Faenza dish, Painter of the "V numbered" service,... Lot 19

Faenza dish, Painter of the "V numbered" service, last quarter of the 16th century Majolica. Diameter 40.5 cm. Conservation: a felting@@@ cracks@@ some glaze jump at edges. Large dish with wide low cavetto and flared brim. The love meeting between Mars and Venus, observed above by Eros, within cloud almond stands out in the center. The scene takes place by a tree, in a country landscape with grassy crags and peaks on the horizon. Verso only glazed. Painted in orange, light blue and reddish brown. We are in the presence of a fine historiated "compendiary" from Faenza, with a nearly full-page scene that gains pictorial prominence because it is not circumscribed by complementary decorative motifs on the brim. The work evidences many of the stylistic features (face and pointed foot of Mars, type of tree, etc.) that can be traced to the manner of the Painter of the "V numbered" service, so-called for being the author of a service whose vessels are marked with a U or V, followed by a number: to date the highest is 173. His manner is a meeting point between two of the major protagonists of Faenza's "compendiario istoriato": the Painter of the draperies and the Painter of the fence. His personality, within the great season of the "whites" of Faenza, painted in the "compendiary style," is central and must have gravitated probably for a time in the orbit of the Bettisi workshop (1) 1) RAVANELLI GUIDOTTI C., Faenza- faïence "Whites" of Faenza, Ferrara, 1996, pp. 278-297