DISH, DUCHY OF URBINO, PROBABLY PESARO, SECOND HALF 16th CENTURY in polychrome painted majolica; diam. cm 26,7, foot diam. cm 9,5, h. cm 3,7 A DISH, DUCHY OF URBINO, PROBABLY PESARO, SECOND HALF 16th CENTURY Comparative Bibliography J. Lessmann, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum Braunschweig, Italienische Majolika, Katalog der Sammlung, Brunswick 1979, pp. 336-338 nos. 468-472; E. Ivanova, Il secolo d'oro della maiolica. Ceramica italiana dei secoli XV-XVI dalla raccolta del Museo Statale dell'Ermitage, Faenza 2003, p. 128 n. 116; E. Sannipoli (ed.), La via della ceramica tra Umbria e Marche: maioliche rinascimentali da collezioni, Gubbio 2010, p. 264 n. 3.30 The dish has a wide cavetto and a wide, oblique brim with a rounded rim striped in yellow; on the back, without a rim, between concentric lines outlined to emphasise the shape. On the front, the historiated scene occupies the entire surface: in the centre there is a sharp rock from which Moses makes water gush forth for his thirsty people using a thin stick; the people assist, kneeling on either side of the rock in a wooded landscape. The pictorial style is particular, rapid, sure in outlining the figures, characterized by a certain lack of proportion, with small heads compared to the bodies and vice versa, somatic features with noses outlined "L", fleshy mouths and still well defined. Even the landscape shows a certain rapidity in the pictorial drafting, characterized by the presence of small red flowers, both on the riverbank and hanging from the trees, according to a typical use of some Pesaro productions close to the pictorial methods of the so-called "painter of Zenobia" or in any case to his environment. Also the use of strong, particularly bright colours, the elongated feet, the faces and the armour of the young men on the right of the plate support us in the attribution proposal. The nucleus of reference and comparison remains that proposed by Lessmann, who identifies a group of around twenty-five works at the Braunschweig in Hamburg, together with the important dish from Milan and the one with the story of Attilio Regolo in the St. Petersburg museum.