he has the proud port of a princess, the
beauty of a woman past her prime, but stately, the indescribable dignity
of attitude which no one but Luini could have rendered so majestically
sweet. In her hand is a book; and she, like Alessandro, has her saintly
sponsors, Agnes and Catherine and St. Scolastica.

Few pictures bring the splendid Milanese court so vividly before us as
these portraits of the Bentivogli: they are, moreover, very precious for
the light they throw on what Luini could achieve in the secular style so
rarely touched by him. Great, however, as are these frescos, they are
far surpassed both in value and interest by his paintings in the side
chapel of St. Catherine. Here more than anywhere else, more even than at
Saronno or Lugano, do we feel the true distinction of Luini--his
unrivalled excellence as a colourist, his power over pathos, the
refinement of his feeling, and the peculiar beauty of his favorite
types. The chapel was decorated at the expense of a Milanese advocate,
Francesco Besozzi, who died in 1529. It is he who is kneeling,
gray-haired and bare-headed, under the protection of St. Catherine of
Alexandria, intently gazing at Christ unbound from the scourging-pillar.
On the other side stand St. Lawrence and St. Stephen, pointing to the
Christ and looking at us, as though their lips were framed to say:
"Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto his sorrow." Even the
soldiers who have done their cruel work seem softened. They untie the
cords tenderly, and support the fainting form, too weak to stand alone.
What sadness in the lovely faces of Sts. Catherine and Lawrence! What
divine anguish in the loosened limbs and bending body of Christ; what
piety in the adoring old man! All the moods proper to this supreme
tragedy of the faith are touched as in some tenor song with low
accompaniment of viols; for it was Luini's special province to feel
profoundly and to express musically. The very depth of the Passion is
there; and yet there is no discord.

Just in proportion to this unique faculty for yielding a melodious
representation of the most intense moments of stationary emotion was his
inability to deal with a dramatic subject. The first episode of St.
Catherine's execution, when the wheel was broken and the executioners
struck by lightning, is painted in this chapel without energy and with a
lack of composition that betrays the master's indifference to his
subject. Far different is the second