_Raffaelle's Sposalizio._--Will DIGITALIS, or any of your numerous
correspondents or readers, do me the favour to say why, in Raffaelle's
celebrated painting "Lo Sposalizio," in the gallery of the Brera at Milan,
Joseph is represented as placing the ring on the third finger of _right_
hand of the Virgin?
I noticed the same peculiarity in Ghirlandais's fresco of the "Espousals"
in the church of the Santa Croce at Florence. This I remarked to the
custode, an intelligent old man, who informed {596} me that the connexion
said to exist between the heart and the third finger refers to that finger
of the _right_ hand, and not, as we suppose, to the third finger of the
_left_ hand. He added, that the English are the only nation who place the
ring on the left hand. I do not find that this latter statement is borne
out by what I have seen of the ladies of continental Europe; and I suppose
it was an hallucination in my worthy informant.
I must leave to better scholars in the Italian language than I am, to say
whether "Lo Sposalizio" means "Betrothal" or "Marriage:" certainly this
latter is the ordinary signification.
I have a sort of floating idea that I once heard that at the ceremony of
"Betrothal," now, I believe, rarely if ever practised, it was customary to
place the ring on the right hand. I am by no means clear where I gleaned
this notion.