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Perhaps I am inclined to plume myself upon this point, from the fact that it was the opinion of Carlo Maratti that 'The arrangement of drapery is more difficult than drawing the human figure; because the right effect depends more upon the taste of the artist than upon any given rules. That sweep of blue gauze has cost me more toil than everything else on the canvas."
As a proof of this, I went accidentally the other day into a print-shop, where, among many others, I found one print from a famous design of Carlo Maratti, who died about thirty years ago, and was the last eminent painter in Europe: the subject is 'il Studio del Disegno'; or "The School of Drawing."
Carlo Maratti was of opinion that the disposition of drapery was a more difficult art than even that of drawing the human figure; that a student might be more easily taught the latter than the former; as the rules of drapery, he said, could not be so well ascertained as those for delineating a correct form, This, perhaps, is a proof how willingly we favour our own peculiar excellence.
In speaking of Carlo Maratti, he confesses the inefficiency of this doctrine in a very remarkable manner: 'Carlo Maratti succeeded better than those I have first named, and I think owes his superiority to the extension of his views: besides his master Andrea Sacchi, he imitated Raffaelle, Guido, and the Caraccis.
In the allegorical picture of the School of Design, by Carlo Maratti, where the students are led through their various studies, in the opening clouds above the academy are seen the Graces, hovering over their pupils, with an inscription they must often recollect Senza di noi ogni fatica è vana.
Alas! how many a mild Madonna have I known to come in a Raphael! keep its ascendancy for a few brief moons then, after certain intermedial degradations, from the front drawing-room to the back gallery, thence to the dark parlour, adopted in turn by each of the Carracci, under successive lowering ascriptions of filiation, mildly breaking its fall consigned to the oblivious lumber-room, go out at last a Lucca Giordano, or plain Carlo Maratti! which things when I beheld musing upon the chances and mutabilities of fate below, hath made me to reflect upon the altered condition of great personages, or that woful Queen of Richard the Second
Among the later Italian examples, where the old legendary accessories are generally omitted, there are some of peculiar elegance. One by Ludovico Caracci, another by Domenichino, and a third by Carlo Maratti, are treated, if not with much of poetry or religious sentiment, yet with great dignity and pathos.
The finest example I have seen, is by Carlo Maratti, in the Vienna Gallery. St. Joseph is on a couch; Christ is seated near him; and the Virgin stands by with folded hands, in a sad, contemplative attitude. I am not aware that the Virgin has ever been introduced into any representation of the temptation or the baptism of our Saviour.
Unusual honors were paid them, as in the case of Maria Portia Vignoli, to whom a statue was erected in the public square of Viterbo to commemorate her great learning in natural science. An artist, Matilda Festa, held a professorship in the Academy of St. Luke in Rome, and Maria Maratti, daughter of the Roman painter Carlo Maratti, made a good reputation both as an artist and a poetess.
In the vestibule there are monuments to Carlo Maratti and Salvator Rosa, and there is a statue of St. Bruno, by Houdon, which is pronounced to be very fine. I thought it good, but scarcely worthy of vast admiration. Houdon was the sculptor of the first statue of Washington, and of the bust, whence, I suppose, all subsequent statues have been, and will be, mainly modelled.
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