Conversation: Saint-Porchaire Ceramics—Rediscovered Treasures of the French Renaissance

Hello, I am Miriam McCue. Can you hear me now?

Yes (speaks faintly). Perfect. Director for philanthropy here at the Art Institute of Chicago. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the museum and tonight's conversation, "Saint-Porchaire Ceramics: Rediscovered Treasures of the French Renaissance." Thank you for being here today to explore one of the Renaissance's greatest artistic mysteries, the exquisite and puzzling 16th-century French ceramics, known as Saint-Porchaire ware.

Additionally, I want to give a very warm welcome and thank you to the members of the Buckingham Society joining us this evening. Each of these individuals has made the thoughtful decision to include the museum in their estate plans. We are deeply grateful for their commitment and invite others who share this vision for the museum's future to join this meaningful society.

As we begin, a brief reminder to please silence your mobile devices. It is my pleasure to introduce the speakers for this evening's program: Kit Maxwell, Jonathan Tavares, and Mairead Horton. Christopher Kit Maxwell is the chair and Eloise W. Martin Curator of Applied Arts of Europe.

Kit joined the museum in 2022, bringing expertise in European ceramics and glass with a special interest in the impacts of global trade and colonial expansion on the development of European design from previous roles at the Corning Museum of Glass, Royal Collection Trust, and the Virginia and Albert Museum. Jonathan Tavares is the Amy and Paul Carbone Curator in Applied Arts of Europe. Jonathan is responsible for curating the arms and armor galleries, part of the Deering Family Galleries of Medieval and Renaissance Art, which opened in 2017.

His purview includes medieval to Baroque applied arts, and he has published numerous articles on 16th-century arms and armor and its manufacture and connection to print culture. Mairead Horton is the Samuel and M. Patricia Grober Assistant Curator in Applied Arts of Europe. With prior experience from the Blanton Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art, Mairead joined the Art Institute in 2023, providing research support for the reinstallation of the collection of European design, 1600 to 1900, in the Eloise W. Martin Galleries.

Now please join me in welcoming Kit, Jonathan and Mairead to the stage. (attendees applauding)

This is on. Yes, good. Good evening, everyone.

Yeah, welcome. We're particularly pleased to be presenting on this special loan installation, which came onto our horizon comparatively recently and has really had us enthralled for the last few months. For me, it's certainly a career-defining experience and I'm looking forward to sharing that with you.

But I don't think you need to be a museum curator to fantasize about, thank you, Jonathan, fantasize about rediscovering a lost treasure. I think that many of us, at one time or another, when sifting through a thrift store or a flea market, might have dreamt of uncovering or happening upon something wonderful that had somehow fallen off the radar. And my encounter with these ceramics that form the subject of tonight's discussion, was for me the realization of this fantasy.

When my friend and colleague, Dr. Michael Hall of Northamptonshire in the UK wrote to me a few years ago to tell me what he had seen after a chance encounter with the owner of these ceramics, I could barely believe him. A few months later, I managed to visit them myself, and many months after that, with further discussions and more visits, they're now here in Chicago on display in a special loan installation in the Deering Family Galleries of Medieval and Renaissance Art. As far as we know, this is the first time they have been shown together ever to the public, but certainly within the last 150 years or so.

There are fewer than 70 known examples of these so-called Saint-Porchaire ceramics, which are named after a town, the town of Saint-Porchaire in western France, which I'll get onto in more detail in a moment, they're believed to have been made around the 1520s and the 1560s. But their authorship remains something of an enigma, who made them, where, and for whom, all remain subjects open to debate. The ceramics themselves are distinguished by a distinctive white, creamy clay body, and their incredibly sophisticated design, the delicacy of their composition, frankly, they're unlike anything that was being produced anywhere else in Europe at that time.

In form and in decoration, they're closely connected to contemporaneous fashions in metal work and indeed bookbinding, more about that in a moment. But the techniques that are used to make them in terms of ceramic production are really, really fascinating, and we'll be taking a closer look at that too. The iconography on many of these pieces associates them with the French royal court, which is particularly intriguing.

In size, in case you haven't seen them. they're pretty dinky things. Most of them would sit in the palm of one hand.

The largest examples, these covered bowls and this pouring vessel, are probably around the size of a cantaloupe melon, to give you a sense of scale. These are the largest, but what exactly are they? Well, most of the forms are related to elite table culture of the period, and they would've been familiar to aristocratic and bourgeois diners of the mid-1500s, but more commonly found in metal work, not in ceramic. And you see here on the right, a painting which depicts a tazza, this shallow-footed bowl used for serving both food and beverages next to a saltcellar.

Salt was a highly or heavily taxed, and therefore, luxurious commodity, which was duly celebrated on the aristocratic and bourgeois table. The Saint-Porchaire ceramics are made from a very particular type of clay that is quarried or was quarried in the region of the Poitou in western France, and it is rich in alumina and in kaolin, and is noted for its fineness and its lightness of color, which we can see clearly. This region of western France, most particularly the area just to the south, the Saintonge, had a long history of pottery production, even when these Saint-Porchaire ceramics were made.

Light-bodied vessels with clear lead glazes, sometimes colored with green or yellow enjoyed markets throughout France, but also beyond into Europe. This was partly because of the advantageous location of the Saintonge, on the coastline, allowing for easy transportation. On the left here, we see a jug, which is at the Museum of London.

It was made at least 200 years before the Saint-Porchaire ceramics. But I think in the color of the clay and the use of the green and yellow glazes, you can see the DNA of pottery production in that region. The Saintonge workshops evidently enjoyed a sophisticated market.

On the screen here are two saltcellars. The one on the left was produced in the Saintonge, and is, in essence, modeled after vernacular architecture, is used to serve and display salt, which was then, as I said, a luxurious commodity. Notice some details: the arched doorway, the mullioned windows above the gabled roof, the molded masks that form the feet around the base, and these female caryatids with lace collars, which support the salt receptacle above.

But I think it's clear when we compare it to Saint-Porchaire ceramics, such as the saltcellar on the right, we're looking at something much more sophisticated, much more refined. The modeling on the Saint-Porchaire is incredibly crisp. Architectural references are much more elevated.

We're not looking at provincial vernacular architectural design, but a classical antiquity here. And the molded hatching and the quatrefoils just above the window here. On Saint-Porchaire, these are translated into finely inlaid slip decoration, and also the colored glazes are much more precisely applied.

So the Saint-Porchaire ceramics, I think it's clear, are really very special and very rare indeed. But as I mentioned, the circumstances of their production remains shrouded in mystery. They were once described as "Le sphinx de la curiosite", or "the sphinx of curiosity." They're essentially a historical enigma, a riddle.

But what we'd like to do this evening is share a little bit about what the nine rediscovered examples on display upstairs and our analysis of them over the last few months can contribute to these ongoing debates. We're going to discuss a little of the influences on their design and their ornament. We're going to take a closer look at the rather surprising techniques used to make them, and also sprinkle in a little bit of science that reveals, well, helps us get a little bit closer perhaps to understanding the circumstances of their authorship.

There are scholars in the field who have spent years working on Saint-Porchaire ceramics, and the history of scholarship on Saint-Porchaire goes back at least 150 years. We've had a few short months to work on these pieces. And I would like to acknowledge the generosity of colleagues beyond the museum who have so kindly shared their expertise with us, namely Francoise Barbe of the Louvre, Marie-Laure Buku Pongo from the Frick Collection, who I think is in the audience this evening somewhere.

And Emily Willis from the School of the Art Institute just across the street. But before we get too much into the weeds or any further into the weeds, it might be helpful if we sort of zoom back a bit and get a little context, understand what was going on in France in the mid-1500s, who were the movers and shakers? What was the artistic and cultural climate of the moment? And I shall pass the proverbial baton to Jonathan for that.

Well, thank you, Kit. I do love the 16th century. (laughs) Especially, I just wanted to add one thing to your incredible comparison here. I do love how already in this period you see these dualities, these tastes of the bourgeois, the rising middle class, which you see with the saltcellar, with the vernacular building, like actually referencing the sort of spaces they inhabited.

And then there's the palatial, which you see with the Saint-Porchaire. So speaking of the palace, it seems fitting to then go to the king. So to begin, one has to start with this figure.

King Francis I, or Francois, of France. A man who looms large in French history, not just because he was physically tall in stature, he was over 6'4", so he was about the size of Kit, (attendees and Jonathan laughing) but it was patronage that formed, his patronage formed the catalyst. He was really responsible for bringing the Italian Renaissance to France.

Now, part of this has a lot to do with Francis's exposure to Italy, and this has been called the Italian wars, especially between 1521 and 1525. At the risk of oversimplifying this complex conflict, Francis fancied himself the best candidate to be the Holy Roman Emperor, that is the ruler of all the German and Austrian empire or constituent states, and also parts of northern Italy, where the emperor would've had influence. And of course, that figure would've been elected by the electors and bishops of Germany, and had been Habsburg for a long time as it had been with Maximilian I before, But he wanted to be elected, and he attempted bribery, as did, of course, the person who did get elected, Charles V, but Francis lost out.

So when his bribery did not work, he invaded northern Italy with the intent to stop Charles from being crowned in Rome, among other things. And this did not go well for Francis. He was captured by Charles in battle, in this Battle of Pavia.

And actually it's almost like a side story, if you look up here, this is Francis, leading an attack, and it's soon thereafter that he gets captured and then held ransom for quite some time. And then his two sons had to be swapped out for him for over three years or so. So this was very traumatic situation.

Nevertheless, Francis saw many Italian villas, palazzos, cities, and churches and experiencing the height of the artistic Renaissance and wanted it for himself and to bring it back to France. So essentially he offered Italian artists, engineers, and architects a stable, lucrative environment, more so than Italy could ever provide at the time. Perhaps no more famous of artists that he had brought over, actually just prior to some of this warring, was Leonardo da Vinci, who spent the last years of his life in Francis's service.

Let's go to the next. So Francis then became known as the Great Builder King. One of his largest projects was this, the Chateau Chambord, his primary hunting lodge.

Imagine this, all this for hunting. It is a perfect example of fledgling Renaissance, French Renaissance, I should say, architecture. So it's a mix.

It's a medieval French castle which forms the bones with Italian renaissance architecture, the windows, the columns grafted onto it, like the skin. And it is designed by the Italian architect, Domenico da Cortona, and executed on site by Pierre Neveu, who is probably a glorified mason, who kept up the project for many, many, many years. And with some aspects that are now, or have been for a while, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci.

Nonetheless, this double-helix staircase that is so famous in the castle. So maybe Leonardo even had a hand in it. But Francis's most influential project was at this second hunting lodge just outside of Paris, Fontainebleau.

Most especially this interior you see here, which is the gallery or what has been known as the Gallery of Francis I. And for that, he had a team of Italian artists led by the painter, Rosso Fiorentino, who himself was a refugee from Rome after the Sack of Rome in 1527, so he went to France, and then later taken up after his death by the artist from Mantua, Francesco Primaticcio, and who was a pupil of Giulio Romano. So very much in this Mannerist, this full-bred Mannerist taste.

And it has a lasting impact of this. There's a dynamic design with sort of Michaelangelo-esque play of sculpture, sculpted figures, in painted scenes with bold ornament, that really I can't say enough that how much influence this truly had. And I just want to point out, and this has much to do with the friezes, you're seeing here in the gallery at this level.

And this is rather largely intact. So you've got the painted scenes and the stucco friezes with this duality that's so influential. And its success in influence owes to a host of prints like this by Pierre Milan that captured and interpreted the gallery's decorative program and made it available to other artists and patrons alike.

This is not merely Italian art in France, it pushes the boundaries of classical art into, again, what we refer to as Mannerism, or these exaggerated proportions in ornament, what we refer to as strapwork, which is what you're seeing here, like captivating these figures, these crazy caryatid-like figures that become framing devices, and the festoons of fruit or the swags that you see. So it's all, in ornamental vocabulary, part of the so-called Fontainebleau School, that is absolutely apparent in the Saint-Porchaire wares, as we will see. And also at the center of this print, I want to point out here, this funny little guy right there, which is a salamander, and that is the emblem of Francis I.

And we also happen to see that same figure of the salamander in the center of our earliest piece on view of Saint-Porchaire here. This covered tazza, or this covered shallow bowl. So this emblem is what helps us date this piece to likely during the reign of Francis I, maybe in the last decade of his reign from about anywhere from 1530 to his death in, just before, 1547.

So this device really helps us understand the dating to some degree. But what is this about the salamander, and why did Francis use this device? And here's a illustration from another document from Francis's early part of his reign. The salamanderin this instance is his emblem, or in Italy, they referred to it as his impresa.

So it's not necessarily heraldic, but it's a personal symbol that the monarch or a noble would take for themself. And Francis likened himself to the salamander 'cause it's this belief that the salamander was born in fire. And this is some medieval thought or belief because as it goes, you stick the wood, these logs, into the fire, and then you light it, you get it ignited, and all of a sudden all these salamanders come running out.

So the belief here is, oh, they must have been born in the fire, when in truth, you just smoked them out of their home. (attendees laughing) But Francis... So the belief was that to be born in fire meant that you would be tested by fire, undergo so many strains and trials and tribulations, and yet you come out victorious and you endure.

And sure enough, he did endure, as we know, he was taken in battle, he had been kept captive, but then he endured and he came back. So it does seem like a fitting symbol for him. And you can see why.

So you see the salamander engulfed in flame and then crowned. And another aspect about this amazing early piece of Saint-Porchaire is this association with metal work. If we look at the bowl around the salamander in the wreath there, it has this assimilated hammered appearance as if it was hammered from a piece of silver and gilded, just like the example, the much later 16th-century English example you see there, you see all these little facets in there that have been hammered in.

So you can see very much the makers of this ceramic are looking at metalwork, contemporary metalwork. In fact, this is an incredibly rare silver-gilt, or a gilded piece of silver produced in France at around the same time and happens to be in Museum Arte Antiga in Lisbon. It has been retrofitted to be a Eucharistic ciborium, to hold the consecrated host.

So that's why you're seeing the cross on there, but that was a later edition. It was probably a secular piece of silver work, but you can see how the form is so related. And one last aspect of this piece, the ornament, is the interlaced patterns that we're seeing here in this print that is after designs by Leonardo da Vinci.

So very much a print that was in and around France at the time. And you can see the detail of the foot here with this interlace patterning. So now moving on to our second monarch.

By the 1547, we see Francis's son Henri II becomes the new king and is during his reign that the majority, perhaps, of surviving Saint-Porchaire seemed to have been produced, like this incredibly detailed triangular saltcellar, which is truly one of my favorites. And this instantly detailed... Excuse me, so Henri, unlike his jovial father, was a serious melancholic ruler.

And I think you can can almost see that in this portrait with his doleful eyes. But like Francis, he loved hunting and jousting. In fact, he loved jousting so much, actually he died from jousting rather sadly.

But anyway, (laughs) so he continued this great patronage of the arts, in particular, architecture. And he would, however, carry on and it would be during his reign that the famed architect Sebastiano Serlio would print several books of architecture which had lasting influence for centuries. And so this is one of the plates from his book, his "Extraordinary Book of Doors," this book purely on doors in this instance.

But I think what you're seeing here is the developing Mannerist architecture, this play with classical forms. And it's so, so similar to the kind of architecture you see on the saltcellar, this play of pilasters, arches, and even this sort of suggestion of depth that we see playing in the center of the saltcellar there. And that same play is also found on furniture from this exact moment of the rein of Henri II.

And here you're seeing this architectonic double cabinet, which has panels very similar to the Saint-Porchaire. And when you flip the saltcellar over or you look on the top of it, you see this little well, and in that well you have these three crescent, and this is the emblem that was adopted by Henri. So as we saw the salamander with Francis I, now we see three crescent with Henri, but this wasn't his emblem by itself, this was from his official mistress, and that was Diane de Poitiers, that you're seeing here in this rather risque portrait, perhaps for royal consumption.

So Henri and Diane de Poitiers began their relationship around 1534. He was 15 and she was 35. (attendees laughing) She had been a widow for just about three years.

And she, rare for the time, had actively managed her late husband's estate and even governed Normandy as the grand seneschal, which is like a governor. So she was very unique in that time for women or for widows to actually have control over property in a major way. And actually a lot of agency in France.

Now I always bring it back to armor, if any of you know me. And this happens to be the armor of Henri II when he was a prince. And this is really significant in terms of these emblems.

So if you look on the details there, these are the inlaid silver details on this blackened armor that was made in Milan for him. And black in silver, black and white were the colors of Diane because she was a widow, and she made those colors fashionable at court. And he, too, always wore black and white, and even on the armor, black and white.

But inside of this we also see, she was goddess of the hunt, or name thereof. So we have the bow and quiver of the goddess of the hunt, the crescent moons, which were her symbol because Diane was also goddess of the moon. And then on here is the combined double Ds and H, so Henri and Diane.

And then we can see here how the crescents transfer from both on the armor but then also on the Saint-Porchaire piece. But now I should hand it over to Mairead to tell us more. (laughs)

Yeah, so I'm gonna continue this story of Henri and Diane by turning to what is my favorite piece, this fabulous nef-shaped cup. And you're gonna hear me say nef a lot. Nef basically was a medieval French word for boat and it was very common on medieval and Renaissance banqueting tables to see these boat-shaped dishes, like this one that you see here.

So the interior of this nef bears the arms of the Chivalric Order of Saint Michael. This was a group of noble men who pledged their fealty to the king, and at this point, Henri was their leader. This is another piece of Saint-Porchaire closely tied, not only to Henri but also Diane de Poitiers, who Jonathan just introduced.

And you can see her again here. Oops, sorry. Here, this time in her clothes.

And the interlaced H and D cipher of Henri and Diane can be found at the center of the cup's heart-shaped knop. And Jonathan just introduced the cipher, but I want to point out that it is something that you see across architectural projects for the royal court in France at this time. You see it on buildings built for Henri, you see it on buildings built for Diane, and you also see it on buildings for Catherine de' Medici, Henri's actual wife, because rather cleverly, depending on how you draw the cipher, it can look like either an H and interlaced Ds, or an H and interlaced Cs, depending on which is more appropriate.

So I also want to draw your attention to the really amazing interlace pattern here on the body of the cup. Interlace patterns, as Jonathan was mentioning, were very popular at this point and they were often referred to as arabesques or moresques as these designs originated in the decorative motifs of the Middle East. These made their way into Europe largely via Venice on leather work, metalwork and so forth.

But they were quickly adopted by European artists and designers. And you can see here a page from a book by Francesco Pellegrino that disseminated these printed patterns across Europe. And I also want to point out a couple architectural features of this cup, again, on the stem, near that heart-shaped knop.

So this is yet another example where we can see how the French Renaissance is simultaneously forward-looking, trend-focused with those interlace and arabesques patterns, but is also sort of backwards-looking, as Jonathan mentioned in the case of Chambord. So we can see up at the top here this gothic arcade of pointed arches, really referencing that medieval architecture. But in a more forward-looking sense, we see these crescent-shaped masks and those are referencing Fontainebleau, Fontainebleau's sculpture that surrounded the friezes featured many of these crescent-shaped masks, which you can see reproduced in this print.

But what I really want to draw your attention to is the most special thing I think about this cup, which is that in addition to its really rich iconography and design, it really reveals the techniques of the Saint-Porchaire makers through looking at it carefully. So you can see, I've circled it here, that this cup is chipped. That's not surprising since it's nearly 500 years old.

But when you look at this circle, it reveals that the cup is in fact double-walled. So this is made out of two pieces of ceramic that have been joined together. There's an inner cup that forms the shape, but then there's also an outer decorated layer that has been applied and it's really, really remarkable to be able to achieve such a fine piece of ceramic in this period.

This really blew our mind when we first realized this long into this.

Yeah, we were just in storage and it was amazing.

I think it's a bit like, just to give you a sense of the technique, if ever as a child, you papier-mached a balloon. So this outer layer of sort of wet clay was applied to an inner layer that's giving it a sort of double wall.

Yeah. It's amazing. And these are like tissue-thin, I mean really, really thin. That's the unique quality of this clay.

[Mairead] Yeah, and you can really see that sense here. This is a fragment from a Saint-Porchaire lid. And you can see the underlayer has been carefully scored in order to then apply this decorated layer over the top of it, as Kit was saying, much like you might apply paper mache to something.

And you can see here on the cup sort of the evidence of this process as well. So the interlace design would've been carefully prepared on a flat sheet of clay, but then the potter had to work to cut out wedges of the clay in order to make it conform to the curves of the cup. So you can see here where there are seams that have been left behind as the potter attempted to join up the designs but didn't quite get it right.

And then they've applied this screaming mask over the top to try to disguise those joins. (attendees laughing)

It's like wrapping paper. Yeah. And here you can see the same interlace pattern on a covered cup, just to give you a sense of what it would look like in a little bit more of a continuous design. But even on this, in this case, you can see that there's probably four different wedges that have had to have been joined together.

Another design motif that we can see on the cup, at the base here, again reveals the influence of the arabesque and it also reveals the influence of gilded bookbindings on the Saint-Porchaire artisans. They most likely used actual bookbinding stamps. So these are brass hand tools that were used to impress leather, in this case, to impress designs into the clay.

And this leather bookbinding on the right and the cup, sorry, on the left, are basically at the same scale. So you can see that those designs would have been made literally using the very same bookbinding stamps between the leather and between the clay. And one thing that we are very lucky to have access to here at the Art Institute is our incredible colleagues at the school just across the road.

And they helped us recreate some of the steps that we think the Saint-Porchaire potters would have taken to produce some of their designs. So we worked with two ceramicists, Emily Willis and Felix Horan, and they helped recreate the Saint-Porchaire clay for us and then stamped it with a slightly enlarged version of a bookbinding stamp that matched the pattern seen on the covered cup that Jonathan was talking about earlier. So here you can see that in the first step, the stamp is impressed into the clay when it's in a leather-hard state and it's then filled in with a contrasting slip that's just a runnier clay.

And then the slip is wiped away to reveal the pattern. It's then given an initial firing, and then the clay is covered with a glaze to produce this fine glossy surface. And if the potters had simply painted on the patterns with the glaze, they would not have been able to achieve this level of fineness, particularly because lead glaze is kind of runny.

So to get this level of crisp detail, you had to use this inlaid technique. Interestingly though, the process of inlaid clay was not new. This was well established already by the medieval period.

So these are some inlaid floor tiles, which were common throughout medieval Europe. And while it's remarkable to see it's been achieved on such a small and refined scale on the Saint-Porchaire, this is just another case of those French Renaissance artists looking backwards and adapting an old-fashioned technique to their purposes.

[Jonathan] And what's really great about this technique from a floor tile standpoint is as you wear the tile over time, you still have, you know, a depth of that inlaid, alternating-color clay. So it's very effective as a floor tile since the Middle Ages, since the 12th, 13th century, and well into the period of Saint-Porchaire. So it's taking this macro-concept design and make it micro, (laughs) and that's what's so fascinating.

[Mairead] Yeah, it's really amazing. And I'll hand it back to Kit.

Yeah, there's another technique that is, thank you, that is I think particularly intriguing suddenly to our eyes in the 21st century. This ewer is a wonderful example of it. It's about, I guess, the size of a large mango.

But it's covered in relief decoration with frogs and lizards. Somewhat unusual, but there was a context for this in the 16th century, and that is life casting, the process of taking a mold from a dead specimen. And that was a practice that was deployed in luxury metal work at the time, most famously by Wenzel Jamnitzer, as seen on the left, this writing box in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

But it was yet another of the sophisticated techniques that inspired the Saint-Porchaire potters. And in fact, it's this technique that has sparked a considerable debate about exactly who produced these ceramics. Bernard Palissy is ranked as the most famous and I suppose the best-documented Renaissance potter.

He originated in the Saintonge and was a practicing engineer and natural scientist before he took up ceramic production in the 1540s. But subsequently, he received both royal and noble patronage, and he's best known for his so-called rusticwears, which are typically highly decorated vessels such as the large oval platter on the left here covered in sort of small amphibious creatures, shells, and vegetation relating to the life-casting technique. Palissy's extensive published accounts refer to the particular qualities of the clay from the Poitou, which he imported to his Paris workshops for trials and experiments.

But no surviving works attributed to Bernard Palissy match the composition of Saint-Porchaire's ceramics, nor among the many boasts he makes about his successes in his writings, does he ever mention successfully producing wares using this clay from the Poitou, nor deploying these incredibly sophisticated and specific techniques that we've just discussed. And I think given the obvious prestige of Saint-Porchaire ceramics, this would've been a glaring omission if he had indeed been the author. Also, his career did not get underway with ceramics until the 1540s, which means it's kind of unlikely that he could have been responsible for the earlier wares, especially those connected to Francois.

But they clearly emerged from the same tradition, very closely connected, certainly Palissy was associated with many of the known patrons of Saint-Porchaire, both in Paris and in the provinces, and archeological excavations of his workshop in Paris at the Louvre where he received the patronage of the queen, have uncovered molds which were evidently taken from Saint-Porchaire wares. So he was clearly familiar with these luxury ceramics, which sort of existed in the same circles of patronage as his own. And it's possible that maybe he attempted to collaborate with Saint-Porchaire potters, but there is no proof that he was the author or the originator of Saint-Porchaire wares.

And I think that, you know, given the possible date range of Saint-Porchaire from the 1520s to the 1560s, it's quite reasonable to ask whether they were in fact the product of a singular workshop, or several, or competing workshops, or successive generations of workshops. And if successive generations, how many? One, two or more?

So this question of patronage and authorship that Kit has brought up is a perpetual confusing issue around Saint-Porchaire and raises the question of whether we ought to associate Saint-Porchaire more with Paris or more with the provinces in France. We can of course associate Saint-Porchaire with the royal court. We've seen so many instances of that already, but you can also associate it with the broader French nobility.

And in fact, the two earliest instances of Saint-Porchaire being recorded can be found in the 16th-century inventories of two men who are associated with the powerful Montmorency-Laval family. And this covered jug on the screen bears the arms of the Montmorency-Laval family on its lid. So the 1542 inventory of Francois de La Tremoille, Viscount of Thouars, records two Saint-Porchaire coupes, and two Saint-Porchaire salts, and the 1568 inventory of Anne de Montmorency, the first duke of Montmorency, records a large ewer with a spout.

It's worth noting, Anne de Montmorency was very closely associated with the kings, particularly Henri, however, both he and Francois de La Tremoille controlled lands around the Saintonge and the Poitou, so this region where the Saint-Porchaire clay was from. So that means that while there's archeological evidence of Saint-Porchaire in Paris at Palissy's workshop, as Kit mentioned, the earliest archival evidence would situate it potentially more in the provinces, which is just another one of these reasons why this is such a confusing and thorny issue for scholars today.

In trying to understand a little bit more about the workshop or the workshops, plural, we were able or have been able to distinguish two groups in the nine ceramics, among the nine ceramics that we have on view upstairs. And there is a visual difference between them both in terms of composition and in terms of design. I think comparing these two on the screen, you can see that the salt on the left is lighter in color than that on the right, but also the design, compare design, the one on the left is a sort more purely archeological expression of the Renaissance.

And the one on the right is a little more charged, over-ornamented. And the shells and the scrolling feet around the base of the one on the right, they have a nod more towards the Baroque sensibility of the 17th century. And looking at the pilasters, the blue pilasters with the arabesque designs on the one on the right, it sort of suggests in an art-historical sense, the 19th-century Renaissance revival compared to the design for an interior on the left from the 19th century.

So these raise questions about the chronology of these two groups. But we're very fortunate at the Art Institute to have a department of scientists and indeed conservators who are experts in ceramics and understanding ceramics. And their investigations have been invaluable in helping us to understand the differences between these two groups, which we can perceive from a more art-historical perspective.

You can see under controlled lighting, I think, quite clearly here that the two vessels on the left are, again, darker in color than the three on the right. And this difference is visible also under ultraviolet radiation, shortwave ultraviolet radiation, probably as a result of a difference in the composition of the glazes. So you see the two vessels on the left fluoresce a little more brightly than the three on the right, which are almost sort of hidden in darkness.

Our colleagues undertook XRF or x-ray fluorescence analysis on the glazes, but also areas of exposed clay on these vessels to identify the key elements used in their production. Oh, lord. (everyone laughing) My colleagues are in the audience, so I'm sure they'll correct me if I get this wrong, but the results essentially tell us that the two groups are compositionally the same, but there are slight differences in the oxides that are used to color the glazes.

But the compositional unity of the clay body requires a little qualification and that the XRF analysis reveals that the ingredients are essentially the same, but it doesn't distinguish the different proportions in which they might appear in the two groups. But nevertheless, none of these results is sufficient to determine a later date for either group. Tin, which we see as an ingredient in the glaze for the group on the left is, thank you, Jonathan, is highly unusual in French ceramics of this period, but it was used in other centers of ceramic production in Europe.

So it's not totally egregious. Had we, for example, found chromium in the green glazes on the bottom line here rather than copper, we would've known that certainly one of the groups would've been 19th century, chromium was used as an oxide to create the color green from the early 19th century. So essentially what these results confirm is that there is a difference between these groups, but it doesn't really account for them in terms of attribution or dating.

And the possibility of a later date, of a 19th-century attribution, is topical and important because there was a revival of interest in these wares in the mid-19th century, fueled by a broader interest in Renaissance art and design, industrial ceramics factories produced pieces in homage to Saint-Porchaire. The biberon the far left here is a piece of Saint-Porchaire, 16th-century Saint-Porchaire at the Louvre. In the center is a 19th-century industrial ceramic production.

Could never mistake this for a Saint-Porchaire, not least because they often bear the factory stamps. They were just a sort of homage to the aesthetic. But there was a great interest among wealthy collectors in the 19th century, and the prices that they were willing to pay certainly stimulated the market for originals.

But of course, it also provided an incentive for less scrupulous imitations

Incentification. Here we go.

So this interest in Saint-Porchaire and indeed the whole Renaissance that arose in the 19th century that Kit has been talking about is perhaps best exemplified by this publication, which was Carle Delange's project to record all of the known examples of Saint-Porchaire which was first published in 1861 and then again in 1888. And it included full-page lithographs of each piece of Saint-Porchaire that he cataloged. And three of the pieces of Saint-Porchaire that are currently on display in our galleries were published in this book.

They are the triangular saltcellar, the ewer with the lizards and frogs, and also this round saltcellar featuring a couple putti and a Venus that we haven't really touched on yet. But this Delange publication also records the collectors who owned the objects at the time, reflecting the fact that Saint-Porchaire was a huge trend among these major collectors who were spending fairly large sums of money on these pieces. And in the U.S. this included people like JP Morgan, and in Europe and in the UK, it's best exemplified by members of the Rothschild family.

And we can in fact confirm that all nine pieces currently on display here were in the collection of the Baron Alphonse de Rothschild by the time of his death in 1905. Alphonse was a member of the French branch of the Rothschild family and he kept the Saint-Porchaire in his Paris home, which you see on the right here, which is near the Place de la Concorde. And is, interestingly, now part of the American embassy complex.

And after Alphonse's death, the Saint-Porchaire stayed in the family. And you can see here archival photos showing the Saint-Porchaire on display in the Paris home alongside examples of Limoges enamels, maiolica, other pieces of Renaissance art. And I've circled the pieces that are currently on display in the galleries here, and here are the rest of them.

During World War II, when the Nazis occupied Paris, they took over the Rothschild home and they confiscated their property, including the Saint-Porchaire. After the war, the Saint-Porchaire was restituted to the family by the Allied Forces. So in addition to all of this Renaissance intrigue, the 19th-century story, the Saint-Porchaire has also had a really interesting more recent history.

And since being restituted, its continued to descend through the family and we're very fortunate to be able to have it on loan to display and reintroduce to the public here.

Yeah, now it's in Chicago, which is another exciting chapter in the biography of these incredible pieces. I mean, it's about time to wrap up and I mean we've covered a lot of ground. We've touched a bit on history and the techniques used to make these objects, the design inspiration, and we've decoded a little bit of the iconography, but there is still so much we have to learn about who made these pieces, where, and for whom.

But before we close out and take any questions, I think maybe it would be nice if you would share one of your key takeaways from your encounters with these incredible ceramics, Jonathan, Mairead.

Well, for me, I'm just astounded by how forward-looking these pieces are, but also back, and that is so symptomatic of the French Renaissance in general. And so with each one of these it's so pushing the boundaries with Mannerist art and architecture, but then there are these gothic arches that they just can't let go of, and it's on several of the pieces. Even the lizards and the snake, there's still a little gothic arches.

But even the technique seems so forward, but in fact, when you think about the inlay technique used in floor tiles since the 12th century, these are almost, like, real medieval ceramics, but pushing it to a whole new level. So I think the mystification, you know, the mystery of it to me is how they got this idea, you know, let's take this inlay technique and we'll harness it in a different way, and that's what blows our mind. Anyway, my mind. (chuckles)

Yeah, I definitely agree with that. And on my end, what's so amazing to me about these is that for all, we don't know who made these, where, for whom, it's that we can absolutely recognize the really amazing, exceptionally refined craftsmanship of these objects just in looking at them. Hopefully you've gone and seen them in the galleries already, but if not, I hope you will afterwards, up on display in the Deering Galleries.

And when you look at them in person, you can see just how incredibly delicate and refined these objects are. And they're incredibly rare and completely anomalous in the history of European ceramics and really reward taking a closer look. So I hope you'll do that.

I second both those points. I think we have a little time for questions, though If you need to leave, please do feel free. We won't be offended.

We are at just about seven o'clock. I have a couple of colleagues with microphones, so if you raise your hands, they will bring them to you.

[Colleague 1] We've got one right here in the front.

[Attendee 1] My question is about the use of color, started out as ivory, maybe black and brown, and then you see some spots of brighter color like blue and green, not all over, but just like accents. Is that a certain year or style when that color came in or is that an artistic choice?

You are absolutely right to notice the evolution of the kind of decorative repertoire. And yes, to begin with, we have these ornamental strapwork arabesques, and then come the colored glazes, which harken back to the long tradition of pottery in the Saintonge region. So these glazes were previously used in decorating these light-bodied ceramics and sort of make their way back into the Saint-Porchaire repertoire.

Yeah, so these are lead glazes, the blue, usually probably, is a cobalt perhaps. And then the greens are usually copper oxides and they used these glazes in the Middle Ages as well. You saw one of them with the green that you showed earlier.

And so this is just using those glazes in specific areas to sort of give a little bit of color and even the earliest tazza, the little top of it actually, they do this sort of marbleized technique with some of these colors as well. And the purple is probably manganese as well. So these are oxides mixed with the lead and they're very runny, and yeah, so.

But I think you're right to ask about maybe how the use of color shifted over time because initially the earlier Saint-Porchaire does have more of a black-and-white look, even if it has a few little speckles of color. And as we proceed forward through the decades, it does seem to get more and more colorful for sure.

[Colleague 2] We have a question in the upper right.

[Attendee 2] Obviously these are very ornamental and they were used on the tables, and you showed us some images of that. Were there a lot of signals or signs that they were used functionally outside of just kind of ornately displaying salt or anything like that?

This is the million-dollar question. I mean, quite literally, they were objects of display for sure, and prestige. Certainly, they could have been used functionally, but there was also a function to display.

But I mean, I would say that if they were used it would've been judiciously because of their fragility. But you see that, I mean, they have signs of wear and damage and who knows how and when that occurred.

Yeah, I mean we even see this with a Italian maiolica, and this has been a long debate too. Are these pieces of maiolica, or these decorated beautifully tin-glazed pottery with these mythological scenes which are exactly contemporary with the Saint-Porchaire, or were they used on the table, or were they actually just for display on the credenza? We don't entirely know. I think they were probably somewhat used, maybe not common, common, but you know, to make an appearance and actually get people to speak about it.

What I find really interesting about these two is, you know, from an aristocratic standpoint, it's silver in gilded silver that is the height of what you put on your table and could have been used to show your rank and status. And that was particularly in Germany and other places. But the Italians, with the maiolica, they start to introduce these wares that are not made of very inherently wealthy or inherently valuable materials, but they privileged the artistic merits of it.

And what we're seeing here with these wares is similarly that the French are taking up these rares, however rare that they may be, and they are privileging them for their artistic merits, for the incredible amount of painstaking work that we're seeing in this to produce these. And it's mind-boggling. And so they must have, liked the Italians, begin to value it not for its materials, but for the technique and how they produce this material.

And I would add that many of these vessels, if you flip them over, are decorated on the underside either with these witty little stamps or more inlaid decoration. And I think whether they were used functionally or not, they were clearly appreciated and handled, and were a source of delight.

[Colleague 1] We've got another question to your left. (colleague speaking faintly) [Attendee 3] Thank you. I may have missed it, but why such small pieces, was the clay that rare?

Well, the clay isn't rare, but I think it's more to do with the fineness of the work and to produce larger vessels with this degree of modeling and detail would've been really difficult to fire. The amazing thing about this clay, which is used as dug, which is incredibly rare, usually when you you sort of prepare clay for the ceramics industry, the pottery industry, it's a mixture, it's a recipe. But the Saint-Porchaire clay, as it was extracted out of the ground, that's how it was used and it's particular qualities enabled it to be modeled extremely, extremely finely.

And that was the sort of the display of virtuosity, I guess among the artisans. It was a really unique use of clay, a really unique sort of manifestation of the potter's art.

[Attendee 3] Well, (speaks faintly) with larger pieces (speaks faintly).

We don't know- The question is, "Did they experiment with larger pieces?"

This is one of the great mysteries. The only evidence we have of their production are molds that were clearly taken from Saint-Porchaire wares in Paris. But even in the Saintonge, archeological excavation has not revealed to us, as far as I know.

Mairead, you might know that-

There are a couple platters that are maybe a bit larger, but you know, that is then a less complex form.

Yeah.

That's a great question.

[Colleague 1] We'll take a final question in the middle here.

[Attendee 4] Thank you. This was really fascinating. So there must be some theories about who made these, I'm wondering could they have been by people who wouldn't have been accepted as artisans or under the radar, like women or slaves. I mean, I know they had to have been highly, highly educated in their craft, but I'm sure there's some conspiracy theory or something, like, who do you think, (attendees laughing) if we pressed you against the wall, who do you think might have made these?

Well, there is an exhibition of the Louvre next year on 16th-century French ceramics, 17th-century French ceramics, a big one, which might get us closer to an understanding. I mean the major debate is were they produced in Paris or were they produced in the provinces? There was a program under Catherine de' Medici, the queen, to bring provincial artisans to the French court, and Palissy was one of those, Bernard Palissy, but it's really only through his self-promotion that we know as much as we do about him. He was a prolific writer, he was literate and published.

So yeah, I still have come no closer to understanding where these pieces might have been made.

I mean, I have fantasies that it's some potter in a community who happens to be very close to a bookbinder and asks to borrow his tools and has, like, this aha moment, "I can do something like the tiles," or something. That's a fantasy, we don't know. That's an absolute complete fantasy.

But you know, just to hint at a piece of your question is that so many artisans are unknown in the Renaissance. You know, in my own field, arms and armor, we don't know a lot of armorers. Some are documented, there will be probably documents for potter's names in registries in different villages, but we don't know what they made, you know, we don't know what their pottery looked like.

And hopefully in a digital age, we may get more answers and, you know, more archival material might come up. But. Yeah, and it's worth mentioning maybe that Palissy was a Huguenot, so to your question of maybe a somewhat marginalized group, I mean, he was a Protestant who was under the protection for a while of Catherine de Medici. So I mean, that does certainly raise the question of what sort of people might have been working on these wares.

This was a very harsh time to live in France, with the wars of religion that waged over the end part of this period. It was very troubled. So there's a lot that we don't know and that's part of the mystery and I guess we just have to embrace that.

[Colleague 1] And that concludes our program. Thank you. (attendees applauding)