[227] According to Nonius Marcellus: "By old Roman law, brides used to bring three asses (pennies), and to give one, which they held in the hand, to the bridegroom, as though to purchase him; to place another, which they held in the foot, on the hearth of the family Lares; and to put the third in their pocket and rattle it at the next cross-road."
[228] See, however, for some deductions afterwards made from this estimate, ibid. vol. iv. pt. v. ch. iii. §§ 6, 7.
[229] Elsewhere Ruskin makes some exception in favour of Ary Scheffer: "Though one of the heads of the Mud sentiment school, he does draw and feel very beautifully and deeply" (Letters on Art and Literature, p. 37).
[230] It was placed in their chapel in the church of S. Lorenzo in that city. There it remained till 1764, when it was bought for the Duke of Marlborough, and a copy replaced the original in the chapel.
[231] This picture and Van Dyck's "Charles the First" (1172) were bought in 1884 from the Duke of Marlborough for £87,500. Sir F. Burton, the Director of the National Gallery, had valued them at £115,500 and £31,500 severally. I remember once hearing Mr. Gladstone refer to this matter. His economic conscience seemed to give him some qualms on the score of the unprecedented price. But he took comfort in the fact that, large as was the price actually paid, the price asked by the owner, as also the valuation of the Director, was very much larger. "At any rate," he said with a smile, "I saved the taxpayers £45,000 on this Raphael, by not listening to the advice of the Director of the Gallery." The purchase had been pressed upon the Government by all sorts and conditions of men. The Royal Academy memorialised Mr. Gladstone, and pleaded especially for the Raphael—"a work produced in that happy period in which the reverent purity and the serene grace of the master's earliest work are already mellowing into the fuller dignity of his middle style." The Trustees of the National Gallery declared that the purchase would at once raise the Collection to a rank second to none, and superior to most, of the great Continental Galleries; whilst a memorial from members of Parliament of all parties, after referring to the Raphael as the finest in point of colouring that ever came from his hand, assured Mr. Gladstone that "their constituents and the whole nation will approve and applaud" a departure from "the hard line of severe economy." It appears from The Life and Correspondence of Mr. Childers (ii. 163), who was Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, that the purchase was first suggested by Queen Victoria.
[232] Sir Edward Poynter. The luminous quality of the picture conquered Mr. Ruskin. After one of his last visits to the National Gallery, he said to me: "The new Raphael is certainly lovely—quite the loveliest Raphael in the world. The 'San Sisto' is dark and brown beside it."
[233] In this matter of the open sky also the "Ansidei Madonna" is curiously transitional. "Raphael," says Ruskin (ibid. § 10), "in his fall, betrayed the faith he had received from his father and his master, and substituted for the radiant sky of the Madonna del Cardellino, the chamber-wall of the Madonna della Sediola, and the brown wainscot of the Baldacchino." Here we have both—the Baldacchino and the open sky behind.
[234] Mr. Monkhouse suggests alternative explanations. Who is the figure on the throne? "Is he meant for some intellectual Dives, learning too late that happiness exists not in luxury or knowledge? Is he the poet, musing in sadness and mental solitude on the mysteries of life, who cannot taste of its fruit or listen to its music, unconscious of the brute forces symbolised by the panther, and the vanity of human pride imaged by the peacock on the dead branch; or is he a philosopher imparting wisdom to the young? What matter, the picture charms like nature, because we cannot fathom it" (In the National Gallery, p. 234). In the case of Giorgione's frescoes at Venice, Vasari frankly "gave it up": "I, for my part, have never been able to understand what they mean, nor, with all the inquiries that I have made, could I ever find any one who did understand, or could explain them to me." But the theory that the subject in Renaissance pictures meant nothing—that details were treated from a purely pictorial point of view—is, as Dr. Richter has well observed, more convenient than correct. The clue to many of these unknown subjects is to be found in classical or Italian literature. Bellini's allegorical compositions have recently been thus interpreted. Titian's so-called "Sacred and Profane Love" has been identified by Herr Franz Wickhoff as an illustration of the story of Medea as told in the seventh book of the Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus, and the same author has also found the key to several works ascribed to Giorgione.
[235] Dr. Richter, who found these pictures in a Veronese palace, points out that the architecture in the background represents the old tower of the castle of Mantua (Art Journal, Feb. 1895). It has, however, been urged amongst other objections that the eagle on the banners belongs to neither of the two houses. Perhaps, therefore, the subject of the pictures is purely imaginary or borrowed from some romance of the time.
[236] See note on No. 591.