Sistine Chapel, at Rome; to whose majestic powers of conception every connoisseur bears testimony, while still there is something of extravagant—something which is not absolute beauty—in most of his works at Florence. The glorious Medicean monuments,—
“Where the gigantic shapes of Night and Day,
Turned into stone, rest everlastingly;
Yet still are breathing.”[1]
—in spite of the magic art which makes them for ever sit and sleep, yet jar with the sense of harmony in form. His love of the naked was carried to a curious excess. In the Tribune, is a Holy Family, into which he has introduced a variety of naked figures in different attitudes, that have not the smallest connection with the subject of the picture, but intrude impertinently to mar its effect.
A charming Madonna of Correggio, kneeling beside the divine infant, adorns the Tribune; there is also the portrait termed the Fornarina of Raphael; certainly it is not the Fornarina, for it does not at all resemble her undoubted portraits, and it has been doubted whether the picture be by Raphael. From the Tribune, which, as a focus, collects the rarest and brightest rays of art, branch off several rooms, divided into schools. One of the most interesting is that containing the portraits of painters, by themselves.
- ↑ Rogers's “Italy.”
