Raphael And Cor-Reggio

Raphael4 and Correggio we will quickly dismiss, though we are fully aware of the £70,000 reputation of the one, and the literary reputation of the other. Raphael does not appeal to us, with his sickly sentimentality, his puerile composition, his poor technique, and his lack of observation of nature. Many of the figures in his pictures, standing some feet behind the foremost, are taller and larger than those in front. We feel sure he had no independence of mind. He was a religious youth, with no great power of thought, and time will give him his true place. But as a taxpayer we must enter a mild protest against the ineptitude of authorities who pay such heavy prices for pictures such as the

4 M. Charcot has recently shown that Eaphael's demoniacs are all false and untrue.

Raphael referred to. There was a small picture of a head - the head of a doctor - by an unknown hand, hanging near the Raphael, which, as a work of art, is infinitely its superior, but it was done by an unknown hand. (These pictures have since been re-hung.) For that £70,000 what a splendid collection of good work by men of the present day could have been purchased, a collection every single picture of which might easily be superior to all the Raphaels in the world as works of art!

Del Sarto

To the same period belongs Andrea del Sarto, a naturalistic painter of great power. He had more feeling for nature than most of the men of his time, and his breadth of treatment and truthfulness of colouring are admirable. Of course he painted religious pictures, but from the naturalistic point of view they are wonderful. The student must study the portrait in the National Gallery painted by him.

Titian

The next and last great master of this period is Titian, another of the few entitled to the name of genius. His portraits are his best works. Michael Angelo is reputed to have said, "This man might have been as eminent in design as he is true to nature and masterly in counterfeiting the life, and then nothing could be desired better or more perfect." Titian's works show that he had much more love for nature than Michael Angelo ever showed, and we think it a pity for Michael Angelo's sake that he did not take a leaf from Titian's book instead of criticizing his power of design. His landscape backgrounds show a feeling for nature far above anything painted up' to that time. After his day art in Italy fell into evil ways, and no Italian name stands out even to this day. The study of nature was neglected, illogical traditions slipped in, and though some writers on painting talk of "Naturalists," in the period of decadence, citing Cara-vaggio and others, we would fain know what they mean by the term "Naturalists," for the painters they cite were no students of nature, as is shown by their works, which are more realistic than naturalistic, they being as much students of nature as are the "professional" photographers of to-day, whose ideas of nature are sharpness and wealth of detail. Canaletto's pictures look like bad photographs, and that he used a camera obscura is well known, for Count Algarotti has told us as much. He includes Ribera and other Tramontane masters in the list of those who used tho camera obscura. Ribera however, is no small painter, although he is not a great master. The passages in some of his works are masterful, as in the dead Christ at the National Gallery.

The camera obscura.

Ribera.

Preamble.