Poetry, H 21 cm

Michel Victor Acier is regarded as having paved the way for classicism at MEISSEN®. Called to the Manufactory for 15 years in 1764, he placed his great artistic skills at the service of the Saxon nobility and also, in one memorable instance, of Empress Catherine II, a lover of MEISSEN® and its client for the “Great Russian Order”. The original set of figure groups cast in 1774 under the title “The Free Arts” comprised groups emblematical of “Painting”, “Sculpture”, “Architecture”, “Astronomy”, “Arithmetic” and “Poetry”. This was an epoch in which the aristocracy in particular was fond of seeing literature as an easily digested adjunct to music in operatic and comic works. Thus it comes as no surprise that the brainy tot holding a big book of literary works is accompanied by his musical pals on the harp and trumpet.