For two centuries following came an
interval known as the Dark Ages, when none of the arts flourished.
But before the Moors had fled from Spain the Italians who lived near
at hand and whose territory the invaders often plundered had tired of
their pillaging and in return had made an expedition into the
Saracens' country bringing back with them to Italy some of the
Majolica ware of the Arabs. When the nations began to awaken out of
their two hundred years of warfare and strife, and Genoa, Venice, and
Leghorn became great commercial centres, then the Renaissance came and
the Italians, who were ever an ingenious people, began among other
things to attempt to copy the glaze on this Majolica ware. As a result
in the fifteenth century Luca della Robbia, who was both a sculptor
and a potter, contrived to perfect his wonderful glazed terra cotta."
"Not the Delia Robbia who did the Singing Boys we have on the wall at
school!"
"The very same. He made great blue and white enameled tiles for wall
decoration too; figures of babies and children, as well as whole
altars fashioned entirely from this beautiful enamel. Whether he used
a plumbiferous, or lead glaze; or a stanniferous, or tin glaze, we do
not know.
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