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

as well as books and articles on the subject. More re­

cently, the list of European pioneers in maiolica studies

includes Galeazzo Cora, Paride Berardi, Carmen Ra-

vanelli Guidotti, John Mallet, Timothy Wilson, and

others. One of the richest sources for information re­

garding current maiolica research is the periodical

Faenza published by the Museo Internazionale delle

Ceramiche that had been founded by Ballardini in 1908.

In the United States the field of maiolica scholarship

is more limited. In the late nineteenth century Arthur

Beckwith published his Majolica and Fayence. This vol­

ume was followed by several catalogues of American

collections, including those by Joan Prentice von Erdberg

and Marvin C. Ross on the Walters Art Gallery (now Mu­

seum), Baltimore; Bruce Cole on midwestern collec­

tions; Andrew Ladis on southern collections,- Jorg

Rasmussen on the Robert Lehman collection, Metropol­

itan Museum of Art, New York; Wendy Watson on the

William A. Clark Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art,

Washington, D.C.; Timothy Wilson on the National

Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; and Jessie McNab on

the Taft Museum, Cincinnati.

The J. Paul Getty Museum's collection of Italian ce­

ramics is composed of objects of outstanding quality and

in fine condition. It is no surprise that one can trace the

provenance of a great number of these works to illus­

trious nineteenth- and twentieth-century collectors,

such as Charles Damiron of Lyons,- Alfred Pringsheim of

Munich; Wilhelm von Bode of Berlin,- Andrew Fountaine

of Norfolk (fig. 19); Alessandro Castellani of Rome;

J. Pierpont Morgan of New York,- and Baroness Marie-

Helene and Barons Guy Edouard Alphonse and Alphonse

Mayer of Paris, as well as Lord Nathaniel Charles Jacob

Rothschild of London.

The present volume is a reworking of the Museum's

1988 Italian Maiolica catalogue, changed not only to

correct and update information resulting from the ensu­

ing dozen years of research but also to include the other

Italian ceramic objects in the Getty Museum's collection

that happen not to be made of maiolica. Of the forty-one

entries (including four pairs of objects), thirty-six are ob­

jects made of maiolica (tin-glazed earthenware), one is

made of terra-cotta (earthenware baked but not tin-

glazed), another one is made of terraglia (white-bodied

earthenware), and three are made of porcelain: one soft-

paste (without kaolin), one hybrid soft-paste (with kaolin

but low fired), and one hard-paste (with kaolin). These

objects span almost four hundred years, from the early

fifteenth century to the end of the eighteenth, and

so demonstrate the changing fashions and technical

developments in Italian ceramic production during that

period. Two essentially sculptural ceramic objects (nos.

19 Composite photograph of the Andrew Fountaine maiolica collection, as displayed in the China Room at Narford Hall, Norfolk, ca. 1884.

Photo: Courtesy of Christie's.

Introduction 15