Two Italian white porcelain reclining figures of Hercules and Venus, possibly Doccia, second half of 18th century/early 19th century

Koller, Zurich, 16 September 2013, lot 1561.

The passion for collecting ancient sculptures and reproductions after the antique started in the 15th century with the increase in humanistic studies. It was shared and developed by the young and wealthy Grand Tourists who travelled through Italy, who at the end of their journey wished to retain memories of the monuments they had seen and the emotions they had experienced. This desire inspired the invention of “souvenir”, works of art initially made in bronze but also in porcelain. In 1737, the Marchese Carlo Andrea Ginori (1702-57) established porcelain works in Sesto Fiorentino on the outskirts of Florence, which became the fourth site to successfully produce true porcelain in Europe. Alongside the demand for models after the greatest sculptors of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, including those of Giovanni Battista Foggini, Massimiliano Soldani and Giuseppe Piamontini, for whose serial production Carlo Ginori purchased the rights from their heirs in the 18th century, Marchese Carlo Ginori foresaw the opportunity offered by a growing demand for porcelain copies of the most celebrated antiquities. Conscious of the superiority of the pure-white porcelain as the ideal medium to imitate and reproduce the softness and the details of ancient marbles, he was quick to respond. Throughout the 1740s and 1750s he engaged in acquiring moulds not only of the most famous works from the grand-ducal collections in Florence, but also, with the assistance of the well-connected Guido Bottari, he was able to access and copy some of the famous antique sculptures from elsewhere in Italy, especially Rome. By the time Lorenzo Ginori (1734-1791), Carlo’s eldest son, took charge of the factory upon the death of Carlo in 1757, the factory held a large collection of objects in gesso, wax and terracotta, which were listed in the Inventario de’Modelli, usually with a title, a short description, sometimes with an indication of the origin of the original sculpture, and usually with the number of moulds made for each object.

The original models for these two figures have not been identified, nor have they been paired with corresponding subjects and descriptions in Doccia's Inventario de’Modelli, making an attribution to Doccia uncertain. The youth lying on a lion skin, probably the young Hercules, is reminiscent in his pose of the Roman sculpture of the ‘Sleeping Hermaphrodite’, the ancient Roman marble sculpture depicting Hermaphroditus life-size, discovered at Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome in 1618, and now in the Louvre, Paris (inventory nos. MR 220 and N 335). It rests on a marble mattress by Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), executed in 1620, which in turn appears to be the model for the mattress on which the present figure of Venus reclines on.

Related Literature

J. Winter, ‘The Sculptures of the Doccia Porcelain Manufactory’, in J. Kräftner (ed.), Baroque Luxury Porcelain. The Manufactories of Du Paquier in Vienna and of Carlo Ginori in Florence, Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna, exhibition catalogue, Munich, 2005, pp. 179-189.

K. Lankheit, Die Modellsammlung der Porzellanmanufaktur Doccia, Munich, 1982.

J. Winter, Le Statue del Marchese Ginori, sculture in porcellana bianca di Doccia, exhibition catalogue, Florence, 2003.