, and a great number of intermediate tints obtained
by mixing the standard colours. All the colours of the majolica of the
best periods were painted on the tin-enamel before the final glazing,
and were capable of standing the full heat of the fire. Such a thing as
painting in enamels on the finished ware and refiring them at a lower
heat was unknown before the end of the 17th or beginning of the 18th
century. A true red colour seems to have been beyond the power of most
of the Italian majolists, and was only attained at Faenza, and with less
complete success at Cafaggiolo; the famous red of the Turkish pottery
behaves very indifferently on tin-enamel.

[Illustration: Urbino Potter's mark.]

In the Urbino style, which now became general, the ware was given over
entirely to pictorial subjects, scenes from history or romance,
scriptural and mythological, copied from the compositions of the Italian
painters and usually set in a background of Italian landscape.
Guidobaldo II., duke of Urbino, spared no pains to develop this phase of
the art; the cartoons of Raphael, engraved by Marc Antonio and others,
were placed at the disposal of the pot-painters, as well as the
paintings of Michelangelo, Giulio Romano, Battista Franco, Rosso Rossi,
Perugino, Parmeggiano and many more, and these, together with
engravings by Agostino Venetiano, Marco Dente, Enea Vico and others,
were copied, with more or less fidelity, on the majolica. Some of the
painters, as, for instance, Xanto Avelli, were eclectic in their tastes
and made up their subjects by taking a figure here or there from various
pictures. Thus of three figures on a plate in the British Museum,
painted with the Dream of Astyages, one is borrowed from Raphael and
another from Mantegna. These "_istoriati_" wares reached their zenith at
Urbino between the years 1530 and 1560, when the workshops of the
Fontana family were in full activity; but their popularity was very
general, and skilful painters at many other towns produced specimens
that it is hard to distinguish from those of Urbino. Baldasara Manara
was a prolific painter in this style at Faenza; Pesaro and Castel
Durante were little behind Urbino in the skill of their artists, the
Lanfranchi family in the former town having a well-deserved reputation,
while the founders of the Fontana factories learnt their art in the
latter; and a few pieces of considerable merit bear the name of Rimini
as their place of origin.

There wil