Chapter XIV: Part II (7)

----------------------+-------------------------------+---------------+
| CLASS III. | CLASS IV. |
| | |
| DIVISION | |
| | |
| A B | |
|Public |Private|Public |Private|Public |Private|
|Insti- |Owners |Insti- |Owners |Insti- |Owners |
|tutions| |tutions| |tutions| |
----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| | | | | | |
England:-- | | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
London | -- | 4 | 2 | -- | -- | 1 |
| | | | | | |
Universities:-- | | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
Oxford | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Cambridge | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Northern Counties:--| | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
Northumberland | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Durham | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Lancashire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Yorkshire | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Midland Counties:-- | | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
Lincolnshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Nottinghamshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Derbyshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Cheshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Shropshire | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Staffordshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- |
| | | | | | |
Leicestershire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Norfolk | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Cambridgeshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Northamptonshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Warwickshire | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Worcestershire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Gloucestershire | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Buckinghamshire | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Berkshire | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Southern Counties:--| | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
Sussex | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Hampshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Wiltshire | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Devonshire | 1 | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Cornwall | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
WALES (Crickhowell, | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- |
Newport) | | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
SCOTLAND (Glasgow, | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- |
Abernethy) | | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
IRELAND (Dublin) | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
CONTINENT:-- | | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
Germany (Berlin) | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Italy (Padua) | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
BRITISH COLONIES:-- | | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
Sydney | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| | | | | | |
Auckland | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- |
| | | | | | |
Capetown | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- |
| | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
UNITED STATES | -- | 4 | 1 | 1 | -- | 2 |
| | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
Untraced | -- | 1 | -- | -- | -- | 4 |
| | | | | | |
+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| 1 | 18 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 8 |
----------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

----------------------+-------------------------------+---------------
|
| TOTAL.
|
+-------------------------------+---------------
| |
|Public |Private| Distribution of Copies.
|Insti- |Owners |
|tutions| |
----------------------+-------+-------+-----------------------+------+
| | | |
England:-- | | | |
| | | |
London | 12 | 21 | London | 33
| | | |
Universities:-- | | | |
| | | |
Oxford | 4 | -- | } |
| | | } Universities | 7
Cambridge | 3 | -- | } |
| | | |
Northern Counties:--| | | |
| | | |
Northumberland | -- | 1 | } |
| | | } |
Durham | 1 | -- | } |
| | | } Northern Counties | 12
Lancashire | 3 | 4 | } |
| | | } |
Yorkshire | -- | 3 | } |
| | | |
Midland Counties:-- | | | |
| | | |
Lincolnshire | -- | 1 | } |
| | | } |
Nottinghamshire | -- | 2 | } |
| | | } |
Derbyshire | -- | 2 | } |
| | | } |
Cheshire | -- | 1 | } |
| | | } |
Shropshire | -- | 1 | } |
| | | } |
Staffordshire | -- | 1 | } |
| | | } |
Leicestershire | -- | 1 | } |
| | | } |
Norfolk | -- | 2 | } Midland Counties | 34
| | | } |
Cambridgeshire | -- | 2 | } |
| | | } |
Northamptonshire | -- | 4 | } |
| | | } |
Warwickshire | 4 | 2 | } |
| | | } |
Worcestershire | -- | 2 | } |
| | | } |
Gloucestershire | -- | 4 | } |
| | | } |
Buckinghamshire | 1 | 2 | } |
| | | } |
Berkshire | -- | 2 | } |
| | | |
Southern Counties:--| | | |
| | | |
Sussex | -- | 3 | } |
| | | } |
Hampshire | -- | 1 | } |
| | | } |
Wiltshire | -- | 1 | } Southern Counties | 9
| | | } |
Devonshire | 1 | 1 | } |
| | | } |
Cornwall | -- | 1 | } |
| | | +-----
| | | ENGLAND | 95
WALES (Crickhowell, | -- | 2 | Wales | 2
Newport) | | | |
| | | |
SCOTLAND (Glasgow, | 1 | 2 | Scotland | 3
Abernethy) | | | |
| | | |
IRELAND (Dublin) | 1 | -- | Ireland | 1
| | | +-----
| | | BRITISH ISLES | 101
CONTINENT:-- | | | |
| | | |
Germany (Berlin) | 1 | -- | } |
| | | } Continent | 2
Italy (Padua) | 1 | -- | } +-----
| | | EUROPE | 103
| | | |
BRITISH COLONIES:-- | | | |
| | | |
Sydney | 1 | -- | } |
| | | } |
Auckland | 1 | -- | } BRITISH COLONIES| 3
| | | } |
Capetown | 1 | -- | } |
| | | |
| | | |
UNITED STATES | 10 | 36 | UNITED STATES | 46
| | | |
| | | |
Untraced | -- | 6 | Untraced | 6
| | | |
+-------+-------+ +-----
| 1 | 18 | | 158
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❧ RECENT ACQUISITIONS AT THE LOUVRE ❧

~Three Italian Albarelli~

For some time past Italian fifteenth-century maiolica has been much sought after, and very justly; it would appear, however, that, so far, it is more admired than understood. Without doubt several works have been devoted to this subject. But if we attempt to divide it up into several groups, the various classifications seem neither very clear nor very definitive. ¶ The three druggists’ jars which have just been acquired by the Louvre will help in a certain degree to fix the date and to determine the centre of activity of one of the factories which we are trying to reconstitute at the present moment--a factory which Mr. Fraschetti has made his special study (in _L’ Arte_, 1898), as also Mr. Stettiner has done.[107] Articles from this factory are characterized by a decoration of long, large leaves, curving back at the end, half white and half painted, the veining only being indicated on the back side; these leaves are intermingled with a peculiar style of decoration, in which the eyes of peacocks’ feathers are presented together with large, round, blue and yellow flowers, standing out from a background of slender blue scroll-pattern. The principal pieces of this ware have been found at Rome. They are notably the druggists’ jars of the hospital of St. John Lateran, those of the apothecary Bruti, near the bridge of S. Angelo, the paving tiles in one of the chapels of the church of S. Maria del Popolo, and those in the church of S. Maria della Verità at Viterbo.[108] From this fact it has been concluded that this factory, which sprang more or less directly from Faenza, and which produced a great deal, must have been situated in Rome; and it has been proposed to call it, at least provisionally, the Roman factory. ¶ The three albarelli in the Louvre belong, as the accompanying figures will show, to this class, for they are all decorated on one side with the large peculiar leaves. The most important of these jars, from an artistic point of view, bears on the front side the bust of a beardless man, which will at once recall similar figures on the Viterbo pavement. Before the face waves a streamer,[109] upon which the maker (who was evidently very illiterate) has traced an inscription, which does not seem to convey any meaning whatever:--AR ·IERIN ·RI · N · E · I · R · E. The two other jars are, truth to tell, but very mediocre specimens, but they are of great interest to the archaeologist, for they are decorated with armorial shields which furnish us with some very useful information. On one of these shields are quartered the arms of Aragon and Jerusalem; on the other are the same arms parti per pale with those of Milan. These armorial bearings[110] (very distinct though slightly simplified by the maker, as is generally the case) tell us for whom these jars were manufactured; they belonged, in fact, to Alfonzo II of Aragon, king of Naples and Sicily, who reigned one year (from 1494 to 1495) and died in the latter year at the age of forty-seven. He married in 1465 Hippolyta Maria Sforza (daughter of Francesco Sforza I, duke of Milan, and Bianca-Maria Visconti), who died at Naples in 1484.[111] These albarelli, which bear the coats-of-arms of the king and queen, must have been made between 1465 and 1484, or at the latest before 1495.

Therefore they were made for a Neapolitan prince, and, furthermore, they come from Palermo.[112] This would agree very well with the hypothesis of Messrs. Fraschetti and Stettiner, according to whom all the pieces in this style would be of Roman origin. It would seem natural indeed that Neapolitan sovereigns should address themselves to a factory in Rome which was much nearer than those in Faenza or Florence. But, on the other hand, it must not be forgotten that, even before the end of the fifteenth century, fanciers sent their orders to very distant factories, and also that the centres of ceramic industry were much more numerous in those days than is generally supposed.

~J. J. Marquet de Vasselot.~

~Pictures~

The latest acquisitions consist, in the first place, of two large landscapes by Salomon van Ruysdael. The photographs reproduced avoid the necessity of a detailed description. One of them is from a collection at Montpellier, the other from an Austrian collection. They both present large views of nature, very peaceful and very simple, banks of wide and sluggish rivers such as the first generation of the Dutch seventeenth-century landscape men loved to depict. The museum at Rotterdam possesses a picture by this same van Ruysdael; and we know that his contemporary, Jan van Goyen, who was his rival rather than his master, also took a special delight in painting the environs of that city on the banks of the Maas, with its great sheet of water spread calmly and majestically under the sky laden with grey or copper-coloured clouds. Do we find ourselves here in the same environs of Dordrecht? Probably; although it is impossible to assert this absolutely. ¶ One thing is certain, which is that the workmanship of these two pictures very closely approaches that of the other paintings attributed by modern critics to the uncle of the great Jacob van Ruysdael, as it does that of many other landscapes of that period. Although they do not descend to the almost monochrome appearance of certain van Goyens, brown and yellowish tones predominate, and a certain and rather monotonous uniformity stands revealed, notably in the clump of trees that forms the centre of one of the two compositions. But the moist and cloudy skies are filled with light: one, in the landscape with the two towers, has gaps through which appears a pale blue, with rosy streaks in the direction of the horizon; the other is a little greyer and sadder. A whole crowd of figures, all standing out clearly against the background, fills the bank and the river itself, on which barges are carrying herds and shepherds from one side of the river to the other. A group of horsemen of quality, in the landscape with the church, reminds us very closely of those which we see in the Halt at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. This last picture is dated 1660. But it is much more complicated in composition and more compact in execution than are our two landscapes at the Louvre. The latter seem to belong to a less advanced period of the artist’s career, and are doubtless nearer the Pesth landscape (1631), the first that is known to us after the artist’s registry on the roll of the gild of St. Luke at Haarlem. In any case, these are two very fine museum-pieces, and most worthily represent the earlier of the two Ruysdaels at the Louvre, where as yet he was hardly represented at all, beside those unquestionable master-pieces of his nephew, the Dykes, the Thicket, and the landscape known as the Coup de soleil. ¶ As for the French picture which is also newly hung, this is the portrait of a woman, signed ‘L. Tocqué, 1793.’ It was exhibited at the Salon of the same year, and represents a certain Dame Danger, a perfectly unknown lady. It was, therefore, no iconographic interest that drew the attention of the keepers of the Louvre to this portrait, but rather the intrinsic charm of this very intimate and searching picture of a woman of the fashionable middle-class of the eighteenth century and the merit of its very simple and harmonious execution. Jean Louis Tocqué was already abundantly represented at the Louvre, but chiefly by those official portraits of artist-academicians, of princes and princesses, which made his fortune, which sent him as far abroad as Sweden, Russia and Denmark, but which perhaps charm us less to-day than do those simple and discreet figures which make the society of the eighteenth century itself live once more before our eyes. This picture has been hung not far from the supposed portrait of Madame de Graffigny and from that of a man unknown, by the same artist, and these three figures of unknown persons, to whom we cannot help ascribing a wealth of wit and intelligence, form a charming trio together. ¶ The new-comer is engaged in _parfilage_ or ‘unravelling.’ This occupation was greatly in fashion at the time; it formed an easy work which kept the fingers busy without interfering with conversation. The gold threads were separated from the silks of some piece of lace-work or embroidery and rolled on a special shuttle (we have preserved some that are marvels of delicate carving). Neither the eyes nor the mind needed to be kept fixed on this light labour, as we see in the present case, where the lady, who is no longer in her first youth under her powdered hair, but who still wears a seductively young appearance, looks up at her visitor or interlocutor with a calm and gentle gaze. She wears a grey fur cloak over a _vieux-rose_ skirt; and the whole forms with the blues of the sofa on which she is seated a rare and delicate harmony which is one of the principal qualities of this picture.

~Paul Vitry.~

~The Cover of a Koursi~

In 1902, the Louvre acquired from a French collector residing in Cairo a piece of Arabic copper incrusted with gold and silver, the beauty and rarity of which deserve every attention. This piece is the lid or cover of a _koursi_, used sometimes as a stool on which the candlesticks are placed in a mosque, sometimes as a box to contain the Koran. To prove the rarity of this object I need only mention that no more than two such stools and one box of metal incrusted with gold and silver are known. These two famous objects bear the names of the Sultans Kalaoun and Mohammed el Nasser, and are preserved at the museum of Arabic art in Cairo. ¶ The _koursi_ cover acquired by the Louvre is hexagonal in shape, but must originally have been circular, and formed a plate engraved and incrusted with silver about the middle of the thirteenth century. This hypothesis is confirmed by an examination of the reverse side, which allows of an engraved decoration that would not have been necessary in a real _koursi_ top fixed to the body of the article itself. The centre, consisting of a rose with various designs, and the surrounding frieze, containing an interrupted inscription, give a name--_Al Ganâb_--and the following indication: ‘Belonging to Malik al Nasir.’ This title was common to several sultans in Egypt in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and does not convey an exact indication of the period. ¶ The inscription is interrupted by six medallions. Their shape and the pointed arabesques in which they terminate seem characteristic of the thirteenth century. ¶ Later, in the fourteenth century, the plate must have been turned and cut out into a hexagon intended to serve as a _koursi_ cover. The engraved decoration then added to it is executed with the greatest vigour and clearness, and is rich in incrustations in gold and silver. In the centre is a long inscription with radiating letters giving the customary titles of the contemporary sultan, the sacred names of God, the great, the sole, the glorious. This fine radiating inscription is peculiar, through its character and the decorative importance of the letters, to the art of the Egyptian engravers on copper of the fourteenth century.

~Gaston Migeon.~

ON ORIENTAL CARPETS

ARTICLE IV

❧ THE LOTUS AND THE TREE OF LIFE ❧

That the art of weaving textile fabrics was known and practised among the earliest civilized nations of the world appears to be beyond dispute. Primarily no doubt the need for some form of clothing (slight probably in a hot country) and for floor coverings which should afford a protection against scorpions and other venomous creatures and for sleeping mats called forth the production of cloths woven from reeds and grasses and from the fibres of large-leaved plants. Soon, however, the possibility of using the wool of goats and sheep and camels must have impressed itself on the minds of primitive weavers, and from this to the production of textiles proper was but a short and easy step in natural development. It is probable that a considerable time may have elapsed between the first production of woven fabrics and the time when the artistic need became felt for enhancing their appearance by the employment of colouring matters. The mind of the primitive manufacturer became no doubt gradually attuned to this necessity by the slow development of a natural desire to brighten the gloomy aspect of his darkened homes. (In this regard it will be borne in mind that an essential feature of all oriental interiors has ever been the exclusion, so far as may be, of the scorching glare of the sun’s rays.) The primitive houses of the earliest settled peoples were doubtless built of mud, as are those of their descendants to-day, and it would be difficult to imagine anything less attractive than the interior of an Upper Egypt, or Nubian or Mesopotamian house (which is to-day the exact counterpart of those we find on the paintings and bas-reliefs which have come down to us from the oldest times), with mud walls, mud floor, mud roof, all of a uniform dingy brown, and without furniture of any kind to relieve the eye. It is probable that the early weaver was in the habit of dyeing his woven products in some uniform colour for a considerable time before it occurred to him that richer effects might be produced by colouring his yarns in different tints previous to their employment on the loom. Having got so far it did not take very long before his manual dexterity had so far attained the level of his artistic aspirations as to impel him to seek models for the complicated designs he sought to introduce into his work. For these models, as for their colouring, he naturally turned to those forms which were constantly before his eyes in everyday life. And among these most prominent no doubt was the lotus, which in one form or the other is invariably found to hold a prominent place in the centre or border of an oriental carpet. Probably the artistic weaver copied the numerous forms of the lotus long before he attached any symbolism to the plant itself, and merely because the flowing lines and sweeping curves of the plant appealed to his eye. Other tree and plant forms there were no doubt that commended themselves to him, and these, too, he sought to introduce into his designs; but the predominance of the lotus over all other forms early asserted itself and has maintained its position ever since. At what period the profound and mystic symbolism of the lotus became generally recognized among the peoples to whom it was a familiar object must ever remain a matter of controversy and of speculation. Professor Goodyear, who has written an elaborate treatise on ‘The Grammar of the Lotus,’ regards this form of classic and ancient ornamentation as a development of sun worship. His theory briefly deals with the development of the sun symbols from the lotus by a series of complicated and ingenious evolutions. The lotus, according to him, was a fetish of immemorial antiquity, which has been worshipped in many countries from Japan to Gibraltar. He claims that it is the symbol of life, immortality, renaissance, resurrection and fecundity. He describes the three forms of lotus: the blue and the white, which differ but little save in colour, and the rose lotus, which is really not a lotus at all botanically speaking, and is not a native of Egypt but of India. This lotus (the rose) is still cultivated in China as a food plant, and it is believed that it was brought to Egypt from India by Alexander the Great for that purpose; but that it was regarded by the Egyptians as a national symbol there is, in the opinion of Professor Goodyear, no sufficient evidence to show. ¶That the lotus was early regarded as a religious symbol in India and China is generally held. It is, of course, the sacred flower of the Buddhists. ‘When Buddha was born,’ says Moor in his ‘Hindu Pantheon,’ ‘a lotus bloomed where he first touched the ground; he stepped seven steps northward, and a lotus marked each foot-fall.’ The Buddhist prayer often quoted begins: ‘O God, the jewel of the lotus,’ or ‘O holy jewel in the lotus, be it so.’ In the Hindu theogony the lotus floating on the water is an emblem of the world, and the whole plant of the earth and its two principles of fecundation. Edwin Arnold, in ‘The Light of Asia,’ says: ‘Aum Mani pâdme hûm,’ of which the literal translation is, ‘All hail to the jewel in the flower of the lotus.’ He continues: ‘The sunrise comes,’ ‘The dew-drop slips,’ ‘Into the shining sea.’ ¶ Brahmans consider the sun to be the emblem or image of their great deities, jointly or individually, _i.e._ Brahma the supreme one, who alone exists really and absolutely. The legend goes that Brahma, according to a generally received system founded on a doctrine of the Vaishnavas, sprang on a lotus from the navel of Vishnu, who is the personification of the sun, to bid all worlds exist. ¶ Professor Goodyear maintains that the symbolism of the lotus, which is referred most frequently by modern writers to its phallic and generative or to its funereal and mortuary bearings, is based upon well-proved but not generally recognized solar significance. The easiest way to demonstrate this is by an appeal to the acknowledged fact that the Egyptian idea of the resurrection and of a future life was connected with the worship of the creative and reproductive forces of nature, which were conceived and worshipped as solar in character and origin. It is the supposed passage of the sun at night through a lower world during its return to the dawn of a following day which makes Osiris (the sun at night) the god of the lower world and of the dead, for which reason he is represented as a mummy. As the god of resurrection, the special and emphatic character of Osiris, he represents the creative power of the sun god; and thus the lotus, as the attribute of Osiris, is at once a symbol of the sun of resurrection, and of creative force and power.

FROM THE COLLECTION OF MESSRS. GILLOW]

Professor Goodyear further contends that the lotus, which he holds, as has been said, to be the keynote of decoration, is identical with the tree of life, or rather that the accepted tree of life is really a variant of the lotus in one form or the other of its many aspects. He objects to the theory that the date palm, the palmetta, or the papyrus is invariably the tree of life, as is held by several writers. The weakness of the theory regarding the soma tree or hom (date-palm) as the tree of life is not only the weakness of the palm theory, which is that no transitional forms between the palmetta and palm can be shown in Assyrian art and that they are not known to have grown there, because it is not to be denied that the sacred tree of Assyria[113] was the palm, but it is a pure hypothesis to suppose that all were soma trees. The Assyrian tree of life, he holds, was really an artificial form of the lotus, which plant was as well known in Assyria as in India. Sir George Birdwood, who gives a lengthy list of trees held sacred in one part or another of the east, is more or less emphatic as to the hom or soma, which he says is the date-palm, being the tree of life. He allows, however, that on Yarkand rugs the tree of life is represented by a pomegranate tree. As against this, Sayce, in one of the Hibbert lectures, as quoted by Goodyear, says that, ‘the cedar tree is identified with the tree of life,’ and ‘the palm is possibly later.’ The palm, he adds, is undoubtedly a symbol on Assyrian and Chaldean cylinders, as illustrated in Layard’s ‘Culte du Methra,’ but Goodyear does not think that Layard’s text would give much support to the theory of ornamental palm symbolism in Assyria. Count Goblet d’Alviella, in his work on ‘La Migration des Symboles,’ bears out Goodyear and Sayce, and, to some extent, even Birdwood, as to the locality where the tree of life had its origin; but albeit he describes what he holds to be its early representation, he does not attempt to establish a theory as to what was the tree originally typified. The sacred tree, he says, is one of the earliest historic symbols (note he does not call it the tree of life) and had its origin in Mesopotamia; it passed thence to India, where it was used by Buddhists and Brahmans, and thence again to the Phoenicians, and from Asia Minor to Greece. From Persia it was introduced to the Byzantines, and found its way in early Christian times into Christian symbolism in Sicily, Italy, and even in the west of France. ¶ The earliest type, he claims, was a tree of complex and ornate pattern, having on either side of it a monster who faced each the other. These had the forms of winged bulls or of griffins. Another type, which was that of the semi-human or human priests and kings, followed the same route into China and India and eastern Asia, and being found in the ancient Mexican and Maga codices, is held by Goblet d’Alviella as a part of the evidence which he cites in support of his theory of a pre-Columbian communication between the old world and the new. ¶ As opposed to Sir George Birdwood’s theory that the soma or hom is a date-palm, it may be pointed out that other authorities who are not less entitled to speak on the subject declare the soma of the Vedas[114] and the hom of the Zendavesta[115] to be the _Sarcostemma viminale_, a leafless asclepiad with white flowers in terminal umbels which appear during the rains in the Dekhan. The flower obtains its name apparently from the fact that it is gathered by moonlight (presumably the full moon), the sanskrit word for the moon being _soma_. Its conveyance home in carts drawn by rams is accompanied by ceremonials. A fermented liquor is obtained from the flower by mixing its juice, which has been strained through a sieve of goats’ hair, with a preparation of barley and clarified butter or ghee. This beer or wine is used at religious festivals; it may be said that according to Hindu superstition the gods of their system can do nothing without having been previously stimulated with soma. In the second hymn of the Rigveda occurs this passage: ‘Approach, O Wayu; be visible; this Soma juice has been prepared for thee; approach, drink, hear our invocation.’ Many indeed are the allusions made in religious ceremonials to the invigorating power and even intoxicating qualities of the soma, as to which Windischmann suggests that the plant was identical with the gogard tree, which has the quality of ‘enlightening the eyes’ and which he compares with Ampelus, the vine of Bacchus. This same beverage is used at their meals by the Muhammedan Rishis in Kashmir, who abstain from animal food and from marriage. It may be said that Soma, as well as being the name of a tree, to which it may afterwards well have been given, is in the Hindo mythology the name of the son of Rishi Atri by his wife Anasuga (he is also said to be the son of Dharma and Prabhakara). He married the twenty-seven daughters of Daksha (which are the twenty-seven lunar asterisms). He also carried off Tara the wife of Brihaspati, who bore him a son and named him Buddha. This Buddha is regarded as being the parent of the lunar race. Thus are we inevitably brought back to Buddha and Buddhistic emblems and to the long-vanished origins from which those emblems were derived. The lotus, none have disputed, is the oldest known attribute of Buddhist symbolism, but is it not equally certain that the lotus existed in remote ages long antecedent to the dawn of Buddhism? Here then is matter which makes for the support of Professor Goodyear’s ingenious theory. He takes the sepals of the lotus in their natural form, he shows how they have been twisted and exaggerated into spirals and volutes, which, being squared on their passage through the Ionic style of architecture, formed at length what is known as the meander, Greek fret or key pattern, which being doubled produces the svastika. The svastika therefore, which every authority has acknowledged to be the most ancient expression of symbolism, as it is also the earliest form of ornamentation known to the world, should in accordance with this be regarded as identical with the lotus symbol in one of its many phases.

[_The previous articles of this series appeared in_ ~The Burlington Magazine~ _for March, May, and June._]

NOTES ON VARIOUS WORKS OF ART

THE SORÖ CHALICE

In the notice of a mediaeval chalice from Iceland in the June number of this ~Magazine~ (p. 70), mention was made, by way of comparison, of the silver chalice found in 1827 at Sorö, Denmark, in the grave of Absalon, bishop of Lund, who died in the year 1201. A view of this exceptionally interesting specimen of early Scandinavian work, still preserved in the church of Sorö, is shown in the accompanying illustration.[116] The character of the chalice, as revealed by the photograph, confirms the close relationship existing between it and the example which was the subject of the notice alluded to. The bowl nearly hemispherical in shape, the flattened globular knop, and the trumpet-shaped foot with bevelled margin finishing in a narrow turned-out edge, are the salient features of each alike. A point of distinction not quite so apparent in the engraving which was referred to[117] is the somewhat greater width in proportion to height of the Sorö chalice, giving a rather more spreading shape of bowl and foot. The bowl, too, is seen to have less of the tendency towards a straightening of the contour at its upper part, which, in the example from Iceland, seems to give a hint of the coming change of shape, an indication which suggests the lapse of a certain interval between their dates. The necking between the knop and bowl, on the other hand, is now shown to be of very similar proportions in both. This necking (called by Theophilus the ‘ring’) and the band below the knop are enriched with shallow fluting, somewhat hidden by the shadow in the photograph; the foot appears to have suffered injury from crushing. ¶ Certain features, such as the fully-expanded knop with enrichment above and below, and the fairly substantial character of the work apparent in the thickness at the edge of the foot, support the belief that the subject of the present illustration is an actual mass-chalice.[118] Whether made for service at the altar or merely for mortuary use the chalice is equally valuable as an example of the shape arrived at in Scandinavia in or before the year 1201.

~H. P. Mitchell.~

THE OAKEN CHEST OF YPRES

This chest of massive oak belongs to the office of archives at Ypres. It is perhaps the most curious and characteristic example of a kind familiar to antiquaries. In the middle panel, cut deep into the oak, St. George charges stoutly at the dragon, whose throat is stricken through with the lance. St. George’s head has a basnet, whose point ends in a socket with a feather stuck in it. This basnet has the camail and roundels over the ears. Over his hawberk the saint wears a short coat with long sleeves, wide and slittered at the edges. The saddle, with its great rolled guards for the legs, is noteworthy. The dragon is no writhing worm under the horse-hoofs, but a fearsome thing like to a mad bull-calf, a thing begotten of bull and serpent. Behind the monster stands Dame Cleodolinde, daintily lifting her skirt and no whit uneasy for the hurtling of horse and dragon. Behind her are the town walls, with towers and halls above them. Out of frilled clouds over St. George’s head a divine arm is thrust, in a loose sleeve, with two fingers blessing the lance-thrust. In the broad uprights at the chest-end a gentleman and a lady in full round sleeves stand between pillars. Above them are battlements, and above the battlements mullioned windows. ¶ The broad lock of this chest remains, a lock of most interesting form. The whole chest was once painted in colours, traces of which remain here and there. When the fashion of the dresses and arms have been reckoned over, and something allowed for craft tradition, the chest would seem to be of the early years of the fifteenth century, although it came to the famous exhibition of 1902 at Bruges most absurdly labelled and catalogued as of the thirteenth.

A BURGUNDIAN CHEST

This great chest, which was shown at Bruges in 1902, is a noble example of the Burgundian school of wood-carving, its ornament offering sharp contrast with the English manner. ¶ The four panels of the front and three of the uprights are filled with rich carving of traceries and arabesques, but the chisel has stayed at the framework, and the chest, for all the richness of its ornament, loses nothing of its massive and sturdy appearance. The end panels are plain, and the plain cover is slightly arched in remembrance of the waggon tops of the earlier coffers. The first panel has a little shield of St. Peter’s keys, with the pope’s triple crown very large above it. The second has the emperor’s shield of the eagle with two necks surmounted by an open crown. Another crowned shield bears the famous badge of Burgundy, the steel, or strike-a-light, with its flint and sparks. The fourth panel has neither crown nor shield, but the tracery shapes itself into three fleurs-de-lys, which, although they be not upon a shield, may stand for the king of France. Thus the four panels show pope, emperor, duke and king. On the broad upright in the middle is a crown above a tiny shield charged with a single fleur-de-lys. It will be seen that the armorial decoration is poorly-conceived stuff to be set upon these rich panels. Especially is this feebleness manifest in the starveling fowl of the emperor’s shield. ¶ The chest is of the latter half of the fifteenth century. It is the property of the ‘hospices civils’ of Aalst.

O. B.

A NEW FOUNT OF GREEK TYPE

The Greek type of which a specimen is shown on page 359 is based on the celebrated Alcalà fount of 1514. This was cut by order of Cardinal Ximenes for use in the New Testament of the great Complutensian polyglot Bible, and is usually supposed, though there is no direct evidence, to owe its form to an ancient manuscript which was sent to Spain by Leo X from the Vatican library to serve as the basis for the text of the New Testament in that work. The printer, Arnaldo Guillen de Brocar, asserts in his preface that the type was designed to do special honour to the original language of the Gospels. The present type is adapted from this Alcalà fount with little alteration, as far as the lower case is concerned, the chief change beyond an increase in size being as follows. The New Testament of 1514 was printed with no accents except the acute, and the body of the type was adjusted to this condition. But when Guillen came to print other books (the ‘Chrysoloras’ of the same year, the undated ‘Hero and Leander,’ and one or two others), he found it necessary to provide a complete set of accents, and as the body of the type was not high enough to give room for the tallest of these, he was compelled, in order to avoid recasting the whole fount, to hang these over the line above by means of what are called kerns. The result of this is that while the page produces a very fine solid effect, the lines are too close to each other for comfort in reading. This has been avoided in the new type by taking the tallest combination as the standard of height, and thus increasing the whites between the lines, with a corresponding increase of readableness. But the Alcalà type had only one capital letter, a ~Π~, and it has been necessary to design the whole of the capitals for the new type, as no good models were available. The capitals have in fact always been the weakest point in Greek types. The points and other minor features are also new. ¶ The punches have been cut for Mr. Robert Proctor by Mr. E. P. Prince, who cut the punches for the Kelmscott, Doves, and other special founts, from drawings prepared by Messrs. Walker and Cockerell, and the type has been cast on a double-pica body by Messrs. Miller and Richard, of Edinburgh, the vowels and accents being made separately, and contrived by means of overhangs to combine into a single sort. It is proposed to use this, which will be called the Otter type, for the production of books representative of Greek literature of all periods, ancient, mediaeval, and modern. They will be printed by a hand-press on special hand-made paper in red and black, and no effort will be spared to give, in most cases for the first time since the invention of printing, a form worthy of them to the masterpieces of the greatest classical literature of the world. The first volume, which will probably appear in the autumn of this year, is to be the ‘Oresteia’ of Aeschylus, a quarto of some 250 pages.

Τηλέμαχ᾽, οὔ σ᾽ ὁ ξεῖνος ἐνὶ μεγάροισιν ἐλέγχει ἥμενος, οὐδέ τι τοῦ σκοποῦ ἤμβροτον οὐδέ τι τόξον δὴν ἔκαμον τανύων· ἔτι μοι μένος ἔμπεδόν ἐστιν, οὐχ ὥς με μνηστῆρες ἀτιμάζοντες ὄνονται. νῦν δ᾽ ὥρη καὶ δόρπον Ἀχαιοῖσιν τετυκέσθαι ἐν φάει, αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα καὶ ἄλλως ἑψιάασθαι μολπῇ καὶ φόρμιγγι· τὰ γάρ τ᾽ ἀναθήματα δαιτός. ἦ καὶ ἐπ᾽ ὀφρύσι νεῦσεν· ὁ δ᾽ ἀμφέθετο ξίφος ὀξὺ Τηλέμαχος, φίλος υἱὸς Ὀδυσσῆος θείοιο, ἀμφὶ δὲ χεῖρα φίλην βάλεν ἔγχεϊ, ἄγχι δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ αὐτοῦ πὰρ θρόνον ἑστήκει κεκορυθμένος αἴθοπι χαλκῷ. ΟΔΥΣΣΕΙΑΣ ΒΙΒΛΟΣ ΕΙΚΟΣΤΟΣ ΔΕΥΤΕΡΟΣ ❆ αὐτὰρ ὁ γυμνώθη ῥακέων πολύμητις Ὀδυσσεύς ἆλτο δ᾽ ἐπὶ μέγαν οὐδὸν ἔχων βιὸν ἠδὲ φαρέτρην ἰῶν ἐμπλείην, ταχέας δ᾽ ἐκχεύατ᾽ ὀιστοὺς αὐτοῦ πρόσθε ποδῶν, μετὰ δὲ μνηστῆρσιν ἔειπεν. οὗτος μὲν δὴ ἄεθλος ἀάατος ἐκτετέλεσται· νῦν αὖτε σκοπὸν ἄλλον, ὃν οὔ πώ τις βάλεν ἀνήρ εἴσομαι, αἴ κε τύχωμι, πόρῃ δέ μοι εὖχος Ἀπόλλων. ἦ καὶ ἐπ᾽ Ἀντινόῳ ἰθύνετο πικρὸν ὀϊστόν. ἦ τοι ὁ καλὸν ἄλεισον ἀναιρήσεσθαι ἔμελλεν χρύσεον ἄμφωτον, καὶ δὴ μετὰ χερσὶν ἐνώμα ὄφρα πίοι οἴνοιο· φόνος δέ οἱ οὐκ ἐνὶ θυμῷ μέμβλετο. τίς κ᾽ οἴοιτο μετ᾽ ἀνδράσι δαιτυμόνεσσιν μοῦνον ἐνὶ πλεόνεσσι, καὶ εἰ μάλα καρτερὸς εἴη, οἷ τεύξειν θάνατόν τε κακὸν καὶ κῆρα μέλαιναν· τὸν δ᾽ Ὀδυσεὺς κατὰ λαιμὸν ἐπισχόμενος βάλεν ἰῷ ἀντικρὺ δ᾽ ἁπαλοῖο δι᾽ αὐχένος ἤλυθ᾽ ἀκωκή, ἐκλίνθη δ᾽ ἑτέρωσε, δέπας δέ οἱ ἔκπεσε χειρὸς βλημένου, αὐτίκα δ᾽ αὐλὸς ἀνὰ ῥῖνας παχὺς ἦλθεν αἵματος ἀνδρομέοιο, θοῶς δ᾽ ἀπὸ εἷο τράπεζαν ὦσε ποδὶ πλήξας, ἀπὸ δ᾽ εἴδατα χεῦεν ἔραζε.

PORTRAIT OF A LADY BY REMBRANDT

The important and interesting portrait by Rembrandt which is here reproduced has justly been given a place of honour among the works of that master now being shown in the exhibition of portraits by old masters at the Hague; indeed, in the opinion of many good critics it is one of the greatest attractions at the Kunstkring. Since permission was given to us by Messrs. Dowdeswell to reproduce the picture, it has passed out of their hands into those of Mr. Hage, a Dutch collector, by whom it has been lent to the Hague exhibition; it was formerly in the collection of Sir Matthew Wilson. The panel, which is 30 by 23¼ inches, was painted in the same year as The Anatomy Lesson, when Rembrandt was only twenty-six years old, and belongs, therefore, to his earliest period; that this is the case is proved by the signature on the right of the picture, ‘R. H. L. van Rijn 1632.’ The identity of the lady who is the subject of the portrait has not yet been established, and beyond the fact stated on the picture itself that she was thirty-nine at the time it was painted we know nothing about her. It is unnecessary to expatiate on the merits of the picture, which speaks for itself even in the reproduction.

The oil painting by Daubigny and the pastel by Lhermitte, of which we publish reproductions by kind permission of Mr. John Balli, are good examples of the work of the two French artists. They are among the pictures which have recently been exhibited at Mr. McLean’s gallery for the benefit of that excellent institution, the artists’ benevolent fund.

❧ BIBLIOGRAPHY ❧

~The Ambassadors Unriddled.~ By W. F. Dickes. London: Cassells.