And admitting this fact, that the productions of ceramic art were thus allowed to find admittance, and, as it were, in some measure an equally distinguished position, amidst plate and objects of precious metals, it resulted that this new industry, supported by the best artists, soon became remarkable for works which were at the same time most beautiful and original. As something new in history, we find simple pieces of pottery--to give them their generic name--passing as valuable offerings among the great, and employed on very many occasions to denote ardent admiration in the world of courtly gallantry. It is thus we have handed down to us, principally on cups by renowned masters, portraits of the beauties who in those times adorned the ranks of the nobility: the Dianas, the Francescas, the Lucias, the Proserpines, whom their admirers caused to be portrayed in order to offer them their own likenesses. It was at Florence, about the year 1410, that Luca della Robbia first introduced his invention; but as soon as the process became known, the greater part of the towns of Italy, especially those of Tuscany, established manufactories, among which a remarkable rivalry soon arose: Pesaro, Gubbio, Urbino, Faenza, Rimini, Bologna, Ravenna, Ferrara, Citta Castellana, Bassano, Venice, emulated each other, and almost all succeeded in giving, as it were, an individual character to their productions. Pesaro--the place were the earliest workshops of ornamental pottery in Italy were seated, and the processes of which (derived from Luca della Robbia) seem to have blended with the ancient Spanish, or _Majorquaises_--presents to us a design of a rather harsh and stiff character. “The outlines of figures,” adds M. Jacquemart, “are drawn in manganese black, the flesh is the colour of the enamel, and the drapery alone is of uniform tint.” It was at Pesaro that the celebrated Lanfranco flourished. The ceramic museum of Sèvres has two of his pieces: it was he who invented the method of applying gold to earthenware, at a time when the early processes of ornamenting this manufacture had ceased to be employed, and had given place to delicate paintings, which, although no longer executed by the most renowned artists of Italy, were nevertheless the work of intelligent pupils who had received the benefit of their teaching and example. The manufactory at Gubbio had for its founder Giorgio Andreoli, who, both as a sculptor and an artist in majolica, executed works as remarkable in form as in effect. “The palette of mineral colours adopted by Andreoli was the most perfect of the period; and coppery yellows, ruby reds, are frequently used in his works.” There are still extant some works signed by this _master_ (a title officially conferred on him by a patent of nobility); one is a slab in the Sèvres collection, and another a tablet representing the Holy Family.