_Sept. 28th._--

I have for some time been hunting for portraits of the Duchess Medea.
Most of them, I imagine, must have been destroyed, perhaps by Duke
Robert II.'s fear lest even after her death this terrible beauty should
play him a trick. Three or four I have, however, been able to find--one
a miniature in the Archives, said to be that which she sent to poor
Prinzivalle degli Ordelaffi in order to turn his head; one a marble
bust in the palace lumber-room; one in a large composition, possibly by
Baroccio, representing Cleopatra at the feet of Augustus. Augustus is
the idealized portrait of Robert II., round cropped head, nose a little
awry, clipped beard and scar as usual, but in Roman dress. Cleopatra
seems to me, for all her Oriental dress, and although she wears a black
wig, to be meant for Medea da Carpi; she is kneeling, baring her breast
for the victor to strike, but in reality to captivate him, and he turns
away with an awkward gesture of loathing. None of these portraits seem
very good, save the miniature, but that is an exquisite work, and with
it, and the suggestions of the bust, it is easy to reconstruct the
beauty of this terrible being. The type is that most admired by the
late Renaissance, and, in some measure, immortalized by Jean Goujon and
the French. The face is a perfect oval, the forehead somewhat
over-round, with minute curls, like a fleece, of bright auburn hair;
the nose a trifle over-aquiline, and the cheek-bones a trifle too low;
the eyes grey, large, prominent, beneath exquisitely curved brows and
lids just a little too tight at the corners; the mouth also,
brilliantly red and most delicately designed, is a little too tight,
the lips strained a trifle over the teeth. Tight eyelids and tight lips
give a strange refinement, and, at the same time, an air of mystery, a
somewhat sinister seductiveness; they seem to take, but not to give.
The mouth with a kind of childish pout, looks as if it could bite or