CHAPTER XVII
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.