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

35

Basin with Deucalion

and Pyrrha

Fontana workshop (Orazio or Flaminio)

Urbino

ca. 1565-75

Tin-glazed earthenware

H: 6.3 cm ( 2 Vi in.)

Diam: 46.3 cm (18 lA in.)

86.DE.539

MARKS AND INSCRIPTIONS
None.

CONDITION

Broken and repaired at the top and in the proper

right lobe; a small area of crawled glaze at the

lower right of the medallion has been repaired.

PROVENANCE

Baron Adolphe (Carl) de Rothschild (1823-1900),

Paris, between 1870 and 1890; by inheritance to

Maurice (Edmond Charles) de Rothschild, Paris

(1881-1957), sold to Duveen 1913/14; [Duveen,

New York, inv. 26967; sold to N. Simon,

March 1965]; Norton Simon Foundation, Fullerton

(sold, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 1971, lot

81); private collection, Stuttgart (sold, Reimann

and Monatsberger, Stuttgart, January 1986);

[Alain Moatti, Paris, sold to the J. Paul Getty

Museum, 1986].

EXHIBITIONS

Italian Renaissance Maiolica from the William A.

Clark Collection, Los Angeles County Museum of

Art, March 5-May 17, 1987.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Antiquitaten-Zeitung, no. 25 (1985): 6ii; Getty-

Musf 15 (1987): 216, no. 114; Hess 1988A, no. 34;

Mariaux 1995, 130; Masterpieces 1997, 21, no. 13;

Museum Handbook 2001, 243; Summary Cata­

logue 2001, no. 373

BASINS OF THIS TYPE WERE GENERALLY USED to hold

scented water, which was offered to guests at the dining

table so that they could wash their hands between the

courses of a meal. This triangular basin's elaborate

molded and painted decoration, however, suggests that it

may also, if not solely, have served for display. The three

molded lobes are painted to resemble shells. Delicate

grotesques on a painterly white ground fill these lobes

and run around the rim, where they are dispersed a can-

delieri around cameo-like medallions showing single

figures in silhouette. A fisherman catching a large fish,

a sea nymph riding a sea monster, and a Nereid either

riding or being abducted by a Triton are painted on a

background of blue waves between the three shell-like

cartouches. The blue wave decoration continues on the

reverse, on which six swans are molded in relief follow­

ing the contours of the basin's three lobes (fig. 3 5A).

Molded strapwork encircles each of the three pairs

of swans and is decorated with geometric patterns pri­

marily in ocher, orange, and black. The remainder of the

decoration is executed in tones of ocher, yellow, blue,

grayish green, yellowish green, turquoise, buff, black,

and opaque white.

This basin was accompanied by its matching trilobed

ewer when both objects entered the stock of Duveen

Brothers, New York, in either 1913 or 1914 (fig. 35c).

The unusual, remarkably animated form of this ewer—

with bizarre griffins whose elongated mouths form part

of the handles—was apparently a sought-after form,

given the price Duveen asked for the ewer compared

with the one he asked for its basin.^1 The ewer was sold

on January 25-27, 1926, to Henry E. Huntington for ten

thousand dollars and has been on display at the Hunt­

ington Art Collection since 1929; the basin went unsold

until the 1960s.^2

The central medallion of the basin displays the scene

of Deucalion and Pyrrha (Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 1,11.

315-415), copied from the Lyons edition of 1559 (fig.

3 5D). Deucalion, son of Prometheus and Clymene, was

the Noah of Greek mythology. After surviving the deluge

sent by Zeus, Deucalion and his wife, Pyrrha, with­

drew to a temple on Mount Parnassus to ask the gods

how the two might renew the human race. The oracle

told the couple to cast behind them the bones of their

mother. Pyrrha was horrified, but Deucalion understood

that the oracle was referring to their mother the earth.

The two began to cast stones, which, upon hitting the

ground, assumed human shape. The stones thrown by

Deucalion became men and those thrown by Pyrrha be­

came women.

This basin's type of grotesque ornament (fig. 3 5 B)—

delicate and sinuous fantastic figures and animals inter­

twining against a white ground—began to appear on

Urbino ceramics of the 1560s and was a specialty of the

Fontana and, later, Patanazzi workshops. The ornament

was inspired by Raphael's frescoes of ca. 1520 in the

192