lint Arts.
THE NATIONAL GALLERY: TILE LO3IBARDI AND BALM,
PICTURES.
The Lombardi and Baldi pictures bought at Florence, the most im- portant purchase ever made by the National Gallery, in point of num- bers, since its origin in the purchase of the Angerstein collection, have been displayed to view since the 23d ultimo. They number, upon the lowest method of computation, twenty works ; and this reckoning is much increased if we count singly the separated compositions whieh formed in the first instance one combined whole, and far more if we sum up all the minor compartments of the large altar-pieces. Nor is the purchase important only in number. Connected as the pictures are—by schools and by date—they form the most considerable body of art, in its his- toric aspect, whichlas ever been added to the gallery, and do more towards giving it a solid basis and organization than whatever else has been done since it was founded ; besides which, they belong to the great, though immature, schools of early Italy, and comprise some noble examples. The hard manner and archaic shortcomings of these pictures, is some instances very great, cannot but excite, along with much merely natural and blameless repugnance, some ignorant and presumptuous contempt, among the less thoughtful and more frivolous portion of the gazers. But the impression of their great qualities will sink gradually deeper and deeper, and their influence at last will be real and chastening. The two master-works of the series are by Orcagna and Paolo Leccello. The Orcagna is a Coronation of the Virgin—Angels and Saints adoring. One sees the almond-shaped slits of eyes the dull facial contours, and the rawness of execution, at the first glance; at the second, the majesty of feeling "gives us pause." Beside the throne stand two angels, with the red flame of heavenly zeal burning amid their hair • around it, on each side, saint behind saint, kneels the redeemed hierarchy, and nimbus behind nimbus—and we recognize in front Peter, Bartholomew, and Stephen, Paul and Lawrence, and the queen's crown, and the nun's hood, are among them too. The kneeling angels, grave and gentle, who chant and play at the foot of the throne, are beautifully conceived in ac- tion. The colour, as soon as the eye is accustomed to it, has a solemn repose in its brightness, and something which exalts it from among the surrounding works : one of the "drapery hues particularly, a clear scarlet, looks fit to be worn in heaven. Seven small pictures, originally forming part of the same altar-piece, are here exhibited separately. Their childishness of style deprives some almost wholly of interest, such as the Marks at the Sepulchre. There is grandeur in the subject of the Ascension ; in the floating figure of the Saviour of the Resurrection ; and in a certain air of centripetal force in the two angel-groups adoring the Trinity. The treatment of the Pentecost, with the alien crowd outside the door, and the apostles at the windows, is interesting. For simple hearty enjoyment, there is no picture in the National Gallery to which we should return oftener or longer than the Paola Uccello ; which represents the Battle of Egidio, 1418, in which Carla Malatesta and his nephew were taken prisoners. It is the most chivalrous fighting piece we have ever seen : how stirringly, the trumpets bray,— the spear-staves' bar the sky and orange-grove• red,. blue, and yellow,—
the knights, human suits of armour, spur and prance—the horses champ—the pennon streams upon the air ! The pure adolescent face of the young Malatesta, bare-headed and intrepid, is a thing to remember : and the whole is a most delightful compound of old-world quaintness, the splendid life and energy of the age of fighting, and the true pictorial faculty. The funny horses, very wooden yet not far from being right, the slain ." hog in armour" supine in the foreground, whom old Paolo (of whose naivete and passion for perspective Vasari gives so many stnecdotes,) doubtless thought a triumph of foreshortening, and the am- biguous trots of the back and foreground, intended for one knows not what material or effect, arc as odd as the heart of the picture is strong, manful, and exulting. The silver foil in which the armour is done has toned down into a very harmonious tint. It may be questioned what exact incident is represented in the picture : probably, Malatesta has been already captured, and is putting a stop to an abortive attempt at
rescue.
The oldest performance of all is by Margaritone d'Arezzo. This is not to be looked upon as a work of art, but a document of art; it is not a picture at all, but the absolute infancy and imbecility of the brush— so absurdly bad that one can almost credit the old story that Margari- tone was scared into his grave when Giotto affronted his eyes with some- thing better. The central Virgin is a downright " Judy " ; St. Marga- ret's dragon, with much the cut and action of a duck, is amusing. Cimabue succeeds, with a " Madonna and Child—Angels adoring" ; and certainly, as contrasted with the art typified in Margaritone, asserts his position as a high-hearted pioneer. It is not difficult to conceive the popular impressiveness of austere unsensuous art like this in the thir- teenth century. Duccio da Siena, though belonging to a generation later than Cimabue, shows to disadvantage against him in the small pic- ture here of the green-fleshed Virgin and Child, with Sts. Catharine and Dominick ; Segna di Buonaventura's Crucifix is a piteous and rather shocking object. Two of the immediate followers of the glorious Giotto are represented in important works; which exhibit, however, no even technical advance, but the reverse, on the sacred fragment from the great master's hand which already belonged to the gallery, and which is now hung with the Lombardi pictures. Taddeo Gaddi appears in a " Bap- tism of Christ, and Birth and Death of John the Baptist "—a large altar- piece in numerous sections. At the top is a seated Madonna, with crossed hands upon her bosom—pure and rapt; and, in the correspond- ing compartment not (as more usually) the announcing Gabriel, but Isaiah with his scroll, " Ecce Virgo concipiet." The ascetic uncouth character is ably marked in the baptizing St. John ; and (to descend to minute points) the curves of the darting fish in the Jordan are very true and perfect. Gaddi's is dignified but ill-favoured art. As Brigham Young says of Mormonism on the defensive, it " asks no odds of the wicked." Ja- copo di Casentino's altar-piece of St. John the Evangelist lifted up into Heaven, and numerous accessory subjects, is still less striking in execu- tion; but it has much of the half-realized naturalism of the Giottesque school, and some fine draperies. The predella-picture of the vision of the Apocalypse is singularly dreamlike, with the twilight atmosphere of dreams. Still grander are the draperies of Spinello Aretino in the two Saints John, and James the Less—a work altogether beautiful and noble. A third picture of the school of Giotto is a Coronation of the Virgin ; from an unknown but evidently no unworthy hand. With Lippe Lippi we come to a more advanced stage of art. The Madonna and Child surrounded by Angels and Saints is a fine example ; the two central figures mild and thoughtful, and the angels—in the form of young girls playing violin and lute at the foot of the throne, and of children trooping behind it,—very sweet in human character. The en- vironing Saints are personable figures : the manner of them has been closely caught in the two flanking saint-pictures by an unknown painter of the same school. In the smaller subject of a child-angel presenting the Infant Christ to the Virgin, the distinctive naturalism of Lippo is visible in the expression of heaving in the angel's face. This suggests, however, rather a naughty little boy who expects a scolding than a seraph : and the frame and catalogue are at odds as to whether the picture is a genuine Lippo, or only of his school. The crowded " Adoration of the Magi" by Lippino Lippi is full of matter, character, and interesting points; especially the thoughtful incident of the men who, hard-pressed in the outside throng, are quarrelling with hatchet and drawn sword at the very threshold of the Prince of Peace whom they are come to honour. From the opposite side, two of the shepherds are tramping in with horn and pipes. A portrait by Piero della Francesca of Isotta da Rimini is a piece of rich media val colour and execution, in exquisite preservation; the face very simple in portraiture, and though much too strongly pro- nounced in feature for beauty, marked with a refined grace which per- vades every detail.
A small "Adoration of the Kings" brings at last the venerable name of Fra Angelico into our National Gallery. Diminutive as it is, the colour is so precious and luminous as to make it by no means a con- temptible example. There is more of simple truth in the figures than of abstract elevation. The foremost aged king almost bows himself to the ground : the head of the one who kneels next behind him is deeply re- verent. Benozzo Gozzoli shows himself, in the colour and serenity of his Rape of Helen, the true pupil of his master Angelico. Nothing can be more curiously quaint and sweet. The figure whom we presume to be Paris is scampering along, with a blooming little Helen mounted on his shoulders ; and his esquires are helping themselves liberally to the pretty girls, whose leisurely consternation, as they turn their backs with: HI the portico, is delicious. In front, a cherub of a little boy turns to fly, he knows not whither. The exactly drawn mediaeval ship in the offing would have made old Priam stare as much as the builder of the Levia- than. There is an extremely calm and unconcerned group of knights in the foreground, the chief of whom may possibly be the all-elegant Paris ; but we rather fancy that he is one of the other Trojan princes, or possibly that the painter has intended, with the pictorial license so common among the early masters, to represent in him the easy-natured passivity of Menelaus. Two other pictures might, we think, have been quite as well dispensed with. A so-called Lorenzo di Credi of the Virgin and Child is, in its present state, a ghastly specimen of some vulgar and hideous restorer, who has reduced it rather to the likeness of the cheap sentimental coloured lithographs of saints which flaunt in Roman Catholic shop- windows than of the fifteenth century art; and an Entombment by Canso Tura—an artist of little name, and whose pictures have con- sequently-no plea for admission, in default of intrinsic excellence, —looks like a masquerade of three sickly tailors. The most modern work in date is the most archaic of all in style, except the Margaritone. It is a saint-picture of the seventeenth century by the Greek painter Emmanuel, and of course purely Byzantine in type; mindless, and without even the value of manner, such as it was, of the genuine Byzantines, and worthless save only as a docu- ment.
Such are the Lombardi and Baldi pictures; which the Directors of the gallery have rendered a true national service in securing, and that at a most moderate "price, for the British people.
In concluding this notice, we may advert to what is being done for another national collection—that of ornamental art in the South Ken- sington Museum. Some of the most valuable of the collections made by the Department of Science and Art have been assembled in two per- fectly lighted rooms at the further end of the building, which were opened by the Queen on the 14th ultimo. One room is devoted to pot- tery. and glass ; the other to objects of various descriptions—metal-work, ivories, illuminations, embroidery-work, &c. &c. Both rooms contain a large proportion and vast number of most choice chefs d'ceuvre, which cannot be glanced at without delight, nor seriously contemplated with- out an honest pride in recognizing that England has now fairly won her place among the nations to whom art is dear, and an object of public solicitude. However much remains to be done, and whatever, among the things already accomplished, might have been done better, this is at last a fact; and a fact in which the Department has taken an active share, well worthy of gratitude.
[For THEATRES and Music see Special Supplement.]
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