LORETO is named in connexion with the set of Spezieria vases, of the fabrique of Orazio Fontana, which were presented to the shrine of our Lady of Loreto by the last duke of Urbino, on his abdication in favour of the Holy See. It was the habit to collect the dust gathered from the walls of the Santa Casa and the dress of the Virgin, from which, mixed in small quantities with the potter’s clay, cups or bowls were formed and painted with figures of the Virgin and Child, generally on a yellow ground. These cups were inscribed outside CON · POL · DI · S · CASA (with the dust of the Holy House). Occasionally, but less frequently, some of the holy water from the shrine was sprinkled on the dust, thereby to impart a still greater sanctity. A cup so made is in the writer’s collection, and is inscribed CON · POL · ET · AQVA · DI · S · CASA (with dust and water of the Holy House). These cups were probably presented as marks of favour to pilgrims who had visited and probably enriched the sanctuary. Signor Raffaelli believes that they were made at Castel Durante, for the establishment at Loreto. The seal of the convent was affixed to them in red wax. Hitherto we have no published record of the former existence of a manufactory of artistic enamelled pottery at ROME, that great centre to which by her affluence and power at various periods of history artists and objects of art have been drawn from their native countries. We have no assurance that purely native Roman art ever attained to any very high degree of excellence. The Etruscans and the Greeks in Pagan times, the Byzantine school of the middle ages, and at the period of the _renaissance_ the great Tuscan and Venetian artists worked in Rome upon those monuments of genius of which she is so justly proud; but they are possessions rather than native productions; and it would appear that even in so comparatively small a branch of artistic manufacture she was indebted to a native of Castel Durante for the establishment of a fabrique of maiolica. Had there been pre-existing furnaces, producing wares of artistic merit, it would hardly have been worth while for Mº Diomede on the fall of the dukedom of Urbino to bring his art to Rome. There is no notice of any pieces of this ware inscribed as having been made at Rome until the year 1600, when we find on two oviform pharmacy vases of good outline, having each a pair of double serpent handles and a domed cover surmounted by a knob, the following inscriptions written on oval labels. On one vase “Fatto in botega de M. Diomede Durante in Roma,” and on the other, of which we give a woodcut, “Fatto in Roma da Gio. Pavlo Savino M.D.C.” These vases are decorated on one side with grotesques ably sketched in yellow, greyish blue, and orange colours on a white enamel ground of considerable purity; on the other, a leafage diaper in the same tone of blue covers the like ground. On one only, immediately above the inscribed oval, the head of a buffalo is painted