to fix the eye on these main actions. First, one intense deeply-cut mass of shadow, under the pointed arch, to throw out the head and lifted hand of the Virgin. A vulgar sculptor would have cut all black behind the head; Giovanni begins with full shadow; then subdues it with drapery absolutely quiet in fall; then lays his fullest possible light on the head, the hand, and the edge of the lifted veil. He has undercut his Madonna's profile, being his main aim, too delicately for time to spare; happily the deep-cut brow is left, and the exquisitely refined line above, of the veil and hair. The rest of the work is uninjured, and the sharpest edges of light are still secure. You may note how the passionate action of the servant is given by the deep shadows under and above her arm, relieving its curves in all their length, and by the recess of shade under the cheek and chin, which lifts the face. Now take your modern student's copy, and look how _he_ has placed his lights and shades. You see, they go as nearly as possible exactly where Giovanni's _don't_. First, pure white under this Gothic arch, where Giovanni has put his fullest dark. Secondly, just where Giovanni has used his whole art of chiselling, to soften his stone away, and show the wreaths of the Madonna's hair lifting her veil behind, the accursed modern blockhead carves his shadow straight down, because he thinks that will be more in the style of Michael Angelo. Then he takes the shadows away from behind the profile, and from under the chin, and from under the arm, and puts in two grand square blocks of dark at the ends of the cradle, that you may be safe to look at that, instead of the Child. Next, he takes it all away from under the servant's arms, and lays it all behind above the calf of her leg. Then, not having wit enough to notice Giovanni's undulating surface beneath the drapery of the bed on the left, he limits it with a hard parallel-sided bar of shade, and insists on the vertical fold under the Madonna's arm, which Giovanni has purposely cut flat that it may not interfere with the arm above; finally, the modern animal has missed the only pieces of womanly form which Giovanni admitted, the rounded right arm and softly revealed breast; and absolutely removed, as if it were no part of the composition, the horizontal incision at the base of all--out of which the first folds of the drapery rise.