ases, which are almost as sensuous and earthly as
Correggio without the magisterial brush-work and commanding conception
of the Parma painter. To be quite fair, it may be admitted that
Murillo could make a good portrait. Both in Madrid and Seville you may
verify this.

A beautiful Fra Angelico, a beautiful Mantegna open your eyes, for the
Italian Primitives are conspicuous by their absence. Correggio is
magnificent. The well-known Magdalen and Christ Risen, Noli Me
Tangere! His Virgin with Jesus and St. John is in his accustomed
melting _pate_. One Del Sarto is of prime quality, The Virgin, Jesus
and St. John, called Asunto Mistico at the Prado. Truly a moving
picture, by a painter who owes much of his fame to Robert Browning.
His Lucrezia is a pretty portrait of his faithless wife. There are
Lotto, Parmigianino, Baroccio, Tintoretto, Bassano, Veronese, Domenico
Tiepolo, and his celebrated father the fantastic Giambattista
Tiepolo--not startling specimens any of them.

In the Spanish section Ribera comes at you the strongest. He was a
personality as well as a powerful painter. Consider his Martyrdom of
St. Bartholomew. Zurbaran follows next in interest, though morbid at
times; but of Berragueta, Borgona, Morales, Juanes, Navarette,
Coello--an excellent portraitist, imitator of Moro--La Cruz, Alfonso
Cano, Luis de Tristan, Espinosa, Bias del Prado, Orrente, Esteban de
March--two realistic heads of an old man and an old woman must be set
down to his credit--Ribalta, influenced by Caravaggio, in turn
influencing Ribera--Juan de las Roelas (el Clerigo), Del
Mazo--son-in-law of Velasquez, and responsible for dozens of false
attributions--Carreno de Miranda, Jose Leonardo, Juan Rizi V. Iriarte,
the two Herreras, the elder a truculent charlatan, the younger a
nonentity, and others of the Spanish school may be dismissed in a
word--mediocrities.

II

The secret of Titian's colour, the "Venetian secret," was produced,
some experts believe, by first painting a solid monochrome in tempera
on which the picture was finished in oil. Unquestionably Titian
corrected and amended his work as much as did Velasquez. It is a
pleasing if somewhat theatric belief that Titian and Velasquez,
duelled with their canvases, their rapier a brush. After inspecting
many of the Hals portraits the evidences of direct painting, swift
though calculated, are not to be denied. This may account, with the
temperamental equation, for the less profou