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The Wallace Collection’s, XANTO: Pottery-Painter, Poet, Man Of The Italian Renaissance, Wins AXA Art Newspaper Catalogue Of The Year 2007
THE WALLACE COLLECTION’S, XANTO: POTTERY-PAINTER, POET, MAN OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE, WINS AXA ART NEWSPAPER CATALOGUE OF THE YEAR 2007
The Wallace Collection is delighted to announce that Xanto:Pottery Painter, Poet, Man of the Italian Renaissance, produced to accompany the exhibition of the same name held at the Wallace Collection earlier this year, has won the prestigious AXA Art Newspaper Award for best catalogue.
Presenting the award last night, the Duke of Devonshire said, on behalf of the panel of judges:
“This catalogue won for its sheer intellectual ambition; deeply expressing the connection between Italian Renaissance pottery and the related poetry of the time. This book communicates very vividly the aesthetics thoughts and habits of the Renaissance through a scholarly study of one man and his art.”
Xanto was the first ever monographic exhibition on a maiolica painter. Its beautifully illustrated catalogue by J V G Mallet, formerly Keeper in the Department of Ceramics and Glass in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the world authority on Xanto’s work, is an indispensable work for those with an interest in Italian Renaissance maiolica. It includes, for the first time in English translation, a full transcription of Xanto’s sequence of 44 sonnets addressed to Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, and another first, a comprehensive list of works by or attributed to Xanto .
Maiolica was eagerly collected by the British in the 19th century and as a result British public collections, including The Wallace Collection, have between them the finest collections of maiolica in the world. In the exhibition , 14 pieces by or attributed to Xanto from the Wallace Collection were shown alongside maiolica borrowed from 7 other collections in the UK and Italy. The result was the first maiolica exhibition in London for twenty years, the first ever exhibition dedicated to Xanto, and as a result, the winning catalogue.
Notes to Editors:
The Catalogue
Contributors: Giovanna Hendel, Suzanne Higgott and Elisa Paola Sani
Produced and published for the Wallace Collection by Paul Holberton Publishing, £20, ISBN 0 900 785985
Xanto
Like Grayson Perry today, Francesco Xanto Avelli da Rovigo was one of the most celebrated ceramic artists of his time, a Renaissance man of poetry and politics who dared to depict subjects that others steered away from.
Xanto was a master of maiolica, the technique of painting on tin-glazed earthenware so characteristic of Renaissance Italy. Unlike paintings on canvas, maiolica is unaffected by exposure to light, appearing as fresh, vibrant and authentic as the day it was made.
Xanto (c.1486 - c.1542) came from Rovigo in northern Italy, but is most closely associated with Urbino, in the Marches. Xanto’s working life spanned two decades, from c. 1522 - c. 1542. From 1530, he frequently inscribed the backs of the dishes he decorated with his name, the year, the subject and sometimes even poetry and the information that the piece was made in Urbino. This information provides valuable information about his life and work. The inscriptions are supplemented by documentary information and by a sequence of 44 ambiguous, semi-autobiographical sonnets that he dedicated to Francesco Maria I Della Rovere, Duke of Urbino.
The Exhibition
In addition to almost 60 plates, dishes and bowls by Xanto and his peers, the exhibition included 44 sonnets (not all on display) penned by the artist in honour of the Duke of Urbino. The manuscript of the sonnets, lent by the Vatican Library, were translated into English for the very first time. One of the more unusual exhibits, by Xanto’s fellow painter Francesco Urbini, depicted a head formed of penises with the inscription “Everyone looks at me as if I were a head of dicks” and may be a caricature of Xanto himself by his friend.
The works exhibited showed narrative and allegorical subjects that included contemporary events, such as the 1527 Sack of Rome, as well as scenes from classical literature. Demonstrating his political, artistic and intellectual ambitions, Xanto was virtually the only artist to depict and comment on the Sack of Rome by the troops of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. For a whole year the city, and Pope Clement VII, were held hostage by Charles’s feared ‘Landsknecht’ mercenaries, but hardly any artistic evidence of this survives in what was equivalent to a media blackout. The exhibition offered a rare opportunity to see allegorical scenes commenting on this historic episode.
Xanto’s ‘cut and paste’ style of borrowing details from contemporary prints was evident in a number of works, including figures borrowed from a set of illustrated pornographic sonnets, I Modi, by the notorious satirist Pietro Aretino. The sonnets and their illustrations by Marcantonio Raimondi were thought to be so obscene that they were banned and copies burnt by Pope Clement VII.
Accompanying Events Included:
The Art of the Potter Special Display - Complementing the exhibition, this display showed how Italian Renaissance maiolica was made. The stages of production were vividly explained through quotations and delightful illustrations from a remarkable manuscript treatise on the subject by an Italian observer, Cipriano Piccolpasso. In addition, a series of dishes demonstrated the stages of making a piece of maiolica, from the unfired but formed clay body to the finished item.
International Symposium - 23 - 24 March 2007
Sponsors and supporters of the exhibition: Manny and Brigitta Davidson and Family, Bernd und Eva Hockemeyer Stiftung, Italian Cultural Institute, Professor Elisa Provini Walker, Sotheby’s, Rainer Zietz Ltd. The catalogue was supported by the Ceramica Stiftung Basel.
