Beschreibung:

AN ASSORTMENT OF PLATES FROM THE ‘VEDUTE DEL REGNO’ (VIEWS OF THE KINGDOM) PRESENTATION SERVICE, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS THE ‘SERVIZIO DELL’OCA’. NAPLES, REAL FABBRICA FERDINANDEA, 1793-1795 a serving plate decorated with a Veduta delle Coste di Pozzuoli (View of the Pozzuoli Coasts). On the reverse, the title painted in red over the glaze and the crowned ‘N’ mark under the glaze. Diameter: 42 cm. Two serving plates, one decorated with a view of the Monistero de Certosini e Castello di S. Elmo (Carthusian Monastery and Castel Sant’Elmo); the other with a Veduta della Villa Reale (View of Villa Reale). Both carry, on the reverse, the title painted in red over the glaze and the crowned ‘N’ mark under the glaze. Diameter: 30.2 cm. Four dinner plates with views of: Golfo di Mesina (Gulf of Messina) titled in red over the glaze, without mark; Strada che conduce a Ponti – Rossi, (Road to Ponti-Rossi) titled in red over the glaze and marked with the crowned ‘N’ and a cross etched in the paste under the glaze; Tempio di Pesto (Temple of Paestum) titled in red over the glaze and marked with the crowned ‘N’ under the glaze; Veduta della Costa di Posillipo (View of the Posillipo Coast) titled in red over the glaze and marked with the crowned ‘N’ under the glaze on the reverse. Diameter: cm 24. The decorations of this assortment of porcelain plates includes panoramic views enclosed within a central medallion and surrounded, on the lip, by flowered garlands and blue and red fillet borders extending to the rim. The porcelain is soft-paste and shows some imperfections and signs of wear: crackling, chipping and hairline cracks. The gold is not always in a perfect state of conservation on all the pieces, although the clarity of the views at the centres of the compositions is unaltered. Of note certain details visible in the secondary decoration, introduced during manufacture, such as the lack of several berries in the garland on the Veduta del Golfo di Messina (View of the Gulf of Messina) plate, on which, additionally, the principal view is out of alignment with respect to the titling on the reverse. The Servizio delle Vedute del Regno is considered the maximum expression of the veduta genre of late 18th-century Bourbon court production. The service was erroneously assigned the title of Servizio dell’Oca (Goose Service); the denomination derives from the form of the handles of the covers of several soup tureens which show a child strangling a goose (see fig. 1). The image with the Fanciullo che scherza con un cigno (Child Playing with a Swan) is, in actuality, accompanied on other covers by the Allegoria del Tempo (Allegory of Time) showing a child covering his face with his hands and an image of Silenus. Both these figurines are inspired by Roman copies of Hellenistic statues today in the Musei Capitolini in Rome. Each piece is decorated with a different view of the Kingdom of Naples: the monuments, the archaeological sites and the natural beauties of its territory, from Abruzzo to Sicily, are painted with exceptional pictorial and miniaturistic expertise. The intention is clearly propagandistic; that is, to lay out all the magnificence of the Kingdom before the eyes of guests of the court. The single pieces making up the table service, when marked, carry a crowned letter ‘N’ in blue. The majority of the pieces in the service is today conserved at the Museo di Capodimonte (see fig. 2), while only a very few of its pieces remain in private hands (1). In a systematic study of court documentation, Angela Caròla Perrotti (2) reconstructs the history of this order as it emerges from the extensive correspondence that passed between the ‘Vedore del Reale Ramaglietto’, Luigi Perschie, on behalf of Ferdinand I of Bourbon (as Ferdinando IV of Naples) (1751-1825), King of the Two Sicilies and later of Spain, and the Chief House Steward, Prince of Belmonte Antonio Pignatelli. From their exchanges, we gather that as late as 1792, on occasion of banqu