AN ITALIAN MAIOLICA DATED ISTORIATO DISH

The subject depicted on the present dish showing the capture of Cathagena (New Carthage) is taken from a drawing by Giulio Romano (c.1499-1546) and is probably from the engraving by Georg Pencz executed in 1539 (see illustration). The original drawing was for a set of cartoons relating to a series of tapestries commissioned for Francis I, King of France and represent the victories of Scipio Africanus during the Second Punic War. The drawings by Giulio Romano and Giovanni Francesco Penni were sent to weavers in Brussels and the commission completed by 1535. These tapestries remained in the French Royal Collection until 1797 when they were destroyed in order to recover the precious metals in the cloth. Copies of theses final drawings or preparatory sketches may have remained in Giulio's studio in Mantua until Pencz's visit to Italy in 1539-40.

A similar scene appears on another istoriato dish dated 1541 painted in Urbino by Francesco Xanto Avelli, see J.V.G. Mallet, Xanto, Pottery-Painter, Poet, Man of the Italian Renaissance, London, 2007, pp. 38-39, figs. 26-27; the elaborately patterned reverse of this dish is typical of pieces made in Faenza from the early 16th century. For a dish dated 1540, attributed to Baldassarre Manara, painted with an elaborated battle scene after an engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi, see Carmen Ravanelli Guidotti, Baldassarre Manara Faentino, pittore di maioliche nel Cinquecento, 1996, p. 231, no. A9.