A FOOTED DISH (ALZATA), VENICE, MASTRO DOMENICO AND COWORKERS, CIRCA 1570 RISATA, VENICE, MASTRO DOMENICO AND COWORKERS, CIRCA 1570 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 13,4, h. cm 5,5 Comparative literature C. Ravanelli Guidotti, Homage to Venice. Maioliche veneziane tra Manierismo e Barocco nelle raccolte del Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche in Faenza , II, Faenza 1998, no. 4; D. Thornton, T. Wilson, Italian Renaissance Ceramics, A Catalogue of the British Museum's Collection , London 2009, no. 169; J. Lessmann, Italienische Majolika aus Goethes Besitz. Bestandskatalog, Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Goethe-Nationalmuseum , Stuttgart 2015, pp. 217-230; E. K. Swietlicka, Venetian Maiolica in Polish Collections. New attributions, iconography, interpretations , in " La maiolica italiana del Rinascimento, studi e ricerche ", Proceedings of the international conference, Assisi 9-11 September 2016, G. Busti, M. Cesaretti, F. Cocchi (eds.), Turnhout 2019, pp. 120-121 The cup has a hemispherical shape on a high foot with a wide flat cavetto that rises into a slightly rounded brim and a rounded rim edged in yellow. On the front is an historiated scene with three figures: on the left Vulcan intent on smithing on the anvil, while on the right Venus tenderly clasps Cupid's hand to prevent him from getting too close. Behind the god is the architectural furnace in which the fire burns and again a large backdrop with columns, while to the right is a landscape with a turreted city with houses with sloping roofs. As is customary in historiated maiolica, the painter drew the scene from a print by Marco Dente (Bartsch XIV.184.227) depicting the Forge of Vulcan, but using only some of the characters and inserting them into a larger landscape. The painting style is that of Mastro Domenico's workshop between 1555 and 1575, and the attribution to the Venetian workshop is also based on the quality of the hand, which we only find in some of the historiated works with figures, mainly female, with thin pale, almost ebony skin, but also skilful touches of tin white to emphasise certain small details, such as the toes of the characters or the use of dark green in certain parts of the plate. The face of Vulcan and the features emphasised with manganese in the face of Venus can be found in some of the portraits typical of the workshop's closed-form works, but also in the rare plates signed by the master, such as the large plate of '1568' in the Faenza Museum. The 'historiated', almost Urbino-like part, as well as the morphology of the work find an illustrious comparison in a well-known yellow background bowl by Xanto Avelli in the British Museum in London (inv. no. 1878,1230.373), which is closer to the engraving. The presence of architectural elements, architecture with sloping roofs and other elements, which we find depicted for example in the cup with a cut foot in the Tarnów Museum in Poland (cat. no. MT.II.353), or the comparison with the figure of Cupid in a dish from the Royal Castle of Wawel (cat. no. 1752), where the female figures also seem to correspond to the gentleness of the protagonist of our cup, comfort us in the attribution.