Historic Ornament, Vol. 2 (of 2) / Treatise on decorative art and architectural ornament

In a former volume of this work, under the respective headings, the Pottery of the Prehistoric ages, and of the oldest nations, as Egypt, Assyria, and Phœnicia, has been noticed. The pottery of primitive Greece has also been mentioned, and some illustrations have been given. It is here intended to give a brief outline of the history of Ceramics dating from about the end of the thirteenth century; but to connect this sketch with the notice of Cyprian pottery already given it will be necessary to say something of the Greek, Etruscan, and Roman pottery. Greek vases had been found in great quantities in Etruria before they were found in the islands and colonies of Greece, or to any extent in Athens, and from this circumstance they were wrongly supposed to have been of Etruscan workmanship. The Etruscans imported these vases from Greece during the fifth and sixth centuries B.C., many of which had been placed in their tombs, from where they have been exhumed during the last hundred and fifty years.

The vases found at Athens and other parts of Greece were also, as a rule, found in tombs and burial-places; one class in particular—the Athenian lekythi—were made specially to contain the sacred oil or wine and to be afterwards placed in the tomb. These vases are of a long, narrow, and elegant shape, and were decorated with appropriate funeral subjects outlined on a white ground. This white ground is known as matt, and is of a dull surface; it is not a glaze, but simply an engobe of clay fired at a very low temperature. The draperies of the figures are occasionally coloured red, brown, pale green, or a bluish tint, and some of them are remarkable for their beauty of drawing and expression of sentiment in the design. They date from B.C. 450 to 350. Greek vases are characterized by their beauty of shape as well as by their refined decoration. Some of the richly decorated ones were given as prizes to the victors in the Olympian games, and it has also been conjectured that some of the terra-cotta vases found in the tombs were designed to represent the costlier metal vases that were offered for prizes at the games held in honour of princes at their death, the coarser terra-cotta vases being used at the death of the common people.

The shapes of the Greek vases vary in the different periods, getting more elegant as they approached the middle period—the fifth and the first half of the fourth century B.C.—and larger in size with the handles more elaborate in the later periods. The principal varieties are known under the following names:—the Amphora, a full-bodied vase with two handles, used for carrying wine; the Hydria, a wider bodied vase, used for carrying water: it has generally one large and two smaller handles; the Crater, a large wide-mouthed vessel, used for mixing wine and water; the Lebes, a round basin usually placed on the top of a stand or tripod; the Oinochoè, a ewer-shaped vase, used for pouring out wine; the Lekythos, a long bottle-shaped vase, used for holding oil; the Aryballos, for perfumes or oil; the Cantharos, a two-handled cup on a foot, used for drinking purposes; the Kylix, a shallow cup on a foot, used for drinking wine; and the Rhyton, or drinking horn, made in the shape of an animal’s head or a sphinx.

Greek Ceramic ware, like the Etruscan and Roman, was coated with a scarcely perceptible thin glaze, supposed to be composed of a vitreous alkaline that merely hardened the clay body and left a very faint polish on the surface.

The colouring on the majority of the Greek vases of the sixth century is a brown or red glaze on which are painted the designs in black; the markings on the figures and drapery are incised, showing the groundwork, or being sometimes filled in with white, and the faces and limbs usually painted a white colour and fired at a low heat. Sometimes a purple tint was painted over the accessories. Vases of this period have also a white biscuit ground with similar coloured decorations as those of the red ground.

In the fifth century B.C. a change took place in the style of decoration: the figures and accessories are left in the red ground colour of the vase, and the surrounding groundwork is black; the interior markings are in faint yellow or black, and incised slightly with a tool. This is the period of the best designs and of delicate and correct drawing. Some of the kylixes of this period are exceedingly beautiful, and are usually signed with the name of the artist. Some artists’ names are Meidias, Polygnotos, Epictelos, Pamphaios, Brygos, Euphronius, &c. It is said that the greatest artists of Greece—Phidias, Polycletus, Apelles, and Myron—furnished designs for the potters.

The Greeks in their vase paintings observed strictly the æsthetic laws of proportion and space division (Figs. 1, 2, 3, 4) as they did in their architecture. The precision of touch which they displayed is remarkable, and the skill in the freehand rendering of their geometric and floral borders, not to speak of their figure-work, is astonishing when we think that if they made a mistake on the absorbent biscuit ware on which they painted, it could not be altered without showing the defect.

The Levantine island of Samos has been celebrated from the earliest times for its pottery. It has been mentioned by Homer and Herodotus as unparalleled, for its size, in the wealth and artistic qualities of its people. It was renowned for its temples and metal work as well as for pottery. The Temple of Juno—the Heræum—was built in marble, and was of great magnitude—a treasure house of art in itself. The Samians were great traders, and their beautiful red pottery was carried by their ships to all parts of the known world. The clay of which the Samian ware was made was of a fine red compact earth; the pottery was usually thicker than that of the other Greek ceramics, and the decoration was partly modelled and partly incised (Fig. 5). This ware has been found in nearly all parts of Europe, the design of which inclines to the Græco-Roman style, and is doubtless of the variety made during the Roman occupation of the island.

A Græco-Roman vase in terra-cotta is shown at Fig. 6.

Roman pottery and fragments of it have been found in every country that was formerly under the Roman rule, and consists of examples both of a very simple kind and artistic. Great quantities have been found in England, and every year almost brings new examples to light, consisting of vases, lamps, and panels in terra-cotta.

Although the Greeks never quite lost the art of making pottery during the Middle Ages, they did not produce much artistic work after A.D. 200, and between this time and the end of the fourteenth century. Artistic pottery as glazed ware was imported into Europe from Damascus through the Arabs or Saracens about this time. Cups from Damascus in glazed pottery were reckoned among the treasures of kings, and it was from Damascus that the Arabs undoubtedly brought the secrets of glazed earthenware to Spain, where they established the potteries that fabricated the famous Hispano-Moresque ware. Before dealing with this ware, it is necessary to note briefly the various kinds of glazed wares anterior to its invention. The process of glazing terra-cotta tiles, bricks, and vessels is of great antiquity. In Egypt, as early as the fourth dynasty (B.C. 3766-3600), examples of glazed terra-cotta tiles were in use. Copper has been employed at these early dates to produce a turquoise blue enamel in Assyria and Babylon, and tin has been used in the glaze mixture on the enamelled bricks from the same countries. These ancient tiles and bricks, therefore, belong to the category of fayences. The word fayence, now of so wide application, is derived from Faenza, a town in Italy, where enamelled earthenware, or maiolica, was manufactured in the fifteenth century, which was distinguished by its fine polished white enamel. Fayence is a ware that is distinct from porcelain; it is a potter’s clay mixed with a marl of an argillaceous and calcareous nature and sand. According to the composition, and the degree of heat required in firing, it is called “Soft” (Fayence à pâte tendre) and “Hard” (Fayence à pâte dure).

English earthenware made from pipeclay is “soft”; stone ware, Queen’s ware, and some other special wares are hard. Soft wares are unglazed, glazed, and enamelled. The glazed or varnished wares, as we have seen, were made by the ancient civilized nations, as well as the coarser terra-cotta or unglazed wares. In medieval and in modern times enamelled ware, as distinct from merely glazed or varnished wares, have been made, as well as porcelain or China ware; the latter is called also Kaolin, and is a fine white earth in which silex is the chief constituent, which is derived from a decomposition of feldspathic granite.

Vitreous glaze (or glass) is composed of sand or other siliceous matter fused with potash or soda; this is ground and mixed with water, forming a liquid in which the clay biscuit ware is dipped, and afterwards fired, in order to make it impermeable to liquids. Oxide of lead in considerable quantities is added to the vitreous glaze, which increases its fusibility, but still keeping it transparent; this is what is known as a plumbeous glaze. This glaze may be coloured yellow by the addition of iron oxide; green by copper oxide; blue by cobalt; and black by manganese. All these coloured glazes were known to the ancients.

A further addition of the oxide of tin to the vitreous or plumbeous transparent glaze, in comparatively small quantities, produces the opaque enamel known as a “stanniferous” or tin glaze. This is the enamelled glaze of the Della Robbia ware, of the Hispano-Moresque, and of the Italian maiolica.

From recent analysis of the enamel on Assyrian tiles and bricks it has been ascertained that the oxide of tin was used by the enamellers of that early time, but not to the same extent as the vitreous glaze.

Persia was the natural inheritor of the art of the ancient land of Mesopotamia, and the beautiful siliceous and probably the stanniferous glaze, and also metallic lustres, have been used in that country from very early times. The Arabs, or Saracens, evidently brought the workmen from the East, and imported many pieces of Damascus ware during the independent Caliphate of the Damascus Caliphs in Cordova in Spain, which lasted from the eighth century to the year 1235, when the Moors drove the Arabs out of Spain. The Arabs (says Riaño) had, as early as the beginning of the twelfth century, if not before, established the industry of metallic-lustred pottery in Spain. Edrisi, the Arab geographer, wrote in 1154, in describing Calatayud in Spain: “Here the gold-coloured pottery is made, which is exported to all countries.” This gold-coloured pottery is likely to have been similar to the siliceous glazed ware of the East. The next reference to lustred pottery is made by Ben Batutah, a celebrated Arab traveller, when travelling from Tangiers to Granada, and when passing Malaga (1349-57) he says: “At Malaga the fine golden pottery is made, which is exported to the furthermost countries.” The golden pottery here referred to is the tin-glazed Hispano-Moresque. At Manises, in the kingdom of Valencia, the famous lustred pottery fabriques or workshops were in a flourishing state in the fifteenth century, when Eximenus, in his “Regiment de la cosa publica,” quoted by Riaño, speaking of the excellent things made in his time at Manises in Valencia, says: “Above all, the beauty of the gold pottery, so splendidly painted at Manises, which enamours every one so much that the Pope, and the cardinals, and the princes of the world obtain it by special favour, and are astonished that such excellent and noble works can be made out of the earth.”

The same author translates a document he found in the British Museum, which gives a description of the whole of the making and preparing of the golden lustre as used at Manises in 1785: speaking of its composition, the document runs thus: “Five ingredients enter into the composition of the gold colour: copper, which is the better the older it is; silver as old as possible; sulphur, red ochre, and strong vinegar, which are mixed in the following proportions: of copper three ounces, of red ochre twelve ounces, of silver one peseta (about a shilling), sulphur three ounces, vinegar a quart.” All these ingredients are fused together, and afterwards ground and diluted with water and the vinegar to make the gold-coloured glaze or varnish for use in the decorating of the ware. A woodcut gives a very imperfect idea of Hispano-Moresque pottery, as the lustre and colour is everything in the ware; the designs generally are very simple leaf-work shields and small geometric repetitions. The beautiful dish (Fig. 7) is one of the finest examples of the ware made at Murcia in the province of Valencia. The statement of Eximenus regarding the Pope, the cardinals, and princes sending for this ware seems to have been correct, for most of the pieces known have been found or brought from Italy, to which country the majority of them had evidently been exported.

Besides the lustred ware manufactured in the peninsula in the Middle Ages, the Azulejos, or tiles of bright colours, were made in small pieces, and were embedded in the walls to form geometric patterns. This manner of using these tiles was derived from the coloured and geometric Byzantine mosaics, tiles being used in Spain where mosaics would be used in the Eastern Empire; and perhaps the earliest use of them in Spain was in the Alhambra decoration of the fourteenth century. Afterwards the tiles became larger and more complete in their patterns. Terra-cotta figures and ornament, green and white-glazed pottery were also made by the Moors in Spain.

In the sixteenth century Spanish pottery design was of the Italian Renaissance character. Unlike the Moresque work, the designs were shaded and the colours more subdued, but the Moresque design still continued in favour, and to keep its flat treatment and bright effect of colour. The Italian kind of pottery was made at Talavera, at Andujar, and at La Rambla, as well as unglazed porous and coloured ware at the former place, and white unglazed pottery at the latter places. Coarse green and white pottery was made at Toledo in the sixteenth century; a large well-head or brim, with an interlaced Moresque band in relief, from this place is now in the Museum at Kensington.

A bowl of Talavera ware of the eighteenth century, painted in imitation of the Italian maiolica ware, is also in the Museum. The colours used are green, blue, orange, and manganese tint, which are usually found on the Spanish pottery of this period.

The well-known and extensive potteries at Alcora were established by Count Aranda in 1726, where porcelain and pipeclay wares were made with all kinds of designs, mostly imitations of France, Holland, England, and China. Most of the principal painters and modellers at these works were Frenchmen or Germans. The names of the chief artists were Haly, Knipper, Martin, Garces, Ferrer, and Prato. The Duke of Hijar, son of Count Aranda, succeeded his father (1800-1858) in the management of the Alcora potteries. A specimen of this ware is shown in the Rococo plaque (Fig. 8) with the subject of Galatea.

Another celebrated pottery, connected with royalty, was founded by King Charles III. in 1760 in the gardens of the royal palace of Buen Retiro at Madrid. This King, coming from Naples to inherit the Spanish Crown at the death of his brother Ferdinand, was anxious to establish a similar pottery in Madrid to that which he had previously founded at Capo di Monte, at Naples, so he brought his staff of artists, workmen, and director of the works, Bonicelli, over from Italy to Madrid, and established the Buen Retiro works at a great cost. The yearly expenses of these works were £20,000, and all the pottery made was for the exclusive use of the King and Royal Family, and was sent as presents to foreign princes. This was the case for the first thirty years until the death of Charles III. (1798), after which the pottery was allowed to be sold, but at a very high price. The workmanship of this pottery is good, but there is nothing particularly artistic about it. The designs are in the false taste of the late Italian mixed with Louis Seize incrusted motives. A vase in the Buen Retiro ware is shown at Fig. 9. A room in the royal palace, Madrid, is covered with plaques of this ware.

Maiolica.

Before the advent of Maiolica ware in Italy a similar kind of pottery was made in Spain, which had the stanniferous or opaque tin glaze and the golden lustre that belonged to the best examples of Italian maiolica. We refer to the Hispano-Moresque ware. This opaque stanniferous glaze was known to the Arabs of Spain from the end of the thirteenth century, or more than one hundred years before Luca della Robbia (who died in 1430) produced his enamelled earthenware.

The first specimens of Hispano-Moresque pottery were probably made at Malaga, and another important factory was at Valencia. The shape and decoration of the famous Alhambra vase (Fig. 10), one of the earliest specimens of Hispano-Moresque ware (about 1320), clearly points to its Persian origin of design, and was probably made and decorated by a Persian Saracenic artist. It is coloured brown and blue on a yellowish ground, and is decorated with animals and ornament in the Persian manner. It was found about the middle of the sixteenth century, under the pavement of the Alhambra Palace, filled with gold coins.

Hispano-Moresque ware is of a general yellowish-white colour, with an iridescent metallic lustre similar to the Italian maiolica of the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. The ornamentation is lustrous rather than the ground, and is of a golden copper red to a pale yellow golden tint. It has been divided into three classes: the first has the ornamentation of a copper red colour; the ground is nearly covered by ornament, consisting invariably of birds in the midst of flowers and foliage, resembling Persian pottery. The ware of this class is less perfect in manufacture than that of the golden yellow designs, and is the oldest. The second class has the colour of a monochrome golden yellow tint, with the ornament of a small geometric character, and Spanish or Moresque escutcheons. This variety is of Spanish origin of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

The third class has the ornament partly rendered in coloured enamels, and has golden yellow armorial bearings, interlacings, and foliage. Animals, such as antelopes, sometimes occur. This ware is the carefully executed work of the fifteenth century. During the first years of the sixteenth century the third class of ware was probably imitated by the Italians.

The process of the manufacture of lustred earthenware was introduced into Italy by Arabian or Spanish workmen from the Balearic Isles.

A beautiful vase of elegant shape with large perforated handles in Hispano-Moresque, decorated with ivy or briony leaves and tendrils, is in the Kensington Museum (Fig. 11).

A curious shaped tile from the Alhambra is shown at Fig. 12, the decoration of which is purely Saracenic.

Scaliger (1484-1558) tells us that a costly fayence, as beautiful as the pottery of India, was made in his time in the island of Majorca and exported to Italy; he also adds that the name “Maiolica” or Majolica was derived from Majorca.

The island of Majorca was an Arab possession until the year 1230, and no doubt the Arabs had there founded potteries for the production of glazed earthenware.

Towards 1300, as related by Passeri, the Italian potters began to cover a raw clay with a coating of white opaque Sienese earth produced from that territory. This coating of a white opaque substance, called an “engobe,” was the ground to which the colours were applied, and which, differing from the older methods hitherto employed in Italy, was a distinct advance in pottery manufacture, and has been considered as the first beginning of Maiolica pottery. Improvements were effected in the use of this engobe or opaque varnish until the time of Luca della Robbia (1355-1430).

Della Robbia Ware.

It is not known whether the above celebrated artist invented the opaque white stanniferous glaze with which he covered his works, but he was the first to use it successfully in the architectural decoration known as “Della Robbia” ware. He succeeded, however, in colouring his white glaze, thereby greatly enlarging its usefulness for exterior and interior decoration. The colours he obtained were blue, yellow, green, violet, and a copper tint. His sculptured terra-cottas glazed with these colours became objects of great request. He obtained more orders than he could execute himself, and so he employed his two brothers, who were sculptors, to assist him. His nephew Andrea, after himself was the most famous in this kind of work, and produced, like his uncle Luca, groups of figures in panels, single figures, tabernacles, friezes, &c.

Three sons of Andrea, Giovanni, Luca, and Girolamo, worked in the same material, and Girolamo was invited by François I^er to decorate the Château de Madrid with “Della Robbia” ware, representing the “Metamorphoses” of Ovid, which was done at a cost equal to £15,530.

In the Kensington Museum there are many specimens of Della Robbia ware, among which are a series of twelve circular medallions in enamelled terra-cotta, representing the twelve months of the year, one of which is illustrated at Fig. 13. The bas-relief of the Virgin and Child (Fig. 14) is likely to be a work of one of the Della Robbia family.

Italian Maiolica.

About the year 1450 the Sforzi, the Lords of Pesaro, established at the latter place Maiolica factories, and a decree, dated 1st of April, 1486, was published, granting certain privileges to the ceramists of Pesaro. The potteries of Urbino, Gubbio, and Castel-Durante were then equally famous with those of Pesaro. It is generally thought that the use of metallic lustre was first known at Pesaro; the pearly, the ruby, and the golden lustres appeared at Pesaro and Gubbio before they were known at any other Italian pottery. The early pieces are decorative dishes, or, as they are called, “bacili,” having a broad border and a deep sunk centre; at the back is a projecting circular “giretto,” pierced with two holes, which shows that they were intended to be hung up as decorative objects. Coats of arms, or other devices, occupied the centre; the border usually is simple but well designed, showing a mixture of Oriental with Gothic or Italian forms (Fig. 15). The potteries of Faenza, Forli, and Caffaggiolo are thought by some to be as early, if not earlier, in date than those of Pesaro.

In 1444 Federigo, the second Duke of Urbino, built a castellated palace at Urbino, and gathered around him men of learning and many artists, and especially encouraged the manufacture of maiolica. His son, Guidobaldi I., succeeded him in 1482, and he also was a great patron of the ceramic arts. The ware made in Italy during this time—the latter half of the fifteenth century—was known under the name of “mezza-maiolica,” this ware differing from tin-glazed or true maiolica in its glaze in its having a lead or plumbeous glaze; but in common with the true maiolica, the mezza-maiolica is also a lustred ware, having a peculiar iridescent lustre, derived from the lead used as a glaze. This lustred ware was therefore made anterior to the tin-glazed dishes and other objects, and chiefly at Pesaro and Gubbio. The lustre was obtained on a glaze of oxide of lead and glass by the use of certain metallic oxides, and the art of making it was probably learnt from the potters of the island of Majorca, where the making of the Hispano-Moresque ware was well known.

The Italian writer Passeri states that the tin-glazed ware or true maiolica was made at Pesaro in 1500, and that the process was introduced from Tuscany. A better ground for the reception of the colours used in the decoration was afforded by the new enamel, but it did not entirely supersede the manufacture of the mezza-maiolica, as a great deal of the latter ware still continued to be made of a brilliant metallic lustre at the fabriques of Pesaro and Gubbio. At Castel-Durante, Urbino, and Diruta were other famous botegas or fabriques where the lustred ware was made, but none were so celebrated as that of Maestro Giorgio at Gubbio. It was at this famous botega that the best of all the golden and ruby metallic lustres were produced. The ruby lustre particularly seemed to be a monopoly of the Gubbio workshops, for it is known that many of the Italian factories sent their pieces to Maestro Giorgio at Gubbio to have the ruby and the gold lustre added as a finish to parts of the designs.

Maiolica was made at Venice in the sixteenth century, also at Forli, Diruta, Siena, Caffaggiolo, and Faenza, where much early work of great beauty in design was produced.

We shall only have space to describe a few of the most important products of Italian maiolica.

An early method of decorating maiolica pottery is known as “sgraffitto-work,” in which the patterns are scratched or incised into the ground: this was a favourite method of executing outdoor plaster decoration in Italy. It consists in laying on a ground of coloured clay or plaster on another coating of a different colour, and while this second coating is moderately soft, the pattern or design is incised or “scratched” down to the first coating or ground, which, being of a different colour, reveals itself, and thus forms the pattern. In both, pottery and plaster decoration sgraffitto work is usually accompanied by modelling in relief, such as representations of leaves, flowers, and fruit in bas-relief bands, or medallions of figures and animals, in high relief. After the ware is incised it is glazed with a translucent lead glaze, variegated with green and yellow colouring over the white engobe (Fig. 17). The sgraffitto pottery of Italy is either of Lombardic or Venetian origin, as appears from the usual Gothic character of the designs.

The wares of Caffaggiolo are distinguished by a purely white glaze, with masses of a rich cobalt blue used as portions of the groundwork for the ornament; sometimes green and purple are used with the blue, and at other times a bright orange yellow and a copper green or an Indian red. Caffaggiolo, Faenza, and Forli wares have much resemblance to each other. The pitcher (Fig. 16), with the arms of the Medici family, belongs probably to the Caffaggiolo school, and is a work of the early years of the sixteenth century.

The tazza (Fig. 19) is another example of this ware. The fine plate (Fig. 18) is thought to be a work from the same botega, and the subject is supposed to represent Raphael and the Fornarina.

The plate (Fig. 15) is an example of the mezzo-maiolica ware, and is anterior to the date 1500. The more beautiful one (Fig. 20) is a work dating from the first years of the sixteenth century, at the time when the stanniferous glaze was coming into use. Both these plates are supposed to be from the Pesaro fabriques. They may have been made as wedding presents from the bridegroom to the bride, and are portrait dishes, with an inscription on the ribbon, with the name of the bride, or some endearing motto.

These plates are known as “amatorri” pieces. The colours used in the Pesaro maiolica are yellow, green, manganese, black, and cobalt blue, and have what is known as the “madreperla” lustre, which has a beautiful changing effect in colour. The outlines are manganese, and the flesh left white in the best pieces. The finest work executed in Pesaro came from the fabrique of Lanfranco in the years 1540-45.

The products of the Sienese potteries are worthy of being ranked with the best works of Pesaro and Caffaggiolo, to which they are closely allied.

There is a fine pavement of tiles in the Kensington Museum from the Petrucci Palace at Siena, dated 1509. Benedetto is the name of an artist of the Sienese school, who painted in maiolica, from whose hand most of the best Siena maiolica has come; the drug pot (Fig. 21) and the two plates (Figs. 22 and 23) are works of his. On the drug pot, tiles, and some large dishes, grotesques were very much used as ornament, and in colour, yellow, orange, and particularly black grounds, were used in the Siena production.

The maiolica wares of Gubbio are the most celebrated in all Italy, as regards their richness and beauty of colouring; this, of course, was due mostly to the beautiful effects gained by the unique ruby and gold lustres used at this fabrique. The name of one man, Maestro Giorgio Andreoli, as the chief artist, is connected with the Gubbio ware. He was a native of Pavia, and came of a noble family. He finally established himself at Gubbio, where he was made a “Castellano” of that city in 1498, and enjoyed the patronage of the Dukes of Urbino. He was a modeller as well as a painter of maiolica, and is said to have executed some altar-pieces in relief before coming to Gubbio. In the Kensington Museum there is a bas-relief of St. Sebastian which is supposed on good authority to be a work of his hand; it is coloured with the gold and ruby lustres.

A circular dish or “bacile” of lustred ware (Fig. 24), with the subject of two mailed horsemen in the centre, and a border of foliated ornament, is a work of the Gubbio fabrique, but is an earlier work than the time of M^o. Giorgio.

The embossed vase in copper lustre (Fig. 25) is a very beautiful example of the stanniferous glaze and ruby copper lustre. The design is well adapted to show the “reflets” of the lustre by the variety of form on its embossed surfaces. This work is ascribed to the same artist who executed the previous example.

The tazza (Fig. 26), with the subject, “The Stream of Life,” after Robetta, is one of Giorgio’s best figure pieces. Though not very good in figure draughtsmanship, it is excellent in colour, and is cleverly heightened with ruby lustre. This and another plaque in Kensington Museum, representing the “Three Graces” after Raphael, are amongst if not the best of Giorgio’s work: for colour and richness of lustre, and for clearness and perfection of the enamel glaze, they are the best works in Italian maiolica that we possess. The date of both is probably 1525.

A work by Giorgio is shown at Fig. 27. This is a highly decorative tazza in the best manner of Giorgio, who was very clever at this kind of design. The groundwork of this piece is blue, parts of the decoration are green, and other parts ruby, while all of the decoration is lustred. The back of this piece is covered with a yellow lead glaze, which seems to be the case with many examples of maiolica. Probably it was done for economical reasons. We close the list of illustrations of Gubbio ware with that of a dish, “Fruttiera” (Fig. 28). The design is simple and very good for showing the beauties of the ruby and gold lustres. It is embossed, and has been made from a mould, and is an unsurpassed example of the famous Gubbio lustre. Mr. Fortnum thinks that Giorgio obtained the secret of the ruby lustre from an artist that formerly worked at the Gubbio fabrique, and that he did not invent it, and also that all the similar lustred ware was produced at Gubbio, the wares of Urbino, Castel-Durante, and of other fabriques having been sent to Gubbio to get the final lustre added to them.

Another artist who executed many important works at the Gubbio botega signs his productions with the letter N. Some think that this is meant for a signature of M^o. Cencio, a son of Giorgio who succeeded his father at the fabrique. Another name that appears on some of this ware is M. Prestino. It is known that Giorgio signed his name on many pieces that were painted by other artists or by his pupils.

A beautiful specimen of Castel-Durante ware is the plate (Fig. 29) with a deep centre—"tondino"—which has a border of cupids, foliage, and medallions on a dark blue ground. The centre has cupids, and the sides of the centre painted with solid white ornaments on a low white ground. It is probably the work of the artist Giovanni Maria (1508).

The vase (Fig. 30) is a richly decorated specimen of the same ware; the grotesque masks and arabesques are vigorously drawn, and the ornament generally is a good example of that used on the Castel-Durante ware. This vase has been used as a drug pot, and was made at the botega of Sebastiano di Marforio. Giuseppe Raffaelli in his “Memorie” (1846) says that the manufacture of glazed pottery as an art began when Monsignor Durante built a “castello” on the Metauro at Correto in the year 1284, and the names of potteries are recorded that were in existence in 1364 to 1440. The year 1490 began a period of great activity in the Castel-Durante fabriques, and we hear of many artists who were Durantine maiolica painters going to various parts of Europe and establishing works in pottery. Tesio and Gatti went to Corfu in 1530, and taught the art in the Ionian Islands; Francesco de Vasaro went to Venice, where he was eminently successful in developing the Venetian phase of maiolica; others went to Nevers and Lyons, in France, and one to Antwerp. The artist who styled himself “Francesco” of Urbino, and who also worked at Perugia, sometimes signed his works “Durantino.” Vasari, in his “Lives of the Painters,” speaks of Battista Franco of Venice, a clever painter and designer, as having been employed by the Duke of Urbino, Guidobaldo II., in 1540, to design subjects for the excellent ceramic painters of Castel-Durante. The death of Duke Francisco Maria II. (1631) put an end practically to the maiolica industry of the place; the trade generally then declined, and the artists were forced to emigrate.

Urbino is a city celebrated in the art and literature of Italy in the Renaissance period, and her dukes rivalled the Medici family of Florence in the patronage and encouragement of art, science, and literature. The names of the Urbino maiolica artists have been fortunately well preserved. Those of Nicola da Urbino, Guido Fontana, and his more famous son Orazio, also another son, Camillo, the versatile artists in “Majoliche istoriate”, and Francesco Xanto, may be mentioned as the most important.

To the first-named artist, Nicola, is ascribed the earliest authentic works from the potteries of Urbino, the celebrated service of maiolica, painted probably between the years 1490 and 1519, for Isabella d’Este, wife of the Marquis of Mantua, and known as the Gonzaga-Este service. Two fine plates of this service are in the British Museum. They have the arms of Gonzaga impaling those of Este on a shield, and one of them has the painted subjects of Apollo and Daphne, and Apollo and the Python, while the other has a representation of a troop of horse soldiers entering a city. The figures are delicately and carefully outlined and the colouring is brilliant.

Orazio Fontana was the most celebrated of the family of that name. His best work was done from 1540 to 1560, and he was the artist proprietor of a botega at Urbino, from whence came many of the finest works ever made in that city, not only as regards their artistic qualities but in the beauty and finish of the maiolica ware. The “istoriati” panels, or figure subjects (usually mythological) which were copies or adaptations of engraved designs by Italian painters, were the work of Orazio himself, and the grotesques probably from the hand of his brother or some other artist.

The pilgrim bottle (Fig. 31) is from the botega of Orazio Fontana, but the grotesques on it are supposed to have been painted by his brother Camillo. One artist named Gironimo was very clever at this grotesque, or “Raphaelesque” work as it is sometimes called—not from the great Raphael Sanzio, but from the artist Raphael dal Colle, who introduced this grotesque design among other work of his for the decoration of the Pesaro ware, in the duchy of Urbino. These grotesques were afterwards called “Urbino arabesques” and were of a different character to the grotesques of the Gubbio ware, which may be seen by comparing the dish of Urbino ware signed by Gironimo (Fig. 32) with Fig. 27.

There is a circular dish of Urbino ware in the Museum at Kensington on which is painted the subject of the marriage of Alexander with Roxana, from an engraving by Marc Antonio Raimondi, after Raphael’s design. This work is signed by Francesco Xanto (1533), a prolific and somewhat careless artist who took great liberties with the designs he adapted, like most of the maiolica painters. The colouring of this dish is very rich: the colours generally of the Urbino school were green, yellow, and blue, and a predominance of orange on a light or white ground.

Faenza pottery is among the oldest in Italy, but little is known of the early artists or potteries. Many pieces of doubtful origin have been classed as Faentine, but without any positive proof.

In the Cluny Museum in Paris there are a pair of pharmacy jars or vases, one of which bears the inscription “Faenza,” and the other is dated 1500, their excellence proving that good work was done at Faenza at this date, or perhaps much earlier. The pottery works called the Casa Pirota was the principal establishment for the production of maiolica at Faenza.