children's balls, were given tiny plates of sugar-plums, whereon a dancing Cupid sounding his cymbal was often painted. 10. Massa collection,—this has a sadder import: Un bel morire tutta la vita onora, "A beautiful death confers illustration on a lifetime," was, no doubt, in memory of some venerated friend, and might have been used to serve her funeral meats.*

But to return to the uses of this pottery. Those who have observed the rich effect of the majolica sparingly displayed in the late Medieval Exhibition at the Adelphi [1850] may readily admit that, on a buffet lit up by Italian suns, its glowing tints and attractive forms were no mean substitute for the as yet scarce precious metals. Ingenuity was taxed to invent designs and adaptations of an art in which fashion ran riot: - Tiles for floors or panelling (see p. 385.); vases of mere ornament; beakers; epergnes; wine-coolers; perfume-sprinklers; fountains, whence there flowed alternately, as if by magic, water or wine of nine varieties at the bidding of the bewildered guest†; wine

*In order to finish our notice of mottoes, a few others may be here added. 11. Massa collection; a female portrait, on whose breast are the arms of Montefeltro: Viva, Viva il Duca di Urbino. 12. Rome, Kestner Museum; another female portrait: Ibit ad geminos lucida fama pollo (?) 13. Kestner Museum and that at the Hague; St. Thomas probing the Saviour's wound: Beati qui non viderunt et crediderunt, “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." 14. Spoleto, Tordelli collection; a beautiful female resisting a crowd of armed soldiery: 1540. Italia mesta sottosopra volta, como pei venti in mare le torbid onde, ch' or da una parte et hor da l' altra volta. "1540. dejected Italy, tossed like the windlashed waves, turning now hither now thither." 15. Rome, satire on the sack of Rome; a warrior in antique armour strikes with a two-handed sword at a naked woman stretched in a lascivious posture, behind whom five others tremblingly await their fate it is inscribed behind, 1534. Roma lasciva dal buon Carlo quinto partita a mezza. Fra Xanto a. da Rovigo, Urbino. "Rome, the wanton, cut up by the good Charles V.; by Brother Xante of Rovigo, at Urbino." This plate, glowing with iridescence, contradicts Passeri's opinion (quoted at p. 392.) that stanniferous glaze was never practised in the Urbino workshops, as does the tile introduced three pages below. 16. Rome; a grandly draped female, sitting in desolation over a dead child: Fiorenzo mesta i morti figlii piange, "Disconsolate Florence weeps for her lifeless offspring" in the plague visitation of 1538. Though with the most brilliant ruby and gold lustre I ever saw, it has in blue the cipher X, probably also of Xante in Urbino.

:

† One such, nearly four feet high, tapering upwards like a pagoda, with the arms of Duke Guidobaldo II, was very conspicuous in the late Medieval Exhibition,

cups clustered with grapes, through an orifice in which the liquor was sucked, anticipating the American device for discussing sherry-cobbler. Of drug-bottles and pots we have spoken. Sauce-boats, salt-cellars, and inkstands gave rise to endless caprices, in the guise" of beasts, and of fowl and fishes;" and to these may be added figure-groups of saints, grotesque characters and animals, fruits, trees, and pilgrims' bottles.

In the decorations there was generally a consistency, too often lost sight of by modern artificers. Thus, toilet-basins were painted with marine deities, water-nymphs, or aquatic allegories; fruit-stands with fruits and vintages; wine-cups with vinefestoons. Among the oddities may be mentioned tiny tea-cups, into the paste for which was mingled a portion of dust carefully gathered in sweeping out the holy house at Loreto, their sanctity being vouched by the inscription, Con pol. di S. C., "With dust from the Santa Casa." The effigy of the Madonna of Loreto is often affixed, in colour and design on a par with the superstition. A pair of these was shown at the Medieval Exhibition of 1850, No. 562. of the catalogue, belonging to Mrs. Palliser.

Having thus considered the various sites and sorts of Urbino majolica, its processes and purposes, we shall mention some of the artists employed upon it. Of these there were two classes, the potter who mixed and manipulated, modelled and moulded clay-clod into an article of convenience or luxury, and the painter whose pencil rendered it an object of the fine arts; latterly, however, these branches were combined, and were carried on by a class of artificers called vasaii or vasari, and boccalini, according as vases or bottles prevailed in their workshops. The little that has come to our knowledge regarding

belonging to Mr. Falke, and one of the great cisterns invented by Giacomo Lanfranco (see p. 389. and Appendix No. XIII.) is in the possession of Sir Archibald Ilay Campbell, Bart., of Garscube, Scotland. Another of these, much broken, brought sixty-four guineas at the Stowe sale, where a salt-cellar, with goats' heads, masques, and festoons, reached ten and a half guineas.

those by whom the early Pesarese and Gubbian ware was fashioned and decorated will be found in a former page. The later makers of Pesaro and Urbino have more frequently left us the means of identifying their performances in monograms or signatures, usually inscribed in blue characters on the back of plates. But before considering these, we may dispose of the vulgar error which has given Raffaele's name to Italian porcelain. Superficial or romancing writers have often seriously repeated, with purely fictitious additions, Malvasia's petulant sneer, which he was fain quickly to retract, that the great Sanzio was a painter of plates; others have, without better grounds, made him assistant to his father, a potter. There is however nothing connecting him with the ceramic art beyond a loose notice by Don V. Vittorio, in his Osservazioni Sopra Felsina Pittrice (pp. 44. 112-14.), of a letter from Raffaele referring to designs supplied by him to the Duchess for majolica. That he did supply such drawings is possible, though discredited by Pungileoni, and, if true, it in no way compromises his status, at a period when high art lent a willing hand to decorate and elevate the adjuncts and appliances of domestic life. This much is certain, that compositions emanating from Sanzio and his school were employed in ornamenting porcelain during the sixteenth century, but they were doubtless obtained from his pupils, or from the engravings of Marc Antonio. Such is the tile here introduced from the original in my possession (8 inches by 7), which is one of the most Raffaelesque I have met with, and which, though not signed, displays the colouring practised by Fra Xanto, the blue and green being deep and well marked, the orange and yellow of the clouds and curtain in metallic iridescence.

In this, as in most instances, the design is somewhat marred by the colours having run when laid on, or during vitrification. The mistake as to Sanzio has been partly occasioned by confusion with Raffaele del Colle, who painted at the Imperiale, and is said by tradition to have contributed sketches for the Pesarese workshops, and also with another Raffaele Ciarla,

who seems to have been a potter, about 1530-60. Battles, sieges, and mythological figures resembling the vigorous inventions of Guilio Romano, are not unfrequent; and in the Kestner Museum, I have observed several plates of choice design and Raffaelesque character, especially the Fall and Expulsion of our first Parents, and the Gathering of Manna. But these are satisfactorily accounted for by Paseri's statement, that, with a view to improve a native manufacture which brought to his state both estimation and wealth, Duke Guidobaldo II. took infinite pains in collecting a better class of drawings and prints from celebrated masters, on the dispersion of which, in consequence of their being sought for by collectors, the pictorial excellence of majolica rapidly declined. The first symptom of decay was the substitution of monotonous arabesques, weak in colour and repeated from the type introduced by Raffaele, in place of figure groups and other subjects requiring composition and design.

Premising that we cannot now distinguish exactly between potters and the painters, where these cognate occupations chanced to be divided, and that the same persons occasionally wrought at various places in the duchy, we shall supply a notice of the names we have met with in connection with the workshops of Pesaro, Urbino, and Castel Durante, during the sixteenth century.

Terenzio Terenzi painted vases and plates at Pesaro, one of which he signed "Terenzio fecit, 1550," but his usual mark was T. Another is inscribed, "Questo piatto fu fatto in la Bottega de Mastro Baldassare, Vasaro da Pesaro, e fatto per mano de Ferenzio fiolo di Mastro Matteo Boccalaro." He was doubtless the person who, under the surname of Rondolino, became notorious at Rome for his clever pictorial forgeries of the great master's works, although said by Ticozzi to have been born at Pesaro in 1570. The signature "Mastro Gironimo, Vasaro in Pesaro, J. P." occurs from 1542 to 1560, and to him Mr.