ART IN HOSPITALS.
[To Tun EDITOR OF THE "SPEOTATO11,1 Srn,—Having read with interest the article in the Spectator on " Art in Hospitals," I have thought that it might interest other readers to know or be reminded of an early instance in which the kindly and admirable idea of the writer was thoroughly, if also quaintly, carried out, in a rougher and harder age than ours. In the noble public hospital of Siena there is a double series of wall-paintings, on the one side sacred, on the other side secular, just above the curtainless beds or pallets of the patients. In the spring of 1864, by the kindness of the gentleman then directing the management of the hospital, to whom 1 had been given at Florence a letter of introduction, I was enabled to examine these paintings, though the beds in the long, narrow room (lighted only at each end, north and south, if I mis- take not), were moat of them occupied. If I was told any- thing (but 1 do not remember that I was) as to the names and dates of the painters (supposing there were more than one), the lapse of thirteen years has erased all recollection of them, but of two pictures, sufficiently unlike in motive, I retain a tolerably clear impression. In the one, which for spirit and intention was hardly unworthy even of Hogarth, two doctors were fiercely wrangling over a disputed case, after a fashion which would have delighted Rabelais, La Fontaine, or (above all) Moller° ; and in front were two dogs, snarling at each other, with every fang bare, and all eight feet firmly and furiously planted well apart,—a pair of brutes vicious enough to be men. On the other wall is a painting, as tender and graceful in conception as it is rough and plain in workmanship, representing a long, narrow ladder, reach- ing from earth to heaven, up the rungs of which the spirits of " them that are just born, being dead," are climbing and totter- ing and smiling, in the shape of children too young to walk alone, but propped and guided on either hand by attentive angels ; while above the topmost round of the ladder, and just below the ceiling, women, with outstretched arms and bosoms pressed (like the Blessed Damosel's) against the outer bar of heaven, lean downward, in fervent expectation of the coming children.—I
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