
Rediscovering Lost Masterpieces
Rediscovery of a masterpiece, earning recognition from the best collector.
Our collaborations with the studies of auctioneers lead us to authenticate and rediscover missing masterpieces.
This is the case of a superb tondino painted by the famous Xanto who was in the succession of a local doctor whose family suspected neither the origin nor the value.
After being fully published in the Gazette de l'Hôtel Drouot its auction drew interest from all over the world. The piece was finally sold for 270,0000.00 € and acquired by the great Swiss collector Jean-Claude Gandur.
Fra Xanto Avelli de Rovigo (c.1486-c.1542)
Urbino, circa 1529-1530
Diameter: 26 cm
Inscriptions on the reverse: "De Appollo and Pangli / musicali acceti / fabula (and brand of epsilon)".
This unrecorded earthenware tondino dish is painted with a full polychrome decoration representing Apollo, seated against a tree trunk playing the lyre, challenged by the satyr Pan, lying in the foreground and holding a sort of bagpipe, observing an old man seated against a trunk of half-naked tree, King Lydian Tmolos. The mythological scene is taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses (Metamorphoses, XI) where we relate the episode in which Pan defies Apollo in a musical competition judged by Tmolos, King Lydian.
This unique dish belongs to a service called "three crescents" made most probably for a Florentine family, but the identification remains unclear today. The publications have proposed several hypotheses: the Strozzi, the Buoncristiani, the Cosi or even the Vitelli.