Transcribing Material Values in Doccia's Porcelain Medici

Hannah Wirta Kinney TRANSCRIBING MATERIAL VALUES IN DOCCIA’S PORCELAIN MEDICI VENUS* Thomas Salmon’s 1757 Lo stato presente di tutti i paesi e popoli del mondo described the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and city of Florence through the works of admired artists. Im- aginatively walking the city through Salmon’s words, the reader discovers Florence’s artistic legacy in every corner. This guide, like so many of the period, reinforced the illus- trious history the Medici family had written about themselves through their investment in the artistic culture of the city to which so many Grand Tourists made their pilgrim- age. The pinnacle of the Florentine experience was viewing the wonders of the famous grand-ducal galleries, which Salmon said were “perhaps unique”.1 Salmon catalogued room by room the “great works of every Art” collected through the “immense expense” of the “Heroes of the Medici House”.2 The last room, the Tribuna, contained “the best qualities of nature and art, the marvels of painting and sculpture”. Held in highest re- gard was “the most beautiful Statue of Venus, commonly called the Venere de’ Medici, which in past centuries was the wonder of Rome, and now one could say the marvel of this city” (fig. 1). Her perfection, Salmon emphasized, was attested to by “the many copies that one finds scattered throughout the world”.3 * This article evolved out of my Masters’ thesis submitted at the Bard Graduate Center in May 2014. It would not have been possible without a Prendergast Travel Grant, access to the Ginori Family ar- chives, and open conversation with Oliva Ruccellai and Rita Balleri at the Museo Richard-Ginori della Manifattura di Doccia. I would like to thank the volume’s editors and Geraldine A. Johnson for their comments that helped to improve and expand those ideas. 1 Salmon 1757, 43: “[…] la famosa Galleria, la quale è forse l’unica, o pur va del pari colle più celebri di Europa; non potendo abbastanza descriversi le cure ed attenzioni, onde l’augusta Casa de’Medici acquistò da ogni parte con immense spese i preziosi avanzi delle antichità, e gli eccellenti lavori in ogni genere di Arte, di questo illustre Museo: basta il dire che tutti gli Eroi della Casa de’Medici fecere a gara per arricchirlo”. English translation: HWK. The original emphasis, capitalization, and spelling have been used in this and subsequent quotations from period texts. 2 Ibid. 3 Salmon 1757, 62: “L’ultima Stanza alla fine, detta la Tribuna, è quella che accresce la maraviglia, poichè in essa ritrovansi compendiati i maggiori pregi della natura e dell’arte, i prodigi della pittura e della scultura, e quanto v’ha di più bello, ricco, prezioso. Fra le cose più rare adunque che sono senza numero, veggonsi sei Statue di marmo le più belle e più perfette, al parere degl’intendenti, di 72 | Hannah Wirta Kinney 1 Medici Venus, 1st century BCE, marble, 155 cm, Rome, Galleria degli Uffizi, inv. 1914, n. 224 During the same period, on display five miles from Florence in the gallery of the Doccia porcelain factory were porcelain casts of “the most rare antique Greek Statues of the collection of the Princes of the Medici House, and those conserved in the Imperial Gallery of Florence”.4 Amongst them was a Medici Venus (plate VI). At a height of 132 centimeters, its famous contours captured in shining white porcelain, the Doccia Venus quanti mai siense vedute a’ nostri tempi, e di ciò fanno fede le moltissime copie, che in varie forme si trovano sparse nel mondo, servendo a’ Professori di perfetto modello ed esemplare. Più delle altre però si tiene in pregio la bellissima Statua di Venere, dette volgarmente la Venere de’ Medici, la quale ne’ passati secoli fu la maraviglia di Roma, ed ora si può dire un prodigio di questa città.” English translation: HWK. 4 Ibid., 92 “[…] esperimenti al naturale e nella sua giusta proporzione non solo le più rare antiche Sta- tue Greche raccolte da Principi della Casa Medici, e che nella Imperiale Galleria di Firenze si con- servano, ma quelle in oltre, le quali vagamente adornano tutta Roma.” English translation: HWK. Transcribing Material Values in Doccia’s Porcelain Medici Venus | 73 inevitably impressed eighteenth-century visitors.5 Up until the founding of the Doccia factory in 1737, the formula for true hard-paste porcelain had been a closely guarded se- cret of northern European courts and porcelain objects from outside of Europe were im- ported luxuries from the East.6 Salmon noted that the factory’s founder, Marchese Carlo Ginori, had invested great sums of money to develop porcelain in Tuscany with the ul- timate goal of surpassing the northern European factories by producing not just table- ware, but also sculptures.7 Within five years of developing the formula for hard-paste porcelain, the Doccia factory could cast sculptural pieces up to sixty centimeters in length, a feat only equaled by the Meißen factory in Dresden. Doccia’s Medici Venus and the other full-scale casts, described as “statue di grandezza naturale”8 in a period inven- tory, were the technical achievements of a brief period, between 1745 and Ginori’s death in 1757. In Florence, these years were marked by the political and cultural transition brought on by the death of the last Medici Grand Duke Gian Gastone in 1737. In the decades fol- lowing, the political, economic, and cultural structures of the Grand Duchy quickly changed under Francis Stephen of Lorraine’s rule. Ginori came from one of Florence’s no- ble families and was an active member of the late Medici court.9 After the Medici family’s demise, Ginori was an outspoken critic of the Lorraine rule and the administrative changes that were being implemented, which he believed were compounding Tuscany’s problems.10 Ginori was an ardent advocate of the longevity and significance of Tuscan culture not only through his political actions but also through his porcelain factory, as this essay will explore.11 Florentine artistic production in these years can appear backwards looking, repeti- tive, and lacking innovation. For scholars of Florentine Baroque sculpture, Doccia’s production and the related documentation surrounding the origins of the models and moulds used to cast them, are valuable sources for attributing the designs of bronze sculptors thereby tying Doccia’s production to a lineage of reuse with the Medici work- shops in the seventeenth century.12 Porcelain scholars, on the other hand, often focus on the material innovations at Doccia and the history of production that followed these in- novative early years. These objects thus become stuck between two timelines, as either 5 For the eighteenth-century fascination with porcelain, see Cavanagh/Yonan (eds.) 2010. 6 The first European formula for porcelain was discovered at the court of Augustus the Strong in Dresden in 1718. It was followed by Du Paquier’s work in Vienna in 1719. 7 Salmon 1757, 92: “il Marchese Ginori, non pago di avere coi, suoi lavori esattamente emulati tutti quelli delle straniere fabbriche, s’impegnò nella difficilissima lavoratura delle Statue, e di assai dub- biosa riuscita”. English translation: HWK. 8 AGL 37.6, Inventario della fabbrica delle porcellane e maioliche di Doccia fatto il 11 Luglio 1757. 9 Exh. cat. Sesto Fiorentino 2006. 10 For contemporary views on Ginori’s contribution to Florence see Doran 1876, 405 f.; Alessandri 1757, XXVI. 11 For a good summary of Ginori’s life and varied interests, see exh. cat. Sesto Fiorentino 2006. 12 This is possible due to the inventories of models published in Lankheit 1982. 74 | Hannah Wirta Kinney an end or a beginning. I argue instead that Doccia sculpture must be understood within the historical context of these volatile decades to fully comprehend the multiple practices of faithful copying within them and, importantly, the cultural significance of this repli- cation. The Doccia Medici Venus, amidst the array of other replicative sculpture produced at the factory, deserves closer attention within the context of a discussion of faithful copies because it demonstrates that objects can have multiple reference points for faithful- ness in both form and matter. As I explore, the Doccia Medici Venus faithfully copied the form of Florence’s most important statue through the use of moulds taken off of the marble that served as its sculptural and design model.13 While the use of moulds allowed the form of the figure to be precisely copied, the porcelainVenus reproduced its model in a material that did not exactly replicate its marble exemplar. The Doccia Venus instead was made in a medium that mimicked a material of historic importance to the city: porcelain. I argue that Doccia’s “statue di grandezza naturale”, and the Venus specifically, should therefore be understood to be artifacts that document an active reflection on the city’s history and an articulation of Florentine identity through the icons and materials that embodied that history. They thus demonstrate how copies, especially faithful ones, must be contextualized within the intellectual and political culture that fostered their production and gave them meaning. Fidelity in form and matter In their fidelity or infidelity to an original, copies embody technical and artistic choices that reveal period values. The copy, like the descriptive text found in a guidebook, can thus help us to read and to understand period taste and cultural values. But doing so re- quires looking at copies as unique objects and not simply something that is not original.14 A copy is not a derivative of an original, it is a descriptive form that visually and materially (re)presents aesthetic characteristics of the original as they were perceived at a particular moment in time.

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