Walks in Rome - Augustus J. C. Hare

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thy fond charge forget?"

       Byron, Childe Harold.

      Standing near the wolf is the well-known and beautiful figure of a boy extracting a thorn from his foot, called the Shepherd Martius.

      "La ressemblance du type si fin de l'Apollon au lézard et du charmant bronze du Capitole le tíreur d'épine est trop frappante pour qu'on puisse se refuser à voir dans celui-ci une inspiration de Praxitèle ou de son école. C'est tout simplement un enfant arrachant de son pied une épine qui l'a blessé, sujet naïf et champêtre analogue au Satyre se faisant rendre ce service par un autre Satyre. On a voulu y voir un athlète blessé par une épine pendant sa course et qui n'en est pas moins arrivé au but; mais la figure est trop jeune et n'a rien d'athlétique. Le moyen âge avait donné aussi son explication et inventé sa legende. On raccontait qu'un jeune berger, envoyé à la découverte de l'ennemi, était revenu sans s'arrêter et ne s'était permis qu'alors d'arracher une épine qui lui blessait le pied. Le moyen âge avait senti le charme de cette composition qu'il interprétait à sa manière, car elle est sculptée sur un arceau de la cathédrale de Zurich qui date du siècle de Charlemagne."—Ampère, iii. 315.

      Forming part of the decorations of this room are two fine pictures, a dead Christ with a monk praying, and Sta. Francesca Romana, by Romanelli. Near the door of exit is a bust said to be that of Junius Brutus.

      "Il est permis de voir dans le buste du Capitole un vrai portrait de Brutus; il est difficile d'en douter en le contemplant. Voilà bien le visage farouche, la barbe hirsute, les cheveux roides collés si rudement sur le front, la physiognomie inculte et terrible du prémier consul romain; la bouche serrée respire la détermination et l'énergie; les yeux, formés d'une matière jaunâtre, se détachent en clair sur le bronze noirci par les siècles et vous jettent un regard fixe et farouche. Tout près est la louve de bronze. Brutus est de la même famille. On sent qu'il y a du lait de cette louve dans les veines du second fondateur de Rome, comme dans les veines du premier, et que lui aussi, pareil au Romulus de la légende, marchera vers son but à travers le sang des siens.

      "Le buste de Brutus est placé sur un piédestal qui le met à la hauteur du regard. Là, dans un coin sombre, j'ai passé bien des moments face à face avec l'impitoyable fondateur de la liberté romaine."—Ampère, Hist. Rom. ii. 270.

      The 4th Room contains the Fasti Consulares, tables found near the temple of Minerva Chalcidica, and inscribed with the names of public officers from Romulus to Augustus. The 5th Room contains two bronze ducks (formerly shown as the sacred geese of the Capitol) and a female head—found in the gardens of Sallust, a bust of Medusa, by Bernini, and many others. The 6th, or Throne Room, hung with faded tapestry, has a frieze in fresco, by Annibale Caracci, representing the triumphs of Scipio Africanus. The 7th Room is painted by Daniele da Volterra(?) with the history of the Punic Wars. The 8th Room (now used as a passage) is a chapel, containing a lovely fresco, by Pinturicchio, of the Madonna and Child with Angels.

      "The Madonna is seated enthroned, fronting the spectator; her large mantle forms a grand cast of drapery; the child on her lap sleeps in the loveliest attitude; she folds her hands and looks down, quiet, serious, and beautiful: in the clouds are two adoring angels."—Kugler.

      The four Evangelists are by Caravaggio; the pictures of Roman saints (Cecilia, Alexis, Eustachio, Francesca-Romana), by Romanelli.

      By the same staircase, passing on the left a wonderful relief of the apotheosis of the wicked Faustina, we may arrive at the Picture Gallery of the Capitol (which can also be approached by a separate staircase, entered from an alley at the back of the building), reached by two rooms inscribed with the names of the Roman Conservators from the middle of the sixteenth century. This gallery contains very few first-rate pictures, but has a beautiful St. Sebastian, by Guido, and several fine works of Guercino. The most noticeable pictures are—

      1st Room.— 2. Disembodied Spirit (unfinished): Guido Reni. 13. St. John Baptist: Guercino. 16. Mary Magdalene: Guido Reni. 20. The Cumæan Sibyl: Domenichino. 26. Mary Magdalene: Tintoretto. 27. Presentation in the Temple: Fra. Bartolomeo. 30. Holy Family: Garofalo. 52. Madonna and Saints: Botticelli? 61. Portrait of himself: Guido Reni. 78. Madonna and Saints: F. Francia, 1513. 80. Portrait: Velasquez. 87. St. Augustine: Giovanni Bellini. 89. Romulus and Remus: Rubens.

      2nd Room.— 100. Two male portraits: Vandyke. 104. Adoration of the Shepherds: Mazzolino. 106. Two Portraits: Vandyke. 116. St. Sebastian: Guido Reni. 117. Cleopatra and Augustus: Guercino. 119. St. Sebastian: Lud. Caracci. 128. Gipsy telling a fortune: Caravaggio. 132. Portrait: Giovanni Bellini. 134. Portrait of Michael Angelo: M. Venusti? 136. Petrarch: Gio. Bellini? 142. Nativity of the Virgin: Albani. 143. Sta. Petronilla: Guercino. An enormous picture, brought hither from St. Peter's, where it has been replaced by a mosaic copy. The composition is divided into two parts. The lower represents the burial of Sta. Petronilla, the upper the ascension of her spirit.

      "The Apostle Peter had a daughter, born in lawful wedlock, who accompanied him in his journey from the East. Petronilla was wonderfully fair; and Valerius Flaccus, a young and noble Roman, who was a heathen, became enamoured of her beauty, and sought her for his wife; and he, being very powerful, she feared to refuse him; she therefore desired him to return in three days, and promised that he should then carry her home. But she prayed earnestly to be delivered from this peril; and when Flaccus returned in three days, with great pomp, to celebrate the marriage, he found her dead. The company of nobles who attended him, carried her to the grave, in which they laid her, crowned with roses; and Flaccus lamented greatly."—Mrs. Jameson, from the Perfetto Legendario.

       199. Death and Assumption of the Virgin: Cola della Matrice.

      "Here the death of the Virgin is treated at once in a mystical and dramatic style. Enveloped in a dark blue mantle, spangled with golden stars, she lies extended on a couch; St. Peter, in a splendid scarlet cope as bishop, reads the service; St. John, holding the palm, weeps bitterly. In front, and kneeling before the couch or bier, appear the three great Dominican saints as witnesses of the religious mystery; in the centre St. Dominic; on the left, St. Catherine of Siena; and on the right, St. Thomas Aquinas. In a compartment above is the Assumption."—Jameson's Legends of the Madonna, p. 315.

       123. Virgin and Angels: Paul Veronese. 124. Rape of Europa: Paul Veronese.

      

      At the head of the Capitol steps, to the right of the terrace, is the entrance to the Palazzo Caffarelli, the residence of the Prussian minister. It has a small but beautiful garden, and the view from the windows is magnificent.

      "After dinner, Bunsen called for us, and took us first to his house on the Capitol, the different windows of which command the different views of ancient and modern Rome. Never shall I forget the view of the former; we looked down on the Forum, and just opposite were the Palatine and the Aventine, with the ruins of the Palace of the Cæsars on the one, and houses intermixed with gardens on the other. The mass of the Coliseum rose beyond the Forum, and beyond all, the wide plain of the Campagna to the sea. On the left rose the Alban hills, bright in the setting sun, which played full upon Frescati and Albano, and the trees which edge the lake, and further away in the distance, it lit up the old town of Labicum."—Arnold's Letters.

      From the further end of the courtyard of the Caffarelli Palace one can look down upon part of the bare cliff of the Rupe Tarpeia. Here there existed till 1868 a small court, which is represented as the scene of the murder in Hawthorne's Marble Faun, or "Transformation." The door, the niche in the wall, and all other details mentioned in the novel, were realities. The character of the place is now changed by the removal of the boundary-wall. The part of the rock seen from here is that usually visited from below by the Via Tor de' Specchi.

      To reach the principal portion of the south-eastern height of the Capitol, we must ascend the staircase beyond the Palace of the Conservators, on the right. Here we shall find ourselves upon the highest part of

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