Guido ranks next in my estimation, as a painter of Virgins.  He is described as an elegant and accomplished man, remarkable for the modesty of his disposition, and the dignity and grace of his manner; as delicate in his personal habits, and sumptuous in his dress and style of living.  He had unfortunately contracted a taste for gaming, which latterly plunged him into difficulties, and tinged his mind with bitterness and melancholy.  All his heads have a peculiar expression of elevated beauty, which has been called Guido’s air.  His Madonnas are all but heavenly:  they are tender, dignified, lovely:—­but when compared with Raffaelle’s, they seem more touched with earthly feeling, and have less of the pure ideal:  they are, if I may so express myself, too sentimental:  sentiment is, in truth, the distinguishing characteristic of Guido’s style.  It is remarkable, that towards the end of his life, Guido more frequently painted the Mater Dolorosa, and gave to the heads of his Madonnas a look of melancholy, disconsolate resignation, which is extremely affecting.

Titian’s character is well known:  his ardent cheerful temper, his sanguine enthusiastic mind, his love of pleasure, his love of women; and true it is, that through all his glowing pictures, we trace the voluptuary.  His Virgins are rather “des jeunes epouses de la veille”—­far too like his Venuses and his mistresses:  they are all luxuriant human beauty; with that peculiar air of blandishment which he has thrown into all his female heads, even into his portraits, and his old women.  Witness his lovely Virgin in the Vatican, his Mater Sapientiae, and his celebrated Assumption at Venice, in which the eyes absolutely float in rapture.  There is nothing ideal in Titian’s conception of beauty:  he paints no saints and goddesses fancy-bred:  his females are all true, lovely women; not like the heavenly creation of Raffaelle, looking as if a touch, a breath would profane them; but warm flesh and blood—­heart and soul—­with life in their eyes, and love upon their lips:  even over his Magdalenes, his beauty-breathing pencil has shed a something which says,

    A misura che amo—­
    Piange i suoi falli!

But this is straying from my subject; as I have embarked in this fanciful hypothesis, I shall multiply my proofs and examples, as far as I can, from memory.

In some account I have read of Murillo, he is emphatically styled an honest man:  this is all I can remember of his character; and truth and nature prevail through all his pictures.  In his Virgins, we can trace nothing elevated, poetical or heavenly:  they have not the ideality of Raffaelle’s, nor the tender sweetness of Correggio’s; nor the glowing loveliness of Titian’s; but they have an individual reality about them, which gives them the air of portraits.  That chef-d’oeuvre, in the Pitti Palace, for instance, call it a beautiful peasant girl and her baby, and it is faultless: