This figure was derived from the engraving of Arlequinfrom the series of fourteen figures from the Italian Comedy by Johann Jacob Wolrab published in Nuremberg in 1722 (illustrated on page 44).

The only group of all sixteen figures is in the Pfleuger Collection.¹ Only four other figures of Harlequin from this series are recorded, of which the closest in coloring to the present example is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.² The second example is in the Pflueger Collection (formerly in the collections of Carl Jourdain, Emma Budge and Otto and Magdalena Blohm),³the third was formerly in the collections of Francis M. Baer, Emma Budge and and Magdalena Blohm, and was sold by Sotheby's (from the Blohm Collection) on 25 April 1961, lot 390, pl. XXIII. The fourth, which has 'arlequin'incised on the base, was sold by Sotheby's, London on 1 July 1958, lot 168.

1. Which was formerly in New York and is now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
2. C. Le Corbeiller et al., The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1984, pp. 277-278, no. 208.
3. Illustrated by H. Morley-Fletcher, Early European Porcelain and Faience, as collected by Kiyi and Edward Pflueger, London, 1993, Vol. I, pp. 116-117, and by R. Schmidt, Early European Porcelain as Collected by Otto Blohm, Munich, 1953, pl. 45.