Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 5: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Switzerland, Part 1
History
Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 5: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Switzerland, Part 1
Austria -- Description and travel; Germany -- Description and travel; Switzerland -- Description and travel
Among other curiosities preserved in the collection, we were shown a
brass plate containing one of the records of the Roman Senate made one
hundred and eighty years before Christ, Greek manuscripts of the fifth
and sixth centuries, and a volume of Psalms printed on parchment in the
year 1457 by Faust and Schoeffer, the inventors of printing. There were
also Mexican manuscripts presented by Cortez, the prayer-book of
Hildegard, wife of Charlemagne, in letters of gold, the signature of San
Carlo Borromeo, and a Greek Testament of the thirteenth century which
had been used by Erasmus in making his, translation and contains notes
in his own hand. The most interesting article was the "Jerusalem
Delivered" of Tasso, in the poet's own hand, with his erasures and
corrections.
The chapel of St. Augustine contains one of the best works of
Canova--the monument of the Grand Duchess Maria Christina of
Sachsen-Teschen. It is a pyramid of gray marble, twenty-eight feet high,
with an opening in the side representing the entrance to a sepulcher. A
female figure personating Virtue bears in an urn to the grave the ashes
of the departed, attended by two children with torches. The figure of
Compassion follows, leading an aged beggar to the tomb of his
benefactor, and a little child with its hands folded. On the lower step
rests a mourning genius beside a sleeping lion, and a bas-relief on the
pyramid above represents an angel carrying Christina's image, surrounded
with the emblem of eternity, to heaven. A spirit of deep sorrow, which
is touchingly portrayed in the countenance of the old man, pervades the
whole group.
While we looked at it the organ breathed out a slow, mournful strain
which harmonized so fully with the expression of the figures that we
seemed to be listening to the requiem of the one they mourned. The
combined effect of music and sculpture thus united in their deep pathos
was such that I could have sat down and wept. It was not from sadness at
the death of a benevolent tho unknown individual, but the feeling of
grief, of perfect, unmingled sorrow, so powerfully represented, came to
the heart like an echo of its own emotion and carried it away with
irresistible influence. Travelers have described the same feeling while
listening to the "Miserere" in the Sistine Chapel at Rome. Canova could
not have chiselled the monument without tears.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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