A PHARMACY JAR (ALBARELLO), MASTER OF THE BRANCACCIO CHAPEL (ATTR.), 1470-1480 ALBARELLO, NAPLES, MASTER OF THE BRANCACCIO CHAPEL (ATTR.), 1470-1480 majolica painted in polychrome with cobalt blue, yellow ochre, copper green, manganese brown in shades of purple and black; h. 21.5 cm, mouth diameter 9.2 cm, foot diameter 8.8 cm Provenance Sotheby's, Florence, 19 October 1970, lot 5; Sotheby's, Milan, 2 December 1998, lot 253; Private collection Exhibition Exhibition of Italian Renaissance Ceramics , curated by the Mitzukoshi Foundation and Faenza Museum, Tokyo/Nagoya, 1981 (cat. no. 9) Literature G. Donatone, La maiolica napoletana dagli Aragonesi al Cinquecento , Naples 2013, fig. 6.a Comparative literature J. Giacomotti, Catalogue des majoliques des musées nationaux , Paris 1974, pp. 27-28 n. 86 The albarello has a cylindrical shape slightly tapering in the centre, an angled shoulder and calyx, a short neck with an everted rim cut into a splint and a flat foot also finished in a splint. The glaze, which covers the entire surface leaving the foot uncovered, is poor, creamy-white with inclusions, boils and cracks; the interior is unglazed. The neck of the vase is decorated with a double pair of fillets interspersed on the shoulder by a series of oblique dashes outlined with rapidity. The front of the body is decorated with a depiction of a panther gradient to the right on a flowery meadow, enclosed within a frame that follows its contours, according to a choice in use in the early Renaissance that seems to affect all Italian manufactures across the board. Two lanceolate leaves fill the spaces left free by the outline, connecting to the back where a curled leaf motif is developed accompanied by a dense pattern of spirals and dots to complete the ornamentation. The panther, painted in yellow ochre, has a small head with a closed mouth and its neck covered by a thick collar with a ring. Our albarello has been on the market since the 1970s with attribution to the Tuscan or Faentine area, an attribution also present in the catalogue entry of an exhibition held in Japan in 1981, which was however changed following publication by Guido Donatone in 2013, which proposes an attribution of the same to the Neapolitan workshop of the so-called Maestro della Cappella Brancaccio, with a date ascribable to the second half of the 15th century, associated by comparison with other works from this workshop, not least an albarello with a dog or feline gradient associated with another secondary decoration. There is also an interesting comparison with a 'twin' albarello in the Louvre Museum (inv. no. OA 8232) datable to 1475 and attributable, according to Jeanne Giacomotti, to Faenza.