the widespread feeling of anxiety that has resulted from Mr. Mallock's article. The Bishop holds an official position in the Church; he is a guardian of the Faith. It is, in consequence, of importance that no falsehoods should be disseminated as to his teaching; and few read theology except in the pages of magazines.

No notice has been taken of Mr. Mallock's criticism of the Bishop's dissertation in defence of the Virgin Birth, for it would involve a discussion for which there is no space. It is enough to say that Mr. Mallock gives an amusing travesty of a few pages in that essay. It seems to have been Mr. Mallock's object to shock the orthodox by proving the Bishop a heretic, and to amuse the heterodox by exhibiting him as a fool. The charge of heresy has broken down, and the imputation of foolishness may best be counteracted by reading the Bishop's works.

We started with the assumption that Mr. Mallock had not read the Bishop of Worcester's works, and it is charitable to conclude in the same way. Mr. Mallock was probably furnished with his halfdozen quotations and with a scrap or two from Canon Henson and Mr. Beeby. For the rest he relied upon his inner consciousness and the methods of constructive criticism.' In future, he may be advised to keep these methods for dealing with ancient documents, lest the plain men' and 'sensible laymen' to whom he appeals, who know nothing of 'constructive criticism,' may characterise his achievements in simple Saxon such as cannot appear in these pages. Mr. Mallock, I am reminded, has ere now written much disagreeable fiction. In future it is to be hoped that he will not associate it with the well-known name of a living man.

H. MAYNARD SMITH.

THE EXHIBITION

OF EARLY ART IN SIENA

A GREAT national building that has been for ages the centre of the political and civic life of a race endowed to the highest degree with the power of artistic expression is a continuous record of their deepest feelings and ideals. In the structure itself, as in the works of art which decorate it, a people has externalised itself and eternised itself. Those currents of social feeling that have stirred the emotions of generations of artists and stimulated their inspiration have there found ordered, rhythmic utterance. Of no building is this more true than of the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena. The devotion of the rich Guelph burghers who built the palace to the city's gracious sovereign Lady, and their ideals of government; the gests of the heroes who fought for the republic; the squalor and decadence of the age that followed the Black Death-the age when Siena was brought low by foreign marauders and civic discord-the brief return of prosperity that marked the early decades of the Quattrocento and the alliance with Florence, typified in art in the achievement of Jacopo della Quercia; the temporary moral and spiritual revival brought about by S. Bernardino; the superficial splendour of the age of the Petrucci; the nation's subsequent fall and enslavement all these things are recorded in and about the walls of the rose-red palace with the Gothic windows a colonnelli, and the tower whose tall stem is crowned with a white flower.

In this year of grace 1904, this pictured chronicle has been graingerised for our delight. Aided by Dr. Corrado Ricci's fine connoisseurship and contagious energy, the Syndic-himself a learned and discerning lover of his city's art-and a band of willing helpers have set in order between the leaves of this book of history many works of the artists of old Siena, gathered from many places. Pictures and objects of art from remote country churches and distant villas, for a sight of which pilgrims of the beautiful have made long and arduous journeys, have been made accessible to those who have no time for such expeditions. Siena, too long criminally

careless of her children's fame and her own glory, has at last set a splendid example to her neighbour cities.

Of the ten thousand objects that have temporarily found a home in the Palazzo Pubblico many, of course, are historical or archæological illustrations, and nothing more. Concerning these things, interesting as they are, we cannot speak here. We must content ourselves with a brief survey of the more important works of art exhibited at the Mostra Senese. Even to the student of history such a survey may not be unprofitable; for the most purely artistic work of art is at the same time an illustration of history in the widest and noblest sense of the term.

In the collection of sculpture the great Sienese masters of the Trecento are of necessity unrepresented, for of Lorenzo del Maitano, Tino di Camaino, and Cellino di Nese no work was procurable. Of the sculptors of the Quattrocento several important examples have been brought together. It is necessary to emphasise the fact that in such works as these the heart of Siena has found its most consummate expression; for the tendency to overrate the importance of Tuscan painting has nowhere revealed itself more clearly than in recent writings upon Sienese art. It is necessary to insist again and again that in painting Siena has nothing to show that is of the same significance as the works in sculpture of Jacopo della Quercia or even of Lorenzo del Maitano and Neroccio. That is to say, no artist realised as fully the possibilities of paint as a medium of ordered expression as these three great artists realised the possibilities of stone. For the Ilaria del Carretto' we would not take in exchange all the loveliest works of Simone Martini. And all Neroccio's giraffe-like 'Madonnas' are not worthy of being weighed in the balances with one statue of his-the 'St. Catherine of Alexandria.'

By far the greatest of the works of art in the exhibition is Jacopo della Quercia's Fonte Gaja,' which at last has found again a fitting home. All that remains of it has been reverently reconstructed in the loggia of the Palazzo Pubblico. If Dr. Corrado Ricci and his assistants had done nothing else, for this one act they would merit the gratitude of all lovers of fine things. The compilers of the catalogue have been refreshingly liberal in their attributions to Quercia. At one time, in the early days of scientific criticism, it would have been necessary to oppose such a tendency. But the pendulum has now swung the other way, and some of the great masters have been robbed of works which legitimately belong to them. A wider study of the achievement of modern artists would, I think, correct this tendency. What undistinguished renderings of landscape we sometimes find even amongst the authentic works of Corot and Monet, what weak etchings that bear the mark of the butterfly! And in the field of great allegorical illustration

is there not some skimble-skamble stuff that is adorned with the name of its noblest modern master? Nevertheless critics take from the leading masters of the Quattrocento works which have their chief characteristics, but which are, perhaps, a little laboured and uninspired, and lacking here and there in fineness of quality. In the opinion of the present writer several works now vaguely assigned to his school are by Jacopo himself. I can find no grounds for supposing that any other hand than the master's own designed the Madonna and four saints from the church of S. Martino1 which are amongst the collection at the Mostra. At the same time I cannot agree that the two interesting wooden figures of St. Anthony and St. Ambrose, so happily rediscovered by Dr. Corrado Ricci, are by Jacopo's own hand. The futile exaggeration of a master's most pronounced mannerisms is one of the common marks of the work of a pupil. A figure formerly assigned to Quercia is Vecchietta's gilded wooden statue of St. John the Baptist from the church of Fogliano. Here as elsewhere his naturalistic tendencies have led him to select a hard, uncomely type. The 'St. John the Baptist' from Montalcino, an altogether feebler work, is obviously by one of Vecchietta's imitators.

3

6

A master with very different ideals was Neroccio. The only undoubted work by his hand in this section is the 'St. Catherine of Siena,'' a painted wooden statue, from the Chapel of the Contrada dell' Oca. The catalogue has assigned to the artist three other statues, the 'St. Mary Magdalen' from S. Spirito and an Angel Gabriel' and 'Virgin Annunciate.' Moreover, Mr. Berenson has attributed to him the bust of St. Catherine from the PalmieriNuti Collection, a work which Dr. Ricci, following the greatest living authority on Tuscan sculpture, Dr. Bode, has given to Mino da Fiesole. The Annunciation' from Santuccio, though not by Neroccio himself, reveals his influence. The 'St. Mary Magdalen is undoubtedly a work of Giacomo Cozzarelli. The question of the authorship of the bust of St. Catherine is a more important and a more difficult problem. This work certainly possesses some of the qualities of Neroccio's Madonnas. In the long neck and narrow shoulders, as in the lines of the veil that covers the saint's head, it is possible to trace resemblances to a type common enough in the artist's pictures, a type which is remarkable for a fragile and mannered gracility. But, just because it possesses these peculiarities, we cannot give it to Neroccio; for one of the most obvious facts concerning Neroccio is that his sculpture is as different as possible from his painting in aim and feeling. Take, for instance, two of the master's most typical works-the panel of the Madonna

Sala, ix. 15-19.

5 Ibid. ix. 1.

2 Ibid. viii. 31, 35.
6 Ibid. ix. 8.
• Ibid. ii. 287.

Ibid. ix. 4
Ibid. ix. 7.

• Ibid. viii. 32.
8 Ibid. ix. 6.

with S. Bernardino and St. Catherine' in the Siena Gallery 10 and the statue of St. Catherine of Alexandria, before alluded to, which is in the chapel of St. John the Baptist in the Duomo. In this one work, as in almost all Neroccio's presentations of womanhood in painting, is a graceful, slender woman with an abnormally long thin neck. The modelling throughout is very slight, and for its æsthetic effect the picture depends upon its beauty of line. It breathes of the Trecento. It takes us back to Simone Martini. Could you find anywhere a greater contrast to this figure than in the 'St. Catherine of the Duomo, a woman more massive than Palma's St. Barbara'? Her hair is arranged in heavy masses above an Olympian brow. Her neck is as broad as that of the Lemnian 'Athene' and much shorter. About her fine shoulders and nobly moulded form the heavy drapery hangs in large folds. She has quite a Roman solidity and stability. Not grace but grandeur, not sweetness but strength are her predominant qualities. Worthy is she to be one of the mothers of an imperial race, whose function it is to war down the proud.'

In form, as in feeling, nothing could be further removed from this figure than is the Palmieri 'St. Catherine,' with the wan, pensive face, the sloping shoulders, and the thin, emaciated body. If we wish to understand Neroccio's style as a sculptor in marble we must fix our attention upon his works in that medium and forget for the time his Madonnas in tempera. We shall then see that he is a faithful follower of Quercia's manner, and the pupil and rival of Antonio Federighi, in whom the spirit of old Roman art lived again. To attribute this bust to Neroccio, Jacopo's imitator, is certainly to make a mistake similar to that of the old critics who gave the work to Quercia himself. For it has nothing of the classical spirit. It is as poignantly pathetic, as intimate, as subtly emotional in conception as a Madonna of Botticelli or an infant of Andrea della Robbia. In its ascetic grace, as in some of its morphological features the sensitive mouth, the heavy eyelids, the high cheek bones, and the low brow-this bust seems to justify in a measure the attribution to Mino da Fiesole. But yet to me its authorship remains an insoluble problem. Whoever the sculptor may be, this is one of the most impressive works of its period.

Federighi himself is represented by three works. The earliest in date, an imposing wooden statue of the school of Quercia, is his St. Nicholas of Bari,' a work given in the catalogue to Jacopo himself. Of scarcely less interest is his Moses,' 12 a figure in stone which once adorned the Piazzetta of the Ghetto. The young 'Bacchus 13 of Count Achille d'Elci is in his most advanced' Roman manner, and recalls the works of the master in the Siena Duomo.

The exhibition of painting, through no fault of the committee,

10 No. 285.

"Sala, ix. 12.

12 Ibid. Staircase, 45.

18 Ibid. ii. 311.