White oval plaque with a scalloped contour, enhanced around the rim by garlands and volutes terminating in shell shapes according to the most typical baroque taste, decorated in low relief with the biblical scene of Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4, 1-30). As already emphasized in other circumstances by the present writer, the striking feature of this plaque is that the modeler utilized the well itself, created three-dimensionally, as the holy water stoup.

The low relief derives from a model by the Florentine artist Girolamo Ticciati (1679-1745), is cited among the Manufactory's Models in number 104 on page 38: "Un bassorilievo raffigurante la Sammaritana con Gesù Cristo al pozzo, di cera. Del Ticciati, con forme" [A low relief depicting the Samaritan woman with Jesus Christ at the well, in wax. By Ticciati, with molds] (for the corresponding wax, see Lankheit, 1984, fig. 72).

A small bronze of the same subject had also been sculpted by Ticciati, who was a pupil of Foggini; formerly part of the collection of the Electress of the Palatinate, Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, this work is now in the Palacio de Oriente di Madrid, while the wax is in the Doccia porcelain Museum (on page 21, number 5: "Gruppo della Sammaritana con Gesù Cristo al pozzo del Ticciati con forme" [Group of the Samaritan woman with Jesus Christ at the well by Ticciati with molds]).

The attribution to Ticciati of the holy water stoup on display here is a matter of certainty and is endorsed by Lankheit, who, however, points out that factory records frequently failed to make a clear distinction between his works and those of Massimiliano Soldani Benzi. The latter sculptor likewise created a low relief on the same subject, published in 1960 by Morazzoni-Levy (but attributed to Foggini in the factory records) in plate 240a.

One exemplar of this work, in the version produced in Doccia, is on display as the following exhibit here. Plaques such as these, which were intended for private devotion, may perhaps be identified with the "Secchioline di altezza 7 - 8 soldi con una figura di Santo in bassorilievo, bianche" [small stoups 7-8 sous tall with a figure of a Saint in low relief, white] sold around 1760 for little more than 13 Liras, and also available .".... più grandi e più ornate, bianche" [bigger and more ornate, white] at 40 Liras (Tariffa dei pezzi delle porcellane della fabbrica di Doccia [Price list of the Doccia factory porcelain], in Ginori Lisci, 1963, p. 308 passim). (L.M.)