The Hand-Kiss
Johann Joachim Kändler, Meissen Manufactory (1706-1755) · Eighteenth century
A lady sits in an armchair in a blue-grey bodice, a yellow flowered skirt and a white flowered mantle lined in red, a little dog curled on her lap and a cup in her right hand. To her right a Black servant offers a cup of chocolate; to her left a gentleman in a violet coat kneels to kiss her left hand. She looks toward the servant, not the suitor. In fifteen centimetres of porcelain Kändler stages a whole comedy of manners: gallantry, luxury and the fashionable morning chocolate. Look at the sharp modelling of the faces and hands and at the bright enamel colours, which sit on a hard, white, glassy porcelain.
Meissen, near Dresden, was the first European factory to master true hard-paste porcelain, in seventeen ten, and Johann Joachim Kändler, its chief modeller from seventeen thirty-one, invented the porcelain figure group as an art form. Little scenes like this one decorated dessert tables and cabinets across Europe and were eagerly copied by French factories. The group came to the Louvre in nineteen eleven with the bequest of Count Isaac de Camondo, the banker and collector whose gift also brought the museum many of its Impressionist paintings.
Did You Know? The lady ignores the gentleman kissing her hand and looks instead at the servant bringing her chocolate.
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