The chief Italian factory was that at Doccia near Florence, founded by the Marchese Carlo Ginori in 1735 and still kept up by his descendants. His aim was to compete with the porcelain imported from Saxony, and he succeeded in his efforts without the princely support by which alone in most European countries the manufacture was saved from failure. He obtained the assistance of an expert from the factory at Vienna, Carl Wendelin Anreiter, of whose painted work on porcelain rare specimens are occasionally met with. The earliest Doccia productions showed distinct signs of Meissen influence, as may be seen from a soup-bowl in the Victoria and Albert Museum; this has a basket-work rim of the Meissen type, and is decorated with genre scenes from Italian peasant life in medallions, surrounded by tendrils in red and gold and small panels of lilac colour. Other pieces of the same service bear the mark of a Doccia painter, Pietro Fanciullacci. At a later stage the Ginori works became famous for their large reproductions in white porcelain of antique statues in the Florentine palaces, such as the Crouching Venus and the Apollo Belvedere.
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The celebrated royal factory at Capodimonte, near Naples, is said to owe its origin to a present of Meissen porcelain made to Charles III., King of the Two Sicilies, in 1736, when he married the Saxon princess Maria Amelia. Its earliest productions were in white porcelain moulded with shells, coral, and other marine decorations, but its fame is more specially founded on the services with mythological subjects minutely picked out in enamel colours. As at Doccia, the inborn genius of the Italians for modelling was exhibited in figures and elaborate statuettes, in which drapery and flesh are usually tinted after nature. A characteristic example is a large allegorical composition at Kensington, supported on four figures copied from the crouching Turkish slaves (“I quattro Mori”) by Pietro Tacca, which surround the monument of Ferdinand I. of Tuscany in the harbour at Leghorn; modelling and colouring alike display the tendency to exaggeration and sensationalism characteristic of Italian art in the period of decadence. When Charles III. succeeded in 1759 to the throne of Spain, he removed with him to the palace of Buen Retiro, near Madrid, the whole establishment of his Neapolitan factory; the Madrid porcelain is of a similar kind to that made before the transfer of the works.
The later factory carried on at Naples under Ferdinand IV. shows the influence of the excavations at Herculaneum in the severe classical style by which it is marked. Painted views of the district of Naples and of the local antiquities are a favourite feature. At the same time the works gained some renown by the cleverly modelled statuettes in biscuit china of greyish tone made under the direction of Filippo Tagliolini.
IV
FRENCH PORCELAIN
PLATE 19
Vase, Sèvres, given in 1780 by Gustavus III. of Sweden to Catherine II. of Russia. Decorated by Morin, Fontaine, and Le Guay on a bleu de roi ground. Height, 19½ in. Jones Collection.
No. 781-1882. See p. [59].