Getty Museum

Relief-Blue Jar with Dots

Date

about 1430–1450

Medium

Tin-glazed earthenware

Culture

Italian

Department

Decorative Arts

Institution

Getty Museum

This small, rounded jar features five horizontal bands of ornamentation alternating with white reserves. Each band contains wavy lines, dots and dashes of brownish-purple manganese, and heavy circles of “relief blue.” This distinctive blue glaze was a preparation of cobalt and lead that could be painted on so thickly that it stood out from the surface of the pot after firing. While many relief-blue ceramics were painted with animals and leaf patterns, at least a dozen surviving works have more abstract motifs like this one. The interior of the jar is painted with a clear, lead glaze. The jar is marked with a six-pointed asterisk below each handle. Scholars have not come to a consensus on the meaning of such marks, which appear on more than thirty other surviving jars. It may be related to a Florentine workshop operated by Giunta di Tugio (c. 1382 – c. 1450). Two other relief-blue jars in the Getty collection, [one with a rampant lion](http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/949/unknown-maker-relief-blue-jar-with-rampant-lions-italian-about-1425-1450/) and [one with running boars](http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/950/unknown-maker-relief-blue-jar-with-running-boars-italian-about-1430/), also bear this mark.

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