Allegory of Europe

From the time of its invention, i.e. the development of the production technology, European hard-paste porcelain became increasingly prominent in royal and aristocratic households and in court life. Several German princes, following the example of the Meissen factory founded by Augustus the Strong (1670–1733) in 1710, set up their own operations, such as the Archbishop (and Elector) of Mainz in Höchst, the Elector of Bavaria in Nymphenburg. There were other porcelain works in Strasbourg, Frankenthal, Berlin, Furstenberg and Ludwigsburg. The model makers who produced porcelain statues often worked for more than one factory. Johann Christoph Ludwig von Lück (1703–1780), for example, the maker of the Allegory of Europe, worked in the porcelain works of Meissen and Höchst, and subsequently, from 1744, served the Vienna factory operated by the imperial court. The Baroque visualisations of the four seasons, the four elements, the four points of the compass, the virtues, the five senses, the twelve months and the continents were developed partly on classical precursors. For this series, each continent is symbolised by a female figure, an animal – a white horse for Europe and, in another item, a camel for Asia – and various appurtenances. Europe is embodied by a victorious female sovereign with highly symbolic attributes: a crown on her head, a sceptre in her hand, a book and laurel wreath on her lap, and a gun, spade and painter’s palette at her feet. From her sleeve, like a horn of plenty, fall gold and silver coins. Europe, in the view of the artist, is manifested, and rules the world, as the repository of plenty and the victorious Western civilisation that has created it.