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Wine Cistern

Large bowl completely covered in scenes of battles on land and sea.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

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  • Large bowl completely covered in scenes of battles on land and sea.

Date:

1553

Artist:

Francesco Durantino
Italian, active 1543-after 1553

About this artwork

Elaborately fashioned platters, vessels, and containers, often with decorative embellishments that indicated their specialized function or their owner’s social status, were displayed on the banquet tables of Renaissance Italy. Cisterns such as this were filled with cold water and used to cool wine bottles at feasts. Skillfully decorated by the Italian ceramic painter Francesco Durantino, this work typifies the Renaissance interest in both Christian imagery and scenes from pagan antiquity. It is covered with depictions of two famous battle scenes, one on land and one at sea. Although the exterior, adapted from frescoes by Raphael’s followers, represents a land battle culminating in the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine I to Christianity, the cistern’s interior depicts a legendary naval disaster: the sinking of the Trojan hero Aeneas’s ships by the jealous goddess Hera. At the cistern’s center, the ships disappear beneath the waves, a playful conceit that was no doubt even more effective when the cistern was filled with water. The generously sized vessel displays all the characteristics that made maiolica, a tin-glazed earthenware, popular: brilliant colors, lively painting, and riveting narratives mixed with fanciful design. The term maiolica probably comes from Majorca, the port through which pottery from Moorish Spain was first exported to Italy.

Status

On View, Gallery 238

Department

Applied Arts of Europe

Artist

Francesco Durantino

Title

Wine Cistern

Place

Italy (Object made in)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

1553

Medium

Tin-glazed earthenware (maiolica)

Dimensions

53.3 × 26.7 cm (21 × 10 1/2 in.)

Credit Line

Mary Waller Langhorne Endowment

Reference Number

1966.395

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https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/25853/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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