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Maker/s | uncertain (maker) |
Category |
tin-glazed earthenware |
Name | dish |
School/Style | |
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. |
Production Notes | Possibly made by a member of the Masci family of Deruta. |
Production Place | Deruta (maker) (place) Umbria (maker) (region) Italy (maker) (country) |
Technique Description | 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 |
Dimensions |
height: (whole): 7.5
cm |
Period | early 16th Century |
Date | circa 1500 to 1530 |
Provenance | bought: Sotheby's 1932-06-08 (Filtered for: Applied Arts collection) 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.Purchased with the Glaisher Fund |
Inscriptions/Marks |
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Documentation |
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Other Notes | Large decorative dishes, known as piatti da pompa, were a speciality of sixteenth-century Deruta potters. They are about 40 cm wide and have a distinctive profile with a slightly raised edge, broad rim and curved well with a footring, which is usually pierced by two holes to take a cord for suspension. Curiously these are often incorrectly placed for suspension the right way up. The backs are almost always lead glazed and the fronts are tin-glazed and painted in polychrome or in blue embellished with gold lustre and, on some early examples, also red lustre. The gold pigment, actually derived from a compound of silver, varies in colour after firing from a very pale silvery-yellow to brassy- or brownish-gold. Many of these dishes are decorated with busts or three-quarter length figures of young women, usually accompanied by an inscribed scroll. They are not portraits, but belong to several physical types which, in the early part of the 16th century, closely resembled women in paintings by Pinturicchio (1454-1515) and Perugino (active 1472-1523). The girl on this dish closely resembles the Eritrean Sibyl in Perugino's fresco of God the Father announcing the Salvation in the Collegio del Cambio, Perugia, the nearest large city to Deruta. She also resembles young women Pinturicchio's, Visitation in the Borgia apartments of the Vatican. The inscription, which also occurs on at least three other dishes, is the only one so far recorded from an identified literary source - Petrarch's Le Rime, XXIII, 31, 'La vita el fin e 'l di loda la sera'. In translation this reads `Life by its end, day by the evening, is praised' or more idiomatically, `The end crowns the life, the evening the day'. The `X' on the end of the scrolls seems to be a space filler or an indication that the verse continues. |
Accession Number | C.24-1932 (Applied Arts) |
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