LETTER XIX. -- - The Transfiguration. The St. Jerome. Great Length of Time required by Rome for the Examination of Works of Art.-Library of the Vatican. Michael Angelo's Frescoes.- Collections at the Capitol. St. Paul's Church. The English Burying-ground.— Castle of St. Angelo.— Tomb of Adrian.— Benvenuto Cellini. — Theatrical Parties at Prince Tortonia's. The Colonna. Presentation to the Pope.- Examination of St. Peter's. The under Church. Canova's Monument of Clement XIII. Monument to the last Stuart. Sir Walter Scott.—Mosaics.— Receiving the Black Veil. Rome, December, 1841. At last we have seen the Transfiguration, and the St. Jerome of Domenichino which hangs opposite, and which to my feeling is very nearly as fine a picture as the other. . . . Both are transcendant, and are enough to fill the mind for many hours, without any other object whatever to divide attention with them. But, alas! how insufficient the time which we have been able to devote to them and how greatly, too, I begin to regret that I cannot prolong my stay in this art-full city! The question as to which may be the most beautiful, or which the most agreeable residence among the cities of Italy, must for ever remain an unsettled one, because it must depend entirely 320 LIBRARY OF THE VATICAN. upon individual taste and manner of life to decide it.... but as to which city ought to have most time given to it by those whose only object is to become acquainted with antiquities, and with the vast treasury of art which Italy contains, there can be no doubt. Rome demands months, from the same activity and power of exertion which would. make days suffice elsewhere. . . . But regret on this point is idle. Those who have homes to which they are eager to return cannot reasonably lament the blessing, even though it curtails the enjoyment of other delights..... but at any rate, when arranging the allotment of the time to be given to Italy, it will be well to remember that Rome requires by far the longest portion of it. But it is only when you actually get to Rome that you can fully believe this, so much is there to enchant the spirits elsewhere also. But once at Rome, and the fact becomes clear. With the exception of the two majestic pictures I have just mentioned, the Madonna di Foligno is the only one in the Vatican gallery that particularly enchanted me. . . . This Madonna, and the child too, is Raffael. . . . which is the only epithet I know of which can describe it. It is only in Italy, however, despite the cartoons and the Marquis of Westminster, that this epithet can be fully understood. To the library of the Vatican we had the pleasure of being taken by Monsignore A—, a LIBRARY OF THE VATICAN. 321 man of taste and an accomplished scholar; and under his auspices we had the advantage of seeing some of the most interesting manuscripts. . . . The extent of the whole collection is stupendous. . . . He accompanied us also to the Sestine chapel, where I did my best to enjoy the fresco wonders it contains. But the prodigious charm which they have for connoisseurs is beyond me. I look at them with a vast deal of interest and curiosity; but as a matter of pleasure I would much rather find myself in the gallery at Bologna, or before Titian's Annunciation at Venice. It must, indeed, be a very extraordinary excess of presumptuous folly which could induce any one not educated as an artist to express a doubt as to the wisdom of the decision now sanctioned by ages, which has declared the frescos of the Vatican to be among the most precious treasures of art. With the most perfect sincerity, I declare that I truly believe them to be so. But if it would be folly to deny this, it would, on my part at least, be gross affectation were I to say that I know and feel, on the authority of my own eyes and intellect, that they are so. Perhaps had I light to see, and ample time to examine them, the effect might be different. It might be in some degree the same as what I have experienced upon the examination of many works of the chisel, which when I first looked at them, appeared to me less obviously beautiful than others accounted of less value. In VOL. II. Y 322 MICHAEL ANGELO'S FRESCOS. this case of the statues, wherever my mind has at length followed the judgment of the learned, it has always been by a sort of slow and patient development of truth. There are morsels, fragments I mean, of antique statuary, in which the first glance of an unlearned eye discerns little or nothing beyond a mutilated piece of marble, interesting, perhaps, from its well-authenticated antiquity, but worthy of attention from no other cause. A lengthened examination of this fragment, however, will very often force upon the mind such a conviction of the truth of its details as leads to wonder and delight.... and it requires no learning, beyond that observant learning of the eye, which is, or may be, common to all men, to be aware of the excelling skill of the artist. But the case is far different in examining the wide-spreading acres of stucco in the Sestine chapel, before which all bow (all excepting the unhappy ignorant) with a fulness of delight, the expression of which has a thousand times caused me, when far, far away, to envy very heartily all who had the power of looking at them. Yet now I gaze at these wonders of art again and again without feeling the slightest sensation of pleasure. What I do feel, indeed, while looking at them, is lamentably the reverse of it; for I suffer, in the first place, all the keenness of disappointment from not finding the gratification I had hoped for, and all the mortification, in the second, which can arise MICHAEL ANGELO'S FRESCOS. 323 from knowing that the disappointment is caused solely by my own deficiences. In the frescos of Giotto, both in the Campo Santo at Pisa, and in the chapel of the Annunziata at Padua, but particularly in the latter, there is an interest totally independent of the execution, which renders every trace of the artist's hand most precious. The name of Dante alone, so joined as it is with that of Giotto, is quite sufficient to explain this, even without the positive charm which the sweet simplicity of the female figures, and the easy dignity of the male ones, cannot fail to inspire. But there is something monstrous, rather than dignified, to my fancy, in the colossal turbulence of Michael Angelo's compositions in the Sestine chapel, and to this I fear no length of study could ever reconcile me, nor any thing short of the veriest affectation lead me to praise: "Oh! how I grieve! (as the song says) Oh! how I grieve, I ne'er their charms can know!" But such is my destiny, and I must submit to it nevertheless: "Ancor men duol, pur ch'i' me ne remembri !” We have more than once driven to the Capitol, and have been absolutely unable to enter it from the potency of the attraction without. . . . but at length we have achieved the adventure, and, manfully subduing the cunning wiles of all the ruins on the outside, turned resolutely away from them, |