A documentary Urbino maiolica architectural inkstand, probably Patanazzi workshop, 1580-1600

in the form of a hexagonal model temple (tempietto), one side with a door aperture beneath a scrolling shield inscribed 'Urbini', the opposite side with a green-painted door, the other sides each with a niche containing a figure of one of the Cardinal Virtues with their attributes, the walls decorated with grotesques and cameos, the marbled dividing columns surmounted by putti playing horns and stringed instruments, the divided upper container painted with quill pens, a signet ring, and a set of six writing implements,

The Collection of Baron Paolo Sprovieri

Illustrated: Timothy Wilson, Italian Maiolica of the Renaissance, 1996, no.154, pp.386-388

A few minor racks and many chips, glaze flakes and minor losses, but substantially intact. Some painting and restoration to marbled columns. Probably originally had a cover and perhaps a drop-down door.
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The inscription on this ambitious inkwell and on a few other pieces (see Johanna Lessmann, Italienische Majolika, 1979, p.234 and no. 261) enables us to attribute this small group of sculptural pieces to Urbino, and stylistically most probably to the Patanazzi workshop which seems to have been the largest of its time.

The model is likely originally to have had a cover, presumably modelled as a roof, and perhaps also a slip-in door fitting into a slot in the open aperture.

A similarly elaborate inkwell, with a cover modelled as a large group of Apollo and the Muses, inscribed 'Urbino Patanazzi fecit anno 1584' in the Friedsam Collection at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, acc. no. 32.100.363a–f, is illustrated by Wilson, op.cit., p.384.

Around twenty of these more elaborate inkwells exist, though few as ambitious as the present example. The type, and the brief late sixteenth century fashion for such inkwells shown by mentions in inventories, are discussed by Julia Poole, A Catalogue of Italian Maiolica...in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 1995, pp.405-406.