MAIOLICA

MAIOLICA. — It is a variety of pottery (see),
consisting of a paste based on clay, fired to a color
ranging from red to flesh-pink. The products, known
after an initial firing by the generic term “biscuit,”
are covered with a glassy coating, rendered opaque
by tin oxide (or other opacifiers), generally white,
called “glaze.” Upon this, decorations are painted
with colors based on metallic oxides that withstand
the second firing (ca. 920°), and are therefore called
“grand feu.” These decorations are applied with a
brush or otherwise; the object is then covered with a
“varnish,” more commonly a silica-lead type, and
fired a second time.

During this second firing, the glaze melts, fixing the
colors and rendering the object impermeable to liquids;
the varnish, due to its transparency, imparts a greater
brilliance to the surface; for this reason it is called
“gloss” or “crystalline.”

Erroneously, the term “mezza maiolica” was once
used to describe products made of clay paste, coated
while still raw with a thin layer of white earth (“terra
di Siena,” “terra di Vicenza,” or “engobe”), decorated
with a brush or by sgraffito, then covered with “crys-
talline” and fired only once. The fundamental colors,
as mentioned, are based on metallic oxides ground in
water: green from copper, violet from manganese, yel-
low from antimony, blue from cobalt, etc. These “grand
feu” colors differ from those called “petit feu,” since the
latter, being more fusible, are applied with resin onto
the already-fired glaze at 920° and fixed with a third
firing (i.e., “third fire” or “muffle fire”) at about 650°.

A complementary decorative effect (metallic “lustres”)
can be achieved by applying, onto the already-decorated
and fired glaze, metallic salts (most commonly of cop-
per, silver, and bismuth) dissolved in dilute acetic acid
or tempered in vinegar with calcined kaolin, then firing
a third time at approximately 700° in a reducing atmo-
sphere.

The “metallic reflection” ornament (gilding) is obtained
by painting the areas to be gilded on the already-fired
glaze with “liquid gold” (gold chloride tempered in a
resinous substance) and firing at approximately 700° in
a normal atmosphere. The same process applies to sil-
vering.

The term *maiolica* is the Tuscan softening (cf. *Inferno*,
XXVIII, 82) of the name of Majorca, an island of the
Balearics, one of the ports in the cabotage trade that,
from the late 14th century and even more in the fol-
lowing century, imported into Italy the admirable car-
nival wares gleaming with aerial lustres and iridescent
cat’s-eye effects, often bearing the coats of arms of great
Italian families. Only after the mid-16th century did this
name come to designate all stanniferous-glazed produc-
tion, regardless of third-fire decoration.

It is still widely held that Italian maiolica makers
learned their craft from masters who had immigrated
from the East. However, medieval “encyclopedias” at-
test that, well before the year 1000, the use of stannifer-
ous glaze (already well known to decorators in the ancient
East) had become common knowledge in Italy as well.

This technique was later masterfully expounded around
the mid-16th century by the knight Cipriano Piccol-
passo (1524–79) of Casteldurante, now Urbino, in his
treatise *Li tre libri dell’arte del vasaio* (manuscript in the
library of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London), along
with the most precise instructions on all the practices of
the maiolica art.

Certainly, the advancement to the higher forms of the
technique occurred gradually. In the early Middle Ages,
even up to around the year 1000, common production
still shows that phase

(see

MAIOLICA - Orvietan vases in relief with glossy varnish (14th c.) - Rome, Palazzo Venezia Museum.

The names of these early artisans remain anonymous, and only scant relics of their work are known; a Petrus orzarlous worked in 1142 in Faenza; a Martinus oriolarius in 1195 in Florence; a Petrus vascellarius in 1211 in Orvieto. From this “archaic phase” of production, better studied in the finds from Orvieto and Faenza, there remain mostly pitchers with increasingly white glaze, the first decorations painted in violet and green, featuring geometric, floral, heraldic, and animal motifs, drawn from prototypes in the East and Byzantium, transmitted via the Iberian Levant.

The human figure is rarer and more tentative, appearing only in the subsequent phase (known as the “severe style” for the gravity of its decorative forms and the overall sobriety of its chromatic rendering), when it increasingly becomes the focal point of the entire decoration. From the second and third decades of the 15th century onward, as the variety of vase forms grows richer (e.g., pitchers, spherical vases on tall feet, handled mesotic flasks shaped like small barrels, albarelli for apothecary drugs, etc.), alongside the deep purple-black from manganese, black and brown from iron, and the brilliant green from copper, the blue of Levantine “zaffera” introduced by Venetian merchants appears; this color, lightened into a beautiful cobalt blue, would become a monopoly of German mines.

The broad and increasingly “human” output of the workshops operating in the “severe style” can be divided according to dominant motifs in their decorations or the exotic patterns quickly assimilated by Italian workshops. Splendid are the products of the first two families: the “green” ware and that “with raised saffron” (among which the Florentine and Faentine examples are best studied), covering the first half of the century. The “Italo-Moresque” family—soon exhausted—the “palmette,” “peacock feather,” and “Damascene” styles extend somewhat beyond the end of the 15th century, by which time motifs from the Renaissance are fully introduced.

In the 16th century, the abandonment of archaizing tradition and adherence to a coloristic taste increasingly light, sonorous, and transparent decisively elevated the work of some workshops to notable artistic value. The movement began in Faenza. A new sense of color, based on delicate blue tones, executed with masterful glazing and accompanied by rare hues of great preciosity, gained dominance over a glaze of wonderfully white and velvety texture. The central scene of a plate or pitcher became a true representation, proportionate to its enclosing border, and acquired intense expressiveness. Even when the subject’s inspiration—often drawing from other art forms such as engravings or paintings—employs bold foreshortenings and naive movements, the austere, symmetrical, and orderly compositions impart a high decorative sense: the work now appears as the product of the craftsman’s personal contribution, expressed through a thoughtful and concentrated graphic and chromatic plasticity, with the value and energy of an invention. For the first time, the landscape itself becomes an active element in

MAIOLICA - Glazed and relief vases with floral and animal motifs (15th c.) - Paris, Louvre.

Primordial («paleo-Italian») works will consist especially of pitchers and small jars with wide, flattened bodies, adorned with raised bosses or deep incisions: rough pieces, with a greyish base (such as certain examples from the so-called Fountain of Juturna in the Roman Forum or found in other places, even beyond the Alps), datable to the Carolingian period, yet covered with a glassy coating, albeit in dull green and yellowish hues, which made the vessel more suitable for practical use compared to unglazed earthenware or vessels merely covered with earthen coatings, which had been used previously.

The renewed taste for color would later lead to the application, on the body of the pottery, of a white clay slip («ingubbiatura»), on which the potter could incise or even paint, but which had to be protected by a glassy coating to make its surface impermeable to liquids.

Examples of this can also be found in those «basins» or bowls that Romanesque architects embedded in buildings, especially religious ones, which were being adorned in Italian cities to enliven the sober tones of brickwork: Italian-style basins or bowls, which were accompanied by the polychrome and iridescent types that renewed Mediterranean trade imported from Egypt, Syria, and Moorish Spain. The fusion into a single technical process of concealing the natural color of the biscuit and rendering it impermeable with a single coating through the application of enamel was a significant achievement, from which all subsequent developments in this art would stem from the 12th century onward. Thus, the enameled coating became the foundation upon which excellent masters laid those prestigious paintings that would captivate universal admiration, to the point of being considered a distinctive aspect of Italian civilization in the 15th and 16th centuries.

The intense emotional impact of the whole, while the decorative repertoire, drawn from ancient «grotesques» once discovered and disseminated, rendered with skillful hand and exquisite play of polychromy, adds grace to the work, no longer obscure or confused with ordinary utilitarian production, but coveted by the client and «signed» by its very author, who recognized its value. The masters of this «new style,» through contact with nobles, whose heraldic needs they satisfied, and with humanists and scholars, whose advice they followed, formed a school of painting whose «individual masters» excelled from 1490 to 1525.

This is the peak of the «Faenza canon,» whose refined and elegant features are epitomized by the products of the «Casa Pirota,» with a distinctive «beautiful style.» But by the third decade of the 16th century, this «first phase of istoriato» was followed by another, which treated the decoration of maiolica as true painting, spreading across the entire surface of the plate, often distorted by the very shape of the vessel on which it was painted. The artist’s personality, stimulated to technical virtuosity, became subject to a broader sense of color, now dominated by warm tones. Thus emerged a school whose leaders were found in the Duchy of Urbino. While in Deruta, in Umbria, maiolica was also decorated with lustre in greenish-gold and violet hues, in Gubbio, then part of the Duchy of Urbino, Maestro Giorgio Andreoli applied his opulent «reflections» of gold, ruby, and iridescent hues to maiolica sent to him in competition by other workshops: a brilliant phenomenon whose fame endures to this day. Later, in 1569, the Duke of Urbino granted the Lanfranco family of Gabicce, operating in Pesaro, a privilege «for having discovered a method of applying real gold to earthenware vessels and decorating them with gold work.»

In the region of the Roveresque State, first in Casteldurante (renamed Urbania in 1635 in honor of Pope Barberini), then in Urbino, its illustrious capital, Nicolò Pellipario (d. before 1547) produced refined and thoughtful paintings on fine dining services and large ceremonial plates, which would set a trend. Cultured, versatile, highly skilled, rich in taste and inventiveness, with a delicate yet expressive palette, he was the leader of a new school, whose best followers would include Francesco Xanto Avelli of Rovigo and the relatives of Nicolò himself, who, in their new home, adopted the surname Fontana.

This manner of «istoriato» (narrative decoration) on pottery, with rich polychrome paintings based on warm colors but employing a wide range of half-tones, spread to the major Italian workshops, which often treated it with distinctive local accents. Large «credenze» (sideboards), elaborate apothecary sets such as the one belonging to the Duke of Urbino (later donated to the Treasury of the Holy House of Loreto), trays, ewers, inkstands, and other shaped objects became the expression of this taste. Urbino presented them as gifts to the Spanish court, while the King of France desired to obtain them from Faenza «as if by magic» («per incanto»). Mythology, sacred history, and costume were employed, and the subjects, often formally derived from engravings—particularly from the school of Raphael—were usually illustrated with painted captions on the reverse of the pieces. The application of the «mark» of the artist or workshop became common practice.

The «second» and «third istoriato» styles, with their richly polychrome decorations in «grotesque» and «cameo» styles, from the workshops of the Metauro valley and their followers, became items of export abroad. And just as at the beginning of the 16th century the «Faenza-style» Francisco Nicoloso had excellently painted maiolica in Seville, it would now be the masters of the Urbino area (from Urbino itself, Pesaro, Urbania, Faenza, Venice, and other places) who would spread and teach this art in France, the Netherlands, certain regions of Germany, England, and later even in Moravia and Bohemia, where they gave rise to the particular class of «Haban» maiolica.

Venice, from its eclectic workshops, disseminated large and small vases with dense, showy foliage and human busts of striking coloristic effect; Apulia and Sicily, already influenced by Faenza and «Metauro-style» imports, reworked these motifs with a somewhat faded palette on modest enamel. By the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the next, the «Faenza» style had entered the French language as «faïence,» and from there the word was adopted with slight variations by other European languages, where it remains to this day—a significant tribute from the entire continent to a refined form of Italian art.

In Italy, moreover, in the second half of the 16th century, due to the saturation of an overly widespread product, its diminished formal qualities, and a new orientation in taste, a lively reaction arose against this style, which has been called “florid.” At its forefront were still the Faenza workshops, which had always been numerous and prolific. VIRGILIOTTO CALAMELLI and “DON PINO” (Leonardo Bettisi) may be cited as the forerunners of the new taste for “white” wares, to which the growing interest in Chinese porcelain was naturally not unrelated. From the opulent polychrome palettes of the “METAURESI” maiolica painters, a shift occurred toward a range of simpler harmonizations, and very often on the velvety, glossy enamel—more so than ever before—were traced airy, lively filiform designs, in blue alone or accompanied by sparse touches of green and yellow: a coat of arms, an image of a putto or saint, or a succinct impressionistic composition made up the entire decoration. This style, executed with a free and rapid hand, was already given the name “compendiary” by Ballardini, to emphasize its incisive expressiveness. It too conquered the Italian workshops, until, in the course of the 17th century, signs of another different decorative manner emerged from other parts of Italy—Liguria, Tuscany, and for a brief period, Abruzzo.

The Ligurian style—at Savona, Albissola, and Genoa—developed along decidedly Chinese patterns, initially adopting only a blue color on white or slightly cream-colored enamel, applied with skillful glazes to paint summary, pleasing fantasies of birds and flying putti, sailing galleys, landscapes dense with foliage, rocks, and tufts of sharp-edged grasses.

It should be noted that this repertoire was common at this time even to Dutch, German, English, and Portuguese workshops. A little later, polychrome depictions of animals and trees would recall the manner developing at that period in Talavera, Spain.

Monte Lupo, near Florence, in the first half of the 17th century, alongside its large and small jars with broad green foliage and mottoes and whimsies, presented a series of plates that might well be called “picaresque.” Painted in a bold, almost clownish manner, yet not without the “grandeur” inherent to the time, they featured caricatures rendered in rough, popular polychromy: gallants and musketeers, people on horseback or standing with comical swagger, in duels or battles, with pikes, arquebuses, flags, and drums, offering the extremes of grotesque Hispanism. Alongside these were images of peasants in curious poses, sketched in a careless but sympathetic bravura. Castelli in Teramo, instead, reverted to the “istoriato” style, often covering the entire surface of the piece but enclosed within baroque frames of broad vegetal scrolls, architectural motifs, putti, etc. The palette was “languid”: faded greens, reddish yellows, veiled blues, and sometimes touches of gold. Yet the landscapes were treated with exemplary sensitivity. There were also large paintings of complex figurative scenes, sacred and mythological, and interiors, rendered with rare mastery. The highly productive families of the Grue and Gentile shared the honor of this production, which innovated in the painting of maiolica in southern Italy.

By the 18th century, maiolica in northern Italy became decidedly a follower of foreign models, especially Dutch and French. Thus, the Bérain-style designs diffused by the Provençal workshops of Moustiers, the styles of the three “Luigi” of France, and the imitation—even with “petit feu” colors—of Eastern porcelain, widely spread across Europe and particularly German under the impulse of Strasbourg, were all executed with rare skill and effectiveness on already-fired enamel. Alongside the chinoiserie that now dominated the entire ornamental world, there were the whimsies of rocaille, the decorations “à la fleurs indiennes” and “à la fleurs allemandes,” and the ornament “alla giapponese” based on Imari patterns, where red and green were often supplemented by gold, frequently replaced by yellow.

A “new compendiary” style could be seen in the “macchiette” and “ruins” of the final period of the century. But besides porcelain, a material that remained relatively costly, maiolica found itself having to compete with the new ceramics, which rapidly spread and, for commercial as well as practical reasons, came to surpass all other products: English “creamware,” perfected by Wedgwood. It soon conquered all the world’s markets, and maiolica, defeated in the hard economic battle as a widely marketed artisanal product, was reduced to folk uses (rustic maiolica) or became a refined product made to reproduce ancient masterpieces or to showcase the genius of individual craftsmen in the best workshops. Vedi tavv. CXXIII-CXXIV.