We entirely dissent from the unmeasured laudation here given to the famous statue at St. Peter’s. Let the praise of originality of conception, as well as of merit of execution (so far as the size of his material would permit) be given where it is due, to the sculptor of the fourteenth century, who died a hundred years before Michael Angelo was born. Nay, more than this; an unprejudiced comparison will show that where the work of the great Italian differs from the earlier Pietà, it differs for the worse. In the ivory the position of the head and the cold stiffness of the limbs are more death-like and more solemn than in the marble. In the ivory also the Mother seems to be thinking more of the past pains and sufferings of her Divine Son than of her own sorrows: tenderly she supports the Saviour’s head with her right hand, and, as it were, still clings to Him and draws Him to her with the other; not, as in the marble at Rome, stretching out and opening her hand as if to show _her_ misery and the terrible extent of _her_ bereavement. The mediæval artist remembered that the sad cry of the prophet in the book of Lamentations referred not to His mother but to Christ: “Was there ever any sorrow like unto my sorrow?” It was a common practice in the middle ages to colour statuettes and, indeed, also other things, such as triptychs, diptychs, and the covers of writing-tablets. Traces of this colouring are still visible on many examples. The robes and vestments were painted red or blue, with borders of a different colour and often diapered with patterns in gold. The interesting illustration (opposite) of a painter at work upon a statuette, an illumination in a French manuscript of the fifteenth century, is copied from M. Labarte’s work on the industrial arts. [Illustration] Modern taste runs generally, with regard to this question, in opposition to the old; but we are not, therefore, hurriedly to decide against colour as altogether barbarous or improper. Sculpture, people thought in former days, gained an improved effect by such additional help, and certainly the use of colour was an attempt to give a more real appearance and more true to nature. The carvers in ivory could moreover (if they had known the fact) have appealed to the best period of the Greek school; to the works of Phidias and Praxiteles. The chryselephantine statues in the temples of Athens and Olympia had the same character of ornament and variety of material.