Francesco Xanto Avelli (

Rovigo Rovigo (, ; ) is a city and communes of Italy, commune in the region of Veneto, Northeast Italy, the capital of the province of Rovigo, eponymous province. Geography Rovigo stands on the low ground known as Polesine, by rail southwest of Veni ...

, c. 1487? – c. 1542?)These dates are put forth in the biography provided by the

J. Paul Getty Museum The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California, United States, housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. It is operated by the J. Paul Getty Trust, the world's wealthies ...

; they appear, however, to be highly conjectural. was an Italian ceramicist. He is best known for his painted

maiolica Maiolica is tin-glazed pottery decorated in colours on a white background. The most renowned Italian maiolica is from the Renaissance period. These works were known as ''istoriato'' wares ("painted with stories") when depicting historical and ...

works.

Life

Xanto Avelli was born in

, in the

Veneto Veneto, officially the Region of Veneto, is one of the 20 regions of Italy, located in the Northeast Italy, north-east of the country. It is the fourth most populous region in Italy, with a population of 4,851,851 as of 2025. Venice is t ...

, sometime in the late 1480s. Nothing at all is known of his origins, his teaching, or his early years; he is first recorded as working in

Urbino Urbino ( , ; Romagnol: ''Urbìn'') is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Italy, Italian region of Marche, southwest of Pesaro, a World Heritage Site notable for a remarkable historical legacy of independent Renaissance culture, especially und ...

in 1530, when he is mentioned in a

notarial A notary is a person authorised to perform acts in legal affairs, in particular witnessing signatures on documents. The form that the notarial profession takes varies with local legal systems. A notary, while a legal professional, is distin ...

document describing attempts by a group of pottery workers, or ''interlaboratores artis figuli'', to form an early

trade union A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...

for the purpose of raising

wage A wage is payment made by an employer to an employee for work (human activity), work done in a specific period of time. Some examples of wage payments include wiktionary:compensatory, compensatory payments such as ''minimum wage'', ''prevailin ...

s. 1530 is also the date on his earliest signed piece, a plate commemorating the coming new year. It is signed ''.f.X.A.R.'', and is further marked ''î Urbino''. At around this time Xanto married a woman called Finalissa, also in Urbino. Over the five years following he produced a large body of work; each piece was signed in various manners, and was dated and marked as a product of Urbino. Such consistency in signing his work was unusual at the time; there is some suggestion that the artist was

blacklisted Blacklisting is the action of a group or authority compiling a blacklist of people, countries or other entities to be avoided or distrusted as being deemed unacceptable to those making the list; if people are on a blacklist, then they are considere ...

after the labor troubles of 1530, and that his choice to sign his works might be in some way related to his difficulties. After 1535, Xanto seems to have become less prolific; his works, if signed, are marked in more cursory fashion. He also had a number of associates and followers working with him regularly, basing their style on his. The last documentary record of him comes in 1541, when he is known to have taken on two assistants; that year he also initialed a piece from the workshop of Francesco de Silvano. What later became of him is unknown.

Work

It is not certain whether or not any of Xanto's earlier work has survived, as no unambiguously signed works bearing his signature have been found dating earlier than 1530. General scholarly opinion holds that a number of works dating back to 1524 are also by his hand. No tangible evidence exists suggesting their point of origin, although both

Faenza Faenza (, ; ; or ; ) is an Italian city and comune of 59,063 inhabitants in the province of Ravenna, Emilia-Romagna, situated southeast of Bologna. Faenza is home to a historical manufacture of majolica-ware glazed earthenware pottery, known ...

and Urbino have been proposed by historians. Xanto's signed works all date from between 1530 and 1542. Each bears his name and the date of the piece; many also were given ambitious tags explaining their meanings. The surviving pieces appear to be similar in nature, with the exception of the signatures, to most other maiolica ware produced in Urbino at the time. Xanto signed his works with a number of different variants of his own name; besides those with his full name, pieces signed ''fra Xanto'' in his hand are known to exist. Besides being a ceramicist, Xanto was also a poet; in the 1530s he wrote a sequence of

sonnet A sonnet is a fixed poetic form with a structure traditionally consisting of fourteen lines adhering to a set Rhyme scheme, rhyming scheme. The term derives from the Italian word ''sonetto'' (, from the Latin word ''sonus'', ). Originating in ...

s in praise of

Francesco Maria I della Rovere Francesco Maria I House of della Rovere, della Rovere (25 March 1490 – 20 October 1538) was an Italian condottiero, who was Duke of Urbino from 1508 to 1516 and, after retaking the throne from Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, Lorenzo I ...

, then

duke of Urbino The Duchy of Urbino () was an independent duchy in early modern central Italy, corresponding to the northern half of the modern region of Marche. It was directly annexed by the Papal States in 1631. It was bordered by the Adriatic Sea in the ea ...

. An elegant fair copy survives in the

Vatican Library The Vatican Apostolic Library (, ), more commonly known as the Vatican Library or informally as the Vat, is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City, and is the city-state's national library. It was formally established in 1475, alth ...

Notes

References

Biography from the National Gallery of Art, WashingtonBiography from the Getty Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Xanto Avelli, Francesco 1480s births 1540s deaths People from Rovigo 15th-century Italian painters Italian male painters 16th-century Italian painters Italian potters Maiolica painters 16th-century Italian poets 16th-century Italian male writers Italian Renaissance painters Italian Mannerist painters