The Impetuous Lover

Taxa (Rafael, Keramos 203/204, 2009, No. 21): *"1. dito, consisting of 4 figures: a shepherdess sitting on the grass, approached by a finely dressed young man who wishes to court her, but she refuses. On the young man is Cupid, holding him by the hair and beating him on the head with his bow. Beside them stands a Harlequin, laughing at the young man. 12 Thaler."

• The group known in the Meissen literature as The Impetuous Lover ranks among Kaendler’s most dynamic and animated creations. The cheerful scene, full of wit and charm, with the thwarted lovers, the laughing Harlequin, and Cupid striking the young man, was probably inspired by a performance of the Comici Italiani at the Dresden Opera.

The model was subsequently produced in several variations. Versions are known in which Harlequin and/or Cupid are omitted, while the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York possesses a variant additionally incorporating a tree. Our example, however, corresponds to the original model, of which only a small number of comparable examples are known:

• Pauls-Eisenbeiss Collection (Menzhausen, pp. 150 and 164)
• Wurm Collection (exhibition catalogue 2010, no. 351), with impressed number “45” = Düsseldorf exhibition catalogue 1997, no. 203
• Siegfried Salz Collection (no. 87, pl. XII), with impressed number “45” twice
• Gardiner Museum, Toronto (object no. G83.1.911; Chilton 2001, no. 95). The Gardiner Museum owns two examples of the group; the second is the variant without Cupid.
• The Prince Amyn Aga Khan Collection (cat. no. 67, pp. 208–209, with impressed number “45”)

The model also served as an inspiration for Franz Anton Bustelli’s The Impetuous Gallant (Der stürmische Galan), without Harlequin, which he created for the Nymphenburg manufactory in 1756 (Bustelli exhibition catalogue 2004, no. 101, figs. 315–317).