3-074-781 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

A Private View in a Monastery, 1883. Engraving '...from the picture by L. C. Henley...The subject of this picture, which was selected from the Exhibition of the Society of British Artists, will suggest to many the great obligations we owe to the old monks for the preservation of ancient literature and the revival of art in the middle ages, and those labours of love in the shape of pictures and illuminated manuscripts still existing in such large numbers. Very likely the reader will recall the examples of the good and Beato Fra Angelico toiling year after year in the cells, corridors, and cloisters of San Marco, always beginning his work alter prayer, and, once finished, never retouching it, believing it to have been executed under Divine direction. In the scene before us a young frate is just finishing a small easel picture of the Virgin, and he has invited a couple of brother monks to a private inspection of it...The younger visitor is lost in silent admiration; the elder, if less deeply impressed, yet may be expatiating on the beauties of the piece. Or, stay, is he finding some fault and suggesting some correction?...the artist is so absorbed in his work that he seems to be supremely indifferent to the critic's strictures'. From "Illustrated London News", 1883.