Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur (KPM), View cup with Berlin veduta of the Altes Museum
, circa 1830. Bell-shaped cup with raised handle ending in a shell palmette. The front with gold-framed polychrome fine painting with flanking tendrils. 10 cm high, 8.5 cm diameter. Without painter's mark, inscribed “Das Museum in Berlin” under the base and with the sceptre signet of the 1830s.
- Some rubbing to the gold staffage, laminated hairline crack to the side, minimal chip to the upper edge of the cup, fine painting in excellent condition.
- The birth of the Spree-Athens -
With the completion of the first building on Berlin's Museum Island, now known as the Altes Museum, in 1830, the palace, now rebuilt, was given a civic counterpart. The Pleasure Garden, also designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, extends between the Palace and the Temple of the Muses. Inspired by the Greek agora, it was designed as a place for contemplative strolls. Accordingly, the veduta shows strolling people in contemporary top hats and frock coats, behind which the newly opened museum unfolds in all its neoclassical splendor. The Dioscuri, crowning the Temple of the Muses, are silhouetted against the blue sky. The meticulously detailed painting of this unique work is not only an outstanding historical document of Berlin from the period immediately after the opening of the museum, but the finest strokes resemble Schinkel's own drawings and congenially depict his architectural masterpiece.
