Plate with the Arms of the Pucci Family (1532): Art, History and Details

Plate with the Arms of the Pucci Family (1532) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Francesco Xanto Avelli (Italian, 1487?–1544?).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Italian nobles of the 1500s often expressed their wealth, social status, and sophistication by ordering large sets of maiolica that sometimes carried their coats of arms or even likenesses, usually in profile as in portraits of the period. The Pucci family was a powerful noble household in Renaissance Florence who were at times quite close allies of the Medici, a prominent banking family.

Object facts

• Title: Plate with the Arms of the Pucci Family
• Date: 1532
• Creator attribution: Francesco Xanto Avelli (Italian, 1487?–1544?)
• Culture: Italy, Urbino
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: tin-glazed earthenware (maiolica)
• Dimensions: Diameter: 3.2 x 19 cm (1 1/4 x 7 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1942.626

A detail from the museum

A more contemporary head of the family, Emilio Pucci, became famous as a fashion designer in the 1960s and 1970s.

Collection credit

Bequest of John L. Severance

Further reading listed by the museum

• John Long Severance Art Collection Photographs: Furniture, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• Catalogue of the John L. Severance Collection: Bequest of John L. Severance, 1936. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1942.
• Busti, Giulio, Mauro Cesaretti, and Franco Cocchi. La maiolica italiana del Rinascimento: studi e ricerche : atti del convegno internazionale, Assisi 9-11 settembre 2016. 2019.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.