The first thing you do when you get to a town abroad is to go to the
Post-office in expectation of letters, which you are sure not to receive
exactly in proportion as you are anxious to have them. Friends at a
distance have you at a disadvantage; and they let you know it, if they
will let you know nothing else. There is in this a love of power or of
contradiction, and at the same time a want of imagination. They cannot
change places with you, or suppose how you can be so much at a loss
about what is so obvious to them. It seems putting them to unnecessary
trouble to transmit a self-evident truth (which it is upon the spot) a
thousand miles (where it becomes a discovery). You have this comfort,
however, under the delay of letters, that they have no bad news to send
you, or you would hear of it in an instant.
When you are disappointed of your letters at the post-office at
Florence, you turn round, and find yourself in the square of the Grand
Duke, with the old Palace opposite to you, and a number of colossal
statues, bleached in the open air, in front of it. They seem a species
of huge stone-masonry. What is your surprise to learn, that they are the
Hercules of Bandinello, and the David of Michael Angelo! Not far from
these, is the Perseus of Benvenuto Cellini, which he makes such a _fuss_
about in his Life.[41] It is of bronze. After a great deal of cabal,
before he was employed on this work, and great hostility and
disagreeable obstacles thrown in his way in the progress of it, he at
length finished the mould, and prepared to cast the figure. He found
that the copper which he had at first thrown in did not work kindly.
After one or two visits to the furnace, he grew impatient, and seizing
on all the lead, iron, and brass he could lay his hands on in the house,
threw it _pell-mell_, and in a fit of desperation, into the melting
mass, and retired to wait the result. After passing an hour in the
greatest agitation, he returned; and inspecting the cast, to his extreme
joy discovered it to be smooth and perfect, without a flaw in any part,
except a dint in the heel. He then sat down to enjoy his triumph over
his enemies, and to devour a cold chicken (which he had provided for his
supper) with vast composure and relish. It is a pity that a work
produced under such auspicious circumstances does not altogether answer
the romantic expectations formed of it. There is something petty and
forced about it; and it smells of the goldsmith’s and jeweller’s shop. I
would rather see the large silver vase, richly embossed by him with
groups of flowers and figures, which was ordered by the Pope and placed
under his table for the Cardinals and other guests to throw their bones
into, instead of throwing them on the floor for the dogs to pick up, as
had hitherto been the custom—a fine proof of the mingled barbarism and
refinement of those days.[42] Benvenuto was a character and a genius,
and more of a character than of a genius; for, after all, the greatest
geniuses are ‘men of no mark or likelihood.’ Their strongest impulses
are not personal, but pass out of themselves into the universe; nor do
they waste their energies upon their private whims and perverse
peculiarities. In Bandinello one does not look for much; he was never
much esteemed, and is made a butt of by Benvenuto Cellini. But what
shall we say to a _commonplace_ or barbarous piece of work by Michael
Angelo? The David is as if a large mass of solid marble fell upon one’s
head, to crush one’s faith in great names. It looks like an awkward
overgrown actor at one of our minor theatres, without his clothes: the
head is too big for the body, and it has a helpless expression of
distress. The Bacchus in the Gallery, by the same artist, is no better.
It is _potbellied_, lank, and with a sickly, mawkish aspect. Both these
statues were, it is true, done when he was very young; and the latter,
when finished, he buried underground, and had it dug up as an antique,
and when it was pronounced by the _virtuosi_ of the day to be superior
to any thing in modern art, he produced the arm (which he had broken
off), and claimed it as his own, to the confusion of his adversaries.
Such is the story; and under the safeguard of this tradition, it has
passed, criticism-proof. There are two pictures here attributed to this
great artist; one in the Gallery, and another in the Palace Pitti, of
_The Fates_, which are three meagre, dry, mean-looking old women. I
shall not return to this subject till I get to the Vatican, and then I
hope to tell a different story. Nothing more casts one down than to find
an utter disproportion between the reality and one’s previous
conceptions in a case of this kind, when one has been brooding all one’s
life over an idea of greatness. If one could sneak off with one’s
disappointment in one’s pocket, and say nothing about it, or whisper it
to the reeds, or bury it in a hole, or throw it into the river (Arno),
where no one would fish it up, it would not signify; but to be obliged
to note it in one’s common-place book, and publish it to all the world,
‘tis villainous! It is well one can turn from disagreeable thoughts like
these to a landscape of Titian’s (the Holy Family at the Pitti Palace).
A green bank in the fore-ground presents a pastoral scene of sheep and
cattle reposing; then you have the deep green of the middle distance,
then the blue-topped hills, and the golden sky beyond, with the red
branches of an autumn wood rising into it; and in the faces of the
bending group you see the tints of the evening sky reflected, and the
freshness of the landscape breathed on their features. The depth and
harmony of colouring in natural objects, refined in passing through the
painter’s mind, mellowed by the hand of time, has acquired the softness
and shadowy brilliancy of a dream, and while you gaze at it, you seem to
be entranced! But to take things somewhat more in order.—
One of the striking things in the Gallery at Florence (given to the City
by one of the Medici Family) is the Collection of Antique Busts. The
Statues of Gods are the poetry of the art of that period. The busts of
men and women handed down to us are the history of the species. You see
the busts of Vitellius (whose throat seems bursting with ‘the jowl’ and
a dish of lampreys), Galba, Trajan, Augustus, Julia, Faustina,
Messalina; and you ask, were there real beings like these existing two
thousand years ago? It is an extension of the idea of humanity; and
‘even in death there is animation too.’ History is vague and shadowy,
but sculpture gives life and body to it; the names and letters in
time-worn books start up real people in marble, and you no longer doubt
their identity with the present race. Nature produced forms then as
perfect as she does now.—Forsyth and others have endeavoured to
invalidate the authenticity of these busts, and to shew that few of them
can be traced with certainty to the persons whose names they bear. That
with me is not the question. The interesting point is not to know _who_
they were, but _that_ they were. There is no doubt that they are busts
of people living two thousand years ago, and that is all that my moral
demands. As to individual character, it would be as well sometimes to
find it involved in obscurity; for some of the persons are better
looking than for the truth of physiognomy they ought to be. Nero is as
handsome a gentleman as his eulogists could wish him to be. The truth
is, that what pleases me in these busts and others of the same kind that
I have seen is, that they very much resemble English people of sense and
education in the present day, only with more regular features. They are
grave, thoughtful, unaffected. There is not a face among them that you
could mistake for a French face. These fine old heads, in short, confirm
one in the idea of general humanity: French faces stagger one’s faith in
the species!
There are two long galleries enriched with busts and statues of the most
interesting description, with a series of productions of the early
Florentine school, the Flying Mercury of John of Bologna, &c.; and in a
room near the centre (called the Tribune) stands the Venus of Medici,
with some other statues and pictures not unworthy to do her homage. I do
not know what to say of the Venus, nor is it necessary to say much where
all the world have already formed an opinion for themselves; yet,
perhaps, this opinion, which seems the most universal, is the least so,
and the opinion of all the world means that of no one individual in it.
The end of criticism, however, is rather to direct attention to objects
of taste, than to dictate to it. Besides, one has seen the Venus so
often and in so many shapes, that custom has blinded one equally to its
merits or defects. Instead of giving an opinion, one is disposed to turn
round and ask, ‘What do _you_ think of it?’ It is like a passage in the
‘Elegant Extracts,’ which one has read and admired, till one does not
know what to make of it, or how to affix any ideas to the words: beauty
and sweetness end in an unmeaning commonplace! If I might,
notwithstanding, hazard a hypercriticism, I should say, that it is a
little too much like an exquisite marble doll. I should conjecture (for
it is only conjecture where familiarity has neutralized the capacity of
judging) that there is a want of sentiment, of character, a balance of
pretensions as well as of attitude, a good deal of insipidity, and an
over-gentility. There is no expression of mental refinement, nor much of
voluptuous blandishment. There is great softness, sweetness, symmetry,
and timid grace—a faultless tameness, a negative perfection. The Apollo
Belvidere is positively bad, a theatrical coxcomb, and ill-made; I mean
compared with the Theseus. The great objection to the Venus is, that the
form has not the true feminine proportions; it is not sufficiently large
in the lower limbs, but tapers too much to a point, so that it wants
firmness and a sort of indolent repose (the proper attribute of woman),
and seems as if the least thing would overset it. In a word, the Venus
is a very beautiful toy, but not the Goddess of Love, or even of Beauty.
It is not the statue Pygmalion fell in love with; nor did any man ever
wish or fancy his mistress to be like it. There is something beyond it,
both in imagination and in nature. Neither have we a firm faith in the
identity of the Goddess; it is a nice point, whether any such form ever
existed. Now let us say what we will of the _ideal_, it ought, when
embodied to the senses, to bear the stamp of the most absolute reality,
for it is only an image taken from nature, with every thing omitted that
might contradict or disturb its uniformity. The Venus is not a poetical
and abstract personification of certain qualities; but an individual
model, that has been altered and tampered with. It would have had a
better effect if executed in ivory, with gold sandals and bracelets,
like that of Phidias (mentioned by Pliny), to define its pretensions as
belonging to the class of ornamental art; for it neither carries the
mind into the regions of ancient mythology, nor of ancient poetry, nor
rises to an equality of style with modern poetry or painting. Raphael
has figures of far greater grace, both mental and bodily. The Apollo of
Medicis, which is in the same room, is a very delightful specimen of
Grecian art; but it has the fault of being of that equivocal size (I
believe called _small-life_) which looks like diminutive nature, not
nature diminished.
Raphael’s Fornarina (which is also in this highly-embellished cabinet of
art) faces the Venus, and is a downright, point-blank contrast to it.
Assuredly no charge can be brought against it of _mimmini-piminee_
affectation or shrinking delicacy. It is robust, full to bursting,
coarse, luxurious, hardened, but wrought up to an infinite degree of
exactness and beauty in the details. It is the perfection of vulgarity
and refinement together. The Fornarina is a bouncing, buxom, sullen,
saucy baker’s daughter—but painted, idolized, immortalized by Raphael!
Nothing can be more homely and repulsive than the original; you see her
bosom swelling like the dough rising in the oven; the tightness of her
skin puts you in mind of Trim’s story of the sausage-maker’s
wife—nothing can be much more enchanting than the picture—than the care
and delight with which the artist has seized the lurking glances of the
eye, curved the corners of the mouth, smoothed the forehead, dimpled the
chin, rounded the neck, till by innumerable delicate touches, and the
‘labour of love,’ he has converted a coarse, rude mass into a miracle of
art. Raphael, in the height of his devotion, and as it were to insinuate
that nothing could be too fine for this idol of his fancy (as Rousseau
prided himself in writing the letters of Julia on the finest paper with
gilt edges) has painted the chain on the Fornarina’s neck with actual
gold-leaf. Titian would never have thought of such a thing; he could not
have been guilty of such a solecism in painting, as to introduce a solid
substance without shadow. Highly as Raphael has laboured this portrait,
it still shows his inferiority to Titian in the imitative part of
painting. The colour on the cheeks of the Fornarina seems laid on the
skin; in the girl by Titian at the Pitti Palace, it is seen through it.
The one appears tanned by the sun; the other to have been out in the
air, or is like a flower ‘just washed in the dew.’ Again, the surface of
the flesh in Raphael is so smooth, that you are tempted to touch it: in
Titian, it retires from the touch into a shadowy recess. There is here a
duplicate (varied) of his _Mistress at her Toilette_ (to be seen in the
Louvre), dressed in a loose night-robe, and with the bosom nearly bare.
It is very carefully finished, and is a rich study of colouring,
expression, and natural grace. Of the Titian Venus (with her gouvernante
and chest of clothes in the background) I cannot say much. It is very
like the common print. The Endymion by Guercino has a divine character
of pensive softness, and youthful, manly grace, and the impression made
by the picture answers to that made by the fable—an excellent thing in
history! It is one of the finest pictures in Florence. I should never
have done if I were to go into the details. I can only mention a few of
the principal. Near the Fornarina is the Young St. John in the
Wilderness, by Raphael; it is very dark, very hard, and very fine, like
an admirable carving in wood. He has here also two Holy Families, full
of playful sweetness and mild repose. There are also two by Correggio of
the same subject, and a fine and bold study of the Head of a Boy. There
is a spirit of joy and laughing grace contained in this head, as the
juice of wine is in the grape. Correggio had a prodigious raciness and
gusto, when he did not fritter them away by false refinement and a sort
of fastidious hypercriticism upon himself. His sketches, I suspect, are
better than his finished works. One of the Holy Families here is the
very acme of the _affettuoso_ and Della Cruscan style of painting. The
figure of the Madonna is like a studiously-involved period or turn upon
words: the infant Christ on the ground is a diminutive appellation, a
prettiness, a fairy-fancy. Certainly, it bears no proportion to the
Mother, whose hands are bent back over it with admiration and delight,
till grace becomes a _cramp_, and her eye-lids droop and quiver over the
fluttering object of her ‘strange child-worship,’ almost as if they were
moved by metallic tractors. The other Madonna is perfectly free from any
taint of affectation. It is a plain rustic beauty, innocent,
interesting, simple, without one contortion of body or of mind. It is
sweetly painted. The Child is also a pure study after nature: the blood
is tingling in his veins, and his face has an admirable expression of
careless infantine impatience. The old Man at the side is a
master-piece, with all this painter’s knowledge of foreshortening,
_chiaro-scuro_, the management of drapery, &c. Herodias’s Daughter, by
Luini, is an elaborate and successful imitation of Leonardo da Vinci.
The Medusa’s Head of the latter is hardly, I think, so fine as Barry’s
description of it. It has not quite the watery languor—the dim
obscurity. The eyes of the female are too much like the eyes of the
snakes, red, crusted, and edgy. I shall only notice one picture more in
this collection—the Last Judgment, by Bronzino. It has vast merit in the
drawing and expression, but its most remarkable quality is the amazing
relief without any perceivable shadow, and the utmost clearness with the
smallest possible variety of tint. It looks like a Mosaic painting. The
specimens of the Dutch and other foreign schools here are upon a small
scale, and of inferior value.
The Palace Pitti was begun by one of the Strozzi, who boasted that he
would build a palace with a court-yard in it, in which another palace
might dance. He had nearly ruined himself by the expense, when one of
the Medici took it off his hands and completed it. It is at present the
residence of the Grand Duke. The view within over the court-yard to the
terrace and mount above is superb. Here is the Venus of Canova, an
elegant sylph-like figure; but Canova was more to be admired for
delicacy of finishing, than for expression or conception of general
form. At the Gallery there is one room full of extraordinary pictures
and statues: at the Palace Pitti there are six or seven covered with
some of the finest portraits and history-pieces in the world, and the
walls are dark with beauty, and breathe an air of the highest art from
them. It is one of the richest and most original Collections I have
seen. It is not so remarkable for variety of style or subject as for a
noble opulence and aristocratic pride, having to boast names in the
highest ranks of art, and many of their best works. The Palace Pitti
formerly figured in the Catalogue of the Louvre, which it had
contributed to enrich with many of its most gorgeous jewels, which have
been brought back to their original situation, and which now shine here,
though not with unreflected lustre, nor in solitary state. Among these,
for instance, is Titian’s Hippolito di Medici (which the late Mr. Opie
pronounced the finest portrait in the world), with the spirit and
breadth of history, and with the richness, finish, and glossiness of an
enamel picture. I remember the first time I ever saw it, it stood on an
easel which I had to pass, with the back to me, and as I turned and saw
it with the boar-spear in its hand, and its keen glance bent upon me, it
seemed ‘a thing of life,’ with supernatural force and grandeur. The
famous music-piece by Giorgioni was at one time in the Louvre, and is
not a whit inferior to Titian. The head turned round of the man playing
on the harpsichord, for air, expression, and a true gusto of colouring,
may challenge competition all the world through. There goes a tradition
that these are the portraits of Luther and Calvin. Giorgioni died at the
age of thirty-four, heart-broken, it is said, because one of his
scholars had robbed him of his mistress—possibly the very beauty whose
picture is introduced here. Leo X., by Raphael, that fine, stern,
globular head, on which ‘deliberation sits and public care,’ is in the
same room with the Cardinal Bentivoglio, one of Vandyke’s happiest and
most _spiritual_ heads—a fine group of portraits by Rubens, of himself,
his brother, Grotius and Justus Lipsius, all in one frame—an admirable
Holy Family, in this master’s very best manner, by Julio Romano—and the
Madonna della Seggia of Raphael—all of these were formerly in the
Louvre. The last is painted on wood, and worn, so as to have a crayon
look. But for the grouping, the unconscious look of intelligence in the
children, and the rounding and fleshiness of the forms of their limbs,
this is one of the artist’s most unrivalled works. There are also
several by Andrea del Sarto, conceived and finished with the highest
taste and truth of feeling; a Nymph and Satyr by Giorgioni, of great
gusto; Hercules and Antæus, by Schiavoni (an admirable study of bold
drawing and poetical colouring), an unfinished sketch by Guido, several
by Cigoli and Fra. Bartolomeo; a girl in a flowered dress, by Titian (of
which Mr. Northcote possesses a beautiful copy by Sir Joshua); another
portrait of a Man in front view and a Holy Family, by the same; and one
or two fine pieces by Rubens and Rembrandt. There is a Parmegiano here,
in which is to be seen the origin of Mr. Fuseli’s style, a child in its
mother’s lap, with its head rolling away from its body, the mother’s
face looking down upon it with green and red cheeks tapering to a point,
and a thigh of an angel, which you cannot well piece to an urn which he
carries in his hand, and which seems like a huge scale of the
‘shard-borne beetle.’—The grotesque and discontinuous are, in fact,
carried to their height. Here is also the Conspiracy of Catiline, by
Salvator Rosa, which looks more like a Cato-street Conspiracy than any
thing else, or a bargain struck in a blacksmith’s shop; and a
Battle-piece by the same artist, with the round haunches and flowing
tail of a white horse repeated, and some fierce faces, hid by the smoke
and their helmets, of which you can make neither head nor tail. Salvator
was a great landscape-painter; but both he and Lady Morgan have been
guilty of a great piece of _egotism_ in supposing that he was any thing
more. These are the chief failures, but in general out of heaps of
pictures there is scarce one that is not of the highest interest both in
itself, and from collateral circumstances. Those who come in search of
high Italian art will here find it in perfection; and if they do not
feel this, they may turn back at once. The pictures in the Pitti Palace
are finely preserved, and have that deep, mellow tone of age upon them
which is to the eyes of a connoisseur in painting as the rust of medals
or the crust on wine is to connoisseurs and judges of a different stamp.