Limited Edition Wall Plate, Scene of commedia dell' arte

During the Baroque, the famous Commedia dell'Arte, originally
a type of Italian street theatre from the 16th century that made
great use of masks and stock characters, featured in a richly
varied programme of entertainment at the Italian court. Actors
wearing costumes and masks to hide their identity played out
scenes of intrigue, conspiracy and also, of course, love with
musical interludes. Underpinning the genre was the idea of figures
from the lower echelons of society known as zanni tussling with
upper-class vecchi, who make complete fools of themselves as
the plot unfolds by dint of their supercilious arrogance.
Commedia characters have appealed to and inspired virtually all
of Meissen's great modellers and porcelain painters over the
centuries. Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775), surely the
most familiar and outstanding amongst them, created a set of
twelve figurines in the early 1770s that have continued to be
some of the most popular collectibles from the Manufactory ever
since.
As part of its 2021 Limited Edition series, the Manufactory is
devoting a whole series of wall plates to the Comedians. Indi vidual characters from the series are complemented here by a
typically whimsical Commedia scene featuring the rather coarse,
witty and fast-tongued Pulcinella. He is a cunning yet simple-mind ed servant from the peasantry, a prankster who is forever playing
tricks and has no respect whatsoever for authority. Pulcinella is
typically portrayed wearing a long black bird's-head mask, a
pointed hat and flared cuffs on a white costume beneath which
a voluminous pot-belly is generally discernible. Our porcelain
painter Ines Baldauf has, in her own rendition, furnished the
impudent valet with colourful clothes, a tall hat and a female
companion. Will the la