JVV 0602
Delft, circa 1670
The blue and white dish has a wide, spreading flange and is painted in the centre with Fortune in a water landscape. She stands on a globe in an open shell at sea and holds in her raised right arm a narrow veil as a sail. To her left is a triton with a trident on a sea monster, to her right one with a flag on a large duck. Ships sail in the background. On the left in the background is a castle ruin on an island, on the right a mill among ruins on another island. The scene is framed in a double circle. The border is divided into five segments, separated by an S-shaped bracket with a face and a grove of bushes. The segments are filled with sea creatures.
Dimensions: diameter 39,3 cm / 15.47 in.
Provenance: Christie's London, auction 1-2 December 2015, lot 22, at Guest & Gray, London, April 2010.
Similar examples
Similar specimens are in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (inv.no. C.195-1923), the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge (inv. no. C.2863-1928), and a private collection (two dishes) in Brussels, Belgium. Another dish is at Aronson in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, a second was sold at Rob Michiels Auctions in Bruges, Belgium.
Explanatory note
This dish belongs to a select group of large dishes with the same segmented decor on the flange featuring sea creatures. Apart from this specimen, six other Fortune dishes are known to have the same arrangement of the decor, but with variations. For instance, there are seven different flanking sea creatures and sea monsters, but in one case they are replaced by ships. The islands in the background are generally a ruin and a mill, once two ruins and once a single mill. Some dishes are also known to feature a landscape or a sea creature instead of Fortune. They have the same segmented flange with sea creatures. The white of the tin glaze, the colour blue used and the style of painting point to one pottery and most probably also to one painter.
