Pausing a few days at Vienna, I formed a friendly intimacy with a young and intelligent Venetian, of the ancient senatorial house of F----i; and, on my return through Venice, after a rewarding and delightful residence of two years in various parts of Italy, I met my Vienna friend in one of the taverns of St Mark's. After a cordial greeting, he told me that he was obliged to leave Venice on the ensuing day, to take possession of an estate and villa in Lombardy, bequeathed to him by a deceased relative. The gardens, he added, covered the slope of a woody hill, which commanded a wide view over the classic shores and environs of the Lake of Garda; and the mansion, although time-worn and ruinous, contained some fine old paintings, and a store of old books and manuscripts which had not seen the light for ages. I had already experienced the keen delight of exploring the mines of literary wealth contained in the old libraries of Italy, and I did not hesitate to accept the cordial invitation to accompany him which closed this alluring description of his Lombard villa.
We left Venice the following morning, and, proceeding by easy journeys through Padua and Verona, we reached the villa on the evening of the third day, and installed ourselves in the least decayed apartments of the ruinous but still imposing and spacious mansion. On the ensuing day I rose early, and hastened to examine some large fresco paintings in the saloon, which had powerfully excited my curiosity during a cursory view by lamp-light. They were admirably designed, and, from the recurrence in all of the remarkable form and features of a young man of great personal beauty, they were evidently a connected series; but, with the exception of two, the colouring and details were nearly obliterated by time and the humid air from the contiguous lake. Upon scrolls beneath the two least injured paintings were the inscriptions of _La Scoperta_ and _La Vendetta_; and the incidents delineated in them were so powerfully drawn, and so full of dramatic expression, that a novelist of moderate ingenuity would readily have constructed from them an effective romance. The picture subscribed _La Scoperta_ represented the interior of an elegant saloon decorated in Italian taste with pictures, busts, and candelabra. In the foreground was seated a young artist in the plain garb rendered familiar to modern eyes by the portraits of Raphael and other painters of the sixteenth century; a short cloak and doublet of black cloth, and tight black pantaloons of woven silk. The form and features of this youth were eminently noble. His countenance beamed with dignity and power, and his tall figure displayed a classic symmetry and grandeur which forcibly reminded me of that magnificent statue, the reposing Discobolus. Before him were an easel and canvass, on which was distinguishable the roughly sketched likeness of a robust and middle-aged man sitting opposite to him in the middle-ground of the picture, and richly attired in a Spanish mantle of velvet. His sleeves were slashed and embroidered in the fashion of the period, and his belt and dagger glittered with adornments of gold and jewels; while his golden spurs, and the steel corselet which covered his ample chest, indicated a soldier of distinguished rank. In the background stood a tall and handsome youth leaning with folded arms against the window-niche. He was attired in the splendid costume of the Venetian nobles, as represented in the portraits of Titian and Paul Veronese, and his dark eyes were fixed upon the painter and his model with an expression of intense and wondering solicitude. And truly the impassioned looks and attitudes of the individuals before him were well adapted to excite sympathy and astonishment. The young artist sat erect, his tall figure somewhat thrown back, and his right hand, holding the pencil, was resting on the elbow of his chair; while from his glowing and dilated features, intense hatred and mortal defiance blazed out upon the man whose portrait he had begun to paint. In the delineation of the broad and knitted brow, the eagle-fierceness of the full and brilliant eye, and the stern compression of the lips, the unknown artist had been wonderfully successful, and not less so in the display of very opposite emotions in the harsh and repulsive lineaments of the personage sitting for his portrait. The wild expression of every feature indicated that he had suddenly made some strange and startling discovery. His face was of a livid and deadly yellow; his small and deep-set eyes were fixed in the wide stare of terror upon the artist; and his person was half raised from his seat, while his hands convulsively clutched the elbows of the chair.