In the May number Signor Paoletti publishes an ancona (insufficiently reproduced) by Jacobello Bonomo. This ancona in its original carved frame is dated 1385, and is important as showing how early the traditional form of the ancona as it appears in the works of the Muranese school was fixed. This indeed differs but slightly from the altarpieces of Antonio da Murano in Sta. Zaccharia at Venice, which are dated nearly half a century later. ¶ Signor Ricci continues to elucidate the little-known Giovanni Francesco da Rimini, an artist of the Romagna influenced by Benedetto Bonfigli, and through him deriving many motives which recall the work of Filippo Lippi. These are specially noticeable in the Baptism belonging to Signor Blumenstihl at Rome. The other picture, which he attributes to this mediocre but agreeable painter, is a Madonna adoring the Infant Saviour which is No. 255 of the Bologna Gallery. ¶ Signor Augusto Bellini Pietri discourses on the frescoes of S. Piero a Grado which were brought to light in 1885 at Cavalcaselle’s instigation. Cavalcaselle himself judged of them as feeble productions of the early Pisan school which might be connected with the name of Giunta Pisano. He failed to see traces of true Byzantine influence. Signor Pietri’s view practically coincides with this, except that he considers them of much greater artistic significance and as indicating the dawn of the new Italian spirit, the beginnings of a dramatic and expressive art as opposed to the hieratic and purely architectonic character of the Byzantine. ¶ Signor Ricci calls attention to an interesting portrait of Luca Pacioli acquired by the Naples Gallery with a Cartellino bearing the inscription JACO. BAR. VIGENNIS. 1495. If vigennis is a corruption of ventenne, and if Jaco. Bar. stands for Jacopo de Barbari, it brings that artist’s birth down to a much later period than has hitherto been assumed. Unfortunately Signor Ricci does not indicate how far the painting in question conforms to the manner of Jacopo de Barbari’s known works. ¶ Signor Ferrari announces the installation of the new museum at Piacenza, and describes its two chief treasures, the Christ at the Column by Antonello da Messina and the tondo (poorly reproduced), which is ascribed, somewhat rashly we think, to Botticelli himself.
ONZE KUNST contains two articles by Max Rooses; in one he describes the Pacully collection in Paris, which has recently come into the market, and, à propos of the picture of a young woman writing, by the Master of the half-figures, which was exhibited at Bruges, makes a suggestion that possibly the half-figure pictures were executed by Jan Matsys when he was absent from the Netherlands, and may have come into connexion with Clouet’s school in France. The colour scheme and scale of modelling of Jan Matsys’s signed Lucretia is, we should have thought, quite distinct from that of the half-figure pictures. ¶ In the second article the author makes known a Rubens belonging to the Countess Constantin de Bousies. The picture is of a satyr pressing grapes into a cup held by a young satyr; in the foreground a tigress is suckling her young. M. Rooses declares this to be the original of the similar picture at Dresden.
ATENEUM. HELSINGFORS.-No. 1 contains an article on mediaeval art in Finland with illustrations of sculptures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which shows how closely the types of early French and German Gothic sculptures were followed. The St. Margaret from Vemo has almost the grace and ease of movement and the large disposition of draperies of the best French work of the end of the thirteenth century. The later work indicates more clearly German influence. Osvald Siren publishes two Florentine Madonna reliefs, at present in Sweden. One is a stucco copy of a relief by Desiderio, lately in the possession of Mrs. Pepys Cockerell.
THE REVUE DE L’ART contains some illustrations from the Pacully collection, and the record by M. Paul Vitry of an interesting discovery, an almost contemporary copy of a lost portrait of the Comte de Dunois, the original probably being by Jean Fouquet.
L’ART, for April, contains a number of reproductions of mediaeval works by royal and titled amateurs, an article on the Museum of Tapestry at the Gobelins factory, one on Horace Vernet as a caricaturist, and one on the exhibition of the Société National des Beaux-Arts, remarkable for its violent and ill-judged attack on Rodin, à propos of the fact that he is not exhibiting this year.
THE ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW, May, is mostly devoted to contemporary architecture, but contains the second part of Mr. Lethaby’s article on ‘How Exeter Cathedral was Built,’ with many illuminating remarks on mediaeval methods of work; not the least interesting is the suggestion that when columns of Purbeck marble were ordered from Corfe, the designs of mouldings and sections were left to the Corfe masons.
R. E. F.
ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR BÜCHERFREUNDE, April, 1903.—The first number of the seventh annual volume of this periodical opens with a detailed account by H. A. L. Degener of the John Rylands Library at Manchester. The building is described and the history of its foundation related. The biography of John Rylands himself is followed by an interesting account of the founders of the Althorp collection, now incorporated, through the munificence of Mrs. Rylands, with the other contents of the palatial building at Manchester. The purchase of the Crawford collection of MSS. by Mrs. Rylands is duly recorded, and a good summary is given of the most important treasures of the library in the way of block-books and incunabula, with special attention to the books from early English presses. The article is illustrated with sketches of the building and facsimiles of rare specimens of printing. An article follows on the contemporary book-decorator, Hugo Hoppener, whose pseudonym is Fidus. His work is unknown in this country, and such specimens as are given do not inspire us with any desire for a closer acquaintance with it. Modern printing in Russia is described by P. Ettinger, and there is a review of two important facsimiles of block-books recently published by Heitz, and edited by Professor W. L. Schreiber, the ‘Twelve Sibyls,’ at St. Gallen, and the edition of the ‘Biblia Pauperum,’ in fifty leaves, at Paris. A specimen of each facsimile accompanies the review.
C. D.