Footnotes

Provenance:
Acquired in 1990

Literature:
Hoffmeister 1999, II, no. 336

Exhibited:
Hamburg, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, 1999-2009

From the service made for Andrea Querini, one of the four attendants (known as 'deputes') provided by the Venetian senate to accompany the Crown Prince of Saxony, Friedrich Christian, during his visit to the city in late 1739. The Crown Prince travelled incognito under the name of the Count of Lusazia (Dal Carlo 2002, p.62). The other deputes were also drawn from leading Venetian families: Zuan Alvise I Mocenigo, Giulio Contarini and Piero Correr; members of some of these families had attended both Augustus the Strong and Augustus III on their visits to Venice. Friedrich Christian's arrival at the border of Venice, where he was met by the four deputes, was painted by Pietro Longhi (now in the Royal Castle, Warsaw, inv. no. FC-ZKW/1130, published by Cassidy-Geiger 2004, fig. 5). Each of the deputes was subsequently rewarded with the gift of an armorial tea, coffee and chocolate service. The service for Andrea Querini is closely similar to that received by Giulio Contarini, most of which is now in the Dr. Ernst Schneider Collection, Schloss Lustheim (illustrated in Cassidy-Geiger 2007, fig. 10-33).

The coffee pot, a milk jug, five coffee cups and saucers and a teacup and saucer from the service were sold by Galerie Hugo Helbing in Munich on 26th May 1911, lot 81 (when the arms were not identified). See Hoffmeister 1999 (Literature) for a list of surviving pieces, to which should be added a saucer in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (Den Blaauwen 2000, no. 113) and a coffee cup and saucer in the collection of the Arnhold family (Cassidy-Geiger 2008, p. 759, fig. 33).

Another cup and saucer from this service was recently acquired by the Fondazione Querini Stampalia (Dal Carlo loc.cit.). In her discussion of the service, the author notes that the recipient was previously thought to be cardinal Angelo Maria Querini, but that due to the absence of any ecclesiastical regalia, this hypothesis was overturned, and that Andrea Domenico di Zuanne Querini is now identified as its recipient. She also notes that the service is mentioned nowhere in the Querini family archives; there are ample amounts of porcelain listed in the archives, but there is no mention of armorials on any of the porcelain pieces.