I would rather talk of their gallery than their government: and surely
nothing made by man ever so completely answered a raised expectation, as
the apparent contest between Titian's recumbent beauty, glowing with
colour and animated by the warmest expression, and the Greek statue of
symmetrical perfection and fineness of form inimitable, where sculpture
supplies all that fancy can desire, and all that imagination can
suggest. These two models of excellence seem placed near each other, at
once to mock all human praise, and defy all future imitation. The
listening slave appears disturbed by the blows of the wrestlers in the
same room, and hearkens with an attentive impatience, such as one has
often felt when unable to distinguish the words one wishes to repeat.
You really then do not seem as if you were alone in this tribune, so
animated is every figure, so full of life and soul: yet I commend not
the representing of St Catharine with leering eyes, as she is here
painted by Titian; that it is meant for a portrait, I find no excuse;
some character more suited to the expression should have been chosen;
and if it were only the picture of a saint, that expression was
strangely out of character. An anachronism may be found in the Tobit
over the door too, by acute observers, who will deem it ill-managed to
paint the cross in the clouds, where it is an old testament story, and
that story apocryphal beside; might I add, that Guido's meek Madonna, so
divinely contrasted to the other women in the room, loses something of
dignity by the affected position of the thumbs.
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