FINE ARTS.
BRITISH INSTITUTION: EXHIBITION Or OLD PICTURES. THE Directors of the British Institution may congratulate themselves, after an indifferent muster of living pretensions, on having here really done something "for promoting the fine arts in the United Kingdom." The present collection of works by the old masters and painters recently deceased is beyond comparison the best we have seen on these walls, throwing completely into shade those of late years. The possessors of pictures seem to have come forward with a genuine desire to display the riches of art in this country ; and the result is a collection of masterpieces in all kinds. The inferior examples of good schools are very few, and even the bad schools appear to comparative advantage. No. 1 alone would suffice to confer celebrity on the exhibition. This is the famous "Adoration of the Magi" by John de Mabuse, in the pos- session of the Earl of Carlisle,—an utter prodigy of finish, completeness, and preservation, among all the prodigies of mediteval art. In the figures with which the canvass is crowded, although often chargeable with a cer- tain distortion of feature and poorness of type, there is abundance of varied and elaborate expression : the Virgin is most pure and lovely. The picture, as a whole, commands a measure of wondering admiration, which it requires some effort to raise from the stage of sheer astonish- ment.
Another singularity of excellence in this collection is the presence of as many as three Leonardos • among them (No. 41) that unspeakable glory of the divinest of intellects and painters, the "Vierge aux Ro- chers," of which the Louvre contains a duplicate. The picture ap- peals to the spectator with multiform beauty too deep and subtile for close analysis here, but which may be summed up as its life,—a breathing fadeless life, most holy, yet too tender, so to speak, too tremblingly sensi- tive, to be other than human; and its solemnity, intense well nigh to dreadfulness. It is a relief to be dispensed, by the fame of the work, from description; for indeed,
" What heart have I to play my puppets, bear my part, Before these worthies ? "
In the exquisite " Virgin and Child " (2) there is a painfulness in the biassed mother's face, as though of the shadow of foreknowledge. The " St. John" (29), at the risk of being held heretical by those who share but can scarcely exceed our devotion to Leonardo, we will not profess to admire greatly. If not rather the work of a pupil or contemporary, this must be a production of Da Vinci's less mature power. But it is not the formal look, so much as what appears to us the general want of greatness, to which we demur in this. The sun-glow circled in clouds, towards which the raised arm of the Baptist points, is, however, finely allusive. Prceaccini's " Holy Family " (3) is one of the thoroughly debased works of the "pestilent Renaissance." Standing alone, the Christ would at once be supposed a Cupid ; so low a depth of degradation can art_yet called religious sink to. The grand style and colour of Del Sarto's "Vir- gin and Child, with St. John" (5), are a relief after Procaccini. The holy Family by Anibal Caracci, known as " Le Raboteur " (7), is a pic- ture of much sweetness and simplicity, over-refined in parts, and remind- ing us in its general disposition of some recent works. The same mas- ter's renowned " Three Maries " (17) is also here—than which the Bo- lognese school boasts perhaps nothing better; and his landscape composi- tion of " The Flight into Egypt " (42)—very black in shadow—where flowers are represented springing up in the path of the fugitives. By Agostino Camel is another landscape, " The Baptism of Our Saviour " (381. mong so many specimens of noble or at least scientific execution, the weak characterless frigidity of Domenichino strikes as singularly wretched. The working of " The Magdalen " (37) seems really to have no method in it other than the drawing of a brush along a oanvass ; nor is there much more in that of the " Italian Lady" (85), though here it may be partly overlooked in favour of the extraordinary beauty of the modeL The " St. John" (11) is one of Domeniehino's best known paintings. Near this are a charming " Virgin and Child" (12) by Perugino, and a fine Rubens, of great size, " Juno transferring the Eyes of Argus to the Peacock's Tail" (15). The only Guido is "A Saint" (45)—the head of an elderly man in devotional action. Amazing truth, simplicity, and delicacy of expression, amazing mas- tery in all technical excellence, unite in Glen Bellini's "Circumcision" (46) : for glowing pomp of colour, combined with the sharpest exactitude of contour, it is a very marvel. Of a subject distasteful almost to repul- siveness the brave old Venetian has made a picture moat truly delightful; so exquisitely natural and infantine is the Christ; so exquisitely graceful, modest, and womanly, the Virgin Mother ;* so manly and direct the man's soul that we read in his work. Modemer idealising, and inevitably Murillo idealisms, pale beside this ; whence the " Madonna" (47) that hangs above it appears to us to occupy an unfortunate position. A. "St. Veronica" (62), most undivine, and squalid rather than haggard or pain- ful ; "Angels strewing flowers " (93)—one of those displays of infants tumbling, turning, and winding about amid clouds, which it was reserved for the later ages of the world to adopt as a subject for a picture—well painted, however, and claiming admiration from the devotees of the style ; and a " Virgin and Child" (97), with more than his usual intensity of lofty expression—are the remaining examples of the Spanish master. Probably (though the picture is hung too high to allow of certainty) much of the shaded-off vanishing aspect of Fra Bartolommeo's "Viirgin and Child with Saints" (93) is due to the restorer ; but clearly not all . nor is it less evident that there must have been an excess of this manner from the first. In the arrangement and action also there is a wavy soft- ness, which, united to the vague execution, becomes cloying; and sug- gests, yet distant and dim in its vileness, the debasement of the Angelica Kauffman and Bartolozzi epoch. For the rest, the feeling of the picture would be fervid and deep, and its beauty impressive, but for its overdone immaterialism. The " St. Cecilia" (103) of Correggio is yet more ill- understood in ideal. The Saint's expression as she displays her book to infant angels, is sly, prurient, and dissolved in an enervating bliss any- thing but saintly. " The Muleteers " (94) by the same master derives its interest from having been, as we are told, "painted for a sign to defray his expenses at an inn.
• We think we trace a considerable resemblance between this face and that in Mr. ifillais's picture at the Academy Exhibition, " The Return of the Dove to the Ark," which Mr. Ruskin terms "a type far inferior to that of average humanity." Of course, the latter is an exact copy from living nature, and the likeness, therefore, merely accidental; and we note it only in the -belief that all must think Bellini's head very lovely and engaging, if not strictly beautifuL
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