shaking the venomous beast from his hand, these are surely beautiful and available materials for a scenic picture. Even if treated as an allegory in a devotional sense, a single majestic figure, throwing the evil thing innocuous from him, which I have not yet seen, it would be an excellent and a significant subject. The little picture by Elzheimer is the best example I can cite of the picturesque treatment. That of Le Sueur has much dignity; those of Perino del Vaga, Thornhill, West, are all commonplace.

Thornhill, as everybody knows, painted the eight principal scenes of the life of the apostle in the cupòla of St. Paul's. Few people, I should think, have strained their necks to examine them; the eight original studies, small sketches en grisaille, are preserved in the vestry, and display that heartless, mindless, mannered mediocrity, which makes all criticism foolishness; I shall, however, give a list of the subjects. 1. Paul and Barnabas at Lystra. 2. Paul preaching at Athens. 3. Elymas struck blind. 4. The converts burn their magical books. 5. Paul before Festus. 6. A woman seated at his feet; I presume the Conversion of Lydia of Thyatira. 7. Paul let down in a basket. 8. He shakes the viper from his hand.

At the time that Thornhill was covering the cupola at "the rate of 27. the square yard," Hogarth, his son-in-law, would also try his hand. He painted "St. Paul pleading before Felix" for Lincoln's Inn Hall; where the subject, at least, is appropriate. The picture itself is curiously characteristic, not of the scene or of the chief personage, but of the painter. St. Paul loaded with chains, and his accuser Tertullus, stand in front; and Felix, with his wife Drusilla, are seated on a raised tribunal in the background; near Felix is the high-priest Ananias. The composition is good. The heads are full of vivid expression ---wrath, terror, doubt, fixed attention; but the conception of character most ignoble and commonplace. Hogarth was more at home when he took the same subject as a vehicle for a witty caricature of the Dutch manner of treating sacred subjects their ludicrous anachronisms and mean incidents. St. Paul, in allusion to his low stature, is mounted on

1 The clergy who permitted Sir James Thornhill to paint the cupola of St. Paul's with Scripture scenes, refused to admit any other paintings into the church. Perhaps they were justified; but not by the plea of Bishop Terrick-the fear of idolatry.

a stool; an angel is sawing through one leg of it; Tertullus is a barrister, in wig, band, and gown; the judge is like an old doting justice of peace, and his attendants like old beggars.

In the Florentine Gallery there is a very curious series of the lives of St. Peter and St. Paul in eight pictures, in the genuine old German style; fanciful, animated, full of natural and dramatic expression, and exquisitely finished, but dry, hard, grotesque, and abounding in anachronisms.1

Among the few separate historical subjects in which St. Peter and St. Paul are represented together, the most important is the dispute at Antioch, a subject avoided by the earliest painters. St. Paul says, "When Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed." Guido's picture in the Brera at Milan is celebrated: Peter is seated, looking thoughtful, with downcast eyes, an open book on his knees; Paul, in an attitude of rebuke, stands over against him. There is another example by Rosso: here both are standing; Peter is looking down; Paul, with long hair and, beard floating back, and a keen reproving expression, "rebukes him to his face." I presume the same subject to be represented by Lucas van Leyden in a rare and beautiful little print, in which St. Peter and St. Paul are seated together in earnest conversation. St. Peter holds a key in his right hand, and points with the other to a book which lies on his knees. St. Paul is about to turn the leaf, and his right hand appears to rebuke St. Peter: his left foot is on the sword which lies at his feet.

"The Parting of St. Peter and St. Paul before they are led to death." The scene is without the gates of Rome; and as the soldiers drag Peter away, he turns back to Paul with a pathetic expression. This picture, now in the Louvre, is one of Lanfranco's best compositions.2

1 This series, the most important work of the painter, Hans Schaufelein, is not mentioned in Kugler's Handbook. It is engraved in outline in the New Florence Gallery, published in 1837.

"St. Paul prevents his jailor from killing himself" (Acts, xvi.) has been lately painted by Claude Hallé, and is now in the Louvre. (Ecole Française, 283.)

When the crucifixion of St. Peter and the decollation of St. Paul are represented together in the same picture, such a picture must be considered as religious and devotional, not historical; it does not express the action as it really occurred, but, like many pictures of the crucifixion of our Saviour, it is placed before us as an excitement to piety, self-sacrifice, and repentance. We have this kind of treatment in a picture by Niccolò dell' Abate1: St. Paul kneels before a block, and the headsman stands with sword uplifted in act to strike; in the background, two other executioners grasp St. Peter, who is kneeling on his cross, and praying fervently: above, in a glory, is seen the Virgin; in her arms the Infant Christ, who delivers to two angels palm-branches for the martyred saints. The genius of Niccolò was not precisely fitted for this class of subjects. But the composition is full of poetical feeling. The introduction of the Madonna and Child stamps the character of the picture as devotional, not historical - it would otherwise be repulsive, and out of keeping with the subject.

There is a Martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul engraved after Parmigiano, which I shall notice on account of its careless and erroneous treatment. They are put to death together; an executioner prepares to decapitate St. Peter, and another drags St. Paul by the beard: the incidents are historically false, and, moreover, in a degraded and secular taste. These are the mistakes that make us turn disgusted from the technical facility, elegance, and power of the sixteenth century, to the simplicity and reverential truth of the fourteenth.

There are various traditions concerning the relics of St. Peter and St. Paul. According to some, the bodies of the two apostles were, in the reign of Heliogabalus, deposited by the Christian converts in the catacombs of Rome, and were laid in the same sepulchre. After the lapse of about two hundred years, the Greek or Oriental Christians attempted to carry them off; but were opposed by the Roman Christians. The Romans conquered; and the two bodies were transported to the church of the Vatican, where they reposed together in a magnificent shrine, beneath the church. Among the engravings in the work of Ciampini and Bosio are two rude old pictures commemorating this In the Dresden Gal., 821.

2 Bartsch, vii. 79.

event. The first represents the combat of the Orientals and the Romans for the bodies of the Saints; in the other, the bodies are deposited in the Vatican. In these two ancient representations, which were placed in the portico of the old basilica of St. Peter, the traditional types may be recognised the broad full features, short curled beard, and bald head of St. Peter, and the oval face and long beard of St. Paul.

Here I must conclude this summary of the lives and characters of the two greatest apostles, as they have been exhibited in Christian Art; to do justice to the theme would have required a separate volume. One observation, however, suggests itself, and cannot be passed over. The usual type of the head of St. Peter, though often ill rendered and degraded by coarseness, can in general be recognised as characteristic ; but is there among the thousand representations of the apostle Paul, one on which the imagination can rest completely satisfied? I know not one. No doubt the sublimest ideal of embodied eloquence that ever was expressed in Art is Raphael's St. Paul preaching at Athens. He stands there the delegated voice of the true God, the antagonist and conqueror of the whole heathen world: "Whom ye ignorantly worship, HIM declare I unto you" is not this what he says? Every feature, nay, every fold in his drapery, speaks; as in the other St. Paul leaning on his sword (in the famous St. Cecilia), every feature and every fold of drapery meditates. The latter is as fine in its tranquil melancholy grandeur, as the former in its authorative energy: in the one the orator, in the other the philosopher, were never more finely rendered: but is it, in either, the Paul of Tarsus whom we know? It were certainly both unnecessary and pedantic to adhere so closely to historic fact as to make St. Paul of diminutive stature, and St. Peter weak-eyed but has Raphael done well in wholly rejecting the traditional portrait which reflected to us the Paul of Scripture, the man of many toils and many sorrows, wasted with vigils, worn down with travel, whose high bald forehead, thin flowing hair, and long pointed beard, spoke so plainly the fervent and indomitable, yet meditative and delicate, organisation, — and in substituting this Jupiter Ammon head, with the dark redundant hair, almost hiding the brow, and the full bushy beard? This is one of the instances in which Raphael, in

VOL. I.

G G

yielding to the fashion of his time, has erred, as it seems to me, though I say it with all reverence! The St. Paul rending his garments at Lystra, and rejecting the sacrifice of the misguided people, is more particularly false as to the character of the man, though otherwise so grandly expressive, that we are obliged to admire what our better our conscience — cannot wholly approve.

sense

I shall now consider the rest of the apostles in their proper order.

ST. ANDREW.

Lat. S. Andreas. Ital. Sant' Andrea. Fr. St. André. Patron saint of Scotland and of Russia. Nov. 30. A. D. 70.

ST. ANDREW was the brother of Simon Peter, and the first who was called to the apostleship. Nothing farther is recorded of him in Scripture he is afterwards merely included by name in the general account of the apostles.

In the traditional and legendary history of St. Andrew we are told, that after our Lord's ascension, when the apostles dispersed to preach the Gospel to all nations, St. Andrew travelled into Scythia, Cappadocia, and Bithynia, everywhere converting multitudes to the faith. The Russians believe that he was the first to preach to the Muscovites in Sarmatia, and thence he has been honoured as titular saint of the empire of Russia. After many sufferings, he returned to Jerusalem, and thence travelled into Greece, and came at length to a city of Achaia, called Patras. Here he made many converts; among others, Maximilla, the wife of the proconsul Egeus, whom he persuaded to make a public profession of Christianity. The proconsul, enraged, commanded him to be seized and scourged, and then crucified. The cross on which he suffered was of a peculiar form (crux decussata), since called the St. Andrew's cross; and it is expressly said that he was not fastened to his cross with nails, but with cords,-a circumstance always attended to in the representations of his death. It is, however, to be remembered, that while all authorities agree that he was crucified, and that the manner of his crucifixion was peculiar, they are not agreed as to the form of his cross. St. Peter Chrysologos says that it was a tree: another author affirms that it was an olive tree. The Abbé Méry