To commence with, we find a good example of Giotto, who (as our girls will see from the excellent chart of the chief painters of the various schools of art, page 629 of our Annual for 1886) flourished in the commencement of the fourteenth century. As on a future occasion we shall have to speak of this painter, when describing the Arena Chapel at Padua, all we shall say at present is that one should not attempt to criticise him or the works of this early Italian school by mere isolated pictures found in galleries. Of course in the days of Giotto Italian art was more or less in its infancy, and the mechanical knowledge possessed by these fourteenth century painters was meagre, therefore we must not expect to find grand effects of chiaroscuro, neither is the rich colour of the later school to be discovered. Of the more perfected early Italian school we find works by Luca Signorelli, Giovanni Bellini, whom we shall find far better represented in Venice, and the excellent Francia, whose lovely picture of “Mater Dolorosa” in our National Gallery is so well known to our girls. We find, also, works of Raffaelle, Leonardo da Vinci and his pupil, Luini. But the best represented painters in the Brera are the later Venetian school, especially Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese. The great glory of the collection is Raffaelle’s picture of the marriage of the Virgin. The arrangement of this picture at first struck us as being extremely formal. We find in the background a twelve-sided temple crowned with a dome, standing directly in the middle of the picture. The architecture of this temple has been severely criticised; but it by no means follows that because Raffaelle thought the structure suitable for his picture he would ever have built anything like it. In front of the temple is a very formal pavement divided into large squares. All the figures are grouped together immediately in the foreground. The High Priest stands in the centre, holding the hands of Mary and Joseph. Behind Joseph are many youths, and behind Mary are a number of women—five in each group, thus keeping up the symmetrical arrangement which runs throughout the whole picture. There is a charming grace about the head of Mary and the two women standing immediately behind her. May we call them the bridesmaids?