"Pilgrim Flask" with Mercury and Psyche

Description This vessel, one of the earliest signed and dated works by Xanto Avelli, is shaped like the flasks carried by traveling pilgrims, hence its name. The image of the god Mercury carrying his beloved, the mortal Psyche, to Mt. Olympus is adapted from an engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi (ca. 1475-1530), the most famous Renaissance engraver, after a wall-painting by Raphael in the Villa Farnesina in Rome.

Exhibitions

• The Taste of Maryland: Art Collecting in Maryland 1800-1934. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. 1984.

Provenance Spain [date and mode of deposition unknown]; Samuel Addington, prior to 1862, by purchase; Boulton, [no. 92]; George Robinson Harding, London [date of acquisition unknown], by purchase; Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1914, by purchase; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.

Credit Acquired by Henry Walters, 1914