TO FRANCESCO XANTO AVELLI DISH, URBINO, 1528-1529 DISH, URBINO, FRANCESCO XANTO AVELLI, 1528-1529 majolica dish painted in polychrome with orange, yellow, green, blue, tin white and manganese brown in shades of black, brown and violet. On the reverse side, inscription see porzia ch'il ferro el/ fuoco affina/ historia /φ and old round collection label with black ink inscription " Xcsanto/ Avelli/ Urbino/ 1530 ; diam. cm 26,5, foot diam. cm 9, h. cm 2,7 Provenance Micheal J. Taylor Collection; Sotheby's, London, 14 April 1981 lot 28; Terni, Barberini Gallery; Rome, Battisti Collection; Pandolfini, Florence, 1 October 2015, lot 38; Private collection Literature M.C. Villa, Riflessi della pittura di Raffello su alcune maioliche rinascimentali che illustrate la storia di Porcia, in "Ceramica Antica" XII, 2002, pp. 54-67; C. Ravanelli Guidotti, Xanto: opere inedite o poco note , in "Faenza" XCIII, 2007, p. 76 fig. 1 a-d The dish has a low cavetto and wide, slightly sloping brim and rests on a low, ringless foot; the rim on the back shows three concentric relief fillets. On the front is depicted the scene of the suicide of Portia, daughter of Cato Uticense and wife of Marcus Junius Brutus, one of Julius Caesar's assassins, who upon hearing of her husband's death (42 BC) kills herself by swallowing hot coals. The young woman is painted on the left of the plate, seated on a step, depicted in the act of swallowing the embers, while on the right a distraught handmaiden seeks help and below a small dog, with a small prey in its mouth, looks at the spectator with a bewildered look; in the centre is the hearth, the protagonist of the composition. The depiction, as usual, is inspired by several engravings: the figure of Portia is recognisable in one of the mothers of the Massacre of the Innocents by Nicolas Beatrizet (Bartsch XIV, no. 14), while the handmaiden is taken from the engraving The Jews Collecting the Manna' by Agostino Veneziano from a drawing by Raphael, now lost (Bartsch XIV, no. 8); similar for the image of the fire, taken from the engraving La Fortezza by Marcantonio Raimondi (Bartsch XV, no. 14). Other plates reveal the same source of inspiration, such as one with Portia painted by the painter LU Ur and dated 1535, and another with a similar legend, dated 1541 and initialled X , now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Carmen Ravannelli Guidotti, who published the plate on the occasion of the proceedings of the conference on Francesco Xanto Avelli, proposes a dating to the years 1528-1529, also due to the presence of the letter Y/φ or feliciana letter, to the use of which the painter remained faithful until around 1530, when he began to sign in full. Regarding the Y/φ sign, see John Mallet ("Istoriato-painting at Pesaro: I: The Argus Painter", in "Faenza" 66), while for the letter feliciana we refer here to Carmen Ravanelli Guidotti (cit. 2007, p. 72), who recalls how palaeographic studies record this sign as included among the abbreviations, widespread at the end of the 15th century thanks to Felice Feliciano (1443-1479). Related works include a plate with Narcissus from the Wallace Collection and one recorded in the post-war archive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York with Actaeon, which shares with the previous work the fidelity to the same engraving sources. Also included in the same series is the plate with Aegeus (Pandolfini, Florence, 28 October 2014, lot 38), also datable to 1528-1529, which, however, displays a compositional disorder that we do not find in the calm and harmonious syntax of the work presented here. The foreshortened figures, with their faces barely visible, are skilfully employed by Xanto Avelli in the composition of the work, while the curtain lends a touch of colour, recalling the taste for dark green, so recognisable in the works of the master from Rovigo. The foreshortened landscape is well-proportioned and opens up the composition, which is still schematic and rigorous, with an attention to proportion that would be lost in other works.