23.—Last night we had a numerous party, and Signor P. and his daughter came to sing. She is a private singer of great talent, and came attended by her lover or her fiancé; who, according to Italian custom, attends his mistress every where during the few weeks which precede their marriage. He is a young artist, a favourite pupil of Camuccini, and of very quiet, unobtrusive manners. La P. has the misfortune to be plain; her features are irregular, her complexion of a sickly paleness, and though her eyes are large and dark, they appeared totally devoid of lustre and expression. Her plainness, the bad taste of her dress, her awkward figure, and her timid and embarrassed deportment, all furnished matter of amusement and observation to some young people, (English of course,) whose propensities for quizzing exceeded their good breeding and good nature. Though La P. does not understand a word of either French or English, I thought she could not mistake the significant looks and whispers of which she was the object, and I was in pain for her, and for her modest lover. I drew my chair to the piano, and tried to divert her attention by keeping her in conversation, but I could get no farther than a few questions which were answered in monosyllables. At length she sang—and sang divinely: I found the pale automaton had a soul as well as a voice. After giving us, with faultless execution, as well as great expression, some of Rossini's finest songs, she sung the beautiful and difficult cavatina in Otello, "Assisa al piè d'un Salice," with the most enchanting style and pathos, and then stood as unmoved as a statue while the company applauded loud and long. A moment afterwards, as she stooped to take up a music book, her lover, who had edged himself by degrees from the door to the piano, bent his head too, and murmured in a low voice, but with the most passionate accent, "O brava, brava cara!" She replied only by a look—but it was such a look! I never saw a human countenance so entirely, so instantaneously changed in character: the vacant eyes kindled and beamed with tenderness: the pale cheek glowed, and a bright smile playing round her mouth, just parted her lips sufficiently to discover a set of teeth like pearls. I could have called her at that moment beautiful; but the change was as transient as sudden—it passed like a gleam of light over her face and vanished, and by the time the book was placed on the desk, she looked as plain, as stupid, and as statue-like as ever. I was the only person who had witnessed this little by-scene; and it gave me pleasant thoughts and interest for the rest of the evening.
Another trait of character occurred afterwards, which amused me, but in a very different style. Our new Danish friend, the Baron B——, told us he had once been present at the decapitation of nine men, having first fortified himself with a large goblet of brandy. After describing the scene in all its horrible details, and assuring us in his bad German French that it was "une chose bien mauvaise à voir," I could not help asking him with a shudder, how he felt afterwards; whether it was not weeks or months before the impressions of horror left his mind? He answered with smiling naïveté and taking a pinch of snuff, "Ma foi! madame, je n'ai pas pu manger de la viande toute cette journée-là?"
27.—We drove to the Palazzo Spada, to see the famous Spada Pompey, said to be the very statue at the base of which Cæsar fell. I was pleased to find, contrary to my expectations, that this statue has great intrinsic merit, besides its celebrity, to recommend it. The extremities of the limbs have a certain clumsiness which may perhaps be a feature of resemblance, and not a fault of the sculptor; but the attitude is noble, and the likeness of the head to the undisputed bust of Pompey in the Florentine gallery, struck me immediately. The Palazza Spada, with its splendid architecture, dirt, discomfort, and dilapidation, is a fair specimen of the Roman palaces in general. It contains a corridor, which from an architectural deception appears much longer than it really is. I hate tricks—in architecture especially. We afterwards visited the Pantheon, the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, (an odd combination of names,) and concluded the morning at Canova's. It is one of the pleasures of Rome to lounge in the studj of the best sculptors; and it is at Rome only that sculpture seems to flourish as in its native soil. Rome is truly the city of the soul, the home of art and artists. With the divine models of the Vatican ever before their eyes, these inspiring skies above their heads, and the quarries of marble at a convenient distance—it is here only they can conceive and execute those works which are formed from the beau-idéal; but it is not here they meet with patronage: the most beautiful things I have seen at the various studj have all been executed for English, German, and Russian noblemen. The names I heard most frequently were those of the Dukes of Bedford and Devonshire, Prince Esterhazy, and the King of England.
Canova has been accused of a want of simplicity, and of giving a too voluptuous expression to some of his figures: with all my admiration of his genius, I confess the censure just. It is particularly observable in the Clori svegliata (the Nymph awakened by Love), the Cupid and Psyche, for Prince Yousouppoff, the Endymion, the Graces, and some others.
In some of Thorwaldson's works there is exquisite grace, simplicity, and expression: the Shepherd Boy, the Adonis, the Jason, and the Hebe, have a great deal of antique spirit. I did not like the colossal Christ which the sculptor has just finished in clay: it is a proof that bulk alone does not constitute sublimity: it is deficient in dignity, or rather in divinity.
At Rodolf Schadow's, I was most pleased by the Cupid and the Filatrice. His Cupid is certainly the most beautiful Cupid I ever saw, superior, I think, both to Canova's and to Thorwaldson's. The Filatrice, though so exquisitely natural and graceful, a little disappointed me; I had heard much of it, and had formed in my own imagination an idea different and superior to what I saw. This beautiful figure has repose, simplicity, nature, and grace, but I felt a want—the want of some internal sentiment: for instance, if, instead of watching the rotation of her spindle with such industrious attention, the Filatrice had looked careless, or absent, or pensive, or disconsolate, (like Faust's Margaret at her spinning-wheel,) she would have been more interesting—but not perhaps what the sculptor intended to represent.
Schadow is ill, but we were admitted by his order into his private study; we saw there the Bacchante, which he has just finished in clay, and which is to emulate or rival Canova's Dansatrice. He has been at work upon a small but beautiful figure of a piping Shepherd-boy, which is just made out: beside it lay Virgil's Eclogues, and his spectacles were between the leaves.[J]
Almost every thing I saw at Max Laboureur's struck me as vapid and finikin. There were some pretty groups, but nothing to tempt me to visit it again.