The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 4Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron
General
The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 4
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron
Poetry
Pope's _Dunciad_, i. 29, _var_.
The Arcade, or "Piazza," so called, which was built by Inigo Jones in
1652, ran along the whole of the north and east sides of the _Piazza_ or
Square of Covent Garden. The Arcade on the north side is still described
as the "Piazzas."--_London Past and Present_, by H. B. Wheatley, 1891,
i. 461, ii. 554, iii. 145.]
[198] {162}["At Florence I remained but a day.... What struck me most
was ... the mistress of Titian, a portrait; a Venus of Titian in the
Medici Gallery ..."--Letter to Murray, April 27, 1817, _Letters_, 1900,
iv. 113. Compare, too, _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza xlix. line i,
_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 365, note 2.]
[199] ["I know nothing of pictures myself, and care almost as little:
but to me there are none like the Venetian--above all, Giorgione. I
remember well his Judgment of Solomon in the Mareschalchi Gallery [in
the Via Delle Asse, formerly celebrated for its pictures] in
Bologna."--Letter to William Bankes, February 26, 1820, _Letters_, 1900,
iv. 411.]
[200] ["I also went over the Manfrini Palace, famous for its pictures.
Among them, there is a portrait of Ariosto by Titian [now in the
possession of the Earl of Rosebery], surpassing all my anticipations of
the power of painting or human expression: it is the poetry of portrait,
and the portrait of poetry. There was also one of some learned lady,
centuries old, whose name I forget, but whose features must always be
remembered. I never saw greater beauty, or sweetness, or wisdom:--it is
the kind of face to go mad for, because it cannot walk out of its
frame.... What struck me most in the general collection was the extreme
resemblance of the style of the female faces in the mass of pictures, so
many centuries or generations old, to those you see and meet every day
amongst the existing Italians. The Queen of Cyprus and Giorgione's wife,
particularly the latter, are Venetians as it were of yesterday; the same
eyes and expression, and, to my mind, there is none finer,"--Letter to
Murray, April 14, 1817, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 105. The picture which
caught Byron's fancy was the so-called _Famiglia di Giorgione_, which
was removed from the Manfrini Palace in 1856, and is now in the Palazzo
Giovanelli. It represents "an almost nude woman, probably a gipsy,
seated with a child in her lap, and a standing warrior gazing upon her,
a storm breaking over the landscape."--_Handbook of Painting_, by Austen
H. Layard, 1891, part ii. p. 553.]
[201] {163}[According to Vasari and others, Giorgione (Giorgio
Barbarelli, b. 1478) was never married. He died of the plague, A.D.
1511.]
[202] {164} "Quæ septem dici, sex tanien esse solent."--Ovid.,
[_Fastorum_, lib. iv. line 170.]
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