This plate is one of thirty-seven known from a service that bears the crest of the Pucci family of Florence. An earlier family surname, Saracini, probably accounts for the head of a Black man, or Saracen, on the family crest, reflecting the fact that a portion of their wealth was derived from the enslavement of Africans. Created between 1532 and 1533, the Pucci service is one of the largest to survive from the Italian Renaissance and the largest commission received by Francesco Xanto Avelli da Rovigo, a celebrated maiolica painter who worked in Urbino. For the decoration of the service, Xanto drew upon several literary sources, including Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. This plate illustrates a scene from the Aeneid in which Palinurus, the pilot of Aeneas’s ship, has been put to sleep by a god shaking “a bough dripping with Lethe’s dew” (sleep) over his head. He falls overboard to his death while clutching the tiller. Xanto, a master of “cut and paste,” based the figure of Palinurus on a print by Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio after Rosso Fiorentino. The figure of Aeneas, who stands at the left holding a shield, is based on a print by Marco Dente after Baccio Bandinelli, while the god of sleep is based on an engraving probably after Raphael.
