The commissioners having decided that six compartments in the new I louse of Lords should be decorated with fresco paiutings. proceeded to allot the several works in the follow ing manner : To Mr. Ilorsley, the subject of Religion.
'Co Mr. Thomas, the subject of Justice.
To Mr. Maclise, the subject of Chivalry.
To Mr. Dyce, the subject of the Baptism of Ethelbert.
To Mr. Redgrave, the subject of Prince henry, afterwards Henry V., acknowledging the authority of Chief Justice Gascoigne.
And to Mr. Cope the subject of Edward the Black Prince receiving the Order of the Garter from Edward in the Upper Waiting Hall, or, as it is to be called, the " Hall of Poets," the eight available panels which it afibrds, are appropriated to frescoes illustrative of Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Shakspere, Dryden, Pope, Byron, and Scott. Such of these paintings as are finished at the time we write, are noble works, full of power and beauty, and fully justifying the commissioners in the selection they have made of the artists employed.
The principal works that have been produced in former times in fresco, are the series of biblical and evangelical historic pictures which adorn the walls and of the chapel of Sixtus V. at Rome, by M. A. Buonaretti ; the chambers of the Vatican, known by the name of the Stanze of Raphael ; which consist principally of religious histories interspersed with some legendary tales. relative
to the popes ; and the cupola of the doom° of Parma, er church of St. Giovanni in that city, by A. C,orreggio. It represents the Ascension of the Virgin, amidst a choir of angels, and with a number of figures of saints below regard ing it. One beautiful and grand work, by Daniel Rieciarelli, commonly called Da Votterra, at the altar of church of Trinita da Monte, the subject of which is taking Christ down from the cross, is said to have been destroyed by the French, in their endeavours to remove it to France. Dorigny has engraved a large print of the design ; and the picture has been thought so well worthy of attention, that an infinite multitude of copies have been made of it.
FRET, (from the Latin, fretum.) a species of guillochi, made of straight grooves or channelures at right angles to each other ; the section of each channel being that of a rectangle. A fret is generally one connected groove with sonic of its parts in the same straight line. The labyrinth fret is that which consists of many turnings or windings. hut in all cases the parts are parallel and perpendicular to each other. The prominent parts or interstices arc generally of the same breadth throughout. In several Grecian examples. intervals are left in regular positions throughout the length of the fret.