Dish
Category
Ceramics
Date
1600 - 1620
Materials
earthenware, tin-opacified lead glaze, polychrome pigments
Measurements
254 mm (Diameter)
Place of origin
Montelupo
Order this imageCollection
Knightshayes Court, Devon
NT 540412
Summary
Dish, earthenware with tin-glaze (maiolica), probably made in Montelupo, Tuscany, Italy, c. 1600-20; painted with an armorial shield surmounted by a crown bearing the arms of Medici.
Full description
The Montelupo pottery workshop, located on the Arno, north-west of Florence, was patronised by the wealthy Medici family, they had a villa nearby at Cafaggiolo. Montelupo provided ceramics for many well to do Florentine families. The arms of the Medici family includes five red balls (palle, in Italian) and one blue, on a gold shield, which decorate numerous buildings all over Florence and Tuscany, but also the ceramics that they commission. This dish was formerly in the collection of Sir William Stirling-Maxwell (1818-1878), 9th Bt., of Keir, Perthshire, and later also Pollok, near Glasgow, Scotland. Much of the Stirling and Maxwell family wealth came from West Indian plantations with enslaved African labour, for which they received compensation in 1833. Stirling-Maxwell formed the largest collection of Spanish art in Britain, some of which remains at Pollok House, when the contents were gifted to Glasgow Corporation in 1967. Highlights of his maiolica collection was sold by his grandson Lt. Col. William Joseph Stirling (1911-1983) of Keir, Perthshire, at Sotheby & Co., Catalogue of Fine Italian Majolica, 18 June 1946, and this dish appears as the third of five items in lot 72 ‘A Venice Plate, painted in the istoriato style with a woman beckoning to a pedlar, blue hilly landscape in the background, 10 in., late 16th Century; a Tazza, painted with “The Baptism”, fluted border 9 ¾ in.; a late Faenza Plate with the Medici arms, orange and yellow tints, 10 in. ; another Plate; and a small tin-enamelled blue and white Castelli Plate with armorials and date 1610, 8¼in.’ The lot purchased for 12 guineas (£12 11s. 12d.) at the sale by "Sir J Amory Sir John Heathcoat-Amory (1894-1972), 3rd Bt., of Knightshayes Court. The house, part of the collection, the garden Sir John and Lady Heathcoat-Amory created, and part of the estate were bequeathed to the National Trust by Sir John Heathcoat-Amory in 1972. The maiolica was later given by Joyce, Lady Heathcoat-Amory (1901-1997), née Wethered, a celebrated golfer.
Provenance
From Lady Amory