The great Master, it is true, gives these
models, but he gives them not to be looked at, but eaten. If painters
could only contrive to paint vegetables (cheaply) so that they could
be eaten, I would be willing.
Two small saloons are next devoted to the modern Dutch and German
school. In these is Denner's head of an old woman, which Cowper
celebrates in a pretty poem--a marvel of faithful reproduction. One
would think the old lady must have sat at least a year, till he had
daguerreotyped every wrinkle and twinkle. How much better all this
labor spent on the head of a good old woman than on the head of a
cabbage!
And now come a set of Italian rooms, in which we have some curious
specimens of the Romish development in religion; as, for instance, the
fathers Gregory, Augustine, and Jerome, meditating on the immaculate
conception of the Virgin. Think of a painter employing all his powers
in representing such a fog bank!
Next comes a room dedicated to the works of Titian, in which two nude
Venuses, of a very different character from the de Milon, are too
conspicuous. Titian is sensuous; a Greek, but not of the highest
class.
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