A BOWL, DUCHY OF URBINO PROBABLY PESARO, SECOND HALF 16TH CENTURY BOWL, DUCHY OF URBINO PROBABLY PESARO, SECOND HALF 16TH CENTURY majolica painted in polychrome with cobalt blue, copper green, manganese brown, antimony yellow in shades of yellow and orange; diam. cm 25.7, foot diam. cm 11.5, h. cm 5 Comparative literature R. Gresta, La maiolica istoriata a Pesaro, nuovi apporti sul pittore del Pianeta Venere , in "Ceramicantica" II, January 1992; A.V.B. Norman, Wallace Collection Catalogue of Ceramics 1: Pottery, Majolica, Faience, Stoneware , London 1979, p. 246 n. C 121 The bowl on a high foot has a broad cavetto and a low seamless raised brim, the rim is rounded and rests on a cold applied raised foot. The glaze is fat, rich and textured with a shiny glazed glaze on both the front and back, and the paint is spread with abundant use of pigments. While on the reverse side the ornamentation is limited to concentric yellow stripes that emphasise the differences in shape, the decoration on the front covers the entire surface and depicts the mythological episode of Arethusa and Alphaeus . Ovid in his Metamorphoses (V, 572 et seq.) narrates that the nymph Arethusa, bathing to refresh herself in the waters of the river Alphaeus, made him fall in love with her to the point that the river god tried to chase her: the nymph then called for help from Artemis, her protector, who enveloped her in a cloud to take her flying to Sicily near Ortigia, where Arethusa herself turned into a spring of fresh water. But Alphaeus, really in love with the nymph, asked the intercession of his father Oceanus to cross the waters of the Ionian Sea and reach his beloved. This subject was quite successful in the production of Urbino in the mid-16th century, as can be seen, for example, in the plate datable to 1550-1560 in the St. Petersburg Museum (inv. no. F3028) or those in the Cluny Museum in Paris, the Victoria and Albert or Braunschweig, where Diana seems to derive from Marcantonio Raimondi's engraving of a Seated Woman by Parmigianino (Bartsch XV, p. 47 no. 31), slightly varied in the pose, while the figure of Alphaeus is taken from Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio's engraving of Apollo and Daphne (Bartsch XV, p. 78 no. 34). In our cup, the characters, who seem to draw inspiration from the same engravings, are depicted amidst backdrops of rocks and trees that separate the foreground from a seascape surrounded by mountains with sharp profiles. On the right, Diana, seated, creates with her hand the cloud that envelops the fleeing young nymph, depicted from behind as the young river god chases her with outstretched hands to reach her. The figures are outlined with strong strokes, the faces and details are illuminated by touches of tin white, contrasting with the sombre choice of very textural colours that characterise the landscape. The use of grey bistro to create the shading of bodies and clouds is skilful. Some elements of the landscape match the plate with the Contesa di Pan e Apollo in the Wallace Collection in London, attributed to the Duchy of Urbino around 1540. Due to the shape of the tree crowns in wide, flattened tufts and the elongated, outlined rocks, the work seems to find stylistic comparison in a series of dishes produced in Pesaro between 1540 and around 1570. However, the style of our bowl is rapid, confident, but lacks those softer features that characterise the works of the 'Pittore del Pianeta Venere' or the workshop of Dalle Gabicce or Sforza di Marcantonio, even though many of the characteristic elements of contemporary works attributable to Pesaro remain, so much so as to suggest a still cautious attribution to the workshops active there.