PETITION FOR A GOVERNMENT STUDIO.
Montalvo was a perfect gentleman, and of an ancient and wealthy family, instructed in the history of art, a great admirer of it, and a very good friend of all artists, especially of those who to their artistic skill added an outward practice of religious duties, to which he was a devotee—though, as far as sentiment, enthusiasm, and real taste for art go, he was not distinguished.
Accordingly, I went one morning to pay him a visit at his rooms in the gallery of the Uffizi—he being also a Director of the Royal Gallery. I must here premise that I was not much in his good graces, because I had not studied at the Academy, which he believed to be the true nursery of an artist. As soon as he saw me, suspecting perhaps what I had come to ask, he said to me—
"And what do you want?"
"I come, Signor President, to say to you that I have made a petition to his Royal Highness the Grand Duke in the hope of obtaining a studio to make a model of a statue that I wish to exhibit this year in the Academy. My means are narrow, because I have a family; and before presenting this petition to the Sovereign, I have thought it my duty to inform you, and at the same time to beg your aid, and to use your influence that it may be answered favourably."
GOVERNMENT STUDIO REFUSED.
He answered, "You are not a pupil of the Academy, and therefore you have no right to ask for a studio, which the grace of the Sovereign grants only to those who have completed their studies in our Academy of Fine Arts."
"If I have not studied," I answered, "at the Academy, I have competed there, and gained the triennial prize, which is the end of the studies at the Academy."
The good Signor replied with impatience, "Which, then, do you think that you are, Canova or Thorwaldsen?"
"God save us, Signor President, I never thought this! But it may be permitted to me to observe, that even Canova and Thorwaldsen began from small beginnings, and were not born at once great sculptors, as Minerva sprung from the head of Jove."