United States or Martinique ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The baby was wrapped in a swaddling band, a piece of linen four or five yards long, which is wound round and round the tiny body, beginning just under the arms and ending at the toes. It is a curious fashion the Italians have of dressing their babies, and has been followed ever since the Mother Mary wrapped the infant Jesus in a swaddling band, so many hundred years ago. "Pretty bambino," Mrs.
It is most popular in cases of child-birth, where it has done such wonders, that if a lady be longer than usual in getting through her difficulties, a messenger is despatched, with all speed, to solicit the immediate attendance of the Bambino. It is a very valuable property, and much confided in especially by the religious body to whom it belongs.
"The bambino is beautiful," said the artist, drawing nearer, but speaking reverently, for he knew that he had found the face he had been seeking for his Madonna for the altar of the Servi. "What doth he like, your little one? For I am a friend to the bambini, and the poverina hath pain to bear."
Love, for him, lay not in flesh and blood alone; rather, in what flesh and blood signified in another clay, not Messer Domeneddio's, but his own chosen task-stuff. He had come hither to Prato on the commission of the Opera, to work a Madonna col Bambino for the great door of the Duomo.
He was kneeling in front of the Bambino. "I see that you have supplied my place, Sir Painter," said a mocking voice. He turned quickly and faced the little doorway. She stood there, smiling, scornful, her hands full of some delicate flimsy stuff, a gold thimble-cap on her finger. "It would not make a bad picture," she said tranquilly, "you and the Bambino." His face lighted up. "You have come!"
"Of all but one thing, Piero;" for it was not possible to misunderstand him, and she was resolute. "If this is not the end I shall speak with my father and the bambino " They were both silent. He knew that no one could ever care for his invalid child as she had done; and all that he owed her and must continue to owe her restrained him under her chiding, for the baby could not live away from her.
But this picture For months with its rippling light of under sea, its soft dreamy background, and in the foreground the mysterious figure.... All was finished but the Child upon her arm, the smile of light in her eyes. The lady had flouted the idea. It was a fancy of her husband's, to paint her as Madonna. She had refused to touch the Bambino sometimes petulantly, sometimes in silent scorn.
"It is nothing to me," she answered shortly. "It is a pretty festa, and Messer Magagnati should take thee. By our Lady of Castello, there are others who will go!" "It would be better for the bambino," he persisted sullenly, as she did not answer him. His voice was not the pleasanter now that its positive tone was changed to a coaxing one. "One is enough, Piero," she said.
But I did not inform Rosina of these things. The next evening she told me that an old woman had been to the house and asked for me. For days my first wife lurked in the neighborhood, beseeching me to come back to her. But I told her that in the eyes of God she was not my wife. Then, in revenge, she cast the evil eye upon the child sul bambino and for six weeks it ailed and then died.
She tells me she wants to hang on to it until she can get the money to have it enlarged into a big picture, and then she's going to keep it till the bambino that's Italian for baby, commissioner, you know till the baby grows up, so he can see what his dead father looked like." Now of a sudden La Farge knew or thought he knew why his interest had stirred in him a minute before.
Word Of The Day