The present lot is the largest of five pieces painted by Xanto with the same scene. The others are a plate dated 1535,1two plates dated 1538,2 a plate dated 1540,3 and an undated and unsigned plate (attributable to Xanto) which is thought to date to circa 1538-40.4 The story depicted is the Vestal Tuccia proving her chastity after a false accusation. Tuccia proved it by carrying water from the Tiber in a perforated basket to the Temple of Vesta, without it falling through the perforations.
Xanto based the female figures for all five pieces on Gian Giacomo Caraglio’s engraving The Muses of the Pierides (after Rosso Fiorentino). For Tuccia and the two figures accompanying her, he borrowed three of the Pierides (daughters of King Pierus) at the centre of the print, but he reversed them. The two figures by the column on the right were taken from two other Pierides on the far right of the print, but these two figures were not reversed. The central bearded priest and the young man behind him are both taken (in reverse) from figures in Marcantonio Raimondi’s Martyrdom of St. Lawrence (after Baccio Bandinelli).
Interestingly, although the first and last pieces are separated by five years, Xanto executed the same scene with exactly the same arrangement of figures, reversed or not reversed from the original print. The canopy above the altar is also essentially the same on all five pieces (there are slight variations). This suggests that Xanto may have retained a copy of his design which he referred to when creating the later pieces. With the exception of the canopy, the interior of the first plate, painted in 1535, is different from the later pieces. Three of the later pieces share a curious feature of short lines below the beams where they join the wall.5
1. Tjark Hausmann, Fioritura, Blütezeiten der Majolika, Eine Berliner Sammlung, Berlin, 2002, no. 67.
2. A plate in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, see Elena Ivanova, Il Secolo d’Oro della Maiolica, Milan, 2003, p. 80, no. 51, and a plate in the Wallace Collection, London, see J.V.G. Mallet, Xanto, Pottery-Painter, Poet, Man of the Renaissance, Wallace Collection Exhibition Catalogue, January-April 2007, London, 2007, pp. 154-155, no. 53.
3. A plate formerly in the Murray sale, Sotheby’s, Florence, November 1929, lot 114, pl. xxiii.
4. In the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin, see Tjark Hausmann, Majolika, Spanische und Italienische Keramik vom 14. Bis zum 18. Jahrhundert, Berlin, 1972, pp. 264-266, no. 196.
5. These are the present lot, the plate in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, and the plate in the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin.