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denly till it becomes very narrow below. Still, I can understand many people, considering it as belonging to that style of beauty which the Italians of the middle ages admired—that is, which one or two of them painted;—J mean an inanimate oval face, with hair parted carefully, and flatly at the'top, and hanging down in long ringlets on the shoulders. The Marchesa's hair was arranged in exactly this manner:—it is evident that is the line of beauty which she adopts. The eyes are not large—of their expression, of course, I cannot speak; but the mouth has little, ifany, and the whole appearance of the bust was as if it resembled a head which was like a bust.
One of the finest pieces of sculpture, in my estimation, was a bust of Machiavelli. Here mouth had the superiority, for the expression of cunning and caducity in the mouth of the bust was as powerful and speaking as any thing I can conceive. "Cunning," perhaps, is not exactly the word to convey my meaning, at least [ would wish it taken in a higher sense than that in which it is commonly used— acuteness and subtlety of thought combined; but probably not exalted by much grandeur or generosity of intellect.
I was much pleased with Bartolini himself; like most foreigners, he speaks rapidly, but his ideas flow as fast as his words;—every moment you are struck by some sound, acute, or original remark, clinched by apposite and strong language. I hate to see a man of reputation in his profession confined, like a mill-horse, to his own beaten round, and proving to you, in despite of what might be concluded and certainly must be wished, that talent may co-exist with extreme narrowness of intellect. This is a truth which I have long wished to deny to my conviction; but what can one do against the repeated instances that one sees, and some of them very distinguished? The assertion, which had become almost a proverb, that " Nelson. was nothing ashore," may be applied mutatis mutandis to men eminent in many different ways. Still the natural desire, as well as expectation, is, when you see a man of whom you have heard much, that his appearance and conversation should prove that he is not a mere mechanic in his calling. With Bartolini this is peculiarly the case. In speaking of his own art, he has a clearness, an absence of all affectation, and, what is still more extraordinary in one'so nearly allied to the Sir Fretful brotherhood of painters, 'an equal absence of all envy. rd _ Bartolini was one of the artists, culled from the most: eminent of nearly all. Europe, who were sent for to Paris to erect the pillar in'the —
'Place Vendéme. A considerable part of the relief of this most beautiful and admirable work is from his models. There can scarcely,:in "my idea, be a more beautiful monument than this. In more senses than one, the inscription beneath the prints of the pillar is a just one.— « Qu'on est fier d'étre Francais quand on 'regarde la colonne!"
One thing Bartolini told me, which surprised me exceedingly—he had never been at Rome! Living within. 170 miles of it, being:an artist, nay a sculptor, he has never visited the metropolis of all art. To be
"sure, when he was at Paris, the Apollo and the Laocoon were there; but you cannot move St. Peter's—fresco paintings are not transferable iat 'pleasure;—above all, the associations attached to Rome cannot be shifted by the mandate of a conqueror; and yet Bartolini never drove, for it is only a drive, to Rome! I cannot understand, or account for it.