So Hilda became a copyist: in the Pinacotheca of the Vatican, in the

galleries of the Pam-fili-Doria palace, the Borghese, the Corsini, the

Sciarra, her easel was set up before many a famous picture by Guido,

Domenichino, Raphael, and the devout painters of earlier schools than

these. Other artists and visitors from foreign lands beheld the slender,

girlish figure in front of some world-known work, absorbed, unconscious

of everything around her, seeming to live only in what she sought to do.

They smiled, no doubt, at the audacity which led her to dream of

copying those mighty achievements. But, if they paused to look over her

shoulder, and had sensibility enough to understand what was before their

eyes, they soon felt inclined to believe that the spirits of the old

masters were hovering over Hilda, and guiding her delicate white hand.

In truth, from whatever realm of bliss and many colored beauty those

spirits might descend, it would have been no unworthy errand to help so

gentle and pure a worshipper of their genius in giving the last divine

touch to her repetitions of their works.

Her copies were indeed marvellous. Accuracy was not the phrase for them;

a Chinese copy is accurate. Hilda's had that evanescent and ethereal

life--that flitting fragrance, as it were, of the originals--which it

is as difficult to catch and retain as it would be for a sculptor to

get the very movement and varying color of a living man into his marble

bust. Only by watching the efforts of the most skilful copyists--men who

spend a lifetime, as some of them do, in multiplying copies of a

single picture--and observing how invariably they leave out just the

indefinable charm that involves the last, inestimable value, can we

understand the difficulties of the task which they undertake.

It was not Hilda's general practice to attempt reproducing the whole of

a great picture, but to select some high, noble, and delicate portion

of it, in which the spirit and essence of the picture culminated: the

Virgin's celestial sorrow, for example, or a hovering angel, imbued

with immortal light, or a saint with the glow of heaven in his dying

face,--and these would be rendered with her whole soul. If a picture had

darkened into an indistinct shadow through time and neglect, or had been

injured by cleaning, or retouched by some profane hand, she seemed to

possess the faculty of seeing it in its pristine glory. The copy would

come from her hands with what the beholder felt must be the light which

the old master had left upon the original in bestowing his final and

most ethereal touch. In some instances even (at least, so those believed

who best appreciated Hilda's power and sensibility) she had been enabled

to execute what the great master had conceived in his imagination, but

had not so perfectly succeeded in putting upon canvas; a result surely

not impossible when such depth of sympathy as she possessed was assisted

by the delicate skill and accuracy of her slender hand. In such cases

the girl was but a finer instrument, a more exquisitely effective piece

of mechanism, by the help of which the spirit of some great departed

painter now first achieved his ideal, centuries after his own earthly

hand, that other tool, had turned to dust.




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