iu Irto.
THE CRYSTAL PALACE.
OH Saturday last the Directors of the Crystal Palace opened to the pub- lic a collection of the Works issued by the Arundel Society, with original drawings, tracings, ere., from which those works have been produced; a collection of such importance and value to the serious study of art as 'no- thing else attainable by the Directors for- exhibition Would have been likely to approach. It is the first display of art-objects not permanently belonging to the institution which has been got up at the Crystal Palace ; and speaks well no less for the Directors' earnestness of purpose than for their liberal feeling. The offer is stated to have come spontaneously from them to the Arundel Society, and it is by them that the arrange- ments for the removal and placing.of the works have been undertaken. The collection is set up in the court adjoining the Music Court. It consists of twomain•diviaions—illustrations of painting, and illustrations of sculpture; the first from the works of Giotto, Fret Angelico, and Ghir- landajo, selected by the Society for publication ; the second from the:El- gin marbles and-ancient ivory carvings.
The works of Giotto so selected consist, as our readers are swats, of those painted in fresco in the Arena Chapel at Padua, illustrating the legendary and scriptural histories of the Virgin and of Christ. The po- sition of the originals has been, as far as practicable, reproduced in the Crystal Palace. Besides the engravings already issued by the Society, the tracings from the entire series, save the Last-Judgment, are here ex- hibited ; proofs-of the next two forthcoming wood-cuts ; reduced pen- and-ink drawings prepared.for the engravers ; drawings in chiaroscuro, also reduced, of the fourteen allegorical figures in the Chapel ; Signor Belloli's fully coloured drawing,of the "Pieta," which has been engraved on-copper ; and some of the decorative and other accessory subject". To these are added-a head from one of Giotto's paintings, which tradition affirms to be his own portrait;' and a coloured design of the Ascension fresco, whose perfectpurity of hue and lustre of tone may suffice to hint a justification of the importance which Ituskin has ascribed to the colour of the frescoes as one of their great constituent beauties. The present is not the opportunity for considering individual pointrin" such of the paintings as have not yet been engraved by the .Arandel Society. We need only say, thatevery additionto a knowledge of Giotto enhances the idea.of what he achieved for the emancipation of art, and of his wonderful intrinsic greatness.
The designs fromAngelico are executed-by two German artists in pen- cil and in,sepia ; that from- Domenico Ghirlendajo is a finished water-- colour of the Death of St. Francis, which the Society seem, for theist-- sent, to have relinqnished the intention of publishing. In the sculptural illustrations, the reductions by Mr. Cheverton front- the Elgin marbles, here exhibited both in alabaster and in bronze deo- trotype, are more generally known than the models of ancient ivory carvings recently introduced into sale. This collection, divided into four- teen classes, each numbering several examples, presents the exquisite art in its Roman, Byzantine Norman, Gothic, and intermediate phases, short where the ftenaissance begins ; and is full of curious de- light to the eye, as well as instruction historic and artistic. An address from Mr. Digby Wyatt ushered in the entire exhibition to the shivering visitors of last Saturday, and through them, as the first re- presentatives of public interest, to the public at large. To expect, at the=
present day, from that miscellaneous lot, reverence, admiration, tolera- tion, or indeed anything but obtuse ridicule and incredulous scorn of such a man as Giotto, were to be wildly sanguine. Not the less have the Directors of the Crystal Palace deserved well of all and earned- the gratitude of the few.
Previous page
