Lot 1616 Dα

This red chalk drawing depicts a personification of Asia sitting on a camel and is based on a series of works illustrating the four continents of the earth by Gottfried Bernhard Göz. Of the four original allegories drawn in black chalk, those of Europe and Africa are today housed in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, whereas that of Europe is illustrated in literature.

The present motif can be attributed to Gottfried Bernhard Göz because the central figures of the four drawings from around 1740 provided the inspiration for the models of the four continents created for the Meissen porcelain manufactory by Johann Joachim Kaendler and Johann Friedrich Eberlein in around 1740 (see ill. 1: Lempertz Decorative Arts, 19.11.2021, lot 1073).

This enlarged version of the motif has been drawn with squares, possibly for use as the design for a fresco or oil painting, depicts the personification of Asia as a female figure in regal attire holding an incense burner. She is surrounded by European and Asian merchants with bundles of wares, presumably coffee, since we see a slender Asian style coffee pot and a mocha cup in the foreground. In the background is a panoramic water landscape with a harbour town. At the time, incense and coffee were the most important export goods from Yemen, so the royal figure could be interpreted as the Queen of Sheba and thus an embodiment of the Orient.