“Exuberant Grotesques: Renaissance Maiolica from the Fontana Workshop” is the latest in a critically acclaimed series of dossier presentations organized by the Frick. The exhibition runs from September 15 through January 17.
This project takes a rare focused look at the Fontana family workshop by presenting several outstanding and innovative examples of Sixteenth Century Italian maiolica dating between 1565 and 1575. Each object features the distinctive combination of a central narrative istoriato scene surrounded by delicate grotesques on a white ground. The incorporation of these grotesques, used first in the Renaissance on the walls of the Vatican loggias painted by Raphael in 1519, was translated in Urbino to the ornamentation of luxury maiolica wares.
For 50 years, from 1560 to the beginning of the Seventeenth Century, they were considered the most fashionable decoration to be found on these ceramics. The best pieces, including the six presented in the exhibition, are usually attributed to the workshop of Orazio Fontana, one of the most renowned Italian potters of the Renaissance, who seems to have specialized in the genre.
Featuring works from the holdings of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Frick, the exhibition is organized by Charlotte Vignon, the sixth Andrew W. Mellon curatorial fellow, who was recently appointed as the Frick’s first associate curator of decorative arts.
Orazio Fontana (1510‱571) trained with his father, Guido Durantino, who owned an important workshop in Urbino, Italy, that attracted the era’s most talented maiolica painters. In 1565, at the age of 55, Orazio opened his own workshop and immediately achieved widespread renown. After Orazio’s death, his nephew Flaminio took over the business, continuing for several years to produce maiolica in the Fontana workshop tradition.
Orazio Fontana’s most important contribution to the production of these wares came around 1560 with the development of a new kind of maiolica decoration that combined fantastic creatures, playful satyrs and winged figures painted in bright colors on a white ground. These motifs, commonly called “grotesques,” were derived from the painted ornaments found on the walls of ancient houses that had been excavated in Rome at the beginning of the century.
Maiolica painters often based their most elaborate compositions on existing models, and the delicate grotesques developed in the Fontana workshop are no exception. Some are derived from a set of etchings known as Les Petites Grotesques by the French architect, designer and engraver Jacques Androuet Du Cerceau (1510‱584). These diminutive etchings were published in two editions in 1550 and 1562, in Orléans and Paris, respectively. In most cases, the maiolica painter freely interpreted Du Cerceau’s black and white motifs, adding ornaments and accessories or slightly modifying a figure’s pose.
In some cases, however, he literally copied Du Cerceau’s original. Two of Du Cerceau’s motifs †a barbed creature with an acanthus leaf tail and a horn-playing satyr †have been reproduced almost exactly on a maiolica vase from the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The same vase is decorated with a central medallion representing a religious scene, this time inspired by an illustrated Bible, another source commonly employed by maiolica painters working in the Fontana workshop. The scene, executed in black on a yellow ground, is based on a woodcut from the Figure del Vecchio Testamento, which was published in 1554 in Lyon, France.
The Frick Collection is at 1 East 70th Street. For information, www.frick.org or 212-288-0700.
