A bust of "Baron" Schmiedel enters the Metropolitan Museum

1. Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775)
Buste du «baron» Schmiedel, 1739
Porcelaine dure - 47 x 36 x 24 cm
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Photo : Guillaume Benoit

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6/10/23 - Acquisition - New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art - This is an effigy (ill. 1) that was an ideal loss leader on the Kugel gallery stand at the Maastricht Tefaf and was even chosen to illustrate its latest greetings card. This Meissen hard-paste porcelain sculpture, recently acquired with funds from the Anna-Maria & Stephen Kellen Acquisitions Fund, can now be admired at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. As its online notice states, the bust of "Baron" Schmiedel is on display in Gallery 533 alongside other works modelled by Johann Joachim Kaendler at the Meissen factory. Schmiedel was the jester of the Saxon court between the 1730s and 1750s, entertaining King Augustus III, who commissioned this bust, of which three other copies are known to exist, in Dresden, Sydney and Detroit respectively. An article published in 1989 by Eva Czernis-Ryl in a Swiss German magazine provides a wealth of information on these objects, which were designed to function as a pendant to a bust of the other court jester, Josef Frölich (1694-1757). Better known but also more popular than the ’baron’, Frölich was the happier of the two, his facetious personality providing a delightful counterpoint to Schmiedel’s melancholy character. The two jesters can be recognised in another Meissen porcelain sculpture, of which the New York Museum owns a copy, immortalising one of Fröhlich and Schmiedel’s tricks.

2. Johann Gottlieb Kirchner (1706-1768)
Buste de Josef Fröhlich, vers 1730-1733
Porcelaine dure - 52,6 x 39,3 x 29,3 cm
Dresde, Porzellansammlung
Photo : Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden

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3. Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775)
Buste du «baron» Schmiedel, 1739
Porcelaine dure - 48,6 x 36,4 x 23,9…