If these be the works of John ab Eyck, there is not only an additional proof, that he could not be the inventor of oil-painting, but likewise that, for near a century after him, the colour of the Flemings continued in the same retrograde taste which checked the Italian design, from the time of Lorenzo Ghiberti to that of Leonardo da Vinci. The pictures here exhibited as the works of Hemelinck, Metsis, Lucas of Holland, Albert Durer, and even Holbein, are inferior to those which are ascribed to Eyck, in colour, execution, and taste. Compared with their composition, the pictures of Andrea Mantegna are nearly reduced to apposition; and the draperies of the three figures on a gold ground, especially that of the middle figure, could not be improved in simplicity or elegance by the taste of Raphael himself. These three figures, indeed, are in a style far superior to the rest; but even these, whether we consider each figure individually, or relatively with each other, their masses, depth, and relief, cannot be surpassed by those which are ascribed to the German, Dutch, and Flemish masters of the succeeding century. The three heads of God the Father, the Virgin, and St. John the Baptist, are not inferior in roundness, force, or sweetness, to the heads of Leonardo da Vinci, and possess a more positive principle of colour; the harmony of _chiar' oscuro_, at which Leonardo aimed, admitted of no variety of tints than what might be obtained by the gradation of two colours. His carnations appear to have been added by glazing; such is the head of Mona Lisa. PHILIPP DE CAMPAGNE--THE VISION OF ST. AMBROSE. The title of this picture is not accurate. It is an intermediate figure of Apostolic gait, and in garments of legendary colours, that shews the saints arrayed in white, who themselves seem less occupied by the errand for which they came, than by the place which they had left. Whatever in this picture is not vision is admirably toned, solemn, dim, and yet rich, the colours of a sacred place, and cloistered, devout meditation. Of these, St. Ambrose himself partakes; but the Apostle who addresses the Bishop, and the two Saints themselves, are by far too ponderous, and their outlines far too much defined for celestial beings, and for the clouds on which they are placed: their drapery, although admirably folded, recalls in the saints too strongly marble, and in the Apostle too palpably reality. A DEAD CHRIST.