Italian Maiolica and Other Early Modern Ceramics in the Courtauld Gallery
Elisa Paola Sani (Paul Holberton, £50)
THE three founders of the Courtauld Institute and Gallery in 1932 were not only philanthropists, but collectors. Samuel Courtauld’s Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings are the most widely known of the gallery’s holdings, but the Old Master paintings and drawings bequeathed by his colleagues Lord Lee of Fare-ham and Sir Robert Witt gave width and depth. They were followed by Witt’s son, John, and Dr and Mrs Spooner with English watercolours, then Roger Fry’s daughter Pamela Diamand with 20th-century and Bloomsbury works.
Another major bequest was less evident to general visitors, because of its more varied nature, until comparatively recently. This was the collection accumulated by the Victorian painter Thomas Gambier Parry (1816–88) and left to the Courtauld by his grandson in 1966. There were about), medieval and Renaissance enamels, Islamic metalwork and other decorative arts. In 2013, John Lowdon was the author of a scholarly catalogue devoted to the ivories; now, it is the turn of the maiolica with this handsome book by Elisa Paola Sani, who was the lead author of the catalogue for the 2017 exhibition ‘Maiolica before Raphael’ at the London dealer Sam Fogg.
