HISTORY OF PICTORIAL ART.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1616, 25 April 1879, Page 3

HISTORY OF PICTORIAL ART.

Dr. Yon Haast delivered the first of a series of lectures on Pictorial Art last evening in the lecture theatre of the Canterbury College. He illustrated his subject by reference to a selection of the Arundel Society’s pictures, which were lately exhibited at the Philosophical Institute’s conversazione in the Provincial Council Chambers, Dr. Yon Haast introduced his remarks by referring to the early rise and growth of pictorial art, which was began by the decoration of the Catacombs in Rome in the reign of Constantino the Great. Prom then he briefly sketched the advancement of painting from the original crude and conventional manner through the twelfth and thirteenth century, and during the period of the Crusades, until the advent of Oimabue and Q-iotto. He next referred to the establishment of the Arundel Society in London, which has for its object the restoration of the works, especially the frescos, of the early masters which adorned many of the convents in Italy, and were in danger of perishing from the effects of time and neglect. He then proceeded to analyse the first principles of art and their gradual development under the influence of advancing knowledge in the principles of drawing and perspective. Next he drew attention to the copies of the frescoes which had been published by the Arundel Society, the majority of which were only discovered in the year 1838, and were almost concealed beneath the incrustation of dirt which time had occasioned. The pictures he chose to comment on were those of three of the earliest and most illustrious fresco painters—Masaccio, Maiolino, and Filippino Lippi. He compared the difference in style between the works of the painters he had cited, which clearly showed from whose hands they emanated, as each bore the impress of the influence of increasing experience over that of his immediate predecessor. The greater part of the lecture was devoted to a comparative analysis of the merits of the Italian school, which Dr. Yon Haast classified into distinctive periods, passing in review the representative painters of each period. He illustrated the excellence of one of the early frescos by narrating an anecdote of Raffaelle, in which the latter was said to have compared a figure in one of them for excellence and accuracy in delineation to his own cartoons. The artists principally alluded to as the fathers of pictorial art in the It alian school were Masolini, Masaccio, Filippino Lippi, Michel Angelo, Andrea del Sarto, Ghirlandaio, and Rafaello. He next alluded to the works of the Flemish school of painters, represented by the brothers Van Eyck, Memling, and Holbein, with a technical

description of the various methods of producing peculiar colors, and of their preservation or restoration from decay. The close of the lecture was devoted to a critical review of the pictures chosen as illustrative of the subject, and their peculiarities and beauties were pointed out by the lecturer ip a very lucid manner, which was at once instructive and interesting.