
Italy in the Renaissance
The splendour of majolica
- Edited by Timothy Wilson, Cristina Maritano
- Size 24x30 cm
- Binding Paperback
- Pages 288
- Illustrations 150
- Language Italian
- Year 2019
- ISBN 9788842224877
- Price € 60,00 € 57,00
Italian majolica. A mirror to the world of the Renaissance
Italian Renaissance majolica is perhaps the one form of art that most completely and with the brightest colours reflects the world in which the women and men of the Renaissance lived. The representation in majolica of religious, mythological, romantic, sacred and profane subjects as a decoration for stately homes is a novelty that was born in Italy at the end of the 15th century and from there exported around Europe. It is an art that grew and evolved in small, highly specialised centres, like Faenza, Pesaro, Cafaggiolo, Deruta, Gubbio, Casteldurante, Urbino. The fascinating and unique history of Italian majolica at its peak, from the second half of the 15th to the mid 16th century, is told by art historian Timothy Wilson, an outstanding curator of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum and the biggest expert on Italian Renaissance majolica (to whom we owe the systematic catalogues of the collections of the British Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the National Gallery in Victoria, and, of course, the Ashmolean Museum), in an exhibition that is among the largest of its kind produced in Italy in the recent past: an exceptional set of works - approximately 200 - from prestigious private collections and those belonging to Palazzo Madama, offering visitors a fresh, intimate look on life during the Renaissance.