1536, MAESTRO GIORGIO ANDREOLI WORKSHOP, ALMOST CERTAINLY PAINTED BY FRANCESCO ‘URBINI’

A coppa with related decoration in the Museo Civico, Pesaro, is inscribed on the reverse in lustre with the date 1525 and the workshop mark of Maestro Giorgio Andreoli. The obverse is painted with a figure of St. Judas Thaddeus, which is thought to be by Nicola da Urbino, and the Saint is similarly surrounded by lustre (See Gian Carlo Bojani, et al., Mastro Giorgio da Gubbio: una carriera sfolgorante, September – November 1998 Palazzo dei Consoli, Gubbio, Exhibition Catalogue, Florence, 1998, p. 77, no. 9, where the reverse is illustrated and the painting of St. Judas Thaddeus is attributed to Nicola da Urbino, or by a painter who had been at Urbino and influenced by him, and p. 54 for a color illustration of the obverse. Also see J.V.G. Mallet, Nicola da Urbino and Francesco Xanto Avelli’, Faenza, XCIII, IV-VI, 2007, p. 204, Fig 4, where the painting of St. Judas Thaddeus is attributed to Nicola da Urbino). The figure on the present coppa bears a strong resemblance to the work of Francesco ‘Urbini’, a painter who worked at Gubbio before he moved to Deruta, where he signed and dated a plate in 1537 (See J.V.G. Mallet, ‘Francesco Urbini in Gubbio and Deruta’ in Faenza, VI, 1979, pp. 279-296, for a discussion of this painter, and pl. XCVII a and b for the Deruta plate dated 1537).

Dated pieces which have been attributed to Francesco Urbini bear dates from 1531-1536, and the fact that he worked in Gubbio is evidenced by lustred maiolica, some of which bear inscriptions in blue in addition to the lustre. It has long been established that the lustred marks for Maestro Giorgio on the reverse of pieces do not indicate authorship of the principal decoration, but only indicate that they were lustred in his Gubbio workshop. Another one of the Eugen Gutmann collection pieces at the Museum Boijmans-Van Beuningen (which remains at the museum) is just such a document of Gubbio’s production. The inscription in blue on the reverse states that it was painted in 1534 in Gubbio, and as this inscription was fired with the rest of the principal decoration before the lustre firing, it indicates that it was made and decorated in its entirety at Gubbio (J.V.G. Mallet, ibid., pl. XCV a and b).

As the present lot is not painted with an elaborate istoriato scene, it is more difficult to establish the authorship of the painted decoration. The distant mountains, face and hands all bear a strong resemblance to a shallow bowl in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, which has been ‘tentatively attributed’ by Timothy Wilson to Francesco Urbini (Timothy Wilson, Italian Maiolica and Europe, Oxford, 2017, pp. 258-259).

PROPERTY RETURNED TO THE HEIRS OF FRITZ GUTMANN
More than a century ago, the following maiolica lots were part of the famed Gutmann collection, formed by the German banker Eugen Gutmann (1840 - 1925). Apart from maiolica, the collection included Old Master paintings, Renaissance jewelry, gold-mounted hardstone objects, bronzes, watches, miniatures and 18th century gold boxes. After his passing, son Fritz Gutmann (1886 - 1944), was chosen to administer the Eugen Gutmann collection trust on behalf of himself and his six siblings.
Eugen solidified the Gutmann family legacy when, at age 32, he co-founded the Dresdner Bank which became one of the leading financial institutions in Germany. Fritz, in his turn, founded a private bank in Amsterdam after the First World War, and settled his family nearby in ‘Bosbeek’, a beautiful historic home with doors and ceilings decorated by the celebrated 18th-century painter Jacob de Wit. In the 1920s Gutmann’s art collection grew considerably, with a special focus on Renaissance works of art, such as the present six maiolica lots, as well as paintings by the likes of Lucas Cranach the Elder and Sandro Botticelli. As political tensions grew in the 1930s, Fritz and his wife Louise, who were Jewish, insisted that their children remain safely in England and Italy, but they unfortunately did not leave the Netherlands themselves. Following the Occupation in 1940 and after a prolonged period of house arrest during which Nazi agents gradually stripped ‘Bosbeek’ of its possessions, the Gutmanns were arrested in 1943 and tragically did not survive in concentration camps, dying the following year.

A detailed account of the family history and the history of the Gutmann collection is given by Simon Goodman in The Orpheus Clock: The Search for my Family’s Art Treasures Stolen by the Nazis, Simon and Schuster, 2015.

How the present group of restituted maiolica wares came to enter the collection of Johan Willem Frederiks (1889-1962) is unclear, but Frederik’s daughter loaned, then donated, the works to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, where they sat for decades, their connection to the Gutmann family unknown for much of their time there. These maiolica artworks were restituted to the heirs of Fritz Gutmann in 2022.

These six maiolica lots from the Gutmann collection represent an opportunity to acquire important renaissance artworks which have not been on the open market for well over half a century. The group focuses on four of the principal maiolica centres of 16^th century Italy; Urbino, Gubbio, Faenza and Deruta. 1530s Urbino maiolica was dominated by two extremely influential painters, Nicola da Urbino, who was both a painter and workshop owner, and Francesco Xanto Avelli. The dish painted with The Banquet of the Gods is very probably painted by Nicola, and the signed and dated plate painted by Xanto with The Sword of Damocles is one of six known pieces painted with this subject, and it has the addition of lustre. The Urbino plate painted with the birth of Castor and Pollux is from a slightly later period and is most probably by the accomplished but anonymous painter who created the famous ‘Punic War Series’. Only a few pottery centres had the special technology of applying iridescent lustred decoration to their wares, and this is admirably represented by the Gubbio coppa painted with a flag bearer, which is probably by Francesco Urbini, and the Deruta ‘bella donna’ dish, a charming and fine example of its type.