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year in the archives of his native city. He paints altar-pieces for churches and convents, and is commissioned by the Signor Jacopo Rossi, of Deruta, to paint a "tavola" (a picture on wood) for the church of San Francesco in that place, wherein the portrait of the pious donor appears, painted small, and bears a scroll with these words in Gothic characters : 'iacobus rubei de deruta fieri fecit hoc opus pro anima sua.' In 1467 Magister Nicolaus Pictor sits among the councillors of the city. A few years later he is officially enumerated amongst those citizens who were eligible to be "priori." He does not appear ever to have filled that office; but his eldest son Lattanzio was priore in 1480, during his father's lifetime. Lattanzio also followed the art of painting. We see, therefore, that the good people of Foligno in those days had no idea that the fine arts unfitted one for the duties of a good citizen; or that because a man could draw heads full of beauty, expression, and character, his own must necessarily be incapable of common sense. Indeed, the business talents of Maestro Niccolò appear to have been held in as high estimation by his fellow-townsmen as was his artistic excellence. He is continually mentioned as sitting in the great Council, and twice he was elected to the Consiglio Centumvirale,' or Council of the Hundred, which was, according to the expression of the Chancellor of the Communità, sacred Deo optimo maximo. He is nominated to select a doctor to the Communità. He reports upon the condition of the public granaries, and makes some suggestions with regard to them, which are accepted by the vote of the Council, with sixty white balls against two black ones. Again, Magister Nicolaus Pictor, Consiliarius, makes the very shrewd and practical suggestion that the Signori priori shall be obliged, before retiring from office, to read to the assembled Council a relation of the incomings and outgoings of the Communità, and that whosoever fails to do so shall pay a line of two ducats, to be employed for the benefit of the Monte Frumentamio, or public granaries before-mentioned. This proposition is approved by fifty votes out of fifty-five. After this we are not surprised to find that when Magister Nicolaus Pictor begs leave to make a well or cistern near to his own house, on the piazzetta of Sant' Agostino, which cistern will occupy forty-eight feet of public ground, the Communità, "considering that for his merits he deserves to be favoured in everything," consents to his request.

On December 18, 1501, our painter is amongst the citizens present at a Council, wherein it is deliberated and decided to send a sort of embassy to Cæsar Borgia, to thank him for the offer he has made to take the city and the people of Foligno under his protection; to supplicate him to carry the offer into effect, and to promise fidelity to him against all enemies, but more especially against the Colonnas and Savellis. The personages chosen to convey this message to Cæsar Borgia were Monsignor Luca Cibo; the Magnifico Sigismondo de' Conti, Apostolic Secretary; Antonio Flavio Bagiarotto, Doctor of Laws, and five or six others of minor importance.

The idea of having recourse to the beneficent protection of Cæsar Borgia seems to us like a population of frogs choosing King Stork to rule over them. However, there are various historical indications that this particular Stork was sufficiently bon prince to prefer feeding on the frogs of his rivals and enemies, and only to have recourse to his own when he was very hungry indeed. The form of his grazia, or offer of protection, is curious, and runs as follows:

"The most illustrious prince and glorious lord, Don Cæsar Borgia, Duke of Romagna, &c. &c. &c., Gonfalonier and Captain-General of the Holy Roman Church, moved by his spontaneous and imperial liberality and clemency to compassion for the misfortunes and calamities of this city and people, which, besides the present affliction of the famine, is oppressed and exhausted by frequent incursions, rapine, fra, and slaughter on the part of other peoples and lords, enemies of this city and people; has offered to the said city and people before his Holiness our Sovereign, his protection, defence, and safeguard against all assailants."

The enumeration of the ills to which Foligno was subject at this time is terrible enough. Early in the year 1502, Niccolò commenced a picture representing the martyrdom of St. Bartholomew for the church dedicated to that saint in Marano, but the illness which finally killed him prevented him from finishing it. It did not, however, make him unmindful of his word; for he left a codicil to his will, directing that the picture should be finished by his son Lattanzio. The will is a very curious document, attesting, as it does, in a lively manner that admixture of wealth and simplicity-almost bareness of living which exists to this day in certain remote townlets and villages of Italy. I have myself seen, in a small town in the Tuscan Maremma, a house belonging to an ancient and respected family of the place, in which were combined in the strangest way evidences of considerable property (for example, a huge plate-chest full of solid silver standing open on a sidetable during the progress of a very frugal dinner) with a Spartan disregard of comfort which no English farmer, nor even well-to-do artisan, would submit to.

Maestro Niccolò died a rich man. He received a handsome dowry of 250 florins with his wife, who was herself, as the reader will remember, the child of a painter, and bequeathed to his grand-daughter Minerva, child of his son Lattanzio, a marriage portion of 280 florins. How considerable these dowers were for that time and place may be gathered from the fact that in a sumptuary statute of Foligno, of the' year 1454, a marriage portion of 300 florins is enumerated amongst those large ones which confer the right of expending 100 florins on the personal ornaments of the bride. This seems a large proportion-onethird of the whole fortune! But then the ornaments so purchased became heirlooms, and descended in the family from generation to generation. The patriarchal dependence on the father in which the

son lived is queerly exemplified by the following legacy :-"Maestro Niccolò bequeaths to his son Lattanzio not only three ounces of pearls which Paola, the wife of the latter, was accustomed to wear, together with a robe valued at twelve florins, and another with crimson velvet sleeves, but, moreover, the very gold ring with which the aforesaid wife of Lattanzio was married!" To his daughter-in-law, Paola herself, he leaves a brown mantle (the word expressing its colour in the original is “monachino," which denotes a brown hue like that of a Capuchin monk's habit), which had belonged to his own wife Caterina. He leaves to his granddaughter Camilla a girdle of crimson velvet ornamented with silver, which he bought from the heirs of Michele di Niccolò Picca. To his own daughter Agnes, who was married, he leaves a sum of seven florins to buy mourning after his death. He moreover arranges that in case of her being left a widow she is to have food, lodging, and fitting dress provided for her in the paternal house, on condition that she puts her dowry into a common stock with the fortunes of her brothers. He leaves to be divided equally between his two sons, Lattanzio and Marchesio, the entire stock of household stuffs, linen, woollen, hempen, and cotton, which had belonged to their mother Caterina; and he leaves to each of them vineyards and lands. To Lattanzio, who followed his own profession, he assigns "the stones of porphyry and marble, the designs, and everything belonging to the art and calling of a painter." He makes due provision for masses to be said for the repose of his soul, and leaves, moreover, a considerable sum of money to build a new altar in the church of Sant' Agostino in Foligno, "near to the main door and the chapel of San Biagio;" and to paint a picture for the adornment of the said altar. In a codicil to his will, dated August 18, 1502, he adds to the legacies of his second son, Marchesio, the ring with which his mother Caterina was married, and a mantle; also the ring I have previously alluded to, on which were engraved the arms of the family. He adds to the legacies of Lattanzio a mantle of purple cloth made expressly for him when he was one of the "priori" of the city. (We know that Lattanzio was elected 'priore" in 1480.) Finally, he informs his sons of two debts owing to him, one of forty-eight florins by the monks of St. Bartholomew in Marano, the other of thirty florins by the men of the Castello di Bastia, both sums being the residue of the prices agreed upon for pictures painted by Maestro Niccolò. The picture in St. Bartholomew was not completed, as we have seen, and Lattanzio was directed to finish it.

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The date of the codicil is August 18, 1502, and on the 1st of the following December we find the brothers Lattanzio and Marchesio coming to an amicable arrangement about the house property which they have inherited under the wills of Niccolò and of Caterina their mother. Between these two dates, therefore, we must fix the period of Maestro Niccolo's death. The same year carried off husband and wife, after a married life of nearly fifty years. It is probable that the same tomb

received their remains, and that this tomb was in the church of Sant' Agostino.

Thus ends the record we have of Maestro Niccolò di Liberatore, the painter, miscalled Alunno. To those who have any knowledge of the domestic life of the old Italian famílies-(not a knowledge easy of attainment by foreigners; for your thorough-bred Italian, with respect to strangers, is much of Shylock's mind: he will "buy with yon, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following;" but he will not "eat with you, drink with you, or pray with you!")-it is curious to mark how little manners have changed amongst them during four centuries. I do not suppose, certainly, that now-a-days the head of a family would bequeath to his daughter-in-law her own wedding-ring; nor that his son's robe of office would be held to be the father's property which he could devise by will. Still, the dependence of grown men and women on their elders is far greater than with us. The whole family, comprising two or three generations, frequently live in the same palazzo, each branch occupying its special suite of apartments. And this circumstance answers an interrogatory I have often heard made by those new to the country: "What on earth could they do with these huge barracks of houses? How was it possible to occupy them?"

The phraseology, too, of Maestro Niccolo's will is comprehensible by the meanest of his countrymen to the present day. When I say "his countrymen," I would be understood to mean the people of his own province of Umbria. A Roman, a Tuscan, or a Lombard would probably be puzzled by several expressions used by our quattrocentista painter. Professor Rossi, writing for Italians, deems it necessary to explain, in a foot-note to the text of Niccolò's will, the signification of several words which are, he says, still commonly used in the neighbourhood of Foligno and Assisi. And he mentions but one word-signifying, according to the context, a copper vessel-which he has found no one in Umbria to understand.

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On the whole, Maestro Niccolò led a good, useful, human existence, and has left behind him much from which we may gain pleasure and profit. It is clear that he had no high-flown notions about himself or his art. He used the good gifts that God had given him-his quickness of eye, intelligence, perception of character, and skill of hand-with honesty and simplicity. I was reading the other day a very able paper on artistic subjects, wherein mention was made of the "restrained and well-bred piety' which distinguishes the works of Perugino. An old Italian friend, himself a Perugian and a learned cognoscente in things of art, smiled sli y when I translated the phrase to him, and proceeded to give me sundry details (for which he can produce chapter and verse) tending to show that, whatever else might be Pietro Perugino's merits, a "well-bred piety" could scarcely be ranked among them!

VOL. XXXIII.-No. 195.

17.

338

A Negro Methodist Conference.

WINCHESTER (Virginia) is very unlike its stately English namesake, and is still, in fact, in rather a primitive condition. There is no greater mistake, however, than to take any individual American town as a type of many, or even of the State in which it is situated, so that in giving the following description of some interesting occurrences, at which we were present at Winchester, Virginia, we wish it to be distinctly understood that we are speaking of that place only, and not describing others under one comprehensive name, or painting classes of men from any of the individual models that passed before our eyes.

There were two negro, or coloured, churches in Winchester-one "Methodist Episcopal" and the other Baptist. Negroes in general belong to one of these two denominations, though there are also Episcopalian, i.e. Anglican, and Catholic congregations, in some large towns, while perhaps other small portions of the coloured population belong to various other religions. Every one knows that the negro is of an emotional, passionate, susceptible nature, and the Methodist Church offers him many attractions. Even white Methodists sometimes feel excited by their religious enthusiasm, and vent their emotions in gestures and exclamations which one would think very unlikely to be forced from them in their normal state of mind. It is not surprising, therefore, that the impulsive African should manifest his nature very freely during the religious "exercises" of the Methodist Church, and this we had an opportunity of observing during a Conference of coloured ministers, including those of Virginia, Maryland, District of Columbia, and West Virginia, which met at Winchester in the early spring of 1874. The Conference was officially called the " Washington Conference of the Coloured Methodist Episcopal Church." It lasted for a week. The Friday and Saturday before the opening Sunday were busy days on the railway: each train brought dozens of coloured ministers, some with, but most without, their families, and each carrying a bag or bundle, with his "go-to-meetin'" suit of glossy black, for there was to be an ordination on the closing Sunday. Most of these ministers were intelligent-looking men, and their clothes were in very good condition; some of the younger were quite dandified, and a few of the older wore gold spectacles. Though the town of Winchester is very small (it must be added that it is also old, for it has a history of 200 years, and was one of the first settlements of the Virginian colonists), there was no difficulty about lodging close upon 200 strangers. Each coloured person owning any

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