Plate

Urbino?, Italy, 16th–17th century

Maiolica painted with grotesques.

Diameter: 23.5 cm

Unmarked.

UMP 8153

Purchased for the museum’s collections from art dealer A. S. Drey of Munich in 1886.

Brightly painted, symmetrically arranged grotesques on off-white glaze, with a horse? and star in the centre well. A ribbon bears the inscription “SI RA FIORE DE SPINA”.

Maiolica was among the crowning achievements of Italian Renaissance culture of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The applied arts flourished during the Renaissance, with well-known painters, sculptors, and architects creating decorative objects. Potters and artisans became famous, and designers earned the recognition normally reserved for fine artists. Maiolica workshops centred around cities in central Italy, especially Florence, Siena, Faenze, Deruta, and Castel Durante, and Venice. Engravings by Renaissance artists, such as Andrea Mantegna, Raffael, Albrecht Dürer, and Lucas Cranach, provided the workshops with a broad and diverse repertoire of forms. Urbino was one of the leading centres of maiolica production in Italy.

l Maiolica