Chapter X: Part II (3)

And I am not sure that the plan might not be adopted with advantage in museums, of having a small room, like the _tribuna_ at Florence for instance, with a florilegium of the best things of all dates; it would be both physically and mentally a boon to many a weary wayfarer. ¶ The most obvious point of comparison with the classical is the work of the classicists of north-east Italy, who, already at the end of the trecento, were beginning a formal but intelligent study of the antique. It would be instructive to see works of Donatello and John of Bologna side by side with their Greek counterparts; a Syracusan decadrachm of Kimon or Euainetos beside a medal of Pisanello or Sperandio. ¶ One bronze in the Burlington Club especially seems to challenge this comparison--the big mounted warrior (No. 53), which at first sight suggests a kind of glorified gothic aquamanile. A reviewer in the _Athenaeum_ points out the ‘research for elegance which already characterizes this figure,’ and which he considers to mark the essential difference between the Greeks and their successors. ‘Whereas the Greek,’ he says, ‘feels most keenly the planes, to the northern and Italian artists it is the ridges that count.’ This seems to me to be a plausible generalization from imperfectly perceived facts. The world-old contrast of the ideal and the real naturally went on in Greek art as it has gone on in every other art; but less among the Greeks, because for most of their history they steadily withstood realism; they believed and acted upon Shakespeare’s ‘Nature is made better by no mean, but nature makes that mean.’ At a late period realism became too strong for them, and the Pergamene school was the beginning of the end. Surely the broad contrasting of planes is not the characteristic of a race, but of a stage of development. Obviously the sculptor in marble or wood is bound to set out by blocking out his figure in broad planes: relative development shows itself in the amount of skill which the artist exhibits in graduating and refining these planes into each other. Early Greek art shows this particularly, because it derived largely from Egyptian traditions, and was long in breaking loose from set canons. But it is none the less true of all sculpture in which an historical development can be traced. The history of Italian sculpture down to Michael Angelo is so much under classical influence that its evolution may almost be said to be an index of its information regarding Greek art. Michael Angelo unfortunately corresponds to the Pergamene stage. Already, before his day, the great Italian medallists had shown in their medal work what is probably, outside of classical times, the nearest approach to the best Greek relief, and they worked largely on Greek lines. It is not by coincidence alone that the helmeted knight on the well-known medal of Ludovico Gonzaga naturally suggests an analogy to the bronze now exhibited. In both cases the simple effect is attained by a judicious elimination, by contrasted planes, and by a skilful co-ordination into an harmonious whole. ¶ This bronze is said to have been found at Grumentum, in Lucania, a city which, as its name and its geographical position show, was never a Greek colony, though latterly a town of some importance. Probably it found its way there in the course of Corinthian traffic: the long-bodied horse, the unusual subject of a helmeted horseman, the treatment of mane and tail, are all characteristic rather of the Corinthian art of the sixth century ~B.C.~; and we know how active the Corinthian colonists were at that period in south Italy. ¶ The same characteristic treatment is seen in the splendid bronze head from Chatsworth (No. 8). It is an Apollo rather over life size, belonging to that interesting transitional stage which immediately precedes the Parthenon. In this case, however, the archaism is partly conscious; the artist realizes the maxim _peu de moyens, beaucoup d’effet_, and uses it to advantage. The type chosen is that of a strong virile athlete, with hair still long, but just budding into manhood, the Βούπαις (‘bully boy’), as Furtwängler points out, of an epigram on a contemporary statue of him by Onatas. What a contrast this to the soft and dreamy Sauroktonos of the succeeding century: with its almost architectural symmetry, its vigorous subordination of all search for detail to general effect, and its mathematical balance of large lines and large planes, it seems to stand as a visible protest against weakness and effeminacy. As Emerson puts it, this one head might be the indemnification for populations of pygmies or weaklings. The step from this to the Parthenon is short in point of years, but is artistically an interval which is strongly defined, for within its limit Greek sculpture has entered into its birthright. This stage is nobly represented in the exhibition by the fragment from a slab of the north frieze of the Parthenon, reproduced in Plate I. Broken away probably at the time of the Venetian bombardment, it seems to have been acquired in Athens by Stuart, who sent it to Smyrna; a few years ago it was dug up beside a rockery in a garden in Essex; what its movements were between Smyrna and Essex is matter for conjecture. A former owner of the Essex property was a Mr. Astle, who was a trustee of the British Museum, and may be supposed to have had an interest in antiquities: _habent sua fata_, these flotsam relics of antiquity: this is not the only marble in the exhibition which has been excavated on English soil. The head (No. 24), which early in the seventeenth century belonged to the famous Arundel collection, was recently dug up by a navvy in London close to the Temple, on the site that was once part of the Arundel house garden. ¶ The surface of the Parthenon fragment has suffered, of course, but not so grievously as might be expected. It gives the head of one of the mounted knights of the north frieze, and the horse’s head of the figure immediately following him. The youth is from northern Greece, probably from one of the Thracian colonies of Athens, as his Thracian headdress of foxskin (the _alopeke_) shows. That his horse is in movement even the fragment makes clear by the light tresses of hair blown backward beneath his cap, of which the heavy tail is itself curved outward by the motion; but his eyes are intently set on his forward path, and the firm and straight yet supple poise of neck and torso bespeak his ‘magic horsemanship.’ The figure behind him (preserved in the British Museum), a squadron commander or marshal, turns partly round in his seat, checking his horse, apparently to give an order to his section; with the suddenness of the action the horse’s mouth is wrenched open and his head thrown back, the plaited forelock swings upward, and every muscle is tense; the motive is a subtle variation on the theme represented by the splendid horse’s head of Selene or Night in the eastern pediment, but with this principal difference, that while this horse is answering to its rider’s curb, the Selene horse is probably starting back of its own accord, in alarm at taking the downward plunge. Now that this beautiful fragment has found its way to London, is it too much to hope that it may make one more journey--and that its last--to Bloomsbury, and rejoin the slab to which it fits?

SMALL BRONZES: HANDLE OF AMPHORA BELONGING TO MR. WYNDHAM COOK; MASK OF SEA DEITY BELONGING TO MR. GEORGE SALTING; PLAQUE BELONGING TO MR. H WALLIS

APHRODITE WITH TORCH, BELONGING TO MR. J. E. TAYLOR

SICK MAN, BELONGING TO MR. WYNDHAM COOK

SEILENOS CROUCHING, BELONGING TO MR. J. E. TAYLOR

NUDE APHRODITE, BELONGING TO MR. CHARLES LOESER]

REPOUSSÉ MIRROR-COVER; IN THE COLLECTION OF MR. J. E. TAYLOR]

From Pheidias it is natural to turn to that other sculptor who shared with him the glory of the latter part of the fifth century. Polykleitos, the leader of the Argive school, did for the physical ideal what Pheidias had done for the religious. His earliest recorded work, the statue of a boy-boxer crowning himself with a wreath, set up at Olympia about 440 ~B.C.~, has been identified in four different replicas, of which one is the head belonging to Sir Edgar Vincent (No. 45), shown on Plate III. The statue-base itself was found at Olympia in 1877, still bearing its dedicatory inscription, and with marks showing that the figure was of bronze. From a marble copy to a bronze original, and that of an artist whose bronze technique was by many considered pre-eminent in antiquity, is a far cry, but even in this head we may see some faint reflection of the genius of Polykleitos. The curved surfaces definitely meet and intersect instead of merging almost insensibly into one another, as happens in marble work. In this respect an admirable contrast is offered by the famous head of Aphrodite, belonging to Lord Leconfield, on Plate II. This head, which is in the catalogue (No. 22) boldly described as ‘an original by Praxiteles,’ in acceptation of a suggestion originally due to Payne Knight, and later adopted by Furtwängler, is undoubtedly the most beautiful Aphrodite head in this artist’s style which has come down to us. A comparison of it with that of the Olympian Hermes and with the copies of the Knidian Aphrodite makes this identification at least highly probable. The hair is apparently roughly finished and almost sketchy, but offers an admirable contrast to the highly polished surface of the flesh, and even without the colour which certainly once covered it is magically successful in its rendering of texture. The high triangular forehead-space, which gives distinction to the type and value to the setting of the eyes, is almost identical with the forehead of the Knidian Aphrodite, and also that of the Knidian Demeter, a statue certainly under strong Praxitelean influence: the slight projection over the brows, the so-called ‘bar of Michael Angelo,’ which is so marked a feature in the Hermes, is introduced here with extraordinary delicacy of effect. It is no wonder that Lucian singled out for praise in the Aphrodite of Praxiteles ‘the beautiful line of her forehead and brow, and her melting eye, full of joy and of pleasure.’ The eyes indeed are especially characteristic; their narrow opening in proportion to the length (_yeux bridés_), the slight projection of the lower lid, which gives an indescribable softness to the shadow beneath it, the almost imperceptible transition at the outer corner both of eye and mouth, are all traits which belong to Praxiteles alone. The oval contour is skilfully redeemed from formality by the dimple in the chin, just as the columnar neck is softened by the soft fold midway. For beneath all the refinement, which might easily become voluptuous, there is withal a physical dignity of form which bespeaks the goddess, ‘che muove il sole e l’ altre stelle.’ The artist ‘keeps the two vases, one of aether and one of pigment, at his side, and invariably uses both.’ ¶ In the presence of this masterpiece it is difficult to share the admiration which the catalogue bestows on the Head of a Girl from Chios (No. 44). The intention of the sculptor was obviously to reproduce a Praxitelean type; but whatever this head may once have been, the entire surface has been so rubbed down that it now looks like a model in partly melted loaf sugar. Under these circumstances any close study of the details is fruitless, but the characteristic features, especially the mouth, are so weakly conceived that it probably looks as pretty now, half hidden under a ‘baldacchino,’ as ever it did; its prettiness indeed seems to be its highest claim to notice.[84] ¶ The head belonging to Mr. Claude Ponsonby on Plate III has lately been claimed as Lysippean by M. Salomon Reinach. Unfortunately we know very little of the characteristic treatment of the features by Lysippos; we know that he was essentially a worker in bronze, that he introduced a more natural treatment of the hair and an animation of facial expression, and that this last qualification naturally led him into portraiture. The general outline of the eye cavities, and the form and modelling of the forehead, closely resemble those of the Alexander portrait in the British Museum; and the rendering of the hair has a certain naturalism which is also found in the Alexander: moreover there is a tragic intensity in the almost haggard eyes and parted lips which, together with the loosened tresses and the drapery covering the back of the head, certainly mark the head as the portrait of a mourning woman. Further than this perhaps we cannot go; but it is worth noting that Tatian mentions the portrait of a woman (the Praxilla) by Lysippos, which we may presume to have been something like this. Michaelis suggests that it may have belonged to ‘the statue of a mourning woman which may have served as the decoration of some sepulchral monument.’ This is probably not far from the truth; at any rate the head seems to stand midway between the conventionalized portraits of the Athenian stelae and the more realistic portraiture of the Hellenistic age, well represented in the exhibition by the busts of Menander (No. 26) and the presumed Hipponax (No. 27). ¶ The _genre_ side of Hellenistic art is well represented in the exhibition by the large bronze statuette of Eros, a dexterous figure of a winged laughing boy rushing forward through space with outspread wings and right foot just touching the ground; Mrs. Strong justly points to the motive as an ultimate evolution from that of the Nike of Samothrace, wherein the weight of the body seems partly supported by the foot and partly by the spread wings, which serve as a counterpoise to the structure. It is quite in consonance with Hellenistic sentiment that the love-god should be shown as the victor in the sacred torch race, the Lampadephoria --Eros the unconquerable, the ἀνίκατος μάχαν, invades the palaestra and beats the athlete at his own game. ¶ When I first saw this charming figure (it was in a room at the Charing Cross Hotel, on his first arrival here) the then owner told me the circumstances of his discovery. Not far south of Vesuvius the river Sirmio finds its way to the sea; at a spot on the Pompeii side which probably in antiquity marked a ferry or ford, this statuette with other things was excavated. The presumption is that the hapless owner, fleeing from the eruption with his treasure under his arm, was overtaken here, possibly while waiting for the ferry-boat. It is a tragic little history, all the more touching somehow on account of the subject which the figure represents. ¶ In its collection of smaller bronzes the exhibition is particularly rich. A small selection is here given in Plate IV. The archaic period is represented by the little crouching or, more probably, dancing Seilenos (No. 34), the wild animalistic sprite of the woods, half bearded man and half horse, as Ionic art depicted him; by the amphora handle (No. 92) in the form of a youth bent backwards below two panthers which rested on the lip of the vase; and by the charming little Aphrodite (No. 20) whose formal drapery and pose, combined with a refinement of delicate modelling, are together characteristic of the springtime of Greek art. With her may be contrasted the tiny nude Aphrodite (No. 11) to which an ancient admirer has presented a necklace, bracelet, and anklet in gold, probably, as Mrs. Strong suggest, an adaptation of a famous statue by Praxiteles. ¶ On Plate V is a fine example of the repoussé mirror-covers which seem to have belonged exclusively to the fourth and third centuries ~B.C.~ The nearly full-grown Eros with long wings is characteristic rather of the earlier stage; otherwise the subject, in which he assists a lady or his mother at her toilet, is a favourite one for this class of representation. An unusual form of mirror support is Mr. Wallis’s plaque (No. 62), which has the design cut out _à jour_, as beautiful in its pale blue patina as it is in the dexterous adaptation of the composition to the space which it has to fill. The owner suggests that the reclining winged boy is Hypnos rather than Eros; if so, it is an unusual rendering of the god of sleep.

(_a_) (_b_) (_c_) (_d_) (_e_)

(_a_) CARYATID FIGURE; (_b_) WOMAN LEANING ON PEDESTAL, BELONGING TO MR. J. E. TAYLOR; (_c_) DOLL, BELONGING TO MRS. MITCHELL; (_d_) WOMAN WITH A FAN, BELONGING TO MR. JAMES KNOWLES; (_e_) THE YOUNG DIONYSOS, BELONGING TO MR. J. E. TAYLOR

TERRACOTTAS]

KRATER BELONGING TO HARROW SCHOOL

(_a_) (_b_)

(_a_) KYLIX SIGNED BY TLESON, AND (_b_) PLATE SIGNED BY EPIKTETOS; IN THE COLLECTION OF THE MARQUESS OF NORTHAMPTON]

The Alexandrine period is represented on Plate IV by Mr. Salting’s fine mask of a sea deity (No. 113) with inlaid eyes and marine emblems skilfully worked in, suggestive of the grotesque masks of Pompeian and cinquecento Italian art; and by Mr. Wyndham Cook’s puzzling seated statuette of an emaciated man (No. 50). This figure has usually been described as a pathological study, a votive offering to Asklepios from a sick person. The careful workmanship, however, and the fact that it is inscribed with the name of the personage represented seem to militate against this view; moreover the figure does not seem to represent actual suffering so much as austerity. The excessive emaciation, the pose, and the fixed abstracted expression appear to me to indicate rather ecstasy, the ἔκστασις of the mystic, the Pythagorean anchorite who, like the Brahmin, has learnt by mortification of the flesh to project his soul into the unseen. We know the interest that Alexander took in the Indian _yogins_, and that he had intended to bring one of them, Kalanos, back with him to Greece. It is not improbable that other Greeks may have taken up the idea: and it is significant that this bronze was found at Alexander’s own city of Pella and bears a Macedonian name. If this be so, it adds an extraordinary and unique interest to the little bronze. ¶ The group of terracotta statuettes on Plate VI are chosen as characteristic types of different forms of this charming art. The little doll (No. 24) made, perhaps, in imitation of a Persephone figure, but intended to have movable limbs, and the Caryatid figure (No. 26) belong to the fifth century; the latter is remarkable for its strongly Pheidian character of type and drapery, and is certainly of Attic work nearly contemporary with the Parthenon. The young Dionysos (No. 7) and the two girls (Nos. 3 and 10) are good instances of the peculiarly modern sentiment which pervaded the art as well as the literature of the Hellenistic age. These figures are the bric-à-brac of antiquity; the far-away ancestors of Dresden, and Saxe, and Watteau, with some of their coquetry and none of their artificiality. ¶ Before leaving the terracottas it is necessary to mention the large head of Zeus (No. 46) which has been added since the exhibition opened; Professor Furtwängler and Mrs. Strong consider this head to be ‘a Greek work of the great period of Pheidias.’ It is particularly unpleasant to me to find myself differing entirely from their view; after close and repeated examination I am bound to say that it seems to me to belong to a well-known class of terracottas which are now generally agreed to be of modern origin. ¶ Of the collection of vases there is only space here to include three typical specimens (Plate VII); these are the kylix signed by the artist Tleson (No. 16), with a charming drawing of two goats rearing up and butting one another above a floral ornament; a good example of the skill with which the Greek artist pressed into his service as pure decoration a common scene of daily life; the plate (No. 79), signed by Epiktetos, with its humorous ride-a-cock-horse subject, the precursor of the Parthenon horseman riding on his own fighting-cock; and the krater from Harrow School (No. 44), with its masterly composition of the hero Kaineus overwhelmed by the Centaurs. In its strong firm line, and spirited composition, which is yet kept in subordination to the decorative effect of the vase as a whole, this work stands out instinct with the combination of strength and self-control which are the leading characteristics of the best works of Hellenic art. ¶ I have already occupied so much space that the very important series of engraved gems and coins must remain almost unnoticed, and this is a pity because outside the great museums we are not likely ever to see such a series again assembled. The beautiful drawings of Greece by Cockerell, the wandering artist-scholar, one of the great builders of English artistic repute in the Levant, these too must be left with a bare mention. But this fact in itself speaks for the high standard attained by the exhibition, on which Mrs. Strong and the club are much to be congratulated.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

~Pintoricchio: His Life, Work, and Time.~ By Corrado Ricci.
Translated by Florence Simmons. William Heinemann, 1902.

The publication by Mr. Heinemann of a large, costly, and elaborately illustrated book upon Pintoricchio is evidence that this long-neglected Umbrian painter is growing in popularity. Effaced for more than two and a half centuries by the dazzling radiance of his younger contemporary’s fame, Pintoricchio’s individuality, first appreciated by Rumohr, began clearly to stand out again only when Morelli demonstrated that he was the author of two frescoes in the Sixtine chapel. Even then he borrowed his lustre from working where Michelangelo left his masterpieces, and from having, as Morelli pointed out, influenced Raphael. It remained for the anarchical taste of recent years to exalt him into an important ‘Master’ on his own account. ¶ The occasion was offered by the reopening in 1897 of the Borgia apartments, which he decorated; for although the popes may have lost their power to immortalize themselves by feats of statesmanship, the ambition to signalize their pontificates by the patronage of art appears not wholly to have died out. Leo XIII in restoring and opening to the public the magnificent suite of rooms where, in the service of Alexander VI, Pintoricchio toiled to make a monument to his patron, was no less the maker of an artistic reputation than his Renaissance predecessors--with the significant difference, however, that he conferred a posthumous fame, a _succès d’archéologie_, instead of the renown that came from the commission to rebuild and decorate that city of cities which has now passed from under the papal sway. ¶ But, unless the lay world had been independently attuned to Pintoricchio’s art, papal patronage would not have carried his renown far. But modern art is just at a point where Pintoricchio is really more sympathetic than the masters of the great style, for in the break-up of artistic tradition and the decline of classical taste the decorator of to-day is thrown back upon parading the mere materials of his art, upon bright colour and relief, upon sumptuousness, and the startling and attractive. He has, in fact, dedicated himself to ornamentation--for we must not debase the word decoration! And of ornamentation, of the sumptuous, the attractive, the gay and the ingenious, Pintoricchio was a master. The gorgeousness of the Borgia apartments delude even critics who ought to distinguish more subtly, into praising them as art. It is so difficult to be stern with the attractive! ¶ And so Pintoricchio, becoming popular, needed a handsome book to reveal him further to his English admirers; and for them, being English, a volume of mere illustrations, like the French tome of M. Boyer d’Agen, did not suffice. There must be the flavour of pedantry, of Morellianism, of research into origins, without omitting the necessary historical setting. And so the publisher commissioned the valiant Dr. Ricci, head of the great gallery of the Brera, to prepare such a work, knowing well that he could not entrust it to more skilful and conscientious hands. But, contrary to the Biblical story, instead of blessing Israel the emissary of Balak was unable to keep his tongue from curses! Dr. Ricci’s taste was too cultivated, his experience of great art too profound, to permit him to raise the chosen painter to the altar prepared for him, and the publisher was thus constrained to write a short ‘Note’ explaining that, in spite of what the author says, Pintoricchio really _is_ a great artist, standing only just below ‘the three or four supreme masters’--close, that is to say, to Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Giorgione! Turning, however, to Dr. Ricci’s estimate, we find it absolutely sane and just:--‘Pintoricchio ... was more attracted by the external splendours of art than by its sentiment ... is wholly destitute of passion ... and shows but little research in the matter of expression.’ And instead of joining in the unreserved praise accorded to him in the publisher’s ‘Note’ as a ‘master of decoration,’ he, on the contrary, criticizes his artist’s gaudiness and his lack of composition, and utters a protest, particularly welcome at the present moment, against the use of raised ornament in decorative painting. Indeed, while Morelli’s account of Pintoricchio leaves the reader with a general sense that he was to be preferred to his master Perugino, Dr. Ricci nowhere loses his sense of proportion, nowhere unduly exalts the subject of his work, and the resulting impression of his long book is to place Pintoricchio in a just relation to the artists of his time: attractive, sweet, agreeable, ‘exuberant and instinctively elegant,’ but almost never entering into rivalry with any master who possessed, in however small a degree, any of the specifically artistic qualities. His treatment, indeed, of Pintoricchio’s greatest work, the frescoes of the cathedral library of Siena, scarcely does justice to the real artistic merits of the decorative scheme. As these works so far surpass the frescoes of the Borgia apartments, the impression they give of ‘gaiety and well-being,’ which Dr. Ricci barely touches on, might well have been amplified. But one is grateful to him for pronouncing himself so clearly against the current notion that the young Raphael assisted Pintoricchio in these frescoes, instead of mystifying us with the usual non-committal generalities on this subject; and also for ranging himself so openly with Morelli and against Signor Venturi in refusing the absurd ascription of Gentile Bellini’s drawings to Pintoricchio. He calls attention to a phrase in Gentile’s will which speaks of drawings of his in Rome, thus amply accounting for the introduction of figures similar to those in Gentile’s sketches into the Roman frescoes of the Umbrian painter so notoriously given to pilfering. ¶ Singularly full and complete is Dr. Ricci’s list of Pintoricchio’s works; indeed, the fault lies just in this! While we thank him for sparing no pains to look up every possible work of his painter, we must reproach him with being too liberal in questions of authenticity. It is particularly among what Dr. Ricci considers the early works that we find him too generous. It is in my opinion quite impossible that Pintoricchio should have executed the Presentation at Torre d’ Andrea, which shows so many of the characteristics of that (deservedly) little known painter, Antonio da Viterbo[85], while the copy at Siena of the central figures in the great ancona of 1498 at Perugia cannot of course be, as he supposes, an _early_ work, and seems to me too crude and flaccid to be by him at any period of his career. The early Madonna in the Bufalini collection at Città di Castello I cannot clearly remember, but the ruined Madonna with the infant John in the _duomo_ of that town could certainly never have been touched by Pintoricchio’s own hand, and Lord Crawford’s Madonna and Angels at Wigan is too cold and hard for him, and indeed seems to be the work of some Romagnol imitator of Pintoricchio, whose youthful hand was trained under the benumbing influence of Palmezzano. ¶ I regret that I cannot quite follow our author in his chronology of Pintoricchio’s works, for the clear arrangement of which at the end of his book he nevertheless earns our gratitude. The assumption that the Ara Coeli frescoes were painted after those in the Sixtine chapel seems to me to confuse Dr. Ricci’s view of the chronology from the start. To my eyes they are clearly earlier works, although I know that Morelli here for once agreed with Crowe and Cavalcaselle, and dated them as late as 1496. But the whole question is by no means clear, and I confess to being unable to discover in Dr. Ricci’s book the exact criteria he uses to determine the date of a particular work. The Sienese _tondo_ which he calls early seems to me definitely to belong to the period after 1500, and the two Madonnas at Spello do not convince me that they are early, or even that they are of the same date. Dr. Ricci professes himself not quite convinced of the adequacy of internal evidence; nevertheless, like all unbelievers, he constantly takes refuge in it, but not consistently, and it is this uncertainty of method which, perhaps more than anything else, prevents our following his conclusions with intelligent sympathy. And this one regrets the more, because with the broad lines of his book, and, above all, with his estimate of Pintoricchio, one has such hearty sympathy. ¶ A word of protest must be added about the strange translation and about certain carelessness apparent in the book-making. ‘Coetanean’ is an odd word to meet on the first page, and surely Dr. Ricci never spoke of the ‘coast of Subasio’! ‘S. Bernardine,’ or, worse still, ‘San Bernardine,’ is not a happy way of anglicizing the name of the Sienese saint, nor is ‘Cybo’ an improvement upon the usual form. ‘Enea’ recurs in an irritating manner, where every cultivated English person expects Aeneas; for, since Bishop Creighton’s sympathetic account, ‘Aeneas Silvius,’ whether as humanist or pope, has become a familiar name. Just here, by the way, I may express my surprise that among Dr. Ricci’s historical references for Pope Alexander VI (p. 87) he did not place Creighton’s account, the best in English, or perhaps in any language. ¶ The subject of the first coloured plate is misnamed ‘S. Bernardino,’ although in the text correctly described as St. Louis of Toulouse. And this leads me to protest against cheap colour reproductions of this kind. The feeblest, young-lady water-colour sketch after Pintoricchio could not resemble him less than these coarse, smeared, falsely-tinted reproductions. They are worse than useless; they are hideously misleading. The other illustrations of the book, however, are copious and accurate, and we cannot be too grateful for the reproduction of so many of the pictures in private collections, photographs of which it is often almost impossible for the student to procure.

M. L.

~Ancient Coffers and Cupboards.~ By Fred Roe. Methuen & Co.

Mr. Fred Roe’s book of ancient coffers and cupboards must surely be the first of many such monographs. To-day the process block has made it possible to illustrate with ease the most elaborate details of the work of the ancient craftsmen, and within the covers of a book we may bear home our museum to be pored over at leisure. And here we have the chosen pieces of many museums, many churches, and many collectors’ hoards, in a form which makes them as useful to the new craftsmen as to the antiquary. It is true that Mr. Roe has not given us process work alone. Although such illustrations as those of the famous chest of the twelve knights at the Cluny and the St. George chest at South Kensington leave nothing to be desired, Mr. Roe does not allow it to be forgotten that he can use a pencil with effect. His drawings, although they have nothing of the tight and \T\-squared manner familiar in architects’ drawings of old pieces, yet give a pleasant impression of truth and trustworthiness, and err not on the side of that dangerous cleverness which so often persuaded that great man M. Viollet le Duc to translate ornament and detail from every scratch and stain of his model. With a volume of the _Mobilier Français_ at hand Mr. Roe may be at issue with the Frenchman on a definite point. Here we have the great _armoire_ of Noyon as presented spick and span in the coloured drawing of M. Viollet le Duc, and here we have it also from the pencil of Mr. Roe. To our mind Mr. Roe seems the more trustworthy interpreter, but one or other is at fault. On the first of the eight doors of the _armoire_ Mr. Roe gives us a figure of the Virgin in a sweeping robe, holding the Child in her arms. M. Viollet le Duc, with abundant detail, gives us the same door with a bare-legged St. John Baptist in his camel’s hair, supporting in his arms a lamb. ¶ It is no disparagement to Mr. Roe’s written commentary to say that the early history of the chest is told clearly enough by his well-arranged series of drawings and photographs. We owe him thanks that he has avoided the temptation which would persuade the writer upon any side of English archaeology to gallop through his subject from Stonehenge to the great exhibition within the covers of a single book. Here we have the history of the mediaeval chest, from the thirteenth-century examples with which we must perforce begin, to the end of the Gothic work in the fifteen hundreds. There Mr. Roe stays, and for the story of the Elizabeth and seventeenth-century chests, which are still in such plenty amongst us, we may wait in good content for Mr. Roe’s future work. ¶ To those who are familiar with inventories, and wills, and such-like documents of the intimate life of our ancestors, the picture of the ancient English home rises up furnished with a bed, a brass pot, and a chest; for these good things came ever foremost amongst the few household goods of folk of the middling sort. It would be difficult to say where the collector might lay his hand nowadays upon the woodwork of a mediaeval bed; the brass pots have for the most part served their day and gone back to the foundry furnace; but the oaken chest remains here and there in the countryside for a most curious and venerable relic. ¶ We can hardly doubt that the familiar chest was from the beginning cunningly decorated; but accurate knowledge begins with the thirteenth century, with vast fronts of one or more broad beams set longways between two broad uprights. For ornament we have suggestions of arch-work simply indicated with chiselled lines and roundels of tracery. The ends are solidly framed with massive timbers. Of painted chests a notable example remains at Newport in Essex, and this Mr. Roe shows us in its colours. The inside of the lid when upreared shows like a painted reredos with a rood, the Virgin and St. John, and St. Peter and St. Paul, each within a painted archway of reds and greens. Twelve shields appear upon the chest, but on these remains no trace of the painted bearings which would have told us the story of the piece. Below the twelve shields, fessewise across the front of the chest runs a most singular ornament, a broad band of open tracery cast in pewter. ¶ The thirteenth century closes with the richly ornamented chest-fronts which endure for the rest of the medieval period. The long chest in Saltwood church is assigned by Mr. Roe to the century-end. The front is covered with tracery work with deep mullions, the broad uprights at the ends being filled with winged dragons in square panels. To this century-end belongs also that most famous and glorious chest which is the pride of the Musée Cluny, along whose mullioned front stand twelve knights with shields and ailettes of their arms; and here again we feel that, although the lighting of Mr. Roe’s photograph was unfortunate, our modern illustrations must take the place of Viollet le Duc’s too highly wrought drawings. ¶ Throughout the fourteenth century we find in England the traditional window tracery along the chest front, and the dragons or beasts in squared compartments of the broad uprights. From Hultoft, in Lincolnshire, we have in a late fourteenth-century chest an early example of a panelled and buttressed piece, in which pierced and cut-out tracery has been applied to a flush front. A lid painted inside with shields of arms belongs to a chest formerly in the Chancery court of Durham, and, apart from its beauty, claims our interest by the fact that the first shield is that of the Aungerviles, of whom came Richard of Bury, bishop of Durham, and author of the ‘Philobiblon,’ one of those few mediaeval books which yet find readers. Concerning this shield, we may remark that Mr. Roe’s ‘Gules, a cinquefoil _or_ (or argent) ermine pierced (of the field?)’ is not a very lucid piece of blazonry. Between the shields a dragon meets with a centaur-like figure in yellow hood and red kilt ‘running a tilt,’ as Mr. Roe somewhat loosely phrases it, but really playing with the sword and buckler. Forty-five years ago this chest was still in the Chancery court; if we ask why it is now in the hands of an ‘eminent antiquary,’ we should have for answer a familiar story of the ignorance and wanton folly of our half-civilized English official classes. A sad side of Mr. Roe’s narrative is the recurrent exclamation at the fact that a church chest, perfect in the days of Parker, Cotman, or Shaw, is now staved in, or clumsily restored. This in such cases where the chest has been suffered to remain. The Wittersham chest does not seem to have stayed at Wittersham long after its beauties had been published to the world in a ‘Dictionary of Architecture,’ and the fact that the nameless connoisseur who removed it took with him the ancient parish stocks as well leaves Wittersham without the means of dealing with the offence of those who should have been its custodians. Parker engraves a famous chest at Guestling, of which but one panel remained when the present rector came to Guestling, and even this poor relic has gone the way of the rest. It would be well if the thief were the one enemy of such treasures--in that case the nation might come to its own some day; but the church stove, even in our own time, has crackled with fuel for the loss of which our descendants will curse their pig-hearted ancestry. ¶ Of the most interesting type, which Mr. Roe, who shuns the English word chest, is pleased to call a ‘tilting coffer,’ we are afforded a valuable set of pictures. It is good to see that perhaps the finest panel of St. George and his dragon and Dame Cleodolinde is in our own national collection at South Kensington. The barbarously fine chest at Ypres will stand to all who know it for a familiar example. Mr. Roe, being possessed with the idea that these figured chests are English in design and working, is persuaded that the Ypres chest may have been abandoned by the English army which sieged Ypres in 1383; but we may confess that we find no notably English feeling in this chest or its fellows. ¶ To follow the story of the gothic chest to its running to seed in the sixteenth century were to encroach upon the office of Mr. Roe’s excellent monograph. Mr. Roe’s work is clear and to the point. We feel that he has not only drawn and photographed, but handled and rummaged the chests of which he tells us. He is cunning in hinges and locks, and forgeries of respectable standing and the mis-datings of long tradition do not entangle him. It may perhaps be said of his terminology that he attaches too definite and settled a meaning to the words which he chooses to apply to various forms of the objects of his study. The definition of a coffer as ‘a box of great strength for the keeping and transport of weighty articles, having its front formed by a single panel,’ as distinct from a hutch, ‘a household coffer of a rough description,’ strikes us as too assured and exact. A more serious blemish arises from Mr. Roe’s apparent belief that from the character of the work upon a chest one may easily guess whether its first home were in church or hall. The familiar window tracery of many chest-fronts spells for him plainly church or monastery. By the same token Mr. Roe would have us set down for a churchman every fourteenth-century man who wore ‘Poules windowes’ cut in his shoe leather, and the knights and dragons of many miserere-seats would show him that the first place of their setting-up was in the castle hall. Another odd fancy of Mr. Roe’s persuades him that the ‘civil wars,’ apparently those of the king and commonwealth, account for the loss of many pieces of English gothic furniture. Such a fancy does not argue an intimate knowledge of the history of the seventeenth-century struggles, than which no wars have been waged with less sacking and burning; and Mr. Roe, as his last words show, knows full well that the fellest enemies of our mediaeval relics flourished in the nineteenth century in the close and the rectory, sat at high tables of old foundations, and even came to good credit as scholars and antiquaries. There are honoured names amongst us to-day whose bearers have done deeds of destruction to which Merciful Strickalthrow or Corporal Humgudgeon would not have set their hands.

O. B.

~A Guide to Siena: History and Art.~ By William Heywood and Lucy
Olcott. Enrico Torrini, Siena, 1903.

Certainly it never rains but it pours. Siena, so long without any adequate guide to her intensely interesting history and art, has suddenly broken out into quite a literature to herself. Scarcely has the controversy over the respective merits, or the reverse, of Professor Langton Douglas’s ‘History’ and Mr. Gardner’s ‘Story’ ceased to rouse our interest before a third guide appears in the field, which to our mind is infinitely the best of the three. Less pretentious and less costly, it contains in its smaller compass a mass of information in a readable form that is within the comprehension of the dullest, and yet worthy of the careful perusal of the most critical. Both Mr. Heywood and Miss Olcott live in and love Siena, so that their several parts are not only written _con amore_, but on carefully studied data. The history is written with a swing that carries one along, and yet leaves one at the end with a clear idea of what Siena was at her best. Mr. Heywood’s charm of style--as might be expected from his former work--is very great. It is easier, more lucid, and, without being any the less expressive or forcible, is wholly free from the few blemishes that might be objected to in his previous essays. No one understands better than he the complications and kaleidoscopic changes that occurred with so much abruptness in the government of the republic. Therefore we have the more occasion to be grateful to him for having set the main facts of her story before us, unhampered by superfluous digressions and comments. Once only he pauses to give eloquent expression to his admiration for that much-misunderstood and much-abused body, the _Nove_, whose rule (1292-1355) was the longest and most prosperous of all the various combinations that held sway in Siena. They are usually represented as ruthless tyrants, and generally detested and hateful; whereas there can be no question that their firm, autocratic rule, if severe and sometimes cruel, held in check alike arrogant noble and turbulent demagogue, and that under their guidance Siena reached the highest point of her prosperity, internal and external. At home flourished the arts of peace as they never did again, and abroad her fame was European, her merchants were respected, and her produce in demand throughout the civilized world. With the fall of the _Nove_ fell Siena. Their hold over the reins of government lasted sixty-three years;--no other body again held them so long until she finally sank into the position of a subject city. Mr. Heywood’s notices as to the saints and writers of Siena are all too brief, and we would like to hear more from him about them, but space clearly forbids: and, as he points out, readers may turn to his other works for much that is perforce left unrelated here. We can only regret one note (on p. 68), which we feel must have been inadvertent on his part, and certain expressions in the bibliographical notice, to which we refer presently. ¶ Miss Olcott’s section, being, we believe, her first literary work, deserves an unusually high meed of praise. One may not always agree with her attributions, and her judgement on painters that she does not like is severe and not always quite just;--for example, her attitude towards Sodoma and Beccafumi, respectively, will not be endorsed by all her readers;--still, she has so evidently studied her subject with thoroughness and care, working under the best direction, and weighing her facts with so much patience and real insight, that one can scarcely praise this first essay of hers too highly. Her attitude towards the native Sienese artists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is so truly devotional that, even if it blinds her to the beauties and merits of later workers, it disarms severe criticism. She points out very truly--and in this respect she follows the same line as Mr. Heywood in his history--that the art of Siena never rose again after the middle of the fourteenth century (_i.e._, contemporarily with the fall of the _Nove_) to the point that it then attained. The various foreign influences that eventually came into the state wrought fine achievements, but native talent was never again what it had been in the days of Duccio, Simone Martini, and their immediate successors. It is, however, true that in the following century very great artists did arise, in whose praise the authoress is specially eloquent. That she has great reason, the lovely works of such men as Matteo di Giovanni, Neroccio di Landi, Lorenzo di Pietro (Vecchietta), and Giovanni di Stefano (Sassetta) amply testify to those who have eyes to see. To Neroccio and Vecchietta, moreover, she draws further notice, since, like so many artists of their day, they were both sculptors and painters, and obtained more than ordinary success in either of the greater arts. Thus panel, bronze, and marble, when touched by them, produce effects of exquisite charm in gracious line and lovely expression that are unsurpassed and unsurpassable. We feel no doubt that to walk through the city in Miss Olcott’s company will be a pleasure, which student and traveller cannot fail to appreciate. That small mistakes as to fact have occasionally crept in was of course unavoidable; but for practical purposes they are unimportant. She has managed to avoid the dullness of a mere record of facts, though her notes are full of practically useful side-information; while, on the other hand, she has not fallen into that temptation to dogmatize, so difficult to escape from when dealing with a specialized school of painting like that of Siena. ¶ Student and traveller alike have much reason to be grateful for the work; mainly on account of its directness and simplicity; though also for the valuable footnotes supplied by both authors. The bibliographical lists are of great interest, but we cannot refrain from remarking that the notice as to books to be avoided is, to say the least of it, in doubtful taste. We understand the irritation caused by such books as those specified to writers who have studied the subject carefully, and we recognize fully the incalculable mischief done by the inaccuracies of the modern catchpenny magazine contributor; but we cannot but think so long and virulent an attack, however justly deserved, quite unsuitable within the pages of a guide book. We suggest that in a future edition these pages might be omitted, as being the only serious blemish to a book on which authors and publisher may be very heartily congratulated.

R. H. H. C.

~Yacoub Artin Pasha: Contribution à l’Étude du Blason en Orient.~
Londres (B. Quaritch), 1902.

The prospectus issued by the publisher of this work contained the extraordinary statement that ‘E. T. Rogers Bey, in his contributions to the subject, established beyond doubt that coats of arms and armorial bearings were introduced into Europe by the crusaders in imitation of the practice of the eastern princes whom they had encountered in the field of battle.’ It would surprise no one acquainted with the vexed question of heraldic ‘origins’ to know that he did nothing of the kind. What he did advance was that ‘... les avis sont partagés sur la question de savoir si les Croisés ont pulsé en Orient les notions de cet art [blazon] ou s’il est exclusivement d’origine européenne. Les arguments en faveur de son origine orientale me paraissent les mieux fondés, car ils sont soutenus par des données historiques. Un esprit militaire et même chevaleresque existait parmi les Musulmans de l’Arabie, de la Syrie et de l’Égypte, longtemps avant la formation de nos ordres de templiers et de chevaliers; et il est fort probable que cet esprit guerrier s’est communiqué par l’entremise des Venitiens et des Génois et repandu peu à peu en Europe même avant la première croisade.’ We do not hesitate to say that beyond this string of theory there is nothing in the forty-nine pages of Rogers Bey’s ‘Le Blason chez les Princes Musulmans de l’Égypte et de la Syrie’ (Bulletin de l’Institut Égyptien, 1880) offering proof of the derivation of European armory from the east. All this we quote _in extenso_ because Artin Pasha’s work is, he states, to be regarded as the sequel to Rogers Bey’s memoir, and because, where he touches the origin of western heraldry, his remarks are likewise mere unfounded assertion. Neither does his knowledge of European arms appear to be of the most accurate order; he states that Louis IX of France was the first to adopt the fleur de lys, when in fact the seal of that monarch’s father, Louis VIII, bears a shield semé de lys, bearings which may be traced back to the mantle and shoes worn by Philip Augustus at his ‘sacre’ in 1179, similarly sown with fleurs de lys. Needless to say, the correctness of no theory concerning the origin of European blazon is demonstrable, and it is to be regretted that the author did not steer clear of it altogether. As an account of Moslem blazon and of the emblems found upon Arabic glass, pottery, sculpture, coins, metal-work and arms, Artin Pasha’s work, in spite of such blemishes, will be of great value to archaeologists and collectors. The author has been at pains to obtain as complete a series as possible of the strange insignia frequently figuring upon these works of art. His plan is to discuss the bearings such as the fleur de lys, lion, fish, eagle, cup, dice, horns, the so-called hieroglyphic signs, the sword and sabre, crescent, cross, dagger, separately, each with its history, and a catalogue of extant examples. Of these over three hundred are reproduced, many in colour, from Egypt and the continental and London museums. Unfortunately many are unidentified, and it seems to us that it would have increased the value of the book if approximate dates had been assigned to the objects decorated with such insignia as remain for the present in this category. The constitution of mameluke society, to which the majority of mediaeval armigerous Egyptians belonged, is the great obstacle to a systematic identification or study of their heraldry, if heraldry it can be called. The cases in which insignia are known to have been inherited are so few, says the author, that one cannot affirm that hereditary blazon generally existed in Egypt, though in the case of the emirs he concludes for the existence of transmission from father to son; admittance to the mameluke body was closed, apparently, to their legal offspring, and in the majority of cases their insignia denoted official or court rank and changed with it. ¶ Artin Pasha gives also a great deal of information concerning the emblems used by other oriental nations, though his arguments seem occasionally to bring within the net heraldic purely conventionalized animal or vegetable forms, attributing to much merely symbolical or ornamental material a character unwarranted by the strict significance of the term blazon.

A. V. ~de~ P.

~Jules Helbig. La Peinture au pays de Liége et sur les bords de la
Meuse.~ xiv and 510 pp., 30 phototypes, and numerous cuts. Liége,
1903. 12 by 8½ inches. 15s.