This fresco was discovered
through Mr. Kirkup's means, and the tracing is particularly valuable,
because the original has been almost destroyed by rough usage in drawing
out a nail that had been driven into the eye. It represents the profile
of a youthful but melancholy face, and has the general outline of Dante's
features in other portraits.
Dante has held frequent communications with Mr. Kirkup through a medium,
the poet being described by the medium as wearing the same dress seen in
the youthful portrait, but as hearing more resemblance to the cast taken
from his dead face than to the picture from his youthful one.
There was a very good picture of Savonarola in one of the rooms, and many
other portraits, paintings, and drawings, some of them ancient, and
others the work of Mr. Kirkup himself. He has the torn fragment of an
exquisite drawing of a nude figure by Rubens, and a portfolio of other
curious drawings. And besides books and works of art, he has no end of
antique knick-knackeries, none of which we had any time to look at; among
others some instruments with which nuns used to torture themselves in
their convents by way of penance.
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