A Meissen porcelain cup and saucer with scenes after Angelika Kauffmann
With original saucer. The cup decorated with a scene of "Ariadne on Naxos" the saucer with "Paris and Aphrodite" in a reduced colour palette. With renewed interior gilding. Blue crossed swords mark with star, underglaze blue painter's mark 4 (cup), gold 4 (saucer). Some wear to the gilding. H cup 5.2 cm.
Around 1780 - 90.
The scene painted on this cup is based on Angelika Kauffmann's spectacular work "The abandoned Ariadne", which was published in an engraving in 1778 by the brothers Georg Siegmund and Johann Gottlieb Facius under the title "Ariadne awakened from Sleep, finds herself abandoned by Theseus". The depiction on the saucer shows an excerpt from the judgment of Paris, namely only the dialogue scene between the chosen Aphrodite and Paris, and her rivals Hera and Athena, according to William Wynne Ryland's "Porrigit hic Veneri lucida dona Paris".
Provenance
The Dr. Annedore Müller-Hofstede Collection.
Literature
An identically decorated cup illus. in cat. "Verrückt nach Angelika" Porzellan und anderes Kunsthandwerk nach Angelika Cup and saucer and the engravings illustrated in Bodinek, Raffinesse im Akkord. Meissener Porzellanmalerei und ihre grafischen Vorlagen, vol. 2, Dresden 2018, no. 131 - 132a.