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Show POMPEIAN PAINTING. Beautiful Young Woman Seated on a Bronze Chair. At Bosco Reale, near Naples, an interesting in-teresting group of Pompeian houses has just been uncovered and the student stu-dent of painting is astonished to find figure-work there reminding him more of fourteenth-century than of first-icentury first-icentury endeavors. In one of the most striking of these figures a young woman is seated on a bronze chair, a chair of singularly beautiful form. She is playing the lyre. Her features and expression are pleasing and vivacious. viva-cious. Her hair is curled and she wears a white robe. She curiously holds her instrument with the right hand and plays with the left. Behind fie chair a young girl is standing, probably a maid. From her expression expres-sion and from her position, we suppose sup-pose that she is listening with interest inter-est to the music of her mis'tress. This composition is one of much simplicity and naturalness, and it seems to have been done, not by many, but by a few strokes by the frankness and sure-ness sure-ness of the hand of a master, Signor Baldassare Odescalchi, Senator of the Kingdom of Italy, has recently written writ-ten an interesting article on these discoveries dis-coveries for the "Nuova Antologia," and voices the surprise of all that such harmonious composition, such correct design, and such remarkable colouring could have existed and yet not have been better known. Until the other day it was supposed that the frescoes at Pompeii itself represented the highest high-est form of art of the period. |