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- Wine cooler
- Workshop of Pantanazzi , Probably
- Urbino, italy
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- Date: c. 1580 - 1600
- Medium: Tin-glazed earthenware, painted
- Height: 22.5 cm
- Width: 47.5 cm, maximum
- Inv: C116
- Location: Smoking Room
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- Description
- Provenance
- Further Reading
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- This trilobate wine cooler stands on a base formed of three lion’s paw feet alternating with vertical volutes. Between each of the three lobes of the wall there is a handle with its top formed as a grotesque mask of an open-mouthed, toothed monster with a beard, goat-like horns, and a cockleshell on the crown of its head. Each mask is flanked on the rim of the cooler by a pair of relief scrolls. The interior is painted with a scene of fishermen on the river Arno at Florence working their nets from boats and specially constructed rock-formed breakwaters. Beyond the city, the landscape fades gradually into the distance where there is a range of low blue hills. The Arno river god, accompanied by a lion, is in the lower left corner of the scene. In the sky, among clouds, five naked winged putti hover holding laurel branches. The exterior of each lobe is painted on its upper part with a pair of naturalistic birds which face each other, flanking a grotesque ornament comprising a beribboned mask face with an inverted cornucopia of fruit descending from each ear and one from the mouth. These bird pairs are above the curved swags of fruit descending from the masks’ ears. They are probably intended to represent a nuthatch and a goldfinch; a chaffinch and a goldfinch; and a nuthatch and a blue tit or yellow wagtail. The lower section of each lobe is painted with a central yellow and orange fleur-d-lis; on two lobes these are flanked by a pair of unidentified birds and on one by another likely goldfinch and a butterfly, each within a delicate laurel scroll. The centre of the hollow between the feet is glazed white and painted on a pale blue ground with a blue flower. The colours are blue, orange, yellow, green, black, and opaque white.
The wine coolers that were incorporated into prestigious Renaissance maiolica tableware services were often their most monumental component. They were often trilobate in shape. Wine coolers of this form were described in Renaissance documents as ‘rinfrescatoio a triangolo’. The bowl was usually painted over the entire surface with a subject related to water. These subjects were usually taken from Roman history or Classical mythology (see Wallace Collection C107, C111), and C116 is unusual in depicting a contemporary scene, albeit with the inclusion of a river god. Maiolica on which a narrative or figurative scene is painted over an entire surface as if it were an artist’s canvas is described as ‘istoriato’ maiolica. The cooler would be filled with water or ice and containers of wine placed in it. An example in gold is depicted at the Palazzo Te, Mantua, in a fresco of ‘The Banquet of the Gods’, part of the decorative scheme painted by Giulio Romano in the Chamber of Cupid and Psyche between 1526 and 1528. In the fresco, the cooler is placed on the ground close to the credenza and a flask is being kept cool in it.
This wine cooler was probably made in the Patanazzi family workshop in Urbino, a small but prestigious town in the Duchy of Urbino, in the Marche region of Italy. Urbino was the ducal capital of the dukes of Urbino. It was the foremost maiolica-producing town in Renaissance Italy. The Patanazzi were related to the Fontana family and had taken over their workshop from them. The Fontana and Patanazzi workshops produced the majority of the surviving trilobate wine coolers, which were fashionable during the second half of the sixteenth century. The pottery owner Guido Durantino (see Wallace Collection C101) and his son Orazio, had changed their surname to Fontana by 1541. Orazio ran his own workshop in Urbino from 1565 until his death in 1571. After Orazio’s death the workshop was taken over by his nephew Flaminio Fontana (see C107), from whom it passed to a relative, Antonio Patanazzi (d. 1587), probably from the late 1570s. From Antonio, the workshop passed to his son Francesco Patanazzi (d. 1616). The latest dated wine cooler made in Francesco Patanazzi’s workshop is dated 1608 and is a trilobate example now in the British Museum (see Dora Thornton and Timothy Wilson, ‘Italian Renaissance Ceramics. A Catalogue of the British Museum Collection’, 2 vols, London 2009, II, cat. no. 364 [acc. no. 1985,10–1,1]).
The scene of fishermen on the river Arno in Florence in the bowl of C116 is copied from an engraving published by Philips Galle (1537–1612) after a drawing by Jan van der Straet, also known as Joannes Stradanus (1523–1605). The maiolica differs from the print in including rocky manmade breakwaters and putti among clouds. Stradanus was a Flemish artist who spent much of his life in Florence, where he was employed on projects for Cosimo I de’ Medici. The print source for the bowl of C116 belongs to a series of hunting scenes for which Stradanus provided the designs and which evolved in several iterations over a period of almost thirty years. The fishing scene was first published in 1578 by Galle. However, the prints for the initial series of hunting scenes were published by Hieronymus Cock in 1570 and were conceived as representations of designs produced by Stradanus for tapestries for Cosimo I de’ Medici’s villa at Poggio a Caiano in Tuscany. Twenty-eight tapestries were woven between 1566 and 1577; more had been planned but did not materialise. Cock’s widow published two further sets of prints in the hunt series, one in 1574 and the other in 1576. Doubtless due to the success of these prints, Stradanus and Galle embarked on a project that would ultimately expand the hunting series to 104 prints and went well beyond the range of hunting scenes depicted in the tapestries. Galle published the first series of 44 prints resulting from his collaboration with Stradanus in 1578. The frontispiece included the Medici coat of arms and a text by Stradanus that referred to the tapestries. The 44 prints concluded with six scenes of fishing on the Arno, each including the Arno river god. Although the fishing scenes were never executed as tapestries, they suggest what the tapestries would have looked like. The print on which the scene depicted on C116 depends therefore provides a ‘terminus ante quem’ of 1578 for C116. Some years later Stradanus and Galle embarked on a further series comprising 61 additional hunting scenes. Some of Stradanus’s drawings are dated 1596, so the series incorporating these additional prints must have been published after that. The frontispiece carries the title by which the series has become known, ‘Venationes Ferarum, Avium, Piscium. Pugnae Bestiariorum & mutuae Bestiarum’ (Hunts of wild animals, birds and fish. Battles of beast fighters and of beasts among each other). Each scene was accompanied by four lines of Latin verse composed by Cornelis Kiliaan. The verse associated with the fishing scene depicted on C116, which was published again with this series, refers to the fish being caught in round nets when the Arno swells and its waves foam. The large series was published in several parts, the final edition combining the 44 plates from the 1578 series with the more recent prints and being numbered from one to 104. The print source for C116 was number 94. The full series was subsequently reprinted several times by the Galle family. (For further information see Marjolein Leesberg, ‘Venationes ferarum, avium, piscium 1578–1599’ in Alessandra Baroni & Manfred Sellink, ‘Stradanus 1523–1605. Court artist of the Medici’, pp. 245–258.
Might a further connection to Florence be intended by the fleur-de-lis that occurs three times on the lower part of the lobe exteriors on C116? They have a distinctive, flame-like motif on either side of the central petal that is reminiscent of the fleur-de-lis on the coat of arms of the city of Florence, although those on C116 are yellow and orange while the Florentine version is red.
This sumptuous wine cooler is unusual in several regards: in depicting a contemporary subject; in the inclusion of naturalistic, and in some cases identifiable birds rather than fantastical ones; and in the inclusion of several fleurs-de-lis.
- This trilobate wine cooler stands on a base formed of three lion’s paw feet alternating with vertical volutes. Between each of the three lobes of the wall there is a handle with its top formed as a grotesque mask of an open-mouthed, toothed monster with a beard, goat-like horns, and a cockleshell on the crown of its head. Each mask is flanked on the rim of the cooler by a pair of relief scrolls. The interior is painted with a scene of fishermen on the river Arno at Florence working their nets from boats and specially constructed rock-formed breakwaters. Beyond the city, the landscape fades gradually into the distance where there is a range of low blue hills. The Arno river god, accompanied by a lion, is in the lower left corner of the scene. In the sky, among clouds, five naked winged putti hover holding laurel branches. The exterior of each lobe is painted on its upper part with a pair of naturalistic birds which face each other, flanking a grotesque ornament comprising a beribboned mask face with an inverted cornucopia of fruit descending from each ear and one from the mouth. These bird pairs are above the curved swags of fruit descending from the masks’ ears. They are probably intended to represent a nuthatch and a goldfinch; a chaffinch and a goldfinch; and a nuthatch and a blue tit or yellow wagtail. The lower section of each lobe is painted with a central yellow and orange fleur-d-lis; on two lobes these are flanked by a pair of unidentified birds and on one by another likely goldfinch and a butterfly, each within a delicate laurel scroll. The centre of the hollow between the feet is glazed white and painted on a pale blue ground with a blue flower. The colours are blue, orange, yellow, green, black, and opaque white.