An Urbino maiolica dish, 1549

painted with Aeneas honouring his father's tomb, a town in the background, a coat of arms with initial P above, dated 1549, the reverse with yellow concentric lines and the inscription "enea al paterno sepulchro 1549".

Christie's Roma, 25 February 1976, lot 115

Brescia, Museo Santa Giulia, Ceramiche nelle civiche collezioni bresciane, June-July 1988
Brescia, Museo Santa Giulia, Majolica della piu della fabbrica, Selezione dalle civiche collezioni bresciane e da collezioni private, November-December 2006

Clara Stella (ed.), Ceramiche nelle civiche collezioni bresciane, exhibition catalogue, 1988, p.99
Carmen Ravanelli Guidotti, Majolica della piu della fabbrica, Selezione dalle civiche collezioni bresciane e da collezioni private, exhibition catalogue, 2006, fig. 4

Cr: typical minor chips. Painted fire defect on the reverse.
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The dish depicts the scene from Virgil’s Aeneid (5, 1 to 103): sailing away from Carthage, Aeneas and the Trojans are driven by a violent storm to Sicily, where they decide to stay and honour the tomb of Aeneas’s father, Anchises.  Aeneas organises a sacrifice and some games, then a procession to his father’s tomb where he offers some libations. A huge snake appears from the tomb, symbol of the presence of Anchises’s soul at the ceremony.  The Aeneid was a popular subject for illustration in Medieval times and this scene, with the snake, is also to be found on a Limoges enamel panel, circa 1530-1535, now at the Metropolitan Museum, New York (45.60.29).

The dish was exhibited in Brescia in 2006 and illustrated by C. Ravanelli Guidotti, who identified the arms as those of the Petrobelli, a noble family from Padova. She named the anonymous painter the 'Pittore Petrobelli' and associated that artist with a service of seven istoriato dishes, now in Santa Giulia, Museo della Citta di Brescia, all dated 1549 and with the arms of the Foresti family of Brescia.
 
Together with John Mallet and Timothy Wilson, Carmen Ravanelli Guidotti attributed to him several other pieces: two with verse and date, one crespina dated 1546 in a private collection, a dish dated 1547 in the Chicago Art Institute, and other examples with verse
only: five in the Musei Civici di Pesaro, one in the Potteries Museum & art Gallery of Stoke-on-Trent, and one at Knightshayes Court.