National Gallery-the 'Bust Portrait of a Girl' (No. 1230), the 'Portrait of a Youth' (No. 1299), and the best of the three, lent by Mr. Willett, are doubtless all faithful likenesses, and they are executed with great skill and care; but for individuality they will bear no comparison with the 'Portrait of a Young Man' (No. 626), which is now by common consent ascribed to Botticelli. The determined character of this young man in the red cap is seized and, as it were, engraved, in the firm lines of the nose, mouth, and eyes, at once and for ever. It is a face which would be recognised in a crowd by any one who had seen the picture. And yet the features are of no uncommon type. One cannot say the same of the Ghirlandajo portraits; not of the man, nor of the girl, nor even of Mr. Willett's lady, though she was one of the beauties of the day, and remarkable, as the inscription showeth, for mental as well as physical charm. One knows as much about her as if one had met her once in passing on a staircase, no more. She is 'icily perfect, splendidly null.' One observes and remembers less of herself than of her costume. is easier to forget her face than her elaborate coiffure, the ornament on her dress, with its rich arrangement of reds and oranges and yellows, or even the beautiful jewel on the shelf beside her. As she appears here, she appears in Ghirlandajo's fresco of the Salutation of the Virgin in S. Maria Novella, one of the attendants or friends of S. Elizabeth, richly dressed, with the same long, stiff neck and round bust, standing at the entrance of a magnificent palace (presumably that of Zacharias), with the same air, calm, dignified, and indifferent. One can imagine how Botticelli would have represented her, comparatively still, perhaps, as a spectator whose emotion should not rival that of the principal characters, but yet all alive, with at least an animated face of expectancy and a suggestive flutter of a robe.

It

Yet these two artists were very closely allied in everything but temperament, and their careers ran side by side. There was but a difference of two years in their ages, Ghirlandajo (1449-1494) being the junior. They both, though painters, worked at first under goldsmiths. Ghirlandajo's father, Bigordi, was a silk-broker, and his son is supposed to have derived the appellation of Ghirlandajo from his master, who was celebrated for skill in manufacturing the golden garlands which were so much in favour with the Florentine ladies of the day. this jeweller's pupils were, it is said, termed 'del Ghirlandajo.' His first teacher in painting is supposed to have been Cosimo

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Rosselli or Alesso Baldovinetti. In 1475 he was employed with Botticelli in painting the Sistine Chapel, where his fresco of the 'Calling of S. Peter and S. Andrew' is distinguished from Botticelli's by the stateliness and simplicity of its composition and the calm dignity of its figures. In these respects he most plainly shows that it was Masaccio, of all painters, that he desired to emulate. He shows this also by the introduction of a crowd of spectators drawn up, with their heads on a level, on each side of the group of principal actors, and performing, as has been said, much the same function with regard to them as the chorus of a Greek tragedy. Five years later we find him again associated with Botticelli in the church of the Ognissanti at Florence, where his fresco of S. Jerome in his study is preserved side by side with one of S. Augustine by Botticelli. The former is careful even to laboriousness, in the way all the contents of the chamber are wrought out. A Van Eyck or an Albert Durer could scarcely have taken more pains with these details, but the figure, though fine in type, and not without a thoughtful dignity, appears heavy and cold beside Botticelli's ardent conception of S. Augustine. Later, both artists were engaged in decorating the Sala del Orologio (now the Sala dei Gigli) in the Palazzo Pubblico. The plague cut short Ghirlandajo's life in 1494, in his forty-fifth year, six years after he painted this portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni, and six years before Botticelli painted 'The Nativity of our Saviour,' which now hangs beside it in the National Gallery.

Associated in life, they are now associated in death in a strange country, by reason of the power of their gifts in the same beautiful art. We wish that we had more details of their private lives, and especially of their relations with each other; but on this point history is unfortunately silent. We know little more than that they lived and worked in Florence, in that teeming time of Italian art, which produced Lippo Lippi, Benozzo Gozzoli, Pesellino, the Pollaiuoli, Verrocchio, Rosselli, Botticelli, Ghirlandajo, Leonardo da Vinci, Filippino Lippi, Lorenzo di Credi, Piero di Cosimo, and the young Michael Angelo. If we add to these such architects as Bramante and San Gallo, such sculptors as the Maiani and the younger Della Robbias, and if we fancy them all gathered in the palace of the Medici in the Via Larga, together with the famous scholars and poets of the day, and surrounded by the precious collections of ancient and modern sculpture, and gems and

coins, and manuscripts and pictures, which that palace then contained, we shall regret still more that we have such scanty knowledge of the intercourse which passed between the members of this gallant company. Yet we may thus at least form some notion of the variety and force of the artistic and intellectual energy with which they were surrounded. That the ideas so profusely generated in such an atmosphere did not remain stagnant in the authors' minds, the pictures even in the National Gallery are sufficient warrant. They show how freely these ideas played, how well the masters taught, giving all they knew but without affecting the individuality of their pupils; how in turn the pupils borrowed freely from their masters and others' masters and each other, without a fear of being accused of theft or plagiarism, enjoying an intellectual communism, which was very fruitful in the development of art, though, as in the case of 'The Virgin Adoring,' it may sometimes puzzle the experts of to-day.

With the artists whose works are the subject of this article, practically ends a definite period in the history of Florentine Art; with the pupil of Ghirlandajo-the great Michael Angelo begins another, the only Florentine artist who may be said to belong to both being Leonardo da Vinci. The period in which they flourished was, roughly, the last half of the fifteenth century, the lifetime of Lorenzo de' Medici (1448-1497). It was a time of comparative peace for Florence, especially after Lorenzo had made peace with its enemies in 1480. The former period had indeed been more troubled, and in the celebrated Pazzi conspiracy, his brother Giuliano had been murdered and he himself had had a narrow escape, but it ended in consolidating his power over Florence, which was as absolute as that of his grandfather the great Cosimo. It was, no doubt, partly due to the peaceful state of the city, partly to Lorenzo's patronage, partly to the wealth which Florence had accumulated, that art of all kinds flourished so greatly, and that the art of painting in particular made such rapid progress in the days of Lorenzo the Magnificent. But without remarkable energy and genius in the artists themselves, no such results could have been achieved; for, despite the progress that had been made in the earlier part of the century, and the phenomenal genius of Masaccio, the science of painting was still in comparative infancy when these men were young. But their progress was not only technical; they, indeed, studied anatomy and

perspective, and made great improvements in composition, in drawing and in colouring, but they also greatly extended the domain of the art with regard to subject, made a very great advance in landscape and portrait, and taught painting to reflect the life and thought of the day in spite of the restrictions of their generally religious themes, so that when they had finished their work, the palace of Italian art had risen high, and needed the aid only of a few master-builders to complete the edifice.

What they did was nothing more nor less than the construction of a new and lovely language to express the whole emotions of humanity. The old language upon which theirs was based, was only capable of expressing one limited class of feeling, a religious feeling, certainly, but only a limited class of that, strictly confined to man's hopes and fears of the future state, as instigated by dogmas of the Church. They made this restricted language almost as universal as words, showing its capacity to express every joy and every sorrow, every feeling and every thought to which the mind, body, and soul of man is sensitive.. They did not perfect it; Italy itself did not perfect it; it is not even perfected now; but they did more towards the desired end than any other body of men have done in the same time. It is for this that their works claim special consideration, not only from the student of art but the student of humanity.

To look upon their work from another point of view, it may be said that they rediscovered Beauty, progressing slowly and by degrees to the recognition of the human body as the standard of all beauty expressed in form. The general dignity of its presence was felt by Giotto, by Masaccio, by Ghirlandajo; the wonder of its construction by Pollaiuolo; its capacity for expressing passionate emotion by Botticelli; but the perfectly harmonic relation of each part to the beauty of its organisation as a whole nobody as yet had felt except, perhaps, Leonardo da Vinci. That Michael Angelo had felt it is evident even in that early picture of The Madonna and Infant Christ, S. John the Baptist and Angels' (No. 809), which was once considered to be the work of his master Ghirlandajo, to whom he was apprenticed for three years, in April, 1488, being at that time of the age of thirteen years.

COSMO MONKHOUSE.

A FINNISH FAIRY FANCY.

FAR away to the dismal North lived a young man called Joukahainen, who was the best singer and cleverest magician in all Lapland.

Now, the Lapps and the Finns were always falling out with each other, and when it came to Joukahainen's cars that in Finland there dwelt a better singer and cleverer magician than himself, an old man named Wainamoinen, his anger knew no bounds; so he went to his mother and told her of his intention to challenge the old magician to a singing contest. In vain did his mother try to dissuade him from this foolish idea; vain also were his father's entreaties.

'Wainamoinen, by his magic spells, would sink him in the snow and turn his feet and ankles into ice.'

'Say you so?' said Joukahainen. Methinks rather it is I who will change his feet into flint and his raiment into wood; his heart within him shall become a stone, the bow on his shoulder shall turn to marble, and the helmet on his brow will I change into granite.'

Brave words!

So Joukahainen left his parents, harnessed his horse to a golden sledge, then, springing on the cross-bench and cracking his pearl-enamelled birch whip, drove away across the snow.

All day and all night he travelled, till at twilight on the third day he reached Wainola, which is Finland. Now, Wainamoinen also was abroad at that time, driving in his golden sledge, and it happened that the two sledges met, crashing into one another on the road by the seashore, and that of Wainamoinen was broken. Then he cried in great anger

'Who are you, that you should drive so carelessly? Do you not see that you have broken my shafts and traces and my sledge by your recklessness? What is your name? and where do you come from?'

'I am Joukahainen, the magic singer of the North; and since