Jar

Unknown

ca. 1625–50 · Tin-glazed earthenware · European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

During the course of the sixteenth century a number of potteries making tin-enameled earthenware came into existence in Talavera de la Reina, a small town some sixty miles southwest of Madrid. The town supplied plain wares that were greatly admired for the beauty of their white surface—the "bianco"—and others that were decorated in a subdued palette of high-temperature greens, yellows, browns, blues, and purples. This jar and bowl (1983.469.1, .2) come from a pottery, so far unidentified by name, that seems to have obtained important orders over a fairly long period in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The characteristics of the factory are well exemplified in these objects: a fine bianco; a very beautiful blue—skillfully modulated from light to deep shades—that predominated in the early and mid-16oos; and an energetic freedom in the use of the brush point to draw in figures and background vegetation. In the latter part of the seventeenth century the prevailing to

Artist

Unknown

Date

ca. 1625–50

Medium

Tin-glazed earthenware

Culture

Spanish, Talavera de la Reina

Department

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Credit line

Purchase, Gift of Irwin Untermyer, by exchange, 1983