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拍品专文
The inscription translates as ‘The enamored Procris at the end of her crime. In the 7th Book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses’.
The present unpublished plate is an exciting addition to the canon of works by Francesco Xanto Avelli. In the same year that he painted this plate, Xanto also painted a coppa with a closely related subject of Cephalus and Procris which also includes lustre added at Gubbio(1). A year earlier, Xanto had painted a slightly different version of the scene on a plate for the armorial Leonardi Service(2). The Leonardi Service plate includes a similar figure of Cephalus and Cupid, but depicts Procris crouching, hiding from her husband. Xanto painted the subject once again, in 1537(3).
Xanto followed his usual technique of adapting figures from a variety of print sources to assemble this composition. The figure of Cupid flying down is adapted from a figure in an engraving which Xanto frequently used, Marcantonio Raimondi’s Apollo and Muses on Parnassus, after Raphael. The figure of Procris appears to have been slightly adapted from the reclining figure to the left of Apollo in the same print. The figure of Cephalus is derived from a figure on the right in Marcantonio Raimondi’s engraving David Beheading Goliath after a design by Raphael for the Loggias at the Vatican.
The scene depicts the tragic story of the lovers Cephalus and Procris recounted by Ovid in his Metamorphoses. Cephalus was out hunting when he lay down to rest for a while. He called upon the breeze Aurora to cool him down, but unfortunately, was overheard by a busybody who assumed that he was calling for a lover. This was reported to the horrified Procris, who immediately went to the forest to find her husband. After she found him, she hid in the undergrowth. When she heard him call upon the breeze again she realized that there had been a misunderstanding, and she got up to joyfully greet her husband. Upon hearing a rustle in the bushes, however, Cephalus shot an arrow at what he thought would be a beast, and tragically killed his wife.
1. This coppa was formerly in the Fountaine Collection and is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (27.97.41). See Gaetano Ballardini, Corpus della Maiolica Italiana, 1938, Vol. II, no. 96, 90, 283R, and E.P. Sani, ‘List of works by or attributable to Francesco Xanto Avelli’ in J.V.G. Mallet, Xanto, Pottery Painter, Poet, Man of the Renaissance, Wallace Collection January-April 2007 Exhibition Catalogue, London, 2007, p. 196, no. 226.
2. In the Museo Civico, Pesaro, see J.V.G. Mallet, ibid., 2007, p. 35, figs. 22 and 23. The reverse of this piece appears to be inscribed in Nicola da Urbino’s hand, but the istoriato scene is clearly by Xanto, not Nicola. The two painters collaborated on the service.
3. E.P. Sani, ibid., 2007, p. 199, no. 334.
The present unpublished plate is an exciting addition to the canon of works by Francesco Xanto Avelli. In the same year that he painted this plate, Xanto also painted a coppa with a closely related subject of Cephalus and Procris which also includes lustre added at Gubbio(1). A year earlier, Xanto had painted a slightly different version of the scene on a plate for the armorial Leonardi Service(2). The Leonardi Service plate includes a similar figure of Cephalus and Cupid, but depicts Procris crouching, hiding from her husband. Xanto painted the subject once again, in 1537(3).
Xanto followed his usual technique of adapting figures from a variety of print sources to assemble this composition. The figure of Cupid flying down is adapted from a figure in an engraving which Xanto frequently used, Marcantonio Raimondi’s Apollo and Muses on Parnassus, after Raphael. The figure of Procris appears to have been slightly adapted from the reclining figure to the left of Apollo in the same print. The figure of Cephalus is derived from a figure on the right in Marcantonio Raimondi’s engraving David Beheading Goliath after a design by Raphael for the Loggias at the Vatican.
The scene depicts the tragic story of the lovers Cephalus and Procris recounted by Ovid in his Metamorphoses. Cephalus was out hunting when he lay down to rest for a while. He called upon the breeze Aurora to cool him down, but unfortunately, was overheard by a busybody who assumed that he was calling for a lover. This was reported to the horrified Procris, who immediately went to the forest to find her husband. After she found him, she hid in the undergrowth. When she heard him call upon the breeze again she realized that there had been a misunderstanding, and she got up to joyfully greet her husband. Upon hearing a rustle in the bushes, however, Cephalus shot an arrow at what he thought would be a beast, and tragically killed his wife.
1. This coppa was formerly in the Fountaine Collection and is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (27.97.41). See Gaetano Ballardini, Corpus della Maiolica Italiana, 1938, Vol. II, no. 96, 90, 283R, and E.P. Sani, ‘List of works by or attributable to Francesco Xanto Avelli’ in J.V.G. Mallet, Xanto, Pottery Painter, Poet, Man of the Renaissance, Wallace Collection January-April 2007 Exhibition Catalogue, London, 2007, p. 196, no. 226.
2. In the Museo Civico, Pesaro, see J.V.G. Mallet, ibid., 2007, p. 35, figs. 22 and 23. The reverse of this piece appears to be inscribed in Nicola da Urbino’s hand, but the istoriato scene is clearly by Xanto, not Nicola. The two painters collaborated on the service.
3. E.P. Sani, ibid., 2007, p. 199, no. 334.