Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/169

 besides many others, made vast additions to them afterwards, by the taking of Athens, and by his conquests in Asia.

COMPARATIVE MERITS OF THE VENUS DE MEDICI, AND THE VENUS VICTRIX.

The Venus de Medici is placed in the tribune of the Florentine gallery, between two other Venuses, the Celestial and the Victorious. "If you observe them well," says Spence, "you will find as much difference between her air, and that of the celestial Venus, as there is between Titian's wife as a Venus, and as a Madonna, in the same room."

THE EFFECT OF PAINTING ON THE MIND.

The effects of the pencil are sometimes wonderful. It is said that Alexander trembled and grew pale on seeing a picture of Palamedes betrayed to death by his friends. It doubtless brought to his mind a stinging remembrance of his treatment of Aristonicus.

Portia could bear with an unshaken constancy her last separation from Brutus; but when she saw, a few hours after, a picture of the Parting of Hector and Andromache, she burst into a flood of tears. Full as seemed her cup of sorrow, the painter suggested new ideas of grief, or impressed more strongly her own.

An Athenian courtezan, in the midst of a riotous banquet with her lovers, accidentally cast her eye