are constantly abusing their power. The pitcher has gone so often to the well that it may be going to break at last.

G. de R.

NOTES FROM BELGIUM1

THE department of antiquities at the Cinquantenaire Museum has acquired an important basrelief, besides funeral inscriptions, vases, articles of glass, fibulae, and other objects, from the Byzantine cemetery at Saloniki. The subject of the bas-relief is Dionysus, who is called in the inscription Asdouletos or Asdoules, the god of the town of Asdoula. The sculptured portion includes figures of Dionysus, Pan, and Silenus, and two naked boys among the branches of an enormous vine, plucking the grapes and leaves. The basrelief has been closely examined by M. Perdrizet in the Revue Archéologique of Paris.

At Tervueren, near Brussels, a beginning has been made with the building of the new Colonial museum which is to house the collections of the

Congo State. The most interesting objects in these collections, which at present are buried away in packing cases, are the anthropological and ethnographical specimens bearing on the forms of primitive art. The principal front of the new museum will be very like that of the Petit Palais in the Champs Elysées; there will be a single storey divided into large bays and surmounted by a central dome.

The excavations carried on by the Archaeological Society of Brussels at Wavre, on a spot which local tradition declares to be the site of the earliest buildings of the town, have just disclosed the ruins of a third-century Gallo-Roman villa, nearly eighty yards in extent. A large sewer made of squares of terra-cotta runs across it, and there is a cellar some ten feet deep built of brick with white fillets in relief. Cubes of mosaic, pieces of porphyry, and white marble mouldings are found on all sides, and the discoveries include a silver ring, a silver trident, fragments of pottery, and the remains of six hypocausts, one of them in perfect condition.

THE SOMZEE COLLECTION

THE sale of the Somzée collection has been one of the most interesting and important events of the year. When exhibited, it proved to be an eloquent example of the class of modern collection that is formed hastily and without any special culture. Side by side with the very finest things were pictures daubed with retouchings and outrageously restored marbles. But the total value of the collection was high, and there were a large number of works that deserve special mention. Among the Greek antiquities the most important was the colossal statue of a youth in a helmet (No. 4 in the catalogue), which fetched 65,000 francs. The material is Parian marble, and the 1 Translated by Harold Child.

statue came from the Villa Ludovisi at Rome. It is the only Roman replica of a lost Greek statue by an artist of the first half of the fifth century. The sculptor, according to Professor Furtwängler, was Micon; according to M. Salomon Reinach, Hagelaïdes. The statue represents the Athenian hoplitodromos Callias, the pancratiast, and strikingly resembles the figures on the pediment at Olympia, particularly the Pelops on the eastern pediment. There is a model of it in the Cinquantenaire Museum at Brussels. The chief work of the Graeco-Roman period was the colossal statue of Septimius Severus, models of which are in the Louvre and the Cinquantenaire Museum. This statue, which according to M. Salomon Reinach would make the fame of any museum, was bought for the Cinquantenaire Museum at 360,000 francs. Examination reveals that the head is two centuries later than the body, which dates from the early Empire. The statue is of green bronze cast hollow, and came from the Palazzo Sciarra at Rome, having formerly been in the Palazzo Barberini. According to Winckelmann it was discovered at the same time as the famous Barberini faun, during the excavation of the moat round the castle of St. Angelo under Urban VIII (1623-1644).

The

Of the pictures, The Death of Polyxena by Tiepolo was bought by the State for the Brussels museum for 25,000 francs. The ease and fullness of the composition and the characteristically Venetian amber and gold of the colouring make it a fine example of this painter's work. St. Engracia, a Hispano-Flemish work of the early sixteenth century, the origin and attribution of which make an interesting question, went for 56,000 francs. It had been seen before at the Universal Exhibition at Paris in 1900, and at the exhibition of pictures by masters of the Flemish and British schools in London in 1899 (No. 16 in the catalogue). I cannot agree that The Patrol of Lansquenets, which the catalogue attributes to Rubens, is rightly regarded as belonging to the period when Rubens was living at Mantua and worked in Rome. It has none of the characteristics of his art at that period, and, in spite of the documentary evidence accepted without criticism by M. de Somzée, I believe it more properly to be attributed to Jordaens. The low price of 27,000 francs was probably due to this uncertainty of attribution. A bust portrait of a doctor, attributed to Paolo Greco, but apparently in the first manner of Domenico Theotocopouli, called El Greco, fetched 9,500 francs. A tapestry of Bathsheba, exhibited in Paris in 1900 and at the exhibition of primitives at Bruges in 1902, was bought for the townhall of Brussels for 100,000 francs. The two tapestries of The Marriage of Mestra and The Sacrilege of Erisichthon fetched 55,000 and 60,000 francs respectively.

R. PETRUCCI.

NOTES FROM HOLLAND 1

THE Rijksmuseum does not contain many specimens of the Netherlands school of painting of the fifteenth century, and it is always necessary to make a journey to Utrecht if one would obtain a satisfactory impression of the art of that period. Lately, however, this department of the Rijksmuseum has been enriched by two fifteenth-century paintings representing a Resurrection and a Last Supper respectively. Neither of these is of the very first importance; but, nevertheless, both are desirable and welcome acquisitions, and give a certain completeness to the collection, which hitherto has been noted rather for its well-known array of excellent works of the seventeenth century.

It is not easy to adorn these two works with a great name; and, although Dirk Bouts was given as the artist before and during the sale, this was done with the object of, in a measure, localizing them. They are most certainly not by Bouts himself, although the composition of the Last Supper resembles, with many differences, Bouts's magnificent painting in St. Peter's at Louvain, a characteristic which, as we were able to see at the Bruges exhibition, it has in common with many second-rate pictures of this sort. The Resurrection has in its composition several elements that remind us of Memlinc; but it is by the same master as the Last Supper, a painter who flourished about 1470 and whom we look upon as a Flemish or Brabançon rather than a North Netherlands painter.2

The museum has also for some time been in the possession of a very good Aert van der Neer, a 1 Translated by A. Teixeira de Mattos.

2 Cf. No. 42 in the Bruges exhibition of 1902, which seems to belong to the same group. Reproduced in Pigmentdrucke v. d. Verlagsanstalt Bruckmann (Munich: 1903).

Foreign Correspondence

Moonlit Landscape, a little dark, but with admirably elaborate background and with, in some portions, that wonderful dull silver gleam of the moonlight which van der Neer was so well able to produce in his best moments.

The Netherlands Museum of History and Art, on the ground floor of the Rijksmuseum, shows, in the porcelain room, a large dish which serves as an excellent example of fifteenth-century oriental pottery. The piece comes from Damascus, and is distinguished for its severe and powerful ornamental decoration. On the blue-white bottom of the fairly deep dish is a symmetrical pattern of heavy pomegranates on bending stems, surrounded by a rich and ornate design in twigs and blossoms, all in very simple colours, olive green, turquoise, and cobalt blue. This specimen is also of importance as showing the origin, the descent of the much weaker but yet charming family of the so-called 'Rhodian dishes.' The magnificent glazing and the severe simplicity combine to make a rarely beautiful piece, in which the lover of ceramics will find the same enjoyment as an impressionable woman in the contemplation of a unique orchid.

The museum has recently purchased and will shortly exhibit a bronze mortar of Arabic origin (thirteenth century) encrusted with red copper arabesques and engraved with a severe design of animals and characters. This piece is the more interesting inasmuch as the delicate ornamentation of twisted tendrils and flowery spirals, as well as the sharp pointing of the animals, seems to teach us much concerning the origin of many a gothic ornamentation.

The Print Room is exhibiting an important selection of decorative prints of the German, French, and Italian schools from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. W.

ART HISTORY

GONSE (L.). Les chefs-d'œuvre des Musées de France: Sculptures, Dessins, Objets d'Art. (15 x 11) Paris (Lib. de l'Art ancien et moderne), 50 fr. Plates and text illus. Vol. I. (Peintures) was published in 1900.

BRÉHIER (L.). Les origines du Crucifix dans l'art religieux. (7 x 5) Paris (Bloud). One of the series 'Science et Religion': 62 pp.

LAPAUZE (H.). Procès-verbaux de la Commune générale des Arts de Peinture, Sculpture, Architecture et Gravure (18 juillet 1793, etc.) et de la Société populaire et républicaine des Arts. Publiés intégralement pour la première fois avec une introduction et des notes. (11 x 7) Paris (Bulloz), 15 frs. HARTMANN (S.). Japanese Art. (8 x 5) London (Putnam), 6s. net. 39 plates, 6 in colour.

Cook (E. W.). Anarchism in Art and Chaos in Criticism.

(9x6) London (Cassell), Is. net. Papers reprinted from
Vanity Fair'; revised and enlarged.
ANTIQUITIES

KÖRTE (G. and A.). Gordion: Ergebnisse der Ausgrabung im
Jahre 1900. (11 x 8) Berlin (Reimer).

A record of excavation in Phrygia, published by the Imperial German Archaeological Institute, with 245 illustrations, maps, etc.

THEDENAT (H.). Le Forum Romain et les Forums impériaux. 3ème édition, entièrement refondue. (7 × 4) Paris (Hachette). SOCIÉTÉ NATIONALE DES ANTIQUAIRES DE FRANCE. Centenaire, 1804-1904. Recueil de Mémoires. (11 × 9) Paris (Klincksieck). A vol, of 500 pp. containing over fifty contributions by members of the Society, 25 photogravures, and text illus. SOLITRO (G.). Il Lago di Garda. (117) Bergamo (Istituto italiano d'arti graf.), 3. 1. 50. Illus.

JACKSON (F. H.). Sicily. (6 x 4) London (Methuen), 3s. net.
The Little Guides,' 22 illus, and 2 maps.
BADEN. Die Kunstdenkmäler des Grossherzogthums.

Vol. VI.,

Kreis Freiburg, Erste Abtheilung: Die Kunstdenkmäler des Landkreises Freiburg. In Verbindung mit E. Wagner bearbeitet von F. X. Kraus. (11 x 8) Tübingen and Leipzig (Mohr). 500 pp., copiously illustrated.

GASQUET (Dom F. A.) English Monastic Life. (9 × 5) London (Methuen), 7s. 6d. net. 'The Antiquary's Books'; illustrated.

BROOKE (Rev. A. St. C.). Slingsby and Slingsby Castle. (8 × 5) London (Methuen), 7s. 6d. 16 plates and map.

HORE (P. H.). A history of the town and county of Wexford. (10 x 8) London (Elliot Stock). Illus.

List of some old buildings in an area of seventy miles square: round Manchester. (9 x 5) Manchester (Society of Architects). 48 pp. and map.

ments.

GRANDMAISON (L. de). Essai d'Armorial des artistes français (xvie-xviiie siecles): lettres de noblesse, preuves pour l'ordre de Saint-Michel. (10 × 6) Paris (Champion), 5s. 108 pp. BUBER (M.). Juedische Kuenstler. (12 x 9) Berlin (Juedischer Verlag), 10 m.

Essays upon Josef Israels, L. Ury, E. M. Lilien, M. Liebermann, Solomon J. Solomon and J. Epstein, by different authors. 170 pp., copiously illustrated. OSTINI (F. von). Böcklin. (10×7) Leipzig (Velhagen and Klasing), 4 m. Kunstler-Monographien.'

SOUBIES (A.). J.-L. Gerome (1824-1904): Souvenirs et notes. (10 × 7) Paris (Flammarion), 1 fr. 16 pp.

SPIELMANN (M. H.). The art of J. MacWhirter, R.A. (14 × 10) London (Hanfstaengl), 4s. net. 30 pp., 32 illus. including 6 phototypes.

PINNINGTON (E.). Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. (7x5) London (W. Scott Publishing Co.), 3s. 6d. net. Makers of British Art'; 21 plates.

MCCURDY (E.). Leonardo da Vinci. (8 x 5) London (Bell), 5s. net. Great Masters in Painting and Sculpture.' 42 illus. MENPES (M.). Whistler as I knew him. (11 x 8) London (Black), 40s. 125 plates, 23 in colour.

ARCHITECTURE

SCHмOHL (P.) and STAEHLIN (G.). Barockbauten in Deutschland. (20 x 15) Stuttgart (Ebner), 10 m., part 1, 17 phototypes; complete in 5 parts.

The BRITISH HOME of To-day. A book of modern domestic architecture and the applied arts. Edited by W. Shaw Sparrow. (12 × 9) London (Hodder and Stoughton), 5s. net. Illus.

PAINTING

BRETON (J.). La Peinture: les Lois essentielles; les Moyens et le But; le Beau et la divine Comédie des Arts entre eux. L'Odysée de la Muse, conte historique. (8 x 5) Paris (Lib. de l'art ancien et mod.).

EXPOSITION des Primitifs Français au Palais du Louvre et à la Bibliothèque Nationale. Catalogue. Second edition, 2 vols. (11 x 6) Vol. I: Paintings, Sculpture and Tapestries; II: Manuscripts. With 40 plates. 12 fr. BOUCHOT (H.). L'Exposition des Primitifs Français: la Peinture en France sous les Valois. (16 x 12) Paris (Lib. centrale des Beaux-Arts), 150 fr., 4 parts, each containing 25 photogravures and descriptive text. Pt. 1 published. HOLME (C.). The Royal Academy from Reynolds to Millais. Edited by C. Holme. (12 × 9) London (Offices of The Studio'), 5s. net. Special summer number of The Studio'; text by W. K. West, W. S. Sparrow and T. Wood. Illustrated.

Catalogue of an Exhibition of Paintings by George Morland, held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, 1904. (9 × 5) 2d. With a Morland bibliography.

LANGTON (M. B.). How to know Oriental Rugs, a handbook. (8 x 5) London (Appleton; F. Warne), 8s. 6d. net. 20 plates, 12 in colour, and map.

MISCELLANEOUS

BURTON (W.). A history and description of English Earthenware and Stoneware to the beginning of the xixth cent. (10 x 6) London (Cassell), 30s. net. Illustrations, including 24 col. plates, and facsimiles of marks.

SINGLETON (E.). French and English Furniture: distinctive styles and periods described and illustrated. (11 × 7) London (Hodder and Stoughton), 2 gs.

Embraces French styles from Louis XIII. to Empire, and English from Jacobean to Adam, Hepplewhite and Sheraton. Illustrated by H. D. Nichols.

HUMANN (G.). Die Kunstwerke der Münsterkirche zu Essen. (11 x 8) Düsseldorf (Schwann). With portfolio of 72 phototypes (18 x 13).

BERCHEM (M. van). Notes d'Archéologie Arabe: Étude sur les Cuivres damasquinés, et les Verres emaillés, inscriptions, marques, armoiries. (9 × 7) Paris (Leroux.)

Tirage à part from the 'Journal Asiatique,' 99 pp. with inscriptions in facsimile.

CHENNEVIÈRES (H. de). Petit Inventaire illustré de la Chalcographie du Musée national du Louvre. (9 × 5) Paris (Joannin), I fr. 50. 33 plates.

LIEGE: Musée des Beaux-Arts. Catalogue. (8 x 5) Liége, 1904. MAY (Phil) in Australia. (18 x 11) Sydney (Bulletin Office),

21S. net.

Uniform with the recently published Album; contains a list of the artist's work from 1878; biography by A. G. Stephens, and 92 plates of reproductions.

PERIODICALS

LE MUSÉE. Revue d'art antique. (11 x 8) Paris (6 rue de Port-Mahon), 18 fr. per annum; 2 fr. 50 per number. Edited by G. Toudouze; illustrated.

RIVISTA D' ARTE: miscellanea mensile di Storia dell' Arte medievale e moderna. (10 x 7) Firenze (Alinari), 15 fr. per annum or 1 fr. 50 per part, 24 pp., illustrated. Continuation of the Miscellanea d'Arte,' 1903. SALE CATALOGUES

GAILLARD (E.). Catalogue des Objets d'Art de la renaissance, tapisseries, tableaux anciens, dont la vente aura lieu, 1 Place Malesherbes, 8-16 juin 1904. (14 × 11) Paris (P. Chevallier). [50 photogravures.]

GIMBEL (K.). Waffen- und Kunst-Sammlung, Baden-Baden. Sale, 30 Mai-3 June 1904. (16 x 12) Berlin (R. Lepke), 8 m. [37 phototype plates.] HEFNER-ALTENECK (J. von). Kunstsammlungen: 1. Rüstengen, Waffen, Antiquitäten, Olgemälde, Pergamentmalereien, Aquarelle, Handzeichnungen; 11. Kupferstiche, etc. Sale, 6 June, etc., 1904. München (Helbing), 3 m. (pt. 1), 2 m. (pt. 2). [24 phototypes.]

MATHILDE (Princess). Catalogue des tableaux anciens, tableaux modernes, objets d'art et d'ameublement; vente par suite du décès de S. A. I., 17-21 mai 1904. (13× 10). Paris (P. Chevallier). [36 phototypes.]

COLLECTIONS DE SOMZEE. Catalogue, 2e et 3e parties; Tableaux anciens, cassones, objets d'art anciens, tapisseries. Vente 22 mai 1904 et jours suivants. 2 vols. (16 x 12) Bruxelles (J. Fiévez). [70 plates.]

Black. Price 40s. net.

Art Library. Price 3s. 6d. net.

Newnes'