Fiasco Flask (or "bowl") with ovoid body, high neck with...

Fiasco

Flask (or "bowl") with ovoid body, high neck with extroverted mouth, narrow disc-shaped support.
Majolica painted in polychromy, in the front inside a circle, with a shelf frame, figure of "Sant'Andrea"; in the postergale, eight horizontal registers of fantasy.
H.cm.31; Øb.cm.10,5.
Cond.: restorations...
Prov.: ITALIKA, inv. no. M16.
Bibl.: Gardelli, 1999, n. 241.
Bertolami Fine Art, auction 32, lot 40.

PALERMO, workshop of Cono and Paolo Lazzaro; 16th century, first decade.

The flask (or cylinder) was part of a series of apothecary's vases, which came out of the workshop of Cono and Paolo Lazzaro for their close resemblance to a vase dated 1608, presenting Santo Antonio Abate, unequivocally produced in Palermo for the inscription to be dissolved in Senatus Populusque Palermitanus (Gardelli 1999, n. 239). In fact, the same attitude is found in Sant'Andrea, with its beautiful tapered hands and face drawn in small strokes, certainly the work of a talented artist. The same stylistic features can be found in a series of pharmacy vases in the Museum of Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo, one of which was signed "laczre" at the end of the 16th century, and others with dates from 1600 to 1605 (Governale 1986 passim; Daidone 2005, nn.1-9). In 1607 the workshop was forced to close. The accessory decoration is different for everyone and is an indication of the great imagination and design skills of the Lazzaro workshop in the first decade of the seventeenth century. We are faced with a very particular pictorial style, whose stylistic features dissolve from the imitation of continental models and reach a new personal and unmistakable artistic charge.