It was, however, during the last years of his life that the Duke really made his most important acquisitions. In 1885, for the sum of £3,800, he bought from Mr. Fuller Russell the charming diptych painted in 1466 for Jeanne de France, daughter of Charles VII. This painting was formerly attributed to Memling, but Count Paul Durrieu now assigns it to Zanetto Bugatto of Milan, one of that master’s greatest pupils in Italy.
Plate XXIV.
Photo. Giraudon.
The Three Graces.
By Raphael.
Musée Condé.
In the same year Raphael’s picture of the Three Graces was purchased for the sum of £30,000 from the executors of the Earl of Dudley—a panel so small as not to exceed the dimensions of a man’s hand. The youthful Raphael in this composition was clearly inspired by the beautiful antique marble group at Siena; and we may observe how the genius of two great artists in two such diverse epochs can be happily blended together. The Three Graces at Chantilly and The Dream of a Knight at the National Gallery are not far apart and may probably both be dated at about 1500-1503; but around the former picture there seems to hang some unsolved problem. The Duc d’Aumale expresses himself about it in the following terms: “Are these really the Three Graces whom we have here before us? Or was it not rather the intention of Raphael to represent the Three Ages of Womanly Beauty? To the left the virgin with a veil around her slender hips; to the right the woman in her prime wearing a necklace of coral; and in the centre, with her back turned to the spectator, the woman in her full maturity, merely exhibiting her fine profile. Does not this picture imply that Woman at all ages holds in her hand the Empire of the World?”