ATTRIBUTED TO SFORZA DI MARCANTONIO (ACTIVE CIRCA 1535-1581), ITALIAN, PESARO, DATED 1548 | ISTORIATO SHALLOW BOWL WITH THE PRESENTATION OF THE HEAD OF POMPEY

With Galleria Pesaro, Milan;

Sotheby's Milan, 4 and 5 December 1996, lot 720

The scene depicted comes at the end of the Great Roman Civil War and shows Caesar presented with Pompey’s head. Following his decisive defeat at the Battle of Pharsalus and the effective end of the Republic, Pompey fled to Egypt where he was assassinated, probably on the orders of Ptolemy, who feared both being usurped by Pompey and the advancing Caesar. The inscription to the bowl may be taken from Petrarch’s sonnets, and refers to the gift of the honoured head (Thornton and Wilson, op. cit., no. 64). A similar scene and verse are on a dish in the Wallace collection (Norman op. cit. no. C99). The use of a scene from Roman history with a verse from Petrarch was popular in Urbino and owes a debt to Sforza di Marcantonio’s mentor, Francesco Xanto Avelli, suggesting that Sforza may have worked in Urbino in the 1530s and early 1540s. Originally from Casteldurante he is recorded in Pesaro by at least 1548 perhaps at the Lanfranco workshop (Thornton and Wilson, op. cit. no. 210, where the authors refer to a document cited by P. Bonali and R. Gresta, Girolamo e Giacomo Lanfranco dale Gabicce maiolicari a Pesaro nel secolo XVI, Rimini, 1987, p. 94, placing Sforza di Marcantonio in Pesaro by 17 May 1548). A shallow bowl dated 1551 in the collection of the British Museum attributed to Sforza is by the same hand as the present bowl (ibid no. 210).   

The Galleria Pesaro, who at one point owned this istoriato bowl, was one of the most prestigious Italian galleries of the early 20th century. The gallery also exhibited contemporary masters, including works by renowned modernist Adolfo Wildt, who first exhibited his l'Anima e la sua Veste here in 1919. A version of Wildt's L'Anima which is one of two which had been with Galleria Pesaro was sold in these rooms, 12 December 2018, lot 83. 

RELATED LITERATURE

A. Norman, Wallace Collection Catalogue of Ceramics I, London, 1976, pp. 203-5, no. C99; D. Thornton and T. Wilson, Italian Renaissance Ceramics, a Catalogue of the British Museum, London, 2009, Vol. I, pp. 99-100 and 356-7; nos. 64 and 210