Pharmacy Bottle (c. 1500–1510): Art, History and Details

Pharmacy Bottle (c. 1500–1510) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Pharmacy bottles that lined the shelves of Renaissance pharmacies often held medicinal herbs, spices, and ointments. The inscription on this bottle reads CAPILLV, which was a liquid extracted from a fern-like plant commonly referred to as “maiden’s hair water.”

Object facts

• Title: Pharmacy Bottle
• Date: c. 1500–1510
• Culture: Italy, Papal States, Faenza
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: tin-glazed earthenware (maiolica)
• Dimensions: Overall: 38.8 cm (15 1/4 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1943.52.2

A detail from the museum

The peacock feather design lining the bottom of this bottle was especially popular in Faenza, near Bologna, during the Renaissance.

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.
• Cole, Bruce. Italian Maiolica from Midwestern Collections. Bloomington: Indiana University Art Museum, 1977. Published as Drug Bottle.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Jenifer Neils. The World of Ceramics: Masterpieces from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Museum in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1982.

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.