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Seven cities, as you know, dispute among themselves, the birth place of Homer; seven great nations are quarrelling over Morelli: India, Egypt, Arabia, Persia, Turkey, Italy, and Spain. The cold countries, even the temperate ones, France, England and Germany, make no pretensions. He is acquainted with every language and speaks the most of them.
Second to none as a work of art indeed more striking than any in the naïve and fearless truth of the rendering is the Lavinia Sarcinelli as a Matron in the Dresden Gallery. Morelli surely exaggerates a little when he describes Lavinia here as a woman of forty.
Crowe and Cavalcaselle's theory rested in the main, though not so entirely as Giovanni Morelli appears to have held, on the signature and the early date to be found on a Santa Conversazione, once in the collection of M. Reiset, and now at Chantilly in that of the late Due d'Aumale.
Palma Vecchio also deserves serious consideration as possible author of the "Shepherd Boy." Crowe and Cavalcaselle, ii. 144. Morelli, ii. 212. Quoted by Morelli, ii. 212, note. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, ii. 155. Crowe and Cavalcaselle also cite a portrait in the Casa Ajata at Crespano; as I have never seen this piece I cannot discuss it.
There can be little doubt, notwithstanding, that Morelli was right in denying the authorship of Barbarelli, and tentatively, for he does no more, assigning the so subtly attractive and pathetic Concert to the early time of Titian. To express a definitive opinion on the latter point in the present state of the picture would be somewhat hazardous.
The story is but an episode in a sylvan scene, where other figures, in quaint costumes, seem to be leading an idyllic existence, untroubled by the cares of life, and utterly unconcerned at the strange event passing before their eyes. From the "Apollo and Daphne" it is an easy transition to the "Venus," that great discovery which we owe to Morelli, and now universally recognised by modern critics.
Morelli writes: "These masterpieces appear to me unequalled in the art of the fifteenth century; for to no other contemporary painter was it given to endow the human frame with a like degree of passion, vehemence, and strength."
When in the course of the performance he seized his harp to begin the song, there was a cry from the audience, 'Ah! il prend encore sa harpe, upon which there was a universal outburst of laughter followed by fresh whistling, so prolonged, that at last Morelli decided boldly to lay aside his harp and step forward to the proscenium in the usual way.
Is there any one of your friends like de Tallard, imbued with the spirit of our age, to whom I can be of any service? If so, command me. Give me some news of our old friend de Gourville. I presume he is prosperous in his affairs; if his health is poor I shall be very sorry. Doctor Morelli, my particular friend, accompanies the Countess of Sandwich, who goes to France for her health.
In one or two cases he boldly repeats the same figure in the same picture, feature for feature, as in the Virgin and S. John of the Rospigliosi "Holy Family," limb for limb as in the flying soldiers of the Loreto "Conversion of Saul." He was also most faithful to his own type of limb or feature, especially those in which Morelli has taught us always to look for similarity.
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