It is, of all the
faces of the Virgin extant, the most perfectly beautiful and one of the
least spiritual.
There is another fine Madonna, commonly called La Virgen del Pez, from a
fish which young Tobit holds in his hand. It is rather tawny in color,
as if it had been painted on a pine board and the wood had asserted
itself from below. It is a charming picture, with all the great Roman's
inevitable perfection of design; but it is incomprehensible that
critics, M. Viardot among them, should call it the first in rank of
Raphael's Virgins in Glory. There are none which can dispute that title
with Our Lady of San Sisto, unearthly and supernatural in beauty and
majesty.
The school of Florence is represented by a charming Mona Lisa of
Leonardo da Vinci, almost identical with that of the Louvre; and six
admirable pictures of Andrea del Sarto. But the one which most attracts
and holds all those who regard the Faultless Painter with sympathy, and
who admiring his genius regret his errors, is a portrait of his wife
Lucrezia Fede, whose name, a French writer has said, is a double
epigram. It was this capricious and wilful beauty who made poor Andrea
break his word and embezzle the money King Francis had given him to
spend for works of art. Yet this dangerous face is his best excuse, - the
face of a man-snarer, subtle and passionate and cruel in its blind
selfishness, and yet so beautiful that any man might yield to it against
the cry of his own warning conscience.
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