4. _Lustred Majolica_--This brilliant species of Italian pottery (to
which alone Piccolpasso applied the name majolica) seems to have been
mainly produced at Deruta and Gubbio, though experiments were made at
Cafaggiolo and probably at Faenza and Siena. Considering how much the
Italian majolist owed to the Spanish-Moorish potter, it is remarkable
that this beautiful method of decoration should have made so tardy an
appearance, for the earliest specimens do not appear to be much earlier
than the end of the 15th century, and the process was apparently
abandoned by the middle of the 16th. The lustre wares of Deruta,
probably the earliest made in Italy, have strongly-marked affinities
with their Spanish prototypes; the earlier examples are hardly to be
distinguished from Spanish wares, and to the last the ware remained
technically like the earlier ware, though with perfectly Italian
decorative treatment. Yet the best examples of Deruta silver lustre have
a quality of tone that has never been surpassed; a colour resembling a
wash of very transparent umber bearing a delicate nacreous film of the
most tender iridescence. The Gubbio lustre is best known to us through
the works of Maestro Giorgio, whose distinctive lustre is a magnificent
ruby-red unlike any other. In all probability the lustre process was so
quickly abandoned on the fine painted majolica, because the increasing
efforts to make a "picture" were discounted by so uncertain a process.
When one of the later majolica painters had spent weeks on the
decoration of some vase or dish, with an elaborate composition of
carefully drawn figures, it was not likely that he would care to expose
it to any risks that could be avoided. The risks of the lustre process
were inordinately great--Piccolpasso says, "Frequently only six pieces
were good out of a hundred"--so that its use was relegated only to
inferior wares, and then the process was relinquished and forgotten
until its rediscovery in the second half of the 19th century.
The history of the development of these noble wares is by no means
clear, nor is it always certain what part was played by each town in the
successive inventions of technical methods, decoration and colouring, so
that it is better, in such a general sketch as this, to treat the
subject in its broadest features only. In the earlier painted wares the
only colours used were manganese-purple and a transparent copper-green
as on the mezza-majolica, but early in the 15th century cobalt-blue was
added to the palette, and, later on, the strong yellow antimoniate of
lead, mixed with iron. The decorations at this period were largely
influenced by the wares imported from Persia, Syria, Egypt and Spain,
specimens of which were so prized as to be used for the decoration of
church fronts and the façades of public buildings. The lustre of the
Saracenic wares was not yet understood, but its place was taken first by
manganese and afterwards by yellow. The designs were chiefly
conventional flower-patterns in the Persian or Moorish style,
arabesques, and floral scrolls, the ground being filled at times with
those tiny spirals, scrolls and dots to which the Eastern potters were
so partial. Figures, human and animal, were introduced either among the
formal ornament or only sundered from it by panels, of which the
outlines often followed the contours of the central design (see the
early 15th-century Faenza piece, Plate VI.). The figures were, in fact,
drawn to conform to the outline of the vessel, and not the vessel made
to display the figure-subject as in the majolica of the succeeding
century. The earliest dated example of this period is the pavement laid
down in the Caracciolo chapel in the church of San Giovanni a Carbonara,
in Naples, about 1440. Specimens of these tiles may be seen in the
British Museum, and from their style it has been suggested that they
were made by some Spanish potters brought over to Naples by Queen
Joanna, who was of the royal house of Aragon. To this period also have
been referred the large ovoid jars made to contain drugs or confections,
and decorated with bold scrolls of formal oak leaves enclosing spirited
figures of men or animals, or heraldic devices. These are characterized
by a rich blue colour generally piled up in palpable relief and
sometimes verging on black; the outlines are usually in manganese, and
transparent green is used for details and occasionally even as a ground
colour. This ware has been definitely assigned to Florence on what seem
very inadequate grounds, and it is better to speak of it simply as
Tuscan. Then, essentially Italian ornament began to assert itself, and
it redounds to the credit of the Italian majolist that he soon freed
himself from repeating the styles of the wares from which he obtained
his methods, and produced a distinctive type of ornament of his own. He
revelled in patterns with bold floral scrolls, or those based on
peacocks' feathers (see fig. 45), and then he advanced to concentric
bands of painted ornament, borrowed from classic art yet breathing the
true spirit of the Renaissance; while cable borders, chequer and scale
patterns, bands of stiff radiating leaves, festoons of fruit and
flowers, zigzags and pyramidal scrolls occupied nearly the whole surface
or framed an armorial or emblematic central subject. Figure-subjects
occur with increasing frequency as the century advanced; Madonnas and
other sacred subjects, portraits, and, occasionally, groups of figures
after the early Italian masters, or scenes borrowed from the first
illustrated editions of the classics, gradually encroach on the
conventional borders and occupy more and more of the surface of the
piece. The provenance of these 15th-century pieces still remains
uncertain--Faenza, Forli, Florence, Siena and other places offering
rival claims,--but there is no doubt that from the earliest times Faenza
was the most fertile centre of their manufacture, and almost all the
motives of the _quattrocento_ wares are found on fragments discovered
there or on examples that can be traced to Faventine factories.
[Illustration: FIG. 45.--Early Faenza plate, with peacock-feather
design, in blues, yellow and orange-red. (Victoria and Albert Museum.)]
[Illustration: Early Faenza Potter's mark.