IDENTIFICATION OF THE ARTISAN AND ARTIST. 319 



his enamel. Ho set to work again, and put his materials again in the 

 fire; and this time there was a tremendous explosion, the ashes burst in 

 and the whole of his work was covered with black, so firmly set into the 

 enamel tbat it all had to be thrown away except a few pieces, by which 

 he made a trifle. For sixteen years he persevej:ed in this way, and 

 then was crowned with success, and produced the finest specimens of 

 colored and beautiful j)ottery, such as are to this day sought by the cu- 

 rious; and he received a situatiou in the king's household, and ended 

 his days in comfort and respectability. 



I could mention the beautiful earthenware of the sixteenth century, 

 known by the name of " Eaphael's ware,'" because it is supposed that 

 Eaphael himself did not disdain to make designs for common pottery, 

 pottery not to be used merely by the rich, but to be found in the common 

 cottages and houses of ordinary classes ; the most beautifnl specimens 

 being in the apothecaries' shops of Padua and Verona. There we have 

 the employment of high art in the decoration of a common and ordinary 

 object; for the pottery itself has no particular pretensions to elegance of 

 make, but yet one of these plates, thick, heavy, clumsy, and coarse as 

 they are, is worth a service of modern production as a work of art. 



Another department is statuary in pottery, which presents some very 

 interesting features in the history of art. Its very origin is exceedingly 

 interesting. Pliny gives it to us as the invention of a certain potter, of 

 very ancient date, wliose daughter, when parting with a youth to whom 

 she was engaged, did what I dare say some of you have done, made 

 him stand before the lamp, so as to throw his shadow on the wall, and 

 so sketch his head and face ; and the father, wishing to preserve this 

 sketch, took some of his clay, and filled up the outline, and made a 

 bass-relief of the countenance. That piece of pottery, at the time when 

 the Eomans first became acquainted with art, and carried away the 

 monuments of Greece, was preserved in the temple of the Nymphs, at 

 Corinth, as a treasure of art — as the first germ from which had been 

 developed some of the most beautiful productions of that kind. At the 

 time of the Eomau kings of the race of Tarquin, the inhabitants of Italy 

 had arrived at such perfection in this art that they used to make chariots, 

 horses, and other representations of clay, so well baked that they could 

 be placed in the open air, and stood for many centuries without injury ; 

 and, in fact, we find them now among Etruscan monuments. The Eomans 

 must also have learned well how to paint them ; because we find it 

 stated that there was an artist, whom Yarro particularly mentions, who 

 imitated fruit in pottery so perfectly as to deceive any one, and make 

 one think it was real. 



But the most interesting example of this application of high art to 

 such products is what we find in the life of an eminent artist, and at the 

 same time a potter, Luca della Eobbia. He was put, when quite a boy, 

 apprentice to a jeweler. He very soon began to make things in bronze; 

 he gave up mere small modeling, and began upon marble, and succeeded 



