628 POTTERY [ITALIAN MAJOLICA. No. 8. Potters marks. No. 9. grounds of Perugino s picti Museum, painted in this like beauty, though in no way specially suited to the requirements of ceramic art, for which a bolder and less realistic style of treat ment is really the . . most suitable & Q -N" 5 I O R&I O Some fine early plates of Faenza make are signed with No. 8 mark ; a common later mark is the mono gram FA(enza) see No. 9. Another plate, also in the British Museum, has a painting copied from a design by Albert Uiirer, the Scourging of Christ. This highly - laboured and minute style of Siena. painting was largely practised in the potteries of Siena, which pro duced plates of great beauty, with borders of graceful scroll-work and grotesques in white and different tints of blue, with usually a rich russet-brown or orange ground. Tondini from Siena are often decorated in this way with a central medallion containing a minute landscape, painted with wonderful minuteness and finish. The landscapes are very delicate in colour, and, though often not more than an inch and a half in diameter, have a wonderful suggestion of atmosphere and distance which recalls the lovely sunset-lit back- tures. A very beautiful plate in the British nted in this minute style with the scene of Scsevola before Porsena, is signed on the back, " fata i Siena da M<? Bene detto." Other plates by the same very clever and refined painter are decorated only in blue, with touches of pure white on the creamy enamel ground. The Kensington Museum has a good specimen, with a central painting of a hermit and landscape background, surrounded by a delicate border of arabesques. Little is known of the artist. Another signature which occurs on Siena ware is No. 10, in one case conjoined with the date 1542. Majolica with plain Florence, blue enamel is a rare variety, and has been attributed to Luca or Andrea della f ^ f*^^ Robbia, some pieces being marked as in ^ -_ ^=. JT No. 11, apparently for " Luca della Robbia, 1 1^. x , I A^ Florentia." It has no . ^ * X. s* rr painting, but was partly gilt; in colour the enamel resembles the plain blue pottery of Persia men tioned above. It consists No. 10. No. 11. mostly of vases moulded Potters marks, with flutings and bosses after a metal design ; very few pieces exist. The beautiful sculpture in enamelled terra-cotta made by the Delia Robbia family will be treated of under the head of ROBBIA. Venice. Venetian majolica was not largely produced till towards the second half of the 16th century. In the earlier part of that century the few potters of Venice appear to have chiefly occupied themselves with attempts to produce true porcelain. The earliest dated speci men of Venetian majolica is of the year 1540. Some of this ware is very decorative in effect, and has paintings of graceful and elaborate foliage, scroll-work, and arabesques, designed with great intricacy. It is in blue and white, the main enamel ground being a very pale blue, and the design in deeper shades of blue with high lights in pure white. Others have land scapes in blue and white, with grace ful, but too realistic borders of fruit and flowers in yellow, green, and blue, somewhat later in style. Mark No. 12 occurs on some of the finest Vene tian majolica. Towards the end of the 16th century there was a rapid falling off in the artistic beauty of majolica paintings, and not solely in the execution : the pigments also be came thin and poor, with very often a disagreeable " granular " look. Some effective pottery was produced at Venice, c. 1590-1620, with a deep ultra marine blue enamel ground, on which IP Potter s mark. No. 12. Later designs were painted in white, a style of ware which was largely manufactured at Nevers in France a few years later (see fig. 62 below). All through the 17th and 18th centuries majolica in a degraded i- form was produced at many places in Italy ; but most of the old kilns, such as those of Deruta, Gubbio, and Faenza, fell into disuse. The latest kind of majolica, decorated with coarse paintings in blues and yellows of rather harsh tint, was largely produced at Turin, Genoa, Venice, Savona, Castello, Naples, Montehipo, and other cities. The older potteries at Pesaro and Urbino still continued in work, but produced nothing of real merit. A common mark on Turin ware is No. 13 ; and on Savona majolica one of the two forms in No. 14 often occurs. In the beginrmig of the 17th century spirited copies were made of the magnificent Rhodian pottery, such as that shown in fig. 48 above, but with pigments very inferior No. 13. No. 14. Potters marks. to those of the originals. At Capo di Monte, near Naples, a manu factory of pottery and porcelain was started under royal patronage in 1736; but it was more celebrated for the production of porcelain than of enamelled wares. Of late years clever imitations of the old majolica have been produced in Italy, especially from the workshop of the marquis Ginori. Even the old lustre colours are successfully reproduced ; but most of the modern majolica is marred by a want of spirit and freedom, the natural result of its being a too servile copy of a bygone style. Shapes of Majolica. The most carefully finished and finest paint- Shaj ings are as a rule on plates, which were of various forms, from almost flat disks to the tondini with wide flat rims and deep bowl -like centres. Many of the jugs, vases, and ewers are extremely graceful in form, some suggested by the bronze vessels of ancient Rome, others taken from Greek vases. Piccolpasso gives sketches of the principal shapes, and a long list of special names, not now of much importance, as they varied in different manufactories and even workshops in the same town. The character of the non-pictorial decorations combines many different elements of style. In some of the patterns we see a survival of earlier mediaeval and native Italian taste and invention. Others, especially the large ewers of Cafaggiolo and Faenza, have flowers taken from Persian pottery, but treated in a thoroughly original way. Some plates, painted in the silver lustre only, are almost imitations of Hispano- Moorish ware or actual majolica made in the Balearic Islands. In all the scroll -patterns, mingled with grotesques, it is easy to trace the influence of the ancient wall -decorations from the baths of Titus and other buried buildings, the discovery of which at the beginning of the 16th century did so much to destroy the lingering mediaeval spirit and substitute a pseudo-classical style, which finally had so fatal an effect on all branches of art in Italy. Collections. The chief collections of the majolica of Italy are Coll those of the South Kensington Museum (perhaps the most com- tiou pletely representative of all), the Bargello in Florence, the museums of Milan, Venice, Turin, Pesaro, Urbino, and other places in Italy. The Hotel Cluny and the Louvre in Paris, the Ceramic Museum at Sevres, as well as Limoges, Berlin, Vienna, Munich, and St Peters burg, have good collections. The British Museum collection is not large, but it is one of the most important, from the number of " signed " pieces that it contains, and from the fact that nearly all its specimens are remarkable for their exceptional beauty or some point of special interest. 1 Literature. For Italian majolica, see Vasari, Lives ofBattistn Franco, Btton- talenti, and Luca della Robbia (eel. Milanesi, 1882) ; Meurer, Italienische Majolica- flicssen, 1881 ; Corona, IM, Ceramica, 1879 ; Vanzolini, Istorie delle fabliriche di Majoliche, Pesaro, 1879 (a most valuable reprint of the best old treatises on the subject, including Piccolpasso s illustrated MS.); Uarceland Dflange, Faiences Italiennes, 1S64 ; Fortnum, South Kensington Museum Catalogue of Majolica, 1873 ; Jacquemart, Les Majoliques de la collection Campana, 1862, also article in Gaz. des Beaux- Arts, xiii. p. 289; Drake, Venetian Ceramics, 1868; Lazari, Notizia della raccolta Correr, 1859 ; Raffaelli, Maioliche lavorate in Caste! Durante, 184t> ; Bonghi, Majoliche di cittd di Castello, 1856 ; Casati, Les Faiences de Diruta, 1874; Campori, Maiolica di Ferrara, 1871; Delsette, Maioliche di Pesaro, 1845 ; Frati, Maioliche di Pesaro, 1844 ; Torteroli, La Maiolica Savonese, 1856 ; Pungileoni, Pitture in Maioliche di Urbino, 1857 ; Brancaleoni, Mastro Giorgio di Giibbio, Pesaro, 1857. For information on the marks on majolica, see Genolini, Maiol. ital., Marche e Monogrammi, Milan, 1881 ; and De Mely, La Cemmirfue ital., Sigles et Monogrammes, Paris, 1884. Many valuable articles on majolica are scattered through the volumes of the Gaz. des Beaux -Arts. SECTION XI. SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE. Spanish. Spanish pottery is for the most part a coarse Spr .1 imitation of Italian majolica, chiefly made at Valencia, P ot Triana (Seville), and Talavera. Some of the enamelled ware made at the last-named town is elaborately painted with figure -subjects in blues, yellow, green, and manganese purple, of extremely bad taste and feebleness of drawing. 2 The simpler pottery made at Valencia a little before and after the year 1700, though rudely painted, is very decora tive in effect. Large plates often have conventional flowers or profile heads, somewhat after the style of some of the earliest majolica of Italy, and are coarsely painted in blue and yellow. In the 18th century good enamelled pottery 1 The year 1884 will be memorable in the history of majolica for the sale and dispersal of the important collection formed in the 18th century by Sir Andrew Fountaine of Narford. A few specimens were secured for the South Kensington and British Museums, but some of the finest pieces were bought for France, especially a magnificent Faenza plate, dated 1508, which fetched 966. Several of the Pesaro and Urbino dishes sold for between 200 and 300.
2 See Casati, Les Faiences de Talavera, 1874.