TALBOT1495

Dear Henry

I hope my letter from Bologna will have satisfied you. Psyche’s head is quite in keeping with the rest of the picture, & I dare say just as Guido ¹ painted it but I do not much admire that style of head. The nymph that crowns Europa is as well as ever she was in her life. – But Venice is the place for pictures – the prices are enormous but there are so many & so well preserved. There is a Raphael ² intact – for 1000 £. Venetian pictures are too much alike, to please me – & being mostly painted for furniture pictures, they are of such odd shapes & proportions as they were intended for cornices, ceilings, over doors &c that they seldom look well out of the place they were painted for. I think Venice the most imposing place after Rome I ever saw. I am sure she might have made herself mistress of Italy if she chose. It must have been a lapsus pennæ ³ my putting pictures in the plural – or my thoughts were on the Correggio ⁴ which is to be. Will you pay the 25 £s to Hoare’s ⁵ in Fleet Street the extra expences being all included in my things coming with it I will not charge you with yours being but a small part. They are addressed to M^r John Fraser 25 Tokenhouse yard an agent to whom M^r Irvine wrote to recommend them. I never thought much of Tintoret ⁶ & Giorgione ⁷ till I came to Venice. I think the Flora at Florence must be a Giorgione. What laborious workmen the Venetians were, what acres of canvas P. Veronese ⁸ Palma ⁹ & Tintoretto covered. half a dozen names are all you ever hear for what it seems would require the labour of 50 οιοι nun βροτοι εισι ¹⁰ I could hear nothing precise of Correggios transfiguration. ¹¹ –

Y^r Aff^te

W T H F S.

Henry Talbot Esq^r
31 Sackville Street
London