The style of this painter is dismissed by Lanzi as "dry," and by another authority as "dry and stiff." There is a certain stiffness, undoubtedly—due probably in part to religious symbolism—in the hands of the Virgin and in the upraised finger of the Child, and in those of the otherwise human and chubby cherubim. But there is nothing dry or stiff in the pretty faces of these children, or in the gracious and beautiful face of the mother. She is clad in a white-and-gold brocade of very beautiful pattern. "One of the finest of the kind known to us, it appears," says the Athenæum, "to be of Venetian origin, and is a pure and perfect diaper, instinct with the choicest Gothic grace and harmony of line, and betraying but the slightest touch of Orientalism. This circumstance attests that the brocade did not come from a Sicilian loom, while other elements prohibit us from ascribing it to an ultramontane craftsman." The landscape background, which has sadly darkened, has many quaint figures—on one side Mary, Joseph, and a cow; on the other, the Three Kings and their attendants.
1332. GEORGE, 1ST EARL OF BERKELEY.
G. Netscher (Dutch: 1639-1784). See 843.
The first Earl of Berkeley—a man of considerable note in his day, and the author of a religious work to which some complimentary couplets by Waller have given a kind of immortality—was born in 1628 and died in 1698. He was one of the Commissioners nominated in 1660 to proceed to the Hague to invite Charles to return to the kingdom, and shortly afterwards he received various important appointments. In 1688, after the flight of the King, he was one of the lords assembled at the Guildhall to draw up the celebrated declaration constituting themselves a provisional government until such time as the Prince of Orange should arrive.
1333. THE DEPOSITION FROM THE CROSS.
Tiepolo (Venetian: 1692-1769). See 1192.
1334. THE FORTUNE-TELLER.
Pietro Longhi (Venetian: 1702-1762). See 1100.
A girl, in the hooped dress and three-cornered hat of the 18th century, is having her hand read by a fortune-teller, while a cloaked cavalier, standing near in a white domino, watches the result.