The ‘Crucifixion’ and the ‘Assumption of Madonna’ are very tall and narrow compositions, audacious in their attempt to fill almost unmanageable space with a connected action.  Of the two frescoes the ‘Crucifixion,’ which has points of strong similarity to the same subject at Varallo, is by far the best.  Ferrari never painted anything at once truer to life and nobler in tragic style than the fainting Virgin.  Her face expresses the very acme of martyrdom—­not exaggerated nor spasmodic, but real and sublime—­in the suffering of a stately matron.  In points like this Ferrari cannot be surpassed.  Raphael could scarcely have done better; besides, there is an air of sincerity, a stamp of popular truth, in this episode, which lies beyond Raphael’s sphere.  It reminds us rather of Tintoretto.

After the ‘Crucifixion,’ I place the ‘Adoration of the Magi,’ full of fine mundane motives and gorgeous costumes; then the ‘Sposalizio’ (whose marriage, I am not certain), the only grandly composed picture of the series, and marked by noble heads; then the ’Adoration of the Shepherds,’ with two lovely angels holding the bambino.  The ’Assumption of the Magdalen’—­for which fresco there is a valuable cartoon in the Albertina Collection at Turin—­must have been a fine picture; but it is ruined now.  An oil altar-piece in the choir of the same church struck me less than the frescoes.  It represents Madonna and a crowd of saints under an orchard of apple-trees, with cherubs curiously flung about almost at random in the air.  The motive of the orchard is prettily conceived and carried out with spirit.

What Ferrari possessed was rapidity of movement, fulness and richness of reality, exuberance of invention, excellent portraiture, dramatic vehemence, and an almost unrivalled sympathy with the swift and passionate world of angels.  What he lacked was power of composition, simplicity of total effect, harmony in colouring, control over his own luxuriance, the sense of tranquillity.  He seems to have sought grandeur in size and multitude, richness, eclat, contrast.  Being the disciple of Lionardo and Raphael, his defects are truly singular.  As a composer, the old leaven of Giovenone remained in him; but he felt the dramatic tendencies of a later age, and in occasional episodes he realised them with a force and furia granted to very few of the Italian painters.

LANINI AT VERCELLI

The Casa Mariano is a palace which belonged to a family of that name.  Like many houses of the sort in Italy, it fell to vile uses; and its hall of audience was turned into a lumber-room.  The Operai of Vercelli, I was told, bought the palace a few years ago, restored the noble hall, and devoted a smaller room to a collection of pictures valuable for students of the early Vercellese style of painting.  Of these there is no need to speak.  The great hall is the gem of the Casa Mariano.  It has a coved