BEST goldthwaite The Economic and Social World of Italian Renaissance Maiolica 1989

ITALIAN RENAISSANCE MAIOLICA II
for which their native city was famous; and in I545, a Bolognese
chroniclereported with much satisfaction the opening of the first
shop of maiolica, where a particularly large number of vases, bowls,
and plates went on display to show they were in fact the equal of
Faentine wares -not the kind of event that usually gets recorded in
chronicles of the period. 26 When the above-mentioned Macci, an old
family of ceramicists of Deruta but by now residents of Perugia,
made application for citizenship in Perugia in I498, the petition was
decorated with the drawing of a pitcher and proudly declared them
producers of beautiful and completely original products that were
sold throughouthe world and that increased the glory and fame of
Perugia to the admiration of all who appreciated lusterware (laboreria
maiolicata).27
The princes of Italy, once they had raised the stakes oftheir intense
political competition with one another to include art patronage in
general, were quick to recognize the prestige value of locally produced
maiolica for the enhancement of their reputations. Petty despots
like Costanzo Sforza and Roberto Malatesta, who ruled over
towns in the Romagna where maiolica was produced, did not hesitate
to send samples as gifts to a man with such discriminating taste
as Lorenzo the Magnificent and to the pope himself. By the sixteenth
century, there was hardly a prince in Italy who did not attempto
attract potters to his capital either to stimulate the local economy by
introducing a new industry or to set up a court kiln for the private
production of highly prestigious products. Some of these princes
clearly had the additional interest in developing the commercial possibilities
of this new taste.28
Perhaps the most stunning success in the growth of this industry,
finally, was its ability to compete against imported wares to the
point of driving them out of the Italian market altogether and, eventually,
of invading the very markets abroad whence these foreign
products came. Earlier in the Middle Ages, before Italians knew
anything about making tin-glazed pottery, they imported wares
26"6Documenti, " Faenza, I (I 913):17- I 8.
27Biganti, "Produzione a Gubbio" 215.
28For Florence: Cora, "Fabbrica di maioliche." For Ferrara: Grazia Biscontini
Ugolini, "Un nuovo pezzo del celebre servizio nuziale di Alfonso II d'Este," Rassegna
distudi edi notizie, 3 (1975):158-6o. For Ferrara, Mantua, and Savoy: Campori, Maiolica
di Ferrara 68, 79-83.
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