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Raphael Raphael was therefore decried as being scarcely superior to Sir Frederick Leighton; and one of the early Italian painters, Francesco Bianchi, whom Vasari exhumes in some three or four lines, was praised as possessing a subtle and mysterious talent very different indeed from the hesitating smile of La Jaconde.
This picture is also known as 'La Jaconde. I wish to call attention to it because it is the first of four surpassingly beautiful portraits of women which four great painters gave in succession to the world.
I have written, in connection with Lionardo's 'Jaconde' and Raphael's 'Fornarina, of Titian's 'Bella Donna. He has various 'Bellas, but, as far as I know, this is the 'Bella Donna, 'a splendid, serious beauty, in a red and blue silk dress, in the Sciarra Gallery, Rome.
'La Jaconde' is now in the Louvre in nearly ruined condition, yet a judge says of it that even now 'there is something in this wonderful head of the ripest southern beauty, with its airy background of a rocky landscape, which exercises a peculiar fascination over the mind.
The others, to be spoken of afterwards, are Raphael's 'Fornarina, Titian's 'Bella Donna, and Rubens' 'Straw Hat. About the original of 'La Jaconde' there never has been a mystery such as there has been about the others. At this portrait the unsatisfied painter worked at intervals for four years, and when he left it he pronounced it still unfinished.
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