A Meissen porcelain plate from a later order for the Pâris de Monmartel-Béthune service
Gotzkowsky model. Decorated with a crowned arms of alliance supported by two lions rampant, small bouquets of "woodcut" style flowers, insects, and scattered blooms. Blue crossed swords mark with dot, pressnummer 56. A tiny chip to the basal ring, minor wear to the gilt edging. D 24.5 cm.
Around 1763, dmodel by Johann Friedrich Eberlein, 1746.
The French banker Jean Pâris de Monmartel (1690 - 1766) and his third wife Marie Armande de Béthune (1709 - 1772) were married on 16th February 1746, and it was rumoured in the family that the Meissen service created for the occasion was a wedding gift from the Polish King Stanislaw Leszczynski. In fact, however, the service was a gift from the Saxon King August III. For the catalogue "Fragile Diplomacy", Selma Schwartz and Jeffrey Munger went in search of traces of the service and found an exchange of letters ending in 1749 that clearly identifies the patron and the recipient of the gift. Hermann Moritz Prince of Saxony, the Maréchal de Saxe, described Jean Pâris de Monmartel as so influential that he kept the state machine running. The presentee, on the other hand, was still so proud and happy about the service three years after receiving it that he kept it locked away in his office and no one but himself was allowed to touch it.
The service remained in his private rooms until his death in 1766. At that time, it consisted of 72 dinner plates, 24 soup plates, 60 platters, four round and four oval tureens, twelve salad bowls, five saucières, 20 compotes and four leaf-shaped bowls - in other words, it was of average size for a courtly service of that time.
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 sold in Lempertz auction 1159 Sammlung Renate und Tono Dreßen on 13th November 2020, lot 705.