Piero Pollaiuolo (pol-lä-yö-o'-lo), 1443-1496?

INTONIO POLLAIUOLO and his slightly younger brother, Piero, worked together. Antonio was apprentice to Bartoluccio, stepfather of Lorenzo Ghiberti, the maker of the famous bronze gates of the Baptistery at Florence, and became a skillful sculptor and goldsmith. His most noted works are the tombs of the popes, Innocent VIII and of Sixtus IV at Rome.

Piero was, it is said, put to learn the art of painting with Andrea del Castagno, and was pursuing his calling, when Antonio also, although renowned as a metal-worker, "desiring for his labors a more enduring memory," says Vasari, set to work, "and in a few months became an excellent painter."

In their work together it is held that Antonio furnished the designs, and Piero more usually carried them out. On this theory of the pictures attributed to the Pollaiuoli, the better ones are credited to Antonio, and the poorer to Piero, and of others, the merits are explained by Antonio's good designs, and the defects by Piero's bad painting. Such is criticism, which would be infallible if the critics could agree.

"The Young David," in the Berlin Museum, is assigned to Piero, but some think it too good for him and claim the doubtful honor for the brother. It is of interest to note that to the Florentines, David was in some degree a symbolic personage, representing the liberty of the city.

Looked at for itself, the David but little resembles our usual conception of the Hebrew stripling, whom we are wont to endow with more grace of person than this rather ungainly figure presents.

Gabriel Max (gå'-brēl måks), 1840–

ERMAN art of our time is far less known in America than it ought to be, but Max has fared better than others. He was born in Prague, and after study there and in Vienna went to Munich under Piloty; but he has little in common with the conventional Munich school. He is an excellent workman, and his warm pearl-gray tones and firm drawing, his grouping and well-fixed types of feature and form, give his paintings an unmistakable character.

Max has striven to make his pictures studies of the deeper emotions and struggles of the soul, and has perhaps too often chosen the sadder and gloomier tragedies of life as his themes. In his martyrs and heroines of suffering he has sometimes gone beyond the bounds of his art in trying to express subtle emotions and contrasts of feeling. In healthier subjects he has much charm and power.

Chamisso's ballad, "The Lion's Bride," which Max has made his rather morbid theme, is the story of the keeper's daughter who has been from childhood on the most friendly terms with a lion. About to be wedded, and arrayed as a bride, she enters the cage to bid the animal a tender farewell. The lion in jealousy kills his former pet and crouched over his victim awaits what may yet come.

The painter has improved the opportunity for strong contrast between his two chief figures. He has aimed to give to his lion all the desperate emotions which might have driven a man to avert in such tragic manner the threatened loss of his favorite to a hated rival. If such attribution of human insight and passion to animals is false psychology and perverted sentimentality, it can hardly claim to be sound art.