An Italian armorial Istoriato-ware bowl depicting Diana and Actaeon, attributed to the workshop of Ludovico and Angelo Picchi, circa 1550, Castel Durante

bearing an unidentified coat of arms surmounted by a banner inscribed with the motto SAPIES DOMINABITUR ASTRIS, the foot painted with yellow bands around the edge, footring and edge of the well, indistinctly painted in the center in blue: l'ateono (?)

Minor chipping around rim and foot. Minor surface abrasions. Very minor pits in glaze from firing.
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This bowl depicts the ill-fated hunter Actaeon, who has just stumbled upon Diana and her nymphs bathing.  The startled Diana in anger causes him to be transformed into a stag.  Actaeon is shown here in mid-transformation, with a stag's head on his human body, before he falls prey to his own hunting hounds.

Pieces from this service are recognizable by the motto above the unidentified coat of arms, SAPIES DOMINABITUR ASTRIS ("the wise man will be master of the stars"); at least 23 are known, nearly all in museum collections, making it the most numerous extant Castel Durante service.  Although lacking signatures or any documentation of the commission, they belong to a body of work by a prolific Castel Durante workshop, tentatively identified as that of brothers Ludovico and Angelo Picchi, based upon their known authorship of a set of pharmacy jars of 1562-3 with the arms of Boerio (Wilson and Thornton 2009, no. 228).  The service features a mixture of biblical and mythological subjects and includes several duplicates.

For a listing of known examples bearing the SAPIES... motto see the entry for the Hercules and Deianira bowl in the recent catalogue of maiolica in the British Museum (Thornton and Wilson 2009, no. 230).  This includes two which are dated 1551, and two of the subject Diana and Acteon, along with three other "possible additions" (ibid., footnote 25), and among those another Diana and Acteon.  Another depicting the Adoration of the Shepherds was sold at Beaussant Lefèvre in Paris, June 4, 2010, lot 39.

The unusual rendering of Actaeon with a stag's head is similar to the representation of Jupiter becoming a swan on a plate by the same workshop also in the British Museum (Thornton and Wilson 2009, no. 231)

RELATED LITERATURE

Dora Thornton and Timothy Wilson, Italian Renaissance Ceramics: a catalogue of the British Museum collection, London, 2009