saucer

High cup shape over stand ring with slightly extended lip border and several angular broken handle. Round saucer with lattice like insert ring. All walls painted with multicolored “German” flowers. Insects of all kinds are depicted between the flowers, a butterfly on the back of the cup after a leaf made of Georg Hoefnagel’s “Archetypa” (part 3, sheet 7; cat. 80). A grasshopper, also inspired by Hoefnagel, surprises in the mirror of the Trembleuse saucer. The edges gilded. (Neuwirth, Waltraud) This cup, which forms a trembleuse with the accompanying saucer (without illustration), is decorated with a magnificent butterfly, European flowers, two juices and a grasshopper. The butterfly may have been inspired by a stitch that goes back to a drawing by Joris (Georg) Hoefnagel, as well as the long-legged insect on the back of the cup and the grasshopper in the mirror of the lower bowl. Because Hoefnagel’s engravings were not colored, the painter might have been inspired by the elegant color palette of the Chinese Famille rose. Du Paquier finds the unusual shape of a handle only in single-headed drinking vessels (two other examples: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Inv.-No.42,205.3; Sturm-Bednarczyk 1994, p. 110, No. 124). (MC, Melinda and Paul Sullivan Foundation for Decorative Arts)