Issuu

Contents

Maiolica in Italy and Beyond John Mallet, Elisa Sani, Caroline Campbell, Hugo Blake, Alfonso Pleguezuelo, Silvia Glaser, Michael J. Brody, Raffaella Ausenda, Dora Thornton, Françoise Barbe, Valentina Mazzotti and Lucio Riccetti have asserted their moral rights to be identified as the authors of this work.

Foreword Alexander Sturgis

Preface J.V.G. Mallet and E.P. Sani

Copyright © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, 2021 British Library Cataloguing in Publications Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-910807-47-7 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any storage and retrieval system, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. Designed by Stephen Hebron Printed and bound in TBC Frontispiece: detail of fig. 5.3 For further details of Ashmolean titles please visit: www.ashmolean.org/shop

The Place of Maiolica among the Arts of the Renaissance 11 Caroline Campbell Archaic Maiolicas in the North, c. 1280–1450 Hugo Blake

Revisiting Niculoso Pisano (active 1503–1529): Italian Novelties 57 and Iberian Taste Alfonso Pleguezuelo Italian-influenced tin-glazed Earthenware of the sixteenth and 72 seventeenth Centuries North of the Alps. More Questions than Answers Silvia Glaser Reflections on early Gubbio Lustreware 82 Elisa Paola Sani An istoriato Basin fit for a Cardinal 95 J.V.G. Mallet Several Seventeenth-century Armorial bianchi Works for Roman 105 and other élite Clients Michael J. Brody High-quality Maiolica in the style of Porcelain: Experiments in 124 North Italian Maiolica in its productive last Years Raffaella Ausenda Provenance as a Criterion for Attribution: Napoleonic Seizures in Braunschweig and the Maiolica Collection in the Louvre Françoise Barbe

141

‘Deglj Antiquari il Re’: Giovanni Freppa as Dealer, Collector 151 and Forger in nineteenth-century Florence Dora Thornton

Contents

Foreword Alexander Sturgis

Preface J.V.G. Mallet and E.P. Sani

The Place of Maiolica among the Arts of the Renaissance 11 Caroline Campbell Archaic Maiolicas in the North, c. 1280–1450 Hugo Blake

141

‘Deglj Antiquari il Re’: Giovanni Freppa as Dealer, Collector 151 and Forger in nineteenth-century Florence Dora Thornton

Preface

Dish made by Clarissa Sirci, Deruta, 2017, given to Tim by his Umbrian friends in honour of the publication of the Ashmolean Maiolica catalogue Opposite: detail of fig. 5.11 (p. 88)

The present publication is an edited record of the papers given at the two-day symposium ‘Italian maiolica and Europe’ held in Oxford on 22 and 23 September 2017. Although Professor Timothy Wilson might not have wished to acknowledge the fact, this was in effect a celebration of his long service in the Ashmolean Museum as Keeper of Western Art and of the publication of his monumental catalogue, Italian Maiolica and Europe. The many friends and admirers who attended this occasion gave evidence of the affection in which Tim Wilson is held. In publishing edited versions of the papers delivered on that occasion it seemed appropriate that the resultant volume should take the form of a Festschrift and with this in mind we have added a bibliography of Professor Wilson’s writings on ceramics. Invitations to speak at the symposium were restricted partly by the time available and partly by the need to conduct the proceedings in English. This regrettably excluded a number of major scholars and friends, particularly from Italy. The international scope of Tim Wilson’s interests and friendships suggested that we follow the example of his Ashmolean catalogue by covering not only Italian maiolica but also the spread of tin-glazed pottery across Europe. In this way we hope to produce a volume which will be of interest to a wide audience. As editors we have received much help both with the organisation of the conference and with the subsequent publication of its papers. Among those to whom particular thanks are due are the Director of the Ashmolean Museum, Alexander Sturgis and many of the Museum’s staff including Matthew Winterbottom and Christopher Doogue. On behalf of the Ashmolean Declan McCarthy has taken charge of matters concerning the publication. From the Oxford Ceramic Group thanks are due in particular to Rosalind Sword and Colin Wyman. Thanks are due to the speakers for the care in preparing, delivering and editing their excellent papers and providing illustrations. We are particularly grateful to Franco and Isa Ercole; Sam Fogg; Martin Foley; the late Bernd Hockemeyer; Errol Manners; Oxford Ceramics Group; Justin Raccanello and Rainer Zietz, whose financial support made the sym posium possible. Warm thanks are due to the Ceramica-Stiftung, Basel for an invaluable subvention to this publication. John Mallet Elisa Paola Sani

Preface

Dish made by Clarissa Sirci, Deruta, 2017, given to Tim by his Umbrian friends in honour of the publication of the Ashmolean Maiolica catalogue Opposite: detail of fig. 5.11 (p. 88)

The Place of Maiolica among the Arts of the Renaissance Caroline Campbell

This short essay is dedicated, with deep respect and affection, to Timothy Wilson – a universal scholar, whose interests range from the particular to the general, an inspiring colleague, and the nicest first boss that one could wish to have. In many ways, maiolica was the quintessential Renaissance art form. It was complicated to produce and involved great technical skill and artistic prowess on the part of its makers. In this paper I will look at the historiography, reception and collecting of maiolica, and its deep connections with other art forms. I will explore the relationship between the function and the aesthetic uses of maiolica, its connections with the wider Mediterranean, and its strong intellectual basis. Finally, I will address, in brief, maiolica’s relationship to classicism and narrative. My intention in this essay is to provide a wide-ranging context for the more detailed and specific studies of maiolica in this volume.

Historiography

Opposite: detail of fig. 6.9 (p. 99)

No account of the reception of maiolica can avoid the figure of Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574), Renaissance painter, architect, draughtsman, polemicist and art historian, whose Lives of the Artists, written in the middle of the sixteenth century, still cast their shadow over art’s histories today.1 Vasari – whose very name reflects his family origins as potters or vasai 2 – damns the makers of maiolica with faint praise. The ‘Lives’ (it was not for nothing that they were subtitled those of ‘Architects, Sculptors and Painters’) were predicated on talent (ingegno) in the arts of design (disegno) and narrative art (storie), rather than skill and craft.3 At the apex of disegno was talent in drawing – specifically as it was practised by Tuscan (primarily Florentine) and central Italian artists. It was through drawing that artists could display their invention (inventio), and it is not therefore surprising that a mastery of drawing techniques is a key component of Vasari’s praise pyramid. This favoured artists such as Andrea del Verrocchio, who used chalk, metalpoint and ink to convey his ideas with subtlety and skill,4 or the marvellously inventive Giulio Romano, who was able to turn his hand to any art form, from architecture and painting to the design of complex gold and silver table pieces.5 Equally important for Vasari was the ability of artists to amend and embellish stories for themselves, rather than merely copy textual narratives. Again, this tendency led him to privilege those whom he saw as intellectuals rather than craftspeople. For instance, he singled out the Florentine sculptor Donatello for having done more than anyone to study the remains of Greek and Roman art, and to approach more nearly their works, praising particularly scenes 11

The Place of Maiolica among the Arts of the Renaissance Caroline Campbell

Historiography

Opposite: detail of fig. 6.9 (p. 99)

sculpted in low relief such as the Keys of St Peter (now V&A), not only because they were skilfully and wonderfully worked, but also because they demonstrated Donatello’s masterful ‘invention of stories’.6 For Vasari, maiolica was only important as an art of design when it was designed by a painter, such as the Venetian-born artist and designer Battista Franco. Even in this case Vasari’s praise was muted. Following his tendency to use one ‘Life’ to exemplify the characteristics of one art form, or approach, the essentials of his attitude to maiolica were condensed in his account of Franco. It is implied that he only designed plates because he was incapable of making his beautiful designs work on a bigger scale.7 Vasari recounted how Guidobaldo della Rovere was displeased with Franco’s frescoes of the Assumption of the Virgin in Urbino Cathedral , but delighted by the ‘infinite number’ of drawings Franco made for vases and dishes. Despite his praise of the skill of the ceramicists, and of the beautiful appearance of the paintings fired onto the maiolica dishes – ‘the pictures that were painted on them would not have been better if they had been executed in oils by the most excellent masters’ – Vasari’s implication is clearly that painting is superior to ceramics.8 Franco, Vasari’s exemplar of an artist who could draw and design, not paint,9 merely confirmed his view of maiolica as little more than a ‘sub-art’.

Collecting Even the collecting of maiolica has reflected the Vasarian model. The types of maiolica that have survived in the greatest quantity, and which are best preserved, are in keeping with his value systems. Historiated maiolica, for instance, has always been collected, and it is because of istoriato ware that maiolica became part of the great museums founded across Europe and North America in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whether museums specifically devoted to art and design such as the V&A or the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin (founded respectively in 1852 and 1868), or universal museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Historiated ware has been viewed since the nineteenth century as being one of the integral arts of the Italian Renaissance, so much so that it was among the earliest categories of object to be photographed, catalogued, copied or even – on the basis that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery – faked.10 C.D.E. Fortnum (1820–1899) was one of the earliest maiolica cataloguers, producing a volume on the V&A’s collection in 1873.11 The private collection he formed of maiolica and other Renaissance art objects was bequeathed to the Ashmolean in 1899. It was of such significance that Fortnum is often called the Ashmolean’s ‘second founder’.12 The maiolica collection, although varied, is dominated by istoriato ware, or objects that tell a story on their surfaces, particularly tales from the greatest works of European literature, including Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Petrarch’s Trionfi.13 Ninteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship on, and the collecting of, maiolica was wholly related to its connection with the arts of design. Maiolica was valued in particular for its pictorial and narrative qualities, for instance when artists took the initiative in devising a composition of their own on a dish.

12 caroline campbell

Above left: fig. 1.1 Dish, tin-glazed earthenware, The Procession of Pope Leo X in Florence, Cafaggiolo or Montelupo, by the Painter of the Papal Procession, c.1516. Diam. 41.5 cm (© Victoria and Albert Museum, 8928-1863) Above right: fig. 1.2 Dish, tin-glazed earthenware, The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, after Albrecht Dürer. Faenza, c. 1515. Diam. 25.5 cm (© Victoria and Albert Museum, C.159-1937)

A good example is the Master of the Papal Procession’s plate to commemorate the arrival of the Medici Pope Leo X into Florence (fig. 1.1). It includes the elephant Hanno, a gift to the Pope by King Manuel of Portugal, even though the animal was never brought to Florence.14 Another much-prized type of maiolica for collectors and writers consisted of those objects which related very obviously to celebrated iconographic motifs. Dora Thornton has written about the fascination of Northern European prints, particularly the work of Dürer, for maiolica painters and their patrons.15 One instance, illustrated here, is The Presentation of Christ in the Temple from Dürer’s Small Passion, transliterated by a maiolica painter from Faenza via Marcantonio Raimondi (fig. 1.2). It is not a straightforward copy: the motif has been reworked to suit the circular form of the footed dish. The artist whose inventions provided the greatest repertoire par excellence was Raphael. Prints after Raphael, made under his control or by his students, are a constant of the repertoire of historiated maiolica. Raphael’s Lucretia, a much copied invention – perhaps the most replicated motif of the Italian sixteenth century, across many art forms – found its way onto a number of pieces of maiolica.16 Maiolica artists also responded to the aesthetic fashions of the day, the most significant of which in early sixteenth-century central Italy was the taste for grotesques, or classical ornamentation which derived from those found in the Domus Aurea, Rome. The Loggetta of Cardinal Bibbiena in the Vatican, designed by Raphael and his assistants, was the most influential expression of this style, which spread all over Europe; there are any number of plates with grotesque decorations and forms. The Venetian examples are particularly interesting because they transform their source into something that functions on the rounded surface of a plate (such as fig. 1.3).17 They demonstrate that copying is not necessarily a neutral or passive activity.

the place of maiolica 13

12 caroline campbell

the place of maiolica 13

Fig. 1.3 Dish, tin-glazed earthenware, A Candelieri grotesque decoration. Venice, c. 1540–60. Diam. 47.7 cm ( J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California, 84.DE.120)

Below left: fig. 1.4 The Head of Saint John the Baptist. Oil painting on walnut, Milan, 1511. 45.7 × 38.7 cm (National Gallery, London, NG 1438)

Finally, since the nineteenth century maiolica has been valued by scholarship of the arts when it has resulted in works that are comparable to painting, both in format and in focus. A prime example of this is the famous plate by Maestro Jacopo of a maiolica painter at work (V&A). Wearing clothes that are more expensive than that of a simple artisan and surrounded by wealthy patrons (a very beautiful young couple), he is shown seated on an expensive chair (not too far from the chair on which Pope Julius II sits in Raphael’s celebrated portrait (National Gallery, London)). The maker is depicted as an artist, as someone of value – indeed for a long time it was thought to be a portrait of Raphael himself.18 It is possible that he is going to paint the young couple, so that rather than copying a motif, he is engaged on an independent artistic enterprise. This plate represents maiolica as a separate and valued art. However – as on this object – there were many crossovers and connections between maiolica and the other arts of Renaissance Italy.

Below right: fig. 1.5 Dish on low foot, tinglazed earthenware, The Head of John the Baptist, by Francesco Urbini, 1535. Diam. 23 cm (Victoria and Albert Museum, 8910-1863)

is made was written in preparation for the establishment of a maiolica industry in France (that this did not happen until later does not lessen the value of the manuscript).19 Reading Picolpasso, let alone studying the travails of incomplete or poorly fired dishes, gives one a full understanding of the difficulty of this infinitely complicated art. Picolpasso – an administrator and soldier, but from the clay town of Castel Durante – describes how the clay is first fired to a temperature of 1000° C (a highly complex task when relying on a wood-fired kiln). The fired clay was then dipped in glazes of potash mixed with tin and lead oxides; when these were dry, the surface was painted. A second firing at a lower temperature took place when the painting and decoration was completed. Finally, a third firing, again at a lower temperature, was used to fuse lustres, painted with compounds containing copper and silver oxides, onto vessels that had already been fired, glazed and fired again. If all went well, and the pottery did not explode or break during firing, the potter would have made objects dazzling in their range and brightness of colours. At best, as Timothy Wilson has written, the art of the maiolica painter required the precision of the miniaturist and the confidence of the fresco painter.20 It is possible to see maiolica as impacted by other arts, but it is equally possible to see it as the ‘influencer’, and as the paragone, or exemplar, of all other art forms. Maiolica as a form can give colouristic results which are simply not possible in other media. It can create surfaces that seem vibrant and alive when compared to sculpture and polychromy. It is also more durable than marble or stone, let alone oil paint on a wooden or canvas support. A comparison of two heads of John the Baptist from the same iconographic source (figs. 1.4 and 1.5), both made in the sixteenth century, demonstrates how colours are much more enduring in maiolica than they are in easel paintings.

Technology We cannot avoid the technical relationships between maiolica and the other arts. The manufacture of maiolica was particularly complicated. There were enormous challenges in producing perfectly glazed ceramic dishes decorated not with simple patterns but with complex figures and using technically sophisticated glazes and colours. A manuscript by Cipriano Picolpasso which describes how maiolica 14 caroline campbell

the place of maiolica 15

Fig. 1.3 Dish, tin-glazed earthenware, A Candelieri grotesque decoration. Venice, c. 1540–60. Diam. 47.7 cm ( J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California, 84.DE.120)

Below left: fig. 1.4 The Head of Saint John the Baptist. Oil painting on walnut, Milan, 1511. 45.7 × 38.7 cm (National Gallery, London, NG 1438)

Below right: fig. 1.5 Dish on low foot, tinglazed earthenware, The Head of John the Baptist, by Francesco Urbini, 1535. Diam. 23 cm (Victoria and Albert Museum, 8910-1863)

the place of maiolica 15

Fig. 2.11 ‘Late’ Archaic Maiolica. Bowl. H. approx. 5–5.5 cm, rim diam. 10 cm, base diam. 4 cm. Mechelen (photographs, Klooster van de Zusters Franciscanessen te Herentals; drawing, Vandenberghe 1981, p. 75)

well as in Savona, by Pisan emigrants in the fifteenth century.74 Examples of this type have been found at Southampton and in Flanders.75 Eighteen or more are known from eleven sites in Southampton dug between 1955 and 1992 (fig. 2.12).76 Most are from small ring-based bowls with rim diameters – where measurable – of between about 14.5 and 16 cm and are about 7 cm high (fig. 2.12.2). The diameter of a brimmed bowl is about 18 cm and it is about 5 cm high (fig. 2.12.1). One large bowl has a diameter of about 31 cm and may once have been 12 cm high (fig. 2.12.3). The flat base of a squat pear-shaped jug has a thickened outside edge and a diameter of about 15.5 cm (fig. 2.12.4).77 Three others may have belonged to jugs and one base may be from a jar.78 The brimmed bowl is plain (fig. 2.12.1). Two small bowls bear only the outline of a small purple-brown tadpole-like motif over the base (fig. 2.12.2). The inside body of the large bowl is 38 hugo blake

Opposite: fig. 2.12 Maiolica arcaica pisano-ligure. Southampton. 1–3. Bowls. 1. Rim diam. approx. 18 cm; 2. Rim diam. approx. 14.5 cm; 3. Rim diam. approx. 31 cm; 4. Jug. Base diam. approx. 15.5 cm (photographs 1–3, Duncan Brown; drawings, Thomson and Brown 1992, fig. 1, nos 2–3, 7-8)

archaic maiolicas in the north 39

covered with a poorly executed (radiating?) pattern of green bands and narrow upright and inverted purple-brown ‘V’s, with a horizontal green band and a purple-brown wavy line below the rim (fig. 2.12.3). A similarly crude and coloured ladder pattern is on part of the outside of the jug and flanked by a smaller motif formed of three radiating lines in an arrow shape (fig. 2.12.4).79 A small, almost hemispherical bowl with a ring base, which was excavated in Bruges, has ‘a fairly hard orange-red fabric and shows white-pink tin glaze on the inside and colourless to red-brown lead glaze on the outside’ (fig. 2.13). The decoration in purple brown consists of two crossed pairs of lines over the base and groups of hatched lines on the external bevel of the rim. It is over 7 cm high with a rim diameter of about 15 cm and a base about 7 cm across.80 Other finds of this type have been made at Sluys and in the fishing village of Raversijde on the Flemish coast. The ring-base fragment collected at Sluys has a diameter of about 6.5 cm, with a sufficiently shallow remaining body profile to suggest it may have come from a brimmed bowl or dish (fig. 2.14.1). It is in a ‘very hard dark red sandy’ fabric with a ‘dark brown green lead glaze out …, inside grey tin glaze’.81 ‘Two adjoining fragments of a deep bowl with a brim in a dark-red hard fabric with half transparent tin glaze on the inside and orange-red lead glaze on the outside’ were excavated at Raversijde (fig. 2.14.2).82 The ‘dense, red fabric’ of the Southampton pottery and the ‘very hard dark red’ and ‘dark-red hard’ ones of the Flemish fragments suggest they were made in Pisa, confirmed by the chemical analysis of a bowl from Southampton. However, the same method shows that the most complete jug is of Ligurian origin (fig. 2.12.4).83 Savona is thought to have reproduced essentially the same Pisan decorative motifs and forms but of a lower quality.84 The pottery with which the Southampton examples were dumped in pits and cellars suggest they were filled around 1500. A few of the associated ceramic types are even datable to after 1520.85 The Bruges pit has been assigned to the fifteenth century and the other Flemish contexts to the second and third quarters or to the ‘middle’ of that century.86 The archaeological contexts in or near the Italian production centres of the pottery like that found in north-west Europe are earlier, datable to around 1400 and to the first half of the fifteenth century.87 At Pisa the colour of the tin glaze characteristic of this period and later is usually greyish white. In some cases it covers both sides, replacing the subsidiary lead glaze.88 Plain all-over tin glaze – except on the ring base – is the norm in the last quarter of the century amongst the pottery waste at one site. Here, however, in the first half of the sixteenth century when small hemispherical bowls were almost the only form of Archaic Maiolica represented, the upper parts of the outside of some were lead glazed and the rest below was left bare.89 In Liguria many small plain bowls have been found in late fifteenth-century contexts, but along with what in Pisa are considered earlier decorated forms, followed by the appearance of a type attributed to Genoa, which, however, resembles the last Pisan Archaic Maiolica characterised by a partially lead-glazed exterior.90 Southampton’s stone-lined cesspits and cellars were filled at more or less the same time, reflecting a period of building refurbishment. The large size of the pottery fragments found suggest that the material came from house clearances 40 hugo blake

Fig. 2.14 Maiolica arcaica pisano-ligure (1–2) and ‘maiolica povera’ (3). Openform fragments. 1. Base diam. approx. 6.5 cm. Sluys, The Netherlands; 2–3. Bowls. Raversijde, Belgium. 2. approx. 4.3 × 3.7cm (drawing, Pieters 2002–3, fig. 51.9); 3. approx. 3.7 × 3.1 cm (1. drawing, David Neal; 2–3. photographs, Marnix Pieters; 3. drawing, Pieters 2002–3, fig. 52.2)

rather than from the re-deposition of rubbish accumulated elsewhere. Although most of the pottery found in these features is datable to between about 1475 and 1525 – including examples of Italian polychrome Renaissance maiolica, the maiolica arcaica pisano-ligure found with them is about half a century or more earlier, suggesting it was looked after longer (i.e. ‘curated’). None of the over-all tin-glazed or partially lead-glazed variants made at the same time as the rest of the deposited pottery has apparently been found.91

Other similar ‘late’ Archaic Maiolica

Fig. 2.13 Maiolica arcaica pisano-ligure, bowl. H. over 7 cm, rim diam. approx. 15 cm, base diam. approx. 7 cm (Dienst van de Stedelijke Musea, Stad Brugge)

The shape and decoration of another late Archaic Maiolica fragment from Raversijde does not belong to the pisano-ligure type, even though it is in a fine orange-red fabric and is similarly glazed (fig. 2.14.3). It consists of the upper side of a deep bowl with a convex collared rim. The inside is covered with two horizontal green-filled bands separated by rows of vesica-shaped motifs – also filled in green – separated by vertical pairs of purple-brown lines.92 Considered to be a fifteenth-century type, it is widespread in Tuscany. The colour of the fabric suggests an alluvial source of the clay. However, similar examples made in the ‘Florentine’ part of the lower Arno valley are unglazed on the outside.93 It is less certain to what Archaic Maiolica type the jug handle retrieved from St Peter Port harbour in Guernsey belongs. It has – to judge from a photograph – an orange-red fabric and traces of a thin pale yellowish pink glaze. The archaic maiolicas in the north 41

Other similar ‘late’ Archaic Maiolica

Fig. 2.13 Maiolica arcaica pisano-ligure, bowl. H. over 7 cm, rim diam. approx. 15 cm, base diam. approx. 7 cm (Dienst van de Stedelijke Musea, Stad Brugge)

alternate green and purple-brown horizontal lines on the handle and the pair of purple-brown lines on the body below are typical of the ‘classic’ type. However, the pink colour of the glaze and the fact that it also stops short of the pair of lines suggest it is a late fourteenth-century variant, but the shape of most fifteenth-century handles has a strap rather than a rod section.94

DISCUSSION AND INTERPRETATION Early phase archaic maiolica Near Eastern model for Mediterranean Maiolica The only comparable vessel to the almost complete jar from Norwich so far identified in Italy is what Perali called a ‘pseudo vascello imitante vaso Persiano’, decorated with letters which resemble cursive Arabic.95 Hurst observed that ‘the form of the [Dunham-on-Trent Archaic Maiolica] neck fragment, with the rim thickened outside, is very similar to the series of blue alkaline glazed wares from the eastern Mediterranean, but the [rim] profile is rounded not bevelled [fig. 2.3.5].This rounding is also found on the Clarendon [Archaic Maiolica] jar’.96 The facetted ‘cruet’ retrieved in Boston (fig. 2.3.10) may too have been inspired by Near Eastern cylindrical drug jars or albarelli.97 Hurst published examples of both these forms of ‘Raqqa-type’ ware found in north-west Europe in the same paper in which he first described his Mediterranean Maiolica.98 Analogues for both the form of the Norwich and Orvieto jars and for their ornament – particularly for the Perali jar – can be found in the thirteenth-century pottery attributed to Raqqa in central Syria. Raqqa-type jar fragments of the inverted-pear shape have also been found in British contexts datable – one more certainly than the other – to that century.99 Form and content It is striking that nearly all the ‘early’ phase pottery found in north-west Europe – whether of Raqqa-type, Mediterranean Maiolica or Low Countries archaic maiolica – consists of jars, as may most of the ‘classic’ Archaic Maiolica found in Britain.100 This suggests that these types were acquired in the North for their content and not to serve as tableware. Given the size and the provenance of the Syrian jars, they could have been filled with ‘minute spices’, which were sold in ‘small quantities at high prices’.101 In 1368–69 ginger and pepper – which were not considered small spices – made up sixty per cent in value of the Levantine cargoes discharged at Genoa.102 Towards the end of the decade these two spices still seem to have dominated in terms of quantity the goods loaded in east Mediterranean ports for Genoa. The goods were counted according to their form or packing. Of these only green ginger was listed by jars (giarre).103 Candles, fish, honey and pottery were also transported from Spain to Genoa in jars, olive oil along the northern African coast, and butter from Sicily to Pisa.104 In Genoese inventories the term jar was usually applied to a large terracotta storage vessel and only rarely may it have indicated a container similar in size to the Raqqa-type ones found in western Europe.105 In fourteenth-century Genoese inventories of apothecary shops a spice jar was 42 hugo blake

called a cooking pot or saucepan (pignata/pugnata), which could be metal or ceramic.106 Italian merchants and the English wool trade In the thirteenth century northern Italian merchants almost monopolised the cross-Mediterranean trade in spices.107 Tuscans and Emilians were also already active in England in the second quarter of the century, the date of the earliest context in which a Raqqa-type jar was excavated at the Templar preceptory at South Witham in Lincolnshire.108 After the order’s lands were sequestered in 1308, three shepherds were employed on this estate and its fleeces were consigned to an Italian firm.109 Wool was then England’s most valuable export commodity.110 In 1213/14 the English Templars had been granted a licence to sell theirs overseas.111 After the dispute between England and Flanders started in 1270, Italians replaced the Flemish as the principal foreign exporters of wool and their firms became the largest operators.112 Merchants, mainly from Florence and to a lesser extent Lucca, bought in advance the best qualities from Cistercian abbeys, who also supplied lesser grades acquired from small producers.113 The principal port in England from which wool was then exported was Boston, where monasteries from as far away as the Welsh Marches, Holderness in Yorkshire, and even Sussex consigned their products.114 Three Mediterranean Maiolica vessels have been identified at one of the Cistercian abbeys listed by the Florentine merchant Pegolotti as a supplier of wool when he worked for the Bardi firm in England from 1317 to 1321.115 Kirkstall Abbey dealt with merchants from Florence, Lucca and Pistoia.116 The largest concentration of Mediterranean Maiolica finds after London is from Boston, the main place of consignment for wool paid for in advance, where many religious houses had properties.117 It may well have been from here that much of this class of pottery was distributed over England and Wales. Gifts of ‘potz gingere vert’ In the second half of the fourteenth century green ginger was not only shipped in jars from the Levant to Genoa but also brought to Southampton by Ligurians.118 In 1366 the city of Genoa gave some jars of ginger to two cardinals at Avignon, and in 1457 the city of Coventry gave one to the Queen.119 Similar exotic gifts may have been made earlier by Tuscan merchants to the landowners who agreed wool contracts – which could last up to twenty years – in order to cement their bonds.120 Both the jars’ expensive content and their brightly painted and glazed appearance constituted ‘small, distinctive items’ which would have been ‘both noticed and noticeable’.121 Context for container substitution In the thirteenth and the later fourteenth century the potz could have been made in Syria, where the green ginger was acquired. However, after the fall of Acre in 1291 marking the end of the Crusader kingdoms in the Levant, where Florentines and other Tuscan merchants had been active, the western spice trade route switched for more than fifty years to the Black Sea.122 This may well have been the archaic maiolicas in the north 43

Far left: fig. 7.3 Plate, tin-glazed earthenware, decorated with the arms of Michiel of Venice, Deruta, c. 1600–40. Diam. 24.9 cm (Philadelphia, private collection) Left: fig. 7.4 Painted arms of Michiel of Venice, MS., 17th century, from Famiglie venete con le loro armi (Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, MS. alfa.o.3.2, p. 113; digitised record accessible online at http://bibliotecaestense.beniculturali.it/ info/img/mss/i-mo-beu-alfa.o.3.2.html)

The market for white maiolica was still high in 1634, when Marzio Mongardini of Foligno placed an order with a Deruta potter that included 110 armorial plates (seventy tondi and forty piatti alla francese coll’arme); beneath the list of the number and type of plates he required is a detailed drawing of the arms the potters were to reproduce on his maiolica (fig. 7.1).10 The first plate to be discussed here is decorated with the arms of the celebrated Michiel family of Venice (six bars alternating argent and azure, charged with 21 bezants arranged six, five, four, three, two, one), who produced three late-medieval doges; flanking the arms are the client’s initials ‘G’ and ‘M’ (figs 7.3 and 7.4).11 The ‘G’ could refer to any number of given names, and merely the list of male ‘G’ names in common use in Renaissance Italy is sizeable: Giovanni, Giacopo, Giuseppe, Giulio, Giorgio, Gabriele, Guido, Girolamo, Guglielmo, etc. A search for a prominent Giovanni (‘Zuanne’ in Venetian dialect) Michiel, for example, around this time leads to the influential Venetian ambassador to England, France, and the Holy Roman Empire and although the plate is probably too late to have belonged to this Giovanni (he died in 1596), it may have belonged to his nephew Giovanni, one of his two heirs.12 But this is of course highly speculative, and it may be that the specific client for this plate, and its associated table service, is never definitively identified. The shield shape, mantling, and helm of these arms are nearly identical to those on a Deruta dish with the Ludovici and Masci arms, datable to the first quarter of the seventeenth century.13 The angel crest above the Michiel arms is similar to the figures (often winged putti) regularly found at the centre of Deruta bianchi plates with stylised garlands on their borders, and is particularly close to an allegorical figure of Prudence on a footed plate in the Museo Regionale della Ceramica, Deruta, all of which date to the first decades of the seventeenth century.14 The only other extant maiolica with the Michiel arms that I am aware of is a bianco di Faenza oval flask in the Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche, Faenza, with the initials ‘P’ and ‘M’ flanking the arms, made around 1575–1600, and probably also part of a table service.15 The arms on this flask are heraldically inaccurate 108 michael J. brody

Below left: fig. 7.5 Plate (one of five), tinglazed earthenware, decorated with the arms of Bardi of Siena, Deruta, c. 1600–40. Diam. 26.3 cm (Philadelphia, private collection) Below right: fig. 7.6 Drawing of the Bardi of Siena arms, from De Marchis, Giovanni, Arme di famiglie nobili delle città di Firenze, Siena, Pisa, Lucca e Genova (Biblioteca Nazionale di Roma: manoscritti del fondo Vittorio Emanuele (BNVE), MS 314 , Rome, 1790, p. 123, position 1; accessible online at http:// www.armoriale.it/wiki/BNVE_ms_314_ Elenco_famiglie)

since the tincture of the bars and bezants is opposite to what it should be (and so technically they refer to the Fosa family), but the ‘M’ flanking the arms makes a very strong case for a Michiel client. The only other instance of Venetian patronage of Faenza bianchi services known to me is a 1587 document in which the nobleman Paolo Dandolo ordered a 138-piece Faenza credenza;16 but it stands to reason that there were a sizable number more commissions given both the high status of this client (the Dandolo family produced four late-medieval doges) and the existence of patronage networks – well-documented in Renaissance Italy – in which family members, friends, and associates emulated other élite maiolica consumers by ordering table services for themselves, or as gifts.17 The arms on the next plate (azure a centaur argent rearing and shooting a bow in front of a tree vert, in chief or a crowned eagle displayed sable) were identified in 2012 as those of Bardi of Siena, and this is probably correct (fig. 7.5).18 The shield design and foliate mantling are similar to those on the Michiel plate, but here the helm is crowned, and the crest is a crowned eagle sable – a repetition of the charge in the chief – which may refer to a specific branch of the Bardi family yet to be identified. Standard renditions of the Bardi arms have no tree behind the centaur (fig. 7.6), and authoritative descriptions of the arms do not mention a tree, so its presence on the plate’s arms may be due to a maiolica painter exercising artistic license.19 The number of plates from this service known to me is seven: five (which probably remained together as a group since the time they were made) in a private collection in Philadelphia; one in a private collection in Siena; and one in the Museo Regionale della Ceramica, Deruta.20 The plate in Deruta is the only one of the group that has a substantial well at the centre, making it suitable for liquid or semi-liquid foods, such as soups and stews. The museum claims the Bardi service for Deruta and dates it to the second half of the seventeenth century;21 the plate in a private collection in Siena, dated about 1650–75, is stated to be Sienese, presumably because of the Bardi family’s Sienese roots, but such reasoning can be unreliable given the well-documented consumption of Deruta maiolica by clients in and around towns with their own maiolica-making traditions.22 Based on dated Deruta armorial works and pieces with similar arms style, a date prior to 1650 for the Bardi service seems to me more likely.23 The arms of the next plate (or a slipped and leaved flower [rose?] orange) are accompanied by letters intended to be read in the order ‘G’, ‘M’ and ‘F’, with ‘F’ referring to the client’s surname (fig. 7.7). Since the charge is a stemmed flower

Several 17th-Century Armorial Bianchi Works 109

(fiore in Italian), and because charges often visually interpret a family’s name (or part of it), a useful tactic for identifying these arms is to look for families whose name is, or contains, either fiore (or a derivation thereof), or the name of a specific flower.24 Although the arms may be those of the Fiore family of Bologna (fig. 7.8), they more likely refer to the Floridi family (fig. 7.9), who originated in Norcia, in Umbria.25 By the late medieval period Floridi descendants had spread to different parts of central Italy, including Guarcino, about 70 km east of Rome, the town with which they are most strongly associated.26 And although there are other Italian families who have single flower charges for their arms, the inscribed initial ‘F’ additionally supports a provisional Floridi identification. Initial research to identify potential ‘G’ ‘M’ (Giovanni Maria?) clients for this service has not brought any individual to light. The arms on the plate have an uncommon crest of a dexter hand with its index finger pointing upward, which may be a charge that denotes a specific branch of the family, similar to the Monaldeschi arms example cited above (fig. 7.2). The arms on this plate share multiple design features with dishes from a Deruta bianchi service with the Strozzi arms, made at the beginning of the seventeenth century:27 the colours yellow and orange dominate, blue encircles the shield, the mantling and tassels are similar, dots flank the clients’ initials, and the nearly identical helms face frontward (affronté) rather than to the side, which is unusual for helms on maiolica. A further detail characteristic of arms on Deruta ware around this date, including the Michiel plate discussed above (fig. 7.3), is the ‘bleeding’ of the green that colours parts of the mantling. The arms on the Floridi(?) plate (fig. 7.7) and in the 1634 Mongardini document (fig. 7.1) are similar enough in design to suggest they are approximately contemporary. The next armorial plate has a coat of arms above a full name – the letter ‘D’ followed by ‘LAURITIO’ and ‘LAURITI’, each separated by a raised dot (fig. 7.10).28 The design and execution of the arms, including the thick, bi-colour ribboning that undulates around the shield, suggest the plate and its associated service were made towards the middle of the seicento, possibly as late as around 1660. This arms design, particularly the ribboning, is comparable to the Pannocchieschi d’Elci arms on a plate attributed to Siena, and the unidentified arms on two plates

Above top: fig. 7.7 Plate, tin-glazed earthenware, decorated perhaps with the arms of Floridi of Guarcino, Deruta, c. 1600–40. Diam. 24.5 cm (Philadelphia, private collection) Above, lower left: fig. 7.8 Engraving, arms of Fiore of Bologna, from Canetoli, Floriano, Il Blasone bolognese, cioè arme gentilizie di famiglie bolognesi, nobili, cittadinesche e aggregate ..., Bologna, 1791, pl. 30 (‘Famiglie Cittadine, F’), no. 473 Above, lower right: fig. 7.9 Arms of Floridi of Guarcino (Lazio) (accessible online at http://discoverplaces.travel/journal/ lifestyle/guarcino-floridi-family)

Fig. 7.10 Plate, tin-glazed earthenware, decorated with the arms of Toppi, probably Deruta, c. 1620–60. Diam. 25.5 cm (Philadelphia, private collection)

110 michael J. brody

Fig. 7.11 Detail, engraved gravestone arms of the prelate Giacopo Toppi (Church of San Rocco, Anticoli Corrado, Rome)

almost certainly made in Deruta.29 I know of just one other piece from this service, a dish with a deep well sold through a Roman auction house in 2012.30 These arms (party per fess orange, in chief argent a comet or, in base argent three grain stalks or and orange) have no connection to the standard arms of the Lauriti (or Laurito) family (whose charge is a single silver wing), nor to the arms of families with variants of the name. An online search, in Italian, for the two charges on the plate (cometa and spighe di grano), eventually led to the eighteenth-century prelate Giacopo Toppi, whose arms (fig. 7.11) are engraved on his gravestone inside the Church of San Rocco in Anticoli Corrado, a town about 45 km northeast of Rome.31 Identification of the Toppi family arms is corroborated by a rendering of the marshalled Toppi (or Topi) of Lazio arms in a manuscript in the Biblioteca Nazionale di Roma.32 The meaning of the letter ‘D’ that precedes ‘LAURITIO • LAURITI’ below the plate’s arms is unclear. It could stand for a given name abbreviated to its first letter (e.g. Donato, Davide, Dario, Daniele, Domenico, etc.), but more likely it stands for ‘DE’ or ‘DI’ (which itself may be part of the client’s family name) or even ‘DA’, suggesting the plate (and the table service of which it was part) was a gift from Laurizio Lauriti. Alternatively, since the name on the plate is Latinised, the ‘D’ might be an abbreviation for ‘DONO’ (gift), which would establish Laurizio as the recipient of the service, and, most probably, a member of the Toppi family (whose arms appear above the name) as the gift-giver. (Similarly, had the inscription begun with ‘EX’, the opposite would be true: that Laurizio was gifting the service to a Toppi family member.) Since in this era a place of birth could also function as a surname, ‘Lauriti’ may indicate that Laurizio, or his family, had origins in the town of Laurito in the province of Salerno.33 Because the precise role of the person whose arms appear on extant maiolica is so often not known, the designation ‘client’ is generally preferred to ‘owner’. Despite the practice of a donor having his or her arms emblazoned on an item to be gifted being relatively common in Renaissance Italy, there are few instances in which it can be plainly demonstrated for maiolica. When in 1490 Lorenzo de’ Medici thanks Galeotto Malatesta for a gift of maiolica, he says he values the ceramics more than if they were of silver, then continues, ‘I assure you it was not necessary to put your coat of arms on these objects to make my remembrance and recollection of your lordship more lasting’.34 About seventy-five years later, Guidubaldo II Della Rovere, duke of Urbino, gifts the priest Andrea Ghetti a table service that displays the duke’s own arms and emblem prominently on the front of the plates, and it is only through a dedicatory inscription on the reverse of the plates that we know the roles of the two men in this gift exchange.35 The presence of a donor’s arms on a gifted item also explains a percentage of the instances in which one encounters in Renaissance and post-Renaissance household inventories maiolica and other applied art objects described as having the arms of someone other than their owner. In some cases, when donors place their arms on a gift, they have, or are perceived to have, a social or economic status higher than that of the recipient, and so the recipient is honored doubly: first by the gift itself, and second for the ability to display it so that others will see from whom it originated. Several 17th-Century Armorial Bianchi Works 111

Fig. 7.10 Plate, tin-glazed earthenware, decorated with the arms of Toppi, probably Deruta, c. 1620–60. Diam. 25.5 cm (Philadelphia, private collection)

110 michael J. brody

Fig. 7.11 Detail, engraved gravestone arms of the prelate Giacopo Toppi (Church of San Rocco, Anticoli Corrado, Rome)

Collection’, Burlington Magazine, CXLVII (November 2005), pp. 729–741. Warren 2014. J. Warren, Medieval and renaissance Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum, 3 vols., vol. 2, Sculptures in Stone, Clay, Ivory, Bone and Wood, Oxford, 2014. Warren 2021. J. Warren, ‘From Florence to Paris: new evidence for Giovanni Bastianini and his work’, forthcoming, The Burlington Magazine, March 2021. Watkins 1987. G. Watkins, ‘The pottery’, in ‘Excavations in the High Street and Blackfriargate’, East Riding Archaeologist, 8 (1987), pp. 53–181. Whitehouse 1967. D.B. Whitehouse, ‘The medieval glazed pottery of Lazio’, Papers of the British School at Rome, 35 (1967), pp. 40–86. Whitehouse 1972. D.B. Whitehouse, ‘III. The medieval and renaissance pottery’, in ‘Excavation and survey at Tuscania, 1972: a preliminary report’, Papers of the British School at Rome, 40 (1972), pp. 209–35. Whitehouse 1983. D.B. Whitehouse, ‘Introduzione allo studio della ceramica medievale orvietana’, in Satolli 1983, pp. 10–21. Whitwell 1903. R.J. Whitwell, ‘Italian bankers and the English crown’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 17 (1903), pp. 175–233. Whitwell 1904. R.J. Whitwell, ‘English monasteries and the wool trade in the 13th century’, Vierteljahrschrift für Sozialund Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 2 (1904), pp. 1–33. Wilson 1987. T. Wilson, Ceramic art of the Italian Renaissance, London, 1987. Wilson 1991. T. Wilson (ed.), Italian Renaissance pottery: papers written in association with a colloquium at the British Museum, London, 1991. Wilson 1993. Timothy Wilson, ‘Renaissance Ceramics’, in Western Decorative Arts, Part 1, Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, and Cambridge, 1993, pp. 119–263. Wilson 1999. Timothy Wilson. ‘“Il papà delle antiche maioliche”. C.D.E. Fortnum and the study of Italian maiolica’, Journal of the History of Collections 11 (1999), pp. 203–18. Wilson 2002. Timothy Wilson. ‘La maiolica a Castel Durante e ad Urbino fra il 1535 e il 1565: alcuni corredi stemmati’, in Bojani 2002, pp. 125–65. Wilson 2010. Timothy Wilson, ‘La contraffazione delle maioliche all’inizio del Novecento: la testimonianza del Museen-Verband’, in Riccetti 2010, pp. 267–80.

232 general bibliography

Wilson 2015. Timothy Wilson, with contributions by Amanda Dunsmore and Marika Strohschnieder, Italian Maiolica in the Collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2015 Wilson 2016. Timothy Wilson, Maiolica, Italian Renaissance Ceramics in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2016. Wilson 2017. Timothy Wilson, Italian Maiolica and Europe, Medieval, Renaissance and later Italian Pottery in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, with Some Examples Illustrating the Spread of Tin-glazed Pottery across Europe, Oxford, 2017. Wilson and Sani 2006–7. Timothy Wilson and Elisa Paola Sani (with contributions in vol. 2 from Carola Fiocco, Gabriella Gherardi, Marino Marini, and Claudio Paolinelli), Le maioliche rinascimentali nelle collezioni della Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Perugia. Perugia, 2006–7. Wipplinger 1965. Eva Wipplinger, Fayencen deutscher Manufakturen aus der Staatlichen Galerie Moritzburg in Halle/Saale, Leipzig 1965. Wivel et al. 2020 (forthcoming). Matthias Wivel et al., Titian: Love, Desire, Death, exh. cat., National Gallery, London; Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston and Museo del Prado, Madrid, 2020. Woolgar 2011. C.M. Woolgar, ‘Gifts of food in late medieval England’, Journal of Medieval History, 37 (2011), pp. 6–18. Worcestershire Ceramics, n.d. Worcestershire Ceramics online database, n.d. https://worcestershireceramics.org/ fabrics/201. Yoshida-Takeda, Lebrun-Jouve and Delumeau 2004. Tomiko Yoshida-Takeda, Claudine Lebrun-Jouve and Jean Delumeau, Inventaire dressé après le décès en 1661 du Cardinal Mazarin, Paris, 2004. Zaccaria 1972. G. Zaccaria, ‘Assisi: per la festività di S. Francesco nel sec. XIV’, Ricerche di archivio; Assisi: pagine sparse, Assisi, 1972, pp. 51–3. Zecchin 1986. Luigi Zecchin, Ricettario Darduin.Un codice vetrario del Seicento trascritto e commentato, Venice, pp. 53–54. Zecchin 2011. Paolo Zecchin, ‘Giuseppe Briati, il più famoso vetraio veneziano del Settecento’, Journal of Glass Studies, 53 (2011), pp. 161–75. Zoli 1913. P. Zoli, ‘Mezzamaiolica’, Faenza, 1 (1913), p. 90. Zurli and Iannucci 1982. F. Zurli and A.M. Iannucci, Ceramiche dalle collezioni del Museo Nazionale di Ravenna, Bologna, 1982.