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 [Illustration] 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, 1540. _Chrianite anim_ _allis Christtus_ _fatto in Pesaro._