ONE summer as I was on the point of sailing for America I received, by cablegram, a commission to paint, for the Catholics of Philadelphia, a portrait of the Pope. As to the character of the portrait I was given carte blanche.
Here was an opportunity that I had not even imagined—to paint the most spiritual in appearance and ethereal personage of his day, or perhaps of any day. The Pope had often been described to me, when borne aloft in procession through St. Peter's on great festival occasions, as appearing to be unreal, immaterial, so pale and transparent and pure was his countenance, opalescent in its radiance, and illumined by a slight smile in the corners of a mouth whose firm lines betrayed the inner consciousness of a great responsibility. A fondness for the pearly gray tints of life, for the pastel-like quality of surfaces, led me to look upon this commission as the culminating episode of a fortunate career, and that if only a mere suggestion of the spiritual beauty of the pontiff could be attained I might consider that I had not painted in vain. Many of my friends congratulated me on my good fortune in being asked to paint a subject so completely in sympathy with my favourite scheme of colour, and I was happy in the thought that the portrait was destined for my native city, where I was already represented by one of Mr. Gladstone.
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