painted by Fra Bartolomeo.

Page 159.

movement and expression; the pervading sentiment in all his best pictures is holiness. He particularly excelled in the figures of boy-angels, which he introduced into most of his groups, sometimes playing on musical instruments, seated at the feet of the Virgin, or bearing a canopy over her head, but, however employed, always full of infantine grace and candour. He is also famed for the rich architecture he introduced into his pictures, and for the grand and flowing style of his draperies. It was his opinion that every object should be painted, if possible, from nature; and for the better study and arrangement of the drapery, he invented those wooden figures with joints (called lay-figures) which are now to be found in the studio of every painter, and which have been of incalculable service in art.

We have not, as yet, any picture by Fra Bartolomeo in our National Gallery. Lucca, Florence, and Vienna possess the three finest.

The first of these, at Lucca, is perhaps the most important of all his works. It is called the Madonna della Misericordia, and represents the Virgin, a grand and beautiful figure, standing on a raised platform with outstretched arms: beneath her ample robe, which is held open by two angels, are groups of suppliants, who look up to her as she looks up to heaven, where, hovering in a glory of light, is seen her divine Son. Wilkie, in one of his letters from Italy (1827), dwells upon the beauty of this noble picture, and says that it combines the merits of Raphael, of Titian, of Rembrandt, and of Rubens ! "Here," he says, "a monk in the retirement of his cloister, shut out from the taunts and criticism of

the world, seems to have anticipated in his early time all that his art could arrive at in its most advanced maturity; and this he has been able to do without the usual blandishments of the more recent periods, and with all the higher qualities peculiar to the age in which he lived."

This is very high praise, particularly from such a man as Wilkie. The mere outline engraving in Rosini's Storia della Pittura' will show the beauty of the composition; and the testimony of Wilkie with regard to the magical colouring is sufficient. The group in the illustrative woodcut would form of itself a picture.

The St. Mark in the Pitti Palace is a single figure, seated, and holding his Gospel in his hand. For this picture a grand-duke of Tuscany (Ferdinand II.) paid 12001. nearly two hundred years ago, which, according to the present value of money, would be equal to about 30007. Much finer, though less celebrated than the figure of St. Mark, is a Deposition from the Cross, also in the Pitti Palace, in which the Virgin gazing on the face of her dead Son, and the Magdalene bowed down with anguish over his feet, are remarkable for depth of pathetic expression.

In the Imperial Gallery at Vienna is the Presentation in the Temple, a picture of wonderful dignity and beauty, and well known by the fine engravings which exist of it. The figures are rather less than life.

In the Louvre at Paris are two very fine pictures; a Madonna enthroned, with several figures, life size,

*Life of Sir David Wilkie, vol. ii. p. 451.

which was painted as an altarpiece for his own convent of St. Mark, and afterwards sent as a present to Francis I.; the other is an Annunciation.

In the Gallery of Lord Westminster there is a divine little picture, in which the infant Christ is represented reclining on the lap of the Virgin, and holding the cross, which the young St. John, stretching forth his arms, appears anxious to take from him.

The Berlin Gallery contains only one of his pictures; the Dresden Gallery not one. His works are best studied at Lucca and in his native city of Florence, to which they are chiefly confined.

Fra Bartolomeo had several scholars, none of whom were distinguished except a nun of the monastery of St. Catherine, known as Suor Plautilla, who imitated his style, and has left some beautiful pictures.

LIONARDO DA VINCI

BORN 1452, DIED 1519.

WE now approach the period when the art of painting reached its highest perfection, whether considered with reference to poetry of conception, or the mechanica means through which these conceptions were embodied in the noblest forms. Within a short period of about thirty years, i. e. between 1490 and 1520, the greatest painters whom the world has yet seen were living and working together. On looking back we cannot but feel that the excellence they attained was the result of the efforts and aspirations of a preceding age; and yet these men were so great in their vocation, and so individual in their greatness, that, losing sight of the linked chain of progress, they seemed at first to have had no precursors, as they have since had no peers. Though living at the same time, and most of them in personal relation with each other, the direction of each mind was different-was peculiar; though exercising in some sort a reciprocal influence, this influence never interfered with the most decided originality. These wonderful artists, who would have been remarkable men in their time though they had never touched a pencil, were Lionardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Correggio,