VINOVO.--In the royal castle of Vinovo or Vineuf, near Turin, some unsuccessful endeavours to manufacture porcelain were made with the help of one of the younger Hannongs of Strassburg. A Turin doctor, Vittore Amadeo Gioanetti, who had already made numerous experiments with the clays and rocks of the district, met with better success about 1780. The paste of this ware contains a considerable amount of silicate of magnesia, obtained from a deposit of magnesite discovered in the neighbourhood by the doctor.[202] This hybrid ware is more easily fusible than a true porcelain, but it resists well rapid variations of temperature. The usual mark is the letter V surmounted by the cross of the house of Savoy (PL. D. 66). CAPO DI MONTE.--Here in the northern suburbs of Naples, just beneath the Royal Palace, an important factory of soft-paste porcelain was established in 1742. Don Carlos, of Bourbon-Farnese extraction, had recently exchanged his dukedom of Parma for the throne of the Two Sicilies. In 1738 he had married a Saxon princess, but there is little sign of any German influence either in the design or composition of the ware made at his new porcelain factory at Capo di Monte. Like his cousin at Versailles at a later date, he took the keenest interest in the sale of his porcelain. An annual fair was held in front of the palace, and a large purchase there was a sure passport to the favour of the king, who is even said to have worked as a potter himself. When in 1759 Don Carlos succeeded to the throne of Spain as Charles III., he, as it were, carried his porcelain works with him, taking away the best workmen, so that little of interest was made at Naples after that date. To this earlier period belong the plain white pieces often in imitation of sea-shells, or again resting on a heap of smaller shells moulded probably from nature (a very similar ware was made at Bow and other English factories). We find also highly coloured statuettes and groups of figures. But the name of Capo di Monte is associated above all with another style of decoration. The surface of the ware in this case is covered by groups of figures, mythological subjects by preference, and by vegetation, moulded in low relief and delicately coloured. This was the ware imitated at Doccia in later days, and also, it would seem, at Herend, in Hungary. But perhaps the most characteristic pieces then made at Naples are the little detached figures, generally grotesques, delicately modelled and painted (PL. XLII.). In this Capo di Monte porcelain we may note generally the prevalence of extreme rococo forms. The glaze of the white ware has a pleasant warm tone resembling that of some of the Fukien porcelain, which may in part have served as a model.