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
The figure of the Virgin seemed to soar in the air, and it was difficult
to think the clouds were not in motion. An aërial lightness clothes her
form, and it is perfectly natural for such a figure to stand among the
clouds. Two divine cherubs look up from below, and in her arms sits the
sacred Child. Those two faces beam from the picture like those of
angels. The mild, prophetic eye and lofty brow of the young Jesus chain
one like a spell. There is something more than mortal in its
expression--something in the infant face which indicates a power
mightier than the proudest manhood. There is no glory around the head,
but the spirit which shines from those features marks its divinity. In
the sweet face of the mother there speaks a sorrowful foreboding mixed
with its tenderness, as if she knew the world into which the Savior was
born and foresaw the path in which he was to tread. It is a picture
which one can scarce look upon without tears.
There are in the same room six pictures by Correggio which are said to
be among his best works--one of them, his celebrated Magdalen. There is
also Correggio's "Holy Night," or the Virgin with the shepherds in the
manger, in which all the light comes from the body of the Child. The
surprise of the shepherds is most beautifully exprest. In one of the
halls there is a picture of Van der Werff in which the touching story of
Hagar is told more feelingly than words could do it. The young Ishmael
is represented full of grief at parting with Isaac, who, in childish
unconsciousness of what has taken place, draws in sport the corner of
his mother's mantle around him and smiles at the tears of his lost
playmate.
Nothing can come nearer real flesh and blood than the two portraits of
Raphael Mengs, painted by himself when quite young. You almost think the
artist has in sport crept behind the frame and wishes to make you
believe he is a picture. It would be impossible to speak of half the
gems of art contained in this unrivalled collection. There are twelve
large halls, containing in all nearly two thousand pictures.
The plain south of Dresden was the scene of the hard-fought battle
between Napoleon and the allied armies in 1813. On the heights above the
little village of Räcknitz, Moreau was shot on the second day of the
battle. We took a footpath through the meadows, shaded by cherry trees
in bloom, and reached the spot after an hour's walk. The monument is
simple--a square block of granite surmounted by a helmet and sword, with
the inscription, "The hero Moreau fell here by the side of Alexander,
August 17, 1813," I gathered as a memorial a few leaves of the oak which
shades it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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