Tile fragment: C.130-1927

Current Location: In storage

Maker(s)

Entities

Tile fragment
top-left corner of a square tile

Description

Top-left corner of a square tile from the Palazzo Petrucci. Cream earthenware, tin-glazed on the upper surface. Painted in dark blue, green, yellow, orange, brownish-red, and, on the border tile, black.
The tile is decorated with the top left corner of a shield, and a similar border with a yellow crescent reserved in dark blue in the spandrel.

Notes

History note: Purportedly purchased in Siena by F. Leverton Harris.

Legal notes

F. Leverton Harris Bequest

Measurements and weight

Depth: 2.1 cm
Height: 7.5 cm
Width: 9.2 cm

Place(s) associated

Siena ⪼ Tuscany ⪼ Italy

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Bequeathed (1926) by Harris, Frederick Leverton

Dating

16th Century
Renaissance
Production date: circa AD 1509

Note

This tile fragments (and C.127, C.128, C.129-1927) and another border tile fragment which has lost most of its glaze (C.131-1927) formed part of a tile pavement commissioned by Pandolfo Petrucci for the principal room in his palazzo in Siena. The room is thought to have been decorated between 1508 and Petrucci's death in 1512, and three of the tiles are dated 1509. The pavement comprises pentagonal tiles of two sizes, square tiles and rectangular border tiles. Some of the square tiles are decorated with the quartered arms of Piccolomini and Petrucci, with trophies, or with figures in landscapes reminiscent of those by Pinturicchio, Signorelli and Genga. The majority are decorated with grotesques, and the pavement as a whole is one of the most outstanding illustrations of this genre on early sixteenth-century maiolica. Over 300 tiles from the pavement are in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and there are 17 in the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg. When cataloguing that collection Rasmussen listed a number of others.