- DIMENSIONS:
- Length
(overall) 198 mm; Width (overall) 112 mm
- DESCRIPTION:
- Deep
blue oval dish of "Palissy ware", with naturalistically
moulded figures of a man clad in a brown loincloth, and a woman in
a blue loincloth. Their bodies are turned slightly towards each other,
with her left hand resting on his left hip. There are blue and green
garlands on their heads, with green and yellow foliage behind, and
green herbage behind their crossed legs. Seven green and yellow medallions
form an everted rim to half the dish; the remainder is plain. Mottled
polychrome back, with two depressions at the backs of the heads.
- COMMENTARY:
- Bernard
Palissy, who was born near Agen c. 1510, having worked as an artist
in stained glass, turned to pottery about 1540. By 1542 he was established
at Saintes. In 1555 the High Constable of France, de Montmorency,
commissioned a rustic grotto which was set up by Palissy, at the instance
of Catherine de Medici, in the garden of the Tuileries in 1566. Technically
his pottery is not dissimilar from that of Saintonge and Poitou, though
the technique of casting lizards and other creatures from the life
may have been a contribution of his own. Having suffered as a Protestant,
and been imprisoned for heresy, Palissy died c. 1590. His moulds were
used after his death and his work was continuously imitated. His influence
can be found at Avon, near Fontainebleau, in the wares made at the
pottery of Barthélemy de Blénod. It is probable that
the pieces in the Ashmolean collection date from the first half of
the seventeenth rather than from the sixteenth century.
- Museum Id. No:
- 1656 p. 53: Variety of China dishes
1685 B no. 584-7: Disci 4 Chinitici oblongi; in una parte faeminas
nudas prostratas habent sua pudenda manibus tegentes
|
