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In a word, Borgognone was a true Lombard of the best time. The very imperfection of his flesh-painting repeats in color what the greatest Lombard sculptors sought in stone a sharpness of relief that passes over into angularity. This brusqueness was the counter-poise to tenderness of feeling and intensity of fancy in these Northern artists.

The background is entirely of gold, thickly studded with bosses of gilded gesso. The figures are finely modelled and posed. The flesh-painting, as in all the frescoes, is perhaps somewhat heavy in colour, but the whole effect is rich and harmonious.

Vermilion, orange, scarlet, and blue these colours had been laid in stripes, circles, and figures upon the braves. They were colours that he, an outcast, might not use. But there was one poor privilege in flesh-painting that even he could claim. Kneeling again in clout and squaw's skirt, he had smeared the black and red in rude signs upon his chest.

The critics are merely expressing the trend of public opinion. It is not new to our age. Millet had been painting nudes the most exquisite bits of flesh-painting seen for many a day, and as modest as Chabas "September Morn." "What do they say of my things?" asked Millet. "That you are still painting naked women," replied Diaz. Millet was horrified. "I paint naked women!

Half rising, he gave it a kick, just as one of his brothers might have done. Then he squatted again, and through the ragged strands of his bang, his black eyes sparkled eagerly. For, of late, every warrior's lodge had seen secret flesh-painting; under every warrior's blanket were hidden gaudy tracings of vermilion, scarlet, orange, and blue; and was he not painted, too!

No words can describe the beauty of the flesh-painting, especially in the figures of the Genii, or the technical delicacy with which the modelling of limbs, the modulation from one tone to another, have been carried from silvery transparent shades up to the strongest accents. Mr. Ruskin has said, and very justly said, that "the highest art can do no more than rightly represent the human form."

As stucco pretending to be marble, and graining pretending to be wood, are in false taste in building, so false jewelry and cheap fineries of every kind are in bad taste; so also is powder instead of natural complexion, false hair instead of real, and flesh-painting of every description.

Larcher's great success in the carrying business, which warranted his purchase of a mansion near Riverston already furnished in high style by an illustrious Spa physician furnished indeed with such large framefuls of expensive flesh-painting in the dining-room, that Mrs. Larcher was nervous until reassured by finding the subjects to be Scriptural.

In a word, Borgognone was a true Lombard of the best time. The very imperfection of his flesh-painting repeats in colour what the greatest Lombard sculptors sought in stone a sharpness of relief that passes over into angularity. This brusqueness was the counterpoise to tenderness of feeling and intensity of fancy in these northern artists.

That the picture now in the Sala de la Reina Isabel at Madrid is this original is proved, in the first place, by the quality of the flesh-painting, the silvery shimmer, the vibration of the whole, the subordination of local colour to general tone, yet by no means to the point of extinction all these being distinctive qualities of this late time.