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diff --git a/old/54932-0.txt b/old/54932-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 78a579d..0000000 --- a/old/54932-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4375 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Italian Backgrounds, by Edith Wharton - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Italian Backgrounds - -Author: Edith Wharton - -Illustrator: Ernest Clifford Peixotto - -Release Date: June 19, 2017 [EBook #54932] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ITALIAN BACKGROUNDS *** - - - - -Produced by Mary Glenn Krause, MFR, Charlie Howard, and -the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - -ITALIAN BACKGROUNDS - -[Illustration: - - _Group from the Crucifixion - San Vivaldo_ -] - - - - - ITALIAN BACKGROUNDS - - BY - EDITH WHARTON - - ILLUSTRATED BY E. C. PEIXOTTO - - [Illustration] - - NEW YORK - CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS - MCMV - - - - - Copyright, 1905, by - CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS - - _Published April, 1905_ - - THE DE VINNE PRESS - - - - -TABLE OF CONTENTS - - - PAGE - AN ALPINE POSTING-INN 1 - - A MIDSUMMER WEEK’S DREAM 15 - - THE SANCTUARIES OF THE PENNINE ALPS 39 - - WHAT THE HERMITS SAW 63 - - A TUSCAN SHRINE 83 - - SUB UMBRA LILIORUM 107 - - MARCH IN ITALY 125 - - PICTURESQUE MILAN 153 - - ITALIAN BACKGROUNDS 171 - - - - -LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS - - - GROUP FROM THE CRUCIFIXION--SAN VIVALDO _Frontispiece_ - FACING PAGE - BY THE PORT OF LOVERE 20 - - THE MUNICIPIO--BRESCIA 28 - - CHIESA DEI MIRACOLI--BRESCIA 36 - - THE INNER QUADRANGLE AT OROPA 46 - - THE MAIN COURT OF THE SACRO MONTE AT VARALLO 56 - - A CHARACTERISTIC STREET 110 - - THE “LITTLE PALACE OF THE GARDEN” 116 - - THE WORN RED LIONS OF THE ANCIENT PORCH 120 - - AN ITALIAN SKY IN MARCH 140 - - COURT OF THE PALAZZO MARINO, NOW THE MUNICIPIO 156 - - THE TOWER OF S. STEFANO 162 - - THE CHURCH AT SARONNO 168 - - - - -AN ALPINE POSTING-INN - - -To the mind curious in contrasts--surely one of the chief pleasures of -travel--there can be no better preparation for a descent into Italy -than a sojourn among the upper Swiss valleys. To pass from the region -of the obviously picturesque--the country contrived, it would seem, for -the delectation of the _cœur à poésie facile_--to that sophisticated -landscape where the face of nature seems moulded by the passions and -imaginings of man, is one of the most suggestive transitions in the -rapidly diminishing range of such experiences. - -Nowhere is this contrast more acutely felt than in one of the upper -Grisons villages. The anecdotic Switzerland of the lakes is too -remote from Italy, geographically and morally, to evoke a comparison. -The toy chalet, with its air of self-conscious neatness, making one -feel that if one lifted the roof it would disclose a row of tapes -and scissors, or the shining cylinders of a musical box, suggests -cabinet-work rather than architecture; the swept and garnished streets, -the precise gardens, the subjugated vines, present the image of an -old maid’s paradise that would be thrown into hopeless disarray by -the introduction of anything so irregular as a work of art. In the -Grisons, however, where only a bald grey pass divides one from Italy, -its influence is felt, in a negative sense, in the very untidiness of -the streets, the rank growth of weeds along the base of rough glaring -walls, the drone of flies about candidly-exposed manure-heaps. More -agreeably, the same influence shows itself in the rude old centaur-like -houses, with their wrought-iron window-grilles and stone escutcheons -surmounting the odorous darkness of a stable. These are the houses -of people conscious of Italy, who have transplanted to their bleak -heights, either from poverty of invention, or an impulse as sentimental -as our modern habit of “collecting,” the thick walls, the small -windows, the jutting eaves of dwellings designed under a sultry sky. -So vivid is the reminiscence that one almost expects to see a cypress -leaning against the bruised-peach-coloured walls of the village -_douane_; but it is just here that the contrast accentuates itself. -The cypress, with all it stands for, is missing. - -It is not easy, in the height of the Swiss season, to light on a nook -neglected by the tourist; but at Splügen he still sweeps by in a cloud -of diligence dust, or pauses only to gulp a flask of Paradiso and a -rosy trout from the Suretta lakes. One’s enjoyment of the place is -thus enhanced by the pleasing spectacle of the misguided hundreds who -pass it by, and from the vantage of the solitary meadows above the -village one may watch the throngs descending on Thusis or Chiavenna -with something of the satisfaction that mediæval schoolmen believed to -be the portion of angels looking down upon the damned. Splügen abounds -in such points of observation. On all sides one may climb from the -alder-fringed shores of the Rhine, through larch-thickets tremulous -with the leap of water, to grassy levels far above, whence the valley -is seen lengthening southward to a great concourse of peaks. In the -morning these upper meadows are hot and bright, and one is glad of the -red-aisled pines and the onyx-coloured torrents cooling the dusk; but -toward sunset, when the shadows make the slopes of turf look like an -expanse of tumbled velvet, it is pleasant to pace the open ledges, -watching the sun recede from the valley, where mowers are still -sweeping the grass into long curved lines like ridges of the sea, while -the pine-woods on the eastern slopes grow black and the upper snows -fade to the colour of cold ashes. - -The landscape is simple, spacious and serene. The fields suggest the -tranquil rumination of generations of cattle, the woods offer cool -security to sylvan life, the mountains present blunt weather-beaten -surfaces rather than the subtle contours, wrinkled as by meditation, of -the Italian Alps. One feels that it is a scene in which _nothing has -ever happened_; the haunting adjective is that which Whitman applies to -the American landscape--“the large _unconscious_ scenery of my native -land.” - -Switzerland is like a dinner served in the old-fashioned way, with -all the dishes put on the table at once: every valley has its flowery -mead, its “horrid” gorge, its chamois-haunted peaks, its wood and -water-fall. In Italy, the effects are brought on in courses, and -memory is thus able to differentiate the landscapes, even without the -help of that touch of human individuality to which, after all, the -best Italian scenery is but a setting. At Splügen, as in most Swiss -landscapes, the human interest--the evidences of man’s presence--are -an interruption rather than a climax. The village of Splügen, huddled -on a ledge above the Rhine, sheepishly turns the backs of its houses -on the view, as though conscious of making a poor show compared to -the tremendous performance of nature. Between these houses, set at -unconsidered angles, like boxes hastily piled on a shelf, cobble-stone -streets ramble up the hill; but after a few yards they lapse into -mountain paths, and the pastures stoop unabashed to the back doors of -the village. Agriculture seems, in fact, the little town’s excuse for -being. The whole of Splügen, in midsummer, is as one arm at the end of -a scythe. All day long the lines of stooping figures--men, women and -children, grandfathers and industrious babes--spread themselves over -the hill-sides in an ever-widening radius, interminably cutting, raking -and stacking the grass. The lower slopes are first laid bare; then, to -the sheer upper zone of pines, the long grass, thick with larkspur, -mountain pink and orchis, gradually recedes before the rising tide of -mowers. Even in the graveyard of the high-perched church, the scythes -swing between mounds overgrown with campanulas and martagon lilies; -so that one may fancy the dust of generations of thrifty villagers -enriching the harvests of posterity. - -This, indeed, is the only destiny one can imagine for them. The past -of such a place must have been as bucolic as its present: the mediæval -keep, crumbling on its wooded spur above the Rhine, was surely perched -there that the lords of the valley might have an eye to the grazing -cattle and command the manœuvres of the mowers. The noble Georgiis who -lived in the escutcheoned houses of Splügen, and now lie under such -a wealth of quarterings in the church and graveyard, must have been -experts in fertilizers and stock-raising; nor can one figure, even for -the seventeenth-century mercenary of the name, whose epitaph declares -him to have been “captain of his Spanish Majesty’s cohorts,” emotions -more poignant, when he came home from the wars, than that evoked by the -tinkle of cow-bells in the pasture, and the vision of a table groaning -with smoked beef and cyclopean cheeses. - -So completely are the peasants in the fields a part of the soil they -cultivate, that during the day one may be said to have the whole -of Splügen to one’s self, from the topmost peaks to the deserted -high-road. In the evening the scene changes; and the transformation is -not unintentionally described in theatrical terms, since the square -which, after sunset, becomes the centre of life in Splügen, has an -absurd resemblance to a stage-setting. One side of this square is -bounded by the long weather-beaten front of the posting-inn--but the -inn deserves a parenthesis. Built long ago, and then abandoned, so the -village tradition runs, by a “great Italian family,” its exterior shows -the thick walls, projecting eaves and oval attic openings of an old -Tuscan house; while within, a monastic ramification of stone-vaulted -corridors leads to rooms ceiled and panelled with sixteenth-century -woodwork. The stone terrace before this impressive dwelling forms the -proscenium where, after dinner, the spectators assemble. To the right -of the square stands the pale pink “Post and Telegraph Bureau.” Beyond, -closing in the right wing at a stage-angle, is a mysterious yellowish -house with an arched entrance. Facing these, on the left, are the -_dépendance_ of the inn and the custom-house; in the left background, -the village street is seen winding down, between houses that look -like “studies” in old-fashioned drawing-books (with the cracks in -the plaster done in very black lead), to the bridge across the Rhine -and the first loops of the post-road over the Splügen pass. Opposite -the inn is the obligatory village fountain, the rallying-point of -the chorus; beneath a stone parapet flows the torrent which acts as -an invisible orchestra; and beyond the parapet, snow peaks fill the -background of the stage. - -Dinner over, the eager spectators, hastening to the terrace (with -a glimpse, as they pass the vaulted kitchen, of the Italian _chef_ -oiling his bicycle amid the débris of an admirable meal), find active -preparations afoot for the event of the evening--the arrival of the -diligences. Already the orchestra is tuning its instruments, and the -chorus, recruited from the hay-fields, are gathering in the wings. A -dozen of them straggle in and squat on the jutting stone basement of -the post-office; others hang picturesquely about the fountain, or hover -up the steep street, awaiting the prompter’s call. Presently some of -the subordinate characters stroll across the stage: the owner of the -saw-mill on the Rhine, a tall man in homespun, deferentially saluted by -the chorus; two personages in black coats, with walking-sticks, who -always appear together, and have the air of being joint syndics of the -village; a gentleman of leisure, in a white cap with a visor, smoking -a long Italian cigar and attended by an inquisitive Pomeranian dog; a -citizen in white socks and carpet slippers, giving his arm to his wife, -and preceded by a Bewickian little boy with a green butterfly-box over -his shoulder; the gold-braided custom-house officer hurrying up rather -late for his cue; two or three local ladies in sunburnt millinery and -spectacles, who drop in to see the postmistress; and a showy young man, -with the look of having seen life at Chur or Bellinzona, who emerges -from the post-office conspicuously reading a letter, to the undisguised -interest of the chorus, the ladies and the Pomeranian. As these figures -pass and repass in a kind of social silence, they suggest the leisurely -opening of some play composed before the unities were abolished, and -peopled by types with generic names--the Innkeeper, the Postmistress, -the Syndic--some comedy of Goldoni’s, perhaps, but void even of -Goldoni’s simple malice. - -Meanwhile the porter has lit the oil-lanterns hanging by a chain over -the door of the inn; a celestial hand has performed a similar office -for the evening star above the peaks; and through the hush that has -settled on the square comes a distant sound of bells.... Instantly -the action begins; the innkeeper appears, supported by the porter -and the waiter; a wave of acclamation runs through the chorus; the -Pomeranian trots down the road; and presently the fagged leaders -of the Thusis diligence turn their heads round the corner of the -square. The preposterous yellow coach--a landau attached to a glass -“clarence”--crosses the cobble-paved stage, swinging round with a grand -curve to the inn door; vague figures, detaching themselves from the -chorus, flit about the horses or help the guard to lift the luggage -down; the two syndics, critically aloof, lean on their sticks to watch -the scene; the Pomeranian bustles between the tired horses’ legs; and -the diligence doors let out a menagerie of the strange folk whom one -sees only on one’s travels. Here they come, familiar as the figures -in a Noah’s ark: Germans first--the little triple-chinned man with a -dachshund, out of “Fliegende Blätter,” the slippered Hercules with a -face like that at the end of a meerschaum pipe, and their sentimental -females; shrill and vivid Italians, a pleasant pig-faced priest. -Americans going “right through,” with their city and state writ large -upon their luggage; English girls like navvies, and Frenchmen like -girls; the arched doorway absorbs them, and another jingle of bells, -and a flash of lamps on the bridge, proclaim that the Chiavenna -diligence is coming. - -The same ceremony repeats itself; and another detachment of the -travelling menagerie descends. This time there is a family of rodents, -who look as though they ought to be enclosed in wire netting and -judiciously nourished on lettuce; there is a small fierce man in -knickerbockers and a sash, conducting a large submissive wife and two -hypocritical little boys who might have stepped out of “The Mirror of -the Mind”; there is an unfortunate lady in spectacles, who looks like -one of the Creator’s rejected experiments, and carries a grey linen bag -embroidered with forget-me-nots; there is the inevitable youth with -an alpenstock, who sends home a bunch of edelweiss to his awe-struck -family.... These, too, disappear; the horses are led away; the chorus -disperses, the lights go out, the performance is over. Only one -spectator lingers, a thoughtful man in a snuff-coloured overcoat, who -gives the measure of the social resources of Splügen by the deliberate -way in which, evening after evening, he walks around the empty -diligences, looks into their windows, examines the wheels and poles, -and then mournfully vanishes into darkness. - -At last the two diligences have the silent square to themselves. There -they stand, side by side in dusty slumber, till the morning cow-bells -wake them to departure. One goes back to Thusis; to the region of -good hotels, pure air and scenic platitudes. It may go empty for all -we care. But the other ... the other wakes from its Alpine sleep to -climb the cold pass at sunrise and descend by hot windings into the -land where the church steeples turn into _campanili_, where the vine, -breaking from perpendicular bondage, flings a liberated embrace about -the mulberries, and far off, beyond the plain, the mirage of domes and -spires, of painted walls and sculptured altars, beckons across the -dustiest tracts of memory. In that diligence our seats are taken. - - - - -A MIDSUMMER WEEK’S DREAM - -AUGUST IN ITALY - - _.... Un paysage choisi - Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques._ - - -I - -For ten days we had not known what ailed us. We had fled from the -August heat and crowd of the Vorderrheinthal to the posting-inn below -the Splügen pass; and here fortune had given us all the midsummer -tourist can hope for--solitude, cool air and fine scenery. A dozen -times a day we counted our mercies, but still privately felt them to be -insufficient. As we walked through the larch-groves beside the Rhine, -or climbed the grassy heights above the valley, we were oppressed by -the didactic quality of our surroundings--by the aggressive salubrity -and repose of this _bergerie de Florian_. We seemed to be living in -the landscape of a sanatorium prospectus. It was all pleasant enough, -according to Schopenhauer’s definition of pleasure. We had none of the -things we did not want; but then we did not particularly want any of -the things we had. We had fancied we did till we got them; and as we -had to own that they did their part in fulfilling our anticipations, we -were driven to conclude that the fault was in ourselves. Then suddenly -we found out what was wrong. Splügen was charming, but it was too near -Italy. - -One can forgive a place three thousand miles from Italy for not being -Italian; but that a village on the very border should remain stolidly, -immovably Swiss was a constant source of exasperation. Even the -landscape had neglected its opportunities. A few miles off it became -the accomplice of man’s most exquisite imaginings; but here we could -see in it only endless material for Swiss clocks and fodder. - -The trouble began with our watching the diligences. Every evening we -saw one toiling up the pass from Chiavenna, with dusty horses and -perspiring passengers. How we pitied those passengers! We walked among -them puffed up with all the good air in our lungs. We felt fresh and -cool and enviable, and moralized on the plaintive lot of those whose -scant holidays compelled them to visit Italy in August. But already the -poison was at work. We pictured what our less fortunate brothers had -seen till we began to wonder if, after all, they were less fortunate. -At least they had _been there_; and what drawbacks could qualify that -fact? Was it better to be cool and look at a water-fall, or to be hot -and look at Saint Mark’s? Was it better to walk on gentians or on -mosaic, to smell fir-needles or incense? Was it, in short, ever well to -be elsewhere when one might be in Italy? - -We tried to quell the rising madness by interrogating the travellers. -Was it very hot on the lakes and in Milan? “Terribly!” they answered, -and mopped their brows. “Unimaginative idiots!” we grumbled, and -forbore to question the next batch. Of course it was hot there--but -what of that? Think of the compensations! To take it on the lowest -plane, think of the empty hotels and railway carriages, the absence -of tourists and Baedekers! Even the Italians were away, among the -Apennines and in the Engadine; we should have the best part of the -country to ourselves. Gradually we began to picture our sensations -should we take seats in the diligence on its return journey. From that -moment we were lost. We did not say much to each other, but one morning -at sunrise we found a travelling-carriage at the door. No one seemed -to know who had ordered it, but we noticed that our luggage was being -strapped on behind. We took our seats and the driver turned his horses -toward the Splügen pass. It was not the way to Switzerland. - -[Illustration: - - _By the Port of Lovere_ - - E. C. Peixotto - LOVEIRE. 1901. - -] - -We mounted to ice and snow. The savage landscape led us to the top of -the pass and dogged us down to the miserable Italian custom-house on -the other side. Then began the long descent through snow-galleries and -steep pine-forests, above the lonely gorge of the Madesimo: Switzerland -still in every aspect, but with a promise of Italy in the names of -the dreary villages. Visible Italy began with the valley of the Lira, -where, in a wild Salvator Rosa landscape, the beautiful campanile -of the Madonna of Gallevaggio rises above embowering walnuts. After -that each successive village declared its allegiance more openly. -The huddled stone houses disappeared in a wealth of pomegranates and -oleanders. Vine-pergolas shaded the doorways, roses and dahlias -overflowed the terraces of rough masonry, and between the -walnut-groves there were melon-patches and fields of maize. - -As we approached Chiavenna a thick bloom of heat lay on the motionless -foliage, and the mountains hung like thunder-clouds on the horizon. -There was something oppressive, menacing almost, in the still weight -of the atmosphere. It seemed to have absorbed all the ardour of the -sun-baked Lombard plain, of the shadeless rice and maize fields -stretching away to the south of us. But the eye had ample compensation. -The familiar town of Chiavenna had grown as fantastically picturesque -as the background of a fresco. The old houses, with their medallioned -doorways of worn marble; the court-yards bright with flowers and -shaded by trellised vines; the white turbulence of the Lira, rushing -between gardens, balconies and terraces set at reckless angles above -the water--were all these a part of the town we had so often seen at -less romantic seasons? The general impression was of an exuberance of -rococo--as though the sportive statue of Saint John Nepomuc on the -bridge, the grotesque figures on the balustrade of the pale-green villa -near the hotel, and the stucco shrines at the street corners, had -burst into a plastic efflorescence rivalling the midsummer wealth of -the gardens. - -We had left Switzerland with the general object of going to Italy and -the specific one of exploring the Bergamasque Alps. It was the name -which had attracted us, as much from its intrinsic picturesqueness as -from its associations with the _commedia dell’ arte_ and the jolly -figures of Harlequin and Brighella. I have often journeyed thus in -pursuit of a name, and have seldom been unrewarded. In this case the -very aspect of the map was promising. The region included in the -scattered lettering--_Bergamasker Hochthäler_--had that furrowed, -serried look so encouraging to the experienced traveller. It was rich, -crowded, suggestive; and the names of the villages were enchanting. - -Early the next morning we set out for Colico, at the head of the -Lake of Como, and thence took train for Sondrio, the chief town of -the Valtelline. The lake, where we had to wait for our train, lay in -unnatural loveliness beneath a breathless sky, the furrowed peaks -bathed in subtle colour-gradations of which, at other seasons, the -atmosphere gives no hint. At Sondrio we found all the dreariness of a -modern Italian town with wide unshaded streets; but taking carriage in -the afternoon for Madonna di Tirano we were soon in the land of romance -again. The Valtelline, through which we drove, is one vast fruit and -vegetable garden of extraordinary fertility. The _gran turco_ (as the -maize is called) grows in jungles taller than a man, and the grapes and -melons have the exaggerated size and bloom of their counterfeits in a -Dutch fruit-piece. The rich dulness of this foreground was relieved by -the noble lines of the hills, and the air cooled by the rush of the -Adda, which followed the windings of our road, and by a glimpse of -snow peaks at the head of the valley. The villages were uninteresting, -but we passed a low-lying deserted church, a charming bit of -seventeenth-century decay, with peeling stucco ornaments, and weeds -growing from the florid vases of the pediment; and far off, on a lonely -wooded height, there was a tantalizing glimpse of another church, a -Renaissance building rich with encrusted marbles: one of the nameless -uncatalogued treasures in which Italy still abounds. - -Toward sunset we reached Madonna di Tirano, the great pilgrimage -church of the Valtelline. With its adjoining monastery it stands -alone in poplar-shaded meadows a mile or more from the town of Tirano. -The marble church, a late fifteenth-century building by Battagio -(the architect of the Incoronata of Lodi), has the peculiar charm of -that transitional period when individuality of detail was merged, -but not yet lost, in the newly-recovered sense of unity. From the -columns of the porch, with their Verona-like arabesques, to the -bronze Saint Michael poised like a Mercury on the cupola, the whole -building combines the charm and naïveté of the earlier tradition with -the dignity of a studied whole. The interior, if less homogeneous, -is, in the French sense, even more “amusing.” Owing, doubtless, to -the remote situation of the church, it has escaped the unifying -hand of the improver, and presents three centuries of conflicting -decorative treatment, ranging from the marble chapel of the Madonna, -so suggestive, in its clear-edged reliefs, of the work of Omodeo at -Pavia, to the barocco carvings of the organ and the eighteenth-century -_grisailles_ beneath the choir-gallery. - -The neighbouring monastery of Saint Michael has been turned into an inn -without farther change than that of substituting tourists for monks -in the white-washed cells around the cloisters. The old building is -a dusty labyrinth of court-yards, loggias and pigeon-haunted upper -galleries, which it needs but little imagination to people with cowled -figures gliding to lauds or benediction; and the refectory where we -supped is still hung with portraits of cardinals, monsignori, and lady -abbesses holding little ferret-like dogs. - -The next day we drove across the rich meadows to Tirano, one of those -unhistoried and unconsidered Italian towns which hold in reserve for -the observant eye a treasure of quiet impressions. It is difficult to -name any special “effect”: the hurried sight-seer may discover only -dull streets and featureless house-fronts. But the place has a fine -quality of age and aloofness. The featureless houses are “palaces,” -long-fronted and escutcheoned, with glimpses of arcaded courts, and of -gardens where maize and dahlias smother the broken statues and choked -fountains, and where grapes ripen on the peeling stucco walls. Here -and there one comes on a frivolous rococo church, subdued by time to -delicious harmony with its surroundings; on a fountain in a quiet -square, or a wrought-iron balcony projecting romantically from a -shuttered façade; or on one or another of the hundred characteristic -details which go to make up the _mise en scène_ of the average Italian -town. It is precisely in places like Tirano, where there are no salient -beauties to fix the eye, that one appreciates the value of these -details, that one realizes what may be called the negative strength -of the Italian artistic sense. Where the Italian builder could not be -grand, he could always abstain from being mean and trivial; and this -artistic abnegation gives to many a dull little town like Tirano an -architectural dignity which our great cities lack. - - -II - -The return to secular life was made two days later, when we left -our monastery and set out to drive across the Aprica pass to Edolo. -Retracing for a mile or two the way toward Sondrio, we took a turn to -the left and began to mount the hills through forests of beech and -chestnut. With each bend of the road the views down the Valtelline -toward Sondrio and Como grew wider and more beautiful. No one who has -not looked out on such a prospect in the early light of an August -morning can appreciate the poetic truth of Claude’s interpretation -of nature: we seemed to be moving through a gallery hung with his -pictures. There was the same expanse of billowy forest, the same silver -winding of a river through infinite gradations of distance, the same -aërial line of hills melting into illimitable sky. - -As we neared the top of the pass the air freshened, and pines and open -meadows replaced the forest. We lunched at a little hotel in a bare -meadow, among a crowd of Italians enjoying the _villeggiatura_ in their -shrill gregarious fashion; then we began the descent to Edolo in the -Val Camonica. - -The scenery changed rapidly as we drove on. There was no longer -any great extent of landscape, as on the other side of the pass, -but a succession of small park-like views: rounded clumps of trees -interspersed with mossy glades, water-falls surmounted by old mills, -_campanili_ rising above villages hidden in foliage. On these smooth -grassy terraces, under the walnut boughs, one expected at each turn -to come upon some pastoral of Giorgione’s, or on one of Bonifazio’s -sumptuous picnics. The scenery has a studied beauty in which velvet -robes and caparisoned palfreys would not be out of place, and even the -villages might have been “brushed in” by an artist skilled in effects -and not afraid to improve upon reality. - -It was after sunset when we reached Edolo, a dull town splendidly -placed at the head of the Val Camonica, beneath the ice-peaks of the -Adamello. The Oglio, a loud stream voluble of the glaciers, rushes -through the drowsy streets as though impatient to be gone; and we were -not sorry, the next morning, to follow its lead and continue our way -down the valley. - - -III - -The Val Camonica, which extends from the Adamello group to the head of -the lake of Iseo, is a smaller and more picturesque reproduction of the -Valtelline. Vines and maize again fringed our way; but the mountains -were closer, the villages more frequent and more picturesque. - -[Illustration: - - _The Municipio--Brescia_ - - E. C. Peixotto - BRESCIA. 1901. -] - -We had read in the invaluable guide-book of Gsell-Fels a vague allusion -to an interesting church among these mountains, but we could learn -nothing of it at Edolo, and only by persistent enquiries along the -road did we finally hear that there _was_ a church with “sculptures” -in the hill-village of Cerveno, high above the reach of carriages. We -left the high-road at the point indicated, and drove in a light country -carriole up the stony mule-path, between vines and orchards, till -the track grew too rough for wheels; then we continued the ascent on -foot. As we approached the cluster of miserable hovels which had been -pointed out to us we felt sure we had been misled. Not even in Italy, -the land of unsuspected treasures, could one hope to find a church with -“sculptures” in a poverty-stricken village on this remote mountain! -Cerveno does not even show any signs of past prosperity. It has plainly -never been more than it now is--the humblest of _paesi_, huddled away -in an unvisited fold of the Alps. The peasants whom we met still -insisted that the church we sought was close at hand; but the higher we -mounted the lower our anticipations fell. - -Then suddenly, at the end of a long stony lane, we came on an imposing -doorway. The church to which it belonged stood on a higher ledge of -the hill, and the door led into a vaulted ascent, with shallow flights -of steps broken by platforms or landings--a small but yet impressive -imitation of the Bernini staircase in the Vatican. As we mounted we -found that each landing opened into a dimly-lit chapel with grated -doors, through which we discerned terra-cotta groups representing the -scenes of the Passion. The staircase was in fact a Sacred Way like -the more famous one of Varallo; but there was distinct originality in -placing the chapels on each side of the long flight of steps leading to -the church, instead of scattering them on an open hill-side, according -to the traditional plan common to all the other sacred mountains of -northern Italy. - -The dilettante will always allow for the heightening of emotion that -attends any unexpected artistic “find”; but, setting this subjective -impression aside, the Via Crucis of Cerveno remains in my memory as -among the best examples of its kind--excepting always the remarkable -terra-cottas of San Vivaldo in Tuscany. At Cerveno, as at Varallo, -the groups are marked by unusual vivacity and expressiveness. The -main lines of the composition are conventional, and the chief -personages--Christ and the Apostles, the Virgin and the other -holy characters--are modelled on traditional types; but the minor -figures, evidently taken from life, are rendered with frank realism -and with extraordinary truth of expression and gesture. Just such -types--the dwarf, the beggar, the hunchback, the brawny waggoner or -ploughman--had met us in every village on the way to Cerveno. As in -all the hill-regions where the goitre is prevalent, the most villanous -characters in the drama are depicted with a hideous bag of flesh -beneath the chin; and Signorelli could not have conceived more bestial -leering cruelty than that in some of the faces which press about the -dying Christ. The scenes follow the usual order of the sacred story, -without marked departure from the conventional grouping; but there is -unusual pathos in the Descent from the Cross, where the light from -the roof of the chapel falls with tragic intensity on the face of a -Magdalen full of suave Lombard beauty. - -Hardly less surprising than this remarkable stairway is the church to -which it leads. The walls are hung with devotional pictures set in -the faded gilding of rich old frames, the altar-fronts are remarkable -examples of sixteenth-century wood-carving, and the high altar is -surmounted by an elaborate tabernacle, also of carved wood, painted and -gilt, that in itself repays the effort of the climb to Cerveno. This -tabernacle is a complicated architectural composition--like one of the -fantastic designs of Fontana or Bibbiena--thronged with tiny saints -and doctors, angels and _putti_, akin to the little people of the -Neapolitan _presepii:_ a celestial company fluttering - - _Si come schiera d’api che s’infiora_ - -around the divine group which surmounts the shrine. - -This prodigality of wood-carving, surprising as it is in so remote and -humble a church, is yet characteristic of the region about Brescia -and Bergamo. Lamberti of Brescia, the sculptor of the famous frame -of Romanino’s Madonna in the church of San Francesco, was one of the -greatest wood-carvers of the Italian Renaissance; and every church -and chapel in the country through which we were travelling bore -witness to the continued practice of the art in some graceful frame or -altar-front, some saint or angel rudely but expressively modelled. - -We lunched that day at Breno, a town guarded by a ruined castle on -a hill, and sunset brought us to Lovere, at the head of the lake of -Iseo. It was the stillest of still evenings, and the little town which -Lady Mary Wortley Montagu has immortalized was reflected, with every -seam and wrinkle of its mountain background, in the pearly surface -of the lake. Literal-minded critics, seeking in vain along the shore -for Lady Mary’s villa and garden, have grumbled at the inaccuracy of -her descriptions; but every lover of Italy will understand the mental -process by which she unconsciously created an imaginary Lovere. For -though the town, at first sight, is dull and disappointing, yet, taken -with its surroundings, it might well form the substructure of one of -those Turneresque visions which, in Italy, are perpetually intruding -between the most conscientious traveller and his actual surroundings. -It is indeed almost impossible to see Italy steadily and see it whole. -The onset of impressions and memories is at times so overwhelming that -observation is lost in mere sensation. - -Certainly he who, on an August morning, sails from Lovere to Iseo, at -the southern end of the lake, is likely to find himself succumbing to -Lady Mary’s hallucinations. Warned by her example, and conscious of -lacking her extenuating gift, I hesitate to record my impressions of -the scene; or venture, at most, to do so in the past tense, asserting -(and this even with a mental reservation) that on a certain morning -a certain number of years ago the lake of Iseo wore such and such an -aspect. But the difficulty of rendering the aspect remains. I can only -say it was that very lake of the _carte du Tendre_ upon which, in the -eighteenth-century romances, gay parties in velvet-hung barges used -to set out for the island of Cythera. Every village on that enchanted -shore might have been the stage of some comedy in the Bergamasque -dialect, with Harlequin in striped cloak, and Brighella in conical hat -and wide green and white trousers, strutting up and down before the -shuttered house in which Dr. Graziano hides his pretty ward; every -villa reflecting its awnings and bright flowers in the lake might -have housed some Rosaura to whom Leandro, the Tuscan lover, warbled -_rispetti_ beneath the padlocked water-gate; every pink or yellow -monastery on the hill-side might have sent forth its plausible friar, -descendant of Machiavelli’s Fra Timoteo, to preach in the market-place, -beg at the villa-door, and help Rosaura and Leandro cozen the fat dupe -of a Pantaloon in black cloak and scarlet socks. The eighteenth century -of Longhi, of Tiepolo and Goldoni was reflected in the lake as in some -magic crystal. Did the vision dissolve as we landed at Iseo, or will -some later traveller find it still lying beneath the wave like the -vanished city of Ys? There is no telling, in such cases, how much the -eye receives and how much it contributes; and if ever the boundaries -between fact and fancy waver, it may well be under the spell of the -Italian midsummer madness. - - -IV - -The sun lay heavy on Iseo; and the railway journey thence to Brescia -left in our brains a golden dazzle of heat. It was refreshing, on -reaching Brescia, to enter the streets of the old town, where the -roofs almost meet and there is always a blessed strip of shade to -walk in. The cities in Italy are much cooler than the country. It is -in August that one understands the wisdom of the old builders, who -made the streets so narrow, and built dim draughty arcades around the -open squares. In Brescia the effects of light and shade thus produced -were almost Oriental in their sharp-edged intensity; the rough stucco -surfaces gilded with vivid sunlight bringing out the depths of -contrasting shade, and the women with black veils over their heads -slipping along under the mysterious balconies and porticoes like -flitting fragments of the shadow. - -[Illustration: - - _Chiesa dei Miracoli--Brescia_ -] - -Brescia is at all times a delightful place to linger in. Its chief -possessions--the bronze Victory, and that room in the Martinengo palace -where Moretto, in his happiest mood, depicted the ladies of the line -under arches of trellis-work backed by views of the family villas--make -it noteworthy even among Italian cities; and it has, besides, its -beautiful town-hall, its picture-gallery, and the curious court-yards -painted in perspective that are so characteristic of the place. But in -summer there is a strong temptation to sit and think of these things -rather than to go and see them. In the court-yard of the hotel, where -a fountain tinkles refreshingly, and the unbleached awnings flap in -the breeze of the electric fans, it is pleasant to feel that the -Victory and the pictures are close at hand, like old friends waiting -on one’s inclination; but if one ventures forth, let it be rather -to the churches than to the galleries. Only at this season can one -appreciate the atmosphere of the churches: that chill which cuts the -sunshine like a knife as one steps across the dusky threshold. When -we entered the cathedral its vast aisles were empty, but far off, -in the dimness of the pillared choir, we heard a drone of intoning -canons that freshened the air like the sound of a water-fall in a -forest. Thence we wandered on to San Francesco, empty too, where, in -the sun-spangled dimness, the great Romanino throned behind the high -altar. The sacristan drew back the curtain before the picture, and as -it was revealed to us in all its sun-bathed glory he exclaimed with -sudden wonder, as though he had never seen it before: “_È stupendo! È -stupendo!_” Perhaps he vaguely felt, as we did, that Romanino, to be -appreciated, must be seen in just that light, a projection of the suave -and radiant atmosphere in which his own creations move. Certainly no -Romanino of the great public galleries arrests the imagination like the -Madonna of San Francesco; and in its presence one thinks with a pang of -all the beautiful objects uprooted from their native soil to adorn the -herbarium of the art-collector.... - - -V - -It was on the last day of our journey that the most imperturbable -member of the party, looking up from a prolonged study of the -guide-books, announced that we had not seen the Bergamasque Alps after -all. - -In the excited argument that followed, proof seemed to preponderate -first on one side and then on the other; but a closer scrutiny of the -map confirmed the fear that we had not actually penetrated beyond -the borders of the promised land. It must be owned that at first the -discovery was somewhat humiliating; but on reflection it left us -overjoyed to think that we had still the Bergamasque Alps to visit. -Meanwhile our pleasure had certainly been enhanced by our delusion; and -we remembered with fresh admiration Goethe’s profound saying--a saying -which Italy inspired-- - - _O, wie beseliget uns Menschen ein falscher Begriff!_ - - - - -THE SANCTUARIES OF THE PENNINE ALPS - - -When June is hot on the long yellow streets of Turin, it is pleasant to -take train for the Biellese, that romantic hill-country where the last -slopes of the Pennine Alps melt into the Piedmontese plain. - -The line, crossing the lowland with its red-tiled farm-houses and -mulberry orchards, rises gradually to a region of rustling verdure. -Mountain streams flow down between alder-fringed banks, white oxen doze -under the acacia-hedges, and in the almond and cherry orchards the -vine hangs its Virgilian garlands from blossoming tree to tree. This -pastoral land rolls westward to the Graiian Alps in an undulating sea -of green, but to the north it breaks abruptly into the height against -which rises the terraced outline of Biella. - -The cliffs of the Biellese are the haunt of ancient legend, and on -almost every ledge a church or monastery perpetuates the story of -some wonder-working relic. Biella, the chief town of this devout -district, covers a small conical hill and spreads its suburbs over the -surrounding level. Its hot sociable streets are full of the shrill -activity of an Italian watering-place; but the transalpine traveller -will probably be inclined to push on at once to the village of Andorno, -an hour’s drive deeper in the hills. - -Biella overhangs the plain; but Andorno lies in a valley which soon -contracts to a defile between the mountains. The drive thither from -Biella skirts the Cervo, a fresh mountain stream, and passes through -villages set on park-like slopes in the ample shade of chestnut-groves. -The houses of these villages have little of the picturesqueness -mistakenly associated with Italian rural architecture; but every window -displays its pot of lavender or of carnations, and the arched doorways -reveal gardens flecked with the blue shadows of the vine-pergola. - -Andorno itself is folded in hills, rounded, umbrageous, cooled with -the song of birds. A sylvan hush envelops the place, and the air one -breathes seems to have travelled over miles of forest freshened by -unseen streams. It is all as still and drowsy as the dream of a tired -brain. There is nothing to see but the country itself--acacia-fringed -banks sloping to the stream below the village; the arch of a ruined -bridge; an old hexagonal chapel with red-tiled roof and an arcade of -stunted columns; and, beyond the bridge and the chapel, rich upland -meadows where all day long the peasant women stoop to the swing of the -scythe. - -In June in this high country (where patches of snow still lie in the -shaded hollows), the wild flowers of spring and summer seem to meet: -narcissus and forget-me-not lingering in the grass, while yellow -broom--Leopardi’s _lover of sad solitudes_--sheets the dry banks with -gold, and higher up, in the folds of the hills, patches of crimson -azalea mix their shy scent with the heavy fragrance of the acacia. In -the meadows the trees stand in well-spaced majestic groups, walnut, -chestnut and beech, tenting the grass with shade. The ivy hangs its -drapery over garden walls and terraces, and the streams rush down under -a quivering canopy of laburnum. The scenery of these high Pennine -valleys is everywhere marked by the same nobleness of colour and -outline, the same atmosphere of spaciousness and poetry. It is the rich -studied landscape of Bonifazio’s idyls: a scene of peace and plenitude, -not the high-coloured southern opulence but the sober wealth poured -from a glacial horn of plenty. There is none of the Swiss abruptness, -of the Swiss accumulation of effects. The southern aspect softens and -expands. There is no crowding of impressions, but a stealing sense of -harmony and completeness. - -From Andorno the obvious excursion is to the famous shrine of San -Giovanni; a “sight” taking up eight pages in the excellent “Guida del -Biellese,” but remaining in the traveller’s memory chiefly as the -objective point of a charming walk or drive. The road thither winds -up the Val d’Andorno, between heights set with villages hung aloft -among the beech-groves, or thrusting their garden-parapets above the -spray and tumult of the Cervo. The densely-wooded cliffs are scarred -with quarries of sienite, and the stream, as the valley narrows, -forces its way over masses of rock and between shelving stony banks; -but the little gardens dashed by its foam overflow with irises, roses -and peonies, surrounded with box-hedges and shaded by the long mauve -panicles of the wistaria. - -Presently the road leaves the valley, and ascends the beech-clothed -flank of the mountain on which the church of San Giovanni is perched. -The coolness and hush of this wooded hill-side are delicious after -the noise and sunshine of the open road, and one is struck by the -civic amenity which, in this remote solitude, has placed benches at -intervals beneath the trees. At length the brow of the hill is reached. -The beeches recede, leaving a grassy plateau flanked by a long façade -of the monastery; and from the brink of this open space the eye drops -unhindered down the long leafy reaches of the Val d’Andorno. - -The scene is characterized by the tenderest gradations of colour -and line: beeches blending with walnuts, these with the tremulous -laburnum-thickets along the stream, and the curves of the hills flowing -into one another till they lose themselves in the aërial distances of -the plain. The building which commands this outlook is hardly worthy -of its station, unless, indeed, the traveller feels its sober lines -to be an admission of art’s inferiority to nature in such aspects. To -the confirmed apologist of Italy there is indeed a certain charm in -finding so insignificant a piece of architecture in so rare a spot: -as though in a land thus amply dowered no architectural emphasis -were needed to call attention to any special point of view. Yet a -tenderness for the view, one cannot but infer, must have guided the -steps of those early cenobites who peopled the romantic landscape with -wonder-working images. When did a miracle take place on a barren plain -or in a circumscribed hollow? The manifestations of divine favour -invariably sought the heights, and those who dedicated themselves to -the commemoration of such holy incidents did so in surroundings poetic -enough to justify their faith in the supernatural. - -[Illustration: - - _The Inner Quadrangle at Oropa_ - - E. C. Peixotto - LOVEIRE. 1901. -] - -The church, with its dignified front and sculptured portal, adjoins -the hospice, and shows little of interest within but the stone grotto -containing the venerated image of Saint John, discovered in the third -century by Saint Eusebius, Bishop of Vercelli. This grotto is protected -by an iron grating, and its dark recess twinkles with silver hearts -and other votive offerings. The place is still a favourite pilgrimage, -but there seems to be some doubt as to which Saint John has chosen it -as the scene of his posthumous thaumaturgy; for, according to the -local guide-book, it is equally frequented on the feasts of the Baptist -and of the Evangelist. This uncertainty is not without its practical -advantages; and one reads that the hospice is open the year round, -and that an excellent meal may always be enjoyed in the _trattoria_ -above the arcade; while on the feasts of the respective saints it is -necessary for the devotee to bespeak his board and lodging in advance. - -If San Giovanni appeals chiefly to the lover of landscape, the more -famous sanctuary of Oropa is of special interest to the architect; for -thither, in the eighteenth century, the piety of the house of Savoy -sent Juvara, one of the greatest architects of his time, to add a grand -façade and portico to the group of monastic buildings erected a hundred -years earlier by Negro di Pralungo. - -The ascent to the great mountain-shrine of the Black Virgin leads the -traveller back to Biella, and up the hills behind the town. The drive -is long, but so diversified, so abounding in beauty, that in nearing -its end one feels the need of an impressive monument to close so -nobly ordered an approach. As the road rises above the vineyards of -Biella, as the house-roofs, the church-steeples and the last suburban -villas drop below the line of vision, there breaks upon the eye the -vast undulating reach of the Piedmontese plain. From the near massing -of cultivated verdure--the orchards, gardens, groves of the minutely -pencilled foreground--to the far limit where earth and sky converge -in silver, the landscape glides through every gradation of sun-lit -cloud-swept loveliness. First the Val d’Andorno unbosoms its wooded -depths; then the distances press nearer, blue-green and dappled with -forest, with the towns of Biella, Novara and Vercelli like white fleets -anchored on a misty sea. This view, with its fold on fold of woodland, -dusky-shimmering in the foreground, then dark blue, with dashes of -tawny sunlight and purple streaks of rain, till it fades into the -indeterminate light of the horizon, suggests some heroic landscape of -Poussin’s, or the boundless russet distances of Rubens’s “Château of -Stein.” - -Meanwhile the foreground is perpetually changing. The air freshens, the -villages with their flower-gardens and their guardian images of the -Black Virgin are left behind, and between the thinly-leaved beeches -rise bare gravelly slopes backed by treeless hills. The Loreto of -Piedmont lies nearly four thousand feet above the sea, and even in -June there is a touch of snow in the air. For a moment one fancies -one’s self in Switzerland; but here, at the bend of the road, is a -white chapel with a classic porch, within which a group of terra-cotta -figures enact some episode of the Passion. Italy has reasserted herself -and art has humanized the landscape. More chapels are scattered through -the trees, but one forgets to note them as the carriage turns into a -wide grassy forecourt, bordered by stone pyramids and dominated at its -farther end by the great colonnade of the hospice. A _rampe douce_ with -fine iron gates leads up to an outer court enclosed in the arcaded -wings of the building. Under these arcades are to be found shops in -which the pilgrim may satisfy his various wants, from groceries, wines -and cotton umbrellas (much needed in these showery hills), to rosaries, -images of the Black Virgin, and pious histories of her miracles. Above -the arcades the pilgrims are lodged; and in the centre of the inner -façade Juvara’s marble portico unfolds its double flight of steps. - -Passing through this gateway, one stands in a spacious inner -quadrangle. This again is enclosed in low buildings resting on -arcades, their alignment broken only by the modest façade of the -church. Outside there is the profane bustle of life, the clatter of -glasses at the doors of rival _trattorie_, the cracking of whips, the -stir of buying and selling; but a warm silence holds the inner court. -Only a few old peasant women are hobbling, rosary in hand, over the -sun-baked flags to the cool shelter of the church. The church is indeed -cavernously cold, with that subterranean chill peculiar to religious -buildings. The interior is smaller and plainer than one had expected; -but presently it is seen to be covered with a decoration beside which -the rarest tapestry or fresco might sink into insignificance. This -covering is composed of innumerable votive offerings, crowding each -other from floor to vaulting over every inch of wall, lighting the -chapels with a shimmer of silver and tinsel, with the yellow of old -wax legs and arms, and the gleam of tarnished picture-frames: each -overlapping scale of this strange sheath symbolizing some impulse of -longing, grief or gratitude, so that, as it were, the whole church is -lined with heart-beats. Most of these offerings are the gift of the -poor mountain-folk, and the paintings record with artless realism the -miraculous escapes of carters, quarrymen and stone-cutters. In the -choir, however, hang a few portraits of noble donators in ruffs and -Spanish jerkins; and one picture, rudely painted on the wall itself, -renders with touching fidelity the interior of a peasant’s house in the -sixteenth or seventeenth century, with the mother kneeling by a cradle -over which the Black Virgin sheds her reassuring light. - -The ebony Virgin herself (another “find” of the indefatigable Saint -Eusebius) is enthroned behind the high altar, in a tiny chapel built -by her discoverer, where, in a blaze of altar-lights, the miraculous -image, nimbused in jewels and gold, showers a dazzling brightness -on the groups who succeed each other at her iron lattice. The -incense-laden air and the sweating stone walls encrusted with votive -offerings recall at once the chapel of Loreto; but here the smaller -space, the deeper dusk, heighten the sense of holiness and solemnity; -and if a few white-capped Sisters are grouped against the grating, -while before the altar a sweet-voiced young priest intones the mystic - - _Mater purissima, - Mater admirabile, - Mater prudentissima,_ - -punctuated by the wailing _Ora pro nobis!_ of the nuns, it would be -hard to picture a scene richer in that mingling of suavity and awe with -which the Church composes her incomparable effects. - -After so complex an impression the pleasures of the eye may seem a -trifle thin; yet there is a great charm in the shaded walks winding -through the colony of chapels above the monastery. Nothing in nature is -lovelier than a beech-wood rustling with streams; and to come, in such -a setting, on one graceful _tempietto_ after another, to discover, in -their semi-pagan porches, groups of peasants praying before some dim -presentment of the Passion, gives a renewed sense of the way in which, -in Italy, nature, art and religion combine to enrich the humblest -lives. These Sacred Mounts, or Stations of the Cross, are scattered -everywhere on the Italian slopes of the Alps. The most famous is at -Varallo, and to find any artistic merit one must go there, or to San -Vivaldo in Tuscany, or the unknown hill-village of Cerveno in the Val -Camonica. At Oropa the groups are relatively crude and uninteresting; -but the mysterious half-light in which they are seen, and the -surrounding murmur of leaves and water, give them a value quite -independent of their plastic qualities. - - * * * * * - -Varallo itself is but a day’s journey from Andorno, and in June weather -the drive thither is beautiful. The narrow country road mounts through -chestnut-groves as fine as those which cast their velvet shade for -miles about Promontogno in the Val Bregaglia. At first the way dips -continuously from one green ravine to another, but at Mosso Santa -Maria, the highest point of the ascent, the glorious plain again -bursts into view, with white roads winding toward distant cities, -and the near flanks of the hills clothed in unbroken forest. The Val -Sesia is broader than the Val d’Andorno, and proportionately less -picturesque; but its expanse of wheat and vine, checkered with shade -and overhung by piled-up mossy rocks, offers a restful contrast to the -landscape of the higher valleys. As Varallo is neared the hills close -in again and the scenery regains its sub-Alpine character. The first -unforgettable glimpse of the old town is caught suddenly at a bend of -the road, with the Sanctuary lifted high above the river, and tiled -roofs and church-towers clustered at its base. The near approach is a -disenchantment; for few towns have suffered more than Varallo under the -knife of “modern improvement,” and those who did not know it in earlier -days would hardly guess that it was once the most picturesque town in -North Italy. A dusty wide-avenued suburb, thinly scattered with cheap -villas, now leads from the station to the edge of the old town; and -the beautiful slope facing the Sacred Mountain has been cleared of its -natural growth and planted with moribund palms and camellias, to form -the “pleasure” grounds of a huge stucco hotel with failure written over -every inch of its pretentious façade. - -One knows not whether to lament the impairment of such rare -completeness, or to find consolation in the fact that Varallo is rich -enough not to be ruined by its losses. Ten or fifteen years ago every -aspect was enchanting; now one must choose one’s point of view, but -one or two of the finest are still intact. Turning one’s back, for -instance, on the offending hotel, one has still, on a summer morning, -the rarest vision of wood and water and happily-blended architecture: -the Sesia with its soft meadows and leafy banks, the old houses huddled -above it, and the high cliff crowned by the chapels of the Sacred Way. -At night all melts to a diviner loveliness. The clustered darkness of -the town, twinkling with lights, lies folded in hills delicately traced -against a sky mauve with moonlight. Here and there the moon burnishes a -sombre mass of trees, or makes a campanile stand out pale and definite -as ivory; while high above, the summit of the cliff projects against -the sky, with an almost Greek purity of outline, the white domes and -arches of the Sanctuary. - -The centre of the town is also undisturbed. Here one may wander through -cool narrow streets with shops full of devotional emblems, and of -the tall votive candles gaily spangled with gold, and painted with -flower-wreaths and _mandorle_ of the Virgin. These streets, on Sundays, -are thronged with the peasant women of the neighbouring valleys in -their various costumes: some with cloth leggings and short dark-blue -cloth petticoats embroidered in colours; others in skirts of plaited -black silk, with embroidered jackets, silver necklaces and spreading -head-dresses; for nearly every town has its distinctive dress, and -some happy accident seems to have preserved this slope of the Alps -from the depressing uniformity of modern fashions. In architectural -effects the town is little richer than its neighbours; but it has that -indescribable “tone” in which the soft texture of old stucco and the -bloom of weather-beaten marble combine with a hundred happy accidents -of sun and shade to produce what might be called the _patine_ of Italy. -There is, indeed, one remarkable church, with a high double flight -of steps leading to its door; but this (though it contains a fine -Gaudenzio) passes as a mere incident in the general picturesqueness, -and the only church with which the sight-seer seriously reckons is that -of Santa Maria delle Grazie, frescoed with the artist’s scenes from the -Passion. - -[Illustration: - - _The Main Court of the Sacro Monte at Varallo_ - - E. C. Peixotto - VARALLO. 1901. -] - -There is much beauty of detail in these crowded compositions; but, to -the inexpert, Gaudenzio lives perhaps chiefly as the painter of the -choiring angels of Saronno: so great there that elsewhere he seems -relatively unimportant. At Varallo, at least, one associates him -first with the Sacred Mountain. To this great monument of his native -valley he contributed some of his most memorable work, and it seems -fitting that on turning from his frescoes in Santa Maria one should -find one’s self at the foot of the path leading to the Sanctuary. The -wide approach, paved with tiny round pebbles polished by the feet -of thousands of pilgrims, leads round the flank of the cliff to the -park-like enclosure on its summit. Here, on the ledge overlooking the -town, stands the church built by Saint Charles Borromeo (now disfigured -by a modern façade), and grouped about it are the forty-two chapels -of the “New Jerusalem.” These little buildings, to which one mounts -or descends by mossy winding paths beneath the trees, present every -variety of pseudo-classical design. Some, placed at different levels, -are connected by open colonnades and long flights of steps; some have -airy loggias, overlooking gardens tufted with blush-roses and the lilac -iris; while others stand withdrawn in the deep shade of the beeches. -Each chapel contains a terra-cotta group representing some scene in -the divine history, and the site and architecture of each building -have been determined by a subtle sense of dramatic fitness. Thus, the -chapels enclosing the earlier episodes--the Annunciation, the Nativity -and the scenes previous to the Last Supper--are placed in relatively -open sites, with patches of flowers about their doorsteps; while as the -drama darkens the pilgrim descends into deep shady hollows, or winds -along chill stone corridors and up and down interminable stairs; a -dark subterranean passage leading at last to the image of the buried -Christ. - -Of the groups themselves it is difficult to speak dispassionately, -for they are so much a part of their surroundings that one can hardly -measure them by any conventional standard. To do so, indeed, would be -to miss their meaning. They must be studied as a reflection of the -Bible story in the hearts of simple and emotional peasants; for it was -the piety of the mountain-folk that called them into being, and the -modellers and painters who contributed to the work were mostly natives -of Val Sesia or of the neighbouring valleys. The art of clay modelling -is peculiarly adapted to the rendering of strong and direct emotions. -So much vivacity of expression do its rapid evocations permit, that -one might almost describe it as intermediate between pantomime and -sculpture. The groups at Varallo have the defects inherent in such -an improvisation: the crudeness, the violence, sometimes even the -seeming absurdities of an instantaneous photograph. These faults are -redeemed by a simplicity and realism which have not had time to harden -into conventionality. The Virgin and Saint Elizabeth are low-browed -full-statured peasant women; the round-cheeked romping children, the -dwarfs and hunchbacks, the Roman soldiers and the Jewish priests, -have all been transferred alive from the market-places of Borgo Sesia -and Arona. These expressive figures, dressed in real clothes, with -real hair flowing about their shoulders, seem like the actors in some -miracle-play arrested at its crowning moment. - -Closer inspection brings to light a marked difference in quality -between the different groups. Those by Tabacchetti and Fermo Stella -are the best, excepting only the remarkable scene of the Crucifixion, -attributed to Gaudenzio, and probably executed from his design. -Tabacchetti is the artist of the Adam and Eve surrounded by the -supra-terrestrial flora and fauna of Eden: a curious composition, with -a golden-haired Eve of mincing elegance and refinement. To Stella are -due some of the simplest and most moving scenes of the series: the -Adoration of the Magi, the message of the angel to Joseph, and Christ -and the woman of Samaria. Especially charming is the Annunciation, -where a yellow-wigged angel, in a kind of celestial dressing-gown of -flowered brocade, advances, lily in hand, toward a gracefully-startled -Virgin, dressed (as one is told) in a costume presented by a pious lady -of Varallo. In another scene the Mother of God, habited like a peasant -of Val Sesia, looks up smilingly from the lace-cushion on which she is -at work; while the Last Supper, probably a survival of the older wooden -groups existing before Gaudenzio and his school took up the work, shows -a lace-trimmed linen table-cloth, with bread and fruit set out on real -Faenza dishes. - -After these homely details the scenes of the Passion, where Gaudenzio’s -influence probably prevailed, seem a trifle academic; but even here -there are local touches, such as the curly white dog at the foot of -Herod’s throne, the rags of the beggars, the child in the Crucifixion -holding a spotted hound in leash. - -The Crucifixion is fitly the culminating point of the series. Here -Gaudenzio lined the background with one of his noblest frescoes, and -the figures placed before it are worthy, in expression and attitude, to -carry out the master’s conception. The gold-bucklered Roman knight on -his white charger, the eager gaping throng, where beggars and cripples -jostle turbaned fine ladies and their dwarfs, where oval-faced Lombard -women with children at the breast press forward to catch a glimpse of -the dying Christ, while the hideous soldiers at the foot of the cross -draw lots for the seamless garment--all these crowding careless figures -bring out with strange intensity the agony uplifted in their midst. -Never, perhaps, has the popular, the unimpressed, unrepentant side of -the scene been set forth with more tragic directness. One can fancy the -gold-armoured knight echoing in after years the musing words of Anatole -France’s _Procurateur de Judée_:--“Jésus? Jésus de Nazareth? Je ne me -rappelle pas.” - - * * * * * - -From Varallo the fortunate traveller may carry his impressions -unimpaired through the chestnut-woods and across the hills to the lake -of Orta--a small sheet of water enclosed in richest verdure, with the -wooded island of San Giuliano on its bosom. Orta has a secret charm of -its own: a quality of solitude, of remoteness, that makes it seem the -special property of each traveller who chances to discover it. Here -too is a Sacred Way, surmounting the usual knoll above the town. The -groups have little artistic merit, but there is a solemn charm in the -tranquil glades, with their little white-pillared shrines, connected -by grass walks under a continuous vaulting of branches. The chief -“feature” of Orta, however, is the incredibly complete little island, -with its ancient church embosomed in gardens; yet even this counts only -as a detail in the general composition, a last touch to the prodigal -picturesqueness of the place. The lake itself is begirt by vine-clad -slopes, and in every direction roads and bridle-paths lead across the -wooded hills, through glades sheeted in spring-time with primroses and -lilies-of-the-valley, to the deeper forest-recesses at the foot of the -high Alps. - -In any other country the departure from such perfect loveliness must -lead to an anti-climax; but there is no limit to the prodigality of the -Italian landscape, and the wanderer who turns eastward from Orta may -pass through scenes of undiminished beauty till, toward sunset, the -hills divide to show Lake Maggiore at his feet, with the Isola Bella -moored like a fantastic pleasure-craft upon its waters. - - - - -WHAT THE HERMITS SAW - - -In almost every gallery of Italy there hangs, among the pictures of -the earlier period, one which represents, with loving minuteness of -topographical detail, a rocky mountain-side honeycombed with caves and -inhabited by hermits. - -As a rule, the landscape is comprehensive enough to include the whole -Thebaid, with the river at the base of the cliff, the _selva oscura_ -“fledging the wild-ridged mountain steep by steep,” and the various -little edifices--huts, chapels and bridges--with which the colony -of anchorites have humanized their wild domain. This presentment of -the life of the solitaries always remained a favourite subject in -Italian art, and even in the rococo period, when piety had become -a drawing-room accomplishment, the traditional charm of the “life -apart” was commemorated by the mock “hermitages” to be found in every -nobleman’s park, or by such frescoes as adorn the entrance to the -chapel of the Villa Chigi, near Rome: a tiny room painted to represent -a rocky cleft in the mountains, with anchorites visiting each other in -their caves, or engaged in the duties of their sylvan existence. - -A vast body of literature--and of a literature peculiarly accessible -to the people--has kept alive in Catholic countries the image of the -early solitary. The Golden Legend, the great Bollandist compilations, -and many other collections of pious anecdote, preserve, in simple -and almost childish form, the names and deeds of the desert saints. -In the traditions of the Latin race there still lingers, no doubt, a -sub-conscious memory of the dark days when all that was gentle and -merciful and humane turned to the desert to escape the desolation of -the country and the foulness of the town. From war and slavery and -famine, from the strife of the circus factions and the incredible -vices and treacheries of civilized life, the disenchanted Christian, -aghast at the more than pagan corruption of a converted world, fled -into the waste places to wear out his life in penance. The horrors he -left behind surpassed anything the desert could show--surpassed even -the terrors that walked by night, the airy tongues that syllabled -men’s names, the lemurs, succubi and painted demons of the tombs. -Nevertheless the lives of the early anchorites, who took refuge in -the burning solitudes of Egypt and Asia Minor, were full of fears and -anguish. Their history echoes with the groans and lamentations of souls -in pain, and had their lives been recorded by contemporary artists, the -presentment must have recalled those horribly circumstantial studies of -everlasting torment which admonished the mediæval worshipper from the -walls of every church. - -But when Italian art began to chronicle the history of the desert -fathers, a change had passed over the spirit of Christianity. If -the world was still a dark place, full of fears and evil, solitary -communion with God had ceased to become a more dreadful alternative; -and when men went forth into the desert they found Christ there rather -than the devil. So at least one infers from the spirit in which the -Italian painters rendered the life of the Thebaid--transposing its -scenes from the parched African desert to their own fertile landscape, -and infusing into the lives of the desert fathers that sense of human -fellowship with which Saint Francis had penetrated the mediæval -conception of Christianity. The first hermits shunned each other as -they shunned the image of evil; every human relation was a snare, -and they sought each other out only in moments of moral or physical -extremity, when flesh or spirit quailed before the hallucinations of -solitude. But in the Italian pictures the hermits move in an atmosphere -of fraternal tenderness. Though they still lead the “life apart,” it is -shorn of its grimness and mitigated by acts of friendly ministry and -innocent childlike intercourse. The solitaries still dwell in remote -inaccessible regions, and for the most part their lives are spent -alone; but on the feasts of the Church they visit each other, and when -they go on pilgrimage they pause at each other’s thresholds. - -Yet, though one feels that this new spirit has tamed the desert, -and transplanted to it enough of the leaven of human intercourse to -exorcise its evil spirits, the imagination remains chiefly struck by -the strangeness of the conditions in which these voluntary exiles must -have found themselves. The hermits brought little with them from the -world of cities and men compared to what they found in the wilderness. -Their relation to the earth--their ancient mysterious mother--must -have been the most intimate as well as the most interesting part of -their lives; as a “return to nature” the experience had a freshness -and intensity which the modern seeker after primeval sensations can -never hope to recover. For in those days, when distances were measured -by the pilgrim’s sandal or the ass’s hoof, a few miles meant exile, -and the mountain visible from the walls of his native town offered -the solitary as complete an isolation as the slopes of Lebanon. News -travelled at the same pace, when it did not drop by the way. There was -little security outside the city walls, and small incentive for the -traveller, except from devotional motives, to seek out the anchorite on -his inaccessible height. - -The hermit, therefore, was thrown back on the companionship of the -wild; and what he won from it we read in the gentler legends of the -desert, and in the records of the early Italian artists. Much, for -instance, is told of the delightful nature of the intercourse between -the solitaries and wild animals. The lion having been the typical -“denizen” of the Libyan sands, the Italian painter has transplanted -him to the Umbrian hill-sides, where, jointly with the wolf and the -stag, he lives in gentle community with the anchorites. For instead -of fleeing from or fighting these lords of the wilderness, the wise -hermits at once entered into negotiations with them--negotiations -sometimes resulting in life-long friendships, and sealed by the -self-sacrificing death of the adoring animal. It was of course the -power of the cross which subjugated these savage beasts; and many -instances are recorded of the control exercised over wild animals, -and the contrition awakened in them, by the conquering sign. But the -hermits, not content with asserting their spiritual predominance over -these poor soulless creatures (_non sono Cristiani_), seemed to feel -that such a victory was too easy, and were themselves won over by the -devotion of their dumb friends, and drawn into a brotherly commerce -which no law of the Church prescribed. - -The mystical natural history of the first Christian centuries -facilitated the belief in this intercourse between man and beast. When -even familiar domestic animals were credited with strange symbolic -attributes, it was natural to people the wild with the dragon, the -hydra and the cocatrix; to believe that the young of the elephant were -engendered by their mothers’ eating of the mandragora which grows on -a mount near Paradise; that those of the lion were born dead and -resuscitated by their parents’ breath; and that the old eagle renewed -his youth by plunging three times in a magic fountain. It is not -strange that creatures so marvellously endowed should have entered into -friendly relations with the human intruders upon their solitude, and -subdued their savage natures to the teachings of their new masters. -And as the lion and the wolf were gradually transformed into humble -but wise companions, so the other influences of the wilderness came -to acquire a power over the solitaries. Even after the early Thebaids -had been gathered in under one or another of the great monastic rules, -seekers after holiness continued to flee the communal life, and in -Italy every lonely height came to have its recluse. It was impossible -that these little restricted human lives, going forth singly into the -desert, should not be gradually absorbed into it and saturated with -its spirit. Think what a soul-shattering or soul-making experience it -must have been to the dweller in the narrow walled town or the narrower -monastery, to go forth alone, beyond the ploughed fields and the road -to the next village, beyond the haunts of men and hail of friendly -voices, forth into the unmapped region of hills and forests, where -wild beasts and robbers, and other presences less definable but more -baleful, lay in wait for the lonely traveller! From robbers there was -not much to fear: the solitaries were poor, and it was a great sin to -lay hands on them. The wild beasts, too, might be won over to Christian -amity; but what of those other presences of which the returning -traveller whispered over the evening fire? - -At first, no doubt, the feeling of awe was uppermost, and only the -heart inflated with divine love could sustain the assaults of fear and -loneliness; but gradually, as the noise of cities died out, as the ear -became inured to the vast hush of nature, and the mind to the delicious -recurrence of untroubled hours--then, wonderfully, imperceptibly, the -spirit of the hermit must have put forth tendrils of sympathy and -intelligence toward the mysterious world about him. Think of the joy of -escaping from the ceaseless brawls, the dirt, disease and misery of the -mediæval town, or from the bickering, the tale-bearing, the mechanical -devotions of the crowded monastery! Think of the wonder of entering, -alone and undisturbed, into communion with this vast still world of -cliff and cataract, of bird and beast and flower! - -There were, of course, different kinds of hermits: the dull kind whose -only object was to escape from the turmoil and rivalry of the city, -or the toil and floggings of the farm, and to live drowsily in a warm -cleft of the rocks (not too far from the other solitaries), high above -the populous plain alternately harried by war and pestilence; and -there was the ecstatic, so filled with the immanent light that he saw -neither cliff nor cataract, that the various face of nature was no more -to him than a window of clear glass opening on the brightness of the -beatific vision. But there must have been a third kind also--the kind -in whom the divine love, instead of burning like a cold inward flame, -overflowed on the whole world about him; to whom, in this new immediate -contact with nature, the swallow became a sister, the wolf a brother, -the very clods “lovers and lamps”: mute Saint Francises, born out of -their due time, to whom the life of nature revealed, inarticulately but -profoundly, the bond of brotherhood between man and the soil. - -It was to these solitaries that the wilderness truly confessed itself, -yielding up once more all the terror and the poetry of its ancient -life. For the cliffs and forests shunned of men had not always been -thus deserted, and always there had throbbed in them the pulse of -that strange intermediate life, between the man and the clod, of which -the tradition lingers in all lonely places. The hermits of course knew -this: the life of ancient days was still close to them. They knew also -that the power of the cross had banished from temple and market-place, -from garden, house and vineyard, a throng of tutelary beings on whom -the welfare of men had once been thought to depend, but who had now -been declared false to their trust, and driven forth to join their -brothers of the hills and woods. This knowledge rested on no vague -rumours, but on authenticated fact. Were not many of the old temples -still standing, some built into the walls of Christian churches, others -falling into desecrated ruin on lonely cliff and promontory? And was -it not known that in these latter the wraiths of the old gods still -reassembled? Many pilgrims and travellers bore witness to the fact. -Who had not heard of the Jewish wayfarer, overtaken by night in a -lonely country, who sought shelter in a ruined temple of Apollo, and -would have been blasted by the god and his attendant demons, had he -not (converted by fear) dispelled the unholy rout with the sign of the -cross? - -A tangle of classic and mediæval traditions, Greek, Etruscan and -Germanic, in which the gods of the Thessalian glades and the werewolves -of northern forests rode the midnight blast in the _chevauchée_ of a -wild Walpurgisnacht, haunted the background of life in that confused -age when “ignorant armies clashed by night” on the battleground of -the awakening human intelligence. To the citizen hugging the city -walls, this supernatural world was dark with images of sin and fear; -but to the dweller in the forest, bold enough to affront the greater -terrors of self-communion, it must have offered a mitigating sense -of fellowship. That it did so is proved even by some of the earliest -legends. It was not always in forms of peril and perdition that the -banished gods manifested themselves to the votaries of the usurper. -To the dweller in the city they may have come in vengeful shape, like -the Venus, _tout entière à sa proie attachée_, who held fast to the -Christian bridegroom’s ring (though surely here one catches a note -of the old longing); but in their native solitude they seem to have -appeared propitiatingly, with timid proffers of service, as when Saint -Anthony, travelling in search of a fellow-hermit, was guided on his -way, first by a centaur and then by “a little man with hoofs like a -goat.” - -For generations indeed, for centuries even in that slow-moving time, -the divinities of the old dispensation must have remained more familiar -to the simple people than the strange new God of Israel. Often they -must have stolen back in the twilight, to surprise and comfort the -unlettered toilers who still believed in them, still secretly offered -them the dripping honeycomb and bowl of ewe’s milk, or hung garlands -in the cleft tree which they haunted. To some of these humble hearts, -grieving for their old fireside gods, and a little bewildered by the -demands of the great forbidding Christ who frowned from the golden -heights of the Byzantine apse, the “return to nature” must have been -like a coming home to the instinctive endearing ways of childhood. How -could they be alarmed by the sight of these old exiled gods, familiars -of the hearth and garden; they who had been born to the sense of such -presences, to half-human intercourse with beings who linked man to the -soil that nurtured him, and the roof beneath which he slept? - -Even the most holy and learned men of the first Christian centuries did -not question the actual existence of the heathen gods, and the Fathers -of the Church expended volumes of controversy in discussing their -origin and their influence on a Christianized world. A strange conflict -of opinion waged around this burning question. By the greater number of -authorities the old gods were believed to be demons, emanations of the -mysterious spirit of evil, himself the Ahriman of the ancient Eastern -dualism, who had cleverly smuggled himself into the new Christian -creed. Yet the oracles, though usually regarded as the voices of these -demons, were always believed in and quoted by the Christian Church, -and the history of the dark ages abounds in allusion to the authority -of the Sibylline books. While Christian scholarship thus struggled -under the spell of the old beliefs, how could the artisan and serf have -freed themselves from it? Gradually, indeed, the Church, foreseeing the -perils of a divided allegiance, and fearing the baleful loveliness of -the old gods, was to transform their myths into Christian legend, and -so supply a new throng of anthropomorphic conceptions for minds unable -to keep their faith alive on the thin abstractions of the schoolmen. -The iconography of the early Church bears witness to the skill with -which these adaptations were effected, and the slender young Olympians -and their symbols pressed into the service of the new faith; but it was -long before the results of this process reached the popular mind, and -meanwhile the old gods lived on in simple fellowship with the strange -saints and angels. - -Through all the middle ages the marvellous did not fail from the earth: -it simply receded farther from the centres of life, drawing after -it the hearts of the adventurous. The Polo brothers were no doubt -clear-sighted practical men while they drove their trade in Venice; -but wonders pressed upon them when they set foot in the Great Khan’s -domains. If an astute Italian prince, who lived till the middle of -the fifteenth century with the light of the new humanism flooding his -court, could yet, on his travels to the Holy Land and Greece, discover -castles inhabited by enchanted snakes, as well as wonder-working -shrines of his own creed, how could the simple hearts of the anchorite -and solitary remain closed to the old wonders? - -Shapes which have once inhabited the imagination of man pass -reluctantly out of existence. Centuries of poetic belief had peopled -the old world with a race of superhuman beings, and as many centuries -would be needed to lay their ghosts. It must be remembered, moreover, -that no sudden cataclysm, political or intellectual, marked the -introduction of the Christian faith. For three centuries after the -sacrifice on Calvary, hardly an allusion to the new god is to be found -in the pages of the pagan historians and philosophers. Even after he -had led the legions of Constantine to victory, and so won official -allegiance throughout the Roman world, no violent change marked the -beginning of the new era. For centuries still, men ploughed the same -fields with ploughs fashioned on the same lines, kept the same holidays -with the same rites, and lived on the same store of accumulated -beliefs. And in the hearts of the solitaries these beliefs must have -lingered longest. For in fleeing the world they were returning to the -native habitations of the old gods. They were nature-spirits every one, -sprung from the wave, the cloud, the tree. To the cities they had been -borne triumphant by the will of men, and from the cities they might -be banished at its behest; but who should drive them from their old -stronghold in the breast of nature? Their temples might be re-dedicated -to the new god, but none could banish them from the temples not made -with hands. Daylight might deny them, but twilight confessed them -still. They made no effort to recover the supremacy which had been -wrested from them: the gods know when their hour has come. But they -lived on, shrinking back more and more into their primitive forms, -into the vapour, the tree-trunk, the moon-track on the lonely sea; or -revealing themselves, in wistful fugitive glimpses, to the mortals who -had come to share their forest exile. - -In what gentle guise they showed themselves, one may see in many -pictures of the Italian _quattro cento_, some of whose lesser painters -seem to have been in actual communion with this pale woodland Olympus. -The gods they depict are not the shining lords of the Greek heaven, -but half-human, half-sylvan creatures, shy suppliants for mortal -recognition, hovering gently on the verge of evanescence. Robetta, the -Florentine engraver, transferred them to some of his plates, Luini -caught their tender grace in his Sacrifice to Pan and Metamorphosis -of Daphne, and Lorenzo Costa gives a glimpse of their sylvan revels -in the Mythological Scene of the Louvre; but it was Piero di Cosimo -who had the clearest intuition of them. The gentle furred creature of -the Death of Procris might have been the very faun who showed Saint -Anthony the way; and in all Cosimo’s mythological pictures one has the -same impression of that intermediate world, the twilight world of the -conquered, Christianized, yet still lingering gods, so different from -the clear upper air of classic art. - -Was it, as the scholars would have us believe, mere lack of -book-learning and technical skill that kept the painters of the -_quattro_ cento spell-bound in this mediæval Olympus? Were these -vanishing gods and half-gods merely a clumsy attempt to formulate -the classic conception of divinity? But the Pisani had discovered -Greek plastic art two centuries earlier; but the uncovered wonders of -Rome were being daily drawn and measured by skilful hands; but the -silhouettes of the antique temples were still outlined against the -skies of Greater Greece! No--these lesser artists were not struggling -to embody a half-understood ideal. Kept nearer the soil and closer to -the past by the very limitations of their genius, they left to the -great masters the task of reconstituting classical antiquity, content -to go on painting the gods who still lived in their blood, the gods -their own forbears had known in the familiar streets and fields, the -fading gods whom the hermits were last to see in the lost recesses of -the mountain. - - - - -A TUSCAN SHRINE - - -One of the rarest and most delicate pleasures of the continental -tourist is to circumvent the compiler of his guide-book. The red -volumes which accompany the traveller through Italy have so completely -anticipated the most whimsical impulses of their readers that it is now -almost impossible to plan a tour of exploration without finding, on -reference to them, that their author has already been over the ground, -has tested the inns, measured the kilometres, and distilled from the -massive tomes of Kugler, Burckhardt and Morelli a portable estimate -of the local art and architecture. Even the discovery of incidental -lapses scarcely consoles the traveller for the habitual accuracy of -his statements; and the only refuge left from his omniscience lies in -approaching the places he describes by a route which he has not taken. - -Those to whom one of the greatest charms of travel in over-civilized -countries consists in such momentary escapes from the expected, will -still find here and there, even in Italy, a few miles unmeasured by -the guide-book; and it was to enjoy the brief exhilaration of such a -discovery that we stepped out of the train one morning at Certaldo, -determined to find our way thence to San Vivaldo. - -For some months we had been vaguely aware that, somewhere among the -hills between Volterra and the Arno, there lay an obscure monastery -containing a series of terra-cotta groups which were said to represent -the scenes of the Passion. No one in Florence seemed to know much about -them; and many of the people whom we questioned had never even heard -of San Vivaldo. Professor Enrico Ridolfi, at that time the director -of the Royal Museums at Florence, knew by hearsay of the existence -of the groups, and told me that there was every reason to accept the -local tradition which has always attributed them to Giovanni Gonnelli, -the blind modeller of Gambassi, an obscure artist of the seventeenth -century, much praised by contemporary authors, but since fallen into -merited oblivion. Professor Ridolfi, however, had never seen any -photographs of the groups, and was not unnaturally disposed to believe -that they were of small artistic merit, since Gonnelli worked much -later, and in a more debased period of taste, than the modeller of the -well-known groups at Varallo. Still, even when the more pretentious -kind of Italian sculpture was at its lowest, a spark of its old life -smouldered here and there in the improvisations of the _plasticatore_, -or stucco modeller; and I hoped to find, in the despised groups of -San Vivaldo, something of the coarse naïveté and brutal energy which -animate their more famous rivals of Varallo. In this hope we started -in search of San Vivaldo; and as the guide-books told us that it could -be reached only by way of Castel Fiorentino, we promptly determined to -attack it from San Gimignano. - -At Certaldo, the birthplace of Boccaccio, where the train left us one -April morning, we found an archaic little carriage, with a coachman -who entered sympathetically into our plan for eluding our cicerone. He -told us that he knew a road which led in about four hours across the -mountains from San Gimignano to San Vivaldo; and in his charge we were -soon crossing the poplar-fringed Elsa and climbing the steep ascent to -San Gimignano, where we were to spend the night. - -The next morning, before sunrise, the little carriage awaited us at -the inn door; and as we dashed out under the gateway of San Gimignano -we felt the thrill of explorers sighting a new continent. It seemed, -in fact, an unknown world which lay beneath us in the early light. -The hills, so definitely etched at midday, at sunset so softly -modelled, had melted into a silver sea of which the farthest waves were -indistinguishably merged in billows of luminous mist. Only the near -foreground retained its precision of outline, and that too had assumed -an air of unreality. Fields, hedges and cypresses were tipped with an -aureate brightness which recalled the golden ripples running over the -grass in the foreground of Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus.” The sunshine -had the density of gold-leaf: we seemed to be driving through the -landscape of a missal. - -At first we had this magical world to ourselves, but as the light -broadened groups of labourers began to appear under the olives and -between the vines; shepherdesses, distaff in hand, drove their flocks -along the roadside, and yokes of white oxen with scarlet fringes above -their meditative eyes moved past us with such solemn deliberateness -of step that fancy transformed their brushwood-laden carts into the -sacred _carroccio_ of the past. Ahead of us the road wound through -a district of vineyards and orchards, but to the north and east the -panorama of the Tuscan hills unrolled range after range of treeless -undulations, outlined one upon the other, as the sun grew high, with -the delicately-pencilled minuteness of a mountain background of Sebald -Beham’s. Behind us the fantastic towers of San Gimignano dominated each -bend of the road like some persistent mirage of the desert; to the -north lay Castel Fiorentino, and far away other white villages gleamed -like fossil shells embedded in the hill-sides. - -The elements composing the foreground of such Tuscan scenes are almost -always extremely simple--slopes trellised with vine and mulberry, under -which the young wheat runs like green flame; stretches of ash-coloured -olive orchard; and here and there a farm-house with projecting eaves -and open loggia, guarded by its inevitable group of cypresses. These -cypresses, with their velvety-textured spires of rusty black, acquire -an extraordinary value against the neutral-tinted breadth of the -landscape; distributed with the sparing hand with which a practised -writer uses his exclamation-points, they seem to emphasize the more -intimate meaning of the scene; calling the eye here to a shrine, there -to a homestead, or testifying by their mere presence to the lost -tradition of some barren knoll. But this significance of detail is one -of the chief charms of the mid-Italian landscape. It has none of the -purposeless prodigality, the extravagant climaxes, of what is called -“fine scenery”; nowhere is there any obvious largesse to the eye; but -the very reticence of its delicately-moulded lines, its seeming disdain -of facile effects, almost give it the quality of a work of art, make it -appear the crowning production of centuries of plastic expression. - -For some distance the road from San Gimignano to San Vivaldo winds -continuously upward, and our ascent at length brought us to a region -where agriculture ceases and the way lies across heathery undulations, -with a scant growth of oaks and ilexes in the more sheltered hollows. -As we drove on, these copses gave way to stone-pines, and presently -we dipped over the yoke of the highest ridge and saw below us another -sea of hills, with a bare mountain-spur rising from it like a scaly -monster floating on the waves, its savage spine bristling with the -walls and towers of Volterra. - -For nearly an hour we skirted the edge of this basin of hills, in sight -of the ancient city on its livid cliff; then we turned into a gentler -country, through woods starred with primroses, with a flash of streams -in the hollows; and presently a murmur of church-bells reached us -through the woodland silence. At the same moment we caught sight of a -brick campanile rising above the trees on a slope just ahead of us, and -our carriage turned from the high-road up a lane with scattered chapels -showing their white façades through the foliage. This lane, making a -sudden twist, descended abruptly between mossy banks and brought us out -on a grass-plot before a rectangular monastic building adjoining the -church of which the bells had welcomed us. Here was San Vivaldo, and -the chapels we had passed doubtless concealed beneath their cupolas -“more neat than solemn” the terra-cottas of which we were in search. - -The monastery of San Vivaldo, at one time secularized by the Italian -government, has now been restored to the Franciscan order, of which -its patron saint was a member. San Vivaldo was born at San Gimignano -in the latter half of the thirteenth century, and after joining in -his youth the Tertiary Order of Saint Francis, retired to a hollow -chestnut-tree in the forest of Camporeno (the site of the present -monastery), in which cramped abode he passed the remainder of his life -“in continual macerations and abstinence.” After his death the tree -which had been sanctified in so unusual a manner became an object of -devotion among the neighbouring peasantry, who, when it disappeared, -raised on the spot an oratory to the Virgin. It is doubtful, however, -if this memorial, which fell gradually into neglect, would have -preserved San Vivaldo from oblivion, had not that Senancour of a saint -found a Matthew Arnold in the shape of a Franciscan friar, a certain -Fra Cherubino of Florence, who, early in the sixteenth century, was -commissioned by his order to watch over and restore the abandoned -sanctuary. Fra Cherubino, with his companions, took possession of the -forest of Camporeno, and proceeded to lay the foundation-stone of a -monastery which was to commemorate the hermit of the chestnut-tree. -The forgotten merits of San Vivaldo were speedily restored to popular -favour by the friar’s eloquence, and often, after one of his sermons, -three thousand people were to be seen marching in procession to the -river Evola to fetch building-materials for the monastery. Meanwhile -Fra Tommaso, another of the monks, struck by the resemblance of the -hills and valleys of Camporeno to the holy places of Palestine, -began the erection of the “devout chapels” which were to contain the -representations of the Passion; and thus arose the group of buildings -now forming the monastery of San Vivaldo. - -As we drove up we saw several monks at work in the woods and in the -vegetable-gardens below the monastery. These took no notice of us, but -in answer to our coachman’s summons there appeared another, whose Roman -profile might have emerged from one of those great portrait-groups -of the sixteenth century, where grave-featured monks and chaplains -are gathered about a seated pope. This monk, whose courteous welcome -betrayed as little surprise as though the lonely glades of San Vivaldo -were daily invaded by hordes of sight-seers, informed us that it was -his duty to conduct visitors to the various shrines. The chapels of the -Passion are about twenty in number, and as many more are said to have -perished. They are scattered irregularly through the wood adjoining -the monastery, and our guide, who showed a deep interest in the works -of art committed to his charge, assured us that the terra-cotta groups -were undoubtedly due to Giovanni Gonnelli, _Il Cieco di Gambassi_, for -whose talent he seemed to entertain a profound admiration. Some of -the master’s work, he added, had been destroyed, or replaced by that -of “qualche muratore”; but he assured us that in the groups which had -been preserved we should at once recognize the touch of an eminent -hand. As he led the way he smilingly referred to Giovanni Gonnelli’s -legendary blindness, which plays a most picturesque part in the -artist’s biography. The monk explained to us that Gonnelli was blind -of only one eye, thus demolishing Baldinucci’s charming tradition of -portrait-busts executed in total darkness to the amazement of popes and -princes. Still, we suspected our guide of adapting his hero’s exploits -to the incredulity of the unorthodox, and perhaps secretly believing -in the anecdotes over which he affected to smile. On the threshold of -the first chapel he paused to explain that some of the groups had been -irreparably injured during the period of neglect and abandonment which -followed the suppression of the monastery. The government, he added, -had seized the opportunity to carry off from the church the Presepio -in high relief which was Gonnelli’s masterpiece, and to strip many of -the chapels of the escutcheons in Robbia ware that formerly ornamented -the ceilings. “Even then, however,” he concluded, “our good fathers -were keeping secret watch over the shrines, and they saved some of the -escutcheons by covering them with whitewash; but the government has -never given us back our Presepio.” - -Having thus guarded us against possible disillusionment, he unlocked -the door of the first chapel on what he declared to be an undoubted -work of the master--the Descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Disciples. - -This group, like all the others at San Vivaldo, is set in a little -apsidal recess at the farther end of the chapel. I had expected, at -best, an inferior imitation of the seventeenth-century groups in the -more famous Via Crucis of Varallo, but to my surprise I found myself -in the presence of a much finer, and apparently a much earlier, work. -The figures, which are of life-size, are set in a depressed arch, and -fitted into their allotted space with something of the skill which the -Greek sculptors showed in adapting their groups to the slope of the -pediment. In the centre, the Virgin kneels on a low column or pedestal, -which raises her partially above the surrounding figures of the -disciples. Her attitude is solemnly prayerful, with a touch of nun-like -severity in the folds of the wimple and in the gathered plaits of the -gown beneath her cloak. Her face, furrowed with lines of grief and age, -is yet irradiated by an inner light; and her hands, like those of all -the figures hitherto attributed to Gonnelli, are singularly graceful -and expressive. The same air of unction, of what the French call -_recueillement_, distinguishes the face and attitude of the kneeling -disciple on the extreme left; and the whole group breathes that air -of devotional simplicity usually associated with an earlier and less -worldly period of art. - -Next to this group, the finest is perhaps that of “Lo Spasimo,” the -swoon of the Virgin at the sight of Christ bearing the cross. It is -the smallest of the groups, being less than life-size, and comprising -only the figure of the Virgin supported by the Marys and by two -kneeling angels. There is a trace of primitive stiffness in the attempt -to render the prostration of the Virgin, but her face expresses an -extremity of speechless anguish which is subtly contrasted with the -awed but temperate grief of the woman who bends above her; while the -lovely countenances of the attendant angels convey another shade of -tender participation: the compassion of those who are in the counsels -of the Eternal, and know that - - _In la sua volontade è nostra pace_. - -In this group the artist has attained to the completest expression of -his characteristic qualities: refined and careful modelling, reticence -of emotion, and that “gift of tears” which is the last attribute one -would seek in the resonant but superficial art of the seventeenth -century. - -Among other groups undoubtedly due to the same hand are those of -Christ Before Pilate, of the Ascension, and of the Magdalen bathing -the feet of Christ. In the group of the Ascension the upper part has -been grotesquely restored; but the figures of the Virgin and disciples, -who kneel below, are apparently untouched, and on their faces is seen -that look of wondering ecstasy, that reflection of the beatific vision, -which the artist excelled in representing. In every group of the series -his Saint John has this luminous look; and in that of the Ascension it -brightens even the shrewd bearded countenances of the older disciples. -In the scene of Christ before Pilate the figure of Pilate is especially -noteworthy: his delicate incredulous lips seem just framing their -immortal interrogation. Our guide pointed out that the Roman lictor in -this group, who raises his arm to strike the accused Christ, has had -his offending hand knocked off by the zeal of the faithful. - -The representation of the Magdalen bathing the feet of Christ is -noticeable for the fine assemblage of heads about the supper-table. -Those of Christ and of his host are peculiarly expressive; and Saint -John’s look of tranquil tenderness contrasts almost girlishly with the -majestic gravity of the neighbouring faces. The Magdalen herself is -less happily executed; there is something actually unpleasant in her -ramping four-footed attitude as she crawls toward the Christ, and the -figure is probably by another hand. In the group of the Crucifixion, -for the most part of inferior workmanship, the figures of the two -thieves are finely modelled, and their expression of anguish has been -achieved with the same sobriety of means which marks all the artist’s -effects. The remaining groups in the chapels are without special -interest, but under the portico of the church there are three fine -figures, possibly by the artist of the Spasimo, representing Saint -Roch, Saint Linus of Volterra, and one of the Fathers of the Church. - -There are, then, among the groups of San Vivaldo, five which appear -to be by the same master, in addition to several scattered figures -presumably by his hand; all of which have always been attributed to -Giovanni Gonnelli, the blind pupil of Pietro Tacca. The figures in -these groups are nearly, if not quite, as large as life; they have all -been rudely repainted, and are entirely unglazed, though framed in -glazed mouldings of the familiar Robbian style. - -Professor Ridolfi’s information was confirmed by the local tradition, -and there seemed no doubt that the groups of San Vivaldo had always -been regarded as the work of Gonnelli, an obscure artist living -at a time when the greatest masters produced little to which -posterity has conceded any artistic excellence. But one glance at the -terra-cottas sufficed to show that they could not have been modelled -in mid-seventeenth century: neither their merits nor their defects -belonged to that period of art. What had the sculptor of San Vivaldo -in common with the pupils of Giovanni Bologna and Il Fiammingo, that -tribe of skilled craftsmen who peopled every church and palace in -Italy with an impersonal flock of Junos and Virgin Marys, Venuses and -Magdalens, distinguishable only by their official attributes? The more -closely I studied the groups, the more the conviction grew that they -were the work of an artist trained in an earlier tradition, and still -preserving, under the stiffening influences of convention, a touch of -that individuality and directness of expression which mark the prime of -Tuscan art. The careful modelling of the hands, the quiet grouping, so -free from effort and agitation, the simple draperies, the devotional -expression of the faces, all seemed to point to the lingering -influences of the fifteenth century; not indeed to the fresh charm of -its noon, but to the refinement, the severity, of its close. The glazed -mouldings enclosing the groups, and the coloured medallions with -which the ceilings of the chapels are decorated, suggested a direct -connection with the later school of the Robbias; and as I looked I was -haunted by a confused recollection of a Presepio seen at the Bargello, -and attributed to Giovanni della Robbia or his school. Could this be -the high-relief which had been removed from San Vivaldo? - -On returning to Florence I went at once to the Bargello, and found, -as I had expected, that the Presepio I had in mind was indeed the one -from San Vivaldo. I was surprised by the extraordinary resemblance of -the heads to some of those in the groups ascribed to Gonnelli. I had -fancied that the modeller of San Vivaldo might have been inspired by -the Presepio of the Bargello; but I was unprepared for the identity -of treatment in certain details of hair and drapery, and for the -recurrence of the same type of face. The Presepio undoubtedly shows -greater delicacy of treatment; but this is accounted for by the fact -that the figures are much smaller, and only in partial relief, whereas -at San Vivaldo they are so much detached from the background that they -may be regarded as groups of statuary. Again, the glaze which covers -all but the faces of the Presepio has preserved its original beauty -of colouring, while the groups of San Vivaldo have been crudely daubed -with fresh coats of paint, and even of whitewash; and the effect of -the Presepio is farther enhanced by an excessively ornate frame of -fruit-garlanded pilasters, as well as by its charming predella with -small scenes set between panels of arabesque. Altogether, it is a far -more elaborate production than the terra-cottas of San Vivaldo, and -some of its most graceful details, such as the dance of angels on the -stable-roof, are evidently borrowed from the earlier _répertoire_ of -the Robbias; but in spite of these incidental archaisms no one can -fail to be struck by the likeness of the central figures to certain of -the statues at San Vivaldo. The head of Saint Joseph in the Presepio, -for instance, with its wrinkled penthouse forehead, and the curled -and parted beard, suggests at once that of the disciple seated on the -right of Saint John in the house of the Pharisee; the same face, though -younger, occurs again in the Pentecostal group, and the kneeling female -figure in the Presepio is treated in the same manner as the youngest -Mary in the group of the Spasimo: even the long rolled-back tresses, -with their shell-like convolutions, are the same. - -The discovery of this close resemblance deepened the interest of -the problem. It seemed hardly credible that a work of such artistic -significance as the Via Crucis of San Vivaldo should not long since -have been studied and classified. In Tuscany especially, where every -phase of fifteenth-century art, including its prolongation in the -succeeding century, has been traced and analyzed with such scrupulous -care, it was inconceivable that so interesting an example of an -essentially Italian style should have escaped notice. There could -be no doubt that the groups belonged to the period in question. -Since it was impossible not to reject at once the hypothetical -seventeenth-century artist content to imitate with servile accuracy -a manner which had already fallen into disfavour, it was necessary -to assume that a remarkable example of late _quattro-cento_ art had -remained undiscovered, within a few hours’ journey from Florence, for -nearly four hundred years. The only reasonable explanation of this -oversight seemed to be that, owing to the seclusion of the monastery -of San Vivaldo, the groups had never acquired more than local fame, -and that, having possibly been restored in the seventeenth century by -Giovanni Gonnelli or one of his pupils, they had been ascribed to him -by a generation which, having ceased to value the work of the earlier -artist, was profoundly impressed by the miraculous skill of the blind -modeller, and eager to connect his name with the artistic treasures of -the monastery. - -To the infrequent sight-seers of the seventeenth and eighteenth -centuries, there would be nothing surprising in such an attribution. -The perception of differences in style is a recently-developed faculty, -and even if a student of art had penetrated to the wilds of San -Vivaldo, he would probably have noticed nothing to arouse a doubt of -the local tradition. The movement toward a discrimination of styles, -which came in the first half of the nineteenth century, was marked, in -the study of Italian art, by a contemptuous indifference toward all but -a brief period of that art; and the mere fact that a piece of sculpture -was said to have been executed in the seventeenth century would, until -very lately, have sufficed to prevent its receiving expert attention. -Thus the tradition which ascribed the groups of San Vivaldo to Giovanni -Gonnelli resulted in concealing them from modern investigation as -effectually as though they had been situated in the centre of an -unexplored continent, and in procuring for me the rare sensation of -an artistic discovery made in the heart of the most carefully-explored -artistic hunting-ground of Europe. - -My first care was to seek expert confirmation of my theory; and as a -step in this direction I made arrangements to have the groups of San -Vivaldo photographed by Signor Alinari of Florence. I was obliged to -leave Italy before the photographs could be taken; but on receiving -them I sent them at once to Professor Ridolfi, who had listened with -some natural incredulity to my description of the terra-cottas; and -his reply shows that I had not overestimated the importance of the -discovery. - -“No sooner,” he writes, “had I seen the photographs than I became -convinced of the error of attributing them to Giovanni Gonnelli, called -_Il Cieco di Gambassi_. I saw at once that they are not the work of an -artist of the seventeenth century, but of one living at the close of -the fifteenth or beginning of the sixteenth century; of an artist of -the school of the Robbias, who follows their precepts and possesses -their style.... The figures are most beautifully grouped, and modelled -with profound sentiment and not a little _bravura_. They do not appear -to me to be all by the same author, for the Christ in the house of the -Pharisee seems earlier and purer in style, and more robust in manner; -also the swoon of the Madonna, ... which is executed in a grander style -than the other reliefs and seems to belong to the first years of the -sixteenth century. - -“The fact that these terra-cottas are not glazed does not prove that -they are not the work of the Robbia school; for Giovanni della Robbia, -for example, sometimes left the flesh of his figures unglazed, painting -them with the brush; and this is precisely the case in a Presepio of -the National Museum” (this is the Presepio of San Vivaldo), “a work of -the Robbias, in which the flesh is left unglazed. - -“I therefore declare with absolute certainty that it is a mistake to -attribute these beautiful works to Giovanni Gonnelli, and that they are -undoubtedly a century earlier in date.” - - - - -SUB UMBRA LILIORUM - -AN IMPRESSION OF PARMA - - -Parma, at first sight, lacks the engaging individuality of some of the -smaller Italian towns. Of the romantic group of ducal cities extending -from Milan to the Adriatic--Parma, Modena, Ferrara, Urbino--it is -the least easy to hit off in a few strokes, to sum up in a sentence. -Its component features, however interesting in themselves, fail to -blend in one of those memorable wholes which take instant hold of the -traveller’s imagination. The “sights” of Parma must be sought for; they -remain separate isolated facts, and their quest is enlivened by few -of those happy architectural incidents which give to a drive through -Ferrara or Ravenna so fine a flavour of surprise. - -[Illustration: - - _A Characteristic Street_ - - E. C. Peixotto - PARMA. 1901. -] - -The devotee of the fourteenth century, trained by Ruskin to pass -without even saluting any expression of structural art more recent -than the first unfolding of the pointed style, must restrict his -investigations to the Baptistery and the outside of the Cathedral; and -even the lax eclectic who nurses a secret weakness for the baroque and -rejoices in the last frivolous flowering of the eighteenth century, -finds little immediate satisfaction for his tastes. The general aspect -of Parma is in fact distinctly inexpressive, and its more important -buildings have only the relative merit of suggesting happier examples -of the same style. This absence of the superlative is, in many Italian -cities, atoned for by the episodical charm of the streets: by glimpses -of sculptured windows, pillared court-yards, and cornices projecting -a perfect curve against the blue; but the houses of Parma are plain -almost to meanness, and though their monotonous succession is broken -here and there by a palace-front embroidered with the Farnese lilies, -it must be owned that, with rare exceptions, these façades have few -palatial qualities but that of size. Perhaps not short of Ravenna could -be found another Italian town as destitute of the more obvious graces; -and nowhere surely but in Italy could so unpromising an exterior hide -such varied treasures. To the lover of Italy--the perennial wooer whom -every spring recalls across the Alps--there is a certain charm in -this external dulness. After being steeped in the mediævalism of Siena, -Perugia or Pistoja, after breathing at Vicenza, Modena and Bergamo the -very air of Goldoni, Rosalba, and the _commedia dell’ arte_, it is -refreshing to come on a town that holds back and says: “Find me out.” -Such a challenge puts the psychologist on his mettle and gives to his -quest the stimulus of discovery. - -It may seem paradoxical to connect the emotions of the explorer with -one of the most familiar centres of artistic influence, but it is -partly because Parma is still dominated by Correggio that it has -dropped out of the emotional range of the modern traveller. For though -it is scarce a hundred years since our grandparents posted thither to -palpitate over the master, their æsthetic point of view is as remote -from ours as their mode of locomotion. By a curious perversity of fate -Correggio, so long regarded as the leading exponent of “sentiment,” now -survives only by virtue of his technique, and has shrunk to the limited -immortality of the painter’s painter. A new generation may rediscover -his emotional charm, but to the untechnical picture-lover of the -present day his prodigious manipulations of light and colour seldom -atone for the Turveydrop attitudes of his saints and angels and for the -sugary loveliness of his Madonnas. Lacking alike the frank naturalism -of such masters as Palma Vecchio and Bonifazio, the sensuous mysticism -of Sodoma and the fantastic gaiety of Tiepolo, Correggio seems to -typify that phase of cold sentimentality which dwindled to its end -in the “Keepsakes” of sixty years ago. Each generation makes certain -demands on the art of its own period and seeks certain affinities in -the art of the past; and a kind of personal sincerity is perhaps what -modern taste has most consistently exacted: the term being understood -not in its technical sense, as applied to execution, but in its -imaginative significance, as qualifying the “message” of the artist. It -is inevitable that the average spectator should look at pictures from -a quite untechnical standpoint. He knows nothing of values, brushwork -and the rest; yet it is to the immense majority formed by his kind that -art addresses itself. There must therefore be two recognized ways of -judging a picture--by its technique and by its expression: that is, -not the mere story it has to tell, but its power of rendering in line -and colour the equivalent of some idea or of some emotion. There is -the less reason for disputing such a claim because, given the power of -_seeing soul_, as this faculty may be defined, the power of embodying -the impression, of making it visible and comprehensible to others, is -necessarily one of technique; and it is doubtful if any artist not -possessed of this insight has received, even from his fellow-craftsmen, -a lasting award of supremacy. - -Now the sentiment that Correggio embodied is one which, from the -present point of view, seems to lack the preserving essence of -sincerity. It is true that recent taste has returned with a certain -passion to the brilliant mannerisms of the eighteenth century; but -it is because they are voluntary mannerisms, as frankly factitious -as the masquerading of children, that they have retained their hold -on the fancy. As there is a soul in the games of children, or in -any diversion entered into with conviction, so there is a soul, if -only an inconsequent spoiled child’s soul, in the laughing art of -the eighteenth century. It is the defect of Correggio’s art that it -expresses no conviction whatever. He offers us no clue to the _état -d’âme_ of his celestial gymnasts. They do not seem to be honestly in -love with this world or the next, or to take any personal part in the -transactions in which the artist has engaged them. In fact, they are -simply models, smirking and attitudinizing at so much an hour, and so -well trained that even their individuality as models remains hidden -behind the fixed professional smile. The conclusion is that if they -are only models to the spectator, it is because they were only models -to Correggio; that his art had no transmuting quality, and that he was -always conscious of the wires which held on the wings. - -It may, indeed, be argued that devotional painting in Italy had -assumed, in the sixteenth century, a stereotyped form from which a -stronger genius than Correggio’s could hardly have freed it; and that -the triumphs of that day should be sought rather in the domain of -decorative art, where conventionality becomes a strength, and where -the æsthetic imagination finds expression in combinations of mere line -and colour. Many of the decorative paintings of the sixteenth century -are indeed among the most delightful products of Italian art; and it -might have been expected that Correggio’s extraordinary technical skill -and love of rhythmically whirling lines would have found complete -development in this direction. It is, of course, permissible to the -artist to regard the heavenly hosts as mere factors in a decorative -composition; and to consider Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, -Powers only in their relation to the diameter of a dome or to the -curve of a spandril; but to the untechnical spectator such a feat is -almost impossible, and in judging a painter simply as a decorator, the -public is more at its ease before such frankly ornamental works as -the famous frescoes of the convent of Saint Paul. It might, in fact, -have been expected that Correggio would be at his best in executing -the commission of the light-hearted Abbess, who had charged him to -amplify the symbolism of her device (the crescent moon) by adorning her -apartments with the legend of Diana. There is something delightfully -characteristic of the period in this choice of the Latmian goddess to -typify the spirit of monastic chastity; and equally characteristic is -Correggio’s acceptance of the commission as an opportunity to paint -classic bas-reliefs and rosy flesh and blood, without much attempt to -express the somewhat strained symbolism of the myth. - -[Illustration: - - _The “Little Palace of the Garden”_ - - E. C. Peixotto - PARMA. 1901. -] - -The vaulted ceiling of the room is treated as a trellised arbour, -through which rosy loves peep down on the blonde Diana emerging from -grey drifts of evening mist: a charming composition, with much grace of -handling in the figure of the goddess and in the _grisailles_ of the -lunettes below the cornice; yet lacking as a whole just that ethereal -quality which is supposed to be the distinctive mark of Correggio’s -art. Compared with the delicate trellis-work and flitting cupids of -Zucchero’s frescoes at the Villa di Papa Giulio, Correggio’s design -is heavy and dull. The masses of foliage are too uniform and the -_putti_ too fat and stolid for their skyey task. This failure of the -decorative sense is rendered more noticeable by the happy manner in -which Araldi, a generation earlier, had solved a similar problem in the -adjoining room. Here the light arabesques and miniature divinities of -the ceiling, and the biblical and mythological scenes of the frieze, -are presented with all that earnest striving after personal truth of -expression that is the ruling principle of fifteenth-century art. It is -this faculty of personal interpretation, always kept in strict abeyance -to the laws of decorative fitness, which makes the mural painting -of the fifteenth century so satisfying that, compared with the -Mantegna room at Mantua, the Sala del Cambio at Perugia, the Sala degli -Angeli at Urbino, and the frescoed room at the Schifanoia at Ferrara, -all the later wall-decorations in Italy (save perhaps the Moretto room -at Brescia) seem to fall a little short of perfection. - -Of a much earlier style of mural painting, Parma itself contains one -notable example. The ancient octagon of the Baptistery, with its -encircling arcade and strange frieze of leaping, ramping and running -animals, is outwardly one of the most interesting buildings in Italy; -while its interior has a character of its own hardly to be matched -even in that land of fiercely competing individualism. Downward from -the apex of the dome the walls are frescoed in successive tiers with -figures of saints in rigid staring attitudes, interspersed with awkward -presentments of biblical story. All these designs are marked by a -peculiar naïveté of composition and great vehemence of gesture and -expression. Those in the dome and between the windows are attributed -to the thirteenth century, while the lower frescoes are of the -fourteenth; but so crude in execution are the latter that they combine -with the upper rows in producing an effect of exceptional decorative -value, to which a note of strangeness is given by the introduction, -here and there, of high-reliefs of saints and angels, so placed that -the frescoes form a background to their projecting figures. The most -successful of these sculptures is the relief of the flight into Egypt: -a solemn procession led by a squat square-faced angel with unwieldy -wings and closed by two inscrutable-looking figures in Oriental dress. - -Seen after the Baptistery, the Cathedral is perhaps something of a -disappointment; yet to pass from its weather-beaten front, between the -worn red lions of the ancient porch, into the dusky magnificence of the -interior, is to enjoy one of those contrasts possible only in a land -where the humblest wayside chapel may disclose the stratified art of -centuries. In the great cupola, Correggio lords it with the maelstrom -of his heavenly host; and the walls of the nave are covered with -frescoes by Mazzola and Gambara, to which time has given a golden-brown -tone, as of sumptuous hangings, that atones for the pretentious -insignificance of their design. There is a venerable episcopal throne -attributed to Benedetto Antelami, that strangely dramatic sculptor -to whom the reliefs of the Baptistery are also ascribed, and one of -the chapels contains a magnificent Descent from the Cross with his -signature; but except for these works the details of the interior, -though including several fine sepulchral monuments and a ciborium by -Alberti, are not exceptional enough to make a lasting impression. - -On almost every Italian town, whatever succession of masters it may -have known, some one family has left its dominant mark; and Parma is -distinctively the city of the Farnesi. Late-comers though they were, -their lilies are everywhere, over gateways, on palace-fronts and in the -aisles of churches; and they have bequeathed to the town a number of -its most characteristic buildings, from the immense unfinished Palazzo -della Pilotta to the baroque fountain of parti-coloured marbles which -enlivens with its graceful nymphs and river-gods the grassy solitude of -the palace-square. It is to Rannuccio I, the greatest of these ducal -builders, that Parma owes the gigantic project of the Pilotta, as well -as the Farnese theatre and the University. To this group Duke Ottavio, -at a later date, added the charming “Little Palace of the Garden,” of -which the cheerful yellow façade still overlooks the pleached alleys -of a formal pleasance adorned, under the Bourbon rulers who succeeded -him, with groups of statuary by the court sculptor, a Frenchman named -Jean Baptiste Boudard. Ottavio commissioned Agostino Carracci to -decorate the interior of the ducal villa, and even now, after years -of incredible neglect and ill-usage, the walls of several rooms show -remains of the work executed, as the artist’s pious inscription runs, -_sub umbra liliorum_. The villa has been turned into barracks, and -it is difficult to gain admission; but the persistent sight-seer may -succeed in seeing one room, where large-limbed ruddy immortals move, -against a background of bluish summer landscape, through the slow -episodes of some Olympian fable. This apartment shows the skill of the -Carracci as decorators of high cool ceremonious rooms, designed to -house the midsummer idleness of a court still under the yoke of Spanish -etiquette, and living in a climate where the linear vivacities of -Tiepolo might have been conducive to apoplexy. - -[Illustration: - - _The Worn Red Lions - of the Ancient Porch_ - - E. C. Peixotto - PARMA. 1901. -] - -The most noteworthy building which arose in Parma under the shadow -of the lilies is, however, the famous theatre built by Aleotti for -Duke Rannuccio, and opened in 1620 to celebrate the marriage of -Odoardo Farnese with Margaret of Tuscany. Externally it is a mere -outgrowth of the palace; but to those who feel a tenderness for the -vivacious figures of the _commedia dell’ arte_ and have followed -their picturesque wanderings through the pages of Gozzi and Goldoni, -the interior is an immediate evocation of the strolling theatrical -life of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--that strange period -when players were passed on from duchy to principality to perform at -wedding-feasts and to celebrate political victories; when kings and -princes stood sponsors to their children, and the Church denied them -Christian burial. - -The Farnese theatre is one of those brilliant improvisations in wood -and plaster to which Italian artists were trained by centuries of -hurriedly-organized _trionfi_, state processions, religious festivals, -returns from war, all demanding the collaboration of sculptor, -architect and painter in the rapid creation of triumphal arches, -architectural perspectives, statuary, chariots, flights of angels, and -galleons tossing on simulated seas: evanescent visions of some _pays -bleu_ of Boiardo or of Ariosto, destined to crumble the next day like -the palace of an evil enchanter. To those who admire the peculiarly -Italian gift of spontaneous plastic invention, the art of the -_plasticatore_, to borrow an untranslatable term, such buildings are of -peculiar interest, since, owing to the nature of their construction, -so few have survived; and of these probably none is as well preserved -as Aleotti’s theatre. The ceiling of painted canvas is gone, and the -splendid Farnese dukes bestriding their chargers in lofty niches on -each side of the proscenium are beginning to show their wooden anatomy -through the wounds in their plaster sides; but the fine composition of -the auditorium, and the throng of stucco divinities attitudinizing in -the niches and on the balustrades, and poised above the arch of the -proscenium, still serve to recall the original splendour of the scene. -The dusty gloom of the place suggests some impending transformation, -and when fancy has restored to the roof the great glass chandeliers -now hanging in the neighbouring museum, their light seems to fall once -more on boxes draped with crimson velvet and filled with lords and -ladies in the sumptuous Spanish habit, while on the stage, before a -gay perspective of colonnades and terraces, Isabel and Harlequin and -the Capitan Spavento, _plasticatori_ of another sort, build on the -scaffolding of some familiar intrigue the airy superstructure of their -wit. - -In the adjoining palace no such revival is possible. Most museums -in Italy are dead palaces, and none is more inanimate than that of -Parma. Many of the ducal treasures are still left--family portraits -by Suttermans and Sir Antony Mor, Bernini-like busts of the Bourbon -dukes of Parma, with voluminous wigs and fluttering steinkerks; old -furniture, old majolica, and all those frail elaborate trifles that -the irony of fate preserves when brick and marble crumble. All these -accessories of a ruined splendour, catalogued, numbered and penned up -in glass cases, can no more revive the life of which they formed a part -than the contents of an herbarium can renew the scent and murmur of a -summer meadow. The transient holders of all that pomp, from the great -Alexander to the Duchess Marie Louise of Austria, his last unworthy -successor, look down with unrecognizing eyes on this dry alignment of -classified objects; and one feels, in passing from one room to another, -as though some fanciful heroic poem, depicting the splendid vanities -of life, and depending for its effect on a fortunate collocation of -words, had been broken up and sorted out into the different parts of -speech. - -This is the view of the sentimentalist; but from that of the student -of art the museum of Parma is perhaps more interesting than the palace -could ever have been. The Correggios are in themselves an unmatched -possession; the general collection of pictures is large and varied, and -the wealth of bronzes and marbles, of coins, medals and architectural -fragments of different schools and periods, would be remarkable in any -country but Italy, where the inexhaustible richness of the small towns -is a surprise to the most experienced traveller. - -On the whole, the impression carried away from Parma is incomplete -and confusing. The name calls forth as many scattered images as -contradictory associations. It is doubtful if the wanderer reviewing -from a distance his Italian memories will be able to put any distinct -picture of the place beside the concrete vision of Siena, Mantua or -Vicenza. It will not hang as a whole in the gallery of his mental -vignettes; but in the mosaic of detached impressions some rich and -iridescent fragments will represent his after-thoughts of Parma. - - - - -MARCH IN ITALY - - -I - -March is in some respects the most exquisite month of the Italian year. -It is the month of transitions and surprises, of vehement circling -showers with a golden heart of sunlight, of bare fields suffused -overnight with fruit-blossoms, and hedgerows budding as suddenly as the -staff of Tannhäuser. It is the month in which the northern traveller, -grown distrustful of the promised clemency of Italian skies, and with -the winter bitterness still in his bones, lighting on a patch of -primroses under a leafless bank, or on the running flame of tulips -along the trenches of an olive orchard, learns that Italy _is_ Italy, -after all, and hugs himself at thought of the black ultramontane March. - -It must be owned, however, that it is not, even in Italy, the safest -month for excursions. There are too many _voltes-face_ toward winter, -too many moody hesitating dawns, when the skies will not declare -themselves for or against rain, but hanging neutral till the hesitating -traveller sets forth, seem then to take a cruel joy in proving that -he should have stayed at home. Yet there are rare years when some -benign influence tames the fitfulness of March, subduing her to a long -sequence of golden days, and then he who has trusted to her promise -receives the most exquisite reward. It takes faith in one’s luck to -catch step with such a train of days, and fare with them northward -across the wakening land; but now and then this fortune befalls the -pilgrim, and then he sees a new Italy, an Italy which discovery seems -to make his own. The ancient Latin landscape, so time-furrowed and -passion-scarred, lies virgin to the eye, fresh-bathed in floods of -limpid air. The scene seems recreated by the imagination, it wears the -pristine sparkle of those - - _Towers of fables immortal fashioned from mortal dreams_ - -which lie beyond the geographer’s boundaries, like the Oceanus of the -early charts; it becomes, in short, the land in which anything may -happen, save the dull, the obvious and the expected. - - -II - -It was, for instance, on such a March day that we rowed across the -harbour of Syracuse to the mouth of the Anapus. - -Our brown rowers, leaping overboard, pushed the flat-bottomed boat -through the line of foam where bay and river meet, and we passed -over to the smooth current which slips seaward between flat banks -fringed with arundo donax and bamboo. The bamboo grows in vast -feathery thickets along these Sicilian waters, and the slightly -angular precision of its stem and foliage allies itself well with -the classic clearness of the landscape--a landscape which, in spite -of an occasional excess of semi-tropical vegetation, yet retains the -Greek quality of producing intense effects with a minimum of material. -There is nothing tropical about the shores of the Anapus; but as the -river turns and narrows, the boat passes under an arch of Egyptian -papyrus, that slender exotic reed, brought to Sicily, it is supposed, -by her Arabian colonizers, and thriving, strangely enough, in no other -European soil. This plumy tunnel so enclosed us as we advanced, that -for long stretches of our indolent progress we saw only the face of -the stream, the summer insects flickering on it, and the continuous -golden line of irises along its edge. Now and then, however, a gap in -the papyrus showed, as through an arch in a wall, a prospect of flat -fields with grazing cattle, or a solitary farm-house, low, brown, -_tassée_, with a date-palm spindling against its well-curb, or the -white flank of Etna suddenly thrust across the sky-line. - -So, after a long dreamy lapse of time, we came to the source of -the river, the azure bowl of the nymph Cyane, who pours her pure -current into the broader Anapus. The haunt of the nymph is a circular -reed-fringed pool, supposedly so crystalline that she may still be seen -lurking on its pebbly bed; but the recent spring rains had clouded her -lair, and though, in this legend-haunted land, one always feels the -nearness of - - _The faun pursuing, the nymph pursued_, - -the pool of Cyane revealed no sign of her presence. - -Disappointed in our quest, we turned back and glided down the Anapus -again to visit her sister-nymph, the more famed but less fortunate -Arethusa, whose unhappy fate it is to mingle her wave with the -brackish sea-tide in the very harbour of Syracuse, where, under the -wall of the quay, the poor creature languishes in a prison of masonry, -her papyrus wreath sending up an anæmic growth from the slimy bottom -filled with green. - -We were glad to turn from this desecrated fount to the long -russet-coloured town curving above its harbour. Syracuse, girt with -slopes of flowering orchard-land, lies nobly against the fortified -ridge of Epipolæ. But the city itself--richer in history than any -other on that crowded soil, and characteristically symbolized by its -Greek temple welded into the masonry of a mediæval church--even the -thronging associations of the city could not, on a day so prodigal of -sunlight, hold us long within its walls. These walls, the boundaries -of the Greek Ortygia, have once more become the limits of the shrunken -modern town, and crossing the moat beyond them, we found ourselves -at once in full country. There was a peculiar charm in the sudden -transition from the old brown streets saturated with history to this -clear smiling land where only the spring seemed to have written its -tale--its ever-recurring, ever-fresh record of blossom and blade -miraculously renewed. The country about Syracuse is peculiarly fitted -to be the exponent of this gospel of renewal. The land stretches away -in mild slopes laden with acre on acre of blossoming fruit-trees, and -of old olive orchards under which the lilac anemones have room to -spread in never-ending sheets of colour. The open pastures are plumed -with silvery asphodel, and every farm-house has its glossy orange-grove -fenced from the road by a rampart of prickly pear. - -The highway itself, as we drove out toward Epipolæ, was thronged with -country-folk who might have been the descendants of Theocritan nymphs -and mortal shepherds, brown folk with sidelong agate eyes, trudging -dustily after their goats and asses, or jogging townward in their -little blue or red carts painted with legends of the saints and stories -from Ariosto. After a mile or two the road curved slowly upward and we -began to command a widening prospect. At our feet lay Syracuse, girt by -the Plemmyrian marsh, and by the fields and orchards which were once -the crowded Greek suburbs of Neapolis, Tyche and Achradina; and beyond -the ridge of Epipolæ and the nearer hills, Etna rose white and dominant -against the pale Calabrian coast-line. - -The fortress of Euryalus, on the crest of Epipolæ, might be called the -Greek Carcassonne, since it is the best-preserved example of ancient -military architecture in Europe. Archways, galleries, massive flights -of stairs and long subterranean passages may still be traced by the -archæologically minded in the mass of fallen stones marking the site -of the ruin; and even the idler unversed in military construction will -feel the sudden nearness of the past when he comes upon the rock-hewn -sockets to which the cavalry attached their horses. - -Euryalus, however, more fortunate than Carcassonne, has escaped the -renovating hand of a Viollet-le-Duc, and its broken ramparts lie in -mellow ruin along the backbone of the ridge, feathered with those -delicate growths which, in the Mediterranean countries, veil the -fallen works of man without concealing them. That day, indeed, the -prodigal blossoming of the Sicilian March had covered the ground with -a suffusion of colour which made even the mighty ruins of the fortress -seem a mere background for the triumphant pageant of the spring. From -the tall silhouette of the asphodel, classic in outline as in name, to -the tendrils of scarlet and yellow vetch capriciously fretting the -ancient stones with threads of richest colour, every inch of ground and -every cleft of masonry was overrun with some delicate wild tracery of -leaf and blossom. - -But to those who first see Syracuse in the month of March--the heart of -the Sicilian spring--it must appear pre-eminently as one vast unbounded -garden. The appeal of architecture and history pales before this vast -glory of the loosened soil. The walls and towers will remain--but -this transient beauty must be caught upon the wing. And so from the -flowered slopes of Euryalus we passed to the richer profusion of the -gardens that adjoin the town. Fringing the road by which we descended, -a hundred spring flowers--anemones, lupins, sweet alyssum, herb-Robert, -snapdragon and the fragrant wild mignonette--linked the uncultivated -country-side to the rich horticulture of the suburbs; and in the -suburbs the vegetation reached so tropical an excess that the spring -pilgrim’s memory of Syracuse must be a blur of golden-brown ruins -immersed in a sea of flowers. - -There are gardens everywhere, gardens of all kinds and classes, from -the peasant’s hut hedged with pink geraniums to the villa with its -terraced sub-tropical growths; but most wonderful, most unexpected of -all, are the famous gardens of the quarries. Time has perhaps never -done a more poetic thing than in turning these bare unshaded pits of -death, where the Greek captives of Salamis died under the lash of the -Sicilian slave-driver and the arrows of the Sicilian sun, into deep -cool wells of shade and verdure. Here, where the chivalry of Athens -perished of heat and thirst, a damp mantle of foliage pours over the -red cliff-sides, fills the depths with the green freshness of twilight, -and effaces, like a pitiful hand on a burning brow, the record of -that fiery martyrdom. And the quarries are as good to grow flowers in -as to torture men. The equable warmth of these sheltered ravines is -as propitious to vegetation as it was destructive to human life; and -wherever soil has accumulated, on the ledges and in the hollows, the -“blood of the martyrs” sends up an exuberant growth. - -On the edge of one of these hell-pits a monastery has been built; above -another stands a villa; and monastic and secular hands have transformed -the sides of the quarries into gardens of fantastic beauty. Paths and -rocky stairways fringed with fern wind down steeply from the upper -world, now tunnelled through dense growths of cypress and olive, now -skirting cliff-walks dripping with cataracts of ivy, or tufted with -the glaucous spikes and scarlet rockets of gigantic cactuses. In the -depths, where time has amassed a soil incredibly rich, the vegetation -becomes prodigious, febrile, like that of the delirious garden in “La -Faute de l’Abbé Mouret.” Here the paths wind under groves of orange -and lemon trees, over a dense carpeting of violets, stocks, narcissus -and honey-scented hyacinths. Trellises of red roses lift their network -against the light, and damp clefts of the rock are black with dripping -maidenhair. Here are tall hedges of blue rosemary and red-gold -abutilon, there shrubby masses of anthemisia, heliotrope and lavender. -Overhead, black cypress-shafts spring from the bright sea of foliage, -and at the pit’s brink, where the Syracusan citizens, under their white -umbrellas, used to lean over and taunt the captives dying in the sun, a -great hedge of prickly pear writhes mockingly against the sky. - - -III - -At noon of such another day we set out from Rome for Caprarola. - -The still air had a pearly quality and a mauve haze hung upon the -hills. Our way lay north-westward, toward the Ciminian mountains. Once -free of the gates, our motor started on its steady rush along the white -highway, first past the walls of vineyard and garden, and then across -the grey waste spaces of the Campagna. The Roman champaign is the type -of variety in monotony. Seen from the heights of the city, it reaches -in silvery sameness toward all points of the compass; but to a near -view it reveals a dozen different physiognomies. Toward Frascati and -the Alban hills it wears the ordered garb of fertility: wheat-fields, -vineyards and olive-groves. South-eastward, in the direction of the -Sabine range, its white volcanic reaches are tufted with a dark _maqui_ -of sullen and reluctant growth, while in the west the Agro Romano rolls -toward Monterosi and Soracte in sere reaches of pasture-land mottled -with hillock and ravine. - -Gradually, as we left the outskirts of Rome, the grandeur of this -stern landscape declared itself. To the right and left the land -stretched out in endless grassy reaches, guarded here and there by -a lonely tomb or by the tall gateway of some abandoned vineyard. -Presently the road began to rise and dip, giving us, on the ascent, -sweeping views over a wider range of downs which rolled away in -the north-west to the Ciminian forest, and in the east to the hazy -rampart of the Sabine hills. Ahead of us the same undulations swept on -interminably, the road undulating with them, now engulfed in the trough -of the land, now tossed into view on some farther slope, like a streak -of light on a flying sea. There was something strangely inspiriting -in the call of this fugitive road. From ever-lengthening distances it -seemed to signal us on, luring us up slope after slope, and racing -ahead of us down the long declivities where the motor panted after it -like a pack on the trail. - -For some time the thrill of the chase distracted us from a nearer view -of the foreground; but gradually there stole on us a sense of breadth -and quietude, of sun-bathed rugged fields with black cattle grazing -in their hollows, and here and there a fortified farm-house lifting -its bulk against the sky. These fortress-farms of the Campagna, -standing sullen and apart among the pacific ruins of pagan Rome--tombs, -aqueducts and villas--give a glimpse of that black age which rose on -the wreck of the Imperial civilization. All the violence and savagery -of the mediæval city, with its great nobles forever in revolt, its -popes plotting and trembling within the Lateran walls, or dragging -their captive cardinals from point to point as the Emperor or the -French King moved his forces--all the mysterious crimes of passion and -cupidity, the intrigues, ambushes, massacres with which the pages of -the old chronicles reek, seem symbolized in one of those lowering brown -piles with its battlemented sky-line, crouched on a knoll of the waste -land which its masters helped to devastate. - -At length a blue pool, the little lake of Monterosi, broke the expanse -of the downs; then we flashed through a poor roadside village of the -same name, and so upward into a hill-region where hedgerows and copses -began to replace the brown tufting of the Campagna. On and on we fled, -ever upward to the town of Ronciglione, perched, like many hill-cities -of this region, on the sheer edge of a ravine, and stretching its line -of baroque churches and stately crumbling palaces along one steep -street to the edge of a lofty down. - -Across this plateau, golden with budding broom, we flew on to the next -height, and here paused to embrace the spectacle--beneath us, on the -left, the blue volcanic lake of Vico in its oak-fringed crater; on the -right, far below, the plain of Etruria, scattered with ancient cities -and ringed in a mountain-range still touched with snow; and rising from -the middle of the plain, Soracte, proud, wrinkled, solitary, with the -ruined monastery of Sant’ Oreste just seen on its crest. - -[Illustration: - - _An Italian Sky in March_ -] - -From this mount of vision we dropped abruptly downward by a road cut -in the red tufa-banks. Presently there began to run along the crest -of the tufa on our left a lofty wall gripping the flanks of the rock, -and overhung by dark splashes of ivy and clumps of leafless trees--one -of those rugged Italian walls which are the custodians of such hidden -treasures of scent and verdure. This wall continued to run parallel -with us till our steep descent ended in a stone-paved square, with the -roofs of a town sliding abruptly away below it on one side, and above, -on the other, the great ramps and terraces of a pentagonal palace -clenched to the highest ledge of the cliff. Such is the first sight of -Caprarola. - -Never, surely, did feudal construction so insolently dominate its -possessions. The palace of the great Farnese Cardinal seems to lord -it not only over the golden-brown town which forms its footstool, but -over the far-reaching Etrurian plain, the forests and mountains of the -horizon: over Nepi, Sutri, Cività Castellana, and the lonely pride of -Soracte. And the grandeur of the site is matched by the arrogance of -the building: no villa, but a fortified and moated palace, or rather a -fortress planned in accordance with the most advanced military science -of the day, but built on the lines of a palace. Yet on such a March day -as this, with the foreground of brown oak-woods all slashed and fringed -with rosy almond-bloom; with the haze of spring just melting from the -horizon, and revealing depth after depth of mountain-blue; with March -clouds fleeing overhead, and flinging trails of shadow and showers of -silver light across the undulations of the plain--on such a day, the -insolent Farnese keep, for all its background of gardens, frescoes, and -architectural splendour, seems no longer the lord of the landscape, -but a mere point of vantage from which to view the outspread glory at -our feet. - - -IV - -The drive from Viterbo to Montefiascone lies across the high plateau -between the Monte Cimino and the lake of Bolsena. - -For the best part of the way, the landscape is pastoral and -agricultural, with patches of oak-wood to which in March the leaves -still cling; and on this fitful March morning, with rain in the -shifting clouds, the ploughmen move behind their white oxen under -umbrellas as vividly green as the young wheat. Here are none of the -great bursts of splendour which mark the way from Rome to Caprarola; -and it seems fitting that this more prosaic road should be travelled -at a sober pace, in a Viterban posting-chaise, behind two plodding -horses. The horses are not so plodding, however, but that they swing us -briskly enough down the short descents of the rolling country, which -now becomes wilder and more diversified, with stretches of woodland -interspersed with a heathy growth of low fragrant shrubs. Here the -slopes are thick with primroses, and the blue vinca and violet peep -through the ivy trails of the hedgerows; but the trees are still -leafless, for it is a high wind-swept region, where March practises -few of her milder arts. A lonely country too: no villages, and only -a few solitary farm-houses, are to be seen as we jog up and down the -monotonous undulations of the road to the foot of Montefiascone. - -The town overhangs us splendidly, on a spur above the lake of Bolsena; -and a long ascent between fortified walls leads to the summit on which -its buildings are huddled. Through the curtain of rain which the skies -have now let down, the crooked streets with their archways and old -blackened stone houses present no striking effects, though doubtless -a bright day would draw from them some of that latent picturesqueness -which is never far to seek when Italian masonry and Italian sunlight -meet. Meanwhile, however, the rain persists, and the environment of -Montefiascone remains so obstinately shrouded that, for all we know, -the town may be situated “Nowhere,” like the famous scene in Festus. - -Through this rain-muffled air, led blindfold as it were, we presently -descend again by the same windings to the city gates, and thence, -following the road to Bagnorea, come on the desolate church of San -Flaviano, lying by itself in a hollow beneath the walls of the town. -In our hasty dash from the carriage to the door, there is just time -to receive the impression of an immensely old brick façade, distorted -and scarred with that kind of age which only the Latin sense of -antiquity has kept a word to describe--then we are in a low-arched -cavernous interior, with spectral frescoes emerging here and there -from the universal background of whitewash, and above the choir a -spreading gallery or upper church, which makes of the lower building -a species of crypt above ground. And here--O irony of fate!--in this -old, deserted and damp-dripping church, under a worn slab before -the abandoned altar (for it is only in the upper church that mass -continues to be said)--here, a castaway as it were from both worlds, -lies that genial offshoot of a famous race, the wine-loving Bishop -Fugger, whose lust of the palate brought him to this lonely end. It -would have been impossible to pass through Montefiascone without -dropping a commemorative tear on the classic Est-Est-Est upon which, -till so lately, a good cask of Montefiascone has been yearly broached -in memory of the prelate’s end; yet one feels a regret, almost, in -carrying away such a chill recollection of the poor Bishop’s fate, -in leaving him to the solitude of that icy limbo which seems so -disproportionate a punishment for his amiable failing. - -Leaving San Flaviano, we press on toward Orvieto through an unbroken -blur of rain. The weary miles leave no trace in memory, and we are -still in an indeterminate region of wood and pasture and mist-muffled -hills when gradually the downpour ceases, and streaks of sunset begin -to part the clouds. Almost at the same moment a dip of the road brings -us out above a long descent, with a wavy plain at its base, and reared -up on a cliff above the plain a fierce brown city, walled, towered -and pinnacled, which seems to have dropped from the sky like some -huge beast of prey and locked its talons in the rock. All about the -plain, in the watery evening light, rises a line of hills, with Monte -Amiata thrusting its peak above the circle; the nearer slopes are -clothed in olive and cypress, with castles and monasteries jutting from -their ledges, and just below us the sight of an arched bridge across -a ravine, with a clump of trees at its approach, touches a spring -of memory and transports us from the actual scene to its pictured -presentment--Turner’s “Road to Orvieto.” - -It was, in fact, from this point that the picture was painted; and -looking forth on the landscape, with its stormy blending of sepia-hues -washed in pallid sunlight, one sees in it the vindication of Turner’s -art--that true impressionism which consists not in the unimaginative -noting of actual “bits,” but in the reconstruction of a scene as it -has flowed into the mould of memory, the merging of fragmentary facts -into a homogeneous impression. This is what Turner has done to the view -of Orvieto from the Bolsena road, so summing up and interpreting the -spirit of the scene that the traveller pausing by the arched bridge -above the valley loses sense of the boundaries between art and life, -and lives for a moment in that mystical region where the two are one. - - -V - -Our friends and counsellors had for many years warned us against -visiting Vallombrosa in March--the month which oftenest finds us in -Tuscany. - -“Wait till June,” they advised--and knowing the complexity of -influences which go to make up an Italian “sensation,” and how, for -lack of one ingredient, the whole mixture may lose its savour, we -had obediently waited for June. But June in Florence never seemed to -come--“the time and the place” were no more to meet in our horoscope -than in the poet’s; and so, one year when March was playing at April, -we decided to take advantage of her mood and risk the adventure. - -We set out early, in that burnished morning air which seems, as with a -fine burin, to retrace overnight every line of the Tuscan landscape. -The railway runs southward along the Arno valley to Sant’ Ellero; and -we might have been travelling through some delicately-etched background -of Mantegna’s or Robetta’s, in which the clear pale colours of early -spring were but an effect of subtle blendings of line. This Tuscan hill -scenery, which for purity of modelling has no match short of Greece, is -seen to the best advantage in March, when the conformation of the land -is still unveiled by foliage, and every line tells like the threads of -silver in a _niello_. - -From Sant’ Ellero, where the train is exchanged for a little funicular -car of primitive construction, we were pushed jerkily uphill by a -gasping engine which had to be constantly refreshed by long draughts of -water from wayside tanks. On such a day, however, it was impossible to -grudge the slowness of the ascent. As we mounted higher, the country -developed beneath us with that far-reaching precision of detail which -gives to extended views in mid-Italy a curiously pre-Raphaelite -look--as though they had been wrought out by a hand enamoured of -definition and unskilled in the creation of general effects. The new -wheat springing under the olives was the only high note of colour: all -else was sepia-brown of new-turned earth, grey-brown of weather-mottled -farm-houses and village belfries, golden-black of rusty cypresses -climbing the hill-sides in straight interminable lines, and faint blush -of peach-blossoms floating against grey olives. - -Then we gained a new height, and the details of the foreground were -lost in a vast unfolding of distances--hill on hill, blurred with -olive-groves, or bare and keen-cut, with a sprinkling of farm-houses -on their slopes, and here and there a watch-tower on a jutting spur; -and beyond these again, a tossing sunlit sea of peaks, its farthest -waves still crested with snow. Half way up, the abrupt slopes of -oak-forest which we had skirted gave way to a plateau clothed with -vines and budding fruit orchards; then another sharp climb through -oak-scrub, across the dry beds of mountain-streams and up slopes of -broom and heather, brought us to the topmost ledge, where the railway -ends. On this ledge stands the dreary village of Saltina--a cluster -of raw-looking houses set like boxes on a shelf (with a Hôtel Milton -among them), and a background of Swiss chalets dotted forlornly on a -treeless slope. Saltina must be arid even in midsummer, and in March -it was a place to fly from. Our flight, however, was regulated by the -leisurely gait of a small white donkey who was the only _bête de somme_ -to be had at that early season, and behind whom we slowly turned the -shoulder of the cliff, and entered the pillared twilight of a great -fir-wood. The road ran through this wood for a mile or two, carrying -us straight to the heart of the Etrurian shades. As we advanced, -byways branched off to the right and left, climbing the hill-sides -through deep-perspectives of verdure; and presently we came to a wide -turfy hollow, where the great trees recede, leaving a space for the -monastery and its adjacent buildings. - -The principal _corps-de-bâtiment_ faces on a walled entrance-court with -box-bordered paths leading to the fine arcaded portico of the church. -These buildings are backed by a hanging wood with a hermitage on its -crest--the Paradiso--but before them lies an open expanse studded with -ancient trees, with a stone-bordered fish-pond, and grass walks leading -down to mossy glens with the sound of streams in their depths. Facing -the monastery stands the low building where pilgrims were formerly -lodged, and which now, without farther modification than the change of -name, has become the Albergo della Foresta; while the monastery itself -has been turned into a government school of forestry. - -Since change was inevitable, it is a fortunate accident which has -housed a sylvan college in these venerable shades, and sent the -green-accoutred foresters to carry on the husbandry of the monks. -Never, surely, were the inevitable modifications of time more gently -tempered to the survivor of earlier conditions. The monastery of -Vallombrosa has neither the examinate air of a _monument historique_, -nor that look of desecration and decadency that too often comes with -altered uses. It has preserved its high atmosphere of meditative -peace, and the bands of students flitting through the forest with -surveying-implements and agricultural tools seem the lawful successors -of the monks. - -We had been told in Florence that winter still held the mountains, that -we should find snow in the shady hollows and a glacial wind from the -peaks. But spring airs followed us to the heights. Through the aromatic -fir-boughs the sunlight slanted as warmly as down the ilex-walks of -the Boboli gardens, and over the open slopes about the monastery there -ran a rosy-purple flush of crocuses--not here and there in scattered -drifts, or starring the grass as in the foregrounds of Mantegna and -Botticelli, but so close-set that they formed a continuous sheet of -colour, a tide of lilac which submerged the turf and, flowing between -the ancient tree-boles, invaded even the dark edges of the forest. It -was probably the one moment of the year at which the forest flushes -into colour; its hour of transfiguration--we might have tried every -other season, and missed the miracle of March in Vallombrosa. At first -the eye was dazzled by this vast field of the cloth-of-purple, and -could take in none of the more delicate indications of spring; but -presently we found our way to the lower glens, where the crocuses -ceased, and pale-yellow primroses poured over ivy-banks to the brink -of agate-coloured brooks. In the forest, too, ferns were uncurling and -violets thrusting themselves through the close matting of fir-needles; -while the terraces of the monks’ garden, which climbs the hill-side -near the monastery, were fragrant with budding box and beds of tulip -and narcissus. - -It was an air to idle in, breathing deep the stored warmth of -immemorial springs; but the little donkey waited between the shafts of -his _calessina_, and on the ledge of Saltina we knew that our engine -was taking a last draught before the descent. Reluctantly we jogged -back through the forest, and, regaining our seats in the train, plunged -downward into a sea of translucent mountains, and valleys bathed in -haze, a great reach of irradiated heights flowing by imperceptible -gradations into amber depths of air, while below us the shadows fell, -and the Arno gleamed white in the indistinctness of evening. - - - - -PICTURESQUE MILAN - - -I - -It is hard to say whether the stock phrase of the stock tourist--“there -is so little to see in Milan”--redounds most to the derision of the -speaker or to the glory of Italy. That such a judgment should be -possible, even to the least instructed traveller, implies a surfeit -of impressions procurable in no other land; since, to the hastiest -observation, Milan could hardly seem lacking in interest when -compared to any but Italian cities. From comparison with the latter, -even, it suffers only on a superficial estimate, for it is rich in -all that makes the indigenous beauty of Italy, as opposed to the -pseudo-Gothicisms, the trans-Alpine points and pinnacles, which Ruskin -taught a submissive generation of art critics to regard as the typical -expression of the Italian spirit. The guide-books, long accustomed -to draw their Liebig’s extract of art from the pages of this school -of critics, have kept the tradition alive by dwelling only on the -monuments which conform to perpendicular ideals, and by apologetic -allusions to the “monotony” and “regularity” of Milan--as though -endeavouring in advance to placate the traveller for its not looking -like Florence or Siena! - -[Illustration: - - _Court of the Palazzo Marino, - now the Municipio_ -] - -Of late, indeed, a new school of writers, among whom Mr. J. W. -Anderson, and the German authors, Messrs. Ebe and Gurlitt, deserve -the first mention, have broken through this conspiracy of silence, -and called attention to the intrinsically Italian art of the -post-Renaissance period; the period which, from Michael Angelo to -Juvara, has been marked in sculpture and architecture (though more -rarely in painting) by a series of memorable names. Signor Franchetti’s -admirable monograph on Bernini, and the recent volume on Tiepolo in the -Knackfuss series of Künstler-Monographien have done their part in this -redistribution of values; and it is now possible for the traveller to -survey the course of Italian art with the impartiality needful for its -due enjoyment, and to admire, for instance, the tower of the Mangia -without scorning the palace of the Consulta. - - -II - -But, it may be asked, though Milan will seem more interesting to the -emancipated judgment, will it appear more picturesque? Picturesqueness -is, after all, what the Italian pilgrim chiefly seeks; and the current -notion of the picturesque is a purely Germanic one, connoting Gothic -steeples, pepper-pot turrets, and the huddled steepness of the northern -burgh. - -Italy offers little, and Milan least of all, to satisfy these -requirements. The Latin ideal demanded space, order, and nobility of -composition. But does it follow that picturesqueness is incompatible -with these? Take up one of Piranesi’s etchings--those strange -compositions in which he sought to seize the spirit of a city or a -quarter by a mingling of its most characteristic features. Even the -northern conception of the picturesque must be satisfied by the sombre -wildness of these studies--here a ruined aqueduct, casting its shade -across a lonely stretch of ground tufted with acanthus, there a palace -colonnade through which the moonlight sweeps on a winter wind, or the -recesses of some mighty Roman bath where cloaked figures are huddled -in dark confabulation. - -Canaletto’s black-and-white studies give, in a lesser degree, the -same impression of the grotesque and the fantastic--the under-side -of that _barocchismo_ so long regarded as the smirk on the face of a -conventional age. - -But there is another, a more typically Italian picturesqueness, gay -rather than sinister in its suggestions, made up of lights rather -than of shadows, of colour rather than of outline, and this is the -picturesqueness of Milan. The city abounds in vivid effects, in -suggestive juxtapositions of different centuries and styles--in -all those incidental contrasts and surprises which linger in the -mind after the catalogued “sights” have faded. Leaving behind the -wide modern streets--which have the merit of having been modernized -under Eugène Beauharnais rather than under King Humbert--one enters -at once upon some narrow byway overhung by the grated windows of a -seventeenth-century palace, or by the delicate terra-cotta apse of a -_cinque-cento_ church. Everywhere the forms of expression are purely -Italian, with the smallest possible admixture of that Gothic element -which marks the old free cities of Central Italy. The rocca Sforzesca -(the old Sforza castle) and the houses about the Piazza de’ Mercanti -are the chief secular buildings recalling the pointed architecture of -the north; and the older churches are so old that they antedate Gothic -influences, and lead one back to the round-arched basilican type. But -in the line of national descent what exquisite varieties the Milanese -streets present! Here, for instance, is the Corinthian colonnade of San -Lorenzo, the only considerable fragment of ancient Mediolanum, its last -shaft abutting on a Gothic archway against which clings a flower-decked -shrine. Close by, one comes on the ancient octagonal church of San -Lorenzo, while a few minutes’ drive leads to where the Borromeo palace -looks across a quiet grassy square at the rococo front of the old -family church, flanked by a fine bronze statue of the great saint and -cardinal. - -The Palazzo Borromeo is itself a notable factor in the picturesqueness -of Milan. The entrance leads to a court-yard enclosed in an ogive -arcade surmounted by pointed windows in terra-cotta mouldings. The -walls of this court are still frescoed with the Borromean crown, and -the _Humilitas_ of the haughty race; and a doorway leads into the -muniment-room, where the archives of the house are still stored, and -where, on the damp stone walls, Michelino da Milano has depicted the -scenes of a fifteenth-century villeggiatura. Here the noble ladies of -the house, in high fluted turbans and fantastic fur-trimmed gowns, may -be seen treading the measures of a mediæval dance with young gallants -in parti-coloured hose, or playing at various games--the _jeu de -tarots_, and a kind of cricket played with a long wooden bat; while in -the background rise the mountains about Lake Maggiore and the peaked -outline of the Isola Bella, then a bare rock unadorned with gardens and -architecture. These frescoes, the only existing works of a little-known -Lombard artist, are suggestive in style of Pisanello’s dry and vigorous -manner, and as records of the private life of the Italian nobility in -the fifteenth century they are second only to the remarkable pictures -of the Schifanoia at Ferrara. - -Not far from the Borromean palace, another doorway leads to a different -scene: the great cloister of the Ospedale Maggiore, one of the most -glorious monuments that man ever erected to his fellows. The old -hospitals of Italy were famous not only for their architectural -beauty and great extent, but for their cleanliness and order and the -enlightened care which their inmates received. Northern travellers have -recorded their wondering admiration of these lazarets, which seemed as -stately as palaces in comparison with the miserable pest-houses north -of the Alps. What must have been the astonishment of such a traveller, -whether German or English, on setting foot in the principal court of -the Milanese hospital, enclosed in its vast cloister enriched with -traceries and medallions of terra-cotta, and surmounted by the arches -of an open loggia whence the patients could look down on a peaceful -expanse of grass and flowers! Even now, one wonders whether this -poetizing of philanthropy, this clothing of charity in the garb of -beauty, may not have had its healing uses: whether the ugliness of the -modern hospital may not make it, in another sense, as unhygienic as the -more picturesque buildings it has superseded? It is at least pleasant -to think of the poor sick people sunning themselves in the beautiful -loggia of the Ospedale Maggiore, or sitting under the magnolia-trees -in the garden, while their blue-gowned and black-veiled nurses move -quietly through the cloisters at the summons of the chapel-bell. - -[Illustration: - - _The Tower of S. Stefano_ - - E. C. Peixotto - MILANO. 1901. -] - -But one need not enter a court-yard or cross a threshold to appreciate -the variety and colour of Milan. The streets themselves are full of -charming detail--_quattro-cento_ marble portals set with medallions of -bushy-headed Sforzas in round caps and plaited tunics; windows framed -in terra-cotta wreaths of fruit and flowers; iron balconies etching -their elaborate arabesques against the stucco house-fronts; mighty -doorways flanked by Atlantides, like that of Pompeo Leoni’s house (the -_Casa degli Omenoni_) and of the Jesuit seminary; or yellow-brown -rococo churches with pyramids, broken pediments, flying angels, and -vases filled with wrought-iron palm-branches. It is in summer that -these streets are at their best. Then the old gardens overhanging -the Naviglio--the canal which intersects Milan with a layer of -Venice--repeat in its waters their marble loggias hung with the vine, -and their untrained profusion of roses and camellias. Then, in the more -aristocratic streets, the palace doorways yield vistas of double and -triple court-yards, with creeper-clad arcades enclosing spaces of -shady turf, and terminating perhaps in a fountain set in some splendid -architectural composition against the inner wall of the building. In -summer, too, the dark archways in the humbler quarters of the town are -brightened by fruit-stalls embowered in foliage, and heaped with such -melons, figs and peaches as would have driven to fresh extravagance -the exuberant brush of a Flemish fruit-painter. Then again, at the -turn of a street, one comes across some little church just celebrating -the feast of its patron saint with a brave display of garlands and red -hangings; while close by a cavernous _bottegha_ has been festooned with -more garlands and with bright nosegays, amid which hang the painted -candles and other votive offerings designed to attract the small coin -of the faithful. - - -III - -Yet Milan is not dependent on the seasons for this midsummer magic -of light and colour. For dark days it keeps its store of warmth and -brightness hidden behind palace walls and in the cold dusk of church -and cloister. Summer in all its throbbing heat has been imprisoned -by Tiepolo in the great ceiling of the Palazzo Clerici: that revel of -gods and demi-gods, and mortals of all lands and races, who advance -with linked hands out of the rosy vapours of dawn. Nor are loftier -colour-harmonies wanting. On the walls of San Maurizio Maggiore, -Luini’s virgin martyrs move as in the very afterglow of legend: that -hesitating light in which the fantastic becomes probable, and the -boundaries between reality and vision fade; while tints of another -sort, but as tender, as harmonious, float through the dusk of the -sacristy of Santa Maria delle Grazie, a dim room panelled with -intarsia-work, with its grated windows veiled by vine-leaves. - -But nothing in Milan approaches in beauty the colour-scheme of the -Portinari chapel behind the choir of Sant’ Eustorgio. In Italy, -even, there is nothing else exactly comparable to this masterpiece -of collaboration between architect and painter. At Ravenna, the tomb -of Galla Placidia and the apse of San Vitale glow with richer hues, -and the lower church of Assisi is unmatched in its shifting mystery -of chiar’-oscuro; but for pure light, for a clear shadowless scale -of iridescent tints, what can approach the Portinari chapel? Its -most striking feature is the harmony of form and colour which makes -the decorative design of Michelozzo flow into and seem a part of the -exquisite frescoes of Vincenzo Foppa. This harmony is not the result -of any voluntary feint, any such trickery of the brush as the later -decorative painters delighted in. In the Portinari chapel, architecture -and painting are kept distinct in treatment, and the fusion between -them is effected by unity of line and colour, and still more, perhaps, -by an identity of sentiment, which keeps the whole chapel in the same -mood of blitheness,--a mood which makes it difficult to remember that -the chapel is the mausoleum of a martyred saint. But Saint Peter -Martyr’s marble sarcophagus, rich and splendid as it is, somehow fails -to distract the attention from its setting. There are so many mediæval -monuments like it in Italy--and there is but one Portinari chapel. -From the cupola, with its scales of pale red and blue, overlapping -each other like the breast-plumage of a pigeon, and terminating in a -terra-cotta frieze of dancing angels, who swing between them great -bells of fruit and flowers, the eye is led by insensible gradations -of tint to Foppa’s frescoes in the spandrils--iridescent saints and -angels in a setting of pale classical architecture--and thence to -another frieze of terra-cotta seraphs with rosy-red wings against a -background of turquoise-green; this lower frieze resting in turn on -pilasters of pale-green adorned with white stucco _rilievi_ of little -bell-ringing angels. It is only as a part of this colour-scheme that -the central sarcophagus really affects one--the ivory tint of its old -marble forming a central point for the play of light, and allying -itself with the sumptuous hues of Portinari’s dress, in the fresco -which represents the donator of the chapel kneeling before his patron -saint. - - -IV - -The picturesqueness of Milan has overflowed on its environs, and there -are several directions in which one may prolong the enjoyment of its -characteristic art. The great Certosa of Pavia can, alas, no longer be -included in a category of the picturesque. Secularized, catalogued, -railed off from the sight-seer, who is hurried through its endless -corridors on the heels of a government custodian, it still ministers to -the sense of beauty, but no longer excites those subtler sensations -which dwell in the atmosphere of a work of art rather than in itself. -Such sensations must be sought in the other deserted Certosa at -Chiaravalle. The abbey church, with its noble colonnaded cupola, is -still one of the most conspicuous objects in the flat landscape about -Milan; but within all is falling to ruin, and one feels the melancholy -charm of a beautiful building which has been allowed to decay as -naturally as a tree. The disintegrating touch of nature is less cruel -than the restoring touch of man, and the half-ruined frescoes and -intarsia-work of Chiaravalle retain more of their original significance -than the carefully-guarded treasures of Pavia. - -Less melancholy than Chiaravalle, and as yet unspoiled by the touch -of official preservation, is the pilgrimage church of the Madonna of -Saronno. A long avenue of plane-trees leads from the village to the -sumptuous marble façade of the church, an early Renaissance building -with ornamental additions of the seventeenth century. Within, it is -famous for the frescoes of Luini in the choir, and of Gaudenzio Ferrari -in the cupola. The Luini frescoes are full of a serene impersonal -beauty. Painted in his latest phase, when he had fallen under the -influence of Raphael and the “grand manner,” they lack the intimate -charm of his early works; yet the Lombard note, the Leonardesque -quality, lingers here and there in the side-long glance of the women, -and in the yellow-haired beauty of the adolescent heads; while it finds -completer expression in the exquisite single figures of Saint Catherine -and Saint Apollonia. - -[Illustration: - - _The Church at Saronno_ - - E. C. Peixotto - 1901. -] - -If these stately compositions are less typical of Luini than, for -instance, the frescoes of San Maurizio Maggiore, or of the Casa Pelucca -(now in the Brera), Gaudenzio’s cupola seems, on the contrary, to sum -up in one glorious burst of expression all his fancy had ever evoked -and his hand longed to embody. It seems to have been given to certain -artists to attain, once at least, to this full moment of expression: to -Titian, for instance, in the Bacchus and Ariadne, to Michael Angelo in -the monuments of the Medici, to Giorgione in the Sylvan Concert of the -Louvre. In other works they may reveal greater powers, more magnificent -conceptions; but once only, perhaps, is it given to each to achieve -the perfect equipoise of mind and hand; and in that moment even the -lesser artists verge on greatness. Gaudenzio found his opportunity -in the cupola of Saronno, and for once he rises above the charming -anecdotic painter of Varallo to the brotherhood of the masters. It -is as the expression of a mood that his power reveals itself--the -mood of heavenly joyousness, so vividly embodied in his circle of -choiring angels that form seems to pass into sound, and the dome to -be filled with a burst of heavenly jubilation. With unfaltering hand -he has sustained this note of joyousness. Nowhere does his invention -fail or his brush lag behind it. The sunny crowding heads, the flying -draperies, the fluttering scores of the music, are stirred as by a wind -of inspiration--a breeze from the celestial pastures. The walls of the -choir seem to resound with one of the angel-choruses of “Faust,” or -with the last chiming lines of the “Paradiso.” Happy the artist whose -full powers find voice in such a key! - - -V - -The reader who has followed these desultory wanderings through Milan -has but touched the hem of her garment. In the Brera, the Ambrosiana, -the Poldi-Pezzoli gallery, and the magnificent new Archæological -Museum, now fittingly housed in the old castle of the Sforzas, are -treasures second only to those of Rome and Florence. But these are -among the catalogued riches of the city. The guide-books point to -them, they lie in the beaten track of sight-seeing, and it is rather -in the intervals between such systematized study of the past, in -the parentheses of travel, that one obtains those more intimate -glimpses which help to compose the image of each city, to preserve its -personality in the traveller’s mind. - - - - -ITALIAN BACKGROUNDS - - -I - -In the Italian devotional pictures of the early Renaissance there are -usually two quite unrelated parts: the foreground and the background. - -The foreground is conventional. Its personages--saints, angels and Holy -Family--are the direct descendants of a long line of similar figures. -Every detail of dress and attitude has been settled beforehand by laws -which the artist accepts as passively as the fact that his models -have two eyes apiece, and noses in the middle of their faces. Though -now and then some daring painter introduces a happy modification, -such as the little violin-playing angels on the steps of the Virgin’s -throne, in the pictures of the Venetian school, such changes are too -rare and unimportant to affect the general truth of the statement. -It is only in the background that the artist finds himself free to -express his personality. Here he depicts not what some one else has -long since designed for him, in another land and under different -conceptions of life and faith, but what he actually sees about him, in -the Lombard plains, in the delicately-modelled Tuscan hill-country, -or in the fantastic serrated landscape of the Friulian Alps. One must -look past and beyond the central figures, in their typical attitudes -and symbolical dress, to catch a glimpse of the life amid which the -painting originated. Relegated to the middle distance, and reduced to -insignificant size, is the real picture, the picture which had its -birth in the artist’s brain and reflects his impression of the life -about him. - -Here, for instance, behind a Madonna of Bellini’s, white oxen graze -the pasture, and a shepherd lolls on a bank beside his flock; there, -in the train of the Eastern Kings, real soldiers, clerks, pedlars, -beggars, and all the miscellaneous rabble of the Italian streets wind -down a hill-side crowned by a mediæval keep, and cross a bridge with a -water-mill--just such a bridge and water-mill as the artist may have -sketched in his native village. And in the scenes of the life of the -Virgin, what opportunities for _genre_-painting present themselves! In -Ghirlandaio’s fresco of the Birth of the Virgin, in the apse of Santa -Maria Novella, fine ladies in contemporary costume are congratulating -the conventionally-draped Saint Anna, while Crivelli’s Annunciation, in -the National Gallery, shows an ornate Renaissance palace, with peacocks -spreading their tails on the upper loggia, a sumptuous Eastern rug -hanging over a marble balustrade, and the celestial messenger tripping -up a flight of marble stairs to a fashionable front door. - -No painter was more prodigal than Carpaccio of these intimate details, -or more audacious in the abrupt juxtaposition of devotional figures -with the bustling secular life of his day. His Legend of Saint Ursula, -in the Accademia of Venice, is a storehouse of fifteenth-century -anecdote, an encyclopædia of dress, architecture and manners; and -behind his agonizing Saint Sebastian, tied to a column and riddled with -arrows, the traffic of the Venetian canals goes on unregardingly, as in -life the most trivial activities revolve unheeding about a great sorrow. - -Even painters far less independent of tradition than Carpaccio and -Crivelli succeeded in imparting the personal note, the note of direct -observation, to the background of their religious pictures. If the -figures are placed in a landscape, the latter is not a conventional -grouping of hill, valley and river: it has the unmistakable quality of -the _chose vue_. No one who has studied the backgrounds of old Italian -pictures can imagine that realistic landscape-painting is a modern -art. The technique of the early landscape-painters was not that of the -modern interpreter of nature, but their purpose was the same; they -sought to render with fidelity and precision what they saw about them. -It is this directness of vision which gives to their backgrounds such -vividness and charm. In these distances one may discover the actual -foreground of the artist’s life. Here one may learn what was veritably -happening in fifteenth-century Venice, Florence and Perugia; here see -what horizons the old masters looked out on, and note that the general -aspect of the country is still almost as unchanged as the folds of the -Umbrian mountains and the curves of the Tuscan streams. - - -II - -As with the study of Italian pictures, so it is with Italy herself. -The country is divided, not in _partes tres_, but in two: a foreground -and a background. The foreground is the property of the guide-book -and of its product, the mechanical sight-seer; the background, that -of the dawdler, the dreamer and the serious student of Italy. This -distinction does not imply any depreciation of the foreground. It must -be known thoroughly before the middle distance can be enjoyed: there -is no short cut to an intimacy with Italy. Nor must the analogy of the -devotional picture be pushed too far. The famous paintings, statues -and buildings of Italy are obviously the embodiment of its historic -and artistic growth; but they have become slightly conventionalized by -being too long used as the terms in which Italy is defined. They have -stiffened into symbols, and the life of which they were once the most -complete expression has evaporated in the desiccating museum-atmosphere -to which their fame has condemned them. To enjoy them, one must let in -on them the open air of an observation detached from tradition. Since -they cannot be evaded they must be deconventionalized; and to effect -this they must be considered in relation to the life of which they are -merely the ornamental façade. - -Thus regarded, to what an enchanted region do they form the approach! -Like courteous hosts they efface themselves, pointing the way, but -giving their guests the freedom of their domain. It is not too -fanciful to say that each of the great masterpieces of Italy holds the -key to some secret garden of the imagination. One must know Titian -and Giorgione to enjoy the intimacy of the Friulian Alps, Cima da -Conegliano to taste the full savour of the strange Euganean landscape, -Palladio and Sansovino to appreciate the frivolous villa-architecture -of the Brenta, nay, the domes of Brunelleschi and Michael Angelo to -feel the happy curve of some chapel cupola in a nameless village of the -hills. - -“Une civilisation,” says Viollet-le-Duc, “ne peut prétendre posséder -un art que si cet art pénètre partout, s’il fait sentir sa présence -dans les œuvres les plus vulgaires.” It is because Italian art -so interpenetrated Italian life, because the humblest stonemason -followed in some sort the lines of the great architects, and the -modeller of village Madonnas the composition of the great sculptors, -that the monumental foreground and the unregarded distances behind -it so continually interpret and expound each other. Italy, to her -real lovers, is like a great illuminated book, with here and there -a glorious full-page picture, and between these, page after page of -delicately-pencilled margins, wherein every detail of her daily life -may be traced. And the pictures and the margins are by the same hand. - - -III - -As Italy is divided into foreground and background, so each city has -its perspective; its _premier plan_ asterisked for the hasty traveller, -its middle distance for the “happy few” who remain more than three -days, and its boundless horizon for the idler who refuses to measure -art by time. In some cases the background is the continuation, the -amplification, of the central “subject”; in others, its direct -antithesis. Thus in Umbria, and in some parts of Tuscany and the -Marches, art, architecture, history and landscape all supplement and -continue each other, and the least imaginative tourist must feel that -in leaving the galleries of Siena or Florence for the streets and the -surrounding country, he is still within the bounds of conventional -sight-seeing. - -In Rome, on the contrary, in Milan, and to some extent in Venice, as -well as in many of the smaller towns throughout Italy, there is a sharp -line of demarcation between the guide-book city and its background. -In some cases, the latter is composed mainly of objects at which the -guide-book tourist has been taught to look askance, or rather which he -has been counselled to pass by without a look. Goethe has long been -held up to the derision of the enlightened student of art because he -went to Assisi to see the Roman temple of Minerva, and omitted to visit -the mediæval church of Saint Francis; but how many modern sight-seers -visit the church and omit the temple? And wherein lies their superior -catholicity of taste? The fact is that, in this particular instance, -foreground and background have changed places, and the modern tourist -who neglects Minerva for Saint Francis is as narrowly bound by -tradition as his eighteenth-century predecessor, with this difference, -that whereas the latter knew nothing of mediæval art and architecture, -the modern tourist knows that the temple is there and deliberately -turns his back on it. - - -IV - -Perhaps Rome is, of all Italian cities, the one in which this -one-sidedness of æsthetic interest is most oddly exemplified. In the -Tuscan and Umbrian cities, as has been said, the art and architecture -which form the sight-seer’s accepted “curriculum,” are still the -distinctive features of the streets through which he walks to his -gallery or his museum. In Florence, for instance, he may go forth from -the Riccardi chapel, and see the castle of Vincigliata towering on its -cypress-clad hill precisely as Gozzoli depicted it in his fresco; in -Siena, the crenellated palaces with their iron torch-holders and barred -windows form the unchanged setting of a mediæval pageant. But in Rome -for centuries it has been the fashion to look only on a city which has -almost disappeared, and to close the eyes to one which is still alive -and actual. - -The student of ancient Rome moves among painfully-reconstructed -débris; the mediævalist must traverse the city from end to end to -piece together the meagre fragments of his “epoch.” Both studies are -absorbing, and the very difficulty of the chase no doubt adds to its -exhilaration; but is it not a curious mental attitude which compels -the devotee of mediæval art to walk blindfold from the Palazzo Venezia -to Santa Sabina on the Aventine, or from the Ara Cœli to Santa Maria -Sopra Minerva, because the great monuments lying between these points -of his pilgrimage belong to what some one has taught him to regard as a -“debased period of art”? - -Rome is the most undisturbed baroque city of Italy. The great revival -of its spiritual and temporal power coincided with the development -of that phase of art of which Michael Angelo sowed the seed in Rome -itself. The germs of Bernini and Tiepolo must be sought in the Sistine -ceiling and in the Moses of San Pietro in Vincoli, however much the -devotees of Michael Angelo may resent the tracing of such a lineage. -But it is hard at this date to be patient with any form of artistic -absolutism, with any critical criteria not based on that sense of -the comparative which is the nineteenth century’s most important -contribution to the function of criticism. It is hard to be tolerant of -that peculiar form of intolerance which refuses to recognize in art -the general law of growth and transformation, or, while recognizing -it, considers it a subject for futile reproach and lamentation. The -art critic must acknowledge a standard of excellence, and must be -allowed his personal preferences within the range of established -criteria: æsthetically, the world is divided into the Gothically and -the classically minded, just as intellectually it is divided into those -who rise to the general idea and those who pause at the particular -instance. The lover of the particular instance will almost always have -a taste for the Gothic, which is the personal and anecdotic in art -carried to its utmost expression, at the cost of synthetic effect; but -if he be at all accessible to general ideas, he must recognize the -futility of battling against the inevitable tendencies of taste and -invention. Granted that, from his standpoint, the art which evolved -from Michael Angelo is an art of decadence: is that a reason for -raging at it or ignoring it? The autumn is a season of decadence; -but even by those who prefer the spring, it has not hitherto been an -object of invective and reprobation. Only when the art critic begins -to survey the modifications of art as objectively as he would study -the alternations of the seasons, will he begin to understand and -to sympathize with the different modes in which man has sought to -formulate his gropings after beauty. If it be true in the world of -sentiment that _il faut aimer pour comprendre_, the converse is true in -the world of art. To enjoy any form of artistic expression one must not -only understand what it tries to express, but know - - _The hills where its life rose, - And the sea where it goes._ - -Thus philosophically viewed, the baroque Rome--the Rome of Bernini, -Borromini and Maderna, of Guercino, the Caracci and Claude -Lorrain--becomes of great interest even to those who are not in -sympathy with the exuberances of seventeenth-century art. In the -first place, the great number of baroque buildings, churches, palaces -and villas, the grandeur of their scale, and the happy incidents of -their grouping, give a better idea than can elsewhere be obtained of -the collective effects of which the style is capable. Thus viewed, -it will be seen to be essentially a style _de parade_, the setting -of the spectacular and external life which had developed from the -more secluded civilization of the Renaissance as some blossom of -immense size and dazzling colour may develop in the atmosphere of the -forcing-house from a smaller and more delicate flower. The process was -inevitable, and the result exemplifies the way in which new conditions -will generate new forms of talent. - -It is in moments of social and artistic transformation that original -genius shows itself, and Bernini was the genius of the baroque -movement. To those who study his work in the light of the conditions -which produced it, he will appear as the natural interpreter of that -sumptuous _bravura_ period when the pomp of a revived ecclesiasticism -and the elaborate etiquette of Spain were blent with a growing taste -for country life, for the solemnities and amplitudes of nature. -The mingling of these antagonistic interests has produced an art -distinctive enough to take rank among the recognized “styles”: an art -in which excessive formality and ostentation are tempered by a free -play of line, as though the winds of heaven swept unhindered through -the heavy draperies of a palace. It need not be denied that delicacy -of detail, sobriety of means and the effect of repose were often -sacrificed to these new requirements; but it is more fruitful to -observe how skilfully Bernini and his best pupils managed to preserve -the balance and rhythm of their bold compositions, and how seldom -profusion led to incoherence. How successfully the Italian sense of -form ruled over this semi-Spanish chaos of material, and drew forth -from it the classic line, may be judged from the way in which the -seventeenth-century churches about the Forum harmonize with the ruins -of ancient Rome. Surely none but the most bigoted archæologist would -wish away from that magic scene the façades of San Lorenzo in Miranda -and of Santa Francesca Romana! - -In this connection it might be well for the purist to consider what -would be lost if the seventeenth-century Rome which he affects to -ignore were actually blotted out. The Spanish Steps would of course -disappear, with the palace of the Propaganda; so would the glorious -Barberini palace, and Bernini’s neighbouring fountain of the Triton; -the via delle Quattro Fontane, with its dripping river-gods emerging -from their grottoes, and Borromini’s fantastic church of San Carlo at -the head of the street, a kaleidoscope of whirling line and ornament, -offset by the delicately classical circular cortile of the adjoining -monastery. On the Quirinal hill, the palace of the Consulta would go, -and the central portal of the Quirinal (a work of Bernini’s), as well -as the splendid gateway of the Colonna gardens. The Colonna palace -itself, dull and monotonous without, but within the very model of a -magnificent pleasure-house, would likewise be effaced; so would many -of the most characteristic buildings of the Corso--San Marcello, the -Gesù, the Sciarra and Doria palaces, and the great Roman College. Gone, -too, would be the Fountain of Trevi, and Lunghi’s gay little church -of San Vincenzo ed Anastasio, which faces it so charmingly across the -square; gone the pillared court-yard and great painted galleries of -the Borghese palace, and the Fontana dei Termini with its beautiful -group of adjoining churches; the great fountain of the piazza Navona, -Lunghi’s stately façade of the Chiesa Nuova, and Borromini’s Oratory -of San Filippo Neri; the monumental Fountain of the Acqua Paola on the -Janiculan, the familiar “Angels of the Passion” on the bridge of Sant’ -Angelo, and, in the heart of the Leonine City itself, the mighty sweep -of Bernini’s marble colonnades and the flying spray of his Vatican -fountains. - -This enumeration includes but a small number of the baroque buildings -of Rome, and the villas encircling the city have not been named, -though nearly all, with their unmatched gardens, are due to the art -of this “debased” period. But let the candid sight-seer--even he -who has no tolerance of the seventeenth century, and to whom each -of the above-named buildings may be, individually, an object of -reprobation--let even this sectary of art ask himself how much of -“mighty splendent Rome” would be left, were it possible to obliterate -the buildings erected during the fever of architectural renovation -which raged from the accession of Sixtus V to the last years of the -seventeenth century. Whether or no he would deplore the loss of any one -of these buildings, he would be constrained to own that collectively -they go far toward composing the physiognomy of the Rome he loves. -So far-spreading was the architectural renascence of the seventeenth -century, and so vast were the opportunities afforded to its chief -exponents, that every quarter of the ancient city is saturated with -the _bravura_ spirit of Bernini and Borromini. Some may think that -Rome itself is the best defence of the baroque: that an art which -could so envelop without eclipsing the mighty monuments amid which -it was called to work, which could give expression to a brilliant -present without jarring on a warlike or ascetic past, which could, in -short, fuse Imperial and early Christian Rome with the city of Spanish -ceremonial and post-Tridentine piety, needs no better justification -than the _Circumspice_ of Wren. But even those who remain unconverted, -who cannot effect the transference of artistic and historic sympathy -necessary to a real understanding of seventeenth-century architecture, -should at least realize that the Rome which excites a passion of -devotion such as no other city can inspire, the Rome for which -travellers pine in absence, and to which they return again and again -with the fresh ardour of discovery, is, externally at least, in great -part the creation of the seventeenth century. - - -V - -In Venice the foreground is Byzantine-Gothic, with an admixture -of early Renaissance. It extends from the church of Torcello to -the canvases of Tintoretto. This foreground has been celebrated in -literature with a vehemence and profusion which have projected it still -farther into the public consciousness, and more completely obscured the -fact that there is another Venice, a background Venice, the Venice of -the eighteenth century. - -Eighteenth-century Venice was not always thus relegated to the -background. It had its day, when tourists pronounced Saint Mark’s an -example of “the barbarous Gothick,” and were better acquainted with -the ridotto of San Moisè than with the monuments of the Frari. It -is instructive to note that the Venice of that day had no galleries -and no museums. Travellers did not go there to be edified, but to be -amused; and one may fancy with what relief the young nobleman on the -grand tour, sated with the marbles of Rome and the canvases of Parma -and Bologna, turned aside for a moment to a city where enjoyment was -the only art and life the only object of study. But while travellers -were flocking to Venice to see its carnival and gaming-rooms, its -public festivals and private _casini_, a generation of artists were -at work brushing in the gay background of the scene, and quiet hands -were recording, in a series of memorable little pictures, every phase -of that last brilliant ebullition of the _joie de vivre_ before “the -kissing had to stop.” - -Longhena and his pupils were the architects of this bright _mise en -scène_, Tiepolo was its great scene-painter, and Canaletto, Guardi -and Longhi were the historians who captured every phrase and gesture -with such delicacy and precision that under their hands the glittering -Venice of the “Toccata of Galuppi” lies outspread like a butterfly with -the bloom on its wings. - -Externally, Venice did not undergo the same renovation as Rome. As she -was at the close of the Renaissance, with the impress of Palladio and -Sansovino on her religious and secular architecture, so she remains -to this day. One original architect, Baldassare Longhena, struck the -note of a brilliant _barocchismo_ in the churches of Santa Maria della -Salute and the Scalzi, and in the Pesaro and Rezzonico palaces on the -Grand Canal; and his pupils, developing his manner with infinitely -less talent, gave to Venice the long squat Dogana with its flying -Fortune fronting the Lagoon, the churches of Santa Maria Zobenigo, -San Moisè and the Gesuiti, the Monte di Pietà, and a score of imposing -palaces. The main effect of the city was, however, little modified by -this brief flowering of the baroque. Venice has always stamped every -new fashion with her own personality, and Longhena’s architecture -seems merely the hot-house efflorescence of the style of Sansovino and -Scamozzi. Being, moreover, less under the sway of the Church than any -other Italian state, she was able to resist the architectural livery -with which the great Jesuit subjugation clad the rest of Italy. The -spirit of the eighteenth century therefore expressed itself rather in -her expanding social life, and in the decorative arts which attend -on such drawing-room revivals. Skilful _stuccatori_ adorned the old -saloons and galleries with fresh gilding and mirrors, slender furniture -replaced the monumental cabinets which Venice had borrowed from Spain, -and little _genre_-pictures by Longhi and landscapes by Canaletto and -Battaglia were hung on the large-patterned damask of the boudoir walls. -Religion followed the same lines, adapting itself to the elegancies -of the drawing-room, and six noble families recognized their social -obligations to heaven by erecting the sumptuous church of Santa Maria -degli Scalzi, with its palatial interior, in which one may well imagine -the heavenly hostess saying to her noble donators: “Couvrez-vous, mes -cousins.” - -Though begun by Longhena about 1650, the church of the Scalzi is so -identified with the genius of Tiepolo that it may be regarded as an -epitome of eighteenth-century Venetian art. Herr Cornelius Gurlitt, -the most penetrating critic of the Venetian baroque, has indeed justly -pointed out that Longhena was the forerunner and _Geistesgenossen_ of -the great master of eighteenth-century decorative painting, and that -the architect’s bold and sumptuous structural effects might have been -designed as a setting for those unsurpassed audacities of the brush -which, a hundred years later, were to continue and complete them. - -On the soaring vault of the Scalzi, above an interior of almost -Palladian elegance and severity, the great painter of atmosphere, the -first of the _pleinairistes_, was required to depict the transportation -of the Holy House from Palestine to Loreto. That Tiepolo, with his -love of ethereal distances, and of cloud-like hues melting into thin -air, should have accepted the task of representing a stone house -borne through the sky by angels, shows a rare sense of mastery; that -he achieved the feat without disaster justifies the audacity of the -attempt. - -Tiepolo was above all a lover of open spaces. He liked to suspend -his fluttering groups in great pellucid reaches of sky, and the vast -ceiling of the Scalzi gave him an exceptional opportunity for the -development of this effect. The result is that the angels, whirling -along the Virgin’s house with a vehemence which makes it seem a -mere feather in the rush of their flight, appear to be sweeping -through measureless heights of air above an unroofed building. The -architectural propriety of such a _trompe l’œil_ is not only open to -criticism but perhaps quite indefensible; yet, given the demand for -this particular illusion, who but Tiepolo could have produced it? - -The same ethereal effect, but raised to a higher heaven of -translucency, is to be found in the ceiling of the Gesuati (not to be -confounded with the Gesuiti), on the quay of the Zattere. This charming -structure, built in the early eighteenth century by Massari, one of -the pupils of Longhena, but obviously inspired by the great churches -of Palladio, is dedicated to Saint Mary of the Rosary; and Tiepolo, in -three incomparable frescoes, has represented on its ceiling the legend -of Saint Dominick receiving the chaplet from the Virgin in glory. - -The guide-books, always on the alert to warn the traveller against an -undue admiration of Tiepolo, are careful to point out that the Mother -of God, bending from her starry throne above the ecstatic saint, looks -like a noble Venetian lady of the painter’s day. No doubt she does. -It is impossible to form an intelligent estimate of Tiepolo’s genius -without remembering that the Catholicism of his time was a religion -of _bon ton_, which aimed to make its noble devotees as much at home -in church as in the drawing-room. He took his models from real life -and composed his celestial scenes without much thought of their inner -significance; yet by sheer force of technique he contrived to impart -to his great religious pictures a glow of supernatural splendour which -makes it not inapt to apply to them the lines of the “Paradiso”: - - _Che la luce divina è penetrante - Per l’universo, secondo ch’è degno, - Sichè nulla le puote essere ostante._ - - -VI - -It is quite true, however, that Tiepolo was not primarily a devotional -painter. He was first of all a great decorative artist, a master of -emotion in motion, and it probably mattered little to him whether he -was called on to express the passion of Saint Theresa or of Cleopatra. -This does not imply that he executed his task indifferently. Whatever -it was, he threw into it the whole force of his vehement imagination -and incomparable _maestria_; but what he saw in it, whether it was -religious or worldly, was chiefly, no doubt, the opportunity to obtain -new effects of light and line. - -If he had a special bent, it was perhaps toward the depicting of -worldly pageants. In the Labia palace on the Canareggio, a building -in which Cominelli, the ablest Venetian architect of the eighteenth -century, nobly continued the “grand manner” of Sansovino and Scamozzi, -Tiepolo found an unequalled opportunity for the exercise of this -side of his talent. Here, in the lofty saloon of the _piano nobile_, -he painted the loves of Antony and Cleopatra transposed to the -key of modern patrician life. He first covered the walls with an -architectural improvisation of porticoes, loggias and colonnades, which -might have been erected to celebrate the “triumph” of some magnificent -Este or Gonzaga. In this splendid setting he placed two great scenes: -Cleopatra melting the pearl, and Antony and Cleopatra landing from -their barge; while every gallery, balcony and flight of steps is filled -with courtiers, pages and soldiers, with dwarfs and blackamoors holding -hounds in leash, and waiting-maids and lacqueys leaning down to see the -pageant. - -From this throng of figures the principal characters detach themselves -with a kind of delicate splendour. Royal Egypt, - - _On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed_, - -in her brocaded gown of white and gold, with a pearl collar about -her throat, and a little toy spaniel playing at her feet, is an -eighteenth-century Dogaressa; Antony is a young Procurator travestied -as a Roman hero; while the turbaned black boy, the maid-servants, -the courtiers, the pages, are all taken _sur le vif_ from some -brilliant rout in a Pisano or Mocenigo palace. And yet--here comes -the wonder--into these “water-flies” and triflers of his day, the -ladies engrossed in cards and scandal, the abatini preoccupied with -their acrostics, the young nobles intriguing with the _prima amorosa_ -of San Moisè or engaged in a sentimental correspondence with a nun of -Santa Chiara--into this throng of shallow pleasure-seekers Tiepolo has -managed to infuse something of the old Roman state. As one may think of -Dante beneath the vault of the Gesuati, one may recall Shakespeare in -the presence of these rouged and powdered Venetians. The scene of the -landing suggests with curious vividness the opening scene of “Antony -and Cleopatra”-- - - _Look where they come! - The triple pillar of the world transformed - Into a strumpet’s fool--_ - -and one can almost hear the golden Antony, as he brushes aside the -importunate Roman messengers, whispering to his Queen: “What sport -to-night?” - -Still more Shakespearian is the scene of the pearl. Cleopatra, -enthroned in state at the banqueting-table, lifts one hand to drop the -jewel into her goblet, and in her gesture and her smile are summed up -all the cruel grace of the “false soul of Egypt.” It is Tiepolo’s -best praise that such phrases and associations as these are evoked by -his art, and that, judged from the painter’s standpoint, it recalls -the glory of another great tradition. Studied in the light of Venetian -painting, Tiepolo is seen to be the direct descendant of Titian and -Veronese. If the intervening century has taken something from the -warmth of his colour, leaving it too often chalky where that of the -Renaissance was golden, he has recovered the lines, the types and the -radiant majesty of the Venetian _cinque cento_, and Veronese’s Venice -Enthroned, in the Ducal Palace, is the direct forbear of his Virgins -and Cleopatras. - - -VII - -It is perhaps no longer accurate to describe Tiepolo as forming a part -of the Venetian background. Recent criticism has advanced him to the -middle distance, and if there are still comparatively few who know his -work, his name is familiar to the cultivated minority of travellers. - -Far behind him, however, still on the vanishing-point of the tourist’s -horizon, are the other figures of the Venetian background: Longhi, -Guardi, Canaletto, and their humbler understudies. Of these, Canaletto -alone emerges into relative prominence. His views of Venice are to -be found in so many European galleries, and his name so facilitates -the association of ideas, that, if few appreciate his work, many are -superficially acquainted with it; whereas Guardi, a painter of greater -though more unequal talent, is still known only to the dilettante. - -The work of both is invaluable as a “document” for the study of -eighteenth-century Venice; but while Canaletto in his charming canvases -represented only the superficial and obvious aspect of the city, as it -might appear to any appreciative stranger, Guardi, one of the earliest -impressionists, gives the real life of the streets, the _grouillement_ -of the crowd in Saint Mark’s square, the many-coloured splash of a -church procession surging up the steps of the Redentore, the flutter of -awnings over market-stalls on a fair-day, or the wide black trail of a -boat-race across the ruffled green waters of the Canalazzo. - -Far beneath these two men in talent, but invaluable as a chronicler of -Venetian life, is Canaletto’s son-in-law, Bellotti, who, in a stiff -topographical manner, has faithfully and minutely recorded every -detail of eighteenth-century life on the canals. Being of interest -only to the student of manners, he is seldom represented in the public -galleries; but many private collections in the north of Italy contain -a series of his pictures, giving all the Venetian festivals, from the -Marriage of the Adriatic to the great feat of the _Vola_, which took -place in the Piazzetta on the last Thursday before Lent. - -As unknown to the general public as Bellotti, but more sought after by -connoisseurs than any other Italian artist of the eighteenth century -save Tiepolo, is Pietro Longhi, the _genre_-painter, whose exquisite -little transcripts of Venetian domestic life now fetch their weight in -gold at Christie’s or the Hôtel Drouot. Longhi’s talent is a peculiar -one. To “taste” him, as the French say, one must understand the -fundamental naïveté of that brilliant and corrupt Venetian society, -as it is revealed in the comedies of Goldoni and in the memoirs of -contemporary writers. The Venetians were, in fact, amoral rather -than immoral. There was nothing complex or morbid in their vice; it -was hardly vice at all, in the sense which implies the deliberate -saying of “Evil, be thou my good.” Venetian immorality was a mere -yielding to natural instincts, to the _joie de vivre_ of a gay and -sensuous temperament. There was no intellectual depravity in Venice -because there was hardly any intellect: there was no thought of evil -because there was no thought. The fashionable sinners whom posterity -has pictured as revelling in the complexities of vice sat enchanted -before the simple scenes of Goldoni’s drama, and the equally simple -pictures of their favourite _genre_-painter. Nor must it be thought -that this taste for simplicity and innocence was evidence of a subtler -perversion. The French profligate sought in imagination the contrast of -an ideal world, the milk and rose-water world of Gessner’s Idylls and -the _bergerie de Florian_. But Goldoni and Longhi are not idealists, -or even sentimentalists. They draw with a frank hand the life of their -day, from the fisherman’s hut to the patrician’s palace. Nothing can -be more unmistakable than the realism of Goldoni’s dialect plays, and -a people who could enjoy such simple pictures of the life about them -must, in a sense, have led simple lives themselves. - -Longhi’s easel-pictures record every phase of Venetian middle-class -and aristocratic existence. To some, indeed, it is difficult to find -a clue, and it has been conjectured that these represent scenes from -the popular comedies of the day. The others depict such well-known -incidents as the visit to the convent parlour, where the nuns are -entertaining their gallants with a marionette-show; the masked _nobil -donna_ consulting the fortune-teller, or walking with her _cicisbeo_ -in Saint Mark’s square; the same lady’s _lever_, where she is seen at -her toilet-table surrounded by admirers; the family party at breakfast, -with the nurse bringing in a swaddled baby; the little son and heir -riding out attended by his governor; the actress rehearsing her aria -with the _maestro di cappella_; the visit to the famous hippopotamus -in his tent in the Piazzetta; the dancing-lesson, the music-lesson, -the portrait-painting, and a hundred other episodes of social and -domestic life. The personages who take part in these scenes are always -of one type: the young women with small oval faces, powdered but -unrouged, with red lips and sloping foreheads; the men in cloaks and -masks, or gay embroidered coats, with square brows and rather snub -features, gallant, flourishing, _empressés_, but never in the least -idealized or sentimentalized. The scenes of “high life” take place -for the most part in tall bare rooms, with stone window-frames, a -family portrait of a doge or an admiral above the chimney-piece, and a -few stiff arm-chairs of the heavy Venetian baroque. There is nothing -sumptuous in the furnishing of the apartments or in the dress of their -inmates. The ladies, if they are going abroad or paying a visit, wear -a three-cornered hat above the black lace _zendaletto_ which hides -their hair and the lower part of the face, while their dresses are -covered by the black silk _bauto_ or domino. Indoors, they are attired -in simple short gowns of silk or brocade, with a kerchief on the -shoulders, and a rose or a clove-pink in the unpowdered hair. That -pleasure in the painting of gorgeous stuffs, and in all the material -splendours of life, derived by Tiepolo from his great predecessors of -the Renaissance, was not shared by Longhi. His charm lies in a less -definable quality, a quality of unstudied simplicity and naturalness, -which gives to his easel-pictures the value of actual transcripts from -life. One feels that he did not “arrange” his scenes, any more than -Goldoni constructed his comedies. Both were content to reflect, in the -mirror of a quietly humorous observation, the every-day incidents of -the piazza, the convent and the palace. - -The fact that Longhi, in his _genre_-pictures, sought so little -variety of grouping, and was content to limit his figures to so small -a range of gestures, has given rise to the idea that he was incapable -of versatility and breadth of composition. To be undeceived on this -point, however, one has only to see his frescoes in the Palazzo Grassi -(now Sina) on the Grand Canal. This fine palace, built about 1740 -by Massari, the architect of the Gesuati, has a magnificent double -stairway leading from the colonnaded court to the state apartments -above; and on the walls of this stairway Longhi, for once laying aside -his small canvases and simple methods, has depicted, in a series of -charmingly-animated groups, the members of the Grassi family leaning -over a marble balustrade to see their guests ascending the stairs. -The variety of these groups, the expressiveness of the faces, and the -general breadth of treatment, prove that Longhi had far more technical -and imaginative power than he chose to put into his little pictures, -and that his naïveté was a matter of choice. Probably no one who knows -his work regrets this self-imposed limitation. Additional movement and -complexity of grouping would destroy the sense of leisure, of spacious -rooms and ample time, of that absence of hurry and confusion so typical -of a society untroubled by moral responsibilities or social rivalries, -and pursuing pleasure with the well-bred calmness which was one of the -most charming traits obliterated by the French Revolution. - - -VIII - -On a quiet canal not far from the church of the Frari there stands an -old palace where, in a series of undisturbed rooms, may be seen the -very setting in which the personages of Goldoni and Longhi played out -their social comedy. - -The Palazzo Querini-Stampaglia was bequeathed to the city of Venice -some fifty years since by the last Count Querini, and with its gallery, -its library and its private apartments has since then stood open to -a public which never visits it. Yet here the student of Venetian -backgrounds may find the unchanged atmosphere of the eighteenth -century. The gallery, besides some good paintings of earlier schools, -contains a large collection of Bellotti’s pictures, representing all -the great religious and popular festivals of Venice, as well as a -half-dozen Longhis and a charming series of _genre_-pictures by unknown -artists of his school. - -Of far greater interest, however, are the private apartments, with -their seventeenth and eighteenth century decorations still intact, -and the walls lined with the heavy baroque consoles and arm-chairs -so familiar to students of Longhi’s interiors, and of the charming -prints in the first edition of Goldoni. Here is the typical _chambre -de parade_, with its pale-green damask curtains and bed-hangings, and -its furniture painted with flowers on a ground of pale-green _laque_; -here the tapestried saloon with its Murano chandeliers, the boudoir -with looking-glass panels set in delicately carved and painted wreaths -of flowers and foliage, and the portrait-room hung with pictures of the -three great Querini: the Doge, the Cardinal and the Admiral. Here, too, -is the long gallery, with a bust of the Cardinal (a seventeenth-century -prince of the Church) surrounded by marble effigies of his seven -_bravi_: a series of Berniniesque heads of remarkable vigour and -individuality, from that of the hoary hang-dog scoundrel with -elf-locks drooping over an evil scowl, to the smooth young villain with -bare throat and insolent stare, who seems to glory in his own sinister -beauty. - -These busts give an insight into a different phase of Italian life: -the life of the violent and tragical seventeenth century, when every -great personage, in the Church no less than in the world, had his -bodyguard of hardened criminals, outlaws and galley-slaves, who -received sanctuary in their patron’s palace, and performed in return -such acts of villany and violence as the Illustrissimo required. It -seems a far cry from the peaceable world of Goldoni and Longhi to this -prelate surrounded by the effigies of his hired assassins; yet _bravi_, -though no longer openly acknowledged or immortalized in marble, lurked -in the background of Italian life as late as the end of the eighteenth -century, and Stendhal, who knew Italy as few foreigners have known -it, declares that in his day the great Lombard nobles still had their -retinue of _bauli_, as the knights of the stiletto were called in the -Milanese. - -It is not in art only that the _bravi_ have been commemorated. Lovers -of “I Promessi Sposi,” the one great Italian novel, will not soon -forget the followers of Don Rodrigo; and an idea of the part they -played at the end of the eighteenth century may be obtained from the -pages of Ippolito Nievo’s “Confessioni di un Ottuagenario,” that -delightful book, half romance, half autobiography, which, after many -years of incredible neglect, has just been republished in Italy. -Ippolito Nievo, one of Garibaldi’s young soldiers, was among those -who perished in the wreck of the _Ercole_, on the return from Palermo -in 1860. He was but twenty-nine at the time of his death, and it is -said that his impatience to see a lady to whom he was attached caused -him, despite the entreaties of his friends, to take passage in the -notoriously unseaworthy _Ercole_. Four years earlier he had written the -“Confessioni,” a volume which, for desultory charm and simple rendering -of domestic incidents, is not unworthy to take rank with “Dichtung -und Wahrheit,” while its capricious heroine, La Pisana, is as vivid a -creation as Goethe’s Philina or (one had almost said) as the Beatrix of -Thackeray. - -Ippolito Nievo was himself a native of the Veneto, and intimately -acquainted, through family tradition, with the life of the small -towns and villa-castles of the Venetian mainland at the close of the -eighteenth century. The “Confessioni” picture the life of a young -lad in a nobleman’s castle near the town of Portogruaro, and later -in Venice; and not the least remarkable thing about the book is the -fact that, at a period when other Italian novelists were depicting the -high-flown adventures of mediæval knights and ladies, its young author, -discarding the old stage-properties of romanticism, should have set -himself to recording, with the wealth of detail and quiet humour of a -Dutch _genre_-painter, the manners and customs of his own little corner -of Italy, as his parents had described it to him. Nievo’s account of -the provincial nobles in the Veneto shows that to the very end of the -eighteenth century, mediæval customs, with all their violence and -treachery, prevailed within a day’s journey of polished and peaceful -Venice. His nobles in their fortified castles, of which the drawbridges -are still raised at night, have their little trains of men-at-arms, -composed in general of the tattered peasantry on their estates, but -sometimes of professional fighters, smugglers or outlaws, who have been -taken into the service of some truculent lord of the manor; and Nievo -describes with much humour the conflicts between these little armies, -and the ruses, plots and negotiations of their quarrelsome masters. - -In another novel, published at about the same time, Pietro Scudo, -a Venetian who wrote in French, has drawn, with far less talent, a -picture of another side of Venetian life: the life of the musical -schools and the Opera, which George Sand had attempted to represent in -“Consuelo.” Scudo’s book, “Le Chevalier Sarti,” has fallen into not -unmerited oblivion. It is written in the insipid style of the romantic -period--that style which Flaubert, in a moment of exasperation, -described as “les embêtements bleuâtres du lyrisme poitrinaire”; and -its heroine, like Châteaubriand’s unhappy Madame de Beaumont, dies of -the fashionable ailment of the day, _une maladie de langueur_. The -book, moreover, is badly constructed to the verge of incoherence, and -the characters are the stock mannikins of romantic fiction; yet in -spite of these defects, Scudo has succeeded (where George Sand failed) -in reproducing the atmosphere of eighteenth-century Venice. He has -done this not by force of talent but by the patient accumulation of -detail. Though not the most important feature in the construction -of a good historical novel, this is an essential part of the -process. George Sand, however, was above such humble methods. Totally -lacking in artistic sensibility and in its accompanying faculty, -the historic imagination, she was obliged to confine herself to the -vaguest generalities in describing scenes and manners so alien to the -“romantic” conception of life. Nature and passion were the only things -which interested her, and in the Venice of the eighteenth century -there was no nature and little passion. Hence the Venetian scenes of -“Consuelo” give the impression of having been done _de chic_, while -Scudo’s bear the impress of an unimaginative accuracy. In “Le Chevalier -Sarti” the lover of “decadent” Venice will find innumerable curious -details, descriptions of life in the villas of the Brenta, of concerts -in the famous Scuole, carnival scenes at the ridotto, and _parties -fines_ at the Orto di San Stefano, the favourite resort of the world -of gallantry; while the minor characters of the book, who have escaped -the obligatory romanticism of the hero and heroine, help to make up the -crowded picture of a world as bright and brittle as a sun-shot Murano -glass. - - -IX - -But it is, after all, not in Nievo or Scudo, nor even in Longhi -and Goldoni, that one comes closest to the vanished Venice of the -eighteenth century. - -In the Museo Correr, on the Grand Canal, there has recently been opened -a room containing an assemblage of life-sized mannikins dressed in the -various costumes of the _sette cento_. - -Here are the red-robed Senator, the proud Procuratessa in brocade and -Murano lace, the Abatino in his plum coloured taffeta coat and black -small-clothes, the fashionable reveller in _bauto_ and mask, the -lacquey in livery of pale-blue silk, the lawyer, the gondolier, the -groom, and the noble Marquess in his hunting-dress of white buckskin. -Surely nowhere else does one come into such actual contact with that -little world which was so essentially a world of _appearances_--of fine -clothes, gay colours and graceful courtly attitudes. The mannikins -indeed are not graceful. The Cavaliere Leandro can no longer execute a -sweeping bow at the approach of the Procuratessa, or slip a love-letter -into the muff of the charming Angelica; the Senator may stare as -haughtily as he pleases at the Abate and the lawyer, without compelling -those humble clients to stir an inch from his path; and the noble -Marquess, in his spotless buckskin leggings and gauntlets, will never -again be off to shoot thrushes from a “bird-tower” in the Euganeans. -But the very rigidity of their once supple joints seems an allegory of -their latter state. There they stand, poor dolls of destiny, discarded -playthings of the gods, in attitudes of puzzled wonder, as if arrested -in their revels by the stroke of the dread Corsican magician--for it -was not Death but Napoleon who “stepped tacitly and took them” from the -plots and pleasures, the sunshine and music of the canals, to that pale -world of oblivion where only now and then some dreamer curious of the -day of little things revisits their melancholy ghosts. - - - - -Transcriber’s Notes - - -Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a -predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not -changed. - -The spelling of non-English words was not checked. - -Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced -quotation marks retained. - -Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. - -Redundant chapter titles removed by Transcriber. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Italian Backgrounds, by Edith Wharton - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ITALIAN BACKGROUNDS *** - -***** This file should be named 54932-0.txt or 54932-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/4/9/3/54932/ - -Produced by Mary Glenn Krause, MFR, Charlie Howard, and -the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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