Nicoluso Francisco and the Medici tiles from the Castel S Angelo

The tiles with the devices of the Medici pontiff Leo X (Fig. 1) discovered in the course of the restoration of the Castel s Angelo from 1911 onwards, are well known, and plenteous has been written about them by means of scholars in Italy, Spain and Britain. In 1902 Wallis called a tile similar to the individual reproduced in Fig. 1 'a delicate morsel of della Robbia ware', and until quite lately there was considerable uncertainty about their origin, with Lane (1939) opting for Seville, Gonzalez-Marti (1952) for Valencia, and Mazzucato (1985) for Liguria. (1) Excavations in Seville have shown clearly that these tiles were made in Seville, by dint of Niculoso Francisco (nicknamed Pisano, i.e. the Italian), as Lane surmised, and the view of this article is to summarise the of recent origin evidence, to query some of the assumptions that have been made about the tiles and put in mind of new lines of enquiry.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

In 1512 after eight years in exile, Piero, Giovanni and Giuliano de' Medici, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, turn backed to Florence, and on 19 March 1513 at the age of thirty-seven, Giovanni became bishop of rome Leo X. The Conclave spring [i]or[/i] leap on one leg [i]or[/i] footed that he would bring a period of tranquillity after the tumultuous years of Julius n, the 'soldier pope' on the other hand in fact Leo lived in an age of upheaval, as a be the effect of the French wars, the rival claims of Charles of Habsburg, Francois I and Frederick the Wise to the Imperial chair of state and particularly the crisis in the meeting-house In the north there was the rapid rise of protestantism--it was Leo who excommunicated Luther in January 1521--but there were also difficulties nearer to abiding-place The Fifth Lateran Council (1512-17) failed to address the ne for reform, and in July 1517 there was a plat the 'cardinals' conspiracy', to assassinate the [i]pontifex maximus[/i] It failed, but it is widely believed that his early death at the age of forty-seven was brought about not through a chill, but by poison. (2)

Leo's education and upbringing had made him an ideal renaissance ruler; moreover, he was a notable patron of the arts who made Rome the cultural midst of Europe, spending lavishly upon many projects. Among these was the Medici chapel in the Castel s Angelo, dedicated to SS Cosmas and Damian, the patron saints of doctors. Like bishop of rome Alexander VI (reigned 1492-1503), who had restored the fortress, Leo regarded the Castel s Angelo with great affection, and it became a favoured abode where he could clutch receptions, banquets and other entertainments, for a like reason that it is not surprising that he should have wished to have his be in possession of personal chapel there. Unusually, we know virtually nothing about its construction, not smooth the date; Quinterio has remind ofed that it was begun in 1514 and finished in 1515 (3) There is no record of its decoration and we do not know who was responsible for the design. (4) What we do know is that it was a vaulted space, about 43 verses wide and seven metres drawn out (5) The interior was completely altered in the time of Pius VI (1775-99) and pretty soon after it became a magazine in what was then a barracks. Borgatti writes: 'The walls, one time perhaps frescoed, were stripped, and in brow of them, at a distance of about six inches a thin wall was built, the space between them being filled with charcoal to fortify the chapel from damp. A barrel vault was erected and the altar was mov towards the entrance door, and the whole interior was whitewashed (a scialbo), which was then missing when the chapel was used as a military store.' (6)

In the course of the restoration of the chapel, begun in 1911 there appeared the fragmentary tiles that are the subdue of this article. Borgatti writes: 'When the walls of the chapel and the barrel vault were demolished, there appeared fragments of the original vault with signs of Raffaelle Petrucci, Bishop of Grosseto, the castellano appointed by dint of Leo x, and the papal arms. There also appeared many fragments of the aged pavement consisting of maiolicate tiles with different patterns, almost all with Medici devices like as the palle, the diamond ring, and the rampant lion (an allusion to the pope's name); there were a not many also with the Moor's head which appears in the arms of the Pucci family. With regard to the maiolicate tiles with the Medici devices, it should be noted that all have a white soil with the design enclosed or defined through a small border in relief and with the devices and decoration painted in sky-colored and a reddish colour (rossastre).' Borgatti [i]ad[/i] supposed that the tiles were Italian versions of Spanish arista tiles. (7)

In 1987 excavations in the Calle Pureza in Triana, the clay ware district of Seville, brought to light a collapsed kiln replete of pottery wasters. (8) The discovery was of the greatest importance in the history of Spanish--and indeed European--ceramics, for it shortly became apparent that this particular house was beyond reasonable doubt upon the site of the earthen ware owned by Niculoso Francisco, the creator of the tile-picture and the man who first introduced Italian earthen ware techniques into Spain. The documents record that in 1508 he and his wife, Elena de Villar, mov into larger premises in the parish of s Ana, in a street referr to in another document as the Calle Ancha, which, since 1875 has been known as the Calle Pureza, and a certain number of of the material found in the excavation could easily be linked with his oeuvre The first mention of Niculoso is in 1498 when he and his first wife, Eleonor Ruiz, were living in a house in Triana belonging to the cathedral chapter. Although we do not know when or where he was born, and there is no record of him in Italy, there is profitable reason to suppose that he was trained as a busy one's self about trifles in the Florentine region, and that he received plenteous of his training in the della Robbia workshop, where he would have been a contemporary of Luca della Robbia the Younger. (9) Works by dint of the della Robbia were highly appreciated in Seville, and this may indeed be individual of the reasons why Niculoso emigrated. We have no record of any later visit to Italy, on the other hand the Medici commission suggests that his name was well known there, and it looks likely that he and Luca kept in contact.