title: Italy: The Essential Guide to Viewing Italian Renaissance Art (Art for Travellers)
author: John Power
description: Ann Morrow and her husband John Power share a passion for Italy, travel and art, and make regular trips to Italy. John is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Melbourne and, when he is not visiting Italy, continues to teach and research. He has held several senior positions in public life and also writes on parliamentary history. Ann has held senior Australian state government positions and she has recently established an Executive Development Program for the senior women in five major universities. They decided to write this guide after observing many of their friends emerging-glassy-eyed and confused-from the Uffizi Galleries in Florence.
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  ##### www.blackmask.com
  
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  Travelling Companions
  
  
  I.
  
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  This page copyright © 2003 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  
  
  
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  # Travelling Companions
  
  
  ### By Henry James
  
  
  This page copyright © 2003 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
  * I.
  
  
  * II.
  
  
  
  
      
  
  Etext by Ian Hillman
  
  
  ### I.
  
  
  
  
  
  THE most strictly impressive picture in Italy is incontestably the
  
  
  Last Supper of Leonardo at Milan. A part of it's immense solemnity is
  
  
  doubtless due to it's being one of the first of the great Italian
  
  
  masterworks that you encounter in coming down from the North. Another
  
  
  secondary source of interest resides in the very completeness of it's
  
  
  decay. The mind finds a rare delight in filling each of it's vacant
  
  
  spaces, effacing it's rank defilement, and repairing, as far as
  
  
  possible, it's sad disorder. Of the essential power and beauty of the
  
  
  work there can be no better evidence than this fact that, having lost
  
  
  so much, it has yet retained so mu