INTRODUCTION.
After the fall of Napoleon had given peace to Europe, and insipidity to a soldier’s life, I returned with my regiment to B——, and too soon discovered that the lounging habits and quiet security of parade and garrison service were miserable substitutes for the high and stirring excitement of the bivouac, the skirmish, and the battle. I found myself gradually sinking into a state of mental atrophy, perilous alike to physical and moral health; and, after a fruitless struggle of some months with these morbid longings for old habits and associations, I determined to quit the army, and to realise the favourite daydream of my early youth—a walk through Italy; hoping, by two years of travel and incessant intercourse with men and books, to gain a fresh hold upon life and happiness, and to repair, in some measure, those deficiencies in my education, which the premature adoption of a military life had necessarily involved.
Pausing a few days at Vienna, I formed a friendly intimacy with a young and intelligent Venetian, of the ancient senatorial house of F——i; and, on my return through Venice, after a rewarding and delightful residence of two years in various parts of Italy, I met my Vienna friend in one of the taverns of St Mark’s. After a cordial greeting, he told me that he was obliged to leave Venice on the ensuing day, to take possession of an estate and villa in Lombardy, bequeathed to him by a deceased relative. The gardens, he added, covered the slope of a woody hill, which commanded a wide view over the classic shores and environs of the Lake of Garda; and the mansion, although time-worn and ruinous, contained some fine old paintings, and a store of old books and manuscripts which had not seen the light for ages. I had already experienced the keen delight of exploring the mines of literary wealth contained in the old libraries of Italy, and I did not hesitate to accept the cordial invitation to accompany him which closed this alluring description of his Lombard villa.
We left Venice the following morning, and, proceeding by easy journeys through Padua and Verona, we reached the villa on the evening of the third day, and installed ourselves in the least decayed apartments of the ruinous but still imposing and spacious mansion. On the ensuing day I rose early, and hastened to examine some large fresco paintings in the saloon, which had powerfully excited my curiosity during a cursory view by lamp-light. They were admirably designed, and, from the recurrence in all of the remarkable form and features of a young man of great personal beauty, they were evidently a connected series; but, with the exception of two, the colouring and details were nearly obliterated by time and the humid air from the contiguous lake. Upon scrolls beneath the two least injured paintings were the inscriptions of La Scoperta and La Vendetta; and the incidents delineated in them were so powerfully drawn, and so full of dramatic expression, that a novelist of moderate ingenuity would readily have constructed from them an effective romance. The picture subscribed La Scoperta represented the interior of an elegant saloon decorated in Italian taste with pictures, busts, and candelabra. In the foreground was seated a young artist in the plain garb rendered familiar to modern eyes by the portraits of Raphael and other painters of the sixteenth century; a short cloak and doublet of black cloth, and tight black pantaloons of woven silk. The form and features of this youth were eminently noble. His countenance beamed with dignity and power, and his tall figure displayed a classic symmetry and grandeur which forcibly reminded me of that magnificent statue, the reposing Discobolus. Before him were an easel and canvass, on which was distinguishable the roughly sketched likeness of a robust and middle-aged man sitting opposite to him in the middle-ground of the picture, and richly attired in a Spanish mantle of velvet. His sleeves were slashed and embroidered in the fashion of the period, and his belt and dagger glittered with adornments of gold and jewels; while his golden spurs, and the steel corselet which covered his ample chest, indicated a soldier of distinguished rank. In the background stood a tall and handsome youth leaning with folded arms against the window-niche. He was attired in the splendid costume of the Venetian nobles, as represented in the portraits of Titian and Paul Veronese, and his dark eyes were fixed upon the painter and his model with an expression of intense and wondering solicitude. And truly the impassioned looks and attitudes of the individuals before him were well adapted to excite sympathy and astonishment. The young artist sat erect, his tall figure somewhat thrown back, and his right hand, holding the pencil, was resting on the elbow of his chair; while from his glowing and dilated features, intense hatred and mortal defiance blazed out upon the man whose portrait he had begun to paint. In the delineation of the broad and knitted brow, the eagle-fierceness of the full and brilliant eye, and the stern compression of the lips, the unknown artist had been wonderfully successful, and not less so in the display of very opposite emotions in the harsh and repulsive lineaments of the personage sitting for his portrait. The wild expression of every feature indicated that he had suddenly made some strange and startling discovery. His face was of a livid and deadly yellow; his small and deep-set eyes were fixed in the wide stare of terror upon the artist; and his person was half raised from his seat, while his hands convulsively clutched the elbows of the chair. In short, his look and gesture were those of a man who, while unconscious of danger, had suddenly roused a sleeping lion.
The companion picture, called La Vendetta, portrayed a widely different scene and circumstance. The locality was a deep ravine, the shelving sides of which were thickly covered with trees; and the background of this woody hollow was blocked up to a considerable height by the leafy branches of recently hewn timber. In the right foreground were two horses, saddled and bridled, and at their feet the bleeding corpses of two men, clothed in splendid Greek costume. On the left of the painting appeared the young Venetian nobleman before described: he was on horseback, and watching, with looks of deep interest and excitement, the issue of a mortal combat between the two prominent figures in La Scoperta. But here the younger man was no longer in the plain and unassuming garb of an artist. He was attired in a richly embroidered vest of scarlet and gold; white pantaloons of woven silk displayed advantageously the full and perfect contour of his limbs; while a short mantello of dark-blue velvet fell gracefully from his shoulders, and a glossy feather in his Spanish hat waved over his fine features, which told an eloquent tale of triumph and of gratified revenge.
His antagonist, a man of large and muscular proportions, was apparelled as in the other picture, excepting that he had no mantle, and was cased in back and breast armour of scaled steel. He had been just disarmed; his sword, of formidable length, had flown above his head; while a naked dagger lay on the ground under his left hand, which hung lifeless by his side, and from a gaping wound in the wrist issued a stream of blood.
The sword-point of the young painter was buried in the throat of his mailed opponent, whose livid hue and rayless eyeballs already indicated that his wound was mortal.
I was intently gazing upon these mysterious pictures when my friend entered the saloon, and in reply to my eager inquiries, informed me that the series of paintings around us portrayed some romantic family incidents which had occurred in the sixteenth century; and that these frescos had been designed by an able amateur artist, who was indeed the hero of this romance of Italian life, and after whom this apartment was still called the Saloon of Colonna. The late proprietor of the villa, he continued, had mentioned some years since the discovery of a manuscript in the library, which gave a detailed account of the incidents on these pictured walls, and which, if we could find it, would well reward the trouble of perusal.
My curiosity received a fresh impulse from this intelligence. Telling my friend that I would investigate his books while he visited his tenants, I proceeded after breakfast to the library; and, after some hours of fruitless search, I discovered, in a mass of worm-eaten manuscripts, an untitled, but apparently connected narrative, which forcibly arrested my attention by the romantic charm of the incidents, the energy of the language, and the spirited criticisms on fine art with which it was interwoven. The hero of the tale was an ardent and imaginative Italian; at once a painter and an improvisatore; a man of powerful and expansive intellect; and glowing with intense enthusiasm for classic and ancient lore, and for the beautiful in art and nature. The diction of this manuscript was, like the man it portrayed, lofty and impassioned; and, when describing the rich landscapes of Italy, or the wonders of human art which adorn that favoured region, it occasionally rose into a sustained harmony, a rhythmical beauty and balance, of which no modern language but that of Italy is susceptible. Dipping at random through its pages, I saw with delight the name of Colonna; and, ere long, discovered an animated description of the singular scene portrayed in La Scoperta.
On my friend’s return in the evening, I held up the manuscript in triumph as he approached; and, after a repast in the Colonna saloon, F——i, who, although a Venetian, could read his native tongue with Roman purity of accent, opened at my request the time-stained volume, and read as follows.