Page:Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 - Volume 2.djvu/234

 limbs unwillingly fail. From the halls of the statues you go through long galleries filled with funereal urns, ancient maps, and old tapestry worked from Raffaelle’s cartoons, into rooms where the paintings are. It is managed so, that when you have passed through all, you quit the rooms by the loggie of Raffaelle, and the Swiss on guard does not permit you to return;—there is no great harm in this—as it would be nearly impossible to walk the whole way back again. Visitors ought, nevertheless, to be allowed to enter by this door at choice, that they may at once reach the pictures without the extra labour of traversing the extensive galleries that lead to them. Of the oil paintings we see here, the San Geronimo by Domenichino is perhaps the finest. Of the Transfiguration I have before spoken: as a composition, it is esteemed the grandest picture in the world; but I turn from it to others (to the Madonna di Foligno, for instance) of an earlier date, in which there is a more heavenly grace; an expression of celestial and pure beauty, an emanation of the immortal soul, superior to any perfection of colouring or grouping.

But it is among the frescos of Raffaelle that I have lingered longest with the greatest delight. These were the first works of this matchless painter, when called to Rome. He had been soliciting leave