This dish is one of the first maiolica dishes to be painted in the istoriato (narrative) style.

The dish portrays a scene from Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book 11, in which King Ceyx ignores the pleas of his wife Alcyone and sets out on a voyage on which he will be drowned. It is set within an elaborate border featuring putti, fruit and flowers, vases, and cornucopias.

Provenance

Baron Gustave de Rothschild, Paris by 1865; by descent.


Back to top