Venice

Despite a lack of local raw materials, Venice was an important pottery-manufacturing center from as early as the 15^th century. Considering the acuity of her citizens in the areas of trade and commerce, it should come as no surprise that the ceramic industry in Venice was protected by bills and decrees controlling the importation of foreign maiolica and thereby securing the market for local goods.

As the primary northern Adriatic port of Italy, Venice had enjoyed cultural and commercial exchange with the Near and Far East since ancient times, and the influence of these areas is apparent in much of the maiolica created by this center’s artisans.

Venetian wares typically feature floral and foliate patterns inspired by Oriental motifs, including blue-and-white dominated schemes borrowed from Ming porcelains.

In his famous treatise of 1557, I tre libri dell’arte del vasaio (The Three Books of the Potter’s Art), Cipriano Piccolpasso describes the important role played by Venice in the development of Italian Renaissance maiolica.

Venetian workshops were responsible for technical and creative innovations that were studied and emulated by craftsmen from other centers, like Faenza, Pesaro, Urbino and Castel Durante. The connection between Venice and some of these towns was undoubtedly strengthened by ‘La Serenissima’’s dependence on her neighbors for the potting clays and pigments in which she was deficient.

Venetian maiolica comprises wares of all shapes and sizes, but is perhaps best known for large round drug jars and other apothecary wares featuring portrait medallions (typically representations of beautiful women or men, soldiers and saints) framed by scrolling ornament on a dark blue ground decorated with richly-colored fruit.

These ceramics were very popular, both in Italy, where Venetian styles are known to have directly influenced the schools of Sicily, and abroad, as witnessed by the substantial collection of Venetian wares housed in the museum at Braunschweig.

Despite the survival of a fair number of pieces and various fonts documenting the area’s ceramic activity, the history of maiolica manufacture in Venice remains frustratingly patchy. Piccolpasso mentions the presence in Venice of artisans visiting or emigrating from other parts of Italy, and evidence that Venetian craftsmen traveled to and worked in other centers is cited by some scholars, but an in-depth, comprehensive survey of Venetian production has yet to be undertaken.

The lack of information makes the assignment of wares made in Venice quite difficult. The most renowned Venetian workshop is that of Maestro Domenico (b. ca.1520-25), whose portrait medallion floral and fruit wares and istoriato pieces represent the apex of Venetian Renaissance maiolica, and to whom most of the period’s important pieces are currently attributed.

Future research may reveal the identities of the authors of many works currently linked stylistically to Maestro Domenico, and offer additional insight into the evolution of the strong local styles that define Venetian maiolica.