The middle of the eighteenth century saw a huge sea change in European taste, as the upper classes moved from rococo frivolity to neo-classical seriousness. The greatest prophet of neo-classicism in Germany was of course the writer Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-68), who in his History of Greek Art singled out porcelain for criticism, describing it as a ’beautiful material’ (schöne materie), but claiming that it had never produced a real work of art, and that most porcelain was ’in childish taste’ and was used mostly to make ’idiotic puppets’, the charming little figures made for the dessert table that are so esteemed today. This resulted in table decoration of high-minded seriousness. A Frauenzimmer-Lexicon (housewife’s manual) of 1773 gives precise instructions for the decorations of dessert, insisting that the housewife has a good knowledge of history and classical mythology:

At the great ceremonial dinners the dessert is often used to display allegorical and figural representations, in the proper arrangement of which considerable knowledge of History, Poetry and Mythology, likewise of Architecture and Perspective is called for. The easiest representations at great desserts are pleasure-gardens, with promenades, buildings, fountains, parterres, vases and statues, of which last the porcelain factories at Meissen, Berlin, Vienna etc, make the prettiest and most decorative pieces and ensembles imaginable, thus saving the confectioner much work.

These displays seem to have been quite literally talking points: the Confectionery of the Freiherr of Dalbert borrowed cork models of antique buildings for the dessert, so that guests were ‘vouchsafed more knowledge and encouraged to use this in the discussion of the most ancient monuments and other works of art’. The dessert had been a time for frivolous discussion and flirting, but a new seriousness and heaviness crept in, that spread to the whole dinner service, which now surrounded a magnificent sculptural porcelain centrepiece.

The greatest example of neo-classicism in dinner services was the ‘Cameo’ service ordered by Catherine the Great of Russia from Sèvres in 1776. Her agent, Prince Grigori Potemkin, wrote that the service should be ’in the best and newest style, with Her Majesty’s monogram on every piece’ and ’without any deviation from antique models, with reproductions of cameos’. It was intended for sixty people, with a centrepiece of ninety-one biscuit figures centred on a bust of Minerva (representing the Empress) surrounded by the muses sculpted by the sculptor Boizot, who had already worked for Catherine in 1769.

Other factories began to make unglazed biscuit porcelain in the manner of Sèvres, thus resembling classical marble figures. Meissen made a wide variety of these figures, usually of classical Gods and heroes, some modelled by Christian Gottfried Jüchtzer (1752-1812), who was appointed chief modeller in 1794, and made much use of the collection of casts from the Mengs collection. The factory at Ludwigsburg is thought to have been the first to make figures in the neo-classical taste, when in 1762 it recruited the modeller Wilhelm Beyer, whom the king had sent to study in Rome to introduce modern ideas to the factory. After his death, the tradition was continued by the modeller J.J. Louis who was brought in from Tournai as oberbossierer (chief modeller) in 1762-72. The fashion for French modellers and craftsmen extended to the other factories. The factory at Fürstenburg obtained the services of the French sculptor, Desoches, to act as modeller as early at 1769. He made a range of figures in biscuit, the most notable being busts of Greek philosophers mounted on pedestals, as well as medallions of the royal family.

The porcelain factory that followed the classical style most consistently was that of Naples, close to the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum. King Ferdinand founded a new factory in the grounds of the royal palace at Portici, to the east of Naples, in 1771. In 1779 he appointed as director Domenico Venuti (1745-1817), a man of great learning and ability, the son of Marcello Venuti, one of the first excavators at Herculaneum. He was himself involved in the restoration and publication of the Greek temples at Paestum, and, not surprisingly under his directorship a number of neo-classical services were made. These include the ’Herculaneum’ service of 1781, made as a present for the Spanish court, and the ’Etruscan’ service of 1785 presented to George III of Great Britain. They were full of neo-classical imagery, the useful vessels being copied directly from Greek vases. The modeller Filippo Tagliolini (1745-1809) joined the factory from the Vienna factory in 1780, and modelled a wide variety of figures in the classical style, or copied from antique originals; his most ambitious work is a large biscuit centrepiece of many figures in contorted poses of ‘The Fall of the Giants’ of 1787-92/99.

However, in the Italian Peninsula emblematic displays of sugar-paste trionfi lasted well into the eighteenth century. A confectionery textbook, Il credenziere de buon gusto, written by Vicenzo Corrado and published in Naples in 1778, illustrates a dessert table for the month of May with sugar allegorical figures of Primavera, Fame and Partenope, the patron goddess of Naples. Corrado also suggests detailed iconographic schemes for the other eleven months of the year.