CHAPTER IV.

ITALY.

Italian Art.--Whence Derived.--Greece and Persia.--Divisions.--Ancient Roman and Etruscan.--Etruria and Greece.--Questions Resulting from Discoveries at Vulci.--Early Connection between Etruria and Greece.--Etruscan Art an Offshoot of Greek.--Examples.--Best of Black Paste.--Why Etruscan Art Declined.--Rome.--Nothing Original.--Its Debt to Etruria and Greece.--Decline of its Art.--Unglazed Pottery and its Divisions.--Glazed Pottery.--Samian Ware.--Aretine.--Terra-cotta.--After Rome fell.--The Renaissance.--Saracenic Influences.--Crusades.--Conquest of Majorca.--Tin Enamel and Metallic Lustre.--Bacini at Pisa.--Lead Glaze.--Majolica Made at Pesaro.--Sgraffiati.--Luca della Robbia.--Sketch of his Life.--His Alleged Discovery.--What he really Accomplished.--Where he Acquired the Secret of Enamel.--His Works.--Bas-Reliefs.--Paintings on the Flat.--His Successors.--Recapitulation of Beginnings of Italian Majolica.--Chaffagiolo.--Siena.--Florence.--Pisa.--Pesaro. --Castel-Durante.--Urbino.--Gubbio and Maestro Giorgio.--Faenza. --Forli, Rimini, and Ravenna.--Venice.--Ferrara.--Deruta.--Naples. --Shape and Color.--Modern Italy.

The ceramic art of Italy, beginning with the Roman and Etruscan, and coming down to the Renaissance in the fifteenth century, is the successor of those of Greece and the East, on the one hand, and of the Saracenic and Hispano-Moresque on the other. There have been two questions under discussion in reference to the latter period, viz., Where did Italy acquire her knowledge of the use of stanniferous enamel? and, Whence did she draw her skill in the application of metallic lustre? We shall find, on examining the evidence, that the great works of her artistic prime were the results of a derivative and not of an original art. They are only original in so far as they indicate a point in advance of Italy’s predecessors. We have said that Oriental art culminated in Greece. Italy presents us with a later point of union between two lines issuing from the East. We find subjects and forms recalling at once the ideals of Greece and the rich mythological and legendary sources from which were drawn the aids to her prolific imagination. We also find that the Greek restraint in the use of colors is thrown aside, and that Italy availed herself to the full of the skilful processes and methods of embellishment brought to her shores from Persia, and by the Saracens and Moors from their settlements in Africa and Spain.

There are thus two great divisions of Italian pottery: the ancient Roman and Etruscan, and that of the Renaissance. Between these two there is a long period of darkness, extending from the last smouldering glow of the art of Italy, after Constantine took the seat of the imperial power to Byzantium, to the entrance of the Saracens into Europe.

In considering the ancient epoch, one pertinent fact may be borne in mind, viz., that the best remains of the art of Greece have been found beyond its own borders, and that its history might be written from those discovered in Italy alone. Dividing Italy into three sections, we shall have Magna Græcia, Campania, and Etruria. Of these the latter has the greater antiquity, in so far as its ceramic remains are concerned. Greek colonies settled all along the southern part of the peninsula and in Sicily, and such relics as are found there may, in the mean time, be dismissed as corresponding in style with those of the same dates produced in Greece.

Although the same rule might be held in a less broad sense to apply to Etruria, it is deserving of more lengthened consideration. When, in 1825, the great discoveries were made at Vulci, the learned world was divided as to the places to which the vases should be credited. Some maintained that they were made in Greece and imported; others, that they were made in Etruria by Gr