ted drawing in the
attitudes. But we look in vain for the "sacred and the sweet," for
heart, for soul, for countenance.

Andrea del Sarto had, in his profession, great talents rather than
genius and enthusiasm. He was weak, dissipated, unprincipled; without
elevation of mind or generosity of temper; and that his moral
character was utterly contemptible, is proved by one trait in his
life. A generous patron who had relieved him in his necessity,
afterwards entrusted him with a considerable sum of money, to be laid
out in certain purchases; Andrea del Sarto perfidiously embezzled the
whole, and turned it to his own use. This story is told in his life,
with the addition that "he was persuaded to it by his wife, as
profligate and extravagant as himself."

Carlo Dolce's gentle, delicate, and melancholy temperament, are
strongly expressed in his own portrait, which is in the Gallery of
Paintings here. All his pictures are tinged by the morbid delicacy of
his constitution, and the refinement of his character and habits. They
have exquisite finish, but a want of power, degenerating at times into
coldness and feebleness; his Madonnas are distinguished by regular
feminine beauty, melancholy, devotion, or resigned sweetness: he
excelled in Mater Dolorosa. The most beautiful of his Virgins is in
Pitti Palace, of which picture there is a duplicate in the Borghese
Palace at Rome.

Carlo Marratti, without distinguished merit of any kind--unless it was
a distinguished merit to be the father of Faustina Zappi,--owed his
fortune, his title of _Cavaliere_, and the celebrity he once enjoyed,
not to any superiority of genius, but to his successful arts as a
courtier, and his assiduous flattery of the great. What can be more
characteristic of the man, than his simpering Virgins, fluttering in
tasteless, many-coloured draperies, with their sky blue back-grounds,
and golden clouds?

Caravaggio was a gloomy misanthrope and a profligate ruffian: we read,
that he was banished from Rome, for a murder committed in a drunken
brawl; and that he died at last of debauchery and want. Caravaggio was
perfect in his gamblers, robbers, and martyrdoms, and should never
have meddled with Saints and Madonnas. In his famous _Pieta_ in the
Vatican, the Virgin is an old beggar-woman, the two Maries are
fish-wives, in "maudlin sorrow," and St. Peter and St. John, a couple
of bravoes, burying a murdered traveller: _dipinse ferocemente sempre
perche feroce era