TONDINO, DUCHY OF URBINO, CASTELDURANTE OR PESARO, 1533-1555 in majolica painted in white overglaze and polychrome green, blue orange yellow antimony and manganese brown; diam. cm 19, foot diam. cm 7, h. cm 2,6 A PLATE (TONDINO), DUCHY OF URBINO, CASTELDURANTE OR PESARO, 1533-1555 Bibliography for comparison B. Rackham, Victoria and Albert Museum. Catalogue of Italian Maiolica, London 1977, p. 201 no. 603, table 94; R. Gresta, Un piatto con il stemma Mazza e qualche nota sui soprabianchi, in "Faenza", CIII, 1, 2017, pp. 46-55; T. Wilson, The Golden Age of Italian Maiolica Painting, Turin 2019, pp. 366-368 n. 163 The small saucer or roundel has a deep cavetto, oblique brim, rounded rim, and a slightly raised ring foot. The decoration shows around the rim a garland of small lance-shaped leaves outlined in brown, the brim richly decorated with the so-called white overglaze technique, which involves a dense decoration of leafy circles outlined in white tin directly on the glaze, and inside the cavetto in a hilly landscape with the sky at sunset a bipartite noble emblem of the Mazza family of Pesaro flanked by the letters G and P, perhaps indicating a marriage. The technique used here is amply described by Cipriano Piccolpasso in his text I tre libri dell'arte del vasaio (The three books of the art of the potter), indicating it as being for use in Urbino. Numerous fragments of these works have been found in the ducal palace of Urbania (Castel Durante), but recent finds in Pesaro have led scholars to propose a Pesaro origin or, in any case, a more widespread production within the Duchy of Urbino. Other small plates are conserved in public and private collections, such as, for example, the specimen without initials in the Victoria and Albert Museum (inv. no. C 2262-1910) or the one identical to ours conserved in a private collection and recently published by Wilson, whose details can be found here.