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.

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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. 

 

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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)".

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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.