The Madonna for my mother was finished in August. The artist had selected the incident of the flight into Egypt, and the mother of Jesus was reposing in deep shade, under the giant arms and dense foliage of a maple tree. In the middle distance, a few ilex and cypress trees were effectively and naturally distributed. The background was mountain scenery; and from a lofty cliff a river was precipitated, in a bold and picturesque fall. The waters rebounded from the gulf below in silver spray, and flowed through a verdant level into a tranquil and beautiful lake. The most romantic features of the wilderness around the lake of Garda were faithfully and beautifully introduced; and the brilliant rays of a sun approaching the horizon, threw a flood of gold over rock, and wood, and water. The Madonna was a young and lovely woman, giving nourishment to her first-born son, and bending over her pleasing task with delighted attention. The head of the Virgin was after a sketch from life, but developed and elevated in character, and invested with a breathing tenderness, a hallowed innocence and purity of expression, which at once thrilled and saddened the beholder. The boy was a model of infantine beauty; he supported himself with one little hand on his mother’s breast, which was partially veiled with red drapery, and he had raised his cherub head and glossy curls from the sweet fount of life, to look with bright and earnest gaze upon the glowing landscape. The luxuriant brown hair of the Madonna was confined in a net, from which a few locks had strayed over her brow and cheek; and her blue mantle flowed with modest grace over her fine person, revealing, through its light and well-distributed folds, the graceful and easy position of the limbs. The eyes of both were radiantly bright, and in the large, well-opened orbs of the infant Saviour, the painter had introduced a something never seen in life—a premature and pathetic seriousness, awfully indicative of his high and hallowed destiny. Above the stately plane-tree were soaring three angels of more than Grecian beauty; and their features, in which a sacred innocence of look was blended with feminine grace and softness, reminded me powerfully of that exquisite design in Raffaelle’s pictorial Bible—the “three angels before Abraham’s threshold.”
In the middle-distance the ass was grazing, and Joseph, whose features the artist had borrowed from the well-chiselled head of an old peasant, stood leaning on his staff, like a faithful servant who has succeeded in rescuing from imminent peril the treasure intrusted to him. The picture was upright and on a large scale; the Madonna and Bambino were painted the size of life, and the rich colouring of the heads and draperies was finely relieved by the local tints and highly finished bark and leafage of the plane-tree, behind which the immense landscape receded in wide and brilliant perspective.
My mother was inexpressibly delighted with this valuable token of his regard, and her affection for the highly-gifted painter became truly maternal.
About this period I remarked a mysterious change in the looks and habits of Colonna. His prompt and flowing language gave place to a moody and oppressive silence; his deportment was occasionally more abrupt and impassioned; and his eloquent features betrayed some hidden source of grief and perplexity. The increased duration and frequency of his rambles from the villa excited at length my attention and remonstrance. In justification, he pleaded, as before, that he was a man of itinerant habits, and too mercurial in temperament to remain long in any place. This explanation had now, however, ceased to be satisfactory. Our intercourse was obviously less cordial and incessant. He had of late rarely sought my society in his excursions, and this circumstance, in connection with his altered look and manner, made me suspect some change in his feelings towards me. I determined to solve a mystery so painful and embarrassing, and succeeded ere long in obtaining his confession, during a still and beautiful night, a large portion of which we passed together in a myrtle arbour, which crowned a cool eminence in the villa gardens. We had passed some hours in this delicious solitude, enjoying the pure night-breeze, and admiring the soft and silver tints diffused by an Italian moon over the lake and landscape. Our spirits were elevated by wine, and song, and conversation; and our hearts communed together, and expanded into more than usual freedom and confidence. I described to him the fair objects of several fleeting attachments, and acknowledged that my experience of female excellence had never yet realised the expectations I had formed. “I anticipated from you, however,” I continued, “some illustrations of that wayward thing, the human heart. A youth so ardent in feeling, and so adorned by nature and education, must necessarily have had no limited experience of the tender passion; and surely some of the beautiful heads in your portfolio have been sketched from life, and con amore.”
“I do not willingly,” he replied, “enter upon acknowledgments of this nature. They tend to excite feelings of envy, and sometimes expose the warmest friendship to a severe test. We have now, however, enjoyed abundant opportunity to study the lights, and shades, and inmost recesses of our respective characters, and as you have made me your father-confessor, I shall no longer hesitate to repose in you a responsive and unbounded confidence. Know, then, that I love, with all the enthusiasm of a first passion, the most beautiful woman of her time—that she is the only daughter of the proudest senator in Venice—that she is no stranger to your family, and now resides within a league of us. Her name is Laura Foscari; and she is, alas! the destined and unwilling bride of the opulent Ercole Barozzo, governor of Candia.”
At this unexpected intelligence, I almost started on my feet with astonishment. My consternation was too great for utterance, and I listened with breathless and eager attention.
“We became acquainted,” he continued, “by a singular accident. I had long admired her as the most lovely woman in Venice. Her head has all the beauty of a fine antique, lighted up by dark eyes of radiant lustre, and heightened by a smile of magic power and sweetness. I have more than once sketched her unrivalled features when she was kneeling at church, and her fine eyes were upraised in devotional rapture. In public places, and at mass, I had frequently seen her, and our eyes had so often met, that she could not but learn from mine how fervently I admired her. My endeavours to obtain an introduction as an artist to her father and brothers had been unsuccessful, and at length I was indebted to a fortunate incident for an opportunity of conversing with her unobserved. One evening, near the close of the last Carnival, I saw her enter with her friends the place of St Mark, near the new church of San Geminiano. She wore only a half-mask, and her graceful mien and fine person could not be disguised. My mask and domino were similar to those of her youngest brother, who resembled me also somewhat in person. The imperfect light and the confusion of the assembled crowd separated her from her party; and while endeavouring to rejoin them, she approached me, mistook me for her brother, put her arm within mine, and with charming vivacity, whispered in my ear some comments on the motley groups around us. You will readily conjecture that I promptly availed myself of the brief and golden opportunity. I glanced rapidly around, and finding that we were unobserved, I partially raised my mask. She had so often observed me gazing upon her with undisguised and rapturous admiration, that she recognised me at once, and tacitly acknowledged it by a blush which suffused every visible feature with crimson. In glowing and beautiful confusion she attempted to withdraw her arm, but I retained it firmly, and in low but emphatic tones, I told her that I had long loved her with sincerity and ardour; that I could fairly boast of constancy and discretion, of education and refinement; that no man so well understood her value, or would encounter and endure so much to win her affections. All this and more I poured into her ear with rapid and glowing diction, and with the impassioned gesture which is natural to me. Timid and irresolute, she accompanied me some paces, paused, and in trembling emotion again attempted to withdraw her arm, but was still urged forward by my impetuosity. At length, by a sudden effort, she escaped; but, as she quitted, whispered with bewitching hesitation and timidity—‘To-morrow morning, at Santi Giovanni e Paolo.’ Soon as these words fell on my delighted ear, I plunged into the crowd of masks, in token of my discretion and prompt obedience to her will. The emotion excited by this early and unexpected proof of sympathy was so rapturous and overwhelming, that I abandoned myself to all the extravagance of sudden bliss. I flew on wings of ecstasy along the streets, bounded over the stairs of the Rialto, and reached my abode in a state of mind bordering on delirium. During that interminable but delicious night I neither sought nor wished for repose. I felt as if I had never known sleep—as if I should never sleep again; and, when my waking dreams occasionally yielded to brief and agitated slumber, my excited feelings called up a flitting train of images not less vivid and enchanting.
“Long before the commencement of the early mass, I had reached the church indicated by the beauteous Laura. I was the first to enter it, and I waited her arrival with an impatience which no words can describe. Never had the celebration of the mass appeared to me so wearisome and monotonous; and, in hopes to subdue in some measure the wild agitation which chafed me, I withdrew the curtain which veiled Titian’s divine picture of Pietro Martire, in which the saint lies wounded and dying before his assassin. The companion of the prostrate Pietro is endeavouring to escape a similar fate; and two angels, whose features are not Italian but Greek, are soaring amidst the foliage, environed with a heavenly lustre, which throws its bright effulgence over the foreground of the immense landscape. What a masterpiece! How full of animation and contrast! What rich and lively local tints in the slender and graceful stems of the lofty chestnuts, which are painted the size of nature! And how naturally the glorious landscape fades into the blue and distant mountains! The half-naked murderer has all the ferocity of a mountain bandit, in figure, attitude, and menace; while the wounded saint exhibits in his pale and collapsed features the dying agony of a good man, blended with a consciousness that he has achieved the rewarding glories of martyrdom.
“But no masterpiece could allay the glowing tumults of my soul, and again I paced the church with feverish impatience. At length the peerless Laura entered, and, alas, poor Titian! the charms of thy creative pencil withered as she approached—the vivid splendours of thy colouring faded before the paramount beauties of nature! She was attired in the picturesque garb and head-dress of Venice; her veil was raised; and her fine countenance, radiant with beauty and intelligence, imparted life, dignity, and lustre to every surrounding object.
“She was accompanied by her mother, and after prostration before the altar, they retired to their devotions in the body of the church. I stood in a position which enabled me to observe every look and gesture, and it did not escape me that Laura, while kneeling, cast a look of supplication towards heaven, and sighed deeply. She soon became conscious of my presence; and rising, she took a chair, and fixed upon me a look so deeply penetrative, so fraught with tender meaning, and yet so timidly, so truly modest, that every chord of feeling in my frame was thrilled with sudden transport. To uninterested observers her deportment was tranquil, but ere long I could discern tokens of deep and anxious thought clouding her lovely face. Her lips quivered as if in sympathy with some inward feeling of doubt and apprehension, which at length subsided, and her angelic features were suddenly irradiated with a tender and enchanting smile. She then read for some time in her book, and marked a place in it with a card, to which, by an expressive glance, she directed my attention. The mass was concluded, the congregation quitted the church, and I availed myself of the crowded portal to approach and take the card, which she conveyed to me unperceived. I hastened from the spot, and seized the first opportunity to read these words—‘Two hours after midnight, at the postern near the canal.’ The card said no more; but, to a lover, it spoke volumes.