THE NATIONAL. GALLERY.
The opening of the National Gallery on' the 25th ultimo, after its an- nual recess, reveals only two new acquisitions. This is not much, yet it leaves nothing to complain of as regards. quantity : in point of quality, both works are more than worthy of their place.
The first is a Domenico Glurlandajo, representing the Virgin and
Child, with two angels. It is a careful, finished, firm picture; ex- traordinary for grand power or spiritual depth, nor yet an instance of shortcoming ; such a Ghirlandajo as the British or any National Gallery may show with satisfaction, and quite a right picture to have bought. With meek delight, the Madonna looks down to the Child upon her knee, whose left hand holds a raspberry. Of the two adolescent angels, feminine and male, the farmer, bearing a lily, glances upward, the latter, placed at Christ's head, and having features of a type, approximating to that distinctive of Sandro Botticelli, looks straight .fronting out of the picture. The composition is symmetrical—the colour bright and strong without peculiarity. The second picture is a portrait of Jeanne d'Archel, by the great Low- country painter Antonio More, the limner of " Bloody Mary" and Philip II. ; a portait-painter thanwhom none has known better to. unite the solid actuality of Teutonic with the austere richness of Spanish art. We have no associations connected with the name of Jeanne d'Archel, nor does the likeness acquaint us with an interesting face.; its features and, eharacter,nnmarked, and simply reproduced without any infusion of mosnentary expression—dark eyes, pale brownish complexion, month slightly crimped, little hair showing; the hands joined ; the age, liar& traceable through the settled face, somewhere between twenty-nine and forty. But it is a magnificent pictare, royal in colour, flawless in truth: our own days, so greatly in need of a lesson, could choose no higher standard of portrait-painting to study.
Of other changes at the gallery, we noted nothing worth mention be. yond the shifting of the Coronation of the Virgin, catalogued as of the school of Giotto, and the fishing-coast Turner.. Both are, now near the eye, and the excellence of the latter can be fairly estimated. The Tunas Collection at Marlborough House remains almost absolutely unaltered: few of the master's pencil memoranda, framed on Mr. Ruskin's plan, nay be observed, one noting down the minutite of three Claudes,—and some large, slight, but very beautiful washings-in of effects in water-colour, in the same room with the sepia-drawings.
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