DATED 1535, BY FRANCESCO XANTO AVELLI

It would appear that the present unpublished ewer is not only a new addition to the corpus of Xanto’s work, but it is also unique, as there are no other ewers painted by him which are known to have survived. No ewers can be found in the compendium by 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, pp. 191-201.

The scene is taken from Marcantonio Raimondi’s engraving Parnassus, after a design by Raphael for a fresco in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican, a source which Xanto turned to many times for inspiration. On this ewer, Xanto has adapted the print by reversing it and modifying some of the details, including changing Apollo’s original lyre to a lira da braccio. The scene is painted slightly more loosely than is typical, with little use of line, which may be related to the challenges of the curved surface. The form of the ewer is similar to a Roman ewer engraved by Agostino Veneziano in 1531. For an ewer of the same form decorated by a different painter and dated 1539, see Timothy Wilson, Tin-Glaze and Image Culture, the MAK Maiolica Collection in its wider context, The MAK, Vienna, April – August Exhibition Catalogue, Stuttgart, 2022, pp. 32-33.