terror, and swearing that nothing would induce him to meet that woman's eyes again.
Had Mrs. Siddons lived in our day, every shop-window would have been crowded with photographs of her classically beautiful face, in every pose and every costume. Mercifully she lived in the days of Gainsborough and Reynolds, and is, therefore, the original of two of the most beautiful female portraits ever painted. Sir Joshua is said to have borrowed his conception from a figure designed by Michael Angelo on the roof of the Sixtine Chapel. She is seated in a chair of state, with two figures behind holding the dagger and the bowl. The head is thrown back in an attitude of dramatic inspiration, the right hand thrown over an arm of the seat, the left raised, pointing upwards. A tiara, necklace, and splendid folds of drapery enhance the stateliness of the composition. It is, undoubtedly, the great painter's masterpiece. "The picture," Northcote says, "kept him in a fever." The unfavourable reception his pictures of the year before had met with made him resolved to show the critics that he was not past his prime, while the grandeur and magnificence of the sitter stimulated him to the exertion of all his genius.
Mrs. Siddons was fond, in later years, of describing her sittings. "Ascend your undisputed throne," said the painter, leading her to the platform. "Bestow on me some idea of the tragic muse." And then, when it was ended, the great painter insisted on inscribing his name on her robe, saying that he could not lose the honour of going down to posterity on the hem of her garment. We, who only know of her greatness from hearsay, can form some idea of what she must have been from this magnificent conception.
