In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries,Venetian attempts at porcelain production resulted in
examples that appear to be nothing more than a porcel-
lana contrefacta (counterfeit porcelain) of opaque white
lattimo glass painted with enamel colors.^11 Contempo
rary sources suggest that Ferrarese potters produced
porcelain in the 1560s and 1570s, although none of these
vessels have been identified, and a recipe of 1583 from
Ferrara in the Modena archives identifies the "porcelain"
material as made of the same white tin glaze and fine
clay that were used to make earthenware maiolica.^12
After he had purchased the Palazzo Pitti in 1550,Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici built workshops be
hind it to encourage the recondite arts of tapestry weav
ing, crystal carving, pietra dura mosaic, and porcelain
production. Bernardo Buontalenti was apparently the su
pervisor for most of the grand duke's artistic ventures,
and Giorgio Vasari, writing of Buontalenti in 1568, pre
dicted that he "will be making vessels of porcelain in a
short time," indicating that none yet existed. Only after
the grand duke's death in 1574 was porcelain finally pro
duced in the Boboli Garden workshops under the pa
tronage of his son, Francesco I. In 1575 Andrea Gussoni,
a Venetian ambassador to Florence, wrote that Francesco
had rediscovered the method of making porcelain and
that a "Levantine" (elsewhere referred to as "a Greek
who had traveled to the Indies") helped teach how to pro
duce it.^13 This porcelain production apparently contin
ued for a few decades following Francesco's death in
1587, after which it fell into oblivion. Surprisingly, almost a century passed before soft-paste porcelain was
reinvented at Rouen—by Louis Poterat—and then at
Saint-Cloud in the 1670s.^14
It was the Getty flask that, centuries later, helpedMedici porcelain regain its fame. While visiting the Flo
rentine studio of the English art dealer, collector, and
painter William Blundell Spence in 1857, the dealer
Alessandro Foresi noticed the Getty flask sitting on a
chest of drawers, where it was being used to hold paintbrushes.^15 Although Spence thought it was a piece of
maiolica from Faenza, Foresi recognized the material as
porcelain, thinking it might be from the Ginori factory
at Doccia whose objects had once been likewise marked
36 E Vase. China, beginning of the sixteenth century. Hard-paste
porcelain, H: 3 6 cm (14 in.). Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Museo
degli Argenti. Photo: Antonio Quattrone. This Chinese blue
and white vase was the type of porcelain collected by the
Medici. It appears to have entered the Medici collection in
the sixteenth century and was only recently rediscovered in
an armoire in the Palazzo Pitti.36F Plate. Turkey (Iznik), ca. 1570. Earthenware, Diam: 32.8 cm (13/4 in.).
Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, inv. x.3267.202 Pilgrim Flask