Piero Fornasetti Themes & Variation Porcelain Plate, Rosenthal, Motiv 20

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Piero Fornasetti Rosenthal Porcelain Plate, Temi e Variazioni, Motiv 20, Clock Face
German, 1980s

Piero Fornasetti's most famous image, the … Read more Piero Fornasetti Rosenthal Porcelain Plate, Temi e Variazioni, Motiv 20, Clock Face
German, 1980s

Piero Fornasetti's most famous image, the face of the opera singer Lina Cavalieri, becomes the dial of a clock on this Rosenthal porcelain plate. Bold black numerals in a nineteenth-century display face run around the well, the 10 and the 2 meeting the outer ends of her brows and the 6 set beneath her chin, while an ornate pair of hands with pierced lozenges pivots on the bridge of her nose: the minute hand rises through the center of her forehead to the 12, the hour hand reaches across her cheek to the 9, and the clock stands at nine o'clock. Fornasetti plays on the double meaning of a clock face, setting a timeless classical beauty to mark the passing hours. The design is printed in black on the white glaze in the fine stipple and crosshatching of the engravings from which he worked, within a gilt rim.

During the 1980s Rosenthal of Germany produced a series of wall plates reproducing designs from Fornasetti's Tema e Variazioni, each printed in black and white with a gilt edge and numbered on the reverse as a Motiv. Rosenthal's own label calls them Sammelteller, or collector's plates, and they are often known in the trade as Julia plates. They were made for display, and the foot rim of this example is pierced for hanging; it retains its original Rosenthal label.

Hung alone or within a grouping of Fornasetti plates, the clock face suits a kitchen, study or entrance hall, and reads well against a plain painted wall or a patterned paper.

Dimensions:
Diameter: 9¼ inches (23.5 cm)

Marks:
Printed in white on a black roundel: Rosenthal Germany, the Fornasetti hand-and-paintbrush device, FORNASETTI, Dekor: Temi e variazioni, Motiv 20. Original Rosenthal paper label: JULIA / TEMI E VARIAZ. M. 20 / SAMMELTELLER 24 CM / FORM 13510 / DEKOR 404420 / ARTIKEL 20124, with barcode 4 012438 309187.

Provenance:
Private Collection

Condition:
Excellent, with no chips, cracks or restoration; the print is crisp and the gilt rim retains its original luster.

References:
Patrick Mauriès, Fornasetti: Designer of Dreams (Thames & Hudson, 1991), p. 192.

Historical Context:
The image that gave rise to Tema e Variazioni is the face of the Belle Époque soprano Lina Cavalieri (1874–1944), which Fornasetti found while leafing through a nineteenth-century French magazine. He called it an archetype, classic like a Greek statue and enigmatic like the Gioconda, and returned to it for the rest of his career; the series now numbers around 400 variations and has been continued by his son Barnaba, whose atelier still makes Tema e Variazioni wall clocks. Rosenthal's plates of the 1980s, the decade of Fornasetti's death in 1988, helped bring his work back to international notice.

(Ref: NY11100-nmrx) See less