'September 20th.—To-day, after lunch, Andrea Sperelli invited me and Francesca to come to his room and look at some drawings that had arrived for him yesterday from Rome.
'It would not be too much to say that an entire Art has passed before our eyes to-day—an art studied and analysed by the hand of a master draughtsman. I have never experienced a more intense pleasure.
'The drawings are Sperelli's own work—studies, sketches, notes, mementos of every gallery in Europe; they are, so to speak, his breviary, a wonderful breviary in which each of the Old Masters has his special page, affording a condensed example of his manner, bringing out the most lofty and original beauties of his work, the punctum saliens of his entire productions. In going through the large collection, not only have I received a distinct impression of the various schools, the movements, the influences which have combined to develop the art of painting in various countries, but I feel that I have had a glimpse into the spirit, the essential meaning of the art of each individual painter. I am as if intoxicated with art, my brain is full of lines and figures, but in the midst of the apparent confusion there stand out clearly before me the women of the early masters, those never-to-be-forgotten heads of Saints and Virgins which smiled down upon my childish piety in old Sienna from the frescoes of Taddeo and Simone.
'No masterpiece of art, however advanced and brilliant, leaves upon the mind so strong and enduring an impression. All these slender forms, delicate and drooping as lily-buds, these grave and noble attitudes for receiving a flower offered by an angel, placing the fingers on an open book, bending over the Holy Infant, or supporting the body of Christ; in the act of blessing, of agonising, of ascending into Heaven—all these things, so pure, so sincere, so profoundly touching, affect the soul to its depths and imprint themselves for ever on the memory.
'Thus, one by one, the women of the Early Masters passed in review before us. Francesca and I were seated on a low couch with a great stand before us, on which lay the portfolio containing the drawings which the artist, seated opposite, slowly turned over, commenting on each in succession. I watched his hand as he took up a sheet and placed it with peculiar care on the other side of the portfolio, and each time I felt a sort of thrill, as if that hand were going to touch me—Why?—
'Presently, his position doubtless becoming uncomfortable, he knelt on the floor, and in that attitude continued turning over the drawings. In speaking, he nearly always addressed himself to me, not at all with the air of imparting instruction, but as if discussing the pictures with a person as familiar with the subject as he was himself; and, at the bottom of my heart, I was conscious of a sense of complacency mingled with gratitude. Whenever I exclaimed in admiration, he looked at me with a smile which I can still see, but cannot define. Two or three times, Francesca rested her arm on his shoulder in unconscious familiarity. Looking at the head of the first-born of Moses, copied from Botticelli's fresco in the Sistine Chapel, she said—"It has a look of you when you are in one of your melancholy moods."—And when we came to the head of the Archangel Michael from Perugino's Madonna of Pavia, she remarked—-"It is a little like Giulia Moceto, is it not?" He did not answer, but only turned the page over rather sooner than usual. Upon which she added with a laugh—"Away with the pictures of sin!"
'This Giulia Moceto is, I suppose, some one he was once in love with. The page once turned, I had a wild, unreasoning desire to look at the Michael again and examine the face more closely. Was it merely artistic curiosity?
'I cannot say, I dare not pry into my heart, I prefer to temporise, to deceive myself; I have not the courage to face the battle, I am a coward.
'And yet the present is so sweet. My imagination is as excited as if I had drunk strong tea. I have no desire to go to bed. The night is soft and warm as if it were August, the sky is cloudless but dimly veiled, the breathing of the sea comes slow and deep, but the fountains fill up the pauses. The loggia attracts me—shall we go out and dream a little, my heart and I?—dream of what?
'The eyes of the Virgins and the Saints pursue me—deep-set, long and narrow, with meekly downcast lids, from under which they gaze at one with that charmed look—innocent as the dove, and yet a little side-long like the serpent. "Be ye harmless as doves and wise as serpents," said Our Lord—