We might fancifully call them a pair of native pearls or uncut gems, lovely by reason even of their sketchiness.

Whether by intention, as some critics have supposed, or for want of time to finish, as I am inclined to believe, these two reliefs are left in a state of incompleteness which is highly suggestive.

Taking the Royal Academy group first, the absolute roughness of the groundwork supplies an admirable background to the figures, which seem to emerge from it as though the whole of them were there, ready to be disentangled.

The most important portions of the composition--Madonna's head and throat, the drapery of her powerful breast, on which the child Christ reclines, and the naked body of the boy--are wrought to a point which only demands finish.

Yet parts of these two figures remain undetermined.