Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/241

Rh side, waiting to do her service at the slightest bidding. Youthful innocence and industry, the beautiful picture seems to tell us, are guarded and honoured by the heavenly beings. No legend is wanting here,—no story needed to furnish an explanation.

Now, however, to cool a little my artistic enthusiasm, a merry incident occurred. I observed that several of the German artists, who came up to Tischbein as an old acquaintance, after staring at me, went their ways again. Having left me for a few moments, one returned, and said, "We have had a good joke. The report that you were in Rome had spread among us, and the attention of us artists was called to the one unknown stranger. Now, there was one of our body who used for a long time to assert that he had met you, nay, he asseverated he had lived on very friendly terms with you,—a fact which we were not so ready to believe. However, we have just called upon him to look at you, and solve our doubts. He at once stoutly denied that it was you, and said that in the stranger there was not a trace of your person or mien." So, then, at least, our incognito is for the moment secure, and will afford us something hereafter to laugh at.

I now mixed at my ease with the troop of artists, and asked them who were the painters of several pictures whose style of art was unknown to me. At last I was particularly struck by a picture representing St. George killing the dragon and setting free the virgin. No one could tell me whose it was. Upon this, a little, modest man, who up to this time had not opened his mouth, came forward, and told me it was by Pordenone, the Venetian painter; and that it was one of the best of his paintings, and displayed all his merits. I was now well able to explain why I liked it. The picture pleased me because I possessed some knowledge of the Venetian school, and was better able to appreciate the excellences of its best masters.