"The Philadelphia Museum of Art is the fortunate beneficiary of Howard I. and Janet H. Stein's important collection of Italian Renaissance ceramics. This handsome book features the Stein Collection and brings it together, for the first time, with related pieces belonging to the Museum. More than ninety objects, painted in vibrant colors that have survived half a millennium with undiminished brilliance, are reproduced in color and in black and white.

Together they represent the various shapes, ornamentation, ambitious compositions, and complex narratives characteristic of a distinguished selection of ceramics from Renaissance Italy." "The history of these objects unfolds in the text by specialist Wendy M. Watson. Included is an original essay by Dean Walker on collecting maiolica in the United States, and a detailed scholarly checklist."--BOOK JACKET.