Coming now to Italian pottery, we must speak first of _sgraffiati_, _graffiti_, or incised wares. This mode of ornamentation is one of the most primitive and universal in a ruder form, although it appears but little on the early glazed wares of our own country; of those of France a fine example, attributed to the 14th century, is preserved at Sèvres. In Italy, as was the case in all other varieties of pictorial art, it was brought to a high degree of perfection, not merely as a manner of ornamenting pottery but applied on a large scale to mural decoration. It appears to have been in use from an early period, examples of a coarse kind occurring among the plates incrusted in the towers of churches of the 12th and 13th centuries at Pisa and elsewhere, and it was probably in use before or coeval with the earliest painted wares. Its method as applied to pottery is described by Piccolpasso in his manuscript, and consists in covering the previously baked “biscuit” of ordinary potter’s clay with a “slip” or “_engobe_” of the white marl of Vicenza, by dipping it into a bath of that earth milled with water to the consistence of cream; when dry, this white covering, fixed by a slight baking, is scratched through with an iron instrument shewing the design in the red colour of the clay against the superimposed white ground. It is then covered with an ordinary translucent lead glaze, and clouded with yellow and green by slight application of the oxides of iron and copper. There appears to be a considerable range in the dates of various specimens in collections, some of which are probably among the earliest examples of Italian decorative pottery that have come down to us; others may be of the middle or last quarter of the 15th century and, like the fine example which we engrave, are highly characteristic; great skill is shown upon them in the combination of figures and foliage in relievo with the incised ornamentation. Nearly all the pieces of this class are probably the work of one botega, and are distinguished by the character of their designs; a border of mulberry leaves is very general, or shields of the “pavoise” or kite form. Judging also from the sort of florid Gothic character to be seen in some of the leafage mouldings, from the costumes of the north of Italy in the 15th century, and from the lion supporters and other details which connect them with north Italian art, we have little hesitation in believing that they were produced in Lombardy or the Venetian mainland. [Illustration]