Figural group - allegory of fire

Johann Joachim Kändler was born in 1706 in the small Saxon village of Fischbach as the son of a pastor. He received a classical education, to which he owed an excellent knowledge of Greek and Roman mythology. The knowledge, a unique sense of observation of nature and an innate talent for the arts formed the basis of his later career. At the age of seventeen he entered the studio of the famous Dresden sculptor Johann Benjamin Thomae, where he quickly attracted attention. Eight years later, he was appointed court sculptor by August II the Strong and employed as a modeller at the royal porcelain manufactory in Meissen despite his young age. There, he showed his artistic talent and his organisational skills, which he put to good use during his forty years of work. He managed to run the factory through the turbulent time of the Austro-Prussian wars and maintained production against all odds. He died in Meissen in 1775.

With his arrival came an outstanding development of figural art in Meissen. Kändler created sculpturally decorated vessels with single figures and entire figural groups, as in the famous swan service. One of them is a group with a naked woman by the fire and a putto lighting a torch. It belongs to the group of figures with allegories of the four elements: Water, Fire, Earth and Air, which Kändler developed in 1747. Each model leaving the studio was numbered; this one has the number 836, which gives an idea of the production size. The figurines became very popular and in increasing demand, so the same designs were repeated years later, sometimes with changes (copyright, as we know it today, was not yet known). The item was made when Camillo Marcolini (1774-1814) headed the factory. In Kändler's model, the base is low, irregular, with grass and flowers, and the figures are multi-coloured painted. The later version, keeping with the spirit of the period, is snow-white on a base in the form of an oval pedestal with a decorative frieze all around.

Barbara Czajkowska