JEAN BAPTISTE CAMILLE COROT (1796-1875) The picture of "The Wood Gatherers" is very precious to us. It is the last picture Corot signed after he was confined to the bed, a few days before he died. A curious story is told of Corot's painting this picture. He had an old study of another artist's of a landscape with St. Jerome at prayer: you remember I told you the story of St. Jerome and his lion. Corot took the study and made a number of sketches of it. Somehow his landscape would not fit St. Jerome, so he painted a man on horseback and a dog going off into the woods. Then in the place of St. Jerome praying he put a woman gathering bits of wood and another woman with a bundle of fagots under her arm. Now the picture must have another name and he called it "The Wood Gatherers." When you go to Washington, you must not fail to see this picture in the Corcoran Art Gallery. [Illustration: FIG. 4. THE WOOD-GATHERERS. COROT. Courtesy of the Corcoran Art Gallery, Washington, D. C.] AURORA GUIDO RENI (1575-1642) Hyperion had three wonderful children, Apollo, the god of the sun, Selene, the goddess of the moon, and Aurora, the goddess of the dawn. When Aurora appears her sister, Selene (the moon), fades and night rolls back like a curtain. Now let us look at this masterpiece by Guido Reni carefully that we may know how wonderful is the coming of day. Aurora, in a filmy white robe, is dropping flowers in the path of Apollo (the sun) as he drives his dun-colored horses above the sleeping Earth. The Horae (the hours), a gliding, dancing group of lovely beings, accompany the brilliant god. Each hour is clothed in garments of a special tint of the great light of day, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and violet. The golden-hued Apollo sits supreme in his chariot of the sun. The fresco--fresco means painted on fresh plaster--is on the ceiling of the Rospigliosi Palace, Rome. The painting is as brilliant in color to-day as it was when painted three hundred and fifty years ago. Aurora, like most of the gods and goddesses, fell in love with a mortal. She asked Zeus to make her husband immortal but she forgot to ask that he should never grow old. And, fickle woman that she was! when he became gray and infirm, she deserted him and, to put a stop to his groans, she turned him into a grasshopper. Her son, Memnon, was made king of the Ethiopians, and in the war of Troy he was overcome by Achilles. When Aurora, who was watching him from the sky, saw him fall she sent his brothers, the Winds, to take his body to the banks of a river in Asia Minor. In the evening the mother and the Hours and the Pleiades came to weep over her dead son. Poor Aurora! even to-day her tears are seen in the dewdrops on the grass at early dawn. [Illustration: Courtesy of Pratt Institute FIG. 5. THE AURORA. GUIDO RENI. ROSPIGLIOSI PALACE, ROME] THE SINGING BOYS FRANS HALS (1584?-1666)