Vase; China, Qing Dynasty, Kangxi Period (1662-1722)

Vase; China, Qing Dynasty, Kangxi Period (1662-1722)
Vase "gu"
Blue and white glazed and glazed porcelain.
Circular mark on the base
Measurements: 46 x 22,5 x 22,5 cm.

Vase that responds to the archaic form "gu", of tripartite profile with truncated cone base, convex central body and neck that opens in wide bell-shaped mouth, articulated in horizontal records. The piece has a circular mark on the base, a characteristic mark of certain Kangxi productions.

The decorative program of the vase is developed in three registers. The upper one, which occupies the neck and the upper part of the body, presents a wide lake scene with a mountain landscape in the background and figures of fishermen in the foreground. This iconography of the solitary fisherman in the aquatic landscape refers directly to the poetic and pictorial tradition of the learned hermit, and evokes both the painting of the Song masters and the poems of Taoists and Confucians who found in fishing a metaphor for contemplation and detachment from the world. The central register houses a composition with cherry blossom branches. Finally, the lower register takes up the lake scene and the riverside landscape, closing the narrative cycle of the piece with a second view of the same poetic universe.

The decoration is executed in cobalt blue under cover on white paste, covered in turn by a transparent and colorless glaze with a vitreous finish. This technique, known in Chinese as "qinghua" is one of the longest traditions in the history of ceramics. Its origins date back to the Gongxian kilns in Henan province during the Tang dynasty, but it was under the Mongols of the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) that the potteries of Jingdezhen, on the banks of the Chang River in Jiangxi province, definitively established the technical and iconographic canons of blue and white porcelain. During the Ming dynasty, the most prestigious blue was the so-called "Mohammedan blue", a cobalt pigment imported from Persia that reached its maximum expression in the reigns of Xuande (1426-1435) and Chenghua (1465-1487). The Chinese procedure, unique compared to other ceramic traditions, consisted of applying the pigment directly on the raw, unfired paste, mixed with water and deposited with a brush with the ease and precision of calligraphic writing, and then proceeding to glaze and fire in a single phase, which gave the line a freshness and integration with the support impossible to achieve by other means.