AN ISTORIATO DISH

Details
AN ISTORIATO DISH
CASTEL DURANTE, , CIRCA 1550, BY ANDREA DA NEGROPONTE

The wide basin with narrow rim, painted on a white ground in shades of yellow, blue, green, ochre and manganese enriched with white highlights with the story of The Trojan Horse, the underside with concentric yellow bands and a paper label inscribed in German with the subject, inscribed in red with Sackler number 82.3.2 (rim nicks tidied, chips to footrim, test drill holes filled)--12 7/8in. (32.7cm.) diam.
Provenance
With Cyril Humphris, London?
Exhibited
Washington, D.C., no. ?
San Francisco, CA, no. 63

Lot Essay

See Chigi, no. 21a for a dish attributed to Negroponte which is decorated with similar elements of composition and style including the characteristic treatment of the drapery, of the trees (including the positioning itself and the painting of one side in a darker green), of the architecture (in particcular the flat angled ochre roofs and the towers), of the crossed fences at the bank of the river, and of the water (picked out with rounded zig-zags of a rich blue on a paler blue ground).

See also Lessman, no. 105 for a dish painted with the same male figure as the soldier at the left wearing a cuirass and raising his left arm. On the Braunschweig plate, the figure's head is facing the opposit direction. However, the torso, arms and legs are the same.

Sold with thermoluminescence certificate 381s26 dated January 1986 from the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, Oxford University, stating that the sample tested was last fired between 310 and 470 years ago (1516-1676).