"Pictor Ignotus" is a reverie characteristic of a monastic painter
of the Renaissance who recognizes, in the genius of a youth whose
pictures are praised, a gift akin to his own, but which he has never
so exercised, spite of the joy such free human expression and
recognition of his power would have given him, because he could not
bear to submit his art to worldly contact. So he has chosen to sink
his name in unknown service to the Church, and to devote his fancy
to pure and beautiful but cold and monotonous repetitions of sacred
themes. His gentle regret that his own pictures will moulder
unvisited is half wonderment that the youth can endure the sullying
of his work by secular fame.
67. Travertine: a white limestone, the name being a corruption of
<Tiburtinus>, from <Tibur> , now Tivoli, near Rome, whence this
stone comes.