A Cozzi porcelain oval two-handled soup tureen and cover, circa 1770

Enrico Questa Collection, Turin, Sotheby’s, Milan, 21 March 2005, lot 247.

This sumptuous rococo form was influenced by slightly earlier wares produced in the faience and porcelain factories of northern Europe in the 1750s and 1760s. The decoration is influenced by Japanese Imari porcelain, known in the factory records as "blò e rosso o del Giapon". The Cozzi factory appears to have continued using Imari decoration as late as 1783 when an inventory was drawn up of the factory's stock, published for the first time by Giuseppe Marino Urbani de Gheltof, Studi intorno alla ceramica veneziana, 1876, pp. 69-75. This type of decoration later gave way to others more in keeping with the emerging neoclassical style.

An early tureen of this form in the white was included in the 1936 exhibition curated by Nino Barbantini held at the Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice dedicated to the porcelain of Venice and Nove, illustrated in N. Barbantini, Le Porcellane di Venezia e delle Nove, Venice 1936, pl. LXIX, fig. 206. Two tureens are in the Museo Civico d'Arte Antica in Turin, one painted with European flowers, the other in the Meissen 'gelber Löwe'-pattern, illustrated in A. Mottola Molfino, L’ Arte della Porcellana In Italia, Il Veneto e La Toscana, vol. I, Busto Arsizio 1976, tavs. XIV, 164/165.

A particularly close example to the present painted in the same pattern is illustrated in G. Morazzoni and S. Levy, Le Porcellane Italiane, vol. I, Milan 1960, tavs. 64a and 64b.