Savona Faience

Italian

Pair of Covered Jars

c. 1740

Glazed earthenware

Museum purchase with funds donated in Memory of Jane Sherwood Nelson
by her Family

1980.29.1

Faience is the French name given to tin-glazed earthenware, after the Italian potteries of Faenza that had been famous for their maiolica since the Renaissance.  The Ligurian town of Savona in northern Italy was one of the most important centers for creating such wares during the 17th and 18th centuries.  The forms were often based on contemporary objects in silver and porcelain, as in the rococo period, and the scenes often derived from contemporary paintings or prints.  These scenes reveal a couple strolling and a single figure, and their reverse shows a rustic dwelling in a landscape, reminding us of the rise of landscape in the 17th century and the importance of the pastoral in the 18th.

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