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A Russian porcelain oyster dish from the Raphael Service

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SKU: 1606-015 Category:

Description

A Russian porcelain oyster dish from the Raphael Service, Imperial Porcelain Factory, ST Petersburg, 1899. Of circular shape with rounded, molded handle, the center with a finely painted vignette of a centaur regarding a classical herm en grisaille against an iron red ground in a circular reserve, surrounded by nine radiating panels decorated with foliate trophies & grotesques, the handle with a winged dracon en grisaille against an iron red ground, the underside with gilded rim & foot & with gilt Slavonic Imperial cipher of Nicholas II dated 1899. Length 5 5/8 x w. 4 3/4 in. (14.3 x 12.2 cm)

Emperor Alexander III specially commissioned the Raphael Service in honor of the 400th anniversary of the Italian painter Raphael Sanzio da Urbino (1483-1520) in 1883. Intended for use in Great Catherine Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, the Raphael service was perhaps the most important service produced at the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory in the late 19th & early 20th centuries. The ornament is derived from motifs in the Hermitage’s Raphael Loggia, which had been copied for Catherine II after frescoes by Raphael & his students in the loggias of the Vatican. The service’s primary decoration alternates panels with human & animal figures interwoven with scrolls & foliage & medallions with antique figures en grisaille set against gray, celadon, iron red, or light blue backgrounds. The project was so complex that Leonard Leonardovich Schaufelberger (1839-1894), head of the factory’s painting workshop, oversaw the designs, & Emperor Alexander III personally approved most of them. Pieces from it are uniquely marked with large, stenciled ciphers of the ruling monarch in tooled gold Slavonic script. The ornately painted service was completed in 1903 after twenty years’ work & included only fifty place settings. The following year, the service was moved to the Anichkov Palace in St. Petersburg for use by the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna. On the service & its history, see T.V. Petrova’s note in Pod tsarskim venzelem, St. Petersburg, 2007, pp. 200-201.

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