With the World's Great Travellers, Volume 4

by Unknown

The magnificent frescos I admire as much as any one. But the thousands of Madonnas,—Raphael’s “Madonna di San Sisto,” which cost forty thousand dollars, I like better than any I have yet seen, next to that old painting of Leonardo da Vinci in the old church not far from Milan,—all the Madonnas have pretty eyes, pretty faces, pretty attitudes; but they do not come up to my idea of the Virgin. Then there are so many nude Venuses, and all sorts of nudities, that the artists who painted them ought to have been condemned to go without clothes, even in cold weather, to see how they would like it; and when they died they should have every bone in the human body carved as ornaments on their tombstone as I saw somewhere in my travels. The heads of the old men are exceedingly fine and natural; but many of the portraits have such affected attitudes that they seem ridiculous to me. I suppose it used to be the fashion to take an attitude when they sat for a portrait.

Mrs. Siddons’s portrait, in London, and one of Mary Queen of Scots and her page, were the most beautiful and faultless to my taste of all I saw in England.

Murillo’s beggar boys and girls did not know enough to assume an attitude; and of course they please, because they are natural.

Did you ever see persons sit where they could see themselves in a mirror, conversing, and still looking at themselves with a sort of half consciousness they were doing so, and thinking that you were not noticing that they did so? I say, did you ever notice what a ridiculous and puzzled expression it gives to their faces? Well, this is just the expression of the greater part of these so celebrated portraits and paintings. It is appalling to think of,—I mean my want of taste,—but I do like to see pictures look natural. “How will madame have potatoes, sauté or grillé, or au naturel?” The word naturel sounds so charmingly after all I have seen, that I reply joyously, “Au naturel;” and he brought me boiled potatoes,—just what I liked. I forgot to mention that we went again to the opera in Munich, in the small theatre in the king’s palace. The opera was “Alessandra Stradella,” by Flotow. I never heard sweeter music; and Nachbaur, who took the part of Stradella, was not only a magnificent tenor, but a perfect Adonis in person. He would meet with success in New York.

Yesterday we went to the royal palace, a very ancient and ungainly-looking building. Our object was to visit the green rooms, or vaults, which contain all kinds of rare objects-jewels, ivory, bronzes, and costly things,—which I suppose were intended to show the magnificence of the Saxon kings, who once were among the richest sovereigns in Europe. There are eight of these rooms on the ground-floor of the palace. I wish you could have been with us to have seen all the curiosities, and to have heard the custodian, who spoke English, tell us all about what he showed us. It is impossible to remember a tenth part of what one sees, so I was glad when the custodian said, as he entered the first room, which contains the bronzes, “Laties, here is more as a huntred fine bronzes; the best fon Italy, I show you ze masterpieces. Zis is Antinous; here is Apollo; dis leetle dog is curious; is of hammered iron, not cast hammered. ’Tis by Peter Vischer. You see he scratch himself,—very funny, very curious. Zis crucifix made by John of Bologna,—a masterpiece.” I kept close to him to ask him more particularly about many things. The next room was the ivory room. I wish you could have heard him pronounce “my lady” in three or four different ways. There were four hundred and eighty-four pieces of ivory wonderfully carved. “Here, melaty, one little piece. Two drunken musicians fighting. Made by Dinglinger.” “Who was Dinglinger?” I asked. “He was yeweller of te court, melaty.” After seeing all in the room, he said, “Zis way, laties, if you please, one leetle step down. Here are ze mosaics. Zis table Florentine mosaic; best of ze tables.” There were large life sized portraits on each side of the windows. I asked, “Whose portrait is this?” “Christian II., melaty. He always drink sixteen pottles of wine in one day,—sixteen pottles, melaty.” I was much pleased with a magnificent chimney-piece, made of the different kinds of china manufactured here, and ornamented with the various kinds of stone found in Saxony. In the fourth room I noticed a peculiar clock, made in the form of the tower of Babel. One gold chalice, ornamented with precious gems, made by Benvenuto Cellini, attracted my attention. I asked about another portrait. “Augusta ze Strong, melaty. He took a horseshoe in his hand and broke it in two. Very strong, melaty, very strong.” I had heard the story of his stopping at a shop to have a shoe put on his horse. Selecting a shoe, he took it in his hand, and breaking it, said it was not strong enough. The smith, after shoeing his horse, asked for a dollar. Augustus threw down a silver dollar. The smith took it up, and rolling it over in his fingers in the form of a cigar, asked if the dollar was a good one.

A little farther, the custodian took up a golden egg. “Here, laties, is one golden egg. I will open it, and you will see it contains a golden chicken. I will open ze chicken; it has in it ze Polish crown. I will open ze crown, and show you one fine ring. All zese rings are for show, for curiosity, for playthings.” The next room contained the largest pearls; one represents the body of a court dwarf, and is as large as a hen’s egg. In the seventh room we were shown the regalia used at the coronation of Augustus Second as king of Poland, and then brought here to be kept for the coronation of Saxon princes who might at some future time be crowned at Cracow. There, too, were the swords of John Sobieski and Solyman II., of Turkey. The hilts of these swords seemed one mass of diamonds. The shoulder-knot of the queens of Poland containing six hundred and sixty-two diamonds! Then the diamond buttons, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and other precious stones were as wonderful on account of their abundance as they were for their great beauty. I could only think of Sinbad the sailor, of Aladdin and his wonderful lamp, and all the fairy-tales of diamonds and gems I had read in my life. In the last there were emeralds one and a half inches large, and a model of the throne and court of the great Mogul Aurengzebe, at which Dinglinger and eighteen men worked eight years, and were paid fifty-nine thousand thalers! A costly plaything. All the Saxon crown jewels, collected from the time of the Elector Maurice, 1541, were one blaze of light and beauty. Boxes are always ready for packing them, particularly in time of war, when they are taken to the fortress of Königstein.

We have been over the bridge to the Japanese palace to see the collections of porcelain from the earliest times until now. The Portuguese were the first to bring porcelain to Europe from China and Japan, and Saxony was the first European country in which its manufacture was begun. Von Tzschirnhausen was making experiments in his three glass huts when, in 1701, he was joined by John Frederic Böttger, an alchemist, who said he had succeeded in finding the philosopher’s stone, and who, in the presence of witnesses, melted eighteen two groschen pieces, sprinkled into the liquid mass a reddish powder, and changed them into the finest gold. However that may have been, he found a species of earth in the neighborhood of Meissen which suited his purposes, and began the manufacture of porcelain, which at the present day is carried on there in a large establishment called the royal porcelain manufactory of Dresden china. Meissen is not far from Dresden, but I am afraid we shall not have time to go there.

But to return to the Japanese palace. There were costly selections of Chinese, Japanese, East Indian, Dresden, and Sèvres porcelain. It is really astonishing to see what improvement was made in Dresden china in twenty years, and then from those twenty years until the present time. There are twenty rooms in the basement of this building which are filled with these collections. I only wish they had put them in the story above, where ever so much old statuary is placed, for then they could be seen to so much better advantage, and the statuary be kept in the shade, where, in my opinion, a good lot of it should always be. Kändler’s model of a huge monument to Augustus (III. of Poland and II. of Saxony) is entirely of porcelain, and cost twelve thousand thalers. A camellia, thirty-eight inches high, modelled by Schiefer, in Meissen, in 1836, is most beautiful. We were shown plates which cost three or four hundred dollars apiece. The bust of the queen of Prussia, given by her husband, Frederic William III., to this collection, is exquisite. A white lace veil was carelessly thrown over the head. I looked at it, and thought it strange that a lace veil should be thrown over a bust of china, and spoke to the guide about it. He said the veil was china too. I examined it closely; the work on the border was perfect, and you could see the head and neck through the veil as plainly as if it had been real lace. The Sèvres china given by the first Napoleon was the handsomest of any we saw. Some majolica vases were very fine, and cost about ten thousand dollars each. There were Chinese gods, made in China, of the most beautiful porcelain, but as hideous in form as they were beautiful in material.

We went to the armory, said to be the finest collection of the kind in Europe. In the first room we were shown many curiosities: the work-table of “Mother Anna,” made of petrified wood, which the attendant wished me to notice particularly, because it was a petrifactation.

Then there was a clock with a bear striking the seconds on a drum; another clock imitated a chime of bells; Luther’s drinking-cup, made of gold, and holding about a pint; and a beautiful cabinet presented to him by his friend and protector, the Elector of Saxony, and which, after his death, was sold to the government by his family. The next room was filled with implements of sports and the chase, all very curious.