FINE ARTS.
NEW FOREIGN PRINTS.
A VERY beautiful print has lately appeared in the window of Mr. HOLLOWAY, the publisher. Henrietta Street, Covent Garden t which is remarkable in itself, and also as being one of the finest examples of modern German art. It is entitled Genoveva ; and represents a lovely young mother, richly habited, reclining against a tree in a wood, and holding in her lap a new-born infant asleep, her face being upturned. to heaven with a look of imploring anguish. She is the wife of a jealous noble, who on a groundless suspicion of infidelity thrust her from his roof; and haying wandered into a forest, she there gave birth to her first-born child : her life was preserved, almost miraculously, by sucking the milk of a wild doe, that is seen in the twilight background approach- ing the spot. The design is in the purest style of Italian art—the ideal of actual life ; that is, the countenance, instead of being disfigured by agony and grief, is sublimed by an elevated expression of suffering re- signation and prayerful fervour into almost seraphic beauty ; and the dress is not torn or disordered, but arranged in accordance with the graceful yet simple attitude of the figure. The composition is faultless: the group might serve as a model for the sculptor ; indeed there is a sculpturesque decision in the drawing, though it is entirely free from rigidity of substance, and from that dry, linear manner, a prevailing defect of the German school. The slumbering babe nestling between its mother's knees, is a breathing image of the tender rounded form of infancy in a posture of perfect repose ; and the clasped hands of the mother retain it with a half-conscious instinct : the limbs are not only solid, but fleshly. 'file painter's name is STEINBRUCR, of Dusseldorf, the most promising school of Germany. But for the hard minuteness with which the weeds in the foreground and the ivy on the trunk of the tree arc defined, there is nothing to indicate the German mannerism disagreeably ; and the quality of the art is more akin to DOMLNICIIINO than ALBERT DURER.
The execution of the plate is no less admirable than the picture: it is an elaborate and delicately.--finished line engraving by FELSING, and by ninny degrees the best production of the burin that we have seen front Germany: in short, it could hardly be surpassed in va- riety of texture and effect of colour and fleshiness by the best line engraver in this country. Not having the print before us, we cannot enter so fully into the executive merits of the plate as it deserves : suffice it to say, that in the skilful adaptation of means to the end, it evinces finesse in employing the resources of the art that will surprise others as it has us. In looking over Mr. DOMINIC COLNAGEEN collec- tion of prints for some other specimens of German engraving, (one always resorts to Pall Mall East for what is choice or rare,) we met with a Head of Christ, engraved by FELSING, the lines of which are bold, firm, and clear, but the style is rigid and mechanical to pedantry ; whereas in the Cellar= the executive skill is wholly subservient to the development of the painter's feeling.
We are the more glad to note this great advance in the German school of engraving, because it. is to that country we should prefer to look for translations of the chefs-d'iativre of the old masters, rather than to France, whence comes the supply of RAFFAELLES and LEO* NARDOS at present. One can generally depend on the fidelity of the German prints, whether copperplates or lithographs, especially in the essential point, the most susceptible of fallacious interpretation—expres- sion; but the alloy of affectation in the French draughtsmen makes one mistrust the engravings after their copies. A recent German lithograph of the affecting picture by RAFFAELLE of Christ Bailing his Cross, is equal if not preferable to the large line engraving, the work of an Italian artist ; and the line engraving of the Magdalen Reading, by CORREGGIO, at Dresden, lately finished by HUMPHREYS, is infinitely superior to any other. Mr. DOMINIC COLNAGIII showed us a proof, before letters, just arrived here, of a divine head by RAFFAELLE, of Urania, taken from one of ltis grand compositions, and engraved by FORSTER. after a copy by DESNOYERS, one of the most celebrated French draughtsmen : it is full of grace and sweetness, and has that indefinable charm belonging to the ideal heads of the prince of painters—a frank, sensuous pudency, expressive of a fine bland nature, for which it was sufficient happiness to exist. The en- graving is marred by an impertinent misuse of skill, done to please the inimunnee-pinuninee taste of the admirers of engine-turning, which gives a waving uncertainty to the shadows ; moreover, the shadow of the eye in the light side of the face is too strongly and abruptly defined: but despite these defects, it is a fine engraving, and worthy to hang be- side the same engraver's portrait of Rarra.ELLa by himself,—the true one, which represents him with head a little thrown back, looking over his shoulder as a painter would when sketching his own profile in a mirror. How different the ingenuous simplicity and fine-eyed intellec- tual clearness of this face, from the turgid voluptitous languor of the Musician, with the furred robe, whose portrait by RAFFAELLE so long passed for that of the great painter.
We fear it is hopeless to expect our own engravers to turn their at- tention to the chefs d'teuvre of art, after the experience HP.MPHREYS had of the discernment of the publishers, and the small encouragement 13CR. NET has met with in his noble project of producing a series of cheap prints of the most famous pictures on a large scale, We take this op. portexity of-mxpressing a hope that Mr. BURNET will complete the set of RAFFAELLE'sPeartoons,:forbis own sake : when the seven prints may be had in a cover for thirty shillings—and such copies as could not be got for as many guineas—they may find their way into amateurs' port- folios and Mechanics institutes, if not into the dwellings of the working classes as was intended.
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