American Researches in Italy

LIFE OF TASSO: RECOVERY OF A LOST PORTRAIT OF DANTE

To the Editor of the Knickerbocker:

Sir--Permit me through the pages of your magazine to call the attention of
the public to the learned and elegant researches in Europe of one of our
countrymen, Mr. R. H. Wilde, of Georgia, formerly a member of the House of
Representatives. After leaving Congress, Mr. Wilde a few years since spent
about eighteen months in traveling through different parts of Europe, until
he became stationary for a time in Tuscany. Here he occupied himself with
researches concerning the private life of Tasso, whose mysterious and
romantic love for the Princess Leonora, his madness and imprisonment, had
recently become the theme of a literary controversy, not yet ended; curious
in itself, and rendered still more curious by some alleged manuscripts of
the poet's, brought forward by Count Alberti. Mr. Wilde entered into the
investigation with the enthusiasm of a poet, and the patience and accuracy
of a case-hunter; and has produced a work now in the press, in which the
"vexed questions" concerning Tasso are most ably discussed, and lights
thrown upon them by his letters, and by various of his sonnets, which last
are rendered into English with rare felicity. While Mr. Wilde was occupied
upon this work, he became acquainted with Signer Carlo Liverati, an artist
of considerable merit, and especially well versed in the antiquities of
Florence. This gentleman mentioned incidentally one day, in the course of
conversation, that there once and probably still existed in the "Bargello,"
anciently both the prison, and the palace of the republic, an authentic
portrait of Dante. It was believed to be in fresco, on a wall which
afterward, by some strange neglect or inadvertency, had been covered with
whitewash. Signor Liverati mentioned the circumstance merely to deplore the
loss of so precious a portrait, and to regret the almost utter hopelessness
of its recovery.

As Mr. Wilde had not as yet imbibed that enthusiastic admiration for Dante
which possesses all Italians, by whom the poet is almost worshiped, this
conversation made but a slight impression on him at the time. Subsequently,
however, his researches concerning Tasso being ended, he began to amuse his
leisure hours with attempts to translate some specimens of Italian lyric
poetry, and to compose very short biographical sketches of the authors. In
these specimens, which as yet exist only in manuscript, he has shown the
same critical knowledge of the Italian language, and admirable command of
the English, that characterize his translations of Tasso. He had not
advanced far in these exercises, when the obscure and contradictory
accounts of many incidents in the life of Dante caused