Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Part two - VI
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knights and maidens, and the leaves in gold and purple she
remembered having seen in a book of mass in the San Marco
library. The words of the songs looked very strange,
hand-printed in elegant monastic Latin types. In some of the larger
full-page illustrations the composition was baroque, a direct
copy of Roman altar pictures. It was an echo of all he had
seen and lived among and loved — an echo of the melody of
Gert Gram’s youth; not a single note was his own, but this
melody of many notes was resounded in a particularly soft,
melancholy tone.
“You don’t quite like them,” he said. “I can see you
don’t.”
“Yes, I like them. There is much that is pretty and delicate
about them, but, you know” — she searched for the right
expression — “the effect is a little strange on us, who have seen
the same subjects treated differently and so perfectly, that we
cannot conceive them treated in another way.”
He sat opposite her, resting his chin in his hand. By and
by he looked up, and she was sad at heart to meet his eyes.
“I seem to remember them as being much better than they
are,” he said quietly, trying to smile. “I have not opened this
portfolio for many a year, as I told you.”
“I have never quite understood that you were so attracted
by the later renaissance and the baroque,” she said, to divert
the conversation.
“I am not surprised, Jenny dear, that you don’t understand
it.” He looked into her face with a melancholy smile.
“There was a time when I believed in myself as an artist, but
not so completely that I did not have a slight doubt sometimes,
not of succeeding to express what I wanted, but as to what I
really wanted to express. I saw that romantic art had had its
day and was on the decline — there was decadence and falsehood
all along — and yet in my heart I was devoted to romance,
not in painting alone, but in real life. I wanted the
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