Lot 221: A rare Meissen Böttger stoneware head of Apollo, circa 1708-13

A rare Meissen Böttger stoneware head of Apollo, circa 1708-13
Modelled by Paul Heerman (1673-1732) after Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), 10cm high

Provenance:Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 6 June 1972, lot 173Modelled after sketches done by Paul Heermann in Rome of the celebrated marble group of Apollo and Daphne by Bernini (1622-25), made for Scipione Borghese and placed in the Palazzo Borghese in Rome. Heermann, who had worked with his uncle, Johann Georg Heermann, at Troja castle near Prague, was in Dresden from around 1705, where he worked on the Zwinger Palace and, from 1708, supplied models to Johann Friedrich Böttger for the Meissen manufactory. According to an invoice of 9 October 1708, Heermann delivered three figures to Böttger's colleague, Dr. Bartholomaei, at a cost of 4 Talers (Rainer Rückert, Biographische Daten der Meißener Maunufaktaristen des 18. Jahrhunderts (1990), p. 81). The Apollo head is recorded in the earliest known inventory of the Meissen manufactory of 28 May 1711, nos. 251 and 999, and again on 3 August the same year: "Form 42..Apollonis Kopf" (published by Claus Boltz, Formen des Boettgersteinzeug im Jahre 1711, in Mitteilungsblatt der Keramikfreunde der Schweiz 96 (1982), pl. 11, fig. 16). The sales from the Dresden porcelain collection in 1919 and 1920 included one example in each sale (Lepke's, 7-8 October 1919, lot 58; 12-14 October 1920, lot 82 (with Japanese Palace inventory number 217 - the 1770 inventory lists ten "Judithen-Köpfe"). See also M. Eberle, Das Rote Gold (n.d.), no. 8, for a similar example in the historic collection in Schloss Friedenstein, Gotha, and a list of other published examples.