IL PIATTO DELL'ASTROLOGO DAL SERVIZIO DELLE TRE LUNE CRESCENTI Julia Triolo

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The exquisite armorial istoriato which is the subject of my  talk is an early 16th century footed bowl, one of the finest jewels of the Strozzi Sacrati Collection. (fig. 1) (SLIDE) The piece, which measures 26 cm. in diameter, is painted with maiolica glaze pigments using a predominantly warm palette of orange, yellow and brown, and other ochre colors derived from iron oxide, as well as cobalt blue, turquoise blue and green, and finally, black and white for highlighting and shadowing, and it carries a shield with three white (ie.., silver) crescents on a blue ground.
This coppa first reappeared on the art market-- and thus also in the literature --in 1898, when it was sold in Paris from the Charles Mannheim Collection. The author of the sale catalogue - Emile Molinier - attributed the piece to Francesco Xanto Avelli.  The date of its acquisition by the Strozzi Sacrati family is unknown to me, but I suppose it is possible that the marchese Uberto Strozzi Sacrati acquired it in 1939, when it was sold in New York from the William Randolph Hearst Collection. (1)
The coppa is uninscribed and undated, and the subject has been inferred on the basis of the refined and esoteric engraving upon which the painting is based, Giulio Campagnola's so-called Astrologer, which carries the date 1509. (Fig.2) Since the image on our istoriato is reversed, it may be that the maiolica painter worked from a reversed copy of Campagnola's print (SLIDE), of which at least two (both anonymous) existed, dated 1509 and 1514. (2) (Fig.3) (SLIDE)
This istoriato was part of a set of ceramic tablewares which, for want of an identifiable patron, has come to be known as the "Three Crescents Set".  Ten known pieces (eight plates and two salts) carry the coat of arms  in the form "one crescent above, two below, addorsed" (sopra, un crescente montante, sotto, due crescenti adossati) as we see it on the Strozzi Sacrati piece. Sixteen other istoriati   carry a coat of arms which is exactly reversed:  "two addorsed crescents above and one below" (sopra, due crescenti addosati, sotto, un crescente rovesciato).   One of the pieces in this group is dated 1530. (Figs.4-5) (SLIDE) (SLIDE)
The differences in the arms and in the painting styles were not noticed in the literature until Bernard Rackham pointed to them in the late 1950s.(3)  Rackham did not attempt to give a name to the artist of the set with the arms as in the Astrologer, although he noted his stylistic affinities with Nicola Pellipario (i.e., Nicola da Urbino), and possibly with Guido Durantino,  and with early signed works by Francesco Xanto Avelli.   Rackham believed that the second group (let us call it group B) was by the painter F.R., whom he believed to be of Faentine origin.  Gaetano Ballardini, who together with Rackham had created (in 1933) the oeuvre of the monogrammist F.R., perceptively wrote in 1938 that he was coming to believe that FR was in fact Francesco Xanto
Avelli rovigiese, and he (rightly) attributed a piece from the Three Crescent Set (Fig.6) (SLIDE) acquired by the Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche to Xanto.(4)
In 1971 John Mallet attributed the whole of group B to Xanto, and in 1980/1988 he assigned the other part (group A) to an anonymous painter he named the Painter of the Milan Marsyas, after an especially typical work in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan.(5)   (Fig.7) (SLIDE) In the same context he also argued that both groups must have been painted for a single commission. The Milan Marsyas Painter was probably active in Urbino between ca.1525 and ca.1535 (according to Mallet), and worked in a style that is unmistakably influenced by Nicola da Urbino, although he also shows knowledge of the work of Xanto Avelli, with whom on several occasions he evidently "shared" printed sources for his figure drawing. (6)
It is perhaps useful here to attempt to characterize and compare the types of visual sources each of these painters used, as well as his approach to the adaptation of these sources.  For his part of the Three Crescents Set, as we know it, Xanto combined figures from many different sources, rarely relying on a single guiding image. He evidently was working with a set of reversible figures copied from print sources. (Timothy Wilson noted earlier that Xanto's painted figures are rarely identical in size with the original engravings, so it seems that his models were drawn freehand rather than actually traced).  In my study of the services I observed that by 1530, the date of the Three Crescents Set,  Xanto was working with figures  from at least twenty   Raimondi school prints for his amorial maiolica, and his repertory amounts to about 40 odd figures from these. We may deduce that he had a collection of traced figure drawings rather than whole copies of most of prints because his use of his sources is often quite partial. For example, out of the approximately 50 figures in Marcantonio's   Martyrdom of S. Lawrence, he seems to have utilized no more than a half dozen.   As far as the three early services are concerned, there is no case where he relies on a single print as the basis for his whole image. The Lehman Collection plate with Venus, Aeneas and Achates (Fig.4)  (SLIDE) is  the closest  he came to adopting a single source (Fig.5) (SLIDE), and here he has obviously provided a completely   "new" environment for his three figures, whose relative sizes are noticably altered with respect to the "mother" image.   In spite of the modifications Xanto introduces--including color, the position of the hands, costume, and so forth,  the "Gestalt" of his figures in some way remains fixed.   In the mid-19th century the English connoisseur J.C. Robinson wrote that   "Xanto's execution, although dexterous, is monotonous and mechanical".   Although this judgement appears harsh, Robinson, who did not procede to analyze Xanto's working method as we now do, or to appreciate other aspects of his artistry, was responding to this undeniable lack of freedom in his figure drawing.
Instead, the Milan Marsyas Painter, who perhaps relies more frequently on whole prints (stampe intere) for his subjects, demonstrates overall a somewhat less rigid approach to his actual figure drawing than Xanto, who once he had developed his method, could not be separated from it.  On the Astrologer plate (Fig.1, 3) (SLIDE) (SLIDE), for instance, the Milan Marsyas Painter has indeed drawn each of the main narrative elements directly from the print, but he has at the same time altered them each to some degree, the torso of his Astrologer figure being more elongated and erect, the Dürer-esque dragon in the print being modified into a proportionally  smaller and more compact form, the tree stump now larger and of a quite different shape, etc.  The addition of the tall, dominant hill was necessary for the adaptation of the composition to the circular form of the dish, and the conversion of the tree stump behind the Astrologer into a broken classical column was probably effected to give greater emphasis to the reclining figure who is rather dwarfed under the rocks.  The cityscape, however, has been reproduced with infinite care in order evidently to maintain its recognizable character as Venice.  For his choice of visual sources,  the Milan Marsyas Painter has favored a Venetian print which reflects the taste of a somewhat earlier generation; Xanto, who favored Raimondi prints of the Roman school,  probably would have regarded the image as superannuated. (7)  Non-Xantian as well is the Venetian quality of the Astrologer print, where there really is no clearly definable narrative (i.e., no historia) underway, and where the figure is subsumed by the landscape, which plays an equal role in the "non-drama."  In terms of his technique, the Milan Marsyas painter tends to utilize the whole (or the principal part of) of his print sources, leaving the iconography unchanged, a modus operandi that bears more in common with Nicola's early practice than with Xanto, who (from 1528 on) regularly recombined figures from different sources to create independant new images, and who infrequently  relied on a single print source for the entire composition.
Xanto adopted the practice- possibly as early as the mid-1520s - of  inscribing the backs of his istoriati with poetic stanze refering to the subject he was treating.   As is well known, in the late 1520s, several of his istoriati, lustred in Gubbio by the Andreoli shop, were inscribed with the date in lustre, as well as with the "M.G." of Maestro Giorgio. (8) On the back of one of the Three Crescent pieces, the Venus, Aeneas and Achates (Fig.5) (SLIDE), possibly for the first time in his entire production, he himself has provided a date - of 1530.  This date allows us to hypothetically group the other undated pieces of both his and the Milan Marsyas Painter's sets around a fixed reference point.  The two groups are quite comparable in their color schemes (with the single exception of Xanto's manganese purple on many of his pieces)  and in the compositional style, as well as in the constant placement of the shield in the upper third of the composition, as if by prior agreement. Also, the painters seem to share certain motifs such as broad, flat tree stumps, and occasionally, architectural forms, and so it seems very likely that they were painted during the same general  period (ca.1530) if not simultaneously and in tandem, as part of a single commission involving both painters.
The Three Crescent heraldry remains a controversial issue. The positions have been summarized by Francesco Vossilla in his catalogue entry for the Strozzi Sacrati exhibition (9); here I will review and briefly  comment on them. All are surely now in agreement that the Three Crescents as shown in this set cannot be the arms of the Strozzi family, since the tinctures do not match. The Strozzi blazon, as described by Pompeo Litta   (Celebri famiglie italiane, vol. x ) is found on two Faenza armorial plates (ca.1530) in the Strozzi Sacrati collection (Fig.8),  with the tinctures "fondo giallo, fascia rosso con tre crescenti montanti d'argento" (fix).   In 1980/1988 John  Mallet wrote that the two Three Crescents groups were probably two parts of the same commission, since the palette used is so similar and since the two painters also divided the commission of another set with the arms of an eagle.(10)   In 1989 Jörg Rasmussen rebutted that the blazons are actually the imprese of two separate families: Xanto's set, he argued, carries the impresa of the Vitelli family of Citta di Castello and the Milan Marsyas' set that of the Manetti of Florence.(11)  In support of his theory that the sets were painted for different families, he noted that the subject of Apollo and Daphne is repeated in each group.  In her 1995 catalogue of the maiolica in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, Julia Poole observes however that "the majority of armorial dishes bear the owner's arms or a simplified version of them," and she goes on to object that Rasmussen's hypothesis "is difficult to accept because the receipt of commissions from two families with such similar heraldic imprese at about the same date seems too great a coincidence." (12)  In his 1996 catalogue of a private collection, Timothy Wilson also refers to the "sheer improbable coincidence of two quite unrelated services being ordered in Urbino at   about the same time by families with such near identical arms."(13)    In the same context, he suggested several possible explanations, including that one set was found unsatisfactory and was replaced by the other, possibly for heraldic reasons, or that they were linked sets for different branches of the same family.   And Wilson suggested the Cosi or Buoncristiani families of Florence as   candidates for the arms as they are shown on Xanto's part of the set. (14).
I consulted the Ceramelli-Papiani repertory of Florentine and central Italian heraldry formed by Enrico Ceramelli-Papiani  and now in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze, and may add the following remarks. (15)
The arrangements of the crescents  in both maiolica versions of the shield are heraldically  termed "crescenti irregolari";  Ceramelli-Papiani records only one family--the Castellani--as having arms with crescents in such a form (as found on the Milan Marsyas Painter's group), although the tincture of their crescents (oro) doesn't match our set.  According to Ceramelli-Papiani's records, neither the Vitelli nor the Manetti families' blazons match the tinctures of those found in the Three Crescent Set(s), which I take as crescenti d'argento su campo azzurro.(16)  [The Vitelli of Citta di Castello are recorded as using "stemma quadripartito, in alto, a sinistra e in basso, a destra, due crescenti volti, oro, in campo azzurro", etc. (fix);  the Manetti of Florence used "tre crescenti volti oro in una banda azzurro" (fix).]  Both the Cosi family and the Buoncristiani  arms indeed show three silver crescents on a blue field, although neither is recorded in the "irregolari" form.  The Cosi's crescents are "volti", and the Buoncristiani's are "montanti".  There was no information in the fascicoli on family members from our period who might have been recipients of maiolica.   Perhaps further considerations will emerge in the discussion following this conference session.
I should now like to briefly return to the Astrologer plate (Fig.1) (SLIDE) and its print source (Fig.3) (SLIDE) and iconography, and to examine its  reflection in maiolica from the 1520s and 1530s. The image shows an old sage who appears to measure with a compass a celestial sphere upon which are drawn astral bodies (the sun, a crescent moon), a sign of the zodiac (the bilancia), and several numbers and letters. The blue sphere is the same type of object as that shown at the center of the group of classical astronomers and mathematicians--several in eastern dress--on the remarkable istoriato of 1524 by the Pittore della Coppa Bergantini (Fig.9)(SLIDE) in the Museo Statale Medioevale e Moderno in Arezzo.  [This  painting may have been inspired, as Dr. Ravanelli Guidotti suggested, by Raphael's cartoon (Milano, Ambrosiana) for the School of Athens, although the maiolica painter has invented the foreground still-life of scientific instruments, tablets and texts.(17)]  The pairs of sphinxes  in the rim decoration are evidently meant to invoke the eastern origins of the science of astrology.
Nearby on the left, and directly  below the city in the Strozzi Sacrati istoriato, as in the print, is a macabre triad, including a small leering dragon, a skull and bones, and a dead tree stump. In the background lies a city and lagoon, which has generally been recognized as Venice.  Carpaccio's Lion of S. Mark (1516)  (Fig 10) (SLIDE) shows a view of more or less the same part of the city, with Palazzo ducale, the domes of S. Marco, and the campanile.  In 1969 Edgar Wind wrote that the image represented "the perfect sage...the gentle 'measurer of the universe' ... here so deeply absorbed in celestial mathematics that he does not even notice the presence of Death and the Devil who are quietly waiting for their prey". (18)   More recently Silvio D'Amicone studied the symbols and numbers on the globe itself (in Campagnola's print), and compared them with astronomical tables (ephemerides) published in the late 15th-early 16th cs., and noted that the numbers have a very precise and accurate astrological meaning.(19)   On 13 Sept 1509, D'Amicone writes, "l'ingresso del Sole in Bilancia è caratterizato da una Solis et Lunae coniunctio."  The conjunction of the sun and moon in Libra that year was preceded by  "infausti accumuli di pianeti".   D'Amicone cites astrologers and prognosticators who predicted that the year 1509 would usher in a long period of war and bloodshed. And he argues that the print refers to the disasters which did indeed befall Venice in 1509 as a result of the wars of the League of Cambrai.  Campagnola's print therefore looks back on Venice's recent disasters, using a visionary image that seems to express faith in the science of astrology.
It is difficult to determine whether the Milan Marsyas Painter was aware of specific historical meanings associated with Caraglio's print.  To be sure, he altered the numbers found on the sphere, and omitted the date, which effectively removes the topical allusions found in  Campagnola's print, as well as discouraging us from finding specific astrological significance in the image.  And while it is still certainly Venice which is represented on the istoriato, and while the dragon and skull certainly can mean no good, Venice's worst crises were past by 1529-1530, so there is no special historical  event to which the Milan Marsyas Painter might be refering.  It also seems doubtful, given the ominous appearance of the dragon and skull, that the painter would have introduced numbers which referred to the life of the patron. (After all, this is not a flattering astrological representation.) It cannot be excluded, though, that the numbers and letters (notably, a large "R" near the astrologer's hand) may have some coded meaning significant either to the painter or patron.  However, as far as I am able to tell, the image is devoid of any reference to current history, in contrast to the political allegories on the Sack of Rome painted by Francesco Xanto Avelli for the other portion of the set.
Let us consider for a moment the range of subjects treated by each painter to see if this might aid us in determining whether the sets were conceived together or separately. On his seven other istoriati, the Milan Marsyas Painter treats strictly mythological subjects which are generally from Ovid's Metamorphoses, and in one case, from Virgil's Aeneid. (20)   The 16 istoriati painted by Xanto have a more varied literary origin.  (21)   Excluding the two smallest pieces (A River God and Cupid, a Warrior and Cupid) which have no clear  literary subject, ten are Ovidian; one is from Virgil's Aeneid, one is from the Golden Ass of Apuleius, and the final two are the political allegories (Fig.6,11) (SLIDE-SLIDE) invented by Xanto mentioned above. (22)  It may fairly be said that Xanto has expended a good deal more effort on his subject matter, and certainly,   given the addition of hendecasyllabic inscriptions, also on the poetic concept of each piece.  However in neither part of the set can  any governing theme be detected, and one is left with the impression that at most the painters were instructed to produce a series of non-religious, mythological miniatures, and for the rest were left to their own devices in the choice of subjects.  Except for the doubled Apollo and Daphne (Figs.12,13) (SLIDE-SLIDE), the groups could be seen as being complementary in their iconography.  Perhaps repetitions were not an overly troubling issue, for after all, Xanto included two quite similar allegories on the Sack of Rome in his group.
For the maiolicari who utilized the Astrologer print between 1529 and ca.1540 (I am aware of seven other istoriati beyond the Strozzi Sacrati piece) Campagnola's image was of service chiefly  because the figure of the pondering sage was a useful type.(23)   That is, none of the others reproduces the whole image.  The earliest example, a lustred plate marked by Maestro Giorgio and dated 1529, was last seen at the Toretelli sale in Paris 1870.(24)(Fig.14) (SLIDE)  Unfortunately it is almost impossible to identify the origin of the painter of this work since the image is difficult to read (although ten to one, given the Gubbio lustre, it is  a Duchy of Urbino painter), but it is interesting that the model was used in the same direction as the Strozzi Sacrati Astrologer. Alfred Darcel, author of the sale catalogue, interpreted the subject as Archimedes measuring the Terrestrial Globe.  The artist has evidently reproduced the old sage and the architectural background, excluding the rest.  Another contemporary istoriato (sold in London in 1976) (Fig.15) (SLIDE), painted  it seems, by the Milan Marsyas Painter himself, interestingly  enough uses the figure of the Renaissance astrologer (in the same direction as the Strozzi Sacrati image)with with the figure of the classical Venus/Diana from Raimondi's Quos Ego print.(25)  She is familiar from Xanto's istoriato of Venus Aeneas and Achates in his part of the Three Crescent's pieces -- the one dated 1530.  This istoriato must certainly date to the same period, and the shared print source reiterates the link between the two painters.   Poole and Wilson have noted that it was recycled on several occasions for a Death of   Aeschylus.(Fig. 17) (SLIDE) a subject in which the tragedian is shown to have been unable to escape his fate.(26)  The figure's esoteric origins at times survived into its new contexts, when it was used as a model for subjects reflecting on human destiny, and influence of the celestial bodies on human affairs.  In 1540, Xanto himself reused the figure as a meditating philosopher in a somewhat crowded istoriato (Fig.18) with an allegory of the human condition and inscribed the back  with a reworked   line from a Petrarch sonnet "Suo destino ha ciascu(n) dal di chel nasce."(27)  The Strozzi Sacrati istoriato, however, remains unique in its faithfulness to the composition and spirit of the visual source.
 

Notes
1. I base this supposition on G.C. Bojani's statement's on p.12 of the exhibition catalogue, Capolavori di Maiolica della Collezione Strozzi Sacrati, eds. G.C. Bojani and F. Vossilla (Firenze, 1998).
2. Bartsch, A. The Illustrated Bartsch, New York, 19--, vol. 25; Campagnola's print: p.255, 8-C (376) The copies are on p.253, 8 (375) and 8-A (376);  the majolica painter probably did not use the Raimondi school copy (by Agostino Veneziano) as many have stated [including myself in my doctoral thesis,  The Armorial Maiolica of Francesco Xanto Avelli (Ann Arbor, 1996),  p.277-278, n.3B.8] since the image is in the other direction.
3. B. Rackham, "Xanto and 'F.R.': an Insoluable Problem?" Faenza 1957, XLIII, 5, p.106 and note 24.
4. G. Ballardini, "Il Trentennio", Faenza 17 (1938), p.123-127.
5. J.V.G. Mallet, "Maiolica at Polesden Lacey III: A New Look at the Xanto   Problem," Apollo 93,  p.170-183.
6. One of these occasions was for a set of dishes (only four survive) with the shield "un aquila a volo abbassato rivolto a sinistra, di bianco, in campo blu", a commission shared between Xanto and the Milan Marsyas Painter and carried out perhaps shortly before they worked on the "Three Crescents Set". Here, as Mallet was first to observe, both painters made use of the same Raimondi print (Parnassus) after Raphael's preparatory drawing for the Parnassus fresco in the Stanza della Segnatura.
Cf. J. Mallet, "Xanto: i suoi compagni e seguaci" in Francesco Xanto Avelli da Rovigo: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Rovigo 3-4 May, 1980, Stanghella, 1988, p. 70; For catalogue entries for this set, cf. Triolo 1996, p.253-257. The Milan Marsyas Painter's Venus inVulcan's Forge (Three Crescents Set) in the Metropolitan Museum seems to depend on a somewhat earlier istoriato by Xanto in the Walters Art Gallery (inscribed "Vulcano y").
7. I noted in my doctoral thesis, op. cit.,  p.166, that this image (the original of which is dated 1509) was the earliest print source used in the first three Xanto, or Xanto-related sets, datable between ca.1528 and 1530.
8. Cf. F. Cioci, "Corpus, II, 82, 77, 267R (1533): errata corrige: Xanto a Gubbio nel 1528-'29,"  CeramicAntica  1993, 111, n.11, pp.28-45.
9.  Capolavori di maiolica della Collezione Strozzi Sacrati, p. 95.
10.  Mallet 1980/1988, p. 70.
11. Rasmussen, J., The Robert Lehman Collection. X. Italian Maiolica, New York, 1989, p. 126.
12. J. Poole, Italian Maiolica and Incised Slipware in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Cambridge,  1995), p.315.
13. T. Wilson, Italian Maiolica of the Renaissance Milan, 1996, p.
14.  Cit.,  p.189-191, note 24.  F. Vossilla 1998, p.95, cites my thesis as the source of this suggestion, but my source was Wilson.
15. Cf. the useful index  of the fondo: I blasoni delle famiglie Toscane conservati nella raccolta Ceramelli-Papiani (Rome, 1992) edited by P. Marchi.
16.  I take the color of the crescents in both sets to be white (i.e., heraldically argento rather than oro), although Fransceso Vossilla states that it is "giallo" in his catalogue entry, p. 95.
17. C. Ravanelli Guidotti, "Iconografia raffaellesca nella maiolica della prima metà del XVI secolo," in M.G.C.D.Dal Poggetto and P. Dal Poggetto (ed.), Urbino e le Marche prima e dopo Raffaello, Exhibition catalogue, Urbino, 1983, p. 462, n.132.
18. E. Wind, Giorgione's Tempesta with comments on Giorgione's poetic allegories Oxford, 1969, p.6
19. D'Amicone, S., "Apocalysis cum mensuris: l'Astrologo di Giulio Campagnola," Venezia Cinquecento 2, n.3, p.75-87.
20. The subjects treated in the Milan Marsyas' part of the set include: Venus in Vulcan's Forge; Cupid and Venus (or Psyche); Four Nymphs and Cupid; Apollo and Daphne;  Apollo (or Paris) as a Cowherd; Apollo and Pan; Calydonian Boar Hunt; Astrologer.  Cf. Triolo1996 pp. 274-278.
21. Xanto's Three Crescent Set subjects are: Venus Appearing to Aeneas and Achates; Rhea Silvia and Amulius; Apollo and Daphne; Narcissus and Echo; Diana and Acteon; Ino and Athamas; Leda and the Swan; Phrixus and Helle; Dedalus and Icarus; Cupid and Psyche; Allegory of the Sack of Rome (twice); Amphiaraus and Eriphyle; Orpheus descending into Hades. Cf. Triolo 1996, pp.258-273.
22.  Guy de Tervarent (in "Enquete sur le sujet des majoliques", Kunstmuseets Arsskrift 37, 1950,  p. 31-34,  argued that these Sack of Rome pieces express a viewpoint (in which the Emperor is pitted against the pope, depicted as a putto carrying the Medici pallone) that was "possible" only between the Sack of Rome (May, 1527) and the year  1530, when the Emperor and pope Clement VII united forces to suppress the Florentine Republic (August, 1530) after the Pope had crowned Charles in Bologna (February 1530). If he was correct in this observation, the date of the two political pieces could arguably  be 1529 or even 1528, although in terms of their style and use of print sources, they do not appear to precede the 1530 dated piece by more than a year. Cf. my thesis, p.161-162; 166, 183; 269-271.
23. Istoriati which utilize the Astrologer image are:
    1. 1529; lustred, Gubbio, signed "M.G", Archimedes. (location unknown). Cf. Catalogue d'une importante réunion de faiences italiennes preovenant en partie de la collection  Toretelli de Spoleto, Hotel Drouot, Paris, 7-8 May, 1870, n. 3.
    2. ca.1530-1535; Astrologer and Woman,  Urbino. (location unknown) Cf. T. Borenius, Catalogue of a Collection of Maiolica belonging to Henry Harris, n.47, pl.XIVA.
    3. 1533; Fontana Workshop, Astrologer, .(London, Victoria and Albert Museum). Cf. B. Rackham, Victoria and Albert Museum, Catalogue of Italian Mai olica, London, 1940/1977, n.816.
4. ca.1535; Workshop of Guido Durantino (attrib.) Death of Aeschyus (private collection).
    5. 1540; Xanto, Allegory of Human Destiny (Paris, Louvre). Cf. J. Giacomotti, Catalogue des majoliques des musées nationaux (Paris, 1974), n. 859.
    6. 1540; Xanto, Death of Aeschylus (Berlin, private collection). Cf. Catalogue de Collection de M. Charles Testart, Paris, Hotel Drouot, 24-25 June, 1924, n.22.
    7. ca.1535-1550; Death of Aeschylus, Faenza or Forlì;  (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum). Cf. J. Poole 1995, n.336.
24.  Catalogue d'une importante réunion de faiences italiennes provenant en partie de la collection  Toretelli de Spoleto, Hotel Drouot, Paris, 7-8 May, 1870, n. 3. I thank Timothy Wilson for this reference.
25. Sold Sotheby's, London, 16 March, 1976, lot 23. I thank John Mallet for this reference.
26. Poole 1995, p.259 ; and Wilson 1996,  p. 240, n.101, and note5.
27.  J. Giacomotti, Les Majoliques des Musées Nationaux, Paris 1974, p.268-269, n.859.

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