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

22

Plate with a Winged

Putto on a Hobbyhorse

Possibly Urbino area, Venice, or Pesaro

ca. 1510-20

Tin-glazed earthenware

H: 2.4 cm (i^5 /i6 in.)

Diam: 23.5 cm (9V4 in.)

84.DE.116

MARKS AND INSCRIPTIONS
None.

CONDITION

Minor glaze chips on the rim.

PROVENANCE

Alessandro Castellani, Rome (sold, Hotel Drouot,

Paris, May 27, 1878, lot 34, to "Fanien" [according

to sale cat. notation]); Fanien; [Duveen Brothers,

Paris (stock no. 3275), 1914-16, transferred to

Duveen Brothers, New York, 1916 (stock

no. 25892), sold 1923 to A. Seligmann, Rey and

Co.];^1 [Arnold Seligmann, Rey and Co., New

York]; Charles Damiron, Lyons (sold, Sotheby's,

London, June 16, 1938, lot 60, to M. & R. Stora);

[M. &. R. Stora, Paris]; Luzarche d'Azay, Paris (sold,

Palais Galliera, Paris, December 6, 1962, lot 24);

Robert Strauss, England (sold, Christie's, London,

June 21, 1976, lot 22); [Cyril Humphris, London],-

[Rainer Zietz, Ltd., London, sold to the J. Paul

Getty Museum, 1984].

EXHIBITIONS

None.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rackham 1937A; Chompret 1949, 2: pi. 13, fig. 93;

Christie's Review 1976, 396; Morley-Fletcher and

Mcllroy 1984, 66, fig. 3,- GettyMusJ 13 (1985): 243,

no. 174; Hess 1988A, no. 29; Summary Catalogue

2001, no. 361.

THE WELL OF THIS TONDINO is decorated with a winged

putto on a hobbyhorse before a lagoon landscape within

a narrow white band. Two male busts in medallions are

reserved on a ground of Harpies, monsters, cornucopias,

and strings of beads around the wide rim. The blue, dark

reddish amber, brown, yellow, green, purple, and opaque

white embellishment is exceptionally brilliant and jewel­

like. The dark reddish amber pigment appears to be bole,

a variety of clay colored red by iron oxide, which is found

in Armenia and Tuscany and was used to decorate Iznik

pottery. The reverse displays a band of blue and white fo­

liate scrolls in the alia porcellana style.

The medallions display a bald man in classical dress

and a bearded man wearing a turbanlike hat. The appear­

ance of these two figures calls to mind representations of

Mohammed II (1432-1481), who became the sultan of

the Ottoman Turks in 1451,^2 and John VIII Palaeologus

(1390-1448), the Byzantine emperor who traveled to

Italy in the early fifteenth century to discuss a possible

union between the Greek and Latin churches.^3 It has

also been suggested that the bald man might represent

Cicero.^4 Any identification of these medallion figures

must be considered tentative, however, since similarities

with known portraits do not appear convincing; these

busts may simply represent generalized Eastern types.

This dish was, at one time, attributed to a "Giovanni

Maria" active in Castel Durante because of its similarity

to a bowl in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New

York,^5 inscribed 1508 adi 12 de sete[m]br[e] facta fu i[n]

Castel dura[n]t[e] Zova[n] maria v[asa]w (made in

Castel Durante by the potter Giovanni Maria on Sep­

tember 12, 1508; fig. 22E). This signed and dated piece

has been used as a benchmark for attributing a number

of maiolica plates and bowls to the artist.^6 Although

these plates and bowls are no longer thought to form

a consistent group—appearing to be the work of various

ceramic painters—they display similarities to the

Lehman bowl. These similarities include the depiction

of chubby putti, imaginative and festive grotesques, tro­

phies, masks, invented beasts, pearls, and musical in­

struments set against a dark blue ground. It is possible

that the "Giovanni Maria" of the Lehman bowl is

Giovanni Maria Mariano, a man identified by documents

as being in Urbino in 1520, in Venice in 1523, and back

in Urbino in the 1530s.^7 It is possible, therefore, that

the maiolica objects associated with the Lehman bowl

fall within the sphere of Giovanni Maria Mariano's in­

fluence, that is, between the Duchy of Urbino and Venice

in the first decades of the sixteenth century.

Three tondini form a group with the Getty plate and

appear to have been decorated by the same hand. They

include a tondino also showing a putto on a hobbyhorse

in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (fig. 22c);^8 one with

a putto riding a dolphin in the Victoria and Albert Mu­

seum, London (inv. C.2087-1910) (fig. 22D);^9 and one

displaying a putto with a shield in the National Gallery

128