AN URBINO DOCUMENTARY TONDINO

1531, REVERSE SIGNED ·F·X·A· I(N) URBINO. ·1531· BY FRANCESCO XANTO AVELLI

Details

AN URBINO DOCUMENTARY TONDINO
1531, REVERSE SIGNED ·f·x·A· i(n) urbino. ·1531· BY FRANCESCO XANTO AVELLI
Painted with Apollo and Marsyas, Marsyas with bagpipes and recumbent to the left, Apollo seated with his lyre by a tree-stump on the right, Cupid hovering above with a crown of laurels, before a lake and a distant town in a mountainous landscape, within a blue line and yellow band border (broken into two principal sections and restuck, smaller section between 9 and 6 o'clock broken into four parts and restuck, associated overpainting, slight chipping to rim)
8 3/8 in. (21.3 cm.) diam.

Provenance

Adda Collection
Cucci Collection
Maioliche italiane rinascimentali sale, Semenzato, Milan, 5th November 1986, lot 101.

Literature

Bernard Rackham, Islamic Pottery and Italian Maiolica, London, 1959, pl. 190B. Exhibition Catalogue, Ceramica Italiana del Rinascimento, Tokyo, 1981, no. 101.
Giuliana Gardelli, op. cit., 1987, pp. 70-71, no. 24.

Exhibited

Tokyo, 1981
Urbino, Palazzo Ducale, July - September 1987.

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Lot Essay

Xanto used two prints for the decoration of this tondino. The figure of Marsyas appears to have been derived (in reverse) from the figure of a wounded soldier beneath a horse in Marco Dente's 'Battle Scene' engraving after Raphael or Giulio Romano.1 Apollo is derived from Apollo in Marcantonio Raimondi's engraving 'Parnassus', and Cupid is derived (in reverse) from the same print (see p. 67).

1. An almost identical figure occurs on a number of pieces by Xanto including the tondino in the Wallace Collection (C88), see J.V.G. Mallet, Exhibition Catalogue, Xanto, Pottery-painter, Poet, Man of the Renaissance, Wallace Collection, London, 2007, p. 124.

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