1 Style of the Centaur Painter. Detail of black-figure cup, ca. 540-30 B.C.
Karlsruhe, Badisches Landesmuseum. The decoration on this cup shows
a potter trimming a kylix on a potter's wheel. A robed companion,
possibly the person who had ordered the cup, watches him at work.
2 Albarello. Valencia (Manises), early fifteenth century. Tin-glazed
earthenware, H: 38 cm (15 in.). London, Victoria and Albert Museum.
This Spanish jar is decorated with Kufic script and knot, interlace, and
tree of life patterns.
Tin glazes can likewise be traced to Spain from as
early as A.D. iooo.^4 But around 1300 Ibn al-Ahmar;s Nas-
rid kingdom, which had united Malaga with Murcia and
Granada, became increasingly unstable, and Moorish
masters were forced north to the more prosperous Valen-
cian ceramic centers. They brought with them Islamic
motifs and techniques that were then exported to Italy
thanks to active commerce and the movement of arti
sans between Spanish workshops and the growing Italian
centers of production (fig. 2).
The technique of tin-glazing ceramics reached Italy
for the first time by the eleventh century, when potters
and pottery from the eastern Mediterranean and Maghrib
reached southern Italy. Geometric patterns, Islamic
motifs, ships, and animal figures in green, brown, and
yellow predominate, with cobalt blue pigment appearing
in the twelfth century. This so-called protomaiolica can
also be found in Pisa, where polychrome bowls were set
into church walls—possibly to create a coloristic effect
much like stone mosaic—although whether it arrived
via ship or overland is not known.^5
In the fourteenth century Near Eastern craftsmen
transmitted the technique across northwest Africa
through Spain to Europe. Trade and migration also car
ried ceramics along this route. It was this later importa
tion—comprising pottery of Moorish Spain together
with Islamic wares—that exerted the strongest stylistic
influence on early Italian maiolica.2 Introduction