study. The translator takes this opportunity to make grateful
acknowledgement of her debt to the authors named, who have made such
valuable information available, and to those friends who have read the
manuscript and made many helpful suggestions.

FRANCES SEAVER

* * * * *

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

In Raphael Petrucci, who died early in 1917, the world has lost one of the
ablest and most devoted students and interpreters of the art of the Far
East. He was only forty-five years of age, in the prime of his powers,
brimming with energy and full of enterprises that promised richly. Though
he did not die in the field, he was none the less a victim of the war. He
had exhausted himself by his labours with the Belgian ambulances at La
Panne, for Belgium was his adopted country. He had a house in Brussels,
filled with a collection of Chinese and Japanese art, and a little cottage
near the coast just over the borders of Holland. He came of the great and
ancient Sienese family of the Petrucci, but his mother was French and he
spent much of his earlier life in Paris, before settling in Brussels and
marrying one of the daughters of the painter Verwee. He had also spent
some time in Russia. In Brussels he was attached to the Institut Solvay.

He was a man of science, a student of and writer on sociology and biology.
He lectured on art and had a knowledge of the art of the world which few
men in Europe rivalled. He wrote a philosophic novel, _La Porte de l'Amour
et de la Mort_, which has run through several editions. He published a
book on Michelangelo's poetry. At the same time he was a scientific
engineer. When war broke out Petrucci was on his way home from Italy,
where he had been engaged, I believe, on some large engineering project
and he only got out of Switzerland into France by the last train which
left Basle. He came to England for a time, looking after a number of
Belgian refugees, including some very distinguished artists. At the end of
1914 he was engaged by the India office to do some valuable work in London
on the collection of Chinese and Tibetan paintings brought back from
Tun-huang by Sir Aurel Stein. He then worked at La Panne for the Belgian
army hospital (he had had a medical training in his youth), went to
Provence for a rest, fell ill and died in Paris after an operation.

Raphael Petrucci was a man who seemed to reincarnate the bo