How the rarest "Chinese" porcelain of the Medici family appeared as a result of a mistake

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In 1574, the Medici family tried to reproduce Chinese porcelain. Although this attempt was unsuccessful, it led to the creation of one of the rarest types of pottery ever made in the history of mankind. Chinese porcelain has long been considered a great treasure. From the end of the 13th century, it began to appear at the courts of Europe as trade routes expanded. By the second half of the 15th century, Chinese porcelain was abundant in the ports of Turkey, Egypt and Spain. The Portuguese began to import it systematically in the 16th century after establishing a post in Macau. Due to the value of Chinese porcelain, there was a desire to replicate it. Finally, in the last quarter of the 16th century, the Medici factories in Florence produced the first European soft-paste porcelain, a completely new creation of the Medici family.

1. History and import of Chinese porcelain

Porcelain was made in China around the 7th century and was produced with very specific ingredients and measures, which is why we now call porcelain hard paste. The Italian explorer Marco Polo (1254-1324) is credited with bringing Chinese porcelain to Europe at the end of the 13th century.

For inexperienced Europeans, hard porcelain was a beautiful creation, beautifully and brightly decorated, pure white pottery (often called ivory white or milky white), smooth and flawless surface, hard to the touch, but fragile. Some believed that he possessed mystical powers. This extraordinary product was enjoyed by royalty and wealthy collectors.

The Ming Dynasty (1365-1644) produced the distinctive blue and white porcelain known today to enthusiasts.

The main components of Chinese hard porcelain are kaolin and petunze (which give a pure white color), and the products are painted under a transparent glaze with cobalt oxide, which gives a deep blue color after firing at a temperature of 1290 ° C. By the 16th century, patterns on Chinese hard porcelain included multi-colored scenes using complementary colors - the ubiquitous blue, as well as red, yellow and green. The drawings depicted stylized flowers, grapes, waves, lotus flowers, vines, reeds, fruit bushes, trees, animals, landscapes and mythical creatures. The most famous design of the Ming era is the blue and white pattern that dominated Chinese ceramic work from the early 14th century to the late 1700s. Typical vessels made in China include vases, bowls, jugs, cups, plates, and various art objects such as tassels, ink stones, boxes with lids, and incense burners.

At this time, Italy was experiencing a Renaissance. Painting, sculpture and decorative arts were conquered by Italian artists. Craftsmen and artists from Italy (and Europe) enthusiastically embraced the Far Eastern designs that have been spreading across the continent for over a century. They were inspired by oriental art practices and works, the latter of which can be seen in many paintings of the Renaissance. After 1530, Chinese motifs were often found in majolica, Italian pewter glazed earthenware that displayed a variety of ornaments. In addition, many majolica pieces have been decorated in a historiato style borrowed from Far Eastern culture, which is narrated through visual effects.

The desire to reproduce Chinese porcelain predates Francesco de Medici. In his 1568 edition of the Biographies of the Most Outstanding Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Giorgio Vasari reports that Bernardo Buontalenti (1531-1608) tried to unravel the secrets of Chinese porcelain, but there are no documents confirming his discoveries. Buontalenti, production designer, architect, theater artist, military engineer and painter, worked for the Medici family all his life. But how he influenced the creation of Medici porcelain is unknown.

2. The emergence of Medici porcelain

By the middle of the 16th century, the Medici family, great patrons of the arts and famous in Florence from the 13th to the 17th century, politically, socially and economically owned hundreds of pieces of Chinese porcelain. There are records of how the Egyptian Mamluk sultan presented this family with exotic animals and several porcelain vessels, which were unmatched in 1487.

Duke Francesco Medici is known to have an interest in alchemy and is believed to have already experimented with porcelain for several years before opening his factories in 1574. The Medici's interests prompted him to devote many hours to study in his private laboratory or studio, at the Palazzo Vecchio, where his curiosities and a collection of objects were kept, which gave him privacy to contemplate and study alchemical ideas.

With sufficient resources to recreate Chinese hard porcelain, Francesco founded two ceramic factories in Florence in 1574, one in the Boboli Gardens and the other in the San Marco Casino. The porcelain enterprise was not for the sake of profit - its ambition was to reproduce exquisite, highly prized Chinese porcelain in order to preserve its own collection and give it to someone for whom it was burning with sympathy and respect (there are suggestions that Francesco gave it to Philip II, Spanish ruler).

A 1575 report by the Venetian ambassador to Florence, Andrea Gussoni, mentions that he (Francesco) invented a method of making Chinese porcelain after ten years of research (confirming reports that Francesco had researched production methods before opening factories).

But what Francesco and his hired artisans actually invented was not hard Chinese porcelain, but what would be called soft-paste porcelain. The Medici porcelain formula is documented and reads: "white clay from Vicenza, mixed with white sand and ground rock crystal (proportion 12: 3), tin and lead flux." The glaze used contains calcium phosphate, resulting in an opaque white color. The overglaze decoration was done primarily in a shade of blue (to mimic the popular Asian painting style in similar shades), but manganese red and yellow are also used. Porcelain of a famous family was fired in the same way as in Italian majolica. Then a second low temperature glaze containing lead was applied.

The resulting products demonstrated the experimental nature in which they were produced. Products could be yellowish, sometimes whitish or gray, and resembled ceramics. The resulting shades of overglaze decorative motifs also range from shiny to dull (blue ranged from bright cobalt to gray). The shapes of the pieces made were influenced by the trade routes of the era, showcasing Chinese, Ottoman and European tastes, including basins and jugs, plates, right down to the smallest mugs. The objects displayed slightly curved shapes and were thicker than hard china.

Even considering the far from ideal results of the Medici efforts, what the factories produced was extraordinary. Medici soft-paste porcelain was a completely unique product and reflected an exquisite artistic ability. The products were a tremendous advancement technically and chemically, made from a proprietary formula of Medici ingredients and various temperatures.

The decorative motifs found on products of the Medici family are a mixture of styles. While the Chinese blue and white stylization is clearly visible (various branches, blooming flowers, deciduous vines are visible in abundance), the products also express appreciation to the Turkish ceramics of Iznik (a combination of traditional Ottoman arabesque patterns with Chinese elements showing spiral scrolls, geometric motifs, rosettes and lotus flowers, composed mostly of blues, but later incorporating pastel shades of green and purple).

The usual visuals of the Renaissance are also seen, including classically dressed figures, grotesques, twisting foliage, and delicately applied floral arrangements.

Most of the surviving fragments are signed by the Medici family - most depict the famous dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, a Florentine cathedral, with the letter F below (most likely referring to Florence or, less likely, Francesco). Some of the figures show the six balls (palle) of the Medici coat of arms, the initials of the name and title Francesco, or both. These signs testify to how proud Francesco was of Medici porcelain.

3. Production decline

Francesco de Medici's desire to replicate Chinese porcelain led to the fact that he created something new, and most importantly, produced in Europe. Medici porcelain fascinated those who saw it, and as an invention of the family, in its essence it embodied and was of great value.

However, the Medici factories did not last long from 1573 to 1613. It is known that production declined after Francesco's death in 1587. In general, the number of products produced is unknown. After Francesco's death, the inventory of his collections numbers about three hundred and ten pieces of family porcelain, produced in their own factories, but this is only a small part of what was actually produced.

The search for the formula of Chinese porcelain continued. The soft paste was produced in Rouen, France in 1673 and in England by the end of the 17th century. Porcelain comparable to the Chinese version was not produced until 1709, when Johann Böttger of Saxony discovered kaolin in Germany and produced high quality hard transparent porcelain.

The porcelain remained in the family until the 18th century, when an auction in Florence sold the collection out in 1772. Today there are about sixty pieces of porcelain from this family, and all but fourteen of them are in museum collections around the world.

Continuing the topic, read also about what was invented in ancient China, and what inventions from the distant past are still held in high esteem by the modern world.