ABSTRACT
In 1989 Richard Goldthwaite wrote a seminal article on the economic and social world of Italian Renaissance majolica.1 Building on a rich historiography, Goldthwaite made very strong claims about the key importance of majolica in enhancing a new social and economic context for consumption, one that reached far beyond majolica itself, comprehending ‘many realms of the human spirit that manifest themselves in material objects, including aesthetics and the very sense of possessiveness itself’.2 On the one hand, majolica served as a splendid pars pro toto for the Burckhardtian perspective on the material Renaissance. Majolica objects or tin-glazed ceramics were among the ‘countless number of those small things and great things which combine to make up what we mean by comfort’ and that ‘we know to have first appeared in Italy’.3 On the other hand, majolica was to a certain extent actively paving the way to a new, distinct, modern consumer mentality.4 Long before the material turn in history, Goldthwaite already credited the material qualities of majolica with playing a vital role in fundamentally altering Renaissance consumer attitudes. Luxury ceramics were valued in the first place not so much for the intrinsic value of their raw materials, but for the ingenuity and knowledge that were needed for producing them. The learned artistic culture, as well as the design qualities, were vital to fully develop their aesthetic potential.5 Lightness, softness and breakability were among the material characters of ceramics that can be labelled as the agency of things, that is to say recognised as key determinants in the relationships between objects and subjects.6 Materiality is one thing, aesthetics – however interconnected – are another. Through their decorative and design patterns, majolica objects were essential for the social construction of categories such as taste, lifestyle, civilisation and urban manners.7 Especially istoriato-majolica served well in dispersing knowledge of ancient history and mythology.8 In short, Goldthwaite saw enough reasons to make a case for ceramics as playing an important role in shifting the mental boundaries of Renaissance consumers towards the cheaper, more vulnerable, aesthetic yet more fashionable material culture that would characterise the ‘new luxury model’ of the late early modern period.
