seen before, had no love for animals, for he tells us, ' Von may, for instance, take a cast of an arm, a hand,
a foot, a leg, a bird, a beast, or any kind of animal or
fish ; but the animals must be dead, because they ha'e neither sense nor firmness to stand still ! '
In default of other models, Cennino advises his pupils to take casts of themselves, by spreading paste or wax on a large table — 'a dinner-table, for histance' — which was to be set on the ground (this shows these tables were on trestles) ; and then the artist was to throw himself upon the soft wax in any attitude he pleased, after which feat he was to extricate himself from it dexterously — no easy matter, after being em- bedded more than a foot deep in soft wax ! The Tambroni edition ends with Cennino's recipe for making casts, but in another copy of the Treatise we find directions for working in glass and mosaics. Agnolo Gaddi had inherited the secret of this laying of mosaics, for in 1 346 he repaired some of the mosaics of Tafi in the roof of S. Giovanni at Florence. So firmly did he fix the cubes of glass into the ground with a stucco composed of mastic and w-ax melted together, that neither the roof nor the vaulting had received any injury from water from the time of its being repaired till the time of Vasari. Agnolo, o coiu'se, taught Cennino. This latter puts the secre down in his famous Treatise.
So the end of the old man's book comes at last ; and as he began, so he wishes to wind up with an invoca- tion to his saints : ' Praying that the Most High God, Our Lady, S. John, S. Luke the Evangelist and Painter, S. Eustachius, S. Francis, S. Anthony of Padua, may give us grace and strength to sustain and bear in peace the cares and labours of this world. And that to those who study this book they will give grace to study it well, and to retain it ; so that by the sweat of their brows they may live peaceably, and maintain their families in this world with grace ; and finally, in that which is to come, live witii gloiy for ever and ever. Amen.'
There are many more interesting bits in this Treatise, but we have merely picked out a few in order to show the character of the man : his simplicity, his religious spirit, his quaint humour, his decision, and his admira- tion of the great upon earth, tempered, however, by his fund of common-sense. Much valuable informa- tion about the social life of the Italian citizens might be gathered from his Treatise ; for though Cennino Cennini wrote only about art for artists, the interest extends much further. The book is full of words and expressions which cannot now be found elsewhere ; so that philology, as well as art, gains valuable assistance from him. Could the old artist and author know how grateful we are for his labour of love, he would, we feel sure, believe that his invocation to all saints, male and female, of paradise,' as he quaintly puts it, had certainly not been in vain, and that part, at least, of the prayer we have quoted has been granted. The saints, ' male and female,' have gi'en us grace to study his book well, and to retain it, though whether in these days artists are able to ' maintain their families ' by the knowledge acquired from Cennino's work is a question which we must leave for them to answer. EsME Stuart.
COROT AT THE GOUPIL GALLERY.
To all lovers of Corot the present exhibition at the Goupil Gallery in New Bond Street must be indeed a delight. A whole room full of examples of the poet-painter's most exquisite achievements seems almost too good to be true ; but there it is nevertheless, and Messrs. Boussod Valadon are to be congratulated on the effect of their selection from the collections of Mr. Alexander Young, Mr. J. S. Forbes, M. Victor Desfosscs, and others. ' I,e Lac de Garde ' presents an especially luminous instance of Corot's spiritual, and yet perfectly real, landscape, seen through pure, veiled sunlight. The composition is charming, and the atmospheric illusion so perfect as to banish all idea of brushwork. ' La Danse des Nymphes,' which comes next, although line and romantic in the extreme, is not so clearly instinct with the peculiar charm of its neighbours. ' Le Lac,' again, is a triumph of that ideal delicacy which, being traced to its foundation, is the outcome of suppressed strength. Here is a wonderful sense of light and movement ; the white clouds shift and float upon the faintly-blue sky ; the trees sway above the moving figures upon the road beside the lake, and over all lies the dreamy lustre, soft as a caress, of the same veiled sunUght. Wet, blue, and silvery is ' Mantes la Jolie,' a very embodiment of the spirit of Spring; but ' L'Abreuvoir,' with its far-stretching plain, and, in the foreground, a pool with oxen standing, and the figure of the herdsman, beneath an almost sombre mass of foliage, silhouetted against evening light, is unde- finably classic in character.
In ' The Bent Tree ' the delineation of graceful tree-forms upon an opalescent sky is beyond praise, and in a poetic marine ('The Clifts,' from the collection of Mr. H. W. Mesdag) the clear-obscure of Corot's tremulous suppressed sunlight finds full expression. ' La Mare aux Grenouilles ' is a watery triumph of sweet cold greys and greens beneath a wet blue sky with moving clouds ; here, too, is the sense of space which again we find in the small classic canvas entitled ' The Goatherd.'
One of the most interesting pictures here is ' La Toilette,' a large, upright canvas, the next destination of which will be the Paris Exposition ; its interest depends not solely upon its great beauty, but also upon its testimony as to the consummate skill of the master in figure-painting, and in preserving the same quality in this as in his landscape. In the foreground are two women, beneath the shade of tall, light-foliaged trees ; one, a beautiful nude girl, is seated, while the other, her tirewoman, bends over her, twining flowers in her hair. A little further back, a third dignified female figure leans gracefully against a tree-stem. In these figures, in the nude one more particularly, we find precisely the same quality as in Corot's rendering of impersonal Nature ; the same exquisite refinement and strength of colour, drawing, and composition.
Of the rest we have left ourselves no space to speak,— uf the misty green marsh of ' La Vanne,' of the grandly classical ' Pastorale — Souvenir d'ltalie,' and others almost equally admirable. It is a place one must needs leave with regret, and yet with a sense of tranquillity and exhilaration born of such contact with the living soul, so strong and sweet and joyous, of Corot.
