It Seemed To Me That The Coloring
Of The Frescos Had Lost Whatever Tenderness It Once Had; And That What
Was never meant to be matter of conscious perception, but only of the
vague sense which it is the office
Of decoration to impart, had grown
less pleasing with the passage of time. There in the first hall was the
story of Cupid and Psyche in the literal illustration of Apuleius, and
there in another hall was Galatea on her shell with her Nymphs and
Tritons and Amorini; and there were Perseus and Medusa and Icarus and
Phaeton and the rest of them. But, if I gave way to all the frankness of
my nature, I should own the subjects fallen sillv through the old age of
an outworn life and redeemed only by the wonderful skill with which they
are rendered. At the same time, I will say in self-defence that, if I
had a very long summer in which to keep coming and dwelling long hours
in the company of these frescos, I think I might live back into the
spirit which invented the fables, and enjoy even more the amusing taste
that was never tired of their repetition. Masterly conception and
incomparable execution are there in histories which are the dreams of
worlds almost as extinct as the dead planets whose last rays still reach
us and in whose death-glimmer we can fancy, if we will, a unity of life
with our own not impossible nor improbable. But more than some such
appeal the Raphaels and the Giulio Romanos of the Farnesina hardly make
to the eye untrained in the art which created them, or unversed in the
technique by which they will live till the last line moulders and the
last tint fades.
We came out and stood a long time looking up in the pale afternoon light
at the beautiful face of the tenderly aging but not yet decrepit casino.
It was utterly charming, and it prompted many vagaries which I might
easily have mistaken for ideas. This is perhaps the best of such
experiences, and, after you have been with famous works of art and have
got them well over and done with, it is natural and it is not unjust
that you should wish to make them some return, if not in kind, then in
quantity. You will try to believe that you have thought about them, and
you should not too strictly inquire as to the fact. It is some such
forbearance that accounts for a good deal of the appreciation and even
the criticism of works of art.
IX
DRAMATIC INCIDENTS
If the joke of the door-keeper at the Farnesina was not so delicate in
any sense as some other jokes, it had, at least, the merit of being
voluntary. In fact, it is the only voluntary joke which I remember
hearing in the Tuscan tongue from the Roman mouth during a stay of three
months in the Eternal City.
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