But the pen almost drops
from her hand, and the high cold words have no meaning for her, and
her true children are those others, among whom, in her rude home, the
intolerable honour came to her, with that look of wistful inquiry on
their irregular faces which you see in startled animals--gipsy children,
such as those who, in Apennine villages, still hold out their long
brown arms to beg of you, but on Sundays become _enfants du choeur_,
with their thick black hair nicely combed, and fair white linen on
their sunburnt throats.
What is strangest is that he carries this sentiment into classical
subjects, its most complete expression being a picture in the _Uffizii_,
of Venus rising from the sea, in which the grotesque emblems of the
middle age, and a landscape full of its peculiar feeling, and even its
strange draperies, powdered all over in the Gothic manner with a quaint
conceit of daisies, frame a figure that reminds you of the faultless
nude studies of Ingres. At first, perhaps, you are attracted only by
a quaintness of design, which seems to recall all at once whatever you
have read of Florence in the fifteenth century; afterwards you may
think that this quaintness must be incongruous with the subject, and
the colour is cadaverous or at least cold.
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