AN URBINO MAIOLICA ISTORIATO DISH
Lot 8 PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT ITALIAN COLLECTION

AN URBINO MAIOLICA ISTORIATO DISH

CIRCA 1535-40, THE REVERSE INSCRIBED LA DEA LAFONA IN BLUE SCRIPT

Closed4 June 2013

Price Realised

GBP 31,250

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AN URBINO MAIOLICA ISTORIATO DISH
CIRCA 1535-40, THE REVERSE INSCRIBED la dea lafona IN BLUE SCRIPT
Painted with the Goddess latona kneeling to drink at a stream beside her two children, holding a bowl in her left hand, a group of three men standing in the stream before her with their hands in the water, in a wooded landscape with distant buildings, within a blue line and ochre band border, the reverse with four concentric yellow bands (very minor chipping to rim)
10 1/8 in. (25.7 cm.) diam.

The Antique and Decorative Arts League, Inc., New York, 1925 according to red label attached to reverse.
Harry A. Norton, Montreal; Sotheby's sale, New York, 25 October 1968, lot 49.
Paolo Sprovieri Collection.

Specialist note

The scene is a story from Book VI of Ovid's Metamorphoses, where Latona, the mother of Apollo and Diana, was travelling and when thirsty stopped to drink at a lake in Lycia. She was prevented from drinking by a group of men working the osier beds who muddied the water and she promptly punished them by turning them in to frogs.

Two dishes with a version of the same scene are in the British Museum, see Dora Thornton and Timothy Wilson, Italian Renaissance Ceramics, A Catalogue of the British Museum Collection, Vol. I, London, 2009, pp. 331-332, no. 195 and p. 343, no. 202. Wilson discusses the composition of the figures which are similar to those on a plate by Nicola da Urbino (now in Verona) from the set made in around 1524 for Isabella d'Este, suggesting that the artist was either in contact with Nicola or had access to the drawings used at his workshop, see Timothy Wilson, ibid., 1996, pp. 243-244, no. 102.