Carl Marr, 1858

OPULARITY, if it be no proper test of the real merit of a work of art, cannot be ignored in making up our estimates. But labored efforts for effect, the fashionable mannerisms of the hour, or a vicious catering to the bad taste of an illy instructed class or time have often given a short-lived fame, more easily lost than won. A popularity based on truth and simplicity bids fair to continue.

Carl Marr's "Gossip" is a quiet, modest work, which as it hangs in the Metropolitan Museum seems always to have before it admirers, who return with ever new pleasure to look into the cheerful, sunlighted room, with its cool, gray walls and cosy neatness, in which these two amiable maidens are privileged always to sit and gossip rather than spin.

It is a scene easy to understand, and if older persons feign to esteem lightly the subjects of their discourse, it cannot be hard for those whose hearts are young to guess at the topics which so engross them. Nothing hateful or malicious, we may be sure, is on the lips of these smiling and wholesome young girls, and the general air of neatness and well-ordered living, which is about them, makes no small part of the lasting attractiveness of the picture.

Marr was born in Milwaukee, Wis., but has long lived in Munich, where he was chiefly trained in art and has held a professorship in the Academy, so that he is looked upon there as a German.

Church of St. Ouen (ö-an'), Rouen, France

OUEN, the ancient capital of the province of Normandy, in the rich lower valley of the Seine, is one of the most interesting old towns of Europe. Important and wealthy in the early centuries, its architectural monuments have long been famous, and as modern commerce and industry found it convenient to create for their needs a new town across the river, much of the old city survives unchanged.

The abbey church of St. Ouen is one of the most beautiful, graceful and delicate specimens of French Gothic in existence. Chiefly built from 1318 to 1330, when the style was fully developed and at its highest perfection, in its harmonious proportions, its soft gray-toned stones, its subdued yet ample light, its impressive size, and its freedom from incongruous monuments and other disturbing elements, the spacious interior fills the beholder with delight and leaves in the mind an image of perfect beauty.

The old verger loves to tell how, in the age of devotion when the church was reared, abbot and priest, clergy and laity, in person, wrought gladly on the structure, which thus rose, the work of love and simple piety.

Our view shows, above the roofs of the city, the western façade, which was not built until the middle of the last century. The interior is 453 feet in length and 106 feet high. Columns and piers are unusually slender, so that the walls seem almost all of glass. Above the crossing rises a tower crowned with an open-work lantern, where the visitor may wander and look down on the large garden park behind the church, out over the city and the near cathedral, to the encircling range of wooded hills.

Ecce Homo (ek'-sē bō'-mō)

Guido Reni (gwe'-dō-rā'-nē), 1575-1642

JUIDO RENI was born near Bologna, and first entered the school of Denis Calvart, a Fleming and a capable painter who had settled in Bologna. In 1595 he became a pupil of the Caracci, who were with great zeal striving to renew the glories of Italian art, by uniting the excellences of all the earlier schools, choosing from each its best. These Eclectics became good workmen and made many spirited paintings, but the beauty of nature and the truthful simplicity of life they did not often attain.

Guido followed them to Rome where he painted with much success for about twenty years, when he returned to Bologna and lived there until his death. He had great facility, a lively feeling for beauty in line, and for orderly composition, and his best work has a nobility and dignity which deserves praise. Overproduction and haste led him frequently to a monotony and coldness, which in our day has given him a standing below that enjoyed by him in his own time or in the eighteenth century.

Ecce Homo, Behold the man! is the title often given to pictures of Christ wearing the crown of thorns and the purple vestment and formally shown as a prisoner to the accusing people, since it was with these words, following the account of St. John, that Pilate presented him. It is often, as in this picture in Dresden, also used for the head alone of the dead or dying Christ crowned with thorns. The artist has succeeded in his lofty task, with a head full of nobility and pathos, not unworthy the exalted theme.