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

9

Relief-Blue Jar with Dots

Tuscany, probably Florence

ca. 1430-50

Tin-glazed earthenware

H: 16.5 cm (6V2 in.)

Diam (at lip): 10.5 cm (4V8 in.)

W (max.): 17.8 cm (7 in.)

85.DE.58

MARKS AND INSCRIPTIONS
Below each handle, a six-pointed asterisk sur­
rounded by dots.

CONDITION

Two chips in the rim; chips along the handles,-

a number of blind cracks in the body.

PROVENANCE

Palazzo Davanzati, Florence (fig. 9D); Stefano

Bardini, Florence; Elie Volpi, Florence^1 (sold,

Jandolo and Tavazzi, Rome, April 25 -May 3,

1910 , lot 777, to Count H.-A. Harrach [informa­

tion supplied by auction house]); Count Hans-

Albrecht Harrach (d. 1963), Rome (1900-1914),

Munich (1923-43), and Niederarnbach, South

Germany (sold, Lempertz, Cologne, May 6, 1953,

lot 414); Dr. Robert Bak, New York (sold,

Sotheby's, London, December 7, 1965, lot 15, to

E. Lederer); Erich Lederer (1896-1985), Geneva;

by inheritance to Lederer's widow, Elisabeth

Lederer, 1985; sold to the J. Paul Getty Mu­

seum, 1985.

EXHIBITIONS

None.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cora 1973, 1: 8o; 2: fig. 107b; GettyMusf 14

(1986): 251, no. 212; Hess 1988A, no. 9; Conti

et al. 1991, fig. 17; Summary Catalogue 2001,

no. 348.

9 A Alternate view.

THIS TWO-HANDLED VESSEL displays on each side four

horizontal zones delineated by manganese purple lines.

These zones display wavy manganese purple lines and a

double row of cobalt blue dots (or "berries") set into the

curves on a ground of small manganese dots. The interior

is lead glazed. The area below each strap handle bears

a six-pointed asterisk mark surrounded by dots, attrib­

uted to the Florentine workshop of Giunta di Tugio (see

nos. 7-8).^2 However, there is some question as to

whether the more than thirty jars marked with various

forms of asterisk all belong to di Tugio or even to a single

other potter. An attempt has been made to stylistically

link works by the same hand as that responsible for dec­

orating this jar. According to this grouping, a so-called

painter E would have decorated the Getty jar and the

small example with an upright hare in the Victoria and

Albert Museum, London (fig. 9c).^3

Roughly a dozen examples of relief-blue jugs and

two-handled jars display similar repetitive, almost geo­

metric decoration (including patterns of tabs, dots,

dashes, and wedge shapes), rather than the more com­

mon leaf embellishment.^4 The arrangement of rows of

repeating fingerlike cogs (called a goccioloni for "big

drops" of pigment) on several of these more abstractly

decorated pots has been associated with the vair motif

.deriving from heraldry.^5 How these more simplified pat­

terns relate to the more common relief-blue leaves has

yet to be fully considered.

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