29. A very rare Doccia teapot and cover, circa 1745 The teapot of squat shape applied with a lizard handle, the painted decoration on the body and cover divided into four panels with fish-scale borders in iron-red and "a paesi porpora" landscape decoration on two sides, the spout with a relief-moulded oak leaf edged in puce, 15.7cm high (finial terracotta replacement) (2) Provenance With Galleria Costantini, Rome Literature Biancalana, Alessandro, Porcellane Ginori a Doccia. La stanza delle meraviglie di casa Colli, 2023, p. 404-407, cat. 91 d'Agliano, Andreina. Baroque Luxury Porcelain, 2006, p. 325. This teapot is one of exceedingly few wares made at Doccia with the lizard handle, another example being in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 46.103a, b.. The handle in the shape of a lizard, or salamander, is taken from Chinese wares, such as a Dehua wine vessel of the Kangxi period (1662-1722), published in Ulrich Pietsch, Meissener Porzellan und seine ostasiatischen Vorbilder, 1996, p. 73, cat. 13. The tradition of depicting lizards and salamanders in Chinese art originated in the Neolithic period (10,000-2,200 BCE) and Shang Dynasty (1600-1050 BCE), with jade and bone objects carved in the form of a slender-bodied, wingless creature covered in fish scales with only front legs. These forms were undoubtedly derived from depictions of the mythical loong, more commonly known as the Chinese dragon, and associated with rebirth, prosperity, and the element of water. Later on, Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) artists appropriated earlier Archaic bronze objects featuring lizard forms and translated them into porcelain (see a celadon ewer in the Art Institute of Chicago, inv. 1925.1467). Such objects eventually made their way to Europe, finding keen imitators among the continent's nascent porcelain manufactories, not least of which the Du Paquier concern in Vienna (see an early ewer modelled on a Ming prototype, circa 1725-30, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, inv. C.33-1957). A rare Du Paquier tankard with salamander handle is in the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg (inv. 1914.289 a,b), and another was sold at Bonhams, London, 5 June 2013, lot 55 (ill.). The lizard handle and puce landscape decoration evidence the strong Viennese influence in Florence, executed to perfection in this example by the painter Giuseppe Romei (1714-1785) whose earliest recorded payment for works decorated "in purpuro" is dated to May 1743 (Biancalana 2023, p. 407).