The present charger is an important document as it bears the monogram of Orazio Fontana, a significant and influential personality in 16th century maiolica. His celebrity was such that he was described as ‘the noblest in the art of making pottery and porcelain vases’… ‘who in the time of Guidubaldo so conducted himself that services made by him were sent, as rarities, to great lords, to the King of Spain, and to the Emperor himself’.¹ Orazio was the son of Guido Durantino, the owner of one of Urbino’s most important maiolica workshops. By 1541 they had changed their surname from Durantino (which signified that the family was originally from nearby Castel Durante) to Fontana. The monogram on the reverse of this charger can be read as ORATO, and the same monogram appears on seven other works.² Seven of the eight pieces bear dates which range between 1541 and 1544, and one of these, a large dish painted with The Muses and the Pierides which was formerly in Berlin,³ was also marked as being ‘made in the workshop of Guido of Castel Durante, potter, in Urbino, 5 November 1542’. This inscription, in combination with the monogram, makes it almost certain that the eight monogrammed pieces are the work of Orazio Fontana.

The present lot is very similar to a large charger in Siena which Orazio painted with a similar battle scene in the following year.⁴ The inscription on the reverse of the charger in Siena informs us that the battle depicted is the fight against the Sabines from early Roman history, whereas on the present lot, the scene is adapted to depict the moment in Greek legend when the allied Greek forces burn Troy, having finally overwhelmed the Trojans after a long ten-year siege.

The scenes on both chargers are very similar to an engraving of the Battle of Constantine at the Milvian Bridge after a fresco in the Sala di Costantino in the Vatican. The fresco was after a design by Raphael and painted by Giulio Romano between 1520 and 1524. The print copying this fresco has been attributed to Orazio Farinati, but the dating given in Bartsch is too late for it to have been available to Orazio Fontana to have used as a source for this charger, or the charger in Siena. Johanna Lessmann noted that the engraving attributed to Farinati is the earliest engraving known of the subject, and she suggested that maiolicari painting this scene before Farinati’s engraving was published could have been working from a drawing made directly from the fresco.⁵ Alternatively, perhaps there was another, earlier, print made after the fresco, which has now been lost. A common source of some sort is supported by similarities found on maiolica painted with this scene which are not present on the fresco, or the engraving. One such feature is the angle of the central horse’s head, which on the present charger is different from the same horse’s head on the fresco and the engraving. The angle of its foreshortening together with the slightly awkward rendering of its mouth, is very similar to the same head on Orazio’s 1544 charger in Siena, suggesting that he was using the same source for both of his chargers. On a charger in Brunswick with a similar battle scene by a different painter, the same horse’s head is relatively similar to Orazio’s rendering of it, and the same is true of a charger painted in Venice, suggesting that they may perhaps have had a common source, which is presumably now lost.⁶

1. The Urbino writer Bernardino Baldi in about 1607, cited by Timothy Wilson, Italian Maiolica of the Renaissance, Milan, 1996, p. 369 and p. 370, note 12.
2. The reading of the monogram and proposed identity of its author were suggested in 1855 by A.W. Franks of the British Museum. For a list of the eight works with this monogram, see Thornton and Wilson, ibid., London, 2009, Vol. I, p. 301.
3. Formerly in the Schlossmuseum, Berlin. It has been missing since the Second World War and is presumed destroyed. For illustrations of the obverse, see Ravanelli Guidotti, ibid., 1992, p. 113, figs. 13g and 13h (a detail of the monogram on the obverse), and for an illustration of the inscription on the reverse, see Wilson, ibid., 1996, p. 251.
4. In the Palazzo Chigi Saracini (MPS. Inv. n. 128), see Ravanelli Guidotti, ibid., 1992, pp. 109-116, no. 13.
5. Johanna Lessmann, Italienische Majolika, Brunswick, 1969, p. 267.
6. For the Brunswick charger, see Lessmann, ibid., 1969, no. 313. For the Venice charger in Philadelphia, see Wendy M. Watson, Italian Renaissance Ceramics, The Howard I. and Janet H. Stein Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, December 2001-April 2002 Exhibition Catalogue, Philadelphia, 2001, p. 58 (large colour illustration), and p. 180, cat 4, and see Caterina Marcantoni Cherido, ‘Sulle trace di Domenico da Venezia nella collezione di maioliche rinascimentali del Museo Correr, in Mario Paranello (ed.), Da Venezia alla Calabria, Briatico, p. 124, fig. 9.