FINE ARTS,
THE NATIONAL GALLERY.
Four new pictures bang on the walls of the National Gallery.
The most important is an Adoration of one of the three Kings, ascribed to Giorgione. Whether it really is, or, as some maintain, is not, by that noble poet of colour, we will not take it upon us to affirm. Certain it is that Giorgione's pictures are extremely rare ; and the criterion of style would make us quite as apt to infer, with Mr. Morrie Moore, that the work is a Bellini. In this instance, too, we cannot do otherwise than assent to Mr. Moore's allegations as to injuries inflicted by the cleaner,— a fact which he affirms to be within his own personal knowledge,—al- though we do not go to the full extent of the terms in which he expresses their results : the picture undoubtedly bears traces of merciless scrubbing. But, whoever may be its author, and whatever the degree of its de- terioration,_ the country possesses in it a work of the fine early period of the great Venetian art—one which, to the eyes of him who sees in paint- ings something beyond surfaces, media and methods of practice, still has its beauties of colour and its charm of? sentiment, chaste yet warm, en- joying yet attuned to melancholy. We know few things more lovely than the figure of the Virgin ; the modest simplicity united to an elevation above all homage. Beyond the feeling and the coloUr there is not so much to admire; but these are enough. The arrangement is not .re- markable, nor the expression of the figures, except the Virgin's, considered individually rather than with reference to the total impiessiotlu 1Xlie drawing is deficient; a point which would not by any means induee us to repel the authorship of Giorgione in favour of Bellinrs. The violet dress of the page, and a patch of blue sky which comes more forward than the trees through which it appears, are two of the passages which speak most clearly to the restorer's hand.
The other Italian picture, Christ Driving the Money-changers and others from the Temple by Jacopo Basaano, has what would be the cha- racteristics of a very hurried and careless picture by Tintoret, had Tin- toret's mind been common, like Bassano's, instead of noble. Dark con- fusion and want of keeping reign over the scene. The story is so indiffer- ently told, that Christ, the motive power of the entire action, does not stand conspicuously out ; and when we find him, we recognize nothing having a stamp of divinity, or even superiority. As a specimen of an artist and of a period, however, the work, which is a presentation, could not be spared without loss.
The Spanish picture from Louis Philippe's sale—St. Francis in prayer, having a skull in his hands—is a decided acquisition. It is our only Zurbaran ; broad, massive, black, strong in expression and relief, and quite monastic. It is the most Spanish of the few Spanish works we possess ; and nothing can be objected to its present condition.
A Joseph Vernet—a view in Rome, with numerous small figures, some- what better than the scene—is the fourth picture ; like the majority of his productions, poor, common, and greatly wanting in vitality of style, but still the most respectable in the gallery.
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