The scene is derived from a woodcut illustration in the Biblicae Historiae (‘Stories from the Bible’), by the German printmaker Sebald Beham. This publication was a small affordable book which was first published in Frankfurt in 1533, and which was used by maiolica painters in Italy as a source of inspiration. Beham’s woodcut illustrates an episode from Genesis, Chapter 37, verses 23-28, where Joseph’s brothers put him in a well, and then decided to sell him to traders en route to Egypt, rather than kill him. A number of maiolica pieces with scenes derived from Beham’s illustrations in the Biblicae Historiae have been attributed to the Fontana workshop.¹ An armorial plate with very a similar scene, and which shares the same print source as the present lot, is in the Wallace Collection, London.² Although very similar in style to the present lot, the Wallace plate appears to be by a different hand. From the 1540s a degree of uniformity to the Fontana workshop style appears to have developed, making it difficult to distinguish the work of individual painters. The buildings, mountains and trees on the present lot are very similar to those of other Fontana workshop pieces of that time, but the faces and hands of the figures are more distinctive, and are very similar to a plate in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York which has been attributed to Gironimo Thomasi.³ In addition to these similarities, it is interesting that the New York plate should also have an elaborate garland of flowers and fruit on the reverse which is so similar in style to the garland on the reverse of the present lot,⁴ particularly as garlands of this type are extremely rare, with only a very small number currently known.⁵ Surviving signed works by Thomasi indicate that he initially worked in Urbino, but in 1576 he was working in Liguria and in 1582 he had moved to Lyon in France. His itinerant career and the transmission of the Italian istoriato style to France has been the particular study of the scholarly dealers Camille Leprince and Justin Raccanello.⁶

1. This includes the important commission of pharmacy jars supplied to the Pharmacy of the Santa Casa at Loreto. Also see Timothy Wilson, 'Tin-Glaze and Image Culture, the MAK Maiolica Collection in its wider context', The MAK, Vienna, April – August Exhibition Catalogue, Stuttgart, 2022, p. 34, note 1, for other Old Testament pieces after Beham prints.
2. See A.V.B. Norman, Catalogue of Ceramics 1, Pottery, Maiolica, Faience, Stoneware, London, 1976, pp. 278-280, no. C141. As two pilgrim-flasks with the same arms as the Wallace plate survive (and which also have Old Testament scenes after Beham’s woodcuts), the three pieces were presumably once part of an armorial set. One of these flasks was bought by Goethe after 1825, see Johanna Lessmann, Italienische Majolika aus Goethes Besitz, Stuttgart, 2015, pp. 78-81.
3. Timothy Wilson, Maiolica, Italian Renaissance Ceramics, New Haven and London, 2016, pp. 212-213, where the author notes the similarity of the style to the British Museum plate which bears the date 1582 and the letters G.T.V.F. (which have been deciphered as Gironimo Tomasi Vrbinate Fecit), see D. Thornton and T. Wilson, Italian Renaissance Ceramics, a Catalogue of the British Museum Collection, London, 2009, Vol. II, no. 341, and where other signed pieces by Thomasi are listed on p. 548.
4. This enclosed a central shield of arms for the Este family, and it is possible that the present lot was also destined for an equally distinguished recipient, given how unusual such garlands are.
5. Wilson lists three others in addition to the New York example; one in the Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest, one in an Italian private collection and one in an American collection, see Wilson, ibid., 2016, p. 353, notes 7 and 8.
6. See Camille Leprince and Justin Raccanello, ‘The Transfer of the Istoriato Maiolica Tradition from Italy to France', The French Porcelain Society Journal, Vol. VI, 2016, pp. 1-27.