Probably Giacomo Mancini Workshop, called “El Frate” , Italian, Deruta, circa 1573

Private Collection, Houston, Texas; 

Sotheby’s London, 20 November 1962, lot 68;

Alfred Spero, London;

Cyril Humphris, London;

Arthur M. Sackler Collection;

His sale (Part I), Christie’s New York, 13 January, 1993, lot 8;

Where acquired.

Washington D.C., National Gallery of Arts, Sixteenth-Century Italian Maiolica from the Arthur M. Sackler Collection and from the National Gallery of Art’s Widener Collection, 5 September 1982 - 2 January 1983, no. 10;

San Francisco, The Replica Handbags s Museum of San Francisco, Palace of the Legion of Honor, Italian Maiolica from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, 1986-1988, no.34. 

This syrup jar is part of a pharmacy series, including albarelli and a bottle, all painted with the same device and monogram. The set is surely the result of an operation of substantial scale and was commissioned for the same pharmacy. The connection with a pharmacy in the district of Porta Sole, in Perugia, where the emblem of a sun with a face is emblasoned on buildings, is only a hypothesis. 

This syrup jar is very similar in the colours, painting style, decoration and monogram to the albarello, dated 1573, in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, (inv. no. 02.5.12, see T. Wilson, op. cit., 2016, no. 109, pp.308, 309) and another in Rouen.  

The 1573 albarelli and several spouted jars with the same emblems are strikingly similar in conception to an earlier pharmacy series; some pieces were dated 1501 and 1502 and with the emblem of a moor’s head. The later albarelli were likely made to match and supplement earlier pieces made for the “Sole” pharmacy early in the sixteenth century; the potter may have been Giacomo Mancini, called El Frate (“The Friar,” dead about 1580).

GIACOMO MANCINI “EL FRATE”

Giacomo Mancini, called El Frate, is documented as having supplied the tiles for the pavement in the Church of San Pietro, Perugia, dated 1563, painted with an orange ground decoration that resembles that of this syrup jar. The Mancini family is documented as running one of Deruta’s leading workshops in the 16th and 17th centuries. Unusually for Deruta maiolica painters, El Frate had a habit early in his career, between 1541 and 1545, of signing istoriato work and for this reason he is the only Deruta painter of the 1540s to the 1570s whose activity can be certainly traced. 

RELATED LITERATURE

T. Wilson, Maiolica: Italian Renaissance Ceramics in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016, no. 109. pp.308-309;

C. Fiocco and G. Gherardi, La ceramica di Deruta, Perugia, 1944, no.176a, p. 277.