At Siena also admirable works were produced but we are disposed to think that their inspiration was derived from Caffaggiolo, whence also her potters probably received instruction in the application of the stanniferous enamel. Some pieces of the latter end of the fifteenth century are with probability ascribed to Siena, and dated pieces as early as 1501. Tiles also from the same fabrique are remarkable for the excellence of their grotesque borders on an orange yellow ground, having centres painted with great delicacy: some unusual examples having a black ground to their decorative borders. Rome and the south of Italy do not appear to have produced meritorious works in this field, during the period of its greatest excellence in the northern and Tuscan states; and it is not till the dispersion of the artists, consequent upon the absorption of the Umbrian duchy into the Pontifical states, that we find a Durantine establishing a pottery at Rome, and producing in 1600 an inferior repetition of the grotesque style so admirable in the hands of the Fontana, half a century earlier at Urbino. The decadence was rapid; an increased number of inferior potteries produced wares of a lower price and quality; the fall of the ducal houses which had so greatly encouraged its higher excellence as a branch of fine art, together with the general deterioration in artistic taste, alike tended to its end. CHAPTER V. A revival in the production of native decorative earthenware took place in various parts of Italy, as also in the rest of Europe. The efforts made to imitate true porcelain were reflected by improvements in the quality and decoration of enamelled earthenware, and in the last century we find potteries in various pacts of Piedmont and Lombardy, Venice, Genoa and Savona, Urbino and Pesaro, Siena, Castelli, Florence and Rome, producing wares of greater or less artistic excellence. But although careful drawing is occasionally found, as on some of the pieces painted by Ferdinando Maria Campana at Siena, from the prints of Marc Antonio, and some charming designs with borders of amorini among foliage, and subject pieces of great merit from the Castelli fabrique; and although the “technique” of the manufacture is also of great excellence; the ornamentation wants that masculine power of colouring and vigour of the renaissance, so strikingly apparent upon the better productions of the older furnaces, and the admirable delicacy and richness of effect to be seen upon the earlier works.