Inscriptions and the dynamic reception of Italian Renaissance maiolica
2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 30; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/02666286.2014.912907
ISSN1943-2178
Autores Tópico(s)Medieval Architecture and Archaeology
ResumoAbstractIn the sixteenth century, tin-glazed earthenware dishes known as maiolica became an interactive means of entertaining viewers in the context of dining through the combination of painted imagery and inscriptions. Beginning around 1530, painters of a type of narrative-painted maiolica, known as ‘istoriato,’ began to include lengthy inscriptions on the reverses of dishes that often identified subjects and included excerpts of poetry. These inscriptions demonstrate three important features: first, dishes must have been handled by viewers in order to read the inscriptions, either while on display or during a meal; second, the more complex inscriptions were intended to encourage greater engagement between the viewer and ceramic dish and generate increased interaction and conviviality among guests, and third, maiolica painters were attempting to raise their standing in court circles by demonstrating their literary knowledge through the addition of these inscriptions. These inscriptions are discussed in the context of Renaissance banquets where discussions of literary subjects took place.Keywords: maiolicainscriptionsRenaissance diningnarrative paintingFrancesco Xanto AvelliNicola da Urbino Notes1 – Translation by Giovanna Hendel in J. V. G. Mallet, Xanto: Pottery-Painter, Poet, Man of the Italian Renaissance (London: Paul Holberton, 2007), 162–69. See also Guido Vitaletti, “Le Rime di Francesco Xanto Avelli,” Faenza 6, no. 1 (1918): 11–15, no. 2: 41–44. Xanto’s sonnets survive as a manuscript copy in the Vatican Library, Urb. Lat. 794, 20.6.2 – Bette Talvalcchia,“Professional Advancement and the Use of the Erotic in the Art of Francesco Xanto,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 25 (1994); 121–53; Ewa Katarzyna Świetlicka, Ceramika Rafaela: Majolika istoriato ze zbiorow polskich / Raphael’s Ware: Istoriato Maiolica from Polish Collections (Warsaw: National Museum in Warsaw, 2010), 23.3 – Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Complete Poems of Michelangelo, trans. John Frederick Nims (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Deborah Parker, Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); ibid., “The Poetry of Patronage: Bronzino and the Medici,” Renaissance Studies 17, no. 2 (June 2003): 230–45; ibid., Michelangelo and the Art of Letter Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). For a broader discussion of the social status of the Renaissance artist, see Joanna Woods-Marsden, Renaissance Self-Portraiture: The Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).4 – “Maiolica” describes ceramic vessels covered in a lead-glaze that was made white through the addition of tin oxide. Before the glaze could be added, the ceramic vessel was soft biscuit fired. The vessel was then covered in the white glaze. Once the white glaze had dried, painters added glazes of colored oxides to create designs, and then the vessel was fired a second time. See Frank and Janet Hamer, The Potter’s Dictionary of Materials and Techniques, 4th ed. (London: A.C. Black, 1997), s.v. “Maiolica”; W. David Kingery and Meredith Aranson, “On the Technology of Renaissance Maiolica Glazes,” Faenza 5 (1990): 226–35.5 – Ovid, Metamorphoseos vulgare (Venice: Z. Rosso, 1497). For a recent edition, see Ovidio Metamorphoseos vulgare, trans. Giovanni Bonsignore (Bologna: Commission per i testi di lingua, 2001); Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Venice: A. Manutius, 1499). For recent analysis, see April Oettinger, “The Hypnerotomachia poliphili: Art and Play in a Renaissance Romance,” Word & Image 27, no. 1 (March 2011): 15–30.6 – John Varriano, Taste and Temptation: Food and Art in Renaissance Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 172.7 – Alison Holcroft, “Francesco Xanto Avelli and Petrarch,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 51 (1988): 225–34; Timothy Wilson, “Xanto and Ariosto,” Burlington Magazine 132 (May 1990): 321–27; Mallet, Xanto: Pottery-Painter, Poet, Man of the Italian Renaissance, 37; Dora Thornton and Timothy Wilson, Italian Renaissance Ceramics: A Catalogue of the British Museum Collections (London: British Museum, 2009), 256.8 – L’istoriato libri a stampa e maioliche italiane del cinquecento (Faenza: Gruppo Editoriale Faenza, 1993); Świetlicka, Ceramika Rafaela, 203–43; Ilaria Andreoli, “‘Fabulae Artificialiter Pictae’: Illustrazione del Libro e Decorazione Ceramica nel Rinascimento,” in Fabulae Pictae: Miti e storie nelle maiolica del Rinascimento, ed. Marino Marini (Milan: Giunti, 2012), 110–25.9 – Richard Goldthwaite, “The Economic and Social World of Italian Renaissance Maiolica,” Renaissance Quarterly 42, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 1–32.10 – See Francesco Liverani, “Sei maioliche del rinascimento italiano: preliminari allo studio delle iscrizioni nell’istoriato ceramico,” in Italian Renaissance Pottery, ed. Timothy Wilson (London: British Museum, 1991), 46–50.11 – For examples, see entries for maiolica and other ceramics vessels in the collections of the Gonzaga of Mantua: Daniela Ferrari, Le Collezioni Gonzaga: L’Inventario dei Beni del 1540–1542 (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2003), entries 1414–1416, 1515–1517, 5472, 5474, 5475, 5541, 5542, 5552–5554.12 – Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, Marvels of Maiolica: Italian Renaissance Ceramics from the Corcoran Gallery of Art Collection (Charlestown, MA: Bunker Hill Publishing, 2004), 29.13 – See diners in Paolo Veronese’s The Wedding Feast at Cana (1563), originally displayed in the refectory of the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice and now in the collection of the Musée du Louvre in Paris.14 – J. V. G. Mallet, “Mantua and Urbino: Gonzaga Patronage of Maiolica,” Apollo 114 (1981): 162–69; Musacchio, Marvels of Maiolica, 32.15 – See the banquet scene in Giulio Romano’s Sala di Psiche (1526–1528) in the Palazzo del Te in Mantua.16 – Lisa Boutin, “Displaying Identity in the Mantuan Court: The Maiolica of Isabella d’Este, Federico II Gonzaga, and Margherita Paleologa” (PhD dissertation, UCLA, 2011), 4.17 – Ken Albala, The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 18, 41.18 – Mallet, Xanto: Pottery-Painter, Poet, Man of the Italian Renaissance, 27. Marco Spallanzani, Ceramiche alla Corte dei Medici (Modena: F.C. Panini, 1994), 129: “Vedendo mangiare Nostro Signore su piatti di terra in bianco sopra bianco, ho dimandato al suo siscalco perché la Santità Sua non mangiava in quelli depinti a figure. Hamme detto lei non mangiare in altro, reservando quelli per uso di Cardinali” [Seeing Our Lord eat on earthenware plates decorated with white-on-white decoration, I asked his steward why His Holiness was not eating from ones painted with figures. I received the answer that he never ate off anything else, reserving the other kind for the use of cardinals]. Giovanmaria Della Porta in Viterbo to the Duchess of Urbino in Urbino, July 7, 1528, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Urbino, Classe I, Divisione G, filza 265, c. 86r.19 – J. V. G. Mallet and Franz Adrian Dreier, The Hockemeyer Collection: Maiolica and Glass (Bremen: H. M. Hauschild, 1998), 35.20 – Thierry Crépin-Leblond and Pierre Ennès, eds., Le Dressoir du prince: Services d’apparat à la Renaissance (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1995), 66.21 – See Rudolf Wachter, Non-Attic Greek Vase Inscriptions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). For a discussion of the creative ways of using inscriptions in ancient Greece, see Alexandre G. Mitchell, Greek Vase-Painting and the Origins of Visual Humour (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 166.22 – Ancient vases were referred to generically as “Greek,” as documented in 1491 in Lorenzo de’Medici’s collection. See Laurie Fusco and Gino Corti, Lorenzo de’ Medici: Collector and Antiquarian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 72–73.23 – Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite de’più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori, ed. G. Milanesi. 9 vols, vol. 4 (Florence: Sansoni, 1906), 581–82: “E dovemo sapere che di questa sorte pitture in vasi non ebbono, per quanto si può giudicare, i Romani. Perciochè i vasi che si sono trovati di que’tempi, pieni delle ceneri de’loro morti, o in altro modo, sono pieni di figure graffiate e campite d’un colore solo in qualche parte o nero o rosso o bianco, e non mai con lustro d’invetriato, nè con quella vaghezza e varietà di pitture che si sono vedute e veggiono a’ tempi nostri” [As far as we know, the Romans did not have this type of painting on pottery. The vessels from those days that have been found filled with the ashes of their dead are covered with figures incised and washed in with one color in any given area, sometimes in black, red, or white, but never with the brilliance of glaze nor the charm and variety of painting which has been seen in our day]. Vasari may have been especially familiar with ceramics. His family name was derived from the term vasaio (potter), and, in fact, his grandfather worked as a potter in Arezzo. See Patricia Rubin, Giorgio Vasari: Art and History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 61.24 – Elisa Sani, Italian Renaissance Maiolica (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2012), 93.25 – Boutin, “Displaying Identity in the Mantuan Court,” 31–32.26 – Lili Fang, Chinese Ceramics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 59–114. Stacey Pierson, From Object to Concept: Global Consumption and the Transformation of Ming Porcelain (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013), 6–9.27 – Timothy Wilson, “Nicola da Urbino,” in Majolique: La faïence au temps des humanistes, ed. Françoise Barbe and Thierry Crépin-Leblond (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2011), 156–61. There are 128 dishes attributed to Nicola da Urbino, either as painter or inscriber. All but four are listed in the appendix in J.V.G. Mallet, “Nicola da Urbino and Francesco Xanto Avelli,” Faenza 93 (2007): 199–250. The following have recently been sold at auction: a dish from Isabella d’Este’s service that sold at Christie’s in Paris on December 17, 2009, a dish that sold at Sotheby’s in London on July 6, 2010, a dish that sold at Christie’s in London on May 24, 2011, and a dish that sold at Christie’s in London on July 5, 2012.28 – Thornton and Wilson, Italian Renaissance Ceramics, cat. 147 and 148.29 – For canto XXV, see Mallet, Xanto: Pottery-Painter, Poet, Man of the Italian Renaissance, 178. The wording of the canto is different from the reverse of the dish, but the subject matter of war and peace is similar.30 – Ibid., cat. 35.31 – Talvalcchia,“Professional Advancement,” 130; J. V. G. Mallet, “Xanto: I suoi compagni e seguaci,” in Francesco Xanto Avelli da Rovigo: atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, 1980 (Rovigo, 1988), 67–108.32 – Sani, Italian Renaissance Maiolica, 137.33 – Marta Ajmar, “Talking Pots: Strategies for Producing Novelty and the Consumption of Painted Pottery in Renaissance Italy,” in The Art Market in Italy (15th–17th Centuries), ed. Marcello Fantoni, Louisa Chevalier Matthew, and Sarah Matthews Grieco (Modena: F.C. Panini, 2003), 55–64; Marta Ajmar-Wollheim and Flora Dennis, At Home in Renaissance Italy (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2006), 214.34 – Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists, trans. Charles Burton Gulick (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927–1941).35 – Giovanni della Casa, Galateo: Or, The Rules of Polite Behavior, trans. M. F. Rusnak (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 11, 73–76.36 – Mallet, Xanto: Pottery-Painter, Poet, Man of the Italian Renaissance, cat. 52.37 – Sani, Italian Renaissance Maiolica, 138–48.38 – Timothy Wilson, “Un ‘intricamento’ tra Leonardo ed Arcimbaldo,” Ceramic’Antica 15, no. 2 (February 2005), 10–44.39 – Patrizia E. P. Biscarini and Giuseppe M. Nardelli, “Alcune Riflessioni sulla Coppa Erotica dell’Ashomolean Museum di Oxford,” Ceramic’Antica 16, no. 10 (November 2006): 48–50.40 – Albala, The Banquet, 49.41 – Early modern banqueters possessed a greater willingness to consume a wider variety of organs and body parts than modern diners. See ibid., 24, 53, 68, 72, 204.42 – Howard Coutts, The Art of Ceramics: European Ceramic Design, 1500–1830 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 33, fig. 40.43 – For an account of a 1511 banquet at the Villa Belvedere accompanied by music and poetry, see Roy Strong, Feast: A History of Grand Eating (London: Pimlico, 2002), 163.44 – H. Colin Slim, “Music in Majolica,” Early Music 12, no. 3 (August 1984): 371–73; Carmen Ravanelli Guidotti, Musica di smalto (Ferrara: Belriguardo, 2004); Flora Dennis, “Scattered Knives and Dismembered Song: Cutlery, Music and the Rituals of Dining,” Renaissance Studies 24, no. 1 (January 2010): 156–84.45 – Rudolf E. A. Drey, “Istoriato maiolica with Scenes from the Second Punic War. Livy’s History of Rome as Source Material,” in Italian Renaissance Pottery, ed. Timothy Wilson (London: British Museum, 1991), 51–61.46 – Thornton and Wilson, Italian Renaissance Ceramics, cat. 192.47 – Stefano Guazzo, La Civil Conversazione (Brescia: Bozzola, 1574).48 – Girolamo Bargagli, Dialogo de’ Giuochi che nelle vegghie sanesi si usano di fare (Venice: Griffio, 1592), 60.49 – Thornton and Wilson, Italian Renaissance Ceramics, 326.50 – Ajmar, “Talking Pots,” 61.51 – Mallet, Xanto: Pottery-Painter, Poet, Man of the Italian Renaissance, 128–29.52 – Alison Holcroft, “Francesco Xanta Avelli and Petrarch,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes (1988): 225–34. See Petrarch, Trionfo della fama II, 103–105.53 – Holcroft, “Francesco Xanto Avelli and Petrarch,” 234.54 – Ibid., 225–34.55 – For the Gian Giacomo Caraglio engraving after Raphael, see The Illustrated Bartsch XV (95), no. 62. For Sodoma’s fresco, see Frances Ames-Lewis, The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 188–89.56 – Amedeo Belluzzi, Palazzo Te a Mantova (Modena: F.C. Panini Editore, 1998).
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