How I should like to describe her--just to see what a holy
indignation I could stir up in the world--just to hear
the unreflecting average man deliver himself about my
grossness and coarseness, and all that. The world says
that no worded description of a moving spectacle is
a hundredth part as moving as the same spectacle seen
with one's own eyes--yet the world is willing to let its
son and its daughter and itself look at Titian's beast,
but won't stand a description of it in words.
Which shows that the world is not as consistent as it
might be.

There are pictures of nude women which suggest no impure
thought--I am well aware of that. I am not railing
at such. What I am trying to emphasize is the fact that
Titian's Venus is very far from being one of that sort.
Without any question it was painted for a bagnio and it
was probably refused because it was a trifle too strong.
In truth, it is too strong for any place but a public
Art Gallery. Titian has two Venuses in the Tribune;
persons who have seen them will easily remember which one I am
referring to.

In every gallery in Europe there are hideous pictures
of blood, carnage, oozing brains, putrefaction--pictures
portraying intolerable suffering--pictures alive
with every conceivable horror, wrought out in dreadful
detail--and similar pictures are being put on the canvas
every day and publicly exhibited--without a growl from
anybody--for they are innocent, they are inoffensive,