Page 88 - Ming_China_Courts_and_Contacts_1400_1450 Craig lunas

Plate 8.2 Blue-and-white porcelain bowl, Xuande mark and period,
1426–35, Jingdezhen. Height 9cm, diameter 15.9cm. Sir Percival
David Collection, PDF 681
Plate 8.4 Small white glazed cup, excavated at Zhushan, Xuande
Francesco Benaglio (c. 1432–92), an Italian Renaissance mark and period, 1426–35. Height 4.6cm, diameter 6.2cm. Jingdezhen

artist who painted this work in the late 1460s.Benaglio was Institute of Ceramic Archaeology, Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province
also responsible for painting, in the late 15th century, with
Michele da Verona (1470–1536/1544), frescoes in the Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506) (Pl. 8.3). Scholars have
7
Lavagnoli Chapel of the Church of S. Anastasia, Verona. suggested that Mantegna contracted the sides of the Yongle
These show Christ preaching on the seashore with a period bowl slightly so that, filled with gold coins, it could fit
backdrop of trading vessels of the types which would have in the hands of the wise man in this scene, which was painted
transported the porcelain. 5 between 1495 and 1505. However, excavations at Jingdezhen
8
The type of bowl shown here (Pl. 8.2) was first made in have revealed white vessels of exactly this form and
9
the Yongle era 永樂 (1403–24) and then copied in the proportions from the Yongle and Xuande strata (Pl. 8.4).
Xuande 宣德 period (1426–35), but the design was not As almost every shape was made in the full range of colours
subsequently used again until the style was revived in the and designs, it is likely that a blue-and-white version existed
Qing dynasty (1644–1911). Yongle period wares tend to have of exactly these same proportions. Hongzhi 弘治 period
6
darker, more intense blue designs and so the paler blue of blue-and-white bowls dating between 1488 and 1505 bear no
10
this bowl suggests that the artist was representing a piece of resemblance to the bowl in the painting, demonstrating that
porcelain of the Xuande era. Its accurate depiction here the blue-and-white bowl depicted by Mantegna was certainly
suggests he saw rather than imagined the bowl. a Yongle era piece and therefore an antique rather than an
Nearly 50 years later, at the beginning of the 1500s, object that was created at the same time as the picture.
Chinese porcelain was still so rare in Italy that antique Ming During the course of the British Museum exhibition the
blue-and-white was represented in the Adoration of the Magi by possibility of this being Vietnamese was discussed. However,

Plate 8.3 Andrea Mantegna (1431–
1506), Adoration of the Magi,
1495–1505, Italy. Distemper on linen,
height 48.6cm, width 65.6cm. The J.
Paul Getty Museum, 85.PA.417

78 | Ming China: Courts and Contacts 1400–1450