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- margin-bottom: 1em; - padding: .5em; - } - - .cap-container {float: none; padding-left: 50%;} - - -} - </style> - </head> - -<body> - - -<pre> - -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) - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<h1>ITALIAN BACKGROUNDS</h1> - -<div id="i_1" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 27.6875em;"> - <img src="images/i_004.jpg" width="443" height="600" alt="" /> - <div class="cap-container"><div class="caption"> -<i>Group from the Crucifixion<br /> -San Vivaldo</i></div></div></div> - -<p class="newpage p4 center wspace xxlarge"> -ITALIAN BACKGROUNDS</p> - -<p class="p2 center">BY<br /> -<span class="larger wspace">EDITH WHARTON</span></p> - -<p class="p2 center">ILLUSTRATED BY E. C. PEIXOTTO</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="max-width: 15.0625em;"> - <img src="images/i_005.jpg" width="241" height="340" alt="" /></div> - -<p class="p2 center larger vspace wspace">NEW YORK<br /> -CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS<br /> -<span class="gesperrt">MCMV</span> -</p> - -<hr /> - -<p class="newpage p4 center smaller"> -Copyright, 1905, by<br /> -<span class="smcap">Charles Scribner’s Sons</span><br /> -<br /> -<i>Published April, 1905</i></p> - -<p class="p2 center smaller sans">THE DE VINNE PRESS -</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="TABLE_OF_CONTENTS"></a>TABLE OF CONTENTS</h2> -</div> - -<table summary="Table of Contents"> - <tr class="small"> - <td class="nopad"> </td> - <td class="tdr nopad">PAGE</td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">AN ALPINE POSTING-INN</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#hdr_1">1</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">A MIDSUMMER WEEK’S DREAM</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#hdr_2">15</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">THE SANCTUARIES OF THE PENNINE ALPS</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#hdr_3">39</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">WHAT THE HERMITS SAW</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#hdr_4">63</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">A TUSCAN SHRINE</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#hdr_5">83</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">SUB UMBRA LILIORUM</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#hdr_6">107</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">MARCH IN ITALY</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#hdr_7">125</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">PICTURESQUE MILAN</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#hdr_8">153</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">ITALIAN BACKGROUNDS</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#hdr_9">171</a></td></tr> -</table> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> -</div> - -<table summary="List of Illustrations"> - <tr> - <td class="tdl nopad">GROUP FROM THE CRUCIFIXION—SAN VIVALDO</td> - <td class="tdr nopad"><a href="#i_1"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr> - <tr class="xsmall"> - <td class="nopad"> </td> - <td class="tdr nopad">FACING PAGE</td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">BY THE PORT OF LOVERE</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#i_2">20</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">THE MUNICIPIO—BRESCIA</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#i_3">28</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">CHIESA DEI MIRACOLI—BRESCIA</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#i_4">36</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">THE INNER QUADRANGLE AT OROPA</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#i_5">46</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">THE MAIN COURT OF THE SACRO MONTE AT VARALLO</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#i_6">56</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">A CHARACTERISTIC STREET</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#i_7">110</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">THE “LITTLE PALACE OF THE GARDEN”</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#i_8">116</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">THE WORN RED LIONS OF THE ANCIENT PORCH</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#i_9">120</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">AN ITALIAN SKY IN MARCH</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#i_10">140</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">COURT OF THE PALAZZO MARINO, NOW THE MUNICIPIO</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#i_11">156</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">THE TOWER OF S. STEFANO</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#i_12">162</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">THE CHURCH AT SARONNO</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#i_13">168</a></td></tr> -</table> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1">1</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 id="hdr_1"><a id="AN_ALPINE_POSTING-INN"></a>AN ALPINE POSTING-INN</h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">To</span> 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 <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">cœur à poésie facile</i>—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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4">4</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">douane</i>; but it is just here that the contrast<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5">5</a></span> -accentuates itself. The cypress, with all it stands -for, is missing.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6">6</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <em>nothing has ever -happened</em>; the haunting adjective is that which -Whitman applies to the American landscape—“the -large <em>unconscious</em> scenery of my native land.”</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7">7</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8">8</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>So completely are the peasants in the fields a part -of the soil they cultivate, that during the day one<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9">9</a></span> -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 -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">dépendance</i> of the inn and the custom-house; in the -left background, the village street is seen winding<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10">10</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>Dinner over, the eager spectators, hastening to the -terrace (with a glimpse, as they pass the vaulted -kitchen, of the Italian <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">chef</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11">11</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile the porter has lit the oil-lanterns hanging -by a chain over the door of the inn; a celestial<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12">12</a></span> -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.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13">13</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14">14</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">campanili</i>, -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.</p> -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15">15</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 id="hdr_2"><a id="A_MIDSUMMER_WEEKS_DREAM"></a>A MIDSUMMER WEEK’S DREAM<br /> - -<span class="subhead">AUGUST IN ITALY</span></h2> -</div> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr"> -<span class="i0">.... Un paysage choisi<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques.</span></i> -</div></div> -</div> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">For</span> 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 <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">bergerie de Florian</i>. -We seemed to be living in the landscape of a sanatorium -prospectus. It was all pleasant enough, according<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18">18</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19">19</a></span> -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 <em>been there</em>; 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?</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20">20</a></span> -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.</p> - -<div id="i_2" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 37.5em;"> - <img src="images/i_035.jpg" width="600" height="416" alt="" /> - <div class="cap-container"><div class="caption"> - <i>By the Port of Lovere</i><br /> - - <span class="small in4i">E. C. Peixotto<br /> - <span class="in4i">LOVEIRE. 1901.<br /></span></span> -</div></div></div> - -<p>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 -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21">21</a></span>overflowed the terraces of rough masonry, and between -the walnut-groves there were melon-patches -and fields of maize.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22">22</a></span> -the hotel, and the stucco shrines at the street corners, -had burst into a plastic efflorescence rivalling the -midsummer wealth of the gardens.</p> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">commedia dell’ arte</i> -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—<i xml:lang="de" lang="de">Bergamasker -Hochthäler</i>—had that furrowed, serried look so encouraging -to the experienced traveller. It was rich, -crowded, suggestive; and the names of the villages -were enchanting.</p> - -<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23">23</a></span> -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 -<i xml:lang="it" lang="it">gran turco</i> (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.</p> - -<p>Toward sunset we reached Madonna di Tirano, -the great pilgrimage church of the Valtelline.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24">24</a></span> -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 -<i xml:lang="it" lang="it">grisailles</i> beneath the choir-gallery.</p> - -<p>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-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25">25</a></span>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26">26</a></span> -from a shuttered façade; or on one or another -of the hundred characteristic details which go to -make up the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">mise en scène</i> 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.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27">27</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">villeggiatura</i> in -their shrill gregarious fashion; then we began the -descent to Edolo in the Val Camonica.</p> - -<p>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, <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">campanili</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28">28</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p>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.</p> - -<div id="i_3" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 34.6875em;"> - <img src="images/i_047.jpg" width="555" height="600" alt="" /> - <div class="cap-container"><div class="caption"> - <i>The Municipio—Brescia</i><br /> - - <span class="small in4i">E. C. Peixotto<br /> - <span class="in4i">BRESCIA. 1901.</span></span> -</div></div></div> - -<p>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 -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29">29</a></span>road did we finally hear that there <em>was</em> 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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">paesi</i>, 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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30">30</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31">31</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32">32</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">putti</i>, akin to the little people of -the Neapolitan <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">presepii:</i> a celestial company fluttering</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i xml:lang="it" lang="it">Si come schiera d’api che s’infiora</i><br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">around the divine group which surmounts the shrine.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33">33</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34">34</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">carte du Tendre</i> 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 -<i xml:lang="it" lang="it">rispetti</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35">35</a></span> -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.</p> - -<h3>IV</h3> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36">36</a></span> -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.</p> - -<div id="i_4" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 19em;"> - <img src="images/i_059.jpg" width="304" height="600" alt="" /> - <div class="cap-container"><div class="caption"> - <i>Chiesa dei Miracoli—Brescia</i> - </div></div></div> - -<p>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 -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37">37</a></span>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: “<i xml:lang="it" lang="it">È stupendo! È stupendo!</i>” 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....</p> - -<h3>V</h3> - -<p>It was on the last day of our journey that the most -imperturbable member of the party, looking up from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38">38</a></span> -a prolonged study of the guide-books, announced -that we had not seen the Bergamasque Alps after all.</p> - -<p>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 <span class="locked">inspired—</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i xml:lang="de" lang="de">O, wie beseliget uns Menschen ein falscher Begriff!</i><br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39">39</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 id="hdr_3"><a id="THE_SANCTUARIES_OF_THE"></a>THE SANCTUARIES OF THE -PENNINE ALPS</h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">When</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42">42</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43">43</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <em>lover of sad solitudes</em>—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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44">44</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45">45</a></span>hedges -and shaded by the long mauve panicles of the -wistaria.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46">46</a></span> -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.</p> - -<div id="i_5" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 37.5em;"> - <img src="images/i_073.jpg" width="600" height="383" alt="" /> - <div class="cap-container"><div class="caption"> - <i>The Inner Quadrangle at Oropa</i><br /> - <span class="small in4i">E. C. Peixotto<br /> - <span class="in4i">LOVEIRE. 1901.</span></span> -</div></div></div> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47">47</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">trattoria</i> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48">48</a></span>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.”</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49">49</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">rampe douce</i> 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.</p> - -<p>Passing through this gateway, one stands in a spacious -inner quadrangle. This again is enclosed in low<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50">50</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">trattorie</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51">51</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><i xml:lang="it" lang="it"> -<span class="i0">Mater purissima,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Mater admirabile,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Mater prudentissima,</span></i> -</div></div> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52">52</a></span></p> -<p class="in0">punctuated by the wailing <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">Ora pro nobis!</i> 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.</p> - -<p>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 -<i xml:lang="it" lang="it">tempietto</i> 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,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53">53</a></span> -give them a value quite independent of their plastic -qualities.</p> - -<div class="tb">* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54">54</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55">55</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">mandorle</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56">56</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">patine</i> 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.</p> - -<div id="i_6" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 29.75em;"> - <img src="images/i_087.jpg" width="476" height="600" alt="" /> - <div class="cap-container"><div class="caption"> - <i>The Main Court of the Sacro Monte at Varallo</i><br /> - <span class="small in4i">E. C. Peixotto<br /> - <span class="in4i">VARALLO. 1901.</span></span> -</div></div></div> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57">57</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58">58</a></span> -stone corridors and up and down interminable stairs; -a dark subterranean passage leading at last to the -image of the buried Christ.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59">59</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60">60</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61">61</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Procurateur de Judée</i>:—“Jésus? Jésus de -Nazareth? Je ne me rappelle pas.”</p> - -<div class="tb">* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62">62</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63">63</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 id="hdr_4"><a id="WHAT_THE_HERMITS_SAW"></a>WHAT THE HERMITS SAW</h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">In</span> 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.</p> - -<p>As a rule, the landscape is comprehensive enough -to include the whole Thebaid, with the river at the -base of the cliff, the <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">selva oscura</i> “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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66">66</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67">67</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68">68</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69">69</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70">70</a></span> -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 (<i xml:lang="it" lang="it">non sono Cristiani</i>), 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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71">71</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72">72</a></span> -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?</p> - -<p>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!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73">73</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74">74</a></span> -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?</p> - -<p>A tangle of classic and mediæval traditions, Greek,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75">75</a></span> -Etruscan and Germanic, in which the gods of the -Thessalian glades and the werewolves of northern -forests rode the midnight blast in the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">chevauchée</i> 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, <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">tout entière à sa proie attachée</i>, -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.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76">76</a></span> -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?</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77">77</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78">78</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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?</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79">79</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80">80</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>In what gentle guise they showed themselves, one -may see in many pictures of the Italian <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">quattro -cento</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81">81</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>Was it, as the scholars would have us believe, mere -lack of book-learning and technical skill that kept -the painters of the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">quattro</i> 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.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83">83</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 id="hdr_5"><a id="A_TUSCAN_SHRINE"></a>A TUSCAN SHRINE</h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap b"><span class="smcap1">One</span> 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.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86">86</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87">87</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">plasticatore</i>, 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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88">88</a></span> -climbing the steep ascent to San Gimignano, where -we were to spend the night.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89">89</a></span> -above their meditative eyes moved past us with such -solemn deliberateness of step that fancy transformed -their brushwood-laden carts into the sacred <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">carroccio</i> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90">90</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91">91</a></span>spur -rising from it like a scaly monster floating on -the waves, its savage spine bristling with the walls -and towers of Volterra.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92">92</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93">93</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94">94</a></span> -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, -<i xml:lang="it" lang="it">Il Cieco di Gambassi</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95">95</a></span> -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.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96">96</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">recueillement</i>, 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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97">97</a></span> -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</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i xml:lang="it" lang="it">In la sua volontade è nostra pace</i>.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98">98</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99">99</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100">100</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101">101</a></span> -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?</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102">102</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">répertoire</i> 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.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103">103</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">quattro-cento</i> 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,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104">104</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105">105</a></span> -an artistic discovery made in the heart of the most -carefully-explored artistic hunting-ground of Europe.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>“No sooner,” he writes, “had I seen the photographs -than I became convinced of the error of -attributing them to Giovanni Gonnelli, called <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">Il -Cieco di Gambassi</i>. 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 <em>bravura</em>. They do not appear to me to be<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106">106</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>“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.</p> - -<p>“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.”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107">107</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 id="hdr_6"><a id="SUB_UMBRA_LILIORUM"></a>SUB UMBRA LILIORUM<br /> - -<span class="subhead">AN IMPRESSION OF PARMA</span></h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">Parma, at</span> 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.</p> - -<div id="i_7" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 22.1875em;"> - <img src="images/i_145.jpg" width="355" height="600" alt="" /> - <div class="cap-container"><div class="caption"> - <i>A Characteristic Street</i><br /> - <span class="small in4i">E. C. Peixotto<br /> - <span class="in4i">PARMA. 1901.</span></span> -</div></div></div> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110">110</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111">111</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">commedia dell’ arte</i>, -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112">112</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113">113</a></span> -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 <em>seeing soul</em>, 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.</p> - -<p>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 -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">état d’âme</i> of his celestial gymnasts. They do not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114">114</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115">115</a></span> -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.</p> - -<div id="i_8" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 37.5em;"> - <img src="images/i_155.jpg" width="600" height="363" alt="" /> - <div class="cap-container"><div class="caption"> - <i>The “Little Palace of the Garden”</i><br /> - <span class="small in4i">E. C. Peixotto<br /> - <span class="in4i">PARMA. 1901.</span></span> -</div></div></div> - -<p>The vaulted ceiling of the room is treated as a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116">116</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">grisailles</i> 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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">putti</i> -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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117">117</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118">118</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119">119</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120">120</a></span> -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, <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">sub -umbra liliorum</i>. 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.</p> - -<div id="i_9" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 24.5em;"> - <img src="images/i_163.jpg" width="392" height="600" alt="" /> - <div class="cap-container"><div class="caption"> - <i>The Worn Red Lions<br /> - of the Ancient Porch</i><br /> - <span class="small in4i">E. C. Peixotto<br /> - <span class="in4i">PARMA. 1901.</span></span> -</div></div></div> - -<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121">121</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">commedia dell’ arte</i> 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.</p> - -<p>The Farnese theatre is one of those brilliant improvisations -in wood and plaster to which Italian -artists were trained by centuries of hurriedly-organized -<i xml:lang="it" lang="it">trionfi</i>, 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 <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">pays -bleu</i> of Boiardo or of Ariosto, destined to crumble<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122">122</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">plasticatore</i>, -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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123">123</a></span> -Harlequin and the Capitan Spavento, <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">plasticatori</i> -of another sort, build on the scaffolding of some familiar -intrigue the airy superstructure of their wit.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124">124</a></span> -for its effect on a fortunate collocation of words, had -been broken up and sorted out into the different -parts of speech.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125">125</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 id="hdr_7"><a id="MARCH_IN_ITALY"></a>MARCH IN ITALY</h2> -</div> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">March</span> 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 <em>is</em> Italy, after all, and hugs himself at -thought of the black ultramontane March.</p> - -<p>It must be owned, however, that it is not, even in -Italy, the safest month for excursions. There are -too many <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">voltes-face</i> toward winter, too many moody<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128">128</a></span> -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</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>Towers of fables immortal fashioned from mortal dreams</i><br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">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.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129">129</a></span></p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p>It was, for instance, on such a March day that we -rowed across the harbour of Syracuse to the mouth -of the Anapus.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130">130</a></span> -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, <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">tassée</i>, with a date-palm spindling against its -well-curb, or the white flank of Etna suddenly thrust -across the sky-line.</p> - -<p>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</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>The faun pursuing, the nymph pursued</i>,<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">the pool of Cyane revealed no sign of her presence.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131">131</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132">132</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133">133</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134">134</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135">135</a></span>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136">136</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137">137</a></span></p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p>At noon of such another day we set out from Rome -for Caprarola.</p> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">maqui</i> -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.</p> - -<p>Gradually, as we left the outskirts of Rome, the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138">138</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139">139</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140">140</a></span> -palaces along one steep street to the edge of a lofty -down.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<div id="i_10" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 37.5em;"> - <img src="images/i_187.jpg" width="600" height="448" alt="" /> - <div class="cap-container"><div class="caption"> - <i>An Italian Sky in March</i> -</div></div></div> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141">141</a></span> -of a pentagonal palace clenched to the highest -ledge of the cliff. Such is the first sight of -Caprarola.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142">142</a></span> -the lord of the landscape, but a mere point of vantage -from which to view the outspread glory at our feet.</p> - -<h3>IV</h3> - -<p>The drive from Viterbo to Montefiascone lies across -the high plateau between the Monte Cimino and the -lake of Bolsena.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143">143</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>Through this rain-muffled air, led blindfold as it -were, we presently descend again by the same windings<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144">144</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145">145</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146">146</a></span> -at its approach, touches a spring of memory and -transports us from the actual scene to its pictured -presentment—Turner’s “Road to Orvieto.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<h3>V</h3> - -<p>Our friends and counsellors had for many years -warned us against visiting Vallombrosa in March—the -month which oftenest finds us in Tuscany.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147">147</a></span> -“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.</p> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">niello</i>.</p> - -<p>From Sant’ Ellero, where the train is exchanged<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148">148</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149">149</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">bête de somme</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150">150</a></span> -a space for the monastery and its adjacent buildings.</p> - -<p>The principal <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">corps-de-bâtiment</i> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">monument historique</i>, nor that look<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151">151</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152">152</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">calessina</i>, 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.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153">153</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 id="hdr_8"><a id="PICTURESQUE_MILAN"></a>PICTURESQUE MILAN</h2> -</div> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">It</span> 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156">156</a></span> -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!</p> - -<div id="i_11" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 24.25em;"> - <img src="images/i_207.jpg" width="388" height="600" alt="" /> - <div class="cap-container"><div class="caption"> - <i>Court of the Palazzo Marino,<br /> - now the Municipio</i> -</div></div></div> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157">157</a></span></p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158">158</a></span> -where cloaked figures are huddled in dark confabulation.</p> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">barocchismo</i> -so long regarded as the smirk on the face of a conventional -age.</p> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">cinque-cento</i> church. -Everywhere the forms of expression are purely Italian, -with the smallest possible admixture of that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159">159</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">Humilitas</i> of the haughty race;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160">160</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">jeu de tarots</i>, 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.</p> - -<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161">161</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162">162</a></span> -black-veiled nurses move quietly through the cloisters -at the summons of the chapel-bell.</p> - -<div id="i_12" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 20.3125em;"> - <img src="images/i_217.jpg" width="325" height="600" alt="" /> - <div class="cap-container"><div class="caption"> - <i>The Tower of S. Stefano</i><br /> - <span class="small in4i">E. C. Peixotto<br /> - <span class="in4i">MILANO. 1901.</span></span> -</div></div></div> - -<p>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—<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">quattro-cento</i> 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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">Casa degli -Omenoni</i>) 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163">163</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">bottegha</i> -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.</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164">164</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165">165</a></span> -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—<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166">166</a></span>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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">rilievi</i> 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.</p> - -<h3>IV</h3> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167">167</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168">168</a></span> -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.</p> - -<div id="i_13" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 30.875em;"> - <img src="images/i_227.jpg" width="494" height="600" alt="" /> - <div class="cap-container"><div class="caption"> - <i>The Church at Saronno</i><br /> - <span class="small in4i">E. C. Peixotto<br /> - <span class="in4i">1901.</span></span> -</div></div></div> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169">169</a></span> -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!</p> - -<h3>V</h3> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170">170</a></span> -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.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171">171</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 id="hdr_9"><a id="ITALIAN_BACKGROUNDS"></a>ITALIAN BACKGROUNDS</h2> -</div> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">In</span> the Italian devotional pictures of the early -Renaissance there are usually two quite unrelated -parts: the foreground and the background.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174">174</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">genre</i>-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175">175</a></span>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>Even painters far less independent of tradition -than Carpaccio and Crivelli succeeded in imparting<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176">176</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">chose vue</i>. 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.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177">177</a></span></p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p>As with the study of Italian pictures, so it is with -Italy herself. The country is divided, not in <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">partes -tres</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178">178</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179">179</a></span> -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.</p> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p>As Italy is divided into foreground and background, -so each city has its perspective; its <em>premier plan</em> 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180">180</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181">181</a></span> -mediæval art and architecture, the modern tourist -knows that the temple is there and deliberately turns -his back on it.</p> - -<h3>IV</h3> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>The student of ancient Rome moves among painfully-reconstructed -débris; the mediævalist must -traverse the city from end to end to piece together<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182">182</a></span> -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”?</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183">183</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184">184</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">il faut aimer pour comprendre</i>, 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</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><i> -<span class="i0">The hills where its life rose,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the sea where it goes.</span></i> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>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 -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">de parade</i>, the setting of the spectacular and external -life which had developed from the more secluded<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_185">185</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <em>bravura</em> 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;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_186">186</a></span> -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!</p> - -<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_187">187</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_188">188</a></span> -colonnades and the flying spray of his Vatican -fountains.</p> - -<p>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 <em>bravura</em> spirit of Bernini and Borromini.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_189">189</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">Circumspice</i> 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.</p> - -<h3>V</h3> - -<p>In Venice the foreground is Byzantine-Gothic, with -an admixture of early Renaissance. It extends from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_190">190</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">casini</i>, a generation of artists -were at work brushing in the gay background of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_191">191</a></span> -scene, and quiet hands were recording, in a series of -memorable little pictures, every phase of that last -brilliant ebullition of the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">joie de vivre</i> before “the -kissing had to stop.”</p> - -<p>Longhena and his pupils were the architects of -this bright <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">mise en scène</i>, 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.</p> - -<p>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 -<i xml:lang="it" lang="it">barocchismo</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_192">192</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">stuccatori</i> 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 <em>genre</em>-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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_193">193</a></span> -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.”</p> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">Geistesgenossen</i> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">pleinairistes</i>, -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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_194">194</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">trompe -l’œil</i> 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?</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_195">195</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">bon ton</i>, 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”:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><i> -<span class="i0">Che la luce divina è penetrante<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Per l’universo, secondo ch’è degno,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sichè nulla le puote essere ostante.</span></i> -</div></div> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_196">196</a></span></p> - -<h3>VI</h3> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">maestria</i>; 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.</p> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">piano nobile</i>, he -painted the loves of Antony and Cleopatra transposed -to the key of modern patrician life. He first<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_197">197</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>From this throng of figures the principal characters -detach themselves with a kind of delicate splendour. -Royal Egypt,</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed</i>,<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">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 <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">sur le vif</i> -from some brilliant rout in a Pisano or Mocenigo<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_198">198</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">prima amorosa</i> 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 -<span class="locked">Cleopatra”—</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><i> -<span class="i10">Look where they come!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The triple pillar of the world transformed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Into a strumpet’s fool—</span></i> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">and one can almost hear the golden Antony, as he -brushes aside the importunate Roman messengers, -whispering to his Queen: “What sport to-night?”</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_199">199</a></span> -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 -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">cinque cento</i>, and Veronese’s Venice Enthroned, in -the Ducal Palace, is the direct forbear of his Virgins -and Cleopatras.</p> - -<h3>VII</h3> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>Far behind him, however, still on the vanishing-point -of the tourist’s horizon, are the other figures of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_200">200</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">grouillement</i> 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.</p> - -<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_201">201</a></span> -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 -<em>Vola</em>, which took place in the Piazzetta on the last -Thursday before Lent.</p> - -<p>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 <em>genre</em>-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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_202">202</a></span> -immorality was a mere yielding to natural instincts, -to the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">joie de vivre</i> 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 -<em>genre</em>-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 <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">bergerie de Florian</i>. 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.</p> - -<p>Longhi’s easel-pictures record every phase of Venetian -middle-class and aristocratic existence. To<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_203">203</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">nobil donna</i> consulting -the fortune-teller, or walking with her <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">cicisbeo</i> -in Saint Mark’s square; the same lady’s <em>lever</em>, 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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">maestro di cappella</i>; 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, <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">empressés</i>, -but never in the least idealized or sentimentalized. -The scenes of “high life” take place for the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_204">204</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">zendaletto</i> which hides their -hair and the lower part of the face, while their dresses -are covered by the black silk <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">bauto</i> 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,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_205">205</a></span> -the every-day incidents of the piazza, the convent -and the palace.</p> - -<p>The fact that Longhi, in his <em>genre</em>-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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_206">206</a></span> -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.</p> - -<h3>VIII</h3> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_207">207</a></span> -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 <em>genre</em>-pictures by unknown artists -of his school.</p> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">chambre de parade</i>, with its pale-green -damask curtains and bed-hangings, and its furniture -painted with flowers on a ground of pale-green <em>laque</em>; -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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">bravi</i>: a series of Berniniesque heads of remarkable -vigour and individuality, from that of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_208">208</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">bravi</i>, 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 -<i xml:lang="it" lang="it">bauli</i>, as the knights of the stiletto were called in the -Milanese.</p> - -<p>It is not in art only that the <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">bravi</i> have been commemorated. -Lovers of “I Promessi Sposi,” the one<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_209">209</a></span> -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 <i>Ercole</i>, 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 -<i>Ercole</i>. 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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_210">210</a></span> -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 <em>genre</em>-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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_211">211</a></span> -these little armies, and the ruses, plots and -negotiations of their quarrelsome masters.</p> - -<p>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, <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">une maladie de langueur</i>. -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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_212">212</a></span> -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 <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">de chic</i>, 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 <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">parties fines</i> 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.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_213">213</a></span></p> - -<h3>IX</h3> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">sette cento</i>.</p> - -<p>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 <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">bauto</i> 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 <em>appearances</em>—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<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_214">214</a></span> -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.</p> - -<div class="chapter"><div class="transnote"> -<h2 class="nobreak p1"><a id="Transcribers_Notes"></a>Transcriber’s Notes</h2> - -<p>Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant -preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.</p> - -<p>The spelling of non-English words was not checked.</p> - -<p>Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced -quotation marks retained.</p> - -<p>Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.</p> - -<p>Redundant chapter titles removed by Transcriber.</p> -</div> -</div> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -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-h.htm or 54932-h.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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