Exclusive Collection Billy Goat

Augustus the Strong was hugely passionate about porcelain. This had long been imported to the Saxon court on merchant ships from the Far East but was subsequently produced in the first European porcelain manufactory. So as to be able to display his comprehensive collection in fitting manner, in 1725 the Saxon Elector had work started on converting the "Dutch Palais" he had purchased on the north bank of the Elbe in the Dresden borough of Neustadt into a four-winged building. He renamed it his "Japanese Palais" and set about fulfilling his dream of furnishing it with a zoo populated by porcelain animals for which he commissioned large numbers of mostly life-size models to be made.

It was also initially intended to house this hunky Billy Goat by Meissen's modelling genius Johann Joachim Kaendler there. Large-format Meissen sculptures of this kind are unique and producing them makes the utmost demands of staff at the manufactory even today. Our Billy Goat is made up of 19 individual parts that are joined together by a "repairer" to create a single, seemingly indivisible whole. Johann Joachim Kaendler performed particularly outstanding feats in the sphere of large-format statuary. As with so many other of the figurines the artist modelled, his Billy Goat testifies to exceptional powers of observation that enable the beholder to catch a substantial glimpse of nature through the medium of a work of art.

At the same time, Kaendler's compositions invariably add up to more than just copies of nature: they reflect a given animal's inherent character, capture the moment at which it is at its most impressive and, in the process, give us a rare insight into its soul.