The Osceola times., 1880-01-31
THE WOMEN OF VENICE.
Looking In vain for the Famous Beauties
of the Painters.
Venice Cor. Chicago Inter Oceal

Venice Cor. Chicago lnter-Ocean.
The famous beauty of the Venetian
women, whom Titan, GeorgIone and
Paul Neronese painted in the likeness OF
glowing, voluptuous creatures, whose
hair hal stolen the glory of the sun, and
whose flesh rivalled the beauty of the
peach-how can one describe them when
they are never seen save upon those
brilliant canyasses? II there is a gold
en-haircd woman in Venice, besides the
sunny-haired Americans at the United
States consulate, we have thus FAR failed
to see her. If there is any peachy flesh
| in woman's form it is hidden from our
eyes. If there are any other Venetian
women than the long-faced, large-noscd,
black haired type, with whole medieval
castles and Gothic catbedrals of false
hair piled over their brows, and whole
inches Of powder laid upon their faces,
who meet us at every turn, then thev
are evidently too precious for mortal
gaze, and are hidden away somewhere,
! like new Danes, in the paternaj tower.
Nowhere in the world, save perhaps in
Brighton, England, does such lavish
use Of powder prevail as i'm Italy. We
thought the Neapolitan ladies' had reach
ed the last possible limit of its use when
we saw them going boldly about, look
ing like ghastly masks, through which
looked burning eyes. But it remained
to come to Venice to see the Neapoitans
outdone. for, where the Neapolitan only
whitens her face, the Venetian covers
herself with it from head to foot, so that
hair, eyebrows, face, dress, and some
times even the hounces of her skirt, are
as white as were the masqueraders in
the "Miller's Pretty Daughter" 1t can
scarcely be supposed that the type of
Venetian beauty has so radically chang
ed since 400 years ago, when the most
glowing rays Of the Renaissance gather
ed upon Venetian canyasses and made
Titian's beauties, and the ampler splen-
dor of Paul Veronese's women, to be the
marvel of subsequent ages. 1t is prob
ably true that scarcely natural beauty
ever was painted by one of those mas
tiers. and that every bit of gorgeous flesh,
and every lock of that splendid hair,
was the painters copy, was the produc;
of hair dyes and cosmetics; and that the
Venetian women then were i'm reality no
more beautiful than they are now In
the matter of oftight-Iacing. too, the Itali-
an idea seems to be that which prevailed
present century One wonders how
they breathe, these lily-waisted, whose
iron corsct-bones show so plainly through
their dresses that iron itself can do no
more in the way of compression. One
wonders they do not break in two and
90 walking off like the strange creature
that a maniac American PAINTER used to
paint at the Gigi studio in Rome lasi
winter. This poor fellow, who had been
a clergyman, and knew nothing what
ever of art, and the mania to paint had
come upon him only with the shattering
of his intellect. As his manual skill was
unequal to anything more complicated
than the painting Of trousers and petit
coats, he always did his model only from
the waist downwards, and then magnif-
Gently framed and sought to sell his
paintings of headless, strawberries and
waistless skirts and trousers, convinced
that the patron who asked for more
failed to understand the loftiest purposes
of art.