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Painted by Francesco Xanto Avelli

Plate with the sinking of the fleet of Seleucus (from the Pucci Service), 1532

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 25

Medium

tin-glazed earthenware (maiolica)

Dimensions

overall (height by diameter): 2.6 × 25.7 cm (1 × 10 1/8 in.)

Credit Line

Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection)

Accession Number

2015.19.4014

Artists / Makers

Francesco Xanto Avelli (ceramist) Italian (Rovigo), active in Urbino, c. 1486/1487 - after 1542

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

center right on banner: SELE / VCO (Seleucus); upper center, shield of arms: Argent, a moor's head proper wearing a headband argent charged with three hammers sable; behind the shield, an "ombrellino"; reverse: 1532 / La Classe di Seleuco i / mar'sommersa / Nel XXVII Libro d Iustino Histo: / fra: Xanto A / da Rouigo, i / Urbino (The fleet of Seleucus, submerged in the sea, in the 27th book of Justin's History, Francesco Xanto Avelli of Rovigo, in Urbino); reverse near rim, scratched into glaze, Fountaine inventory number: af 84

Provenance

Ralph Bernal [1783 or 1784-1854], London; (his estate sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, at Bernal residence, London, 5 March-30 April 1855, 32 days, 15th day [22 March], no. 1738); Andrew Fountaine, Esq [1801/1808-1874], Narford Hall, near King's Lynn, Norfolk;[1] by descent in the Fountaine family; (Fountaine sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London,16-19 June 1884, 1st day, no. 40);[2] Oskar Hainauer [1840-1894], Berlin;[3] by inheritance to his widow, Julie Hainauer [1850-1926], Berlin; purchased 1906 with the entire Hainauer collection by (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris); sold 17 October 1906 to William Andrews Clark [1839-1925], New York;[4] bequest 1926 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.

[1] Henry G. Bohn, A guide to the knowledge of pottery, porcelain, and other obejcts of vertu. Comprising an illustrated catalogue of the Bernal Collection of Works of Art..., 2nd ed., London, 1862: 182, no. 1738. This annotated version of the Bernal sale catalogue provides buyers names. See also note 2.

[2] For a detailed study of the Fountaine collection of maiolica see Andrew Moore, "The Fountaine Collection of Maiolica," The Burlington Magazine 130, no. 1023 (June 1988): 435-447. Sir Andrew Fountaine (1676-1753) was the originator of the collection.As Moore writes, no record of individual items in the collection dating from Fountaine's time is known, but eighteenth century texts and Narford Hall inventories describing the collection in general terms do exist, and it is likely that Fountaine acquired much of the collection during his second Grand Tour that began in 1714. Sir Andrew's heirs added items to the collection, and it appears that it was the Andrew Fountaine who lived 1808-1873 (Moore describes him as Andrew IV) who added most substantially to the core of his ancestor's original collection.

At the time of Andrew IV's 1835 inheritance from his father (also Andrew Fountaine, 1770-1835), he prepared an inventory of the maiolica that Moore publishes in the first appendix of his article. Between 1855 and his death in 1873, Andrew IV compiled a second inventory, which is contained in the "Family Book," held at Narford Hall at the time of Moore's article. The numbering of this inventory corresponds to numbers which, together with the monogram AF, were incised at some time in the nineteenth century on items in the collection. Moore's article includes a concordance of the numbered items in the second inventory with the numbered lots in the 1884 sale, and the NGA plate, which has "af 84" inscribed on its reverse, is identified as number 84 in part I of the second inventory (this part, of six, is described as "Small Plates less than 12 1/2 inches in diameter Total 131").

The second inventory also includes the initials "AF" in the margin next to 99 of the total of 276 maiolica entries. Moore concludes that "these initials are almost certainly [Andrew IV's] record of his own purchases" and that "by inference, the remaining items [with three exceptions]...stand the greatest chance of having been acquired by Sir Andrew Fountaine, the collection's originator, in the eighteenth century. The NGA plate entry has an "AF" next to it in the margin, confirming its acquisition by Andrew IV, as evidenced in the records of the 1855 Bernal sale (see note 1).

[3] See the annotated sale catalogue and pp. 63-70 of "The Fountaine Collection: Prices and Purchasers' Names," both in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische en Ikonografische Documentatie, The Hague, available at Brill Online, accessed 23 April 2020, copy in NGA curatorial files. [Report on the first day of the Fountaine sale], The Times (17 June 1884).

[4] Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: Series I.D, General business records, 1907-1964, reel 59, box 163, Hainauer collection sales ledger, July 1906-December 1909; copy in NGA curatorial files.

Associated Names

Bernal, Ralph
Christie, Manson & Woods, Ltd.
Clark, William Andrews
Corcoran Gallery of Art
Duveen Brothers, Inc.
Fountaine, Andrew
Hainauer, Julie
Hainauer, Oskar

Exhibition History

2004: Marvels of Maiolica: Italian Renaissance Ceramics from the Corcoran Gallery of Art Collection, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie; Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida; Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh; Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids; Hillstrom Museum of Art, Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, Minnesota; Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, 9 April 2004 - 18 June 2006, no. 19.

2007: Treasures of European Decorative Art and Sculpture, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 25 August 2007 - 29 March 2009, no catalogue.

2018: Sharing Images: Renaissance Prints into Maiolica and Bronze, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2018

Bibliography

1897: Bode, Wilhelm von, ed. Die Sammlung Oscar Hainauer / The Collection of Oscar Hainauer. [bound as one volume, English and German pages interleaved in one page sequence] Berlin, 1897 and London, 1906: 116, no. 339 (M59).

1925: Carroll, Dana H. Catalogue of Objects of Fine Art and Other Properties at the Home of William Andrews Clark, 962 Fifth Avenue. Part II. Unpublished manuscript, n.d. (1925): 261, no. 59.

1955: Breckenridge, James D. "Italian Maiolica in the W.A. Clark Collection." The Corcoran Gallery of Art Bulletin 7, no. 3 (April 1955): no. 80.

1955: Von Erdberg, Joan Prentice. "Italian Maiolica at the Corcoran Gallery of Art." The Burlington Magazine 97, no. 624 (March 1955): 74.

1986: Watson, Wendy M. Italian Renaissance Maiolica from the William A. Clark Collection. Exh. cat. (11 venues). London and Washington, 1986: 132-135, no. 52, repro.

1988: Andrew Moore, "The Fountaine Collection of Maiolica," The Burlington Magazine 130, no. 1023 (June 1988): 444, identified by the Corcoran accession number 26.361.