A Meissen figure group of Spanish Lovers, circa 1740-45

modelled by J. J. Kändler, as a fashionably dressed lady wearing a wide-hooped skirt courted by a gentleman in a Watteauesque cost.mes , he modelled leaning in to clasp her left arm and hand, standing upon a small mound base applied with flowerheads and leaves,

With Fischer-Böhler, Munich;
acquired from the above in 1957.

Related Literature
Meredith Chilton, Harlequin unmasked, The Commedia dell'Arte and Porcelain sculpture, Yale University Press, 2001, p. 85.

The female figure's head has been re-stuck at the neck and there are two hairline cracks which extends through her skirt, probably extensions of firing cracks, one of which has some dis-coloured over-paint on the edge inside her skirt
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This model is based on an engraving by Pierre Filœul after the painting 'Le baiser donné' by Jean-Baptiste Pater of 1736. Chilton discusses this model and suggests that the group may more likely represent lovers from the Italian Comedy, or a fashionably dressed couple attending a masquerade, noting that whilst the lady’s cost.mes is more or less correct for the date of manufacture, however the gentleman is of sixteenth or seventeenth century style, that was perhaps thought in the eighteenth century to be of Spanish origin, hence the Meissen factory’s reference to it in January 1740, as “The Spanish Group”. The group is not.mes ntioned in Kändler's Taxa or work records but is referred to as the 'Spanier Gropgen' [Spanish group] in a specification of figures and groups completed by the Weiße Corps in overt.mes in January 1740 (R. Rückert, 'Zur Staffierung der Gesichter von Meißener Porzellanfiguren'. in Keramos 153, July 1996, p. 156).