DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51585#0247
TITIAN.
243
our national-and royal galleries. In our National
Gallery there are five, of which the Bacchus and
Ariadne, the Venus and Adonis, and the Ganymede,
are fair examples of his power in the poetical de-
partment of his art: but we want one of his ines-
timable portraits. In the gallery at Hampton Court
there are seven or eight pictures attributed to him,
most of them in a miserably ruined condition.
The finest of these is a portrait of a man in black,
with a white shirt seen above his vest up to his
throat; in his right hand a red book, his fore-finger
between the leaves ; it is called in the old cata-
logues Alessandro de’ Medici, and has been en-
graved under the name of Boccaccio ;* but it has
no pretensions to either name : it is a wonderful piece
of life. There is also a lovely figure of a stand-
ing Lucretia, about half-life size, with very little
drapery—not at all characteristic of the modest
Lucretia who arranged her robes that she might fall
with decorum : she holds with her left hand a red
veil over her face, and in the right a dagger with
which she is about to stab herself. This picture
belonged to Charles I., and came to England with
the Mantua Gallery in 1629; it was sold in 1650,
* The engraving, which is most admirable, was executed
by Cornelius Vischer when the picture was iu Holland, in
the possession of a great collector of that time, named Van
Keynst; from whom the States of Holland purchased it with
several others, and presented them to Charles I.
243
our national-and royal galleries. In our National
Gallery there are five, of which the Bacchus and
Ariadne, the Venus and Adonis, and the Ganymede,
are fair examples of his power in the poetical de-
partment of his art: but we want one of his ines-
timable portraits. In the gallery at Hampton Court
there are seven or eight pictures attributed to him,
most of them in a miserably ruined condition.
The finest of these is a portrait of a man in black,
with a white shirt seen above his vest up to his
throat; in his right hand a red book, his fore-finger
between the leaves ; it is called in the old cata-
logues Alessandro de’ Medici, and has been en-
graved under the name of Boccaccio ;* but it has
no pretensions to either name : it is a wonderful piece
of life. There is also a lovely figure of a stand-
ing Lucretia, about half-life size, with very little
drapery—not at all characteristic of the modest
Lucretia who arranged her robes that she might fall
with decorum : she holds with her left hand a red
veil over her face, and in the right a dagger with
which she is about to stab herself. This picture
belonged to Charles I., and came to England with
the Mantua Gallery in 1629; it was sold in 1650,
* The engraving, which is most admirable, was executed
by Cornelius Vischer when the picture was iu Holland, in
the possession of a great collector of that time, named Van
Keynst; from whom the States of Holland purchased it with
several others, and presented them to Charles I.