Background
Xanto Avelli was born in Rovigo, in the Veneto, sometime in the late 1480s.
Xanto Avelli was born in Rovigo, in the Veneto, sometime in the late 1480s.
He is best known for his painted maiolica works. Nothing at all is known of his origins, his teaching, or his early years. He is first recorded as working in Urbino in 1530, when he is mentioned in a notarial document describing attempts by a group of pottery workers, or interlaboratores artis figuli, to form an early trade union for the purpose of raising wages.
1530 is also the date on his earliest signed piece, a plate commemorating the coming new year.
lieutenant 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.
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.