reins In tljr Ebitnt.
THE. RATIONAL GALLERY AND TILE APOLLO AND- M4RSYAS. Milan, Tuesdoy, Nay 1st, 1860, &a—On December 16, the sculptor. Widumann, one of the leading artiste * Munich, and Professor at the Royal Academy there, wrote to me thus :-- " The artists of Munich wishing te show in some way their gratitude for the supreme pleasure which you have procured them by the exhibition of ypur sublime.painting by Raphael, have commissioned mo to request you to do them the pleastire of pagan tomorrow evening in their, company. Some new members will be received into the Society, and, this occapion will serve at the same time, to render some slight tribute to the exhibitor of the *L- ilian]," &c. Present at the meeting was an Englishman bathed 1: Harold Stanley, an artist, I believe,.hut of whose being I was until then ignorant. Since some years resident at-Munich, he had become a member of the Society. Yield- ing to a not .un-English sentiment, he begged .of. Professpr Widumann to introduce hint to the lion of the monient. His wish gratified, he settled himself beside me for the rest of the evening ; and So hot was his' cordiality, that he not only pressed me to dine with him on the morrow, but on our finding ourselves sub Jove, he made a wide divergence from his own road through a pelting, snow, at one o'clock of a Munich Decenaber, a.m., in order to see me safe to the end of mineand it was his lusty arm that coaxed the - denvey varlets of-the inn to overlook my dissipation. I resisted the dinner, Bet, subdued by his urgency, I broke a resolve, and compounded_ foe " tea." Between that evening and- the 28d of December, the day of my. departure for.Dresden, I called upon him two or three times. On the 20th, the committee of the Artists' Fund presented me an address on the Apollo and Mortises. On the 7th of January, the Spectator published a.translation of it. containing the following deelaration,:— " Public opinion has pronounced- itself with rare unanimity upon this painting, the exquisite beauty of which, with irresistible eloquence, pro- claims as its author, the sublime Urbinate."
That translation was Mr. Stanley's, who regretted his inability to render the force of the original.
On the 28th of February, I received at Venice information from Munich, that soon' after my leaving the latter city, this identical' Mr. Stanley, acting upon advice from home, had been agitating- against me. On the 22d of March, I received here from different persons, one of them a member- of the Artiste' Society, two further communications from Munich, confirmatory of the first, .but with the supplement, that the said Stanley, still inspired. as above, had gone the length of demanding from the society a. recocation.ofihe address,—threatening to withdraw from it if refused. Indulgent enough for the occasion, the reply was ; " Withdraw whenever you please." Stanley's sorry servility became the. topic of the day. But, mark how malice blinds. Suppose therevocation obtained: The free original suffrage alone would be sterling ; such revocation, a mere counterfeit. It may here be observed that Professor Widumann's letter is not a whit less an attestation of the Apollo and lifarsyas's authenticity by the artists of 'Munich, than is the address itself. At Dresden, conduct analogous was pursued by others, but the unanimity and candour of the Dresden connoisseurs headed by Director Schnorr, who in the Dresden Journal of December the 30th, spontaneously recorded his attestation of the Appele and Marayas's genuineness, defeated the plot.
At Vienna, simultaneously with my arrival there, a hostile article with entreaty for its immediate insertion, reached the official journal.; but it fell into the hands of Professor R. von Eitelberk a man of wit, heart.and honour. The Raphael exhibited, an essay worthy of it was the response.
At Venice, where the late seoreting of Raphael's original drawing for the Apollo and Marsyas, is matter of notoriety, Sir Charles Eastlake's local picture touters and "restorers," were in harness; public opinion, however, hinted prudence. Here at Milan, the focus of British, pieture-catering and picture restoring in Italy, the well-knowu habitual recipients of English coin, inspired. by gleanings past, present, and prospective, have been. busy for their pay- master ; and having more at stake, bolder. Zealous to avert from him and selves a triumph of the Apollo, and Marsyas at Milan, they devised to pre- vent my being invited to exhibit it in the Brera Gallery : this failing, thanks to the uprightness of Count Giberto Borommeo, the director, they thought to dim its lustre by gaining the Governor of Milan not, to visit it, he having expressed, his intention to do so. But not Raphael's was the-loss. Some will dinibtlma have remembered the statement in the London press in the summer of 18.58, that letters from England had reached M. Mt:made and other. influential men in Paris, beseeching them not to countenance either man or picture. But at Paris, as at Munich, I had had the start. Brief : wherever I have sojourned since I withdrew from England in Fe- bruary 1858, convinced of the fact, afterwards proolaimed by the Tines, that in England, to impeach, not anonymously, the highly,placed, is per- dition, there have I been dogged—a fact!of gravest import, as fouling the source itself of liberty, graver to the economy of the commonwealth than even a treaty of commerce. It was remarked by a distinguished German, that this persecution " savoured of the middle. ages, but-that to the ferocity of those days, it,united the meannesa of these." Another circumetance, remains to, be told, mules I adhere to the resoluT don which I published on the subject in May, 1856,. and which I am known to have often repeated since, no. one cart have a right to stretch the letter of .my words. Immediately after-Mr. Coningham's question:to Mr. Disraeli, in March, 1859, the same that drew, from the right honourable gentleman so-gentlemanly, and famous a reply; Sir Charles. Eastlake called upon the former in order to ascertain upon what terms the Apollo and Marsyas could be obtained. Not having myself decided upon the matter, none other could be my spokesman. But the interrogator himself intimated a sum, a sum absurd, indeed, for a Raphael in some wise unique, but especially as the ap- praisement of a man who had recently bestowed 13,6501. upon a coarse tenth-rate picture ; and was actually recruiting agent after agent to procure for 12,0001.„. or 16,0001., another inferior. work ' • nevertheless, a sem more than. four times the value of any picture of like dimensions of its school,— not by Raphael. Deduct, if you will, his often self-confessed incompetency in such matters, still we may surmise the director of our' ational Gallery's comiction on the Apollo and Marsyas ; a conviction "fortified," no doubt, by the high authority, of his predagegue ex-travelling agent, Herr Otto Miindler' the "Expert," without whom, as intimated in the Douse of Com- mons by Lord Elcho, the directorship of the National. Gallery had for. him no charms ; and who, as- was published in May, 1856, without contradic- tion, had declared Ilia own conviction, that the Apollo and Marsyas was un- questionably by Raphael.
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