Charger with Arms of the Vigeri Family (1524): Art, History and Details

Charger with Arms of the Vigeri Family (1524) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Maestro Giorgio Andreoli (Italian, 1465?–1553).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Italian nobles of the 1500s often expressed their wealth, social status, and sophistication by ordering large sets of maiolica that sometimes carried their coats of arms or even likenesses, usually in profile similar to portrait paintings of the period. Reserved for use at festival events such as a wedding or commissioned to mark a special occasion or an important visit, elaborately decorated utilitarian vessels in maiolica were prized as works of art by their owners and displayed as such in their residences.

Object facts

• Title: Charger with Arms of the Vigeri Family
• Date: 1524
• Creator attribution: Maestro Giorgio Andreoli (Italian, 1465?–1553)
• Culture: Italy, Urbino region, Gubbio
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: tin-glazed earthenware with gold and red lustre (maiolica)
• Dimensions: Diameter: 39.4 cm (15 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1943.56

A detail from the museum

During the Renaissance, the powerful Vigeri family of Savona, a seaport in northwestern Italy, included numerous cardinals and bishops of the Roman Catholic Church.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Milliken, William M. "Italian Majolica." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 31, no. 1 (January 1944): 7-15.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• Hess, Catherine. Italian Ceramics: Catalogue of the J. Paul Getty Museum Collection. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2002.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.