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Updated: July 2, 2025
They had reached the balustraded terrace, and were pausing for pleasure in the garden tops below, with the flowery spaces, and the statued fountains all coming together. She put her hand on one of the fat little urchin-groups on the stone coping. "I don't want cherubs, when I can have these putti. And those old prince-bishops didn't, either!"
Are these carved chairs, with their reliefs of dancing putti, familiar to her the figures, I mean?" Mary shook her head. "Then it is certain that in your Italian wanderings you did not go to Prato. These groups of children dancing and blowing horns are very cleverly copied from Donatello's famous pulpit in the duomo.
They had reached the balustraded terrace, and were pausing for pleasure in the garden tops below, with the flowery spaces, and the statued fountains all coming together. She put her hand on one of the fat little urchin-groups on the stone coping. "I don't want cherubs, when I can have these putti. And those old prince-bishops didn't, either!"
This is the more curious when it is remembered how tenderly, with what observant and sympathetic truth the relation of child to mother, of child to child, was noted in the innumerable "Madonnas" and "Holy Families" of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; how both the Italians, and following them the Netherlanders, relieved the severity of their sacred works by the delightful roguishness, the romping impudence of their little angels, their putti.
Yet many subordinate details a row of putti in a cinquecento frieze, for instance and much of the low relief work especially the Crucifixion with its characteristic episodes of the fainting Maries and the soldiers casting dice are lovely in their unaffected Lombardism.
Then putti are practical and useful they hold up scrolls, tie back draperies, carry pictures, point out great folks, feed birds, and in one instance Correggio has ten of them leading a dog out to execution.
The angularity and crumpled draperies of the Milanese manner, when so exaggerated, produce an impression of caricature. Yet many subordinate details a row of putti in a Cinque Cento frieze, for instance and much of the low relief work, especially the Crucifixion, with its characteristic episodes of the fainting Marys and the soldiers casting dice, are lovely in their unaffected Lombardism.
The Florentine boasts a very beautiful and touching series of putti by Delia Robbia, that does little or nothing to diminish its death-rate. So far from preventing infant murder these places, with the noblest intentions in the world, have, for all practical purposes, organized it.
Over it is a Baptism of Christ, with God the Father and the Dove above. Within is a frieze of putti bearing garlands, with shell-head niches and channelled pilasters below. Above this is a band of Venetian-Gothic leaves, and in the coffered ceiling are rosettes. This ceiling is a pointed wagon vault, cut from two great blocks of marble, which meet in the centre.
On the ceiling above her, Tiepolo had painted a headlong group of sensuous forms, alive with vulgar movement and passion; the putti and the goddesses, peering through aërial balustrades, looked down complacently on Madame d'Estrées. Meanwhile there stood behind her a silent, distinguished figure the man of whom Harman saw that she was always nervously and sometimes timidly conscious.
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