Jug with acanthus leaf decoration

Jug with round, slightly everted rim, applied pelican spout, reconstructed banded handle, ovoid body, and indistinct flat bottom. The jug is covered with a thin glaze on the entire exterior except the bottom, which has only sporadic traces of the greenish glaze covering the entire interior. The glaze has traced decorations outlined in green with brown filling in the form of two acanthus shoots on the side of the body inserted within circular bands and horizontal bands on the spout. 
The find belongs to the so-called Latium pottery or majolica category, which refers to a cluster of coated pottery of Roman and Latium (now Lazio) production that preceded the Proto-majolica phase. In fact, between the late-twelfth and thirteenth century we see the birth of a series of tableware artifacts that quickly replaced earlier types. In Rome, these types have well-defined characteristics such as a stanniferous glaze coating, the prevalence of closed forms over open ones, and the absence of an initial start-up phase of production that is in fact immediately configured as well-defined both morphologically and stylistically. In an early phase, which can be dated to the first half of the thirteenth century, decorations appear in three colors (copper green, manganese brown, and rust yellow) and the most frequent artifact types are globular pitchers with applied spouts. In this initial phase, it would seem conceivable to assume production took place in the workshops previously entrusted with the creation of red-painted ceramics, with which, it must be said, the Latium Proto-majolica finds have much in common. In a second phase, the rust yellow of the decorations tends to disappear and the pitcher profiles tend to be longer and narrower. Coupled with this, the decorations become more concise and linear and the number of extant finds increases. It therefore seems likely that, as demand increased, production was necessarily sped up, thus leading to decorative simplification. In the first half of the fourteenth century, production probably came to an end with the start of the production of Proto-majolica by craftsmakers in the Umbria-Latium area. 

Beatrice Brancazi

Fair.

Mazza Guido, La ceramica medioevale di Viterbo e dell’Alto Lazio, Viterbo 1983;
Ricci Marco, Vendittelli Laura, Museo Nazionale Romano - Crypta Balbi, ceramiche medievali e moderne. I, Ceramiche medievali e del primo rinascimento (1000-1530), Roma 2010, pp. 47-75.