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which the trees are animated hy birds. The coarse vigour of Andrea, or his school, is visible in the work whose tempera is raw and dull; but the draperies are more careful than in Castagno’s frescos. The Magdalen, 1 and the Baptist 2 are two figures which may remind the critic of works of Filippino’s decline. 3 In the museum of Berlin, a Virgin with the dead Christ on her knees surrounded by saints and angels on Golgotha, reveals the style of Andrea del Castagno. 4 The figure which most truly displays his manner is a bony and sinewy S. Jerom, the nude of whose frame is mapped out after the manner conspicuous in the later Mantegna, — the expression of whose face is hard and stern. The grimace in the Virgin’s face is not agreahle. The thin bodied colour is yellowish in tone, the shadows of a yellowish brown through which the verde undertone appears. Another picture in the same gallery, representing S. Jerom, a small predella piece, 5 is .of a similar character to the foregoing, hut the tempera is more spare and the execution coarser. A second S. Jerom of the same class may be seen by the curious in the depot of the Berlin Gallery. A third, which is a re petition of no. 1139 at Berlin, may.be seen in the Lombardi collection at Florence. A small crucifixion in the Municipal Gallery at Prato 6 with the fainting Virgin, the Evangelist, the Magdalen, SS. Jerom and Francis, seems entitled to be classed amongst the works of Andrea del Castagno. The group of the Virgin raised by S. John is in the feeling of that in An gelico’s fresco of the refectory of S. Marco at Florence; but the S. Jerom is peculiarly in Andrea’s manner. Andrea del Castagno died, probably of plague, on the nineteenth of August 1457, having lost his wife a few 1 No. 37. Acad, of Arts. Galerie des grands tableaux. 3 No. 39. ib. 3 A S. Jerom (No. 44. id.) in the Academy of Arts is exactly in the character of N os . 37 and 39, yet is assigned to Fra Filippo. In the same Gallery No. 6, Ga lerie des anciens tableaux, a Mag dalen at the foot of the cross, tempera on canvass is in the man ner of Luca Signorelli yet cata logued under the name of Andrea del Castagno. 4 No. 1055. To the Virgin’s left is S. Jerom, to the right S. Augus tine. In rear is the cross with an angel at each extremity of the horizontal limb. Distance a land scape. 5 No. 1139. In the distance are episodes, S.S. Sebastian, Roch and Tobit netting the fish. 6 No. VII. Prato Cat. under the head of “Scuola Fiorentina”.
