His ghastly Medusa made me shudder while it fascinated me, as if in those loathsome snakes, writhing and glittering round the expiring head, and those abhorred and fiendish abominations crawling into life, there still lurked the fabled spell which petrified the beholder. Poor Medusa! was this the guerdon of thy love? and were those the tresses which enslaved the ocean's lord? Methinks that in this wild mythological fiction, in the terrific vengeance which Minerva takes for her profaned temple, and in the undying snakes which for ever hiss round the head of her victim—there is a deep moral, if woman would lay it to her heart.
In Guercino's Endymion, the very mouth is asleep: in his Sybil the very eyes are prophetic, and glance into futurity.
The boyish, but divine St. John, by Raffaelle, did not please me so well as some of his portraits and Madonnas; his Leo the Tenth, for instance, his Julius the Second, or even his Fornarina: and I may observe here, that I admire Titian's taste much more than Raffaelle's, en fait de maîtresse. The Fornarina is a mere femme du peuple, a coarse virago, compared to the refined, the exquisite La Manto, in the Pitti Palace. I think the Flora must have been painted from the same lovely model, as far as I can judge from compared recollections, for I have no authority to refer to. The former is the most elegant, and the latter the most poetical female portrait I ever saw. At Titian's Venus in the Tribune, one hardly ventures to look up; it is the perfection of earthly loveliness, as the Venus de' Medici is all ideal—all celestial beauty. In the multiplied copies and engravings of this picture I see every where the bashful sweetness of the countenance, and the tender languid repose of the figure are made coarse, or something worse: degraded, in short, into a character altogether unlike the original.
I say nothing of the Gallery of the Palazzo Pitti; which is not a collection so much as a selection of the most invaluable gems and masterpieces of art. The imagination dazzled and bewildered by excellence can scarcely make a choice—but I think the Madonna Della Seggiola of Raffaelle, Allori's magnificent Judith, Guido's Cleopatra, and Salvator's Catiline, dwell most upon my memory.
Nov. 24.—After dinner, we drove to the beautiful gardens of the Villa Strozzi, on the Monte Ulivetto, and the evening we spent at the Cocomero, where we saw a detestable opera, capitally acted, and heard the most vile, noisy, unmeaning music, sung to perfection.
Nov. 26.—Yesterday we spent some hours at Morghen's gallery, looking over his engravings; and afterwards examined the bronze gates of the Baptistery, which Michel Angelo used to call the gates of Paradise. We then ascended the Campanile or Belfry Tower to see the view from its summit. Florence lay at our feet, diminished to a model of itself, with its walls and gates, its streets and bridges, palaces and churches, all and each distinctly visible; and beyond, the Val d'Arno with its amphitheatre of hills, its villas, and its vineyards—classical Fesole, with its ruined castle, and Monte Ulivetto, with its diadem of cypresses; luxuriant nature and graceful art, blending into one glorious picture, which no smoky vapours, no damp exhalations, blotted and discoloured; but all was serenely bright and fair, gay with moving life, and rich with redundant fertility.
"O dell' Etruria gran Città Reina,
D'arti e di studj e di grand' or feconda;
Cui tra quanto il sol guarda, e 'l mar circonda,
Ogn' altra in pregio di belta s' inchina:
Monti superbi, la cui fronte alpina
Fa di sè contra i venti argine e sponda:
Valli beate, per cui d'onda in onda
L'Arno con passo signoril cammina:
Bei soggiorni ove par ch' abbiansi eletto
Le grazie il seggio, e, come in suo confine,
Sia di natura il bel tutto ristretto, &c."
Filicaja will be pardoned for his hyperboles by all who remember that he was himself a Florentine.