POTTERY AND LACE AT THE ITALIAN EXHIBITION.
ANIMATION is the chief note of the Art portion of the ItsliAn Flichibition, animation which is in many- instances exuberant to the point of vulgarity, and especially in the case of the specimens of sculpture, disconcerting to our primary notions. Amid much that is really beautiful in design, and a great deal of workmanship which it would be difficult to praise too highly, one is struck by the prevalence of frivolous and commonplace conceits, and by the curious movement which makes the smaller figures and groups in the collection of sculpture so strange and novel. There is nothing of the dignity, nothing of the "rapture of repose,' about these beautifully chiselled, realistic little figures, belonging to a school of Art of which we beheld the beginning in the famous "Reading Girl" exhibited in the Italian Court of the great Exhibition of 1862, in the company of Mr. Story's immortal " Cleopatra " and " Lybian ANIMATION is the chief note of the Art portion of the ItsliAn Flichibition, animation which is in many- instances exuberant to the point of vulgarity, and especially in the case of the specimens of sculpture, disconcerting to our primary notions. Amid much that is really beautiful in design, and a great deal of workmanship which it would be difficult to praise too highly, one is struck by the prevalence of frivolous and commonplace conceits, and by the curious movement which makes the smaller figures and groups in the collection of sculpture so strange and novel. There is nothing of the dignity, nothing of the "rapture of repose,' about these beautifully chiselled, realistic little figures, belonging to a school of Art of which we beheld the beginning in the famous "Reading Girl" exhibited in the Italian Court of the great Exhibition of 1862, in the company of Mr. Story's immortal " Cleopatra " and " Lybian The figures are very clever; there is a marble child in a tucked frock and a knitted hood ; the frock and the hood leave abso- lutely nothing to desire—except the absence of-both—and there is a portly nurse, with an irreproachable apron, a draped gown, a portentous bustle, butterfly-bows on her head, and. an ugly crying child in her extended arms, who could hardly be more real, or more unwelcome, in the solid flesh and the textile fabrics on which the artist has lavished remarkable skill. These are two instances among dozens ; there is also a young person with one foot on his knee, and a just-pulled-off sock on the floor beside him—the seek as perfect as the cavalry officer's eye-glass in Miss La Creevy's miniature—and a boy with a ball, than which nothing could be less desirable- as an object of permanent contemplation, except the living model with his potentialities of mischief. A little boy enjoying himself immensely in a swing is a pleasing spectacle enough for a few minutes' contemplation, but one hardly worthy of perpetuation in marble with all the skill of the artist who has reproduced it. Then there is a second little boy, making mock-music with a pair of bellows for a fiddle, and a toy-whip for a bow, beautifully executed. This is called "Serenade," but where is the fan, the worth, or the art of it ? The same general impression of futility and fidgetti- ness, of mere prettiness without dignity, which is made by the smaller works in sculpture, is also produced by the terra-cotta and other specimens of Ceramic art, of course with numerous exceptions, and all due allowance' for the consideration that prettiness is more requisite than dignity in the products of the potter's art. Figures, faces, attitudes, gestures, costumes, occupations, expres- sions, colours, all are astonishingly clever,—the spectacled old women, the gossiping old men, the flirting girls and boys, the bawling hawkers, the innumerable illustrations of every-day life in a land where sunshine, colour, and laughter' abound, are given with realism, vivacity, movement, which - amaze the beholder. But they are wearisome too; not because one sees so many of them all together, but because there is a certain vulgarity about them; and when one has admired the design, recognised the glance, or the grin, the saucy swagger, the eloquent hand-movements, the accuracy of detail, the vitality of the whole, one ends by wondering how such very clever artists can think all this worth while. We are well accustomed to the reflection ; how often does it recur during one's visits to the Royal Academy season after season ?
It is a pleasure to turn from these things to the great vases with flaunting flowers flung out from them—most brittle of earthen vessels—in the collection of the Industria Ceramica Napoletana, and to the charming Florentine specimens of art pottery from the Cantagalli Works. Attracted by the beauty and variety of the forms, and the glow of colour, the visitor learns with interest that the artists who make the copies from the antique and the renaissance executed in the famous Cantagalli ware, are almost all peasant-workmen ; also that it is mostly to them that the new and beautiful shapes and com- binations of colour before his eyes are due. He learns from' the catalogue that the products of the pottery are all painted. by hand without the aid of any mechanical means, and that they are made of "the enamelled earthenware called. Majolica,' the painting being executed on the unbaked glaze, after which the ware is baked at high fire ;" and, from an. attendant, that the most recent achievement of the Cantagalli pottery is the successful production of the long-desired metallic glaze which lends imperishable lustre to some of the most beautiful objects in the collection. It is not easy to realise that one is not in presence of very costly things, when one contemplates the Raffaelesque designs from loggie and stanze on vases, flagons, candelabra, tazze, flower-stands, table-ornaments of all sizes and forms, in- variably beautiful; and the reproductions of Della Robbia (the white Madonna especially), with their encircling fruit- garlands, grapes and oranges, pomegranates, maize, and medlars, each separate piece of fruit a study of form and colour. There is a child's standing figure from the Foundling Hospital at Florence, with loosed swaddling-clothes and untied bands, which is counted a masterpiece of Della Robbia ; it is wonderfully beautiful in this reproduction. The use of sea-shells, dolphins, water-birds, and serpentine forms, and the graceful vagaries of knotted and tasselled cords, the dragon and lizard forms, the chimmrx, the wyvern, the hippogrif, and all the varieties of heraldic design, is curious to trace among the minor objects in the collection, the flagons, jugs, cups, candlesticks, fruit-dishes, low flower-stands, brackets, and miscellaneous things of beauty. These are so various, curious, ingenious, and tasteful, that they easily distract one from the grander achievements ; the great Urbino vases, with their landscapes and stately groups of figures; the Tuscan, Florentine, Castel- Durante vases ; designs from the old frescoes in the Pisan Campo Santo; rich and glowing Persian tiles; and the beautiful plaques, reproductions respectively of the " Primavera " of Botticelli, a "Triumph of Bacchus" by Paul Veronese, and Rossellino's "St. John." Delightful jugs from originals in the Correr Museum at Venice, the lily of Florence in countless combinations, crowned hippogrifs with the arms of the Italian cities gripped in their glittering claws, crowing cocks with shining feathers and the true irate eye, lamp-pedestals beautiful of form and colour, and " oddments " of countless sorts and sizes, distract one and satisfy one all at once. Not the Nast attractive are the works of art which take the useful form of dessert-services and tea and coffee-pots. The fruits painted upon the graceful baskets and the idealised plates of the former, all different, are perfectly executed ; and the quaint forms of the latter tell of the originality of the designers. A queer little coffee-pot, with its lid deftly joined to the spout by a gracefully twisted cord, bears the following inscription :— " Noir comme le dia.ble, Chaud comme l'enfer, Par comme un ange, Dour comme ?amour: Recette de Talleyrand pour la cafe."
A very curious object is a bell of the Urbino ware, suspended by a handle of the same; the tongue is of metal. It bears an old inscription : "Mariana bella sopra l'altre belle." "Why, that's a pun," remarked a lady in the hearing of the present writer ; "at least, I mean it would be if 'bell' was all the same in the Italian."
Among the most beautiful objects in the Cantagalli collec- tion are vases, candelabra, table ornaments, and flower-stands, reproductions of the pale-blue and white (not dead-white) ware, made at Savona in the eighteenth century. The old Dutch form of tulip-pot, a vase with nozzles—also a Chinese form—is very effective in this ware : one can picture the blaze and blare of the gorgeous flowers, with the scarlet striking into the yellow and the black against the back- ground formed of these subdued and harmonious tints. No doubt the lily of Florence becomes it bravely too.
Lace is a tempting topic, even to the ignorant male who knows nothing of its literature—it has an illustrated organ all to itself, styled a "family paper" in Venice—but ven- tures to assert that he knows good lace when he sees it. There
is some superbly beautiful lace, old and new, to be seen at the Italian Exhibition,—lace whose value is .comprehended as one
studies it, taking in the associations of the old, and coming to -understand the patient labour that goes to the making of the mew. Venice is, of course, the chief contributor of both the antique and the modern examples of this exquisite fabric. Mr.
Jesurum exhibits a bed and pillow-covering in raised rose- point, which belonged to Pope Leo X., and is valued at 21,200; also four yards of Venetian point made in 1680; a smaller quantity made ten years later. All are indescribably beautiful, and each might have been laid aside yesterday, with the final sigh of satisfaction and weariness by the dear dead women who wrought them, while the tale of their own lives was being told. The modern Venetian ace is very beautiful, especially in the light and silken scarfs and mantillas, both black and white. On beholding the latter, one is carried back to the " Keepsake " days, and beyond them to Galuppi's time. It would be easy to summon up a splendid company in one's fancy ; to deck the lovely ladies in the Venice lace ; to hang the hall with the gilded and silvered leather fabrics (revived from the great days of old) which come from Milan; to set it forth with the inlaid tables and cabinets from Florence ; and to place the guests in the Savonarola chairs, or on the tabonrets em- broidered in roses, convolvuli, and tulips on cloth of silver. Then should there be placed in the hand of the fairest of the fair "the sceptre that rules the world," a fan beyond compare. It is to be seen at the Italian Exhibition, but not to be pur- chased, and it is the work of Signor Smargiassi. One is tempted to use the word " incredible " to such a feat as the painting of this fan. The material is so fine, so light as hardly to be seen. Across this faint film are drawn the filaments of a spider's web,—the spider is a lurking, roguish Cupid. Towards his meshes floats, with wondrous lightness and grace, a female figure, draped in nebulous garments, with a drifting scarf; she suggests the moonlit hour, and from the lower earth springs a cluster of rich red poppies—a triumph of art, with their glowing colour, their peculiar downiness, their slim stems, their shining black hearts—one might snap the bell-heads off the darting stalks—all perfect, and on an almost imperceptible gossamer ground. Such a fan might one of Titian's or Paul Veronese's sitters have waved and furled, throned in a palace by the Adriatic or on the Arno.
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