PHILIPP DE CAMPAGNE—THE VISION OF ST. AMBROSE.
The title of this picture is not accurate. It is an intermediate figure of Apostolic gait, and in garments of legendary colours, that shews the saints arrayed in white, who themselves seem less occupied by the errand for which they came, than by the place which they had left. Whatever in this picture is not vision is admirably toned, solemn, dim, and yet rich, the colours of a sacred place, and cloistered, devout meditation. Of these, St. Ambrose himself partakes; but the Apostle who addresses the Bishop, and the two Saints themselves, are by far too ponderous, and their outlines far too much defined for celestial beings, and for the clouds on which they are placed: their drapery, although admirably folded, recalls in the saints too strongly marble, and in the Apostle too palpably reality.