An extremely rare Italian porcelain figure of a Magus, probably Rome, factory of Filippo Cuccumos, circa 1770An extremely rare Italian porcelain figure of a Magus, probably Rome, factory of Filippo Cuccumos, circa 1770Possibly depicting Caspar, as a bearded, kneeling man offering a covered goblet in his right hand, wearing a cloak hung with tassels and a sash tied around the waist, the edge of his cloak, the sash and the goblet embellished in gilding, likely a fragment, as the group is placed on a crudely finished base made for slotting into another segment, perhaps originally forming part of a larger group of the Adoration of the Magi, 10.7cm high (right hand restuck at the wrist, chips)Provenance:European Private Collection since the 1980sFor further reading on Cuccumos porcelain, see F. Sacchi, Filippo Cuccumos capitano romano ceramista, in La ceramica n. 10 (1964) and G. Santuccio, Filippo Cuccumos e la manifattura di porcellane in Via Panisperna a Roma, in Bollettino d'arte, Rome (1988). A discussion on a Cuccumos figure of Saint Bartholomew is published in G. Santuccio, Die Porzellan Manufaktur Cuccomos in Rom, in U. Pietsch and T. Witting, Zauber der Zerbrechlichkeit. Meisterwerke Europäischer Porzellankunst (2010), pp. 259-263.Only very few signed or marked objects by this very elusive factory, founded by Filippo Coccumos in 1761, are recorded today, all of them of religious subjects. The beforementioned signed and dated figure of Saint Bartholomew that was previously in a private collection in Rome, a signed and dated figure of Saint Anthony in the collection of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan and a marked and dated figure of Saint Francis and another unmarked Saint Francis of a very similar model, in the Collezione Cagnola in Villa Cagnola in Varese. Other Cuccomos figures that have come to the market include a pair of birds (Christie's London, 14 November 2013, lot 241) which are marked with the crowned double 'C'. The history of the Cuccumos factory was published in some detail by Lucia Arbace, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Vol 31 (1985), an article which can now be found online on the website of the Istituto Treccani. Filippo Cuccumos or Coccumos was granted the right to produce porcelain in Rome for a duration of 40 years by Pope Clement XIII. In exchange for the priviledge, Cuccumos what asked to yearly execute a porcelain figure of a Saint on the feast days of San Pietro and Paolo (29 June). The factory was based in the Monastery of San Lorenzo on the Via Panisperna in Rome. The success was shortlived, and in 1764 Cuccomos applied for a loan from the Vatican. There is no more mention of the factory in the archives of the Vatican until 1781, when the factory was sold by Filippo Cuccomos to Lanfranco Bosio and Filippo Bianchini. The only known archiva reference outside the above mentioned archive is a contemporary source, a record given by the Abbot Grisellini which states that tutto andò in fumo, perché l'imprenditore allo spirito di somma loquacityà ed impostura non aggiungeva delle cognizioni in tal materia. [all went up in smoke because the owner had good spirit and intelligence, but no experience in the material]. A few years after Bosio and Bianchini had bought the factory, it closed permanently. Pope Pius VI withdrew the exclusive privilege of porcelain making from them and a legal situation ensued, in which Bosio and Bianchini blamed Coccumos, who they maintained had sold them faulty materials. The closed factory was investigated (among the recorded findings were six furnaces), and in 1792 it was ruled that Coccumos was not guilty.In a footnote to his discussion of the Volpato factory, Charles Drury Edward Fortnum (1820-1899) notes that it is possible that further researches might make known the former existence of some, perhaps private, furnaces for he production of porcelain at Rome at an earlier period in the century. A short time before leaving the city, in the Spring of 1870, the writer observed in the hands of Sign. Corvisieri, the dealer, an extremely well-modelled group of the 'Deposition' executed in a hard artificial white porcelain of a grey shade, very similar to that of Doccia, on which, scratched in the clay, was ROMA.MAG.1769 above the monogram of two interlaced letters C, surmounted by a crown, a mark similar to that incised on the porcelain of Buen Retiro, in Spain. (in: C. Drury E. Fortnum A Descriptive Catalogue of the Maiolica in the South Kensington Museum (1873), p. 463)