Of the lesser lights that circle round the luminaries at a modest distance, two only need detain us. Catena, like many another second-rate man, has grown rich of late years by confiscation from his betters. The Warrior adoring the Infant Christ represents in its solemn, summer evening looking splendour and sedateness the utmost of what he was capable of. Once attributed to Giorgione, then again to Bellini, it was first restored as his masterpiece to its rightful owner by Crowe and Cavalcaselle. Girolamo dai Libri, though he saw the great day of Italian art at its zenith, still retains much of the simplicity and innocency of the earlier time, in which men walked circumspectly and were tempted not too far.

If we are to believe Morelli, the National Gallery is not entitled to boast the great name of Giorgione; but Venturi has recently called attention to a small picture (No. 1173) which bears all the traces of his early manner, that is to say, if the two well-known pictures in the Uffizi are rightly ascribed to him. The subject is unknown, or at least has not yet been explained. What we see is a novice brought for instruction to a sage or magician crowned with olive and seated under a canopy. Two things speak for the authorship of Giorgione. In the first place, the freedom and originality with which the landscape is treated. The artist has begun to look at Nature with his own eyes, and to draw from reality what tradition could not supply. In the second place, we are sensible, as it were, of the atmosphere of an event without being shown the process. The figures petrified by some strange spell seem just able to suggest what they cannot enact.

Among the great masters of portrait, Titian is sadly to seek, though Palma's golden presentation of a poet is no unworthy substitute. Byron summed it up when he called it "the poetry of painting and the painting of poetry."

Moretto here surpasses not only himself but almost everyone else in the subtle and romantic portrait of Count Martinengo Cesaresco of Brescia. Note how he has succeeded in enwrapping his sitter, as it were, in the atmosphere of his dreams, without robbing him at the same time, as Lotto would certainly have done, of all appearance of strength of mind and will. Moroni is perhaps Moretto's equal as a face-painter; but he is more prosaic, more at home with the middle class of substantial tradesmen and respectable professional men.

Only one picture in this collection bears the name of Leonardo da Vinci, and of this, as is well known, there is a version in the Louvre. The majority of recent critics regard the French picture as the sole original, and assign the London version to the hand of Ambrogio de Predis. Now the Virgin of the Rocks, whatever may have become of it, was painted by Leonardo for an altarpiece of which the two wings were undoubtedly furnished by Ambrogio de Predis. So much is placed beyond dispute by a recently discovered document. The preliminary difficulty of the existence of two versions is then managed by the critical champions of the French picture by means of a free use of unproved assumptions. We are told that the original—that is, the one in France-was disposed of by Leonardo to an agent of the French king, whereupon Ambrogio prepared the replica which after many vicissitudes found its way to the National Gallery. Unfortunately, historical possibilities can be invoked only too easily, seeing that they are inexhaustible. If the picture may have been sold to the French king and replaced by another, that other may also have been executed by Leonardo. That is to say, if we are confined to the ground of pseudo-history, we cannot advance very far. There remains the appeal to internal evidence, and in this case at any rate the result should be clear and decisive. For now at last the authentic documentary Ambrogio is restored to his old place on either side of the central picture, and, this being so, one would have expected to be overwhelmingly convinced by the sameness of treatment throughout. Morelli, by the way, did notice a sameness of hand, though to him the hand was not that of Ambrogio de Predis. But, strange to say, this conviction so far is by no means universal, for the historical Ambrogio stands revealed to us as a man who, when he attempted anything more complicated and more trying than a portrait on traditional lines, was little better than a dauber. And the conclusion of the whole matter is that our Virgin of the Rocks has gained rather than lost on the evidence of the chief witness. This has been well put by Frizzoni, who would never have admitted as much if the facts could still have been made to point the other way: "The evidence of the angels is such as to raise afresh the credit of the central picture at least to this extent, that Leonardo's part in it must have been greater than some were led to admit."

We now come to Correggio, the great technical genius of Italy,

the only Italian who, though he died in 1534, would have had nothing to learn from either Rembrandt or Velasquez. Nor is this all, for technically the most modern, he is also the most Greek. Whereas others make occasional visits only to the shrine of beauty and live upon partial memories, he seems to have worked from first to last full in the presence of the divine idea: τοῦτο ἐκεῖνο οὗ δὴ ἕνεκα καὶ οἱ ἔμπροσθεν πάντες πόνοι ἦσαν. By the side of the Education of Cupid, in which the forms seem to be moulded by the light which plays over and about them, the best of Titian and the best of Rubens would look oily and yellow. Before the little Madonna and Child, at once so subtle and spontaneous, we think of what Reynolds said of him: "If I had not seen it done by Correggio, I should have taken it to be impossible."

III

The finest examples of Dutch art in England are probably still to be sought in private collections. Here, though there is more than enough to show the technical dexterity of Rembrandt, we miss him in his Shakespearean mood. The Adoration of the Shepherds, however, is a rendering of the scene such as no other man could have given. The dim light, the squalor of the closely-huddled peasants, who speak in whispers for fear of awaking the Child, the pervading atmosphere of hopeless poverty-all this shows how profoundly Rembrandt must have pondered the real nature and beginnings of that gospel which the common people heard gladly, The great writer of our day, who claimed that he alone in his century had understood Jesus and St. Francis, said: J'ai un vif goût pour les pauvres. Rembrandt might have said the same.

In Munich, and of course at Antwerp, Rubens is on a grander scale; but the quality and range of his power are shown to the full in the Judgment of Paris and the Rape of the Sabines, which he painted with his own hand. The latter especially, with its riot of colour, which the master is strong enough and subtle enough to keep in all its profuseness within bounds of harmony, is not unworthy to be compared even with the Bacchus and Ariadne of Titian.

Hobbema, as a rule, is an artist neither delicate nor deep; but the Avenue at Middelharnis stands out far above his ordinary re

spectable level. In fact, this and Vermeer's View of Delft at the Hague are the great landscapes of the seventeenth century. Nothing can be more direct or uncompromising than the artist's realism. A road bordered on either side with meagre poplars leads straight ahead to where the open sea is suggested though not shown. Whether the artist willed it or not, the scene is eloquent with a haunting sort of poetry. The monotony, the dull sky, the trees at intervals, picture better than many a professed allegory, the prosaic limits and routine of ordinary experience: Semita tranquillae patet unica vitae.

IV

The early English school is well, though by no means fully, represented. Unused by religion and indifferent to history, its triumphs are still to be sought in the privacy of stately homes. In Gainsborough's portrait of Mrs. Siddons the coldness of his favourite key seems to suit the marble mould of the great Tragedyqueen, who even in private life talked blank verse; while the Parish Clerk has the charm that comes of perfect comprehension of a simple theme, and perfect mastery of a direct method. In the three Ladies Waldegrave we have an imposing example of that style which Reynolds created for himself, and the secret of which died with him. His chances were not peculiar; he had rivals to whom it is said that he paid the compliment of jealousy; but no one ever caught and fixed as he did the eternal feminine of aristocracy— courage without coarseness, freedom without licence, and tenderness with no weakness of subservience.

But the great divinity here is Turner, that unique, unaccountable apparition of a later time, to whom, born as he was in a humble dwelling in the neighbourhood of London Bridge, all the kingdoms of nature and the glory of them seem to have been revealed. He is seen in all his phases from his first steps in the wake of others to the apocalyptic visions of his decay; and of him it will be sufficient to say, as was said of Humboldt: Majestati naturae par ingenium.

PICTURES AT GROSVENOR HOUSE'

[1900: AET. 37]

HE nucleus of the celebrated Westminster collection was formed about the middle of the last century by Richard, first Earl Grosvenor. He owed his elevation to the peerage to the influence of the elder Pitt; but he is perhaps less remembered now for his public services than for the unfailing kindness of heart, of which his protection of Gifford in his early days of penury and struggle is a conspicuous example. He was succeeded by his third son, Robert, who was placed under the care of Gifford, and twice accompanied him to the Continent as his pupil. Gifford, in his autobiography, speaks of his amiability and accomplishments. In 1788 he entered Parliament as member for East Loe, and distinguished himself by imprudently quoting Demosthenes in his maiden speech, little suspecting that the House of Commons would resent Greek as instinctively as, according to Shiel in his advice to Disraeli, it resented genius. Conspicuous for taste and splendour, he rebuilt Eaton, and, in 1806, added the Agar Collection to the picture gallery.

The masterpieces of Rembrandt in Grosvenor House are enough of themselves to make the fame and fortune of any gallery, public or private. It is strange that Rembrandt should have become almost the patron saint of those who, as they expect nothing from an artist but technical cleverness, are satisfied when nothing more than this is shown. The truth is that, great as was Rembrandt's power of hand, the delicacy and grasp of his mind were even greater. Technically he repeated himself, so much so that his pictures when brought together betray to a singular extent a common method and a common formula. But to the activity of

1

Reprinted by permission of the Berlin Photographic Company from "The Masterpieces of Grosvenor House," London, 16mo, 1900.