A CASTELLI BERETTINO-GROUND ARMORIAL 'TURCHINO-WARE' DISH

Excavations at the site of the Pompei workshop in Castelli in the 1980s uncovered a large quantity of fragments of kiln waste which relate to a number of different wares including the blue-ground Turchino wares. In the late 16th and 17th centuries Turchino ware was produced at a number of pottery centres in Italy and further afield in centres such as Nevers. In the Pescara exhibition catalogue Carmen Ravanelli Guidotti discusses the findings at Castelli, mounting a persuasive argument for attributing Cardinal Farnese's Turchino service, among others, to Castelli. Ravanelli Guidotti points out that a number of armorial sets were produced, many of them for ecclesiastical clients. See C. Ravanelli Guidotti, 'La Produzione Turchina: La Nascita e l'Affermarsi del Nuovo Gusto tra Manierismo e Barocco' in Vincenzo de Pompeis et al., Le Maioliche Cinquecentesche di Castelli, Pescara Exhibition Catalogue, Brescia, 1989, pp. 126-134, where she illustrates a very similar dish on p. 130, no. 32. For an armorial ewer with the same arms in the Louvre, Paris, see de Pompeis ibid., pl. C 120, no. 577 and also Jeanne Giacomotti, Catalogue des majoliques des musées nationaux, Paris, 1974, p. 408, no. 1210, where it is attributed to Faenza.