DISCOVERY OF A RAPHAEL.
A subscription was opened on the spot, promoted by the Cavaliere Alessandro Saracini, the Count Scipione Borghese, the Count Augusto dei Gori, and the Marquis Alessandro Bichi-Ruspoli. The statue which they ordered was of the Pontiff Pius II., Eneas Silvius Piccolomini.
These four gentlemen were good friends of mine; but I saw Saracini oftenest, as he came to Florence on business affairs. He had an intelligent love of Art, which he practised a little for his amusement, and he was President of the Institute of Fine Arts at Siena. One day he came to me quite breathless. He said that he had seen, in a shop or store-house near the Via Faenza, a wall all painted over, and that it was concealed by carriages, carts, wheels, and poles—in fact, it was at a carriage-maker's.
"But what painting is it?" I asked.
"I do not know—I cannot say what it is; but it appears to me very beautiful," he replied. "It is like Perugino, or certainly of his school."
"Wait a moment," I said; "here in the neighbourhood is some one who understands these things better than you or I;" and we went to Count Carlo della Porta, and to Ignazio Zotti, painters who lived in the Niccolini building with me. They lost no time, and we all four went to the place. Carlo della Porta having placed a ladder against the wall, mounted, and stayed there only a few moments, then descended, and made Zotti go up. They then, after exchanging some words, expressed the opinion that it was by Raphael.
The clearing out of this place, and the arguments for and against the decision on the part of the Government, and the ultimate destination of the picture, are all well known, and I pass to other things. Having finished the Giotto, I went to Rome to make studies there for the statue of Pius II. I stayed there a month, and lived at the Hotel Cesari, Piazza di Pietra. It was the month of December 1844.
MY FOLLY AT ROME.
I must confess, whatever it costs me, that the Eternal City did not make the most favourable impression upon me; and except the ruins of ancient Rome, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Forum, with its triumphal arches and colonnades, all the rest excited in me no enthusiasm. But I must admit I had been spoiled by too much praise; and I was so vain, that while I accepted everything with apparent modesty, I was so puffed up internally with pride that at times it would show itself in spite of me. I remember once at the house of the Signora Clementina Carnevali, where every evening were to be seen all the most distinguished persons in Rome, either in letters or art, strangers as well as Italians,—I remember, I say, to have replied in a most impertinent manner to some one who asked me how I liked the monuments and the art of Rome, and what above all had most pleased me. I replied—and I blush to repeat it—"What I like best is the stewed broccoli"—a reply as outrageously stupid as insolent, and I wonder that those who heard it could have taken it in good part. For myself, as I feel to-day, if a young artist had replied to me in such a manner, he would have got little good out of it, and so much the better for him!
But I had better luck; my foolish reply was repeated by every one, and so clouded by vanity and pride were my eyes, that I fancied it excited mirth and approbation, while it really deserved only compassion.