Even the `Penny
Cyclopaedia' (1842), which devotes a column to little Tischbein
himself, and goes into various details of his career, is silent about
the portrait of Goethe. I learn from that column that Tischbein became
director of the Neapolitan Academy, at a salary of 600 ducats, and
resided in Naples until the Revolution of '99, when he returned in
haste to Germany. Suppose he passed through Rome on his way. A homing
fugitive would not pause to burden himself with a vast unfinished
canvas. We may be sure the canvas remained in that Roman studio--an
object of mild interest to successive occupants. Is it there still?
Does the studio itself still exist? Belike it has been demolished,
with so much else. What became of the expropriated canvas? It wouldn't
have been buried in the new foundations. Some one must have staggered
away with it. Whither? Somewhere, I am sure, in some dark vault or
cellar, it languishes.
Seek it, fetch it out, bring it to me in triumph. You will always find
me in the Baptistery of San Lorenzo. But I have formed so clear and
sharp a preconception of the portrait that I am likely to be
disappointed at sight of what you bring me. I see in my mind's eye
every falling fold of the white mantle; the nobly-rounded calf of the
leg on which rests the forearm; the high-light on the black silk
stocking.
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