Piero Fornasetti Rosenthal Porcelain Themes & Variations Plate, Sun Face, #18
By Piero Fornasetti
Located in Downingtown, PA
A striking porcelain plate from the celebrated "Themes & Variations" (Tema e Variazioni) series designed by Piero Fornasetti and produced by Rosenthal, Germany, in the 1980s — Motiv 18, among the most poetic images of the series, in which the face of Lina Cavalieri becomes the sun itself, gazing serenely from a rayed solar disc as it breaks through banks of finely engraved clouds. The black-and-white transfer print is executed with precision on Rosenthal's fine porcelain blank and finished with a gilt rim. The plate retains its original black presentation box with silver sunburst and gilt Rosenthal/Fornasetti marks. Provenance: The Iris Apfel Collection. The plate comes from the holdings of the legendary style icon (1921–2024), whose maximalist eye made Fornasetti a natural fixture of her world — a provenance that suits few designers better. Cavalieri, an operatic soprano, was Fornasetti's eternal muse; he discovered her face in a 19th-century French magazine and returned to it throughout his career. As he famously put it: "What inspired me to create more than 500 variations on the face of a woman? I don't know. I began to make them and I never stopped." Rosenthal's small 1980s range of these designs — sometimes called Julia plates...
Late 20th Century German Mid-Century Modern Porcelain
Porcelain
