-despite its frequent reminiscences of his elder brother Pietro-as a quite independent master, and must have been executed some time after his artistic coming of age. Still, despite its comparative maturity of style and its grandly noble spirit, it is not yet quite free from a certain stiffness of design and hardness of expression which have almost, if not entirely, disappeared in the altarpiece at Massa.

We need but compare the figures of the Virgin in the two pictures, in order to convince ourselves of the differences in style and treatment which exist between them. The softer modelling, the more graceful arrangement of the drapery, the greater ease of line and tenderness of expression, in the Madonna of the Massa picture, point to a considerably higher level of technical attainment and of spiritual development, and consequently to a later work. Nor is this increased facility of handling and refinement of conception to be found only in the figure of the Virgin; it is evident throughout the entire painting, and especially so in such a freely drawn and delicately modelled figure as that of Charity. The seeming neglect of detail in some of the less important figures is in no way due to any technical incompetency, but to the inevitable generalization of the minor parts of a large and complex whole.

Somewhat later than the polyptych of S. Petronilla, and yet anterior to the altarpiece at Massa, midway as it were between the two, comes the little-known Madonna in the church of S. Eugenio, a work marked by the same nobility of expression as its sister pieces, and sharing much of the tender yet dignified beauty of the Massa altarpiece. Slightly later than that picture but even closer in style and spirit, and more especially

in colour, than either of the above-mentioned panels, stands that most exquisite of all Ambrogio's creations, the little Virgin and Child with adoring Saints and Angels (No. 20) in the Sienese Academy.9

We have thus seen, that although belonging to Ambrogio's earlier period, the great picture at Massa is by no means a very early work. So far as it is possible to place it with anything approaching to precision, I would assign it to the year 1330, or closely thereabouts. It would thus be not far removed in time of execution from the first of Ambrogio's works of whose date we have any documentary evidence the frescoes from the story of the Franciscan order in S. Francesco at Siena, with which, in more ways than one, the Massa painting has much in

common.

The present condition of this altarpiece, although by no means as deplorable as its chequered history would lead one to suppose, is none of the best, and it is to be sincerely hoped that the authorities of Massa will see fit to accept the recent uninterested offer of an Italian gentleman to provide the picture with a suitable frame, on the condition that they should first place it in the hands of a competent restorer, such as Signor Cavenaghi, that it may undergo a careful and way could necessary cleaning. In no better they make reparation, in the name of Massa's people, for past centuries of neglect, than by accepting this most generous of offers, and by restoring this noble masterpiece to its ancient place of honour on the altar of their historic cathedral, where once it stood in its sumptuous entirety, a wonder to all beholders, the city's greatest treasure and artistic glory.

Reproduced on page 87.

HE scheme of an exhibition of French primitives was first mooted immediately after the exhibition at Bruges in 1902. M. Henri Bouchot, who was the first to suggest the idea, devoted all his learning and his prodigious activity towards its realization; formed around himself a group consisting of all the scholars who, by their study of French mediaeval art, and especially of the history of French miniature-painting, seemed to him to be marked out as his essential fellow-workers: Messrs. Léopold Delisle, Robert de Lasteyrie, Georges Lafenestre, J. J. Guiffrey, Paul Durrieu, Camille Benoît, Henri Martin, and others; secured the most gratifying patronage; and, lastly, obtained from the Central Union of Decorative Art the promise of its splendid hospitality in the available portion of its future museum, in the palace of the Louvre itself. The Minister for Public Instruction and Fine Arts accepted the honorary presidency, and M. Edouard Aynard, deputy for Lyons, the working chairmanship. The exhibition will be opened on Easter Thursday, and will remain open until the end of July.

Notwithstanding this name of 'primitives,' which current usage has, so to speak, imposed upon the organizers of the exhibition, no attempt will, in fact, be made to go back to the first origins of French art. It is in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that we must look for the real primitives; but the promoters have voluntarily confined themselves to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in their search for the origins of modern art, for the beginnings not of an art that is being formed, but of an art that is being transformed by drawing closer and closer to nature and life. Nevertheless it is 1 Translated by A. Teixeira de Mattos.

important, if we would realize the value of the French art of the fourteenth century, and notably the strength of Paris as an artcentre, that we should remember that accumulation of earlier works of the first order, that mass of iconographic and plastic traditions, on which the artists of the Valois court continued to live, while transforming them and imbuing them with a new spirit. A few pieces of sculpture, of goldsmith's work and of ivory will be all that the forthcoming exhibition will contain to remind us of that glorious past and of that perfection achieved by our artists and artizans of the age of St. Louis, for in

stance.

The object of the exhibition will be to give a sort of general picture of the artistic activity of the Valois, from Philip VI to Henry III, from 1328 to 1589, at least in so far as concerns the art of painting on a flat surface and the arts based upon drawing; for the modelling arts will figure in this collection only for purposes of reference. A small number of sculptures, as characteristic types as possible, selected from among those which could be moved (that is to say especially from among those belonging to art-lovers in Paris), will mark the development of our art of statuary, the importance of which, for that matter, no longer remains to be proved now that we have museums of casts, like that of the Trocadéro, which enable us to grasp it as a whole and through its essential monuments.

The industrial arts, which were also so brilliant during that period, have necessarily had to be left on one side. There was no purpose in repeating the splendid demonstration provided by the retrospective exhibition of 1900. A few specimens will represent those only, such as the art of painting on enamel or of tapestry, which spring directly from the art of drawing or

colour.

One would have liked, especially, to illustrate fully the development of tapestry, which, under the conditions of our northern climate, is the real equivalent of the great decorative art of fresco-painting. Workshops of tapestry-weavers were set up in Paris as early as the end of the thirteenth century. They were prospering there in the fourteenth century even before the establishment of the celebrated workshops of Flanders. They called upon the most renowned painters for a supply of cartoons which took their motives from the most varied themes: religious subjects, romantic history, battle-scenes, and the rest. In their products we generally find a freedom of manner, a power of freshness, and, above all, a greatness of decorative effect which we should often seek in vain in paintings on panels or altar-screens, and which rival the qualities even of Italian fresco-painting.

The interest of art-lovers, aroused in our day and attracted more and more towards those admirable gothic tapestries, has brought to light a great number of pieces which it would have been quite easy to collect. Our churches and our municipal establishments have also preserved many series which could have been largely drawn upon. Unfortunately, space has, to a certain extent, been lacking, and the promoters have been obliged to content themselves with a few very important specimens, which will complete our information about the works of painting and will lend to some of the lobbies and lounges of the exhibition the wealth of their decorative effect, pending the organization of a special exhibition of this marvellous art, which requires so much room for its adequate display.

In the same way the attempt to bring together any series of glass windows has been almost completely abandoned, although the art of painting on glass was one of the first importance in our country. We shall have to judge the work of our painters decorative style, great on stained-glass, their

their love of realism in portraiture, from good photographs in detail; but to appraise the beauty of their workmanship and the glowing warmth of their colouring we must view their productions on the spot, in our churches and cathedrals.

Lastly, everyone knows the place which miniature-painting also occupies in the history of the art of the middle ages and the large number of masterpieces that have been preserved, better sheltered in the manuscripts of our libraries than were the frescoes and pictures in our churches, exposed as the latter were to the vandalism of men and the ravages of time. But here, Admirable again, many difficulties arose.

as the art of illuminators is, important as we to-day recognize it to be, it will always remain an inaccessible art. One cannot turn over the leaves of a precious manuscript as easily as one looks through a room in a museum or exhibition. And yet there would be very instructive comparisons to be drawn between the art of the painters and the art of the illuminators, arts which are complementary and throw light one upon the other. They are even said to proceed from each other, the limners reproducing discoveries in gesture, types and compositions of famous painters, and the latter in their turn applying themselves to this minute and patient art of the illuminator, and creating, as did Fouquet in the Book of Hours of Stephen Chevalier, masterpieces of composition which other decorators in their train translated by enlarging them into works of important dimensions, such as, for instance, the altar-screen at Loches.

To facilitate comparison, whenever the works in question have consisted of separate leaves, of isolated miniatures, it has been determined to exhibit them side by side with the paintings, in the same way as an endeavour has been made to bring together the rare drawings or sketches that have survived and the complete finished