Chapter «Quel maestro che fa vasi in Antigniano»: un ceramista al servizio di Cosimo I

Abstract

In the second half of the 16th century a master potter (or two?) worked on the villa-farm of the Medici Duke (later Grand Duke) in Antignano to the south of Livorno. In the 1560s he made “large vases” some of which were inventoried in 1574 and 1578 in the royal palaces of Florence. Towards the end of the century the license given to a tableware maker from Montelupo at Antignano to sell his work in Livorno “and everywhere” was confirmed. While it appears that in the 1560s the potter had been employed to supply vases to the farm, the one known thirty years later seems to have worked on his own account. It is probable that the “kiln-men” known in Antignano in 1571 made lime to build the new port of Livorno. Instead, one of the two brick “kilns” illustrated in the plans in the following centuries, if already in existence before then, was perhaps used to make ceramics.