Page 276 - Bonhams Catalog Cohen and Cohen Jan 24, 2023 New York

134
A LARGE FAMILLE ROSE ‘DON QUIXOTE’ CIRCULAR The large dish depicts the moment Don Quixote places a barber’s
CHARGER bowl on his head in the mistaken belief that it is the legendary
Qianlong period, circa 1755-70 ‘Helmet of Mambrino’. The scene is based on an imaginative design
The center of the dish and well, painted with an oval roundel depicting by Charles-Antoine Coypel (1694-1752) originally for the Gobelins
the bumbling romantic knight Don Quixote on his horse Rosinante led tapestry factory. Images by Coypel were engraved by a number of
by his roguish squire, Sancho Panza and watched surreptitiously by artists including Louis Surugue, Gerard Vendergucht and Jacob
two ladies hiding behind a tree, behind a barber flees after having his Folkema (fig.1). The Vandergucht series of engravings was used for an
bowl taken by Don Quixote, all set in a rocky landscape, the everted early English edition published around 1732.
rim painted with four equally spaced grisaille and gilt landscape and
bird cartouches, the reverse plain, the base unglazed. This dish is from the third and rarest service ordered in China
15 3/8in (39cm) diam. somewhere between 1755 and 1770. See Michael Cohen, The
Magazine Antiques, January 2013, for an article proposing several
$10,000 - 15,000 pieces of exceptional quality and with distinctive enameling made
at this particular Chinese enameling workshop, possibly specially
乾隆時期 約1745-50年 粉彩《堂吉訶德》大盤 commissioned for the English market.
Published: This design is one of the most sought after by collectors of European
Cohen & Cohen, Baroque & Roll, Antwerp, 2015, pp. 94-95, no. 60 subjects on Chinese export porcelain. It is now thought that three
services may have been ordered, the first in 1745 just after the Jacob
出版： Folkema or Jan Van der Gucht print was published, the second about
倫敦Cohen & Cohen古董行，《Baroque & Roll》，安特衛普，2015 1750 and the third, and rarest, sometime between 1755 and 1770.
年，頁94-95，圖版編號60 For further discussion, see Cohen & Cohen, Baroque & Roll, Antwerp,
2015, pp. 94-95, no. 60.
In this episode Quixote has encountered a barber who is holding
a basin over his head to shelter from the rain (the woman on the
left appears to be sheltering herself with her cloak too). With his
characteristic ability to conjure up heroic adventures out of the
mundane, Quixote has assumed the basin to be the ‘Helmet of
Mambrino’, a legendary possession of a Moorish King, made of
pure gold and rendering the wearer invulnerable. It was the goal of
many of the Knights of Charlemagne to find it, not dissimilar to King
Arthur’s Knights searching for the Holy Grail. Quixote commands the
astonished barber to give him the helmet and, thinking he is mad,
the barber drops it and flees. The story is popular and emblematic
of all that Quixote represents. Don Quixote is a hero for any age but
especially for ours. He has a huge imagination nurtured by reading
many books and his innocence and excitement at the prospect of
adventure appears as madness to the ‘gray’ people around him. He
has his own code: an ancient one of morality and honor, the code of
Chivalry, and he sets out bravely to rectify the wrongs he encounters.
Book One of the novels by Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) was
published in 1605, written in prison to pay off his debts. Cervantes had
a colorful life: as a young man he was servant to a Spanish Cardinal in
Rome. He later enlisted with the Spanish Militia and was wounded in
the Battle of Lepanto against the Turks.
He then went to sea but was captured by Barbary pirates and spent
five years as a slave. Ransomed by his family, he returned to Madrid
where he acted as a Commissary for the Armada in 1587. Later a tax
Collector position took him to Seville. However, he never matched the
(fig.1) success of his first book and sadly died penniless on 23 April 1616,
coincidentally on the same day that Shakespeare died.

References: Howard & Ayers, 1978, p. 345, no. 342, a dinner plate
from the earlier service; Lloyd Hyde, 1964, plate XV, p. 15, the later
service; Buerdeley, 1962, Cat. 33, the later service: Williamson, 1970,
pl. XXIV, a teapot with the five-figure version.

274 | BONHAMS