File:BLW Dish with Scenes from the Trojan War.jpg

English: Dish with scenes from the Trojan War

1535
Italy, Urbino
Workshop of Guido Durantino (later known as Fontana, died after 1576)
Tin-glazed earthenware (maiolica)
With the arms of Anne de Montmorency

This piece belongs to a now widely dispersed service of istoriato maiolica made in Urbino for the Grand Master of France Anne de Montmorency (1493-1567) in 1535.
There around 20 known pieces belonging to this service; plates of different sizes and shapes, candlesticks and a flask. All the pieces depict classical mythology and include Anne de Montmorency coat of arms in a slightly inaccurate rendering.

Montmorency was the greatest private art patron of the French Renaissance.
No documentation has come to light about the commission of this service, but it is likely that it was a diplomatic gift from Italy to one of the most influential men at the French court.

Most of the pieces from the set are inscribed on the back with the name of the workshop in which they were made that of Guido Durantino in Urbino in 1535.

Guido, who later took the name of Fontana, was head of one of the most prolific workshops in Urbino from the 1530s and he employed some of the best istoriato painters available. Although the handwriting on the inscriptions belongs to the same person, there are significant stylistic differences among the various pieces which perhaps suggests more than one painter worked on the set.

Bequeathed by Mr R.J. Dyson