The Brimmer donation,
in 1838, added a costly series of engravings, chiefly of the French
and Italian museums, and the drawings of Guercino, Salvator Rosa, and
other masters. The separate chamber in which these collections were at
first contained, made a favorite place of meeting for Margaret and a
few of her friends, who were lovers of these works.
First led perhaps by Goethe, afterwards by the love she herself
conceived for them, she read everything that related to Michel Angelo
and Raphael. She read, pen in hand, Quatremere de Quincy's lives of
those two painters, and I have her transcripts and commentary before
me. She read Condivi, Vasari, Benvenuto Cellini, Duppa, Fuseli, and
Von Waagen,--great and small. Every design of Michel, the four volumes
of Raphael's designs, were in the rich portfolios of her most intimate
friend. 'I have been very happy,' she writes, 'with four hundred and
seventy designs of Raphael in my possession for a week.'
* * * * *
These fine entertainments were shared with many admirers, and, as I
now remember them, certain months about the years 1839, 1840, seem
colored with the genius of these Italians. Our walls were hung with
prints of the Sistine frescoes; we were all petty collectors; and
prints of Correggio and Guercino took the place, for the time, of
epics and philosophy.
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