Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/126

 different times, the study of painting has taken the same vicious course; above all, among the imitators of Pietro da Cortona, some of whom went so far as to condemn a study of the works of Raffaelle, and even to decry, as useless, the imitation of nature." Bernini lived in splendor and magnificence, and left a fortune of 400,000 Roman crowns (about $700,000), to his children.

BERNINI AND THE VEROSPI HERCULES.

When the Verospi statue of Hercules killing the Hydra was first discovered, some parts of it, particularly the monster itself, were wanting, and were supplied by Bernini. Some years after, in further digging the same piece of ground, they found the hydra that originally belonged to it, which differs very much from Bernini's supplemental one; yet the latter is given in Maffei's Statues, and other books of prints, as the antique. The statue was removed from the Verospi palace to the Capitol, where it now is; and the original hydra, with a horned sort of a human face, snakes for hair, and a serpentine body, is there also, in the same court.

FANATICISM DESTRUCTIVE TO ART.

Queen Elizabeth was a bitter persecutor of art; she ordered all sacred pictures in the churches to be utterly destroyed, and the "walls to be white-*washed, so that no memorial of them might remain. In her reign, it became fashionable to sally forth