[239] The subject has since met with more attention, but no other work has been expressly dedicated to it. We may refer to Vasari, Lanzi, and Gaye, passim; Ricci, Notizie delle Belle Arti in Gubbio; Kunstblatt, No. 51; Montanari, Lettera interno ad alcune Majoliche dipinte nella collezione Massa in Giornale Arcadico di Roma, XXXVII., 333; Brongniart, Traité des Arts Ceramiques; Marryat, History of Pottery and Porcelain. It is both an advantage and a pleasure to refer readers unacquainted with this interesting art, to the charming and accurate representations of azulejo, Robbian ware, and majolica, given in the last of these works. It is greatly to be desired that Mr. Marryat may, in continuation of his subject, and with access to English collections unknown to me, supply much information which this slight sketch cannot include.
[240] We enter not upon the contested question of the origin of these productions; wherever made, they prove the taste of those who owned and appreciated them. Besides, the ruder varieties were certainly indigenous to Central Italy from an early period. Neither need we trace the analogy between majolica and enamel. The latter was not unknown to the ancients, though brought by them to no ornamental perfection. During the dark ages, it was used as an accessory of metal sculpture for many purposes of religious art, and was even introduced into large works, such as bronze doors. The splendid reliquary at Orvieto, enamelled on silver at Siena by Ugolino Vieri in 1338, as well as the paliotti of Florence and Pistoja executed in that and the following centuries, show to what perfection this art had attained, ere the painting of porcelain was practised in Italy.
[*241] For all that concerns the Della Robbia, cf. Maud Cruttwell, Luca and Andrea della Robbia and their School (Dent, 1904).
[*242] The finest collection of Italian majolica in the world is probably that in Pesaro in the possession of the Municipality.
[243] Archiv. Dipl. Urbinate at Florence [1845].
[244] Gaye, Carteggio, I., p. 304. He was probably Roberto Malatesta, who served the Florentines in 1479, and died 1482; so Gaye's date of 1490 seems erroneous.
[245] See [vol. II.]
[246] In 1845, the Canon Staccoli at Urbino showed me a plate equally feeble in design and colour, signed F.M. Doiz Fiamengo fecit, a proof that it was no despised production of the time.
[247] The rules of syntax are in these often overstepped, and conjecture left to eke out the sense. My reading is literal, of basta la fe del povere sevedore, which is intelligible, and rhymes, as is not the case with basta la fede, e 'l povere se vedo, the version of Passeri. This author tells us of a certain coy or mischievous Philomela who pierced her lover's present with holes and made of it a mouse-trap! Also of an exquisite Gubbian plate, portraying the Daniella Diva, who displays a wounded heart with the legend Oimè! "Ah me." A drug-bottle in Mr. Marryat's collection, and engraved in his work, has the portrait of a lady whose squint is given to the life.
[248] In order to finish our notice of mottoes, a few others may be here added. 11. Massa collection; a female portrait, on whose breast are the arms of Montefeltro: Viva, Viva il Duca di Urbino. 12. Rome, Kestner Museum; another female portrait: Ibit ad geminos lucida fama pollo (?). 13. Kestner Museum and that at the Hague; St. Thomas probing the Saviour's wound: Beati qui non viderunt et crediderunt, "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." 14. Spoleto, Tordelli collection; a beautiful female resisting a crowd of armed soldiery: 1540. Italia mesta sottosopra volta, como pei venti in mare le torbid'onde, ch'or da una parte et hor da l'altra volta. "1540. Dejected Italy, tossed like the wind-lashed waves, turning now hither now thither." 15. Rome,—satire on the sack of Rome; a warrior in antique armour strikes with a two-handed sword at a naked woman stretched in a lascivious posture, behind whom five others tremblingly await their fate: it is inscribed behind, 1534. Roma lasciva dal buon Carlo quinto partita a mezza. Fra Xanto a. da Rovigo, Urbino. "Rome, the wanton, cut up by the good Charles V.; by Brother Xante of Rovigo, at Urbino." This plate, glowing with iridescence, contradicts Passeri's opinion (already quoted) that stanniferous glaze was never practised in the Urbino workshops, as does the tile introduced three pages below. 16. Rome; a grandly draped female, sitting in desolation over a dead child: Fiorenzo mesta i morti figlii piange, "Disconsolate Florence weeps for her lifeless offspring," in the plague visitation of 1538. Though with the most brilliant ruby and gold lustre I ever saw, it has in blue the cipher X, probably also of Xante in Urbino.