Page 316 - Bonhams Catalog Cohen and Cohen Jan 24, 2023 New York

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A LARGE AND RARE FAMILLE ROSE ‘DON QUIXOTE’ OVAL The story is popular and emblematic of all that Quixote represents.
DISH Don Quixote is a hero for any age but especially for ours. He has a
Qianlong period, circa 1745 huge imagination nurtured by reading many books and his innocence
the center of the dish and well, painted with an oval roundel depicting and excitement at the prospect of adventure appears as madness to
Don Quixote on horseback (Rosinante) led by his squire, Sancho the ‘gray’ people around him. He has his own code: an ancient one
Panza and watched surreptitiously by two ladies hiding behind a tree, of morality and honor, the code of Chivalry, and he sets out bravely to
all set in a rocky landscape, the everted rim painted with four equally rectify the wrongs he encounters.
spaced grisaille and gilt landscape and bird cartouches, the reverse
plain, the base unglazed. Book One of the novels by Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) was
15 2/2in (39cm) across 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
$6,000 - 9,000 Rome. He later enlisted with the Spanish Militia and was wounded in
the Battle of Lepanto against the Turks.
乾隆時期 約1745-50年 粉彩《堂吉訶德》大盤
He then went to sea but was captured by Barbary pirates and spent
Published: five years as a slave. Ransomed by his family, he returned to Madrid
Cohen & Cohen, Think Pink!, Antwerp, 2013, pp.72-73, no.49 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
This relatively rare dish depicts the moment Don Quixote places a success of his first book and sadly died penniless on 23 April 1616,
barber’s bowl mistaken as the ‘Helmet of Mambrino’ on his head, coincidentally on the same day that Shakespeare died.
after an image by Charles-Antoine Coypel (1694-1752) originally for
the Gobelins tapestry factory, and later engraved by Jacob Folkema For another similar dish, just slightly smaller in size, see Christie’s New
(1692-1767) or Gerard van der Gucht (1696-1776). York, 24 October 2022, The Anne and Gordon Getty Collection, lot
961
For a lengthy discussion of the subject see the footnote to Lot 134 in
this sale. References: Howard & Ayers 1978, p.345, no.342, a dinner plate;
Lloyd Hyde 1964, plate XV, p15, Buerdeley 1962, Cat 33, Williamson
The depiction on this dish, however, omits the fleeing barber and his 1970, pl XXIV, a teapot with the five-figure version.
donkey, visible in the later version.

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