The Four Seasons

The allegory of the seasons is older than porcelain itself, and here it is done without captions: autumn is grapes, summer is wheat ears and scarlet poppies, spring an armful of wild flowers. Winter changes every time — a shawl in the wind and a bird on a snowy branch, a bundle of firewood and a dog at the feet, a sledge on a slope.

The series is built as three sets of four figures in Capodimonte porcelain. Within a set the measurements and weight match, so the four stand in an even row; between sets the scale and the age of the characters shift — youths and girls, a young man and woman, adolescents and a child. One set is named after the seasons, another after the scenes: the boy with grapes, the boy with a sheaf, the girl on a sledge.

The thirteenth piece draws all four together: children gathered around a stump, each with an attribute — a sheaf of ears, bunches of grapes, a basket of flowers, a fire with fruit.