Mariano J. M. B. Fortuny (for-tö'-nē), 1838-1874

JORTUNY was born at Reus, in Spain, and when fifteen went to Barcelona to study painting in the Academy. He won the patronage of the City Council, enjoyed for many years a pension for study in Rome and elsewhere, and was sent to Africa in 1861 to paint historical pictures of the

campaign. Fortuny copied and studied in several art centers, and intensely an artist, he became as expert a painter in oils and water colors as an etcher, and also as a metal worker. He lived now in Granada, now in Paris, changing often, but for a longer time in Rome, where he died.

Fortuny was brilliant, full of spirit and life, a great talent which sometimes rose almost to genius in the glow and fire of his bold design and vivacious color. Southern Spain and Africa inspired his choice of subjects, which are chiefly picturesque glimpses of the life and the peoples of those regions. "The Spanish Marriage" and "The Choice of a Model" are two of his best works. The latter, a Roman picture, brilliantly and delicately painted, was sold in New York in 1898 for $42,000, and belongs to Senator W. A. Clarke.

He rarely painted portraits, and the splendid picture given to the Metropolitan Museum in 1889, by the late Alfred Corning Clark, from the Stebbins collection is almost his only feminine portrait. With its firm, vivid drawing, its dignified yet easy pose, the unsurpassed rendering of the fabrics of the robe, and above all its rich yet restrained tones, it may rank as one of the finest of modern portraits.

NE of the world's greatest so-called heroes is Alexander. The son of the Macedonian king, Philip, born 356 B.C., he came to the throne at the age of twenty. Something of the culture and philosophy of the Greeks was imparted to him by his teacher, Aristotle. He first established his power

at home by conquest, then in 334 began his eastern expeditions, occupied Egypt in 332, subdued the mighty Persian Empire during the years 331 to 327, and in 326 invaded India. Returning to Persia in 325 as a universal conqueror, he died in 323 at Babylon.

Alexander was a splendid barbarian, bold, of resistless energy, a great military genius and adventurer, boundless in ambition of conquest, proud, with some striking virtues of the soldier at the outset of his career, sometimes magnanimous, more often violent and cruel, as he chanced to fancy a hero and demigod should be.

Great good fortune attended him, and his brave and disciplined Macedonians cut down the effeminate hosts of the eastern monarchs, as the troops of Cortez swept away the hordes of Mexicans, more than eighteen centuries later, like them urged on by thirst for booty and adventure.

Of magnetic nature, dashing, lavish in gifts, politic or severe as suited his purpose or his caprice, of personal bravery, he was a marvelous leader of men until his haughty and superstitious nature gave way before the Oriental adulation and luxury he learned to love.

This Greek bust of the Rhodian school shows him as the demigod he liked to fancy himself, astonished and indignant that pain and death should subdue him.