A Capodimonte porcelain Commedia dell'Arte group, circa 1750

With the Antique Porcelain Company, New York (applied paper label);

Sotheby’s Geneva, 14 November 1989, lot 26;

Giovanni & Gabriella Barilla Collection, Geneva, sold Replica Shoes ’s London, 14 March 2012, lot 194.

The dynamic movement of this composition makes it look like a scene from the theatre that has been caught on camera. The way Colombine gestures with her arms suggests that she is asking Arlecchino to stand aside whilst she scolds the pedantic Doctor. By the end of the seventeenth century and throughout the first half of the eighteenth century, theatrical performances in the so-called 'stile italiano' featured the protagonists of the Commedia dell'Arte with their stock characters and easily recognisable flaws and attributes. They were the main attraction at public events from fairs to feast day celebrations and many artists of the time took inspiration from the plays that were performed. Among these artists was the Tuscan Gian Domenico Ferretti (1692-1768) who painted a series of pictures which are interesting for their somewhat Fuselian sense of drama. They feature Colombine and Arlecchino in several instances with a third figure, either the Doctor or another male or female figure. Since Ferretti's pictures almost always show Arlecchino suffering from one sort of mishap or another, I think they must be derived from the Goldoni-inspired theatrical performances which were staged in Florence in 1742 as 'The Thirty-two Misadventures of Arlecchino'. Some of Gricci's porcelain sculpture, although gentler in expression, bears very close similarities to Ferretti's compositions, suggesting that perhaps Gricci, as a good Tuscan by birth, knew of the staging of these plays in Florence and even after he had followed Charles Bourbon and moved to Naples, kept in touch with his old circle of Tuscan artists who had shared his artistic formation. What is certain is that this porcelain group shows such pronounced similarities with a drawing by Ferretti of Arlecchino being attacked by two girls (accession no. WA1863.741, fig. 1), now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; the relationship between them can hardly be one of chance. The biggest difference between Gricci's model and Ferretti's drawing is the free movement of the figures' gestures, which Gricci has achieved by disentangling the knot of arms which characterises Ferretti's figures. Although Gricci would have been constrained by technical demands, as he would have had to make the individual figures and then assemble them as a group at a later stage, he has treated the limitations as an opportunity to create a particularly attractive composition. It is interesting to note that there is another drawing by Ferretti in the Ashmolean which shows Arlecchino playing cards at a table with a gentleman (accession no. WA1863.742, fig. 2), and surreptitiously cheating by extracting the winning card from a pocket in Colombine's dress, while she, clearly complicit, pretends not to notice. A reworking of this composition also exists, conceived by Gricci with even greater freedom of movements than in the group described here. It shows Pulcinella, Pantalone and Arlecchino sitting on a little wall playing cards and is in the Kunst und Gewerke Museum, Hamburg.  

There are only two other examples of this group depicting 'Colombine standing between the Doctor and Arlecchino' that we know of, one is a polychrome porcelain version from the Kiyi and Edward M. Pflueger Collection, now in the Museum of Replica Handbags s, Boston, accession no. 2002.123, illustrated by F. Stazzi, Italienisches Porzellan, Frankfurt, 1964, front cover, and by H. Morley-Fletcher, The Pflueger Collection: Early European Porcelain and Faience as Collected by Edward and Kiyi Pflueger, London, 1993, vol. II, p. 28. The other, of white porcelain with the faces heightened in enamels, is in the Museo Teatrale alla Scala, Milan, see Musei e Gallerie di Milano, Museo Teatrale alla Scala, Milan, 1975, vol. 2, p. 242, cat no. 593, pl. 489. The same white group is also illustrated by F. Stazzi, L'arte della ceramica: Capodimonte, Milan, 1972, p. 326, no. 138. The model is discussed in depth by A. Caròla-Perrotti, Le Porcellane dei Borbone di Napoli, Capodimonte e Real Fabbrica Ferdinandea 1743-1806, exhibition catalogue, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, December 1986 - April 1987, Naples, 1986, pp. 151-153, and the white example illustrated p. 153, fig. C.

Angela Caròla-Perrotti translated by Emma Bassett