Italian Ceramics: Catalogue of the J. Paul Getty Museum Collection

smaller albarelli, however.^19 Similar rays decorate vari­

ous contemporaneous luster dishes from Deruta and

may signify God's benediction on the subject.^20

The two Marcantonio Raimondi prints that are

copied on the Bo jars—Temperance (also known as

Woman Watering a Plant) and Venus Protecting Man

(also known as Man and Woman with Spheres)—have

been dated to before 1510 and ca. 1506, respectively,^21

providing, at least, a terminus post quern for the group.

Although for the Louvre jars a religious theme might

link the group, the figures on the final two albarelli from

this group, those in the Getty Museum, are more prob­

lematic. Indeed, they are arguably the most unusual and

perplexing of the set. They do not appear to depict

images which are religious, mythological, allegorical,

sexual, or amorous. Rather, their subjects, dressed

in contemporary peasant clothes, seem to be genre

figures.^22

The distaff—an instrument for spinning wool and

therefore a symbol of domestic labor—was a conven­

tional attribute of the industrious, righteous wife in the

sixteenth century and commonly appears in female por­

traiture and allegorical representations.^23 However, it

was also used in a negative context as a symbol of domes­

tic discord.^24 In sixteenth-century European art and liter­

ature, moreover, spinning represented erotic activity.^25

As one scholar has pointed out, in the Renaissance a

lame peasant could represent the moralizing emblem of

mutuum auxilium—meaning reciprocal assistance or

mutual love—or else the biblical episode of Saint Peter

Apostle, in which he heals a lame beggar on the steps of

the Temple,- the latter could be the interpretation of a

scene on a drug jar in Faenza (fig. 2IE).^26 Several other

images on jars from this group derive from prints by the

fifteenth-century painter and engraver Jacopo de' Bar-

bari, making it possible that the Getty examples do so as

well. De' Barbari engraved a pair of figures—a woman

with a distaff holding a child and a man with a maiolica

jug holding a cradle (figs. 21F - G)—that might relate to

the figures on the Getty jars, although these figures ap­

pear less peaceful than those in de' Barbari;s engravings.^27

It appears that two other jars, one in the Cleveland

Museum of Art (inv. 40.12) and one in the Wadsworth

11 E Vase. Deruta, end of the fifteenth century. Tin-glazed earthenware,

H: 29 cm (n Vi in.). Faenza, Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche,

inv. 24909.

124 Two Jars