The  attitude  of  the  Venus,"  he  continues,  "  is  even-
way  unbecoming."  And,  as  if  this  were  not  hard  mea-
sure enough,  he  has  the  cruelty  to  hang  her  up  upon  the
horns  of  a  dilemma.  "  Either  the  goddess  feels  that  she
is  naked,  or  she  does  not :  if  her  modesty  suffers,  let  her
put  on  her  clothes.  It  really  were  too  absurd  for  this
modest  person  to  walk  up  and  down  Olympus,  under  the
gaze  of  immortals  and  of  mortals  too,  all  the  while  en-
during miseries  which  she  might  so  easily  spare  herself!"
It  was,  perhaps,  a  conviction  of  the  ludicrous  inconsis-
tencies into   which   connoisseurs   are   so   frequently  be-


THE    1'ITTI    PALACE.  107

brayed,  that  led   Lord  Byron  to  exclaim,  with  real  or  af-
fected contempt  for  the  labours  of  the  whole  fraternity —

I  leave  to  learned  fingers,  and  wise  hands,
The  artist  and  his  ape,  to  teach  and  tell
How  well  his  connoisseurship  understands
The  graceful  bend  and  the  voluptuous  swell :
Let  these  describe  the  undescribable !

At  the  Corsini  Palace  is  one  of  the  most  admired  per-
formances of  Carlo  Dolci — a  figure  of  Poetry — exhibit-
ing less  of  the  mannerism,  less  of  the  mawkish  and  af-
fected sweetness  that  characterizes  most  of  his  works.
It  has  been  well  described,  as  "  one  of  those  counte-
nances, the  charms  of  which  are  lighted  up  by  that  un-
definable  expression,  which  makes  the  face  the  index  of
the  mind,  and  gives  the  assurance,  at  the  first  glance,  of
intellectual  superiority."


108  FLORENCE.
IMPROVVISATORI.
