Canova, and his latest work; the second, ing pleasing verses of the latter are far superior to the sonnet of Cesarotti : of Canova, by his clever pupil Rinaldo Rinaldi, after the original so admirably sculptured by Canova hiraself.' CHAPTER XI. Grimani palace at Santa Maria Formosa).-Cor- O Canova immortal, che indietro lassí The palace of Corniani d'Algarotti presents two curious collections, differing in kind, but both bearing some analogy to the scientific and literary name recalled by its appellation: the first is composed of more than six thousand specimens of stones and minerals of Lombardy and the ancient Venetian provinces; the second is a dramatic library, comprising all the pieces played at Venice from the establishment of the first theatre in 1636 to our own times. The house of Goldoni, who flourished seventy-one years after, was calle de' Nonboli. A few weeks' sojourn at Venice is sufficient to produce the conviction that the real Italian comedy must have originated or rather been regenerated there (Machiavel and Ariosto still main The family portraits of the Grimani palace (at Santa Maria Formosa) compose a fine gallery of paintings by Titian, Paolo Veronese, and other able masters. This palace is worthy of Rome or Naples for its multitude of antique statues, inscriptions, and bronzes. The Venetian Dobility, trading with Greece and the Levant, first began to make a display in antique collections. There are to be remarked at the Grimani palace an infant Hercules, a most beautiful Grecian bust, the colossal statue of Marcus Agrippa, transferred by a singular fate from the vestibule of the Pantheon amid the waves of the Adriatic: an obscene group of So-tain the supremacy over the Italian dracrates and Alcibiades, in which the former is not even the very equivocal friend of the young Alcibiades. Α chamber decorated by Sansovino is mag-thily represented by the heroine of the nificent. The Institution of the Rosary, a celebrated painting by Albert Darer, contains his portrait and his wife's. The Story of Psyche, on the octagonal ceiling, by Francesco Salviati. was regarded by Vasari as the finest work in Venice, the exaggerated eulogium of a friend, though the painting certainly has some good points. A Cupid is by Guido: a Purification, by Gentile BelLoi; and the painting of the elegant chapel. Christ crowned with thorns, by the elder Palma. Canova's Hebe is at the house of Heinzelmann. This charming though some what elaborate figure is one of the most famous and most popular masterpieces of its author; he has repeated it with slight variations as many as four times; it has been worthily sung by Cesarotti and Pindemonte, and the follow The bust of Cicognara, since his death, on the 3th of March 1834, has been taken to Ferrara, his rpentry which also claimed the body of the filustrans deceased. The sale of the collection of engravings and mielles was announced for the month of February that year: the learned catalogue was matists); for the spirit of society survives there amid the decay of all beside. This famous and longlived society is still wor Biondina, the countess Benzoni, distinguished for the gracefulness, simplicity, and piquancy of her wit; it was this lady who, with the familiarity of the Venetian dialect, told Byron certain home truths to which he listened with delight, and perhaps never heard them save in that burlesque language: this lady, still so full of vivacity, so unaffected and cheerful, may be called the last of the Venetian dames. The Contarini palace, replete with the ancient and glorious reminiscences of that family which became extinct at the beginning of this century, is decorated with frescos by Tiepolo, and four admirable paintings of Luca Giordano, one of which is Eneas carrying his father Anchises. drawn up in French by two Venetians, SS. Alessandro Zaneti and Carlo Albrizzi. ⚫ of the three other Hebes of Canova one (Josephine's) belongs to the emperor of Russia, another to Lord Cawdor, and the third to the marchioness Guicciardini of Florence. mory I shall always cherish, died in 1836, aged sixty-six, after a long illness, which had neither impaired her lively imagination nor the attractions of her mind; during this illness the Memoirs of Madame Lebrun, her contemporary and friend, were read to her, and they brought to recollection her Venice of forty years past, with its joyous pleasures, its beautiful religious music, and its good society of French emigrants: in this manner did the authoress of the Ritratti find her pains alleviated by the narrative of our great portrait-painter. Cicognara possessed Dante's Beatrix, another of Canova's chefs-d'œuvre, given by him to this amiable, learned, excellent man, his worthy and partial friend, as a friend ought always to be, whatever Plato's proverb may say to the contrary. A writer who unites elevated thought with delicacy of feeling, thus relates, in an important work, the origin of this figure: "An artist of pre-eminent renown, a statuary who not long since shed so great a lustre on the glorious country of Dante, and whose graceful fancy had been so often exalted by the masterpieces of antiquity, one day saw for the first time, a woman, who seemed to him a living apparition of Beatrix. Full of that religious feeling which genius ever imparts, he immediately required the marble ever obedient to his chisel to express the sudden inspiration of that moment, and the Beatrix of Dante passed from the vague domain of poesy into the reality of art. The feeling which resides in this harmonious countenance is now become the new type of pure and virginal beauty, which, in its turn, gives inspiration to artists and poets." This woman is a French lady celebrated for the charms of her person and her noble character. It is some honour for France to have revealed to the first statuary of Ita ly the conception of that mysterious i beauty sung by her greatest poet calm enthusi f this admira' has often oduced, b quently In Cir CHAPTER XII. Aldus.-Printing a manufacture.-Present state of printing in Venice. I deeply regretted not being able to find any certain trace of one dwelling, I mean that of Aldus Manutius,' in which he assembled that veritable typographic academy, composed of the most learned characters, who spoke nothing but Greek when engaged in the examination and discussion of the classics. The press of Aldus Manutius and his son would now be a real monument; it was the only treasure that the former of these great men left to the second, after devoting his fortune and profits to the discovery and purchase of old manuscripts in Greek and Latin, and occupying his whole life in deciphering, completing, correcting, and publishing them. It is easy to conceive with what almost poetical enthusiasm the discovery of this all-powerful | art must inspire a man so learned as the elder Aldus, and so passionately attach ed to that reviving antiquity, which he thus saw rendered indestructible and universal. The rather strange inscription over the door of his chamber shows the extraordinary ardour of his application: Quisquis es, rogat te Aldus etiam atque etiam: ut, si quid est quod à se velis, perpaucis agas, deinde actutum abeas, nisi tanquam Hercules, defesso In 1828 an honorary inscription was put on an old house, No. 2013 in the Campo de San Agostino; granting that the tradition be not very positive, there can be no doubt that the residence of Aldus Manutius was thereabout: some letters sent to the latter by Marco Musuro bear the address appresso Sancto Augustin dove se stampa. Marco Musuro, Bembo, Angelo Gabrielli, Andrea Navagero, Daniele Rinieri, Marino Sanuto, Benedetto Ramberti, Battista Egnazio, Fra Giocondo the architect. 3 When Paul Manutins setted at Rome, in 156', he transported his printing-office thither; part of It was, however, left at Venice, under the direction of his son Aldus; nor did it remain inactive, as may be inferred from the number of editions published every year during bis absence, among which are several of bis own works -Annales de l'Imprimerie des Aldes, by M. Renouard, vol. III,, p. 455, 456, 460. 4 See Annibal Caro, Lett. burlevoli; lett. xxx., and on the li'e and labours of Paul Manutius, a letter of Bonfadio's, quoted ante, book V. chap. xxlii. 5 The reader will recollect the excellent work of Count Daru, entitled, Notions statistiques sur la librairie, pour servir à la discussion de la loi sur la presse en 1827, which notions were founded on the Bibliographie de la France. It results from this Atlante, veneris suppositurus humeros. Semper enim erit quod et tu agas, et quotquot huc attulerint pedes. en Whosoever thou art, Aldus treats thee again and again, if thou hast business with him, to conclude it briefly, and hasten thy departure; unless, like Hercules to the weary Atlas, thou come to put thy shoulder to the work. Then will there ever be sufficient occupation for thee, and all others who may come." Paul Manutius appears to have been no less indefatigable than his illustrious father, as we may learn from the reproaches of his friends.4 Printing at that period, instead of being merely an honourable manufacture of great produce, sold to curious and eager, rather than delicate consumers, was a liberal. an admirable art, which was discovered late, but seems to have had no infancy. The clearness of the impression, and the beauty of the ink and paper of the first printers have not been surpassed. Printing-offices now are merely book factories, and the same nicety and evenness of working cannot be expected from the pressman who prints a thousand sheets a day. The editions of Nicolas Jenson, Vindeline of Spire, of the Aldi, and others, were moreover printed in smaller numbers. Some of Cicero's works, such as the Epistolæ familiares, published by Paul Manutius, were reprinted almost every year. The elder useful document that the number of volumes printed in France, in the year 1825, was between thir teen and fourteen millions (more than four hundred thousand issued from the presses of MM. Firnin Didot alone) which produced in trade a real value of 33,750.000 fr. and afforded employment and subsistence to thirty-three thousand seven hundred and fifty persons. A still more precise return of the productions of the French press has appeared in a valuable miscellany (Revue des Deux-Mondes, t. VI. p. 68); according to this table the number of sheets printed in 1835 was one hundred and twentyfive millions, 6 When we consider the perfection attained by the ancients In the art of coining and their acquaintance with moveable characters, it is astonishing that printing escaped their observation. It was invented at the epoch of the emigration of Grecian learning into Italy, just at the time when most needed, and doubtless for that very reason. 7 The excellent ink of Nicholas Jenson and other Italian printers of the fifteenth century was procured from Paris, as in these latter days that of Bodoni This ink has a bright jet which our present ink has not; but it is pretended that age produces it, and that some centuries bence ours will be as fine. CHAPTER XIII. Assumption. Paintings. - Bronzes. - Models.- Aldus states in the preface of his Euripides (1503) that he was commonly accustomed to work a thousand copies. Academy of Fine Arts.-Venetian school.—Titian's This extraordinary man, for the beauty and usefulness of his editions, must be put in the first rank of those propagators of thought; he invented the octavo form, and printed the first Virgil (in 1501) with which one could ramble in the groves. Aldus united to his talents and vast acquirements a most estimable character, very different from his contemporary Tomas Junte of Florence, who, according Varchi, "was only a dealer whose avarice was equal to his riches, and more interested in the profit than the honour of his printing-office." The Academy of Fine Arts is an excellent institution, chiefly due to the zeal, information, and patriotism of Cicognara, who was named its president in 1808. This academy has become an inestimable asylum in the midst of the dispersion and decay of so many chefs-d'œuvre. It has already collected many works from the oppressed churches and convents, and will doubtless be still serviceable in the advancing ruin of Venice. This rich collection of more than four hundred paintings consists almost entirely of works by the great masters of the Venetian school-a school, admirable rather for its adherence to nature and truth than the ideal, for brilliancy of colouring, boldness, and the picturesque rather than purity of drawing, which our young school imitates, just as the new school of poetry, tired of contemplating the models of antiquity, turns to Shakspeare. These means of regenerating art appear very uncertain; talent would find in meditation a more productive and certain resource. Amid the decay of Venice, the discovery of Titian's masterpiece, the Assumption, which he executed before the age of thirty, is a kind of compensation for so many losses. By some strange chance this blackened painting had been long thrust aside and almost hidden in the top of the church Dei Frari, when Cicognara had himself raised up to it, washed one corner with spittle, and, being sure of its author, offered a newer paint If the glory of the olden days of Venetian printing be irrevocably past, the press, now chiefly devoted to religious works, translations of the classics, or literary publications, is by no means unproductive. I have now before me the Elenco (catalogue of the volumes printed and published in Venice and the Venetian provinces during the year 1826; the number amounts to eight hundred and twenty-one, of which six hundred and minety-six thousand seven hundred and ten copies were printed. Two hundred and twenty-four articles are marked gratis, equivalent to the ne se vend pas of the Bibliographie, and they amount to fifty-six thousand six hundred and fifty-four pieces and volumes. The copies given by the author are much more profusely distributed in Italy than in France, and this kind of presents is considered one of the chief social obligations of a writer. The five hundred and ninety-seven volumes with their six hundred and forty thousand and fifty-six co-ing to the clergyman, who was delighted pies for sale, represent a value of 1,354,470 Austrian livres (47,135l. 108.). The printing-office known by the name of Altisopoli, at Venice, under the managment of S. Bartolomeo Gamba, has reprinted the Universal Biography in Italian, at twelve hundred copies; and the work of that learned bibliographer entitled Serie dei testi di lingua italiana e di altri esemplari del bene scrivere, published in 1828, is very satisfactory as regards the typographical execution. This office derives its name from the little village of Alvisopoli, in which the senator Alviso 1 Ludovico; Mocenigo, an eccentric character, had the fancy to establish a priuting-office about thirty jenta ago Alvisopoll was a fief of his illustrious with the change. This painting is perhaps the most extraordinary for effect: the mystery of the head of the Father, the brilliancy and softness of the group of the Virgin, and thirty little angels near; her ethereal, heavenly grace; the marvellous contrast of light and shade, and the conception of the whole, are different merits that cannot be described. Gentile Bellini's painting, representing the piazza of Saint Mark about the end of the fifteenth century, at the moment family: the establishment was too expensive in such a place to support itself more than two years; Alviso Mocenigo was obliged to transfer it to Venice, but retained its primitive name, by which it is now called. |
