Studio: international art (38.1906)

Italian Art at the Milan Exhibition

whom he drew and painted, whilst in his official
position as “ painter in ordinary ” to Francis I. and
Henri II. In the letters of appointment to this
position in 1541, reference is made to his great
ability as a painter, and he seems to have been
held in as high honour in the French court as
Holbein was in the English court just a few years
earlier. In the Louvre and at Chantilly there are
very large collections of chalk drawings by Clouet
similar in treatment to the collection of Holbein’s
drawings at Windsor, and he seems to have been
as close and unflattering a recorder of the features
and character of his models as was Holbein,
although his drawings are softer and less aggressive
in effect. The studies in the Print Room are all
drawn with black and red chalk upon white paper.
Some few, such as the exquisite portrait of Eliza-
beth of Austria, wife of Charles IX., have a little
yellow worked into the flesh, and are softened with
a stump or minute point to such a degree that out-
line is entirely lost. Most of them have careful
studies of the costumes and head-dresses of the
sitters, and it is really curious that he should have
made such a very elaborate study of the features of
the subject of our illustration with so slight an indica-
tion of anything beyond. This drawing has been
made with four crayons—red, black, yellow and
blue—and would seem to have been entirely point
work, although perhaps it has suffered a little from
rubbing, a matter not to be wondered at considering
its great age. The reproduction is reduced to
about three-fourths the size of the original.

ITALIAN ART AT THE MILAN
EXHIBITION. BY ALFREDO
MELANI.

No man of taste can possibly be in sympathy
with these great International Exhibitions, which
are almost always mere fairs, in which the
commonplace predominates, rather than displays
of work destined to the education of the public.
Thus, when I say the Exhibition of Milan in its vast
aggregate is a fair, I make no accusation and pass
no judgment designed to impose upon the good
faith of my readers.

Our exhibition, started on a basis far more
modest than are the effects we now behold, was
added to day by day, both by the unforeseen
co-operation of the Italians themselves and by that
—on a large scale—of foreign countries. So, too,
the exhibition buildings, designed in the first place
on quite a limited plan, have grown like the famous
ball of the fable. A competition among our Italian

architects was started, but the result fell far below
expectations; consequently the exhibition buildings,
from the aesthetic point of view, are deplorable. I
will go further : there never was an exhibition more
deplorable in its architecture than the International
Exhibition of Milan. Poverty of imagination is
allied with coarseness of form. The aesthetic
section of the public is unanimous in deploring
what we see now, and shall see, alas, for long
months to come—an arid spectacle of artistic
insensibility. Want of time, muddle and meanness
—all are in part responsible for this architectural
result; but it is simply a disaster, and the architects
might surely have got out of it with greater credit.

With these remarks—and I could not avoid
brief comment on the buildings, to show that we
Italians ourselves recognise their extreme inferiority
—I will at once go on to state that the Fine Arts
section at Milan is truly national.

Fired by the results of the International Exhibi-
tions in Venice, particularly the fine biennial
displays with which the readers of The Studio are

PORTRAIT by TOFANARI

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