Limited Masterworks Vase Mythical Melusine

Melusine is a mythical being in medieval folklore, a beautiful woman - half human, half fish - who casts her spell over men and is subsequently their undoing. Her saga is one of the great ancient European myths with roots dating back to the 12th century. Names and settings may differ in the various mythological accounts, but the underlying theme is the same throughout: a mere mortal enters into a liaison with a supernatural being and the human's downfall is the inevitable consequence.

Porcelain painter Martina Szehr has long been a great fan of the many tales involving mermaids and in particular the various Melusines and has now been able to articulate her fascination on an amphora modelled in 1864. Against a ground handdaubed in a most apposite eelgrass green, we see the young Melusine seated amongst reeds on the obverse and, unseen by all, taking a bath in her true guise. Her long hair billows over her right shoulder and she has the tail of a fish.

The reverse features a small boy, likewise with a fish's tale, who an engraving in the manufactory archives states as having been based on a work by François Boucher (1703- 1770). The French painter, illustrator and engraver in the French Rococo style was famous for his lascivious, mythological and allegorical motifs. The "fêtes galantes" or pastoral entertainments produced by French painters such as Boucher or, indeed, Antoine Watteau - bucolic scenes of couples in love in natural or parkland settings, often with erotic undertones - have served as the source material for great masterpieces of Meissen porcelain painting on countless occasions.