THE MADONNA OF FOLIGNO—RAPHAEL.
None who has seen this picture at Foligno, will recognize it here. Whatever praise the ingenious and complicated process of restoration may deserve, that of having restored to the picture its original and primitive tone makes certainly no part of it: as well might the ingredients of a dish ready-dressed by a restaurateur of the Palais Royal, be said to resemble the unprepared viands of which it is composed. I am far from ascribing the want of resemblance to the restoration; it could only give what remained—the bleak crudity of its aspect. The comparative imbecility of some of its parts accuse another hand that succeeded.[52] Pictures ex voto can claim little merit from composition. "The Madonna" of Foligno, and the "St. Cecilia" of Raphael; the "St. Sebastian" of Titian, &c. are discriminated from each other by little else than by a more or less picturesque conception of the ground on, or before which the figures are placed: it is expression, therefore, which makes their chief merit, and this is the great loss which we have suffered in the "Madonna of Foligno." Neither the "St. John," the "St. Jerome," nor the head of "St. Francis," acknowledge the hand, the eye, or the feelings of Raphael. The "St. John," though perhaps not even in its original state sufficiently dignified, is become a savage, and what is worse, a French one. The "St. Francis," and "St. Jerome," have been tinted into insipidity; but the head of "Sigismond Conti," the "Madonna and Child," appear to have suffered less, and the angelic countenance of "The Cherub with the Tablet," beams with its primitive radiance the impasto of Raphael.