Dish with Floral Motifs

Description

March 28, 2009
The two dishes exhibited here are later examples of Spanish lusterware, one of the most important traditions in the art of European ceramics. During the fourteenth century, Muslim artists who immigrated to the Kingdom of Valencia (a region under Christian rule on the east coast of Spain) began to manufacture a special type of ceramic ware that had a long tradition in Islamic kingdoms, but had not been produced in Christian Europe for many centuries. What distinguished their ceramics was not the ceramic itself, but the opaque-white glaze that provided an unrivaled background for more colorful painted decoration and the luster glaze produced by a final firing, which gave the ceramics an attractive metallic iridescence. By the fifteenth century, such lusterwares were produced in several centers in Christian Spain and were exported widely. Although Christian artists took over the production of such lusterwares during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the designs on later dishes reveal this Islamic heritage. The popularity of lusterware led Italian artists to start producing their own lusterwares, known as maiolica, in the sixteenth century. The use of the opaque-white glaze first introduced to Christian Europe through Spain spread even more widely to other centers of ceramic production throughout Europe, where it was used for many types of wares, including faience in France and Delftware in Holland.