Meissen at Arte Antiga

Museu de Arte Antiga has a show ('Museografia') intended to suggest the vast amount of stuff they have locked away in storage. It shows photos of the old days, when everything here was on display. It was a little crowded, it's true, but to my mind it does not seem to follow, as two recent Museu Antiga directors claim in quotes at the entrance to the show, that one must prune and display only a few pieces with a lot of dead space to spare. (And throw the rest in the dungeon). Neither Pitti in Florence, nor Pamphilhj in Rome, where paintings hang cheek to jowl -- and jaw to forehead -- in three, sometimes four rows one above the other, are bad museums.

(Maybe it is my baroque nature, but I like to be crowded in by beautiful objects. Come, embrace me, my soul says, come, hug me tight).

One of the items in the show is a cabinet, 1 x 2 meters, of French, Spanish, and German (principally Meissen) porcelain cups. These items, formerly in the Portuguese royal collection at Necessidades, are all incredibly beautiful, there is not one less than perfect thing, testifying to Their Majesties superb taste, and, surprise, the high quality of production Meissen was capable of. I am incredibly moved here: until I saw this collection I had no idea that they ever made good stuff in Meissen. But they did: and the Portuguese bought it all and locked it away.

I try to take photos, but photography is not allowed. There are no reproductions of these pieces for sale and there is no catalogue of the museum's porcelain collection. During the era of exploration, the Portuguese kept their discoveries secret. (It has even been suggested that the main reason why they didn't fund Colombus's proposal to sail West is that they already knew that there was land there and that it was not India). It is perhaps the Portuguese nature to discover things and -- hide them.

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Among the more memorable pieces: a Meissen plate painted in rose leaf, with globular cup painted in rose petals outside and solid gold inside and a handle in the shape of a thorned branch; a Meissen cup with landscape with landscape on the plate wrapped wreath-like around the central flat circle (which receives the cup's foot); a Spanish piece with cup and plate painted with red marble columns and cypresses between them; a French set, with the cup in the shape of krateros, dark blue with gold patterns, white inside with a wreath of roses around the lip, and the same wreath of roses around the edge of the plate; a French piece in spring green, with roundels with symbols of the republic -- fascii, Frysian cap, tree of liberty; a Meissen service set with gold-tipped, dark blue lip and individually hand painted nature morte.