Medici Porcelain

Professor Timothy Wilson, Honorary Curator, Department of Western Art, Ashmolean Museum

Medici porcelain is the first European porcelain of which examples have been identified. Their beauty and rarity make the 60-odd known intact pieces among the most iconic works of European ceramics.

Various attempts in Renaissance Italy to imitate Chinese porcelain, precious and seeming almost magical, are recorded. In Ferrara Duke Alfonso II d’Este employed two brothers, Camillo and Battista Gatti of Castel Durante; at his death Camillo was described as “the modern rediscoverer of porcelain”. No examples of this Ferrarese porcelain have yet been identified.

At the same time, in Florence, experiments were taking place under the aegis of Grand Duke Francesco I de’ Medici; success was achieved by 1575. Porcelain-makers worked alongside goldsmiths and hardstone workers and the designs reflect Mannerist shapes as well as Chinese prototypes. Production depended on granducal patronage and tailed off after Francesco’s death; there is no continuity with later European porcelain.