margin of the Salome panel has been used for scratching the
Chronicle of Castiglione. I read one date, 1568, several of the
next century, the record of a duel between two gentlemen, and many
inscriptions to this effect, 'Erodiana Regina,' 'Omnia praetereunt,'
&c. A dirty one-eyed fellow keeps the place. In my presence he swept
the frescoes over with a scratchy broom, flaying their upper surface
in profound unconsciousness of mischief. The armour of the executioner
has had its steel colours almost rubbed off by this infernal process.
Damp and cobwebs are far kinder.

THE CERTOSA

The Certosa of Pavia leaves upon the mind an impression of bewildering
sumptuousness: nowhere else are costly materials so combined with a
lavish expenditure of the rarest art. Those who have only once been
driven round together with the crew of sightseers, can carry little
away but the memory of lapis-lazuli and bronze-work, inlaid agates and
labyrinthine sculpture, cloisters tenantless in silence, fair painted
faces smiling from dark corners on the senseless crowd, trim gardens
with rows of pink primroses in spring, and of begonia in autumn,
blooming beneath colonnades of glowing terra-cotta. The striking
contrast between the Gothic of the interior and the Renaissance
facade, each in its own kind perfect, will also be remembered; and
thoughts of the two great houses, Visconti and Sforza, to whose pride
of power it is a monument, may be blended with the recollection of
art-treasures alien to their spirit.

Two great artists, Ambrogio Borgognone and Antonio Amadeo, are the
presiding genii of the Certosa. To minute criticism, based upon the
accurate investigation of records and the comparison of styles,
must be left the task of separating their work from that of numerous
collaborators. But it is none the less certain that the keynote of
the whole music is struck by them, Amadeo, the master of the Colleoni
chapel at Bergamo, was both sculptor and architect. If the facade
of the Certosa be not absolutely his creation, he had a hand in the
distribution of its masses and the detail of its ornaments. The only
fault in this otherwise faultless product of the purest quattrocento
inspiration, is that the facade is a frontispiece, with hardly any
structural relation to the church it masks: and this, though serious
from the point of view of architecture, is no abatement of its
sculpturesque and picturesque refinement. At first sight it seems
a wildern