eBooks Base 2000

Until we learn to appreciate the cherubs and angels that Raphael scatters
through the blessed air, in a picture of the "Nativity," it is not amiss
to look at, a Dutch fly settling on a peach, or a bumblebee burying
himself in a flower.
It is another token of imperfect taste, no doubt, that queer pictures and
absurd pictures remain in my memory, when better ones pass away by the
score. There is a picture of Venus, combing her son Cupid's head with a
small-tooth comb, and looking with maternal care among his curls; this I
shall not forget. Likewise, a picture of a broad, rubicund Judith by
Bardone,--a widow of fifty, of an easy, lymphatic, cheerful temperament,
who has just killed Holofernes, and is as self-complacent as if she had
been carving a goose. What could possibly have stirred up this pudding
of a woman (unless it were a pudding-stick) to do such a deed! I looked
with much pleasure at an ugly, old, fat, jolly Bacchus, astride on a
barrel, by Rubens; the most natural and lifelike representation of a
tipsy rotundity of flesh that it is possible to imagine.


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