group of women led by Joseph, the shepherd carrying
the lamb upon his shoulder, the girl with a basket of white doves,
the child with an apple on the altar-steps, the lovely youth in the
foreground heedless of the scene; all these are idyllic incidents
treated with the purest, the serenest, the most spontaneous, the
truest, most instinctive sense of beauty. The landscape includes a
view of Saronno, and an episodical picture of the 'Flight into Egypt'
where a white-robed angel leads the way. All these lovely things
are in the 'Purification,' which is dated _Bernardinus Lovinus
pinxit_, MDXXV.

The fresco of the 'Magi' is less notable in detail, and in general
effect is more spoiled by obtrusive blues. There is, however, one
young man of wholly Lionardesque loveliness, whose divine innocence
of adolescence, unalloyed by serious thought, unstirred by passions,
almost forces a comparison with Sodoma. The only painter who
approaches Luini in what may be called the Lombard, to distinguish it
from the Venetian idyll, is Sodoma; and the work of his which comes
nearest to Luini's masterpieces is the legend of S. Benedict, at
Monte Oliveto, near Siena. Yet Sodoma had not all Luini's innocence or
_naivete._ If he added something slightly humorous which has an
indefinite charm, he lacked that freshness as of 'cool, meek-blooded
flowers' and boyish voices, which fascinates us in Luini. Sodoma
was closer to the earth, and feared not to impregnate what he saw
of beauty with the fiercer passions of his nature. If Luini had felt
passion, who shall say? It appears nowhere in his work, where life is
toned to a religious joyousness. When Shelley compared the poetry of
the Theocritean amourists to the perfume of the tuberose, and that of
the earlier Greek poets to 'a meadow-gale of June, which mingles
the fragrance of all the flowers of the field,' he supplied us
with critical images which may not unfairly be used to point the
distinction between Sodoma at Monte Oliveto and Luini at Saronno.

THE CASTELLO OF FERRARA

Is it possible that the patron saints of cities should mould the
temper of the people to their own likeness? S. George, the chivalrous,
is champion of Ferrara. His is the marble group above the Cathedral
porch, so feudal in its medieval pomp. He and S. Michael are painted
in fresco over the south portcullis of the Castle. His lustrous armour
gleams with Giorgionesque brilliancy from Dossi's masterpiece in
the Pinacoteca. T