This "Inkstand With Sleeping Knight" was made in the early 16th century in Faenza, Italy. It's one of 32 tin-glazed earthenware objects in the traveling exhibition "Marvels of Maiolica: Italian Renaissance Ceramics From the Corcoran Gallery of Art Collection" at The Frick Art & Historical Center. Click photo for larger image.

An outstanding exhibition of Italian Renaissance ceramics has been in quiet residence at The Frick Art & Historical Center while most attention has centered on a concurrent exhibition of 19th-century Pittsburgh-based Bakewell Glass. Today is the last day to see the latter, but the ceramics will be displayed through April 3.

"Marvels of Maiolica: Italian Renaissance Ceramics From the Corcoran Gallery of Art Collection," a traveling exhibition, comprises 32 handsome examples of exquisitely crafted tin-glazed earthenware, most of it made in the early 16th century.

The objects are from one of the great collections of maiolica in the United States, according to Frick Director Bill Bodine, who was at the Corcoran, the oldest art museum in Washington, D.C., between 1983 and 1992. The maiolica was among more than 800 decorative and fine art objects donated to the Corcoran in 1925 by William A. Clark, a copper-mining baron and former Montana senator.

In the late 1980s, the maiolica traveled to major institutions across the country, and the author of the catalog that accompanied that exhibition, Wendy Watson, will give a free public lecture, "Italian Renaissance Ceramics: Painters, Potters and Patrons," at noon Thursday at the Frick. Watson, who is curator of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum in Massachusetts, will discuss the relationship of maiolica to other Renaissance arts and its patronage.

Refinement was a valued quality in a period that produced such geniuses as da Vinci and Michelangelo. Owning such fine works was one way to indicate that one had taste, not only because of their inherent craftsmanship but also through ornamentation that frequently included classical or moralizing subject matter.

A luster overglaze adds a glow to many pieces, a quality that was important, Bodine says, because people wanted gold for the sideboards in their homes, but not all could afford it. "Ceramic lustered to look like metal was the next best thing to gold, silver or even copper."

The ware was in large part functional, although there is evidence that some was specifically intended for display. From special occasion commissions to pharmacy storage containers, from tableware of the Medici to plaques of petition left in churches, maiolica was an integral part of Renaissance life.

An intricate footed dish, made circa 1513-21 in Tuscany, is embellished with the arms of the Medici to which the papal tiara and crossed keys of Saint Peter were added in recognition of Giovanni de'Medici's appointment as Pope Leo X.

This "Tall Drug Jar With Two Babies Riding a Griffin" was made in the mid-16th century by the workshop of Orazio Pompeii in Castelli. It contained, according to its inscription, "an aqueous solution of calamint, prized for its ability to bring about both menstruation and urine." Click photo for larger image.

Among Bodine's favorites is a large commemorative vase that displays the arms of Duke Guidobaldo de Montefeltro of Urbino overlain with papal symbols that refer to his position within the Holy Roman Church. It's fronted by an image of Judith holding the head of Holofernes.

Urbino artisan Xanto (Francesco Xanto Avelli da Rovigo) is among the most well-known of those exhibited, Bodine says, and is represented by four spectacular plates that draw for imagery upon historical, mythological and Biblical events, such as a depiction of the "Massacre of the Innocents" based on several prints by artists in Raphael's circle. Another resplendent plate from an Urbino studio depicts "St. Paul Preaching at Athens," its composition drawn from Raphael's cartoons for Sistine Chapel tapestries.

Not all of the subjects were high-minded. One dish belonging to the "genre of erotically charged maiolica wares" shows a woman clutching her exposed breast with one hand and holding a bird, an ancient phallic symbol, in the other, in front of a suggestively worded scroll.

Apothecary jars are appealing with their often folky designs and the now quaint applications of their contents. A tall jar showing a bearded man wearing a helmet "held a solution of wild celery, commonly used to treat rheumatism, gout and flatulence." A nobly dressed woman in profile with a greatly receding hairline appears on an albarello, a waisted-shaped jar that contained a scabies treatment.

Maiolica was developed to compete with the decorative ceramics arriving from the East along early trade routes. Its popularity had diminished by the beginning of the 18th century, when Dresden and other European locations developed a successful porcelain recipe, but maiolica continues to be made at some of the historic sites in Italy, and to be collected.

"Maiolica" continues through April 3 in the Frick Art Museum, 7227 Reynolds St., Point Breeze. Admission is free. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday; closed Easter Sunday. The prepossessing and affordable catalog, with its informative essay and color illustrations, is desirable as both reference and keepsake ($10.95). For information, call 412-371-0600 or visit www.frickart.org.

	One of the few objects in the exhibition with a historic theme is a late 15th-century dish, center, depicting the meeting of Italian poet Petrarch and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV.. Click photo for larger image.

Identity and Cuba

A public forum, "Out of Residence: Examining Culture, Identity and Memory Inside and Outside Cuba," will be held at 3 p.m. today at the Mattress Factory, North Side.

The event complements the museum's current exhibition, "New Installations, Artists in Residence: Cuba," and is co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies, University of Pittsburgh. Tours of the exhibition in English and Spanish will be given at 1 p.m.

Participants are Shawn Alfonso Wells, instructor in Africana Studies and Latin American Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and an expert on racial identity in Cuba; Ezequiel Mobley, producer/host of weekly bilingual (Spanish-English) cable television show "Hola!"; Lisa Valanti, president of the Pittsburgh-Matanzas Sister Cities Project; and Kwasi Jayourba, ethnomusicologist, artist and master percussionist.

Admission is $8; $5 students/seniors; free for museum and center members and Pitt students. Due to limited seating, reservations are recommended; call 412-231-3169.

Hungarian art historian

Katalin Keseru, professor of art history at Eovos Lorand University, Budapest, will give a free public lecture at 4:30 p.m. Monday in the Adamson Wing, 136A, Baker Hall, Carnegie Mellon University. She will speak about "Visions as a Source of Modernism in Hungarian Art."

Outsider Henry Darger

Pertinent to the film "In the Realms of the Unreal" about the late Henry Darger, currently at the Regent Square Theater and reviewed in yesterday's PG, Andy Warhol Museum Director Tom Sokolowski called to say that the museum will present a large exhibition on the outsider artist next year.