Maiolica is Italian tin-glazed pottery dating from the Renaissance. It is decorated in bright colours on a white background, much of it depicting historical and legendary scenes.
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The name is thought to come from the medieval Italian word for Majorca, an island on the route for ships bringing Hispano-Moresque wares from Valencia to Italy. Moorish potters from Majorca are reputed to have worked in Sicily and it has been suggested that their wares reached the Italian mainland from Caltagirone[1] An alternative explanation of the name is that it comes from the Spanish term obra de Malaga, denoting “[imported] wares from Malaga”.[2]
During the Renaissance, the term maiolica referred solely to lusterware, including both Italian-made and Spanish imports, but eventually the term came to be used when describing ceramics made in Italy, lustered or not, of tin-glazed earthenware. With the Spanish conquest of Mexico, tin-glazed maiolica wares came to be produced in the Valley of Mexico as early as 1540, at first in imitation of tin-glazed pottery imported from Seville.[3] Mexican maiolica is known famously as 'Talavera'.
Tin glaze gives makers a brilliant white, opaque surface to paint over. The colours are applied as metallic oxides or as fritted underglazes to the unfired glaze, which absorbs pigment like fresco, making errors impossible to fix, but preserving the brilliant colors. Sometimes the surface is covered with a second glaze (called coperta by the Italians) that lends greater shine and brilliance to the wares. In the case of lustred wares, a further firing at a lower temperature is required. Kilns required wood, which contributed to deforestation even of the unplantable hillsides, at ever higher altitudes, as well as a source of suitable clay. Glaze was made from sand, wine lees, lead and tin.[4]
The fifteenth-century wares that initiated maiolica as an art form were the product of an evolution in which medieval lead-glazed wares were improved by the addition of tin oxides under the influence of Islamic wares imported through Sicily.[5] Such archaic wares[6] are sometimes called "proto-maiolica".[7] During the later fourteenth century, the limited palette of colours was expanded from the traditional manganese purple and copper green to include cobalt blue, antimony yellow and iron-oxide orange. Sgraffito wares were also produced, in which the white tin-oxide glaze was scratched through to produce a design from the revealed body of the ware. Sgraffito wasters excavated from kilns in Bacchereto, Montelupo and Florence show that such wares were produced more widely than at Perugia and Città di Castello, the places to which they have been traditionally attributed.[8]
Refined production of tin-glazed earthenwares made for more than local needs was concentrated in central Italy from the later thirteenth century, especially in the contada of Florence. The medium was also adopted by the Della Robbia family of Florentine sculptors. The city itself declined in importance in the second half of the fifteenth century, perhaps because of local deforestation, while the production scattered among small communes[9] and, after mid-fifteenth century, at Faenza. Significantly, in a contract of 1490[10] twenty-three master-potters of Montelupo agreed to sell the year's production to Francesco Antinori of Florence; Montelupo provided the experienced potters who were set up in 1495 at the Villa Medicea di Cafaggiolo by its Medici owners.[11] Florentine wares spurred characteristic productions in the fifteenth century at Arezzo and Siena.
In the fifteenth century Italian maiolica reached an astonishing degree of perfection, with the development of istoriato wares on which historical and legendary scenes were painted in great detail. The State Museum of Medieval and Modern Art in Arezzo claims to have the largest collection of istoriao wares in Italy. Istoriato wares are also well represented in the British Museum, London.
In Romagna, Faenza, which gave its name to faience, produced fine maiolica from the early fifteenth century; it was the only fair-sized city in which the ceramic industry became a major economic component.[12] Bologna produced lead-glazed wares for export. Orvieto and Deruta both produced maioliche in the fifteenth century. In the sixteenth century, maiolica production was established at Castel Durante, Urbino, Gubbio and Pesaro.
Some maiolica was produced as far north as Padua, Venice and Turin and as far south as Palermo and Caltagirone in Sicily.[13] In the seventeenth century Savona began to be a prominent place of manufacture.
The variety of styles that arose in the sixteenth century all but defies classification.[14] Italian cities encouraged the start of a new pottery industry by offering tax relief, citizenship, monopoly rights and protection from outside imports.
An important mid-sixteenth century document for the techniques of maiolica painting is the treatise of Cipriano Piccolpasso, not a professional potter himself.[15] Individual sixteenth-century masters like Nicola da Urbino, Francesco Xanto Avelli, Guido Durantino and Orazio Fontana of Urbino, Mastro Giorgio of Gubbio and Maestro Domenigo of Venice all deserve individual treatment. Gubbio lustre used colours such as greenish yellow, strawberry pink and a ruby red. The tradition of maiolica died away in the eighteenth century, under competition from inexpensive porcelains and white earthenware.
Some of the principal centers of production (e.g. Deruta and Montelupo) still produce maiolica, which is sold world wide. Modern maiolica looks different from old maiolica because its glaze is usually opacified with the cheaper zircon rather than tin, though there are potteries that specialise in making authentic-looking Renaissance-style pieces with genuine tin-glaze.
"By a convenient extension and limitation the name may be applied to all tin-glazed ware, of whatever nationality, made in the Italian tradition ... the name faïence (or the synonymous English 'delftware') being reserved for the later wares of the 17th Century onwards, either in original styles (as in the case of the French) or, more frequently, in the Dutch-Chinese (Delft) tradition."[16] The term "maiolica" is sometimes applied to modern tin-glazed ware made by studio potters (as in Osterman's book, see below).
The English word, majolica, is also used for Victorian majolica, a different type of pottery with clear, coloured glazes.
 Blue and white vase with oak-leaf decor, Florence, 1430. Louvre Museum |
 An albarello (drug jar) from Venice or Castel Durante, 16th century. Approx 30cm high. Decorated in cobalt blue, copper green, antimony yellow and yellow ochre. Burrell Collection |
 Modern tiles from Deruta. |
 A modern plate from Caltagirone, Sicily, painted in cobalt blue. |
 A modern vase from Caltagirone, Sicily. |
 A modern plate from Faenza, adapting a traditional Chinese design. |
   | Metropolitan Museum of Art - Maiolica | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art |
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