A DISH, VENICE, MASTRO DOMENICO AND COWORKERS, CIRCA 1560-1570 DISH, VENICE, MASTRO DOMENICO AND COWORKERS, CIRCA 1560-1570 majolica dish painted in polychrome with orange, yellow, green, blue, manganese brown in shades of black, brown and tin white. On the reverse side inscription in blue: arme diachile fabbri/ cate daullchano secondo/ omer ; diam. cm 25, foot diam. cm 12, h. cm 4,2 Comparative literature J. Lessmann, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum Braunschweig. Italienische Majolika. Katalog der Sammlung , Brunswick 1979, pp. 409-481; J. Lessmann, Italienische Majolika Aus Goethes Besitz: Bestandskatalog Klassik Stiftung Weimar Goethe-Nationalmuseum: Bestandskatalog Der Klassik Stiftung , Weimar 2015, pp. 234-237 nn. 90-91 The dish has a wide cavetto and broad horizontal brim and rests on a ring base. The decoration completely covers the stanniferous glaze on the front of the piece, occupying the entire space without interruption, demonstrating the great technical skill of the painter, who was able to arrange the scene even in the cavetto without creating any loss of perspective. The scene, which is taken from the Homeric narration (Iliad, XVIII, 369 ff.) and depicts Vulcan intent on forging Achilles' weapons, takes its cue from a woodcut taken from the Vita et Metamofoseo D'Ovidio, figurato & abbreviato in forma d'Epigrammi by M. Gabriello Symeoni published in Lyon in 1559, and in the same engraving one can also read the epigram outlined in manganese brown on the back of the plate under the foot, but with the painter's abbreviations and interpretation. While in the source, Vulcan's workshop is enclosed within walls and Venus appears next to the god, intent on supervising the forging for her protégé, in our plate the painter sets the scene in an open landscape, while respecting both the depiction of the main deity and the presence of the lorica placed at the foot of the work station, here simplified and transformed into a rocky base, but above all bringing the masonry furnace present in the engraving back into the new setting. The painter's style is secure, the landscape in the background denouncing the influence of the Marche workshops, but the hand is very close to the works of Mastro Domenico's workshop, many examples of which can be found in German collections and in particular in the Brunswick Museum. However, we would like to focus here on some of the details of the dish, such as the sky that splits at the top leaving an unreal and supernatural light, surrounded by the same clouds that we find in a dish in the collection of the Goethe-Nationalmuseum with a scene of Hippomenes and Atlas (inv. no. II 354-334), in which the landscape also recalls the training environment of the painter of these plates, but also the rapid and confident style in the translation of the engravings and the faces of the figures, which we also find in another plate from the same museum with a depiction of Cain and Abel (Inv. no. II 354.338).