the entrance of a cavern. These figures are arranged in the pyramidal form afterwards so much in favour with Raphael. The Virgin, in the centre, but in the middle distance, dominates the other actors. A blue mantle fastened at the breast by a brooch, hangs from her shoulders. One hand on the shoulder of the little S. John, at whom she is looking, the other extended over her Son, she invites the precursor to approach him. The Infant, seated on the ground, and steadying himself with his left hand, blesses his young companion with the right; the angel. one knee on the ground beside the Child, supports him with one hand, and with the other shows him the little S. John. Here we have already the germs of the consummate art of gesture, of which Leonardo afterwards made so brilliant an application in the Last Supper at Milan. It is this which gives such extraordinary animation to the composition.

The master, however, is far from perfect as yet. A certain inexperience reveals itself, side by side with the most exquisite sensibility, the rarest faculty for observation. There is, in particular, something slightly archaic in the Virgin's type. (The painter seems to have lagged behind the draughtsman, for the studies for this picture are free and supple in the highest degree.) The nose is straight, not aquiline, the mouth but slightly curved, the chin low and square, as in certain faces of Perugino's and Francia's. As to the angel, who wears a red tunic and a green mantle, his expression is vague and undecided. He is more firmly modelled in the two preliminary drawings, the one in the Royal Library at Turin, the other in the École des Beaux Arts. Note the affinity between his type and that of the Virgin.

In the two children there is also something hard and arid; the desire for objective truth occasionally gets the better of a sense of style and expression. But what a knowledge of colour and of modelling! The result is a mingling of Correggio and Rembrandt. In the Infant Jesus, with his somewhat mournful expression, his chestnut locks, his chubby contours (there are dimples on the elbow and shoulder), the effect of the wonderful foreshortening, the broadly treated surfaces, is little short of miraculous. In the little S. John, the foreshortening is curt and abrupt, after the manner of Verrocchio. The type, too, has striking analogies with those of Verrochio. I may add that the light