The “Drunken Bacchus” of Michael Angelo is greatly admired, and indeed it might pass for a relic of the palmiest times of Grecian art.  The face, amidst its half-vacant, sensual expression, shows traces of its immortal origin, and there is still an air of dignity preserved in the swagger of his beautiful form.  It is, in a word, the ancient idea of a drunken god.  It may be doubted whether the artist’s talents might not have been employed better than in ennobling intoxication.  If he had represented Bacchus as he really is—­degraded even below the level of humanity—­it might be more beneficial to the mind, though less beautiful to the eye.  However, this is a question on which artists and moralists cannot agree.  Perhaps, too, the rich blood of the Falernian grape produced a more godlike delirium than the vulgar brandy which oversets the moderns!

At one end of the gallery is a fine copy in marble of the Laocoon, by Bandinelli, one of the rivals of Michael Angelo.  When it was finished, the former boasted it was better than the original, to which Michael made the apt reply:  “It is foolish for those who walk in the footsteps of others, to say they go before them!”

Let us enter the hall of Niobe.  One starts back on seeing the many figures in the attitude of flight, for they seem at first about to spring from their pedestals.  At the head of the room stands the afflicted mother, bending over the youngest daughter who clings to her knees, with an upturned countenance of deep and imploring agony.  In vain! the shafts of Apollo fall thick, and she will soon be childless.  No wonder the strength of that woe depicted on her countenance should change her into stone.  One of her sons—­a beautiful, boyish form,—­is lying on his back, just expiring, with the chill langour of death creeping over his limbs.  We seem to hear the quick whistling of the arrows, and look involuntarily into the air to see the hovering figure of the avenging god.  In a chamber near is kept the head of a faun, made by Michael Angelo, at the age of fourteen, in the garden of Lorenzo de Medici, from a piece of marble given him by the workmen.

The portraits of the painters are more than usually interesting.  Every countenance is full of character.  There is the pale, enthusiastic face of Raphael, the stern vigor of Titian, the majesty and dignity of Leonardo da Vinci, and the fresh beauty of Angelica Kauffmann.  I liked best the romantic head of Raphael Mengs.  In one of the rooms there is a portrait of Alfieri, with an autograph sonnet of his own on the back of it.  The house in which he lived and died, is on the north bank of the Arno, near the Ponte Caraja, and his ashes rest in Santa Croce.