Bowl 1720 - 1735

Curator: What we have before us is a porcelain bowl, a decorative piece dating from between 1720 and 1735. The artist is unknown, but its creation certainly fits within the Baroque tradition of the time. It resides here at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Editor: Immediately, I feel a chill; it is an unusual monochromatic depiction on porcelain, something I typically associate with color. What about you? Does it strike you this way? Curator: You're right, the limited palette certainly contributes to that feeling! The scenes of the hunt wrap all around, playing out against what are almost ghostly landscape elements. It’s stark, but purposeful; maybe life and death weren’t as separate as we'd like to think during those times, or maybe porcelain painters just had limited pigments available! Editor: Observe the formal arrangement. We see dynamic groups and diagonal lines of energy—hunters, dogs, stags, all rendered with incredible precision in their movement. What could this hunt represent besides itself? Curator: On the one hand, you have what seems to be almost a rural scene. A simple activity, perhaps. But with closer examination, it reminds me of tapestries depicting the same subject—only those are celebrations of aristocracy and their divine right to the land. A dog is almost devouring one deer’s neck. It isn't for the faint of heart. Editor: There's also an interesting contrast in how different materials dictate form. With porcelain, the bowl's surface becomes the canvas. You have this convex plane that bends, distorts, and somehow animates these scenes as you move around them. And the continuous narrative almost creates its own temporal loop. Curator: Temporal loop… I love that! It suggests that despite the centuries, certain things—our fascination with nature, life, death, skill and the hunt—continue. This beautiful, somewhat chilling bowl kind of loops us back. Editor: Right, from a vessel used in a specific place and time, this bowl transforms time to become timeless in the halls of the Met.