While I was thus speaking she stood disquieted and frowning, and then said that it was unjust, absurd, and ridiculous, and that I must not give heed to him, but that she should stay, and I must go on with the portrait. After a while, however, she grew calmer, and decided to go away; and this was well. But she did not give up the matter, and the day after, she wrote to me to say that she should return to give me more sittings. I had not yet thrown down the clay, not only on account of my natural unwillingness to do so, which is excusable, but also because of the advice of Prince Jerome, the brother of the Princess Matilde, who insisted that the Prince could not pretend to anything more than that the work should be suspended. But of this I was a safer and better advised judge than he, and well knew that a husband is the legitimate master of his own wife, and of any portrait of her. But I repeat, I allowed the statuette to remain because I disliked to destroy it. The Princess did not return as she had promised, and wrote again to me to expect her another day. This went on for some time; and finally, when I saw her again, she told me that she was going to Paris with the Prince, and that on her return we must go on, and if the Prince persisted in his ideas, she would recompense me for the work I had done on it.
In fact, she went to Paris with the Prince, and there she remained; while he, recalled by the Emperor Nicholas of Russia, went to St Petersburg, where he found that a decree of divorce had been demanded by the Princess and signed by the Emperor. The Prince gave me nothing further to do, except some slight things which are scarcely worth mentioning, and the Princess entirely forgot her promise. And as I am now on this matter, and in order to make an end of it, let me leap over eleven years, and say that, having exhibited in Paris at the Exposition of 1855, besides the model in plaster of the Abel (as I have before narrated), a reproduction in small of this statue in marble, which I desired to sell, I wrote to the Princess asking her to purchase it. This I did to remind her indirectly of her promise to recompense me for the labour I had given to her statuette, but she never answered. I now make another leap over twelve years more. In the Exposition Universelle at Paris in 1867, I was one of the Italian Jury on Sculpture; and one evening, at a reception at the Tuilleries, I was presented by our minister Nigra to the Emperor, who had on his arm the Princess Matilde. As soon as she saw me she said, "We have known each other a long time;" but I, remembering how she had treated me, pretended to have no remembrance of her. And the Emperor looked at me through his sleepy eyes, and must have thought me either remarkably forgetful or a great fool. The Princess, naturally, never deigned to give me another look.
I MEET THE PRINCESS IN PARIS.
And now again I return to my works. After Pius II., I put up a figure of life-size representing Innocence. This was ordered of me by Signor Tommasi of Leghorn; but later, with my full consent, it remained on my hands, and was bought by Prince Constantine of Russia. I have determined not to judge my own works, though here and there I may give a little hint; but in order that these memoirs may be of some use, it is well that I should indicate the spirit of the principles which guided me in my work. I have said that my faith in the pure imitation of nature was somewhat shaken by the criticisms of my Giotto as being too naturalistic. Some reasonings by my friends, and above all, certain articles by Giuseppe Arcangeli in the 'Rivista, Sul Bello Ideale,' as well as the compliments and eulogies of my statue of Innocence by Borghi, finally persuaded me that there does exist a bello ideale impossible to find in nature, and this beauty should be arrived at by an imitation of the antique, and by the aid of memory.
IDEALISTS AND NATURALISTS.
Nothing is more dangerous than this theory. Beauty is scattered over universal nature. The artist born to feel and perceive this beauty (which is the object of art) has his mind and heart always exercised in seeking it out and expressing it. He discerns in nature one or more living forms that in some degree approximate to the type he has in his mind, and the reality of these, by strengthening his ideals, enables him to work the latter properly out. The artist who is without his ideal, and forces himself to find it outside of nature, torturing his memory with what he has seen or studied in the works of others, makes but a cold and conventional work. The animating spark, the heat, the life, does not inform his work, for he is not the father, but only the stepfather of his children. To this school belong the imitators—that is, the timid friends of nature.
On the other side, but in much greater numbers and with much greater petulance, are the naturalisti, who despise every kind of ideality, and especially despise it because they have it not. Neither is their heart warmed by strong and sweet affections, nor do they with their eyes or their mind seize, among the multiform shapes of nature, a type, a movement, or an expression which, assiduously pursued, awakens and fecundates the idea within them. The first ruffian or harlot of the streets taken by evil chance suffices for them, and they delight to drag this noble art of ours through filth and ugliness.
BAD EFFECTS OF EULOGY.
Each of these extremes I have sought to avoid. But it is none the less true that, at the period to which I have arrived in my narrative, I was carried a little away, by the discourses and writings of literary men and critics of Art, on the road that leads to the conventional and academic. This bad influence weakened my faith in nature and my courage in my work. And the Pius II., the Innocence, and the Purity are, so to speak, the mirrors in which are reflected my want of faith, uncertainty, and weakness of mind during these three years of artistic irresolution. In seeking after the perfect I lost the little good that my genius had produced in my first years, uninfluenced by all these discussions, and what is of more importance, by all eulogies both of good and of bad alloy. Yes, also of bad alloy. The young artist should take heed of all the praise that he receives. He should hold it in suspicion, and weigh it, and make a large deduction. Eulogy is like a perfume, grateful to the sense, but it is better to inhale it but little, little, little, because it goes to the head, lulls us to sleep, and sometimes intoxicates us and bewilders us so that we lose our compass. One must be prudent. Flowers of too strong an odour must be kept outside the room. Air is necessary—air. I hope that these words will fall into the ear of some to whom they may do good—I mean, of those who not only sniff up praise with eagerness, but are discontented because they do not think it sufficient, and who re-read it and talk of it with others so as to prolong their pleasure, and preserve all the papers and writings which speak of them, without perceiving that this is all vanity and pettiness of heart.
INJUDICIOUS PRAISE.