Maiolica Collection

Dish with two lute-players

Ferrara, probably, c. 1470 - 1500

40.cm (diameter)

earthenware; glazed incised slipware

Incised slipware is rarely marked or dated, and pieces similar in technique and design were made over a wide area, but especially in the domains of the d’Este Dukes of Ferrara. The most sophisticated and elegant pieces of this particular type, especially those redolent of a “courtly love” tradition, are usually attributed to Ferrara, or sometimes Bologna, but there is little firm archaeological or documentary evidence published of the location of workshops: local attribution will remain hazardous until more systematic excavations of Renaissance sites, ideally production sites, have been carried out.

Bibliography: Fortnum 1897, p. 57, pl. VII.

Mallet 1978, p. 397, fig. 2.

Wilson 1989/2003, no. 30.

R. Magnani, La ceramica ferrarese fra Medioevo e Rinascimento (Ferrara, 1981), I, p. 113, tav. XVIII.

Poole 1995, p. 508.

R. Magnani, “La ceramica graffita padano-veneta”, CeramicAntica anno 8, no. 1 (January 1998), p. 29.

L. Syson in S.J. Campbell (ed.), Cosmè Tura. Painting and Design in Renaissance Ferrara (exhib. cat., Isabella Stewart Garner Museum, Boston, 2002), pp. 62-3.

Presented by C. D. E. Fortnum, 1888.  WA1888.CDEF.C401