Volume VI Part 18 (1/2)
Mengs was a very passionate man, and would sometimes beat his children most cruelly More than once I have rescued his poor sons from his furious hands He boasted that his father, a bad Boheht hireat painter, and he wished his own children to enjoy the saes
He was deeply offended when he received a letter, of which the address omitted his title of chevalier, and his nas were but trifles after all, and that I had taken no offence at his o the chevalier on the letters he had written to ht of the same order as himself He very wisely made no answer; but his objection to the omission of his baptismal name was a very ridiculous one He said he was called Antonio after Antonio Correggio, and Rafael after Rafael da Urbino, and that those who omitted these names, or either of them, implicitly denied his possession of the qualities of both these great painters
Once I dared to tell hiures, as the ring finger was shorter than the index He replied sharply that it was quite right, and shewed hed, and shewed hi that I was certain that my hand was made like that of all the descendants of Adam
”Then whom do you think that I am descended from?”
”I don't know, but you are certainly not of the same species as myself”
”You mean you are not of my species; all well-made hands of men, and woer a hundred doubloons that you are in the wrong”
He got up, thren brushes and palette, and rang up his servants, saying,--
”We shall see which is right”
The servants caht For once in his life, he laughed and passed it off as a joke, saying,--
”I a unique in one particular, at all events”
Here I must note another very sensible redalen, which was really wonderfully beautiful
For ten days he had said every ht” At last I told hi it would be finished, as he was still working on it
”No, I have not,” he replied, ”ninety-nine connoisseurs out of a hundred would have pronounced it finished long ago, but I want the praise of the hundredth man There's not a picture in the world that can be called finished save in a relative sense; this Magdalen will not be finished till I stop working at it, and then it will be only finished relatively, for if I were to give another day's work to it it would be more finished still Not one of Petrarch's sonnets is a really finished production; no, nor any otherthat the mind of man can conceive is perfect, save it be a mathematical theorem”
I expressed my warm approval of the excellent way in which he had spoken He was not so sensible another time when he expressed a wish to have been Raphael
”He was such a great painter”
”Certainly,” said I, ”but what can youyou had been Raphael? This is not sense; if you had been Raphael, you would no longer be existing But perhaps you onlythe joys of Paradise; in that case I will say no more”
”No, no; Inow, either in soul or body”
”Really such a desire is an absurdity; think it over, and you will see it for yourself”
He flew into a rage, and abused
Another tiic author and a painter, of course to the advantage of the latter
I analysed the reat extent purely ed in casual talk; whilst a ritten tragedy is the work of genius pure and simple Therefore, the poet must be immeasurably superior to the painter