A Doccia white porcelain figure of a River God, probably the Personification of the River Tiber, circa 1750

With Lukacs & Donath, Antichità, bearing label;

With Pelham Galleries, London, TEFAF, Maastricht, March 2012;

Where acquired.

At least one other example of this rare figure survives, now preserved in the Museo delle Arti Decorative del Castello Sforzesco, Milan, inv. no. P85, illustrated in L. Melagati, Le Porcellane Europee Al Castello Sforzesco, Milan, 1999, p. 75; G. Morazzoni and S. Levy, Le Porcellane Italiane, Milan, 1960, vol. II, tav. 252.

The original source for this model remains unidentified. Near contemporary to the production of this figure, Jean-Jacques Caffieri exhibited at the Paris Salon, in 1757, a plaster sculpture of a river god in the guise of a seated bearded old man. Shortly thereafter, he created a marble version which he presented in 1759, as a reception piece to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture (now in the Louvre Museum, inv. no. MR 1773). Caffieri’s marble was later copied at the Imperial porcelain factory in Vienna in about 1765, and an example from the Belvedere Collection is illustrated in C. Lehner-Jobst et. al, Fragili tesori dei Principi. Le vie della porcellana tra Vienna e Firenze, exh. cat., Florence, Palazzo Pitti, 2018, p. 368, cat. no. 103. In her entry for the Vienna figure, Lehner-Jobst suggests the possible link to the Fontana dell’Oceano (1576) by Giambologna, located in the Boboli Gardens, Florence, centered by the figure Oceanus and surrounded by the personifications of the three great rivers, the Nile, Ganges and Euphrates, noting particularly the close similarities in the treatment of Euphrates to the Vienna figure. Giambologna’s personification of the Mugnone River, found in the grotto at the Parco Mediceo at Pratolino may also have been a source, and it is plausible that both sculptures could have been a point of reference for the modellers at Doccia in the creation of the present figure. Furthermore, a circa 1663-64 etching by Salvator Rosa of The Dream of Aeneas, showing Aeneas resting before the river god Tiber, exhibits similarities in composition to the present figure.