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

28, 41 ) have been included here and can be cross-refer­

enced to their more complete entries in the Museum's

Italian and Spanish Sculpture (2002). The alert reader

will also notice that the first two objects in the catalogue

are not Italian at all but Spanish. The influence of Span­

ish pottery, as developed by craftsmen from the Islamic

world, on Italian postclassical ceramics was significant,

and it is opportune and revealing to illustrate that

influence here.

For the past fifteen years or so the British Museum

has been involved in three linked projects attempting to

establish the geographical sources of different groups of

tin-glazed earthenware using neutron activation analysis

(NAA).^26 The three groups include Hispano-Moresque

and other Spanish pottery, Italian maiolica, and North­

ern European tin-glazed ceramics. These NAA investiga­

tions have been remarkably successful. Using as

benchmarks objects whose origins are known, the analy­

sis has been able to distinguish between discrete groups

of objects, establishing incontrovertible evidence that

the groups were created in different places (different

clays come from different geographical settings). Of the

maiolica items in the Getty collection whose place of

origin had remained elusive, four—nos. 13-14, 17,

21 [.2]—were chosen for neutron activation analysis on

the grounds that removing samples would not risk the

integrity of the pieces. Two types of statistical analysis

were performed on the data obtained from the samples:

cluster analysis and discriminant analysis. Initially the

results confirmed that all were produced in the Tus­

cany/Umbria regions of central Italy. More specifically,

whereas the cluster analysis indicated that nos. 13, 14,

and 21 displayed chemical features associated with com­

parison pieces from Deruta, discriminant analysis

showed that the samples were close to Montelupo refer­

ence samples. In this case, stylistic associations were

used to attribute the Getty pieces to one of these two

centers. Results showed that the clays used for nos. 13 and

1 4 are so similar as to strongly suggest they were made

from the same center. Both cluster and discriminant

analyses of no. 17 indicate that it was made in Montelupo.

Timothy Wilson admits that pieces of earthenware

from different areas "are sometimes so similar in

appearance that we have not yet learnt visual criteria to

tell them apart."^27 Lacking signatures and documentary

information, stylistic groupings established by connois-

seurship have been the only tools available to distin­

guish the yield of different centers of production. Now,

archaeometry—the study of art history and archaeology

using physical and biological sciences, in this case, the

chemical analysis of clays—can be added to the tools

at the historian's disposal.^28 However, as in other cases,

no single method of analysis is totally sufficient to eval­

uate an object. For the most complete understanding, a

concert of analyses must be employed: stylistic and doc­

umentary as well as scientific.

16 Introduction