his pale, serenely noble face is a little black berretta.  Saints attend him, as though attesting to his act of faith.  Opposite kneels Ippolita, his wife, the brilliant queen of fashion, the witty leader of society, to whom Bandello dedicated his Novelle, and whom he praised as both incomparably beautiful and singularly learned.  Her queenly form is clothed from head to foot in white brocade, slashed and trimmed with gold lace, and on her forehead is a golden circlet.  She has the proud port of a princess, the beauty of a woman past her prime but stately, the indescribable dignity of attitude which no one but Luini could have rendered so majestically sweet.  In her hand is a book; and she, like Alessandro, has her saintly sponsors, Agnes and Catherine and S. Scolastica.

Few pictures bring the splendid Milanese Court so vividly before us as these portraits of the Bentivogli:  they are, moreover, very precious for the light they throw on what Luini could achieve in the secular style so rarely touched by him.  Great, however, as are these frescoes, they are far surpassed both in value and interest by his paintings in the side chapel of S. Catherine.  Here more than anywhere else, more even than at Saronno or Lugano, do we feel the true distinction of Luini—­his unrivalled excellence as a colourist, his power over pathos, the refinement of his feeling, and the peculiar beauty of his favourite types.  The chapel was decorated at the expense of a Milanese advocate, Francesco Besozzi, who died in 1529.  It is he who is kneeling, grey-haired and bareheaded, under the protection of S. Catherine of Alexandria, intently gazing at Christ unbound from the scourging pillar.  On the other side stand S. Lawrence and S. Stephen, pointing to the Christ and looking at us, as though their lips were framed to say:  ’Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto his sorrow.’  Even the soldiers who have done their cruel work, seem softened.  They untie the cords tenderly, and support the fainting form, too weak to stand alone.  What sadness in the lovely faces of S. Catherine and Lawrence!  What divine anguish in the loosened limbs and bending body of Christ; what piety in the adoring old man!  All the moods proper to this supreme tragedy of the faith are touched as in some tenor song with low accompaniment of viols; for it was Luini’s special province to feel profoundly and to express musically.  The very depth of the Passion is there; and yet there is no discord.

Just in proportion to this unique faculty for yielding a melodious representation of the most intense moments of stationary emotion, was his inability to deal with a dramatic subject.  The first episode of S. Catherine’s execution, when the wheel was broken and the executioners struck by lightning, is painted in this chapel without energy and with a lack of composition that betrays the master’s indifference to his subject.  Far different is the second episode when Catherine is about to be beheaded.  The executioner has