Photo By Taft Museum of Art

"Tall Drug Jar with Cleopatra Contemplating the Asp" dates back to the 16th century. It also "puts Playboy in the shade."

The best reason for seeing Marvels of Maiolica at the Taft is the simplest: It's gorgeous stuff. We'll get to other reasons later, but let's begin by noting that what started out as a less expensive imitation of luxury goods -- that is, earthenware putting on the airs of porcelain -- became an art form in its own right even as, like porcelain, it fulfilled utilitarian functions.

The 30-some pieces in the exhibition date from 1470 to 1590 and had pride of place in many an Italian Renaissance household or shop, for good reason. The colors are dazzling, the decorative subjects are beautiful and the shapes use the necessary thickness of earthenware to advantage. Affordable to many but not cheap, these works served as wedding presents, status indicators and generally added to the owners' pleasures.

When clay bodies are treated with tin glaze, like the Iznik pottery of Turkey, they can take on the brilliance if not the thinness of china. Borrowing the tin glaze idea from the Turks, who had worked with it as early as the 9th century, Italians developed maiolica at a time when society was shifting its goals, outlooks and expectations in a manner we now identify as the Renaissance. More people had money for non-essentials, or could afford to have essentials in luxury form.

Religious themes persisted but humanism prompted interest in the old classical mythologies, with their scandalous stories and ever-present nudity, all of which look terrific illustrated on maiolica. ("Talk about shocking," said a man visiting the show when I did. "Puts Playboy in the shade." He was looking at "Tall Drug Jar with Cleopatra Contemplating the Asp" at the time.)

That tall drug jar once held lemon balm, which cured aches and colds, ailments considerably more mundane than those of Cleopatra, who had immortal longings in her. Apothecaries were quick to see the usefulness of this ware. Decoratively labeled jars lined shop shelves, symbols of the trade.

This traveling exhibition, organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., from their own outstanding maiolica collection, takes on increased depth and interest in its Cincinnati showing thanks to the Taft's resourceful handling of the material. Former Taft Chief Curator David T. Johnson returned as guest curator and provides explanatory labels that are both informative and interesting, qualities sometimes hard to join in didactic material.

Current Taft Chief Curator Lynne Ambrosini, mindful of the depth and quality of the Cincinnati Art Museum's print collection, borrowed from the CAM a selection of prints from the period incorporating similar themes and also wrote wall texts that, like Johnson's, illuminate and inform. This related show is imbedded in the primary one so that it's possible, for instance, to look from the maiolica treatment of the story of the gods sinking the fleet of Seleucus to a print showing the same thing, the backsides of gods prominent in each.

Another Cincinnati addition is a display case showing production stages of tin-glazed earthenware, developed by Susan Snyder, an Indiana potter who makes maiolica ware today. We see a plate at its first inception in clay, then the same shape covered with an opaque white tin glaze, then the application of painted decoration -- which virtually disappears as the glaze sucks up the pigment, leaving the decorator "flying in the dark," Johnson says -- and so on through two firings or possibly three, if luster is included. The powder that becomes luster is added, firing ensues and polishing produces a shining finish. With or without luster, there was "lots of trial and error and much was thrown away," according to Johnson.

Among the handsome things not thrown away and surviving here is "Dish with the Incarnation of the Virgin," (1520-25). Its broad, patterned rim of Near Eastern motifs encloses a tondo (round painting) of the Virgin seen in a setting of deep perspective. Perspective was a new idea for Renaissance artists and they explored it with zest. A very lively example is "Plate with an Allegorical Scene of Calliope and a Youth" (1525-28).

By the early 16th century maiolica artists were so established that they signed their work. Nicola da Urbino put his name, proudly one would think, to this particular example.

The final dimension to the Cincinnati showing of Marvels of Maiolica is that it places the Taft's own maiolica collection, small but exceedingly choice, into a larger context. The Taft's "Display Dish with Orpheus Lamenting the Death of Eurydice," seen in the permanent collection's Renaissance Gallery, is so fine that other works considered to have been the work of the same hand, in some of the world's great museums, identify the maker as "Master of the Taft Orpheus." Two of the eight red luster maiolica pieces in the United States are at the Taft. In addition, French artists making Limoges ware often looked to the same sources for inspiration as the Italian maiolica decorators; see Judith, portrayed in Limoges enamel in the permanent collection and in maiolica in the exhibition.

Maiolica doesn't hold back: Its mission is the "wow" factor. Marvels of Maiolica shows us how the "wow" is achieved and lets us enjoy it. Grade: A