di Raniere, of a noble family at Cagli, in order to manufacture earthenware, and may have directed attention to the productions of della Robbia, who had already been employed at Rimini by its tyrant, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta. [Footnote *241: For all that concerns the Della Robbia, cf. MAUD CRUTTWELL, _Luca and Andrea della Robbia and their School_ (Dent, 1904).] * * * * * An account of majolica[*242] ought to contain the various places noted for its manufacture, the peculiar qualities distinguishing their respective productions, the methods by which these qualities were given, and the artists most successful in producing them. But on most of these points we are left in great ignorance, which my limited observation has not enabled me to dispel. All I can offer is a list of the manufactories and artists, classed to the best of my power, and preceded by a few very general notices of the process. [Footnote *242: The finest collection of Italian majolica in the world is probably that in Pesaro in the possession of the Municipality.] The Chevalier Cipriano Picolpasso, of Castel Durante, doctor in medicine and majolica-painter under Duke Guidobaldo II., left a MS. professing to record the secrets of his art; but Passeri, after examination, pronounces his revelations trite, and his historical notices barren. It is, however, agreed that Pesaro was the first site within the duchy of Urbino where the fabric attained celebrity, and that its earliest efforts were called _mezza_ or "half" majolica. This is distinguished by a coarse gritty fracture, of dirty grey colour, and a glaze which does not take much lustre or transparency. It is generally in the form of plates, many of them huge, all clumsily thick, and frequently of a dingy, ill-vitrified yellow on the back. The lustre on the front is rather pearly than metallic; but prismatic, or even golden, iridescence is met with. These productions are assigned, by Passeri and others, to the fifteenth century; but the arms of Leo X. appear on one in the mediæval exhibition of 1850 (No. 543, belonging to Mr. S. Isaacs), and on another in the Hotel Cluny, at Paris; while, in the museum of the Commendatore Kestner, Hanoverian minister at Rome, is a third, designed after Marc Antonio. The "fine" majolica attained its greatest perfection at Urbino between 1530 and 1560, and it was prized chiefly for the perfect vitrification and transparency of its varnish, the comparative thinness and whiteness of the texture, the brilliant colouring, and masterly design. Gubbian pottery combined in some degree the qualities of half and fine ware, but excelled all others in metallic and prismatic glaze. [Illustration: MAIOLICA _A plate of Castel Durante ware of about 1524_ "The divine and beautiful Lucia"]