Fig. 65.—Mezza-Maiolica.
Before giving some particulars of these manufactures, it may be well to refer to a name which seems to take precedence of others among the artists in ceramic work in Italy. This man was Luca della Robbia, born in the year 1400. M. Ritter says of him: “He was a sculptor first, and a potter afterward. An artist of the highest power, he was inspired with all the marvelous æsthetic force and subtilty and fertility of his age and of his country. He was not satisfied, as other sculptors are, with form-beauty alone, but cast about to add to his moulded figures the further beauties of coloring and surface-texture. He no doubt well knew the wares of the Moors of Spain, and probably was acquainted with the secret of the tin-glaze already used by the Italian potters. It is needless to assume, as most writers do, that he discovered tin-glazes for himself; but he at any rate adopted the process, and he has left us bass-reliefs and even life-sized statues covered with a fine stanniferous polychrome-glaze, which are among the wonders of Italian Renaissance art, and which to this day are, in their way, unsurpassed triumphs of skill.”
The portrait ([Fig. 66]) which we give shows him to be among the strong and able men, who might not only stand before kings, but might be a king himself.