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

vii vii

FOREWORD

IN THE EARLY 1980s the Museum's holdings of Italian

ceramics consisted primarily of wonderful ancient ex­

amples from Etruria, Imperial Rome, and Magna Graecia.

Although the Museum already owned an impressive col­

lection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French

decorative arts, including pieces produced at Sevres, the

Italian peninsula was represented by a mere handful of

fine objects produced in those same years.

Then, in a single group acquisition in 1984, the

Getty became the repository of one of the most impor­

tant collections of Italian Renaissance tin-glazed earthen­

ware, or maiolica, in the United States and Europe.

Although small, this group of objects is exceptionally

fine and includes highly inventive luxury items with an

illustrious provenance, such as the splendid and bizarre

Venetian plate decorated with grotesques that was once

owned by Queen Victoria. It also contains more humble

rarities, such as the spirited drug jar made for Santa

Maria della Scala in Siena, the site of one of the most

important pharmacies of its day. Thus, the Museum's

holdings provide a remarkably comprehensive picture of

Italian Renaissance maiolica production.

Since 1984, several objects have been added to com­

plement and round out the collection. A few earlier

Spanish pieces, and an astonishing Baroque basin and

Rococo tabletop, bracket the predominantly Renais­

sance material. The acquisition of the Medici porcelain

flask in 1986, at that time one of only three such ob­

jects left in private hands, extended the collection into

the area of Italian porcelain, which also offers rich

comparisons with the Museum's eminent collection of

French porcelain.

Due to its process of firing colored glazes onto a clay

body, Renaissance maiolica preserves an unchanging

palette, and its painted scenes offer an enlightening

counterpart to paintings from the same period, whose

pigments may have faded or altered with time. One of

the many benefits of the new installations at the Getty

Center has been the chance to view the maiolica collec­

tion in beautifully designed galleries one floor below the

galleries of Italian Renaissance paintings. The opportu­

nity to relate these works of very different media, but of

comparably erudite subject matter and virtuosic tech­

nique, is an unexpected bonus to the Museum visitor.

This volume is a reworking of the 1988 catalogue of

the Italian maiolica at the Getty. I would like to thank

Catherine Hess, Associate Curator of Sculpture and

Works of Art, for her excellent research and work on both

the original catalogue and this revised edition. The en­

suing fourteen years have seen great advances in relevant

scholarship and archaeology. As a result, the present cat­

alogue not only fully presents, for the first time, the Mu­

seum's Italian porcelain in addition to its maiolica but

also provides new and more ample scientific, icono-

graphic, and historical information.

DEBORAH GRIBBON

Director, The J. Paul Getty Museum

Vice-President, The J. Paul Getty Trust

OPPOSITE: Drug jar for syrup of lemon juice (detail). See no. 16.