Introduction 1

Montelupo and all the ceramic manufacturing centres of the Florentine area had a particular role in the history of Italian ceramics and obviously differ from the other workshops in Tuscany and also from the rest of Italy.
Between the 14th and 15th centuries they were at the head of a fictile quality- innovation, even if they started out late. No detailed examples have been found of an indisputable “Florentine” production before the end of the 14th century.
This delayed acquisition of new technologies which was to lead to a national ceramic renaissance, is even more evident if compared to the complex and progressive picture which emerges from archaeological findings from other areas in regions like Pisa and Siena.

These can be chronologically placed in the first half of the 13th century, and testify not only to the circulation of glazed ceramics or decorations which were unknown in Florence, but also to the handling of maiolica which had started at least forty years before it got under way in this city.
The ‘delay’ in Florence and its territory — the area which was the object of this city’s early expansion, called “Contado” (rural area around the city) — restrained the advance of more aesthetic and functional ceramics. This seems to give weight to the words of Dante Alighieri (born 1266) who, when speaking of the city of his ancestors, said that he missed the simplicity of Florentine customs, which he believed to be modest and even ‘rustic’.

Leaving aside the poet’s bitter opinion of his city, owing to his personal experiences which no doubt lead him to long for the “good old days”, the gap evinced in the circulation of “modern” ceramic production — also noticeable in other aspects of daily life and customs — between the coastal area (cities like Pisa, and the Florentine territory, at the foot of the Apennines) is not completely unexpected. It is, in fact, obvious that maritime areas — after the late Middle Ages — which had always been in contact with the East, were the first to receive not only merchandise but also more modern products which, in our case, would have stimulated the local clay workers.  

Portolano del Mediterraneo, XVII secolo Venezia, Museo storico navale

It is not mere chance, therefore, that these kinds of crafts, on the same standing to ceramics, developed along the opposite coast of the Mediterranean and in other Islamic countries, which increasingly traded with Italian coastal towns. This is true, for example, of the leather tanning process (one thinks of “maroquin” or “cordovans” ) which had an elite position in 13th century Pisa.

Nonetheless, in the city of the Crusades, there was a period of ceramic decoration well before the “archaic maiolica” phase. One is well aware of how the so called “proto-maiolica” period, beginning at the end of the 12th century, was tied to maritime ports and to the areas trading overseas, like Savona, Gela and Brindisi. The same can, obviously, be said for the spread of the contemporary “Tyhrrenian graffiti”.

The intensity of trade in ceramics (not always of good quality) between the Pisan Port and the Eastern Mediterranean countries — as well as with North Africa, Maghreb and Moorish Spain — together with various other kinds of imported merchandise, is discernible in the phenomenon of “bowls”, inserted in the walls of churches in Pisa. These specimens are the most outstanding examples of decorated ceramics which circulated in the Mediterranean area during the period going from the beginning of the 11th century and the first half of the 12th century.

Archaeological excavations have also proven that the circulation in Pisa of these imported objects — some even with lids — were not simply used for architectural insertions. None of this was found in the Florentine area of that period, irrespective of the fact that imported ceramics from different parts of the Mediterranean did circulate, at least until the end of the 13th century.

From a historical-geographical point of view it is, therefore, comprehensible that the imitiation of quality glazed or “ingobbiata” (under glazing) products came sooner in coastal towns. These towns involved in trading with the more ‘advanced’ Islamic countries, came to imitate their characteristics. Yet, the chronological discordance between the Florentine area and other internal parts of Tuscany, geographically further away from the coast is, nonetheless, surprising.
The oldest recordings of “archaic maiolica” found in Montalcino, in the Senese area, and inserted into an architectural context (the vaults of the ‘Commune’ ) date from around 1220 to 1250, an earlier period to the similar examples found in the Florentine area.

The late beginnings of ceramic craftsmanship which can be seen from findings in Florence (Piazza della Signoria, St Reparata and generally the urban area of the city, as well as in the Palazzo Pretorio in Prato, and more recently in the Palazzo dei Vescovi, in Pistoia), or from the manufacturing areas of Montelupo and Bacchereto, show that this production was not aligned to the growth of the city of the “lily” in the period going from 1180-1250. This is confirmed by the fact that Florence was the first city in Europe to coin gold in 1252.

As well as economic factors, the geographical setting of Florence explains the lateness of Florentine production of glazed ceramics, which archaeological excavations have given light to. The reason for this will have to be unravelled by analysing the social and cultural problematic of the ruling class and of the population which was fast growing in 12th and 13th century Florence. Obviously, aristocratic citizens were not deprived of luxury objects, as Dante Alighieri would have liked. This would have been confirmed with the restitution of the water wells of the turris maior (major towers) belonging to the Uberti family in Piazza della Signoria, and, even more credibly — from the archaeological findings — a widespread use of luxury ceramics of a different nature.

An integral publication of the Mediaeval documentation which has come out of the Florentine subterranean might give an answer but, to date, scholars remain on hypothetical ground.