Bacino with drinker

The bowl, which has a band running round its edge, below which are three circles, has been painted with a lustred decoration on a cream ground, comprising a drinker seated in Oriental fashion surrounded by lightly painted palmettes. The person, who is a court official dressed in a pleated robe with sleeves bearing inscriptions, is holding a goblet in his right hand. The person’s head, represented in a three-quarter view, is covered with a turban. All the details have been very finely worked.

This ceramic bowl with a lustre-painted decoration, produced in Fatimid Egypt in the second half of the eleventh century, is a bacino (It. basin, hollow circular vessel). Embedded in one of the facades of San Sisto Church in Pisa, it was used, along with other Muslim ceramic plates, to decorate the building. Ceramics were used architecturally in this way to replace the stone medallions inherited from the Roman-Byzantine world. From the last quarter of the tenth century to the first half of the fifteenth century, this practice was very common in Italy, particularly in the North and Tuscany. It emerged at a time when Italian towns and cities were prospering and the considerable commerce between Amalfi, Genoa, Pisa, Venice, and Alexandria doubled the maritime trade routes that linked Muslim Spain with the East[1]. Today, there are 669 bacini, of various origins, on 26 buildings in the city. Since the bacini were embedded during the construction process and the dates of construction are known, they provide us with valuable information about the history of ceramics.

The bowl with the drinker invites several observations. It had once been placed under the roof of the south side aisle, and had been positioned in such a way that the person was upside down—at the height it was placed, this didn’t matter. This is far from being an isolated phenomenon in Pisan ensembles. Although it has been painted with a lustred decoration, no particular care has been taken in the bowl’s production. This is also the case for the 44 bacini of the same quality that have been integrated into the city’s buildings. Its decorative theme, which is very traditional, doesn’t tell us much about the date of production. The evolution of styles would generally indicate that this type of ceramics—whose main subject matter stands out against a decorative ground consisting of a few vegetal scrolls—dates from the twelfth century. But, the bacino with the drinker, which belongs to this category, was embedded in a church whose construction began either in 1070, following the victory of the Pisans over the Genoese, or in 1088, when the Pisans and Genoese returned after their victory over the Saracens of Mahdia, in Tunisia. This style is therefore older than had previously been thought[2].

The oldest dishes with lustre-painted decoration in Pisa (end of tenth century, beginning of eleventh century) all originate from Fatimid Egypt, and very probably from Fustat. Lustred ceramics, produced in Muslim Spain, followed this initial wave of ceramics. By studying the buildings and analyzing the pastes, it has been possible to determine that some of these pieces had been produced in the first quarter of the twelfth century: the ‘quatrefoil’ bowl from San Silvestro Church[3], and the ‘bowl with bird’ from Sant'AndreaChurch[4], which are both attributable to Murcia and not Valencia.

[2] These deductions are important, as it is known that, as far as Fatimid ceramics are concerned, two datable fragments both originate from the reign of the caliph al-Hākim (reigned 996–1020): the first is inscribed with the name of General Ghaban (Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo), and the second bears the name of another officer and carries the signature of the Muslim potter (Benaki Museum, Athens).

[3] Museo Nazionale San Matteo, bacino No. 190.

[4] Museo Nazionale San Matteo, bacino No. 232.