Jean-Dominique Rachette
Most of us on the DailyArt team are cat people but a dog once in a while is good for everyone! :) We present today's adorable figurine thanks to Slovak National Museum - Museum of History in Bratislava where now you can visit The Golden Age of Peterhof - From Peter I. to Catherine II, which is a joint project of Slovak National Museum - Museum of History in Bratislava and Peterhof State Museum – Reserve.
In the magnificent creative heritage of the model-master of the Imperial Porcelain Factory, Jean-Dominique Rachette, the portrait of a lioness, amazingly lively with the transfer of the character of an animal and the impeccable accuracy of modelling, occupies one of the most important places. The legend connects this porcelain portrait with one of the favorites of Catherine II, a dog named Zemira, who enjoyed the special grace of the empress who repeatedly mentioned her in her letters. The ancestors of the numerous progeny to which Zemira belongs are two dogs named Sir Tom Anderson and Lady Anderson, donated by Catherine II to Baron Thomas Dimsdale, an English doctor invited by the Empress to administer smallpox vaccinations in Russia. In the park of Tsarskoe Selo, there was a stone over the burial place of the beloved dog with an epitaph carved on it, composed at the request of Catherine II by the ambassador of France at the Russian court, Louis Philippe Segur.
Read also about Gainsborough and his dogs’ portraits.