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Inscription

center reverse: .1532. / Rape i castro Nettu / Basali nimpha. / Nel .VI. Li: de Ovidio Met: / fra: Xanto .A. / da Rovigo, i / Urbino. [Neptune in the form of a wether rapes the nymph Basalis. In book 6 of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Francesco Xanto Avelli of Rovigo in Urbino]

Marks and Labels

Kann collection labels 18, 187; "Arms of the FAMILY PUCCI" (now in object folder, NGA Curatorial Records)

Provenance

Count Ferdinando Pasolini dall'Onda, Faenza, in 1852.[1] Maurice Kann [1839-1906], Paris; purchased 1908 with the entire Kann collection by (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris); purchased February 1910 by Peter A. B. Widener, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania; inheritance from the Estate of Peter A. B. Widener by gift through power of appointment of Joseph E. Widener, Elkins Park, 1942.

Exhibition History

1982
Sixteenth-Century Italian Maiolica; Selections from the Arthur M. Sackler Collection and the National Gallery of Art's Widener Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1982-1983, no. 50, repro.
1995
Le dressoir du Prince: Services d'apparat à la Renaissance, Musée national de la Renaissance, Ecouen, France, 1995-1996, no. 11, repro.

Technical Summary

Earthenware, covered front and back with a white tin glaze. The painting is in blue, brown, yellow, orange, green, purple, turquoise, black, and white; the green and purple have bubbled slightly. On the rim near the edge are four kiln-support marks. The plate has been broken into several pieces and repaired with broad areas of overpaint, especially in bands across the center from ten to four o'clock and from seven to one o'clock, and on the rim from nine clockwise to one o'clock and between three and four o'clock. The plate was already noted as damaged when described by Frati in 1852.

Bibliography

1852
Frati, Luigi. Del Museo Pasolini in Faenza. Bologna, 1852: 15, no. 54.
1935
Inventory of the Objects d'Art at Lynnewood Hall, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, The Estate of the Late P.A.B. Widener. Philadelphia, 1935: 65.
1942
Works of Art from the Widener Collection. Foreword by David Finley and John Walker. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 14, as Urbino (Francesco Xanto Avelli da Rovigo).
1983
Wilson, Carolyn C. Renaissance Small Bronze Sculpture and Associated Decorative Arts at the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1983: 121, no. 3.
1988
Triolo, Julia. "Francesco Xanto Avelli's Pucci service (1532-1533): a catalogue." Faenza 74 (1988): part 1: 41, no. 17; part 2: 254-255, pl. 43.
1989
Rasmussen Jörg. The Robert Lehman Collection, 10. Italian Majolica. New York and Princeton, 1989: 255-256, fig. 80.9.
1993
Distelberger, Rudolf, Alison Luchs, Philippe Verdier, and Timonthy H. Wilson. Western Decorative Arts, Part I: Medieval, Renaissance, and Historicizing Styles including Metalwork, Enamels, and Ceramics. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1993: 205-209, color repro. 207.

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