Of Velasquez's work there should be mentioned, in the first place, his paintings of Philip IV. and the Duke of Olivarez, both of striking characterization in their grotesque ugliness--the master will survive even the one-sided and exclusive cult of which he has been made the victim. We will not set our minds against Velasquez's or Leonardo's "Mona Lisa" just because they are to be found in all the exercises of enraptured modern goslings. I will not say anything about the "Madonna Conestabile," the "St. George," and the wonderful "Madonna Alba" of Raphael, for I consider it entirely superfluous to combat the affected underestimates of the master of Urbino, which is insisted upon as a matter of party obligation by every imitator of fashion. If Herr Muther prescribes the Botticelli cult for the last years of one century, the rediscovery of the joyous Andrea del Sarto for the first years of a new century, he will, if we live to see the day, prescribe for the century noonday the return to the master of perfection, Raffaelo Sanzio, as the inevitable requirement of fashion, and his disciples will add here their solemn amen. But the eternal masters are above the gossip of salons and fashions. Sebastiano del Piombo is represented here by a most extraordinary "Descent from the Cross," Correggio by the "Madonna del Latte," Leonardo da Vinci by the light blonde "Madonna Litta," which, like all the works of this master, is questioned, but which bears his imprint as much as any of his works. Of Botticelli there is a very well-preserved "Adoration of the Magi," similar to the Florentine painting. Likewise, here in all the minor figures of the kneeling kings and shepherds, and even of the horses, there is a perfection in the mastery of drawing, the Madonna archaically overslender, with the thin neck of the Primitivists, which, out of respect for sacred tradition, the otherwise bold master did not dare meddle with. Naturally, the modern art mockery sees in this defect of Botticelli's, accounted for by respect for tradition, his chief superiority, and goes into affected raptures at the sensitive figures of his "Primavera," and imitates the studied gestures of those foolish airs which our higher bourgeoisie affect in order to resemble the decadent nobility. But Botticelli really deserves a better fate than to be the fashion painter of the snobs.