THE pottery of Ottoman Turkey is probably the most impressive element of the Godman Bequest, one of the richest benefactions in the history of the British Museum. Particularly well represented is the so-called 'Damascus' group - named and, until now, usually dated on the basis of the inscribed mosque-lamp in the British Museum (87 5-16 1; presented by C. Drury Fortnum) to circa 956 (1549) but generally agreed not to have been made at Damascus. The group is characterised by a spectrum of underglaze colours - tones of cobalt, turquoise, grey, olive-green, black and manganese - unparalleled in any other Islamic underglaze-painted pottery or in contemporary Europe. The pottery is generally held to be a transitional phase between the blue and white 'Abraham of Kütahya' and 'Golden Horn' wares of the earlier sixteenth century and the wares dated or datable to after 1560 decorated with underglaze bole-red. Its transitional status does not, however, withstand close examination; and though its chronology, the circumstances of its manufacture, the clientele for which it was made, its probable evolution and even its subsequent history remain obscure, a cumulative argument may be constructed to identify it with pottery made for the Ottoman court; it would then date from the period 1560 to 1580 and be contemporary with the finest Iznik tilework of this period, which is either decorated in bole-red and its associated spectrum or in blue and white. The material to be considered here is necessarily selective but it takes account not only of the 'Damascus' wares in the Godman Bequest but also of pieces collected by God-man's eminent contemporaries, Henderson, Fortnum, Franks and Salting, to whom the major collections of the United Kingdom are also substantially indebted.

IN the 1840s, nearly a century after Sèvres had started its production of biscuit porcelain figures, the Staffordshire potters launched a new, improved version of biscuit, known either as Statuary Porcelain or as Parian Ware. At the Minton factory the debt to France was, after a fashion, acknowledged by the employment there of French modellers. These modellers did not come from the ceramic profession: in two of the cases which concern us here, they were sculptors whose main speciality had been ornamental work in bronze and other metals. It could hardly have been otherwise, since the French tradition of ceramic sculpture had been broken at the Revolution, and was to be revived only in the Second Empire, in the wake of the English achievement. Historians of ceramics have stated that the choice of these modellers was made by Léon Arnoux, Minton's Art Director. However, in the instance of Carrier-Belleuse, the most talented of the group, there seems good reason to suppose that the initiative for his appointment came from outside the profession. His connection with the Sutherland family suggests a different background to his employment by the firm, and had some interesting repercussions.

MICHELANGELO'S journeys to Carrara and its neighbourhood to seek marble for his sculptural and architectural projects are a remarkable feature of his biography. Travel of this kind on the part of sculptors was certainly no novelty by the end of the fifteenth century; but Michelangelo's stays in Carrara numbered nearly a dozen and the length of time he spent there was probably without precedent.

THIS note attributes two drawings to Pietro Negroni, a Southern Italian painter active in Naples, and indicates how their discovery may shed some light on a hitherto obscure area of Italian renaissance draughtsmanship.

CASTIGLIONE'S Penitence of St Peter (Fig.40), which is presented here for the first time, indicates that despite the recent attempts to define Castiglione's early career in Rome, we still have much to learn about the formative years of this complex and captivating Genoese artist. Lacking any documentation on this picture, save that it was once cited as a Hermit tentatively attributed to Baciccio in the Ruspoli collection, Rome, the painting can nonetheless with some confidence be dated to the mid-1630s because of its many stylistic affinities with Castiglione's only known dated work of the decade, a Jacob's journey of 1633 (Fig.45). In addition to having a similar signature, IO:BENEDITTVS/CASTILIONVS/IANVENSI (Fig.42), the two paintings share details in the lyrical landscapes and in the deli-cate handling, which is of an astonishing range-from minute herring-bone patterns to highly finished varnishes contrasting with passages of scumbling. Yet beyond these kinships, the Penitence of St Peter is a decidedly different work from Castiglione's better known Viaggi di Giacobbe. Even its subject-a mystical event taking place in a setting lacking Castiglione's usual farrago of still life and animals - reinforces the painting's singular position among his early known works. Moreover, the picture indicates Castiglione's reconsideration of his Genoese-Flemish artistic roots shortly after his appearance in Rome in 1632.