In the preceding pages I have tried to p_The Burlington magazine

judge with what success--Vanni’s claims to the authorship of a certain

group of pictures, so closely related in style, quality, and spirit,

as clearly to belong to the same period of his activity as that

which produced the polyptych of S. Stefano. As we know, this period

was one of a comparatively old age. Yet it would seem as if Andrea had

turned, during the later years of his life, with a renewed activity,

to the practice of his art, after the busy public career of his prime.

Judging from the scarcity of documents of an official nature connected

with his name after 1384, it would seem that, somewhere about that

year, he retired from active participation in political affairs and

devoted himself wholly to his painting. That he was inactive as an

artist, however, during all his earlier years, is not to be believed.

We have, in fact, a line of documents to prove that this was not the

case. Still, these written records help us very little in the tracing

of his earlier artistic development. Evidently in origin a pupil of the

school of Lippo Memmi, I should place in the period of his ascendance a

somewhat hard and gaudy, but not uninteresting, triptych, representing

St. Michael between St. Anthony the abbot and the Baptist, No. 67

of the Siena gallery. This work, which is in a remarkable state of

preservation, is attributed to Lippo Memmi himself, and clearly shows

the characteristics of his school. There is much in the figures which

bears a close similarity to Andrea’s later types. Another panel--a

Virgin and Child in the priest’s house, next to S. Pietro Ovile--having

close affinity to Simone and Lippo Memmi in technical treatment, in

colour, and even in style, seems to presage in a far more definite

manner the works of Vanni which we now know, and already shares many

of his peculiar characteristics in detail. But, apart from these two

paintings, I can call to mind no works of these early years which I

can with any confidence give to him. The first notice of Andrea as a

painter is one of 1353, in which year he was associated with Bartolo

di Fredi, whether as partner or assistant is not quite clear. The last

records of his activity are dated 1400. Milanesi, upon some unnamed

authority, gives the probable date of his death as 1414. ¶ It would

prolong this article unduly if the questions of Vanni’s influence upon

Sienese art, and of his possible pupils and apparent successors, were

entered into with the fullness which the subject demands. We must limit

ourselves here to a brief mention of the closest of the followers of

Vanni in those later years in which chiefly we have been studying him,

a painter less known even than himself, Paolo di Giovanni Fei. An

apparently early work by him, the Madonna del Rosario of S. Domenico,

suggests that he was actually the pupil of Vanni. By him, also, are

three pictures in the Siena gallery, one in the chapel of S. Bernardino

just outside the Porta Camollia, another in the Saraceni collection,

and yet another in the Minutolo chapel of Naples cathedral.

EARLY PAINTERS OF THE NETHERLANDS AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE BRUGES

EXHIBITION OF 1902

❧ WRITTEN BY W. H. JAMES WEALE ❧

ARTICLE V

Gerard David worked in Bruges from the commencement of 1484 until his

death, August 13, 1523, yet he does not appear to have taken a single

apprentice during all that period, at least the register of the gild

of St. Luke contains no entry of any such. It is, however, certain

that he had several assistants; one of these, Adrian Isenbrant, I was

able to rescue from oblivion in 1865. He came to Bruges in 1510, was

admitted as free master into the gild on November 29, and continued

working there for more than forty years, until his death in July

1551. He acquired a reputation for skill in painting the nude and

the human countenance, and executed many pictures for Spain, which

as a rule he sent by Antwerp to Bilbao. Although no document has as

yet been discovered connecting his name with any particular picture,

yet there is hardly any doubt that he is the author of a number of

works certainly painted in Bruges between 1510 and 1551, the figures

in which are remarkable for their careful execution and sweetness of

expression, characteristics attributed to the works of Isenbrant by

old writers. Several of these works are still in Spain, others have

been brought from the Peninsula within the last fifty years. Of these

I purpose to treat later on; at present I shall confine my remarks to

the works included in the exhibition. The most important of these is

a large diptych given to the church of Our Lady at Bruges by Barbara

Le Maire, widow of George Van de Velde, a wealthy cloth merchant, who

had held many offices in the communal council. The dexter panel (178)

represents the Blessed Virgin seated with clasped hands, overwhelmed

with grief, in a niche of Renascence architecture. Around her, set

in architectural framework, are seven little pictures representing

the seven dolours; in some of these are motives borrowed from the

engravings of Martin Schongauer and Albert Dürer. The sinister panel

(179), which disappeared from the church about 1832, came into the

possession of the duke of Arenberg, who in 1874 sold it to the Brussels

museum. On the face are pictured George Van de Velde in the costume

of a brother of the confraternity of the holy Blood, and his wife,

protected by their baptismal patrons, and accompanied by their nine

sons and eight daughters, all kneeling in prayer. The subject on the

dexter panel is repeated on the reverse of this in grisaille but with

differences, so that whether the diptych was shut or open, on festivals

or ferias, the figure of the sorrowful Mother, to whom the widow Van de

Velde was very devoted--_multum affectata_--was always exposed to the

veneration of the faithful. George Van de Velde died on April 28, 1528;

his second son, John, who in the picture wears a surplice, was ordained

priest and said his first mass in the church of Our Lady in 1530-31,

about which date his mother presented the picture. ¶ The Blessed Virgin

and Child seated in a landscape with SS. Katherine, Barbara, Dorothy,

Margaret and Agnes (145), lent by Count Arco-Valley, is a charming

early composition, of which there is a weak repetition in the academy

of St. Luke at Rome. The prototype of this picture is doubtless the

dexter panel of the diptych painted by Memlinc for John Du Celier, now

in the Louvre at Paris, whilst variations are in the gallery at Munich,

at Geneva, and at Buckingham Palace. A triptych lent by M. Lotman, of

Berne (177), represents the Blessed Virgin and Child and two angels

playing a mandoline and a harp; and on the exterior, St. Jerome

praying before a crucifix. The carpet here is from the same model as

that under the Virgin’s feet in 145.

[Illustration: ST. LUKE, BY ADRIAN ISENBRANT; IN THE POSSESSION OF

MESSRS. P. AND D. COLNAGHI]

[Illustration: TRIPTYCH: THE BLESSED VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH TWO ANGELS,

BY ADRIAN ISENBRANT; IN THE COLLECTION OF MONSIEUR LOTMAN]

[Illustration: THE VISION OF SAINT ILDEPHONSUS, BY ADRIAN ISENBRANT IN

THE COLLECTION OF THE EARL OF NORTHBROOK]

A panel (183) belonging to the earl of Northbrook represents the

Blessed Virgin and Child enthroned, in a garden, beneath a canopy,

to which is attached a cloth of honour; the donor and his wife and

family kneel at the sides; the background is formed by a stone wall,

on which two peacocks and a pea-hen are sunning themselves. The head

of our Lady has been restored. ¶ Two shutters of a triptych (180),

lent by Mr. R. von Kaufmann, represent a donor and his wife with their

children protected by St. John the Evangelist and St. Barbara(?). The

donors on these shutters are, though a few years older, strikingly like

those in 183. But in the earlier picture the man, aged thirty-four, is

represented with one son and one daughter, both dead when the picture

was painted, while behind his wife, aged thirty-three, kneel a boy

of nine and a girl of five. The man in 180 is represented with one

son dead, and his wife with three daughters, one of whom was dead.

¶ The vision of St. Ildephonsus, bishop of Toledo (151), belonging

to Lord Northbrook, is in every respect a very remarkable work; the

composition unusually good, the colouring rich and harmonious. The

saint, kneeling on the foot-pace of an altar on the north side of a

large church of picturesque architecture, looks up with outstretched

arms at the Blessed Virgin, who, attended by three lovely angels, is

about to vest him with a chasuble. Behind him kneel three monks, two

looking up at the heavenly apparition, the third absorbed in prayer.

In the background a procession of chanting monks, followed by a pious

crowd of lay folk, winds its way round the choir. The figures of all

are most carefully executed, and are remarkable for the delicacy of

their modelling and sweetness of expression.[105] ¶ Another brightly

coloured picture (152), also belonging to Lord Northbrook, represents

the Blessed Virgin seated on a stone throne adorned with rams’ heads,

holding the divine Child, who has his left arm round her neck and

is caressing her chin. The Virgin’s face has little character, but

the Child’s expression is very pleasing. ¶ St. Mary Magdalene in the

desert, kneeling before a large crucifix held by an angel (182), from

the De Somzée collection, is a remarkable work, with a landscape

background with peculiar rocks. A panel with a half-length figure of

St. Luke holding a portrait of the Blessed Virgin and Child (187),

lent by Messrs. P. and D. Colnaghi, is a fine work, the evangelist

being probably the master’s own portrait. A triptych belonging to the

cathedral of Bruges (184) represents in the centre the Presentation in

the Temple with the kneeling figure of an Augustinian nun of the Le

Gros family, probably the granddaughter of Philip Wielant and Joan van

Halewyn, whose portraits on the shutters, as remarked by M. G. Hulin,

are evidently not painted from life. The triptych, which probably

came from one of the Augustinian convents suppressed at the end of

the eighteenth century, was, with many others now preserved in the

cathedral, presented to it by M. van Huerne. ¶ A panel (185) lent by

M. Sedelmeyer, with full-length figures of St. Andrew, St. Michael,

and St. Francis in the foreground, with a representation of Calvary in

the upper portion, is a late work, the Calvary closely resembling that

in the diptych of our Lady of seven dolours. The exhibition included

several other works either copies or painted under the influence of

Isenbrant. ¶ Two other masters who flourished in Bruges about this

time, and who were restored to history by me, one in 1860 and the other

in 1863, were each represented by one authentic work. John Prevost, a

native of Mons in Hainault, was born c. 1462. It is not known where

he learned his art or to whom he was apprenticed. He visited Antwerp

in 1493 and was admitted as free-master into the gild of St. Luke,

but shortly after removed to Bruges, where he bought the right of

citizenship and settled definitely. He also purchased the freedom of

the town of Valenciennes in 1498, in which year, if not previously,

he married Joan de Quaroube, a well-to-do elderly lady, who, after

twenty-five years of wedded life, had in 1489 been left a widow by

the celebrated painter and miniaturist Simon Marmion. She died in

1506. Prevost, who married again three times, died in January 1529.

The only picture proved by documentary evidence to be by him is the

Last Judgement (167), painted in 1525 for the town hall, lent by the

museum where it is now kept. An earlier representation of the same

subject, said to have been painted by him for the Dominicans of Bruges

(169), was lent by Viscount de Ruffo Bonneval. A third, lent by Mr.

E. F. Weber (168), attributed to him by M. Hulin,[106] appears to me

to be the work of an imitator. It is not only inferior in drawing and

execution, but the treatment of the subject--the risen are bringing

account books which the angels are verifying--is childish. M. Hulin

enumerates eleven other pictures as being certainly, and three more as

possibly, by Prevost. Four of these were in the exhibition (109, 157,

189, and 342); a fifth, the Blessed Virgin and Child in an aureole

surrounded by angels, with the prophets and sibyls, at St. Petersburg,

which he believes to be the picture painted in 1524 for the altar of

St. Daniel in the church of St. Donatian at Bruges. The other six

are SS. Antony of Padua and Bonaventure, in the Brussels gallery; an

Adoration of the Magi, at Berlin; the Blessed Virgin and Child, in the

National gallery (No. 713, attributed to Mostaert); another with SS.

Benedict and Bernard, at Windsor castle; another with a carthusian,

exhibited as by Isenbrant at the Burlington club in 1892; and a

Virgin and Child, at Carlsruhe, where it is attributed to Gossart.

The three which he thinks may be attributed to him are the heads of

Christ and the Blessed Virgin (193 and 194), and the charming picture

of St. Francis renouncing the world (150), belonging to Mr. Sutton

Nelthorpe. Few indeed are those who write on the early masters who can

resist the temptation of attributing to them a goodly list of works.

Much may be learnt when, as in the present case, serious arguments are

started which can be discussed, and no harm can result so long as the

attributions are not accepted as certainties by museum authorities.

¶ The other master, Albert Cornelis, who died in 1532, is still only

known by one remarkable picture (170), the Coronation of the B. Virgin.

¶ A painting of the Mater dolorosa (105), formerly in the church of

the Austin friars, lent by the cathedral, is said to be a copy of a

miraculous picture in the church of Ara caeli at Rome, of which other

copies were formerly at Abbenbroek and Romerswale in Zealand, and a

third, if not one of these two, is now in the gallery at Munich. The

copy exhibited was traditionally attributed to John van Eyck, and the

cipher in the corner, supposed to be his, was adduced as a proof.

This cipher, retouched by the restorer who re-gilt the background, is

certainly that used as a signature by John van Eecke or van Eeckele,

a painter who settled in Bruges and was admitted as free-master into

the gild of St. Luke in September 1534, and worked there until his

death in November 1561. A panel lent by the museum of Tournay (106),

representing the vision of St. Bernard with other episodes in the life

of that saint in the landscape background, is an original work of

the master signed with his cipher. ¶ A panel (250) lent by the Black

Sisters represents St. Nicolas of Tolentino, and on the exterior an

Austin friar, Roger De Jonghe (born 1482, died 1579), kneeling at a

prayer desk on which is an open book.

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF ROGER DE JONGHE, AUSTIN FRIAR, REVERSE OF

A PANEL OF A TRIPTYCH, BY AN UNKNOWN PAINTER; BELONGING TO THE SŒURS

NOIRES AT BRUGES]

[Illustration: EPISODES IN THE LIFE OF ST. BERNARD, BY JOHN VAN EECKE;

IN THE TOURNAI MUSEUM]

THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE FIRST FOLIO SHAKESPEARE

❧ WRITTEN BY FRANK RINDER ❧

On November 8, 1623, Edward Blount and Isaac Jaggard obtained the

licence of the Stationers’ company for the publication, in the first

folio edition of Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies, of sixteen

plays, not before printed. Some 265 years later the late Mr. Bernard

Quaritch, in cataloguing a good copy of the completed work, directed

attention to the fact that, based on the then value of the quartos,

the twenty Shakespearian plays actually printed for the first time

in the folio of 1623--for as many were included--would, as first

editions, have a money-worth of from £3,500 to £4,000. All question

of the quartos apart, however, a fine copy of the book, originally

procurable for £1, might now realize from £2,000 to £3,000; indeed,

the mean between these two sums is said to have been privately offered

for a particularly well-known example. No printed book, apart from

about a dozen monuments of typography from fifteenth-century presses,

has fetched so much at auction as the £1,720 realized at Christie’s in

1901 for the Dormer-Hunter first folio, now in the possession of Mr.

Charles Scribner of New York, albeit a few weeks previously £1,475 was

the amount paid on behalf of a transatlantic collector for the scarcer

Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ in first edition, said to have been

issued at 1s. 6d. ¶ That there was ample warrant for the publication of

a new facsimile is acknowledged on all hands; and the folio recently

produced by the Clarendon press has failed in few respects only to

satisfy the most exigent of connoisseurs. The hypercritical observe

that the plate-mark measures no more than 12-11/16 in. by 7½ in.,

as against 13⅛, in. by 8⅛ in., the actual size of the pages of the

duke of Devonshire’s copy at Chatsworth, on which the facsimile is

based. On the whole, however, the volume has been cordially welcomed,

and that welcome is merited. ¶ Interest and value are enhanced, of

course, by the scholarly introduction and the census of known extant

copies from the pen of Mr. Sidney Lee. Under his guidance we are

enabled to take a bird’s-eye view of all relevant facts pertaining to

the volume ‘which constitutes the greatest contribution yet made to

English literature.’ Oversights and inaccuracies must of necessity

have crept into the census, for Mr. Lee has been compelled to rely to

a considerable extent, of course, on information supplied to him by

owners and others. But who would have been prepared to undertake a

like task, who would have been able to carry it to a more successful

issue? ¶ Mr. Lee conjectures that the edition of the first folio

consisted of 600 copies, of which not far short of one-third, in

varying states, probably still exist. In 1616 and 1647 respectively

there appeared the collected works of Ben Jonson and of Beaumont and

Fletcher, each issued, he thinks, in about the same number of copies

and at the same price of £1. At the sale of Sir Kenelm Digby’s library

in April 1680 the Beaumont and Fletcher volume fetched 13s. 6d.; the

Ben Jonson, with the folio of 1640 added, 17s. 6d. As most collectors

are aware, the earliest record of the sale by auction of a first folio

Shakespeare is of that in the library of Sir William and the Hon. Henry

Coventry, dispersed in the Haymarket by W. Cooper on May 19, 1687; but,

unfortunately, there is no mention of the sum realized. Mr. Lee states

that the first priced record belongs to 1756, when the Martin Folkes

example, now in the Rylands library, was sold to George Steevens for 3

guineas. On the other hand, it has been affirmed that in an anonymous

collection of books dispersed in 1687-8 a first folio fetched no more

than 14s. ¶ It is felt that in one direction Mr. Sidney Lee might with

advantage have taken a further step. He has gathered together the

material necessary for making, not only a geographical analysis of the

copies traced, but an analysis which shall show, too, the approximate

condition of those to be found here or there. Of the 600 copies

conjectured to have been printed in 1623, Mr. Lee mentions the present

owners of 144, leaving the possessors of 14., whose particulars do not

agree with those of any others, untraced. The total of 160, including

the two copies named in the postscript, is made up by mention of an

example stated to have been lost in the S.S. _Arctic_, 1854, and of

that said to have been destroyed in the Chicago fire of 1871. In order

to understand the table that follows, it is necessary in the first

place to transcribe details of the four main classifications into which

Mr. Lee divides the copies he has traced:--

CLASS I.-(PERFECT COPIES).

Division.

A. ~I.-XIV.~ Good, un-restored condition 14

B. ~XV.-XLI.~ Good condition, but with occasional leaves

either supplied from another copy of the

first folio or repaired, i.e., mended,

mounted, or inlaid 27

C. ~XLII., XLIII.~ Good condition, with leaves occasionally

supplied from later folios 2

CLASS II.-(IMPERFECT).

Division.

A. ~XLIV.-LIV.~ Good condition, but with a few pages

missing, and occasionally other slight

defects 11

B. ~LV.-CV.~ and Fair condition, but with fly-leaf and

~LXXVII~a. occasionally other leaves missing, or

supplied either from later folios or

in facsimile 52

C. ~CVI.-CXXII.~ Moderate condition, with most of

preliminary and other missing leaves in

facsimile or from later folios 17

CLASS III.--(STILL MORE IMPERFECT).

Division.

A. ~CXXIII.-CXL.~ Defective, numerous leaves in various

and ~CXXXIV~a. sections missing, or made up in facsimile

or from later folios 19

B. ~CXLI.-CXLVI.~ Fragmentary 6

CLASS IV.

~CXLVII.-CLVI.~ Copies otherwise unclassed owing to

lack of full description 10

Copies alleged to have been destroyed 2

---

Total 160

===

The accompanying table is an attempt to show at a glance the

geographical distribution of the copies named by Mr. Lee. His estimate

of condition has been scrupulously followed, even with regard to the

first folio in the royal library at Berlin. In the _Vossische Zeitung_

of February 10, and in _The Times_ of the following day, there appeared

a statement to the effect that a careless or malicious reader had

mutilated this Berlin copy, which was bought of Joseph Lilly in 1858

and presented by the then prince-regent, afterwards Emperor William I.,

to the royal library, and that the whole of the ‘Comedy of Errors’ had

been cut out. I communicated with the director of the library on this

subject, and he courteously informs me that the statement, happily,

is based on a misapprehension. The folio of 1623 is in the same

condition as when presented forty-five years ago; on the other hand,

the facsimile of 1806 has been robbed of eight leaves, including those

on which the ‘Comedy of Errors’ is printed. As to distribution, I have

assumed that the five copies sold in the United States during the past

few years have there remained; of the three examples which occurred

at Sotheby’s in 1902 I chance to know that one has gone to America,

another is still in London; while since January copies LXXVIII_a_,

LXXX, and LXXXVI have been sold at auction and are entered under

‘London, private owners.’ It is worthy of remark that the three first

folios in British colonies are presentations from public-spirited men:

those at Capetown and Auckland are the gift of Sir George Grey; that at

Sydney of Sir Richard Tangye.

----------------------+-----------------------------------------------+

| CLASS I. |

| |

| DIVISION |

| |

| A B C |

----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

London | 2 | 2 | 2 | 4 | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

Oxford | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- |

| | | | | | |

Cambridge | 2 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

Northumberland | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Durham | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Lancashire | -- | 1 | -- | 2 | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Yorkshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

Lincolnshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Nottinghamshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Derbyshire | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Cheshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Shropshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Staffordshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Leicestershire | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Norfolk | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Cambridgeshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Northamptonshire | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Warwickshire | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Worcestershire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Gloucestershire | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Buckinghamshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Berkshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

Sussex | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Hampshire | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Wiltshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Devonshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Cornwall | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

WALES (Crickhowell, | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

SCOTLAND (Glasgow, | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

IRELAND (Dublin) | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

Germany (Berlin) | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Italy (Padua) | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

Sydney | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Auckland | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Capetown | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

UNITED STATES | 2 | 2 | 4 | 10 | 1 | -- |

| | | | | | |

Untraced | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

| 6 | 8 | 7 | 20 | 2 | -- |

----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

----------------------+-----------------------------------------------+

| CLASS II. |

| |

| DIVISION |

| |

| A B C |

----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

London | 2 | 1 | 2 | 8 | 1 | 1 |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

Oxford | 1 | -- | 2 | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Cambridge | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

Northumberland | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Durham | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Lancashire | 2 | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Yorkshire | -- | -- | -- | 2 | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

Lincolnshire | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Nottinghamshire | -- | -- | -- | 2 | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Derbyshire | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Cheshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1 |

| | | | | | |

Shropshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Staffordshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Leicestershire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Norfolk | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- | 1 |

| | | | | | |

Cambridgeshire | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- | 1 |

| | | | | | |

Northamptonshire | -- | -- | -- | 2 | -- | 1 |

| | | | | | |

Warwickshire | -- | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | -- |

| | | | | | |

Worcestershire | -- | -- | -- | 2 | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Gloucestershire | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- | 1 |

| | | | | | |

Buckinghamshire | -- | -- | 1 | 1 | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Berkshire | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

Sussex | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1 |

| | | | | | |

Hampshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Wiltshire | -- | 1 | -- | 1 | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Devonshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Cornwall | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

WALES (Crickhowell, | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

SCOTLAND (Glasgow, | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

IRELAND (Dublin) | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

Germany (Berlin) | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Italy (Padua) | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

Sydney | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Auckland | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Capetown | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

UNITED STATES | -- | 1 | -- | 11 | 2 | 5 |

| | | | | | |

Untraced | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

| 6 | 5 | 14 | 38 | 4 | 13 |

----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

----------------------+-------------------------------+---------------+

| CLASS III. | CLASS IV. |

| | |

| DIVISION | |

| | |

| A B | |

----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

London | -- | 4 | 2 | -- | -- | 1 |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

Oxford | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Cambridge | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

Northumberland | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Durham | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Lancashire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Yorkshire | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

Lincolnshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Nottinghamshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Derbyshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Cheshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Shropshire | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Staffordshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- |

| | | | | | |

Leicestershire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Norfolk | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Cambridgeshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Northamptonshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Warwickshire | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Worcestershire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Gloucestershire | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Buckinghamshire | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Berkshire | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

Sussex | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Hampshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Wiltshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Devonshire | 1 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Cornwall | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

WALES (Crickhowell, | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

SCOTLAND (Glasgow, | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

IRELAND (Dublin) | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

Germany (Berlin) | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Italy (Padua) | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

Sydney | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |

| | | | | | |

Auckland | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- |

| | | | | | |

Capetown | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- |

| | | | | | |

UNITED STATES | -- | 4 | 1 | 1 | -- | 2 |

| | | | | | |

Untraced | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | 4 |

| | | | | | |

+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

| 1 | 18 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 8 |

----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

----------------------+-------------------------------+---------------

| TOTAL.

+-------------------------------+---------------

| |

|Public |Private| Distribution of Copies.

|Insti- |Owners |

|tutions| |

----------------------+-------+-------+-----------------------+------+

| | | |

England:-- | | | |

| | | |

London | 12 | 21 | London | 33

| | | |

Universities:-- | | | |

| | | |

Oxford | 4 | -- | } |

| | | } Universities | 7

Cambridge | 3 | -- | } |

| | | |

Northern Counties:--| | | |

| | | |

Northumberland | -- | 1 | } |

| | | } |

Durham | 1 | -- | } |

| | | } Northern Counties | 12

Lancashire | 3 | 4 | } |

| | | } |

Yorkshire | -- | 3 | } |

| | | |

Midland Counties:-- | | | |

| | | |

Lincolnshire | -- | 1 | } |

| | | } |

Nottinghamshire | -- | 2 | } |

| | | } |

Derbyshire | -- | 2 | } |

| | | } |

Cheshire | -- | 1 | } |

| | | } |

Shropshire | -- | 1 | } |

| | | } |

Staffordshire | -- | 1 | } |

| | | } |

Leicestershire | -- | 1 | } |

| | | } |

Norfolk | -- | 2 | } Midland Counties | 34

| | | } |

Cambridgeshire | -- | 2 | } |

| | | } |

Northamptonshire | -- | 4 | } |

| | | } |

Warwickshire | 4 | 2 | } |

| | | } |

Worcestershire | -- | 2 | } |

| | | } |

Gloucestershire | -- | 4 | } |

| | | } |

Buckinghamshire | 1 | 2 | } |

| | | } |

Berkshire | -- | 2 | } |

| | | |

Southern Counties:--| | | |

| | | |

Sussex | -- | 3 | } |

| | | } |

Hampshire | -- | 1 | } |

| | | } |

Wiltshire | -- | 1 | } Southern Counties | 9

| | | } |

Devonshire | 1 | 1 | } |

| | | } |

Cornwall | -- | 1 | } |

| | | +-----

| | | ENGLAND | 95

WALES (Crickhowell, | -- | 2 | Wales | 2

Newport) | | | |

| | | |

SCOTLAND (Glasgow, | 1 | 2 | Scotland | 3

Abernethy) | | | |

| | | |

IRELAND (Dublin) | 1 | -- | Ireland | 1

| | | +-----

| | | BRITISH ISLES | 101

CONTINENT:-- | | | |

| | | |

Germany (Berlin) | 1 | -- | } |

| | | } Continent | 2

Italy (Padua) | 1 | -- | } +-----

| | | EUROPE | 103

| | | |

BRITISH COLONIES:-- | | | |

| | | |

Sydney | 1 | -- | } |

| | | } |

Auckland | 1 | -- | } BRITISH COLONIES| 3

| | | } |

Capetown | 1 | -- | } |

| | | |

UNITED STATES | 10 | 36 | UNITED STATES | 46

| | | |

Untraced | -- | 6 | Untraced | 6

| | | |

+-------+-------+ +-----

| 1 | 18 | | 158

----------------------+-------+-------+-----------------------+-----

❧ RECENT ACQUISITIONS AT THE LOUVRE ❧

~Three Italian Albarelli~

For some time past Italian fifteenth-century maiolica has been much

sought after, and very justly; it would appear, however, that, so

far, it is more admired than understood. Without doubt several works

have been devoted to this subject. But if we attempt to divide it up

into several groups, the various classifications seem neither very

clear nor very definitive. ¶ The three druggists’ jars which have just

been acquired by the Louvre will help in a certain degree to fix the

date and to determine the centre of activity of one of the factories

which we are trying to reconstitute at the present moment--a factory

which Mr. Fraschetti has made his special study (in _L’ Arte_, 1898),

as also Mr. Stettiner has done.[107] Articles from this factory are

characterized by a decoration of long, large leaves, curving back at

the end, half white and half painted, the veining only being indicated

on the back side; these leaves are intermingled with a peculiar style

of decoration, in which the eyes of peacocks’ feathers are presented

together with large, round, blue and yellow flowers, standing out from

a background of slender blue scroll-pattern. The principal pieces of

this ware have been found at Rome. They are notably the druggists’ jars

of the hospital of St. John Lateran, those of the apothecary Bruti,

near the bridge of S. Angelo, the paving tiles in one of the chapels of

the church of S. Maria del Popolo, and those in the church of S. Maria

della Verità at Viterbo.[108] From this fact it has been concluded that

this factory, which sprang more or less directly from Faenza, and which

produced a great deal, must have been situated in Rome; and it has been

proposed to call it, at least provisionally, the Roman factory. ¶

The three albarelli in the Louvre belong, as the accompanying figures

will show, to this class, for they are all decorated on one side with

the large peculiar leaves. The most important of these jars, from an

artistic point of view, bears on the front side the bust of a beardless

man, which will at once recall similar figures on the Viterbo pavement.

Before the face waves a streamer,[109] upon which the maker (who was

evidently very illiterate) has traced an inscription, which does not

seem to convey any meaning whatever:--AR ·IERIN ·RI · N · E · I · R · E.

The two other jars are, truth to tell, but very mediocre specimens,

but they are of great interest to the archaeologist, for they are

decorated with armorial shields which furnish us with some very useful

information. On one of these shields are quartered the arms of Aragon

and Jerusalem; on the other are the same arms parti per pale with those

of Milan. These armorial bearings[110] (very distinct though slightly

simplified by the maker, as is generally the case) tell us for whom

these jars were manufactured; they belonged, in fact, to Alfonzo II

of Aragon, king of Naples and Sicily, who reigned one year (from 1494

to 1495) and died in the latter year at the age of forty-seven. He

married in 1465 Hippolyta Maria Sforza (daughter of Francesco Sforza

I, duke of Milan, and Bianca-Maria Visconti), who died at Naples in

1484.[111] These albarelli, which bear the coats-of-arms of the king

and queen, must have been made between 1465 and 1484, or at the latest

before 1495.

[Illustration: THREE ITALIAN ALBARELLI OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY,

RECENTLY ADDED TO THE LOUVRE]

[Illustration: LANDSCAPES BY SOLOMON RUYSDAEL, RECENTLY ADDED TO THE

LOUVRE]

Therefore they were made for a Neapolitan prince, and, furthermore,

they come from Palermo.[112] This would agree very well with the

hypothesis of Messrs. Fraschetti and Stettiner, according to whom

all the pieces in this style would be of Roman origin. It would seem

natural indeed that Neapolitan sovereigns should address themselves

to a factory in Rome which was much nearer than those in Faenza or

Florence. But, on the other hand, it must not be forgotten that, even

before the end of the fifteenth century, fanciers sent their orders to

very distant factories, and also that the centres of ceramic industry

were much more numerous in those days than is generally supposed.

~J. J. Marquet de Vasselot.~

~Pictures~

The latest acquisitions consist, in the first place, of two large

landscapes by Salomon van Ruysdael. The photographs reproduced avoid

the necessity of a detailed description. One of them is from a

collection at Montpellier, the other from an Austrian collection. They

both present large views of nature, very peaceful and very simple,

banks of wide and sluggish rivers such as the first generation of the

Dutch seventeenth-century landscape men loved to depict. The museum

at Rotterdam possesses a picture by this same van Ruysdael; and we

know that his contemporary, Jan van Goyen, who was his rival rather

than his master, also took a special delight in painting the environs

of that city on the banks of the Maas, with its great sheet of water

spread calmly and majestically under the sky laden with grey or

copper-coloured clouds. Do we find ourselves here in the same environs

of Dordrecht? Probably; although it is impossible to assert this

absolutely. ¶ One thing is certain, which is that the workmanship of

these two pictures very closely approaches that of the other paintings

attributed by modern critics to the uncle of the great Jacob van

Ruysdael, as it does that of many other landscapes of that period.

Although they do not descend to the almost monochrome appearance of

certain van Goyens, brown and yellowish tones predominate, and a

certain and rather monotonous uniformity stands revealed, notably

in the clump of trees that forms the centre of one of the two

compositions. But the moist and cloudy skies are filled with light:

one, in the landscape with the two towers, has gaps through which

appears a pale blue, with rosy streaks in the direction of the horizon;

the other is a little greyer and sadder. A whole crowd of figures, all

standing out clearly against the background, fills the bank and the

river itself, on which barges are carrying herds and shepherds from

one side of the river to the other. A group of horsemen of quality, in

the landscape with the church, reminds us very closely of those which

we see in the Halt at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. This last picture

is dated 1660. But it is much more complicated in composition and more

compact in execution than are our two landscapes at the Louvre. The

latter seem to belong to a less advanced period of the artist’s career,

and are doubtless nearer the Pesth landscape (1631), the first that is

known to us after the artist’s registry on the roll of the gild of St.

Luke at Haarlem. In any case, these are two very fine museum-pieces,

and most worthily represent the earlier of the two Ruysdaels at the

Louvre, where as yet he was hardly represented at all, beside those

unquestionable master-pieces of his nephew, the Dykes, the Thicket,

and the landscape known as the Coup de soleil. ¶ As for the French

picture which is also newly hung, this is the portrait of a woman,

signed ‘L. Tocqué, 1793.’ It was exhibited at the Salon of the same

year, and represents a certain Dame Danger, a perfectly unknown lady.

It was, therefore, no iconographic interest that drew the attention of

the keepers of the Louvre to this portrait, but rather the intrinsic

charm of this very intimate and searching picture of a woman of the

fashionable middle-class of the eighteenth century and the merit of its

very simple and harmonious execution. Jean Louis Tocqué was already

abundantly represented at the Louvre, but chiefly by those official

portraits of artist-academicians, of princes and princesses, which

made his fortune, which sent him as far abroad as Sweden, Russia and

Denmark, but which perhaps charm us less to-day than do those simple

and discreet figures which make the society of the eighteenth century

itself live once more before our eyes. This picture has been hung

not far from the supposed portrait of Madame de Graffigny and from

that of a man unknown, by the same artist, and these three figures

of unknown persons, to whom we cannot help ascribing a wealth of wit

and intelligence, form a charming trio together. ¶ The new-comer is

engaged in _parfilage_ or ‘unravelling.’ This occupation was greatly

in fashion at the time; it formed an easy work which kept the fingers

busy without interfering with conversation. The gold threads were

separated from the silks of some piece of lace-work or embroidery and

rolled on a special shuttle (we have preserved some that are marvels

of delicate carving). Neither the eyes nor the mind needed to be kept

fixed on this light labour, as we see in the present case, where the

lady, who is no longer in her first youth under her powdered hair, but

who still wears a seductively young appearance, looks up at her visitor

or interlocutor with a calm and gentle gaze. She wears a grey fur cloak

over a _vieux-rose_ skirt; and the whole forms with the blues of the

sofa on which she is seated a rare and delicate harmony which is one of

the principal qualities of this picture.

~Paul Vitry.~

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF DAME DANGER, BY LOUIS TOCQUÉ; RECENTLY ADDED

TO THE LOUVRE]

~The Cover of a Koursi~

In 1902, the Louvre acquired from a French collector residing in Cairo

a piece of Arabic copper incrusted with gold and silver, the beauty and

rarity of which deserve every attention. This piece is the lid or cover

of a _koursi_, used sometimes as a stool on which the candlesticks

are placed in a mosque, sometimes as a box to contain the Koran. To

prove the rarity of this object I need only mention that no more than

two such stools and one box of metal incrusted with gold and silver

are known. These two famous objects bear the names of the Sultans

Kalaoun and Mohammed el Nasser, and are preserved at the museum of

Arabic art in Cairo. ¶ The _koursi_ cover acquired by the Louvre is

hexagonal in shape, but must originally have been circular, and formed

a plate engraved and incrusted with silver about the middle of the

thirteenth century. This hypothesis is confirmed by an examination of

the reverse side, which allows of an engraved decoration that would not

have been necessary in a real _koursi_ top fixed to the body of the

article itself. The centre, consisting of a rose with various designs,

and the surrounding frieze, containing an interrupted inscription,

give a name--_Al Ganâb_--and the following indication: ‘Belonging to

Malik al Nasir.’ This title was common to several sultans in Egypt

in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and does not convey an

exact indication of the period. ¶ The inscription is interrupted by

six medallions. Their shape and the pointed arabesques in which they

terminate seem characteristic of the thirteenth century. ¶ Later, in

the fourteenth century, the plate must have been turned and cut out

into a hexagon intended to serve as a _koursi_ cover. The engraved

decoration then added to it is executed with the greatest vigour

and clearness, and is rich in incrustations in gold and silver. In

the centre is a long inscription with radiating letters giving the

customary titles of the contemporary sultan, the sacred names of God,

the great, the sole, the glorious. This fine radiating inscription

is peculiar, through its character and the decorative importance of

the letters, to the art of the Egyptian engravers on copper of the

fourteenth century.

~Gaston Migeon.~

[Illustration: LID OF AN ARABIC KOURSI OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY;

RECENTLY ADDED TO THE LOUVRE]

ON ORIENTAL CARPETS

ARTICLE IV

❧ THE LOTUS AND THE TREE OF LIFE ❧

That the art of weaving textile fabrics was known and practised among

the earliest civilized nations of the world appears to be beyond

dispute. Primarily no doubt the need for some form of clothing (slight

probably in a hot country) and for floor coverings which should afford

a protection against scorpions and other venomous creatures and for

sleeping mats called forth the production of cloths woven from reeds

and grasses and from the fibres of large-leaved plants. Soon, however,

the possibility of using the wool of goats and sheep and camels must

have impressed itself on the minds of primitive weavers, and from this

to the production of textiles proper was but a short and easy step

in natural development. It is probable that a considerable time may

have elapsed between the first production of woven fabrics and the

time when the artistic need became felt for enhancing their appearance

by the employment of colouring matters. The mind of the primitive

manufacturer became no doubt gradually attuned to this necessity by

the slow development of a natural desire to brighten the gloomy aspect

of his darkened homes. (In this regard it will be borne in mind that

an essential feature of all oriental interiors has ever been the

exclusion, so far as may be, of the scorching glare of the sun’s rays.)

The primitive houses of the earliest settled peoples were doubtless

built of mud, as are those of their descendants to-day, and it would

be difficult to imagine anything less attractive than the interior of

an Upper Egypt, or Nubian or Mesopotamian house (which is to-day the

exact counterpart of those we find on the paintings and bas-reliefs

which have come down to us from the oldest times), with mud walls, mud

floor, mud roof, all of a uniform dingy brown, and without furniture

of any kind to relieve the eye. It is probable that the early weaver

was in the habit of dyeing his woven products in some uniform colour

for a considerable time before it occurred to him that richer effects

might be produced by colouring his yarns in different tints previous to

their employment on the loom. Having got so far it did not take very

long before his manual dexterity had so far attained the level of his

artistic aspirations as to impel him to seek models for the complicated

designs he sought to introduce into his work. For these models, as

for their colouring, he naturally turned to those forms which were

constantly before his eyes in everyday life. [Illustration] And among

these most prominent no doubt was the lotus, which in one form or the

other is invariably found to hold a prominent place in the centre or

border of an oriental carpet. Probably the artistic weaver copied the

numerous forms of the lotus long before he attached any symbolism to

the plant itself, and merely because the flowing lines and sweeping

curves of the plant appealed to his eye. Other tree and plant forms

there were no doubt that commended themselves to him, and these, too,

he sought to introduce into his designs; but the predominance of the

lotus over all other forms early asserted itself and has maintained its

position ever since. At what period the profound and mystic symbolism

of the lotus became generally recognized among the peoples to whom it

was a familiar object must ever remain a matter of controversy and

of speculation. Professor Goodyear, who has written an elaborate

treatise on ‘The Grammar of the Lotus,’ regards this form of classic

and ancient ornamentation as a development of sun worship. His theory

briefly deals with the development of the sun symbols from the lotus by

a series of complicated and ingenious evolutions. The lotus, according

to him, was a fetish of immemorial antiquity, which has been worshipped

in many countries from Japan to Gibraltar. He claims that it is the

symbol of life, immortality, renaissance, resurrection and fecundity.

He describes the three forms of lotus: the blue and the white, which

differ but little save in colour, and the rose lotus, which is really

not a lotus at all botanically speaking, and is not a native of Egypt

but of India. [Illustration] This lotus (the rose) is still cultivated

in China as a food plant, and it is believed that it was brought to

Egypt from India by Alexander the Great for that purpose; but that

it was regarded by the Egyptians as a national symbol there is, in

the opinion of Professor Goodyear, no sufficient evidence to show.

¶That the lotus was early regarded as a religious symbol in India and

China is generally held. It is, of course, the sacred flower of the

Buddhists. ‘When Buddha was born,’ says Moor in his ‘Hindu Pantheon,’

‘a lotus bloomed where he first touched the ground; he stepped seven

steps northward, and a lotus marked each foot-fall.’ The Buddhist

prayer often quoted begins: ‘O God, the jewel of the lotus,’ or ‘O

holy jewel in the lotus, be it so.’ In the Hindu theogony the lotus

floating on the water is an emblem of the world, and the whole plant

of the earth and its two principles of fecundation. Edwin Arnold, in

‘The Light of Asia,’ says: ‘Aum Mani pâdme hûm,’ of which the literal

translation is, ‘All hail to the jewel in the flower of the lotus.’

He continues: ‘The sunrise comes,’ ‘The dew-drop slips,’ ‘Into the

shining sea.’ ¶ Brahmans consider the sun to be the emblem or image of

their great deities, jointly or individually, _i.e._ Brahma the supreme

one, who alone exists really and absolutely. The legend goes that

Brahma, according to a generally received system founded on a doctrine

of the Vaishnavas, sprang on a lotus from the navel of Vishnu, who is

the personification of the sun, to bid all worlds exist. ¶ Professor

Goodyear maintains that the symbolism of the lotus, which is referred

most frequently by modern writers to its phallic and generative or to

its funereal and mortuary bearings, is based upon well-proved but not

generally recognized solar significance. The easiest way to demonstrate

this is by an appeal to the acknowledged fact that the Egyptian idea of

the resurrection and of a future life was connected with the worship of

the creative and reproductive forces of nature, which were conceived

and worshipped as solar in character and origin. It is the supposed

passage of the sun at night through a lower world during its return

to the dawn of a following day which makes Osiris (the sun at night)

the god of the lower world and of the dead, for which reason he is

represented as a mummy. As the god of resurrection, the special and

emphatic character of Osiris, he represents the creative power of the

sun god; and thus the lotus, as the attribute of Osiris, is at once a

symbol of the sun of resurrection, and of creative force and power.

[Illustration: A TABRIZ CARPET, WITH A DEEP RED FIELD AND BLUE BORDER,

THE MEDALLION ILLUSTRATING THE TREE OF LIFE AND LOTUS FLOWER

FROM THE COLLECTION OF MESSRS. GILLOW]

Professor Goodyear further contends that the lotus, which he holds,

as has been said, to be the keynote of decoration, is identical with

the tree of life, or rather that the accepted tree of life is really a

variant of the lotus in one form or the other of its many aspects. He

objects to the theory that the date palm, the palmetta, or the papyrus

is invariably the tree of life, as is held by several writers. The

weakness of the theory regarding the soma tree or hom (date-palm) as

the tree of life is not only the weakness of the palm theory, which

is that no transitional forms between the palmetta and palm can be

shown in Assyrian art and that they are not known to have grown there,

because it is not to be denied that the sacred tree of Assyria[113]

was the palm, but it is a pure hypothesis to suppose that all were

soma trees. [Illustration] The Assyrian tree of life, he holds, was

really an artificial form of the lotus, which plant was as well known

in Assyria as in India. Sir George Birdwood, who gives a lengthy list

of trees held sacred in one part or another of the east, is more or

less emphatic as to the hom or soma, which he says is the date-palm,

being the tree of life. He allows, however, that on Yarkand rugs the

tree of life is represented by a pomegranate tree. As against this,

Sayce, in one of the Hibbert lectures, as quoted by Goodyear, says

that, ‘the cedar tree is identified with the tree of life,’ and ‘the

palm is possibly later.’ The palm, he adds, is undoubtedly a symbol on

Assyrian and Chaldean cylinders, as illustrated in Layard’s ‘Culte du

Methra,’ but Goodyear does not think that Layard’s text would give

much support to the theory of ornamental palm symbolism in Assyria.

Count Goblet d’Alviella, in his work on ‘La Migration des Symboles,’

bears out Goodyear and Sayce, and, to some extent, even Birdwood, as

to the locality where the tree of life had its origin; but albeit

he describes what he holds to be its early representation, he does

not attempt to establish a theory as to what was the tree originally

typified. The sacred tree, he says, is one of the earliest historic

symbols (note he does not call it the tree of life) and had its origin

in Mesopotamia; it passed thence to India, where it was used by

Buddhists and Brahmans, and thence again to the Phoenicians, and from

Asia Minor to Greece. From Persia it was introduced to the Byzantines,

and found its way in early Christian times into Christian symbolism in

Sicily, Italy, and even in the west of France. ¶ The earliest type, he

claims, was a tree of complex and ornate pattern, having on either side

of it a monster who faced each the other. These had the forms of winged

bulls or of griffins. [Illustration] Another type, which was that of

the semi-human or human priests and kings, followed the same route

into China and India and eastern Asia, and being found in the ancient

Mexican and Maga codices, is held by Goblet d’Alviella as a part of the

evidence which he cites in support of his theory of a pre-Columbian

communication between the old world and the new. ¶ As opposed to Sir

George Birdwood’s theory that the soma or hom is a date-palm, it may be

pointed out that other authorities who are not less entitled to speak

on the subject declare the soma of the Vedas[114] and the hom of the

Zendavesta[115] to be the _Sarcostemma viminale_, a leafless asclepiad

with white flowers in terminal umbels which appear during the rains in

the Dekhan. The flower obtains its name apparently from the fact that

it is gathered by moonlight (presumably the full moon), the sanskrit

word for the moon being _soma_. Its conveyance home in carts drawn by

rams is accompanied by ceremonials. A fermented liquor is obtained from

the flower by mixing its juice, which has been strained through a sieve

of goats’ hair, with a preparation of barley and clarified butter or

ghee. This beer or wine is used at religious festivals; it may be said

that according to Hindu superstition the gods of their system can do

nothing without having been previously stimulated with soma. In the

second hymn of the Rigveda occurs this passage: ‘Approach, O Wayu; be

visible; this Soma juice has been prepared for thee; approach, drink,

hear our invocation.’ Many indeed are the allusions made in religious

ceremonials to the invigorating power and even intoxicating qualities

of the soma, as to which Windischmann suggests that the plant was

identical with the gogard tree, which has the quality of ‘enlightening

the eyes’ and which he compares with Ampelus, the vine of Bacchus.

This same beverage is used at their meals by the Muhammedan Rishis in

Kashmir, who abstain from animal food and from marriage. It may be

said that Soma, as well as being the name of a tree, to which it may

afterwards well have been given, is in the Hindo mythology the name of

the son of Rishi Atri by his wife Anasuga (he is also said to be the

son of Dharma and Prabhakara). He married the twenty-seven daughters

of Daksha (which are the twenty-seven lunar asterisms). He also

carried off Tara the wife of Brihaspati, who bore him a son and named

him Buddha. This Buddha is regarded as being the parent of the lunar

race. Thus are we inevitably brought back to Buddha and Buddhistic

emblems and to the long-vanished origins from which those emblems were

derived. The lotus, none have disputed, is the oldest known attribute

of Buddhist symbolism, but is it not equally certain that the lotus

existed in remote ages long antecedent to the dawn of Buddhism? Here

then is matter which makes for the support of Professor Goodyear’s

ingenious theory. He takes the sepals of the lotus in their natural

form, he shows how they have been twisted and exaggerated into spirals

and volutes, which, being squared on their passage through the Ionic

style of architecture, formed at length what is known as the meander,

Greek fret or key pattern, which being doubled produces the svastika.

The svastika therefore, which every authority has acknowledged to be

the most ancient expression of symbolism, as it is also the earliest

form of ornamentation known to the world, should in accordance with

this be regarded as identical with the lotus symbol in one of its many

phases.

[_The previous articles of this series appeared in_ ~The Burlington

Magazine~ _for March, May, and June._]

[Illustration: THE SORÖ CHALICE]

NOTES ON VARIOUS WORKS OF ART

THE SORÖ CHALICE

In the notice of a mediaeval chalice from Iceland in the June number of

this ~Magazine~ (p. 70), mention was made, by way of comparison, of the

silver chalice found in 1827 at Sorö, Denmark, in the grave of Absalon,

bishop of Lund, who died in the year 1201. A view of this exceptionally

interesting specimen of early Scandinavian work, still preserved in

the church of Sorö, is shown in the accompanying illustration.[116]

The character of the chalice, as revealed by the photograph, confirms

the close relationship existing between it and the example which was

the subject of the notice alluded to. The bowl nearly hemispherical in

shape, the flattened globular knop, and the trumpet-shaped foot with

bevelled margin finishing in a narrow turned-out edge, are the salient

features of each alike. A point of distinction not quite so apparent

in the engraving which was referred to[117] is the somewhat greater

width in proportion to height of the Sorö chalice, giving a rather more

spreading shape of bowl and foot. The bowl, too, is seen to have less

of the tendency towards a straightening of the contour at its upper

part, which, in the example from Iceland, seems to give a hint of the

coming change of shape, an indication which suggests the lapse of a

certain interval between their dates. The necking between the knop and

bowl, on the other hand, is now shown to be of very similar proportions

in both. This necking (called by Theophilus the ‘ring’) and the band

below the knop are enriched with shallow fluting, somewhat hidden by

the shadow in the photograph; the foot appears to have suffered injury

from crushing. ¶ Certain features, such as the fully-expanded knop

with enrichment above and below, and the fairly substantial character

of the work apparent in the thickness at the edge of the foot, support

the belief that the subject of the present illustration is an actual

mass-chalice.[118] Whether made for service at the altar or merely for

mortuary use the chalice is equally valuable as an example of the shape

arrived at in Scandinavia in or before the year 1201.

~H. P. Mitchell.~

THE OAKEN CHEST OF YPRES

This chest of massive oak belongs to the office of archives at Ypres.

It is perhaps the most curious and characteristic example of a kind

familiar to antiquaries. In the middle panel, cut deep into the oak,

St. George charges stoutly at the dragon, whose throat is stricken

through with the lance. St. George’s head has a basnet, whose point

ends in a socket with a feather stuck in it. This basnet has the camail

and roundels over the ears. Over his hawberk the saint wears a short

coat with long sleeves, wide and slittered at the edges. The saddle,

with its great rolled guards for the legs, is noteworthy. The dragon

is no writhing worm under the horse-hoofs, but a fearsome thing like

to a mad bull-calf, a thing begotten of bull and serpent. Behind the

monster stands Dame Cleodolinde, daintily lifting her skirt and no

whit uneasy for the hurtling of horse and dragon. Behind her are the

town walls, with towers and halls above them. Out of frilled clouds

over St. George’s head a divine arm is thrust, in a loose sleeve,

with two fingers blessing the lance-thrust. In the broad uprights

at the chest-end a gentleman and a lady in full round sleeves stand

between pillars. Above them are battlements, and above the battlements

mullioned windows. ¶ The broad lock of this chest remains, a lock of

most interesting form. The whole chest was once painted in colours,

traces of which remain here and there. When the fashion of the dresses

and arms have been reckoned over, and something allowed for craft

tradition, the chest would seem to be of the early years of the

fifteenth century, although it came to the famous exhibition of 1902 at

Bruges most absurdly labelled and catalogued as of the thirteenth.

A BURGUNDIAN CHEST

This great chest, which was shown at Bruges in 1902, is a noble example

of the Burgundian school of wood-carving, its ornament offering sharp

contrast with the English manner. ¶ The four panels of the front and

three of the uprights are filled with rich carving of traceries and

arabesques, but the chisel has stayed at the framework, and the chest,

for all the richness of its ornament, loses nothing of its massive

and sturdy appearance. The end panels are plain, and the plain cover

is slightly arched in remembrance of the waggon tops of the earlier

coffers. The first panel has a little shield of St. Peter’s keys,

with the pope’s triple crown very large above it. The second has the

emperor’s shield of the eagle with two necks surmounted by an open

crown. Another crowned shield bears the famous badge of Burgundy, the

steel, or strike-a-light, with its flint and sparks. The fourth panel

has neither crown nor shield, but the tracery shapes itself into three

fleurs-de-lys, which, although they be not upon a shield, may stand for

the king of France. Thus the four panels show pope, emperor, duke and

king. On the broad upright in the middle is a crown above a tiny shield

charged with a single fleur-de-lys. It will be seen that the armorial

decoration is poorly-conceived stuff to be set upon these rich panels.

Especially is this feebleness manifest in the starveling fowl of the

emperor’s shield. ¶ The chest is of the latter half of the fifteenth

century. It is the property of the ‘hospices civils’ of Aalst.

O. B.

A NEW FOUNT OF GREEK TYPE

The Greek type of which a specimen is shown on page 359 is based on

the celebrated Alcalà fount of 1514. This was cut by order of Cardinal

Ximenes for use in the New Testament of the great Complutensian

polyglot Bible, and is usually supposed, though there is no direct

evidence, to owe its form to an ancient manuscript which was sent to

Spain by Leo X from the Vatican library to serve as the basis for the

text of the New Testament in that work. The printer, Arnaldo Guillen

de Brocar, asserts in his preface that the type was designed to do

special honour to the original language of the Gospels. The present

type is adapted from this Alcalà fount with little alteration, as far

as the lower case is concerned, the chief change beyond an increase

in size being as follows. The New Testament of 1514 was printed with

no accents except the acute, and the body of the type was adjusted

to this condition. But when Guillen came to print other books (the

‘Chrysoloras’ of the same year, the undated ‘Hero and Leander,’ and

one or two others), he found it necessary to provide a complete set of

accents, and as the body of the type was not high enough to give room

for the tallest of these, he was compelled, in order to avoid recasting

the whole fount, to hang these over the line above by means of what are

called kerns. The result of this is that while the page produces a very

fine solid effect, the lines are too close to each other for comfort in

reading. This has been avoided in the new type by taking the tallest

combination as the standard of height, and thus increasing the whites

between the lines, with a corresponding increase of readableness. But

the Alcalà type had only one capital letter, a ~Π~, and it has been

necessary to design the whole of the capitals for the new type, as no

good models were available. The capitals have in fact always been the

weakest point in Greek types. The points and other minor features are

also new. ¶ The punches have been cut for Mr. Robert Proctor by Mr.

E. P. Prince, who cut the punches for the Kelmscott, Doves, and other

special founts, from drawings prepared by Messrs. Walker and Cockerell,

and the type has been cast on a double-pica body by Messrs. Miller and

Richard, of Edinburgh, the vowels and accents being made separately,

and contrived by means of overhangs to combine into a single sort. It

is proposed to use this, which will be called the Otter type, for the

production of books representative of Greek literature of all periods,

ancient, mediaeval, and modern. They will be printed by a hand-press

on special hand-made paper in red and black, and no effort will be

spared to give, in most cases for the first time since the invention

of printing, a form worthy of them to the masterpieces of the greatest

classical literature of the world. The first volume, which will

probably appear in the autumn of this year, is to be the ‘Oresteia’ of

Aeschylus, a quarto of some 250 pages.

Τηλέμαχ᾽, οὔ σ᾽ ὁ ξεῖνος ἐνὶ μεγάροισιν ἐλέγχει ἥμενος, οὐδέ τι τοῦ

σκοποῦ ἤμβροτον οὐδέ τι τόξον δὴν ἔκαμον τανύων· ἔτι μοι μένος ἔμπεδόν

ἐστιν, οὐχ ὥς με μνηστῆρες ἀτιμάζοντες ὄνονται. νῦν δ᾽ ὥρη καὶ δόρπον

Ἀχαιοῖσιν τετυκέσθαι ἐν φάει, αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα καὶ ἄλλως ἑψιάασθαι μολπῇ

καὶ φόρμιγγι· τὰ γάρ τ᾽ ἀναθήματα δαιτός. ἦ καὶ ἐπ᾽ ὀφρύσι νεῦσεν·

ὁ δ᾽ ἀμφέθετο ξίφος ὀξὺ Τηλέμαχος, φίλος υἱὸς Ὀδυσσῆος θείοιο, ἀμφὶ

δὲ χεῖρα φίλην βάλεν ἔγχεϊ, ἄγχι δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ αὐτοῦ πὰρ θρόνον ἑστήκει

κεκορυθμένος αἴθοπι χαλκῷ. ΟΔΥΣΣΕΙΑΣ ΒΙΒΛΟΣ ΕΙΚΟΣΤΟΣ ΔΕΥΤΕΡΟΣ ❆ αὐτὰρ ὁ

γυμνώθη ῥακέων πολύμητις Ὀδυσσεύς ἆλτο δ᾽ ἐπὶ μέγαν οὐδὸν ἔχων βιὸν ἠδὲ

φαρέτρην ἰῶν ἐμπλείην, ταχέας δ᾽ ἐκχεύατ᾽ ὀιστοὺς αὐτοῦ πρόσθε ποδῶν,

μετὰ δὲ μνηστῆρσιν ἔειπεν. οὗτος μὲν δὴ ἄεθλος ἀάατος ἐκτετέλεσται·

νῦν αὖτε σκοπὸν ἄλλον, ὃν οὔ πώ τις βάλεν ἀνήρ εἴσομαι, αἴ κε τύχωμι,

πόρῃ δέ μοι εὖχος Ἀπόλλων. ἦ καὶ ἐπ᾽ Ἀντινόῳ ἰθύνετο πικρὸν ὀϊστόν. ἦ

τοι ὁ καλὸν ἄλεισον ἀναιρήσεσθαι ἔμελλεν χρύσεον ἄμφωτον, καὶ δὴ μετὰ

χερσὶν ἐνώμα ὄφρα πίοι οἴνοιο· φόνος δέ οἱ οὐκ ἐνὶ θυμῷ μέμβλετο. τίς

κ᾽ οἴοιτο μετ᾽ ἀνδράσι δαιτυμόνεσσιν μοῦνον ἐνὶ πλεόνεσσι, καὶ εἰ μάλα

καρτερὸς εἴη, οἷ τεύξειν θάνατόν τε κακὸν καὶ κῆρα μέλαιναν· τὸν δ᾽

Ὀδυσεὺς κατὰ λαιμὸν ἐπισχόμενος βάλεν ἰῷ ἀντικρὺ δ᾽ ἁπαλοῖο δι᾽ αὐχένος

ἤλυθ᾽ ἀκωκή, ἐκλίνθη δ᾽ ἑτέρωσε, δέπας δέ οἱ ἔκπεσε χειρὸς βλημένου,

αὐτίκα δ᾽ αὐλὸς ἀνὰ ῥῖνας παχὺς ἦλθεν αἵματος ἀνδρομέοιο, θοῶς δ᾽ ἀπὸ

εἷο τράπεζαν ὦσε ποδὶ πλήξας, ἀπὸ δ᾽ εἴδατα χεῦεν ἔραζε.

[Illustration: MR. ROBERT PROCTOR’S ‘OTTER’ TYPE]

PORTRAIT OF A LADY BY REMBRANDT

The important and interesting portrait by Rembrandt which is here

reproduced has justly been given a place of honour among the works

of that master now being shown in the exhibition of portraits by old

masters at the Hague; indeed, in the opinion of many good critics it

is one of the greatest attractions at the Kunstkring. Since permission

was given to us by Messrs. Dowdeswell to reproduce the picture, it has

passed out of their hands into those of Mr. Hage, a Dutch collector, by

whom it has been lent to the Hague exhibition; it was formerly in the

collection of Sir Matthew Wilson. The panel, which is 30 by 23¼ inches,

was painted in the same year as The Anatomy Lesson, when Rembrandt was

only twenty-six years old, and belongs, therefore, to his earliest

period; that this is the case is proved by the signature on the right

of the picture, ‘R. H. L. van Rijn 1632.’ The identity of the lady who

is the subject of the portrait has not yet been established, and beyond

the fact stated on the picture itself that she was thirty-nine at the

time it was painted we know nothing about her. It is unnecessary to

expatiate on the merits of the picture, which speaks for itself even in

the reproduction.

The oil painting by Daubigny and the pastel by Lhermitte, of which we

publish reproductions by kind permission of Mr. John Balli, are good

examples of the work of the two French artists. They are among the

pictures which have recently been exhibited at Mr. McLean’s gallery for

the benefit of that excellent institution, the artists’ benevolent fund.

[Illustration: POLYCHROME CHEST BELONGING TO THE OFFICE OF ARCHIVE AT

YPRES]

[Illustration: A BURGUNDIAN CHEST OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY BELONGING TO

THE HOSPICES CIVILES AT AALST]

[Illustration: PORTRAIT BY REMBRANDT VAN RIJN; IN THE COLLECTION OF MR.

J. HAGE]

[Illustration: ON THE SEINE, BY CHARLES-FRANÇOIS DAUBIGNY; IN THE

COLLECTION OF MR. JOHN BALLI]

[Illustration: LE PÊCHEUR, BY LÉON LHERMITTE; IN THE COLLECTION OF MR.

JOHN BALLI]

❧ BIBLIOGRAPHY ❧

~The Ambassadors Unriddled.~ By W. F. Dickes. London: Cassells.

~Mr. Dickes~ has been ill-advised to repeat and amplify, as he has

done in this volume, a theory concerning Holbein’s picture of The

Ambassadors of which all competent students recognized the futility

when it was first broached in _The Magazine of Art_ a dozen years ago.

Since then the subject and history of the picture have been completely

elucidated by Miss Mary Hervey in a book published in 1895. Her work

is a model of patient, sagacious and fortunate industry. No links of

any consequence are wanting in the chain of evidence, internal and

external, by which she has made it certain that the portraits in the

picture are those of two leading French diplomatists of the time,

the one a man of the sword and the other of the robe, viz.: Jean de

Dinteville, bailly of Troyes, and his friend, George de Selve, bishop

of Lavaur; that the picture was painted by Holbein in London when the

two friends were here together in the spring of 1533; and that it is

the identical work described in three perfectly authentic documents

of the mid-seventeenth century as having been preserved down to that

date at Polisy, the seat of the Dinteville family in Champagne.

The traditional name of the picture in the eighteenth century, The

Ambassadors, is thus completely justified. Of one ambassador, M. de

Selve, tradition had also quite rightly preserved the name; while of

the other, Jean de Dinteville, the name had been lost; and the name

D’Avaux, which belonged to a diplomatic family of a later generation,

had been substituted mistakenly. It is the pleasure of Mr. Dickes to

ignore these proofs, and to assert a rival theory for which there is

not a shadow either of antecedent likelihood or of genuine evidence,

while it is flatly at variance with tradition. His work, the result of

no small industry and application of a blundering kind, is a pathetic

example of the fate which awaits an untrained inquirer who has become

possessed by an _idée fixe_ and insists on burrowing with obstinate

blindness in a hopelessly wrong direction. Kindness would suggest

that such a performance should be ignored; but as its illusory air of

candour and research has actually misled some unwary critics, let it be

dealt with here as briefly and gently as the case admits. ¶ The theory

of Mr. Dickes is that the picture represents the two German brothers,

Otto Henry and Philip, counts palatine of the Rhine, who had their

residence at Neuburg and were known as dukes of Neuburg, and that it

was painted in celebration of a treaty of Nuremberg concluded between

the Catholic and Protestant princes of Germany in 1532. The road by

which the author has arrived at this conclusion is somewhat as follows:

A conspicuous feature in the picture is a lute with a broken string.

In Alciati’s famous book of Emblems, of which the first extant edition

was published at Augsburg in 1531 (though some of the emblems had

previously been in circulation, most probably in manuscript), a lute

is the symbol of a treaty. Or rather it is the symbol of a particular

group of treaties, _Foedera Italorum_; in all probability the league

of Cognac, which in 1626 united the princes of Italy with France and

England against the emperor. A set of Latin verses accompanies the

emblem, and declares, among other things, that if a single string

should be ill-stretched or broken, all power of pleasing will depart

out of the instrument and its excellent music will become jangled.

Obviously, therefore, if the lute with the broken string in Holbein’s

picture has anything to do with Alciati and his emblems at all, it

must signify a treaty broken and not a treaty made and confirmed. Mr.

Dickes shuts his eyes to this root fact of the case, and builds all

his argument on the patently false supposition that it is the emblem

of a treaty signed and valid. Having further, on no reasonable grounds

whatever, satisfied himself that the picture represents two brothers

of whom one is Catholic and the other Protestant, he hunts up his

history of the Reformation, and learns about the treaty of Nuremberg

and the concern in it of the two brothers, Counts Otto Henry and

Philip. From that moment it becomes a fixed dogma with him that these

are the persons represented, and all facts and evidences have to be

pulled about like putty in order to prove it. Thus the inscriptions

on the picture, which are perfectly genuine, declare that Holbein

painted it in 1533, and that at that date the age of the lay personage

in short cloak, sword and dagger was twenty-nine, and of the clerical

or legal personage in square cap and velvet gown, twenty-five. These

indications absolutely fit alike the date of Dinteville’s mission,

that of Selve’s visit, and those of Dinteville’s birth and Selve’s

birth. But they are hopelessly out for Counts Otto Henry and Philip.

So it costs Mr. Dickes nothing to declare the inscription with the

artist’s name and the date a forgery; when in fact it has been proved

unquestionably genuine by the test of the same caretul processes which

cleared away the dirt and accretions of time from other details in the

work. Agreeing that the picture was painted in 1533 (for which there

is no evidence at all except this same impeached inscription), Mr.

Dickes then assumes the arbitrary date 1532 (that of the signature of

his Nuremberg treaty) from which to calculate the ages of the sitters.

Even so he cannot get them right, Otto Henry having been born in 1502

and Philip in 1503. The former thus still remains one year and the

latter five years too old; so that in the case of Philip the figure 25

has to be declared, again without a shadow of foundation, to have been

altered. ¶ Once more, the lay ambassador in the ordinary court dress of

the time, short cloak, sword and dagger and tasselled belt, wears the

badge of the French order of St. Michael, thus confirming the tradition

and the probability that he was a Frenchman. This would be fatal to

Mr. Dickes’s theory, so it has to be made out that the badge is not

that of the famous order at all. For this Mr. Dickes has no better

proof than that it is not identical with the same order as figured

about a century later in Favyn’s ‘Théâtre d’Honneur et de Chevalerie.’

But there was no mechanical uniformity in the badge of the order as

worn by its members, and still less in its representation by artists

supplying their portraits. All students of French sixteenth-century

portraiture, whether painted or engraved, can easily recall a dozen or

a score of variations in the badge; while no such student could have

a moment’s doubt that Holbein’s sitter, whatever else he was or was

not, is declared by this badge to be a knight of the order. This is

again one of the cardinal facts by which an inquirer must be guided,

and to contradict it as Mr. Dickes does is merely idle. ¶ Again, Miss

Hervey discovered in a Paris curiosity shop in 1895, and presented

to the National gallery, a docketed seventeenth-century document on

parchment fully describing the picture and its contents. Mr. Dickes

at the time attacked the authenticity of this document in detail, on

grounds which to any trained paleographer are ridiculous. In his book

he does not reprint his arguments, but in an innocently impertinent

dedication to the trustees of the National gallery coolly puts it aside

as ‘supposititious.’ In point of fact it has no flaw whatever except

that it is destructive of his theory. But worse: Miss Hervey, whose

methods are as sound and scrupulous as those of Mr. Dickes are the

reverse, also found in the library of the French Institute two other

documents of the seventeenth century minutely confirming the contents

of the first: these are papers of the Godefroy family relating to a

correspondence between themselves and Nicholas Camusat, the well-known

antiquary of Troyes, who had made it his business to collect historical

and archaeological traditions concerning his native town and its

distinguished families, including that of Dinteville. These documents

are too irrefutable to be contested: Mr. Dickes therefore placidly

ignores them. In like manner, in trying to show, what his theory

requires, that the picture was painted not in London but in Germany,

he ignores Miss Hervey’s proof that the pavement is copied strictly

from one still extant in Westminster abbey. As a point on his side, he

quotes as having been painted by Holbein at Basle in 1533 a picture

of a Wheel of Fortune ‘in the collection of the duke of Westminster.’

The picture he means belongs in fact to the duke of Devonshire, and

was painted by Hans Schäufelein; whose monogram and mark of a shovel

have been tampered with but are still clearly discernible, and whose

style is quite unlike that of Holbein. One more instance may suffice

for the illustration of this gentleman’s incredible method of dealing

with the evidences which substantiate the real meaning and contents

of the picture. Among the instruments on the table symbolical of the

arts to which these two cultivated and liberal young diplomatists

were devoted, is a small hand globe, which has been identified as

copied, with the addition of a certain number of place-names, from

that published by Schöner at Nuremberg in 1523. On this globe the name

of Nuremberg appears conspicuously, as of course is natural, since

that was its place of publication. Mr. Dickes at once reads this as

an evidence for his theory that the picture is meant to celebrate

the peace of Nuremberg. Among the place-names added by the painter

to those which were inserted by the cartographer are three of German

provinces, four of Spanish provinces, five of French provinces, and

three of French towns, Paris, Lyons and Bayonne, besides one which is

that of Dinteville’s own village and fief in Champagne, Polisy (the s

a little broken by a crack in the panel). These additions are exactly

what might have been expected to be dictated by a French diplomatist

engaged in the combinations of his country at the time with Spain and

Italy, while the insertion of Polisy is of course a final link in

the proof that the lay ambassador is no other than Dinteville. This

insertion is promptly and without a shadow of reason declared by Mr.

Dickes an eighteenth-century forgery. ¶ Now for an instance of the kind

of evidence with which this critic tries to support his own theory.

Dinteville in the picture wears a girdle with a rich tassel hanging

at the front. So do a number of great gentlemen in portraits of this

time; as for instance the well-known Earl of Surrey at Hampton Court,

and the sitter in the famous portrait of Morett in the gallery at

Dresden. But Mr. Dickes thinks it a great point for his argument that

a tassel (though one, as he does not mention, of other colours) was

among the quarterings in the arms of his counts palatine. So he not

only ignores its habitual use in the fashions of the day; he maintains

that the Dresden picture, in which the sitter also wears the tassel,

is another and later portrait of the same Count Otto Henry, and that

it was painted not by Holbein but long after Holbein’s death by

Christoph Amberger. The suggestion is merely preposterous: the Dresden

picture is not only by Holbein, but one of the very finest and the

most central of his works, of far finer artistic quality, indeed, than

our National gallery picture; and the features have no resemblance

to those of Dinteville (Mr. Dickes’s Otto Henry) in the London

picture except in the mere fashion of the hair and beard. Moreover,

the identity of the sitter in the Dresden picture as another French

ambassador to England, Charles de Soliers, sieur de Morette, has lately

been put out of the possibility of doubt by the discovery of a fine

contemporary medallion portrait of the same sitter, in boxwood, with

his name and titles in full and on the back his device of a seaport, a

horse, and a dolphin. ¶ But why pursue the ungrateful subject farther?

Mr. Dickes’s book bristles on every page with similar absurdities

of statement and of inference. Fortunately, for any qualified and

careful reader, he sometimes provides an antidote against his own

theories by himself furnishing the obvious means of their refutation.

Nothing, for instance, could be more grotesque than the collection

of different and totally unlike portraits which he has picked out of

various galleries in Europe, and would persuade us to accept as all

representing the valiant Count Philip, the defender of Vienna. The

mere possibility of his taking all these, together with the French

cleric in The Ambassadors, for one and the same person, would seem to

argue him form-blind in the same degree as the whole tenour of his book

unfortunately argues him fact-blind and evidence-proof.

S. C.

~Un des Peintres peu connus de L’École Flamande de transition.~ Jean

Gossart de Maubeuge, sa vie et son œuvre, d’après les dernières

recherches et des documents inédits. Par Maurice Gossart. 147 pp., 2

engravings, and 12 phototypes. Lille, 1903.

Being at Veere some years ago, and finding that I had a few hours at

my disposal before the members of the gild of St. Thomas and St. Luke

could arrive, I bethought me of the local archives, which I fancied

would probably contain documents throwing light on the history and

works of Gossart. I found the archives in confusion, and was not

so fortunate as to discover anything. I had hoped on taking up the

present volume to find that the author had been more fortunate, but,

alas, it contains no mention of these archives, which probably still

await the visit of someone with leisure and patience to devote to

their examination. It is a pity that M. Gossart has not been able to

undertake this; still we must be thankful for what he has done. Any

attempt to clear up the history of an artist of note, especially of

one to whom many works are attributed, is deserving of praise and

encouragement. The settling of the date of Gossart’s visit to Italy

with Philip of Burgundy and of his death are two important additions

to our knowledge. ¶ John Gossart, son of Simon, a bookbinder, was

born at Maubeuge about 1472. It is not known when or to whom he was

apprenticed, or where he worked prior to 1503, in which year he was

admitted as free master into the gild of St. Luke at Antwerp. In

1508 he went to Rome with his patron, Philip of Burgundy, admiral of

Flanders, who was sent by the Archduchess Margaret on an embassy to

Pope Julius II. Starting from Mechlin on October 26, 1508, they visited

Verona and Florence on their way to the Eternal City, where, after the

return of Philip, Gossart remained copying antique works of art for

him until July 1509, when he set out for the Netherlands, arriving at

Middleburg in November. ¶ He remained in the service of Philip until

the death of that prince in 1524, and then entered that of Adolphus of

Burgundy, marquis of Veere, with whom he remained until his death in

1533. So far good, and had the author stopped here we should have had

no fault to find with him, but he has endeavoured to draw up a list of

Gossart’s paintings, a task for which he is evidently little fitted.

Not only has he omitted several important works, such as the early

picture in the Prado gallery, but he has included others which bear no

resemblance to those painted by Gossart, or which never pretended to

be other than copies, being honestly signed by the copyist ‘Malbodius

inventor’; he has enumerated pictures as being now in private

collections which were dispersed more than fifty years ago, and has

described the same picture twice over (pp. 66 and 68) under different

titles, having apparently copied out or translated any notices he has

come across, and this with very little care, as his pages not only

swarm with errors of spelling but also of fact, such as the monstrous

absurdity that Gossart (p. 63) painted the portrait of ‘Van den _Rust_,

_Carmélite_, qui recueillit Memlinc à la bataille de Nancy.’

W. H. J. W.

~Old English Masters.~ Engraved by Timothy Cole. Macmillan.

This hook contains some of Mr. Timothy Cole’s most accomplished work.

The preface certainly does not exaggerate his merits when it says

that no other engraver of the day could transpose into the medium of

wood engraving so much of the spirit and even of the actual quality

of the original pictures. Whether, as is also claimed, his engravings

are of more value as records and reminiscences of the paintings than

good photogravures we doubt. For any purposes of study photographic

processes with all their drawbacks are essential. But there is much to

be said for interpretative engraving when it reaches so high a point

of excellence as Mr. Cole’s. For when we look at a photograph or a

photogravure, however good, we enjoy, not the thing before our eyes,

but the vision of the original, which, even if we have never seen it,

we imaginatively construct. Our enjoyment is at one remove from our

actual sensations, but when we look at one of Mr. Cole’s finer pieces

we get an immediate pleasure from the discriminating and appreciative

tact of the translator, from the rare mastery of a difficult medium

which he shows, and this pleasure is superadded to a very vivid sense

of the beauty of the original. Moreover, in certain instances, his

power of suggesting luminous and transparent depth of colour or of

hinting at subtle gradations of tone goes almost beyond the reach of

photographic reproduction. It is not a little surprising that in

a medium so precise as wood engraving Mr. Cole’s most distinctive

excellence lies not in his rendering of design of definite form so much

as in his power of giving atmospheric suffusion and infinitely subtle

gradations of tone and of suggesting colour. There are, indeed, not

a few cases where the form is too much lost, where the searched-out

design of the original disappears in a vague penumbra; many cases,

too, where the contour is unduly wavering and shapeless: on the other

hand, where the chiaroscuro is most subtle, where the gradations would

seem to defy any analysis into lines and dots, Mr. Cole surpasses

himself. The face of Gainsborough’s Mrs. Graham is quite marvellous

in this respect, while for atmospheric quality it would be impossible

to surpass the Wilsons. With Reynolds he is less successful. Romney’s

Parson’s Daughter is another excellent engraving; and here again it

is the evasive liquid brush stroke which he understands so perfectly.

Raeburn’s Lord Newton, in which similar qualities predominate, is

again admirably rendered. We doubt whether this method of reproducing

works of art will be continued in the future, nor do we particularly

desire it. The finest qualities of wood engraving as an independent

art are really contradictory to such methods as are necessary for the

faithful transcription of oil painting, but the American school of wood

engraving will nevertheless be remembered for the perfect attainment of

its best aims in Mr. Cole’s work.

R. E. F.

PERIODICALS.

~Gazette des Beaux Arts~, July.--_La Sculpture beige et les influences

françaises. By M. Raymond Kœchlin._--The author endeavours to show that

the realistic tendencies hitherto supposed to be indigenous in Flemish

art from its commencement did not in reality declare themselves till

the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries.

In the twelfth century German influence predominated at all events in

Mosan art, but was succeeded in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries

by the decisive influence of French figure sculpture. Belgian art

was at this period informed by the same idealistic and generalizing

tendencies as the French school from which it derived. M. Kœchlin makes

his point good by a number of interesting examples, but in his anxiety

to proclaim French influence he minimizes the distinctions between the

two schools, the shorter proportions, the blunter and more angular

modelling of the Belgian sculptors. If the effigy of Blanche of Castile

which came from Tournai to St. Denys is really--as M. Pit supposes--a

work of the thirteenth century, it shows that already the Flemings were

beginning that angular and cutting treatment of the folds of drapery

which is associated with the realistic art of the late fourteenth

and fifteenth centuries, and which the French did not accept till

a much later date. _Quelques réflexions sur les Salons._ (_Second,

concluding article._) _By M. Henry Cochin._--This is as brilliantly and

fascinatingly written as the first article, and is, like it, pleasantly

discursive. M. Cochin discusses with stimulating suggestiveness the

theory that every work of art is a symbol, a sign in a universal

language, a token corresponding with spiritual and mental values. He

proceeds to elaborate the very tenable thesis that all portraiture is

caricature, and justly praises in this connection M. Weber’s satiric

comedies. His remarks on the ‘modern style,’ as the French call it, or

‘l’art nouveau’ as we, with a laudable desire to assign to the disease

a foreign origin, term it, deserve to be quoted: ‘Le temps est venu,

je pense, de prononcer le _De profundis_ et les dernières prières sur

le soi-disant _modern style_, être abortif et adultérin, qui porte un

nom Anglais, mail est né vraiment en Allemagne, qui n’est pas _moderne_

puisqu’il paraît déjà suranné et court la province--qui de plus n’est

pas un _style_, comme it serait aisée de le démontrer.’ _Un Manuscrit

de Philippe le Bon._ (_Second Article._) _By M. S. Reinach._--The

author continues his description of these remarkable miniatures and

gives still further proof, drawn from the types and gestures of the

horses, for supposing that its author is none other than Simon Marmion,

of whose picture at Wied he gives three illustrations. It is certain

that the likenesses to the early Dutch school, particularly to Dirk

Bouts, are common both to Simon Marmion and the miniaturist. While he

is discussing Simon Marmion, we hope M. Reinach will take account of

the picture of St. Michael attributed to the Flemish school at Hertford

House (No. 528), which bears, we think, the impress of his style. The

idea had already occurred independently to Mr. Claude Phillips. We hope

that M. Reinach will be able to secure rather better reproductions of

the succeeding miniatures in his forthcoming article. _Le Salon de

1761._ (_Second article._) _By M. Casimir Stryienski._--By the aid of

the minute and brilliant sketches with which Gabriel de Saint-Aubin

annotated his catalogues, the author continues to trace the history

of the pictures which figured in this salon. The most interesting

of those here discussed is Chardin’s _Benedicite_, a second replica

of one of those in the Louvre. In this version the artist extended

his canvas laterally to take in another figure which he succeeded

in relating admirably with the original group. The purpose of this

change was to make his picture a companion piece to a Teniers. The

central composition was frequently repeated by contemporary copyists

and imitators. _Tradition française et musées d’art antique. By M.

Georges Toudouze._ --An eloquent appeal for the vulgarization of

art, in the proper sense of the word, by making the arrangement of

specimens more intelligible and interesting to the unlearned and by

adding to fragmentary figures explanatory models of the whole figure or

composition.

~Rassegna d’Arte.~--_Le feste artistiche da Milano._--An account of

the inauguration of the gallery of art in the castle at Milan, and

of the new rooms at the Brera. The history of what the public spirit

and intelligence of the Milanese has accomplished, both in the castle

and the Brera, may well make us envy the energy of the decadent Latin

races. To take the Brera: in the last four years, under the able

direction of Signor Ricci, the Brera has been entirely remodelled;

the sixteen galleries have been increased to thirty-five, in which

the pictures are displayed according to their affinities of time and

place; the frescoes by Luini from the chapel of S. Giuseppe in the

della Pace have been placed on a vault expressly adapted to them;

while among the new acquisitions, mentioning only the more important

ones, we find eight frescoes by Bramante, four panels by Gentile du

Fabriano, one by Benozzo Gozzoli, several pieces by Lazzaro Bastiani,

Butinone, Beltraffio, Solario, Cosimo Tura, and a magnificent Cima.

In addition to this, that most desirable adjunct to all places

intended for the study of art, a large and representative collection

of photographs, has been installed. We fear that in spite of our

greater wealth the last four years’ acquisitions by the National

gallery would show poorly compared with the work accomplished in

this provincial town in Italy. _Butinone and Zenale_: a reply by

Malaguzzi Valeri to the criticisms of Herr Seidlitz, of which we gave

an abstract last month. In this he maintains the validity of the date

145-- for the altarpiece in the Brera, and brings in as evidence for

its possibility Foppa’s Crucifixion at Bergamo of 1456, which he

describes as showing a similar squarcionesque influence. We should

have said that the influence was rather that of Jacopo Bellini, and

that the squarcionesque element found its way later into Lombard art

and lingered on even when Leonardo was in the city. _Della Robbia at

Marseilles_: two school pieces, one of which is catalogued by Miss

Cruttwell, are figured and described by Signor Rossi. _La Rocella di

Squillace_: Dr. Groeschel replies to the article by Signor Caviglia

in the April number, in which this was referred to the sixth century.

The author says that the naves were covered with ogival vaults, and

that the church cannot antedate the end of the eleventh century.

_Miscellaneous Articles_: Don Guido Cagnola, who is well known for

his efforts in the preservation of works of art, writes to protest

against the disfigurement and obliteration of pictures and frescoes

by ecclesiastical authorities. An article signed Piceller describes

vividly the battle of San Egidio and the capture of Malatesta; the

description is fitted to the picture by Ucello in the National gallery.

This is evidence of how little attention is paid abroad to the work of

English historians of art, for Mr. Horne, in the _Monthly Review_ for

October 1901, once and for all disposed of the theory that Ucello’s

picture represents this battle. With admirable patience and minute

research, he proved point by point that it represents the rout of

San Romano in which Niccolo da Tolentino defeated the Sienese under

Bernardino della Carda in 1432. His article leaves the matter no longer

open to such vague guesses. Among various items of news we learn that

a school piece of the Della Robbia which stood in the oratory of the

Annunziata at Legri has been stolen, or rather broken to pieces and the

greater part taken away.

~La Revue de l’Art Ancien et Moderne.~--The July number is devoted

almost exclusively to modern art. An article on the discoveries at

Antinoe by Mons. Gayet describes some very remarkable Byzantine

textiles, on which are symbols of a mixed Greco-Roman and Egyptian

character, such as the Venus-Isis. The form, however, appears to be

decadent Alexandrine Greek.

~Architectural Review.~--Contains an article by Mr. A. C. Champneys

on Iona, with many excellent reproductions. The author’s careful

analysis of the building and the historical evidence seems only to

show the hopeless uncertainty of any theories which would connect the

existing buildings with the sites of St. Columba’s original monastic

foundations. Nor is the architectural history of the cathedral itself

much clearer. The curious habit of the later builders of imitating

older forms makes the determination of dates exceedingly difficult.

The appeal made by ~The Burlington Magazine~ for the preservation of

Clifford’s Inn is taken up in an editorial article, and Mr. Lethaby

protests, we fear in vain, against the proposed destruction of the

beautiful eighteenth-century bridge over the Exe, at Exeter.

~Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft.~--_Die Gotteshäuser von Meran,

der Alten Hauptstadt des Landes Tirol. By Franz Jacop Schmitt._ An

analysis of the architectural features of the churches of Meran and

the neighbourhood, with the result, which the author describes as

_hocherfreulich_, of finding that German gothic forms crossed the

border line between the ecclesiastical provinces of Mayence and

Aquileja, and arc found in parts of Tyrol where Italian was the spoken

language. The result is interesting; the patriotic fervour with which

the author hails it is to be deprecated in writing the history of art.

¶ _Due Strambotti inediti per Antonio Vinciguerra e un ignoto ritratto

di Vettor Carpaccio. By Arduino Colasanti._ The author publishes two

octaves by an unknown poetaster of the end of the quattrocento. In one

written about 1502 he describes a portrait of Antonio Vinciguerra,

called il Cronico, by Carpaccio. The portrait, like others by the

same hand of which we have records, has disappeared. ¶ _Ueber die

Proportionsgesetze, etc. By Constantin Winterburg._ A third instalment

of this minute analysis of the types of proportion established by

Dürer, and of the changes in his point of view between the first and

second book. ¶ _Die Allegorie des Leben und Todes in der Gemäldegalerie

des Germanischen Museums. By Ludwig Lorenz._ An account of the picture

in two parts of the above subject, No. 135 in the Nuremberg museum. The

author finds in this remarkable work, which was originally ascribed to

the mysterious Gerard van der Meire, the characteristics of the Meister

des Hausbuches, an artist of the middle Rhenish school, known hitherto

only by his engravings. ¶ _Zur Geschichte der Plastik Schlesiens

von 1550-1720. By Berthold Haendcke._ The author praises highly the

renaissance sculpture of Silesia, and finds in the best work the

influence of Italian, and, to some extent, Flemish models, but rejects

with some fervour the idea of foreign workmanship.

R. E. F.

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE

NOTES FROM FRANCE[119]

~Exhibition of French Primitives~

The splendid exhibition at Bruges, of which Mr. W. H. James Weale is

writing for the readers of ~The Burlington Magazine~ with that eminent

proficiency for which he is so widely known, has had an unexpected

effect and has become the decisive cause of the realization of a

plan dear to numbers of French art-lovers. I refer to an exhibition

of French primitives. ¶ The origin of the talent of the van Eycks

has long preoccupied the minds of art-historians. M. P. Durrieu said

lately, in the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_: ‘The prodigious talent of

the van Eycks seems to be revealed suddenly, like a sort of brilliant

meteor, which bursts forth and dazzles men’s eyes. It presents a

peculiarly attractive problem.’ ¶ The Bruges exhibition has given a

fresh impulse to the study of the question. On the other hand, it has

brought home to us the injustice of the profound neglect into which we

had allowed our old French masters to fall, while the renown of the

primitives of Flanders and Italy was increasing year by year. Lastly,

certain works attributed to the Flemish artists, some of which even

figured in this way in the Bruges exhibition, had called for a more

careful examination, which led eventually to French attributions. The

question was really pertinent. ¶ I have spoken of ‘profound neglect.’

The expression is not strictly accurate. M. Paul Vitry, of the Louvre,

published lately a remarkable pamphlet in which he resuscitated a whole

collection of French works on our old fifteenth-century painters. He

quoted the studies of Vallet de Viriville, of the Marquis de Laborde,

of Messrs. de Grandmaison, Bouchot, Leprieur, Durrieu, Salmon, Benoît,

Salomon Reinach, etc. It is nevertheless true that an undeserved

ostracism and an unjustifiable ignorance still weigh down upon the

French primitives. ¶ Every art-lover will applaud the happy initiative

of M. Henri Bouchot, the distinguished keeper of prints at the national

library, who has undertaken to restore to our painters of the middle

ages and the Renaissance the glorious place which they have the right

to occupy in the history of art. Without seeking in the least to

detract from the value of the Flemish primitives, it is nevertheless

well to recall the close connexion that exists between their work and

that of our limners of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, whose

reputation at that time was worldwide. Is it not likely that the latter

were the masters and leaders of the former? The artistic centre of

the world in the fourteenth century was the court of the Valois. We

owe the prodigious output of works of art that forms the pride of the

fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to those Maecenases who are known

as Philip VI, John II, Charles V, to the dukes of Berry, Anjou and

Burgundy. ¶ M. Bouchot has thought that it would be interesting to show

_de visu_ how great was the influence upon the destinies of art of all

those master-pieces conceived and executed for princes so French in

their taste and language. Would it not be interesting to prove that

the van Eycks were the heirs of the Limbourg-Malouels, who worked in

France for the duke of Berry, and that such Flemings as Broderlam were

inspired by Jacquemart de Hesdin and André Beauneveu, themselves the

successors of our old Parisian miniature painter, Pucelle? ¶ Thanks

to M. Henri Bouchot, who knows this period of our national art better

than any of his contemporaries, the exhibition of French primitives has

issued from the conception stage and entered into the domain of active

life. It will be held in 1904. The French government has given its best

support. The exhibition is organized under the honorary presidency of

the minister of public instruction and the honorary vice-presidency of

the director of fine arts and the director of higher education, and it

will have for its acting president M. Aynard, member of the Institute,

and for its vice-presidents M. Georges Berger, president of the Union

centrale des Arts décoratifs, and M. Robert de Lasteyrie, member

of the Institute, professor at the École des Chartes. The members

of the managing committee are M. Léopold Delisle of the Institute,

administrator of the national library; M. Kaempfen, director of the

national museums; M. Pascal, of the Institute, in- spector-general of

civil buildings. The members of the council of organization are, for

painting, M. Georges Lafenestre, of the Institute; for miniatures, M.

Henri Omont, of the Institute; for tapestries, M. Maurice Fenaille;

for enamels, M. E. Saglio, of the Institute. The general secretary

is M. Henri Bouchot, keeper of the print-room and a member of the

consultative committee of ~The Burlington Magazine~, assisted by M. P.

A. Lemoisne. The treasurer is M. T. Mortreuil, treasurer-general of the

national library, assisted by M. P. Lacombe. ¶ There will doubtless be

three exhibitions: one at the Louvre, which will include the primitives

of that museum and those of Cluny; the second at the national library,

consisting of the rich collection of miniatures in the print-room.

The third exhibition, the place of which is not yet definitely fixed,

will comprise the works lent by the provincial museums and by private

collectors. These will be very numerous and very fine, to judge by the

many kind offers which M. Henri Bouchot has already received. I can

only repeat the words of M. Paul Vitry and hope with him that all those

who set store by the glory of French art and of art pure and simple

will make a point of supporting ‘the Bouchot plan’ and giving it, at

the exhibition of French primitives, ‘the benefit of their knowledge

and of their good will.’

~G. de Rorthays.~

~Rouen.~

To those who know the grand portal of the cathedral of Rouen,

resplendent with sculptural wealth, a master-piece of the sixteenth

century in all its magnificence, the work of its complete restoration,

which is now being pursued, will appear enormous. Thanks to the support

of the state, of the city of Rouen and of the diocesan administration,

this work will be entirely finished within a few years. ¶ It is

already, in fact, well forward. During the last three well-filled

years, they have restored, on either side of the central portion, a

whole row of little gables and fourteenth-century niches, in which

old statues, kept in reserve in the Tour de Beurre and the Cour

d’Albane, have been replaced. They have also completely reconstructed

and re-erected two large stone pyramids, 16 m. in height, which had

not been rebuilt since the terrible hurricane which in 1632, in a few

hours, overthrew most of the steeples and spires of the Rouen churches.

¶ These works were followed by the complete restoration of the large

central gable, against which the extremity of the roofing of the nave

rests, and by the entire repair of the great open gallery, dating to

the end of the fifteenth century. At the same time one of the great

buttresses flanking the main front was removed. They were erected in

our own time, when, after the fire of 1822, the new metal spire was

constructed by the architect Alavoine. This buttress, the carving of

which had never been executed, and which had remained corroded, has

been replaced by a large fourteenth-century buttress. There remains

another, which will also be entirely replaced. ¶ These different works

completing the restoration of the upper portions of the portal have

allowed an important part of the tall scaffolding that concealed it to

be removed. There still remains to be restored the whole of the lower

portion of the portal, notably the great gable, very much fretted

and sunk, which at present supports the clock; the great arch of the

rose-window and the rose itself; and, lastly, the covings, embellished

with innumerable small statues, sheltered under canopies, that form

the chief portal itself. It is to be hoped that they will be able to

put back all those delicious little figures of which a large number

were broken down by the Protestants: they will probably succeed in

doing so, for the credit placed at the disposal of the restoring

architect, M. Sauvageot, is about to be increased by a sum of 600,000

fr., bequeathed to the archbishop for the express object of being

employed exclusively on this work of restitution in the cathedral,

by M. Gosselin, an architect who had long collaborated in the work

of the cathedral church. ¶ Several works have been carried out in

the archbishop’s palace itself. For instance, they have been engaged

on the restoration of a gallery, on the east side overlooking the

garden, which was built during the Renaissance by one of the Cardinals

d’Amboise, at the same time as a pretty fountain in marble, the memory

of which has been preserved by Jacques Le Lieur, who drew it for his

‘Livre des fontaines.’ This gallery, supported by columns, is to be

restored to its original form. ¶ During the excavations necessitated

by the construction of an important building in the rue Grand Pont the

eminent archaeologist M. Léon de Vesly, corresponding member of the

ministry of public instruction, brought to light, at a depth of 5 m.,

numerous fragments of red earthen Samos bowls, handsomely decorated. ¶

I will mention the following among the objects discovered: the bottom

of a basin, in red earth, ·120 m. in diameter, with the inscription,

SCOTNS: _Scotnus_ (See ‘Corpus inscriptionum latinarum,’ Vol. XII, p.

758. _Scotnus_, Vase found at Nîmes and in the Saint-Germain museum). ¶

Another bottom of a dish, ·151 m., with the inscription

ONESM

: _Onesimus Caï Annus_.

CANNI

This is a mark of Arezzo read by M. Seymour de Ricci (See the ‘Corpus

inscript.,’ Vol. XIII, part 3, p. 95). ¶ The bottom of a _lecythus_,

·40 m., with, on a rectangular seal, the mark CACASIM. ¶ Fragments of

a large amphora. On the rim, near the _sinus_, from right to left, SEX

VALECT: _Sextus Valenus fecit_, with a cartouche with a rectangular

border and circles.¶ Other discoveries included an antefix of a

somewhat rare character, seeing that the Saint-Germain museum does not

contain a similar one. It is decorated with the figure of a child,

full-face, with puffed cheeks, and forms the stem of a palm-leaf.

This is evidently the copy of a type of antefix that came from Italy

or Greece. Among the remains found in the excavation were also found

many bones of cattle, of the _Sus scrofa_, or wild-sow, and vestiges

of stakes, of which an array had already been discovered previously,

which might suggest the existence of a lacustrine settlement in the

neighbourhood of the Seine. ¶ In the course of the excavations executed

on the site of the Haute Vieille Tour, where stood the original palace

of the dukes of Normandy, there were found, beside important vestiges

of military fortifications, a little bottle, in black earth, of

Roman origin; various bones, including numerous horns of the _cervus

elephas_; and two fifteenth-century tokens. One of these is ·026 m.

in diameter, and bears on the obverse a caravel, on the reverse a

lozenged shield charged with four fleurs-de-lys. It is said to resemble

the English noble. The other measures ·032 m. This is a French token,

imitated from the coinage of Dauphiné, a dolphin quartered with

fleurs-de-lys. A silver half-crown of Louis XV, dated 1741, was also

found, as was a token of German make of the eighteenth century, bearing

on the obverse a quartered shield and on the reverse the legend CVIQUE

SVVM, and the date 1701.

~Georges Dubosc.~

FROM BELGIUM[120]

~Ghent~

The staircase which at present gives access to the crypt in the

cathedral of St. Bavo at Ghent is to disappear in consequence of the

installation of the _Heilig Graf_ in the place at which it starts. In

view of the artistic and archaeological importance of this vast crypt,

it will now be approached, as, for that matter, the greater number

of crypts were approached, by two staircases. With this object, the

two primitive staircases will simply be reinstated in their original

positions. The restoration of these primitive entrances is desirable

from another point of view: it will allow of the immediate rebuilding

of the lower portions of the columns, which were rashly cut away, in

the eighteenth century, for the installation of large marble slabs. All

the columns in the choir have undergone the same dangerous mutilation;

their bases have been slashed into, to a great depth, right and left.

So long ago as 1900, the royal commission on monuments declared that

it was necessary to take thought of this position of affairs, which

was capable, at a given moment, of compromising the very existence of

the building. ¶ In the crypt, two large funeral monuments have been

discovered. They are in marble, and belong to the Renaissance period;

they were originally in one of the chapels in the circumference of

the choir, whence they were removed to make room for some works of

restoration. These funeral monuments will be placed against the walls

of the south-east entrance of the church. ¶ Lastly, the commission has

requested the governor of the province to instruct the committee of

correspondents to draw up an inventory of the objects of art housed

in the cathedral crypt and to state, as far as possible, the origin

of these works, several of which appear to present a real artistic

importance.

~Nieuport~

The work of restoration of the fine church of Nieuport is being

actively carried out. In consequence of certain demolitions effected

since an earlier inspection, it has been ascertained that the

cross-vaulting of the transept was originally in wood, as were all the

other vaults of the building. A portion of the wooden ribs is still in

position, as is also the case with the remains of the shingle roofing.

All doubt being now resolved, this vault will be reinstated in wood. In

the wall of the south transept, a primitive window has been laid bare.

It was built up at the time of a general alteration of the edifice and

replaced by a larger bay. The window will be restored to its first

state. The removal of the covering of the south transept has shown that

the ridge of that portion of the monument is higher by about 50 cm.

than that of the adjacent roofings. As no alteration has taken place

in this part, the actual height of the roofing and of the south gable

will be maintained. Pains have been taken to restore the primitive

buttresses of the south nave, beside the choir, of which the old sites

have been found.

~R. Petrucci.~

FROM BERLIN[121]

Within the last few months the picture gallery of Berlin has had the

opportunity of making some very fortunate purchases which supplement

the collection of pictures of the northern schools in a way that

is particularly desirable. The acquisition of the large picture by

Hugo van der Goes was an event for the Berlin gallery, one of those

purchases which may suffice to reconcile an acquisitive curator with

the chances of a restless profession for another year or two. ¶ Of the

pictures of older German masters the gallery had the opportunity of

buying two striking works. The Rest on the Flight of the year 1504,

always acknowledged as Lucas Cranach’s best picture, passed from the

hands of Frau Fiedler of Munich, the widow of its last owner, into the

possession of the Berlin gallery. The picture, enamel-like in painting

and in excellent preservation, was formerly in the Schiarra gallery in

Rome. Further, they succeeded in acquiring one of the few authentic

panels of Martin Schongauer, a painting of moderate dimensions, very

near akin to the Münich, and still more to the Vienna Madonna pictures.

Of particular charm is the sunny bright landscape in the background.

¶ The gallery hitherto lacked a great religious painting by Rubens;

this default is now very happily atoned by the acquisition of the

Conversion of Paul. The picture, that dates from about the time of the

great religious pictures of Antwerp, reveals stress of emotion and

very penetrating harsh illumination. Of the recently acquired Italian

pictures only one deserves comment here; but this is a master work--the

Resurrection of Christ, by Giovanni Bellini, of the earlier period of

the master.

I. S.

FROM VIENNA[121]

In the preceding pages I have tried to prove--the reader can best