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Plate
unknown - Enlarge image
Plate
- Place of origin:
Jingdezhen, China (made)
- Date:
ca. 1745-50 (made)
- Artist/Maker:
unknown (production)
- Materials and Techniques:
Porcelain painted in enamels and gilt
- Credit Line:
Bequeathed by Basil Ionides
- Museum number:
C.78-1963
- Gallery location:
Ceramics Study Galleries, Asia & Europe, room 137, case 13, shelf 7
The dish is decorated with a scene copied from the engraving Pèlerin de l"Isle de Cythère, made in 1708 by Bernard Picart (1673-1733), a French engraver active in Holland.
In Greek mythology the Ionian island of Cythera was a sacred place devoted to the cult of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Visual representations of the myth of Cythera began to be circulated in France around 1700, usually showing groups of men and women embarking on boats or arriving at the island. Only two pictorial treatments, including Picart's, depict single couples. The theme also became popular in theatre performances of the period, presented at the Paris Opéra as ballets and at the popular theatres of the fairs (théâtre de la foire) as comedies. Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), who pioneered the genre of arcadian representations of love and fête galantes, reproduced the motif in the painting L'Isle de Cythère of circa 1708-09, and in two other versions entitled The pèlerinage à Cythera of 1717 and in 1718-19
