199. Death and Assumption of the Virgin: Cola della Matrice.
"Here the death of the Virgin is treated at once in a mystical and dramatic style. Enveloped in a dark blue mantle, spangled with golden stars, she lies extended on a couch; St. Peter, in a splendid scarlet cope as bishop, reads the service; St. John, holding the palm, weeps bitterly. In front, and kneeling before the couch or bier, appear the three great Dominican saints as witnesses of the religious mystery; in the centre St. Dominic; on the left, St. Catherine of Siena; and on the right, St. Thomas Aquinas. In a compartment above is the Assumption."—Jameson's Legends of the Madonna, p. 315.
123. Virgin and Angels: Paul Veronese.
124. Rape of Europa: Paul Veronese.
At the head of the Capitol steps, to the right of the terrace, is the entrance to the Palazzo Caffarelli, the residence of the Prussian minister. It has a small but beautiful garden, and the view from the windows is magnificent.
"After dinner, Bunsen called for us, and took us first to his house on the Capitol, the different windows of which command the different views of ancient and modern Rome. Never shall I forget the view of the former; we looked down on the Forum, and just opposite were the Palatine and the Aventine, with the ruins of the Palace of the Cæsars on the one, and houses intermixed with gardens on the other. The mass of the Coliseum rose beyond the Forum, and beyond all, the wide plain of the Campagna to the sea. On the left rose the Alban hills, bright in the setting sun, which played full upon Frescati and Albano, and the trees which edge the lake, and further away in the distance, it lit up the old town of Labicum."—Arnold's Letters.
From the further end of the courtyard of the Caffarelli Palace one can look down upon part of the bare cliff of the Rupe Tarpeia. Here there existed till 1868 a small court, which is represented as the scene of the murder in Hawthorne's Marble Faun, or "Transformation." The door, the niche in the wall, and all other details mentioned in the novel, were realities. The character of the place is now changed by the removal of the boundary-wall. The part of the rock seen from here is that usually visited from below by the Via Tor de' Specchi.
To reach the principal portion of the south-eastern height of the Capitol, we must ascend the staircase beyond the Palace of the Conservators, on the right. Here we shall find ourselves upon the highest part of
"The Tarpeian rock, the citadel
Of great and glorious Rome, queen of the earth,
So far renown'd, and with the spoils enriched
Of nations."
Paradise Regained.
"The steep
Tarpeian, fittest goal of treason's race,
The promontory whence the traitor's leap
Cured all ambition."
Childe Harold.