An Italian maiolica Group of the Madonna and Child Pesaro or perhaps Tuscany,circa 1490-1510

the Virgin standing in introspection wearing a flower-embroidered reddish-ochre robe, the infant Child in a short tunic, nestled under the protection of her green-lined blue cloak, touching her breast and holding an apple, the details of their features picked out in blue,  a star on her shoulder, the apple in his hand and the yellow edges of their robes with traces of cold-painted gold lacquer,circular painted wood base ( some repair and losses)

The group has been damaged along its mould lines and elsewhere, particularly at the back and the base, and repaired with plaster which has been cold-painted. Both heads are hollow, presumably for the fitting of gold crowns or haloes, and now also filled with plaster. The maiolica itself is in largely good condition, with some typical flaking and minor chips
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Leaving aside the glazed terracottas of the Della Robbia family, the sculpture of the maiolica potters of the Renaissance is usually regarded as being of no great importance, amounting to some minor figural groups and decorative inkwells at Urbino and precious little else, the whole emphasis of the maiolica potters being on painting.

The exception to this is a small and relatively homogeneous group of extraordinary pieces, dating from around 1500, about which little is known for sure, and to which this newly-discovered piece clearly belongs.  They largely comprise eight groups of the seated Madonna and Child, including one in the British Museum, and four other versions of this figure, in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the Museo Civico in Turin, the Gardiner Museum in Toronto and in the Pflueger collection, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as well as a few busts and relief panels which may be related.

In previous times attributed to Faenza, a high proportion of the most closely-related members of this group of important maiolica sculpture seems to have a provenance in or around Pesaro, although there is no concrete evidence to link them firmly to manufacture there, and recent  analysis of clay structures has suggested that Siena may be another possibility.

As to dating, a seated Madonna and Child similar to the British Museum's example, formerly in the D'Azeglio collection and now thought to be in a private collection in the United States, is dated 1499 and seems to be very close in date to our own group, though the incongruous date 1551 is found on the Pflueger example of this group.

For a full discussion of the attribution and dating of this rare class, together with a list of the known pieces , see Dora Thornton and Timothy Wilson, Italian Renaissance Ceramics, A Catalogue of the British Museum Collection, item 213, pp.359-361.