A JUG, FAENZA, EARLY 16TH CENTURY JUG, FAENZA, EARLY 16TH CENTURY Made of earthenware painted in polychrome with citrine yellow, orange yellow, copper green, cobalt blue, and manganese brown, ovoid body resting on a low flared foot with flat base rim, short neck with trefoil mouthpiece, ribbon handle that descends slightly curved. The main decoration is concentrated on the front and features an oval medallion within a frame with a ladder motif, which contains an original ornament with a laid table that stands out against a deep yellow background, moved by orange lines to simulate the floor and above by a very fine band of almost lily-like lines. The remaining surface of the vase is occupied by a banded ornament with parallel lines decorated with embrocations, while a stylised crown runs across the neck and the handle is decorated with polychrome watercolour lines. In terms of shape and decoration, the jug can be included in the group of works produced in Faenza and Romagna in the so-called transitional period between the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century, and it seems to us that the decoration, of great narrative impact and centred precisely on the representation of a jug, already preludes certain narrative 'historiated' moments. Close in form and minor decoration to the mug with a female figure from the MIC in Faenza (inv. no. 14116), Carmen Ravanelli Guidotti recalls how works of this genre already belonged to the geometric-floral period, which lasted until the second half of the 16th century with works also characterised by popular themes, as in the case of the depiction of the 'denari' of cards, an auspice of good fortune, present for example in a mug in the civic collections of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan (cat. no. 52); h. 20.5 cm, foot diameter 10.5 cm Comparative literature C. Ravanelli Guidotti, Thesaurus of works from the Faenza tradition . Faenza 1998, p. 210-211 n. 44; C. Ravanelli Guidotti in R. Ausenda (ed.), Musei e Gallerie di Milano. Museo d'Arti Applicate. Le ceramiche, I, Milan 2000, pp.126-128 n. 124