| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Materials and techniques | Hard-paste porcelain painted with enamels and gilded |
| Brief description | Statuette in hard-paste porcelain of Hercules, Doccia porcelain factory, Doccia, late 18th century-first decades of 19th century |
| Physical description | Statuette in hard-paste porcelain of Hercules, painted with enamels and gilded. A nude bearded figure leaning against a tree-trunk over which a lion skin is thrown. He holds three golden apples. His left hand rests on a club. Supported on a square black plinth. |
| Dimensions | - Height: 15.2cm
- Width: 6.9cm
|
| Gallery label | - (ca. 1995)
- Hercules
Porcelain
After the statue known as the Farnese Hercules
ITALY (DOCCIA); late 18th century
Gift of Mr J.H.Fitzhenry
C.28-1910
(Label draft attributed to John V. G. Mallet, ca. 1995)
|
| Credit line | Given by Mr. J. H. Fitzhenry |
| Object history | After the statue known as the Farnese Hercules in Naples. |
| Subjects depicted | |
| Bibliographic references | - Bayley, Stephen, ed. Taste: an exhibition about values in design. London : Boilerhouse Project, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1983. Pl. 4.
- Frescobaldi Malenchini, Livia ed. With Balleri, Rita and Rucellai, Oliva, ‘Amici di Doccia Quaderni, Numero VII, 2013, The Victoria and Albert Museum Collection’, Edizioni Polistampa, Firenze, 2014
pp. 70-71, Cat. 48
48. Statuette of the Farnese Hercules
end of the 18th century-first decades
of the 19th century
porcelain painted in colours
painted under the base “28”
h 15,3 cm
inv. C.28-1910
gift: Mr J.H. Fitzhenry, Esq.
The statuette is a reproduction of an antique marble statue of Hercules at Rest which is in the Archaeological Museum in Naples; the statue is part of the Farnese collection which was brought to Naples from 1786 (RAUSA 2009, p. 21-22).We do not know which model was used for the statuette but, considering its small size it is probably related to a group of Classical style porcelains listed in the Inventory of Models (about 1791-1806): “N. 1There are14 statuettes, some from Florence and some from other places […] The Third one is a Bacchante […] and all of them have their moulds” (LANKHEIT 1982, p. 153, 76:1). This refers to a series of statuettes of presumably the same size, for which we know of four examples having the same characteristics (MANNINI 1997, p. 62-63), one of which, the Nymph with a Panther, exists also in a decorated version (cat. 46).The small size of these statuettes suggests that they were used as part of a table setting, as was typical in the late 18th century for figures produced by other manufacturers, like the biscuits made by Giovanni Volpato in Rome (A. González-Palacios, in FASTO ROMANO 1991, p. 220, cat. 187) and the Real Fabbrica Ferdinandea. In this statuette the lion pelt has been decorated with spots as though it was a leopard skin and this suggests that the artists at Doccia no longer had knowledge of the first of the Labors of Hercules in Porcelain 71 which the hero kills the Nemean lion to obtain his pelt (FERRARI 1999, p. 282). Among the various biscuits that were produced during the Campana casting project in the 1960s (BALLERI 2011, p. 40) there was an example of this Hercules which allowed us to identify the number of the mould that had been used to make it. Research conducted on the list of Capodimonte moulds, the Catalogo Modelli e Forme di Capo di Monte (AMD, arm. 3, 1940s, n. 246) revealed that this statuette continued to be made up until the 1940s when the crowned “N” mark was being used to identify this type of production(CARÒLA-PERROTTI 2008, p. 73).
R.B.
Bibliography: MORAZZONI 1935, plate LXXVIII
- p. 234
Settis, Salvatore., Anguissola, Anna., and Gasparotto, Davide eds. Serial/Portable Classic: The Greek Canon and its Mutations. Fondazion Prada: Milan, 2015. ISBN 9788887029611.
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