Tradition has persevered to give this admirable picture, known from the print in Crozat, to Raphael. It does not, however, require more than a comparison with his other portraits, from the first to that of Leo the Tenth, to see that the donation is gratuitous; if it were to be given to any other master, Giorgione has undoubtedly the first claim upon it, and there is no known work of his which can dispute its precedence, though it agrees with them in style. That conscious purity of touch which, exclusively, scorns all repetition, visible chiefly in the nose and nostrils of the Maitre d'Armes, the unity of tone in the whole of the colour, and that breadth, which, without impairing the peculiarity of character or the detail, presents the whole at once,--dualities never attained by the dry and punctiliory Roman principles, speak a Venetian pencil. The forefinger of the right arm is perhaps not designed, or foreshortened, with the energy or correctness which might be expected from the boldness of the conception, or from the power of either Raphael or Giorgione: but the character of the hand as well as its colour, is in unison with the head. Why the principal figure should be called a Maitre d'Armes is not easily conceived; it is certainly the most important of the two, and the leading figure of the picture. The second, although full-faced, is subordinate, and can by no courtesy of physiognomy be construed into the head of Raphael, unless the heads in the Tribuna at Florence, in this gallery, in Vasari, in the school of Athens, &c.; as well as the head of the figure wrapped in a _Ferrajuolo_, and sitting in a painter's study, as meditating, by M. Antonio, be spurious. It bears indeed some resemblance to a head etched by W. Hollar, and subscribed with his name; but the authority on which that appellation rests, is too futile to be admitted. JOHN AB EYCK.