Siena and Pesaro.

Well-nigh all the history we have of the early artistic pottery of Siena may be read upon the specimens of her produce, preserved in our museums and private collections. A considerable number of pieces, evidently the work of one able hand, has been variously assigned to the furnaces of Faenza, of Caffaggiolo, and of Pesaro; to the first two from a general similarity in the character of their design. On the other hand, the initials I. P. occurring in large characters on the reverse of some of the pieces were presumed to be those of the words “In Pesaro,” and led to a confusion of them with others really painted at the Lanfranchi works at Pesaro and marked with the same initials but in a smaller form; standing for the signature of the artist, “jiacomo pinsit.” These last, then unknown to collectors, were cited by Passeri who was supposed to refer to the far more beautiful works now under consideration.

The acquisition, however, of a pavement of tiles from the Petrucci palace at Siena, dated 1509, and the knowledge of the existence of others of a similar stamp in the church of San Francesco in that city, the style of handling as well as the design and colouring upon which agreed closely with these works; a fine dish in the British museum in the same manner, and on which occurs one of the same coats of arms as those upon the pavement of the Petrucci; and the further acquisition of a small plate, the painting of which in blue camaÏeu is assuredly in the manner of the finer examples above referred to, and which is signed on the reverse “fata i Siena da mº benedetto;” form together a chain of evidence conclusive as to the existence of this fabrique, and the origin of the various pieces in question.

The South Kensington museum possesses very important specimens of this master’s work; and the connexion of the

several examples is very minutely traced in the large catalogue of Maiolica. We need only, therefore, generally observe that they are worthy of being ranked among the most excellent productions of the potter’s skill in Italy during the earlier years of the 16th century; and that in respect of their technical characteristics, and the tone and manner of their colouring and design, they are more nearly allied to the productions of the Caffaggiolo furnaces, from which in all probability the inspiration of them was derived. We give woodcuts of three of these beautiful pieces: nos. 1569, 1792, and 4487. The last of these is very interesting on account of the mark and inscription upon the reverse (also engraved p. 99), showing that the painter was probably Benedetto himself, who was then the head of the establishment. The drawing of the central figure is masterly and finished with the utmost care.

One of the finest specimens of this master belongs to Mr. Henderson; the central subject is that of Mutius ScÆvola before Porsenna; it is painted with great care and is surrounded by a border of grotesques on orange ground. On the reverse is the

mark in the accompanying woodcut. The grotesques upon the

border of a large dish in the British museum are painted upon a black ground, an unusual style which also occurs on some of the tiles of the Petrucci pavement, and is we believe almost peculiar to this botega.

We lose sight of the Sienese pottery for two centuries, when it again appears under the then best ceramic painter in Italy, Ferdinando Maria Campani who is said, but we do not know on what exact authority, to have worked also at Castelli and at San Quirico. A piece signed by him is at South Kensington. His subjects, as in this instance, were frequently taken from the Bible series of Raffaelle as rendered by Marc Antonio’s engravings, and from the works of the Caracci. Some extremely well executed tiles, plates, &c. copied and adapted from the old, have also been produced within the last few years at Siena under the superintendence of signor Pepi, a druggist, opposite the Prefecture. We have occasionally met with some of these, scratched and chipped by other artists to suit the modern-antique market.

The small town of Monte Lupo, nestling under its “rocca” on the southern bank of the river at the opening of the Val d’ Arno inferiore, is on the road from Florence and near to Empoli. Its pottery is distinguished (or we should rather say notorious) for having produced the ugliest and most inferior painted pieces that bear the signature of their maker and the place where they were made.

But a ware of a different kind formed of a red clay and glazed with a rich treacle-brown or black glaze, the forms of the pieces being sometimes extremely elegant, has been also assigned to this locality. Some of them are enriched with gilding and with subjects painted in oil colours, not by a ceramic artist. We are informed, however, by signor Giuseppe Raffaelli that wares of this description were made at Castel Durante, and that a fine example of them, with portraits of a count Maldini and his wife, is preserved in the library at Urbania. He describes them as made of a red earth covered with an intensely black glaze, on which the oil painting and gilding were executed. It is nevertheless probable that Monte Lupo produced a similar ware, and pieces occur ornamented with reliefs and with raised work, engobÉ, with a white or yellow clay on the brown ground, by the process known as pÂte sur pÂte. Certain pieces marbled on the surface to imitate tortoiseshell, agate, &c. are ascribed to this pottery.

At SÈvres is a tazza with ill painted subject on white ground and inscribed,—

and a dish in the hÔtel Cluny at Paris, painted with the subject of the rape of Helen somewhat in the manner of the Urbino wares, has at the back,

This, we think, more likely to have been the production of Monte Lupo than of Monte Feltro, to which it has been ascribed.

There can be little doubt that potteries existed in the neighbourhood of the important commercial city of Pisa, and it is more than probable that the painted and incised bacini, which are encrusted into her church towers and faÇades, are mostly of local manufacture during the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries. On this subject we must refer the reader to the remarks in the chapter on Persian and Hispano-moresque wares. Among the latter, references will be found to two writers who stated that a commerce existed between Valencia and Pisa, from whence faÏence was imported into Spain in exchange for the wares of that country. It does not however follow that this faÏence was entirely of Pisan production, although exported thence; but it is not improbable that a considerable quantity was made there for exportation.

Antonio Beuter, praising the wares of Spain, says that they are equal in beauty to those of Pisa and other places. This was about 1550. Early in the next century Escolano says, speaking of the wares of Manises, “that in exchange for the faÏences that Italy sends us from Pisa, we export to that country cargoes of that of Manises.”

In the collection of baron Alphonse de Rothschild, of Paris, is a large and well formed vase with serpent handles, under which the name PISA is inscribed on tablets. It is much in the manner of the later Urbino wares, having grotesques on a white ground, but more nearly approaching those examples at South Kensington (nos. 321 and 323) having the arms of the Medici, which we have ascribed in the large catalogue to Caffaggiolo or Florence. It has been suggested that this vase may be of the Pesaro fabrique, and that the word upon it was merely a variation in spelling the first half of the name Pisaro; but we see no reason for accepting such an explanation or that Pisa should be denied the small honour of having produced this example, the only one inscribed with her name.

There can be very little doubt that a manufactory of glazed earthenware existed at Pesaro or in its immediate outskirts from a very early period, and that it probably succeeded to the works established there in Roman times, the remains of which have occasionally been brought to light; but with the exception of the recorded names of certain potters, occurring in deeds and records which are preserved among the public archives of the city, we are uninformed, and unable to recognize the produce of these potteries or to know their characteristics.

Anterior to 1540 we have no signed and dated example, and should therefore be reduced to the position of entire ignorance as to their previous productions but for the work of the indefatigable archÆologist Giambattista Passeri. Born in 1694 at Farnese in the Campagna di Roma (where his father, of a patrician family of Pesaro, practised as a physician) and educated at Rome, he subsequently settled in his parental city and published the “Istoria delle pitture in Maiolica fatte in Pesaro e in luoghi circonvicini,” in 1758. To him we are indebted for the notice of the potters above alluded to, and in his work he gives us an account of the mode pursued in the manufacture, much of which however he appears to have derived from the earlier manuscript of Piccolpasso. He tells us that the large early bacili enriched with a madreperla lustre were the produce of Pesaro; and in corroboration states that many of them are painted with the coats of arms and portraits of the members of noble Pesarese families, instancing one with the arms of the “Bergnana” family then preserved in the Casa Olivieri. It has been objected that Passeri was influenced by local partiality in favour of the native city of his family, and that he ascribed to her furnaces what may in equal likelihood have been produced at Gubbio or Diruta; and the discovery of a few pieces of lustred ware, marked as the produce of the latter Castello in the middle of the 16th century, was hailed by several critics as conclusive evidence against his assertion.

It appears to the writer that such evidence is equally unsatisfactory, inasmuch as the works in question were produced some century and a half anterior to the earliest dated piece of Diruta ware. Passeri wrote in the middle of the last century, when the art was no longer in existence and its specimens only preserved in the cabinets of the curious; but he was a man of erudition and research and probably had means of obtaining information with which we are unacquainted; we think therefore that as his statements have not yet been met by proofs of their incorrectness, or by counter-statements of greater weight, we are bound to accept them until additional light be thrown upon the subject. He tells us that remains of antique furnaces and ruins of a vase shop of classic times, with fragments of red and black wares and lamps marked with the letter G, were found in the locality known as the “Gabbice” where the Lanfranchi works were afterwards established in the 16th century, and where the earth is of fine quality. He traces the use of this earth in the time of the Goths, and states that it again revived under the government of the Malatesta; and that soon afterwards a mode of adorning churches was adopted by the insertion of discs of earthenware at first simply glazed with the oxide of lead, but that coloured ones were subsequently used.

The wares were made by covering the crude baked clay with a slip or engobe of white earth, the “terra di San Giovanni” from Siena, or with that of Verona, and glazing it with “marzacotto,” a mixture of oxide of lead, sand and potash. The colours, used were yellow, green, manganese black, and cobalt blue (from the “zaffara” of the Levant). During the government of the Sforza the manufacture greatly developed and was protected, for on 1st April 1486 a decree was made prohibiting the introduction of earthenwares for sale from other parts, except the jars for oil and water. This was confirmed in 1508. In 1510 a document enumerates “Maiolica” as one of the trades of Pesaro, naming also “figoli,” “vasai,” and “boccalari;” and we must bear in mind that there is good reason for believing that at that period “Maiolica” was a name technically understood as applying only to the lustred wares.

Passeri states that about 1450 the “invetriatura” or glazing had already begun to perfect itself under the Sforza, when those early pieces were produced decorated with “arabesque” borders encircling coats of arms, portraits, and ideal heads outlined with manganese and coloured with the “madreperla” lustre, leaving the flesh white. He ascribes the improvement in the manufacture by the use of the stanniferous glaze to the discovery of the Della Robbia, and adds that, although the art of making it was known

earlier at Florence, the fine ware was only introduced at Pesaro about 1500: near which period the beautiful portrait dish which we engrave (no. 4078 at Kensington) was probably made. Here he again says that the lustred ware derived its name from the pottery of Maiolica, and that the earlier and coarser varieties were known as “Mezza-maiolica.” Guid’ Ubaldo II. greatly encouraged the art, and in 1552 granted to Bernardin Gagliardino, Girolamo Lanfranchi, Ranaldo and others an edict prohibiting the importation of other wares for sale, thus confirming the former acts, which would appear to have fallen into neglect: and in the year 1562, on the 1st of June, he granted another, confirming to Giacomo Lanfranco a protection of his art or patent for applying real gold to his wares.

Passeri then (after some further historical details) describes examples of the glazed and enamelled pottery of Pesaro which he had seen, and the earliest he refers to are floorings of tiles existing in his time, upon one of which, brought to him by a workman, was inscribed

and on the other

A considerable period elapses between this and the next dated example, a plate, with the subject of Horatius Codes, inscribed,—

On another (a companion of a plate preserved in the Louvre),

He further mentions a plate having a mark consisting of the initials O A connected by a cross, and a bas-relief with the same initials which again occur sculptured over a door, which he suggests may have been that of the potter’s house; we should, however, be more disposed to regard it as a conventual or cathedral monogram.

We will now leave the work of Passeri and quote another record of the pottery made at Pesaro a short time before the 16th century, returning to him for information on the revival of the art at that locality in the last.

Dennistoun in his history of the dukes of Urbino (vol. 3, p. 388) refers to a letter among the diplomatic archives of the duchy preserved at Florence dated 1474, from pope Sextus IV. in which he thanks Costanzo Sforza, lord of Pesaro, for a present of

most elegantly wrought earthen vases which for the donor’s sake are prized as much as gold or silver instead of earthenware. Another letter from Lorenzo the magnificent to Roberto Malatesta of Pesaro, thanking him for a similar present, says, “they please me entirely by their perfection and rarity, being quite novelties in these parts, and are valued more than if of silver, the donor’s arms serving daily to recall their origin.” There is every reason for assuming that both these presents consisted of wares produced at the Pesaro furnaces.

These wares must have been looked upon as “novelties” at Florence, not simply because they were painted on flat surfaces covered with stanniferous glaze (for Luca della Robbia had done this many years before) but because, being decorated with rich metallic glaze and madreperla lustre, they probably were novelties to the Florentines as productions of an Italian pottery. If this inference be correct, may not another be drawn from it? That these presents being the produce of Pesaro, and enriched with the metallic lustre, we may derive from the whole matter an additional proof that the early lustred pieces, whose origin has been disputed, were really made at that city; and that we may agree with Passeri in ascribing the well-known “bacili” to that place. Engraved p. 107 is a fine lustred bacile at South Kensington, probably of Pesaro ware, and about the year 1510.

The earliest dated Pesaro piece is in the possession of the writer. It is a “fruttiera” which is painted the creation of animals by the Almighty, Who, moving in the midst, is surrounded by animals rising out of the ground; a distant landscape, with a town (!) on the side of a steep mountain, forms the background.

On the reverse is inscribed as in the woodcut on the next page,

We have seen some large dishes decorated with raised masks, strapwork, &c. and painted with grotesques on a white ground, and subject panels, and other grandiose pieces which are ascribed to the Urbino artists, but which may in equal likelihood be attributed to the Lanfranchi of Pesaro. A triangular plateau in the possession of Mrs. Hope has the character of their finest productions.

The art at Pesaro rapidly declined after 1560, wanting the encouragement of a reigning ducal court; and Passeri ascribes much evil influence to what he considers the bad taste of preferring the unmeaning designs of the oriental porcelain, which was greatly prized by the wealthy, and the painting after the prints of the later German school of Sadeler, &c. to the grander works of the old masters; the landscapes were, however, well executed. He gives us also a history of the revival of the manufacture in his own time, under the influence and encouragement of the cardinal prelate Ludovico Merlini. In 1718 there was only one potter at Pesaro, Alfonzo Marzi, who produced the most ordinary wares. In 1757 signor Giuseppe Bertolucci, an accomplished ceramist of Urbania, in conjunction with signor Francesco di Fattori, engaged workmen and artists and commenced a fabrique, but it was soon abandoned. Again in 1763 signors Antonio Casali and Filippo Antonio Caligari, both of Lodi, came to Pesaro and were joined by Pietro Lei da Sassuolo of Modena, an able painter on Maiolica; they established a fabrique producing wares of great excellence hardly to be distinguished from the Chinese. In the Debruge-Labarte collection was a one-handled jug or pot, painted with flowers in white medallions on a blue ground, and on the foot engraven in the paste—

A manufacture at present exists of painted tiles for pavement, removed to Pesaro from Urbania, and which at one time produced vases and plates in the manner of the Urbino istoriati pieces as also lustred wares after the style of M. Giorgio. It has, we are informed, ceased making these imitations and now confines itself to the first-named class of goods.