JOHNSON COLLECTION ROSE. 681 



composition, artists usually add to it other figures. Seldom do they 

 proceed by way of subtraction. Therefore the simpler composition 

 is usually the first. Certainly this is the liner of the two, better pre- 

 served, richer in color, more united in composition. 



The school of the Marches produced no painter of the very first 

 rank, though some of the works of Francesco Francia, such as the 

 Pieta in London, the Deposition from the Cross at Parma, the An- 

 nunciation in the Brera, and the Madonna of the Rose Garden at 

 Munich, are among the most precious things in all the range of art. 

 The dry-as-dust critic who can not appreciate their ineffable charm 

 is surely to be pitied. 



Francesco had several sons who devoted themselves to painting, 

 chief of whom was Giacomo Francia. The Marriage of St. Cath- 

 erine in the Johnson collection is one of his most delightful works. 

 Both the Madonna and the St. Catherine are beautiful, especially the 

 latter, a highborn maiden with features of Grecian regularity and 

 wearing a royal diadem upon her queenly head. She lifts up her 

 exquisite hand to the Christ Child, who is stretching forth the 

 betrothal ring, while behind the group is St. Joseph and a landscape 

 background. 



The Venetian is the most glorious of all the schools of painting. 

 In that branch of art it maintains the incontestable supremacy that 

 Athens holds in sculpture; and among its masters there is none 

 possessed of a more compelling charm than Lorenzo Lotto. There 

 is scarcely anything on earth more beautiful than his Holy Family 

 at Vienna, certainly nothing more exquisite and refined. And hun- 

 dreds of years before Gainsborough painted his Blue Boy, Lotto in 

 this picture refuted still more triumphantly the dictum of Sir Joshua 

 Reynolds that blue was a cold color that should be relegated to the 

 less important parts of the canvas, and used only to enhance the 

 effect of the warmer hues. If it is ever admissible in speaking of 

 one art to use the language of another, this must be called the incom- 

 parable symphony in blue. 



But, while Lotto painted many lovely religious pictures, he was 

 perhaps even more distinguished in the art of portraiture. When 

 men have achieved success and have become rich and prosperous a 

 pardonable pride leads to a desire to transmit their lineaments to 

 posterity; and the Venetian nobles had every reason to be proud. 

 They had raised upon the mud banks of the Adriatic a dream of 

 imperishable beauty ; they had attained the hegemony in the world's 

 commerce, so that the wealth of the Orient was poured into their 

 city's lap; and in a thousand desperate struggles on land and sea, 

 they had built up a splendid empire. Their favorite painter was 

 Titian, who depicted them as they loved to appear, calm, serene, far- 



