The Allegorical and Symbolic Meaning in West European Porcelain Craft of the 18th Century

Abstract

The article takes a look at the works of various porcelain manufactories: Italian Docchia, German Meissen and Nymphenburg, Viennese and French Sèvres. These works are subject to allegorical interpretation and symbolic meaning. This content feature is one of the characteristic features of Baroque and Rococo art. The author pays particular attention to the identification of allegorical attributes and specific elements of form and decor that carry symbolic meaning. Porcelain artifacts, the authors of which are prominent European masters (Soldani, Kändler, Eberlein, Bustelli, Niedermeier and Fournier), are examined in detail. These kinds of decorative and applied arts reflected the unique worldview of a person living in the 18th century - the period of Enlightenment. The following methods of art history laid the foundation for this study: the formal-stylistic and iconological analyses of porcelain artifacts, which enabled the author to identify the semantic content of examined images. The scientific novelty of this article lies in the fact that for the first time in Russian art studies, a comprehensive study of the works of 18th-century porcelain crafts from different countries was carried out in order to identify their symbolic meanings. A detailed study of these works gives the author reason to conclude that bestowing artifacts with symbolic content is characteristic of Baroque and Rococo art, and that these works reflected one of the features of the figurative art system of the 18th century.