The Museum’s outstanding collection of maiolica is significant because most of the major pottery centers, maiolica forms, and styles are represented. This current catalogue presents the collection in a chronological progression according to stylistic trends. Lavish color plates accompany the detailed entries

"This volume in a series of sixteen that features the more than two thousand works of art in the Robert Lehman Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art focuses on Italian majolica or earthenware." -- Metropolitan Museum of Art website.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Italian Renaissance art, objects, and even the idea of Italy itself figured heavily both in the dynamic international art market and in the eyes of the general public. The alternative objects that were actively dispersed and collected -- authentic works, pastiches, Renaissance-inspired counterfeits, and reproductions -- in the diverse media of paint, plaster, terracotta, and photography, had a tremendous impact on visual culture across social strata. These essays examine less studied aspects of this market through the lens of just a few of the countless successful sales of objects out of Italy.

In 1984 the Getty Museum acquired an exceptional collection of Italian Renaissance maiolica, or tin-glazed earthenware. These often brilliantly colored objects range from an early Florentine jar with relief-blue decoration to a much later Mannerist dish with grotesque ornament. The collection was the subject of Italian Maiolica, a beautifully illustrated catalogue that the Museum published in 1988. Italian Ceramics amplifies and updates the earlier volume, including objects—some of them porcelain and terracotta—acquired during the intervening years. Among them are a pair of eighteenth-century candlesticks representing mythological scenes and a tabletop with hunting scenes; and, from the 1790s, the beautifully modeled and painted Saint Joseph with the Christ Child. Italian Ceramics contains the most recent scientific, historical, and iconographic information about the Museum’s holdings. Completely revised and expanded, this book offers a wealth of new information about the Getty Museum’s superb collection, which spans more than four centuries of Italian ceramic art.

Issued in conjunction with the exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art of over 450 works of art from the legendary Havemeyer collection, formed at the turn of the century by pioneering American patrons of art Henry O. and Louisine Havemeyer, this lavishly illustrated catalogue combines 800 illustration (176 in color) with the collaborative efforts of 27 authors who examine the various aspects of the collection in summarizing essays and in entries on individual works. In addition, one essay is devoted to the Manhattan residence designed for the Havemeyers by Tiffany and Colman. An exhaustive 90-page chronology offers a perspective on the formation of the collection, outlining the roles of friend and advisor Mary Cassatt and a succession of dealers, and focusing on the history of the family and its business interests. 9.25x12.25" Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR