.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The inscription per amor io ardo in focho e moro translates as ‘through love I burn in fire and die’. The present dish and the accompanying piece are exciting additions to the surviving pieces from an early armorial set, of which eight other pieces are known(1). One of these pieces, from the Lehman collection in New York(2), is dated 1521, providing a probable date for the set. The arms are for the Di Bate family of Florence(3), but neither the member of that family for whom the set was made, nor the circumstances of the commission, are currently known.
Pieces from this set were previously thought to have been made at Castel Durante, where a candelieri decoration had been in use for some time, and then sent to Gubbio for lustring, but it is now generally accepted that they were both made and lustred at Gubbio. The precision of the application of the lustre in the design of the present lot suggests that it was made and lustred in the same site.
The present lot and the Lehman dish appear to be by the same hand, although this appears to be a different hand from the other piece from the set in this sale. The present lot and the Lehman piece bear a strong resemblance to an armorial piece in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London which includes a candelieri grotesques(4), and which has been attributed to the ‘The Painter of the Judgment of Paris’(5), whose work is very similar to the ‘Saint Ubaldus Painter’(6).
The drill-hole to the center may have been intended for suspending the dish from a wall. If this is the case, it is tempting to speculate that it may have taken place in the 18th century, a time when appreciation of Renaissance maiolica seems to have reached a low point(7). Alternatively, the hole may have been drilled to ‘allow the plate to be fixed over a knot in a piece of rope from which a piece of meat or other foodstuff was suspended, to block rats or mice from getting down at it; this practice is still remembered by... people in Italy’(8).
1. For a list of the other known pieces, which does not include the present two lots in this sale, see Julia E. Poole, Italian maiolica and incised slipware in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 1995, pp.219-220, no. 295.
2. Jörg Rasmussen, Italian Majolica in the Robert Lehman Collection, New York, 1989, pp. 188-189, where the date is inscribed on a shield which is part of the grotesques.
3. This identification was made by Giacomotti, Les majoliques des Musées nationaux, Paris, 1974, p. 231, no. 754.
4. See Bernard Rackham, Catalogue of Italian Maiolica, London, 1940, Vol. I, pp. 219-220, no. 652
5. See Elisa Sani, ‘Gubbio 1515-1525. Reflections on early Lustreware’ in J.V.G. Mallet and E. Sani (Ed.), Maiolica in Italy and Beyond, Oxford, 2021, p. 87, fig. 5.10. The ‘Painter of the Judgment of Paris’ is the author of a plate in the Dutuit collection at the Petit Palais in Paris, which is painted with that subject and inscribed on the reverse ‘Maestro Giorgio, 2 October 1520, BDSR in Gubbio’ in blue script, indicating that the plate was made in Gubbio, rather than having been made elsewhere and brought to Gubbio for lustring.
6. Bernard Rackham dubbed him the ‘Saint Ubaldus Painter’ after the piece in the V&A Museum, London, see Rackham, ibid., Vol. I, p. 225, no. 670, and Vol. II, pl. 105. The painters’ styles are extremely similar, and they were both active in Maestro Giorgio’s Gubbio workshop at the same time, see J.V.G. Mallet and Franz Adrian Dreier, The Hockemeyer Collection, Maiolica and Glass, Bremen, 1998, no. 16, pp. 235-236. Timothy Wilson takes the view that these painters are probably the same person, see Wilson, Italian Renaissance Ceramics in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2016, p. 222.
7. This is illustrated by the sale, in 1797, of a group of 200 pieces of maiolica (which may have included an istoriato plate from the Pucci service) at auction in a single lot, which was acquired by the dealer Agnolo Campolini. See Timothy Wilson, The Golden Age of Italian Maiolica-Painting, Turin, 2018, p. 244 and note 16.
8. Timothy Wilson, ibid., 2018, p. 149.
Pieces from this set were previously thought to have been made at Castel Durante, where a candelieri decoration had been in use for some time, and then sent to Gubbio for lustring, but it is now generally accepted that they were both made and lustred at Gubbio. The precision of the application of the lustre in the design of the present lot suggests that it was made and lustred in the same site.
The present lot and the Lehman dish appear to be by the same hand, although this appears to be a different hand from the other piece from the set in this sale. The present lot and the Lehman piece bear a strong resemblance to an armorial piece in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London which includes a candelieri grotesques(4), and which has been attributed to the ‘The Painter of the Judgment of Paris’(5), whose work is very similar to the ‘Saint Ubaldus Painter’(6).
The drill-hole to the center may have been intended for suspending the dish from a wall. If this is the case, it is tempting to speculate that it may have taken place in the 18th century, a time when appreciation of Renaissance maiolica seems to have reached a low point(7). Alternatively, the hole may have been drilled to ‘allow the plate to be fixed over a knot in a piece of rope from which a piece of meat or other foodstuff was suspended, to block rats or mice from getting down at it; this practice is still remembered by... people in Italy’(8).
1. For a list of the other known pieces, which does not include the present two lots in this sale, see Julia E. Poole, Italian maiolica and incised slipware in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 1995, pp.219-220, no. 295.
2. Jörg Rasmussen, Italian Majolica in the Robert Lehman Collection, New York, 1989, pp. 188-189, where the date is inscribed on a shield which is part of the grotesques.
3. This identification was made by Giacomotti, Les majoliques des Musées nationaux, Paris, 1974, p. 231, no. 754.
4. See Bernard Rackham, Catalogue of Italian Maiolica, London, 1940, Vol. I, pp. 219-220, no. 652
5. See Elisa Sani, ‘Gubbio 1515-1525. Reflections on early Lustreware’ in J.V.G. Mallet and E. Sani (Ed.), Maiolica in Italy and Beyond, Oxford, 2021, p. 87, fig. 5.10. The ‘Painter of the Judgment of Paris’ is the author of a plate in the Dutuit collection at the Petit Palais in Paris, which is painted with that subject and inscribed on the reverse ‘Maestro Giorgio, 2 October 1520, BDSR in Gubbio’ in blue script, indicating that the plate was made in Gubbio, rather than having been made elsewhere and brought to Gubbio for lustring.
6. Bernard Rackham dubbed him the ‘Saint Ubaldus Painter’ after the piece in the V&A Museum, London, see Rackham, ibid., Vol. I, p. 225, no. 670, and Vol. II, pl. 105. The painters’ styles are extremely similar, and they were both active in Maestro Giorgio’s Gubbio workshop at the same time, see J.V.G. Mallet and Franz Adrian Dreier, The Hockemeyer Collection, Maiolica and Glass, Bremen, 1998, no. 16, pp. 235-236. Timothy Wilson takes the view that these painters are probably the same person, see Wilson, Italian Renaissance Ceramics in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2016, p. 222.
7. This is illustrated by the sale, in 1797, of a group of 200 pieces of maiolica (which may have included an istoriato plate from the Pucci service) at auction in a single lot, which was acquired by the dealer Agnolo Campolini. See Timothy Wilson, The Golden Age of Italian Maiolica-Painting, Turin, 2018, p. 244 and note 16.
8. Timothy Wilson, ibid., 2018, p. 149.