Vienna—The Palace of Liechtenstein.
The red-nosed German led on through the crowded Graben, jostling aside
the Parisian-looking lady and her handsome Hungarian cavalier, the
phlegmatic smoker and the bearded Turk, alike. We passed the imperial
guard, the city gate, the lofty bridge over the trench (casting a look
below at the flower-garden laid out in “the ditch” which encircles the
wall), and entered upon the lovely Glacis—one step from the crowded
street to the fresh greenness of a park.
Would you believe, as you walk up this shaded alley, that you are in the
heart of the city still?
The Glacis is crossed, with its groups of fair children and shy maids,
its creeping invalids, its solitude-seeking lovers, and its idling
soldiers, and we again enter the crowded street. A half hour more, and
the throng thins again, the country opens, and here you are, in front of
the palace of Liechstenstein, the first noble of Austria. A modern
building, of beautiful and light architecture, rises from its clustering
trees: servants in handsome livery hang about the gates and lean against
the pillars of the portico, and with an explanation from my lying valet,
who evidently makes me out an ambassador at least, by the ceremony with
which I am received, a grey servitor makes his appearance and opens the
immense glass door leading from the side of the court.
One should step gingerly on the polished marble of this superb
staircase! It opens at once into a lofty hall, the ceiling of which is
painted in fresco by an Italian master. It is a room of noble
proportions. Few churches in America are larger, and yet it seems in
keeping with the style of the palace, the staircase—everything but the
creature meant to inhabit it.
How different are the moods in which one sees pictures! To-day I am in
the humour to give it to the painter’s delusion. The scene is real.
Asmodeus is at my elbow, and I am witched from spot to spot, invisible
myself, gazing on the varied scenes revealed only to the inspired vision
of genius.
A landscape opens.[2] It is one of the woody recesses of Lake Nervi, at
the very edge of “Dian’s Mirror.” The huntress queen is bathing with her
nymphs. The sandal is half laced over an ankle that seems fit for
nothing else than to sustain a goddess, when casting her eye on the
lovely troop emerging from the water, she sees the unfortunate Calista
surrounded by her astonished sisters, and fainting with shame. Poor
Calista! one’s heart pleads for her. But how expressive is the cold
condemning look in the beautiful face of her mistress queen! Even the
dogs have started from their reclining position on the grass, and stand
gazing at the unfortunate, wondering at the silent astonishment of the
virgin troop. Pardon her, imperial Dian!
Come to the baptism of a child! It is a vision of Guido Reni’s.[3] A
young mother, apparently scarce sixteen, has brought her first child to
the altar. She kneels with it in her arms, looking earnestly into the
face of the priest while he sprinkles the water on its pure forehead,
and pronounces the words of consecration. It is a most lovely
countenance, made lovelier by the holy feeling in her heart. Her eyes
are moist, her throat swells with emotion—my own sight dims while I
gaze upon her. We have intruded upon one of the most holy moments of
nature. A band of girls, sisters by the resemblance, have accompanied
the young mother, and stand, with love and wonder in their eyes, gazing
on the face of the child. How strangely the mingled thoughts, crowding
through their minds, are expressed in their excited features. It is a
scene worthy of an audience of angels.
We have surprised Giorgione’s wife (the “Flora” of Titian, the “love in
life” of Byron) looking at a sketch by her husband. It stands on his
easel, outlined in crayons, and represents Lucretia the moment before
she plunges the dagger into her bosom. She was passing through his
studio, and you see by the half suspended foot, that she stopped but for
a momentary glance, and has forgotten herself in thoughts that have
risen unaware. The head of Lucretia resembles her own, and she is
wondering what Giorgione thought while he drew it. Did he resemble her
to the Roman’s wife in virtue as well as in feature? There is an
embarrassment in the expression of her face, as if she doubted he had
drawn it half in mischief. We will leave the lovely Venetian to her
thoughts. When she sits again to Titian, it will be with a colder
modesty.
Hoogstraeten, a Dutch painter, conjures up a scene for you. It is an old
man, who has thrust his head through a prison gate, and is looking into
the street with the listless patience and curiosity of one whom habit
has reconciled to his situation. His beard is neglected, his hair is
slightly grizzled, and on his head sits a shabby fur cap, that has
evidently shared all his imprisonment, and is quite past any pride of
appearance. What a vacant face! How perfectly he seems to look upon the
street below, as upon something with which he has nothing more to do.
There is no anxiety to get out, in its expression. He is past that. He
looks at the playing children, and watches the zigzag trot of an idle
dog with the quiet apathy of one who can find nothing better to help off
the hour. It is a picture of stolid, contented, unthinking misery.
Look at this boy, standing impatiently on one foot at his mother’s knee,
while she pares an apple for him! With what an amused and playful love
she listens to his hurrying entreaties, stealing a glance at him as he
pleads, with a deeper feeling than he will be able to comprehend for
years? It is one of the commonest scenes in life, yet how pregnant with
speculation!
On—on—what an endless gallery! I have seen twelve rooms, with forty or
fifty pictures in each, and there are thirteen halls more! The delusion
begins to fade. These are _pictures_ merely. Beautiful ones, however! If
language could convey to your eye the impressions that this waste and
wealth of beauty have conveyed to mine, I would write of every picture.
There is not an indifferent one here. All Italy together has not so many
works by the Flemish masters as are contained in this single
gallery—certainly none so fine. A most princely fortune for many
generations must have been devoted to its purchase.
I have seen seven or eight things in all Italy, by Corregio. They were
the gems of the galleries in which they exist, but always small, and
seemed to me to want a certain finish. Here is a Corregio, a large
picture, and no miniature ever had so elaborate a beauty. It melts into
the eye. It is a conception of female beauty so very extraordinary, that
it seems to me it must become, in the mind of every one who sees it, the
model and the standard of all loveliness. It is a nude Venus, sitting
lost in thought, with Cupid asleep in her lap. She is in the sacred
retirement of solitude, and the painter has thrown into her attitude and
expression so speaking an unconsciousness of all presence, that you feel
like a daring intruder while you gaze upon the picture. Surely such
softness of colouring, such faultless proportions, such subdued and yet
eloquent richness of teint in the skin, was never before attained by
mortal pencil. I am here, some five thousand miles from America, yet
would I have made the voyage but to raise my standard of beauty by this
ravishing image of woman.
In the circle of Italian galleries, one finds less of female beauty,
both in degree and in variety, than his anticipations had promised.
Three or four heads at the most, of the many hundreds that he sees, are
imprinted in his memory, and serve as standards in his future
observations. Even when standing before the most celebrated pictures,
one often returns to recollections of living beauty in his own country,
by which the most glowing head of Titian or the Veronese suffer in
comparison. In my own experience this has been often true, and it is
perhaps the only thing in which my imagination of foreign wonders was
too fervent. To this Venus of Corregio’s, however, I unhesitatingly
submit all knowledge, all conception even, of female loveliness. I have
seen nothing in life, imagined nothing from the description of poets,
that is any way comparable to it. It is matchless.
In one of the last rooms the servitor unlocked two handsome cases, and
showed me, with a great deal of circumstance, two heads by Denner. They
were an old man and his wife—two hale, temperate, good old country
gossips—but so curiously finished! Every pore was painted. You counted
the stiff stumps of the good man’s beard as you might those of a living
person, till you were tired. Every wrinkle looked as if a month had been
spent in elaborating it. The man said they were extremely valuable, and
I certainly never saw anything more curiously and perhaps uselessly
wrought.
Near them was a capital picture of a drunken fellow, sitting by himself,
and laughing heartily at his own performance on the pipe. It was
irresistible, and I joined in the laugh till the long suite of halls
rung again.
Landscapes by Van Delen—such as I have seen engravings of in America,
and sighed over as unreal—the skies, the temples, the water, the soft
mountains, the distant ruins, seemed so like the beauty of a dream.
Here, they recall to me even lovelier scenes in Italy—atmospheres
richer than the painter’s pallet can imitate, and ruins and temples
whose ivy-grown and melancholy grandeur are but feebly copied at the
best.
Come Karl! I am bewildered with these pictures. You have twenty such
galleries in Vienna, you say! I have seen enough for to-day, however,
and we will save the Belvidere till to-morrow. Here! pay the servitor,
and the footman, and the porter, and let us get into the open air. How
common look your Viennese after the celestial images we have left
behind! And, truly, this is the curse of refinement. The faces we should
have loved else, look dull! The forms that were graceful before, move
somehow heavily. I have entered a gallery ere now, thinking well of a
face that accompanied me, and I have learned indifference to it, by
sheer comparison, before coming away.
We return through the Kohlmarket, one of the most fashionable streets of
Vienna. It is like a fancy ball. Hungarians, Poles, Croats, Wallachians,
Jews, Moldavians, Greeks, Turks, all dressed in their national and
striking costumes, promenade up and down, smoking all, and none exciting
the slightest observation. Every third window is a pipe shop, and they
show, by their splendour and variety, the expensiveness of the passion.
Some of them are marked “two hundred dollars.” The streets reek with
tobacco smoke. You never catch a breath of untainted air within the
Glacis. Your hotel, your café, your coach, your friend, are all redolent
of the same disgusting odour.
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[2] By Franceschini. He passed his life with the Prince Liechstenstein,
and his pictures are found only in this collection. He is a delicious
painter, full of poetry, with the one fault of too voluptuous a style.
[3] One of the loveliest pictures that divine painter ever drew.
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