Painting

Rosalba used to say, "I have so long been accustomed to study features, and the expression of the mind by them, that I know people's tempers by their faces." She frequently surprised her friends by the accuracy of character which she read in the faces of persons who were entire strangers to her.

Very few female portraits are found in the Spanish collections. Their painters were seldom brought in professional contact with the beauty of high-born women—the finest touchstone of professional skill—and their great portrait painters lived in an age of jealous husbands, who cared not to set off to public admiration the charms of their spouses. Velasquez came to reside at court about the same time that Madrid was visited by Sir Kenelm Digby, who had like to have been slain the first night of his arrival, for merely looking at a lady.

A brighter day now dawned upon Poussin. What had happened to him, which would have been regarded by most young artists as the greatest misfortune and sunk them in despondency and ruin, proved of the greatest advantage to him. The Cardinal Barberini having returned to Rome, gave him some commissions, which he executed in such an admirable manner as at once established his reputation among those of the greatest artists of the age. The first work he executed for his patron was his celebrated picture of the Death of Germanicus, which Lanzi pronounces one of his finest productions.

Matias de Torres, a Spanish painter, affected the style of Caravaggio. His compositions were half veiled in thick impenetrable shadows, which concealed the design, and sometimes left the subject a mystery. Francisco de Solis was standing before one of them, in the church of Victory at Madrid, representing a scene from the life of St. Diego, and was asked to explain the subject depicted. "It represents," said the witty painter, "San Brazo," St. Arm, nothing being distinguished but the arm of a mendicant in the background.

There are numerous catacombs in Egypt, the principal of which are at Alexandria; at Sakkara, near Cairo; at Siut, near the ancient Lycopolis or City of the Wolf; at Gebel Silsilis, on the banks of the Nile between Etfu and Ombos, the site of one of the principal quarries of ancient Egypt; and at Thebes. Many of these are of vast extent, and were doubtless formed by quarrying the rocks and mountains for building materials.

While the court of France was at variance with the Holy See, considerable acrimony existed among his Holiness's troops against all Frenchmen; consequently, wherever they met them in Rome, they instantly attacked them with sticks and stones, and sometimes with even more formidable weapons. It happened one day that Poussin and three or four of his countrymen, returning from a drawing excursion, met at the Quattro Fontane near Monte Cavallo, a company of soldiers, who seeing them dressed in the French costume, instantly attacked them.

Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, and afterwards also king of Italy, was born at Amali, near Vienna, in 455, and died in 526. Though a Goth, he was so far from delighting in the destruction of public monuments, and works of art, that he issued edicts for their preservation at Rome and throughout Italy, and assigned revenues for the repair of the public edifices, for which purpose he employed the most skillful and learned architects, particularly Aloïsius, Boëtius, and Symmachus. According to Cassiodorus (lib. ii. Varior. Epist.

This wonderful genius was of royal descent, and born at Syracuse about B.C. 287. He was a relative of king Hiero, who held him in the highest esteem and favor, though he does not appear to have held any public office, preferring to devote himself entirely to science. Such was his enthusiasm, that he appears at times to have been so completely absorbed in contemplation and calculations, as to be totally unconscious of what was passing around him.

"When the haughty and able Pope Innocent III. caused Cardinal Langton to be elected Archbishop of Canterbury in despite of King John, and compelled him to submit, to appease the latter and to admonish him, his Holiness presented him with four golden rings, set with precious stones, at the same time taking care to inform him of the many mysteries implied in them.

Elizabeth Sirani was born at Bologna in 1638. She early exhibited the most extraordinary talent for painting, which was perfectly cultivated by her father, Gio. Andrea Sirani, an excellent disciple and imitator of Guido. She attached herself to an imitation of the best style of Guido, which unites great relief with the most captivating amenity. Her first public work appeared in 1655, when she was seventeen years of age.