vividly the same figure in the Paumgaertner altarpiece.  Aerial and linear perspective are still imperfect, but the technical treatment of the figures is as finished as in Duerer’s best pictures of the later period.  The outlines are sharp, the colours very liquid, laid on without doubt in tempera, and covered with oil glazes; the whole tone exceedingly fresh, clear, and brilliant.  If it was Barbari’s fine work which incited Duerer to this delicate and careful method of execution, he has certainly far surpassed the Venetian, not only in form and ideas, but also in the solidity of his technique.  This technique is undoubtedly of Northern origin, as is also the harmony of colour, which Duerer here realizes, and does not soon again abandon.  It must not be forgotten, however, that the difference between this technique and that practised by Giovanni Bellini is one of degree and not of principle; judging at least by the unfinished painting of Giovanni’s in the Uffizi, in which the design is sketched either with the pencil or brush, and the colours then laid on in tempera, and afterwards repeatedly covered with oil glazes.  Duerer appears to have owed the opportunity of producing this his first masterpiece in painting to a commission from the Elector Frederick of Saxony.  Christian II. presented it to the Emperor Rudolph II. in 1603, and in the last century it was sent from the imperial gallery, in exchange for the Presentation in the Temple, by Fra Bartolomeo, to Florence, where it now shines as a gem of German art amongst the renowned pictures in the Tribune of the Uffizi.

[Illustration:  ADORATION OF THE MAGI.
        Duerer.]

    The Life and Works of Albert Duerer, translated from the German
    and edited by Fred. A. Eaton (London, 1882).

MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE

(HOGARTH)

AUSTIN DOBSON

Nevertheless, if the main circumstances of the painter’s career should still remain unaltered, there must always be a side of his work which will continue to need interpretation.  In addition to painting the faults and follies of his time, he was pre-eminently the pictorial chronicler of its fashions and its furniture.  The follies endure; but the fashions pass away.  In our day—­a day which has witnessed the demolition of Northumberland House, the disappearance of Temple Bar, and the removal of we know not what other time-honoured and venerated landmarks—­much in Hogarth’s plates must seem as obscure as the cartouches on Cleopatra’s Needle.  Much more is speedily becoming so; and without some guidance the student will scarcely venture into that dark and doubtful rookery of tortuous streets and unnumbered houses—­the London of the Eighteenth Century.

[Illustration:  MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE.
        Hogarth.]