The Arundel Society's first publication for 1888 and 1889 is
remarkallefor a new departure, in more senses than one. The sub- jects of their chromo-lithographs are usually sacred; and this year the chief attraction is Botticelli's "Allegory of Spring," reproduced in Berlin by Wilhelm Greve from a drawing by Signor Costantini, both working for the Society for the first time. When we con- sider the copies of pictures of this epoch and character to be observed in visiting either our own National or foreign galleries on days set apart for students, we can better appreciate the merits of these reproductions. We lay stress upon this epoch as being a trying one for the copyist, from the difficulty of retaining the naive beauty of the originals, without an attempt to engraft upon it the conventional prettiness of our own time. Of course, it is impossible that these chromo-lithographs can convey the look of age and decay which is so impressive in the originals, and which, we think, is better obtained by photographs; but colour will, no doubt, overbalance this perhaps fanciful objection in the eyes of the majority. For ourselves, we admire for effect the two plates from Andrea del 'Sen-to, produced by MM. Lemercier and Co., Paris, by the process called heliogravure, giving a reproduction in monochrome only. -The "Christ Bound to the Column," a chromo- lithograph after Antonio Razzi, better known under the name of Sodoma, does not appear to justify the judgment of those who, Lanzi tells us, placed the original above the work of Michael Angelo.
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