Cosmo, instead of degenerating into a "rich man's son," went on with the work which his father had begun; but he conducted it as a great man should, not as a great miser would. This was true of his successors, who continued to be merchants and bankers, even after they had come to be grand-dukes and rulers of the Florentine state. This wealth was used, of course, to push their own fortunes and ambitions, but it was used in a ducal way, not only in the building of palaces and galleries, but in the encouragement of the arts and of letters, all of which increased his own glory, while it ministered to the magnificence of the state. The Medici had ceased to be merchants long before the time of Francis, but it is easy to believe that the traditions of his family ran in his veins, and that he should have been ready to attempt the production of porcelain in his city, when the love for it and the desire for it had grown to be an influence in Europe, as it had in the seventeenth century. Nineteen specimens only are known of this earliest porcelain, and these are in the hands of museums and of private collectors. Examples may be seen in the Sèvres and Kensington Museums. It seems that the best quality was made for the family of the founder, and this bears the mark of six pellets, each with a letter and one with a _fleur-de-lis_. These letters, F. M. M. E. D. II., mean _Franciscus Medici Magnus Etruriæ Dux Secundus_. [Illustration: FIG. 140.--_Medicean Porcelain._] We engrave here (Fig. 140) a beautiful _bocca_, or pitcher, fifteen inches high, of this porcelain, which is in the collection of the Baron de Rothschild. The decoration resembles the style of maiolica known as Raffaelesque; the body is white and the painting of a light blue. The handle is a crown, formed by uniting those of the Medici and of Austria. The less beautiful pieces are described as "coarse, opaque, and of a bluish gray, the glaze thick and vitreous." This china was something between hard and soft. Whether this production of Italy is really porcelain, is open to doubt. M. Demmin, who is certainly entitled to great consideration, denies it very plainly. He states that the vase exhibited by M. Rothschild, in 1865, showed a break at the neck, and that the body was not porcelain, but a white clay--_terre de pipe_. He states, also, that the five pieces in the museum of Sèvres are not translucid, and have no signs such as mark the _pâte tendre_ of France or Italy. English writers choose to class this under the head of porcelain, which seems, at least, to be very questionable. The two marks are: [Illustration: _The Duomo of Florence and the six pellets of the Medici._]