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gives eighteen chair-backs without seats or legs, but for each of them there is a separate bracket, showing how important he considered it.

Chippendale also used the bracket, but for his Chinese or gothic chairs only, and Manwaring's use of it probably arises from his combination of the square leg with the carved back. When, therefore, we find a chair with a bracket it is probably not by Chippendale: if in addition to the bracket there is a square leg and a carved back, it is possibly by Manwaring; but if, as in plate 7 of the 'Real Friend' (No. III), there is a criss-cross or lattice-work pattern in the splat resembling his gothic railing, the possibility becomes as near a certainty as it is in the nature of such things to be. Another glance at plate 5 will show a carved ornament running along the lower

VI- Real Friend' (plate 11).

edge of the front rail, which is also almost, if not quite, confined to Manwaring's work as far as this period is concerned. It occurs in many earlier chairs, but is given only once, and that as an alternative, in the 'Director.'

His fondness for designing garden railings gave him a better grip of the latticework pattern, as applied to chairs, than any of his contemporaries; Mayhew being his only real competitor. Plate 23 of "The Chair Makers' Guide' (No. IV) is a good sample of his work in this particular form of design. In this, note particularly the floral decoration in the centre of the back, which is very distinctive of his treatment, his idea being to temper the severe feeling by ornament, as is also shown by the curves in the lower part of the back.

Another chair worthy of notice is that on plate 13 (No. V), in which the floral decorations at the junction of the pattern are again employed. If the carving were well executed, which it almost certainly was, this would make an exceedingly fine piece for a collector.

Most of the designers of the eighteenth century were infected with what is known as the Chinese craze, and Manwaring was no exception. For the most part, like the furniture-makers' gothic (which Mr. Heaton calls churchwarden gothic), it is scarcely recognizable. The ideas were simply made use of and translated, so to speak, into English, till Anglo-Chinese, if I may be allowed to coin a name for it, came to be a separate style of itself, fairly well defined, but including many things from entirely different sources. It is not for its purity that I would call attention to plate 11 in Manwaring's 'Real Friend' (No. VI)-for Mayhew and sometimes even Chippendale was purerbut because I consider it the best chair, if not the best single piece executed in this particular manner.

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ITALIAN BOXWOOD CARVINGS OF THE EARLY

SIXTEENTH CENTURY'
BY DR. WILHELM BODE

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ERMAN art of the Renaissance period attained its highest development in the so-called minor branches. This is evident in Schongauer's engravings; the 'small masters' have all the characteristics of miniature painters, and even Dürer's large pictures are finished off like miniatures. Plastic art of the same period shows us the dainty boxwood carvings which are so highly and rightly prized. The small boxwood heads, said to represent Adam and Eve, in the Victoria and Albert Museum stand on a far higher level than any lifesized bust of German origin, and few of the works, even of Vischer or Riemenschneider, can rival the little figures, also of Adam and Eve, in the museum at Gotha by the hand of Conrad Meit. The wooden blocks for German medals of this period may be said to rank with Italian quattrocento medallions. Some hundreds of firstclass carvings by German masters are extant, scattered about in various collections and for the greater part by unknown artists. To these might be added the work of Dutch artists; but we generally find wood carvings in the Netherlands to have been executed by Germans settled there, such as Conrad Meit, court carver to Margaret of Austria, Stadtholder of the Netherlands.

From the small amount of work of this kind produced in the Netherlands, it might easily be inferred that Italy possessed even less. The broad monumental tendency of Italian art, especially in sculpture, seems to exclude a taste for daintily executed small works and to find no pleasure in them. This is, however, not unvaryingly the case, as the beautiful boxwood figure of Hercules in the Wallace Collection proves.

1 Translated by the Baroness Augusta von Schneider.
Reproduced on page 181.

According to the inscription, it is the work of one Francesco of Padua, a goldsmith. E. Bonnaffé mentions the figure in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1886, I, 202, and it is not the only one of its kind. A small wood carving of St. Sebastian was amongst the bronzes of the Falcke collection added to the Berlin museum in 1891; the figure is remarkable for the beauty of its outlines and its elegant poise; and here also we may safely assume that the unknown artist was an Italian. A carved wooden relief representing Christ Rising from the Dead, purchased about the same time for the Berlin museum, shows equally evident though dissimilar traces of Italian workmanship.

Being struck by this fact, I examined the small wood carvings in public and private collections with a view to discovering further works pointing to an Italian origin. Though the result of my researches was but a modest one, it has so far borne out my supposition that small wood carvings were made in Italy at the same period as in Germany, and also that it is possible to determine the date and place of their origin with some degree of certainty. I am desirous on this account to make a short summary of my observations, and also intend giving reproductions from the best specimens of works of this kind, in the hope that my investigations may lead to further studies and researches in the Italian archives.

Our information on the Hercules of the Wallace Collection is more ample than in the case of almost any other small work of carving in Italy, as besides the full signature of OPVS FRANCISCI AVRIFICIS P. round the base, there exists the testimony of a contemporary, singularly remarkable for its detailed mode of expression. Bonnaffé first called attention to this fact. Bernardino Scardenone of Padua, born about 1485, in his work entitled De antiquitate urbis Patavii,'

compiled before the middle of the sixteenth century, gives a description of a 'Herculeum buxeum Francisci argentarii Patavini.' The piece was in the possession of Marc' Antonio Massimo of Padua. The writer goes on to say that it was a marvel of art, worthy of Polycleitus or Pheidias, and records the fact that it was carved by the artist (whom Scardenone calls Francesco da Sant' Agata) in the year 1520, 'per ocium (ut audio),' and valued at one hundred ducats.

This is extremely high praise, but by no means exaggerated, for Italian Renaissance art can boast of few works which show such a thorough knowledge of anatomy as this little carving. Each part of the body, so full of subtle contrasts in its movements, is perfectly finished off on all sides, standing out sharply detached. The expression and gesture are full of life, but do not surpass the classic standard of ancient works of sculpture, and this perfect measure may be the reason why the piece has been mistaken for a copy of antique work. It seems strange that we possess nothing beyond this little from the hand of a man who must have gem been a great artist in the early cinquecento. His name, up till now, has only come to our knowledge through Scardenone. It so happens, however, that the matter has recently been brought up in an essay by C. von Fabriczy in the Rassegna d'Arte. The writer's endeavours to discover the master named Francesco da Sant' Agata in the Paduan archives proved fruitless, though he succeeded in tracing a family of that name in Verona. Now the museum at Berlin possesses a small relief in pearwood of the head of John the Baptist, borne by two angels on a charger, which little work is signed FRANCISCVS JVLI VERONEN, 3 As this Francesco di Giuliano, who was born in the year 1462 in Verona, is not mentioned in the annals of the city after the date 1504, Fabriczy suggests that he might have settled in Padua at this period and was possibly identical

• Reproduced on page 187.

with the artist of the renowned Hercules. Doubtless the hypothesis rests on a slender basis, as Fabriczy himself admits, nor does he find any very striking affinity between the relief and the statuette of Hercules. The family of Sant' Agata, moreover, he informs us, were amongst the nobles of Verona. Does it seem probable that the artist, if he belonged to this family, would have omitted his name in the inscription? The assumption that Scardenone named the artist after the district in which he lived is more likely. The addition Patavinus' to the inscription cited by Scardenone would, for a Veronese nobleman having resided more than forty years in his native town, smack greatly of the incongruous.

Last year the Berlin museum purchased a small boxwood figure bearing far more traces of resemblance to the Hercules. It is almost equal in size to the latter, which measures ten inches, and will be found reproduced in these pages.4 The work represents a naked youth with uplifted arms; the body is of somewhat slenderer and more austere appearance than the Wallace Collection piece and less rich in anatomical mastery than this. The figure is fine in outline from every point of view, and shows considerable likeness to the Hercules in the beautiful conception of form and finished execution. There is a strong probability that the work was executed by Francesco da Sant' Agata, and we are confirmed in the view that it was intended for a St. Sebastian by the presence of some small holes in the body, formerly containing arrows, and thus explaining the raised arms and upturned piteous gaze. A bronze replica of this work in Mr. Pierpont Morgan's possession3 has no indication of the arrows; the artist was probably, as a true Renaissance artist, more intent on beauty of form and proportions than on his subject, but it is not quite plain what is the subject even of the boxwood figure.

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BRONZE FIGURE OF HERCULES; IN THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM AT OXFORD

BOXWOOD FIGURE OF HERCULES, BY FRANCESCO DA SANT

AGATA; IN THE WALLACE COLLECTION

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