Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/287

Rh standing in her picturesque Indian costume, looking down thoughtfully at a little cross, is excellently conceived. The most beautiful of all his statues seemed to me to be his Rebecca at the Well, and the Goddess of Silence.

In the atelier of Mr. Rogers, another American artist, I admired the pictures in bas-relief, from the history of Columbus, intended for the gates of the new Capitol in Washington,—a work similar to that on the gates of the Baptistery at Florence, but original in regard to the subject, and treated with great knowledge and artistic skill.

But now enough of artistic matters and studios, for the present.

Amongst the various palaces, with their gardens, I will merely mention that which is now possessed by the Corsini family, and which formerly belonged to the Swedish Queen Christina, during her residence in Rome. Her bed-room alone,—the room in which she died,—is still kept in the state it was when she occupied it. The pictures on the walls, and which were executed for her, are an extraordinary roccoco. One sees, side by side, pictures of saints, and unclothed female figures, amongst satyrs. But in this woman's soul, was an extraordinary mixture of small and great, of high and low. One picture in the room, of very mediocre-quality, or rather below mediocrity, represents her baptism in St. Peter's after her renunciation of the Protestant faith of her father. It represents a herald blowing a trumpet, to proclaim the remarkable transaction to the world.

Sweden has to thank Queen Christina for having