The center of this charger features a large shield representing the Medicis, a banking family that became prominent in Florence under Cosimo de’ Medici (r. 1434−64). The shield, crossed keys, and papal tiara refer more specifically to a Medici pope, either Leo X (r. 1513−21) or Clement VII (r. 1523−34). A 1531 dish, in the collection of the Musée National de la Renaissance in Écouen, with nearly identical decoration points to the reign of Clement VII for this design. Such plates were possibly commissioned by the pope to be presented as gifts, although they are more likely to have been purchased and displayed by lay owners as proclamations of loyalty or as commemoration of the pope’s reign. In the fifteenth to early sixteenth century, Deruta became a center for producing maiolica, a type of earthenware ceramic covered with tin-opacified glaze and painted with bright colors. Influenced by ceramics from the Islamic world, craftspeople in Deruta became the first in Italy to use metallic compounds, usually silver or copper, in a final glaze, which resulted in an iridescent effect. Such ceramics became known as lusterware.
William Randolph Hearst populated his California estates with medieval and early modern decorative arts. This is one of more than twenty Deruta display plates that Hearst acquired between 1912 and 1935. He purchased the majority of them in the 1920s from Arnold Seligmann, Rey & Company in New York and others from various dealers and at auctions in Munich, London, and New York. Hearst displayed the plates in the Gothic Study at San Simeon.
Cynthia Kok
2025 (adapted from Thomas Michie in Hearst the Collector, 203)
