This striking dish with a luminous palette is related to a group of legendary or historical figures of men donning helmets and in profile, which were attributed by von Falke in 1917¹ to Nicola da Urbino. In 1989, Jörg Rasmussen² ascribed them to Giovanni Maria Vasaro of Castel Durante, and to an anonymous painter active in the latter's workshop, dating them around 1510-1525. Recently, Timothy Wilson and Dora Thornton contested these hypotheses and proposed a dating of 1520-1525.³

This series includes fifteen beautifully painted dishes including five illustrated with women and ten with men, very possibly from a single service. It has been suggested that one example of a male portrait, the cup depicting Gallafrone in a private collects ion, bears the Este coat of arms. As this character is from the epic poem Orlando Innamorato Boiardo (1440- 1494), and considering Boiardo’s connection to the Ferrarese court, some scholars believe that the entire series may have been an Este commission, but that is only supposition.

The majority of dishes from the series may have been produced by a single dotatissimo or very gifted painter, who might have been working either in Castel Durante or Urbino.The iconographic sources which served as a model for the earthenware painter are not known but the dish that seems closest to the present piece and most likely by the same hand is the one decorated with the effigy of King Solomon in a private collects ion (fig. 1).⁴

Stordilano, King of Granada, was one of the many characters in Orlando Furioso, the great epic poem by the Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533). L’ Orlando Innamorato by Boiardo was published for the first t.mes in 1483, and Orlando furioso by Ariosto, in 1516. The latter constitutes a sort of continuation of Boiardo’s work, which remained unfinished due to his death. These two poems had an extraordinary impact, first at the Ferrarese court of the Este – the house to which the two poets were officially attached – and well beyond. These two literary works circulated at the court, even before their printing, creating a deep enthusiasm for their poetic and romantic text.

This Stordilano cup was part of the famous collects ion of French art dealer Alexandre Imbert (1865-1943, who helped J. P. Morgan acquire extraordinary collects ions, including one of maiolica, some of which are now in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut. This cup was exhibited at the Union centrale des arts décoratifs from May to October 1911.

RELATED LITERATURE
O. v. Falke, “Majoliken von Nicola da Urbino”, in Ӓmtliche Berichte aus den Königl. Kunstsammlungen, Berlin, 39, 1917;
J. Rasmussen, Italian Majolica in the Robert Lehman collects ion, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Princeton University Press, 1989;
Dora Thornton and Timothy Wilson, Italian Renaissance Ceramics: A catalogue of the British Museum collects ion, 2009;
Lucio Riccetti, Alexandre Imbert, J. Pierpont Morgan e il collezionismo della maiolica italiana fino al 1914, Florence 2017, p. 326, no. 452;
T. Wilson, The Golden Age of Italian Maiolica Painting, 2019, p. 354;
C. Paolinelli, “Terra pulchritudinis. La maiolica a decoro ornamentale nel Ducato di Urbino”, in F. Paoli and J. Spike (eds), Francesco Maria Della Rovere di Tiziano. Le collezioni roveresche nel palazzo ducale di Casteldurante. Urbino. 2019, p. 99, tav. IVA, fig. F (a fragment of similar type excavated in Urbanaia)

¹ Von Falke 1917, no. I, pp. 3-16;
² Rasmussen 1989, nº 63, and pp. 244-245, publishes twelve cups from this series: The Bella Hippolita from the Musée des arts décoratifs, Paris does not seem to belong to the same series.
³ D. Thornton and T. Wilson 2009, I, pp. 343 and 347. The authors were unaware of the present dish when this book was published
⁴ C. Paolinelli, and C. Cardinali, Magnifica Ceramica da una collezione privata. Maioliche rinascimentali e ceramiche classiche, Pesaro 2011, fig. 25

We are grateful to Professor Timothy Wilson and Mrs. Greta Kaucher for their invaluable contributions to the research on this entry.