was in great favour with Cosmo, the first Grand-Duke of Tuscany, and still more with his son Francesco. ‘Bernardo,’ says Vasari, who was a contemporary, ‘applies himself to everything, as may be seen by the vases of porcelain which he has made in so short a time--vases which have all the perfection of the most ancient and the most perfect.’ He could make objects of all kinds in porcelain. ‘Of all these things our prince [Francesco the Grand-Duke] possesses the methods of manufacture.’ Francesco Maria, the second Grand-Duke of Tuscany, was neither a good prince nor a faithful husband. He was, however, by nature an enthusiastic and patient experimenter, and a chemist after the manner of the day. Soon after his accession, in 1576, the Venetian envoy writes of him--I abbreviate here and there: ‘He has found the way to make the porcelain of India; he has equalled them in transparence, in lightness, and in delicacy. With the help of a Levantine he worked for more than ten years, spoiling thousands of pieces, before producing perfect work. He passes his whole day in his _casino_ [in the Boboli Gardens] surrounded by alembics and filters, making, among other things, false jewels, and fireworks.’ We learn also, from a contemporary manuscript, that the paste of this porcelain was formed by mixing certain white earths from Siena and from Vicenza with a frit, itself made from pounded rock crystal fused with soda and glassmakers’ sand. The Vicenza clay, at all events, was probably of a kaolinic nature. After shaping on the wheel and drying, the decoration was painted on the raw paste, and the vessel subjected to a preliminary firing; the plumbiferous glaze was then applied to the biscuit. This Medici ware is decorated for the most part with cobalt blue alone, but occasionally a little purple, and still more rarely other colours are added. The design is made up of sprigs of conventionalised flowers and leaves connected by fine stalks, suggesting, on the whole, a Persian rather than a Chinese influence. In a few cases we find the renaissance arabesques (or, more properly, grotesques) of the time combined with masks in relief. The usual mark is a hasty outline of the dome of the Cathedral of Florence, and below it the letter F; on a few pieces, those especially which are decorated with the grotesques, we find the six roundels, or ‘palle,’ of the Medici, surmounted by the ducal coronet. A few pieces are dated. The earliest date that has been discovered--1581--is on a bottle of square section, rudely painted, under a crackle glaze, with the arms of Spain.