ri_ whom they
hired every morning in the Piazza di Espagna beside the Sealinata of the
Trinity; the everlasting country-woman, swarthy and black-eyed, with
great hoops in her ears and wearing a green skirt, a black waist and a
white head-dress caught up on her hair with large pins; the usual old
man with sandals, a woolen cloak and a pointed hat with spiral bands on
his snowy head that was a fitting model for the Eternal Father. The
artists judged each other's ability by the number of thousand lire they
took in during a year; they spoke with respect of the famous masters who
made a fortune out of the millionaires of Paris and Chicago for
easel-pictures that nobody saw. Renovales was indignant. This sort of
art was almost like that of his first master, even if it was "worldly"
as Don Rafael had said. And that was what they sent him to Rome for!

Unpopular with his countrymen because of his brusque ways, his rude
tongue and his honesty, which made him refuse all commissions from the
art merchants, he sought the society of artists from other countries.
Among the cosmopolitan group of young painters who were quartered in
Rome, Renovales soon became popular.

His energy, his exuberant spirits, made him a congenial, merry comrade,
when he appeared in the studios of the Via di Babuino or in the
chocolate rooms and cafes of the Corso, where the artists of different
nationalities gathered in friendly company.

Mariano, at the age of twenty, was an athletic fellow, a worthy scion
of the man who was pounding iron from morning till night in a far away
corner of Spain. One day an English youth, a friend of his, read him a
page of Ruskin in his honor. "The plastic arts are essentially
athletic." An invalid, a half paralyzed man, might be a great poet, a
celebrated musician, but to be a Michael Angelo or a Titian a man must
have not merely a privileged soul, but a vigorous body. Leonardo da
Vinci broke a horseshoe in his hands; the sculptors of the Renaissance
worked huge blocks of marble with their titanic arms or chipped off the
bronze with their gravers; the great painters were often architects and,
covered with dust, moved huge masses. Renovales listened thoughtfully to
the words of the great English aestheticist. He, too, was a strong soul
in an athlete's body.

The appetites of his youth never went beyond the manly intoxications of
strength and movement. Attracted by the abundance of models which Rome
offered, he often undre