. A history of / with a preface by Frank Brangwyn. he age in consummatefashion. All the glamour of the new learning is there;the gods of antique days have come out of hiding and friskabroad. Piero di Cosimo was a very Florentine of Floren-tines, the republican blood in him, a live individual,frank of tongue, witty, arrogant, whimsical, odd, his quaintsoul sensitive to the subtlest delicacies of colour, grim ofcharacter, exquisitely sympathetic to sorrow and pain. Nomore perfect example of his skill of artistry has come downto us than the glowing harmonies of his Death of Procris at
. A history of / with a preface by Frank Brangwyn. he age in consummatefashion. All the glamour of the new learning is there;the gods of antique days have come out of hiding and friskabroad. Piero di Cosimo was a very Florentine of Floren-tines, the republican blood in him, a live individual,frank of tongue, witty, arrogant, whimsical, odd, his quaintsoul sensitive to the subtlest delicacies of colour, grim ofcharacter, exquisitely sympathetic to sorrow and pain. Nomore perfect example of his skill of artistry has come downto us than the glowing harmonies of his Death of Procris atthe National Gallery in London. Here we have veryFlorence of the late fourteen-hundreds. Here are thepagan gods stepping out of their long hiding in the shadygroves, and careering abroad in Italian landscape. Withinthe space of the long narrow span of the painted surface,Piero di Cosimo has uttered his poem of love and jealousy,of death and remorse, in lyric fashion. The whispered 122 XVI FRA BARTOLOMMEO 1475 - 1517 (Louvre)•VIRGIN AND CHILD, WITH SAINTS \. I OF PAINTING slander that has sent the jealous Procris into her hiding- OF THE place in the thicket to watch her lovers meeting with an DEEPS OF Unknown One, has also sent her to her death, when, leapin? tOETRY • • • • THAT MAY from hiding to confess her false suspicion, she is slain by -fTrrxH the arrow of her lover as he quickly lets fly, startled by the .^ twf rustle of what he took to be a wild beast in the bush; and rqUGH as the life flows scarlet from her wounded throat, she tells OUTER • her tale—and unseen Jupiter, bending his ear to hear the MAN piteous tragedy, did well to change her into a star. Tis a literary theme, its true enough, and the pictured sonnet needs a book of the words to explain it—therein the art is faulty enough, as indeed was much of the art of the Florentines—but, apart from this, what an exquisite thing it is ! the pity of it, shown in the bereaved satyr and mourning dog, the
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