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

7

Relief-Blue Jar with

Rampant Lions

Tuscany, probably Florence

ca. 1425-50

Tin-glazed earthenware

H: 39.4 cm (15 Vi in.)

Diam (at lip): 19.3 cm (ysA in.)

W (max.): 40 cm [is^3 A in.)

84.DE.97

MARKS AND INSCRIPTIONS

Below each handle, a six-pointed asterisk.

CONDITION

A crack runs from under one handle to the base;

two small losses in the neck are filled and painted;

small chips around the rim and along the handles.

PROVENANCE

Count Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi (d. 1956),

Villa Vittoria, Florence, sold to N. Longari; [Nella

Longari, Milan, sold to R. Zietz]; [Rainer Zietz,

Ltd., London, sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum,

1984].

EXHIBITIONS

None.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cora 1973, 1: 83, 457; 2, pi. 1 n} GettyMusf 13

(1985): 240, no. 157; Hess 1988A, no. 7; Conti

et al. 1991, 254, no. 59; Masterpieces 1997, 9,

no. 2; Summary Catalogue 2001, no. 346.

THIS TWO-HANDLED drug jar is the largest known ves­

sel of its kind. Its high-shouldered, ovoid body is embel­

lished on each side with a rampant lion among dots (or

"berries") and branches of leaves in a thin blue impasto

outlined in and surrounded by dashes and wavy lines in

manganese purple. The short neck and strap handles are

likewise painted with blue dots and manganese lines

on a thin bluish white ground. The interior is glazed but

much abraded.

This piece displays a painted asterisk below each

handle, which may serve a purely ornamental function,

since asterisks were a common decorative motif.^1 Be­

cause the areas below handles on jugs and jars are con­

ventionally inscribed with maker's marks, however, it

is also possible that the asterisks on this work indi­

cate a given workshop. Galeazzo Cora identified the six-

pointed asterisk on this drug jar (fig. 7A) as the mark of

the workshop of Giunta di Tugio di Giunta (ca. 1382-ca.

1450), one of the most important maiolica ceramists of

his time in Florence.^2 However, the ascription of all jars

marked with the asterisk to di Tugio is currently under

question.^3 On stylistic grounds, it has been proposed

that the thirty-three relief-blue jars marked with aster­

isks of the total 162 attributed to the Florentine area may,

in fact, be the work of at least seven different artists.^4

Lions frequently embellish zaffeia a rilievo, or relief-

blue ceramics (fig. 7D) and are particularly appropriate

as a Florentine motif since they may refer to that city's

lion emblem, or marzocco. The lion, also a popular

image on wares from Valencian centers such as Paterna

or Manises,^5 is commonly thought to be of Hispano-

Moresque origin. Recent scholarship also suggests that it

may derive from Italian heraldry or archaic ceramics.^6

The white, starlike disk on the lion's chest, a design

whose significance has yet to be explained, appears on

Hispano-Moresque works (fig. 7E) and may have been

transferred to Italian ceramics with the influx of Spanish

wares in the fifteenth century.^7 This design also ap­

pears on animals embellishing contemporary and earlier

7 A Detail of maker's mark below handle.

50