Basin Depicting a Cistern, Tower and Domed Building
Talavera Poblana (Puebla, Mexico)
1775–1825
- Medium
- Tin-glazed earthenware
- Classification
- Ceramics
- Dimensions
- Diam.: 50 cm (20 in.)
- Culture
- Puebla
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of the Americas
- Credit line
- Gift of Eva Lewis in memory of her husband, Herbert Pickering Lewis
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Barely a decade after the Spanish conquered Aztec (Mexica) Tenochtitlan (present-day Mexico City) in 1521, they founded the city of Puebla de los Angeles sixty miles to the southeast. As colonial society began to take shape, a new visual environment was called into being, supplanting the major forms of native art and affirming the cultural ascendancy of the ruling order. Ceramics became important in this endeavor, and Puebla emerged as the principal center of a thriving pottery industry that included glazed tableware, secular and religious accessories, and tiles used in architectural ornamentation. The imagery of these objects stemmed from opposite ends of the earth, reflecting a New World synthesis that came into being as the Silk Road became global. Master ceramists from Spain settled in Puebla, bringing with them the potter’s wheel as well as tin-glazed earthenware and Hispano-Moresque ornamentation, both originally rooted in the artistic culture of the Islamic world. Indeed, a primary characteristic of the Spanish tradition can be traced to the formative period of Islamic art, which occurred between 800 and 1000. The artists, artisans, and architects charged with the task of…
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
