United States or Laos ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Pensieroso is an Italian word really meaning thoughtful but this little girl was not thinking, for then the expression of her face would have been much stronger and firmer and less languid; but the word has got to be used for a sort of awake-dreamy state when one lets thoughts float lazily along without having any energy to dwell upon them, and see whether they are good or bad.
Now if you ask about the expression on her face, I must tell you it was rather languid and "pensieroso."
He was probably in the early stage of acquiring the language, when he superscribed the two first poems with their Italian titles. For there is no such word as "Penseroso," the adjective formed from "Pensiero" being "pensieroso". Even had the word been written correctly, its signification is not that which Milton intended, viz. thoughtful, or contemplative, but anxious, full of cares, carking.
Recall to mind the figure of Night which Michael Angelo has placed at the feet of the Pensieroso, dress her in modern garb, twist that long hair round the magnificent head, a little dark in complexion, set a spark of fire in those dreamy eyes, throw a scarf about the massive bosom, see the long dress, white, embroidered with flowers, imagine the statue sitting upright, with her arms folded like those of Mademoiselle Georges, and you will see before you the Consul's wife, with a boy of six, as handsome as a mother's desire, and a little girl of four on her knees, as beautiful as the type of childhood so laboriously sought out by the sculptor David to grace a tomb.
The thought that was passing through this little girl's head at the time I mention and which made her look so languid and pensieroso, was "I wish it was 6 o'clock."
Not until Van Dyck, refining upon Rubens under the example of the Venetians, painted in the pensieroso mood his portraits of high-bred English cavaliers in all the pride of adolescence or earliest manhood, was this particular aspect of youth in its flower again depicted with the same felicity.
Word Of The Day