Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/357

 Like others of the minor masters, Alessio Baldovinetti shows here more capacity of thought and work in slight studies than in large pictures, where his touch is thin and his work sterile. His Deposition from the Cross is fine enough to surprise at first sight, fresh and not feeble, inventive even, as in the action of the boy assisting. Another group by the same hand is forcible and expressive: two men, with faces full of busy passion, meet and exchange rapid looks; the one with hands clasped, the other about to mount a step on which his foot already rests, with elbow on knee and cheek on hand; hard by waits an attendant with a short pike, and near him a torturer or hangman, with the tools of his trade. This design is probably a sketch to be worked up in some picture of martyrdom; its dramatic and distinct intention strikes and attracts at once. By Taddeo Gaddi is a noticeable drawing of the meeting of Elizabeth and Mary; noticeable mainly for its background of rocky barren highland, with lean trees rising behind the low quaint house whence the elder woman has come forth in glad reverence and eager welcome. Of Mantegna there are but few samples, grouped mainly with those of Botticelli near the entrance of the first room; a design of the final death-grapple of Anteus with Hercules; one of Judith attended by two maids; a mask as of one just awakened after death in hell, fierce with perpetual fear and violent with immortal despair; a young girl gathering up her dress and looking back, her old nurse near at hand—a Juliet as it were before the advent of passion; a youth raised from the dead, in whom miraculous life leaps back into a face full of dawning wonder