A cup and saucer with dedication, porcelain, body with everted lip, wide gilt interior rim, to exterior wide and fine gilt rims, burnished and matt gilt-painted laurel frieze on a white band, green ground, octagonal reserve with images of youth and age painted en grisaille, between them hovers Chronos with a scythe, leaning on the shoulder of an old woman with a walking stick, who is returning to embrace a young woman walking to greet her, raised gilt-accented handle with rosettes and foliate terminals, height 10 cm, saucer with the same décor, well with lozenge and finely painted dedication in black lettering, Ø 15.5 cm, slightly rubbed, Vienna, Imperial Manufactory, underglaze blue shield mark, date marks 1822, 1822, turner no. 7 Josef Rammersberger 1803-1827, no. 40 Franz Peroutka 1792-1839, painter no. 18 Franz Schnell 1816-1855, who wrote the dedication, gilt painter no. 120 Bernhardt Rössner 1795-1825 (Ru)

Lit.: Dominik Bartmann and Gert-Dieter Ulferts, Berlin Museum, Von Chodowiecki bis Liebermann, Katalog der Zeichnungen, Aquarelle, Pastelle und Gouachen des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, cat. no. 261,
the genius of time waving a scythe in the air, leading a symbolical young female figure forwards, whilst an old woman, leaning on a walking stick, steps backwards; c. 1794; grey ink over pencil, grey wash/white vellum, 17.0 x 10.8 cm, inscribed lower right (black ink): D: Chodowiecki del; inv. no. GHZ 64/7; neg. 1736; prov.: Berlin, Gerda Bassenge, auction 4/1 (1964) no. 438; acquired from the Verein der Freunde und Förderer des Berlin Museums e. V.;
lit.: Robert Hirsch, Nachträge und Berichtigungen zu Daniel Chodowieckis sämtliche Kupferstiche beschrieben von Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig, 1906, p. 93, no. 18; design for a frontispiece published in: Deutsche Monatsschrift, Berlin, I, 1794, engraved by Eberhard Siegfried Henne. Beneath the inventory, it states: Explanation of the frontispiece engraving. Chronos hovers above the cycle of time, with the light falling between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His heavy right hand, weighed down with the scythe presses down on the shoulder of the 94-year-old woman. Although she wears the likeness of Frederick II on her shawl, her stick is resting on unsound rubble, and she creeps gloomily away. With a confident, joyful expression and following time’s beckoning hand, the young nymph with her beautiful crown steps forward into the compass of the new era. Her father’s eyes rest on her approvingly, and his left arm is placed gently around her shoulders, leading her forwards. New growth springs from the earth wherever she points. This symbolic image makes a play not only on the turn of the centuries, which was only six years away at the time of its publication, but also – in reference to the Enlightenment – on the intellectual and political change ushered in by the French Revolution.