ject hidden beneath his coat, a volley of blank cartridges resounded like the salute to an emperor. Not expecting such a distinction, the thief dropped his burden and took to his heels. While an officer of the carabinieri stepped forth from his concealment in a near-by doorway and picked up Fra Angelico's painting, whole and uninjured, another officer intercepted the frightened thief who had chosen to make a pastime of filching Fra Angelicos, and placed the fleet-footed one under arrest.

This old monastery of

San Marco from which
the painting was stolen
no longer belongs to the
monks, but is held by
the State as a national
museum, containing
many of the finest
examples of early
painting extant in
Italy. Here one
finds the
greatest
number

of works by Fra
Angelico collected
in any one place.
San Marco has
suffered little,
architecturally,
since its designer,
Michelozzo,
worked out its
plans for Cosimo de'
Medici and the Domin-
icans; and the hole in
the roof that the thieves
made in order to mislead
the investigators prob-
ably upset the dust of
centuries for the first
time since the Beato
Angelico came from
near-by Fiesole and
took up his abode
there as a mem-
ber of the order,
working for ten
years on the
frescoes that
still adorn
the walls of
many of the
monastery's
cells and clois-

ters. In cell number XXXIII, the stolen Madonna of the Star was given place. The picture is a small painting, exquisitely wrought with the technique of a miniaturist, and although the photographic reproduction suggests, by reason of its composition, a picture of ample proportions, the painting is, in reality, so small-being only twelve by twenty-four inches-that it was an easy enough task for the thieves to abstract it undetected. Originally,

Fra Angelico's madonna adorned the sacristy of the Church of Santa Maria Novella, whence it was removed some years ago. Professor Carocci, Di

rector of San Marco, wept with joy on hearing of the recovery of the little panel, and breathed a sigh of relief to know that, although this is believed

to be the

very first

instance of the theft of a painting from an Italian national museumi, San Marco's administration would not have to undergo the opprobrium of losing one of its chief masterpieces. In passing, it may be noted that the only example of the work of Fra Angelico in America is the Death and Assumption of the Virgin in the private collection of Mrs. John L. Gardner of Boston.

A New Masterpiece for the Louvre

WHILE

Italy

was temporarily mourning the Madonna della Stella, the museum of the

Louvre was consoling itself for the loss of the Mona Lisa by the acquisition of the most important painting that has come to any national collection in France since the advent within those same walls of the famous Botticelli Villa Lemmi frescoes some years ago. The newly acquired masterpiece is a Saint Sebastian by Andrea Mantegna, a painting that was for many years the chief art possession of the little chapel of Aigueperse, a village in the department of Puy-de-Dôme. Civic poverty, however, compelled the authorities to sell the painting to the French government for some $40,000, so the Louvre had no longer need to expose bare nails on its lately devasted wall in the Salon Carré, Mona Lisa's old home.

The story of this Saint Sebastian by Mantegna is not without historic interest, it being one of the most precious morceaux of the classical Renaissance. It was brought into France from Italy upon the occasion of the marriage of Gilbert de Montpensier and Claire di Gonzaga, granddaughter of

Lodovico Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, Mantegna's patron, whose service the great painter entered just thirty years before Columbus discovered America. The beautiful Claire carried the Saint Sebastian with her from Mantua. Even in those days, it was considered a magnificent dot, although there were few in the rough France of that period who had any regard for painting, associating it with the perfume of the South, which they still derided. Nevertheless, Gilbert de Montpensier held brilliant court, and he and the lady of his heart found many to admire the art treasure that had been brought with her dower. Andrea Mantegna seems to have been somewhat prolific in Saint Sebastians, there is one from his hand in the collection of Baron Giorgio Franchetti in Venice (this work was found in Mantegna's atelier after his death) and one in the Vienna museum. Although there is a difference of opinion among critics as to the time at which Mantegna painted this Saint Sebastian that the Louvre has purchased from Aigueperse, I consider it a work of Mantegna's youth, probably executed just subsequent to the completion of his immortal paintings in the Ovetari chapel at Padua, perhaps just about the time of the death of Fra Angelico in Florence. The acquisition of this painting completes the Louvre's incomparable series of works illustrating

Mantegna's development, the Calvary representing the work of his maturity, Our Lady of Victory and the Allegories from Isabella d'Este's grotto, that of his old age. It is said that when Gabrielle d'Annunzio was writing his play, Saint Sebastian, which awakened an almost unprecedented interest at the time of its production in Paris, he made a pilgrimage to all the great continental museums for the purpose of studying all the paintings of the saint by the old masters to be found, finally seeking out Mantegna's at Aigueperse, upon seeing which his enthusiasm was unbounded, and he declared that it met more fully than any other work his conception of the martyrsaint. The Louvre possesses a number of other versions of Saint Sebastian, Perugino's among them, but it is doubtful if any painting depicting the youthful martyr surpasses in beauty or in interest this by Andrea Mantegna.

Howard Pyle's Death

WE have lost a notable figure in the his

tory of American art in the passing of Howard Pyle, whose death in Florence, Italy, in November, it is a sad duty to record. His devotion to the serious study of sound drawing, which resulted in his mastery of line, was a devotion rare enough in these days. Howard Pyle was still a young man when he left us, he was only fifty-eight,-and we had hoped that he would live to a ripe old age and continue to add to the luster of American illustration. Perhaps his enthusiasm for reproduced work led him astray in the matter of color, for in such work we find him thoroughly successful neither as a painter nor as an illustrator. But in line-drawing Howard Pyle must rank as one of the foremost original draughtsmen of the era. His antiquarian equipment was extensive and extraordinary, and one might almost call his style Düreresque to an extreme degree, certain marked peculiarities in his technique being very reminiscent of the early German engraver of Nuremberg. Unfortunately, this artist devoted little time to mural painting, though we are fortunate in having examples of this phase of his art for the new Essex County Court House. We shall miss Howard Pyle, both his personality and his influence upon the younger generation of illustrators, but his is an influence that will live long after him in his works.

Over a century ago, the French astronomer Laplace promulgated his famous nebular theory as to the origin of the solar system. Up to the present time, the scientific world has accepted that theory as the best working hypothesis that has ever been offered, and the non-scientific. world has almost forgotten that it is only an hypothesis and has come to look upon it rather as an established fact. Of late years, however, astronomers have been growing more and more convinced that the Laplacean hypothesis is inadequate and destined soon to be superseded by a new

By

F some one stops us in the street and asks us how far it is to the railroad station, we think it a perfectly natural question.

But if some one stopped us in the street and asked us how far it was to the sun, we should very likely think that the man was crazy and call a policeman.

Which proves (although at first sight we do not realize it) that while we do not expect every one to know his way around towr, we take it as a matter of course that every one should know his way around the sciar system.

There are some things that we do so unconsciously that we deny them indignantly if any one accuses us of them. Snoring, for instance. Or taking an interest in astron

theory more nearly in accord with the mass of facts that have been accumulating since Laplace's time. In his recent book on the evolution of the stellar system, Professor T. J. J. See propounds such a new theory a theory so vast in its scope that it cannot fail to stir the imagination of anyone who has ever looked up with awe and wonder at the infinite reaches of the night sky. The WORLD TO-DAY prints the following review of the book by the kind permission of Professor See's publishers, Thomas P. Nichols & Sons

omy. There is probably not one man in a hundred but would unhesitatingly tell us that it is because the public takes no interest in astronomy that it refuses, almost to a man, to sit up till 2 A. M. to watch an eclipse of the moon. But, of course, it is really the other way about. It is precisely because the public takes sufficient interest in astronomy that it dares to sleep through such a phenomenon.

To prove it, you have only to introduce an element of uncertainty into the outcome of any advertised celestial event. When Biela's comet was expected to brush the earth with its tail a year ago, and astronomers were of several minds as to what the effect would be, the newspapers suddenly bloomed into astronomical journals, the

smoking cars on suburban trains were turned into debating clubs, and for a week there were more opera-glasses and more prayers directed to heaven than had been known for a generation.

This wasn't because we suddenly began to take an interest in astronomy. It was because our habitual, and hence unconscious, interest in it suddenly became acute enough to be conscious. Astronomically speaking, we snored so loud that we woke ourselves up.

motions of the heavenly bodies and were puzzled to understand how it was that they revolved about the earth in such irregular fashion, the complicated explanation of the

Neither history nor tradition tells us of a time when men were happy without some explanation of what they saw in the depths of space. Mr. T. J. J. See, the eminent astronomer in charge of the United States Naval Observatory at Mare Island, California, whose new theory of the origin and evolution of the stars we are going to try to get the hang of, is merely the latest of an immemorial line of seers and scientists who have successively fitted new explanations to newly recognized facts. But there has always been A Theory. There had to be, if men were to be free to go about their mundane business.

Take, for example, the case of our savage ancestors who (with a blundering discernment that does credit to their scientific intuitions) worshiped the Sun as their living and visible god. Think of the terror that must have come to them when, in broad daylight and a clear sky, the invisible moon began to take bites out of the sacred person of their deity. And think of the sense of safety that must have been derived from the explanation that this was caused by a dragon that was trying to eat him, and that if all the faithful gathered in the open and made horrible noises the dragon would become frightened and run away. We call that folk-lore, or mythology. It was nothing of the kind. It was astronomy in swaddling clothes. It was a scientific theorythat is to say, a formula that seemed to work. It was the Dragonial Hypothesis.

Of course, this was a very simple hypothesis-in every sense of the word simple. But then the observed facts that it undertook to explain were few. Later on, when men had disentangled something of the varying

concentric and eccentric spheres was devised by the Greeks and for some fourteen centuries was accepted by the world.

Now, as we are about to try to grasp the general outline of the latest attempt to overthrow one of these accepted theories and to set up a new one in its place, we may as well keep in mind the law that governs the formulation, the acceptance, and the discarding or renovating of these guesses at reality. Perhaps it may be stated somewhat as follows: A theory is first advanced by a scientist as a recognizedly tentative attempt to find a formula that will harmonize all the observed facts of the case. When such a formula refers to some natural phenomenon that directly interests or concerns the laity, it generally tends to be accepted by the public as a statement of literal fact, and, if it satisfies the needs of science for any length of time, to be dogmatized by the public into doctrine. And long after a new race of scientists have piled up enough observations discordant with the old theory to satisfy them of its inadequacy, the laity continue to regard the familiar hypothesis as among the fundamentals of knowledge. It is only when some synthetic mind has devised a new theory that (1) brings into apparent harmony all the outwardly discordant discoveries that have been accumulating, that (2) pushes speculative constructiveness far enough ahead to insure itself a scientific lease of life, and that (3) gives to the whole mass of observations and speculations a dramatic unity that at once fires the imagination and satisfies the reason of the public, that the old scientific dogma disintegrates before the fire of a new scientific faith.

This is what happened when Laplace, in 1796, promulgated the famous Nebular Hypothesis-the theory that for a century the scientific world has accepted as a working approximation to the truth while scientists were busy testing its myriad implications;