Two Meissen porcelain armorial plates from the 'Münnich' Service, circa 1738

Count Burkhard Christoph von Münnich (9 May 1683 – 16 October 1767) began his service in 1716 under Augustus the Strong and became General Inspector of Polish troops and Commander of the Royal Guard. After service in the French and Polish-Saxon armies, Münnich entered the service of Peter the Great of Russia in 1721, and was promoted to Lieutenant General in 1722. In 1728, he was appointed commander in chief of the Russian Army by Peter II. During the War of the Polish succession, commanding 15,000 troops, in 1734, Münnich took part in the siege of Gdańsk, where a claimant to the Polish throne, Stanisław Leszczyński I, had been hiding. In the same year Münnich was awarded the order of St. Andrew. This armorial service may represent a gift in recognition of his involvement in the War of the Polish succession, which resulted in Friedrich August's election as King of Poland. “An individual biography can be a portrait of an age, and the figure of Münnich, a Saxon, working in Russian service probably represents the best embodiment of Russia's new Europeanized cultural landscape" (Lydia Liackhova, ‘In a Porcelain Mirror: Reflections of Russia from Peter I to Empress Elizabeth’, in Maureen Cassidy-Geiger, Fragile Diplomacy: Meissen Porcelain for European Courts, 1710-1763, New Haven, 2008, pp. 70-71). See also the detailed discussion of the service by Anette Loesch in Ulrich Pietsch (ed.), Meissen for the Czars, Porcelain as a Means of Saxon-Russian Politics in the Eighteenth Century, exh. cat., Munich, 2004, pp. 50-51. A plate from this service was sold at Sotheby's, London, 12 June 2008, lot 722, and a charger was sold from the Ehlen Collection, Sotheby’s, Cologne, 6 March 2024, lot 52.