Notes
- Bernard Rackham, however, has posited that the inscription should be
read Vivis ero vivus ero mortuis em vivus (alive I shall be among the
living, and alive I shall be among the dead); see Rackham 1959, 143,
no. 3 54b, pi. 231. Since maiolica painters often did not compose and
possibly did not even understand the words they copied for inscription,
both the abbreviated forms and the meaning of this phrase must be con
sidered open to interpretation.
- Like that expressed in the amorous inscription Sogie tovesero perfihi-
vivo epo[i]lamorte (I will be subject to you as long as I live and even af
ter death) on a basin in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
(Watson 1986, 78, no. 28.)
- The memento mori theme also appears explicitly on maiolica plates;
see, for example, a lustered tondino of ca. 1525 attributed to the work
shop of Maestro Giorgio Andreoli in the Ringling Museum of Art, Sara
sota (Duval and Karcheski 1983, 91-92, no. 82).
- Other Deruta plates with similar female busts and similar inscrip
tions concerned with the transience of life include two formerly in the
Adda collection, Paris: one inscribed Non e si vago e fioie che no[n]
i[n]bia[n]ca o casca (no flower is so fair that it does not fade or fall) and
the other inscribed Um bel morire tuta la vita onoia (a beautiful death
makes honorable a whole life); see Rackham 1959, nos. 344, 354. This
concern may well have been influenced by the plague, a constant men
ace in early Renaissance Italy that had at one point reduced by half the
population of certain centers (Braudel 1972-73, 1: 332).
- Marabottini Marabotti 1982, 30-31.
- For further information on this technique see Hess 1999, 4-22.
- Timothy Wilson in National Gallery 1993, 152-54.
- My thanks to Timothy Wilson for bringing this and the following object
to my attention.
- Giacomotti 1974, no. 516; Sarasino 1924, 61, pi. 52.
- Giacomotti 1974, no. 586.
- Falke 1914-23, 1: no. 124, pi. 68.
- Liverani and Reggi 1976, 58, fig. 58.
- Busti and Cocchi 1999, 170, no. 57.
- Sale cat., Hotel Drouot (Piasa), Paris, June 28, 2000, lot 75; and sale
cat., Finarte, November 21-22, 1963, pi. 80, lot 158.
- See Chompret 1949, 2: figs. 200, 203-7, 820, 823-24; Giacomotti
1974, nos. 517, 582-85, 587.
Lustered Plate with a Female Bust 117
