3-028-610 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Out Of The World," by R. Lehmann, 1870. Engraving of a painting. 'The scene is one which we understand the artist witnessed years ago at the Franciscan monastery at Tivoli. In a whitewashed cell...a young monk sits playing the harpsichord - one of those old-fashioned instruments still used in remote districts on the Continent where the modern piano has not yet been introduced - and an elder monk stands listening to him. Inside the harpsichord was inscribed the distich in monkish Latin quoted in the catalogue: "Me vivum in silva fecit natura tacere: Me caesum ars cogit, dulce sonare loqui". [Living a woodland tree, to be dumb was decreed me by Nature Dead, how I sing! how I speak! such is the magic of art]. The figures compose unaffectedly, and the simple colouring accords well with the sentiment of repose and retirement proper to the subject and title...Such scenes of quiet and repose are now rare since the dissolution of so many monasteries abroad; but, however false and mischievous the monastic conception of life, some careworn, overtaxed toilers "in the world" may, without reproach, occasionally sigh for peace and rest as complete as is here indicated - for a refuge "out of the world" - "the world forgetting, by the world forgot".' From "Illustrated London News", 1870.