It represented Hilda as gazing with sad and earnest horror at a bloodspot which she seemed just then to have discovered on her white robe.

The picture attracted considerable notice.

Copies of an engraving from it may still be found in the print shops along the Corso.

By many connoisseurs, the idea of the face was supposed to have been suggested by the portrait of Beatrice Cenci; and, in fact, there was a look somewhat similar to poor Beatrice's forlorn gaze out of the dreary isolation and remoteness, in which a terrible doom had involved a tender soul.

But the modern artist strenuously upheld the originality of his own picture, as well as the stainless purity its subject, and chose to call it--and was laughed at for his pains--"Innocence, dying of a Blood-stain!" "Your picture, Signore Panini, does you credit," remarked the picture dealer, who had bought it of the young man for fifteen scudi, and afterwards sold it for ten times the sum; "but it would be worth a better price if you had given it a more intelligible title.