The Beginnings of Lustreware in Renaissance Italy
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THE BEGINNINGS OF LUSTREWARE IN RENAISSANCE ITALY Timothy Wilson In his Dcscrittioiie di tntta Italia, published in 1550, Leandro Alberti wrote a short panegyric of the lustred pottery made in the little town of Deruta in Umbria: The pottery made here is celebrated for being worked in such a way that it seems gilt. And the work is so cunningly carried out that up to now no craftsman in Italy has been able to equal it, although experiments and attempts to make similar work have often been made. These vases are called Maiolica, because originally the technique was discovered on the island of Majorca, and it was brought here from there'. This contains two misconceptions: Deruta was not the only place in Italy where lustre was successfully made, and the technique was not discovered in Majorca. If so well-informed a contemporary was awry, it is not surprising if the origin and early history of Italian lustreware are still among the most problematic subjects in the history of Renaissance pottery. The purpose of this article is to examine some of the problems and to give some account of recent Italian research on the subject. One of the grandest pieces of pottery of the 15th century is the wing-handled jar once owned by Horace Walpole, subsequently part of the Godman Figure 1. Valencia region, after 1465. British Museum. Bequest of 1983 to the British Museum, and now resplendent in the Museum’s new Renaissance and later gallery2 (fig. 1). It was made in Spain, near the listed in aristocratic inventories in medieval Europe: Christian port of Valencia, probably at the small it was (with the exception of rare imports from town of Manises. The amts, between bands of blue Islamic southern Spain) simply kitchenware, too and lustre leaves, are those of Medici; in the upper cheap to deserve mention. roundel are the lilies granted by the King of France However, Spain was heir to a different tradition, in 1465 to Piero de’ Medici (‘the Gouty’) and subse stemming from Islam, where potter)’ had for quently borne by his branch of the family. These centuries been seen as having aesthetic value. This amts and the ring and feathers device on the back esteem for potter)’ was linked to two technical indicate that the jar was made on commission for or inventions, glazing pottery with a white tin glaze, as a gift to Piero, or for his son Lorenzo ‘the and decorating it with metallic lustre.5 Magnificent’, who succeeded as head of the family Both inventions appear to have been made in in 1469 and died in 1492.’ what is now Iraq, around 800 AD. Adding tin to a This ambitious jar (or perhaps more accurately glaze to turn it white seems to have been an attempt ‘vase’4) surely had no storage function: it is an object to imitate white-bodied imports from China. Lustre made for display, almost for its own sake. Such a is thought to have been a variant of a technique long-distance commission for luxury potter)’ would previously known to glass-makers. Compounds have been unusual before the 15th century. Potter)’ containing silver and/or copper are applied to was widely used all over medieval Europe, and tin potter)’ that has already been thrown, fired, glazed, glaze had been known in Italy for two centuries; but often painted in colours, and fired a second time; the potter)’ had not before in the Christian West aspired pot is then given a third, low-temperature firing. to the condition of art. Potter)’ is virtually never The essential technical process is ‘reduction’: during 35 happened is not clear, but there is evidence that the local Buyl family fostered the industry in Manises and encouraged Islamic potters to settle there. The term used in Spanish throughout the 14th and 15th centuries to describe lustreware is obra de malequa, ‘Malaga ware’, but Manises soon outstripped Malaga as a production centre. During the 14th century the potters developed a style eloquently blending their Islamic heritage with Christian and ‘Gothic’ elements. Among the best customers of the Valencian potters were the wealthy families of Florence. Archaeological finds from Tuscany, documentary evidence, and numerous surviving lustred dishes and jars with the amis of Florentine families10 testify to the long-lasting fashion in Tuscany for Spanish lustrewares. For most of the 15th century, if Figure 2. Probably Florence region, c. 1450. Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam. members of a grand Florentine family wanted prestige pottery, the most natural thing to do was to the firing, oxygen is driven out of the kiln and the order it from Spain," perhaps through one of the metal oxides are converted into a thin layer of metal Florentine merchant companies that maintained particles on and in the surface of the glaze; when agents in Valencia. Occasionally we have archival cleaned, this has an iridescent surface that ranges in record of such commissions: documents in the colour from golden-yellow to red. Copper tends to archive of the ‘Merchant of Prato’, Francesco di produce red lustre, while silver tends to produce Marco Datini, record him in 1401-2 arranging the yellowish, but the conditions of firing also affect the import of Valencian lustreware into Venice,12 and colour. the inventory of a Pisan merchant made in 1480° Tin-glazing and lustring potter)' spread through lists a quantity of Valencian dishes bearing his arms. the expanding Islamic world in succeeding centuries. The shield shapes on most armorial examples are Some sumptuous dishes from various parts of the characteristic of Italian, rather than Spanish, heraldry: Islamic world found their way from the 11 th century evidently, Florentines sent drawings of their amis for onwards to Pisa, where they were set into church Moslem potters to copy; just as, three centuries later, facades. Since these so-called bacini are sometimes on European aristocrats sent bookplates to China to be datable buildings, they are key documents for the copied onto export porcelain. history of Islamic pottery.6 The phrase used in the 1480 inventory and By the 13th century, elegant lustred pottery was constantly to describe imported lustrewares in Italian being made at the westernmost extremity of the documents is lauori di maiolicha. Maiolica is the Islamic world, at Malaga, in the Kingdom of medieval Italian name for Majorca, which lies not far Granada. In 1337 an Islamic writer wrote that ofF shore from Valencia and was a trans-shipment Malaga was famous ‘for ironwork and for its golden point for Western Mediterranean trade. There is no pottery, the like of which is not known elsewhere’; good evidence that lustre was made in Majorca in and another a few yean later wrote that ‘in Malaga is the late Middle Ages, and it has been suggested that made a wonderful golden pottery and it is sent the currency of the temi in Italian arose from a abroad to far-distant lands’.7 Malaga potters probably misunderstanding by Italians of the Spanish obra dc made some of the most stupendous achievements in malequa.'* Confusion there may have been, and a the history of ceramics, the huge vases for the philological study of the early uses of the word Alhambra in Granada.8 That Malaga lustreware was would be of interest; but Italian documents tend to sent to ‘far-distant lands’ was no exaggeration: spell the word in such a way as to suggest that the Malagan bacini are found on 13th century Pisan writers are thinking of the island. Alberti was not churches; and excavations all over Europe (including alone in supposing that lustre was actually made in England and Ireland) and North Africa of high-status Majorca. 13th- and 14th-century sites have turned up Whatever its origin, maiolica to 15th century fragments of Malagan lustreware.7 Italians meant lustreware imported from Spain; and In the years after 1300 a number of Moslem later, when Italians themselves learnt to make lustre potters migrated up the coast of Spain to the ware, maiolica was the word used to describe these Valencia region, in particular to Manises. Why this products. Not till after the middle of the 16th 36 pottery imitated Valencian motifs without being able to reproduce the lustre. Apart from its technical brilliance, there was perhaps another element in the fascination cast by Valencian lustrewares throughout Europe - alchemy. A principal aim of medieval magic and science was the search for the ‘philosopher’s stone’, which could turn base substances into gold. When medieval and Renaissance writers mention lustreware it is gold that they think of. Cipriano Piccolpasso, in his Three Books of the Potter’s Art (c. 1557), writes of Gubbio lustre: ‘and when the work comes out well, it seems like gold’.18 For the medieval European, there was a precise sense in which lustreware may have seemed magical - golden pottery without the use of gold. Vannuccio Biringuccio of Siena, in his treatise on metallurgy (1540), wrote that: ‘The principal basis [of pottery] is derived from two things - the art of drawing and various secrets and alchemical mixtures’.1'' If ordinary pottery could seem alchemy, far more so lustreware. Occasional attempts were made in the 15th century to apply real gold to pottery, principally in the Della Robbia workshop in Florence. The earliest instance may be the ceramic mosaic on the tomb of Benozzo Federighi, Bishop of Fiesole, which was installed 1454-1459 in the church of San Pancrazio in Florence (and is now in Santa Trinita); it contains ceramic mosaic panels some of which have gold on them20. Later in the century, altar vases with simulated flowers became a regular part of the workshop’s production; some retain traces of gilding.