Note 61 — Chapter III
Reading edition
The picture is in the Guadagni palace. It is one of the most important landscapes Salvator ever painted. The figures are studied from street beggars. On the one side of the river, exactly opposite the point where the Baptism of Christ takes place, the painter, with a refinement of feeling peculiarly his own, has introduced some ruffians stripping off their shirts to bathe. He is fond of this incident. It occurs again in one of the marines of the Pitti palace, with the additional interest of a foreshortened figure, swimming on its back, feet foremost, exactly in the stream of light to which the eye is principally directed.