You will certainly be glad to hear that on the first day of the Exhibition my picture was bought by the Queen.
I am at this moment in the thick of packing; you must excuse, dear Friend, my ending so abruptly. I will write again from England.—Your grateful pupil,
Fred Leighton.
Reproduction of Letter written by Sir Charles Eastlake, P.R.A., to Lord Leighton, announcing the fact that Queen Victoria had purchased his picture, "Cimabue's Madonna." 1855.[ToList]
So ended the first page of Leighton's life as an artist in the Rome of the fifties—a very different Rome to that of the present. The atmosphere was still steeped in those days with a flavour belonging to the Papal temporal dominion, and the visible life still picturesque with the costumes and grandeur of mediæval customs.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] See page 83.