Art-Jottings In Art-Studios.*

ART-JOTTINGS IN ART-STUDIOS . *

BY BRO . REV . W . TEBBS . SCULPTUR E .- —III . "Sermons in stones . "

WHEN speaking in our last number of the decoration of wall-surf aces—technically " in the flat , "—Ave briefly noticed that in certain cases effects Avere produced by touching the " incised" Hues with colour . The instances we then touched upon were those of no later or more cultivated branches of art than the ancient Hieroglyphs , but , like most other inventions , although rude at first in themselves , they ultimately formed the basis of several beautiful species of ornamentation ; . of such , the first to come under notice is

TARSIA-WORK , ivhich consists of devices wrought " in the flat" in " incised " lines , the incisions being afterwards filled hi with cement . In the Florentine Chapel of S . Miniatio is an extremely early specimen of this land of . decoration ; but although it is most effective , still the full' result of ivhich the art is capable is not attained toinasmuch as the cement used is of one uniform black

, tint . We have said that this work is not wanting in effectiveness , for the result is telling just as is a line-engraving : but precisely as in a simple engraving warmth is wanting , so with the Florentine Tarsia-Work , the eye notes the absence of completeness that colour gives . If we pass now to a more recent example—the Albert Memorial Chapel at Windsor —we shall find some Tarsia-Work in which this want is completely supplied , for Baron

Triqueti , the artist , has so thoroughly mastered this branch of art , that he has made it almost equal in beauty , warmth , and finish , to the most highly coloured pictures . This result has been obtained by ( he substitution of variously-coloured cements for the simple black of the earlier work . In passing from Tarsia-Work we can only briefly sum up the excellencies of the latest developments of the art by saying ( hat , viewed generally , its beauties are nearly , ii not quite , equal to those of "fresco-painting ; , " whilst examined in detail , it possesses the minute finish of work in " enamel . " By an easy transition we now pass on to

MOSAIC , which is another ancl more developed adaptation of " incision . " We say adaptation , although it would be perhaps more correct to say that it is " incision " pushed to such a limit as to be almost a reversal of the before-described Tarsia-Work ; for , wherever in the latter process the outline is " incised , " and the consequent engraved outline filled in with colourin the former the entire body of the work is treated in that way ,

, the result being , of course , a work of much greater intensity so far as colouring is concerned . Mosaic , then , is the art of producing a well-nigh imperishable picture by means oi cutting out the requisite design bodily in the marble or stone foundation , and then filling in the incisions with a hard substance of various colours and shades . This filling