“Xanto’s works may be considered to represent perfectly the ‘Majoliche istoriate,’ and he certainly had a talent for the arrangement of his works in composition, nearly all his subjects being ‘pasticci’; the various figures or groups introduced being the invention of other artists copied with adroit variations over and over again, and made to do duty in the most widely different characters. As an original artist, if indeed he can be so considered, he may be classed with the more mannered of the scholars of Raffaelle. His designs are generally from classical or mythological subjects. Xanto’s execution, although dexterous, is monotonous and mechanical; his scale of colouring is crude and positive, full of violent oppositions; the only merit, if merit it be, being that of a certain force and brightness of aspect; in every other respect his colouring is commonplace, not to say disagreeable even; blue, crude opaque yellow, and orange tints, and bright verdigris green are the dominant hues, and are scattered over the pieces in full unbroken masses, the yellow especially meeting the eye at the first glance. In the unsigned pieces, before 1531, the glaze is better and more transparent, the execution more delicate, and the outline more hard and black than in the later specimens. Some of Xanto’s wares are profusely enriched with metallic lustres, including the beautiful ruby tint; these specimens, however, form but a small per-centage of the entire number of his works extant. This class of piece is, moreover, interesting from the fact that the iridescent colours were obviously not of Xanto’s own production, but that on the contrary, they were applied to his wares by Mº Giorgio, and the supposed continuers of Giorgio’s ‘fabrique’ in Gubbio. Many pieces are extant, which, in addition to Xanto’s own signature, nearly always written in dark blue or olive tint, are likewise signed with the monagram N of the Giorgio school in the lustre tint; and one specimen at least has been observed which, though painted by Xanto, has been signed in the lustre tint by Maestro Giorgio himself.” We cannot entirely agree with this somewhat severe judgment upon his artistic merits. We have no evidence to confirm Passeri’s supposition that BATTISTA FRANCO painted pieces and initialled them with the letters B. F. V. F. That artist was called to Urbino in 1540, by Guidobaldo II., to make designs for various pieces, and these initials are on some of the vases in the Spezieria at Loreto. He returned to Venice where he died in 1561; one of his cartoons for a plate is in the British museum, and others are preserved.