Churches, and palaces, and statues, are no doubt ornamental to a city; and the Princes are praise-worthy who have taken pains to rear and collect them; but the greatest of all ornaments are cheerful, happy, living countenances. The taste is not general; but, I thank God, I know some people who, to a perfect knowledge and unaffected love of the fine arts, join a passion for a collection of this kind, who cannot, without uneasiness, see one face in a different style, and whose lives and fortunes are employed in smoothing the corrosions of penury and misfortune, and restoring the original air of satisfaction and cheerfulness to the human countenance. Happy the people whose Sovereign is inspired with this species of virtù!
LETTER LXXI.
Florence.
I have generally, since our arrival at Florence, passed two hours every forenoon in the famous gallery. Connoisseurs, and those who wish to be thought such, remain much longer. But I plainly feel this is enough for me; and I do not think it worth while to prolong my visit after I begin to be tired, merely to be thought what I am not. Do not imagine, however, that I am blind to the beauties of this celebrated collection; by far the most valuable now in the world.
One of the most interesting parts of it, in the eyes of many, is the series of Roman Emperors, from Julius Cæsar to Gallienus, with a considerable number of their Empresses, arranged opposite to them. This series is almost complete; but wherever the bust of an Emperor is wanting, the place is filled up by that of some other distinguished Roman. Such an honour is bestowed with great propriety on Seneca, Cicero, or Agrippa, the son-in-law of Augustus. But, on perceiving a head of Antinous, the favourite of Adrian, among them, a gentleman whispered me,—that minion, pointing to the head, would not have been admitted into such company any where but in Florence. It ought, however, to be remembered, that the Gallery is not an Ægyptian court of judicature, where Princes are tried, after death, for crimes committed during their life. If the vices of originals had excluded their portraits, what would have become of the series of Roman Emperors, and particularly of the bust of the great Julius himself, who was husband to all the wives and —— —— —— The gallery is sacred to art, and every production which she avows, has a right to a place here.
Amidst those noble specimens of ancient sculpture, some of the works of Michael Angelo are not thought undeserving a place. His Bacchus and Faunus, of which the well-known story is told, have been by some preferred to the two antique figures representing the same.
The beautiful head of Alexander is universally admired by all the virtuosi; though they differ in opinion with regard to the circumstance in which the sculptor has intended to represent that hero. Some imagine he is dying; Mr. Addison imagines he sighs for new worlds to conquer; others that he faints with pain and loss of blood from the wounds he received at Oxydrace. Others think the features express not bodily pain or languor, but sorrow and remorse, for having murdered his faithful friend Clitus. You see how very uncertain a business this of a virtuoso is. I can hardly believe that the artist intended simply to represent him dying; there was nothing very creditable in the manner he brought on his death. Nor do I think he would choose to represent him moaning, or languishing with pain or sickness; there is nothing heroic in that; nor do we sympathise so readily with the pains of the body, as with those of the mind. As for the story of his weeping for new worlds, he will excite still less sympathy, if that is the cause of his affliction. The last conjecture, therefore, that the artist intended to represent him in a violent fit of remorse, is the most probable. The unfinished bust of Marcus Brutus, by Michael Angelo, admirably expresses the determined firmness of character which belonged to that virtuous Roman. The artist, while he wrought at this, seems to have had in his mind Horace’s Ode