19th C. Italian Maiolica Dish - Venus Disarming Cupid

Western Europe, Italy, Renaissance Revival, ca. 19th century CE. A playful yet fateful scene unfolds across this Italian maiolica dish, executed in the Renaissance Revival manner and drawing directly from the visual and literary traditions of the Italian Renaissance. Venus, goddess of love and beauty, is shown teasingly disarming her son Cupid, lifting his bow with a gesture that is at once affectionate and cautionary as it prevents him from inflicting the wounds of love. The moment is intimate, almost lighthearted, yet charged with mythic consequence. The composition references Book X of Ovid's Metamorphoses, in which Venus is accidentally scratched by one of Cupid's arrows while playing with him, an event that ignites her overwhelming passion for the mortal hunter Adonis. That love leads inexorably to tragedy and grief, and in later Renaissance imagery, scenes of Venus restraining Cupid often suggest her attempt to interrupt fate itself, to pause desire before it wounds again. Size: 10" Diameter x 2.5" H (25.4 cm x 6.4 cm) The narrative captures the Renaissance fascination with classical mythology as a mirror for human emotion and moral reflection. Rendered within an architectural setting framed by drapery and foliage, the figures are modeled with soft contours and fluid movement, echoing Renaissance painted prototypes. The surrounding border of scrolling cobalt ornament and geometric banding reinforces this historicist vocabulary, while the palette of deep blues, warm ochres, muted greens, and creamy whites reflects the decorative language of Florentine and central Italian maiolica traditions. Intended for display rather than daily use, the dish exemplifies the 19th century revival of Renaissance ceramic art, where classical myth, scholarly reference, and ornamental splendor converge. It stands as both homage and reinterpretation, a ceramic retelling of love's power to wound gods and mortals alike, rendered enduring in glaze and fire. Item # 199335

Estimate:£93.44

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