page_title: Maiolica
section_title: History of production
hierarchical_section_title: Maiolica / History of production
caption_attribution_description: Britain Loves Wikipedia at the Victoria and Albert Museum Dish with man on horseback English: Dish with man on horseback Italy, Deruta, 1520-50 The dish shows almost the entire range of colours used by maiolica painters. Among the most popular designs on large Deruta dishes of this kind are single figures of horsemen, either Western lancers, such as this one, or, Turkish ones. This type of plate may have formed a pair with an Ottoman rider proceeding in the opposite direction. Collection ID: 2595-1856A This photo was taken as part of Britain Loves Wikipedia in February 2010 by Valerie McGlinchey.
context_page_description: Maiolica is tin-glazed pottery decorated in colours on a white background. Italian maiolica dating from the Renaissance period is the most renowned. When depicting historical and mythical scenes, these works were known as istoriato wares. By the late 15th century, several places, mainly small cities in northern and central Italy, were producing sophisticated pieces for a luxury market in Italy and beyond. In France maiolica developed as faience, in the Netherlands and England as delftware, and in Mexico as talavera.
  In English the spelling was anglicised to majolica but the pronunciation usually preserved the vowel with an i as in kite.
context_section_description: Refined production of tin-glazed earthenwares made for more than local needs was concentrated in central Italy from the later thirteenth century, especially in the contada of Florence. The medium was also adopted by the Della Robbia family of Florentine sculptors. The city itself declined in importance as a centre of maiolica production in the second half of the fifteenth century, perhaps because of local deforestation, and manufacture was scattered among small communes, and, after the mid-fifteenth century, at Faenza.
  Potters from Montelupo set up the potteries at Cafaggiolo. In 1490, twenty-three master-potters of Montelupo agreed to sell the year's production to Francesco Antinori of Florence; Montelupo provided the experienced potters who were set up in 1495 at the Villa Medicea di Cafaggiolo by its Medici owners.
  In the fifteenth century, Florentine wares spurred the production of maiolica at Arezzo and Siena. 
  Italian maiolica reached an astonishing degree of perfection in this period. In Romagna, Faenza, which gave its name to faience, produced fine maiolica from the early fifteenth century; it was the only significant city in which ceramic production industry became a major part of the economy. Bologna produced lead-glazed wares for export. Orvieto and Deruta both produced maioliche in the fifteenth century.
  In the sixteenth century, maiolica production was established at Castel Durante, Urbino, Gubbio and Pesaro. The early sixteenth century saw the development of istoriato wares on which historical and mythical scenes were painted in great detail. The State Museum of Medieval and Modern Art in Arezzo claims to have the largest collection of istoriato wares in Italy.  Istoriato wares are also well represented in the British Museum, London.
  Some maiolica was produced as far north as Padua, Venice and Turin and as far south as Palermo and Caltagirone in Sicily and Laterza in Apulia. In the seventeenth century Savona began to be a prominent place of manufacture.
  The variety of styles that arose in the sixteenth century all but defies classification. Goldthwaite notes that Paride Berardi's morphology of Pesaro maioliche comprises four styles in 20 sub-groups; Tiziano Mannoni categorized Ligurian wares in four types, eight sub-categories and 36 further divisions; Galeazzo Cora's morphology of Montelupo's production is in 19 groups and 51 categories. The diversity of styles can best be seen in a comparative study of apothecary jars produced between the 15th and 18th centuries. Italian cities encouraged the pottery industry by offering tax relief, citizenship, monopoly rights and protection from outside imports.
  An important mid-sixteenth century document for the techniques of maiolica painting is the treatise of Cipriano Piccolpasso.  The work of individual sixteenth-century masters like Nicola da Urbino, Francesco Xanto Avelli, Guido Durantino and Orazio Fontana of Urbino, Mastro Giorgio of Gubbio and Maestro Domenigo of Venice has been noted. Gubbio lustre used colours such as greenish yellow, strawberry pink and a ruby red.
  The tradition of fine maiolica came under increasing competition in the 18th century, mainly from porcelain and white earthenware. But the 18th century is not a period of relentless decline. To face the competition from porcelain and its vibrant colours, the process of third firing (piccolo fuoco) was introduced, initially in North-West Europe around the mid of century. After the traditional two firings at 950 °C, the vitrified glaze was painted with colours that would have degraded at such high temperatures, and was fired a third time at a lower temperature, about 600-650 °C. New vibrant colours were thus introduced, in particular red and various shades of pink obtained from gold chloride. It is believed that one of the first to introduce this technique in Italy was Ferretti in Lodi, in northern Italy. Lodi maiolica had already reached high quality in the second quarter of the 18th century. With the introduction of the third firing technique, and with the increasing interest in botany and scient
caption: Deruta ware dish, 2nd quarter of the 16th century, shows the full range of glaze colors (Victoria and Albert Museum)
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