Getty Museum

Green-Painted Dish with an Interlace Pattern

Date

15th century

Medium

Tin-glazed earthenware

Culture

Italian

Department

Decorative Arts

Institution

Getty Museum

This humble dish takes the form of a basin with a flat bottom and sloped sides. Painted with vegetal motifs in green, ocher, and brown on a white ground, the center of the dish features a pattern of interlaced white ribbons and green leaves radiating from a cross. Around this central pattern is a ring of elongated ovals in green and ocher, punctuated by wavy brown lines. Influenced by the motifs on Islamic ceramics imported to Italy, these abstracted designs are typical of tin-glazed earthenware made in Florence and its environs during the middle of the fifteenth century. The decoration on the border, however, mimics a garland of laurel branches bound with ribbons. Laurel garlands were symbols related to ancient Rome, and therefore demonstrate the fascination with classical motifs that was developing in fifteenth-century Florence. At some point in its history, the dish was discarded and buried in the earth, causing damage and discoloration to the glaze.

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