Page:A Picture by Hieronymus Bosch.djvu/4

Rh from travelers' stories of Africa or the East. The shepherds, indeed, are so real in type and attitude that losing sight of the holy character of the subject, one feels that curiosity of the extraordinary happening of a visit of kings to their neighborhood brings them hither. They are merely onlookers. There is a fire beneath the window within the court and one warms his hand over it. The other has an houlette the attribute of French and Netherlandish shepherds still in use in certain localities for the purpose of digging up clods of earth which are thrown before straying sheep to bring them back to the flock.

It is a pleasant task to describe the landscape. It is spring and the country is pale green. A winding road is at the right beyond a field by a little river where crows gather about the skeleton of a horse. The river is crossed by an arched bridge and on it shaded by willow trees walk two lovers, a dog following them. A meadow is in the center. A shepherd sleeps under a tree, his sheep grazing near and a sheep dog curled up beside him. Two peasants are awkwardly dancing on the grass, and two others walk side by side, their heads close together in the earnestness of their talk. The retinues of the kings wait in the open country. Heralds from one party stationed in a hollow between two fields hail the emissaries of another as they ride along the road with their dogs. The third company is farther away on the summit of a hill. All are gaily dressed and carry spears or banners and ride gallant horses.

Far away at the left is Jerusalem, a populous city with a great minster, tall churches, and countless houses with gabled roofs, surrounded by a wall with gates and turrets. In the other direction is a lake with two castles on its shores. Ridges of distant hills show one beyond another up to the horizon, and the sky, a luminous haze near the earth, merges into blue above with suggestions of faint clouds. High up is the star "which had gone before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was."

It is a picture to linger over, for its entertainments are various and of different sorts which require leisure and sympathy. A vision of the old world is in it. The artist is revealed as one with the fresh outlook of a child, who delights in all the animate things about him and at the same time lives an imaginative life apart fed by romance and the spirit of adventure. He has reconstructed a hackneyed story with capricious but convincing logic. And yet these traits, characteristic of youth, are disclosed by means of a craftsmanship that shows thorough schooling in the profound resources of a great tradition of painting.

GRECO-BUDDHIST SCULPTURE

{di|S}}O few opportunities have been afforded in this country for the study of Greco-Buddhist sculpture, that the collection of such works exhibited this month in the Room of Recent Accessions should properly receive more notice than is now possible. It is hoped, however, that in the immediate future, the following preliminary statement will be supplemented by a more extended publication of the pieces which constitute this important collection.

The terms Greco-Buddhist or school of Gandhara, as used in Indian archaeology, are interchangeable. They describe a class of ancient Indian sculptures, found principally in the northwest of India, the ancient Gandhara, which may be dated approximately in the first two centuries of our era. The peculiar character of these sculptures is perhaps best indicated by the term Greco-Buddhist, rather than by the territorial designation, since the influence of late Greek art is manifest, although to a varying extent, in the mode of representation and in much of the ornament, while the subject matter, on the whole, is largely Buddhist. One might say, to quote Dr. Foucher, whose authoritative work on these sculptures can not be too highly praised, that this Greco-Buddhist school is a new page in the history of Greek art, but that the meaning of the page is clear only to one who reads Sanskrit.

How did it happen that Greek art came to influence the development of sculpture