Rome was to me first and foremost Michael Angelo's
Sistine Chapel, Raphael's Stanzas and Loggias, and now all this
magnificent array, which I had travelled so far to see, was closed to me
by an old man's bad temper.
But there was still enough to linger over in Rome. The two palaces that
seemed to me most deserving of admiration were the Farnese and the
Cancellaria, the former Michael Angelo's, the latter Bramante's work,
the first a perpetuation in stone of beauty and power, the second, of
grace and lightness. I felt that if one were to take a person with no
idea of architecture and set him in front of these buildings, there
would fall like scales from his eyes, and he would say: "Now I know what
the building art means."
Luini's exquisite painting, _Vanity and Modesty_, in the Galleria
Sciarra, impressed me profoundly. It represented two women, one nun-
like, the other magnificently dressed. The latter is Leonardo's well-
known type, as a magically fascinating personality. Its essential
feature is a profoundly serious melancholy, but the beauty of the figure
is seductive. She is by no means smiling, and yet she looks as though a
very slight alteration would produce a smile, and as though the heavens
themselves would open, if smile she did. The powerful glance of the dark
blue eyes is in harmony with the light-brown hair and the lovely hands.
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