so that he was sent by the Pope, Sixtus IV., to assist in the decoration of the Sistine chapel. Before going to Rome, however, he painted at S. Gemignano in the oratory of S. Giovanni. The visit to Rome must have been about 1484, but how long it lasted, and whether it was a single visit or was repeated, is not ascertained. As, however, he seems, from the record of the work on the Palazzo Pubblico at Florence, to have drawn pay for every year from 1483 to 1485, inclusive, he could hardly have been away continuously for a year; and as in that interval he painted a second fresco for the Sistine, now destroyed, and decorated a chapel for the Tornabuoni family in Sta. Maria sopra Minerva in Rome, also destroyed, he probably made various visits as the state of the work he happened to be engaged on permitted. The frescos in Rome having been completed, as we must conclude, about 1484, he next undertook the decoration of the chapel of Sta. Fina at S. Gemignano, in which, as probably in most or all of his painting of this period, he employed the services of his brother-in-law, Sebastiano Mainardi, whose hand the discrimination of Cavalcaselle detects through the most important passages of it. Without some such coöperation it would indeed have been impossible for any painter to have executed so many important works as Ghirlandaio crowded into his short life. He repeated in S. Marco of Florence the subject of his "Last Supper" in the Ognissanti, of which Cavalcaselle says: Less favorable in its impression on the spectator is the "Last Supper" in the convent of S. Marco at Florence, where Ghirlandaio, repeating the arrangement carried out at Ognissanti, gives evidence of his progress in the production of relief, but less happily renders animation and movement. Yet the dim tone and roughness of surface caused by time and damp may have a part in diminishing the sympathy that might otherwise be felt for this work. I cannot in all cases accept so readily the esthetic judgments of Cavalcaselle as his technical opinions, but in general it can hardly be admitted that the damages of time can affect our sympathy with a work of art; and I am not disposed to accept with less reserve the great expert's estimate of the relative importance of the Sassetti chapel frescos. The condition, however, in which they are now seen, much covered with dust and otherwise obscured, may make my judgment less favorable than it might be if the conditions for their study were as satisfactory as is the case in the choir of Sta. Maria Novella. The former work has been for some time made difficult VOL. XLII.-96. of access by the restorations in progress in the church of the Santissima Trinità. Of these subjects Cavalcaselle says: Seen from the necessary distance, the Sassetti chapel not only shows a complete unity of decoration, but charms beyond all other works hitherto to the known features of his style, a greater harcarried out by Ghirlandaio, because, in addition mony of color is apparent, and because the just value of tones in contrast creates an impression almost equal to that produced in the same sense by the frescos of Masaccio. A surprising reality is represented, with the breadth and grandeur attained by Masaccio and Raphael, in the portrait of Sassetti, whose form and bald head are not more finely given than those of his wife [sic]. The treatment in the former is such that handling of the impasto, and disdains the usual Ghirlandaio appears to surpass himself in the minuteness of stippling. The simple flow of a lake-red drapery of solid stuff, the manly frame and fleshy hands, are nature itself. The value of the chapel thus considered as an integral work in which the distinct compositions are only parts must be estimated differently from that of the compositions themselves. The intellectual and artistic power of the man are shown to much greater advantage in a work of this complexity carried out successfully than they could be in an individual picture, no matter how remarkable. In this, which may be considered a different type of genius from the simply artistic type as we have seen it in Bellini or Masaccio, there is something of the architect, and Ghirlandaio has shown the same quality in a similar combination in the Palazzo Pubblico of Florence, of which Cavalcaselle says: "Florentine artists have seldom been more happy in laying out architectural space than Ghirlandaio in this instance- the whole is distributed with such excellence of proportion, adorned with such taste, and realized with such a successful application of perspective, that nothing remains to be desired." But the estimate of the artist as a painter of a story, and as a decorator and architectural composer, must not be confounded. In the latter capacity he may be classed with Giotto perhaps, in the class at least, if not at the height; but in the former I cannot agree with some of the critics who have studied Ghirlandaio. The execution of this great work was followed by the commission to paint the choir of Sta. Maria Novella, by his treatment of which he will probably be finally judged as a painter. The choir had been painted by Orcagna, but the rain filtering in from the roof had so damaged the frescos that "many enlightened citizens of Florence desired either to have these interesting works renewed or to see the choir adorned anew by some painter worthy of the THIS NOTES BY T. COLE ON THE FRANCIA PORTRAIT. HIS portrait of “An Unknown Man" by Francia is one of his very finest. It hangs in the Sala dell' Iliade of the Pitti Gallery, Florence. It is life size, painted on wood, and measures 274 inches high by 20%1⁄2 inches wide. It is wonderfully subtle and delicate in treatment, simple in its variety of tones, and mellow in coloring. The landscape background is warm and tender. The sky in color is something between a greenish blue and a warm gray, becoming of a golden hue to ward the horizon. The distant hills are of warm bluish and greenish tones. The middle distance is warm and yellowish, grading down to the foreground into brown ish tints. The background of the other side of the head is of a soft neutral brown. The hat and cloak of the figure are black, but of a soft grayish tone-the hat being of the darker shade and having a velvety richness. The trimming of the cloak suggests gold. The flesh is pale and yellowish. The hair is reddish brown. What a poetical personage it is—so tender, thoughtful, and serious! One cannot fail to be impressed by the portrait. And what a fine conception of a half length! It fully justifies Francia's reputation as a portrait painter. GHIRLANDAIO, 1449–94. (DOMENICO DI TOMMASO CURRADI DI DOFFO BIGORDI.) HE career of Ghirlandaio must be considered one of the most brilliant of the Renaissance. Though educated in the midst of art influences, and probably always more or less given to the pursuit of some of its forms, his father being of that jeweler's craft which was the school of so many of the best artists of the time, he seems to have been slow to seek an independent career. The father's title Ghirlandaio, the garlandmaker, was due to his distinction as a maker of the jeweled garlands which the fine ladies of Florence were in the habit of wearing, and not, as Vasari supposed, to his invention of them, for they had been the subject of sumptuary laws in the earliest and heroic days of the Republic. His being singled out for this title of distinction may be taken as proof of his supremacy in that branch of art, the more as it clung to his descendants, unlike the generality of those epithets. The qualities of the son are such as to show that he must have had early training in drawing and possibly in gold-work; for the facility and certainty of touch which are his distinguishing traits could not have been acquired late in life. We hear that he was put in his father's shop in boyhood, but that to his trade he preferred catching the likenesses of passersby and customers, so that at length his father put him to the study of painting under Master Alessio Baldovinetti, where he must have progressed slowly, but where he acquired that solid and certain method which more than any other art-quality distinguishes him amongst his fellows of the Renaissance. At the age of thirtyone he is described by his father in an incomereturn preserved in Gaye as "without any fixed place of abode," which probably means that he had not yet set up a bottega of his own, nor was he recognized as a master until after he had executed the frescos in the church of the Ognissanti in 1480. His pictures in the Vespucci chapel of the Ognissanti in Florence are destroyed, but there are others in the church which have been protected, and of which the St. Jerome, engraved by Mr. Cole, is an excellent example, though not a work of great pretension like the frescos in Sta. Maria Novella in the same city. The "Last Supper" in the refectory of the Ognissanti is considered the earliest composition we have by him. It is in the traditional form of the subject, the long table with two wings and with Christ in the middle, the grouping varied more than in the conventional representations by prior artists. A group on the left seems to be eagerly listening to the Saviour's words, and Peter points to Judas as if he would say: "Behold the villain who shall be our ruin!" There is an immaturity in the work as compared with the Sta. Maria Novella frescos which does not appear in the simpler subject of the St. Jerome, possibly painted afterward; but even the latter shows the hardness of a severe and painstaking student, and the precise execution of a methodical painter, rather than the power of a great master. It is, considering the epoch, a singularly elaborate work, and the accessories are rendered with a fidelity which is quite unique. Minute detail in design we have in earlier painters, especially in Mantegna and Gentile da Fabriano, though not in fresco; but here the effort for realistic fidelity is simply for the sake of detail, not of his own designing, and strikes one as somewhat mechanical and unfeeling. The firmness of hand is there, but the mastery of the larger qualities of art is not. About this time, and probably immediately after the Ognissanti frescos, he was commissioned to paint the story of S. Paolino in Sta. Croce, as well as a series of subjects in the Sala dell' Orologio of the Palazzo Vecchio; and other work for the Republic seems rapidly to have increased his reputation, |