Urbino Majolica

Urbino majolica, majolica also spelled maiolica, Italian tin-glazed earthenware made in the city of Urbino, which from about 1520 dominated the market. Early wares, mostly dishes, are decorated with narrative scenes that typically cover the entire surface. The narrative scenes are taken from the Bible, from Classical mythology, from Classical and contemporary history, and from poetry and are painted in a range of colours, in which brilliant yellow, orange, and brown predominate. This pictorial, or istoriato, style owed much to contemporary painting and to woodcuts and engravings published in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Later wares were decorated in a style called grotesque, which consisted of motifs copied from the painter Raphael, who in turn adopted them from motifs found during excavations of Nero’s Golden House in Rome in 1509. This purely decorative style was more suited to the intrinsic nature of pottery forms than the istoriato style, which was based on the conception of a dish or plate as the mere vehicle or support of a painting.

majolica bowl

Several distinguished painters of pottery are known. The most notable are Nicola Pellipario, who worked at Castel Durante originally and at Urbino from 1528, and Francesco Xanto Avelli of Rovigo (flourished 1529–42). Nicola, who introduced and developed the istoriato style at Urbino, painted in the workshop of his son Guido (who took the name Fontana), drawing from engravings after the painter Raphael. Finely modeled figures, sometimes singly, sometimes in complex groups in architectural settings, were painted over the entire surface of the dish in an illusionist manner, with much of the drama and restless movement of Raphael’s later work. Guido continued in this tradition, and in his workshop dishes, plates, roundels, and plaques were produced in large quantities between 1530 and 1580. Avelli favoured subjects from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, an influential edition of which, illustrated with woodcuts, had appeared in 1497. He took his themes from the Bible, from the poet Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533), and from contemporary events.

The later style, grotesque, also derived from Raphael’s paintings, was introduced by Guido Fontana’s son Orazio around 1560–70. At first it consisted of little grotesques and arabesques painted in a continuous band in yellow, brown, blue, and green on a ground of white around the rim of the plate, with the narrative, or istoriato, portion shrunk to a roundel in the centre. Later the istoriato style was totally supplanted by the grotesques. Majolica production in Urbino declined in the late 17th century.