Maiolica

Maiolica, tin-glazed earthenware produced in Italy from the 13th century onwards. Compared with the earthy pigments of medieval European pottery, tin-glazed earthenware with its potential for bright colours painted onto a luminous white ground led to attractive, exotic, and high-status ceramics. This type of ceramics was first produced in response to Hispano-Moresque ware, made in Spain and exported in large quantities to the noble patrons of Renaissance Italy. The name maiolica (frequently spelt majolica) is thought to be either a corruption of “Majorca” after the island from which many of the Spanish pots were shipped, or to derive from “Málaga”, one of the main centres of Spanish production.

After the first (bisque) firing, the low-firing earthenware body, a pale buff colour due to the high lime content, was coated in a thick lead-based glaze, opacified, and whitened with up to 20 per cent of tin-oxide. Pigments were then painted onto the unfired glaze surface before being fired again to approximately 1,000° C. Initially, these pigments were applied in simple geometric designs using combinations of copper oxide (green) and manganese dioxide (purply-brown), but with the stimulus of developments in the arts, the palette was expanded to include cobalt oxide (blue), lead antimonite (egg yellow), and lead antimonite and iron oxide (orange). This has come to be regarded as the classic Italian maiolica palette. Influenced by Renaissance painting, ceramic decoration became more pictorial and sophisticated, incorporating finer lines and graded washes of colour to suggest depth, perspective, and form. The high shine of the glaze may well indicate the use of a transparent overglaze or coperta.

The main centres of production were Orvieto, Faenza, Florence, Deruta, Montelupo, and Venice. Many drugs jars were made for hospitals and pharmacies, but there was also great demand for commemorative wares. The growth of new religious and secular buildings also gave rise to the production of architectural ceramics such as wall roundels, tile panels, and pavements. After the Renaissance, production declined in quality and was continued mostly in small country potteries. (See also Pottery.)