Medici porcelain
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Medici porcelain was the first successful attempt in Europe to make imitations of Chinese porcelain, though it was soft-paste porcelain rather than the hard-paste made in Asia. The experimental manufactory housed in the Casino of San Marco in Florence existed between 1575 and 1587 under the patronage of Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Surviving examples are extremely rare, and the great majority of the 60-70 examples are in museums. A painted mark of
Brunelleschi's dome Florence Cathedral, formally the (; in English Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Flower), is the cathedral of Florence, Italy ( it, Duomo di Firenze). It was begun in 1296 in the Gothic style to a design of Arnolfo di Cambio and was structurally co ...
and a capital letter F appear on the underside of some pieces; others bear the
Medici The House of Medici ( , ) was an Italian banking family and political dynasty that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici, in the Republic of Florence during the first half of the 15th century. The family originated in the Muge ...
''palle'', the balls that are the Medici heraldic charge. Never a commercial venture, Medici
porcelain Porcelain () is a ceramic material made by heating substances, generally including materials such as kaolinite, in a kiln to temperatures between . The strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to other types of pottery, arises mainl ...
s were sometimes given as
diplomatic gifts A diplomatic gift is a gift given by a :diplomat, politician or leader when visiting a foreign country. Usually the gift is reciprocated by the host. The use of diplomatic gifts dates back to the ancient world and givers have competed to outdo e ...
; for example, surviving pieces bear the arms of
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.


History and Manufacture

Giorgio Vasari reported in the 1568 edition of his ''
Vite ''The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects'' ( it, Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori), often simply known as ''The Lives'' ( it, Le Vite), is a series of artist biographies written by 16th-ce ...
'' that Bernardo Buontalenti was currently at work on discovering the art of porcelain, but there is no sign that he was successful. The first successes were finally reported in 1575 by the Venetian ambassador
Andrea Gussoni Andrea is a given name which is common worldwide for both males and females, cognate to Andreas, Andrej and Andrew. Origin of the name The name derives from the Greek word ἀνήρ (''anēr''), genitive ἀνδρός (''andrós''), that ref ...
, who mentioned in his brief to the '' Serenissima'' that Francesco discovered the means of making "the porcelain of India," (i.e. the East Indies). Gussoni mentioned in particular the four qualities that made porcelain desirable, apart from its exotic rarity:
However, the entire project was ultimately relatively short-lived; the high-firing temperature pushed sixteenth century technical capability to its limit, resulting in exorbitant production costs. There are no references to Medici porcelain manufacture securely dated after Francesco's death in 1587. The body of Medici porcelain ware is a type of soft-paste porcelain, composed of white clay containing powdered feldspar, calcium phosphate and wollastonite (CaSiO3), with quartz. The glaze contains calcium phosphate, indicating that the middle-eastern technique of using calcined bone to make an opaque white glaze was adopted. The result is translucent but slightly glassy in feel. Following the precedents of classic Chinese
blue and white porcelain "Blue and white pottery" () covers a wide range of white pottery and porcelain decorated under the glaze with a blue pigment, generally cobalt oxide. The decoration is commonly applied by hand, originally by brush painting, but nowadays by sten ...
, decorations were painted in underglaze blue, which resulted in a range of hues when fired—from a bright cobalt blue (such as a flask in the
National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...
) to grey (such as the bottle detail at right). Some pieces have outlines traced in manganese. Body shapes are adapted from maiolica ceramics and silver models; they range from the largest basins and ewers, chargers and plates, to the smallest
cruet A cruet (), also called a caster, is a small flat-bottomed vessel with a narrow neck. Cruets often have an integral lip or spout, and may also have a handle. Unlike a small carafe, a cruet has a Stopper (plug), stopper or lid. Cruets are normal ...
s. Decorative motifs are executed in imitation of Chinese blue-and-white wares, or of Turkish İznik ceramics, or more rarely in imitation of maiolica '' grottesche'' ornament. Both Chinese and Turkish ceramics had been represented in the Medici family collections for over a century; for example, one prized possession of the family was a gift from the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt who sent Lorenzo de' Medici "large vessels of porcelain, the like of which has never been seen" in 1478.


Legacy

When Francesco died, his younger brother Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici inherited the position of Grand Duke. Ferdinando brought his prized Chinese and Medici porcelains back with him to Florence from the Villa Medici in Rome, along with his paintings and treasured Roman antiquities. But with the ubiquity of European soft-paste and hard-paste porcelains in the eighteenth century, the Medici heirs in the House of Lorraine came to value less and less the imperfect Medici porcelains, with their minute firing cracks and bubbled glazes. In 1772 an auction in the
Palazzo Vecchio The Palazzo Vecchio ( "Old Palace") is the City hall, town hall of Florence, Italy. It overlooks the Piazza della Signoria, which holds a copy of Michelangelo's ''David (Michelangelo), David'' statue, and the gallery of statues in the adjacent ...
of objects from storage dispersed the Medici porcelains conserved in Tuscany. The venture disappeared from history until interest revived after the mid-nineteenth century. The 1588 inventory drawn up after Francesco's death listed 310 pieces. Today only some sixty or seventy pieces are known to survive.For a list of surviving pieces of Medici Porcelain see G. Cora and A. Fanfani, ''La porcellana dei Medici'' (Milan) 1986. The next successful European attempt to make soft-paste porcelain would come from the
Rouen manufactory The city of Rouen, Normandy has been a centre for the production of faience or tin-glazed earthenware pottery, since at least the 1540s. Unlike Nevers faience, where the earliest potters were immigrants from Italy, who at first continued to make w ...
in France, in 1673.


Notes


References

*G. Cora and A. Fanfani, ''La porcellana dei Medici'' (Milan) 1986. *Giuseppe Liverani, ''Catalogo delle porcellane dei Medici'', in series ''Piccola Biblioteca del Museo delle Ceramiche in Faenza'': II (Faenza) 1936. *Arthur Lane, ''Italian Porcelain'' London 1954.


External links


National Gallery, Washington DC: Medici porcelain flask
{{Medici Ceramics manufacturers of Italy Porcelain Culture of Tuscany Italian pottery Diplomatic gifts