' Besides the mantle, Tischbein was doing the Campagna. I
remember that some years ago an acquaintance of mine, a painter who
was neither successful nor talented, but always buoyant, told me he
was starting for Italy next day. `I am going,' he said, `to paint the
Campagna. The Campagna WANTS painting.' Tischbein was evidently giving
it a good dose of what it wanted. `It takes no little time,' writes
Goethe to Frau von Stein, `merely to cover so large a field of canvas
with colours.
Ash Wednesday ushered itself in, and ushered the Carnival out. The
curtain falls, rising a few days later on the Bay of Naples. Re-enter
Goethe and Tischbein. Bright blue back-cloth. Incidental music of
barcaroles, etc. For a while, all goes splendidly well. Sane Quixote
and aesthetic Sancho visit the churches, the museums; visit Pompeii;
visit our Ambassador, Sir William Hamilton, that accomplished man.
Vesuvius is visited too; thrice by Goethe, but (here, for the first
time, we feel a vague uneasiness) only once by Tischbein. To Goethe,
as you may well imagine, Vesuvius was strongly attractive. At his
every ascent he was very brave, going as near as possible to the
crater, which he approached very much as he had approached the
Carnival, not with any wish to fling himself into it, but as a
resolute scientific inquirer.
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