There is a picture at the Capitol, the "Rape of Europa," by Paul
Veronese, that would glow with wonderful brilliancy if it were set in a
magnificent frame, and covered with a sunshine of varnish; and it is a
kind of picture that would not be desecrated, as some deeper and holier
ones might be, by any splendor of external adornment that could be
bestowed on it. It is deplorable and disheartening to see it in faded
and shabby plight,--this joyous, exuberant, warm, voluptuous work. There
is the head of a cow, thrust into the picture, and staring with wild,
ludicrous wonder at the godlike bull, so as to introduce quite a new
sentiment.
Here, and at the Borghese Palace, there were some pictures by Garofalo,
an artist of whom I never heard before, but who seemed to have been a man
of power. A picture by Marie Subleyras--a miniature copy from one by her
husband, of the woman anointing the feet of Christ--is most delicately
and beautifully finished, and would be an ornament to a drawing-room; a
thing that could not truly be said of one in a hundred of these grim
masterpieces.
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