75. LETTER LXXV.
VIENNA—THE PALACE OF LIECHSTENSTEIN.
The red-nosed German led on through the crowded
Graben, jostling aside the Parisian-looking lady and
her handsome Hungarian cavalier, the phlegmatic
smoker and the bearded Turk, alike. We passed the
imperial guard, the city gate, the lofty bridge over the
trench (casting a look below at the flower garden laid
out in “the ditch” which encircles the wall), and entered
upon the lovely Glacis—one step from the
crowded street to the fresh greenness of a park.
Would you believe, as you walk up this shaded
alley, that you are in the heart of the city still?
The Glacis is crossed, with its groups of fair children
and shy maids, its creeping invalids, its solitude-seeking
lovers, and its idling soldiers, and we again
enter the crowded street. A half hour more, and the
throng thins again, the country opens, and here you
are, in front of the palace of Liechstenstein, the first
noble of Austria. A modern building, of beautiful
and light architecture, rises from its clustering trees;
servants in handsome livery hang about the gates and
lean against the pillars of the portico, and with an explanation
from my lying valet, who evidently makes
me out an ambassador at least by the ceremony with
which I am received, a gray servitor makes his appear
ance and opens the immense glass door leading from
the side of the court.
One should step gingerly on the polished marble of
this superb staircase! It opens at once into a lofty
hall, the ceiling of which is painted in fresco by an
Italian master. It is a room of noble proportions.
Few churches in America are larger, and yet it seems
in keeping with the style of the palace, the staircase
—everything but the creature meant to inhabit it.
How different are the moods in which one sees pictures!
To-day I am in the humor to give it to the
painter's delusion. The scene is real. Asmodeus is
at my elbow, and I am witched from spot to spot, invisible
myself, gazing on the varied scenes revealed
only to the inspired vision of genius.
A landscape opens.[12]
It is one of the woody recesses
of Lake Nervi, at the very edge of “Dian's Mirror.”
The huntress queen is bathing with her
nymphs. The sandal is half laced over an ankle that
seems fit for nothing else than to sustain a goddess,
when casting her eye on the lovely troop emerging
from the water, she sees the unfortunate Calista surrounded
by her astonished sisters, and fainting with
shame. Poor Calista! one's heart pleads for her.
But how expressive is the cold condemning look in
the beautiful face of her mistress queen! Even the
dogs have started from their reclining position on the
grass, and stand gazing at the unfortunate, wondering
at the silent astonishment of the virgin troop. Pardon
her, imperial Dian!
Come to the baptism of a child! It is a vision of
Guido Reni's.[13]
A young mother, apparently scarce
sixteen, has brought her first child to the altar. She
kneels with it in her arms, looking earnestly into the
face of the priest while he sprinkles the water on its
pure forehead, and pronounces the words of consecration.
It is a most lovely countenance, made lovelier
by the holy feeling in her heart. Her eyes are moist,
her throat swells with emotion—my own sight dims
while I gaze upon her. We have intruded on one of
the most holy moments of nature. A band of girls,
sisters by the resemblance, have accompanied the
young mother, and stand, with love and wonder in
their eyes, gazing on the face of the child. How
strangely the mingled thoughts, crowding through
their minds, are expressed in their excited features.
It is a scene worthy of an audience of angels.
We have surprised Giorgione's wife (the “Flora”
of Titian, the “love in life” of Byron) looking at a
sketch by her husband. It stands on his easel, outlined
in crayons, and represents Lucretia the moment
before she plunges the dagger into her bosom. She
was passing through his studio, and you see by the half
suspended foot, that she stopped but for a momentary
glance, and has forgotten herself in thoughts that
have risen unaware. The head of Lucretia resembles
her own, and she is wondering what Giorgione thought
while he drew it. Did he resemble her to the Roman's
wife in virtue as well as in feature? There is
an embarrassment in the expression of her face, as if
she doubted he had drawn it half in mischief. We
will leave the lovely Venetian to her thoughts. When
she sits again to Titian, it will be with a colder
modesty.
Hoogstraeten, a Dutch painter, conjures up a scene
for you. It is an old man, who has thrust his head
through a prison gate, and is looking into the street
with the listless patience and curiosity of one whom
habit has reconciled to his situation. His beard is
neglected, his hair is slightly grizzled, and on his
head sits a shabby fur cap, that has evidently shared
all his imprisonment, and is quite past any pride of
appearance. What a vacant face! How perfectly he
seems to look upon the street below, as upon something
with which he has nothing more to do. There
is no anxiety to get out, in its expression. He is past
that. He looks at the playing children, and watches
the zigzag trot of an idle dog with the quiet apathy
of one who can find nothing better to help off the
hour. It is a picture of stolid, contented, unthinking
misery.
Look at this boy, standing impatiently on one foot
at his mother's knee, while she pares an apple for
him! With what an amused and playful love she
listens to his hurrying entreaties, stealing a glance at
him as he pleads, with a deeper feeling than he will
be able to comprehend for years! It is one of the
commonest scenes in life, yet how pregnant with speculation!
On—on—what an endless gallery! I have seen
twelve rooms, with forty or fifty pictures in each, and
there are thirteen halls more! The delusion begins
to fade. These are pictures merely. Beautiful ones,
however! If language could convey to your eye the
impressions that this waste and wealth of beauty have
conveyed to mine, I would write of every picture.
There is not an indifferent one here. All Italy together
has not so many works by the Flemish masters
as are contained in this single gallery—certainly
none so fine. A most princely fortune for many generations
must have been devoted to its purchase.
I have seen seven or eight things in all Italy, by
Corregio. They were the gems of the galleries in
which they exist, but always small, and seemed to me
to want a certain finish. Here is a Corregio, a large
picture, and no miniature ever had so elaborate a
beauty. It melts into the eye. It is a conception of
female beauty so very extraordinary, that it seems to
me it must become, in the mind of every one who sees
it, the model and the standard of all loveliness. It is
a nude Venus, sitting lost in thought, with Cupid
asleep in her lap. She is in the sacred retirement of
solitude, and the painter has thrown into her attitude
and expression so speaking an unconsciousness of all
presence, that you feel like a daring intruder while you
gaze upon the picture. Surely such softness of coloring,
such faultless proportions, such subdued and yet
eloquent richness of teint in the skin, was never before
attained by mortal pencil. I am here, some five thousand
miles from America, yet would I have made the
voyage but to raise my standard of beauty by this ravishing
image of woman.
In the circle of Italian galleries, one finds less of
female beauty, both in degree and in variety, than his
anticipations had promised. Three or four heads at
the most, of the many hundreds that he sees, are imprinted
in his memory, and serve as standards in his
future observations. Even when standing before the
most celebrated pictures, one often returns to recollections
of living beauty in his own country, by which
the most glowing head of Titian or the Veronese suffer
in comparison. In my own experience this has
been often true, and it is perhaps the only thing in
which my imagination of foreign wonders was too
fervent. To this Venus of Corregio's, however, I
unhesitatingly submit all knowledge, all conception
even, of female loveliness. I have seen nothing in
life, imagined nothing from the descriptions of poets,
that is any way comparable to it. It is matchless.
In one of the last rooms the servitor unlocked two
handsome cases, and showed me, with a great deal of
circumstance, two heads by Denner. They were an
old man and his wife—two hale, temperate, good old
country gossips—but so curiously finished! Every
pore was painted. You counted the stiff stumps of
the goodman's beard as you might those of a living
person, till you were tired, Every wrinkle looked as
if a month had been spent in elaborating it. The man
said they were extremely valuable, and I certainly
never saw anything more curiously and perhaps uselessly
wrought.
Near them was a capital picture of a drunken fellow,
sitting by himself and laughing heartily at his own performance
on the pipe. It was irresistible, and I joined
in the laugh till the long suite of halls rung again.
Landscapes by Van Delen—such as I have seen
engravings of in America, and sighed over as unreal—
the skies, the temples, the water, the soft mountains,
the distant ruins, seemed so like the beauty of a dream.
Here, they recall to me even lovelier scenes in Italy—
atmospheres richer than the painter's pallet can imitate,
and ruins and temples whose ivy-grown and melancholy
grandeur are but feebly copied at the best
Come, Karl! I am bewildered with these pictures.
You have twenty such galleries in Vienna, you say!
I have seen enough for to-day, however, and we will
save the Belvidere till to-morrow. Here! pay the
servitor, and the footman, and the porter, and let us
get into the open air. How common look your Viennese
after the celestial images we have left behind!
And, truly, this is the curse of refinement. The faces
we should have loved else, look dull! The forms
that were graceful before, move somehow heavily. I
have entered a gallery ere now, thinking well of a face
that accompanied me, and I have learned indifference
to it, by sheer comparison, before coming away.
We return through the Kohlmarket, one of the most
fashionable streets of Vienna. It is like a fancy-ball.
Hungarians, Poles, Croats, Wallachians, Jews, Moldavians,
Greeks, Turks, all dressed in their national and
striking costumes, promenade up and down, smoking
all, and none exciting the slightest observation. Every
third window is a pipe-shop, and they show, by their
splendor and variety, the expensiveness of the passion.
Some of them are marked “two hundred dollars.”
The streets reek with tobacco smoke. You never
catch a breath of untainted air within the Glacis.
Your hotel, your café, your coach, your friend, are
all redolent of the same disgusting odor.
