PART II

By a strange coincidence those paintings in the ‘Cappella Maggiore’

of Santa Trinita to which the entries in Alesso’s ‘Ricordi, Libro

B,’ refer, have alone been preserved of all the frescoes once in the

chapel, with the exception of some fragments of the lunettes on the

lateral walls. The last but one of these entries records the purchase

of cinnabar for the wings of the seraphim on the soffit of the arch

opening into the ‘Crociera.’[51] The first entry in ‘Libro B’ is dated

March 9, 1470-1; but according to an abstract of an entry in ‘Libro

A,’ Alesso ‘received the commission to paint the “Cappella Maggiore”

of Santa Trinita from Bongianni Gianfigliazzi, for 200 gold ducats, on

July 1, 1471, and undertook to finish the work within the period of

five to seven years.’[52] The latter date, no doubt, was that of the

execution of the ‘writing,’ subscribed by the hand of Misser Bongianni,

which Alesso held, and to which he refers in the ‘ricordo’ on the

first page of ‘Libro B.’ In the interval between these two dates the

painter began the cartoons for the figures of the prophets and the

other ornaments of the vault. On April 28, 1471, he bought ‘16 quires

of coarse paper (_carta da straccia_) in royal folio, at 5 soldi the

quire, for making the “spolverizzi” of the prophets and the other

“spolverizzi” that occur in the said vault.’ The ‘spolverizzi’ properly

were the outlines pounced upon the plaster, by means of the pricked

cartoon; but here, by a figure of speech, Alesso clearly intends the

cartoons themselves. The more usual method of transferring a cartoon

was to trace the outlines, by means of a metal style, on to the fresh

plaster, as Vasari recommends.[53] Pricked cartoons seem to have been

more commonly employed in the case of embroideries and ‘drappi.’[54] ¶

Having in the meantime purchased certain colours for the work, Alesso,

at length, on August 29, 1471, paid various sums for moving the boxes

containing his colours, etc., into chapel, and for the purchase of

brushes and pipkins in preparation for the actual painting of the

vault. There are two entries of that date: the first records that he

bought ‘from Bernardino di Ventura, the pencil-maker, 58 pencils of

minever, between coarse and fine, one with another, great and small,’

costing, lire 1 soldi 12; the second, that he spent, ‘between new

pipkins and small pots, and hogs’-hair and pack thread for making

pencils of hogs’-hair, and for the carriage of chests and trestles

for the work of painting the said chapel, lire 3 soldi 5.’ Alesso,

however, does not appear to have proceeded very far with the actual

painting of the vault until the following spring; for on April 12,

1472, he records that he bought ‘five pounds of azzurro della Magnia

(namely, biadetto) for making the bed under the fine blue, and this

I bought from Lorenzo di Piero, the painter, in Borgo Sant’Apostoli,

at the price of 5 soldi the ounce.’[55] This ‘biadetto’ was probably

identical with the ‘sbiadato’ mentioned by Cennini, in a passage in

which he says, that ‘a blue like sbiadato, and very similar to azzurro

della Magnia,’ may be made with indigo and white, ‘biacca’ or ‘bianco

sangiovanni.’[56] Alesso would seem to have painted _a fresco_ the blue

backgrounds behind the figures of the prophets on the vault with this

‘biadetto,’ using it as a ‘bed’ for the fine azzurro della Magnia,

which he afterward applied _a secco_.[57] It cost one-fifth, or even

less, of the genuine azzurro della Magnia, and, no doubt, resembled

it in colour. The genuine azzurro della Magnia seems to have been not

easily obtainable in Florence; and Alesso is generally careful to

record how he came by his purchases. On March 7, 1470-1, according to

the first entry in ‘Libro B,’ he bought ‘2 pounds 9 ounces of azzurro

di Magnia from Cardinale del Bulletta, at the price of 26 soldi the

ounce’; and on the 12th of the same month, 4 pounds 2½ ounces, at 33

soldi the ounce. On April 31, 1471, he bought 1 pound 7 ounces, ‘from a

German, in a bladder,’ at 31 soldi the ounce. ‘On 25 day of September,

1472,’ records Alesso, ‘I bought 2 pounds of azzurro di Magnia from

Giovanni d’Andrea, glazier, at the price of 25 soldi the ounce; he

said it belonged to a gossip of his, a courier, who brought it from

Venice: the said Giovanni wanted 4 soldi to go drinking with.’ This

Giovanni d’Andrea was the glazier who, in partnership with Il Lastra,

had executed the window of the ‘Cappella Maggiore’ of Santa Trinita,

from Alesso’s design. Finally, on January 13, 1472-3, Alesso bought

2 pounds 10 ounces, ‘from a Pole,’ at 20 soldi the ounce; ‘a clear,

beautiful, finely-ground blue,’ he adds with satisfaction. At that time

the painter was about to begin the lunettes on the lateral walls of the

chapel. ¶ Cennini calls azzurro della Magnia ‘a natural colour that is

found in and around silver lodes.’ ‘Much,’ he adds, ‘is obtained in

Germany [La Magnia, whence its name], and also in the country about

Siena.’[58] Milanesi, in the notes to his edition of Cennini, says

that this blue was an oxide of cobalt; but Mrs. Herringham, with more

probability, identifies the colour with blue carbonate of copper,

commonly called blue verditer: in the same way, she identifies ‘verde

azzurro,’ which Cennini says was made artificially from ‘azzurro della

Magnia,’ with green verditer, which is also a carbonate of copper.[59]

Alesso records in ‘Libro B,’ that, on March 20, 1470-1, he bought 6

pounds of ‘verde azzurro,’ at 14 soldi the ounce. ¶ It is worthy of

remark that in a work of the importance of these frescoes, executed for

so wealthy a patron as Messer Bongianni Gianfigliazzi, Alesso should

not have used ultramarine, but a blue which cost but a twentieth part

of that ‘noble, beautiful, and most perfect beyond all colours.’[60]

According to the entries cited above, Alesso bought his azzurro della

Magnia at prices varying from 20 soldi to 33 soldi the ounce.

Few other colours are specified by name in these ‘Ricordi.’ On May 24,

1471, Alesso purchased 4 pounds 5 ounces of yellow, namely, ‘arzicha,’

at 13 soldi the ounce. Cennini calls ‘arzica’ a colour chemically

produced and little used, but more at Florence than elsewhere. He adds

that it perishes on exposure to the air, and is not good for walls,

but mixed with a little azzurro della Magnia and giallorino it makes

a beautiful green.[61] Mrs. Herringham suggests that ‘arzica’ may be

massicot, called azarcon in Spain.[62] ¶ On September 1, 1471, Alesso

bought 5 ounces of fine lake at 14 soldi the ounce. The colour was

probably used for the purple robe of the David. Lastly, on September

14, 1472, he bought ‘8 ounces of fine cinnabar to make the cherubim of

the arch before the said chapel,’ at 2 soldi 8 danari the ounce. This

was the vermilion for the wings of the seraphim, which still remain on

the soffit on the arch. ¶ By June 1472 the painting of the vault had so

far advanced that Alesso began to buy the gold for the ornaments. On

June 13 he bought from Domenico, the gold-beater, 1,700 pieces of fine

gold ‘laid upon tin-foil,’ for lire 61; on June 15, from Giovanni, the

gold-beater, called Il Rosso, 500 pieces, also on foil, for lire 18;

on June 23, 4,000 pieces of fine gold, at 3 lire 4 soldi the hundred,

from a Genoese; and on June 28, 86 sheets of yellow foil, on which

to lay the gold, for lire 8. Lastly, on July 9, 1472, he bought ‘8

pounds of liquid varnish, to apply them upon the vault, namely, the

ornaments of fine gold.’ In all this Alesso appears to have followed

the method set forth by Cennini, in cap. 99 of his ‘Trattato.’[63] ¶

But one other entry in these ‘Ricordi’ calls for any remark: on July

24, 1471, Alesso ‘bought four pounds of linseed oil at the price of 4

soldi the pound.’ What purpose was this oil intended to serve? Was it

for some oil ‘tempera’? Vasari, speaking of these paintings of Santa

Trinita, says that ‘Alesso laid them in _a fresco_, and afterwards

finished them _a secco_, tempering the colours with yolk of egg, mixed

with liquid varnish made over the fire’; he adds that Alesso ‘thought

that this tempera would protect the paintings against damp; but it

was of so strong a nature that where it has been applied freely the

work has in many places flaked away, and so, whereas he thought to

have found a rare and most beautiful secret, he remained deceived by

his opinion.’[64] Without attempting to discuss the nature of the

‘tempera’ which is here described, I may recall the fact that Domenico

Veneziano, who was undoubtedly Alesso’s master, is celebrated by Vasari

on account of ‘the new method which he employed of colouring in oil’;

and the books of the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova record payments for

very considerable quantities of linseed oil which that master used for

the lost paintings in the ‘Cappella Maggiore’ of Sant’ Egidio.[65]

Domenico, no doubt, possessed the secret of some improvement upon the

old method of painting in oil on walls, which Cennino Cennini, who

describes it at length in the ‘Libro dell’ Arte,’ cap. lxxxix.–cap.

xciv., says ‘was much in use among the Germans.’ ¶ Alesso, as I have

said, originally undertook, on July 1, 1471, to paint the ‘Cappella

Maggiore’ of Santa Trinita for 200 gold florins, and to finish the

work within a period of five to seven years. It was not, however,

until January 19, 1496-97, after an interval of more than twenty-five

years, that the total amount to be paid him for finished work was

estimated by Cosimo Rosselli, Benozzo Gozzoli, Pietro Perugino and

Filippino Lippi at 1,000 gold florins.[66] In other words, Alesso had

spent upon the work five times the minimum period originally stipulated

for its completion, and he was awarded five times the original sum

for which he had undertaken to complete the chapel. Two causes appear

to have contributed to this delay. The one was that Alesso’s method

of laying-in his paintings _a fresco_, and finishing them _a secco_,

admitted of endless elaboration, and a consequent expenditure of time,

which pure fresco painting did not admit of. The other was, that

shortly after receiving the commission for the chapel Alesso appears

to have turned his attention to reviving the art of mosaic, which

had almost died out in Florence. We first hear of Alesso working in

mosaic in 1481, in which year he restored the figures on the façade

of San Miniato a Monte.[67] In 1483 he was appointed by the consuls

of the Arte de’ Mercanti to restore the mosaics in the tribune of the

baptistery of San Giovanni, ‘there being no one, in all the dominion

and jurisdiction of Florence, but he, who then understood that art’: in

consideration of which the consuls resolved to convey to him, ‘for the

term of his natural life, such real property as would yield 30 florins

yearly, upon the condition that he bound himself, so long as he lived,

to repair and restore the mosaics of San Giovanni.’[68] In accordance

with this resolution two houses in the Piazza di San Giovanni,

belonging to the Arte de’ Mercanti, were assigned to Alesso on February

26, 1483-4,[69] and by two instruments of the same date, engrossed by

the notary, Ser Giovanni di Jacopo de’ Migliorelli, Alesso re-leased

the two houses to the persons who were already in possession of them

at the date of the assignment. These instruments are printed, for the

first time, in the appendix to this article.[70] ¶ The decoration of

the ‘Cappella Maggiore’ of Santa Trinita, and the restoration of the

mosaics in the baptistery of San Giovanni and San Miniato a Monte,

appear to have almost entirely engrossed the last thirty years of

Alesso’s life. During that time we hear of no work of importance

undertaken by him, with the exception of the lost altar-piece of Sant’

Ambrogio, which he began in 1470. Messer Bongianni Gianfigliazzi died

on November 7, 1484, and was buried in his chapel at Santa Trinita,

long before Alesso had brought its frescoes to a conclusion.[71]

The work, however, was continued at the instance of his son, Jacopo

Gianfigliazzi; and Stefano Rosselli records in his ‘Sepoltuario

Fiorentino,’ that at the time he was writing, c. 1657, the basement of

Alesso’s altar-piece in the ‘Cappella Maggiore’ of Santa Trinita bore

the inscription: ‘Jacobus Gianfigliazzius Bongiannis Equitis Fil_ius_,

sua erga De_um_ Pietate.’[72] ¶ Of the paintings that once decorated

the walls of this chapel we possess but some partial and imperfect

accounts. Vasari, to whom we chiefly owe the meagre notices which are

extant, says that they consisted of ‘stories from the Old Testament.’

Alesso, he says, ‘drew many portraits from the life; and in the story

of the aforesaid chapel [of Santa Trinita], in which he represented

the Queen of Sheba going to hear the wisdom of Solomon, he drew

Lorenzo de’ Medici, the Magnificent, who was father of Pope Leo X, and

Lorenzo dalla Volpaia, a most excellent master of dials, and a great

astrologer.’ ‘In another story which is opposite to this, Alesso drew

Luigi Guicciardini the elder, Luca Pitti, Diotisalvi Neroni, Giuliano

de’ Medici, father of Pope Clement VII; and next to the stone pilaster

[of the arch opening into the church] Gherardo Gianfigliazzi the elder,

and Messer Bongianni, knight, wearing a blue habit and a collar round

his neck, together with Jacopo and Giovanni of the same family. Near to

these last are Filippo Strozzi and Messer Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli,

astrologer.’[73] What the subject of this latter story may have been,

we do not now know. According to Giovanni Cinelli, in his edition

of the ‘Bellezze di Firenze,’ published in 1677, the other story of

the Queen of Sheba was on the left wall of the chapel, ‘dal Corno

del Vangelo.’ Cinelli, after quoting this passage from Vasari, adds

that ‘in the angle of the choir, on the left side, there is painted a

Cain in the act of striking his brother Abel, a figure which is very

admirable in its attitude, and which expresses in its countenance the

malice and hatred which Cain bore in his heart towards his brother:

and it is greatly esteemed by the connoisseurs; so much so, that when

the cardinal of the serene house of Este came to Florence and visited

this church, he desired to see and consider with attention so fine a

painting.’[74]

[Illustration: _Photograph by Alinari_

THE PAINTINGS OF ABRAHAM, NOAH, MOSES, AND DAVID BY ALESSO BALDOVINETTI

ON THE VAULT OF THE CAPPELLA MAGGIORE OF SANTA TRINITA AT FLORENCE]

Already, when Vasari wrote in 1568, the frescoes in the ‘Cappella

Maggiore’ of Santa Trinita ‘had begun to flake away in many

places.’[75] The last writer to allude to their indifferent condition

is Giuseppe Richa, who speaks of them as ‘not a little consumed and

spoiled by time.’[76] That was in 1755; five years later, in 1760,

Alesso’s ‘stories’ were ruthlessly destroyed or covered with whitewash,

and the walls of the chapel decorated with ‘stucchi’ in the taste of

the time.[77] During the recent restoration of the church, in 1890-7,

the paintings of the four patriarchs on the vault of the chapel, the

seraphim on the soffit of the vault, and the fragments of the lunettes

on the lateral walls of the chapel, were found under the whitewash,

and restored by Signor Dario Chini. [Plate III.] ¶ The vault itself

is divided into four triangular compartments by the intersecting

ribs of the vault, which spring from the four corbels at the angles

of the chapel. In the compartment above the window of the chapel is

a seated figure of Noah, in an ample cloak of dark green, worn over

an under-dress of a reddish colour. He holds some object which is

now undecipherable in his right hand; and beside him, on the left,

is placed the ark. ¶ In the compartment above the left wall of the

chapel is a seated figure of Abraham clad in a yellow robe lined with

green, over an under-dress of vermilion. In his right hand he holds the

sacrificial knife, and at his feet kneels his son Isaac, bound and clad

in white. In the compartment above the right wall is a seated figure of

Moses, holding the two tables of the Law in his hands. The robe, which

falls over the knees of the figure, is vermilion in colour, and the

underdress appears to have been a dark leaf-green. In the compartment

above the arch is a seated figure of David playing upon a psaltery with

three sound-holes. He is attired in a purple mantle lined with green,

which almost entirely envelops his figure. The purple of this robe is

now much perished. All these four figures are relieved against blue

backgrounds, broken by rays of gold which appear to proceed from the

figures; and all the four compartments are surrounded by borders of

fruit and flowers upon a vermilion ground. The ribs of the vault are

painted with green foliage intertwined with a running ribbon, and the

keystone of the vault is blazoned with the arms of the Gianfigliazzi:

or, a lion rampant azure. On the soffit of the arch opening into the

chapel is painted, on a blue ground, the series of seraphim with

vermilion wings, to which allusion has already been made. ¶ In the

lunette on the left wall, immediately below the figure of Abraham, in

the vault, are the remains of a ‘story’ of the ‘sacrifice of Isaac.’

In the upper part of the picture, on some rising and rocky ground,

Abraham is seen turned towards the right, and kneeling before an altar.

This figure is in large part almost obliterated, and the figure of

the angel who appears to him in the sky, and that of Isaac upon the

altar, can now scarcely be made out. On the right of the painting,

however, there may still be seen a tree boldly designed against the

sky, recalling certain passages in Alesso’s painting of the Nativity

in the atrium of the Annunziata at Florence. The lower part of this

lunette has entirely perished. ¶ In the lunette on the opposite wall,

below the figure of the patriarch, in the vault, is a ‘story’ of ‘Moses

receiving the tables of the Law on Mount Sinai.’ The upper portion of

this painting alone remains in a ruined condition. On the top of the

mount Moses kneels, turned to the left. The figure is much damaged;

and that of God the Father, who appears to him out of the heavens, has

almost entirely disappeared. The bare mountain-top is broken by patches

of herbage, and around it may still be seen some cypresses, with other

foliage. ¶ Below each of these lunettes, on the lateral walls of the

chapel, appear to have been two other stories; but the subject of only

one of them has been recorded (as I have said) by Vasari, namely, the

visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon, which appears to have been

on the left wall of the chapel. The story of Cain killing his brother

Abel, recorded by Cinelli, was probably on the altar-wall beside the

window, in the left-hand corner. ¶ In the figures on the vault, Alesso

attains to a nobility of design, and a largeness of manner, which he

does not again reach in any extant work of his. That extreme research

for form, which so largely spoils our enjoyment of the altar-piece

which he painted for this chapel, does not detract, at all in the same

degree, from the severe beauty of these figures; for they possess a

charm both of conception and design which is little distinctive of

Alesso’s later manner, though akin to a certain grace and sweetness

in some of his earliest works. The attitudes of these ‘prophets old’

are very grandly imagined, especially that of the David, who looks up

as he touches his psaltery with a gesture that expresses a spiritual

ecstasy, with an admirable fineness and reticence. Indeed, these

figures are represented with a truth of character, and a refinement of

feeling, for which we vainly look in similar works by his more famous,

and more obviously gifted, pupil, Domenico Ghirlandaio; such as the

vaults of the ‘Cappella Maggiore’ of Santa Maria Novella, and of the

Sassetti chapel in Santa Trinita. To judge from these figures of the

four patriarchs, the destruction of the ‘stories’ which were below

them cannot sufficiently be deplored; the reputation of few Florentine

masters depended so largely on a single work as Alesso’s did upon this

chapel of the Gianfigliazzi. ¶ One other fragment of the ‘stories’

which once decorated the walls of this chapel has come down to us.

Giuseppe Richa, in his ‘Notizie Istoriche delle Chiese Fiorentine,’

after mentioning the various portraits to be found in these paintings,

adds: ‘all these figures are named by the writers of the life of

Alesso; but they do not allude to [the portrait of] a young man in the

angle of the choir, on the epistle side, who is represented in a red

habit, with a green cap on his head, and a white handkerchief in his

hands; and this is Alesso Baldovinetti, who portrayed himself as he

was, when a young man; and he, also, drew there the portrait of Guido

Baldovinetti, who was the man most gifted and renowned at that time in

his illustrious family.’[78] ¶ Domenico Maria Manni, in the notes to

his edition of ‘Baldinucci,’ published a few years after Richa’s work

had appeared, cites a certain ‘Memoriale’ of Francesco di Giovanni

di Guido Baldovinetti, written in the year 1513. According to this

‘Memoriale’ (from which, no doubt, Richa derived his notice of the

portrait in question) Alesso portrayed on the walls of the ‘Cappella

Maggiore’ of Santa Trinita, among many other noble citizens, ‘Guido

Baldovinetti, and, last of all, himself, wearing a _cioppone_ of faded

rose, and a handkerchief in his hand.’[79] Among the pictures which

Morelli bequeathed to the Accademia Carrara, at Bergamo, is a fragment

of a fresco, No. 23, containing the head of a man. It has been cut to

a round measuring 0.23 centm. in diameter. According to an inscription

on the back of the painting it is a portrait of Alesso Baldovinetti,

painted by himself and taken from an angle of the choir of Santa

Trinita in Florence.[80] There can be little doubt that this is the

head to which Francesco Baldovinetti referred in his ‘Memoriale,’ and

that it was cut from the walls of Santa Trinita when Alesso’s paintings

were destroyed in 1760; but whether it is a portrait of the painter is

a question which I must not here attempt to discuss.

[Illustration: A GROUP OF THREE, BY JAN MIENSE MOLENAER; IN THE

COLLECTION OF MR. EDGAR SPEYER (_See_ ~The Burlington Magazine~ for

June 1903, page 52)]

THE DUTCH EXHIBITION AT THE GUILDHALL

❧ ARTICLE II.--THE MODERN PAINTERS ❧

The collection of works of modern Dutch painters at the Guildhall is

much more representative than that of the old masters, and is likely

to be a revelation to those visitors who know only the few, and in

many cases inadequate, examples of modern Dutch works which have been

seen from time to time in London. In only one previous instance, that

of the Glasgow exhibition, has such a representative collection of

modern Dutch painters been brought together in this country. ¶ The

chief interest of the collection is to be found in the works of the

three brothers Maris and of Israels, for these painters are the leaders

of the school, and the rest, though not without individualities of

their own in technique and treatment, are followers. ¶ Joseph Israels

is represented at the Guildhall chiefly by works of his later period,

which are far better known in England than are the pictures in his

earlier manner, which can be studied best at Amsterdam; these latter

are distinguished by precision and detail rather than by the subtler

and more sympathetic treatment of his mature work. ¶ The largest

canvas of Israels shown is The Shipwrecked Fisherman (11), which,

though impressive and well balanced, has a certain stagey effect.

There are several tricks of technique, such as the parallel clouds

and sky, which, however, add not a little strength to the general

effect. Far superior to this picture is The Cottage Madonna (14), a

vigorous painting of a woman with a child in a characteristically Dutch

cottage interior. This fine work can hardly be considered a typical

example of Israels, not indeed because it falls short of his other

achievements, but rather for the opposite reason. It is a wonderful

piece of sympathetic painting, full of feeling and pathos, and without

those eccentricities which are apparent in such of his pictures as

A Jewish Wedding (95), interesting as being the last picture which

he has painted, and therefore reproduced here for this reason, but

lacking in the opinion of the present writer the surpassing merits

which many claim for it. It has become so much the mode to praise

equally all the work of a particular painter or a particular school,

that the sense of proportion and the power of discrimination have

almost become extinct and criticism has been undermined. No painter of

the modern Dutch school is more unequal than Israels, except perhaps

Mauve; and one feels that if he has almost risen to the level of a

great master in The Cottage Madonna, and perhaps in A Ray of Sunshine

(7) and The New Flower (82), there is a particular group of works

at the Guildhall which are sustained in estimation by the repute of

greater achievements. ¶ The case of Jacob Maris is quite otherwise. The

whole of his work is upon essentially legitimate lines, and inspires

a feeling that he never produced a picture from a less than worthy

motive. His pictures are full of the softness and delicacy of the Dutch

atmosphere, and most people would consider it incredible that none of

them were painted out-of-doors. Yet the present writer has been assured

by one of Maris’s intimate friends that this was the case; when a

particular view or picture struck him he was accustomed to stand with

his hands in his pockets, and the picture was painted entirely from

memory in his studio. Yet his works miss no essential truth. This stage

was not reached without much experimentalizing and profound study.

Jacob Maris began with a scrupulous striving after finish, which would

do credit to any of the little masters of Holland of the seventeenth

century. Take for example The Weary Watchers (90), painted in 1869,

in which the child is painted with the finish of a Metzu, and the cat

approaching the cradle with the minuteness of a Mieris. It is a long

jump from this picture to A Windmill, Moonlight (125), the last work

which he finished; but under the surface of the latter, in spite of

the apparent dash, we perceive not one whit less regard for essential

truth. ¶ There are three or four canvases at the Guildhall which

display Maris in his very finest mood. Many will, perhaps, consider

that the finest of all, at least as regards brush work, is Gathering

Seaweed (44). The sky with its immense grey white clouds, through

breaks in which glimpses of blue beyond are discernible, is the chief

factor in the picture. This is in every respect one of Maris’s finest

works, and he has never exceeded the delicious silveriness of sea and

sky and the sense of moisture in the breeze which he here gives us; his

rendering of the wet flat sand on which stand the horse and cart of the

seaweed gatherers has been equalled only by Bonington. ¶ Of somewhat

similar character is the beautiful little Storm Cloud (80), into which

he has infused much the same feeling; but another phase of Maris is

shown in the wonderful Bridge (92), which deservedly occupies a place

of honour on the walls of the Guildhall gallery. Across a typical

Dutch canal is thrown a wooden bridge, under which, away along the

placid canal, can be seen a distant quay abutted with houses; little

red-tiled houses fill the extreme left and right of the picture. It is

a simple motive which in strict accordance with the principles of the

painters of Holland demonstrates the innate beauty of the commonplace.

Quite equal to this, both for intensity of feeling and realization, is

the River and Windmill (101) on the side wall; the sense of stillness

and calm which pervades this work is typical of the tranquillity of a

mind whose sole delight was in nature and its portrayal. The artist is

equally successful in a very different way in the bold and powerful

Dutch Town (43), which seems to be a freely adapted view of Amsterdam.

This is one of his latest works, and was painted in 1898. There is a

delicate shimmer on the water with its lazy craft, and the ill-defined

buildings are developed in an atmosphere shrouded by haze and darkened

by smoke. These two works should be compared with The Ferry Boat

(81), painted in 1870, which owes something to Van Goyen and Soloman

Ruysdael; to his appreciation of the qualities of his predecessors, and

his study of their art, Maris’s own achievements must in great measure

be attributed. It is always unsafe to prophesy, but it is almost safe

to say that Jacob Maris’s reputation will last. ¶ The representation at

the Guildhall of Willem Maris is much less worthy, and a better series

of his works could surely have been obtained; but in one small panel,

Springtime (37), we have the best qualities of his art, and it may be

doubted whether in the representation of the delicate and poetical

charm of spring Willem Maris is surpassed even by Daubigny, except in

a very few pictures. The trees awaken from their winter slumber and

put forth in velvety green the leaves which hardly more than tinge the

brownness of trunk and branch. The stream swollen with the recent rain

affords refreshing drink to the cattle which have just emerged from

the copse on the right. The meadow, with its carpet of tender green

bordered by a row of pollard willows, recedes until it meets the sky

line. Light clouds float over the blue sky and betoken weather fair

but fickle. ¶ When one turns from these two kindred spirits to their

brother Matthew Maris one is struck by the contrast. For Matthew lifts

us at once from things earthly into a spiritual atmosphere; everything

that he touches he envelops in mysticism and poetry. Yet perhaps his

work is more difficult of appreciation; he appeals to a more exclusive

circle. Yet what magic contour of line, what exquisite rhythm, what

consummate balance of composition, we find in it. The Outskirts of a

Town (39), for instance, enveloped in a bewitching gloom,

commends itself to the artist and student, though not to the lover of

pyrotechnics. That fine canvas entitled Montmartre (40) is another

example of the same idealistic treatment. Among examples of his work

which particularly puzzle the public are such efforts as A Study (58)

and A Lady and Goats (59), the latter an idyl inadequately described

by its prosy title. But perhaps the essence of his art is to be found

in The Butterflies (62) and L’Enfant Couchée (70), which for typical

presentment and delicacy of colour are among his finest achievements.

[Illustration: THE ARCHIVES AT VEERE, BY JAN BOSBOOM; IN THE COLLECTION

OF MR. J. C. J. DRUCKER]

[Illustration: A JEWISH WEDDING, BY JOSEPH ISRAELS; IN THE COLLECTION

OF MR. J. C. J. DRUCKER]

[Illustration: A FANTASY, BY MATTHEW MARIS; IN THE COLLECTION OF MADAME

VAN WISSELINGH]

[Illustration: THE NEW FLOWER, BY JOSEPH ISRAELS; IN THE COLLECTION OF

MR. J. STAATS FORBES]

[Illustration: WATERING HORSES, BY ANTON MAUVE; IN THE COLLECTION OF

MR. J. C. J. DRUCKER]

[Illustration: THE CANAL BRIDGE, BY JACOB MARIS; IN THE POSSESSION OF

MESSRS. THOMAS AGNEW AND SONS]

[Illustration: A WINDMILL, MOONLIGHT, BY JACOB MARIS; IN THE COLLECTION

OF MR. J. C. J. DRUCKER]

[Illustration: THE BUTTERFLIES, BY MATTHEW MARIS; IN THE COLLECTION OF

MR. WILLIAM BURRELL]

We are back once more upon the earth when we come to Anton Mauve, of

whose works there are no less than twenty-one examples in the Guildhall

exhibition. With the exception of Joseph Israels, he is the most

unequal painter of modern Holland; there are occasions when he comes

near to equalling Jacob Maris at least in atmospherical effect, and yet

at other times he sinks into a mere technical repetition of his better

self. Of his best phase we could not have better illustrations than The

Hay Cart (2) and Driving in the Dunes (4). In both there is the same

feeling for truth, the same adaptation of technique to the necessities

of the occasion. Watering Horses (97) is another fine work, resplendent

with harmonies of green and grey, and showing the same feeling for

natural phenomena. ¶ After such work as that of the brothers Maris,

and Mauve, and occasionally Israels, one is inevitably disappointed

with Mesdag. Mesdag misses the mark not because of any deficiencies

in technique, but because his works lack that essential quality of

landscape painting--atmosphere. The consequence is that we never lose

sight of the paint; it is paint everywhere. This is all the more to be

regretted since he is a good draughtsman, and his scheme of colour is

often satisfactory and truthful; moreover he has a profound knowledge

of composition. Yet with all these qualities he generally fails. We do

not want a sunset sky full of prismatic glow, nor a sea shimmering

with opalescent tints, if we cannot feel that it is a real sky and a

real sea, and that something other than paint fills up the intervening

space. Mesdag’s deficiency is emphasized in the two pictures shown in

the present exhibition, A Stormy Sunset (28) and A Threatening Sky

(54), which give us nothing but the mere physical features of the

scene, and leave us with an undefinable yearning for something for

which we look in vain. ¶ The other men whose work is represented for

the most part owe what is best in their art to the greater lights

of their school. Of such is the work of Théophile de Bock, of which

Evening (17) is an example of a plagiarism on the school of 1830,

intermingled with a Dutch sentiment which renders it difficult to say

with certainty whether it should be classified as French or Dutch in

sentiment. That Bock has originality when it is brought into play is

amply demonstrated in An Avenue in Holland (94). The sunlit road with

its strongly painted trees conveys an admirable idea of summer heat

and foliage, in which the artist boldly achieves his aim without any

aid but his own sheer force. Such a work shows powers which are never

brought into full play when he attempts to see with other eyes. Apart

from landscape there is but little of interest in the exhibition.

An exception, however, must be made in favour of the fine canvas

by Christopher Bisschop, Prayer Disturbed (29), which is a strong

and powerful piece of painting, and also intensely sympathetic in

realization. Two other canvases are worthy of mention, that by Albert

Neuhuys, Near the Cradle (96), a fine representation of a cottage

interior painted with incisive truth and directness, and Bosboom’s

Archives at Veere (128), an excellent example of the interiors to which

he devoted himself; it has the spaciousness and grace characteristic

of the work of a painter than whom no modern artist has shown a keener

appreciation of the artistic possibilities of ancient buildings.

THE SEALS OF THE BRUSSELS GILDS[81]

❧ WRITTEN BY R. PETRUCCI ❧

MONSIEUR G. DES MAREZ, professor at the university and keeper of the

records of the city of Brussels, has drawn attention lately to three

seals which appeared to him to be worthy of special study. These

consist, first, of the matrix of the seal of the Gild of Barbers

in the fifteenth century, which forms part of the sigillographical

collection of the Musées Royaux du Cinquantenaire; secondly, of the

silver matrix of the seal of the Gild of Butchers in the sixteenth

century, preserved in the archives of the city of Brussels; thirdly

and lastly, of the matrix of the seal of the Gild of Bakers, in the

private collection of M. Charles Lefébure: this last belongs, like the

first, to the fifteenth century. Now the Brussels gilds were never

called upon to seal deeds, a fact of which M. Des Marez was the better

aware as he had just obtained a gold medal from the Royal Academy of

Belgium for an important study, which is at this moment in the press,

on the organization of labour in Brussels during the fifteenth century.

Were the three existing matrices therefore false? And, if they did

in reality date from the period to which everything contributed to

ascribe them, how was their presence to be explained? Those were the

questions which M. Des Marez set himself to adjudge and upon which he

has succeeded in throwing a brilliant light. ¶ Thanks to M. Des Marez’

kindness, I have been able to take cognizance of his work and of the

seals upon which it bears. M. Des Marez’ study will not be published

until the end of August or September next, when it will appear in the

annals of the Archaeological Society. My readers will therefore be the

first to find here set forth the solution of an important historical

and archaeological question. ¶ The juridical incompetence of the

Brussels trading corporations is indisputable. In the second half of

the thirteenth century, the artisans began to lay down the outlines

of a corporate movement. This led to a privilege obtained from Duke

John by the patricians invested with power, by which the craftsmen

were subjected to their authority. The gilds were dependent upon the

town council for all that concerned the making of their rules and

regulations; at most, they enjoyed the right of presenting drafts

for the approval and sanction of the aldermen; they were not able to

sell, pledge or mortgage; and, although their wardens were invested

with certain police functions, their jurisdiction was nevertheless

extremely limited. Difficult cases were submitted to the judgement of

the aldermen, and in no case could the wardens of their own initiative

proceed to a forced execution upon the persons or goods of delinquents.

¶ The gild was unable to issue any act directly, and therefore the

use of a seal, the attributive mark of jurisdiction, is inexplicable.

Even the Drapers’ Gild was without it, although this gild constituted

a powerful administrative and jurisdictive machinery by the side of

the aldermen, of whom, at the time of its splendour, it was even

independent. It issued acts, which the trading corporations were not

able to do, and made regulations, far and near, for all those having

to do with the woollen manufactures or cloth-making. The absence of a

collective seal is to be explained, in this case, by the use made by

the deacons of their personal seals, a use proved by documents in which

it is explicitly mentioned. It was not until 1698 that the Drapers’

Gild ordered a collective seal to be made. The matrix of this seal is

lost, but there remains an impression of it affixed to one side of the

very sheet containing the text of the resolution relating to it, which

document is preserved in the archives of the kingdom, where I have

been able to consult it. ¶ The engraving of this seal is very poor. In

a circular field is St. Michael, clad in a Roman breast-plate, his legs

cased in buskins. His forehead is surmounted by a cross, and his wings

are unfolded. He brandishes a sword in his right hand. Lucifer lies

felled at his feet. St. Michael is seizing one of the demon’s horns

with his hand. Lucifer raises his right hand with a defending gesture;

his left arm is brought back against his body. He wears short wings,

one of which covers a part of the saint’s arm. His lower limbs end in

claws; a long tail is twined between his legs. The impression is made

on a paper pulp which was previously moistened. Above this was laid a

cut-out leaf of thin paper, on which the matrix of the seal was pressed

with force. The paper shows stains of mould; the reliefs are weak and

difficult to distinguish; to reproduce them by photography is almost

impossible. These circumstances, added to the fact that this piece has

absolutely no artistic value, account for the absence of a reproduction

in these pages. Between the two circular fillets that run around the

above figures is this inscription: SIGIL · DECANOR · ET OCTOJUDICUM

· GILDÆ · BRUXELLENSIS. (_Sigillum decanorum et octojudicium gildæ

bruxellensis._) The text of the resolution says that the seal shall

be inscribed with the words: _Sigillum collegii decanorum_, etc. The

engraver could not find room for the word _collegii_, and was obliged

to omit it. This is why a note added to the text of the resolution of

December 4, ordering the execution of the seal, declares that a true

impression of the seal is affixed on the other side and corrects the

text by suppressing the word _collegii_. I may also mention that,

whereas the seal shows the spelling GILDÆ, the text preserves the

old mediaeval spelling GILDE. ¶ We find, therefore, that one alone

of the corporations, the Drapers’ Gild, which was the most powerful,

did unquestionably possess a seal, but at a late date, at the end of

the seventeenth century. This innovation is due, on the one hand, to

modifications introduced into the expedition of the acts, involving

the abolition of the single or double parchment label separate from

the sheet itself and bearing the seal; on the other, to the fact that

the deacons abandoned the use of their personal seals, which served

as a signature in the middle ages, for the customary employment of a

manuscript signature. The personal seals of the deacons having been

abandoned, it became necessary to have recourse to a collective seal. ¶

It is certain, therefore, that the juridical conditions under which the

trading corporations were constituted give rise to very grave doubts

as to the authenticity of the seals of the gilds. If we add the fact

that the records contain no sealed document proceeding from any of the

Brussels gilds, we shall feel greatly tempted to lend to these doubts

the force of certainty. However, an examination of the three matrices

of seals which are here for the first time reproduced scarcely permits

us to believe in their falseness. Let me briefly analyse each of these

three pieces.

[Illustration: SEAL OF THE GILD OF BARBERS]

The matrix of the seal of the Barbers’ Gild is in the sigillographical

collection of the Musées Royaux du Cinquantenaire. Two figures are

standing on a circular ground; they represent St. Cosmas and St.

Damian, the patrons of barber-surgeons. They are dressed in the costume

of the fifteenth century. The right figure, clad in a tunic that comes

down to mid-leg, carries in its left hand a mortar exactly similar to

the mortars that were still in use in Flanders in the last century. In

its right hand, it holds an instrument that might be either a pestle

or a lancet; it is a long, thin instrument, spreading slightly at one

end. Its right arm is bent, and from the wrist hangs a sort of case

shaped like a purse, with an open clasp. This figure symbolizes the

barber. By its side is a shield bearing a pair of open scissors, with

an instrument in pale that appears identical with that which the figure

holds in its right hand. The figure on the left is clad in a long

robe adorned with a wide collar, which seems to point to a profession

superior to that of the mere barber: this is a surgeon. In his right

hand, he holds a round phial with a long, bell-mouthed neck. His left

hand is folded over his breast; the extended fore-finger points to

the phial. From his wrist hangs a bag or purse-shaped case, with open

clasp. By his side is the escutcheon of the city of Brussels, which,

in the fifteenth century, was a plain red shield. The two figures are

standing on a grassy mound. In the upper half of the circumference

of the seal we see a device that reads: _S. barbitonsorū in brūx_.

This seal is the only one of the three that bears a Latin device, a

fact quite in keeping with the learned profession of the surgeons and

barbers.

[Illustration: SEAL OF THE GILD OF BAKERS]

The matrix of the seal of the Bakers’ Gild is now in the private

collection of M. Charles Lefébure. On the ground of the seal we see

St. Aubert, Bishop of Cambrai, the patron of the Brussels bakers, clad

in his pontifical vestments, with the mitre on his head. With his

right hand he is giving the benediction; in his left he holds a peel,

the shovel used for thrusting bread into the oven. The figure rises

at half-length from behind a wide shield on which are represented,

saltierwise, a peel, with two round loaves laid upon the blade, and a

bar for raking the cinders. The circular inscription is in Flemish,

it reads: _S. d’s ambachts · der · beckers · in brussel ·_ (‘Seal

of the Gild of the Bakers in Brussels’). The seal displays all the

characteristics of the fifteenth century.

[Illustration: SEAL OF THE GILD OF BUTCHERS.]

The matrix of the seal of the Butchers’ Gild is in silver. It is kept

in the archives of the city of Brussels. Its date must be carried

back to the early sixteenth century; it is very beautifully engraved.

St. Michael fells the dragon, represented as a shaggy monster with a

bull’s head, which seizes the saint’s left leg in one of its claws;

in the other, it clutches the escutcheon, which it bites in the lower

corner. The saint is clad in armour. In his right hand, he brandishes

his sword; with his left, he holds the escutcheon, which he uses as

a buckler. On the shield figure the heads of three animals: an ox,

a calf and a sheep. The exergue bears the device in Flemish: ~S.

TSVLEESHOUWERS · A͡BACHT · IN BRUESSEL ·~ (‘Seal of the Butchers’

Gild in Brussels’). ¶ M. Des Marez connects the making of these seals

with the great impulse towards emancipation that stirred the trading

corporations in the fifteenth century. In the second half of that

century, the protests of the magistrates are constantly multiplying,

and the trades seem to be progressing towards complete independence. On

the accession of Mary of Burgundy, a violent popular agitation wrested

from the young princess the privilege of June 4, 1477, which hallowed

the triumph of democracy. But this victory lasted only a little while;

and, in 1480, Maximilian of Austria restored the old constitution of

1421. The execution of the seals must, therefore, be ascribed to this

emancipatory movement and, doubtless, to that short period of three

years during which the gilds, as sovereign masters, were called upon to

seal their acts. It is to be presumed that, if any acts were sealed,

these were very rare and were probably destroyed; and it is also very

possible that, after the matrices had been engraved, the reaction set

in almost immediately and that they were never used. ¶ This concerns

the seals of the Barbers’ and Bakers’ Gilds. That of the butchers must

be attributed to the beginning of the sixteenth century. The gild had,

since 1450, claimed a privileged situation consecrating the hereditary

principle: none could be a butcher who was not sprung from butchers.

This privilege, granted by Philip the Good, kindled a quarrel between

the butchers and the town which sometimes led to bloodshed and which

lasted for seventy years. In or about 1516, Charles V put an end to

this state of things by perpetuating the privilege. The date of the

execution of the seal corresponds with this victory for the gild.

But the butchers were stopped in their too independent courses and

were made to continue to recognize the authority of the town council

in all that concerned the making of their rules and regulations and

the management of their interests. ¶ I have shown how constitutional

history and sigillography have together enabled M. Des Marez to solve

a question debated to this day by proving the genuineness of the seals

of the Brussels gilds. The question involved a two-fold problem,

historical and archaeological. The interest attaching to it will be

understood when I add that seals of gilds are exceedingly rare in

Belgium. Hardly any are known to exist except for Bruges, Saint-Trond,

Hasselt, Maastricht, Liége and Ardenbourg. Almost all the tradesmen

were subject to the authority of the town magistrates. The seals of the

Brussels gilds survive as eloquent witnesses of a temporary triumph in

their struggle for independence.

NEW ACQUISITIONS AT THE NATIONAL MUSEUMS

~British Engraving at the Victoria and Albert Museum~

The exhibition of British engraving which has been arranged at the

Victoria and Albert Museum is of considerable interest and importance.

Moreover, it is timely; for the trend of fashion in engravings has of

late been in a direction so limited, that the need was very apparent of

a corrective to a popular point of view by no means entirely warranted

by the facts. The cult of the colour-print and mezzotint has been

pursued beyond all reasonable bounds. In the hands of able merchants

and indiscriminating patrons it has reached a mere absurdity--expressed

in market values. The whole matter has got out of scale; and the

most serious criticism that could be launched against the present

exhibition--that it tried to cover a field too wide--is fully met by

the absolute desirability of reminding the British public that there

were line engravings of some importance; that aquatint had been used

with results of no little value; that etching was not a lost art, and

that mezzotints of subjects other than those devoted to portraits of

pretty women were by no means ignoble. ¶ The art of line engraving

was but tardily settled in this country, for some doubtful reason,

not until well-nigh a century after it had reached a pitch of high

perfection on the continent. Its tangible beginnings are represented

at South Kensington by the superb title-page of the ‘Anatomy’ of

Thomas Gemini (1545). But the work of William Rogers is the first

of importance by a native-born artist. By him, we have the superb

portrait of Queen Elizabeth, lent by his Majesty the King from the

collection at Windsor; and three plates from Segar’s ‘Honor Military

and Ciuill,’ Sir Thomas Docwra, Godfreydus Adelmar, and Alphonsus

Rex Castiliensis. These very fairly represent the strongly individual

talent of Rogers, who used a most expressive line with care and

economy; and in his employment of the dot for the modelling of faces,

foreshadowed the invention of stipple by more than a hundred years.

¶ The method of Thomas Coxon is not represented in the exhibition;

but that of Elstracke, a Flemish contemporary has full justice done

to it by the fine Prince Charles, as well as other prints from the

King’s collection. His Majesty has also contributed most of the best

examples of the severe and dry manner of the De Passe family, who had

an influence so great on British line engraving; but whose technique,

however able, seems to lack something, and to have destroyed the

decorative qualities which were already apparent in the earlier group.

An interesting comparison may be made between the Queen Elizabeth of

Crispin de Passe and that of Rogers mentioned before. Of the engravers

of the later part of the seventeenth century, mention need only be

made of the fact that Faithorne the elder, David Loggan, Sherwin, and

White, all receive ample justice in the exhibition; and this means that

under their names will be found some of the finest prints exhibited in

any branch of engraving. The line engraving of the eighteenth century

developed for the best in subjects other than portraiture. Thus we have

the strong work of that turbulent spirit, Sir Robert Strange, devoted

mainly to the translation of paintings by the great masters; and that

of William Woollett and his school to landscape, especially after

Claude. Woollett is well represented by four plates attributed entirely

to him, and by two in which Ellis and Vivares avowedly collaborated.

But of the first it must be said that a note in Dance’s ‘Portraits’

expressly states that Thomas Hearne, the water-colour artist, who was

apprenticed to Woollett, ‘etched’ the Roman Edifices in Ruins. The

working proof exhibited at Kensington (No. 146) is, if this is true, in

great part the work of Hearne. We have little space on this occasion

for more than the merest summary of the contents of the gallery; an

adequate notice of which would indeed require at least a whole number

of this magazine. It is only possible therefore, in passing from the

subject of line engraving, to draw special attention to Mr. Rawlinson’s

splendid loan of specimens of the fine school fostered especially by J.

M. W. Turner; to the numerous proofs of the delicate work produced by

the book illustrators of about the same period; and to the interesting

and unique examples of working and finished proofs of the Landseer

school--portions of a collection which came to the National Art Library

by the generosity of Mr. Sheepshanks--in its way, probably unrivalled.

[Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH; LINE ENGRAVING BY WILLIAM ROGERS; IN

THE COLLECTION OF HIS MAJESTY THE KING]

[Illustration: ROMAN EDIFICES IN RUINS; LINE ENGRAVING BY THOMAS HEARNE

AND WILLIAM WOOLLETT, AFTER CLAUDE; WORKING PROOF; IN THE VICTORIA AND

ALBERT MUSEUM]

There is little to say, in this place, on the subject of the

mezzotints. His Majesty has lent a magnificent impression of The Great

Executioner, by Prince Rupert, after Spagnoletto; a print which strikes

one as perhaps in its vigour and splendid painter-like qualities

the finest in the gallery. The rest of the mezzotints are generally

well known, though to the credit of the exhibition it must be said

that the preponderance of the fashionable, if insipid class, is not

overwhelming. The Wards are hardly as good as they might be; especially

in view of the large amount of space given to Charles Turner. But The

Water Mill by the latter, after Sir A. W. Callcott, makes one very

charitable towards him. It is certainly one of the finest examples

of the value of mezzotint as a method of rendering landscape. Mr.

Rawlinson, again, lends some valuable examples of the ‘Liber Studiorum’

which are carefully and instructively catalogued. Among the modern

work, that of Mr. Frank Short holds, of course, the first place, for he

is one of the very few living mezzotinters who can be said to take rank

with the best of the old men in technique. The pretty art of stipple

receives due attention; and so do the colour-prints, of which the

best are, it is good to find, the property of the museum. The art of

etching is well shown from Hollar, the group of imitators of Rembrandt

in the eighteenth century, the Norwich school, and Wilkie and Geddes

in the nineteenth, down to the etching clubs and our own times. Most

of this work is well known, for etching has been better served in the

matter of literature than any of its sister arts: and it is the only

one which has real life at the present day. A most important complement

to the exhibited prints is furnished by a series of technical cases,

containing complete sets of all tools and materials used in each of

the various methods of engraving and etching; as well as examples of

all the intermediate stages of working them. These were arranged by

Mr. Frank Short and Miss C. M. Pott, and their descriptive notes in

the catalogue make it a really useful little manual of technique for

the amateur. It only remains to add that the illustration of Rogers’s

Queen Elizabeth is reproduced by the gracious permission of his Majesty

the King, who has also allowed a photogravure to be made of The Great

Executioner, by Prince Rupert, which will appear as a supplement to the

next number of ~The Burlington Magazine~. The other illustrations are

from the collection of prints in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

~Edward F. Strange.~

~British Museum~

~Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities~

Among the additions to the department of British and mediaeval

antiquities during the past half year are several objects of

exceptional interest. In the ceramic section, a large two-handled

vase of Florentine maiolica of the fifteenth century, with heraldic

lions upon the sides, forms a worthy pendant to the magnificent vase

of the same fabric acquired last year; while the series of oriental

wares has been enriched by a writing-stand, or stand for flowers, of

the twelfth or thirteenth century, ornamented with animals of archaic

style in relief, and attributed to a factory in the neighbourhood

of Aleppo. The acquisitions to the collection of glass exhibited in

the same room include an enamelled German drinking-glass of the late

sixteenth century, a very good example of its kind. ¶ In the mediaeval

room the most notable additions will be found in the series of ivory

carvings. Here the place of honour belongs to the beautiful head of a

tau cross in morse ivory, dating from the eleventh century, recently

discovered in the vicarage garden of Alcester, Warwickshire, which

will be fully described next month in these pages. Secondly, there

is a small but important group of ivories formerly in the possession

of the Rev. Walter Sneyd, of Keele Hall, and exhibited in the art

treasures exhibition at Manchester in 1857, and at South Kensington

in 1862. Although few of the pieces composing this group are of high

artistic merit, they are valuable as illustrations of the development

of ivory carving during the early middle ages, a period which needed

fuller representation in the museum collections. The most remarkable

is an oval pyx of the form favoured between the fourth and seventh

centuries, especially in Egypt and Syria. Its interest lies in the fact

that it appears to be a Carlovingian imitation of a Syrian original

dating from perhaps two centuries earlier. It differs essentially in

style from the other examples which have been preserved, and the heavy,

large-headed figures, with their long, retorted fingers, find their

nearest parallels in the miniatures of Carlovingian MSS. Then there is

a Byzantine panel, apparently by the same hand as a plaque acquired by

the museum at the Ashburnham sale in 1901. This plaque was let into

the cover of a thirteenth-century MS. of the romance of ‘Parceval le

Galois,’ but originally belonged to a casket ornamented with scenes

from the history of Joseph, two large panels from which have been for

many years in the Berlin museum. It is satisfactory now to record the

acquisition from the Sneyd collection of yet another example marked by

the same individuality of style, and perhaps once forming a part of the

same composition. Another small piece of Byzantine work not without

charm is a panel from the lid of a casket of the ninth century, with

figures probably from one of the classical scenes so popular during

the iconoclastic period. Finally there are two long panels with seated

apostles, Rhenish work of the twelfth century, and a smaller panel

with the Flagellation, of similar attribution and date. An interesting

accession in the sphere of prehistoric industrial art is a remarkably

large bronze spear-head, inlaid at the base of the blade with gold

studs, a fine example of the skill and taste of the metal-workers of

Britain towards the close of the bronze age.

O. M. D.

[Illustration: THE WATER MILL, MEZZOTINT BY C. TURNER AFTER SIR A. W.

E. CALCOTT, R.A.; IN THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM]

[Illustration: THE HÔTEL DE VILLE AT LOUVAIN; COLOURED AQUATINT BY J.

C. STADLER, AFTER S. PROUT; IN THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM]

~The Print Room of the British Museum~

The Department has acquired by purchase an extremely interesting and

important addition to the collection of Chinese paintings. This is a

long roll, containing scenes of court life and amusements in the first

century ~A.D.~ Pan Chao, a female historian of that era, is among the

figures represented. It is painted in colours on brown silk; green,

purple, and a tawny yellow have been used, but have more or less sunk,

so that the general impression is that of a painting in vermilion and

black, the two pigments which have stood best. The actual workmanship,

especially the modulation of the brush-line, is of extraordinary

beauty and power, and can only be that of a great master. There seems

no reason to doubt that we have in this roll an authentic work by Ku

K‘ai-chih (‘Ko-gai-shi’ in Japanese pronunciation), a very famous

artist of the fourth and fifth centuries ~A.D.~, to whom it has always

been attributed, though the signature and inscriptions are probably

of later date. Annexed to the roll is a eulogy of the painter in the

handwriting of Ch‘ien Lung, the emperor who received Lord Macartney’s

embassy in 1793; and following this is an admirable and delicate

ink-landscape by an eighteenth-century painter. The importance of a

picture by Ku K‘ai-chih will be realized when we consider that of the

art of the T‘ang dynasty (600 to 900 ~A.D.~) hardly a vestige remains,

while relics of the later Sung period are extremely rare. Nothing so

ancient exists in Japan, the country where for a thousand years the

early paintings of China have been collected with ardour and preserved

with veneration. ¶ A full account of this and some other important

examples of Chinese painting will shortly be given in this magazine.

L. B.

NOTE ON THE LIFE OF BERNARD VAN ORLEY

Bernard van Orley is generally said to have been the second son--third

child--of Valentine van Orley by his first wife, Margaret van

Pynbroeck, whom he married May 13, 1490. He is further stated to have

left Brussels in 1509 for Rome, and to have studied in the school

of Raphael, becoming a great favourite with his master. ¶ It seems

impossible to reconcile these statements with certain facts which are

established beyond doubt by authentic documents. In 1514 Bernard was

settled as a master-painter at Brussels, and had already gained a

certain reputation, for the confraternity of the Holy Cross at Furnes

in 1515 sent a delegate to Brussels to ask him to furnish a design for

the altar-piece of their chapel. Bernard must therefore have at that

time attained the age of 30,[82] which would put back the date of his

birth to 1484-5. And unless there is some error in the date--May 4,

1504--of the procuration published by A. Wauters (‘Bernard van Orley,’

Bruxelles, 1881, p. 70), his birth must have taken place before May

1479, as no minor could give a procuration or power of attorney to

another to dispose of property. Children at that time only attained

their majority at the age of 25. ¶ If born in 1479 Bernard may well

have become a free master or gone to Rome in 1509. I suspect that he

was not the son of Valentine and Margaret van Pynbroeck, but of some

other Valentine, perhaps the uncle. I know of no document giving the

name of his mother.

~W. H. James Weale.~

THE COLLECTION OF PICTURES OF THE EARL OF NORMANTON, AT SOMERLEY,

HAMPSHIRE

❧ WRITTEN BY MAX ROLDIT ❧

ARTICLE I.--PICTURES BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS

In almost every corner of these islands there is to be found hidden

away amongst the trees or proudly standing on the summit of a hill one

of those imposing ancestral homesteads which the British aristocracy

have erected at various times ever since the Norman conquest. From the

feudal castle of gothic architecture to the modern mansion replete

with every comfort and household invention of the nineteenth century

every style is represented. These buildings are geographical landmarks

in the country, and nearly all are also landmarks in the artistic

topography of Great Britain. Succeeding generations of owners have

accumulated treasures which, severely guarded by family settlements,

can only be dislodged under special conditions. In not a few instances

the ancient furniture thus preserved, the objects of art and especially

the pictures, the latter usually grouped round a nucleus of family

portraits of successive periods, would rival many a public collection

for the perfection of the examples, their artistic and monetary worth,

and even their actual number. The more therefore is it to be regretted

that they are so rarely accessible to the artist, the student, the

public at large. A small percentage is, it is true, to be seen at the

admirable loan exhibitions organized yearly at Burlington House and the

Guildhall, and also from time to time in galleries governed by private

enterprise; but these artistic feasts are all too rare, and even were

the owners of fine works of art always willing to lend their property,

which is not invariably the case, it would be impossible for all the

objects worthy of being shown to pass in this way before the gaze of

a single generation. Many are the masterpieces in this country which

have not moved from their resting place for scores of years and which

are, except to a privileged few, as completely unknown and invisible

as the immensely distant stars which astronomers contemplate through

their most powerful lens. ¶The collection of pictures at Somerley,

the Earl of Normanton’s beautiful seat near Ringwood in Hampshire, is

one of those of whose very existence only a small minority is aware.

The mansion, of late Georgian style, stands on the banks of the Avon

in the midst of a park and estate extending over 9,000 acres, and

is visited by only a small number of persons annually besides Lord

Normanton’s immediate entourage. ¶ With a very few exceptions, the

entire collection was formed between the years 1820 and 1868 by Welbore

Ellis, second Earl of Normanton, and grandfather of the present peer.

Born in 1778, he succeeded to the title in 1809, married Diana, eldest

daughter of the eleventh Earl of Pembroke, in 1816, and died in his

ninetieth year in 1868, leaving as a record of his taste and artistic

knowledge the wonderful gallery of paintings which is the subject

of this study. ¶ The collection is composed chiefly of pictures of

the eighteenth-century English school, including works by Reynolds,

Gainsborough, Hogarth, Hoppner, Romney, Lawrence, Morland, Bonington,

Nasmyth and Crome; it contains also pictures by some Flemish and Dutch

masters of the seventeenth century, Rubens, Van Dyck and Teniers,

Paul Potter, Van de Capelle, Aart van der Neer, Wouwerman and Willem

van de Velde; Guardi and Canaletto represent the Italian; Murillo

represents the Spanish school; whilst Greuze is the only French artist

who has found a place at Somerley. The most striking feature of the

collection is to be found in the predominance of works by Sir

Joshua Reynolds, evidently the favourite painter of the second Lord

Normanton, who acquired no fewer than twenty-six examples from his

brush. ¶ For the sake of clearness and convenience, a description of

the Normanton collection may be divided into three sections, namely:--

I. The works by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

II. The works by British painters other than Sir Joshua Reynolds.

III. The works by painters of the foreign schools.

[Illustration: MISS MURRAY, OF KIRKCUDBRIGHT, BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS;

IN THE COLLECTION OF THE EARL OF NORMANTON.]

[Illustration: CHARITY FAITH HOPE

THE THREE THEOLOGICAL VIRTUES; FROM THE PAINTINGS BY SIR JOSHUA

REYNOLDS FOR THE WINDOW AT NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD; IN THE COLLECTION OF

THE EARL OF NORMANTON]

¶ The group of paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds is unparalleled in any

other collection public or private all the world over; both by the

number and the excellence of the examples, it is absolutely unique,

and it would be well-nigh impossible at the present day for even a

multi-millionaire to bring together a rival gathering of this one

painter’s productions. ¶ All through his career as a collector, Lord

Normanton continued to acquire examples of Sir Joshua’s work, but his

most important single purchase was made as early as 1821 at the sale

of the pictures of the Marchioness of Thomond, held at Christie’s on

May 18 and 19 of that year. The Marchioness of Thomond was no other

than Mary Palmer, daughter of Sir Joshua’s elder sister, and sister to

pretty ‘Offy’ Palmer, afterwards Mrs. Gwatkin, whom her uncle so often

used as a model for his fancy pictures, notably for the Strawberry

Girl. When Sir Joshua died in 1792, he left the bulk of his property to

his niece, Mary Palmer; she inherited nearly £100,000 besides a number

of pictures and other works of art; the same year she married the fifth

Earl of Inchiquin, subsequently created Marquess of Thomond. After her

death in 1821, her pictures were sold at Christie’s, and that occasion

may be said to mark the foundation of the Normanton collection. Lady

Thomond’s sale included, besides many works by old masters, a large

number of pictures and sketches by her illustrious uncle; and here

Lord Normanton secured for less than £3,000 the wonderful series of

seven decorative panels which have ever remained the chief ornament of

his collection, and for which in recent years fabulous sums have been

offered and refused. They represent the three theological virtues,

Faith, Hope, and Charity, and the four cardinal virtues, Temperance,

Prudence, Justice, and Fortitude. They are the original designs

executed by Sir Joshua Reynolds for the window at New College, Oxford,

and afterwards copied on glass by Jarvis. Ever since his school days

at Westminster, Lord Normanton had known and admired these pictures at

Lady Thomond’s. On the day of the sale, in answer to a suggestion of

the auctioneer that the entire set should be sold together, the company

present, which included the Dukes of Devonshire and Northumberland,

Lords Egremont, Grosvenor, Bridgewater, Fitzwilliam, Dudley and

Ward, and Harewood, Sir Charles Long on behalf of the king, and many

other well-known picture buyers, decided that the Virtues should be

offered separately. The Charity was put up first, and its purchase at

1,100 guineas by Lord Normanton, then a young man, created no small

sensation. Lord Dudley and Ward eagerly competed for the Fortitude, for

which his mother had sat to Sir Joshua, but that as well as the other

six succumbed to Lord Normanton’s bidding. Seven years later an offer

of twice the purchase price was made for them on behalf of the king,

and again some few years afterwards the National Gallery tried in vain

to tempt Lord Normanton with three times the original sum. ¶ As to the

designs themselves, it had been the painter’s original intention to

make them drawings or cartoons; but he soon found it would be easier

for him to paint them in oils, so long had he been used to the brush

and the palette. ‘Jarvis, the painter on glass,’ he said, ‘will have a

better original to copy, and I suppose persons hereafter may be found

to purchase my paintings.’ In this he was, however, disappointed,

since the Virtues were still in his possession at his death. ¶In a

letter written about 1778, Sir Joshua details the general plan for

the Oxford window. ‘Supposing this scheme to take place, my idea is

to paint, in the great space in the centre, Christ in the Manger, on

the principle that Correggio has done it, in the famous picture called

the Notte; making all the light proceed from Christ. These tricks of

the art, as they may be called, seem to be more properly adapted to

glass-painting than any other kind. This middle space will be filled

with the Virgin, Christ, Joseph and angels; the two smaller spaces

on each side I shall fill with the shepherds coming to worship; and

the seven divisions below with the figures of Faith, Hope, Charity

and the four cardinal virtues; which will make a proper rustic base

or _foundation_ for the support of the Christian Religion....’ ¶

The large central picture of the Nativity, measuring ten feet by

eighteen, was sold by the artist to the Duke of Rutland for the then

unprecedented price of 1,200 guineas. It was unfortunately destroyed

in the fire at Belvoir in 1816. A powerful sketch of this subject on a

small scale is, however, to be found at Somerley. ¶ The seven Virtues,

which now hang side by side in the magnificent gallery built by the

second Earl of Normanton, each measure 6 ft. 11 in. in height by 2

ft. 9 in. in width, except the central panel, Faith, which is taller

and narrower than the others, namely, 8 ft. by 2 ft. 5 in. Charity

is represented by a group of a woman clasping three children in her

protecting arms, whilst all the rest contain but a single allegorical

figure, with the special attributes consecrated by tradition. The most

noteworthy feature of the entire series, and that which first strikes

the onlooker, is its thoroughly and unmistakably English character. No

straining after classicism, no copying or imitation of the Italians

are to be found in this the most successful work of decoration ever

painted by a British artist. In the Nativity, Reynolds was accused of

a too servile imitation of Correggio, but certainly no such reproach

can apply to the seven Virtues. In the conception or the execution,

in the drawing or the colour, in the types of his models or the

arrangement of the draperies, nowhere is a trace discernible of any

foreign element. Reynolds represented the Virtues under the features of

the lovely and refined English ladies whom he was accustomed to paint;

the draperies in which they are clothed are dresses of the eighteenth

century, simplified no doubt, and chastened, but sometimes scarcely

altered, as in the case of Temperance and Prudence. He thus avoided

the cold conventionality usually so apparent in allegorical paintings,

whilst losing nothing in dignity or impressiveness; if one misses the

spiritual elevation of the Italians, there is a corresponding gain in

humanity, and that indefinable quality, charm.

[Illustration: TEMPERANCE PRUDENCE

TWO OF THE CARDINAL VIRTUES FROM SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS’S PAINTINGS FOR

THE WINDOW AT NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD, IN THE COLLECTION OF THE EARL OF

NORMANTON]

[Illustration: FORTITUDE JUSTICE

TWO OF THE CARDINAL VIRTUES; FROM THE PAINTINGS BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS

FOR THE WINDOW AT NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD; IN THE COLLECTION OF THE EARL OF

NORMANTON]

Faith is represented by the figure of a girl with a face of exquisite

innocence and sweetness, expressive also of deep suffering and infinite

resignation. Her plain white pilgrim’s robe is partly covered by a

loose brown drapery falling around her in simple heavy folds; with

her left hand she holds a tall wooden cross, the upper part of which

is strongly outlined against the divine illumination which brightens

the clouds above her; her right hand is uplifted towards heaven in

an attitude of invocation. Hope is the least successful panel of the

series. Clad in dull green draperies with a brown scarf flowing from

her shoulders, she stands in a somewhat awkward position, her hands

uplifted and her face averted towards the light which pours upon her

through the clouds. Charity can, on the contrary, rank with the finest

of Sir Joshua’s pictures; his model in this instance was Mrs. Sheridan,

the lovely wife of the author of ‘School for Scandal,’ who had also

sat to him for the figure of the Virgin in the Nativity. On her breast

nestles a half-naked infant whom she lovingly supports with her left

hand, whilst with the other she clasps in a close embrace two more

children, a young girl and a curly-headed boy, who have run to her

for protection; with an expression of rare tenderness and pity

she gazes down upon her little charges. This picture is painted with

exceptional power; the contrasts of light and shade are rendered with

a perfection almost reminiscent of Rembrandt, whilst the composition

is both strong and graceful. The two beautiful young women in whom

Reynolds has impersonated Temperance and Prudence are clothed in white

dresses of eighteenth-century design, bordered in the case of the

second with a narrow gold braid. Mrs. Elizabeth Palmer, wife of the

artist’s nephew, the Dean of Cashel, was the model for Prudence; she

gazes thoughtfully into a mirror which she holds in her right hand; in

the left she has an arrow round which an adder is entwined. Temperance

is pouring water from a golden jug into a golden cup. In the two last

panels, the figures stand full face to the spectator; the features of

Justice are shaded by the balance which she raises to the level of her

head; her loose robe, held by a girdle at the waist, is rose-coloured,

and her right hand rests on the hilt of a naked sword. Fortitude (Lady

Dudley and Ward) is the traditional figure of Britannia, a plumed

helmet upon her noble head, a small golden breast-plate decorating

her white robe, around which a dark red mantle is draped; the head of

the watchful lion crouching at her feet is shown in the right-hand

corner. ¶ Several other works by Sir Joshua were acquired by Lord

Normanton besides the seven Virtues at Lady Thomond’s sale, including

the expressive half-length portrait of himself, painted in 1769, in

his robes of president of the Royal Academy, his right hand resting

on a book. The delightful portrait of Elizabeth, daughter of Sir

Joshua’s friend Topham Beauclerk and his beautiful wife Lady Diana,

represented as Spenser’s Una with the lion crouching at her side, came

from the same source and cost only thirty-seven guineas. Elizabeth

Beauclerk married in 1787 the Earl of Pembroke and was the mother of

Diana, Lady Normanton, wife of the collector. Sir Joshua painted

her about the year 1778 and showed her in a perfectly simple white

frock, childishly sitting on her heels upon the ground. Her hair falls

loosely over her shoulders and her expression is one of thoughtful

innocence. The foliage and landscape behind her are treated with great

breadth and power; the more delicate parts of the picture, such as

the face and hands, are on the contrary very smoothly painted; the

marked difference in texture is explained by the fact that at this

period Sir Joshua used a mixture of wax and Venice turpentine as a

vehicle for the heads, and wax alone for other portions of his pictures

where he wished to produce thicker impastos. The picture described

in Lady Thomond’s catalogue as A Girl seated on her heels embracing

a favourite Kitten, for which Lord Normanton gave 295 guineas, is

one of several of the same delightful subject done by Sir Joshua and

usually known as Felina. It was painted in 1787, and although Offy

Palmer was by that time a grown-up young woman, it is her features

when a child which her uncle has once more used. Witty and graceful,

this picture bears witness to Sir Joshua’s supremacy as a limner of

children. No one more than he succeeded in reproducing their quaint and

charmingly awkward attitudes, and it would be difficult to find even

in his works anything more delicious than this little dark-eyed damsel

fondling her unhappy pet almost to the point of suffocation. The face

is painted with great delicacy and a clearness of complexion unusual

in Sir Joshua’s pictures; the background of foliage is unfortunately

severely cracked, owing to an excessive use of treacherous bitumen.

Miss Falconer (afterwards the Hon. Mrs. Stanhope) as Contemplation

was also included in the Marchioness of Thomond’s collection, but was

not bought at her sale by Lord Normanton. It was knocked down on that

occasion for 100 guineas to a dealer, from whom it passed into the

possession of Mr. John Allnutt, of Clapham Common, and it was only many

years later that it was transferred into the Somerley collection of

which it now forms part. The beautiful lady whom the painter has here

represented, in a moonlit landscape, seated on a bank in a pensive

attitude, was a well-known figure in the society of her day, where her

high spirits and light-hearted gaiety made her a general favourite;

the appearance of this portrait, so contrary to her character, excited

no little comment at the time. In charm of expression and unaffected

grace of pose this portrait is a truly delightful production. An

interesting fact concerning it is that it is one of the few portraits

by Reynolds painted on a panel; the artist, who, as is well known,

was for ever making new experiments in the mediums he employed,

selected on this occasion an old Japanese panel, and the reverse

of the picture is to this day decorated with a still-life in bold

relief, brilliant in colouring and of no mean artistic merit. ¶ In

three life-size full-length portraits of young girls which hang in

Lord Normanton’s gallery, it is instructive to compare the artist’s

method of treatment of a similar subject at different periods of his

career. These pictures are those of Lady Betty Hamilton, painted in

1758, of Miss Murray of Kirkcudbright, 1765, and that, some twenty

years later in date, known for lack of a better title as The Little

Gardener. In the first there is a richness of colour and a wealth of

detail not to be found in either of the two others; the influence

of Reynolds’s master, Hudson, is still clearly discernible, and the

warmth and brilliance of the colouring must be traced to the immediate

effects of the artist’s recent travels in Italy, where the gorgeous

tones of the Venetians had filled him with a boundless admiration. In

the two earlier portraits there is a simple artlessness of pose in

striking contrast with the affected and self-conscious attitude of The

Little Gardener, whilst the latter is far broader and more spontaneous

in technique. ¶ The portrait of Lady Betty Hamilton, afterwards

Countess of Derby, is unsurpassed by any work of Sir Joshua at this

early period, and it may also be counted among the best of his child

portraits. In a low-cut dress of plum-coloured embroidered silk, her

wide skirt reaching to the ground, she sits on a bank in a garden; she

has a white muslin pinafore bordered with lace, and her hands rest on

her lap holding a bunch of vari-coloured flowers. The flesh-tints are

somewhat faded, but the dreamy blue eyes and rosebud mouth expressive

of happy childhood’s ignorance of evil and suffering, are a delight

to look upon. She was a daughter of the Duke of Hamilton, and became

the first wife of the twelfth Earl of Derby, who, after divorcing her,

married Miss Farren the celebrated actress. In 1777 Reynolds painted

another portrait of her as Countess of Derby, a whole-length which was

engraved by William Dickinson; this picture has, however, disappeared,

probably destroyed by her husband after his divorce. ¶ Little Miss

Murray of Kirkcudbright in a plain white dress with a black silk scarf

thrown over her head and shoulders and funny blue shoes, stands in a

landscape, her hands loosely crossed in front of her. By her side sits

a curious woolly white dog with black spots on its face, which has no

appearance of life, and shows how inferior in this respect Sir Joshua

was to Gainsborough, who stands with Velasquez among the greatest

dog painters of the world. The landscape in this picture is of quite

unusual excellence, and with the fine breezy sky forms an effective and

pleasing background to the figure of the blue-eyed little Scotch girl.

¶ Who was the sitter for the portrait called The Little Gardener, it

seems at the present time impossible to discover; it shows a pretty

young girl sitting dreamily on a bank at the edge of a wood; she

wears a white dress with a crimson sash, and with her right hand she

loosely holds a straw bonnet decorated with pink ribbons.

[Illustration: THE LITTLE GARDENER, BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS; IN THE

COLLECTION OF THE EARL OF NORMANTON]

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF GEORGE, THIRD DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH, BY SIR

JOSHUA REYNOLDS; IN THE COLLECTION OF THE EARL OF NORMANTON]

There is at Somerley only one male portrait of great importance by Sir

Joshua Reynolds. This represents George, third Duke of Marlborough,

and is a magnificent three-quarter length portrait. The duke wears

a rich coat of brown embroidered silk and a mantle of crimson velvet

bordered with white fur thrown over his right shoulder; his left arm

rests upon a column, and the upper portion of the body is outlined

against a beautiful sky background. The pose is evidently inspired

by Van Dyck, and the portrait lacks none of the dignity and elegance

of the older master. An almost exactly similar painting is in the

possession of the Earl of Pembroke, in which however the duke’s dark

dress is replaced by one of white embroidered satin. ¶ Some dozen

portraits of the usual half-length format (about 30 in. by 25 in.)

are contained in the Normanton collection, and not a few of them are

of superlative quality. Among the most pleasing is that of the Misses

Horneck, as original as it is graceful in composition; many failures

have resulted from the attempt thus to group two life-size heads in

so small a space, but Sir Joshua has here admirably succeeded in

avoiding stiffness and crowding while preserving perfect pictorial

unity. Painted in a light key about the year 1775, this picture is in

a wonderful state of preservation, having retained all its freshness

of tone and delicacy of modelling. An unfinished sketch of the same

subject, slightly larger in size, belongs to Sir Henry Bunbury, a

descendant of the elder sister’s husband, the caricaturist, Henry

William Bunbury. Mrs. Bunbury (Catharine Horneck), who is seen on

the right of the group, was Goldsmith’s ‘Little Comedy,’ whilst her

sister Mary, afterwards Mrs. Gwyn, is celebrated by him as ‘The Jessamy

Bride.’ The excellent though slightly faded portrait of Miss Anne

Liddell was bought by the second Lord Normanton at Christie’s in May,

1867, at the sale of Mr. H. A. J. Munro, of Novar, for 225 guineas.

Miss Liddell, who is represented in a black low-cut dress and black

cloak trimmed with white fur, holding some flowers in her right hand,

was a daughter of Lord Ravensworth; she became Duchess of Grafton, and

after divorcing in 1769 married the Earl of Upper Ossory. The pair of

heads of the Earl and Countess of Pembroke, painted within the last

years of the artist’s life, cost Lord Normanton only 30 guineas in

1827. Lord and Lady Pembroke were the parents of Diana, Lady Normanton,

and the countess is the same lady whom Sir Joshua represented some

years previously as Una with the lion; she wears her peeress’s robes

of crimson and ermine over a white low-necked dress, and the earl is

in uniform of red and gold. It is interesting to find side by side

with these examples of the end of the painter’s career the picture of

A Boy Reading, which is inscribed ‘1747, J^a Reynolds pinxit Nov.’

and which is one of the earliest known works of the artist, when he

was only twenty-three years of age. It is said to be a portrait of

himself, but this is by no means certain, although the boy’s features

bear a certain resemblance to those of Sir Joshua. With hair falling

over his shoulders, and arms leaning on a table, he reads from a large

book which he holds open with both hands; four more books lie on the

table beside him. It is related that on seeing this picture after

an interval of many years Sir Joshua remarked that he had made but

little progress since he painted it. Although this observation must

not be taken too literally, there is no doubt that even at this early

period he exhibited uncommon mastery of his art. To an early period

also, probably between 1755 and 1760, the portrait of Lady Charlotte

Johnstone, daughter of the first Earl of Halifax, and that of Mrs.

Russell, daughter of Mr. Flountia Vassall, are shown to belong by the

marked attention paid to detail, by a certain tightness of drawing, and

also by the faded flesh-tints due to Reynolds’s excessive use at this

time of brilliant but unstable carmine. Both are painted in profile,

wearing rich dresses of similar pattern, with pearls in their ears

and round their throat. Probably a little later in date is the very

decorative and somewhat French-looking portrait of Miss Meux (engraved

as Miss Muse); she wears a Louis XV costume, the bodice all tucks and

frills, and a flat gipsy straw hat trimmed with pink ribbons; she has

two rows of pearls round her throat, and the muslin gimp which covers

her breast is spotted with little pink rosettes. This is no doubt the

picture which Lord Normanton bought for 135 gns. at the Novar sale

in 1867, and which was then said to be a portrait of Fanny Reynolds

(Sir Joshua’s sister). Another beautiful half-length picture is that

of the actress Mrs. Quarrington, as St. Agnes, in a brown dress over

which hangs a dark green mantle. She holds a lamb in her arms and a

palm branch in her left hand; the pathetic face, surrounded by her

loose locks of hair, is upturned in an attitude of prayer. Nor must

mention be omitted of a pretty and powerful octagonal study of a

little girl’s head with pearls in her hair, the shoulders covered

with a light white drapery. ¶ The oval portrait of Mrs. Inchbald is

catalogued in more than one volume of recent date as a work by Sir

Joshua; it is, however, hard and unconvincing, and the flesh and

black dress are too weakly painted not to leave a doubt in one’s mind

whether it is not rather the production of one of Reynolds’s pupils,

most probably Northcote. It is difficult also to admit the portrait of

Admiral Barrington to be entirely from the master’s hand; there is a

similar portrait by him in Greenwich Hospital, and it is known that six

replicas were made at the time in Sir Joshua’s studio; this is one of

them, and, although painted under his supervision, it is probable that

his own brush took but little part in the work. Possibly a replica

of the famous picture in the Chamberlayne collection, but also more

probably the work of a contemporary copyist, is the Lady Hamilton as a

Bacchante, a subject rendered familiar by numerous engravings, notably

Bartolozzi’s beautiful colour-print. No doubt whatever is possible in

the case of The Little Archer, the figure of a boy lying full length

in a landscape; here the methods of Sir Joshua are palpably imitated,

but the poor drawing and the ugly obtrusiveness of the boy’s white

stockings preclude any possibility of the master having in any way

contributed to its painting. ¶ A number of acknowledged copies of

pictures by Sir Joshua Reynolds are also to be found at Somerley, and

some are not devoid of merit. Among the best may be mentioned Mrs.

Siddons as the Tragic Muse, painted by the Duchess of Buckingham, from

the original now at Grosvenor House, of which a genuine replica hangs

at Dulwich; also Mrs. Gwyn in Persian costume, a good contemporary

reproduction of the picture which belongs to Mr. W. W. Astor. ¶ It

would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of this group of

pictures by Sir Joshua Reynolds; the genius of the Royal Academy’s

first president is displayed at Somerley in its every phase, and

each period of his career is represented by one or more works of the

highest artistic value; there, he can be studied as it is impossible

to study him elsewhere, at the same time that a comparison can be made

with masterpieces of other great English painters which hang in Lord

Normanton’s magnificent gallery.

[Illustration: STUDY OF A LITTLE GIRL, BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS; IN THE

COLLECTION OF THE EARL OF NORMANTON]

[Illustration: THE MISSES HORNECK, BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS; IN THE

COLLECTION OF THE EARL OF NORMANTON]

[Illustration: HIGH WARP TAPESTRY, LOUIS XIV VISITING THE ROYAL

FURNITURE MANUFACTORY AT THE GOBELINS, AFTER CHARLES LE BRUN. LOUVRE]

FRENCH FURNITURE OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES[83]

❧ WRITTEN BY ÉMILE MOLINIER ❧

ARTICLE II.--THE LOUIS XIV STYLE--(_continued_)

THE GOBELINS

It would certainly be unfair to consider Louis XIV and espeacially

Colbert, from the point of view of the part played of the royal

manufactory of crown furniture at the Gobelins, as being merely

unconscious instruments. There is no doubt that a formal act of will

on their part entered into this creation. But, once having done this

justice, especially to Colbert, we are bound to remark, if we would

wish to take a sane view of events, that an institution of this kind

was, at the moment when it was established in France, the result of a

series of previous efforts, all turned in the same direction; was the

result also of a general movement of centralization which was to be

one of the sources of weakness, of the system of government adopted in

France. ¶ The founding of the academy of painting and sculpture had

completed the organization of art in the great sense; the founding

of the manufactory of the Gobelins was destined to bring about the

centralization of the minor arts and to strike a blow at the old

edifice of the rules of the corporations. We must make no mistake: from

the artistic point of view, the monarchy largely began the salutary

work of emancipation which the French Revolution was to complete, and

we may well be surprised that right-minded persons should discover a

source of weakness and decadence in the modifications introduced into

the life of the workshops. To be logical we should have to blame

the monarchy itself, which, nearly 150 years before the Revolution,

began, by a devious course it is true, to take away all force from

restrictive laws, from rules and regulations which already seemed out

of date at the end of the middle ages. It will be seen that, though the

complete abolition of the rules of the corporations did, in certain

cases, become a cause of confusion, we should do wrong to look upon it

as the sole cause of the degeneration in artistic feeling in the minor

arts at the commencement of the nineteenth century. The suppression of

the corporations under the Revolution was as inevitable an event as

was under Louis XIV the establishment of official artistic workshops.

The whole lay in the manner of setting to work to decree those two

measures. ¶ To second his views, Colbert was fortunate enough to have

at hand an exceptional man, one who was at the same time an organizer

and an artist, two qualities rarely united in one and the same brain;

and he also had the good sense to select him in spite of appearances.

He did more, for after selecting him he left him the most complete

liberty. And yet Charles Le Brun might have passed as suspect in the

minds of both the king and Colbert. ¶ Born in Paris on February 24,

1619, Charles Le Brun was the son of Nicholas Le Brun, a sculptor. His

first masters were Perrier, a Burgundian painter, and Simon Vouet;

and it was doubtless through Vouet’s intermediary that he became

acquainted with the Chancellor Séguier, in whom he was later to find

a firm friend and a constant protector. Some works executed for the

Cardinal de Richelieu earned for him the title of painter to the

king in 1638. In 1642, he accompanied Nicolas Poussin to Rome and was

admitted as a master-painter into the corporation. He returned to Paris

in 1646, received the title of _valet de chambre_ to the king, and

married Suzanne Butay, a painter’s daughter. ¶ A law-suit between the

wardens of the Gild of Painters and the king’s painters, the so-called

‘patent painters,’ suddenly made Le Brun conspicuous, and, after the

favourable decision pronounced by the parliament, with the support of

Séguier he contributed not a little towards the definite foundation of

the academy of painting (1648). But, while fighting strenuously for the

principles of his art, Le Brun neglected no opportunity of practising

it, and executed for a number of Paris mansions a series of large

decorative compositions, for which he had acquired the taste in Italy.

The houses of Bertrand de la Bazinière, treasurer of the _Épargne_; of

Marshal d’Aumont; of the Chevalier de Jars; of Inselin, treasurer of

the _Chambre aux Deniers_; of Lambert de Thorigny, president of the

_Chambre des Comptes_, were decorated by him in turns. In the last of

these mansions he painted the Galerie d’Hercule, which still exists,

and the sight of which eventually determined the Superintendent Fouquet

to send for Le Brun to Vaux (1657). Here, in the sumptuous residence of

Vaux, of which Fouquet was to have the enjoyment for so short a while,

Le Brun displayed his full powers. He not only painted or designed such

compositions as the Apothéose d’Hercule, the Triomphe de la Fidélité,

L’Aurore, Le Sommeil, the Palais du Soleil, but he also directed the

sculptors, ornament workers and silversmiths, the tapestry workers

and embroiderers, and managed the manufactory of high-warp tapestry

established by Fouquet at Maincy. He supplied so large a number of

models and cartoons for tapestry, that many of his compositions could

be executed only much later at the manufactory of the Gobelins; the

Chasses de Méléagre, Mars et Venus, Jupiter allaité par la chèvre

Amalthée, five pieces representing the history of Constantine, the

Muses, all bear witness to the prodigious fertility of an artist who,

like the great Italians of the Renaissance, was lavish in production

while developing his admirable administrative qualities. ¶ If these

gigantic works at the Château de Vaux had not succeeded in earning for

him the esteem of Mazarin and of the queen-mother, Anne of Austria,

and also in drawing the attention of the king (for Le Brun was the

organizer of the great _fêtes_ given by the Superintendent in 1659),

it might have happened that our artist would have incurred the same

disgrace as his patron. Very fortunately this was not so; for once

talent was able to silence envy, and Le Brun was admirably served

by circumstances. In 1660, the king ordered a large picture of him,

Alexandre pénétrant dans la tente de Darius, and the city of Paris

instructed him to erect a triumphal arch on the Place Dauphine for

the entry into Paris of Louis XIV and his queen, Maria Theresa. In

1661 he entered into relations with Colbert; in 1662 he received the

much-coveted title of ‘first painter to the king.’ We see, therefore,

that his connexion with Fouquet--and it does not seem that Le Brun was

ever placed in the painful situation of having to deny the man who had

enabled him to make his mark--so far from harming him, had, on the

contrary, done him good service. Perhaps the king, at the same time

that Colbert began to suspect his exceptional powers as an organizer

and administrator, recognized in Le Brun one of those men who were to

be so useful to his thirst for stately glory and royal pomp.

[Illustration: GOBELIN TAPESTRY, PSYCHE’S BATH, BY LE LORRAIN; END OF

LOUIS XIV; IN THE LOUVRE]

[Illustration: SECTION OF THE BORDER OF THE SAME TAPESTRY]

[Illustration: A MARQUETRY BUREAU BY ANDRÉ CHARLES BOULE IN THE PALACE

OF FONTAINEBLEAU]

[Illustration: A BOOK CASE BY ANDRÉ CHARLES BOULE]

One last circumstance enabled Le Brun to make himself absolutely

indispensable to the king’s glory. On February 6, 1661, the first

floor of the small gallery of the Louvre was almost totally destroyed

by fire. Our artist was commissioned to renew its decoration; he

made of this a monument to the glory of Apollo, the god of the

sun, a delicate attention which enabled him to indulge in more or

less delicate allusions with his brush to the king himself. All the

works--which, for that matter, were never finished under Louis XIV: the

works at the other royal residences, and particularly at Versailles,

thrust the Galerie d’Apollon into the background--were directed solely

by Le Brun: he got together a little army of sculptors and decorators,

among whom we recall the names of Gaspard and Balthazar de Marsy,

François Girardon, Thomas Regnauldin, Monnoyer, the brothers Lemoyne

and Ballin, whose fortunes were thenceforth closely linked with those

of the first painter to the king. ¶ The letters patent of Louis XIV

instituting the ‘royal manufactory of crown furniture’ are dated

November 1667, but they sanction a state of things that existed as

far back as 1663. I shall analyse briefly this deed of foundation,

most of whose dispositions it is very important for us to know,

showing as they do how the machinery of administration was capable of

being simplified in the seventeenth century. Let me here remind my

readers that the name of ‘Gobelins,’ which to-day serves to designate

the tapestries issuing from the famous manufactory, dates back to

the fifteenth century. At that time a dyer called Jean Gobelin, a

native of Rheims, settled on the banks of the little river Bièvre.

His trade prospered so well that his name was given to his house and

workshop, near to which came to live Marc de Comano and François de la

Planche, the Flemish upholsterers installed in Paris by Henry IV. In

1662 Colbert joined the old house of the Gobelins to the workshops of

the descendants of Comano and La Planche; and on these premises was

installed the new manufactory which was destined to perpetuate the

memory of the name of the humble dyer of the fifteenth century.

(_To be continued._)

THE EXHIBITION OF GREEK ART AT THE BURLINGTON FINE ARTS CLUB

❧ WRITTEN BY CECIL SMITH ❧

‘Every man of taste will congratulate himself that England is the

seat and the refuge of the arts; and that so many genuine remains

of ancient sculpture are present in our cabinets.’ So wrote James

Dallaway at the beginning of last century, and, although some may

think that the arts have now somewhat altered their habits, there is

no doubt that this country still remains pre-eminent in the wealth of

its private collections of Greek antiquities. If proof were needed,

this admirable little collection would afford it. When the scheme was

first mooted of a Greek exhibition at the Burlington Club, a moderate

scepticism was not altogether unnatural. The former attempt in 1888

had not been exactly an enthusiastic success, and somehow the club

itself appeared to be a somewhat stern soil for so tender a plant. A

society of dilettanti, with grave and reverend opinions upon every

conceivable form of bigotry and virtue, might be expected either to

adopt an attitude of cold aloofness or to overlay its offspring with

excessive and even (may one whisper it?) injudicious appreciation. But

we never know where a blessing may light, and, if one may judge from

the assiduous attention the exhibition has received, not only from the

sternest critics of the club, but from the smart ladies of at least

two capitals, a new era has dawned for Greek art; if it only lasts

long enough, intrepid explorers will be found invading Bloomsbury, and

the British Museum will cease to offer cool solitudes for the peaceful

reflection of the philosopher and student. ¶ For the general public who

have little time or inclination for long museum galleries, this sort

of exhibition has much to recommend it; the intelligent public likes

to have its culture prescribed for it in tabloid form--a small dose,

unmistakably potent, which can be easily digested between meals. To

this form of requirement the Burlington Club is admirably adapted: a

single room, with just enough space for arranging a few good things.

Mrs. Strong and her committee are so much to be congratulated that it

seems ungracious to grumble; but personally I should have preferred

to turn out about half of the less fine objects. It was difficult, no

doubt; the susceptibilities of lenders are not lightly to be trifled

with; but Greek art, more than most things, needs plenty of breathing

space, and the exhibition would have gained by a judicious depletion.

¶ I think it was M. Piot who used to carry always in his waistcoat

pocket a few of the choicest Greek coins (those being the most portable

forms of the best art), as he said, ‘to correct his eye’; that was

undoubtedly a true instinct. When all is said and done, Greek art will

always serve as an admirable corrective--within its limits of course,

for painting is obviously excluded--and that is at least some comfort

in these impressionist days, when new creeds lie about like leaves in

Vallombrosa. ¶ I overheard one day a visitor to this exhibition angrily

resenting the suggestion that Greek art at its best could be compared

for a moment with the master works of the middle ages. It is a large

question, which there is no space here to argue, only I do not think it

is so easily dismissed as the hasty critic supposed. I should even be

prepared to stand by some of the objects here exhibited. After all, it

is in many cases the same plant growing up under differing conditions

of time and circumstance. Some day perhaps the club may be persuaded to

try the experiment of showing side by side some of the finest parallel

achievements of antiquity and the three centuries of mediaeval Europe.

[Illustration: PLATE I

FRAGMENT OF THE FRIEZE OF THE PARTHENON, BELONGING TO MR T. D.

BOTTERELL]

[Illustration: PLATE II

BUST OF APHRODITE, PROBABLY BY PRAXITELES; IN THE COLLECTION OF THE

LORD LECONFIELD]

[Illustration: PLATE III

HEAD OF A MOURNING WOMAN, BELONGING TO MR. CLAUDE PONSONBY

HEAD OF A YOUTH, BELONGING TO SIR EDGAR VINCENT, K.C.M.G., M.P.]

And I am not sure that the plan might not be adopted with

advantage in museums, of having a small room, like the _tribuna_ at

Florence for instance, with a florilegium of the best things of all

dates; it would be both physically and mentally a boon to many a weary

wayfarer. ¶ The most obvious point of comparison with the classical

is the work of the classicists of north-east Italy, who, already at

the end of the trecento, were beginning a formal but intelligent study

of the antique. It would be instructive to see works of Donatello

and John of Bologna side by side with their Greek counterparts; a

Syracusan decadrachm of Kimon or Euainetos beside a medal of Pisanello

or Sperandio. ¶ One bronze in the Burlington Club especially seems to

challenge this comparison--the big mounted warrior (No. 53), which

at first sight suggests a kind of glorified gothic aquamanile. A

reviewer in the _Athenaeum_ points out the ‘research for elegance

which already characterizes this figure,’ and which he considers to

mark the essential difference between the Greeks and their successors.

‘Whereas the Greek,’ he says, ‘feels most keenly the planes, to the

northern and Italian artists it is the ridges that count.’ This seems

to me to be a plausible generalization from imperfectly perceived

facts. The world-old contrast of the ideal and the real naturally

went on in Greek art as it has gone on in every other art; but less

among the Greeks, because for most of their history they steadily

withstood realism; they believed and acted upon Shakespeare’s ‘Nature

is made better by no mean, but nature makes that mean.’ At a late

period realism became too strong for them, and the Pergamene school

was the beginning of the end. Surely the broad contrasting of planes

is not the characteristic of a race, but of a stage of development.

Obviously the sculptor in marble or wood is bound to set out by

blocking out his figure in broad planes: relative development shows

itself in the amount of skill which the artist exhibits in graduating

and refining these planes into each other. Early Greek art shows this

particularly, because it derived largely from Egyptian traditions,

and was long in breaking loose from set canons. But it is none the

less true of all sculpture in which an historical development can be

traced. The history of Italian sculpture down to Michael Angelo is so

much under classical influence that its evolution may almost be said

to be an index of its information regarding Greek art. Michael Angelo

unfortunately corresponds to the Pergamene stage. Already, before his

day, the great Italian medallists had shown in their medal work what

is probably, outside of classical times, the nearest approach to the

best Greek relief, and they worked largely on Greek lines. It is not

by coincidence alone that the helmeted knight on the well-known medal

of Ludovico Gonzaga naturally suggests an analogy to the bronze now

exhibited. In both cases the simple effect is attained by a judicious

elimination, by contrasted planes, and by a skilful co-ordination

into an harmonious whole. ¶ This bronze is said to have been found at

Grumentum, in Lucania, a city which, as its name and its geographical

position show, was never a Greek colony, though latterly a town of some

importance. Probably it found its way there in the course of Corinthian

traffic: the long-bodied horse, the unusual subject of a helmeted

horseman, the treatment of mane and tail, are all characteristic rather

of the Corinthian art of the sixth century ~B.C.~; and we know how

active the Corinthian colonists were at that period in south Italy.

¶ The same characteristic treatment is seen in the splendid bronze

head from Chatsworth (No. 8). It is an Apollo rather over life size,

belonging to that interesting transitional stage which immediately

precedes the Parthenon. In this case, however, the archaism is partly

conscious; the artist realizes the maxim _peu de moyens, beaucoup

d’effet_, and uses it to advantage. The type chosen is that of a strong

virile athlete, with hair still long, but just budding into manhood,

the Βούπαις (‘bully boy’), as Furtwängler points out, of an epigram

on a contemporary statue of him by Onatas. What a contrast this to

the soft and dreamy Sauroktonos of the succeeding century: with its

almost architectural symmetry, its vigorous subordination of all search

for detail to general effect, and its mathematical balance of large

lines and large planes, it seems to stand as a visible protest against

weakness and effeminacy. As Emerson puts it, this one head might be the

indemnification for populations of pygmies or weaklings. The step from

this to the Parthenon is short in point of years, but is artistically

an interval which is strongly defined, for within its limit Greek

sculpture has entered into its birthright. This stage is nobly

represented in the exhibition by the fragment from a slab of the north

frieze of the Parthenon, reproduced in Plate I. Broken away probably at

the time of the Venetian bombardment, it seems to have been acquired in

Athens by Stuart, who sent it to Smyrna; a few years ago it was dug up

beside a rockery in a garden in Essex; what its movements were between

Smyrna and Essex is matter for conjecture. A former owner of the Essex

property was a Mr. Astle, who was a trustee of the British Museum, and

may be supposed to have had an interest in antiquities: _habent sua

fata_, these flotsam relics of antiquity: this is not the only marble

in the exhibition which has been excavated on English soil. The head

(No. 24), which early in the seventeenth century belonged to the famous

Arundel collection, was recently dug up by a navvy in London close to

the Temple, on the site that was once part of the Arundel house garden.

¶ The surface of the Parthenon fragment has suffered, of course, but

not so grievously as might be expected. It gives the head of one of the

mounted knights of the north frieze, and the horse’s head of the figure

immediately following him. The youth is from northern Greece, probably

from one of the Thracian colonies of Athens, as his Thracian headdress

of foxskin (the _alopeke_) shows. That his horse is in movement even

the fragment makes clear by the light tresses of hair blown backward

beneath his cap, of which the heavy tail is itself curved outward by

the motion; but his eyes are intently set on his forward path, and the

firm and straight yet supple poise of neck and torso bespeak his ‘magic

horsemanship.’ The figure behind him (preserved in the British Museum),

a squadron commander or marshal, turns partly round in his seat,

checking his horse, apparently to give an order to his section; with

the suddenness of the action the horse’s mouth is wrenched open and his

head thrown back, the plaited forelock swings upward, and every muscle

is tense; the motive is a subtle variation on the theme represented by

the splendid horse’s head of Selene or Night in the eastern pediment,

but with this principal difference, that while this horse is answering

to its rider’s curb, the Selene horse is probably starting back of

its own accord, in alarm at taking the downward plunge. Now that this

beautiful fragment has found its way to London, is it too much to hope

that it may make one more journey--and that its last--to Bloomsbury,

and rejoin the slab to which it fits?

[Illustration: PLATE IV--BRONZES

SMALL BRONZES: HANDLE OF AMPHORA BELONGING TO MR. WYNDHAM COOK; MASK OF

SEA DEITY BELONGING TO MR. GEORGE SALTING; PLAQUE BELONGING TO MR. H

WALLIS

APHRODITE WITH TORCH, BELONGING TO MR. J. E. TAYLOR

SICK MAN, BELONGING TO MR. WYNDHAM COOK

SEILENOS CROUCHING, BELONGING TO MR. J. E. TAYLOR

NUDE APHRODITE, BELONGING TO MR. CHARLES LOESER]

[Illustration: PLATE V

REPOUSSÉ MIRROR-COVER; IN THE COLLECTION OF MR. J. E. TAYLOR]

From Pheidias it is natural to turn to that other sculptor who

shared with him the glory of the latter part of the fifth century.

Polykleitos, the leader of the Argive school, did for the physical

ideal what Pheidias had done for the religious. His earliest recorded

work, the statue of a boy-boxer crowning himself with a wreath, set

up at Olympia about 440 ~B.C.~, has been identified in four different

replicas, of which one is the head belonging to Sir Edgar Vincent (No.

45), shown on Plate III. The statue-base itself was found at Olympia

in 1877, still bearing its dedicatory inscription, and with marks

showing that the figure was of bronze. From a marble copy to a bronze

original, and that of an artist whose bronze technique was by many

considered pre-eminent in antiquity, is a far cry, but even in this

head we may see some faint reflection of the genius of Polykleitos. The

curved surfaces definitely meet and intersect instead of merging almost

insensibly into one another, as happens in marble work. In this respect

an admirable contrast is offered by the famous head of Aphrodite,

belonging to Lord Leconfield, on Plate II. This head, which is in the

catalogue (No. 22) boldly described as ‘an original by Praxiteles,’

in acceptation of a suggestion originally due to Payne Knight, and

later adopted by Furtwängler, is undoubtedly the most beautiful

Aphrodite head in this artist’s style which has come down to us. A

comparison of it with that of the Olympian Hermes and with the copies

of the Knidian Aphrodite makes this identification at least highly

probable. The hair is apparently roughly finished and almost sketchy,

but offers an admirable contrast to the highly polished surface of the

flesh, and even without the colour which certainly once covered it is

magically successful in its rendering of texture. The high triangular

forehead-space, which gives distinction to the type and value to the

setting of the eyes, is almost identical with the forehead of the

Knidian Aphrodite, and also that of the Knidian Demeter, a statue

certainly under strong Praxitelean influence: the slight projection

over the brows, the so-called ‘bar of Michael Angelo,’ which is so

marked a feature in the Hermes, is introduced here with extraordinary

delicacy of effect. It is no wonder that Lucian singled out for praise

in the Aphrodite of Praxiteles ‘the beautiful line of her forehead

and brow, and her melting eye, full of joy and of pleasure.’ The

eyes indeed are especially characteristic; their narrow opening in

proportion to the length (_yeux bridés_), the slight projection of the

lower lid, which gives an indescribable softness to the shadow beneath

it, the almost imperceptible transition at the outer corner both of

eye and mouth, are all traits which belong to Praxiteles alone. The

oval contour is skilfully redeemed from formality by the dimple in the

chin, just as the columnar neck is softened by the soft fold midway.

For beneath all the refinement, which might easily become voluptuous,

there is withal a physical dignity of form which bespeaks the goddess,

‘che muove il sole e l’ altre stelle.’ The artist ‘keeps the two

vases, one of aether and one of pigment, at his side, and invariably

uses both.’ ¶ In the presence of this masterpiece it is difficult to

share the admiration which the catalogue bestows on the Head of a Girl

from Chios (No. 44). The intention of the sculptor was obviously to

reproduce a Praxitelean type; but whatever this head may once have

been, the entire surface has been so rubbed down that it now looks

like a model in partly melted loaf sugar. Under these circumstances

any close study of the details is fruitless, but the characteristic

features, especially the mouth, are so weakly conceived that it

probably looks as pretty now, half hidden under a ‘baldacchino,’ as

ever it did; its prettiness indeed seems to be its highest claim to

notice.[84] ¶ The head belonging to Mr. Claude Ponsonby on Plate

III has lately been claimed as Lysippean by M. Salomon Reinach.

Unfortunately we know very little of the characteristic treatment of

the features by Lysippos; we know that he was essentially a worker in

bronze, that he introduced a more natural treatment of the hair and

an animation of facial expression, and that this last qualification

naturally led him into portraiture. The general outline of the

eye cavities, and the form and modelling of the forehead, closely

resemble those of the Alexander portrait in the British Museum; and

the rendering of the hair has a certain naturalism which is also

found in the Alexander: moreover there is a tragic intensity in the

almost haggard eyes and parted lips which, together with the loosened

tresses and the drapery covering the back of the head, certainly

mark the head as the portrait of a mourning woman. Further than this

perhaps we cannot go; but it is worth noting that Tatian mentions the

portrait of a woman (the Praxilla) by Lysippos, which we may presume

to have been something like this. Michaelis suggests that it may have

belonged to ‘the statue of a mourning woman which may have served as

the decoration of some sepulchral monument.’ This is probably not far

from the truth; at any rate the head seems to stand midway between

the conventionalized portraits of the Athenian stelae and the more

realistic portraiture of the Hellenistic age, well represented in the

exhibition by the busts of Menander (No. 26) and the presumed Hipponax

(No. 27). ¶ The _genre_ side of Hellenistic art is well represented

in the exhibition by the large bronze statuette of Eros, a dexterous

figure of a winged laughing boy rushing forward through space with

outspread wings and right foot just touching the ground; Mrs. Strong

justly points to the motive as an ultimate evolution from that of

the Nike of Samothrace, wherein the weight of the body seems partly

supported by the foot and partly by the spread wings, which serve

as a counterpoise to the structure. It is quite in consonance with

Hellenistic sentiment that the love-god should be shown as the victor

in the sacred torch race, the Lampadephoria --Eros the unconquerable,

the ἀνίκατος μάχαν, invades the palaestra and beats the athlete at

his own game. ¶ When I first saw this charming figure (it was in a

room at the Charing Cross Hotel, on his first arrival here) the then

owner told me the circumstances of his discovery. Not far south of

Vesuvius the river Sirmio finds its way to the sea; at a spot on the

Pompeii side which probably in antiquity marked a ferry or ford, this

statuette with other things was excavated. The presumption is that the

hapless owner, fleeing from the eruption with his treasure under his

arm, was overtaken here, possibly while waiting for the ferry-boat. It

is a tragic little history, all the more touching somehow on account

of the subject which the figure represents. ¶ In its collection of

smaller bronzes the exhibition is particularly rich. A small selection

is here given in Plate IV. The archaic period is represented by the

little crouching or, more probably, dancing Seilenos (No. 34), the wild

animalistic sprite of the woods, half bearded man and half horse, as

Ionic art depicted him; by the amphora handle (No. 92) in the form of

a youth bent backwards below two panthers which rested on the lip of

the vase; and by the charming little Aphrodite (No. 20) whose formal

drapery and pose, combined with a refinement of delicate modelling, are

together characteristic of the springtime of Greek art. With her may be

contrasted the tiny nude Aphrodite (No. 11) to which an ancient admirer

has presented a necklace, bracelet, and anklet in gold, probably, as

Mrs. Strong suggest, an adaptation of a famous statue by Praxiteles. ¶

On Plate V is a fine example of the repoussé mirror-covers which seem

to have belonged exclusively to the fourth and third centuries ~B.C.~

The nearly full-grown Eros with long wings is characteristic rather

of the earlier stage; otherwise the subject, in which he assists a

lady or his mother at her toilet, is a favourite one for this class

of representation. An unusual form of mirror support is Mr. Wallis’s

plaque (No. 62), which has the design cut out _à jour_, as beautiful

in its pale blue patina as it is in the dexterous adaptation of the

composition to the space which it has to fill. The owner suggests

that the reclining winged boy is Hypnos rather than Eros; if so, it

is an unusual rendering of the god of sleep.

[Illustration: PLATE VI

(_a_) (_b_) (_c_) (_d_) (_e_)

(_a_) CARYATID FIGURE; (_b_) WOMAN LEANING ON PEDESTAL, BELONGING TO

MR. J. E. TAYLOR; (_c_) DOLL, BELONGING TO MRS. MITCHELL; (_d_) WOMAN

WITH A FAN, BELONGING TO MR. JAMES KNOWLES; (_e_) THE YOUNG DIONYSOS,

BELONGING TO MR. J. E. TAYLOR

TERRACOTTAS]

[Illustration: PLATE VII

KRATER BELONGING TO HARROW SCHOOL

(_a_) (_b_)

(_a_) KYLIX SIGNED BY TLESON, AND (_b_) PLATE SIGNED BY EPIKTETOS; IN

THE COLLECTION OF THE MARQUESS OF NORTHAMPTON]

The Alexandrine period is represented on Plate IV by Mr. Salting’s

fine mask of a sea deity (No. 113) with inlaid eyes and marine emblems

skilfully worked in, suggestive of the grotesque masks of Pompeian

and cinquecento Italian art; and by Mr. Wyndham Cook’s puzzling

seated statuette of an emaciated man (No. 50). This figure has usually

been described as a pathological study, a votive offering to Asklepios

from a sick person. The careful workmanship, however, and the fact

that it is inscribed with the name of the personage represented seem

to militate against this view; moreover the figure does not seem

to represent actual suffering so much as austerity. The excessive

emaciation, the pose, and the fixed abstracted expression appear to me

to indicate rather ecstasy, the ἔκστασις of the mystic, the Pythagorean

anchorite who, like the Brahmin, has learnt by mortification of the

flesh to project his soul into the unseen. We know the interest that

Alexander took in the Indian _yogins_, and that he had intended

to bring one of them, Kalanos, back with him to Greece. It is not

improbable that other Greeks may have taken up the idea: and it is

significant that this bronze was found at Alexander’s own city of Pella

and bears a Macedonian name. If this be so, it adds an extraordinary

and unique interest to the little bronze. ¶ The group of terracotta

statuettes on Plate VI are chosen as characteristic types of different

forms of this charming art. The little doll (No. 24) made, perhaps,

in imitation of a Persephone figure, but intended to have movable

limbs, and the Caryatid figure (No. 26) belong to the fifth century;

the latter is remarkable for its strongly Pheidian character of type

and drapery, and is certainly of Attic work nearly contemporary with

the Parthenon. The young Dionysos (No. 7) and the two girls (Nos. 3

and 10) are good instances of the peculiarly modern sentiment which

pervaded the art as well as the literature of the Hellenistic age.

These figures are the bric-à-brac of antiquity; the far-away ancestors

of Dresden, and Saxe, and Watteau, with some of their coquetry and

none of their artificiality. ¶ Before leaving the terracottas it is

necessary to mention the large head of Zeus (No. 46) which has been

added since the exhibition opened; Professor Furtwängler and Mrs.

Strong consider this head to be ‘a Greek work of the great period of

Pheidias.’ It is particularly unpleasant to me to find myself differing

entirely from their view; after close and repeated examination I am

bound to say that it seems to me to belong to a well-known class of

terracottas which are now generally agreed to be of modern origin. ¶

Of the collection of vases there is only space here to include three

typical specimens (Plate VII); these are the kylix signed by the artist

Tleson (No. 16), with a charming drawing of two goats rearing up and

butting one another above a floral ornament; a good example of the

skill with which the Greek artist pressed into his service as pure

decoration a common scene of daily life; the plate (No. 79), signed by

Epiktetos, with its humorous ride-a-cock-horse subject, the precursor

of the Parthenon horseman riding on his own fighting-cock; and the

krater from Harrow School (No. 44), with its masterly composition

of the hero Kaineus overwhelmed by the Centaurs. In its strong firm

line, and spirited composition, which is yet kept in subordination to

the decorative effect of the vase as a whole, this work stands out

instinct with the combination of strength and self-control which are

the leading characteristics of the best works of Hellenic art. ¶ I

have already occupied so much space that the very important series of

engraved gems and coins must remain almost unnoticed, and this is a

pity because outside the great museums we are not likely ever to see

such a series again assembled. The beautiful drawings of Greece by

Cockerell, the wandering artist-scholar, one of the great builders of

English artistic repute in the Levant, these too must be left with a

bare mention. But this fact in itself speaks for the high standard

attained by the exhibition, on which Mrs. Strong and the club are much

to be congratulated.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

~Pintoricchio: His Life, Work, and Time.~ By Corrado Ricci.

Translated by Florence Simmons. William Heinemann, 1902.

The publication by Mr. Heinemann of a large, costly, and elaborately

illustrated book upon Pintoricchio is evidence that this long-neglected

Umbrian painter is growing in popularity. Effaced for more than two and

a half centuries by the dazzling radiance of his younger contemporary’s

fame, Pintoricchio’s individuality, first appreciated by Rumohr, began

clearly to stand out again only when Morelli demonstrated that he was

the author of two frescoes in the Sixtine chapel. Even then he borrowed

his lustre from working where Michelangelo left his masterpieces,

and from having, as Morelli pointed out, influenced Raphael. It

remained for the anarchical taste of recent years to exalt him into an

important ‘Master’ on his own account. ¶ The occasion was offered by

the reopening in 1897 of the Borgia apartments, which he decorated;

for although the popes may have lost their power to immortalize

themselves by feats of statesmanship, the ambition to signalize their

pontificates by the patronage of art appears not wholly to have died

out. Leo XIII in restoring and opening to the public the magnificent

suite of rooms where, in the service of Alexander VI, Pintoricchio

toiled to make a monument to his patron, was no less the maker of

an artistic reputation than his Renaissance predecessors--with the

significant difference, however, that he conferred a posthumous fame,

a _succès d’archéologie_, instead of the renown that came from the

commission to rebuild and decorate that city of cities which has now

passed from under the papal sway. ¶ But, unless the lay world had been

independently attuned to Pintoricchio’s art, papal patronage would not

have carried his renown far. But modern art is just at a point where

Pintoricchio is really more sympathetic than the masters of the great

style, for in the break-up of artistic tradition and the decline of

classical taste the decorator of to-day is thrown back upon parading

the mere materials of his art, upon bright colour and relief, upon

sumptuousness, and the startling and attractive. He has, in fact,

dedicated himself to ornamentation--for we must not debase the word

decoration! And of ornamentation, of the sumptuous, the attractive,

the gay and the ingenious, Pintoricchio was a master. The gorgeousness

of the Borgia apartments delude even critics who ought to distinguish

more subtly, into praising them as art. It is so difficult to be stern

with the attractive! ¶ And so Pintoricchio, becoming popular, needed a

handsome book to reveal him further to his English admirers; and for

them, being English, a volume of mere illustrations, like the French

tome of M. Boyer d’Agen, did not suffice. There must be the flavour of

pedantry, of Morellianism, of research into origins, without omitting

the necessary historical setting. And so the publisher commissioned

the valiant Dr. Ricci, head of the great gallery of the Brera, to

prepare such a work, knowing well that he could not entrust it to

more skilful and conscientious hands. But, contrary to the Biblical

story, instead of blessing Israel the emissary of Balak was unable to

keep his tongue from curses! Dr. Ricci’s taste was too cultivated,

his experience of great art too profound, to permit him to raise the

chosen painter to the altar prepared for him, and the publisher was

thus constrained to write a short ‘Note’ explaining that, in spite

of what the author says, Pintoricchio really _is_ a great artist,

standing only just below ‘the three or four supreme masters’--close,

that is to say, to Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Giorgione!

Turning, however, to Dr. Ricci’s estimate, we find it absolutely

sane and just:--‘Pintoricchio ... was more attracted by the external

splendours of art than by its sentiment ... is wholly destitute of

passion ... and shows but little research in the matter of expression.’

And instead of joining in the unreserved praise accorded to him in the

publisher’s ‘Note’ as a ‘master of decoration,’ he, on the contrary,

criticizes his artist’s gaudiness and his lack of composition, and

utters a protest, particularly welcome at the present moment, against

the use of raised ornament in decorative painting. Indeed, while

Morelli’s account of Pintoricchio leaves the reader with a general

sense that he was to be preferred to his master Perugino, Dr. Ricci

nowhere loses his sense of proportion, nowhere unduly exalts the

subject of his work, and the resulting impression of his long book is

to place Pintoricchio in a just relation to the artists of his time:

attractive, sweet, agreeable, ‘exuberant and instinctively elegant,’

but almost never entering into rivalry with any master who possessed,

in however small a degree, any of the specifically artistic qualities.

His treatment, indeed, of Pintoricchio’s greatest work, the frescoes

of the cathedral library of Siena, scarcely does justice to the real

artistic merits of the decorative scheme. As these works so far surpass

the frescoes of the Borgia apartments, the impression they give of

‘gaiety and well-being,’ which Dr. Ricci barely touches on, might

well have been amplified. But one is grateful to him for pronouncing

himself so clearly against the current notion that the young Raphael

assisted Pintoricchio in these frescoes, instead of mystifying us

with the usual non-committal generalities on this subject; and also

for ranging himself so openly with Morelli and against Signor Venturi

in refusing the absurd ascription of Gentile Bellini’s drawings

to Pintoricchio. He calls attention to a phrase in Gentile’s will

which speaks of drawings of his in Rome, thus amply accounting for

the introduction of figures similar to those in Gentile’s sketches

into the Roman frescoes of the Umbrian painter so notoriously given

to pilfering. ¶ Singularly full and complete is Dr. Ricci’s list of

Pintoricchio’s works; indeed, the fault lies just in this! While we

thank him for sparing no pains to look up every possible work of his

painter, we must reproach him with being too liberal in questions of

authenticity. It is particularly among what Dr. Ricci considers the

early works that we find him too generous. It is in my opinion quite

impossible that Pintoricchio should have executed the Presentation at

Torre d’ Andrea, which shows so many of the characteristics of that

(deservedly) little known painter, Antonio da Viterbo[85], while the

copy at Siena of the central figures in the great ancona of 1498 at

Perugia cannot of course be, as he supposes, an _early_ work, and seems

to me too crude and flaccid to be by him at any period of his career.

The early Madonna in the Bufalini collection at Città di Castello I

cannot clearly remember, but the ruined Madonna with the infant John

in the _duomo_ of that town could certainly never have been touched

by Pintoricchio’s own hand, and Lord Crawford’s Madonna and Angels at

Wigan is too cold and hard for him, and indeed seems to be the work of

some Romagnol imitator of Pintoricchio, whose youthful hand was trained

under the benumbing influence of Palmezzano. ¶ I regret that I cannot

quite follow our author in his chronology of Pintoricchio’s works, for

the clear arrangement of which at the end of his book he nevertheless

earns our gratitude. The assumption that the Ara Coeli frescoes were

painted after those in the Sixtine chapel seems to me to confuse Dr.

Ricci’s view of the chronology from the start. To my eyes they are

clearly earlier works, although I know that Morelli here for once

agreed with Crowe and Cavalcaselle, and dated them as late as 1496. But

the whole question is by no means clear, and I confess to being unable

to discover in Dr. Ricci’s book the exact criteria he uses to determine

the date of a particular work. The Sienese _tondo_ which he calls early

seems to me definitely to belong to the period after 1500, and the two

Madonnas at Spello do not convince me that they are early, or even

that they are of the same date. Dr. Ricci professes himself not quite

convinced of the adequacy of internal evidence; nevertheless, like all

unbelievers, he constantly takes refuge in it, but not consistently,

and it is this uncertainty of method which, perhaps more than anything

else, prevents our following his conclusions with intelligent sympathy.

And this one regrets the more, because with the broad lines of his

book, and, above all, with his estimate of Pintoricchio, one has such

hearty sympathy. ¶ A word of protest must be added about the strange

translation and about certain carelessness apparent in the book-making.

‘Coetanean’ is an odd word to meet on the first page, and surely Dr.

Ricci never spoke of the ‘coast of Subasio’! ‘S. Bernardine,’ or, worse

still, ‘San Bernardine,’ is not a happy way of anglicizing the name of

the Sienese saint, nor is ‘Cybo’ an improvement upon the usual form.

‘Enea’ recurs in an irritating manner, where every cultivated English

person expects Aeneas; for, since Bishop Creighton’s sympathetic

account, ‘Aeneas Silvius,’ whether as humanist or pope, has become a

familiar name. Just here, by the way, I may express my surprise that

among Dr. Ricci’s historical references for Pope Alexander VI (p. 87)

he did not place Creighton’s account, the best in English, or perhaps

in any language. ¶ The subject of the first coloured plate is misnamed

‘S. Bernardino,’ although in the text correctly described as St.

Louis of Toulouse. And this leads me to protest against cheap colour

reproductions of this kind. The feeblest, young-lady water-colour

sketch after Pintoricchio could not resemble him less than these

coarse, smeared, falsely-tinted reproductions. They are worse than

useless; they are hideously misleading. The other illustrations of the

book, however, are copious and accurate, and we cannot be too grateful

for the reproduction of so many of the pictures in private collections,

photographs of which it is often almost impossible for the student to

procure.

M. L.

~Ancient Coffers and Cupboards.~ By Fred Roe. Methuen & Co.