A Capodimonte porcelain two-handled bottle cooler, circa 1755

Christie's London, 24 March 1969, lot 159;

Christie’s London, 29 November 2011, lot 69.

Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, December 1986 - April 1987, no. 93.

F. Stazzi, L'arte della ceramica: Capodimonte, Milan, 1972, p. 216, no. 3.

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, p. 146, no. 93.

A similar example is illustrated by A. Lane, Italian Porcelain, London, 1954, pl. 75c (then in the collection of the Hispanic Society of America) and A. Mottola-Molfino, L'Arte della Porcelanna in Italia, Busto Arsizio, 1977, no. 156 (now in the Ariana Museum, Geneva). A white example, of slightly more elongated form and fitted with a gilt-bronze lower section and foot, in the Museo Nazionale della Ceramica Duca di Martina (inventory no. 178), is illustrated by A. Caròla-Perrotti, Le Porcelanne dei Borbone di Napoli, Capodimonte e Real Fabbrica Ferdinandea 1743-1806, exhibition catalogue, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, December 1986 - April 1987, Naples, 1986, p. 147, no. 94. It is published again by N. Spinosa, Sovrane fragilità: Le Fabbriche Reali di Capodimonte e di Napoli, exhibition catalogue, Milan, 2007, p. 35ff, where Patrizia Piscitello suggests that the form may be related to a model by the Paris silversmith Thomas Germain (1673–1748), or to designs by another silversmith, Pierre Germain (1703-83), from Avignon, whose designs were published as engravings, in 1748, in Elements d'orfevrerie divisés en deuz parties de cinquante feuilles chacune, which may have found its way to the factory and been used as a source for new shapes at Capodimonte. For an illustration of the engraving by J.J. Pasquier of a design by Pierre Germain for a bottle cooler of closely related form to the present lot see N. Spinosa et al., Porcellane di Capodimonte, La Real Fabbrica di Carlo di Borbone 1743-1759, Naples, 1993, p. 26. A white cooler of the same form but with a low scroll-moulded foot was sold Bonhams London, 7 December 2017, lot 39.