Italian, Montelupo, 17th century

boldly painted in bright colours with a young man brandishing swords in a stylised river landscape

A Montelupo maiolica dish, 17th century There is a 6cm. long hair crack at 5 o'clock. Most of the rim lacking glaze but smooth, so may have been largely made that way. Typical other wear and minor flaking.
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This well-known type appears to have been made from the late sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries, and showed single or double figures of soldiers, peasants, merchants and other characters, very often against this bright yellow ochre ground.

The documentary example for this well-defined group of Montelupo wares is a dish in the V&A inscribed 'Raffaello Girolamo fecit M.tel.po' and dated 1639 (inv. no. 6668-1860); another dish in the V&A is dated 1632 (inv. no. 4385-1857).

The young man here is holding a rapier in each hand and is therefore likely to be heading for a duel rather than a war; fighting with two swords was a known technique, regarded as very skilled and demanding.