Tondo

Large tondo with double enlarged edge, wide band of flowers and fruit in relief and in the center "Madonna and Child with Angels" in clear relief.
Majolica painted in polychromy in the frame, in white on a blue background in the centre; in the reverse, brown display case.
Ø 65 cm. Cond: very good.
TL. ART-TEST Florence, withdrawal 6/02/2919, no G B 219; proposed date, 19th century: authentic.

Florence, Ginori or Cantagalli manufacture; 19th – 20th century.

The tondo was named "robbiana" after the Della Robbia family, who made majolica’s of the most beautiful statues with Luca starting from the mid-fifteenth century until almost to the end of the sixteenth century. In the late nineteenth century, in the climate of revisiting the ancient, with the overbearing return to the classicism of the Renaissance, important manufacturers, particularly in Florence, such as Ginori, and Cantagalli, were engaged in the restoration of the ancient "robbiane". Hence the love for this Renaissance art, fully relived between the end of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century. Let us cite the case of the beautiful panel with "Virgin in adoration". Reproduced by a prototype by Andrea della Robbia (now at the Bargello), and donated by Count Ginori to the Basilica of the Santuario Della Verna in 1939. In the same Sanctuary, it was the Cantagalli who carried out many restorations on the majolica so much so that in the Chapel of the Stigmata one can admire the tondo of Andrea Della Robbia's workshop, with "The Virgin and Child", in which the Mother holds a finger of the Child's foot between her fingers, just like in the tondo proposed here; the theme recurs again in other majolicas. A tondo of Andrew, now in the Municipal Art Gallery of Città di Castello, also presents the same group of angels that surround the group, while the dove of the Holy Spirit descends from above. One of these Florentine manufactures is attributable to the majolica proposed here.