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. Browning must have seen it before
he wrote, in his pathetic poem, -
"Let my hands frame your face in your hair's gold,
You beautiful Lucrezia, that are mine!"
Nowhere, away from the Adriatic, is the Venetian school so richly
represented as in Madrid. Charles and Philip were the most munificent
friends and patrons of Titian, and the Royal Museum counts among its
treasures in consequence the enormous number of forty-three pictures by
the wonderful centenarian. Among these are two upon which he set great
value, - a Last Supper, which has unfortunately mouldered to ruin in the
humid refectory of the Escorial, equal in merit and destiny with that of
Leonardo; and the Gloria, or apotheosis of the imperial family, which,
after the death of Charles, was brought from Yuste to the Escorial, and
thence came to swell the treasures of the Museum. It is a grand and
masterly work. The vigorous genius of Titian has grappled with the
essential difficulties of a subject that trembles on the balance of
ridiculous and sublime, and has come out triumphant. The Father and the
Son sit on high. The Operating Spirit hovers above them. The Virgin in
robes of azure stands in the blaze of the Presence. The celestial army
is ranged around. Below, a little lower than the angels, are Charles and
Philip with their wives, on their knees, with white cowls and clasped
hands, - Charles in his premature age, with worn face and grizzled beard;
and Philip in his youth of unwholesome fairness, with red lips and pink
eyelids, such as Titian painted him in the Adonis. The foreground is
filled with prophets and saints of the first dignity, and a kneeling
woman, whose face is not visible, but whose attitude and drapery are
drawn with the sinuous and undulating grace of that hand which could not
fail. Every figure is turned to the enthroned Deity, touched with
ineffable light. The artist has painted heaven, and is not absurd. In
that age of substantial faith such achievements were possible.
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