Franco-Neapolitan imbroglio, which was such a dark spot in the Spanish
history of that time, Farinelli left Spain at the royal suggestion,
which amounted to a command. The remaining twenty years of his life he
resided in a splendid palace near Bologna, where he devoted his time and
attention to patronage of learning and the arts. He collected a noble
gallery of paintings from the hands of the principal Italian and
Spanish masters. Among them was one representing himself in a group with
Metastasio and Faustina Bordoni, for whose greatness as an artist and
beauty of character he always expressed the warmest admiration. Though
Farinelli was all his life an idol with the women, his appearance was
not prepossessing. Dibdin, speaking of him at the age of thirty, says
he "was tall as a giant and as thin as a shadow; therefore, if he
had grace, it could only be of a sort to be envied by a penguin or a
spider."

To his supreme merit as an artist we have, however, overwhelming
testimony. Out of the many enthusiastic descriptions of his singing,
that of Mancini, after Porpora the greatest singing-master of the age,
and the fellow pupil with Farinelli under Bernacchi, will serve: "His
voice was thought a marvel because it was so perfect, so powerful, so
sonorous, and so rich in its extent, both in the high and low parts of
the register, that its equal has never been heard. He was, moreover,
endowed with a creative genius which inspired him with embellishments so
new and so astonishing that no one was able to imitate them. The art
of taking and keeping the breath so softly and easily that no one could
perceive it, began and died with him. The qualities in which he excelled
were the evenness of his voice, the art of swelling its sound, the
portamento, the union of the registers, a surprising agility, a graceful
and pathetic style, and a shake as admirable as it was rare. There was
no branch of the art which he did not carry to the highest pitch of