Dish
Category
Ceramics
Date
1550 - 1560
Materials
earthenware, tin-opacified lead glaze, polychrome pigments
Measurements
287 mm (Depth)
Place of origin
Urbino
Order this imageCollection
Knightshayes Court, Devon
NT 540405
Summary
Dish, earthenware with tin-glaze (maiolica), Castel Durante, perhaps Picchi Workshop, possibly by a painter named Andrea da Negroponte, ca. 1550-60; painted with a scene from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the story of Latona (or Leto) and the Lycians, in which Latona turned bathing peasants into frogs as punishment; the underside inscribed ‘quando quella dea fecie | convertire quelli villane | in ranxhie’ [Trans. When the Goddess made those peasants turn into frogs].
Full description
Latona (or Leto), the mother of Apollo and Diana, halts to quench her thirst at a pond. Some peasants working nearby, however, prevent her from doing so. Latona curses them by changing them into frogs and condemning them to spend eternity in the mire. Johanna Lessmann in Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum Braunschweig: Italienische Majolika (Brunswick, 1979), p. 148, was the first to group these pieces from the prolific albeit crude hand, based on a dish at Arezzo bearing the name Andrea da Negroponte. Timothy Wilson, however, believes that they are from the Castel Durante Picchi Workshop, see Timothy Wilson, “La Maiolica a Castel Durante e ad Urbino fra il 1535 e il 1565:alcuni corredi stemmata”, in Gian Carlo Bojani (ed.), I Della Rovere nell’Italia delle corti IV, pp. 124-165. J.V.G. Mallet (correspondence 13/01/04).
Marks and inscriptions
'Quando quella deo fecie conventite quelli nilaone (?) in nanachie' (?)