From his time forward, the Leonardesque face, the peculiar smile, the crimped wisps of hair, the subtle tones of colour, and as far as possible the touch and technique of the master, are reproduced over and over again by the next generation of Milanese painters. Among them all, Luini stands preeminently forward as the only one endowed with profound original genius, capable of transfusing the Leonardesque types with new vitality and beauty of his own conceiving. The others are imitators: Luini is a disciple. These attributes are well seen in the two beautiful frescoes of the Salle Duchâtel. They came to Paris from the Palazzo Litta, that handsome rococo palace in Milan which stands nearly opposite the church of San Maurizio, itself a museum of Luini’s loveliest frescoes, including the incomparable Execution of St. Catherine. The Adoration of the Magi is the most satisfactory of the two. In it the kings,—Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar,—representing, as ever, the three ages of man and the three old continents,—are treated with a grace and soul and delicacy which Luini has hardly surpassed even at Saronno. The eldest king, as most often, kneels next to the Madonna, who occupies the conventional R hand of the picture. He has removed his crown, also an habitual feature, and is presenting his gift, while the others are caught just before the act of offering theirs. The exquisite face of this eldest king is highly typical; so is the gently-smiling Leonardesque Madonna. The youngest king is represented as a Moor, as always in German, Flemish, and North Italian art, though this trait is rarer, if it occurs at all, in the Florentine and Central Italian painters. I take it that the notion of the Moor was derived from Venice; for the Three Kings were great objects of devotion in Lombardy and the Rhine country. Their relics, which now repose at Cologne, made a long stay on their way from the East at Milan; and it is to this fact, I fancy, that we must attribute the exceptional frequency of this subject in the art of Northern Italy, as of the Rhenish region. In the background, the usual caravans are seen descending the mountain. Such long trains of servants and attendants are commonly seen in Adorations of the Magi. Camels and even elephants frequently form part of them. Recollect the charming procession in the exquisite Benozzo Gozzoli in the Riccardi Palace. A study of this subject, from the simple beginnings in Giotto’s fresco in the Arena at Padua (where a single servant and a very grotesque camel, entirely evolved out of the painter’s imagination, form the sole elements of the cortège; beyond the Three Kings), down to the highly complex Ghirlandajo in the Uffizi at Florence, (a good copy of which may be seen at the École des Beaux-Arts,) and thence to Luini, Bonifazio and the later Italians, forms a most interesting subject for the comprehension of the historical evolution of art in Italy. Go straight from this picture to