Grande vaso in ceramica in stile Iznik .Europa,... Lot n° 2

Impressive for its size, the vase is distinguished by a globular body resting on a disc foot, a projecting semicircular double loop, and a flared neck with a slightly everted mouth. The exterior painted with large hatay flowers in blue underlay between plant shoots framed in an undulating movement rendered by the delicate curvature of the lanceolate leaves (saz). The base and neck are further decorated with thin bands of repeated niches, a decorative motif inspired by Chinese ruyi head crowns. Finally, the composition is enlivened by touches of red in tactile relief above covered. Vases such as this are in the wake of the imitation of the Ottoman Iznik manufacture that interested Europe on several occasions, the last in the nineteenth century with the establishment of an Orientalist and/or Turkic taste in the fictile production of various manufacturing centers, among the most famous being Joseph-Théodore Deck and Samson in France and Cantagalli in Italy. The absence of a specific mark on the specimen offered here precludes its secure authorship, but entirely similar comparative specimens-in size, style, and form-are generally attributed to Cantagalli (see Christie's London, June 25, 2020, lot 10; Christie's London, April 22, 2016, lot 426; Christie's London, October 28, 2020, lot 142; Sotheby's London, October 24, 2018, lot 254) modeled after the prototype published in T. Deck, La Faience, Paris, 1887, fig. 11, p. 25 with an older attribution to production on the Greek island of Rhodes, the site of the discovery of an important nucleus of Iznik ceramics in the Four-Flower style and long mistakenly believed to be their place of execution in the last century.