It Is
Frescoed Round With Classically Imagined Portraits Of The Different
Dorias, And Above All The Portrait Of That Great Hero Of The Republic.
I
do not know that this portrait particularly impresses you; if you have
been here before you will be reserving yourself for the portrait which
the custodian will lead you to see in the ultimate chamber of the rather
rude old palace, where it is like a living presence.
It is the picture of a very old man in a flat cap, sitting sunken
forward in his deep chair, with his thin, long hands folded one on the
other, and looking wearily at you out of his faded eyes, in which dwell
the memories of action in every sort and counsel in every kind. Victor
in battles by land and sea, statesman and leader and sage, he looks it
all in that wonderful effigy, which shuns no effect of his more than
ninety years, but confesses his great age as a part of his greatness
with a pathetic reality. The white beard, with "each particular hair"
defined, falling almost to the pale, lean hands, is an essential part of
the presentment, which is full of such scrupulous detail as the eye
would unconsciously take note of in confronting the man himself and
afterward supply in the remembrance of the whole. As if it were a part
of his personality, on a table facing him, covered with maps and papers,
sits the mighty admiral's cat, which, with true feline im-passiveness,
ignores the spectator and gives its sole regard to the admiral. There
are possibly better portraits in the world than this, which was once by
Sebastiano del Piombo and is now by Titian; but I remember none which
has moved me more.
We tried in vain for a photograph of it, and then after a brief glance
at the riches of the Church of the Annunziata, where we were followed
around the interior by a sacristan who desired us to note that the
pillars were "All inlady, all inlady" with different marbles, and, after
a chilly moment in San Lorenzo, which the worshippers and the masons
were sharing between them in the prayers and repairs always going on in
cathedrals, we drove for luncheon to the hotel where we had sojourned in
great comfort three years before. Genoa has rather a bad name for its
hotels, but we had found this one charming, perhaps because when we had
objected to going five flights up the landlord had led us yet a floor
higher, that we might walk into the garden. It is so in much of Genoa,
where the precipitous nature of the site makes this vivid contrast
between the levels of the front door and the back gate. Many of the
streets have been widened since Heine saw the gossiping neighbors
touching knees across them, but nothing less than an earthquake could
change the temperamental topography of the place. It has its advantages;
when there is a ring at the door the housemaid, instead of panting up
from the kitchen to answer it, has merely to fall down five pairs of
stairs.
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