painter has, we think, effectively realised the twilight aspect of a room with the two figures darkly relieved against the whiteness of a Japanese blind, whose bright streaks of vermilion, blue, and green, yield the only positive colour in the picture. An uncomfortable idea strikes one, that under normal circumstances the absorbed man and woman would be more likely to regard their work — a huge canvas — by as much light as they could get ; but then the colour hints of the blind, as well as the tone of the room, would have been sacrificed, and another effect and not this would have been the outcome.
Near by hangs a large canvas, the ' Soup Kitchen,' by Attilio Pasterlo, which is as abso- lutely without any fusion of tone as it is devoid of any appreciable liglit and shade ; for the colour masses of the distant rows of people, as well as the individual heads, are painted in about the same key as the nearer ones, and even in these the shadows are so broken into by the exaggeration of reflected light as to minimise, by this particularisation, any chance of effecting a simple and generalised impres- sion from the conflicting data ; and were it not for the difference in drawing of the further masses, neither the colour nor the distribution of light would suffice to make this distinction evident. But for all that the picture is suggestive of thought and earnest in intention. This is manifest in the con- scientious attempt to individualise different types ; to depict want and poverty without any bent to- wards sentimentality, or recourse to anything but a literal intei'pretation of one of the most ordinary sights to be seen daily in our great cities during the bitter days of winter. As we said earlier, Morbelli verges here and there on the morbid ; and this, we contend, is evinced in his ' Felo de se,' as well as in the title given to his little child study, which he names ' A Pall Mall Gazette subject' ; but as this verdict may sound a one-sided one, it is necessary to admit that there is also another view to take. Few things convey with greater truth the look of sunlight and bright early summer effect than his group of workmen playing at ' Bowls ' on a ' Sunday morning in Lombardy ' ; and if a pathetic note is struck in his rendering of the old men, and the interior of the charitable institu- tion in which their days are passed, called ' The End,' the pathos is of a natural kind. But his strongest work, the one in which most force and character are shown, is his study of ' Intemperance.' It cannot be said that the subject is exactly pleas- ing, yet it is — albeit a small work — unquestionably a powerful piece of realism ; while as an analysis of facial expression it is incomparable, yielding in this respect to no other in the exhibition. Then in the same section may be noted the ably painted ' Viaticum,' also by Angelo Morbelli ; some impressionist water-colours by Cremona ; the ' Piazza of San Marco under Water,' with its golden colour, by Clara Montalba, which is a slightly different aspect from Carcano's greyer rendering of the old palace ; G. Favretto's clever canvas, ' With the Nurses,' most beautiful in colour and execution, as are his earlier works in one of the other rooms, which are just Venetian suggestions, called ' A Wed- ding on the Canal,' ' Courtship,' and ' A Venetian Rag Market.' ' On the Alps,' by Carlo Pittara, and ' Hawking in the East,' by Pasini, are also good. Glancing at the first room, in which most of the work is lent by the Italian Government, Camma- rano's ' Charge of Bersaglieri ' strikes one as possess- ing marked action and character, and the painter has certainly succeeded in representing the recklessness and devilry of this famous band. Jacovacci's ' Vit- toria Colonna, and Michael Angelo,' may claim admiration as regards the painting of the satin robe of the dead poetess, but in no other sense is it satisfying. On one side of this hangs a sombre and airless-looking bit of ' Fontainebleau Forest,' by Palizzi, and on the other Luigi Nono's ' Refugium Peccatorium,' sweet with the subdued colour of evening twilight; then next is Filadelfo's quaint 'Dancing Girls,' in pinned-up gowns, practising their steps in the quietness of a meadow. This picture would gain in interest were the three dancing maids more flexible and unconstrained. In fact, the ' woodenness ' of their pose is such as might add to that reputation for stiffness which we Islanders are understood to enjoy in the estimation of other countries. But in reality the merit of the pictui-e consists in its naive quality, and in the natural arrangement of the figures in the foreground, and particularly in the clever foreshortening of the girl lying on the grass lazily watching the rest. In addition to these are two landscapes, oppo- site enough in quality, but both characterised by fine artistic feeling, the ' Messido,' by Ciardi, and Calderini's silvery ' Winter,' poetical and soft with grey clouds, sweeping and lifting over greyer hills, which lie beyond the leafless trees whose bareness is reflected in the sloppy pools mingled with the shadow of the cloud.
It is not possible to do more than note in the most cursory fashion a few of the remaining pictures which attract either by reason of clever manipulation or artistic sympathy. The latter quality is especially evinced in a landscape called ' Carrara,' by Pontecorvo, and in the delicate effects by F. Giolo of ' Twilight,' and early spring days, or ' In April' as he
