7 MARCH 1857, Page 20

LECTURE BY MR, HENRY OTTLEY.

A lecture under the tide of " An Hour with the Old Masters" was delivered on Wednesday evening, by Mr. Henry Ottley, at the Marylebone Literary and Scientific Institution, illustrated by various engravings from works of Italian art, with the addition of a very large and splendid photograph from the Last Supper of Da Vinci. The range of the lecture extended from the earliest efforts of the Italian art revival in Pisa and Siena before the time even of Cimabue, to the establishment of the eclectic school of the Caracci, as a counterpoise to the mere mannerism and exaggeration into which art had then sunk. Most of the great men of the intermediate period passed under rapid review ; the lecturer's sympathies being chiefly for Giotto and Masaccio in the elder art, but reserved in supremo degree for the, central and legitimate giants, Raffaelle and Michael Angelo. On the dogma of the eclectic school, while giving that school ample credit for any reform which it may have effected, Mr. Ottley was judiciously severe ; terming it "unmeaning and nonsensical" in its attempt to combine a quality here and a quality there from the various schools, and comparing the receipt given in the well-known Carucci sonnet to one from Mrs. Glass's cookery-book.

The tone of the lecture throughout evidenced Mr. Ottley's habitual familiarity with his subject ; a subject of which the materials had clearly not been "got up" for the occasion, but stored and garnered.