DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61284#0224
LETTER FROM ROME 109
and she promised to send a portrait of herself from that city. The promise
was duly fulfilled, and the picture, familiar from a thousand photographs,
hangs in its place among those of so many other painters, of greater or less
consequence in art. Speaking of the Uffizzi collection, she says, “ I
noticed, with a certain pride, the portrait of Angelica Kauffmann, one of
the glories of our sex.”
In November 1789 Madame Lebrun had arrived in Rome, whence, on
the 1st of December, she wrote to her old friend Hubert Robert a long
letter in which she gave him her impressions of the city whose “ eternity ”
had not, in those days, been so furiously assaulted by utilitarian urban
authorities as it has been in the last twenty years. In Saint Peter’s she
had remarked to Menageot, who acted as cicerone, that she wished the
columns had been left in their simple roundness, and he had answered that
originally they were so designed, but that as they did not appear solid
enough, they had been surrounded by pilasters. Of the “ Last Judgment ”
by Michelangelo she writes: “There is grandeur both in the composition
and the execution. As to the disorder that reigns there, it is, in my
opinion, entirely justified by the subject.” She was very angry with those
who repeated the story that Raphael’s death was due to his loose living.
“ The proof that nothing is more false is that we know him to have been
passionately in love with that beautiful boulangere, without whom he
could not live, to whom he remained so faithful that for her sake he refused
honours, riches, and the hand of Cardinal Bibiena’s niece—so faithful
that when at last the Pope wavered and allowed the Fornarina to return
to Rome, the joyful emotion of Raphael, the happiness of once more
seeing that adored woman, contributed greatly to hasten his end. . . .
No, Raphael was not a libertine ; it is only necessary to look at his heads
of the Virgin to be certain of the contrary.”
It is almost impossible to doubt that in writing so warmly in defence
of the personal character of one of the greatest members of her own pro-
fession in any age, Madame Lebrun was thinking also of the attacks
that had been made on her own character, and the logic with which she
defends Raphael from his calumniators is at least as strong as some
of that with which she had replied to the aspersions of her jealous
detractors in Paris.
Naturally, being in the same city with Angelica Kauffmann, Elisabeth
Vigee-Lebrun went to see a sister-artist who not only shared with her
the highest honours in woman’s art at that time, but had known also,
and she promised to send a portrait of herself from that city. The promise
was duly fulfilled, and the picture, familiar from a thousand photographs,
hangs in its place among those of so many other painters, of greater or less
consequence in art. Speaking of the Uffizzi collection, she says, “ I
noticed, with a certain pride, the portrait of Angelica Kauffmann, one of
the glories of our sex.”
In November 1789 Madame Lebrun had arrived in Rome, whence, on
the 1st of December, she wrote to her old friend Hubert Robert a long
letter in which she gave him her impressions of the city whose “ eternity ”
had not, in those days, been so furiously assaulted by utilitarian urban
authorities as it has been in the last twenty years. In Saint Peter’s she
had remarked to Menageot, who acted as cicerone, that she wished the
columns had been left in their simple roundness, and he had answered that
originally they were so designed, but that as they did not appear solid
enough, they had been surrounded by pilasters. Of the “ Last Judgment ”
by Michelangelo she writes: “There is grandeur both in the composition
and the execution. As to the disorder that reigns there, it is, in my
opinion, entirely justified by the subject.” She was very angry with those
who repeated the story that Raphael’s death was due to his loose living.
“ The proof that nothing is more false is that we know him to have been
passionately in love with that beautiful boulangere, without whom he
could not live, to whom he remained so faithful that for her sake he refused
honours, riches, and the hand of Cardinal Bibiena’s niece—so faithful
that when at last the Pope wavered and allowed the Fornarina to return
to Rome, the joyful emotion of Raphael, the happiness of once more
seeing that adored woman, contributed greatly to hasten his end. . . .
No, Raphael was not a libertine ; it is only necessary to look at his heads
of the Virgin to be certain of the contrary.”
It is almost impossible to doubt that in writing so warmly in defence
of the personal character of one of the greatest members of her own pro-
fession in any age, Madame Lebrun was thinking also of the attacks
that had been made on her own character, and the logic with which she
defends Raphael from his calumniators is at least as strong as some
of that with which she had replied to the aspersions of her jealous
detractors in Paris.
Naturally, being in the same city with Angelica Kauffmann, Elisabeth
Vigee-Lebrun went to see a sister-artist who not only shared with her
the highest honours in woman’s art at that time, but had known also,