But here the masterpieces hang thick, and you seem to
see them in a luminous atmosphere of their own. And the great saloons,
with their superb dim ceilings, their outer wall in splendid shadow, and
the sombre opposite glow of mellow canvas and dusky gilding, make,
themselves, almost as fine a picture as the Titians and Raphaels they
imperfectly reveal. We lingered briefly before many a Raphael and
Titian; but I saw my friend was impatient, and I suffered him at last to
lead me directly to the goal of our journey--the most tenderly fair of
Raphael's virgins, the Madonna in the Chair. Of all the fine pictures of
the world, it seemed to me this is the one with which criticism has least
to do. None betrays less effort, less of the mechanism of success and of
the irrepressible discord between conception and result, which shows
dimly in so many consummate works. Graceful, human, near to our
sympathies as it is, it has nothing of manner, of method, nothing,
almost, of style; it blooms there in rounded softness, as instinct with
harmony as if it were an immediate exhalation of genius.
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