A gold-mounted Meissen porcelain topographical snuff-box, Circa 1750

The view of Dresden across the Elbe is after an engraving by Bellotto (1) showing Dresden from the Right Bank of the Elbe above the Augustus Bridge. The engraving copies Bellotto’s first view of Dresden completed in 1747 and takes in the dome of the Frauenkirche above Count Brühl’s art gallery, Dresden Castle and the Augustusbrücke. The view is taken from Councillor Hoffmann’s garden whose wife, Felicità Sartori, a painter and miniaturist who may have been known to Bellotto from their native Venice. The significance of the original work is underlined by the inclusion but the artist’s self-portrait in the foreground of the painting, seated, in conversation with two identified as the painters Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich and Johann Alexander Thiele, the former was inspector of the Royal Gallery and the later a veduista whom Bellotto would succeed. The other group of three figures includes two identified as the courtier’s Filippo di Violante, the court physician and the castrato Nicolò Pozzi, known as Niccolini.

The interior of the cover is painted with a view of Warsaw from Praga across the River Vistula (2) thereby demonstrating the importance of both cities to the Electors of Saxony as Kings of Poland-Lithuania. The panorama is based on drawings by the military engineer and commander Erik Dahlberg and shows Warsaw as it was in circa 1656, a significant date in the Swedish Deluge. Following the occupation of Warsaw by Swedish forces, the Battle of Warsaw took place between the forces of the Polish-Lithuanian crown attempting to re-capture the city from Sweden and Brandenburg under Karl X Gustav of Sweden and Friedrich Wilhelm, Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia. The painter of the present snuffbox represents a section of the panorama which takes in a number of Royal and noble residences as well as churches and monasteries. It is worth noting that the view begins on the left with the Ossoliński Palace, later known as Sandomierski Palace. By the middle of the 18^th century the palace was bought by Count Brühl and remodelled by Johann Friedrich Knöbel and Joachim Daniel von Jauch.

The underside of the box is painted with the distinctive towers of Schloß Moritzburg, a Renaissance hunting lodge, set in park wetlands, was latterly remodelled by Pöppelmann and Longuelune for Augustus the Strong with relatively few changes to the exterior of the buildings since. The graphic source for this scene has not yet been identified. The sides of the box are painted with further scenes, the left side with the equestrian steps and Upper Orangerie at Friedrichsschlösschen at Gross-Sedlitz. The front of the box is painted with Hubertusberg, designed by J.C. Neumann in 1727 and enlarged by Christopher Köffel between 1743 and 1752. The right-hand panel is painted with Pillnitz, a lustschloss or Summer pleasure palace on the banks of the River Elbe, after an engraving by J. A. Thiele, 1726. The scene to the back of the box appears to be a view of Schloss Lichtenburg and this is born out when compared to Merian’s view of Prettin and Schloss Lichtenburg (3).

Apart from the present snuffbox, several other related topographical boxes are recorded in the literature. The examples in the Dr. Fritz Mannheimer collection, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam and from the Helmut Joseph Collection, sold Bonhams, London, 5^th July 2011, lot 16, both have scenes of Dresden after Bellotto to the cover and the same scenes painted to the exterior of the box and interior of the cover.  The interiors of the boxes are painted in purple monochrome with the monogram AR reserved against a lozenge-patterned ground. Two further similar examples without the monogram to the interior are in state collections, one in the Kunstindustrimuseet, Copenhagen, the other in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden (inv. no. P.E.1827).  Another example was sold in these Rooms, 3rd December 1962, lot 119.  This example with underglaze-blue decoration, formerly in the Sir Alfred Chester Beatty Collection (5), it thought to be the example given by Maria Josepha of Saxony to her son, Prince Xavier.

(1) Perspective de la galerie, et Jardin de son Excellence Mgr. le Comte de Brühl Premier Ministre et des batiments contigus à la prairie d’oster, de Vesme, A., Le Peintre-Graveur Italien, (1906), no. 11; see also Kozakiewicz, S., Bernardo Bellotto gennent Canaletto, (1972), Vol. II, no 146.

(2) Adapted from Urbs Warsovia Sedes Ordinaria Regnum Poliniae, 1656 from an engraving by Nicholas Pérelle after Erik Jönsson Dahlbergh, which appeared in Samuelis Liberi Baronis de Pufenfendorf De Rebus A Carolo Gustavo SueciæbRege Getis Commentariorum… Samuel von Pufendorf’s history of the triumphs of Karl X Gustav of Sweden, published by Christopher Riegel in 1696.

(3) See the engravings by Casper and Matthäus Merian in Zeiler, M., Topographia Superioris Saxsoniæ Thuringiæ Misniæ Lusatiæ… of 1650.

(4) den Blaauwen, A.L., Meissen Porcelain in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2000, no. 233, pp. 327-9

(5) Sir Alfred Chester Beatty Collection, sale Sotheby's, London, 3 December 1962, lot 119, subsequently anonymous sale, Christie's, Geneva, 11 May 1981, lot 210 and the Franz E. Burda Collection.