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miniature pictures on porcelain | handmade | passe-partout | solid wood frame | size 9.7 x 10.8 cm | set of 4 pictures
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Set of four miniature porcelain pictures "World Famous Masterpieces"
Your picture gallery en miniature with world-famous works by old masters!
For centuries, miniature pictures made of fine porcelain were produced mostly for aristocratic collectors. This miniature painting bears a museum masterpiece that is transferred by hand onto genuine Thuringian porcelain, fired twice and mounted on a pastel-coloured passe-partout. Afterwards, the shiny gold edge is applied by hand with a metal leaf. The valuable overall picture is rounded off by a solid wood frame that has been primed and sanded several times. Size 9,7 x 10,8 cm each.
Jean-Étienne Liotard: "A Lady Pouring Chocolate" (c. 1744): Original: Oil on canvas, British Museum, London.
Leonardo da Vinci: "Lady with an Ermine", 1488-90: Original: oil on walnut, Muzeum Narodowe, Krakow.
Jan Vermeer van Delft: "Girl with a Pearl Earring", 1665: Original: oil on canvas, Mauritiushuis, The Hague.
Jean-Étienne Liotard: "The Chocolate Girl", 1743-45: Original: oil on canvas, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden.
Set of all four miniature paintings.
This set contains the following products
About Jan Vermeer van Delft
Jan Vermeer is one of the most important Dutch painters of the Baroque period. He was baptised on 31 October 1632 in Delft and buried there on 15 December 1675. As there was no school of painting in Delft at that time, the son of a silk weaver, art dealer and innkeeper was trained as a craftsman. His admission to the Delft Guild of St. Luke in 1650 testifies to his activity as a master painter. Only 37 of his paintings have survived to this day. His main theme was genre painting, as there are only a few portraits or religious paintings in his œuvre.
The interior views radiate silence, security and inner peace. The painter from Delft was able to achieve these effects with subtle colour harmonies and refined shadows. He was also a master of the photographic perspective. The genre paintings show few figurative scenes, to which symbolic content is often attributed.
A special mention should be given to Vermeer's Delft City View of 1661, whose naturalism testifies to a high level of mastery. In addition, "The Girl with the Pearl Earring" became the epitome of beauty and grace. For the painter, it was a challenge to bring the viewer into contact with the model. The young woman's eye contact skilfully establishes a connection, but at the same time achieves distance again through the body that is turned away. Many generations of art lovers have rightly been fascinated by the extraordinary expression of this painting.
Vermeer strove for perfection in his painting, which is why he often produced just four paintings a year. As a result, the father of eleven children struggled with financial hardship, which increased during the last years of his life. Right after his death, Jan Vermeer fell into oblivion. It was not until the middle of the 19th-century that people learned to appreciate the quality of his paintings.
Epochal term for the art of the 17th century. The Baroque style of art, which originated in Rome around 1600, permeated visual arts, literature and music practically all over Europe within a very short period of time and lasted until 1770 in the visual arts. The last phase is generally characterised by Rococo.
Characteristic features include: the pulsating movement of all forms, the abolition of boundaries between architecture, painting and sculpture, that resulted in the epoch typical "Gesamtkunstwerk" ("total work of art"), and especially the purposeful use of light, which became an important artistic component. The subordination of the individual parts to the whole resulted in the creation of a unified and, at the same time, dynamic space, which is fully expressed in the magnificent buildings of this period.
The Baroque art, with its penchant for grandeur, splendour and rushing abundance, clearly reflects the desire for representation, which was a concern of secular and ecclesiastical, especially the Catholic, patrons of the time, who were strengthened by the Counter-Reformation. In painting, characteristic features of the Baroque, are manifested in the altar and ceiling painting, history and portrait.
Typical representatives include artists such as Anthony van Dyck, Peter Paul Rubens as well as Gian Lorenzo Bernini in the field of sculpture.
Ceramic product made of kaolin, quartz and feldspar.
Porcelain is formed by turning or pressing and figurative objects are cast. Complex objects have to be cast in separated steps and sections and then "assembled". After the moulding, the pieces are dried and "annealed" at about 900 °C. Next, the glaze will be applied and fired at temperatures between 1,240 °C and 1,445 °C. In renowned manufactures, the porcelain is painted by hand whereby each colour has to be fired individually and in compliance with narrow temperature tolerances.
Porcelain was invented in China and became widespread in Europe from the 16th century onwards. The first European porcelain factory was founded in Meissen, Germany in 1710.
Other famous European porcelain factories include Fürstenberg, Höchst, Schwarzburger Werkstätten, Lladró, Nymphenburg, KPM, Augarten, Sèvres, Limoges, Royal Copenhagen, Worcester. Individual factories label their products with their personal porcelain stamps so that for the collecter it is easy to identify their origin.
(Rebirth). The term describing art from around 1350 until the 16th century.
A mindset that developed in Florence in the late 14th century that was retrospectively classified as rebirth of the classical ideals of Greek and Roman antiquity. During the 15th and 16th centuries, the Renaissance spread first over Italy and then all over Western Europe and determined the entire artistic creation. Brilliant artists such as Donatello, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Dürer, Holbein, Cranach and Fouquet created their immortal works by following the humanistic premises and placing the human being in the centre of all thinking.
Renaissance experienced its heyday in literature through dramatic works and poems of William Shakespeare.
At the end of the 16th century, the Renaissance had to give way to the opulence of baroque, before its ideas experienced a rebirth in the classicism of the 18th century.