The artwork is accompanied by the export licence.

Felt loop on the brim, left side. On the back label “169 AN AMUSING URBINO DISH painted in the usual palette of blue, green, yellow and ochre, with the story of Pyramo and Thisbe, the hero lies with his spear through his body by the side of Ninus’ tomb. Thisbe and the lioness stand close by. A city in the background the tomb inscribed with the names of the lovers, 10 incs, circa 1540".

Provenance: Genova Collection, Venice; "Importanti maioliche rinascimentali", Sotheby's Florence, 19 October 1970, lot 89; "Importanti mobili, arredi e oggetti d'arte, porcellane e maioliche", Pandolfini Florence, 19 November 2015, lot 111.

Literature: M. Bellini and G. Conti, "Maioliche italiane del Rinascimento", Milan 1964, p. 147, pl. B.

The subject, taken from Ovid's "Metamorphoses", represents the feral moment of the tragic myth of Pyramus and Thisbe: the two young people, on the run to live their love thwarted by their respective families, agree to meet together in a place near a mulberry tree, near the tomb of King Nino. Here Thisbe arrives first, barely managing to escape the attack of a lioness, but leaving a bloody veil on the ground: seeing it and believing her beloved dead, Pyramus kills himself by throwing himself on his sword. Having found his body, out of desperation Thisbe also joins his fate: the gods, moved by the love of the two young people, later decide to transform the colour the fruits of the mulberry tree, under which the two lovers had died, into a shiny blood-like red. All the details of the myth are present on the plate, and the moment depicted is precisely the one in which Thisbe discovers the lifeless body of Pyramus: the names of the two characters also appear engraved on the front of the tomb on the right side. Already attributed by Bellini and Conti to an Urbino workshop, the plate was subsequently traced back for stylistic reasons to the area of Castel Durante, specifically to the workshop of Ludovico and Angelo Picchi, with a possible and fitting comparison with a plate depicting the "Challenge between Apollo and Marsyas" of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, attributed to the workshop of Andrea da Negroponte, active in the Picchi workshop in Casteldurante from the end of the 1640s until 1563.