Master Sculpture & Works of Art
Master Sculpture & Works of Art
Property from a European Collection
Istoriato Plate with Moses' Trial by Fire
Auction Closed
February 7, 08:37 PM GMT
Estimate
8,000 - 12,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Property from a European Collection
Possibly by Francesco Urbini (active circa 1530–40)
Italian, Urbino, Gubbio-Lustred, dated 1533
Istoriato Plate with Moses' Trial by Fire
painted with Moses' trial by fire; the reverse with lustered scrolls and dated 1533 . P; with modern collector’s labels.
tin-glazed earthenware (maiolica)
diameter: 10 ½ in.; 26.7 cm
Berney Collection, Bracon Hall, Norwich;
Sotheby's London, 18 June 1946, lot 24;
Sotheby's Florence, 17 October 1969, lot 75;
Where acquired.
B. Rackham, in Burlington Magazine vol. LXI, November 1932, no. CCCLVI;
G. Ballardini, Corpus della maiolica italiana, II, Rome 1938, fig. 84;
G. Liverani, in Faenza XLLII, 1956, no. 5, pl. LIXb.
South Kensington Museum 1862, Catalogue no.5231
The story of Moses' trial by fire, which is was related by Petrus Comestor, the 12th century French theological writer and teacher, was infrequently depicted in art. Although a painting of the same subject-matter, attributed to Giorgione circa 1505, is in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
When one day Terimith had presented him to Pharaoh, that he might adopt him, the king admiring the boy's beauty placed the crown, which he happened to be wearing at the time, on his head. And there was an image of Ammon wrought on it. However the boy threw the crown to the ground and broke it. And the priest Heliopoleos, rising from the king's side, cried out: 'This is the boy whom God has shown us to kill, that we may be free from the fear of the rest,' and he wanted to rush upon him, but he was delivered by the help of the king, and by the persuasion of a certain wise man who asserted that the boy had done this through ignorance. In proof of which, when he brought burning coals to the boy, the boy put them to his mouth, and burned the tip of his tongue with fire (translated from Latin, as related by Petrus Comestor).
It has been suggested by Timothy Wilson, in written correspondence after viewing a photograph of the present plate, that this dish may be Francesco Urbini, the painter of the celebrated phallic plate in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Mallet discusses this painter in his 1979 article.1
The initial 'P' on this plate is almost certainly that of the person who applied the luster, not the main painter of the subject. The letter P occurs some other examples of Gubbio lusterware around this date, for example a relief-molded bowl in the Musée Adrien-Dubouché at Limoges.2 Timothy Wilson, in written correspondence and from a photograph only, has suggested two hypothetical candidates to identify P: Vittorio di Filippo called “Prestino”, a Gubbio potter documented from 1528 to 1586, by whom a signed relief dated 1536 is in the Louvre and a dish dated 1557 in the Wallace Collection3 and Paolo di Francesco of Deruta, documented as an associate of Maestro Giorgio in Gubbio from 1508 to 1531; it has been suggested he might have been Francesco “Urbini”’s father.4
Our thanks to Paul Taylor, Head of the Photographic Collection at the Warburg Institute for identifying the subject of this piece
1 J.V.G. Mallet, ‘Francesco Urbini in Gubbio and Deruta’ in Faenza 65, 1979, pp. 279-96; T. Wilson, Italian Maiolica and Europe, Oxford, 2017, no. 116
2J. Giacomotti, Catalogue des majoliques des musées nationaux, 1974, Paris, no.713
3 D. Thornton and T. Wilson, Italian Renaissance Ceramics. A catalogue of the British Museum collection, London, 2009, p. 521
4 Ibid., p. 531