Articles and Essays by Lisa Boutin Vitela
In the sixteenth century, tin-glazed earthenware dishes known as maiolica became an interactive m... more In the sixteenth century, tin-glazed earthenware dishes known as maiolica became an interactive means of entertaining viewers in the context of dining through the combination of painted imagery and inscriptions. Beginning around 1530, painters of a type of narrative-painted maiolica, known as ‘istoriato,’ began to include lengthy inscriptions on the reverses of dishes that often identified subjects and included excerpts of poetry. These inscriptions demonstrate three important features: first, dishes must have been handled by viewers in order to read the inscriptions, either while on display or during a meal; second, the more complex inscriptions were intended to encourage greater engagement between the viewer and ceramic dish and generate increased interaction and conviviality among guests, and third, maiolica painters were attempting to raise their standing in court circles by demonstrating their literary knowledge through the addition of these inscriptions. These inscriptions are discussed in the context of Renaissance banquets where discussions of literary subjects took place.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This article explores connections between istoriato (narrative-painted) maiolica dishes created f... more This article explores connections between istoriato (narrative-painted) maiolica dishes created for marchesa Isabella d'Este and her son duke Federico II Gonzaga and dining rituals at their suburban palaces. Due to its low intrinsic value, maiolica was especially well-suited for use at their suburban palaces, as these retreats were usually expected to be less ostentatious than the court in Manuta. These palaces outside the Mantuan city limits, such as Isabella’s palazzo di Porto, were places of learned discussion, lush gardens, and outdoor dining. The decoration of the Gonzaga maiolica dishes, which included imprese of the marchesa and duke, stories and characters from classical literature, musical motifs, and verdant landscapes, would have resonated with visitors to the palaces, who would have viewed similar iconography in the palace decoration and enjoyed the suburban palace gardens. Therefore, the Gonzaga maiolica dishes served as an important part of the dining rituals that took place at these retreats by inspiring discussions and reinforcing the palaces’ visual messages.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The work of painter Vittore Carpaccio throws new light on the gender ideals pervasive in Venetian... more The work of painter Vittore Carpaccio throws new light on the gender ideals pervasive in Venetian society during the late fifteenth century. Recent conservation research has revealed that the artist’s most famous work, a rare domestic panel depicting two sumptuously attired women seated on a rooftop terrace or altana (Museo Correr, Venice) was, in fact, only the lower half of a painting whose upper portion depicted men hunting on the Venetian lagoon (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles). Yet scholars have continued to address the separated panels as if they each constituted an artistic whole, rather than addressing the complexities of the recomposed panel’s iconography. In this article, the entire painting is analyzed as a construction of contemporary notions of gender difference. The image is read as an accurate depiction of aspects of Venetian life, while also serving as an allegory of courtship through the representation of female passivity and virtue in contrast to male aggression in the midst of the hunt.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Conference Papers by Lisa Boutin Vitela
This paper examines data visualizations created within IDEA Ceramics, a part of the interdiscipli... more This paper examines data visualizations created within IDEA Ceramics, a part of the interdisciplinary digital humanities project IDEA: Isabella d'Este Archive. The visualizations of IDEA Ceramics demonstrate trends in size, materials, and the frequency of narratives and personal emblems on the ceramic dishes of Isabella d'Este's maiolica service. These visualizations, produced through DH Prospect developed at UNC Chapel Hill, provide a method for analyzing Renaissance maiolica services or " credenze " on a larger scale in order to track the changing demands of patrons in the sixteenth century. Isabella d'Este's maiolica service is contrasted with that of her son Duke Federico II Gonzaga, as well as the services of other courtly patrons, in order to highlight the sociability and possible utilitarian functions of Renaissance maiolica.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This paper examines three categories of fifteenth and sixteenth-century ceramics that employed il... more This paper examines three categories of fifteenth and sixteenth-century ceramics that employed illusory techniques to impress, surprise, and even deceive viewers in the context of dining in Spain, Italy, and France. The first category of lusterware provided an inexpensive means of replicating the visual effects of silver and gold dishware, while also incorporating legible representations of narratives. In the second category, Medici patrons sought to emulate Chinese porcelain and Iznik pottery through the commissioning and display of maiolica “alla porcellana” and soft-paste porcelain in order to demonstrate understanding of refined materials and comprehensive collecting practices. The final category of Bernard Palissy’s rustic ware, decorated with a variety of species including lizards and snakes, suited contemporary enthusiasm for the study of the natural world, as well as the creation and use of grottoes as dining spaces. This paper focuses on the messages of wealth and knowledge that these ceramics conveyed to diners.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The Medici family of Florence serves as a case study of early porcelain collectors. According to ... more The Medici family of Florence serves as a case study of early porcelain collectors. According to inventories and archival records, the Medici porcelain collection expanded exponentially from 1456 to 1547. These documents and surviving objects demonstrate a shift from a focus on only the surface appearance of porcelain to a desire to understand the materiality of true porcelain.
Francesco I de’ Medici (1541 - 1587), Grand Duke of Tuscany and a porcelain enthusiast, sponsored the first European examples of soft-paste porcelain. The production of Medici porcelain under Francesco exemplified the types of art objects that were sought-after in the Late Renaissance due to wider trade networks, growing interests in the possession of objects and knowledge from territories beyond Europe, and the developing study of alchemy and the natural world. By examining examples of Medici porcelain in the context of their production and reception, Francesco – who has been maligned in scholarship as an eccentric – is reassessed as an engaged and innovative patron. Indeed, he was the first Renaissance prince to triumph in the creation of porcelain or ‘white gold,’ as it came to be known. Despite the imperfections of Medici porcelain, this presentation emphasizes that Francesco’s sponsorship functioned a significant step in the eventual production of true, hard-paste porcelain in Europe.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This paper will examine the practice of imitating Ming porcelain in Italian Renaissance pottery w... more This paper will examine the practice of imitating Ming porcelain in Italian Renaissance pottery workshops and the reception of these imitations. Due to a growing appreciation of rare, imported Chinese porcelain, early sixteenth-century Italian potters appropriated and developed techniques of covering their brownish-red earthenware vessels in white, tin-glazes, followed by the addition of blue decoration. These imitations lacked the technical refinement of light, kaolinite vessels from China, but the outward appearance satisfied aesthetic demands. By the end of the sixteenth century, however, the desire to create true porcelain became urgent. The Medici porcelain manufactory in Florence (1575-1587) had limited success in creating soft-paste porcelain, but the dishes were not equal in quality to Chinese counterparts. Based on this development during the sixteenth century, I will argue that the demand for blue-and-white decoration in the early part of the century must have motivated alchemists to try to equal the quality of Chinese ceramics. Although the results of sixteenth-century Italian experiments in porcelain production were unsuccessful, so few examples of Ming porcelain were available in Europe that viewers of imitation vessels may have been unaware of the characteristics of porcelain, as appears to have been the case in many surviving inventories. This paper will explore this moment of cultural exchange in which artists resorted to illusion and experimentation due to immense technical challenges.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
In the sixteenth century, tin-glazed earthenware dishes known as maiolica became a means of enter... more In the sixteenth century, tin-glazed earthenware dishes known as maiolica became a means of entertaining viewers in the context of dining. In this paper, I will discuss the inscriptions found on the reverses of maiolica dishes that have garnered little attention from scholars. Beginning around 1530, painters of a type of narrative-painted maiolica, called ‘istoriato,’ began to include lengthy inscriptions on the reverses of dishes that often identified subjects and included excerpts from poems. I will argue that these inscriptions demonstrate two important features: first, dishes must have been subject to handing in order to read the inscriptions, either while on display or during a meal, and second, maiolica painters were attempting to raise their standing among artists by demonstrating their literary knowledge through the addition of these inscriptions. These inscriptions will be discussed in the context of country and suburban villas, where economical maiolica dishes were socially acceptable and where learned discussions of literary subjects frequently took place.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Maiolica (tin-glazed earthenware) painted with classical narratives became a useful means of disp... more Maiolica (tin-glazed earthenware) painted with classical narratives became a useful means of displaying erudition and virtue in sixteenth-century Italian courts. Among the most popular sources of imagery were Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In Virgil’s birthplace of Mantua, marchesa Isabella d’Este (1474-1539) owned three dishes by master maiolica painter Nicola da Urbino (active ca. 1520-1537/8) featuring her coat of arms and imagery from the Aeneid. One of these dishes represented Aeneas’ escape from Troy. The painted dish drew on well-established iconography from antiquity. Following the standard composition, Nicola depicted Aeneas carrying his elderly father, Anchises, who clutches two household gods while Ascanius follows. A second dish featured Cupid disguised as Ascanius crawling into Dido’s lap at a banquet held by the Carthaginian queen for the exiled Trojans who arrived at her shores. Nicola’s representation of the banquet scene included sixteenth-century furniture and classically-inspired costume. The iconography of the third dish is less certain, but may represent the encounter of the prophetess Manto and the river god Tiber. The relationship between the two would have been well known to Mantuans, as the consummation of their relationship resulted in a son, Ocnus, who founded their city. This paper will analyze these three dishes in the context of dining rituals in the Mantuan court, the increasing popularity of prints that served as inspiration for maiolica painters, and the art collections of the Gonzaga and Isabella d’Este. These three dishes will also be compared to dishes with similar imagery commissioned by members of other aristocratic families.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Conference Presentations by Lisa Boutin Vitela
Our presentation considers the material culture of the past through the art of the present. Isabe... more Our presentation considers the material culture of the past through the art of the present. Isabella d’Este (1474-1539), was the most important female art patron and collector of her day. Our film, “The Illustrated Credenza” investigates her narrative-painted, tin-glazed earthenware service (credenza di maiolica istoriata), designed by Nicola d’Urbino, the Raphael of Renaissance ceramic painters. Today, the twenty-three surviving dishes from Isabella d’Este’s original set are housed in far-flung international collections. Following sixteenth-century workshop methods, Italian ceramicist Ester Mantovani has replicated the plates, allowing us to experience the remaining service as an ensemble for the first time since the 1500s. Mantovani’s service helps us to visualizing the credenza in action following Isabella’s dining protocols. Her strategies for self-fashioning are revealed through the narratives on the dishes branded with her personal arms and emblems.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Articles and Essays by Lisa Boutin Vitela
Conference Papers by Lisa Boutin Vitela
Francesco I de’ Medici (1541 - 1587), Grand Duke of Tuscany and a porcelain enthusiast, sponsored the first European examples of soft-paste porcelain. The production of Medici porcelain under Francesco exemplified the types of art objects that were sought-after in the Late Renaissance due to wider trade networks, growing interests in the possession of objects and knowledge from territories beyond Europe, and the developing study of alchemy and the natural world. By examining examples of Medici porcelain in the context of their production and reception, Francesco – who has been maligned in scholarship as an eccentric – is reassessed as an engaged and innovative patron. Indeed, he was the first Renaissance prince to triumph in the creation of porcelain or ‘white gold,’ as it came to be known. Despite the imperfections of Medici porcelain, this presentation emphasizes that Francesco’s sponsorship functioned a significant step in the eventual production of true, hard-paste porcelain in Europe.
Conference Presentations by Lisa Boutin Vitela
Francesco I de’ Medici (1541 - 1587), Grand Duke of Tuscany and a porcelain enthusiast, sponsored the first European examples of soft-paste porcelain. The production of Medici porcelain under Francesco exemplified the types of art objects that were sought-after in the Late Renaissance due to wider trade networks, growing interests in the possession of objects and knowledge from territories beyond Europe, and the developing study of alchemy and the natural world. By examining examples of Medici porcelain in the context of their production and reception, Francesco – who has been maligned in scholarship as an eccentric – is reassessed as an engaged and innovative patron. Indeed, he was the first Renaissance prince to triumph in the creation of porcelain or ‘white gold,’ as it came to be known. Despite the imperfections of Medici porcelain, this presentation emphasizes that Francesco’s sponsorship functioned a significant step in the eventual production of true, hard-paste porcelain in Europe.