Live Auction 1162Centuries of Style, Silver, European Ceramics, Portrait Miniatures and Gold Boxes
A DERUTA MAIOLICA DISH
Lot 14

A DERUTA MAIOLICA DISH

CIRCA 1540-60

Closed27 November 2013

Price Realised

GBP 5,000

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A DERUTA MAIOLICA DISH
CIRCA 1540-60
The centre painted with a Patron Saint, perhaps Saint Geminianus, standing barefoot, holding a book in one hand and a model of a building in another, with a crozier and his Bishop's mitre at his feet, with flowering plants and buildings in the distance, within an ochre-ground border with a continuous band of blue foliate scrolls forming yellow-ground panels enclosing foliate motifs alternating with pendant foliage, the footrim pierced for suspension (crack from rim at 3 o'clock and extending around well, crack to rim at 6 o'clock, branching glaze crack to reverse)
14.7/8 in. (37.8 cm.) diam.

Specialist note

For an example of a dish painted with Saint Lucia in a similar landscape and incorporating similar foliate motifs in the border see Jeanne Giacomotti, Catalogue des majoliques des Musées nationaux, Paris, 1974, p. 156, no. 521. A related Deruta dish painted with a standing saint is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London see museum no. CIRC.338-1919.

Saint Geminianus was Bishop of Modena and is thought to have died in 397. He rarely appears in art, but when shown is typically depicted as an elderly bishop holding a crozier and perhaps a model of the city of Modena, of which he is the patron. He was said to have twice saved the city of Modena from destruction, first by his intercession when it was under attack by Attila the Hun, and second from the danger of floods.