Francesco Xanto Avelli (Rovigo circa 1487 - circa 1542 Urbino), Italian, Urbino, circa 1530

This is an interesting addition to the group of Xanto works allegorically referring to the Sack of Rome and will be published by Timothy Wilson in a forthcoming issue of Faenza.

An iconographically similar dish, also by Xanto, is published by Thorton and Wilson,¹ and has two of the same figures employed on this dish. Both include the central figure of the young man beheading a woman, sourced from Marco Dentes' engraving after Bandinelli of The Massacre of the Innocents. Xanto also used the female figure from the Three Crescent Service (circa 1530), also an allegory of the Sack of Rome. The figure tugging at the slain woman's tunic comes from the Rape of Helen by Giulio Romano, engraved by both Marco Dente and Marcantonio Raimondi.²

For further discussion of Xanto's repetition of the subject, see Castelletti.³

¹ D. Thornton and T. Wilson, Italian Renaissance Ceramics - A Catalogue of the British Museum Collection, London, 2009, vol. I, no. 157

² Illustrated Bartsch, vol. 26, nos. 209 (170), 210 (171)

³ C. Castelletti, 'L'allegorie del Sacco di Roma del 1527 nella maiolica di Francesco Xanto Avelli' in 1527 - Il Sacco di Roma, Rome, 2020, pp. 193-208