[Footnote 246: In 1845, the Canon Staccoli at Urbino showed me a plate equally feeble in design and colour, signed _F.M. Doiz Fiamengo fecit_, a proof that it was no despised production of the time.] [Illustration: MAIOLICA _A plate of Urbino ware about 1535. (The arms are Cardinal Pucci's)_] Much of what has been said of the fine majolica of Pesaro is applicable to that ascribed to Urbino, most of which appears to have been made in the neighbouring towns of Fermignano, Gaifa, and Castel Durante (now Urbania), the alluvial washings of the Metauro being peculiarly adapted for the purest white glaze. Yet Pungileoni has wormed out of some old notarial protocols the names of Mo. Giovanni di Donnino in 1477, and of Mo. Francesco in 1501, both designed of Gardutia, potters (_figuli_) at Urbino. He also establishes that coloured figures were executed there in vases in 1521. Passeri denies that those ruby and gold colours for which we shall find Gubbio celebrated, and which certainly were known in the workshops of Pesaro, ever came into use at Urbino,--a conclusion which we shall have occasion to correct. Indeed, this secret of metallic iridescence is said to have been known at Florence, and I have seen a plate of golden lustre bearing the emblem of the woolstaplers' guild [_arte della lana_]; but if such manufactory existed, I have found no notice of it, and the still flourishing one of Ginori in the Val d'Arno pretends to no such antiquity. I was shown at Florence a tile, on which Annibale Caracci's Galatea was represented with great accuracy of design, but poor and hard in colour, signed "_Ferdinand Campani, Siena, 1736_." In the latter town there is said to have been a fabric known by the name of _Terchi_; the analogous one, near Fermo, in the Abruzzi, called _Grue_, sent forth, I believe, most of those tiles, small plates, or cups and saucers,--ornamented with landscapes of tolerable design, but tinted in sickly yellow or blue, and totally devoid of style,--which abound in Lower Italy.