The Greville Memoirs, Part 1 (of 3), Volume 1 (of 3): A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IVGreville, Charles
History
The Greville Memoirs, Part 1 (of 3), Volume 1 (of 3): A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV
Greville, Charles
Great Britain -- History -- George IV, 1820-1830; Great Britain -- History -- William IV, 1830-1837
As we were going to this palace we drove by the Cancellaria
(which was likewise built out of the Coliseum), and heard by
accident that a dead cardinal (Somaglia) was lying in state
there. Somaglia was Secretary of State in Leo's time. Having seen
all the living cardinals, we thought we might as well complete
our view of the Sacred College with the dead one, and went up.
After a great deal of knocking we were admitted to a private view
half an hour before the public was let in. He had been embalmed,
and lay on a bed under a canopy on an inclined plane, full
dressed in cardinal's robes, new shoes on, his face and hands
uncovered, the former looking very fresh (I believe he was
rouged), his fingers black, but on one of them was an emerald
ring, candles burning before the bed, and the window curtains
drawn. He was 87 years old, but did not look so much, and had a
healthier appearance in death than half the old walking mummies
we had seen with palms in their hands in the morning.
Took a look at Pasquin, who had nothing but advertisements pasted
upon him. I had seen Marphorius in the Capitol; there has long
been an end to the witty dialogues of the days of Sixtus V., so
quaintly told by Leti; they are so little 'birds of a feather'
(for Pasquin is a mutilated fragment, Marphorius a colossal
statue of the ocean) that, residing as they did at different
parts of the town, it is difficult to understand how they ever
came to converse with each other at all. I remember one of the
best of his stories. Sixtus V. made his sister a princess, and
she had been a washerwoman. The next day Pasquin appeared with a
dirty shirt on. Marphorius asks him 'why he wears such foul
linen;' and he answers 'that his washerwoman has been made a
princess, and he can't get it washed.'
To the Farnesina: Raphael's frescoes, the famous Galatea, and the
great head which Michael Angelo painted on the wall, as it is
said as a hint to Raphael that he was too minute. There it is
just as he left it. Here Raphael painted the Transfiguration, and
here the Fornarina was shut up with him that he might not run
away from his work. It might be thought that to shut up his
mistress with him was not the way to keep him to his work. Be
that as it may, the plan was a good one which produced these
frescoes and the Transfiguration.
[Page Head: POMPEY'S STATUE]
I very nearly forgot to mention the Palazzo Spada, where we went
to see the famous statue of Pompey, which was found on the spot
where the Senate House formerly stood, and which is (as certainly
as these things can be certain) the identical statue at the foot
of which Caesar fell.
Muffling his face within his robe
Ev'n at the base of Pompey's statue,
Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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