Workshop of the Pompei family - Castelli, circa 1574 - 1589, Two plates with arms of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese

The service was first recorded in an inventory of 1644 and subsequently listed in a second inventory of the Palazzo Farnese, Rome, in 1653, comprising at least 144 pieces. Today, seventy-two plates survive in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples, two of which are dated 1574 and bear the letter C followed by a symbol, probably indicating manufacture at Castelli.

Variations in form, glaze, and decoration among the surviving pieces suggest that the service may have been produced in more than one consignment, and possibly in more than one workshop, up to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese’s death in 1589. This type of pottery was already being made in Castelli before 1566: a plate bearing the arms of Cardinal Michele Ghisleri—who became Pope Pius V in 1566—is preserved in the MAK Collection, Vienna (T. Wilson 2022, cat. no. 179).

The production of maiolica decorated in gold and white on a dark blue glaze ground, as seen in the Farnese service, represents a significant technical innovation in Italian ceramics. The Pompei family workshop in Castelli, active from before 1566, appears to have been the first Italian center to experiment successfully with the use of gold decoration on maiolica on an industrial scale. Excavations carried out in 1985 confirmed that this type of pottery was a characteristic production of Castelli, particularly of the leading workshop of Orazio Pompei, who may have produced all or most of the Farnese service.

The arms at the center of the plates are those of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (1520–1589), politician, diplomat, and major patron of the arts, who in 1568 commissioned the Chiesa del Gesù in Rome, designed by the architect Vignola.

Related Literature

L. Arbace, La maiolica Italiana, Museo della Ceramica Duca di Martina, Napoli, 1996, p. 108, cat nos. 133-138;

T. Wilson, Italian Maiolica and Europe, Oxford, 2017, p. 261, cat. no. 118;

T. Wilson and C. Maritano, L'Italia del Rinascimento, Lo Splendore della Maiolica, Torino, 2019, p. 159, cat. no. 123;

T. Wilson, Tin-glaze and Image Culture, Vienna, 2022, p. 223, cat. 179.