Marvels of Maiolica' New show at Taft Museum spotlights ceramic treasures of the Renaissance
Copyright Cincinatti Post, May 2005 By Jerry Stein Post arts writer
Maiolica, which had its origins in Italy during the Renaissance, is a ceramic notable not only for its great beauty, but also as a kind of glossy journal for the history and culture of its era. The Taft Museum of Art's new show "Marvels of Maiolica," which is up through June 18, features 30 pieces dating from about 1470-1590. The show was organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The Corcoran was beneficiary of a bequest from Sen. William A. Clark, a copper mine owner in Montana. His bequest included 120 examples of Italian Renaissance maiolica. The distinguished collection includes dishes, tiles, plaques, vessels and even an inkstand depicting historical events, religious scenes, mythology, heraldry and even erotica.
The exhibition, curated by David T. Johnson, deputy director for collections and chief curator at Hillwood Museum & Gardens, Washington, D.C., is also tied to the Taft's maiolica collection. Visitors will be directed to both collections. "What I've done is organize the exhibition to show the social, economic, political and artistic achievements of the Renaissance ... as demonstrated by maiolica or tin-glazed earthenware," Johnson said. Maiolica came into being as a more affordable and ultimately beautiful substitute for the highly prized but exorbitantly expensive Chinese porcelains developed during the Tang Dynasty (618-906 A.D.). "It was a luxury good that rarely made it to Europe," said Johnson, who was chief curator at the Taft before going Hillwood. "It could only be afforded by the very rich."
Meanwhile, in Baghdad in the 9th century a tin glaze that looked similar to the white ground of the Chinese porcelain was developed. This ground was placed on earthenware. Maiolica, also spelled majolica, has its roots in Majorca, the island near Spain. This island port began exporting to Europe the Islamic tin-glazed ceramics that were made in Spain. Spain had fallen under the dominance of the Moors or Berbers in the 8th century. "This was still a costly luxury good," Johnson said, "but a little more affordable."
By 1250, Italian potters had created a tin glaze comparable to the Islamic maiolica coming out of Majorca. Still, Italian maiolica remained expensive because tin had to be imported from Cornwall in Britain. The Taft exhibition has a helpful display on the making of maiolica created by the Indiana-based potter Susan Snyder. Snyder is the first woman in America to have graduated from an Italian academy teaching the art of maiolica. Italian clay has a color range from red to buff so it would distort the colors used to decorate earthenware if pigments were applied directly to it. The tin-glaze, made from the ash of tin and mixed with crushed glass, is applied to the earthenware. The creamy white glaze masks the dark Italian clay. The color pigments, used to decorate the tin glaze, are made from ground minerals. These pigments produce the oranges, yellows, blues, greens, and, occasionally, red that came later in the maiolica's development under the Medici. When these pigments are applied to the tin glaze ground, then fired, the brilliant hues associated with maiolica are produced.
The 16th century engineer and soldier Cipriano Piccolpasso, whose brother also was a maiolica potter, apparently was so enamored of the ceramic that he wrote a highly detailed three-volume work on just how maiolica was made. Piccolpasso augmented his documentation with drawings of the process. Copies of these drawings from the book are seen in the exhibition. The earliest maiolica piece in the show is a dish circa 1470-80. It depicts a historical event - the meeting of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV and the poet Francesco Petrarch in 1354. The composition, made at a workshop in Faenza or Tuscany, is quite symbolic.
"The eagle at bottom is the symbol of the Holy Roman emperor," Johnson said. "The king is larger and more dominant than anyone else because he is the emperor." The pose of the seated emperor with legs bent at right angles to the thighs is taken from a Renaissance playing card that later inspired the tarot cards. A print of the king playing card borrowed from the Cincinnati Art Museum is part of the exhibition. The suite of prints is used to show connections to the artwork on the various pieces of maiolica. As a testament to the expense of tin glaze, the Charles IV plate, like many others in the show, is covered with tin glaze only on its front. The back has a regular glaze. Also, decoration is more limited, if executed at all, on the backs of pieces. There was a pragmatic reason as well as economic reasons for not finishing backs of pieces with glaze and elaborate designs. Take the maiolica apothecary jars. There was little need for design on the backs of the jars. After all, the jars generally were set on shelves. Who was going to see the back sides then?
Other examples of maiolica: Tile with St. Martin and the Beggar (about 1500-1520): Maiolica was not limited to vessels and plates; it also manifested itself in tiles. While the Renaissance turned to humanism and secularism as subjects for art as exemplified in the keen interest in historical depictions, religion wasn't exactly bumped from prominence. This tile from Tuscany shows St. Martin of Tours cutting part of his cloak to share with a beggar. But such a tile likely would not have just been hanging decoratively on a wall glorifying charity. These tiles "would line a wall or a floor in a small room," Johnson said. "In the winter when you would have a charcoal brazier, the tiles would radiate heat. "In the summer, the tiles would insulate against the heat and keep it cooler. "And if you had tiles on the wood floor, that means all the nasty vermin and rats living under the floor couldn't get up."
albarello or pharmacy jars: These also are examples of maiolica being used for utilitarian purposes. The Albarello jars, indented or waisted midway down their cylindrical shape for better handling, were used to hold such dry ingredients as spices, drugs and confections. The openings of the jars were covered with parchment and tied to keep the ingredients fresh. The Albarello, Arabic for container, often reflected the influence of the early Islamic imported jars. The interlaced designs on the yellow bands are representative of Islamic patterns.
But on these apothecary jars, the Islamic patterns are combined with European figurative art. One Albarello jar (1510-1515) includes a lion's head, plumes, palmette leaves and elegantly draped festoons between the bands of Islamic patterns.
These popular fantastic designs are called grotesques. They originated with the discovery of Roman wall paintings found in the excavation at Rome in 1480 of Nero's Golden Room. The word grotesque comes from grotti or the whimsically decorated subterranean rooms in Nero's house. Plate with St. Paul Preaching at Athens. This plate (circa 1535) is an example of the transition of maiolica from being made collaboratively in workshops by anonymous artists to maiolica created solely by one accomplished fine artist. These pieces were very likely to carry the artist's signature or insignia and were dated. This virtuoso plate of the biblical scene, likely by Orazio Fontana, who left his identification mark on the plate, is based on Raphael's compositions for tapestries commissioned for the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. Johnson said plates like the St. Paul are examples of the advent of what is called istoriato, or narrative scenes. Storytelling on maiolica achieves its greatest development in the work of such artists as Francesco Xanto Avelli da Rovigo in the first half of the 16th century. Xanto signed his works, such as his "Plate with Palinurus Overboard," an episode from Virgil's "Aeneid" drawn from the Taft collection. He also supplied descriptions or even his own poetry on the backs of the plates, marking him as a well-educated artist.
Maiolica eventually was supplanted in 1708 when the secret of manufacturing Chinese porcelain was discovered in Germany. The discovery made porcelain all the rage in Europe at the expense of maiolica.
