Dessert sculptures

The presence of sculptures on the table, especially on special occasions, has been customary at least since the seventeenth century and was characterized by a narrative function: on religious occasions, representations such as the Via Crucis were chosen, while for weddings and celebrations the inspiration was more evocative and often linked to mythological scenes.

Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger, in his chronicle of the marriage between Maria de’ Medici and Henry IV, which took place in 1600, for example, recounts that the table was decorated with small bronze sculptures commissioned from Giambologna, whose workshop also produced sugar renditions of his compositions intended for the same purpose.

The practice of embellishing banquets with ephemeral sculptures in sugar or butter continued into the eighteenth century. In that century, the monumental sculptures that had developed along the table during the seventeenth century were significantly scaled down. However, the sculptural groups continued to preserve their grandeur.

It is within this context that the Manifattura Ginori produced table sculptures in porcelain. So precious as to be called “white gold,” in the eighteenth century porcelain was truly an emblem of the status of its owner. Its social function was primarily expressed through table settings, and particularly dessert settings, which quickly became a privileged witness to the variety of styles characterizing the tastes of the time.

To this taste, the Manifattura di Doccia did not fail to add a touch of ‘Florentine-ness,’ offering ‘buffe’ caricature figures that fully reproduce the Caramogi of the designer and engraver Jacques Callot, active from 1611 at the Medici court. With this choice, Carlo Ginori not only sought to distinguish his production from that of contemporary manufactories but also intended to pay tribute to the magnificence of the patronage of the Medici family, now in decline. This intent is also revealed by the centerpiece featuring a triton supporting a shell on its head, an obvious allusion to the Florentine fountains commissioned by the Medici and to the compositions of Florentine late Baroque workshops, particularly that of Giovan Battista Foggini.

Sensitive to changes in fashion, in the late eighteenth century the manufactory enlivened desserts with reproductions of ancient statuary (sometimes arranged in small groups), with masks from the Commedia dell’Arte (such as those of Harlequin and Harlequina serving as bottle coolers) and with polychrome compositions inspired by Arcadian-pastoral themes.

In the last decades of the eighteenth century, with the rise of Neoclassicism, in the production of the main European ceramic manufactories, the decorated porcelain was replaced by biscuit, whose white and matte surface was particularly valued for its resemblance to marble.

• L. Ginori Lisci, La porcellana di Doccia, Firenze 1963, pp. 31-39
• M. Chilton, Harlequin Unmasked. The Commedia dell’Arte and Porcelain Sculpture, New Haven-London 2001
• A. d’Agliano, Influssi orientali ed esotismo nella Manifattura Ginori a Doccia fra il 1737 e il 1765, in Fragili tesori dei principi. Le vie della porcellana tra Vienna e Firenze, exhibition catalog curated byi R. Balleri,  A. d’Agliano, C. Lehner-Jobst, Livorno 2018, pp. 43-59