In this Capo di Monte porcelain we may note generally the prevalence of extreme rococo forms. The glaze of the white ware has a pleasant warm tone resembling that of some of the Fukien porcelain, which may in part have served as a model.
When the factory was re-established first at Portici and then again at Naples, a very different influence is perceptible. There is a service at Windsor presented by the King of Naples to George iii. in 1787, decorated with ‘peintures Hetrusques,’ that is to say, with reproductions of antiques in the Museo Borbonico. This later ware generally bears as a mark an N surmounted by a crown.
Doccia.—The interest of the factory at Doccia, some five miles to the west of Florence, where majolica and many varieties of porcelain have been made for the last one hundred and seventy years, centres round the Ginori family. The founder of those works, the Marchese Carlo Ginori,[203] who belonged to an old Florentine family, was sent, in 1737, by the Grand Duke on a diplomatic mission to the Emperor Francis i. He had already, at his villa near Sesto, succeeded in making some imitations of Oriental porcelain, and on his return from Vienna he brought back with him the arcanist Carl Wandhelein. With his assistance Ginori was able in a short time to turn out some well modelled statuettes. The paste, however, was not very white or uniform, and the larger pieces are generally disfigured by fissures. To this time belongs probably a large statuette of a crouching Venus at South Kensington. This kind of ware had its inspiration, no doubt, in the ambitious attempts to replace the works of the sculptor with which the Meissen factory was occupied about this time. Ginori was soon after appointed Governor of Leghorn,[204] and he is said to have despatched a vessel to China expressly to bring back the kaolin of that country.
PLATE XLII. 1, 2 AND 3—CAPO DI MENTE
4—DOCCIA
The works at Doccia and the schools and museums attached to them are frequently referred to by our eighteenth century travellers. There appears to have been a period of decline, as was not unnatural, during the Napoleonic wars, but by the early part of the nineteenth century the factory at Doccia had become one of the most important in Europe. On the death of the founder, in 1757, the works had been carried on by his son Lorenzo, and he in his turn was succeeded by Carlo Leopoldo, who introduced a new type of furnace. This remarkable dynasty of noble potters has carried on the Doccia works to the present day.
Beside a large outturn of enamelled fayence and of hard porcelain, ad uso di Francia, a milder or hybrid type of paste has been largely made, and the materials have been obtained from many sources, native and foreign. The dealers’ shops in Italy have been inundated with imitations of the old majolica, and with the help of moulds obtained from the moribund Capo di Monte works, close imitations of that ware have long been made at Doccia. Indeed the bulk of the porcelain decorated with mythological figures in low relief (more especially the larger pieces so often seen in dealers’ shops and in salerooms) has its origin in Tuscany rather than at Naples.
The mark, a star formed of two superimposed triangles, is derived from the arms of the family, but this mark has often been omitted.
In the eighteenth century many kinds of ware were imitated; the plain white porcelain is, however, the most interesting, such as the already mentioned statuettes and the imitations of the Fukien ware, specimens of which were sent by Sir Horace Mann to Walpole in 1760. This kind of ware is whiter and of a more dead aspect than that made at Naples and at Buen Retiro. In the Franks collection are specimens from an interesting series of small medallions with portraits of the grand ducal and other families, in white relief on a grey-blue ground. These were made at Doccia, probably towards the end of the eighteenth century.