The treasure of this room is the _Velata_ (245), Raphael's own
portrait of the woman that he loved, to whom he wrote his sonnets, and
whom he afterwards idealised as the Madonna di San Sisto; her
personality remains a mystery. Titian's _Bella_ (18), a rather stolid
rejuvenation of Eleonora Gonzaga, is chiefly valuable for its
magnificent representation of a wonderful Venetian costume. Here are
three works of Andrea del Sarto--the Annunciation (124), the Madonna
in Glory, with four Saints (123), and St John the Baptist (272); the
first is one of his most beautiful paintings. The picture supposed to
represent Andrea and his wife (118) is not by the master himself.
Bartolommeo's St Mark (125) was painted by him in 1514, to show that
he could do large figures, whereas he had been told that he had a
_maniera minuta_; it is not altogether successful. His Deposition from
the Cross (64) is one of his latest and most earnest religious works.
The Three Fates (113) by Rosso Fiorentino is an undeniably powerful
and impressive picture; it was formerly ascribed to Michelangelo. The
Three Ages (110), ascribed to Lorenzo Lotto here, was by Morelli
attributed to Giorgione, and is now assigned by highly competent
critics to a certain Morto da Feltre, of whom little is known save
that he is said to have been Giorgione's successful rival for the
favours of a ripe Venetian beauty; the picture itself, though injured
by restoration, belongs to the same category as the Concert. "In such
favourite incidents of Giorgione's school," writes Walter Pater,
"music or music-like intervals in our existence, life itself is
conceived as a sort of listening--listening to music, to the reading
of Bandello's novels, to the sound of water, to time as it flies."
In the _Sala di Marte_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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