A very rare and extremely beautiful mid nineteenth century K.P.M. porcelain plaque painted by Eduard Schade, signed E. Schade and stamped K.M.P. verso, depicting a scene from the legend of Roderick entitled Florinda, after the celebrated painting by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, the scene showing Florinda seated centre left surrounded by ten other handmaidens beside the Rio Tajo near Toledo, to the left stands King Roderick, wearing his crown and hidden in the undergrowth below the great castle at Toledo as he spies the group so as to decide who was the fairest of them all, of whom he considers Florinda to be the most beautiful, the clothed and semi-nude assemblage of beautiful woman, each with long flowing hair caught in a bun and secured by flowers, ribbons or a veil and set within a wooded glade with a few flowering trees while behind a clearing leads to an open plain and distant mountains

German, either Stuttgart or Berlin, date circa 1855

56 x 68 cm.

This extremely beautiful and unusually large porcelain plaque was executed by Eduard Schade, a mid nineteenth century German porcelain painter of unique talent. Schade gained renown for his ability to paint such works of the greatest clarity and subtlety and sometimes as here on porcelain plaques of unusually large size. In his book, "Deutsche Fayence- und Porzellan-Hausmaler", first published in 1925, Gustave Edmund Pazaurek mentioned this specific work and also the fact that a number of Schade's painted porcelains were once among the works at Schloss Rosenstein in Stuttgart. Pazaurek notes that some of the latter were sold at auction by F. Fleischhauer in Stuttgart 27th October 1919, lots 116-118 and 26th October 1920, lot 179 and by implication that his Florinda was amongst those pieces. If, as possibly is the case, then Schade's work was owned by King Wilhelm Friedrich Karl von Württemberg at Schloss Rosenstein. The castle, situated in the Bad Cannstatt district of Stuttgart was built between 1822 and 1830 in the classical style by the court builder Giovanni Salucci for Wilhelm I; standing in Rosenstein Park it now houses the Stuttgart Museum of Natural Sciences.

In addition to its quality and size, the work, which can be considered unique, is a copy of a celebrated oil painting entitled Florinda by the great German born artist Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-73). Winterhalter, who was patronised by many of the European royal courts, painted two versions of this work, both now in eminently important collections. The first, measuring 178.4 x 245.7 cms, was painted in 1852 and was singled out by his patron Queen Victoria of England to give to her beloved husband Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg as a gift for his 33rd birthday on 26th August 1852 and is still in the British Royal Collection. Winterhalter then painted a second version of the same size, which he exhibited the following year at the Paris Salon. In 1899 the latter work was bequeathed by the marine architect and shipbuilder William H. Webb to the Metropolitan Museum, New York, where it is still hangs today.

Winterhalter, and in turn Schade's scene shows an episode from the ancient legend of Roderick, the 34th and last of the Visigoth kings, a legend that inspired a number of early nineteenth century Romantic writers such as Sir Walter Scott's The Vision of Don Roderick, published in 1811 and the epic poem written by Scott's friend Robert Southey, published in 1814. The scene here is one of the most Romantic in the story's narrative, namely the moment when King Roderick, son of Theodofred and grandson of King Chindasuintho, spied the beautiful Florinda, who is also referred to in literature as La Cava, beside the Rio Tajo near Toledo, where Florinda and the other handmaidens lived. Here King Roderick is shown wearing his crown and fine clothes but seemingly hidden behind a branch amongst the dense undergrowth below the great castle beyond so that he could decide for himself who was the fairest of his handmaidens. Immediately on setting eyes on Florinda, who here is seated centre left and whose central role is alluded to by the positioning of the hands of her adjacent maidens, he knew her to be the most beautiful and she became the object of his desire and eventual seduction.

On hearing of Florinda's fate, her father St. Julian, who held the fortress of Ceuta (the mountain opposite Gibraltar) sought to avenge his daughter. Though he had previously been one of Roderick's trusted counts, St. Julian denounced his loyalty and in avenging Florinda, he secretly met the Moors and encouraged them to invade Spain, which led to a battle between the Moors and Goths; on the third day of battle King Roderick was overthrown and killed at Guadaltë near Xerës de la Frontera on July 17th 711.

Despite his supreme gifts as an artist, relatively little is known about Eduard Schade. We know that he was active in Berlin in about 1840 and that since some of his works were at Schloss Rosenstein he was almost certainly patronised by King Wilhelm I. Schade gained great popularity for his paintings on porcelain, many of which were copies after famous paintings. A number of these were copies after Old Master works such as a Venus after Titian and The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus after Rubens' famous painting in the Alte Pinakothek, which was also a popular subject among other German porcelain painters. Schade also depicted a number of scenes depicting Oriental slave markets as well as more contemporary genre scenes, most commonly including young and beautiful women.

Schade's plaque bears the K.P.M. mark, signifying that it was made by the Königlichen Porzellan-Manufaktur. This however does not mean that Schade actually worked for this leading Berlin porcelain factory, a fact that is verified from recent correspondence with their archivist. Rather K.P.M., as the leading German porcelain factory of its day tended to sell the finest quality blank plaques to artists of calibre, such as Eduard Schade.

Schade appears to have been equally adept when working in pen and ink, being the artist of a number of illustrations, such as The Bamberg Gardener in the Morning and The Bamberg Gardener in the Evening both of 1850 (examples of which are housed in the Bamberg Staatsbibliothek). The first shows the gardener and his wife as they prepare their produce for market in the morning while the second shows a young couple working in the fields as they stop to hear the bells of the Angelus at the end of the day, while beside them their baby sleeps soundly in a small basket. Whether Schade saw Winterhalter's Florinda at the Salon or another exhibition or merely knew it from a print there is no denying that it is an extremely accurate copy. However some of the colouring differs in Schade's work, notably that of the maidens' dresses, for instance in both of Winterhalter's versions, Florinda wears a golden dress while in Schade's it is a blue grey colour while the maiden to her left is here depicted in a patterned golden robe while in Winterhalter's earlier oils she wears a patterned turquoise blue robe.

Interestingly in 1855 Winterhalter painted a portrait of The Empress Eugénie, Wife of Napoléon III, Surrounded by Her Ladies-in-Waiting, which now hangs in the Musée National du Château de Compiègne, in which the composition and certain of the figures are based on his Florinda, in particular the pose but obviously not the features nor dress of three left hand seated maidens were almost replicated while the Empress herself is seated in the relatively same position as that of Florinda.

Born in Germany, Winterhalter was one of the leading portrait artists of his day and as such enjoyed the patronage of the royal families of Germany, France, England, Belgium, Austria and Russia. Noted predominantly as a portraitist he also executed a number of historical scenes of which Florinda was almost certainly his best known. Thus given its prestige and popularity it is little surprising that Schade chose this work to replicate on porcelain, which he did to great effect.