In Fealty to Apollo
— The Club turns so sympathetic an car to every manifestation of love for art and literature that I think I am not doing amiss in calling attention to a Roman event of the year 1895. I translate roughly a programme which has just appeared, charmingly designed and printed on parchment paper by the Danesi phototype firm, which a few years ago issued the facsimile copy of the Codex Vatican us.
II Convito (The Banquet). A few artists, writers and painters, united by a common and sincere cult for all the noblest forms of art, propose to publish each month, in Rome, — from January to December, 1895, — a collection of prose, verses, and designs, selected with severity of choice, and printed with exceptional elegance of type and paper.
These small monthly books are intended to contain whatever is most, perfect in contemporary Italian art. The undertaking is not an easy one, but the beginning is well augured bv the approval and co·peration of Giosué Carducci ; by a new novel of Gabriele d’ Annunzio ; by original designs of F. Paolo Micchetti, Marius de Maria, Guido Boggiani, G. A. Sartorio, Giuseppe Cellini, Eugenio Benson, Mariano Fortuny, Alessandro Morani, and others.
The subscription for the series of twelve books will be thirty-six francs.
Editor, ADOLFO DE BOSIS, Borghese Palace, Rome.
The editor is known by his exquisite and faithful translations of Shelley’s poems into Italian, and, to any one at all acquainted with Italian literature and art, the names given in the above are sufficient guarantee for the rare value of the publication. It meets a want in Italy, as hitherto there has been no highclass illustrated monthly. It will, however, appeal only to an elect circle, and there is a fine carelessness of pecuniary interest in the ardent group of artists and poets who have initiated the enterprise. There is something of the old Greek worship of the beautiful and love of art for its own sake in their calm recognition that the magazine will scarcely pay expenses, and that they probably will be able to sustain it for one year only.