N 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.
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.
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.
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.
HE 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.