Scent bottle 1765 - 1775

Curator: So delicate! Like a captured dream…or maybe a repressed memory from a French boudoir. Editor: We're looking at a Scent Bottle created sometime between 1765 and 1775 by the esteemed Meissen Manufactory. The sculpture is currently located here at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and formed in ceramic, specifically porcelain. Curator: Porcelain… it explains that uncanny whiteness. It feels spectral almost, yet undeniably tactile with that intimate scene. Are we intruding? Editor: Observe the complex iconography. At the base, an amorous couple nestles beneath a draped canopy. This tableau is then surmounted by a classical, banded inscription with two birds resting on top. The composition's success hinges on this juxtaposition of intimacy and elevated rhetoric. The sculpture uses romantic iconography to comment on human love…perhaps to flatter the owner by association with nobility? Curator: And a dash of sauciness, surely. Look at those plump porcelain figures, posed so casually! It's quite risqué for a scent bottle, don't you think? Or is it the romantic idealism masking something more base? Editor: What’s striking is the effective use of relief. See how the artist used varied depths and curves to create visual texture. The figures are set apart and appear to protrude ever so slightly from their background. Consider this porcelain work an investigation of romance but also an essay on perspective, narrative, and sculptural qualities. Curator: Mmm. An essay in scandal rendered in porcelain…it has a ring. Though I have to admit that without knowing the context, the work has an alien charm all its own, it does capture your eye somehow. Editor: Its ethereal quality lies in the materiality and how the sculptural qualities give its meaning.