f a mountain landscape in Masaccio's simple manner,
a rich Renaissance villa, and an open loggia. The architecture
perspective is scientifically accurate, and a frieze of boys with
garlands on the villa is in the best manner of Florentine sculpture. On
the mountain-side, diminished in scale, is a group of elders burying the
body of St. John. These are massed together and robed in the style of
Masaccio, and have his virile dignity of form and action. Indeed, this
interesting wall-painting furnishes an epitome of Florentine art, in its
intentions and achievements, during the first half of the fifteenth
century. The color is strong and brilliant, and the execution solid.

The 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," etc.
A dirty, one-eyed fellow keeps the place. In my presence he swept the
frescos over with a scratchy broom, flaying their upper surface in
profound unconsciousness of mischief. The armor of the executioner has
had its steel colors 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 sight-seers 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
c