A tazza or bowl in alabaster
Volterran School
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
c. 1850 - 1875
Materials
Alabaster
Measurements
305 mm (Height); 300 mm (Diameter)
Place of origin
Volterra (Italy)
Order this imageCollection
Cragside, Northumberland
NT 1225865
Summary
Sculpture, alabaster; a tazza for fruit; Italian, Volterra; c. 1850-1870. An alabaster tazza or bowl for fruit, with a large bowl supported on a stem formed from three dolphins.
Full description
A bowl or tazza made from alabaster, the bowl section embellished with large vine leaves around the sides, the stem with three plunging dolphins, their tails twisted with their neighbour’s; a hexagonal-shaped base. The bowl is cracked. A form of gypsum, alabaster has long been popular as a material for sculpture, for its relative softness and ease of carving, and also for its attractive translucency and whiteness. This alabaster tazza was made in Italy, in the Tuscan city of Volterra, for centuries a centre for the alabaster-carving industry. From the late eighteenth century onwards, workshops and factories in Volterra began to produce figures, utensils and other useful objects, such as vases and light fittings, on an industrial scale. The rather fleshy carving of the leaves and fruit may be compared with that of a lamp fitting in a private collection, made around 1850 (Ciardini, Luperini, Nesi 2008, p. 68), or the monumental lampstands made by the Tangassi workshop in 1865 for Maximilian I of Mexico (Cozzi 1986, pp. 68-71, figs. 55-62). A tazza in the Bruchi collection, dated to the late nineteenth century has a stem formed from swans and an almost identical bowl section, and has been described as one of the most complex products of the Volterra alabaster workshops (Ciardini, Luperini, Nesi 2008, p.93). A drawing of a tazza made for the Amerigo factory c. 1850-60 has identical entwined dolphins to those on the Cragside tazza (Cozzi 1986, p. 96, fig. 96). Jeremy Warren April 2022
Makers and roles
Volterran School, sculptor
References
Cozzi 1986: Mauro Cozzi, Alabastro. Volterra dal settecento all’art deco, Florence 1986 Ciardini, Luperini, Nesi 2008: Roberto Ciardi, Ilario Luperino and Luciano Nesi, eds., Alabastro a Volterra. Scultura di Luce 1780-1930, exh. cat., Palazzo dei Priori, Volterra 2008