A Meissen porcelain dish from the Pâris de Monmartel-Béthune dinner service
The rim decorated with a large crowned arms of alliance supported by two lions on a rocaille bracket painted in sepia camaieu. The centre with woodcut style flowers and insects. With small flowers painted over firing flaws. Blue crossed swords mark, dreher's number 20. Minor scratches and some wear to the gilding. D 28.1 cm.
1746, model by Johann Friedrich Eberlein.
The French banker Jean Pâris de Monmartel (1690 - 1766) and his third wife Marie Armande de Béthune (1709 - 1772) were married on February 16th 1746. It was rumoured in the family that the Meissen service created for the couple on occasion of their wedding was a gift from the Polish King Stanislaw Leszczynski. However, the service was in fact a present from King August III of Saxony. For the catalogue "Fragile Diplomacy," Selma Schwartz and Jeffrey Munger set out to trace the origins of the service and found an exchange of letters ending in 1749 that clearly identified both the patron and the recipient of the gift. Prince Hermann Moritz of Saxony, the Maréchal de Saxe, described Jean Pâris de Monmartel as being so influential that he kept the state machinery running. Despite this, the banker was still so proud and overjoyed about the porcelain service three years after receiving it that he kept it locked away in his office and allowed no one but himself to touch the pieces.
The service was housed in his private rooms until his death in 1766. At that time, it consisted of 72 dinner plates, 24 soup bowls, 60 platters, four round and four oval tureens, twelve salad bowls, five sauce boats, 20 compote dishes, and four leaf-shaped bowls – a more or less average size for a courtly service of the era.
Provenance
Private collection, Palatinate.
Literature
For more on the history of this service see Schwartz/Munger, Gifts of Meissen Porcelain to the French Court, 1728 - 50, in: Cassidy-Geiger (ed.), Fragile Diplomacy. Meissen Porcelain for European Courts ca. 1710 - 63, New Haven-London 2007, p. 147 f.
An identical platter in cat. Sammlung Hoffmeister, vol. II, Hamburg 1999, no. 364, and another auctioned by Lempertz Cologne, auction 1159, Collection of Renate and Tono Dreßen on 13th November 2020, lot 705.