ÜBER OTTO OSEINER. By Johannes Guthman. Hiersemann (Leipzig).

CATALOGUE OF JAPANESE WOOD CARVINGS, ETC., IN THE BOSTON MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS.

MAGAZINES.

Gazette des Beaux Arts. Durendal (Brussels). Onze Kunst (Amsterdam and Antwerp). L’Art (Paris). La Presse Universelle (Antwerp). L’Arte (Rome). Rassegna d’Arte. The Architectural Review

A NEW MEZZOTINT

We have received from Messrs. P. and D. Colnaghi & Co. an impression of a mezzotint by Mr. H. Scott Bridgwater after Raeburn’s portrait of Mrs. Home Drummond of Blair Drummond, which they have just published. Raeburn loses nothing in Mr. Bridgwater’s translation, indeed the mezzotint has greater merit as a work of art than the original picture; we have seen no modern engraving in mezzotint which we can regard as its equal. Mr. Bridgwater has produced a work worthy to rank with the best mezzotint engraving of the eighteenth century—with the work even of such a master of the art as J. R. Smith; and this portrait of Mrs. Drummond is very much superior to some of the eighteenth-century mezzotints for which absurd prices are being paid by people who regard everything that comes from the eighteenth century with indiscriminating admiration. We do not believe that anyone of taste and judgement, who was not blinded by the eighteenth-century glamour, could seriously maintain that any mezzotint of Valentine Green’s is to be compared as a work of art with Mr. Bridgwater’s latest work. We have little enough to boast of in modern artistic production; let us at least recognize good work when we meet with it; the best work of modern artists has been done in black and white, and most of the modern works of art that are really worth collecting are drawings or etchings; to these we can now add some mezzotints, among which Mr. Bridgwater’s Mrs. Drummond is perhaps the most notable. The issue is restricted to 350 impressions, all artist’s proofs.

❧ CORRESPONDENCE ❧

MR. JULIUS WERNHER’S TITIAN

SIR,

One of your subscribers in Venice has drawn my attention to an article in your magazine (April number, p. 185), written by Mr. Herbert Cook, and illustrating a magnificent portrait by Titian, in the possession of Mr. Julius Wernher. Your subscriber tells me that similarly insufficiently described Italian portraits are not uncommon in English private collections, though, of course, not through the fault of the collectors, as it is impossible to obtain sufficient information from printed books only. We here in Venice are naturally better off, and the public and private archives and the manuscripts in the libraries offer much material to one who is experienced to handle it, and yield in most cases sufficient information. So your subscriber has asked me to show in the case of this Giacomo Doria what we can achieve here. ¶ To the student of palaeography it is not a matter of opinion, but of certainty, that the inscription reads: Giacomo Doria quondam Agostini, that means Giacomo Doria, son of the late Agostino. The dress is not the habit of an Augustinian friar. In the famous concert by Giorgione, in the Palazzo Pitti, the ecclesiastic playing the clavi-cembalo is an Augustinian; he is clean shaven, has the large tonsure, and wears a mozetta. It is impossible to decide by looking at the reproduction alone whether Giacomo wears Venetian or Genoese dress, everything being entirely black. According to Crollalanza’s ‘Dizionario storico-blasonico,’ there were two families of the name of Doria—one in Genoa, and one in the Veneto. Mr. Cook has not been able to decide to which branch Giacomo belonged. ¶ Now Signor Comm. Carlo dei Conti Bullo, at Venice, has a private archive containing many important documents concerning the history of the town of Chioggia. These documents show that the war between Venice and Genoa, called the war of Chioggia, led to the settlement of several important Genoese families in Chioggia. Amongst these are mentioned the Bonivento, the Cibo, the Gandolfo and the Doria. ¶ The Chioggia branch of the Doria family still exists; its present head is Signor Giovanni Battista Doria, a draughtsman in the Genio Civile in Venice. This gentleman has in his possession a genealogical tree, compiled and signed by two canons of the cathedral of Chioggia, which proves his descent from Victor, son of Giovanni, born in the year 1480, and founder of the Chioggia branch. But in this tree no Giacomo di Agostino occurs. Now Signor Doria has another tree, although not a signed one, which shows how Victor di Giovanni is attached to the main trunk of the family in Genoa. In this tree the looked-for Giacomo di Agostino occurs; he is therefore a Genoese and not a Venetian. ¶ We give here the interesting part of this tree: