della Rovere all commissioned works by the foremos
maiolica artists of their time. The maiolica vogue soo
spread to other countries through gifts and foreign com
missions; the households of Andreas Imhof in Nurem
berg and Constable Anne de Montmorency in Franc
included pieces of Italian maiolica.^24 Indeed, the Mu
seum's trilobed basin (no. 35) may originate from a duca
collection in Urbino. Although unable to afford th
most refined pieces by the most sought-after ceramistsfamilies of lesser fame but of a certain affluence als
commissioned and collected maiolica. Three of th
Museum's maiolica objects (nos. n, 25-26) were eithe
ordered by or given to the well-to-do families whos
arms they bear.
Also of noble heritage is the Museum's sixteenth
century porcelain flask made in the grand-ducal factor
founded by Francesco I de' Medici, (no. 36). This remark
able object is a particularly fine example of this rare pro
duction—the first of its kind in the West—and is th
very item that set in motion the revival of interest i
these objects in the nineteenth century after several cen
turies of oblivion. Named for a type of "littl
pig"-shaped [porcellus in Latin) shell, porcelain is dis
tinguished from earthenware by the very qualities of th
shell after which it was named: it is translucent, smooth
white, and hard. The more porous earthenware require
a vitreous glaze surface to be watertight, whereas porce
lain (and to a certain degree stoneware) actually vitrifie
when fired at high temperatures. Porcelain glaze and pig
ment decoration are entirely decorative, with no rea
practical function.
Medici porcelain as well as the French versions mad
at Saint Cloud and Rouen in the seventeenth centur
were of a type called soft paste, which served as a substi
tute for true, or hard-paste porcelain before the secret o
hard-paste manufacture was discovered in the West. Thi
secret entailed mixing kaolin (found in a limited numbe
of deposits worldwide) with a feldspathic rock that
when fired at a high temperature (around 1300 degree
centigrade), fuses into a glassy matrix. By comparison
soft paste is generally made of white clay mixed wit
ground glass and then fired at a lower temperature. Al
though porcelaneous (that is, vitreous or glassy), soft n e l e , o e r e - y e n e e , s s l e y f s r , s , h t17 Figure of Beltrame di Milano. Meissen manufactory, ca. 1720. Hard-
paste porcelain, H: 16.5 cm (6 Vi in.). Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum,
86.DE.542.12 Introduction