The Fifteenth Century, Golden Era Of Pesarese Ceramics

Ferruccio Mengaroni must have experienced the fascination with the most beautiful ceramic works of the second half of the fifteenth century coming from Pesaro’s underground, originating from an era in which the city, under the reign of the Sforza, finds itself at the peak of its ceramic activities thanks to its artisan workshops, with various works referable by style and colors to that flourishing era, as proof.
It was in fact in the sixteenth century that the archaic language of manganese brown and copper green geometric decorations got abandoned, to add various other shades of color to its palette, such as cobalt blue imported from overseas. It’s at that moment that in Pesaro – just like in Faenza, Deruta and Montelupo – the artisan workshops started specializing in majoliche of higher quality, quickly developing a technical mastery of colors and enamels that allowed for a bigger variety of patterns and decorations.

The innovation of the compositions was influenced by the islamic world, particularly by the lustre works created by islamic artisans in the Valenza district in Spain, later imported in great quantities in Italy. But it’s also the arts of the East – with its fabrics and metals created by ottoman artisans – that became an inspiration for the italian ceramists.

Mengaroni preferred to characterize his works with some artifacts of great beauty that imitated the sixteenth century models not only in its representations, but also in its materials; like the large plate with a friar represented on it, where he willingly re-proposed – as to imitate antique works – the so-called signs of time.