Dish: C.24-1932

Maker(s)

Maker: Unidentified Deruta pottery

Entities

• Dish
• piatto da pompa

Categories

• Tin-glazed earthenware
• Maiolica
• Lustreware

Description

Tin-glazed earthenware painted in blue and lustred with a half-length figure of a young woman in profile to right facing a coiled scrole inscribed 'LA VITA.EL.FINE.ELDI.LO DA.LASE RA.X.' (Life by its end, day by the evening, is praised), surrounded by a border of leaves and stylized flowers.

Earthenware, the front is tin-glazed; the reverse has thick, opaque, dark yellow lead-glaze. Painted in thinly applied dark blue and with pale silver-yellow lustre. Shape 61. Circular, with slightly sloping rim, and wide deep well, standing on a footring pierced by three incorrectly placed suspension holes. In the well, a young woman, half-length with her head in profile to right, faces a coiling scroll, inscribed 'LA VITA.EL.FINE.ELDI.LO DA.LASE RA.X.' (Life by its end, day by the evening, is praised). There are formal flowers in the background, and bound laurel round the edge of the well. On the rim, slanting serrated leaves alternate with stylized flowers. A band of yellow lustre encircles the outer edge.

Notes

History note: Max Goldschmidt-Rothschild; Kurt Glogowski, Berlin; sold Sotheby's, 8 June 1932, Catalogue of the well-known collection of important Italian majolica, also bronzes and statuary, velvets, textiles and embroideries, fine Oriental rugs, & c. the property of Herr Kurt Glogowski of Berlin, lot 30.

Legal notes

Purchased with the Glaisher Fund

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Bought (1932-06-08) by Sotheby's

Dating

16th Century, Early
Circa 1500 CE - Circa 1530 CE

Note

The girl is painted in the style of Pietro Perugino (active 1472-1523) and closely resembles the Eritrean Sibyl in his fresco of 'God the Father announcing the Salvation' in the Sala dell'Udienza in the Collegio del Cambio, Perugia, painted between 1496 and 1500. Similar young women appear in paintings by Pinturicchio (1454-1513) such as in the' Visitation' in the Borgia apartments of the Vatican, but Deruta maiolica painters were more likely to have seen or had access to drawings after local works in nearby Perugia. It was a popular prototype for the decoration of large dishes decorated with busts or half-length figures of women, known today as bella donna dishes. These are thought to have been presented to women by their betrothed or husband, and a few examples show a couple together. At least thirty-five examples based on the same prototype are known, the majority showing the girl facing to the left, and a few to the right, as here, and in the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio (1951.327), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1953.225.87), and the Chigi-Saraceni collection, Siena (FAC.Inv. no. 61). There are no dated examples decorated with similar designs, but it seems probable that this slender, chaste ideal of womanhood con¬tinued to be represented by Deruta painters until at least the 1520s. Many of these dishes have a scrolling ribbon or label behind the girl, bearing a name followed by Bella or another adjective, or have a proverb, saying, or quotation from the bible or literature. The inscription on this dish was taken from Petrarch's, Le Rime, XXIII, 31, `La vita el fin e 'l di loda la sera' ' (Life by its end, day by the evening, is praised). Variants of this line occur on dishes with the same girl in the the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (94.4.320), and the Musée National de la Renais¬sance, Écouen (E.C1.2430), and on a dish decora¬ted with a different girl, in the Museo Nazionale di Ravenna. The dishes had a wide variety of border patterns. This dish has one of the most unusual; designs of slanting leaves and stylized flowers, radiating from the the edge of the well, which also occurs on a dish decorated with warrior in the Kunstgewerbe¬museum, Cologne (E 2110).

School or Style

Renaissance