•D2453. Polychrome Birdcage Plaque

Marked with PVB, possibly for Pieter Verburg, owner of De Vergulde Blompot (The Gilded Flower Pot) from 1756 to 1789

Painted with a finch with a black head, perched on a wooden stick, within a wooden cage with a blue water cup suspended at one end, and the arched top pierced with a hole for suspension.

DIMENSIONS
Height: 29.6 cm. (11.7 in.)

PROVENANCE
Private collection, Switzerland

NOTE
Birdcage plaques were occasionally placed on a wall among other tiles as part of the architectural design of a space. The trompe l’oeil (trick the eye) technique, which is frequently utilized in ancient master paintings to captivate and deceive the audience, is demonstrated in this birdcage plaque. The still life paintings with trompe l’oeil techniques from the seventeenth century served as a likely source of inspiration for the Delft potters. On the current plaque, a scene has been painted with depth and realistic features in an effort to produce an optical illusion. Both genre and trompe l’oeil paintings from the seventeenth century frequently feature realistically painted birdcages. There was a great preference for birdcages.

SIMILAR EXAMPLES
A pendant plaque is in the Gill Patterson Collection at the Shelter Island Historical Society. It is illustrated in Delftware, from the Gill Patterson Collection at the Shelter Island Historical Society, 2012, p. 29. Two pendant plaques with the birds mirrored were sold at Christies in 2006.