At San Quirico cardinal Chigi established a work about 1714, inspired with the idea of reviving the art of painting on faience. It was directed by Piezzentili, a painter who had given some study to the celebrated vases by Orazio Fontana. On his death Bartolomeo Terchi, Feschi, or Ferchi, seems to have worked at or directed the establishment, for in the Louvre is a plaque representing Moses striking the rock, and signed “Bar Terchi Romano in S. Quirico.” We shall meet with this wandering artist also at Bassano. With other members of his family he seems to have worked at various potteries throughout Italy, and examples occur on which his or their signatures appear, accompanied only by the patronymic “Romano,” and which are of course difficult to assign to any one of the fabriques at which we know them to have worked.
Ferdinando Maria Campani before going to Siena worked also at this fabrique; its productions were not sold, but given as presents by the cardinal.
We have very little positive information in respect to the fabrique of Diruta in the Papal States. Alluded to by Passeri as a pottery near Foligno where pieces were produced remarkable for the whiteness of the paste, we are led to the supposition that he may have confounded the wares produced at other neighbouring localities with those made at Diruta: and he does not inform us whether it produced lustred wares or only those of polychrome decoration. A few years since certain plates came under the notice of collectors inscribed “In Deruta,” the subjects painted in blue outline, and lustred with a brassy golden colour. Doubt and uncertainty had long existed as to the spot where the large “bacili” and other pieces of a well-known and abundant ware, lustred with a golden pigment of peculiarly pearly effect in certain lights, had been produced, and the discovery of these signed examples, having a somewhat similar metallic enrichment, caused connoisseurs to grasp at the, perhaps hasty, conclusion, that to Diruta must be assigned those wares of earlier date and hitherto unknown locality, and that Diruta must have possessed a pottery of very early time and important character. But after an examination and comparison of signed specimens, and others which are with reasonable probability considered to be of this fabrique, we are compelled to conclude that the productions of Diruta were generally inferior to, and in many instances copied or derived from, those of the Gubbio or earlier Pesaro types.
Castel di Diruta or Deruta is a “borgo” or dependency of Perugia, on the road from that city to Orvieto by Todi. It is but a few miles from Perugia, within an easy day’s journey of Gubbio, and although it may be reasonable to presume that potteries existed there from an early period, we think it more probable that they derived the use of the lustre pigments from Gubbio.
It is extremely difficult in many instances to decide with any degree of certainty as to whether some individual early specimens of the lustred ware alluded to above, be of Pesaro, of Gubbio, or of Diruta workmanship. We have little hesitation in assigning the dish in the next woodcut to Diruta; the dance of Cupids is after Marc Antonio. The similarity of the process necessary to such productions entails a corresponding similarity of result, but we notice a somewhat coarser grounding, a golden reflet of a brassy character, a ruby, when it (rarely) occurs, of pale dull quality,
looser outlines of a colder and heavier blue, and in the pieces not lustred the same tones of colour, a dark blue approaching to that of Caffaggiolo in depth but wanting its brilliancy, the use of a bright yellow to heighten the figures in grotesques, &c. in imitation of the golden lustre, and a thin green. The drawing is generally of an inferior stamp, and a certain tout ensemble pervades the pieces difficult to define but which more or less prevails.
The discovery within the last few years of a fine work, signed with the artist’s monogram, the date 1527, and the place at which
it was painted, is all we know of the existence of a botega at Fabriano. There can be little doubt that many such local and individual furnaces existed during the sixteenth century under the direction of ceramic artists, in many instances an emigrant from one of the more important centres, and encouraged to set up for himself at another city by the patronage of the leading families. This plate, which has for subject the “Madonna della Scala” after Marc Antonio’s engraving from Raffaelle, is cleverly painted, and on the reverse is the inscription of which we have given a facsimile. It was exhibited by M. Spitzer, of Paris, at the “Exposition Universelle,” was purchased from him by signor Alffº. Castellani, and subsequently sold at Christie’s for £114. Another example by the same hand, and with the same subject but without signature, was sold at the same sale.