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It was truly a work of love, and it had cost him his most precious and essential possession for his art his eyesight. The engraver was Steinla, and the picture was the Madonna di Sisto.... It can be seen only by those who go to Dresden.
Edmonstone had some errands there that would occupy her longer than Charles liked to wait in the carriage, it was settled that Philip should drive her there in the pony phaeton, and Guy accompany them and drive back, thus having an opportunity of seeing Philip's print of the 'Madonna di San Sisto, returning some calls, and being introduced to Mr. Lascelles, whilst she was shopping.
In Rome, not far from the Fountain of Trevi of whose waters it is said that they have the power to ensure the return to Rome of any one who has drunk of them in a cup not heretofore devoted to common purposes is the spacious convent called San Domenico e Sisto. Here the first convent of Dominican friars was established, and the spot is historic ground in the annals of the order of Preachers.
They may be common to the race and age: as, for instance, the conception of sovereign deity expressed in the Olympian Zeus of Pheidias, or the conception of divine maternity expressed in Raphael's 'Madonna di San Sisto. Still the personality of the artist, his own intellectual and moral nature, his peculiar way of thinking and feeling, his individual attitude towards the material given to him in ideas of human consciousness, will modify his choice of subject and of form, and will determine his specific type of beauty.
While her father himself may not have banished her to S. Sisto, she, probably excited by Pesaro's departure, and perhaps angry with the Pope, had doubtless sought this place as an asylum.
To these last years belong his 'Madonna di San Sisto, so named from its having been painted for the convent of St Sixtus at Piacenza, and his last picture, the 'Transfiguration, with which he was still engaged when death met him unexpectedly. He had a house in Rome, and a villa in the neighbourhood, and on his death left a considerable fortune to his heirs.
We have our proof cast of the great glorious head of the Venus di Milo; we have those six beautiful photographs of Rome, that Brown brought to us; we have the great German lithograph of the San Sisto Mother and Child, and we have the two angel heads, from the same; we have that lovely golden twilight sketch of Heade's; we have some sea photographs of Bradford's; we have an original pen-and-ink sketch by Billings; and then, as before, we have 'our picture. What has been the use of our watching at the gates and waiting at the doors of Beauty all our lives, if she hasn't thrown us out a crust now and then, so that we might have it for time of need?
Assunta's object, of course, was to break the match with the Marchese di Castelmare for the sake of bringing on one with the Duca di San Sisto. Violante's object, it has been said, was to avoid any marriage at all specially that immediately proposed to her; and the stories, which from time to time Assunta brought her of the goings on of Ludovico, had a double interest for Violante.
The fresco of "Alexander" in the Palazzo Borghese is by an imitator. The "Madonna di San Sisto" was painted for a banner to be borne in processions. It is a subtle observation of Rio that the banner, an invention of the Umbrian school, corresponds in painting to the hymn in poetry. See Vol. II., Revival of Learning, p. 316, for Raphael's letter on this subject to Leo X.
There was one such little group on the hillside in the middle of our Battery position, between two of our gunpits. There was another in the middle of our forward position at San Sisto, and another, where some thirty Bersaglieri and Artillerymen were buried, in the Baerenthal Valley. It was here one day that an Irish Major, newly come to Italy, said to me, "I don't want any better grave than that."
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