Figure of the Day: Harlequin and the Sausage, 1740

Figurine of Harlequin
Meissen, Germany, 1740
The Victoria & Albert Museum

Johann Joachim Kändler (1706-1775), as we’ve discussed, in the 1740s worked for Germany’s Meissen Porcelain Factory as one of their chief modelers.  He is, perhaps, best known for his dramatic group of figures from the Italian theatrical tradition of Commedia dell’Arte from which our “Punch and Judy” tradition developed.

Here, we see one of those figures.  This one depicts a masked Harlequin in hard-paste porcelain, painted in enamels and gilded.  He is shown leaning against a tree stump, in a grey hat with an upturned brim decorated with a turquoise rosette.  Harlequin is holding a cherry in his left hand and a curved sausage in his right. Sausages were a comic staple in the Commedia dell’Arte—a theme that carried over into the story of Mr. Punch.