_THE DREAM OF ST. URSULA_
(CARPACCIO)
_JOHN RUSKIN_
_THE DREAM OF ST. URSULA_
In the year 1869, just before leaving Venice, I had been carefully
looking at a picture by Victor Carpaccio, representing the dream of a
young princess. Carpaccio has taken much pains to explain to us, as
far as he can, the kind of life she leads, by completely painting her
little bedroom in the light of dawn, so that you can see everything in
it. It is lighted by two doubly-arched windows, the arches being
painted crimson round their edges, and the capitals of the shafts that
bear them, gilded. They are filled at the top with small round panes
of glass; but beneath, are open to the blue morning sky, with a low
lattice across them; and in the one at the back of the room are set
two beautiful white Greek vases with a plant in each, one having rich
dark and pointed green leaves, the other crimson flowers, but not of
any species known to me, each at the end of a branch like a spray of
heath.
These flower-pots stand on a shelf which runs all round the room and
beneath the window, at about the height of the elbow, and serves to
put things on anywhere; beneath it, down to the floor, the walls are
covered with green cloth, but above are bare and white. The second
window is nearly opposite the bed, and in front of it is the
princess's reading-table, some two feet and a half square, covered by
a red cloth with a white border and dainty fringe; and beside it her
seat, not at all like a reading-chair in Oxford, but a very small
three-legged stool like a music-stool, covered with crimson cloth. On
the table are a book, set up at a slope fittest for reading, and an
hour-glass. Under the shelf near the table, so as to be easily reached
by the outstretched arm, is a press full of books. The door of this
has been left open, and the books, I am grieved to say, are rather in
disorder, having been pulled about before the princess went to bed,
and one left standing on its side.
Opposite this window, on the white wall, is a small shrine or picture
(I can't see which, for it is in sharp retiring perspective), with a
lamp before it, and a silver vessel hung from the lamp, looking like
one for holding incense.
The bed is a broad four-poster, the posts being beautifully wrought
golden or gilded rods, variously wreathed and branched, carrying a
canopy of warm red. The princess's shield is at the head of it, and
the feet are raised entirely above the floor of the room, on a dais
which projects at the lower end so as to form a seat, on which the
child has laid her crown. Her little blue slippers lie at the side of
the bed, her white dog beside them; the coverlid is scarlet, the white
sheet folded half way back over it; the young girl lies straight,
bending neither at waist nor knee, the sheet rising and falling over
her in a narrow unbroken wave, like the shape of the coverlid of the
last sleep, when the turf scarcely rises. She is some seventeen or
eighteen years old, her head is turned towards us on the pillow, the
cheek resting on her hand, as if she were thinking, yet utterly calm
in sleep, and almost colourless. Her hair is tied with a narrow
riband, and divided into two wreaths, which encircle her head like a
double crown. The white nightgown hides the arm, raised on the pillow,
down to the wrist.
At the door of the room an angel enters (the little dog, though lying
awake, vigilant, takes no notice). He is a very small angel; his head
just rises a little above the shelf round the room, and would only
reach as high as the princess's chin, if she were standing up. He has
soft grey wings, lustreless; and his dress, of subdued blue, has
violet sleeves, open above the elbow, and showing white sleeves below.
He comes in without haste, his body like a mortal one, casting shadow
from the light through the door behind, his face perfectly quiet, a
palm-branch in his right hand, a scroll in his left.
So dreams the princess, with blessed eyes that need no earthly dawn.
It is very pretty of Carpaccio to make her dream out the angel's dress
so particularly, and notice the slashed sleeves; and to dream so
little an angel--very nearly a doll angel--bringing her the branch of
palm and message. But the lovely characteristic of all is the evident
delight of her continual life. Royal power over herself, and happiness
in her flowers, her books, her sleeping and waking, her prayers, her
dreams, her earth, her heaven.
* * * * *
"How do I know the princess is industrious?"
Partly by the trim state of her room--by the hour-glass on the table,
by the evident use of all the books she has (well bound, every one of
them, in stoutest leather or velvet, and with no dog's-ears), but more
distinctly from another picture of her, not asleep. In that one a
prince of England has sent to ask her in marriage; and her father,
little liking to part with her, sends for her to his room to ask her
what she would do. He sits, moody and sorrowful; she, standing before
him in a plain housewifely dress, talks quietly, going on with her
needle-work all the time.
A workwoman, friends, she, no less than a princess; and princess most
in being so. In like manner is a picture by a Florentine, whose mind I
would fain have you know somewhat, as well as Carpaccio's--Sandro
Botticelli. The girl who is to be the wife of Moses, when he first
sees her at the desert well, has fruit in her left hand, but a distaff
in her right.
"To do good work, whether you live or die"--it is the entrance to all
Princedoms; and if not done, the day will come, and that infallibly,
when you must labour for evil instead of good.
_FORS CLAVIGERA_
Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent, 1872.
* * * * *
[Illustration]
* * * * *