Louvre.

Peter and St. Paul are seated together in earnest conversation. St. Peter holds a key in his right hand, and points with the other to a book which lies on his knees. St. Paul is about to turn the leaf, and his right hand appears to rebuke St. Peter. His left foot is on the sword which lies at his feet.

"The Parting of St. Peter and St. Paul before they are led to Death:" the scene is without the gates of Rome, and as the soldiers drag Peter away, he turns back to Paul with a pathetic expression. This is one of Lanfranco's best compositions.

When the crucifixion of St. Peter and the decollation of St. Paul are represented together in the same picture, such a picture must be considered as religious and devotional, not historical; it does not express the action as it really occurred, but, like many pictures of the crucifixion of our Saviour, it is placed before us as an excitement to piety, self-sacrifice, and repentance. We have this kind of treatment in a picture by Dresden Gal. Nicolò dell' Abate: St. Paul kneels before a block, and the headsman stands with sword uplifted in act to strike; in the background, two other executioners grasp St. Peter, who is kneeling on his cross, and praying fervently: above, in a glory, is seen the Virgin; in her arms the infant Christ, who delivers to two angels palm branches for the matyred saints. The genius of Nicolò was not precisely fitted for this class of subjects. But the composition is full of poetical feeling. The introduction of the Madonna and Child stamps the character of the picture as devotional, not historical-it would otherwise be repulsive, and out of keeping with the subject.

Bartsch, vii. p. 79.

There is a Martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul by Parmigiano, which I shall notice on account of its careless and erroneous treatment. They are put to death together; an executioner prepares to decapitate St. Peter, and another drags St. Paul by the beard: the incidents are historically false,

and, moreover, in a degraded and secular taste. These are the mistakes that make us turn disgusted from the technical facility, elegance, and power of the 16th century, to the simplicity and reverential truth of the 14th.

There are various traditions concerning the relics of St. Peter and St. Paul. According to some, the bodies of the two apostles were, in the reign of Heliogabalus, deposited by the Christian converts in the catacombs of Rome, and were laid in the same sepulchre. After the lapse of about two hundred years, the Greek or Oriental Christians attempted to carry them off; but were opposed by the Roman Christians. The Romans conquered; and the two bodies were transported to the church of the Vatican, where they reposed together in a magnificient shrine, beneath the church. Among the en- Eng. in gravings in the work of Ciampini and Bosio are two rude old pictures commemorating this event. The first represents the combat of the Orientals and the Romans for the bodies of the Saints; in the other, the bodies are deposited in the Vatican. In these two ancient representations, which were placed in the portico of the old basilica of St. Peter, the traditional types may be recognized- the broad full features, short curled beard, and bald head of St. Peter, and the oval face and long beard of St. Paul.

Ciampini.

Here I must conclude this summary of the lives and characters of the two greatest apostles, as they have been exhibited in Christian art: to do justice to the theme, it would have required a separate volume. One observation, however, suggests itself, and cannot be passed over. The usual type of the head of St. Peter, though often ill rendered and degraded by coarseness, can in general be recognized as characteristic; but is there among the thousand representations of the apostle Paul, one on which the imagination can rest completely satisfied? I know not one. No doubt the sublimest ideal of embodied Hampton eloquence that ever was expressed in art is Raphael's St. Paul

Court.

Acad.
Bologna.

Cartoon,
Hampton
Court.

:

preaching at Athens. He stands there the delegated voice of the true God, the antagonist and conqueror of the whole heathen world" Whom ye ignorantly worship, HIM declare I unto you"-is not this what he says? Every feature, nay every fold in his drapery, speaks; as in the other St. Paul leaning on his sword (in the famous St. Cecilia), every feature and every fold of drapery meditates. The latter is as fine in its tranquil melancholy grandeur, as the former in its authoritative energy in the one the orator, in the other the philosopher, were never more finely rendered: but is it, in either, the Paul of Tarsus whom we know? It were certainly both unnecessary and pedantic to adhere so closely to historic fact, as to make St. Paul of diminutive stature, and St. Peter weak-eyed: but has Raphael done well in wholly rejecting the traditional portrait which reflected to us the Paul of Scripture, the man of many toils and many sorrows, wasted with vigils, worn down with travel-whose high bald forehead, thin flowing hair, and long pointed beard, spoke so plainly the fervent and indomitable, yet meditative and delicate organization; and to substitute this Jupiter Ammon head, with the dark redundant hair, almost hiding the brow, and the full bushy beard? This is one of the instances in which Raphael, in yielding to the fashion of his time, has erred, as it seems to me, though I say it with all reverence! The St. Paul rending his garments at Lystra, and rejecting the sacrifice of the misguided people, is more particularly false as to the character of the man, though otherwise so grandly expressive, that we are obliged to admire what our better sense-our conscience-cannot wholly approve.

I shall now consider the rest of the apostles in their proper order.

ST. ANDREW.

Lat. S. Andreas. Ital. Sant' Andrea. Fr. St. Andrè.

of Scotland and of Russia. Nov. 30. A.D. 70.

Patron Saint

ST. ANDREW was the brother of Simon Peter, and the first who was called to the apostleship. Nothing farther is recorded of him in Scripture: he is afterwards merely included Mark, 1. 29. by name in the general account of the apostles.

or Patræ.

In the traditional and legendary history of St. Andrew, we are told, that after our Lord's ascension, when the apostles dispersed to preach the gospel to all nations, St. Andrew travelled into Scythia, Cappadocia, and Bithynia, every where converting multitudes to the faith. The Russians believe that he was the first to preach to the Muscovites in Sarmatia, and thence he has been honoured as titular saint of the empire of Russia. After many sufferings, he returned to Jerusalem, and thence travelled into Greece, and came at length to a city of Achaia, called Patras. Here he made many converts; among others, Maximilla, the wife of the proconsul Ægeus, whom he persuaded to make a public profession of Christianity. The proconsul, enraged, commanded him to be seized and scourged, and then crucified. The cross on which he suffered was of a peculiar form (crux decussata), since called the St. Andrew's cross; and it is expressly said, that he was not fastened to his cross with nails, but with cords,-a circumstance always attended to in the Baillet. representations of his death. It is, however, to be remembered, that while all authorities agree that he was crucified, and that the manner of his crucifixion was peculiar, they are not agreed as to the form of his cross. St. Peter Chrysologos says that it was a tree: another author affirms that it was an olive tree. The Abbé Méry remarks, that it is a mistake to Theologie give the transverse cross to St. Andrew; that it ought not to differ from the cross of our Lord. His reasons are not absolutely conclusive:-"Il suffit pour montrer qu'ils sont là-dessus

des Peintres,

Raphael.

Statue, Fiamingo.

dans l'erreur de voir la croix véritable de St. André, conservée dans l'Eglise de St. Victor de Marseille; on trouvera qu'elle est à angles droits," &c. Seeing is believing; nevertheless, the form is fixed by tradition and usage, and ought not to be departed from, though Michael Angelo has done so in the figure of St. Andrew, in the Last Judgment, and there are several examples in the Italian masters. The legend goes on to relate, that St. Andrew, on approaching the cross prepared for his execution, saluted and adored it on his knees, as being already consecrated by the sufferings of the Redeemer, and met his death triumphantly. Certain of his relics were brought from Patras to Scotland in the fourth century, and since that time St. Andrew has been honoured as the patron saint of Scotland, and of its chief order of knighthood. He is also the patron saint of the famous Burgundian order, the Golden Fleece; and of Russia and its chief order, the Cross of St. Andrew.

Since the fourteenth century, St. Andrew is generally distinguished in works of art by the transverse cross; the devotional pictures in which he figures as one of the series of apostles, or singly as patron saint, represent him as a very old man with some kind of brotherly resemblance to St. Peter; his hair and beard silver white, long, loose, and flowing, and in general the beard is divided; he leans upon his cross, and holds the Gospel in his right hand.

The historical subjects from the life of St. Andrew, treated separately from the rest of the apostles, are very few; his crucifixion is the only one that I have found treated before the fifteenth century. On the doors of San Paolo, the in