The book published by Lady Dilke, at the end of last year, is one of the most complete and definite works on an important section of our artistic history that we French possess. For we are marked by this rare characteristic, that the qualities of our own distinguished men are most often revealed to us by foreigners. While we have in our midst a number of specialist writers to instruct us in minute detail concerning the most trifling acts and deeds of a Fleming or Italian, we lack historians who will take a general view of our national art. It would seem that the Frenchman who shall have written a book on the eighteenth century as full and thorough as Lady Dilke’s is yet to be born. From time to time men of great attainments have produced a monograph, have described the work of a Watteau or a Lancret, but this has always wanted the necessary general commentary, the linking with general history, the grouping of facts, which lend so great an attraction to the works of Lady Dilke. It affords me a two-fold pleasure to say this, first because I profess a deep and very respectful sympathy for the author’s person, and secondly because I have always been greatly touched by the French side of her character. Lady Dilke and I know the faults of our respective countrymen; we speak of them when necessary; but we also know our reciprocal good qualities and speak of these too. Lady Dilke has written in praise of the school of the French Minor Masters of the eighteenth century with a conviction and an ardour of which we are very proud, and I feel charged to express to her in this review our deep-felt gratitude. ¶The difference between England and ourselves is made manifest from the very first. Whereas with us a more or less florid, amusing, or, let us say, sensational narrative is in most cases sufficient to satisfy the French reader, Lady Dilke’s book, although intended to be read by everybody, does not fear to display an integral erudition. This handsome and well-illustrated book, while it gladdens the eyes of a person indifferent to these questions, will interest profoundly the specialist and the scholar. It contains not a line unsupported by at least one reference and often by many. All that the contemporaries of our eighteenth-century artists have left concerning them, all records of inventories and even judicial notes, have been read and employed in their season by their kindly historian. It is easy to read into the impartial, nicely-turned, but apparently impassive text a genuine woman’s admiration for these feminine, evasive and exquisite artists; but the passion is restrained and displays itself only at the last. When the author is occasionally obliged to lament certain rather gross errors, she does so with filial moderation, with that which a child might show towards its grandfather; and we have learnt all, we are able to deplore all, while not one serious word of blame shall have fallen from the historian’s pen. ¶ Lady Dilke divides her work into eleven chapters, each bearing the name of an art-lover or artist. The first of these chapters is devoted to the Comte de Caylus and the great amateurs. For, though the collectors date very far back, the ‘amateur,’ in the French and modern sense of the word, came into being together with the speculations of Law. There is a singular and never-changing agreement between the rabid collector and the stock jobbing financier; it is as though the man who had grown suddenly rich wished to find no less suddenly in his new palace the ancestral elegance of the man of quality. ¶ Lady Dilke has selected the Comte de Caylus because he exercised an enormous influence upon the whole of the eighteenth century. Himself an engraver—though of no great merit—he was the cause that men and women of the world amused themselves with the pastime, that Madame de Pompadour tried her hand at engraving, and that, trying her hand, but with only slight success, she favoured to an extreme degree the artist-engravers of her time. ¶ The second chapter is devoted to those lovers of engravings, the print-collectors Mariette and Basan, who, for the rest, had no great affection for the artists of their time, but who favoured the iconographic movement. ¶ The typical French engraver of the eighteenth century is Charles Nicolas Cochin, who was known as the Chevalier Cochin. Cochin, through his family, his connexions and his works, touches every section of society. He belongs to the Court, to the nobility, to the middle class. His mother was a Horthemels; his sisters were Mesdames Tardieu and Belle. Cochin was trained in the school of different masters; he shows traces of Watteau, Gillot, Chardin and Detroy. But he is above all himself; his mind is composed of a thousand amiable, witty, and refined things; his art is the very spirit of a nation; and it is not too much to say that in him French art is summed up. ¶ The men whom Lady Dilke studies in Chapter IV of her book, the engravers Drevet and Daullé, are different people. They descend from the great century; they go back by easy degrees to Louis XIV and those famous artists, Audran, Nanteuil and Edelinck. But, though they have style and even majesty, they have neither the charm nor the grace of their contemporaries. This is also, to a certain extent, the case with Wille, who came to France to learn and who borrowed from us only the solemn and majestic side of the great masters. ¶ Lady Dilke studies in succession the Laurent Cars, the Le Bas, and, lastly, Gravelot. Gravelot the author regards almost in the light of a fellow-countryman. The greater part of his career was spent in London. We know that, in so far as this part is concerned, the author is in possession of even still more varied and personal notes. From Gravelot to Eisen, from the “Opera de Flora” to the “Contes de Lafontaine,” is an imperceptible transition. And thus we come to the masters of the end of the century, to Moreau the younger in particular, who presents its definite synthesis, linked as he is to Cochin by the brothers Saint-Aubin, the “exquisite poets of the most charming decadence.” ¶ Finally, Lady Dilke speaks of the engravers in colours, of those men, such as Demarteau, Debucourt, and others, who, without eclipsing their English colleagues, keep step with them. And then we come to the relations of the engravers with the Academy. Here, what severity is shown! On one occasion, the engraver Balechou, who is a member of the Academy, engraves a full-length portrait of the King of Poland, Augustus III. He had promised not to pull a separate proof of it. Having done so in one single case—this proof is still preserved in the Paris Print-room—he was struck off the list of Academicians. ¶ It is impossible, in a short review, to set forth in detail the importance of a book of this kind. We need this book in France, and it is to be hoped that one of our publishers will issue a translation, because it is a revelation to us. The English publisher has undoubtedly produced a practical and easily-handled book, but his reproductions are a little inferior in quality, given the value of the work. It would have been desirable that all the illustrations should have taken the form of heliogravures. Nevertheless, and putting this little criticism on one side, Lady Dilke’s book is, sincerely speaking, the newest and most “encyclopaedic” work that we at present possess on the French draughtsmen and engravers of the eighteenth century.
HENRI BOUCHOT.
It was a happy thought of Messrs. Cassell to issue an illustrated catalogue of the National Portrait Gallery similar to that of the National Gallery. The Portrait Gallery, in spite of great difficulties in the matter of space and funds, has become a place of which the nation may well be proud. It already contains a series of British portraits which if not absolutely complete, is at least representative, sensibly arranged, and catalogued with much more fullness and accuracy than some better endowed collections. One or two possible improvements may suggest themselves to the outsider—the addition, for instance, of photographs (we hear that some arrangement of this kind is actually contemplated) or careful copies of unique portraits of famous men which can never leave their present owners. The colleges of Oxford and Cambridge contain several pictures which would fill gaps in the Gallery, and other works in private hands are equally desirable. Nevertheless, the National Portrait Gallery, like the British Museum, has hitherto been so fortunate in its directors that there is no reason for regarding its future with serious anxiety. ¶ Nor can we be surprised that Mr. Cust, who has had so much to do with the well-being of the Portrait Gallery, has edited its illustrated catalogue on thoroughly sound lines. To precisians a chronological arrangement may seem to have disadvantages. These disadvantages, in our opinion, are minimized by the addition of an index of portraits and an index of artists, while the grouping together of men of the same generation, family, or profession, has the enormous advantage of making the book a thing attractive both to the casual reader and to the student of history, instead of a dry alphabetical list. ¶ We have only one fault to find with the abbreviated biographies which Mr. Cust supplies. They are laudably impartial, but the impartiality is sometimes carried to an extreme which places a second-rate man on the same level as a first-rate one. ¶ As a rule, a very wise discretion has been exercised in reproducing the pictures on a scale proportionate to their actual size and importance, so that the defects which marred the kindred volumes on the National Gallery have generally been avoided. One or two exceptions may perhaps be noted. We do not, for instance, think that justice is done to Kneller’s vivid portrait of the poet Gay (No. 622) by a cut less than two inches in height and less than one and a half inches in breadth, especially when Mr. Sargent’s portrait of Coventry Patmore is honoured by a full-page engraving. The juxtaposition of the two portraits of Sir William Hamilton also is not a success. The figure by David Allan looks a giant compared with that painted by Reynolds. ¶ The photographing, engraving, and printing of the pictures have on the whole been so admirably done that we have no more fault to find with them than with the letterpress or the arrangement of the book. We notice, indeed, that Kneller is again unfortunate. His portrait of John Smith, the mezzotint engraver (No. 699), is one of his most masterly works, showing a grip of character, an artistic taste, and a technical perfection for which in his Court portraits we seek in vain. In the reproduction the portrait loses all its spirit and all its quality. On the other hand, almost all the slight sketches and pencil drawings in the gallery come out excellently, so that any occasional failure cannot be attributed to want of care or want of science. ¶ Perhaps, considering its price, the publishers might have bound the book more strongly, even if they retained the limp cover which allows the book to open comfortably. The present paper binding is too flimsy for a book that has to be used for reference, and to send a work of reference to the binder often results in deprivation just when one needs the book most. ¶ These, after all, are minor details. As a whole, the catalogue is a thoroughly sound piece of work, and does credit to its editor, publishers, and printers (if not to its binder), and we have no doubt it will take its place by the Dictionary of National Biography on the shelves of all who are interested in the past history of the British race.
C. J. H.
There are three ways of writing history which rejoice all serious readers and students. The first and best is, alas, rare, for it requires constructive imagination based on sound scholarship. It is the history which bestows upon the characters portrayed that quality which makes them live on in the reader’s mind like great myths. Gibbon’s ‘Julian,’ Mommsen’s ‘Hannibal,’ Carlyle’s ‘Voltaire,’ Creighton’s ‘Pius II’—to take a very few instances chosen at random—live on in our imaginations like the heroes of romance, like Don Quixote, or Julien Sorel, or the ‘Egoist.’ ¶ On the other hand, there is the work of the mere archivist, the conscientious finder and transcriber of documents, who leaves the imaginative reconstruction of character entirely to the reader. For this, too, the student cannot be too grateful. And then there is the via media of the gifted compiler, whose efforts are also welcome, provided they are honest and careful, and free from the taint of journalism. ¶ It is this middle path that Mrs. Ady is accustomed to take, and always with peculiar success in her biographies of women. Those who have already enjoyed her ‘Beatrice d’Este’ will be prepared for finding interest and pleasure in reading her account of that noble lady’s even more accomplished and more famous sister, Isabella, marchioness of Mantua, the leader for more than forty years of the most continuously brilliant and intellectual court in Italy. Mrs. Ady does not claim originality of research, but her task of weaving the documentary researches of others into a readable, accurate, and interesting account is extremely well done. It is true that she has no great or genial gifts for the presentment of character, but she knows at least how to describe it with the appropriate background of historical events and of court and family life. She has better taste than to make of it a lurid tale, as some popular writers would have done. Isabella is painted as the faithful and devoted wife and daughter and sister, the careful and affectionate mother—nay, even the doting grandmother—as well as the ‘prima donna del mondo,’ the Muse of poets and humanists, the patroness and friend of great artists, the confidante of popes and emperors, and the victim, too, of family and political tragedies. ¶ For us in this place, her interest lies chiefly in one aspect of her many activities—in her relations with the artists of her day. Her portrait was drawn by Leonardo, and painted by Mantegna, Titian, Francia, Costa, as well as by various artists of less importance, such as Maineri and Buonsignori, and her medal was cast in bronze by the sculptor Cristoforo Romano. She was a passionate collector of beautiful things, decorating her private apartment with pictures by Mantegna, Costa, and Perugino, and sending her emissaries over nearly the whole of Italy to extort from dilatory or overworked painters the fulfilment of commissions she had given them, getting now a Nativity from Giovanni Bellini, a Magdalen and a St. Jerome from Titian, Allegories from Correggio, portraits from Francia, and even from Raphael himself. She employed Timoteo Viti to make designs for her majolica dinner-service, and most of the northern sculptors of note were at one time or another set to work for her. Lorenzo da Pavia made her priceless viols and lutes of inlaid ivory and ebony, and Caradosso carved her a wonderful inkstand in ebony and silver, while the most famous glass-blowers and jewellers of her time contributed their best efforts to her matchless collection. But even dearer to her than contemporary art was the antique, and she spared no pains or expense, no wiles or selfishness, to get into her possession every available antique statue or fragment that she heard of. The collector’s passion was on her, and even her fine taste and that of her cultivated advisers did not always protect her from the collector’s misfortunes. In the light of recent revelations, it is amusing to hear how she was taken in by the forgeries of a certain Roman dealer who bore the splendid name of Raphael of Urbino, and how this shifty precursor of many an Italian ‘antiquario’ of to-day managed to get out of giving her back her money! ¶ Curiously enough, Isabella, although a fast friend of the Medicean popes and their relatives, seems to have taken no interest at all in the art of Florence, except in Michelangelo, and in Leonardo, who came to her, not from Florence, but from Milan. She sent to Florence, it is true, for a picture, but it was to Perugino she wrote, and not to any of the great Florentine masters. ¶ Mrs. Ady has tried to trace carefully the present whereabouts of Isabella’s portraits and possessions, but we miss in the index any assembling of her scattered remarks on this interesting subject. The Leonardo pastel sketch (reproduced as frontispiece to Vol. I, but wrongly described as red chalk) is well known in the Louvre; one of the Titians (the one copied by Rubens) she identifies in the collection of M. Leopold Goldschmid at Paris, while the other, in Vienna, is reproduced as the frontispiece to the second volume. As to the latter, she says it was painted by Titian after a portrait by Francia, itself not done from the life, but from sketches and descriptions. If this be indeed the one referred to, Titian has managed to give no hint of his obligation to the Bolognese master. The portrait by Maineri, a painter of Parma, the author suggests as being the same as that in Mrs. Alfred Morrison’s collection, exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1894; but she admits, on the other hand, that this portrait may be from the hand of Beltraffio, which indeed it clearly is. Although it has apparently not occurred to Mrs. Ady, is it not possible that the untraced portrait of Isabella painted by Costa, was, like so many of her treasures, bought for Charles I, and that it is the Portrait of a Lady which now hangs in Hampton Court (No. 295)? The face resembles the one he painted as Isabella’s in the Louvre Allegory, but, on the other hand, they are both so thoroughly Costa in every detail that neither can be called real portraits in the modern sense of the word. The objective photographic style of portraiture in vogue to-day was quite foreign to the habits of most Renaissance painters, who were satisfied, once they had found a type that suited them, to stick to it for everything—Madonnas, portraits of ladies, and allegorical figures, indifferently. ¶ Perhaps the most vivid part of Mrs. Ady’s book is her description of Isabella’s experiences in that fatal sack of Rome, which, as Erasmus wrote to her friend Sadoleto, was ‘not the ruin of one city, but of the whole world.’ Barricaded in the Palazzo Colonna with three thousand distressed souls under her care, Isabella, safe in the protection of her son, Ferrante, one of the leaders of the imperial forces, looked down from her windows with anguish upon the scenes of horror and vandalism enacted in the streets below. Her house was the only one in Rome that escaped, except the Cancelleria, which was occupied by Cardinal Colonna. But except for the irreparable destruction of so many of the world’s masterpieces of beauty, this and many another interesting incident in Isabella’s career belong rather to history than to art.
M. L.
On comparing the number of monographs that have appeared on other than Dutch artists with that of books in our possession treating of Dutch painters, we see that the latter have been allotted but a scanty measure in literature; indeed, one may go further and say that during the past twenty years, excepting Rembrandt and a few other great masters, no extensive and comprehensive work has been written on the old Dutch painters. For this neglect a very well-founded reason exists: the native art historians of the Netherlands are still collecting materials, and cannot as yet think of writing exhaustive books concerning their great masters; for they are much too well aware of the vast gaps that are still to be found in their knowledge. This is so in the case, among others, of Frans Hals, and it will remain so for many years to come; we must needs wait until all the records are accessible before being able to arrive at a definite knowledge of Hals’s personality. ¶ Mr. Davies has been deterred by no such considerations; he not only, with a ready pen, describes Hals’s life and works, but, thanks to the spacious manner in which he conceives his subject, finds occasion to indulge in digressions on old Dutch conditions, art and so forth, which might undoubtedly possess an interest for English readers if they were correct, but that, unfortunately, is far from being always the case. ¶ After treating in his first two chapters of the ‘Rise of a National Art’ and ‘Holland and its Art in the Seventeenth Century’ the author collects the few known facts concerning Hals’s life in Chapter III, and endeavours to draw a conclusion touching his personality. We quite admit that legend may have represented Hals as being a more dissolute man than he actually was. Nevertheless, one who ill-treated his wife as he did can really not have had any particularly aristocratic manners. It would be better for us to say that we do not know enough about his life to be able to white-wash it of the few disagreeable facts that have been handed down to us. There can be no doubt, however, that he was a Bohemian, as Mr. Davies rightly characterizes him. ¶ The following chapters are devoted entirely to Hals’s artistic career and works; those preserved at Haarlem of course occupying a great place. The description of these is a lively one, and is evidently based upon a repeated examination. There are a good index, bibliography, useful indications such as the approximate dates of Hals’s life and of his principal paintings, etc. In a word, the writer has industriously brought together all that he has been able to ascertain touching his subject from books and pictures. But there is one matter in which Mr. Davies has not succeeded, and that is the producing of a critical work. It is true that he himself expressly says this as regards the catalogue,[45] but he constantly makes the same mistakes in the text itself. This is an exceedingly dangerous standpoint; for, thanks to it, so soon as one sets to work on a scientific basis, one finds him, for instance, describing two pictures (Illustrations Nos. 1 and 54) as Portraits of the Painter which do not represent Hals at all, while, again, the Portrait of Admiral de Ruyter (Illustration No. 55) is not a picture of that admiral. ¶ In the same way, the catalogue—which, from the very nature of the standpoint of the writer, is incomplete—contains childish mistakes, which are due to a lack of adequate critical knowledge. For to say of the Hille Bobbe with a young man smoking behind her, merely that it is ‘generally recognized as the work of F. Hals the son’ surely denotes an excess of caution, considering that it is established beyond all doubt that this picture was, in fact, painted by the son, and therefore it ought not to have been included in the catalogue. Some of the paintings in English collections which we missed in the catalogue we were fortunate enough to find mentioned in the ‘List of Pictures which have appeared ... in the Winter Exhibitions ... at Burlington House,’ which is inserted after the ‘List of Works.’ But these data are also, we regret to say, uncritical. We also searched the catalogue in vain for the oldest dated portrait by Frans Hals, namely, that of Scriverius, dated 1613, which forms part of the Warneck Collection in Paris, although it is mentioned by the author on pp. 27, 29, 84, and 96 of the text. Again, we find no mention of the delightful Portrait of a Man[46] in the Van Lynden collection, at present lent to the Mauritshuis at the Hague, nor of various other pieces.[47] As regards the drawings, there is no doubt whatever that the drawing in the British Museum is an original Hals. There are more of this sort, and we are sorry not to find them mentioned in Mr. Davies’s book. ¶ We must deliver ourselves of one or two further remarks, not from any love of fault-finding, but to remove mistaken ideas. The picture mentioned on p. 22, which is traditionally, and by Mr. Davies, supposed to represent Hals’s workshop, was painted by Michiel Sweerts, and has nothing to do with Hals’s workshop. Nor is what the author observes touching Hals’s manner of painting (p. 124) quite correct. Hals slowly perfected his technique, proceeding along a road which is quite easily traced. It is true that he underpainted a considerable number of his pictures, but there are also many, very many indeed, which he finished at once, in the wet paint, without the least underpainting. One of the best examples of the latter is the Portrait of a Man, in Lord Spencer’s collection, which is at present in the Guildhall Exhibition. ¶ Mr. Davies’s book has been very handsomely printed and produced, and is filled with mostly satisfactory illustrations. It is to be regretted that the contents of the book are not more worthy of its format; as a critical guide to the art of Frans Hals it is wholly untrustworthy.
W. M.
GAZETTE DES BEAUX ARTS.—The April number opens with an article by M. Salomon Reinach, in which he brings to light a great unknown miniaturist whom he identifies with the painter Simon Marmion, known as the author of the altarpiece of St. Bertin, now in the castle of Wied. Of this magnificent and little-known work the National Gallery possesses two fragments representing a chorus of angels rejoicing at the birth of the saint and two angels carrying his soul up to heaven, a strange and imaginative composition, in which the ridge of a roof cutting into the base of the composition gives an effect of supernatural strangeness. The manuscript in which the miniatures in question occur is in the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg, and has remained till now unnoticed. It is in the main the French compilation entitled the ‘Grandes Chroniques de Saint-Denys,’ but the history is continued with extracts from various historians to the beginning of the reign of Charles V. It contains fifteen full-page miniatures which are of quite extraordinary merit, and which may be by Simon Marmion. The smaller miniatures are by another hand, and are distinctly inferior. The most interesting of the miniatures is the title-page representing Fillastre, Abbot of St. Bertin, offering the Grandes Chroniques to Philippe le Bon of Burgundy, by whose side stands the aged Chancellor Rollin; behind stand three figures, among which M. Reinach recognizes the youthful Charles the Bold and the Grand Bâtard. The heads are admirably rendered, and show that Marmion, if it be indeed he, must be reckoned as one of the great masters of portraiture of a school in which portraiture attained to the utmost perfection. The landscapes are, however, scarcely less remarkable. They do not, of course, rise quite to the height of imaginative realism shown in the Hubert van Eyck miniatures published by M. Durrieu, but they are conceived in a similar vein and executed with absolute mastery. If M. Reinach’s conjecture is correct, and it rests on a number of subsidiary proofs besides the likeness of style to the Wied altarpiece, he has done a great service in bringing to light the work of a great artist whose reputation as a miniaturist was such that his name was coupled with that of Fouquet in the eulogies of contemporary poets. Marmion was born at Amiens about 1420. In 1454 he was at Lille employed by the Duke of Burgundy, but he seems to have worked chiefly at Valenciennes. His style shows the influence of the Van Eycks, and still more of Van der Weyden. But there is, we think, in his manner of composition, and in the freedom of his fancy, something which distinguishes him from the pure Flemish painters, something which is due to his French origin and early training. ¶ The next article by M. Casimir Stryienski is concerned with French art of a very different kind. There exist a number of catalogues of the early exhibitions of the Salon, illustrated throughout with minute sketches by Gabriel de St. Aubin. The author has had the idea of reconstructing by the aid of one of these catalogues the Salon of 1761, and discussing the subsequent history of the various works. Many of these are quite lost, and survive only in St. Aubin’s marvellous sketches. Delicate as St. Aubin’s more serious work is, as a tour de force nothing could equal the dexterity of these minute notes. Between two lines of the catalogue he will insert a whole row of sketches, in which not only the composition but some suggestion of the chiaroscuro of the originals is given. Many of the works of Vien, J. B. M. Pierre, Vanloo, and Hallé make a more pleasing impression when interpreted thus than the originals can have done. ¶ M. André Michel, who carries on the work inaugurated by the genius of Courajod, commences a series of articles on the acquisitions made by his department of the Louvre. The finest of these came from Courajod’s collection, and include a wooden crucifix of the twelfth century, in which we can trace the first germs of the new sentiment for life and dramatic expressiveness working in the old hieratic formula. The exquisite statue of a man of the thirteenth century, also in wood, shows the new art arrived already at perfect command of the means of expression, but still restrained by a reminiscence of earlier schematic treatment. This and the stone statue of St. Geneviève show French sculpture at a point which it has never surpassed. The fifteenth and sixteenth century sculptures which have been added to the national collection, though of great beauty, have nothing of the supreme sense of design of the earlier work. ¶ M. F. de Mely publishes two sarcophagi with figures in relief discovered at Carthage. In spite of Greek and Egyptian influences the author considers that at least one of the figures, that of the priestess, bears the impress of a special racial type, and he considers that this and the Elche head taken together give us an idea of a distinctively Punic ideal type. M. Pierre Gusman describes, without adding anything very new, the Villa Madama, and M. André Pascal begins an account of the eighteenth century sculptor Pierre Julien.
In the May number Monsieur Gaston Migeon, who has done much towards the classification of Mahommedan copper work, writes on the Exhibition of Mahommedan Art recently held at the Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs in the Pavillon de Marson. Several remarkable specimens of copper work are reproduced, perhaps the most interesting being that lent by M. Sarre which is supposed to date from the first years of the Hegira, and to be of Sassanian workmanship. Some fourteenth-century Persian velvets and tissues of singularly fine and naturalistic design are also figured, as well as two splendid Indo-Persian miniatures from the collection of M. Bing. ¶ In his second and concluding article on the acquisition of the department of sculpture in the Louvre, M. André Michel describes a remarkable polychrome wooden statue of the beginning of the sixteenth century belonging to the Franconian school. In this the author finds the influence of Albert Dürer. It is certainly a more deliberate and scientific work of art than the majority of Franconian sculptures of the period. Several works by Houdon, Deseine and Clodion are also described and reproduced. The prints of the Dutuit Collection are described in a brilliant and humorous article by M. Henri Bouchot, in which he concerns himself more with the collector than the collection, which is in fact rather remarkable for the number of prints of ascertained pedigree than for its artistic character. M. Pascal completes in this number his study of Pierre Julien.
JAHRBUCH DER KUNSTHISTORISCHEN SAMMLUNGEN DES ALLERHÖCHSTEN KAISERHAUSES. Band XXIII, Heft 5.—The present fascicule is devoted entirely to researches by Herr Julius von Schlosser on ‘Artistic Tradition in the late Middle Ages.’ Under this title the author brings together several separate researches; the connexion between them lies in their illustration of the contrast between mediaeval art with its direct visual symbolizing of ideas and the Renaissance and modern habits of actual imitation of natural forms. ¶ The first of his researches is concerned with a large illuminated parchment, too large to have formed part of a book and probably meant to be framed and hung on a wall. It depicts in the centre the Nativity, around which, in a large number of medallions enclosed in late Gothic scrollwork, are represented the various analogies by which the immaculate conception was rendered credible. It is an early example of the ‘Defensorium inviolatae virginitatis beatae Mariae,’ in which the miracle is rendered plausible by a record of all the miraculous things in nature. The origin and propagation of this popular form of doctrinal exegesis is discussed. The author of the ‘Defensorium,’ Franciscus of Retz, was a Dominican, and professed theology in the University of Vienna from 1385 to 1411. The earliest illustrated version is the manuscript of Frater Antonius of Tegernsee of 1459, and the work was published as a block-book as early as 1470. The best-known is Eysenhut’s block-book of 1471, of which the British Museum possesses a copy. In the early sixteenth century it was published also in a French translation at Rouen, but it was most popular in Bavaria and Austria. The parchment picture of the Vienna Hofmuseum, which forms the subject of these researches, is, the author considers, by an Austrian artist of the latter half of the fifteenth century. ¶ Of greater artistic merit are the small folding tablets of the Vienna Hofmuseum, in which are depicted a series of men and animals which served as patterns for artists. There are, for instance, the heads of Christ, the Virgin, and St. John, in poses which show that they would serve for a Crucifixion; there is the Veronica, and a number of varied types which experience and tradition showed were likely to be useful to an artist. It is certainly a striking example of the essentially practical methods of artistic production at a time when painting was an actual necessity, and when, therefore, the picture was of more importance than the artist’s personality. This work belongs to about the year 1400. ¶ Another artist’s pattern-book discussed by Herr von Schlosser, though this has already been published in part, is that used by the miniaturists of a Rhenish monastery, now in the Hofbibliothek at Vienna. This contains, besides initials and borders, the traditional receipts for various animals both real and fabulous. This the author compares with Villars de Honnecourt’s famous sketch-book and the similar pattern-book of Stephen of Urach in Munich. Villars de Honnecourt, however earlier in date, had indeed much more than a merely practical aim in view. He had already begun those researches into the laws of proportion and harmony in natural form which later on absorbed Leonardo da Vinci and Dürer. ¶ Herr von Schlosser aptly concludes this part of his researches by a reproduction of an Attic vase in Berlin, on which is represented the workshop of a vase maker with the pattern receipts for gods and animals hanging on the wall. ¶ Finally, in an appendix, Herr von Schlosser discusses Giusto of Padua’s frescoes of the virtues in the Eremitani at Padua, which have recently been relieved in part of their covering of whitewash. He reproduces the two best preserved figures. Here again the question is of the rôle played by a traditional pattern-book, for there exist similar representations of the virtues in manuscripts at Florence and Vienna, while recently Signor Venturi has acquired for the national collection at Rome another version, which he considers is Giusto of Padua’s own sketch-book and the model for the frescoes. Herr von Schlosser shows, we think conclusively, that this is of later origin by a belated Giottesque of the early fifteenth century, while he brings forward as the original of the whole series a MS. at Chantilly by Bartolommeo de’ Bartoli, executed in all probability between 1353 and 1356 in Bologna.
REPERTORIUM FÜR KUNSTWISSENSCHAFT. 1903. Part II.—Constantin Winterberg continues his minute analysis of Albert Dürer’s theory of the proportions of the figure. In this article he deals with the second book, and shows how Dürer freed himself increasingly from the traditional mediaeval canon and sought to establish his theory on inductive lines. ¶ Mr. Campbell Dodgson publishes a transcript of David de Necker’s preface to the Landsknechts, from which it appears that the original drawings were by Hans Burkmair, Christopher Amberger, and Jörg Breu, and were engraved by Jost de Necker, David’s father. This settles a much-disputed point, and shows that Beham, to whom a number of the originals were ascribed, must be excluded altogether. ¶ Count Luigi Manzoni writes on the stained glass in Perugia in the quattrocento, and in particular on the great window in S. Domenico, which he ascribes in part to Fra Bartolommeo di Pietro Accomandati, who appears to have worked in stained glass already in the fourteenth century at a time when most Italian towns were forced to employ foreigners for such work. The greater part of the window was executed, according to the author, in the second half of the fifteenth century, and by the painter Benedetto Bonfigli. ¶ In this number Dr. Friedländer concludes his notices of the Bruges Exhibition. He deals with Albert Cornelis, an artist who was first recognized by Mr. James Weale, and with Jan Provost, with regard to whom he follows M. G. Hulin. He agrees therefore in giving to the artist, Mr. Sutton-Nelthorpe’s Legend of St. Francis. More surprising is his suggestion that the Madonna, lent by Madame André under the name of Van Eyck, which was reproduced in the April number of The Burlington Magazine, is a youthful work of Jan Provost. With regard to Jan van Eeckele, the author maintains a sceptical attitude. He supposes the signature J.V.E. attached to certain works to be forgeries intended for Jan Van Eyck. After discussing the works of the later Flemish and Dutch artists, Dr. Friedländer discourses on the works which are not of purely Flemish origin. Among them the most interesting was the so-called Antonello da Messina, lent by Baron d’Albenas, representing the Pietà. This, following M. Hulin, Dr. Friedländer gives to a French artist, and dates about 1470. The mixture of Italian and Flemish influence in this work is, we think, of quite a different kind from that found in French works of the period.
RASSEGNA D’ARTE.—To the April number M. George le Brun contributes an enthusiastic, though by no means exaggerated, appreciation of the elder Breughel, ‘the only artist of his time who knew how to withstand the enchantments of the Italian masters,’ though he too travelled in Italy. Signor Enrico Cavilia calls attention to the imposing ruins of the basilica at Squillace which he ascribes to about the year 600. If this is accurate it becomes, after St. Abbondio at Como, the earliest example of a basilica in the form of a Latin cross. This important example of early Christian architecture has been little noticed hitherto. Signor Rivoira, for example, makes no mention of it. ¶ A small piece of stuff with a woven pattern of figures, rabbits, birds, and ornamental intreccie, which was found at Modena in 1900, forms the subject of an article by Isabella Errera. This has hitherto been supposed to be of Byzantine workmanship, but the author by comparison with other pieces of similar design and workmanship ascribes it to Arab workmen under Byzantine influence.
In the May number Signor Paoletti publishes an ancona (insufficiently reproduced) by Jacobello Bonomo. This ancona in its original carved frame is dated 1385, and is important as showing how early the traditional form of the ancona as it appears in the works of the Muranese school was fixed. This indeed differs but slightly from the altarpieces of Antonio da Murano in Sta. Zaccharia at Venice, which are dated nearly half a century later. ¶ Signor Ricci continues to elucidate the little-known Giovanni Francesco da Rimini, an artist of the Romagna influenced by Benedetto Bonfigli, and through him deriving many motives which recall the work of Filippo Lippi. These are specially noticeable in the Baptism belonging to Signor Blumenstihl at Rome. The other picture, which he attributes to this mediocre but agreeable painter, is a Madonna adoring the Infant Saviour which is No. 255 of the Bologna Gallery. ¶ Signor Augusto Bellini Pietri discourses on the frescoes of S. Piero a Grado which were brought to light in 1885 at Cavalcaselle’s instigation. Cavalcaselle himself judged of them as feeble productions of the early Pisan school which might be connected with the name of Giunta Pisano. He failed to see traces of true Byzantine influence. Signor Pietri’s view practically coincides with this, except that he considers them of much greater artistic significance and as indicating the dawn of the new Italian spirit, the beginnings of a dramatic and expressive art as opposed to the hieratic and purely architectonic character of the Byzantine. ¶ Signor Ricci calls attention to an interesting portrait of Luca Pacioli acquired by the Naples Gallery with a Cartellino bearing the inscription JACO. BAR. VIGENNIS. 1495. If vigennis is a corruption of ventenne, and if Jaco. Bar. stands for Jacopo de Barbari, it brings that artist’s birth down to a much later period than has hitherto been assumed. Unfortunately Signor Ricci does not indicate how far the painting in question conforms to the manner of Jacopo de Barbari’s known works. ¶ Signor Ferrari announces the installation of the new museum at Piacenza, and describes its two chief treasures, the Christ at the Column by Antonello da Messina and the tondo (poorly reproduced), which is ascribed, somewhat rashly we think, to Botticelli himself.
ONZE KUNST contains two articles by Max Rooses; in one he describes the Pacully collection in Paris, which has recently come into the market, and, à propos of the picture of a young woman writing, by the Master of the half-figures, which was exhibited at Bruges, makes a suggestion that possibly the half-figure pictures were executed by Jan Matsys when he was absent from the Netherlands, and may have come into connexion with Clouet’s school in France. The colour scheme and scale of modelling of Jan Matsys’s signed Lucretia is, we should have thought, quite distinct from that of the half-figure pictures. ¶ In the second article the author makes known a Rubens belonging to the Countess Constantin de Bousies. The picture is of a satyr pressing grapes into a cup held by a young satyr; in the foreground a tigress is suckling her young. M. Rooses declares this to be the original of the similar picture at Dresden.
ATENEUM. HELSINGFORS.-No. 1 contains an article on mediaeval art in Finland with illustrations of sculptures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which shows how closely the types of early French and German Gothic sculptures were followed. The St. Margaret from Vemo has almost the grace and ease of movement and the large disposition of draperies of the best French work of the end of the thirteenth century. The later work indicates more clearly German influence. Osvald Siren publishes two Florentine Madonna reliefs, at present in Sweden. One is a stucco copy of a relief by Desiderio, lately in the possession of Mrs. Pepys Cockerell.
THE REVUE DE L’ART contains some illustrations from the Pacully collection, and the record by M. Paul Vitry of an interesting discovery, an almost contemporary copy of a lost portrait of the Comte de Dunois, the original probably being by Jean Fouquet.
L’ART, for April, contains a number of reproductions of mediaeval works by royal and titled amateurs, an article on the Museum of Tapestry at the Gobelins factory, one on Horace Vernet as a caricaturist, and one on the exhibition of the Société National des Beaux-Arts, remarkable for its violent and ill-judged attack on Rodin, à propos of the fact that he is not exhibiting this year.
THE ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW, May, is mostly devoted to contemporary architecture, but contains the second part of Mr. Lethaby’s article on ‘How Exeter Cathedral was Built,’ with many illuminating remarks on mediaeval methods of work; not the least interesting is the suggestion that when columns of Purbeck marble were ordered from Corfe, the designs of mouldings and sections were left to the Corfe masons.
R. E. F.
ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR BÜCHERFREUNDE, April, 1903.—The first number of the seventh annual volume of this periodical opens with a detailed account by H. A. L. Degener of the John Rylands Library at Manchester. The building is described and the history of its foundation related. The biography of John Rylands himself is followed by an interesting account of the founders of the Althorp collection, now incorporated, through the munificence of Mrs. Rylands, with the other contents of the palatial building at Manchester. The purchase of the Crawford collection of MSS. by Mrs. Rylands is duly recorded, and a good summary is given of the most important treasures of the library in the way of block-books and incunabula, with special attention to the books from early English presses. The article is illustrated with sketches of the building and facsimiles of rare specimens of printing. An article follows on the contemporary book-decorator, Hugo Hoppener, whose pseudonym is Fidus. His work is unknown in this country, and such specimens as are given do not inspire us with any desire for a closer acquaintance with it. Modern printing in Russia is described by P. Ettinger, and there is a review of two important facsimiles of block-books recently published by Heitz, and edited by Professor W. L. Schreiber, the ‘Twelve Sibyls,’ at St. Gallen, and the edition of the ‘Biblia Pauperum,’ in fifty leaves, at Paris. A specimen of each facsimile accompanies the review.
C. D.