A Doccia white porcelain figure of a Callot dwarf, circa 1750-60

With Ars Domi, Zurich;

Private collection, Zurich, acquired from the above, 1968;

Koller, Zurich, 24 March 2014, lot 1529.

Five Doccia Callot dwarfs, including an example of the present model (object no. 50.211.270) are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and illustrated by J.H. Munger, 'Eighteenth-century Doccia Porcelain in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York', Amici di Doccia, Quaderni I-2007, p. 28, fig. 14. Another polychrome example is in the Museo Richard Ginori della Manifattura di Doccia, illustrated in A. Biancalana, Porcellane e Maioliche a Doccia, La Fabbrica dei Marchesi Ginori, I Primi Cento Anni, Florence, 2009, p. 55. The Doccia factory produced several different dwarf figures, some modelled after the famous engravings by Jacques Callot (1592–1635) and his Italian counterpart, Luigi Baccio del Bianco (1604 –1657). Two other dwarf figures from the Collezione Guido Rossi and the Musei Civici del Castello Sforzesco are published in A. Mottola Molfino, L'Arte della Porcellana in Italia, Busto Arsizio, 1976, vol. I, cat. nos. 465-466, where the author notes that another source for these Doccia figures was the work of Tuscan artist Giovanni Domenico Ferretti (1692-1768).