Pietro Perugino (pā-rö-jë'-nō), 1446-1525

RIGHT and glorious, clad in full armor, stands the Archangel Michael in the famous picture in the National Gallery. Compare with the head of the angel there, this closely similar head, which comes from "The Assumption of the Virgin,'

in the Academy in Florence. The figures in the two pictures are almost exact counterparts in every detail, save the decoration of the breastplate. In Perugino's "Virgin in Glory," in Bologna, the same type is used.

The great altarpiece from which this head comes is an elaborate work, painted at Vallambrosa in 1500, at the height of the artist's powers. At the top is the Eternal Father; beneath, the Virgin seated, both surrounded by singing angels and cherubs. On the earth below are four stately figures, one of which is St. Michael, all standing in reverent and dignified pose, noble conceptions grandly carried out.

According to the Hebrew and also the Christian hierarchical scheme, St. Michael is the first of the four Archangels, God's chief ministers to men. He is the Captain of the heavenly hosts, conqueror of the rebel angels and of the powers of evil, prince of the Church Militant, guardian of redeemed souls, warding against assaults, defending and avenging.

He is represented, glorious in youth and strength, in radiant armor, beautiful as the light, often with flowing robes and lance in hand, transfixing the easily vanquished dragon. Here he is in armed repose, resplendent as one who conquers without effort, by indwelling power and excellence, and with features of a feminine, Umbrian sweetness.

N the personality of the first occupant of the imperial dignity in Rome, Augustus Cæsar, grand nephew, adopted son and heir of Julius Cæsar, the majesty of the empire and the nobler side of the Roman character are well represented.

Rome, a city extended by conquest to a world power, had grown to unwieldy proportions which not even a skillful administration could manage under a republic, from whose citizens most republican virtues had vanished.

At the death of Julius Cæsar in 44 B.C., his power, bequeathed to his heir, had yet to be conquered by the subjection of rival factions, but the battle of Actium, 31 B.C., in effect confirmed the position of Cæsar Octavianus, and in 27 B.C. he was formally styled Augustus, which became the title of the later emperors.

A strong personality, stern, even cruel where policy demanded, Augustus, by his personal accomplishments, his love of literature and the arts, the immense improvements made in Rome, and the peace and order which his long reign secured, won for himself a renown, made more illustrious by contrast with his unworthy successors.

This picture shows the bust only of a fine full-length statue of Augustus, of yellow marble, made shortly before the Christian era, originally gilded and colored, which was discovered in Rome in 1863 in the Livian Villa, and was restored and placed in the Vatican Museum.

It shows the emperor clad in a richly decorated armor, a noble and commanding figure, with extended right arm, as if haranguing the troops; in his left hand the scepter.

The Man With the Hoe

Jean François Millet (mil-la'), 1814-1875

HE peasant painter who wrought this famous picture was a genius in the depth, truth and universality of his conceptions, and the warmth of his feeling, while he was a great artist in his technical power of expression. He has given to the world a long series of figures which are to us as types of the humanity which serves, creates and makes higher life possible.

He was no moralist preaching, to comfort the toiler, of what is called the dignity of labor, a notion chiefly of those who do not have to work with their hands. Nor was he a socialist aiming to show the hardships of toil. He was a soul endowed with the poetic instinct to see, and the creative power to reproduce, the essential worth and the profound meaning of the homely, useful acts of common life.

A widely circulated American poem has treated this French farm laborer, resting on his hoe, as the victim of the woes and wrongs of the ages heaped on the tiller of the soil, bowed and crushed to the clods he moves. Nothing could be more untrue to the thought of Millet. "I have never dreamed of being a pleader in any cause," he said. Since the Revolution, the French peasant, working safely the soil he owns, needs no pity as the world goes. His life is hard, but he is not soul-quenched, nor a thing that never hopes, but in him and from him is the strength and hope of the French people.

This picture has long been owned by the Crocker family in San Francisco.