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The
Ceramics of Deruta.
The origin of the
ceramics of Deruta is rather ancient. The first installations were
surely favoured by the easy availability of clay in its hills,
where it is still extracted in
the first decades of our century, in the neighbourhoods as well as
in the alluvial drift of the Tevere
river. The happy geographical position of Deruta, mostly
for its proximity to main land and river roads of communications,
favouring the commerce and exchanges, might then have sustained
the development of the activity of the patters and the expansions
of their
businesses.
Although the
attestations related to its more ancient origin are scarce, a
considerable number of testimonies, as file documentation,
archaeological evidences, or surviving masterworks preserved in
the museums or in private collections, prove that the ceramics has
been continuously produced in Deruta from the late Middle Ages
till today. As a result, we have a composite picture that shows
Deruta growing, mostly between the fifteenth and the sixteenth
centuries and again in our century, as an extraordinary phenomenon
of mono-economy based on the production of the ceramics. The
Middle age are characterised by the so called “archaic glazes”
like basins. Bowls, bread trays, jugs and plates coloured only in
brown and green on a whitish enamel bottom, with a repertoire
limited to geometric or geometric-floral motives and, sometimes,
representations of animal and anthropomorphous or sacred symbolism.
Characteristics of this china are, besides, the fashioning to the
lathe in one solution, without final finishing touches, a thin
enamel tending to the grey, lightly applied only on those parts
reserved to the decoration.
In the third century the
“late – Gothic” style prevails, characterised by the
richness of the formal and, above all, iconographic variations.
We are watching the
transformation of the forms and a complication of the ornamental
patterns that are mostly organised in accordance with a formal
scheme to which for a long time the painters of Deruta will remain
faithful and that see distribution of the decoration, shed among a
central medallion and a series of parallel concentric bands that
surround it. On the contrary, the transformation of the forms
seems to resolve the necessity to facilitate the task of the
painter placing at his disposition greater surfaces to
be destined for the representations. In this way the
“pompous” plates are able to receive allegorical and loving
subjects, warlike or hunting scenes and coats of arms and other
heraldic symbols, often represented in a reserved space. The
contour decoration mostly used includes instead motives like
“flames and radiant crown”, “roll up leaf”, “pointed
leaf”, often framed by turnings and spiral marked “to
scratch” on manganese bottom. In the second part of the III
century, Deruta is touched by some phenomenon that will have a
conclusive influence on the development of the ceramics. Deruta
and its master potters were, in fact, at the center of an intense
artistic and commercial movement. In this “virtuous circle”,
the productions of Deruta during that period is very variegated
for quality and techniques. It is then offered to rich and popular
markets, next to the refined and sophisticated artefact even the
art of the glazed terracotta was flourishing. New forms and
decorations are superimposed to the preceding ones, new techniques,
as the “Lustro”, were learned, new protagonist were added to
the original nucleuses of Deruta giving life to an artistic and
commercial vivacity without precedents. Among the productions of
greater value, in the last decades of the XV century, there seemed
to appear, in Deruta, a typology that constitutes
a first example of transition toward the beautiful style of
the XVI century. It is a wide typology characterised by the
presence of simple decorations in the shape of petal on the plates
and pans’ backs and so denominated “petal back”.
The production of
ceramics ”a lustro” dominates the scene between the end of the
III century and beginning of the XVI century, that will rightfully
make the factories of Deruta famous. The “lustro” consist in a
special decorative technique, that allows obtaining the colours of
the gold, or of the rubies with changing and iridescent tones.
Instead, an exception is made to the rigid compartment of the
figurative plant, the decorated production of Giacomo Mancini
“Il Frate” (the friar), toward the mid- XVI century , and the
samples where the decoration is extended in geometrical
progression on the whole surface of the objects as, for example,
might be found in some decorated plates in white over white or
with the motive “vegetable arabesque”. Even in the forms
primarily round, sinuous and with thin thickness a further change
in decorative and ornamental sense is determined. Among
the most diffused: the “pump” plate, to be used for
exhibition, “amatory goblet” in the different styles of
“ballate”, of the “gamelii” and of the “impaliate”,
the globular vase with double handle on a tall foot.
The plurality of the cultural influences, the influence of
the greater arts, the vigour and the artistic freedom of the
potters from Deruta finds the best synthesis in 1524, with the
complex realisation of the floor discovered in the church of San
Francesco in Deruta. It is composed of a series of tiles in star
and cross shape, juxtaposed one on the other, in accordance with a
typical and diffused form between the Islamic floor and never
repeated-except this case-in the Christian world, where symbolic
and allegorical scenes are represented, that seem to refer to the
cycle of the fresco
of the Collegio del Cambio di Perugia, alternate to decorative
motive of geometric-vegetable type. The author or the authors are
unknown, but the works is initialled in the back with “S”,
whowever it was, was
a master from Deruta, since comparative studies consented to
identify different works creditable to the anonymous “Maestro of
the floor”. In the production of 1600 the style
“Compendiario” prevails. The protraction of the renaissance
pictorial canons that privileged the formal solutions,
bidimensional, the anatomical study and the decorative redundancy,
constitutes yet the greatest obstacle in the achievement of the
approximate description of the figures that the definitely skilled
hand of the painter of the “Compendiario” was proposing. On
the contrary, the forms are complicated with motives
“baccellature” plastic relief, sinuous hems, in particular in
the “crespine”, In the “fruit plates” and in the
saltcellars, in the stoups and in the inkstands that countersign
the production of the time.
In the XVIII century the
production appears still rich in quality and in artistic
inventiveness, even if less referable to the style that
characterised the previous production. The cause is to be found in
the fact that none masters of that time appeared to be coming from
the ancient local potter families and, it can therefore be
presumed that the innovations of the period were imported from
other places. Besides, one can observe the progression abandonment
of the “Compendiario” painting to achieve, in second half of
the XVIII style, more cultured, rigorous and formal, with an
opening to the contemporary tendencies of the “vedutista”
painting. However after this experience, Deruta’s production
sinks rapidly, reaching an alarming status of crisis towards the
middle of the 1800. The artistic production which nearly stopped,
survived in the production of ordinary kitchenware. Such a
situation seems due to the general slackness that tormented, at
that time, the economy of the Pontifical State as well as the
general weakening of the arts, creditable to various sociocultural
factors like the indifference of the church, the decadence of the
aristocracy and the lack of a vivacious middleclass that left a
provincialism situation and cultural delay, the artistic and
cultural milieu of Umbria and, in particular, of Perugia. The
first studies on majolica, the historical and amateur researches
and collectors’ interest favoured the industrial resumption that
is marked by a contest with a prize organised by the town council
of Deruta in 1872. An exhibition of Deruta’s ancient ceramic was
the corollary to the contest and from there the idea probably
originated to constitute a town museum, well grounded at the and
of the century upon initiative of Francesco Briganti. It is then
thanks to the same Briganti and to the artist’s doctor Angelo
Micheletti, to whom later on Alpinolo Magnini is to be added, that
formed the first specialized workers, and the producers tried to
reunite in cooperatives. The production is directed toward
revivalist and classical typology, from the faithful imitation of
the XVI original, including “il Lustro”, till the revision of
decorative and formal themes based on the national ceramic
tradition and on the commemorative portraiture. The commercial
success was notable for the more traditional productions, as well
as for the more innovative ones, inspired from the tendencies of
Art Nouveau and Decò and, later on from those of the
twentieth-century modern style.
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