Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/651

MAJOLICA.] POTTERY 627 no 1 iired The mark used most frequently by Giorgio is shown in No. 5. A somewhat similar monogram was used by an earlier potter; an example dated 1491 is shown in No. 6. Though not the inventor of the ruby lustre, which was then so much admired, Giorgio appears to have been the chief potter of his time who used it. The fact is, the pro cess was a difficult one and required special skill, not in the preparation of the oxide of copper pigment but in the firing, so as to expose the colour to actual contact with the reducing flame without the pottery itself being shattered to pieces. Even with the best skill of the Gubbio potters a large proportion of the lustred ware perished in the kiln. The majolica potters of many other towns were in the habit of sending their otherwise finished wares to Gubbio for the sake of having the additional brilliance derived from lustre colours. In some cases a space for the lustres was left white ; in others rude dabs and splashes of ruby and yellow lustre were applied over completely finished paint ings of landscapes or figure-subjects, often in a very coarse and tasteless fashion. Some delicately painted plates are quite spoiled and vulgarized by the heavy touches of lustre that have been put over them. The ruby is in fact rather strong and hard in tone, and needed very careful applica tion to make it harmonize with the quieter non- lustre colours ; it is far more salient and metallic-looking than the fine yellow lustre of the early ware. In addition to the ruby, " gold " and " silver " lustres were used at Gubbio. The latter are a deep and a pale yellow. The pale silver lustre was made from oxide of silver ; the gold was a mix ture of copper and silver oxides. A great deal of the pro duce of Giorgio s workshop is very rude and of no artistic merit, while the best and most carefully painted wares usually err, in accordance with the rapidly declining taste of his time, in being far too pictorial. Copies of pictures crowded with figures, arranged without regard to the shape of the vessel they were meant to decorate, and painted with all the colours of the potter s palette, were most highly esteemed. Many of them are from designs by Raphael and other great painters, but are really quite unsuited for ceramic decoration. Giorgio s earlier works are, on the whole, in better taste, and some later portrait heads are very good. Fig. 59 shows a fine tazza in the Louvre signed at the back "exo^Giorg.," which is both nobly drawn and harmoni ous in colour ; its date isabout 1525. The fav ourite subjects on the pictured ("istoriata") majolica of Gubbio and elsewhere are scenes from Roman mytho logy, especially Ovid s Meta morphoses, and stories from classical 1 tory. Unluckily contemporary history is rare ; the British Museum has a good specimen, a plate painted with the defeat of Francis I. at the battle of Pavia. t It was at Urbino and Castel Durante that the produc tion^ elaborate pictured majolica was mostly carried on, For e:c officina, a phrase borrowed from the Roman potters stamps, see p. 619 supra. Gubbio tazza by Maestro Giorgio, with lady s portrait and inscription "Julia bella." especially between the years 1530 and 1560, under the patronage of the reigning dukes of the Delia Rovere family. Francesco Xanto Avelli, Guido Fontana, and Niccola da Urbino were specially celebrated for this class of work, and often used Marc Antonio Raimondi s engravings from Raphael s designs to decorate their plates and vases. 2 Many of these are painted with great delicacy and richness of effect in spite of their unsuitability for their special purpose and the comparative poverty of the potter s palette, which was, of course, limited to colours that would stand the severe heat of the kiln. The pictured wares of Urbino sometimes have the Gubbio lustre colours, but the best are without them. Another class of design was also used at Urbino with much better decorative effect. It con sisted of fanciful and graceful arabesques or floral scroll work mingled with grotesque figures or Cupids, all skil fully arranged to emphasize the main contours of the plate or vase. Branches of the oak tree in flowing and slightly geometrical lines are a frequent motive of de- sign, chosen in compliment to the Delia Rovere dukes, who bore an oak on their coat of arms. All these, but especially the pictured wares, were highly paid for, and sometimes were valued as much as silver plate. They were mostly Pottcr>s mark - No - 7 - "piatti di pompa," meant, that is, to hang on walls or ornament sideboards rather than for actual use. Some of the early productions of one of the Urbino potteries are marked with the graceful monogram No. 7. In a short sketch like this it is impossible to give even an outline of the many varieties of majolica produced in such profusion during the 16th century, but a few others of the more important kinds may be mentioned. The Faenza potteries produced one of the most Faenza. beautiful of the later varieties, chiefly plates with wide flat rims and deep centres, called "tondini," the borders decorated with delicate and minute arabesques, painted in several tints of a deep ultramarine blue of wonderful richness and decorative effect. In the centre is usually a coat of arms or a single figure, with a brilliant jewel-like touch of orange or deep red, which sets off to the utmost the blues of the border (see fig. 60). One of the most remarkable specimens of majolica painting, treated with the deli cate minuteness of an illuminated MS., is on a plate in the British Museum from the Faeuza workshops. It is a scene of the death of the Virgin, sur rounded by the apostles, copied with slight adap tations from an engraving by the German master Martin Schon- gauer. The Italian ceramic painter has slightly but skil fully altered the composition to fit it to the cir cular form of the plate, and has also given a more graceful cast to the mannered German faces of the original. The execution is won derfully delicate FIG. 60. Faenza plate (tondino), with border in deep and miniature- ultramarine blues, and central coat of arms in rich like, almost orange and red. (South Kensington Museum.) wholly done in different tints of blue, with a little yellow to suggest flesh colour, and high lights touched in with pure white enamel, the main enamel ground being white slightly tinged with pink. It is evi dently the work of a very able artist, and is a little picture of gem- 2 A namesake and relation of Raphael s was a skilful painter of istoriati pieces ; and hence has arisen the tradition that the great

painter occasionally decorated majolica (see RAPHAEL).