Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/355

 of offence; only higher yet on a ledge of the hill-side under lee of the pine-wood a hermit's cottage hangs over the one barren path that winds among bleak spaces and windy solitudes. No modern realist has excelled in quaint homeliness of device Piero's study of a Nativity. The sacred group of mother, child, and angel is gathered together in a farm-house room; of this group the angel supporting the new-born child in his arms is the most graceful figure: the ox looking on has an air of amusement, not of the reverence improper to brute nature; amused possibly at the lodging chosen for it by an artist whose neglect of the traditional manger is a sample of his eccentric scorn of traditions. The window of this room looks out on a low land at sunrise, coldly lighted by the clear level morning new-born with the birth of Christ. The subject of another study I have not guessed at. Before a judge in round cap and eastern robe stands a girl averting her eyes from a Jew-faced man with silk sash and high hat, who is in act (it seems) to draw a dagger from his sleeve; her expression that of a disdainful desire for death rather than shame; to her on the other hand a plumed knight seems eagerly to appeal; his face is distinct in character, with small sharp upper lip and large chin. The girl may be a martyr standing before her judge for her faith's sake, between the lover she renounces and the traitor she abhors; or the subject may be simply taken in full from some mediæval legend of adventurous constancy: it is assuredly graceful and vital as a piece of work.

There are a few designs of either Pollajuolo; by Piero, a fine head, wrinkled and sullen; a youth with