Dish with the Christogram IHS
Unknown · c. 1450
Forty six centimetres across, the dish is covered in the coppery metallic lustre that made the potteries of Manises, near Valencia, the most prized in fifteenth-century Europe. In the centre the monogram IHS, the abbreviated name of Jesus, stands out in lustre on the white tin glaze. Around it the ground is filled with the pattern known as bryony, a dense scroll of leaves and tendrils of the wild vine, one of the standard motifs of Valencian lustreware. The reverse is painted with fleurs-de-lis, a decoration that appears on many Manises pieces and does not necessarily point to a French buyer, though such dishes were exported all around the Mediterranean and beyond.
Made around fourteen fifty, at the height of Valencian production, the dish was a display piece rather than tableware, its size and shimmer designed to catch candlelight on a sideboard. The lustre technique had reached Spain from the Islamic world, and Muslim and Christian potters worked side by side in Manises. The dish belonged to Jean-Léonce Leroux and came to the Louvre through his bequest, accepted in eighteen ninety seven.
Did You Know? The sacred monogram in the centre sits on a dish whose technique was invented by Muslim potters in the Islamic world.
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