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Lot Essay
The inscription De Venere con gli amorini translates as ‘Of Venus with the cupids’. Typically, it is Fortune who stands on a ball, rather than Venus. The source which the artist used as inspiration for this lot is an engraving by an anonymous artist of circa 1515-1535. The majority of the prints which survive are later states which have an inscription ‘Petri de Nobilibus Formis’, for the Roman print dealer Pietro de Nobili who was active 1575-1585. An uninscribed earlier state of the print is illustrated in Bartsch, where it is suggested that the engraver may have been following an antique relief(1).
The handwriting on the reverse of the present lot appears to be by the same hand as the inscriptions on a large charger with Diogenes and Alexander and a plate from the Punic War (or Hannibal) Service(2), but the painted decoration of the present lot is by a different hand. A wine cooler painted with a marine Triumph of Bacchus in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, is probably painted by the same hand.3
1. See Suzanne Boorsch and John Spike (ed.), The Illustrated Bartsch, Italian Masters of the Sixteenth Century, New York, 1985, Vol. 28 (formerly Vol. 15, Part 1), p. 51.
2. These were sold by Christie’s, London, on 24 May 2011, lots 35 and 34 respectively, and are now in a private collection, see Timothy Wilson, The Golden Age of Italian Maiolica-Painting, Turin, 2018, pp. 318-319, no. 138 and pp. 320-322, no. 139.
3. See Timothy Wilson, Maiolica, Italian Renaissance Ceramics in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2016, pp. 278-279, no. 98.
The handwriting on the reverse of the present lot appears to be by the same hand as the inscriptions on a large charger with Diogenes and Alexander and a plate from the Punic War (or Hannibal) Service(2), but the painted decoration of the present lot is by a different hand. A wine cooler painted with a marine Triumph of Bacchus in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, is probably painted by the same hand.3
1. See Suzanne Boorsch and John Spike (ed.), The Illustrated Bartsch, Italian Masters of the Sixteenth Century, New York, 1985, Vol. 28 (formerly Vol. 15, Part 1), p. 51.
2. These were sold by Christie’s, London, on 24 May 2011, lots 35 and 34 respectively, and are now in a private collection, see Timothy Wilson, The Golden Age of Italian Maiolica-Painting, Turin, 2018, pp. 318-319, no. 138 and pp. 320-322, no. 139.
3. See Timothy Wilson, Maiolica, Italian Renaissance Ceramics in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2016, pp. 278-279, no. 98.