Italian maiolica

T IM OT HY W IL S O N

ITALIAN MAIOLICA AND EUROPE

Italian Renaissance maiolica and Europe

T

he main subject of this book is tin-glazed earthen­ ware, a technique that owes its origin to the Islamic world, and its diffusion through Europe and beyond to the Italian Renaissance.1 Maiolica – the ‘pottery of humanism’2 – is not only the quintessential Renaissance ceramic art, but also an art form that clearly demonstrates the impact of the Italian Renaissance on the rest of Europe. The very words used in various languages indicate the fluidity of ceramic technology transfer and the way national traditions tended be born in imitation of foreign products: Italian maiolica takes its name from Malaga and Majorca; French and German faïence from Faenza; English delftware from Delft in the Netherlands; and Mexican talavera from Talavera in Spain.

Maiolica was not the only type of ceramics made in Renaissance Italy. Incised slipware and earthenware dec­orated by marbling with slips, or in other ways, were produced in large quantities all over fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy, and formed a high proportion of everyday ceramics, especially in northern Italy; they had the advantage of not requiring tin, which had to be expensively imported. The technique of incising slipware goes back through the Byzantine and Islamic worlds to Tang China. In Europe, Italian slipware was part of a long tradition of European slip-decorated earthen­ wares, from Cyprus to Stoke-on-Trent, but only occasionally (as in Renaissance Ferrara, nos 206 and 207) developed links with higher-status art forms or aspirations above the level of household pottery.

Chinese porcelain, by contrast, was intensely admired and highly valued. It was more-or-less convincingly imitated in several Italian centres, of which the most successful – and the only one for which surviving examples have been identified – was the project carried out under the patronage of the Medici Grand Dukes of Tuscany in the 1570s and 1580s (no. 219).

However, these were always princely prestige projects; technological difficulties and lack of suitable materials meant that they were never commercially viable. The experiments faded out soon after the early seventeenth century and the developments in France and Germany that even­tually led to the manufacture of ‘true’ porcelain in Dresden and its commercial exploitation across Europe in the eighteenth century owed nothing to the experiments carried out in Renaissance Italy.3

The fact that a ceramic glaze could be rendered opaque white by the addition of tin oxide, providing a good base for painting, had been known in the Islamic world since about ad 800 (see p. 29). In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries potters in Malaga, in the Islamic Kingdom of Andalucia, applied lustre and sometimes cobalt blue to tin-glazed earthen­ware to produce products of an ambitious brilliance without precedent. Malaga lustre was deservedly admired and developed extensive export markets throughout the Mediterranean (fig. 22) and to northern Europe.4 In the fourteenth century, the centre of gravity of the industry moved up the east coast of Spain, to Paterna and especially Manises, in the Christian Kingdom of Valencia, and the export business of the potters became even more extensive.

Around 1400 the ‘Merchant of Prato’, Francesco di Marco Datini (c.1335–1410), regularly dealt with commissions of large consignments of Manises lustreware for the affluent merchant families of Florence.5 This was known to Italian clients as maiolica. The origin of the word may have been Italians’ hearing of the Spanish phrase for lustreware, obra de malica (Malaga ware); some Italians took the word as referring to the island of Majorca, not far from Valencia and a major trans-shipping port, and mistakenly believed that the wares were made there.6 In the sixteenth century, the word gradually expanded its range until it acquired first, the meaning of lustreware, whether made in Spain or in Italy, then its meaning in modern Italian, describing any tin-glazed earthenware, whether lustred or not.

In Italy, as throughout much of the Mediterranean littoral, the technique of tin-glazing pottery was widely diffused by 1300.7 In the thirteenth and much of the fourteenth century, the decoration of so-called ‘archaic maiolica’ in northern and central Italy was executed mainly or only in manganese purple-brown and copper-green (nos 4–12). After about 1300 a blue made from imported cobalt was introduced, followed by a yellow derived from antimony and a range of oranges obtained from iron, to produce a range of possible colours. Around 1460 some Italian potters learnt the Islamic secret of applying metallic lustre and in two towns, Gubbio and Deruta, this iridescent lustre became economically important by 1500, adding considerable value to pottery (see pp. 234–60). [ 11 ]

A high-status product In the first half of the fifteenth century, if a wealthy Italian patron wanted colourful and glamorous ceramics for display, something that might be an ornament to rooms of a house more prominent and public than the kitchen, he would order lustreware from Spain (fig. 1); locally made pottery was for more day-to-day use. Towards the end of the century, however, there is evidence that the increasingly sophisticated and ambitious pottery made in some parts of Italy, with its new range of colours and elegance of ornament (including all’antica motifs), was beginning to catch the interest of influential and discerning patrons. In April 1490, Lorenzo de’ Medici wrote to Galeotto Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, who had sent him a gift of pottery (presumably made within Galeotto’s own dominions), thanking him and attributing values of rarity, novelty, and excellence to the vessels: Fig. 1 Lustred plate with arms of the Zati family of Florence. Spanish, Valencia (probably Manises), c.1410–50. © The Trustees of the British Museum, PE 1855,1201.87. On long loan to the Ashmolean (LI 183.2).

Fig. 2 Maiolica vase with the arms of Medici and Orsini. Montelupo, 1469 or later. © 2017, Detroit Institute of Arts, 37.74.

[ 12 ] italian renaissance maiolica and europe

They are perfect and much to my taste, so I appreciate them very much. Nor do I know how to thank you adequately, since if rarer things should be more valued, these things are more precious to me more and I value them more than if they were of silver, being very excellent and rare, as I say, and quite novel to us here.8 There is an element of polite rhetoric here, but no Italian would have thought of expressing himself in these terms about Italian-made pottery fifty years before. A handsome jar, now in Detroit, perhaps intended as a plant pot, may have been commissioned by or for Lorenzo himself and/or his wife Clarice Orsini, whom he married in 1469 (fig. 2).9 It was made in the Florence region, probably in the rising specialist pottery centre of Montelupo. Although the potter could not make lustre, both the wing-handled form and the floral decoration (called ‘fleur-de-lis’, fioralixi, by a Tuscan merchant in 148010) imitate the prestigious and more expensive lustreware imports from Manises. After Lorenzo’s death in 1492, the jar was recorded in an inventory at the Medici villa of Poggio a Caiano – the earliest known inventory reference to an identifiable surviving piece of Italian maiolica.11 For the first time, we catch sight of an Italian potter carrying out an armorial commission for a wealthy Italian client, seeking to compete directly with prestigious Spanish imports. Before much longer, so rapid was the technical and artistic development of Italian maiolica that Italian potters entirely conquered their home market.

In similar vein to Lorenzo, in 1486, the Ferrarese ambassador to the court of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, wrote to Eleonora Duchess of Ferrara saying that, if she

28 Bowl, Syrinx transformed into a reed Painted by Domenego da Venezia or in his workshop, Venice, c.1560–70 Presented by C.D.E. Fortnum, 1888; WA 1888.CDEF.C462.

Provenance: Bought by Fortnum from Mannheim, Paris, 1855. Lent to the Ashmolean, 1888.

Deep bowl, the sides curving up and flattening towards the edge; substantial foot-ring.

Earthenware, covered front and back with a white tin glaze, with some pockmarking front and back.

Painted in blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, brown, white. The edge is painted ochre-yellow outside a blue line. On the back, yellow, orange, blue, and purple rings; the inscription in blue capital letters within the foot-ring.

Diam. 30.4; depth 6.2 cm

Condition: Good.

Bibliography: Fortnum 1855 ms catalogue, p. 50, no. 16; 1857 ms catalogue, p. 108, no. 37; Notebook catalogue 9, no. 462; Fortnum 1889, III, p. 83; Fortnum 1897, p. 81.

The scene on this bowl, which is of a favourite Venetian shape, is set in a broad landscape with trees and rocks; water, mountains, buildings, and a bridge in the distance. In the centre is Syrinx, a female figure in the process of being transformed into a reed. On the left Pan approaches

and reaches out to her. On the left a woman (Syrinx again?) reclining; foreground a woman and winged Cupid holding a fruit; right two women, one holding a basket with produce, the other gesturing upwards. The inscription on the back reads: ·DISARIGA·MUTATA· INCANA (Of Syrinx transformed into a reed). The subject, the nymph Syrinx changed into a reed to avoid the unwanted attentions of the god Pan, is from Book I of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

sixteenth century · venice & veneto [ 81 ]

The bowl is a characteristic example of the production of the workshop of Maestro Domenego da Venezia.

Domenego, who married the daughter of the immigrant potter Giacomo da Pesaro (see no. 23), is documented from 1547 and died in the 1570s or possibly later; during this time he ran what must have been the most successful maiolica workshop in Venice.1 Works marked with his name are dated between 1562 and 1568.2 The facts that some of these

works have the word feci, ‘I made it’, after his name and that he is described in a document as depentor over bochaler (painter or potter) indicate that he was himself the principal painter, or one of them, in the workshop he owned. This plate is among numerous pieces in the same style as the signed works; their consistency is such that he must either have been extremely prolific as a painter or maintained an unusually consistent workshop style within his workforce.

1 Lessmann 1979, pp. 409–507; Alverà Bortolotto 1988, pp. 24–5; Wilson 1996, pp. 437–40; Thornton and Wilson 2009, pp. 95–6.

2 The signed works are listed by Wilson 1996, pp. 439–40. A David and Goliath signed domenego feci is currently (2016) with Bazaart, London (Leprince, Raccanello, and Sani 2016, pp. 28–31).

29 Bowl, A banqueting scene Painted by Domenego da Venezia or in his workshop, Venice, c.1560–70 Presented by C.D.E. Fortnum, 1888; WA 1888.Cdef.c463.

Provenance: Ralph Bernal, London; bought

by Fortnum for £7 at the Bernal sale,1 Christie’s, 5 March–30 April 1855, lot 2023. Lent to the Ashmolean, 1888.

Deep bowl, the sides curving up and flattening towards the edge; substantial foot-ring.

Earthenware, covered front and back with a white tin glaze; three kiln-support scars on the back.

Painted in blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, brown, white. The edge is painted yellow outside a blue line. On the back, four yellow rings.

Diam. 29.5; depth 5.2 cm Condition: Cracked from 6 o’clock up the righthand side and repaired.

Bibliography: Fortnum 1855 ms catalogue, p. 50, no. 17; 1857 ms catalogue, p. 108, no. 38; Bohn 1857, no. 2023; Notebook catalogue 9, no. 463; Fortnum 1889, III, p. 83; Fortnum 1897, p. 81; Wilson 1989/2003, no. 26; Mariaux 1995, p. 43.

The scene is set in a landscape with water and mountains behind. At a table in the open air, but beneath a large canopy-cloth draped from a tree on the left is a table,

probably intended as stone, on a carved plinth. Centre, a man and a woman canoodling; to the right, a man with a wine cup; left, a man in a feathered hat; at the left and right ends of the table are musicians. On the table are three small branches with fruit. To the right is a large block of carved stone with a bottle on it.

The subject is taken from an engraving by the Nuremberg printmaker Virgil Solis (1514–1562) (fig. 40), from a series illustrating the effects of wine.2 German prints and illustrated books were widely available in Italy and often used by sixteenth-century Italian maiolicapainters, from Martin Schongauer3 and Albrecht Dürer4 in the early period of istoriato to Georg Pencz,5 Sebald Beham,6 Hans Holbein the Younger,7 and Virgil Solis8 in the middle decades of the century.9 By the same painter as no. 28.

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1 For Fortnum’s purchases from the sale of the collection of Ralph Bernal, see no. 57.

2 O’Dell-Franke 1977, p. 125, no. f68.

3 Thornton and Wilson 2009, no. 68.

4 Thornton 2004.

5 Rasmussen 1984, no. 152.

6 For instance, Rasmussen 1984, pp. 192–3, Wilson 1996, no. 119; Wilson 2016B, no. 68.

7 For instance, Lessmann 1979, nos 205, 207.

8 For other examples, Lessmann 1979, nos 65, 66, 366, 389, 765.

9 For an overview, see Schmidt 1941.

39 Mould-made bowl, The young St John the Baptist Faenza, c.1530–45 Presented by C.D.E. Fortnum, 1888; WA 1888.Cdef.c478.

Provenance: Bought by Fortnum from Pickert, Fürth (near Nuremberg), 1856. Lent to the Ashmolean, 1887.

Mould-made dish formerly on splayed foot (now cut down). The moulding has 24 convex ridges and 24 lobes at the edge; the centre is convex.

Earthenware, covered front and back with a whitish tin glaze. Painted in blue, yellow, orange, green, pale brown. On the back radiating lines of short dashes in blue and orange.

Diam. 25.6; depth: 5.5 cm Condition: The foot has been slightly cut down, probably to facilitate the dish being set in a frame.

Bibliography: Fortnum 1855 ms catalogue, p. 59, no. 38; 1857 ms catalogue, p. 101, no. 17; Notebook catalogue 9, no. 478; Fortnum 1889, III, p. 92; Fortnum 1897, p. 86.

In the centre, on a yellow ground, is a back view of a near-naked haloed figure holding a long cross, probably the young St John the Baptist, standing among clouds. Around this radiate twelve compartments, alternating scrolling oak leaves (without acorns) on a blue ground

[ 100 ] sixteenth century · faenza

and foliate dolphin-scrolls on orange; further compartments towards the edge have leaf-sprays on blue, open books and leaf scrolls on green, and a circular motif with leaf-scrolls on orange; the edge is painted dark blue.

The shape, dolphin-scrolls, and leaf decoration on this piece are characteristic of Faenza work of this period.

For the popularity of images of the young St John the Baptist, see no. 192.

40 Mould-made bowl, The young St John the Baptist Probably Faenza, c.1530–45 Presented by C.D.E. Fortnum, 1888; WA 1888.Cdef.c477.

Provenance: Bought from Pickert, Fürth (near Nuremberg), 1856. Lent to the Ashmolean, 1887.

Mould-made dish on splayed foot. The moulding has eighteen convex ridges and eighteen lobes at the edge; the centre is convex. Earthenware, covered front and back with a whitish tin glaze. Painted in blue, yellow, orange, green, pale brown. On the back concentric broad and narrow bands in blue, yellow, and orange.

Diam. 25.5; depth 6 cm Condition: Glaze crackled overall, front and back.

Cracked and repaired at 10 o’clock; other edge chips, some retouched. Repair to foot.

Bibliography: Fortnum 1855 ms catalogue, p. 59, no. 37; 1857 ms catalogue, p. 101, no. 16; Notebook catalogue 9, no. 477; Fortnum 1889, III, p. 92; Fortnum 1897, p. 86.

In the centre is the young St John the Baptist, seated on a hillock and holding a cross. Around this radiate eighteen compartments, alternating scrolling leaves on a blue ground and foliate dolphin-scrolls on orange; further alternating compartments with leaf-sprays and flower motifs on the sides; the edge is painted dark blue.

sixteenth century · faenza [ 101 ]

114 Relief-moulded bowl, Fede motif Workshop of Maestro Giorgio, Gubbio, c.1525–40 Presented by C.D.E. Fortnum, 1888; WA 1888.Cdef.c436.

Provenance: Unrecorded. Lent to Ashmolean, 1887.

Bowl on splayed hollow foot; the centre, which is convex and has a raised retaining ring impressed with a relief motif of crossed hands crowned with wavy lines in relief below; on the sides eleven spiralling gadroons of pear shape, with circular bosses between each. Earthenware, covered front and back with a whitish tin glaze, somewhat pinkish on the back. There are patches of crawling especially around the convex centre. Painted in blue, with lustre varying from yellowish to pale brown. In the centre, the crossed hands and crown are painted following the moulded design, with the wavy lines below painted as flames. The sides are painted with foliate motifs between the pearshaped gadroons. The back is plain, with splodges of lustre.

Diam. 27.2; depth 7.5 cm

Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, has the clasped hands with a crown and the words CO[N] FERMA FEDE (with firm faith).4 It seems more likely that the crown that appears over the hands on this and the Hartford piece is added to give general authority to the profession of faith, rather than indicating that the relationship involved is between a royal or noble couple.

This type of relief-moulded Gubbio bowl is usually lustred in gold and red; there was probably some red lustre on this bowl, for instance on the relief bosses, which has failed to develop through insufficient firing.5

Condition: Some edge chips.

Bibliography: Fortnum Notebook catalogue 8, no. 436; Fortnum 1889, III, p. 67; Fortnum 1897, p. 72.

This is one of two examples in the Fortnum collection of a type of bowl imitating embossed metalwork, made by impressing one or more moulds onto the front of the leather-hard pottery,1 which was a significant part of the production of Maestro Giorgio’s workshop. Dated examples are concentrated in the years 1530 to 1532, but they were probably made both much earlier and also later than this.2 Fortnum suggested that the unusual pear-shaped bosses may have reference to the armorial bearings of the Peruzzi family, but this is doubtful.

The motif of clasped hands, known as the Fede (faith) motif, was used in Roman times to denote a contract and passed into medieval iconography as a symbol of devotion or betrothal. It is very common on rings and occurs on maiolica from the late fifteenth century.3 An example in Deruta lustreware in the Wadsworth

[ 256 ] sixteenth century · gubbio

1 On the technique, see Sannipoli 1999.

2 Thornton and Wilson 2009, pp. 531–2. See Sani 2012, figs 18, 19, for good illustrations of one in the V&A with the arms of Pope Julius II, who died in 1513.

3 Thornton and Wilson 2009, no. 40.

4 Rasmussen and Watson 1986, no. 7.

5 The potter Alan Caiger-Smith notes that reds can fail to develop through insufficient heat or insufficient reduction; he compares a Gubbio lustre piece in the V&A, on which the red lustre has developed on one side but completely failed to develop on the other; see Caiger-Smith 1991, fig. XXXb (V&A 7960-1861; Rackham 1940, no. 694).

115 Bowl, The young St John the Baptist Gubbio, workshop of Maestro Giorgio, c.1525–40 Presented by C.D.E. Fortnum, 1888; WA 1888.Cdef.c435.

Provenance: Bought by Fortnum from Delange in Paris, 1854, ‘to the disappointment of M. Riocreux, who wanted it for Sèvres’.1 Lent to the Ashmolean, 1887.

78 in ink on underside within the foot.

Small bowl, the sides curving evenly upwards; small slightly splayed foot. The body has been impressed using stamps with a half-length stand­ ing figure of St John the Baptist and eleven ovals in relief. Earthenware, covered front and back with a creamy-whitish tin glaze. Painted in blue with golden and red lustre (the red has fired poorly) roughly following the relief designs. The sides are painted around the relief design with mandorla-shaped compartments linked by foliate compartments and a continuous strap. The edge is painted in golden lustre. On the back, in red lustre, are two rudimentary scrolls and traces of two more.

There are two models of the young St John the Baptist on Gubbio relief-moulded dishes of this sort. The commoner has the boy saint full length, moving to the right.3 Another example of the present model was in the Oppenheimer collection.4 For the technique and the dating, see no. 114. Fortnum suggested this might be by ‘Maestro Prestino’, around 1536. The attribution to the Gubbio potter Vittorio di Filippo de Floribus, called Prestino, implies a link to a signed and dated relief in the Louvre;5 but no relationship is discernible to me between the two works.

1 For the Paris dealers Henri and Carle Delange, see no. 60. Denis-Désiré Riocreux (1791–1872) trained as a porcelain-painter and became first curator of the ceramic museum at Sèvres.

2 Ecce agnus dei, ecce qui tollit peccatum mundi. The words were adapted for the text of the Roman Catholic mass.

3 Thornton and Wilson 2009, no. 332, citing other examples.

4 Chompret 1949, fig. 747.

5 Giacomotti 1974, no. 743. The other signed work by Prestino is a plate in the Wallace Collection, dated 1557 (Norman 1974, no.

C70). See Fortnum 1896, p. 172, ‘Marks and Monograms’, nos 148–50; Thornton and Wilson 2009, p. 521, for further references.

Diam. 19.5; depth 3.8 cm Condition: Chips to edge; one large chip between 2 and 3 o’clock filled and retouched.

Bibliography: Fortnum 1855 ms catalogue, p. 55, no. 29; 1857 ms catalogue, p. 100, no. 14; Notebook catalogue 8, no. 435; London 1887, no. 186; Fortnum 1889, III, p. 67; Fortnum 1896, p. 168, pl. XIII; Fortnum 1897, p. 71, pl. XIII; Castelli 1988, p. 162, no. 8.

Fortnum described this as ‘a brilliant example of the golden lustre pigment’. In the centre, the young St John the Baptist holding a tall cross around which is draped a banner with the words ECCE ANGNUS DEI (for Ecce agnus dei – ‘behold the lamb of God’); behind him is a tree.

The iconographical association of St John the Baptist with the lamb is based on the text in John, chapter 1, verse 29: John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness, saw Jesus approaching and said ‘Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world’.2 For the popularity of images of the young John the Baptist in domestic contexts, especially in Florence, see no. 192.

sixteenth century · gubbio [ 257 ]

SLIPWARE AND LE AD- GL A ZED E ARTHENWARE

T

he pottery in this section is not tin-glazed but made of earthenware covered with a whitish slip and decorated beneath a transparent lead-based glaze. The decoration is most frequently incised or scraped through the slip, before first firing, to reveal the redder body of the clay beneath; decoration can then be added in colours, which tend to run into the lead glaze, in contrast to a tin glaze in which colours will, unless a ceramic object is badly fired, remain separated and fixed. Alternative techniques are to swirl slips of different colours, producing a kind of marbled effect, or to add decoration in lines or blobs of white slip.1 The technique of incised slipware dates back to Tang dynasty China and was diffused in the Islamic and Byzantine worlds before it was taken up in Italy.

The Ashmolean holds a good group of fourteenth/ fifteenth-century bowls from Cyprus, including a group of pieces with lively figural decoration. In Italy, production of incised slipware was especially widespread in the plain of the river Po and in north-eastern Italy,2 including Venice;3 but it was also extensively made further south, for instance in Tuscany.4 There is a vast archaeological literature on

[ 392 ]

the making of slipware in different regions of Italy but many issues about chronology and attribution remain unclear and new production centres are still being identified.5 Lead-glazed slipware has, for the potter, the advantage that it is less dependent than maiolica on expensive imported ingredients, tin and cobalt.

It was therefore widely made in areas that were simultaneously producing maiolica, when a cheaper alternative was required. Slipware is much more rarely inscribed, marked, or dated than Renaissance maiolica. Nonetheless, at its best and most ambitious, notably in the Ferrara of the Este dukes,6 it reaches the level of a sophisticated art form with links to contemporary painting.

1 For Renaissance slipware north of the Alps in various decorative techniques, see Stephan 1987.

2 M. Munarini and others in Ericani and Marini 1990, pp. 1–176; Magnani and Munarini 1998.

3 Conton 1940.

4 Moore Valeri 2004 and 2005.

5 Thornton and Wilson 2009, pp. 640–93, give an overview and further bibliographical references.

6 Magnani 1981–2.

258 Two pouring vessels French, Nevers, c.1610–50, perhaps workshop of the Conrade family

(a) Presented by C.D.E. Fortnum, 1888; WA 1888.Cdef.c481.

Provenance: Unrecorded. Lent to the Ashmolean, 1887.

Boat-shaped vessel, representing a bath, on splayed hollow foot. In the bath is a modelled figure of a reclining naked woman, holding in both hands a cloth or towel that passes between her thighs.

Her right leg is raised. Her hair is tied up in a band and she wears a necklace. Earthenware, covered entirely, except where the foot touches the ground, with a thick white tin glaze. Painted in blue, black, yellow, orange. Dashes and dots around the relief studding on the edge. The underside undecorated.

Length 20.7; h. to rim of bath 5.9 cm Condition: Minor wear and chipping.

Bibliography: Fortnum Notebook catalogue 9, no. 481; Fortnum 1889, III, p. 93; Fortnum 1897, p. 87. (b) Presented by Gerald Reitlinger, 1972 (received 1978); WA 1978.234.

Provenance: Mrs Maxwell MacDonald, Pollok House, Pollokshaws, Glasgow; sold Christie’s, London, 24 April 1967, lot 98; bought by Reitlinger.

Boat-shaped vessel representing a bath. In the bath is a modelled figure of a reclining naked woman, similar to that on (a), but with her legs crossed; a large flower covers her right shoulder. The decoration and facture are virtually identical to those of (a).

Length 19.5; h. to rim of bath 6 cm Condition: Minor wear and cracking.

These two slightly varying versions of what can only be described as an amusing novelty product are so similar that they must have come from the same workshop. They are a tin-glazed version of a type of object made by Bernard Palissy or his followers (see p. 35, fig. 28).

There are examples in the Louvre and elsewhere.1 Fortnum, who had acquired his example by 1887, thought it Italian, seventeenth or eighteenth-century, and

tin glaze from outside italy · france [ 467 ]

Fig. 122 Fragments of pottery excavated at the Tour Goguin, Nevers. Photo: Jean Rosen.

suggested it might be from Imola or Faenza. Subsequent curatorial opinion in the Ashmolean, recognizing the rela­ tionship to the Palissy-type examples, has regarded it as French, probably Nevers, from the mid-seventeenth century or perhaps later. The attribution to Nevers is now corroborated by finds of fragments (fig. 122), apparently production waste, from the Tour Goguin, Nevers, which seem to prove production of vessels of this type in the city, probably in the Conrade workshop.2 The form apparently corresponds to objects described as gondolles (gondolas) mentioned in documents concerning the Italian potters Baptiste Conrade (Battista Conrado) and his uncle Augustin Conrade (Agostino Conrado) in Nevers in 1611 and 1612. Jean Rosen, author of the definitive study of Nevers pottery, informs me that he believes their primary use was by ladies to pour water over themselves when bathing.3 Louvre curator Michèle Bimbenet-Privat has expressed the view that vessels of this

form ‘could be used equally for washing or at table’.4 Objects of the same type were also made at Montpellier;5 and also, outside France, in London and perhaps the Low Countries. An example attributed to a London workshop is in the FMC.6 Reitlinger commented in 1975 on the index card for his example that ‘I have some doubts’. The unworn state of the glaze on both, together with the apparent high firing of the hard earthenware body, might be taken as supporting the idea that these are actually nineteenth-century products, perhaps designed to deceive.

It is unfortunate that we do not know when Fortnum acquired his example.

Nonetheless, it seems more likely than not that these two examples are authentic seventeenth-century Nevers products.7 1 OA1286; Rosen 2009, II, p. 141, fig. 131. This is from the Sauvageot collection, which came to the Louvre in 1857. For examples at Sèvres and Clamecy, see Montpellier

[ 468 ] tin glaze from outside italy · france

2 3

4 5 6

7

2012, p. 277, figs 33, 34 (I thank Françoise Barbe for this reference).

Rosen 2009, II, p. 120, fig. 99.

Email of 7 April 2016. I thank Monsieur Rosen for his courteous wide-ranging advice on French faïence in the Ashmolean and for the illustration of fragments from the Tour Goguin. Écouen 2009, p. 278; I thank Françoise Barbe for this reference.

Montpellier 2012, p. 277, fig. 31.

Archer 2013, no. 98, citing another London example in the Longridge collection and one in Antwerp, dated 1642 and attributed to the Netherlands.

Antoinette Faÿ-Hallé, then the experienced and expert director of the Musée national de Céramique at Sèvres, visiting the Museum in the 1990s, expressed the view that these are authentically of the seventeenth century. We are also grateful to Jean Rosen for his view; he tells us that he has never encountered what he believes to be fakes of this category of object.

Materials and technology Twenty-five objects were examined by an Oxford Instruments X-MET 8000 series handheld XRF analyzer in order to confirm the materials used in the manufacture of the glazes and decoration and from that help to answer curatorial questions regarding places of manufacture and technological transfer between production centres.8 The selected objects spanned 500 years of production from a range of sites, including sixteenth-century Della Robbia and Italian istoriato maiolica, eighteenth-century ceramics from Puebla

de los Ángeles, Mexico and early nineteenth-century creamware from Naples and Wedgwood and eighteenth-century ceramics from Puebla, Mexico. A summary of the objects tested and key findings are presented in Table 1.

Glazes A key question in the research for this catalogue was whether tin was present as an opacifying agent in the glazes of the selected objects. Opacifying agents are ceramic materials that are suspended within a glaze and which absorb, reflect, and scatter light in all directions. If sufficient amounts of

Table 1 XRF results, key findings Catalogue/ Accession No.

Description

Date

Place of manufacture

Tin in glaze?

Glaze colourants/ pigments

WA 1899.

CDEF.S17 (not in this catalogue)

Two-handled vase, Della Robbia workshop

c.1500–20

Florence, Italy

Yes

Blue: Co, Cu, Fe, Ni

No. 70

Cut-down bowl, A ring of boys dancing

c.1535–60

Italy, possibly Urbino

Yes

–

No. 30

Plate, The Death of the Children of Niobe

c.1545–50

Venice or Veneto, Italy

Yes

Recto: Blue: Co, Ni, As, Cu, Bi Yellow: Sb, Fe Orange: Sb, Fe, Zn Green: Cu, Sb Black: Fe, Co, Ni, Sb, Zn Verso: Blue: Co, Cu, Ni, Fe

No. 215

Dish

Perhaps seventeenth century

Origin uncertain (Tuscany?)

Below detection

White: Sn Brown: Fe, Mn

No. 118

Plate with the arms of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese

c.1574

Castelli, Italy

Yes

Blue: Co, Cu, Fe, Ni, As, Bi, Mo

No. 259

Bottle, numbered 86

c.1660–1700

Nevers, France

Yes

Blue: Co, Cu, Mn, Fe, Ni, As, Bi, Mo

No. 262

Vase or drinking vessel, The Sacred Trigram

c.1520–60

Probably Southern Netherlands (Antwerp?)

Yes

Blue: Co, Ni, Fe, Cu, Mo Yellow: Sb, Fe

No. 276

Mug

c.1630–70

London, England

Yes

Purple/brown: Mn, Fe

No. 139

Plate on high foot

c.1680–1720

Laterza, Italy

Yes

–

WA 1958.57.34 (not in this catalogue)

Plate with floral motif

Late seventeenth– eighteenth century

Possibly Spanish

Yes

Green: Cu, Sb, Zn

non-destructive technical investigation of tin-glazed ceramics [ 519 ]

Catalogue/ Accession No.

Description

Date

Place of manufacture

Tin in glaze?

Glaze colourants/ pigments

No. 252

Large jar, baluster shaped

1700–50

Puebla de los Ángeles, Mexico

Yes

Blue: Co, Fe, Ni, Mn, Cu, Zn, As

No. 143

Plate, A leaping hare amid foliage

c.1670–1730

Origin uncertain

Yes

Green: Cu

No. 160

Drinking bowl, The Madonna of Loreto

1720

Loreto or nearby, Italy

Below detection

–

No. 154

Plate, The Creation of Eve

c.1725–35

Siena

Yes

–

No. 289

Plate, unidentified subject

c.1743–50

Perhaps Holíč

Yes

–

No. 155

Plate, Truth unveiling Truth

1749

Siena

Yes

–

No. 254

Plate with a Chinese figure

1750–1825

Puebla de los Ángeles, Mexico

Yes

–

No. 195

Figure group, Bacchus and Ariadne

Early nineteenth century

Italy, probably Faenza

Yes

–

No. 196

Figure group, Hercules and Iole

Early nineteenth century

Italy, probably Faenza

Yes

–

WA 2009.33 (not in this catalogue)

Plate, armorial creamware

c.1790

Wedgwood, England

Below detection

–

No. 174

Tureen, Characters of the Naples region

1800–40

Naples, Italy

Below detection

–

No. 261

Tile in Iznik style

c.1860–80

Théodore Deck, Paris, France

Below detection

–

No. 177

Small plate in imitation of Iznik

1880

Torquato Castellani, Rome

Yes

–

WA 1955.41 (not in this catalogue)

Bowl

Nineteenth century

Possibly Spanish

Yes

–

No. 2

Part of a bowl

c.1225–1300

Probably Lucera, Puglia

Yes

Brown: Mn, Fe

Key – ?

As Bi

not tested unknown arsenic bismuth

Co Cu Fe Ni

cobalt copper iron nickel

Mn Mo Sb Zn

manganese molybdenum antimony zinc

an opacifier are distributed throughout a glaze, the glaze turns from transparent to opaque concealing the underlying ceramic body. Tin oxide is an excellent opacifier due to its high refractive index, small particle size (typically less than 1 μm or 0.001 mm), irregular surface, and low solubility, and

has been used in the production of ceramic glazes since the eighth or ninth century.9 It is generally agreed that at least 3% tin oxide is needed to achieve effective opacification.10 The detection of tin in lead-glazed objects can be straightforward using handheld XRF if a single relatively

[ 520 ] non-destructive technical investigation of tin-glazed ceramics

ISBN 978-1-910807-16-3

9 781910 807163