ALBARELLO, FAENZA, 16th CENTURY in majolica painted in polychrome with cobalt blue green and yellow; h. cm 20,5, diam. of mouth cm 15,3, diam. of base cm 12 A PHARMACY JAR (ALBARELLO), FAENZA, 16TH CENTURY Comparative bibliography G.C. Bojani, C. Ravanelli Guidotti, A. Fanfani, Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche in Faenza. The Galeazzo Cora donation. Ceramiche dal Medioevo al XIX secolo, Milan 1985, p. 52 n. 93; C. Ravanelli Guidotti, Ceramiche occidentali del Museo Civico Medievale di Bologna, Bologna 1985, p. 86 n. 52; C. Ravanelli Guidotti, Thesaurus di opere della tradizione di Faenza, Faenza 1998, pp. 265-271 fig. 29 The ointment jar has a cylindrical shape on a low, slightly flared foot, a wide mouth with everted rim and a short neck that immediately descends into an oblique, angled shoulder, as does the chalice. The shoulder is decorated with a band bordered by concentric lines with a V motif; the median area of the body shows a scroll with curled ends with the pharmaceutical inscription Dastice.i. in Gothic characters; between the two ends of the cartouche there is a coat of arms with three leafy branches surmounted by a blue band with three yellow lilies; the remaining surface is covered by a thick "porcelain" decoration with small leaves, concentric circles and thin branches; at the foot there is a serpentine decoration. The "porcelain style" decoration was inspired by the coveted Chinese porcelain, made known in the West through Venetian imports. In Faenza, there are numerous attempts to imitate Chinese decorations on open shapes, also in terms of morphology, but often used in association with more typically western motifs such as small representations or emblems. The use of decorations on closed forms is rarer, and in particular can be found in some albarellos, where the variant "alla porcellana minuta" is well represented. The container finds precise references in the Faentine production area, such as, for example, a coherent exemplar, but with a different and smaller emblem, from the MIC of Faenza (cat. no. 21313) and another albarello from the same museum with a curled cartouche enriched with yellow in a different form, but coherent in its decorative choice (cat. no. 1014), or even an albarello from the Museo Civico Medievale of Bologna (cat. no. 1061).