A Nevers maiolica large dish, circa 1640

Possibly, Cosimo III de' Medici (1642-1723), Grand Duke of Tuscany;

The Fountaine Collection, Narford Hall, Norfolk, probably acquired by Sir Andrew Fountaine (1676-1753), inv. no. III:33;

Recorded in the Octagon Closet at Narford Hall, in the Fountaine Family Inventory of 1835;

Thence by descent to Sir Andrew Fountaine IV (1808-73);

The Celebrated Fountaine Collection of Majolica, Christie's London, 18 June 1884, lot 349 (£48.6s to Grindlay) (Listed in the third day’s sale as: Lot 349 An Urbino Dish, many figures kneeling, Moses receiving the Tables of the Law, description on the back in French—17 in.);

Probably, art dealer William Grindlay of 3 Pall Mall Place, London;

Christie’s London, 30 March 1987, lot 254;

Where acquired

A. Moore, ‘The Fountaine Collection of Maiolica’, The Burlington Magazine, vol. 130, no. 1023, June 1988, pp. 435-447.

This dish was part of one of the most celebrated collections of Renaissance maiolica and works of art ever formed; established first by the connoisseur and traveller Sir Andrew Fountaine (1676-1753), and subsequently added to by his descendants. In 1835, Andrew Fountaine IV (1808-1873), upon the death of his father Andrew Fountaine III and his inheritance of Narford Hall, drew up an inventory of the ‘Octagon Closet’ which housed the family’s collection of maiolica. According to the inventory, the room included “200 pieces of the ancient earthenware called Raphaels” and “about 200 pieces of the old French enamel on Copper”. The inventory was ordered by shelf and by object type, and were listed where applicable by the inscriptions on the backs of the objects. On ‘Shelf I, Large Raphael Wares’, the present dish is listed as: ‘12. Moyse au mont de Sinai. Exode CXIX.’ The inventory of 1835, as transcribed in Moore, op. cit., states that "The collection here was bought or exchanged for something else by Sr. Andrew Fountaine from Cosmo the 3d. Grand Duke of Tuscany, who parted with as much as he could of the collection made by Lorenzo di Medicis, Duke of Urbino, for the Royal collection at Florence”. Sir Andrew did indeed have a close friendship with the Grand Duke, and much of his collection was acquired on his two Grand Tours of Europe, though as yet no archival evidence has been found to support the Fountaine collection was formed out of the Grand-Ducal collection.

A small number of dishes painted with biblical subjects and bearing French inscriptions, presumably Nevers maiolica, were recorded in the 1835 inventory at Narford Hall. One such dish, with the subject of the Children of Israel gathering Quails, which was the subsequent lot to the present dish when sold in 1884 (lot 350), was perhaps painted by the same hand, and is now in The Louvre, Paris, inv. no. OA 11045, illustrated in Moore, 1988, p. 400, figs. 53-54. Another Nevers dish also after a Bernard Salomon woodcut, with a Book of Exodus subject of Miriam and the Israelite women celebrating the drowning of Pharaoh's army, is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, acc. no. WA2013.10, illustrated in T. Wilson, Italian Maiolica and Europe: Medieval and Later Italian Pottery in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2017, pp. 464-466, cat. no. 257. That dish was originally displayed next to the present dish, listed as ‘no. 13’ in the 1835 Fountaine inventory.

The scene on the present dish is taken from a woodcut by Bernard Salomon used as an illustration in Claude Paradin’s Bible picture-book Quadrins Historiques de la Bible, published in Lyon in 1553. A near identical dish probably painted by the same hand, though 10cm smaller in diameter, was sold at Christie’s London, 12 June 1995, lot 342 (as Lyon).

In the famed 1884 sale of the Fountaine Collection, the present dish was bought by the dealer William Grindlay (b. 1828/29 - d. by 1887), who was listed as a ‘curiosity dealer’ at 52 South Molton Street, London, in 1860, and as ‘art dealer’ at 3 Pall Mall Place in Kelly’s Directory in 1879 and 1882. He purchased seven lots of maiolica in the Fountaine sale, spending most on the present lot (lots: 4, 158, 180, 342, 346, the present work, 353). The present locations of the other dishes he acquired are unknown, though lot 346, catalogued as an Urbino plate painted with Samson slaying the Philistines, was probably the example that later entered the collection of the Hon. W.F.B. Massey-Mainwaring, M.P (1845-1907), sold, Messrs. Robinson & Fisher, 6-11 June 1904, lot 164.