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Title: Italy, the Magic Land
Author: Whiting, Lilian, 1847-1942
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Italy, the Magic Land" ***
[Illustration: _Temple, Taormina_]
ITALY
THE MAGIC LAND
BY
LILIAN WHITING
AUTHOR OF "THE FLORENCE OF LANDOR," "THE LAND OF
ENCHANTMENT," "THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL," ETC.
"And, under many a yellow star,
We dropped into the Magic Land!"
_Illustrated from Photographs_
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1907
_Copyright, 1907_,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
_All rights reserved_
Published November, 1907
THE GRIFFITH-STILLINGS PRESS, BOSTON, U.S.A.
TO
ELLA
(MRS. FRANKLIN SIMMONS)
WHOSE EARTHLY FORM REPOSES IN THE BEAUTIFUL ROMAN CEMETERY,
WHERE POETIC ASSOCIATIONS WITH KEATS AND SHELLEY HAUNT
THE AIR,--UNDER THE SCULPTURED "ANGEL OF THE RESURRECTION,"
WITH ITS MAJESTIC SYMBOLISM OF THE
TRIUMPH OF IMMORTALITY,--BUT WHOSE RADIANT
PRESENCE STILL TRANSFIGURES THE LIFE THAT
HELD HER IN IMMORTAL DEVOTION,--
THESE PAGES ARE INSCRIBED,
WITH THE UNFORGETTING LOVE OF
LILIAN WHITING.
ROME, ITALY, May Days, 1907.
"_Nor Life is ever lord of Death,
And Love can never lose its own._"
PREFATORY NOTE
That Florence, the "Flower City," receives only a passing allusion in
this record of various impressions that gleam and glow through the days
after several visits to the Magic Land, is due to the fact that in a
previous volume by the writer--one entitled "The Florence of
Landor"--the lovely Tuscan town with its art, its ineffable beauty, and
its choice social life, formed the subject matter of that volume. Any
attempt to portray Florence in the present book would savor only of the
repetition of loves and enthusiasms already recorded in the previous
work in which Walter Savage Landor formed the central figure. For that
reason no mention of Florence, beyond some mere allusion, is attempted
in these pages, which only aim to present certain fragmentary
impressions of various sojourns in Italy, refracted through the prism of
memory. Whatever inconveniences or discomfort attend the traveller
swiftly fade, and leave to him only the precious heritage of resplendent
sunset skies, of poetic association, of artistic beauty. In spirit he is
again lingering through long afternoons in St. Peter's till the golden
light through the far windows of the tribune is merged into the dusk of
twilight in which the vast monumental groups gleam wraith-like. Again
he is ascending the magnificent _Scala Regia_, and lingering in the
Raphael Stanze, or in the wonderful sculpture galleries of the Vatican,
or sauntering in the sunshine on the Palatine. In memory he is again
spellbound by ancient and mediæval art. In the line of modern sculpture
the work of Franklin Simmons in Rome is a feature of Italy that haunts
the imagination. No lover of beauty would willingly miss his great
studios in the Via San Nicolo da Tolentino, with their wealth of ideal
creations that contribute new interest to the most divine of all the
arts.
"The world of art is an ideal world,--
The world I love, and that I fain would live in;
So speak to me of artists and of art,
Of all the painters, sculptors, and musicians
That now illustrate Rome."
The mystic charm of the pilgrimage to Assisi; the romance that reflects
itself in the violet seas and flaming splendors of the sky on the shores
of Ischia and Capri; the buried treasures of Amalfi; the magnetic
impressiveness of the Eternal City,--all these enter into life as new
forces to build and shape the future into undreamed-of destinies.
L. W.
THE BRUNSWICK, BOSTON,
October Days, 1907.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I THE PERIOD OF MODERN ART IN ROME 3
II SOCIAL LIFE IN THE ETERNAL CITY 127
III DAY-DREAMS IN NAPLES, AMALFI, AND CAPRI 227
IV A PAGE DE CONTI FROM ISCHIA 281
V VOICES OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI 341
VI THE GLORY OF A VENETIAN JUNE 389
VII THE MAGIC LAND 423
INDEX 459
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Temple, Taormina _Frontispiece in Photogravure_
Angel, Church of San Andrea delle Fratte, Rome _Page_ 12
Detail from the Stuart Monument, St. Peter's, Rome " 24
Tomb of Clement XIII, St. Peter's, Rome " 32
"The Genius of Death," Detail from the Tomb
of Clement XIII, St. Peter's, Rome " 43
"La Fortuna," Accadémia di San Luca, Rome " 47
Spanish Steps, Piazza Trinità dei Monti, Rome " 72
Tomb of Pio Nono, San Lorenzo (Fuori le Mura) Rome " 75
"The Dance of the Pleiades" " 92
"Grief and History," Detail from Naval Monument,
Washington " 105
"The Genius of Progress Leading the Nations" " 108
"Mother of Moses" " 112
"Valley Forge" " 116
La Pieta, St. Peter's, Rome " 120
Villa Medici, Rome " 134
Entrance to Villa Pamphilia-Doria, Rome " 159
Statue of Christ, Ancient Church of San Martina, Rome " 193
Castel San Angelo and St. Peter's, Rome " 204
Porta San Paola, Pyramid of Caius Cestius, Rome " 216
Castel Sant'Elmo, Naples " 231
Ancient Temple, Baiæ " 241
Ischia, from the Sea " 282
La Rocca, Ischia " 294
Castello di Alfonso, Ischia " 306
Detail from "Parnassus," Raphael Stanze, Palazzo
Vaticano, Rome " 311
Vittoria Colonna, Galleria Buonarroti, Florence " 320
San Francescan Convent-Church, Assisi " 346
St. Francis d'Assisi, The Duomo, Assisi " 366
Santa Chiara, The Duomo, Assisi " 375
Baiæ and Ischia, from Camaldoli " 382
Ruins of the Greek Theatre, Taormina, Sicily " 429
Ponte Vecchio, Florence " 434
Campo Santo, Genoa " 453
"_Rest we content if whispers from the stars
In wafting of the incalculable wind
Come blown at midnight through our prison-bars._"
THE MAGIC LAND
_By woodland belt, by ocean bar,
The full south breeze our forehead fanned;
And, under many a yellow star,
We dropped into the Magic Land._
* * * * *
_We heard, far-off, the siren's song;
We caught the gleam of sea-maids' hair;
The glimmering isles and rocks among
We moved through sparkling purple air._
_Then Morning rose, and smote from far
Her elfin harps o'er land and sea;
And woodland belt, and ocean bar
To one sweet note sighed--"Italy!"_
OWEN MEREDITH.
ITALY, THE MAGIC LAND
I
THE PERIOD OF MODERN ART IN ROME
But ah, that spring should vanish with the Rose!
That youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close?
The nightingale that in the branches sang,
Oh, where and whither flown again,--who knows?
OMAR KHAYYAM.
ROME, as the picturesque city of the Popes in the middle years of the
nineteenth century, was resplendent in local color. It was the Rome of
sunny winters; the Rome of gay excursions over that haunted sea of the
Campagna to pictorial points in the Alban and Sabine hills; the Rome of
young artist life, which organized impromptu festas with Arcadian
freedom, and utilized the shadow or the shelter of ruined temples or
tombs in which to spread its picnic lunches and bring the glow of
simple, friendly intercourse into the romantic lights of the poetic,
historic, or tragic past. There were splendid Catholic processions and
ceremonials that seemed organized as a part of the stage scenery that
ensconced itself, also, with the nonchalance of easy possession, in the
vast salons of historic palaces where tapestried walls and richly
painted ceilings, arched high overhead, with statues dimly seen in
niches here and there, and the bust of some crowned Antoninus, or
radiant Juno, gleaming from a shadowy corner, all made up the
_mise-en-scène_ of familiar evenings. There were lingering hours in the
gardens of the Villa Medici into whose shades one strolled by that
beguiling path along the parapet on Monte Pincio, through the beautiful
grove with its walks and fountains. The old ilex bosquet, with its
tangled growth and air of complete seclusion, had its spell of
fascination. Then, as now, the elevated temple, at the end of the main
path, seemed the haunt of gods and muses. In all the incidental, as well
as the ceremonial social meeting and mingling, art and religion were the
general themes of discussion. This idyllic life--
"Comprehending, too, the soul's
And all the high necessities of art"--
has left its impress on the air as well as its record on many a page of
the poet and the romancist. The names that made memorable those
wonderful days touch chords of association that still vibrate in the
life of the hour. For the most part the artists and their associates
have gone their way--not into a Silent Land, a land of shadows and
vague, wandering ghosts--but into that realm wherein is the "life more
abundant," of more intense energy and of nobler achievement; the realm
in which every aspiration of earth enlarges its conception and every
inspiration is exalted and endowed with new purpose; the realm where, as
Browning says,--
"Power comes in full play."
The poet's vision recognizes the truth:--
"I know there shall dawn a day,
--Is it here on homely earth?
Is it yonder, worlds away,
Where the strange and new have birth,
That Power comes in full play?"
The names of sculptor, painter, and poet throng back, imaged in that
retrospective mirror which reflects a vista of the past, rich in ideal
creation. Beautiful forms emerge from the marble; pictorial scenes glow
from the canvas; song and story and happy, historic days are in the
very air. To Italy, land of romance and song, all the artists came
trooping, and
"Under many a yellow Star"
they dropped into the Magic Land. If the wraiths of the centuries long
since dead walked the streets, they were quite welcome to revisit the
glimpses of the moon and contribute their mystery to the general
artistic effectiveness of the Seven-hilled City. All this group of
American idealists, from Allston and Page to Crawford, Story, Randolph
Rogers, Vedder, Simmons, and to the latest comer of all, Charles Walter
Stetson, recognized something of the artist's native air in this Mecca
of their pilgrimage.
It was, indeed, quite natural, on account of the stupendous work of
Michael Angelo and the unrivalled museums of the Vatican, that Rome
should have become pre-eminently the artistic centre of the nineteenth
century and should have attracted students and lovers of art from all
parts of the world. The immortal works of the two great periods, the
Greek and the Renaissance,--the art that was forever great because it
was the outgrowth of profound religious conviction,--were enshrined in
the churches and the galleries of Rome. The leading countries of Europe
sent here their aspiring students and established permanent academies
for their residence. Germany, France, and England were thus represented.
Thorwaldsen came as a pensioner from the Academy of Fine Arts in
Copenhagen; and it was during his life, and that of the noble Canova,
that Rome began to be recognized as the modern world-centre of art. Was
it not a natural sequence that the early painters and sculptors who came
to study under the stimulating influences of the great masterpieces of
the past should linger on in the city whose very air became to them the
breath of inspiring suggestion? Where but in Rome would have come to
Crawford the vision of his "Orpheus" and of his noble Beethoven? or to
Story his "Libyan Sibyl," and that exquisite group, "Into the Silent
Land"? or to Vedder his marvellous creations of "The Fates Gathering in
the Stars," the "Cumæan Sibyl," or the "Dance of the Pleiades"? to
Simmons his triumphant "Angel of the Resurrection," and "The Genius of
Progress Leading the Nations"? or to Stetson that ineffable vision of
"The Child," and that wonderful group called "Music"? whose coloring
Titian or Giorgione might well mistake for their own.
Under the Pontifical _régime_ the general character of Rome was mediæval
and religious. The perpetual festas of the church made the streets
constantly picturesque with their processions of monks, and friars, and
priests, and these wonderful blendings of color and scenic effect
stimulated the artistic sense. The expenses of living in Rome were then
only a fraction of what the cost is at the present time; and as the city
was the resort of the wealthy and cultured few, the artists were
surrounded by the stimulus of critical appreciation and of patronage.
Their work, their dreams, were the theme of literary discussion, and
focussed the attention of the polite world. Their studios were among the
important interests to every visitor in the Eternal City. In those days
the traveller did not land with his touring car at Naples, make "the
run" to Rome in a record that distanced any possibilities of railroad
trains, pass two or three days in motoring about the city and its
environs, seeing the exterior of everything in a dissolving view and the
interior of nothing,--as within this time, at least, he must flash on
in his touring car to Florence. On the contrary, the traveller proceeded
to Rome with serious deliberation, and with a more realizing sense of
undertaking a journey than Walter Wellman experiences in attempting to
fly in his aero-car to the North Pole and send his observations across
the polar seas by wireless telegraphy. The visitor went to Rome for a
winter, for a year, and gave himself up to leisurely impressions. Rome
was an atmosphere, not a spectacle, and it was to be entered with the
lofty and reverent appreciation of the poet's power and the artist's
vision.
In Rome, Thomas Cole painted some of his best pictures; and in Rome or
Florence wrought a long list of painters and sculptors. Whether in the
Eternal City or in the Flower City, their environment was alike
Italy--the environment of the Magic Land. Among the more prominent of
all these devotees of Beauty several nationalities were represented.
Each might have said of his purpose, in the words of William Watson:--
"I follow Beauty; of her train am I,
Beauty, whose voice is earth and sea and air;
Who serveth, and her hands for all things ply;
Who reigneth, and her throne is everywhere."
Among these artists there flash upon memory the names of Vanderlyn,
Benjamin West, Allston, Rauch, Ange, Veit, Tenerani, Overbeck, Schadow,
Horace Vernet, Thorwaldsen, John Gibson, Hiram Powers, Crawford, Page,
Clark Mills, Randolph Rogers, William Rinehart, Launt Thompson, Horatio
and Richard Greenough, Thomas Ball, Anne Whitney, Larkin G. Mead, Paul
Akers, William Wetmore Story, Harriet Hosmer, J. Rollin Tilton, and,
later, Elihu Vedder, Moses Ezekiel, Franklin Simmons, Augustus St.
Gaudens, and Charles Walter Stetson, the name of Mr. Stetson linking the
long and interesting procession with the immediate life of to-day. Of
these later artists Story, Miss Hosmer, Ezekiel, Vedder, Simmons, and
Stetson are identified with Rome as being either their permanent or
their prolonged residence. Mr. St. Gaudens was a transient student,
returning to his own country to pursue his work; and of two young
sculptors, Hendrick Christian Anderson and C. Percival Dietsch, time has
not yet developed their powers beyond an experimental stage of brilliant
promise.
[Illustration: ANGEL, CHURCH OF SAN ANDREA DELLE FRATTE, ROME
Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini
_Page 32_]
The Rome of the artists of clay and canvas was also the Rome of the
poets and romancists, of authors in all lines of literary achievement.
How the names of the procession of visitors and sojourners in the
Eternal City, from Milton, Goethe, and Mme. de Staël to Henry James,
Marion Crawford, Richard Bagot, and Grace Ellery Channing (Mrs. Charles
Walter Stetson), gleam from that resplendent panorama of the modern past
of Rome! Like the words in electric fire that flash out of the darkness
in city streets at night, there shine the names of Shelley and of Keats;
of Gladstone, on whom in one memorable summer day, while strolling in
Italian sunshine, there fell a vision of the sacredness and the
significance of life and its infinite responsibility in the fulfilment
of lofty purposes. What charming associations these guests and
sojourners have left behind! Hawthorne, embodying in immortal romance
the spirit of the scenic greatness of the Eternal City; Margaret Fuller,
Marchesa d'Ossoli, allying herself in marriage with the country she
loved, and living in Rome those troubled, mysterious years that were to
close the earthly chapter of her life; Robert and Elizabeth Browning,
the wedded poets, who sang of love and Italy; Harriet Beecher Stowe,
finding on the enchanted Italian shores the material which she wove
with such irresistible attraction into the romance of "Agnes of
Sorrento;" Longfellow, with his poet's vision, transmuting every vista
and impression into some exquisite lyric; Lowell, bringing his
philosophic as well as his poetic insight to penetrate the untold
meaning of Rome; Thomas William Parsons, making the country of Dante
fairly his own; Thackeray, with his brilliant interpretation of the
_comédie humaine_; Emerson, who, oblivious of all the glories of art or
the joys of nature, absorbed himself in writing transcendental letters
to his eccentric, but high-souled aunt, Mary Moody Emerson; Ruskin,
translating Italian art to Italy herself; Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe and
his poet wife, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, in the first flush of their bridal
happiness, when Mrs. Howe's impassioned love for the Seven-hilled City
inspired many a lyric that mirrors the Roman atmosphere of that day;
Kate Field, with a young girl's glad enthusiasm over the marvellous
loveliness of a Maytime in Rome, and her devotion to those great
histrionic artists, Ristori and Salvini; George Stillman Hillard,
leaving to literature the rich legacy of his "Six Months in
Italy,"--a work that to this day holds precedence as a clear and
comprehensive presentation of the scenic beauty, the notable monumental
and architectural art, and the general life and resources of this land
of painter and poet. Other names, too, throng upon memory--that of
William Dean Howells, painting Italian life in his "Venetian Days," and
charming all the literary world by his choice art; and among later work,
the interesting interpretations of Rome and of social life in Rome, by
Marion Crawford, Henry James, and Richard Bagot,--in chronicle, in
romance, or in biographical record. During the last quarter of the
nineteenth century, indeed, the visitors to Rome--authors, artists,
travellers of easy leisure--defy any numerical record. Mrs. Louise
Chandler Moulton, poet, romancist, and delightful _raconteur_ as well,
has recorded some charming impressions of her various sojourns in Rome
both in her "Random Rambles" and in "Lazy Tours." Of the Palatine Hill
we find her saying:--
"Sometimes we go to the Palace of the Cæsars, and look off upon the
heights where the snow lingers and the warm light rests, making
them shine like the Delectable Mountains. Nearer at hand are the
almond trees, in flower, or the orange trees, bright at once with
their white, sweet blossoms and their golden fruit."
Mrs. Moulton writes of the "stately dwellers" in Rome whom time cannot
change; and to whom, whenever she returns, she makes her first visit;
some of whom are in the mighty palace of the Vatican and some of whom
dwell in state in the Capitol.
"The beautiful Antoninus still wears his crown of lotus in Villa
Albani and the Juno whom Goethe worshipped reigns forever at the
Ludovisi," she writes; "I can never put in words the pleasure I
find in these immortals." Mrs. Moulton loved to wander in the Villa
Borghese "before the place is thronged with the beauty and fashion
of Rome as it is in the late afternoon. I do not wonder that Miriam
and Donatello could forget their fate in these enchanted glades,"
she wrote, "and dance as the sunbeams danced with the shadows.
Sometimes I seem to see them where the sun sifts through the young
green leaves, and her beauty--her human, deep-souled beauty--and
his fantastic grace are the only things here that cannot change.
"The walls will crumble; the busts of kings and heroes and poets
will lose their contours, the lovely Roman ladies also grow old and
fade, and vanish from sight and from memory; but still these two,
hopeless yet happy, will dance in these wild glades immortally
beyond the reach of the effacing years."
The visit to Rome of the Rev. Dr. Phillips Brooks--later the Bishop of
Massachusetts--is immortalized in the most lifelike portrait bust of the
great preacher ever modelled; a bust in which the genius of the
sculptor, Franklin Simmons, found one of its noblest expressions, and
has perpetuated, with masterly power, the energy of thought, at once
profound and intense, in the countenance of Bishop Brooks. These, and
many another whom the gods have loved and dowered with gifts, rise
before any retrospective glance over the comparatively recent past of
Rome. Bishop Brooks passed there the Holy Week of one Lenten season,
and of the Miserere in the Sistine Chapel he wrote that it was certainly
the most wonderful music to which he had ever listened; and he added:--
"The Miserere in the Sistine, the Benediction from the balcony, the
solemn moment of the elevation of the Host on Easter, and the
illumination of St. Peter's, these all seem to reach very
remarkably the great ideal of the central religious commemoration
of Christendom."
It was in the winter of 1828 that Mr. Longfellow first visited Rome,
which "is announced," he wrote, "by Nero's tomb," and he quotes Dupaty's
lines:--
"Quoi! c'est là Rome? quoi!
C'est le tombeau de Neron qui l'annonce."
Mr. Longfellow expressed his love for the Eternal City, and in a
personal letter[1] he said:--
"I have been so delighted with Rome that I have extended my
residence much beyond my original intention. There is so much in
the city to delay the stranger; the villages in the environs are so
beautiful, and there is such a quiet and stillness about everything
that, were it in my power, I should be induced to remain the whole
year round. You can imagine nothing equal to the ruins of Rome. The
Forum and the Coliseum are beyond all I had ever fancied them; and
the ruined temples and the mouldering aqueducts which are scattered
over the Campagna; I do not believe there is a finer view in the
world than that from the eastern gate of the city, embracing the
Campagna, with its ruined aqueducts diverging in long broken
arcades, and terminated by the sweep of the Albanian hills,
sprinkled with their white villages, and celebrated in song and
story! But the great charm of the scene springs from association;
and though everything in Italy is really picturesque, yet strip the
country of its historic recollections,--think merely of what it is,
and not of what it has been,--and you will find the dream to be
fading away.
"You would be shocked at the misery of the people, especially in
the Pope's dominions: but their element seems to be in rags and
misery; and with the ceremonials of their religion and the holidays
of the church, which average nearly three a week, they are
poor--and lazy and happy. I mean, happy in their way."
In a later visit the poet was domiciled in an hotel on the Piazza
Barberini, where the wonderful view included then the entire city "to
where St. Peter's dome darkens against the sunset." Of this visit his
brother, Rev. Samuel Longfellow, writes:--
"Here Mr. Longfellow became for the season the centre of the group
of American visitors and resident artists, whose well-known names
need not be recounted. Here he made, also, acquaintances among the
Italians,--especially the Duke of Sermoneta, the Dantean scholar,
and Monsignore Nardi, of the papal court. The Pope himself he did
not visit. An interesting acquaintance was that made with the Abbé
Liszt, who was spending the winter in Rome, having rooms in the
abandoned Convent of Santa Francesca, in the Forum. Calling there
one evening, in company with Mr. Healy the artist, the inner door
of the apartment was opened to them by Liszt himself, holding high
in his hand a candle which illuminated his fine face. The picture
was so striking that Mr. Longfellow begged his companion to put it
upon canvas,--which he did; and the painting now hangs in the
library of Craigie House. At a morning visit, Liszt delighted the
party with a performance upon his Chickering pianoforte.
"To see Rome, as all travellers know, is a work for many months;
and it was pursued with tolerable diligence. But Mr. Longfellow was
never a good sight-seer. He was impatient of lingering in picture
galleries, churches, or ruins. He saw quickly the essential points,
and soon tired of any minuter examination."
But long, indeed, before nineteenth-century artists and authors laid
siege to the Eternal City, in the far-away years of 1638, Milton visited
Rome, and there still remains the tablet, on the wall of the _casa_ in
the Via delle Quattro Fontane in which he stayed, a tablet bearing an
inscription giving the date of his visit; as, also, in Via Machella,
there is an inscription marking the place where Scott lived during his
visit to Rome. Goethe made his memorable tour to Italy in 1786--fourteen
years before the dawn of the nineteenth century--and wrote: "I feel the
greatest longing to read Tacitus in Rome;" and again (an observation
with which every visitor to the Eternal City will sympathize) he
noted:--
"It grows more and more difficult for me to render an account of my
residence in Rome, for as we always find the sea deeper the further
we go, so it is with me in observation of this city.... Wherever we
go and wherever we stand, we see about us a finished
picture,--forms of every kind and style; palaces and ruins; gardens
and wastes; the distant and the near houses; triumphal arches and
columns,--often all so close together that they might be sketched
on a single sheet. One should have a thousand points of steel with
which to write, and what can a single pen do? and then in the
evening one is weary and exhausted with the day of seeing and
admiring. Here one reads history from within outward."
Chateaubriand, who in his earliest youth had visited America as the
guest of Washington, passed the winter of 1803-4 in Rome, and his
pictorial transcriptions of the city and its environs are among the most
exquisite things in literary record. As, for instance, this description
of a sunset from Monte Mario:--
"I was never weary of seeing, from the Villa Borghese, the sun go
down behind the cypresses of Monte Mario, and the pines of the
Villa Pamphili planted by Le Notre. I have stood upon the Ponte
Molle to enjoy the sublime spectacle of the close of day. The
summits of the Sabine hills appeared of lapis lazuli and pale gold,
while their bases and sides were bathed in vapors of violet or
purple. Sometimes lovely clouds, like fairy cars, borne along by
the evening wind with inimitable grace, recall the mythological
tales of the descent of the deities of Olympus. Sometimes old Rome
seems to have spread all over the west the purple of her consuls
and her Cæsars, beneath the last steps of the god of day. This rich
decoration does not vanish so quickly as in our climate. When we
think the hues are about to disappear they revive on some other
point of the horizon; one twilight follows another and the magic of
sunset is prolonged."
It was in the same year that Mme. de Staël visited Rome and recorded, in
her glowing romance, "Corinne," the impressions she received. In the
spring of 1817 Lord Byron found in Rome the inspiration that he
transmitted into that wonderful line in "Childe Harold":--
"The Niobe of Nations! There she stands."
It was two years later that Shelley passed the spring in the
Seven-hilled City, retiring to Leghorn later, to write his tragedy of
"The Cenci."
In Rome the visitor follows Michael Angelo and Raphael through the
various churches and museums. The celebrated sibyls of Raphael are in
the Santa Maria della Pace; his "Isaiah" is in San Agostino and his
"Entombment" in the Casino of the Villa Borghese. While the sublime work
of Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel is always one of the first
things in Rome to which the traveller goes to study that incomparable
work portraying the Creation--the Prophets and the Sibyls, the Angels
and the Genii, that record the impassioned power of the master--yet all
footsteps turn quickly, too, to the church called San Pietro in Vincoli,
near the house in which Lucrezia Borgia lived, in which is the colossal
Moses of Michael Angelo. As it stands, it fails to convey the first
design of the great sculptor. Originally intended for the tomb of Pope
Julius II, the plan included a massive block of marble (some forty by
twenty feet) surmounted by a cornice and having its niches, its columns,
and its statues, of which the Moses was to have been one. It would then
have been judged relatively to the entire group, while now it is seen
alone, and thus out of the proportions that were in the mind of the
artist. The entire conception, indeed, was to unite sculpture and
architecture into one splendid combination. "Thus the statue of Moses
was meant to have been raised considerably above the eye of the
spectator," writes Mr. Hillard, "and to have been a single object in a
colossal structure of architecture and sculpture, which would have had a
foreground and a background, and been crowned with a mass at once
dome-like and pyramidal. Torn, as it is, from its proper place; divorced
from its proportionate companionship; stuck against the wall of a
church; and brought face to face with the observer,--what wonder that so
many of those who see it turn away with no other impressions than those
of caricature and exaggeration!"
Mr. Hillard adds:--
"But who that can appreciate the sublime in art will fail to bow
down before it as embodied in this wonderful statue? The majestic
character of the head, the prodigious muscles of the chest and
arms, and the beard that flows like a torrent to the waist,
represent a being of more than mortal port and power, speaking with
the authority, and frowning with the sanctions of incarnate law.
The drapery of the lower part of the figure is inferior to the
anatomy of the upper part. Remarkable as the execution of the
statue is, the expression is yet more so; for notwithstanding its
colossal proportions, its prominent characteristic is the
embodiment of intellectual power. It is the great leader and
lawgiver of his people that we see, whose voice was command, and
whose outstretched arm sustained a nation's infant steps. He looks
as if he might control the energies of nature as well as shape the
mould in which the character of his people should be formed. That
any one should stand before this statue in a scoffing mood is to me
perfectly inexplicable. My own emotions were more nearly akin to
absolute bodily fear. At an irreverent word, I should have expected
the brow to contract into a darker frown, and the marble lips to
unclose in rebuke."
[Illustration: DETAIL FROM STUART MONUMENT, ST. PETER'S, ROME
Antonio Canova
_Page 33_]
William Watson condenses his impressions of this majestic sculpture in
the following quatrain.--
"The captain's might, and mystery of the seer--
Remoteness of Jehovah's colloquist,
Nearness of man's heaven-advocate--are here:
Alone Mount Nebo's harsh foreshadow is miss'd."
The impressive group of sculptures and buildings on the
Campidoglio--where once the shrine of Jupiter Capitolinus stood--owes
its present picturesque scheme largely to Michael Angelo. The
fascination of the long flights of steps leading from the Piazza
Aracöeli to the Capitoline, where the ancient bronze equestrian statue
of Marcus Aurelius forever keeps guard, is indescribable. The historic
statues of Castor and Pollux mark the portals; on either hand there are
seen the Muses of ancient sculpture, the Palazzo Senatoriale and the
Palazzo dei Conservatori. There is in the entire world no more classic
ground than is found in this impressive grouping of art and
architecture.
The genius of Raphael has recorded itself in those brilliant and
imperishable works that enthrall the student of art in the Raphael
stanze in the Vatican. He was imbued with the spirit of Greek art, and
while Titian is a greater colorist, while Correggio, Botticelli,
Perugino, and other artists that could be named equal or exceed Raphael
in certain lines, yet as the interpreter of the profoundest thought, and
for his philosophic grasp and his power to endow his conceptions with
the most brilliant animation, he stands alone. The religious exaltation
of "The Transfiguration" reveals the supreme degree of the divine genius
of Raphael. That this painting was the last work of his life, that it
was placed above his body as it lay in state, and was carried in his
funeral procession, invests it with peculiar interest.
As a draftsman Raphael was second only to Michael Angelo, with whom he
must forever share the immortality of fame. The Academy in Venice holds
some of his choicest drawings, and in the Venetian sketch-book in the
National Gallery in London are many of his small pictures, including
that of the "Knight's Dream."
It was in the autumn of 1508, when Raphael was in his twenty-fifth year,
that he was called to Rome in the service of the Pope. The Pontiff at
this time was Pope Julius II, whose successor was Leo X, and under their
pontificates (from 1508 to 1520) Raphael produced these masterpieces
which stand unrivalled in the world save by the creations of Michael
Angelo in the Capella Sistina. The celebrated "Four Sibyls" of Raphael
are not, however, in the stanze of the Vatican, but in the Church of San
Maria della Pace. In the Palazzo Vaticano these four wonderful stanze
entrance the visitor; the Stanza della Signatura, the Stanza d'Eliodoro,
the Stanza dell'Incendio and the Sala di Constantino.
For the decoration of these stanze several painters from Umbria had been
summoned,--Perugino, Sodoma, Signorelli, and others; but when Raphael
had produced the "Disputa" in the Sala della Signatura, Pope Julius II
recognized the work as so transcendent that he ordered the other artists
to cease and even had some of their paintings obliterated that there
might be more space for the exercise of Raphael's genius. In the
"Disputa" are glorified the highest expressions of the human
intellect--the domain portrayed being that of Theology, Philosophy,
Poetry, and Justice. The splendor of this creation transcends all
attempts of interpretation in language. Against a background of gold
mosaic are portrayed these typical figures enthroned on clouds where
genii flit to and fro bearing tablets with inscriptions. Theology holds
in the left hand a book, while the other points to the vision of angels;
Poetry, laurel-crowned, is seen seated on a throne with books and lyre;
Philosophy wears a diadem, and Justice, with her balance and her sword,
is also crowned. The title of this marvellous work is misleading. Its
message is not that of disputation but of beatitude. At the altar are
grouped the congregation; the mystic spell of heavenly enthusiasm
enfolds the scene as an atmosphere, as above the heavens open and the
glorified Christ, surrounded by the saints who have kept the faith, is
disclosed to the devotees kneeling below, while a choir of listening
angels bend over them from the distant clouds in the background.
Under Poetry are grouped Apollo and the Muses, and the figures of Homer,
Dante and Virgil, of Petrarcha, Anacreon and Sappho, of Pindar and of
Horace are recognized. The great scholars seen in the Philosophy include
Plato and Aristotle, while in the groups under Justice, Moses and Solon
are seen.
"Raphael seems to have never known despair," remarked Franklin Simmons
of the work of this divine genius. "His paintings reveal no struggle,
but seem to have been produced without effort, as if brought into
existence by an enchanter's wand."
No observation could more vividly interpret the wonderful effect
produced on the student by Raphael, and he cannot but recall the truth
expressed in these lines of Festus:--
"All aspiration is a toil;
But inspiration cometh from above
And is no labor."
The inspiration of Raphael was of the noblest order. His genius, his
kindling enthusiasm, his ecstasy of religious devotion, have left an
imperishable heritage to art. By his transcendent gifts he represents
the highest manifestation of the art of painting in the Renaissance. For
the true note in art lies in spiritual perception. Not so brilliant a
colorist as Titian, he was more the interpreter of the extension of
human activity into that realm of the life more abundant, and with his
extraordinary facility of execution he united exquisite refinement and
unerring sense of beauty and the masterly power in composition that
fairly created for the spectator the visions that his soul beheld. "I
say to you," said Mr. Bryce recently in a press interview,--"I say to
you, each oncoming tide of life requires and needs men of lofty thought
who shall dream for it, sing for it, who shall gather up its tendencies,
formulate its ideals and voice its spirit." One of those men of lofty
thought who thus dream for the ages was Raphael, and his power and glory
have left an ineffaceable impress upon human life. He was the divinely
appointed messenger of beauty, and he was never disobedient to the
heavenly vision.
"Time hath no tide but must abide
The servant of Thy will;
Tide hath no time, for to Thy rhyme
The ranging stars stand still."
The decline of art after Michael Angelo and Raphael was marked. The very
splendor and power of their creations, instead of inspiring those who
immediately followed them, produced almost the inertia of despair. In
the reverence and awe and admiration with which these transcendent
masterpieces were approached any power to originate seemed futile by
contrast. Imitation rather than creation became the method adopted,
resulting in an increased poverty of design and feeble execution. The
art of the sixteenth century deteriorated rapidly till the baroco style
was in evidence. One reason, too, for the decline was in that art was no
longer so exclusively dedicated to the high service of religion, but
aimed, instead, to please and to procure patrons, and thus were all
worthy standards lowered to pernicious levels.
A sculptor who left his impress upon the sixteenth-century art was
Lorenzo Bernini, a Neapolitan (born in 1598) who died in Rome in 1685.
The work of Bernini has a certain fascination and airy touch that, while
it sometimes degenerates into the merely fantastic and even into tawdry
and puerile affectations, has at its best a refinement and grace that
lend to his sculptures an enduring charm, as seen in his "Apollo and
Daphne" (a work executed in his eighteenth year) which is now in the
Casino of the Villa Borghese. Bernini's name is perpetuated in the
colossal statues on the colonnade of St. Peter's, the great bronze
angels with their draperies streaming to the winds on the Ponte San
Angelo, and in the vast fountain in the Piazza Navona. In the court of
the Palazzo Bernini is one of the most interesting of his works--a
colossal figure, allegorical in significance, illustrating "Truth
Brought to Light by Time." One of the most important works of
Bernini--now placed in the Museo Nazionale--is the group of "Pluto and
Proserpine."
[Illustration: TOMB OF CLEMENT XIII, ST. PETER'S, ROME
Antonio Canova
_Page 42_]
The influence that was to reform and regenerate the art of sculpture in
the sixteenth century came with the great and good Canova, with which
was united that of Flaxman and of Thorwaldsen. The heavenly messengers
are always sent and appear at the time they are most needed. Neither
Truth nor Art is ever left without a witness.
"God sends his teachers unto every age,
To every clime, and every race of men,
With revelations fitted to their growth
And shape of mind; nor gives the realm of truth
Into the selfish rule of one sole race."
Canova's genius and services were widely recognized. In 1719 he was made
a Senator; he was ennobled with the title of Marchese of Ischia and
granted a yearly allowance of three thousand scudi; and his noble and
generous enthusiasms, not less than his genius, have left their record
on life as well as on art. When he died (in Venice, Oct. 3, 1822) his
work included fifty-nine statues, fourteen groups, twenty-two monuments,
and fifty-four busts. The statue of Pius V and the tomb of Clement XIII
are his greatest works, and the latter is perhaps even increasingly
held as a masterpiece of the ages.
Canova, warned by the fatal influence of imitation in art in the
sixteenth century, frequently counselled his pupils against copying his
own style and constantly urged them to study from the Greeks. He advised
them to visit frequently the studios of other artists, "and especially,"
he would add, "the studios of Thorwaldsen, who is a very great artist."
In the early part of the nineteenth century contemporary sculpture in
Rome was led by the three great artists,--Canova, Thorwaldsen, and
Gibson. In 1829 Gibson had the honor of being elected a member of the
Accadémia di San Luca in place of the sculptor Massimiliano, who had
then just died. Cammuccini, the historical painter, proposed Gibson, and
with the ardent assistance of Thorwaldsen he was elected resident
Academician of merit. "Like Canova, Thorwaldsen was most generous to
young artists," says Gibson of the great Danish master, "and he freely
visited all who required his advice. I profited greatly by the knowledge
which this splendid sculptor had of his art. On every occasion when I
was modelling a new work he came to me, and corrected whatever he
thought amiss. I also often went to his studio and contemplated his
glorious works, always in the noblest style, full of pure and severe
simplicity. His studio was a safe school for the young, and was the
resort of artists and lovers of art from all nations. The old man's
person can never be forgotten by those who saw him. Tall and strong,--he
never lost a tooth in his life,--he was most venerable looking. His kind
countenance was marked with hard thinking, his eyes were gray, and his
white locks lay upon his broad shoulders. At great assemblies his breast
was covered with orders."
Thorwaldsen (born in Copenhagen, Nov. 19, 1770) went to Rome in
1797--sent by the government of Denmark as a pensioner. It is said that,
in his enthusiasm for Rome, Thorwaldsen dated his birth from the hour he
entered the Eternal City. "Before that day," he exclaimed, "I existed; I
did not live." For nearly fifty years--until his death in 1844--he lived
and worked in Rome, occupying at one time the studio in Via Babuino that
had formerly been that of Flaxman.
John Gibson, who went to Rome in 1817,--twenty years after Thorwaldsen
first arrived,--had the good fortune to be for five years a pupil of
Canova, whose death in 1822 terminated this inestimable privilege. The
elevation of purpose that characterized the young English student made
his progress and development a matter of peculiar interest to the
master. Gibson, also, bears his testimony to the stimulus of the Roman
environment. "Rome above all other cities," he says, "has a peculiar
influence upon and charm for the real student; he feels himself in the
very university of art, where it is the one thing talked about and
thought about. Constantly did I feel the presence of this influence.
Every morning I rose with the sun, my soul gladdened by a new day of a
happy and delightful pursuit; and as I walked to my breakfast at the
Caffè Greco and watched with new pleasure the tops of the churches and
palaces gilt by the morning sun, I was inspired with a sense of daily
renovated youth, and fresh enthusiasm, and returned joyfully to the
combat, to the invigorating strife with the difficulties of art. Nor did
the worm of envy creep round my heart whenever I saw a beautiful idea
skilfully executed by any of my young rivals, but constantly spurred on
by the talent around me I returned to my studio with fresh resolution."
Again to a friend Gibson writes:--
"I renewed my visits to the Vatican, refreshing my spirits in that
Pantheon of the gods, demigods, and heroes of Hellas.... In the art
of sculpture the Greeks were gods.... In the Vatican we go from
statue to statue, from fragment to fragment, like the bee from
flower to flower."
These five years in which Canova, Thorwaldsen, and Gibson lived and
wrought together--although the youngest of this trio was still in his
student life--form a definite period in the history of modern art in
Rome. The dreams, the enthusiasm, the devotion to ideal beauty which
characterized their work left its impress and its vitality of
influence--a mystic power ready to incarnate itself again through the
facility of expression of the artists yet to come. To the young men
whose steps were turned toward Rome in these early years of the century
just passed, how great was the privilege of coming into close range of
the influence of such artists as these; to study their methods; to hear
the expression of their views on art in familiar meeting and
conversation! These artists were closely in touch with that "lovely and
faithful dream which came with Italian Renaissance in the works of
Pisani, Mino di Fiesole, Donatello, Michael Angelo, and Giovanni da
Bologna--all who caught the spirit of Greek art." Artistic truth was the
keynote of the hour, and it is this truth which is the basis of the
highest conception of life.
"Art's a service,--mark:
A silver key is given to thy clasp
And thou shalt stand unwearied night and day,
And fix it in the hard, slow-turning wards
To open, so that intermediate door
Betwixt the different planes of sensuous form
And form insensuous, that inferior men
May learn to feel on still through these to those,
And bless thy ministration. The world waits for help."
In their true relation art and ethics meet in their ministry to
humanity, for only in their union can they best serve man. All the
nobler culture has its responsibility in service. "Many a man has a
blind notion of stewardship about his property, but very few have it
about their knowledge," said Bishop Phillips Brooks, and he added: "One
grows tired of seeing cultivated people with all their culture cursed by
selfishness." To the true idealist--as distinct from the mere
emotionalist with æsthetic tastes--selfishness is an impossible prison.
The only spiritual freedom lies in the perpetual sharing of the fuller
life. The gift shared is the gift doubled. Art is the spiritual glory of
life; the supreme manifestation, the very influence of spiritual
achievement. Mr. Stillman, discussing the revival of art, has
questioned: "Does the world want art any longer? Has it, in the present
state of human progress, any place which will justify devotion to it?"
He questions as to whether man is still
"Apparelled in celestial light,"
or whether he has lost "the glory and the freshness" of his dreams.
"No one can admit," continues Mr. Stillman, "that the human
intellect is weaker than it was five or twenty centuries ago; but
it is certain that if we take the pains to study what was done five
centuries ago in painting, or twenty centuries ago in sculpture,
and compare it with the best work of to-day, we shall find the
latter trivial and 'prentice work compared with the ordinary work
of men whose names are lost in the lustre of a school.
"Then, little men inspired by the Zeitgeist, painted greatly; now,
our great men fail to reach the technical achievement of the little
men of them. There is only one living painter who can treat a
portrait as a Venetian artist of 1550 A.D. would have done it, and
how differently in the mastery of his material! If we go to the
work of wider range, the Campo Santo of Pisa, the Stanze, the
Sistine Chapel, the distance becomes an abyss; the simplest
fragment of a Greek statue of 450 B.C. shows us that the best
sculpture of this century, even the French, is only a happy
child-work, not even to be put in sight of Donatello or Michael
Angelo. The reason is simple, and already indicated. The early men
grew up in a system in which the power of expression was taught
from childhood; they acquired method as the musician does now, and
the tendency of the opinion of their time was to keep them in the
good method."
Is this not too narrow and sweeping a judgment? The art of portraiture
certainly did not die with the Venetian painters of 1550, however great
their work; and if there be but "one living painter" who can treat
portrait art like the early Venetians, there are scores of artists who
achieve signal success by other methods of treatment.
At all events, these three men, Canova, Thorwaldsen, and Gibson, worked
with the conviction that art is service. With Victor Hugo, Canova could
have said: "Genius is not made for genius; it is made for men.... Let
him have wings for the infinite provided he has feet for the earth, and
that, after having been seen flying, he is seen walking. After he has
been seen an archangel, let him be still more a brother.... To be the
servant of God in the march of progress--such is the law which regulates
the growth of genius."
They worked and taught by this creed. Thorwaldsen, on first arriving in
Rome, wandered for three years, it is said, among the statues of gods
and heroes, like a man in a dream. The atmosphere of the earlier day
when Titian was employed by the king of Portugal and Raphael by the Pope
to create works of great public importance still lingered and exerted
over Thorwaldsen, and over all artists susceptible to its subtle
influence, a peculiar spell. Its power was revealed in his subsequent
works--the "Christ;" the sculptured groups for tombs in St. Peter's and
in other churches; the poetic reliefs symbolizing "Day" and "Night;"
"Ganymede Watering the Eagle;" the "Three Graces," "Hebe," and many
others.
Among Canova's works his immortal masterpiece is the monumental memorial
group for the tomb of Pope Clement XIII in St. Peter's. The Pope is
represented as kneeling in prayer. The modelling of the entire figure is
instinct with expression. The fine and beautiful hands express reverence
and trust. The countenance is pervaded with that peace only known to the
soul that is in complete harmony with the divine power. The Holy Father
has taken the tiara from his head and it lies before him on the
cushion on which he kneels. Although the entire portrayal of the figure
reveals that devotion expressed in the solemn and searching words of the
church service, "And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord,
ourselves, our souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy, and living
sacrifice unto thee,"--although it is the very utmost rendering of the
soul to God, it is yet the deliberate, the joyful, the living acceptance
of divine love and no mere trance of ecstasy. No more wonderful figure
in all the range of sculpture has been created than the Clement XIII of
Canova.
[Illustration: "THE GENIUS OF DEATH,"
DETAIL FROM TOMB OF CLEMENT XIII,
ST. PETER'S, ROME
Antonio Canova
_Page 43_]
The group is completed by two symbolic figures representing Religion and
Death. The former is personified as a female figure holding a cross; the
latter sits with his torch reversed. Grief, but not hopeless and
despairing sorrow, is portrayed; it is the grief companioned by faith
which ever sees
"The stars shine through the cypress trees."
The base of the monument represents a chapel guarded by lions.
Pistolesi, the great Italian authority on the sculpture of St. Peter's
and the Vatican galleries, notes that the lions typify the firmness and
the force and the courage, "_la fortezza dell'anima_," that so signally
characterized Clement XIII. There is probably no sacred monument in the
realm of all modern art which can equal this creation in its delicacy,
its lofty beauty, and the noble message that it conveys.
The oldest art school, the Accadémia di San Luca, founded in 1507 by
Sixtus, when he called to Rome all the leading artists of Europe to
assist in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, is an organization that
magically links the present with the days of Canova, Thorwaldsen, and
Gibson, as it linked them, also, with the remote and historic past. The
father of the present custodian of the Academy knew Thorwaldsen well.
The grandfather of the gifted Italian sculptor, Tadolini (who has
recently completed the tomb for Pope Leo XIII, placed in the Basilica of
San Giovanni Laterano), modelled the bust of Thorwaldsen, and in one
gallery hangs the great Danish sculptor's portrait, painted by himself.
The first director of San Luca was Federigo Zuccaro. In the early years
of the nineteenth century this Academy was a vital centre of art life,
and it is still a school that draws students, although the visitor who
does not loiter and linger in his Rome may fail to know of this most
alluring place. The San Luca is in the Via Bonella, one of the old,
dark, narrow, and gloomy streets of the oldest part of Rome,--a short
street of hardly more than two blocks, running between the Via
Alessandra and the Forum. Hawthorne vividly pictures all this old Rome
when he speaks of the "narrow, crooked, intricate streets, so
uncomfortably paved with little squares of lava that to tread over them
is a penitential pilgrimage; so indescribably ugly, moreover; so cold,
so alley-like, into which the sun never falls and where a chill wind
forces its deadly breath into our lungs; the immense seven-storied,
yellow-washed hovels, or call them palaces, where all that is dreary in
domestic life seems magnified and multiplied; those staircases which
ascend from a ground floor of cook shops and cobblers' stalls, stables
and regiments of cavalry, to a middle region of princes, cardinals, and
ambassadors, and an upper tier of artists just beneath the unattainable
sky: ... in which the visitor becomes sick at heart of Italian
trickery, which has uprooted whatever faith in man's integrity had till
then endured;" the city "crushed down in spirit by the desolation of her
ruin and the hopelessness of her future;" one recalls these words when
passing through the unspeakable gloom and horror and desolation and
squalor of ancient Rome. In these surroundings one's cab stops at "No.
44," and ringing the bell the door is open, whether by super-normal
agency or by some invisible terrestrial manipulation one is unable to
determine; but in the semi-darkness of the narrow hall he discerns
before him a flight of steep stairs, and, as no other vista opens, he
reasons that, by the law of exclusion, this must be the appointed way.
Along the wall are seen, here and there, some antique casts from
Trajan's Column, and reliefs from Canova and Thorwaldsen. The galleries
above hold only a small and a comparatively unimportant collection of
pictures. There are marines from Vernet and Claude Lorraine; a "Venus
Crowned by the Graces" from Rubens; Giulio Romano's copy of Raphael's
"Galatea,"--the original of which (in the Villa Farnesina) represents
Galatea surrounded by Nymphs, Cupids, and Tritons, being carried in a
shell across the sea. There is a Cupid, and also the "Fortuna" of Guido
Reni,--the latter a figure of ineffable grace floating in the air. One
of Raphael's early works representing "St. Luke Painting the Madonna" is
here. There are several works by Titian, but these have less than would
be expected of the glory usually associated with his name; and a Vandyke
representing the Virgin and Child, with two angels playing, the one on a
lute, the other on the violin.
[Illustration: "LA FORTUNA," ACCADÉMIA DI SAN LUCA, ROME
Guido Reni
_Page 47_]
One salon filled with portraits of artists is especially interesting,
and that of Thorwaldsen is so feminine in its costume and the parting of
the hair, that it is almost inevitably mistaken for that of a woman.
Guido's graceful "Fortuna" is represented as a female figure flying
through the air, her long hair streaming in the wind, and the picture
recalls to one the Greek legend of Opportunity, as told by Kainos. The
legend runs:--
"'Of what town is thy sculptor?'
"'Of Lukzon.'
"'What is his name?'
"'Lysippos.'
"'And thine?'
"'Opportunity, controller of all things.'
"'But why standest thou on tiptoe?'
"'I am always running.'
"'Why, then, hast thou wings on both feet?'
"'I fly like the wind.'
"'But wherefore bearest thou a razor in thy right hand?'
"'As a sign to men that I am sharper than any steel.'
"'And why wearest thou thy hair long in front?'
"'That I may be seized by him who approaches me.'
"'By Zeus! And thou art bald behind?'
"'Because once I have passed with my winged feet no one may seize
me then.'"
From one landing, on the steep narrow staircase of San Luca, opens the
Biblioteca Sarti, an art library of some fifteen thousand volumes. The
sculpture gallery is now closed and can only be entered by special
permission. This is the more to be regretted as it contains the
principal collections in Rome of the original casts of the works of
Thorwaldsen and Canova.
The latter-day artists who have been setting up their Lares and Penates
in Rome at various periods during the early and into the later years of
the nineteenth century have found the Eternal City in strong contrast
with its twentieth-century aspects, however it may have differed from
the Rome of the Popes. The earlier American artists to seek the
Seven-hilled City were painters; and Allston, Copley, and Stuart had
already distinguished themselves in pictorial art before America had
produced any sculptor who could read his title clear to fame. It is to
Hiram Powers (born in Vermont in 1805) that America must look as her
first sculptor, chronologically considered, closely followed by Thomas
Crawford, who was but eight years his junior, and by Horatio Greenough,
who was also born in the same year as Powers, and who preceded him in
Italy, but whose work has less artistic value. Mr. Greenough has left a
colossal (if not an artistic) monument to his gifts in stately shaft
marking Bunker Hill which he designed. Problematic in their claim to
artistic excellence as are his "Washington"--a seated figure in the
grounds of the Capitol in Washington--and his group in relief called
"The Rescue" in the portico of the Capitol, his name lives by his
personality as a man of liberal culture and noble character, if not by
his actual rank in art. First of the American group in Italy, he was
followed by Powers, who sought the ineffable beauty and enchantment of
Florence in 1837. Horatio Greenough died in comparatively early life,
leaving perhaps the most interesting of his works in a relief (purchased
by Professor George Ticknor, the distinguished historian of Spain)
"representing in touching beauty and expression a sculptor in an
attitude of dejection and discouragement before his work, while a hand
from above pours oil into his dying lamp, an allegory illustrative of
the struggles of genius and the relief which timely patronage may extend
to it."
Mr. Powers passed his entire life in Florence. His work attracted great
attention and inspired ardent appreciation. In portrait busts Powers was
especially successful; and his "Greek Slave," his "Fisher Boy," "Il
Penseroso," and "Proserpine" impressed the art-loving public of the time
as marked by strong artistic power and as entitled to permanent rank in
sculpture.
Mr. Crawford died young; but his name lives in the majestic bronze
statue of "Beethoven" which is in the beautiful white and gold interior
of Symphony Hall, in Boston; and his "Orpheus" and some other works
claim high appreciation. Writing of Crawford, Mr. Hillard said:--
"Crawford's career was distinguished by energy, resolution, and
self-reliance. While yet a youth, he formed the determination to
make himself an artist; and with this view went to Rome--alone,
unfriended, and unknown--and there began a life of toil and
renunciation; resisting the approaches alike of indolence and
despondency. His strength of character and force of will would have
earned distinction for powers inferior to his. Nothing was given to
self-indulgence; nothing to vague dreams; nothing to unmanly
despair. He did not wait for the work that he would have, but
labored cheerfully upon that which he could have. Success came
gradually, but surely; and his powers as surely proved themselves
to be more than equal to the demand made upon them."
On the death of Mr. Crawford, Thomas William Parsons wrote a memorial
poem in which this stanza occurs:--
"O Rome! what memories awake,
When Crawford's name is said,
Of days and friends for whose dear sake
That path of Hades unto me
Will have no more of dread
Than his own Orpheus felt, seeking Eurydice!
O Crawford! husband, father, brother
Are in that name, that little word!
Let me no more my sorrow smother;
Grief stirs me, and I must be stirred."
Thomas Ball, who went in early manhood to Florence, where he remained
until when nearly at the age of fourscore he returned to his native
land, still continues, at the age of eighty-five, to pursue the art he
loves. He has created works, as his equestrian statue of "Washington" in
the Public Gardens and his "Lincoln Freeing the Slave" in Park Square,
both in Boston; his great Washington Memorial group in Methuen,
Massachusetts; his "Christ Blessing Little Children," and many other
historic and ideal sculptures, that seem endowed with his beautiful and
winning spirit as well as with his rare gifts. Larkin G. Mead chose
Florence rather than Rome for his home and work. His noble "River God,"
placed at the head of the Mississippi near St. Paul, as well as other
interesting creations, link his name with that of his native land.
Randolph Rogers, a man of genius; Rinehart, Paul Akers, and Thompson all
died before the full maturity of their powers; Akers at the early age of
thirty-six, leaving, as his bride of a year, the poet, Elizabeth Akers
Allen, who, under the _nom de plume_ of "Florence Percy," has endeared
herself to all lovers of lyric art. In a monograph on Paul Akers,
written after his death, the writer says of his studio in Rome:--
"Linked with this studio is Hawthorne's tale of 'The Marble Faun,'
as Kenyon's studio was none other than Paul Akers's. Though
Hawthorne in his romance saw fit to lay the scene in the rooms once
occupied by Canova, it was in the Via del Crecie that he wove the
thread of his Italian romance.
"Paul Akers's growing reputation and increase of work ere long made
it necessary for him to seek a more commodious studio, and he took
rooms once occupied by the famous Canova. Here he had made under
his supervision copies in marble of many of the famous works of the
Vatican and the Capitol. The largest collection of these was a
commission from Mr. Edward King of Newport, and among them were
busts of Ariadne, Demosthenes, and Cicero, and a facsimile of the
'Dying Gladiator' which Mr. King presented to the Redwood Library
of Newport.
* * * * *
"During his first winter in Rome he was permitted by the
authorities to make a cast of a mutilated bust of Cicero which had
long lain in the Vatican. A critic writing from Rome in 1857 says
of this bust of Cicero: 'Mr. Akers obtained permission to take a
cast from it; he then restored the eye, brow, and ears, and
modelled a neck and bust for it in accordance with the temperament
shown by the nervous and rather thin face. He has succeeded
admirably. It is the very head of the Vatican, yet without the
scars of envious time, and sits gracefully on human shoulders,
instead of being rolled awkwardly back upon a shelf.' This bust is
unlike the portrait which so long passed for Cicero's, but has been
identified by means of a medal which was struck by the Magnesians
in honor of the great orator during his consulate, and is now the
authorized portrait of Cicero. The finest of Paul Akers's creations
executed during his stay in Rome are 'St. Elizabeth of Hungary,'
which represents the princess at the moment the roses have fallen
to the ground; 'Una and the Lion,' an illustration of the line in
Spenser's 'Faerie Queene,'--
'Still while she slept he kept both watch and ward;'
the head of Milton and the 'Pearl Diver.' The 'Pearl Diver,' now
owned by the city of Portland, represents a youth stretched upon a
sea-worn rock and wrapped in eternal sleep. The arms are thrown
above the head, and about the waist is a net containing
pearl-bearing shells for which he has risked his life. There is no
trace of suffering; all is subdued to beauty. It is death
represented as the ancients conceived it, the act of the
torch-reverting god. This youth, who has lost his life at the
moment when all that for which he had dared was within his grasp,
suggests Paul Akers's own untimely death on the eve of his
triumph."
It was from his Roman studio that Mr. Akers wrote to a friend:--
"Yesterday Browning called. He looked a long time at my Milton, and
said it was Milton, the man-angel. He praised the wealth of hair
which I had given the head, and then said that Mrs. Browning had a
lock of Milton's hair, the only one now in existence. This was
given her by Leigh Hunt, just before his death, who had the records
proving it to be genuine. The hair was, he said, like mine. He
invited me to visit him in Florence, where he would show me the
first edition of Milton's poems, marked to indicate the peculiar
accent which the poet sometimes adopted, a knowledge of which makes
clear somewhat that otherwise seems discordant. Milton was so great
a musician that there could have been no fault in sound in his
compositions. He looked over my books; said my edition of Shelley
was one which he had corrected for the press, not from a knowledge
of the original MS., but from his internal evidence that so it must
have been; said Poe was a wonderful man; spoke of Tennyson in the
warmest terms. Took up a copy of his own poems published in the
United States, and remarked that it was better than the English
edition, yet had some awful blunders, and wished me to allow him to
correct a copy for me. My head of the 'Drowned Girl' caught his eye
and interested him. I told him that I had thought of Hood's 'Bridge
of Sighs.' He then said that Hood wrote that on his deathbed, and
read it to him before any one else had seen it. Hood was doubtful
whether it was worth publishing. To-morrow Mrs. Browning is to
come; she has been quite ill since she came to Rome, and I have
seen her but once. I derive much comfort from the friendship of
Charlotte Cushman. She has just gone from here. She has frequent
breakfast parties; I have attended but one. Mr. and Mrs. James T.
Fields, Wild, the painter, and myself were the guests. Fields I
like much."
The first works of Mr. Akers were two portrait busts, of Longfellow and
of Samuel Appleton. Of his bust of Milton, Hawthorne in the "Marble
Faun" has said:--
"In another style, there was the grand, calm head of Milton, not
copied from any one bust or picture, yet more authentic than any
of them, because all known representations of the poet had been
profoundly studied and solved in the artist's mind. The bust over
the tomb in Greyfriar's Church, the original miniatures and
pictures wherever to be found, had mingled each its special truth
in this one work--wherein likewise by long perusal and deep love of
'Paradise Lost,' the 'Comus,' the 'Lycidas,' and 'L'Allegro,' the
sculptor had succeeded even better than he knew in spiritualizing
his marble with the poet's mighty genius. And this was a great
thing to have achieved, such a length of time after the dry bones
and dust of Milton were like those of any other dead man."
Richard Greenough and the painter, Mr. Haseltine, were prominent figures
among the early American group of the nineteenth-century artists in
Rome. There came Emma Stebbins, who modelled a fine portrait bust of
Charlotte Cushman; and Anne Whitney, whose statues of Samuel Adams and
of Leif Ericson adorn public grounds in Boston; whose life-size statue
of Harriet Martineau is the possession of Wellesley College; and whose
"Chaldean Astronomer," "Lotus-Eater," and "Roma"--a figure personifying
the Rome of Pio Nono--reveal her power in ideal creation.
The name of Harriet Hosmer stands out in brilliant pre-eminence among
those of all women who have followed the plastic art. Her infinite charm
of personality seems to impart itself to her work, and she has the gift
to make friends as well as to call forms out of clay--the success of
friendship being one even more permanently satisfying. In her early life
as a girl hardly more than twenty, she sought Rome, living with art as
her chaperon. Her versatility, her picturesque individuality, and her
imaginative power all combined to win sympathetic recognition. Gibson,
whose guidance was particularly well adapted to develop her gifts,
received her into his own studio and took a deep interest in her work.
It was during the period of her early efforts that Hawthorne was in
Rome, and she is graphically depicted in his notebooks in her boyish cap
at work in the clay. Gibson was an artist, _con amore_, and Miss
Hosmer's joyous abandon to her art captivated his sympathy. "In my art
what do I find?" he questioned; "happiness; love which does not depress
me; difficulties which I do not fear; resolution which never abates;
flights which carry me above the ground; ambition which tramples no one
down." Master and pupil were akin in their unwearied devotion to art. Of
Gibson, whose absence of mind regarding all the details of life made him
almost helpless in travel and affairs, Miss Hosmer used gleefully to say
that he "was a god in his studio, but God help him out of it!" This
glancing sprite of a girl, frightening her friends by her daring and
venturous horseback riding; gravitating by instinct to offer some
generous, tender aid to the sick, the destitute, or the helpless; the
life and light of gay dinners and of social evenings; working from six
in the morning till night in her studio, "with an absence of
pretension," says Mrs. Browning, "and simplicity of manners which accord
rather with the childish dimples in her rosy cheeks than with her broad
forehead and high aims," had the magic gift that merged her visitors and
patrons into enthusiastic friends; and Mrs. Browning has chronicled the
pretty scene when Lady Marion Alford, the daughter of the Earl of
Northumberland, knelt before the girl artist and slipped on her finger
a ring--a precious ruby set with diamonds--as a token of her devotion.
Reading Miss Hosmer's life still further backward, the reader is
transported, as if on some magic carpet, to St. Louis, in the United
States, where a noble and lofty man, Hon. Wayman Crow,--a generous
friend, a liberal patron of the arts, a man of the most refined tastes
and culture, whose great qualities were always used in high
service,--first aided Miss Hosmer to the preliminary studies in her art,
and whose accomplished and lovely daughters (now Mrs. Lucien Carr of
Boston, Mrs. Edwin Cushman of Newport and Rome, and Mrs. Emmons of
Leamington, England) were as a trio of sisters to the young artist. And
"the flowing conditions of life" bear on this lifelong friendship until
a fair young girl, Élise (the daughter of Mrs. Emmons), catches up this
sweet tie and as an accomplished and lovely young woman in Roman
society, when these "flowing conditions" had come down even into the
season of 1906-7, Miss Emmons cherished the fame of Harriet Hosmer and
enjoyed the privilege of a constant correspondence with the
distinguished artist. So the past links itself again with the present;
and who can tell where any story in life begins or ends in the constant
evolutionary progress?
Miss Hosmer's work attracted wide attention. Her majestic statue of
"Zenobia;" the winsome "Puck;" the impressive statue of "Beatrice
Cenci," representing her as she lay in her cell in Castel San Angelo the
night before her execution,--these and other works of hers are of an
interesting character and will hold their permanent rank in sculpture.
Were all the muses present at the christening of William Wetmore
Story--sculptor, musician, poet and painter, jurist and man of letters,
and the friend whose social relationships made life a thing of beauty--
"To winds and waterfalls,
And autumn's sunlit festivals,
To music and to music's thoughts
Inextricably bound"?
Mr. Story made his first visit to Italy in 1847; not at that time with
any fixed purpose of exchanging his profession of the law for art. He
loved literature, and his grace and ease in expression had already
manifested his literary talent; he had an inclination toward
modelling--it could hardly, at this time, have been called by a stronger
name--and curiously enough with him the usual conditions were reversed
and he received a commission for a statue of his father, Judge Story,
before he had made any definite turning toward the art of sculpture. A
young man of versatile gifts and accomplished scholarship, sculpture was
to him one among the many attractive forms of art rather than the
supreme attraction; and it was the stimulus of the given work that
determined him as a sculptor, rather than his determination to be a
sculptor that determined the work. Among the goddesses of life Destiny
must, perhaps, be allowed a place. At all events, after Mr. Story's
initial glance at Italy, he sought Rome again a year later, and this
time it was his choice for life, however unrevealed to his eye were the
resplendent years that lay before him. He had fallen under the spell of
the Magic Land. In a letter to Lowell, Mr. Story had questioned how he
should ever endure again "the restraint and bondage of Boston." It was
the picturesque Rome of the Popes that he first knew. The years of
1848-49 were those of revolutionary activities in Italy. Pio Nono, one
of the most saintly and beloved of the Popes,--whose mortal form now
rests in that richly decorated chapel in old San Lorenzo, _fuori le
mura_, on the site of the church that Constantine founded on the burial
place of St. Lawrence,--made his flight to Gaeta and the Roman republic
was established. It was a dramatic scene when Pio Nono returned (April
12, 1850), entering Rome by the Porta San Giovanni. The scene from this
gate was then, as now, one of the most impressive in the Eternal City.
It was in this vast Basilica of San Giovanni Laterano that Pio Nono
entered that April day, leaving his carriage and walking alone to the
altar, where he knelt in devotion. A splendid procession awaited without
to accompany the Holy Father to the Papal Palace. The superb state
carriages conveyed princes and foreign ambassadors and great nobles.
From the Piazza San Giovanni to St. Peter's every house was illuminated,
and the populace cheered and waved until the very air vibrated with
sound and color. These were the days when the methods of government were
a visible spectacle, a drama, making the life in Rome a daily
illuminated missal.
The Storys, on their return to Italy, located themselves for a time in
Florence, where they met the Brownings, and that lifelong friendship
between the poet and the sculptor was initiated. In these happy
Florentine days Mr. Story worked in his studio while his wife read to
him the life of Keats, then just issued, written by Monckton Milnes,
later Lord Houghton. But the "flowing conditions" soon bore them onward
to Rome, where they settled themselves in the Via Porta Pinciana, and
met the Crawfords, who were domiciled in the Villa Negroni. In these
Roman days, too, appeared Mr. Cropsey, of poetic landscape fame, and
here, too, was Margaret Fuller. Mazzini was then a leading figure in the
Chamber of Deputies,--"the prophet not only of modern Italy, but of the
modern world." He found Italy "utilitarian and materialistic, permeated
by French ideas, and weakened by her reliance on French initiative. He
was filled with hope that Italy might not only achieve her own unity,
but might once more accomplish, as she had in the Rome of the Cæsars and
the Rome of the Church, the unity of the Western world. 'On my side I
believe,' he says, 'that the great problem of the day was a religious
problem, to which all other questions were but secondary.'" He was
asserting that "we cannot relate ourselves to the Divine, but through
collective humanity. It is not by isolated duty (which indeed the
conditions of modern life render more and more impossible), nor by
contemplation of mere Power as displayed in the material world, that we
can develop our nature. It is rather by mingling with the universal
life, and by carrying on the evolution of the never-ending work."
The studios of Mr. Crawford in those days were in the Piazza delle
Terme, near the Baths of Diocletian. William Page, the painter, was
domiciled on the slope of the Quirinal where he painted a portrait of
Charlotte Cushman which Mrs. Browning described as "a miracle"; one of
Mrs. Crawford; the head of Mrs. Story, which he insisted upon presenting
to her husband; and a magnificent portrait of Browning which the artist
presented to Mrs. Browning. "Both of us," wrote Robert Browning of this
gift, "would have fain escaped being the subjects of such princely
generosity; but there was no withstanding his delicacy and
noble-mindedness." Mrs. Jameson was much in Rome in the early years of
the 1850-60 decade, living in the old port by the Tiber nearly opposite
to the new and splendid building of the law courts. Near the Tarpeian
Rock Frederika Bremer had perched, in a tiny room of which she took all
the frugal care, even to washing the blue cups and plates when she
invited the Hawthornes to a tea of a simplicity that suggested, indeed,
the utmost degree of "light" housekeeping. Thomas Buchanan Read was one
of the hosts and guests of this social group, and it was at a dinner he
gave that Hawthorne met Gibson, whose conversational talents were
evidently (upon that occasion) chiefly employed in contemning the
pre-Raphaelite school of painters and emphasizing the need of sculptors
to discover and to follow the principles of the Greeks,--"a fair
doctrine, but one which Mr. Gibson fails to practise," observes
Hawthorne. The Brownings were variously bestowed in Rome through
succeeding winters,--in the Bocca di Leone, in the Via del Tritone and
elsewhere. Mrs. Browning, as her "Casa Guida Windows" and many other
poems attest, took always the deepest interest in Italian politics.
American and English friends come and go, but the little group of
residents and the more permanent sojourners, as the Hawthornes and the
Brownings, continue their daily variations on life in the social dinners
and teas, the excursions and the sight-seeing of the wonderful city.
Only the magician could "call up the vanished past again" and summon
into an undeniable materialization those charming figures to come forth
out of the shadowy air of the rich, historic past, and stand before us
in the full light of contemporary attention. Not alone this group of
choice persons, but the environment of their time, the very atmosphere,
are demanded of this necromancy. The figure of Adelaide Kemble (Mrs.
Sartoris) is one of these, and the tradition still survives of a concert
given in the splendid, spacious hall of the Palazzo Colonna where she
was the prima donna of the occasion. There were also musicals at the
house of Mrs. Sartoris, where the guests met her famous sister, Fanny
Kemble. Mrs. Browning was fond of both the sisters, and said of them
that their social brilliancy was their least distinction. She found
them both "noble and sympathetic," and her "dear Mr. Page" and "Hatty"
(Miss Hosmer) "an immense favorite with us both," she said of her
husband and herself; these and the Storys made up the special circle for
the Brownings in Rome. "The Sartoris house has the best society in
Rome," writes Mrs. Browning to Miss Mitford, "and exquisite music, of
course. We met Lockhart there and my husband sees a good deal of him....
A little society," she says, "is good for soul and body, and on the
Continent it is easy to get a handful of society without paying too dear
for it. This is an advantage of Continental life."
Mrs. Browning greatly admired the work of Mr. Page, whose portraits she
found "like Titian's." But the tinted statues of Gibson seemed to her
inartistic. His famous painted Venus she called "pretty," but only as a
wax doll might be, not as a work of genuine art. Then Thackeray and his
two daughters came; Miss Anne (now known to the world of literature as
Anne Thackeray Ritchie) was a special favorite with Mrs. Browning.
Coming to Rome at one time from Florence in midwinter, the Brownings
found that the Storys had taken an apartment for them (in the Via Bocca
di Leone), and they arrived to find lighted fires and lamps. Their
journey had included a week's visit at Assisi, studying the rich art of
Cimabue and Giotto in the church of the great Franciscan monastery. Mrs.
Browning visited studios in Rome and found that of Mr. Crawford more
interesting to her than Mr. Gibson's, but no artist is "as near" to her,
as she herself says, as Mr. Page. The Storys left the Porta Pinciana to
live at No. 93 in the Piazza di Spagna, and in the same house with the
Brownings, in the Bocca di Leone, Mr. Page had his apartment. To Lowell,
Mr. Story wrote of the Brownings:--
"The Brownings and we became great friends in Florence, and, of
course, we could not become friends without liking each other. He,
Emelyn says, is like you. He is of my size, but slighter, with
straight black hair, small eyes, a smooth face, and manner nervous
and rapid. He has great vivacity, but not the least humor; some
sarcasm, considerable critical faculty, and very great frankness
and friendliness of manner and mind. Mrs. Browning will sit buried
up in a large easy-chair listening and talking very quietly and
pleasantly. Very unaffected is she.... I have hundreds of statues
in my head, but they are in the future tense. Powers I knew very
well in Florence. He is a man of great mechanical talent and
natural strength of perception, but with no poetry in his
composition, and I think no creative power.... I have been to hear
Allegri's 'Miserere' in the Sistine Chapel, with the awful and
mighty figures of Michael Angelo looking down from the ceiling; to
hear Guglielmi's 'Miserere' in St. Peter's, while the gloom of
evening was gathering in the lofty aisles and shrouding the
frescoed domes, was a deeply affecting and solemnly beautiful
experience. Never can one forget the plaintive wailing of the
voices that seemed to implore pity and pardon."
It was in 1856 that the Storys located themselves in Palazzo Barberini,
which Bernini designed and which was built "out of the quarry of the
Coliseum" by Urban VIII. It is one of the wonderful old palaces of
Rome,--this mass of Barberini courts, gardens, terraces, and vast
apartments, with the interminable winding stairs, where on one landing
Thorwaldsen's lion lies before the great doors decorated with the arms
of Popes and princes. Here the old Cardinal Barberini lived his stormy
life; here are the gallery and the library,--the latter stored with
infinite treasures of ancient documents, old maps whose portrayal of the
earth bears little resemblance to the present, and famous manuscripts
and volumes in old vellum, some fifty thousand in all. In the Barberini
gallery are a few noted works,--Raphael's "Fornarina," Guido's "Beatrice
Cenci," a "Holy Family" by Andrea del Sarto, and others.
[Illustration: SPANISH STEPS, PIAZZA TRINITÀ DEI MONTI, ROME
_Page 72_]
The Via delle Quattro Fontane, on which the Palazzo Barberini stands,
might well be known as the street of the wonderful vista. One strolls
down it to the Via Sistina and to Piazza Trinità de' Monti at the head
of the Spanish steps (the Scala di Spagna), pausing for the loveliness
of the view. Across the city rises the opposite height of Monte Mario,
and to the left the Janiculum, now crowned with the magnificent
equestrian statue of Garibaldi, which is in evidence from almost every
part of Rome. As far as the eye can see the Campagna stretches away,
infinite as the sea--a very Campagna Mystica. The luminous air, the
faint, misty blue of the distance, the deep purple shadows on the hills,
make up a landscape of color. At the foot of the Spanish steps the
flower venders spread out their wares,--great bunches of the
flame-colored roses peculiar to Italy, the fragrant white hyacinths,
golden jonquils, baskets of violets, and masses of lilies of the valley.
On many a night of brilliant moonlit glory the artistic sojourners in
Rome lingered on the parapet of the Pincian Hill watching the moonlight
flood the Eternal City until churches and palaces seemed to swim in a
sea of silver. Or in the morning, when the rose-red of dawn was aglow,
there seemed to hover over the city that wraith of mist whose secret
Claude Lorraine surprises in his landscapes. These dawn visions of
mysterious, incredible beauty are a part of the very identity of Rome.
There were mornings when the Hawthornes with Mrs. Jameson or some other
friend would drive out to the old San Lorenzo (_fuori le mura_), the
church founded by Constantine in 330 on the site where the body of St.
Lawrence was buried. At various periods the church was enlarged and
finally, as recently as in 1864, Pio Nono had great improvements made
under the architect Vespignani. In the piazza in front was placed an
immense column of red granite, some sixty feet high, with the statue of
St. Lawrence, a standing figure, at the top. It is most impressive. The
colonnade at the entrance of the church is decorated with frescoes and
contains two immense sarcophagi, whose sides are beautifully sculptured
with reliefs. The roof is supported by six Ionic columns. Entering the
church one finds an interior of three aisles divided by colossal columns
of Oriental granite. In the middle aisle, on both sides the galleries,
are fresco paintings illustrating the martyrdom of St. Lawrence and of
St. Stephen, one series on the right and the other on the left. One of
these paintings, especially, of the life of St. Lawrence, is strangely
haunting to the imagination. It represents the youthful, slender figure,
nude, save for slight drapery, laid on the gridiron while the fire is
being kindled under it and the fagots shovelled in. The physical
shrinking of the flesh--of every nerve--from the torture, the spiritual
strength and invincible energy of the countenance, are wonderfully
depicted. The great aisle was painted by order of Pius IX by Cesare
Fracassini; in it are two pulpits of marble. A double staircase of
marble conducts to that part of the Basilica of Constantine which by
Honorius III was converted into the presbytery. It is decorated at the
upper end by twelve columns of violet marble which rise from the level
of the primitive basilica beneath. At the end is the ancient pontifical
seat, adorned with mosaic and precious marbles. The papal altar is under
a canopy in the Byzantine style. The pavement of this presbytery is
worthy of particular attention. Descending to the confessional which is
under the high altar the tomb of the martyred saints, Lawrence, Stephen,
and Justin, is found.
[Illustration: TOMB OF PIO NONO, SAN LORENZO (FUORI LE MURA), ROME
_Page 75_]
It was the request of Pio Nono that his mortal body should rest here,
where it is placed in a simple tomb, according to his own instructions;
but the chapel is very rich in decoration which was paid for by money
sent from all parts of the world.
The chapel walls are entirely encrusted in mother-of-pearl, gilt bronze,
and beautiful marbles. The mosaic paintings are formed of gold and
precious stones of fabulous value. This interior is perhaps the richest
in the world in its decoration. San Lorenzo is a patriarchal church, and
one of the seven pilgrimage churches of Rome. Near San Lorenzo is the
Campo Verano, a cemetery containing many beautiful memorial sculptures.
In those days, half a century ago, the entrance most often used by
visitors to Rome was through the Via Flaminia and the Porta del Popolo,
opening on the Piazza del Popolo, rather the most picturesque and
impressive place in all Rome. On the left is the Pincian Hill (Monte
Pincio), with its rich terraces, balustrades, its beautiful porticos
filled with statuary, its groves of cypress and ilex trees; a classic
vision rising on the sight and enchanting the imagination. On the side
opposite the Porta three roads diverge in fan shape--the Via Babuino,
the Corso, and the Ripetta, with the "twin churches" side by side; one
between the Babuino and the Corso, the other between the Corso and the
Ripetta.
The Corso (which was the ancient Flaminian Way) runs straight to the
Piazza Venezia at the foot of the Capitoline Hill. This Piazza del
Popolo was widened and decorated by Pius VII. It is formed by two
semicircles, adorned with fountains and statues, and terminated by four
symmetrical edifices. In the semicircles are colossal groups in marble,
and a road opposite the Pincio leads to the Ponte Margherita and the
Prati di Castello.
The obelisk in the centre of the piazza was brought to Rome from
Heliopolis by Cæsar Augustus and originally stood in the Circus Maximus.
It was erected here by Pope Sixtus V, and it is nearly a hundred feet in
height. It is formed of red granite, and while it has been broken in
three places, the hieroglyphics are still legible. This obelisk was
first erected in Egypt as a part of the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis,
in a period preceding that of Rameses II. After the battle of Actium,
Augustus transported it to Rome, and it was first placed in the Circus
Maximus, but during the reign of Valentinian it fell from its pedestal
and lay buried in the earth, until in the sixteenth century Pope Sixtus
V had it placed in the centre of the Piazza del Popolo, and consecrated
it to the cross. The two inscriptions are on opposite sides. One thus
reads:--
"The Emperor Cæsar, son of the divine Cæsar Augustus, Sovereign
Pontiff, twelve times Emperor, eleven times Consul, fourteen times
Tribune, having conquered Egypt, consecrated this gift to the Sun."
The other inscription is as follows:--
"Sixtus V, Sovereign Pontiff, excavated, transported, and restored
this obelisk, sacrilegiously consecrated to the Sun by the great
Augustus, in the great Circus, where it lay in ruins, and dedicated
it to the cross triumphant in the fourth year of his pontificate."
The Church of Santa Maria del Popolo is built into the very wall of
Monte Pincio on the site of Nero's tomb. It dates back to 1099, and
consists of three naves and several chapels. In the first chapel is a
"Nativity" by Pinturicchio, who also painted the lunettes. Another
chapel belongs to the Cibo family, and is rich in marbles and adorned
with sixteen columns of Sicilian jasper. The "Conception" is by Maratta,
the "Martyrdom of St. Lawrence" by Morandi, and the "St. Catherine" by
Volterra. The "Visitation" was sculptured by Bernini in 1679. The third
chapel is painted by Pinturicchio (1513), and the fourth has an
interesting bas-relief of the fifteenth century. The picture of the
Virgin, on the high altar, is one of those attributed to St. Luke; the
paintings on the vault of the choir are by Pinturicchio. The two marble
monuments are, from their perfection of design and execution, reckoned
among the best modern works. They are by Cantucci da S. Savino. In the
chapel following is an "Assumption" by Annibale Carracci; the side
pictures are by Caravaggio. The last chapel but one in the small nave is
the Chigi chapel, and is one of the most celebrated in Rome.
Raphael gave the designs for the dome, the paintings of the frieze, and
the altar picture. This latter was begun by Del Piombo and finished by
Salviati. The statue of Daniel is by Bernini. The front of the altar and
the statues of Jonah and Elijah were done by Lorenzetto (1541), from
designs by Raphael. Outside this chapel is the monument of Princess
Odescalchi Chigi (1771), by Paolo Posi. The stained windows of the choir
belong to the fourteenth century, and in the sacristy and the vestibule
are monuments also of the fourteenth century and of the fifteenth.
Luther resided in the convent attached to this church when he was in
Rome.
There is a legend that a large walnut tree grew on the site of Nero's
tomb in whose branches innumerable crows had their home, and that they
devastated all that part of Rome. An appeal was made to the Virgin, who
declared that the crows were demons who kept watch over the ashes of
Nero, and ordered the tree to be cut down and burned, the ashes being
scattered to the air, and that, on the spot, a church should be built to
her honor. This was accomplished, and the crows no more troubled the
Eternal City.
The gardens of Lucullus were on the Monte Pincio. The view of the
terraced hillside from the Piazza del Popolo is one of the most
impressive in Rome.
The Hawthornes left Rome in 1859; and the death of Mrs. Browning in June
of 1861 left the little circle of the Roman winters irreparably broken.
"Returning to Rome," wrote Story to Charles Eliot Norton, "I have not
one single intimate ... no one with whom I can walk any of the higher
ranges of art and philosophy." Mr. Story had modelled the busts of both
Mr. and Mrs. Browning during their sojourns in Rome; in 1853 Harriet
Hosmer had made the cast of the "clasped hands" of the poets, the model
having since been cast in bronze; Mr. Page had, as already noted,
painted a portrait of Robert Browning; and Mr. Leighton (afterward Sir
Frederick) had made a beautiful portrait sketch of Mrs. Browning. In
later years all these memorials, with other paintings or plastic
sketches of the wedded poets, were grouped in Mr. Barrett Browning's
palace in Venice.
At this time Mr. Story had completed his "Cleopatra," which Hawthorne
had embalmed in literary mention in "The Marble Faun;" and beside his
"Judith," "Sappho," and other lesser works, he had achieved one of his
finest successes in the "Libyan Sibyl." Both the "Cleopatra" and the
"Sibyl" became famous. Whether they would produce so strong an effect at
the present stage of twentieth-century life is a problem, but one that
need not press for solution. Mr. Story was singularly fortunate in
certain conditions that grouped themselves about his life and combined
to establish his fame. These conditions, of course, were largely the
outer reflection of inner qualities, as our conditions are apt to be;
still, the "lack of favoring gales" not infrequently foredooms some
gallant bark to a disastrous course.
"Man is his own star....
* * * * *
Our acts, our angels, are, for good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still,"
it is true; yet has not Edith Thomas embodied something of that
overruling destiny that every thoughtful observer must discern in life
in these lines?--
"You may blame the wind or no,
But it ever hath been so--
Something bravest of its kind
Leads a frustrate life and blind,
For the lack of favoring gales
Blowing blithe on other sails."
Only occasionally have we
"... the time, and the place,
And the loved one all together."
Mr. Story's nature was eminently sympathetic with the other arts; he was
himself almost as much a literary man as he was a sculptor; he was the
friend and companion of literary men, and to the fact that art in the
middle years of the nineteenth century was far more a literary topic
than a matter of critical scrutiny, Mr. Story owed an incalculable
degree of his fame. He was an extremely interesting figure with his
social grace, his liberal culture, and his versatile gifts. His life was
centred in choice and refined associations. If not dowered with lofty
and immortal original genius, he had a singular combination of talent,
of fastidious taste, and of the intellectual appreciation that enabled
him to select interesting ideal subjects to portray in the plastic art.
These appealed to the special interest of his literary friends and were
widely discussed in the press and periodicals of the day. It is a
_bonmot_ of contemporary studio life that Hawthorne rather than Story
created the "Cleopatra," and one ingenious spirit suggests that as Mr.
Story put nothing of expression or significance into his statues, the
beholder could read into them anything he pleased; finding an empty
mould, so to speak, into which to pour whatever image or embodiment he
might conjure up from the infinite realm of imagination. One of the
latest of these contemporary critics declares that "Story declined
appreciably, year by year, falling away from his own standard; haunted
to the point of obsession by visions of mournful female figures,
generally seated, wrapped in gloom. It seems strange," this critic
continues, "that so active a mind should dream of nothing but brooding,
sinister souls, of bodies bowed in grief, or tense with rage. Never
once, apparently, did there come to him a vision of buoyancy and grace;
of a beauty that one could love; of good cheer and joy of very living;
always these unwholesome creatures born of that belated Byronic
romanticism."
This criticism, while it has as little appreciation of Mr. Story's
exquisite culture and of the taste and refinement of his art as the
general rush of the motor car and telephonic conversational life of the
first decade of the twentieth century has of the thoughtful, the poetic,
the leisurely atmosphere of Mr. Story's time, is yet not without a keen
flashlight of truth. Painting had its reactionary crisis from the
pre-Raphaelite ideals and the _intransigeants_ have had their own
conflicts in which they survived, or disappeared, according to the
degree of artistic vitality within. Sculpture and literature must also
meet the series of tests to which the onward progress of life persists
in subjecting them, and those who are submerged and perish can only
encourage the survivors as did the Greeks, as sung by Theocritus:--
"A shipwrecked sailor, buried on this coast,
Bids you set sail.
Full many a gallant ship, when we were lost,
Weathered the gale."
"As we refine, our checks grow finer," said Emerson. As life becomes
more elaborate and ambitious, the critical tests increase. Contemporary
fame can be created for the artist by favorable contemporary comment;
but it rests with himself, after all; it rests in the abiding
significance of his work--or the lack of it--as to whether this fame is
perpetuated. That of Mr. Story does not hold within itself all the
qualities that insure the appreciation of the present day. It is, as the
critic of the hour expresses himself, "too literary,"--too largely a
question of classic titles which appealed to the mid-nineteenth-century
authors whose judgment of art the twentieth century finds particularly
amusing. Henry James has somewhere held up to ridicule the early Beacon
Hill Boston for its impassioned devotion to the "attenuated outlines" of
Flaxman's art. But the work of Story will survive all transient
variations of opinion, even of the present realistic age; for is not
true realism, after all, to be found in the eternal ideals of truth,
grace, dignity, refinement, significance, and beauty? These qualities
have a message to convey; and no one can study with sympathetic
appreciation any sculpture of William Wetmore Story without feeling that
the work has something to say; that it is not a mere reproduction of
some form, but is, rather, an idea impersonated, and therefore it has
life, it has significance. The criticism of the immediate hour is not
necessarily infallible because it is contemporary. What does William
Watson say?
"A deft musician does the breeze become
Whenever an Æolian harp it finds;
Hornpipe and hurdy-gurdy both are dumb
Unto the most musicianly of winds."
It is an irretrievable loss if, in the passion for the _vita nuova_, a
generation, or a century, shall substitute for the Æolian harp the mere
hornpipe and hurdy-gurdy of the hour. In another of his keenly critical
quatrains William Watson embodies this signal truth:--
"His rhymes the poet flings at all men's feet,
And whoso will may trample on his rhymes.
Should Time let die a song that's pure and sweet,
The singer's loss were more than matched by Time's."
Art is progressive, and the present is always the "heir of all the ages"
preceding; but it cannot be affirmed that it invariably makes the best
use of its rich inheritance.
There are latter-day sculptors who excel in certain excellences that
Story lacked; still, it would not be his loss, but our own, if we fail
in a due recognition of that in his art which may appeal to the
imagination; for, whatever the enthusiasms of other cults may be, there
are qualities of beauty, strength, and profound significance in the art
of Story that must insure their permanent recognition. Still, it remains
true that Mr. Story owes his fame in an incalculable degree to the
friendly pens of Hawthorne and others of his immediate circle,--Lowell,
Motley, Charles Eliot Norton, Thackeray, Browning,--friends who,
according to the latest standards of art criticism, were not unqualified
nor absolute judges of art, but who were in sympathy with ideal
expression and recognized this as embodied in the statues of Story.
Browning wrote to the London _Times_ an article on Mr. Story's work, in
which he conjured up most of the superlative phrases of commendation
that the limits of the English language allow to praise his work, none
of whose marshalled force was too poor to do him reverence. The
versatile gifts of Story's personality drew around him friends whose
influence was potent and, indeed, authoritative in their time.
Still, any analysis of these conditions brings the searcher back to the
primary truth that without the gifts and grace to attract about him an
eminent circle of choice spirits he could not have enjoyed this potent
aid and inspiration; and thus, that
"Man is his own star,"
is an assertion that life, as well as poetry, justifies. In the full
blaze of this fundamental truth, it is, not unfrequently, the
mysterious spiritual tragedy of life that many an one as fine of fibre
and with lofty ideals
"Leads a frustrate life and blind,
For the lack of favoring gales
Blowing blithe on other sails."
Mr. Story was himself of too fine an order not to divine this truth.
With what unrivalled power and pathos has he expressed it in his
poem--one far too little known--the "Io Victis":--
"I sing the song of the Conquered, who fell in the Battle of
Life,--
The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed
in the strife;
Not the jubilant song of the victors, for whom the resounding
acclaim
Of nations was lifted in chorus, whose brows wore the chaplet
of fame,
But the hymn of the low and the humble, the weary, the
broken in heart,
* * * * *
Whose youth bore no flower on its branches, whose hopes
burned in ashes away,
From whose hands slipped the prize they had grasped at, who stood
at the dying of day
With the wreck of their life all around them...."
In this poem Mr. Story touched the highest note of his life,--as poet,
sculptor, painter, or writer of prose; in no other form of expression
has he equalled the sublimity of sentiment in these lines:--
"... I stand on the field of defeat,
In the shadow, with those who are fallen, and wounded, and
dying, and there
* * * * *
Hold the hand that is helpless, and whisper, 'They only the
victory win
Who have fought the good fight, and have vanquished the
demon that tempts us within;
Who have held to their faith unseduced by the prize that the
world holds on high;
Who have dared for a high cause to suffer, resist, fight,--if
need be, to die.'"
Such a poem must have its own immortality in lyric literature.
For a period of forty years the home of the Storys in Palazzo Barberini
was a noted centre of the most charming social life. Mr. Story's
literary work--in his contributions of essays and poems to the _Atlantic
Monthly_; in his published works, the "Roba di Roma," "Conversations in
a Studio," his collected "Poems," and others--gave him a not transitory
rank in literature which rivals, if it does not exceed, his rank in
art.
Meantime other artists were to take up their permanent abode in the
Seven-hilled City,--Elihu Vedder in 1866; Franklin Simmons two years
later; Waldo and Julian Story, the two sons of William Wetmore Story,
though claiming Rome as their home, are American by parentage and
ancestry; and Mr. Waldo Story succeeds his father in pursuing the art of
sculpture in the beautiful studios in the Via San Martino built by the
elder Story. In 1902 Charles Walter Stetson, with his gifted wife, known
to the contemporary literary world by her maiden name, Grace Ellery
Channing, set up their household gods and lighted their altar fires in
the city by the Tiber, ready, it may be, to exclaim with Ovid:--
"Four times happy is he, and times without number is happy,
Who the city of Rome uninterdicted enjoys."
[Illustration: "THE DANCE OF THE PLEIADES"
Elihu Vedder
_Page 92_]
If art is a corner of the universe seen through a temperament, the
temperament of Mr. Vedder must offer an enthralling study, for it seems
to be a lens whose power of refraction defies prophecy because it deals
with the incalculable forces. His art concerns itself little with the
æsthetic, but is chiefly the art of the intellect and the imagination.
All manner of symbols and analogies; the laws of the universe that
prevail beyond the stars; the celestial figures; the undreamed
significance in prophecy or in destiny; omens, signs, and wonders; the
world forces, advancing stealthily in the shadows of a dusky twilight;
the Fates, under brilliant skies, gathering in the stars; oracles and
supernatural coincidences that lurk in undreamed-of days; the Pleiades
dancing in a light that never was on sea or land; unknown Shapes that
meet outside space and time and question each other's identity; the dead
that come forth from their graves and glide, silent and spectral,
through a crowd, unseen by any one; the prayer of the celestial powers
poured forth in the utter solitude of the vast desert,--it is these that
are the realm of Vedder's art, and what has the normal world of portrait
and landscape to do with such art as this? Can it only be relegated to a
class, an order, of its own, and considered as being--Vedderesque? It
seems to stand alone and unparalleled. In his work lies the
transfiguration of all mystery. Vedder never paints nature, in the
sense of landscapes, and yet one often feels that he has the key to the
very creation of nature; that he has supped with gods and surprised the
secrets of the stars. Do the winds whisper to him?--
"The Muse can knit
What is past, what is done,
With the web that's just begun."
How can he find the design to phrase his thought--this painter of ideas?
"Can blaze be done in cochineal,
Or noon in mazarin?"
Whatever the Roman environment may have done for Allston, Page, and
Story, there is no question but that to Vedder it has been as his soul's
native air. For him the sirens sing again on the coast; the sorceress
works her spell; the Cumæan Sibyl again flies, wraithlike, over the
plain, clasping her rejected leaves of destiny which Tarquin in his
blindness has refused to buy. The Rome that lies buried under the ages
rises for Vedder. His art cannot be catalogued under any known division
of portrait, landscape, marine, or genre, but it is simply--the art of
Vedder. It stands alone and absolutely unrivalled. The pictorial
creations of Vedder are as wholly without precedent or comparison as if
they were the sole pictorial treasures of the world. The visitor may
care for them, or not care, according to his own ability to comprehend
and to recognize the inscrutable genius there manifested; but in either
case he will find nowhere else, in either ancient or contemporary art,
any parallel to these works.
One could well fancy that to any interrogation of his conceptions the
artist might reply:--
"I am seeker of the stone,
Living gem of Solomon.
But what is land, or what is wave,
To me, who only jewels crave?
* * * * *
I'm all-knowing, yet unknowing;
Stand not, pause not in my going."
In the rich, weird realm of Omar Khayyam's Persian poem, the Rubaiyat,
Mr. Vedder found the opportunity of his life for translating its thought
into strange, mystic symbolism. Never were artist and poet so blended
in one as in Vedder's wonderful illustrations for this poem. It has
nothing in common with what we ordinarily call an illustrated work. It
is a great treasure of art for all the ages. It is a very fount of
inspiration for painter and poet. An exquisite sonnet suggested by "The
Angel of the Darker Cup" is the following by Louise Chandler Moulton:--
"She bends her lovely head to taste thy draught,
O thou stern Angel of the Darker Cup!
With thee to-night in the dim shades to sup,
Where all they be who from that cup have quaffed.
She had been glad in her own loveliness, and laughed
At Life's strong enemies who lie in wait;
Had kept with golden youth her queenly state,
All unafraid of Sorrow's threat'ning shaft.
"Then human Grief found out her human heart,
And she was fain to go where pain is dumb;
So Thou wert welcome, Angel dread to see,
And she fares onward with thee, willingly,
To dwell where no man loves, no lovers part,--
Thus Grief that is, makes welcome Death to come."
The sonnet, the stanza, and the pictorial interpretation all form one
beautiful trio in poetic and graphic art.
Writing of Mr. Vedder, Mr. W. C. Brownell speaks of the personal force
in a picture and says that with Vedder this personal force is
imagination,--"the imagination of a man whose natural expression is
pictorial, but who is a man as well as a painter; who has lived as well
as painted, who has speculated, pondered, and felt much.... It is this,"
he continues, "that places Vedder in the front rank of the imaginative
painters of the day." Of Mr. Vedder's painting called "The Enemy Sowing
Tares," Mr. Brownell writes:--
"... Here you note a dozen phases of significance. The theme is
unconventional; the man has become the archenemy; the night is
weird and awe-inspiring; the tares represent the foe of the
church--money; they are sown at the foot of the cross--the symbol
of the church.... Mr. Vedder has not passed his life in Rome for
nothing. His attitude is in harmony with the spirit of the Sistine
and the Stanze."
One of the interesting and mystical works of Vedder is "The Soul between
Doubt and Faith,"--three heads, that of the Soul hooded and draped,
looking before her with eyes that seem to discern things not seen by
mortals; the sinister face of Doubt at the left, the serene, inspiring
countenance of Faith at the right. It is a magical picture to have
before one with its profoundly significant message. The works of Mr.
Vedder will grow more priceless as the years pass by. They are pictures
for the ages.
In Mr. Ezekiel, another American artist whose almost lifelong home has
been in Rome, is a sculptor whose touch and technique have won
recognition. In a recumbent figure of Christ is seen one of the best
examples of his art. It is pervaded by the classic influences in which
he has lived. The studios of Mr. Ezekiel, in the ruins of the old Baths
of Caracalla, are very picturesque and his salon, with its music, its
wealth of books including many rare and beautiful copies, and its old
pictures and bric-a-brac, is one of the fascinating interiors of the
Eternal City.
The visitor who is privileged to see the Story studios in the Via San
Martino finds Mr. Waldo Story occupying these spacious rooms where the
flash of a fountain in the court, a view of the garden, green-walled by
vines, with flowers and shrubs and broken statues, make the place
alluring to dreamer and poet. In these rooms may be seen many of the
elder Story's finest statues in cast or marble, the "Libyan Sibyl,"
"Nemesis," "Sappho," the "Christ," "Into the Silent Land," and others,
with many portrait busts, among which are those of Browning, Shelley,
Keats, Theodore Parker, Mrs. Browning, Marchesa Peruzzi de Medici (Edith
Story), John Lothrop Motley, one of Story's nearer friends, and Lord
Houghton.
In the work of Mr. Waldo Story one admirable portrait bust is of Cecil
Rhodes. A decorative work, a fountain for the Rothschild country estate
in England, is charmingly designed as a Galatea (in bronze), standing in
a marble shell that is drawn by Nereids and attended by Cupids. The
happy blending of marble and bronze gives to this work a pleasing
variety of color. Another decorative design is that of "Nymphs Drinking
at the Fountain of Love." These studios are among the most interesting
in Rome.
It was in 1868 that Franklin Simmons, then a young artist from Maine,
turned to Rome as his artistic Mecca. Since then the Eternal City has
always been his home, but his frequent and prolonged sojourns in America
have kept him closely in touch with its national life. Mr. Simmons is
the idealist who translates his vision into the actuality of the hour
and who also exalts this actuality of the hour to the universality of
the vision. In the creation of portrait busts and of the statues and
monumental memorials of great men he infuses into them the indefinable
quality of extended relation which relegates his work to the realm of
the universal and, therefore, to the immortality of art, rather than
restricting it to the temporal locality. Louis Gorse observes that it is
not the absence of faults that constitutes a masterpiece, but that it is
flame, it is life, it is emotion, it is sincerity. Under the touch of
Mr. Simmons the personal accent speaks; to his creative power flame and
life respond, and to no sculptor is the truth so admirably stated by M.
Gorse more applicable.
Mr. Simmons has been singularly fortunate in a wide American
recognition, having received a liberal share of the more important
commissions for great public works of sculpture. The splendid statue,
_al fresco_, of the poet Longfellow for his native city, Portland, was
appropriately the work of Mr. Simmons as a native of the same state; the
portrait statues of General Grant, Gov. William King, Roger Williams,
and Francis H. Pierrepont, all in Statuary Hall in the Capitol in
Washington; the portrait busts of Grant, Sheridan, Porter, Hooker,
Thomas, and other heroes of the Civil War; the colossal group of the
Naval Monument at the head of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington,--are
all among the works of Mr. Simmons.
Like all artists who, like the poet, are born and not made, Mr. Simmons
gave evidence of his artistic bent in his early childhood. After
graduating from Bates College he modelled a bust of its president, and a
little later, going to Washington (in the winter of 1865-66), many of
the noted men of the time gave him sittings, and in a series of portrait
busts his genius impressed itself by its dignity of conception and an
unusual power of sympathetic interpretation. He modelled the bust of
Grant while he was the General's guest in camp, taking advantage of
whatever spare minutes General Grant could give for sittings in the
midst of his pressing responsibilities; and it is perhaps due to this
unusually intimate intercourse with the great hero, and the _rapport_,
not difficult of establishment, between two men whose natures were akin
in a certain noble sincerity and lofty devotion to the purest ideals,
that Mr. Simmons owes the power with which he has absolutely interpreted
the essential characteristics of General Grant in that immortal portrait
statue in the Capitol.
Washington is, indeed, the place to especially study the earlier work of
Franklin Simmons. An important one is the Logan memorial,--an equestrian
statue which is considered the finest work in sculpture in the capital,
and which is the only statue in the United States in which both the
group and the pedestal are of bronze. The visitor in Washington who
should be ignorant of the relative rank of the great men commemorated by
the equestrian memorial monuments of the city might be justified in
believing that General Logan was the most important man of his time, if
he judged from the relative greatness of his statue. When Congress
decided upon this group, Mr. Simmons was requested to prepare a model.
This proving eminently acceptable, Mr. Simmons found himself, quite to
his own surprise, fairly launched on this arduous work, involving years
of intense concentration and labor. For this monumental work was to be
not merely that of the brave and gallant military leader,--a single idea
embodied, as in those of Generals Scott, Sheridan, Thomas, and
others,--but it was to be a permanent interpretation of the
soldier-statesman, mounted on his battle-horse; it was to be, in the
comprehensive grasp of Mr. Simmons, the vital representation of the
complex life and individuality of General Logan and, even more, it must
reflect and suggest the complex spirit of his age. In this martial
figure was thus embodied a manifold and mysterious relation, as one of
the potent leaders and directive powers in an age of tumultuous
activities; an age of strife and carnage, whose goal was peace; of
adverse conditions and reactions, whose manifest outcome was yet
prosperity and national greatness and splendid moral triumph. All these
must be suggested in the atmosphere, so to speak, of the artist's work;
and no sculptor who was not also an American--not merely by ancestry and
activity, but one in mind and heart only; one who was an intense
patriot and identified with national ideas--could ever have produced
such a work as that of the Logan monument. So unrivalled does it stand,
unique among all the equestrian art of this country, that it enchants
the art student and lover with its indefinable spell. When this colossal
work was cast in bronze, in Rome, the event was considered important.
The king and the Royal family visited the studio of Mr. Simmons to see
the great group, and so powerfully did its excellence appeal to King
Umberto that he knighted Mr. Simmons, making him Cavaliere of the Crown
of Italy. Nor was Mr. Simmons the prophet who was not without honor save
in his own country, for his _alma mater_ gave him the degree of M.A. in
1867; Colby College honored him with the Master's degree in 1885, and in
1888 Bowdoin bestowed upon this eminent Maine artist the same degree. In
1892 Mr. Simmons married the Baroness von Jeinsen, a brilliant and
beautiful woman who, though a lady of foreign title, was an American by
birth. An accomplished musician, a critical lover of art, and the most
delightful of hostesses and friends, Mrs. Simmons drew around her a
remarkable circle of charming people and made their home in the Palazzo
Tamagno a notable centre of social life. No woman in the American colony
of the Seven-hilled City was ever more beloved; and it was frequently
noted by guests at her weekly receptions that Mrs. Simmons was as
solicitous for the enjoyment of the most unknown stranger as for those
of rank and title who frequented her house. Her grace and loveliness
were fully equalled by her graciousness and that charm of personality
peculiarly her own. Her death in Rome, on Christmas of 1905, left a
vacant place, indeed, in many a home which had been gladdened by her
radiant presence. One of the most beautiful works of Mr. Simmons is a
portrait of his wife in bas-relief, representing her standing just at
the opening of parted curtains, as if she were about to step behind and
vanish. It is a very poetic conception. A bust of Mrs. Simmons, also, in
his studio, is fairly a speaking likeness of this beautiful and
distinguished woman. It is over her grave in the Protestant cemetery
that Mr. Simmons has placed one of his noblest ideal statues, "The Angel
of the Resurrection,"--a memorial monument that is one of the art
features of Rome to the visitor in the Eternal City.
[Illustration: "GRIEF AND HISTORY," DETAIL FROM NAVAL MONUMENT,
WASHINGTON
Franklin Simmons
_Page 105_]
The brilliant and impressive Naval Monument, or Monument of Peace, as it
is known in Washington, placed at the foot of Capitol Hill on
Pennsylvania Avenue, is eloquent with the power of heroic suggestion
that Mr. Simmons has imparted to it. The work breathes that exaltation
of final triumph that follows temporary defeat. Those who died that the
nation might live, are seen in the perpetual illumination of
immortality. Not only has Mr. Simmons here perpetuated the suffering,
the sacrifices of the Civil War, but that sublime and eternal truth of
victory after defeat, of peace and serene exaltation after conflict, and
the triumph of life after death, are all immortally embodied in this
group crowned with those impressive and haunting figures, "Grief" and
"History," which are considered as among the most classically beautiful
and significant in the range of modern sculpture.
In the early winter of 1907 Mr. Simmons was invited by the American
Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Hon. Whitelaw Reid, to send
for Dorchester House, London, three busts of distinguished
Americans,--those of Alexander Hamilton, Chief Justice Chase, and Hon.
James G. Blaine, which Mr. Reid, in visiting the Roman studios of Mr.
Simmons, had seen and greatly admired. The Ambassador observed that he
"would like a few Americans, as well as so many Roman Emperors," about
him.
These portrait busts all reveal an amazing force and mastery of work.
The fine sculptural effect of the Hamilton and the wonderful blending of
subtle delicacy of touch and vigor of treatment with which the nobility
of character is expressed, mark this bust as something exceptional in
portrait art. It has a matchless dignity and serene poise. The bust of
Chief Justice Chase is a faithful and speaking reproduction of the very
presence of its subject, instinct with vitality; and the fire and force
and brilliancy of the bust of Hon. James G. Blaine fairly sweeps the
visitor off his feet. The modelling is done with an apparent
instantaneousness of power that is the highest realization of creative
art. It is the magnetic Blaine, the impassioned and eloquent statesman,
that rises before the gazer.
Mr. Simmons has long been a commanding figure in plastic art. No
American sculptor abroad has, perhaps, received so many important public
commissions as have been given to him. He has created nearly a score of
memorial groups; he has modelled over one hundred portrait busts and
statues. His industry has kept step with his genius. The latest success
of Mr. Simmons in the line of monumental art is the statue (in bronze)
of Alexander Hamilton, which was unveiled at Paterson, N. J., in May of
1907. The splendidly poised figure, the dignity, the serene strength and
yet the intense energy of the expression and of the entire pose are a
revelation in the art of the portrait statue.
It is not, however, true that Mr. Simmons has ever resigned himself to
the necessity of producing portrait and memorial sculpture exclusively.
In the realm of the purely ideal Mr. Simmons finds his most felicitous
field for creative work. A bas-relief entitled "The Genius of Progress
Leading the Nations," with all its splendid fire and action, the _motif_
being that of the spirits Life and Light beating down and driving out
the spirits of darkness and evil; "The Angel of the Resurrection," with
its glad, triumphant assertion of the power of the immortal life; the
poetry and sacredness of maternity as typified in the "Mother of Moses;"
the statues of the "Galatea" and the "Medusa," and other ideal
creations, indicate "the vision and the faculty divine" of Mr. Simmons.
To a very great degree his art is that which the French describe as the
grand manner, and to this is added a spiritual quality, a power of
radiating the intellectual purpose, the profounder thought and the
aspiration of the subject represented.
[Illustration: "MOTHER OF MOSES"
Franklin Simmons
_Page 108_]
One of the most charming of these ideal works is a statue of "Penelope,"
represented seated in the chair, her rich robe falling in graceful
folds, and the little Greek fillet binding her hair. The face bears a
meditative expression, into which has entered a hint of pathos and
wistfulness in the dawning wonder as to whether, after all, Ulysses will
return. The classic beauty of the pose; the exquisite modelling of the
bust and arms and hands, every curve and contour so ideally lovely; the
distinction of the figure in its noble and refined patrician elegance,
are combined to render this work one that well deserves immortality in
art, and to rank as a masterpiece in modern sculpture.
[Illustration: "THE GENIUS OF PROGRESS LEADING THE NATIONS"
Franklin Simmons
_Page 107_]
Another of his ideal figures, "The Promised Land," is a work of great
spiritual exaltation and beauty. An Israelite woman has just arrived at
the point when before her vision gleams the "Promised Land"; the face
tells its own story of all she has passed through,--the trials, the
sadness, the obstacles to be overcome; but now she sees the fulfilment
of her hopes and dreams. It is a most interesting creation, and one in
which is portrayed the artist's spiritual insight and susceptibility to
poetic exaltation. To one visitor to Mr. Simmons's studio this statue
suggested the following lines:--
Fair on her sight it gleams,--the Promised Land!
The rose of dawn sifts through the azure air,
And all her weariness and toil and care
Vanish, as if from her some tender hand
Lifted the burden, and transformed the hour
To this undreamed-of sense of joy and power!
The rapture and the ecstasy divine
Are deep realities that only wait
Their hour to dawn, nor ever rise too late
To draw the soul to its immortal shrine.
O Sculptor! thy great gift has shaped this clay,
To image the profoundest truth, and stand
As witness of the spirit power that may
Achieve the vision of the Promised Land!
[Illustration: "VALLEY FORGE"
Franklin Simmons
_Page 110_]
In a statuette in bronze called "Valley Forge," Mr. Simmons has fairly
incarnated the entire spirit of the Revolutionary period in that
mysterious way recognized only in its result; all that unparalleled
epoch of tragic intensity and sublime triumph lives again in this work.
The fidelity to a lofty ideal which essentially characterizes Mr.
Simmons is as unswerving as that of Merlin, who followed "The Gleam."
"Great the Master
And sweet the Magic
When over the valley
In early summers,
Over the mountain,
On human faces,
And all around me
Moving to melody,
Floated the Gleam."
This American sculptor who, in his early youth, sought the artistic
atmosphere of Rome as the environment most stimulating to his dawning
power, who accepted with unfailing courage the incidental privations of
art life in a foreign land more renowned for beauty than for comfort,
who
"... never turned his back, but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,"
has expressed his message in many purely ideal works,--the message that
the true artist must always give to the world and that leads humanity to
the crowning truth of life, that of the ceaseless progress of the soul
in its immortality.
For the brief and significant assertion of the apostle condenses the
most profound truth of life when he says:--
"To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is
life and peace."
In these words are imaged the supreme purpose of all the experiences of
the life on earth; and to the artist whose works bear this lofty message
of the triumph of spirituality, his reward shall appear, not in the
praise of men, but in the effect on character that his efforts have
aided to exalt; in the train of nobler influences that his work shall
perpetually inspire and create.
Mr. Simmons has always found Rome potent in fascination. One may not
want to go to St. Peter's every day, but one knows it is there, and
there is some inexplicable satisfaction in being where it is possible to
easily enter this impressive interior. One may not go near the Forum
for a month, or even a season, but the knowledge that one may find it
and the wonderful Palatine Hill any hour of any day is a perpetual
delight. The Vatican galleries, with their great masterpieces; the
Sistine Chapel, the stately, splendid impressiveness of San Giovanni
Laterano; the wanderings in Villa Borghese, and the picturesque climbing
of the Spanish steps, even all the inconveniences and deprivations,
become a part of the story of Rome which the artist absorbs and loves.
The studios of Mr. Simmons in the Via San Nicolo da Tolentino are a
centre of artistic resort, and his personal life is one of distinction
amid the picturesque beauty and enchantment of the Eternal City.
For many years (until the death of Mrs. Simmons in 1905) the sculptor
and his wife had their home in the beautiful Palazzo Tamagno in the Via
Agostino Depretis, where one of those spacious apartments of twenty to
thirty rooms, only to be found in a Roman palace, was made by them a
brilliant centre of social life. Mrs. Simmons was herself a musical
artist, with impassioned devotion to music; and her rare personal charm
and distinction of presence drew around her a most interesting
circle. Her receptions were for many years a noted feature of Roman
society. The social life in Rome is very brilliant, interesting, and
fascinating. The sight-seeing is a kind of attendant atmosphere,--the
perpetual environment offering, but not intruding itself. People come to
Rome for reasons quite disconnected with the Golden House of Nero or the
latest archæological discoveries in the Forum. The present, rather than
the past, calls to them, and the present, too, is resplendent and
alluring.
Of the foreign painters in Rome, Charles Walter Stetson, whose work
recalls the glory of the old Italian masters, is especially
distinguished for his genius as a colorist. No visitor in Rome can
afford to miss the studio of one of the most imaginative of modern
artists. A wonderful picture still in process is a genre work with
several figures, called "Music." An idyllic scene of a festa amid the
ilex trees--with the Italian sky and the golden sunshine pervading a
luminous atmosphere, while the joyous abandon of the dancers appeals to
all who love Italy--is one of the many beautiful pictorial scenes of Mr.
Stetson which enchant the eye and haunt the imagination. Another
picture is called "Beggars,"--a name that illy suggests its splendor.
There is the façade of a church to which a long flight of steps leads
up, a procession of cardinals and friars in their rich robes, while at
one side the groups of beggars shrink into the darkness. It is an
impressive commentary upon life.
For a long period, through the early and middle years of the nineteenth
century, Rome held her place as the world centre of modern artistic
activity. Great works of poetic and ideal sculpture elevated the general
public taste to a high degree of appreciation. The standards were not
ingeniously adjusted to mere spectacular methods whose sole appeal was
to the crude fancy of possible patrons. Art held her absolute and
inviolate ideals, and the spirit of her votaries might well have been
interpreted in Mrs. Browning's words:--
"I, who love my art,
Would never wish it lower to suit my stature."
The tone of public appreciation is raised to a high quality only when
the artist refuses to sell his soul for a mess of pottage. He may, to
be sure, need the pottage, but the price is too great. Rather will he
find his attitude expressed in these wonderful lines:--
"I can live
At least my soul's life without alms from men.
And if it be in heaven instead of earth,
Let heaven look to it--I am not afraid."
All art that has within itself true vitality must ever be the leader and
the creator of the popular taste; only when it falls into decadence does
it become the servile follower.
It is a serious question as to the degree in which the art of to-day
keeps faith with the eternal ideals. The great expositions of the past
quarter of a century, while they have contributed immeasurably to the
popularization of art and to the familiarization of the public with the
work of individual painters and sculptors, have yet, in many ways, been
a demoralizing influence in their insidious temptation to produce
pictures or plastic art calculated to arrest immediate attention, thus
putting a premium on the spectacular, the sensational, on that which
makes the most immediate and direct appeal to the senses. The work
becomes fairly a personal document wrought with perhaps an almost
amazing finesse, but utterly failing in power to inspire joyous
sensibility to beauty or to impart to the gazer that glow of radiant
energy which lofty art invariably communicates to all who respond to its
infinite exaltation.
All great art is inspired by religious ideals. Painting and sculpture
give to these a presence. Under their creative power are these ideals
manifested. To embody them in living form becomes the absolute
responsibility of the artist. In Greece all the fortunate conditions to
produce great art were curiously combined and pre-eminently supported by
the conjunction of events and by the prevailing sentiment of the time.
The artist drew his inspiration from the most exalted conception of life
embodied in gods rather than in men. Art, too, was an affair of the
state. It was the supreme interest and held national importance. The
temple was erected to form an inclosure for the statue, rather than that
the statue was created as an adornment for the temple. The greatest
gifts were consecrated to the service of art, and under these
stimulating influences it is little wonder that artistic creation
achieved that vital potency which has thrilled all succeeding
centuries and has communicated to them something of the divine air of
that remote period. With the Renaissance in Italy art culminated in the
immortal work of Raphael and Michael Angelo. In the Sistine Chapel,
where that sublime grouping of prophets and sibyls speaks of the very
miracle of art in their impassioned fire and glow; where the figures,
the pose, the draperies are so grandly noble and infused with dignity
and presence,--the very atmosphere is vocal with the language of the
spirit and the expressions of religious reverence. These marvellous
shapes of grandeur and sublime intimations carry the soul into a
conscious communion with the divine. In these stupendous works Michael
Angelo has given to all the ages the message of the highest exaltation
of art. In the technique, in the marvellous dignity of the sentiment, in
the depth of the feeling involved, in the grace and power of the
composition, these works embody the artistic possibilities of painting.
Are such works as those of Canova and Thorwaldsen no longer created?
Can it be that art is no longer of national importance? In our own
country vast appropriations are made for internal improvements of all
kinds, while art that kindles and re-enforces life is almost ignored.
Our government--the government of the richest country in the
world--appropriated $200,000 for a memorial monument to General Grant to
be placed in Washington, while Italy--whose resources are so slender in
comparison--appropriates seven million dollars--thirty-five times the
amount--for her great monument to Victor Emmanuel which is now being
erected in Rome to stand near the Capitol and the Palace of the
Quirinale. Great art has always been closely associated with great
devotion to religious ideals. The artist was the servant of the Lord,
and it was his supreme purpose to embody the aspirations of the age and
render his works a full and complete symbol of those true realities of
life which have their being in the spiritual universe rather than in the
changing temporal world of the outer universe. The so-called realism of
the day is based on a false interpretation. "The things that are seen
are temporal, while the things that are not seen are eternal." True
realism is in spiritual qualities, not in physical attributes. True
realism is found in such works as Canova's sublime group, where the
figures of Religion and of Death forever impress all who stand before
this magnificent monument; it is found in Thorwaldsen's "Christ;" in
Franklin Simmons's "Angel of the Resurrection,"--in such works as those
that have a language for the soul, rather than in a "Saturnalia."
Again, another fatal rock on which art must inevitably make shipwreck is
the theory that it is good to perpetuate ugliness, in either painting or
in sculpture. The permanent reality of life is beauty. So far as any
person or object departs from this enduring reality, so far it is the
result of distortion and deformity, and these, being the temporary, the
accidental, the deficient, should not be perpetuated in ideal creation.
It is an Apollo who embodies the permanent ideal of manhood--not a
cripple or a hunchback. Still further: art should not only refuse to
embody the defective, which is a mere negative; it should not only give
form to the utmost perfection it beholds in nature or in humanity, but
beyond this the responsibility is upon the artist to penetrate into
loftier realms, to catch the vision not revealed to mortals. The artist
is, by virtue of his high calling, a co-worker with God. An English wit
has declared that life copies art rather than that art copies life. In
this he expresses a truth rather than a merely clever epigram. It is the
artist's business to lead, not to follow. Only as he leads does he
fulfil his divinely appointed destiny. "I maintain that life is not a
form of energy," writes Sir Oliver Lodge; "that it is not included in
our present physical categories; that its explanation is still to be
sought. And it appears to me to belong to a separate order of existence,
which interacts with this material frame of things, and while here
exerts guidance and control on the energy which already here exists; for
although they alter the quantity of energy no whit, and though they
merely utilize available energy like any other machine, live things are
able to direct inorganic terrestrial energy along new and special paths,
so as to achieve results without which such living agency could not have
occurred." Does it for an instant seem that a great scientist's
theoretical speculations of the laws of the universe and of organic life
have no connection with the province of art? On the contrary. Truly does
Balzac exclaim: "Is not God the whole of science, the all of love,
the source of poetry?" The artist is he who enters into the divine
realm; who discerns the divine creations as the true ideals of humanity,
and who interprets to the world the sublime significance of the divine
thought. Shall such an artist degrade his power by portraying
ugliness--the mere defects of negations and distortions? Shall he
degrade life by calling these the realities?
[Illustration: "LA PIETA," ST. PETER'S, ROME
Michael Angelo
_Page 117_]
The painter or sculptor who holds that it is as truly art to represent
distortion and repulsiveness as it is to represent beauty is as false to
his high calling as would be the poet who should insist that doggerel
and mere commonplace truisms expressed in rhyme are poetry. Compare, for
example, two statues, Cecioni's "_La Madre_," in which a woman's utter
lack of personal attraction is so complete as to make her fairly
repulsive to the gazer, and the "Mother of Moses," by Franklin Simmons,
in which the mystic beauty, the very ideal of maternity, is embodied.
Which of these statues is calculated to uplift and to exalt all who come
near? This marvellously beautiful creation of Mr. Simmons shows a woman
of exquisite delicacy and loveliness sitting, slightly bending forward,
holding her baby to her breast. The modelling of the draped figure with
the bare arms and neck revealing the tender curves, the yielding
delicacy of the flesh and that inscrutable light upon the beautiful
countenance, whose expression suggests that she is looking far into the
future of the infant whom she holds in her arms, are a wonderful
portrayal of the mystery and the sacredness of motherhood. The one
statue degrades maternity; the other ennobles and exalts. The one
embodies a pernicious and a false ideal; the other embodies the ideal
that must appeal to all that is noble and divine in human life, and it
thus ministers to moral progress by its contribution to the elevation of
the social tone. For indeed, life follows art. It is art that exerts
this powerful influence upon life which it may lead to loftier heights
or drag down to the moral abyss. The artist is not merely the portrayer
of existing types; he is the inspirer of those ideal types which human
life should recognize as its pattern, its model to be followed and
ultimately achieved. The world needs ideal and poetic art to minister to
the attainment of the true social life and to the full and complete
expression of man himself.
Do not the visions of Fra Angelico and Botticelli still inspire the
artist of to-day with the absolute realization of all the deep
significance of the past?
"Is there never a retroscope mirror,
In the realms and corners of space,
That can give us a glimpse of the battle,
And the soldiers face to face?"
Religion and art are inseparably united. In its true significance
religion takes precedence of all else in that its influence is felt in
every department and in every direction and expression of man's
activity. It is the inexhaustible fountain of that lofty energy which
communicates itself to every channel that carries inspiration to life
and to art. Religion is the influence that redeems the mere shallow,
surface presentation,--the petty trick to capture popularity, and holds
art true to its real purpose. The glory of the mediæval art of Italy
owed its greatness to religion. Cimabue and Giotto were directly
inspired by that spring of a diviner life given to Italy and later to
the world of that "sweet saint," Francis of Assisi. In an age of cruelty
and terror he brought the new message that man is dear to God; that the
soul is ceaselessly joyful; that man, created in the divine image, is a
part of the divine life, and that only when he lives in this response
and recognition does he truly live at all. In this restatement of the
truth that Jesus came to proclaim, St. Francis opened the way for a
revival of art, and opened the gates of that infinite and divine energy
which has immortally recorded itself for all ages in the "Divina
Comedia" of Dante. The irresistible wave of power which resulted from
that liberating of thought, feeling, and emotion by the work of St.
Francis expressed itself in the sublimest poem of all the ages, and in
that glorious triumph of art that is still the treasure and the source
of artistic inspiration.
It is only when the world is lifted out of the limitations of the
material by a period of great art that humanity is brought into close
and inspiring relation with the living Christ.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
_Men and women make the world,
As head and heart make human life._
MRS. BROWNING.
* * * * *
_Alas, our memories may retrace
Each circumstance of time and place;
Season and scene come back again,
And outward things unchanged remain;
The rest we cannot reinstate,
Ourselves we cannot re-create,
Nor set our souls to the same key
Of the remembered harmony._
LONGFELLOW.
_And as, after the lapse of a thousand years, you stand upon that
hallowed spot, the yellow Tiber flowing sluggishly beneath you, the
ruins of the Eternal City all around you speaking of fallen
greatness, the mighty Basilica of St. Peter rising before you like
some modern tower of Babel that would monopolize the road to
heaven, the eye rests upon the figure of the Archangel sheathing
his glittering sword upon the summit of the Castle of St. Angelo,
and the heart asks, Why should that be a legend? Why should that be
a projection of a morbid and devout imagination? Why should it not
have been the clairvoyance of supernatural ecstasy opening the
world of spirits? It was no unreality when the angel of God, with
his sword drawn in his hand, withstood the prophet Balaam. It was
no morbid imagination when the angel of God smote with the edge of
the sword the first-born of the land of Egypt. It was no imposture
when the shining hosts of the army of the Almighty smote the
Assyrians. It was no deception when Gabriel, the King's messenger
from the court of heaven, was sent to comfort Daniel by the river
Hiddekel; or when he announced to the maiden, whom all generations
have called blessed, that she was to be the mother of the Divine
Redeemer.... The written Word from first to last is full of the
holy angels. It begins with angels, it ends with angels._
THE VENERABLE ARCHDEACON WILBERFORCE,
Westminster Abbey.
II
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE ETERNAL CITY
And others came,--Desires and Adorations,
Winged Persuasions and Veiled Destinies!
SHELLEY.
In what ethereal dances!
By what eternal streams!
POE.
Social life in Rome is no misnomer. From the most stately and beautiful
ceremonials of balls at the court of the Quirinale, in ducal palaces, or
at the embassies; of dinners whose every detail suggests stage pictures
in their magnificence, to the simple afternoon tea, where conversation
and music enchant the hours; the morning call _en tête-à-tête_, and the
morning stroll, or the late afternoon drive,--a season in Rome
prefigures itself, by the necromancy of retrospective vision, as a
resplendent panorama of pictorial scenes. There rise before one those
mornings, all gold and azure, of loitering over the stone parapet on
Monte Pincio, gazing down on the city in her most alluring mood. The
new bridge that is to connect the Pincio with the Villa Borghese is a
picturesque feature in its unfinished state; but the vision traverses
the deep ravine and revels in the scene of the Borghese grounds carpeted
with flowers. Its picturesque slopes under the great trees, with a view
of Michael Angelo's dome in the near distance, are the resort of morning
strollers, who find that lovely picture of Charles Walter Stetson's--a
stretch of landscape under the ilex trees, the scarlet gowns of the
divinity students giving vivid accents of color here and there--fairly
reproduced in nature before their vision. One should never be in haste
as the bewildering beauty of the Roman spring weaves its emerald
fantasies on grass and trees, and touches into magical bloom the scarlet
poppies that flame over all the meadows, and caress roses and hyacinths
and lilies of the valley into delicate bloom and floating fragrance
until the Eternal City is no more Rome, but Arcady, instead--one should
never be in haste to toss his penny into the _Fontane de Trevi_. Yet in
another way it may work for him an immediate spell that defies all other
necromancy. Judiciously thrown in, on the very eve of departure, it is
the conjurer that insures his return; but at any time prior to this it
may even weave the irresistible enchantment that falls upon him and may
prevent his leaving at all. Nor can he summon up the moral courage to
regret even the missing of all other engagements, and the failure to
keep faith with his plans. For in the May days Rome falls upon him anew,
like a revelation, and he is ready to confess that he has never seen her
who sees her not in her springtime loveliness. The Italian winter by no
means lives up to its reputation. It is not the chill of any one special
day that discourages one from any further effort to continue in this
vale of tears, but the cold that has, apparently, the chill and dampness
and cold of all those two thousand and two hundred and sixty winters
that have gone before which concentrate themselves in the atmosphere.
One could presumably endure with some degree of courage, if not
equanimity, the chill in the air of any _one_ winter; but when all the
chill and cold that has ever existed in more than the two thousand
winters of the past concentrates itself in the winter, say, of 1906-7,
why, patience ceases to be a virtue although one that the sojourner in
Rome is particularly called upon to practise if he fares forth to visit
churches and galleries in the winter.
Torrents of rain pour down, rivalling the cloud-bursts of Arizona.
Virgil's cave of the winds apparently lets loose its sharpest blasts.
Tramontana and sirocco alternate, and each is more unendurable than the
other.
The encircling mountains are white with snow. The streets are a sea of
mud, for they are paved with small stones, and except in the new Villa
Ludovisi quarter and along the Via Nazionale and a few other of the
newer thoroughfares there are no sidewalks, the foot passengers (in all
old Rome) pressing close to the wall to avoid the dangerously near
proximity of carts and cabs. This rough pavement makes all driving hard
and walking difficult. The Roman lady, indeed, does not walk; and the
visitors who cannot forego the joy of daily promenades enter into the
feelings of that nation which is said to take its pleasures sadly. But
spring works a transformation scene. The air is filled with the most
transparent shining haze; the sky lacks little of that intense, melting
blue that characterizes the ineffable beauty of the skies in Arizona;
and ruins and fragments and strange relics--ghosts of the historic
past--are all enshrined in trailing green and riotous blossoms. To drive
on the terraced roads of Monte Mario with all Rome and the emerald-green
Campagna before one; through the romantic "Lovers' Lane," walled in by
roses and myrtle; to enjoy the local life, full of gayety and
brilliancy, is to know Rome in her most gracious aspects. One goes for
strolls in the old Colonna Gardens, where still remain the ruins of the
Temple of the Sun and of the Baths of Constantine. The terraces offer
lovely views over the city. The old palace is occupied by the present
Prince Colonna, and it is not unfrequently the scene of most elaborate
and gorgeous receptions where the traditional Roman splendor is to be
found. A series of arched bridges over the narrow street of the Via
della Pilotta connect the Gardens with the Colonna Palace in the Piazza
San Apostoli. Very fine old sarcophagi are half buried in trailing vines
on the slope of the hill, dark with magnificent cypress trees. The
Colonna Gardens are a very dream of the past, in their ruins of old
temples, their shattered statues, their strange old tablets and
inscriptions, and their grand view of the Capitol.
In one's retrospective vision of a Roman season all the inconveniences
and discomforts of the winter disappear, leaving only the beauty and the
enjoyment to be "developed," as the photographer would say, on the
sensitive plate of memory.
No one really knows Rome until he has watched the transcendent
loveliness of spring investing every nook and corner of the Eternal
City. The picturesque Spanish steps are a very garden of fragrance, the
lower steps of the terraced flight being taken possession of by the
flower venders who display their wares,--masses of white lilac,
flame-colored roses, rose and purple hyacinths and baskets of violets
and carnations. Did all this fragrance and beauty send up its incense to
Keats as he lay in the house adjoining, with the musical plash of
Bernini's fountain under his window? It is pleasant to know that by the
appreciation of American and English authors, the movement effectively
directed by Robert Underwood Johnson, this house consecrated to a poet's
memory has been purchased to be a permanent memorial to Keats and to
Shelley. A library of their works will be arranged in it; and portraits,
busts, and all mementos that can be collected of these poets will render
this memorial one of the beautiful features of Rome.
From the flower venders and the circulating libraries in the Piazza di
Spagna that allure one in the morning, from the fascinating glitter of
the little Via Condotti which is, in its way, the rue de la Paix of
Rome, one leisurely climbs the steps to where the great obelisk looms up
in front of the Convent Church of the Trinità di Monti and on, across
the Piazza di Trinità, toward the Pincian, one wanders along the brow of
the hill surmounted by the low stone parapet. The view is a dream of
beauty. Over the valley lies Monte Mario, crowned with the Villa Madama,
silhouetted against the blue Roman sky; and the commanding dome of St.
Peter's, the splendid new white marble buildings of the Law Courts, the
domes of other churches, all make up a picturesque panorama, while on
the Janiculum the great equestrian statue of Garibaldi can be descried.
Strolling on, one turns into the gardens of the Villa Medici, the
French Academy of Art, in which the present director, the great Carolus
Duran, is domiciled and in which twenty-four students--of painting,
sculpture, music, and architecture--are maintained at the expense of the
French government for several years, the twenty four being chosen from
those who have given signal proof of their ability. The Villa Medici
has, perhaps, a more beautiful site than any other building in Rome.
Facing the west, with the Janiculum and Monte Mario forever before it,
while below lies the Piazza di Spagna and the Piazza del Popolo, and all
the changing splendors of the sunset sky as a perpetual picture gallery,
the situation is, indeed, magnificent. It is still conceivable, however,
that Monsieur Carolus Duran must have many quarters of an hour when he
longs for the brilliancy and the movement and the stimulus of his Paris.
The gardens of the Villa Medici are large, but they are laid out with
narrow paths bordered with box, forming a wall as impervious as if of
stone, and dark and damp by the shade of foliage. These walks are paved
with gravel, and are always damp. These formal rectangles and alleys are
utterly shut in, so that in any one part one can see only the two
dense green walls of box that inclose him and the glimpse of sky
overhead,--not precisely a cheering promenade. This is the Italian idea
of a garden. Much broken sculpture, weather-stained and defective, is
placed all along the way, and the perpetual Roman fountain is always
gushing somewhere.
[Illustration: VILLA MEDICI, ROME
_Page 134_]
Another phase of the Roman season may rise before one in the stately
beauty of any old historic palace, where the hostess, all grace and
sweetness, receives her guests in the apartment in which Galileo had
been confined when imprisoned in Rome. The approach to this _piano
nobile_ was up a flight of easily graded marble stairs, where in
frequent niches stood old statues. The large windows in the corridor on
the landing were curtained with pale yellow, thus creating a golden
light to fall on the old sculptured marbles. One salon was decorated
with Flaxman's drawings on the wall, in their classical outlines. From a
steep, dark stone stairway, down which one descended (at the imminent
risk of a broken neck in the darkness and from the irregular stairs
rudely carved in the stone), one emerged on a landing, where a little
door opened into the balcony of the chapel, a curious, gloomy place,
with tombs and altar and shrine, and some very poor old paintings. One's
progress to it recalled the lines from Poe's "Ulalume":--
"By a route, obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only."
Then, sitting in one of the richly decorated salons at afternoon tea in
this same old palace one day, while an accomplished harpist was
discoursing delicate music from its vibrating chords, flights of birds
kept passing a window, making a scene like that of a Wagner opera. The
groups present, largely of the Roman nobility, the titled aristocracy,
resembling so closely some of the old portraits in the palazzo that it
was easy to recognize that they were all one people, descendants of the
same race.
Many of the guests looked, indeed, as if they had stepped from out the
sumptuously carved frames on the wall. At these pretty festas one meets
much of the resident Roman world. The guests assembled seem to be
speaking in all the romance languages. There are Russian and Spanish as
well as Italian, French, German, and English at these alluring teas.
All the salons of the spacious apartments are thrown open, and the men
in their picturesque court dress or military costume, and the women and
girls in dainty gowns, make up an alluring scene. The salons are richly
furnished and abound in works of art, old pictures, inlaid cabinets,
carvings, rich vases, busts, and statuettes. The library, with its
wealth of books; the music room; the salon for dancing; the supper room,
and the quiet rooms where groups gather before the blazing open fires,
grateful in these lofty rooms whose temperature suggests the frozen
circles of Dante,--all make up a delightful picture. One meets the most
varying individualities. A Russian lady of title may confide her
conviction that her country is ruined, and that she never desires to
return to it. Italy is the country that attracts not only political
refugees from other European countries, but many who are out of sympathy
with conditions elsewhere and who find the cosmopolitan society and the
varied interests of this land of sunshine their most enjoyable
environment.
One pleasant feature of a Roman winter is that of the usual course of
lectures given by Professor Lanciani. The celebrated archæologist is a
man of special personal charm, and his conversation, as well as his
public lectures, is full of interest and value. The lectures are given
under the auspices of the Società Archeologica, and a special subject
recently discussed was the celebration to be held in 1911 in Rome. One
project for this celebration includes the plan to lay out a carriage
road around the Forum and the Palatine, and also around the Baths of
Titus and of Caracalla, extending the drive to all those places included
between the Appian and the Latin Way, the Villa Celimontana and the
Circus Maximus.
Professor Lanciani discussed the artistic history of Rome and the
different appearances the city took on in different periods; the
regulation plan drawn up by Julius Cæsar and accepted and carried out by
Augustus, by which one-fifth of the total area of the city was reserved
for public parks. In the third century of the empire the city was
inclosed by parks and crossed from end to end by delightful portico
gardens, where valuable works of art were collected. During the period
of the Renaissance there were the famous villas and the Cesarini Park
on the slopes of the Esquiline, and after regretting the many
unnecessary acts of vandalism committed since 1870 in Rome, Professor
Lanciani suggested that a complete reconstruction of the Baths of
Caracalla should be made, to serve in 1911 as the Exhibition Building.
He believed no artistic difficulties would present themselves, as in the
fifteenth century different architects took plaster casts of the
decorations of the statues and of every detail of the Baths. The
archæological exhibition would be arranged in the two large halls,
another hall would be for concerts, another for lectures, the others for
different congresses to be held.
In this way Rome would inaugurate for 1911 the Mediæval Museum in Castel
Sant'Angelo, the mediæval collections in the Torre degli Anguillara, and
the grand archæological exhibition in the reconstructed Baths of
Caracalla.
Italian women are by no means behind the age in their organizations to
aid in social progress. The most important one in Italy is that of the
leading women of the nobility and aristocracy, called "The Society for
Women's Work," which holds annual meetings, over which Lady Aberdeen,
the president of the International Council, and the Contessa Spalletti,
the president of the National Council of Italy, preside. Many of the
prominent women of the Italian nobility are taking active part in the
larger outlook for women; and in this movement Margherita, _la Regina
Madre_, leads the way, supported by a large following of the titled
nobility.
"Margherita holds the hearts of the people," remarked Cora, Contessa di
Brazzá Savorgnan, at a brilliant little dinner one night, and no
expression could more admirably represent the feeling of the nation
toward the Queen Mother.
Queen Elena as the reigning sovereign has, of course, her exclusive
royal prerogatives, and she has youth and initiative and precedence; but
Margherita is a most attractive woman, with learning and accomplishments
galore, and she has an art of conversation that allures and fascinates
visiting foreigners of learning and wit, as well as of rank. Roman
society is not large numerically, and the same people are constantly
meeting and consolidating their many points of contact and interest.
Social life in these Italian cities is the supreme occupation of the
residents, and one must concede that in proportion as one meets the same
people constantly does society gain in dramatic interest. With each
person who is in any sense an individual the play of life begins. It
gains in dramatic sequence as it proceeds. The Eternal City is a
wonderful scenic setting for the human drama.
Local gossip suggests perceptible rivalry between the stately palace of
the King and the pink palace on the hill, in which Margherita holds her
state with not less ceremony than that observed at the Court of the
Quirinale. It is a beautiful thing for a country to have in it a woman
of high position, of leisure and of culture, who is so admirably fitted
to be the friend of the people as is Margherita. She is a connoisseur in
art; she has a most intelligent interest in science; she is a critical
lover of literature; she is a wise and judicious and deeply sympathetic
leader in all philanthropic work and purposes. One can hardly visit
painter or poet or artist in any line, or school, institute, or
association, but that he hears of the personal sympathy and
encouragement bestowed by this noble and beautiful Italian Queen,--the
_Regina Madre_.
Practically there are, indeed, two courts in Rome; that of the Palazzo
Margherita seeming to quite rival that held at the Palazzo Quirinale.
The palace of the Queen Mother is an imposing three-story structure of
pink-hued marble, with beautiful gardens and terraces, and adjoining it,
in the palace grounds, is a marble villa, used for the entertainment of
royal guests. This palace has been the residence of Margherita when in
Rome since the tragic death of King Umberto, in 1900. It is in the
Ludovisi quarter, and stands on the very site of the Gardens of Sallust.
The Queen Mother receives noted visitors constantly, and entertains
visiting royalties and members of the aristocracy. No great man of
science, literature, and art visits Rome without seeking a presentation
to the liberal-minded and accomplished _Regina Madre_, who is one of the
most winning and attractive of all the royal women of Europe.
It has become quite a feature in introducing young girls to present them
first in private audience to Margherita, and then later to Queen Elena
at the Court of the Quirinale. Surely no girl could be given a lovelier
idea of womanhood than that embodied in the Dowager Queen. When the poet
Carducci died in the early months of 1907, Margherita sent beautiful
messages of consolation to his family, and, later, to his home city of
Bologna she sent the following letter:--
"I announce that I make a free gift to the city of Bologna of the
house where Giosuè Carducci passed the last years of his life, and
the library he collected there.
"Bologna, that showed such affectionate hospitality for Giosuè
Carducci for so many years, and surrounded him with so much
devotion, will know, I feel sure, how to carefully preserve this
remembrance of the greatest poet of modern Italy.
MARGHERITA."
The Syndic replied in a letter hardly less fine in its expression of
Bologna's appreciation, and with assurances that the name of the first
Queen of Italy will in future be forever associated with Italy's
greatest modern poet.
The Regio Palazzo del Quirinale is near the Capitol, in the older part
of the city, and only a small part of this is shown to visitors when
the King and Queen are in residence. The Sala Regia may be seen, the
chapel in which are preserved a large number of the wreaths and the
addresses sent from all parts of the civilized world on the occasion of
the death of Victor Emmanuel II, and a suite of reception rooms, the
throne room with many historic portraits, the Sala des Ambassadeurs, and
the audience chamber, containing Thorwaldsen's "Triumphal Procession of
Alexander the Great," a gift from Napoleon I. In the small chapel of the
Annunciation is an altar piece by Guido Reni.
To artists the Queen Mother is most generously kind. One of the younger
Italian sculptors, Turillo Sindoni, Cavaliere of the Crown of Italy,
whose latest creation is a very beautiful statue of St. Agnes, has his
studios in the Via del Babuino, and to especially favored visitors he
sometimes exhibits a beautiful letter that he received from Margherita,
who purchased two of his statues. With the letter expressing her warm
appreciation of his art was an exquisite gift of jewelled sleeve-links.
Notwithstanding the fascinating lectures of Professor Lanciani and the
valuable and interesting work in the Forum that is being accomplished
under the efficient directorship of Commendatore Boni, yet all the roads
that traditionally lead to Rome do not converge to the palace on the
Palatine. Modern Rome is only mildly archæological, and while it takes
occasional recognition of the ancient monuments, and drives to the crypt
of old St. Agnes, to the tomb of Cecilia Metella, and may manage a
descent into the catacomb of St. Calixtus, it is far more actively
interested in its dancing and dining and driving. As a scenic background
for festivities Rome is a success, and as one comes into social touch
with the titled nobility, and the resident life, by birth or adoption,
one finds a city of infinite human interest and picturesque
possibilities.
Between the "Whites" (the loyal followers of the Palazzo Quirinale and
the King) and the "Blacks" (the devoted followers of the Palazzo
Vaticano and the Pope) a great gulf is fixed over which no one may
cross.
Pope Pius X is wonderfully accessible, considering the great
responsibilities and duties he has on him, and his generous goodness,
his gracious tact and the beauty of his spirit endear him to all,
Catholic or Protestant alike, for every one recognizes in him the
Christian gentleman, whose ideals of gentleness and inspiring
helpfulness impress themselves on all who are so fortunate as to meet
him.
The most impressive ceremonial receptions of the "Blacks" are those
given at the Spanish Embassy in the Piazza di Spagna. At the Embassy or
in the private palace of any Roman noble which a Cardinal honors by
accepting an invitation, he is received according to a most picturesque
old Roman custom. At the foot of the stairs two servants bearing lighted
torches meet his Eminence, and, making a profound obeisance, escort him
to the portals of the grand reception salon and await, in the corridor,
his return. On his departure they escort him in the same way down the
staircase.
In the College of Cardinals and among the many interesting
individualities of the Vatican, the most marked figure is that of the
Cardinal Secretary of State, Merry del Val. He occupies the Borgia
apartments, which are hung with tapestry and ornamented with the most
unique and valuable articles _de vertu_,--wonderful vases, inlaid
cabinets, old tapestries, paintings, statues, busts, and ivories. These
Borgia apartments are one of the most interesting features of the
Palazzo Vaticano, and may be seen now and then by special permission
when the Cardinal secretary is out, or when he may be pleased to retire
into his more private salons in the apartment while the others are
shown. Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val is an impressive personality, whose
life seems strangely determined by destiny. His father was an _attaché_
of the Spanish embassy to the Court of St. James when the future
Cardinal was born in 1865. In 1904, at the early age of thirty-nine, he
was advanced from the soutane violet of the bishop to the mantelletta
scarlet of the cardinal, and after the accession of the present Pope,
Pius X, he was appointed to the highest office in the Vatican, that of
Secretary of State, the Pope paying him the high tribute because of his
"devotion to work, his capability and absolute self-negation."
Cardinal Merry del Val has had a wonderful training of experience and
circumstances. At the early age of twenty-two he was a member of the
papal embassy commissioned to the jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887. He
was also appointed a member of the embassy from the Vatican to attend
the funeral of Emperor William I; and at the jubilee of Francis Joseph,
Emperor of Austria, Cardinal (then Bishop) Merry del Val was the sole
and accredited representative of the Holy See, as he was also at the
coronation of King Edward. The Spanish Cardinal is the special trusted
counsellor of the royal family of Spain.
In Rome, Cardinal Merry del Val is an impressive figure. He is always
attended by his _gentiluomo_, who is gorgeously arrayed in knee
breeches, military hat and sword. This gentleman in waiting walks behind
him on a promenade, sits in his carriage and stands near him in all
religious ceremonies. His equipage is well known in the Eternal City,--a
stately black carriage drawn by two massive black horses with luxurious
flowing manes.
It is freely prophesied in Rome that the Cardinal secretary is destined
to yet exchange the mantelletta scarlet for the zucchetta white, when
Pius X shall have gone the way of all his predecessors in the papal
chair. He is the Cardinal especially favored by Austria and Spain.
Although the conflict with France was at first ascribed to Cardinal
Merry del Val, he has of late been completely exonerated from blame,
even by the French prelates and clergy.
Cardinal Merry del Val represents the most advanced and progressive
thought of the day. He is an enthusiastic admirer of Marconi and the
marvels of wireless telegraphy; he is an advocate of telephonic service,
electric motors, electric lights, and of phonographs and typewriters for
the Vatican service. He is a great linguist, speaking English, French,
and German as well as Spanish, which is his native tongue, and Italian,
which has become second nature. He is a good Greek scholar and a
profound Latin scholar, and he speaks the ancient Latin with the fluency
and the force of the modern languages. He is, indeed, a remarkable
twentieth-century personality and one who has apparently a very
interesting life yet to come in his future.
At the Villa Pamphilia Doria, built by a former Prince Doria, the
largest villa in the Roman environs and the finest now remaining, the
Cardinal enjoys his game of golf, of which he is very fond. The Doria
family rendered the villa magnificent in every respect. Besides the
spacious avenues, woods, fountains, a lake, and cascades, are various
edifices, among which is one in the form of a triumphal arch, decorated
with ancient statues; the casino of the villa in which are preserved
some ancient marbles and several pictures; the beautiful circular
chapel, adorned with eight columns of marble and other stately
ornaments. There is a monument erected by the present Prince Doria to
the memory of the French soldiers who were killed there during the siege
of 1849. From the terrace of the palace there is a magnificent view of
the environs of Rome, as far as the sea. In consequence of excavations,
some columbaria, sepulchres, inscriptions, and other relics have been
found, which have attracted much attention from archæologists.
It is near these grounds that the "Arcadians" still hold their _al
fresco_ meetings. The society dates back to 1690, and the first _custos_
(whose duty was to open and close the meetings) was Crescimbeni. The
"Arcadians" organized themselves to protest against the degeneracy of
Italian poetry that marked the seventeenth century. To keep their
meetings a secret from the populace the "Arcadians" held their meetings
in an open garden on the slope below San Pietro in Montorio,--a terrace
still known as "Bosco Parrasio degli Arcadi."
One of the enchanting views in Rome is from the Piazza San Giovanni. One
looks far away past the Coliseum in its ruined grandeur and the _casa_
where Lucrezia Borgia lived, and in the near distance is the colossal
pile of San Giovanni di Laterano, its beautiful and impressive façade
crowned with the statues of the apostles silhouetted against the western
sky. In the piazza formed by the church, the museums, and the Baptistery
of San Giovanni and the Scala Santa is one of the most remarkable
obelisks in Rome, ninety-nine feet in height, formed of red granite and
carved with hieroglyphics. This shaft is placed on a pedestal which
makes it in all some 115 feet in height. It was placed in 1568 by Sixtus
V. The museums of the San Giovanni are the "Museo Sacro" and the "Museo
Profano,"--the latter founded by Pope Gregory XVI, and very rich in
sculptures and mosaics. The "Museo Sacro" was founded by Pio Nono, and
is rich in the antiquities of the Christian era. Within San Giovanni
the visitor finds himself in a vast interior divided by columns of
verd-antique into three aisles, each of which is as wide as, and far
longer than, the interior of an ordinary church. Statues fill the
niches, and the chapels and confessionals are all beautifully decorated.
The Corsini Chapel is the richest and was executed by order of Clement
XII, in honor of St. Andrew Corsini, who is represented in a rich mosaic
painting copied from Guido. Two sculptured figures, "Innocence" and
"Penitence," stand before the altar, and above is a relief depicting St.
Andrew protecting the Florentine army at the battle of Anghiari.
The tomb of Pope Clement XII (who himself belonged to the Corsini family
and who was an uncle of Cardinal Corsini) is in a niche between two
columns of porphyry, and there is a bronze statue of the Pope. On the
opposite side is a statue of Cardinal Corsini, and in the crypt below
are tombs of the Corsini family. On the altar--always lighted--is a
"Pieta" by Bernini, of which the face of the Christ is very beautiful.
Near the centre of the Basilica is a rich tabernacle of precious stones,
defined by four columns of _verde antico_, and it is said that the
heads of St. Peter and St. Paul are preserved here. The table upon which
Christ celebrated the Last Supper is placed here, above the altar of the
Holy Sacrament, a sacred relic that thrills the visitors. In one chapel
is a curious and grotesque group of sculpture,--a skeleton holding up a
medallion portrait, while an angel with outstretched wings hovers over
it.
San Giovanni has the reputation of being absolutely the coldest church
in all Rome, which--it is needless to remark--means a great deal, for
they all in winter have the temperature of the arctic regions. In all
these great churches there is never any heat; no apparatus for heating
has ever been introduced, and the twentieth century finds them just as
cold as they were in the centuries of a thousand years ago. This
colossal Basilica is considered the most important church in the world,
as it is the cathedral of the Pontiff. It was founded in the third
century by Constantine, destroyed by fire in 1308, and rebuilt by Pope
Clement V, and every succeeding Pope has added to it. The façade is of
travertine, with four gigantic columns and six pilasters, and the
cornice is decorated with colossal figures of Jesus and a number of the
saints. There are five balconies, the middle one being always used for
papal benedictions. In the portico is the colossal statue of Constantine
the Great. Within the columns are of _verde antico_; the ceiling was
designed by Michael Angelo; the interior is very rich in sculpture, and
there are some fine paintings and the chapels are most beautiful, one of
them containing a tabernacle comprised wholly of precious stones. Above
the altar of the Holy Sacrament the table upon which Christ celebrated
the Last Supper with the disciples is preserved. It is wonderful to look
upon this most sacred and significant relic.
It is in this church that the tomb of Leo XIII has been constructed by
the eminent Italian sculptor, Tadolini, opposite the tomb of Innocent
III. The work was completed in the spring of 1907, the design being a
life-size portrait statue of the Pope with two figures, one on either
side, representing the church and the workman-pilgrim, forming part of
the group. This is one of the most memorable monuments of all Rome, and
the tomb of the great Leo XIII will form a new shrine for Christian
pilgrimage.
Included in the group of structures that form the great Basilica of San
Giovanni is the Scala Santa, which offers a strange picture whenever one
approaches it. These twenty-eight marble steps that belonged to Pilate's
house in Jerusalem are said to have been once trodden by Jesus and may
be ascended only on one's knees. At no hour of the day can one visit the
Scala Santa without finding the most motley and incongruous throng thus
ascending, pausing on each step for meditation and prayer. These stairs
were transported from Jerusalem to Rome under the auspices of St.
Helena, the Empress, about 326 A.D., and in 1589 they were placed by
Pope Sixtus V in this portico built for them with a chapel at the top of
the stairs called the "Sancta Sanctorum," formerly the private chapel of
the Popes. In this sanctuary is preserved a wonderful portrait of the
Saviour, painted on wood, which is said to have been partly the work of
St. Luke but finished by unseen hands. The legend runs that St. Luke
prepared to undertake the work by three days' fasting and prayer, and
that, having drawn it in outline, the painting was done by angelic
ministry, the colors being filled in by invisible hands. In ancient
times--the custom being abolished by Pius V in 1566--this picture was
borne through Rome on the Feast of the Assumption and the bearer halted
with it in the Forum, when the "Kyrie Eleison" would be chanted by
hundreds of voices.
Myth and legend invest every turn and footfall of the Eternal City, and
there are few that are not founded on what the church has always called
supernatural manifestations, but which the new age is learning to
recognize as occurrences under natural law.
The story of Luther's ascent of the Scala Santa is thus told:--
"Brother Martin Luther went to accomplish the ascent of the Scala
Santa--the Holy Staircase--which once, they say, formed part of
Pilate's house. He slowly mounted step after step of the hard
stone, worn into hollows by the knees of penitents and pilgrims.
Patiently he crept halfway up the staircase, when he suddenly stood
erect, lifted his face heavenward, and in another moment turned
and walked slowly down again.
"He said that as he was toiling up a voice as if from heaven spoke
to him and said, 'The just shall live by faith.' He awoke as if
from a nightmare, restored to himself. He dared not creep up
another step; but rising from his knees he stood upright like a man
suddenly loosed from bonds and fetters, and with the firm step of a
free man he descended the staircase and walked from the place."
The entire legendary as well as sacred history is almost made up of
instances of the interpenetration of the two worlds; the response of
those in the spiritual world to the needs of those in the natural world.
Pope Paschal recorded that he fell asleep in his chair at St. Peter's
(somewhere about 8.20 A.M.) with a prayer on his lips that he might find
the burial place of St. Cecilia, and in his dream she appeared to him
and showed him the spot where her body lay, in the catacombs of
Calixtus. The next day he went to the spot and found all as had been
revealed to him. The miraculous preservation of St. Agnes is familiar to
all students of legendary art. Throughout all Rome, shrine and niche
and sculpture, picture, monument, arch and column, speak perpetually of
some interposition of unseen forces with events and circumstances in
this part of life. The Eternal City in its rich and poetic symbolism is
one great object lesson of the interblending of the two worlds, the
natural and the spiritual. The first stage regarding all this marvellous
panorama was entire and unquestioning acceptance; the succeeding stage
was doubt, disbelief; the third, into which we are now entering, is that
of an enlightened understanding and a growing knowledge and grasp of the
laws under which these special interpositions and interventions occur.
For that "according to thy faith be it unto thee," is as true now in the
twentieth century as it was in the first. The one central truth that is
the very foundation of all religious philosophy is the continuity of
life and the persistence of intercourse and communion, spirit to spirit,
across the gulf we call death. The evidences of this truth have been
always in the world. The earliest records of the Bible are replete with
them. The gospels of the New Testament record an unbroken succession
of occurrences and of testimony to this interpenetration of life in the
Unseen with that in the Seen. Secular history is full of its narrations
of instances of clairvoyance, clairaudience, and of communications in a
variety of ways; and the sacred and legendary art of Rome, largely
founded on story and myth and legend, when seen in the light of
latter-day science is judged anew, and the literal truth of much that
has before been considered purely legendary is revealed and realized.
One reads new meanings into Rome when testing it by this consciousness.
It is a city of spiritual symbolism. It is a great object lesson
extending over all the centuries. Making due allowance for the
distortion and exaggeration of ages of testimony, there yet remains a
residuum indisputable. The Past and the Present both teem with record
and incident and experience proving that life is twofold, even now and
here; that all the motives and acts of the life which we see are
variously incited, modified, strengthened, or annulled by those in the
realm of the Unseen.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO VILLA PAMPHILIA-DORIA, ROME
_Page 159_]
The intelligent recognition of this truth changes the entire conduct of
life. It entirely alters the point of view. It extends the horizon line
infinitely. Instead of conceiving of life as a whole, as comprised
between the cradle and the grave, it will be regarded in its larger and
truer scope as a series of experiences and achievements, infinite in
length and in their possibilities and unbroken by the change we call
death. This will impart to humanity a new motor spring in that greater
hope which puts man in a working mood, which makes him believe in the
value of that which he undertakes, which encourages him to press on amid
all difficulties and against all obstacles. Increasing hope, all
activity is proportionately increased. It was an event of incalculable
importance to the progress of humanity when the swift communication by
cable was established between America and Europe. It is one of
infinitely greater importance to establish the truth and enlarge the
possibility of direct communication with the world of higher forces and
larger attainment and scope than our own. This communication exists and
has always existed, but it has been regarded as myth and legend and
phenomenon rather than as a fact of nature whose laws were to be
ascertained and understood. It must be made clear as an absolute
scientific demonstration that the change of form by the process we call
death does not put an end to intelligent and rational intercourse, but
that, indeed, instead of setting up a barrier, it removes barriers and
renders mutual comprehension far clearer and more direct than before.
This realization alters the entire perspective of life, and is the new
Glad Tidings of great joy.
It is something of all this that the Eternal City suggests to one as he
makes his pilgrimages to shrine and cloister and chapel and Basilica.
The mighty Past is eloquent with a thousand voices, and they blend into
a choral harmony of promise and prophecy for the nobler future of
humanity.
At the foot of the Scala Santa, on either side, are statues of Christ
and Judas, and of Christ and Pilate, very interesting groups by
Jacometti, and there is also a kneeling statue of Pio Nono.
The statue of Judas is considered one of the most notable of the late
modern Italian sculpture.
The Rome of to-day is in strange contrast even to the city that Page and
Hawthorne knew, in the comparatively recent past; and the Rome of the
ancients is traced only in the churches and the ruins. It is a _mot_
that one hears every language spoken in Rome, except the Italian! So
largely has the Seven-hilled City become the pleasure ground of foreign
residents. The contrast between the ordinary breakfast-table talk in
Rome and in--Boston, for instance, or Washington, is amusing. In the
Puritan capital it usually includes the topic of weather predictions and
the news in the morning paper, with whatever other of local or personal
matters of interest. In Washington, where the very actors and the events
that make the nation's history are fairly before one's eyes, the
breakfast-table conversation is apt to turn on matters that have not yet
got into the papers,--the evening session of the previous night,
perhaps, when too long prolonged under the vast dome to admit of its
having been noted in the morning press. But in Rome the breakfast-table
talk is apt to be of the new excavations just taken from the bed of the
Tiber; the question as to whether the head of St. Paul could have
touched (at the tragic scene of his execution) at three places so far
apart as the tri-fontanes; or a discussion of the marvellous freshness
of the mosaics in the interior of the Palace of the Cæsars; or, again,
of the last night's balls or dinners, and matters most frankly
_mondaine_, and of contemporary life.
The American Embassy, whose location depends on the individual choice of
the Ambassador of the time, is now in the old Palazzo del Drago on the
corner of the Via Venti Settembre and the Via delle Quattro Fontane. The
street floor, like all the old palaces, is not used for living purposes.
The portiere, the guards, the corridors, and approaches to the
staircases monopolize this space. The piano nobile is the residence of
the beautiful and lovely Principessa d'Antuni, the youthful widow of the
Principe who was himself a grandson of Marie Christine, the Queen of
Spain. The young Princess who was married to him at the age of
seventeen, ten years ago, is left with three little children, of whom
the only daughter bears the name of her great-grandmother, the Spanish
Queen. Perfectly at home in all the romance languages, an accomplished
musician, a thinker, a scholar, a student, a lovely figure in life, a
beautiful and sympathetic friend is the Princess d'Antuni. She is "of a
simplicity," as they say in Italy, investing the dignity of her rank
with indescribable grace and sweetness. The two long flights of stairs
that lead up to the secundo piano in the Palazzo del Drago--the floor
occupied by the American Embassy--have at least a hundred steps to each
staircase, yet so broad and easy of ascent as hardly to fatigue one.
These flights are carpeted in glowing red, while along the wall are
niches in each of which stands an old statue, making the ascent of the
guest seem a classic progress.
The Palazzo del Drago has an elevator, but elevator service in Rome is a
thing apart, something considered quite too good for human nature's
daily food, and the slight power is far too little to permit any number
of people to be accommodated, so on any ceremonial occasion the elevator
is closed and the guests walk up the two long flights. The total lack of
any mastery of mechanical conditions in Italy is very curious.
The grand ball given at the American Embassy just before Ash Wednesday
in the winter of 1907 was a very pretty affair. Up the rose-red carpeted
stairs the guests walked, the statues looking silently on, but
apparently there was no Galatea to step down from her niche and join the
happy throng. In the antechamber each guest was asked to write his name
in the large autograph books kept for that purpose, and then, passing
on, was received by the Ambassador and Ambassadress in the first of the
splendid series of salons thrown open for the occasion. At this time it
was Mr. and Mrs. Henry White who represented the United States, and won
the hearts of all Rome as well, and assisted by their charming daughter,
Miss Muriel White, they made this ball an affair to leave its lovely
pictures in memory. The scenic setting of an old Roman palace captivates
the stranger. It may not impress him as especially comfortable, but it
is certainly picturesque, and who would not prefer--at least for the
"one night only" of the traditional _prima donna_ announcements--the
pictorially picturesque and magnificent to the merely comfortable? The
lofty ceilings, painted by artists who have long since vanished from
mortal sight, make it impossible to attain the temperature that the
American regards as essential to his terrestrial well-being, and as the
only sources of heat were the open fireplaces the guests hovered around
these and their radii of comfortable warmth were limited. In one salon
there was one especially beautiful effect of a great jar of white lilacs
placed before a vast mirror at sufficient distance to give the mirror
reflection an individuality as a thing apart, and the effect was that of
a very garden of paradise. The music was fascinating, the decorations
all in good taste, and the occasion was most brilliant,--_très
charmante_ indeed. The American ambassadress was ablaze with her famous
diamonds, her corsage being literally covered with them, and her
coiffure adorned with a coronet, but the temperature soon forced the
ambassadress to partially eclipse her splendor with the little ermine
shoulder cape that is an indispensable article for evening dress in
Rome. The temperature does not admit the possibility of _décolleté_
gowns without some protection, when these resplendent glittering robes
that seem woven of the stars are worn. Among the more distinguished
guests, aside from the _corps diplomatique_ and the titled nobility of
Rome and visiting foreigners, were M. Carolus Duran, the celebrated
portrait artist of Paris, and among other interesting people were Miss
Elise Emmons of Leamington, England, a grand-niece of Charlotte Cushman.
M. Carolus Duran was very magnificent, his breast covered with jewelled
orders and decorations from the various societies, academies, and
governments that have honored him. He is a short man and has grown quite
stout, but he carries himself with inimitable grace and dignity, and in
his luminous eyes one still surprises that far-away look which Sargent
so wonderfully caught in his portrait of the great French artist,
painted in his earlier life.
The number of spacious salons with their easy-chairs and sofas enabled
all guests who desired to ensconce themselves luxuriously to do so, and
watch the glittering scene. The supper room and the salon for dancing
were not more alluring than the salons wherein one could study this
brilliant throng of diplomates, titled nobility, distinguished artists,
social celebrities, and those who were, in various ways, each _persona
grata_ in Rome. Among those at this particular festivity were the
American novelist, Frank Hamilton Spearman, with Mrs. Spearman. In late
American fiction Mr. Spearman has made for himself a distinctive place
as the novelist whose artistic eye has discerned the romance in the new
phases of life created by the extensive systems of mountain railroading,
and the great irrigation schemes of the far West, which have not only
opened up new territory, but have called into evidence new combinations
of the qualities most potent in human life,--love, sacrifice, heroism,
devotion to duty, and tragedy and comedy as well. In his novels, "The
Daughter of a Magnate" and "Whispering Smith," in such vivid and
delightful short stories as "The Ghost at Point of Rocks," which
appeared in _Scribner's Magazine_ for August of 1907, Mr. Spearman has
dramatized the pathos, the wit, the vast and marvellous spirit of
enterprise, the desolation of isolated regions, the all-pervading
potency and one may almost say intimacy of modern life made possible by
the Arabian Nights' dream of wireless telegraphy, "soaring" cars,
long-distance telephoning, and lightning express train service in cars
that climb the mountains beyond the clouds, or dash through tunnels with
ten thousand feet of mountains above them. Mr. Spearman is the novelist
_par excellence_ of this intense _vie modernité_.
On Washington's Birthday, again, the stately salons of the American
Embassy in the old Palazzo del Drago were well filled from four to six
with an assemblage which expressed its patriotism and devotion to
Washington by appearing in its most faultless raiment and in an apparent
appreciation of the refreshment tables, from which cake and ices, tea
and various other delicacies, were served.
The informal weekly receptions at the Embassy are always delightful, and
the dinners and ceremonial entertainments are given with that faultless
grace which characterizes the American ambassadress.
The American consulate is always a charming centre in Rome, and in the
present residence of Consul-General and Mrs. De Castro, who have
domiciled themselves on a lofty floor of a palace in the Via Venti
Settembre, commanding beautiful views that make a picture of every
window, the consulate is one of the favorite social centres for
Americans and other nationalities as well, who enjoy the charming
welcome of Mrs. De Castro.
Professor and Mrs. Jesse Benedict Carter, in their lovely home in the
Via Gregoriana, add another to the pleasant American centres in the
Eternal City, Professor Carter having succeeded Professor Norton as the
principal of the American Classical School.
Mrs. Elihu Vedder, assisted by her accomplished daughter, Miss Anita
Vedder, has a pretty fashion of receiving weekly in Mr. Vedder's studio
in the Via Flaminia, and these Saturday receptions at the Vedders' are a
feature of social life in Rome which are greatly sought. The
distinguished artist reserves these afternoons for leisurely
conversation, and pictures and sketches are enjoyed the more that they
may be enjoyed in the presence of their creator. Miss Vedder has called
to life again the almost lost art of tapestry, and her productions of
wonderful beauty are considered as among the most desirable in modern
decorative art. Among these tapestries are "The Lover's Song," "Salome
Dancing before Herod," "The Annunciation," "The Legend of the Unicorn,"
"The Lovers' Picnic," and "The Lovers." The tapestries were painted in
Rome and in the Vedder villa, _Torre Quattro Venti_ on Capri, where the
artist and his wife and daughter pass their summers. The established
English Church has two chapels in Rome, one the Holy Trinity, of which
Rev. Dr. Baldwin is the rector, and the other English chapel in Via del
Babuino has for its chaplain Rev. Dr. Nutcombe Oxenham, whose ministry
is one of the most helpful factors in Rome. Dr. and Mrs. Oxenham occupy
a charming apartment in the Piazza del Popolo, the most picturesque
piazza in Rome, with the terraced Pincion hillside crowned by the Villa
di Medici on one side, and the "twin churches" on another; and the
beautiful salon of Mrs. Oxenham, with its wealth of books and classic
engravings and gems of pictures, is one of the homelike interiors in
Rome. Mr. and Mrs. Oxenham receive on Wednesdays, and an hour with them
and their guests is always a privileged one.
The work of this church, largely through the active co-operation of Mrs.
Oxenham, extends into wide charities which are without discrimination as
to sect or race,--the only consideration being the human need to be met
in the name of Him whose care and love are for each and all.
Among the delightful hostesses of Rome is the American wife of Cavaliere
Cortesi, an Italian man of letters, and in their apartment, in one of
the notable palaces in the Corso, some of the most brilliant musicals
and receptions are given, the "All'Illustrissima Signora" being assisted
in the informal serving of tea by the two little fairy daughters,
Annunziata and Elizabetta, whose childish loveliness lingers with the
_habitués_ of this pleasant home.
In the Palazzo Senni, in the old part of Rome, looking out on Castel San
Angelo and the Ponte d'Angelo, across to the dome of St. Peter's, the
Listers had their home; and though Mrs. Lister, one of the most
distinguished English ladies of Rome, has gone on into the fairer world
beyond, her daughter, Miss Roma Lister, sustains the charming
hospitalities for which her mother was famous. Her salons on the piano
nobile of the palace are rich in souvenirs and rare objects of art. Mrs.
Lister, who was of a noted English house, was evidently a favorite with
Queen Victoria and the royal family; and her marriage gifts included two
drawings by the Queen, both autographed, and a crayon portrait of the
Empress Frederick with autographic inscription to Mrs. Lister. Another
personal gift was a portrait of Cardinal Newman, with his autograph. A
bust of Lady Paget of Florence, the widow of Sir Augustus Paget,
formerly the English Ambassador to Italy, is another of the interesting
treasures which include, indeed, gifts and offerings from a large number
of those eminent in state, in art, in literature, or in the church. The
gracious hospitality of Miss Lister is dispensed to groups of
cosmopolitan guests, and her dinners and other entertainments are among
the most brilliant in Rome.
The Eternal City is not as hospitable to various phases of modern
thought as is Florence, in which Theosophy, Christian Science, and
psychic investigation flourish with rapidly increasing ardor; but Rome
has a Theosophical Society, among whose leaders is the Baroness
Rosenkrans, the mother of the distinguished young Danish novelist, and
the aunt of Miss Roma Lister. The society has its rooms in the very
heart of old Rome, and holds weekly meetings, often with an English
lecturer as the speaker of the hour. A Theosophical library, in both
English and Italian, is easily accessible, and the meetings are
conducted in either language as it chances at the time. The accession of
Annie Besant to the presidency of the Theosophical Society, succeeding
Colonel Olcott, whose death occurred early in 1907, was most
satisfactory to the Roman members. Mrs. Besant is one of the most
remarkable women of the day. She is in no sense allied with any fads
or freaks; she is essentially a woman of scholarship and poise, of
genuine grasp of significant thought and of brilliant eloquence.
Theosophy, rightly interpreted, is in no sense antagonistic, but,
rather, supplemental to Christianity. It offers the intellectual
explanation--the details, so to speak--of the great spiritual truths of
the Bible.
Rome seems fairly on its way to become an English-speaking city, so
numerous are the Americans and English who throng to Rome in the winter.
There are now at least a dozen large new hotels on the scale of the best
modern hotels in New York and Paris, beside the multitude of the older
ones which are comfortable and retain all their popularity; yet this
increase in accommodation does not equal the increase in demand. In
February the tide of travel sets in toward Rome, and from that date
until after Easter every nook and niche are filled to overflowing. The
demand for apartments in Rome is greater than the supply, although the
city is being constantly extended and new buildings are rapidly being
erected. It would seem as if, with the present increasingly large number
of Americans and English, it might be an admirable financial enterprise
for capitalists to come and build comfortable modern apartment hotels.
There seems to be no adequate reason why, in this age, people should be
compelled to live in these gloomy, dreary, cold, old stone palaces,
without elevator service and with no adequate heating, lighting, and
running-water facilities. There would seem to be no conceivable reason
why these conveniences should not be at hand in Rome as well as in New
York. As for the climate, with warm houses to live in, it would be
charmingly comfortable, for the deadly cold is not in the temperature
out of doors, but only in the interiors. One is warm in the sunshine in
the streets, when he is fairly frozen in the house. Mentioning this,
however, with wonder that some enterprising American did not begin such
building operations, a friend who has lived for sixteen years in Rome
replied that the Italians would never permit it; that no foreigner is
allowed to come in here and initiate business operations. And the
Italians continue building after the old and clumsy fashion of five
hundred years ago.
Italy has a curiously pervasive and general suspicion of any latter-day
comfort. The new apartment houses of from four to seven stories are
largely without any elevator; if there is one it usually only ascends
about halfway, and it is so clumsy and slow in its methods, so poorly
supported by power, that half the time it does not run at all. The
streets of Rome are paved with rough stones; the sidewalks are very
narrow; the lighting is inadequate. Bathrooms are rare and insufficient
in number, and all interior lighting and heating arrangements lack much
that is desirable according to American ideas of comfort.
Still the Eternal City is so impressive in and of itself that sunshine
or storm, comfort or the reverse, can hardly affect one's intensity of
joy and wonder and mysterious, unanalyzable rapture in it. The
twentieth-century Rome is a very different affair from the Rome on which
Hawthorne entered one dark, cold, stormy winter night more than half a
century ago. In the best modern hotels one may be as comfortable as he
likes, with all the fascinations of life added besides. No wonder that
Rome is one of the great winter centres, with some of the most
interesting people in the world always to be found under the spell of
its enchantment.
The Rome of to-day is a curious mixture of ruins and of modern buildings
which are neither modern nor mediæval in their structure, but many of
which combine the most picturesque features of the latter with the
latest beauty of French and American architectural art. The classic
buildings are now largely in unpleasant surroundings; as, for instance,
the Pantheon, which is surrounded by a fish market, with unspeakable
odors and other repulsive features. "But the portico, with its sixteen
Corinthian columns, is forever majestic; the interior, a vast circular
cell surmounted by a dome through which alone it is lighted, there being
no windows in the walls, is massive and grim, but the magical
illumination, the eye constantly revealing the sky above, gives it
wonderful beauty. Over the outer portals is the inscription of its
erection by Agrippa twenty-seven years before Christ, so it has stood
for nearly two thousand years. Colossal statues of Augustus and Agrippa
fill niches. In diameter the interior of the Pantheon is one hundred and
thirty-two feet, and it is the same in height, which insures the
singularly harmonious proportions. The tribune of the High-Altar is cut
in the thickness of the wall in the form of a semicircle, and is
ornamented, like the door, with four pilasters and two columns of violet
marble. The six chapels are also cut in the wall and ornamented by two
columns and two pilasters. The columns and the pilasters support the
beautiful cornice of white marble; the frieze is of porphyry, and goes
round the whole temple. Above this order there is a species of attic
with fourteen niches, and the great cornice from which rises the
majestic dome. Eight other niches are between the chapels, and these are
also with a pediment supported by two Corinthian columns. They are now
converted into altars. In this temple are buried several artists, among
whom are Raphael, Giovanni da Udine, Baldassare Peruzzi, and Annibale
Carracci. Raphael is buried beneath the base of the statue called la
Madonna del Sasso, sculptured by Lorenzetti. This church is, however,
without paintings or sculptures of much interest. Victor Emmanuel was
entombed here on the 20th of January, 1878, and King Umberto on the 9th
of August, 1900." One of the imposing ceremonies of Rome is that always
celebrated in the Pantheon on March 14, in memory of King Umberto Primo.
A grand catafalque, surmounted by the royal crown, and surrounded by
tall candelabra with wax candles, is erected in the centre of the
temple, draped with black velvet and gold lace, and lighted with
electric lamps. The mass is for a chorus of voices only. All the civil
and military authorities, the state dignitaries, and the _corps
diplomatique_ to the court of Italy are present. The troops, in full
dress uniform, file in the Piazza of the Collegio Romano, Via Piè di
Marmo, and the Piazza della Minerva, enclosing thus a large square in
the Piazza del Pantheon. The spectacle is one of the most imposing of
all Roman ceremonies.
The King, and Queen Elena, and the Dowager Queen Margherita, accompanied
by their respective civil and military households, assist at the requiem
mass celebrated in the Pantheon, and at a commemoration service, on the
same day, in the Royal Chapel of the Sudario, where also assemble the
ladies and gentlemen of the Order of the Annunziata.
On the same morning the feast of St. Gregory, Pope and Doctor of the
church, is celebrated at his church on the Cælian Hill. He was born of a
noble family, and was Prefect of Rome in 573. Pope Pelagius II made him
regionary deacon of Rome, and sent him as legate to Constantinople in
578, where he remained till the death of Pelagius, when he was elected
Pope (590). He introduced the Gregorian chant. His first great act was
to send St. Augustine to convert the Saxons of England to the Christian
faith. An inscription in the Church of San Gregorio Magno states that
St. Augustine was educated in the abbey which was erected on the site of
the present church by Gregory, and that many early archbishops of York
and Canterbury were also educated there. It was on the steps of this
church that Augustine and his forty monks took leave of Gregory, when
setting out for England. He died in 604, after a pontificate of thirteen
years and six months. He was buried in the portico of the Vatican
Basilica, and his body lies under the altar dedicated to him in this
same church. His church, on the Cælian Hill, was built on the site of
the monastery founded by him. In the chapel of the triclinium, near the
church, the table on which he served the poor is shown. Near the church
also is seen his cell, where his marble chair and one of his arms are
exhibited.
During the Lenten season of 1907 one of the privileges of Rome was to
hear the sermons of Monsignor Vaughn, in the English Catholic Church of
San Silvestre. Monsignor Vaughn is the private chaplain of the Pope. His
discourses attracted increasing throngs of both Catholic and Protestant
hearers. This celebrated prelate is a brother of the late English
Cardinal. He is a man of great distinction of presence, of beautiful
voice and fascination of manner. One discourse had for its theme the
joys of the life that is to come. The spiritual body, he said, has many
qualities not pertaining to the physical body. It is immured from all
disease and accidents; it is subtle and can pass through any substance
which is (apparently) solid to us, as, for instance, when Jesus appeared
in the midst of his disciples, "the doors being shut." It is not a clog
on the soul, continued Monsignor Vaughn; the spiritual body is the
vehicle of the soul and can waft its way through the air; it can walk
the air as the physical body walks the earth. It is not--as is the
physical body--the prison of the soul, but the companion of the soul.
This is all a very enlightened presentation of spiritual truth, and it
is little wonder that such preaching attracts large congregations. Holy
Week in Rome bears little resemblance now to that of the past. The Pope
is not visible in any of the ceremonials in any of the churches; and the
impressiveness of former Catholic ceremonials is greatly lessened.
Indeed, with the passing of the temporal power of the Pope, the
picturesqueness of Rome largely vanished.
Not, assuredly, from any lack of reverence for the colossal cathedral of
St. Peter's is that Basilica a resort for Sunday afternoons; it suggests
a social reunion, where every one goes, listens as he will to the music
of the Papal choir in the Chapel of the Sacrament, and strolls about the
vast interior where the promenade of the multitude does not yet disturb
in the least the vesper service in the chapel. Here one meets
everybody; the general news of the day is exchanged; greeting and
salutation and pleasant little conversational interludes mark the
afternoon, while the sun sinks behind the splendid pile of the Palazzo
Vaticano, and the golden light through the window of the tribune fades
into dusk. Can one ever lose out of memory the indescribable charm of
this leisurely sauntering, in social enjoyment, in the wonderful
interior of St. Peter's?
In the way of the regulation sight-seeing the visitor to Rome compasses
most of his duty in this respect on his initial sojourn and goes the
rounds that no one ever need dream of repeating. Once for all the
visitor to Rome goes down into the Catacombs; makes his appallingly hard
journey over Castel San Angelo, into its cells and dungeons, and to the
colossal salon in which is Hadrian's tomb; once for a lifetime he climbs
St. Peter's dome; drives out to old St. Agnes and descends into the
crypt; visits the Church of the Capucines and beholds the ghastly
spectacle of the monks' skulls; drives in the Appian Way; visits the
Palace of the Cæsars, the Baths of Caracalla--a mass of ruins; the
Forum; the Temples of Vesta and Isis; the Coliseum, and the classic old
Pantheon. These form a kind of skeleton for the regulation sight-seeing
of the Eternal City; things which, once done, are checked off with the
feeling that the entire duty of the tourist has been fulfilled, and
that, henceforth in Rome, there is laid up for him the crown of
enjoyment, if not rejoicing; that he may go again and again to study the
marvellous treasures of the Vatican galleries, the masterpieces of art
in the Raphael stanze in the Vatican, the interesting pictures and
sculpture in the many rich churches and galleries. The deadly chill of
most of these galleries and churches in the winter is beyond words to
describe. It is as if the gloom and chill and darkness of a thousand
centuries were there concentrated.
One of the regulation places for the devout sight-seer, who feels
responsible to his conscience for improving his privileges, is the Museo
Nazionale, or the Tiberine Museum, a large proportion of whose treasures
have been excavated in making the new embankments of the Tiber. It is
located on the site of the Baths of Diocletian, the great ruins of which
surround it in the most uncanny way. Built around a large court, the
salons of the museum are entered from the inner cloisters. In the centre
of the court is a fountain, and around it are antique fragments of
statues, columns, and statuettes found in many places. The famous
Ludovisi collection of antique statuary is now permanently placed in
this museum,--a collection that includes the "Ludovisi Mars;"
"Hercules," with a cornucopia; the "Hermes of Theseus," the "Discobolus
Hermes;" the "Venus of Gnidus" as copied by Praxiteles; the "Dying
Medusa;" the "Ludovisi Juno," which Winckelmann declares to be the
finest head of Juno extant, a Greek work of the fourth century; a "Cupid
and Psyche;" the two "Muses of Astronomy" and of "Epic Poetry," "Urania
and Calliope;" "an Antoninus;" the largest sarcophagus known; a "Tragic
Mask" (colossal) in rosso antico; a bust of "Marcus Aurelius" in bronze,
and many other priceless works.
The splendor of scenic setting for art in the magnificent salons of the
Casino Borghese has never been surpassed. They are, perhaps, the most
impressive of any Roman interior, with lofty, splendidly decorated
ceilings and walls, where recess and niche hold priceless sculptures.
The splendor of these salons, indeed, quite exceeds description. In the
principal one is a group on one wall--a colossal relief--representing
Marcus Curtius plunging into the gulf in the Forum. There are busts of
the twelve Cæsars; there are busts of all the Roman Emperors, with
alabaster draperies, placed on pedestals of red granite. There are
Bernini's "Apollo and Daphne;" Canova's celebrated statue of Princess
Pauline Borghese (the sister of Napoleon I); Bernini's "David" and
"Æneas and Anchises;" Thorwaldsen's "Faun;" "Diana," "Isis," "Juno," and
many other celebrated classic statues. All the great paintings which
were formerly in the Palazzo Borghese--over six hundred in all--are now
in this casino. The great work in this collection is Raphael's
"Entombment of Christ," painted in his twenty-fourth year. Titian's
"Divine and Human Love;" Raphael's portrait of "Cæsar Borgia;"
Correggio's "Danaë;" Domenichino's "Cumæan Sibyl" and "Diana;" Peruzzi's
"Venus Leaving the Bath;" Van Dyck's "Crucifixion;" Titian's "Venus and
Cupid;" and "Annunciation," by Paul Veronese; Vasari's "Lucrezia
Borgia;" Botticelli's "Holy Family and Angels;" Van Dyck's "Entombment;"
Carlo Dolce's "Mater Dolorosa," and Sassoferrato's "Three Ages of Man"
are among the great masterpieces in this museum.
The Villa Borghese (by which is meant the park) is some three miles in
extent, and was laid out some two hundred years ago by Cardinal
Borghese. As recently as 1902 it was purchased by the government for
three million francs, and its official name is now "Villa Comunale
Umberto Primo." These grounds contain fountains, antique statues,
tablets, small temples and many inscriptions, with statues of Æsculapius
and Apollo, and an Egyptian gateway. They are open all day to every one
freely and are one of the great attractions of Rome.
The great palaces of Rome are of later date than those of Florence.
There are some eighty principal ones, of which the Palazzos Veneziano,
Farnese, Doria, Barberini, Colonna, and the Rospigliosi (containing
Guido's famous "Aurora") are the most important. The Farnesina Palace
contains some of the most interesting pictures in Rome, and the
traditions of the residence of Agostino Chigi, during the pontificate
of Leo X, are still found in Rome,--traditions of the lavish
magnificence of the entertainments given here to the Pope and the
Cardinals.
The Monte Pincio is the famous drive of Roman society, and the promenade
around the brow of the hill offers one of the most enchanting views of
the world. Near the Trinità di Monti stands the historic Villa Medici,
the French Academy of which the great Carolus Duran is now the director.
The view across the valley in which lies the Piazza di Spagna, the river
to St. Peter's, from the Villa Medici, is one of the finest in Rome.
The architecture of the garden façade is attributed to Michael Angelo.
These gardens have a circuit of more than a mile, laid out in the formal
rectangles and densely bordered walks of the Italian custom. All manner
of old fragments of sculpture are scattered through them,--a torso, a
broken bust, a ruined statue, an old and partly broken fountain,--and
entablatures and reliefs are seen in the walls on every hand. No sound
of the city ever penetrates into this dense foliage which secludes the
gardens of the famous Villa Medici.
One of the features of Roman life is the fashionable drive on Monte
Pincio in the late afternoons. An hour or two before sunset the terrace
of the Piazza Trinità di Monti begins to be thronged with pedestrians,
who lean over the marble balustrade, gazing at the incomparable pictured
panorama where the vast dome of St. Peter's, the dense pines of the
Villa Pamphilia-Doria on the Janiculum, and the dark cypress groves on
Monte Mario loom up against the golden western sky.
Compared with the extensive parks of modern cities the Monte Pincio
would prefigure itself as a drive for fairies alone. It comprises a few
acres only, thickly decorated with trees and shrubbery, with a casino
for the orchestra that plays every afternoon, and a circular carriage
drive so limited in extent that the same carriage comes in view every
few minutes.
The Eternal City has had so many birthdays that one would fancy them to
have become negligible; but it was announced on April 21 of 1907 that
the date was a special anniversary, and she took on aspects of
festivity. The municipal palaces and museums were hung with tapestries,
flags were flying from the Capitol, the municipal guards were all in
full dress uniform and the municipal orchestra played in the Piazza
Colonna. The historic bell began ringing at eight in the morning in
peals that were well calculated to call the Cæsars from their tombs and
which might, indeed, have been mistaken for the final trumpet calls of
Gabriel. But the Romans take their pleasures rather sadly and
sternly,--not like the light-hearted Florentines in song and laughter,
or with the joyous abandon of the Neapolitans,--so there was no special
manifestation on the part of the populace, and the day, cold, gloomy,
and cheerless, did not inspire gayety.
When the Republic of Rome was established (on Feb. 9, 1849) a
provisional government was appointed. In March of that year Mazzini
proposed that the assembly should appoint a Committee of War, and it was
decided to send troops to Piedmont. Later a triumvirate, consisting of
Mazzini, Saffi, and Armellini, was formed, but disaster was near. In
April the French troops landed at Cività Vecchia, and the Italians
prepared to defend their country from the control of Louis Napoleon.
Mazzini is said to have been "the life and the soul" of this defence.
But the Republic was doomed, and when it had fallen the Pope returned,
only under the protection of the French. But the French Empire, too, was
doomed to fall; and when Garibaldi transferred his successes to Victor
Emmanuel, the monarchy was consolidated by the union of Rome with Italy,
and the present "Via Venti Settembre" in Rome--the street named to
commemorate that 20th of September, 1870, on which the Italian troops
entered the city and the Papal reign ended--perpetuates the story of
those eventful days. "Victor Emmanuel, Cavour, and Garibaldi have been
designated, along with Mazzini, as the founders of the modern Italy,"
said Dr. William Clarke, "but a broad line divides Mazzini from the
others." Dr. Clarke sees between Cavour and Mazzini "the everlasting
conflict between the idealist and the man of the world. The former," he
continues, "stands by the intellect and the conscience; the latter by
the limitations of actual fact and the practical difficulties of the
case," and Dr. Clarke notes further:--
"It was pre-eminently Mazzini who gave to Italy the breath of a new
life, who taught her people constancy in devotion to an ideal
good. Prophets are rarely successful in their own day, and so it
has been with the prophet of modern Italy. The making of Italy has
not proceeded in the way he hoped it would; for the Italians, who
are an eminently subtle and diplomatic people, have apparently
thought it best to bend to the hard facts by which they have been
surrounded. But if, as Emerson teaches, facts are fluid to thought,
we may believe that the ideas of Mazzini will yet prevail in the
nation of his birth, and that he may yet be regarded as the
spiritual father of the future Italian commonwealth. For of him, if
of any modern man, we may say that he
'Saw distant gates of Eden gleam,
And did not dream it was a dream.'"
[Illustration: STATUE OF CHRIST, ANCIENT CHURCH OF SAN MARTINA, ROME
_From the Artist's Original Cast_
Albert Bertel Thorwaldsen
_Page 193_]
Between the period of the establishment of the Roman Republic in 1849
and the consummation of United Italy in 1870 the years were rich to the
artist, whatever they may have been to philosopher and patriot. The way
for the painter and the sculptor seems to have been a flowery and a
pictorial one,--a very _via buona fortuna_, through a golden,
artistic atmosphere. The perpetual excursions may lead the serious
spectator to wonder where working hours come in, but, at all events,
those days are rich in color. Friends grouped together by the unerring
law of elective affinities loitered in galleries and churches. San
Martina, near the Mamertine prisons, was a point of interest because of
Thorwaldsen's bequest to it of the original cast of his beautiful statue
of "Christ" which is in Copenhagen. This is, perhaps, the finest work
ever conceived by the Danish sculptor, and is one that no visitor of
to-day can behold unmoved. Both Canova and Bernini are also represented
in this church,--the former by a statue of "Religion" and the latter by
a bust of Pietro da Cortona. Beneath the present Church of San Martina
is the ancient one containing the shrine of the martyr, under a superb
bronze altar. Of this church, Mrs. Jameson says in her "Sacred and
Legendary Art":--
"At the foot of the Capitoline Hill, on the left hand as we descend
from the Ara Coeli into the Forum, there stood in very ancient
times a small chapel, dedicated to St. Martina, a Roman virgin. The
veneration paid to her was of very early date, and the Roman people
were accustomed to assemble there on the first day of the year.
This observance was, however, confined to the people, and was not
very general till 1634, an era which connects her in rather an
interesting manner with the history of art. In this year, as they
were about to repair her chapel, they discovered, walled into the
foundations, a sarcophagus of terra cotta, in which was the body of
a young female, whose severed head reposed in a separate casket.
These remains were very naturally supposed to be those of the saint
who had been so long venerated on that spot. The discovery was
hailed with the utmost exultation, not by the people only, but by
those who led the minds and consciences of the people. The Pope
himself, Urban VIII, composed hymns in her praise; and Cardinal
Francesco Barberini undertook to rebuild her church."
The painter, Pietro da Cortona, entered into this feeling and at his own
expense built the chapel and painted for its altar piece the picture
representing the saint in triumph, while the temple in which she has
gone to sacrifice falls in ruins from a raging tempest.
In any stray ramble in Rome the sojourner might chance, at any moment,
upon obelisk, a pedestal or inscription linked with the great names of
the historic past. Hawthorne has recorded how, by mere chance, he turned
from the Via delle Quattro Fontane into the Via Quirinale and was thus
lured on to an obelisk and a fountain on the pedestal of which on one
side was the inscription, "Opus Phidias," and on the other, "Opus
Praxiteles," and he exclaims:--
"What a city is this, when one may stumble, by mere chance--at a
street corner as it were--on the works of two such sculptors! I do
not know the authority," he continues, "on which these statues
(Castor and Pollux I presume) are attributed to Phidias and
Praxiteles; but they impressed me as noble and godlike, and I feel
inclined to take them for what they purport to be."
While the Papal ceremonies are neither so frequent nor so magnificent as
in former days, still any hotel guest in Rome is liable, any morning,
on coming down to the _salle-à-manger_ for coffee, to find every woman
(who is taking her Rome seriously) arrayed in a black robe with a black
lace veil on her head. One would fancy they were all a procession of
nuns, about to retire from the world into the strict seclusion of the
cloister. But it is nothing so momentous. It is only that every lady,
with the devotion to spectacles which every visitor in Rome feels, as a
matter of course, has secured the pink ticket entitling her to admission
to the Vatican Palace to see the "passage" of the Pope, as he makes his
way, attended by the Cardinals of the Sacred College, to the Sistine
Chapel where his Holiness "creates" new Cardinals. Although rumored that
the spectacle will be a gorgeous one, that the Pope will be carried
aloft preceded by the silver trumpeters and attended by the Cardinals
and the ambassadors and other dignitaries in the full dress of their
ceremonial costumes and their orders, the reality is less impressive.
Some feminine enthusiasts fare forth at the heroic hour of eight,
although the procession is not announced to pass until a quarter after
ten (which in Italy should be translated as a quarter after eleven, at
the earliest, if not after twelve, which would be the more probable), in
order to secure good standing room. For everybody is to stand--of
course, comfort being a thing conspicuous only by its absence in Italy!
Those of us too well aware by the experiences of previous visits to
Italy that no Italian function was ever on time, from the starting of a
railway train to the crowning of a king, only betake ourselves to the
glories of the Palazzo Vaticano at the hour named, and we have then--as
one's prophetic soul or his commonplace memory warned him--to wait more
than an hour wedged into a dense crowd of all nationalities, none of
whom seem at this particular juncture, at least, to be at all
overburdened with good manners. And what went they out for to seek?
Instead of an impressive spectacle--a thing to remember for a
lifetime--one merely sees Pius X walking, surrounded by his Cardinals in
a group,--not a procession,--he alone in the centre with his mitre on
his head,--the whole scene hardly lasting over a minute, and as his
Holiness is not as tall as most of his Cardinals, he is almost hidden
from view. It had been rumored that the Pope was to be borne aloft in
the Papal chair, preceded by the traditional white fan and the silver
trumpets; but the present Pope is temperamentally inclined to minimize
all the ceremonials investing his sacred office.
Yet there is always a thrill in entering the Vatican. To ascend that
splendid _Scala Regia_ designed by Bernini, with one of the most
ingeniously treated perspective effects to be found, it may be, in the
entire world; to cross this _Scala_ with its interesting frescoes by
Salviati and others; to see at near range the picturesque Swiss
Guard,--surely any pretext to enjoy such a morning is easily accepted of
whatever occurrence one may grasp in order to obtain the hour.
One curious feature of the past is to-day equally in evidence in Rome.
Strolling at any time into the Church of San Agostino one beholds a
curious spectacle. It is in this church that is placed the beautiful
bronze statue of the Virgin and Child by Sansovino. It is approached by
a platform on which is placed a stool that enables one to mount and thus
reach the foot of the statue, which is kissed and the wish of the
devotee is offered. This Madonna is believed to have the power to grant
each wish and prayer; to heal the sick; restore the blind, the deaf, and
the lame; to grant immunity from loss or illness; to grant success and
prosperity. The poor Madonna must have her hands full with these
avalanches of petitions, but she sits calmly in state and, if the
striking testimony of votive offerings can be credited, she is most
amiable in granting the prayers of her devotees. For she is hung with
priceless jewels; necklaces, brooches, bracelets, diamond and ruby and
sapphire rings on her fingers, she is a blaze of splendor. Around this
statue there is a perpetual crowd, whatever hour of day one chances to
wander in, and from prince to beggar the bronze foot is kissed, as each
waits his turn to mount the stool and prefer his secret wish. The walls
of the church are covered with the votive offerings to the Madonna for
her aid,--rich jewels, orders, tablets,--offerings of all kinds. In this
church is entombed the body of Santa Monica, the mother of St.
Augustine, placed in an urn of verd-antique, in a special chapel
beautifully decorated. After preferring one's secret wish to the Virgin
one must wander on to the Fontane de Trevi and throw his penny into the
water to insure his return to Rome, and then he may rest, _mens conscia
recti_!
Although Holy Week in Rome has less ceremonial observance in these
latter days than those of the impressive scenes so vividly portrayed by
Mme. de Staël in "Corinne," it still attracts a multitude of visitors
and offers much to touch and thrill the life of the spirit, quite
irrespective as to whether the visitor be of the Catholic or Protestant
faith. In the great essentials of Christianity, all followers of Christ
unite. The Pope does not now take part in public services on Easter, and
that scene of the Pontifical blessing from the balcony of St. Peter's
given to the multitude below who throng the piazza remains only in
memory and in record. But the stately and solemn services of Good Friday
in the vast and grand interior of St. Peter's are an experience to
linger forever in memory. The three hours' service--the chanting of the
Miserere--was a scene to impress the imagination. This service is held
in the late afternoon of Good Friday, in the tribune of St. Peter's, the
extreme end of the church where the vast window of yellow glass gives a
perpetually golden light. The chair believed to have been that of St.
Peter's is here placed, enclosed in ivory and supported by statues of
four Fathers of the church, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Chrysostom,
and St. Athanasius, from a design of Bernini.
In the tribune is the tomb of Urban VIII (who was Matteo Barberini), of
which the redundant decoration tells the story that it is also Bernini's
work. Opposite this tomb is that of Paul III, by della Porta, under the
supervision of Michael Angelo, it is said, and the beauty and dignity of
the bronze figure of the aged Pope, in the act of giving the
benediction, quite confirm this tradition. On a tablet in the wall of
the tribune are engraved the names of all the bishops and prelates who,
in 1854, accepted the belief of the Immaculate Conception,--this tablet
being placed by the order of Pio Nono.
In this tribune on the late afternoon of the Good Friday of 1907 the
seats were filled with worshippers to listen to the three hours' chant
of the Miserere. Princes and peasants sat side by side, and an immense
throng who could not find seats stood, often wandering away in the dim
distances of the cathedral and ever and again returning. The high altar,
where Canova's beautiful figure of the kneeling Pope always enchains the
visitor, was, as usual, surrounded. The lights burned--these perpetual
lamps--and the moving throng went and came. The scene grew mystic,
dream-like, as the solemn music floated on the air.
The Chapel of the Holy Sacrament, on the left of the cathedral, was made
into the sepulchre that day, and anything more beautiful than the myriad
altar lights and the flowers could not be imagined. At the altar
black-robed nuns were kneeling, and all over the chapel, kneeling on the
floor, were people of all grades and ranks of life, from the duchess and
princess to the beggar woman with a ragged shawl on her shoulders and
her baby in her arms. St. Peter's was nearly filled all that day with
people, not crowded, but apparently thronged in almost every part.
The altar in the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament was one mass of deep red
roses. The chapel was completely darkened, but the blaze of myriads of
tall candles illuminated the roses and the black-robed nuns and the
black-robed devotees. It was a scene never to be forgotten.
Even in the latter-day Rome, historic names are not wanting. One of
these, the Princess Christina Bonaparte, _née_ Ruspoli, died in 1907 in
her Roman villa in Via Venti Settembre. She was the widow of Prince
Napoleon Charles Bonaparte and a cousin of the Empress Eugénie. With her
husband in Paris until 1870, she fled (whilst her husband was fighting
at Metz) as soon as the Commune was proclaimed. The princess was
considered a beautiful woman and her portrait had been painted by Ernest
Hébert, but it was lost when the Palace of the Tuileries was destroyed
in 1870.
With this princess dies the name of the Bonaparte family. Her daughters,
Donna Maria Gotti-Bonaparte and Princess Maria della Moskowa, were often
with her in Rome.
The Palazzo Bonaparte is very near Porta Pia. Although called a palace,
it is simply a plain house of some five stories, with narrow halls and
stone staircases, no elevator, no electric lights. The princess occupied
the first floor, while the apartments above were let to various
families.
With the exception of the royal palaces there are few in which suites
are not obtainable for residence by any one who desires them.
[Illustration: CASTEL SAN ANGELO AND ST. PETER'S, ROME
_Page 204_]
It was at a pleasant _déjeûner_ one spring day in Rome that the project
was launched, that we should go motoring that afternoon to Frascati,
Albano, Castel Gandolfo, Lago di Nemi, and all that wonderful region. We
were lunching with a friend who had a charming apartment in one of the
sumptuous old palaces of Rome, where, in a niche on the marble
staircase, the statue of Cæsar Augustus stood,--a copy of the famous
statue in the Capitoline,--where lofty, decorated ceilings, old
paintings and sculptures adorned the rooms, and where from the windows
we looked out on the tragedy-haunted Castel San Angelo, with the dome of
San Pietro in the background. Our friend who invited us to fly in his
motor had brought his touring car over from America. The one note of new
luxury now is for travellers to journey with their touring cars. In a
year or two more it will be airships or soaring machines. On this
wonderful May afternoon, all azure and gold, we started off in the
great, luxurious touring car which was arranged even to carry two
trunks, with a safe in it for the deposit of valuables, a hamper for
refreshments, and, indeed, almost every conceivable convenience. On we
flew through Rome, past the great Basilica of San Maria Maggiore; past
the wonderful pile of San Giovanni Laterano, with the colossal statues
of the apostles surmounting the façade; through the Porta San Giovanni
into the narrow, walled lane leading out on the Campagna; on, on, to the
Alban hills. We flew past olive orchards and vineyards, and the vast
green pasture lands of the Campagna whose vivid green was ablaze with
scarlet poppies. Far away to the west there was a white shining
line--the line of the sea.
At Frascati we stopped at the Villa Torlonia, the country place of the
ducal family, whose grand Roman palazzo is in the Bocca di Leone in the
old part of Rome. The Torlonia have an only daughter, Donna Teresa,
whose _débutante_ ball a year ago is said to have been the most
magnificent entertainment in Rome for fifty years. A writer, in a recent
article on the nobility of Rome, said of this family:--
"The Torlonia figure repeatedly in the novels of Thackeray, who
was never tired of portraying them. They have been most useful
citizens, and since the days of the old army contractor, who
founded the house, have augmented the family wealth by judicious
investments, especially in connection with the draining and
reclaiming of the marsh lands that abound in the former Papal
States. They have contracted matrimonial alliances with the
Colonna, with the Borghese, the Belmonte, the Doria, and the
Sforza."
The Villa Torlonia at Frascati is a very large estate with extensive
gardens, terraces, and a cascade of three falls on the hillside, which
is turned on (the water) at pleasure. The house, however, is a
shabby-looking affair, a two or three story, rambling, yellow structure,
which, at Newport, would not be considered too good for the gardener.
After the usual fashion of the Italians who seldom travel, the Torlonia,
wealthy as they are, simply remove from their palace in Rome to their
villa at Frascati instead of travelling to Switzerland, Germany, or
elsewhere in the summer.
The Duke and Duchess of Cumberland were the guests of the Torlonia that
day, the entire party enjoying themselves _al fresco_, and the beautiful
cascade pouring down within the near distance.
These outlying towns, Frascati, Albano, Castel Gandolfo, and Lago di
Nemi, the picturesque group in the Alban Mountains, are some sixteen to
eighteen miles from Rome. These Alban hills rise like an island from the
vast plain of the Campagna, the highest point being some three thousand
feet above sea level. They are covered with villages and castles and
villas, and have in all a population of some fifty thousand. The region
is volcanic, and the beautiful Lago di Nemi and Lago di Albano were the
craters of extinct volcanoes. All this region was the haunt of Cicero,
Virgil, and Livy. At Tusculum, near Frascati, are the remains of
Cicero's villa, and also of an ancient theatre hewn out of solid rock.
The view to the west toward Rome is most beautiful. The dome of St.
Peter's crowns the Eternal City; and the Campagna--a sea of green--is as
infinite in sight as is the Mediterranean. There are splendid villas and
estates in these Alban hills that belong to the Roman nobility, and
here the Pope has his summer palace. "The Alban Mount is also full of
historical and legendary interest," says a writer on the country around
Rome. "The Latin tribe, one of the constituent elements of the Roman
people, had here its seat. Upon the highest peak of the range was the
temple of Jupiter Latiaris, where all the tribes of Latin blood, the
Romans included, met every year to worship; and where the victorious
generals of the Republic repaired to offer praises and acknowledgments.
In these mountain glens undoubtedly most of that ballad literature of
Rome, the loss of which Macaulay so eloquently laments and so
successfully restores, had its origin. Nor need the scholar be reminded
that this is the scene of the most original and vigorous portions of the
Æneid of Virgil; nor how the genius of the poet, which rather languidly
recounts the traditions borrowed from Greece, wakes to new life, when he
feels his feet upon his own soil and deals with Latin names and Latin
legends."
The Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati is celebrated for its fantastic
waterworks in elaborate fountains and cascades. In the gardens a statue
of Pan with a pipe of reeds and one of a satyr with a trumpet are made
to play (both the pipe and the trumpet) by water. The hydraulic engineer
must have found in Frascati his earthly paradise, for he commanded the
water to leap into foam and spray in the air, to rush down marble
terraces, and to form itself into obelisks of liquid silver.
At Grotto Ferrata is a vast monastery of monks of the Order of Basilio
(Greek), a monastery so colossal as to be mistaken for a fortress. The
chapel has frescoes by Domenichino. At Castel Gandolfo is the summer
Papal palace, that has not been occupied by a Pope since the
overthrowing of the temporal power in 1870. It has a beautiful and
commanding view toward Rome. It was built by Urban VIII.
All the magic of Italy is in this picturesque excursion. In the vast
grounds of the Villa Barberini are the ruins of the ancient palace and
gardens of Domitian. On one hillside is a broken wall; a long avenue of
ilex trees reveals here and there fragments of mosaic pavement.
Crumbling niches hold fragments of statues. The hill itself is still
pierced with the long tunnels driven through it by Domitian that he
might pass unseen,--presumably safe from his enemies,--from the palace
to the gardens. From the parapet, Rome is seen across the shining
Campagna and the dome of Michael Angelo gleams against the blue Italian
sky.
"The wreck is beautiful," writes Mrs. Humphry Ward, in "Eleanor," of
this romantic spot; "for it is masked in the gloom of the overhanging
trees; or hidden behind dropping veils of ivy; or lit up by straggling
patches of broom and cytisus that thrust themselves through the gaps in
the Roman brickwork and shine golden in the dark. At the foot of the
wall, along its whole length, runs a low marble conduit that held the
sweetest, liveliest water. Lilies of the valley grow beside it,
breathing scent into the shadowed air; while on the outer or garden side
of the path the grass is purple with long-stalked violets, or pink with
the sharp heads of the cyclamen. And a little farther, from the same
grass, there shoots up, in happy neglect, tall camellia trees, ragged
and laden, strewing the ground red and white beneath them. And above the
camellias again the famous stone-pines of the villa climb into the high
air, overlooking the plain and the sea, peering at Rome and Soracte."
One could wander all day in the strange ruins of the old Barberini
grounds, and in the vast spaces of the gardens and through the Villa
Doria.
The beauty of the avenue of ilex trees through which we flew from Castel
Gandolfo to Lago di Nemi surpasses description. This lake, some four
miles in circumference, lies in a crater hollow, with precipitous hills
surrounding it, the water so clear that the ancients called it the
"Mirror of Diana." In it was constructed an artificial island in the
design of a Roman state barge.
Over the long viaduct at Ariccia we flew; everywhere in the little town
people, donkeys--an almost indistinguishable mass--filled the narrow
streets; and thus on to Genzano and the Lago di Nemi, with its fabled
fleet at the bottom.
The Chigi woods, that fill the deep ravine under the great viaduct at
Ariccia, were in the most brilliant emerald green. Past these forests
lay the vast stretch of the Pontine Marshes; and turning toward Rome
again, the splendor of the sunset flamed in the sky. One could but
recall Mrs. Humphry Ward's vivid picture of a storm seen over this part
of the Campagna:--
"The sunset was rushing to its height through every possible phase
of violence and splendor. From the Mediterranean, storm clouds were
rising fast to the assault and conquest of the upper sky, which
still above the hills shone blue and tranquil. But the northwest
wind and the sea were leagued against it. They sent out threatening
fingers and long spinning veils of cloud across it--skirmishers
that foretold the black and serried lines, the torn and monstrous
masses behind. Below these wild tempest shapes again--in long
spaces resting on the sea--the heaven was at peace, shining in
delicate greens and yellows, infinitely translucent and serene,
above the dazzling lines of water. Over Rome itself there was a
strange massing and curving of the clouds. Between their blackness
and the deep purple of the Campagna rose the city--pale
phantom--upholding one great dome, and one only, to view of night
and the world. Round and above and behind, beneath the long flat
arch of the storm, glowed a furnace of scarlet light. The buildings
of the city were faint specks within its fierce intensity, dimly
visible through a sea of fire. St. Peter's alone, without visible
foundation or support, had consistence, form, identity; and between
the city and the hills, waves of blue and purple shade, forerunners
of the night, stole over the Campagna towards the higher ground.
But the hills themselves were still shining, still clad in rose and
amethyst, caught in gentler repetition from the wildness of the
west. Pale rose even the olive gardens; rose the rich brown
fallows, the emerging farms; while drawn across the Campagna from
north to south, as though some mighty brush had just laid it there
for sheer lust of color, sheer joy in the mating it with the
rose,--one long strip of sharpest, purest green."
The Villa Falconieri, in Frascati, which was built by Cardinal Ruffini,
with the old ilex tree preserved in the portals, has recently been
purchased by the Emperor of Germany, who proposes to transform it into
an Academy for the accommodation of German students in Rome. These
national academies draw their corresponding numbers of students from the
nations thus represented, and contribute to the cosmopolitan aspects of
Rome. The American Academy in Rome is now being transferred from the
Ludovisi quarter to a large and convenient building outside Porta Pia.
Perhaps the eminently social quality of Roman life may be indirectly due
to the lack of library privileges which is a conspicuous defect in Rome.
The Biblioteca Vittorio Emanuele, under the courteous administration of
Commendatore Conte Guili, has, it is true, a collection of over half a
million volumes and thousands of very rare and valuable manuscripts. It
has a large public reading room, and books are loaned on the signature
of any embassy or consulate; yet this library, while offering peculiar
advantages to theological and other special students and readers, does
not afford any extended privileges to the general reader of modern
English and American publications. It is located in a grim and
forbidding old stone palace, approached by an obscure lane from the
Corso, where, as there is no sidewalk, the pedestrian shares the narrow,
dark, cold, stone-paved little street with carts, donkeys, peasants,
and beggars.
The great monument to King Victor Emmanuel, of mingled architecture and
sculpture, a colossal structure of white marble with arches and pillars
forming beautiful colonnades, the capital of each column heavily carved,
and the sculpture, which is being done by a number of artists, will be
of the most artistic and beautiful order. This memorial will occupy an
entire block, and it is located very near the Capitol. All the old
buildings in the vicinity will be torn down to give a fine vista for
this transcendently noble and sumptuous memorial.
The directors of this work aim to have it completed and ready to be
unveiled in 1911, the jubilee year of Italy's resurrection as a united
country.
Encircled by the old Aurelian wall and near the great pyramid that marks
the tomb of Caius Cestius, who died 12 B.C., lies the Protestant
cemetery of Rome, full of bloom and fragrance and beauty, under the
dark, solemn cypress trees that stand like ever-watchful sentinels. When
Keats was buried here (in 1820), Shelley wrote of "the romantic and
lovely cemetery ... under the pyramid of Caius Cestius, and the mossy
walls and towers now mouldering and desolate which formed the circuit of
ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered
even in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with
death," he added, "to think of being buried in so sweet a place."
[Illustration: PORTA SAN PAOLA, PYRAMID OF CAIUS CESTIUS, ROME
_Page 216_]
In the old cemetery (immediately adjoining the pyramid and separated
from the new one by a wall) is the grave of Keats (who died in 1821)
with its unique inscription, "Here lies one whose name was writ in
water." Beside it is that of his friend, Joseph Severn, who died in
1829, and near these the grave of John Bell, the famous writer on
surgery and anatomy. In the new or more modern cemetery the visitor
lingers by the graves of Shelley and his friend, Trelawney; August
Goethe (the son of the poet); of William and Mary Howitt, who died in
1879 and 1888. Not merely, however, do the names of Keats and Shelley
allure the visitor to poetic meditations; but here lie the earthly forms
of many a poet, painter, and sculptor of our own country, with their
wives and children, who have sought in the Eternal City the
atmosphere for art and who, enamoured by the loveliness of Rome,
continued there for all their remaining years. These graves, these
sculptured memorials, are eloquent with the joys, the sorrows, the
achievements and the failures, the success and the defeat, of the
artistic life in a foreign land. Many of these memorial sculptures are
the work of the husband or the father, into which is inseparably joined
the personal tenderness to the artist's skill. Especially noticeable are
the graves of the wives of three American sculptors,--William Wetmore
Story, Richard S. Greenough, and Franklin Simmons. Each of these is
marked by a memorial sculpture created by the husband, and the three
different conceptions of these sculptors are interesting to contrast.
That of Mr. Story is of an angel with outspread wings, kneeling, her
head bowed in the utter despair and desolation of hopeless sorrow. The
figure has the greatest delicacy of beauty and refinement and
tenderness; but it is the grief that has no support of faith, the grief
that has no vision of divine consolation. On the memorial monument is
simply the name, Emelyn Story, born in Boston, 1820, died in Rome in
1898, and the note that it is the last work of W. W. Story, in memory of
his beloved wife. Here, also, is Mr. Story buried, his name and dates of
birth and death (1819-1901) alone being inscribed.
At the tomb of Sarah B. Greenough, the wife of Richard S. Greenough, the
monument is designed to represent Psyche escaping from the bondage of
mortality. This Psyche is emerging from her garments and she holds in
her hand a lamp. On this is the inscription: "Her loss was that as of a
keystone to an arch."
Mrs. Greenough was a very accomplished musician, and she had the unique
honor of having been made a member of the "Arcadians."
The memorial sculpture over the grave of Mrs. Franklin Simmons is, as
elsewhere noted, the work of her husband, a figure called "The Angel of
the Resurrection." The angel is represented as a male figure (Gabriel)
holding in the left hand a golden trumpet while the right is
outstretched. His wings are spread, his face partly turned to the right.
The form is partially draped and in every detail is instinct with a
complete harmony; every fold of the drapery, every curve of the body,
and the lofty and triumphant expression of the face in its ineffable
glory of achievement proclaim the triumph of immortality. It stands on a
pedestal that gives it, from the base of the pedestal to the tip of the
outstretched wings, a height of some twenty-one feet. This monument,
seen against a background of dark cypress trees, speaks the word of
positive and complete faith in the divine promise of eternal life.
"Then life is--to wake, not sleep,
Rise and not rest, but press
From earth's level where blindly creep
Things perfected, more or less,
In the heaven's height--far and steep."
The visitor lingers over the grave of that interesting painter, J.
Rollin Tilton, whose landscapes from Egypt and Italian scenes were so
vivid and picturesque.
Richard Henry Dana, the elder, born in Boston in 1815, came to Rome to
die in 1882.
Very near the tomb of William Wetmore and Emelyn Story is that of
Constance Fenimore Woolson. Over the graves of William and Mary Howitt
is the inscription: "Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God,
believe also in me."
On the wall just back of the new tomb erected over the ashes of Shelley
by Onslow Ford in 1891 is a memorial tablet placed to Frederick W. H.
Myers, bearing this inscription:--
"This tablet is placed to the memory of Frederick William Henry
Myers, born at Keswick, Cumberland, Feb. 6, 1843; died in Rome,
Jan. 17, 1901. 'He asked life of Thee, and Thou gavest him long
life ever and forever.'"
Over the grave of John Addington Symonds, whose best monument is in his
admirable History of the Renaissance in Italy, is a Latin inscription
written by Professor Jowett of Oxford, and a stanza from the Greek of
Cleanthes, translated by Mr. Symonds as follows:--
"Lead thou, our God, law, reason, motion, life;
All names for Thee alike are vain and hollow;
Lead me, for I will follow without strife,
Or, if I strive, still more I blindly follow."
John Addington Symonds, who certainly ranks as the most gifted
interpreter of Italy, in her art, her legends and associations, and her
landscape loveliness, died in the Rome he so loved in 1893. His wife was
ill in Venice, but his daughter, Margaret,--his inseparable companion
and his helper in his work,--was with him. It is Miss Symonds who
prefaced a memorial volume to her father with the exquisite lines:--
"O Love; we two shall go no longer
To lands of summer beyond the sea."
Near the graves of Keats and of his friend, Joseph Severn, are those of
Augustus William Hare and John Gibson, the sculptor, who died in 1868.
Some ten years before Hawthorne, meeting Gibson at a dinner given by T.
Buchanan Read, wrote of him that it was whispered about the table that
he had been in Rome for forty-two years and that he had a quiet,
self-contained aspect as of one who had spent a calm life among his clay
and marble.
Dwight Benton, an American painter and writer, who was for some time in
the diplomatic service and whose home had been in Rome for more than a
quarter of a century, lies buried here. For many years he was the
editor of _The Roman World_, which still sustains the interesting
character that marked it during his editorship. Of his work in art a
friend wrote:--
"In painting, as in literature, Dwight Benton took his inspiration
from nature. His paintings of Italian scenery are true and faithful
representations of its character and atmospheric effects. His
tramps on the Roman Campagna were long and often tiring, but he
worked with all an artist's enthusiasm, unmindful of cold, rain,
and even hunger. He would delight, as all true artists, in an old
convent, a tree, a tower, a cross, which he would reproduce with a
peculiar and striking perfection of tone and color. In his
paintings of Keats's and Shelley's tombs, not only are the slabs
and marble there, but there, also, in all their naturalness, are
the stately pines and cypresses above, with the sunshine and
shadows alternating between them, and in the background the
turreted top of St. Paul's Gateway, the Pyramid of Caius Cestius,
all lending effect and picturesqueness to the whole."
The present King of Italy purchased one of Mr. Benton's paintings,
called "Giornata di tristezza."
While art abounds in Rome, less can be said for literature. There is a
large and admirable selected Italian library in connection with the
Collegio Romano; but while these books circulate, under certain
conditions, to visitors, and the courtesy of the librarian and his staff
is generously kind, the location and the Italian methods render it a
matter of some difficulty to avail one's self of its resources. In the
Piazza di Spagna there are two circulating libraries, but although one
of these claims twenty-five thousand volumes, the majority are of
mediocre fiction and almost none, if any, of the important modern works
are to be found here. The visitor who is a subscriber to this library
passes into a small, dark room, where one window looking on the street
hardly does more than make the darkness visible, and he must take the
catalogue to the window and stand in order to decipher the list, which
is hardly, indeed, worth the trouble, as there are very few volumes of
any pretension to importance in the collection, and of late years no
additions, apparently, have ever been made. The other circulating
library, while far preferable, is still in crowded rooms and the
assortment is limited. The visitor in Rome who cares for reading matter
looks forward with delight to Florence, with its noble circulating
library, to which access is so easy and whose conduct in all ways is so
convenient and grateful to the guest.
In Rome, however, one finds his romance embodied in life and his history
written in the streets and in the marvellous structures. His poetry is
in her art, her ruins, her magical loveliness of hillside vistas, her
infinite views over the Campagna, her sapphire skies, and her luminous,
golden atmosphere.
"_Here Ischia smiles
O'er liquid miles,
And yonder, bluest of the isles,
Calm Capri waits
Her sapphire gates,
Beguiling to her bright estates._"
"_Oh, Signor! thine the amber hand,
And mine the distant sea
Obedient to the least command
Thine eyes impose on me._"
III
DAY-DREAMS IN NAPLES, AMALFI, AND CAPRI
"With dreamful eyes
My spirit lies
Where summer sings but never dies."
Naples is the paradise of excursions. It is set in the heart of
incomparable loveliness. Over its sapphire sea one sails away--to the
Fortunate Isles, or some others equally alluring. Its heights and
adjacent mountains offer views that one might well cross the ocean to
enjoy. Its atmosphere is full of classic interest; of song, and story,
and legend, and romance; of history, too, which in its tragic and
exciting episodes is not less vivid in color and in strange studies of
human life than is any romance. Naples is the city of fascination. Rome
is stately and impressive; Florence is all beauty and enchantment;
Genoa is picturesque; Venice is a dream city; but Naples is
simply--fascinating. There is the common life of the streets and the
populace continually _en scène_; the people who are at home on the sunny
side in winter, or the shady side in summer; there is the social life of
the nobility, which is brilliant and vivacious. The excursions, of which
Naples is the centre, are the chief interest to travellers, and these,
while possible in winter, are far more enjoyable in the early spring.
Still even in midwinter the days are sunny, and while the air is crisp
and cool, it is not cold. The grass is as green as in June; but the
foliage and flowers are more or less withered. Naples has the high and
the lower town, the former the more desirable, and the fine hotels
perched on the terraces, with the view all over the Bay of Naples,
Capri, Sorrento, and Vesuvius, offer a vista hardly to be duplicated in
the entire world. The lower town has its fine hotels on the water's
edge, with a beautiful view over the bay, less enchanting than when seen
from above. The Bay of Naples is enclosed in two semicircular arms that
extend far out at sea, the southern reaching nearly to Capri, while near
the termination of the northern,
"Fair Ischia smiles
O'er liquid miles."
Far out at sea the sun shines dazzlingly on the blue Mediterranean. The
landscape is full of those curious formations that are always inherent
in volcanic regions. The region surrounding Naples is abrupt,
picturesque, with the same irregular outline of hills that characterizes
the elevations in the Tonto basin in Arizona. The vegetation is of the
tropical type. The cactus is common, although it grows to no such
monstrous heights as in Arizona. Orange and lemon groves prevail as far
as the eye can see. On every height towns and villages crown the crests
and sweep in winding terraces around the hillsides. Olive orchards
abound. Castles and ruins gleam white in the sunshine on the ledge of
rocky precipices. The curved shores shine like broken lines of silver,
with deep indentations at Naples and at Castellammare. Between these two
points rises Vesuvius, the thin blue smoke constantly curling from the
summit that, since the eruption of 1906, has lost much of its elevation.
In many places there is hardly the width of a roadway between the low
mountains and the coast, but the cliffs are tropically luxurious in
vegetation. Everywhere the habitations of the people crowd the space.
From the monasteries and the castles that crown the heights, both
distant and near to the clustered villages of the plain and those
clinging to the hillsides, the scene is one unending panorama of human
life. For Naples is only the focussing point of these densely populated
regions of Southern Italy. The city stretches along the coast on both
sides her semicircular bay; but the terraced hills, the stretches of
land beyond, and every peak and valley are thickly sown with human
habitations. Its commanding heights, two of which rise in the middle of
the town, and its beautiful mirrored expanse of water give to it the
most unparalleled variety and beauty of landscape loveliness.
"What words can analyze," says George S. Hillard, "the parts and details
of this matchless panorama, or unravel that magic web of beauty into
which palaces, villas, forests, gardens, vineyards, the mountains, and
the sea are woven? What pen can paint the soft curves, the gentle
undulations, the flowing outlines, the craggy steeps, and the far-seen
heights, which, in their combination, are so full of grace and, at the
same time, expression? Words here are imperfect instruments, and must
yield their place to the pencil and the graver. But no canvas can
reproduce the light and color which play round this enchanting region.
No skill can catch the changing hues of the distant mountains, the
star-points of the playing waves, the films of purple and green which
spread themselves over the calm waters, the sunsets of gold and orange,
and the aerial veils of rose and amethyst which drop upon the hills from
the skies of morning and evening. The author of the book of
Ecclesiasticus seems to have described Naples, when he speaks of 'the
pride of the height, the clear firmament, the beauty of heaven, with his
glorious show.' 'See Naples and then die,' is a well-known Italian
saying; but it should read, 'See Naples and then live.' One glance at
such a scene stamps upon the memory an image which, forever after, gives
a new value to life."
[Illustration: CASTEL SANT'ELMO, NAPLES
_Page 231_]
Naples gives to the visitor the impression of being a city without a
past. If she has a history, it is not written in her streets. She is
poetic and picturesque, not historic. The heights of Capodimonte and
Sant'Elmo divide her into unequal parts, and there is the old Naples
which only the antiquarian or the political economist would wish to
see, and the new and modern city which is such a miracle of beauty that
one longs to stay forever, and fails to wonder that the siren sought
these shores. Naples has either been very much misrepresented as to its
prevailing manners and customs, or else it has changed within the past
decade, for, as a rule, the gentle courtesy and kindness of the people
are especially appealing. Augustus often sojourned in Naples, and it was
an especially poetic haunt of Virgil, whose tomb is here. Although the
poverty and the primitive life of the great masses of the people have
been widely discussed, it is yet true that Naples has a very charming
social life, and that the University is a centre of learning and
culture. One of the oldest universities in Europe, it has a faculty of
over one hundred and twenty professors and more than five thousand
students. A large and valuable library, and a mineralogical collection
which specialists from all over the world come to study, are among the
treasures of this University, which was founded in the early part of the
thirteenth century by Emperor Frederick William II. There is now in
process of erection a new group of buildings which will embody the
latest laboratory and library and other privileges. Archæology is,
naturally, a special feature of the University of Naples, and the
proximity to Pompeii, Herculaneum, and to the wonderful Pompeian
collection in the Museum of Naples affords peculiar and unrivalled
advantages to students. A bust of Thomas Aquinas, during his life a
lecturer at this University, is one of the interesting treasures. The
Archives of the Kingdom of Naples attract many a scholar and savant to
this city. There are in this collection (which is kept in the monastery
adjoining the Church of San Severino) over forty thousand Greek
manuscripts, some of which date back to the year 700. The Naples Museum
is the great repository of all Pompeian art, and it is rich in
sculpture; but it is badly arranged and the vast series of galleries and
the long flights of stairs make any study of its work so fatiguing that
a visit to it might rank as one of the seven labors of Hercules.
In the royal museum of the Palazzo di Capodimonte, which is located on
the beautiful height bearing that name, there are some pictures that are
well worth visiting, not because they are particularly good art, but
because of the interest attaching to the subjects. This gallery is
largely the work of modern Neapolitan artists. Here is the celebrated
picture of Michael Angelo bending over the dead body of Vittoria
Colonna, kissing only her hand, and haunted by the after-regret that he
did not kiss her forehead. Virginia Lebrun has here portraits of Maria
Theresa and of the Duchess of Parma; there is one canvas (by Celentano)
showing Benvenuto Cellini at the Castel Sant'Angelo; a scene depicting
the death of Cæsar and a few others of some degree of interest.
Curiously, Naples has never produced great art. Salvator Rosa was, to be
sure, a Neapolitan, but his is almost the only name that has made itself
immortal in the art of this city. Domenico Morelli, who has recently
died, made himself felt as an original painter with certain claims that
arrested attention. He is not a draughtsman, but he is a colorist of
passionate intensity; he has original power and, more than all, he has a
curious endowment of what may be called artistic clairvoyance.
Transporting himself by the magic of thought to places on which his eye
never rested, he yet sees as in vision their special characteristics.
In one of his most important works, the motive of which is the
temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, he has painted the desert with a
startling reality. Here is a great plain, the stony, parched Judean
plain, with the very feeling of its desolation pervading the atmosphere.
The Royal Chapel in Naples was decorated by Morelli, the ceiling painted
with an "Assumption of the Virgin," which stands alone in all the
interpretations of this theme; not by virtue of superior artistic
excellence,--on the contrary its art does not make a strong appeal,--but
by its originality of treatment. The "Salve Regina" and the "Da Scala
d'Oro" are among the more interesting works of this artist, whose recent
death has removed a figure of exceptional character in modern art, one
who had, pre-eminently, the courage of his convictions. Some few years
ago Morelli's "Temptation of St. Anthony" was exhibited in both Paris
and Florence, and was generally condemned, perhaps because not wholly
understood. The form of the temptation was supposed to be the shapes
taken by a morbid and diseased imagination; but while as a
psychological conception it was not without value, it was yet far from
attractive as a work of art. The finest conception, perhaps, ever
depicted of the temptation of St. Anthony--a subject that has haunted
many an artist--is that painted by the late Carl Guthers of Washington,
a lofty and gifted spirit whose too brief stay on earth ended in the
early months of 1907. In this picture the temptation of the saint
appears as a vision of all that is purest and sweetest in life,--wife,
children, home; it was from all this peace and loveliness that St.
Anthony turned, sacrificing personal happiness to the duty of
consecrated service to his Master, in the exquisite conception of Mr.
Guthers. Edoardo Dalbano is the typical leader of the Neapolitan school
of painting of the present day, and his fascinating picture, called the
"Isle of Sirens," representing the sirens singing in the sunlit Bay of
Naples, might well be held as the keynote to all this enchanting region.
Surely, if the sirens sing not in those blue waters, it were useless to
search elsewhere for them. Buono is an artist of the Neapolitan shores,
who paints its fisher-folk; Brancaccio catches the very spirit and
animated atmosphere of the street scenes of Naples; Campriani and
Pratello are landscapists of note; Esposito, too, despite his Spanish
name, is a Neapolitan marine painter whose work is often most arresting
in its power to catch the flickering sunshine over blue water that
bathes the rocks rising out of the sea,--these isles of the sirens from
which float the melodies that enchanted Odysseus.
The traveller may be surprised to find that in size Naples ranks fourth
on the European Continent,--Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, only,
exceeding it. Naples should be, not only a port, a pleasure haunt, and a
paradise for excursions, but one of the great cities of the world in
commercial and in social importance. It has one of the finest natural
harbors of the world; it has a beautiful and attractive adjoining
country in which to extend, indefinitely, its residence and trade
districts; it has the most enchanting fairyland of views that ever were
seen this side the ethereal world; it has an atmosphere of song and
story and a climate that is far from being objectionable. Naples is
seldom the possessor of a higher temperature in summer than is New York
or Boston; the winters are mild, and they offer weeks of sunny
loveliness when Rome is swept by the icy tramontana from the snow-clad
Alban hills. Naples offers, too, exceedingly good facilities for living;
the groups of excellent hotels, both on the terraces and on the water's
edge in the lower town and along the Villa Nazionale, offer every
comfort, and the politeness and courtesy of the Neapolitans, as a rule,
are among the alluring features of this enchanting city.
What shall be said of one hotel, especially, perched on the cliffs, to
which one ascends by an elevator, finding it the most luxurious
fairyland that imagination can conjure? Leaving the street one walks
through a marble tunnel lighted with electricity, wondering if he is,
indeed, in the grotto of the Muses. Entering a "lift" truly American in
its comfort and speed, he is wafted up the heights and steps out in--is
it paradise? Here is a large salon entirely of glass with an
incomparable view all over the gleaming bay, with Capri and Sorrento
shining fair on the opposite sides and Vesuvius, a purple peak, in the
near distance. The great city of Naples lies spread out below, with its
interior heights of Capodimonte and others. It is a view for which alone
one might well sail the four thousand miles of sea from the American
shores. Through open French windows one may step out on the terrace. If
it is cold he may still enjoy this sublimely wonderful view behind the
glass walls that reveal all its beauty and protect him from wind or
chill. Elsewhere adjoining salons stretch away, where sunshine, music,
reading matter, and dainty writing-desks allure the guest and create for
him, indeed, an earthly paradise.
Of the drive on the Strada Nuova di Posilipo, skirting the coast while
following the winding rise of the hill, with the sumptuous villas and
gardens on one side and the blue sea on the other,--what words can
suggest its charm? On a jutting promontory on the ruins of the Palazzo
di Donna Ana are seen the palace whose convenient location made it
possible for the royal hosts to throw their guests into the sea whenever
they became tiresome, an accommodation that the modern hostess might, at
times, appreciate. On this road, winding up the Posilipo, is the villa
where Garibaldi passed the last winter of his life and which is marked
by a tablet. And everywhere and at every turn are the beautiful views,
commanding Bagnoli, Camaldoli, Ischia, Baia and Procida, Capri, Nisida
and the Neapolitan waters. The hill slopes are overgrown with myrtles
and orange trees and roses. Here and there a defile is filled with a
vineyard under careful culture.
In the presence of all this marvel of nature's loveliness the visitor
hardly remembers the historic interest; yet it was on the little island
of Nisida that Brutus and Cassius concocted the conspiracy against
Cæsar. The vast Phlegræan Plain before the eye is invested with Hellenic
traditions and is the region of many scenes in the poems of Virgil and
Homer. In the years of the first and second centuries this plain was
dotted with the rich villas of the Roman aristocracy. Here, too, lay the
celebrated Lacus Avernus, a volcanic lake which the ancients regarded as
the entrance to Avernus itself. Truly it required little imagination to
see here the approach to the infernal regions. The air was so poisonous
that no bird could fly over the lake and live. Virgil's scene of the
descent of Æneas, guided by the sibyl, into the infernal depths is laid
here; and near this lake are resorts of the latter-day tourist, known
as the "Sibyl's Grotto," the "Grotto della Pace," the "Bagni di Sibyl,"
and the "Inferno."
[Illustration: ANCIENT TEMPLE, BAIÆ
_Page 241_]
Baia, on the coast, was the Newport of Rome in the days of Augustus,
Hadrian, Cicero, and Nero. It was then the most magnificent summer
watering-place known to the world. The glory of the Roman Empire was
reflected in the glory of Baia. In one of the Epistles of Horace a Roman
noble is made to say: "Nothing in the world can be compared with the
lovely bay of Baia." Some five hundred years ago this region became so
malarial that no one could dwell in it. Fragments and ruins still remain
of the imposing baths and villas of the Roman occupancy. An old crater
called the Capo Miseno is described by Virgil as the burial place of
Misenus:--
"_At pius Æneas ingenti mole sepulcrum
Inponit, suaque arma viro remumque tubamque
Monte sub aereo, qui nunc Misenus ab illo
Dicitur aeternumque tenet per saecula nomen._"
Cumæ was the most ancient Greek colony of Italy on the coast, and the
last survivors of the Tarquinii died here. This is the most classic of
all these legendary coast towns near Naples, as it was here that the
Cumæan Sibyl dwelt with the mysterious sibylline leaves,--the books that
were carried to Rome. A colossal Acropolis was once here, fragments of
whose walls are now standing; and the rocky foundation is honeycombed
with secret passages and openings. It is here that Virgil's "Grotto of
the Sibyl" is supposed to have stood,--the grotto "whence resound as
many voices, the oracles of the prophetess."
The journey from Naples to Herculaneum is easily made by electric train
cars within an hour, and while there is not much to see it is still an
excursion well worth making. Dr. de Petra, of the chair of Archæology in
the University of Naples, and formerly the Director of the National
Museum, is warmly in favor of the proposed excavation of this buried
city, as is Professor Spinazzola of the San Martino museum, who believes
that Italy may well become one vast museum of antiquities. "As the
theatre of Herculaneum is actually at present a subterranean
excavation," he observed, "why not excavate in a similar way the entire
city underneath modern Resina? In this way a perfectly unique
underground museum would be formed, which would have the merit of
leaving magnificent Roman art treasures exactly in their proper places
in the villas. Such a work ought to be perfectly practicable, with the
resources of modern engineering, and would certainly be unique in the
world.
"There would be no need to build a special museum for the objects
discovered. Not only would this money be saved, but I feel convinced
that so many visitors would be attracted as to more than pay for the
maintenance. A subterraneous Herculaneum--surely a perfectly unique
place of pilgrimage, just as it was nearly two thousand years ago--might
be lighted by electric arc lights. I feel certain it would attract
sight-seers from the ends of the world. At the same time work might go
on in the open parts of the city.
"Pompeii was more of an industrial town, while Herculaneum was a
favorite resort of the Roman patricians, who did not bring their
treasures with them from their northern homes, but had them executed by
Greek artists in the south."
Under the mighty floods of _lava d'acqua_ that buried Herculaneum
doubtless lie temples, a splendid forum, magnificent villas, and most
valuable art and literary treasures. In the eighteenth century
excavations brought to light rare bronzes, mosaics, and papyri. The
famous equestrian statue of Balbo, in the Naples Museum, was excavated
from Herculaneum. Professor Lanciani and Commendatore Boni of Rome--the
latter the present director of the Forum, succeeding Lanciani--believe
that some of the richest art of ancient times may be found in
Herculaneum; as does Professor Dall'Osso, inspector of excavations at
Pompeii.
Herculaneum is held to have been founded by Hercules when he landed at
Campania, returning from Iberia, some three hundred years B.C., and it
was in 63 A.D. that it was destroyed. Of this cataclysm Pliny, the
Younger, wrote:--
"The sea seemed to roll back on itself by the convulsions of the
earth. On the other side hung a black and dreadful cloud, bursting
with fiery and serpentine vapors. Naught was heard in the darkness
but the shrieks of women, the screams of children, and the frenzied
cries of men calling for children, for wives, for parents,--all
lifting hands to the gods, praying and wishing for death."
Dr. Charles Waldstein of Cambridge University, the eminent archæologist,
whose efforts toward initiating the excavation of Herculaneum were a
notable event of 1906, thus writes of this buried city:--
"It is important to bear in mind that naturally all the best works
in the Museum of Naples, especially the bronzes, came from
Herculaneum and not from Pompeii.
"What is most striking is the marvellous preservation of these
works. This fact of itself ought to counteract the strange but
widespread misapprehension that, while Pompeii was covered with
cinders and ashes, Herculaneum was covered with lava, and that the
hardness of that material made excavation difficult, if not
impossible. All geologists and archæologists are agreed that no
lava issued from the eruption of 79 A.D. Herculaneum was covered by
a torrent of mud consisting of ashes and cinders mixed with water.
The mass which covers it, so far from being less favorable to the
preservation of objects, is much more favorable than that which
covers Pompeii. Pompeii was partially covered with hot ashes and
pumice stones, which burnt or damaged the works of art. As it was
not wholly covered, moreover, the inhabitants returned and dug up
some of their greatest treasures. Herculaneum, on the other hand,
had its actual life, arrested at the highest point, securely
preserved from depredation, to a depth of eighty feet, by a
material which preserved intact the most delicate specimens which
have come down to us in a state so perfect as to be really
remarkable.
"The most important of these delicate objects are manuscripts, of
which that one villa produced 1750. The state of preservation is
illustrated by one specimen, giving two pages from the works of the
philosopher Philademus. Unfortunately, the possessor of the villa
was a specialist, a student of Epicurean philosophy. While his
taste in art was fortunately so catholic, his taste in literature
was narrowed down by his special bent. Piso was the friend and
protector of the philosopher Philo. Already sixty-five copies of
that author's works have been found among the papyri.
"Yet the city of Herculaneum contained many such villas, and herein
it differed from Pompeii. Pompeii was a commonplace provincial town
devoted exclusively to commerce; it was not the resort of wealthy
and cultured Romans. It was essentially illiterate. No manuscript
can be proved to have been found there. It is true a wax tablet
with writing has been found; yet this contains--receipts of
auctions. Herculaneum, on the other hand, was the favorite resort
of wealthy Romans, who built beautiful villas there as in our times
people from modern Rome settle for the summer at Sorrento and
Castellammare."
The present descent into the theatre of Herculaneum is made by a flight
of more than a hundred steps, slippery and cold, in total darkness save
for the candle that is carried by the guide, and the visitor sees only
the stone seats of the amphitheatre and the stage with the two vacant
niches, the statues that filled each being now placed in the Museum in
Naples.
The journey of thirteen miles from Naples to Pompeii is through a
succession of densely populated villages that seem to be an integral
part of Naples itself, for there is no line of demarcation. Portici,
Torre del Greco, Torre dell'Annunziata, and others all blend with each
other and with Naples. However familiar one has become with the
literature of Pompeii, with both archæological descriptions and
imaginative interpretations in romance, and however familiar with its
aspects he may have become from replicas in art museums, and from
pictures, one can yet hardly approach this silent, phantom city without
being thrilled by its deep significance. At a distance of a few miles
over the gently undulating plain rises Vesuvius; one gazes on the paths
where the rivers of molten fire must have rolled down. George S.
Hillard, visiting Pompeii in 1853, thus described a house which the
visitors of to-day study and admire:--
"The finest house we saw within the walls is one which had been
discovered and laid bare about four months previous to the date of
our visit, called the house of the Suonatrice, from a painting of a
female playing on a pipe, at the entrance. This house was deemed of
such peculiar interest that it was under the charge of a special
custode, and was only to be seen on payment of an extra fee. It was
not of large size, but had evidently been occupied by a person of
ample fortune and exquisite taste. The paintings on the walls were
numerous, and in the most perfect preservation. In the rear was a
minute garden not more than twenty or thirty feet square, with a
fairy fountain in the centre; around which were several small
statues of children and animals, of white marble, wrought with
considerable skill. The whole thing had a very curious effect, like
the tasteful baby-house of a grown-up child. Everything in this
house was in the most wonderful preservation. The metal pipes which
distributed the water, and the cocks by which it was let off,
looked perfectly suited for use. Nothing at Pompeii seemed so real
as this house, and nowhere else were the embellishments so numerous
and so costly.
"Pompeii, though a Roman city in its political relations, was
everywhere strongly marked with the impress of the Greek mind. It
stood on the northern edge of that part of Italy which, from the
number of Grecian colonies it contained, was called Magna
Græcia,--a region of enchanting beauty, in which the genius of
Greece attained its most luxurious development. It has been
conjectured that Pompeii had an unusually large proportion of men
of property, who had been drawn there by the charms of its
situation and climate, and that it thus extended a liberal
patronage to Greek architects, painters, and sculptors. At any
rate, the spirit of Greece still lives and breathes in its ashes.
Its temples, as restored by modern architects, are Greek. Its works
in marble and bronze claim a place in that cyclus of art of which
the metopes of the Parthenon are the highest point of excellence.
The pictures that embellish the walls, the unzoned nymphs, the
bounding Bacchantes, the grotesque Fauns, the playful arabesques,
all are informed with the airy and creative spirit of Greek art.
"The ruins of Pompeii are not merely an open-air museum of
curiosities, but they have great value in the illustration they
offer to Roman history and Roman literature. The antiquarian of our
times studies the great realm of the past with incomparable
advantage, by the help of the torch here lighted."
From Pompeii to Castellammare, the beautiful seaside summer resort of
the Neapolitans, "a lover of nature could hardly find a spot of more
varied attractions. Before him spreads the unrivalled bay,--dotted with
sails and unfolding a broad canvas, on which the most glowing colors and
the most vivid lights are dashed,--a mirror in which the crimson and
gold of morning, the blue of noon, and the orange and yellow-green of
sunset behold a livelier image of themselves,--a gentle and tideless
sea, whose waves break upon the shore like caresses, and never like
angry blows. Should he ever become weary of waves and languish for
woods, he has only to turn his back upon the sea and climb the hills for
an hour or two, and he will find himself in the depth of sylvan and
mountain solitudes,--in a region of vines, running streams,
deep-shadowed valleys, and broad-armed oaks,--where he will hear the
ringdove coo, and see the sensitive hare dart across the forest aisles.
A great city is within an hour's reach; and the shadow of Vesuvius hangs
over the landscape, keeping the imagination awake by touches of mystery
and terror."
The road to Sorrento, on a cliff a hundred feet or more above the sea,
with mountains on the other side, towering up hundreds of feet high; a
road cut in many places out of the solid rock, supported by galleries
and viaducts from below,--a road that crosses deep gorges and chasms,
always with the iridescent colors of the sea below,--and from Sorrento
to Amalfi again, only, if possible, even more wonderful,--is there in
the world any drive that can rival this picturesque and sublime route?
Of it George Eliot wrote:--
"It is an unspeakably grand drive round the mighty rocks with the
sea below; and Amalfi itself surpasses all imagination of a
romantic site for a city that once made itself famous in the
world."
Sorrento, with its memories and associations of Tasso, seems a place in
which one cares only to sit on the balcony of the hotel overhanging the
sea and watch the magic spectacle of a panorama unrivalled in all the
beauty of the world. Flowers grow in riotous profusion; the fairy sail
of a flitting boat is caught in the deepening dusk; the dark outline of
Vesuvius is seen against the horizon; and orange orchards gleam against
gray walls. Here Tasso was born, in 1544, fit haunt for a poet, with
tangles of gay blossoms and the aerial line of mountain peaks. A low
parapet borders the precipice, and over it one leans in the air heavy
with perfume of locust blossoms. Has the lovely town anything beside
sunsets and stars and poets' dreams? Who could ask for more?
To La Cava,--to Amalfi,--still all a dream world!
"O summer day, beside the joyous sea!
O summer day so wonderful and white,
So full of gladness and so full of pain!"
How Amalfi sets itself to song and music! Who can enter it without
hearing in the air Longfellow's beautiful lines?--
"Sweet the memory is to me
Of a land beyond the sea,
Where the waves and mountains meet,
Where, amid her mulberry-trees,
Sits Amalfi in the heat,
Bathing ever her white feet
In the tideless summer seas.
* * * * *
'Tis a stairway, not a street,
That ascends the deep ravine,
Where the torrent leaps between
Rocky walls that almost meet.
* * * * *
This is an enchanted land!
Round the headlands, far away,
Sweeps the blue Salernian bay
With its sickle of white sand;
Further still and furthermost
On the dim discovered coast,
Pæstum with its ruins lies,
And its roses all in bloom."
If ever a region was dropped out of paradise designed, solely, for a
poet's day-dreams, it is Amalfi, and the even more beautiful Ravello
just above. One fancies that it must have been in the mystic loveliness
of this eyrie that the poet lost himself in a day-dream while Jupiter
was dividing all the goods of the world. When he reproached the god for
not saving a portion for him, Jupiter replied that all the goods were
gone, it was true, but that his heaven was always open to the poet.
The ancient Amalfi, the city of activities and merchandise, is gone.
"Where are now the freighted barks
From the marts of east and west?
Where the knights in iron sarks
Journeying to the Holy Land,
Glove of steel upon the hand,
Cross of crimson on the breast?
Where the pomp of camp and court?
Where the pilgrims with their prayers?
Where the merchants with their wares?
* * * * *
Vanished like a fleet of cloud,
Like a passing trumpet-blast,
Are those splendors of the past,
And the commerce and the crowd!
Fathoms deep beneath the seas
Lie the ancient warves and quays,
Swallowed by the engulfing waves."
It is impossible to realize that Amalfi was once a flourishing city of
Oriental trade. One looks in vain for any trace of ruin or shrine that
still suggests the ancient splendors of activity. The strata of the
past, so visible in other mediæval cities, are not apparent here. The
great cathedral is a most interesting study in the art of
architecture,--its exquisite arcades, its delicate, lofty campanile
glittering in the sun. The green-roofed cupola is a distinctive feature,
and up the many flights of stairs the old Capuccini convent lies,--the
unique, romantic hotel where the cells of the monks are now the rooms of
the perpetual procession of guests. Does the wraith of Cardinal
Capuano, who founded this convent, still wander in midnight hours
through the dim cloisters? Does he still keep watch by the body of St.
Andrew, the apostle, which he is said to have found and brought to the
cathedral where the saint lies, as a saint should lie, gloriously
entombed. St. Andrew was the patron saint of Amalfi, but at his death
his body was carried from Patras to the Bosphorus, where it was placed
in a church in Constantinople. The legend runs that Cardinal Capuano,
being in Constantinople, entered the Church of the Holy Apostles to
pray, and knowing that the body of the saint was in that city, he
besought the heavenly powers to guide him to it. Rising from his
devotions he was approached by an aged priest, who announced to the
Cardinal that the object of his search was in that very church in which
he was praying for guidance; and, aided by unseen powers, he was able to
recover it and convey it to Amalfi. All Italian towns that respect
themselves offer the allurement of an entombed saint and if,
occasionally, the same identical saint does duty for more than one city,
who is to decide the local genuineness of the claim? Nothing in all
Italy is so curious as is this town of staircases instead of streets; of
houses perched on the angles of impossible eyries suggesting that, as
the Venetians go about in gondolas, so the Amalfians must have airships,
or the wings of Icarus, with which to circle in air from their dwellings
to the beach.
The precipitous gorges and dark ravines have on their crests low
parapets of stone walls over which the visitor lingers and leans
watching the bluest of seas lying fair under the bluest of skies. The
main road,--there is only one,--descending from the hill to the water's
edge, makes its progress through a tunnel.
The old Amalfi, with its palaces, its arches and colonnades, lies under
the sea. Just as the Pensione Caterina with its rose walks and terraces
slipped into the sea in December of 1899, when two guests and several
fishermen lost their lives, so the ancient Amalfi fell, its cliffs
swallowed up in the waters below.
"Hidden from all mortal eyes,
Deep the sunken city lies;
Silent streets and vacant halls,
Ruined roofs and towers and walls;
Even cities have their graves!"
When, on a May evening, the white moonlight falls in cascades of silver
sheen over terraces and sea, with Amalfi all alabaster and pearl like a
dream city in the ethereal air; when the stars hang low in the skies and
the fairy lights of the fishermen's boats twinkle far out at sea; when
the summer silence is suddenly thrilled by the melody of Neapolitan
songs on the air, as if it were a veritable _chant d'amour_ of
sirens,--then does one believe in the buried city. These rich baritone
voices are surely those of some singers of the buried ages. They are
floating across the centuries since Amalfi had its pride and place among
the great centres of activity. Atrani, Amalfi's twin city, lies in the
adjoining defile of the mountains which arch above them. The strange old
houses are all dazzlingly white, transfigured under the moon to an
unearthly loveliness.
The tragedy of the ruin of Amalfi is related by Petrarca, who was then
living in Naples. It was in 1343 that a terrible cataclysm--an
earthquake accompanied by a tempest--caused the destruction and the
submergence of the city in the sea.
The believers in astrology will find their faith re-enforced by the fact
that a bishop, who was also an astrologist, had read in the stars that
in December of 1343 a terrible disaster would occur on the Naples coast.
It arrived on schedule time. Petrarca, writing of it to Giovanni
Colonna, states that in consequence of the prediction of the bishop, the
people were in a condition of wild terror, endeavoring to repent of
their sins and aspiring to a purer moral life. In this tide of religious
emotion, ordinary occupations were neglected. On the very day of the
calamity people were crowding the churches and kneeling in prayer. At
night, after the people were in bed, the shock came. The sunset had been
fair, the evening quiet, and the people were reassured. But they were
awakened from sleep by the violence of falling walls and the terror of
the tempest. Petrarcha was lodging in a convent, and he heard the monks
calling to one another as they rushed from cell to cell. They hastily
gathered crosses and sacred relics in their hands, and, preceded by the
prior, sought the chapel, where they passed the night in prayer while
the tempest raged outside. The sea broke against the rocks with a fury
that seemed to tear the very foundations of the earth. The thunder
pealed, and mingled with it were the shrieks of the frightened
populace. The rain fell in torrents, deluging the city as if the sea
itself were pouring on it. When the morning came the darkness still
continued. In the harbor broken ships crashed helplessly together. The
sands were strewn with mutilated dead bodies. Between Capri and the
shore the sea ran mountains high. Amalfi was completely destroyed, and
has never regained her prestige.
The cathedral at Ravello has traces of the rich art it once enshrined,
and the rose gardens of the Palazzo Rufolo might enchant Hafiz himself.
The terrace on the very crest of the mountain commands one of the
wonderful views of the world. The cloistered colonnades of this old
Saracenic palace reveal views even to the plains of Pæstum. There are
rare mosaics and fragments of bronzes and marbles yet remaining.
The noble Greek ruins at Pæstum--the three temples--stand in all the
majesty of utter desolation. They are overgrown with flowers, however,
and they stand "dewy in the light of the rising dawn-star."
"The shrine is ruined now, and far away
To east and west stretch olive groves, whose shade,
Even at the height of summer noon, is gray.
* * * * *
"Yet this was once a hero's temple, crowned
With myrtle boughs by lovers, and with palm
By wrestlers, resonant with sweetest sound
Of flute and fife in summer evening's calm,
And odorous with incense all the year,
With nard and spice and galbanum and balm."
The detour to Pæstum is full of significance. The massive columns of the
temples stand like giants of the ages. "It is difficult," writes John
Addington Symonds, "not to return again and again to the beauty of
coloring at Pæstum. Lying basking in the sun on a flat slab of stone,
and gazing eastward, we overlook a foreground of dappled light and
shadow; then come two stationary columns built, it seems, of solid gold,
where the sunbeams strike along their russet surface. Between them lies
the landscape, a medley first of brakefern and asphodel and feathering
acanthus and blue spikes; while beyond and above is a glimpse of
mountains, purple almost to indigo with cloud shadows, and flecked with
snow."
The sail from Amalfi to Pæstum is one incomparable in loveliness. The
sunshine is all lurid gold. The faint, transparent blue haze fills all
the defiles of the mountains; the cliffs disclose yawning caverns where
vast clusters of stalactites hang; and as the boat floats toward Capri
from the Sorrento promontory its rocky headlands rise and flame into
purple and rose against the glowing sky. Across the Bay of Naples rises
the great city. It stands in some subtle way reminding one of the scene
where one
"... rowing hard against the stream,
Saw distant gates of Eden gleam."
Capri is the idyllic island of prismatic light and shade, of gay and
joyous life. Here Tiberius had his summer palace, and it was from these
shores that he sent the historic letter which revolutionized the life of
Sejanus. The letter--_verbosa et grandis epistola_--is still vivid in
the historic associations of Rome. Capri is one of the favorite resorts
both for winter and summer. Its former modest prices are now greatly
increased, like all the latter-day expenses of Italy; but its beauty is
perennial, and the artist and poet can still command there a seclusion
almost impossible to secure elsewhere in Italy. The distinguished
artist, Elihu Vedder of Rome, has a country house on Capri, and another
well-known artist, Charles Caryl Coleman, makes this island his home.
There are days--sometimes several days in succession--that the sea is
high and the boats cannot run between Naples, Sorrento, and Capri; and
the enforced seclusion is still the seclusion of the poet's dream. For
he shares it with Mithras, the "unconquered god of the sun," whose cult
influenced all the monarchs of Europe and who holds his court in the
Grotto de Matrimonia. Into this grotto one descends by a flight of
nearly two hundred feet; he strolls among the ruins of the villa of
Tiberius, where the very air is still vital and vocal with those strange
and tragic chapters of Roman life. The Emperor Augustus first founded
here palaces and aqueducts. Tiberius, who retired to Capri in the year
27 A.D., had his architects build twelve villas, in honor of the gods,
the largest of these being for Jupiter and known as the Villa Jovis. In
31 A.D. occurred that dramatic episode in Roman history, the fall of
Sejanus, and six years later Tiberius died. The vast white marble baths
he had built for him are now submerged on the coast, and boats glide
over the spot where they stood. The Villa Jovis stood on a cliff seven
hundred feet above the sea, and the traditions of the barbarities and
atrocities that took place there still haunt the island. The natives
apparently regard them as a certain title to fame, but the wise tourists
persistently ignore horrors; life is made for joy, sweetness, and charm;
it is far wiser to think on these things.
And there is charm and joy to spare on lovely Capri. "Sea-mists are
frequent in the early summer mornings, swathing the cliffs of Capri and
brooding on the smooth water till the day wind rises," says John
Addington Symonds. "Then they disappear like magic, rolling in
smoke-wreaths from the surface of the sea, condensing into clouds and
climbing the hills like Oceanides in quest of Prometheus, or taking
their station on the watch towers of the world as in the chorus of the
Nephelai. Such a morning may be chosen for the _giro_ of the island. The
Blue Grotto loses nothing of its beauty, but rather gains by contrast,
when passing from dense fog you find yourself transported to a world of
wavering subaqueous sheen. It is only through the very topmost arch that
a boat can glide into this cavern; the arch itself spreads downward
through the water so that all the light is transmitted from beneath and
colored by the sea. Outside the magic world of pantomime there is
nothing to equal these effects of blue and silver.... Numberless are the
caves at Capri. The so-called Green Grotto has the beauty of moss agate
in its liquid floor; the Red Grotto shows a warmer chord of color; and
where there is no other charm to notice, endless beauty may be found in
the play of sunlight upon roofs of limestone, tinted with yellow,
orange, and pale pink, mossed over, hung with fern, and catching tones
of blue or green from the still deeps beneath.... After a day upon the
water it is pleasant to rest at sunset in the loggia above the sea. The
Bay of Naples stretches far and wide in front, beautiful by reason of
the long fine line descending from Vesuvius, dipping almost to a level,
and then gliding up to join the highlands of the north. Now sun and moon
begin to mingle: waning and waxing splendors. The cliffs above our heads
are still blushing like the heart of some tea-rose; when lo, the touch
of the huntress is laid upon those eastern pinnacles, and the horizon
glimmers with her rising. Was it on such a night that Ferdinand of
Aragon fled from his capital before the French, with eyes turned ever to
the land he loved, chanting, as he leaned from his galley's stern, that
melancholy psalm, 'Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh
but in vain,' and seeing Naples dwindle to a white blot on the purple
shore?"
The roses of Capri would form a chapter alone. What walks there are
where the air is all fragrance of acacia and rose and orange blossoms!
Cascades of roses in riotous luxuriance festoon the old gray stone
walls; the pale pink of the early dawn or of a shell by the seashore,
the amber of the Banskeia rose, the great golden masses of the Maréchal
Niel, their faint yellow gleaming against the deep green leaves of
myrtle and frond. The intense glowing scarlet of the gladiolus flames
from rocks and roadside, and rosemary and the purple stars of hyacinths
garland the ways, until one feels like journeying only in his singing
robes. The deep, solemn green of stone pines forms canopies under the
sapphire skies, and through their trunks one gazes on the sapphire sea.
Is Capri the isle of Epipsychidion?
"Is there now any one that knows
What a world of mystery lies deep down in the heart of a rose?"
One walks among these rose-lined lanes, hearing in the very air that
exquisite lyric by Louise Chandler Moulton:--
"Roses that briefly live,
Joy is your dower;
Blest be the Fates that give
One perfect hour.
And, though too soon you die,
In your dust glows
Something the passer-by
Knows was a Rose."
Monte Cassino is one of the most interesting inland points in Southern
Italy,--the monastery lying on the crest of a hill nearly two thousand
feet above the sea. Dante alludes to this in his Paradiso (XXII,
XXXVII), and in the prose translation made by that eminent Dantean
scholar, Professor Charles Eliot Norton, this assurance of Beatrice to
Dante is thus rendered:--
"That mountain on whose slope Cassino is, was of old frequented on
its summit by the deluded and ill-disposed people, and I am he who
first carried up thither the name of Him who brought to earth the
truth which so high exalts us; and such grace shone upon me that I
drew away the surrounding villages from the impious worship which
seduced the world. Those other fires were all contemplative men,
kindled by that heat which brings to birth holy flowers and fruits.
Here is Macarius, here is Romuald, here are my brothers, who within
the cloisters fixed their feet, and held a steadfast heart. And I
to him, 'The affection which thou displayest in speaking with me,
and the good semblance which I see and note in all your ardors,
have so expanded my confidence as the sun does the rose, when she
becomes open so much as she has power to be. Therefore I pray thee,
and do thou, father, assure me if I have power to receive so much
grace, that I may see thee with uncovered shape.' Whereon he,
'Brother, thy high desire shall be fulfilled in the last sphere,
where are fulfilled all others and my own. There perfect, mature,
and whole is every desire; in that alone is every part there where
it always was: for it is not in space, and hath not poles; and our
stairway reaches up to it, wherefore thus from thy sight it
conceals itself. Far up as there the patriarch Jacob saw it stretch
its topmost part when it appeared to him so laden with Angels. But
now no one lifts his feet from earth to ascend it; and my rule is
remaining as waste of paper. The walls, which used to be an abbey,
have become caves; and the cowls are sacks full of bad meal. But
heavy usury is not gathered in so greatly against the pleasure of
God, as that fruit which makes the heart of monks so foolish. For
whatsoever the Church guards is all for the folk that ask it in
God's name, not for one's kindred, or for another more vile. The
flesh of mortals is so soft that a good beginning suffices not
below from the springing of the oak to the forming of the acorn.
Peter began without gold and without silver, and I with prayers and
with fasting, and Francis in humility his convent; and if thou
lookest at the source of each, and then lookest again whither it
has run, thou wilt see dark made of the white. Truly, Jordan turned
back, and the sea fleeing when God willed, were more marvellous to
behold than succor here."
Dante adds that the company "like a whirlwind gathered itself upward,"
and that "the sweet lady urged me behind them, with only a sign, up over
that stairway; so did her virtue overcome my nature. But never here
below, where one mounts and descends naturally, was there motion so
rapid that it could be compared unto my wing."
The time was when Dante and Beatrice met, and he "was standing as one
who within himself represses the point of his desire, and attempts not
to ask, he so fears the too-much." And then he heard: "If thou couldst
see, as I do, the charity which burns among us thy thoughts would be
expressed. But that thou through waiting mayst not delay thy high end, I
will make answer to thee, even to the thought concerning which thou art
so regardful."
The vast monastery of Monte Cassino, lying on the crest of a hill nearly
two thousand feet above the sea, has one of the most magnificent
locations in all Italy. This monastery was founded (in 529 A.D.) by St.
Benedict, on the site of an ancient temple to Apollo. Dante alludes to
this also in the Paradiso (Canto XX, 11). As seen from below this
monastery has the appearance of a vast castle, or fortress. Its
location is one of the most magnificent in all Italy. The old entrance
was a curious passage cut through solid rock and it is still used for
princes and cardinals--no lesser dignitaries being allowed to pass
through it--and within the past thirty years a new entrance has been
constructed. In the passageway of the mediæval entrance St. Benedict is
said to have had his cell, and of recent years the German Benedictines,
believing they had located the original cell, had it located, restored,
and decorated with Egyptian frescoes. Several of the courts of this
convent are connected by beautiful arcades with lofty arches, and
adorned with statues, among which are those of St. Benedict and his
sister, St. Scholastica. Still farther up the hill, upon the monastery,
stands the church which is built on the site of the ancient one that was
erected by St. Benedict himself--this present edifice dating back to
1637. Above the portals there is a long inscription in Latin relating
the history of the monastery and the church. These portals are solid
bronze, beautifully carved, with inlaid tablets of silver on which are
inscribed a list of all the treasures of the abbey in the year 1006. The
church is very rich in interior decoration of mosaics, rare marbles,
and wonderful monumental memorials. Either side of the high altar are
monuments to the Prince of Mignano (Guidone Fieramosca) and also to
Piero de Medico. Both St. Benedict and his sister, St. Scholastica, are
entombed under the high altar, which is one of the most elaborately
sculptured in all the churches of Italy.
Among the pictorial decorations of this church are a series of fresco
paintings by Luca Giordano, painted in the seventeenth century,
representing the miracles wrought by St. Benedict. In the refectory is
the "Miracle of the Loaves," by Bassano; and in the chapel below are
paintings by Mazzaroppi and Marco da Siena. Nothing can exceed the
richness and beauty of the carvings of the choir stalls. These were
executed in the seventeenth century by Coliccio.
The library of this monastery is renowned all over Europe--indeed, it is
famous all over the world--for its preservation of ancient manuscripts
done by the monks. These are carefully treasured in the archives. Among
them is the record of a vision that came to the monk Alferic, in the
twelfth century, on which it is believed that Dante founded his
immortal "Divina Commedia;" there is also a fourteenth-century edition
of Dante with margined notes; and the Commentary of Origen (on the
Epistle to the Romans), dating back to the sixteenth century; there is
the complete series of Papal bulls that were sent to the monastery of
Monte Cassino from the eleventh century to the present time, many of
them being richly illuminated and decorated with curiously elaborate
seals. There is an autograph letter of the Sultan Mohammed II to Pope
Nicholas IV, with the Pope's reply,--the theme of the correspondence
being the Pope's threat of war. The imperial Mohammed seems to have been
in terror of this, and in his epistle he expresses his willingness, and,
indeed, his intention, to be converted as soon as he shall visit Rome!
Apparently the Holy Father of that day laid little stress on the
sincerity of this offer on the part of the Sultan. Here, too, is a
wonderful correspondence between Don Erasmo Gattola, the historian of
the abbey, and a great number of the celebrated men of his time; and
there are hundreds of other letters, manuscripts, and documents relating
to kings, nobles, emperors, and many of the nobility of the age.
In this monastery there is a most interesting collection of relics, in
bronze, silver, gold, and _rosso antico_. The library proper contains
some eleven thousand volumes, dating back to the very dawn of the
discovery of the art of printing.
Mr. Longfellow, whose poet's pen has pictured so many of the Italian
landscapes and ancient monuments, thus set Monte Cassino to music,
picturing the entire landscape of the Terra di Lavoro region:--
"The Land of Labor and the Land of Rest,
Where mediæval towns are white on all
The hillsides, and where every mountain's crest
Is an Etrurian or a Roman wall.
* * * * *
"There is Aquinum, the old Volscian town,
Where Juvenal was born, whose lurid light
Still hovers o'er his birthplace like the crown
Of splendor seen o'er cities in the night.
"Doubled the splendor is, that in its streets
The Angelic Doctor as a school-boy played,
And dreamed perhaps the dreams that he repeats
In ponderous folios for scholastics made.
"And there, uplifted, like a passing cloud
That pauses on a mountain summit high,
Monte Cassino's convent rears its proud
And venerable walls against the sky.
"Well I remember how on foot I climbed
The stony pathway leading to its gate;
Above, the convent bells for vespers chimed,
Below, the darkening town grew desolate.
* * * * *
"The silence of the place was like a sleep,
So full of rest it seemed; each passing tread
Was a reverberation from the deep
Recesses of the ages that are dead.
"For, more than thirteen centuries ago,
Benedict fleeing from the gates of Rome,
A youth disgusted with its vice and woe,
Sought in these mountain solitudes a home.
"He founded here his Convent and his Rule
Of prayer and work, and counted work as prayer;
The pen became a clarion, and his school
Flamed like a beacon in the midnight air.
* * * * *
"From the high window, I beheld the scene
On which Saint Benedict so oft had gazed,--
The mountains and the valley in the sheen
Of the bright sun,--and stood as one amazed.
* * * * *
"The conflict of the Present and the Past,
The ideal and the actual in our life,
As on a field of battle held me fast,
Where this world and the next world were at strife."
The monastery of Monte Cassino entertains, as its guests, for dinner or
for a night, all gentlemen who visit it; but there is an alms box on the
ancient gate into which the guest is supposed to place whatever
contribution he pleases for the poor of the place. The Italian
government, in 1866, declared this monastery to be a "Monumento
Nazionale," and it is now a famous ecclesiastical school with some two
hundred students and a resplendent faculty of fifty learned monks under
the direction of the Abbot. Some of the most celebrated prelates in
Europe have been educated at Monte Cassino.
Quite near Monte Cassino, as Longfellow depicts in his lines, is Monte
Aquino, a picturesque hillside where the "Doctor Angelicus," Thomas
Aquinas, was born (in 1224), the son of Count Landulf, in the Castel
Roccasecca. He was educated in the monastery, and one finds himself
recalling here these lines of Thomas William Parsons, entitled "Turning
from Darwin to Thomas Aquinas:"--
"Unless in thought with thee I often live,
Angelic doctor! life seems poor to me.
What are these bounties, if they only be
Such boon as farmers to their servants give?
That I am fed, and that mine oxen thrive,
That my lambs fatten, that mine hours are free--
These ask my nightly thanks on bended knee;
And I do thank Him who hath blest my hive,
And made content my herd, my flock, my bee.
But, Father! nobler things I ask from Thee.
Fishes have sunshine, worms have everything!
Are we but apes? Oh! give me, God, to know
I am death's master; not a scaffolding,
But a true temple where Christ's word could grow."
It was at Aquinum, too, at the foot of Monte Aquino, Juvenal was born.
Near the peaks of Monte Cassino and Monte Aquino is that of Monte Cairo,
five thousand five hundred feet high, from whose summit one of the
finest views of all southern Europe is attained. The Gulf of Gaeta, the
valley of San Germano, the wild and romantic mountain region of the
Abruzzi and a view, too, of the blue sea are in the panorama, bathed in
the opalescent, gleaming lights that often invest the Italian landscape
with jewelled splendor.
"I ask myself, Is this a dream?
Will it all vanish into air?
Is there a land of such supreme
And perfect beauty, anywhere?"
It might have been in this pictured dream-region that Hercules came to
rest.
"When Heracles, the twelve great labors done,
To Calpe came, and there his journey stayed,
He raised two pillars toward the evening sun,
And carved them by a goddess' subtle aid.
Upon their shafts were sacred legends traced,
And round the twain a serpent cincture placed:
'T was at this bound the primal world stood still,
And of Atlantis dreamed, with baffled will."
But still in unmeasured space, still beyond and afar and unattained,
still lost in the unpenetrated realms of the poet's fancy,--
"Atlantis lies beyond the pillars yet!"
_"Here Ischia smiles
O'er liquid miles."_
* * * * *
_High o'er the sea-surge and the sands,
Like a great galleon wrecked and cast
Ashore by storms, thy Castle stands
A mouldering landmark of the Past._
_Upon its terrace-walk, I see
A phantom gliding to and fro;
It is Colonna,--it is she
Who lived and loved so long ago._
LONGFELLOW.
_We are the only two that, face to face,
Do know each other, as God doth know us both.
--O fearless friendship, that held nothing back!
O absolute trust, that yielded every key,
And flung each curtain up, and drew me on
To enter the white temple of thy soul,
So vast, so cold, so waste!--and give thee sense
Of living warmth, of throbbing tenderness,
Of soft dependencies! O faith that made
Thee free to seek the spot where my dead hopes
Have sepulture, and read above the crypt
Deep graven, the tearful legend of my life!
There, gloomed with the memorials of my past,
Thou once for all didst learn what man accepts
Lothly--(how should he else?)--that never woman,
Fashioned a woman,--heart, brain, body, soul,--
Ever twice loved._
"_Vittoria Colonna to Michael Angelo._"
MARGARET J. PRESTON.
IV
A PAGE DE CONTI FROM ISCHIA
"Unto my buried lord I give myself."
* * * * *
Michael Angelo!
A man that all men honor, and the model
That all should follow; one who works and prays,
For work is prayer, and consecrates his life
To the sublime ideal of his art
Till art and life are one.
LONGFELLOW, from "_Michael Angelo; A Fragment_."
In that poetic sail along the Italian coast between Naples and Genoa the
voyager feels that it is
"On no earthly sea with transient roar"
that his bark is floating; that
"Unto no earthly airs he trims his sail,"
as he flits along this coast when violet waves dash against a brilliant
background of sky. Ischia reveals herself through the blue, transparent
air, gleaming with opalescent lights, quivering, fading and flaming
again as the afterglow in the east rivals in its coloring the sunset
splendors of the west. Is there in the air a faint, lingering echo of
the _chant d'amour_ of sirens on the rocky shores? Is Parthenope still
to be descried? Gazing upon Ischia there is a rush of romantic
impressions as if one were transported into ideal regions of song,
before this impression begins to resolve itself into definite
remembrance of fact and incident. Surely some exquisite associations in
the past had enchanted this island in memory and invested it with the
magic light that never was on sea or land. Traditions of beauty; of the
lives of scholar and savant and princes of the church; of a court of
nobility enriched and adorned by prelate and by poet; traditions, too,
of a woman's consecration to an immortal love and the solace of grief by
poetic genius and exalted friendships,--all these seem to cling about
Ischia in a vague, atmospheric way till memory, still groping backward
in the twilight of the richly historic past, suddenly crystallized into
recognition that it was Ischia which was the home of Vittoria Colonna,
the greatest woman poet of the Italian Renaissance. Lines, long since
read, arose like an incantation; and like bars of music, each note of
which vibrated in the air, came this fragment of one of her songs:--
"If in these rude and artless songs of mine
I never take the file in hand, nor try
With curious care and nice, fastidious eye
To deck and polish each uncultured line,
'T is that it makes small merit of my name
To merit praise....
* * * * *
But it must be that heaven's own gracious gift
Which, with its breath, divine, inspires my soul,
Strikes forth these sparks unbidden by my will."
[Illustration: ISCHIA, FROM THE SEA
_Page 282_]
Vittoria Colonna was called the most beautiful and gifted woman of her
time in all Italy. Her life of nearly sixty years (1490-1547) lay
entirely in that period when the apathy of ten centuries was broken,
when the darkness fled before the dawning of a glorious day. New methods
of thought, revised taste in poetry, new discoveries of science, a
nobler progress in criticism, great discoveries, and a lofty and
unprecedented freedom of conviction marked the century between 1450 and
1550, stamping it as the marvellous time which we know as the
Renaissance, "that solemn fifteenth century which can hardly be studied
too much, not merely for its positive results in the things of the
intellect and the imagination, its concrete works of art, its special
and prominent personalities, with their profound æsthetic charm, but for
its general spirit and character, for the ethical qualities of which it
is a consummate type."
It was peculiarly fitting that Italy should take the initiative in
inaugurating this _vita nuova_. Italy had a language and literature and
art. Dante had delivered his solemn message and Petrarca his impassioned
song. Boccaccio had taught the gospel of gladness. Who shall analyze the
secret springs of their inspiration and reveal to what degree Ovid and
Horace and Virgil influenced the later literature? A new solar system
was established by Copernicus. America was discovered. Science entered
on her definite and ceaseless progress, and religion and art became
significant forces in human life. Printing had been invented and the
compass discovered.
Into this time of new forces, when everything was throbbing and
pulsating with life, was Vittoria Colonna born into social prestige and
splendor. Her father, Fabrizio Colonna, and her mother, Agnesina di
Montefeltro, a daughter of the Duke of Urbino, were then domiciled in
the castle of Marino, on the Lago d'Albano, a magnificent palace some
twelve miles from Rome, in which the Duke d'Amalfi (the father of
Fabrizio Colonna) lived, and which is still standing, filled with
memorials and relics of historic interest. Urbino, the seat of the
Montefeltro, is renowned as having been the birthplace of Raphael, who
"Only drank the precious wine of youth,"
but who
"... lives immortal in the hearts of men,
... and the world is fairer
That he lived in it."
The Colonna date back to the eleventh century, and they gave many
princes and cardinals to the country. At the close of the thirteenth
century they were arrayed against Boniface VIII, the Pope, who accused
them of crime, while they disputed the validity of his election to the
holy office. In retaliation, the Pope excommunicated the entire family,
anathematized them as heretics and declared their estates forfeited to
the church. The Colonna, far from being intimidated, commanded three
hundred armed horsemen, attacked the papal palace, which they plundered,
and made him a prisoner,--an incident referred to by Dante in the
"Inferno." The Colonna and the Orsini were also at warfare, and when a
member of the former family was elevated to the papacy under the name of
Martin V, they despoiled property of the Orsini.
Gay excursionists to-day, who fly over the Campagna in their
twentieth-century touring cars to the lovely towns of the Alban hills,
may look down from Castel Gandolfo on the gloomy, mediæval little town
of Marino, part way up a steep hillside, whose summit is crowned by the
castle once belonging to the Colonna and in which Vittoria passed her
early childhood. "Nothing," in his "Roba di Roma," says Story, "can be
more rich and varied than this magnificent amphitheatre of the Campagna
of Rome, ... sometimes drear, mysterious, and melancholy in desolate
stretches; sometimes rolling like an inland sea whose waves have
suddenly become green with grass, golden with grain, and gracious with
myriads of wild flowers, where scarlet poppies blaze and pink daisies
cover vast meadows and vines shroud the picturesque ruins of antique
villas, aqueducts, and tombs, or drop from mediæval towers and
fortresses."
Flying in the swift motor-car of the time toward the Alban hills, Marino
may be easily reached in less than an hour from the Porta San Giovanni,
and in the near distance Monte Albani, rising into the cone of Monte
Cavi, is a picture before the eye, while on the lower slopes gleam the
white villages of Albani, Marino, Castel Gandolfo, and Frascati, with
the campanile of a cathedral, a fortress-like ruin, or gardens and olive
orchards clambering up the heights. The Papal town of Rocca di Papa
crowns one summit where once Tarquin's temple to Jupiter stood and on
whose ruins now gleam afar in the Italian sunshine the white walls of
the Passionist convent of Monte Cavi, built by Cardinal York. From this
height Juno gazed upon the great conflict of contending armies, if
Virgil's topography be entitled to authority. And here, through a defile
in the hills, one may look toward Naples, "and then rising abruptly
with sheer limestone cliffs and crevasses, where transparent purple
shadows sleep all day long, towers the grand range of the Sabine
mountains, whose lofty peaks surround the Campagna to the east and north
like a curved amphitheatre.... Again, skirting the Pontine Marshes on
the east, are the Volscian mountains, closing up the Campagna at
Terracina, where they overhang the road and affront the sea with their
great barrier. Following along the Sabine hills, you will see at
intervals the towns of Palestrina and Tivoli, where the Anio tumbles in
foam, and other little mountain towns nestled here and there among the
soft airy hollows, or perched on the cliffs."
In this landscape there are three ruined villages--Colonna, Gallicano,
and Zagarda--perched on their respective hills. The castle of the
Colonna family is now restored and modernized to a degree that leaves
little trace of that former stately grandeur which is transmuted into
modern convenience and comfort.
In this scene of romantic beauty, with the vista of beauty almost
incomparable in any inland view in Italy, Vittoria passed her infancy,
until, at the age of four, her childhood was transplanted to fairy
Ischia. In all this chain of Alban towns, including Marino, Viterbo,
Ariccia, and Rocca di Papa, the great family of the Colonna owned
extensive estates, each crowning some height, while the defiles between
were filled, then as now, with the foam and blossom of riotous greenery.
Then, as now, across the mystic Campagna, the dome of St. Peter's
silhouetted itself against a golden background of western sky.
One needs not to have had privileged access to the sibylline leaves of
the Cumæan soothsayer to recognize that Vittoria Colonna was born under
the star of destiny. Her horoscope seemed to be inextricably entwined
with that of Italy; and the events which created and determined the
conditions of her life and its panoramic series of circumstances were
the events of Italy and of Europe as well--in political aspects and in
the influence on general progress, brought to bear by strong and
prominent individualities whose gifts, genius, or force dominated the
movements of the day.
To her father's change of political allegiance, from the French to the
Spanish side, in the war raging between those countries in 1494,
Vittoria owed all her life in Ischia; and her marriage, and all that
resulted from her becoming a member of the d'Avalos family, was due to
this espousal of a new political faith on the part of Fabrizio Colonna.
To the fact that in 1425 the war with France again broke out was due the
loss of her husband and the conditions that consecrated her life to
poetry, to learning, and that made possible the beautiful and
sympathetic friendship between herself and Michael Angelo. Her life
presents the most forcible illustration of the overruling power on human
life and destiny.
It was the political change of faith on the part of Fabrizio Colonna
that initiated an unforeseen and undreamed-of drama of life for his
infant daughter, the first act of which included the command of the King
of Naples that the little Vittoria should be betrothed to Francesco
d'Avalos, the son of Alphonso, Marchese di Pescara, of Ischia, one of
the nobles who stood nearest to the king in those troubled days.
Francesco was born in the castle on Ischia in 1489, and was one year
older than Vittoria. Fabrizio exchanged his castle at Marino for one in
Naples, which city made him the Grand Constable. The d'Avalos castle in
Ischia had at this time for its chatelaine the Duchessa di Francavilla,
who is said by some authorities to have been the elder sister and by
others to have been the aunt of Francesco. Donna Constanza d'Avalos,
later the Duchessa di Francavilla, had been made the Castellana of the
island for her courage in refusing to capitulate to the French troops
when, after the death of her father, she was left in sole charge of the
d'Avalos estates, and Emperor Charles V elevated her rank to that of
Principessa. The Duchessa was one of the most remarkable women of the
day. She was a classical scholar, and herself a writer, the author of a
book entitled "_Degli Infortuni e Travagli del Mondo_." To the care of
this learned and brilliant woman, a great lady in the social life of the
time, the care of the little Vittoria was committed, and she studied and
played and grew up with Francesco, her future husband. The d'Avalos
family ranked among the highest nobility of the Court of Naples, and the
Principessa reigned as a queen of letters and society in her island
kingdom. It was under her care that the two children, Francesco and
Vittoria, pursued their studies together and acquired every grace of
scholarship and accomplishment of society. The circles which the
Duchessa drew around her included many gentlewomen from Sicily and from
Naples; and "the life at Castel d'Ischia was synonymous with everything
glorious and elegant," recorded Visconti, "and its fame has been
immortalized." Although Francesco (the future Marchese di Pescara) was
born in Italian dominions, yet the d'Avalos family were of Spanish
ancestry and traditions. The musical Castilian was the language of the
household. The race ideals of Spain--the poetic, the impassioned, the
joy in color and movement--pervaded the very atmosphere of Castel
d'Ischia. Vittoria's earliest girlhood revealed her exceptional beauty
and charm, and gave evidence that the gods loved her and had dowered her
with their immortal gifts and genius, which flowered, under the
sympathetic guidance and stimulus of such a woman as the Principessa
(the Duchessa di Francavilla) and the society she drew around her, as
the orange and the myrtle flower under the southern sunshine.
The literature of biography presents no chapter that can rival this in
the idyllic beauty of the lives of those two children on the lovely
island in the violet sea. The perpetual conflicts that were waged in
both Rome and Naples awakened no echoes in this romantic and isolated
spot, whose atmosphere was that of the peace of scholarly pursuits and
lofty thought that is found where the arts and the muses hold their
sway.
But in 1496 came the tragedy of the death of the young king and queen of
Naples; four years later Rome celebrated a jubilee in which Naples took
part, sending a splendid procession as escort to the famous Madonna that
was carried from Naples to Rome and back, working miracles, it is said,
on both journeys, as a Madonna should. A year later Frederick of Naples
and the queen, and two of the king's sisters,--ladies of high
nobility,--came as guests to the castle in Ischia,--royal exiles seeking
shelter. Five years later the new king and queen were welcomed with
gorgeous parade and acclamation. A pier was thrown out over one hundred
feet into the sea; on this a tent of gold was erected, and all the
nobility of Naples, in the richest costumes of velvet and jewels,
thronged to meet the royal guests. Over the sunlit Bay of Naples
resounded the thunder of the guns in military salute and the cheers of
the people. Among the distinguished nobility present, Costanza, Duchessa
and Principessa di Francavilla, was a marked figure with her young
charge, Vittoria Colonna, at her side. She made a deep reverence and
kissed the hand of the king as he passed, as did many of the ladies of
highest rank, and at the fête of that evening Vittoria's beauty charmed
all eyes. Although it was well understood that she had been betrothed
since childhood to Francesco d'Avalos, yet many princes and nobles sued
for her hand and were refused by her father, who was at this time
established magnificently in Naples. Pope Julius II refused the
pleadings of two dukes, both of whom wished to seek Vittoria in
marriage, as he considered the love of the young girl for her betrothed
a matter to be held sacred. Three years later, when Vittoria was
nineteen and Francesco twenty, their marriage was celebrated in Castel
d'Ischia with the richest state and beauty of ceremonial observance. A
few months previous to this time she had returned to her father's
country home in the family castle at Marino, whither both Fabrizio
and Agnese Colonna accompanied their daughter. When the time appointed
for her bridal came, Vittoria was escorted to Ischia by princes, and
dukes, and ladies of honor, and the marriage gifts to the bride included
a chain of rubies, diamonds, and emeralds, linked with gold; a writing
desk of solid gold; wonderful bracelets; costumes of velvets, and
brocades and rich embroideries, and a portion of fourteen thousand
ducats.
[Illustration: LA ROCCA, ISCHIA
_Page 294_]
"The noted pair had not their equals in Italy at this time," writes a
contemporary historian. "Their life in Naples was all magnificence and
festivity, and when they desired to exchange it for the country they
left Naples for Pietralba on Monte Emo, where they assembled pleasant
parties of ladies and gentlemen. Much time was passed in their beloved
Ischia, where the Duchessa, as Castellana, was obliged to receive much
company. And here were found the flower of chivalry and the men most
noted in letters.... They listened to the poets Sanazzaro, il Rota, and
Bernardo Tasso; or they heard the admirable discourses on letters of
Musefico, il Giovio, and il Minturno. It was an agreeable school for the
youthful minds of Vittoria and Pescara. Thus passed in great happiness
the first three years of their married life."
It is not strange that to the young Marchesa di Pescara, Ischia had
become an enchanted island. The scene of her happy childhood, of her
studies, of her first efforts in lyric art, of her stately and
resplendent bridal; the home, too, of her early married life,--it is
little wonder that in after years she translated into song its scenic
loveliness and the thoughts and visions it had inspired.
Again, the ever-recurring war came on, and in the spring of 1512 the
King of Naples conferred the doubtful privilege on the Marchesa di
Pescara of serving as the royal representative. It is said that Vittoria
personally superintended her young husband's outfit,--in horses,
attendants, armor, and other details belonging to a gentleman of rank.
Her father and her uncle, Prospero Colonna, were also among the military
who led Italian troops. In the terrible battle of Ravenna (which was
fought on the Easter Sunday, April 11, of 1512), Pescara was wounded,
taken prisoner, and carried to the fortress of Porta Gobbia. A messenger
was sent to Ischia, where Vittoria lived between her books and the
orange groves; and the twentieth-century cynic of 1907 will smile at the
form in which she expressed her sorrow,--that of a poem of some forty
stanzas, which began:--
"_Eccelso Mio Signor! Questa ti scrivo
Per te narrar tra quante dubbie voglie,
Fra quanti aspri martir, dogliosa io vivo!_"
A translation of this lyric epistle, made in prose, gives it more fully
as follows:--
"Eccelso Mio Signor: I write this to thee to tell thee amid what
bitter anxieties I live.... I believed that so many prayers and
tears, and love without measure, would not have been displeasing to
God.... Thy great valor has shone as in a Hector or an Achilles."
In this letter Vittoria tells him that when the messenger reached her,
she was lying on a point of the island ("_I_, in the _body_, my _mind_
always with _thee_," she says), and that the whole atmosphere had been
to her that day "like a cavern of black fog," and that "the marine gods
seemed to say to Ischia, 'To-day, Vittoria, thou shalt hear of disgrace
from the confines: thou now in health and honor, thou shalt be turned
to grief; but thy father and husband are saved, though taken
prisoners.'"
This presentiment she related to her husband's aunt, the Duchessa
Francavilla, the Castellana of Ischia, who begged her not to think of it
and said, "It would be strange for such a force to be conquered."
Just after this conversation between the youthful Marchesa and the
Duchessa, the messenger arrived. The psychic science of to-day would see
in this occurrence a striking instance of telepathy. In her poetic
epistle to her husband, Vittoria also says:--
"A wife ought to follow her husband at home and abroad; if he
suffers trouble, she suffers; if he is happy, she is; if he dies,
she dies. What happens to one happens to both; equals in life, they
are equals in death. His fate is her fate."
These letters--in keeping with the times--were, on both sides, expressed
in literary rather than in personal form. Pescara, from his captivity,
wrote to her a "Dialogue on Love,"--a manuscript for which Visconti
notes that he has searched in vain.
The Marchesa di Pescara went from Ischia to Naples, after learning of
the misfortunes that had overtaken her husband, in order that she might
be able constantly to receive direct communication regarding his fate. A
few months later the Marchese returned, making the day "brilliant with
joy" to Vittoria, but after a year of happiness he was again called to
service, and the Marchesa returned to her beloved Ischia. She gave
herself to the study of the ancient classics; she wrote poems, and
"considered no time of value but so spent," says Rota. The age was one
of a general revival of learning. Royalty, the Pope, the princes and
nobility were all giving themselves with ardor to this higher culture.
Under Dante the Italian language assumed new perfection. This period was
to Vittoria one of intense stimulus, and it must have had a formative
influence on her gifts and her mental power. Having no children, she
adopted a young cousin of her husband, the Marchese del Vasto, to
educate and to be the heir of their estates. In 1515, Pescara again
returned and the entire island of Ischia was "aflame with bonfires, and
the borders of the beautiful shore bright and warm with lights," in
honor of the event. Of this event, Vittoria wrote:--
"... My beloved returns to us ... his countenance radiant with
piety to God, with deeds born of inward faith."
At a magnificent wedding festival in the d'Avalos family about this
time, it is recorded that the Marchesa di Pescara "wore a robe of
brocaded crimson velvet, with large branches of beaten gold wrought on
it, with a headdress of wrought gold and a girdle of beaten gold around
her waist."
When the coronation of Charles V was to be celebrated at Aix-la-Chapelle
the Marchese di Pescara was appointed ambassador to represent the House
of Aragon on this brilliant occasion, when the new emperor was to be
invested with the crown and the sceptre of Charlemagne. Charles had
decided to journey by sea and to visit Henry VIII on the way, an
arrangement of which Cardinal Wolsey was aware, although he had kept
Henry in ignorance of it, according to those curious mental processes
of his mind where his young monarch was concerned. Shakespeare, in the
play of "King Henry VIII," describes the meeting of the two kings, which
occurred at Canterbury, "at a grand jubilee in honor of the shrine of
Thomas à Becket." One historian thus describes this scene:--
"The two handsome young sovereigns rode into Canterbury under the
same canopy, the great Cardinal riding directly in front of them,
and on the right and left were the proud nobles of Spain and
England, among whom was Pescara. The kings alighted from their
horses at the west door of the cathedral and together paid their
devotions before that rich shrine blazing with jewels. They humbly
knelt on the steps worn by the knees of tens of thousands of
pilgrims."
On the return to Naples of the Marchese di Pescara he told the story of
his regal journey to an assemblage of nobles in the Church of Santa
Maria di Monte Oliveto, and he then joined the Marchesa in Rome, where
she had gone to visit her family and to pay her devotions to Leo X, who
had just created Pompeo Colonna a cardinal.
Pope Leo aspired to draw around him a court distinguished for its
culture and brilliancy in both art and literature. In this court the
Marchesa di Pescara shone resplendent. "She was at the height of her
beauty, and her charms were sung by the poets of the day," says a
contemporary.
A year later Leo X died, succeeded by Adrian (who had been tutor to
Charles V), to the intense and bitter disappointment of Cardinal Wolsey,
who had made the widest--and wiliest--efforts to gratify his own
ambition of reigning in the Papal chair. Again the war between France
and Italy, that which seemed to be a perpetually smouldering feud, and
the Marchese di Pescara, again summoned to battle, was wounded at Pavia.
For some time he lay between life and death at Milan, and a messenger
was sent to beg Vittoria to come to him. She set out on this journey,
leaving Naples in great haste; but on reaching Viterbo another messenger
met her with the tidings of the death of the Marchese, which had
occurred on Nov. 25, 1525. Overcome with grief, Vittoria was carried
back to Rome and for the solace of entire seclusion she sought the
cloistered silence of the convent of San Silvestre, which lay at the
foot of the Monte Cavallo in Rome, almost adjoining the gardens of the
Colonna palace. To the Marchese di Pescara, who had the military rank of
general, was given a funeral of great pomp and splendor in Milan, and
his body was brought to the famous Naples church of Santa Domenica
Maggiore, where it was entombed with the princes and nobles of his
house.
Before the death of the Marchese there had been a political plot to join
the Papal, Venetian, and Milanese forces and rescue Italy from the
Emperor's rule, and the Pope himself had sent a messenger to Pescara
asking him to unite with the league. The Marchese, Spanish by ancestry
and by sympathies, used this knowledge to frustrate the Italian designs
and to warn Spain. The Italian historians have execrated him for this
act, which they regard as that of a traitor. Vittoria, however, did not
take this view apparently, as in a letter to her husband she wrote:--
"Titles and kingdoms do not add to true honor.... I do not desire
to be the wife of a king, but I glory in being the wife of that
great general who shows his bravery in war and, still more, by
magnanimity in peace, surpasses the greatest kings."
The inducement of the throne of Naples had been held out to Marchese di
Pescara. He evidently regarded this in the nature of a dishonorable
bribe, and it is this view which the Marchesa plainly shared.
After his death her first impulse was to take the vows of a cloistered
nun. The Pope himself intervened to dissuade her, and she consented to
enter, only temporarily, the convent of San Silvestre on the Monte
Cavallo.
In the will of the Marchese di Pescara there was a clause directing that
anything in his estate unlawfully acquired should be restored to the
owner; and under this, Vittoria gave back to the monastery of Monte
Cassino the Monte San Magno that had formerly been its property.
From the cloistered shades of the convent Vittoria removed to the family
castle of the Colonna at Marino, where, on the shore of this beautiful
lake (which was the scenery of Virgil's Æneid), she passed some months,
engaged in writing sonnets. Of one of these a translation runs in
part:--
"I write solely to assuage my inward grief, which destroys in my
heart the light of this world's sun; and not to add light to _mio
bel sole_, to his glorified spirit. It is fit that other tongues
should preserve his great name from oblivion."
In another, perhaps her most perfect sonnet, she beseeches the winds to
convey to her beloved the message she sends:--
"_Ch'io di lui sempre pensi; o pianga, o parli_,"--That I always
think of him, or weep for him, or speak of him.
Again, a year later, Vittoria returned to lovely Ischia, which, as one
writer has described, "rises out of the blue billows of the
Mediterranean like giant towers. The immense blocks of stone are heaped
one upon another, in such a supernatural manner as to give a coloring to
the legend, that beneath them, in those vast volcanic caverns, dwells
the giant Tifeo." The castle where the Duchessa Francavilla and the
Marchesa Pescara lived is built on a towering mass of rock joined to the
island by a causeway. The castle includes the palace, a church, and
other buildings for the family and their guests and dependants.
For some three years the Marchesa did not again leave Ischia. In the
mean time volumes of her poems were published. She received the
acclamation of all the writers of her time. The crown of immortelles,
often laid but on a tomb, was continually pressed upon her brow. She was
the most famous woman of her time. Her beauty, her genius, her noble
majesty of character impressed the contemporary world. Her days were
filled with correspondence with the most distinguished men of the day.
Ariosto, Castiglione, Ludovico Dolce, Cardinal Bembo, Cardinal
Contarini, and Paolo Giovio were among her nearer circle of friends.
[Illustration: CASTELLO DI ALFONSO, ISCHIA
_Page 306_]
Stormy times fell upon Italy, in all of which the Colonna family bore
prominent part, and all of which affected the life of Vittoria Colonna
in many ways. Her biography, if written with fulness and accuracy, would
be largely a history of the Italy of that time, for her life seemed
always inseparably united with great events.
In the year 1530 (Clement VII being the Pope) a full Papal pardon had
been extended to all the Colonna, and their castles and estates had also
been restored to them. For years past Rome had been in a state of
conflict. Benvenuto Cellini, who had watched the terrible scenes from
Castel San Angelo where he was immured, has described the terrors. The
Eternal City, whose population under Leo X had been 90,000, was now--in
1530--reduced to half that number. Palaces and temples had been the
scenes of riot and destruction, yet to this very lawlessness of the time
the Roman galleries of the present owe their ancient statues, which were
uncovered by these assaults. The Coliseum was left in the ruined state
in which it is now seen, and by the sale of the stones taken from it the
Palazzo Barberini was erected.
Vittoria, coming again to Rome and revisiting its classic greatness,
exclaimed that happy were they who lived in times so full of grandeur;
to which the poet Molza gallantly replied that they were less happy, as
they had not known her! Everywhere was she received with the highest
honors. She made a tour, visiting Bagni di Lucca, Bologna, and Ferrara,
where she was the guest of the Duca and Duchessa Ercole in the ducal
palace. The Duchessa was the Princesse Renée, the daughter of Louis XII
of France, and an ardent friend of Calvin, who visited her in Ferrara.
It was to this visit that Longfellow refers in his poem entitled
"Michael Angelo," when he pictures Vittoria as sitting for her portrait
to the artist and conversing with her friend Giulia, the Duchess of
Trajetto, Michael Angelo begs them to resume the conversation
interrupted by his entrance, and Vittoria says:--
"Well, first, then, of Duke Ercole, a man
Cold in his manners, and reserved and silent,
And yet magnificent in all his ways."
To which the Duchessa replies:--
"How could the daughter of a king of France
Wed such a duke?"
MICHAEL ANGELO.
"The men that women marry,
And why they marry them, will always be
A marvel and a mystery to the world."
VITTORIA.
"And then the Duchess,--how shall I describe her,
Or tell the merits of that happy nature
Which pleases most when least it thinks of pleasing?
Not beautiful, perhaps, in form and feature,
Yet with an inward beauty, that shines through
Each look and attitude and word and gesture;
A kindly grace of manner and behavior,
A something in her presence and her ways
That makes her beautiful beyond the reach
Of mere external beauty; and in heart
So noble and devoted to the truth,
And so in sympathy with all who strive
After the higher life."
JULIA.
"She draws me to her
As much as her Duke Ercole repels me."
VITTORIA.
"Then the devout and honorable women
That grace her court, and make it good to be there;
Francesca Bucyronia, the true-hearted,
Lavinia della Rovere and the Orsini,
The Magdalena and the Cherubina,
And Anne de Parthenai, who sings so sweetly;
All lovely women, full of noble thoughts
And aspirations after noble things.
* * * * *
With these ladies
Was a young girl, Olympia Morata,
Daughter of Fulvio, the learned scholar,
Famous in all the universities:
A marvellous child, who at the spinning-wheel,
And in the daily round of household cares,
Hath learned both Greek and Latin; and is now
A favorite of the Duchess and companion
Of Princess Anne. This beautiful young Sappho
Sometimes recited to us Grecian odes
That she had written, with a voice whose sadness
Thrilled and o'ermastered me, and made me look
Into the future time, and ask myself
What destiny will be hers."
JULIA.
"And what poets
Were there to sing you madrigals, and praise
Olympia's eyes?" ...
VITTORIA.
"None; for great Ariosto is no more."
* * * * *
JULIA.
"He spake of you."
VITTORIA.
"And of yourself, no less,
And of our master, Michael Angelo."
MICHAEL ANGELO.
"Of me?"
VITTORIA.
"Have you forgotten that he calls you
Michael, less man than angel, and divine?
You are ungrateful."
MICHAEL ANGELO.
"A mere play on words."
The Duca and Duchessa of Ferrara invited the most distinguished persons
in Venice and Bologna and Lombardy to meet their honored guest. Bishop
Ghiberto of Verona besought her to visit that city. Vittoria accepted
and was for some time the Bishop's guest in his palace, and she took
great interest in the historic city. With the Bishop she visited the
ancient Duomo, which in 1160 had been restored by Pope Urban II, and
reconsecrated. It was a strong desire of the Marchesa at this time to
make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; but the journey was then so perilous and
so long--none too easy, indeed, at the present time--that she was
dissuaded from the attempt.
Verona, to do her honor, had a medal struck bearing her portrait. The
group of great artists--Titian, Tintoretto, and Giorgione in Venice; Fra
Angelico, Bartolommeo, and others of that day--were creating their
wonderful works which Vittoria must have seen and enjoyed during this
tour. Raphael, whose death had occurred in 1520, Vittoria had,
doubtless, known; but whether it was she who was the original of the
Muse in his great picture of "Parnassus," as is alleged, is not fully
established.
[Illustration: DETAIL FROM "PARNASSUS," RAPHAEL STANZE,
PALAZZO VATICANO, ROME
Raphael Sanzio
_Page 311_]
"Unto my buried lord I give myself,"
wrote Vittoria Colonna in one of the sonnets to her husband's memory,
and this line is the keynote to her entire life, both as woman and poet.
It was no translation of her life into another key, no reckoning by
stars that flashed from different skies, when there fell upon her the
baptism and crown of that immortal friendship with Michael Angelo.
The Marchesa di Pescara returned to Rome, from this notable tour in
Northern Italy, in 1538. She was received with the honors that her fame
inspired. Michael Angelo was then deeply absorbed in painting his "Last
Judgment," in the Capella Sistina.
"Every one in Rome took an interest in the progress of this magnificent
fresco, from the Pope (who continually visited the artist) down to the
humblest of the people. We may imagine Vittoria standing by the great
painter to view his sublime work; but Michael Angelo did not require the
patronage, even of a Colonna, and it is possible that Vittoria herself
first sought out his friendship."
In the Casa Buonarroti, in Florence, hangs that exquisite picture
painted of Italy's greatest woman poet, in her early youth; and in its
rare and precious collection of manuscripts are the letters of Vittoria
to the poet and sculptor. Her influence is said to have produced a great
change in his religious views, influencing his mind to a more lofty and
more spiritual comprehension of the divine laws that govern the
universe.
Condivi, in referring to this chapter in their lives, has said:--
"In particular he was most deeply attached to the Marchesa di
Pescara, of whose divine spirit he was enamoured, and he was
beloved by her in return with much affection."
It was about 1535 when Michael Angelo left Florence for Rome, appointed
by the Pope, Paul III, as the chief architect, sculptor, and painter of
the Vatican. He was enrolled in the Pontifical household, and he at once
began his work in the Sistine Chapel. Mr. Symonds believes that he must
have been engaged upon the "Last Judgment" through 1536, 1537. The great
artist was not without a keen wit of his own as well; for on receipt of
a letter from Pietro Aretino, from Venice, in September of 1537, with
praises of his work that Michael Angelo deemed extravagant, he replied
that while he rejoiced in Aretino's commendation, he also grieved; "as
having finished a large part of the fresco," he said, "I cannot realize
your conception which is so complete that if the Day of Judgment had
come and you had been present and seen it with your eyes, your words
could not have described it better."
Vittoria Colonna now passed some years between Rome and Orvieto, that
picturesque town with its magnificent cathedral rich in mediæval art,
where she lived in the convent of St. Paolo d'Orvieto. She varied this
residence by remaining at times in the convent of San Caterina di
Viterbo, in that city. In Rome she had lived both at the convent of
Santa Anna and also at the Palazzo Cesarini, which was the home of
members of the Colonna family. A sonnet of Michael Angelo's written to
Vittoria reflects the feeling that she inspired in him:--
"Da che concetto ha l'arte intera e diva
La forma e gli atti d'alcun, poi di quello
D'umil materia un semplice modello
È 'l primo parto che da quel deriva.
Ma nel secondo poi di pietra viva
S'adempion le promesse del martello;
E sì rinasce tal concetto e bello,
Che ma' non è chi suo eterno prescriva.
Simil, di me model, nacqu'io da prima;
Di me model, per cosa più perfetta
Da voi rinascer poi, donna alta e degna.
Se 'l poco accresce, 'l mio superchio lima
Vostra pietà; qual penitenzia aspetta
Mio fiero ardor, se mi gastiga e insegna?"
Of this sonnet the following beautiful translation is made by John
Addington Symonds:--
"When divine Art conceives a form and face,
She bids the craftsman for his first essay
To shape a simple model in mere clay:
This is the earliest birth of Art's embrace.
From the live marble in the second place
His mallet brings into the light of day
A thing so beautiful that who can say
When time shall conquer that immortal grace?
Thus my own model I was born to be--
The model of that nobler self, whereto
Schooled by your pity, lady, I shall grow.
Each overplus and each deficiency
You will make good. What penance then is due
For my fierce heat, chastened and taught by you?"
The correspondence between Vittoria and Michael Angelo was undated, and
all that now remains is fragmentary.
The great artist, writing to his nephew, Sionardo, in 1554, says:--
"Messer Giovan Francisco Fattucci asked me about a month ago if I
possessed any writings of the marchioness. I have a little book
bound in parchment which she gave me some ten years ago. It has one
hundred and three sonnets, not counting another forty she afterward
sent on paper from Viterbo. I had these bound into the same book,
and at that time I used to lend them about to many persons so that
they are all of them now in print. In addition to these poems I
have many letters which she wrote from Orvieto and Viterbo. These,
then, are the writings I possess of the marchioness."
In Rome, 1545, Michael Angelo thus writes to Vittoria:--
"I desired, lady, before I accepted the things which your ladyship
has often expressed the will to give me--I desired to produce
something for you with my own hand in order to be as little as
possible unworthy of this kindness. I have now come to recognize
that the grace of God is not to be bought, and that to keep it
waiting is a grievous sin. Therefore I acknowledge my error and
willingly accept your favors. When I possess them--not, indeed,
because I shall have them in my house, but for that I myself shall
dwell in them--the place will seem to encircle me with paradise.
For which felicity I shall remain ever more obliged to your
ladyship than I am already, if that is possible.
"The bearer of this letter will be Urbino, who lives in my service.
Your ladyship may inform him when you would like me to come and see
the head you promised to show me."
With this letter Michael Angelo sent to Vittoria a sonnet which, in the
translation made by John Addington Symonds, is as follows:--
"Seeking at least to be not all unfit
For thy sublime and boundless courtesy,
My lowly thoughts at first were fain to try
What they could yield for grace so infinite.
But now I know my unassisted wit
Is all too weak to make me soar so high,
For pardon, lady, for this fault I cry,
And wiser still I grow remembering it.
Yea, will I see what folly 't were to think
That largess dropped from thee like dews from heaven,
Could e'er be paid by work so frail as mine!
To nothingness my art and talent sink;
He fails who from his mental stores hath given
A thousandfold to match one gift divine."
As a gift to Vittoria Colonna, Michael Angelo designed an episode from
the Passion of our Lord, which Condivi describes as "a naked Christ at
the moment when, taken from the cross, our Lord would have fallen at the
feet of His most holy mother if two angels did not support Him in their
arms. She sits below the cross with a face full of tears and sorrow,
lifting both her widespread arms to heaven while on the stem of the tree
above is written this legend: '_Non vi si pensa quanto sangue costa._'
The cross is of the same kind as that which was carried by the White
Friars at the time of the plague of 1348, and afterward deposited in the
Church of Santa Croce at Florence."
In presenting this cross to her he wrote:--
"Lady Marchioness, being myself in Rome, I thought it hardly
fitting to give the Crucified Christ to Messer Tommaso, and to make
him an intermediary between your ladyship and me, especially
because it has been my earnest wish to perform more for you than
for any one I ever knew upon the world. But absorbing occupations,
which still engage me, have prevented my informing your ladyship of
this. Moreover, knowing that you know love needs no taskmaster, and
that he who loves doth not sleep, I thought the less of using
go-betweens. And though I seemed to have forgotten, I was doing
what I did not talk about, in order to effect a thing that was not
looked for, my purpose has been spoiled. He sins who faith like
this so soon forgets."
[Illustration: VITTORIA COLONNA, GALLERIA BUONARROTI, FLORENCE
_Page 312_]
In reply Vittoria Colonna wrote:--
"Unique Master Angelo and my most singular friend: I have received
your letter and examined the crucifix which truly hath crucified in
my memory every other picture I ever saw. Nowhere could one find
another figure of our Lord so well executed, so living, and so
exquisitely finished. I cannot express in words how subtly and
marvellously it is designed. Wherefore I am resolved to take the
work as coming from no other hand but yours.... I have examined it
minutely in full light and by the lens and mirror, and never saw
anything more perfect."
She added:--
"... Your works forcibly stimulate the judgment of all who would
look at them. My study of them made me speak of adding goodness to
things perfect in themselves, and I have seen now that 'all is
possible to him who believes.' I had the greatest faith in God that
He would bestow upon you supernatural grace for the making of this
Christ. When I came to examine it I found it so marvellous that it
surpasses all my expectations. Wherefore, emboldened by your
miracles I conceived a great desire for that which I now see
marvellously accomplished: I mean that the design is in all parts
perfect and consummate. I tell you that I am pleased that the angel
on the right hand is by far the fairer, since Michael will place
you, with all angels, upon the right hand of the Lord some day.
Meanwhile I do not know how else to serve you, than by making
orisons to this sweet Christ, whom you have drawn so well and
exquisitely, and praying you to hold me yours to command as yours
in all and for all."
Again Vittoria wrote to him:--
"I beg you to let me have the crucifix a short while in my keeping,
even though it be unfinished. I want to show it to some gentlemen
who have come from the most reverend, the Cardinal of Mantua. If
you are not working will you not come at your leisure to-day and
talk with me?"
It is an interesting fact to the visitor in the Rome of to-day that the
convent of San Silvestre where Vittoria Colonna lived was attached to
the church of San Silvestre in Capite, now used as the English-speaking
Catholic church in the Eternal City. The wing which was formerly the
convent (founded in 1318) is now converted into the central post office.
It was in the sacristy of San Silvestre, decorated with frescoes by
Domenichino, that a memorable meeting and conversation took place, one
Sunday afternoon in those far-away days of nearly five hundred years
ago, between Michael Angelo and Francesco d'Ollanda, a Spanish miniature
artist,--the meeting brought about by Vittoria Colonna. The Spanish
artist was a worshipper of Michael Angelo, who "awakened such a feeling
of love," that if d'Ollanda met him in the street "the stars would come
out in the sky," he says, "before I would let him go again." This
fervent worship was hardly enjoyed by its object, who avoided the
Spanish enthusiast. One Sunday, however, d'Ollanda had gone to San
Silvestre finding there Tolomei, to whom he was also devoted, and
Vittoria Colonna, both of whom had gone to hear the celebrated Fra
Ambrosia of Siena expound the Epistles of St. Paul. The Marchesa di
Pescara observed that she felt sure their Spanish friend would far
rather hear Michael Angelo discuss painting than to hear Fra Ambrosia on
the wisdom of St. Paul. Summoning an attendant she directed him to find
Michael Angelo and tell him how cool and delightful was the church that
morning and to beg him to join Messer Tolomei and herself; but to make
no mention of the presence of d'Ollanda. Her woman's tact and her
faultless courtesy were successful in procuring this inestimable
privilege for the Spanish painter. Michael Angelo came, and began the
conversation--which was a monologue, rather, as all three of the friends
wished only to listen to the master--by defending artists from the
charge of eccentric and difficult methods. With somewhat startling
candor Michael Angelo proceeded:--
"I dare affirm that any artist who tries to satisfy the better
vulgar rather than men of his own craft will never become a
superior talent. For my part, I am bound to confess that even his
Holiness wearies and annoys me by begging for too much of my
company. I am most anxious to serve him, ... but I think I can do
so better by studying at home than by dancing attendance on my legs
in his reception room."
Another meeting of this little group was appointed for the next Sunday
in the Colonna gardens behind the convent, under the shadow of the
laurel trees in the air fragrant with roses and orange blossoms, where
they sat with Rome spread out like a picture at their feet. That
beautiful terrace of the Colonna gardens, to which the visitor in Rome
to-day always makes his pilgrimage, with the ruined statues and the
broken marble flights of steps, is the scene of this meeting of Vittoria
Colonna, Michael Angelo, and Francesco d'Ollanda. On this second
occasion the sculptor asserted his belief that while all things are
worthy the artist's attention, the real test of his art is in the
representation of the human form. He extolled the art of design. He
emphasized the essential nature of nobleness in the artist, and added:--
"In order to represent in some degree the adored image of our Lord,
it is not enough that a master should be great and able. I maintain
that he must also be a man of good conduct and morals, if possible
a saint, in order that the Holy Ghost may rain down inspiration on
his understanding."
Of the relative degree of swiftness in work Michael Angelo said:--
"We must regard it as a special gift from God to be able to do that
in a few hours which other men can only perform in many days of
labor. But should this rapidity cause a man to fail in his best
realization it would be better to proceed slowly. No artist should
allow his eagerness to hinder him from the supreme end of
art--perfection."
Mr. Longfellow, in his unfinished dramatic poem, "Michael Angelo" (to
which reference has already been made), has one scene laid in the
convent chapel of San Silvestre, in which these passages occur:--
VITTORIA.
"Here let us rest awhile, until the crowd
Has left the church. I have already sent
For Michael Angelo to join us here."
MESSER CLAUDIO.
"After Fra Bernardino's wise discourse
On the Pauline Epistles, certainly
Some words of Michael Angelo on Art
Were not amiss, to bring us back to earth."
* * * * *
MICHAEL ANGELO, _at the door_.
"How like a Saint or Goddess she appears!
Diana or Madonna, which I know not,
In attitude and aspect formed to be
At once the artist's worship and despair!"
VITTORIA.
"Welcome, Maestro. We were waiting for you."
MICHAEL ANGELO.
"I met your messenger upon the way.
And hastened hither."
VITTORIA.
"It is kind of you
To come to us, who linger here like gossips
Wasting the afternoon in idle talk.
These are all friends of mine and friends of yours."
MICHAEL ANGELO.
"If friends of yours, then are they friends of mine.
Pardon me, gentlemen. But when I entered
I saw but the Marchesa."
Vittoria tells the master that the Pope has granted her permission to
build a convent, and Michael Angelo replies:--
"Ah, to build, to build!
That is the noblest art of all the arts.
Painting and sculpture are but images,
Are merely shadows cast by outward things
On stone or canvas, having in themselves
No separate existence. Architecture,
Existing in itself, and not in seeming
A something it is not, surpasses them
As substance shadow....
... Yet he beholds
Far nobler works who looks upon the ruins
Of temples in the Forum here in Rome.
If God should give me power in my old age
To build for Him a temple half as grand
As those were in their glory, I should count
My age more excellent than youth itself,
And all that I have hitherto accomplished
As only vanity."
To which Vittoria responds:--
"I understand you.
Art is the gift of God, and must be used
Unto His glory. That in art is highest
Which aims at this."
The poet, with his characteristically delicate divination, has entered
into the inner spirit of these two immortal friends.
Walter Pater, writing of Michael Angelo, truly says:--
"Michael Angelo is always pressing forward from the outward
beauty--_il bel del fuor che agli occhi piace_--to apprehend the
unseen beauty; _trascenda nella forma universale_--that abstract
form of beauty about which the Platonists reason. And this gives
the impression in him of something flitting and unfixed, of the
houseless and complaining spirit, almost clairvoyant through the
frail and yielding flesh."
Again we find Pater saying:--
"Though it is quite possible that Michael Angelo had seen Vittoria,
that somewhat shadowy figure, as early as 1537, yet their closer
intimacy did not begin till about the year 1542, when Michael
Angelo was nearly seventy years old. Vittoria herself, an ardent
Neo-Catholic, vowed to perpetual widowhood since the news had
reached her, seventeen years before, that her husband, the youthful
and princely Marquess of Pescara, lay dead of the wounds he had
received in the battle of Pavia, was then no longer an object of
great passion. In a dialogue written by the painter, Francesco
d'Ollanda, we catch a glimpse of them together in an empty church
at Rome, one Sunday afternoon, discussing indeed the
characteristics of various schools of art, but still more the
writings of St. Paul, already following the ways and tasting the
sunless pleasures of weary people, whose hold on outward things is
slackening. In a letter still extant he regrets that when he
visited her after death he had kissed her hands only. He made, or
set to work to make, a crucifix for her use, and two drawings,
perhaps in preparation for it, are now in Oxford.... In many ways
no sentiment could have been less like Dante's love for Beatrice
than Michael Angelo's for Vittoria Colonna. Dante's comes in early
youth; Beatrice is a child, with the wistful, ambiguous vision of a
child, with a character still unaccentuated by the influence of
outward circumstances, almost expressionless. Vittoria is a woman
already weary, in advanced age, of grave intellectual qualities.
Dante's story is a piece of figured work inlaid with lovely
incidents. In Michael Angelo's poems frost and fire are almost the
only images--the refining fire of the goldsmith; once or twice the
phoenix; ice melting at the fire; fire struck from the rock which
it afterwards consumes."
Visconti notes that among Italian poets, Vittoria Colonna was the first
to make religion a subject of poetic treatment, and the first to
introduce nature's ministry to man into poetry. Rota, her Italian
biographer, states that she died in February of 1547, in the Palazzo
Cesarini. This palace is in Genzano, on Lago di Nemi, and has been one
of the Colonna estates; but from Visconti and other authorities it is
evident that she died in Rome, either in the convent of Santa Anna or in
the palace of Cesarini, the husband of her kinswoman, Giulio Colonna,
which must have been near the convent in Trastevere, the old portion of
Rome across the Tiber. Visconti records that on the last evening of her
life when Michael Angelo was beside her, she said: "I die. Help me to
repeat my last prayer. I do not now remember the words." He clasped her
hand and repeated it to her, while her own lips moved, she gazed
intently on him, smiled and passed away. This translation has been made
of Vittoria Colonna's last prayer:--
"Grant, I beseech Thee, O Lord, that I may ever worship Thee with
such humility of mind as becometh my lowliness and such elevation
of mind as Thy loftiness demandeth.... I entreat, O Most Holy
Father, that Thy most living flame may so urge me forward that, not
being hindered by any mortal imperfections, I may happily and
safely again return to Thee."
It is recorded by an authority that her body, "enclosed in a casket of
cypress wood, lined with embroidered velvet," was placed in the chapel
of Santa Anna which has since been destroyed. Visconti says: "She
desired, with Christian humility, to be buried in the manner in which
the sisters were buried when they died. And, as I suppose, her body was
placed in the common sepulchre of the nuns of Santa Anna." Grimm
declares that he cannot discover the place of her burial, and Visconti
declares that her tomb remains unknown.
But it is apparently a fact that the body of Vittoria Colonna is
entombed in the sacristy of Santa Domenica Maggiore in Naples, the
sarcophagus containing it resting by the side of the one containing the
body of her husband, Francesco d'Avalos, Marchese of Pescara. This
church is one of the finest in Naples, with twenty-seven chapels and
twelve altars, and it is here that nearly all the great nobles of the
kingdom of Naples are entombed. Here is the tomb of the learned Thomas
Aquinas and here is shown, in relief, the miracle of the crucifix by
Tommaso de Stefani, which--as the legend runs--thus addressed the
learned doctor:--
"_Bene scripsisti de me, Thoma; quam ergo mercedem recipies?_"
To which he replied: "_Non aliam nisi te._"
It is in the sacristy in which lie all the Princes of the House of
Aragon that the sarcophagi of the Marchese and the Marchesa di Pescara
are placed side by side in the high gallery near the ceiling. The altar
has a fine Annunciation ascribed to Andrea da Salerno. The ceiling
(whose coloring is as fresh and vivid as if painted yesterday) is by
Solimena. Around the walls near the ceiling are two balconies or
galleries, filled with very large wooden sarcophagi, whose scarlet
velvet covers have faded into yellow browns with pink shades, many of
which are tattered and are falling to pieces. The casket containing the
body of Fernando Francesco d'Avalos, Marchese of Pescara (the husband of
Vittoria Colonna), has on it an inscription by Ariosto; and his portrait
(showing in profile a young face with blonde hair and a full reddish
brown beard) and a banner, also, is suspended above the casket. That
containing the body of the Marchesa, his wife (Vittoria Colonna), has an
aperture at the top where the wood is worn away and the embalmed form,
partly crumbled, may be seen. This seems strange to the verge of
fantasy, but it is, apparently, true. The writer of this volume visited
the Church of Santa Domenica Maggiore in Naples in December of 1906, and
was assured by the sacristan that this sarcophagus contains the body of
the Marchesa. Inquiries were then made of other prelates and of the
Archbishop, who gave the same assurance. Later, learned archæologists in
Rome were appealed to, regarding this assertion made in Naples, and the
consensus of opinion obtained declares their assertion true. Professor
Lanciani has himself publicly expressed this conviction. Still, it
remains a curious question as to when this sarcophagus was placed in the
sacristy, for the date goes back into long-buried centuries.
Adjoining Santa Domenica Maggiore is the monastery in which Thomas
Aquinas lived and lectured (in 1272), and the cell of the great doctor
of philosophy is now made into a chapel. His lectures called together
men of the highest rank and learning and were attended by the king and
the members of the royal family. The entire locality of this church is
replete with historic association. The most distinguished of the
nobility of Naples have, for centuries, held their chapels in this
church, and in these are many notable examples of Renaissance sculpture.
The Accadémia des Arcades of Rome, founded in the seventeenth century to
do honor to lyric art, celebrated the placing of a bust of Vittoria
Colonna in a gallery of the Capitoline, in May of 1865, by a resplendent
poetic festa. According to the gentle, leisurely customs of the land,
where it is always afternoon and time has no value, thirty-two poets
read their songs, written in Latin or in Italian, for this occasion,
which were published in a sumptuous volume to be preserved in the
archives of the Arcadians, who take themselves more seriously than the
world outside quite realizes. This bust of Vittoria Colonna was the gift
of the Duca and Duchessa of Torlonia of that period. It was crowned with
laurel, as that of Petrarca had been, and the government took official
recognition of the event.
Goethe was made a member of this Accadémia that regarded itself as
reflecting the glories of the Golden Age of Greece, and which was a
century old at the time of his visit to Italy. "No stranger of any
consequence was readily permitted to leave Rome without being invited to
join this body," he recorded, and he wrote a humorous description of the
formalities of his initiation.
Mrs. Horatio Greenough was honored by being made a member of this
Accadémia in recognition of her musical accomplishments, and the record
of it is placed on the memorial marble over her grave in the Protestant
cemetery in Rome. Every year, on Tasso's birthday (April 25), the
Accadémia holds a festa in a little amphitheatre near "Tasso's oak," on
the Janiculum, at which his bust is crowned with laurel. The gardens in
which the seventeenth-century Arcadians disported themselves are now
known among the Romans as _il Bosco Parrasio degli Arcadi_.
Throughout Italy the fame of Vittoria Colonna only deepens with every
succeeding century. Her nobility of character, her lofty spirituality of
life, fitly crowned and perfected her intellectual force and brilliant
gifts. Although from the customs of the time the Marchesa lived much in
convents, she never, in any sense, save that of her fervent piety, lived
the conventual life. Her noble gifts linked her always to the larger
activities, and her gifts and rank invested her with certain demands and
responsibilities that she could not evade. She was one of the messengers
of life, and her place as a brilliant and distinguished figure in the
contemporary world was one that the line of destiny, which pervades all
circumstances and which, in her case, was so marked, absolutely
constrained her to fill. She had that supreme gift of the lofty nature,
the power of personal influence. Her exquisite courtesy and graciousness
of manner, her simple dignity and unaffected sincerity, her delicacy of
divination and her power of tender sympathy and liberal comprehension
all combined to make her the ideal companion, counsellor, and friend, as
well as the celebrity of letters and lyric art.
No poet has more exquisitely touched the friendship between Vittoria
Colonna and Michael Angelo than has Margaret J. Preston, in a poem
supposed to be addressed to the sculptor by Vittoria, in which occur the
lines:--
"We twain--one lingering on the violet verge,
And one with eyes raised to the twilight peaks--
Shall meet in the morn again.
* * * * *
... Supremest truth I gave;
Quick comprehension of thine unsaid thought,
Reverence, whose crystal sheen was never blurred
By faintest film of over-breathing doubt;
... helpfulness
Such as thou hadst not known of womanly hands;
And sympathies so urgent, they made bold
To press their way where never mortal yet
Entrance had gained,--even to thy soul."
This is the _Page de Conti_ that one reads in the air as he sails past
Ischia on the violet sea; and the _chant d'amour_ of the sirens catches
the echo of lines far down the centuries:--
"I understood not, when the angel stooped,
Whispering, 'Live on! for yet one joyless soul,
Void of true faith in human happiness,
Waits to be won by thee, from unbelief.'
"Now, all is clear. For _thy_ sake I am glad
I waited. Not that some far age may say,--
'_God's benison on her, since she was the friend
Of Michael Angelo!_'"
_So sometimes comes to soul and sense
The feeling which is evidence
That very near about us lies
The realm of spiritual mysteries.
The sphere of the supernal powers
Impinges on this world of ours.
The low and dark horizon lifts,
To light the scenic terror shifts;
The breath of a diviner air
Blows down the answer of a prayer:--
That all our sorrow, pain, and doubt
A great compassion clasps about,
And law and goodness, love and force,
Are wedded fast beyond divorce.
Then duty leaves to love its task,
The beggar Self forgets to ask;
With smile of trust and folded hands,
The passive soul in waiting stands
To feel, as flowers the sun and dew,
The One true Life its own renew._
WHITTIER.
"_For Thou only art holy. Thou only art the Lord. Thou only, O
Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the Glory of God the
Father._"
_Sometimes in heaven-sent dreams I do behold
A city with its turrets high in air,
Its gates that gleam with jewels strange and rare,
And streets that glow with burning of red gold;
And happy souls, through blessedness grown bold,
Thrill with their praises all the radiant air,
And God himself is light, and shineth there
On glories tongue of man hath never told._
_And in my dreams I thither march, nor stay
To heed earth's voices, howsoe'er they call,
Or proffers of the joys of this brief day,
On which so soon the sunset shadows fall;
I see the Gleaming Gates, and toward them press--
What though my path lead through the Wilderness?_
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
V
VOICES OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Oh, Italy! thy strength, thy power, thy crown
Lie in the life that in Assisi stirs
The heart, with impulse of self-sacrifice;
Where still St. Francis gathers weary souls
In his great love, which reaches out to all.
... His blessing falls
In clear sweet tones: "_Benedicat tibi
Convertat vultum suum ad te et
Det Pacem!_" Hushed and holy silence breathes
About the wanderer who lifts his heart
To catch the echo of that voice of love.
CELIA RICHMOND.
The mystic pilgrimage to Assisi, the "Seraphic City," prefigures itself
almost as a journey to the Mount of Vision. "Any line of truth that
leads us above materialism," says Dr. Wilberforce, Venerable Archdeacon
of Westminster Abbey, "that forces us to think, that encourages the
imagination to pierce the world's cobwebs, that forces us to remember
that we are enwrapped by the supernatural, is helpful and stimulating. A
human life lived only in the seen and felt, with no sense of the
invisible, is a fatally impoverished life, a poor, blind, wingless life,
but to believe that ever around us is a whole world full of spiritual
beings; that this life, with its burdens, is but the shadow which
precedes the reality; that here we are but God's children at school, is
an invigorating conviction, full of hope, productive of patience and
fruitful in self-control."
To an age imprisoned in the fear of God the "sweet saint," Francis,
brought the message of the love of God. To an age crushed under the
abuses of religion as an organization of feudal bishops and
ecclesiastics, St. Francis brought the message of hope and of joy. He
revealed to his age the absolute reality of the spiritual world that
surrounds us. He was born into a time when there existed on the one
hand, poverty and misery; on the other, selfish and debasing
self-indulgence of wealth and its corresponding oppression of the poor.
The Church itself was a power for conquest and greed. Its kingdom was of
this world. St. Bernard and others had nobly aimed to effect a reform
and had illustrated by their own lives the beautiful example of
simplicity and unselfishness, but their work failed in effectiveness
and permanent impress.
"Oh, beauty of holiness!
Of self-forgetfulness, of lowliness."
Not only in beauty, but in power does it stand. St. Francis brought to
the sad and problematic conditions of his time that resistless energy of
infinite patience, of a self-control based on insight into the divine
relationships of life, and of unfailing fidelity to his high purpose.
Through good report or through evil report he kept the faith, and
pressed onward to the high calling of God. The twelfth and the
thirteenth centuries had been a period of religious unrest and chaos. As
Archdeacon Wilberforce has so impressively said in the words quoted from
him, a life lived with no sense of the invisible is blind and
impoverished. The movement initiated by St. Francis proclaimed anew the
divine grace and love.
"Tokens are dead if the things live not. The light everlasting
Unto the blind is not, but is born of the eye that has vision."
Something not unlike this trend of thought must drift through the mind
of every one who journeys through the lovely Umbrian country to Assisi,
one of those picturesquely beautiful hill towns of Italy whose romantic
situation impresses the visitor. Seen from a little distance, one could
hardly imagine how it could be reached unless he were the fortunate
possessor of an airship. The entire region is most picturesque in
character. Journeying from Rome to Assisi there is a constant ascent
from the Campagna to the Apennines, and the road passes through wild
defile and valley with amethyst peaks shining fair against the sky, with
precipitous rocks, and the dense growth of oak and pine trees. In some
places the valley is so narrow that the hills, on either side, rise
almost within touch of the hand from the car window. The hill towns are
frequent, and the apex of these towns is invariably crowned with a
castle, a cathedral, or a ruin, and around it, circling in terraces, is
built the town. The charm largely vanishes when fairly in these circling
roads, for on either side are high walls, so that one's view is
completely bounded by them; but from the summit and from the upper
floors of the houses the most beautiful views are obtained. The Umbrian
region, in which are located Perugia, Assisi, Spello, Foligno, Spoleto,
Terni, Narni, and others, is simply the gem region of all Italy. The
Umbrians are the most ancient of the Italian people, and Assisi claims
to have been founded eight hundred and sixty-five years before the
founding of Rome. It was the scene of constant warfare, and the streets
are all underlaid by subterranean passages, in which the inhabitants
could disappear from their enemies.
To this ancient Umbrian city, from which went out the life and light
that carried wonderful currents of vitality and illumination to all
Italy and into almost all parts of the world, one comes as to a special
and a sacred pilgrimage. For this mediæval town, perched on the top of a
rocky hill, is the birthplace of St. Francis, the founder of the
Franciscan order; in it were the scenes of his early life, and here, in
1226, at the age of forty-four years, he died. The convent-church of San
Francesco, built to his memory in 1230; the lower church, completed at
that date, while the upper was finished in 1253; the magnificent
Cathedral of Santa Maria Degli Angeli, completed in 1640; the Church of
Santa Chiara and the Duomo, are the points of interest.
[Illustration: SAN FRANCESCAN CONVENT-CHURCH, ASSISI
_Page 346_]
The purple Apennines, on one spur of which Assisi is built, are a
picturesque feature of lovely Umbria. The old houses of Assisi rise
white in the sunshine. The ancient walls still surround the city, and
its towers stand as they stood before the eyes of St. Francis, almost
seven centuries ago. The peak of Mt. Subasio, a neighboring peak of the
Apennines, looms above the colossal rock that crowns the hill around
whose top Assisi clusters in winding terraces. The massive pile of the
Francescan church and monastery--the two churches, one above the
other--forms an architectural group whose imposing aspect arrests the
eye of every traveller for miles around. The pointed arches of the
cloisters and the square campanile contrast rather than blend in an
effective and harmonious manner and resemble military fortifications
rather than an edifice of the church. The old walls still surround
Assisi, and the houses all rise white under the blue Italian sky. The
narrow streets, hardly wide enough for one carriage to pass another, are
so intricate in their curves as they climb the steep hill, that it
requires a faith hardly less than the traditional degree said to move
mountains to lead the visitor to suppose that he will ever emerge
from one that he has entered. Many of the houses along these curious
thoroughfares have no windows, the only light and air coming through the
open door. The bells from the campanile of the Francescan
convent-church, from the Duomo and from the Church of Santa Chiara ring
every quarter of an hour; and this constant clash of bells is almost the
only sound that breaks the silence of the mediæval town, which lends
itself to visions and to dreams. On the very air is stamped the impress
of St. Francis. His personality, his teachings, his faith pervaded the
atmosphere in a way that no one could believe until he had himself
entered into the experience. In narration it cannot but seem like a
pleasing and half-poetic fancy; but the lingerer in this shrine of
religion and art will realize that the actual personality of the man who
trod these streets nearly seven hundred years ago is strangely before
him. Canon Knox Little, in a series of lectures on St. Francis of Assisi
delivered in the Ladye Chapel of Worcester Cathedral a few years since,
says of the panorama of the town:--
"The scene which from Assisi presented itself daily to his youthful
eyes must have had, did have, as we know, a lasting effect upon his
mind. From thence the eye surveys a noble coronet of stately
mountains. You look from Radicofani, above Trena, to Monte Catria,
famous as the scene of some of Dante's saddest times of solitude,
and ever is the eye satisfied with the grace and grandeur of the
curves of mountain outline, and the changing hues of an
incomparable sky. There are rivers and cities and lakes,--from
Thrasymene, just hidden by a line of crests, to the Paglia and
Tiber beneath, where Orvieto crowns its severe and lonely rock.
With the changing lights and shadows always beautiful in the vivid
spring or burning summer, tender-tinted autumn or clear and
sparkling winter, with the bright and pure and buoyant atmosphere
always giving life and vigor, what spot on earth more fitted as the
birthplace of the saint who was, above all things, bright and
tender and strong?"
Assisi was an important town in the twelfth century when Francis, the
son of Pietro Bernardone di Mercanti, wandered over its hills, and after
severe fasting and prayer communed with God. Born in the midst of the
constant warfare between Assisi and Perugia, he was first a soldier. He
was captured and thrown into prison, and it was a remarkable dream, or
vision, that came to him before he was set free, that determined his
life of consecration. Tradition invested his birth with legends, one of
which is, that in his infancy an aged man came to the door and begged to
be permitted to take the child in his arms, prophesying that he was
destined to accomplish a great work. Pietro Bernardone was a wealthy
merchant of Assisi. Pica, the mother of Francis, is said to have been of
noble origin and of a deeply religious nature. The early youth of
Francis was given to games, festivals, and pleasures that degenerated
into dissipation, but the mother continually affirmed her assurance
that, if it pleased God, her son would become a Christian. In this
atmosphere was nurtured "the sweet-souled saint of mediæval Italy," who
is described as a figure of magical power, whose ardent temperament and
mystic loveliness attracted to him all men.
There is also a legend that Pica went to pray at the Portiuncula and
that, for seven years, she prayed for a son. Her prayer was answered in
the coming of the infant who was to be the great saint of all the ages.
Francis, in his childhood, also knelt and prayed at this shrine. In the
year 1211, when Francis was twenty-nine years of age and had entered on
his ministry, this chapel was given to him, "and no sooner had they come
to live here," it is said, "than the Lord multiplied their number from
day to day." At one time he had gone to his devotions in great
depression of spirits, "when, suddenly, an unspeakable ecstasy filled
his breast. 'Be comforted, my dearest,' he said, 'and rejoice in the
Lord, and let us not be sad that we are few; for it has been shown to me
by God that you shall increase to a great multitude and shall go on
increasing to the end of the world. I see a multitude of men coming to
me from every quarter--French, Spaniards, Germans, English--each in
their different tongues encouraging the others.'"
At a distance of perhaps a mile and a half from Assisi, down in the
valley near the railroad station, four holy pilgrims founded a shrine in
the fourth century. Later, on this site, St. Benedict erected a tiny
chapel, called "St. Maria della Portiuncula" (St. Mary of the Little
Patron), and once, when praying in the chapel, Benedict had a vision of
a vast crowd of people kneeling in ecstasy, chanting hymns of praise,
while outside greater multitudes waited to kneel before the shrine, and
he took this to mean that a great saint would one day be honored there.
So the legends, still conversationally told in Assisi, run on and are
locally current. Undoubtedly the dwellers in this curious old town,
whose streets have hardly one level spot but climb up and down the steep
hillside, realize that their saint is their title to fame and their
revenue as well; yet through all the tales there breathes a certain
sincerity and simplicity of worship. The little dark primitive shops
teem with relics, which make, it is true, a great draft on imagination,
and by what miracle modern photography has contrived to present the
saint of Assisi in various impressive attitudes and groups it would be
as well not to inquire too closely. It is a part of the philosophy of
travel to take the goods the gods provide, and the blending of amused
tolerance and unsuspected depths of reverential devotion by which the
visitor will find himself moved, while in Assisi, can hardly be
described. For, surely, here
"... there trod
The whitest of the saints of God,"
and Catholic or Protestant, one equally enters into the beauty of his
memory. The double and triple arches of the convent church enclose
cloistered walls continually filled with visitors. No shrine in Italy
holds such mysterious power. Simplicity and joy were the two keynotes of
the life taught by St. Francis. "Poverty," he asserted, "is the happy
state of life in which men are set free from the trammels of
conventionalism, and can breathe the pure air of God's love. The richest
inward life is enjoyed when life is poorest outwardly. Be poor," he
continued, "try a new principle; be careless of having and getting; try
_being_, for a change. Our life in the world ought to be such that any
one on meeting us should be constrained to praise the heavenly Father.
Be not an occasion of wrath to any one," he often said, "but by your
gentleness may all be led to press onward to good works."
The supreme aim of Francis was that of service to humanity. He gave
himself with impassioned fervor to this one work. For him there were no
ideals of cloistered seclusion or of devotion to learning and art, but
the ideal alone to uplift humanity. It was literally and simply, indeed,
the Christ ideal. Of the "Rule" made, one of his biographers says:--
"Amid all these encouragements the Rule was made. It consists, like
other monastic rules, of the three great vows of poverty, chastity,
and obedience, differing only in so far that the poverty ordained
by Francis was absolute. In other rules, though the individual was
allowed to possess nothing, the community had often rich
possessions, and there was no reason why the monks should not fare
sumptuously and secure to themselves many earthly enjoyments,
notwithstanding their individual destitution and their vow. But
among the Brothers Minor there was not to be so much as a provision
secured for the merest daily necessities. Day by day they were to
live by God's providence, eating what was given to them, taking no
thought how they were to be fed, or wherewithal clothed; 'neither
gold nor silver in your purses;' not even the scrip to collect
fragments in--as if God could not provide for every returning
necessity. There had been monasteries in Italy for centuries, and
the Benedictines were already a great and flourishing community;
but this absolute renunciation of all things struck a certain chill
to the hearts of all who heard of it, except the devoted band who
had no will but that of Francis. His friend, the Bishop of Assisi,
was one of those who stumbled at this novel and wonderful
self-devotion. 'Your life, without a possession in the world, seems
to me most hard and terrible,' said the compassionate prelate. 'My
lord,' said Francis, 'if we had possessions, arms and protection
would be necessary to us.' There was a force in this response which
perhaps we can scarcely realize, but the Assisan bishop, who knew
something of the temper of the lords of Umbria, and knew how lonely
were the brethren dwelling on the church lands--the little plot
(Portiuncula) a whole half league from the city gates--understood
and perceived the justice of the reply.
"Another grand distinction of the Rule drawn up by Francis was the
occupation it prescribed to its members. They were not to shut
themselves up, or to care first for their own salvation. They were
to preach--this was their special work; they were to proclaim
repentance and the remission of sins; they were to be heralds of
God to the world, and proclaim the coming of His kingdom. It is not
possible to suppose that when he thus began to organize the mind of
Francis did not make a survey of the establishments already in
existence--the convents bound by the same three great vows, where
life at this moment was going on so placidly, with flocks and herds
and vineyards to supply the communities, and studious monks in
their retirement, safe from all secular anxieties, fostering all
the arts in their beginning, and carrying on the traditions of
learning; while all around them the great unquiet, violent world
heaved and struggled, yet within the convent walls there was
leisure and peace. Blessed peace and leisure it was often, let us
allow, preserving for us the germs of many good things we now
enjoy, and raising little centres of safety and charity and
brotherly kindness through the country in which they were placed.
But such quiet was not in the nature of Francis. So far as we can
make out, he had thought little of himself--even of his own soul to
be saved--all his life. The trouble on his mind had been what to
do, how sufficiently to work for God and to help men. His fellow
creatures were dear to him; he gave them his cloak from his
shoulders many a day, and the morsel from his own lips, and would
have given them the heart from his bosom had that been possible."
These are the "voices" that still echo in the air of Assisi. In the
suburbs is still shown the spot where the chapel of St. Damian stood up
a rocky path on the hillside in an olive grove. It was here that the
scene of the miracle of the crucifix is laid. Before the altar Francis
knelt, praying: "Great and Glorious Father, and thou, Lord Jesus, I pray
ye, shed abroad your light in the darkness of my mind. May I in all
things act in accordance with thy holy will."
It is recorded that while he thus knelt in deep prayer, he was unable to
turn his eyes from the cross, conscious that something marvellous was
taking place. The image of the Saviour assumed life; the eyes turned
attentively on him; a voice spoke accepting his service and he felt at
once endowed with the most marvellous tide of vitality, of joy, and of
exhilaration. At this moment he entered on that life whose impress is
left on the ages. Of the character and the peculiar quality of its
influence Mrs. Oliphant well says:--
"It is not always possible to follow with our sympathy that
literal, childlike rendering of every incident in the life of the
Master, which sometimes looks fantastical and often unmeaning. He
was a man of his time, and could live only under the conditions
which that time allowed. He made visible to a literal, practical,
unquestioning age the undeniable and astounding fact that the
highest of all beings chose a life of poverty, hardship, and
humbleness; that He chose submission instead of resistance, love
instead of oppression, peace and forgiveness instead of revenge and
war. Christ had died in their hearts, as said the legend of that
Christmas at Greccia; and, as in one of the bold and artless
pictures just then beginning to yield to a more refined and subtle
art, Francis set forth before the world the image of his Master.
The Son of man was lifted up, as on another cross, before the eyes
of Umbria, before all Italy, warlike and wily, priest and baron,
peasant and Pope. In this world Francis knew nothing, acknowledged
nothing, cared for nothing save Christ and Him crucified--except,
indeed, Christ's world, the universe redeemed, the souls to be
saved, the poor to be comforted, the friends to be cherished, the
singing birds and bubbling fountains, the fair earth and the sweet
sky. Courteous, tender, and gentle as any paladin, sweet-tongued
and harmonious as any poet, liberal as any prince, was the
barefooted beggar and herald of God. We ask no visionary reverence
for the Stigmata, no wondering belief in any miracle. As he stood,
he was as great a miracle as any then existing under God's
abundant, miraculous heavens; more wonderful than are the day and
night, the sun and the dew; only less wonderful than that great
Love which saves the world, and which it was his aim and destiny to
reflect and show forth."
That mystic union to which all the ages attest, the union that may, at
any moment, be formed between the soul and God, that mystery which the
church calls conversion and which finds its perfect interpretation in
the words of St. Paul, when he said, that if any man be in Christ he is
a new creation, had been accomplished in the life of Francis. He
realized the fulness of the knowledge of God's will; he longed only for
wisdom and for spiritual understanding. Nor is this experience one to be
relegated to the realm of miracle. It is simply entering into the
supreme completeness of life. It is not alone St. Paul, but every man,
who may truly say, "I can do all things through Christ, who
strengtheneth me." Nor does this experience, when translated aright into
daily life and action, require any abnormal form of expression. It does
not, in its truest significance, mean a life apart from the ordinary
duties, but rather it means that these duties shall be fulfilled in the
larger and nobler way. The exceptional man may be called to be the
standard bearer; to renounce all domestic ties and give his service to
the world; but such a life as this differs only in degree from that
which in the ordinary home and social relations finds ample means for
its best expression. The persistent aim after perfection should be the
keynote of every life. No one should be satisfied to hold as his
supreme ideal any lesser standard of ultimate achievement than is
involved in the divine command, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your
Father in heaven is perfect." This is the soul's ideal, whatever ages
and eternities it may require for it to recognize this trackless path.
St. Francis recognized joy as a factor of the nobler life. "It was his
constant effort," writes one biographer, "that there should be bright
looks and cheerful tones about him. To one of his brethren, who had the
habit of walking about sadly with his head drooping, he said,--it is
evident, with a spark of the impatience natural to his own vivacious
spirit,--'You may surely repent of your sins, my brother, without
showing your grief so openly. Let your sorrow be between God and you:
pray to Him to pardon you by His mercy, and to restore to your soul the
joy of His salvation. But before me and the others be always cheerful,
for it does not become a servant of God to have an air of melancholy and
a face full of trouble.'"
An incident in the early life of St. Francis, which had determining
significance, was his meeting with Dominic. The story is told "that
Dominic, praying in a church in Rome, saw, in a vision, our Lord rise
from the right hand of the Father in wrath, wearied at last with the
contradiction of sinners, with a terrible aspect and three lances in his
hand, each one of which was to destroy from the face of the earth a
distinct class of offenders. But while the dreamer gazed at this awful
spectacle, the Virgin Mother arose and pleaded for the world, declaring
that she had two faithful servants whom she was about to send into it to
bring sinners to the feet of the Saviour; one of these was Dominic
himself, the other was a poor man, meanly clad, whom he had never seen
before. This vision came to the devout Spaniard, according to the
legend, during the night, which he spent, as he was wont, in a church,
in prayer. Next morning, while he mused on the dream which had been sent
to him, his eye fell all at once upon a stranger in a brown tunic, of
aspect as humble and modest as his garb, coming into the same church to
pray. Dominic at once ran to him, fell on his neck, and, saluting him
with a kiss, cried, 'Thou art my companion: thy work and mine is the
same. If we stand by each other, nothing can prevail against us.'"
No magic mirror, however, revealed to Francis the wonderful panorama of
his future. No sibyl turned the leaves of the records yet to unfold. "He
was preparing himself for a life of penitence rather than a life of
activity," in the opinion of Paul Sabatier, and he had dreamed no dream
of becoming a religious founder. He was so entirely without any personal
ambition, save that of being obedient to the Heavenly Vision, that this
absolute consecration of purpose enabled the divine power to work
through him without obstruction. He became a very perfect instrument, so
to speak, in the divine hand. After repairing the little chapel called
the Portiuncula, on the level ground at the foot of the hill, some two
miles from Assisi, his plan was to there pass his time in meditation and
prayer. But the legend runs that on the feast of St. Mathias (February
24), in the winter of 1209, a Benedictine monk was celebrating mass and
on his turning to read, "Wherever ye go preach, saying, The kingdom of
heaven is at hand," Francis was profoundly and peculiarly impressed, and
he exclaimed: "This is what I desire, O Father; from this day forth I
set myself to put this command in practice." He felt that Jesus himself
had spoken to him through the priest. Love and sacrifice became to him
the supreme ideals, and in this moment, in that poor and bare little
chapel, was inaugurated one of the greatest and most far-reaching
religious movements of the entire world.
"Not always as the whirlwind's rush
On Horeb's mount of fear,
Not always as the burning bush
To Midian's shepherd seer,
Not as the awful voice which came
To Israel's prophet bards,
Nor as the tongues of cloven flame,
Nor gift of fearful words,--
"Not always thus with outward sign
Of fire or voice from Heaven
The message of a truth divine,
The call of God is given!"
That great ministry of St. Francis, whose influence pervades all
time,--that lies between the opening years of the thirteenth and the
opening years of the twentieth centuries,--was initiated the next
morning in Assisi, when Francis preached for the first time. He spoke
simply, emphasizing the truths he had learned to realize through his own
experience: the absolute duty of following after perfection; the
importance of realizing the shortness of life and the need of
repentance. The first disciple of Francis was a wealthy resident of
Assisi, named Bernardo. He was impressed with the conviction that he
should distribute his possessions and unite with Francis in all his aims
and work. Without definite organization, others joined them. They passed
that spring and summer going up and down the country, sometimes
assisting the harvesters and haymakers, and everywhere entering into the
common life of the people. The Bishop of Assisi, however, remonstrated
with Francis, saying that to him it seemed very harsh and unwise to try
to live without owning anything. To which Francis replied that he did
not desire temporal possessions, as these required arms for their
defence and were an obstacle to the love of God and one's neighbor. It
has remained for later years to discern the still truer significance of
the teachings of Jesus, that neither possessions nor the lack of
possessions form the real test, but the use which is made of them. As
spiritual insight is developed it is more and more clearly realized that
the quality of the life lived is the sole matter of importance, and not
the conditions that surround it.
The brotherhood increased. The abbot of the Benedictines on Monte
Subasio ceded to Francis and his order the little chapel called the
Portiuncula, now enclosed within the vast and magnificent church of
Santa Maria degli Angeli. M. Paul Sabatier, in his admirable biography
of St. Francis, points out clearly that the founder of the Franciscans
contemplated a laboring and not a mendicant order. During the decade
1211 to 1221, which Francis and his followers passed at the Portiuncula,
a portion of the time was constantly passed in industrial pursuits.
"With all his gentleness, Francis knew how to show an inflexible
severity toward the idle," says Sabatier, "and he even went so far as to
dismiss a friar who refused to work." Although Francis espoused poverty,
declaring that she was his bride, he was unfalteringly loyal to the
ideals of honest industry and integrity.
[Illustration: ST. FRANCIS D'ASSISI, THE DUOMO, ASSISI
Giovanni Dupré
_Page 366_]
The mystic legends of the life of their saint that abound in Assisi are
touched with poetic romance in that a companion figure is always seen by
his side, that of Santa Chiara. Not more inseparable in popular thought
are Dante and Beatrice, or Petrarca and Laura, than are Francis and
Clara. Their statues stand side by side in the Duomo; they are
represented together by both painter and sculptor in the churches of
Santa Chiara and Santa Maria degli Angeli in the old hill town. Chiara
was the daughter of a noble family, and as a girl of sixteen, coming
under the influence of Francis from hearing one of his sermons, she,
too, became one of his followers and left her father's palace in Assisi
to take the vows of perpetual and voluntary poverty at the altar of the
Portiuncula. Followed by two women, she passed swiftly through the town
in the dead of the night, and through dark woods, her hurrying figure
seeming like some spirit driven by winds towards an unknown future. One
thing alone was clear before her--that she was nearing the abode of
Francis Bernardone whose preaching at San Giorgio only a month before
had thrilled her, inspiring her in this strange way to seek the life he
had described in fiery words. Just as she came in sight of the
Portiuncula the chanting of the brethren, which had reached her in the
wood, suddenly ceased, and they came out with lighted torches in
expectation of her coming. Swiftly and without a word she passed in
to attend the midnight mass which Francis was to serve, and the scene is
thus described:--
"The ceremony was simple, wherein lies the charm of all things
Franciscan. The service over and the last blessing given, St.
Francis led Clare toward the altar, and with his own hands cut off
her long, fair hair and unclasped the jewels from her neck. But a
few minutes more and a daughter of the proud house of Scifi stood
clothed in the brown habit of the order, the black veil of religion
falling about her shoulders, lovelier far in this nun-like severity
than she had been when decked out in all her former luxury of
silken gowns and precious gems.
"It was arranged that Clare was to go afterward to the Benedictine
nuns of San Paolo, near Bastia, about an hour's walk farther on in
the plain. So when the final vows had been taken, St. Francis took
her by the hand and they passed out of the chapel together just as
dawn was breaking, while the brethren returned to their cells
gazing half sadly, as they passed, at the coils of golden hair and
the little heap of jewels which still lay upon the altar cloth."
Clara founded a convent and lived as its abbess, and the great church of
Santa Chiara is built on the site of this convent. She was born in
Assisi in 1194, and died in 1253, surviving Francis by twenty-seven
years. Her father was the Count Favorini Scifi, and he had destined his
daughter--who had great beauty--to a rich and brilliant marriage. He
violently opposed her choice of the religious life, but no earthly
power, she declared, should sever her from it.
The beauty of the lifelong friendship between Francis and Clara is thus
touched upon by Mrs. Oliphant:--
"It was one of those tender and touching friendships which are to
the student of history like green spots in the desert; and which
gave to the man and the woman thus voluntarily separated from all
the joys of life a certain human consolation in the midst of their
hardships. They can have seen each other but seldom, for it was one
of the express stipulations of the Franciscan Rule that the friars
should refrain from all society with women, and have only the most
sparing and reserved intercourse even with their sisters in
religion. And Francis was no priest, nor had he the privilege of
hearing confession and directing the spiritual life of his daughter
in the faith. But he sent to her to ask enlightenment from her
prayers, when any difficulty was in his way. He went to see her
when he was in trouble; especially once on his way to Rieti to have
an operation performed on his eyes. Once the two friends ate
together at a sacramental meal, the pledge and almost the
conclusion on earth of that tenderest, most disinterested, and
unworldly love which existed between them. That he was sure of her
sympathy in all things, of her prayers and spiritual aid,
whatsoever he might be doing, wheresoever he might be, no doubt was
sweet to Francis in all his labors and trials. As he walked many a
weary day past that church of St. Damian, every stone of which was
familiar to him, and many laid with his own hands, must not his
heart have warmed at thought of the sister within, safe from all
conflict with the world, upon whose fellow-feeling he could rely
absolutely as man can rely only on woman? The world has jeered at
the possibility of such friendships from its earliest age; and yet
they have always existed,--one of the most exquisite and delicate
of earthly ties. Gazing back into that far distance over the
graves, not only of those two friends, but of a hundred succeeding
generations, a tear of grateful sympathy comes into the student's
eye. He is glad to believe that, all those years, Francis could see
in his comings and goings the cloister of Clara; and that this
sacred gleam of human fellowship,--love purified of all
self-seeking,--tender, visionary, celestial affection, sweetened
their solitary lives."
Legends innumerable, attesting supernormal manifestations regarding
Francis, sprang up and have been perpetuated through the ages. One is as
follows:--
"Hardly more than three years from the moment when the pale
penitent was hooted through Assisi amid the derisive shouts of the
people, and driven with blows and curses into confinement in his
own father's house, we find that it has already become his custom
on Sunday to preach in the cathedral; and that, from his little
convent at the Portiuncula, Francis has risen into influence in the
whole country, which no doubt by this time was full of stories of
his visit to Rome and intercourse with the Pope, and all the
miraculous dreams and parables with which that intercourse was
attended. Already the mind of the people, so slow to adopt, but so
ready to become habituated to, anything novel, had used itself to
the sight of the brethren in their brown gowns, and, leaping from
one extreme to the other, instead of madmen, learned to consider
them saints. The air about the little cloister began to breathe of
miracles,--miracles which must have been a matter of common report
among the contemporaries of the saint, for Celano wrote within
three years of Francis's death. Once, when their leader was absent,
a sudden wonder startled the brethren. It was midnight between
Saturday and Sunday, and Francis, who had gone to preach at Assisi,
was at the moment praying in the canon's garden. A chariot of fire,
all radiant and shining, suddenly entered the house, awaking those
who lay asleep, and moving to wonder and awe those who watched, or
labored, or prayed. It was the heart and thoughts of their leader
returning to them in the midst of his prayer, which were figured by
this appearance."
When Francis died a pathetic scene is thus described:--
"All the clergy of Assisi, chanting solemn hymns, came out to meet
the bier, and thus they climbed the hill to the birthplace of the
saint, the city of his toils and tears and blessing. When they came
to St. Damian an affecting pause was made. Clara within, with all
her maidens, waited the last visit of their father and friend.
Slowly the triumphant crowd defiled into the church of the nuns,
hushing, let us hope, their songs of joy, their transports of
gratulations, out of respect to the grief which dwelt there, and
could scarcely, by all the arguments of family pride, or the
excitement of this universal triumph, be brought to rejoice. The
bier was set down within the chancel, the coffin opened, and opened
also was the little window through which the nuns received the
sacrament on ordinary occasions. To this little opening the pale
group of nuns, ten of them, with Clara at their head, came marching
silently, with tears and suppressed cries. Clara herself, even in
face of that multitude, could not restrain her grief. 'Father,
father, what will become of us?' she cried out; 'who will care for
us now, or console us in our troubles?' 'Virgin modesty,' says
Celano, stopped her lamentations, and with a miserable attempt at
thanksgiving, reminding herself that the angels were rejoicing at
his coming, and all was gladness on his arrival in the city of God,
the woman who had been his closest friend in this world, whose
sympathy he had sought so often, kissed the pale hands--'splendid
hands,' says Celano, in his enthusiasm, 'adorned with precious gems
and shining pearls'--and disappeared from the little window with
her tears into the dim convent behind, where nobody could reprove
her sorrow."
The personality of Chiara comes down to us through the ages invested
with untold charm. It is said that when she was dying there came "a long
procession of white-robed virgins, led by the Queen of Heaven, whose
head was crowned with a diadem of shining gold, each of the celestial
visitors stooped to kiss Chiara as her soul passed to its home."
During all the life of Francis, whenever any new movement or work was to
be undertaken, he invariably sent to ask the counsel and the prayers of
Chiara.
The miraculous preservation of the body of Santa Chiara is one of the
articles of faith in Assisi. In 1850--six hundred years after her
death--a tomb believed to be hers was found and opened in the presence
of a distinguished group of ecclesiastics, among whom was Cardinal
Pecci, later Pope Leo XIII. In this tomb a form is said to have been
found, and it has been placed in a reliquary of alabaster and Carrara
marble especially constructed for it. This sanctuary is placed in the
church of Santa Chiara, in the crypt, behind a glass screen, where
candles are kept perpetually burning. Lina Gordon Duff, writing the
history of Assisi, says of this curious spectacle:--
"As pilgrims stand before a grating in the dimly lighted crypt, the
gentle rustle of a nun's dress is heard; slowly invisible hands
draw the curtain aside, and the body of Santa Chiara is seen
lying in a glass case upon a satin bed, her face clearly outlined
against her black and white veils, whilst her brown habit is drawn
in straight folds about her body. She clasps the book of her Rule
in one hand, and in the other holds a lily with small diamonds
shining on the streamers."
[Illustration: SANTA CHIARA, THE DUOMO, ASSISI
Amalia Dupré
_Page 375_]
In all these churches--the great convent church, upper and lower, of the
Franciscans elaborately adorned with frescoes by Cimabue and by Giotto;
in the ancient Duomo; in Santa Chiara and in Santa Maria degli
Angeli--statues of the two saints, Francis and Chiara, are placed side
by side. She shares all the exaltation of his memory and the fulness of
his fame.
The strange problem of the stigmata has, perhaps, never been absolutely
solved. Canon Knox Little says that as to the miracles of St. Francis
generally speaking, there is no intrinsic improbability; that "his holy
life, his constant communion with God, the abundant blessings with which
it pleased God to mark his ministry, all point in the same direction."
Latter-day revelations of psychic science disclose contemporary facts
of the power of mental influence on the physical form that are, in many
instances, hardly less wonderful than this alleged miracle of St.
Francis. Whether the story is accepted literally or only in a figurative
sense does not affect the transcendent power of his influence. His
entire life and work illustrate the beauty of holiness. "Art in its
widest sense gained a marvellous impulse from his work and effort," says
Canon Knox Little. The French and Provençal literature and the schools
of Byzantine art preceded the life of Francis; but his influence
imparted a powerful wave of sympathetic and vital insight and awakened a
world of new sensibilities of feeling. Indeed, it is a proverb of Italy,
"Without Francis, no Dante." Certainly the life of Francis was the
inspiration of the early Italian art. Cimabue and Giotto drew from the
inspiration of that unique and lovely life the pictorial conceptions
that have made Assisi the cradle of Italian painting. The great works of
Giotto are in the lower church of the Franciscan monastery. One of these
frescoes represents chastity as a maiden kneeling in a shrine, while
angels bring to her branches of palm. Obedience is depicted as placing
a yoke upon the bowed figure of a priest, while St. Francis, attended by
two angels, looks on; Poverty, whom Francis declared to be his bride, is
pictured as accompanied by Hope and Charity, who give her in marriage to
St. Francis, the union being blessed by Christ, while the heavenly
Father and throngs of angels gaze through the clouds on this nuptial
scene. The fresco called Gloriosus Franciscus is perhaps the crowning
work of Giotto. Francis is seen in a beatitude of glory, with a richly
decorated banner bearing the cross and seven stars floating above his
head and bands of angels in the air surrounding him. Canon Knox Little,
alluding to these interesting works of Giotto, says that "even in their
faded glories they give an immense interest to the lower church of
Assisi. No one can look at them now unmoved, or wander on the hillside
to the west of the little city, with the rugged rocks above one's head,
and beneath one's feet the rich carpets of cyclamen, and before one's
eyes long dreamy stretches of the landscape of Umbria, without being
touched by the feeling of that beautiful and loving life devoted to God
and man and nature, in utter truth, which therefore left such an
impress on Christian art."
The Madonna and saints painted by Cimabue are faded almost to the point
of obliteration, yet there still lingers about them a certain grace and
charm. The visitor to this Franciscan monastery church realizes that he
is beholding the art which was the very pledge and prophecy of the
Renaissance, and he realizes, too, that the Renaissance itself was the
outgrowth of the new vitality communicated to the world by the life and
character of St. Francis. He gave to the world the realization of the
living Christ; he taught that religion was in action, not in theology.
He liberated the spirit; and when this colossal church was being built
(1228-53) the artists who had felt the new thrill of life opened by his
teaching hastened to Assisi to express their appreciation by their
pictorial work on its walls. The qualities of spiritual life--faith,
sacrifice, sympathy, and love--began, for the first time, to be
interpreted into artistic expression.
The tomb of St. Francis is in the crypt of the church. The stone
sarcophagus containing his body was discovered in 1818, and then placed
here in a little chamber especially prepared, surrounded by an iron
latticework with candles perpetually burning.
From the sacristy of the lower church, stairs ascend to the upper, with
its beautiful nave and transept with a high altar, and the choir stalls.
While the lower church with its great arches is always dark, the upper
is flooded with light from vast windows. There is a series of frescoed
panels on either side, accredited to pupils of Giotto, full of forcible
action and a glow of color. But the upper church, while it is
magnificent, lacks somewhat of that mystic atmosphere one is so swiftly
conscious of in the gloom and mystery of the lower church.
Stretching behind the churches, along the crest of the high hill, is the
colossal monastery itself, with that double row of arches and colonnades
that makes it so conspicuous a feature of all the Umbrian valley.
Formerly hundreds of monks dwelt here; but the Italian government
suppressed this monastery in 1866, and since that time it has been used
as a school for boys.
The ancient Duomo, whose façade is of the twelfth century, has three
exquisite rose windows, and on either side, as one approaches the high
altar, stand the statues of St. Francis and of Santa Chiara. In the
little piazza in front of the church is a bronze copy of Dupré's famous
statue of St. Francis.
The colossal church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, with its magnificent
dome, is a contrast, indeed, to the primitive little Portiuncula where
Francis knelt in prayer, and which is now preserved in the centre of
this vast cathedral,--the rude structure encased in marble, and
decorated, above the entrance, with a picture by Overbeck, whose motive
is St. Francis as he stands, hushed and reverent, listening to the voice
that tells him to embrace poverty. There is a fine Perugino in the
church, representing the Saviour. The cell in which St. Francis died,
enclosed in the little chapel which St. Bonaventura built over it, is
preserved in this great cathedral.
"And who was he that opened that door in heaven?" questions Canon Knox
Little in reference to St. Francis. "Who was he that gave that fresh
life and thought? Who but the man who had brought down in his own person
the living Christ into his century, who had taught men again the love of
God, and then the love of man and the love of nature; who had lifted
the people out of their misery and degradation, and awakened the church
out of its stiffness and worldliness; it was he, too, who inspired, who
may at most be said to have created, Italian art,--the great St.
Francis! Such are the deep, such are the penetrating, such are the
far-reaching effects of sanctity. If a soul is, by divine grace, given
wholly to God, it is impossible for us to say to what heights it may
attain, or what good, in every region of human effort, it may do."
[Illustration: BAIÆ AND ISCHIA, FROM CAMALDOLI
_Page 382_]
Perugia, the neighboring city only fifteen miles from Assisi, is the
metropolis of all this Umbrian region. Like Assisi, it is a "hill town,"
built on an acropolis of rock, its foundations laid by the Etruscans
more than three thousand years before the Christian era, and its
atmosphere is freighted with the records of artists and scholars. The
Perugians were the forerunners. They held the secret of artifice in
metals and gems; they were architects and sculptors. The only traces of
their painting that have come down to us are their works on sarcophagi,
on vases or funeral urns,--traces that indicate their gifts for line and
form. It was about 310 B.C. that all Umbria became a Roman province.
The colossal porta of Augustus--a gateway apparently designed for the
Cyclops--still retains its inscription, "Augustus Perusia." The
imperishable impress of the great Roman conqueror is still seen in many
places. Perugia was a firm citadel, as is attested by the fact that
Totila and his army of Goths spent seven years in besieging it. The
centuries from the thirteenth to the fifteenth inclusive, when it was
under the sway of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, were years of tragic
violence. Even the cathedral became the scene of riot, and its interior
was entirely washed with wine, and it was reconsecrated before it could
be again used for holy offices. The little piazza in front of the
cathedral, now dreaming in the sun, has been the scene of strange and
contrasting crises of life. Strife and warfare have desolated it; the
footsteps of Bernardino of Siena have consecrated it, as he passed
within the great portals to preach the gospel of peace. He was one of
the most potent of the Francescan disciples, and Bernardino (born of the
noble family of the Albizzeschi, in 1380, in Siena, the year after St.
Catherine's death) for forty years wandered over Italy, preaching
peace and repentance. Vespasiano da Bisticci, a contemporary historian,
records that Bernardino "converted and changed the minds and spirits of
men marvellously and had a wondrous power in persuading men to lay aside
their mortal hatreds." Bernardino died at the age of sixty-four in
Aquila, and the towns in which he had faithfully carried on his
apostolic work placed the sacred sign of the divine name (I.H.S.) upon
their gates and palaces, in his memory. In the Sienese gallery is a
portrait of San Bernardino by Sano, painted in 1460, representing the
saint as the champion of the Holy Name, with the inscription, "I have
manifested Thy name to men." In one of his impressive and wonderful
sermons San Bernardino said:--
"There still remain many places for us to make. Ah! for the love of
God, love one another. Alas! see you not that, if you love the
destruction one of the other you are ruining your very selves? Ah!
put this thing right for the love of God. Love one another! What I
have done to make peace among you and to make you like brothers, I
have done with that zeal I should wish my own soul to receive. I
have done it all to the glory of God. And let no one think that I
have set myself to do anything at any person's request. I am only
moved by the bidding of God for His honor and glory."
Opposite the Duomo of Perugia, on the other side of the piazza, is the
Palazzo Municipio, with a Gothic façade, a beautiful example of
thirteenth-century architecture. Here also is the colossal fountain with
three basins, decorated with pictorial designs from the Bible by Niccolo
Pisano and Arnolfo of Florence, and in the shadow of this fountain St.
Dominic, St. Francis, and St. Bernardino often met and held converse.
Perugia easily reads her title clear to artistic immortality in having
been the home of Perugino, the master of Raphael. Here he lived for
several years working with Pinturicchio in the frescoes that adorn the
Collegio del Cambio, now held as a priceless treasure hall of art. They
still glow with rich coloring,--the Christ seen on the Mount of
Transfiguration; the Mother and Child with the adoring magi; and the
chariot of the dawn driven by Apollo a century before Guido painted his
"Aurora" in the Palazzo Rospigliosi in Rome.
From the parapets of Perugia are views of supreme poetic beauty. The
play of light and color on the picturesque hills and mountains of the
Umbrian country; the gray-green gleam of olive orchards and the silver
threads of winding streams; the towers and ruins and castles of a dozen
towns and villages that crown the slopes, and the violet shadows of
deepening twilight, with Assisi bathed in a splendor of rose and
gold,--all combine to make this an ever-changing panorama for the poet
and painter.
No journey in Italy is quite like that to the lovely Umbrian valley and
its Jerusalem, Assisi, the shrine which, with the single exception of
Rome, is the special place of pilgrimage for the entire religious world.
Perugia offers the charm of art, and attracts the visitor, also, by an
exceptional degree of modern comfort and convenience; but Assisi is the
shrine before which he kneels, where the footsteps of saints who have
knelt in prayer make holy ground, and where he realizes anew the
consecration of faith and sacrifice. The very air is filled with divine
messages, and in lowly listening he will hear, again, those wonderful
and thrilling words of St. Francis:--
"By the holy love which is in God I pray all to put aside every
obstacle, every care, every anxiety, that they may be able to
consecrate themselves entirely to serve, love, and honor the Lord
God, with a pure heart and a sincere purpose, which is what He asks
above all things."
_White phantom city, whose untrodden streets
Are rivers, and whose pavements are the shifting
Shadows of palaces and strips of sky;
I wait to see thee vanish like the fleets
Seen in mirage, or towers of clouds uplifting
In air their unsubstantial masonry._
LONGFELLOW.
_Fair as the palace builded for Aladdin,
Yonder St. Mark uplifts its sculptured splendor--
Intricate fretwork, Byzantine mosaic,
Color on color, column upon column,
Barbaric, wonderful, a thing to kneel to!
Over the portal stand the four gilt horses,
Gilt hoof in air, and wide distended nostril,
Fiery, untamed, as in the days of Nero.
Skyward, a cloud of domes and spires and crosses;
Earthward, black shadows flung from jutting stonework.
High over all the slender Campanile
Quivers, and seems a falling shaft of silver._
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.
_As one who parts from Life's familiar shore,
Looks his last look in long-beloved eyes,
And sees in their dear depths new meanings rise
And strange light shine he never knew before;
As then he fain would snatch from Death his hand
And linger still, if haply he may see
A little more of this Soul's mystery
Which year by year he seemed to understand;
So, Venice, when thy wondrous beauty grew
Dim in the clouds which clothed the wintry sea
I saw thou wert more beauteous than I knew,
And long to turn and be again with thee.
But what I could not then I trust to see
In that next life which we call memory._
PHILLIPS BROOKS.[2]
FOOTNOTES:
[2] From "Life of Phillips Brooks," by kind permission of Messrs. E. P.
Dutton & Co.
VI
THE GLORY OF A VENETIAN JUNE
I have been between Heaven and Earth since our arrival at Venice.
The Heaven of it is ineffable--never had I touched the skirts of so
celestial a place. The beauty of the architecture, the silver
trails of water up between all that gorgeous color and carving, the
enchanting silence, the music, the gondolas,--I mix it all up
together, and maintain that nothing is like it, nothing equal to
it, no second Venice in the world.
MRS. BROWNING, in the June of 1850.
The first glimpse of enchanted Venice, as her towers and marble palaces
rise wraith-like from the sea, is an experience that can never fade from
memory. Like a mirage, like a vision invoked by some incantation or
magician's spell, the scene prefigures itself, bringing a thrill of some
vague and undefined memory, as if a breath floated by,--
"An odor from Dreamland sent,
That makes the ghost seem nigh me,
Of a splendor that came and went;
Of a life lived somewhere,--I know not
In what diviner sphere,--
Of memories that stay not and go not,"
which eludes all translation into words. Nor does the spell dissolve and
vanish when put to the test of one's actual sojourn in the Dream City.
It is an experience outside the boundaries of the ordinary day and
daylight world, as if one were caught up into the ethereal realm to find
a city
"... of gliding and wide-wayed silence
With room in the streets for the soul."
The sense of remoteness from common life could hardly be greater if one
were suddenly swept away to some far star, blazing in the firmament; or
if Charon had rowed him over the mystic river and he had entered the
abodes of life on the plane beyond. Even the hotel becomes an enchanted
palace whose salons, luxuriously decorated, open by long windows on
marble balconies overhanging the Grand Canal. Dainty little tables piled
with current reading matter, in French, English, and Italian, stand
around; the writing-desks are sumptuous, filled with every convenience
of stationery; and the matutinal coffee and rolls are served the guest
in any idyllic niche wherein he chooses to ensconce himself, regardless
of the regulation _salle-à-manger_. One looks across the Grand Canal to
the beautiful Church of Santa Maria della Salute. The water plashes
against the marble steps as gondolas glide past; the blue sky of Italy
reflects itself in the waters below, until one feels as if he were
floating in the air between sea and sky. In the heart of the city, with
throngs of people moving to and fro, all is yet silence, save the cry of
the gondolier, the confused echo of voices from the people who pass, and
here and there the faint call of a bird. No whir and rush of electric
cars and motors; no click of the horses' feet on the asphalt
pavement--no pavement, indeed, and no horses, no twentieth-century rush
of life. It is Venice, it is June, and the two combine to make an
illuminated chapter. To live in Venice is like being domesticated in the
heart of an opal. How wonderful it is to drift--a sky above and a sky
below--on still waters at sunset, with the Dream City mirrored in the
depths, every shade of gold and rose and amber mirrored back,--the very
atmosphere a sea of color, recalling to one Ruskin's words that "none of
us appreciate the nobleness and the sacredness of color. Of all God's
gifts to man," he continues, "color is the holiest, the most divine,
the most solemn. Color is the sacred and saving element." If the
enthusiasm in these words savor of exaggeration, Venice is the place
that will lure one to forgetfulness of it. One is simply conscious of
being steeped in color and revelling in a strange loveliness. One no
longer marvels at the glory of Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese. They but
interpreted on canvas the shining reality. A charming writer on Venice
has well said:--
"The aspects of Venice are as various, as manifold, as the hues
held in solution upon her waters beneath a sirocco sky. There is a
perpetual miracle of change; one day is not like another, one hour
varies from the next; there is no stable outline such as one finds
among the mountains, no permanent vista, as in a view across a
plain. The two great constituents of the Venetian landscape, the
sea and the sky, are precisely the two features in nature which
undergo most incessant change. The cloud-wreaths of this evening's
sunset will never be repeated again; the bold and buttressed piles
of those cloud-mountains will never be built again just so for us;
the grain of orange and crimson that stains the water before our
prow, we cannot be sure that we shall look upon its like again....
One day is less like another in Venice than anywhere else. The
revolution of the seasons will repeat certain effects; spring will
chill the waters to a cold, hard green; summer will spread its
breadth of golden light on palace front and water way; autumn will
come with its pearly-gray sirocco days, and sunsets flaming a
sombre death; the stars of a cloudless winter night, the whole vast
dome of heaven, will be reflected in the mirror of the still
lagoon. But in spite of this general order of the seasons, one day
is less like another in Venice than anywhere else; the lagoon wears
a different aspect each morning when you rise, the sky offers a
varied composition of cloud each evening as the sun sets. Words
cannot describe Venice, nor brush portray her ever-fleeting,
ever-varying charm. Venice is to be felt, not reproduced; to live
there is to live a poem, to be daily surfeited with a wealth of
beauty enough to madden an artist to despair."
It was in the autumn of 1882 that the Rev. Dr. Phillips Brooks, later
Bishop of Massachusetts, visited Venice and wrote of San Marco:--
"Strange how there is nothing like St. Mark's in Venice, nothing of
the same kind as the great church. It would have seemed as if,
standing here for so many centuries, and always profoundly loved
and honored, it would almost of necessity have influenced the minds
of the generations of architects, and shown its power in their
works. But there seems to be no sign of any such influence. It
stands alone."
Dr. Brooks noted that Venice had "two aspects, one sensuous and
self-indulgent, the other lofty, spiritual, and even severe. Both
aspects," he continues, "are in its history and both are also in its
art. Titian often represents the former. The loftier, nobler Tintoretto
gives us the second. There is something in his greatest pictures, as,
for instance, in the Crucifixion, at St. Rocco, which no other artist
approaches. The lordly composition gives us an impression of
intellectual grasp and vigor. The foreground group of prostrate women is
full of a tenderness. The rich pearly light, which floods the centre,
glows with a solemn picturesqueness, and the great Christ, who hangs
like a benediction over the whole, is vocal with a piety which no other
picture in the world displays. And the Presentation of the Virgin, in
Santa Maria dell'Orto, is the consummate presentation of that beautiful
subject, its beauty not lost in its majesty."
Of other pictures Dr. Brooks said:--
"In the Academia there is the sunshine of three hundred years ago.
Paris Bordone's glowing picture of the Fisherman who brings the
Ring of St. Mark to the Doge, burned like a ray of sunlight on the
wall. Carpaccio's delightful story of St. Ursula brought the old
false standards of other days back to one's mind, but brought them
back lustrous with the splendor of summers that seemed forever
passed, but are perpetually here. Tintoretto's Adam and Eve was, as
it always is, the most delightful picture in the gallery, and
Pordenone's great St. Augustine seemed a very presence in the vast
illuminated room."
Tennyson loved best, of all the pictures in Venice, a Bellini,--a
beautiful work, in the Church of Il Redentore; and he was deeply
impressed by the "Presentation of the Virgin," from Tintoretto, in the
Church of the Madonna dell'Orto. "He was fascinated by St. Mark's,"
writes the poet's son, "by the Doge's Palace and the Piazza, and by the
blaze of color in water and sky. He climbed the Campanile, and walked to
the library where he could scarcely tear himself away from the Grimani
Breviary."
Venice, though not containing any single gallery comparable with the
Pitti and the Uffizi, is still singularly rich in treasures of art, and
rich in legend and story. The school of encrusted architecture is
nowhere so wonderfully represented as here, and it is only in this
architecture that a perfect scheme of color decoration is possible. In
all the world there is no such example of encrusted architecture as that
revealed in St. Mark's. It is a gleaming mass of gold, opal, ruby, and
pearl; with alabaster pillars carved in designs of palm and pomegranate
and lily; with legions of sculptured angels looking down; with altars of
gold ablaze with scarlet flowers and snowy lilies, while clouds of
mystic incense fill the air. One most impressive place is the
baptistery, where is the tomb of St. Mark and also that of the Doge
Andrea Dandolo, who died at the age of forty-six, having been chosen
Doge ten years before. His tomb is under a window in the baptistery, and
the design is that of his statue in bronze, lying on a couch, while two
angels at the head and the feet hold back the curtains.
The sarcophagus that is said to contain the body of St. Mark is of the
richest description, encrusted with gold and jewels on polished ebony
and marble. There is a legend that after St. Mark had seen the people of
Aguilia well grounded in religion he was called to Rome by St. Peter;
but before setting off he took with him in a boat the holy Bishop
Hennagoras and sailed to the marshes of Venice. The boat was driven by
wind to a small island called Rialto, on which were some houses, and St.
Mark was suddenly snatched into ecstasy and heard the voice of an angel
saying, "Peace be to thee, Mark; here shall thy body rest."
There is also a legend that in the great conflagration which destroyed
Venice in 976 A.D., the body of St. Mark was lost and no one knew where
to find it. Then the pious Doge and the people gave themselves to
fasting and prayer, and assembled in the church, asking that the place
be revealed them. It was on the 25th of June that the assemblage took
place. Suddenly one of the pillars of the church trembled, and opened to
disclose the sarcophagus,--a chest of bronze. The legend goes on to say
that St. Mark stretched his hand out through the side and that a noble,
Dolfini by name, drew a gold ring off the finger.
The place where this miracle is said to have been wrought is now marked
by the Altar of the Cross.
Ruskin declares that "a complete understanding of the sanctity of color
is the key to European art." Nowhere is this sanctity of color so felt
as at San Marco. The church is like the temple of the New Jerusalem.
The origin of Venice is steeped in sacred history. It is pre-eminently
the city founded in religious enthusiasm. The chronicles of De Monici,
written in 421, give this passage: "God, who punishes the sins of men by
war, sorrow, and whose ways are past finding out, willing both to save
the innocent blood, and that a great power, beneficial to the whole
world, should arise in a place strange beyond belief, moved the chief
men of the cities of the Venetian province both in memory of the past,
and in dread of future distress, to establish states upon the nearer
islands of the Adriatic, to which, in the last extremity, they might
retreat for refuge.... They laid the foundation of the new city under
good auspices on the island of the Rialto, the highest and nearest to
the mouth of the Brenta, on March 25, 471."
The first Doge of Venice was Paolo Lucio Anafesto, elected by the
tribunal of commonalty, tribunals, and clergy, at Heraclea, in 697. The
period of the subjection of the ecclesiastical to the ducal and
patrician powers followed. The "Council of Ten" was established in 1335,
and the last Doge elected was Lodovico Manin in 1789, who exclaimed,
"_Tolè questo: no la doperò più_," as the French Revolution destroyed
the Republic of Venice.
The finest example of Renaissance architecture in Venice is that of the
_Libreria Vecchia_, the work of Jacobo Sansovino, completed in the
sixteenth century. Never were the creations of poet and philosopher more
fittingly enshrined. The rich Doric frieze, the Ionic columns, the
stately balustrade, with statues and obelisks, the resplendent richness
of ornamentation, offer a majesty and beauty seldom found even in the
best classical architecture of Europe. On the ceiling of one sala is a
picture by Titian representing "Wisdom" as a woman, reclining on a
cloud, her right hand outstretched to take a book that Genius is
offering her. There are two beautiful caryatides by Vittoria and rich
mural work by Battista Franco and De Moro.
Petrarca, returning from his wanderings in 1362, pleaded with the Senate
of Venezia to give him a house, in return for which he offered the
inheritance of his library. This was the nucleus of the fine collection
which since 1812 has been included in the Palace of the Doges. In it are
some magnificent works by Paolo Veronese, one portrait by Tintoretto,
and others by Salviati and Telotti.
The Doge's Palace is a treasure house of history. One enters the Porta
della Carta, which dates back to 1638, erected by Bartolomeo Buon. The
portal is very rich in sculpture, and among the reliefs is a heroic one
of Francesco Foscari, kneeling before the lion at St. Mark's. One
recalls his tragic fate and passes on. Perhaps, _en passant_, one may
say that his pilgrimage through Venice and Florence is so constantly in
the scenes of tragedy that he is prone to sink almost into utter
sadness, even, rather than seriousness. The air is full of ghosts. One
feels the oppression of all the life that has there been lived, all the
tragedies that have been enacted in these scenes.
In Renaissance nothing more wonderful in Europe can be found than the
court of the Palace of the Doges. Antonio Rizzo began the east façade of
the building in 1480, and it was continued by Lombardo, and completed by
Scarpagnino. "Words cannot be found to praise the beauty of these
sculptures," says Salvatico, "as well as of the single ornaments of the
walls and of the ogres which have been carved so delicately and richly
that they cannot be excelled by the Roman antique friezes."
By the golden staircase one goes to the council chambers,--the hall of
the Senate, the Council of Ten, and the Council of Three. In the great
council chamber is that most celebrated mural painting in the world,
"The Glory of Venice," by Paolo Veronese, which covers the ceiling. In a
frieze are the portraits of seventy-six of the Doges, but in one space
is a black tablet only, with the inscription: "This in place of M. F.,
who was executed for his crimes."
The "Sala del Maggior Consiglio" (hall of the grand council) is very
rich in paintings. Above the throne is Tintoretto's "The Glory of
Paradise," and the walls are covered with battle pieces and symbolic and
allegorical paintings. There is "Venice Crowned by Fame," by Paolo
Veronese, "Doge Niccolò da Ponte Presenting the Senate and Envoys of
Conquered Cities to Venice," by Tintoretto; "Venice Crowned by the
Goddess of Victory," by Palma Giovane, and many another of the richest
and most wonderful beauty.
Descending into the prisons and dungeons brings one into a vivid
realization of the grim history of which these were the scenes. The
Bridge of Sighs has two covered passages, one for the political and one
for the criminal prisoners. Here is shown a narrow ledge on which the
condemned man stood, with a slanting stone passageway before him, which,
when the guillotine had done its swift and deadly work, conveyed the
crimson flood into the dark waters of the canal below, while the body
was thrown in the water on the other side. There are the "Chambers of
Lead," where prisoners were confined, intensely hot in the summer, and
as intensely cold in the winter. Many of these dark, close, narrow
cells--in which the one article of furniture allowed was the wooden
slanting rack, that served as a bed--still remain. In many of these are
inscriptions that were written by the prisoners. One reads (in
translation): "May God protect me against him whom I trust; I will
protect myself against him whom I do not trust."
The murderer, Giovanni M. Borni, wrote in his cell: "G. M. B. was
confined very unjustly in this prison; if God does not help it will be
the last desolation of a poor, numerous, and honest family."
All visitors to these gloomy dungeons recall the lines of Byron:--
"I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,
A palace and a prison on each hand."
The piazza of St. Mark's is a distinctive feature, even in all Europe.
It is not large; it is surrounded on three sides with shops, which are
merely glittering bazaars of jewels and bric-a-brac; the sidewalk is
blockaded with cafés _al fresco_, the ground is half covered with the
dense flocks of white doves, but here all lingers and loiters. The
façade of St. Mark's fills one end--a mass of gleaming color. At one
corner is the tall clock tower (Torre dell'Orologio) in the Renaissance
style of 1400, crowned with the gilded lion of St. Mark. On the festa
days three figures, the Three Wise Men, preceded by an angel, come forth
on the tower and bow before the Madonna, in a niche above,--a very
ingenious piece of mechanism. With its rich architecture and sculptures
and masses of color, the piazza of San Marco is really an open-air hall,
where all the town congregates from morning till midnight.
To study the art of the Venetian school is a work of months, and one
that would richly repay the student. The churches and galleries of
Venice give a truly unique opportunity. In the Church of San Sebastiano
lies Paolo Veronese, the church in which he painted his celebrated
frescoes, now transformed into a temple for himself. Here one finds his
"Coronation of the Virgin," "The Virgin in the Gloria," "Adoration of
the Magi," "Martyrdom of San Sebastian," and many others. In the Scuola
di San Rocco are the great works of Tintoretto, "St. Magdalene in the
Wilderness," the "Visitation," and the "Murder of the Innocents."
In the San Maria dei Frari is the tomb of Titian,--an exquisite grouping
of sculpture in Carrara marble, erected in 1878-80 by the command of the
Emperor of Austria, the work of Zandomenighi. In this church is Titian's
most famous painting, the "Madonna of the Pessaro," the work of which is
probably, too, the greatest in all Venetian art. The Hall of Heaven is
shown, supported by colossal columns. St. Peter, Francis, and Antoninus
are commending the Pessaro family to the Virgin, who is enthroned on
high. The beauty of line, the splendor of color, and the marvellous
composition render this immortal masterpiece something whose sight marks
an epoch in life. Canova's tomb in San Maria dei Frari is a wonderful
thing. It is a pyramid of purest marble, with a door opening for the
sarcophagus, above which is a portrait of Canova in relief, and on
either side the door angels and symbolic figures are sculptured.
The Church of Santa Maria della Salute, to which one is always
returning, is a wonderful example of artistic architecture, as its snowy
towers and dome seem to rise out of the water and float in the air.
The fall of the Campanile in 1904 was regarded as a calamity by all the
civilized world. For a thousand years it had stood at the side of St.
Mark's; but the disaster aroused the attention of experts to the
condition of the great cathedral itself, and it was found that the vast
area of over fifty thousand square feet of matchless mosaic needed
restoration in order that they should be preserved.
The Palazzo Rezzonico, which dates to Clement XIII, usually known as the
"Browning Palace," has been for many years one of the special interests
to the visitor in Venice. In the early months of 1907 it passed out of
the hands of Robert Barrett Browning, who had purchased it in 1888, and
had held it sacredly, with its poetic and personal associations, since
the death of his father, the poet, in 1889. To Mr. Barrett Browning is
due the grateful appreciation of a multitude of tourists for his
generous and never-failing courtesy in permitting them the privilege of
visiting this palace in which his father had passed many months of
enjoyment. It was from this residence that the poet Browning wrote, in
October of 1880, to a friend:--
"Every morning at six I see the sun rise; far more wonderfully, to
my mind, than his famous setting which everybody glorifies. My
bedroom window commands a perfect view; the still, gray lagune, the
few sea-gulls flying, the islet of San Giorgio in deep shadow and
the clouds in a long purple rock behind which a sort of spirit of
rose burns up till presently all the rims are on fire with gold,
and last of all the orb sends before it a long column of its own
essence apparently; so my day begins."
Later, of his son's palace, Mr. Browning wrote:--
"Have I told you that there is a chapel which he has restored in
honor of his mother--putting up there the inscription by
Tommaseo,[3] now above Casa Guidi in Florence?"
In this palace Mr. Browning wrote some of his later poems, and it may
well be that it was when he was clad in his singing robes that he
perhaps most deeply felt the ineffable charm of Venice:--
"For the stars help me, and the sea bears part;
The very night is clinging
Closer to Venice' streets to leave one space
Above me...."
It was from these lofty salons in the Browning Palace that the poet
passed to the "life more abundant" on that December day of 1889, on the
very day that his last volume, "Asolando," was published and also the
last volume of Tennyson's. Regarding these Mr. Gladstone said, in a
letter to Lord Tennyson: "The death of Browning on the day of the
appearance of your volume, and we hear of one of his own, is a touching
event."
From the time of Mrs. Browning's death in Florence (in June of 1861) Mr.
Browning never felt that he could see Italy again, until the autumn of
1878, when he, with his sister, Miss Sarianna Browning, came to Venice
by way of the Italian lakes and Verona. At this time they only remained
for a fortnight, domiciled in the old Palazzo Brandolin-Rota, which was
transformed into the Albergo dell'Universo. This palace was on the Grand
Canal below the Accadémia, and here he returned through two or three
subsequent years. Mr. Browning became very fond of Venice, and he
explored its winding ways and gardens and knew it, not merely from the
gondola view, but from the point of view of the curious little dark and
narrow byways, the bridges, and the piazzas.
It was in 1880 that Mr. Browning first met, through the kind offices of
Mr. Story, a most charming and notable American lady, Mrs. Arthur
Bronson (Katherine DeKay), who had domiciled herself in Casa Alvisi, an
old palace on the Grand Canal opposite the Church of Santa Maria della
Salute. She was a woman of very interesting personality, and had drawn
about her a circle including many of the most distinguished people of
her time, authors, artists, poets, and notable figures in the social
world. She was eminently _simpatica_ and her lovely impulses of generous
kindness were rendered possible to translate into the world of the
actual by the freedom which a large fortune confers on its possessor.
Between Mrs. Bronson and Mr. Browning there sprang up one of those rare
and beautiful friendships that lasted during his lifetime, and to her
appreciation and many courtesies he owed much of the happiness of his
later years. In the autumn of 1880 Mrs. Bronson made Mr. Browning and
his sister her guests, placing at their disposal a suite of rooms in the
Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati--a palace adjoining her own--and each night
they dined and passed the evening with her, with music and conversation
to enchant the hours. After Mr. Browning's death, Mrs. Bronson was the
friend whom all pilgrims to his shrine in Venice felt it a special
privilege to meet and to hear speak of him. In her palace was a large
easy-chair, with a ribbon tied across the arms, in which Browning was
accustomed to sit, and which was held sacred to him. Mrs. Bronson was an
accomplished linguist, and the _habitués_ of her salon represented many
nationalities. Among these was the Princess Montenegro, the mother of
the present Queen of Italy.
It is little wonder that the Browning Palace was for so many years a
focus for all who revered and loved the wedded poets, Robert and
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
In the marble court, roofed only by the blue Venetian sky, stood Mr.
Barrett Browning's statue of "Dryope" in bronze, on its marble
pedestal,--a beautiful conception of the Dryope of Keats,--the dweller
in forest solitudes whom the Hamadryads transformed into a poplar. Here
a fountain makes music all day long, and the court is also adorned in
summer by great Venetian jars of pink hydrangeas in full bloom. The
grand staircase, with its carved balustrade and the wide landing where a
rose window decorates the wall, leads to the lofty salons which were yet
as homelike as they were artistic during the residence of the Brownings.
Mr. Story's bust of Mrs. Browning, other portrait busts of both the
poets, sculptured by their artist son, and by others, and other
memorials abound. In the library were gathered many interesting volumes,
autographed from their authors, and many rare and choice editions, among
which was one of the "Sonnets from the Portuguese" in a sumptuous volume
whose artistic beauty found a fitting setting to Mrs. Browning's
immortal sonnets. Among other volumes were a collection of signed
"Etchings" by Sir Laurence Alma-Tadema; presentation copies from
Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Aubrey De Vere, Walter Savage Landor, and many
another known to fame; and a copy, also, of a study of Mrs. Browning's
poetry[4] by an American writer.
There is one memento over which the visitor always smiled--a souvenir of
a London evening in 1855 when the Brownings had invited Dante Gabriel
Rossetti and his brother and Lord Madox Brown to meet Tennyson and
listen to his reading of his new poem, "Maud," then still unpublished.
During the reading Rossetti drew a caricature representing Tennyson with
his hair standing on end, his eyes glowering and his hand theatrically
extended, as he held a manuscript inscribed,
"I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood."
A reproduction of John Singer Sargent's painting, "The Gypsy Dance,"
bore the inscription, "To _mon ami_, Browning." From the library is a
niche, decorated in gold, with memorial entablatures to the memory of
Mrs. Browning. On the outer wall of the palace is an inscription that
runs:--
"Robert Browning died in this house 12th December, 1889.
"Open my heart and you will see
Graven inside it 'Italy.'"
There is a sadness in the fact that this palace, consecrated to the
memory of the immortal poets, husband and wife, has passed into the
hands of strangers; but that is a part of the play in a world in which
we have no continuing city. In the spring of 1905, Miss Sarianna
Browning died in the home of her nephew, near Florence, and her body was
buried in the new Protestant cemetery in that city; the old one, where
all that was mortal of Elizabeth Barrett Browning was laid to rest,
being now closed. Mr. Barrett Browning, in his Tuscan villa, is again
dwelling near Florence, his native city, which must forever hold to him
its atmosphere of consecrated beauty as the beloved home of his
mother,--the noblest and greatest of all woman poets.
The centenary of Carlo Goldoni was celebrated in Venice in the spring
of 1907 by the publication of all his works and a monograph on his life;
an exhibition of personal relics; the presentation of one of his dramas
set to music by Baldassare Galuppi, the great Venetian composer of his
time, and by a procession to lay a wreath of laurel on his monument in
the Campo San Bartolommeo. The drama given, entitled the "Buranello,"
was the last work of the author, and it was presented in the theatre
Goldoni. The Municipal Council of Venice voted the sum of fifty thousand
lire for the _édition de luxe_, which consists of twenty volumes, in
octavo. In each volume is a different portrait of Goldoni, facsimile of
manuscripts, and the reproduction of literary curiosities.
The monograph of Goldoni was issued by the press of the Venetian
Institute of Graphic Art in a limited number of copies.
It contains more than three hundred printed pages and a series of very
interesting illustrations. Among these are the reproductions of ancient
engravings which are most rare (such as the view of the Grimani Theatre
at San Giovanni Crisostomo, a famous theatre existing in the days of the
Venetian republic, but now demolished), frontispieces of destroyed
editions, and other personal memorials. The revival of the splendid work
of the famous artist was one of the attractions of the festa of
celebration. The art exhibition of Venice in this spring of 1907 was
very picturesque. One special salon was allotted to the artists of Great
Britain, and there was a fine loan collection of the portraits of
English noblemen painted by Mr. Sargent. This salon was decorated with
panels by Frank Brangwyn.
Venice forever remains a dream, a mirage, an enchantment. Has it a
recognized social life, with "seasons" that come and go? Has it trade,
commerce, traffic? Has it any existence save on the artist's canvas, in
the poet's vision? Has it a resident population to whom it is a home,
and not the pilgrimage of passionate pilgrims?
There are those who find this Venice of all the year round a society of
stately nobles whose ancestral claims are identified with the history of
the city and who are at home in its palaces and gondolas, but of this
resident life the visitor is less aware than of that in any other city
in Italy. For him it remains forever in his memory as the crowning
glory of June evenings when the full, golden moon hangs over towers and
walls, when gondolas freighted with Venetian singers loom up out of the
shadows and fill the air with melody that echoes as in dreams, and that
vanishes--one knows not when or where. Mr. Howells, in his delightful
"Venetian Days," has interpreted much of that life that the tourist
never recognizes, that eludes his sight; and the Dream City still, to
the visitor who comes and goes, shrouds itself in myth and mystery. One
of the poetic visions of Venice is that given in Robert Underwood
Johnson's "Browning at Asolo" (inscribed to Mrs. Arthur Bronson), of
which the opening stanzas run:--
"This is the loggia Browning loved,
High on the flank of the friendly town;
These are the hills that his keen eye roved,
The green like a cataract leaping down
To the plain that his pen gave new renown.
"There to the West what a range of blue!--
The very background Titian drew
To his peerless Loves. O tranquil scene!
Who than thy poet fondlier knew
The peaks and the shore and the lore between?
"See! yonder's his Venice--the valiant Spire,
Highest one of the perfect three,
Guarding the others: the Palace choir,
The Temple flashing with opal fire--
Bubble and foam of the sunlit sea."
Edgar Fawcett, always enchanted with his Venetian days, pictures the
northern lagoon, some six miles from Venice, as "a revel of pastoral
greenness, with briery hedges, numberless wild flowers and the most
captivating of sinuous creeks, overarched by an occasional bridge, so
old that you greet with respect every moss-grown inch of its drowsy and
sagging brickwork. The cathedral, the ineludible cathedral of all
Italian settlements, is reached after a short ramble, and you enter it
with mingled awe and amusement," he continues. "Some of its mosaics,
representing martyrs being devoured by flames and evidently enjoying
themselves a great deal during this mortuary process, challenge the
disrespectful smile. But others are vested with a rude yet sacred
poetry, and certain semi-Oriental marble sculptures, adjacent to the
altar, would make an infidel feel like crossing himself for the crime of
having yielded to a humorous twinge. This duomo dates far back beyond
the Middle Ages, and so does the small Church of Santa Fosca, only a
step away. What renders Torcello so individual among all the islands and
islets of the lagoon, I should say, is her continual contrast between
the ever-recurrent idyllicism of open meadows or wilding clusters of
simple rustic thickets, and the enormous antiquity of these two hoary
ecclesiastic fanes. History is in the air, and you feel that the very
daisies you crush underfoot, the very copses from which you pluck a
scented spray, have their delicate rustic ancestries, dating back to
Attila, who is said once to have brought his destructive presence where
now such sweet solemnity of desertion and quietude unmolestedly rules."
History and legend and art and romance meet and mingle to create that
indefinable sorcery of Venice. It is like nothing on earth except a
poet's dream, and his poetic dream is of the ethereal realm. The
wonderful music that floats over the "silver trail" of still waters; the
mystic silences; the resplendence of color,--all, indeed, weave
themselves into an incantation of the gods; it is the ineffable
loveliness of Paradise where the rose of morning glows "and the June is
always June," and it is no more earth, but a celestial atmosphere,--this
glory of June in Venice.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] This inscription and a description in detail of all the memorials of
Elizabeth Barrett Browning are given in full in a volume entitled "A
Study of Elizabeth Barrett Browning." Boston: Little, Brown, & Co.
[4] "A Study of Elizabeth Barrett Browning." Little, Brown, & Co.
_Dear Italy! The sound of thy soft name
Soothes me with balm of Memory and Hope.
Mine, for the moment, height and sweep and slope
That once were mine. Supreme is still the aim
To flee the cold and gray
Of our December day,
And rest where thy clear spirit burns with unconsuming flame._
_Thou human-hearted land, whose revels hold
Man in communion with the antique days,
And summon him from prosy greed to ways
Where Youth is beckoning to the Age of Gold;
How thou dost hold him near
And whisper in his ear
Of the lost Paradise that lies beyond the alluring haze!_
ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON.
_Great ideas create great peoples. Let your life be the living
summary of one sole organic idea. Enlarge the horizon of the
peoples. Liberate their conscience from the materialism by which it
is weighed down. Set a vast mission before them. Rebaptize them._
MAZZINI.
_All parts array for the progress of souls: all religion, all solid
things, arts, governments,--all that was or is apparent upon this
globe, or any globe, falls into niches and comes before the
procession of Souls along the grand roads of the universe.... Of
the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of
the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and
sustenance._
WALT WHITMAN.
VII
THE MAGIC LAND
More than five hundred years have passed over the country of Dante
since the death of his mortal part--years of glory and of shame, of
genius and intolerable mediocrity, of turbulent liberty and mortal
servitude; but the name of Dante has remained, and the severe image
of the poet still rules the destinies of Italian generations, now
an encouragement and now a reproach. The splendor of no other
genius has been able to eclipse or dim the grandeur of Dante; never
has there been a darkness so profound that it could conceal this
star of promise from Italian eyes; neither the profanations of
tyrants and Jesuits, nor the violations of foreign invaders, have
been able to efface it. "_Sanctum Poetæ nomen quod nunquam
barbaries violavit._"
MAZZINI.
The true life of Italy is not read in any record of contemporary facts
or statistics. Mazzini once said of Dante, in an essay on the immortal
poet, that "the life, the true life of Dante does not lie in the series
of the material facts of his existence. The life of Dante consists in
the sufferings and aspirations of his soul; in its dominant impulses; in
the ceaseless development of the idea which was at once his guide,
inspiration, and consolation; in his belief as a man and as an Italian."
The real life of Italy is, by analogy, to be read in that atmosphere
of aspiration and of noble purpose which characterizes the nation rather
than in the material facts of its general progress at the present time.
As a country Italy is young. It is still less than forty years since her
unity was declared, and to merge the large number of separate States
into one harmonious whole is a task requiring the evolutionary progress
of time; for a nation, like a university, cannot be a matter of
instantaneous creation. It must germinate and grow. The country that,
previous to so comparatively a recent date as the year 1870, was, in the
phrasing of Prince Metternich, "a geographical expression," can hardly
be judged by present national standards after an existence of only
thirty-seven years, although it need be said in no spirit of apology;
for Italy is advancing in scientific development, in manufactures, and
in the problems involved in civil and hydraulic engineering to a notable
degree in the northern part. Milan and Naples are separated by far more
than geographical distance. In modern progress Milan is divided by
centuries from all Southern Italy.
Between Italy and the United States the _entente cordiale_ is not
merely that of diplomatic and ceremonial courtesy, but of an exceptional
degree of mutually sympathetic comprehensions. In noble ambitions and
lofty purposes Americans and Italians are closely akin. In zeal for
contemporary scientific progress, in an intense susceptibility to the
glories of art, and in hospitality to all that makes for progress, both
nations meet in mutual recognition. Of no people is it more deeply true
than of Americans that "each man has two countries: his own and Italy."
The average traveller sees this fair land with a breadth and
thoroughness seldom called into requisition elsewhere. In England he is
usually content with London, the tour of the cathedral towns and the
lake region of the poets. France is summed up to him in Paris and in the
chateaux of outlying districts. But Italy beguiles the traveller into
every lonely foot-trail in the mountains; to every "piazza grande" of
lonely hamlets, isolated on a rocky hillside; to every "fortezza" that
crowns a mountain summit. The unexplored byways of Italy are magnetic in
their fascination, and one special source of congratulation on the part
of those fortunate tourists who travel with their own motor car is that
they are thus enabled to penetrate into untrodden byways in Italy in a
manner impossible to those who must depend entirely on the regulation
railroad service. All lovers of Italy are devoted to these original
tours of private exploration. A recent trip to Saracinesco, in the
region of Tivoli, was made by Mrs. Stetson (Grace Ellery Channing) with
her husband, and in a descriptive record of the little journey into an
unfrequented mountain region this paragraph occurs:--
"Roused by 'an awful rose of dawn' which turned every solemn slope
to strange amber and amethyst, we left that rocky eyrie next day,
returning by way of Anticoli--beloved of artists. And if the ascent
had qualified us for Alpine climbers, the descent qualified us as
members of the Italian cavalry corps. Pictures of officers riding
down the face of cliffs will never impress us again; we know now it
is the very simplest of 'stunts.' Our way down was diversified by
the tinkling of thousands of sheep-bells, by the far too close
proximity of bulls to Maria's crimson headdress, which nothing in
the world would induce her to remove, and by sundry meetings with
relations, long-unseen friends, and strangers, from whom we culled
the whole register of deaths, births, marriages, and happenings for
a month past. At last, beside a little bridge near the railroad
station, Leonardo addressed his ten-thousandth adjuration to
Beppino, whose poor little legs trembled under him. It was no
longer, 'Ah, sacred one!--don't you see Anticoli!'--or 'the rock,'
or whatever it might be; now he said, 'Ah, sacred one!--don't you
comprehend?--the Signora descends'--and Beppino looked distinctly
pleased.
"Here we demanded the reckoning, skilfully evaded hitherto.
"'Well--a franc for each beast,--and half a franc for the
room,--the rest was nothing--a _sciocchezza_.'
"A franc apiece!--half a franc!--were _we_ brigands that we should
do this thing?"
This typical picture of idyllic days in Italy, enjoyed in the impromptu
excursion and trip, reveals the delicacy of feeling and the sunny
kindness that characterize the _contadini_ and which imparts to any
social contact with them a grace and sweetness peculiar to Italian
life. There are parts of Italy where it is still the Middle Ages and no
hint of the twentieth century has yet penetrated. The modern spirit has
almost taken possession of Rome; it is largely in evidence in Florence
and even Venice, and it dominates Milan; but in most of the "hill towns"
and in the little hamlets and lonely haunts where a house is perhaps
improvised out of the primeval rock, the prevailing life is still
mediæval, and only awakens on festa days into any semblance of activity.
Somewhere, away up in the hills, several miles from Pegli,--on the
Mediterranean coast near Genoa,--is one of these sequestered little hill
towns called _Acqua Sacra_. The name is obvious, indeed, for the sound
of the "sacred water" fills the air, falling from every hillside and
from the fountain of the _acqua sacra_ by the church. Pilgrims come from
miles around to drink of these waters. Each house in this remote little
hamlet is of solid stone, resembling a fortress on a small scale, and
the houses cling to the hillsides like mosses to a rock. Though far up
in the mountains, the hills rise around the hamlet like city walls,
as if the life of all the world were kept outside. The unforeseen visit
to these remote hamlets, suddenly chancing upon some small centre of
happy and half-idyllic life, is one of the charms of tourist travel in
this land of ineffable loveliness.
[Illustration: RUINS OF THE GREEK THEATRE, TAORMINA, SICILY
_Page 429_]
The approach to Italy, by whatever direction, by land or by sea, one
enters, is one of magical beauty. Whether one enters from the
Mediterranean or from the Adriatic, or by means of the Mont Cenis, the
Simplon, or the St. Gothard pass, through the sublime mountain wall,
each gateway is marvellous in attraction. Approaching from the seas that
completely surround Italy except on one side, the almost undreamed-of
splendor of Naples, Genoa, and Venice, as seen from off the shore,
exceeds all power of painter or poet to reproduce. The precipitous coast
of Sicily; the picturesque city of Palermo; the wonderful ruins of the
Greek theatre on the heights in Taormina,--all enchant the tourist. To
anchor off Naples, in the beautiful bay, serves the purpose of an hotel
out at sea. It is like living in Venice--only more so! By the little
rowboats one may go, at any moment, to Naples, and it is more delightful
than passing the days in the city itself. For at night as one strolls
or sits on deck what a picture is before the eye! All Naples, on her
semicircular shores, with her terraced heights rising above, defined in
a blaze of electric lights! Genoa, _la Superba_, is still more
magnificent when seen from the sea; and Venice, rising dream-enchanted,
completes the wonders of the approach by water.
As the new Italy has not yet achieved any homogeneous unity, Naples,
Rome, Florence, Venice, and Milan differ in their characteristics to
such a degree that no general interpretation of the residents of any one
would appropriately describe those of another. Paris and Vienna hardly
differ as much as do Milan and Rome; and Venice, Florence, and Rome,
each rich in art treasures, have little else in common. Certain
characteristics of each of the large cities reveal themselves
prominently, even to a superficial observer. Milan, as has been said, is
a centre of activity, as Florence is of culture and accomplishments.
Florence has the largest and the most choice circulating library in all
Italy and one that ranks among the best on the Continent. Her galleries
are treasure stores of art, and her social life is unsurpassed--one
might almost say unrivalled--in its fine quality. Music, philosophic
culture, learning in all lines of research characterize Florentine
society. Education has always been regarded in Florence as a matter of
prime importance, and when the government grant of funds is insufficient
the sum is made up by private contributions, so that the _Scuola del
Popolo_ gives free instruction, yearly, to eighteen hundred pupils, in
every branch of technical and art education. This fact alone offers its
own explanation of that general intelligence of the people which so
impresses the visitor in Florence. But this is a municipal rather than
national fact. Every special development in any direction in Italy will
always be found to be the characteristic of the city or locality, not of
the country as a whole; and thus the unity of Italy is still a political
expression rather than a political fact. It is a theory which is not yet
developed into an experience. Italy is in the making. Practically, she
is the youngest of countries, with less than forty years of experimental
attempt at _national_ life behind her. Not until 1919 will she have
attained the first half century of her united life. Educational
facilities, inclusive of schools, libraries, and museums; railroads,
telegraph and telephone service, electric lighting and electric
trams,--all the ways and means of the modern mechanism of life are,
inevitably, in a nebulous state in Italy. The political situation is
extremely interesting at the present time. That the "Blacks" and the
"Whites" are diametrically opposed to each other is in the nature of
history rather than that of contemporary record or of prophecy; and that
this is a traditional attitude in this city of the Cæsars is not a fact
by any means unknown; but the situation is complicated by the third
party--the Socialists--who, by allying themselves with either, would
easily turn the scales and command the situation. If they were ardent
Catholics and were advocates of the Papal supremacy, the temporal power
of the Pope would be restored in less time almost than could be
recorded, and Pius X would be in residence in the Palazzo Quirinale
rather than Victor Emanuele III. But this great modern uprising in
Italy--a movement that is gathering force and numbers so rapidly that no
one can venture to prophesy results even in the comparatively immediate
future--this great modern movement is neither for church nor state. The
Socialist uprising is very strong in Milan and through Northern Italy.
It is much in evidence in the Umbrian region--in Foligno, Spoleto,
Nervi, and those towns; and from Frascati to Genzano and in the Lake
Nemi chain of villages--Rocca di Papa, Castel Gandolpho, Ariccia,
Albano--these villages within some fifteen miles of Rome. In these there
is a veritable stronghold of Socialism, where its purposes and policy
are entrenched. Yet when one alludes to its policy, the term is rather
too definite. If it had a settled and well-formulated policy on which
all its adherents were in absolute accord they would carry all before
them. But Socialism is still a very elastic term and covers, if not a
multitude of sins, at least a multitude of ideas and ideals. There is
now a rumor that the situation is forcing the absolutely inconceivable
union of church and state--of the Vatican and the Quirinale--that they
may thus withstand their common foe. A more amazing and extraordinary
turn of affairs could not be imagined; and if the rumor (which is now
becoming more coherent in Rome) should prove to be the forerunner of
any truth, the situation will be one of the most amazing in all history.
[Illustration: PONTE VECCHIO, FLORENCE
_Page 430_]
Epoch-making events in the course of progress are always preceded by
circumstances that form to them a natural approach and chain of
causation. They are the results of which the causes stretch backward in
the past. One of the things that has an incalculably determining
influence on the present situation is that of the character of the
present Pope. His Holiness, Pius X, brings to the Papacy an entirely new
element. He is no ascetic or exclusive ecclesiastic; he is no diplomat
or intriguant, but rather a simple, kindly man, of a simplicity totally
unprecedented in the annals of the Palazzo Vaticano. Instead of clinging
with unswerving intensity of devotion to the idea of the restoration of
the temporal power of the church, Pope Pius X would not be disinclined
to the uniting of church and state as in England; the Vatican to remain,
like the See of Canterbury, the acknowledged head of the spiritual
power, while the Quirinale remained the head of the government to which
the church should give its political adherence, the Quirinale in return
giving to the Vatican its religious adherence. Perhaps it is not too
much to say that something not unlike this might easily become--if it is
not already--the dream of Pius X. But in the mean time there is another
factor with which to reckon, and that is the present Papal Secretary of
State, Cardinal Merry del Val. He it is who really holds the mystic key
of St. Peter's. He is a diplomatist, an ecclesiastic, an embodiment of
all that is severe and archaic in authority. The Pope is by no means
able to set his course by his own watch-lights. The College of Cardinals
surrounds him, and the College of Cardinals is practically one Cardinal,
the keen scholar and the all determining Cardinal Merry del Val, whose
personality dominates the court of the Vatican. This remarkable prelate
represents the most advanced and progressive thought of the day in many
ways,--as has been noted in preceding pages,--but as a Jesuit he is
unalterably devoted to what he considers the only ideal,--the
restoration of the temporal power of the Pope. Spain revealed her
attitude when King Alphonso asked of all the monarchs of Europe that the
name of each should be borne by his infant son, the heir-apparent; and
for Italy he asked the name of the Pope and not of the King, thus
recognizing Pius X rather than Victor Emmanuel III as the head of the
nation.
That the Socialists have very logical and serious grounds for complaint
is true. That their leader, Signor Enrico Ferri, an Italian journalist
and a Senator, is one of the most able men in Italy since the time of
Cavour is equally undeniable. The Socialists are fortunate, too, in
other leading men. Turati, the editor of the _Critica Sociale_,
Pantaleoni, Colajanni, and others are absolutely the hope of Italy at
the present time in the struggle for better conditions. For the
conditions of life in Italy, as regards taxation, the problems of
transit, the government restrictions on agricultural production and on
manufactures, are absolutely intolerable and should not be endured for a
day. The taxation is so exorbitant that it is a marvel Italy is not
depopulated. On land the tax rate is from thirty to fifty per cent; the
income tax is not merely, as one would suppose, levied on a legitimate
income derived from a man's possessions, but is levied on salaries,
ranging from ten to twenty per cent of these, and also, not content with
this unheard-of extortion, the tax is levied on the nature and source
of his salary, and even the smallest wage is thus subject to an income
tax. Again, there is a most absurd tax on salt, which, like sugar and
tobacco, is held as a government monopoly. No poor person living on the
seacoast in Italy is allowed to take even a pail of water from the sea
to his house, as the government assumes that, by evaporation, it might
yield a few grains of salt. The tax on sugar effectually checks an
industry that might be made most profitable, that of putting up fruit in
jams, jellies, and compote, and renders the price of these commodities
absurdly high. Again, when taxes are paid the process is even worse than
the unjust and exorbitant tax itself. No one is allowed to send a check
or postal order; no tax gatherer calls at the home or the office. Each
person must go himself or send a personal representative to a given
place between certain hours. Here stand a long procession, each person
in town going up, filling out pages of written formalities; talking of
each item and discussing it according to the national custom, until the
office hours are over for that day, and often not one-fourth of the
persons waiting have been served. All then must take their chances the
next day, and perhaps even a third or a fourth day,--a loss of time and
energy that in no other country would be tolerated for a moment. But
time has not yet any recognizable value in Italy. Every enterprise and
manufacture is taxed in Italy, and as the returns of these are
inevitably revealed so that no evasion is possible, and as the exactions
of the government consume nearly all the profits, the result is that all
business enterprises are discouraged and that Italy swarms with a great
idle population, while nearly all articles and supplies are imported
from other countries, with the payment of enormous duties, making their
cost far greater, proportionately, than their value.
There are great tracts of country in Southern Italy suitable for tobacco
raising, but (as it is one of the government monopolies) people are
forbidden to raise it; and in private gardens only three plants are
permitted. Again, all industries are crippled, if not paralyzed, by the
tax at the frontier, and also by the tax at every gate of every city. At
every _porta_ in Rome are stationed government officers who scrutinize
every box, basket, and package; and all fruit, eggs, garden stuff,
milk, and commodities of every kind are taxed as they are brought inside
the walls.
The railroads of Italy are, at present, very poor in all facilities of
transit. Within a year the Italian government has "taken over" these
roads and better conditions are promised, which are, alas! not yet in
sight. There are many "counts" to the indictment against the Italian
railroads which are only suitable to adorn the very lowest circles of
the Inferno described by Dante. They are uncleanly; the roadbeds are so
rough that the miserably built compartments jolt and jostle over the
tracks; the seats are so high that the feet can hardly touch the floor,
and the facilities for light and air are as badly managed as is possible
to conceive. As is well known, these are divided into first, second, and
third class, these compartments all being in the same train, and between
the first and second there is little difference save that of price.
Curiously, the price of even second-class travelling in Italy is over
half a cent a mile higher than that of the splendid trains in America,
with their swift time, their smooth roadbeds, their admirable
conveniences in every way. Again, no luggage is carried free, and the
prices asked for it are extortionate beyond words. One may check all his
impedimenta from San Francisco to New York without extra charge; but in
going from Rome to Naples, or from Florence to Genoa to sail, the same
luggage will cost from six to eight dollars to convey it to the steamer.
Again, these railroads pay their employés so poorly that only the most
inefficient service can be retained at all; only those persons who are
the absolute prisoners of poverty will consent to accept such meagrely
paid service.
The Italian government consists, like that of most countries, of an
upper and lower house, the Senate and the House of Deputies. But the
former is rather a matter of miscellaneous honors than one of political
initiative. There is no limit to the number of Senators; they are
created by being named by the King, and the office is for life. If a man
attracts the favorable notice of the King,--because he is a good artist,
engineer, archæologist, chemist, or financier,--presto, he is liable to
be made a Senator. Canova, the celebrated sculptor, was made a Senator
because, indeed, he was a great artist! There is one condition,
however, that a Senator must be one who pays annually not less than
three thousand lire in taxes. The Senators receive no salary, and their
times of meeting are uncertain and no man's presence is obligatory. The
House of Deputies has five hundred and eight members, all of whom must
be Italian subjects over thirty years of age. They have no salary, but
are given the entire freedom of the realm in all transit on railroads
and steamers. The Chamber of Deputies is largely made up of professional
men, and it is little wonder that the Socialists are demanding an entire
reform in the government of the country. There was never in any country
more defective conditions than now prevail in Italy. The very fact that
the young King is an estimable gentleman, who is personally not in the
least to blame for the prevailing status of unfortunate conditions, is
in one way an added misfortune, as the personal loyalty he justly
inspires militates by so much against the revolution in government which
is so deeply a necessity of Italy before her better and more prosperous
life can begin. It is now a country of stagnation. All Southern and
Central Italy simply lives off its tourists; and every year prices and
fees and extortion in general from the visitors to Italy become greater.
Senator Enrico Ferri, the leader of Socialism in Italy, was born in 1856
in Mantua. He had a university education, was admitted to the bar, and
in 1881 was called to the chair of penal law in the University of
Bologna. The Senator is a scientific Socialist,--a man of the most
exceptional gifts and qualities, and the author of a noted work,
entitled "Criminal Sociology," which is translated into several
languages. Senators Ferri and Lombroso are special friends and also
co-workers.
On taking his seat in the University of Bologna, Professor Ferri
delivered a lecture, entitled "New Horizons in Penal Law," which was a
most impressive effort. In it he said:--
"It was in this inaugural discourse that I affirmed the existence
of the positivist school of criminal law, and assigned to it these
two fundamental rules: First, while the classical schools of
criminal law have always studied the crime and neglected the
criminal, the object of the positivist school was, in the first
place, to study the criminal, so that, instead of the crime being
regarded merely as a juridical fact, it must be studied with the
aid of biology, of psychology, and of criminal statistics as a
natural and social fact, transforming the old criminal law into a
criminal sociology. Secondly, while the classical schools, since
Beccaria and Howard, have fulfilled the historic mission of
decreasing the punishments as a reaction from the severity of the
mediæval laws, the object of the positivist school is to decrease
the offence by investigating its natural and social causes in order
to apply social remedies more efficacious and more humane than the
penal counteraction, always slow in its effects, especially in its
cellular system, which I have called one of the aberrations of the
nineteenth century."
Such is the man to whom it is no extravagance to allude as one of the
present leaders of progress in Italy. He is in the early prime of mature
life; he is a man of education, culture, great original gifts, and of
sympathies with humanity as wise and judicious as they are liberal and
all-embracing. Scientific Socialism tolerates no lawlessness, no
violence, nor does it, like the so-called Christian Socialism, attempt
to graft impossible conditions on society. It regards the laws of
economics, and it is practicable and possible as well as considerate and
just. And the great inspirer, proclaimer, and leader of scientific
Socialism is Enrico Ferri.
Italy not only inspires the enthusiasm of the lover of beauty in nature
and art, she inspires a vital and abiding interest in all that shall
make for her true progress, and she inspires, as well, absolute faith in
her ultimate future. At present her monarchy is among the most liberal
and progressive of Europe. King Victor Emmanuel is a man of integrity,
of intelligence, and of devotion to the best interests of his country as
he understands these interests to be. If they might be better served by
a more democratic form of government, it is hardly to be asked or
expected that such a view should present itself to an hereditary
monarch. Among the most liberal element there are not wanting men who
believe that for the immediate future the present form of government is
the most feasible. In their conviction Italy is by no means prepared to
be a republic. The masses of the people are uneducated; and a great
work, requiring time, must be effected in the popularization of
intelligence and of instruction, before democratic government could be
adopted. Yet there is no faltering in the outlook on a glorious future.
The noble words of Mazzini still ring in the Italian air: "Walk in
faith, and fear not. Believe, and you will conquer." By way of enforcing
his convictions Mazzini said:--
"Upon a day in the sixteenth century, at Rome, some men bearing the
title of _Inquisitors_, who assumed to derive wisdom and authority
from God himself, were assembled to decree the immobility of the
earth. A prisoner stood before them. His brow was illumined by
genius. He had outstripped time and mankind, and revealed the
secret of a world.
"It was Galileo.
"The old man shook his bold and venerable head. His soul revolted
against the absurd violence of those who sought to force him to
deny the truths revealed to him by God. But his pristine energy was
worn down by long suffering and sorrow; the monkish menace crushed
him. He strove to submit. He raised his hand, he too, to declare
the immobility of the earth. But as he raised his hand, he raised
his weary eyes to that heaven they had searched throughout long
nights to read thereon one line of the universal law; they
encountered a ray of that sun which he so well knew motionless amid
the moving spheres. Remorse entered his heart: an involuntary cry
burst from the believer's soul: _Eppur si muove!_ and yet it moves.
"Three centuries have passed away.
Inquisitors,--inquisition,--absurd theses imposed by force,--all
these have disappeared. Naught remains but the well-established
movement of the earth, and the sublime cry of Galileo floating
above the ages.
"Child of Humanity, raise thy brow to the sun of God, and read upon
the heavens: _It moves._ Faith and action! The future is ours."
"Poetry," added Mazzini, "will teach the young the nobleness of
sacrifice, of constancy, and silence; of feeling one's self alone
without despairing, in an existence of suffering unknown or
misunderstood; in long years of bitterness, wounds, and delusion,
endured without murmur or lament; it will teach them to have faith in
things to come, and to labor unceasingly to hasten their coming, even
though without hope of living to witness their triumph;" and his final
word in this great invocation to the new potencies of the opening future
is an exhortation to believe in all greatness and goodness. "Faith," he
said, "which is intellect, energy, and love, will put an end to the
discords existing in a society which has neither church nor leaders;
which invokes a new world, but forgets to ask its secret, its Word, from
God." In universal education must lie the first national aid to the
development of Italy. "_L'anima del gran mondo è l'allegria._"
As Florence is pre-eminently the city of culture, so is Milan of
activities. Her keynote is _modernité_. The visitor is at once impressed
by her energy, her enterprise, and her commercial prosperity. Milan has
the best municipal facilities and conveniences in all Italy. The
electric lighting of streets, public buildings, and residences, the
street transit, the arrangement and conduct of shops and all industrial
matters, are in such contrast to any other city in Italy as to lead the
sojourner to ask himself whether he can still be on the southern side of
the Alpine range. In the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele Milan has the most
wonderful structure in all Europe. This arcade was built in 1865, and
under the magnificent glass dome it includes nearly one hundred of the
most attractive and well-stocked shops, bazaars, and establishments. The
dome is decorated with frescoes and caryatides, and with the statues of
numbers of eminent men, among whom are Dante, Raphael, Savonarola, and
Cavour. The offices and banks in Milan are centres of incessant energy.
For all this stress of activity the visitor does not, however, forget
the art features; the visit to the antique Church of St. Ambrosio; to
the old convent where Leonardo da Vinci's celebrated fresco, "The Last
Supper," is to be seen, though so faded that it is now difficult to
discern all the figures. Nor does he fail to climb the wonderful
cathedral that lifts its airy grace, as if about to float upward in the
skies. Every flight of the steps, in the ascent, brings one to a new
vision of beauty. On the roof of this cathedral one wanders as in a very
forest of sculpture. Its scheme of decoration includes more than two
thousand statues, two of which are by Canova. From the summit, when the
air is clear, there are beautiful views of the Alps.
To the savant and scholar the Ambrosian library in Milan is one of the
special treasures of Europe. It contains some of the most rare and
valuable manuscripts in the entire world,--some of Virgil's with
annotations from Petrarcha; a manuscript of Dante's; drawings by
Leonardo da Vinci, and other interesting matters of which no other
copies exist.
The Magic Land is seen under its most bewitching spell in the region of
the Italian lakes. The palace of Isola Bella; the charming gardens; the
lake of Como, green-walled in hills whose luxuriant foliage and bloom
form a framework for the white villas that cluster on their terraced
slopes,--all form a very fairyland of ethereal, rose-embowered beauty.
At night the lakes are a strange, unreal world of silver lights and
shadows.
The completion of the Simplon tunnel has opened between Italy and Paris
a route not only offering swifter facilities for transit, but adding
another to the regions of beauty. This route has also still further
increased the commercial importance of Milan, the portal and metropolis
of Northern Italy. Milan has become the national centre of all
scientific and technical pursuits, and it is fairly the Mecca for young
men of Central and Southern Italy who are entering into the professions,
or into civil and electrical engineering and other of the technical arts
and industries.
Bologna, with her historic University, with the long covered arcades of
the streets, the fountain, which is the work of Giovanni di Bologna, and
the gallery where many of Guido's best works are placed, has its
individual interest for the tourist; and Verona, Pavia, Modena, Parma,
and Turin all repay a visit from the leisurely saunterer in Italy.
Pisa offers to the visitor four interesting architectural monuments in
the Duomo, the Baptistery, the Leaning Tower, and the Campo Santo, all
of which are unique. The cathedral has unique designs in its black and
white marbles that render it almost as much an object of artistic study
as is the cathedral in Siena. The view from the summit of the Leaning
Tower reveals the Mediterranean six miles in the distance, gleaming like
a sea of silver. The Campo Santo dates from the thirteenth century,
when the earth of which it is composed was brought (in 1228) from the
holy places in Jerusalem, conveyed to the city (then a seaport) by fifty
galleys sent out by the Republic of Pisa. The interior walls of the
Campo Santo are covered with fresco paintings by Orcagna which are one
of the artistic spectacles of the country in their extravagant portrayal
of theological beliefs, so realistically presented in their dramatic
scenes from Paradise and from Hades, as to leave nothing to the
imagination. The fantasies in this emblematic sculpture of memorial
monuments over a period of seven hundred years can be seen in the Campo
Santo of Pisa,--a strange and often a most grotesque medley.
Genoa is well named La Superba. Her thoroughfares are streets of
palaces. Her terraced gardens and villas, reached by the subterranean
funicular street railway, are regions of unique and incomparable beauty,
with the blue Mediterranean at their feet. Genoa is the paradise for
walking. The streets are largely inaccessible to carriages, but the
admirable street electric railway penetrates every locality. It passes
in dark tunnels under the hills, reappears on the high terraces, and
climbs every height. From the crest of one of these Corsica can often be
seen. All the hill-slopes are a dream of pictorial grandeur, with their
terraces, their palaces, their sculpture, fountains, and flowers. On the
summit of almost every hill there is a fortress, and often ramparts
which are silhouetted, in dark masses, against the sky. Orange groves
abound on the terraces, often showing the golden fruit, buds, and
blossoms all at the same time.
Genoa is fairly a metropolis of sculpture. The great families have
themselves perpetuated in portrait statues rather than in painted
portraits. In one of the grand ducal palaces in the Via Balbi the
visitor may see, not only the life-size statues and the busts of the
family ancestry, but one group comprising nine figures, where three
generations are represented, in both sitting and standing poses,
ingeniously combined.
The churches of Genoa are among the richest in Europe. That of the
Annunziata, the special monument of the Lomellini family, glitters and
gleams with its gold ceilings and rich frescoes. The cathedral has the
special allurement of the emerald dish which King Solomon received as
a gift from the Queen of Sheba. The little "street of the jewellers" is
an alluring place,--so narrow that one can almost stand in the centre of
the road and touch the shop windows on either hand, and these windows
dazzle the eye with their fascinating glitter of gold and silver
filigree work and their rich jewels.
[Illustration: CAMPO SANTO, GENOA
_Page 453_]
Beyond all other curious excursions that even a Magic Land can offer is
that to the Campo Santo of Genoa. A cloistered promenade encloses a
square, and above are terraced colonnades, each and all revealing
statues, and monuments, and groups of sculpture whose varied beauty,
oddity, or bizarre effects are a curious study. Some memorials--as one
of an angel with outstretched wings; another of a flight of angels
bearing the soul away; another combining the figure of Christ with the
cross, and angels hovering near--are full of beauty. Others are a marvel
of ingenious and incongruous combination. One of the latter represents
the man whose memory it commemorates as lying on his bed in his last
illness; the physician stands by, his fingers on the patient's pulse;
on the opposite side a maid is approaching with a dish holding some
article of food, and near the physician are grouped the wife, with a
little child clinging to her skirts; the son, holding his hat with both
hands and looking down on it, and the daughter, a young girl, with her
eyes raised to heaven. Each of these figures is in life size; the bed is
reproduced in marble, with the pillows and all the coverings in the most
absolute realism, and the entire effect is so startling in its bizarre
aspect that one could hardly believe in its existence until by personal
observation he had verified so singular a monument.
Yet there is beauty and symbolic loveliness, too, in many of the
memorial sculptures of this Campo Santo, and turning away from this
cemetery in which lies the body of the noble Mazzini, one hears on the
air the refrain of his words on Dante:--
"It appeared to him of more importance to hasten to accomplish his
mission upon earth, than to meditate upon the inevitable hour which
marks for all men the beginning of a new task. And if at times he
speaks of weariness of life, it is only because he sees evil more
and more triumphant in the places where his mission was appointed.
He concerned himself, not about the length or the shortness of
life, but about the end for which life was given; for he felt God
in life, and knew the creative virtue there is in action."
Eighty thousand people followed Mazzini to his tomb, and his name lives
in the Italy of to-day as one to be associated with that of Dante as
prophet and inspirer.
The enchantment of approaching Genoa from the sea at night is an
experience to remain as one of the pictorial treasures of memory. The
magnificent _lanterna_, the lighthouse with its revolving light, that
can be seen for fifty miles out from the coast; the brilliant
illumination defining the _fortezza_ on the summit of one hill; the
curving lights of the terraced residential district and the illumination
of the very forest of shipping clustered in the bay,--all combine into a
scene not easily effaced from the memories of foreign scenes.
It is only in close relations with Italian literature that Italy can be
adequately enjoyed and that the sojourner may enter into sympathetic
associations with contemporary Italian life. Dr. Richard Garnett
believes that the literature of Italy "is a less exhaustive
manifestation than elsewhere of the intellect of the nation," and that
"the best energies of the country are employed in artistic production.
It is, indeed, remarkable," he continues, "that out of the nine Italians
most brilliantly conspicuous in the first rank of genius and
achievement,--Aquinas, Dante, Columbus, Leonardo, Michael Angelo,
Raphael, Titian, Galileo, Napoleon,--only one should have been a man of
letters."
Contemporary Italian literature follows the trend of the day in
reflecting the life of the people. The novels of Fogazzaro, the poems of
Carducci, the biography and history written by Villari, to say nothing
of several other writers who, while not approaching these authors, have
still a definite place in the literature of the present, offer
illumination on the outer scenery of life, and offer interpretation of
the life itself. Art has declined; literature has advanced in Italy,
even within the past decade. The law of progress is as inevitable as is
the law of gravitation.
"Onward the chariot of the Unvarying moves;
Nor day divulges him nor night conceals;
Thou hear'st the echo of unreturning hooves,
And thunder of irrevocable wheels."
The future of Italy inspires faith in the renewal of its noblest ideals
of achievement. Its ineffable beauty is a heritage of joy to every
visitor who comes under the indescribable spell of its attraction and
finds that, in all the panorama of foreign life which haunts his memory,
it is Italy which shines resplendent as the Magic Land!
INDEX
Accademia des Arcades, Rome, 334.
Accadémia di San Luca, oldest art school, 44;
location of, 45;
galleries of, 46, 47, 48.
Acqua Sacra, 428.
Akers, Paul, in Rome, 10;
early death of, 53;
work of, 54, 55;
quoted, 56;
Hawthorne's estimate of, 57.
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, quoted, 387.
Allen, Elizabeth Akers, quoted, 53.
Amalfi, 253-257;
destruction of, 258, 259.
Ambrosian library, Milan, 449.
American Academy, Rome, 214.
American Embassy, Rome, location of, 153;
ball at, 164-167;
receptions at, 169.
Anderson, Hendrick Christian, in Rome, 10.
Angelo, Michael, work of, 22, 23, 312;
message of, 117;
friendship with Vittoria Colonna, 290;
Longfellow's poem on, 308-310;
art of, 313, 314;
quoted, 314, 316, 317, 318, 323;
gift to Vittoria Colonna, 318;
meeting with Francesco d'Ollanda, 322, 323, 324;
Walter Pater's estimate of, 327, 328, 329.
Annunziata Cathedral, Genoa, 452.
Aquinas, Thomas, birthplace of, 276;
tomb of, 331;
monastery of, 333.
Aquinum, 277.
"Arcadians," meetings of, 150.
Ariosto, 306.
Art, as leader of popular taste, 115;
inspired by religious ideals, 116;
Renaissance in, 117;
national importance of, 117;
ignored, 118;
relation to ugliness, 119;
falseness of, 121;
influence on life, 122;
united with religion, 123.
Assisi, pilgrimage to, 341, 344;
founding of, 345;
points of interest in, 345, 346;
Canon Knox Little's description of, 348;
as a shrine, 385.
Assisi, Bishop of, 354, 364.
Assisi, St. Francis of, 123, 124;
message of, 342;
birthplace of, 345;
impress of, 347;
parents of, 348, 349;
early life of, 350;
legends regarding, 351;
quoted, 352, 354, 356;
supreme aim of, 353;
Rule of, 353, 354;
prayer of, 356;
character of, 357;
incident in early life of, 360;
first ministry of, 363;
first disciple of, 364;
at the Portiuncula, 365;
friendship with Clara, 365, 367, 368;
legends regarding, 370;
death of, 372;
miracles of, 375;
tomb of, 378.
Bagot, Richard, in Rome, 11, 13.
Baia, 241.
Baldwin, Rev. Dr., in Rome, 10, 171.
Ball, Thomas, work of, 52.
Balzac, quoted, 120.
Barberini, Cardinal, 72.
Baths of Caracalla, 139.
Baths of Diocletian, 184.
Bell, John, grave of, 216.
Bembo, Cardinal, 306.
Benedictines, 354, 365.
Benton, Dwight, grave of, 221;
estimate of, 221.
Bernardino of Siena, 382, 383;
quoted, 383.
Bernini, Lorenzo, work of, 22.
Besant, Mrs. Annie, 174.
Biblioteca Sarti, 48.
"Blacks," 145, 146.
Bologna, 450.
Bonaparte, Princess Christina, death of, 203.
Boni, Commendatore, opinion of, 244.
Boni, Giovanni M., 403.
Bronson, Mrs. Arthur, 409, 410.
Brooks, Rev. Phillips, in Rome, 15;
quoted, 16, 39, 388, 394, 395.
Brownell, W. C., quoted, 96.
Browning, Elizabeth B., in Rome, 11;
quoted, 60, 114, 125, 389;
death of, 80, 408;
meeting with Mrs. Bronson, 410, 411.
Browning Palace, 406, 410, 411, 412, 413.
Browning, Robert, quoted, 3, 407, 408;
in Rome, 11, 70;
in Venice, 406;
death of, 408.
Browning, Miss Sarianna, 408, 413.
Buono, 236.
Byron, Lord, in Rome, 22;
quoted, 22, 403.
Campagna, 73, 205.
Campanile, fall of, 406.
Campo Verano, 76.
Campo Santo of Pisa, 450, 451, 453.
Campidoglio, buildings on, 25.
Campriani, 237.
Canova, in Rome, 7;
his genius, 33;
masterpiece of, 42;
realism of, 118.
Capella Sistina, 27.
Capo Miseno, 241.
Capri, island of, 262, 263, 264;
roses of, 266.
Capuano, Cardinal, legends of, 256.
Capuccini, convent of, 255.
Carducci, 143.
Carter, Professor Jesse Benedict, in Rome, 169.
Carter, Mrs. Jesse Benedict, 34, 37, 169.
Casa Buonarroti, 312.
Casino Borghese, 185.
Castel d'Ischia, 292, 293, 294.
Castellammare, 250.
Castle Gandolfo, 286.
Castiglione, 306.
Cecioni's "La Madre," 121.
Cestius, Caius, tomb of, 215.
Channing, Grace Ellery, 10, 91.
Chapel of Holy Sacrament, 202.
Chateaubriand, in Rome, 21;
quoted, 21.
Cicero's villa, remains of, 207.
Cimabue, 376, 378.
Cole, Thomas, in Rome, 9.
Coleman, Charles Caryl, home of, 263.
College of Cardinals, 435.
Colonna, Fabrizio, 290.
Colonna family, 285, 288, 289, 306, 307.
Colonna palace and gardens, 131.
Colonna, Vittoria, home of, 282;
quoted, 283, 303;
parents of, 285;
early childhood of, 286, 288;
horoscope of, 289;
destiny of, 290;
betrothal of, 290;
marriage of, 294, 295;
early married life of, 295, 296;
quoted, 297, 298, 300, 303, 305, 319, 320, 321;
in Pope Leo's court, 302;
her husband's death, 302;
removal of, 304;
fame of, 306;
return to Rome of, 307;
Longfellow's picture of, 308, 309, 310, 325, 326, 327;
travels of, 308, 311;
her influence with Michael Angelo, 313;
life in Rome and Orvieto, 314;
receives letters and sonnet from Michael Angelo, 317;
receives present from Michael Angelo, 318;
arranges meeting of Michael Angelo and Francesco d'Ollanda,
322, 323, 324;
Walter Pater's comments on, 328;
death of, 329;
last prayer of, 330;
burial of, 331;
tomb of, 332;
bust of, 334;
fame of, 335, 336;
Margaret J. Preston's poem on, 337.
Condivi, quoted, 313.
Contarini, Cardinal, 306.
Corsini chapel, 152.
Crawford, Marion, in Rome, 11, 13.
Crawford, Thomas, in Rome, 49;
career of, 51;
poem on, 52.
Crow, Hon. Wayman, 61.
Cumæ, 241.
Cumæan Sibyl, 242.
da Bisticci, Vespasiano, 383.
Dalbano, Edoardo, 236.
Dana, Richard Henry, 219.
Dante, quoted, 267-270;
Mazzini's estimate of, 454.
d'Avalos, Donna Constanza, 291.
d'Avalos, Francesco, 290, 294, 295.
De Castro, Consul General, in Rome, 169.
Decline of art, 31.
d'Ollanda, Francesco, 322-324.
del Val, Cardinal Merry, 146-149, 435.
del Vasto, Marchese, 299.
De Monici, chronicles of, 398.
de Staël, Mme., in Rome, 11, 22.
Dietsch, C. Percival, in Rome, 10.
di Francavilla, Duchess, 291-293.
di Mercanti, Pica, 349, 350.
di Mercanti, Pietro Bernardone, 348, 349.
di Pescara, Marchesa, 296, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 306, 311, 312,
322, 331, 332, 335.
di Pescara, Marchese, 292, 296, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 331,
332.
Doges, Palace of, 400-403.
Dolce, Ludovico, 306.
Don Erasmo Gattola, 273.
Duca de Torlonia, family of, 205.
Duff, Lina Gordon, quoted, 374.
Dupaty, quoted, 16.
Duran, M. Carolus, in Rome, 166, 167.
Elena, Queen, 140, 142, 179.
Eliot, George, quoted, 252.
Emerson, Mary Moody, letters to, 12.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, in Rome, 12;
quoted, 85.
Emmons, Miss Elise, in Rome, 167.
Esposito, 237.
Ezekiel, Moses, in Rome, 10;
studios of, 97.
Fawcett, Edgar, quoted, 417.
Ferrara, Duca and Duchessa of, 311.
Ferri, Signor Enrico, 436, 442;
quoted, 442.
Festus, quoted, 30.
Field, Kate, in Rome, 12.
Florence, culture of, 430, 431.
Fra Ambrosia, 322.
Franciscan, 367.
Frascati, visited, 205.
Galileo, in Rome, 139, 445.
Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, 448.
Garibaldi, villa of, 239.
Garnett, Dr. Richard, quoted, 456.
Genoa, 430;
features of, 451;
as a metropolis of sculpture, 452;
churches of, 452;
enchantment of, 455.
Ghiberto, Bishop, 311.
Gibson, John, in Rome, 10, 36;
quoted, 34, 37, 59;
grave of, 221.
Giotto, 376, 377, 379.
Giovio, Paolo, 306.
Gladstone, in Rome, 11.
Goethe, in Rome, 11, 20;
quoted, 20.
Goethe, August, grave of, 216.
Goldoni, Carlo, centenary of, 413;
memorial of, 414.
Good Friday, service in Rome, 200, 201.
Greenough, Horatio, in Rome, 10;
work of, 49;
death, 50.
Greenough, Mrs. Horatio, 335.
Greenough, Richard, in Rome, 10, 58;
grave of, 217.
Greenough, Sarah B., tomb of, 218.
Grotto de Matrimonia, 263.
Grotto Ferrata, 209.
Guili, Commendatore Conte, 214.
Guthers, Carl, work of, 236.
Hare, Augustus William, grave of, 221.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, quoted, 45, 57, 67, 195.
Healy, Mr., in Rome, 19.
Herculaneum, 242;
excavations in, 244;
Professor Spinazzola on, 242, 243;
destruction of, 244;
theatre in, 247.
Hillard, George Stillman, in Rome, 12;
quoted, 23, 24, 51, 230, 248.
Holy Week, in Rome, 200.
Hosmer, Harriet, in Rome, 10, 59, 60, 61;
work of, 62.
Howe, Dr. Samuel Gridley, in Rome, 12.
Howe, Julia Ward, in Rome, 12.
Howells, William Dean, in Rome, 13, 416.
Howitt, William and Mary, graves of, 216.
Hugo, Victor, 41.
Ischia, 281;
romantic impressions of, 282;
home of Vittoria Colonna, 282;
the d'Avalos castle in, 291;
as an enchanted island, 296;
Vittoria's return to, 299, 305.
Italy, land of romance and song, 6;
Mazzini's opinion of, 65;
true life of, 423;
as a youthful country, 424;
relation with United States, 425;
traveller in, 425;
picture of idyllic days in, 427;
approach to, 429;
cities of, 429, 430;
in the making, 431;
politics of, 432;
Socialistic uprising in, 433;
taxation in, 436-438;
railroads in, 439, 440;
government of, 440, 441;
future of, 444, 457;
lakes of, 449;
contemporary literature of, 456.
James, Henry, in Rome, 11, 13.
Jameson, Mrs., in Rome, 67;
quoted, 193.
Johnson, Robert Underwood, quoted, 416, 421.
Juvenal, birthplace of, 277.
Keats, in Rome, 11, 132;
memorial, 133;
grave of, 216.
Kemble, Adelaide, in Rome, 68.
Kemble, Fanny, in Rome, 68.
Keynote of life, 359.
Khayyam, Omar, quoted, 1, 94.
Lacus Avernus, 240.
Lanciani, Professor, lectures by, 138, 139;
opinion of, 244, 333.
Leaning Tower of Pisa, 450.
Libraries of Rome, 214, 223.
Lister, Mrs., in Rome, 172.
Liszt, Abbé, in Rome, 18, 19.
Little, Canon Knox, quoted, 347, 348, 376, 377, 380.
Lodge, Sir Oliver, quoted, 120.
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, in Rome, 12;
quoted, 16, 17, 125, 253, 274, 279, 281, 308, 309, 310, 325, 327, 387.
Longfellow, Rev. Samuel, quoted, 18.
Lowell, James Russell, in Rome, 12.
Ludovisi collection, 185.
Luther, in Rome, 80;
ascent of the Scala Santa, 156.
Margherita, Queen Mother, 140, 141;
palace of, 142;
quoted, 143;
relations with artists, 144;
at requiem mass, 179.
Marino, 286, 287.
Mazzini, 191, 192; quoted, 64, 422, 423, 444, 446;
works of, 190, 191;
estimate of, 191;
tomb of, 454.
Mead, Larkin G., in Rome, 10;
work of, 53.
Mediæval Museum of Rome, 139.
Meredith, Owen, quoted, 2.
Metella, Cecilia, tomb of, 145.
Milan, activity of, 430, 447;
structures of, 448;
Ambrosian library of, 449;
as scientific centre, 450.
Mills, Clark, in Rome, 10.
Milton, in Rome, 11, 19.
Misenus, burial place of, 241.
Monte Aquino, 276.
Monte Cairo, 277.
Monte Cassino, 304.
Monte Catria, 348.
Monte Mario, 21, 133.
Monte Pincio, 188.
Monte San Mano, 304.
Morelli, Domenico, work of, 234, 235.
Moulton, Louise Chandler, in Rome, 13;
quoted, 13, 14, 95, 267, 340.
Myers, Frederick W. H., memorial tablet to, 220.
Naples, described, 227-231;
University of, 232;
Museum, 233;
natural attractions of, 237;
hotels of, 238;
Bay of, 265.
Nardi, Monsignore, in Rome, 18.
Nero's tomb, 78, 80.
Nisida, island of, 240.
Norton, Charles Eliot, quoted, 267.
Obelisk in Piazza del Popolo, 77.
Oldest art school, 44.
Oliphant, Mrs., quoted, 357, 368.
Orvieto, 314.
Osso, Professor Dall', opinion of, 244.
Oxenham, Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Nutcombe, in Rome, 171.
Pæstum, 260, 261.
Page de Conti, 337.
Page, William, in Rome, 66.
Palatine Hill, 13, 112.
Palazzo Barberini, 72, 90.
Palazzo Bernini, 32.
Palazzo Bonaparte, 203.
Palazzo Brandolin-Rota, 409.
Palazzo Cesarini, 314, 329.
Palazzo del Drago, 163, 164.
Palazzo di Capodimonte, 233.
Palazzo di Donna Ana, 239.
Palazzo Margherita, 142.
Palazzo Municipio, 384.
Palazzo Quirinale, 142, 143, 432.
Palazzo Rezzonico, 406.
Palazzo Senni, 172.
Palazzo Tamagno, 104.
Palazzo Vaticano, 27.
Pantheon, 177;
ceremonies at, 179.
Papal supremacy, 432.
Parsons, Thomas William, quoted, 52, 276.
Pater, Walter, quoted, 327, 328.
Perugia, town of, 381-384.
Perugino, 384.
Petrarcha, 258, 259, 400.
Phlegræan Plain, 240.
Piazza Barberini, 18.
Piazza del Popolo, 76, 80, 134.
Piazza di Spagna, 70, 133, 146.
Piazza di Trinità, 133.
Piazza San Giovanni, 151.
Pietro da Cortona, work of, 194.
Pisa, architectural monuments of, 450.
Pistolesi, quoted, 43.
Pliny, the Younger, quoted, 244.
Poe, quoted, 136.
Pompeii, 243, 245, 248.
Pope Adrian, 302.
Pope Clement XII, tomb of, 152.
Pope Julius II, 23, 27, 28.
Pope Leo XII, 302.
Pope Leo XIII, tomb of, 154.
Pope Paschal, dream of, 157.
Pope Paul III, 313.
Pope Pio Nono, 64, 75.
Pope Pius X, 145, 147;
"passage" of, 196, 197;
ceremonial receptions of, 146;
residence of, 432;
character of, 434;
dream of, 435.
Portiuncula, 365, 366.
Posilipo, 239.
Powers, Hiram, in Rome, 10;
America's first sculptor, 49;
work, 50.
Pratello, 237.
Preston, Margaret J., quoted, 280, 337.
Principessa d'Antuni, 163, 164.
Quattro Fontane, Via delle, 72.
Raphael, work of, 22, 46, 47, 79;
genius of, 26;
masterpieces of, 27;
Franklin Simmons, opinion of, 29;
inspiration of, 30;
decline of art after, 31.
Ravello, Cathedral at, 260.
Ravenna, battle of, 296.
Read, Thomas Buchanan, in Rome, 67.
Realism, kinds of, 118.
_Regina Madre_, 140, 142.
Regio Palazzo del Quirinale, 143, 144.
Reid, Hon. Whitelaw, 105.
Reinhart, William, in Rome, 10.
Religion united with art, 123.
Renaissance in Italy, 117.
Richmond, Celia, 341.
Rocca di Papa, 287.
Rogers, Randolph, in Rome, 10;
early death of, 53.
Roman environment, 93.
Rome, features of, 1;
as artistic centre, 6, 10, 114;
under Pontifical régime, 8;
Longfellow's love for, 16;
Goethe's impressions of, 20;
work of Michael Angelo and Raphael in, 22;
oldest art school of, 44;
latter-day artists in, 49;
Brownings in, 67;
social life in, 113, 127;
new bridge of, 128;
in May, 129;
in winter, 129, 130;
in spring, 130, 132;
festas in, 136;
discussed by Professor Lanciani, 138;
society in, 140, 141, 170;
two courts of, 142;
modern features of, 145;
enchanting views in, 151;
poetic symbolism in, 158-160;
of the present day, breakfast-table talk in, 162;
American Embassy in, 163;
elevator service in, 164;
American consulate in, 169;
delightful hostesses in, 171, 172;
attitude toward modern thought in, 173;
Theosophical Society of, 173, 174;
demand for apartments in, 175;
sight-seeing in, 183;
great palaces in, 187;
famous drive of, 188;
birthday celebrations of, 189;
Republic of, 190;
rich years to artists in, 192, 193;
Papal ceremonies in, 195;
curious spectacle in, 198;
Holy Week in, 200;
Good Friday service in, 200, 201;
motoring from, 204, 205;
outlying towns of, 207;
American Academy in, 214;
libraries of, 214;
Protestant cemetery of, 215;
literature of, 223;
modern spirit in, 428.
Rosa, Salvator, 234.
Rosenkrans, Baroness, 173.
Rota, 329.
Ruskin, in Rome, 12;
quoted, 398.
Sabatier, Paul, quoted, 362, 365.
Sallust, Gardens of, 140.
Salvatico, quoted, 401.
San Agostino, church of, 198.
San Caterina di Viterbo, 314.
San Francesco, church of, 345.
San Giovanni, 153.
San Marco, 394.
San Maria della Pace, 27.
San Maria dei Frari, 405.
San Silvestre, 32.
Sansovino, Jacob, work of, 399.
Santa Anna, convent of, 314.
Santa Chiara (Clara), 365;
takes vows, 366, 367;
founds convent, 368;
family history of, 368;
friendship with St. Francis of Assisi, 368;
at death of Francis, 372;
personality of, 373;
preservation of body of, 374.
Santa Domenica Maggiore, church of, 303, 331, 333.
Santa Maria Degli Angeli, 345, 365, 380.
Santa Maria del Popolo, 78-80.
Santa Maria della Salute, 405.
Santa Monica, tomb of, 199.
Scala di Spagna, 72.
Scala Santa, 155;
Luther's ascent of, 156.
Scifi, Count Favorini, 368.
Scott, Sir Walter, in Rome, 20.
Sejanus, fall of, 263.
Sermoneta, Duke of, in Rome, 18.
Severn, Joseph, grave of, 216.
Shelley, in Rome, 22;
memorial, 133;
quoted, 215;
grave of, 216.
Simmons, Franklin, in Rome, 10, 15, 91, 98;
quoted, 29;
works of, 98-112;
early life, 100;
degrees conferred upon, 103;
marriage of, 103;
latest success of, 107;
studios of, 112;
realism of, 119;
beautiful creation of, 121;
grave of, 217.
Simmons, Mrs. Franklin, in Rome, 104;
death of, 112;
estimate of, 112;
grave of, 218.
Sindoni, Turillo, 144.
Sistine Chapel, art in, 177.
Sorrento, 251, 252.
Spearman, Frank Hamilton, in Rome, 167;
work of, 168.
Spinazzola, Professor, quoted, 242, 243.
St. Ambrosio, church of, 448.
St. Andrew, 256.
St. Benedict, work of, 270, 271;
tomb of, 272;
chapel of, 350.
St. Damian, chapel of, 356.
St. Gaudens, Augustus, in Rome, 10.
St. Gregory, feast of, 180.
St. Maria della Portiuncula, 351.
St. Mark's, Venice, 396, 397, 404.
St. Mark, tomb of, 397;
legend regarding, 397.
St. Paola d'Orvieto, 314.
Stebbins, Emma, in Rome, 58.
Stetson, Charles Walker, in Rome, 10, 91;
work of, 113.
Stetson, Mrs. Charles Walker, in Rome, 11;
quoted, 426.
Stillman, Mr., quoted, 39.
Story, Julian, in Rome, 91;
studio of, 97.
Story, Waldo, in Rome, 91;
studio of, 97;
works of, 98.
Story, William Wetmore, in Rome, 10;
first visit to Italy of, 62;
in Florence, 65;
quoted, 70, 80, 89, 90, 286;
in Palazzo Barberini, Rome, 71;
works of, 81-86;
estimate of, 82-90;
literary work of, 90;
grave of, 217.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, in Rome, 11.
Strada Nuova di Posilipo, 239.
Symonds, John Addington, grave of, 220;
estimate of, 220;
quoted, 261, 264, 315, 316.
Tasso, 252, 253, 335.
Tennyson's choice of pictures in Venice, 395.
Thackeray, in Rome, 69.
Theocritus, quoted, 85.
Theosophical Society of Rome, 173.
Thomas, Edith, quoted, 82.
Thompson, Launt, in Rome, 10.
Thorwaldsen, in Rome, 7, 10;
quoted, 35;
realism of, 119.
Tiberius, summer palace of, 262;
baths of, 263.
Tilton, J. Rollin, in Rome, 10;
grave of, 219.
Titian, tomb of, 405.
Torlonia, Duca and Duchessa of, 334.
Trelawney, grave of, 216.
Trinità di Monti, church of, 133.
Tusculum, 207.
Umberto, King, 142.
Umbrians, 345.
Urbino, 285.
Vanderlyn, in Rome, 10.
Vaughn, Monsignor, 181.
Vatican, galleries of, 112.
Vatican palace, 196, 198.
Vedder, Anita, in Rome, 171.
Vedder, Elihu, in Rome, 10;
art of, 91-95;
appreciation of, 96;
works of, 96, 97;
country house of, 262.
Vedder, Mrs. Elihu, in Rome, 170.
Venice, first glimpses of, 389;
Grand Canal of, 390;
in June, 391;
color and loveliness of, 392;
art of, 395, 396;
origin of, 398;
first Doge of, 399;
Renaissance architecture in, 399;
Doge's Palace, 400-404;
art in, 404;
fall of Campanile in, 406;
Browning Palace in, 408-413;
centenary of Carlo Goldoni celebrated in, 413, 414;
art exhibition in, 415;
June evening in, 416;
as a poet's dream, 418.
Vernet, Horace, in Rome, 10.
Verona, 311.
Veronese, Paolo, 404.
Vesuvius, 229.
Via Bonella, 45.
Victor Emmanuel III, 118, 215, 432, 444.
Villa Aldobrandini, 208.
Villa Barberini, 209.
Villa Borghese, 14, 187.
Villa Doria, 211.
Villa Falconieri, 213.
Villa Jovis, 263.
Villa Medici, 4, 134.
Villa Nazionale, 238.
Villa Pamphilia Doria, 149.
Villa Torlonia, 206.
Virgil, quoted, 241;
grotto of, 242.
Visconti, 329, 330.
Vittorio Emanuele, 214.
Waldstein, Dr. Charles, quoted, 245.
Ward, Mrs. Humphry, quoted, 210, 212.
Watson, William, quoted, 9, 25, 86, 87.
Wellman, Walter, 9.
West, Benjamin, in Rome, 10.
White, Mr. and Mrs. Henry, in Rome, 165.
"Whites," 145.
Whitman, Walt, quoted, 422.
Whitney, Anne, in Rome, 10, 58.
Whittier, quoted, 339.
Wilberforce, Rev. Basil, quoted, 125, 341.
Woolson, Constance Fenimore, tomb of, 219.
Zuccaro, Federigo, 44.
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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
The original language, spelling, language and punctuation have been
preserved.
The following corrections were made to the original text:
Page xii: Vittoria Colonna, Galleria Buonarotti, Florence
Vittoria Colonna, Galleria Buonarroti, Florence
Page 6: artistic centre of the ninteenth century and
artistic centre of the nineteenth century and
Page 19: on the wall of the _casa_ in the Via delle Quattre Fontane
on the wall of the _casa_ in the Via delle Quattro Fontane
page 26: the Palazzo Sentoriale and the Palazzo dei Conservatore.
the Palazzo Senatoriale and the Palazzo dei Conservatori.
page 27: the Stanza della Incendio and the Sala di Constantino.
the Stanza dell'Incendio and the Sala di Constantino.
page 32: winds on the Pont San Angelo, and in the vast
winds on the Ponte San Angelo, and in the vast
page 32: the Music Nazionale--is the group of "Pluto
the Museo Nazionale--is the group of "Pluto
page 55: during hs stay in Rome are 'St. Elizabeth of
during his stay in Rome are 'St. Elizabeth of
page 72: The Via delle Quatre Fontane, on which the
The Via delle Quattro Fontane, on which the
page 138: given under the auspices of the Societa Archeologica,
given under the auspices of the Società Archeologica,
page 148: _gentilinomo_, who is gorgeously arrayed in knee
_gentiluomo_, who is gorgeously arrayed in knee
page 161: Jacomletti, and there is also a kneeling statue
Jacometti, and there is also a kneeling statue
page 163: and the Via dell Quattro Fontane. The
and the Via delle Quattro Fontane. The
page 163: for living purposes. The portere, the guards,
for living purposes. The portiere, the guards,
page 170: and in the Vedder villa, _Torre Quatro Venti_
and in the Vedder villa, _Torre Quattro Venti_
page 171: the American wife of Caviliere Cortesi, an
the American wife of Cavaliere Cortesi, an
page 178: Peruzzi, and Annibale Caracci. Raphael is
Peruzzi, and Annibale Carracci. Raphael is
page 185: that includes the "Ludovisi Mars;" Hercules,"
that includes the "Ludovisi Mars;" "Hercules,"
page 200: he may rest, _mens conscia recta_!
he may rest, _mens conscia recti_!
page 205: whose grand Roman palazzo is in the Boca di
whose grand Roman palazzo is in the Bocca di
page 213: The Villa Falconicri, in Frascati, which was
The Villa Falconieri, in Frascati, which was
page 234: Benvenuto Cellini at the Castel Sant Angelo;
Benvenuto Cellini at the Castel Sant'Angelo;
page 237: of the street scenes of Naples; Camprani and
of the street scenes of Naples; Campriani and
page 244: Forum, succeding Lanciani--believe that some
Forum, succeeding Lanciani--believe that some
page 244: equestrian statue of Bulbi, in the Naples Museum,
equestrian statue of Balbo, in the Naples Museum,
page 260: The cathedral at Revello has traces of the
The cathedral at Ravello has traces of the
page 260: of the Palazzo Rufelo might enchant Hafiz himself.
of the Palazzo Rufolo might enchant Hafiz himself.
page 272: Mignano (Ginodone Trieramosca) and also to
Mignano (Guidone Fieramosca) and also to
page 272: are a series of fresco paintings by Luca Gindano,
are a series of fresco paintings by Luca Giordano,
page 272: by Mazzarappi and Marco da Siena. Nothing
by Mazzaroppi and Marco da Siena. Nothing
page 274: Terre di Lavorno region:--
Terra di Lavoro region:--
page 276: to be a "Monumento Nazionali," and it is now
to be a "Monumento Nazionale," and it is now
page 286: in the "Inferno." The Colonna and the Orsino
in the "Inferno." The Colonna and the Orsini
page 286: look down from Castel Gondolfo on the gloomy,
look down from Castel Gandolfo on the gloomy,
page 287: Marino, Castel Gondolfo, and Frascati, with
Marino, Castel Gandolfo, and Frascati, with
page 295: for the country they left Naples for Pietzalba
for the country they left Naples for Pietralba
page 295: Musefico, il Givoio, and il Minturo. It was an
Musefico, il Giovio, and il Minturno. It was an
page 297: Per te narrar tre quante dubbie voglie,
Per te narrar tra quante dubbie voglie,
page 297: Fra quanti aspri martir, degliosa io vivo!_"
Fra quanti aspri martir, dogliosa io vivo!_"
page 304: San Mano that had formerly been its property.
San Magno that had formerly been its property.
page 305: world's sun; and not to add light to _mio vel solo_,
world's sun; and not to add light to _mio bel sole_,
page 332: "_Bene scripsisti de me, Thoma; quam ergo mercedem recipris?_"
"_Bene scripsisti de me, Thoma; quam ergo mercedem recipies?_"
page 380: Bonaventuri built over it, is preserved in this
Bonaventura built over it, is preserved in this
page 385: the Palazzo Rospigliosa in Rome.
the Palazzo Rospigliosi in Rome.
page 399: Anopeste, elected by the tribunal of commonalty,
Anafesto, elected by the tribunal of commonalty,
page 400: mural work by Battesta Franco and De Moro.
mural work by Battista Franco and De Moro.
page 400: One enters the Porta delta Carta, which
One enters the Porta della Carta, which
page 405: Peter, Maucis, and Antoninus are commending
Peter, Francis, and Antoninus are commending
page 426: Saricinesco, in the region of Tivoli, was made
Saracinesco, in the region of Tivoli, was made
page 436: too, in other leading men. Zurati, the
too, in other leading men. Turati, the
page 452: in Europe. That of the Annunziati, the
in Europe. That of the Annunziata, the
page 461: Annunziati Cathedral, Genoa, 452.
Annunziata Cathedral, Genoa, 452.
page 462: Camprani, 237.
Campriani, 237.
page 463: del Vall, Cardinal Merry, 146-149, 435.
del Val, Cardinal Merry, 146-149, 435.
page 466: Ossi, Professor Dall, opinion of, 244.
Osso, Professor Dall', opinion of, 244.
page 467: Quatre Fontane, Via delle, 72.
Quattro Fontane, Via delle, 72.
page 467: Revello, Cathedral at, 260.
Ravello, Cathedral at, 260.
page 470: Villa Falconicri, 213.
Villa Falconieri, 213.
On page 235: "Da Scala d'Oro" should be "La Scala d'Oro" or
"Madonna della Scala d'Oro".
* * * * *
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