The manufactory at Gubbio had for its founder Giorgio Andreoli, who, both as a sculptor and an artist in majolica, executed works as remarkable in form as in effect. “The palette of mineral colours adopted by Andreoli was the most perfect of the period; and coppery yellows, ruby reds, are frequently used in his works.” There are still extant some works signed by this master (a title officially conferred on him by a patent of nobility); one is a slab in the Sèvres collection, and another a tablet representing the Holy Family.
Urbino—of which the dukes, especially Guidobaldo II., signalized themselves as the most zealous patrons of ceramic art—became famous through the works of Francesco Xanto, who executed historical subjects on enamelled clay. Xanto had as a successor Orazio Fontana, who has been named “the Raphael of Majolica,” and who produced, among other magnificent objects, some vases which, when subsequently seen by Christina of Sweden, so impressed her by their beauty that she offered to exchange for them silver vases of equal size.
It was at the manufactory of Deruta that imaginative subjects on majolica were first introduced; Bassano was famous for its landscapes with ruins; Venice became celebrated for delicate ware with repoussé reliefs; Faenza is still proud of her Guido Salvaggio; Florence of her Flaminio Fontana, &c.
Majolica attained to its highest point of brilliancy under the Duke of Urbino whom we have already named, Guidobaldo II., who was ever ready to make any sacrifice in order that this art might be introduced into the manufactories under his patronage. He even obtained from Raphael and Giulio Romano some original drawings to serve as examples; and this feeling having once been inculcated, we soon find artists of renown, such as Batista Franco and Raphael del Colle, tendering their services for the ornamentation of majolica. Thus the productions of this period are distinguishable among all others for harmony of composition and accurate drawing, qualities which render them specially noteworthy (Fig. 36). Then, almost immediately, followed the decline of this art. While flourishing more and more until the middle of the sixteenth century, the art of making majolica had fallen, at the termination of that epoch, into a kind of degenerate industry, swayed by the caprice of fashion, and thereby reduced to mannerism.
Nearly at the commencement of the renovation of ceramic art, Italian artisans had established themselves in various places, which then became so many artistic centres. Eastern Europe had for its earliest instructors three brothers, Giovanni, Tiseo, and Lazio, who settled at Corfu. Flanders was indebted for the knowledge of these processes to Guido of Savino, who took up his abode at Antwerp. And about the year 1520 we find a manufactory at Nuremberg, of which the ware, though materially differing in character from Italian majolica, may still very probably have been derived from Italy.
We may add that letters of the King of France mention that from 1456 there were certain revenues derivable from the “Beauvais Potteries;” and in the twenty-seventh chapter of the first book of “Pantagruel,” published in 1535, Rabelais places among the various articles composing the trophy of Panurge, “a saucer, a salt-cellar of clay, and a Beauvais goblet;” which proves, as M. de Sommerard remarks, “that as early as this date, there were manufactured in this city vessels of clay sufficiently good in quality to be placed on the table with silver and pewter utensils;” but it does not naturally follow that France had not long to wait for the man of genius who would soon leave her nothing to covet from Italy.
Fig. 36.—Cup, Italian Ware. In the Collection of Baron Alph. Rothschild. Taken from MM. Carle Delange and C. Borneman’s work.
About the year 1510, in a small village in Périgord, a child was born who, after receiving the rudiments of education, was obliged while still quite young to try to gain a livelihood by his own industry. This child’s name was Bernard Palissy. He first learnt the trade of a glazier, or rather of a glass-fitter and painter. This trade, while it initiated him into the principles of drawing, and gave him a certain insight into chemical manipulations, at the same time aroused in him a taste for art and the study of natural sciences. While “painting figures in order to gain his daily bread,” as he himself tells us in one of the works he has left behind him, and which gives us the highest opinion of his simple yet energetic nature, he applied himself to the study of the true principles of art in the works of the great Italian painters—the only artists then in repute. Owing to various circumstances the trade of glazier proving unprofitable, he at once began the study of geometry, and soon obtained credit, in the part of the country wherein he dwelt, as “a clever draughtsman of plans.” Such comparatively mechanical labour as this could not long suffice for the active vigour of a mind thirsting after progress and discovery. Moreover, Palissy, while employed on his calling as a land-surveyor, had never ceased to give close observation to the structure and composition of geological strata. With the purpose of dispelling the doubts in his mind, and also with the object of obtaining substantial confirmation regarding the system he had already originated, he began to travel. The result of his journeyings was the inauguration of a theory which, after having long been contemptuously rejected by the learned, was nevertheless destined to form the foundation of principles which are now considered as the basis of modern geological science.
