A striking collection of five porcelain plates from Fornasetti’s Tema e Variazioni (Theme and Variations) series, featuring surreal reinterpretations of the face of Italian opera singer and legendary beauty Lina Cavalieri.
Piero Fornasetti discovered Cavalieri’s image in a late-19th-century illustrated magazine and transformed her face into hundreds of playful, poetic and occasionally rather bizarre variations, making it one of the most recognizable motifs in 20th-century Italian design.
This group comprises variations No. 10, 107, 130, 163 and 248, ranging from the wonderfully simple enlarged eye to fragmented, doubled and winking interpretations of Cavalieri’s features. Each is executed in Fornasetti’s characteristic black-and-white graphic style on glazed porcelain.
The individual plates are:
- No. 10: Split portrait of Lina Cavalieri
- No. 107: “The Necklace” – Cavalieri’s neck encircled by a necklace composed of miniature versions of her own face.
- No. 130: Cavalieri shown playfully winking.
- No. 163: A surreal collage in which Cavalieri’s eye, mouth, nose and other features appear as pinned fragments arranged across the plate.
- No. 248: “Left Eye” – An enlarged isolated eye
Estimated manufacture date: circa 1990s, with several of the designs themselves originating considerably earlier in the history of the series. No. 107, for example, is documented as a design from the 1960s.
Dimensions:
Diameter: 10″ / 25-26 cm.
