CIRCA 1525-1530

Details

A GUBBIO MAIOLICA GOLD AND RUBY LUSTRED DISH
CIRCA 1525-1530
The recessed gold-lustre center painted in shades of grey with Cupid holding a flaming torch, the blue-ground border reserved with gold and ruby lustre grotesques with cornucopias, palmettes, foliate scrolls and pendant drapes, the three winged putti masks painted in shades of blue and grey, the reverse with concentric bands and lines of lustre and an indistinct inscription …de (?) Ferriere (?) in ink, with red sealing-wax (indistinctly impressed) and a printed label inscribed 'P. 48 /E. de R./ 7' for Édouard de Rothschild
9 1⁄8 in. (23.2 cm.) diameter

Provenance

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 4041).
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. 339/15).
Returned to France on 9 January 1946 and restituted to the Rothschild family.
By descent to the present owners.

Conditions of sale

Lot Essay

A similar dish in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (MMA. 27.97.32), is illustrated by Gaetano Ballardini, Corpus della Maiolica Italiana, 1933-1938, Vol. I, fig. 171, no. 183, where the author erroneously states that it is dated 1525 (the other related piece in the same museum, MMA 27.97.33, is also not dated). A dish in the British Museum with related decoration and Cupid riding a dolphin at its center is illustrated by Dora Thornton and Timothy Wilson, Italian Renaissance Ceramics, A Catalogue of the British Museum Collection, London, 2009, Vol. II, p. 517, no. 317, where the unusual features of this group of pieces are noted.

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