Commemorative Vase dedicated to Michelangelo Buonarroti
Second half of the nineteenth century
In the eighteenth century, Michelangelo’s reputation was remarkable. The Doccia factory did not remain indifferent to this phenomenon and, from its earliest years of activity, enriched its model collection with plaster casts taken from the sculptor’s most famous works. Among these are the allegorical figures placed on either side of the monuments of Giuliano Duke of Nemours and Lorenzo Duke of Urbino in the New Sacristy of the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence, which are also reproduced on this vase.
The figures are arranged two per side, framing on one side the head of David and on the other side the Portrait of Michelangelo, topped by a scroll bearing the verse “Michel, more than mortal / Divine angel”, sinuously crossing the strings of a lyre. This is a rhyme written by Ludovico Ariosto in the second octave of canto XXXIII of Orlando furioso (1516), commemorating the fame of some Italian painters active between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The evocation of this verse on a nineteenth-century vase is due to the repeated homage to the “Florentine genius”: it had also been employed by Giorgio Filippo Giorgi in the dedication to Francesco Maria Gabburri, appearing in the 1730 edition of Raffaello Borghini’s Il Riposo, and again by Anton Francesco Gori in the 1746 edition of Ascanio Condivi’s Life of Michelangelo.
Our example therefore represents a tribute to Michelangelo by the factory outside the collective celebrations for the fourth centenary of his birth (1875), as it was presented at the London Exhibition in 1888 and again at that of Palermo in 1891. Undoubtedly, the imposing size for a porcelain artifact, the slender amphora-like structure with a narrow and flared neck, which accentuates its vertical development, together with the rich decoration featuring a reinterpretation of the Renaissance grotto motif in the lower section, make it a piece worthy of exhibition. The side handles sculpted with mask faces stylistically recall the inventions of the sculptor Urbano Lucchesi, artistic director of the Ginori factory in the years when the vase was made.
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Commemorative Vase of Michelangelo Buonarroti
In the eighteenth century, Michelangelo’s reputation was remarkable. The Doccia factory did not remain indifferent to this phenomenon and, from its earliest years of activity, enriched its model collection with plaster casts taken from the sculptor’s most famous works. Among these are the allegorical figures placed on either side of the monuments of Giuliano Duke of Nemours and Lorenzo Duke of Urbino in the New Sacristy of the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence, which are also reproduced on this vase.
The figures are arranged two per side, framing on one side the head of David and on the other side the Portrait of Michelangelo, topped by a scroll bearing the verse “Michel, more than mortal / Divine angel”, sinuously crossing the strings of a lyre. This is a rhyme written by Ludovico Ariosto in the second octave of canto XXXIII of Orlando furioso (1516), commemorating the fame of some Italian painters active between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The evocation of this verse on a nineteenth-century vase is due to the repeated homage to the “Florentine genius”: it had also been employed by Giorgio Filippo Giorgi in the dedication to Francesco Maria Gabburri, appearing in the 1730 edition of Raffaello Borghini’s Il Riposo, and again by Anton Francesco Gori in the 1746 edition of Ascanio Condivi’s Life of Michelangelo.
Our example therefore represents a tribute to Michelangelo by the factory outside the collective celebrations for the fourth centenary of his birth (1875), as it was presented at the London Exhibition in 1888 and again at that of Palermo in 1891. Undoubtedly, the imposing size for a porcelain artifact, the slender amphora-like structure with a narrow and flared neck, which accentuates its vertical development, together with the rich decoration featuring a reinterpretation of the Renaissance grotto motif in the lower section, make it a piece worthy of exhibition. The side handles sculpted with mask faces stylistically recall the inventions of the sculptor Urbano Lucchesi, artistic director of the Ginori factory in the years when the vase was made.
