.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
The inscription 'Atheon i(n) Cervo' translates as 'Acteon into a stag'. This plate belongs to a group of pieces which have short inscriptions followed by a flourish resembling a 'y' or the Greek letter 'phi', and the significance of this mark has been much debated. John Mallet proposed that the majority of the pieces with this mark are early Xanto pieces painted between about 1528 and 1530. The symbol was not exclusive to Xanto, as it was also used by two of his close followers,1 and Mallet has suggested that it was more probable that it denoted a form of punctuation, or etc., or that it was simply a flourish.2
Although the present lot can be attributed to Xanto with a reasonable degree of certainty, the location of where it was made is less certain. Xanto began to sign and date his work in Urbino from 1530 onwards, but before then his full movements are not known and he was also recorded at Gubbio.
The figure of the nymph on the far left appears to be derived from Marcantonio Raimondi's engraving of the 'The Triumph of Galatea' after Raphael (see p. 66). In the story depicted the young prince Actaeon accidentally stumbled on Diana and her attendants while they were bathing. As a punishment for glimpsing divine nudity he was turned into a stag and consequently killed by his own hunting-hounds.
1. Giulio da Urbino and the 'Lu Ur' painter, see lot 28.
2. J.V.G. Mallet, Exhibition Catalogue, Xanto, Pottery-painter, Poet, Man of the Renaissance, Wallace Collection, London, 2007, p. 35, notes that Julia Triolo 'has pointed out that such a flourish was often used in the notarial documents of the day to end the line of a formulaic part of text'. He suggests that 'at a time when punctuation was far from standardised, the 'y phi' appears often to have served where we should write a full-stop or 'etc', and is significant only as a trait of handwriting used especially on his earlier inscriptions by Xanto, and not exclusively by him'.
Although the present lot can be attributed to Xanto with a reasonable degree of certainty, the location of where it was made is less certain. Xanto began to sign and date his work in Urbino from 1530 onwards, but before then his full movements are not known and he was also recorded at Gubbio.
The figure of the nymph on the far left appears to be derived from Marcantonio Raimondi's engraving of the 'The Triumph of Galatea' after Raphael (see p. 66). In the story depicted the young prince Actaeon accidentally stumbled on Diana and her attendants while they were bathing. As a punishment for glimpsing divine nudity he was turned into a stag and consequently killed by his own hunting-hounds.
1. Giulio da Urbino and the 'Lu Ur' painter, see lot 28.
2. J.V.G. Mallet, Exhibition Catalogue, Xanto, Pottery-painter, Poet, Man of the Renaissance, Wallace Collection, London, 2007, p. 35, notes that Julia Triolo 'has pointed out that such a flourish was often used in the notarial documents of the day to end the line of a formulaic part of text'. He suggests that 'at a time when punctuation was far from standardised, the 'y phi' appears often to have served where we should write a full-stop or 'etc', and is significant only as a trait of handwriting used especially on his earlier inscriptions by Xanto, and not exclusively by him'.