ments of love and beauty, and "the rough edge of battle,"

As, when loud surges lash the sounding shore,

The hoarse, rough, verse, should-like the billows—roar,
Not so when swift Camilla, &c. &c.

But we shall next introduce Coreggio to the reader's notice, who will throw much more grateful and effectual light upon these points, than any language which we can employ.

This little work from the pencil of Julio Romano, came to the National Gallery with the rest of the Carr collection; and formerly adorned the Villa Aldobrandini. An engraving from it by Julio Bonasoni, in a congenial style of dry austerity, may be found in the portfolios of those who collect the early productions of the Italian schools.

THE HOLY FAMILY.

ANTONIO DA COREGGIO.

Or the Holy Families treasured in our National Gallery, that from the pencil of Coreggio is the finest; and perhaps it would have been esteemed still finer as a work of Art, had it not been entitled a Holy Family, since there is nothing of the external pretension or show of divinity about it, save and except its superlative merits as a picture, and that single and quite subordinate circumstance which we shall proceed to mention.

As a young, innocent, and smiling nurse, attentive to her charge; or a delighted mother attiring her

infant son, it is of transcendental excellence: but since there is a carpenter at work in the back-ground, its pretensions to be esteemed the Holy Family must be regarded as indisputable, and we shall presently treat of it accordingly. It has already been treated of by Raphael Mengs in his account of the paintings in the royal collection at Madrid, of which it was formerly esteemed to be one of the chief ornaments. His opinions we have not had the pleasure of perusing, but in all probability the reader who wishes to form a critical estimate of the merits of Coreggio's Holy Family, will find the remarks of such an artist as Mengs, well worthy of being consulted.

After being acquainted with this work only through the medium of engravings, we were both surprised and delighted at the sight of the original, not that the engravings were not good; but that there is so much of the celestial purity of painting (technically speaking), and so much of that kind of peculiarity withal, which can no more be translated or rendered into another language of art-or at least which has not yet been thus rendered-than words can express it-So much is there of these extraordinary qualities, that it came upon us like a heavenly vision, or a picture from another planet. The Athenians of old, possessed a statue of their tutelary deity which was fabled to have fallen from heaven, and was much venerated. It had a primitive air, yet was crude, archaic, and graceless. Could they have shown. such a work of Art as this of Coreggio, their fable had been rendered credible, and their veneration been justified upon internal evidence. Yet these high claims reside not in any thing celestial, superlative, or ineffable, in the character either of the

Madonna, or infant Saviour; and if, in what shall follow, these terms, or any of them, shall fall from our pen, they must be understood as being intended to be applied to the peculiar felicity with which the painter has employed the instruments of his art—not to indicate the unspeakable beauty of the characters he has produced--but we must develope and explain.

The Madonna has come forth into the genial summer air of Nazareth, as if to sit with her celestial charge, and inhale the freshness of its breezes her little basket of nursery implements is beside her; and at a short distance, in the back-ground, Joseph the Carpenter is sedately at work, which (as is observed above) is the chief signal of a Holy Family being here intended by the artist. Intent upon his occupation among unfinished edifices, and quite detached from the fore-ground objects, he seems introduced as a denoting sign, and no more; and the Madonna and Bambino to be the things signified: as if Coreggio had preferred this to the having recourse to such conventional circlets of sanctitude as, in the works of his predecessors and contemporaries betokened holiness; and had resolved, by the potency of his art, and without factitious aid, to raise what was earthly into heavenly importance, as Adam is recorded to have been created out of clay.

And this is what he has accomplished. Of the infant Christ, the purity of its innocence alone, seems to elevate it almost sufficiently toward divinity. There is no dawn of the incipient consciousness of his sublime destiny. We speak here of what is expressed in his countenance and action. In character it has somewhat the air or peculiarity of being the portrait of a handsome and fair-haired English child: his

complexion too is exquisitely fair. The placidly smiling maternal tenderness of the young Madonna as she enrobes her infant, is also beautifully expressed. An excellent critic thinks we may observe in this female a certain innocent girlish pride arising from the consciousness of the perfections of the infant entrusted to her; which perhaps no painter except Coreggio, ever conceived. But this girlish pride is scarcely compatible with the lofty dignity which the religion of Italy attached to the character of the mother of our Saviour; nor could it probably have co-existed with that due consciousness of the perfections of the Holy Infant, which in some of Raphael's Madonnas is so profound as to absorb all other

sentiments.

To our view, the group appears to beam with domestic affection, but it does not go beyond select nature. Although the Fine Art with which it is rendered be quite marvellous, there is nothing about it of the ideal or deific being intended to be superinduced on the terrestrial, otherwise than by the beauty of the internal blandishments of Art.

scope

In these respects, Julio Romano's holy group (which we dismissed a few pages back) and the present, are wide as the Poles apart; and may therefore serve to teach us how various and vast are the of excellence and the pleasures to be derived from pictures. Both artists are justly admired, although the one be deficient in every requisite in which the other shines and abounds.

Wide as the Poles apart although Julio Romano and Coreggio were, upon an important professional principle; there is pleasure in perceiving that the sphere of their Art revolved in an orbit of urbanity;

and that if the envy and professional jealousies of some painters, have been held up to public ridicule and dislike, others are liberal-preeminent amongst whom was Julio Romano. Yes: amid the professional envy and uncharitableness, which literary commentators have been perhaps a little too prone to select and report, it is but fair to mention that Julio candidly and liberally affirmed Coreggio's colouring to be "altogether the best he had ever seen; nor was he averse to the Duke of Mantua giving the preference to Coreggio above himself, when about to make a presentation of pictures to the Emperor Charles V." [Roscoe's Lanzi.]

Let the reader call to mind here, how tempting and how flattering to an artist's ambition was this occasion. And when we reflect too that decision of style in Art, proceeds from vigour and peculiarity of thought-such liberality as is here implied,* is worthy of being placed upon record, as equally honourable to Julio Romano and to Coreggio.

To return to Coreggio's Holy Family. There is nothing at all about this group, of its author having intended in the delineation of his component forms, to superinduce the ideal or deific, on the terrestrial; or (in other words) of superseding "Nature as it is," by "Nature as it ought to be"-otherwise than by

* But in truth, the instances of such liberal emulation and appreciation-at least among modern painters-are much more numerous than the world has given them credit for. He who goes much into their society, cannot have failed to witness instances of respectful deference for, and as high and just appreciation of, each other's talents, as you will find among any numerous body of fellow practitioners of the same profession (even the clergy themselves). To be sure they also occasionally blame heartily but the same sincerity gives birth to both.