The small town of Monte Lupo, nestling under its “rocca” on the southern bank of the river at the opening of the Val d’ Arno inferiore, is on the road from Florence and near to Empoli. Its pottery is distinguished (or we should rather say notorious) for having produced the ugliest and most inferior painted pieces that bear the signature of their maker and the place where they were made.
But a ware of a different kind formed of a red clay and glazed with a rich treacle-brown or black glaze, the forms of the pieces being sometimes extremely elegant, has been also assigned to this locality. Some of them are enriched with gilding and with subjects painted in oil colours, not by a ceramic artist. We are informed, however, by signor Giuseppe Raffaelli that wares of this description were made at Castel Durante, and that a fine example of them, with portraits of a count Maldini and his wife, is preserved in the library at Urbania. He describes them as made of a red earth covered with an intensely black glaze, on which the oil painting and gilding were executed. It is nevertheless probable that Monte Lupo produced a similar ware, and pieces occur ornamented with reliefs and with raised work, engobé, with a white or yellow clay on the brown ground, by the process known as pâte sur pâte. Certain pieces marbled on the surface to imitate tortoiseshell, agate, &c. are ascribed to this pottery.
At Sèvres is a tazza with ill painted subject on white ground and inscribed,—
“Dipinta, Giovinale Tereni
“da Montelupo.”
and a dish in the hôtel Cluny at Paris, painted with the subject of the rape of Helen somewhat in the manner of the Urbino wares, has at the back,
“Vrate délina
“fate in Monte.”
This, we think, more likely to have been the production of Monte Lupo than of Monte Feltro, to which it has been ascribed.
There can be little doubt that potteries existed in the neighbourhood of the important commercial city of Pisa, and it is more than probable that the painted and incised bacini, which are encrusted into her church towers and façades, are mostly of local manufacture during the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries. On this subject we must refer the reader to the remarks in the chapter on Persian and Hispano-moresque wares. Among the latter, references will be found to two writers who stated that a commerce existed between Valencia and Pisa, from whence faïence was imported into Spain in exchange for the wares of that country. It does not however follow that this faïence was entirely of Pisan production, although exported thence; but it is not improbable that a considerable quantity was made there for exportation.
Antonio Beuter, praising the wares of Spain, says that they are equal in beauty to those of Pisa and other places. This was about 1550. Early in the next century Escolano says, speaking of the wares of Manises, “that in exchange for the faïences that Italy sends us from Pisa, we export to that country cargoes of that of Manises.”