FERDINAND BOL (1616-1680) in the beginning of his career reproduced the manner of Rembrandt. His coloring was mellow and enriched by chiaroscuro. Later, about 1650, the chiaroscuro became less pronounced and the color insipid. While he is esteemed chiefly for his portraits, he also treated Biblical subjects, as may be seen by three examples in the Dresden Gallery and two in the Rijks Museum. The most pleasing of the Dresden pictures is _Jacob Presented to Pharaoh by Joseph_. There is a very characteristic look of scrutiny in Pharaoh’s face, while his jewel-bespangled cloak, with its broad border of white and black fur, affords a fine mass of scintillating color, juxtaposed to the rich creamy costume of Joseph and the crimson of the old man’s. The picture, indeed, presents a very handsome color-scheme, though one may discover a certain stiffness and theatricality in the gesture of Joseph’s hands. The accompanying picture, _Rest of the Holy Family during Its Flight into Egypt_, is over six feet high and suggests a canvas too large for the material introduced, so that one third of it is filled up with supernumerary articles, such as a saddle and a basket of tools. One suspects that the picture may have been intended as a decoration for some wall-space, as the very large example in the Rijks Museum certainly was. For this, _Abraham Receiving the Angels_ was one of five panels painted for a room in a house at Utrecht, the other four being now in the abbey of Middelburg in Zeeland. A mild reflection of Italian Renaissance feeling is suggested by the _comme il faut_ disposition of the angels’ draperies, but their coloring of golden amber is finely Rembrandtesque; so, too, the glow of the yellowing beech-tree that spires up into the top of the composition, and the plum-gray velvet of Abraham’s robe. The picture, in fact, while shallow in its treatment of the incident, is finely decorative. On the other hand, the _Salome Dancing before Herod_, a work apparently of Bol’s later period, is an absurdly bad picture, bright and flimsy in color and entirely trifling as a study of form.