The Defense of Champigny

J. B. Édouard Detaille (de-tä'-ye), 1848–

more ungrateful task can be imagined for a military painter than to depict the wars in which his country suffered bitter defeat. Detaille was born in Paris, became in 1865 the pupil of Meissonier for two years, then spent some time in the south of France, where he early took up painting military scenes with quick success. But he had before him a much sterner and more thorough school, for in August, 1870, he enlisted in the Garde Mobile de la Seine, and was in service in different capacities about Paris during the entire siege. After the close of the war he resumed his painting, utilizing sketches made while a soldier and studying the other battlefields of the campaigns.

Detaille has all the careful accuracy and neatness of his teacher transported to a larger scale. His pictures have an almost photographic fidelity to details, and while not embodying the fire and tumult of war as do the works of many other military painters, their exactness and charm of detail have rendered them popular.

Detaille has been able to record many a scene of valor in the brave and thrilling defense carried on so long against superior forces by his countrymen. Such an episode he has here shown. Not a battle but an isolated affair, one of many, the defense on December 2, 1870, of a château at a strategic point against a body of the German troops gradually but surely closing in on Paris. This picture was bought direct from the Salon of 1879 by the late Judge Henry Hilton, and by him given, in 1887, to the Metropolitan Museum.

Andrea da Verrocchio (an'-drā-ä dä vā-rōk'-kē-ō), 1435-1488

ERROCCHIO (the name means true-eyed) was one of those marvelous Florentine workmen of the early Renaissance in Italy, to whom all things were possible. Apprenticed to a goldsmith of the same name, he became a master in that art, which in the fifteenth century seemed often the pathway to all other arts. He turned from one to another, and became

also architect, sculptor, bronze-caster, painter and musician.

After working in Rome and elsewhere, he came back to Florence, took up chiefly sculpture and the allied arts of metal, and set up a bottega or art workshop. To this came many pupils, among others Lorenzo di Credi, perhaps Perugino, and Leonardo da Vinci. Painting was also done in his shop, although the "Baptism of Christ" is about the only picture now extant, which the critics. leave to him.

The two angel heads here given are but a fragment of the picture, which shows St. John and Christ standing in a shallow, rock-girt stream, the Baptist pouring water from a cup on the head of Christ. The two figures are robust, muscular, with more angular vigor than grace, contrasting with the two angels, who kneel close by on the bank.

The lovely angel face seen in profile is the one about which Vasari, the historian of Italian art, tells the well-known legend.

He says, "Leonardo da Vinci, then a youth and his pupil, aiding in this work, painted there an angel that was much better than the other things in the picture, which was the cause that Andrea resolved never again to touch his brushes."

Be this true or not, the graceful beauty of the angels is in strong contrast with the severity of the chief figures.