Workshop of Piero and Paolo Bergantini, Italian, Faenza, circa 1524-30

Probably made for the widow Anne d’Alençon;

John Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913), New York;

Thence by descent to his son J.P. (“Jack”) Morgan Jr (1867-1943);

Sir Joseph Duveen (1869-1939), Duveen albums 1916. Duveen's stock (29058), 1927;

Dr. Howard Bak, New York;

Sotheby's, London, 7 December 1965, lot 55;

Jean-Georges Rueff, Paris;

Palais Galliera: Rheims and Laurin, Paris, 7 March 1970, lot 10;

Cyril Humphris, London;

Private Collection, Italy, purchased from the above in 1970;

Pandolfini, Florence, 28 October 2014, lot 29.

G. Conti, L’arte della maiolica in Italia, Milan, 1973, fig. 55;

G. Conti, L’arte della maiolica in Italia, Milan, 1980, fig. 114;

J. Rasmussen, Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Italienische Majolika, Hamburg, 1984, p. 99, no. 6; 

D. Thorton and T. Wilson, Italian Renaissance Ceramics. A Catalogue of the British Museum Collection, London, 2009, vol. I, p. 243, no. 20; 

L. Riccetti, "1913 : il mancato catalogo della collezione di maiolica italiana di J. Pierpont Morgan" in Faenza, no. 1-2013, p. 128, no. 44;

T. Wilson, The Hockemeyer Collection. Maiolica and Glass, vol. II, 2012, p. 65, no. 56;

T. Wilson, “Italian maiolica and gift-giving between women, c.1480-1600”, in C. Kovesi (ed.), Luxury and the Ethics of Greed in Early Modern Italy, Turnhout 2018, pp. 199-203, fig. 9.6;

T. Wilson, The Golden Age of Italian Maiolica-Painting, Turin, 2018, p. 194.

London, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1905 - 1912;

New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1914 - 1916.

THE PALEOLOGO FAMILY AND THE MARQUISATE OF MONFERRATO 

The arms are those of Paleologo (a branch of the imperial family of the Byzantine Empire) impaling d’Alençon. Timothy Wilson has argued that this plate and a series of glass plates with nearly identical arms were made for Anne d’Alençon (1492-1562), the widow of Guglielmo IX Paleologo, Marquess of Monferrato (1486-1518).¹ Anne was a cultured French royal princess, who married the hereditary ruler of the small independent state of Monferrato in 1508; she was regent of Monferrato from her husband’s death in 1518 on behalf of her son Marquess Bonifazio, until 1530. 

From about 1524 a series of armorial plates in this style were made, with various armorials, all or most of them in the workshop of the Bergantini brothers. The armorial dishes thought to have been made by that Faentine family are mostly painted with the same general design and include the light blue ground with the reverse painted with a small circle with a cross in the center, combined with bands painted a porcellana containing flowers, foliage scrolls and hashmarks. Some are also inscribed on the back with, often "B", presumably for “Bergantini”. Most are much smaller than the present plate.

Wilson suggests that several of the Faenza services with impaled arms (those of husband and wife) were made as gifts for or commissioned by the wives, or sometimes, as here, widows, often as gifts between women. One such service, commissioned in 1524 by Eleonora Duchess of Urbino, with the arms of Gonzaga impaling d’Este, as a gift for her mother the widowed Isabella d’Este is famous and well-documented. The service of which this plate is the outstanding survival may have been a gift to Anne d’Alençon but may equally have been ordered by the widowed Marchesa herself. Anne’s second daughter Margherita married Federico II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, in 1531, thus sealing the strategically important union between the Gonzagas and the Paleologos.²

In Faenza, one of the most successful workshops for high-quality maiolica was run by the brothers Piero and Paolo Bergantini. The Bergantini workshop was located near the chapel of San Vitale in Faenza; Piero is documented from 1503 to 1540 and Paolo from 1507 to 1541. Only one work is known that bears the name of the Bergantini bottega and a date; it is a bowl in the Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche in Faenza depicting the Sacrifice of Marcus Curtius, decorated a berettino, including a rim with a trofei decoration and inscribed: ·FATA· IN· FAENZA • I[N] • LABOTEGA ·DE· M[AESTRO] ·PIERE· BERGANTI[N]O • M.CCCCC/1529 a dj 17 de zugno. It provides a touchstone for attributions to the workshop and allows the present plate to be firmly attributed to it; this plate is one of the most magnificent surviving products of the workshop. 

Another bowl dated 1531, in the Museo Civico of Turin and with the arms of the Salviati family is particularly close to the present plate. A further connection can be made between this dish and one with the arms of Roberto Strozzi and his wife Maria di Simone Ridolfi, circa 1525 preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (acc. no. 27.97.17).³ This piece, which like the present piece, is a single very large item in a service of smaller pieces, and also includes putti flanking the central coat of arms and a motif with a variation of interlacing arabesques and a reverse with a similar outer border. Five other pieces with the same coat of arms, with similar designs but much smaller dimensions, are in the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art in Toronto; the Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire in Brussels; two others that belonged to the firm of A. S. Drey, in Munich; and one that was exhibited at the Fogg Art Museum in 1939 and then sold at Sotheby’s, London, 29-30 March 1971. 

PRESTIGIOUS PROVENANCE: PIERPONT MORGAN AND DUVEEN 

In the early 20th century, this dish was part of the collection of J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913), the most successful American businessman at the time. A philanthropist and art lover whose means had almost no limit, Morgan assembled an incredible collection of art objects, watches, paintings, manuscripts and books (including maiolica), much of which was given by his son Jack to the to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut; Pierpont Morgan’s own creation, the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, also holds some of his maiolica. 

Joseph Duveen (1869-1939), 1st Baron Duveen, the most influential British art dealer of his time, purchased this plate, together with most of the rest of Morgan’s Italian maiolica, from Jack Morgan in 1916. The Duveen brothers were suppliers and advisers to the great American art collectors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Henry Clay Frick, William Randolph Hearst, Henry E. Huntington, Samuel H. Kress, Andrew Mellon, John D. Rockefeller, the Canadian Frank Porter Wood, and J. Pierpont Morgan, among others. 

We are grateful to Professor Timothy Wilson and Mrs. Greta Kaucher for their invaluable contributions to the research on this entry.

¹T. Wilson, The Hockemeyer Collection. Maiolica and Glass, II, 2012, p. 65;

²D. Thornton and T. Wilson, Italian Renaissance Ceramics: A Catalogue of the British Museum Collection, London 2009, pp. 128-43 (on the Bergantini services);

³T. Wilson, Maiolica. Italian Renaissance Ceramics in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2016, no. 44.