A RARE URBINO MAIOLICA ARMORIAL TONDO circa 1523-40

Workshop of Guido Durantino, finely painted with Polyphemus and Galatea, a reclining youth, perhaps Acis, seated on a rock playing a syrinx, the pipes of Pan, Galatea standing watching from beside a rock nearby, in a moonlit scene, the yellow and terra-cotta ground armorial of a lion rampant bearing a bishop's mitre above 

The Cottreau Collection, sold Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, auction 28^th/29^th April 1910, illustrated

Sotheby’s would like to thank John Mallet for his kind assistance in the cataloguing of this lot.

M.Brody, ‘Istoriato Maiolica With the Arms of Giacomo Nordi, Bishop of Urbino, 1523-1540’, no.16

The arms are those of Giacomo Nordi, Bishop of Urbino, 1523-1540.  Until quite recently the arms were unidentified. The service was first attributed to the Nordi family - and more specifically to Bishop Nordi - by Corrado Leonardi. Sixteen pieces from the service are known and have been published by M.Brody, op.cit. (Masters Program in the History of the Decorative Arts/Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, 1998). Among the known examples are those in the Victoria and Albert Museum (B.Rackham, Catalogue, pl.146, no.907), in the Louvre (see J.Giacomotti, Catalogue des majoliques des musées nationaux, no.1013) and at Polesden Lacey (see J.Mallet, Apollo, November 1970, p.340, fig.2). See also the plate from the Robert Lehman Collection, sold in these Rooms, 17^th October 1989, lot 129.

The service has been discussed most recently by C.Fiocco, G.Gherardi and L.Sfeir-Fakhri, Majoliques Italiennes du musées des arts decoratifs de Lyon, Collection Gillet, (2001),  pp.240-242, fig.160 and 161 where two further plates are illustrated and the present lot is mentioned, p.240.

 

There is also a flask in the Museo Civico, Bologna (see C.Ravanelli Guidotti’s Catalogue- Ceramiche occidentali del Museo Civico Medievale di Bologna, (1985), no.105, and another in the Museo Civico di Forli. Not all the service appears to have been painted by the same artist, though several of the known pieces are attributed by Mallet to the painter of part of the celebrated service made for Anne de Montmorency.

 

See also the previous lot.