CIRCA 1515

In their 2004 exhibition catalogue, Giulio Busti and Franco Cocchi illustrate two bella donna chargers with young women wearing winged headdresses similar to the young woman’s in the present lot⁽¹⁾. Busti and Cocchi note the similarity of the position of the masks above their foreheads to a mask on the helmet of Leonidas Lacedemonio in the fresco of Uomini forti in the Sala dell’Udienze of the Collegio del Cambio, and they also note that wings feature in another Perugino fresco in the same room⁽²⁾. The use of ruby lustre on this charger is unusual, as by the time of this charger’s production, ruby lustre was used infrequently at Deruta.

1. For a charger with ‘Giulia’ in the Museo Regionale della Ceramica, Deruta, see Giulio Busti and Franco Cocchi, La ceramica umbra al tempo di Perugino, Museo Regionale della Ceramica, Deruta, February – July 2004 Exhibition Catalogue, Milan, 2004, no. 34, and no. 35 for a lustred charger with ‘Madalena’ in the Louvre, Paris.
2. See Busti and Cocchi, ibid., 2004, p. 124.