The Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche in Faenza (MIC Faenza) is one of the world’s most significant ceramic museums. While the museum’s name is synonymous with the refined majolica wares of central Italy, it also offers a lens into the broader European ceramic tradition, including the Netherlands’ famed Delftware.
Founded in 1908 by local art historian and philanthropist Gaetano Ballardini, the Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche in Faenza (MIC Faenza) stands as a monument to the cultural significance of ceramics across civilizations. Faenza itself had been a center of majolica production since the late Middle Ages, lending its name to “faience,” the tin-glazed pottery that became widespread across Europe.
Ballardini’s vision was born from the devastation of the 1908 Messina earthquake, during which a large quantity of salvaged ceramic fragments from southern Italy were relocated to Faenza. These remnants, combined with an already rich local tradition, inspired the creation of a museum that would not only preserve Italian majolica but also serve as a global repository of ceramic art. His mission was unambiguous: to establish ceramics as a major art form worthy of academic study and international collaboration.
Over the past century, the MIC has evolved into one of the most comprehensive ceramic museums in the world. Its collection spans ancient Mesopotamian and Pre-Columbian ceramics, Islamic wares, Renaissance masterpieces, East Asian porcelain, and modern ceramic art.
Within the European galleries of MIC Faenza, the development of tin-glazed earthenware beyond Italy is represented in both breadth and depth. The Dutch section, though more modest in volume compared to the museum’s Italian holdings, includes a carefully curated selection of Delftware that illustrates the dissemination and transformation of faience traditions across northern Europe.
These pieces, often blue-and-white, though occasionally polychrome, are notable not only for their technical refinement but for the way they absorb and recontextualize motifs from Italian, Chinese, and even Ottoman sources. Scenes derived from prints by Raphael or mythological figures reminiscent of istoriato maiolica coexist with pastoral landscapes and chinoiserie compositions more closely associated with the Dutch taste.
The MIC’s approach underscores a key historical insight: that Delftware was not merely a substitute for porcelain or a derivative of Italian design, but a genre that evolved through a process of cultural synthesis. In this light, Delftware occupies a central position in the European ceramic narrative, one that complements and extends the story begun in Faenza.
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