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Francesco Xanto Avelli (
Rovigo
Rovigo (, ; egl, Ruig) is a city and ''comune'' in the Veneto region of Northeast Italy, the capital of the eponymous province.
Geography
Rovigo stands on the low ground known as Polesine, by rail southwest of Venice and south-southwest of P ...
, c. 1487? – c. 1542?)
[These dates are put forth in the biography provided by the ]J. Paul Getty Museum
The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa.
The Getty Center is located in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles and fea ...
; they appear, however, to be highly conjectural. was an Italian
ceramicist
Ceramic art is art made from ceramic materials, including clay. It may take forms including artistic pottery, including tableware, tiles, figurines and other sculpture. As one of the plastic arts, ceramic art is one of the visual arts. Wh ...
. He is best known for his painted
maiolica
Maiolica is tin-glazed pottery decorated in colours on a white background. Italian maiolica dating from the Renaissance period is the most renowned. When depicting historical and mythical scenes, these works were known as ''istoriato'' wares ...
works.
Life
Xanto Avelli was born in
Rovigo
Rovigo (, ; egl, Ruig) is a city and ''comune'' in the Veneto region of Northeast Italy, the capital of the eponymous province.
Geography
Rovigo stands on the low ground known as Polesine, by rail southwest of Venice and south-southwest of P ...
, in the
Veneto
it, Veneto (man) it, Veneta (woman)
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, sometime in the late 1480s. Nothing at all is known of his origins, his teaching, or his early years; he is first recorded as working in
Urbino
Urbino ( ; ; Romagnol: ''Urbìn'') is a walled city in the Marche region of Italy, south-west of Pesaro, a World Heritage Site notable for a remarkable historical legacy of independent Renaissance culture, especially under the patronage of F ...
in 1530, when he is mentioned in a
notarial
A notary is a person authorised to perform acts in legal affairs, in particular witnessing signatures on documents. The form that the notarial profession takes varies with local legal systems.
A notary, while a legal professional, is disti ...
document describing attempts by a group of pottery workers, or ''interlaboratores artis figuli'', to form an early
trade union
A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ...
for the purpose of raising
wage
A wage is payment made by an employer to an employee for work done in a specific period of time. Some examples of wage payments include compensatory payments such as ''minimum wage'', '' prevailing wage'', and ''yearly bonuses,'' and remune ...
s. 1530 is also the date on his earliest signed piece, a plate commemorating the coming new year. It is signed ''.f.X.A.R.'', and is further marked ''î Urbino''.
At around this time Xanto married a woman called Finalissa, also in Urbino. Over the five years following he produced a large body of work; each piece was signed in various manners, and was dated and marked as a product of Urbino. Such consistency in signing his work was unusual at the time; there is some suggestion that the artist was
blacklisted after the labor troubles of 1530, and that his choice to sign his works might be in some way related to his difficulties.
After 1535, Xanto seems to have become less prolific; his works, if signed, are marked in more cursory fashion. He also had a number of associates and followers working with him regularly, basing their style on his. The last documentary record of him comes in 1541, when he is known to have taken on two assistants; that year he also initialed a piece from the workshop of
Francesco de Silvano. What later became of him is unknown.
Work
It is not certain whether or not any of Xanto's earlier work has survived, as no unambiguously signed works bearing his signature have been found dating earlier than 1530. General scholarly opinion holds that a number of works dating back to 1524 are also by his hand. No tangible evidence exists suggesting their point of origin, although both
Faenza and Urbino have been proposed by historians.
Xanto's signed works all date from between 1530 and 1542. Each bears his name and the date of the piece; many also were given ambitious tags explaining their meanings. The surviving pieces appear to be similar in nature, with the exception of the signatures, to most other maiolica ware produced in Urbino at the time. Xanto signed his works with a number of different variants of his own name; besides those with his full name, pieces signed ''fra Xanto'' in his hand are known to exist.
Besides being a ceramicist, Xanto was also a poet; in the 1530s he wrote a sequence of
sonnets in praise of
Francesco Maria I della Rovere
Francesco Maria I della Rovere (25 March 1490 – 20 October 1538) was an Italian condottiero, who was Duke of Urbino from 1508 to 1516 and, after retaking the throne from Lorenzo II de' Medici, from 1521 to 1538.
Biography
He was born ...
, then
duke of Urbino
The Duchy of Urbino was an independent duchy in early modern central Italy, corresponding to the northern half of the modern region of Marche. It was directly annexed by the Papal States in 1625.
It was bordered by the Adriatic Sea in the east ...
. An elegant fair copy survives in the
Vatican Library
The Vatican Apostolic Library ( la, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, it, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana), more commonly known as the Vatican Library or informally as the Vat, is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City. Formally es ...
.
Notes
References
Biography from the National Gallery of Art, WashingtonBiography from the Getty Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Xanto Avelli, Francesco
1480s births
1540s deaths
People from Rovigo
15th-century Italian painters
Italian male painters
16th-century Italian painters
Italian potters
Maiolica painters
16th-century Italian poets
16th-century male writers
Italian Renaissance painters
Italian Mannerist painters