Dürer's paintings, something new and peculiar to himself in the design, composition, and execution may always be observed, so that it is impossible not to perceive his creative spirit and distinguishing manner, in which he had no master to imitate.

ROYAL PORTRAITS.

"L'amour propre aime les portraits," La Bruyere says-Of this axiom, Queen Elizabeth, Charles the First, and Louis the Fourteenth, give the most striking illustrations. Queen Elizabeth made it penal to buy an ugly picture, and leze majesté for a limner not to flatter her. She is generally represented with all the attributes of royal power and sovereign beauty, while Junos, Venuses, and Minervas fly before her to hide their diminished heads where they may. The melancholy countenance of Charles the First is to be seen in every collection in Europe, from the numberless portraits which filled his own gallery, the contents of which were so dispersed. He made Rembrandt paint him as Saint George; and Vandyke and others painted him under the form of every saint in the calendar. Louis the Fourteenth, on the contrary, flourishes on the walls and ceilings of Versailles and of the Tuilleries as Jupiter or Apollo, surrounded by his mistresses as the Graces; while the Virtues are oddly enough allegorized as monsters.

DEATH OF BARRY.

THE latter part of Barry's life was a comparative blank, living in filthy rags, and abortive schemes at his house in Castle-street, Oxford Market; a period which some of his friends have charitably supposed to have been darkened by occasional mental aberrations, and almost perpetual despondency. He seldom appeared before the public, and his last literary effort, was a Letter and Petition addressed to his Majesty, and published in the Morning Herald of December 3, 1799. In 1805, some friends of Barry, particularly the Earl of Buchan, supposing his circumstances to be difficult, raised a subscription in the Society of Arts, and purchased therewith a comfortable annuity for his life, but he did not live to receive even the first payment. Poor Barry's last illness was short. He was taken ill, at a tavern where he usually dined, and was carried to the house of the late Mr. Bonomi the architect, where he languished fifteen days, and expired February 22, 1806. After his death his body was laid in state, in the great room at the Adelphi, where he was surrounded by his grand ethical series of pictures, and it might then have been said of him, as of another great and neglected man, Sir Christopher Wren, " SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS CIRCUMSPICE." His remains were interred in a vault in the substructure of St. Paul's Cathedral, close to those of Sir Christopher Wren

and Sir Joshua Reynolds, covered with a flat stone

inscribed

Ω

THE

GREAT HISTORICAL PAINTER

JAMES BARRY

DIED 22d FEBRUARY, 1806,
AGED 64.

EMULATION AND RIVALRY IN THE ARTS.

EMULATION carries with it neither envy nor unfair rivalry, but inspires only a powerful inclination to surpass all others by superiority alone. Such was the emulation and rivalry between Zeuxis and Parrhasius, which caused the improvement of both; and similar thereto was that which inspired the master-minds of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle; of Titian and Pordenone; and of Agostino and Annibale Caracci; and with similar results, Raffaelle's talents were excited by the presence of Michael Angelo in Rome, which had laid dormant during that great man's absence, and both the Caracci declined when their competition ceased, as it proved by the following facts.

The confraternity of the Chartreuse at Bologna, proposed to the artists of Italy to paint a picture for them in competition, and to send sketches or designs for selection. The Carracci were among

the competitors, and the sketch of Agostino was preferred; which first gave rise, according to some authors, to the jealousy between the two brothers.

The picture which Agostino painted, is his celebrated Communion of St. Jerome, which was formerly in the Louvre. This fine picture represents the venerable saint, feeling his approaching dissolution, is carried to the church of Bethlehem, when he receives the last sacrament of the Romish church, the Viaticum, in the midst of his disciples, while a monk writes down his last words. It is reckoned the master piece of the artist; the two brothers then commenced the Farnese gallery in conjunction, but the jealous feelings which existed between them, separated them. Agostino, who was according to all authority, the best tempered of the two, gave himself up entirely to the practice of his art. The noble emulation of high minds was lost, in this instance, in the meaner spirit of jealousy and rivalry.

CARLO MARATTI AND SALVATOR ROSA.

WHILE Carlo Maratti was working with daily assiduity in the magnificent gallery of the most interesting palace in Rome (the Colonna,) condescending to paint Cupids and roses on fragile mirrors, (which, however, still decorate walls dismantled of nobler and more lasting ornaments,) Salvator Rosa was employed by the Constable

Colonna in painting historical pictures for the same gallery, and even affected to barter compliments with the puissant prince. By more than one ill-timed but generous present to a man so greatly his superior in wealth and rank, he unconsciously laid the foundation of a calumny against his noted disinterestedness, which, inconsistent as it is, still stamps his liberal character with one solitary incident of ridicule, or of avarice. "The Constable Colonna," says a modern retailer of historical anecdotes, "sent a purse of gold to Salvator on receiving one of his beautiful landscapes. The painter not to be outdone in generosity, sent the prince another picture as a present, which the prince insisted on remunerating with another purse; another present and another purse followed; and this struggle between generosity and liberality continued to the time of many other pictures and presents, until the prince finding himself a loser by the contest, sent Salvator two purses, with the assurance that he gave in, "et lui ceda le champ de battaille." The pictures painted at this time for the Constable Colonna were, "Mercury and the Peasant,' "Moses found by Pharaoh's daughter," the two sublime St. Johns, and the landscapes which gave rise to the anecdote above recited.

CARLO DOLCE'S WEDDING DAY.

CARLO DOLCE not only dedicated his pencil to