CIRCA 1565-1580, PROBABLY ORAZIO OR FLAMINIO FONTANA WORKSHOP

Details

AN URBINO MAIOLICA ISTORIATO EWER
CIRCA 1565-1580, PROBABLY ORAZIO OR FLAMINIO FONTANA WORKSHOP
The central continuous istoriato scene depicting Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden with the serpent and a crowned figure of God, a river-god reclining on an upturned urn, between bands of rosettes, trompe l’oeil coffering and bead ornament, the whitened ground of the lower part, waisted foot, rounded shoulder and flared neck decorated with grottesche, the elaborate helmet-shaped spout interior painted with water, the scrolling handle with a ram’s head upper terminal and a bifurcated lower part below a blue mask, the underside with various labels including a printed Baron Alphonse de Rothschild collection label and an Union Centrale exhibition label
13 ¼ in. (33.7 cm.) high

Provenance

Baron Alphonse de Rothschild (1827-1905), by 1865.
Baron Édouard de Rothschild (1868-1949).
Confiscated from the above by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg following the Nazi occupation of France in May 1940 (ERR no. R 4079).
Recovered by the Monuments Fine Arts and Archives Section from the Altaussee salt mines, Austria, and transferred to the Munich Central Collecting Point, 23 June 1945 (MCCP no. 390/5).
Returned to France on 9 January 1946 and restituted to the Rothschild family.
By descent to the present owners.

Literature

Albert Jacquemart, ‘Union Centrale des Beaux-Arts Appliqués à l’Industrie, Musée Rétrospectif’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1865, p. 400 (illustrated in reverse).
Franck, L’art ancien. Photographies des collections célèbres par Franck, Paris, 1868, Vol. IV.
Alfred Darcel and Henri Delange, Recueil de faïences italiennes de XVe, XVIe, et XVIIe siècles, Paris, 1869, pl. 91.
Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1878, p. 969 (illustrated in reverse).
Collections de M. le baron Alphonse de Rothschild, circa 1900 (n.d.), Vol. I.

Exhibited

Paris, Palais de l’Industrie, Union Centrale des Beaux-Arts Appliqués à l’Industrie, Musée Rétrospectif, 1865.
Paris, Trocadero, Exposition Universelle, May-November 1878.

Conditions of sale

Lot Essay

The figures of Adam, Eve and God are based on one of Bernard Salomon’s woodcut illustrations in Claude Paradin’s Bible picture-book Quadrins Historiques de la Bible, published by Jean de Tourne in Lyon in 1553. An edition of this picture-book was also published in Italy, and the woodcuts became a regular source of inspiration for maiolicari. The reclining river-god, which bears no relation to the Old Testament, must derive from another source.

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