Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Wednesday, 15 September 1875

At midday we go to the galleria degli Uffizzi, which connects, moreover, with the Pitti and which I saw yesterday as much as one can see in passing.
Today it is another matter — I spend an hour and a half there.
The Greek statues and busts detain me for a long time. I am disappointed by the sight of Alcibiades' head — I had never imagined him with that fleshy brow, that small mouth showing the teeth, that small beard. Cicero is rather good (I do not take him for a Greek — be reassured) — but poor Socrates! Oh! He did well to take up philosophy and converse with his daimon — he could not have done anything else. What a ridiculous ugliness!
At last I stand before the famous Venere Medicea! This little doll is a fresh disappointment. Those protruding ankles do not excite my admiration, and the head is too small
and the features common to all Greek statues. No — this is not Venus, the charming goddess, the mother of love. The mouth is cold, the eyes without expression. Certainly the proportions are admirably preserved — but what would be left of her, if the proportions were less perfect? Call me barbarous, ignorant, arrogant, stupid — but that is my opinion. The Venus de Milo is far more Venus.
I pass to the paintings and find at last something worthy of Raphael's name — not a flat, faded image like his Madonnas, not a Christ-child like papier-mâché, but a living, beautiful, fresh head: La Fornarina. Perhaps it is because I understand nothing of it — but I greatly prefer this head to all his Madonnas combined.
Titian's mistress, blonde and full-figured, is admirable as Flora — but at the Pitti, again painted by Titian, as Cleopatra being bitten by an asp, she represents an absurdity: too stout, too blonde, not at all Greco-Egyptian. I admired the audacity of a composition by Gio. di San Giovanni — Venus combing with a fine-toothed comb the hair of Cupid resting on her knees and — forgive me for saying such a dirty thing — killing the inhabitants of Love's hair. I should like to thrash the painter.
The effects of light in the pictures of Gherardo delle Notti please me enormously. His faces are beautiful and living. The great canvas representing the shepherds around the cradle of Jesus is magnificent. Without that banal aureole, the divine child illuminates all the surrounding figures [sic] and seems himself to be made of light. The Virgin Mary holds back the covering to reveal the child and looks at the shepherds with a true smile from heaven. They have faces radiantly respectful, and those nearest shade their eyes with their hands as one does when the sun prevents one from seeing. All the faces are beautiful, real — the expressions remarkable. One sees clearly that the painter understood what he was doing.
In the French room there is a very pretty small portrait by Mignard, and in the Flemish room a small picture by François van Mieris that ravished me by its extraordinary delicacy. The closer one looks, the lovelier it is — and the more incomprehensible the manner in which the colours are applied.
I speak only of what I particularly noticed; I devoted most time to the busts of the Roman emperors and Roman women — Agrippina, Poppaea,
and so on — I forget her name. Nero is handsome like no one else.
Marcus Aurelius is a good broad face; Titus resembles someone — I cannot say whom.
They have just brought us the ticket for our box tonight at the Teatro Pagliano. They do not give a ticket — they give the key to the box and two admission cards. I only see this in Italy.
Tomorrow we must leave. The more I look, the more I want to look — I tear myself away with difficulty from all these beauties.
The Venus de' Medici has made me rather proud!
Then we visit the Egyptian and Etruscan museums. The infancy of art has its charm. But I do not believe, as they say, that Greek sculpture was imported from Egypt.
It is an entirely different character; and then in Greece even in the most remote times, nothing was made resembling Egyptian things — just as in Egypt there was and is nothing approaching Greek magnificence. In Egypt [Crossed out: sculpture] art is always in the same imposing and absurd state.
I regret not being able to explain better what I understand so well.
After this we return home only to go out again to the Cascine. There are more people this evening than the evening before last. But the Italian women are plain and inelegant with all their ribbons and multicoloured shawls.
Since I have been in Italy I look at these dark women with their black hair — greased and shining — these flat-bottomed women with their enormous feet, their soldier-like figures, and I wonder how the devil men manage to love such creatures. No doubt the aristocracy is much the same everywhere — but I speak of the middle class, which is repulsive here. It is a good idea to go out only at nightfall and walk in the evening, by moonlight.
At eight o'clock we are at the Teatro Pagliano.
An immense hall, entirely white, unadorned and stripped bare — or at least that is its effect on me. But the boxes are large, open, made for displaying fine dress. They are giving Il figli prodigo by Auber, libretto by Scribe.
I have never listened to an opera more as music and as a whole. The costumes are of an astonishing absurdity. These biblical personages are dressed in green, blue, yellow, embroidered with gold and silver.

Notes

"Il figli prodigo" — "The Prodigal Son." Marie writes "figli" (plural) where Italian requires "figlio" (singular). ↩