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The molded or thrown clay piece was given a first, or "bisque" firing, then covered with an opaque lead- and tin-oxide glaze. (Leadless glazes are the standard for contemporary majolica potters, however.) Decorations were painted on the dry glaze, and a second firing fused both glaze and decoration to an even, glossy surface. This direct painting technique led to vigorous designs and novel imagery, producing some of the most delightful and artistically satisfying creations in European ceramic history. The most common surviving pieces from the earliest period of majolica are storage vessels made for monastic pharmacies, usually labeled to indicate their contents and decorated with contemporary Hispano-Moresque motifs or the symbols of saints credited with healing powers. Because of Islamic prohibitions against it, the human form was rarely depicted on majolica pottery prior to 1450 but became characteristic of its design by the beginning of the 16th century. The majolica of Deruta is noted for its stylized portrait heads and figures and seems to have been the first Italian ware to adopt (c.1500) the Valencian technique of of using luster glazes to produce metallic and iridescent effects. From Deruta the technique was probably brought to Gubbio, where a ruby-red luster color was evolved. Relief-molded wares, designed to enhance the brilliance of the iridescence, were produced at both towns.
In the
late 15th century majolica became more decorative and less functional.
Sixteenth-century majolica decoration evolved away from pictorialism and was frequently derived from engravings of ornamental motifs, published for the use of decorative designers. These motifs, following the prevalent enthusiasm for Greek and Roman antiquities, conjured up a pagan world populated by cupids, satyrs, sphinxes, and other mythical beings. Acanthus foliage, palmettes, and the Roman "trophy" of arms were common motifs. From the East, by way of Venice and Islamic metalworkers there, came the arabesque style, a continuous interlacing of formalized leaves and branches. At Urbino a sophisticated style evolved that consisted of a bizarre medley of winged monsters, grotesque semihuman creatures, urns, and masks, linked by swags and garlands. These delicately painted, whimsical grotesque elements were set off by a technically perfect white glaze. The Urbino factories also produced small statues, whose forms were inspired by contemporary work in bronze. The ultimate reaction against the overworked polychrome narrative style was the plain white ware of Faenza, the thick glaze appreciated for its own sake. The dispersal of majolica craftsmen, particularly from Faenza, exerted a profound influence on European pottery styles and, in particular, of the Netherlands, where, in the early 17th century, the tin-glaze technique was taken up and used to imitate Chinese porcelain.
The third type of pottery is a Chinese invention that appeared when feldspathic material in a fusible state was incorporated in a stoneware composition. The ancient Chinese called decayed feldspar kaolin substance known in the West as china clay. Two types of porcelain evolved: "true" porcelain, consisting of a kaolin hard-paste body, extremely glassy and smooth, produced by high temperature firing, and soft porcelain, invariably translucent and lead glazed, produced from a composition of ground glass and other ingredients including white clay and fired at a low temperature.
 In the course of their long history potters have used many decorating
techniques. Among the earliest, impressing and incising of wares are still
favored. Ancient potters in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, northern
India, and the high regions of Central Asia frequently decorated wares with
impressed or incised designs.
An especially popular type of decoration involved the sgraffito, or "scratched," technique used by Italian potters before the 15th century. By the 16th century Italian potters working mainly in Padua and Bologna had developed great skill in sgraffito, which entailed the incising of designs on red or buff earthenware that had been coated with ordinary transparent lead glaze, usually toned yellow or, sometimes, brown, copper, or green. Just like today, after firing, the wares were dipped into white clay slip so that a dark pattern could be cut on the surface. By cutting through the white slip, the artist produced a design on the exposed red or buff body. Pigments were also sometimes applied. After a further coating of lead glaze the ware was fired a second time. A sound knowledge of glazes--both utilitarian and decorative-- is vital to the potter. The origin of glazes and glazing techniques is unknown, but the fine lustrous glazes developed in China surely began with a simple glaze that served to cover earthenware and render it watertight. Potters in Mesopotamia and Iran commonly used an alkaline glaze made of quartz mixed with sodium and potassium. An admixture of colored metallic oxides, mostly lead, was introduced later.
Painting
on
pottery and porcelain became richly colorful in many regions and periods. For a long period ceramic artists had used only black or brown pigment to decorate wares that were then covered with clear glaze. It is believed that the appearance in China of 13th-century brush-decorated wares from Persia sparked a change. These works, painted in blue cobalt under the glaze, inspired the brushwork of the Chinese, and the resulting so-called blue-and-white style prevailed for a long time. In the Islamic world, ceramic decorative art flowered with the creation of a great diversity of painted wares. Painted luster decoration on pottery originated in Mesopotamia and spread to ancient Egypt; later, under Islam in Persia, this type of decoration on white-glazed wares became incredibly brilliant. Islamic luster-painted wares were later masterfully developed by Italian potters during the Renaissance.
Majolica ware, whether thrown on the wheel or pressed into molds, was fired once to obtain a brown or buff body, then dipped in glaze composed of lead and tin oxide with a silicate of potash. The opaque glaze presented a surface that was suitable to receive decoration. A second firing after decoration fixed the white glaze to the body and the pigments to the glaze, so that the colors became permanently preserved. Frequently, the beauty of these wares was increased by dipping them in a translucent lead glaze composed of oxide of lead mixed with sand, potash, and salt. When certain luster pigments and enamels were used in all-over painting, wares had to be specially fired at low temperature. Application of metallic luster pigments required great skill because these colors were extremely volatile and needed special handling. Luca della Robbia work raised majolica production from a craft to high art in Italy. Not only did he use blue and white enamels in decorative work, but, as a sculptor, he also used the majolica technique to add brilliance to the surface of his productions…
In art, an arabesque is a decorative pattern composed of rhythmic, curvilinear designs. The term, derived from the Italian arabesco ("Arab-like"), is usually associated with the intricate geometric or foliated scrollwork seen in Islamic architecture, miniature painting, and minor arts. The motif was also employed in the late Roman and Renaissance periods.
The "rebirth" of art in Italy was connected with the rediscovery of ancient philosophy, literature, and science and the evolution of empirical methods of study in these fields. Central to the development of Renaissance art was the emergence of the artist as a creator, sought after and respected for his erudition and imagination.
The Early
Renaissance
The High
Renaissance The Late Renaissance A major watershed in the development of Italian Renaissance art was the sack of Rome in 1527, which temporarily ended the city's role as a source of patronage and compelled artists to travel to other centers in Italy, France, and Spain. Even before the death of Raphael, in 1520, anticlassical tendencies had begun to manifest themselves in Roman art. Patronized by leading banking families like the Medici, the classicizing Early Renaissance style was initiated in Florence during the 1420s by Filippo Brunelleschi, Donatello, and Masaccio. Through his study of Giotto, Masaccio had rediscovered the Italian classical tradition, and, traveling together to Rome, Brunelleschi and Donatello derived new understanding of antiquity by studying ancient Roman ruins and sculptures. Their observations, coupled with the humanistic Tuscan intellectual climate, engendered an avant-garde aesthetic that replaced the Gothic in Italy by the end of the century. Florentine architects determined the design standards for Early Renaissance buildings. Churches were organized on either a central plan or a combination central and rectangular plan. Residential palaces were developed around a central arcaded courtyard, or cortile. The relationship of architectural proportion and human scale was a Renaissance concern first manifested in the works of Brunelleschi. Donatello was the most influential Early Renaissance sculptor. His David (c.1430-32; Bargello, Florence), the first free-standing bronze nude statue since antiquity, revived the classical compositional device of contrapposto, showed a concern for psychological interpretation, and displayed a scientific, as well as an erotic, interest in the human body. Poetic mood and lyrical line or contour typified the busts and reliefs of mid-century Florentines such as Luca della Robbia and Desiderio da Settignano. The anecdotal realism of Verrocchio, Andrea del and the energetic studies of the figure in motion of Antonio Pollaiuolo were dominant in late-15th-century Florence.
Bibliography: Pica, Agnoldomenico, Italian Majolica Tile, trans. by James
Pallas (1971); Rackham, Bernard, Italian Maiolica (1952); Schneider, Mike,
Majolica (1989). |
Dishes and vases were designed primarily for display, especially the
pictorial narrative styles associated with Urbino. Subjects for illustration
were taken from Roman history, Greek and Roman mythology, the Bible, and
occasionally from contemporary literature. Imagery was often derived from
engravings or from woodcut book illustrations.
The first type, earthenware, has
been made following virtually the same techniques since ancient times.
Earthenware is basically composed of clay--often blended clays- -and baked
hard, the degree of hardness depending on the intensity of the heat. After
the invention of glazing, earthenwares were coated with glaze to render them
waterproof; sometimes glaze was applied decoratively. It was found that,
when fired at great heat, the clay body became nonporous. This second type
of pottery, called stoneware, came to be preferred for domestic use.