But
chiefly for the unaccountable nightmares with which its interior
has been decorated (among other subjects of more delicate
execution), by Giulio Romano. There is a leering Giant over a
certain chimney-piece, and there are dozens of Giants (Titans
warring with Jove) on the walls of another room, so inconceivably
ugly and grotesque, that it is marvellous how any man can have
imagined such creatures. In the chamber in which they abound,
these monsters, with swollen faces and cracked cheeks, and every
kind of distortion of look and limb, are depicted as staggering
under the weight of falling buildings, and being overwhelmed in the
ruins; upheaving masses of rock, and burying themselves beneath;
vainly striving to sustain the pillars of heavy roofs that topple
down upon their heads; and, in a word, undergoing and doing every
kind of mad and demoniacal destruction. The figures are immensely
large, and exaggerated to the utmost pitch of uncouthness; the
colouring is harsh and disagreeable; and the whole effect more like
(I should imagine) a violent rush of blood to the head of the
spectator, than any real picture set before him by the hand of an
artist.
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