 |
 |
 |
See Notebook M2 p.91, Palace Book p.55 and Works, 10.406, and compare the painting by Bellini of the ‘Continence of Scipio’, 1505, now in the National Gallery of Art Washington. Scipio Africanus, from whom the Cornaro family claimed descent, returned a captive woman to her fiance, and so proved his continence or, in the vernacular, ‘chastita’. The first part is clearly a reference to the ‘chastita’ of Scipio. Ruskin initially read ‘elafia’ as one word but struck it out and divided it to make a phrase which in Works, 10.406 he read as ‘e la figlia’, ‘and the daughter / girl’. The word read in the transcript as if it were the English ‘are’ is clearly a part of the inscription. It has a line over the ‘a’, and is preceded by an illegible shape, possible ‘ax’, of similar length. It was perhaps Ruskin’s first attempt to read ‘a re’. Presumably it means ‘to the king’.
|
|
|
[Version 0.05: May 2008]