A new light on a first example of lustred majolica in Italy

A study has been realised to elucidate the first step of lustre production in Italy. With this aim in mind, an investigation was carried out on an emblematic lustred object: Baglioni's albarello. It is conserved at Louvre museum and it is considered as one of the very first examples of lustred object produced in Italy. The characteristics of the lustred film have been determined, identifying interesting aspects that may be used to scientifically confirm the origin of this object. This study was completed by the investigation of other objects: a not lustred albarello, still decorated with the coat of arms of Baglioni's family and a lustred plate with the coat of arms of the Montefeltro family. The two Baglioni's albarelli are stylistically and historically considered as produced in one of the numerous workshops of Deruta. The origin of the Montefeltro's plate, although from central Italy, is not precisely attested. In order to acquire more information, clarifying the origin and place of production of these objects, a comparison of their physico-chemical characteristics with results obtained and already published on different well-attested productions, such as Islamic, Hispano-Moresque and Italian, was carried out. For what concerns the museum objects, the use of non-destructive investigation techniques was mandatory. For this reason, ion beam techniques as PIXE and RBS have been used at AGLAE facility, as well as a new X-ray micro-diffraction equipment, at C2RMF. Moreover, the results were compared with data obtained on shards of certain production origin, by means of chemometric techniques. Some hypothesis concerning the place of production of the examined objects have been formulated.