This dialogue, natural and simple, had taken such hold of our good _religieux_’s fancy, that not a word would he say about the picture, while his imagination was so full of the prince, and of his own amazement at the salutation of his companions, when returning to the refectory;--“Why, Gaetano,” cried they, “thou hast been conversing with _Cæsar_:”--I too liked the tale, because it was artless, and because it was true. But the picture surpasses all praise; the woman kneeling on the fore-ground, her back to the spectators, seems a repetition of the figure in Raphael’s famous picture of the Vatican on fire, that is shewn in the chambers called particularly by his name; where the personifications of Justice and Meekness, engraved by Strange, seize one’s attention very forcibly; it is observable, that the first is every body’s favourite in the painting, the last in the engraving.
Raphael’s Bible, as one of the long galleries is comically called by the connoisseurs, breaks one’s neck to look at it. The stories, beginning with Adam and Eve, are painted in small compartments; the colouring as vivid now as if it were done last week; and the _arabesques_ so gay and pretty, they are very often represented on fans; and we have fine engravings in England of all, yet, though exquisitely done, they give one somehow a false notion of the whole: so did Piranesi’s prints too, though invaluable, when considered by themselves as proofs of the artist’s merit. His judicious manner, however, of keeping all coarse objects from interfering with the grand ones, though it mightily increases the dignity, and adds to the spirit of his performance, is apt to lead him who wishes for information, into a style of thinking that will at last produce disappointment as to general appearances, which here at Rome is really disproportionate to the astonishing productions of art contained within its walls.
But I must leave this glorious Vatican, with the perpetual regret of having seen scarcely any thing of its invaluable library, except the prodigious size and judicious ornaments of it: neither book nor MS. could I prevail on the librarian to shew me, except some love-letters from Henry the Eighth of England to Anne Boleyn, which he said were most likely to interest _me_: they were very gross and indecent ones to be sure; so I felt offended, and went away, in a very ill humour, to see Castle St. Angelo; where the emperor Adrian intended perpetually to repose; but the urn containing his ashes is now kept in a garden belonging to one of the courts in the palace, near the Apollo and other Greek statues of peculiar excellence. From his tomb too, some of the pillars of St. Paul’s were taken, and this splendid mausolæum converted into a sort of citadel, where Sixtus Quintus deposited three millions of gold, it is said; and Alexander the Sixth retired to shield himself from Charles the Eighth of France, who entered Rome by torch-light in 1494, and forced the Pope to give him what the French historians call _l’investiture du royaume de Naples_; after which he took Capua, and made his conquering entry into Naples the February following, 1495; Ferdinand, son of Alphonso, flying before him. This Pope was the father of the famous Cæsar Borgia; and it was on this occasion, I believe, that the French wits made the well-known distich on his notorious avarice and rapacity: