We have very little positive information in respect to the fabrique of DIRUTA in the Papal States. Alluded to by Passeri as a pottery near Foligno where pieces were produced remarkable for the whiteness of the paste, we are led to the supposition that he may have confounded the wares produced at other neighbouring localities with those made at Diruta: and he does not inform us whether it produced lustred wares or only those of polychrome decoration. A few years since certain plates came under the notice of collectors inscribed “In Deruta,” the subjects painted in blue outline, and lustred with a brassy golden colour. Doubt and uncertainty had long existed as to the spot where the large “bacili” and other pieces of a well-known and abundant ware, lustred with a golden pigment of peculiarly pearly effect in certain lights, had been produced, and the discovery of these signed examples, having a somewhat similar metallic enrichment, caused connoisseurs to grasp at the, perhaps hasty, conclusion, that to Diruta must be assigned those wares of earlier date and hitherto unknown locality, and that Diruta must have possessed a pottery of very early time and important character. But after an examination and comparison of signed specimens, and others which are with reasonable probability considered to be of this _fabrique_, we are compelled to conclude that the productions of Diruta were generally inferior to, and in many instances copied or derived from, those of the Gubbio or earlier Pesaro types. Castel di Diruta or Deruta is a “borgo” or dependency of Perugia, on the road from that city to Orvieto by Todi. It is but a few miles from Perugia, within an easy day’s journey of Gubbio, and although it may be reasonable to presume that potteries existed there from an early period, we think it more probable that they derived the use of the lustre pigments from Gubbio. It is extremely difficult in many instances to decide with any degree of certainty as to whether some individual early specimens of the lustred ware alluded to above, be of Pesaro, of Gubbio, or of Diruta workmanship. We have little hesitation in assigning the dish in the next woodcut to Diruta; the dance of Cupids is after Marc Antonio. The similarity of the process necessary to such productions entails a corresponding similarity of result, but we notice a somewhat coarser grounding, a golden _reflet_ of a brassy character, a ruby, when it (rarely) occurs, of pale dull quality, [Illustration] looser outlines of a colder and heavier blue, and in the pieces not lustred the same tones of colour, a dark blue approaching to that of Caffaggiolo in depth but wanting its brilliancy, the use of a bright yellow to heighten the figures in grotesques, &c. in imitation of the golden lustre, and a thin green. The drawing is generally of an inferior stamp, and a certain _tout ensemble_ pervades the pieces difficult to define but which more or less prevails.