Lustreware Production in Renaissance Italy and Influences from the Mediterranean Area

This paper will analyse the major production centres of lustreware in Renaissance Italy. Focus will be on central Italy (Deruta and Cafaggiolo), considering both the development of the production technique and whether it can be proved that potters moved from one productive centre to the other carrying with them the knowledge needed for terzo fuoco. The attempts made in Montelupo and Faenza will be analysed as well. Primary sources, such as Li tre libri dell’arte del vasaio by Piccolpasso, describe in detail all the processes of lustre-ware making; these ‘recipes’ are known from other potters’ books written in the same period. What is not said, however, is how Renaissance potters came to understand the technique of applying metallic oxides to tin-glazed artefacts in order to obtain golden or silver reflexes. The contacts with Moresque Spain have been constant in the previous centuries and it might be possible that somehow Italian potters learned this technique from Spanish potters. While Italo-Moresque maiolica is the result of imitated models, lustreware production requires technological knowledge that could not have been acquired by chance. The influence of models circulating within the Mediterranean area will be considered as well, trying to understand how, together with their products, people circulated as well.