Letter XXXVII

Yesterday your friend Mr. C---- called and took me over to Murano in a
beautiful pair-oared boat that simply flew. There I saw a wonderful apse
filled with mosaic of dull gold, wherein is set a blue-black figure of
the Madonna, ten heads high and ten centuries old, which almost made me
become a Mariolatrist on the spot. She stands leaning up the bend with
two pale hands lifted in ghostly blessing. Underfoot the floor is all
mosaic, mountainous with age and earthquakes; the architecture classic
in the grip of Byzantine Christianity, which is like the spirit of God
moving on the face of the waters, or Ezekiel prophesying to the dry
bones.

The Colleoni is quite as much more beautiful in fact and seen full-size
as I had hoped from all smaller reproductions. A fine equestrian figure
always strikes one as enthroned, and not merely riding; if I can't get
that, I consider a centaur the nobler creature with its human body set
down into the socket of the brute, and all fire--a candle burning at
both ends: which, in a way, is what the centaur means, I imagine?

Bellini goes on being wonderful, and for me beats Raphael's Blenheim
Madonna period on its own ground. I hear now that the Raphael lady I
raved over in Florence is no Raphael at all,--which accounts for it
being so beautiful and interesting--to me, I hasten to add. Raphael's
studied calmness, his soul of "invisible soap and imperceptible water,"
may charm some; me it only chills or leaves unmoved.