Before the advent of Maiolica ware in Italy a similar kind of pottery was made in Spain, which had the stanniferous or opaque tin glaze and the golden lustre that belonged to the best examples of Italian maiolica. We refer to the Hispano-Moresque ware. This opaque stanniferous glaze was known to the Arabs of Spain from the end of the thirteenth century, or more than one hundred years before Luca della Robbia(who died in 1430) produced his enamelled earthenware.

The First Specimens Of Hispano-Moresque Pottery

The First Specimens Of Hispano-Moresque Pottery were probably made at Malaga, and another important factory was at Valencia. The shape and decoration of the famous Alhambra vase (Fig. 10), one of the earliest specimens of Hispano-Moresque ware (about 1320), clearly points to its Persian origin of design, and was probably made and decorated by a Persian Saracenic artist. It is coloured brown and blue on a yellowish ground, and is decorated with animals and ornament in the Persian manner. It was found about the middle of the sixteenth century, under the pavement of the Alhambra Palace, filled with gold coins.

Hispano-Moresque Ware

Hispano-Moresque Ware is of a general yellowish-white colour, with an iridescent metallic lustre similar to the Italian maiolica of the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. The ornamentation is lustrous rather than the ground, and is of a golden copper red to a pale yellow golden tint. It has been divided into three classes: the first has the ornamentation of a copper red colour; the ground is nearly covered by ornament, consisting invariably of birds in the midst of flowers and foliage, resembling Persian pottery. The ware of this class is less perfect in manufacture than that of the golden yellow designs, and is the oldest. The second class has the colour of a monochrome golden yellow tint, with the ornament of a small geometric character, and Spanish or Moresque escutcheons. This variety is of Spanish origin of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

The third class has the ornament partly rendered in coloured enamels, and has golden yellow armorial bearings, interfacings, and foliage. Animals, such as antelopes, sometimes occur. This ware is the carefully executed work of the fifteenth century. During the first years of the sixteenth century the third class of ware was probably imitated by the Italians.

The process of the manufacture of lustred earthenware was introduced into Italy by Arabian or Spanish workmen from the Balearic Isles.

A beautiful vase of elegant shape with large perforated handles in Hispano - Moresque, decorated with ivy or briony leaves and tendrils, is in the Kensington Museum (Fig.11).

A curious shaped tile from the Alhambra is shown at Fig. 12, the decoration of which is purely Saracenic.

Scaliger

Scaliger (1484-1558) tells us that a costly fayence, as beautiful as the pottery of India, was made in his time in the island of Majorca and exported to Italy; he also adds that the name "Maiolica"or Majolica was derived from Majorca.

The island of Majorca was an Arab possession until the year 1230, and no doubt the Arabs had there founded potteries for the production of glazed earthenware.

Towards 1300, as related by Passeri, the Italian potters began to cover a raw clay with a coating of white opaque Sienese earth produced from that territory. This coating of a white opaque substance, called an "engobe," was the ground to which the colours were applied, and which, differing from the older methods hitherto employed in Italy, was a distinct advance in pottery manufacture, and has been considered as the first beginning of Maiolica pottery. Improvements were effected in the use of this engobe or opaque varnish until the time of Luca della Robbia (1355-1430).

Fig. 9. Buen Retiro Ware. (S. K. M).

Fig. 10. The Alhambra Vase Hispano-Moresque.

Fig. 11. Hispano-Moresque Vase. (S.K. M).

Fig. 12. Alhambra Tile. (S. K. M).

Della Robbia Ware

It is not known whether the above celebrated artist invented the opaque white stanniferous glaze with which he covered his works, but he was the first to use it successfully in the architectural decoration known as "Delia Robbia" ware. He succeeded, however, in colouring his white glaze, thereby greatly enlarging its usefulness for exterior and interior decoration. The colours he obtained were blue, yellow, green, violet, and a copper tint. His sculptured terra-cottas glazed with these colours became objects of great request. He obtained more orders than he could execute himself, and so he employed his two brothers, who were sculptors, to assist him. His nephew Andrea, after himself was the most famous in this kind of work, and produced, like his uncle Luca, groups of figures in panels, single figures, tabernacles, friezes, etc.

Three sons of Andrea, Giovanni, Luca, and Girolamo, worked in the same material, and Girolamo was invited by Fran*¡ois Ier to decorate the ChÆ'teau de Madrid with "Delia Robbia" ware, representing the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid, which was done at a cost equal to *15,530.

In the Kensington Museum there are many specimens of Delia Robbia ware, among which are a series of twelve circular medallions in enamelled terra-cotta, representing the twelve months of the year, one of which is illustrated at Fig. 13. The bas-relief of the Virgin and Child (Fig. 14) is likely to be a work of one of the Della Robbia family.

Fig. 13. Medallion in Enamelled Earthenware, by Luca della Robbia. (S. K. M).