Nicola da Urbino, a dinner service for a duchess


A conversation between Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank and Dr. Beth Harris in front of Nicola da Urbino, armorial plate (tondino), The Story of King Midas, c. 1520–25, tin-glazed earthenware, 27.5 cm in diameter (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)


Additional resources

See this plate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Learn more about the expanding the renaissance initiative

Read more about Isabella d’Este on Smarthistory

Jessie McNab, “Maiolica in the Renaissance,” in Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 2002)

See more Italian Renaissance ceramics in the National Gallery of Art

Jörg Rasmussen, The Robert Lehman Collection. Vol. 10, Italian Majolica (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989).

W. David Kingery, “Painterly Maiolica of the Italian Renaissance.” Technology and Culture 34, no. 1 (1993): 28–48.

Timothy Wilson, with an essay by Luke Syson, Maiolica: Italian Renaissance Ceramics in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016).

Lisa Boutin Vitela, “Virgilian Imagery and the Maiolica of the Mantuan Court,” in Virgil and Renaissance Culture, ed. Luke Houghton and Marco Sgarbi (Tempe, Arizona: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018), 49–62.

Lisa Boutin Vitela,“Dining in the Gonzaga Suburban Palaces: The Use and Reception of Istoriato Maiolica,” in Le Banquet de la Renaissance: Images et Usages, ed. Diane Bodart and Valérie Boudier (Pisa: Predella, 2013), 103–115.

Lisa Boutin Vitela,“Isabella d’Este and the Gender Neutrality of Renaissance Ceramics,” Women’s Studies: An inter-disciplinary journal 40, no. 1 (Jan., 2011): 23–47.

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Cite this page as: Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank and Dr. Beth Harris, "Nicola da Urbino, a dinner service for a duchess," in Smarthistory, November 5, 2020, accessed March 19, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/nicola-urbino-midas/.