Renaissance maiolica panel, painted in with a debased form of the Sacred Monogram

An image of Maiolica. Tray/wall panel. Unknown maker, Tuscany, Montelupo. Circular with shallow vertical sides and flat base which has warped in firing. The central medallion contains a debased form of the Sacred Monogram, outlined in orange and reserved in a blue ground, surrounded by a blue zig-zag border. The rest of the base is decorated with four lozenges with a spot at each point linking them to almond, oval and segmental shapes filled with small strokes and stylised stems and leaves. Round the sides there are short oblique strokes between blue bands and a wide blue band on the rim. The exterior is decorated with three blue horizontal bands. Earthenware, tin-glazed on the front and outside wall and dribbled across the unglazed base. Painted in blue, green, yellow, orange-red, and black. Height, whole, 4.0 cm, diameter, whole, 36.2 cm, circa 1550- 1600. Renaissance. Notes: Blue geometrical decoration comprising rhomboidal and elliptical shapes usually embellished with spots of green, yellow, orange or red has been attributed to Montelupo and Faenza. It seems likely that these bold designs evolved from earlier knot patterns on maiolica, which in turn seem to be related to those on textiles or Islamic metalwork.

Terms of use

These images are provided for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons License (BY-NC-ND). To license a high resolution version, please contact our image library who will discuss fees, terms and waivers.

Download this image

Creative commons explained - what it means, how you can use our's and other people's content.

Maiolica. Tray/wall panel. Unknown maker, Tuscany, Montelupo. Circular with shallow vertical sides and flat base which has warped in firing. The central medallion contains a debased form of the Sacred Monogram, outlined in orange and reserved in a blue ground, surrounded by a blue zig-zag border. The rest of the base is decorated with four lozenges with a spot at each point linking them to almond, oval and segmental shapes filled with small strokes and stylised stems and leaves. Round the sides there are short oblique strokes between blue bands and a wide blue band on the rim. The exterior is decorated with three blue horizontal bands. Earthenware, tin-glazed on the front and outside wall and dribbled across the unglazed base. Painted in blue, green, yellow, orange-red, and black. Height, whole, 4.0 cm, diameter, whole, 36.2 cm, circa 1550- 1600. Renaissance. Notes: Blue geometrical decoration comprising rhomboidal and elliptical shapes usually embellished with spots of green, yellow, orange or red has been attributed to Montelupo and Faenza. It seems likely that these bold designs evolved from earlier knot patterns on maiolica, which in turn seem to be related to those on textiles or Islamic metalwork.

Image data

Accession Number: C.189-1991
Photograph copyright © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Aperture: f/27.0
Focal length: 120
Camera: Hasselblad H3DII-31
Photographer name: Katie Young
Image height: 778 pixels
Image width: 1024 pixels
Processed with: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.4 (Windows)
Filesize: 840.50kB
Exposure time: 1/125
ISO Speed: 200
Fnumber: 27/1

Key words

16th Century blue circular earthenware Fitz_AA geometric geometrical glazed Italian Late Renaissance leaves lozenge maiolica medallions monogram Other Keywords painted plaque Renaissance round sacred monogram tin-glazed tray wall panel

Citation for print

This page can be cited in the Harvard Bibliographic style using the text below:


            The Fitzwilliam Museum (2024)
            "Renaissance maiolica panel, painted in with a debased form of the Sacred Monogram"
            Web page available at: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/image/media-4168881964 Accessed: 2024-12-22 16:41:46

Citation for Wikipedia

To cite this page on Wikipedia you can use this code snippet:


            {{cite web|url=https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/image/media-4168881964
            |title=Renaissance maiolica panel, painted in with a debased form of the Sacred Monogram
            |author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-12-22 16:41:46|publisher=The
            University of Cambridge}}

API call for this record

To call these data via our API (remember this needs to be authenticated) you can use this code snippet:

https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/api/v1/images/media-200321

Bootstrap HTML code for reuse

To use this as a simple code embed, copy this string:

<div class="text-center">
    <figure class="figure">
        <img src="https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/aa/aa35/C_189_1991_201601_kly25_dc2.jpg"
        alt="Tray"
        class="img-fluid" />
        <figcaption class="figure-caption text-info">Renaissance maiolica panel, painted in with a debased form of the Sacred Monogram</figcaption>
    </figure>
</div>