- For a further discussion of the iconography of these two plates, see
Curnow 1992, 59-60, 63, nos. 62, 66 - It is interesting to note that at the time of this commission, the Calini
family owned a small house on what was then called via delle
Maioliche, later renamed via Fiume because of its proximity to the local
river [fiume in Italian). Given both the original name of this street and
that a river (potential source for clays and for energy to run mills) would
have been a necessity for an active pottery, it is tempting to hypothesize
that the Calini family had a long-standing interest and was possibly in
volved in maiolica production. The Calini were to inhabit the adjoining
Palazzo Avogadri—renamed Palazzo Calini ai Fiumi in the seventeenth
century—which presently serves as seat of the university law school.
The Calini palazzo in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was that
constructed by the family on Vicolo Borgondio and referred to as Casa
Borgondio della Corte. The palazzo's main salone was decorated with
early sixteenth-century frescoes by Floriano Ferramola, which were dis
mantled in the 1860s and 1870s. The large fresco of a contemporary
tournament in Brescia was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum
in 1861 (shadows of this fresco still remain in situ); the majority of the
other frescoes entered the Pinacoteca Tosio e Martinengo, Brescia,
around 1875 (see Lechi 1974, 2: 181-83, I 91 i Kauffmann 1973, 1: 102-
3). There appears to be no connection between this fresco cycle and the
Calini maiolica subjects. - For examinations of these links, see two articles by Mariarosa Palvarini
Gobio Casali (1989-90 and 1994) and the entry by Timothy Wilson
for a plate from the Valenti-Gambara service in Ausenda 2000,
182-84, no. 193.
Armorial Dish with the Flaying of Marsyas 149