t in the "Marble Faun." They, however, are unable to find
the traces of sorrow, the "tear-stained cheeks" and "eyes that have
wept till they can weep no more," so eloquently described by all
writers and art-critics of the present day; and so far I agree with
them--the face does not impress me with such depths of woe.

Their opponents, however, hold the time-honored tradition that Guido
painted Beatrice in her cell upon the morning of her execution, or as
she stood upon the scaffold--for there are two versions of the
story--and that the gown and turban which she wears were made by her
own hands on the night preceding the fatal day. But no words of mine
can give a fair idea of this celebrated painting: I will transcribe
Hawthorne's description of it.

"The picture represented simply a female head; a very youthful,
girlish, perfectly beautiful face, enveloped in white drapery, from
beneath which strayed a lock or two of what seemed a rich though hidden
luxuriance of auburn hair. The eyes were large and brown, and met
those of the spectator, but evidently with a strange, ineffectual
effort to escape. There was a little redness about the eyes, very
slightly indicated, so that you would question whether or no the girl
had been weeping. The whole face was quiet; there was no distortion or
disturbance of any single feature, nor was it easy to see why the
expression was not cheerful, or why a single touch of the artist's
pencil should not brighten it into joyousness. But in fact it was the
very saddest picture ever painted or conceived; it involved an
unfathomable depth of sorrow, the sense of which came to the observer
by a sort of intuition. It was a sorrow that removed this beautiful
girl out of the sphere of humanity, and set her in a far-off region,
the remoteness of which--while yet her face is so close before
us--makes us shiver as at a spectre."

Next to the Cenci a St. Francis hangs, his hands devoutly folded and
his head bowed in pious meditation upon the sufferings of his Redeemer,
whose figure bound upon the Cross lies before him. The skull at his
feet and the dreary landscape surrounding him indicate his hermit-life
of isolation and penance. The Saint is dressed in the coarse brown
habit of a mendicant friar, and his face is luminous with that
gentleness that distinguished his character after his conversion; for
it is recorded of him that he would step aside rather than harm the
smallest insect.

Above