Italian, Castel Durante or Venice, circa 1530 - 1550

Sotheby's London, 16 October 1989, lot 133; 

Sotheby's New York, 13 January 1995, lot 1157;

Where acquired

Ornament of this kind was particularly favoured in Castel Durante and the present albarello may have been provided by a workshop in that town, although the bands of zig-zag ornament are unusual. An alternate place of manufacture, though speculative, is the workshop of Francesco di Piero of Castel Durante, who married the daughter of the prominent Venice potter Jacomo da Pesaro and who maintained workshops both in his native Castel Durante and in Venice, where his unusually large kiln was admired by Cipriano Piccolpasso. 

Timothy Wilson has suggested that an albarello with trofei on an orange ground marked "M FRANCESCO" and dated 1555 in the De Ciccio collection at the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples (L. Arbace, "Albarelli rinascimentali della collezione De Ciccio", CeramicAntica, anno 1, no. 8, September 1991, p. 57) might be an indication of Venetian production.