A DISH, DUCHY OF URBINO, CIRCA 1545-1550 DISH, DUCHY OF URBINO, CIRCA 1545-1550 majolica painted in polychrome with cobalt blue, copper green, manganese brown, antimony yellow in shades of yellow and orange; diam. cm 25,2, foot diam. cm 8,4, h. cm 3,5 Comparative literature M. Mancini Della Chiara, Maioliche del Museo civico di Pesaro , Pesaro 1979, no. 217; C.D. Fuchs, Maioliche istoriate rinascimentali del Museo Statale d'Arte Medioevale e Moderna di Arezzo, Arezzo 1993, p. 187 n. 89; O. Mazzuccato, L. Pesante, Medieval and Modern Ceramics. Catalogo delle collezioni dei Musei Vaticani. Decorative Arts. 1 , Vatican City 2023, pp. 170-174 nos. 2.15; 2.16; 2.17 The dish has a deep cavetto, an oblique brim with a rounded rim and rests on a low ring foot. While the back shows no decoration, the front is painted with Vulcan's workshop: on the right the god is intent on striking a weapon on the anvil, in the centre Cupid, armed with an arrow, watches him closely, on the left Venus embraced by Mars looks outwards seated on a rock; Behind Vulcan is a furnace with a blazing fire observed by a cupid, while above, a cupid armed with a bow standing above spiral clouds observes the scene, enclosed on one side by a rock and on the other by a powerful architecture with domed roofs; in the background, finally, is a landscape with a hilltop town elevated above a large body of water. The pictorial style is that of the figures in the Pesaro Museum bowl with Apollo and Daphne, dated 1545 (Inv. Coll. Mazza, cas. 99; Rs 239, Gp317). The figure of a cupid with coloured wings with a small face, the toned and rounded musculature, and certain ways of outlining the landscapes, such as the high hill with some houses shaded in green, present on a cup with Pasiphae and Daedalus in the Museum of Arezzo (inv. no. 14648) and comparable with our plate, lead us to the environment of the Duchy of Urbino and in particular to the works of the workshop of Lanfranco dalle Gabicce. However, the same stylistic methods are found in three other works with mythological scenes, two cups and a dish attributed to the Fontana workshop between 1545 and 1555, recently published and currently on display in the new rooms of the Ceramics in the Vatican Museums (inv. no. MV62267, MV62266, MV62274), attributed to the hand of the same painter. This prudential attribution, however, does not exempt us from recognising a single painter's hand to be assigned to the Duchy of Urbino.