Red earthenware dish covered with white slip and with incised decoration of a woman and two men, one playing the lute. Italian, Venice region, about 1480 to 1490.

Dish painted in blue, coppper green, manganese purple and brownish yellow.The ground of the design is cut away. In the middle, a lady with two youths, one of whom is playing a lute, surrounded by heavy swags of laurel suspended from the rim, which has a border of interlaced strapwork. The back is unglazed, incised before firing with the initials 'F.O'.

Formerly Bernal Collection.
Purchase price note: Bought for £40 10s.
Michelangel Munarini (in La ceramica nel Veneto) describes this dish as 'Venice, end of 15th to the beginning of the 16th century'.
Parts of a similar large dish were discovered in the walls of the city of Treviso which pre-date the rebuilding of the walls in the first decade of the 16th century.
These two dishes have the same orange-red clay body and the same style of decoration in which large parts of the white slip covering are removed to reveal decoration on a background of orange-red clay. In both dishes, the principal decoration consists of figures and the white-slipped flesh of the figures is left unpainted.
A two-handled bowl (see La ceramica nel Veneto) was excavated in Legnago in 1947. It has the same orange-red largely cut-away background and the same intertwined border as on this V&A dish. It is dated mid to late 15th century and attibuted to Leganago.

Made in the Venice region.

1764-1855