Produced by Delphine Lettau and the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net RENAISSANCE FANCIES AND STUDIES: BEING A SEQUEL TO EUPHORION BY VERNON LEE LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 1895 [_All rights reserved_] _Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. _At the Ballantyne Press_ _TO_ _MY DEAR FRIENDS_ _MARIA AND PIER DESIDERIO PASOLINI_ _EASTER 1895_ PREFACE These essays being mainly the outcome of direct personal impressions of certain works of art and literature, and of the places in which they were produced, I have but few acknowledgments to make to the authors of books treating of the same subject. Among the exceptions to this rule, I must mention foremost Professor Tocco's _Eresia nel Medio Evo_, Monsieur Gebhart's _Italie Mystique_, and Monsieur Paul Sabatier's _St. François d'Assise_. I am, on the other hand, very deeply indebted to the conversation and advice of certain among my friends, for furnishing me second-hand a little of that archæological and critical knowledge which is now-a-days quite unattainable save by highly trained specialists. My best thanks, therefore, to Miss Eugénie Sellers, editor of Furtwängler's "Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture;" to Mr. Bernhard Berenson, author of "Venetian Painters," and a monograph on Lorenzo Lotto; and particularly to my friend Mrs. Mary Logan, whose learned catalogue of the Italian paintings at Hampton Court is sufficient warrant for the correctness of my art-historical statements, which she has had the kindness to revise. MAIANO, NEAR FLORENCE, _April_ 1895. CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE ix THE LOVE OF THE SAINTS 1 THE IMAGINATIVE ART OF THE RENAISSANCE 65 TUSCAN SCULPTURE 135 A SEEKER OF PAGAN PERFECTION, BEING THE LIFE OF DOMENICO NERONI, PICTOR SACRILEGUS 163 VALEDICTORY 233 THE LOVE OF THE SAINTS I "Panis Angelicus fit panis hominum. O res mirabilis, manducat Dominum Pauper, Servus et Humilis." These words of the Matins of the Most Holy Sacrament I heard for the first time many years ago, to the beautiful and inappropriate music of Cherubini. They struck me at that time as foolish, barbarous, and almost gross; but since then I have learned to think of them, and in a measure to feel of them, as of something greater and more solemn than all the music that Cherubini ever wrote.