CIRCA 1545

Details

A DERUTA MAIOLICA EWER-STAND
CIRCA 1545
The center painted with Mucius Scaevola in a stylized landscape, his right hand above a flaming pedestal and his foot overstepping the yellow band enclosing the scene, within a white band with scrolling ochre stems with acorns, the broad blue-ground well molded with a candelieri grotesques enriched in colors, the orange-ground border molded with a fruiting and flowering garland interspersed with masks and martial trophies, the reverse with an Union Centrale exhibition label
15 1⁄8 in. (38.5 cm.) diameter

Provenance

Baron Alphonse de Rothschild (1827-1905).
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 4015).
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. 343/8).
Returned to France on 9 January 1946 and restituted to the Rothschild family.
By descent to the present owners.

Literature

Catalogue des objets d’art et de curiosité exposés au Musée Rétrospectif ouvert au Palais de l’Industrie en 1865, Paris, 1866, p. 245, no. 2688.
Franck, L’art ancien. Photographies des collections célèbres par Franck, Paris, 1868, Vol. II.
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, no. 2688.

Conditions of sale

Lot Essay

The central scene illustrates an episode of Roman heroism that occurred when Rome was under siege by Lars Porsena, King of Clusium. A Roman nobleman, Gaius Mucius, disguised himself in a risky attempt to infiltrate the Clusian camp and assassinate Porsena, but mistakenly killed Porsena’s secretary, who was finely dressed as a decoy. Anticipating he would be tortured, Mucius held his right hand in a fire to demonstrate his defiance. Impressed by the Roman youth’s endurance and resolve, Porsena decided to release him. He became known as Scaevola (left-handed).

A stand with the same molded decoration around a central portrait, dated 1546, is in the Musée du Louvre; see Jeanne Giacomotti, Les majoliques des Musées nationaux, Paris, 1974, pp. 204-205, no. 663.

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