day, the idea is as suggestive, as poetic, as full of interest and reality as to Orcagna half a millenium ago. Call the title what we will, its meaning and interest are the same for all time. "Eternity affirms the conception of the hour." For the sentiment which gave rise to this conception of the Coronation of Mary was not one singular in its attachment to the Mother of God. It is a choice symbol expressive of a general feeling towards all women; the poetic rendering of the recognition of woman's queenship over the empire of that vast world embraced by the word " Home," a world ruled not by force of law, but by the spirit of tenderness and sacrifice. Such chivalric feeling became the cradle of this home-hallowed conception, and the one must not be dissociated from the other. In the artist's mind, then, this is not so much the crowning of Heaven's Queen with the symbol of authority or with the sign of power, as it is the crowning of a Mother with the symbol of those spiritual qualities, by all men recognised as her heritage and her charge. And thus art crowns the idea for its world-wide hallowing. From quite early days it has been usual to represent those to whom was attached any kind of superhuman or universal power, as crowned or diademed: and most frequently by the radiated form. The horns of Moses and of Pan, the radiated crown of Apollo, the crown of thorns put upon the brow of Christ [in mock of the power He claimed] and the star crown here given to Mary, are all similarly significant. If then the idea be not as true and as solemly suggestive to us here in London to-day as to those of Florence in Orcagna's age, surely the fault is with us, and not with the idea. For the message is missioned by the Genius of Life, though it come out with the fullness of human power that might adorn it to-day. Moreover, the picture, notwithstanding its strange simplicity, is F powerful in the directness of its appeal to the deeper instincts of life, and as a work of art is a marvel of expressive detail. In the sensitive cast of the mother's countenance, and in the refined pose of her figure, there is a rare degree of eloquence, such as silently bespeaks a modesty which would shun, a humility which would disallow any sort of self-adornment. Her Lord, to whose will she submits herself, is no less monumental in dignity of combined power and tenderness. And in the celestial band below, in the maidens that play and sing at the mother's feet, despite their quaint little almond eyes, there is a naïveté of expression, a simplicity and animation unequalled at so early a date. In particular she who, singing behind the harpist, generously spends her soul in impassioned songs, while others, agreeable to nature's truth, are singing regardless of their song, interested only in what is around. Again, in that dual company of holy men and women sitting about the throne, reverence stills every feature, and a saintly singleness of purpose keeps each eye as they look in loving adoration on Him whose dying bought their souls' salvation, or as they lean towards Her whose human heart petitioned them to paradise. Grand, patriarchal, and modelled on large types are these saints, each individualized by the appropriate symbol of their life's action or agony-Agnes by her lamb, Lawrence by his grid, Peter by his key and church (the latter a model of San Piero Maggiore, in which the altar-piece stood). This Orcagna was professedly an Architect; and the calm, the dignity, the monumental grandeur of this composition, designate a mind long practised in an art whose essential qualities are pronounced order and sternness of simplicity. To him belongs the key that opens the treasure-house of Titian and Velasquez; for through the stage of art that loves severe symmetry of form and heraldic simplicity of colour, must each of us pass, to purchase our appreciation of the subtle play of varied tints, the music of disguised rhythm, and the lowered tones of masters matured in powers awakened by this early art. But more than this, we have here no artist who in ignorance of its true aim, will isolate his art. Painting with him is the handmaid of Architecture, and is always subordinated to and stimulated by some function or material need of life. A fresco for a wall, a picture for a cabinet, or a piece for an altar he will paint, but Orcagna could as soon have hung a plate, as a picture on a wall, so jealous was he of the preservation of that relationship with surrounding conditions, which can alone make any art one with the place it pretends to decorate. For to lose sight of this proportion of things is to lose sight of that high function of art which makes it not a luxury, but a necessity of life. The panels that form the predella of this altar-piece are hung about the room, and in them will be seen the same mastery of thought, the same vigour of handling, that characterize the Coronation. But the distinctive quality of this work is its splendour. This blaze of joy is Orcagna's own-his whose genius discerned the meaning of material magnificence when allied to ennobling ideals. For to make art glorious, a thing whose one being shall be beauty, is the aim of Orcagna. To be prodigal in the splendour native to noble endeavour rather than to bargain with time for his seven days' wage of success, is the temper of an artist governed in his work by the propriety of insistance upon things moral to the subordination of skill spent in imitation of things material. For this, his only satisfaction, did he spend himself in carving to lavish richness the shrine of Or San Michele; for this he threw up those proud arches of the Loggia dei Lanzi; for this he set the jewelled mosaics on Orvieto's front, and here he catches even rarer hues to distinguish the enshrinement of this heart-sanctified ideal or ever it be lifted on the altar of his Mother Church. And in this splendour no one since has surpassed him, though we are yet but seventy years from Cimabue's triumph-the triumph of open-eyed tradition over tradition blindfold and brainless. Be well assured it is this magnificence of intention in a mind ravished with reverence of a poetic ideal which creates that kind of beauty befitting those things to which man most needs his attention drawn for like reverence and respect. Τὰ μὲν αἰσθητῶς ἱερατῶν νοητών ἀπεικονίσματα, και ἐπ ̓ αὐτὰ χειραγωγία καὶ ὁδός. The thought that laid this lavishness of gold without stint upon the altar-piece is one with the thought that framed David's impatient remark to Nathan, "See, now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwelleth within curtains." What all priests and prophets have felt to be so reasonable, this artist strove to shadow forth in some sort and by such objective beauty to win the attention of all, that the alliance of art and religion might be as full of power to others as it proved of purpose to himan alliance so inevitable that we may be assured each large idea will sooner or later come to be irradiated by art, and as completely compassed by beauty as the earth is irradiated by the sun, and her life compassed and controlled by the heavens. A. H. MACKMURDO. VERSES SUGGESTED BY OVID'S LINES: "Tot tibi tamque dabit formosas Roma puellas ; Haec habet, ut dicas, quidquid in orbe fuit." A. A. 1. 55-6. HAD you but eyes, but eyes that move Here in this London 'mid the stir, The traffic and the burdened air, Had you but eyes that knew their home, Then this were Greece, or that were Rome. The state of Dian is not gone, The dawn she fled is yet the dawn; Her crystal flesh the years renew Despite her bodice, skirt and shoe. Nor is she only to be seen With Juno's height and Pallas' sheen; |