Existing comment:
Covered jar
ca. 1675–1700
Mexican
Vessels of this type, called bucaros de Indias by their Spanish collectors, reached the height of their popularity in Europe in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Fashionable women at the time also ate small portions of the fragrant red clay from which the jars were made, called tierra sigilada, because it was thought to have medicinal properties. The two jars displayed separately in this gallery were once in the collection of the marquises Bourbon del Monte di Sorbello in Perugia. The jars' good condition suggests they were used only as objects of display. |