Such wares have been found at Orvieto, Faenza, Siena and else where, dating from the 14th and i 5th centuries, with designs of animals, birds, foliage and heraldry of Gothic style in manganese purple and green, recalling those of the Spanish wares of Paterna.
By the end of the i 5th century the palette was extended to five principal colours or more, but the designs retained their purely decorative character. After 1500 a change to pictorialism came about, with a further range of colouring, dishes and vases being at last treated merely as recip ients for subject-paintings (isto riati) ; later in the century the arabesques of Raphael and his school based on ancient Roman wall-paintings began to influence maiolica design, and in the 17th century decoration of this type found a rival in monochrome blue painting in emulation of Chinese porcelain and the Dutch wares of the time, heralding the downfall of the art of maiolica in competition with English earthenware in the 18th century. A great part of the output of the maiolica-potters, in the form of large dishes, wall-panels and vases, was intended from the out set for decoration only; dishes with appropriate designs were a favourite form of gift as love-tokens or to celebrate betrothals and weddings. The "useful" wares include plates, jugs and large pitchers, and especially drug-pots for the equipment of feudal or monastic pharmacies, either with a handle and short spout or of the waisted cylindrical shape known as albarello. Pave ment-tiles were also an important part of the output of certain workshops. From about 1500 onwards the influence of con temporary graphic art becomes increasingly apparent in the deco ration of maiolica. Woodcuts in devotional and other books and the engravings on copper of German as well as Italian masters pro vided the painters with motifs.
Early in the 15th century, under the lordship of the Manfredi, Faenza became an important cen tre of the craft; the city soon rose to such predominance that its name was adopted in French and other languages for enam elled earthenware in general. Floor-tiles, dated 1487, of great beauty, powerful design and col ouring, in the church of San Petronio, Bologna, are shown by inscriptions on them to have been made at Faenza in the workshop of the Betini family. The leading
Faventine workshop from about 1500 was the Casa Pirota; the dishes and drug-vases there made display a great wealth and variety of ornament based on early Renaissance motive s—cupids, masks, dolphins, cornucopias and the like, generally in reserve on a blue ground. One class,of wares is painted in dark blue and white on an enamel stained lavender-blue. A great master of the craft, identified by the signature on the back of a dish painted with Christ amongst the Doctors as Ieronimo da Forli, is believed to have lived at Faenza; he adapted compositions of Diirer and others in paintings displaying all the resources of the art in unexcelled beauty of harmonious colour ("The Resurrection," Victoria and Albert Museum, London ; "Martyrdom of St. Sebastian," Flor ence; "Death of the Virgin," British Museum).
It seems that maiolica was not made at Florence, but potteries existed in its neighbourhood at Montelupo and Caffaggiolo. To the former perhaps belong the noble 15th century wares, especially two-handled nearly globular drug-pots, painted in a thick blackish blue and purple with animals, birds and human figures amongst foliage which from its type has won for these wares the appellation "oak-leaf jars"; in the 17th century this place produced dishes with crude figures of musketeers. A pottery attached to a castle of the Medici, Caffaggiolo, was the source of some of the most sumptuous maiolica ever made, great dishes, bowls and pitchers with the arms of the Medici and of the two popes of that family, triumphs in the manner of Mantegna, and subjects after Floren tine artists. Hardly less splendid are the wares of Siena, particu larly of one Maestro Benedetto; they excel in vigorous ornamental designs of early Renaissance character, in a palette dominated by a rich orange-yellow. Con spicuous among them are the drug-vases with an oval panel on one side formed by a ribboned wreath of fruit and foliage and traversed by a wide band bearing the name of the intended con tents. The typical Sienese paint ing is seen also in the heraldic and grotesque designs of the pavement-tiles of the Petrucci Palace, Siena, now scattered in various museums. The Sienese wares were imitated at Deruta, near Perugia, which was, how ever, better known for its lustred wares (the earliest with a date, a relief of St. Sebastian in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is of 1501) ; these are painted in blue outline and shading, filled in with a pale lemon—or straw-yellow lustre. They take the form especially of two-handled vases and goblets and heavy wide rimmed dishes, often painted with a lady's bust accompanied by a moralising adage or with figures influenced by Perugino.