I pass twenty others in order to reserve the last look for Titian's two Venuses. One, facing the door, reclines on a red velvet mantle, an ample vigorous torso as powerful as one of Rubens' Bacchantes, but firmer—an energetic and vulgar figure, a simple, strong unintellectual courtezan. She lies extended on her back, caressing a little cupid naked like herself, with the vacant seriousness and passivity of soul of an animal in repose and expectant. The other, called "Venus with the Dog," is a patrician's mistress, couched, adorned and ready. We recognize a palace of the day, the alcove fitted up and colors tastefully and magnificently contrasted for the pleasure of the eye; in the background are servants arranging clothes; through a window a section of blue landscape is visible; the master is about to arrive.
Nowadays we devour pleasure secretly like stolen fruit; then it was served up on golden salvers and people sat down to it at a table. It is because pleasure was not vile or bestial. This woman holding a bouquet in her hand in this grand columnar saloon has not the vapid smile or the wanton and malicious air of an adventuress about to commit a bad action. The calm of evening enters the palace through noble architectural openings. Under the pale green of the curtains lies the figure on a white sheet, slightly flushed with the regular pulsation of life, and developing the harmony of her undulating forms. The head is small and placid; the soul does not rise above the corporal instincts; hence she can resign herself to them without shame, while the poesy of art, luxury and security on all sides comes to decorate and embellish them. She is a courtezan but also a lady; in those days the former did not efface the latter; one was as much a title as the other and, probably, in demeanor, affection and intellect one was as good as the other. The celebrated Imperia had her tomb in the church of San Gregorio, at Rome, with this inscription: "Imperia, a Roman courtezan worthy of so great a name, furnished an example to men of perfect beauty, lived twenty-six years and twelve days, and died in 1511, August 25." ...
On passing from the Italian into the Flemish galleries one is completely turned around; here are paintings executed for merchants content to remain quietly at home eating good dinners and speculating over the profits of their business; moreover in rainy and muddy countries dress has to be cared for, and by the women more than the men. The mind feels itself contracted on entering the circle of this well-to-do domestic life; such is the impression of Corinne when from liberal Italy she passes to rigid and dreary Scotland. And yet there is a certain picture, a large landscape by Rembrandt, which equals and surpasses all; a dark sky bursting with showers among flocks of screaming crows; beneath, is an infinite stretch of country as desolate as a cemetery; on the right a mass of barren rocks of so mournful and lugubrious a tint as to attain to the sublime in effect. So is it with an andante of Beethoven after an Italian Opera.
FLORENCE EIGHTY YEARS AGO[40]
BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
There is a great deal of prattle about Italian skies; the skies and clouds of Italy, so far as I have had an opportunity of judging, do not present so great a variety of beautiful appearances as our own; but the Italian atmosphere is far more uniformly fine than ours. Not to speak of its astonishing clearness, it is pervaded by a certain warmth of color which enriches every object. This is more remarkable about the time of sunset, when the mountains put on an aerial aspect, as if they belonged to another and fairer world; and a little after the sun has gone down, the air is flushed with a glory which seems to transfigure all that it encloses.
Many of the fine old palaces of Florence, you know, are built in a gloomy tho grand style of architecture, of a dark-colored stone, massive and lofty, and overlooking narrow streets that lie in almost perpetual shade. But at the hour of which I am speaking, the bright warm radiance reflected from the sky to the earth, fills the darkest lanes, streams into the most shadowy nooks, and makes the prison-like structures glitter as with a brightness of their own.
It is now nearly the middle of October, and we have had no frost. The strong summer heats which prevailed when I came hither, have by the slowest gradations subsided into an agreeable autumnal temperature. The trees keep their verdure, but I perceive their foliage growing thinner, and when I walk in the Cascine on the other side of the Arno, the rustling of the lizards, as they run among the heaps of crisp leaves, reminds me that autumn is wearing away, tho the ivy which clothes the old elms has put forth a profuse array of blossoms, and the walks murmur with bees like our orchards in spring. As I look along the declivities of the Appenines, I see the raw earth every day more visible between the ranks of olive-trees and the well-pruned maples which support the vines.
If I have found my expectations of Italian scenery, in some respects, below the reality; in other respects, they have been disappointed. The forms of the mountains are wonderfully picturesque, and their effect is heightened by the rich atmosphere through which they are seen, and by the buildings, imposing from their architecture or venerable from time, which crown the eminences. But if the hand of man has done something to embellish this region, it has done more to deform it. Not a tree is suffered to retain its natural shape, not a brook to flow in its natural channel. An exterminating war is carried on against the natural herbage of the soil. The country is without woods and green fields; and to him who views the vale of the Arno "from the top of Fiesole," or any of the neighboring heights, grand as he will allow the circle of the mountains to be, and magnificent the edifices with which the region is adorned, it appears, at any time after mid-summer, a huge valley of dust, planted with low rows of the pallid and thin-leaved olive, or the more dwarfish maple on which vines are trained.