The Argosy — page 42: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

32 Princess Eleanor, and would rather a thousand times I had not seen the picture in the Tribuna, than have the ideal I had conceived of this genius dimmed by a single shadow.” “ Perhaps the girl was the prettiest Raphael had ever seen,” Ernest said; “only he painted her as she was, while he idealised the other female heads in his pictures. --Of course I only speak en dilettante, and do not presume to give an opinion on the subject.” My brother turned to Herr Impach ashe epoke these last words ; but the artist did not yet choose to tell us his mind, and allowed Arsent to reply. “Tam of Princess Eleanor’s opinion. With her I think that a coarse beauty cannot compete with a refined though less handsome being. The first only delights the eye, the second the mind also, even if we speak of the exterior alone.” “That is a matter of taste,” said Werdan. “Le juste milieu is what I like best.” “My compliments to the one who fears to offend either side!” I answered. But as I had made up my mind to force open Herr Impach’s mouth, I continued: “The greatest of his century must have had the choice amongst the loveliest women of his time. Why then should he have chosen a being we cannot call beautiful, and before whose portrait we stand from no other reason than because we are told it is Raphael’s Forna- rina ? ” “It is not Raphael’s Fornarina,” the young artist at last conde- scended to say. ‘‘No document, not even a tradition, speaks to the fact, whilst a thousand indications point us to the real original.” “ And which is that?” we all asked at the same moment. “The Madonna della Seggiola. We find her head reproduced in ten pictures. ’Tis always the same maiden, who, with loving looks bestowed on the spectator, pleases us so much. All that history and tradition reveal points to the fact that she was indeed the beautiful Trasteverina.” “You believe with me,” I asked, “that Raphael never loved the woman commonly called the Fornarina?” ‘‘T am sure of it. A true artist, a genius, who meets the woman of his dreams, must by her be inspired to his best work. Wherever Raphael wished to represent beauty as something sacred, there he painted his Fornara’s beloved face. She was all in all to him, as he said to Leo X., who, on asking him why the girl was always at his heels when he painted, received the answer: ‘If you take away my Fornarina, you take away my eyes.’” The artist defended his cause as if he felt that I had attacked him much more than poor, stout Fornarina, Emest nodded his head approvingly when he had done speaking, and I should have liked) to comicbooks.com |