Dear Henry
I hope my letter from Bologna will have satisfied you. Psyche’s head is quite in keeping with the rest of the picture, & I dare say just as Guido <1> painted it but I do not much admire that style of head. The nymph that crowns Europa is as well as ever she was in her life. – But Venice is the place for pictures – the prices are enormous but there are so many & so well preserved. There is a Raphael <2> intact – for 1000 £. Venetian pictures are too much alike, to please me – & being mostly painted for furniture pictures, they are of such odd shapes & proportions as they were intended for cornices, ceilings, over doors &c that they seldom look well out of the place they were painted for. I think Venice the most imposing place after Rome I ever saw. I am sure she might have made herself mistress of Italy if she chose. It must have been a lapsus pennæ <3> my putting pictures in the plural – or my thoughts were on the Correggio <4> which is to be. Will you pay the 25 £s to Hoare’s <5> in Fleet Street the extra expences being all included in my things coming with it I will not charge you with yours being but a small part. They are addressed to Mr John Fraser 25 Tokenhouse yard an agent to whom Mr Irvine wrote to recommend them. I never thought much of Tintoret <6> & Giorgione <7> till I came to Venice. I think the Flora at Florence must be a Giorgione. What laborious workmen the Venetians were, what acres of canvas P. Veronese <8> Palma <9> & Tintoretto covered. half a dozen names are all you ever hear for what it seems would require the labour of 50 οιοι nun βροτοι εισι <10> I could hear nothing precise of Correggios transfiguration. <11> –
Yr Affte
W T H F S.
Henry Talbot Esqr
31 Sackville Street
London
Notes:
1. Guido Reni (1575–1642), Bolognese painter.
2. Raphael Sanzio (1483–1520), Italian painter.
3. Slip of the pen.
4. Antonio Allegri (Correggio) (1484–1534).
5. Hoare & Co., Bankers.
6. Jacopo Robusti (Tintoretto) (1518–1594), Venetian painter. “Tintoret’ is a (now obsolete) Anglicisation of his name.
7. Giorgione (1477–1510), Italian painter. Many works formerly attributed to him are now assigned to others.
8. Paolo Veronese (1528–1588), Venetian painter.
9. Jacopo Palma ( ca.1480–1528), known as ‘Palma Vecchio’ [Old Palma], Venetian painter.
10. Derives from Homer with the Latin insertion of ‘nun’, meaning, ‘such as mortals are now’.
11. This seems to be a mistake for ‘Ascension’, both Transfiguration and Ascension revealing Christ in visionary form. Correggio’s fresco depicting the Ascension of Christ is in the church of San Giovanni in Parma.