Luca's new work was in plain white earthenware at first, a mere
rough imitation of the costly, laboriously wrought marble, finished in a
few hours. But on this humble path he found his way to a fresh success,
to another artistic grace. The fame of the oriental pottery, with its
strange, bright colours--colours of art, colours not to be attained in
the natural stone--mingled with the tradition of the old Roman pottery
of the neighbourhood. The little red, coral-like jars of Arezzo, dug up
in that district from time to time, are still famous. These colours
haunted Luca's fancy. "He still continued seeking something more," his
biographer says of him; "and instead of making his figures of baked
earth simply white, he added the further invention of giving them
colour, to the astonishment and delight of all who beheld them"--Cosa
singolare, e multo utile per la state!--a curious thing, and very useful
for summertime, full of coolness and repose for hand and eye. Luca loved
the forms of various fruits, and wrought them into all sorts of
marvellous frames and garlands, giving them their natural colours, only
subdued a little, a little paler than nature.
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