A Berlin KPM biscuit porcelain group with the Crown Princesses
Model no. 1246. Impressed sceptre mark. Firing cracks to the base, a vertical crack to the clothing and through one wrist. H 55 cm.
1st half 20th C., model by Johann Gottfried Schadow and Friedrich Hagemann, August 1796.
This group depicts Schadow's famous statue of Crown Princess Luise, wife of Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm and her sister Friederike, wife of Prince Friedrich Ludwig Karl. Johann Gottfried Schadow received the commission for this statue in 1794 through the State Minister Friedrich Anton von Heinitz. Financed by the royal porcelain manufactory, Schadow's pupil Carl Friedrich Hagemann created a prototype model for the porcelain figure based on studies by Karl Heinrich Schwarzkopf. The life-size marble group was completed in July 1797, also paid for by Royal Berlin.
Literature
Another later example in the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin (in: Ponert, Berlin Museum, Keramik, Berlin 1985, no. 38).
Cf. Heim, Die Berliner Porzellanplastik und ihre skulpturale Dimension 1751 - 1825, Berlin 2016, no. 144. The author writes: "Große Sorgfalt ließ Schadow bei der subtilen Gestaltung beider Prinzessinen walten, die, über die allgemeine Charakterisierung ihrer Physiognomie hinaus, das Bemühen um die Widergabe ihrer Wesenszüge und politischen Aufgaben erahnen lässt." (p. 531)