URBINI, Francesco - b. ~1500 ?, d. ~1550 Deruta

Francesco Urbini was an Italian ceramicist active in Gubbio and Deruta in the 1530s. He was working in Gubbio between around 1531 and 1536. He was influenced by one of the most prolific painters of the 1530s, Francesco Xanto Avelli da Rovigo.

In Deruta daily-use objects: jugs, bowls and dishes with geometrical and zoomorphic decorations were produced from the fourteenth century. In the sixteenth century maiolica from Deruta reached its apex of splendour, spreading to the main Italian cities. Artists such as Giacomo Mancini and Francesco Urbini signed works of art of great value. There is a whole repertory of designs with female figures, mythological scenes, battles and sacred images, decorated in many different ways.

"Plate "Testa di cazzi"

The plate is dated on the underside in blue, and labelled with the mark of Francesco Urbini, the stylized “cavaletto”, flanked by the initials, F.R.

The profiled head, in ochre tones with white highlights on a blue background is entirely composed of male sexual organs. A band of writing, broken in various places, wraps around it, and the initially illegible text is clarified through a key on the back of the plate, indicating that it should be read from right to left. The text means, tramslated literally: “Everyone looks at me as if I were a dickhead”.

The expression “testa di cazzo” is used in Italy today as an expression of profanity to indicate a rather weak-headed individual with a bad character, whose reasoning originates not in his brain, but rather in his abdomen.