At the period of which we write, Italy had become the leading nation of Europe in all that pertained to literature and the arts; her painters, sculptors, and poets, had thrown over her people and history a glory, or rather a glamour, which was but the iridescence which whispered of decay. Within a century all had sunk into insignificance and palsy. To-day the world visits Italy to see with curious eyes what she has been, not what she is.
The art and the maiolica which she now produces are but copies, and too often bad copies, of that past. The manufactories of Ginori at Florence, and of Giustiniani at Naples, make much good work; but, so far as I have seen, they blindly copy the shapes, the colors, and the decoration, of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and attempt nothing more. And the pity is that we, who buy to-day, seem to want only those!
In our pursuit of art it may be well to remember that no nation can be created by “art,” and none can be saved by it. When it is enlisted only in copying the past, it means feebleness and decay.
From about the year 1500 to 1560 is counted the “fine period” of maiolica-painting, when the painters of whom I have spoken were transferring the compositions of such artists as Raffaelle, Giulio Romano, and Parmegiano, to the clay. These have always had a great value, and always will. The prices vary as the fashion varies. I find at the Bernal sale, in 1856, the prices quoted range from five to one hundred and twenty pounds, since which time they have enormously increased, so that Marryat quotes one piece at eight hundred and eighty pounds; and a beautiful ruby-lustred dish of Gubbio maiolica, exhibited in Sir Richard Wallace’s collection at Bethnal Green, was said to have cost forty thousand dollars, which one easily doubts. The most extreme prices were and are paid for the elaborate figure-pieces copied from the works of Raphael and others. When to these are added the brilliant lustres of Gubbio, we have all that maiolica can show.
When the fabric began to decline in quality, the elaborate figure-painting rapidly went out of use, and arabesques of all kinds, conceits of all kinds—birds, boys, monsters, anything—came in to vary the decoration: these could be done by inferior painters; and the decline of maiolica was as sudden as its rise had been rapid.
Gubbio.—I have spoken of a beautiful plate, brilliant with its ruby-lustre, exhibited at Bethnal Green in the collection of Sir Richard Wallace. The work done at this small town of Gubbio is noted for its lustres; for, while other maiolicas also were decorated with these exquisite flashings of color, these had a marked superiority. The paintings applied there, like those at Urbino, Castel-Durante, and the other “botegas,” were in considerable variety, including sacred, profane, and historical subjects; the beauty and the value of these colored lustres were soon discovered. To one man the especial honor has been given of making them, whether he was the discoverer or not. He is known as Maestro Giorgio Andreoli, usually called “Maestro Giorgio.” He was not only a painter and designer, but he early saw and seized upon the magical art of imparting an added beauty by the use of what is termed lustre. It was applied before his day by the Moors of Spain and Majorca, and also by the potters at Pesaro. But Giorgio seems to have produced results finer than any; and one, the ruby-color, seems to be identified with him. Besides the ruby, he used, with great effect, gold, silver, and copper lustres; and not only were these applied to the paintings done under his eye, but works from other factories were sent to him to be endued with this subtile charm.
I cannot do better than to give here the results of Mr. Fortnum’s careful study of this subject:
“Chiefly under the direction of one man, it would seem that the produce of the Gubbio furnaces was for the most part of a special nature; namely, a decoration of the pieces with the lustre-pigments, producing those brilliant metallic-ruby, golden, and opalescent tints which vary in every piece, and which assume almost every color of the rainbow as they reflect the light directed at varying angles upon their surface. That the Gubbio ware was of a special nature, and produced only at a few fabriques almost exclusively devoted to that class of decoration, is to be reasonably inferred from Piccolpasso’s statement, who, speaking of the application of the maiolica-pigments, says, ‘Non ch’io ne abbia mai fatto ne men veduto fare.’ He was the maestro of an important botega at Castel-Durante, one of the largest and most productive of the Umbrian manufactories, within a few miles, also, of those of Urbino, with which he must have been intimately acquainted and in frequent correspondence. That he, in the middle of the sixteenth century, when all these works were at the highest period of their development, should be able to state that he had not only never applied or even witnessed the process of application of these lustrous enrichments, is, we think, a convincing proof that they were never adopted at either of those seats of the manufacture of enameled pottery. Although much modified and improved, lustre-colors were not invented by Italian artists, but were derived from the potters of the East, probably from the Moors of Sicily, of Spain, or of Majorca. Hence (we once more repeat) the name ‘majolica’ was originally applied only to wares having the lustre enrichment; but, since the decline of the manufacture, the term has been more generally given: all varieties of Italian enameled pottery being usually, though wrongly, known as ‘maiolica.’
“That some of these early bacili, so well known, and apparently the work of one artist, were made at Pesaro, whence the secret and probably the artist passed to Gubbio, is far from improbable. The reason for this emigration is not known, but it may be surmised that the large quantity of broom and other brush-wood necessary for the reducing process of the reverberatory furnace in which this lustre was produced might have been more abundantly supplied by the hills of Gubbio than in the vicinity of the larger city on the coast. That the process of producing these metallic effects was costly, we gather from Piccolpasso’s statement that sometimes not more than six pieces out of a hundred succeeded in the firing.
“The fame of the Gubbio wares is associated almost entirely with one name, that of Giorgio Andreoli. We learn from the Marchese Brancaleoni that this artist was the son of Pietro, of a ‘Castello’ called ‘Judeo,’ in the diocese of Pavia; and that, accompanied by his brother Salimbene, he went to Gubbio in the second half of the fifteenth century. He appears to have left and again returned thither in 1492, accompanied by his younger brother Giovanni. They were enrolled as citizens on the 23d of May, 1498, on pain of forfeiting five hundred ducats if they left the city in which they engaged to continue practising their ceramic art. Patronized by the dukes of Urbino, Giorgio was made ‘castellano’ of Gubbio. Passeri states that the family was noble in Pavia. It is not known why or when he was created a ‘Maestro’—a title prized even more than nobility—but it is to be presumed that it took place at the time of his enrollment as a citizen, his name with the title ‘Maestro’ first appearing on a document dated that same year, 1498. Piccolpasso states that maiolica-painters were considered noble by profession. The family of Andreoli and the ‘Casa’ still exist in Gubbio, and it was asserted by his descendant, Girolamo Andreoli, who died some forty years since, that political motives induced their emigration from Pavia.