Ceramic ornamentation in the city of Ovar. The allegories and the treaty of Cesare Ripa

Architecture as a pre-ordained and organized construction of a space that should meet a given end. It is the outcome of a complex program that respects and sketches the social, cultural and economic context of the client who placed the order. Focusing on the symbolic importance of the architectural work’s frontispice, the present paper will include a few notes on the functionality of the allegorical sculptures in the city of Ovar, and analyze the construction where they are located from a typological, functional, social and economic perspective; it recognizes whenever possible the relation between the historical path and the character of the owner; it identifies the factories/workshops that manufactured it. Likewise the allegorical themes will be mentioned, emphasizing the descriptive and figurative utility of the treaty of Iconology, published for the first time in 1593, in Rome, by Cesare Ripa, evidence of the importance of the fifteen hundreds’ source for the artistic tradition, more specifically the manufacturing of ceramic statues.