DISH, URBINO, WORKSHOP OF GUIDO DURANTINO, 1535-1540 in polychrome painted majolica; on the reverse side is inscribed: Mutio la sua destra/ s[a] abrusia; diam. cm 27, foot diam. cm 9,5, h. cm 3,2. cm 3,2 A DISH, URBINO, WORKSHOP OF GUIDO DURANTINO, 1535-1540 Provenance Paris, Renaud-Giquello & Associés, Drouot-Richelieu no. 2, 11 April 2005, lot 12; Paris, Christophe Perlés; Florence, private collection Bibliography for comparison C. Ravanelli Guidotti, Ceramiche occidentali del Museo civico Medievale di Bologna, Bologna 1985, pp. 140-142 no. 105; J.V.G. Mallet, In botega di Maestro Guido Durantino in Urbino, in "The Burlington Magazine", CXXIX, 1987, p. 129 and appendix; M.J. Brody, Istoriato Maiolica with the Arms of Giacomo Nordi, Bishop of Urbino, 1523-1540, New York 1998, pp. 45-46; T. Wilson, E.P. Sani, Le maioliche rinascimentali nelle collezioni della Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Perugia. 1, Perugia 2006, pp.130-133 n. 42 The dish has a deep cavetto resting on a slightly raised disc foot, the brim is wide and oblique with a smooth rim. The decoration, which covers the entire surface and is painted in polychrome with ample use of white tin highlights, depicts the young warrior Mucius Scaevola in front of his horse in the act of holding a lighted torch to his right hand, which is still holding the sword with which he has committed the "unforgivable error" of betraying the trust of the Roman people. The scene, which takes place in the Etruscan camp placed to besiege the city of Rome, is attended by King Porsenna seated on a throne with his dignitaries behind him. On the top left of the brim is the coat of arms of Cardinal Nordi of Aquileia. On the back in cobalt blue the explanatory inscription: Mutio la sua destra s[a] abrusia. As Carmen Ravanelli Guidotti reminds us, the identification of the coat of arms is due to Corrado Leonardi of Urbania, who points out that Ligi, in his historical notes on the Bishops and Archbishops of Urbino, reproduces the woodcut of the episcopal seal of Giacomo Nordi, Bishop of Urbino from 1523 to 1540, who celebrated the funeral for the deposit of the body of Francesco Maria I, Duke of Urbino, in Santa Chiara. "The painter of the Nordi service" is certainly the same as the painter of the flask analysed by Ravanelli Guidotti and conserved in the Museo Civico Medievale of Bologna (inv. n. 991, formerly Museo Cospiano) with whom he shares the mannerist style, the slender figures, the twisted trees with dark trunks, the paths between grassy clumps outlined in watercolour strokes of green and orange, sprinkled with small rounded stones, and the highlights on the upper arms. In the card, to which we refer, the comparison with the dish in the Boymans Van Beuninge Museum in Rotterdam (inv. no. A 3638) confirms what has been observed above, but with some differences: the comparative dish has horses with elongated muzzles, thin-faced characters with small black eyes, and a similar landscape. Both the dish and the flask are attributed to Guido Durantino or, more likely, to a painter active in his workshop in the period around the 1630s. The presence of several painters active in the Urbino workshop has, in fact, been confirmed in more recent studies. The study of the plate with "d ulcano e venera", also bearing the coat of arms of Bishop Nordi, by Timothy Wilson and Elisa Sani in 2006 - to which we refer for the exact list of plates known to date, among which our example also appears - leads us back to the thesis of Michael Broody, who had identified at least three hands for the authors of the service. The seventeen examples identified up to now, with mainly historical or mythological subjects, present stylistic characteristics that have led to the attribution of the works to several artists similar to the style of the workshop of Guido Durantino. However, in light of the publication of the last example mentioned with Vulcan and Venus, which for some can be compared to the hand of Xanto Avelli, it has been suggested that there were itinerant painters, often anonymous, in Urbino and throughout the duchy. Moreover, the possible attribution of some exemplars of the Nordi service to the same author of the Montmorrecy service advanced by Mallet finds us in agreement as far as the object under analysis is concerned.