EARLY VENETIAN PORCELAIN.--Of all the cities of Europe we might, on theoretical grounds, expect to find in Venice the place above all others where the question of the composition of porcelain would at an early date attract attention, and indeed, the evidence brought to light by the Baron Davillier (_Les Origines de la Porcelaine en Europe_, 1882) and by the late Sir William Drake (_Notes on Venetian Ceramics_, London, 1868, privately printed) fully proves that more than one alchemist or ‘arcanist’ of that city, in one case as early as the fifteenth century, produced specimens worthy to be called ‘_porcellane transparente e vaghissime_,’ and this by contemporaries who had some opportunity of seeing the real porcelain of China.[147] This ‘transparent and beautiful porcelain’ was made in 1470 by Master Antonio, the alchemist, at his kiln by San Simeon, and the writer of a notice that has been preserved sends two specimens of this ware to his friend in Padua. Again, in 1518 we hear of ‘a new artifice not known before in this illustrious city, to make all kinds of porcelain like to the transparent wares of the Levant’; and a year later the ambassador of the Duke Alfonso writes to his master at Ferrara, sending him specimens of the _porcellana ficta_ made by a certain Caterino Zen, whom he has persuaded to emigrate to the latter city. There cannot be the slightest doubt that in all these instances the writers are referring to attempts at the manufacture of something resembling, in its transparency at least, the porcelain of China. There is no question of any confusion with the majolica of the day, with whose properties these men were well acquainted, and we may therefore reasonably regard the Venetian ‘archimisti’ as the first in Europe to make a soft-paste porcelain. As in the case of later experimenters, translucency, rather than hardness or refractory qualities, was the point aimed at; and from the few hints we get as to the substances employed, we may infer that these old ‘archimisti’ started with the idea of combining the properties of glass and of fayence by mixing a ‘frit,’ or glassy element, with various kinds of pure white clay. It is unfortunately true that we can point to no single existing specimen of Italian porcelain that can safely be referred to so early a date; but it must at the same time be remembered that it was only in the year 1857 that the first piece of Medici porcelain was identified by Signor Foresi, and that as late as 1859 a flask-shaped vase of this ware was sold at the Hôtel Drouot as a specimen of Japanese porcelain! MEDICI PORCELAIN.--The first mention of this now well-known ware is probably to be found in Vasari’s _Lives of the Painters_. It is in his account of Bernardo Buontalenti, painter, sculptor, architect, and mechanical genius, who, in all these capacities, [Illustration: _PLATE XXIX._ MEDICI, BLUE AND WHITE]