1 APRIL 1922, Page 12

PORTRAITS OF ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. [To THE EDITOR

or THE " SPECTATOR."]

Sia,—The discovery of reputed early portraits of St. Peter and St. Paul in the hypogeum near tho Porte Maggiore in Rome is one of the deepest interest. But it seems to me that the interest is not so much as a new discovery, but as confirming the traditionary likenesses of the Apostles, which are met with in so many of the churches in Rome. So distinctive are the two types—St. Peter, robust, with square forehead and thick hair; St. Paul, thin and emaciated, with the face of a scholar— that anyone going from church to church in Rome has no difficulty in singling out the two from the rest of the Apostles. The two figures are in the Tribune of St. John Lateran, in the Lateran Museum, the mosaics in Santa Maria Maggiore, St. Pressed°, and St. Pudenziana—to mention only a few that occur to one at the moment. All have the same general types as are seen in this latest discovery of Signor Lanciani,