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THE NATIONAL GALLERY.
A. new purchase hangs in the National Gallery, being the first picture by Mantegna which has yet found a place there. Mantegna was a man- nerist.; combining a distinct aim at antique feeling with a peculiarity of embodiment, partly Gothic, partly individual, and a remarkably abstract His colour, highly variegated, is at once thin, pale, and warm. These characteristics, except the antique tendency, which is here con- siderably in abeyance, are all eminently displayed in the National Gal- lery picture. It represents the Virgin and Child, with the Baptist and the Magdalen; the two former seated under a vermilion canopy, to which lemon and other fruit-trees form a sweet dark impressive back- ground; the two latter, one on each side of the canopy. The figure of the Virgin is especially tender and graceful—a well-conceived medium between the queenly maiden of the religious schools and the gentle young mother of Itaffaelle's later period. The Baptist is austere, rapt, and energetic ; he holds the accustomed cruciform staff entwined with the scroll of his mission, on the inner side of which the painter's name, "Andreas Mantinia F.," is inscribed. In these two figures is to be found the more striking excellence of the picture : the Infant Christ, whose right hand is raised in the act of blessing, is but little dis- tinguished from numerous similar representations; and the Magdalen, with a raised face inefficiently foreshortened, is somewhat a failure. It may perhaps deserve noting, as an expedient conducing to the abstract impression sought after by the artist, that the figures are all looking away from each other into space. His mannered treatment of drapery also, cut up by folds many and sharp, and clinging to the form as if moistened, is conspicuous.
Besides this interesting acquisition, a Pordenone, presented to the Gallery, likewise the first example there of the master, is now to be seen. It is a figure down to the knees, larger than life, and named An Apostle ; possessing little enough distinctive character, but massively designed and painted.
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