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

ITALIAN RENAISSANCE MAIOLICA 5
Growth is also reflected in the emergence of a large number of distinctly
identifiable centers of production and in the seemingly infinite
expansion of the range of their products. Before the midfourteenth
century, pottery is classified into the general categories of
incised slipware, archaic maiolica, and the so-called proto-maiolica;
and all this production, with its limited range of colors and decoration,
can be lumped together according to geographically extensive
regions -namely, Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria-Lazio,
and south Italy, especially Puglia and Sicily. By the Renaissance,
however, these regional categories no longer work: the map becomes
much more complicated with the rise and decline of a large
number of individual centers throughouthe peninsula, each with its
own production characterized by highly distinctive qualities. Pottery
found throughout medieval Tuscany, for instance, is fairly homogeneous,
but from the mid-fourteenth century onwards, distinct
centers of prestige production emerge at Siena, Pisa, Montelupo,
and Cafaggiolo.4 Likewise in the state of Urbino, each center of production-
Casteldurante, Gubbio, Pesaro, and Urbino itself- had
its own specialized characteristics. Just to read out the names of the
chief centers of Renaissance maiolica is to evoke the enormous variety
that is one of the delights of this art form: Deruta with its
golden-yellow wares, Florence with its heavy blue relief, Gubbio
with its red metallic glazes, Siena with its distinctive red, Venice
with its grayish-blue, the Metauro region with the polychromatic
fantasies of the istoriato style and the elaborate plastic forms of its late
production. In the last few years an impressive amount of archaeological
and documentary research as well as more careful visual
analysis by Italian scholars have put the individuality of many other
centers into prominent relief.
This concentration of prestige production in a number of small
rural places occurred presumably because of access to betteraw materials,
especially clays and fuel, to improve the quality of production.
In other words, industrial development brought the forces of
geographical determinis more prominently into play-a subject
that seems not to have been discussed in the literature. This relocation
of producers to rural places, most of which were in remote
mountainous regions, occurred despite the consequent rise in trans-
4Riccardo Francovich, La ceramica medievale a Siena e nella Toscana meridionale (secc.
XIV-XV) (Florence, 1982) chap. 2; idem and Sauro Gelichi, La ceramica medievale nelle
raccolte del Museo Medievale e Moderno di Arezzo (Florence, 1983) 50-52.
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