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THE BOOK OF 

ITALIAN TRAVEL 

(1580-1900) 



BY 

H. NEVIUJE MAUGHAM 
"1 



WVm FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS IN PHOTOGRAFURE 
BY HEDLBY fITTON 



LONDON 

GRANT RICHARDS 

NEW YORK : E. P. BUTTON ts* CO. 

1903 



' T~~ 






Printed fay Ballantvnb, Hanson A- Co. 
At the BaUantyne Prea» 



PREFACE 



The question of how best to popularise the large amount 
of travel-literature concerning Italy is a problem of some 
difficulty. The view here adopted has been to utilise it so 
as to give a synthesis of the art and character of the most 
typical Italian towns. The danger of the many specialised 
books that pour from the press — admirable as some of them 
are — is that the reader does not attain a general idea of Italy. 
In that country very little has altered since the northern 
travellers first journeyed there in the seventeenth century. 
The accounts of early travel are mostly as correct now as 
when they were written, and often they possess the pictur- 
esqueness drawn from a life more in harmony with the art of 
the great eras. Some sides of Italian art were totally neglected 
by the first travellers, and in such cases we have to go to later 
interpreters, seeking the aid of those most in sympathy with 
any particular period , 

It has been remarked by Ampbre that as a man's tempera- 
ment is, so will he show a preference for Venice, Florence, or 
Rome. He might have added that there is a natural predis- 
position towards the Classic, the Gothic, or the Renaissance 
periods. Every one of our travellers has his bias, but we 
still believe that passages chosen from authors so widely apart 
as Evelyn and Taine will not form an unharmonious mosaia 
. If there is a difference in the style of our authors, there are 
often far greater differences in the style of the churches or 
-' pictures contained within one town. It is only owing to the 
n scientific habit of thought that modem men are able to con- 



Sr-* 



vi PREFACE 

sider such varying manifestations of the aesthetic life. The 
present writer's numerous journeys in Italy enable him, he 
trusts, to mark when a writer is giving us a direct impression 
rather than a mere bit of fine writing. The personal descrip- 
tions of Montaigne, Evelyn, Goethe, and Beckford are retained 
as being of importance, but as a rule in other cases we have 
to ask for the objective note first of all. 

It would have been perfectly possible to make our 
book entirely personal and social, for travellers' descriptions 
of architecture and painting cannot always be scientifically 
correct. We have come to the conclusion, nevertheless, that 
the towns can only be differentiated by the comparison of 
their monuments, and having found our own Italian memories 
considerably simplified by the mere process of selection, we 
think it probable that the reader too will be assisted, though 
he must exercise prudence with regard to the finality of the 
statements our travellers have made. A travel-picture is 
necessarily more a sketch than a ground-plan, an impression 
rather than a treatise. The reader will not always find his 
Italy here, but from the *' multitude of counsellors " he may 
learn some new views. With the fresh activity directed to 
our own towns at home, it cannot be superfluous to examine 
those of Italy, considering them as organisms, but always 
remembering that we live under different conditions of faith 
and civilisation. No book that we know of gives a complete 
picture of Italy; the subject is too vast, the historical associa- 
tions too numerous. Our selection does not propose to 
supersede the existing guide-books,^ but rather to supplement 
them ; it may be useful as showing modem travellers what the 
average opinion is concerning any town or typical monument. 
Taste is always changing, and it is of importance to sum up 
the experience of the past so as to test any firesh advance. 

^ The kte Mr. A. J. C Hare's entertaining volumes occupy the tna 
media between the guide-books and this selection» but very few of his 
quotations will be found in the present volume, as our title excludes 
poetry and romance. 



PREFACE vu 

Particular care ;has been taken to make the appreciations 
chosen rq>resentatiye ; and in the general balance of the book 
credit has been given to every school of art However we 
may estimate the later schools, they had their influence on 
European art, and to sacrifice Palladian architecture to the 
Gothic order, or the Renascents to the Primitives, is to 
prejudice the whole inquiry. 

The general bibliography of Italian travel is contained in 
Boucher de la Richarderie's BibUotKtque des Voyages^ with 
occasional comments ; and a still fuller list up to the year 1815 
has been published by Prof. Alessandro d'Ancona at the end 
of his translation of Montaigne's Joum^. The introduction 
here following can only be said to be relatively exhaustive, 
and there is the possibility of having omitted some work that 
might have been of assistance. We begin our selection at 
Venice, because the most important travellers down to Goethe 
started with that town. From Venice we follow the towns on 
the Adriatic side to Ravenna; thence we come back north 
and — ^foUowing the easiest comprehensive railway journeys — 
we take the towns from the Lakes to Milan and Bologna; 
from Turin to Genoa, Pisa, and Leghorn ; from Florence and 
Perugia to Siena and Orvieto ; then Rome and Naples, con- 
cluding with the bay of Napl^ We have necessarily excluded 
antiquities, except in some few cases at Rome and Pompeii. 

Most generous permission to use copyright matter has to 
be acknowledged in the following cases : For extracts from 
J. A. Symonds' Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece 
(edited by Mr. H. F. Brown) to Messrs. Smith, Elder, & Co. ; 
for the extract from Frederika Bremer to Messrs. Hurst and 
Blackett; for those from Mrs. Elliot's Idle Woman to the 
Marchesa Chigi and to Messrs. Chapman & Hall ; to Messrs. 
Chapman & Hall also for the extracts from T. A. TroUope's 
Lenten Jaum^; for the translations from Goethe and Vasari 
to Messrs. George Bell, as also for a passage from Hope 
Rea's Donatella; for the extracts from Hawthorne's French 
and Italian Notebooks to Messrs. Kegan Paul & Co. ; for the 



viii PREFACE 

passage from Mr. H. James' Lifo of Hawthorne to Messrs. 
Macmillan ; for the extract from C G. Leland's translation of 
Heine's Rmebilder to Mr. W. Heinemann ; for a note from 
Tuscan Cities to Mr. W. D. Howells i for an extract from his 
translation of Rabelais (A. P. Watt) to Mr. W. F. Smith ; for 
the extracts from G. S. Hillard's Six Months in Itafy^ from 
Dean Stanley's Letters^ and from G. E. Street's Brick and 
Marble in the Middle Ages to Mr. John Murray; for those 
from Lady Wallace's translation of Mendelssohn's Letters^ and 
from Lord Macaulay's Life and Letters (Trevelyan) to Messrs. 
Longman ; for a passage from the Letters of Henri Regnault 
to M. Eugbne Fasquelle ; for the extract^from Montesquieu to 
the Baron de Montesquiou. 

Mme. Taine, in granting the courteous permission to select 
from M. Taine's Voyage en ItaHe, added that she was always 
happy to see her husband's works "mises a portie du public 
anglais." In conclusion, it may be stated that biographical 
facts in the introduction have always, where possible, been 
tested by the admirable accounts^in the Dictionary of National 
Biography. 

The Editor would be glad to receive any corrections, for in 
dealing with matter covering' such a wide period mistakes 
may very well occur. 



CONTENTS 

PAGB 

Preface v 

Introduction . i 

Part I— Italy the School of Humanism and Taste 4 

§ I. Early Travels 5 

§ 2. Travellers from Coryatt to Evelyn ... 19 

§ 3. Objects of Travel 37 

§ 4. Travellers from Burnet to Winckelman . . 31 

§ 5. Travellers from Gibbon to Young • • • 39 

§ 6. The Theory of Good Taste ; Italian Character . 48 

Part II — Italy and the Modern Spirit ... 57 

§ I. Goethe and Mme. de Stad 57 

§ 2. Napoleon's Italy 65 

§ 3. Byron and Shelley 71 

§ 4. The Search for the Picturesque .... 81 

§ 5. The Cult of Medisevalism and the Primitives . 89 

§ 6. Scientific Study 102 

Venice and Towns of the Adriatic . . m 

The Lakes, Milan, and Towns to Bologna . 201 

Turin, Genoa, Pisa, and Towns to Leghorn . . 231 

Florence, Perugia, and Towns to Orvieto . 253 

Rome 331 

Naples and the Bay of Naples 438 

Index 459 



Adde tot egregias urbes, operumque laborem, 
Tot congesta manu praeruptis oppida saxis, 
Fluminaqae antiques subterlabentia mures. 

. . . Salve, magna parens firugum, Satumia tellus. 
Magna virdm : tibi res antiquae laudis et artis 
Ingredior. 

Vergil, Georg, II. (ap. 158-174). 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

FLORENCE Frontispiece 

PAGB 

VENICE 112 

ROME 332 

NAPLES 438 



The 

Book of Italian Travel 



INTRODUCTION 

This book is a symposium expressing the delight of many of 
the greatest minds of modem Europe when fresh from one of the 
unique experiences of life. But while it contains the selected 
descriptions and appreciations of Montaigne, Evelyn, Addison, 
Goethe, Shelley, Dickens, Taine, Symonds, and many others, 
our record of their travels will show plainly how gradual was 
the recognition of the importance of Italy. Books and books 
have been written about Italy, but it needed many minds to 
understand the meaning of the architecture and the painting 
contained in its towns. It took some 800 years to make the 
Mediaeval and Renaissance Italy which still exists for our 
wonder; it has taken 400 years for the northern races to 
arrive at a full conception of the civilisation that resulted in 
such an art. The reason why the full appreciation of Italy 
has taken so long may be expressed as die result of ^i) the 
extreme diversity of the influences that made Italy; (2) the 
essential differences between the Teutonic and Latin races. 

To take the first point, the differences between the Italian 
towns are as striking as those between Athens, Corinth, or 
Sparta must have been. This is in most cases more than a 
contrast of geographical peculiarities; the fierce antagonisms 
of the Middle Ages produced results of extreme individualism. 
The conflict was the result of a mingling of races and spiritual 
influences which can only be paralleled by modem America. 
The factors, stated in their simplest form, were the clash of 
Christian customs and paganism, the influx of new blood from 
the north, the Byzantine influence with its attenuated form of 



2 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

Oriental mysticism, the supremacy of the Papacy, the establish- 
ment of the Republics and of monastic institutions, and, finally, 
the rule of the despots and the revival of Greek learning. We 
have the blood of the north and the south, the religion of the 
east and the luxury of paganism, a country of heavenly beauty 
and strife of unimaginable hate, all in a ferment to the making 
of a new order of things. The intermingling, the clash and 
reaction of all these influences have occupied historians for 
many years. It was not easy to see the past in any proportion 
until Gibbon wrote his great work, which is really as much 
the history of the early evolution of Italy as that of the dis- 
integration of Rome. We believe that the succeeding pages 
of this study will show plainly that the increased appreciation 
of art has always gone with the progress of historic inquiry ; 
we might almost say that the art has not been recognised until 
its history has been elucidated. 

To indicate the second preliminary point, it is evident that 
the Teutonic ideals resulting in the Reformation and culminat- 
ing in Puritanism were something deeper than a mere change 
of ceremonial. Those movements were a part of the temper 
of abstract thought of the northern races.^ The Italians 
living in a beautiful country, and linking on to the pagan 
representation of deities in all forms, i^ere naturally inclined 
towards a visible manifestation of their ideals. The Mass 
is a dramatic representation of the Divine Sacrifice; the 
Cathedrals by their very form typify the Cross on which that 
sacrifice was consummated. The Catholic religion began with 
asceticism, but ended by reconciling itself to the beauty of life. 
The Church of Rome in the Renaissance represented a 
Christianity founded on paternal authority together with 
a pagan love of earthly beauty. In severe contrast with 
this is Puritanism, with its faith founded on the individual 
conscience and its reading of life as discipline. A religion 
of tradition will need vast churches as evidences of the 
past; a religion of the conscience will be satisfied with its 
plain houses o^ prayer ; the Catholic will ask for the Church 
made manifest in ceremonial, the Protestant will rely on his 
Bible. 

Catholicism is, perhaps, more than a religion, it is a national 

* Only in one town in Italy — Naples — has there ever been a marked 
tendency to speculative philosophy, and this is attributed to its Greek 
origins. The abstract temper of the Teutonic races is fully discussed in 
Taine's PhUowphie de VAH. 



INTRODUCTION 3 

temperament, and Pmitanism might be looked at in the same 
way. Some such fundamental distinction must be sought 
between the Italian and the Teutonic races. The national 
genius of Italy found itself in a life of outward splendour and 
in a laxer rule. Look at the expression of our English spirit 
in Shakespeare : it is a search for hidden laws of truth and 
righteousness. Shakespeare took from Italy what England 
could not give him, the romantic colour and decorative 
architectural background of the south. But he had a funda- 
mental Puritanism in his Renaissance expression, for every 
one of his characters is judged by unseen laws. Galileo, the 
Italian, discovered the movement of the heavenly bodies; 
Newton, the Englishman, discovered the reason of that move- 
ment. Catholicism marks the place of the Divine Sacrifice 
in the history of the world, and illustrates it in ritual and in 
fresco, with a wealth of beauty and pity that is unapproach- 
able. Puritanism seeks out the moral tragedy of good and 
evil and asks for no actual manifestation, no real presence of a 
Redeemer beyond the mystical communion of prayer. 

It would not be possible to find a generalisation wide 
enough to express the diiference of the Italian and the 
Teutonic conceptions of life. It was necessary to indicate 
that a fundamental difference does exist The better we 
understand this fact, the easier it will be to trace the gradual 
appreciation of Italian art from the years following on the 
close of the Renaissance — which was also the period of the 
northern Reformation — to the end of the nineteenth century. 



PART I 

ITALY THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM 
AND TASTE 

At the close of the sixteenth century the outward evidence of 
the perfervid life of Italy is as complete as the shell which has 
grown round some sea-organism. This shell remains to us 
almost untouched by time, and scarcely deformed by the last 
growths of the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. But it is 
notable that the travellers from the north of Europe begin to 
go to Italy just when its great artistic work is practically com- 
plete. It was not possible for the Italians themselves to 
appreciate fully the work of their ancestors. We must not 
think that they have been indifferent to their great possessions, 
although the fact that so many things have been done in their 
country is at present a dead-weight on their enthusiasm. 
There were always Italians with a love of antiquity, who were 
ready to collect their national documents or treasures. In the 
seventeenth century, too, we see frequent reference to the 
antiquaries, or "sightsmen" who conducted travellers, and 
these were often learned men. 

But if we had only the accoimts of Italians, the literature 
dealing with Italy would be far less rich than it is. The 
northern sightseers were at first instructed by the inhabitants, 
but they soon began to compare, to classify. We travel now 
with their accumulated experience, but many appreciations, 
which are easy to us, were the results of years of inquiry. It 
is worth while to trace the gradual growth of that aesthetic 
evolution. When the first literary travellers went to Italy from 
England there was no school of painting in existence at home, 
and Vasari penned the epilogue of the art of his country a 
hundred years before even the most cultured Englishmen 
could discuss art at all. They were days of progress when the 
northern mind grasped the beauty of Venice; the plastic 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 5 

of the Venus di Media; the refined charm of Raphael's 
Madonnas ; the subtlety of Donatello or the simplicity of the 
Primitives ; and the further we go, the more we shall mark the 
rest of Europe seeking its inspirations in Italy, and taking as 
much treasure-trove home as its mental equipment made it 
capable of adapting. As we go forward, taking our travellers 
for the most part chronologically, we shall be able to work 
into the thread of the narrative certain passages which cannot 
very well go into the body of selections made. The fund of 
information concerning manners and customs is extraordinarily 
rich, but we can only choose here and there, leaving an ample 
harvest for other workers in the same field. 



§ I. Early Travels 

Even in the fifth century a.d. a poet from Lyons called 
SiDONius Apollinaris undertakes a kind of classical tour, 
quoting Virgil at Cremona and speaking of Hasdrubal at 
Fano. Pilgririiages to Rome had already begun in the fourth 
century, and Charlemagne and our own Alfred the Great 
visited the holier spots. A guide-book for strangers, called 
the Mirihilia Urbis Roma, was written in the Middle Ages, and 
the earliest manuscript copy extant is attributed to the end of 
the twelfth century. An English version of this curious book 
was undertaken by Mr. F. M. Nicholls in 1889. The general 
tone of the Miribilia is much like that of the Golden Legend, 
In the memorable year of Jubilee (1300), Villani estimates 
200,000 pilgrims as being in the papal city, and the historian, 
seeing such multitudes of men in something of the spirit which 
made Xerxes weep as he thought that all his hosts were but 
mortal, resolved on writing the history of Florence. Dante 
was probably also present, and in the Inferno (cant, xviii.) 
certainly uses an image describing the barrier then erected on 
the bridge of St. Angelo, so that those coming from St. Peter's 
and those going thither should not clash. But without delay- 
ing unduly on these travellers (they are well set forth m 
Ampere's essay, Rorne i trovers les Si^cles ^), we may pass to 
the spiritual marriage between English and Italian poetry, one 
which was to last uninterruptedly for 500 years. 

Chaucer's first Italian journey was the result of a diplomatic 
mission in 1373, "to treat with the duke, citizens, and mer- 

^ Printed in the Grke, Rome et Dante volume. 



6 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

chants of Genoa for the purpose of choosing an English port 
where the Genoese might form a commercial establishment." 
The editor of Chaucer, the Rev. W. W. Skeat, continues: 
" It was probably on this occasion that Chaucer met Petrarch 
at Padua, and learnt from him the story of Griselda, reproduced 
in the Clerkes Tale.'' To quote again the meagre details of a 
second journey which took place in 1378, Chaucer "was sent 
to Italy with Sir Edward Berkeley, to treat with Bamabo 
Visconti, lord of Milan, and the famous freelance, Sir John 
Hawkwood, on certain matters touching the king's expedition of 
war ... a phrase of uncertain import" As to Chaucer's use 
of Italian books, it would be a mistake to overestimate par- 
ticular influences on his work. He was probably unacquainted 
with Boccaccio's Decameron^ and the few Italian stories used 
in the Canterbury Tales are taken from Petrarch. His minor 
poems are written on French models, but the spirit of the 
longer works is certainly Italian. Dante's influence is markedly 
present in the House of Fame^ so far so that Lydgate ex- 
travagantly referred to the poem as " Dant in English." The 
greater number of the tales in the Legend of Good Women are 
in Boccaccio's De Claris Mulieribus, Again in Troilus and 
Criseydey Chaucer's indebtedness to Boccaccio's Filosirato is 
over 2500 lines, or one-third of the Italian poem, and a com- 
plete sonnet of Petrarch's is worked into the narrative. But 
for any detailed statement of these facts, Prof. Skeat's larger 
edition of Chaucer must be studied. 

A very early traveller in Italy was Brother Felix Fabri of 
Ulm, who arrived at Venice in 1484 on his way back from 
a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. His "faithful description" of 
Venice is mainly historical, but contains some details concern- 
ing commerce. We may roughly translate from his monkish 
Latin this description of the approach by sea: "Presently, 
before we could see the town of Venice, we were seen by the 
watchers on the tower of St. Mark's, who ran and took the 
ropes of the bells, and began to ring them all. As soon a^ 
the bells were heard, the same thing was done in all the toweiis 
and belfries through the whole town of Venice ; for this was*^ 
always done on the arrival of the ships. Then even as the 
stroke of the clappers was heard, all who had friends or 
merchandise on board were eager to hear the news; and 
those who wished to earn money by acting as guides, and 
those whose office it was to collect the customs for the state, 
ran to sea, and getting into barques and boats hastened to 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 7 

come to meet us. Thus even before we reached the anchorage 
a great number of small boats came from the town, rowing 
round us and doing their business." 

To come to the first foreign painter visiting Italy, 
Albrecht Durer's visit to Venice in 1505 was the beginning 
of a very friendly connection with some of the well-known 
painters. At Venice, among other works, Diirer painted an 
altar-piece for the German merchants dwelling in the town : 
this work is now in Prague. From Venice the painter went to 
Bologna and to Ferrara, hoping to make Mantegna's acquaint- 
ance there, but the latter's death prevented it. Letters from 
Diirer to his friend Pirckheimer give some glimpses of his life 
in Venice ; his work excited no little curiosity, and he was so 
astonished that he remarked on the honours accorded to him, 
for at home he was looked on as little more " than a hanger- 
on." At a later date, though no longer in Italy, Diirer corre- 
sponded with Raphael, who sent him a sketch of a group for 
the Battle of Ostia^ and Diirer sent his portrait to Raphael. 
Raphael's engraver, Marc Antonio^ appears to have imitated 
EHirer's engravings, and the German's method must have 
aroused much interest in Italy, for the Italians, further re- 
moved from the country of the discovery of printing, were far 
less advanced in engraving than in the other arts."^ To 
illustrate the history of this period, it may be remarked that 
Durer went to Italy hardly half-a-dozen years before the Refor- 
mation was introduced into Nuremberg. 

The first professed English record of travel concerning 
Italy is to be found in The Pylgrymage of Sir R. Gxjylforde, 
Knyghty edited for the Camden Society in 1851 from a unique 
printed copy in the British Museum. Guylforde went to Italy 
in 1506 on his journey to Palestine. Entering the country by 
way of Chambery and Aiguebelle, he stayed at Alessandria, 
and passed through Cremona and Ferrara. At Padua he saw 
the feast of St. Antony, and later at Venice a festival in com- 
memoration of the capture of Padua. He refers to the " many 
great relics and jewellery" of St. Mark's, to the "artillery and 
engines " he saw, and " the rychesse, the sumptuous buyldyngs, 
the relygyous houses, and the stablysshynge of their justices 
and counsylles." On Ascension Day he saw the spousals with 

^ The illnstnitioiis of the Dream of Poliphile^ printed in 1499, are 
admirable in design, but the figures are outlines without any modelling, 
except lines indicating drapery. Boldrini's engraving of Titian's Milan of 
Cr^Uma at a £ur later date partly shows the Diirer manner. 



8 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

the Adriatic: "Upon the Ascencion daye, which daye the 
Duke, with a great tryumphe, and solempnyte, with all the 
seygnyoury, went in their Archa triumphali, which is in manner 
of a Galye of a straunge facyon and wonder stately, etc. ; and 
so rowed out into ye see with assystence of their patriarche, 
and there spoused ye see with a rynge. . . " He also saw 
the festival of Corpus Christi, described as follows : " There 
went pagentis of ye olde lawe and the newe, joynynge togyther 
the figures of the blessyd sacrament in suche noumbre and soo 
apte and convenyent for that feeste y^ it wold make any man 
joyous to se it And over that it was a grete marveyle to se 
the grete noumbre of relygyous folkes, and of scholes that we 
call bretherhede or felysshyps, with theyr devyses, whiche all 
bare lyghte of wondre goodly facyon, and bytwene every of the 
pagentis went lytell children of bothe kyndes, gloryously and 
rychely dressyd, berynge in their hande in riche cuppes or 
other vessaylles some pleasaunt floures or other well smellynge 
or riche stufTe, dressed as aungelles to adome the sayde pro- 
cessyon. The forme and maner thereof exceded all other that 
ever I sawe so moche that I can not wryte it." Guylforde's 
accoimt of Italy hardly occupies five quarto pages of his travel 
book, but it was soon to be copied. Richard Torkvngton 
(priest of Mulberton, m Norfolk) started in 1517, travelling 
toward Palestine like Guylforde ; the diary he .left was first 
printed in 1883. There is an evident resemblance between 
some particulars narrated by Torkyngton and details given by 
Guylforde. Torkyngton copies Guylforde's sentence, "the 
richesse, the sumptuous buyldyng, the religious houses, &c. 
&c.," textually; and the description of the feast of Corpus: 
Christi is the same. The account of the dinner in the Doge's j 
palace, at which the pilgrims were present, appears to be new, ' 
but the question of the originality of Torkyngton's Diary must 
be left an open one, as he has further copied his accoimt of 
Crete from another book. 

Our next figure of importance is Martin Luther. We 
have but few indications of his visit to Italy in 15 10, when he 
went to adjust a matter of business between his monastery and 
the Pope's vicar. He passed through Milan, Pavia, Bologna, 
and Florence, and hastened on to Rome, desirous of accom- 
plishing the purpose of the proverb, " happy the mother whose 
child shall celebrate mass in Rome on St John's Eve." This 
he was unable to do, but as he came to the city he echoed the 
traditional prayer of the pilgrims : " Hail, Holy Rome ! made 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 9 

holy by the holy martyrs and by the blood spilt here." One 
of his few recorded comments on Rome was made years after 
his visit : " I would not for a hundred thousand florins have 
missed seeing Rome. I should have always felt an uneasy 
doubt whether I was not, after all, doing injustice to the Pope. 
As it is, I am quite satisfied on the point." 

Rabelais was in Italy (between 1532 and 1536) in the 
suite of Jean, Cardinal du Bellay, the ambassador sent from 
France to Pope Paul III. Rabelais describes his intentions 
in going to Rome in the epistle dedicatory he wrote for 
Marlianus' Topography of Rome. He meant to see the famous 
men, to collect plants and drugs for his medical studies, and 
"lastly, to pourtray the appearance of the city with my pen, as 
though with a pencil, so that there might be nothing on my 
return from abroad, which I could not readily furnish to my 
countrymen from my books." Unhappily for us, though to 
his own " great relief," the researches of Marlianus made a 
new book unnecessary. The great humorist in his Letters 
describes the Pope making preparation for the arrival of 
Charles V. of Spain in Rome on a visit to the Pope, who 
housed 3000 of his retinue in his palace. He comments on 
the Holy Father having received letters informing him that 
the " Sophy, King of the Persians, has defeated the army of 
the Turk." He sends his friends, in Poitou, grains from 
Naples, and warns the gardeners sowing them to remember 
the earlier season in Italy. He describes, in a curious 
historical passage, how the papal bull of excommunication 
against the King and the realm of England was defeated in 
the consistory by the opposition of the Cardinal Du Bellay. 
Rabelais' letters are sixteen in number, filling some forty small 
pages. 

Rabelais has also left us a most important description of the 
festival held by Cardinal du Bellay at Rome on the receipt of 
news of the birth of the King of France's second son in 1549. 
A projected mimic seafight above the iElian bridge was 
prevented by a rising of the Tiber, but on the " 14th of this 
month of March, the sky and air seemed to show favour to 
the festivity." It began with bull-baiting and followed with a 
contest of armed men and a pageant of fair women, the chief 
of whom, "taller and more conspicuous than all the others 
representing Diana, bore above her forehead a silver crescent, 
with her fair hair flowing loosely over her shoulders, her head 
bound with a garland of laurel all intertwined with roses. 



10 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

violets, and other beautiful flowers; she was clad, over her 
tunic and fardingale of red crimson damask with rich em- 
broidery, with fine Cyprus cloth quite covered with gold 
lacquer, curiously twisted as though it had been a cardinal's 
rochet, coming half-way down her leg, and over that a leopard's 
skin very rare and costly, fastened with large gold buttons on 
the left shoulder." ^ This goddess and her nymphs are taken 
prisoners, but finally rescued after much artillery practice and 
the "horrible thunderings made by such a cannonade." 
Rabelais refers to the supper that closed the day in character- 
istic fashion: "It might outdo the celebrated banquets of 
several ancient emperors. ... At this banquet were served 
more than one thousand five hundred pieces of pastry; I 
mean pies, tarts, and meat rolls. If the viands were plentiful, 
so also were the tipplings numerous." In the immortal 
history of Pantagruel, the fifth book takes that hero with 
Panurge and his other friends to a place called Ringing 
Island, and this is evidently a parody of Rome. It is towards 
the end of Rabelais' masterpiece^ and he does not extract any 
considerable humour from the "popehawk" (papegau) and 
his attendant "clerghawks, monkhawks, priesthawks, abbot- 
hawks, bishophawks, cardinhawks." Rabelais was too much 
of a Frenchman to take much interest in Italian art, and the 
last book of Pantagruel (if authentic at all) is admittedly 
inferior to its forerunners. 

To come back to England after the time of Chaucer, 
Italian travel and study are at first only tentatively under- 
taken. Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, brought Italian 
scholars to England, and presented many Italian books to the 
University of Oxford in the middle of the fifteenth century. 
From that university, too, " a small band of scholars " went 
to Italy and brought back the precious knowledge of Greek 
literature. Mr. Lewis Einstein, in his book on The Italian 
Renaissance in England^ gives us such facts as can be gleaned 
with regard to these literary pilgrims. linacre and Grocyn 
were the most distinguished of them, and, on their return 
to Oxford, they taught such students as More, Colet, and 
Erasmus. But interest in Italian matters other than scholar- 
ship began to grow. William Thomas (d, 1554), clerk of 
council to Edward VL, was in Italy from about 1545 for some 
five years. Thomas is said to have returned to England 
" highly famed for his travels through France and Italy " ; his 
1 From the rendering of W. F. Smith (1893). 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE ii 

grammar and dictionary are certainly the first published of 
Uieir kind in the English language. His Historic of Italie 
(1549), printed in black letter, concerns not only the record 
of the past, but is to a great extent a guide-book. 

Thomas' knowledge of history is considerable for his time. 
In his description of Rome he examines the antiquities, but 
says little about later buildings except St. Peter's, and then 
gives brief lives of the Popes, whom he calls " bishops." At 
Venice he remarks on the freedom accorded to strangers, for 
" if thou be a papist there shall thou want no kinde of super- 
stition to find upon. If thou be a gospeller, no man shall 
ask why thou comest not to church." A few words of 
characterisation may be culled from another page: ''The 
common opinion is, that the Florentines are commonly great 
talkers, covetouse, and spare of livyng. ... I continued 
there a certain space at mine owne charges and laye a good 
while with Maister Bartholomew Panciatico, one of the 
notablest citesins, where I never saw the fare so slendere, 
but any honest gentilman woulde have been right well 
contented withall. And yet I dare avowe, he exceded not 
the ordinarie. Besydes that the fine service, the sweetnesse 
of the houses, the good ordre of all things, and the familiar 
conversacion of those men, were enough to feede a man ; if 
without meate men might be fedde." Thomas considered 
the Florentine women more virtuous than the Venetians, and 
the lower classes very religious \ he admits that the gentlemen 
are fond of talking, but he pleads their love of eloquence. 

Sir Thomas Hoby, the translator of Castiglione's Corte- 
gianoy travelled in Italy in 1549 and subsequent years, and 
has left a brief diary in his Booke of the TravaiU and lief of 
me Thomas Hoby (MS. Brit. Mus. Eg. 2148 Famb.). He 
was in Venice and Padua for about a year, and intersperses a 
brief account of things seen with plentiiful classical references. 
Hoby found Florence occupied by a garrison of Spanish 
soldiers, and at Rome he found a papal conclave taking place. 
The following remarks on Rome are a specimen of Hoby's 
style : " When I came there and beheld the wonderful majesty 
of buildings that the only roots thereof do yet represent the 
huge temples, the infinite great palaces, the immeasurable 
pillars, most part of one piece, fine marble and well wrought, 
the goodly arches of triumph, the bains, the conduits of water, 
the images as well of brass as of marble, the obelisks, and a 
number of other like things not to be found again throughout 



12 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

an whole world; imagining withal, what majesty the city 
might be of, when all these things flourished; then did it 
grieve me to see the only Jewell, mirror, mistress and beauty 
of this world that never had her like nor (as I think) never 
shall, lie so desolate and disfigured." 

In 1568 Miguel de Cervantes went to Italy as camarero 
in the train of Julio Acquaviva, the Papal Nuncio returning 
from the Court of Spain. Travelling along the southern coast 
of France and thence down to Rome, Cervantes may have 
obtained on the journey some of the atmosphere of beauty 
with which he surrounds his romance Galatea, The book, 
however, has the general flavour of Italian prose pastorals, 
and is more a fine literary exercise than a transcript of life 
and its humours. Mr. H. E. Watts reminds us that Spaniards 
were scarcely strangers in Rome at a time when Spain " was 
absolutely mistress of Lombardy and of Naples," when Tus- 
cany was under its protection, and the Pope practically under 
its authority. 

Montaigne was a sceptic of the Renaissance, less open 
than Luther, less epicurean than Rabelais ; in his character as 
a polished gentleman he is peculiarly fitted to describe the 
social Italy of his time. As Stendhal points out, Montaigne 
does not even mention Michael Angelo or Raphael, and ad- 
miration of scenery had not then influenced the French. His 
journey is dated 1580, and occupied seventeen months and 
eight days ; the manuscript lay for a long time undiscovered, 
imtil a historian in quest of material obtained leave of the 
Comte de Se'gur, the later occupant of the chiteau of Montaigne, 
to search its records. There can be no doubt of the genuineness 
o{ XhQ Journal du Voyage; it was published in 1774, and later 
on translated into English by William Hazlitt (the son of the 
essayist) in 1842. The journey was at first dictated to an 
amanuensis, but presently Montaigne takes it up with his own 
hand. It contains frequent references to the state of his 
health, and in many cases the narration is dull or trivial. 
Here, as in every author quoted in our extracts, some severity 
has been necessary. The general purpose of giving a living 
picture of the Italian towns is more important than details of 
extreme interest in personal biography. Montaigne, for in- 
stance, was made a Roman citizen in 1581;^ he had some 
trouble with the papal agent about his Essays ; but such facts 

^ He mves the text of the patent in the third book of his Essays, 
written subsequently to the Italian journey. 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 13 

can only briefly be mentioned, and do not belong to our 
scheme. Montaigne expresses die general r^ret of the classi- 
cists about Rome when (as the amanuensis wrote from his 
dictation) : " He observed that there is nothing to be seen of 
ancient Rome but the sky under which it had risen and stood, 
and the outline of its form ; that the knowledge he had of it 
was altogether abstract and contemplative, no image of it 
remaining to satisfy the senses ; that those who said that the 
ruins of Rome at least remained, said more than they were 
warranted in saying ; for the ruins of so stupendous and awful 
a fabric would enforce more honour and reverence for its 
memory; — nothing, he said, remained of Rome but its 
sepulchre.*' 

Another Frenchman who wrote on Italy was the {>oet 
Joachim Du Bellay, whose verses on the antiquities, the 
grandeur, and the fall of Rome are gracefully rhetorical. He 
expresses, however, a characteristically French preference for 
his own country of Anjou : 

" Plus me plait le s^jour qu*ont bdti mes aleux, 
Que des palais romains le front audadeux, 
Plus que le marbre dur me plait I'ardoise fine ; 

*' Plus mon Loyre gaulois aue le Tiber latin, 
Plus mon petit Lyr6 que le mont Palatin, 
£t plus que I'air marin la douceur angevine." 

Du Bellay's Visions of Rome were translated by Spenser. 

The Earl of Surrey (Henry Howard, I5i7?-i547) was 
never in Italy, and the tale connecting him with a fair lady 
called Geraldine, whose cause he espoused in the lists of 
Florence, is derived from the misreading of a novel by Thomas 
Nash, called The Unfortunate Traveller {i^^^). Surrey, in- 
deed, was the first English writer who imitated Italian sonnets 
successfully; and if the tale of his journey is incorrect, the 
sixteenth-century novel which he inspired is not without its 
interest. The chief claim of this novel was first pointed out 
by M. J. J. Jusserand, who goes so far as to say that Shake- 
speare found hints for his Falstaff in it. The tale contains 
some realistic pictures of life in Italy at the end of the sixteenth 
century, narrating "strange accidents, treasons, poisonings," 
with a conclusion that shows a curious Puritan note of re- 
pentance. The book has been lately reprinted with a preface 
by Mr. Edmund Gosse (1892). 

Sir Philip Sidney was in Padua and Venice in i573. In 



14 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

the latter town his portrait was painted by Paolo Veronese, 
but the original is now lost. Sidney was advised by a severely 
Protestant friend not to go to Rome, and he therrfore stayed 
away. Young Englishmen did not always come back entirely 
improved by their southern experiences. Ascham, the gentle 
master of Lady Jane Grey, was only nine days in Italy, but he 
tells us that he saw '* in that little time, in one city, more liberty 
to sin, than ever I heard tell of in our noble city of London in 
nine years." Robert Greene, the dramatist, admits that he 
*' saw and practised on his Italian travels such villainy as it is 
abomination to describe." Sir Philip Sidney has admitted the 
dangers of Italy, but remarks that he is acquainted with " divers 
noble personages . . . whom all the siren songs of Italy could 
never untwine from the mast of God's Word." The poet 
Spenser, a kindred spirit and friend of the author of the 
Arcadia^ never went to Italy. 

Sir Robert Dallington (1561-1637), afterwards Master 
of Charterhouse, travelled in Italy in 1596, and his Survey of 
the Great Duk^s State of Tuscany was printed in 1605. 
Dallington had earned means to travel as a schoolmaster, and 
he arranged his " discourse" in a very precise manner, under 
" cosmographie, chorographie," and so forth. The book, which 
is of sixty-six quarto pages, is in the first part more properly 
a treatise, dealing especially with history, fortifications, and 
natural products. Few instances of a later date can be found 
of references to fortresses or artillery ; we may take it that 
Italy at the end of the sixteenth century still preserved some 
of its military reputation. Dallington gives a pedigree of the 
Medici family, and then elaborately describes the arms, style, 
title, court, expenses, and coinage of the Grand Duke. The 
book ends with a sententious description of the Florentine 
character. Following Boterus, Dallington says the Florentines 
are " niggards, they live to themselves, they love no strangers, 
they are close-fisted, they have an eye to the backe doore, 
they are hard to be sounded, they are ever biting the lip, their 
mind ever on their pennie, their study still how to gaine. 
Also, they are men of a shrewd wit, of a spare dyet, of a 
warie and discreet carriage, very industrious, very apt to leame, 
they proceede for an inch, they stand upon the advantage." 
When we think of the millions which Florentine usurers in 
early times lent our English kings (money which, in the case 
of Peruzzi's loan to Edward IV., was not repaid), we can 
understand this description of a business-like people, out of 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 15 

accordance as the picture is with our ideas of artistic Florence. 
The English schoolmaster does not think much of Italian 
education, and complains : " As for their liberall sciences, it 
is not seen in their schooles, where in one universitie ye shall 
scarce finde two that are good Grecians, without the which 
tongue they hold in our schooles in England a man never 
deserveth the reputation of learned." The fact is that Greek 
studies fell into abeyance with the Catholic reaction. Among 
the few references to the arts is the following concerning 
Florence : *' This towne hath had famous men in painting and 
poetry ; and I verily thinke that heerein Italy generally excel- 
leth. And no marvell, when all their time is spent in amours, 
and all their churches deckt with colours." Granting that 
Dallington has the pedagogic mind, his expression " deckt with 
colours " is a not unfair gauge of the uneducated sensation of 
pleasure which will take many years to grow to the scientific 
appreciation of the art of Italy. 

A traveller of importance in Italy is Rubens, who arrived 
in Venice in 1600. Here some of his pictures or sketches 
were shown to a gentleman of the household of Vincent 
Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, who engaged the young painter, 
then in his twenty-third year. No paintings of Rubens 
are at present to be traced in the palace at Mantua. In 
1 60 1 the painter went to Rome, where he made numerous 
studies, among them one in red chalk after Michael Angelo's 
Creation of Woman and another in charcoal after the lower 
left-hand portion of Raphael's Transfiguration^ sketches now 
in the Louvre. Rubens was still in the employ of the Duke, 
and was to remain so for eight years ; in 1603 he went with 
an envoy to deliver some pictures and presents from the 
Duke to the rapacious Court of Spain. Returning to Mantua, 
Rubens painted an important Trinity^ and also a Transfigura- 
tion^ now at Nancy. In 1606 we find him studying the antique 
in Rome, and nuking an oil-copy of Caravaggio's Entombment 
The Duke of Mantua probably employed him to buy pictures 
there, and Rubens' stay in Italy, like that of Velasquez later, 
shows how desirous the reigning princes of Italy and other 
countries were of obtaining works of art, although many were 
just as anxious to obtain them for as small sums as possible. 
Rubens himself was not overpaid by Vincent Gonzaga. 

To the question whether Shakespeare ever visited Italy, a 
negative is the only reply to be made. " To Italy, it is true," 
writes Mr. Sidney Lee, " and especially to cities of Northern 



i6 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

Italy, like Venice, Padua, Verona, Mantua, and Milan, he 
makes frequent and ^miliar reference, and he supplied many 
a realistic portrayal of Italian life and sentiment But the 
fact that he represents Valentine in the 7\tfo Gentlemen of 
Verona (I. i. 71) as travelling from Verona to Milan by sea, 
and Prospero in the Tempest as embarking on a ship at the 
gates of Milan (I. ii. 129-44), renders it almost impossible 
that he could have gathered his knowledge of Northern Italy 
from personal observation. He doubtless owed all to the 
verbal reports of travelled friends or to books, the contents of 
which he had a rare power of assimilating and vitalising." 
While agreeing with Mr. Sidney Lee's opinion in the main 
issue, we may remark that Shakespeare does not say that 
Valentine travelled by sea, but that he "embarked" for Milan. 
Much of the intercourse between the northern towns was by 
canal and river, and with the connecting canals between the 
towns and the Adige, the Po and the Adda, a journey by 
water was perfectly feasible between Verona and Milan. The 
reference to the Tempest^ however, is more debatable, and 
would depend on the precise meaning of the expression " bore 
us some leagues to sea." As to the books Shakespeare may 
have read, Hob3r's was in manuscript Sir Robert Dallington's 
Survey was printed when several of Shakespeare's Italian plays 
were already written. The Itinerary of Fynes Moryson was 
not printed till 161 7. Shakespeare may very well have read 
the Cort^giano in its English dress, as also Guazzo's sketch of 
manners at the Court of Ferrara, translated in 1586. The 
book of Saviolo, a fendng-master settled in England, was pub- 
lished in 1695, and gives details as to the duello. We may 
venture to differ from Mr. Lee's phrase ''realistic portrayid 
of Italian life." The realism produced by travel is to be 
found in Nash's Unfortunate Traveller; Shakespeare's Italy 
is uniformly that of the Italian novelists as &r as local colour 
is concerned.^ No doubt it is curious that so few travel-books 
on Italy exist before 1600, but it will be found that nearly all 
literary travel begins about that date, excepting perhaps in the 
case of Eastern voyages. Among Shakespeare's friends may 
very possibly have been John Florio, Italian tutor to the Earl 
of Southampton and the author of an Italian-English Dictionary 
published in 1596. Florio was the son of an Italian who had 
left Italy owing to politics, much as Rossetti's father did in the 

> Except in the chanieter of lago, who is a typical Renaissance 
Italian. 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 17 

nineteenth century. As Rossetti had the bilingual gift which 
enabled him to make the early Italian poets famUiar to English 
readers, so Florio assisted the current of Italian culture, and 
in addition to this was the translator of Montaigne's Essays. 

The briefest digression may be permitted here to illustrate 
the indebtedness of the Elizabethan age to Italian literature. 
Spenser in his Faery Queen had imitated the Italian epics, 
and his Platonism was purely of Italian origin; in common 
with many other writers he had written sonnets, which, if not 
On the Italian model, were in imitation of Italian fancy. 
Warton, in his History of English Poetry^ tells us that many 
Italian books were translated as a result of our trade with 
Italy. Grammars and dictionaries were necessary for mer- 
chants; but in 1566 William Paynter issued a first collection 
of novels called The Palace of Pleasure^ containing sixty novels 
out of Boccacio. It was from this and other translations of 
Italian novels that Shakespeare and other dramatists drew 
many of the plots whose Italian beauty and extravagance they 
balanced with British strength and humour. It would not be 
possible to speak too highly of the value of Italian inspiration 
to English minds, but it is fair to point out that a tale like 
Romeo and Juliet found a more complete setting in its new 
home. Apart from dramatic tales, it may be noted that both 
Tasso and Ariosto were Englished before 1600 by Fairfax and 
by Sir John Harrington respectively, and even apart from 
such books, English manners were sJready Italianised by the 
Cortegiano, Mr. Einstein's book, already referred to, gives 
an excellent account of this period. 

An Elizabethan traveller who was Shakespeare's contem- 
porary is Fynes Moryson, whose Itinerary describes journeys 
begun as early as 1591. After traversing the Netherlands, 
Germany, and Switzerland, Moryson finds himself in Italy in 
1594. Much of his book is a compilation from the learned 
authors of the time, but where Moryson gives us his own 
experiences they are of the highest value. Especially do they 
interpret for us the one main factor, the religious spirit and 
furthermore the enormous inquisitorial power of the Church. 
Moryson notes at Rome : '* Easter was now at hand, and the 
priests came to take our names in our lodging, and when we 
demanded the cause, they told us that it was to no other end 
but to know if any received not the Communion at that holy 
time, which, when we heard, we needed no spurs to make 
haste from Rome into the State of Florence." Moryson 

B 



i8 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

indicates that the position of heretics in Rome had been 
most hazardous till the defeat of the Spanish Armada. When 
riding near Florence, Moryson was imprudent enough to break 
off a mulberry branch to shade himself from the sun, but was 
warned in time that the trees were preserved by the Grand 
Duke for the silkworms, and that there were heavy penalties 
for touching them. Concerning diet and the price of food 
Moryson is very full of information. He writes : " In general 
the Italians, and more especially the Florentines, are inost neat 
at the table, and in their inns from morning to night the tables 
are spread with white cloaths, strewed with flowers and fig 
leaves, with Ingestars or glasses of divers coloured wines set 
upon them, and delicate fruits, which would invite a man to 
eat and drink, who otherwise hath no appetite, being all open 
to the sight of passengers as they ride the highway, through 
their great unglazed windows. ... In cities where many take 
chambers in one house, they eat at a common table, but each 
man hath his own food provided. . . . And at the table, per- 
haps one man hath a hen, another a piece of flesh, a third 
poached eggs, and each man several meat after his diet." As 
an illustration of the disguises women assume in the Novels, 
we may quote Moryson's statement : " I have seen honourable 
women, as well married, as virgins, ride by the highway in 
Princes' trains, apparelled like men, in a doublet close to the 
body and large breeches open at the knees." A curious 
description is that of the Dutch lady on the road to Rome, 
"and her gentlewomen and men-servants all in the habit of 
Franciscan friars," going a pilgrimage " for the satisfaction of 
their sins." Concerning the supremacy of Italy as the school 
of humanism, this may be quoted : " I stayed all this winter 
at Padua, in which famous university I desired to perfect my 
Italian tongue. . . . Gentlemen of all nations came thither in 
great numbers, . . . some to study the civil law, others the 
mathematics and music, others to ride, to practise the art of 
fencing, and the exercises of dancing." 

There is one side of Italian travel that we can only 
glance at in the influence of Inigo Jones. He first went to 
Italy in about 1603, where he studied architecture and devoted 
much attention to the ruins of ancient buildings. Again in 
16 1 3 he was purchasing works of art for the Earl of Arundel. 
It was through Inigo Jones that Italian decoration was intro- 
duced into our drama. Coryatt describes a playhouse at 
Venice as being very inferior to English ones, but he does not 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 19 

appear to refer to scenery. It was fortunate for Shakespeare 
that he had formed his art before pictorial realism robbed the 
drama of the poetry which had suggested the background. 
Inigo Jones originated the English study of Palladian architec- 
ture, and through him it was handed down to Sir Christopher 
Wren. 



§ 2. Travellers from Coryatt to Evelyn 

The real succession of literary travels now b^ns with 
Coryatt's Crudities, which is the result of a journey to Venice 
in 1608 by way of Paris, Lyons, Turin, and Milan. It is a 
very quaint book, full of conceit and eccentricity. The follow- 
ing description of Venice is a specimen of Thomas Coryatt's 
style : " The fairest place of all the citie (which is indeed of 
admirable and incomparable beauty, that I thinke no place 
whatsoever, eyther in Christendome or Pagenisme, may com- 
pare with it) is the Piazza, that is, the market-place of St. 
Marke, or (as our English merchants commorant in Venice 
doe call it) the place of S. Marke, in Latin Forum or Flaiea 
Di Marci, Truly such is the stupendious (to use a strange 
Epitheton for so strange and rare a place as this) glory of it, 
that at my first entrance thereof it did even amaze or rather 
ravish my senses." Coryatt's account of Venice (the principal 
town he describes in Italy) is a delightful personal experience, 
and it is with extreme regret we have omitted its most import- 
ant pages. The time had not come for distinguishing the 
differences that mark Venice off from other towns. 

Coryatt, as a traveller to the India which was afterwards to 
become the brightest gem in the British crown, deserves to be 
printed a{)art and in his entirety.^ 

A rare illustrated book of travels is that of George Sandys 
(1578-1644), a son of an Archbishop of York. His journey 
began in 16 10, and shows him setting forth from Venice by 
sea to go to Turkey, Egypt, and Palestine. On his way back 
he saw the southern part of Italy, which he describes at the 
end of his volume, published in 161 5. To towns like Florence 
and Bologna he only makes a passing reference, but he tells 
us the history of Naples and the adjoining towns with frequent 
classical allusions. The book has curious engravings which 

' G>ryatt was surprised to find that forks were in use in Italy, and 
took the custom home. With his love of notoriety, he was highly pleased 
to be called /fifrt^, or *• fork-bearer," by his Mends. 



20 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

enhance its interest^ but the descriptions do not afford us any 
useful matter. One story, however, may be preserved. " In 
the south," says the writer, " a certaine Calabrian, hearing that 
I was an Englishman, came to me and would needs persuade 
me that I had insight in magicke : for that Earl Bethel was 
my countryman, who lives at Naples, and is in those parts 
famous for suspected necromancie. He told me that he had 
a treasure hidden in his house; the quantity and qualitie 
shewne him by a boy, upon the conjuration of a Knight of 
Malta: and offered to share it between us if I could helpe 
him unto it But I answered that in England we were at 
defiance with the divell; and that he would do nothing for 
us." The peasants in the south to-day have the same belief 
in buried treasure, if less faith in the necromantic powers of 
Englishmen. 

Sir Henry Wotton was British Ambassador at Venice in 
three distinct periods falling between 1604-24. The letters 
in his ReliquuB deal mostly with politics, but some refer- 
ences to Paolo Sarpi are of particular interest. The English- 
man would naturally be the friend and admirer of the monk 
who caused the Venetians to set at naught a papal interdict. 
Herein Paolo Sarpi was more fortunate than Savonarola, for 
his fellow-citizens upheld him in the long polemic with the 
Vatican, and he finally died at a good old age. Wotton and 
Paolo Sarpi appear to have taught each other English and 
Italian. It was towards the end of the ambassador^ stay in 
Venice, in 16 18, that the Republic was threatened by the 
conspiracy of which Otway gives a dramatic, if exaggerated, 
rendering in his play Venice Preserved. 

The Familiar Letters of James Howell, published 1641, 
comprise some letters written from Italy in 162 1, but the 
recent editors express a doubt as to whether many of Howell's 
letters were not written when he was a prisoner in the Fleet, 
rather than from abroad. Undoubtedly he had travelled, but 
his Italian letters have neither the interest nor picturesqueness 
of Evelyn's. Howell's Instructions for Forreine Travel were 
printed in 1642, and in the Italian section warn young 
travellers against "brokers of manuscripts," who under 
pretence of offering valuable historical documents sell "old 
flat things " that are already in print. The general comment 
on the passions of Italians is that the traveller will "find 
Vertue and Vice, Love and Hatred, Atheisme and Religion in 
their extremes." Howell especially recommends the traveller 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 21 

" to see the Treasurie of St. Mark and Arsenall of Venice ; the 
Mount of Piety" — (the original of the French mont depieti, or 
state-pawnshop) — " in Naples ; the Dome and Castle of Milan ; 
the proud pakces in and about Genoua j St. Peter's Church, 
the Vatican, and other magnificent structures in Rome." A 
remark which he makes, in which we would heartily follow 
him, is " the most materiall use ... of Forraine Travel is to 
find out something that may bee applyable to the publique 
utility of one's own countrey." 

The first visit of Velasquez to Italy is dated 1 630-1, and 
opens with a residence at Venice. Palomino tells us that " he 
was much pleased with the paintings of Titian, Tintoretto, 
Paolo " — Veronese — " and other artists of that school ; there- 
fore he drew incessantly the whole time he was there ; and 
especially he made studies from Tintoretto's famous Cruci- 
fixion.* . . ." On leaving Venice he was very anxious to get 
to Rome, where we are told by Pacheco that "he received 
many favours from the Cardinal Barberini, the Pope's nephew, 
at whose request he obtained a residence in the Vatican 
Palace. They gave him the keys of some rooms and the 
chief apartment painted in fresco with scenes from the Bible 
by Federigo Zuccari and others. But he gave up this resi- 
dence because it was too much out of the way, and he did 
not like to be so much alone. All he required was to be let 
in freely by the watch when he wanted to draw — for instance, 
Michael Angelo's Last Judgment^ or things by Raphael. 
There he appeared many long days, and made great progress." 
He settled for two months in or near the Medici Palace on the 
Trinita de' Monti, and there painted the sketch of the garden 
that is now in the Prado. Another direct transcript from 
nature is that of the Arch of Titus. It is said that Velasquez 
ordered for the King of Spain twelve pictures by the best 
masters in Italy, but Justi reminds us that "not one of 
the twelve pictures reached its destination." Undoubtedly 
Velasquez brought back some pictures for the King from 
Rome. At Naples he became acquainted with the Spaniard 
Ribera, painter to the Viceroy. Velasquez's first journey was 
mainly that of a painter desirous of learning, the second was 
more motived by the necessity of obtaining pictures and casts 
from the antique for the Alcazar at Madrid, and is dated 1649. 
lie found that good pictures were difficult to obtain in Venice, 
but he bought a Tintoretto and a Veronese. Velasquez was 
^ In the Scttola di San Rocco. 



22 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

in Rome in 1650, and the record exists of a conversation with 
Salvator Rosa, in which Velasquez expressed but a poor 
opinion of Raphael. In this year he psunted the portrait of 
Pope Innocent X. ; he also obtained castings of thirty-two 
statues, of ancient statuary, and of the head of Michael 
Angelo's Moses. He had endeavoured to obtain some 
Correggios, and especially the Nativity^ from Modena, but in 
this case was unsuccessful. 

Richard Lassels (1603-1668} is one of the few English 
Roman Catholics who have written about Italy. He made his 
journeys into Italy as tutor of various young noblemen. His 
travels were posthumously published in 1670, but probably 
refer to journeys made in 1630-40, though some few references 
in the book are of later date. The style is fresh and frank and 
not without poetic imagery. Observing that the houses in 
Genoa lack in breadth but take it out in height, he adds that 
the town '* looked in my eye like a proud young lady in a 
straight bodyed flowered gowne, which makes her look tall 
indeed and fine, but hinders her from being at her ease and 
taking breath freely." A comic note comes in when he says 
that the women look like " haycocks with armes and heads." 
Lassels' account of Italy is not overdone with classical quota- 
tions. Though it is more a guide-book than a travel-book, he 
supplies us with the following comment on character : 

"As for the Italian humour, it is a middling humour, 
between too much gravity of the Spaniard, and too great levity 
of the French. Their gravity is not without some fire, nor 
their levity without fleame. They are apish enough in 
camevall time, and upon their stages, as long as the visard 
is on ; but that once off, they are too wise to play the fooles 
in their own names, and own it with their owne faces. They 
have strong fancies and y^t solid judgments, a happy temper, 
which makes them great preachers, politicians, and ingeniers ; 
but withall they are a little too melancholy and jealous ; they 
are great lovers of their brethren and of neare kindred as the 
lirst friends they are acquainted withall by nature, and if any 
•of them lye in passe and fair for advancement, all the rest of 
his relations will lend him their purses, as well as their shoulders 
to help him up, though he be but their younger brother. They 
are sparing in dyet, both for to live in health and to live hand- 
somely, making their bellies contribute to the maintenance of 
their backs, and their kitchen help to the keeping of their 
stables. They are ambitious still of honours, remembering 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 23 

they are the successors of the masters of the world, the old 
Romans, and to put the world still in mind of it, they take to 
themselves the glorious names of Camillo, Scipione, Julio, 
Mario, Pompeo, etc. They are as sensible aJso of their 
honour, as desirous of honours, and this makes them strickt to 
their wives even to jealousy, knowing that for one Cornelius 
Tacitus, there have been ten PubUi Cornelii ; and that Lucius 
Comicius is the most affronting man. They are hard to be 
pleased when they have once been red-hot with offence ; but 
they will not meet revenge in the face and field, and they will 
rather hire it than take it. . . . 

" As for their manners, they are most commendable. They 
have taught them in their bookes, they practise them in their 
actions, and the^ have spread them abroad over all Europe, 
which owes its civility unto the Italians, as well as its religion. 
They never affront strangers in what habit soever they appeare, 
and if the strangeness of the habit drew the Italian's eye to it, 
yet he will never draw in his mouth to laugh at it. As for 
their apparel or dresse, it's commonly black and modest. . . . 
They are precise in point of ceremony and reception, and are 
not puzzled at all when they heare a great man is comeing to 
visit them. There's not a man of them but he knows how to 
entertain men of all conditions, that is, how farre to meet, how 
to place them, how to style and treat them, how to reconduct 
them and how farre. They are good for nunciatures, em- 
bassies, and state employments, being men of good behaviour, 
lookes, temper and discretion, and never outrunning their 
business." 

Milton went to Italy after his Comus had been acted, and 
an interesting letter from Sir Henry Wotton, then Provost of 
Eton, is printed in the second edition of the Masque. After 
thanking the young poet for the " dainty piece of entertain- 
ment," Wotton goes on to talk of Milton's projected journey : 
" I should think that your best line will be through the whole 
length of France to Marseilles, and thence by sea to Genoa, 
whence the passage into Tuscany is as diurnal as a Gravesend 
barge. I hasten, as you do, to Florence or Siena, the rather 
to tell you a short story from the interest you have given me 
in your safety. At Siena I was tabled in the house of one 
Alberto Scipioni, an old Roman courtier in dangerous times, 
having been steward to the Duca di Pagliano, who with all his 
family were strangled, save this only man that escaped by 
foresight of the tempest. With him I had often much chat of 



24 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

those affairs, into which he took pleasure to look back from 
his native harbour ; and at my departure toward Rome (which 
had been the centre of his experience) I had won his con- 
fidence enough to beg his advice how I might carry myself 
there without offence of others or of mine own conscience. 
* Signor Arrigo mio^ says he, * / pensieri stretti ed il viso 
sciolto ^ will go safely over the whole world,' of which Delphian 
oracle (for so I have found it) your judgment doth need no 
commentary." 

Milton's journey to Italy is best epitomised by Mark 
Pattison in his short life of the poet. He set out with his 
letters of introduction from Sir Henry Wotton and arrived at 
Florence in the autumn of 1638. The young foreigner (he 
was then thirty) was well received by the learned Academies, 
which upheld the literary traditions of an Italy in decadence. 
In one minute-book in which his attendance is recorded, 
Milton is described as mulio erudite. No particular record of 
his stay at Florence or at Rome exists except a few scattered 
references in his prose works, the famous comparison suggested 
by Vallombrosa, and the sympathetic reference to Galileo, 
whom he met in 1639. Some of Milton's Italian poems show 
his facility in the language, which he had b^un to study in his 
twenty-fourth year. It is perhaps late in the day to quote 
Milton, but the lines in Paradise Regained describing ancient 
Rome give a grand conception of its former glories : 

•* The city which thou seest no other deem 
Than great and glorious Rome, Queen of the Earth 
So far renowned, and with the spoils enriched 
Of nations. There the Capitol thou seest, 
Above the rest lifting his stately head 
On the Tarpeian rock, her citadel 
Impregnable ; and there Mount Palatine, 
The imperial palace, compass huge, and high 
The structure, skill of noblest architects, 
With gilded battlements, conspicuous far, 
Turrets, and terraces and glittering spires. 
Many a fair edifice besides, more like 
Houses of p:ods — so well I have disposed 
My aery microscope — ^thou may'st behold, 
Outside and inside both, pillars and roofs 
Carved work, the hand of famed artificers 
In cedar, marble, ivory, or gold. 



' ** Honest thoughts and guarded looks." The " Sir Harry mine " is 
much like the modern **earo tnio sigftcre" 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 25 

Thence to the gates cast round thine eye, and see 

What conflux issuing forth, or entering in : 

Praetors, proconsuls to their provinces 

Hasting, or on return, in rofa«s of state ; 

Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power." 
« 
John Evelyn is a perfect traveller, and very much of what 
he has written finds its place here. He lived from the reign 
of Charles I. to that of William and Mary, and his diary 
extends from 1641 to 1705. He came of a good family, and 
his father's estate in Surrey, as he tells us, "was esteemed 
about ;;^4ooo per ann,^ well wooded and full of timber." 
The house is tenanted to-day by a collateral descendant, and 
among other relics possesses the MSS. of the diary. Evelyn 
was a fine example of the activity and culture of his time, 
alternating public services with efforts on behalf of the fine 
arts. Horace Walpole wrote : " He was one of the first pro- 
moters of the Royal Society ; a patron of the ingenious and 
the indigent, and peculiarly serviceable to the lettered world ; 
for besides his writings and discoveries he obtained the 
Arundelian Marbles for the University of Oxford and the 
Anmdelian Library for the Royal Society." He went to Italy 
in 1644, that is, just over 100 years after Michael Angelo's 
death. 

Evelyn's taste for magnificence will be sufficiently noted in 
our extracts, but we may illustrate his love of coimoisseurship 
by the following : " We were againe invited to Signor Angeloni's 
study, where with greater leysure we surveyed the rarities as his 
cabinet and medaills especially, esteem'd one of the best 
collections in Europe. He also showed us two antiq lamps, 
one of them dedicated to Palasy the other Laridus Sacru\ as 
appeared by their inscriptions; some old Roman rings and 
keyes; the Aegyptian Isis cast in yron; sundry rare bas- 
relievos, good pieces of paynting, principally the Christ of 
Corregio, with this painter's owne face admirably don by him- 
selfe : divers of both the Bassanos ; a greate number of pieces 
by Titian, particularly the Triumphs; an infinity of naturall 
rarities, dry'd animals, Indian habits and weapons, shells, etc., 
divers very antiq statues of brasse ; some lamps of so fine an 
earth that they resembled cornelians for transparency and 
colour ; hinges of Corinthian brasse, and one great nayle of 
the same mettal found in the ruins of Nero's golden house." 
The variety of the oiy'ets d'ari here enumerated shows a culture 
that is far more advanced than that of travellers like Coryatt or 



26 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

Sandys. These writers held to the classical note of the 
sixteenth century, but in Evelyn the admirer of things both 
ancient and modem is to be seen. He describes the splendid 
palaces he sees in language of a similar fanciful grace, but he 
is more than a dilettante, for he sees Italy in due proportion of 
the past and present. Evelyn's balanced study of the country 
is remarkable, for it had no forerunner, and is the first fairly 
complete picture of Italy we possess, with the omission, of 
course, of certain modem notes of admiration for art. Thus 
much may be said to support the choice of Evelyn as our 
representative traveller of the seventeenth century. We place 
Evelyn in this section of travel, because he links on by style 
and habit of thought to the later Renaissance. The advance 
in his culture may be attributed to his greater acquaintance 
with the Italian cognoscenti^ but his references to painting are 
extremely bald, and he is sometimes content to refer to " divers 
good pictures," merely adding the names. In one way Evelyn 
is right : the artistic value of a picture in his day was only con- 
sidered in relation to the building of which it formed a detail. 
Exaggerated admiration for easel pictures was to come later, 
and to make painting too often an art of conscious trickery 
and affectation. 

A book whose subject is somewhat out of the category of 
travel, but of interest nevertheless, is the Voyage et observation 
of the Sieur Audeber, conseilUr du Roy au Pariement de 
Bretagne (1656). This medley of no little shrewdness refers to 
character, customs, and such divers subjects as meals, demoniacs, 
weights and measures, wines, coral, and scorpions. Audeber 
begins by repeating the familiar idea that the Italian is always 
an extremist, " de sorte qu'il est du tout homme de bien, ou 
du tout m^chant " ; he remarks on his eloquence, his discretion 
and fidelity, but considers that his vice is that of being vindic- 
tive, and of concealing his hatred till he can satisfy vengeance. 
A curious detail is that, in reference to arms wom on the 
person, a defensive weapon (generally the sword) is every- 
where permitted ; that a dagger can only be wom outside the 
towns; that any one wishing to go into the country with 
halbard or javelin must place a piece of wood on the point ; 
and that any one with a baston a feu — ^videlicet, a gun — must 
leave it uncharged while within the city gates. The dagger 
was permitted at Ferrara, at Milan the rapier had to be a 
certain length; in Genoa and in San Marco at Venice no 
sword could be worn. Audeber further tells us of the various 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 27 

methods by which Guelfs and Ghibellines are to be distin- 
guished. Knife and fork and spoon are placed on the right 
side of the platter in Guelf houses, in Ghibelline houses neither 
right nor left, mats en travers^plus avenif en la table; they cut 
their bread differently too, the former at the side, the latter 
above or below. We also read of bets being made about 
future Popes. 

// Mercuric Italico is a small volume containing the 
Itinerary of John Raymond in 1646-47, which gives the 
towns the following epithets : Rome the Holy, Venice the 
Rich, Naples the Gentle, Florence the Faire, Genua the 
Superbe, Milan the Great, Bolonia the Fat, Padua the Learned, 
Verona the Ancient The Italians have always retained certain 
names for the principal towns, and we may add the Latin title 
of Augusta Perusia^ still preserved. Verona, it may be 
remarked, is always called La Degna^ and not the " Ancient" 

§ 3. Objects of Travel 

We may now seek to indicate the main directions of 
research among sixteenth- and seventeenth-century travellers. 
They carried on the humanistic tradition of the early Re- 
naissance, a humanism based on the study of the classics and 
directed to making a courtier. The poets and dramatists had 
used Italian books as a mine of romantic material, but the 
travellers go abroad, as James Howell tells us, *' to mingle with 
those more refined nations, whom learning and knowledge 
did first urbanize and polish." The northerner, in fact, from 
1550 to 1680 was not an invader going in search of plunder, 
but a partially instructed man going to the best school of 
knowledge, letters, and manners. He sought culture, not specially 
of an aesthetic kind, but to become a more complete man by 
the influence of the country which Howell declares "hath 
beene alwayes accounted the Nurse of Policy, Learning, 
Musique^ Architecture, and Limning, with other perfections 
which she disperseth to the rest of Europe." 

Notwithstanding the reference to "limning" our early 
travellers know very little of painting. Lassels refers to 
Raphael's Loggte^ and also speaks of Cimabue as being men- 
tioned by Vasari, but he most probably drew his information 
from an antiquary. He says too, " Virtuosi make a great 
dispute which of these three painters was the most excellent : 
Raphael Urbin, Michael Angelo, or Andrea del Sarto? But 



28 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

the wisest give every one his particular praise or excellency. 
Raphael was excellent in colari^ Michael Angelo in designe^ 
and Andrea in making things seeme to be of rilievo" The 
use of the Italian words is of importance as probably indicating 
that English terms of art did not exist, at least in this precise 
significance. 

No clearer summary of one side of early seventeenth- 
century travel can be found than that given in Lassels' preface 
to his book.^ Himself a bear-leader of young noblemen, he 
considers mature men, and comments on his own texts 
for the young: "Travelling preserves my young nobleman 
from surfeiting of his parents, and weanes him from the 
dangerous fondness of his mother. It teacheth him whole- 
some hardship, to lye in beds that are none of his acquaintance; 
to speak to men he never saw before, to travel in the morning 
before day and in the evening after day, to endure any horse 
and weather, as well as any meat and drink, whereas my 
country gentleman that never travelled can scarce go to 
London without making his will, or at least without wetting 
his handkercher. • . . 

"Travelling takes off, in some sort, the aboriginal t:urse, 
which was laid upon mankind almost at the beginning of the 
world : I meane the confusion of tongues. . . . 

" Travelling enables a man much for his countrye's service. 
It makes the merchant rich, by showing him what abounds 
and wants in other countryes, that so he may know what to 
import, what to export. ... It makes a nobleman fitt for the 
noblest employment, that is, to bee ambassador abroad for his 
King in forrain countryes, and carry about with him his King's 
person, which he represents, and his King's word, which he 
engageth. . . . 

" Travelling brings a man a world of particular profits. It 
contents the minde with the rare discourses we heare from 
learned men. It makes a man think himself at home every- 
where, and smile at unjust exile. It makes him wellcortie 
home againe to his neighbours, sought after by his betters, and 
listened unto with admiration by his inferiors. It makes him 
sit still in his old age with satisfaction, and travel over the 
world againe in his chair and bed by discourse and thoughts. 
In fine, it's an excellent Commentary upon historyes, and no 
man understands Livy and Caesar, Guicciardin and Monluc, 

' Coryatt's reasons for travelling are almost all drawn from classic 
examples. 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 29 

like him who hath made exactly the Grand Tour of France 
and the Giro of Italy. . . ." 

The Italy to wUch our travellers went was one which still 
preserved the pride of its old pageants. Lassels, speaking of 
the entry of the Duke and Duchess of Savoy into Chamb^ry, 
then the chief town of the dukedom, declares that " to describe 
all the triumphal arches in the streets, with their emblems and 
mottoes rarely painted ; the stately throne a little out of the 
town, where the Duke and Duchess received the compliments 
of their subjects ; the rich liveries of the young townsmen on 
horseback, the gallantry of the noblemen and gentlemen of 
the coimtry (800 in all), with their horses as fine as they ; the 
Parlament men, and other officers of Justice all in black 
velvet gowns, the clergy and religious marching in the mean- 
time humbly a foot and in procession ; the Duke's two com- 
panies of horse in velvet coats of crimson colour, embroidered 
with gold and silver ; the pages and footmen of the Duke and 
Duchess in crimson velvet laid thick with gold and silver 
lace ; in fine, the Duke and Duchess on horseback as brilliant 
as the sun, would fill a book alone." 

When the traveller came over the mountains into Italy, he 
was carried on a chair or rode a mule ; in winter he might be 
"posted down the hill upon the snow in sledges." Arriving 
in the towns, he bargained for his lodging and refreshment ; 
and could often obtain money on the bills of exchange he 
h^d brought with him. As long as he was discreet in speech 
he could go to see any religious ceremony : Evelyn was actually 
invited by a friendly Dominican to be godfather to a converted 
Turk and a Jew. He visited the schools of anatomy, saw the 
dissection of dead bodies, and was sometimes able to view the 
ceremony of Circumcision in the Ghetto. If he was learned, 
or even companionable, he was admitted to the sessions of the 
Academies. Evelyn gives us one instance of this : 

" I was invited after dinner to the Academic of the Humor- 
ists kept in a spacious hall belonging to Signor Mancini, 
where the Witts of the towne meete on certaine dales to recite 
poems, and debate on several subjects. The first that speakes 
is cal'd the Lord, and stands in an eminent place, and then 
the rest of the Virtuosi recite in order. By these ingenious 
exercises, besides the leam'd discourses, is the purity of the 
Italian tongue daily improved. The roome is hung roimd with 
devises or emblemes, with mottos under them. There are 
severall other Academies of this nature, bearing like fantastical 



30 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

titles. In this of the Humorists is the picture of Guarini, the 
famous author of the Pastor Fido, once of this society. The 
cheife part of the day we spent in hearing the academic 
exercises." 

Private collections of art were willingly thrown open to 
foreigners, cathedrals and churches were always public, while 
even the palaces of the Doges or Dukes could be visited with- 
out much apparent formality. A letter introducing Tom Coryatt 
to Sir Henry Wotton shows that it was necessary to hiave 
credentials when not of noble birth ; a nobleman, apparently, 
was still introduced by his title. Some evidence of the state 
of mind in which the travelled Englishman returned is sup- 
plied by Shakespeare. He himself is not. very favourable to 
foreign travel, if Rosalind expresses his opinion when she 
says : " A traveller ! By my faith, you have reason to be sad. 
I fear you have sold your own lands to see other men's." We 
presently come to the quip : " Farewell, Monsieur Traveller : 
look your lisp and wear strange suits, disable all the benefits 
of your own country, be out of love with your nativity, and 
almost chide God for making you that countenance you are, 
or I will scarce think you have swam in a gondola." It is to 
be observed, however, that England was dmost mediaeval in 
spirit till the beginning of the reign of James I. The English 
mind, as soon as it had been put in touch with the record of 
the past, made as astonishing progress as Norway has made 
within our own time. From being provincial London became a 
seat of learning ; we may note how thoroughly Italian Francis 
Bacon is in his diction; splendid palaces began to arise 
throughout the country, pictures and medals were brought 
from Italy : the record of the art collection of Charles I. serves 
as a model of the taste of 1640 ; and a general spirit of culture 
was diffused, which showed itself both in the Puritans, John 
Milton and Andrew Marvell, as well as the Royalists, George 
Herbert and Robert Herrick. The growing austerities of the 
Commonwealth, the lewd French follies of the Restoration, 
the comfortable prosperity of the Georgian era, crushed this 
fine spirit of the reconciliation of seemliness and beauty with 
truth and reverence. It was only in the Victorian age, with its 
new expansion, that England was to win back a true spiritual 
freedom, with its accompanying love of the arts which add a 
dignity to life and its nobler pleasures. 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 31 



§ 4. Travellers from Burnet to Winckleman 

A certain hiatus in the record of travel is observable from 
the time of Evelyn to that of Addison. This may be attri- 
buted to the Civil War, and the prevalence of Spanish influences 
in England during the time of Charles II. and James II. 
Dryden and his compeers followed Spanish models in the 
drama, and a large number of Spanish books were translated 
into English. Intercourse with France, too, altered the mental 
attitude. When we come to the later years of the seventeenth 
century, we find plain and precise accounts of Italy without 
any of the beauty of the earlier travels. Gilbert Burnet, 
the author of the History of his Own Times^ and famous as 
one of the supporters of William of Orange, by whom he was 
afterwards made Bishop of Salisbury, travelled in Italy about 
the year 1686. He embodied his ideas in three long letters 
from Milan, Florence, and Rome. He was at that time in 
disfavour with James II., but he was well received by Pope 
Innocent XI., until — it is to be supposed — the Papal Court 
heard of the part Burnet had played against Catholicism in 
England. Burnet's letters are chatty accounts of many dif- 
ferent impressions, written currente calamoy and interspersed 
with historical remarks showing unusual research for his 
period. Another letter of his was printed, describing Molinos 
and the Molinist heresy. Limojon de St. Didier, who has 
left us an entertaining monograph on Venice (1680), was a 
Frenchman of Avignon, who was well versed in political affairs, 
and at one time went on a mission for Louis XIV. to the 
deposed James II., then in Ireland. A book of travels that 
had some repute was the New Voyage to Italy^ translated in 
1695 from the French of Maximilien Misson. The writer 
was a Protestant refugee from France, and went to Italy in 1688 
as bear-leader of the young Charles Butler, afterwards Earl of 
Arran. Addison considered his account as being generally 
" more correct than that of any writer before him." Misson's 
narration is undistinguished in style, and such few extracts as 
might possibly have been suitable would only have had an 
antiquarian interest In his " Instructions to a Traveller " he 
gives us some glimpses into the material side of life abroad in 
his day. He says : " There are some good Inns at Venice, 
such as the Louvre^ the White Lyon^ and the French Arms ; 
but when one intends to spend some months in that city, the 



32 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

best way is to hire a furnished house. ... At the Louvre 
you are entertained for eight livres a day, and the White Lyon 
and French Arms are somewhat cheaper, but you must always 
remember to make your bargain for everything before you go 
into the house, to avoid after-debates." He adds that an 
ordinary gondola costs fifteenpence an hour, or a superior 
one seven or eight livres a day. Misson recommends those 
staying in Rome to '' agree with a skilful Antiquary and fix 
certain times to visit with him the principal rarities." He 
remarks that he gave his antiquary three pistoles a month, 
stating that "he is well acquainted with medals and trades 
m 'em." 

The letters from Italy of James Drummond, fourth Earl 
OF Perth, were first pubUshed in 1845 fro"^ ^^ original MS. 
by the Camden Society. Mr. William Jerdan, the editor, tells 
us that James Drummond was bom in 1648, and studied 
philosophy at the University of St. Andrews. After succeed- 
ing to his father's title, he became Chancellor of Scotland in 
1684, and in James II.'s reign declared himself a Roman 
Catholic. After James' flight to the Continent, the Earl of 
Perth travelled in Italy, and finally ended his career at 
St. Germain's in attendance on the deposed sovereign. The 
first letter bears date Venice, i8th February 1695. We may 
extract from one of the early letters this pretty vignette : " This 
morning the Princess Pallavicini carryed us to mass, and after 
that to a vineyard where the Princess Savelli was making her 
vintage. We had an handsome dinner, although we surprised 
the Princess ; and the young lasses who were there, per mozzi- 
care^ that is, to gather the grapes, played on the tantbaur de 
sasque and sung songs how when they went out the dew wet 
their pettycoats, how they sung and talkt with their sweet- 
hearts while they cut the stalks of the rasins, and how their 
mistress had provided a good breakfast, etc., and eveiy verse 
ended with a Viva il Compare et viva la Comare^ that is, may 
our good-man and good-wife prosper." Drummond also gives 
us a glimpse of the Spanish dominion which lasted in Naples 
till 1 7 13, in the following: — "The feast of Saint Antonio, the 
abbot (St Paul, the first hermite contemporarie), began the 
camavall here with a SpafTagio or Corso, where all the great 
folks in the town went in the street that leads to St. Antoine's 
Church to walk in their coaches; all the chief magistrates 
went ; their officers, alguazils, and sbirri, were on horse-back, 
in Spanish cloaths ; the Viceroy, with all his court and guard, 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 33 

on horse-back and a' foot, with the Svrizzers in their liveries, 
and all the Spanish troops in the publick places where his 
Excellency was to go through." 

Addison was under thirty years of age when he reached 
Italy for his two years' trip. The earliest edition of his book 
appears to be Remarks on severed Parts of Italy ^ etc, (1705); 
the title-page has a motto from Cicero, and the publisher is 
Jacob Tonson. Addison's object in travel is mainly to follow 
the footsteps of the ancient poets. In a versified letter to 
Lord Halifax, written in 1701, he says : 

" Poetic fields encompass me around, 
And still I seem to tread a classic ground. 
For here the Muse so oft her harp has strung, 
That not a mountain rears its head unsung ; 
Renowned in verse each shady thicket grows, 
And every stream in heavenly numbers flows." 

Dr. Johnson's opinion of the book was expressed with his 
usual terseness : " As his stay in foreign countries was short, 
his observations are such as might be supplied by a hasty view, 
and consist chiefly in comparisons of the present face of the 
country with the descriptions left us by the Roman poets. . . . 
The most amusing passage of his book is his account of the 
minute republic of San Marino ; of many parts, it is not a 
very severe censure to say that they might have been written 
at home. His elegance of language and variegation of prose 
and verse, however, gains upon the reader." We have not 
been able to select much from Addison, but we have followed 
Dr. Johnson in choosing the description of San Marino. A 
description of the Italian character has the keen perception 
that would be expected of the writer of the Spectators : 

" The Italians are for recommending themselves to those 
they converse with by their gravity and wisdom. In Spain 
. . . where there are fewer liberties of this nature allowed, 
there is something still more serious and composed in the 
manner of the inhabitants. But as mirth is more apt to make 
proselytes than melancholy, it is observed that the Italians 
have many of them for these late years given very far into the 
modes and freedoms of the French ; which prevail more or less 
in the courts of Italy, as they lie at a smaller or greater dis- 
tance from France. It may l)e here worth while to consider 
how it comes to pass, that the common people of Italy have 
in general so very great an aversion to the French, which 

C 



34 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

every traveller cannot but be sensible of, that has passed 
through the country. The most obvious reason is certainly 
the great difference that there is in the humours and manners 
of the two nations, which always works more in the meaner sort, 
who are not able to vanquish the prejudices of education, than 
with the nobility. Besides that, the French humour, in regard 
of the liberties they take in female conversations, and their 
great ambition to excel in all companies, is in a more particular 
manner very shocking to the Italians, who are naturally jealous 
and value themselves upon their great wisdom." 

Dean (afterwards Bishop) Berkeley was in Italy in 17 14. 
He had Pope among his correspondents, and the point of view 
of the age is to be noted in the following : " Green fields and 
groves, flowery meadows and purling streams are nowhere in 
such perfection as in England ; but if you would know light- 
some days, warm suns, and blue skies, you must come to 
Italy ; and to enable a man to describe rocks and precipices, 
it is absolutely necessary that he pass the Alps." This famous 
philosopher's Italian Journal -^ds first published in 187 1, and 
this must not be con&sed with his letters to Pope ; the journal 
is more a series of jottings than a connected account. The 
Voyage en JtaKe of Montesquiou, the author of the Esprit 
des Lois^ was published posthumously. Montesquiou went 
to Venice in 1728, where he met Lord Chesterfield, and they 
discussed the respective merits of Englishmen and French- 
men. It came down to an argument whether sangfroid or 
esprit were the superior gift. Montesquiou enjoyed the hos- 
pitality of the Milanese aristocracy during three weeks' stay 
in Lombardy, and in Turin was received by King Victor- 
Amadeus II. Turin bored the brilliant Frenchman, but he 
was delighted by the affable simplicity of the Florentines. He 
described Naples and Rome by saying, " Naples can be seen 
in two minutes, Rome requires six months.'* The Voyage 
Historique of Guyet de Merville (1729) is not much more 
to our purpose than that of Montesquiou, but it is worth an 
examination by the student of history as giving some concep- 
tion of the intrigues of the clerical court in Rome in the story 
of the trial of a spy called the Abbate Volpini. Joseph 
Spence, whose Anecdotes are a repertory of the literary opinions 
delivered in conversation by Pope and other celebrities, knew 
Italy well. He made three tours there between 1730 and 
1739, and inserts several bits of conversation in the Anecdotes^ 
which illustrate the small-talk of the time. Spence's letters 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 35 

to his mother describe incidents in his travels. A remark by 
Dr. Cocchi in the Anecdotes shows that the study of Dante 
(somewhat interrupted during the Renaissance) was obtaining 
a new vogue. 

The letters written from Italy by Gray, the author of the 
immortal "Elegy/' have often been praised, but a study of 
them shows that the zeal of the biographers has outrun their 
acumen. Critics are too often unable to distinguish between 
personal interest and intrinsic value. It is only by comparing 
the results of travel that we see what is really an addition to 
the store of experience or delight. Gra/s journey took place 
in 1 740-1 741 ; he went in company with Horace Walpole, 
but their different temperaments caused an estrangement 
which was only healed years after. Gray's letters are those 
of a confirmed classicist and have occasional felicities of 
expression. Horace Walpole dates his earliest letter from 
Italy, November nth, 1739, ^^^ begins, "So, as the song 
says, we are in fair Italy." His letters do not contain any 
more interest for our purpose than those of his companion. 
They are the letters of a very young man, and contain such 
remarks as " the incidents of a week in London would furnish 
all Italy with news for a twelvemonth." His comment on the 
landscape after leaving Siena is "you can't imagine how 
pretty the country is between this and Florence ; millions of 
little hiUs planted with trees and tipped with villas or con- 
vents." His description of life at Rome is ; " Roman con- 
versations are dreadful things ! such untoward mawkins as 
the princesses ! and the princes are worse. Then the whole 
city is littered with French and German abbes, who make up 
a dismal contrast with the inhabitants." He visited the 
excavations of Herculaneum, which had been discovered 
about a year and a half before. He states at the end of a 
year that he has made " no discoveries in ancient or modem 
arts," adding, in a fashionable spirit of weariness, that he has 
" so absolutely lost all turiosity that, except the towns in the 
straight road to Great Britain, I shall scarce see a jot more of 
foreign land." The Castle of Otranto^ written after the author 
had become a middle-aged man, is the first modem effort in 
Italian Romance. It is easy to laugh at its affected senti- 
ment, but it is an invaluable aid to the understanding of the 
eighteenth-century idea of the sublime. When Horace 
Walpole wants to write his finest, he paints a Domenichino 
picture in words. The tale fails in any sense of Gothic feeling, 



36 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

because mediaeval life had not been sufficiently studied. The 
necessity of historical inquiry to the comprehension of early 
art could not be shown more plainly than by Horace Walpole's 
pastiche. 

The famous Lettres Famil&res of Charles de Brosses, 
written in 1739-40, but published far later, is a difficult book 
to deal with. De Brosses' social account of Italy is that of 
a clear-sighted observer, but it is rather superficial and deals 
with some scandalous matters. De Brosses was the first 
President of the Parliament of Dijon, and his scientific 
knowledge was favourably commented on by his friend Buffon. 
He visited Naples when the excavations of Herculaneum had 
recently been begun, and sent a paper describing them to the 
Acadkmie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres some years later. 
De Brosses* account of Italy has a peculiarly modem note : 
he refers very little to the classics, and the advance in cul- 
tivated appreciation from Addison's journey some forty years 
before is very marked. The Lettres Famili^res have been 
recently translated by Lord Ronald Gower, as far as was 
possible for modem readers. For the very brief extracts we 
have made our translation is a new one. The description of 
our fellow-countrymen in Rome is too good to be missed: 
"The English are here in great numbers, and live extrava- 
gantly. As a nation they are much liked by the Romans on 
account of the wealth they bring, though most Italians keep 
their most real affections for Germany. I observe that in 
general no nation is less liked than our own : this comes from 
our detestable habit of proclaiming our preference for our 
customs beyond those of foreigners, invariably finding fault 
with whatsoever is not done as it is at home. The money 
spent by the English in Rome, and the habit of making the 
grand tour as part of their education, does not do them much 
good. There are some men of culture who seek for knowledge, 
but they are few in number. Most of them have a hired 
carriage stationed in the Piazza di Spagna, which waits for 
them throughout the day, while they get through it by playing 
billiards or some similar game with each other. I have known 
more than one Englishman who left Rome without meeting 
anybody except their fellow-countrymen and without knowing 
where the Colisseum was. . . ." 

De Brosses is noteworthy for his criticisms of pictures. 
He admired Gioi^one, "a painter all the more admirable 
for his colouring, in that he had no foremnner for this part of 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 37 

the art, of which he may be called the inventor." Of the great 
canvas illustrating the Miracle of Si, Mark we are told that 
"Tintoret has done no finer thing." De Brosses has evi- 
dently studied Vasari at first hand, and speaks of Cimabue, 
Giotto, the Spanish Chapel in Sta Maria Novella^ of Ghir- 
landajo and Orcagna, though he adds that they have pictured 
sacred subjects " in a comical and absurd manner." Never- 
theless, if we compare De Brosses* notes on pictures with 
Samuel Richardson's specialised book on Italian statuary 
(published in 1722 and considered by Winckleman the most 
complete book done up to his time) we see the relative 
superiority of the Frenchman's knowledge. The clues given 
by De Brosses were not followed up, his appreciations were 
not those of his own time. De Brosses gives the best view 
of eighteenth-century society in Italy, but it is not very useful 
for our general purpose. 

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Letters from Italy are 
not so entertaining as those she wrote fi'om Constantinople. 
She appears to have resided in the country at frequent intervals 
for almost twenty years from 1739 j but she is more interested 
in setting down her impressions on Tom Jones or Clarissa 
Harlowe than in Italian life or art. S. Whatley's Journey 
to Tuscany (1741) contains some of the small-talk of the 
period and remarks on the Inquisition at Rome. 

We need not attempt to sum up the purpose of travel till 
we have come to the confines of the French Revolution period; 
a certain difference arises, however, with Sir Joshua Rey- 
nolds. He is the first important English painter who comes 
as a painter, and he will be followed by Richard Wilson and 
not a few others down to the time of Turner, Wilkie, Prout, 
Bonington, and Eastlake. Reynolds journeyed to Italy in 
1750 when in his twenty-sixth year. According to his pupil 
and biographer James Northcote, he " was too much occupied 
in his studies to dedicate much time to epistolary correspond- 
ence." The chief results of his Italian travel exist in his art and 
in the Discourses he delivered to the Academy students in 
England. The notes on the pictures he studied in Italian 
towns have been edited by William Cotton, with two photo- 
graphs from rough pencil sketches showing the placing of the 
figures in two compositions; these notes take up forty-six 
pages of print, and are extremely fragmentary. Here, by way 
of example, is the description of Tintoretto's Adam and Eve 
in the Scuola della Caritk at Venice : " His back forms a mass 



38 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

of light, his thigh lost in the ground ; the shadows in general, 
full. The figures in the colour of the ground, sometimes a 
little greyer, sometimes warmer. The landscape all mellow, 
except a little blue distant hill and sky ; black trees and others 
more yellow. The nearer hills are painted slap-dash with 
white and grey and flesh tints. The leaves of the trees ditto, 
then scumbled over with a mellow colour of oil." This is 
highly technical criticism, and such fragments may be found 
useful by painters. A remark made elsewhere by Reynolds 
concerning his travels is worth quoting : " The manner of the 
English travellers in general, and of those who most pique 
themselves on studying Vertu is, that instead of examining the 
beauties of those works of fame and why they are esteemed, 
they only inquire the subject of the picture and the name of 
the painter, the history of the statue and where it was found, 
and write that down. Some Englishmen, while I was in the 
Vatican, came there and spent above six hours in writing down 
whatever the antiquary dictated to them ; they scarcely ever 
looked at the paintings the whole time." We shall refer later 
to Sir Joshua's art-criticism. 

The Earl of Orrery's Z^/Sferr (1754-1755) are devoted 
principally to history, and gave Robert Browning the subject 
of his play King Victor and King Charles, The Earl distin- 
guished himself by handing Johnson's Dictionary — then re- 
cently published — to the Accademia della Crusca ; he describes 
this institution as having received " the authority of regular 
statutes " in 1580, and its name as being taken from the word 
cnuca (bran), while its device is a mill, typifying that in matters 
linguistic it separates the flour from the chstfT. It is infinitely 
regrettable that Oliver Goldsmith has left us but the vaguest 
hints as to his Italian journey in 1755. A poetical reference 
to " the wandering Po " and to the condition of Italy, a de- 
scription of the floating bee-houses of Piedmont in the Ani- 
mated Naturcy and a few statements as to academies and 
universities in Italy are all that John Forster refers to in his 
life of the author of "The Vicar of Wakefield." Tramping 
from town to town, flute in hand, sleeping and supping where 
he could. Goldsmith might have given us a picture of Italian 
manners which would have ranked with his delicious novel. 

We pass now to the first German who made his mark in 
Italian study. It is is difficult to understand precisely where 
J. J. WiNCKELMAN was an innovator in art criticism. The 
clearest point is that up to his time Italian archaeologists had 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM ANp TASTE 39 

mostly preferred to study medals and bric-k-bi ^^th a great 
deal of tedious classic erudition, but still with ;ference to 
Italian art Winckelman tried to see the classic remains as 
those who created them in the past would have looked upon 
them. From this he formed a canon of beauty which con- 
trolled Europe for years. Winckelman's Letters are dated 
between 1756-1764, and refer mainly to critical questions. 
We may note that the eighteenth century marked the discovery 
of many classical masterpieces. The results of the discoveries 
at Herculaneum were partly transmitted to the north by 
Winckelman's two letters. 

§ 2. Travellers from Gibbon to Young 

Any correct idea of Gibbon's travels in Italy has to be 
pieced out of the several different autobiographical memoirs 
edited in 1896 by Mr. John Murray from the present Earl of 
Sheffield's manuscripts. The first Earl of Sheffield has used 
many passages of the memoirs, but some important passages 
were not known till the recent publication. From Memoir B 
it appears that Gibbon at one time thought of writing a " His- 
tory of the Republic of Florence, under the House of M^dicis." 
That classical history was of more interest to him is shown by 
his preliminary studies of antiquarian books on Italy, and of 
descriptions of the country by ** Strabo, Pliny, and Pomponius 
Mela," before setting out on his journey (Memoir B ad fin.). 
Again he writes : " My studies were chiefly preparations for 
my classic tour — the Latin poets and historians, the science of 
manuscripts, medals and inscriptions, the rules of architecture, 
the topography and antiquities of Rome, the geography of 
Italy, and the military roads which pervaded the Empire of 
the Caesars. Perhaps I might boast that few travellers more 
completely armed and instructed have ever followed the foot- 
steps of Hannibal " (Memoir C). He started from Lausanne 
on April 16, 1764, and went to Turin, Milan, Parma, Modena, 
Bologna, and Florence. At this last town he stayed from 
June to September, and then went on by Lucca, Leghorn, 
and Siena to Rome. " My temper," he writes (Memoir C), 
" is not very susceptible of enthusiasm, and the enthusiasm 
which I do not feel I have ever scorned to affect But at the 
distance of twenty-five years I can neither forget nor express the 
strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached 
and entered ih& eternal city. After a sleepless night, I trod 



40 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

with a lofty step the rums of the Forum ; each memorable 
spot where Romulus stood^ or TuUy spoke, or Oesar fell, was 
at once present to my eye ; and several days of intoxication 
were lost or enjoyed before I could descend to a cool or 
minute examination." At Naples, Gibbon met Sir William 
Hamilton, the British Envoy, and later on went to Loretto, 
Bologna, Padua, Vicenza, Milan, and Turin. Gibbon describes 
his idea of a good traveller as one who is indefatigable in 
enterprise and research, and who has " a correct and exquisite 
eye, which commands the landskip of a country, discerns the 
merit of a picture, and measures the proportions of a build- 
ing." He finally repeats the famous passage in his private 
journal, in which he narrates that it was on " the fifteenth of 
October 1764, in the close of the evening, as I sat musing in 
the church of the Zoccolanti or Franciscan Fryars, while they 
were singing Vespers in the Temple of Jupiter on the ruins of 
the Capitol," that he first determined on writing the Decline 
and Fall of the Roman Empire. He refers, in Memoir E, to 
the fact that he " read the Tuscan writers on the banks of the 
Arno," and sums up the four great towns not unhappily as 
" the beauties of Florence, the wonders of Rome, the curiosi- 
ties of Naples . . . the singular aspect of Venice.*' 

Smollett the novelist was iA Italy between 1763 and 
1765. His biographer, Mr. David Hannay, remarks that his 
travels are dreary reading. "His view ... is naturally 
darkened by his own sufferings, and the book in which he 
described his experiences is full of melancholy details of the 
state of his health, and dreary stories of the extortion of land- 
lords and the insolence of postilions." Smollett's career was 
drawing to a close, and after a visit to Scotland in 1766 he 
returned again to Italy, and wrote, or completed, Humphry 
Clinker y dying at Leghorn in 1771. His grave is in the old 
English cemetery of that town. Smollett is something of an 
iconoclast, and ridicules any excessive admiration for art. 
His friend, Dr. John Armstrong, writing under the name 
"Lancelot Temple," in 1771 published A Short Ramble^ which 
forms a tiny book of 103 pages, with twelve lines to the page : 
this curious essay is partially intended as a skit on travellers in 
Italy. Smollett compared the Pantheon to a cockpit with a 
hole on the top; and Armstrong suggests that Michael 
Angelo might have dressed the Charon in his Last Judgment 
" in a chancellor*s wig, and stuck a blue cockade upon his 
hat" 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 41 

Samuel Sharps travelled south in 1 765-1 766, having an 
interview with Voltaire at Geneva on his way. He remarks 
that the Venetian Republic was "extremely rigid in what 
regards the quarantine; and indeed, as they border upon 
these countries where the plague so frequently rages, they 
cannot be too watchful." He notes in one letter : " I make 
no doubt that you are apprized the Italians count their hours 
till twenty-four o'clock," which is still the custom to-day. 
We need not follow him implicitly when he states that "in 
Florence, the generality of Ladies have each of them three 
Cicesbeos : the first is the Cicesbeo of dignity ; the second is 
the Cicesbeo who picks up the glove, gives the fan, and pulls 
off, or puts on the cloak, etc. ; the third Cicesbeo is, by the 
wags, deemed the substantial Cicesbeo, or Lover." A point to 
be noted is that the right of sanctuary existed in Sharpens 
time : " At Florence my eyes were tired with the view of an 
assassin and another delinquent, who had taken refuge on the 
steps before a church." Baretti (presently referred to) has 
called this account in question, reminding us that gossip at 
Florence may well call a pickpocket or a runaway debtor 
assassino. We may add our own testimony in recalling the 
proverb: 

" Cocehieri et marinai^ sono assassini assat" * 

Joseph Baretti (Giuseppe Marcontonio Baretti), who 
was bom in Italy, began his career by writing poetry, but found 
his hopes of success frustrated by an imprudent squib. 
Coming to England, he obtained an engagement at the Italian 
Opera-House in London, and published a Dictionary, which 
was of permanent value. He became a friend of Dr. Johnson, 
who thought highly of his conversation. His Account of the 
Manners and Customs of Italy (published 1 768) is the narrative 
of a journey made in part " to animadvert upon the remarks 
Mr. Sharpe and those of other English writers, who after a 
shOTt tour have ventured to describe Italy and the Italians." 
Baretti had become in many ways Anglicised, and the book of 
an Italian revisiting his country and writing of it in excellent 
English repays perusal. We may, for the present, quote his 
account of the Tuscan custom of competitive improvisation, 
"that is, of singing verses extempore to the guitar and other 
stringed instruments. ... I can aver that it is a very great 

^ " CoachmeD and mariners are mostly murdeiers." 



42 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

entertainment, and what cannot fail of exciting very great 
surprise, to hear two of their best improwisatori, et cantare 
pares et respondere paratiy and each eager to excel, expatiate in 
ottova rima upon any subject moderately susceptible of poetical 
amplification. Several times have I been astonished at the 
rapidity of their expressions, the easiness of their rhymes, the 
justness of their numbers, the copiousness of their images, and 
the general warmth and impetuosity of their thoughts ; and I 
have seen crowds of listeners hurried as well as myself into a 
vortex of delight, if I may so express it, whose motion acquired 
more and more violence as the bards grew more and more 
inflamed by the repeated shoutings of the bystanders, and 
by the force of that opposition which each encountered from 
his antagonist." 

James Barry, the historical painter, was in Italy in 1768- 
177 1, and wrote letters describing it to his friend and patron, 
Burke. Bany belongs to the period when the dilettanti had 
begun to talk about the sculptured Laocoon group ; the art- 
study indicated in his letters is really a profound one, and he 
approvingly mentions the "Abbate Winckleman, the Pope's 
antiquary." Barry has also the distinction of having been the 
last painter to see Leonardo da Vinci's Cenacoh in anything 
like its former state.^ " I found," he writes, "a scaffold erected, 
which on ascending, I saw one half of the picture covered by 
a great cloth ; on examining the other part that was uncovered, 
I found the skin of colour, which composed the picture, to be 
all cracked into little squares of about the eighteenth of an 
inch over, which were for the most part in their edges loosened 
from the wall and curling up ; however, nothing was materially 
lost I saw that the picture had been formerly repaired in 
some few places ; yet as this was not much, and as the other 
parts were untouched, there was nothing to complain of. The 
wonderful truth and variety of the expressions, so well de- 
scribed by Vasari and Rubens, and the admirable finesse of 
finish and relievo taken notice of by Armenini were still 
remaining." Presently the cloth on the other side is with- 
drawn by a monk, and Barry, seeing the repaint, breaks out 
into a diatribe concluding : '' Now you have got a beast to 
paint another picture upon it, who knows no more of the 
matter than you do yourselves ; there was no occasion for this 

^ We have the most perfect pedigree of this great work, for Bandello 
the Dovelist was living at Santa Maria delle Grazie while Leonardo 
painted it 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 43 

covering it over with new colours ; it might be easily secured 
in those parts that are loosening from the wall, and it would 
stand probably as long as your order will." 

Under the date 1771 comes Dr. Burney's Music in France 
and Itafyy which does not afford us any material for comment. 
Lessing's one journey to Italy in 1775 affords the like insigni- 
ficant results. The much-discussed comparison of poetry with 
plastic art based on the Laocoon group in the Vatican was 
evolved before Lessing had left Germany. Deriving our 
impression from the life by Mr. James Sime, we do not think 
the severely critical temper of Lessing was much influenced 
by Italy. At Turin he frequents the museum of antiquities, 
and especially the ancient Egyptian collections, and in the 
library of the town he was able to discover the valuable 
treatise on art by Alberti. Lessing wrote one play on an 
Italian subject in his Emilia GaUotti^ and we are tempted to 
say a word here on the inability of any dramatists except the 
Elizabethans to evoke a dramatic result from Italian life. The 
fundamental quality of drama is the working out of individual 
destinies under the unseen laws of Fate, and neither Lessing, 
nor Goethe in his Tasso^ nor Byron after him fulfilled this 
canon of what we might call dramatic mysticism. Nor does 
the Italian drama itself fulfil these conditions, for in Italy 
Fate was eliminated by the dogma of the Church. A possible 
exception might be found in Spanish plays, but here the rules 
of the "point of honour" supply in great part the unseen 
influences lacking in Italian drama. 

Lady Miller's Tour is dated 1776, and has interest as its 
authoress went into the best society of the time, whose frocks 
and frills she has described as a woman of fashion would, 
but she has not the descriptive gift of Mrs. Piozzi. Her chief 
claim on our attention is her having measured the Venus de' 
Medid, whom she found to be exactly 4 feet 9! inches in 
height James Northcote, the biographer of Reynolds, was 
at Rome in 1778, and left an MS., which was edited by Mr. 
Stephen Gwynn in 1898. He met in Rome among other 
people, David, the painter and the friend of Robespierre. 
Northcote's work in Rome consisted rather of copying than 
of painting original pictures. There appears to have been 
quite an English colony of painters there ; on a death occurring 
Northcote describes the necessity of effecting the funeral in 
the Protestant cemetery at night by the light of torches, in 
order not to offend the superstitious populace. 



44 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

In reference to the French writers,* Voltaire seems never to 
have gone to Italy, and Ampere remarks that while Voiture and 
Balzac (not the later novelist, but a well-known stylist) went 
to Rome, not one of the great writers of the time of Louis XIV. 
was ever there. Such Italian travel-books as were produced by 
Frenchmen dealt more with social matters than with art. The 
PiRB Lalande gives many descriptions of ecclesiastical cere- 
monies in his voluminous book; the ABBi. Richard in his 
Description Historique et Critique (1766) deals with "govern- 
ment, arts, commerce, population, and natural history" in 
six volumes ; Pineau-Duclos, the secretaire perpktuel to the 
French Academy, made researches into the customs and the 
finances of the Papal States in 1767 ; P. J. Groslev in 1769 
studies Muratori and early chronicles in his Observations; 
Mme. de Genlis, the writer of moral and educational tales, 
describes an Italian journey in her Memoirs ; her Italian 
descriptions lack the piquant interest of what she writes about 
France. The brilliant woman-painter, Mme Vigfe Le Brun, 
fled to Italy from the terrors of the French Revolution, and 
has described her experiences in her Souvenirs^ which are of 
a bright anecdotic nature. She was honoured in Florence by 
being asked for her portrait for the Uffizi, where it still hangs. 
In Rome she made.friends with Angelica Kauffmann, and at 
Naples was on the most intimate terms with Sir William 
Hamilton and Emma Hart 

Sir William Hamilton formed a really fine collection of 
antiques, sold to the British Museum in 1772, and forming 
the nucleus of the present collection of Greek and Roman 
antiquities. He also wrote about Vesuvius. John Moore's 
View of Society and Manners in Italy was published in two 
volumes in 1781. It abounds in such remarks as: "The 
Italians, I am informed, have a greater relish for agility and 
high jumping in their dancers, than for graceful movements." 
The 'keynote of the book may be seen in the criticism con- 
cerning Guido: "The graceful air of his young men, the 
elegant forms and mild persuasive devotion of his Madonnas ; 
the art with which, to all the inviting loveliness of female 

* "The Italians very generally decry the French travellers," writes 
Lady Morgan, "who, they assert, never know or at least never spetik 
their language ; and against poor Lalande they are very inveterate. . . . 
The^ quote with triumph his norid description of the beautiful aloe grow- 
ing m the garden of the Ambrosiana. This we saw just as blooming as 
when Lalande saw it forty years ago ; for it had recently got a new coat 
of paint ; — ^being made ot tin." 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 45 

features, he joins the gentleness and modesty which belong to 
the female character, are the peculiar excellencies of this 
charming painter." ^ Miss Mary Berry, whose Journals and 
Correspondence (i 783-1852) were first printed in 1865, had, 
says the editor, "seen Marie Antoinette in all her pride and 
beauty," and yet lived to "be privately presented to Queen 
Victoria a few months before her death." She was among 
Horace Walpole's correspondents, and knew most of the 
European celebrities for sixty years. She was in Italy in 1783, 
in 1 81 6, and again in 1820 ; but she does not take advantc^e 
of this fact to point out any changes. Her journal has some 
amusing touches, like the description of the Grand Duke's 
carriage at Modena in 1783, as "the oldest, plainest, shabbiest 
chariot I ever saw," and a horse which any country parson 
" would have been ashamed to own." The contrast between 
the apparent wealth and the private penury of the great families 
in Italy at the end of the eighteenth century is not in any 
way exaggerated. 

Mrs. Piozzi (Dr. Johnson's Mrs. Thrale) has left us a 
highly entertaining and picturesque account of her residence 
in Italy. It was published in 1789, and has been edited lately 
by the Countess Martinengo Cesaresco, Mrs. Piozzi's marriage 
to an Italian enabled her to enter into many sides of the life 
which are beyond the scope of the ordinary traveller. She 
refers to many things somewhat beneath the dignity of other 
travellers, but of value notwithstanding. Her account of the 
presepio in churches or houses at Christmas-time may be 
quoted : 

" In many houses a room, in some a whole suite of apart- 
ments, in others the terrace upon the house-top, is dedicated 
to this very uncommon show, consisting of a miniature repre- 
sentation in sycamore wood, properly coloured, of the house 
at Bethlehem, with the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph, and our 
Saviour in the manger, with attendant angels, etc., as in pictures 
of the Nativity. The figures are about six inches high, and 
dressed with the most exact propriety. This, however, though 
the principal thing intended to attract spectators' notice, is 
kept back, so that sometimes I scarcely saw it at all ; while a 
general and excellent landscape, with figures of men at work, 
women dressing dinner, a long road in real gravel, with rocks, 
hills, rivers, cattle, camels, everything that can be imagined, 

^ When we have found platitudes of this nature in later travel-books, 
we have not troubled to describe them at all. 



46 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

fill the other rooms, so happily disposed, too, for the most 
part, the light introduced so artfully, the perspective kept so 
surprisingly ! One wonders, and crie$ out it is certainly but 
a baby-house at best ; yet managed by people whose heisuis, 
naturally turned towards architecture and design, give them 
power thus to defy a traveller not to feel delighted with the 
general effect; while if every single figure is not capitally 
executed and nicely expressed beside, the proprietor is truly 
miserable, and will cut a new cow, or vary the horse's attitude, 
against next Christmas, coiUe que coi^te. And perhaps I should 
not have said so much about the matter if there had not been 
shown me within this last week presepios which have cost their 
possessors fifteen hundred or two thousand English pounds ; 
and, rather than relinquish or sell them, many families have 
gone to ruin. I have wrote the sums down in letters, not 
figures, for fear of the possibility of a mistake. One of these 
playthings had the journey of the three kings represented in it, 
and the presents were all of real gold and silver finely worked ; 
nothing could be better or more livelily finished." 

This comment of Mrs. Piozzi's on perfumes is as true to- 
day as when it was written: ''The Roman Ladies cannot 
endure perfumes, and faint away even at an artificial rose. 
I went but once among them, when Memmo, the Venetian 
ambassador, did me the honour to introduce me somewhere, 
but the conversation was soon over — not so my shame, when 
I perceived all the company shrink from me very oddly and 
stop their noses with rue, which a servant brought to their 
assistance on open salvers. I was by this time more like to 
faint away than they from confusion and distress; my kind 
protector informed me of the cause, said I had some grains of 
marechale powder in my hair perhaps, and led me out of the 
assembly, to which no entreaties could prevail on me ever to 
return, or make further attempts to associate vrith a delicacy 
so very susceptible of oflfence." 

Mrs. Piozzi, somewhat unexpectedly, gives us a clever 
impression of landscape in these words : " Nothing is so little 
animated by the sight of living creatures as an Italian prospect. 
No sheep upon their hills, no cattle grazing in their meadows, 
no water-fowl, swans, ducks, etc., upon their lakes ; and, when 
you leave Lombardy, no birds flying in the air, save only from 
time to time, betwixt Florence and Bologna, a solitary kite 
soaring over the surly Apennines, and breaking the immense 
void which fatigues the eye ; a ragged lad or wench, too, now 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 47 

and then leading a lean cow to pick among the hedges, has a 
melancholy appearance, the more so as it is always fast held 
by a string, and struggles in vain to get loose." 

William Beckford's ^^ Dreams^ Waking Thoughts^ and 
Incidents^ in a series of Utters from various parts of Europe^^^ 
contribute some of the most picturesquely sensitive descrip- 
tions of Italy in the latter part of the eighteenth century. 
Beckford was a young man of great wealth, who had already 
written the romance of Vatheky when he went to Italy with his 
tutor (i 780-1 782). The Italian letters (including those on 
Spain and the Low Countries) were published in 1783, but 
almost all the copies were destroyed by the author, and the 
book only saw the light in 1834. Beckford's career in Eng- 
land was that of a connoisseur who wasted considerably over 
a million of money in the collections of books and virtu he 
gathered at Fonthill, where Nelson and Lady Hamilton visited 
him together. The reader will need no commendation of the 
letters here chosen : Beckford is at the beginning of the romantic 
movement which touched Sir Walter Scott, and Rousseau on 
the Continent ; as a writer of prose he must always hold a high 
place among Englishmen. In sentiment and in love of land- 
scape he anticipates Byron in some measure, and he might 
well be placed in our next section of travel except for his 
general attitude of connoisseurship. 

Arthur Young's Italian journey forms an intermezzo 
in the memorable Travels in France (i 787-1 789). They 
present a very important account of the agricultural condition 
of Italy, but the traveller sometimes glances at civic or artistic 
matters. His point of view is characteristically shown when 
he visits the Abbey of St. Ambrose in Milan. He remarks : 
"They showed us a MS. of Luitprandus, dated 721, and 
another of Lothaire, before Charlemagne. If they contained 
the register of their ploughs, they would have been interesting ; 
but what to me are the records of gifts to convents for saving 
souls that wanted probably too much cleaning for all the 
scrubbing brushes of the monks to brighten?" His comment 
on Venice is even more amusing: "If cheapness of living, 
spectacles, and pretty women are a man's objects in fixing his 
residence, let him live at Venice : for myself I think I would 
not be an inhabitant to the Doge, with the power of the Grand 
Turk. Brick and stone, and sky and water, and not a field or 
a bush even for fancy to pluck a rose from ! My heart cannot 
expand in such a place : an admirable monument of human 



48 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

industry, but not a theatre for the feelings of a farmer ! " To 
quote another typical passage, Young writes: "The circum- 
stance that strikes one in Florence, is the antiquity of the 
principal buildings; everything one sees considerable is of 
three or four hundred years' standing : of new buildings there 
are next to none ; all here remind one of the Medicis : there 
is hardly a street that has not some monument, some decora- 
tion, that bears the stanlp of that splendid magnificent family. 
How commerce could enrich it sufficiently, to leave such pro- 
digious remains, is a question not a little curious ; for I may 
venture without apprehension to assert, that all the collected 
magnificence of the House of Bourbon, governing for eight 
hundred years twenty millions of people, is trivial when com- 
pared with what the Medici family have left for the admiration 
of succeeding ages — sovereigns only of the little mountainous 
region of Tuscany, and with not more than one million of 
subjects." Arthur Young attributes these enormous results to 
trade having been a monopoly. 

§ 6. The Theory of Good Taste ; Italian Character 

The keynote of travel in the eighteenth century is more 
diversified than that of the seventeenth. Addison expresses a 
more abstract, a less keen humanism in his preface when he 
writes: "There is certainly no place in the world where a 
man may travel vrith greater pleasure and advantage than in 
Italy. One finds something more particular in the face of the 
country, and more astonishing in the works of nature, than can 
be met with in any other part of Europe. It is the great 
school of music and painting, and contains in it all the noblest 
productions of statuary and architecture, both ancient and 
modem. It ab)ounds with cabinets of curiosities, and vast 
collections of all kinds of antiquities. No other country in 
the world has such a variety of governments, that are so 
different in their constitutions, and so refined in their politics. 
There is scarce any part of the nation that is not famous in 
history, nor so much as a mountain or river that has not been 
the scene of some extraordinary action." In the last sentence 
is seen the love for classical lore, which still inspired Addison, 
and later on, in a different period, Eustace and Macaulay. 
But the eighteenth-century travellers are more generally either 
observers of manners, or enthusiasts of "good taste.*' De 
Brosses and Mrs. Piozzi, Samuel Sharpe and Lady Miller, have 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 49 

a keen eye for social conditions, but less as humanists than as 
actors in the genteel comedy of life. The age which produced 
Pope and Fielding could not fail to see character with clear 
eyes. 

Such aesthetic culture as was sought by travellers was derived 
from rational study of the masters. Gibbon in a letter to his 
stepmother (June 20, 1764) wrote : "I flatter myself that the 
works of the greatest artists, which have been continually 
before my eyes, have already begun to form my taste for the 
fine arts." Sir Joshua in his DUcaurses said: "The gusto 
grande of the Italians ; the beau idkcU of the French ; and the 
great styUy genius^ and taste among the English, are but 
different appellations of the same thing. It is this intellectual 
dignity . . . that eimobles the painter's art. . . ." The en- 
deavour to find perfection by the rules of Burke and other 
philosophers of the Beautiful happily never found credit with 
Reynolds. "Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they 
would be no longer taste or genius.'' Sir Joshua has some 
inclination to discuss art by these canons, but he saves himself 
by his perfect knowledge of craftsmanship. Most of the 
contemporary books base their art criticism on this question of 
tastey and it led to the admiration of the Caracd, of Domeni- 
chino and Guido Reni. But here we must seek to explain 
the overpraise of these painters. Admiring Raphael and 
Michael Angelo as he did, Reynolds was compelled to seek 
a more complete painter's technique than those masters 
possessed. As painters of a certain school (for we must 
always except Velasquez and Rembrandt) the Italian 
Ecclectics took academical painting and design as far perhaps 
as they can be taken. Modem art has searched for scienti^c 
decomposition of light or for realism of vision, but in the 
actual business of covering the canvas the Ecclectics are only 
surpassed by the Venetians, or the Dutch and the Spanish 
master. Reynolds expressly says that the best work of 
Ludovico Carracci shows the "power over materials" which 
he calls style.* It must not be forgotten that in the Discourses 
Reynolds is talking to students, and the work of the Ecclectics 
is by its nature fitted to stand as the model of academic art. 
Eastlake, discussmg this question in 1842, points out how 
much these Ecclectics were once admired, and said "the 
change in more recent times with regard to the homage paid 

> In the "Discoane" for 1792 the technical accomplishment of 
Raphael and the Ecclectics is fiilly contrasted. 



so THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

them has, however, been owing to a change of principle. It 
has been felt that, in the attempt to combine the excellencies, 
however great, of various minds, the chief recommendation of 
human productions, viz. the evidence of individual character, 
the moral physiognomy, which in its sincerity and passion 
atones for so many defects, is of necessity wanting ; this is one 
reason why the Germans dwell so much on the unaffected 
efforts of the early painters." 

The cult oi good taste will be sufficiently illustrated in our 
extracts from Beckford, but the eighteenth-century view of 
Italian character has an equal importance. Baretti, as an 
Italian who had seen a totally different civilisation, was in a 
position to give us a very clear view of what the Italians were. 
The notes we take from him are lengthy, but we believe of 
considerable importance: "Superficial travellers," he writes, 
" are apt to speak of them in the mass ; and they cannot fdXi 
into a greater mistake. There is very little difference, com- 
paratively speaking, between the several provinces of England, 
because all their inhabitants live under the same laws, speak 
dialects of the same tongue much nearer each other than the 
dialects of Italy, and have a much greater intercourse between 
themselves than the Italians have had these many ages. No 
nations, distinguished by different names, vary more from each 
other in almost every respect than these which go under the 
common name of Italians ; but still these provincial discrimi- 
nations require a masterly hand in the description ; and I am 
sure I feel my abilities to be very disproportionate to the task. 
. . . However, that I may not leave so ample a topic quite 
untouched, I will here endeavour to give my reader what 
satisfaction I can upon the several characteristics of the 
Italians. 

" To begin therefore with the Piedmontese, who are the 
most Alpine nation of Italy, I must observe, that one of the 
chief qualities which distinguish them from all other Italians, 
is their want of cheerfulness. A stranger travelling through 
Italy may easily observe, that all the nations there have in 
general very gay countenances, and visibly appear much more 
inclined to jollity by their frequent and obstreperous laughing. 
But take a walk along any place of public resort in any of the 
Piedmontese towns, and you will presently perceive that almost 
every face looks cloudy and full of sullen gravity. There are 
many peculiarities besides this, that render the Piedmontese 
unlike the other Italians. Among other things, it is very 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 51 

remarkable that Piedmont never produced a single poet. . . . 
But if the Piedmontese are not to be compared with the 
Tuscans and other Italians for that brilliancy of imagination 
which poetry and the polite arts require, they have, on the 
other hand, greatly the advantage when considered as soldiers. 
Though their troops have never been very numerous, every- 
body conversant in history knows the brave stand they have 
made for some centuries past against the French, Spaniards, 
and Germans whenever they were invaded by these nations.* 

"... South of Piedmont, and alongshore of the Tyrrhene 
Sea, lie the small but populous dominions of the Genoese 
republic. The people of this coimtry have been much ex- 
posed in ancient days to the malignity of wit, and many of the 
Roman poets have taken much freedom with the ancient 
Ligurians. Yet, whatever truth there may be in the sarcastic 
sayings of Virgil, Silius Italicus, Ausonius and others, I think 
that a proud ostentation of learning rather than sober reason 
has induced many a modem to tread in their footsteps. As a 
native of Turin, I could not help being brought up in an 
unjust aversion to the Genoese: an aversion very common 
among neighbouring nations, and very difficult for human 
reason to conquer at any time of liife. But having had 
occasion, twice in my days, and at distant periods, to pass 
some months at Genoa, and to visit the greatest part of the 
republic's territories, I own I could not find in that people any 
groimd for the insolent reproach, that their men are as devoid 
o/faithy and their women ofshame^ as their hills are of woody 
and their sea of fishes. ... I would certainly rather choose to 
live with them at Genoa than in any other town I ever saw ; 
because there the government is mild, the climate soft, the 
habitations large and clean, and the whole face of the country 
most romantically beautiful. The Genoese nobles are in 
general affable, polite, and very knowing: and their great 
ladies much better acquainted with books than any other set 
of Italian ladies. . . . Trade in Genoa is far from being de- 
rogatory to nobility, as I have already observed ; so that even 
the chief senators and members of government engage in it 
publicly and in their own names. The Piedmontese differ so 
much from them in this particular, that no man professing 
commerce, except a banker, is allowed in Piedmont to wear a 
sword. 

» Withoat the bravery of the Piedmontese the Unitjr of Italy, effected 
long after Baretti wrote, would have been an impossibikty. 



52 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

"... The inhabitants of Lombardy, and the Milanese 
especially, value themselves upon their being dt bon ccsur; a 
phrase which in the spelling appears to be French, though it 
be somewhat different in the meaning as well as in the pro- 
nunciation, answering with much exactness to the English 
adjective good-natured. Nor do the Milanese boast unjustly of 
this good quality, which is so incontrovertibly granted to them 
by all other Italians, that they are perhaps the only nation in 
the world not hated by their neight)ours. The Piedmontese, 
as I said, hate the Genoese ; the Genoese detest the Pied- 
montese, and have no great kindness for the Tuscans ; the 
Tuscans are not very fond of the Venetians or the Romans ; 
the Romans are far from abounding in good will to the 
Neapolitans ; and so round. . . . But the Milanese are, much 
to their honour, an exception to the general rule. . . . They 
are commonly compared to the Germans for their plain 
honesty, and to the French for their fondness of pomp and 
elegance in equipages and household furniture ; and I have a 
mind to add that they resemble the English in their love of 
good eating. . . . The Milanese are likewise remarkable 
amongst the Italians for their love of rural amusements. They 
generally pass the greatest part of the summer and the whole 
autumn in the country, and they have good reason for so 
doing, as that hilly province of theirs called Monte di Brianza^ 
where their country-houses chiefly lie, is in my opinion the 
most delightful in all Italy for the variety of its landscapes, the 
gentleness of its rivers, and the multitude of its lakes. 

"... The Venetians are indeed more addicted to sen- 
suality than more northern nations, and love cards rather 
too passionately; but their fondness for cqirds and women 
excludes them not from the possession of many virtues and 
good qualities very estimable and useful in society. They are 
most remarkably temperate in their way of living, though very 
liberal in spending. . . . They are so characteristically tender- 
hearted, that the least affectionate word melts them at once, 
makes them lay aside any animosity, and suddenly reconciles 
them to those whom they disliked before. Of this quality in 
them, strong traces are presently discovered in their very 
dialect, which seems almost composed of nothing else, but of 
kind words and endearing epithets.^ However, this humane 

* Mrs. Piozzi says : *' At Venice the sweetness of the patois is irresis- 
tible ; their lips, incapable of uttering any but the sweetest sounds, reject all 
consonants they can get quit of, and make their mouths drop honey.'* 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 53 

turn of mind shows itself much seldomer in their nobility than 
in the people ... It is well known that the Venetian nobles, 
together with the very meanest of their servants and depend- 
ants, are forbidden by a most severe law to speak or hold any 
correspondence with any person whatsoever who resides in 
Venice in a public character from any foreign sovereign, or 
even with the servants and dependants of such persons. . . . 
As all strangers of any distinction generally frequent the 
houses of the foreign ministers, the nobles dare not see them 
often, and even shun those places where strangers resort most. 
By these means they are almost reduced to the necessity of 
only conversing among themselves ; and as very few of them 
are even allowed to travel by the inquisitors of state (without 
whose permission they vrill scarcely venture to go so far as 
their country houses when situated at any considerable distance 
from Venice) their manners are borrowed from no nation (as 
is partly the case with all other Italians) but are perfectly their 
own, and have not changed for many centuries. 

"... As to the customs and manners of these provinces 
of Italy, which belong to the republic, they are considerably 
different from those of Venice, and approach nearly to those 
of Austrian Lombardy. The people of Brescia ^ made it for- 
merly a point of honour to be great bullies ; and I remember 
the time myself when it was dangerous to have any dealings 
with them, as they were much inclined to quarrel merely for a 
whim, and would presently challenge one to fight with pistol 
or blunderbuss. And when it was the fashion amongst our 
great folks to have any enemy treacherously murdered, a bravo 
was easily hired amongst the low people of this town and pro- 
vince. But such abominable customs have now been abolished 
many years. ... It has often been asserted by writers of 
travels, that many of the Italian provinces are but thinly in- 
habited, and that the badness of the government is the cause of 
their depopulation. If there be any truth in this remark, it is 
certainly with regard to Ferraraand its territory. . . . The natives 
of this duchy, which I have only visited in a cursory maimer, are 
very modest and ceremonious, if one may judge of their private 
deportment by what they appear in their places of public resort. 
By virtue of an ancient privilege, whereof they are not a little 
proud, even their tailors and coblers can strut about with a 
sword at their side. . . . From this duchy we enter the state 

^ Brescia, in Evelyn's day, was a great place for the manufacture of fire- 
anni. 



54 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

of Bologna, of which the Pope is likewise possessed. Bologna 
has been much renowned for many ages on account of its univer- 
sity, which boasts of being the most ancient in Europe, and 
even to this day preserves a kind of pre-eminence over all other 
Italian universities, as it is said to be furnished with learned 
professors more abundantly than any other, though their 
stipends are much smaller. The nobility and genteel people 
of Bologna have long possessed the reputation of being upon 
the whole more acquainted with books than those of any other 
Italian towns. ... Of the Romagna, Umbria, and other papal 
provinces, I have little to say, as I have only crossed them 
hastily. It is affirmed that their inhabitants, the Romagnoles 
especially, are remarkable for their rudeness and ferocious 
temper. 

"... The Romans of to-day have somewhat degenerated 
from their ancestors ; or, to speak more properly, their art of 
managing nations has at last been learnt by other people. 
The principles of policy and government are at present more 
generally understood ; and the Pope is not now the only prince 
who has the means of an universal information and extensive 
influence. However, to me the Romans still appear superior 
on the whole to all other people in Europe, or at least to all 
other nations in Italy. . . . They are habitually well-bred, 
careful to please, and anxious to get new friends and new 
connections. Their cardinals and principal monsignori's seem 
in general to have a greater turn for the science of politics 
than for any other ; and it is believed that a stranger who has 
any public business to transact with their statesmen has need 
to be very dexterous and cautious not to be outwitted. . . . 
Tuscany was the mistress of politeness to France, as France 
has since been to all the western world ; and this little pro- 
vince may justly boast of having produced (and nearly at one 
time) a greater number of extraordinary men than perhaps any 
of the most extensive European kingdoms. . . . The Tuscans 
were smitten by the charms of poetry to a greater degree than any 
other people, as soon as their language began to be turned to- 
wards verse. . . . That sensibility of heart which has long made 
the Tuscans thus enamoured with poetry, has likewise totally 
wore out that ferocity for which they were so remarkable in the 
brutal times of the Guelphs and Ghibelines ; and has brought 
them to be perhaps the most gentle and amiable nation now 
extant. This character of gentleness is indeed easily to be 
perceived by any traveller as soon as from Bologna he reaches 



THE SCHOOL OF HUMANISM AND TASTE 55 

the highest top of the Apennine, where all strangers are treated 
with the softest urbanity by these mountaineers, who to the 
simplicity which is natural to all inhabitants of extensive ridges 
of bills, join the most obliging expressions and most respectful 
manners," 

We may supplement Baretti's notions of local character by 
an attempted estimate of Italian character in general. Of 
the respect paid to their love of beauty by all travellers we 
need not speak, for that is obvious ; but between the lines of 
eighteenth-century travels, extremely keen in the search for 
character, we may perceive a certain dissatisfaction with Italians 
personally. The Italian, much as his taste and refinement 
were deferred to, was at a disadvantage when meeting the 
foreigner on questions of government He had no sheet- 
anchor of loyaiity to a king or a constitution ; no prevailing 
theory of national progress. He loved his town^ but that was 
mostly a decadent power. The Frenchman came to him as 
representative of a country which prided itself as being the 
e;q>onent of manners in Europe; the Englishman had the 
pride of his wealth as landowner and the fine animal spirits of 
the lover of sport. The Italian had the artistic treasures of 
his country, but they belonged to the past To the instinctive 
unspoken query "What are you?" he could give no reply. 
In character he was infinitely more complex than his guests ; 
for modem Italy, as the product of a second civilisation out 
of the remains of an older one, had gone from the homogeneous 
to the heterc^eneous state. We must add to this the former 
Teutonic and the actual Spanish and Austrian dominations, 
with the perpetual unseen tyranny of the Papacy. The Italian 
was not his own man, and he was accused of dissimulation 
where he was only steering a safe course between very real 
dangers. The artistic temperament had made it difficult for 
him to see the blessings of unified government ; in his search 
for the infinite he had lost hold of the humble realities of 
human happiness. He could not appeal to ancient Rome, 
for Catholicism had won its triumph by destroying the ancient 
empire, and Guicciardini had pointed out that Machiavelli's 
Roman sympathies were illogical ; when Leopardi came, he 
could look back to Rome as an example, but only because 
religion had begun to lose its hold. 

The Italian in our own day preserves a gentilezzay which 
is the cloak of very strong passions. With many virtues and 
qualities he was more complex and less easy to deal with than 



S6 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

other Europeans. He now has won his national unity and 
has become more like other Europeans, but the impress of 
hundreds of years of repression is not easy to shake off. He 
will calculate with a great deal of profundity about very small 
matters ; but that is a habit rather than a vice, for it does not 
follow that his calculation goes towards an ^oistic purpose. 
Outwardly he appears very simple and childlike, but his in- 
tellect is highly developed ; and he is not entirely the aeature 
of momentary impressions. We shall rather find the key to 
his nature in the word versatility^ a quality which has its 
dangers, but which gives a perpetual fascination to life. This 
versatility was the result of the clash of all the varied influ- 
ences that moulded the Italian nature till the French Revolu- 
tion. If the men of the Renaissance sought to take all 
knowledge for their province, Dante had already done so in 
his time; the first indications of the possibility of the un- 
discovered world of America arose in Italy, as did the first 
modem curiosity about ancient Egypt The ItaEan presents 
the curious aspect of an archaeologian who yet stretches out 
his hands towards the discoveries of science ; and in his every- 
day life he does not divorce superstition from a keen vision of 
modem necessities. Christian and pagan, artist and realist, 
sensuous and yet self-denying, he remains in extremes. 

There was in all this too much subtlety for the understand- 
ing of the eighteenth century, with its rationally calm methods 
of thought. The Italians seen by De Brosses or Baretti were 
going through one of those long periods of depression which 
come to a race which has overtaxed its powers in splendid 
effort But even in his darkest hours the Italian preserved 
his enthusiasm and still hoped for better things, for with the 
privileges and the pains of genius he had the secret consola- 
tions which more practical people do not possess. 



PART II 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 

As we approach the French Revolution we breathe a fresher 
and more bracing air ; the Gothic age of Italy always has a 
faint smell of incense, and the Renaissance is laden with heavy 
perfumes of luxury and passion. Even the rationalism of the 
eighteenth century is somewhat formal and pedantic compared 
with the frank defiance of the revolutionary era. Hitherto 
our travellers have nm in grooves, and follow the general trend 
of opinion with slavish fidelity. We shall still see the schools 
succeed each other, but the personality of the writers is clearly 
marked. Italy itself was still living in the past, and the clash 
of the protected Republics and Principalities with the revolu- 
tionary spirit would be tragic if it were not amusing. But 
before coming to the Napoleonic era we have to discuss some 
important travellers who link together the two periods., 

§ 1. Goethe and Mme. De Stael 

Goethe's* Italian experiences (September 1786 to April 
1788) have been well described by Prof. Herford "as interest- 
ing us even more as biography than as travel. . . . The work 
caUed the lialienische Reise was worked up by Goethe thirty 
years after the journey itself, from the journals and letters 
written at the time. A large number of the originals he then 
destroyed. But the valuable Journal sent to Frau von Stein 
and a number of the letters to Herder were happily preserved, 
and have now been issued by the Goethe-Gesellschaft, admir- 
ably edited by Eric Schmidt" {Tayiortan Lecture for i898).2 
Professor Heiford indicates that the main research of Goethe 
in Italy was connected with antiquity rather than the period 

^ Schiller was never in Italy, but chose the subject of the Genovese 
conspiracy in 1547 for his drama called Fiesco. 
* Published by the Oxford University Press. 

57 



S8 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

expressed in Faust, Goethe, delighted as he had been with 
his initiation into classical beauty at Weimar, had temporarily 
lost his love for an art which could only appeal to him through 
incomplete reproductions, in woodcut and plaster cast." Sus- 
pecting that the theories of Winckleman about the repose and 
majesty of ancient art did not contain the entire truth, Goethe 
had an increasing desire to go to Rome and see for himself. 
Goethe, we must not forget, is half of the eighteenth century 
and half of the nineteenth century : with the former he looks 
for Good Taste, for the abstract quality of beauty ; with the 
latter he is seeking for the more living inspiration, the creation 
at white heat, the personal expression and the nature-worship 
of romanticism. Weary of a conventional Germany, and with 
all the desire which led the Teutons southwards for centuries, 
he begins to feel in his thirty-seventh year that if he does not 
go to Italy, he will " go mad." What Goethe wanted to find 
in Italy is not easy to explain : most critical writers on the 
problem expend a great deal of language with little result 
that we can take hold of. One of the poet's dicta will perhaps 
best aid us : " If the artist, by imitating Nature, by ^striving to 
find a universal expression for it, by exact and profound study 
of the objects themselves, finally attains to an exact and ever 
exacter knowledge of the qualities of things and the mode of 
their existence, so that he surveys the whole series of forms, 
and can range together and imitate the varioos characteristic 
shapes, then what he achieves, if he achieves his utmost, and 
what, if achieved, sets his work on a level with the highest 
efforts of man, is Style** The definition appears to relate to 
the art of design, but Goethe habitually spoke of one art in 
terms of another. Going to Italy as a poet seeking for the 
law governing creative art, he still talks of style (which is a 
great deal more than good taste), but with the added scientific 
necessity of finding "universal expression." Eighteenth-century 
good taste as a rule was directed to finding an art which 
should give pleasure, Goethe's conception is of a search for 
something going beyond the approval of the dilettanti. After 
a very brief sojourn in Rome, Goethe writes : " Here I feel 
calm, and tranquillised, I believe, for my remaining life." 

Had he found what he sought ? At any rate, he writes : 
" So much is certain : the old artists had as complete a know- 
ledge of Nature, and as definite an idea of what can be 
represented and how it must be represented, as Homer had. 
These great works of art were at the same time supreme works 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 59 

of Nature, produced by men according to just and natural 
laws. All that is arbitrary or fantastic falls away; here is 
necessity, here is God." The majestic unity and complete- 
ness of Greek sculpture became infinitely more to him than 
the suavity of the art oi good taste; and the classic spirit was a 
complete contrast to the modem idea, even then coming into 
vogue with the nearing French Revolution, with its Democratic 
hurry, its gigantic egoism, and its desire to possess without 
earning, to enjoy without suffering. Goethe had never reached 
a full conception of artistic unity till he went to Rome \ even 
the first part of Faust is a collection of morceaux cleverly 
welded together, deriving unity from their psychological, their 
human interest rather than their governing artistic motive. 
To understand Goethe's search in Italy we must contrast 
Wilhelm Meister and its fascinating impressionism with the 
clear-cut classic lines of his poems written in Rome. On his 
return home he came to see the value of national subjects,^ 
and it is in Hermann and Dorothea that he combines the 
nature and simplicity of classic art with the homely sweetness 
of German rural life. The objection may be made that 
Goethe is always searching consciously for perfection, but 
perhaps that is the fault of modernity, with its text-books for 
all the arts. Goethe finally saved himself " by an exact and 
profound study of the objects themselves," and chose for the 
object of that study the life of his own people and his own 
time. 

The whole question of Goethe's travels has been interest- 
ingly studied by M. Th^ophile Cart. It is not possible to say 
that Goethe assisted in making Italy better understood than it 
had been. His letters give us the opinions of an exceptional 
mind, and show a synthesis of the stock of ideas of his age. 
The pioneers of the new spirit are not necessarily men of 
importance, and Goethe did not aid in the imminent "discovery" 
of Gothic architecture. It is in the temper of inquiry and 
freedom from prejudice that he is modern ; in his self-analysis 
by the touchstone of antiquity — for he goes to Italy as much to 
(Uscover his own soul as that of the country — he leaps over 
the gap of a hundred years and belongs to the end of the 
nineteenth century. Not a few of the poet's opinions will be 
found in our selections, arranged mostly as pensies^ and their 
deep philosophy and vivid sense of history are beyond praise. 

^ Cervantes, too, finally devoted his genius to an essentially Spanish 
sabject, just as Chaucer found himself in the Canterbury TaUs, 



6o THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

One personal note may be placed here, as showing to what 
lengths connoisseurs carried their admiration of art '* Sir 
William Hamilton," writes Goethe from Naples, "who still 
resides here as ambassador from England, has at length, after 
his long love of art, and long study, discovered the most 
perfect of admirers of nature and art in a beautiful young 
woman.^ She lives with him : an English woman of about 
twenty years old. She is very handsome, and of a beautiful 
figure. The old knight has made for her a Greek costume, 
which becomes her extremely. Dressed in this, and letting 
her hair loose, and taking a couple of shawls, she exhibits 
every possible variety of posture, expression, and look, so that 
at the last the spectator almost fancies it is a dream. One 
beholds here in perfection, in movement, in ravishing variety, 
all that the greatest of artists have rejoiced to be able to 
produce. Standing, kneeling, sitting, lying down, grave or 
sad, playful, exulting, repentant, wanton, menacing, anxious — ^all 
mental states follow rapidly one after another. With wonderful 
taste she suits the folding of her veil to each expression, and with 
the same handkerchief makes every kind of head-dress. The 
old knight holds the light for her, and enters into the exhibition 
with his whole soul. He thinks he can discern in her a resem- 
blance to all the most famous antiques, all the beautiful profiles 
on the Sidlian coins — aye, of the Apollo Belvedere itself. This 
much at any rate is certain — the entertainment is unique." 

Deferring the consideration of Napoleon for the moment, 
we come to Mme. de Stael, who, exiled from France by 
Napoleon, went from Coppet to Italy in 1804. Among her 
friends were Monti the poet, Bonstetten, Humboldt, William 
von Schlegel, and Sismondi. Angelica Kaufmann (the friend of 
Sir Joshua Reynolds and of Goethe), the young Thorwaldsen, 
and Canova, who was to become the sculptor of Napoleon 
as Emperor, were the artists in vogue. Goethe had thought 
that what he called Mme. de Stael's "convinced lack of 
artistic form " would prevent her producing anything of interest, 
but Carinne was the result of her year's journey. The book 
has undoubtedly had its influence on European literature; 
its graceful periods are still interesting to read, and as a com- 
position with an ideal figure posed against a background 
of Italian architecture or scenery, it has some claim as a 
creative work. The scene in the Capitol, in which Corinne 

^ Emma Hart, afterwards Lady Hamilton. Some of her letters, 
daring the Nelson episode, give pretty glimpses of Court life at Naples. 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 61 

the poetess is crowned, is really an amplification of the homage 
paid to Mme. de Stael in Rome ; and as it has been said that 
Dephine was what Mme de Stael was, so Carinne was what 
she wanted to be. Corinne, it is true, is drawn as a young 
English girl, whose mother was Italian ; seeking freedom, she 
has gone to Rome, and it is by no stretch of the imagination 
that we see her holding her saian and meeting men on equal 
terms, without forfeiting public esteem. The beautiful im- 
prowisatrice^ Isabella Pelligrini, who died young, was among 
the women poets whom Mme. de Stael met, and who were on 
fully equal terms with their contemporaries. Corinne happens 
to fall in love with a young English noble, Oswald, and it is 
with a very simple plot of passion and despair that the de- 
scriptions of, Italy are intermingled. Oswald, with all his 
admiration of Corinne's poetry, of her innocent freedom of 
life, wishes her to become the submissive wife of English 
society. Corinne cannot forfeit her independence, and finally 
dies of love in a swan-like manner that was customary to the 
heroines of romance in the banning of the nineteenth century. 
This scheme enables the writer to see Italy through an atmos- 
phere of joy or sorrow, and there is something very attractive 
in the mild way in which the hero receives instruction from 
the learned and talented Corinne. ' The sketches of English, 
French, or Italian character are vivid ; the psychology tender 
and not forced. Byron wrote a passionate letter in La Guic- 
cioli's copy of the book, and also in a note remarked of 
Mme. de Stael : " She is sometimes right, and often wrong 
about Italy and England ; but almost always true in delineating 
the heart, which is of but one nation, and of no country, or, 
rather, of all.'* 

But this is not the chief interest of Mme. de Stael's 
writings. She is the founder of a cosmopolitan literature in 
that she clearly marks national differences of character. In 
CorinnCy the search is not for a criterion of good taste, or a 
standard of beauty; it is not for the still earlier humanism. 
Mme. de Stael wants to show us the contrast of national 
character, and the influence of new surroundings on it. Her 
passion is feeble when compared with Rousseau, her his- 
toric imagination tame when compared with Chateaubriand. 
Ampere has pointed out that " in her delineation of places 
that impressed her, we admire the loftiness and strength of 
the ideas suggested by things seen, rather than their actual 
representation." Classic art said little to her; the pictorial 



62 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

masters left her cold, and when she speaks of them it is in 
an abstract way. Nevertheless Italians still give a high place 
to Corinne^ and it is interesting to see them studying their 
own country through a foreigner's eyes. Till Beckford's time 
the foreigner had to take his ideas on Italy from the native 
historians, antiquarians, or dilettanti When Mme. de Stael 
crowns her Corinne in the Capitol, she shows that the north 
has appreciated Italy, and that the natives are willing them- 
selves to learn from that appreciation. The book had 
enormous influence in France, and according to M. Albert 
Sorrel : " Corinne was, to a whole generation of generous, 
romantic, and passionate men and women the book of love 
and of the ideal. It was a revelation of Italy to many French 
people. It made Italy for years the land of lovers and the 
cherished end of all travels in quest of happiness.'' 

Among historians William Roscoe (1753-1831) is a 
sympathetic figure. Brought up to the profession of the law 
in Liverpool, he imbibed a taste for Italian poetry in his youth, 
and in 1790 began to work on the Life of Lorenzo di Medici. 
A friend consulted rare manuscripts and books on his behalf 
in Florence, and Roscoe published his first edition in 1796. 
It won the warm approval of Lord Orford and other dis- 
tinguished men, and two years later Roscoe began his 
History of Leo X. Owing to business losses he had to sell 
his fine library, but his zeal for learning was recognised in the 
appreciation of friends who raised a sum of ;;^25oo for him. 
His influence brought the subject of Italian literature forward 
in northern countries, and his son Thomas Roscoe, by trans- 
lating some of the Italian novelists and Lanzi's History of 
Fainting^ continued his good work. Samuel Forsyth 
travelled in Italy in 1802, and was detained in France on his 
way home under the arbitrary order of Buonaparte's regulations 
against British subjects. Curiously enough, his book was a 
favourite of Buonaparte's, though (published during his ten 
years' detention) it did not obtain Forsyth's release. His 
opinions are mostly too fragmentary for quotation, but he 
gives us a helpful criticism of ancient art when he refers to 
the " colossal taste which arose in the empire, and gave an 
unnatural expansion to all works of art In architecture it 
produced Nero's golden house and Adrian's villa ; in hydraulics 
it projected the Claudian emissary, and Caligula's Baian bridge ; 
in sculpture it has left at the Capitol such heads and feet as 
betray the emperor's contempt for the dimensions of man ; 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 63 

in poetry it swelled out in the hyperboles of Lucan and 
Statins." Forsyth had a pretty gift of sarcasm, sometimes 
unnecessarily exerted, concerning Italian manners. 

Chateaubriand was in Italy in 1803-4 seeking material 
for his book Les Martyrs, He wrote a useful, if not always 
accurate, description of Hadrian's villa ; and a long letter on 
Rome, written to a friend, M. de Fontanes, contains some 
philosophic reflections, and the following admirable pictorial 
note: "Nothing can be so beautiful as the lines of the 
Roman horizon, the gentle inclination of the planes, and the 
soft fugitive outlines of the mountains which bound them. 
... A singular tint and most peculiar harmony unite the 
earth, the sky, and the waters. All the surfaces are blended 
at their extremities by means of an insensible gradation of 
coloiu-, and without the possibility of ascertaining the point 
at which one ends, or another begins. You have doubtless 
admired this sort of light in Claude Lorraine's landscapes. 
It appears ideal, possessing a beauty beyond nature; it is 
nevertheless the genuine light of Rome." Chateaubriand 
shows himself extremely sensitive to light, and in this an- 
ticipates the beautiful skies which are the noblest part of the 
art of Turner. We make no apology for inserting such a 
picture as this of Chateaubriand's: "I did not neglect to 
visit the Villa Borghese, and to admire the sun as he cast his 
setting beams upon the cypresses of Mount Marius and the 
pines of the Villa Pamphili, planted by Le Notre. I have also 
often directed my way up the Tiber to enjoy the grand scene 
of departing day at Ponte Mole. The summits of the Sabine 
mountains then appear to consist of lapis-lazuli and pale 
gold, while their bases and sides are enveloped in a vapour, 
which has a violet or purple tint Sometimes beautiftil clouds, 
like light chariots, borne on the winds with inimitable grace, 
make you easily comprehend the appearance of the Olympian 
deities under this mythologic sky. Sometimes ancient Rome 
s^ms to have stretched into the west all the purple of her 
Consuls and her Csssars, and spread it under the last steps 
of the God of day. This superb decoration disappears less 
swiftly than in our climate; for when you believe the tints 
vanishing, they suddenly illumine some other point of the 
horizon. Twilight succeeds twilight, and the charm of 
closing day is prolonged. It is true that at this hour of rural 
repose, the air no longer resounds with bucolic song ; you no 
longer hear the dulda Unquimus aroa^ but you still see the 



64 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

'great victims of the Clitumnus' — white bulls and herds of 
half wild horses, which descend to the banks of the Tiber, 
and quench their thirst with its waters. You might fancy 
yourself transported to the times of the ancient Sabines, or to 
the age of the Arcadian Evander, irotfiev€$ Aawv, when the 
Tiber was called Albula, and the pious Eneas navigated its 
unknown stream." * 

Augustus von Kotzebue, the German dramatist, travelled 
in Italy in 1804 and 1805. His account is marred by ignor- 
ance of Italian history and art. It occasionally contains a 
reference to customs of interest Kotzebue describes as a 
''laudable custom" the old habit in Naples of milking the 
cow at the door of the customers. He goes on : " Besides 
these cows, there are also a number of calves that wander 
about the city, but for a very different purpose. They belong 
to the monks of St. Francis, who not only in idleness get their 
own bellies filled by the people, but also commit the protection 
of their live-stock to their good-nature. For that purpose 
nothing more is necessary than to put a small square board 
on the forehead of the calf with the figure of St. Francis 
painted on it. Provided with this, the animals walk about 
uncontrolled, devour as much as they can, and sleep where 
they choose, without any one venturing to prevent them." 
Kotzebue, like other Germans, Archenholtz (1797) and Heine, 
shows a certain boorish contempt for Italians, which is 
displeasing. 

Charles Victor de Bonstetten's Foyage en Latium was 
published at Geneva, An XIII {iSo^)^ and is an essay on the 
scenes of the six last books of Virgil's Eneid. The subject 
has been attempted by Juste Lipse, Cluvier, and others ; but 
Bonstetten's imaginative restoration of Latium in the time of 
the pious Aeneas, if going outside our purview, has its charm. 
He believes in the accuracy of " the picture which Virgil gives 
of the Latins of Aeneas' time, of the vast forests and clearings, 
of the semi-pastoral, semi- warlike customs, and of a cold climate 
such as exists in our time in partially cleared countries." The 
general comparison of Italian landscape with Virgil has the 
defect of the idea that poetry expresses by imitation, whereas 
it rather suggests by imagery. The approach of Aeneas 
to Italy, the impressions of scenery in the Georgics^ reproduce 
the great features of the land that Virgil knew and loved for 
the spiritual eye alone. Dryden, who did not know Italy, 
^ From an anonymous translation (1828). 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 65 

succeeded in eliminating every hint of the country, admirable 
as his version is for its limpid English. Virgilian landscape 
would best be illustrated by the minor Pompeian paintings 
in the Museum at Naples. 

Though severely censured by Byron, the Classical Tour 
(181 3) of John Chetwood Eustace is by no means to be 
despised. Eustace was a friend of Burke's, and was with him 
dunng his last illness. He was a Catholic who had the 
breadth of mind to associate with Protestants, though this 
offended his co-religionists. Eustace's Taur^ if somewhat dull, 
is thorough and often instructive. Byron's friend, Hobhouse, 
afterwards Lord Broughton, has criticised the travels severely, 
but Hobhouse's own book on Italy is not very entertaining. 

§ 2. Napoleon's Italy 

To understand the conditions of Italy when Buonaparte 
invaded it, we may epitomise its infinite subdivision into small 
states from Nugent's Grand Tour^ a guide-book published in 
1778. We read that the Pope possessed Rome and the 
Campagna, the province of Sabina, the Duchies of Spoleto, 
Castio Urbia and Ferrara, the Marquisate of Ancona, Ro- 
magna, Bologna, the Duchy of Benevento, and the county 
of Avignon in France. The Emperor as Grand Duke of 
Tuscany had Florence, Siena, Pitigliano and S. Floro, Pon- 
tremoli, Porto Ferrara and the islands of Giglio, Gorgogna 
and Monte Cristo. The House of Austria had Milan and 
Mantua, Aquileia, Glorizia, and Gradisca, with places in Istria. 
Don Carlos was King of Naples, and had the ports of Tuscany. 
The King of Sardinia had Savoy, Piedmont, Montferrat, 
Saluzzo, and part of the Duchy of Milan. The Republic of 
Venice had Istria, Friuli, the Marca Trevigiana, Venice and 
Padua, Verona, Vicenza, Brescia, Bergamo, and Crema besides 
part of Dalmatia, &c. The 'Republic of Genoa had the two 
Rivieras, east and west, the kingdom of Corsica, and the 
marquisate of Final. In addition to this there were such 
petty states as the Dukedoms of Parma and Placentia, of 
Modena, Reggio, and Mirandola, of Guastalla, of Massa, of 
Sabionetto; then the republics of Lucca and San Marino; 
the principalities of Castiglione and Solferino, of Monaco 
(under French protection), of Masserano, and other fiefs in 
Piedmont, yieldmg homape to the Pope, &c. &:c. 

To a country thus divided, and yet preserving the pride 



66 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

of history and art, keeping the most pompous of manners 
amid the small intrigues of these tiny states, came the gaunt 
young Buonaparte with his following of superb rapscallions, 
wild with revolutionary ardour, many of them unshod, and 
all of them hungry. The French force of 35,000 men was 
opposed by the joint armies of Piedmont and Austria, amount- 
ing to 60,000 men. Buonaparte used the tactics afterwards 
unsuccessful in Belgium ; piercing the centre of the enemy's 
line, he turned the Piedmontese towards Turin, followed them, 
and inflicted a crushing defeat The King of Sardinia made 
peace by ceding Savoy and Nice to the French : these pos- 
sessions had later on to be restored, but were definitively 
added to French territory by Napoleon III. Buonaparte 
followed the Austrians, and, after forcing the bridge of Lodi, 
made his triumphal entry into Milan (1796), and, after further 
defeating the Austrians, proceeded to Bologna, where he 
extorted from the Pope twenty millions of francs and a large 
number of works of art Among the pictures chosen by the 
French commissaries were not a few by Corr^gio, Guido Reni, 
Perugino, and Raphael. At a later date Napoleon obtained 
from Venice Tintoretto's acknowledged masterpiece, the De- 
livery of a Slave by St Marky his Paradise^ Titian's Assumption 
of the Virgin, and, to crown all, the four bronze horses of St. 
Mark's. These treasures were afterwards restored to Italy, but 
some wonderful Mantegnas remain in the Louvre as souvenirs 
of what is to the art lover the most excusable side of the 
Napoleonic conquests. 

Napoleon's letters from Italy to that " languorous Creole " 
Josephine made no reference to the country, but are fiery 
amatory appeals following on laconic announcements of victory. 
The result of the first Italian campaign was to make the idea 
of unity a possible reality in those Italian minds which had 
only cherished it as an impossible ideal. The abstract idea 
of unity had failed to impress the Italians sufficiently to lead 
to action. When that idea had been actually embodied in a 
human being, it gradually brought them to the endeavour 
which culminated in the crowning of Victor Emmanuel. True 
that in every country the idea of liberty needs a representative, 
but Italy could not herself supply the prototype. Buonaparte 
undoubtedly went to Italy with the desire of freeing it ; his 
wonderful success brought his ambitions to a head, and with 
his inherited Italian blood he was fully a match for Italian 
intrigue. Venice fell to him without a blow, was soon pledged 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 67 

away to the Austrians as a pawn in the game, but freed again 
under the treaty of Presbourg. Other towns which had hoped 
to regain their ancient Republican institutions were formed 
into a Cisalpine Republic under the protection of France, but 
certainly with more freedom than they had enjoyed for three 
centuries. 

The Italians were again to learn that invaders from the 
outside, invited or uninvited, always played for their own 
hand, and that Italian imity could only be won by a national 
uprising, dependent on itself. Called away by the failure of 
other French generals, and with the interval filled in by his 
Egyptian campaign, Buonaparte only reappeared in Italy in 
1800, after imitating Hannibal's feat of crossing the Alps with 
an army. Marengo and a succession of victories culminated 
in his naming himself the President of the reorganised Cis- 
alpine Republic. In 1804, after his coronation as French 
Emperor, Napoleon transformed the Cisalpine Republic into 
a monarchy, and in 1805 was crowned with the iron crown 
of the Lombard princes, in Milan cathedral, as King of Italy, 
with his stepson, Eugene de Beauhamais, as Viceroy. ^^1 
this jerry-built empire-building was soon to be thrown down, 
but popular engravings of Napoleon are still to be met with in 
Italy, where his name is often spoken of with respect.^ There 
are not a few valuable obiter dicta of Napoleon concerning 
Italy, but the most memorable is his prediction contained in 
the Mhnarial de Ste Helhie : " Italy, set apart within natural 
limits, separated by the sea and by lofty mountains from the 
rest of Europe, seems called to be a great and powerful nation. 
. . . Unity in customs, language, and literature should, in a 
period that wiU be more or less remote, at last unite its peoples 
under a single government . . . Rome is undoubtedly the 
capital which they will some day choose."* 

We place Stendhal (Henri Beyle) next to Napoleon, not 
by virtue of any extraordinary gift, but because his best book 
illustrates the Italy of Napoleonic times, and because he is of 
interest as having followed Napoleon in several campaigns 
from the entry into Milan to the retreat from Moscow. After 
the Restoration in France he went back to Milan, always dear 
to him, and stayed there from 1814 to 182 1. He went into 

^ The editor, within our own day, has received money bearing the 
inscripdon "Napoleone Imperatore." 

* The letters of Mrs. Starke (1800) illustrate some part of the Napole- 
onic era in Italy. 



68 . THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

literary society, meetii^ Manzoni and MoilU, and also Byron. 
In Milan he enjoyed the love-affair which seems indispensable 
to every Frenchman's study of Italy. His documented analysis 
called De P Amour contains several old Italian stories well told. 
Finding his means of livelihood in default after his father's 
death, he accepted the French consulate first at Trieste and 
then at Civita Vecchia. We may deal with the Chartreuse de 
Parme first, though it was one of the author's latest works. 
Mr. Maurice Hewlett, the author of the brilliant Little Navels 
of Italy ^ has written of this book : ^^ La Chartreuse depicts the 
Italy of the eighteenth century : the Italy of faded simulacra, 
q{ Jfdrd and hair powder, of Cicisbei and curled abbati^ of 
fetits-mattres^ of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, of Luca 
Longhi. For the comedian of manners this is the time of 
times, since manners seemed all, and Italy the place of places, 
where manners have always been more than all." ^ Stendhal 
undoubtedly knew his Italy as few people do; and the 
political intrigues of the Court of Parma, interwoven with the 
passions excited by the Duchess of Sanseverina and the 
affection she entertains for her nephew, form a plot of absorb- 
ing interest Balzac wrote of the Chartreuse that Stendhal 
had produced "the modem Prince, the romance which 
Machiavel would write, if exiled from Italy in the XlXth 
century," and adds that the book would only satisfy "the 
diplomats, statesmen, observers, the most eminent men of the 
world, the most distinguished artists ; — in a word, the twelve 
or fifteen hundred persons at the head of European affairs." 
Here is precisely the difficulty experienced by most readers of 
the book, which not only deals with court intrigues of extreme 
sublety, but deals with them in Italy. To really enter into 
the spirit of La Chartreuse we have to know our Italy very 
well, for the romance is not based on broad human emotions. 
It is curiously compact of stirring adventure and passion with 
a very minute analysis of motives. Stendhal prophesied truly 
that his vogue would come with the year 1880, and his work 
belongs by anticipation to the psychological school of the last 
quarter of the nineteenth century. Without doubt,as a creative 
work of art it will always appeal, in the English words quoted 
at the end, " to the happy few," but it may be added — to the 
few who look for morbidity as the crowning excellence of art 
There is no moral sense in what Stendhal writes, but then 
there was no moral sense in the period of which he wrote. 

^ See iDtrodttction to the translation published by Mr. Heinemann. 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 69 

Stendhal's nature was, notwithstanding his love of adventure^ 
that of an ironist ; and the medallion portrait which David 
modelled from his head is not unlike Ibsen in expression. 
But he lacks the profound tenderness of Ibsen, and it is 
herein that his chief failing lies. 

Lacking in love for his fellows, Stendhal had a great 
passion for Italy, and, though of French birth, suggested for 
his epitt^h : Qui Giace, Arrigo Beyle^ Milanese^ Visse, Scn'sse, 
Amo. In 1819 Stendhal published his /^ome^ Napks et 
Florence^ and in 1829 his Promenades dans Rome; both books 
being in the nature of haphazard notes, and the latter lacking 
the historical study necessary for Rome more than any other 
town. His sense of character is often shown in just observa- 
tions ; he analyses Italian local peculiarities in a passage which 
may be compared with Baretti's estimate : " Italy has seven or 
eight centres of civilisation. The simplest action is performed 
in an entirely different way in Turin and Venice, Milan or 
Genoa, Bologna or Florence, Rome or Naples. Venice, not- 
withstanding the extraordinary misfortunes which must crush 
it, has a frank gaiety, while Turin is biliously aristocratic. 
Milanese good humour is as well known as Genoese avarice. 
To be respected at Genoa a man must only spend a quarter 
of his income. . . . The Bolognese is full of fire, passion, 
generosity, and sometimes imprudence. The Florentines have 
a great deal of logic, prudence, and even wit, but I have never 
seen more passionless men : love in Florence is so little known 
that lust has usurped its name. As for the Neapolitan, he is 
the slave of the sensation of the moment. . . ." Stendhal also 
gives us some curious instances of \}m& jettaiura or power of the 
evil eye in Naples. 

While we are on the subject of character, we may here 
insert some observations of Lord Byron, which explain the 
custom of the cavaliere servente. He writes : " You ask me 
for a volume of manners, etc., on Italy. Perhaps I am in the 
case to know more of them than most Englishmen, because I 
have lived among the natives, and in parts of the country 
where Englishmen never resided before . . . ; but there are 
may reasons why I do not choose to treat in print on such a 
subject. I have lived in their houses and in the hearts of 
their families, sometimes merely as "amico di casa," and 
sometimes as " amico di cuore " of the Dama, and in neither 
case do I feel myself authorised in making a book of them. 
Their moral is not your moral ; their life is not your life ; you 



70 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

would not understand it ; it is not English, nor French, nor 
German, which you would all understand. The conventual 
education, the cavalier servitude, the habits of thought and 
living, are so entirely different, and the difference becomes so 
much more striking the more you live intimately with them, 
that I know not how to make you comprehend a people who 
are at once temperate and profligate, serious in their characters 
and buffoons in their amusements, capable of impressions and 
passions, which are at once sudden and durable (what you find 
in no other nation), and who actually have no society (what 
we would call so), as you may see by their comedies ; they 
have no real comedy, not even in Goldoni, and that is because 
they have no society to draw it from. Their conversazioni 
are not society at all. They go to the theatre to talk, and into 
company to hold their tongues. The women sit in a circle, 
and the men gather into groups, or they play at dreary faro, or 
" lotto reale " for small sums. Their academies are concerts 
like our own, with better music and more form. Their best 
things are the carnival, balls and masquerades, when every- 
body runs mad for six weeks. After their dinners and suppers 
they make extempore verses and buffoon one another ; but it 
is in a humour which you would not enter into, ye of the 
north. 

" In their houses it is better. I should know something of 
the matter, having had a pretty general experience among their 
women, from the fisherman's wife up to the Nobil Dama, whom 
I serve. Their system has its rules, and its fitnesses, and its 
decorums, so as to be reduced to a kind of discipline or game 
at hearts, which admits few deviations unless you wish to lose 
it. They are extremely tenacious, and jealous as furies, not 
permitting their lovers even to marry if they can help it, and 
keeping them always close to them in public as in private, 
whenever they can. In short, they transfer marriage to 
adultery, and strike the not out of that commandment The 
reason is, that they marry for their parents, and love for them- 
selves. They exact fidelity from a lover as a debt of honour, 
while they pay the husband as a tradesman, that is, not at all. 
You hear a person's character, male or female, canvassed, not 
as depending on their conduct to their husbands or wives, but 
to their mistress or lover. If I wrote a quarto, I don't know 
that I could do more than amplify what I have here noted. 
It is to be observed that while they do all this, the greatest 
outward respect is to be paid to the husbands, not only by the 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 71 

ladies, but by their Serventi — particularly if the husband serves 
no one himself (which is not often the case, however) : so that 
you would often suppose them relations — ^the Servente making 
the figure of one adopted into the family." 

This stgisMsm was a late custom. Molmenti writes ( Vie 
Privie i Venise) : " When the fashion, at the beginning of the 
XVIIth century, required that domestic affection should 
not be shown in public, the cavalieri serventi were invented, 
and there was often a clause as to them in the marriage- 
contract" In some towns, it may be added, a husband who 
was seen even walking with his wife in public was as like as 
not cut by his friends, hooted by the populace, and challenged 
to fight duels. Napoleon when at Milan endeavoured to dis- 
courage sigisbeism^ and is said to have insisted that invitation 
cards should include the name of husband and wife ; — *' a thing 
formerly unknown in Italy," adds Lady Morgan. 

§ 3. BvRON AND Shelley 

Lord Byron was twenty-eight when he first went to Italy 
in 18 16, with the advantage of having already travelled in 
Spain, Greece, and Asia Minor. The obvious remark on his 
achievement is the wonderful celerity with which he entered 
into the associations, the history, and the thoughts of the 
people. The monkish frolics of Newstead, the dandyism of 
London, and of the Drury Lane management were quickly 
forgotten in his first residence at Venice ; although " for old 
acquaintance' sake" the poet's letters home are thoroughly 
English. He went a great deal into Italian society, and in- 
dulged in some intrigues with women of the lower classes. 
Venice was not then much frequented by his countrymen, for 
Byron writes : " Venice is not a place where the English are 
gregarious ; their pigeon-houses are Florence, Naples, Rome, 
etc" He studied the town to a certain extent, being most 
struck by " the black veil painted over Faliero's picture " in 
the Doge's Palace; he admired some Giorgiones, which the 
later criticism of Morelli considers of doubtful ascription to 
the Venetian master. At Florence he stayed but a day, and 
calls Santa Croce, with its tombs of Machiavelli, Michael 
Angelo, Galileo, and Alfieri, "the Westminster Abbey of 
Italy." He writes from Rome that he has been " to Albano, 
its lakes, and to the top of the Alban Mount, and to Frescati, 
Arida, etc etc, with an etc etc. etc, about the city and in 



72 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

the city: for all which — vide guide-book." As a whole, he 
adds, "it beats Greece, Constantinople, everything — at least 
that I have ever seen." For the CoUseum, Pantheon, St. 
Peter's, and so forth he again says ^^vide guide-book." He 
gives a rapid sketch of a public execution; "the masqued 
priests ; the half-naked executioners ; the bandaged criminals ; 
the black Christ and his banner ; the scaffold ; the soldiery ; 
the slow procession ; and the quick rattle and heavy fall of the 
axe ; the splash of the blood and the ghastliness of the exposed 
heads." At Rome he completed Manfred^ and in June 
1817 he went to La Mira, near Venice, and there he brought 
to a close the fourth canto of Childe Harold. In the 
winter he writes Beppo^ and in 18 18 he is taking the rides 
on the Lido. 

In the letters of this period Byron draws a Venetian girl 
(apparently Margarita Cogni) as follows : " * Benedetto te, e la 
terra che ti fara ! * — * May you be blessed, and the earth which 
you will make I * — is it not pretty ? You would think it still 
prettier if you had heard it, as I did two hours ago, from the 
lips of a Venetian girl, with large black eyes, a face like 
Faustina's, and the figure of a Juno — ^tall and energetic as a 
Pythoness, with eyes flashing, and her dark hair streaming in 
the moonlight— one of those women who may be made any- 
thing." Margarita finally made herself so obtrusive that the 
liaison came to an end : she is credited with this retort after some 
argument on her impertinence to a lady — " If she is a lady, 
I am a Venetian." The year 18 19 saw the first cantos of 
Don Juan^ and also the beginning of the relation with La 
Guiccioli. Soon after Byron goes to Bologna and Ferrara, 
and thence to Ravenna, where he stays over a couple of years. 
There he used to ride in the Pineta (now in great part burnt 
down), composing his tragedies 

" in the solitude 
Of the pine forest, and the silent shore 
Which bounds Ravenna's wood." 

Thenceforward Lord Byron becomes Italianised in habit, 
if not in ideas. He joined in political intrigues, and was 
admitted to a secret society by Count Pietro Gamba, the 
Guiccioli's brother. In 1821 the news of John Keats' death 
in Rome comes ; soon after Byron's friends at Ravenna are 
exiled, and the Guiccioli went to Florence. Shelley stayed a 
while at Ravenna in August 182 1, and Lord Byron presently 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 73 

took his departure, travelling to Holognay when he met his 
friend Samuel Rogers, who has left a versified record of the 
meeting. Byron dien revisited Florence and went on to Pisa, 
where he lived in " a &mous old feudal palazzo, on the Amo, 
large enough for a garrison, with dungeons below and cells in 
the walls, and so full of ghosts, that the learned Fletcher (my 
valet) has b^;ged leave to change his room, and then refused 
to occupy his new room, because there were more ghosts there 
than in the other." In 1822 he removed to Genoa after 
Shelley's death. Among Byron's latest friends in Italy were 
Lord and Lady Blessington and Count D'Orsay. On the 
1 2th of July 1823 he set sail for Greece, and was obliged to 
put back into the harbour owing to the horses on the ship 
breaking loose. He landed for a few hours, and going to the 
house he had quitted said : " Where shall we be in a year ? " 
It has been observed that "on the same day, of the same 
month, in the next year, he was carried to the tomb of his 
ancestors." Byron's letters do not contain many references to 
Italy, and we have not always noted where his various poems 
were composed, because the most important of them are a 
rendering of the principal features of Italy taken in a mass. 

The various stages of Shelley's residence in Italy are 
indicated by his letters published by Mrs. Shelley,^ and after- 
wards more completely edited by Mr. Buxton Forman. The 
subject-matter of the letters is so closely akin to that of the 
poems, that it is easy to take them together. The first letter 
is dated from Milan in April 18 18, and then. Shelley writes 
from Leghorn, Lucca, and Florence. He is next at Venice 
where he meets Lord Byron : " He took me in his gondola 
across the laguna to a long sandy island, which defends Venice 
from the Adriatic. When we disembarked, we found his 
horses waiting for us, and we rode along the sands of the 
sea talking." From this and other rides sprang the poem of 
Julian and Maddah — A Conversation^ and the brief statement 
of the letter becomes the delicate word-picture : 

" I rode one evenine with Count Maddalo 
Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow 
Oi Adria towards Venice : a bare strand 
Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand, 
Matted with hillocks and amphibious weeds, 
Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds, 

^ Mrs. Shelley published an account of a journey undertaken long 
after the poet's death, but it lacks in interest. 



74 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

Is this, an uninhabited sea-side 

Which the lone fisher, when lus nets are dried, 

Abandons ; and no o^er object breaks 

The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes 

Broken and unrepaired, and the tide makes 

A narrow space of level sand thereon, 

Where 'twas our wont to ride when day went down." 

There follows the description of the earth and sky of the 
" paradise of exiles, Italy," touched with the intimate magical 
melancholy and fascination of Venice, the city of silence and 
decay. To this same year, 1818, belongs the poem, Written 
among the Euganean HillSy with its short regular lines follow- 
ing each other as softly as the small waves lap against the 
sides of a gondola. Shelley passes by Este to Ferrara and 
Rome in the same year, and some of his magnificent descrip- 
tions of the latter enrich our pages. These towns did not 
inspire any lyrical poems, and it is only in Naples that Shelley 
produces Lines written in Dejection with their imagery ex- 
pressive of the waters of the bay : 

" I see the deep's untrampled floor 
With green and purple seaweeds strown." 

Shelley's description of Pompeii in the long letter to 
Thomas Love Peacock gives a vivid idea of Pompeii, as far 
as the excavations had then gone, and the same correspondent 
receives an equally interesting letter about Rome. In 1819 
came the Prometheus Unbound^ of which Shelley says in his 
preface: "This poem was chiefly written upon the moun- 
tainous ^ ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, among the flowery 
glades, and thickets of odiferous blossoming trees, which are 
extending in ever-winding labyrinths upon its immense plat- 
forms and dizzy arches suspended in the air. The bright blue 
sky of Rome, and the effect of the vigorous awakening of 
Spring in that divinest climate, and the new life with which 
it drenches the spirits even to intoxication, were the inspira- 
tion of this drama." The Cenci also marks this prolific year, 
and Florence elicits the Ode to the West Wind, written in the 
Cascine. At Florence, too, Shelley set down his remarks on 
some statues in the gallery, among which are the Niobe, the 
Venus called Anadyomene, and Michael Angelo's Bacchus. 
His careful endeavour to express their sculptured attitudes 

^ The epithet " mountainous" is difficult to understand. The baths — 
now excavated — may have reached a considerable height when covered 
with earth. 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 75 

and emotions may remind us that short of actually drawing 
or copying a picture or statue, there is no better way of 
enjoying it to the full than writing down the actual impression 
it makes when standing before it. The result as literature 
may be poor, but much is always to be learnt of the problems 
the creator has met, and an indelible impression remains in 
the mind. In 1820 we find Shelley at Pisa, and the poems 
for that year open triumphantly with the Sensitive Plants the 
song of the gardens of Italy, with their gorgeous hues and 
the rich but somewhat deathly perfume which semi-tropical 
vegetation has. The Skylark, the Witch of Atiasy and the 
Ode to Naples follow in quick succession with the easy harvest 
ripened by a burning sun, each poem in its way expressing 
the beauty or the dignity of Italian landscape with vistas of 
mountain, olive grove, and vastly changing skies. At Pisa the 
novelty of the cities has ended and the correspondence deals 
mostly with domestic matters. In 1821 come Epipsychidion 
and Adonais, and Shelley writes a long letter to Mrs. Shelley 
from Ravenna, whither he had gone to visit Lord Byron. 
Some of his best lyrics belong to this period and the following 
year. In 1822 the poet is again at Pisa or at Casa Magni, 
with the fellowship of Trelawny, Mr. and Mrs. Williams, and 
Byron. The closing days bequeath us the Triumph of Life^ 
ending with the question unanswered : 

" « Then what U Life? ' I cried." 

The letters of Shelley take us down to the 4th July 1822, 
but the story of his last days has been fully narrated by 
Trelawny. Signor Guido Biagi has brought together the docu- 
ments concerning the upsetting of Shelley's boat the Ariel: 
it is now admitted that there was no foul play, though possibly 
the boat was run into during the squall. Captain Medwin in 
the Conversations of Lord Byron gives an account of Shelley's 
cremation on i8th August 1822 : " On the occasion of Shelley's 
melancholy fate I revisited Pisa, and on the day of my arrival 
learnt that Lord Byron was gone to the sea-shore, to assist 
in performing the last offices to his friend. We came to a 
spot marked by an old and withered trunk of a fir-tree, and 
near it, on the beach, stood a solitary hut covered with reeds. 
The situation was well calculated for a poet's grave. A few 
weeks before I had ridden with him and Lord Byron to this 
very spot, which I afterwards visited more than once. In 
front was a magnificent extent of the blue and windless 
Mediterranean, with the Isles of Elba and Gorgona, — Lord 



76 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

Byron's yacht at anchor in the offing : on the other side an 
almost boundless extent of sandy wilderness, uncultivated and 
uninhabited, here and there interspersed in tufts with under- 
wood curved by the sea-breeze, and stunted by the barren and 
dry nature of the soil in which it grew. At equal distances 
along the coast stood high square towers, for the double pur- 
pose of guarding the coast from smuggling, and enforcing the 
quarantine laws. This view was bounded by an immense 
extent of the Italian Alps, which are here particularly pictures- 
que from their volcanic and manifold appearances, and which 
being composed of white marble, give their summits the 
resemblance of snow. As a foreground to this picture appeared 
as extraordinary a group. Lord Byron and Trelawny were 
seen standing over the burning pile, with some of the soldiers 
of the guard; and Iw.eigh Hunt,^ whose feelings and nerves 
could not carry him through the scene of horror, lying back 
in the carriage, — ^the four post-horses ready to drop with the 
intensity of the noonday sun. The stillness of all around was 
yet more felt by the shrill scream of a solitary ciurlew, which, 
perhaps attracted by the body, wheeled in such narrow circles 
round the pile that it might have been struck with the hand, 
and was so fearless that it could not be driven away." 

Byron's letter, of the ayth August 1822, gives us the 
following : " We have been burning the bodies of Shelley and 
Williams on the sea-shore, to render them fit for removal and 
regular interment You can have no idea what an extra- 
ordinary effect such a funeral pile has on a desolate shore, 
with mountains in the background, and the sea before, and 
the singular appearance the salt and frankincense gave to the 
flame. All of Shelley was consumed, except his hearty which 
would not take the flame, and is now preserved in spirits of 
wine." These descriptions may be too highly coloured in 
some respects, but they are substantially correct. Signer Biagi 
has gathered the reminiscences of several of the surviving wit- 
nesses of the incineration. 

The strange eerie life led by the Byron and Shelley group 
is an illustration of the sense of unreality which comes over 
foreigners who have resided long in Italy. The Italians them- 
selves have no intention of burdening their thoughts with the 

^ Leigh Hunt has called in question some statements of this account. 
Hunt, however, is not an entirely trustworthy witness. It may be noted 
that his Stories from tJu Italtan Potis (1846) attracted notice, and is a 
capable book. 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 77 

infinite sorrow or beauty of the past For the acclimatised 
stranger the sense of history and the marvel of the beauty 
surrounding him is ever growing. It is a healthy thing to care 
for life, but have we not all felt an increasing indifference to it 
in Italy or Greece ? Had Byron and Shelley preserved the 
will to live, the death-insuring expeditions in a badly balanced 
boat and the almost grotesque excursion to Greece would 
never have taken place. We cannot undo the past, and the 
warning here set down is rather for those bright spirits of the 
future which may be tempted to love Italy, not wisely but 
too well. If it were argued that Italy is a country which gives 
inspiration to poet and painter, it is fair to reply that Byron 
and Shelley have already taken up much of the ground. New 
material, new ways of seeing or singing, will no doubt arise, 
but we would personally look upon Italy as being an educa- 
tion rather than a goal. The traveller goes to Italy in search 
of the evidences of a dead civilisation, and in so far as that 
enables him to understand his own living civilisation better, 
so far will it be an aid to creative art. But to break away 
from the national bond is to expose ourselves to the danger of 
finding no firm standing-ground in the country of adoption ; 
and some of the last recorded words of Byron were, " Why 
did I not go back to England ? " 

The poetry of Byron and Shelley has done much to inte- 
rest English-speaking people in Italy. Our selection being 
limited to the appreciations of travellers, extracts from creative 
works must be excluded. If we have sometimes regretted the 
purple patches we might have chosen, they would have lost 
much by being detached from their context. The grand 
historic panorama of the fourth canto of Childe Harold is 
perhaps the best poetical commentary on the historical pageant 
of Iti^y, and it contains many beautiful touches of detail, as 
in the description of Florence — " girt by her theatre of hills." 
Byron's descriptions are always solidly planted on the earth, 
while Shelley excels in noting the subtle changes of atmos- 
phere, and catches the ethereal aspect of nature in Italy. 
Critics like Matthew Arnold, accustomed to the sober har- 
monies of English landscape, have called Shelley unreal. 
Any one who knows Italy at all will at once reply that it is 
an unreal place, and it often occurs that a true pictorial ren- 
denng of its transparent colours and delicate tones will look 
thin when taken to England. We must beware of critics who 
wish to apply one standard to all nature. 



78 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

It must be observed that Byron and Shelley were the first 
poets who made Italy the actual subject of their work. Chaucer 
had adapted or imitated Italian tales, the Elizabethans had 
dramatised Italian novels, Milton had imitated the Italian 
manner in his V Allegro and // Penseroso. The banker-poet 
Rogers put Italian stories into verse, but Byron and Shelley 
were almost like Italians writing in English. Well versed in 
the great literature of the country (and the new cult of 
Dante had arisen with the idea of unity that Napoleon had 
implanted), they also knew the gayer writers. Smce Byron 
and Shelley our lyrical poetry has taken an altogether different 
music and more subtle intention. Compare Campbell's lyrics 
with Shelley's, contrast Wordsworth's didactic style with the 
declamatory force of Byron, and we mark the new spirit. If 
Shelley has often an Elizabethan ring, it is because Italian art 
influenced Shakespeare too. The measured cadences which 
the school of Dryden and Pope learnt partly from French 
models were outsung by the stirring music of the newer poetry, 
and ever since Childe Harold or Prometheus Unbound were 
known, all poetry has followed the same quest of music, passion, 
and beauty. 

A point that is to be insisted on is the necessity of study- 
ing the two poets by reference to Italy. Seeking for some 
criticism dealing with them in this way, we have been dis- 
appointed to find that it has not even been attempted. The 
present book in its general aim may be an aid to considering 
such problems ; certainly, until we look at Byron and Shelley 
by the light of Italian influence we can arrive at no conclusive 
criticism. But Byron's Muse was to pay back the gift be- 
stowed. In influencing the work of Leopardi — the first intel- 
lectual poet of Italy since Dante — Byron was unconsciously 
sowing the seed of northern ideas. Ariosto and Tasso had 
been pre-eminently decorative poets, and the poetry of philo- 
sophical reflection begins in moderrr Italy with Leopardi. It 
was a triumph for English letters that, many years after we 
had learnt the arts of inspired song from Italy, in its turn the 
instructress was to learn from us a new manner and a new 
subject in poesy. 

To come back to our travellers, Lady Morgan, whose 
Italian letters are full of shrewd observation, not without a 
point of malice, was bom in Ireland, and after a childhood 
spent among poor actors in Dublin, wrote a novel called The 
Wild Irish Girl^ which made her famous. She was later on 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 79 

invited to become an inmate of the house of the Marquis of 
Abercorn, where she married her patron's doctor, who was 
afterwards knighted. Lady Morgan used her time to great 
advantage, and often gives us a fresh insight into the events 
of the Napoleonic invasion. One item of interest in her 
travels concerns the Ballo del Papa^ or ballet into which the 
Pope was introduced at Milan in 1 797. This skit was publicly 
performed with much applause, but Napoleon allowed the 
Milanese priesthood to prosecute its unfortunate author when 
his ** views gradually centred in his own elevation to a throne." 
Lady Morgan's book on Italy was published in 182 1, and 
called by Byron "fearless and excellent." She afterwards 
wrote a life of Salvator Rosa. Lady Blessington's Idler in 
Italy commemorates travels of the year 1 822-1823, and is an 
extremely entertaining diary with many details about the foreign 
society which was seeking diversion after many years of Euro- 
pean warfare. The beautiful countess was much appreciated 
by her contemporaries — ^among them. Lord Byron, W. S. 
Landor, Hallam, and Casimir Delavigne — and was evidently 
a talented and sensible woman. Hers is practically the last 
book in which we shall find society much spoken of. Un- 
happily, modem travellers take the train and rush from sight 
to sight, never really making friends. We may know more 
about the periods of art than our forefathers, but the travellers 
from Evelyn to Lady Blessington knew the country and its 
inhabitants infinitely better than we do. Perhaps the most 
interesting encounter of Lady Blessington was that narrated 
as follows : '* Walking in the gardens of the Vigna Palatina 
yesterday ... we were surprised by the arrival of the Prince 
and Princess de Montfort and their children, with Madame 
Letitia Bonaparte, or Madame Mhre as she is generally called, 
attended by her chaplain, danu de compagniey and others of 
their joint suite. Having heard that Madame Mire disliked 
meeting strangers, we retired to a distant part of the garden ; 
but the ex-King of Westphalia having recognised my carriage 
in the courtyard, sent to request us to join them, and presented 
us to his mother and wife. Madame Letitia Bonaparte is tall 
and slight, her figure gently bowed by age, but, nevertheless, 
dignified and graceful. Her face is, even still, remarkably 
hsuidsome, bearing proof of the accuracy of Canova's admir- 
able statue of her ; and a finer personification of a Roman 
matron could not be found than is presented by this Hecuba 
of the Imperial Dynasty. She is pale, and the expression of 



So THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

her countenance is pensive, unless when occasionally lighted 
up by some observation, when her dark eye glances for a 
moment with animation, but quickly resumes its melancholy 
character. . . . There was something highly dramatic in the 
whole scene of our interview. Here was the mother of a 
modem Oesar, walkmg amidst the ruins of the palace of the 
ancient ones, lamenting a son whose fame had filled the four 
quarters of the globe." 

It is not easy to sum up any general purpose in the Italian 
study of the years 1790-1825. Goethe, as has been indicated, 
goes with the intention of seeking some general law of beauty. 
This was in accordance with the scientific side of his mind, 
one which almost overbalanced his passionate lyrical impulse. 
Byron and Shelley allow themselves to be completely influ- 
enced by their love of Italy ; subjective as Byron has been 
said to be, he gives us many direcUy imitative representations 
of nature. Such subjectivity as these writers have is in general 
agreement with the growing cult of Romanticism. This key- 
word can hardly be precisely defined, but it implicates a love of 
early architecture and of mystery. It took men away from the 
study of the figure, from the pointed conversation of the salons^ 
from the severely ordered composition, to the solitude of the 
soul amid the grandeurs of nature, to the love of landscape 
painting, and firequently to a negative or a positive Pantheism. 
Mme. de Stael in Carinne still holds to the salon^ to the 
individual figure, but the figures are lost in a certain mystery, 
the conversations are more ideal, and the landscape has its 
sympathy with human moods. We might say perhaps that 
Romanticism endowed Nature with a soul 

Travel in the early nineteenth century takes a consolatory 
spirit, and Samuel Rogers (the fiiend of Tennyson as well as 
of Bjrron) gives the ratianalt of journeys abroad very clearly in 
his IteUy : '* Ours is a nation of travellers. . . . None want an 
excuse. If rich, they ^o to enjoy ; if poor, to retrench ; if 
sick, to recover ; if studious, to learn ; if learned, to relax from 
their studies. But whatever they may say, whatever they may 
believe, they go for the most part on the same errand ; nor 
will those who reflect think that errand an idle one. Almost 
all men are over-anxious. No sooner do they enter the world 
than they lose that taste for* natural and simple pleasures, so 
remarkable in early life. Every hour do they ask themselves 
what progress they have made in the pursuit of wealth or 
honour ; and on they go as their fathers went before them, till. 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 8i 

weary and sick at heart, they look back with a sigh of regret to 
the golden time of their childhood. 

** Now travel, and foreign travel more particularly, restores 
to us in a great degree what we have lost. . . . The old cares 
are left clustering round the old objects, and at every step, as 
we proceed, the slightest circumstance amuses and interests. 
All is new and strange. We surrender ourselves, and feel 
once again as children. . . . The day we come to a place 
which we have long heard and read of, and in Italy we do so 
continually, is an era in our lives; and from that moment 
the very name calls up a picture. How delightfully too does 
the knowledge flow in upon us, and how fast! . . . Our 
prejudices leave us, one by one. Seas and mountains are no 
longer our boundaries. We learn to love and esteem and 
admire beyond them. Our benevolence extends itself with 
our knowledge. And must we not return better citizens than 
we went? For the more we become acquainted with the 
institutions of other countries, the more highly must we value 



§ 4. The Search for the Picturesque 

The number of travellers now begins to increase, and as 
this section lacks in importance, we shall take the books in as 
quick succession as possible. Most of the travels are merely 
undertaken in search of the picturesque, a quest which pro- 
duced the albums of engravings on which Turner uselessly 
lavished so much of his talent Among books which cannot 
be read with any patience is Heine's Italienische Reisebilder 
(1828). Heine tells us that "there is nothing so stupid on the 
face of the earth as to read a book of travels on Italy — unless 
it be to write one, and the only way in which its author can 
make it in any way tolerable is to say as little as possible of 
Italy." We must confess that Heine's attitude reminds us of the 
description in the French farce of " Un trh gros M. Perrichon 
et un trh petit Mont Blanc** ; but we do not care to argue the 
point further with the witty and erratic poet. Heine is more 
useful when he sums up the best German writers on Italy as 
William Miiller, Moritz, Archenholtz, Bartels, Seume, Amdt, 
Meyer, Benkowitz, and Refus.^ 

The peerless sonnet of Wordsworth "On the extinction of 

^ Keysler's four large volumes (1756) contain a considerable number of 
inscriptions from the churches. 

F 



82 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

the Venetian Republic" was composed in 1802, before the 
poet had been in Italy. But we are apt to forget that the 
most distinctively English of our poets, in subject at least, 
made several journeys to the Continent. He knew France 
well, and it was only by an accident that he did not throw in 
his lot with, and share the fate of, the Girondists in the 
Revolution. He wrote some of the best of his earlier lyrics 
in Germany, and his versified Memorials of a Tour on the 
Continent (1820) took him as far as the Italian Lakes and 
Milan. His Memorials of a Tour in Italy commemorate in 
verse a journey made in 1837 (March to August) with the 
companionship of Henry Crabb Robinson. Wordsworth was 
then sixty-seven, and being too old for very striking impressions, 
what he writes at first is interspersed with references to his 
friend Coleridge, to his beloved Yarrow. He goes from 
Acquapendente to Pisa, and Pisa to Rome, where he confesses 
frankly to his disappointment at finding the Capitolian Hill 
and Tarpeian rock less grand than he had imagined them. 
On the return journey he delights in hearing the cuckoo of his 
native woods at Lavema. Wordsworth shows a keen sym- 
pathy for St Francis, which gives us a high idea of his 
historical insight, while he rebukes the modem monks of 
Camaldoli. His next visit is to Vallombrosa, and the fact 
that he seeks the three great monasteries in succession makes 
it probable that he travelled with Forsyth's book. At Florence 
he seeks out the traditionary seat of Dante, and "for a 
moment, filled that empty throne." Then, after a sonnet 
interpreting a picture of Raphael's, he translates two original 
sonnets of Michael Angelo. 

Altogether Wordsworth's Italian tour^ undistinguished as it 
is, is a pleasing record, and proves his ready sympathy with 
a national spirit and a conception of art differing very widely 
from his own. Henry Crabb Robinson says in a letter: 
" Wordsworth repeatedly said of the journey, * It is too late : I 
have matter for volumes,' he said once, ' had I but youth to 
work it up.' It is remarkable how in that admirable poem 
• Musings near Acquapendente ' (perhaps the most beautiful of 
the memorials of the Italian tour) meditation predominates 
over observation. It often happened that objects of universal 
attraction served chiefly to bring back to his mind absent 
objects dear to him." Again (Crabb Robinson's Diary, April 
27, 1830) : "Wordsworth is no hunter after sentimental relics. 
He professes to be r^ardless of places that have only an out> 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 83 

ward connection with a great man, but no influence on his 
works. Hence he cares nothing for the burying-place of 
Tasso, but has a deep interest in Vaucluse." It is character- 
istic that Wordsworth found a joy in the Italian lakes that 
reminded him of the lakes of his home. 

Walter Savage Landor first went to Italy in 181 7, but 
he did not apparently meet Shelley there, though he stayed 
some time at Pisa. In 182 1 ^ he moved to Florence with his 
family, and worked for some eight years at his Imaginary 
Cofwersatums^ in which historical characters of every period 
discuss life and literature. This book made him famous 
among literary people, and any travellers visiting Florence 
made sure of seeing him, among them William Hazlitt (who 
himself wrote on Italy).* It was when he had returned to 
England that Landor published the Pentameron (1837), of 
which Mr. Sidney Colvin has said that the author ** loved and 
understood Boccaccio through and through; and if he over- 
estimated that prolific and amiable genius in comparison with 
other and greater men, it was an error which for the present 
purpose was almost an advantage. Nothing can be pleasanter 
than the intercourse of the two friendly poets as Landor had 
imagined it'' Nevertheless all Landor's efforts result in books 
drawn from books, which means life at two removes. Landor, 
to our thinking, remained peculiarly English, and his render- 
ing of Italy is always reminiscent of Shakespeare. It may be 
noted that he spent the last six years of his life in Italy. 

Hans Andersen crossed the Simplon in September 1833 
on his way to Rome, and his journey included Naples, Capri 
and Pompeii, Florence, Siena, Bologna, and Ferrara. In one 
of the few letters preserved he shows his northern mind by 
saying: "Vesuvius is a flaming ygdrasil." His epitome of 
Italy is: ^'This is the home of phantasy, the north that of 
reason." The romance called the Improvisatare^ which he 
afterwards published, abounds in charming touches of character 
and in richly-coloured descriptions. The book fails, owing to 
the poor delineation of the central figure : we are more inte- 
rested in the details than in the hero. The suggestive 

^ Among books of this period may be cited Mrs. Eaton's Letters on 
Rome (1820), and Cell's Roman Topography (1824). 

' Emerson, who was in Italy in 1833, describes Landor as " living in 
a cloud of pictures in his Villa Gherardesca. . . . He prefers John of 
Bologna to Michel Angelo ; in painting, Raffaelle ; and shares the grow- 
ing taste for Pemgino and the early masters." Another American in 
luly was Fenimore Cooper (Troiv/r, 1833). 



84 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

picturesqueness of his descriptions makes it regrettable that 
he was not content to leave them without any framework 
of romance. Take this passage describing the festa of Gen- 
zano — ^a child is the presumed narrator, but it is a poet 
speaking : 

" How shall I describe the first glance into the street — 
that bright picture as I then saw it ? The entire, long, gently 
ascending street was covered over with flowers ; the ground- 
colour was blue : it looked as if they had robbed all the 
gardens, all the fields, to collect flowers enough of the same 
colour to cover the street ; over these lay in long stripes, green, 
composed of leaves, alternately with rose-colour ; at some dis- 
tance to this was a similar stripe, and between this a layer of 
dark-red flowers, so as to form, as it were, a broad border to 
the whole carpet. The middle of this represented stars and 
suns, which were formed by a close mass of yellow, round and 
star-like flowers ; more labour still had been spent upon the 
formation of names — here flower was laid upon flower, leaf 
upon leaf. The whole was a living flower-carpet, a mosaic 
floor, richer in pomp of colouring than anything which Pompeii 
can show. Not a breath of air stirred — ^the flowers lay im- 
movable, as if they were heavy, firmly-set precious stones. 
From all windows were hung upon the walls large carpets, 
worked in leaves and flowers, representing holy pictures. • . . 
The sun burnt hotly, all the bells rang, and the procession 
moved along the beautiful flower-carpet ; the most charming 
music and singing announced its approach. Choristers swung 
the censer before the Host, the most beautiful girls of the 
country followed, with garlands of flowers in their hands, and 
poor children, with wings to their naked shoulders, sang 
hymns, as of angels, whilst awaiting the arrival of the pro- 
cession at the high altar. Young fellows wore fluttering 
ribands around their pointed hats, upon which a picture of 
the Madonna was fastened ; silver and gold rings hung to a 
chain around their necks, and handsome, bright-coloured scarfs 
looked splendidly upon their black velvet jackets. The girls 
of Albano and Frascati came, with their thin veils el^antly 
thrown over their black plaited hair, in which was stuck the 
silver arrow ; those from Velletri, on the contrary, wore gar- 
lands around their hair, and the smart neckerchief, fastened so 
low down in the dress as to leave visible the beautiful shoulder 
and the roimd bosom. From Abruzzi, from the Marches, and 
from every other neighbouring district, came all in their 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 85 

peculiar national costume, and produced altogether the most 
brilliant effect." 1 

Here again is a little prose-poem of Venice, in an entirely 
different key : " I stepped down into the black gondola, and 
sailed up into the dead street, where everything was water, 
not a foot-breadth upon which to walk. La^e buildings stood 
with open doors, and with steps down to the water ; the water 
ran into the great doorways, like a canal ; and the palace-court 
itself seemed only a four-cornered well, into which people 
could row, but scarcely turn the gondola. The water had left 
its greenish slime upon the walls : the great marble palaces 
seemed as if sinking together : in the broad windows, rough 
boards were nailed up to the gilded, half-decayed beams. The 
proud giant-body seemed to be falling away piecemeal ; the 
whole had an air of depression about it. The ringing of the 
bells ceased, not a sound, except the splash of the oars in the 
water, was to be heard, and I saw not a human being. The 
magnificent Venice lay like a dead swan upon the waves." * 

The romances of Georges Sand are almost out of our 
survey. Her Leitres cTun Voyageur are chiefly devoted to her 
own personality ; and the colossal egoism of the school of the 
literature she belongs to is seen in the fact that her paltry 
amours and reconciliations with Alfred de Musset blinded her 
to the beauty of Venice. Her novels give us hardly one life- 
like idea of Italy. The way in which most of Georges Sand's 
work was done at Venice — a hurried scramble over innumer- 
able sheets of paper to pay for the gambling debts or the 
support of her Alfred — may be responsible for this. The best 
of her work is probably to be found in studies of French life 
such as Francois le Champi^ written when she returned to a 
saner frame of mind. On Alfred de Musset Italy had a 
more lasting influence, and in his drama entitled Lorenzaccio^ 
drawing the character of Lorenzo, the murderer of his cousin 
Alexander di Medici, the French poet achieved a striking 
picture of the turbid passion and vicious ambition of the 
Renaissance. De Musset also wrote one of the most musical 
lyrics in the French language ; it is dated Venice, 1834, and 
often as it has been quoted, it may yet be quoted again : 



^ Translated by Mary Howitt 

' Felix Bartholdy Mendelssohn, in his letters beginning in 1830, 
describes Venice and other towns in the picturesque way. Wagner's 
letters from Venice are entirely personal. 



86 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



CHANSON. 

A Saint-Blaise, k la Zuecca,^ 
Vous ^tiez, vous 6i\cz bien aise, 

A Saint-Blaise. 
A Saint- Blaise, k la Zuecca 

Nous 6tions bien la. 

Mais de vous en souvenir 

Prendrez-vous la peine ? 
Mais de vous en souvenir 

Etd*yrevenir? 

A Saint- Blaise, k la Zuecca, 
pans les pr^s fleuris cueiller la verveine, 
A Saint-Blaise, k la Zuecca, 
Vivre et mourir \k I 

Lord Macaulay was in Italy in 1838-39, and records his 
impressions in the diary published in Trevelyan's Lt/e. His 
remarks are too much in the nature of jottings to assist us, 
but at Rome he makes an admirable comparison (in a letter 
to a friend) : " Imagine what England would be if all the 
members of Parliament, the Ministers, the Judges, the Am- 
bassadors, the Governors of Colonies, the very Commander- 
in-Chief and Lords of the Admiralty were, without one 
exception, bishops or priests ; and if the highest post open to 
the noblest, wealthiest, and most ambitious layman were a 
Lordship of the Bedchamber ! " The unique character of the 
Government of the former papal states could not be better 
put. Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome were written after this 
journey. 

Disraeli's novel, Contarini Flemings published in 1845, 
gives us occasional glimpses of Italy. The descriptive passages 
are not of much value, but even discounting its obvious 
exaggeration, we cannot help being grateful for such a thought 
as this : " In Florence the monuments are not only of great 
men, but of the greatest. You do not gaze upon the tomb of 
an author who is merely a great master of composition, but of 
one who formed the language. The illustrious astronomer is 
not the discoverer of a planet, but the revealer of the whole 
celestial machinery. The artist and the politician are not 
merely the first sculptors and statesmen of their time, but the 
inventors of the very art and the very craft in which they 

* The Giudecca. 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 87 

excelled." Disraeli also shows an attentive study of the 
different schools of art in the following : " The contemplation 
of the Venetian school had developed in me a latent love of 
gorgeous eloquence, dazzling incident, brilliant expression, 
and voluptuous sentiment These brought their attendant 
imperfections — exaggeration, effeminacy, the obtrusion of art, 
the painful want of nature. The severe simplicity of the 
Tuscan masters chastened my mind. I mused over a great 
effect produced almost by a single mean. The picture that 
fixed my attention by a single group, illustrating a single 
passion, was a fine and profitable study. I felt the power of 
Nature delineated by a great master, and how far from 
necessary to enforce her influence were the splendid accessories 
with which my meditated compositions would rather have 
encumbered than adorned her." The general distinction 
is well indicated, and we need not follow Disraeli when he 
proceeds to find the perfect imion of Venice and Florence in 
the art of Rome. 

Lamartine's travels in Italy were preceded by a love-story 
in France, punctuated by another at Naples, and followed by 
a third in Savoy. His writings on Dante had much influence 
in France, and in various works, as in the incomplete 
Mkmaires^ he speaks of the country. It is in Grazielia (written 
in 1847, many years after the journey) that we have his most 
living contribution to literature dealing with Italy. In this 
pretty story he narrates, with almost autobiographical accuracy, 
his innocent devotion to the pretty Neapolitan cigarette-maker 
(in the romance a coral worker), who finally dies of a broken 
heart when he rides away. The study of the fisherfolk of 
Sta. Lucia, the description of scenery, and especially of the 
storm on the bay of Naples, make the book a complete 
success. Lamartine enters into the Italian spirit far better than 
most of his countrymen, who generally have a scarcely veiled 
contempt for the race. The Italians have their own ideas 
about French manners, and Lamartine was not always happy 
in his loves in Italy. He honestly tells us that when he 
expressed his passion for a lady called Bianca Boni while she 
was painting his portrait, she effaced the likeness and, returning 
him his money, shut her doors on him. It is refreshing to 
read that Lamartine made a proper apolc^y ; but this poet 
and republican, with his national failing where pretty women 
are concerned, always remained true to his love of Italy, 



SS THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

and wrote years after, " Depuis ce temps, Tltalie fut ma 
patrie ou du moins demeura pour moi la patrie de I'amour." 

Charles Dickens' Pictures from Italy (first published in 
the Daily News^ from January to March 1846, under the title 
"Travelling Letters Written on the Road), need but the 
briefest comment. The author of David Copperfieldy with his 
quick observation of external features and his ready sense of 
character, is among the travellers from whom we shall borrow 
several descriptions. Contrary to expectation, he is perfectly 
in harmony with his surroundings, and everything he says is 
worthy of our most typically English humorist since the time 
of Shakespeare. Thackeray's references to Italy are un- 
fortunately few and far between. In the Newcomes he tells us 
that in the foreign society of Rome, " thrown together every 
day and night after night; flocking to the same picture- 
galleries, statue-galleries, Pincian drives, and church functions, 
the English colonists at Rome perforce become intimate, 
and in many cases friendly. They have an English library 
where the various meets for the week are placarded. On 
such a day the Vatican galkries are open; the next is the 
feast of Saint So-and-so ; on Wednesday there will be music 
and vespers at the Sistine Chapel ; on Thursday the Pope 
will bless the animals— sheep, horses, and what not : and 
flocks of English accordingly rush to witness the benediction 
of droves of donkeys. In a word, the ancient city of the 
Caesars, the august fanes of the Popes, with their splendour 
and ceremony, are all mapped out and arranged for English 
diversion." 

Edward Lear, the author of the famous rhymes for 
children, contributes several handsomely illustrated books of 
auto-lithographs : Views in Rome and Its Environs^ 1841 ; 
Excursions in Italy ^ 1846 (partly in the Abruzzi^); Journals 
of a Landscape Painter in Southern Calabria^ 1852. The text 
of the last two books is a delightfully personal account of the 
hospitality shown to the painter, and his journal often gives us 
hints as to out-of-the-way places. The drawings (within the 
limitations of the lithographic rendering) are often of great 
beauty. We may here refer to other books on the South of 
Italy. Swinburne wrote the pioneer book in his Travels in 

^ The Abnizd was thought to contain nothing but bears and robbers, 
but the inhabitants smilingly denied the impeachment. The people of the 
district still, we believe, preserve their old costumes, and a traveller would 
be repaid by re-exploring this country. 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 89 

the Two Sidlies (i 777-1 780) ; and the handsomely illustrated 
tomes of iSaint Non (1781) have a careful letterpress. Sir 
R. C. HoARE did for several of the southern cities what 
Eustace had done for the north and centre in a continuation 
of the ''classical tour." Keppel Craven published views, 
and C. Tait Ramage (1828) a personal diary. Those, how- 
ever, who are desirous of studying the south will find every 
assistance in the scholarly books of FRAN90XS Lenormant, 
French Egyptolc^ist. His A Trovers VApiUie et la Lucanie 
(1883) andZa Grande Grice (1881-84) weave together the 
scattered fragments of the Greek historians, and show us the 
importance (long before the great days of Athens) of the cities 
of Sybaris, Crotona, and Tarentum. Lenormant also is well 
informed on the Byzantine and Norman influences in the 
south. The southern portion of Italy, together with Sicily, 
opens up an entirely different series of historical studies. 
Goethe said that Sicily was the key to all Italy, but in his day 
no excavations had been made in Greece. Magna Grsecia 
is to be studied in conjunction with Greece, and an account 
based on that of Lenormant would fill an important gap for 
English readers if a writer with the special qualifications came 
forward. 

§5. The Cult of MEDiiEVALiSM and the Primitives 

It is curious to observe how the earliest manifestations of 
Italian art are those which have taken longest to discover. 
Our travellers have been like an excavator who works down 
from the actual soil through successive architectural deposits 
till the earliest remains of human habitation are laid bare. 
Every new discovery has been exalted at the expense of the 
prior ones, and the schools which swore by Gothic architecture 
could rarely agree with any Italian art later than Botticelli, 
who also had his special votaries. It is difficult to trace to 
its source what has been called the Gothic revival. Romanti- 
cism had two sides, one of the nature-cult, the other of a 
religious reaction. Chateaubriand is probably the first ex- 
ponent of this reaction, but he placed his faith in primitive 
Christianity ; Sir Walter Scott did not concern himself with 
Italy. The fiirst important manifestation of a love of Christian 
art is perhaps to be traced in the work of Friedrich von 
Schlegel. He made his acquaintance with the primitive 
pictures taken to the Louvre, where he saw them in the years 



90 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

1802-1804, and while Lanzi in 1796 had merely followed 
tradition in calling Giotto the father of Italian art, Schl^l 
pointed out his special qualities. Schlegel likewise studied 
Gothic architecture in Belgium, France, and on the Rhine, 
1804-5; in his search he was re-discovering the idealism 
which in Italy was probably of Teutonic origin. Like his 
brother Augustus (the writer on dramatic art) he possessed 
a profound historical knowledge, and while he had studied 
the Teutonic Saga-period, he was also able to differentiate 
the Christian and classic periods in Italy with more clearness 
than had hitherto been done. When Schl^el went to Rome 
he was fully prepared to support the Overbeck School, and 
he wrote enthusiastically of " the German paintings exhibited 
in Rome " ( 1 8 1 9). Overbeck, who was converted to Romanism 
in 18 1 3, had made his effort against the pseudo-classic 
influence of David in Germany, but his school was one which 
used the technique of Raphael and the religious spirit of the 
earlier painters. The Overbeck movement must not be 
compared with that of our Pre-Raphaelites, which was in 
general the search for a primitive technique. We do not 
of course claim Schlegel as the only originator of a love of 
Christian art; hints of the new spirit are probably to be 
found in other books. But the brothers Schlegel had a 
considerable following in Paris, Vienna, and Rome as well 
as in Germany. Hope's Historical Essay on Architecture^ 
comes rather later, and Kugler's History of Painting was not 
published till the 'thirties. Rio's Christian Art, often quoted 
by Ruskin, was begun in 1836. 

One of the most important exponents of mediaevalism was 
Lord Lindsay, who, curiously enough, was able to bring his 
learning to the support of his fathers successful claim to the 
ancient Earldom of Crawford. Ix)rd Lindsay's History of 
Christian Art was published in 1847. This delicately written 
and admirably documented work linked on the primitive 
schools to what the author called Christian mythology, or, 
in our more modern phrase. Catholic folklore. The old tales, 
such as the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, and the traditions 
which had grown round the lives of the Saints, were brought to 
the illustration of the art of Giotto and the schools succeeding 
him. Lord Lindsay defined the influence of Byzantine archi- 
tecture more clearly than had been done, and his classification 

^ Vasari, of course, had long before spoken of Lombard and Gothic 
architecture (Introduction to the Lives), 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 91 

of painting like that of the Sienese school was a step forward. 
His book was frequently mentioned by Ruskin, whom we 
may now discuss. 

John Ruskin's first journey in Italy was in 1835 ("^ ^^s 
sixteenth year), when he went to Venice and Verona. In 
1840 he went to Rome and Naples, and some traces of his 
visit are shown in Modem Painters (not concluded till some 
years later), but that book was based on his admiration of 
Turner and chiefly related to the question of beauty in land- 
scape. It was at Paris in 1844 that Ruskin really began to 
study Italian art in Titian, Bellini, and Perugino. "He 
found," as Mr. Collingwood, his biographer, says, "that his 
foes, Caspar Poussin and Canaletto, and the Dutch land- 
scapists, were not the real old masters ; that there had been 
a great age of art before the era of Vandyck and Rubens — 
even before Michelangelo and Raphael." This opinion, 
showing most plainly the taste of his contemporaries, 
motived a journey to Lucca, to Pisa, and Florence in 1845, 
and also to Venice; thus Ruskin began to have an insight 
into twelfth-century architecture, the painting of Giotto and 
Carpaccio, and also a new fervour for the then misunderstood 
Tintoretto. One result of this journey was that on his return 
to England Ruskin wrote to the Times suggesting that no 
more Guido or Rubens pictures should be bought for the 
National Gallery, while it lacked even single specimens of 
Fra Angelico or Ghirlandajo and had no important Bellini 
or Perugino. His ideal of a representative collection was 
realised years after. The Seven Lamps of Architecture was 
written and illustrated in 1846 and 1848, and The Stones oj 
Venice from 1849 to 1853. His later books contained many 
references to Italy, and such studies as Mornings in Florence 
and St. Mark^s Rest are entirely devoted to Italian subjects. 
Ruskin hardly comes into our category of travellers who can 
be selected from : to take any detached passages from a book 
like Stones of Venice would be to give a very unfair idea of it. 
Furthermore, while the general influence of Ruskin has been 
in some ways admirable, there are too many debatable points 
in his teaching. His technical books have not produced one 
student of merit, and his instructions in design are painfully 
amateurish. He unfortunately upheld the view that the 
spiritual force of art is more admirable than the craftsmanship 
of it This implies a divorce between the two, whereas in 
reality it is impossible to say where craftsmanship ends and 



92 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

inspiration begins. The greatest artists in conception have 
invariably been the greatest painters or sculptors in execution. 
The Primitives painted as well as they knew how; their 
technique was that best suited to religious decoration. Giotto 
by abandoning the " Greek '' manner shows that he would have 
taken every advantage of the new style had he been bom 
later. Not one of the Primitives admitted a deliberate 
archaism. We know that such an archaism was sometimes 
sought in decadent Greece, and there is no surer sign of 
decadence than the archaistic tendency. We may have a 
natural tendency towards the Gothic or Renaissance spirit, 
but for a modern man to endeavour to live the life of Arnold 
of Brescia, Dante, Fra Angelico, or Leonardo is to commit 
mental suicide. 

The prime Ruskinian offence is the prejudicial selection of 
special eras or pictures out of the past. We cannot make any 
truce with this preciosity of finding special meanings or beauties 
in isolated examples. In the Mornings in Florence extra- 
ordinary praise is given to the so-called Giottos in Santa Croce, 
which are paraded as being the final word of primitive art. 
Analyse the beautiful prose of the eloquent passage about the 
Tower of Giotto, and it will be seen how laughable is the 
claim that the Campanile "is the last building raised on the 
earth by the descendants of the workmen taught by Daedalus " ; 
how wildly vague the statement that there is no Christian work 
so perfect. As another instance of Ruskin's rash generalisa- 
tion, take his statement that "in the five cusped arches of 
Niccolb's pulpit you see the first Gothic Christian architecture, 
... the change, in a word, for all Europe, from the Par- 
thenon to Amiens Cathedral." Leader Scott observes, " this 
is very poetic, but it will not bear analysis." To take another 
among many of Ruskin's hyperboles, he writes of the Doge's 
Palace : " It would be impossible, I believe, to invent a more 
magnificent arrangement of all that is in building most beauti- 
ful and most fair." Yet another is the statement that the Bardi 
chapel in Santa Croce is " the most interesting and perfect 
little Gothic chapel in all Italy." Ruskin too often has this 
way of picking out a specimen and praising it extravagantly. 
Unfortunately we cannot understand the superlative till we 
have valued the comparative. The experience of all sane 
love of art is that we b^;in by admiring the minor poets, the 
minor painters, and only reach the supreme manifestations 
after years of search. When we have attained to a sense of 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 93 

the truly great, we are still compelled to go back to the lesser 
lights from time to time. Let any man try to begin the study 
of literature with a few selected classics and he will learn the 
impossibility of ecclecticism as a working philosophy. The 
fault of Ruskin and all his school is that they look upon art 
as something abiding, whereas it has only a relative value as 
being in or out of harmony with a humanity that is always 
chai^ging.^ This or that work in Italy is not and cannot be 
the last word ; it is only in the complete art and inspiration 
that we find a permanent legacy and achievement 

It were unfair and ungracious to deny the great beauty of 
Ruskin's style, the sincerity of his fervour for things ItaUan, 
the value of some of his individual appreciations. His general 
results are not easy to define. He was probably unconsciously 
influenced by the Italian spirit, which we would define as a 
Catholicism transcending religious ceremonial. Personally he 
held to Puritanism without its Protestant dogma, but much of his 
social work depended on his view of redeeming human nature 
by beauty. The excess of English utilitarianism, the northern 
spirit of competition, had driven other sensitive thinkers to 
Italian ideas. Newman, steeping his mind in Catholic theology, 
could not &il to respond finally to the atmosphere thus created. 
Ruskin just as naturally came to see social salvation in the 
Catholic Italian spirit, without its religious doctrine. But the 
^th of England is above all an ethical one. Mr. Frederic 
Harrison, in his recent life of Ruskin, has pointed out how 
little morality has had to do with the supreme manifestations 
of art Nor is it to be believed that the Italy of the Com- 
munes did not possess the germs of the luxury of the Renais- 
sance. Greek learning is not to be saddled with the vices of 
Aretino. The age that produced St Thomas Aquinas also 
produced the monster Ezzelino da Romano. We need hardly 
quarrel with Ruskin's theories, supported as they are by so 
few adherents. If his insistence on the Gothic ages is un- 
tenable, we may still hope that his ideal of a more beautiful 
England may prove true. There is no reason why we should 
not take the better part of Catholicism, as we have ab-eady 
taken from it its zeal for the erection of hospitals : a mediaeval 
reform of monastic inception. Our feelings with regard to the 
Papacy need not blind us to the fact that Catholicism is a 
symbolic view of the Christianity of which Puritanism is the 

^ Ruskin's conception of art was evidently derived from the Platonist 
theory of an ideal of beauty. 



94 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

more practical reading. Even if we hold that these funda- 
mental differences are part of the economy of nature, we can 
be grateful to Ruskin for endeavouring to sow the seed of 
foreign gardens in our somewhat impoverished soil. But in 
considering the influence of Ruskin, we have to remember 
that far greater influence of Catholicism inspiring the Italian 
ideal, which is not necessarily suited to the evolution of our 
own race. 

To pass to French contemporaries of Ruskin, TnioPHiLE 
Gautier's Italia'^ was the result of a journey in 1850, which 
took the writer as far as Naples but only actually describes 
the northern towns. It is devoted chiefly to a description of 
Venice, from which we have drawn largely, as Gautier's im- 
pression is the first which has our modem idea about Venice. 
Certainly he was not the first traveller who accepted the 
beauty of St. Mark's ; his account at any rate preceded the 
completion of Ruskin's Stones of Venice. Gautier's previous 
travels in Spain enabled him to enter into the spirit of the 
Byzantine architecture and mosaic, so much akin to the 
Moorish survivals in Spain. We may safely leave to the 
reader the valuing of Gautier's style, which amid its journalistic 
facility often has the brilliancy of a water-colour rendering. 
That he is always precisely accurate is not to be affirmed, but 
his impressionism serves the purpose of giving some idea of 
an almost indescribable building like St Mark's. Gautier, we 
are told, coming to Venice in later years straight from the 
Parthenon, said : " On my return from Athens, Venice seemed 
to me trivial and grossly decadent" Greek Art, of course, is 
nearer the fountain-head of natural beauty. Gautier, not- 
withstanding, must be credited with beit^ among the earliest 
writers to mark the decorative fascination of Byzantine archi- 
tecture and decoration. He was a pioneer in his admiration 
of Carpaccio, and if time and opportunity had been his, he 
might almost have achieved the general appreciation of Italy 
which was reserved for Taine. 

J. J. Ampere, the son of the famous mathematician, was a 
professor at the Athenaeum of Marseilles, and was among the 
earliest writers who illustrated historical documents by the 
results of practical archaeology. His History of Rome * (only 
reaching to the time of Augustus) was studied in Rome itself, 

^ Gautier has never before been translated. 

^ Anotiier classical historian of the time was George Dennis, who 
wrote the Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria (1848). 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 95 

and Ampere brings the evidence of busts or medals to the 
support of his statements. His volume, called La GrhCy Rome 
et Dante (1850), contains a scholarly account of early travels 
in Italy, but it is by the Voyage Dantesque contained in it 
that Ampere most wins our gratitude. These are sketches 
of travel in Pisa, Lucca, Pistoia, Gubbio, Verona, Rimini, 
Ravenna, and the other towns mentioned in the Divina 
Commedia, Ampere's knowledge of Dante could not be that 
of later commentators, but his enthusiasm has led many 
students to deeper research. His description, for instance, 
of the plain of Siena, and of the battle of Mont-Aperti, where 
Dante was present, is of interest if we remember that the 
Sienese flag carried that day is still in the Cathedral. It is 
with reluctance that we have left such passages aside as being 
beyond the scope of the present volume. 

Alexandre Dumas ph^e was not able to resist the current 
of mediaevalism. His Une Annie d Florence is mainly a ren- 
dering of early stories from the chronicles of Florence. In 
the Corricolo — a book we have been unable to trace — he 
writes, we believe, about modem Naples. Monte Cristo has 
a clever story about life in the Campagna. 

The study of ecclesiology could not fail to go with that of 
early art. Mrs. Jameson, after a briefer voyage in youth, 
went to Italy in 1847, and wrote within the next five years 
her indispensable books called Sacred and Legendary Art^ 
Legends of the SaintSy Legends of the Monastic Orders^ and 
Legends of the Madonna. If these books err in an excessive 
tenderness of sentiment, they give us the greatest aid in the 
study of the spiritual side of Italian Art. Henry Hart 
MiLMAN^ (i 791-1868), Dean of St. Paul's, was a man of 
varied attainments, who wrote capable plays and translated 
poetry from the Sanscrit when knowledge of Oriental lan- 
guages was still unadvanced. He annotated Gibbon, and his 
History of Latin Christianity down to the Death of Pope 
Nicholas V. (1855) was praised by Macaulay, and remains a 
standard work. 

Among the enthusiasts of Gothic architecture was G. E. 
Street, author of Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages (1855). 
The overdoing of Gothic admiration in this period cannot be 
better iUustrated than in the following notes written by the 

^ A historian to whom Milman acknowledged his indebtedness was 
Gregorovius, author of Rome in the Middle AgtSy and Wanderjahre in 
Jtalitn (1864), as also of a charming monograph on Capri. 



96 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

American writer, Charles Eliot Norton in 1856: "Rome 
possesses compaxatively few works of those centuries when 
modem Art exhibited its purest power, and reached a spiritual 
elevation from which it soon fell, and which it has never 
since reattained. The decline that became obvious in the 
sixteenth century stamped its marks upon the face of the 
city." Norton's Church-building in the Middle Ages, however, 
is a most scholarly and valuable book, and there was a good 
reason for a Gothic reaction against such idolatry as this of 
John Bell for Domenichino*s St Agiies : " The serene 
and beautiful countenance of the Saint is irradiated by an 
expression of rapt holiness and heavenly resignation infinitely 
touching." Norton complained of the want of an artistic 
guide-book for Italy. This had been in part attempted by 
another American writer, G. S. Hillard, in 1853, who links 
together some notes of the past of Rome, Venice, and Florence. 
This writer also gave a short sketch of some of the travellers 
and their travels in Italy, which we have preferred not to consult, 
so as to preserve our own impressions intact. A less keen 
medissvalist, but still within the school, was the gentle poet 
Longfellow. He had been in Italy in 1828, and had 
described it in prose, but his chief service is in his version 
of Dante,^ rendered with much felicity ; and his notes showed 
considerable scholarship for his day. He sees clearly the close 
alliance of Dante's conceptions with the symbolism of the 
Cathedrals ; he has admirably distinguished the plastic form 
of the Inferno from the painter-like sense of the Purgatorio ; 
and the five sonnets referring to the Divina Cammed have 
a dignity and insight of their own. 

Robert Browning, as far as we can ascertain, went to 
Italy in 1838, and describing this first trip writes : " I went to 
Trieste, then Venice — ^then through Treviso and Bassano to 
the mountains, delicious Asolo, all my places and castles, you 
will see. Then to Vicenza, Padua, and Venice again." From 
that period for some forty-five years onward nearly every 
volume of the poet's contained something referring to Italy, 
and his most pre-eminent works are exclusively Italian. In 

^ The simple diction of Longfellow's Dante translation is fiur more 
appropriate than the Miltonic blank verse of Gary, which, excellent 
as it is, gives the work a Renaissance flavour. Moaem study of Dante 
comprises the works of Scartazzini, Dr. £. Moore, the Hon. Warren 
Vernon, P. H. Wicksteed, and Paget Toynbee. Rossetti's Dante and his 
Circle has taken its place as a classic 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 97 

1840 he published SordellOy wherein he illustrated some of 
the deepest problems of mediaevalism in the character of 
the Mantuan troubadour who was mentioned by Dante, and 
appears to have been a kind of Italian Faust. Sordello is 
difficult to read, not because of its obscurity, but because of its 
wealth of allusion to early history and ideas. The endeavour 
to write a poem dealing with the spirit of Medisevalism was a 
remarkable one if we contrast other work of the 'forties. Fippa 
Fosses is dated 1841, and describes scenes at A solo in which 
various characters have their intentions strengthened or varied 
by the artless bird-songs of the child Pippa. King Victor and 
King CAarlts {1S42) gives us the attempt of the King of Sardinia 
to get back the crown after he had abdicated in favour of his 
son. In Dramatic Lyrics (written between 1840-50 or later), 
Lwe among the Ruins would appear to be an impression of 
the Campagna. Old Pictures in Florence opens the series of 
poems such as Andrea del Sarto^ in which Browning invades 
the Byronic realms of poetic criticism of art. Not to epi- 
tomise the entire works. The Statue and the Bust is instinct 
with Florentine beauty, and among other minor poems are 
the amusing utterances of the Jews at the Pope's annual 
sermon (now abolished) and Facchiarotto, Of the King and 
the Book^ with its many aspects of one crime and the mingled 
tragedy and satire of the soliloquies, it may be said that this 
poem has not had its day yet. The story is entirely typical 
of Rome at the end of the seventeenth century, and the extra- 
ordinary antiquarian learning of the author has not killed the 
dramatic power of the long contest for life of Guido. Work 
of this nature can never become entirely popular ; it does not 
base itself on national motives. In some ways it is a return 
to the Italy of the novelists and the Elizabethans, but it is 
one with the added psychology of the nineteenth century. 
Judging him as an exotic poet, the greater our knowledge of 
Italy the more admirable Robert Browning's Italian poems will 
appear ; those which are more important, for their rendering 
of the national character of Italy, the minor lyrics for delicate 
suggestions of atmosphere, of landscape, or the texture of 
flower, tree, and ruin. 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's principal Italian poem 
may be said to be Cc^a Guidi Windows (1851), a passionate 
plea for the liberation of Italy. In Aurora Leigh there are 
some slight pen-pictures, of no great interest ; the Foems before 
Congress KcA Last Foems (1862) contain further verses about 

G 



98 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

Italian unity, but the style is not equal to the sentiment, and 
it is not possible to rate the author of the beautiful Sonnets 
from the Portuguese among those who have made Italy more 
real to us. It may be remarked that neither in Mrs. Browning's 
letters to F. G. Kenyon or R. H. Home, nor in the letters to 
and from her husband, are there any peculiarly felicitous 
descriptions of Italian places. 

As Mrs. Browning's work is in great part a plea for Italian 
unity we may here insert a few words about the history of 
the risorgimento. From the Congress of Vienna till the 
Revolution of 1848 the conspiracies for freedom in Italy 
were mainly the work of the local carbonari societies, for the 
main body of the people did not think a united kingdom 
possible. In 1849 short-lived republics were set up in Rome 
and Florence, but the results of the battle of Novara, and the 
interference of the French in Roman affairs, put back the 
movement for unity. Nevertheless the reigning house of 
Savoy was coming forward as the ostensible head of the 
movement, and with the assistance of Napoleon III. (paid for 
by important cessions of territory), Victor Emanuel defeated 
the Austrians at Magenta. The counsels of Mazzini, Cavour, 
and Ricasoli, and the popularity of Garibaldi had all done 
their share, and when the Bourbons evacuated Sicily and the 
re galantuomo was crowned at Turin, Florence was the capital 
first chosen; but when German pressure in 1870 made the 
French troops leave Rome, unity was finally complete in the 
settling of the dynasty in the ancient capital. It will be seen 
from this bare outline that Italian freedom was gained by the 
intervention and conflict of some of those very powers which 
had made it lose its liberty two hundred and fifty years before. 
The most recent works on this great struggle are those of the 
Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, and Mr. George Meredith's 
Vittoria is a brilliant social picture of the movement. 

Tennyson's one contribution to Italian travel consists of 
the charming poem called " The Daisy," and with a delicate 
felicity of terse expression gives us glimpses of the northern 
towns. No better description of Lombard architecture could 
be set down in the given number of words than this : 

And stern and sad (so rare the smiles 
Of sunlight) looked the Lombard piles ; 

Porch-pillars on the lion resting, 
And sombre, old, colonnaded aisles. 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 99 

Here again is the very hue and colour of the Tuscan plain 
in which Florence lies : 

In bright vignetteSi and each complete, 
Of tower or duomo, sunny-sweet, 

Or palace, how the city glitter'd 
Thro' caress avenues, at our feet. 

Tennyson also wrote some lines on Sirmio, and treated an 
Italian subject in his The Falcon^ a play taken from Boccaccio. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne ^ was already a middle-aged man 
when he went to Italy in 1858, and h^ Italian Note-book 
shows that it was difficult for him at first to fall in with Italian 
ideas. Like most of the Americans of his period he only 
sees the absurd side of the art, until a greater familiarity with 
the history of so different an evolution to that he knows aids 
him to see its beauty. A curious passage in Transformation^ 
afterwards called The Marble Faun^ states the case for Philis- 
tinism with some force. But the painting of " Venuses, Ledas, 
Graces" does not surely disqualify a man from rendering 
religious subjects, and Hawthorne admits that after the ob- 
jections he xnakes, " a throng of spiritual faces look reproach- 
fully upon us." To come to the romance itself, The Marble 
FauHy though begun abroad, was only completed in England. 
Mr. Henry James well describes the central figure when he 
says: "Every one will remember the figure of the simple, 
joyous, sensuous young Italian, who is not so much a man as 
a child, and not so much a child as a charming, innocent 
animal, and how he is brought to self-knowledge and to a 
miserable conscious manhood, by the commission of a crime. 
. . . Hawthorne has done few things more beautiful than the 
picture of the unequal complicity of guilt between his im- 
mature and dimly puzzled hero, with his clinging, unquestion- 
ing, unexacting devotion, and the dark, powerful, more 
widely-seeing feminine nature of Miriam." The figure of 
Hilda, "the pure and somewhat rigid New England girl," 
gives us a type in contrast, and Hawthorne makes a strong 
point in letting her confess to a priest the secret she had 
siuprised and then come away, as Mr. James says, " with her 
conscience lightened, not a whit the less a Puritan than 
before." Hawthorne, it seems to us, has admirably met the 
difficulty of constructing a novel which shall give some con- 

^ A friend of Hawthorne's was the lovable little woman Frederika 
Bremer, a Scandinavian, who wrote much on Italy. 



^S/58l3 



loo THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

ception of the American impression of Rome. Democratic 
America and the town of the Papacy are poles apart, and 
yet may meet in their common humanity. J^ Marble Faun 
certainly suggests the old crimes of the ancient city, and the 
unreality of our existence under such conditions, for it is not 
the past, but the present which seems untrue in Rome. 
Hawthorne's heroines are not those of our day, and in 
costume (to use the word in a wide sense) the romance may 
not please actual taste, but considering the difficulty of the 
problem the result is worthy of high praise. 

George Eliot's most important journey in Italy was in 
i860, and it is described in some ninety pages of the epistolary 
biography of her life. The gifted novelist — ^herself so much 
like one of Michael Angelo's Sibyls — could not fail to say 
some interesting things, as, for example, this concerning St 
Peter's: "The piazza, with Bernini's colonnades, and the 
gradual slope upward to the mighty temple, gave me always 
a sense of having entered some millennial new Jerusalem, 
where all small and shabby things were unknown." As a 
general rule, Roman art is. forced and unpleasant to her, but 
she loved the people and exclaims : " Oh the beautiful men 
and women and children here ! Such wonderful babies with 
wise eyes ! — such grand-featured mothers nursing them ! As 
one drives along the streets sometimes, one sees a madonna 
and child at every third or fourth upper window; and on 
Monday a little crippled girl seated at the door of a church 
looked up at us with a face full of such pathetic sweetness 
and beauty, that I think it can hardly leave me again." At 
Naples she liked the too-little known Giotto frescoes in the 
church of Llncoronata, but her highest admiration was 
reserved for the Temple of Neptune at Psestum, " the finest 
thing, I verily believe, we have seen in Italy. It has all the 
requisites to make a building impressive. First, form. What 
perfect satisfaction and repose for the eye in the calm re- 
petition of these columns — in the proportions of height and 
length, of front and sides : the right thing is found — it is not 
sought after in uneasy labour or detail or exaggeration. Next, 
colour. It is built of travertine, like the other two temples ; 
but while they have remained, for the most part, a cold grey, 
this Temple of Neptune has a rich, warm, pinkish brown that 
seems to glow and deepen under one's eyes." — (Archaeology, 
we may note, had not in i860 reached the knowledge of the 
invariable polychromatic decoration of the ancient temples.) 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT loi 

" — Lastly^ position. It stands on the rich plain, covered with 
long grass and flowers, in sight of the sea on one hand, and 
the sublime blue mountains on the other. Many plants 
caress the ruins : the acanthus is there, and I saw it in green 
life for the first time ; but the majority of the plants on the 
floor or bossing the architrave, are familiar to me as home 
flowers — purple mallows, snapdragons, pink hawkweeds." 

George Eliot was enthusiastic with Florence, but made 
the usual mistake of condemning the intentional simplicity of 
the interior of the Duomo. The frescoes she liked best were 
those of Fra Angelico in San Marco, and generally from her 
praise of Giotto, Orcagna, Masaccio, and Ghirlandajo we may 
say that her view of Florence is that which prevails to-day. 
It is at Florence that George Eliot first refers to Romola as 
" rather an ambitious project," but it was in the following year 
(and in London) that she began the studies for it by reading 
the lengthy list of books she has left us, which includes 
Sacchetti, "The Monks of the West," Sismondi, Villari's 
"Savonarola," Politian's "Epistles," and Varchi. The list 
certainly suggests cramming for an examination, and the 
Romola romance has now lost much of its former vogue. 
We are not inclined to regret this change of taste. George 
Eliot's rendering of Italian character errs in precisely the 
same way as the late Mrs. Oliphant's historical studies : she 
cannot keep out the persistent note of modem English thought 
Romola herself is a very proper yoimg woman of the nine- 
teenth century, Savonarola has too much of our Liberalism. 
In the same way Mrs. Oliphant's St. Francis has become an 
Evangelical whom one could put into an East End parish 
without the least misgiving. In the atmosphere of Romola^ 
instead of the balmy air which, according to Vasari, made 
Florence prolific in great men, we have cold English airs and 
a dry severity of outline that lacks Italian morbidczza and 
Tuscan grace. 

A fer more successful effort than George Eliot's is that 
of the late Mr. J. Henry Shorthouse in John Inglesant 
(1880). The manner is perhaps fastidious, but the quality of 
fascination belongs to many of the episodes. The hero carries 
an atmosphere of northern melancholy with him, and is too 
much like Henry Esmond placed in an earlier period. This 
does not detract from the grace of the Italian scenes amid 
which he moves; and the careful documentation not in- 
frequently is quickened into lifelike presentment The fault 



102 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

of the book as a romance is that it tends towards a definite 
religious conclusion. Practically we may agree with that con- 
clusion, but the least idea of " tendency " taices away the finer 
flavour of romance; and when we finish the book we can 
but turn back to such a scene as that in which the Cavaliere 
Inglesant, having met his defenceless enemy in a mountain pass 
at sunrise, forgives him before the altar of the solitary chapel, 
and, leaving his sword with the priest, goes forth to become in 
the future a legend of the apparition of St. George in that 
desolate place. Such a conception has no little of the spiritual 
beauty of the early romances of chivalry. 

§ 6. Scientific Study 

Science does not appear to have been applied to Italian 
matters before the evolutionary theory b^an to come forward. 
Among the first scientific books might be classed the careful 
study of Rome by Sir George Head. Bom in 1782, he 
was educated at the Charterhouse, and served through the 
Peninsular War; he also acted as deputy-marshal at the 
Coronation of William IV. He wrote on the development of 
commerce in England, and was a contributor to the Quarterly 
Review. His travels in Rome usefully supplement a gap that 
we could otherwise have with difficulty filled, for he gives us 
facts and nothing but facts concerning the minor churches in 
that town. Sir G. Head's three bulky volumes form a monu- 
ment of the industry of less than two years' work^ and show 
how a sober observer can be of service. Many of Head's 
theories about the antiquities have been replaced by the 
researches popularised for English readers by LancianL In 
the same class we would place a later book, the Roba diRoma^ 
of William W. Story ; it takes its title from the Italian 
word roha^ which may mean " goods and chattels," " odds and 
ends." In this extraordinary repertory, published in 1862, 
Mr. Story brought together an enormous amount of knowledge 
concerning Roman folklore, history, customs, festivals, char- 
acter, and anecdote. The book is not scientifically arranged, 
and was probably not written for that purpose; it is never- 
theless a sociological book. One point only can we refer to 
it amid this mass of information : the Italian conception of 
the Christ. Northern travellers, with their idea of a benign 

^ A chatty book dealing mostly with the different classes in Rome is 
E. About's Rome Omtemporaine (i860). 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 103 

Mediator, are surprised and sometimes shocked at the central 
figure in Michael Angelo's Last Judgment The book makes 
it clear that the Catholic idea of Mediation is centred in the 
Madonna, while the stern punishment of sin is in the hands of 
the Saviour. Some of the painters, however, the Mystics and 
Raphael, for instance, give a different aspect to the figure of 
the Saviour. 

H. Taine's Voyage en Italie^ was published in 1865, a 
year after the Philosaphk de PArt Taine had in the latter 
work epitomised the lectures he had delivered to the students 
of the Beaux-Arts, or French national art school. The Voyage 
en lialie brings us practically to the climax of northern 
knowledge concerning Italian art. Taine, from his profound 
knowledge of English literature and French history, his posi- 
tivist ideas and his insight into painting, was well fitted to sum 
up the results of three centuries of research. We have hitherto 
seen our travellers preferring the art of one period, and even 
the new cult of Mediaevalism did not exist without a corre- 
sponding neglect of the Renaissance. Taine in his philosophical 
letters brings forward the history, but preserves an admirably 
picturesque style and a keen sense of beauty, with appropriate 
colour of phrase for every sensation. Other writers after him 
may glean a new impression here and there, but it will hardly 
be possible to take a more comprehensive view of the entire 
problem of Italian art He has little of the superciliousness 
generally affected by Frenchmen when speaking of Italy ; and 
none of the blague which amuses but often offends us in 
De Brosses. 

Taine, if we may place him by his own methods of classi- 
fication, is the French equivalent of Ruskin. The two men 
are very difierent indeed in many of the results they arrive at, 
but each represents the best culture of the respective educa- 
tions of their coimtries. Where Ruskin is diffuse and scholastic 
in the manner of an Oxford commentator, Taine is methodical 
and clear ; Ruskin loves to quote inscriptions, Taine prefers 
to arrive at general principles. Ruskin's fault is that out of 
many facts he arrives at few principles ; Taine's fault is that 
he is inclined to find a principle for every fact We need not 
follow the gifted Frenchman in all his deductions. It is not 
to be believed that the results of Italian civilisation can be 
included in any series of generalisations, however far-reaching. 

^ This book has been done into English, but we have translated our 
extracts anew. 



104 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

We have sought to express one persistent national factor in 
the word Catholicism, but we can no more find a formula for 
Italian art than we could define the result of Shakespeare's 
plays. The consideration of anything that is natural leads us 
to an infinity of cause and effect, and in the positivists' work 
we see a vain attempt to isolate a certain class of phenomena, 
and mark nothing more than the interaction of the various 
influences or things belonging to that class. Comprehensive 
as the view of Taine is, we should not be satisfied with his 
book alone, for scientific study of the art of a nation will never 
give us all we need. Art does not exist in the abstract, it only 
b^ns to be something tangible when a human temperament 
is aflected by it. We can usefully learn from others what it 
means to them ; science can only trace the evolution, and is 
invariably cold with r^ard to the human influence.^ 

For the painter working in Italy some suggestions made in 
the letters of Henri Rbgnault (the painter who died too 
soon, but at the call of national duty) may be mentioned. 
"I think it is almost harmful," he wrote in 1867, "^o come 
to Rome before knowing thoroughly the history of the art 
which is to be so clearly read in Florence, and whose gaps 
may be filled in at Padua, Parma, Siena, Pisa, Venice, and 
other towns. What are we to do when suddeiUy put fece to 
face with the formidable giant of the Sistine chapel ? How 
can we preserve any hope in his presence, when at each visit 
we are crushed with wonder and admiration, so strangely 
mingled that they may very well be fear?" After pointipg 
out that every pre-eminent master breaks the mould, Regnault 
goes on : "I have made up my mind to begin by a thorougli 
study of the masters who enabled Raphael, Titian, and 
Leonardo to be what they were. Not that I think they will 
make me a Raphael, a Titian, a Leonardo, or a Veronese all 
in one; I have no such great ambition. But the earlier 
painters (I only speak of those I saw at Florence) are to be 
studied in their quaint yet profound sentiment, and show 
their qualities of colour more readily than the achieved 
masters, who wilfully conceal their secrets." Regnault, as a 
matter of fact, finally formed himself on the Spanish schools, 

1 Among later French books are Frands We/s /^ome, and C Yriarte's 
books on Venice, Florence, and on Mantegna. Tke PiUrina^ Ombriens 
of J. C. Broussole may also be noted, and Pftul Bourget's SensaHom 
^luUu (189 1). M. A Boumet has written pleasantly on French travellers 
and painters in Rome and in Venice. 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 105 

which, with the best Dutch schools, have now an increasingly 
great influence. 

John Addington Symonds went to Italy shortly after 
leaving Oxford in 1863, and made several visits there in suc- 
ceeding years. The first volume of his Renaissance in Italy ^ 
was published under the title of The Age of the Despots in 
1875, and succeeding volumes were The Revival of Learnings 
the Inne Arts^ and the Catholic Reaction, These works are a 
sequence of essays rather than documented histories, but they 
are indispensable to the student of Italian history. The judg- 
ments are always moderate, the style is brilliant and varied ; 
and admiration of art does not blind the writer to scientific 
principles; he always preserves his native Protestantism, 
though he has an unprejudiced insight into the Catholic spirit 
and a ready comprehension of Italian character. One of the 
greatest aids to the understanding of Italian history or art is a 
knowledge of the modem Italians, which is only to be acquired 
by some years of close personal intercourse. Symonds was 
also able to estimate the comparative value of modem Italian 
historians, for it must be remembered that their accounts of 
earlier periods have occasionally been biassed by an immediate 
political motive, so potent still is the influence of the Papacy, 
which in some eyes can do nothing good. As a traveller 
Symonds is specially commendable for the notes on the 
smaller towns which he contributed to the Comhill Magazine^ 
now collected in three volumes. This writer of prolific in- 
dustry also translated Benvenuto Cellini's Life^ the Memoirs 
of Carlo Gozzi, and produced an efficient if not remarkable 
biography of Michael Angelo. A gleaner who must not be 
neglected is Francis Elliot, the author of An Idle Woman 
in Italy, The descriptions of the towns to the north and 
south of Rome have a charm of colour which makes them 
very attractive; the author's learning, too, is not inconsider- 
able. In not a few cases Mrs. Elliot's descriptions of classical 
Rome take up ground which other writers have left untrod 
because of its familiarity. To sum up the recollections of the 
Roman Fomm is a hazardous experiment, but the most learned 
scholar may often be usefully reminded of facts leamed in his 
schooldays and not always clearly remembered. Mrs. Elliot 
succeeds where an earlier writer, Mrs. Eaton, failed. Though 
Mrs. Eaton's Rome gave a valuable epitome, it was marred by 
too many feminine '* asides." 

* Burckhaidt's Renaissance is also a standard work. 



io6 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

Among our recent searchers in the field is to be mentioned 
the late Mr. Grant Allen, who in taking towns like Venice 
or Florence followed strictly evolutionary lines. His method 
of dealing with churches may be quoted from his volume on 
Venice : " A church, as a rule, is built over the body or relics 
of a particular saint, in whose special honour it was originally 
erected. That saint was usually one of great local importance 
at the moment of its erection, or was peculiarly implored 
against plague, foreign enemies, or some other pressing and 
dread misfortune. In dealing with such a church, then, I 
endeavour to show what were the circumstances which led to 
its erection, and what memorials of these circumstances it still 
retains. In other cases it may derive its origin from some 
special monastic body — Benedictine, Dominican, Franciscan 
— ^and may therefore be full of the peculiar symbolism and 
historical allusion of the order who founded it. Wherever I 
have to deal with such a church, I try as far as possible to 
exhibit the effect which its origin had upon its architecture and 
decoration ; to trace the ims^e of the patron saint in sculpture 
or stained glass throughout the fabric ; and to set forth the 
connection of the whole design with time and place, in order 
and purpose. In short, instead of looking upon monuments 
of the sort mainly as the products of this or that architect, I 
look upon them rather as material embodiments of the spirit 
of the age." 

Perhaps the most fruitful of recent discoveries is that 
resulting from the researches of scholars into the records 
of the Comacine Guilds. The labours of Merzario and 
Castellani have been popularised for English readers, and 
also fortified by a great deal of study by the lady who called 
herself Leader Scott in her Cathedral Builders. The theory 
put forward and supported by much evidence is that the 
original guild traced its origin from the later Imperial architects, 
who fled to the islands of the lake of Como during the barbaric 
invasions. From thence issued the organisations of masters 
and apprentices which may be traced in Florence, Siena, and 
other towns, besides many links connecting them with the 
architecture of the north. For the examination of Italian 
architecture from 800 to 1400, this work appears to us in- 
dispensable. Among writers who are not easy to place in any 
systematic order are Vernon Lee, with studies on the Renais- 
sance and eighteenth century; Dean Stanley, from whose 
Letters (edited by Mr. R. E. Prothero) we have chosen an 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 107 

admirable historical and descriptive account of Ravenna, an 
account which might serve as a model to future travellers; 
Walker, writings in the Original; S.Laing, who wrote suggestively 
on the future of the Papacy ; John Richard Green, the historian, 
who was in Italy in 187O) and contributed articles to the Satur- 
day /Review on Como, Capri, and ancient art ; Dean Alford 
{Letters) ; E. A. Freeman, whose essays concerning Venice and 
other towns have recently been collected. The writings of James 
Dennistoun and of T. A. Trollope were mostly historical, 
though the latter published also an account of a journey in 
Umbria. Recent writers have been Mr. W. D. Howells ( Venice 
and the Venetians^ and likewise 7\iscan Cities), the Misses 
Homer ( Walks in Florence), Mr. Horatio F. Brown (the history 
and likewise sketches of Venice), Mr. Marion Crawford {Ave 
Roma Immortalis)^ and Mr. Montgomery Carmichael. The 
works of all of these writers are in current circulation. Scientific 
criticism of art began for English readers in the practical 
knowledge of Sir Charles Eastlsie, some time President of the 
Royal Academy. He was in Italy in 18 16, and after the 
usual tour went to Rome, which he made his home for 
fourteen years. Besides being a painter of distinction, his 
Materials for the History of Oil-Fainting and Contributions to 
the Literature of the Fine Arts are devoted in great part to 
Italian subjects. Many important Italian pictures in the 
National Gallery were chosen by him for purchase. Eastlake 
has been followed by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, C Blanc, 
Muntz, Bode, Lafenestre, B. Behrenson, and others \ but the 
younger writers mostly base their method on that of Morelli 
in the fascinating game of " attributions." 

In setting down the briefest statement of a somewhat pro- 
longed study of the travel-books of three centuries and in con- 
sidering the extracts that follow, the present writer has 
experienced a certain change in his attitude towards Italy. 
Some indication of these results may be a fitting commentary 
on the whole subject. In the first place, a student of histories 
or descriptions dealing with Italy (quite apart from original 
research into the documents) is necessarily impressed by the 
magnitude of the subject. We go to Italy in light-hearted 
youth, fortunately unwitting of the fact that we are going to 
review the remains of the civilisations of 2000 years. With 
the results of the labours of many searchers before us, with 
the fiEunlity to go from town to town, is it surprising that we 



io8 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

bring home confused impressions and partial estimates ? The 
humanist, the connoisseur, or the romanticist went to Italy with 
a certain well-defined standard to aid him, and the task would 
be easier to-day if we had some clue, some main principle to 
guide us. The first trip to Italy will preferably be a scamper 
through, a journey of enjoyment, and it is after that first 
panoramic visit that a foundation may be laid for building on, 
and this should surely begin with scientific study. The senti- 
mental rhetoric so many writers indulge in is of no lasting 
service. A calm appreciation of the historical causes leading 
to the Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance eras would be 
an infinitely greater aid. Without any exhaustive course of 
study the reader can link on the establishment of the Papacy 
in Rome and the Eastern element in Venice to the Lombard 
influences and the consolidation of the early Republics. Then 
the monastic orders come forward, followed by the despotic 
governments, as much in ecclesiastical Rome as elsewhere. 
The invasions of France and Spain were succeeded by the 
Catholic reaction, and finally Italy joins in the grand move- 
ment of unity. When a general historic view has been 
achieved^ it wUl be far easier to devote attention to a special 
period according to the preference of temperament 

Whether Italy will still fill the place in culture which it 
has occupied hitherto is a question which we hesitate to answer. 
Italian influences in architecture are at present to be seen in 
every big town, and in homes not a few there hangs some 
reproduction oi»the Italian rendering of the Scriptural narra- 
tives. The mere ignorant denial of the influence of Italy — 
which with Hebraic and Greek traditions forms the basis 
of all intellectual culture — is that of a young heir who thinks 
that he is free to do as he pleases now he has come into the 
estate. In a way our ancestors are never dead, they live in us 
more than we know, and Italy means the history of the world 
for centuries, whether in its direct influence or in the reactions 
it has caused. The Hebrew tradition is a severe discipline ; 
Greek culture is only suited to a select class of minds ; the art 
of Italy in some sense combines them. With the blessings of 
settled government and personal freedom which we enjoy, we 
we are somewhat hampered in our quest of the manifestation 
of beauty. It may be argued that the spiritual truth of 
Puritanism is worth more than all the magnificence of other 
faiths ; and this does not deny the value of the symbol, for to 



ITALY AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 109 

deny that would be to do away with all art.^ We may say 
again we owe very much that has dignity and grace in our 
towns to Italian influence ; but where we have imitated slavishly 
we have ceased to be English without becoming Italian. 
The reason of this is not far to seek : subject as much as 
imagination is essentially the product of the conditions of the 
time. The sign-manual of monasticism is on most of the 
early Italian monuments ; Renaissance work is marked by the 
necessity of satisfying the taste of despotic masters. The 
Reformation made a gulf which is only bemg fiUed as we come 
to see the real points of agreement between northern and 
southern civilisations. In modem coimtries where art has 
been an exotic it is a question whether we shall ever throw 
off the parent teaching. Personally, we would incline to the 
opinion that the present epoch of a practically complete recog- 
nition of the art of the past is the turning point. We cannot 
continue to remain in the thraldom of Italy, however import- 
ant, however inspiring the themes of the past may be. The 
world has moved too far for them to have any influence other 
than the educative one, notwithstanding the hopes once enter- 
tained of bringing a mediaeval simplicity into modem life. 

A certain distmst of the material aflbrded by our own 
country has been the result of the excessive admiration of 
Italy during the last century. This distrust is connected with 
insufficient knowledge of our Cathedrals and the extensive 
post-Reformation remains we possess in England ; and surely 
our admitted lack of early mediaeval relics is amply compen- 
sated by the superb literature from Spenser up to Chaucer, 
from I^'ers Ploughman to the Anglo-Saxon poems, and from 
the Celtic romances of chivalry and the Arthurian legend back 
to the Teutonic Sagas and the Edda. If we have mostly failed 
hitherto in the pictorial arts, it is because we have sought 
inspiration rather than technique in Italy. But the poetic 
imagination is precisely the quality in which the northern 
nations are not lacking. What we need is rather a sense of 
pictorial conception, an instinctive knowledge of what falls 
within the domain of sensuous vision. This faculty cannot be 
bestowed, but it can be trained, and Italian study will only 
teach us to seek, to delineate and harmonise the indwelling 

^ " I, for one, look forward to no distant date when we shall aeain 
rejoice to see our churches clothing their walls with the painters' art, which 
has been too long banished from them." — The Archbishop of Canterbury 
(Speech at Royal Academy Banquet, 1903).' 



no THE BOOK OF ITALIAN Tl'/AVEL 

beauty of the life around us, when we look^, at the art of the 
south in relation to the life of the south, and . ,^ot as an unvary- 
ing standard. With the beauty of our hiJ'storic past, the 
nobility of our own heroes and martyrs, the zcctraXes of our 
modem life, why should we go elsewhere for the subject- 
matter of our arts ? Why seek the decoration that blossomed 
in a southern clime, when we have our own flowers of the 
field, our own beasts, birds, and butterflies ? Why should not 
our churches, our town halls, our private dwellings more 
generally bear the insignia or tell the story of our forebears, or 
mark by their proportions or their architectural form the stem 
and manly genius of the race ? The business of the poet or 
artist is to evoke beauty and order from the life about him, 
and that he may do so he must perforce compare the art with 
the civilisation of the past, for national work attempted without 
that experience is apt to be crude or parochial. Greece exist- 
ing mainly in museums, the craftsman must study in Italy ; 
but always remembering the essential differences of time, of 
place, of conditions, which can only be overridden by an 
epoch-making genius like that of Shakespeare, who, universal 
as he was, was yet in the- best sense typically British too. If- 
there is one lesson which Italy teaches us, it is* that all its 
art is its own ; with some exceptions of the individuality <5f 
genius, we see cathedral, statue, fresco, or portrait as the 
immediate impression of the religious belief, the classic re- 
search, the life, the civic ardour of Italy itself. If then Italy 
teaches us to neglect our own country, its traditions and its 
aspirations, it has taught us nothing at all. Marking with 
admiration and gratitude the results the Italians have achieved 
in the past, we, with a different task to perform, may yet 
endeavour to commemorate the collective effort of our nation, 
perhaps not in the same way, but still with the certainty that 
Art, whether plastic, pictorial, or poetic, rarely avails unless, 
together with a high standard of craftsmanship, it expresses 
the sacred hopes and the human sympathies of the race from 
which it springs. 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE 
ADRIATIC 

THE APPROACH TO VENICE 

We proceeded over fertile mountains to Bolsano. It was here 
first that I noticed the rocks cut into terraces, thick set with 
melons and Indian corn ; fig-trees and pomegranates, hanging 
over garden walls, clustered with fruit. In the evening we 
perceived several further indications of approaching Italy ; and 
after sunset the Adige, rolling its full tide between precipices, 
which looked terrifying in the dusk. Myriads of fireflies 
sparkled amongst the shrubs on the bank. I traced the 
course of these exotic insects by their blue light, now rising 
' to the summits of the trees, now sinking to the ground, and 
associating with vulgar glow-worms. We had opportunities 
enough to remark their progress, since we travelled all night ; 
such being my impatience to reach the promised land ! 

Morning dawned just as we saw Trent dimly before 
us. I slept a few hours, then set out again . . . after the 
heats were in some measure abated; and leaving Bergine, 
where the peasants were feasting before their doors, in their 
holiday dresses, with red pinks stuck in their ears instead of 
rings, and their necks surrounded with coral of the same 
colour, we came through a woody valley to the banks of a 
lake, filled with the purest and most transparent water, which 
loses itself in shady creeks, amongst hills entirely covered with 
shrubs and verdure. 

The shores present one continual thicket, interspersed 
with knots of larches and slender almonds, starting from the 
underwood. A cornice of rocks runs round the whole, except 
where the trees descend to the very brink, and dip their boughs 
in the water. 

It was six o'clock when I caught the sight of this un- 
suspected lake, and the evening shadows stretched nearly 



112 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

across it. Gaining a very rapid ascent, we looked upon its 
placid bosom, and saw several airy peaks rising above tufted 
foliage. I quitted the contemplation of them with regret, 
and, in a few hours, arrived at Borgo di Volsugano^ the scene 
of the lake still present before the eye of my fancy. 

. . . My heart beat quick when I saw some hills, not very 
distant, which I was told lay in the Venetian State, and I 
thought an age, at least, had elapsed before we were passing 
their base. The road was never formed to delight an im* 
patient traveller, loose pebbles and rolling stones render it, in 
the highest degree, tedious and jolting. I should not have 
spared my execrations, had it not traversed a picturesque 
valley, overgrown with juniper, and strewed with fragments of 
rock, precipitated, long since, ft-om the surrounding eminences, 
blooming with cyclamens. 

I clambered up several of these crags, 

Fra gli odoriferi ginepri, 

to gather the flowers I have just mentioned, and .found them 
deliciously scented. Fratillarias, and the most gorgeous flies, 
many of which I have noticed for the first time, were flutter- 
ing about and expanding their wings to the sun. There is no 
describing the numbers I beheld, nor their gaily varied colour- 
ing. I could not find in my heart to destroy their felicity ; to 
scatter their bright plumage, and snatch them for ever from 
the realms of light and flowers. Had I been less compas- 
sionate, I should have gained credit with that respectable 
corps, the torturers of butterflies ; and might, perhaps, have 
enriched their cabinets with some unknown captives. How- 
ever, I left them imbibing the dews of heaven, in free posses- 
sion of their native rights; and having changed horses at 
Tremolano, entered, at length, my long-desired Italy. 

The pass is rocky and tremendous. . . . For two or three 
leagues there was little variation in the scenery ; cliffs, nearly 
perpendicular on both sides, and the Brenta foaming and 
thundering below. Beyond, the vines began to be mantled 
with vines and gardens. Here and there a cottage, with 
shades of mulberries, made its appearance ; and we often dis- 
covered, on the banks of the river, ranges of white buildings, 
with courts and awnings, beneath which numbers of women 
and children were employed in manufacturing silk. As we 
advanced the stream gradually widened, and the rocks receded ; 
woods were more frequent and cottages thicker strown. 



:UC 



,3 I.' 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 113 

About five in the evening we left the country of crags and 
precipices, of mists and cataracts, and were entering the fertile 
territory of the Bassanese. It was now I beheld groves of 
olives, and vines clustering the summits of the tallest elms ; 
pomegranates in every garden, and vases of citron and orange 
before almost every door. The softness and transparency of 
the air soon told me I was arrived in happier climates, and I 
felt sensations of joy and novelty run through my veins, upon 
beholding this smiling land of groves and verdure stretched 
out before me. A few hazy vapours, I can hardly call them 
clouds, rested upon the extremities of the landscape ; and, 
through their medium, the sun cast an oblique and dewy ray. 
Peasants were returning home, singing as they went, and call- 
ing to each other over the hills ; whilst the women were milk- 
ing goats before the wickets of the cottage, and preparing their 
country fare. 

. . . Our route to Venice lay winding along the variegated 
plains I had surveyed from Mosolente ; and after dining at 
Treviso we came in two hours and a half to Mestre, between 
grand villas and gardens peopled with statues. Embarking 
our baggage at the last mentioned place, we stepped into a 
gondola, whose even motion was very agreeable after the jolts 
of a chaise. We were soon out of the canal of Mestre, termi- 
nating by an isle which contains a cell dedicated to the Holy 
Virgin, peeping out of a thicket, whence spire up two tall 
cypresses. Its bells tinkled as we passed along and dropped 
some paolis into a net tied at the end of a pole stretched out 
to us for that purpose. 

As soon as we had doubled the cape of this diminutive 
island, an expanse of sea opened to our view, the domes and 
towers of Venice rising from its bosom. Now we began to 
distinguish Murano, St. Michele, St Giorgio in Alga, and 
several other islands, detached from the grand cluster, which 
I hailed as old acquaintances ; innumerable prints and draw- 
ings having long since made their shapes familiar. Still 
gliding forward, we every moment distinguished some new 
church or palace in the city, suffused with the rays of the 
setting sun, and reflected with all their glow of colouring from 
the surface of the waters. 

The air was calm; the sky cloudless; a faint wind just 
breathing upon the deep, lightly bore its surface against the 
steps of a chapel in the island of San Secondo, and waved the 
veil before its portal, as we rowed by and coasted the walls of 

H 



114 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

its garden overhung with fig-trees and surmounted by spreading 
pines. The convent discovers itself through their branches, 
built in a style somewhat morisco, and level with the sea, 
except where the garden intervenes. 

We were now drawing very near the city, and a confused 
hum began to interrupt the evening stillness ; gondolas were 
continually passing and repassing, and the entrance of the 
Canal Reggio, with all its stir and bustle, lay before us. Our 
gondoliers turned with much address through a crowd of boats 
and barges that blocked up the way, and rowed smoothly 
by the side of a broad pavement, covered with people in all 
dresses and of all nations. — Beckfard. 



PERSONAL ACCOUNTS 
Venice in the Seventeenth Century^ 

Tis said that when the Huns overran Italy some meane 
fishermen and others left the maineland and fled for shelter to 
these despicable and muddy islands, which in processe of 
time, by industry, are growne to the greatnesse of one of 
the most considerable States, considered as a Republic, and 
having now subsisted longer than any of the foure ancient 
Monarchies, flourishing in greate state, wealth, and glory, by 
the conquest of greate territories in Italy, Dacia, Greece, 
Candy, Rhodes, and Sclavonia, and at present challenging the 
empire of all the Adriatiq Sea, which they yearly espouse by 
casting a gold ring into it with greate pomp and ceremony 
on Ascension Day : the desire of seeing this was one of the 
reasons that hastened us from Rome. 

The Doge, having heard masse in his robes of state (which 
are very particular, after the Eastern fashion,) together with the 
Senat in their gownes, imbark'd in their gloriously painted, 
carved, and gilded Bucentora, inviron'd and follow'd by 
innumerable gallys, gondolas, and boates, filled with spec- 
tators, some dressed in masquerade, trumpets, musiq, and 
canons; having rowed about a league into the Gulph, the 
Duke at the prow casts a gold ring and cup into the Sea, at 

^ It is to be regretted that Montaigne says very little about Venice, 
because, in his words, ** the curiosities of the place are so well known that 
I need not describe them." Thus we are deprived of an authoritative 
sixteenth-century account. 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 115 

which a loud acclamation is ecchoed from the greate guns of 
the Arsenal and at the Liddo. We then returned. 

Two days after, taking a gondola, which is their water- 
coach (for land-ones there are many old men in this Citty who 
never saw one, or rarely a horse), we rowed up and downe the 
Channells, which answer to our streetes. These vessells are 
built very long and narrow, having necks and tailes of Steele, 
somewhat spreading at the beake like a fishe's taile, and kept 
SO exceedingly polish'd as to give a greate lustre ; some are 
adom'd with carving, others lined with velvet (commonly 
black), with curtains and tassells, and the seates like couches, 
to lie stretch'd on, while he who rowes stands upright on the 
very edge of the boate, and with one oare bending forward as 
if he would fall into the Sea, rows and turnes with incredible 
dexterity ; thus passing from channell to channell, landing his 
fare or patron at what house he pleases. The beakes of these 
vessells are like the ancient Roman rostrums. 

The Rialto and Merceria 

The first publiq building I went to see was the Rialto, a 
bridge of one arch over the grand Canall, so large as to admit 
a gaily to row under it, built of good marble, and having on it, 
besides many pretty shops, three ample and stately passages 
for people without any inconvenience, the two outmost nobly 
balustred with the same stone ; a piece of Architecture much 
to be admir'd. It was evening, and the Canall where the 
Noblesse go to take the air, as in our Hide-park, was full of 
ladys and gentlemen. There are many times dangerous stops 
by reason of the multitude of gondolas ready to sink one 
another ; and indeede they affect to leane them on one side, 
that one who is not accostom'd to it would be afraid of over- 
setting. Here they were singing, playing on harpsicords and 
other musick, and serenading their mistresses; in another 
place racing and other pastimes upon the water, it being now 
exceeding hot. 

Next day I went to their Exchange, a place like ours 
frequented by merchants, but nothing so magnificent: from 
thence my guide led me to the Fondigo di Tedeschi, which is 
their magazine, and here many of the merchants, especialy 
Germans, have their lodging and diet as in a college. The 
outside of this stately fabric is painted by Giorgione da 
Castelfranco, and Titian himselfe. 



ii6 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

Hence I pass'd thro' the Merceria, which is one of the 
most delicious streetes in the world for the sweetnesse of it, 
and is all the way on both sides tapistred as it were with 
cloth of gold, rich damasks and other silks, which the shops 
expose and hang before their houses from the first floore, and 
with that variety that for neere halfe the yeare spent cheifly in 
this Citty I hardly remember to have seene the same piece 
twice exposM ; to this add the perfumes, apothecaries shops, 
and the innumerable cages of nightingales which they keepe, 
that entertaine you with their melody from shop to shop, so 
that shutting your eyes you would imagine yourselfe in the 
country, when indeede you are in the middle of the Sea. It 
is almost as silent as the middle of a field, there being 
neither rattling of coaches nor trampling of horses. This 
streete, pav'd with brick and exceedingly cleane, brought us 
thro' an arch into the famous Piazza of St. Marc. . . . 

The Piazza and St. Mark's 

The buildings in this Piazza are all arch'd, on pillars, pav'd 
within with black and white polish'd marble even to the shops, 
the rest of the fabric as stately as any in Europ, being not 
only marble but the architecture is of the famous Sansovini, 
who lies buried in St. Jacomo at the end of the Piazza. The 
battlements of this noble range of building are rail'd with 
stone, and thick set with excellent statues, which add a great 
ornament. One of the sides is yet much more Roman-like 
than the other which reguards the Sea, and where the Church 
is plac'd. The other range is plainly Gotiq: and so we entred 
into St. Marc's Church, before which stand two brasse 
piedestals exquisitely cast and figur'd, which beare as many 
tall masts painted red, on which upon greate festivals they 
hang flags and streamers. The Church is also Gotic ; yet for 
the preciousnese of the materials being of severall rich marbles, 
aboundance of porphyrie, serpentine, etc., far exceeding any 
in Rome, St. Peter's hardly excepted. I much admired the 
splendid historic of our B. Saviour compos'd all of Mosaic 
over the faciata, below which and over the cheife gate are four 
horses cast in coper as big as the life, the same that formerly 
were transported from Rome by Constantine to Byzantium, 
and thence by the Venetians hither. They are supported by 
8 porphyrie columns of very great size and value. Being 
come into the Church, you see nothing, and tread on nothing, 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 117 

but what is precious. The floore is all inlayed with achats, 
lazuli's, calcedons, jaspers, porphyries and other rich marbles, 
admirable also for the work ; the walls sumptuously incrusted 
and presenting to the imagination the shapes of men, birds, 
houses, flowers, and a thousand varieties. The roofe is of 
most excellent Mosaic ; but what most persons admire is the 
new work of the emblematic tree at the other passage out of 
the Church. In the midst of this rich volto rise five cupolas, 
the middle very large and sustayn'd by 36 marble columns, 
eight of which are of precious marbles : under these cupolas 
is the high al^, on which is a reliquarie of severall sorts of 
Jewells, engraven with figures after the Greeke maner, and set 
together with plates of pure gold. The altar is cover'd with a 
canopy of ophit, on which is sculptured the storie of the Bible, 
and so on the pillars, which are of Parian marble, that support 
it. Behind these are four other columns of transparent and 
true Oriental alabaster, brought hither out of the mines of 
Solomon's Temple as they report. There are many chapells 
and notable monuments of illustrious persons, Dukes, 
Cardinals, etc., as Zeno, Jo. Soranzi, and others : there is 
likewise a vast baptisterie of coper. Among other venerable 
reliques is a stone on which they say our Blessed Lord stood 
preaching to those of Tyre and Sidon, and neere the doore is 
an image of Christ, much adored, esteeming it very sacred, for 
that a rude fellow striking it, they say, there gush'd out a 
torrent of blood. . . . 

The Treasury 

The next day, by favour of the French Ambassador, I had 
admittance with him to see the Reliquary call'd here Tresoro 
di San Marco, which very few even of travellers are admitted 
to see. It is a large chamber fiill of presses. There are 
twelve breast-plates, or pieces of pure golden armour studded 
with precious stones, and as many crownes dedicated to 
St. Mark by so many noble Venetians who had recovered 
their wives taken at sea by the Saracens ; many curious vases 
of achats ; the cap or comet of the Dukes of Venice, one of 
which had a ruble set on it esteemed worth 200,000 crownes ; 
two unicorns homes ; numerous vasas and dishes of achat set 
thick with precious stones and vast pearles ; divers heads of 
Saints inchas'd in gold ; a small ampulla or glasse with our 
Saviour's blood ; a greate morcell of the real crosse ; one of 



ii8 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

the nailes ; a thorn ; a fragment of the column to which our 
Lord was bound when scourged ; the standard or ensigne of 
Constantine ; a piece of St Luke's arme; a rib of St Stephen ; 
a finger of Mary Magdalene ; numerous other things which I 
could not remember; but a priest, first vesting himselfe in his 
sacerdotals with the stole about his neck, shewed us the 
Gospel of St Mark (their tutelar patron) written by his own 
hand, and whose body they shew buried in the Church, 
brought hither from Alexandria many years ago. . . . 

The Venetian Nobility 

It was now Ascension Weeke, and the greate Mart or 
Faire of the whole yeare was now kept, every body at liberty 
and jollie. The noblemen stalking with their ladys on 
choppines ; these are high-heel'd shoes, particularly affected 
by these proude dames, or, as some say, invented to keepe 
them at home, it being very difficult to walke with them j 
whence one being asked how he liked the Venetian dames, 
replied, that they were mezzo came^ mezzo ligno^ half flesh, 
half wood, and he would have none of them. The truth is, 
their garb is very odd, as seeming allwayes in masquerade ; 
their other habits are totally different from all nations. They 
weare very long crisped haire, of severall strakes and colours, 
which they make so by a wash, dischevelling it on the brims 
of a broade hat that has no head, but an hole to put out their 
heads by ; they drie them in the sunn, as one may see them 
at their windows. In their tire they set silk flowers and 
sparkling stones, their peticoates coming from their very arme- 
pits, so that they are neere three quarters and an half apron ; 
their sleeves are made exceeding wide, under which their shift 
sleeves as wide, and commonly tucked up to the shoulder, 
shewing their naked armes, thro' false sleeves of tifiany, girt 
with a bracelet or two, with knots of points richly tagged 
about their shoulders and other places of their body, which 
they usually cover with a kind of yellow vaile of lawn very 
transparent Thus attir'd they set their hands on the heads 
of two matron-like servants or old women, to support them, 
who are mumbling their beades. 'Tis ridiculous to see how 
these ladys crawle in and out of their gondolas by reason of 
their choppines^ and what dwarfs they appeare when taken 
downe from their wooden scaflblds ; of these I saw near thirty 
together, stalking half as high again as the rest of the world, 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 119 

for courtezans or the citizens may not weare chappinesy but cover 
their bodies and faces with a vaile of a certaine glittering 
taffeta or lustre^, out of which they now and then dart a 
glaunce of their eye, the whole face being otherwise entirely 
hid with it ; nor may the com'on misses take this habit, but 
go abroad barefac'd. To the comers of these virgin-vailes 
hang broad but flat tossells of curious Point de Venize ; the 
married women go in black vailes. The nobility weare the 
same colour, but of fine cloth lin'd with taffeta in Summer, 
with fur of the bellies of squirrells in the Winter, which all 
put on at a certaine day girt with a girdle embossed with silver; 
the vest not much different from what our Bachelors of Arts 
weare in Oxford, and a hood of doth made like a sack, cast 
over their left shoulder, and a round cloth black cap fring'd 
with wool which is not so comely ; they also weare their 
collar open to shew the diamond button of the stock of their 
shirt. I have never scene pearle for colour and bignesse 
comparable to what the ladys wear, most of the noble families 
being very rich in Jewells, especialy pearles, which are always 
left to the son or brother who is destined to marry, which the 
eldest seldome do. The Doge's vest is of crimson velvet, the 
Procurator's, etc., of damasc, very stately. Nor was I lesse 
surprised with the strange variety of the severall nations which 
were seen every day in the streetes and piazzas ; Jews, Turks, 
Armenians, Persians, Moores, Greekes, Sclavonians, some 
with their targets and boucklers, and all in their native 
fashions, negotiating in this famous Emporium, which is 
allways crowded with strangers. . . . 

The Arsenal 

The Arsenal is thought to be one of the best furnish'd in 
the world. We entred by a strong port always guarded, and 
ascending a spacious gallery saw armes of back, breast, and 
head, for many thousands; in another were saddles, over 
them ensignes taken from the Turks. Another Hall is for the 
meeting of the Senat ; passing a graff are the smiths forges, 
where they are continualy at work on ankers and iron work. 
Neere it is a well of fresh water, which they impute to two 
rhinoceros's horns which they say lie in it and will preserve it 
from ever being empoisoned. Then we came to where the 
carpenters were building their magazines of oares, masts, etc., 
for an hundred gallys and ships, which have all their aparell 



I20 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

and furniture neere them. Then the founderie, where they 
cast ordinance ; the forge is 450 paces long, and one of them 
has thirteen furnaces. There is one cannon weighing 16,573 
lbs. cast whilst Henry the Third dined, and put into a ^dly 
built, rigg'd, and fitted for launching within that time. They 
have also armes for 12 galeasses, which are vessells to rowe, of 
almost 150 foote long and 30 wide, not counting prow or 
poop, and contain 28 banks of oares, each 7 men, and to 
carry 1300 men, with 3 masts. In another a magazin for 50 
gallys, and place for some hundreds more. Here stands the 
Bucentaur, with a most ample deck, and so contrived that the 
slaves are not scene, having on the poop a throne for the 
Doge to sit, when he gos in triumph to espouse the Adriatic 
Here is also a gallery of 200 yards long for cables, and over 
that a magazine of hemp. — Evelyn, 

Venice in the Eighteenth Century 

The rooms of our hotel are spacious and cheerful ; a lofty 
hall, or rather gallery, painted with grotesque in a very good 
style, perfectly clean, floored with a marbled stucco, divides 
the house and admits a refreshing current of air. Several 
windows near the ceiling look into this vast apartment, which 
serves in lieu of a court, and is rendered perfectly luminous 
by a glazed arcade, thrown open to catch the breezes. 
Through it I passed to a balcony which impends over the 
canal, and is twined round with plants forming a green 
festoon springing from two large vases of orange trees placed 
at each end. Here I established myself to enjoy the cool, 
and observe, as well as the dusk would permit, the variety of 
figures shooting by in their gondolas. As night approached, 
innumerable tapers glimmered through the awnings before 
the windows. Every boat had its lantern, and the gondolas 
moving rapidly along were followed by tracks of light, which 
gleamed and played upon the waters. I was gazing at these 
dancing fires when the sounds of music were wafted along 
the canals, and as they grew louder and louder, an illuminated 
barge, filled with musicians, issued from the Rialto, and 
stopping under one of the palaces, began a serenade, which 
stilled every clamour and suspended all conversation in the 
galleries and porticos ; till, rowing slowly away, it was heard 
no more. The gondoliers catching the air, imitated its 
cadences, and were answered by others at a distance, whose 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 121 

voices, echoed by the arch; of the bridge, acquired a plaintive 
and interesting tone. I retired to rest, full of the sound, and 
long after I was asleep, the melody seemed to vibrate in my 
brain. 

The Grand Canal 

It was not five o'clock before I was aroused by a loud din 
of voices and splashing of water under my balcony. Looking 
out, I beheld the grand canal so entirely covered with fruits 
and vegetables, on rafts and in barges, that I could scarcely 
distinguish a wave. Loads of grapes, peaches, and melons 
arrived, and disappeared in an instant, for every vessel was in 
motion; and the crowds of purchasers hurrying from boat 
to boa^ formed one of the liveliest pictures imaginable. 
Amongst the multitudes, I remarked a good many whose 
dress and carriage announced something above the common 
rank ; and upon inquiry I found they were noble Venetians, 
just come from their casinos, and met to refresh themselves 
with fruit, before they retired to sleep for the day. 

Whilst I was observing them, the sun began to colour the 
balustrades of the palaces, and the pure exhilarating air of the 
morning drawing me abroad, I procured a gondola, laid in 
my provision of bread and grapes, and was rowed under the 
Rialto, down the grand canal, to the marble steps of S. Maria 
della Salute, erected by the Senate in performance of a vow 
to the Holy Virgin, who begged off a terrible pestilence in 
163a I gazed, delighted with its superb frontispiece and 
dome, relieved by a clear blue sky. To criticise columns or 
pediments of the different fagades, would be time lost ; since 
one glance upon the worst view that has been taken of them, 
conveys a far better idea than the most elaborate description. 
The great bronze portal opened whilst I was standing on the 
steps which lead to it, and discovered the interior of the 
dome, where 1 expatiated in solitude; no mortal appearing 
except an old priest who trimmed the lamps, and muttered 
a prayer before the high altar, still wrapped in shadows. The 
sunbeams began to strike against the windows of the cupola 
just as I left the church, and was wafted across the waves to 
the spacious platform in front of St. Giorgio Maggiore, by far 
the most perfect and beautiful edifice my eyes ever beheld. 

When my first transport was a little subsided, and I had 
examined the graceful design of each particular ornament, 
and united the just proportion and grand effect of the whole 



122 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

in my mind, I planted my umbrella on the margin of the sea, 
and reclining under its shade, my feet dangUng over the 
waters, viewed the vast range of palaces, of porticos, of 
towers, opening on every side and extending out of sight. 
The Doge's residence and the tall columns at the entrance 
of the place of St. Mark, form, together with the arcades of 
the public library, the lofty Campanile and the cupolas of the 
ducal church, one of the most striking groups of buildings 
that art can boast of. To behold at one glance these stately 
fabrics, so illustrious in the records of former ages, before 
which, in the flourishing times of the republic, so many 
valiant chiefs and princes have landed, loaded with the spoils 
of different nations, was a spectacle I had long and ardently 
desired. I thought of the days of Frederic Barbarossa, when 
looking up the piazza of St Mark, along which he marched 
in solemn procession, to cast himself at the feet of Alexander 
the Third, and pay a tardy homage to St Peter's successor. 
Here were no longer those splendid fleets that attended his 
progress; one solitary galeass was all I beheld, anchored 
opposite the palace of the Doge, and surrounded by crowds 
of gondolas, whose sable hues contrasted strongly with its 
vermilion oars and shining ornaments. A party-coloured 
multitude was continually shifting from one side of the piazza 
to the other; whilst senators and magistrates in long black 
robes were already arriving to fill their respective charges. 

I contemplated the busy scene from my peaceful platform, 
where nothing stirred but aged devotees creeping to their 
devotions; and, whilst I remained thus calm and tranquil, 
heard the distant buzz and rumour of the town. Fortunately 
a length of waves rolled between me and its tumults ; so that 
I ate my grapes, and read Metastasio, undisturbed by ofl&cious* 
ness or curiosity. When the sun became too powerful, I 
entered the nave, and applauded the genius of Psdladio. . . . 

An Excursion 

It was midday, and I begged to be rowed to some woody 
island, where I might dine in shade and tranquillity. My 
gondoliers shot off in an instant ; but, though they went at 
a very rapid rate, I wished to fly faster, and getting into a 
bark with six oars, swept along the waters, soon left the Zecca 
and San Marco behind; and, launching into the plains of 
shining sea, saw turret after turret, and isle after isle, fleeting 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 123 

before me. A pale greenish light ran along the shores of the 
distant continent, whose mountains seemed to catch the 
motion of my boat, and to fly with equal celerity. 

I had not much time to contemplate the beautiful effects 
on the waters — the emerald and purple hues which gleamed 
along their surface. Our prow struck, foaming, against the 
walls of the Carthusian garden, before I recollected where I 
was, or could look attentively around me. Permission being 
obtained, I entered this cool retirement, and putting aside 
with my hands the boughs of fig-trees and pomegranates, 
got under an ancient bay, near which several tall pines lift 
themselves up to the breezes. I listened to the conversation 
they held, with a wind just flown from Greece, and charged, 
as well as I could understand this airy language, with many 
affectionate remembrances from their relations on Mount Ida. 

I reposed amidst bay leaves, fanned by a constant air, till 
it pleased the fathers to send me some provisions, with a 
basket of fruit and wine. Two of them would wait upon 
me, and ask ten thousand questions. ... I, who was deeply 
engaged with the winds, and fancied myself hearing these 
rapid travellers relate Uieir adventures, wished my inter- 
rogators in purgatory, and pleaded ignorance of the Italian 
language. This circumstance extricated me from my difli- 
culties, and procured me a long interval of repose. 

The rustling of the pines had the same effect as the mur- 
murs of other old story-tellers, and I slept undisturbed till the 
people without, in the boat (who wondered not a little, I dare 
say, what the deuce was become of me within), began a sort of 
chorus in parts, full of such plaintive modulation, that I still 
thought myself under the influence of a dream, and, half in 
this world and half in the other, believed, like the heroes of 
Fingal, that I had caught the music of the spirits of the hill. 

When I was thoroughly convinced of the reality of these 
sounds, I moved towards the shore from whence they pro- 
ceeded : a glassy sea lay full before me ; no gale ruffled the ex- 
panse ; every breath was subsided, and I beheld the sun go 
down in all its sacred calm. You have experienced the sen- 
sations this moment inspires ; imagine what they must have 
been in such a scene, and accompanied with a melody so 
simple and pathetic. I stepped into my boat, and instead of 
encouraging the speed of the gondoliers, begged them to 
abate their ardour, and row me lazily home. They complied, 
and we were near an hour reaching the platform before the 
ducal palace. . • . 



124 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



The Piazza 

I looked a moment at the four stately coursers of bronze 
and gold that adorn the chief portal, and then took in at one 
glance the w)iole extent of the piazza, with its towers and 
standards. A more noble assemblage was never exhibited 
by architecture. I envied the good fortune of Petrarch, who 
describes, in one of his letters, a tournament held in this 
princely opening. Many are the festivals which have been 
here celebrated. When Henry the Third left Poland to mount 
the throne of France, he passed through Venice, and found 
the Senate waiting to receive him in their famous square, 
which by means of an awning stretched from the balustrades 
of opposite palaces, was metamorphosed into a vast saloon, 
sparkling with artificial stars^ and spread with the richest car- 
pets of the East. . . . Having enjoyed the general perspective 
of the piazza, I began to enter into particulars, and examine 
the bronze pedestals of the three standards before the great 
church, designed by Sansovino in the true spirit of the antique, 
and covered with relievos, at once bold and el^ant. It is 
also to this celebrated architect we are indebted for the stately 
fagade of the Frocuratie nuove, which forms one side of the 
square, and presents an uninterrupted series of arcades and 
marble columns exquisitely wrought. Opposite this mag- 
nificent range appears another line of palaces, whose archi- 
tecture^ though far removed from the Grecian el^;ance of 
Sansovino, impresses veneration, and completes the pomp of 
the view. 

There is something strange and singular in the Tower or 
Campanile, which rises distinct from the smooth pavement of 
the square, a little to the left as you stand before the chief 
entrance of St. Mark's.^ The design is barbarous and termi- 
nates in uncouth and heavy pyramids ; yet in spite of these 
defects it struck me with awe. A b^utiful building called 
the Logetta, and which serves as a guard-house during the 
convocation of the Grand Council, decorates its base. Nothing 
can be more enriched, more finished than this structure ; whicl^ 
though far from diminutive, is in a manner lost at the foot of 

^ Beckford means "with your back to the chief entrance." The pas- 
sage that follows is, when we consider the recent fall of the Campanile, a 
strangely mistaken prophecy ; but Beckford was no judge of towers, for 
the vast one he erected at Fonthill fell down too. 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 125 

the Campanile. This enormous fabric seems to promise a 
long duration, and will probably exhibit St Mark and his 
Lion to the latest posterity. Both appear in great state 
towards its summit, and have nothing superior, but an arch- 
angel perched on the highest pinnacle, and pointing to the 
skies. The dusk prevented my remarking the various sculp- 
tures with which the Logetta is crowded. 

Crossing the ample space between this graceful edifice and 
the ducal i^dace, I passed through a labyrinth of pillars and 
entered the principal court, of which nothing but the great 
outline was visible at so late an hour. Two reservoirs of 
bronze, richly sculptured, diversify the area. In front a mag- 
nificent flight of steps presents itself, by which the senators 
ascend through vast and solemn corridors, which lead to the in- 
terior of the edifice. . . . The various portals, the strange 
projections ; in short, the stately irregularities of these stately 
piles delighted me beyond idea. . . . This fit of enthusiasm 
was hardly subsided, when I passed the gates of the palace 
into the great square, which received a faint gleam from its 
casinos and palaces, just beginning to be lighted up, and to 
become the resort of pleasure and dissipation. Numbers were 
walking in parties upon the pavement ; some sought the con- 
venient gloom of the porticos with their favourites; others 
were earnestly engaged in conversation, and filled the gay illu- 
minated apartments, where they resorted to drink coffee and 
sorbet with laughter and merriment. A thoughtless, giddy 
transport prevailed ; for, at this hour, anything like restraint 
seems perfectly out of the question ; and however solemn a 
magistrate or senator may appear in the day, at night he lays 
up wig and robe and gravity to sleep together, runs intriguing 
about in his gondola, takes the reigning sultana under his arm, 
and so rambles half over the town, which grows gayer and 
gayer as the day declines. 

The Council of Ten 

. . . This is the tribunal which holds the wealthy nobility in 
continual awe ; before which they appear with trembling and 
terror, and whose summons they dare not disobey. Some- 
times, by way of clemency, it condemns its victims to perpetual 
imprisonment, in close, stifling cells, between the leads and 
beams of the palace ; or, unwilling to spill the blood of a 
fellow-citizen, generally sinks them into dungeons, deep under 



126 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

the canals which wash its foundations j so that, above and 
below, its majesty is contaminated by the abodes of punish- 
ment. What other sovereign could endure the idea of having 
his immediate residence polluted with tears ? or revel in his 
halls, conscious that many of his species were consuming their 
hours in lamentations above his head, and that but a few 
beams separated him from the scene of their tortures ? How- 
ever gaily disposed, could one dance with pleasure on a pave- 
ment, beneath which lie damp and gloomy caverns, whose 
inhabitants waste away by painful degrees, and feel themselves 
whole years a-dying ? . . . Abandoning . . . the sad tenants 
of the piombi to their fate, I left the courts, and stepping into 
my bark was rowed down a canal overshadowed by the lofty 
walls of the palace. Beneath these fatal waters the dungeons 
I have also been speaking of are situated. There the wretches 
lie marking the sound of the oars, and counting the free 
passage of every gondola. Above, a marble bridge, of bold 
majestic architecture, joins the highest part of the prisons to 
the secret galleries of the palace ; from whence criminals are 
conducted over the arch to a cruel and mysterious death. I 
shuddered whilst passing below ; and believe it is not without 
cause, this structure is named Pante dei Sospiri, Horrors and 
dismal prospects haunted my fancy upon my return. I could 
not dine in peace, so strongly was my imagination affected ; 
but, snatching my pencil, I drew chasms and subterraneous 
hollows, the domain of fear and torture, with chains, racks, 
wheels, and dreadful engines in the style of Piranesi.^ . . . 

The Islands 

I am just returned from visiting the isles of Murano,^ 
Torcello, and Mazorbo, distant about five miles from Venice. 
To these amphibious spots the Romans, inhabitants of eastern 

^ This passage is characteristic as showing the sensations soi^ht in 
Venice after Horace Walpole had started romance with the '* Castle of 
Otranto.'' Ruskin has rightly warned us that ** Venice of modem 6ction 
and drama is a thing of yesterday," and that *'no great merchant ever saw 
that Rialto under which the traveller now passes with breathless interest." 
Ruskin, however, omits to add that there was an earlier Rialto. 

' Evelyn likewise went to Murano, which he calls even then " famous 
for the best glasses of the world. . . . 'Tis the white flints which they 
have from Pavia, which they pound and sift exceedingly small and mix 
with ashes made of a sea-weed brought out of Styria, and a white sand, 
that causes this manufacture to excell." 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 127 

Lombardy, fled from the rapine of Attila; and, if we may 
believe Cassiodonis, there was a time when they presented 
a beautiful appearance. Beyond them, on the coast of the 
Lagunes, rose the once populous city of Altina, with its six 
stately gates, which Dandolo mentions. Its neighbourhood 
was scattered with innumerable villas and temples, composing 
alt<^ether a prospect which Martial compares to Baise : 

<< iEmula Baiunis Altini Utton villis." 

But this agreeable scene, like so many others, is passed 
entirely away, and has left nothing, except heaps of stones 
and mis-shapen fragments, to vouch for its former magnificence. 
Two of the islands, Costanziaco and Amiano, that are imagined 
to have contained the bowers and gardens of the Altinatiaps, 
have sunk beneath the waters ; those which remain are scarcely 
worthy to rise above their surface. 

Though I was persuaded little was left to be seen above 
ground, I could not deny myself the imaginary pleasure of 
treading a comer of the earth once so adorned and cultivated ; 
and of walking over the roofs, perhaps, of concealed halls and 
undiscovered palaces. Hiring therefore a peiotte^ we took 
some provisions and music (to us equally necessaries of life), 
and launched into the canal, between St. Michael and Murano. 

The waves coursed each other with violence, and dark 
clouds hung over the grand sweep of northern mountains, 
whilst the west smiled with azure and bright sunshine. 
Thunder rolled awfully at a distance, and those white and 
greyish birds, the harbingers of storms, flitted frequently 
before our bark. For some moments we were in doubt 
whether to proceed ; but as we advanced by a little dome in 
the Isle of St. Michael, shaped like an ancient temple, the 
sky cleared, and the ocean subsiding by degrees, soon pre- 
sented a tranquil expanse, across which we were smoothly 
wafted. Our instruments played several delightful airs, that 
called forth the inhabitants of every island, and held them 
silent, as if spell-bound, on the edge of their quays and 
terraces, till we were out of hearing. 

Leaving Murano far behind, Venice and its world of 
turrets began to sink on the horizon, and the low desert isles 
beyond Mazorbo to lie stretched out before us. Now we 
behold vast wastes of purple flowers, and could distinguish 
the low hum of the insects which hover above them ; such 



128 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

was the silence of the place. Coasting these solitary fields, 
we wound amongst several serpentine canals, bordered by 
gardens of figs and pomegranates, with neat Indian-looking 
inclosures of cane and reed : an aromatic plant clothes the 
margin of the waters, which the people justly dignify with the 
title of marine incense. It proved very serviceable in subdu- 
ing a musky odour, which attacked us the moment we landed, 
and which proceeds from serpents that lurk in the hedges. 
These animals, say the gondoliers, defend immense treasures 
which lie buried under the ruins. Woe to those who attempt 
invading them, or prying too cautiously about 1 

Not choosing to be devoured, we left many a mount of 
fragments unnoticed, and made the best of our way to a little 
green, free from weeds or adders, bounded on one side by a 
miserable shed, decorated with the name of the Podesta's 
residence, and on the other by a circular church. Some 
remains of tolerable antique sculpture are enchased in the 
walls ; and the dome, supported by pillars of a smooth Grecian 
marble, though uncouth and ill-proportioned, impresses a sort 
of veneration, and transports the fancy to the twilight glimmer- 
ing period when it was raised. 

Having surveyed what little was visible, and given as much 
career to our ims^nations as the scene inspired, we walked 
over a soil composed of crumbling bricks and cement to 
the cathedral ; whose arches, turned on the ancient Roman 
principle, convinced us that it dates as high as the sixth or 
seventh century. 

Nothing can be well more fantastic than the ornaments 
of this structure, formed from the ruins of the Pi^n temples 
of Altina, and incrusted with a gilt mosaic, like that which 
covers our Edward the Confessor's tomb. The pavement, 
composed of various precious marbles, is richer and more 
beautiful than one could have expected, in a place where 
every other object savours of the grossest barbarism. At the 
farther end, beyond the altar, appears a semicircular niche, 
with seats like the gradines of a diminutive amphitheatre ; 
above rise the quaint forms of the apostles, in red, blue, green, 
and black mosaic, and in the midst of the goodly group a 
sort of marble chair, cool and penitential enough, where St 
Lorenzo Giustiniani sat to hold a provincial council, the Lord 
knows how long ago! The fount for holy water stands by 
the principal entrance, fronting this curious recess, and seems 
to have belonged to some place of Gentile worship. The 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 129 

figures of honied imps cling round its sides, more devilish, 
more Egyptian, than any I ever beheld.^ The dragons on old 
china are not more whimsical : I longed to have it filled with 
bats' blood, and to have sent it by way of present to the 
Sabbath ; I can assure you it would have done honour to their 
witcheries. The sculpture is not the most delicate, but I 
cannot say a great deal about it, as but little light reaches the 
spot where it is fixed. Indeed, the whole church is far from 
luminous, its windows being narrow and near the roof, with 
shutters composed of blocks of marble, which nothing but 
the last whirlwind, one should think, could move from their 
hinges. 

By the time we had examined every nook and corner of 
this singular edifice, and caught perhaps some small portion 
of sanctity by sitting in San Lorenzo's chair, dinner was pre- 
pared in a neighbouring convent, and the nuns, allured by the 
sound of our flutes and oboes, peeped out of their cells and 
showed themselves by dozens at the grate. Some few agree- 
able faces and interesting eyes enlivened the dark sisterhood ; 
all seemed to catch a gleam of pleasure from the music ; two 
or three of them, probably the last immured, let fall a tear, 
and suffered the recollection of the world and its profane joys 
to interrupt for a moment their sacred tranquillity. 

We stayed till the sun was low, and the breezes blew cool 
from the ocean, on purpose that they might listen as long as 
possible to a harmony which seemed to issue^ as the old 
abbess expressed herself, from the gates of paradise ajar. A 
thousand benedictions consecrated our departure; twilight 
came on just as we entered the bark and rowed out upon the 
waves, agitated by a fresh gale, but fearing nothmg under the 
protection of St. Margherita, whose good wishes our music 
had secured — Beckford. 

Thoughts from Goethe 

It was for no idle fancy that this race fled to these islands ; 
it was no mere whim which impelled those who followed to 
combine with them ; necessity taught them to look for security 

1 The question of the origin of this Byzantine decoration at Torcello is 
a difficult one. The period — which Beckford states correctly as being the 
seventh century— is too early for Loneobardic influences, and the spirit 
(apart from the execution) of the work is not Byzantine. For theories 
thereon see Leader Scott {Cathedral Builders^ p. 73, and ed.). 

I 



130 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

in a highly disadvantageous situation, that afterwards became 
most advantageous, enduing them with talent, when the whole 
northern world was immersed in gloom. Their increase and 
their wealth were a necessary consequence. New dwellings 
arose close against dwellings, rocks took the place of sand 
and marsh, houses sought the sky, being forced like trees 
inclosed in a narrow compass, to seek in height what was 
denied them in breadth. Being niggards of every inch of 
ground, as having been from the very first compressed into a 
narrow compass, they allowed no more room for the streets 
than was just necessary to separate a row of houses from the 
one opposite, and to afford the citizens a narrow passage. 
Moreover, water supplied the place of street, square, and 
promenade. The Venetian was forced to become a new 
creature ; and thus Venice can only be compared with itself. 
The large canal, winding like a serpent, yields to no street in 
the world, and nothing can be put by the side of the space in 
front of St. Mark's Square — I mean that great mirror of water, 
which is encompassed by Venice Proper, in the form of a 
crescent. . . . 

I seated myself in a gondola, and went along the northern 
part of the grand canal, into the lagunes, and then entered the 
Canal della Giudecca, going as far as the square of St Mark. 
Now was I also one of the birds of the Adriatic sea, as every 
Venetian feels himself to be, whilst reclining in his gondola. I 
then thought with due honour of my good father, who knew of 
nothing better than to talk about the things I now witnessed. 
And will it not be so with me likewise? All that surrounds 
me is dignified — a grand venerable work of combined human 
energies, a noble monument, not of a ruler, but of a people. 
And if their lagunes are gradually filling up, if unwholesome 
vapours are floating over the marsh, if their trade is declining 
and their power has sunk, still the great place and the 
essential character will not for a moment be less venerable to 
the observer. Venice succumbs to time, like everything that 
has a phenomenal existence. . . . 

I ascended the tower of St Mark's : as I had lately seen 
from its top the lagunes in their glory at flood time, I wished 
also to see them at low water ; for in order to have a correct 
idea of the place, it is necessary to take in both views. It 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 13^^^ 

looks rather strange to see land all around one, where a little 
before the eye fell upon a mirror of waters. The islands are 
no longer islands — ^merely higher and house-crowned spots in 
one large morass of a gray-greenish colour, and intersected by 
beautiful canals. The marshy parts are overgrown with 
aquatic plants. . . • 

My old gift of seeing the world with the eyes of that artist, 
whose pictures have most recently made an impression on me, 
has occasioned me some peculiar reflections. It is evident 
that the eye forms itself by the objects, which, from youth 
upward, it is accustomed to look upon, and so the Venetian 
artist must see all things in a clearer and brighter light than 
other men. We, whose eye when out of doors falls on a 
dingy soil, which, when not muddy, is dusty, and which, 
always colourless, gives a sombre hue to the reflected rays, or 
at home spend our lives in close, narrow rooms, can never 
attain to such a cheerful view of nature. As I floated down 
the lagoons in the full sunshine,^ and observed how the 
figures of the gondoliers stood out from the bright green 
surface and against the blue sky, as they rowed lightly swaying 
above the sides of the gondola, I caught the best and freshest 
type possible of the Venetian school. . . . 

A delicious day from morning to night! I have been 
towards Chiozza,' as far as Pelestrina, where are the great 
structures, called Murazzi^ which the Republic has caused to 

^ With Goethe's picture of Venice in sunshine may be contrasted 
Shelley's description as follows: " We passed the laguna in the middle of 
the night in a most violent storm of wind, rain, and Hghtning. It was very 
curious to observe the elements above in a state of such tremendous con- 
vulsion, and the sur&ce of the water almost calm ; for these lagunas, though 
6ve miles broad, a space enough in a storm to sink a gondola, are so 
shallow that the boatmen drive the boat along with a pole. The sea-water, 
furiously agitated by the wind, shone with sparkles like stars. Venice, now 
hidden and now disclosed by the driving rain, shone dimly with its 
lights." 

' " There is not much to see in poor little Chioggia,'* writes Mr. W. D 
Howells, " except its people, who, after a few minutes' contemplation, can 
hardly interest any one but the artist*' The French painter. Lipoid 
Robot, who rendered the peasant life of the Italians with much charm, 
remarks of the Chioggia fishermen "ils sont superbes." Their tjrpe is 
certainly different from that of the Venetians, and it has been attnbuted 
to Greek blood. 



_^2 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

be raised against the sea. They are of hewn stone, and 
properly are intended to protect from the fury of the wild 
element the tongue of land called the Lido, which separates 
the lagoons from the sea. 

The lagunes are the work of old nature. First of all, the 
land and tide, the ebb and flow, working against one another, 
and then the gradual sinking of the primal waters, were, 
together, the causes why, at the upper end of the Adriatic, we 
find a pretty extensive range of marshes, which, covered by 
the flood-tide, are partly left bare by the ebb. Art took pos- 
session of the highest spots, and thus arose Venice, formed 
out of a group of a hundred isles, and surrounded by hundreds 
more. Moreover, at an incredible expense of money and 
labour, deep canals have been dug through the marshes, in 
order that at the time of high water, ships of war might pass 
to the chief points. What human industry and wit contrived 
and executed of old, skill and industry must now keep up. 
The Lido, a long narrow strip of land, separates the k^unes 
from the sea, which can enter only at two points — at the 
castle and at the opposite end near Chiozza. The tide flows 
in usually twice a day, and with the ebb again carries out the 
waters twice, and always by the same channel and in the same 
direction. The flood covers the lower parts of the morass, 
but leaves the higher, if not dry, yet visible. 

The case would be quite altered were the sea to make new 
ways for itself, to attack the tongue of land and flow in 
and out wherever it chose. Not to mention that the little 
villages on the Lido, Pelestrina, viz., S. Peter's and others, 
would be overwhelmed, the canals of communication would 
be choked up, and while the water involved all in ruin, the 
Lido would be changed into an island, and the islands which 
now lie behind it be converted into necks and tongues of land. 
To guard against this it was necessary to protect the Lido as 
far as possible, lest the furious element should capriciously 
attack and overthrow what man had already taken possession 
of, and with a certain end and purpose given shape and 
use together. — Goethe, 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF. THE ADRIATIC i^j^/ 

VENETIAN LIFE 
The Old FsiisT of the Ascension^ 

I happened to be at Venice thrice, at the great sea triumph, 
or feast of the Ascension, which was performed thus. About 
our eight in the morning, the senators in their scarlet robes 
meet at the Doge's palace, and there taking him up, they walk 
with him processionally unto the shore, where the Bucentoro 
lyes waiting them ; the Pope*s Nuncio being upon his right 
hand, and the Patriarch of Venice on his left hand. Then 
ascending into the Bucentoro, by a handsome bridge thrown 
out to the shore, the Doge takes his place, and the senators 
sit round about the galley as they can, to the number of two 
or three hundred The Senate being placed, the anchor is 
weighed, and the slaves being warned by the capitain*s whistle 
and the sound of trumpets, begin to strike all at once with 
their oars and to make the Bucentoro march as gravely upon 
the water, as if she also went upon cioppini. 

Thus they steer for two miles upon the Laguna, while the 
musick plays, and sings Epithalmiums all the way long, and 
makes Neptune jealous to hear Hymen called upon in his 
dominions. Round about the Bucentoro flock a world of 
pioltas and gondolas, richly covered overhead with sumptuous 
canopies of silks and rich stuffs, and rowed by watermen in 
rich liveries, as well as the trumpeters. Thus foreign em- 
bassadors, divers noblemen of the country and strangers of 
condition wait upon the Doge's galley all the way long, both 
coming and going. At last the Doge being arrived at the 
appointed place, throws a ring into the sea, without any other 
ceremony,' than by sa3dng, Desponsamus te^ Mare^ in signum 
perpetui dominii: and so returns to the church of S. Nicolas in 
Lio (an island hard by) where he assists at high mass with the 
Senate. This done, he returns home again in the same state \ 
and invites those that accompanied him in his galley to dinner 
in his palace : the preparations of which dinner we saw before 

^ The Wedding of the Adrifttic— instituted in 997 — ^was kept up to the 
declining days of the Republic, and Archenholts wrote that " in the year 
1775 the number of those who arrived on the eve of Ascension day 
amounted to 42,480 exclusive of the preceding days." He adds that the 
ceremonial was only performed in fedr weather. 

' Saint-Didier says that flowers and odoriferous herba are thrown on 
the sea " to orown the bride." 



THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

the Doge was got home. This ceremony of marrying the sea, 
as they call it, is ancient : and performed yearly in memory of 
the grant of Pope Alexander the Third, who being restored by 
the Venetians unto his seat again, granted them power over 
the Adriatick sea, as a man hath power over his wife ; and the 
Venetians to keep this possession, make every year this watery 
cavalcata, I confess, the sight is stately, and a poet would 
presently conceive that Neptune himself were going to be 
married to some Nereide. — Lassels. 

Seventeenth-Century Costume 

Methought, when I came here from France to Venice I 
came from boyes to men, for here I saw the handsomest, the 
most sightly, the most proper and grave men that ever I saw 
anywhere else. They weare always in the towne (I speake of 
the noblemen) a long black gowne, a black cap knit with an 
edgeing of black wooll about it, like a fringe ; an ancient and 
manly weare, which makes them look like Senators. Their 
hair is generally the best I ever saw anywhere; these little 
caps not pressing it down as our hats do, and periwigs are 
here forbid. Under their long gownes (which fly open before) 
they have handsome black suites of rich stuffs with stockins 
and garters and Spanish leather shoes neatly made. In a 
word, I never saw so many proper men together, nor so wise, 
as I saw dayly there walking upon the PiazsM o/S. Mark, I 
may boldly say, that I saw there five hundred gentlemen 
walking together every day, everyone of which was able to 
play the Embassador in any Prince's court of Europe. But 
the misery is that we strangers cannot walk there with them 
and talk with them but must keep out of their way and stand 
aloof off. The reason is this : this State (as all Republicks are) 
being hugely gealous of her liberty and preservation, forbids 
her Noblemen and Senators to converse with Forrain Em- 
bassadors, or any man that either is an actual servant or 
follower of an Embassador, or hath any the least relation to 
any Prince's Agent without expresse leave; and this upon 
payne of being suspected as a Traitor and condignly 
punished. ... 

As for the women here, they would gladly get the same 
reputation that their husbands have of being tall and hand- 
some ; but they overdo it with their horrible doppini or high 
shoes, which I have often seen to be a full half yard high. 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 135 

I confesse I wondered at first to see women go upon stilts and 
appear taller by the head than any man and not to be able to 
go any whither without resting their hands upon the shoulders 
of two grave matrons that usher them ; but at least I perceived 
that it was good policy, and a pretty ingenious way either to 
clog women at home by such heavy shoes (as the Egyptians 
kept their wives at home by allowing them no shoes at all) or 
at least to make them not able to go either farre or alone, or 
invisibly. As for the young ladyes of this towne that are 
not marryed, they are never seen abroad, but masked liked 
Moscarades in a strange disguise, at the Fair time and other 
publick solemnities or shows. — Lassels, 

A Play-house in 1608 

I was at one of their play-houses where I saw a comedy 
acted. The house is very beggarly and base in comparison 
of our stately play-houses in England: neither can their 
actors compare with us for apparel, shows and music. Here 
I observed certain things that I never saw before. For I 
saw women act, a thing that I never saw before, though I 
have heard that it hath been sometimes used in London, 
and they performed it with as good a grace, action, gesture, 
and whatsoever convenient for a player, as ever I saw any 
masculine actor. Also their noble and famous courtesans 
came to this comedy, but so disguised, that a man cannot 
perceive them. For they wore double masks upon their 
faces, to the end they might not be seen : one reaching from 
the top of their forehead to their chin and under their neck ; 
another with twiskes of downy or woolly stuff covering their 
noses. And as for their necks round about, they were so 
covered and wrapped with cobweb lawn and other things, 
that no part of their skin could be discerned. Upon their 
heads they wore little black felt caps very like to those of the 
clarissimoes. They were so graced that they sat on high 
alone by themselves in the best room of all die play-house. 
If any man should be so resolute to unmask one of them 
but in merriment only to see their faces, it is said that were 
he never so noble or worthy a personage, he should be cut 
in pieces before he should come forth of the roome, especially 
if he were a stranger. — Coryatt. 



136 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



The Venetian Blondes 

All the women of Venice every Saturday in the afternoon 
do use to anoint their hair with oil, or some other drugs, to 
the end to make it look fair, that is, whitish. For that colour 
is most affected of the Venetian dames and lasses. And in 
this manner they do it: first they put on a reeden hat, 
without any crown at all, but brims of exceeding breadth 
and largeness: then they sit in some sun-shining place in 
a chamber or some other secret room, where having a 
looking glass before them they sophisticate and dye their 
hair with the foresaid drugs, and after cast it back round 
upon the brims of the hat, till it be thoroughly dried with 
the heat of the sun : and last of all they curl it up in curious 
locks with a frisling or crisping pin of iron, which we call 
in Latin calamistrum^ the top whereof on both sides above 
the forehead is accuminated in two peaks. That this is true 
I know by my own experience. For it was my chance one 
day when I was in Venice, to stand by an Englishman's 
wife, who was a Venetian woman born : a favour not accorded 
to every stranger. — Coryatt. 

A Gambling Hell in 1680 

When night comes and the amusements of the Piazza are 
ended, those of the gambling houses begin. The places 
where the Venetian nobility take the bank against all comers 
are called ridotti: there are several of them where the noble- 
men chiefly play during the whole year, but that which is 
specially used during the Carnival is a house near the Piazza 
where the world goes after the hour of the promenade. It 
is difficult to obtain an entrance for those who are not 
masked, the mask^ being the privilege of the Venetian 
nobility ; but a false nose or beard^ or anything which makes 
a disguise is enough — if the wearer does not wish to play 
he can take it off when he is inside the rooms. These are 
a hall and several smaller rooms with a number of hanging 
chandeliers, and many tables arranged all round, at each of 

^ " The use of the mask," writes Montesquiou later, " is not a disguise 
but an incoenito. People change their dress but seldom and everybody 
is recognised. Even when the Papal Nuncio wore a mask, a manlknelt 
to him and asked for his benediction." 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 137 

which a nobleman sits with his back to the wall, and oflfering 
play. Each has before him several packs of cards, a heap 
of gold pieces, another of silver ducats, and two torches 
which are ready to be held up to anyone who wishes to 
play, whether masked nobleman or a private gentleman. The 
crowd is so great that it is not easy to pass from room to 
room, and yet there is a greater silence than in any church. 
. . • The odmness and phlegm with which vast sums are 
won and lost, is so extraordinary, that one might call the 
place a school, established to teach deportment of moderation 
in good as well as evil fortune, instead of a place of amuse- 
ment . . . Ladies go frequently to play in the ridotti. — St. 
DidUr. 

The Carnival 

We arrived here about three weeks ago. The Camavall 
took up ten days of it, where we saw what in Scotland would 
be thought downright madness; everybody is in mask, a 
thing of tafeta, called a bahul, is put on the head, which 
covers one's face to the nose. The upper part is covered by 
people of quality with a white mask like what the ladys used 
to tye on with a chin-cloak long ago. The bahul hangs 
down about the shoulders a hand-breadth below the top of 
the shoulders. A Venetian nobleman's gown, an Armenian 
long garment furred, a vest called a Hongrois, which reaches 
to the knee, furred, or a plain scarlet, is what grave people 
wear ; others are cloathed as they please, some like doctors 
of law, others with peacocks' trains and hatts as broad as 
six hatts, others as harlequins, ladys as country girls, and 
some as oddly as one's wildest dreams could represent them ; 
en fin^ no extravagant conceipt can outdo what one sees on 
St Mark's Place. Sometimes a company of noblemen and 
ladys dress themselves up like country people and dance 
torlanos in the open place, which is the frolick I saw that I 
like the best, for they dance scurvily when they pretend to 
French or English dances (for here they dance country 
dances at aU their balls). A torlano is somewhat like the 
way our Highlanders dance, but the women do it much 
more* prettily than the men. Sometimes you shall see a 
young pair of eyes with a hugh nose and a vast beard playing 
on a guitar and acting like a mountebank. On one hand you 
shall hear a dispute in physick, turning all into ridiculous; 
on the other one, on a subject of law ; some dialogues of 



138 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

mere witt, and things said that are surprising enough. But 
on the whole matter St. Mark's Place is like a throng of 
fooUs. On Shrove Thursday a bull is beheaded by a butcher 
chosen by his fellows for that feat, and if he does it well in 
presence of the Doge and all the Senate is treated in 
senerissimoy feasted, and has the best musick at supper that 
can be. He I saw do it did it cleverly at one blow, and 
did not seem to strain neither. The Doge's guards con- 
ducted him to and from the' place, and a firework is sett on 
fire in fair daylight. A fellow is drawn up on a flying rope, 
such as mountebanks use, in a ship about the bigness of a 
gondola (which is a very long small boat), and all the way 
he fires gunns and throws grenads amongst the people, but 
they are only paper ones. Then he flyes down from the top 
of St. Mark's steple, where he had left his gondola.— /ium^x. 
Earl of Perth. 

The Song of the Gondoliers^ 

This evening I bespoke the celebrated song of the mariners, 
who chaunt Tasso and Ariosto to melodies of their own. This 
must actually be ordered, as it is not to be heard as a thing 
of course, but rather belongs to the half forgotten traditions 
of former times. I entered a gondola by moonlight, with one 
singer before and the other behind me. They sing their song^ 
taking up the verses alternately. The melody, which we know 
through Rousseau, is of a middle kind, between choral and 
recitative, maintaining throughout the same cadence, without 
any fixed time. The modulation is also uniform, only varying 
with a sort of declamation both tone and measure, according 
to the subject of the verse. But the spirit — ^the life of it, is 
as follows : — 

Without inquiring into the construction of the melody, 
suffice it to say that it is admirably suited to that easy class 
of people, who, always humming something or other to them- 
selves, adapt such tunes to any little poem they know by 
heart 

Sitting on the shore of an island, on the bank of a canal, or 
on the side of a boat, a gondolier will sing away with » loud 
penetrating voice — the multitude admire force above every- 
thing — anxious only to be heard as far as possible. Over the 

^ *' The well-known sone of the |;ondoliers, of alternate stanzas from 
Tasso's * Jerusalem,' has died with the mdependence of Venice." — ffobhouse. 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 139 

silent miiTor it travels far. Another in the distance, who is 
acquainted with the melody and knows the words, takes it up 
and answers with the next verse, and then the first replies, so 
that the one is as it were the echo of the other. The song 
continues through whole nights and is kept up without fatigue. 
The further the singers are from each other, the more touching 
sounds the strain. The best place for the listener is halfway 
between the two. 

In order to let me hear it, they landed on the bank of the 
Giudecca, and took up different positions by the canal. I 
walked backwards and forwards between them, so as to leave 
the one whose turn it was to sing, and to join the one who 
had just left off. Then it was that the effect of the strain 
first opened upon me. As a voice from the distance it sounds 
in the highest degree strange — ^as a lament without sadness : 
it has an incredible effect, and is moving even to tears. I 
ascribed this to my own state of mind, but my old boatsman 
said : " h singolare, como quel canto intenerisce, e molto pih 
quando h pi^ ben cantato." He wished that I could hear 
the women of the Lido, especially those of Malamocco and 
Pelestrina. These also, he told me, chaunted Tasso and 
Ariosto to the same or similar melodies. He went on : ''in 
the evening, while their husbands are on the sea fishing, they 
are accustomed to sit on the beach, and with shrill, penetrating 
voice to make these strains resound, until they catch from the 
distance the voices of their partners, and in this way they 
keep up a communicarion with them." Is not that beautiful? 
and yet, it is very possible that one who heard them close by, 
would take little pleasure in such tones which have to vie 
with the waves of the sea. Human, however, and true be- 
comes the song in this way : thus is life given to the melody, 
on whose dead elements we should otherwise have been sadly 
puzzled. It is the song of one solitary, singing at a distance, 
in the hope that another of kindred feelings and sentiments 
may hear and answer. — Croethe. 

Gondolas 

Gondolas themselves are things of a most romantic and 
picturesque appearance ; I can only compare them to moths 
of which a coffin might have been the chrysalis. They are 
hung with black, and painted black, and carpeted with grey ; 
they curl at the prow and stem, and at the former there is a 



140 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

nondescript beak of shining steel, which glitters at the end of 
its long black mass. — SheUey, 

The Modern Gondolier 

I have had plenty of opportunities of seeing my friends 
the gondoliers, both in their own homes and in my apartment 
Several have entertained me at their mid-day meal of fried 
fish and amber-coloured polenta. These repasts were always 
cooked with scrupulous cleanliness, and served upon a table 
covered with coarse linen. The polenta is turned out upon 
a wooden platter, and cut with a string called lasso. You 
take a large slice of it on the palm of the left hand, and break 
it with the fingers of the right. Wholesome red wine of the 
Paduan district and good white bread were never wanting. 
The rooms in which we met to eat looked out on narrow lanes 
or over pergolas of yellowing vines. Their white-washed walls 
were hung with photographs of friends and foreigners, many 
of them souvenirs from English or American employers. The 
men in broad black hats and lilac shirts sat round the table, 
girt with the red waist-wrapper, or fascia^ which marks the 
ancient faction of the Castellani. The odier faction, called 
Nicolotti, are distinguished by a black cusisa. The quarters 
of the town are divided unequally and irregularly into these 
two parties. What was once a formidable rivalry between 
two sections of the Venetian populace still survives in chal- 
lenges to strength and skill upon the water. ... On all these 
occasions I have found these gondoliers the same sympathetic, 
industrious, deeply aflfectionate folk. They live in many 
respects a hard and precarious life. The winter in particular 
is a time of anxiety, and sometimes of privation, even to the 
well-to-do among them. ... On the other hand, their life 
has never been so lazy as to reduce them to the scarcity of 
the traditional Neapolitan lazzaronl— -/. A. Sytnonds. 

A Venetian Funeral 

A church opens its doors; and there issues forth a red 
procession escorting a red bier which is placed on a red 
gondola. In Venice mourning wears purple. This is a 
fimeral passing to the cemetery in the island on the way 
to Murano. The priests, the bearers, the candles, and the 
ceremonial ornaments are m the first gondola. Go and sleep, 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 141 

O dead, beneath the sand impregnated with sea-salt, under 
the shadow of an iron cross brushed by the wing of the sea- 
gull ; for the bones of a Venetian, earth would be too heavy 
a shroud — ThiaphiU GauHer. 



ARCHITECTURE AND ART 
San Marco (The Exterior) 

Like the mosque of Cordova, which it resembles in more 
respects than one, the basilica of Saint Mark has more extent 
than height, differing from most Gothic churches, which spring 
skyward with their multitude of pointed arches and spires. 
The grand cupola in the centre is only no feet in height, 
and San Marco has preserved the character of primitive 
Christianity, which began, as soon as it had come out of the 
catacombs, to build its churches without any formulas of art 
on the ruins of paganism. Begun vd 979, under the doge 
Pietro Orseolo, the basilica was slowly completed, borrowing 
fresh riches and new beauty from each age, and, strange as 
it may seem to our conception of harmony, this collection 
of columns, capitals, bas-reliefs, enamels and mosaics, this 
mingling of styles so varying as the Greek, Roman, Byzantine, 
Arabic and Gothic, produces a perfect whole. . . • 



The Fa9ade towards the Piazza has five porches opening 
into the church, and two leading to lateral galleries outside 
it: in all, seven openings, three on each side of the great 
central porch. The principal porch is marked by two groups 
of four columns of porphyry and verde antique on the first 
stages and of six on the second, supporting the lower line 
of the semi-circle ; the other porches have only two columns 
also at each stage. Here we only refer to the fa9ade itself, for 
the breadth of the porches is ornamented ivith cipoline, jasper 
and pentelic marbles, and other precious substances. We 
may now examine in detail the mosaics and other ornaments 
of this marvellous fa9ade. Beginning with the first arcade 
towards the sea, we observe, above a square doorway enclosed 
by a grille, a Byzantine plate in black and gold in the form 
of a reliquary, with two angels caught up into the bands of 



142 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

the ogive. Higher up, in the tympanum of the semi-circle, 
we see a large mosaic on a golden ground, representing the 
removal of the body of St Mark from the crypts of Alexandria 
and its being smuggled through the Turkish customs-house 
between two rows of pigs, the unclean beasts which the 
Mussulmans will not touch except at the cost of ablutions 
without number. The heathens turn away with gestures of 
disgust, foolishly allowing the body of the apostle to be 
carried away. This mosaic was executed from the cartoons 
of Pietro Vecchia about 1650. In the curve of the moulding 
of the arch on the right, is let in an ancient bas-relief, 
Hercules bearing on his shoulders the boar of Erymanthus 
and spuming the Lemean hydra ; in that to the spectator's 
left, by one the contrasts often met with in St Mark's, we 
see the angel Gabriel standing winged, haloed and shod, 
leaning on his lance: a curious companion to the son of 
Jupiter and Alcmena! The second arcade has a door that 
is not in symmetry with the other ; it is topped by a window 
with three ogives, in which are designed two quatrefoils, and 
which are surrounded by a cordon of enamels. The mosaic 
of the tympanum, also on a ground of gold like all the mosaics 
of St Mark's, pourtrays the arrival of the apostle's body at 
Venice, where it is lowered from the ship and received by the 
clergy and notables of the town ; the ship is shewn and the 
baskets of osier too in which the relics were placed. The 
mosaic is again by Pietro Vecchia. A seated St. Demetrius, 
drawing his sword half out of the scabbard, with a wild 
appearance of belonging to the latest days of the Empire, 
continues the line of varying bas-reliefs which are let into the 
fa9ade of the basilica as though it were a museum. 

We come now to the central door, the grand porch whose 
contour touches the balustrade of marble which runs above 
the other arcades ; it is, as it should be, the richest and most 
ornate, not only for the mass of pillars of ancient marble which 
support and give it grandeur, but also for three mouldings 
which, two within and one without, firmly design the arch by 
their projection. These three flanges of sculptured ornament, 
carved and undercut with marvellous patience, are made up 
of a bushy spiral of leaves, foliage, flowers, fruit, birds, angels, 
saints, figures and monsters of all kinds; in the last flsmge 
the arab^ques spring from the hands of two statues seated 
at each end of the cordon. The door, adorned with panels of 
bronze decorated with muzzles of fantastic animals, has for 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 143 

its main ornament a niche with gilded shutters, trellised and 
opened in the manner of a triptych or cabinet. A Last 
Judgment of considerable size is at the top of the arcade. 
The composition of it was by Antonio Zanchi, and it was 
translated into mosaic by Pietro Spagna. The work was of 
about the year 1680 ; it was restored in 1838 from the original 
design. The Christ, who is not unlike that of Michael Angelo 
in the Sistine Chapel, is separating the good from the evil ; 
near him he has his divine mother and his well-beloved 
disciple, St. John. They appear to intercede with him for 
the sinners, while he leans on a cross upheld by an angel 
with reverent care. Other angels blow on trumpets with 
bulged cheeks, to awake those who sleep too long in their 
tombs. It is above this porch, on the gallery which runs 
round the church that are placed, with ancient pillars for 
their socles, the celebrated horses which temporarily adorned 
Napoleon's triumphal arch in the Place du Carrousel. 
Opinions are divided as to their place of origin : some think 
the horses Roman work of the time of Nero, taken to Con- 
stantinople in the fourth century; others, that they came 
from Chios, being brought by order of Theodosius to the 
hippodrome of Constantinople in the fifth century. It is 
certain that they are antique, and that in 1 205, Marino Zeno, 
then podesti at Constantinople, had them removed from the 
hippodrome and gave them to Venice The horses are life- 
size, somewhat on their haunches, the manes straight and 
cut like those' of the horses on the frieze of the Parthenon. 
They are among the finest relics of antiquity ; with the rare 
quality of being true to nature and yet classical. The move- 
ment shews that they were harnessed to a triumphal car. The 
material is not less precious than the form, for they are said 
to be made of Corinthian brass, and the green patina is to be 
seen where the coat of gilt is worn away by time. 

II 

The fourth porch has the same interior arrangement as the 
second The tympanum of the arcade is filled by a mosaic 
showing the d<^e, the senate, and the patricians of Venice 
coming to worship the body of St Mark laid on a bier and 
covered by a brilliant blue drapery; in a comer lurks a group 
of Turks who shew their discomfiture at having allowed such 
a treasure to be taken from them. This mosaic is one of the 



T44 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

most striking in colour : it was executed by Leopoldo del 
Pozzo, after a design by Sebastiano Rizzi in 1728. It is very 
beautiful, the senator in the purple robe being as fine as any- 
thing by Titian. In the curve of the archivolt near to the big 
doorway is a St George in the Greek-Byzantine style, and 
near, an angel or saint unknowa The fifth porch is one of 
the most curious. The lower portion is filled by five little 
windows with gilt trellises, cut in various ways. Above, the 
four symbolic forms in gilt-bronze — here as fantastic in form 
as Japanese fancies — the ox, lion, eagle, and angel look at 
each other obliquely, while a strange horseman, on a steed 
which may be meant either for P^asus or the white horse of 
the Apocalypse, prances between two golden rosaces. Above 
this is a mosaic, the work of an unknown artist of the twelfth 
century, shewing a picture of great interest : the appearance of 
the basilica erected to receive the relics of St. Mark, as it was 
eight hundred years ago. The domes, of which only three are 
seen owing to the perspective, and the porches of the facade 
have much the same form as they have to-day : the horses, 
just then come from Constantinople, are already in place ; the 
central arcade has a huge Byzantine Christ with a Greek 
monogram, and the others are filled with rosaces, foliation, and 
arabesques. The body of the saint, borne on the shoulders of 
prelates and bishops, shews the face in profile as it is carried 
into the church consecrated to it. A crowd of citizens and of 
women is collected for the ceremony ; the latter dressed in 
the long bejewelled gowns which remind us of the dress of 
the Greek Empresses. The line of varied bas-reliefs, whose 
subjects we have described, is ended on this side by a Hercules 
carrying the boar of Calydon, and seeming to threaten a small 
grotesque figure half lost in a tub. Beneath this bas-relief 
there are two lions rampant, and lower still an antique figure 
in full relief holds a deflected amphora on its shoulder. 
The idea, which chance may have suggested, is happily 
repeated in the remainder of the building. The row of 
porches forming the first storey of the fa9ade is bordered by a 
balustrade of white marble; the second row contains five 
arches ; the centre one is larger than the others, its arch is 
seen behind the horses of Lysippus, and has no mosaic, but is 
glazed with round glass and ornamented with four antique 
pillars. Six bell-turrets, composed of four detached columns 
which make a niche for the statue of the evangelist and of a 
pinnacle surrounded by a golden crown and topped by a vane, 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 14S 

separate the arches, whose tympanum is in a semi-circle, and 
whose ribs diminish into the ogival point. The four subjects 
of the mosaics represent the Ascension, the Resurrection, 
Jesus bringing Adam and Eve and the Patriarchs out of 
Limbo, and the Descent from the Cross of Luigi Gaetano, 
after Maffeo Verona's cartoons of 161 7. In the curve of the 
arcades are placed nude figures of slaves, life-size, bearing on 
their shoulders urns and amphoras, bait down as if they 
wished to pour water taken from a spring into a basin ; 
these amphoras are hollowed for the spouts, and the slaves 
themselves are the gargoyles. They are placed in many 
attitudes^ and are superb in form. 

Ill 

In the ogival point of the big central window, on a dark- 
blue background gemmed with stars, is the lion of St Mark, 
gilded, with a halo and outstretched wing, and with a claw on 
the gospel opened at the passage : Pax Hbi^ Marce^ evangelista 
meus. The lion has a formidable, an apocalyptic expression, 
and looks over the sea like a watchful dragon; above this 
S3rmbolism representing the evangelist is a St. Mark, here in 
human form, erect on the gable-end^ and seeming to receive 
the homage of the neighbouring statues. These five arcades 
are festooned in the ogival ribs with big volutes, leafage and 
rich foliation cut acanthus-wise, and having for blossom an 
angel or saintly personage in adoration. On each gable stands 
a statue, St John, St George, St Theodore, and St Michael, 
with a halo in the form of a hat on their heads. At each end 
of the balustrade there are two masts painted red, on which 
flags are hoisted for Sundays and holidays ; in a comer of the 
edMce, towards the Campanile, is placed a head of purple 
porphyry. The lateral facade, towards the Piazzetta and 
bordering on the Ducal Palace, deserves attention. If, not- 
withstanding every care and the most minute accuracy, this 
description seems confused, we are not to be blamed, for it is 
difficult precisely to describe a hybrid, composite, and varying 
edifice like San Marco. From the Bartolomeo door which 
leads to the Giant's Staircase in the court of the Palace of 
the Doges, the basilica shows a wall covered with marble 
tablets, and antique, Byzantine, or mediseval bas-reliefs, with 
birds, griffins, hybrids ; animals of all kinds, such as lions and 
wild b^sts pursuing hares ; children half-devoured by dragons 



146 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

like the Milanese eagle, and holding in their hands scrolls with 
half-worn inscriptions. Among the curiosities of this side are 
porphyry figures in two pairs, each pair identical in every 
particular ; they are warriors with almost the dress of the 
Crusaders who took Jerusalem, and are sculptured in the most 
primitive and barbarous manner, like the most artless bas- 
reliefs. These men of porphyry, each with a hand on the hilt 
of his sword, seem to be agreeing on some desperate deter- 
mination ; and the vulgar opinion is that they are Harmodius 
and Aristogeiton making ready to kill the tyrant Hipparchus. 
The learned Cavaliere Mustoxidi takes them to be the four 
brothers Anemuria, who conspired against Alexis Comnenus, 
the Emperor of the East They might very well be the four 
sons of Aymon : we certainly incline to this opinion. Some 
take the porphyry figures to be two pairs of Ssuacen robbers, 
who, having plotted to steal the treasure of St. Mark's, 
poisoned each other so as to have the whole booty. On this 
side are set up the two big pillars taken from the church of 
Saint-Saba at St. John of Acre : they are covered with fantastic 
ornaments and inscriptions in Cufic characters, which are 
somewhat strange and undecipherable. A little fiirther on, at 
the angle of the basilica, there is a very laige block of porphyry 
in the shape of a column's stump, with a socle and capital of 
white marble; it used to be used by way of a pillory for 
bankrupts. This custom has fallen into desuetude; never- 
theless, it is not used as a seat, and the Venetians, prompt to 
rest on the first socle or staircase, seem to fight shy of it A door 
of bronze leading to the chapel of the Baptistery, occupies the 
lower part of the first arcade ; it has for impost a window with 
small columns, with the ogival point and four-leaved trefoils ; 
two shields of light-hued enamel, one with a cross on it, and 
a rosace worked like fishes' scales, complete the decoration of 
the tympanum. A mosaic of St. Vitus in a niche, and an 
evangelist holding a book and a pen are designed on the 
lower points of the arcade. A small pediment in Renaissance 
style, and panels of white, broken by a green cross, fill the 
empty space of the second porch. A bench in red brocatella 
of Verona, at the foot of this species of fa9ade in the rough, 
offers a comfortable seat to the idler or dreamer, who, his feet 
in the sun, and his head in the shade — ^after Zafari's recipe for 
comfort — thinks of nothing or of everything, while he gazes at 
the loggia of Sansovino by the base of the Campanile, or the 
blue sea, or the isle of St. George at the end of the Piazzetta. 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 147 

On the capital of verde antique which supports this arcade, 
crouch two apocalyptic monsters, the extravagant forms of 
which St John caught a glimpse in the hallucinations of the 
island of Patmos : one, with a bent beak like that of an eagle, 
holds a little heifer with limbs drawn in under it ; the other, 
part lion, part griffin, has its claws in the body of a child 
turned sideways ; one of the daws seems to tear the eye of the 
victim. The angle is formed by a thick-set column which is 
detached by and carries a bundle of five small columns on its 
broad capital. On the ceiling of the open arch (covered with 
slabs of various marble) there is an eagle in mosaic holding a 
book in its dutch. The second storey has on the gables of 
the arcades two finely conceived statues representing the 
cardinal virtues : Force caressing a pet lion leaping up like a 
good-humoured dog, and Fortitude holding a sword with the 
mien of a Bradamante. The sacristan prefers to call one of 
them Venice, and the other the Queen of Sheba. Amid the 
riches presented to the passer-by in this angle of the basilica, 
are encrusted malachite, varied enamels ; two little angels in 
mosaic unfolding a doth with the impression of the Saviour ; 
a tall barbaric Madonna showing her child to the adoration 
of the faithful, and with two lamps on each side, which are lit 
every night ; a bas-relief of peacocks spreading their £ans, 
this perhaps a relic of some ancient temple of Juno ; a 
St. Christopher with his burden ; and capitals of the most 
charming fancy joined in a bouquet. Such are the riches 
shown by this side of the basilica to those passing in the 
Piazzetta. 

IV 

The other lateral side is towards a small square, which is a 
continuation of the Piazza. At the entrance to this square 
are crouching two lions of red marble, cousins-german to 
those of the Alhambra by reason of the artless fancy of the 
forms and the grotesque fierceness of their snouts and manes. 
They have been worn to perfect smoothness, for since time im- 
memorial the small ne'er-do-weels of the town spend their time 
in climbing on them and playing horses. At the end of the 
square rises the palace of the patriarch of Venice; it is of 
recent date, and would be an unpleasant sight, were it not lost 
in the shadow of St Mark's. On the other side of the square 
is the fa9ade of the church of St Basso. This side of the 
Basilica has less ornament than the other, but it is crowded 



148 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

with discs, mosaics and enamels, frames, arabesques of all 
times and schools, birds, peacocks, weird eagles like the 
alerions and martlets of heraldry. The lion of St. Mark's 
also plays his part in this symbolic menagerie; the empty 
space of the porches is filled either with small windows sur- 
rounded by palms and arabesques, or by incrustations of 
antique or Byzantine fragments; in these medallions are 
sculptured men and animals fighting. If we searched care- 
fully, we might find the bull being killed by the priest as a 
sacrifice to Mithras, for no religion is lacking in this innocently 
Pantheistic temple. At any rate, here is Ceres looking for 
her lost child, a lighted pine-torch in each hand ; she is in a 
chariot drawn by two rearing dragons. We might call it a 
Hindu idol, so archaic is the style and so like the sculptures 
of Persepolis : it makes a curious pendant to Abraham's Sacri- 
fice in bas-relief, a work as early as the earliest primitive 
Christian art Another bas-relief shows two flocks of sheep, 
six on each side, looking at a throne and separated by two 
palm-branches; this gave us matter for thought, but with 
every desire to fathom its meaning, we could not decipher the 
supposedly explanatory inscription in Gothic or Greek letters. 
The sheep may possibly be kine, and then the subject of the 
bas-relief would be the dream of Pharaoh. An antique frag- 
ment, let into the wall a little further on, shows one initiated 
in the mysteries of Eleusis placing a crown on the mystic 
palm ; but this does not prevent a St. George filling the archi- 
volt on a throne of Greek design, and the four evangelists, 
Mark, John, Luke, and Matthew also continue their way on 
the tympanum, the gables, and ceilings, either alone or accom- 
panied by symbolic animals. The porch which opens in the 
arm of the cross formed by the basilica is surrounded by a 
broad band, hollowed, undercut, and chiselled, a charming 
garland of foliage, leafage, and angels ; a sweet Virgin forms 
the key of the arch ; above the door an ogive curves in the 
shape of a heart, sloping at the base like those of the mosque 
of Cordova : this is an Arabian fancy which needs and receives 
the counteraction of a charming Nativity composed with the 
most Christian unction. Beyond, we can only mention a St. 
Christopher ; apostles and angels in a framework of white and 
red marble in chequers ; and a beautiful statue of Our Lady 
seen full-face, placed between two adoring angels and opening 
her hands as if to bless. — Tfikophile Gautier. 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 149 



San Marco (the Interior) 

The basilica of St. Mark's, as if it were an ancient temple, 
has an atrium which in itself would be a church elsewhere, 
and which deserves particular attention. After passing the 
portal, we may first look at a slab of red marble which breaks 
the complicated design of the pavement ; it marks the spot 
where the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa knelt before Alex- 
ander III., saying, Non tibiy sed Petro ; and the proud Pope 
haughtily replied, Et Petro et tnihu . . . The three doors, in- 
crusted and inlaid with silver and covered with figurines and 
ornaments, lead into the nave, and come, it is said, from St. 
Sophia in Constantinople. One of them is signed by Leon 
de Molino. At the end of the vestibule, on the right, is seen 
through a grating the chapel of Zeno, with its retable and 
tomb of bronze. The statue of the Virgin, placed between 
St John the Baptist and St Peter, is called the Madonna 
delta Scarpa^ the Madonna of the shoe, because of the golden 
buskin placed on the foot so often kissed by the faithful. All 
this metal ornamentation has a severe and strange aspect. 



The vault of the atrium, rounded into cupolas, presents the 
history of the Old Testament in mosaic. Here are shown — 
for ail religious history begins by a cosmogony — the seven 
days of the creation according to the account in Genesis, 
distributed in concentric compartments. The barbarous 
archaism of the style has a mystery and primitive weirdness 
that well suits these sacred representations. The drawing in 
its severity has the absoluteness of a dogma, and seems rather 
a hieroglyph expressing a mystery than a reproduction of 
nature, lliis gives these rude Gothic pictures an authority 
and a power which more perfect works do not possess. The 
blue starred globes, the discs of gold and silver figuring the 
firmament, the sun and the moon, the confused stripes which 
symbolise the separation of earth and water, the strange 
personage whose hand brings forth animals and trees of 
chimeriod forms, and who leans like a mesmerist over the 
first man in his sleep and draws the woman from his side, 
the mixture of angular design and daring colour, seize our 
sight and our thoughts as would an arabesque of a profound 



ISO THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

symbolism. Verses of the Bible traced in antique characters, 
complicated by abbreviations and breaks add to the hieroglyphic 
and creational appearance : truly we see a world forming itself 
out of chaos. The Tree of the knowledge of good and evil, 
the Temptation, the Fall, the dismissal from esurthly Paradise 
complete this cosmogonic and primitive cycle, the semi- 
divine epoch of humanity. 

Further on, Cain slays Abel after his sacrifice is rejected 
by the Lord. Adam and Eve are ploughing the earth in the 
sweat of their brow. The legend Increase and multiply is 
quaintly rendered by a couple embraced on a bed whose 
curtain is raised, and which seems to us of an advanced style 
of furniture for the period. The four columns set against the 
wall above these mosaics — for ornament, since they support 
nothing — are of the very rare white and black marble from 
the East; they came from Jerusalem, where, according to 
tradition, they were in Solomon's Temple. The architect, 
Hiram, certainly would not find them out of place in the 
cathedral of St. Mark's. In the next vault, Noah, by God's 
order, and to avoid the Deluge, is building an ark to which all 
the animals of the world are going in couples : an admirable 
subject for a naive worker in mosaic of the thirteenth century. 
Nodiing is more curious than the display on the golden ground 
of this fantastic zoology, which is not far removed from 
heraldry, from arabesque, and from the signs of travelUng 
menageries. The Deluge is most terrible and lugubrious, and 
very different from the highly praised conception of Poussin ; 
the crests of the waves mingle wildly with the threads of rain, 
which are not unlike the teeth of a comb; the raven, the 
dove, the going forth and the giving of thanks — nothing is 
lacking. Here ends the ante(Sluvian cycle; verses of the 
Bible wind everywhere like the inscriptions of the Alhambra, 
and form part of the decorative scheme, explaining each phase 
of this vanished world. The idea is always near the image, 
the Word everywhere encroaches on its plastic representation. 

The story — momentarily interrupt^ by the entrance, 
which has several mosaics of the Virgin with archangels and 
prophets — continues beneath the next vault. Here Noah 
plants the vine and lies drunken, and the separation of 
races follows. Japhet, Shem, and Ham, shadowed by a 
father's curse, each fathers a human family. The tower of 
Babel lifts to heaven the queer anachronism of its Byzantine 
architecture, which draws the attention of the Deity alarmed 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 151 

to find Himself so nearly approached The confusion of 
tongues forces the workers to cease from the attempt; the 
human race, till then one and speaking one tongue, must 
begin its long wanderings in the unknown world to find its 
lost title-deeds and refashion itself. The next cupolas, the 
first placed in the vestibule and the others in the gallery facing 
the place of Lions, contain the history of the patriarch Abraham 
in all its details, with that of Joseph and of Moses, the 
whole accompanied by prophets, priests, evangelists, Isaiah, 
Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Elijah, Samuel, Habukkuk, St Alipius, 
St. Simeon, and a host of others who are grouped or isolated 
in the arches, or the pendentives, in the keys of the vault — 
anywhere where a figure can be placed without regard to its 
ease or its anatomy. . . • 

II 

At the end of this gallery, in the tympanum of a door, 
we greatly admhred a Madonna seated on a throne between 
St John and St. Peter, and offering the child Jesus to the 
faithful. . . . Let us go into the chapel of the Baptistery, 
which is only connected with the cathedral by a communicat- 
iz^ door. . . . The cupola represents Jesus Christ in His 
glory, surrounded by a vast wheel of heads and wings dis- 
posed in circles. All this glitters, palpitates, quivers, flames, 
and changes marvelloudy : angels, archangels, thrones, domina- 
tions, virtues, powers, principalities, cherubim, seraphim, are 
piled up as oval heads, crossing their diapered wings so as 
to form a kind of immense rosace with the colour of a Turkey 
carpet At the feet of Power the enchained devil writhes, 
and Death vanquished falls before Christ the conqueror. The 
next cupola, of a most singular aspect, shows the twelve 
apostles each baptizing the gentiles of a different country. 
The catechumens, according to the old usage, are plunged in 
a basin or tub up to the armpits, and their lack of perspective 
gives them constrained attitudes and piteous countenances, 
which make the baptism seem a punishment. The apostles^ 
with wide-opened eyes, and hard and rough features, appear 
like executioners or torturers. Four doctors of the Church, 
St Jerome, St Gregory, St Augustin, and St Ambrose, fill 
the pendentives. The black crosses with which their dalmatics 
are covered have a sinister and funereal look. 

This dutracter belongs to the entire chapel. The mosaics 



152 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

are of great antiquity, the oldest in the church, and hare 
a fierce barbarity which indicates a relentless and savage 
Christianity. In the arch of the vault, there is a big medallion 
showing Christ under a terrible aspect; it is not the fair 
and beautiful Christ, the blue-eyed young Nazarene whom we 
know, but a severe and formidable Christ, with a beard which 
falls in grey masses like that of God the Father, whose age the 
Christ takes, for Father and Son are co-eternal. WrinUes as 
of eternal age seam His forehead, and the lips are contracted 
as if ready to cast out an anathema. . . . 

Ill 

Let us now go into the basilica. .The door has over it a 
St. Mark in pontifical dress, by the brothers Zuccati, about 
whom Georges Sand wrote her charming story of the Master 
Mosaic Workers, This mosaic has a brilliancy which makes 
it easily understood how jealous rivals accused the clever 
artists of using pigments instead of keeping to ordinary 
methods. The impost within is a Christ between His mother 
and St. John the Baptist, of the best style of the later empire. 
We hasten to say that it is in a fine style in order not to keep 
the eyes any longer from the admirable spectacle now to be 
seen. Nothing can compare with St. Mark at Venice ; neither 
Cologne, nor Strasburg, nor Seville, nor even Cordova with its 
mosque. The effect is surprising and magical, the first im- 
pression being of a golden cavern encrusted with precious 
stones, splendidly sombre and yet brilliant with all its mystery. 
Do we stand in a building or in a vast jewel-casket ? is what 
we ask, for every conception of architecture comes short of 
the reality. The cupolas, the vaults, the architraves, the wall 
spaces, are covered with little cubes of gilded crystals made at 
Murano, whose brilliancy is lasting, and on which the light 
glitters as on the scales of a fish, while they give the back- 
ground to the inexhaustible fancy of the mosaic artists. 
Where the ground of gold stops at the top of the columns 
there starts a covering of the most precious and varied 
marbles. From the vault hangs a great lamp in the form of 
a cross with four arms on whose points are fleurs de lis; it is 
suspended from a golden ball cut filigree fashion ; when it is 
lit it has a wonderful effect like that which the kaleidoscope 
has made popular. Six columns of ribboned alabaster with 
capitals of gilded bronze and of a fantastic corinthian order. 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 153 

support the graceful arcades on which runs the tribune which 
goes almost round the entire church. The cupola forms, with 
the Dove for its central point, its rays for spokes, and the 
twelve apostles for the circumference, an immense wheel in 
mosaic. 

In the pendentives, tall and serious angels have their black 
wings in relief against a ground of yellow sheen. The central 
dome, which opens over the intersection of the arms of the 
Greek cross which is deseed by the plan of the cathedral, 
shows in its vast cup Jesus Christ sitting on a spheral arc, 
amid a starry circle supported by two pairs of seraphim. 
Above Him the divine mother, standing between two angels, 
adores her Son in His glory, and the apostles, separated by a 
quaint tree which symbolises the Garden of Olives, make a 
celestial court about their Master. The theological and 
cardinal virtues have their niches in the spaces between the 
pillars of the smaller dome which lights the vault ; the four 
evangelists, seated in closets of the form of castles, write their 
predous books underneath the pendentives, whose extreme 
points are occupied by emblematic figures pouring forth from 
urns inclined on their shoulders the four rivers of Paradise : 
Gehon, Pison, Tigris, and Euphi|ates. Further on, in the next 
cupola whose centre has a medsdlion of the mother of God, 
the four animals attendant on the evangelists, for this occasion 
freed from the care of their masters, are guarding the sacred 
manuscripts in chimerical and threatening attitudes with an 
excess of teeth, claws, and big eyes which would show fight 
against the dragons of the Hesperides. At the end of the 
demi-cupola, which gleams vaguely behind the grand altar, the 
Saviour is delineated in a gigantic and disproportionate figure 
which shows, according to Byzantine tradition, the distance 
between the person of deity and the feeble creature. Even 
like the Olympian Jove, this Christ if He arose would carry 
away the vault of His temple. 

The atrium of the Basilica, as we have shown, is filled 
with illustrations of the Old Testament, the interior contains 
the entire New Testament, with the Apocalypse for epilc^ue. 
The cathedral of St Mark is a big illuminated Bible, historied, 
illuminated, and decorated, a mediaeval missal on a grand 
scale. Since eight centuries the citizens have pored over the 
pages of this monument as if it were a picture-book, without 
any sense of fatigue breaking its pious admiration. Every- 
where near the picture is the text ; the inscriptions rise and 



154 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

fall or run round about in the form of legends in Greek, 
Latin, leonine verses, versicles, sentences, names, monograms, 
specimens of the calligraphy of all countries and all times ; 
everywhere the old bladk letter traces its script on the page of 
gold in between the jambs of the mosaic The whole edifice 
is rather a temple of the Word than the church of St Mark, 
an intellectual temple which, without caring for any particular 
order of architecture, builds itself up on the verses o( the old 
and new faith, and finds its ornamentation in the exposition of 
doctrine. 

IV 

We do not seek to give any detailed description of the 
building, for that would be a treatise in itself, but we would at 
least endeavour to render the impression of astonishment and 
confusion produced by the world of angels, apostles, evangelists, 
prophets, saints, doctors, and figures of every kind which 
people the cupolas, ceilings, tympana, projecting arches, pillars^ 
pendentives, and the least plane of wtJl-space. Here the genea- 
logical tree of the Virgin spreads in tufted branches whose 
fruits are kings and holy personages, filling a vast panel with 
its strange growth: there shines a Paradise of glory with 
legions of angels and blessed ones. This chapel contains the 
history of the Virgin ; this vault unfolds all the drama of the 
Passion, from the kiss of Judas to the Apparition before the 
holy women, with the intervening episodes of the agonies in 
the Garden of Olives and of Calvary. All those who have 
borne witness for Jesus, either by prophecy, by preaching, or 
by martyrdom are admitted into this most Christian Pantheon. 
There is St. Peter crucified head downward, St. Thomas 
before the Indian king Gondoforo^ St. Andrew suffering 
martyrdom None of the servants of Christ are forgotten, 
not even St Bacchus. The Greek saints of whom we know 
so little — we of the Latin Church — come to increase this 
sacred gathering. St. Phocas, St. Dimitri, St. Procopius, St 
Hermagoras, St. Euphemia, St Erasmus, St. Dorothea, St. 
Thekla, all the fair exotic flowers of the Greek calendar — 
which we could believe to be painted after the receipts of the 
manual of the monk of Aghia-Laura— blossom on trees of 
precious stones. 

At certain hours, when the shadows thicken and the son 
only casts one ray of light obliquely under the vaults of the 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 155 

cupolas, strange effects rise for the eye of the poet and 
visionary. Brazen lightnings flash suddenly from the golden 
backgrounds. Little cubes of crystal gleam here and there 
like the sunlit sea : the outlines of the figures tremble in their 
golden field ; the silhouettes which were just before so clearly 
marked become troubled and mingled to the eye. The harsh 
folds on the dalmatics seem to soften and take movement ; 
mysterious life glides into these motionless Byzantine figures ; 
fixed eyes turn, arms with Egyptian hierarchic gestures move, 
sealed feet begin to walk ; the eight wings of cherubim revolve 
like wheels ; the angels unfold the long wings of azure and 
purple which an implacable mosaic holds to the wall; the 
genealogical tree sluJces its leaves of green marble ; the lion 
of St. Mark stretches himself, yawns, and licks his paw and 
claws ; the eagle sharpens his beak and sleeks his plumage ; the 
ox turns on his litter, and ruminates as he chews his cud The 
martyrs rise from the gridirons where their cross is marked. 
The prophets chat with the evangelists. The doctors instruct 
the youthful saints, who smile with their porphyry lips ; men of 
mosaic become processions of phantoms which climb up and 
down the side of the walls, which perambulate the tribunes, 
and pass before us shaking the gilded hair of their glory. 

We feel an astonishment producing the dizziness of hal- 
lucination. The real spirit of the cathedral, the profound, 
mysterious, and solemn meaning of it then becomes manifest. 
The cathedral seems as if it belonged to a pre-Christian 
Christianity, to a Church founded before religion existed. 
The ages fade into the perspective of the Infinite. — ThkopMle 
GautUr, 

The Ducal Palace 

The Ducal Palace outshines all else as though it were a 
single diamond set in a tiara. I do not wish to attempt a 
description, only a eulogy. I have never seen such archi- 
tecture ; everything is new and unconventional, and I begin 
to see that outside of the classic and Gothic forms which we 
repeat and which are forced on us, there is a whole world. 
Human invention knows no limits, and like nature can violate 
all rules and produce perfect work in defiance of the models 
it is told to imitate. Every habit of the eye is contraried here, 
and it is a delightful surprise to see oriental fancy placing 
what is heavy on what is light, instead of what is light on 
what is heavy. A columnade of robust shafts bears a second 



iS6 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

and lighter one, decorated with ogives and trefoils^ and on 
this frail support expands a massive wall of red and white 
marble, whose courses are interlaced symmetrically, and reflect 
the light. Above, a cornice of triangular openings, of pin- 
nacles, spiracles, and festoons, cuts die sky with its edges, 
and this foliation of marble — interwoven and blossoming 
above the rose or pearl tones of the fa9ade — makes us think 
of the rich cactus which, in its native Africa or America, 
commingles the daggers of its leaves with the purple of its 
flowers. 

We enter, and at once the vision is filled with forms. 
About two cisterns, covered with sculptured bronze, four 
facades show forth their statues and architectural details with 
all the youth of the early Renaissance. There is nothing that 
is bare and cold, everything is covered with statues and reliefs ; 
the pedantry of learning or of criticism not having intervened, 
on the pretext of severity or correctness, to restrain the fire of 
the imagination or the desire of giving pleasure to the eye. 
Venice knew no austerity ; it did not live by literary rules, nor 
force itself to come and yawningly admire a fagade sanctioned 
by Vitruvius; it wished architecture to possess and dehght 
every faculty, and decked it with ornament, column, and 
statue, made it a thing of riches and joy. Pagan colossi of 
Mars and Neptune were used as well as the scriptural figures 
of Adam and Eve; fifteenth-century sculptors create life in 
lank and realistic bodies, and those of the sixteenth century 
throw out agitated and powerful figures. Rizzo and Sansovino 
set up here the precious marbles of their stairways, the delicate 
stucco-work and graceful caprices of their arabesques abound- 
ing in armour and branches, griffins and fawns, fanciful flowers, 
and capering goats, a profusion of poetical flowers and joy- 
fully leaping beasts. We go up these princely stairs with a 
kind of timid respect, ashamed of our sad black coat, which 
reminds us of the contrast of embroidered silk gowns, of the 
pompously flowing dalmatics, the Byzantine tiaras and bus- 
kins — the seigneurial magnificence for which these marble 
steps were intended. At the top of the flight we are greeted 
by a St. Mark of Tintoretto, hurtling through the air like 
ancient Saturn, with two superb women, Force and Justice, 
and a doge who receives from them the sword of leadership 
and of warfare. Beyond this, the stairway opens on the halls 
of government and of state, both lined with paintings : the 
masterpieces of Tintoretto, Veronese, Pordenone, Palma the 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 157 

younger, Titian, Bonifacio, and twenty others cover the walls 
and ceilings, whose design and decoration is due to Palladio, 
Aspetti, Scamozzi, and Sismsovino. All the genius of the city 
at its grandest period met here to glorify the mother-state 
in setting up the memorial of its victories and the apotheosis 
of its splendour. There is no such trophy in the world as 
these sea-fights, with ships with curved prows like swans' 
necks, galleys with crowded banks of oars, IxEittlements hurling 
forth showers of arrows, standards floating among masts, 
tumultuous strife of combatants who rush against each other 
or fall into the sea, crowds of Ill3rrians, Saracens, and Greeks, 
with their bodies bronzed by the sun and torn by struggle, 
stuffs worked with thread of gold, damascened armour, silks 
starred with pearls — all the strange medley of the heroic and 
luxurious pomp which goes in history from Zara to Damietta, 
and from Padua to the Dardanelles. Here and there are the 
grandly allegorical figures of goddesses ; in the comers the 
Virtues of Pordenone, colossal viragoes, they might be called, 
with Herculean bodies that are sanguine and choleric ; every- 
where there riots virile strength, active energy, and sensual joy, 
and to prepare us for this astounding procession is the most 
vast of modem pictures, the Paradise of Tintoretto, eighty 
feet broad by twenty-four high, where six hundred figures 
whirl in a ruddy light like the ardent fire of a conflagration. 

The intellect is, as it were, blinded and subdued; the 
senses fail We pause and close our eyes ; in a few minutes 
we can choose, and I only really saw one picture to-day, the 
Triumph of Venice by Veronese. This work is more than a 
feast for the eye, it is a banquet. In the midst of wonderful 
architecture of balconies and columns, fair-haired Venice sits 
on a throne, radiant with beauty and the fresh roseate com- 
plexion which belongs to young women in damp climates. 
Her silk skirt spreads out from a silken mantle, and around 
her is a circle of girls, leaning with voluptuous and yet 
haughty smiles, with the strange Venetian fascination, that of 
a goddess who has the blood of a courtesan in her veins, but 
who walks on the clouds and draws men to her instead of 
falling to their level Out of their draperies of pale violet, their 
mantles of blue and gold, their living flesh, their backs and 
shoulders catch the light or melt into the half-tone, and the 
rounded softness of their nudity harmonises with the peaceful 
happiness of their attitudes and expressions. Amid them all, 
Venice^ ostentatious and yet benign^ seems a queen whose 



158 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

royalty gives her the certain right of happiness, and whose 
sole glance gives that right to others, while two angels bend- 
ing down in the air place a crown upon her serene head. — 
Taine. 

The Campanile of St. Mark's 

Several incidental references to the Bell-tower will be 
found in our extracts, but at the very period when we were 
still seeking a detailed description of it, the unhappy news of 
its fall was made public in the following laconic dispatch from 
Renter : — 

"Venice, i^/uly (10.40 a,m.).* 

''The Campanile of St. Mark's Cathedral, 98 metres high 
(about 318 feet), has just fallen down on to the Piazza. 

" It collapsed where it stood, and is now a heap of ruins. 

"The cathedral and the Doge's Palace are quite safe. 
Only a comer of the royal palace is damaged. 

" It is believed, but it is not certain, that there has been 
no loss of life. 

" A cordon of troops is keeping the Piazza clear." 

The news was all the sadder and more surprising because 
the end of so considerable a monument cannot fail to remind 
us that the same fate may come to other celebrated buildings. 
The tower, it is true, was known to be affected, for a crack 
caused by a thunderbolt in 1745 had been ineffectually 
repaired with new bricks, and the reappearing fissure had 
been clamped up by an iron band. This perhaps would not 
be sufficient to bring about the final collapse, which has been 
attributed to the consolidation of the basis on which the entire 
city is built, with a sinking of the level computed at 3I inches 
every hundred years. If this theory be correct, the fate of 
other buildings in the Piazza will only be averted by timely 
precautions. 

To give some account ojf the actual catastrophe we venture 
to borrow the account received by the Times from an 
American architect, whose little daughter was an eye- 
witness : — 

"Workmen had been repointing the Campanile, and had 
discovered a bad crack starting from the crown of the second 
arched window on the corner towards St. Mark's, and extend- 

* 190a, 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 159 

ing through the sixth window. This crack had shown signs of 
opening further, and they feared small fragments falling on 
the crowded Piazza ; so the music was quietly stopped in the 
hope that the crowd would naturally disperse. The effect 
was exactly the opposite to that desired. Every one rushed to 
the Piazza. At eleven I was under the tower which rose in 
the dim moonlight The crack was distinctly visible even in 
this half light, but apparently menaced only a comer of the 
tower. On Monday, early, the Campanile was resplendent in 
the sunshine. At nine my little girl Katharine went off with 

her horns of com to feed the pigeons. Mrs. was at St. 

Laccana, and I was near the Rialto sketching. The golden 
Angel on the tower was shining far away. Suddenly I saw it 
slowly sink directly downward behind a line of roofs, and a 
dense grey dust rose in clouds. At once a crowd of people 
began ranning across the Rialto towards the Piazza, and I 
ordered my gondolier to the Piazzetta. On arrival the sight 
was pitiful. Of that splendid shaft all that remained was a 
mound of white dust, spreading to the walls of St. Mark's. 

'' You have heard before now how the Angel was found 
directly within the semi-circle of the central doorway, and how 
the litUe porphyry column of the iron band received the brant 
of the blow of the great marble blocks from above the hills 
of sand at the corner of the Basilica. All this and the fact 
that there were no victims, not an injury to any one, justifies 
the feeling here that it was a miracle. Little Katharine was in 
the Square, and her account, like any child's, was extremely 
circumstantial. She says everything was quiet ; two men were 
putting up ladders in the tower, when suddenly people began 
to cry out from under the arches (it was warm sunlight and 
the Piazza was empty), little puffs of white flew out at the 
height of the first windows, great cracks started at the base 
and opened 'like the roots of a tree," a fountain of bricks 
began to fall all around the walls, and she says as she looked 
she saw the golden Angel, upright and shining, slowly des- 
cending a full third of the height of the tower, when a great 
white cloud enveloped it." 

It took some time to remove the debris of so huge a strac- 
ture ; and when the bricks were carried out to sea in barges, 
we are told by another correspondent that '' the whole affair 
resembled the funeral rites of some ancient landmark, and 
many of the participators were visibly affected." In some 
ways the church of St. Mark's is happier without the 



i6o THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

Campanile, and if the new tower to be erected were kept as 
an early square topped tower of brick, without any imitation 
of the marble additions of 141 7, the complete harmony of the 
Piazza would be more striking. We have quoted a brief note 
from Goethe on the view from the top of the tower, which 
Th^ophile Gautier's description may supplement : *' Leaning 
on the balcony, and turning towards the sea, we first observe 
the sculptures of Venus, Neptune, Mars and other allegorical 
figures of the library of Sansovino . . . next is the leaden roof 
of the Ducal Palace, also the court of the Zecca and the 
Piazzetta, with its columns and its gondolas, and its divided 
pavement ; further on, the sea with its islands and its landing- 
places. In the foreground is to be seen San Giorgio Mag- 
giore with its red belfiy, its two white bastions, its anchorage 
and the belt of ships attracted by the free harbour. A canal 
separates it from the Giudecca, that maritime suburb of Venice 
which has towards the town a line of houses and towards the 
sea a fringe of gardens. The Giudecca has two churches, 
Santa Maria and the Redentore. . . . Turning towards the 
bottom of the Piazza, the prospect is as follows: the con- 
tinuation of the Giudecca, the Dogana with a Fortune with 
flying hair ... the Salute and its double dome ; the entrance 
to the Grand Canal, which, large as it is, is soon lost between 
the houses ; San Moise and its belfry, joined to the church by 
a bridge ; San Stephano . . . the big reddish church of Santa 
Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, lifting beyond its roof an angular 
porch, and the black cupola of St Simon the Little. . . . 
The third vista from the Campanile faces the tower of the 
Clock and includes Santa Maria del Orto, whose tall red 
belfry and vast tiled roof is clearly seen ; the Holy Apostles 
. . . and the Jesuits' Church." 

The bells of the tower were five in number, and their 
music was so well known to Venetians that each bell had a 
name given to it. It will be remembered that the great bell 
was to be rung to call together the conspirators supporting 
the Doge Marino Faliero, and Byron mentions 

" The steep tower portal, 
Where swings the sullen huge oracular bell. 
Which never knells but for a princely death, 
Or for a state in peril." 

The ascent of the tower was by a spiral passage, so easily 
graduated that Napoleon I. is said to have ridden his horse 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC i6i 

up to the top ; but Evelyn long before writes that he might 
have climbed the tower on horseback *' as 'tis said one of the 
French Kings did." Evelyn states that *'on the top is an 
Angel that turns with the wind." 

The reconstruction of the tower is now in progress, and 
it has been ascertained that the level of the Piazza was raised 
70 centimetres from the time when the bell-tower was added 
in the sixteenth century. The original tower was built partly 
of Roman bricks from the ruined city of Altinum. There is 
no difficulty in restoring the tower in its main structural lines, 
as the drawings have all been preserved and the bronze 
figures have been but slightly damaged. — Ed, 

The Lion and St. Theodore 

At the farther end of this second part of the Piazza of St. 
Mark, there stand two marvellous lofty pillars of marble 
of equal height and thickness, very near to the shore of the 
Adriatic gulf, the fairest certainly for height and greatness 
that ever I saw till then. For the compass of them is so 
great, that I was not able to clasp them with both mine arms 
at thrice, their diameter in thickness containing very near 
four foot (as I conjecture). Besides, they are of such an 
exceeding height, that I thought a good while there were 
scarce the like to be found in any place of Christendom, till 
at length I called to my remembrance that wondrous high 
pillar in a certain market-place of Rome, on whose top the 
ashes of the Emperor Trajan were once kept For that 
pillar was about 140 foot high, but this, I think, is scarce 
above 30. They are said to be made of Phrygian marble, 
being solid and all one piece. These were brought by sea 
from Constantinople far more than four hundred years since. 
Upon the top of one of them are advanced the arms of 
Venice, the winged Lion made all of brass; on the other, 
the statue of St. Theodorus gilt, and standing upon a brazen 
crocodile, with a spear in one hand, and a shield in another. 
Caryatt. 

The Grand Canal* 

The Grand Canal is a veritable Golden Book on whose 
monumental facade the entire Venetian nobility has signed 
its name. Every block of stone tells a tale ; every house is 
* Described tQ much detail by Ruskin. 



i62 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

a palace ; every palace a masterpiece and a legend : at each 
stroke of the oar the gondolier cites a name which was as 
well known in the time of the Crusades as to-day ; — and all 
this to right and left of us, for a distance of more than half 
a league. ... On the two sides the most charming and 
beautiful fa9ades stand in uninterrupted succession. Alter 
the architecture of the Renaissance, with its columns and 
superimposed orders, comes a mediaeval palace in the 
Moorish-Gothic manner of which the Ducal Palace is the 
prototype. . . . Further on is a fa9ade veneered with coloured 
marbles, adorned with medallions and brackets; then a 
broad, rose-coloured wall in which is cut out a large columned 
window. Every style is here : Byzantine, Saracen, Lombard, 
Gothic, Romanesque, Greek, and even rococo^ column and 
pillar, ogive and round arch, the fanciful capital, o'emin with 
birds and flowers, from Acre or Jaffa, the Greek capital found 
in the ruins of Athens, mosaic and bas-relief, classic severity 
and the graceful fantasy of the Renaissance. . . . 

Even before we reach the Rialto, on our left, as we go 
up the canal, is the Dario palace, in the Gothic manner, 
the Venier palace, set sideways, with the ornaments, precious 
marbles and medallions in the Lombard style ; the Belle Arti^ 
a classic fa9ade added to the old Scuola della Caritk, and 
topped by a Venice riding a lion; the Contarini palace, 
whose architect was Scamozzi; the Rezzonico palace, with 
the three superimposed orders; the triple Giustiniani palace 
*in the mediaeval style • . . the Foscari palace, noticeable 
by its low door, and its two stages of columns supporting 
ogives and trefoils, where formerly were lodged the sovereigns 
who visited Venice . . . the Balbi palace, on whose balcony 
the princes leant to watch the regattas given with so much 
pomp and show, in the great days of the Republic; the 
Pisani palace, in the German style of the beginning of the 
XVth century. . . . Near the Hotel de L'Europe, there is 
between two large edifices a tiny palace which consists of 
only one window and balcony, but what a window and 
balcony! . . . Further as we go up, we see the following 
palaces: the Corner della Ck Grande, dating from 1532, 
one of Sansovino's best works, . . . the Corner-Spinelli ; 
the Grimani,^ a robust and powerful edifice of Sammicheli, 
... the Farsetti, with a peristyle with columns and a long 

^ The Grimani stands somewhat sideways ; the intention having been 
to leave a small plot of ground, according to Montesquiou« 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 163 

gallery of colonnettes, ... the Loredano and the former 
home of Emico Dandolo, the conqueror of Constantinople. 
Sometimes a crossing or a piazzetta, like the Campo San 
Vitale, for instance, facing the Academy, usefully breaks this 
long line of edifices. . . . Tj:^^ialto, which is the handsomest 
bridge in Venice, has a grand and most monumental appear- 
ance ; it strides the canal with one arch of an elegant yet bold 
design. It was built in 1591, under the doge Pasquale 
Cicogna, by Antonia da Ponte, and replaced the old wooden 
drawbridge shown in the plan of Albert Durer. Two rows 
of shops, divided in the middle by an arcaded portico show- 
ing the sky through it, stand on the sides of the bridge. 
It can be crossed by three footways, that in the centre and 
the two outside by the balustrades of marble. Round the 
bridge of the Rialto, which is one of the handsomest spots of 
the Grand Canal, are piled up the oldest houses in Venice. . . . 
On this side and that of the Rialto stands the old Fondaco 
dei Tedeschi, whose vaguely tinted walls have the suggestion 
of frescoes by Titian and Tintoretto.^ ... As we still go up 
the canal, on our left is the Palazzo Comer della Regina, so 
called after the queen Cornaro . . . this sumptuous palace 
is now a pawnshop, and the humble rags of misery or the 
frippery of improvidence brought to bay are heaped up under 
the rich relics which else would be allowed to fall to ruin, for 
in our day beauty cannot exist unless utility is added. The 
Armenian College, a little way off, is a handsome building by 
Baldassare da Longhena, of a solidly rich and imposing style. 
It was formerly the Pesaro palace. To the right is the Palazzo 
Ck D'oro, one of the finest of the Grand Canal. . . . We have 
not even spoken of the Mocenigo palace, where the great 
Byron lived. . . . The Barbarigo also deserves mention. . . . 
The old inn of the Turks, much used when Venice had all 
the trade of the East and the Indies, now has two stages of 
Arabic arcades in decay. ... As we go from the heart of the 
town, life dies. Many windows are closed or boarded up ; but 
this melancholy has its beauty, more easily caught by the 
mind than the eyes, delighted as they are by the perpetual 
accidents of unexpected light and shade, by varied buildings 
whose decay makes them more handsome, and by the continued 
movement of the waters, the tint of blue and of rose which 
makes up the atmosphere of Venice. — Thkophile Gautier, 



^ The famous frescoes by Giorgione and Titian were certainly painted 

" ought only of executing fancif 
figures," unconnected with history or legend. 



here. Vasari says that Giorgione *' thought only of executing fanciftil 



i64 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



The Churches 

St. Mark's excepted — and a very wonderful exception of 
course it is — the churches in Venice in no way came up to 
my anticipations.^ There is, indeed, not a tithe of the real 
delight experienced in visiting them which I remember to 
have felt in visiting the churches of much smaller cities in 
France, Germany, and our own dear England. — G* £. Street 
Of the churches in Venice it may be observed in general 
that as some of them have been built by Palladio, and many 
raised on models designed by him, they are of a better style 
than architecture. ... I need not add that the talents of die 
first Venetian artists have been exerted to adorn them with 
sculptures and with paintings.^ Of these churches, that De 
Salute (Of Salvation), that De Redemptore (of the Redeemer), 
two votive churches erected by the Republic on the cessation 
of two dreadful pestilences, and that of S. Giorgio Maggiore 
are very noble. — Eustace, 

San Giovanni b Paolo 

A Gothic church, but Italian-Gothic, and therefore gay: 
the round pillars, the broad and well-slanting arches, the 
windows nearly all white, do away with the ghostly or mystical 
ideas which northern cathedrals suggest to the mind. Like 

^ The following notes from Forsyth take a rather more fiivourable view: 
*' Venice may be proud of her churches, of those at least which Palladio 
has built. His Redentore is admirable in plan and elevation. . . . San 
Giorgio, where the last conclave was held, is not so pure in design, yet 
worthy of Palladio. . . . .Sim Francesca cUlla Vigna is another church of 
Pallaaio's, but much inferior to these. Its front, like San Giorgio s^ has 
two wings, each covered with half a pediment. . . . T\it Jesuit church, 
like most of that order, blends richness of materials with poverty of de- 
sign. . . . Santa Maria delta Salute is much admired. It is magnificent, 
to be sure, and lofty and rich ; but it runs into too many angles and pro- 
jections, too many * coignes of vantage,' both without and within." 

s Of the ^eat Paolo Veronese now in the Louvre, De Brosses wrote : 
'* The IVeddtng of Cana, by Veronese, in the church of St. Geo^e, is not 
only a painting of the highest merit, but among the greatest that exist. . . . 
Paolo has here included the portraits of the most famous Venetian painters 
of his day playing on musical instruments. In the foreground Titian is 
playing the double-bass, Paul the viola, Tintoretto the violin, Bassano the 
flute. By these various musical instruments Paul Veronese illustrates the 
different perfections of the painters : Titian, profound science and slow 
but sure craft in workmanship ; his own £Eu:ile and brilliant design ; the 
celerity of Tintoretto's art ; and the elegance of Bassano's style." 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 165 

the Campo Santo at Pisa, like Santa Croce at Florence, the 
church is peopled with tombs, and if those of the Frari ^ were 
added, it would be a mausoleum of the entire Republic. 
Most of the tombs are of the fifteenth, or the early years of 
the sixteenth century : the great age of the city, when great 
men and great deeds are falling into decadence, and yet at 
a date sufficiently recent for the new art to preserve their 
image, and express their sincerity. Some show the dawn of 
this great light : others its sunset ... In the monument of 
the Doge Morosini, who died in 1382, the pure Gothic form 
flowers in all its elegance. A flowered arcade loops its lace 
above the dead ; on either side rises a charming little spire 
borne by a column adorned with trefoils, broidered with 
figures and topped with pinnacles, as if the marble were a 
kind of prickly plant, which bristles and flowers in a feathery 
blossom of thorns and spikes. The Doge sleeps with his 
hands crossed on his breast; these are genuine funeral 
monuments, made up of an alcove, sometimes with canopy 
or curtains, a marble couch decorated like the bedstead 
on which the aged limbs of the man were laid to sleep in 
life. Within the tomb is the sculptured body in its wonted 
dress, calm in sleep, confident and pious because life has 
been well lived. . . . 

At each step we see some new trait of artistic develop- 
ment. In the tomb of the Doge Antonio Venier, who died 
in 1400, the paganism of the Renaissance crops out by such 
ornamental details as the shell-niche. But everything else 
is still angularly decorated, gracefully slender and Gothic in 
the sculpture as well as the architectural design. The heads 
are too heavy and clumsy, too short and often poised on wry 
necks. ... As we go on, following the development of the 
epoch, this naive simplicity grows less and less. The funeral 
monument becomes a heroes' panoply ; round arcades throw 
their broad span above the dead; fanciful arabesques run 
round their polished borders; symmetrical columns show 
their acanthus capitals; sometimes they are set one on 
another, and the four orders of architecture show all their 
variety to satisfy the pride of the eye. The tomb then 
becomes a colossally triumphal arch, and some have twenty 
statues, not far under life-size. — Taine, 

^ We choose San Giovanni e Paolo as being more a typically Venetian 
"Westminster Abbey" than the Frari, but the latter contains Titian's 
Madcmna eU Casa Pesaro^ and formerly hb Assumption of the Virgin. 



i66 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



Venetian Art^ 

The Accademia delle Belle Arti, as is well known, occupies 
the former Scuola della Caritk. . . . The pearl of great price 
and star of the collection is the Infant Jesus by Giovanni 
Bellini. The subject is an oft-repeated one, hackneyed and 
spoilt, and yet it flowers anew with eternal youth from the brush 
of the aged painter. What is there in it except a woman hold- 
ing a child on her knees, and yet what a woman ! The head 
follows you like a dream, and once seen it is always remem- 
bered; it has the impossible beauty, yet wondrous truth of imma- 
culate maidenhood with commanding sensuousness. . . . 

A most interesting picture by Gentile Bellini is the pro- 
cession on the Piazza of St. Mark's, conveying the relics 
guarded by the brotherhood of St. John when Jacopo Salis 
made the vow of the cross. It would be difficult to imagine 
a more complete collection of the dresses of the epoch : the 
patient and minute craftsmanship of the painter does not lose 
a single detail; nothing is sacrificed, the whole is rendered 
with Gothic conscientiousness. The appearance of St. Mark's 
as it was then has the exactitude of an architectural plan. 
The ancient Byzantine mosaics, afterwards restored, still 
adorn the doorways of the old basilica, and, strangely enough, 
the cupolas are entirely gilt as they never were in reality. 
But so scrupulous a painter never had a bee in his bonnet ; 
as a matter of fact the domes were to have bedn gilt, only 
the doge Loredano needed the sequins intended for gilding 
for his war-chest, and the project was never carried into effect 
The only trace of it remains in this picture by Gentile Bellini, 
who gilded his St. Mark by anticipation. . . . 

Nothing could be more graceful, or of a more youthful 
precocity than the sequence of pictures in which Carpaccio 
has pourtrayed the life of Saint Ursula. Carpaccio here has 
the ideal charm, the youthful graciousness of Raphael in the 
Marriage of the Virgin,'^ one of his earliest and perhaps the 

^ We have here linked together a few of Th^ophile Gautier*s remarks — 
sometimes transposing the order— with the intention of illustrating a few 
typical Venetian pictures. The general balance of our book needs this 
in the case of Venice, Florence, and Rome ; although no very effectual 
criticism can be expected on such a small scale. Giorgione, unhappily, 
will be found anywhere rather than in Venice to-day, his best canvases 
being in Dresden, Madrid, Paris, and Glasgow. 

^ The Raphael now is in the Brera at Milan. The Perugiao, its 
prototype, is at Caen. 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 167 

most foscinating of his pictures. Nothing is more naively 
delightful than the innocence of the heads, which are of a 
most angelic suavity ; there is particularly a young man with 
long hair who turns away, letting droop from his shoulder 
a cape with a velvet collar : he is of such a proud, youthful, 
and handsome grace that we might think him the Cupid of 
Praxiteles clad in mediaeval dress, or rather an angel who has 
the fancy of masquerading as a magnifico of Venice. . . . 

The Assumption is one of the largest arrangements of 
Titian, and that in which he has risen to his highest: the 
composition is balanced and distributed with infinite art. The 
upper part, in the form of a semicircle, shows Paradise — the 
Glory, as Spaniards say in the language of asceticism — with 
garlands of angels, submerged and lost in a flow of light of 
incalculable depth, stars shining through flame and brighter 
radiances of eternal day forming an aureole for the Father, 
who comes from the depths of the infinite like a soaring eagle, 
attended by an archangel and by a seraph whose hands uphold 
the crown and the nimbus. This Jehovah, poised like a sacred 
bird with the head advanced and the body retiring in perspec- 
tive under surging draperies opened like wings, astonishes by 
a bold sublimity. If it be possible for mortal man to render 
the person of Deity, Titian has done it : power without limita- 
tion, and imperishable youth make the face shine, and its 
white beard only needs to be shaken to let fall the snows of 
eternity. Since the Olympian Jove of Pheidias, never has 
the Master of heaven and earth been more worthily presented. 
The centre of the picture is taken up by the Virgin Mary, 
who is lifted or rather surrounded by a garland of beatified 
soub ; indeed she needs no help to mount heavenward, being 
caught up by the fire of her peifect faith, and the soul's purity 
that is lighter than the most luminous ether. There really is 
a most surprising upward spring in the figure, and to get this 
effect, Titian has not sought emaciated forms, contorted 
draperies, or transparent colours. His Madonna is a most 
true, most living, most real woman, of as solid a beauty as 
the Venus of Milo. . . . 

Opposite the Assunta of Titian has been placed the St. 
Mark delivering a Slave, by Tintoretto,^ as being the most 

^ "Tintoretto, to be richtly understood,'* writes Symonds, "must be 
sought all over Venice — in tne church as well as the Scuola di San Rocco ; 
in the * Temptation of St Anthony ' at St. Trovaso no less than in the 
temptations of Eve and Christ; in the decorative pomp of the Sala del 
Senato, and in the Paradisal vision of the Sala del Gran Consiglio.'* 



i68 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

powoful and most comparable picture to set near such a 
masterpiece. . . . This picture has for its subject the aid brought 
by the sacred patron of Venice to a poor slave whose savage 
master tormented and tortured him because of the obstinate 
devotion the fellow had for the saint The slave is stretched 
on the ground on a cross surrounded by busy executioners, 
who are vainly struggling to fix him to the engine of shame. 
The nails fly back, the mallets are shattered, the hatcheU are 
broken in splinters; more pitiful than human beings, the 
instruments of torture crumble in the hands of the torturers. 
The standers-by look at each other and murmur, the judge 
leans forward from the seat of justice to see why his orders 
are not carried out, while St Mark, in one of the most violently 
twisted foreshortenings the art of painting has ever attempted, 
rushes head downwards and dives towards earth — ^without 
clouds, wings, cherubin, or any of the aerostatic methods 
usual in sacred pictures — coming to deliver the man who 
has believed in him. This vigorous figure, with an athlete's 
muscles and of colossal size, cutting the air like a rock hurled 
by a catapult, has the most remarkable effect. The design 
has so flowing a strength that the massive saint seems to hover 
in the air and not to fall. It is a triumph of execution, and 
the painting is in so high a key, so marked in the contrasts 
of light and shade, so vigorous in detail and fiercely turbulent 
in brush-work, that the boldest Caravaggios and Spagnolettos 
would be but rose-water by its side. The picture, notwith- 
standing its savagery, always preserves in its accessories the 
abundantly sumptuous architectural aspect which is the peculi- 
arity of the Venetian school.^ — Thkophile Gautier, 

> No traveller affords us a sufficient description of the Bartolomeo 
Colleoni equestrian statue by Verrochio and LeopardL Leonardo da 
Vinci's Sforza at Mifan being no longer in existence, the Colleoni can only 
be compared with the Gattamelata by Donatello at Padua. The figure of 
the Gattamelata is perhaps finer in sculpture, and the horse more massive 
in its planes, but the Colleoni is undoubtedly more dramatic in movement 
and gesture. The general decoration of the Colleoni is more varied, as 
in the details of the flowing mane, the cincture of the horse, and the 
armoured feet clutching at the stirrups ; but the saddle of the GattamelaU 
has some nude figures m relief on it. The Colleoni is more the famous 
condotiiere leading an expedition, and the Gattamelata (though he wears 
a sword) the statesman. Both fibres sit their horses excellently, but the 
horses themselves fall far short of those of Pheidian art. 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 169 



General Note on Venice 

There are some aspects of Venice which are not dealt with 
by our travellers, owing to the peculiarities of the origin and 
life of the town. As to its origins, it did not begin with a 
settled site such as Florence or Rome possessed. The earliest 
existing remains of the Venetian settlement are to be found in 
Murano, Torcello, and Grado. According to Molmenti some 
ninety different churches were built before St Mark's, and he 
mentions a fine specimen of the early dwelling-house as being 
still opposite San Pietro in Murano, this house having been 
built before the eleventh century. In Venice proper, the 
earliest houses were built in wood, and to the fifteenth century 
there still remained some/adriae ligna copperta de canna. The 
Lombard style of brick-building found little favour with the 
Venetians, and not possessing extensive architectural remains 
like the Romans, nor adjacent quarries like the Florentines, 
they had to wait till they had sufficiently large vessels and 
barges to bring their building materials from elsewhere. 

Venice, for some centuries, remained a rural town, with 
gardens round its houses and an orchard in front of St. 
Mark's, where the Piazza now is. Living a peaceable home 
life, the Venetians did not build up the mediaeval towers 
which were used for refuge in other towns, and which still 
remain to the number of thirteen out of fifty-two in even such 
a tiny town as San Gemignano. Such towers as the Venetians 
had were more for observation of the sea. The earlier Ducal 
Palace, the houses of the families of Querini, 2^ni, Dandolo, 
Giustiani, Faliero, and Memmi were &e principal structures 
of Venice when it was winning to power on the seas. As we 
know it, and as the travellers knew it, Venice — ^always with 
the exception of St Mark's — is a town dating from the four- 
teenth and fifteenth centuries to the middle of the seventeenth. 
Much of the decoration of St. Mark's is part of the plunder 
won at the taking of Constantinople in 1204. The conse- 
quences of the trade with the East are too well known to be 
recounted, but the Venetians had already enjoyed a fair 
measure of commercial prosperity as the half-way house 
between the Byzantine and Franconian Empires. Dante, in 
a well-known passage {Infem, xxL 7-18) gives us some idea 
of the activity of the Arsenal in the beginning of the fourteenth 
century, and Petrarch, writing in 1363, says; "From this 



I70 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

port I see vessels departing which are as large as the house I 
inhabit, and which have masts taller than its towers. These 
ships resemble a mountain floating on the sea : they go to all 
parts of the world, braving a thousand dangers ; they carry our 
wines to the English,^ our honey to the Scythians, our saffiron, 
our oils, and our linen to the Syrians, Armenians, Persians, 
and Arabians ; and wonderful to say, they convey our wood 
to the Greeks and Egyptians. From all these countries they 
bring back in return articles of merchandise, which they dis- 
tribute all over Europe. They go even as far as the Don. 
The navigation of our seas does not extend further north ; but 
when they have arrived there, they quit their vessels, and 
travel to trade with India and China ; and after passing the 
Caucasus and the Ganges they voyage as far as the Eastern 
Ocean." 

This is in no exaggeration, and it may be mentioned that 
besides the well-known travels of Marco Polo, Nicholas and 
Antonio Zeno in their wanderings went as far as Iceland, 
Greenland, and the coast of Labrador. The traveller, then, 
will do well to bear in mind the maritime greatness of the 
town, for the Venice of the gondola and the canals will 
always be present. Some conception of maritime Venice will 
be obtained from the pictures in the Ducal Palace, but they 
were painted when Venice had sought a territorial expansion. 
The commerce of the Republic was mostly carried on by what 
Mr. Horatio Brown calls the state-fleet, though individuals 
might build vessels. Every ship, whether propelled by sails 
or oars, belonged to a class, and could be used for trade 
or war. The museum of the Arsenal contains models of 
the ships of all periods, and it is a pity that no traveller has 
written on this interesting collection, with the historical 
memories it suggests. 

To return to the town, Philippe de Comines went in the 
suite of Charles VIII. in 1495, ^^^ ^^ ^^^ memoirs describes 

^ The beginnings of trade with England are of an early date. In the 
Venetian state-papers, edited by Mr. Rawdon Brown, there appears a 
tariff, under date November 6, 1265, in which the price of a whole piece 
of Stamford cloth was 24 solidos. One cargo in 1 3 19 consisted of 
10,000 lbs. of sugar, and 1000 lbs. of candy were exchanged for wool 
in England, but the Venetian skipper was killed by the men of the 
English cog^ Such grievances were redressed by a money payment, 
but the English were not always the offenders, and the Venetians in five 
galley at Southampton had to compound for manslaughter in a sum 
** received from the merchants of Venice." 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 171 

the Grand Canal as being la mieulx maisontt in the whole 
world. The older houses are painted, he tells us, and " the 
others, made in the last hundred years, all covered with white 
marble, which is brought from Istria.'' By the end of the six- 
teenth century, Venice had very nearly a hundred palaces, the 
most noteworthy of these being the Grimani with its broad 
stuccoed staircases and its paintings by Salviati and Giovanni 
da Udine ; the Foscarini with its antiquities ; the Vendramini 
with its Giorgiones, Bellinis, and Titians. Some of the great 
houses had gardens, and it would appear that gardens were 
kept in the adjoining islands whither the notabilities might go 
with their friends and enjoy the cool breezes mingled with the 
perfume of the flowers and the sound of music. 

Of the decoration of most of the palaces — pictures, 
antiques, tapestries, rare silks, furniture, arms and armour — 
little now remains, for the poverty of the nobility made it 
necessary to part with almost everything movable after the 
invasion of Napoleon. For this reason, any detailed account 
of the interior of the palaces would not be of great interest ; 
the exterior suggests the names famous in history or legend. 
To give any adequate account of these names would be to 
write the history of Venice, and we can only indicate a few 
side-issues which may be an aid to understanding its art. 
Venice lacks in the ecclesiastical note of other towns in Italy, 
and late travellers remark on the absence of priests in its 
streets. Except in the Jesuit churches, the influence of Rome 
is not very palpable ; we always feel in Venice that we are in 
an independent state. 

Some surprise may be felt at the sudden change from the 
Byzantine dress and decoration of the early art to that of Car- 
paccio. Venice was somewhat secluded from the rest of Italy, 
and its intercourse was mostly with the East, till in the fourteenth 
century it began to desire supremacy inland, getting possession 
of Treviso in 1339, of Vicenza in 1404, and of Padua and 
Verona in 1405. It is thus that the difference between the 
two schools of art is accounted for. Some influences of the 
life of the East remained, and the women of Venice mostly 
were kept in a semi-oriental seclusion. The usual result 
followed in the prolific number of women of a certain class 
which almost every traveller refers to. This had its influence 
even on the art of the greatest masters, and in Titian's women 
we see the glorification of fleshly loveliness. In fact the 
Venetians, with their almost pure Latin blood, stand apart — 



172 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

in their great days — from the mystical Florentines, as men of 
a robust sensuality and practical strength of mind and deed. 

One last point may now be referred to with regard to the 
frequent introduction of slaves in the great canvases. The 
traffic in slaves was nominally punishable with death, but 
being very lucrative it was permitted to continue till the end 
of the sixteenth century. These slaves were sold by auction 
at San Giorgio and the Rialto, at prices from 1 6 to 80 or 100 
gold ducats. Between 1393 and 1491 as many as 150 sales 
of slaves were notarially registered; they were often better 
treated than servants, and could be freed by their master's 
acknowledgment, or even by his testament. — £d. 

VERONA 1 

The city ... is built on the gentle declivity and bottome 
of an hill, inviron'd in part with some considerable moun- 
taines and downes of fine grass like some places in the South 
of England, and on the other side having the rich plaine where 
Caius Marius overthrew the Cimbrians. The Citty is divided 
in the midst by the river Athesis, over which are clivers stately 
bridges, and on its banks are many goodly palaces, whereof 
one is well painted in chiaro oscuro on the outside, as are 
divers others in this drie climate of Italy. 

The first thing that engaged our attention and wonder too, 
was the amphitheater, which is the most entire of ancient 
remaines now extant. The inhabitants call it the Arena : it 
has two portico's, one within the other, and is 34 rods long, 
22 in bredth, with 42 ranks of stone benches or seates which 
reach to the top. The vastnesse of the marble stones is 
stupendious. . . . This I esteeme to be one of the noblest anti- 
quities in Europ, it is so vast and intire, having escaped the 
ruines of so many other public buildings for above 1400 yeares. 

There are other arches, as that of the victorie of Marius ; 
temples, aquseducts, &c. shewing still considerable remaines 
in severall places of the towne and how magnificent it has 
formerly ben. It has three strong castles, and a large and 
noble wall. Indeede the whole Citty is bravely built, especialy 
the Senate-house where we saw those celebrated statues of 
Cornelius Nepos, Emilius Marcus, Plinius and Vitruvius, all 
having honoured Verona by their birth, and of later date Julius 
Caesar Scaliger, that prodigie of learning. 

* The towns next following are all historically connected with Venice, 
though not on the Adriatic. 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 173 

In the evening we saw the garden of Count Giusti's villa, 
where are walkes cut out of the maine rock, from whence we 
had the pleasant prospect of Mantua and Parma, though at 
greate distance. At the entrance of this garden growes the 
goodliest cypresse I fancy in Europ, cut in pyramid ; 'tis a 
prodigious tree both for breadth and height, entirely cover'd 
and thick to the base. . . . 

This Citty deserv'd all those elogies Scaliger has honoured 
it with, for in my opinion the situation is the most delightfull 
I ever saw, it is so sweetly mixed with rising ground and 
vallies, so elegantly planted with trees on which Bacchus 
seems riding as it were in triumph every autumn, for the vines 
reach from tree to tree ; here of all places I have seene in 
Italy would I fix a residence. Well has that learned man 
given it the name of the very eye of the world : — 

Ocelle iDundi, Sidus Itali coeli, 

Flos Urbium, flos corniculuroq' amaenum, 

Quot sunt, enrntve, quot fiiere, Verona. 

— Evelyn, 

Teutonic Influences 

Verona, the ancient world-renowned city, situated on both 
sides of the Adige, has been in all ages the first halting-place 
for the great German emigrations of tribes which left their 
cold Northern forests and crossed the Alps, to rejoice in the 
golden sunshine of pleasant Italy. Some went further on — 
others were well enough pleased with the place itself, and 
made themselves at home and comfortable in it, put on their 
silk dressing-gowns and promenaded cheerfully among flowers 
and cypresses, until new comers, who still had on their iron 
garments, arrived from the North and crowded them away — 
an oft-repeated tale, and one called by historians the emigra- 
tion of races. If we wander through the district of Verona, 
we find startling traces of those days, as well as of earlier and 
later ages. The amphitheatre and the triumphal arch re- 
mind us of the Roman age ; the fabulous relics of so many 
Romanesque ante-Gothic buildings recall Theodoric, that 
Dietrich of Bern, of whom Germans yet sing and tell ; mad 
fragments bring up Albom and his raging Langobardi ; legen- 
dary monuments speak of Carolus Magnus, whose paladins are 
chiselled on the gate of the Cathedral with the same frank 
roughness which characterised them in life. It all seems as 



174 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

though the town were a great tavern, and as people in inns 
are accustomed to write their names on walls and windows, so 
have the races who have travelled through Verona left in it 
traces of their presence. — Heine. 

A Thought from Goethe 

Though I have been here only a few hours, I have already 
run through the town, and seen the Olympian theatre, and the 
buildings of Palladio.^ . . . When once one stands in the 
presence of these works, one immediately perceives their great 
value, for they are calculated to fill the eye with their actual 
greatness and massiveness, and to satisfy the mind by the 
beautiful harmony of their dimensions, not only in abstract 
sketches, but with all the prominences and distances of per- 
spective. Therefore I say of Palladio : he was a man really 
and intrinsically great, whose greatness was outwardly mani- 
fested. — Goethe, 

The Churches 

Most of the churches, Santa-Anastasia, San Fermo-Mag- 
giore, the Duomo, and San 2^none are of a peculiar style 
called Lombard, which is midway between the Italian and 
Gothic styles, as if Latin and German artists had met to bring 
their ideas into harmony and contrast in one building. The 
result, however, is sincere work : in all primitive architecture we 
see the lively invention of a new spirit. Among these different 
churches we may take the Duomo to be most typical ; like 
the old basilicas, this edifice is a house with another house 
built over it, both showing a gable frontage. . . . Everywhere 
we detect the undecided spirit of the twelfth century, the 
relics of Roman tradition ^ and the blossoming of fresh dis- 

^ Symonds (*' Fine Arts" volume of his Renaissance) reminds us that 
Palladio was only one, if the most representative, of the architects who 
hased their work on the study of Vitruvius. They were book-learned 
architects rather than the craftsmen-builders that the Comadnes were. 

• Many writers used the word Romanesque to sum up the archi- 
tectural order following the Byzantine, and influenced by the Roman 
tradition. But Romanesque practically includes Lombard, hasilican and 
early Tuscan architecture : the word really describes a period rather than 
a style. In reference to Verona generally, Ruskin has described Lombard 
work as **the expression of the introduction of Christianity into barbaric 
minds." Leader Scott has proved that the animal forms of Lombard 
decoration had been preceded by the use of symbolical forms of the same 
kind in work of the early days of Christianity. These forms were not 
necessarily Byzantine. The fish, dove, and lamb need no explanation; 
some beasts are Apocalyptic. 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC i7S 

coveries: the grace of an architecture preserved and the 
gropings of sculpture in its beginning. A projecting porch 
repeats the simple lines of the general conception, and small 
columns supported by griffins rise above and are fitted in twisted 
strands of rope. The porch is original in its grace, but the 
crouching figures grouped round the Virgin are like dog- 
headed apes. Gothic forms prevail in the interior, not clearly 
marked as such, but with a tendency that is already Christian. 
I must confess that in my opinion only pointed arches and 
foliations can give mystical sublimity to a church ; if they are 
lacking, then Christianity is not there, and can only be there 
when they begin to appear. . . . 

We take a cab and drive to the other end of the town, to 
San Zenone, the most curious of the churches, begun by a 
son of Charlemagne, and restored by the German Emperor 
Otho I., but almost entirely of the twelfth century. Some 
parts — such as the sculptures of one door — ^go back further 
even ; I have seen nothing so barbaric except in Pisa. The 
Christ at the pillar looks like a bear climbing a tree: the 
judges, executioners, and personages in other episodes are like 
gross caricatures of German boors in heavy cloaks. The 
Christ on the throne has no skull, the entire face being 
absorbed by the chin, the wild and protruding eyes are like 
those of a frog, while the winged angels about are like human- 
headed bats ... To this low level did art fall during the Car- 
lovingian decadence and the Hungarian invasions. — Taine, 

Tomb of the Scaligers 

. . . Imagination reigns> but in this instance sovereign 
and complete, within an iron railing situated near Santa Maria 
I'Antica, with what is the most curious monument in Verona. 
Here are the tombs of the ancient sovereigns of the city, the 
Scaligers, who were either by turns, or always, tyrants and 
warriors, murderers and exiles, heroes and fratricides. Like 
the princes of Ferrara, Milan, and Padua, they gave an example 
of the powerful but vicious genius which belongs to Italian 
character, and which has been described by Machiavelli in his 
FrincCy or dramatised in his Life of Castrucdo, The first five 
tombs have the heavy simplicity of the heroic age, in which a 
man who had fought, killed, and built only asked for a 
sepulchre as a place of rest. The hollow rock which shelters 
his bones is as solid and worn as the iron armour which 



176 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

guarded his flesh ; it is an enormously massive hollow of 
naked red rock in one piece, placed on three short supports 
of marble. A single thick slab without any ornament forms 
the cover ; in Hamlet's phrase, " the ponderous jaws " ^ of the 
tomb. There could be no truer funeral monument than the 
monstrous coffer standing in its place to all eternity. 

This period of savagery, which spawned an Ezzelino and 
his punishers, gives place to an era of art, in which Dante and 
Petrarch are welcomed at a court of letters and splendour. 
The Gothic style comes from the mountains to Milan, and 
everywhere fertilises Italian architecture; here it shows in 
purity and perfection in the tombs of the last masters of the 
town. Two of the sepulchres, and especially that of Cane 
Signorio, are as precious in their way as the cathedrals of 
Milan and Assisi. The rich and delicate mingling of twining 
and sharply undercut forms, the transformation of rough 
matter into delicate filigree work, of the homogeneous into 
the complex and multiple : such is the inspiration of the new 
art. ... On the summit, Cane Signorio on horseback looks 
like the terminal statue of a rich specimen of jeweller's art ; 
processions of small sculptured figures deck the tomb. Six 
statuettes in armour, with bare heads, cover the edges of the 
platform, and each of the niches of the second storey contains 
the figure of an angel. This crowd of figures and flowering 
marbles rises into a pyramid like a bouquet in a vase, while the 
sky shines through the infinite interstices of the scaffolding. — 
Taine. 

The House of the Capulets 

It was natural enough to go straight from the Market-place 
to the House of the Capulets, now degenerated into a most 
miserable little inn. Noisy vetturfni and muddy market-carts 
were disputing possession of the yard, which was ankle-deep 
in dirt, with a brood of splashed and bespattered geese ; and 
there was a grim-visaged dog, viciously panting in a doorway, 
who would certainly have had Romeo by the leg the moment he 
put it over the wall, if he had existed and been at large in those 
times. The orchard fell into other hands, and was parted off 
many years ago ; but there used to be one attached to the 
house— or, at all events, there may have been — and the hat 
(Cappello), the ancient cognizance of the family, may still be 

* ** Rotten jaws " was Romeo's expression, 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 177 

seen, carved in stone, over the gateway of the yard. The 
geese, the market-carts, their drivers, and the dog, were some- 
what in the way of the story, it must be confessed ; and it 
would have been pleasanter to have found the house empty, 
and to have been able to walk through the disused rooms. 
But the hat was unspeakably comfortable; and the place 
where the garden used to be, hardly less so. Besides, the 
house is a distrustful, jealous - looking house as one would 
desire to see, though of a very moderate size. So I was quite 
satisfied with it, as the veritable mansion of old Capulet, and 
was correspondingly grateful in my acknowledgments to an 
extremely unsentimental middle-aged lady, the Padrona of the 
Hotel, who was lounging on the threshold looking at the geese. 
From Juliet's home to Juliet's tomb, is a transition as 
natural to the visitor as to fair Juliet herself, or to the proudest 
Juliet that ever has taught the torches to burn bright in any 
time. So I went off, with a guide, to an old, old garden, once 
belonging to an old, old convent, I suppose; and being 
admitted, at a shattered gate, by a bright-eyed woman who was 
washing clothes, went down some walks where fresh plants 
and young flowers were prettily growing among fragments of 
old wall, and ivy-covered mounds ; and was shown a little tank, 
or water-trough, which the bright-eyed woman — drying her 
arms upon her 'kerchief, called "La tomba di Giulietta la 
sfortunata." With the best disposition in the world to believe, 
I could do no more than believe that the bright-eyed woman 
believed ; so I gave her that much credit, and her customary 
fee in ready money. It was a pleasure, rather than a disap- 
pointment, that Juliet's resting-place was forgotten. However 
consolatory it may have been to Yorick's Ghost, to hear the 
feet upon the pavement overhead, and, twenty times a day, the 
repetition of his name, it is better for Juliet to lie out of the 
track of tourists, and to have no visitors but such as come to 
graves in spring-rain, and sweet air, and sunshine. — Dickens, 

VICENZAi 

Vicenza is a Citty in the Marquisate of Treviso, yet apper- 
taining to the Venetians, full of gentlemen and splendid 

^ Goethe gives us this landscape : '* The way from Verona hither is 
▼ery pleasant : we go north-eastwards along the mountains, always keeping 
to the left the foremost mountains which consist of sand, lime, clay, and 
tuarl ; the hills which they form, are dotted with villages, castles, and 

M 



178 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

palaces, to which the famous Palladio, borne here, has 
exceedingly contributed as having ben the architect Most 
conspicuous is the Hall of Justice ; it has a toure of excellent 
work ; the lower pillars are of the first order ; those in the 
three upper corridors are Doric ; under them are shops in a 
spacious piazza. The hall was built in imitation of that at 
Padoa, but of a nobler designe, a ia modema. The next 
morning we visited the Theater, as being of that kind the 
most perfect now standing, and built by Palladio, in exact 
imitation of the ancient Romans, and capable of containing 
5000 spectators. The sceane, which is all of stone, represents 
an imperial citty, the order Corinthian, decorated with statues. 
Over the Scenario is inscribed, " Virtuti ac Genio Olympior : 
Academia Theatrum hoc a fundamentis erexit Palladio 
Architect: 1584." The sceane declines 11 foote, the suffito 
painted with cloudes. To this there joynes a spacious Hall 
for sollemn days to ballot in, and a second for the Academics. 
In the Piazza is also the Podesta, or Governor's house, the 
faciata being of the Corinthian order, very noble. The Piazza 
itselfe is so large as to be capable of justs and tournaments, 
the Nobility of this Citty being exceedingly addicted to this 
knight errantry and other martial diversions. In this place 
are two pillars in imitation of those at St Marc's at Venice, 
bearing one of them a winged lion, the other the statue of 
St. Jo. Baptist 

In a word, this sweete Towne has more well-built Palaces 
than any of its dimensions in all Italy, besides a number 
begun and not yet finished (but of stately designe) by reason 
of the domestic dissentions 'twixt them and those of Brescia, 
fomented by the sage Venetians least by combining they 
might think of recovering their ancient liberty. For this 
reason also are permitted those dissorders and insolences 

houses. To the right extends the broad plain, along which the road goes. 
The straight broad path, which is in good preservation, goes through a 
fertile field ; we look into deep avenues of trees, up which the vines are 
trained to a considerable height, and then drop down, like pendant 
branches. Here we can get an admirable idea of festoons ! The grapes 
are ripe, and are heavy on the tendrils, which hang down long and 
trembling. The road is Blled with people of every class and occupation, 
and I was particularly pleased by some carts, with low solid wheels, which, 
with teams of fine oxen, carry the large vats, in which the grapes from the 
vineyards are put and pressed. The drivers rode in them when they were 
empty, and the whole was like a triumphal procession of Bacchanals. 
Between the ranks of vines the ground is used for all sorts of grain, 
especially Indian com and millet" 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 179 

committed at Padoa among the youth of these two territories. 
It is no dishonour in this country to be some generations in 
finishing their palaces, that without exhausting themselves by 
a vast expence at once, they may at last erect a sumptuous 
pile. Count Oleine's Palace is neere perfected in this manner. 
Count Ulmarini is more famous for his gardens, being without 
the walls, especialy his Cedrario or Conserve of Oranges 
eleaven score of my paces long, set in order and ranges, 
making a canopy all the way by their intermixing branches for 
more than 200 of my single paces, and which being full of 
fruite and blossoms was a most delicious sight. In the middle 
of this garden was a cupola made of wyrc, supported by 
slender pillars of brick, so closely covered with ivy, both 
without and within, that nothing was to be perceived but 
greene ; 'twixt the arches there dangled festoons of the same. 
— Evelyn, 

The Palaces 

There are said to be about twenty palaces, which were 
erected by Palladio, some of which are of unusual magnifi- 
cence, and contribute in the whole to give Vicenza an appear- 
ance of splendour and beauty not common even in Italy. In 
materials and magnitude they are inferior perhgps to the 
palaces of Genoa, but in style of architecture and in external 
beauty far superior. Palladio in fact had a particular talent 
in applying the orders and the ornaments of architecture to 
the decoration of private edifices. Unlike the ancients, who 
seem to have contented themselves with employing its grandeur 
in temples, porticoes, and public buildings, he introduced it 
into common life, and communicated its elegant forms to 
private edifices and to ordinary dwellings. — Eustace. 

PADUA 

Padua is the second town of the Venetian state, though 
once the Mother of Venice. Ifs old enough to be the 
mother of Rome itself : having been built by Antenor, whose 
tomb is yet seen here. The town is very great, and fuller of 
good houses, than of men of condition : tyranny and too fre- 
quent murthers having much depopulated it, in point of 
nobility. It stands in the Marca Tresigiana. The walls 
about it are strong, and backt up with fine ramparts. It lies 
near the Euganian hills, in a fertile soil, and plain, which makes 



i8o THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

the proverb say : Bologna la grassa^ ma jPadita la fossa. It's 
famous for the study of physick, as many as our thrice worthy 
physicians in England can testify. The chief things I observed 
in it are these : 

1. Antenor's tomb with Gotick letters upon it : which makes 
me doubt whether this tomb be so ancient as they make it 

2. The public schools, called here // Bue, or Oxe; what 
if the first readers here came from Oxford, as they did to the 
university of Pavia ? ^ 

3. The Physick garden, to acquaint the students in 
Physick, with nature of simples. 

4. The church of S. Antony of Padua, whose body lies in 
the open chapel on the left hand ; and this chapel is adorned 
with curious figures of white marble representing the chief 
actions of this saint's life.^ Under the altar reposeth his 
body, and before it, hang some 27 great lamps of silver, or 
silver gilt. Over against this chappel, stands just such another 
open chappel, called the chappel of San Felice, which is 
rarely painted by famous Giotto, who made the Campanile of 
Florence. In a side chapel on the right hand, is the tombe 
of brave Gatta Mela, whose true name was Erasmo di Nami, 
of whom more by and by. The tombe of Alexander Con- 
tareno, G^eral of the Venetians, and it is one of the best cut 
tombs I have seen. . . . 

5. Going out by this church I saw the Eguestris statue of 
Gatta Mela,' the Venetians' general, whose tomb I saw even 
now in the church. He was nicknamed Gaitay because of his 
watchfulness in carrying business. 

6. The church of S. Justina is one of the first churches of 
Italy, and no wonder, seeing its architect was Palladio. . . . 

^ The origin of the name is more probably from a formerly adjacent 
tavern with the ox for its sign. 

* St. Antony was a Portuguese, bom in 1 195. He became a Fran- 
ciscan in 1 22 1 in Spain, and endeavoured to preach to the Moors in Africa ; 
but, being taken ill, went to Assisi, where he met the founder of his order. 
He is always spoken of as *' il santo," " the saint," in Padua ; his legend 
includes a sermon to the 6shes (given in full from a late broad-sheet by 
Addison), which is a parallel to St. Francis' sermon to the birds. St 
Antony is believed to be efficacious by sailors when there is no wind. The 
church erected in his name is a curious mixture of the Lombard, Gothic, 
and Oriental styles. 

* Padua ranks only second to Florence for the study of Donatello. 
Besides the decorations and bas-reliefs of the Santo^ the statue of '* Gatta- 
mela" (Erasmo di Nami) is of the highest interest. It was executed forty 
years before the Bartolomeo Colleoni at Venice. 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 181 

Before this church and monastery lies the Campo Santo, and 
a fair-field where they keep monthly a mercato franco^ and 
where the evenii^ Carso is kept, by ladies and noblemen in 
their coaches in the summer. — Lassels. 



The Chapel of the Arena 

. . . The Pietk of Giotto, in this little chapel at Padua, is 
now — as it was first painted in the commencement of the 
fourteenth century, and as it will continue to be so long as 
the neglect with which it is now treated allows it to exist — 
one of the great paintings of the world, one of those fountains 
from which school after school and age after age of artists 
may drink instruction and. knowledge, and never fail to gain 
more, the more they study its many excellences, and its 
intensity of feeling and conception. . . . The architectural 
merit of the building is simply, I think, that it performs satis- 
factorily the office of giving ample unbroken surfaces of wall 
for paintings. The arrangement of these is very regular. 
The vault is divided into two parts by wide coloured borders, 
the space between which is painted blue, powdered with gilt 
stars, and in each bay there are five small medallions with 
figures on a gold ground. The side walls are divided by 
borders into three divisions in height; the upper division 
containing subjects from the life of the Blessed Virgin ; the 
central, those illustrative of the life of our Blessed I^rd; 
whilst those nearest to the ground are representatives of the 
Virtues and Vices opposed to each other; the last division 
tinted only in one colour, the others richly painted in beautiful 
colours upon a field of deep blue. The borders which divide 
the paintings are very satisfactory, their patterns always very 
clearly defined with white leading lines, a line of red on either 
side always accompanying each line of white. The paintings 
themselves are very wonderful: there is an earnestness of 
purpose and expression about them such as one rarely meets 
with : each subject is treated with a severe conscientiousness, 
not always conventionally where a departure from strict rule 
is for any reason necessary, but still, generally speaking, in 
accordance no doubt with the ancient traditional treatment. 
This, illuminated as it is by the thought and love and earnest 
intensity of feeling which Giotto lavished on all that he did, 
makes his work here the most perfect example of a series 
of religious pictures which I have ever seen. Of course in 



i82 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

such a large series of subjects there must be great variety of 
excellence, and I am content to agree with the rest of the world 
in awarding the palm of excellence to the Pietk, in which the 
expression of intense feeling in the face of the mourners over 
the body of our Lord is certainly beyond anything of the kind 
that I know. Throughout the subjects our Lord, the Blessed 
Virgin, and the apostles are represented always in vestments 
of the same colour. — G. E. Street 

The University 

During the various revolutions that followed the fall and 
dismemberment of the Roman empire, Padua, in the intervals 
of repose that followed each successive shock, endeavoured 
to repair the shattered temple of the Muses, and to revive 
the sacred fire of knowledge. Some success always attended 
these laudable exertions, and a beam of science occasionally 
broke through the gloom of war and of barbarism. At lengtl^ 
the university was founded about the end of the eleventh 
century, and its foundation was to Padua the commencement 
of an era of glory and of prosperity. Its fame soon spread 
over Europe, and attracted to its schools prodigious numbers 
of students from all, even the most remote countries ; while 
the reputation of its professors was so great, and their station 
so honourable, that even nobles, at a time when nobles were 
considered as beings of a more elevated nature, were ambitious 
to be enrolled in their number. Eighteen thousand students 
are said to have crowded the schools during ages ; and amidst 
the multitude were seen, not Italians and Dalmatians, Greek 
and Latin Christians only; but even Turks, Persians, and 
Arabians, are said to have travelled from the distant regions 
of the East to improve their knowledge of medicine and 
botany, by the lectures of the learned Paduans. Hence the 
catalogue of the students of this University is rich in numbers 
and in illustrious names. Petrarca, Galileo, and Christopher 
Columbus, applied here, each to his favourite art, and in 
classics, astronomy, and navigation, collected the materials 
that were to form their future fame and fortune. — Eustace, 

The House of Petrarch ^ 

At Padua, I was too near the last and one of the most 
celebrated abodes of Petrarch, to make the omission of a 

^ In a village near Padua. 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 183 

visit excusable; had I not been in a disposition to render 
such a pilgrimage peculiarly pleasing. I set forwards from 
Padua after dinner, so as to arrive some time before sunset. 
Nothing could be finer than the day ; and I had every reason 
to promise myself a serene and delicious hour, before the 
son might go down. I put the poems of Petrarch into my 
pocket; and, as my road lay chiefly through lanes, planted 
on either side with mulberries and poplars, from which 
vines hung dangling in careless festoons, I found many a 
bowering shade, where I sat, at intervals, to indulge my 
pensive humour over some ejaculatory sonnet ; as the pilgrim, 
on his journey to Loretto, reposes here and there, to offer 
his prayers and meditations to the Virgin. In little more 
than an hour and half, I found myself in the midst of the 
Euganean hills, and, after winding almost another hour 
amongst them, I got, before I was well aware, into the village 
of Arqua. Nothing can be more sequestered or obscure than 
its situation. It had rather a deserted appearance ; several 
of its houses being destitute of inhabitants, and crumbling 
into ruins. Two or three of them, however, exhibited ancient 
towers, richly mantled with ivy, and surrounded with cypress, 
that retained the air of having once belonged to persons of 
consideration. Their present abandoned state nourished the 
melancholy idea with which I entered the village. Could one 
approach the last retreat of genius, and not look for some 
glow of its departed splendour? 

** Dear to the pensive eye of fond regret, 
Is light still oeaming from a sun that's set." 

llie residence of Petrarch at Arqua is said to have drawn 
thither from Padua the society of its more enlightened citizens. 
This city, whilst Petrarch lived in its neighbourhood, was 
engaged in rebellion against the Venetians; and Francis de 
Q^raura, the head of it, went often to Arqua, to consult 
Petrarch ; when he found himself obliged to sue to Venice for 
peace. The poet was indeed deputed, upon this occasion, his 
ambassador to the state ; as being a person whose character 
and credit were most likely to appease its wrath. His success 
in this embassy might, perhaps, have been some recompense 
for an employment he accepted with much regret, as it forced 
him from his beloved retirement. In a letter to one of his 
friends, written about this period of his life, he says : " I pass 
the greatest part of the year in the country, which I have 



i84 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

always preferred to cities : I read ; I write ; I think : thus, my 
life and my pleasures are like those of youth. I take pains 
to hide myself; but I cannot escape visits : it is an honour 
which displeases and wearies me. In my little house on the 
Euganean hills, I hope to pass my few remaining days in 
tranquillity, and to have alwa3rs before my eyes my dead, or 
my absent, friends." I was musing on these circumstances 
as I walked along the village, till a venerable old woman, 
seated at her door with her distaff in her hand, observing 
me, soon guessed the cause of my excursion ; and offered to 
guide me to Petrarch's house. The remainder of my way was 
short, and well amused by my guide's enthusiastic expressions 
of veneration for the poet's memory ; which, she assured me, 
she felt but in common with the other inhabitants of the 
village. When we came to the door of the house, we met the 
peasant, its present possessor. The old woman, recommend- 
ing the stranger and his curiosity to her neighbour's good 
offices, departed. I entered immediately, and ran over every 
room, which the peasant assured me, in confirmation of what 
I before learnt from better authority, were preserved, as nearly 
as they could be, in the state Petrarch had left them. 

The house and premises, having unfortunately been trans- 
mitted from one enthusiast of his name to another, no tenants 
have been admitted, but under the strictest prohibition of 
making any change in the form of the apartments, or in the 
memorial relics belonging to the place ; and, to say the truth, 
everything I saw in it, save a few articles of the peasant's 
furniture in the kitchen, has an authentic appearance. . . . 
Its walls were adorned with landscapes and pastoral scenes, in 
such painting as Petrarch himself might, and is supposed to 
have executed. Void of taste and elegance, either in the 
design or colouring, they bear some characteristic marks of 
the age to which they are, with no improbability, assigned ; 
and, separate from the merit of exhibiting repeatedly the por- 
traits of Petrarch and Laura, are a valuable sketch of the rude 
infancy of the art, where it rose with such hasty vigour to 
perfection. Having seen all that was left unchanged in this 
consecrated mansion, I passed through a room, said to have 
been the bard's bed-room, and stepped into the garden, situated 
on a green slope, descending directly from the house. It is 
now rather an orchard than a garden ; a spot of small extent, 
and without much else to recommend it, but that it once was 
the property of Petrarch. It is not pretended to have retained 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 185 

the form in which he left it An agreeably wild and melan- 
choly kind of view, which it commands over the Euganean hills, 
and which I beheld under the calm glow of approaching sun- 
set, must often, at the same moment, have soothed the poet's 
aniious feelings, and hushed his active imagination, as it did 
my own, into a delicious repose Having lingered here till 
the sun was sunk beneath the horizon, I was led a little way 
farther in the village, to see Petrarch's fountain. Hippocrene 
itself could not have been more esteemed by the poet, than 
this, his gift, by all the inhabitants of Arqua. The spring is 
copious, clear, and of excellent water ; I need not say with 
what relish I drank of it The last religious act in my pilgrim- 
age was a visit to the church-yard, where I strewed a few 
flowers, the fairest of the season, on the poet's tomb; and 
departed for Padua by the light of the moon. — Becked, 

MANTUA 

Mantua belongs to a sovereign duke or prince of the 
house of Gonzague. It stands in the midst of marshes which 
are nourished by the river Mincius : so that there's no coming 
to it but by two long bridges over the lake. ... As for 
Mantua itself, it's well built, and full of good houses. The 
duke's palace was heretofore one of the richest of Italy. I 
was told it had seven changes of hangings for every room in 
the house; besides a world of rare pictures, statues, plate, 
ornaments, cabinets, an unicornes' horn, an organ of alabaster ; 
six tables, each one three feet long, the first all emerauds, the 
second of Turkey stones, the third of hyacinths, the fourth of 
saphyrs, the fifth of amber, the sixth of jaspar stone. But the 
Imperialists swept all away. The origin of the house of 
Gonzague is from Germany. For a long time they were only 
Marquises of Mantua, till Charles the Fifth made them dukes. 
The revenues of this prince are about five hundred thousand 
crowns. His interest (as that of the other lesser princes of 
Italy) is to join with the stronger of the two nations, France 
or Spain. And he hath been often forced to put now and 
then a French garrison, now and then a Spanish garrison 
into his strong town of Casal, one of the strongest places I 
saw in all Italy : having an excellent Cittadel at one end of it ; 
a strong castle at the other, and strong ditches, walls, and 
ramparts everywhere. In fine, this Duke can raise, about 
fifteen thousand foot, and two thousand horse. — Lassels. 



i86 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



The Cathedral 

Mantua is a large city, with spacious streets, and some 
fine edifices. Its cathedral, built nearly upon the same plan 
as Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, is a very regular and 
beautiful edifice. The nave consists of two rows of Corinthian 
pillars, supporting, not arches, but an architrave and cornice, 
with a range of windows above, and niches in the intervals 
between them. Another row of pillars of the same order, 
on both sides, forms a double aisle. The choir consists of a 
semicircular recess behind the altar. Between the choir and 
the nave rises a very noble dome, decorated with pilasters and 
fine paintings. The transept on the left terminates in the 
chapel of the Holy Sacrament, a hexagon, with a recess for 
the altar, surmounted with a dome, adorned with paintings 
and arabesques in the best style, presenting, on the whole, an 
exquisite specimen of Mantuan taste. — Eustace, 

Palazzo del Tk^ 

The Palazzo T^ ... is indeed as singular a place as ever I 
saw. Not for its dampness, though it is very damp. Nor for 
its desolate condition, though it is as desolate and neglected 
as house can be. But chiefly for the unaccountable night- 
mares with which its interior has been decorated (among other 
subjects of more delicate execution) by Giulio Romano. 
There is a leering Giant over a certain chimney-piece, and 
there are dozens of Giants (Titans warring with Jove) on the 
walls of another room, so inconceivably ugly and grotesque, 
that it is marvellous how any man can have imagined such 
creatures. In the chamber in which they abound, these 
monsters, with swollen faces and cracked cheeks, and every 
kind of distortion of look and limb, are depicted as stagger- 
ing under the weight of falling buildings, and being over- 
whelmed in the ruins ; upheaving masses of rock, and burying 
themselves beneath; vainly striving to sustain the pillars of 
heavy roofs that tumble down upon their heads; and, in a 
word, undergoing and doing every kind of mad and demoniacal 
destruction. — Dickens, 

^ So called because the building is in the form of a T*. Without follow* 
ing Dickens always as a judge of art, his estimate here is just enough. 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 187 



The Triumph of CiCSAR 

The most famous work of Mantegna can only be de- 
scribed from Vasari's account : ^* At the time when he was 
living in Mantua, Andrea had been frequently employed by 
the Marquis Ludovico Gonzaga, who always favoured him 
and esteemed his talents very highly. That noble caused him 
therefore to paint, among other works, a small picture for the 
chapel in the castle of Mantua ; the figures in this work are 
not very large, but are exceedingly beautiful. In the same 
painting are various forms, which, as seen from below, are 
foreshortened in a manner that has been much extolled ; and 
although the draperies are somewhat hard, and the work has 
a certain dryness of manner, the whole is nevertheless seen 
to be executed with much art and great care. For the same 
marquis, Andrea painted the Triumph of Casar^ in a hall of 
the palace of San Sebastiano, in Mantua. This is the best 
work ever executed by his hand. Here are seen in most 
admirable arrangement the rich and beautiful triumphal car, 
with the figure who is vituperating the triumphant hero ; as 
also the kindred, the perfumes, the incense-bearers, the booty, 
and treasures seized by the soldiers, the well-ordered phalanx, 
the elephants, the spoils of art, the victories, cities, and for- 
tresses, exhibited in admirably counterfeited forms, on huge 
cars, the numerous trophies borne aloft on spears, an 'infinite 
variety of helmets, corslets, and arms of all kinds, with orna- 
ments, vases, and rich vessels innumerable. Among the 
multitude of spectators, there is a woman who holds a child 
by the hand ; the boy has got a thorn in his foot, and this he 
shows weeping to his mother, with much grace and in a very 
natural manner." 

Symonds describes the vicissitudes of the Triumph of 
Casar as follows: "Painted on canvas in tempera for the 
Marquis of Mantua, before 1488, looted by the Germans in 
1630, sold to Charles I., resold by the Commonwealth, bought 
back by Charles II., and now exposed, much spoiled by time 
and change, but more by villainous repainting, on the walls 
of Hampton Court." Of pictures painted by Mantegna for 
the Paradiso of Isabella d'Este, two are in the Louvre. A 
model of the marvellous decoration of this tiny room is in 
South Kensington Museum. — Ed. 



i88 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



FERRARAi 

This town of Ferrara was once the seat of a sovereign 
prince of the house of Este, but for want of heirs male after 
the death of Alfonso the Second it fell to the Church, and 
Clement Vlllth took possession of it in person by an entry 
and ceremony worthy of the pen of Cardinal Bentivoglio who 
wa^ there. The town stands in a plain, carrying above four 
miles cpmpass ; it hath a good citadell, strong walls, bulwarks : 
and a good garrison of soldiers. Here are fair streets and 
very handsome palaces; but people are somewhat thin. — 
Lassels, 

RsLics OF Ariosto and Tasso 

The tomb of Ariosto occupies one end of the largest 
saloon of which the library is composed; it is formed of 
various marbles, surrounded by an expressive bust of the 
poet, and subscribed with a few Latin verses, in a less 
miserable taste than those usually employed for similar pur- 
poses. But the most interesting exhibitions here, are the 
writings, &c., of Ariosto and Tasso, which are preserved, and 
were concealed from the undistinguishing depredations of the 
French with pious care. There is the arm-chair of Ariosto, 
an old plain wooden piece of furniture, the hard seat of which 
was oace occupied by, but has now survived its cushion, as 
it has its master. I could fancy Ariosto sitting in it ; and the 
satires in his own handwriting which they unfold beside it, 
and the old bronze inkstand, loaded with figures, which 
belonged also to him, assists the willing delusion. This 
inkstand has an antique, rather than an ancient appearance. 
Three nymphs lean forth from the circumference, and on the 
top of the lid stands a cupid, winged and looking up, with a 
torch in one hand, his bow in the other, and his quiver beside 
him. A medal was bound round the skeleton of Ariosto, 
with his likeness impressed upon it I cannot say I think 
it had much native expression ; but, perhaps, the artist was 
in fault On the reverse is a hand^ cutting with a pair of 

1 No traveller gives us ui adequate reference to the Romanesque 
Duomo, of which Leader Scott writes, " The fa9ade has the usual three 
perpendicular divisions formed by means of chiselled shafts, but each 
division is divided horizontally into three levels, each one enriched with 
Lombard galleries. Besides these is a wealth of ornamentation, figures, 
relie&» trafori (open work) and foliage of the most fantastic kind." 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 189 

scissors the tongue from a serpent, upraised from the grass, 
with this legend — Pro bono malum. What this reverse of 
the boasted Christian maxim means, or how it applies to 
Ariosto, either as a satirist or a serious writer, I cannot 
exactly tell The cicerone attempted to explain, and it is to 
his commentary that my bewildering is probably due — if, 
indeed, the meaning be very plain, as is possibly the case. 

There is here a manuscript of the entire Gerusaletnme 
Uberata^ written by Tasso's own hand ; a manuscript of some 
poems, written in prison, to the Duke Alfonso ; and the satires 
of Ariosto, written also by his own hand ; and the Pastor Fido 
of Guarini. The GerusaUmtne^ though it had evidently been 
copied and recopied, is interlined, particularly towards the end, 
with numerous corrections. The hand-writing of Ariosto is a 
small, firm, and pointed character, expressing, as I should say, 
a strong and keen, but circumscribed energy of mind ; that of 
Tasso is large, free, and flowing, except that there is a checked 
expression in the midst of its flow, which brings the letters 
into a smaller compass than one expected from tihe beginning 
of the word. It is the symbol of an intense and earnest mind, 
exceeding at times its own depth, and admonished to return 
by the chillness of the waters of oblivion striking upon its 
adventurous feet. ... 

We went afterwards to see his prison in the hospital of 
Sant' Anna, and I enclose you a piece of the wood of the 
very door, which for seven years and three months divided 
this glorious being from the air and the light which had 
nourished in him those influences which he has communi- 
cated, through his poetry, to thousands. The dungeon is 
low and dark, and when I say that it is really a very decent 
dungeon, I speak as one who has seen the prisons in the 
doges' palace of Venice. But it is a horrible abode for the 
coarsest and meanest thing that ever wore the shape of man, 
much more for one of delicate susceptibilities and elevated 
fancies. It is low, and has a grated window, and being sunk 
some feet below the level of the earth, is full of unwholesome 
damps. In the darkest corner is a mark in the wall where 
the chains were riveted, which bound him hnnd and foot. 
After some time, at the instance of some Cardinal, his friend, 
the Duke allowed his victim a fire-place ; the mark where it 
was walled up yet remains.' — Shelly, 

1 Montaigne passed through Ferrara while Tasso was in the hospital 
prison of St. Anna. He does not mention the fact of Tasso's imprison- 
ment, and there is no evidence that the two men ever met. 



I90 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



RAVENNA 

The main, if not the whole, interest of Ravenna . . . 
centres in its history, as displayed in its tombs and mosaics 
within the churches. I will go briefly through its several 
points. 

First, the last refuge of the Western Empire. This is 
centred in the extraordinary tomb of Galla Placidia. A low 
brick wall, a low brick octagon tower — ^this is the exterior. 
The interior is a dark chapel, with three recesses, every vault 
and arch of which glitters or darkens, as the case may be, with 
mosaics — ^those well-known old mosaics of the stags at the 
water brooks, and the youthful shepherd sitting with his 
flocks, and the Evangelistic beasts, and in each of the three 
recesses a huge marble sarcophagus — Galla Placidia in the 
centre, Honorius on the right, Constantius on the left. As 
late as 1577 Placidia herself was to be seen sitting, like 
Charlemagne in later times, wrapped in her imperial robes, 
seated on a throne of cypress. Through the aperture which 
revealed this wonderful sight three children put in a light ; 
the robes caught fire ; and in a moment all that remained of 
the daughter of Theodosius, the sister of Arcadius and 
Honorius, the wife of Adolphus and Constantius, the Empress 
of Aetius, and Boniface, the mother of Valentinian III., was 
reduced to ashes. ^^Adesso," said the guide with a grim 
smile, 'non c'^ Galla Placidia." But though this be so, it is 
still a spot of unique interest, so little changed since those 
awful times of a dissolving world, so humble without and so 
proud within, the close of the most romantic life in the 
Imperial family ! 

Secondly, the Gothic kingdom. Three monuments re- 
main : the palace of Theodoric, where he died of seeing the 
ghost of Symmachus in the large fish on his table, a mere 
fragment ; the Basilica^ close by ... as St. Mark's at Venice 
for the doges ; and outside the walls, in the green fields and 
hedges, a huge well-built mausoleum like Cecilia Metella's or 
Hadrian's, on the top of which once rested his ashes till they 
were scattered, as Arian by the Athanasian Greeks. On the 
whole this Gothic period is the least impressive. 

Thirdly, the Exarchate. All the most interesting mosaics, 
and two of the chief churches, St. Vitalis and St. ApoUinaris, 
1 Restored in the eighteenth century. 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 191 

both built by a Ravenna banker (Julianus & Co.) at the same 
time, one within, one without the walls, are of this period. 
The most remarkable are the great representations, in St 
Vitalis, of Justinian and Theodora . . . and in St ApoUinaris, 
of Constantine Pogonatus with his two brothers. They seem 
to be the only existing pictures of the Byzantine court, and, 
though stiff like all mosaics, it is something to look on the 
very figure of those departed potentates. Justinian, as also 
Constantine, is headless (?), clothed in purple, with a diadem 
and a glory of a saint round his head. Theodora, the in- 
famous Theodora, has the same ; her eyes are very large, her 
face thin, her mouth small. Her benefactions to this church 
were among the last acts of her life. She died in the year it 
was finished ; so we here see the last of her. Beside Justinian 
stand the Varangian guards, Anglo-Saxons, now first appearing 
in historical monuments. — Dean Stanley, 

S. Apollinare 

The building belongs to the sixth century, but the un- 
alterable mosaics covering the frieze of the nave on both sides, 
shew as clearly as ever what Greek art had become in the 
monastic minds of the quibbling theologians and the artificial 
rulers of the later Empire. It is still Greek art influencing 
humanity even at a remove of ten centuries from the Parthenon, 
and the talkative fools who now strut on the mundane stage 
still see, although with blinking eyes and as though through a 
fog, the grand forms and flowing draperies which were dis- 
posed in order on the fa9ade of the pagan temples. Here 
above the columns the processions move, one of twenty-two 
women saints toward the Virgin, another of the same number 
of saintly men towards the Christ. In neither case is the 
expressive ugliness, and the exact imitation of the vulgar 
truth of medisevalism, yet to be seen; rather we might say 
the women have dignified figures, inclining to tallness, and in 
their reserved dignity have an antique grace. Their hair falls 
behind and is bound up on the brow like the head-dress of 
the nymphs, while their stole droops in long, severe folds ; the 
male figures in single file are as grave in expression, while 
near both the Christ and the Virgin white-robed angels, with 
white-cinctured brows, are in prayer. But here the artistic 
tradition ends, for all the artist has learnt from it is that the 
figure must be draped, that such a mode of the arrangement 



192 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

of the hair, or such faurial ezpreesion is to be preferred. No 
longer is there any observation of life, or of the young and 
healthy spirit existing behind the outward seeming : the 
Fathers of the Church have forbidden it. . . . 

The baptistery ... is of the fifth century. Heavy 
arabesques cover the walls, and on the vault is to be seen 
the baptism of Jesus Christ, around whom is the circle of the 
twelve apostles, gigantic figures in white tunics and gilded 
mantles. The heads are small, but of surprising length, the 
shoulders narrow and the eyes sunk deep in their sockets. 
Nevertheless the rule of asceticism has not emaciated them to 
the same extent as the descendants of a century later in San 
Vitale. ... St. Apollinare in Classe is on a road where 
stands a marble column, itself the sole survival of an entire 
quarter of the town and the last remnant of a destroyed 
basilica. St. Apollinare in Classe seems also deserted : it 
exists alone in the desolate part which was once a quarter of 
Ravenna. ^ — Taine. 

RIMINI « 

Rimini has nothing modem to boast of. Its antiquities 
are as follow : A marble bridge of five arches, built by Augustus 
and Tiberius, for the inscription is still legible, though not 
rightly transcribed by Gruter. A triumphal arch raised by 
Augustus, which makes a noble gate to the town, though part 
of it is ruined The ruins of an amphitheatre. The Suggestum, 
on which it is said that Julius Caesar harangued his army after 
having passed the Rubicon. I must confess I can by no 
means look on this last as authentic ; it is built of hewn stone, 
like the pedestal of a pillar, but something higher than ordi- 
nary, and is but just broad enough for one man to stand upon 
it. On the contrary, the ancient Suggestums, as I have often 
observed on medals as well as on Constantine's arch, were 
made of wood like a little kind of stage, for the heads of the 
nails are sometimes represented, that are supposed to have 
fastened the boards together. We often see on them the 

^ Concerning the Dante tomb in Ravenna, Dean Stanley well said 
" in the town . . . you cannot realise his presence." The Pineta or pine 
forest with which the great poet's name is associated has been in great 
part burnt down. 

^ Half way between Bologna and Rimini is Faenza, of which Lassels 
writes, *' having no considerable thing in it but white earthem pots, called 
vessels of Faenza." Hence the French word faience. 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 193 

emperor, and two or three general officers, sometimes sitting 
and sometimes standing, as they made speeches, or distributed 
a congiary to the soldiers or people. They were probably 
always in readiness, and carried amoi^ the baggage of the 
army, whereas this at Rimini must have been built on the 
place, and required some time before it could be finished. — 
Addis(m. 

The Cathedral 1 

It is here that all the Malatesti lie. Here too is the chapel 
consecrated to Isotta, " Divae Isottae Sacrum." . . . Nothing 
but the fact that the church is duly dedicated to St. Francis, 
and that the outer shell of classic marble encases an old Gothic 
edifice, remains to remind us that it is a Christian place of 
worship. It has no sanctity, no spirit of piety. The pride 
of the tyrant whose legend — *' Sigismundus Pandulphus Mala- 
testa Pan F. Fecit Anno Gratias mccccl " — occupies every arch 
and stringcourse of the architecture, and whose coat-of-arms 
and portrait in medallion, with his cipher and his emblems of 
an elephant and a rose, are wrought in every piece of sculp- 
tured work throughout Uie building, seems to fill this house of 
prayer so that there is no room left for God.—;/'. A, Symonds, 

SAN MARINO 

The town and republic of St. Marino stands on the top of 
a very high and craggy mountain. It is generally hid among 
the clouds, and lay under snow when I saw it, though it was 
clear and warm weather in all the country about it. There is 
not a spring or fountain, that I could hear of, in the whole 
dominions, but they are always well provided with huge 
cisterns and reservoirs of rain and snow-water. The wine 
that grows on the sides of their mountain is extraordinary 
good, and I think much better than any I met with on the 
cold side of the Apennines. This puts me in mind of their 
cellars, which have most of them a natural advantage that 
renders them extremely cool in the hottest seasons, for they 
have generally in the sides of them deep holes that run into 
the hollows of the hill, from whence there constantly issues a 
breathing kind of vapour, so very chilling in the summer-time, 
that a man can scarce suffer his hand in the wind of it. 

^ Mainly executed by Leo Battista Alberti, who, for his versatility, 
was almost a Leonardo, at a date fifty years earlier. 

N 



194 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

This mountain, and a few neighbouring hillocks that lie 
scattered about the bottom of it, is the whole circuit of these 
dominions. They have, what they call, three castles, three 
convents, and five churches, and can reckon about five thou- 
sand souls in their community. The inhabitants, as well as 
the historians who mention this little republic, give the 
following account of its original. St. Marino was its founder^ 
a Dalmatian by birth, and by trade a mason. He was em- 
ployed above thirteen hundred years ago in the reparation of 
Rimini, and after he had finished his work, retired to this 
solitary mountain, as finding it very proper for the life of a 
hermit, which he led in the greatest rigours and austerities of 
religion. He had not been long here before he wrought a 
reputed miracle, which, joined with his extraordinary sanctity, 
gained him so great an esteem, that the princess of the 
country made him a present of the mountain, to dispose of at 
his own discretion. His reputation quickly peopled it, and 
gave rise to the republic which calls itself after his name. So 
that the commonwealth of Marino may boast at least of a 
nobler original than that of Rome, the one having been at 
first an asylum for robbers and murderers, and the other a 
resort of persons eminent for their piety and devotion. The 
best of their churches is dedicated to the saint, and holds his 
ashes. His statue stands over the high altar, with the figure 
of a mountain in its hands, crowned with three castles, which 
is likewise the arms of the commonwealth. They attribute to 
his protection the long duration of their state, and look on 
him as the greatest saint next the blessed Virgin. I saw in 
their statute-book a law against such as speak disrespectfuUy 
of him, who are to be punished in the same manner as those 
who are convicted of blasphemy. 

This petty republic has now lasted thirteen hundred years, 
while all the other states of Italy have several times changed 
their masters and forms of government Their whole history 
is comprised in two purchases, which they made of a neigh- 
bouring prince, and in a war in which they assisted the pope 
against a lord of Rimini. In the year iioo they bought a 
castle in the neighbourhood, as they did another in the year 
1 1 70. The papers of the conditions are preserved in their 
archives, where 'tis very remarkable that the name of the 
agent for the commonwealth, of the seller, of the notary, and 
the witnesses, are the same in both the instruments, though 
drawn up at seventy years' distance from each other. Nor 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 19S 

can it be any mistake in the date, because the popes' and em- 
perors' names, with the year of their respective reigns, are 
both punctually set down. About 290 years after this they 
assisted Pope Pius the Second against one of the Malatestas, 
who was then lord of Rimini; and when they had helped 
to conquer him, received from the pope, as a reward for 
their assistance, four little castles. This they represent as 
the flourishing time of the commonwealth, when their do- 
minions reached half-way up a neighbouring hill; but at 
present they are reduced to their old extent. They would 
probably sell their liberty as dear as they could to any that 
attacked them ; for there is but one road by which to climb up 
to them, and they have a very severe law against any of their 
own body that enters the town by another path, lest any 
new one should be worn on the sides of their mountain. All 
that are capable of bearing arms are exercised, and ready at a 
moment's call 

The sovereign power of the republic was lodged originally 
in what they call the Arengo, a great council, in which every 
house had its representative. But because they found too 
much confusion in such a multitude of statesmen, they de- 
volved their whole authority into the hands of the council of 
sixty. The Arengo, however, is still called together in cases 
of extraordinary importance ; and if, after due summons, any 
member absents himself, he is to be fined to the value of 
about a penny English, which the statute says he shall pay, 
sine aliquA diminuHone aut gratid. In the ordinary course of 
government, the council of sixty (which, notwithstanding the 
name, consists but of forty persons) has in its hands the 
administration of affairs, and is made up half out of the noble 
families, and half out of the plebeian. They decide all by 
balloting, are not admitted till five and twenty years old, and 
choose Sie officers of the commonwealth. 

Thus far they agree with the great council of Venice, but 
their power is much more extended; for no sentence can 
stand that is not confirmed by two-thirds of this council. 
Besides that, no son can be admitted into it during the life 
of his father, nor two be in it of the same family, nor any 
enter but by election. The chief officers of the common- 
wealth are the two capitaneos, who have such a power as the 
old Roman consuls had, but are chosen every six months. I 
talked with some that had been capitaneos six or seven times, 
though the office is never to be continued to the same persons 



196 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

twice successively. The third officer is the commissary, who 
judges in all civil and criminal matters. But because the 
many alliances, friendships, and intermarriages, as well as the 
personal feuds and animosities that happen among so small a 
people, might obstruct the course of justice, if one of their 
own number had the distribution of it, they have always a 
foreigner for this employ, whom they choose for three years, 
and maintain out of the public stock. He must be a doctor 
of law, and a man of known integrity. He is joined in com- 
mission with the capitaneos, and acts something like the 
recorder of London under the Lord Mayor. The common- 
wealth of Genoa was forced to make use of a foreign judge 
for many years, whilst their republic was torn into the 
divisions of Guelphs and Gibelines. 

The fourth man in the state is the physician, who must 
likewise be a stranger, and is maintained by a public salary. 
He is obliged to keep a horse, to visit the sick, and to inspect 
all drugs that are imported. He must be at least thirty-five 
years old, a doctor of the faculty, and eminent for his religion 
and honesty ; that his rashness or ignorance may not unpeople 
the commonwealth. And that they may not suffer long under 
any bad choice, he is elected only for three years. The 
present physician is a very understanding man, and well read 
in our countrymen, Harvey, Willis, Sydenham, etc. He has 
been continued for some time among them, and they say the 
commonwealth thrives under his hands. Another person who 
makes no ordinary figure in the republic, is the schoolmaster. 
I scarce met with any in the place that had not some tincture 
of learning. I had the perusal of a Latin book in folio, 
entitled, Statuia Illustrissima reipublioE SancH Marini^ 
printed at Rimini by order of the commonwealth. The 
chapter on the public ministers says, that when an ambassa- 
dor is despatched from the republic to any foreign state, he 
shall be allowed, out of the treasury, to the value of a shilling 
a day. The people are esteemed very honest and rigorous 
in the execution of justice, and seem to live more happy and 
contented among their rocks and snows than others of the 
Italians do in the pleasantest valleys of the world. Nothing, 
indeed, can be a greater instance of the natural love that 
mankind has for liberty, and of their aversion to an arbitrary 
government, than such a savage mountain covered with 
people, and the Campania of Rome, which lies in the same 
country, almost destitute of inhabitants. — Addison. 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 197 



URBINOi 

The impression left upon the mind after traversing this 
palace in its length and breadth is one of weariness and 
disappointment . . . Are these chambers really those where 
Emilia Pia held debate on love with Bembo and Castiglione ; 
where Bibbiena's witticisms and Fra Serafino's pranks raised 
smiles on courtly lips; where Bernardo Accolti, ''the 
Unique," declaimed his verses to admiring crowds? Is it 
possible that into yonder hall, where now the lion of S. Mark 
looks down alone on staring desolation, strode the Borgia in 
all his panoply of war, a gilded glittering dragon, and from the 
dais tore the Montefeltri's throne, and from the arras stripped 
their ensigns, replacing these with his own Bull and Valentinus 
Dux? Here Tasso tuned his lyre for Francesco Maria's 
wedding-feast, and read Aminta to Lucrezia d'Este. Here 
Guidobaldo listened to the jests and whispered scandals to 
the Aretine. Here Titian set his easel up to paint ; here the 
boy Raphael, cap in hand, took signed and sealed credentials 
from his Dutchess to the Gonfalier of Florence. Somewhere 
in these huge chambers, the courtiers sat before a torch-lit 
stage, when Bibbiena's Calandria and Castiglione's Tirsi^ with 
their miracles of masques and mummers, whirled the night 
away. Somewhere, we know not where, Giuliano de' Medici 
made love in these bare rooms to that mysterious mother of 
ill-fated Cardinal Ippolito ; somewhere, in some darker nook, 
the bastard Alessandro sprang to his strange-fortuned life of 
tyranny and license, which Brutus Lorenzino cut short with a 
traitor's poignard-thrust in Via Larga. How many men, 
illustrious for arts and letters, memorable by their virtues 
or their crimes, from the great Pope Julius down to 
James III., self-titled King of England, who tarried here 
with Clementine Sobieski through some twelve months of 
his ex-ro3ral exile ! — Sytnonds. 

LORETTO 

Loretto . . . stands on a rising ground, overlooking a fine 
plain, and beyond this at no great distance, the Adriatic sea, 
or Gulf of Venice, which indeed is so near that, in clear 

^ Urbino is placed in this section, because the tiaveUer takes coach 
from Pesaro. There is nothing particular to be said about the Raphael 
house. 



198 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

weather, you can see the Sclavonian mountains on the other 
side of the gulf. The town altogether is exceedingly well 
situated. There are very few inhabitants beyond those who 
are actually engaged in the services of devotion ; or indirectly 
innkeepers . . . and dealers in wax-candles, images, beads, 
Agnus Dei, Salvators, and such commodities ; for the sale of 
which there is a number of fine shops, handsomely fitted 
up; as may well be, for they drive an excellent trade. I 
myself got rid of fifty good crowns in this way, while I was 
there. The priests, the churchmen, and the collie of 
Jesuits, all live together in a large modern palace, where also 
the governor resides, himself a churchman, who has the 
ordering of all things here, subject to the authority of the 
l^ate and the pope. 

The place of devotion is a small brick house, very old and 
very mean, much longer than it is broad. At the head of 
this is a projection, the two sides of which are iron doors, the 
firont consisting of a thick iron grating; the whole a£fair is 
exceedingly coarse and antiquated, without the slightest 
appearance of wealth about it. This iron grating reaches 
across from one door to the other, and through it you can see 
to the end of the building, where stands the shrine, which 
occupies about a fifth part of the space, and is the principal 
object with the pious visitors. Here, against the upper part 
of the wall, is to be seen the image of Our Lady, made, they 
say, of wood ; all the rest of the shrine is so covered with 
magnificent ex-voios^ the offerings of princes and their subjects 
in all parts of Christendom, that there is hardly an inch of 
wall discernible, hardly a spot that does not glitter with gold 
and silver and precious stones. It was with the utmost 
difficulty, as a very great favour, that I obtained therein a 
vacant place, large enough to receive a small fiame, in which 
were fixed four silver figures : that of Our Lady, my own, that 
of my wife, and that of my daughter. At the foot of mine 
there is engraved in silver : Michael MontanuSy Gallus Vesco^ 
Eques Regit ordinis 1581 ; at the foot of my wife's : Frandsca 
Cassaniana uxor; and at that of my daughter: Leonora 
Montana filia unica ; the figure of Our Lady is in the front, 
and the three others are kneeling side by side, before her.^ 
— Montaigne. 

1 Addison eives us a landscape which deserves quotation : *' Our whole 
journey from Coretto to Rome, was very agreeably relieved by the variety 
of scenes we passed through. For not to mention the rude prospect of 



VENICE AND TOWNS OF THE ADRIATIC 199 



ANCONA 

Ancona ... is the principal town of the Marches ; . . . 
it has a large population, a considerable portion of whom are 
Greeks, Turks, and Sclavonians, for the place carries on a 
good trade. The town is well built, and is flanked by two 
eminences, which run down into the sea. On one of diese, 
by which we entered, there is a large fort, and on the other a 
church. The town is seated partly on the slopes of these two 
bills ; but the principal portion is in the valley between them, 
and along the sea-side. There is a good port here, where 
may still be seen a fine arch, erected in honour of the 
Emperor Trajan, his wife and his sister. . . . The country 
abounds in excellent setters, which may be had for about six 
crowns each. There is an amazing number of quails caught 
here, but they are very poor. . . . We learnt that the quails 
came over here in large flocks from Sclavonia, and that every 
night they are caught in nets on the sea-shore, by men who 
allure them in their flight by imitating the quail's note. . . . 

In the night, I heard the report of a cannon, as far off as 
from the Abruzzi, in the kingdom of Naples, and beyond that 
city. Every league along the coast there is a tower ; the first 
of these that discovers a corsair at sea, by firing a gun, gives a 
signal to the next tower, and so on, and in this way the alarm 
spreads with such rapidity that in one hour's time, it reaches 
from the other end of Italy to Venice. — Montaigne. 

The Mole 

The Romans, aware of the advantages of this port, made 
it their principal naval station in the Adriatic, built a mag- 
nificent mole to cover the harbour, and adorned it with a 
triumphal arch. This useful and splendid work was unde^ 

rocks rising one above another, of the gutters deep-worn in the sides of 
them by torrents of rain and snow-water, or the long channels of sand 
winding about their bottoms, that are sometimes filled with so many 
rivers ; we saw, in six days' travelling, the several seasons of the year in 
their beauty and perfection. We were sometimes shivering on the top of 
a bleak mountain, and a little while after basking in a warm valley, 
covered with violets and almond-trees in blossom, the bees already swarm- 
ing over them, though but in the month of February. Sometimes our 
road led us through groves of olives, or by gardens of oranges, or into 
several hollow apartments among the rocks and mountains, that look like 
so many natural green-houses ; as being always shaded with a great variety 
of trees and shrubs that never lose their verdure." 



200 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

taken and finished by Trajan, and to him the triumphal arch 
is dedicated. It is still entire, though stripped of its metal 
ornaments ; the order is Corinthian ; the materials, Parian 
marble ; the form light, and the whole is considered as the 
best, though not the most splendid, nor the most massive 
model, that remains of similar edifices. It was ornamented 
with statues, busts, and probably inferior decorations of 
bronze ; but of these, as I hinted above, it has been long since 
stripped by the avarice of barbarian invaders, or perhaps of 
ignorant and degenerate Italians. From the first taking of 
Rome by Alaric, that is from the total fall of the arts to their 
restoration, it was certain ruin to an ancient edifice to retain, 
or to be supposed to retain, any ornament, or even any stay of 
metal. Not the internal decorations only were torn off", but 
the very nails pulled out, and not unfrequently stones dis- 
placed, and columns overturned, to seek for bronze or iron. — 
Eustace. 

The Cathedral 

. . . The Cathedral ... is unquestionably, as far as my 
experience goes, the most finely situated chiu-ch in Europe. 
A part of the mass of Monte Conero . . . juts out into the 
sea, before receding so as to leave space for the town, and thus 
forms the ancona which has given the place its name, and the 
harbour which gives it its value. On the topmost headland of 
this jutting promontory, which protrudes from the coast-line, 
with an inclination towards the north, far enough out into the 
sea to be washed at its base on both sides, and to command a 
twofold sea view from its summit, the Cathedral stands on the 
spot where stood the 

Domus Veneris quam Dorica sustinet Ancon 

of Juvenal's Fourth Satire.— 7! A. Trollope. 



THE LAKES, MILAN, AND TOWNS 
TO BOLOGNA 

THE APPROACH FROM THE SIMPLON 

. . . The character of the mountains, which we should expect 
to become more smiling and soft as we come towards Italy, 
takes, on the contrary, an extraordinary barbarity and harsh- 
ness. . . . The descents become steeper and steeper; the 
valley in which the road winds is strangled in the gorges ; the 
mountains on either side are scarped in a terrible way ; the 
rocks are sheer to perpendicularity, or seem ready to topple 
over ; their cleavage, with the clear marks of blasting, shews 
that they have only made way after fierce resistance, and only 
at the cost of not a little powder to get the better of them. 
The colouring grows brown, and the light painfully filters 
down the narrow cuttings ; patches of a sombre green, which 
are really pine-forests, spot the dun rocks and give them a 
tigrish aspect. The torrents become cascades, and at the 
bottom of a gigantic fissure, which looks like the hatchet 
stroke of a Titan, there scolds and foams the Doveria, a sort 
of raging river, which does not roll water only, but blocks of 
granite, enormous stones, caked earth, and white smoke. Its 
bed is far larger than its stream, and it rushes and convul- 
sively twists itself, looking like a street of cyclopaean walls 
after an earthquake. It is a chaos of rocks, marble slabs, and 
fragments of marble looking almost like keystones, door posts, 
shavings of columns, and comers of walls. In other places 
whitened stones seem to make a chamel house like the graves 
of mastodons and antediluvian animals laid bare by a water- 
course. It is everywhere ruin, ravage, desolation, and a 
menace of peril. . . . 

This Doveria, furious and raging as it is, has still been of 
service ; without it man could not have cloven these colossal 
masses. Its waters have conquered opposition and prepared 



202 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

a way for the engineer. Its course is a rough tracing of the 
road; torrent and road nudge each other, sometimes the 
road borrows from the torrent, sometimes the torrent from the 
road. Sometimes the solid rock shews an enormous rampart, 
which can be neither scaled nor gone round ; then a gallery 
cut through it with chisel and blasting powder solves the 
difficulty. The Gondo gallery, cut with two openings, which 
would make an admirable underground scene in a melodrama, 
is one of the longest after the Algaby, which is 220 feet in 
length. It bears at one entrance the brief but noble inscrip- 
tion : Aere Italo^ i795>^ -^Z* <'^A Not far from this spot, 
the Frasinone and two other torrents emerging from the 
glaciers of the Rosboden hurl themselves down into the abyss 
with terrifying roar and fury. The road follows an escarpment 
over the gulf. The rock-walls come closer and closer, rough, 
black, bristling, gleaming, and out of balance, only shewing 
the sky between their summits two thousand feet above. . . . 
After crossing the most perilous bridges, and prodigious 
tunnelings, — ^for there is one where all the weight of the 
mountain is on a pile of masonry — we come to a r^on that is 
slightly less penned in. The valley opens out, the Doveria 
spreads out with more ease, the clouds and gathered mists 
break into light wool. The light is less hoarded by the sky ; 
the icy cold grey-green tint which marks the terrors of the 
Alps, becomes somewhat warmer. A few houses have the 
courage to shew their heads through the clumps of trees on 
the less hazardous slopes, and we presently reach IseUa. — 
Thhaphile Gautier, 

THE LAKES 

Lago di Como 

Since I last wrote to you we have been to Como, looking 
for a house. This lake exceeds any thing I ever beheld in 
beauty, with the exception of the arbutus islands of Killamey. 
It is long and narrow, and has the appearance of a mighty 
river winding among the mountains and the forests. We 
sailed from the town of Como to a tract of country called the 
Tremezina, and saw the various aspects presented by that part 
of the lake. The mountains between Como and that village, 
or rather cluster of villages, are covered on high with chestnut 

^ Is Gautier quite right in his date? 



LAKES, MILAN, TOWNS TO BOLOGNA 203 

forests (the eating chestnuts, on which the inhabitants of the 
country subsist in time of scarcity), which sometimes descend 
to the very verge of the lake, overhanging it with their hoary 
branches. But usually the immediate border of this shore is 
composed of laurel-trees, and bay, and myrtle, and wild fig- 
trees, and olives which grow in the crevices of the rocks, and 
overhang the caverns, and shadow the deep glens, which are 
filled with the flashing light of the waterfalls. Other flowering 
shrubs, which I cannot name, grow there also. On high, the 
towers of village churches are seen white among the dark 
forests. Beyond, on the opposite shore, which &ces the 
south, the mountains descend less precipitously to the lake, 
and although they are much higher, and some covered with 
perpetual snow, there intervenes between them and the lake a 
range of lower hills, which have glens and rifts opening to the 
other, such as I should fancy the abysses of Ida or Parnassus. 
Here are plantations of olive, and orange, and lemon trees, 
which are now so loaded with fruit, that there is more fruit 
than leaves — and vineyards. This shore of the lake is one 
continued village, and the Milanese nobility have their villas 
here. The union of culture and the untameable profusion 
and loveliness of nature is here so close, that the line where 
they are divided can hardly be discovered. But the finest 
scenery is that of the Villa Pliniana; so called from a fountain 
wiHch ebbs and flows every three hours, described by the 
younger Pliny, which is in the court-yard. This house, which 
was once a magnificent palace, and is now half in ruins, we 
are endeavouring to procure. It is built upon terraces raised 
from the bottom of the lake, together with its garden, at the 
foot of a semicircular precipice, overshadowed by profound 
forests of chestnut 1 he scene from the colonnade is the 
most extraordinary, at once, and the most lovely that eye ever 
beheld. On one side is the mountain, and immediately over 
you are clusters of cypress-trees of an astonishing height, 
which seem to pierce the sky. Above you, from among the 
clouds^ as it were, descends a waterfall of immense size, 
broken by the woody rocks into a thousand channels to the 
lake On the other side is seen the blue extent of the lake 
and the mountains, speckled with sails and spires. The 
apartments of the Pliniana are immensely large, but ill 
furnished and antique. The terraces, which overlook the lake, 
and conduct under the shade of such immense laurel-trees as 
deserve the epithet of Pythian, are most delightful. — Shelley, 



204 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



Lago Maggiore 

If I had my choice of a country house, I would choose one 
here. From topmost Varese, where the road begins to fall, a 
broad plain with low hills is seen. The expanse is clothed 
with verdure and with trees, with fields and meadows starred 
with white and yellow flowers like a velvet Venetian dress, 
with mulberry-trees and vines. Further on are bouquets of 
oaks and poplars, and scattered among the hills, beautiful 
placid lakes, with broad waters of one tone, shining like mir- 
rors of steel. It has the gentleness of an English landscape, 
the noble composition of a picture by Claude Lorraine. The 
mountains and the sky give majesty, the expansive waters give 
a flowing grace. Two lunds of landscape, those of north and 
south, here meet in a pleasant friendship, and give the softness 
of a grassy park with the grandeur of an amphitheatre of high 
rocks. The lake itself is far more varied than that of Como : 
it is not shut in from end to end by abrupt bare hills ; if it 
lies beneath harsh mountains, it has also smiling slopes, a cloak 
of forest trees, and the perspective of the plain. From Laveno 
we see its broad motionless surface, burnished here and there 
and damascened like a corslet by numberless scales under 
the blaze of the sun breaking through the domed douds. 
The faint breeze hardly brings a dying ripple against the 
pebbles of the shores. Eastward, a pati^ winds half up the 
bank among green hedges, blossoming fig-trees, and spring 
flowers with every kind of sweet scent . . . Further and yet 
further along, the tree-girt mountains slope to the water's edge, 
and lift their cones and misty peaks, lost in the grey clouds. 

At sunrise we took a boat and crossed the lake in the 
diaphanous mist of dawn; the surface is as broad as some 
sea-bays, and the little waves of leaden blue shine £untly. 
The grey vapour covers the sky and water with its monotone ; 
but it fades gradually and disappears, while through its break- 
ing meshes come the lovely light and gentle warmth of day. 
We glide thus for a couple of hours in the unchanging balmy 
twilight of early dawn, touched by the breeze as by the gentle 
shock of air from a feather-fan. Then the sky clears, and 
only blue and brightness are above us; the water around 
is like a broad piece of wrinkled velvet, the sky like a glowing 
sapphire shell. But a white spot appears, grovrs and becomes 
a reality : it is Isola-Afadre, wrapped in its terraces, with the 



LAKES, MILAN, TOWNS TO BOLOGNA 205 

waves beating against its great blue flags and powdering its 
lustrous leaves with moisture. We land; on the side of the 
ledge are aloes with their massive leaves and Indian figs sun- 
ning their tropical fruit. Alleys of lemon trees run by the 
walls, and their green or yellow fruit clings close to the inter- 
stices of the rocks. With this wealth of beautiful plants, four 
terraces rise one by one ; on the plateau of the isle is a band of 
[[(reen throwing over the banks its masses of leaves, laurels, 
evergreens, plane-trees, pomegranates, exotics, glycines, and 
full-bloomed clusters of azalea. We walk amid coolness and 
perfumes. ... All carpeted with delicate grass and grown 
with flowering trees, the island is a fair garland of pink, blue, 
and violet flowers picked at morning time, and with butterflies 
hovering round it. Its immaculate lawns are constellated 
with primroses and anemones; peacocks and pheasants walk 
peacefully, carrying their brilliant tails eyed with gold and 
painted with purple, the uncontested monarchs of a kingdom 
of little birds twittering and talking among themselves. 

I had no wish to consider formal architecture, and cer- 
tainly not artificial decoration, and least of all the artificial 
decoration and perversion of recent centuries. The ten vaulted 
terraces of Isola-Bella, with their grottoes of rock-work and 
mosaic, their chambers covered with pictures and filled with 
bric-k-brac, its basins of water, and its fountains seemed un- 
sightly to me and did not move me. I preferred to look 
at the western shore facing us, scarped and wholly green, and a 
natural delight to the eye. The lofty and peaceful mountains 
rise up in their splendour, and we long to go and sit on their 
lawns. Sloping meadows of wonderful green clothe the first 
slopes ; narcissus, euphorbia, and flowers empurpled abound 
in the hollows; clusters of myosotis open their small blue 
eyes, and their heads tremble in the spray of the springs. 
Myriads of rills glance on the hillside, running and tumbling 
over each other ; tiny cascades strew showers of pearls on the 
grass, while diamond brooks catch up their lost waters and 
hurry to pour them into the lake. Here and there amid the 
happy murmur and the beauty of it all, the oaks shew their 
lustrous new leaves and climb from height to height till they 
cut the sky with an unbroken line. — Tasne. 



2o6 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



Lago di Lugano 

This lake is twenty-five miles in length, in breadth from 
three to six, and of immense depth ; indeed, in some places 
it is said to be almost unfathomable. Its former name was 
Ceresius Locus (the Ceresian Lake) ; but whether known to 
the ancients, or produced, as some have imagined, by a sudden 
convulsion in the fifth or sixth century, has not yet been ascer- 
tained. The banks are formed by the sides of two mountains, 
so steep as to afford little room for villages or even cottages, 
and so high, as to cast a blackening shade over the surface of 
the waters. Their rocky bases are oftentimes so perpendi- 
cular, and descend so rapidly into the gulf below, without 
shelving or gradation, as not to allow shelter for a boat, or 
even footing for a human being. Hence, although covered 
with wood hanging in vast masses of verdure from the preci- 
pices, and although bold and magnificent in the highest degree 
from their bulk and elevation, yet they inspire sensations of 
awe rather than of pleasure. The traveller feels a sort of 
terror as he glides under them, and dreads lest the rocks 
should close over him, or some fragment descend from the 
crag, and bury him in the abyss. 

To this general description there are several exceptions, 
and in particular with reference to that part which, expanding 
westward, forms the bay of Lugano. The banks here slope 
off gently towards the south and west, presenting fine hills, 
fields, and villas, with the town itself in the centre, consisting 
in appearance of several noble lines of buildings. On the 
craggy top of the promontory on one side of this bay stands 
a castle; the towering summit of the opposite cape opens 
into green downs striped with forests, bearing a strong resem- 
blance in scenery and elevation to the heights of Vallombrosa. 
— Eustace, 

Lago di Garda (Sirmione) 

The peninsula of Sirmione, and the bolder promontory of 
Minerbo, the former about seven, the latter about fourteen 
miles distant, appeared to great advantage from Peschiera, 
and grew upon the sight as we advanced. Sirmione appears 
as an island ; so low and so narrow is the bank that unites it 
to the mainland. Its entrance is defended, and indeed totally 



LAKES, MILAN, TOWNS TO BOLOGNA 207 

covered by an old castle, with its battlements and high antique 
tower in the centre, in the form of a Gothic fortification. 

The promontory spreads behind the town, and rises into a 
hill entirely covered with olives : this hill may be said to have 
two smnmits, as there is a gentle descent between them. On 
the nearest is a church and hermitage, plundered by the 
French, and now uninhabited and n^lected. On the farthest, 
in the midst of an olive grove, stand the walls of an old build- 
ing, said to be a Roman bath ; and near it is a vault, called 
the grotto of Catullus, The extremity of this promontory is 
covered with arched ways, towers, and subterranean passages, 
supposed by the inhabitants to be Roman, but apparently of 
no very distant era. At all events, Catullus undoubtedly 
inhabited this spot, and preferred it, at a certain period, to 
every other region. He has expressed his attachment to it in 
some beautiful lines.^ 

Peninsalaram Sirinio, insularumque 
Ocelle, quascunque in liquentibus stagnis 
Manque vasto fert uterque Neptunus. 

He could not have chosen a more delightful retreat. In 
the centre of a magnificent lake, surrounded with scenery of 
the greatest variety and majesty, secluded from the world, yet 
beholding from his garden the villas of his Veronese friends, 
he might have enjoyed alternately the pleasures of retirement 
and of society. — Eustcue. 

The Italian Lakes Compared 

To which of the Italian Lakes should the palm of beauty 
be accorded? This question may not unfrequently have 
moved the idle thoughts of travellers, wandering through that 
loveliest region from Orta to Garda — from little Orta, with 
her gem-like island, rosy granite crags, and chestnut-covered 
swards above the Colna ; to Garda, bluest of all waters, sur- 
veyed in majestic length from Desenzano or poetic Sirmione, 
a silvery sleeping haze of hill and cloud and heaven and 
clear waves bathed in modulated azure. And between these 
extreme points what varied lovelinesses lie in broad Maggiore, 
winding Como, Varese with the laughing face upturned to 
heaven, Lugano overshadowed by the crested crags of Monte 

^ Catnlliis had been gold-digging in Bithynia, with little or no success. 



2o8 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

Generoso, and Iseo far withdrawn among the rocky Alps! 
He who loves immense space, cloud shadows slowly sailing 
over purple slopes, island gardens, distant glimpses of snow> 
capped mountains, breadth, air, immensity, and flooding sun- 
light, will choose Maggiore. But scarcely has he cast his vote 
for this, the Juno of the divine rivals, when he remembers the 
triple loveliness of the Larian Aphrodite, disclosed in all their 
placid grace from Villa Serbelloni; — the green blue of the 
waters, clear as glass, opaque through depth ; the millefleurs 
roses clambering into cypresses by Cadenabbia; the labur- 
nums hanging their yellow clusters from the clefts of Sasso 
Rancio ; the oleander arcades of Varenna ; the wild white 
limestone crags of San Martino, which he has climbed to feast 
his eyes with the perspective, magical, serene, Lionardesquely 
perfect, of the distant gates of Adda. Then, while this 
modern Paris is still doubting, perhaps a thought may cross 
his mind of sterner, solitary liiJce Iseo — the Pallas of the three. 
She offers her own attractions. The sublimity of Monte 
Adamello, dominating Lovereand all the lowland-like Hesiod's 
hill of Virtues reared aloft above the plain of common life, has 
charms to tempt heroic lovers. Nor can Varese be neglected. 
In some picturesque respects, Varese is the most perfect of 
the lakes. These long lines of swelling hills that lead into 
the level, yield an infinite series of placid foregrounds, pleasant 
to the eye by contrast with the dominant snow-summits from 
Monte Viso to Monte Leone : the sky is limitless to south- 
ward; the low horizons are broken by bell-towers and farm- 
houses ; while armaments of clouds are rolling in the interval 
of Alps and plain.—;/. A. Symonds, 

COMO {The Town) 

The city of Como, at two stages distance from Milan, is 
one of the smallest but most ancient capitals of Lombardy. 
It forms a semi-circle at the head of its lake, and reposes at 
the foot of an abrupt height, crowned with the remains of the 
feudal castle of Baradello. The romantic fauxbourgs of San 
Agostino and Borgo Vico stretch to the right and left of the 
lake. Hills of every form and culture swell around, as if 
thrown up by a volcanic explosion ; and the torrent of the 
Cosia^ leaping from its mountain-head, falls into the little 
plain of willows, which separates the town from the mountains 
of St Fermo and Lampino. But prominent in the landscape, 



LAKES, MILAN, TOWNS TO BOLOGNA 209 

and (whether bronzed by sunset, or silenced by moonbeams) 
conspicuous in picturesque effect, rise the ruins of Baradello, 
onoe the scene of a tragic tale. . . . [From the walls of this 
mountain-fortress, so important in the thirteenth century, was 
suspended a cage. In this cage, in the year 1277, exposed to 
all the inclemency of the stormy region, was imprisoned, and 
perished, the famous feudal chief Torriani, once lord of the 
domains of Como and of the Milanese, the victim of the 
vengeance of his rival and conqueror, Sforza.^J 

The interior of the town of Como exhibits dark, narrow, 
and filthy streets ; churches numerous, old and tawdry ; some 
dreary palaces of the Comasque nobles, and dismantled dwell- 
ings of the CittadinL The cathedral, or Duomo, is its great 
feature ; founded in 1396, and constructed with marbles from 
the neighbouring quarries. It stands happily with respect to 
the lake, but is surrounded by a small square of low and 
mouldering arcades and pretty little shops. Its baptistery is 
ascribed to Bramante, but the architecture is so mixed and 
semi-barbarous, that it recalls the period when the arts began 
to revive in all the fantastic caprice of unsettled taste. Every- 
where the el^ant Gothic is mingled with the grotesque forms 
of ruder orders; and basso-relievos of monsters and non- 
descripts disfigure a facade, ^ose light Gothic pinnacles are 
surmounted with golden crosses ; while the fine pointed arch 
and clustered column contrast with staring saints and grinning 
griffins. Upon the walls of this most Christian church are 
inserted inscriptions, and other monuments to the memory 
and honour of the heathen Plinies; and the statue of the 
youngest of these distinguished philosophers forms a pendant 
on the principal front of the cathedral, to a saint. — Lady 
Morgan. 

BERGAMO 

From the new town of commerce to the old town of 
history upon the hill, the road is carried along a rampart 
lined with horse-chestnut trees — clumps of massy foliage, 
and snowy pyramids of bloom, expanded in the rapture of 
a southern spring. ... A sudden angle in the road is 
turned, and we pass from air-space and freedom into the 
old town, beneath walls of dark brown masonry, where wild 
valerians light their torches of red bloom in immemorial 
shade. Squalor and splendour live here side by side. 
^ Lady Moigan's note. 

O 



2IO THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

Grand Renaissance portals grinning with Satyr masks are 
flanked by tawdry frescoes shamming stone-work, or by door- 
ways where the withered bush hangs out a promise of bad 
wine. 

The Cappella Colleoni is our destination, that master- 
piece of the sculptor-architect's craft, with its vari^ated 
marbles — rosy and white and creamy yellow and jet-bhuJc — 
in patterns, bas-reliefs, pilasters, statuettes, encrusted on the 
fanciful domed shrine. Upon the fa9ade are mingled^ in 
the true Renaissance spirit of genial acceptance, motives 
Christian and Pagan with supreme impartiality. Medallions 
of emperors and gods alternate with virtues, angels and 
cupids in a maze of loveliest arabesque; and round the 
base of the building are told two stories — the one of Adam 
from his creation to his fall, the other of Hercules and his 
labours. . . . This chapel was built by the great Condottiere 
Bartolomeo Colleoni, to be the monument of his puissance 
even to the grave.—;/. A, Symonds. 

MONZA 

Recent travellers have spoken so lightly of having gone 
to Monza "to see the iron crown," that we conceived the 
visit a thing of course, open to all strangers in the common 
routine of sights. We found, on the contrary, that to obtain 
permission to inspect this relic, was a matter of interest and 
of time. . . . The order was signed by the Grand Duke 
and countersigned by the Governor of Milan; and it was 
dispatched the night before our visit to the chapter of 
Monza. 

We found Monza dreary and silent ; and its great square 
in front of the cathedral, grown with grass, marked how 
much the shrine of the saintly and ro3ral Theodolinda, the 
famed and most popular of Lombard queens, was now 
neglected by the descendants of her ancient subjects. The 
Duomo, externally Gothic and venerable, is within still more 
impressive and antiquated. The relics of the barbarous 
taste of the dasst tempt were visible in the sculpture, tracery, 
carving, and frescoes which covered the walls, pillars, altai^ 
and shrines of this most memorable edifice. 

We were received at our entrance by some of the chapter, 
appointed to do the honours by the archducal mandate. 
The canon who conducted us, having left us in the church, 



LAKES, MILAN, TOWNS TO BOLOGNA 211 

retired to robe for the ceremony, and returned in grand 
ponticalibus^ preceded by a priest in a white torch, and 
some chorici in their white short surplices. This little proces- 
sion, as it issued from the aisles, seemed a living illustration 
of some of the surrounding basso-relievos, particularly one 
where an archbishop of Monza carries the crown to the 
second husband of Queen Theodolinda. When they arrived 
before the shrine of the Iron Crown, which is contained in 
a gigantic cross suspended over the altar, the priests fell 
prostrate; the sacristan placed a ladder against the cross; 
ascended, opened the shrine, and displayed the treasure in 
the blaze of the torch-light; the priest below filled the air 
with volumes of odorous vapour, flung from silver censers; 
and nothing was visible but the blazing jewels, illuminated 
by the torch, and the white drapery of the sacristan, who 
seemed suspended in mid air. The effect was most singular. 
At last the incense dissipated, and the cross closed, the 
sacristan descended, and the canons shewed us a mock 
crown in imitation of the real, that we might judge of the 
details, and of the size and value of the gems.^ — Lady 
Morgan. 

MILAN 2 

We enter'd into the State of Milan, and pass'd by Lodi, 
a greate Citty famous for cheese little short of the best Par- 
meggiano. We din'd at Marignano, 10 miles before coming 
to Milan, where we met halfe a dozen suspicious Cavaliers, 
who yet did us no harme. Then passing as through a con- 
tinual garden, we went on with exceeding pleasure, for it is 
the paradise of Lombardy, the highways as even and straite 
as a line, the fields to a vast extent planted with fruit about 

^ Lady Morgan describes (from the books narrating them) the cere- 
monies of the procession which took the iron crown to Milan for 
Napoleon's coronation on the 25th May 1805 : " It was led by a guard 
of honour on horseback, a corps of the Italian guards ; a carriage contained 
the municipality of Monza ; another followed with the workmen employed 
to remove the crown ; the canons, the syndic, and the archiprete of the 
cathedral of Monza succeeded ; and last, came a carriage with the master 
of the ceremonies of the Imperial Court, bearing the crown on a velvet 
cushion." Received at Milan with a salvo of artillery, it was deposited in < 
the cathedra], and " a guard watched round it during the night" 

* Montaigne thought Milan not unlike Paris in appearance. Lady 
Moiigan tells us that '* French is spoken with great purity by the Milanese. 
Their u is like the u of the French, the great stumbling-block of the 
southern Italians in French pronunciation." 



212 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

the inclosnres, vines to every tree at equal distances, and 
water'd with frequent streames. There was likewise much 
corne, and olives in aboundance. At approch of the Citty 
some of our company, in dread of the Inquisition (severer 
here than in all Spain), thought of throwing away some Pro- 
testant books and papers. We ariv'd about 3 in the after- 
noone, when the officers searched us thoroughly for prohibited 
goods, but finding we were onely gentlemen travellers, dis- 
missed us for a small reward, and we went quietly to our inn, 
the Three Kings, where for that day we refreshed ourselves, 
as we had neede. The next morning we delivered our letters 
of recommendation to the learned and courteous Ferrarius, 
a Doctor of the Ambrosian College, who conducted us to all 
the remarkable places of the towne, the first of which was the 
famous Cathedral. We enter'd it by a portico so little inferior 
to that of Rome, that when it is finished it will he hard to 
say which is the fairest ; the materials are all of white and 
black marble, with columns of great height of Egyptian granite. 
The outside of the Church is so full of sculpture, that you 
may number 4000 statues all of white marble, amongst which 
that of St. Bartholomew is esteemed a masterpiece. The 
Church is very spacious, almost as long as St. Peter's at 
Rome, but not so large. About the Quire the sacred storie 
is finely sculptured in snow-white marble, nor know I where 
it is exceeded. About the body of the Church are the mirades 
of St. Char. Boromeo, and in the vault beneath is his body 
before the high altar, grated, and inclos'd in one of the largest 
chrystals in Europe. To this also belongs a rich treasure. 
The cupola is all of marble within and without, and even 
covered with great planks of marble, in the Gotick designe. 
The windows are most beautifully painted. Here are two 
very faire and excellent organs. The fabriq is erected in the 
midst of a faire Piazza, and in the center of the Citty. 

Hence we went to the Palace of the Archbishop, which is 
a quadrangle, the architecture of Theobald], who designed 
much for Philip 11. in the Escurial, and has built much in 
Milan. Hence I went into the Governor's Palace, who was 
Constable of Castile ; tempted by the glorious tapissries and 
pictures, I adventured so far alone, that peeping into a chamber 
where the greate man was under the barber's hands, he sent 
one of his Negro's (a slave) to know what I was ; I made the 
best excuse I could, and that I was only admiring the pictures, 
which he returning and telling his lord, I heard the Governor 



LAKES^ MILAN, TOWNS TO BOLOGNA 213 

reply that I was a spie, on which I retir'd with all the speede 
I could, pass'd the guard of Swisse, got into the streete, and 
in a moment to my company, who were gone to the Jesuites 
Church, which in truth is a noble structure, the fronte esped- 
aly, after the moderne. After dinner we were conducted to 
St. Celso, a church of rare architecture, built by Bramante ; 
the carvings of the marble faciata are by Hannibal Fontana, 
whom they esteeme at Milan equal to the best of the ancients. 
In a roome joyning to the Church is a marble Madona like 
a Colosse, of the same sculptor's work, which they will not 
expose to the aire. There are two Sacristias, in one of which 
is a fine Virgin of I^eonardo da Vinci, in the other is one by 
Raphael d'Urbino^ a piece which all the world admires. The 
Sacristan shew'd us a world of rich plate, Jewells, and em- 
broder'd copes, which are kept in presses. . . . 

We concluded this day's wandring at the Monasterie of 
Madona della Gratia, and in the Refectorie admir'd that cele- 
brated Cosna Domini of Leonardo da Vinci, w^ich takes up 
the intire wall at the end, and is the same that the greate 
Virtuoso Francis the First of France was so enamou^d of, 
that he consulted to remove the whole wall by binding it 
about with ribs of iron and timber to convey it into France. 
It is indeede one of the rarest paintings that was ever executed 
by I«eonardo, who was long in the service of that Prince, and 
so deare to him that the Kjng comii^ to visite him in his old 
age and sicknesse, he expired in his armes.^ . . . 

Milan is one of the most princely Citties in Europe : it 
has no suburbs, but is circled with a stately wall for 10 miles, 
in the center of a country that seemes to flow with milk and 
hony. The aire is excellent ; the fields fruitfull to admiration, 
the market abounding with all sorts of provisions. In the 
Citty are neere 100 Churches, 71 Monasteries, 40,000 inhabit- 
ants ; it is of a circular figure, fortified with bastions, full of 
sumptuous palaces and rare artists, especialy for works in 
chrystal, which is here cheape, being found among the Alpes. 
They are curious straw workers among the nunns, even to 
admiration. It has a good river, and a citadell at some small 
distance from the Citty, commanding it, of greate strength 
for its works and munition of all kinds. It was built by 
Galeatius II. and consists of 4 bastions, and works at the 
angles and fronts ; the graff is fac'd with brick to a very great 
depth; has 2 strong towres as one enters, and within is 

^ The story has no basis in &ct. 



214 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

another fort and spacious lodgings for the souldiers and for 
exercising them. No accommodation for strength is wanting, 
and all exactly uniforme. They have here also all sorts of 
work and tradesmen, a greate magazine of armes and pro- 
visions. The foss is of spring water with a mill for grinding 
com, and the ramparts vaulted underneath. Don Juan 
Vasquez Coronada was now Governor ; the garrison Spaniards 
onely. — Evelyn. 

The Cathedral 

I could not stay long in Milan without going to see the 
great church that I had heard so much of, but was never more 
deceived in my expectation than at my first entering : for the 
front, which was sdl I had seen of \ht outside, is not half 
finished, and the inside is so smutted with dust and the 
smoke of lamps, that neither the marble, nor the silver, nor 
brass-works, show themselves to an advantage. This vast 
Gothic pile of building is all of marble, except the roo^ 
which would have been of the same matter with the rest, had 
not its weight rendered it improper for that part of the build- 
ing. But for the reason I have just now mentioned, the 
outside of the church looks much whiter and fresher than 
the inside; for where the marble is so often washed with 
rains, it preserves itself more beautiful and unsullied, than in 
those parts that are not at all exposed to the weather. That 
side of the church, indeed, which faces the Tramontane wind, 
is much more unsightly than the rest, by reason of the dust 
and smoke that are driven against it This profusion of 
marble, though astonishing to strangers, is not very won- 
derful in a country that has so many veins of it within its 
bowels. But though the stones are cheap, the working of 
them is very expensive. It is generally said there are eleven 
thousand statues about the church, but they reckon into the 
account every particular figure in the history pieces, and 
several Uttle images which make up the equipage of those 
that are larger. There are, indeed, a great multitude of such 
as are bigger than the life : I reckoned above two hundred 
and fifty on the outside of the church, though I only told 
three sides of it ; and these are not half so thick set as they 
intend them. — Addison, 

This cathedral is a most astonishing work of art. It is 
built of white marble, and cut into pinnacles of immense 
height, and the utmost delicacy of workmanship, and loaded 



LAKES, MILAN, TOWNS TO BOLOGNA 215 

with sculpture. The effect ^of it, piercing the solid blue with 
those groups of dazzling spires, relieved by the serene depth 
of this Italian heaven, or by moonlight when the stars seem 
gathered among those clustered shapes, is beyond any thing 
I had imagined architecture capable of producing. The 
interior, though very sublime, is of a more earthly character, 
and with its stained glass and massy granite columns over- 
loaded with antique figures, and the silver lamps, that burn 
for ever under the canopy of black cloth beside the brazen 
altar and the marble fretwork of the dome, give it the aspect . 
of some gorgeous sepulchre. There is one solitary spot among 
those aisles, behind the altar, where the light of day is dim 
and yellow under the storied window, which I have chosen 
to visit, and read Dante there. — Shelley, 

The design of the facade is of the simplest : it is an acute 
angle like the gable of an ordinary house, bordered with lace 
of marble, and having on the wall^ without anything jutting 
out, and of no architectural order, five doors and eight 
windows, with six groups of spindle-shaped columns, or rather 
constructive connections ending in hollowed points topped 
with statues and filled in their interstices with brackets and 
niches supporting and protecting figures of angels, of saints 
and of patriarchs. Behind these spring up in numberless 
rounded forms like the shafts of a basaltic grotto, forests of 
belfries, pinnacles, minarets, spikes of white marble, and the 
central spire, which seems like crystallised ice in the air, 
thrown up towards a fearful height in the sky, and placing, 
near enough to step into heaven, the Virgin who stands on its 
topmost point, her foot on the crescent. In the middle of 
the fa9ade are written the words, Maria nascenfi^ which are 
the dedication of the cathedral. 

Begun by John Galeas Visconti, and continued by 
Ludovico il Moro, the basilica of Milan was completed by 
Napoleon. It is the biggest church in existence after St 
Peter's at Rome. Its interior is of a majestic and noble 
simplicity : rows of coupled columns form five naves. These 
grouped columns, in spite of their massive structure, are 
graceful by reason of the elegance of the shafts. Above the 
capital of the pillars, they have a kind of windowed and 
cut-out gallery^ where are placed statues of saints ; then the 
mouldings are carried on to meet in the summit of the vault, 
which is decorated with trefoils and Gothic enterlacings, so 
perfectly painted that they would deceive the eye more were 



2i6 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

it not that the paigetting — occasionally fallen away — shewed 
the bare stone. 

In the centre of the cross an aperture surrounded by a 
balustrade shews to view the mystic chapel where St. Charles 
Borromeo sleq>s in a crystal coffin covered with silver plates. 
St Charles is the best revered saint of the town : his virtues, 
his heroism during the plague, made him so popular that liis 
memory still survives. At the entrance to the choir is a 
triforium which supports a crucifix worshipped by angels in 
adoration ; the following inscription is to be seen in a wooden 
frame : Attendite ad petram unde exdsi estis. On each side 
rise two magnificent pulpits, both of the same metal, uf^eld by 
fine figures in bronze, and with silver bas-reliefs whose weight 
is the least part of their value. The organ, not far fiiom 
the pulpits, has for its shutters big canvases by Procacini, 
if our recollection is right. Round the choir runs a series 
of sculptures illustrating the Stations of the Cross. — Thkophiit 
Gautier, 

San Ambrogio 

Mention is made often of San Ambrogio, founded in the 
fourth century by St Ambrose, completed and remodelled 
later in the Romanesque manner, and supplied with Gothic 
arches towards the year 1300, while it is strewn with fragments 
of the intermediate periods in the shape of doors, pulpit,^ and 
altar-coverings. — Taitu, 

Thb Last Suppbr (Santa Maria dbllb Grazie) 

Of the Last Supper, I would simply observe, that in its 
beautiful composition and arrangement, there it is, at Milan, 
a wonderful picture ; and that, in its original colouring, or in 
its original expression of any single face or feature, there it is 
not. Apart from the damage it has sustained from damp, 
decay, or neglect, it has been (as Barry shows) so retouched 
upon, and repainted, and that so clumsily, that many of the 
heads are, now, positive deformities, with patches of paint and 

^ Appreciation of such work as the pulpit of St Ambrogio has been 
possible only within the last few years. It is not Lombard, though it has 
apparent affinities. Leader Scott dates it as of the sixth century, and 
refers to the Comacine Solomon's knots ; the earliest instance of the use 
of the Lion of Tudah in connection with pillars ; the Byzantine scrolls and 
interlaced work, and the symbolical ammals. The early Christian tomb 
under the pulpit has no connection with it. 



LAKES, MILAN, TOWNS TO BOLOGNA 217 

plaster sticking upon them like wens, and utterly distorting 
the expression. Where the original artist set that impress of 
his genius on a &ce, which, almost in a line or touch, separated 
him from meaner painters and made him what he was, succeed- 
ing bunglers, filling up, or painting across seams and cracks, 
have been quite unable to imitate his hand; and putting in 
some scowls, or frowns, or wrinkles, of their own, have blotched 
and spoiled the work. This is so well established as an 
historical fact, that I should not repeat it, at the risk of being 
tedious, but for having observed an English gentleman before 
the picture, who was at great pains to fall into what I may 
describe as mild convulsions, at certain minute details of 
expression which are not left in it. Wher^ it would be 
comfortable and rational for travellers and critics to arrive at 
a general understanding that it cannot fail to have been a 
work of extraordinary merit, once : when, with so few of its 
original beauties remaining, the grandeur of the general design 
is yet sufficient to sustain it, as a piece replete with interest 
and dignity.^ — Dickens. 

The Chapel of S. Maurizio (Monastero Maggiore) 

The student of art in Italy alter mastering the characters 
of different styles and epochs, finds a final satisfaction in the 
contemplation of buildings designed and decorated by one 
master, or by groups of artists interpreting the spirit of a 
single period. Such supreme monuments of the national 
genius are not very common, and they are therefore the more 
precious. Giotto's chapel at Padua; the Villa Famesina at 
Rome, built by Peruzzi, and painted in fresco by Raphael 
and Sodoma ; the Palazzo del T^ at Mantua, Giulio Romano's 
masterpiece ; the Scuola di San Rocco, illustrating the Venetian 
Renaissance at its climax, might be cited among the most 

' "The fint impression derired from this fresco," writes Gautier, '* is 
one of dream ; every trace of handicraft has vanished : it seems to float 
like a vapour on the surface of a wall which collects it. It is the shadow 
of a painting, the ghost of a masterpiece coming back to us. The result 
is possibly more solemn and religious than if the picture still lived ; its 
body may be gone, but its entire soul survives." Some of the studies for 
the heads are in the Brera at Milan and the Windsor Libranr. In the 
Swiss village of Ponte Capriasca there is an early Luinesque fresco copy 
of the work, but with a different background. Dr. Richter considers the 
best existing copy to be that by Marco d'Oggione, in the Diploma Gallery 
of the Royal Academy, London. 



2i8 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

splendid of these achievements. In the church of the 
Monastero Maggiore at Milan, dedicated to S. Maurizio, Lom- 
bard architecture and fresco-painting may be studied in this 
rare combination. The monastery itself, one of the oldest in 
Milan, formed a retreat for cloistered virgins following the 
rule of S. Benedict. It may have been founded as early as 
the tenth century ; but its church was rebuilt in the first two 
decades of the sixteenth, between 1503 and 15 19, and was 
immediately afterwards decorated with ^escoes by Luini and 
his pupils. . . . 

Round the arcades of the convent-loggia run delicate 
arabesques with faces of fair female saints — Catherine, Agnes, 
Lucy, Agatha — gem-like or star-like, gazing from their gallery 
upon the church below. The Luinesque smile is on their 
lips and in their eyes, quiet, refined, as though the emblems 
of their martyrdom brought back no thought of pain to break 
the Paradise of rest in which they dwell. There are twenty- 
six in all, a sisterhood of stainless souls, the lilies of Love's 
garden planted round Christ's throne.—^. A. Symands, 

The Brera 

The Brera, or palace of the arts and sciences, was anciently 
the site of the convent and church of the UtniliaH* The 
conspiracy of these monks against the life of St. Charles 
Borromeo occasioned the suppression of their house; and 
their convent, with many rich donations, passed to the Jesuits. 
Under their direction, the Brera became one of the most 
superb monastic palaces of Italy, aod is characterised by the 
grandiosity which universally marks the work of this order. . . . 
On the suppression of the Jesuits, the Brera was converted 
into another monastic institution. . . . Under the recent 
government ^ of the kingdom of Italy it changed its name to 
the Institut . . . The upper portico of this fine building now 
contains the magnificent gallery into which all that could be 
obtained or purchased of the ancient school of Lombardy is 
elegantly arranged. — Lady Morgan, 

The Monument of Gaston de Foix* (Brera) 

The hero of Ravenna lies stretched upon his back in the 
hollow of a bier covered with laced drapery; and his head 

^ Under Napoleon. 
' The design of this monument is now in South Kensington. 



LAKES, MILAN, TOWNS TO BOLOGNA 219 

rests on richly ornamented cushions. These decorative acces- 
sories, together with the minute work of his scabbard, wrought 
in the fanciful mannerism of the cinq%uunto^ serve to enhance the 
statuesque simplicity of the young soldier's effigy. The contrast 
between so much of richness in the merely subordinate details, 
and this sublime serenity of treatment in the person of the 
hero, is truly and touchingly dramatic.—;/. A. Symonds, 

PAVIA 

Pavia, that was once the metropolis of a kingdom, but is 
at present a poor town. We here saw the convent of Austin 
monks, who about three years ago pretended to have found 
out the body of the saint, that gives the name to their order. 
King Luitprand, whose ashes are in the same church, brought 
hither the corpse, and was very industrious to conceal it, lest 
it might be abused by the barbarous nations, which at that 
time ravaged Italy. One would therefore rather wonder that 
it has not been found out much earlier, than that it is dis- 
covered at last. The fathers, however, do not yet find their 
account in the discovery they have made ; for there are canons 
regular, who have half the same church in their hands, that 
will by no means allow it to be the body of the saint, nor is 
it yet recognised by the pope. The monks say for themselves, 
that the very name was written on the urn where the ashes 
lay, and that in an old record of the convent, they are said 
to have been interred between the very wall and the altar 
where they were taken up. They have already too, as the 
monks told us, begun to justify themselves by miracles. At 
the comer of one of the cloisters of this convent are buried 
the Duke of Suffolk and the Duke of Lorrain, who were both 
killed in the famous battle of Pavia.^ Their monument was 
erected to them by one Charles Parker, an ecclesiastic, as I 
learned from the inscription. — Addison. 

^ Of the battle of Pavia, fought near the Carthusian monastery on the 
outskirts of the town, Lassels writes : " Upon S. Matthias his day (a day 
fiivourable to Charles the Fifth seeing he was borne on that day, crowned 
Emperor on that day, and got this victory on that day) was fought that 
memorable battle between the said Emperor's forces, and the French 
kin^ anno 1525, where Francis the 1st of France was taken prisoner, 
having lost the day, not for want of courage, but conduct : for he had a 
little before, sent away half of his army to the conquest of Naples." The 
Chevalier Bayard feU on the field. 



320 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



Thb Cbrtosa 

The Certosa is a wilderness of lovely workmanship. From 
Bourgognone's majesty we pass into the quiet region of Luini's 
Christian grace, or mark the influence of Leonardo on that 
rare Assumption of the Madonna by his pupil, Andrea Solari. 
Like everything touched by the Lionardesque spirit, this great 
picture was left unfinished : yet Northern Italy has nothing 
finer to shew than the landscape, outspread in its immeasur- 
able purity of calm, behind the grouped Apostles and the 
ascendant Mother of Heaven. The feeling of that happy 
region between the Alps and Lombardy, where there are 
many waters— ^Z tadtos sine lobe locus sine murmure rivos — 
and where the last spurs of the mountains sink in undulations 
to the plain, has passed into this azure vista, just as all 
Umbria is suggested in a twilight background of young Raphael 
or Perugina 

The portraits of the Dukes of Milan and their families 
carry us into very different regions of feeling. Medallions 
above the doors of sacristy and chancel, stately figures reared 
aloft beneath gigantic canopies, men and women slumbering 
with folded hands upon their marble biers — we read in ail 
the sculptured forms a strange record of human restlessness, 
resolved into the quiet of the tomb. The iniquities of Gian 
Galeazzo Visconti, U grande Biscione^ the blood-thirst of Gian 
Maria, the dark designs of Filippo and his secret vices, 
Francesco Sforza's treason, Galeazzo Maria's vanities and 
lusts ; their tyrant's dread of thunder and the knife ; their 
awful deaths by pestilence and the assassin's poignard ; their 
selfishness, oppression, cruelty, and fraud; the murders of 
their kinsmen ; their labyrinthine plots and acts of broken faith ; 
— all is tranquil now. . . . Some of their faces are common- 
place, with bourgeois cunning written on the heavy features; 
one is bluff, another stolid, a third bloated, a fourth stately. 
The sculptors have dealt fairly with all, and not one has the 
lineaments of utter baseness. To Cristoforo Solari's statues 
of Lodovico Sforza and his wife, Beatrice d'Este, the palm of 
excellence in art and of historical interest must be awarded. 
Sculpture has rarely been more dignified and true to life than 
here. The woman with her short clustering curls, the man 
with his strong face, are resting after that long fever which 
brought woe to Italy, and to the boasted minion of Fortune a 



LAKES, MILAN, TOWNS TO BOLOGNA aai 

slow death in the prison palace of Loches. Attired in ducal 
robes, they lie in state, and the sculptor has canred the lashes 
on their eyelids, heavy with death's marmoreal sleep. He at 
least has passed no judgment on their crimes. . . . 

From the church it is delightful to escape into the cloisters, 
flooded with sunlight, where the swallows skim, and the brown 
hawks circle, and the mason bees are at work upon their cells 
among the carvings. The arcades of the two cloisters are the 
final triumph of Lombard terra-cotta. The memory fails 
before such infinite invention, such facility and felicity of 
execution. Wreaths of cupids gliding round the arches among 
grape-bunches and bird-haunted foliage of vine; rows of 
angels, like rising and setting planets, some smiling and some 
grave, ascending and descending by the Gothic curves, saints 
stationary on their pedestals, and faces leaning from the 
rounds above; crowds of cherubs, and courses, and stars, 
and acanthus leaves in woven lines, and ribands incessantly 
inscribed with the Ave Maria. Then, over all, the rich red 
light and purple shadows of the brick, than which no sub- 
stance sympathises more completely with the sky of solid 
blue above, the broad plain space of waving summer grass 
beneath our feet-^ A, Symonds. 

CREMA 

He who would fain make acquaintance with Crema, 
should time his entry into the old town, if possible, on 
some still golden afternoon of summer. It is then, if ever, 
that he unll learn to love the glowing brickwork of its 
churches and the quaint terra-cotta traceries that form its 
chief artistic charm. How the unique brick architecture of 
the Lombard cities took its origin ... is a question for anti- 
quarians to decide. There can, however, be no doubt that 
the monuments of the Lombard style, as they now exist, are 
no less genuinely local, no less characteristic of the country 
they adorn, no less indigenous to the soil they sprang from, 
than the Attic colonnades of Mnesicles and Ictinus. What the 
marble quarries of Pentelicus were to the Athenian builders, 
the clay beneath their feet was to those Lombard craftsmen. 
. . . Of all . . . Lombard edifices, none is more beautiful 
than the Cathedral of Crema, with its delicately-finished cam- 
panile, built of choicely-tinted yellow bricks, and ending in a 
lantern of the gracefullest, most airily capricious fancy. This 



222 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

bell-tower does not display the gigantic force of Cremona's 
famous torazzo^ shooting 396 feet into blue ether from the dty 
square ; nor can it rival the octagon of S. Gottardo for warmth 
of hue. Yet it has a character of elegance, combined with 
boldness of invention, that justifies the citizens of Crema in 
their pride.— ^. A, Symands. 

CREMONA 1 

Cremona is a large and well-built city, adorned with many 
noble edifices, and advantageously situated on the northern 
bank of the Po. Its cathedral, of Gothic, or rather mixed 
architecture, was begun in the year 1107, and continued at 
different periods, but not completely finished till the fourteenth 
century. It is faced with white and red marble, and highly 
ornamented, though in a singular and fanciful style. It con- 
tains several beautiful altars and fine paintings. One chapel 
in particular merits attention. It is that which is set apart 
for the preservation of the relics of the primitive mart3^rs. 
Its decorations are simple and chaste, its colours soft and 
pleasing. The ashes of the '' sainted dead" repose in urns and 
sarcophagi placed in niches in the wall regularly disposed on 
each side of the chapel, after the manner of the ancient Roman 
sepulchres. It is small, but its proportions, form, and furniture 
are so appropriate and so well combined, that they produce 
a very beautiful and perfect whole. The Baptistery, which, 
according to the ancient manner still preserved in many of the 
great towns of Italy, is a separate building near the cathedral, 
contains in the centre a font of curious form and workman- 
ship, cut out of one immense block of party-coloured marble. 
The tower is of great height and of singular architecture. The 
view from it is extensive, taking in the town with its streets ; 
the roads that cross the country in straight lines in various 
directions ; the Po winding along, almost close to the walls, 

^ The first school of violin-makers appears to have been at Brescia, 
and the first at Cremona was originated by Amati, who was probably 
apprenticed at Brescia. Among Amati's pupils were his sons and the 
celebrated Antony Stradivarius, bom of good nimily at Cremona in 1644, 
if the inscription in the violin bearing his age — 92— and signed in the 
year 1736 be authentic. Stradivari is believed to have receivwi about £^ 
sterling a-piece for his violins ; he contrived to give instruments a new 
power as well as the mellowness attained by former makers. Another 
well-known maker of stringed instruments in Cremona was Joseph 
Guameri. 



LAKES, MILAN, TOWNS TO BOLOGNA 223 

and intersecting the immense plain of the Milanese ; the Alps 
to the north, and the Apennines to the south-west, both covered 
with snow, and occasionally half veiled with passing clouds. — 
Eustace. 

PARMA 1 

The chief things ... to be seen in Parma are these: 
the Duke's palace, with the gardens, fountains, wild beasts, 
the admirable theatre to exhibit operas in. The exquisite 
coaches of the Duke; one whereof is all of beaten silver, 
with the seats and curtains embroidered with gold and silver ; 
another so well gilt and adorned, that it's almost as rich as the 
former. Lastly, the stables, where I saw horses suitable both 
in strength and beauty to the foresaid coaches. Then I went 
to the Damo^ whose cupola was painted by the rare hand of 
Coreggio.^ Lastly, to the Capucins, in whose church lies 
buried my noble hero, Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, 
whom I cannot meet in this my voyage without a compliment. 
He was the third Duke of Parma, but the Tenth Worthy. 
Indeed his leaping the first man into the Turk's galley in the 
battle of Lepanto, with sword in hand, and in the eighteenth 
year only of his age, was such a prognostick of his future 
worth; his reducing Flanders again, with the prodigious 
actions done by him at the taking of Antwerp, was such a 
making good of the prognostic ; and his coming into France 
in his slippers and sedan to succour Rouen besieged by Henry 
the IV., was such a crowning of all his other actions, that his 
history begets belief to Quintus Curtius, and makes men 
believe, that Alexanders can do anything. — Lassels, 

The Cathedral 

The Cathedral, or Duomo of Parma, is one of great 
antiquity and great celebrity. It is a splendid specimen of 

^ Near Panna is Piacenza, or ** pUasaunce** writes L4issels, deserving 
of its name " by reason of its sweet situation in a rich country near the Po 
and Trebbia. . . . The country round about this town is very rich in 
pasturage." It was for the church of San Sisto in this town that Raphael 
painted the Madonna now known by that name in Dresden. 

* Many efforts have been made to express in words the " Correggiosity 
of Cbrreggio." Vasari comes nearest to the mark when he writes : ** We 
may, indeed, affirm with certainty that no artist has handled the colours 
more effectually than himself, nor has any painted with a more charming 
manner, or given a more perfect relief to his figures, so exquisite was the 
softness of the creations from his hand, so attractive the grace with which 
be finished his works.'* 



124 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

the rade magnificence of the rudest times. It is of the 
true ItalianrGotkk^ that is, mixed and semi-barbarous, with 
nothing of the exquisite beauty of the pure Gothic of old 
Enghsh architecture. Griffins and lions guard its porticos, 
cockatrices and serpents deform its architraves. Yet, still 
the first view of the vast interior is very fine and imposing. 
The high dark columns, the cloistral galleries, and above 
all, the walls enriched by the pencil of Mazzuolo, and a 
cupola painted by Correggio (accused indirectly of causing 
his death), give it great interest. — Lady Morgan, 

MODENA « 

Modena is ... a handsome town, and by its high steeple 
shews itself to travellers long before they come to it. It 
hath also a strong citadel, which lying flat and even with the 
town, sheweth the town, that indeed it can be even with it, 
whensoever it shall rebel. The palace of the duke hath some 
rooms in it as neat and rich as any I saw in Italy ; witness 
those chambers hung round with the pictures of those of his 
family and wainscoted with great looking-glasses and rich 
gilding. 

This duke is of the family of Este, but not of the true 
line: wherefore for want of lawful heirs male, Ferrara and 
Commachia fell to the Church in Clement the Eighth's time, 
and remain there ever since. Of the true house of Este, was 
the brave Countess Matilda, the dry-nurse, as I may say, of 
the Roman Church. For it was she who defended Gr^ory 
the VII. against the Emperor Henry the VI., and brought 
him to acknowledge his fault and cry the Pope mercy.' — 
JLassels. 

^ Begun in the Lombardic but concluded in the Italian-Gothic era. 
The Baptistery, with curious little pillared galleries, its Gothic pinnacles 
and dwarf bell- turret on the top, is noticeable. 

' The town was celebrated for its terra-cottas,'and Vasari writes that 
Michael Angelo, passing through Modena, "saw many beautiful fieures 
which the Modanese sculptor, Maestro Antonio Bigarino, had made of 
terra-cotta, coloured to look like marble, which appeared to him to be 
the most excellent productions ; and as that sculptor did not know how to 
work in marble, he said : * If this earth were to become marble, woe to 
the antiques.' " 

' This took place at Canossa, the stronghold afterwards destroyed by 
the townsfolk of Reggio. There is a sketch of the history of Canowa in 
Symonds' SJUtches and Studus in Italy and Greece* 



LAKES, MILAN, TOWNS TO BOLOGNA 225 



BOLOGNA 

This is a large and handsome town, much bigger and 
more populous than Ferrara. At the inn where we put up 
we found the Seigneur de Montluc, who had arrived an hour 
before us, having come direct from France for the purpose 
of staying at this place some time, to perfect himself in 
fencing and riding. On Friday we went to see the Venetian 
fencer, who boasts that he has invented a system of sword-^ 
play that will supersede every other system; and certainly 
his method very much differs from the ordinary practice. 
The best pupil he has is a young gentleman of Bordeaux, 
named Binet. We saw here an ancient tower of a square 
form; so constructed that it leans all on one side, and 
appears every instant to be about to fall. . . . The town 
is full of broad and handsome colonnades, and you every- 
where come upon splendid palaces. You live much the 
same as at Padua, and at a very cheap rate, but the town is 
not so tranquil, in consequence of the long-standing feuds 
which exist between the different old families in the place, 
some of these being partisans of the French, while others 
favour the Spaniards, a great number of whom reside here. — 
Montaigne. 

Bologna in the Seventeenth Century 

This towne belongs to the Pope, and is a famous Uni- 
versity, situate in one of the richest spots of Europe for all 
sorts of provisions. Tis built like a ship, whereof the Torre 
d'Asinello may go for the mainmast. The Citty is of no 
greate strength, having a trifling wall about it, in circuit neere 
5 miles, and 2 in length. This Torre d'Asinello, as- 
cended by 447 steps of a foote rise, seems exceedingly high, 
is very narrow, and the more conspicuous from another tower 
call'd Garisenda so artificially built of brick (which increases 
the wonder) that it seems ready to fall : 'tis not now so high 
as the other, but they say the upper part was formerly taken 
down for feare it should really fall and do some mischief. 

Next we went to see an imperfect Church call'd St. 
Petronius, shewing the intent of the founder had he gone 
on. From this our guide led us to the Schooles, which 
indeede are very magnificent. Thence to St. Dominic's, 

p 



226 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

where that saint's body lies richly inshrin'd. The stalls^ or 
seates of this goodly church have the historic of the Bible 
inlaied with severall woods very curiously don, the work of 
one Fr. Damiano di Bergomo and a frier of that order. 
Amongst other reliques they shew the two books of Esdras 
written with his own hand. Here lie buried Jac. Andreas 
and divers other learn'd persons. To the Church joynes 
the Convent, in the quadrangle whereof are old cypresses, 
said to have been planted by their Saint. 

Then we went to the Palace of the Legat, a faire brick 
building, as are most of the houses and buildings for the 
whole towne, full of excellent carving and mouldings, so as 
nothing in stone seemes to be better finished or more oma- 
mentall ; witnesse those excellent columns to be seene in many 
of their churches, convents, and publiq buildings, for the 
whole towne is so cloyster'd that one may passe from house to 
house through the streetes without being expos'd to raine or sun. 

Before the stately hall of this Palace stands the statue of 
Paule IV. and divers others; also the monument of the 
coronation of Charles V. The Piazza before it is the most 
stately in Italy, St. Mark's at Venice onely excepted. In 
the center of it is a fountain of Neptune, a noble figure in 
coper. Here I saw a Persian walking about in a very rich 
vest of cloth of tissue, and severall other ornaments, accord- 
ing to the fashion of his country, which much pleased me ; 
he was a young handsome person, of the most stately mien. — 
Evelyn, 

Papal Influence 

This fat Bologna has a tristful look, from the numberless 
priests, friars, and women all dressed in black who fill the 
streets and stop on a sudden to pray when I see nothing done 
to call forth immediate addresses to Heaven. . . . VHiilst I 
perambulated the palaces of the Bolognese nobility, gloomy 
though spacious, and melancholy though splendid, I could 
not but admire at Richardson's judgment when he makes his 
beautiful bigot, his interesting Clementina, an inhabitant of 
superstitious Bologna. — Mrs. Piozzu 

A Thought from Goethe 

A great obstacle to our taking a pure delight in their pic- 
tures, and to an immediate understanding of their merits, is 



LAKES, MILAN, TOWNS TO BOLOGNA 227 

the absurd subjects of most of them. To admire or to be 
charmed with them one must be a madman. It is as though 
the sons of God had wedded with the daughters of men, and 
out of such an union many a monster had sprung, into exist- 
ence. No sooner are you attracted by the gusto of a Guido 
and his pencil, by which nothing but the most excellent 
objects the eyes sees are worthy to be painted, but you, at 
once, withdraw your eyes from a subject so abominably stupid 
that the world has no term of contempt sufficient to express 
its meanness ; and so it is throughout. It is ever anatomy — 
an execution — a flaying scene — always some suffering, never 
an action of a hero — never an interest in the scene before you 
— always something for the fancy, some excitement accruing 
from without. Nothing but deeds of horror or convulsive 
sufferings, malefactors or fanatics, alongside of whom the 
artist, in order to save his art, invariably slips in a naked boy 
or a pretty damsel as a spectator, in every case treating his 
spiritual heroes as little better than lay-figures. — Goethe, 

The Churches 

The church of St. Petronius is considered as the principal 
church. It is Gothic, of great extent and antiquity, and, 
though not beautiful, is celebrated as well for several grand 
ceremonies which have been performed in it, such as the 
coronation of Charles V. by Clement VII., as for the meridian 
of the famous astronomer Cassini, traced on its pavement. 
It was built about the years 440 or 450, but rebuilt in a very 
different style in 1390, and seems still to remain, in a great 
degree, unfinished. The prelate, its founder first, and now its 
-patron, flourished in the reign of Theodosius, and was a man 
of great activity and general benevolence. He enlarged the 
extent of the city, adorned it with several public buildings, 
procured it the favour and largesses of the emperor, and by 
his long and unremitting exertions to promote its welfare, 
seems to have a just claim to the gratitude and veneration of 
its inhabitants. S. Salvador, S. Paolo, and, above all. La 
Madonna di S. Luca, deserve a particular visit. This latter 
church stands on a high hill, about five miles from Bologna. 
It is in the form of a Greek cross, of the torinthian order, 
and is crowned with a dome. As the people of Bologna have 
a peculiar devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and crowds flock 
from all quarters to visit this her sanctuary, for their accom- 



P28 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

modation, in all seasons and in all weather, a portico has 
been carried from the gates of the city up the hill to the verj 
entrance of the temple, or rather to the square before it. 
This imm^se building was raised by the voluntary contribu- 
tions of persons of every class. — Eustace, 

The Bolognesb^ School 

I have seen a quantity of things here — churches, palaces, 
statues, fountains, and pictures; and my brain is at this 
moment like a portfolio of an architect, or a print-shop, or a 
commonplace-book. I will try to recollect something of what 
I have seen ; for, indeed, it requires, if it will obey» an act of 
volition. First, we went to the cathedral, which contains nothing 
remarkable, except a kind of shrine, or rather a marble canopy, 
loaded with sculptures, and supported on four marble columns. 
We went then to a palace — I am sure I forget the name of it 
— where we saw a large gallery of pictures. Of course, in a 
picture gallery you see three hundred pictures you forget, for 
one you remember. I remember, however, an interesting 
picture by Guido, of the Rape of Proserpine, in which Proser- 
pine casts back her languid and half-unwilling eyes, as it were, 
to the flowers she had left ungathered in the fields of Enna. 
There was an exquisitely executed piece of Correggio, about 
four saints, one of whom seemed to have a pet dragon in a 
leash. I was told that it was the devil who was bound in that 
style — ^but who can make anything of four saints ? For what 
can they be supposed to be about ? There was one painting, 
indeed, by this master, Christ beatified, inexpressibly fine. It 
is a half figure, seated on a mass of clouds, tinged with an 
ethereal, rose-like lustre ; the arms are expanded ; the whole 
frame seems dilated with expression; the countenance is 
heavy, as it were, with the weight of the rapture of the spirit ; 
the lips parted, but scarcely parted, with the breath of intense 
but regulated passion ; the eyes are calm and benignant ; the 
whole features harmonised in majesty and sweetness. The 
hair is parted on the forehead, and falls in heavy locks on 
each side. It is motionless, but seems as if the faintest breath 
would move it. The colouring, I suppose, must be very good, 
if I could remark and understand it. The sky is of a pale 

1 We preserve this impression as showing what a great poet saw in the 
school. The Eclectics undoubtedly influenced Velasques in some tech- 
nical matters, as also did Caravaggio the realist 



LAKES, MILAN, TOWNS TO BOLOGNA 229 

aerial orange, like the tints of latest sunset ; it does not seem 
painted around and beyond the figure, but everything seems 
to have absorbed, and to have been penetrated by its hues. I 
do not think we saw any other of Correggio, but this specimen 
gives me a very exalted idea of his powers. 

We saw, besides, one picture of Raphael — St. Cecilia: 
this is in another and higher style; you forget that it is a 
picture as you look at it ; and yet it is most unlike any of those 
things which we call reality. It is of the inspired and ideal kind, 
and seems to have been conceived and executed in a similar 
state of feeling to that which produced among the ancients 
those perfect specimens of poetry and sculpture which are the 
baffling models of succeeding generations. There is a unity 
and a perfection in it of an incommunicable kind. The central 
figure, St Cecilia, seems rapt in such inspiration as produced 
her image in the painter's mind ; her deep, dark, eloquent 
eyes lifted up ; her chestnut hair flung back from her forehead — 
she holds an organ in her hands — her countenance, as it were, 
calmed by the depth of its passion and rapture, and penetrated 
throughout with the warm and radiant light of life. She is 
listening to the music of heaven, and, as I imagine, has just 
ceased to sing, for the four figures that surround her evidently 
point, by their attitudes, towards her ; particularly, St. John, 
who, with a tender yet impassioned gesture, bends his coun- 
tenance towards her, languid with the depth of his emotion. 
At her feet lie various instruments of music, broken and 
ynstrung. Of the colouring I do not speak; it eclipses 
nature, yet it has all her truth and softness. 

We went to see heaven knows how many more palaces — 
Ranuzzi, Marriscalchi, Aldobrandi. If you want Italian 
names for any purpose, here they are ; I should be glad of 
them if I was writing a novel. I saw many more of Guido. 
One, a Samson drinking water out of an ass's jaw-bone, in the 
midst of the slaughtered Philistines. Why he is supposed to 
do this, God, who gave him this jaw-bone, alone knows — but 
certain it is, that the painting is a very fine one. The figure 
of Samson stands in strong relief in the foreground, coloured, 
as it were, in the hues of human life, and full of strength and 
elegance. Round him lie the Philistines in all the attitudes 
of death. One prone, with the slight convulsion of pain just 
passing from his forehead, whilst on his lips and chin death 
lies as heavy as sleep. Another leaning on his arm, with his 
hand, white and motionless, hanging out beyond. In the 



230 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

distance, more dead bodies; and, still further beyond, the 
blue sea and the blue mountains, and one white and tranquil 
sail. 

There is a Murder of the Innocents, also, by Guido, finely 
coloured, with much fine expression — but the subject is very 
horrible, and it seemed deficient in strength — at least, you 
require the highest ideal energy, the most poetical and exalted 
conception of the subject, to reconcile you to such a contem- 
plation. There was a Jesus Christ crucified, by the same, 
very fine. One gets tired, indeed, whatever may be the con- 
ception and execution of it, of seeing that monotonous and 
agonised form for ever exhibited in one prescriptive attitude 
of torture. But the Magdalen, clinging to the cross with the 
look of passive and gentle despair beaming from beneath her 
bright flaxen hair, and the figure of St. John, with his looks 
uplifted in passionate compassion ; his hands clasped, and his 
fingers twisting themselves together, as it were, with involun- 
tary anguish; his feet almost writhing up from the ground 
with the same sympathy ; and the whole of this arrayed in 
colours of a diviner nature, yet most like nature's self. Of 
the contemplation of this one would never weary. 

There was a " Fortune," too, of Guido ; a piece of mere 
beauty. There was the figure of Fortune on a globe, eagerly 
proceeding onwards, and Love was trying to catch her back by 
the hair, and her face was half turned towards him ; her long 
chestnut hair was floating in the stream of the wind, and threw 
its shadow over her fair forehead. Her hazel eyes were fixed 
on her pursuer, with a meaning look of playfulness, and a light 
smile was hovering on her lips. The colours which arrayed 
her delicate limbs were ethereal and warm. — Shelley, 



TURIN, GENOA, PISA, AND TOWNS 
TO LEGHORN 

THE APPROACH FROM MONT CENIS 

• . . We descended a long and steep declivity, with the 
highest point of Mount Cenis on our left, and a lake to the 
right, like a landing-place for geese. Between the two was a 
low, white monastery, and the barrier where we had our pass- 
ports inspected, and then went forward with only two stout 
horses and one rider. The snow on this side of the mountain 
was nearly gone. I supposed myself for some time nearly on 
level ground, till we came in view of several black chasms or 
steep ravines in the side of the mountain facing us, with water 
oozing from it, and saw through some galleries^ that is, massy 
stone-pillars knit together by thick rails of strong timber, 
guarding the road-side, a perpendicular precipice below, and 
other galleries beyond, diminished in a fairy perspective, and 
descending "with cautious haste and giddy cunning," and 
with innumerable windings and re-duplications to an intermin- 
able depth and distance from the height above where we were. 
The men and horses with carts, that were labouring up the 
path in the hollow below, shewed like crows or flies. The 
road we had to pass was often immediately under that we 
were passing, and cut from the side of what was all but a 
precipice, out of the solid rock by the broad, firm master- 
hand ^ that traced out and executed this mighty work. The 
share that art has in the scene is as appalling as the scene 
itself — the strong security against danger as sublime as the 
danger itself. Near the turning of one of the first galleries is 
a beautiful waterfall, which at this time was frozen into a sheet 
of green pendant ice — ^a magical transformation. Long after, 
we continued to descend, now faster and now slower, and 
came at length to a small village at the bottom of a sweeping 

^ Napoleon the First. 
231 



432 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

line of road| where the houses seemed like dove-cotes with the 
mountain's back reared like a wall behind them, and which I 
thought the termination of our journey. But here the wonder 
and the greatness began : for, advancing through a grove of 
slender trees to another point of the road, we caught a new 
view of the lofty mountain to our left It stood in front of us, 
with its head in the skies, covered with snow, and its bare 
sides stretching far away into a valley that yawned at its feet, 
and over which we seemed suspended in mid air. The height, 
the magnitude, the immoveableness of the objects, the wild 
contrast, the deep tones, the dance and play of the landscape 
from the change of our direction and the interposition of other 
striking objects, the continued recurrence of the same huge 
masses, like giants following us with unseen strides, stunned 
the sense like a blow, and yet gave the imagination strength 
to contend with a force that mocked it. Here immeasurable 
columns of reddish granite shelved from the mountain's sides; 
here they were covered and stained with furze and other 
shrubs ; here a chalky cliff shewed a fir-grove climbing its 
tall sides, and that itself looked at a distance like a huge, 
branching, pine-tree ; beyond was a dark, projecting knoll, or 
hilly promontory, that threatened to bound the perspective — 
but, on drawing nearer to it, the cloudy vapour that shrouded 
it (as it were) retired, and opened another vista beyond, that, 
in its own unfathomed depth, and in the gradual obscurity of 
twilight, resembled the uncertain gloom of the back-ground of 
some fine picture. At the bottom of this valley crept a slug- 
gish stream, and a monastery or low castle stood upon its 
banks. The effect was altogether grander than I had any 
conception of. It was not the idea of height or elevation that 
was obtruded upon the mind and staggered it, but we seemed 
to be descending into the bowels of the earth — its foundations 
seemed to be laid bare to the centre ; and abyss after abyss, a 
vast, shadowy, interminable space, opened to receive us. We 
saw the building up and frame-work of the world — its limbs, its 
ponderous masses, and mighty proportions, raised stage upon 
stage, and we might be said to have passed into an unknown 
sphere, and beyond mortal limits. As we rode down our 
winding, circuitous path, our baggage (which had been taken 
off) moved on before us ; a grey horse that had got loose from 
the stable followed it, and as we whirled round the different 
turnings in this rapid, mechanical flight, at the same rate and 
the same distance from each other, there seemed some- 



TURIN, GENOA, PISA, TOWNS TO LEGHORN 233 

thing like witchcraft in the scene and in our progress through 
it. The moon had risen, and threw its gleams across the 
fading twilight; the snowy tops of the mountains were 
blended with the clouds and the stars; their sides were 
shrouded in mysterious gloom, and it was not till we entered 
Susa, with its fine old draw-bridge and castellated walls, that 
we found ourselves on terra firma^ or breathed common air 
agaia^ — HdzUtt. 

TURIN 

Turin, anciently called Augusta Taurinorum, is situated 
in a plain, near the foot of the hills and upon the banks of 
the river Po, which begins here to be navigable, and from 
hence carries boats to Ferrara, Chiosa and Venice, 'lliis 
Po is a noble river, and very large in some places, especially 
a little below Ferrara. . . . 

This Turin is the seat of one of the greatest princes in 
Italy, the Duke of Savoy and Prince of Piedmont,* who is 
also treated with the title of altezza reale^ and vicario generaie 
del imperio in Italia. . . . Anciently the Dukes of Savoy kept 
their court at Chamb6ry or else at Bourg en Bresse, a country 
now belonging to France, upon exchange with the Marquisate 
of Saluzzo ; as many of their tombs curiously cut in marble, 
in the Augustins' church there, yet shew. It was Amadeo, 
the fifth of that name, Duke of Savoy, that transferred the 
court to Turin. ... As for the town itself of Turin, it's 
almost square, and hath four gates in it, a strong citadel with 
five bastions to it. . . . The chief things which I saw here, 
were these. 

I. The Duamo^ or great church in which is kept with 
great devotion the Holy Syndon, in which our Saviour's body 
was wound up and buried. . . . ' 

^ Hazlitt left Italy by the road over the Simplon, and remarks : " I 
giant the Simplon has the advantage of Mont Cenis in variety and beauty 
and in sudden and terriffie contrasts, but it has not the same simple 
expansive mndeur, blending and growing into one vast accumulated 
impression.'^ 

' Lady Morgan writes that the source '*of the grandeur of the house of 
Savoy was the position of its little territory, that rendered it the guardian, 
or gaoler of the Alps, and which, b^ enabling it to shut or open this 
important passage, according to the exigency of the day, made its alliance 
an olnect with both Guelf and Ghibellines, French or Burgundians." 

' This Holy Shroud, — sudario^ — ^is according to some accounts the same 
as that shown at seveial other places, being by occult means transported 
thither. This particular shroud has recently gained fresh £une owing to 



234 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

2. The Citadel standing at the back of the town. 

3. The Duke's new palace handsomely built with a fair 
court before it, a great piazza, and a large open street leading 
up of it The chambers are fair and hung with hangings 
of cloth of tissue, of a new and rich fabric, with rich em- 
broidered beds, chairs, stools, cloth of state and canopies. 
The Dutchesses cabinet, the curious bathing place above, 
hung round with the true pictures in little of the prime ladies 
of Europe. The curious invention for the Dutchess to convey 
herself up from her bedchamber to that bathing room, by a 
pully and swing, with great ease and safety: the great hall 
painted curiously : the noble staircase : the old long gallery 
100 paces long with the pictures in it of the princes and 
princesses of the house of Savoy, with the statues of the 
ancient emperors and philosophers in marble, with a rare 
library locked up in great cupboards — are the chief rooms 
and ornaments of this palace. — Lassels. 

GENOA 

The Citty is built in the hollow or bosom of a mountaine, 
whose ascent is very steepe, high, and rocky, so that, from 
the Lantern and Mole to the hill, it represents the shape of 
a theater; the streetes and buildings so ranged one above 
another as our seates are in play-houses; but, from their 
materials, beauty, and structure, never was an artificial scene 
more beautiful to the eye, nor is any place, for the size of it, 
so full of well-design'd and stately palaces, as may be easily 
concluded by that rare booke in a large folio which the 
great virtuoso and paynter PauU Rubens has published, the' 
it contains [the description of] only one streete and 2 or 3 
churches. 

The first Palace we went to visit was that of Hieronymo 
del Negros, to which we passed by boate acrosse the harbour. 
Here I could not but observe the sudden and devilish passion 
of a seaman, who plying us was intercepted by another who 
interposed his boate before him and tooke us in ; for the 

the st]^estion in M. Paul Vignon's book {Le Linceul du Christ) that the 
images on the shroud form a photographic negative, impressed on it by 
the action of the ammoniacal emanations of the dead body in contact 
with myrrh and aloes. Antiquarian opinion in the Roman church has 
always recognised the shroud as being a fourteenth-century painting ; this 
opinion was shared by Clement VJI. For Turin's palaces see Forsyth. 



TURIN, GENOA, PISA, TOWNS TO LEGHORN 235 

teares gushing out of his eyes, he put his finger in his mouth 
and almost bit it oflf by the joynt, shewing it to his antagonist 
as an assurance to him of some bloudy revenge if ever he 
came neere that part of the harbour again. Indeed this 
beautifull Citty is more stayn'd with such horrid acts of revenge 
and murthers than any one place in Europ, or haply in the 
world, where there is a political government, which makes it 
unsafe to strangers. It is made a gaily matter to carry a 
knife whose point is not broken off. 

This Palace of Negros is richly furnish'd with the rarest 
pictures; on the terrace, or hilly garden, there is a grove 
of stately trees amongst which are sheepe, shepherds, and 
wild beasts, cut very artificially in a grey stone ; fountaines, 
rocks, and fish-ponds : casting your eyes one way, you would 
imagine yourselfe in a wildemesse and silent country ; side- 
ways, in the heart of a great citty; and backwards, in the 
middst of the sea. All this is within one acre of ground. In 
the house I noticed those red-plaster flores which are made 
so hard, and kept so polished, that for some time one would 
take them for whole pieces of porphyrie. I have frequently 
wonder'd that we never practiced this in England for cabinets 
and rooms of state, for it appears to me beyond any invention 
of that kind ; but by their carefull covering them with canvas 
and fine mattresses, where there is much passage, I suppose 
they are not lasting in their glory. 

There are numerous other Palaces of particular curiositys, 
for the merchands being very rich have, like our neighbours 
the Hollanders, little or no extent of ground to employ their 
estates in : as those in pictures and hangings, so these lay it 
out on marble houses and rich furniture. 

One of the greatest here for circuit is that of the Prince 
d'Orias, which reaches from the sea to the sum'it of the moun- 
taines. The house is most magnificently built without, nor 
less gloriously furnish'd within, having whole tables and bed- 
steads of massy silver, many of them sett with achates, onyxes, 
cornelians, lazulis, pearls, turquizes, and other precious stones. 
The pictures and statues are innumerable. To this Palace 
belong three gardens, the first whereof is beautified with a 
terrace, supported by pillars of marble ; there is a fountaine 
of eagles, and one of Neptune with other Sea-gods, all of the 
purest white marble; they stand in a most ample basine of 
the same stone. At the side of this garden is such an 
aviary as Sir Fra. Bacon describes in his Sermones fidelium^ 



236 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

or Essays, wherein grow trees of more than two foote diameter, 
besides cypresse, myrtils, lentiscs, and other rare shrubs, which 
serve to nestle and pearch all sorts of birds, who have ayre 
and place enough under their ayrie canopy, supported with 
huge iron worke, stupendious for its fabrick and the charge. 
The other two gardens are full of orange-trees, citrons, and 
pom^anads, fountaines, grotts, and statues; one of the 
latter is a Colossal Jupiter, under which is the sepulchre 
of a beloved dog, for the care of which one of this family 
received of the K. of Spaine 500 crownes a yeare during the 
life of that faithfuU animal. The reservoir of water here is 
a most admirable piece of art; and so is the grotto over 
against it. 

We went thence to the Palace of the Dukes, where is also 
the Court of Justice ; thence to the Merchants Walke, rarely 
covered. Neere the Ducal Palace we saw the publiq armoury, 
which was almost all new, most neatly kept and order'd, suf- 
ficient for 30,000 men. We were shew'd many rare inventions 
and engines of warr peculiar to that armory, as in the state 
where gunns were first put in use. The garrison of the towne 
chiefly consists of Germans and Corsicans. The famous 
Strada Nova, built wholly of polish'd marble, was designed by 
Rubens, and for stateUnesse of the buildings, paving, and 
evennesse of the streete, is far superior to any in Europ, for 
the number of houses ; that of Don Carlo d'Orias is a most 
magnificent structure. In the gardens of the old Marquiss 
Spinola I saw huge citrons hanging on the trees, apply'd like 
our apricots to the walls. The Churches are no less splendid 
than the Palaces : that of St. Francis is wholly built of Parian 
marble; St. Lawrence, in the middle of the City, of white 
and black polish'd stone, the inside wholly incrusted with 
marble and other precious materials ; on the altar of St John 
stand 4 sumptuous columns of porphyry ; and here we were 
shew'd an emerald supposed to be one of the largest in the 
world. The Church of Ambrosio belonging to the Jesuites will, 
when finished, exceed all the rest That of the Annunciada, 
founded at the charges of one family, in the present and 
future designe can never be outdone for cost and art. The 
Mole is a worke of solid huge stone stretching neere 600 
paces into the main sea, and secures the harbour, heretofore of 
no safety. Of all the wonders of Italy, for the art and nature 
of the designe, nothing parallels this. We pass'd over to the 
Pharos, or Lantern, a towre of very great height Here we 



TURIN, GENOA, PISA, TOWNS TO LEGHORN 237 

tooke horses and made the circuite of the Citty as far as the 
new walles would let us ; they are built of a prodigious height, 
and with Herculanean industry, witnesse those vast pieces of 
whole mountaines which they have hewn away, and blown 
up with gunpowder, to render them steepe and inaccessible. 
They are not much lesse than 20 English miles in extent, 
reaching beyond the utmost buildings of the Citty. From 
one of these promontories we could easily discern the Island 
of Corsica; and from the same, Eastward, we saw a Vale 
having a great torrent running thro' a most desolate barren 
country ; and then turning our eyes more Northward we saw 
those delicious Villas of St. Pietro d' Arena, which present 
another Genoa to you, the ravishing retirements of the Genoese 
nobility. Hence, with much paine, we descended towards the 
Arsenide, where the gallys lie in excellent order. — Evelyn, 

An Eighteenth- Century Account ^ 

Horridos tractus, Boreaeq' ; linquens 
R^na Taurini feia, molfiorcm 
A<^ehor bnimam, Genuseq' ; amantes 
litora soles. 

At least if they do not, they have a very ill taste ; for I 
never beheld any thing more amiable : Only figure to yourself 
a vast semicircular bason, full of fine blue sea, and vessels of 
all sorts and sizes, some sailing out, some coming in, and 
others at anchor; and all round it palaces and churches 
peeping over one another's heads, gardens, and marble 
terraces full of orange and cypress trees, fountains, and trellis- 
works covered with vines, which altogether compose the 
grandest of theatres. This is the first coup d'ceil, and is 
almost all I am yet able to give you an account of, for we 
arrived late last night. To-day was, luckily, a great festival, 
and in the morning we resorted to the church of the Madonna 
delle Vigne, to put up our little orisons ; (I believe I forgot to 
tell you, that we have been sometime converts to the holy 
Catholic church) we found our Lady richly dressed out, with 
a crown of diamonds on her own head, another upon the 
child's, and a constellation of wax lights burning before them : 
Shortly after came the Doge, in his robes of crimson damask, 
and a cap of the same, followed by the Senate in black. « . . 
The Doge is a very tall, lean, stately, old' figure, called 
1 We mainly presenre this letter of Gray's as a literary curiosity. 



238 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

Costantino Balbi ; and the Senate seem to have been made 
upon the same model. They said their prayers, and heard 
an absurd white friar preach, with equal devotion. After this 
we went to the Annonciata, a church built by the family 
Lomellini, and belonging to it ; which is, indeed, a most 
stately structure, the inside wholly marble of various kinds, 
except where gold and painting taJces its place. From hence 
to the Palazzo Doria. I should make you sick of marble, if I 
told you how it was lavished here upon the porticoes, the 
balustrades, and terraces, the lowest of which extends quite to 
the sea. The inside is by no means answerable to the 
outward magnificence ; the fiirniture seems to be as old as the 
founder of the family.^ Their great imbossed silver tables tell 
you, in bas-relief, his victories at sea ; how he entertained the 
Emperor Charles, and how he refused the sovereignty of the 
Commonwealth when it was offered him ; the rest is old- 
fashioned velvet chairs, and Gothic tapestry. — Thomas Gray, 

The Palaces 

There are a great many beautiful palaces standing along 
the sea-shore on both sides of Genoa, which make the town 
appear much longer than it is, to those that sail by it. The 
city itself makes the noblest show of any in the world. The 
houses are most of them painted on the outside ; so that they 
look extremely gay and lively, besides that they are esteemed 
the highest in Europe, and stand very thick together. The 
New Street is a double range of palaces from one end to the 
other, built with an excellent fancy, and fit for the greatest 
princes to inhabit. I cannot however be reconciled to their 
manner of painting several of the Genoese houses. Figures, 
perspectives, or pieces of history, are certainly very ornamental, 
as they are drawn on many of the walls, that would otherwise 
look too naked and uniform without them : but instead of 
these, one often sees the front of a palace covered with painted 
pillars of different orders. If these were so many true 
columns of marble, set in their proper architecture, th6y would 
certainly very much adorn the places where they stand, but as 
they are now, they only show us that there is something 
wanting, and that the palace which without these counterfeit 
pillars would be beautiful in its kind, might have been more 
perfect by the addition of such as are real. The front of the 
^ Andrea Doria. 



TURIN, GENOA, PISA, TOWNS TO LEGHORN 239 

Villa Imperiale, at a mile distance from Genoa, without any- 
thing of this paint upon it, consists of a Doric and Corinthian 
row of pillars, and is much the handsomest of any I saw there. 
The Duke of Doria's palace has the best outside of any in 
Genoa, as that of Durazzo is the best furnished within. 
There is one room in the first that is hung with tapestry, in 
which are wrought the figures of the great persons that the 
family has produced ; as perhaps there is no house in Europe 
that can show a longer line of heroes, that have still acted for 
the good of their country. Andrew Doria has a statue erected 
to him at the entrance of the Doge's palace with the glorious 
title of Deliverer of the Commonwealth ; and one of his 
family, another, that calls him its Preserver. In the Doge's 
palace are the rooms where the great and little council, with 
the two colleges, hold their assemblies ; but as the state of 
Genoa is very poor, though several of its members are 
extremely rich, so one may observe infinitely more splendour 
and magnificence in particular persons' houses, than in those 
that belong to the public. But we find in most of the states 
of Europe, that the people show the greatest marks of poverty, 
where the governors live in the greatest magnificence. The 
churches are very fine, particularly that of the Annunciation, 
which looks wonderfully beautiful in the inside, all but one 
comer of it being covered with statues, gilding, and paint. 
A man would expect, in so very ancient a town of Italy, to 
find some considerable antiquities ; but all they have to show 
of this nature is an old rostrum of a Roman ship that stands 
over the door of their arsenal It is not above a foot long, 
and perhaps would never have been thought the beak of a 
ship, had it not been found in so probable a place as the 
haven. It is all of iron, fashioned at the end like a boar's 
head ; as I have seen it represented on medals, and on the 
columna rostrata in Rome.^ — Addison, 

^ The foUowing note usefbUy supplements Addison : '* What is most 
striking here in point of architecture, is the bridge of Cari|[nan, which is 
almost suspended in the air, and deep below it are houses six stories high. 
The fiimily of Carignan had a fine church built, which still goes by their 
name, and makes one of the finest in Genoa. Its situation upon a 
mountain was yery incommodious for pious souls ; the family there had 
the bridge built, which leads from the opposite mountain to the church." 
— Archmholtz, 



240 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



The Cathedral at Dusk^ 

The cathedral is dedicated to St. Lorenzo. On St. 
Lorenzo's day, we went into it, just as the sun was setting. 
Although these decorations are usually in very indifferent 
taste, the effect, just then, was very superb, indeed. For the 
whole building was dressed in red; and the sinking sun, 
streaming in, through a great red curtain in the chief doorway, 
made all the gorgeousness its own. When the sun went 
down, and it gradually grew quite dark inside, except for a 
few twinkling tapers on the principal altar, and some small 
dangling silver lamps, it was very mysterious. — Dickens. 

The Streets 

When shall I forget the Streets of Palaces : the Strada 
Nuova and the Strada Balbi I or how the former looked one 
summer day, when I first saw it underneath the brightest and 
most intensely blue of summer skies : which its narrow per- 
spective of immense mansions, reduced to a tapering and 
most precious strip of brightness, looking down upon the 
heavy shade below ! A brightness not too common^ even in 
July and August, to be well esteemed : for, if the Truth must 
out, there were not eight blue skies in as many midsummer 
weeks, saving, sometimes, early in the morning ; when, looking 
out to sea, the water and the firmament were one world of 
deep and brilliant blue. At other times, there were clouds 
and haze enough to make an Englishman grumble in his own 
climate. 

The endless details of these rich Palaces: the walls of 
some of them, within, alive with masterpieces by Vandyke ! 
The great, heavy, stone balconies, one above another, and 
tier over tier : with here and there, one larger than the rest, 
towering high up — a huge marble platform; the doorless 
vestibules, massively barred lower windows, immense public 
staircases, thick marble pillars, strong dungeon>like arches, 
and dreary, dreaming, echoing vaulted chambers: among 
which the eye wanders again, and again, and again, as every 
palace is succeeded by another — the terrace gardens between 

^ There is so little to be said about the cathedral, that we have chosen 
Dickens' rendering of an impression that we have all felt in some church 
in Italy. 



TURIN, GENOA, PISA, TOWNS TO LEGHORN 241 

house and house, with green arches of the vine, and groves 
of orange-trees, and blushing oleander in full bloom, twenty, 
thirty, forty feet above the street — the painted halls, moulder- 
ing, and blotting, and rotting in the damp corners, and still 
shining out in b^utiful colours and voluptuous designs, where 
the walls are dry — the faded figures on the outsides of the 
houses, holding wreaths, and crowns, and flying upward, and 
downward, and standing in niches, and here and there looking 
fainter and more feeble than elsewhere, by contrast with some 
fresh little Cupids, who on a more recently decorated portion 
of the front, are stretching out what seems to be the semblance 
of a blanket, but is, indeed, a sun-dial — the steep, steep, up- 
hill streets of small palaces (but very large palaces for all that), 
with marble terraces looking down into close by-ways — the 
magnificent and innumerable Churches ; and the rapid passage 
from a street of stately edifices, into a maze of the vilest 
squalor, steaming with unwholesome stenches, and swarming 
with half-naked children and whole worlds of dirty people — 
make up, altogether, such a scene of wonder : so lively, and 
yet so dead: so noisy, and yet so quiet: so obtrusive, and 
yet so shy and lowering: so wide awake, and yet so fast 
asleep : that it is a sort of intoxication to a stranger to walk 
on, and on, and on, and look about him. A bewildering 
phantasmagoria, with all the inconsistency of a dream, and 
all the pain and all the pleasure of an extravagant reality ! — 
Dickens, 

The Bay 

We descended the heights of the Bocchetta in one of those 
golden showers of sunshine so peculiar to the autumnal mid- 
day of Italy. Genoa the Superb, surrounding the semi-circular 
sweep of its beautiful port, appeared in full relief; palaces 
rising in amphitheatres against those abrupt dark cliffs, which 
seem to spring from the shore, and are crowned on their 
extreme summits by forts and towers, mingled with high- 
poised casinos and pending villas. In the front of these home 
features of ports and palaces, spreads, blue and boundless, 
the Mediterranean, seen at first with a startling sensation of 
pleasure, and for ever seen with the interest which belongs to 
its associations.^ — Lady Morgan. 

^ The coast-line has often been admired, and Charles Dickens (par- 
ticularly happy in his descriptions of Genoa) surpasses himself in the 
following : — 

Q 



242 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



LUCCA 1 

Lucca is a pretty little Commonwealth, and yet it sleeps 
quietly within the bosom of the Great Duke's state. . . . This 
little Republic looked in my eye, like a perfect map of old 
Rome in its beginning. If s governed by a Gonfaliero and 
the gentry. The great counsel consists of i6o citizens who 

'< There is nothing in Italy, more beautiful to me, than the coast-road 
between Genoa and Spezzia. On one side : sometimes hi below, some- 
times nearly on a level with the road, and often skirted by broken rocks 
of many shapes : there is the free blue sea, with here and there a picturesque 
felucca gliding slowly on; on the other side are lofty hills, ravines be- 
sprinkled with white cottages, patches of dark olive woods, country 
churches with their light open towers, and country houses gaily painted. 
On every bank and knoll by the wayside, the wild cactus and aloe flourish 
in exuberant profusion ; and the gardens of the bright villages along the 
road, are seen, all blushing in the summer-time with clusters of the &\Ur 
donna, and are fragrant in the autumn and winter with golden oranges 
and lemons. 

** Some of the villages are inhabited, almost exclusively, by fishermen ; 
and it is pleasant to see their great boats hauled up on the beach, making 
little patches of shade, where they lie asleep, or where the women and 
children sit romping and looking out to sea, while they mend their nets 
upon the shore. There is one town, Camoglia, with its little harbour on 
the sea, hundreds of feet below the road ; where families of mariners live, 
who, time out of mind, have owned coasting-vessels in that place, and 
have traded to Spain and elsewhere. Seen from the road above, it is like 
a tiny model on the mar^n of the dimpled water, shining in the sun. 
Descended into, by the winding mule-tracks, it is a perfect miniature of 
a primitive seafaring town ; the saltest, roughest, most piratical little place 
that ever was seen. . . . The church is bright with trophies of the sea, 
and votive offerings, in commemoration of escape from storm and ship- 
wreck. The dwellings not immediately abutting on the harbour are 
approached by blind low archways, and by crooked steps, as if in darkness 
and in difficulty of access they should be like holds of ships, or inconvenient 
cabins under water; and everywhere, there is a smell of fi^ and sea-weed, 
and old rope. 

'' The coast-road whence Camoglia is descried so fitr below, is fiimous, 
in the warm season, especially in some parts near Genoa, for fire-flies. 
Walking there on a dark night, I have seen it made one sparkling firma- 
ment by these beautiful insects : so that the distant stars were pale against 
the flash and elitter that spangled every olive wood and hill-side, and 
pervaded the whole air." 

^ On the railway between Lucca and Florence are Pbtoia and Prato. 
Pistoia was the birthplace of the unhappy division between Bianchi and 
Neri which wrecked Dante's life. Prato was celebrated as being one of 
the strongest fortresses in the whole of Italy. Descriptions of the two 
towns will be found in Dallington and Fynes Moryson. For the Lombard 
churches at Lucca, Pistoia, and Prato (all of extreme interest for Comadne 
work). Leader Scott must be consulted. 



TURIN, GENOA, PISA, TOWNS TO LEGHORN 243 

are changed every year. It's under the Emperor's protection ; 
and it hath about thirty thousand souls in it. Approaching 
unto it, it looked like a pure Low-Country town, with its brick 
walls, large ramparts set round with trees and deep moats 
round the walls. It hath eleven bastions, well guarded 
by the townsmen, and well furnished with cannons of a 
large size. The town is three miles in compass. . . . The 
whole state, for a need, can arm eighteen thousand men of 
service. . . . 

The chief things to be seen here,^ are, the Cathedral, 
called St. Martin's, whose bishop hath the ensigns of an arch- 
bishop, to wit, the use of the pallium and the cross^ and whose 
canons in the quire wear a rochet and camail, and mitres of 
silk like bishops. 

2. The Town-House, or Senate-House, where the Gon- 
faliero lives during the time of his charge. 

3. The church of S. Frediano, belonging to the Canon 
Regulars, where in a chapel on the left hand, is the tomb 
of S. Richard King of England, who died here in his 
pilgrimage to Rome.^ 

4. The Augustins' church, where is seen a hole where the 
earth opened to swallow up a blaspheming gamester. — Lassels. 



The Republic 

It is very pleasant to see how the small territories of this 
little republic are cultivated to the best advantage, so that 
one cannot find the least spot of ground, that is not made 
to contribute its utmost to the owner. In all the inhabitants 
there appears an air of cheerfulness and plenty, not often to 
be met with in those of the countries which lie about them. 
There is but one gate for strangers to enter at, that it may 
be known what numbers of them are in the town. Over 
it is written, in letters of gold, Ubertas» — Addison. 

^ The Volto Santo is described by Mr. Montgomery Carmichael. 

' We do not know if any local antiquary has solved the puzzle of who 
this mysterious king may be. Evelyn quotes in fiiU the epitaph in leonine 
verses, beginning : 

Hie rex Ricardus requiescit, sceptifer almus, 
Rex fiiit Anglorum, regnum tenet bte polorum. 



244 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



PISAi 

The City of Pisa is as much worth seeing as any in Italy ; 
it has contended with Rome, Florence, Sardinia, Sicily, and 
even Carthage. The Palace and Church of St. Stephano 
(where the order of knighthood called by that name was 
instituted) drew first our curiosity, the outside thereof being 
altogether of polish'd marble; within it is full of tables 
relating to this order ; over which hangs divers banners and 
pendants, with other trophies taken by them from the Turkes, 
against whom they are particularly oblig'd to fight; the' a 
religious order, they are permitted to marry. At the front 
of Uie Palace stands a fountaine, and the statue of the greate 
Duke Cosmo. The Campanile, or Settezonio, built by John 
Venipont, a German, consists of several orders of pillars, 30 
in a row, designed to be much higher. It stands alone on the 
right side of the Cathedrall, strangly remarkable for this, that 
the beholder would expect it to fall, being built exceedingly 
declining, by a rare addresse of the architect ; and how it is 
supported from falling I think would puzzle a good geo- 
metrician. The Domo, or Cathedrall, standing neere it, is 
a superb structure, beautified with 6 columns of greate 
antiquity ; the gates are of brasse, of admirable workmanship. 
The Cemetere caVd Campo Santo is made of divers gaily 
ladings of earth formerly brought from Jerusalem, said to be 
of such a nature as to consume dead bodies in fourty houres 
'Tis cloistred with marble arches; here lies buried the 
learned Philip Decius who taught in this University. At 
one side of this Church stands an ample and well-wrought 
marble vessell which heretofore contained the tribute paid 
yearly by the Citty to Caesar. It is plac'd, as I remember, 
on a pillar of opilestone, with divers other antiq umes. 
Neere this, and in the same field, is the Baptistery of San 

^ Montaigne, when at Pisa, was told of a ceremony that was the exact 
counterpart of that at Venice. He wrote: **On Thursday, St. Peter's 
day, it was mentioned to me that formerly the Bishop of Pisa went in 
procession to the church of St. Peter, four miles from the town and 
thence to the sea-side, where, casting a ring into the sea, he solemnly 
espoused it ; but at that time Pisa possessed a very powerful navy. At 
present the sea is married by deputy, by one of the masters of the college, 
who is not accompanied by anythine at all in the shape of a procession. 
The clergy go no further than the church, where they distribute a number 
of indulgences." See our note, p. 248, on S. Pietro. 



TURIN, GENOA, PISA, TOWNS TO LEGHORN 245 

Giovanni, built of pure white marble and cover'd with so 
artificial a cupola that the voice uttered under it seemes to 
breake out of a cloud. The font and pulpit supported by 
4 lyons is of inestimable value for the preciousness of the 
materials. The place where these buildings stand they call 
the Area. Hence we went to the CoUedge, to which joynes 
a Gallery so fumish'd with natural rarities, stones, minerals, 
shells, dry'd animals, skelletons, etc, as is hardly to be seen 
in Italy. To this the Physiq Garden lyes, where is a noble 
palm-tree and very fine water-workes. The river Arno runs 
through the middle of this stately Citye, whence the streete 
is named Longamo. It is so ample that the Duke's gallys, 
built in the Arsenal here, are easily conveyed to Livomo; 
over the river is an arch, the like of which, for its flatness, 
and serving for a bridge, is no where in Europ. The Duke 
has a stately Palace, before which is placed the statue of 
Ferdinand the Third ; over against it is the Exchange, built 
of marble. Since this Citty came to be under the Dukes of 
Tuscany it has been much depopulated, tho' there is hardly 
in Italy any which exceeds it for stately edifices. The 
situation of it is low and flat, but the inhabitants have 
spacious gardens and even fields within the walls. — Evelyn, 

The Duomo 

Pisa, while the capital of a republic, was celebrated for 
its profusion of marble, its patrician towers, and its grave 
magnificence. ... Its gravity pervades every street, but its 
magnificence is now confined to one sacred comer. There 
stand the Cathedral, the Baptistery, the Leaning Tower, and 
the Campo Santo ; all built of the same marble, all varieties 
of the same architecture, all venerable with years, and 
fortunate both in their society and their solitude. 

The Cathedral, though the work of a Greek,^ and sur- 
moxmted by a cupola, is considered by Italians as Gothic: 
not surely the Gothic of the north ; for here are no pointed 
arches, no clustered pillars, no ribs nor tracery in the vaults. 
To prove it so however, they adduce some barbarisms in 
the west front; but the most irregular arches in that front 

^Bnschetto. Leader Scott (p. 209) remarks that the belief that 
Bnschetto was a Greek came from a remark of Vasari's that he came 
"from Dulichium. . . . The inscription ... on Pisa cathedral says 
nothing of the kind. It b a flowery eloquence which Cavalier Del Borgo 
reads as comparing him for genius to Ulysses, Duke of Dulichium.'' 



346 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

are as round as the angle of the roof, under which they are 
crushed, could admit; they all rest on single columns^ and 
these columns, though stunted, are of the same Greek order 
as prevails below. On the sides are some large arches, each 
including two or three smaller ones, . . . On some columns 
we see lions, foxes, dogs, boars, and men figured in the 
capitals, but such ornaments, though frequent in Gothic 
churches, had been introduced long before them into diose 
of Greece and Italy. . . . 

In fact, the very materials of this cathedral must have 
influenced the design; for columns taken from ancient 
temples would naturadly lead back to some such architecture 
as they had left. It is a style too impure to be Greek, yet 
still remote from the Gothic, and rather approaches the 
Saxon ; a style which may here be caUed the Lombard. . . . 
The plan and elevation are basilica]. The five aisles are 
formed by insulated columns; the chair and the transepts 
are rounded like the tribuna; the general decoration of the 
walls consists in round arches resting on single columns or 
pilasters. . . . The side altars are beautiful : the high altar 
is only rich. The pictures, though not much admired, assist 
the architecture; but the sculpture and the tombs interrupt 
some of its general lines. — Forsyth. 

The edifice is almost a Roman basilica, that is : a temple 
with another temple built upon it, or in other words, a house 
having a gable for its fa9ade, a gable cut off at the peak to 
support another house of less size. Five storeys of columns 
entirely cover the fo^ade with their superimposed porticoes. 
They stand coupled together in pairs to support small arcades ; 
all these pretty shapes of white marble under their dark 
arcades form an aerial population of the most perfect, if the 
most unexpected, grace. Nowhere here do we think of the 
melancholy dreams of northern medievalism; this is the 
feast-day of a young nation which is awaking, and honouring 
its gods in the gladness of its fresh good-fortune. It has 
brought together capitals, ornaments, entire columns obtained 
on the distant shores where its wars and its trade have led it, 
and these fragments take their place without any lack of 
harmony, for the work instinctively falls into an antique 
mould, and has only a new development in the direction of 
subtlety and charm, every traditional form reappearing, but 
touched in the same way by a keen originality. — Taine. 

We entered the cathedral and admired the stately columns 



TURIN, GENOA, PISA, TOWNS TO LEGHORN 247 

of porphyry and of the rarest marbles, supporting a roof which, 
like the rest of the building, shines with gold. A pavement 
of the brightest mosaic completes its magnificence ; all around 
are sculptures by Michel Angelo Buonarotti.^ . . . We ex- 
amined them with due attention and then walked down the 
nave and remarked the striking efifect of the baptistery. — 
Beckford. 

The Baptistery and Campanile 

The Baptistery, which, as in all the ancient Italian churches, 
is separated from the cathedral, stands about fifty paces from 
it, full in front It is raised on three steps, is circular, and 
surmounted with a graceful dome. It has two stories, formed 
of half-pillars supporting round arches; the undermost is 
terminated by a bold cornice ; the second, where the pillars 
stand closer, and the arches are smaller, runs up into num- 
berless high pediments and pinnacles, all topped by statues. 
Above these, rises a third story without either pillars or 
arches, but losing itself in high pointed pediments with 
pinnacles, crowned again with statues without number. The 
dome is intersected by long lines of very prominent stone 
fretwork, all meeting in a little cornice near the top, and ter- 
minating in another little dome which bears a statue of St. 
John the Baptist, the titular saint of all such edifices. The 
interior is admired for its proportion. Eight granite columns 
form the under story, which supports a second composed of 
sixteen marble pillars ; on this rests the dome. The ambo or 
desk for reading is of most beautiful marble, upheld by ten 
little granite pillars, and adorned with basso rilievos^ remark- 
able rather for the era and the sculptor than for their intrinsic 
merit. The font is also marble, a great octagon vase, raised 
on three steps and divided into five compartments, the largest 
of which is in the middle. The dome is famous for its echo ; 
the sides produce the well-known efifect of whispering galleries. 
This edifice, which is the common baptistery of the city, as 
there is no other font in Pisa, was erected about the middle 
of the twelfth century by the citizens at large, who by a volun- 
tary subscription of 2ifiorini of each, defrayed the expenses. 

We now proceed to the Campanile or belfry, which is the 
celebrated leaning tower of Pisa. It stands at the end of 

1 The designs of the twelve altars and of several figures are attributed 
to him. 



248 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

the cathedral opposite to the baptistery, at about the same 
distance. It consists of eight stories, formed of arches sup- 
ported by pillars, and divided by cornices. The undermost 
is closed up, the six others are open galleries.^ — Eustace. 

The Town and Sta. Maria Della Spina 

Pisa covers an inclosure of near seven miles in circum- 
ference: the river intersects and divides it into two parts 
nearly equal; the quays on both sides are wide, lined with 
edifices in general stately and handsome, and united by three 
bridges, one of which (that in the middle) is of marble. As 
the stream bends a little in its course, it gives a slight curve 
to the streets that border it, and adds so much to the eflfect 
and beauty of the perspective, that some travellers prefer the 
Lungamo (for so the quays are called) of Pisa to that at 
Florence. The streets are wide, particularly well paved, with 
raised flags for foot passengers, and the houses are lofty and 
good-looking. There are several palaces not deficient either 
in style or magnificence. 

Among its churches the traveller cannot fail to observe a 
singular edifice on the banks of the Amo called Santa Maria 
della Spina ^ (from part of our Saviour's crowns of thorns said 
to be preserved there) — it is nearly square, low, and of an 
appearance whimsical and grotesque rather than beautiful. 
It is cased with black and white marble. Two great doors 
with round arches form its entrance ; over each portal rises 
a pediment ; the other end is surmounted by three obelisks 
crowned with statues ; the corners, the gable^nds, and indeed 
the side walls, are decorated with pinnacles, consisting each of 
four little marble pillars, supporting as many pointed arches 
with their angular gables, and forming a canopy to a statue 
standing in die middle of the pillars ; they all terminate in 
little obelisks adorned with fretwork.^ — Eustace. 

^ Of Niccolo Pisano's pulpit in the Baptistery Leader Scott remarks 
that Niccolo " took the forms of his sect, but im|3roved and freed them ; 
he held to the traditional symbolism of his guiid, but classicised and 
enriched it. His greatest advance was in the modelling of the human 
figure, and here his classic models helped him.** 

^ A church of great architectural interest at Pisa is San Pietro in Grado, 
built, according to tradition, at the spot where St. Peter landed in Italy. 
Leader Scott compares it to St. ApoUinare in Ravenna, but adds, '' San 
Pietro, however, has one very great peculiarity. It has no fa9ade, but is 
built with the usual Lombard three apses at one end, and a single semi- 
circular tribune at the other. The only door is at the side." 



TURIN, GENOA, PISA, TOWNS TO LEGHORN 249 



Church of the Knights 

The Church of the Knights of St. Stephen, which is the 
Grand Duke's order, is all hung with standards taken from 
the Turks ; these make a gallant show, but I wonder whether 
the Turks have not also got some of the flags, which belonged 
to the Knights, in their mosques. The ceiling is painted by 
Bronzino, and illustrates the life of Ferdinand de' Medici. — 
De Brasses. 

Campo Santo 

The Campo Santo is a cemetery, the soil of which is holy 
ground, brought from Palestine.^ Four lofty walls of polished 
marble surround it with their white and crowded panels. 
Inside, a square gallery forms a promenade opening into the 
court through arcades trellissed with ogive windows. It is 
filled with funereal monuments, busts, inscriptions, and statues 
of every form and of every age. Nothing could be simpler or 
more noble. A framework of dark wood supports the arch 
overhead, and the crest of the roof cuts sharp against the 
crystal sky. At the angles are four rustling cypress trees, 
quietly swaying in the breeze ; grass is growing in the court 
with a wild freshness and luxuriance ; here and there a climb- 
ing flower twines round a column, or a small rosebush or shrub 
glows beneath a flash of sunshine. There is no noise, for this 
quarter of the town is deserted ; only now and then the voice 
of some one passing through is heard reverberating as beneath 
the vault of a church. It is the truest burial-ground of a free 
and Christian people ; here before the tomb^ of mighty, we 
can muse on Death and Fame. 

The work of the interior is completely covered with 
frescoes. ... On the right of the entrance Pietro d'Orvieto 

1 A oirious reminder of the oonnectioa of Pisa with the East is the 
brood of camels. Mrs. TroUope wrote in 1842 : *' The grand-ducal farm 
of San Rossore is well deserving a visit, both for the sake of observing the 
very noble style in which the Grand Duke of Tuscany farms, and also for 
the opportunity it gives of seeing a numerous herd of camels, more nearly 
in the condition of wild camels than any which can elsewhere be found in 
Europe. It is said, whether truly or not I could not feel quite certain, 
that the original Asiatic stock from which this herd has been bred, was 
brought to Fisa at the time of the Crusades, by a monk of that dty." Mr. 
Carmichael states that the first camels were introduced into Tuscany by 
the Grand Duke Ferdinand II. in 1662. 



250 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

has painted a colossal Christ, which except for the head and 
the feet, almost disappears under an immense disk represent- 
ing the world and the revolving spheres ; this is the art of 
primitive symbolism. Alongside, in the painter's story of the 
creation and of our first parents, Adam and Eve are big, well- 
fed and rubicund, but yet realistic renderings of the nude. A 
little further on Cain and Abel, wearing sheepskins, display 
vulgar countenances taken from life in the streets or men in a 
fray. Feet, legs and composition are still barbaric, for this is 
as far as incipient realism will go. On the other side, and 
with the same incongruities, a large fresco by Pietro Lorenzetti 
represents ascetic life. Forty or fifty scenes are comprehended 
in the picttu-e : a hermit reading, one in a cave, one sleeping 
in a tree, one preaching with no raiment except his shock of 
hair, and lastly one tempted by a woman and flogged by the 
devil. A few large heads with grey and white beards shew 
the clumsy rusticity of ploughmen ; the landscapes, accessories, 
and even most of the figures are grotesque, the trees are made 
of feathers and the rocks and wild beasts seem to belong to a 
travelling menagerie. Further on, Spinello of Arezzo has 
painted the story of St. Ephesus. His pagans, half Romans 
and half knights, wear armour shaped and coloured to 
mediaeval taste. Here many of the fighting attitudes are true 
to life, as for instance, of a man thrown on his face, and of 
another seized by the beard. Several are contemporary 
figures, as for instance a handsome page in green holding a 
sword, and a trim young squire in a blue pourpoint with 
pointed shoes and a well-modelled 1^. Observation and 
composition are both apparent with the desire to impart 
interest and dramatic variety, but it is only a beginning. . . . 

Nothing more clearly illustrates this ambiguous state of 
mind than a fi-esco, plac^ near one of the angles, called the 
" Triumph of Death " by Orcagna.^ At the base of a mountain 
a cavalcade of lords and ladies comes forward ; these figures 
belong to the time of Froissart, and wear the hood, the ermine 
and the brightly decorated dress of the time, and have the 
hawks and dogs and other things which Valentin Visconti 
went to seek in the palace of Louis of Orleans. The heads 
are also true enough: this elegant veiled noblewoman on 
horseback is a true lady, dreamy and thoughtful, of the middle 

^ The fresco is possibly by the Lorenzettis of Siena. Benoczo 
Gozzoli did some of his best work in the Compo Santo, but his firescoes in 
the Chapel of the Riccardi Palace at Florence are better preserved. 



TURIN, GENOA, PISA, TOWNS TO LEGHORN 251 

ages. This company of the great and happy has suddenly 
come on the corpses of three kings, each in an open grave and 
in different stages of corruption : one with a swollen body, the 
next gnawed by worms and serpents, and the bones of the 
skeleton of the last already showing. The riders draw rein, 
trembling : one leans over his horse's neck to obtain a better 
view, another stops his nostrils. The picture is a " morality " 
like those given in the playhouse ; the aim of the artist is to 
instruct his public, and to do so he brings every available 
episode to bear on the principal group. On the tops of the 
mountain are monks in their hermitages, one reading, one 
milking a fawn, with, in their midst, the beasts of the desert, 
a weasel and a crane. We might render the lesson thus : 
" You good people who gaze on this, see the contemplative 
life of the Christian, the holiness disdained by the mighty 
ones of the earth ! '' But Death comes to restore the balance, 
advancing in the guise of an old greybeard with a scythe in 
his hand to cut down the gay pleasure-seekers, the overfed 
and curled young lords and ladies who are making merry in 
the grove. With a kind of cruel irony he mows down those 
who fear him and avoids those who long to die : a troop of 
the maimed, crippled, blinded, and beggared summon him in 
vain, — ^his scythe is not for them. Such is the path to be 
trodden in this frail, mournful and miserable world, and the 
end towards which all things tend is sadder still. It is 
universal destruction : the yawning abyss into which each and 
all must be cast in a heap, kings and queens, popes, arch- 
bishops and priests. Their crowns are cast aside, and their 
souls — in the shapes of naked babes — issue from their bodies 
to take their place in a dreadful eternity. Some are welcomed 
by angels, but the greater number are seized by demons, with 
horrible and vicious faces, with forms of goats and toads, and 
with bats^'ears and the jaws and claws of cats — a grotesque 
crew leaping and dancing round their quarry. The whole 
fresco is a singular mixture of dramatic passion, morbid philo- 
sophy, accurate observation, awkward triviality and picturesque 
confusion. — Taine, 

LEGHORN. 

Leghorn is fourteen miles from Pisa ; a very pretty town, 
well fortified, and populous; with broad, straight, and well- 
built streets. The public square is handsome and the town 



252 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

pleasant. There may be 40,000 people of all naticms in it : 
Greeks, Jews, Armenians, Catholics, Protestants; but the 
Jews number 6000 or 7000 and have the particular protection 
of the government. ... In fine, we cannot see the town 
without having a good idea of the government of the Tuscan 
Grand-Dukes, who have made a flourishing town and fine 
harbour in spite of sea, air, and natural obstacles.^ — 
Mantesquwu. 

^ Leghorn might be called the "town of toleration," as the Medici 
built it as an asylum for the persecuted races. Evelyn gives us a curious 
glimpse into its life : " Here, especialy in this Piazza, is such a concourse 
of slaves, Turkes, Mores, and other nations, that the number and contusion 
is prodigious ; some buying, others selling, others drinking, others playing, 
some working, others sleeping, fighting, singing, weeping, all nearly 
naked, and miserably chayn d. Here was a tent, where any idle fellow 
might stake his liberty against a few crownes, at dice or other hazard, and, 
if he lost, he was immediately chajm'd and led away to the gallys, where 
he was to serve a tearm of yeares, but from whence they seldom retum'd : 
many sottish persons in a drunken bravado would try their fortune in this 
way." 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, AND TOWNS 
TO ORVIETO 

THE APPROACH TO FLORENCE 

As we approached Rorence, the country became cultivated to 
a rery high degree, the plain was filled with the most beautiful 
villas, and, as far as the eye could reach, the mountains were 
covered with them ; for the plains are bounded on all sides 
by blue and misty mountains. The vines are here trailed on 
low trellisses of reeds interwoven into crosses to support them, 
and the grapes, now almost ripe, are exceedingly abundant. 
You everywhere meet those teams of beautiful white oxen, 
which are now labouring the little vine>divided fields with 
their Virgilian ploughs and carts. Florence itself, that is the 
Lung' Amo (for I have seen no more), I think is the most 
beautiful dty I have yet seen. It is surrounded with culti- 
vated hills, and from the bridge which crosses the broad 
channel of the Amo, the view is the most animated and 
elegant I ever saw. You see three or four bridges, one 
apparently supported by Corinthian pillars, and the white sails 
of the boats, relieved by the deep green of the forest, which 
comes to the water's edge, and the sloping hills covered with 
bright villas on every side. Domes and steeples rise on all 
sides, and the cleanliness is remarkably great. On the other 
side there are the foldings of the Vale of Amo above ; first the 
hills of olive and vine, then the chestnut woods, and then the 
blue and misty pine forests, which invest the aerial Apennines, 
that fade in the distance. I have seldom seen a city so lovely 
at first sight as Florence. — Shdley. 

As I approached Florence ... the country looked, not 
indeed strikingly beautiful, but very pleasing. The sight of 
the olive-trees interested me much. I had, indeed, seen what 
I was told were olive-trees, as I was whirled down the Rhone 
from Lyons to Avignon ; but they might, for anything I saw, 

ass 



254 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

have been willows or ash-trees. Now they stood, covered 
with berries, along the road for miles. I looked at them with 
the same sort of feeling with which Washington Irving says 
that he heard the nightingale for the first time when he came 
to England, after having read descriptions of her in poets 
from his childhood. I thought of the Hebrews, and their 
numerous images drawn from the olive ; of the veneration in 
which the tree was held by the Athenians; of Lysias's speech; 
of the fine ode in the CEdipus at Colonus; of Virgil and 
Lorenzo de' Medici. — Lard Mtuaulay. 

While Milan is a circular town, without a river, a town 
that lies in an unbroken plain except for its many brooks of 
running water, Florence is built entirely differently in a fair- 
sized valley that is bounded by rugged mountains. The town 
is right against the hill which limits it to the south, and by the 
disposition of its streets is not unlike Paris, being also situated 
on the Amo as Paris is on the Seine. ... If we go to the 
southern hill in the garden of the Pitti Palace and thence 
walk round the walls as far as the Arezzo road, we shall get 
an idea of the infinite number of little hills of which Tuscany 
is made up, and which, covered with olives, vines, and small 
patches of wheat, are cultivated like a garden. ... As in the 
pictures of Leonardo and of the early manner of Raphael, the 
horizon is often bounded by dark trees relieved against a blue 
^kj.—SUndhal. 

PERSONAL ACCOUNTS 

Florence in the Sixteenth Century ^ 

... I saw the public processions, and the grand-duke in 
his state-coach. Among other grand sights exhibited on this 
occasion, there is a sort of small moveable stage, gilt on the 
outside, on which there are four little children, and a monk, 
or a nun dressed up as a monk, with a great false beard, who 
represents St Francis of Assisi, standing, holding his hands 
crossed upon his breast, as in the portrait of him, and with a 
crown over his head, fixed on his hood. There were other 

* This is Montaigne's visit to Florence on his return from Rome. The 
visit on his way to Rome is less interesting except for a brief mention of 
Bianca Capello, and the dictum : '* M. de Montaigne said he had never 
been in a country where there were so few pretty women as in Italy.** 
His visit included an excursion to PratoUno^ but we have preferred to 
choose the account given by Lassels. 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 255 

children on foot, armed, one of whom represented St. George. 
When these came to the square, there rushed out upon the 
champion a great dragon, made to look very terrible, and 
spouting flames from his jaws, and so large as evidently some- 
what to stagger the men who carried him. The young 
St. George attacked the dragon in his turn, and struck him, 
and, at last vanquishing him, stabbed him deep in the 
throat. . . . 

The Chariot Race 

. . . There was a grand chariot race, in a large open 
square of an oblong form, and surrounded on all sides by 
handsome houses. At each comer of this place they had 
erected a wooden obelisk, and a long cord extended from each 
of these to the other, to prevent people from crossing the 
ground; there were, besides, several men stationed along 
these ropes, to keep any person from getting over them. The 
balconies were full of ladies; the grand-duke, with the 
duchess and the court, occupying the lower balcony of the 
principal houses. The other spectators were ranged along the 
sides of the square, outside the ropes, and on a sort of 
scaffolds, on one of which I got a place. There were five 
chariots or cars to run. They took their places by lot, in a 
row, by one of the obelisks. It seemed to be considered that 
the outside place was the best, as giving the driver the most 
command of the grouAd. The horses started at the sound of 
a trumpet. The chariot that had the lead on arriving at the 
starting-post, in the third run round the course, was the 
winner. The grand-duke's car had the best of it up to the 
commencement of the third round, but then Strozzi's 
charioteer, who had kept very close to the grand-duke's, 
urged his horses to the utmost, and managed to get so nearly 
on a level with the latter as to make the victory a question 
between them. I observed that the populace broke their 
previous silence when they saw Strozzi's charioteer making 
head, and b^an shouting and encouraging him with all their 
might and main, utterly regardless of their prince being 
present. And afterwards, when the dispute as to the victory 
was referred to the decision of the judges of the course, those 
among them who were in favour of Strozzi having appealed to 
the judgment of the assembly, there was raised an almost 
unanimous shout in favour of Strozzi, who ultimately obtained 
the prize, though it seemed to me that the grand-duke's 



256 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

charioteer was really the winner. The value of the prize was 
a hundred crowns. I was more pleased with this spectacle 
than any other I had witnessed in Italy, for my foncy was 
tickled by its resemblance to the races of the ancients. 

The Feast of St. John^ 

This being St. John's eve, the roof of the cathedral was 
surrounded by two or three rows of lamps, and a number of 
rockets were let off. They say, however, that it is not the ' 
general custom in Italy, as in France, to have fire^works on 
St. John's day. This festival came round in due course, on 
the Sunday, and being, of all the saint's days, the one observed 
by the people of Florence with the greatest solemnity and 
rejoicing, everybody was from an early hour abroad to take 
part in it, dressed in their best. I had thus an opportunity of 
seeing all the women, old and young ; and I must confess 
that the amount of beauty at Florence seemed to me very 
limited. Early in the morning the grand-duke took his seat 
in the palace square, upon a platform which occupied the 
whole front of the palace, the walls of which, as well as the 
platform, were hung with rich tapestry. He was seated under 
a canopy, with the Pope's nuncio at his side on the left, and 
the Ferrarese ambassador on his right, but not so near him 
by a good deal as the nuncio. Here there passed before him 
a long procession of men in various glises, emblems of the 
different castles, towns, and states dependent upon the arch- 
duchy of Florence, and the name and style of each, as its 
representative passed, was announced to the assembled 
multitude by a herald, who stood by in full costume. Repre- 
senting Siena, for instance, there came forward a young man 
habited in white and black velvet, bearing in one hand a large 
silver vase, and in the other an effigy of the she-wolf of Siena. 
These offerings he laid at the feet of the duke, accompanying 
them with a suitable address. When he had passed on he 
was followed, in single file, and as their names were suc- 
cessively called out, by a number of ill-dressed men, mounted 
on sorry hacks or on mules, some carrying a silver cup, 
others a ragged banner. These fellows, of whom there were 

1 *» The Feast of St. John," wrote Hawthorne ift 1858; " like the 
Carnival, is but a meagre semblance of festivity, kept alive factitiously, and 
dying a lingering death of centuries. It takes the exuberant mind and 
heart of a people to keep its holidays alive." 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 257 

a great number, went on through the streets, without any sort 
of form or ceremony, and, indeed, without exhibiting the 
slightest gravity or even decency of demeanour, but rather 
seeming to treat the whole thing as a jest They took their 
part in the affair as representatives of the various castles and 
other places in immediate dependence upon the state of 
Siena. This ceremonial takes place every year. 

By and by, advanced a car, bearing a great wooden 
pyramid, with steps all up to it, on which stood little boys 
dressed in different fashions, to represent saints and angels. 
The pyramid was as high as a house ; and at the top of it was 
St John, bound to an iron bar. Next after this car came the 
public officers, those connected with the revenue occupying 
the first rank. The procession was closed by another car, on 
which were several young men with three prizes, which were 
afterwards run for in different sorts of races. On each side of 
the car were the horses that were about to take part in the 
races, led by the jockeys, wearing the colours of their different 
masters, among whom were some of the greatest nobles of the 
country. The horses were small, but exquisitely formed. 
. . . After dinner, everybody went to see the horse-racing. 
The Cardinal de Medici's horse won: the prize was worth 
about 200 crowns. This spectacle is not so agreeable as the 
chariot-race, for it takes place in the street, and all you see is 
the horses tearing past where you stand, at the top of their 
speed, and there is an end of the matter, as far as you are 
concerned. . . . 

On the preceding Saturday the grand duke's palace was 
thrown open to all comers, without exception, and was crowded 
with country people, who by and by nearly all collected in 
the great hall, where they fell to dancing. As I looked upon 
them, it seemed to my fancy an image of a people's lost 
liberty — an aH but extinguished light throwing out a flickering 
gleam once a year, amid the shows of a saint's day. — Montaigne. 

Florence in the Seventeenth Century 

Florence is at the foot of the Appenines, the West part 
full of stately groves and pleasant meadows, beautified with 
more than a thousand houses and country palaces of note, 
belonging to gentlemen of the towne. The river Amo runs 
through this Citty, in a broad but very shallow channell, 
dividing it, as it were, in the middle ; and over it are fower 

R 



asS THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

most sumptuous bridges of stone. On that nearest to our 
quarter are the 4 Seasons in white marble ; on another are the 
goldsmiths shops ; at the head of the former stands a column 
of opite on which is a statue of Justice with her balance and 
sword, cut out of porphyrie, and the more remarkable for 
being the first which had been carved out of that hard material, 
and brought to perfection after the art had been utterly lost : 
they say this was done by hardening the tools in the juice of 
certaine herbs. This statue was erected in that comer 
because there Cosmo was first saluted with the newes of 
Sienna being tAken. 

The Palaces 

Neere this is the famous Palazzo di Strozzi, a princely 
piece of architecture, in a rustiq manner. The PaJace of Pitd 
was built by that family, but of late greatly beautified by 
Cosmo with huge square stones of the Doric, Ionic, and the 
Corinthian orders, with a terrace at each side having rustic 
uncut balustrades, with a fountain that ends in a cascade seen 
from the great gate, and so forming a vista to the gardens. 
Nothing is more admirable than the vacant stayrecase, marbles, 
statues, umes, pictures, courte, grotto, and waterworkes. In 
the quadrangle is a huge jetto of water in a volto of 4 faces, 
with noble statues at each square, especialy the Diana of 
porphyrie above the grotto. We were here shew'd a prodigious 
greate load-stone. 

The garden has every variety, hills, dales, rocks, groves, 
aviaries, vivaries, fountaines, especialy one of five jettos, the 
middle basin being one of the longest stones I ever saw. 
Here is every thing to make such a paradise delightfull In 
the garden I saw a rose grafted on an orange-tree. There 
was much topiary worke, and colunms in architecture about 
the hedges. The Duke has added an ample iaboratorye, over 
against which stands a Fort on a hill where they told us his 
treasure is kept. In this Palace the Duke ordinarily resides, 
living with his Swiss guards, after the frugal Italian way, and 
even selling what he can spare of his wines, at the cellar 
under his very house, wicker bottles dangling over even the 
chiefe entrance into the Palace, serving for a vintner's bush. 

In the church of Santo Spirito the altar and reliquary are 
most rich, full of precious stones ; there are 4 pillars of a 
kind of serpentine, and some of blue. Hence we went to 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 259 

another Palace of the Duke's, called Palazzo Veochio, before 
which is a statue of David by Michael Angelo, and one of 
Hercules killing Cacus, the work of Baccio Bandinelli. The 
quadrangle about this is of the Corinthian order, and in the 
hall are many rare marbles, as those of Leo the Tenth and 
Clement VII. both Popes of the Medicean family ; also the 
acts of Cosmo in rare painting. In the Chapell is kept (as 
they would make one believe) the original Gospel of St John, 
written with his owne hand ; and the famous Florentine Pan* 
dects, and divers precious stones. Neere it is another pen- 
dant Towre like that at Pisa, always threatening mine. 

Works of Art 

Under the Court of Justice is a stately Arcade for men to 
walke in, and over that the shops of divers rare artists who 
continualy worke for the greate Duke. Above this is that 
renowned Ceimeliarcha, or Repository, wherein are hundreds 
of admirable antiquities, statues of marble and mettal, vases 
of porphyrie, etc. ; but amongst the statues none so famous 
as the Scipio, Boare, the Idol of Apollo brought from the 
Delphic Temple, and two triumphant columnes. Over these 
hang the pictures of the most famous persons and illustrious 
men in arts or armes, to the number of 300, taken out of the 
Museum of Paulus Jovius. They then led us into a laige 
square roome in the middle of which stood a Cabinet of an 
octangular forme, so adom'd and furnish'd with christals, 
achat, sculptures, etc., as exceeds any description. This 
cabinet is called the Triduna, and in it is a pearle as big 
as a hazale nut. The cabinet is of ebonie, lazuli, and jasper ; 
over the door is a round of M. Angelo ; in the cabinet, Zeo 
the Tenth, with other paintings of Raphael, del Sarto, Perugino, 
and Correggio, viz. a St, John, a Virgin, a Boy, 2 Apostles, 
2 Heads of Durer rarely carved. Over this cabinet is a Globe 
of ivoiy, excellently carved ; the Labours of Hercules in massy 
silver, and many incomparable pictures in small. There is 
another, which had about it 8 oriental columns of alabaster, 
on each whereof was placed a head of a Csesar, cover'd with a 
canopy so richly set with precious stones that they resembled 
a firmament of Starrs. Within it was our Saviour's Passion 
and 12 Apostles in amber. This cabinet was valued at two 
hundred thousand crownes. In another, with Calcidon pillars, 
was a series of golden medaills. Here is also another rich 



26o THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

ebony Cabinet cupola'd with a tortoise-shell and containing 
a collection of gold medaills esteem'd worth 50,000 crownes; 
a wreathed pillar of oriental alabaster, divers paintings of Da 
Vinci, Pontomo, del Sarto, an Ecce Homo of Titian, a Boy of 
Bronzini, etc. They shew'd us a branch of corall fixed on the 
rock which they affirme dos still grow. In another roome is 
kept the Tabernacle appointed for the Chapel of St Lawrence, 
about which are placed small statues of Saints, of precious 
materials; a piece of such art and cost, that, having been 
these 40 years in perfecting, it is one of the most curious 
things in the world. Here were divers tables of Pietra 
Comessa, which is a marble ground inlay'd with severall sorts 
of marbles and stones of various colours, representing flowers, 
trees, beasts, birds, and landskips. In one is represented 
the town of Ligome by the same hand who inlay'd the altar 
of St Lawrence, Domenico BenottL I purchased of him 
19 pieces of the same worke for a cabinet. In a presse neere 
this they shew'd an yron nayle, one halfe whereof being con- 
verted into gold by one Thomheuser, a German chymist, is 
look'd on as a greate rarity, but it plainly appeared to have 
been soldered together. There is a curious watch, a mon- 
strous turquoise as big as an egg, on which is carved an 
emperor's head. 

In the Armory are kept many antiq habits, as those of 
Chinese kings ; the sword of Charlemain ; Hannibal's head- 
piece ; a loadstone of a yard long, which bears up 86 lbs. 
weight, in a chaine of 17 links, such as the slaves are tied to. 
In another roome are such rare toumeries in ivoiy as are not 
to be described for their curiosity. There is a faire pillar of 
oriental alabaster; 12 vast and compleate services of silver 
plate, and one of gold, all of excellent workmanship ; a rich 
embrodred saddle of pearls sent by the Emperor to this Duke ; 
and here is that embrodred chaire set with precious stones in 
which he sits, when, on St John's Day, he receives the tribute 
of the Citties. . . . 

Loggia de' Lanzi 

We went to the Portico where the famous statues of 
Judith and Holofernes standi also the Medusa, all of copper; 
but what is most admirable is the Rape of a Sabine with 
another man under foot, the confusion and turning of whose 
limbs is most admirable. It is of one entire marble, the 
worke of John di Bologna, and is most stupendous; this 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 261 

stands directly against the greate Piazza, where, to adorne one 
fountaine, are erected four marble statues and eight of brasse, 
representing Neptune and his family of sea-gods, of a Colossean 
magnitude, with four sea-horses in Parian marble of Lamedrati ; 
this is in the midst of a very great basin, a work, I think, 
hardly to be paralleled. Here is also the famous statue of 
David by M. Angelo ; Hercules and Cacus by Baccio Bandi- 
nelli ; the Perseus in copper by Benevento, and the Judith of 
Donatelli, which stand publickly before the old palace with 
the Centaur of Bologna, huge Colossean figures. Neere this 
stands Cosmo di Medici on horseback, in brasse on a pedistal 
of marble, and four copper bass relievos by John di Bologna, 
with divers inscriptions; the Ferdinand the First on horse- 
back is of Pietro Tacca. The brazen Boare which serves for 
another publiq fountaine is admirable. 

The Annunciata; The Riding School 

After dinner, we went to the church of Annunciata, where 
the Duke and his Court were at their devotions, being a place 
of extraordinary repute for sanctity ; for here is a shrine that 
does great miracles, [proved] by innumerable votive tablets, 
etc, covering almost the walls of the whole church. This is 
the image of Gabriel who saluted the Blessed Virgin, and 
which the artist finished so well that he was in despair of 
performing the Virgin's face, whereupon it was miraculously 
done for him whilst he slept ; but others say it was painted 
by St Luke himself. Whoever it was, infinite is the devotion 
of both sexes to it The altar is set off with four columns of 
oriental alabaster, and lighted by thirty great silver lamps. 
There are innumerable other pictures by rare masters. Our 
Saviour's passion in brasse tables inserted in marble is the 
work of John di Bologna and Baccio Bandinelli. . . . 

At the Duke's Cavalerizzo, the Prince has a stable of the 
finest horses of all countries, Arabs, Turks, Barbs, Gennets, 
English, etc., which are continually exercised in the manage. 
Near this is a place where are kept several wild beasts, as 
wolves, catts, beares, tygers, and lions. They are loose in 
a deep walled court, and therefore to be seene with more 
pleasure than at the Tower of London, in their grates. — 
Evelyn. 



262 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



Florence in the Eighteenth Century 

Our Florentines have nothing on earth to do ; yet a dozen 
fellows crying dambtUi^ little cakes, about the square, assisted 
l>7 beggars, who lie upon the church steps, and pray or rather 
promise to pray as loud as their lungs will let them, for the 
anime sante dipurgatorio ; ballad-singers meantime endeavour- 
ing to drown these clamours in their own, and gentlemen's 
servants disputing at the doors, whose master shall be first 
served; ripping up the pedigrees of each to prove superior 
claims for a biscuit or macaroon ; do make such an intolerable 
clatter among them, that one cannot, for one's life, hear one 
another speak : and I did say just now, that it were as good 
live at Brest or Portsmouth when the rival fleets were fitting 
out, as here ; where real tranquillity subsists under a bustle 
merely imaginary. 

The Grand Duke 

Our Grand Duke lives with little state for aught I can 
observe here ; but where there is least pomp, there is commonly 
most power. ... He tells his subjects when to go to bed, 
and who to dance with, till the hour he chooses they should 
retire to rest, with exactly that sort of old-fashioned paternal 
authority that fathers used to exercise over their funilies in 
England before commerce had run her levelling plough over 
all ranks, and annihilated even the name of subordination. 
If he hear of any person living long in Florence without being 
able to give a good account of his business there, the Duke 
warns him to go away; and if he loiter after such warning 
given, sends him out. Does any nobleman shine in pompous 
equipage or splendid table; the Grand Duke enquires soon 
into his pretensions, and scruples not to give personal advice 
and add grave reproofs with regard to the management of 
each individual's private affairs, the establishment of their 
sons, the marriage of their sisters, etc When they appeared 
to complain of this behaviour to me, I know not, replied I, 
what to answer: one has always read and heard that the 
Sovereigns ought to behave in despotic governments like the 
fathers of their family. . . . "Yes, Madam," replied one of 
my auditors, with an acuteness truly Italian, " but this Prince 
is OMx father-in-law.^* . . . 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 363 



Rustic Picturbs 

I have been out to dinner in the country near Prato, and 
what a charming, what a delightful thing is a nobleman's seat 
near Florence 1 How cheerful the society! How splendid 
the climate 1 how wonderful the prospects in this glorious 
country 1 The Amo rolling before his house, the Apennines 
rising behind it 1 a sight of fertility enjoyed by its inhabitants, 
and a view of such defences to their property as nature alone 
can bestow. A peasantry so rich too, that the wives and 
daughters of the farmer go dressed in jewels ; and those of 
no small value. A pair of one-drop ear-rings, a broadish 
necklace, with a long piece hanging down the bosom, and 
terminated with the cross, all of set garnets clear and perfect, 
is a common, a very common treasure to the females about 
this country; and on every Sunday or holiday, when they 
dress and mean to look pretty, their elegantly-disposed 
ornaments attract attention strongly; though I do not think 
them as handsome as the Lombard lasses, and our Venetian 
friends protest that the farmers at Crema in their state are 
still richer. 

La Contadinella Toscana, however, in a very rich white 
silk petticoat, exceedingly full and short, to shew her neat 
pink slipper and pretty ankle, her pink corps de robes and 
straps, with white silk lacing down the stomacher, puffed shift 
sleeves, with heavy lace robbins ending at the elbow and 
fastened at the shoulders with at least eight or nine bows of 
narrow pink ribbon, a lawn handkerchief trimmed with broad 
lace, put on somewhat coquettishly, and finishing in front 
with a nosegay, must make a lovely figure at any rate ; though 
the hair is drawn away from the face in a way rather too tight 
to be becoming, imder a red velvet cushion edged with gold, 
which helps to bear it off I think, but gives the small Leghorn 
hat, lined with green, a pretty perking air, which is infiinitely 
nymphish and smart. — Mrs. JHozzi. 

A Thought From Goethb 

In the city we see the proof of the prosperity of the 
generations who built it; the conviction is at once forced 
upon us that they must have enjoyed a long succession of 
wise rulers. But above all one is struck with the beauty and 



264 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

grandeur which distinguish all the public works and roads 
and bridges in Tuscany. Everything here is at once sub- 
stantial and clean ; use and profit not less than elegance are 
alike kept in view ; everywhere we discern traces of the care 
which is taken to preserve them. The cities of the Papal 
States on the contrary only seem to stand, because the earth 
is unwilling to swallow them up. — Goethe. 



FLORENTINE LIFE 
Dante in Florence 

At first we cannot trace the Florence Dante knew. Nothing 
is less like the thirteenth-century Tuscan than the Tuscan of 
to-day: the powerful character, the wild and deep passion 
have given place to peaceable habits and gentle manners. 
A life of adventure, peril, and hate has b^ followed by 
pleasant indolence ; we find nothing here of the concentrated 
violence of the Roman nature. Even the peasants of the 
neighbourhood of Florence have a certain elegance and sweet- 
ness of speech and address. The old mediaeval Tuscan type 
was gradually effaced by the hand of the Medici ; the care 
of Leopold has succeeded in softening its last inequalities. 

Thus too is it with the aspect of Florence. At our first 
glance it seems quite modem. The main buildings them- 
selves — the old strongholds which, like the Strozzi palace, 
make the streets dark beneath their dark and crenellated 
masses — are of a more recent date than that of Dante. The 
cathedral was scarcely begun in his time ; and it took i66 
years' work and the crowning gift of Brunelleschi to complete 
it The only monument actually existing in Dante's time was 
the handsome Baptistery he loved so well and mentions as 

" II mio bcl San Giovanni." 

Nevertheless, here and there, a few names or relics bring 
to mind Florence in the fourteenth century. By a fortunate 
chance there stood opposite to my window a wall with the 
funeral scutcheon of Charles of Valois — iiatfleur de /is, which 
for Dante was the symbol of proscription and exile, and which 
now is itself exiled and proscribed. If we look carefully, little 
by little we find the older Florence in the heart of the newer 
town. We may see a modem building grow above an ancient 
sub-structure ; and French windows with green blinds above a 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 265 

wall of enormous black stones hewn diamond-wise. Here 
then are two epochs, one above another, just as on the 
Appian way the hovels of the rustics rise above the tombs of 
the ancient Romans. 

The names of the streets take us back to Dante ; often 
enough they belong to the persons or the families who are 
part of his poem. We find the street of the Blacks, the 
crucifix of the Whites, the street of the Ghibellines or of the 
Guelfs. As we cross these streets with their historic names, 
we can fancy that we shall run up against Farinata, Caval- 
canti, or even Alighieri himself. The part of Florence where 
Dantesque recollections are centred is in the neighbourhood 
of the Cathedral and the Baptistery. Among the numerous 
square towers which here and there rise above^the Florentine 
houses, there is one called the Tower of Dante. The stone 
of Dante, sasso di Danie^ is not now to be found, but an in- 
scription cut on a marble slab keeps alive the memory of this 
memory — ^the tradition of a tradition. 

Finally, not far from here stands even to-day the Portinari 
palace,^ where there dwelt once a little girl who received the 
childish name of Bice. The youthful Dante, a lad of the neigh- 
bourhood, used to play with the child of the Portinari house, 
and for him thenceforward began that new life which he has 
so eloquently told \ and there, in the soul of nine years' age, 
was sown the seed which was in later days to produce the 
immense poem devoted to the immortalisation of Beatrice. — 
Atnpire. 

The Misericordia 

There is a society here, called the Misericordia Society, 
of which I have heard the following account, but do not know 
if it is accurate. It is composed of men of the highest rank, 
whose business it is, in case of accident or sudden death, to 
assemble at the sound of a bell, and render what assistance 
may be necessary. That there may be no personal ostentation, 
they wear black masks. I met about a dozen of them the 
other day bearing a dead body through the streets. They 
were all dressed in black dominos, and, as it rained, in very 

^ Amp^e omits to mention the house (now absolutely renovated) in 
which Dknte was bom. According to Mr. W. D. Howells {JTuscan 
Cities)^ Dante was married in the small church of San Martino near by ; 
but this church is only a chapel of the former San Martino (see IVaiks in 
Fhnnce, by the Misses Homer, vol. i. p. 352, ed. 1884). 



266 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

broad slouched hats. They never spoke, and relieved one 
another in carrying with great dexterity and quickness. Their 
step struck me as unusually majestic, probably from their 
dress, and the solemnity of their occupations. It was a very 
imposing sight. I am told that sometimes the Grand Duke 
himself goes out and assists. — Walker. 

Gaming and Sports in 1630 

It is the custom here in winter, to invite the chief ladies of 
the town (married women only ^) to come to play at cards in 
winter evenings for three or four hours' space ; and this one 
night in one palace, another night in another palace. Thither 
the ladies go, and find the house open to all comers and 
goers, both ladies and gentlemen, that are of any garb. In 
every chamber the doors are set open, and for the most part 
you shall see eight, or ten chambers on a door, going out of 
one another, with a square table holding eight persons, as 
many chairs, two silver candlesticks with wax-lights in them, 
and store of lights round about the room. At the hour 
appointed, company being come, they sit down to play, a 
cavalier sitting between every lady, and all the women as fine 
in cloths and jewels, as if they were going to a ball. The 
doors of all these rooms being open, the light great, the 
women glittering, and all glorious, you would taJce these 
palaces to be the enchanted palaces of the Old King of the 
Mountain. Any gentlemen may come into the palaces and 
stand between the gamesters, and see both how modestly 
they play, and how little they play for. . . . 

The Florentines enjoying by the goodness and wisdom of 
their excellent Prince, the fruits of peace, have many other 
recreations, where the people pass their time cheerfully, and 
think not of rebellion by muttering in corners. For this 
reason, both in winter and summer they have their several 
divertisements. In winter their Giuco di Caldo (a play 
something like our football, but that they play widi tfieir 
hands) every night from the Epiphany till Lent. . . . Besides 
these pastimes, they have once a week, dancing at the Court 
from Twelfth Day till Lent, at which balls, all the ladies of 
the town are invited, to the number sometimes of two hundred, 

^ Southern customs have not changedy and it needs no particular 
reference to our own literature to prove that maids as well as wives were 
always included in northern junketings. 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 267 

and these all married women, and all invited by a particular 
ticket. Then their several Opera's or musical Dramata acted 
and sung with rare cost and art. Lastly, their public running 
at the ring, or at the fauchin^ for a piece of plate. And in 
summer, they have their several dancing days, and their 
frequent card dipaHo upon certain known days and for known 
prizes. — Lassels. 

The Tuscan Dialect 

As for the language of Florence, it's pure, but in their 
books, not in their throats : they do so choak it in the throat 
that it's almost quite drowned there. Nor doth it recover 
itself again till it come to Rome, where Ungua Toscana in 
bocca Romana is a most sweet language. — Lassels, 

Religious Ceremonial^ 

The most unaccountable scene, while we were abroad, 
was the Resurrection of Christ, which we saw performed at 
Florence, on Easter-Eve. There was set up before the door 
of the Cathedral an artificial sepulchre, filled with rockets, 
squibs and crackers, which have trains communicated one to 
another. From this sepulchre there goes a line, through the 
body of the church, to the altar, on which there is placed an 
artificial pigeon, of combustible matter, designed to represen 
the Holy Ghost The Archbishop with his clergy performed 
the function for the day, with great solemnity, being seated on 
the side of the altar, under stately canopies of velvet and 
cloth of gold. When they come to the hallelujas, at the end 
of the music, which is very fine, both vocal and instrumental, 
they all give a hideous shout, then a man sets fire to the com- 
bustible pigeon at the altar, which runs along the line to the 
sepulchre without doors, and blows it up into the air. All 
this was performed with music, drums, trumpets, ringing of 
bells, and firing of the great guns : meanwhile the fiery pigeon 
returns back to the altar and the people fall on their faces to 
worship. — S, Whatl^. 

1 L'Abb^ Richard thought the Florentines less superstitious than other 
Italians, but they certainly had some of the ceremonies which are best 
represented at Rome. 



268 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



Receptions in 1740 

The luxury of the Florentines in their equii)ages is some- 
thing astonishing, as it is likewise in their furniture and dress. 
Every night we have attended evening parties in different 
houses, of which the apartments are quite labyrinthine. These 
assemblies are composed of some three hundred or more 
ladies, covered with diamonds, and five hundred men, wear- 
ing dresses which the Due de Richelieu would scarce dare 
to wear. I much enjoy these gatherings of from eight to nine 
hundred people ; when there are more it becomes a mob ; but, 
seriously, I cannot understand how such crowding can be 
a pleasure to any one. As to the dresses, we are told that 
these rich costumes are only worn on state occasions, and 
last a lifetime, and that all this splendour, these balls and 
assemblies, and illuminated gatherings at which we assisted, 
were given to celebrate society weddings, that had brought 
all the town together, and where the ceremonial is of great 
length. These conversazioni are a matter of much expense 
to those who give them, on account of the vast quantity of 
candles burnt, and the immense amount of ices and confec- 
tions that are handed round during the evening. There is 
dancing, and likewise music — De Brasses, 

An Improvisatrice in 1785 

We are called away to hear the fair Fantastici, a young 
woman who makes improvise verses, and sings them, as they 
tell me, with infinite learning and taste. She is successor to 
the celebrated Gorilla, who no longer exhibits the power 
she once held without a rival; yet to her conversations 
every one still strives for admission, though she is now ill, 
and old, and hoarse with repeated colds. She spares, how- 
ever, now by no labour or fatigue to obtain and keep that 
superiority and admiration which one day perhaps gave her 
almost equal trouble to receive and to repay. . . . Gorilla, 
without preteasions either to immaculate character (in the 
English sense), deep erudition, or high birth, which an Italian 
esteems above all earthly things, has so made her way in the 
world, that all the nobility of both sexes crowd to her house ; 
that no Prince passes through Florence without waiting on 
Gorilla; that the Capitol will long recollect her being crowned 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 269 

there, and that 'many sovereigns have not only sought her 
company, but have been obliged to put up with slights from 
her independent spirit, and from her airy, rather ^than haughty 
behaviour. — Mrs, Piozzu 



Street Improvisation 

In attending to the Italian improvisatori, I began to find 
out, or perhaps only to fancy, several points in which they 
resemble their great predecessor Homer. In both may be 
remarked the same openness of style and simplicity of con- 
struction, the same digressions, rests, repetitions, anomalies. 
Homer has often recourse to shifts of the moment, like other 
improvisatori. Like them he betrays great inequalities. 
Sometimes when his speech is lengthening into detail, he cuts 
it short and concludes. Sometimes when the interest and 
difficulty thicken, the poet escapes, like his heroes, in a cloud. 
I once thought of Homer in the streets of Florence, where I 
once saw a poor cyclic bard most cruelly perplexed in a tale of 
chivahy. He wished to unravel ; but every stanza gave a new 
twist to his plot His hearers seemed impatient for the 
denouement, but still the confusion increased. At last, seeing 
no other means of escape, he vented his poetical fury on the 
skin of his tambourine, and went off with a maledetto, — 
Forsyth, 

ARCHITECTURE AND ART 

Palazzo Vecchio 

Our first visit of all is to the Piazza della Signoria ; here, 
as at Siena, it was the centre of Republican life ; here, too, 
the old town-hall, the Palazzo Vecchio, is a structure of the 
middle ages, an enormous block of stone, pierced with trefoiled 
windows here and there, with a heavy battlement of machi- 
colations, and on one side a lofty battlemented tower. It is 
the veriest civic fortress, useful for warfare or for observation, 
a saf^uard when near, a beacon from afar, in a word, the 
town's suit of armour with its visible crest. We cannot look 
at it without thinking of the intestine warfare described by 
Dino Compagni. They were rough times in Italy were the 
middle ages ; in France we had the war of castles, in Italy it 
was one in the streets. For thirty-three years in succession 



270 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEI- 

the Buondelmonti with forty-four families supporting them 
were fighting the Uberti with twenty-two. They barricaded 
the streets with chevaux de /rise; the houses were fortified; 
and the nobility brought their armed retainers in from the 
countryside. Finally, thirty-six houses belonging to the 
beaten side were rased to the ground, and if the town- hall is 
irr^ularly built, it is because an implacable vengeance insisted 
on the architect's leaving bare the accursed sites on which the 
houses destroyed had once stood. — Tatne,^ 

Palazzo Vecchio (Interior) 

In the midst of the city — ^in the Piazza of the Grand Duke, 
adorned with beautiful statues and the Fountain of Neptune- 
rises the Palazzo Vecchio, with its enormous overhanging 
battlements, and the Great Tower that watches over the whole 
town. In its court-yard — worthy of the Castle of Otranto in 
its ponderous gloom — ^is a massive staircase that the heaviest 
waggon and the stoutest team of horses might be driven up. 
Within it, is a Great Saloon, faded and tarnished in its stately 
decorations, and mouldering by grains, but recording yet, in 
pictures on its walls, the triumphs of the Medici^ and the 
wars of the old Florentine people. The prison is hard by, in 
an adjacent court-yard of the building — a foul and dismal 
place, where some men are shut up close, in small cells like 
ovens ; and where others look through bars and beg ; where 
some are plasring draughts, and some are talking to their 
friends, who smoke, the while, to purify the air ; and some 
are buying wine and fruit of women-vendors; and all are 
squalid, dirty, and vile to look at " They are merry enough, 
Signore," says the Jailer. "They are all blood-stained here," 
he adds, indicating, with his hand, three-fourths of the whole 

' We may note from Homer's IValJ^s in Florence that there was 
formerly a ringhiera^ or rostrum, ia front of the Palazzo Vecchio. This 
rostrum is shown in the San Marco picture of Savonarola's execution, and 
remained in place till Napoleon's time. It was cm the northern angle of 
the ringhiera that the Marzocco, or Lion of Florence, originally was placed. 
As Evelyn tells us above, Michael Angelo's David (now in the Accademia} 
used to stand opposite the n'ngkiera, on the left of the entrance. 

' The palace itself contains no other indication of its tenancy by the 
Grand Dukes, but the statue of Cosimo I. by Giovanni da Bologna still 
stands in the Piazza della Signoria, formerly called, during the interval of 
ducal rule, the Piazza del Gran Duca. The Renaissance works of 
sculpture in the court of the palace have nothitfg to do with the original 
intention of the building. 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 271 

building. Before the hour is out, an old man, eighty years of 
age, quarrelling over a bargain with a young girl of seventeen, 
stabs her dead, in the market-place full of bright flowers, and 
is brought in prisoner, to swell the number. — Dickens, 

Loggia de' Lanzi 

On the right hand, facing the Palazzo Vecchio, are three 
arcades or porticoes, entered by five or six broad steps, noble 
in size, harmonious in proportion, and tasteful in decoration. 
They were erected by Orcagna, in 1375, for the transaction of 
public business, and served at once as a town-hall and an 
exchange. Here the magistrates were inducted into office, 
and here the democracy of Florence were harangued by their 
orators. Under the Medici, this spacious loggia was degraded 
into a lounging-place for the troop of mercenary Swiss and 
Germans, who were raised by Cosmo L to give splendour to 
his state and security to his power. These arcades now shelter 
a silent company of statues. Conspicuous among them is the 
Perseus of the fiery-hearted Cellini, not more known from its 
own merits than from the graphic account of its casting, 
which the artist gives in those memoirs of his, which are 
written with as much fire and fervour as if he had dipped his 
pen in the melted bronze. The figure is erect, holding aloft 
the head of Medusa, and trampling on the misshapen monster 
at his feet. Some critics object to the form as too robust, 
and to the attitude as wanting in simplicity, but no one ever 
denied it breathing life. Corresponding to this is a group in 
marble, by John of Bologna, a young man holding a maiden 
in his arms, with an old man at his feet, which, for want of 
a better name, is called the Rape of the Sabines. It is a 
daring and successful effort, to put such a conception into 
marble, and shows at once the artisf s powers, and his confid- 
ence in them ; but there is something strained, violent, and 
unnatural in the whole composition, and the eye grows weary 
in gazing at such overtask^ muscles. Judith slaying Holo- 
femes, a group in bronze by Donatello, suffers by its proximity. 
It is of the natural size, while its neighbours are colossal, and 
it has more the air of an actress playing the part of Judith, 
than of Judith herself.— G^. S. Hillard. 



272 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



The Dante Portrait in the Bargello^ 

Within the last ten years two interesting discoveries have 
been made in Florence. One is the portrait of Dante in the 
chapel of the Palazzo del Podestk, by Giotto. This palazzo is 
a singular structure, built in a rambling and uncouth style, and 
now used as a prison. Upon the walls of the Cortile are seen 
the armorial bluings of a long line of magistrates of Florence. 
The room in which the portrait was discovered had lost the 
aspect of a chapel, and had been used as a store-house for the 
prison, or some similar office. Perhaps it is hardly correct to 
say that the portrait was discovered, as there must always have 
b^n some persons who knew that this work, and many others, 
were there, and 'might be found if any one would take the 
trouble to remove the whitewash. . . . For many years, even 
generations, the portrait slept in its shroud of white, and there 
would have slept till the last syllable of recorded time, had its 
resurrection depended upon indigenous reverence, energy, and 
enterprise. A few English and American gentlemen . . . 
resolved to make the attempt to uncover it, and after repeated 
applications, and all sorts of aiding influence, the supineness 
or distrust of the government was so far overcome as to give 
these gentlemen a reluctant consent to remove the whitewash 
at their own expense. 

The result answered to their hopes. After a coat of white- 
wash, in some places an inch thick, had been taken off, the 
portrait was found. It represents the great poet in the prime 
of life, before sorrow and struggle had sharpened and deepened 
the lines of his face, and made it that record of outraged pride 
and wounded sensibility which it became in his declining 
years. The brow is ample, the nose straight, and the features 
regular; a countenance at once intellectual and handsome. 
The dress is a long, flowing robe, and the head is covered 
with a sort of hood or cap. Whatever merits as a work of art 
it may have had have been sadly impaired by what it has 
been through ; but no one will deny that it is a precious waif 
snatched from the wreck of time. — G. S. HiUard, 

^ The Bargello has no great interest as a public building, though once 
the home of the PodestiL Much restored in the interior, it now houses 
the collection known as the Museo Nazionale. 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 273 



PONTE VeCCHIO^ 

Among the four bridges that span the river, the Ponte 
Vecchio — that bridge which is covered with the shops of 
jewellers and goldsmiths — is a most enchanting feature in the 
scene. The space of one house, in the centre, being left 
open, the view beyond is shown as in a frame; and that 
precious glimpse of sky, and water and rich buildings, shining 
so quietly among the huddled roofs and gables on the bridge, 
is exquisite. — Dickens, 

The Ponte S. Trinitk was thrown down by the inundation 
of iS57> and rebuilt by order of the Grand Duke Cosmo I. 
according to the designs of Ammanti. It is of a bold and 
sturdy construction ; the arches are of an oval form cut by the 
centre in its length, thus giving greater space and making the 
flow of the water easier. The piles are protected by spurs 
running into acute angles, dividing the volume of water and 
diminishing its strength. The bridge is furnished on the two 
sides with footways for pedestrians, the middle being reserved 
for carriages. At the ends are the statues of the Four 
Seasons. — UAbbi Richard. 

The Duomo 

... It was anciently called S. Reparata's church; but 
since it is called Santa Maria Florida, a fit name for the 
Cathedral of Florence. ... On the top of it stands mounted 
a fair cupola (or tholus) made by Brunelleschi, a Florentine. 
This was the first cupola in Europe ; and therefore the more 
admirable for having no idea after which it could be framed ; 
and for being the idea of that of S. Peter's in Rome, after 
which so many young cupolas in Rome, and elsewhere, have 
been made since. Hence it is said that Michael Angelo 
coming now and then to Florence (his native country) whiles 
he was making the cupola in Rome of S. Peter's church, and 
viewing attentively this cupola of Florence, used to say to it : 
Come te non vogliOy meglio di te non posso^ It's said also that 
Brunelleschi, making this cupola, caused taverns, cook shops, 
and lodgings to be set in it, that the workmen might find all 

^ It may be noted that the Pitti Palace and the Church of the Cannine 
are on the south side of the river. 

* *' Like thee I will not ; better than thee I cannot." 

S 



374 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

things necessary there, and not spend time in going up and 
down. . . . The straight passage from the top of the cupola 
to the round brazen Ball is thirty-six yards high. The Ball is 
four yards wide and capable of four and twenty men : and the 
cross at the top of this Ball is eight yards long. . . . From 
the top of this cupola, taking a perfect view of Florence under 
us, and of the whole country about it, with the sight of two 
thousand villas or country houses scattered here and th^e 
round about the town, we came down again to view the inside 
of this church. 

It is about three hundred feet long, from the great door to 
the choir, and from thence to the end almost two hundred 
more. The choir is round and perpendicularly under the 
cupola, being of the same bigness; and, upon solemn days 
when the wax candles are lighted round about it, it looks 
gloriously, otherwise in winter time it seems too dark.^ The 
High Altar, which stands in this choir, is plain, like those of 
ancient cathedrals, and adorned with a rare statue of a dead 
Christ in white marble made by the hand of Bandinelii. 
Looking up from the quire to the cupola, you see it painted 
on the inside with the representation of heaven, hell and 
purgatory. The painters were Georgio Vasari and Taddeo 
Zuccari. . . . Near the door of the sacristy you may read an 
inscription, importing that in this town of Florence had been 
held a General Council, where the reunion of the Latin and 
Greek church had been made.^ . . . 

In this church you see the statues of divers saints who 
have been archbishops of this town ; and the tombs of divers 
famous men ; as of Marcilius Ficinus, the Platonic Christian 

* Beck ford also refers to the sobriety of the interior as follows : " The 
architect seems to have turned his building inside out ; nothing in art being 
more ornamented than the exterior, and few churches so simple within. 
The nave is vast and solemn, the dome amazingly spacious, witn the high 
altar in its centre, inclosed by a circular arcade near two hundred feet in 
diameter. There is something imposing in this decoration, as it suggests 
the idea of a sanctuarv, into which none but the holy ought to penetrate. 
However profane I might fieel myself, I took the liberty of entering, and 
sat myself down in a niche. Not a ray of light reaches this sacred 
indosure, but through the medium of narrow windows, high in the dome 
and richly painted. 

^ 6th July, 1438. Had the reconciliation been in any way real, Con- 
stantinople might have been saved from the Turks in 1453. The Council 
of Florence is the last great public act of the Eastern Empire. This 
Council had its share in the revival of Greek learning. In the right aisle 
of the cathedral is the monument of Gionoszo Manetti, and a bust of 
Fidnus. (See chapter iv. Symonds's Revival of Learning,^ 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 275 

philosopher ... of Johannes Acutius^ an English knight, 
and general anciently of the Pisani, as the old Gothic letters 
set high upon the wall under his picture on horseback told 
me. — Lassels. 

The Duomo (the Exterior) 

Let us . . . look at the celebrated Cathedral, difficult as 
it is to get a clear view of it. It stands on a level site, and to 
get a complete view of its mass we should have to pull down 
three hundred of the adjoining houses. Herein is the manifest 
defect of the great edifices of the middle ages ; even to-day, 
after the many clearances effected for modern reconstructions, 
the cathedrals must still be studied on paper. The spectator 
takes hold of a fragment, a section or a facade ; but the build- 
ing in its entirety escapes him where the work of man has 
gone beyond his compass. It was not thus in antiquity; the 
temples were small or at most of reasonable size ; their general 
form and complete profile could be studied from twenty 
different places. When Christianity came, human imagination 
soared beyond human strength, and the ambitions of the soul 
forgot the limitations of the body. The balance of the human 
automaton was lost, and with the loss of due moderation, a 
taste for the capricious was established. With neither reason 
nor symmetry campaniles and spires were planted like solitary 
sign-posts in front or beside the cathedrals ; there is one in 
isolation by the Duomo, and this discordance in the human 
harmony must have been potent, since it makes itself felt here 
among Latin traditions and classical associations. 

In other respects, excepting the ogival arcades, the edifice 
is not Gothic but Byzantine, unless we can call it a new style 
altogether ; for it is the result of novel and varied forms like 
the new and mingled civilisation which fathers it. Together 
with suggestions of the quaint and fanciful we feel power and 
originality in it. Walls spacious to grand vastness spring up 
and devdop without the few windows breaking their mass or 
enfeebling their solidity ; there are no flying-buttresses, for the 
building is self-sustained. Marble panels of alternate black 
and yellow, cover it with shining marqueterie-work, and the 
curves of the arches involved in their slabs seem like a sturdy 

1 The Italian chronicles concerning Hawkwood hflve been translated 
by Leader Scott and Sig. Marcotti. Hallam, it will be remembered, 
called the famous amdoUiere the pioneer of modem generalship. 



276 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

skeleton seen through a skin. The Latin Cross formed by 
the building is shorter at the top, and chancel and transept 
are marshalled into circles, projections and tiny domes at 
the back of the church to bear company with the grand dome 
rising above the choir. This dome was the work of Bninell- 
eschi, and is more novel and yet more severe than that of 
St. Peter's, uplifting to an astonishing height its elongated 
form, its eight planes and pointed lantern.^ — Taifu. 

The Campanile 

Here, on the flank of the Duomo, stands the Campanile 
by Giotto, erect, isolated, like St. Michael's tower at Bordeaux 
or the Tour St Jacqties in Paris. All the builders of the 
middle ages seek height in their edifices, they aim at the 
skies, and their towers taper ofif into pointed spires. Had 
this tower been completed a thirty-foot spire would have 
topped a work already 250 feet in height. Hitherto the 
northern architect and the Italian too follow the same instinct 
and gratify the same preferences ; but while the builder beyond 
the Alps in his frank Gothidsm embroiders his tower with 
delicate traceries, complicated mouldings, and an infinitely 
varied and interwoven lace-work of stone, the southern crafts- 
man, with his half-Latin traditions and tendencies, erects a 
square-built pile of solid strength, whose restrained ornament 
does not conceal the general structure ; which is not a frail 
sculptured casket, but a long-lasting monument, covered with 
royal luxury of red, black and white marbles; and which 
recalls the frieze and frontage of an antique temple by the 
wholesome and living statuary of its medallioned bas-reliefs. 
In these medallions, Giotto ^ designed the principal events of 
human civilisation : the Greek tradition set by the side of the 
Hebraic, in the persons of Adam, Tubal-Cain, Noah, Dsedalus, 
Hercules and Antseus, together with the discovery of the use of 
the plough, of the taming of horses, and the beginnings of the 
arts and sciences. In Giotto, the lay spirit of philosophy 
could exist as well as that of theology and religion. — Taine. 

^ The fa9ade of the Duomo has only been completed within our own 
time. 

' The statues are by Donatello and Rosso, the medallions by Giotto, 
Andrea Pisano, and Luca della Robbia. 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 277 



The Baptistery 

Facing the Duomo is the Baptistery, which was formerly 
used as a church. It is a kind of octagonal temple with a 
cupola above it, undoubtedly built on the model of the Pan- 
theon at Rome. According to the evidence of a bishop of 
the eighth century, it uplifted its pompous imitation of the 
rounded imperial form in his time. Here we may mark — in 
the most barbarous period of the middle ages — a continuation, 
a renewal, or certainly an imitation of Roman architecture. 
As we go in, we perceive that the decoration is in nowise 
Gothic; there is a circle of Corinthian columns in costly 
marble, and above them a range of smaller ones with loftier 
arcades. In the vault is a legion of angels and saints gathered 
in four rows round a dim, ascetic and sorrowful Christ of large 
Bjrzantine form. In these three superimposed storeys we may 
read the successive deformations of ancient art ; but it remains 
a classical art, be it modified or distorted ; and it is of the 
utmost importance to remember that in Italy, the art never 
became Teutonised. — Tasne. 

The Baptistery Doors (Lorenzo Ghiberti) 

In 1400, when he was twenty-three years old, after the 
competition from which Brunelleschi retired in his favour, he 
secured the commission for the two doors. Under his hand 
pure Greek beauty reappeared; not only in the powerful 
imitation of the actual body as Donatello understands it, but 
with the appreciation of the ideal and perfected form. Twenty 
figures of women in his bas-reliefs seem master- works of the 
Athenian style as much for their nobility of line and head as 
for their simplicity of pose and calm of action. The forms 
are not too elongated as with the followers of Michael Angelo, 
nor too heavy like the Tkree Graces of Raphael. The £ve 
who has just come to life and leaning forward turns her eyes 
calmly to the Creator is a nymph of the earliest age, a virgin 
pure whose instincts are in the balance between sleeping and 
waking. A like dignity and a similar harmony control the 
groups and inspire the scenes ; the processions stretch out and 
wind as around a vase, while individuals or crowds meet or are 
linked t(^ether like an antique chorus. Symmetrical archi- 
tectural forms of the classic order are set about the colonnades 



278 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

ia whose porticoes are male and austere figures, the falling 
draperies, varied and yet carefully chosen attitudes, of the great 
drama in action. Here a young warrior looks like Alcibiades ; in 
front of him strides a Roman consul ; blooming young women 
of inexpressible youth and health are half turning, at gaze and 
with an arm upraised, one of them like Juno, the other like 
an Amazon, both caught in one of those rare moments when 
the nobility of bodily life reaches without any effort or any 
thought its fulhiess of achievement . . . The work that is 
most like that of the doors of the Baptistery is to be found in 
Raphael's School of Athens and the ioggie; and, to make the 
likeness greater, Ghiberti handles his bronze as if he were a 
painter, for in the number of figures, the interest of the scenes 
and spaciousness of the landscapes, the use of perspective and 
the varied relationship of the retreating planes and vanishing 
lines, these sculptures are almost pictorial^ — Taine. 

Santa Maria Novella* 

The front of the church is composed of black and white 
marble, which, in the course of the five centuries that it has 
been built, has turned brown and yellow. On the right hand, 
as you approach, is a long colonnade of arches, extending on 
a line with the fa9ade, and having a tomb beneath every arch. 
This colonnade forms one of the enclosing walls of a cloister. 
We found none of the front entrances open, but on our left, 

1 «I cannot omit," writes Lassels, "here to take notice of a little 
round pillar in the Piarza, near this baptistery, with the fi^re of a tree in 
iron nailed to it, and old words engraven upon it, importing, that in this 
very place stood anciently an elm tree, which being touched casually by 
the hearse of St. Zenobius, as they carried it here in procession, the tree 
presently budded forth with green leaves of sweet odour, though in the 
month of January. In memory of which miracle, this pillar was set up in 
the same place for a memorial.'* 

' It must not be forgotten that as a church Sta. Maria Novella is older 
than the Duomo. Longfellow refers to one of its historic associations in 
this note : ** At Florence I took lodgings in a house which fronts upon the 
Piazza Novella. In front of my parlour windows was the venerable 
Gothic church of Santa Maria Novella, in whose gloomy aisles Boccaccio 
has placed the opening scenes of his Deeamerone, There, when the 
plague was raging in the city, one Tuesday morning, after mass, the 
' seven ladies, young and fair,' held council together, and resolved to leave 
the infected city, and flee to their rural villas in the environs, where they 
might ' hear the birds sing, and see the green hills, and the plains, and the 
fields covered with grain and undulating like the sea, and trees of species 
manifold.'" 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 279 

in a wall at right angles with the church, there was an open 
gateway, approaching which, we saw, within the four-sided 
colonnade^ an enclosed green space of a cloister. This is 
what is called the Chzostro verde^ so named from the prevailing 
colour of the frescoes with which the walls beneath the arches 
are adorned. . . . Entering the transept, our guide shewed us 
the Chapel of the Strozzi family, which is accessible by a 
flight of steps from the floor of the church. The walls of this 
chapel are covered with frescoes by Orcagna. . . . We next 
passed into the choir, which occupies the extreme end of the 
church behind the great square mass of the high altar, and is 
surrounded with a double row of ancient oaken seats of 
venerable shape and carving. The choir is illuminated by a 
threefold Gothic window, full of richly-painted glass, worth all 
the frescoes that ever stained a wall or ceiling ; but these walls, 
nevertheless, are adorned with frescoes by Ghirlandajo, and it 
is easy to see must once have made a magnificent appearance. 
— Hawthorne, 

Orcagna has covered the entire wall of one of the chapels 
with his vast fresco ; the arrangement of the place of damna- 
tion is planned out with the most exact detail and scrupulously 
in accordance with the Divine Comedy^ as though it were an 
article of faith and not a poetic fiction. It is very difierent to 
the Hell of the Campo Santo at Pisa ; here we find as much 
of the topography of the infernal regions as the space available 
made possible. The painter, for instance, had no room in his 
field for the Hypocrites, but the title is written at the end of 
the painting, and proves that the painter meant to have inserted 
them had he had space. Apart from this, nothing is con- 
cealed or glossed over in the crude or even disgusting details 
of certain punishments. The quarrel of Master Adam, the 
coiner who is dropsical and yet panting with thirst, is drawn 
to the life, as if it were a duel of boxers. The Flatterers are 
plunged in the particular filth by which Dante wished to 
express all his disgust for souls infected by the vice which is 
the plague of courts. 

What is stranger still here is that in one chapel the painter 
has not hesitated to reproduce the curious alliance of Christian 
dogma with pagan fable which the poet attempted in obedience 
to the spirit of the age, and which is even more astounding to 
the view than in the reading. Thus on the walls of Santa 
Maria Novella we see the Violent being pursued by Centaurs 
who pierce them with arrows as in the Divine Comedy, On 



28o THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

mournful branches from which they utter mournful cries are 
perched Harpies, which as a pagan recollection would be 
more in harmony with the jEneid than with the Christian 
fable. There are finally Furies to be seen standing over the 
abyss on their flaming tower. 

Opposite to the Hell, Orcagna has given us the glory of 
Paradise ; but Dante's celestial circles do not lend themselves 
to painting so well as do the bolge of hell. Orcagna has 
not been able to follow the poet's imaginings so faithfully; 
nevertheless, the glorification of the Madonna which domi- 
nates this and other pictures of the middle ages is also the 
crown of the great epic of Dante. — Ampere. 

Ghirlandajo, Michael Angelo's master, has covered the 
walls of the choir with frescoes, which can be best seen about 
mid-day, badly lit as they are, and cumbrously piled on the 
top of each other. The figures are half life-size and deal with 
the history of Saint John the Baptist and the Virgin. Like his 
contemporaries the painter is a copyist by education as well 
as instinct ; he used to draw the people passing in front of 
his jeweller's shop, and the likeness of his figures was much 
admired. For him " the secret of painting lay in drawing." 
For the artists of the period, man is still but a form; but 
Ghirlandajo had so just an idea of that and every other form 
that when he copied the triumphal arches and amphitheatres 
of Rome, he could draw them as accurately from sight as if 
he had used a compass. Thus schooled, he could, we can 
well understand, put the most speaking likenesses in his 
frescoes : here there are some twenty-one, representing men 
whom we know by name : Christopher Landini, Ficino, 
Politian, the bishop of Arezzo, and others of women such as 
Ginevra de' Bend — all belonging to the families which were 
the patrons of the chapel. The figures incline to the common- 
place, some with hard faces and sharp noses come too near 
to realism ; the grand manner is lacking and the painter goes 
on the solid ground, or flies just a little above it ; he by no 
means has the broad flight of Masaccio. Nevertheless he 
builds up his groups and his architecture, arranges his 
characters in round sanctuaries, dresses them in his 
half-Florentine, half-Greek garb, which mingles or con- 
trasts in happy oppositions, and graceful harmony of the 
antique and modem. Above all, Ghirlandajo is simple and 
sincere. . . . 

We could spend hours looking at the feminine figures: 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 281 

the civic flowers of the fifteenth century are here as they lived 
Each has her characteristic expression, and the charming 
irregularity of real life — all of them have the intelligent and 
lively faces of Florentines, half-modern, half-feudal. In the 
Nativity of the Virgin the young girl in a silk skirt who has 
come to call is a serious and innocent young lady of good 
birth; in the Nativity of St. /ohHy a lady standing near is a 
mediaeval duchess : near him is a servant bearing fruit, dressed 
in statuesque drapery and with so much of the joyful impulse 
and health of an ancient nymph that the two ages and two 
beauties meet and unite in the innocence of the same purity. 
The freshest smiles are on their lips. . . . The curiosity and the 
refinement of a later age have not touched them . . . thought 
in them slumbers . . . and education, with all its feverish 
culture, will fail beside the angelic quaintness of their gravity. 
— Taine. 

The admirable frescoes of this [the Spanish] chapel were 
painted by Taddeo Gaddi and Simone Memmi; they set before 
us a mingling of history and allegory, in the encyclopaedic and 
symbolical method which was Dante's as much as that of many 
mediaeval works conceived in the same spirit but without the 
same genius. Simone Memmi has painted the civil and 
ecclesiastic society of his time ; all the social conditions are 
brought together in this picture, which is an enormous review 
of life. Pope and Emperor are figured in the centre, on the 
scheme of Dante; portraits of contemporary celebrities are 
not lacking, although some of the personages are pure 
allegories, or give an image which is an allegory as well as a 
portrait. In Memmi's painting, Laura represents the Will, 
just as in Dante's work Beatrice stands for Contemplation. 

It may be said that Dante habitually chooses some historical 
personage to typify a quality, a vice, or science, and will employ 
this means just as frequently as that of allegory to realise an 
abstraction. In the same way, in Taddeo Gaddi's fresco, 
fourteen Sciences and Arts are rendered as women, while 
beneath these are placed the typical personages who are the 
historical prototypes of each science. The first is the Civil 
Law with Justinian; the Canonic Law comes next. This 
order agrees with Dante's ideas on politics. ... In these 
pictures we continually find conceptions resembling those of 
Dante or inspired by him.* — Amphre, 

^ Santa Maria Novella also contains the Racellai Chapel, with the 
celebrated Cimabue " Madonna " of which Vasari wrote : " This picture 



282 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



Or San Michelb 

Going from the Piazza towards the Duomo, we were pre- 
sently stopped by the church of St Michael, a square flat church, 
whose outside is adorned with rare statues, if not of gold, yet 
worth their weight in gold. The best are, that of S. Matthew 
in brass made by Laurentius Cion; that of S. Thomas in 
brass touching the side of our Saviour, with great demonstra- 
tions of diffidence in his looks, is of Andrea Verrochio's hand. 
That of S. George^ in marble is compared to the best in 
Rome, and hath been praised both in prose and verse. — 
Lassels. 

We went into the church of San Michele, and saw in its 

is of larger size than any 6gure that had been painted down to those 
times; and the angels surrounding it, make it evident that, although 
Cimabue still retained the Greek manner, he was nevertheless gradually 
approaching the mode of outline and general method of modem times. 
Thus it happened that thb work was an object of so much admiration to 
the people of that day — they having then never seen anything better — 
that it was carried in solemn procession, with the sound of trumpets and 
other festal demonstrations, from the house of Cimabue to the church, he 
himself being highly rewarded and honoured for it. It is further reported, 
and may be read in certain records of old painters, that, whilst Cimabue 
was painting this picture, in a garden near the gate of San Pietro, King 
Charles the £lder, of Anjou, ps^sed through Florence, and the authorities 
of the dty, among other marks of respect, conducted him to see the 
picture of Cimabue. When this work was thus shewn to the king, it bad 
not before been seen by any one ; wherefore all the men and women of 
Florence hastened in great crowds to admire it, making all possible 
demonstrations of delight. The inhabitants of the neighbourhood, re- 
joicing in this occurrence, ever afterwards called that place Boreo 
AUegri." ^ ^ 

^ Now in the Museo Nazionale. Vasari's account of this great work 
representing our national patron saint is as follows: "For the Guild of 
Armourers, Donatello executed a most animated figure of St George, in 
his armour. The brightness of youthful beauty, generosity, and bravery 
shine forth in his fieure ; his attitude gives evidence of a proud and terrible 
impetuosity ; the character of the saint is indeed exprei»ed most wonder- 
fully, and life seems to move within that stone. It is certain that in no 
modern figure has there yet been seen so much animation, nor so life-like 
a spirit in marble, as nature and art have combined to produce by the hand 
of JDonato in this statue. On the pedestal which supports the tabernacle 
enclosing the figure, the story of St. George killing the dragon is executed 
in basso-rilievo, and also in marble : in this work there is a horse, which 
has been highly celebrated and much admired : in the pediment is a half- 
length figure of God the Father, also in basso-riUevo." Why does not 
some patron of the arts provide a replica of the statue to be put in some 
public place in London ? 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 283 

architecture the traces of its tiansfonnation from a market into 
a church. In its pristine state it consisted of a double row of 
three great open arches, with the wind blowing through them, 
and the sunshine falling aslantwise into them, while the bustle 
of the market, the sale of fish, flesh or fruit went on within, or 
brimmed over into the streets that enclosed them on every 
side. But, four or five hundred years ago, the broad arches 
were built up with stone- work ; windows were pierced through 
and filled with painted glass ; a high altar,^ in a rich style of 
pointed Gothic, was raised ; shrines and confessionals were sc^t 
up ; and here it is, a solemn and antique church, where a man 
may buy his salvation instead of his dinner. . . . 

It appears that a picture of the Virgin used to hang against 
one of the pillars of the market-place, while it was still a 
market, and in the year 1292, several miracles were wrought by 
it, insomuch that a chapel was consecrated for it. So many 
worshippers came to the shrine that the business of the market 
was impeded, and ultimately the Virgin and St. Michel won 
the whole space for themselves. The upper part of the edifice 
was at that time a granary, and is still used for other than 
religious purposes. This church was one spot to which the 
inhabitants betook themselves much for refuge and divine 
assistance during the great plague described by Boccaccio. — 

San Lorenzo 

This forenoon we have been to the church of St. Lorenzo, 
which stands on the site of an ancient basilica, and was itself 
built more than four centuries ago. The fa9ade is still an 
ugly height of rough brick-work. . . . The interior had a nave 
with a flat roof, divided from the side aisles by Corinthian 
pillars, and, at the farther end, a raised space around the high 

^ This work of art is known as the finest Gothic Italy has produced 
on a small scale. There has been a confusion between Andrea Orcagna 
the sculptor of this altar and Bend di Cione, the builder of this church. 
(See Leader Scott, Cathedral Builders^ p. 332.) Possiblv the two were 
lather and son ; but certainly Andrea signed the shrine as ''^Archmagister." 
This proves that he belonged to the Comadne Guild. The best descrip- 
tion of the shrine is that |;iven by Lord Lindsay. He observes that 
architecturally ** the design u exquisite, unrivalled in grace and propor- 
tion,— it is a miracle of loveliness, and though dustered all over with 
pillars and pinnades, inlaid with the richest marbles, lapis-Iazuli, and 
mosaic-work, it is chaste in its luxuriance as an arctic iceberg— worthy of 
her who was spotless among women." 



284 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

altar. The pavement is a mosaic of squares of black and 
white marble, the squares meeting one another comerwise; 
the pillars, pilasters, and other architectural materials are 
dark brown or greyish stone ; and the general effect is very 
sombre. . . . 

On the left of the choir is what is called the old sacristy, 
with the peculiarities or notabilities of which I am not 
acquainted. On the right hand is the new sacrist^, other- 
wise called the Capella dei Depositd, or Chapel of the Buried, 
built by Michel Angelo, to contain two monuments of the 
Medici family. The interior is of somewhat severe and classic 
architecture, the walls and pilasters being of dark stone, and 
surmounted by a dome, beneath which is a row of windows, 
quite round the building, throwing their light down far be- 
neath upon niches of white marble. These niches are ranged 
entirely around the chapel, and might have sufficed to contain 
more than all the Medici monuments that the world would 
ever care to have. Only two of these niches are filled, how- 
ever. In one of them sits Giuliano di Medici, sculptured by 
Michel Angelo, a figure of dignity, which would perhaps be 
very striking in any other presence than that of the statue 
which occupies the corresponding niche. At the feet of 
Giuliano recline two allegorical statues, Day and Night, whose 
meaning there I do not know, and perhaps Michel Angelo 
knew as little. As the great sculptor's statues are apt to do, 
they fling their limbs abroad with adventurous freedom. 
Below the corresponding niche, on the opposite side of the 
chapel, recline two similar statues, representing Morning and 
Evening. . . . 

. . . The statue that sits above these two latter allegories, 
Morning and Evening, is like no other that ever came from 
a sculptor's hand. It is the one work worthy of Michel 
Angelo's reputation, and grand enough to vindicate for him all 
the genius that the world gave him credit for. And yet it 
seems a simple thing enough to think of or to execute ; merely 
a sitting figure, the face partly overshadowed by a helmet, one 
hand supporting the chin, the other resting on the thigh. But 
after looking at' it a little while, the spectator ceases to think 
of it as a marble statue ; it comes to life, and you see that the 
princely figure is brooding over some great design, which, 
when he has arranged in his own mind, the world will be fisiin 
to execute for him. No such grandeur and majesty have else- 
where been put into human shape. It is all a miracle; the 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 285 

deep repose, and the deep life within it. It is as much a 
miracle to have achieved this as to make a statue that would 
rise up and walk. The face, when one gazes earnestly into it, 
beneath the shadow of its helmet, is seen to be calmly sombre ; 
a mood which, I think, is generally that of the rulers of man< 
kind, except in moments of vivid action.^ — Hawthorne, 

# Santa Crocb 

Santa Croce is a church of the thirteenth century modern- 
ized in the sixteenth, half-Gothic and half-classic, at first 
simple and afterwards decorated, whose discrepancies do not 
allow it to be considered beautiful It has been filled with 
tombs : Galileo, Dante, Michael Angelo, Filicaja,* Battista 
Alberti, Machiavelli, almost all the great Italians, have monu- 
ments here, most of which are modem, aggressive and lacking 
in tenderness. The monument of Alfieri by Canova shews 
the manner of First Empire sculpture, much akin to that of 
David and Girodet. The only one that clings to the memory 
is that of the Countess Zamoiska, with its pale, mild and 
emaciated face : it is a portrait and the sculptor has had the 
courage to be simple and sincere. It is nowise allegorical : 
truth alone gives the sense of pity. Life had scarcely 
departed, and we see the dead in the cap and pleated white 
dress of an invalid on a little bed ; a sheet is over the limbs, 
shewing the shape of the feet. The dead woman sleeps in 
peace, at rest after the last struggle.' — Taine, 

In this church there have recently been discovered — under 
the coat of whitewash — some small frescoes, possibly by 

^ The interest of the New Sacristy has blinded travellers to the value 
of the Old Sacristy with its decorations by Donatello. These were prob- 
ably executed by the sculptor before his visit to Padua to undertake his 
equestrian statue of Guattamelata, though Vasari states the opposite. 
Taine writes enthusiastically : " The two pulpits ... by Donatello ; the 
bronze bas-reliefs covering the marble ; the numerous lifelike figures of 
impassioned youth, and particularly the frieze of naked cherubs playing 
and leaping along the cornice; the charming balcony above the organ 
wrought so delicately as to look like ivory, with its niches^ shell-patterns, 
columns, animals and foliage — how graceful, how tasteful it all is.^' 

^ The author of the famous sonnet, banning : 

" Italia, Italia, o tu, cui feo la sorte 
Dono infelice di belleza." 

• Donatello's Annunciation is to be noted in 55anta Croce. "It is of 
special interest," writes Hope Rea, "it is, as it were a parenthesis in the 
long career of the master, and is in its general career unique. It is his only 
work of any magnitude in which a woman's form has a principal position." 



a86 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

Giotto, with the history of St. John the Baptist, St John the 
Evangelist, and St Francis. But are they by Giotto, and 
have they been faithfully restored? At least they belong to 
the fourteenth century and are curious. Variety is not lacking 
in them ; the numerous figures are seen kneeling, lying, stand- 
ing up, sitting, crouching, moving, in every attitude possible. 
The innocent devotion of the middle ages is well marked, and 
the expression of emotion is life-like. Around St.*FranciSy 
who has just died, the monks stand with cross and banner; a 
brother near the head holds the book of Hours; some, to 
sanctify themselves, touch the stigmata of feet and bands; 
another in monkish zeal pushes his hand into the wound in 
the body. The last figure, which is the most touching, speaks 
to St Francis, hands crossed and drawn face. It is an actual 
scene in a feudal monastery.^ — Taine. 

Church of the Carmine* 
(Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel) 

. . . We still go to the Brancacci chapel to study the 
isolated innovator whose precocious lead found no followers. 
. . . There is a picture by him in the Uffizi of an old man 
in a cap and grey garment, with a wrinkled forehead and a 
cynical expression ; here Masaccio copies as a realist, but in 
the grand manner. It is with this theory, or rather this rough 
idea, about him that we go to the chapel which he has adorned 
with his paintings, although these in the chapel are not all 
by him. MansoUna has begun some of them, Filippino has 
completed others ; but the portions painted by Masaccio can 
be distinguished without any trouble, and whether the three 
painters were unconsciously in agreement, or whether one of 

^ The sacristy of Santa Croce communicates with the Medici chapel, 
of which Hawthorne wrote : " The walls are encrusted, from pavement to 
dome, with marbles of inestimable cost, and it is a Florentine mosaic on a 
grander scale than was ever executed elsewhere, the result is not gaudy, 
as in many of the Roman chapels, but a dark and melancholy richness." 
Mr. G. S. Hillard, however, comments : *'The designer of the Medicean 
chapel reasoned, that if a Florentine mosaic of a few inches square be, as 
it unquestionably is, a beautiful thing, one of many square feet will be just 
as much more beautiful as it is bigger, and therefore he made the whole 
side of the room a mosaic But therein he forgot the essential distinction 
between the jeweller and the architect. He lost the legitimate triumphs 
of the former, without gaining those of the latter." 

' The entire church, excepting this famous chapel, was burnt down in 
177 1, and then rebuilt. It is described in its former state by the Abb^ 
Richard. 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 287 

them followed the cartoons of the other, the work even in its 
successive stages does but mark different advances of one 
mind. 

What strikes us first of all, is that all the work is realistic, 
that is, illustrative of the living individual as our eyes see him. 
The young man who has been baptized and whom Masaccio 
shews coming naked and shivering out of the water with crossed 
arms, is a bather of the day who has had a dip in the Amo in 
cold weather. In the same way his Adam and Eve expelled 
from Paradise are Florentines without clothes, the man, with 
narrow hips and the broad shoulders of a blacksmith, the 
woman with a short neck and clumsy form, and both with 
uncouth legs : both are artisans or tradespeople who do not 
lead the undraped life of the Greeks, and whose bodies have 
not been modelled or beautified by exercise. Thus again for the 
chUd brought to life in Lippi's design, as it kneels before 
the apostles it has the emaciation and frail limbs of a modem 
child. In fine, nearly all the heads are portraits : two monks 
in cowls on the left of St Peter, are monks walking out of the 
monastery. We know the names of the contemporaries who 
lent their heads for portraiture. They were Angiolino 
Angioli, Granacci, Soderini, Pulci, Pollaiola, Botticcelli, and 
Lippi himself. This art took its being from the surrounding 
life as surely as the plaster laid on a face takes the modelling 
and the relief of the form it has rested on. 

How is it then that these creations have more than ordinary 
life ? In what way has the exact imitation of the truth escaped 
servility ? How has Masaccio made noble personages out of 
ordinary persons ? The fact is that out of the multitude of 
truths to be observed, he has chosen the more important and 
subordinated the rest to them. ... St. Peter healing the sick 
over whom his shadow passes has the royal strength of a 
Roman who is accustomed to lead men; Christ paying the 
tribute-money has the noble calm of a conception by Raphael ; 
and nothing can be grander than the handsome arrangement 
of forty figures in the simplest draperies, all severely serious 
and in different attitudes, standing round the naked child 
upraised by St. Paul ; behind them is a richly decorated wall, 
and on each side a mass of houses ; by the silent gathering are 
two groups, one of the passers-by, the other of worshippers, 
which balance each other and by the harmony of their colour 
add a full richness to this magnificent composition. — Taine. 



288 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



The Annunziata ^ 

We went to the church of the Annunziata, which stands in 
the piazza of the same name. . . . The church occupies one side 
of the piazza, and in front of it, as likewise on the two adjoining 
sides of the square, there are pillared arcades, constructed by 
Brunelleschi or his scholars. After passing through these 
arches, and still before entering the church itself, you come to 
an ancient cloister, which is now quite enclosed in glass as a 
means of preserving some frescoes of Andrea del Sarto and 
others, which are considered valuable. Passing the threshold 
of the church, we were quite dazzled by the splendour that 
shone upon us from the ceiling of the nave, the great parallelo- 
grams of which, viewed from one end, look as if richly 
embossed all over with gold. The whole interior, indeed, has 
an effect of brightness and magnificence, the walls being 
covered mostly with light-coloured marble, into which are 
inlaid compartments of rarer and richer marbles. The pillars 
and pilasters, too, are of vari^ated marbles, with Corinthian 
capitals, that shine just as brightly as if they were of solid 
gold, so faithfully have they been gilded and burnished. The 
pavement is formed of squares of black and white marble. 
There are no side aisles, but ranges of chapels, with communi- 
cation from one to another, stand round the whole extent of 
the nave and choir ; all of marble, all decorated with pictures, 
statues, busts and mural monuments ; all worth, separately, a 
day's inspection . The high altar is of great beauty and richness, 
. . . and also the tomb of John of Bologna in a chapel at the 
remotest extremity of the church. In this chapel there are 
some bas-reliefs by him, and also a large crucifix, with a 
marble Christ upon it. . . The church was founded by seven 
gentlemen of Florence, who formed themselves into a religious 
order called " Servants of Mary." . . . When we had gone 

> Evelyn describes the Annunziata in the extract already given. Lassels 
wrote : *' In the cloister over the door that goes into the church is seen a 
rare picture in fresco, of the hand of Andrea del Sarto. It represents our 
Blessed Lady with our Saviour upon her knee, and S. Joseph in a cumbent 
posture leaning upon a sack full-stuffed, and reading in a book. The 
picture of the Blessed Virgin is admirable for sweetness and majesty." 
Taine wrote of Andrea del Sarto, that, like Fra Bartolomeo, he had 
'* reached the summits of art by elevation of type, beauty of composition, 
simplicity of process, harmony of draperies and tranquillity of ex- 
pression.' 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 289 

entirely round the church, we came at last to the chapel of 
the Annunziata, which stands on the floor of the nave, on the 
left hand as we enter. It is a very beautiful piece of archi- 
tecture — a sort of canopy of marble, supported upon pillars ; 
and its magnificence within, in marble and silver, and all 
manner of holy decoration, is quite indescribable. ... In the 
inner part of this chapel is preserved a miraculous picture of 
the Santissima Annunziata. — Hawthorne. 

The Badia* 

We went ... to the church of the Badia, which is built 
in the form of a Greek cross, with a flat roof embossed and 
once splendid with now tarnished gold. The pavement is of 
brick, and the walls of dark stone, similar to that of the 
interior of the cathedral [pietra serena], and there being 
according to Florentine custom, but little light, the effect was 
sombre, though the cool gloomy dusk was refreshing after the 
hot turmoil and dazzle of the adjacent street. ... In the 
chapel of the Bianco family we saw . . . what is considered 
the finest oil-painting of Fra Filippo Lippi.* — Hawthorne, 

San Marco 

Thb Church. — The interior is not less than three or foiu- 
hondred years old, and is in the classic style, with a flat ceil- 
ing, gilded, and a lofty arch, supported by pillars, between the 
nave and choir. There are no side aisles, but ranges of 
shrines on both sides of the nave, each beneath its own pair 
of pillars and pediments. The pavement is of brick, with here 
and there a marble tombstone inlaid. It is not a magnificent 
church; but looks dingy with time and apparent neglect, 
though rendered sufiiciently interesting by statues of mediaeval 
date by John of Bologna and other old sculptors, and by 

* X^ossels calls it "the Abbodia, an abbey c^ Benedictine monks. In 
the church is the tomb of the founder of this abbey, a German nobleman, 
called Conte Hugo, who commanded Tuscany under the Emperor Otho 
the Third." 

* "Fra Filipix) lippi," writes Taine, '*a curious, exact imitator of 
actual life ; carrying his works to so high a finish, that an ereryda]^ painter 
might work day and night for five years without being able to imitate one 
of his paintings ; choosing for his figures squat and rounded heads, burly 
figures, painting Tirgins who are sweet, good girls far removed from any 
sublimity and angels who are like chubby, fat schoolboys." 

T 



a9o THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

monumental busts and bas-reliefs : also, there is a wooden 
crucifix by Giotto, with ancient gilding on it ; and a painting 
of Christ, which was considered a wonderful work in its day. 
— Hawthorne. 

The Cloister. — ^The custode proposed to shew us some 
frescoes of Fra Angelico, and conducted us into a large 
cloister, under the arches of which, and beneath a covering of 
glass he pointed to a picture of St. Dominic kneeling at the 
Cross. There are two or three others by the angelic friar in 
different parts of the cloister, and a regular series, filling up all 
the arches, by various artists. Its four-side, cloistered walk, 
surrounds a square, open to the sky as usuaVand paved with 
grey stones that have no inscriptions, but probably are laid 
over graves. Its walls, however, are incrusted, and the walk 
itself is paved with monumental inscriptions on marble, none 
of which, so far as I observed, were of ancient date. Either 
the fashion of commemorating the dead is not ancient in 
Florence, or the old tombstones have been removed to make 
room for new ones. — Hawthorne, 

The Monastery. — ^The monastery is still almost un- 
touched; two square courts in it shew their files of small 
columns with arches supporting the old narrow tiled roof. In 
one of the rooms is a kind of memorial or genealogical tree, 
with the names of the principal monks who died in the odour 
of sanctity; among these is Savonarola, and mention is made 
of his having died through false accusation. Two of the cells 
he occupied are still shewn. 

Fra Angelico came to the convent before Savonarola, and 
his frescoes adorn the chapter-house, the corridors and the 
grey walls of the cells. He had lived aloof from the world, 
and amid new perturbations and doubts still lived the pure 
life absorbed in God inculcated by the Fhreiti. . . . His art 
is as primitive as his life ; he had begun it with missal-work, 
which he really continued on these walls, for gold, vermilion, 
the brightest scarlets and most brilliant greens, — aU the medi- 
aeval art of the illuminator shines in his work as though it 
were an old parchment. . . . Around him all action is medita- 
tive, and every object gentle in hue. Day after day the unvary- 
ing hours bring before him the same dark lustre of the walls, 
the same severe folds of cowl and frock, the same rustling 
steps going to and fro between the chapel and the refectory. 
Delicate, indecisive sensations vaguely arise in this monotony, 
while tender dreams are like the perfume of a rose sheltered 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 291 

from the bitter winds and blooming far from the great highway 
noisy with the tread of men. The magnificence of eternity 
becomes yisible, and the effort of the painter is centred on its 
expression. Glittering stairways of jasper and amethyst rise 
above each other up to the throne, where sit the beings celes- 
tial. Golden haloes shine round their brows ; their rad, azure 
and emerald robes, fringed, bordered and striped with gold, 
flash like glories. Thread of gold runs over the baldaquins, 
accumulates in embroidery on the copes, shines star-like on 
the timics and glitters from the tiaras, while topaz, ruby and 
diamond sparkle in flaming constellation on jewelled diadems. 
Everything is bright: it is like an outburst of mystical illumina- 
tion. Throughout this prodigal wealth of gold and blue one 
colour prevails, that of sunlight, of heaven. . . . 

The spiritual here has mastery; ponderable matter be- 
comes transfigured; it has lost its mass, its substance is 
etherialised, and nothing remains but a vapour floating in an 
azure splendour. In one instance the blessed ones go towards 
paradise over luxuriant meadows strewn with flowers white 
and red underneath beautiful trees in bloom. ^ They are led 
by angels, and in saintly brotherhood form a circle, hand in 
hand, llie burden of the flesh no longer weighs them down, 
and light radiates from their heads as they glide through the 
air up to the flaming gate from which bursts a golden illumina- 
tion, while above Christ, within a triple row of angels bowing 
before him like flowers, smiles upon the blessed from beneath 
his halo. . . . Although beautiful and ideal, Angelico's Christ, 
even in celestial triumph, is pale, thoughtful and somewhat 
emaciated. He is the eternal friend, the almost melancholy 
consoler of the Imitation^ the poetic Lord of Mercy as the 
grieving heart imagines Him : He is in no way the over-healthy 
figure of the Renaissance painters. His long curling tresses 
and blonde beard mildly surround His features; sometimes 
He smiles faintly, while His gravity is always associated with 
gentle benignity. . . . Near Him the Virgin^ kneeling with 
downcast eyes, seems to be a young maiden who has just com- 
municated. . . . The painter . . . cannot find colours pure 
enough or ornaments precious enough for his saints. He 
forgets that his figures are but painted : he bestows on them 

^ This passage harmonises best with the Paradise now in the Accademia. 
It is well known by the circle of angels and monks dancing. Fra Angelico 
had not the heart to paint the Inferno forming part of it, and that is by a 
different hand. 



392 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

the fond devotion of a believer, ft worshipper. He embroiders 
their robes as if they were real, covering their mantles with 
filigree as fine as the best goldsmith's work. He paints on 
their copes small but perfect pictures ; he delights in delicately 
drawing their comely fair hair, or arranging their curls, and 
severely marking the circular tonsure of the monk. He lifts 
them into heaven for love and service ; and his art is the last 
blossom of the age of mysticism. — Taine, 

Minor Churches 

The travellers have not taken the pains to review all the 
churches. There is the San Salvador (also called Ognisanti) 
with the Zasf Supper of Ghirlandajo in the monks' refectory 
— ^this work is not to be confused with the same painter's 
treatment of the subject in the refectory of San Marco. The 
church of S. Ambrogio contains the famous Cosimo Roselli. 
In the convent of S. Onofrio is the Last Supper^ now 
admitted to be by Rafifaelle, and yet another rendering of this 
theme is Andrea del Sarto's in the monastery of S. S^vi near 
the Porta S. Croce. Mrs. Jameson has contrasted these 
various CenacoH in her Sacred and Legendary Art, San 
Spirito contains the monuments of the Capponi family. The 
monastery cloister adjoining Sta. Maddalena de' Pazzi has a 
large Crucifixion by Perugina — Ed, 

The Palacbs 

The palaces may be divided into those of republican date, 
and the modem. The former had originally towers, like the 
Pisan, which were introduced towards the close of the tenth 
centuiy, as a private defence in the free cities of Italy. To 
these succeeded a new construction, more massive, if possible, 
and more ostentatiously severe than the Etruscan itself: a 
construction which fortified the whole basement of the palace 
with large, rude, rugged bossages, and thus gave always an 
imposing aspect, and sometimes a necessary defence, to the 
nobility of a town forever subject to insurrection. Sudi are 
the palaces of the Medici, the Strozzi, the Pitti. This harsh 
and exaggerated strength prevails only below. The upper 

^ "An early work," wrote Hillard, ** painted before the great master 
had entirely thrown off the stifihess and harshness of the school in which 
he had been trained." 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 293 

storeys are fiiced with Termiculated rustics or free-stone, and 
the whole is crowned with an overpowering cornice which 
projects beyond all authority, for here are no columns to 
regulate its proportions, and its very excess difiiises below a 
certain grandeur distinct from the character of any regulated 
style. — Forsyth, 

Casa Medici (Palazzo Riccardi) 

The Casa Medici is indescribably imposing. It is built of 
hewn stone : its first story is of the Tuscan, its second of the 
Doric, and its third of the Corinthian order. Its ample 
portals open into a spacious court, whose portico, with a 
sculptured frieze by Donatello, is enriched with ancient in- 
scriptions and basso-relievos. Changed as its interior now 
is by its recent master, many of its numerous rooms and 
corridors remain as they existed in the time of the early 
Medici; and the little family chapel is precisely in the same 
state in which it might have been left by old Cosimo and his 
domestic dame, Mona Contessina. The fine old carved oaken 
seats, on which the heads of the fiimily were raised above the 
benches appropriated to the use of the servants, are perfectly 
preserved. The walls are covered with curious old frescoes,^ 
very irrelevant to the place; and the dim religious light, 
admitted through one high casement over the altar, leaves this 
little oratory in such gloomy obscurity, that to see the frescoes 
in mid-day we were obliged to have a lighted flambeau. 

This mansion was built by Cosimo di Medici, the merchant, 
the "Padre della Patria," who, after the death of his son 
Giovanni, foreseeing the approaching dissolution of his sole 
surviving son Pietro (the father of Lorenzo the Magnificent 
and Lorenzo the Tenth) had himself carried through this vast 
palace, exclaiming mournfully as he surveyed it : ** Questa e 
troppo casa a si poco famiglia."^ Pietro (during the short 

^ Of the chapel with its frescoes by Benozzo Goszoli, Mr. W. D. Howells 
writes in TUscan Cities : ** Perhaps the most simply and satisfyingly lovely 
little space that ever four walls enclosed. The sacred histories cover every 
inch Of it with form and color. . . . Serried ranks of seraphs, pea-cock 
plumed, and kneeling in prayer; garlands of roses everywhere; con- 
temporary Florentines on horseback, riding in the train of the Three Magi 
Kings under the low boughs of trees; and birds fluttering throo^ the 
dim, mellow atmosphere, the whole set dense and close in an opulent yet 
delicate fandlulness of design — ^that is what I recaU." 

' ** This is too lazge a house for so small a fiunily." 



294 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

time he survived his father), Lorenzo the Magnificent, and all 
the heads of the Medici family, continued to reside as private 
citizens in this patrimonial mansion, even in the days of their 
greatest power; until Cosimo the First, when made Grand 
Duke, removed to the Palazzo Vecchio. 

The Casa Medici was purchased by the family Riccardi 
from the Grand Duke Ferdinand the Second, in 1659, for the 
sum of forty-one thousand scudi. It was then enlarged, 
changed, and refitted, till its ancient simplicity was destroyed ; 
and the immense sums expended on this occasion contributed 
to the ruin of a fortune as noble, as the house of Riccardi is 
ancient and respectable. — lAidy Morgan. 

CiiSA Strozzi 

The Casa Strozzi, of the same age as the old palace of the 
Medici and the Pitti, is still more picturesque than either of 
these domestic fortresses ; and the fine workmanship of many 
of its details, and the Corinthian el^ance of its cortile, are 
contrasted with the massive strength of its facade, composed 
of what the Italians call "bozze di pietra forte." But the 
great interest attached to this noble and ancient palace is, 
that it was raised and inhabited by Filippo Strozzi, the CcUo 
of his age, and by his strong-minded and ambitious wife, the 
famous Clarice de' Medici. When the rank, the wealth, the 
high consideration in which this illustrious citizen was held, 
induced the people to give him the title oiMessire^ he observed : 
'* My name is Filippo Strozzi ; I am a Florentine merchant 
and no more : who gives me a title, insults me." Yet at that 
moment he held the Popes and Cardinals of the house of 
Medici at bay. The Casa Strozzi is at present the property 
of Duke Strozzi. ... In one of the apartments are held the 
sittings of the famed Della-Crusca.^ — Lady Morgan, 

The Rucellai Gardens and Palace 

While the Strozzi, the Pitti, and Medici were occupied in 
raising those palaces, long destined to command the admira- 
tion and wonder of posterity, Bernardo Rucellai, a young 
Florentine merchant (so wealthy, that on his marriage with 
Nannina di Medici, sister to Lorenzo the Magnificent, thirty 

^ The Misses Horner in their Walks in Florenct state that the Aca- 
demy of La Crusca now sits in the library of San Marco. 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 295 

thousand florins were expended on the wedding-feast,) built a 
palace, and planted and adorned gardens, which became the 
site of the Platonic Academy, of which he was the soul. 
Officiating alternately as gonfaliere and ambassador to Naples, 
he had still time to cultivate letters ; and the hours not given 
to diplomacy and commerce, were deliciousht^pent in these 
gardens. . . . Under the sons of Bemardp^. . the state of 
the country induced discussions of a mdre important nature. 
Machiavel here read aloud to the listing and ardent youth 
of Florence, his Discourses on TMs Zhnus; and Buondel- 
monti recited his opinions on the/necessary reformation of the 
government of Florence, whicli the cunning Leo the Tenth 
then affected to approve. J^re, also, Savonarola influenced 
his auditors with his fanafeic eloquence in the cause of liberty 
and religion ; MichaeLAngelo described his plans of national 
defence ; and the Ca|^ni and the Strozzi staked their lives 
and fortunes in their country's cause. It was in coming forth 
from these gardens that Agostino Capponi and Pietro Boscoli, 
two patriot youths, dropped that list of the conspirators against 
the Medici, which brought them to the scaflbld, and Machiavel 
to the wheel. . . . 

Exile, torture and death soon dispersed the free spirits 
which formed the literary and patriotic circles of the Orti 
Rucellai ; and when Leo the Tenth visited Florence, on the 
same spot where the most fearful conspiracy had been formed 
that ever was attempted against his family, the tragedy of 
Rosamunda was acted for his amusement. — Lculy Morgan, 

Casa Capponi 

The palace of the present Marchese Capponi is not that 
inhabited by his ancestors : it was built after the designs of 
Carlo Fontana, and is one of the most magnificent modern 
palaces in Florence. A spacious portico opens in gardens laid 
out with great taste and elegance : to the left are a range of 
summer-apartments, on the ground-floor; on the right, a noble 
open staircase, with statues and paintings by Matteo Bonechi, 
leads to various suites of rooms above : some of them fur- 
nished with all the cumbrous richness of the seventeenth 
century. . . . The apartment which fixes most steadfastly the 
attention, is the Grande Sala^ on the first floor. This room 
served formerly, in the great houses of Italy, for all the pur- 
poses of family festivity ; and the gallery, which runs round 



296 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

the upper part, and opens into the second story^ was appro- 
priated to the domestics and inferiors, who looked down as 
spectators. In this part of the Florentine houses, where few 
chimneys are to be found, stood the hearth / or its place was 
supplied by a great braziere^ which occupied the centre. The 
sala of the Capponi palace is most remarkable for its walls, on 
which are painted three pictures, representing events in the lives 
of the patriots of that illustrious house. The most interesting, 
and the best-executed of these, is the famous scene between 
Pietro Capponi and Charles the Eighth of France. The King, 
after various successes in Italy (to which he was called by the 
usurper Ludovico Sforza), entered Florence with royal pomp, 
and at) immense military force, and took up his quarters in 
the Casa Medici, where he assumed the tone of the Conqueror 
of Tuscany. Four of the principal citizens were sent to treat 
with him, one of whom was Pietro Capponi But scarcely 
had the Royal Secretary begun to read aloud the insulting 
terms of the capitulation, when the deputies shewed signs of 
indignation and impatience, and the haughty monarch, starting 
up, exclaimed that "he would sound the trumpets forthwith." 
Then Pietro Capponi snatched the treaty from the Secretary's 
hands, and, tearing it in pieces, replied in noble language, but 
in bad French, ''i vaus trompctte^ d motciocAe"; and turning 
his back on the King, went forth followed by his fellow- 
citizens, to ring to arms, and to oppose the eneigy of free 
citizens to the military force of a barbarous invader. This act 
of Capponi, perilous and imprudent as it was heroic, saved the 
city. The inhabitants made their own terms and Charles 
marched peaceably out of Florence. — Zady Morgan, 

Palazzo Corsini 

The Palazzo Corsini is a truly princely fabric, though 
raised in the seventeenth century, when all the arts were in 
degradation. It is of the Tuscan order, built after the designs 
of Silvani, and forms a conspicuous contrast to the massive 
and antiquated edifices of the fifteenth century. It stands on 
the Lung-Amo, and from its ricetto, or open gallery, com- 
mands the windings of that beautiful river, and the valley 
scenery in which it loses itself. A fine statue of the Corsini 
Pope, Clement the Twelfth, to whose nepoHsm this princely 
family owes its immense wealth, stands in this ricetto^ — Lady 
Morgan, 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 497 



Casa Buonarotti 

An interesting visit we made at Florence was to Michael 
Angelo's house-^Casa Buonarotti — in theViaGhibellina. This 
street is striking and characteristic : the houses are all old, with 
broad eaves, and in some cases an open upper story, so that 
the roof forms a sort of pavilion supported on pillars. This 
is a feature one sees in many parts of Florence. Michael 
Angelo's house is preserved with great care by his descendants 
—only one could wish their care had not been shewn in giving 
it entirely new furniture. However, the rooms are the same 
as he occupied, and there are many relics of his presence 
there — his stick, his sword, and many of his drawings. — 
George EUot 

Casa Machiavelli 

The Casa Machiavelli . . . stands outside the Porta 
Romana, and crowns with Gothic turrets, the summit of a 
vine-covered hill. This villa, raised by Machiavelli in the 
days of his prosperity, became the refuge of his adversity. 
His walks to this villa from Florence, he has himself pleasantly 
described. Here many of his works were written ; here he 
struggled with great indigence, and died bereft of all (as he 
has himself described) save his family and his friends. — Lady 
Morgan, 

The Boboli Gardens 

I walked to one of the bridges across the Amo, and sur- 
veyed the hills at a distance, purpled by the declining sun. 
Its mild beams tempted me to the garden of Boboli, which 
lies behind the Palazzo Pitti, stretched out on the side of a 
mountain. I ascended terrace after terrace, robed by a 
thick underwood of bay and myrtle, above which rise several 
nodding towers, and a long sweep of venerable wall, almost 
entirely concealed by ivy. You would have been enraptured 
with the broad masses of shade and dusky alleys that opened 
as I advanced, with white statues of fauns and sylvans glim- 
mering amongst them ; some of which pour water into 
sarcophagi of the purest marble, covered with antique relievos. 
The capitals of columns and ancient friezes are scattered about 
as seats. 

On these I reposed myself, and looked up to the cypress 



298 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

groves spiring above the thickets ; then, plunging into their 
retirements, I followed a winding path, which led me by a 
series of steep ascents to a green platform overlooking the 
whole extent of wood, with Florence deep beneath^ and the 
tops of the hills which encircle it, jagged with pines ; here and 
there a convent, or villa, whitening in the sun. This scene 
extends as far as the eye can reach. 

Still ascending I attained the brow of the mountain, and 
had nothing but the fortress of Belvedere, and two or three 
open porticoes above me. On this elevated situation, I found 
several walks of trellis-work, clothed with luxuriant vines, that 
produce to my certain knowledge the most delicious clusters. 
A colossal statue of Ceres, her hands extended in the act 
of scattering fertility over the prospect, crowns the summit, 
where I lingered to mark the landscape fade, and the bright 
skirts of the western sun die gradually away. 

Then descending alley after alley, and bank after bank, I 
came to the orangery in front of the palace, disposed in a 
grand amphitheatre, with marble niches relieved by dark 
foliage, out of which spring tall aerial cypresses. This spot 
brought the scenery of an antique Roman garden full into my 
mind. I expected every instant to be caUed to the table of 
LucuUus hard by, in one of the porticoes, and to stretch myself 
on his purple triclinias ; but waiting in vain for a summons till 
the approach of night, I returned delighted with a ramble that 
had led me so far into antiquity. . . . 

After traversing many long alleys, brown with impending 
foliage, I emerged into a green opening on the brow of the 
hill, and seated myself under the statue of Ceres. From this 
high point I surveyed the mosaic cupola of the Duomo, its 
quaint turret, and one still more grotesque in its neighbourhood 
built not improbably in the style of ancient Etruria. Beyond 
this singular group of buildings a plain stretches itself far 
and wide, most richly scattered over with villas, gardens, 
and groves of pine and olive, quite to the feet of the 
mountains. 

After I had marked the sun's going down, I went through a 
plat of vines hanging on the steeps, to a little eminence, round 
which the wood grows wilder and more luxuriant, and the 
cypresses shoot up to a surprising elevation. The pniners 
have spared this sylvan corner, and suffered the bays to put 
forth their branches, and the ilex to dangle over the waUcs, 
many of whose entrances are nearly overgrown. I enjoyed the 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 299 

gloom of these shady arbours, in the midst of which rises a 
lofty pavilion with galleries running round it, not unlike the 
idea one forms of Turkish chiosks. Beneath lies a garden of 
vines and rose-trees, which I visited, and found a spring under 
a rustic arch of grotto-work, fringed round with ivy. Millions 
of fish inhabit here, of that beautiful glittering species which 
comes from China. This golden nation were leaping after 
insects, as I stood gazing upon the deep, clear water, and 
listening to the drops that trickle from the cove. Opposite 
to which, at the end of an alley of vines, you discover an oval 
basin, and in the midst of it a statue of Ganymede, sitting 
reclined upon the eagle, full of that graceful languor so peculiarly 
Grecian. Whilst I was musing on the margin of the spring 
(for I returned to it after casting a look upon the sculpture), 
the moon rose above the tufted foliage of the terraces. Her 
silver brightness was strongly contrasted by the deep green of 
the holm-oak and bay, amongst which I descended by several 
flights of stairs, with neat marble balustrades crowned by vases 
of aloes.^ — Bukford. 

Primitive Pictures in the Accademia 

Giotto, Cimabue, and others, of unfamiliar names to me, are 
among the earliest. . . . They seem to have been executed 
with great care and conscientiousness, and the heads are often 
wrought out with minuteness and fidelity, and have so much 
expression that they tell their own story clearly enough ; but 
it seems not to have been the painter's aim to effect a lifelike 
illusion, the background and accessories being conventional. 
The trees are no more like real trees than the feather of a pen, 
and there is no perspective, the figure of the picture being 
shadowed forth on a surface of burnished gold. The effect, 
when these pictures — some of them very large — were newly and 
freshly gilded, must have been exceedingly brilliant, and 
much resembling, on an immensely larger scale, the rich 
illuminations in an old monkish missal. In fact, we have not 
now, in pictorial ornament, anything at all comparable to what 
their splendour must have been. I was most struck with a 
picture by Fabriana Gentile, of the Adoration of the Magi, 
where the faces and figures have a great deal of life and action, 
and even grace, and where the jewelled crowns, the rich em- 

* We have thrown together the accounts of two different visits by 
Beckford, both much in the same key. 



300 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

broidered robes, and cloth of gold and all the magnificence of 
the three kings, are represent^ with the vividness of the real 
thing : a gold sword hilt, for instance, or a pair of gold spurs, 
being actually embossed on the picture. The effect is very 
powerful, and though produced in what modem painters would 
pronounce an unjustifiable way, there is yet pictorial art enough 
to reconcile it to the spectator's mind. Certainly, the people 
of the middle ages knew better than ourselves what is magni- 
ficence, and how to produce it ; and what a glorious work 
must that have been, both in its mere sheen of burnished gold, 
and in its illuminating art, which shines thus through the gloom 
of perhaps four centuries. — Hofwth&me. 

The Uffizi 

It was erected by the orders of Cosmo I. in the year 1564. 
Giorgio Vasari was the architect ; it is built in the form of the 
Greek letter 11, and is more than five hundred feet in length ; 
the court enclosed between the wings is sixty-four feet in 
breadth. This court is regular in all its parts ; on each side is 
a gallery supported by Tuscan pillars ; one end opens on the 
great square ; the other borders the Amo, and is terminated 
by a large arch which unites the two buildings and forms the 
communication. — Eustace. 

The Uffizi is a universal store-house, a sort of Louvre con- 
taining paintings of all times and schools, bronzes, statues, 
sculptures, antique and modem terra-cottas, cabinets of gems, 
an Etruscan museum, artists' portraits painted by themselves, 
28,000 original drawings, 4000 cameos and ivories, and 80,000 
medals. — Taine, 

The first things that strike you in the gallery itself, are 
some glaring Madonnas painted on wood by Greek artists in 
the tenth and eleventh centuries. These pictures are uniform; 
the drapery of the Virgin is dark, but bespangled with stars ; 
the posture of the child the same in all ; for when the divine 
maternity was acknowledged at Ephesus, the child was then 
first coupled with the Madonna, but the mode of painting 
both was fixed by the ritual. Painting in that age was satisfied 
with producing mere forms, and did not aspire at expression 
or movement. Conscious of her own weakness, she called in 
the aid of gold, and azure, and labels and even relief; for 
these pictures are raised like japan-work. They present all 
the meagreness, the angular and distinct contours, the straight, 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 301 

stiff pandlelism of attitude, the vacant yet pretty little features, 
which are common to the productions of unenlightened art — 
Farsyik, 

At first, every one hurries to the Tribune, and probably no 
one ever opened the door of that world-renowned apartment, 
for the first time, without a quickened movement of the heart. 
The room is in shape an octagon, about twenty-five feet in 
diameter. The floor is paved with rich marbles, now covered 
with a carpet, and the vaulted ceiling is inlaid with mother-of- 
pearL It is lighted from above. Here are assembled some of 
the most remarkable works of art in the world. There are 
four statues, the Venus de' Medici,^ the Knife-Grinder, the 
Dancing Faun, the Apollino, and a group, the Wrestlers. On 
the walls are l^ung five pictures by Rapbuael, three by Titian, 
one by Michael Angelo, four by Correggio, and several others 
by artists of inferior name. 

When the emotions of surprise, delight and astonishment 
which seize upon the mind on first entering this room, and 
take captive the judging and reflecting faculties, have some- 
what passed away, and reason resumes the throne from which 
she had been for a moment displaced, we are forced to admit 
that objects too numerous and incongruous are forced upon 
the attention at once. First of all, it is not well to have the 
eyes, and the mind, wooed at the same time by statues and 
pictures of the highest merit The passionless and lunar 
beauty of sculpture has something that in common with, but 
more that is alien firom, the sunny glow of painting. In the 
natural day, moonlight and noonday are separated by a con- 
siderable interval of time and by soft gradations of changing 
light Could we pass from one to the other in a moment, the 
shock would be nearly as great as is felt on stepping from air 
into water. And in the second place, the pictures themselves 
are not congruous; at least, Titian's Venuses have no business 
to be in the same small room with Raphael's Madonnas.^-— 
G. S. Bt/lard, 

^ We have quoted no description of Venus de' Medici. Byron voiced 
the general admiration in CkilM Harold; Hazlitt well remarked that ** the 
Venus is a very beautiful toy, but not the Goddess of Love, or even of 
Beauty " ; this Venus has now ceded the place for beauty to the Venus of 
Melos. No one now would go to Florence to study Greek sculpture ; for 
with the discoveries at iEgina, at Olympia, and of primitive work at 
Athens we have £» fuller material elsewhere. 

' This, of course, is the Puritan view. The wide scope of Renaissance 
Catholicism, as we have endeavoured to indicate, found no contradiction in 
pagan and Christian beauty. 



302 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

When we look at the antiques and the Renaissance sculp- 
ture we are at once struck by the affinity of the two periods. 
Each art is as pagan as the other, that is to say, entirely taken 
up with the physical life of the present They are contrasted, 
however, by marked divergences : the classic art is a calmer 
one, and when we reach the best epoch of Greek sculpture, 
this calm is exaggerated, it is that of an animal, nay even of 
vegetative life in which man allows himself to live without any 
further thought whatever. ... On the other hand the sculptor 
of the Renaissance imitates reality and expression with more 
curious research, as we see in the statues of Verocchio, Ftan- 
cavilla, BandineUi, and above all, of Donatello. His St. John 
the Baptist is like a skeleton worn to the bone by festing. His 
Daoidy however graceful and decided the figure, has sharp 
elbows and arms of extreme thinness. In the works of all the 
sculptors mentioned personal character, passionate emotion, 
the dramatic occasion, the personal will and originality are as 
striking as if the statues were portraits. They are more 
realisticaUy alive than artistically harmonious. 

This is why, in sculpture at least, the only masters who 
give the sentiment of beauty in its purest perfection are the 
Greeks. . . . Compare the J/^n^ of John of Bologna with the 
young Greek athlete standing near him. The former, poised 
on tiptoe, cannot fail to delight the spectator while it does the 
highest credit to the master's artistic skill. The little Athenian 
figure, on the other hand, says nothing and does nothing, is 
content merely to live, and is obviously a civic effigy, a 
monument of some success at the Olympian games, an example 
for the lads of the gymnasium : it is educational in the same 
way as a divine or a religious statue. Neither the god nor the 
athlete needed any added interest, it is enough for them to be 
perfect and calm ; they are not a matter of luxury but appur- 
tenances of public life ; they do not exist as furniture, but as a 
means of commemoration. They can be admired, they cer- 
tainly advance culture; but they are not used for diversion 
and are above criticism. Look again at Donatelto's Davidy 
so proudly erect, so unconventionally attired, so finely serious; 
the figure is not a hero or a legendary saint, but a work of the 
imagination. The sculptor is ready to give us pagan or 
Christian art to order ; his main wish is to please men of 
taste. Finally, consider Michael Angelo's Decui Adonis with 
the head inclined on the bent arm, or the Bacchus raising his 
cup and half opening his mouth as if to drink somebody's 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 303 

good health. The two figures are true to nature and almost 
classical in conception ; but with Michael Angelo as with his 
contemporaries action and dramatic interest predominate.^ — 
Taine. 

I came by chance into the room containing the portraits of 
great painters. I formerly regarded them in the light of valu- 
able curiosities, for there are more than three hundred portraits, 
chiefly painted by the masters themselves, so that you see at 
the same time the master and his work. But to-day a fresh 
idea dawned on me with regard to them, — that each painter 
resembles his own productions, and that each while painting 
his own likeness has been careful to represent himself just as 
he really was. In this way you become personally acquainted 
with all these great men. . . . 

The portrait of Raphael is almost the most touching like- 
ness I have yet seen of him. In the centre of a large rich 
screen, entirely covered with portraits, hangs a small solitary 
picture, without any particular designation, yet the eye is 
instantly arrested by it. This is Raphael, — youthful, pale and 
delicate ; and with such aspirations, such longing and wistful- 
ness in the mouth and eyes, that it is as if you could see into 
his soul. That he cannot succeed in expressing all that he 
sees and feels, and is thus impelled to new endeavour, and 
that he must die an early death, — ^all this is written on his 
mournfully suffering, yet courageous countenance. I/K>king 
into his dark eyes, from whose depths his very soul glances 
out ; looking at the pained and contracted mouth, we cannot 
resist a feeling of awe. — F, Bartholdy Mendelssohn, 

PiTTi Palace 

I doubt if there is a more monumental palace in Europe 
than the Pitti ; I have seen none other which leaves so simple 
and so grandiose an impression. Placed on an eminence its 
entire outline appears in silhouette against the clear blue sky, 
its three distinct storeys placed one above the other, in three 

^ Talne's general contrast between indiyidualistic Renaissance and 
religious or civic classical sculpture (here much abbreviated) must be 
extended to Gothic work too. In the Gothic as in the classic age, art was 
absolutely based on the religious faith or the love of the town. Taine 
went too far when he indicated that there was no art for art's sake in 
Greek art ; every art in its decadence becomes art for art's sake. It is not 
possible to consider the Venus of Praxiteles as springing from the same 
religious and dvic idea as the Athena Parthenos of Pheidias. 



304 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

distinct masses, lessening in size. Two terraces add to tbe 
mass by projecting crosswise on the two flanks. What is 
most unique, intensifying the calm grandeur of the edifice, is 
the vastness of the material of which it is built. These 
materials are not stones, but fragments of rock, — ^we might 
say sections of mountains, for some blocks, those supporting 
the terraces in particular, are as broad as five men's measure. 
Rugged, dark and scarcely hewn, they keep their first harsh- 
ness as a mountain would, if torn from its foundations, broken 
to fragments, and erected in some other spot by Cyclopean 
hands. — Taine, 

My wife and I went to the Pitti Palace to-day ; and first 
entered a court where, yesterday, she had seen a carpet of 
flowers, arranged for some great ceremony. It must have 
been a most beautiful sight, the pavement of the court being 
entirely covered by them, in a regular pattern of brilliant hoes, 
so as really to be a living mosaic. This morning, however, 
the court had nothing but its usual stones, and the show of 
yesterday seemed so much the more inestimable as having 
been so evanescent Around the walls of the court there 
were still some pieces of splendid tapestry which had made 
part of yesterday's magnificence. We went up the staircase, 
of regally broad and easy ascent, and made application to be 
admitted to see the grand ducal apartments. An attendant 
accordingly took the keys, and ushered us first into a great 
hall with a vaulted ceiling, and then through a series of noble 
rooms, with rich frescoes above and mosaic floors, hung with 
damask, adorned with gilded chandeliers, and glowing, in 
short, with more gorgeousness than I could have imagined 
beforehand, or can now remember. 

In many of the rooms were these superb antique cabinets 
which I admire more than any other furniture ever invaited ; 
only these were of unexampled art and glory, inlaid with 
precious stones, and with beautiful Florentine mosaics, both 
of flowers and landscapes — each cabinet worth a lifetime's toil 
to make it, and the cost a whole palace to pay for it Many 
of the rooms were covered with arras, of landscapes, hunting 
scenes, mythological subjects, or historical scenes, equal to 
pictures in truth of representation, and possessing an inde- 
scribable richness that makes them preferable as a mere 
adornment of princely halls and chambers. Some of the 
rooms, as I have said, were laid in mosaic of stone and 
marble; otherwise in lovely patterns of various woods ; others 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 305 

were covered with carpets, delightful to tread upon« and glow- 
ing like the living floor of flowers which my wife saw yesterday. 
There were tables, too, of Florentine mosaic, the mere materials 
of which — lapis-lazuli, malachite, pearl and a hundred other 
precious things — were worth a fortune, and made a thousand 
times more vaduable by the artistic skill of the manufacturer. 
I toss together brilliant words by the handful, and make a 
rude sort of patchwork, but can record no adequate idea of 
what I saw in this suite of rooms ; and the taste, the subdued 
splendour, so that it did not shine too high, but was all tem- 
pered into an eflect at once grand and soft — this was quite as 
remarkable as the gorgeous material. — Hawthorne. 

Raphael in the Pitti 

Raphael is perhaps overpraised by those admirers of art 
who are not artists, and who judge of paintings not by their 
technical merits, but by the eflect which they produce; in 
other words, subjectively and not objectively. All the fine 
arts, poetry, painting, sculpture and music, have something in 
common; something which all persons of sensibility feel, 
though such airy resemblances are not very patient of the 
chains of language. In the expression of this common 
element, Raphael has no rival. Maternal love, purity of feel- 
ing, sweetness, refinement and a certain soft ideal happiness, 
breathe from his canvas like odour from a flower. No painter 
addresses so wide a circle of sympathies as he. No one 
speaks a language so intelligible to the common apprehension. 
. . . The most celebrated of his pictures in this collection is 
the Madonna della Seggiola, so widely known by engravings. 
It is a work of great sweetness, purity and tenderness, but not 
representing all the power of the artist's genius. Its chief 
charm, and the secret of its world-wide popularity, is its happy 
blending of the divine and the human elements. Some 
painters treat this subject in such a way that the spectator sees 
only a mortal mother caressing her child ; while by others, the 
only ideas awakened are those of the Virgin and the Redeemer. 
But heaven and earth meet upon Raphael's canvas : the purity 
of heaven and the tenderness of earth. The round, infantile 
forms, the fond, clasping arms, the sweetness and the grace, 
belong to the world that is around us, but the faces — especially 
that of the infant Saviour, in whose eyes there is a mysterious 
depth of expression, which no engraving has ever fully caught — 

u 



3o6 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

are touched with light from heaven, and suggest something to 
worship as well as to love. — G. S, HiUard. 



Wax Figures (Natural History Museum) 

In the Florentine museum is a representation in wax of 
some of the appalling scenes of the plague, which desolated 
this city about the middle of the fourteenth century, and 
which Boccaccio has described with such simplicity and power 
in the introduction of his Decamerone. It is the work of a 
Sicilian artist, by the name of Zumbo. He must have been a 
man of the most gloomy and saturnine imagination, and more 
akin to the worm than most of us, thus to have revelled night 
and day in the hideous mysteries of death, corruption, and the 
charnel-house. It is strange how this representation haunts 
one. It is like a dream of the sepulchre, with its loathsome 
corses, with "the blackening, the swelling, the bursting of the 
trunk — the worm, the rat, and the tarantula at work." You 
breathe more freely as you step out into the open air again ; 
and when the bright sunshine, and the crowded, busy streets 
next meet your eye, you are ready to ask, is this indeed a 
representation of reality ? Can this pure air have been laden 
with pestilence ? Can this gay city have ever been a city of 
the plague ? 

The work of the Sicilian artist is admirable as a piece of 
art : the description of the Florentine prose-poet equally 
admirable as a piece of eloquence. "How many vast palaces," 
he exclaims, '' how many beautiful houses, how many noble 
dwellings, aforetime filled with lords and ladies, and trains of 
servants, were now untenanted even by the lowest menial ! 
How many memorable families, how many ample heritages, 
how many renowned possessions were left without an heir! 
How many valiant men, how many beautiful women, how 
many gentle youths breakfasted in the morning with their 
relatives, companions, and friends, and when the evening 
came supped with their ancestors in the other world!" — 
Longfellow, 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 307 

ENVIRONS OF FLORENCE 

San Miniato 

A brisk walk of a few minutes out of the Porta San Miniato 
brings the traveller to the church and convent of that name, a 
mass of buildings conspicuous from their position and castel- 
lated appearance. The church, parts of which belong to the 
eleventh century, is an imposing structure, and is, to a consider- 
able extent, built of the fragments of ancient Roman edifices, 
which, when we compare their original destination with their 
present position, remind us of a palimpsest manuscript from 
which a hymn to Apollo has been expunged, and a holy legend 
written in its place. It is well to have Christian churches 
rather than ruined temples, if the latter must be sacrificed to 
the former; but, in a country so abounding with accessible 
building materials as Italy, there is no excuse for the indolence 
or parsimony which destroys the monuments of antiquity, in 
order to use their fragments for incongruous modern structures. 
Here are many curious and interesting works of art, especially 
by Luca della Robbia, who expended fine powers of invention 
and design upon the strange material of glazed blue and white 
tena-cotta. . . . The remains of the fortifications raised around 
the convent by Michael Angelo, during the last unsuccessful 
struggles of the citizens of Florence to throw off the rule of 
the Medici family, may still be traced. ... At a short distance 
from the convent is a tower which was used by Galileo as an 
observatory, and near the tower is a villa in which the illus- 
trious philosopher resided and where Milton is said to have 
visited him.— G. S. Hillard. 

FIESOLE 

Of all the objects that present themselves in the immediate 
vicinity of Florence, Fiesole is from its antiquity, its situation 
and its celebrity, one of the most conspicuous and attractive. 
This town, under the appellation of Faesulae, was one of the 
twelve Etrurian cities, and seems to have been distinguished 
from the others by its skill in the interpretation of omens and 
prognostics. It submitted with the rest of Etruria to the 
Roman power and was colonised by Sylla. The species of 
colonists sent by this tyrant seem to have been of no very 
favourable description, and are represented afterwards as com- 



3o8 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

posing the main body of Catiline's ruffian army. It made no 
figure in the civil wars or revolutions of the following era, 
survived the general desolation of Italy during- the fifth, sixth, 
seventh, and eighth centuries, and prolonged its existence till 
the commencement of the eleventh ; when, in a contest with 
Florence, it was destroyed and its inhabitants, or at least a 
considerable number, transported to that city. However, the 
cathedral remained, and Fiesole, now a lonely but beautiful 
village^ still retains its episcopal honours, its ancient name, 
and its delightful situation Placed on the summit of a lofty 
and broken eminence, it looks down on the vale of the Amo, 
and commands Florence with all its domes, towers and palaces, 
the villas that encircle it, and the roads that lead to it. The 
recesses, swells, and breaks of the hill on which it stands are 
covered with groves of pines, ilex, and cypress. Above these 
groves rises the dome of the cathedral ; and in the midst of 
them reposes a rich and venerable abbey founded by the 
Medicean family. Behind the hill, at a distance, swell the 
Apennines. That a place graced with so many beauties 
should delight the poet and the philosopher is not wonderful, 
and accordingly we find it alluded to with complacency by 
Milton, panegyrised by Politian, inhabited by Picus, and fre- 
quented by Lorenzo. — Eustace. 

Fiesole stands on a hill precipitously steep. The front of 
it cut into a gradation of narrow terraces, which are enclosed 
in a trellis of vines, and faced with loose-stone walls. Such a 
facing may perhaps cost less labour, and add more warmth to 
the plantation than the tuif embankments would do ; but it 
gives a hard, dry effect to the immediate picture, which, 
viewed from Florence, is the most beautiful object in this 
region of beauty. The top of the hill is conical, and its 
summit usurped by a convent of Franciscans, whose leave 
you must ask to view the variegated map of country below 
you. The corridors command a multiplicity of landscape : 
every window presented a different scene, and every mbute 
before sunset changed the whole colouring. . . . The season 
brought a curious succession of insects into view. On the 
way to Fiesole my ears were deafened with the hoarse croak of 
the cigala^ which Homer, I cannot conceive why, compares to 
the softness of the lily. On my return the lower air was 
illuminated with myriads of lucciole or fire-flies ; and I entered 
Florence at shutting of the gates. 

Come la mosca cede alia lancara. 

— Borsyth, 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 309 



PRATOLINO 

We went to Pratolino, a villa of the Great Duke, some six 
miles distant from Florence. Here we saw in the garden 
excellent grots, fountains, water-works, shady-walks, groves 
and the like, all upon the side of a hill. Here you have the 
Grot of Cupid with the wetting-stools, upon which, sitting 
down, a great spout of water comes full in your lace.^ The 
Fountain of the Tritons overtakes you too, and washeth you 
soundly. Then being led about this garden, where there are 
store of fountains under the laurel trees, we were carried back 
to the grots that are under the stairs and saw there the several 
giuochi d^aqua : as that of Pan striking up a melodious tune 
upon his mouth-organ at the sight of his mistress, appearing 
over against him : that where the Angel carries a trumpet to 
his mouth and soundeth it; and where the Country Clown 
offers a dish of water to a serpent, who drinks of it and lifteth 
up his head when he hath drunk : that of the Mill which 
seems to break and grind olives : the Paper Mill : the Man 
with the Grinding Stone : the Saracen's Head gaping and 
spewing out water : the grot of Galatea who comes out of a 
door in a sea-chariot with two nymphs, and saileth a while 
upon the water and so returns again in at the same door : the 
curious Round Table capable of twelve or fifteen men, with 
a curious fountain playing constantly in the midst of it, and 
places between every trencher, or person for every man to set 
his bottle of wine in cold water : the Samaritan Woman com- 
ing out of her house with her buckets to fetch water at the 
fountain, and having filled her buckets, returns back again 
the same way: in the meantime you see Smiths thumping. 
Birds chirping in trees. Mills grinding : and all this is done by 
water, which sets these little inventions awork, and makes 
them move as it were of themselves : in the meantime an organ 
plays to you while you dine there va fresco at that table, if you 
have meat Then the neat bathing place, the pillar of petrified 
water : and lastly, the great pond and grotta before the house, 
with the huge Giant stooping to catch at a rock, to throw it to 
heaven. This Giant is so big, that within the very thigh of 

^ This garden was entirely characteristic of the idle humours of an Italy 
in decadence. 



3IO THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

him is a great grot of water, called the Grot of Thetis and the 
Shell Fishes, all spouting out water.^ — Lasseis. 

General Note on Florence 

The attraction of Florence is evidently less immediate in 
its appeal than that of Venice, and a certain disappointment 
was expressed by Montaigne on his first visit, when he re- 
marked : " I do not understand why this city should be called, 
par excellence^ the Beautiful : it is handsome, no doubt, but 
not more so than Bologna, and very little more so than 
Ferrara ; while Venice is, beyond all comparison, superior to 
it, in this respect. No doubt the view of the city and its 
suburbs, from the top of the cathedral, has an imposing 
eflfect, owing to the immense space which the suburbs occupy, 
covering, as they do, the sides and summit of all the neigh- 
bouring hills for two or three leagues round/' On his second 
visit, however, Montaigne deliberately withdraws his un- 
favourable opinion and admits the beauty of the town, but he 
does not care to go into any precise analysis of that beauty. 
As a matter of fact, Florence is a discovery of the last hundred 
years. Rome has always had its fame ; Venice, as we have 
shewn, was considered remarlcable in the fifteenth century ; 
Florence, if it was admired before modern times, was admired 
for its political institutions and its men of letters rather than 
for its monuments. 

The difficulty of a complete understanding of the town is 
that Florence has always been essentially a City of Mystics, 
and the temper of mysticism has had to wait till our own time 
for its right appreciation. A mjrstic is not necessarily devoid 
of the instincts of action : we may take our own Cromwell for 
the proof of that. The mystic, indeed, will not seek occasions 
of quarrel, but when he is involved in them, his action will be 
swift and unexpected. While a certain moderation of ez- 

^ Other seats of the Medici were Po0|io Imperiale and Poggio a 
Caiano. The former b within a mile of Florence, and is described by 
Lassels as containing Albert Durer's Adam and £tfe, a IHsf^ by Pemgino 
(the expression /^/J always refers to the subject of the Madonna with the 
dead Cnrist on her knees or outstretched before her), and an Assum/twn 
by Andrea del Sarto. Poggio a Caiano is best described in Homer's fValks 
in Florence ; it contains the Triumph of Casar by Andrea del Sarto. 
Botticelli's Primaoora was formerly in the Villa C«stelIo, belongii^ to 
Duke Cosimo. But there is some doubt as to the original owner of the 
work (see Plunkett, Botticelli^ p. 15). 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 311 

pression will go with full tenacity of purpose, enonnous im- 
pulses of hatred or revenge wiU balance the silent spiritual life 
of inner reflection. A personal delicacy and sweetness will 
not be in contradiction to these sources of strei^h. In the 
end, no doubt, the mystic is bound to lose the game to the 
practical man of action who has neither scruples nor inspira- 
tions, and the closing scene of mysticism may come very near 
to the weariness of utter disbelief either in heaven or hell, 
complete disgust both for the aspirations or the sins of men. 
When the mystic dies young, he has found his happiest fate, 
but when he is condemned to live on in a world that grows 
more callous in seeming, year by year, his lot is not to be 
envied. Mystidsm is in some ways the carrying on of the 
early innocent visions of youth into mature years, and ex- 
perience teaches us that such a survival is fraught with much 
unhappiness. 

But we must distinguish between the mystics of Florence. 
Dante is preeminent among them, and his character and his 
career hardly need explanation, except perhaps that we might 
call his exile from Florence the best fortune a man of his 
nature could have had. Leaving the small centre of so much 
that was kindred with himself he wandered out into a larger 
world, and possibly learnt the tolerance which no Florentine 
ever practised at home. In Dante's great work it is to be 
noticed that the passion of hatred never perturbs the current 
of the poetry: no vulgarity of style accompanies the most 
terrific denunciations of human beings that have ever been 
penned. It is with the clarity of the most intense vision that 
Dante sees his enemies in torment : the images are so natural^ 
the punishments so appropriate to the crime, that we discern no 
effort in invention : we are compelled to think that for Dante 
the existence of the spirit-land was far more real than the rough 
world of commercial and social intercourse. 

What is true of Dante is also true of Michael Angelo, who 
had been brought to Florence in his third year. If the in- 
herited blood which took him back to the Counts of Canossa 
was not Florentine, all his artistic training belonged to the 
city. It would be most gravely to misunderstand Michael 
Angelo's att — as also that of the Renaissance at its highest — 
to leave out the mystical inspiration governing it. He 
himself in his poetical quatrain written for the figure of Night 
shews us how intimately the sorrow of that allegory is con- 
nected with the decay of Italian power. If Dante is the 



312 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

trampeter of an Italy first consdoas of its strength and hope- 
ful of its unity, Michael Angelo is the builder of the tomb of 
the great epoch of Catholicism. Michael Angelo's universal 
message is to be found at Rome in his apotheosis of the 
Papacy, but most of his work at Florence has the sign-manual 
of civic patriotism, for Florence was the mother-city he loved, 
and strove to defend, before he symbolised its servitude in the 
burial place of the Medici. 

If we seek for intermediate masters interpreting Florentine 
mysticism between Dante and Michael Angelo, we shall find 
them in Giotto, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, and Andrea del Sarta 
Savonarola was a Ferrarese by birth and education, and 
certainly not a Florentine by his hysterical obscurantism ; the 
prior of San Marco was perhaps given an exaggerated im- 
portance in the nineteenth century owing to a fancied resem- 
blance of his doctrines to religious Liberalism. The Christ- 
governed state which Savonarola sought to establish would only 
have become a minor Papacy ; and Symonds is probably right 
in comparing Savonarola to other revivalists like John of 
Vicenza, Jacopo del Bussolaro, and Jacopo della Marca. 
We do not claim Savonarola as a mystic, and we would not 
look upon him as being any more representative of Florence 
than Paolo Sarpi was of Venice. Raphael is not typically 
Florentine either, and belongs far more in spirit to Bologna 
than to any other town. But Giotto, although he is far better 
to be studied at Assisi or Padua, the Blessed Angelico, 
Botticelli, and Andrea del Sarto are all of Florence and of no 
other town. We include Andrea because both Titian and 
Michael Angelo had the greatest opinion of him, and the 'wwi 
corto (the ** sorry little scrub " of Browning's poem) had the 
same placid technique, concealing deep passion, wluch is the 
character of Giotto and Angelico. In Florentine art we must 
never ask for the dashing vigour of action, the briny breeze 
and sunshine of Venetian painting, but rather a repressed life 
and the pale blossoms of meditation. 

In the mystic character of Botticelli's art we have an apparent 
contradiction, for his greatest work, the Primaveray is an idyll 
of laughter, increase and love. We would suggest that mys- 
ticism is not uniformly sorrowful, and the really mystic 
temper will find as much matter for thought in happiness. 
We have not found any convincing interpretation of the 
Pritnavera among our travellers, and we would not hamper the 
appreciation of such a work by giving an incomplete estimate. 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 313 

Count Flunkett's study of the painting in his monograph on 
Botticelli is the best to be found outside the pages of the 
text-books. He links the picture on to the Platonism of the 
period^ and says ''this poetic allegory reminds one of the 
brilliant festivals, the Calendimaggio, celebrated in song and 
play and living processional tableaux," which were often seen 
in contemporary Florence. We might say generally that 
Botticelli was the mystic of decoration as GhirUmdajo was the 
mystic of colour, 

Masaccio and Donatello might perhaps be taken together 
as mystics in realism. While in other towns art was always 
obedient to the dominant power and preponderating life, in 
Florence there gradually grew up a science of painting for the 
sake of the art. Of this the greatest exponent was Leonardo 
(who possibly influenced Giorgione), but that master can only 
be studied, if studied he can be at all, in Milan. But 
Leonardo is not a Florentine of Florence as Donatello and 
Masaccio were; in each of the masters we see the study 
of life pushed to an extraordinary realism. This is no vulgar 
realism for the sake of astonishing the multitude, but rather 
the spirit in which Tennyson looked at the "flower in the 
crannied wall" Could we but understand the entity of one 
flower, or one rain drop we should understand the meaning of 
all existence, and it is from such a mysticism that the realism of 
Donatello, in sculpture, and Masaccio, in painting, springs. 
Although Vasari's account of Donatello's life lacks in details, 
his description of his works in Florence is very full. Donatello, 
too, like Botticelli, is very ill represented by our travellers. We 
do not regret this, for the genius of both is rather an individual 
than a national gift. Leonardo, Giorgione, Botticelli, and 
Donatello are to be placed apart and studied rather for them- 
selves than for their expression of race. Italian they are as 
Francois Villon or John Keats were French or English, but 
individuality in each case cited seems to claim its own. 

The four great artists we have named have exerted a greater 
influence on those actually engaged in the arts than on the 
public, but it is necessary to point out that those, who in 
modern days endeavour to follow their footsteps, are placing 
their ambitions very high. Few are so presumptuous as to 
endeavour to compete with the unique masters who have 
added individuality to the national note. Yet the predous 
gift possessed by some of expressing beauty is almost as 
rare ; and those who hope to belong to this select class are 



314 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

hampering their chances of popular success. In the end every 
craftsman finds his level; but the appreciation of the most 
subtle form of art is too often confused with the power of 
achieving it A painter or sculptor should think wdl before 
he endeavours to seek the exquisiteness of quality which must 
necessarily go with the mysticism we have endeavoured to 
define. 

We will not insist further on this mysticism, which will be 
better tested by actual study in Florence than by any literary 
discussion. Generally speaking the Italians are not a mysticsd 
race, and the Etruscan factor in the Florentine descent may 
cause this difierentiation, but we know so little about the 
Etruscans, that any hazard of opinion is dangerous. The 
scientific ideas of Verrochio or of Machiavelli seem in contra- 
diction to our general argument, but is it so certain that 
science does not proceed from the mystic temper of searching 
out hidden meanings which are unseen by the profane ? We 
may pass firom this to say one word about the Florentine sense 
of beauty, which, distinctive as it is, is so delicate that it goes 
beyond definition. It may be called vaguely the beauty of 
form and of spiritual expression. The Florentine masterpieces 
rarely excel in colour like those of Venice; they lack the 
drama of Leonardo's Cenacolo or Velasquez' great canvases ; 
they have not the worldly magnificence of the grand frescoes 
of Rome. The Florentine, whatever his origins may be, is 
the most Greek of the modems : Greek, that is, in realism and 
its beauty, for Christian he must remain in his aspiration. 
Florentine art, with Dante, Giotto, and Donatello, has become 
the origin of a small school of select spirits, and whoever joins 
the rapt spirit of meditation to the sternness of physical truth 
must belong to it. Fra Angelico and Michael Angelo each is 
at an opposite extreme of this rendering of life. We would 
call Goethe the nearest approach to it in our own era : the 
English nature with its sturdy love of action and its rich 
melancholy humour rarely comes within that smaller compass. 
But so elusive is Florentine beauty that it escapes from 
the crucible before we can isolate it ; most of our travellers see 
no special quality to describe, and it is only in Hawthorne, the 
mystic firom New England, or in Taine, with his scientific tests, 
that we see any recognition of a fascination which will be most 
felt by those who go to the city in the years of dream between 
youth and maturity. — Ed. 



FXORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 315 



PERUGIA 1 

Perugia is a wonderful old place. Scarcely one street is 
level, and all the houses look as if not a brick had been 
touched since the Caesars. It is the most consistently ancient 
city I ever saw. The very latest fashions date back three 
hundred years; and one feels quite relieved while contem- 
plating something light in the Gothic palaces, after seeing the 
stupendous antiquity of the Etruscan walls, which certainly 
must have been raised by the Titans themselves long before 
their disgrace, somewhere in the time of Deucalion or Nox. 

I proceeded from the hotel into the grand piazza, where 
stands the Duomo, a bold pile of Gothic splendour, raised 
majestically on a flight of marble steps. In the centre of the 
piazza is a beautiful marble fountain of exquisite workmanship, 
whence a perfect river gushes forth, splashing into a spacious 
basin beneath. Opposite is the Palazzo Comunale — ^a huge 
double-fronted Gothic pile, partly standing in the piazza, and 
partly in the great street that opens from it. Here is an 
abundance of all the elaborate tracery and luxuriant fancy of 
that picturesque age. Heavily-groined arched windows, solid, 
yet graceful, occupy the grand storey; while below, a vast 
portal, profusely ornamented with every detail of mediaeval 
grotesqueness, opens into gloomy halls and staircases. At the 
far end of the piazza there is a dark archway, and a descending 
flight of steps going heaven knows where— down to unknown 
depths in the lower town. What a brave old square it is ! 
Not a stone but is in keeping. 

I ascended the steps and entered the Duomo, where the 
coup tail is very imposing, the pervading colour being that 
warm sunlight tint so charming to the eye. The nave, and, 

^ Among towns of interest to the north of Perugia are Arezzo, Cortona, 
and Gubbio. Arezzo (the birthplace of Petrarch) can be taken on a trip 
to La Verna; its cathedral is a fine soecimen of Italian Gothic. Cortona 
has remains of its Etruscan walls, and is described by Forsyth as follows : 
" Cortona, rising amidst its vineyards on the acclivity of a steep hill with 
black mountains behind, struck me at a distance like a picture hung on a 
wall." From Cortona can be seen the lake of Thrasimene, the scene of 
Hannibal's great victory : an interesting reference will be found in 
Macaulay's Life, Symonds describes Gubbio in bb sketches, and remarks 
that its '* public palaces belong to the age of the Communes, when Gubbio 
was a free town, with a policy of its own, and an important part to play in 
the internecine struggles of Pope and Emperor, Guelf ana Ghibelline." 
This observation also applies to towns like Ferugia and Assisi. 



3i6 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

in fact, the whole interior, is very graceful. It is one of those 
buildings one can neither call large nor small, fix>m the admir- 
able proportions of the whole, no inequality betraying the 
precise scale. Frescoes there are all over the roof, and a few 
choice pictures ; one in particular, a Deposition by Baroccio, 
in a chapel near the door, painted, it is said, while he was 
suffering from poison given him, out of envy, at Rome. This 
picture has the usual visiting-card, common to all good paint- 
ings, of having made the journey to Paris. 

Here, too, in a chapel, is preserved the veritable wedding- 
ring of the Virgin, which came, I suppose, flying through the 
air like her house at Loretto; also various other relics, all 
more or less fond of locomotion. In the sacristy, or winter 
choir, is a lovely picture, a Sposalizio by Luca Signorelli : in 
front of the figures is a tumbler of water with some carnations, 
painted with a delicacy of which only the old masters were 
capable. 

The more I walked about, the more I was charmed with 
Perugia. Up and down we went, under old archways, and 
through narrow streets, each more quaint than the other. 
Whenever there was any opening, such views appeared — 
mountains tossed as if by an earthquake, deep valleys, great 
walls built on rocky heights, massive fortifications — all romantic 
beyond expression. We reached at last a plateau, called the 
Frontone, planted with trees, on the very edge of a stupendous 
cliff. The sun was just dissipating the morning mist ^ over one 
of the grandest views on which the eye ever rested. Moun- 
tains, hills, rocks, of every shape and size, were piled one over 
the other, terrace-like ; while to the right lay the blue Lake of 
Thrasymene, a calm and glassy mirror in the midst of this 
chaotic confusion. High mountains shut in the view every- 
where. In front, the rays of the sun were condensed into a 
golden mist, obscuring all nearer objects. To the left lay a 
vast plain, fat and fertile, a land flowing with milk and honey. 
Before us uprose the city of Assisi, sparkling in the sunshine, 
seated on a rocky height, and also backed by lofty Apennines. 
—Mrs. EUiot. 

' One of the most beautiful Itmdscape effects in Italy is to be seen 
when the autumn mists fill the Umbrian valley, and the sun shines as on 
a sea, through which the houses at the foot of the towns are seen as if 
submerged. Eveljm has described this on the road to Rome. 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 317 



The Roman Gate 

We came to the Porta Augusta, one of the grandest monu- 
ments in the world. It is of immense size, and formed of 
uncemented stones actually gigantic ; the walls of Fiesole are 
nothing to it. I cannot describe the solenm majesty of this 
portal of unknown antiquity, frowning down on the pigmy 
erections of later ages. There it stands in a glorious solidity 
until the day of judgment. Nothing short of a universal con- 
vulsion can shake it. Over the arch are the letters "Augusta 
Perusia," looking at a distance like some cabalistic charm. 
On the left are an open gallery and two massive towers. — 
Mrs. Ellwi. 

The Cambio 

... It is the same thing with Perugino as with Van Eyck : 
their bodies belong to the Remussance, their souls to the 
Middle Ages. This is . . . apparent in the Cambio, a kind 
of exchange or Guildhall of the merchants. Perugino was 
entrusted with its decoration in the year 1 500 ; and he has 
placed here a "Transfiguration,'' an "Adoration of the 
Shepherds," Sibyls, Prophets, Leonidas, Socrates, and other 
pagan heroes and philosophers, a St. John over the altar, and 
Mars and Jupiter on the archway. Alongside of this is a 
chapel wainscoted with carved wood, gilded and painted, with 
the Eternal Father in the centre, and various arabesques of 
graceful allegoric figures on the cruppers of lions. Can the 
confluence of two ages be better realised, the intermingling of 
ideas, the bloom of a new paganism underneath a decrepit 
Christianity? . . } 

First comes a "Nativity," under a lofty portico, with a 
landscape of slender trees. ... It is a picture of etherial 
meditation, calculated to make us fall in love with a contem- 
plative life. We cannot too highly commend the modest 
gravity, the mute nobility of the Virgin kneeling before her 
infant Three large serious angels on a cloud are singing 
from a sheet of music : their simplicity takes the mind back 
to the age of the mystics. But if we turn we see figures of 
an altogether diflferent character. The master has been to 
Florence, and its antiques, its nudes, its figures of imposing 
action and spirited intention are new to him, revealing another 

^ The text following has been transposed for convenience. 



4i8 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

world. Reproducing it with some hesitation, he is enticed 
away from the paths he first trod. Each of the six prophets, 
the five sibyls, warriors and pagan philosophers is a master- 
piece of power and physical grandeur. He does not imitate 
Greek types or costumes, for complicated helms, strange head- 
dresses and chivalric reminiscences are oddly intermingled 
with the draped or undraped figures ; it is the feeling whidi is 
antique. These are strong men content with existence, and 
not pious souls dreaming of heaven. The sibyls are all 
radiant with beauty and youth ; the first of them advancing 
with a carriage and form of royal grandeur and stateliness. 
Every whit as noble and grand is the prophet-king who faces 
them. The seriousness and elevation of these figures is un- 
matchable. At this dawn of imaginative art, the face, still 
unclouded, preserves a simplicity and immobihty of primitive 
expression like that of Greek statuary. . . . Man is not broken 
up into petty, varying and fleeting thoughts ; the character is 
made prominent by unity and repose. 

Merchants in long robes used to sit in council on the 
wooden seats of this narrow hall; before opening their 
deliberations, they knelt down in the little adjoining chapel to 
hear mass. There Gian Niccola Manni painted on the two 
sides of the high altar the delicately animated figures of his 
" Annunciation,'' an ample Herodias, with several gracefully 
erect young women, slight and charming, and making us 
understand the spiritual health of the painter's youthful 
vitality. While joining in the droning hum of the responses, 
or following the sacred gestures of the officiating priest, more 
than one of the worshippers must have let his eyes wander up 
to the rosy torso of the little chimaeras crouching on the 
ceiling, the work, according to the local tradition, of a young 
man of great promise, the favourite pupil of the master: 
Raphael Sanzio d'Urbino. — Taine, 

ASSISI 

There are three churches,^ one above the other, all of them 
arranged in connection with the tomb of St. Francis. Over 

^ Italian pointed Gothic begins *in this church of SaA Francesco ; bat 
no Gothic architecture such as we see in the northern cathedrals must be 
sought in Italy. The church at Assisi retains many of the older forms, 
and before Gothic was much used elsewhere Bramante introduced the 
newer order. In &ct, between Romanesque and early Renaissance there 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 319 

that venerated body, which the people believe to be ever living 
and absorbed in prayer at the bottom of an inaccessible cave, 
the edifice has arisen, gloriously blossoming hke an architec- 
tural shrine. The lowest is a crypt, dark as a sepulchre, into 
which visitors go down with torches; pilgrims keep close to 
the dripping walls and grope along to reach the grating. Here 
is the tomb, in a pale dim light Hke that of Limbo. A few 
brass lamps, scarcely giving light, bum forever like stars lost 
in mournful gloom. The rising smoke clings to the arches, 
and the heavy scent of the tapers mingles with that of the 
cave. The guide trims his torch, and its sudden gleam in this 
oppressive darkness above the bones of a corpse, is like a 
Dantesque vision. Here is the mystical grave of a saint, who, 
in the midst of corruption and the worm devouring has his 
sorrowful earthly prison filled with the supernatural radiance 
of the Saviour. 

Words cannot give any conception of the middle church, a 
long, low vault upheld by small rounded arches curving in 
half-shadow^ with a purposed depression which forces us to 
our knees. A coating of sombre blue and of reddish bands 
starred with gold, a marvellous embroidery of ornaments, 
wreaths, delicate scroll-work, leaves and painted figures, 
covers the arches and ceilings with its harmonious and over- 
whelming variety. An entire population of figures and colours 
lives on these walls. . . . There is no Christian monument 
where pure mediaeval ideas reach the mind under so many 
forms, explaining each other and so many contemporary mas- 
terpieces. Over the altar, enclosed with an elaborate iron 
and bronze railing, Giotto has covered an elliptic arch with 
grand, calm figures and mystic allegories. There is St. Francis 
receiving Poverty as spouse from the hands of Christ ; Chastity 
vainly besieged in a crenellated fortress, and adored by angels ; 
Obedience under a canopy, surrounded by saints and kneel- 
ing angels ; St. Francis, glorified in the gilded mansion of a 
deacon, and enthroned in the midst of celestial virtues and 
chanting cherubim. . . . 

On the summit, the upper church shoots up as aerially 
triumphant as the lower is gloomy. Truly, if we sought their 
meaning, we might say that in these three sanctuaries the 
architect meant to represent the three worlds : below the gloom 

is a veiy short period in Italy. Of the cathedral (earlier than the San 
Francesco), of Sta. Chiara and St. Damiano — the nunnery of St. Clare— 
we have found no sufficient accounts. 



320 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

of death and the horrors of the sepulchre under the earth ; in 
the middle, the impassioned struggle of the Christian militant, 
striving and hoping in this world of probation ; above^ the 
bliss and dazzling glory of Paradise. This latter, soaring in 
the bright air, tapers its columns, narrows its ogives, refines its 
arches, mounting upward and on in the glory and full light of 
its lofty windows, by radiance of its rosaces, of its stained glass, 
by the gilded stars which flash through arches and vaults that 
once confined the beatified beings and sacred narratives with 
which it is painted from floor to ceiling. Time has no doubt 
undermined them, some of the frescoes are decayed, and their 
azure is tarnished; but the mind easily restores what is lost 
for the eye, and we once more behold their angelic glory as it 
burst forth six hundred years ago. — Tatne. 

Santa Maria dbgli Angeli 

We now turned to contemplate the noble and spacious 
church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, raised by the feithful over 
the rustic cell where St. Francis loved to oflfer up his devotions. 
Originally it was a solitary cave, where he could retire unseen 
by every human eye, and abandon himself to those raptures 
which history scarce knows whether to denominate madness 
or ecstatic holiness. Here he passed days, nay, even weeks, 
rapt in the contemplation of heavenly beatitude. On this 
spot, therefore, uprose the parent church which now lends so 
noble a feature to the surrounding plain. It is constructed so 
as to enclose his original chapel and cell within its walls. The 
interior is perhaps too bare, from the excessive whiteness and 
simplicity of the massive pillars ; but its size is commanding, 
and a noble dome rises in the centre. The present building 
is modem, the original church having been almost entirely de- 
stroyed in 1832 by an earthquake ; which, however, respected 
the altar and cell of St Francis — a circumstance his followers of 
course attribute to a miracle. That more sacred portion of the 
church is railed off and locked up. While waiting for the 
sacris/ano, who was at dinner, I again fell a victim to some 
straggling beggars in the church ; especially to a woman in the 
pretty Romagnesque costume, who pulled my cloak so persever- 
ingly I was forced into attention. She informed me that, at 
the grand annual festa, ten or twelve thousand persons are 
frequently present, drawn from all the surrounding country by 
enthusiasm for the native saint. So immense, indeed, she 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 321 

said, was the crowd, that persons were frequently suflfocated 
on these anniversaries. What the beggars must be on these 
solemn occasions I leave to the imagination of my readers ; I 
confess myself quite at fault At last the Franciscan brother 
appeared with the keys, and we entered the penetralia behind 
the screen. The deepest devotion was apparent in this man's 
deportment, as well as in that of others who chanced to pass 
us. He never mentioned the saint but in a whisper, at the 
same time raising his cap; and looked evidently with an 
annoyed and jealous eye at our intruding on the sacred pre- 
cincts, heretics and unclean schismatics as we were. Near the 
grand altar is a small recess, where, as I understood, St. Francis 
died : paintings cover the walls, and a lamp bums there per- 
petually. The brother seemed to look on the spot with such 
devotion, I could not trouble him by a too impertinent 
curiosity. But the most interesting portion of the building is 
St Francis' cell, outside the church, in a small court at the end 
of a long stone passage, now converted into a chapel. Under 
the altar there is a deep narrow hole, visible through bars of 
iron, where the saint performed his flagellations, and lay as a 
penance for hours and days without eating or speaking. The 
l^end goes that the instrument of flagellation was the stem 
of a white rose-bush, growing in a little garden hard by (still 
existing), and that aiter his blood had tinged the broken 
branch the tree ever afterwards blossomed of a deep red. — 
Mrs. Elliot 

Le Carceri 

Behind Assisi rises in an immense mass one of the advanced 
bulwarks of the Apennine chain, called Subasio. ... On the 
nearly precipitous face of this mountain, at a distance of about 
three miles and a half from Assisi, is the Santuario delle Careen. 
The walk thither,— or ride if the traveller please, but wheels are 
out of the question — ^is a very pleasing one, commanding dur- 
ing its whole length a noble terrace-view of the beautiful vale 
of Umbria, and the varied outlines of the mountains, which 
enclose it to the south and south-west. A little stream has 
eaten many a deep ravine in the rugged front of the mountain, 
and has deposited soil enough on its sides to favour the growth 
of a small grove of ilex and other trees, which forms a veritable 
oasis amid the bleak and stem nakedness of the vast slope of 
the mountain. This is the site of the little priory of Le 
Carceri. ... An overhanging ledge of rock, harder and offer- 

X 



322 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

ing greater opposition to the action of the weather, than the 
stratum immediately below it, forms a sort of grotto into which 
the buildings of the monastery have been niched ; while three 
or four caverns hollowed out of the rock at different altitudes 
by the action of the little stream at some period, when its 
waters were much more abundant and more violent than they 
are at present, serve for as many little chapels, each more 
intensely holy than the other and each sanctified by some 
special anecdote of the saint's presence. A tiny paved court, 
in front of the main grotto, surrounded by a humble range of 
little cells, now vacant (for the community is not numerous 
enough to occupy them) and a picturesque old covered gate- 
way, approached by an ivy-grown bridge across the ravine, 
completes the dausura^ and supplies the absolutely essential 
means of excluding the outside world, or at least the female 
half of it, from the sacred precincts. At one part of the 
enclosure of the little court, it should be observed, at a place 
where a precipitous fall of the hill-side makes more complete 
enclosure superfluous, the continuity of the dausura is main- 
tained only by a low parapet wall on the brink of the precipice, 
thus admitting air and sunshine into the court, and affoi^ing 
the inmates a view over the lovely valley. In the middle of 
this court was a picturesque well, with its little antique copper 
bucket, full of the beautiful cool and clear water of the spring 
below.— 7! A. TroUope, 

LA VERNA 

Nel crudo sasso infra Tever ed Amo 

Da Christo prese V ultimo sigillo ; 
Che le sue membra due anne portarao. — Dante, 

This singular convent which stands on the cliff of a lofty 
Apennine, was built by Saint Francis himself, and is celebrated 
for the miracle which the motto records. Here reigns all the 
terrible of nature : a rocky mountain, a ruin of the elements, 
broken, sawn and piled in sublime confusion ; precipices 
crowned with old, gloomy visionary woods ; black chasms in 
the rock where curiosity shudders to look down; haunted 
caverns sanctified by miraculous crosses ; long excavated stairs 
that restore you to daylight. . . . 

On entering the chapel of the Stigmata we caught die 
religion of the place ; we knelt round the rail, and gazed with 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 323 

a kind of local devotion at the holy spot where St Francis 
received the five wounds of Christ The whole hill is legen- 
dary ground.^ — Forsyth. 

SIENA 

There are many playne brick towers erected for defence 
when this was a free state. The highest is called the Mangio^ 
standing at the foote of the Piazza, which we went first to see 
after our arrival. At the entrance of this tower is a Chapel, 
open towards the Piazza, of marble well adom'd with sculpture. 

On the other side is the Signoria, or Court of Justice, well 
built a la modema of brick \ indeed the bricks of Sienna are 
so well made that they look almost as well as porphyrie 
itselfe, having a kind of natural polish. 

In the Senate House is a very faire halle where they some- 
times entertain the people with publiq shews and operas as 
they call them. Towards the left are the statues of Romulus 
and Remus with the Wolf, all of brasse, plac'd on a columne 
of ophite stone which they report was brought from the 
renowned Ephesian Temple. These ensignes b^g the armes 
of the towne, are set up in divers of the streetes and publiq 
wayes both within and far without the citty. 

The Piazza compasses the faciata of the Court and Chapel, 
and being made with descending steps, much resembles the 
figure of an escalop shell. The white ranges of pavement 
intermix'd with the excellent bricks above mentioned, with 
which the town is generally well-paved, render it very clean. 
About this market-place (for so it is) are many faire palaces, 
though not built with excesse of elegance. There stands an 
Arch the worke of Baltazar di Sienna, built with wonderfuU 

^ Laverna (north-east of Arezzo) is, except for the wonderful Delia 
Robboas, mainly of interest for the Stigmata of St Francis. It has been 
described by Eustace, and latterly Mr. Montgomery Carmichael. We now 
trend back to the west, to Siena. Many travellers, however, went from 
Assisi to Rome by the road leading through Foligno, Spoleto, and Temi. 
The Earl of Perth describes the plam of Foligno as ** a delightful valley . . . 
the trees set regularly, full of vmes and silk, the ground filled either with 
clover in flower or wheat, the river Qitumnus of the ancients and brooks 
winding through the valley and enriching it." Shelley calls Spoleto *' the 
most romantic dty I ever saw. There is here an acjueduct of astonishing 
elevation, which unites two rocky mountains — there is the path of a torrent 
below." He also describes the cataract of Temi. The famous palace of 
Caprarola nearer Rome was seen by Montaigne, who writes of it in much 
the same terms as Lassels does of Pratolino. 



324 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

ingenuity so that it is not easy to conceive how it is supported, 
yet it has some imperceptible contignations which do not 
betray themselves easily to the eye. On the edge of the 
Piazza is a goodly fountaine beautified with statues, the water 
issuing out of the wolves mouths, being the worke of Jacobo 
Quercei, a famous artist There are divers other publiq foun- 
taines in the Citty, of good designe. 

The Sapienza is the University, or rather CoUedg, where 
the High Germans enjoy many particular privileges when they 
addict themselves to the Civil Law. This place has produced 
many excellent scholars, besides those three Popes, Alexander, 
Pius the Ilnd and the Ilird of that name, the learned ^neas 
Sylvius, and both were of the antient house of the PiccolominL 

The chiefe streete is called Strada Romana, in which Pius 
the Ilnd has built a most stately Palace of square stone with 
an incomparable portico joyning neere to it. The town is 
com'anded by a Castle which hath four bastions and a garison 
of souldiers. Neere it is a List to ride horses in, much 
frequented by gallants in summer. 

Not far from hence is the Church and Convent o( the 
Dominicans, where in the Chapel of St. Catherine of Sienna ^ 
they shew her head, the rest of her body being translated to 
Rome. The Domo or Cathedral, both without and within, 
is of large square stones of black and white marble polish'd, 
of inexpressible beauty, as is the front adom'd with sculpture 
and rare statues. In the middle is a stately cupola and two 
columns of sundry streaked coloured marble. About the body 
of the Church on a cornice within, are inserted the heads of 
all the Popes. The pulpit is beautified with marble figures, a 
piece of exquisite worke ; but what exceeds all description is 
the pavement, where (besides the various emblemes and other 
figures in the nave) the quire is wrought with the History of 
the Bible, so artificially expressed in the natural colours of the 
marbles that few pictures exceede it. Here stands a Christo 
rarely cut in marble, and on the large high Altar is a brasen 
vessell of admirable invention and art The organs are ex- 
ceeding sweete and well tun'd. On the left side of the altar 
is the Library, where are painted the acts of ^Eneas Sylvius 
and others. — Evelyn, 

^ The house of St Catherine has a series of modern pictures of her life, 
mainly of interest for the fact that such work should still be undertaken. 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 325 

Thb Duomo 

At Siena the great church is one of the finest in Italy. 
The arms of the town is a shield with one half (the upper 
part) white and the lower black, so they have built the church 
without and within of black and white polished marble. . . . 
I saw all the floor uncovered, and it is the curiousest piece of 
mosaique imaginable, and of a new kind, for the pieces that 
compose it are all very great, and they have only white, dark, 
and gray marble ; but the lights and sheadows are done so as 
to please the eye very much. There is a jubb^ of white 
marble for reading the Gospell on, in time of high mass, of 
excellent basso-relievo. In the library (so famous for the 
painting ^) they have church books done by the antient monks, 
admirable for the miniatures in them.— /afms^ Earl of Perth, 

The Fksta of the Palio' 

The Piazza has assumed the appearance of a Roman 
circus, and is lined with raised benches up to the first floors 
of the palaces, save on one side where the ground descends 
and mattresses cover the walls. It is the race of the Falia — 
games held annually, and identified from the earliest times 
with Siena. During the Spanish rule they saw fit to alter the 
old fashion of the chariot-race, and inaugurated buU-fights ; 
then the bull-fights lapsed into bufialo-fights, and finally 

^ We are not in accord with the modem opinion which sets down 
Pintnrricdo as a mere journeyman. Considering the large scale of the 
decorations of the library — ^hostile to extreme delicacy of treatment like 
that of the Cambio at Pemgia — we doubt if there is any handsomer room 
in Italy except those in the Vatican. Raphael, who worked with Pintur- 
ricdo at Sienna, must have been considerably aided by his example. In 
the library is the antique statue, it may be remarked, of the Thru 
Graces of which his pen-drawing is extant, and which influenced his sense 
of form considerably. There is a cast of the Pisano pulpit in South Ken- 
sington Museum, we have not given a length]^ account of the cathedral 
itself, because, compared with Pisa or Florence, it has alwavs left us some- 
what cold. The Italian -Gothic decoration of the cathedral and the piazza 
all seem to us mannered, and lacking in the native Italian sense of pro- 
portion. The town itself, with its windows with Spanish gratings, and 
Its character as the largest hill-town in Italy, is of great interest. 

' We prefer to give this admirable account of the unique survival of an 
old festival, to giving anything about Sienese art The art of the town has 
its own interest for the speciuist, but its particular characteristics are not 
easily described, are not noted by our travellers, and Sodoma is hardly 
mentioned by them. The best account of Sienese art b to be found in 
Lord Lindsay. 



326 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

settled down to what we are now about to see — ^horse-races. 
The city, from the earliest days, has been divided into 
cantradt^ or parishes. Each canirada has its special church, 
generally of great antiquity, and each contrada is named after 
some animal or natural object, these names being symbolical 
of certain trades or customs. There is the wolf, giraffe, owl, 
snail, tower, goose, tortoise — in all seventeen. Each has its 
colours, heralds, pages, music, flags, all the mediaeval para- 
phernalia of republican subdivision. . . . 

Each contrada runs a horse at the PaliOy ridden by a 
fantino wearing the colours of the parish \ and this horse and 
this fantino are the incarnation of the honour and glory, evil 
and good passions, of its contrada. The enthusiasm is frantic, 
and the betting desperate. 

This is Wednesday, the i6th August, and we are glad it is 
come, for there have been rehearsals for four days, twice every 
day, and the din has been deafening. According to custom, 
flags have been tossed each day as high as the upper windows, 
in a kind of quaint dance or triumph, very gracefully executed 
by the pages of the contrade. Then, too, are drums beaten 
and trumpets sounded within each palace cortUe^ to remind the 
noble marquis or my lord count — each of whom is "protector " 
of some contrade — that the PaUo is at hand, and to intimate 
that a little ready cash will be joyfully received for the purchase 
of a swift and likely horse (an intimation the noble in question 
is very careful to comply with, if he desires to live peaceably 
at Siena). 

We are awakened to-day by the great bell of the Mangia 
tower and a complication of military music, approaching as 
nearly as possible to the confusion of Babel. Later come 
huge bouquets, borne by four pages in full mediaeval costume 
of rich satin, wearing plumed hats, and accompanied by 
drums. These bouquets are sent as acknowledgments to 
those nobles who have contributed to the Palio. llie more 
popular the man, the larger and choicer the bouquet, which is 
always accepted with much ceremony. 

At six o'clock, when the broiling August sun had some- 
what worn itself out, a large company assembled on the 
great stone balcony of the Chigi Palace, every window 
on the immense fa9ade being decorated with magnificent 
red and yellow damask. All round the Piazza these gay 
trappings marked the lines of the mndows, where in each feudal 
palace stood the living representatives of many historic names. 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 32? 

An enormous crowd, some thirty thousand in number, 
gradually fills the Piazza, chattering, quarrelling, laughing, 
screaming. Every seat in the rais^ amphitheatre is soon 
taken ; and the palace walls are lined as it were with humanity 
half-way up. . . . Bells ring incessantly — the great Mangia 
bell, the audibly beating heart of the city, in long single 
strokes. The thirty thousand people become impatient ; and 
the hoary palace and the big clock, its nedier eye well turned 
on, keep ward over alL A cannon sounds, and from the Via 
Casato slowly emerges the procession — ^the first act in this 
new-old racing-card. The "Wave" contrada comes first — 
four flag-bearers and four pages in middle-age costume, red 
and white, the flag-bearers performing as they advance the 
gioco (game) of the flags ; quaint and graceful movements, 
such as you may see figured in Monstrelet ; the fantino^ or 
jockey, on an unsaddled horse ; the racer, on which he is to 
ride by-and-by following, led by a page ; in all ten different 
attendants for each contrada. The fantino always wears a 
striped surcoat, of the two colours of his contrada^ with its 
symbolic image embroidered on his back in gold. Last of all 
comes the carrocdolo, embodying the visible republic, that 
formerly accompanied the troops to battle, and which, if taken 
or damaged, caused a terrible reproach and shame, such as 
the death of a great sovereign would now occasion. It is to 
our cynical eyes but a lumbering old cart, square and awkward, 
on which are grouped the flags of all the contradein a fraternal 
union that never exists elsewhere. 

Military bands and soldiers follow, exciting the populace 
to madness, who frantically clap their hands. ^1 these 
dramatis persona, including the carrocciolOy group themselves 
on an estrade in front of the public palace, and dispose them- 
selves leisurely for enjoyment 

If darkness can be felt, surely silence may, and we all felt 
the pause when every man and every woman drew their 
breath. Again the cannon thunders, and gaily trotting out 
from under the dark palace gateway, fifteen little horses with 
fifteen party-coloured riders appear, and place themselves 
before a rope stretched across the course — a very necessary 
precaution, I assure you, for last year the horses pressed 
against and broke the cord with their chests (and a strong 
cord too), and floored five men and three horses dead in a 
heap on die stones. 

Now they are marshalled at the rope by a middle-aged 



328 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

gentleman in full evening dress — a queer contrast to the 
mediaeval jockeys. He shows extraordinary courage in 
placing the horses and dragooning the riders. He gives the 
signal like children — uno^ due^ trl^ e via /—drops his official 
staff, and jumps aside with what speed he can for the dear 
life. They are off like the vrind, round the first comer, on to 
the murderous lamp-post, down the descent — whish ! See, 
that horse has hugged the corner, rushed down the hill, and 
is safe. But here, look ! this second rider is hurled off against 
the mattresses lining the house-walls at the fatal comer, or his 
brains would have been infallibly dashed out on the pave- 
ment He falls, but thanks to this protection, is up again, 
bewildered, but still holding the reins, and so jumps into the 
saddle, and rides away. Two others just escape ; and two 
provoking horses won't run. Many are thrown; one horse 
bolts up a street Three times they rush round the Piazza, at 
a risk and with a speed horrible to behold ; and each time the 
ranks are thinner. They ride well, but against all rule, for 
they belabour each other's heads as much as their horses' 
sides — very uneducated and medieval jockeys ! Down hill — 
up again — shelter-skelter — ^horses without riders racing also for 
the fun ! The dmm sounds, and it is all over, and the Oca 
(the goose) has won ; and every one knew the Oca would win, 
because it was the best horse ; and a howU a shriek of exulta- 
tion, comes up from the crowd, which separates and opens 
like the bursting of a dammed-up river. 

Then the Oca horse is seized by, at the very least, thirty 
men and boys, and ih^fantino by as many more, who lift him 
from his unsaddled horse ; and he and the horse are kissed, 
and hugged, and patted, and rejoiced over, and led, then and 
there, to the chapel at the bottom of the Mangia tower, where 
the Madonna stands on the altar, in a forest of flowers, un- 
covered in honour of the day. And so, surging up and down 
among the crowd, man and horse disappear down an alley, to 
reappear at the church of their own contraduy where the priest 
receives and blesses them both, man and beast, and will hang 
up the palio (or banner) in the sacristy, with the date in gold 
letters, as a cosa di devozionc, — Mrs, Elliot 



FLORENCE, PERUGIA, TOWNS TO ORVIETO 329 

ORVIETO 

The FA9ADE OF THE Cathedral 

Modern sculpture can show nothing which, in variety of 
imagination and liveliness of rendering, excels these works 
executed five centuries and a half ago. On the four piers, 
each of which is about twenty-five feet high by sixteen feet in 
width, the spiritual history of the human race, according to 
the scriptural view, is sculptured in direct or typical repre- 
sentations. The first is occupied with bas-reliefs which set 
forth the Creation and the Fall of Man, and the two great 
consequences of the Fall, Sin and Labour. On the next pier 
are sculptured with great fullness and variety, and not always 
with plain meaning, some of the prophetic visions and historic 
events in which the Future Redemption of the world was seen 
or prefigured by the eye of faith, or which awakened longings 
for the coming of the Messiah. On the third is represented 
the Advent, the Life and Death of the Saviour, at once the 
reconciling of God and man and the fulfilment of prophecy. 
And on the fourth is the completion of the things of the spirit, 
in the Resurrection, the Last Judgment, Heaven and Hell. 
Thus were the great facts of his religious creed set before the 
eyes of him who approached the church, about to pass over 
its threshold from the outer world. Every eye could read the 
story on the wall ; and though few might comprehend the full 
extent of its meaning, and few enter into sympathy with the 
imagination of the artist, yet the inspiration of faith had given 
such power to the work, that none could behold it without 
receiving some measure of its spirit. — C JS, Norton, 

LUCA SlGNORELLI^ 

While the priest sings, and the people pray to the dance- 
music of the organ, let us take a quiet seat unseen, and picture 
to our minds how the chapel looked when Angelico and 
Signorelli stood before its plastered walls, and thought the 
thoughts with which they covered them. Four centuries have 
gone by since those walls were white and even to their 
brushes ; and now you scarce can see the golden aureoles of 

' Vasari tells us that he is not surprised that " the works of Luca were 
ever highly extolled by Michelagnolo," who has imitated some of these 
conceptions in the Sistine Chapel. 



330 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

saints, the vast wings of the angels, and the flowing robes of 
prophets through the gloom. Angelico came first, in monk's 
dress, kneeling before he climbed the scaffold to paint the 
angry judge, the Virgin crowned, the white-robed army of the 
Mart3rrs, and the glorious company of the Apostles. These 
he placed upon the roof, expectant of the Judgment Then 
he passed away, and Luca Signordli, the rich man who "lived 
splendidly and loved to dress himself in noble clothes,'* the 
liberal and courteous gentleman, took his place upon the 
scaffold. For all the worldliness of his attire and the 
worldliness of his living, his brain teemed with stem and 
terrible thoughts. He searched the secrets of sin and of the 
grave, of destruction and of resurrection, of heaven and hell. 
All these he has painted on the walls beneath the saints of 
Fra Angelico. First come the troubles of the last days, the 
preaching of Antichrist and the confusion of the wicked. In 
the next compartment we see the Resurrection from the tomb, 
and side by side with that is painted Hell. Paradise occupies 
another portion of the chapel On each side of the window, 
beneath the Christ of Fra Angelico, are delineated scenes 
from the Judgment A wilderness of arabesques, enclosing 
medallion portraits of poets and chiaroscuro episodes selected 
from Dante and Ovid, occupies the lower portions of the 
chapel walls beneath the great subjects enumerated above; 
and here Signorelli has given free rein to his fancy and his 
mastery over anatomical design, accumulating naked human 
figures in the most fantastic and audacious variety of pose.^ — 
J, A. Symonds. 

^ Forsyth epitomises the towns near Orvietoand on the road to Rome as 
follows : " Acquapendente broke fresh upon us, surrounded with ancient 
oaks, and terraces clad in the p;reens of a second spring, and hanging 
vineyards, and cascades and cliffs, and grottoes, screened with pensile 
foliage. Then the Lake of Bolsena expanding at San Lorenzo displayed 
its islands and castellated cliffs, and banks crowned with inviolate woods, 
and ruins built upon ruins, Bolsena mouldering on Volsinii." To continue 
with Eveljm, next is Montefiascone, " heretofore Falemum "... with 
its Horatian memories, its view of Soracte, and the story of the 
Dutch bishop who drank its wine. "From hence," continues Evdyn, 
" we travel a plain and {pleasant champain to Viterbo, which presents itself 
with much state afiar off, in regard of her many lofty pinnacles and towers.*' 
Here is the fiimous Yxtxk of Sebastiano del Piombo, designed by Michael 
Angelo. 



ROME 



THE APPROACH TO ROME 

We set out in the dark. MomiDg dawned over the Lago 
di Vico ; its waters of a deep ultramarine blue, and its sur- 
rounding forests catching the rays of the rising sun. It was 
in vain I looked for the cupola of St. Peter's upon descending 
the mountains beyond Viterbo. Nothing but a sea of vapours 
was visible. 

At length they rolled away, and the spacious plains began 
to show themselves, in which the most warlike of nations 
reared their seat of empire. On the left, afar off, rises the 
rugged chain of Apennines, and on the other side, a shining 
expanse of ocean terminates the view. It was upon this vast 
surface so many illustrious actions were performed, and I 
know not where a mighty people could have chosen a grander 
theatre. Here was space for the march of armies, and verge 
enough for encampments. Levels for martial games, and 
room for that variety of roads and causeways that led from 
the capital to Ostia. How many triumphant legions have 
trodden these pavements ! how many captive kings ! What 
throngs of cars and chariots once glittered on their surface ! 
savage animals dragged from the interior of Africa ; and the 
ambassadors of Indian princes, followed by their exotic train, 
hastening to implore the favour of the senate 1 

During many ages, this eminence commanded almost 
every day such illustrious scenes ; but all are vanished : the 
splendid tumult is passed away; silence and desolation re- 
main. Dreary flats thinly scattered over with ilex, and barren 
hillocks crowned by solitary towers, were the only objects we 
perceived for several miles. Now and then we passed a few 
black ill-favoured sheep feeding by the wayside, near a 
ruined sepulchre, just such animals as an ancient would 
have sacnficed to the Manes. Sometimes we crossed a 
brook, whose ripplings were the only sounds which broke 

33X 



332 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

the general stillness, and observed the shepherds' huts on 
its banks, propped up with broken pedestals and marble 
friezes. . . . Heath and furze were the sole vegetation which 
covers this endless wilderness. Every slope is strewed with 
the relics of a happier period; trunks of trees, shattered 
columns, cedar beams, helmets of bronze, skulls and coins, 
are frequently dug up together. 

Shall I ever forget the sensations I experienced upon 
slowly descending the hills, and crossing the bridge over 
the Tiber ; when I entered an avenue between terraces and 
ornamented gates of villas, which leads to the Porto del 
Popolo, and beheld the square, the domes, the obelisk, the 
long perspective of streets and palaces opening beyond, all 
glowing with the vivid red of sunset? — Beckford. 

We entered on the Campagna Romana ; an undulating flat 
(as you know), where few people can live; and where, for 
miles and miles, there is nothing to relieve the terrible 
monotony and gloom. Of all kinds of country that could, by 
possibility, lie outside the gates of Rome, this is the aptest 
and fittest burial-ground for the Dead City. So sad, so quiet, 
so sullen ; so secret in its covering up of great masses of ruin, 
and hiding them; so like the waste places into which the 
men possessed with devils used to go and howl, and rend 
themselves, in the old days of Jerusalem. We had to traverse 
thirty miles of this Campagna; and for two-and- twenty we 
went on and on, seeing nothing but now and then a lonely 
house, or a villainous-looking shepherd : with matted hair aU 
over his face, and himself wrapped to the chin in a frowsy- 
brown mantle, tending his sheep. At the end of that distance, 
we stopped to refresh the horses, and to get some lunch, in a 
common malaria-shaken, despondent little public-house, whose 
every inch of wall and beam, inside, was (according to custom) 
painted and decorated in a way so miserable that every room 
looked like the wrong side of another room, and, with its 
wretched imitation of drapery, and lop-sided little daubs of 
lyres, seemed to have been plundered from behind the scenes 
of some travelling circus. 

When we were fairly going off again, we began, in a perfect 
fever, to strain our eyes for Rome ; and when, after another 
mile or two, the Eternal city appeared, at length, in the 
distance ; it looked like — I am half afraid to write the word — 
like LONDON ! ! ! There it lay, under a thick cloud, with 
innumerable towers, and steeples, and roofs of houses, rising 



• ^uBLIC Lid 

t ASTOR. L ' :• 



ROME 333 

up into the sky, and high above them all, one Dome. I 
swear, that keenly as I felt the seeming absurdity of the 
comparison, it was so like London, at that distance, that if 
you could have shown it me, in a glass, I should have taken 
it for nothing else. — Dickens, 



THE ANTIQUITIES 
A General Impression ^ 

The Coliseum is unlike any work of human hands I ever 
saw before. It is of enormous height and circuit, and the 
arches built of massy stones are piled on one another, and 
jut into the blue air, shattered into the forms of overhanging 
rocks. It has been changed by time into the image of an 
amphitheatre of rocky hills overgrown by the wild olive, the 
myrtle, and the fig-tree, and threaded by little paths, which 
wind among its ruined stairs and immeasurable galleries : the 
copsewood overshadows you as you wander through its 
labyrinths, and the wild weeds of this climate of flowers 
bloom under your feet The arena is covered with grass, and 
pierces, like the skirts of a natural plain, the chasms of the 
broken arches around. But a small part of the exterior 
circumference remains — it is exquisitely light and beautiful; 
and the effect of the perfection of its architecture, adorned 
with ranges of Corinthian pilasters, supporting a bold cornice, 
is such as to diminish the effect of its greatness. The interior 
is all ruin. I can scarcely believe that when encrusted with 
Dorian marble and ornamented by columns of Egyptian granite, 
its effect could have been so sublime and so impressive as in 
its present state. It is open to the sky, and it was the clear 
and sunny weather of the end of November in this climate 
when we visited it, day after day. ... 

The Forum is a plain in the midst of Rome, a kind of 
desert full of heaps of stones and pits ; and though so near 
the habitations of men, is the most desolate place you can 
conceive. The ruins of temples stand in and around it, 
shattered columns and ranges of others complete, supporting 
cornices of exquisite workmanship, and vast vaults of shattered 
domes distinct with regular compartments, once filled with 

' Shelley's account, it need hardly be said, was written when very 
little had been done in the way of excavation ; but be saw .Rome as the 
travellers had seen it for three hundred years. 



334 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

sculptures of ivory or brass. The temples of Jupiter, and 
Concord, and Peace, and the Sun, and the Moon, and Vesta, 
are all within a short distance of this spot Behold the wrecks 
of what a great nation once dedicated to the abstractions of 
the mind ! Rome is a city, as it were, of the dead, or rather 
of those who cannot die, and who survive the puny generations 
which inhabit and pass over the spot which they have made 
sacred to eternity. In Rome, at least in the first enthusiasm 
of your recognition of ancient time, you see nothing of the 
Italians. The nature of the city assists the delusion, for its 
vast and antique walls describe a circumference of sixteen 
miles, and thus the population is thinly scattered over this 
space, nearly as great as London. Wide wild fields are 
enclosed within it, and there are grassy lanes and copses 
winding among the ruins, and a great green hill, lonely and 
bare, which overhangs the Tiber. The gardens of the modem 
palaces are like wild woods of cedar, and cypress, and pine, 
and the neglected walks are overgrown with weeds. . . . 



The next most considerable relic of antiquity, considered 
as a ruin, is the Thermse of Caracalla. These consist of six 
enormous chambers, above 200 feet in height, and each 
enclosing a vast space like that of a field. There are, in 
addition, a number of towers and labyrinthine recesses, 
hidden and woven over by the wild growth of weeds and 
ivy. Never was any desolation more sublime and lovely. 
The perpendicular wall of ruin is cloven into steep ravines 
filled up with flowering shrubs, whose thick twisted roots are 
knotted in the rifts of the stones. At every stop the aerial 
pinnacles of shattered stone group into new combinations of 
effect, and tower above the lofty yet level walls, as the distant 
mountains change their aspect to one travelling rapidly along 
the plain. The perpendicular walls resemble nothing more 
than that cliff of Bisham wood, that is overgrown with wood, 
and yet is stony and precipitous — ^you know the one I mean ; 
not the chalk-pit, but the spot that has the pretty copse of 

fir-trees and privet-bushes at its base, and where H and I 

scrambled up, and you, to my infinite discontent, would go 
home. These walls surround green and level spaces of lawn, 
on which some elms have grown, and which are interspersed 
towards their skirts by masses of the £Eillen ruin, overtwined 



ROME 33S 

with the broad leaves of the creeping weeds. The blue sky 
canopies it, and is as the everlasting roof of these enormous 
halls. 

But the most interesting effect remains. In one of the 
buttresses, that supports an immense and lofty arch, '' which 
bridges the very winds of heaven," are the crumbling remains 
of an antique winding staircase, whose sides are open in many 
places to the precipice. This you ascend, and arrive on the 
summit of these piles. There grow on every side thick 
entangled wildernesses of myrtle, and the myrletus, and bay, 
and the flowering laurestinus, whose white blossoms are just 
developed, the white fig, and a thousand nameless plants sown 
by the wandering winds. These woods are intersected on 
every side by paths, like sheep-tracks through the copse-wood 
of steep mountains, which wind to every part of the immense 
labyrinth. From the midst rise those pinnacles and masses, 
themselves like mountains, which have been seen from below. 
In one place you wind along a narrow strip of weed-grown 
ruin ; on one side is the immensity of earth and sky, on the 
other a narrow chasm, which is bounded by an arch of 
enormous size, fringed by the many-coloured foliage and 
blossoms, and supporting a lofty and irregular pyramid, over- 
grown like itself with the all-prevailing vegetation. Around 
rise other crags and other peaks, all arrayed, and the deformity 
of their vast desolation softened down, by the undecaying 
investiture of nature. Come to Rome. It is a scene by 
which expression is overpowered ; which words cannot convey. 
Still further, winding up one half of the shattered pyramids, by 
the path through the blooming copse-wood, you come to a 
little mossy lawn, surrounded by the wild shrubs ; it is over- 
grown with anemonies, wall-flowers, and violets, whose stalks 
pierce the starry moss, and with radiant blue flowers, whose 
names I know not, and which scatter through the air the 
divinest odour, which, as you recline under the shade of the 
ruin, produces sensations of voluptuous faintness, like the 
combinations of sweet music. The paths still wind on, 
threading the perplexed windings, other labyrinths, other 
lawns, and deep dells of wood, and lofty rocks, and terrific 
chasms. When I tell you that these ruins cover several acres, 
and that the paths above penetrate at least half their extent, 
your imagination will fill up all that I am unable to express of 
this astonishing scene. 



336 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



II 

I speak of these things not in the order in which I visited 
them, but in that of the impression which they made on me, or 
perhaps chance directs. The ruins of the ancient Forum are 
so far fortunate that they have not been walled up in the 
modem city. They stand in an open, lonesome place» 
bounded on one side by the modern city, and the other by 
the Palatine Mount, covered with shapeless masses of ruin. 
The tourists tell you all about these things, and I am afraid of 
stumbling on their language when I enumerate what is so well 
known. There remain eight granite columns of the Ionic 
order, with their entablature, of the temple of Concord, 
founded by Camillus. I fear that the immense expanse 
demanded by these columns forbids us to hope that they are 
the remains of any edifice dedicated by that most perfect and 
virtuous of men. It is supposed to have been repaired under 
the Eastern Emperors ; alas, what a contrast of recollections ! 
Near them stand those Corinthian fluted columns, which 
supported the angle of a temple ; the architrave and entabla- 
ture are worked with delicate sculpture. Beyond, to the 
south, is another solitary column; and still more distant, 
three more, supporting the wreck of an entablature. De- 
scending from the Capitol to the Forum, is the triumphal 
arch of Septimius Severus, less perfect than that of Con- 
stantine, though from its proportions and magnitude a most 
impressive monument That of Constantine, or rather of 
Titus (for the relief and sculpture, and even the colossal 
images of Dacian captives, were torn by a decree of the senate 
from an arch dedicated to the latter, to adorn that of this 
stupid and wicked monster, Constantine, one of whose chief 
merits consists in establishing a religion, the destroyer of 
those arts which would have rendered so base a spoliation 
unnecessary), is the most perfect. It is an admirable work of 
art. It is built of the finest marble, and the outline of the 
reliefs is in many parts as perfect as if just finished. Four 
Corinthian fluted columns support, on each side, a bold entabla- 
ture, whose bases are loaded with reliefs of captives in every 
attitude of humiliation and slavery. The compartments above 
express, in bolder relief, the enjoyment of success; the 
conqueror on his throne, or in his chariot, or nodding over 
the crushed multitudes, who writhe under his horses' hoofs, 



ROME 337 

as those below express the torture and abjectness of defeat. 
There are three arches, whose roofs are panneled with fret- 
workf and their sides adorned with similar reliefs. The 
keystone of these arches is supported each by two winged 
figures of Victory, whose hair floats on the wind of their own 
speed, and whose arms are outstretched, bearing trophies, as 
if impatient to meet They look, as it were, borne from the 
subject extremities of the earth; on the breath which is the 
exhalation of that battle and desolation, which it is their 
mission to commemorate. Never were monuments so com- 
pletely fitted to the purpose for which they were designed, of 
expressing that mixture of energy and error which is called a 
triumph. 

Ill 

I walk forth in the purple and golden light of an Italian 
evening, and return by star or moonlight, through this scene. 
The elms are just budding, and the warm spring winds bring 
unknown odours, all sweet from the country. I see the radian 
Orion through the mighty columns of the temple of Concord, 
and the mellow fading light softens down the modern buildings 
of the capitol, the only ones that interfere wi)h the sublime 
desolation of the scene. On the steps of the capitol itself, 
stand two colossal statues of Castor and Pollux, each with his 
horse, finely executed, though far inferior to those of Monte 
Cavallo. I ought to have observed that the central arch of 
the triumphal Arch of Titus yet subsists, more perfect in its 
proportions, they say, than any of a later date. This I did 
not remark. The figures of Victory, with unfolded wings, and 
each spurning back a globe with outstretched feet, are, perhaps, 
more beautiful than those on either of the others. Their lips 
are parted : a delicate mode of indicating the fervour of their 
desire to arrive at the destined resting-place, and to express 
the eager respiration of their speed. Indeed, so essential to 
beauty were the forms expressive of the exercise of the im- 
agination and the affections considered by Greek artists, that 
no ideal fi<?ure of antiquity, not destined to some representation 
directly exclusive of such a character, is to be found with 
closed lips. Within this arch are two panneled alto-relievos, 
one representing a train of people bearing in procession the 
instruments of Jewish worship, among which is the holy 
candlestick with seven branches ; on the other, Titus stand- 
ing on a quadriga, with a winged Victory. The grouping 

Y 



338 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

of the horses, and the beauty, correctness, and energy of 
their delineation, is remarkable, though they are much de> 
stroyed. — Shelley. 

The Ancient Capitol 

The Capitol was anciently both a fortress and a sanctuary 
— a fortress surrounded with precipices, bidding defiance to 
all the means of attack employed in ancient times ; a sanctu- 
ary, crowded with altars and temples, the repository of the 
fatal oracles, the seat of the tutelar deities of the empire. 
Romulus began the grand work, by erecting the temple of 
Jupiter Feretrius; Tarquinius Priscus, Servius Tullius, and 
Tarquinius Superbus continued, and the consul Horatius 
Pulvillus, a few years after the expulsion of the kings, com- 
pleted it, with a solidity and magnificence, says Tacitus, 
which the riches of succ^ding ages might adorn, but could 
not increase. It was burned during the civil wars between 
Marius and Sylla, and rebuilt shortly after ; but again de- 
stroyed by fire in the dreadful contest that took place in 
the very Torum itself, and on the sides of the Capitoline 
Mount, between the partisans of Vitellius and Vespasiaa 
This event Tacitus laments, with the spirit and indignation 
of a Roman, as the greatest disaster that had ever be&llen 
the city. And, indeed, if we consider that the public archives, 
and of course the most valuable records of its history, were 
deposited there, we must allow that the catastrophe was pecu- 
liarly unfortunate, not to Rome only, but to the world at 
large. 

However, the Capitol rose once more from its ashes with 
redoubled splendour, and received, from the munificence of 
Vespasian, and of Domitian, his son, its last and most glorious 
embellishments. The edifices were probably, in sight and 
destination, nearly the same as before the conflagration ; but 
more attention was paid to sjrmmetry, to costliness, and, above 
all, to grandeur and magnificence. The northern entrance 
led under a triumphal arch to the centre of the hill, and to 
the sacred grove, the asylum opened by Romulus, and almost 
the cradle of Roman power. On the right, on the eastern 
summit, stood the temple of Jupiter Feretrius. On the left, 
on the western summit, was that of Jupiter Custos (Jupiter 
the Guardian) \ near each of these temples were the &xies of 
inferior Divinities, that of Fortune, and that of Fides (Fide- 



. ROME 339 

lity), alluded to by Cicera In the midst, to crown the 
pyramid formed by such an assemblage of majestic edifices, 
rose the residence of the guardian of the empire, the temple of 
Jupiter Capitolinus, on a hundred steps, supported by a hun- 
dred pillars, adorned with all the refinements of art, and 
blazing with the plunder of the world. In the centre of the 
temple, with Juno on his left, and Minerva on his right 
side, the Thunderer sat on a throne of gold, grasping the 
lightning in one hand, and in the other wielding the sceptre 
of the universe. 

Hither the consuls were conducted by the senate, to assume 
the military dress, and to implore the favour of the gods 
before they marched to battle. Hither the victorious generals 
used to repair in triumph, in order to suspend the spoils 
of conquered nations, to present captive monarchs, and to 
offer up hecatombs to Tarpeian Jove. Here, in cases of 
danger and distress, the senate was assembled, and the magis- 
trates convened to deliberate in the presence, and under the 
immediate influence, of the tutelar gods of Rome. Here the 
laws were exhibited to public inspection, as if under the 
sanction of the divinity ; and here also they were deposited, as 
if entrusted to his guardian care. Hither Cicero turned his 
hands and eyes, when he closed his first oration against 
Catiline, with that noble address to Jupiter, presiding in the 
Capitol over the destinies of the empire, and dooming its 
enemies to destruction. 

In the midst of these magnificent structures, of this 
wonderful display of art and opulence, stood for ages the 
humble straw-roofed palace of Romulus, a monument of 
primitive simplicity, dear and venerable in the eyes of the 
Romans. — Eustace, 

The Colosseum » 

It is no fiction, but plain, sober, honest truth, to say : so 
suggestive and distinct is it at this hour : that, for a moment — 

^ Nothing delighted the Dineteenth-century travellers more than the 
Colosseum by moonlight. Byron sane it in Manfred^ and Goethe has 
written : '* Of the beauty of a walk through Rome by moonlight it is 
imiA)ssible to form a conception, without having witnessed it. AU single 
objects are swallowed up by the great masses of light and shade, and 
nothing but grand and general outlines present themselves to the eye. 
For three several days we have enjoyed to the full the brightest and 
most glorious of nights. Peculiarly beautiful at such a time is the 



340 THE BOOK OF ITALI4N TRAVEL 

actually in passing in — ^they who will, may have the whole 
great pile before them, as it used to be, with thousands of 
eager faces staring down into the arena, and such a whirl of 
strife, and blood, and dust going on there, as no language can 
describe. Its solitude, its awful beauty, and its utter desolation, 
strike upon the stranger the next moment, like a softened 
sorrow ; and never in his life, perhaps, will he be so moved and 
overcome by any sight, not immediately connected with his 
own affections and adOflictions. 

To see it crumbling there, an inch a year; its walls and 
arches overgrown with green ; its corridors open to the day ; 
the long grass growing in its porches j young trees of yester- 
day, springing up on its ragged parapets, and bearing fruit : 
chance produce of the seeds dropped there by the birds who 
build their nests within its chinks and crannies ; to see its Pit 
of Fight filled up with earth, and the peaceful Cross planted in 
the centre ; to climb into its upper halls, and look down on 
ruin, ruin, ruin, all about it ; the triumphal arches of Con- 
stantine, Septimius Severus, and Titus ; the Roman Forum ; 
the Palace of the Caesars ; the temples of the old religion, 
fallen down and gone; is to see the ghost of old Rome, 
wicked wonderful old city, haunting the very ground on which 
its people trod. It is the most impressive, the most stately, 
the most solemn, grand, majestic, mournful sight, conceivable. 
Never, in its bloodiest prime, can the sight of the gigantic 
Coliseum, full and running over with the lustiest life, have 
moved one heart, as it must move all who look upon it now, a 
ruin. God be thanked : a ruin ! — Dickens. 

The Forum 

It is an awful and a solemn thing to visit the valley of the 
Forum by night ; the jdarkness of ages and the dimness of 
decay are imaged by the heavy gloom that then hangs around 
these mysterious precincts — precincts haunted by the mighty 

Coliseum. At night it is always closed ; a hermit dwells in a little shrine 
within its range, and beggars of all kinds nestle beneath its crumbling 
arches : the latter had lit a fire on the arena, and a gentle wind bore down 
the smoke to the ground, so that the lower portion of the ruins was quite 
hid by it, while above the vast walls stood out in deeper darkness before 
the eye. As we stopped at the gate to contemplate the scene through the 
iron gratings, the moon shone brightly in the heavens above. Presently 
the smoke found its way up the sides, and through every chink and 
opening, while the moon lit it up like a cloud." 



ROME 341 

dead, whose shadows seem yet to linger about the habitations 
they loved so well when living. Yonder stood that venerable 
Forum, the hearth and home of early as of imperial Rome ; 
the market, the exchange, the judgment-seat, the promenade, 
the parliament, where lived, and moved, and loved and fought 
that iron nation predestined to possess the earth, founded (in 
the fabulous days when the world was young, and the gods 
loved " the daughters of men '') by Romulus on the field where 
he waged battle with the Sabine forces. Finding that his 
troops were flying before the enemy, and that no one would 
face about to fight, Romulus knelt down in the midst of this 
terrified soldiers, and lifting up his hands to heaven, prayed 
"Father Jupiter" to defend and rally his people, now in 
extreme peril. Jupiter, it was believed, heard and granted his 
prayer; for the fugitives, struck with sudden reverence for 
their king, turned, re-formed their broken lines, and repulsed 
the advancing Sabines. But the daughters of the Sabines, 
who had previously been forcibly carried off from the Great 
Circus, rushed down from the Aventine between the opposing 
armies, with their infants in their arms, calling now on a 
Roman husband, now on a Sabine father or brother to desist, 
and so stayed the fight by their cries, lamentations, and 
entreaties. Peace was then concluded between the two 
nations, and Tatius, the Sabine king, offered sacrifices and 
joined in eternal friendship with Romulus — burying the 
wrongs done to the Sabine women in the foundations of the 
common Forum. Tarquinius Priscus erected spacious porti- 
coes around it to screen and temper the halls from the sun 
and wind, and built shops for the foreign wares that came 
firom Ostia, Antium, and Etruria : those shops for ever famous 
as the spot where perished the girl Virginia by her father's 
hand. 



I endeavoured to rebuild the fallen walls of the Forum 
such as they afterwards appeared — a vast and noble enclosure 
— ^surroimded by many ranges of marble columns, open arcades, 
and majestic porticoes, stretching away in long lines towards 
the Capitoline Mount Between these stately colonnades 
rose a wall of division, hung, in the time of Caesar, with 
splendid drapery, to shelter the togaed senators, tribunes, and 
patricians, who paced up and down on brilliant mosaic floors, 
or sat in judgment in the senate-house, or gave laws to the 



342 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

universe. Innumerable statues, modelled by the best sculptors 
of Greece and Rome, broke the lines of the pillars, while 
brilliant paintings decorated the internal walls, within whose 
ample enclosure rose three great basilicas — the Optima, the 
^milian, and the Julian, besides the Comitium, where the 
Curiae met. The rostra also stood within the Forum, contain- 
ing the orator's pulpit, where Rome so often hung enchanted 
over the eloquence of Cicero ; where Mark Antony fired the 
populace to revenge "great Caesar's fall," the mutilated body 
lying on a bier exposed before himj where Caius Gracchus 
melted the hearts of his audience ; and where Manlius sought 
to suspend the fatal sentence hanging over him as he pointed 
to the Capitol and bade his countrymen remember how his 
arm alone had sustained it. Close at hand was the tribunal 
where the magistrates sat on ivory chairs, whence came the 
decree of Brutus condemning his own sons to die, and that 
other of Titus Manlius, who preferred his son's death at his 
tribunal rather than, living, know him disobedient to the con- 
sular power, then vested in himself — barbarous rigour, that 
afterwards wrought such grief and woe, when power and 
injustice went hand in hand in Rome 1 Near here grew 
the Ruminalis — that mysterious fig tree whose shade sheltered 
Romulus and Remus while the wolf suckled them. In the 
time of Augustus it was enclosed in a temple. The sanctuary 
of Vesta, with its roof of bronze, stood near the Comitium, 
circular in shape, chaste, and pure in design, where the sacred 
virgins, clad in long white vestments bordered with imperial 
purple, tended the sacred fire that burned under the image of 
the goddess, and guarded the Palladium — a golden shield, on 
whose preservation it was said Rome's existence depended. 
Behind the temple, at the foot of the Palatine, stretches a 
wood of evergreen oaks devoted to silence and repose, where 
the dark branches waved over the tombs of departed vestals, 
whose spirits it was believed passed at once to the delights of 
the Elysian Fields. Under the Palatine Hill, and near the 
shrine of Vesta, a pure fountain of freshest water broke into a 
magnificent marble basin close to the portico of a temple 
dedicated to Castor and Pollux. It was said, and believed, 
that after the battle of Lake Regillus, the great twin brethren, 
mounted on snow-white horses and radiant in celestial beauty, 
suddenly appeared in the Forum, and announced to the 
anxious and expectant multitude the victory gained by their 
fellow-dtizens over the Etruscans. At this fountain they 



ROME 343 

stopped and refreshed their horses, and when asked whence 
they came and by what name men called them, they suddenly 
disappeared. So the Romans raised a temple to their honour 
by the spring where they had rested on mortal earth. 

II 

Where now the moon lights up a barren space, the Gulf of 
Curtius once yawned in the very midst of the Forum, to the 
horror and astonishment of the superstitious senators, who 
judged the omen so awful, that the anger of the gods could 
only be allayed by the sacrifice of what Rome deemed most 
precious — a bold and noble warrior^ armed cap-d-pie, who flung 
himself headlong into the abyss. 

Afterwards Domitian raised, as it were in derision, a 
colossal statue of himself over this spot hallowed by patriotic 
recoUections. Beside it stands the single column of Phocas, 
once crowned by his gilded statue; while, to the right, the 
massive pile of Uie triumphant Arch of Severus flings down 
black shadows on the marble stairs descending from the 
Capitol. 

The Capitol, the heart of Rome, the sanctuary of the 
pagan world, stood forth in my fancy radiant and glorious, 
piled with glittering temples, superb porticoes, and lofty 
arches, the abodes of the gods on earth. Here, amidst 
statues, monuments and columns, rose sumptuous fanes con- 
secrated to Peace, to Vespasian, Jupiter Feretrius and Saturn; 
while crowning the hill and overlooking the Forum, is the 
Tabularium, surrounded by long ranges of open porticoes, 
within whose walls hang recorded, on tables of brass, the 
treaties Rome concluded with friends or enemies. 

Around is an open space called the Intermontium, between 
the rising peaks of the hill, where grew a few shattered time- 
worn oaks, endeared to the plebs by the recollection that 
Romulus made this spot at all times the most sacred and 
inviolable asylum to those who sought the hospitality of his 
new city. All crimes, all treasons safely harboured here I To 
the right, high above the rest, uprose the awful temple of 
Jupiter Capitolinus, at once a fortress and a sanctuary — the 
most venerable and the most gorgeous pile that the imagina- 
tion of man can conceive, adorned with all that art could 
invent, and blazing with the plunder of the world. Here 
came the consuls to assume tlie military dress, and to ofier 



344 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

sacrifices before proceeding to battle. Here, in special seasons 
of danger, the senate assembled before the statue of the god 
who presided, as it were, over the destinies of the people ; 
here the tables of the law were displayed to the citizens, and 
the most splendid religious rites performed. The facade, 
turned towards the south and east, consisted of a gigantic 
portico supported by six ranges of columns ; statues of gilt 
bronze alternated with the pillars, on which were suspended 
countless trophies of victory, magnificent shields and plates of 
gold, glittering arms won from barbarian enemies, togedier with 
swords, axes, and shields worn by generals who had returned 
victorious to Rome, and who had enjoyed the honours of a 
military triumph. Statues of gilt bronze were ranged along 
the roof, covered in with tiles of gilt brass, all save the cupola, 
which was open, disdaining any other roofing than that of the 
eternal heavens. Superb basso-relievi decorated the entabla- 
ture and frieze, and vast colonnades of the most precious 
marbles extended on either side of the central temple, linking 
together two side porticoes of almost equal splendour. That 
to the right was dedicated to Juno ; that to the left to Minerva, 
the wife and daughter of the terrible god who sat enthroned 
within the gilded walls of the central sanctuary, crowned with 
a golden diadem, wearing a toga of purple^ and holding in his 
hand the awful thunder destined to destroy the enemies of 
imperial Rome. Jupiter, "supremely great and good," had 
never, according to the Romans, condescended to inhabit any 
other earthly abode, and was particularly propitious when 
approached in his great temple on the Capitol, where his 
altars burned with perpetual incense spread by imperial hands, 
and generals, Caesars, kings, and potentates came from the hi 
ends of the earth to offer costly sacrifices and worship. — 
Mrs. Elliot 

The Palatine 

Augustus was the founder of the Palace of the Caesars. 
He comprised within his own habitation the house of Horten- 
sius, of Cicero, and of some other of the victims of that bloody 
proscription which sealed the last Triumvirate. . . . Not satis- 
fied with the splendid dwelling of his predecessor, Tiberius 
built himself a house on the north side of the Palatine, looking 
into the Velabrum. Caligula, though he had the two houses 
of the two preceding emperors, built himself two more ; one 
on the north-east comer of the Palatine, fronting the Capitol» 



ROME 345 

and the other on the Capitoline hill itself; and these he con- 
nected by a bridge thrown across the Forum, which Claudius, 
though not very wise himself, had sense enough to pull down, 
as well as the house on the Capitol. 

Then came Nero, and built himself a house, which he 
called TransitoriOj and burnt it down, and Rome along with 
it ; and erected the Domus Aureaj a palace such as the world 
never saw. Not only was the whole of its interior covered 
with gold and with gems . • . but it was adorned with the 
finest paintings and statues the world could furnish — the most 
exquisite productions of Greek art We read, too, of triple 
porticoes a mile in length; of a circular banqueting room, 
that perpetually turned round night and day, in imitation of 
the motion of the sun; of vaulted ceilings of ivory, which 
opened of themselves and scattered flowers upon the guests, 
and golden pipes that shed over them showers of soft per- 
fumes. Not content with covering the whole of the Palatine 
with his "Golden House," Nero extended its gardens and 
pleasure-grounds over the whole plain south of the Forum, 
and even upon the Esquiline and Caelian hills. The Colos- 
seum occupies the site of the largest of these lakes Nero made 
in his gardens, which Tacitus describes in such glowii^ 
colours. . . . But we must remember that the word locus was 
applied by the Romans to every piece of still water, however 
smalL . . . The principal one . . . was drained to make way 
for the immense circumference of the Flavian Amphitheatre. 
... It is said that Vespasian, at the same time that he 
drained the lake, pulled down all that Nero had erected 
beyond the Palatine, reducing the Imperial Palace to the hill 
that once contained Rome. . . . Domitian began to build up 
what his predecessors had pulled down, and added to the 
palace the Adonea^ or halte and gardens of Adonis, the sur- 
passing splendour of which excited the astonishment even of 
that age of magnificence. This celebrated building was still 
standing in the time of Severus, — Mrs, Eaton, 

Campus Martius 

From the hills we descended to the Campus Martius, in 
the early ages of the Republic an open field devoted to military 
exercises and well calculated for that purpose by its level grassy 
surface, and the neighbourhood of the river winding along 
its border. In process of time some edifices of public utility 



346 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

were erected upon it ; but their number was small during the 
Republic ; while under the Emperors they were increased to 
such a degree, that the Campus Martius became another city 
composed of theatres, porticoes, baths and temples. These 
edifices were not only magnificent in themselves, but sur- 
rounded with groves and walks, and arranged with a due re- 
gard to perspective beauty. Such is the idea which we must 
naturally form of buildings erected by Consuls and Emperors, 
each endeavouring to rival or surpass his predecessor in mag- 
nificence ; and such is the description which Strabo gives of 
the Campus in his time, that is, nearly in the time of its 
greatest glory. This superb theatre of glcmous edifices, when 
beheld from the Janiculum, bordered in front by the Tiber, 
and closed behind by the Capitol, the Viminal, itke Quirinal, 
and the Pincian hills, with temples, palaces and gardens 
lining their sides and swelling from their summits, must have 
formed a picture of astonishing beauty, splendour and variety, 
and have justified the proud appellation so often bestowed on 
Rome of " the temple and abode of the gods." But of all the 
pompous fabrics that formed this assemblage of wonders how 
few remain ! and of the remaining few how small the numbers 
of those which retain any features of their ancient majesty! 
Among these latter can hardly be reckoned Augustus' tomb, the 
vast vaults and substructions of which indeed exist, but its 
pyramidal form and pillars are no more ; or Marcellus' theafare 
half buried under the superstructure raised upon its vaulted 
galleries ; or the portico of Octavia lost with its surviving arch 
and a few shattered pillars in the Pescheria, Of such surviving 
edifices the principal indeed is the Pantheon itself. — Eustace, 

The Pantheon^ 

« 

The square of the Pantheon, or Piazza della Rotonda, is 
adorned with a fountain and an obelisk, and terminated by 
the portico of Agrippa. This noble colonnade consists of a 
double range of Corinthian pillars of red granite. Between 
the middle columns, which are a little farther removed from 
each other than the others, a passage opens to the brazen 
portals which, as they unfold, expose to view a circular hall 
of immense extent, crowned with a lofty dome, and lighted 

^ Michael Angelo made very few changes in converting this temple 
into the church of S. Marid Rotunda. Among the tombs are those of 
Raphael, Annibale Caracci, and of Victor Emmanuel and King Humbert. 



ROME 347 

solely from above. It is paved and lined with marble. Its 
cornice of white marble is supported by sixteen columns and 
as many pilasters of giallo antico (antique yellow) ; in the cir- 
cumference there are eight niches, and between these niches 
are eight altars adorned each with two pillars of less size but 
of the same materials. The niches were anciently occupied 
by statues of the great deities ; the intermediate altars served 
as pedestals for the inferior powers. The proportions of this 
temple are admirable for the effect intended to be produced ; 
its height being equal to its diameter, and its dome not an 
oval but an exact hemisphere. 

Such is the Pantheon, the most noble and perfect specimen 
of Roman art and magnificence that time has spared, or the 
ancients could have wished to transmit to posterity. It has 
served in fact as a lesson and a model to succeeding genera- 
tions ; and to it Constantinople is indebted for Santa Sophia, 
and to it Rome, or rather the worlds owes the unrivalled dome 
of the Vatican. — Eustace. 

The Molb of Hadrian 

The Emperor Hadrian, who delighted in architecture and 
magnificence, determined to rival, or more probably to surpass, 
the splendour of Augustus's tomb, and erected a mausoleum, 
which, from its size and solidity, was called Moles Hadriani 
(Hadrian's Mole).^ As the Campus Martins was already 
crowned with tombs, temples, and theatres, he selected for its 
site a spot on the opposite bank of the river, at the foot of 
the Vatican Mount ; where, on a vast quadrangular platform 
of solid stone, he raised a lofty circular edifice surrounded by 
a Corinthian portico, supported by twenty-four pillars of a 
beautiful kind of white marble tinged with purple. The tholus^ 
or continuation of the inner imll, formed a second story 
adorned with Ionic pilasters ; a dome surmounted by a cone 
of brass crowned the whole fabric, and gave to it the appear- 
ance of a most majestic temple. To increase its splendour, 
four statues occupied the four comers of the platform, twenty- 
four adorned the portico, and occupied the intervals between 
the columns ; an equal number rose above the entablature ; 
and a proportional series occupied the niches of the second 
story between the pilasters. It is superfluous to observe that 
the whole &bric was cased with marble, or that the statues 
^ It afterwards becatne the Casde of St Angelo. 



34« THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

were the works of the best masters ; and it is almost mmeoes- 
sary to add, that this monument was considered as the noblest 
sepulchral edifice ever erected, and one of the proudest orna- 
ments of Rome, even when she shone in all her imperial 
magnificence. 

Yet the glory of this mausoleum was transitory ; its match- 
less beauty claimed in vain the attention of absent emperors ; 
the genius of Hadrian, the manes of the virtuous Antonini, 
names so dear to the Roman world, pleaded in vain for its 
preservation. The hand of time daily defaced its ornaments, 
the zeal of Honorius stripped it of its pillars, and the military 
skill of Belisarius turned it into a temporary fortress. — JSustaa, 

Thb Circus of Caracalla 

This circus, about two miles from the gates of Rome, 
presents such remnants of its ancient walls as enable us to 
form a clear notion of the different parts and arrangements of 
a circus. A considerable portion of the exterior, and in many 
places the vault that supported the seats, remain. The 
foundation of the two obelisks that terminated the spina (a 
sort of separation that ran lengthwise through the circus) and 
formed the goals, still exists. Near the principal goal on one 
side, behind the benches, stands a sent of tower where the 
judges sat. One of the extremities supported a gallery which 
contained a band of musicians, and is flanked by two towers, 
whence the signal for starting was given. Its length is one 
thousand six hundred and two feet, its breadth two hundred 
and sixty : the length of the spina is nine hundred and twenty- 
two. The distance from the career or end, whence they 
started to the first meta or goal, was five hundred and fifty 
feet. There were seven ranges of seats, which contained about 
twenty-seven thousand spectators. As jostling and every 
exertion of skill, strength, or cuiming were allowed, the 
chariots were occasionally overturned, and as the drivers had 
the reins tied round their bodies, several melancholy accidents 
took place. To remove the bodies of charioteers bruised or 
killed in such exertions, a large gate was open in the side 
of the circus near the first meta^ where such accidents were 
likeliest to take place on account of the narrowness of the 
space; and this precaution was necessary, as the ancients 
deemed it a most portentous omen to go through a gate defiled 
by the passage of a dead body. On the end opposite the career 



ROME 349 

was a triumphal arch, or grand gate, through which the 
victorious charioteer drove amidst the shouts and acclamations 
of the spectators. There were originally four sets of drivers, 
named from the colours which they wore — Aldati (White), 
^ussati (Red), Prasini (Green), and Veneii (BlueV To these 
four Domitian added two more, Aurti (Yellow), and Pur- 
^rei (Purple). Each colour drove five rounds with fresh 
horses. There are stables, therefore, close to the circus; 
and in the centre of these stables a circular fabric of at 
least seventy-two feet diameter, with an open space around 
inclosed by a high wall. This building was probably a riding- 
school, and is supposed to have been crowned with a temple. 
— Eustace, 

ISOLA TiBERINA 

The Isola Tiberina, called during the middle ages Isola di 
S. Bartolomeo, the island of S. Bartholomew,^ is situated in 
the middle of the Tiber, a litde below the Ponte Sisto. . . . 
The communication from the city to the Isola and thence to 
the Trastavere is preserved by two bridges, one on, the other 
off the island, the first called the Ponte di Quatro Capi, and 
the second the Ponte S. Bartolomeo. . . . Without troubling 
ourselves with the uncertain causes that led to the island's first 
appearance, ... an event connected with its early history, and 
referred to by Livy, which occurred about 62 years after its 
supposed origin, or 291 years before the Christian era; and 
first led to its being occupied by houses and buildings as it is 
at present, ... is related as follows : 

At the period above stated Rome was visited by a severe 
plague, that ravaged both town and country, to use the 
identical expression of the writer, like a burning pestilence, 
and caused so violent a sensation among the authorities, that 
the Senate determined, after having duly consulted the Sibylline 
books in the Capitol, to despatch an embassy to the celebrated 
god of medicine, Esculapius whose principal temple was in 
the town of ^idaiurus, in the Peloponnesus. The expedition 
was necessarily postponed for a considerable period in conse- 
quence of military operations at that time in progress; but 
eventually, after the priests had made propitiatory sacrifices, 
and the people had offered up a general supplication to the 
deity, it departed. The ship that conveyed the deputation 

^ With a church containing the body of St. Bartholomew deposited, if 
the tradition be accurate, in 938. 



350 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

having arrived at Epidaurus, the high priest of ^Esculapius 
presented to the members of that body as a remedy for the 
contagious distemper that prevailed, a sacred snake or serpent, 
of which creatures there were it appears several kept alive 
in the temple. . . . The Esculapian snake in question 
was safely conveyed on the way homeward across the Mediter- 
ranean and up the Tiber, but in the process of disembarkation 
the reptile somehow or other made its escape, and slippinjg; 
through its keeper's fingers got to island ; which accident it 
would seem was considered a miraculous indication on the 
part of the deity of the spot whereon to build him a temple ; 
and a temple dedicated to Esculapius was built there accor- 
dingly. At the same time, in commemoration of the expedition 
to Epidaurus, the island, naturaUy of a narrow oval form, 
lying with its longer axis in the direction of the stream, was 
fashioned at its southern extremity into the form of the bow of 
a ship, and covered with an encasement of stone formed of 
blocks of travertino ; and, in addition, an obelisk of granite 
was erected in the middle in imitation of a mast 

The island at the present day, from its oval form, is easily 
reconcilable with the tale related of it, and is about 1200 feet 
in length, 400 feet across the middle, and contains, notwith- 
standing the limited area, a church, a convent, an hospital, 
and a considerable number of small dwelling-houses. . . . 
Upon the eastern side there is a descent by a very steep flight 
of steps, that may be compared to a ship's rope ladder, to the 
beach, which, whenever the river happens to be tolerably low, 
affords a suf^cient footing of dry land to stand upon and 
inspect the artificial formation of the bank above alluded to. 
The form, corresponding with the bow of a ship, may be 
distinctly recognised, and the encasement of solid blocks of 
travertino,^ reduced to a smooth face, is surmounted ^y a 
frieze sculptured in bas-relief with appropriate emblems of the 
Epidaurian embassy, where the serpent may be very clearly 
distinguished. — Sir G, Hetid. 

The Environs of Ancient Rome 

Immediately under our eyes, and at the foot of the Capitol, 

lay the Forum, lined with solitary columns, and terminated at 

each end by a triumphal arch. Beyond and just before us, 

rose the Palatine Mount, encumbered with the substructions 

* Very rarely used before the first century B.c. 



ROME 351 

of the Imperial Palace, and of the Temple of Apollo ; and 
farther on, ascended the Celian Mount with the Temple of 
Faunus on its summit On the right was the Aventine, 
spotted with heaps of stone swelling amidst its lonely vine- 
yards. To the left, the Esquiline, with its scattered tombs 
and tottering aqueducts ; and in the same line, the Viminal, 
and the Quirinal supporting the once magnificent Baths of 
Diocletian. The Baths of Ajntoninus, the Temple of Minerva, 
and many a venerable fabric bearing on its shattered form 
the traces of destruction, as well as the furrows of age, lay 
scattered up and do^m the vast field ; while the superb temples 
of St. John Lateran, Santa Maria Maggiore, and Santa Croce, 
arose with their pointed obelisks, majestic but solitary monu- 
ments, amidst the extensive waste of time and of desolation. 
The ancient walls, a vast circumference, formed a frame of 
venerable aspect, well adapted to this picture of ruin, this 
cemetery of ages, Romani bustum populi. 

Beyond the walls the eye ranged over the storied plain 
of Latium, now the deserted Campagna, and rested on the 
Alban Mount, which rose before us to the south, shelving 
downwards on the west towards Antium and the Tyrrhene 
sea, and on the east towards the Latin vale. Here, it presents 
Tusculum in white lines on its declivity ; there, it exhibits the 
long ridge that overhangs its lake, once the site of Alba Longa, 
and towering boldly in the centre with a hundred towns and 
villas on its sides, it terminates in a point once crowned with 
the triumphal temple of Jupiter Latialis. Turning eastward, 
we beheld the Tiburtine hills, with Tibur reclining on their 
side ; and behind, still more to the east, the Sabine mountains 
enclosed by the Apennines, which at the varying distance of 
from forty to sixty miles swept round to the east and north, 
forming an immense and bold boundary of snow. The Monies 
Cimifd (the Ciminian Mountains), and several lesser hills, 
diverging from the great parent ridge, the Fater Apenninus 
(Father Apennine), continue the chain till it nearly reaches 
the sea and forms a perfect theatre. Mount Soracte, thirty 
miles to the north, lifts his head, an insulated and striking 
feature. While the Tiber, enriched by numberless rivers and 
streamlets, intersects the immense plain; and bathing the 
temples and palaces of Rome, rolls, like the Po, a current 
unexhausted even during the scorching heats of summer. 

The tract now expanded before us was the country of the 
Etrurians, Veientes, Rutuli, Falisd, Latins, Sabines, Volsci, 



3Sa THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

Aequi and Hemici, and of course the scene of the wars and 
the exertions of the victories and the triumphs of infieuit Rome, 
during a period of nearly four hjmdred years of her history. — 
Eustace. 

The Apostles in Rome 

I wish to note down the traditionary footsteps of St Peter 
and St. Paul at Rome, having visited the various spots con- 
nected with their supposed residence here with great interest 
. . . While St. Peter was still uimiolested and residing at the 
house of Pudens — now the spot where stands the interesting 
and most ancient church of Santa Pudenziana, near Santa 
Maria Maggiore — he again exhibited an example of that weak- 
ness of character which led him basely to deny the Divine 
Lord he loved. A persecution against the Christians was 
again threatened ; he became alarmed for his personal safety, 
and his friends strongly urged his flight Peter listened to 
them, and allowing himself to be influenced by their persua- 
sions, he fled from Rome, passing out of the Porta San 
Sebastianoy under the massive arch of Drusus, spanning the 
Appian Way — now called the Street of Tombs. 

He proceeded a mile, to a spot where the road separates, 
forming a fork, leading in one direction towards the Fountain 
of Egeria, and by the other to the church of San Sebastiano, 
built over the most practicable entrance into the catacombs, 
beside the tomb of Cecilia Metella. St Peter, says eccle- 
siastical tradition, had reached this precise fork where the 
road separates, when he beheld advancing towards him his 
Divine Master. Astonished at the sight, he exclaimed, *'Lord, 
where goest thou ? " ( " Datnine quo vadis t ") To which ques- 
tion the glorified form replied, " I go to Rome, to be again 
crucified ; " and disappeared. 

This vision explained to the Apostle what were the inten- 
tions of his Divine Master respecting himself, and the meaning 
of that prophecy — "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou 
wast young thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou 
wouldest ; but when thou art old thou shalt stretch forth thine 
hands, and another shall gird thee and carry thee whither thou 
wouldest not.** He instantly retraced his steps, and returned 
to Rome, where shortly the deepest dungeons of the Mamertine 
prisons opened to receive him. 

The actual church of D&mine quo Vadis has nothing but its 
beautifully suggestive legend to recommend it, otherwise it is a 



ROME 353 

miserable little place ; indeed, there is a vulgar, tawdry look 
about the interior quite painfull to the feelings of those who 
arrive eager to behold the scene of one, if not the most touch- 
ing, of the Church's early legends. A stone, bearing the im- 
press of what is said to have been the Divine foot, but which 
measures some thirty inches at least in length, and is singularly 
" out of drawing " in every way, stands just at the entrance to 
the nave. 

When the Apostles quitted the Mamertine prisons, tradi- 
tion leads them to the Ostian Way, where they were separated 
previous to undergoing martyrdom. A stone marks the spot, 
engraven with their parting words : " Peace be with thee, thou 
founder of the Church " — (St. Paul is supposed to say to St. 
Peter) — "thou shepherd of the universal flock of Jesus Christ." 
To which St. Peter replied, " God be with thee, thou mighty 
preacher, who guidest the just in the living way." St. Paul 
was then led on to a deserted plain three miles from the city, 
to which I shall return, first following the footsteps of St Peter 
through the busy streets, and over the Tiber, to the steep 
heights of the Janiculum, where, in sight of great pagan Rome, 
he suffered crucifixion — begging of his executioners to be 
reversed on the cruel tree, as a last and crowning act of 
humiliation, declaring himself unworthy to die in the same 
upright attitude as his Divine Master. 

Where he expired, and on the spot where the cross was 
erected, now stands the church of San Pietro in Montorio. It 
was selected by Rome's republican defenders as a barrack — 
showing how little Papal teaching for the last eighteen centuries 
had profited the lower population of its own capital. 

... I must now take up the traditionary footsteps of St. 
Paul from the same point as those of St Peter, namely, before 
his entrance into the Mamertine prisons. On first arriving in 
the Eternal City, St Paul remained for two years unmolested. 
During that period he resided in a house situated where now 
stands the church of Santa Maria, in Via Lata, next door to the 
sumptuous palace of the Dorias. . . . After the imprisonment 
of St Paul, and his separation from St Peter, he was led out 
about three miles from Rome — on the Ostian Way — to a 
desolate place in the Campagna, where he was beheaded. — 
Mrs. EUiot 



354 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



The Pyramid of Caius Cestius 

When I am inclined to be serious, I love to wander up and 
down before the tomb of Caius Cestius. The Protestant 
burial-ground 1 is there; and most of the little monuments 
are erected to the young ; young men of promise, cut off when 
on their travels, full of enthusiasm, full of enjoyment ; brides, 
in the bloom of their beauty, on their first journey ; or children 
borne from home in search of health. This stone was placed 
by his fellow-travellers, young as himself, who will return to 
the house of his parents without him ; that> by a husband or a 
father, now in his native country. His heart is buried in that 
grave. 

It is a quiet and sheltered nook, covered in the winter 
with violets ; and the Pyramid, that overshadows it, gives it a 
classical and singularly solemn air. You feel an interest there, 
a sympathy you were not prepared for. You are yourself in a 
foreign land ; and they are for the most part your countrymen. 
They call upon you in your mother-tongue — ^in English — ^m 
words unknown to a native, known only to yourself : and the 
tomb of Cestius, that old majestic pile, has this also in 
common with them. It is itself a stranger, among strangers. 
It has stood there till the language spoken round about it has 
changed; and the shepherd, bom at the foot, can read its 
inscription no longer. — Rogers. 

^ '* The English burjring-place," wrote Shelley, of the spot where his 
ashes were to he, " is a green slope near the walls, under the pyramidal 
tomb of Cestios, and is, I think, the most beautiful and solemn cemetery I 
ever beheld. To see the sun shining on its bright grass, fresh, when we 
first visited it, with the autumnal dews, and hear the whispering of the 
wind amone the leaves of the trees which have overgrown the tomb of 
Cestius, and the soil which is stirring in the sun-warm earth, and to mark 
the tombs, mostly of women and young people who were buried there, 
one might, if one were to die, desire the sleep they seem to sleep. Such 
is the human mind, and so it peoples with its wishes vacancy and oolivion." 
The modest grave of Keats (with that of the fiiithful Severn by it) is in 
the larger cemetery by a trench. Shelley's memorial is in the smaller 
cemetery with a wall dividing it from the pyramid. There are cypress 
trees, and roses grow near the keeper's lodge. A heavy odour of mortality 
makes the place dangerous except for the briefest visit. 



ROME 355 

THE CATACOMBS 
An Early Account 

The Catacombs . . . running many miles under ground, 
made anciently a Christian Rome under the Heathen. There 
were divers of these catacombs in the primitive times, and 
they were called diversely : Arenaria, Cryptae, Areae, Concilia 
Maxtyrum, Poliandria, but most frequently Cemeteria, that is, 
domtitaria^ because here reposed the bodies of the holy 
Martyrs and Saints qui obdonniverunt in domino. But the 
greatest of all these coemeteruB was this of Calixtus. In these 
catacombs during the persecutions raised s^ainst the Christians 
by ten heathen emperors, the faithful believers, together with 
their popes and pastors, used privately* to meet to exercise 
their religion, and steal their devotions ; that is, to hear mass 
in little round chapels painted overhead poorly ; minister the 
sacraments ; bury the dead martyrs and confessors in the walls 
of the long alleys, preach, hold conferences ; and even cele- 
brate councils too sometimes. I descended several times into 
several parts of the catacombs with a good experienced guide 
(which you must be sure of) and with wax lights (torches 
being too stifling) and wandered in them up and down with 
extraordinary satisfaction of mind. The streets underground 
are cut out with men's hands and mattocks. They are as 
high as a man, for the most part, and no broader than for two 
men to meet. All the way long, the sides of these alleys are 
full of holes, as long as a man, and sometimes there are three 
rows, one over another, in which they buried their martyrs and 
confessors: and that posterity might afterwards know which 
were martyrs, which confessors, they engraved upon the stone 
which mured them up, or upon one of the bricks, a palm 
branch in sign of a martyr, and a Pro Christo in cyphers for 
a confessor. It is recorded that during the foresaid persecu- 
tions,* a hundred and seventy-four thousand martyrs were 

^ Recent opinion has modified this, if the word is used in the sense of 
absolute secrecjr. 

* The diminution of the number of the martyrs by Gibbon is perhaps 
no more accurate than the excessive estimate of tnis account. Dr. Arnold 
(of Rugby) in describing S. Stefano Rotondo on the Ccelian, with its series 
of pictures of the persecutions, observes : " Divide the sum total of reported 
martyrs by twenty — ^by fifty if you will — but after all you have a number 
of persons of all ages and sexes suffering cruel torments for conscience' 
sake and for Christ's." 



3S6 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

buried here in this cemetery of Calixtus : among whom were 
nineteen popes martyrs. Hence these catacombs have always 
been esteemed as a place of great devotion, and much fre- 
quented by devout persons. The words over the door, as you 
descend into them from the church of S. Sebastian, tell you, 
how S. Jerome confesseth that he used every Sunday and 
holiday during his stay in Rome, to go to these catacombs. 
And a picture hung over the same door sheweth how S. Philip 
Neri used to frequent these holy places in the night — Lassels. 

De Rossi is at the present time the most distinguished 
antiquarian of Rome, because he two years ago discovered the 
Christian Catacomb of the first century, which was unknown, 
or had been forgotten, ever since the fifth century; and he 
has arrived at this discovery by having, in the first place, dis- 
covered the so-called Calixti Catacomb, with the graves of 
Fabianus, and Saint Cecilia and many other of the ancient 
martyrs. This last-mentioned catacomb, of which much is 
said in the writings of the oldest pilgrims of the sixth and 
seventh centuries, has been considered in latter times to exist 
in a totally different place to that in which De Rossi found it 
New and very careful examinations in the district of the church 
of San Sebastiano led to his discovering that a cow-house, in 
a vineyard, contained a Christian basilica of the oldest date. 
Broken pieces of marble with burial inscriptions, which were 
found imder the stones and rubbish, led to the supposition in 
his mind that the actual Calixti Catacomb would be found 
under his church. He communicated his discovery and his 
suppositions to the Pope, Pio Nono, who encouraged him, and 
furnished him with means to purchase the cow-house and vine- 
yard, and to undertake the excavation. The results of all this 
were rich beyond descriptioiL The actual Calixti Catacomb, 
with the martyrs' graves^ was not only discovered, the descent 
being found near the little and extremely ancient church, 
but in connection therewith the very most ancient catacomb 
where the Christians during the first and second centuries con- 
gregated, as well as interred their dead. The entrance to this 
had been again walled up, and, if I am not mistaken, not 
opened until by De RossL 

It was with a beaming countenance that the fortimate 
discoverer led us to those subterranean chambers, by the very 
way which the most ancient pilgrims had descended. This 
was a handsome convenient flight of white marble steps. We 
went down, each of us bearing a lighted candle — two guides 



ROME 357 

going in advance with torches. We reached the Catacomb of 
Calixtus. The chapels, the graves, and the passages are in 
manj places ornamented with marble columns, bas-reliefs and 
paintings. The number and character of the tombs show that 
this catacomb belonged, after the fourth century, to a poor 
and insignificant mass of people no longer, but to one suffi- 
ciently powerful to make itself regarded and feared by a 
politically wise prince*and ruler. It had, in iact, taken posses- 
sion of the realm, in order to retain which, Constantine, called 
the Great, was obliged to adopt, or at least protect, its 
doctrines. The most interesting of the mausoleums was that 
in which the most ancient Bishops of Rome, Popes Sixtus, 
Fabianus, and many other martyrs, were buried. The inscrip- 
tions on the marble tablets above the niches in the walls, which 
contain the dead, are perfectly well preserved, but consist 
merely of the names of the dead and the short addition, 
^^ Martyr,^ One inscription in this chamber, not upon a 
tomb, by Archbishop Damas, of the fourth century, excellently 
restored by De Rossi, praises " the men and women who are 
here interred because they died for their faith." "In this 
chamber,"adds the pious bishop, "should I, Damas, have wished 
to sleep, but I would not disturb the repose of the martyrs I " 

In the mausoleum of Saint Cecilia you see the empty space 
of the sarcophagus, which is now to be found in the churdi of 
Santa Cecilia di Trastevere, together with a painting repre- 
senting her with a glory and uplifted supplicating hands. 
Other paintings also of Christian martyrs are here ; amongst 
these, one of the bishop who interred Saint Cecilia, and whose 
name, Urbanus, may be easily spelled out in letters which 
surround his head like a frame. The pictures are all in the 
stiff Byzantine style, with rich costumes and gilding. The 
countenances are nothing less than beautiful. This mausoleum, 
like the one we had just left, is spacious and beautifully pro- 
portioned. Smoke on the walls, as of a lamp, shows that 
people had there watched and prayed. The whole of this 
Catacomb is lighted by circular openings, which admit light 
and air into the subterranean burial-place. After about an 
hour's wandering along innumerable passages, through many 
chapels resembling the last mentioned, we arrived at the 
Catacomb of the first century. Before we descended into 
it, De Rossi called our attention to an inscription, which is 
found often repeated by the same hand, upon the walls all the 
way from the mausoleums in the Catacomb of St Calixtus, to 



358 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

the entrance into this of the earlier Christians. A pilgrim who 
had wandered through these chambers whilst he prayed for a 
friend, and he has inscribed his prayer on the walls in these 
words : — 

''Sophronia ! Live thou in God! " 

He appears then to have paused at the door of the oldest 
catacomb, and the prayer now expresses itself in words which 
show that he knew his prayer was heard. Here, in Roman 
letters, one can plainly decipher — " Sophrania dulds^ fnve in 
Deo! Tu vivis in Deo !^^ (Sophronia, sweet one, live in God ! 
Thou dost live in God!) The letters are dark red, as if 
written in blood. Who can avoid thinking here — " Love is 
stronger than death ? " 

We entered the Catacomb of the first century. Here there 
is no splendour, no marble pillars, or pictures ; narrow streets 
and passages, in which are niches, low openings or stages in 
the walls, three stories high, and bones, chalk-like dust, lying 
everywhere. Here, no light, no atmosphere is admitted from 
without, but still the air is as wonderfully good, warm, and 
pure as if it were that of a tranquil sleeping-dhamber, where it 
is good to rest. Here had a poor and persecuted people 
sought shelter for their dead, as well as for their preaching of 
the resurrection of the dead. Neither yet were the monuments 
of the earliest Christians here deficient in culture or art. 
Many fresco paintings in the mausoleums exhibited both these, 
and they far excelled in style and artistic value the Byzantine 
pictures in the catacombs of the fourth century. At the end 
of one little chapel was a well-preserved humorous painting, 
representing a shepherd who preaches to his flock. Some 
listen attentively, others wander away from him, others feed 
on the meadow, one ram bleats toward the preacher, with a 
horrible grimace. In the meantime, you see that a heavy 
shower of rain is falling. Another painting, also good and 
well-preserved, represents Moses, who with his stalT, opens the 
bosom of the rock, and the water gushes forth. Here you see 
the place where the altar has stood ; you see the smoke on the 
walls, and the smoke of the lamp on the ceiling. The 
symbols of the Holy Communion are represented in more 
than one of the chambers, as a glass with wine, above which 
is laid a fish, and also a plate with the holy wafer. I ap- 
proached my candle to the wine in the glass ; it shone as red 
and as fresh as if it had been painted yesterday, and not nearly 
two thousand years ago. — Frederika Bremer, 



ROME 359 



PERSONAL ACCOUNTS 
Rome in thb Sixteenth Century 

... On the 2nd of December we hired apartments at the 
house of a Spaniard, opposite the church of Santa Lucia della 
Tinta. We were here provided with three handsome bed-rooms, 
a dining-room, closet, stable and kitchen, for twenty crowns a 
month, for which sum the landlord agreed to include a cook, 
and fire for the kitchen. The apartments at Rome are 
generally furnished better than those at Paris, the people here 
having great quantities of gilt leather, with which the higher 
class of rooms are lined. For the same price we gave for 
these lodgings, we might have had some at the Golden Vase, 
dose by, hung with cloth of gold and silk, quite like a royal 
palace, but, besides that the rooms here were less independent 
of one another than those we took, M. de Montaigne was of 
opinion that all this magnificence was not only quite super- 
fluous, but that we should find it very troublesome, with refer- 
ence to taking care of the furniture, for there was not a bed in 
the place which was not of the estimated value of four or five 
hundred crowns. At our lodgings we bargained for a supply 
of linen — much the same as in France — a necessary precaution 
in a place where they are somewhat chary of this article. 

M. de Montaigne was annoyed at finding so many French- 
men here ; he hardly met a person in the street who did not 
salute him in his own language. He was very much struck 
with the sight of so crowded a court, so peopled with prelates 
and churchmen ; it appeared to him that there were more rich 
men and more rich equipages here, by far, than in any other 
court he had ever been at He said that the appearance of 
the streets, especially from the number of people thronging 
them, reminded him more of Paris than any town he had ever 
seen. The modem city lies along the river Tiber, on both 
sides. The hilly quarter, where the ancient town stood, and 
to which he daily made visits, is cut up with the gardens of 
the cardinals, and the grounds attached to various churches 
and private houses. He judged, from manifest appearances, 
and from the height of the ruins, that the form of the hills and 
their slopes had altogether changed from what it was in the 
old time, and he felt certain that in several places the modem 
Romans walked on the top of the houses of their ancestors. 



36o THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

It is easy to calculate from the Arch of Sevenis, that we are 
now-a-da3rs more than two pikes' length above the ancient 
roofs ; and in point of fact almost ererywhere you see beneath 
your feet the tops of ancient walls which the rain and the 
coaches have laid bare. . . . 

Ceremonies and Pageants 

On Christmas-day we went to hear mass performed by 
the pope at St. Peter's, where he got a place, whence he 
could see all the ceremonies at his ease. There are several 
special forms observed on these occasions ; first, the gospel 
and the epistle are said in Latin, and then in Gredc, as is also 
done on Easter Sunday and St Peter's day. The pope then 
administered the sacrament to a number of persons, associating 
with him in this service the Cardinals Famese, Medici, Carafia 
and Gonzaga. They use a certain instrument for this purpose, 
from which they drink from the chalice, in order to provide 
against poison. Monsieur de Montaigne was somewhat sur- 
prised to remark at this and other masses which he attended, 
the pope, the cardinals and other prelates were seated during 
the whole mass, with their caps on, talking and chatting 
together. These ceremonies appeared to him altogether to 
partake more of magnificence than devotion. . . . 

On the 3rd January, 1581, the pope rode in procession 
before our house. Before him rode about two hundred per- 
sons, belonging to the court, churchmen and laymen. At his 
side rode the Cardinal de Medici, with whom he was going to 
dine, and who was conversing with him; his eminence was 
uncovered. The pope, who was dressed in his usual costume 
of red cap, white robes, and red velvet hood, was mounted on 
a white palfrey, the harness of which was red velvet, with gold 
fringe and gold lace-work. He gets on his horse without 
assistance, though he is in his eighty-first year. Every fifteen 
yards or so, he stops and gives his benediction to the assembled 
people. After him came three cardinals, and then about a 
hundred men-at-arms, lance on thigh and armed at all points, 
except the head ; there was another palfrey, of the same colour 
and with the same harness as he rode, following him, together 
with a mule, a handsome white charger, a litter and two grooms, 
who carried portmanteaus at their saddle-bow. . . . 

The carnival at Rome this year was, by the pope's per- 
mission, more unrestricted than has been known for several 



ROME 361 

years past, but it did not appear to us any great thing. Along 
the Corso, which is one of ^e largest streets here, and which 
takes its name from the circumstance, they have races, some- 
times between four or five children, sonjetimes between Jews, 
sometimes between old men stripped naked, who run the whole 
length of the street. The only amusing thing is to see them 
run past the place where you are. They have races also with 
horses, which are ridden by little boys, who urge them on with 
incessant whipping ; and there are ass-races, and exhibitions of 
buffaloes, which are driven along at full speed by men on 
horseback, armed with long goads. There is a prize assigned 
for each race, which they call elpalo;^ it consists generally of 
a piece of velvet or cloth. In one part of the street, where 
there is more room for the ladies to look on, the gentlemen 
run at the quintain, mounted upon splendid horses, in the 
management of which they exhibit much grace ; for there is 
nothing in which the nobili^ here more excel than in equestrian ' 
exercises. The scaffolding which M. de. Montaigne had set 
up for himself and his friends cost them three crowns ; but then 
it was situated in one of the best parts of the street.^ 

The Demoniac 

On the 1 6th of February, as I was returning from a walk, I 
saw in a small chapel a priest in his robes, busied in curing a 
demoniac ; the patient seemed a man overwhelmed, and as it 
were, half dead with melancholy. They were holding him on 
his Imees before the altar, with some cloth or other round his 
neck, by which he was secured. The priest first read out of 
his breviary a vast number of prayers and exorcisms, com- 
manding the devil to quit that afflicted body. Then speaking 
to the patient, addressing first himself and then the devil 
which possessed him, he repeated his commands to the devil 
to withdraw, and attack the poor patient with his fists and spat 
on his face by way of assailing the demon. The demoniac 
every now and then returned some unmeaning answer to the 
priest's questions, replying, sometimes for himself, to explain 
what were the symptoms of the malady, and sometimes for the 
demon, to express how the said devil feared God, and how he 

^ Montaigne*! Italian is generally copied from what he has heard 
rather than read. 

* The remainder of Montaigne's journal is written without the aid of 
an amanuensis. 



362 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

dreaded the exorcisms which were being denounced against 
him. 

After this had gone on for some time, the priest, as a last 
eflfort, went to the altar, and taking the pyx, which held the 
Corpus Dominiy in his left hand, and a lighted taper in the 
other, which he held down so that it might bum away, he said 
several prayers and at the end of them pronounced a fierce 
anathema against the devil, with as loud and authoritative a 
voice as he could assume. When the first taper was burnt 
down nearly to his fingers, he took a second and afterwards 
a third. Then he replaced the pyx, and came back to the 
patient, whom, after addressing a few words to him simply as 
a man, he caused to be untied, and directed his friends to take 
him home. . . . The man . . . did nothing but grind his 
teeth and make faces when they presented the Corpus Domini 
to him ; every now and then he muttered si fata volenti for he 
' was a notary and knew a little Latin. . . . 

On Palm-Sunday, at vespers, I saw in one of the churches, 
a boy, seated on a chair at the side of the altar, clothed in a 
large robe of new blue taffeta, with a crown of olive round his 
head, and holding in his hand a lighted white wax taper. It 
was a lad of about fifteen, who had that day, by the pope's 
order, been liberated from the prison, to which he had been 
committed for killing another boy of his own age. . . . 

Pope and People 

On Maundy-Thursday, in the morning, the pope, in full 
pontificals, placed himself in the first portico of St Peter's, on 
the second flight, with the cardinals roimd him, and holding a 
torch in his hand. A canon of St. Peter's, who stood on one 
side, then read at the pitch of his voice a bull in the Latin 
language, excommunicating an infinite variety of people and 
among others the Huguenots, by that term, and all the 
princes who detained any of the estates belonging to that 
church; at which last article, the Cardinals de Medici and 
Caraffa, who stood close by the pope, laughed heartily. The 
reading of this anathema takes up a full hour and a half; for 
every article that the clerk reads in Latin, the Cardinal Gonzaga, 
who stands on the other side with his hat off, repeats in Italian. 
When the excommunication is finished, the pope throws the 
lighted torch down among the people ; and whether in jest or 
otherwise, the Carinal Gonzaga threw another ; for there were 



ROME 363 

three of them lighted. Hereupon ensues a tremendous 
struggle among the people below, to get even the smallest 
piece of this torch ; and not a few hard blows with stick and 
fist are given and returned in the contest. While the curse is 
read, a large piece of black taffeta hangs over the rails of the 
portico before the pope ; and when the reading is over, they 
take up this black taifeta, and exhibit one of another colour 
under it ; and the pope then pronounces his public blessing on 
all the faithful members of the church. 

This same day, they shew the Veronica,* the Vera Effigies^ 
the representation of a face, worked in sombre colours, and 
enclosed in a frame like a large mirror ; this is shewn to the 
people, with much ceremony, from the top of a pulpit, about 
five or six paces wide. The priest who holds it, has his hands 
covered with red gloves, and there are two or three other 
priests assisting him. There is nothing regarded with so 
much reverence as this ; the people prostrate themselves on 
the earth before it, most of them with tears rolling down their 
cheeks, and all uttering cries of commiseration. A woman 
who was present, and who, they said, was a demoniac, got into 
a tremendous fury on seeing this effigy, yelling and throwing 
herself into infinite contortions. The priests take the effigy 
round the pulpit, and at every step or two, present it to the 
people who are standing in that particular direction, and on 
each of these occasions, the crowd raises a huge cry. They 
also shew at the same time and with the same ceremonies, the 
head of the lance, enclosed in a crystal bottle. This exhibi- 
tion takes place several times during the day, and the 
assemblage of people is so vast, that outside the church, so 
far as the eye can reach down the streets, you can see nothing 
but the heads of men and women, so close together that it 
seems as though you could walk upon them. 'Tis a truly 
papal court ; the splendour and the principal grandeur of the 
court of Rome consists in these devotional exhibitions. And 
indeed it is a very striking sight to witness, on these occasions, 
the infinite religious fervour of this people. . . . 

On Low Sunday, I saw the ceremony of the Virgins' alms.^ 

^ The fonnerly accepted derivation from vera, true, and ikon, an image, 
meant an impossible mixture of Latin and Greek. St. Veronica was sup- 
posed to have wiped the Saviour's face on the way to Calvarr ; and the 
name Veronica is the same as that of Berenice, the woman cured of an issue 
of the blood. 

* We transpose this passage which in the original follows that concern- 
ing the Flagellants. 



364 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

The pope, on this occasion, besides his usual train, has 
twenty-five horses led before him, richly caparisoned in doth 
of gold, and ten or twelve mules decorated with crimson vel- 
vet; each of these animals being led by one of the pope's 
lackeys on foot His own litter was also covered with crimscxi 
velvet He was immediately preceded by four men on horse- 
hack, each bearing, at the end of a truncheon, also covered 
with red velvet, and profusely ornamented with gold, a red 
hat: he himself rode on a mule, as did the cardinals who 
followed him, all apparelled in their robes of state : the tails of 
which were fiasten^ with tags to their mule's bridle. 

The virgins were a hundred and seven in number, and 
each was accompanied by an elderly female relation. After 
mass, they left the church, and forming in procession filed 
off. As they left the church of Minerva, where this ceremony 
takes place, each kisses the pope's feet, and he, after blessing 
them, gives to each with his own hand, a purse of white 
damask, containing an order upon his banker for the amount 
of her dowry. It is understood that all the girls who present 
themselves are about to be married, and they come here for 
their marriage dowry, which is thirty-five crowns a head, be- 
sides a white dress, which each has presented to her on the 
occasion and which is worth five crowns more. Their faces 
are covered with white linen veils, which have only an opening 
for them to see out at. 

Procession of Flagellants 

In Rome there are more than a hundred religious societies, 
with one or other of which almost every person of quality is 
connected. Some of these establishments are appropriated to 
foreigners. Our own kings belong to the Society of the Gon- 
sanon. All these private fraternities perform various religious 
ceremonies, though for the most part only in Lent On this 
particular occasion, they all walk in procession, clothed in 
linen robes, each company having a different colour, some 
black, some white, some red, some blue, some green, and so 
on; they nearly all cover their faces with their cowls. The 
most impressive sight I ever saw, here or elsewhere, was the 
incredible number of people who thronged every square and 
street, all taking an earnest part in the devotions of the day. 
They were flocking up towards St Peter's all day long, and 
on the approach of night the whole city seemed in flames ; 



ROME 365 

for every man who took part in the procession of each re- 
ligious community, as it marched up in its order towards the 
church, bore a lighted flambeau, almost universally of white 
wax. I am persuaded, that there passed before me not fewer 
than twelve thousand of these torches, at the very least, for, 
from eight o'clock in the evening till midnight, the street was 
constantly full of this moving pageantry, marshalled in such 
excellent order, with everything so well-timed, that though the 
entire procession, as I have said, was composed of a great 
number of different societies, coming from different parts, yet 
not for one moment did I observe any stoppage, or gap, or 
interruption. 

Each company was attended by a band of music, and 
chaunted sacred songs as they went along. Between the ranks 
walked a file of penitents, who every other minute whipped 
themselves with cords; there were five hundred of these at 
least, whose backs were torn and bleeding in a frightful manner. 
This part of the exhibition is a mystery I have not yet been 
able to make out; they are unquestionably most terribly 
mangled and wounded, yet, from the tranquillity of their 
countenances, the steadiness of their motion and of their 
tongue (for I heard several of them speaking) you would have 
formed no idea they were engaged in a serious occupation, to 
say nothing of a very painful one, and yet many of them were 
lads of but twelve or thirteen years old. As one of them, a 
mere child, with an exceedingly agreeable and uiunoved 
countenance, was passing just close to where I stood, a young 
woman near me uttered an exclamation of pity at the wounds 
he had inflicted on himself, on which he turned round and 
said with a laugh : '* BastOy disse chefo questo per It lui pecatHy 
turn per U miei^^ (Pshaw : tell her I'm not doing this for my 
own sins, but for hers). Not only do they exhibit no appear- 
ance of pain, Qor of being reluctant thus to mangle themselves, 
but on the contrary, they seem to delight in it; or, at all 
events, they treat it with such indifference that you hear them 
chatting together about other matters, laughing, running, jump- 
ing and joining in the shouts of the rest of the crowd, as if 
nothing ailed them. At certain distances, there are men 
walking with them, and carrying wine which they every now 
and then present to the penitents; some of whom take a 
mouthful They also give them sugar-plums. The men who 
carry the wine, at certain intervals, moisten with it the ends of 
the penitents* whips which are of cord, and yet so clotted 



366 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

with gore that they require to be wetted before they can be 
untwisted. Sometimes the wine is applied to the sufferer's 
wounds. From the shoes and the breeches worn by these 
penitents, it is easy to perceive that they are persons quite of 
the lowest class, who, at all events the greater number of 
them, let themselves out for this particiilar service. I was 
told, indeed, that the shoulders were protected by some flesh- 
coloured covering, and that the appearance of the blood and 
wounds was artificial ; but I was near enough to see that the 
cuts and wounds were quite real, and I am sure that the pain 
must have been very severe. — Afontatgtie, 

Rome in the Seventeenth Century 

I came to Rome on the 4th November 1644, about 5 at 
night, and being perplexed for a convenient lodging wandered 
up and down on horseback, till at last one conducted us to 
Mons. Petit's, a Frenchman, near the Piazza Spagnola. Here 
I alighted, and having bargained with my host for 20 crownes 
a month I caused a good fire to be made in my chamber and 
went to bed, being so very wet The next morning (for I was 
resolved to spend no time idly here) I got acquainted with 
several persons who had long lived in Rome. I was especially 
recommended to Father John, a Benedictine monk and 
superior of his Order for the English collie of Douay, a 
person of singular learning, religion and humanity ; also to 
Mr. Patrick Carey, an Ablx)t, brother to our Lord Falkland, 
a witty young priest who afterwards came over to our church ; 
Dr. Bacon and Dr. Gibbs, physicians who had dependence on 
Cardinal Caponi, the .latter being an excellent poet ; Father 
Courtnee, the chief of the Jesuits in the English college ; my 
lord of Somerset, brother to the Marquis of Worcester, and 
some others, from whom I received instructions as to how to 
behave in town, with directions to masters and books. . . . 

A Papal Procession 

There was the solemne and greatest ceremony of all the 
Ecclesiastical States, viz. the procession of the Pope (Innocent 
X.) to St. John de Lateran. Standing on the stepps of Aia 
Celi, neere the Capitol, I saw it passe in this manner : — First 
went a guard of Swissers to make way, and divers of the avant 
guard of horse carrying lances. Next followed those who 



ROME 367 

carried the robes of the Cardinals, two and two ; then the 
Cardinals Mace-bearers; the Caudatari on mules; the 
Masters of their Horse ; the Pope's Barber, Taylor, Baker, 
Gardner, and other domestic officers, all on horseback in rich 
liveries ; the Squires belonging to the guard ; 5 men in rich 
liveries led 5 noble Neapolitan horses white as snow cover'd to 
the ground with trappings richly embroidered, which is a 
service paid by the King of Spaine for the kingdomes of 
Naples and Sicily, pretended feudatorys to the Pope ; 3 mules 
of exquisite beauty and price, trapp'd in crimson velvet ; 3 
rich litters with mules, the litters empty ; the Master of the 
Horse alone, with his Squires ; 5 Trumpeters ; the Amerieri 
estra muros ; the Fiscale and Consistorial Advocates ; Capel- 
lani, Camerieri de honore, Cubiculari and Chamberlaines, 
call'd Secreti ; 4 other Camerieri with 4 capps of the dignity 
Pontifical, which were Cardinals' hatts carried on staffs; 4 
Trumpets : after them a number of noble Romans and gentle- 
men of quality very rich, followed by innumerable Staffieri 
and Pages ; the Secretaries of the Chancellaria, Abbreviatori- 
AcoUti in their long robes and on mules ; Auditori di Rota ; 
the Deane of the Roti and Master of the sacred Palace on 
mules, with grave but rich foote clothes, and in flat episcopal 
hatts ; then went more of the Roman and other Nobility and 
Courtiers, with divers Pages in most rich liveries on horse- 
back; 14 Drums belonging to the Capitol; the Marshalls 
with their staves ; the 2 Sindics ; the Conservators of the Qtty 
in robes of crimson damask ; the Knight Gonfalonier and Prior 
of the R. R. in velvet tocques ; 6 of his holynesses Mace- 
bearers ; then the Captaine or Governor of the Castle of St. 
Angelo upon a brave prancer ; the Governor of the Citty ; on 
both sides of these 2 long ranks of Swissers ; the Masters of 
the Ceremonies ; the Crosse-bearer on horseback, with two 
Priests at each hand on foote ; Pages, Footmen, and Guards 
in aboundance; then came the Pope himselfe, carried in a 
litter or rather open chaire of crimson velvet richly embrodred, 
and borne by two stately mules ; as he went he held up two 
fingers, blessing the multitude who were on their knees or 
looking out of their windows and houses, with loud vivc^s and 
acclamations of felicity to their new Prince. This was foUow'd 
by the Master of his Chamber, Cupp-bearer, Secretary, and 
Physitian ; then came the Cardinal Bishops, Cardinal Priests, 
Cardinal Deacons, Patriarchs, Archbishops, and Bishops, all 
in their several and distinct habits, some in red, others in 



368 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

greene flat hatts with tassells, all on gallant mules richly trapp'd 
with velvet and lead by their servants in great state and multi- 
tudes; then came the Apostolical Protonotari, Auditor, 
Treasurer, and Referendaries; lastly, the Trumpets of the 
reare-guard, 2 Pages of Armes in helmets with feathers and 
carrying launces; a Captaines; the Pontifical Standard of 
the Church ; the two Alfieri or Cornets of the Pope's Light 
Horse, which all foUow'd in armor and carrying launces ; 
which, with innumerable rich coaches, litters, and people, 
made up the procession. What they did at St. John di 
Laterano I could not see by reason of the prodigious crowd ; 
so I spent most of the day in viewing the two triumphal arches 
which had been purposely erected a few days before, and till 
now covered ; the one by the Duke of Parma in the Foro 
Romano, the other by the Jewes in the Capitol, with flattering 
inscriptions. They were of excellent architecture, decorated 
with statues and aboundance of ornaments proper for the 
occasion, since they were but temporary, and made up of 
boards, cloath, &:c. painted and fram'd on the suddaine, but as 
to outward appearance solid and very stately. The night 
ended with fire-workes. That which I saw was that which was 
built before the Spanish Ambassadors house in the Piazza del 
Trinita, and another of the French. The first ai^)eared to be 
a mighty rock, bearing the Pope's arms, a dragon, and divers 
figures, which being set on fire by one who flung a roquet at it, 
tooke fire immediately, yet preserving the figure of the rock 
and statues a very long time, insomuch as it was deemed ten 
thousand reports of squibbs and crackers spent themselves in 
order. That before the French Ambassadors Palace was a 
Diana drawne in a chariot by her dogs, with abundance of 
other figures as large as the life, which played with fire in the 
same marmer. In the meantime the windows of the whole 
city were set with tapers put into lanterns or sconces of several 
coloured oiled paper, that the wind might not annoy them ; 
this rendered a most glorious shew. Besides there were at 
least twenty other fire-works of vast charge and rare art for 
their invention before divers ambassadors', princes' and 
cardinals' palaces, especially that on the castle of St Angelo, 
being a pyramid of lights, of great height, fiekstened to the ropes 
and cables which support the standard-pole. The streets 
were this night as light as day, full of bonfires, cannon roaripg, 
music playing, fountains rurming wine, in all excess of }oy and 
triumph. 



ROME 369 



Visits and Ceremonies 

I went to the Jesuit college. . . . Here I heard Father 
Athanasius Kercher upon a part of Euclid, which he expounded. 
. . . Hence I went to the house of Hippolito Vitellesco (after- 
wards Bibliothecary of the Vatican Library) who shewed us 
one of the best collections of statues in Rome, to which he 
frequently talks as if they were living, pronouncing now and 
then orations, sentences and verses, sometimes kissing them 
and embracing them. He has a head of Brutus scarred by 
order of the senate for killing Julius ; this is much esteemed. 
. . . This gentleman not long since purchased land in the 
kingdom of Naples, in hope by digging the ground to find 
more statues ; which it seems so far succeeded as to be much 
more worth than the purchase. . . . 

On Christmas Eve I went not to bed, being desirous of 
seeing the many extraordinary ceremonies performed then in 
their Churches, as midnight masses and sermons. I went from 
Church to Church the whole night in admiration at the multi- 
tude of sceanes and pageantry which the Friers had with much 
industry and craft set out, to catch the devout women and 
superstitious sort of people, who never parted without dropping 
some money into a vessell set on purpose ; but especialy ob- 
servable was the pupetry in the Church of the Minerva, repre- 
senting the Nativity. I thence went and heard a sermon at 
the ApoUinare, by which time it was morning. On Christmas 
Day his Holinesse saing Masse, the artillerie at St. Angelo went 
off, and all this day was exposed the cradle of our Lord. 

. . . We were invited by the English Jesuites to dinner, 
being their greate feast of Thomas [k Becket] of Canterbury. 
We dined in their common Refectory, and afterwards saw an 
Italian Comedy acted by their alumni before the Cardinals. 

... A Sermon was preach'd to the Jewes at Ponte Sisto, 
who are constrained to sit till the houre is don ; but it is with 
so much malice in their countenances, spitting, hum'ing, cough- 
ing, and motion, that it is almost impossible they should heare 
a word from the preacher. A conversion is very rare. 

... I went to the Ghetto, where the Jewes dwell as in 
a suburbe by themselves; being invited by a Jew of my 
acquaintance to see a circumcision. I passed by the Piazza 
Judea, where their Seraglio begins; for being inviron'd with 
walls, they are lock'd up every night In this place remaines 

2 A 



370 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

yet part of a stately fabric, which my Jew told me had been a 
palace of theirs for the ambassador of their nation when their 
country was subject to the Romans. Being led through the 
Synagogue into a privat house, I found a world of people in a 
chamb^: by and by came an old man, who prepared and 
layd in order divers instruments brought by a litde child of 
about 7 yeares old in a box. These the man lay'd in a silver 
bason ; the knife was much like a short lazor to shut into the 
haft. Then they burnt some incense in a censer, which per- 
fum'd the rome all the while the ceremony was performing. . . . 

A Roman Hospital 

We went to see Dr. Gibbs, a famous poet and countryman 
of ours, who had some intendency in an Hospital built on the 
Via Triumphalis, called Christ's Hospital, which he shew'd us. 
The Infirmitory where the sick lay was paved with various 
coloured marbles, and the walls hung with noble pieces ; the 
beds are very £edre ; in the middle is a stately cupola, imder 
which is an altar decked with divers marble statues, all in 
sight of the sick, who may both see and heare masse as they 
lye in their beds. The organs are very fine, and frequently 
pla/d on to recreate the people in paine. To this joyns an 
apartiment destined for the orphans; and there is a schoole; 
the children weare blew like ours in London at an Hospital 
of the same appellation. Here are 40 nurses who give suck 
to such children as are aocidentaly found exposed and aban- 
doned. In another quarter are children of bigger growth, 450 
in number, who are taught letters. In another, 500 girles 
under the tuition of divers religious matrons, in a Monastry, 
as it were, by itselfe. I was assur'd there were at least 2000 
more maintained in other places. I think one i^partiment 
had in it neere 1000 beds; these are in a very long rome 
having an inner passage for those who attend, with as much 
care, sweetenesse, and conveniency as can be imagined, the 
Italians being generaly very neate. Under the portico the 
sick may walke out and take the ayre. Opposite to this are 
other chambers for such as are sick of maladies of a more rare 
and difficult cure, and they have romes apart At the end of 
the long corridore is an apothecary's shop, fair and very well 
stored; neere which are chambers for persons of better quality 
who are yet necessitous. Whatever the poore bring is at their 
coming in delivered to a treasurer, who makes an inventory 



ROME 371 

and is accoumptable to them, or their representatires if they 
dye. To this building joynes the house of the com'endator, 
who with his officers attending the sick make up 90 persons ; 
besides a convent and an ample church for the friers and 
priests who daily attend. The church is extreamely neate, 
and the sacristia very rich. Indeede 'tis altogether one of the 
most pious and worthy foundations I ever saw : nor is the 
benefit small which divers young physitians and chirurgeons 
reape by the experience they leame here amongst the sick, to 
whom those students have free accesse. 

The Piazza Navona 

I went (as was my usual costome) and spent an aftemoone 
in Piazza Navona, as well to see what antiquities I could pur- 
chase among the people who hold mercat there for medaills, 
pictures, and such curiosities, as to heare the Montebanks 
prate and distribute their medicines. This was formerly the 
Circus or AgpnaUs^ dedicated to sports and pastimes, and is 
now the greatest mercat of the Citty, having three most noble 
fountaines, and the stately Palaces of the PamfUij, St. Giacoma 
de Spagnoli belonging to that nation, to which add two Con- 
vents for Friers and Nuns, all Spanish. In this Church was 
erected a most stately Catafalco, or Capella ardente, for the 
death of the Queene of Spaine ; the Church was hung with 
black, and heare I heard a Spanish sermon or funebral oration, 
and observed the statues, devises, and impreses hung about 
the walls, the Church and Pyramid stuck with thousands of 
lights and tapers, which made a glorious shew. . . . Returning 
home I pass'd by the stumps of old Pasquin at the comer of a 
streete calPd Strada Pontificia ; here they still past up their 
drolling lampoons and scurrilous papers. — Evelyn, 

Rome in the Eighteenth Century 

The special days set apart for receiving in each house are 
very convenient for foreigners, who know every day of the 
week where they can go and pass the evening. We meet at 
eight or nine in the evening till eleven or midnight, the supper- 
hoar generally for those who take supper ; but many people 
have not the custom, and in most places the supper is very 
light, so I think that if we were here long we should fall out 
of the habit, as in this cUmate one meal is quite sufficient 



372 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

Any one of a certain position can easily have the run of the 
salons in a week or a fortnight, and have the acquaintance of 
the greater part of the society of the town. The Romans are 
most cordial in this respect. . . . The house where we go 
most is that of the princess Borghese, sister of the Constable 
Colonna ; it is also the meeting place of the English. . . . 

The Death of a Pope 

I have just seen in the pontifical palace a sorrowful com- 
mentary on mortal greatness. All the halls were open and 
deserted, and I crossed them without seeing even a cat till I 
came to the room of the Pope, whose body I found reposing 
in the bed used during his lifetime, guarded by four Jesuits 
of the Penitenciary, who recited or appeared to recite the 
prayers for the dead. The Cardinal Chamberlain had come 
at nine o'clock to perform his office, and rapped his small 
hammer several times on the brow of the dead,^ calling him by 
his name Lorenzo CorsinL There being no reply, he then 
said : " This is why your daughter is dumb," and taking from 
his finger the fisher's ring, he broke it according to the custom. 
Apparently every one then followed the chamberlain as he went 
out ; and immediately afterwards, as the body of the pope has 
to lie in state no little time, the chin was shaved and rouge 
was placed on the cheeks to soften the great paleness of dea& 
. . . Immediately in the town begin the busy preparations for 
the obsequies, the monument, and the conclave. The cardinal 
chamberlain has sovereign powers during the interregnum; 
during several days he has the right to coin money in his name 
and to his advantage, and he has just sent word to the master 
of the mint that he would hang him, if during the three days 
following he did not coin up to a certain considerable sum. . . . 
I saw the funeral from the house of the Due de Saint-Aignan, 
and it is only the translation of the body to St Peter's. The 
dead Pope was borne on an open litter of embroidered velvet 
fringed with gold, surrounded by the Swiss guard of halbadiers, 
and preceded by the light horse and some other troops, by 
trumpeters and artillery with the muzzle reversed on the gim- 
carriage ; there were some heralds and some torch-bearers, for 
it was at eight o'clock at night I thought at first that it was 
some military general, killed in battle and brought back from his 
camp, for there was little to be seen in the way of clergy, . . . 
^ This well-authenticated custom has fallen into disuse. 



ROME 373 



The Conclave Preparations 

It is amusing to watch all the town excited about the 
beginning of the conclave. You must know that it is erected 
in the interior of the Vatican ; to explain it in a word, a small 
town is built in the palace, and small houses are built in the 
large rooms, from which it will be seen that no town in the 
world is so much inhabited and so stuffy. The masons are first 
called in to brick up all the outer doors of the palace, the 
porticoes of the loggias or hanging galleries, the windows even, 
leaving only two or three panes of glass open at the top of 
each, to let a little light filter into the gloom. The rooms 
being very wide and lofty, can be divided into cabins built 
with planks and rooms over them, leaving a corridor for 
passage by the chambers. The rooms with the finest paint- 
ings are not used, for fear of damaging them. The grand 
peristyle just above the door of St Peter's forms a spacious 
gallery, where cells can be built on both sides, leaving a pas- 
sage between them; this peristyle alone contains seventeen 
rooms, and the most adaptable ones. All the building has to 
be completed within twelve days ; and for the entry of work- 
men, scaffolding, wood, furniture, utensils and so forth, there 
is nothing save a narrow, but lofty door or balconied window, 
which is reached from the street by a ladder for that purpose. 
You will understand the tumult and bother of building in this 
way and at the same time, seventy houses in one hall. . . . 

Conclave Ceremonies 

However wearisome and inconvenient the life of the 
cardinals in this odious prison, it goes swiftly nevertheless, so 
many are the efforts, intrigues and labours necessary. Morn- 
ing and evening the carcfinals assemble in the Sistine Chapel 
to proceed to the election. They sit in their seats, each having 
by him a Est of the Sacred College to be marked with the 
number of votes given to each as the voting goes forward. 
Three cardinals taken in each order of bishop, priest, and 
deacon, are each day chosen to conduct the voting, open the 
papers and declare the election. Each cardinal after having 
sworn before the altar that he proceeds without interest or 
consideration and secretly, but in his conscience, and for the 
greater glory of God, and the prosperity of the church (the 



374 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

formula is every time repeated), places his voting paper in the 
presence of the three inspectors in an urn on a small table in 
the middle of the chapel. The paper contains the name of 
the nominator and the nominee, sand furthermore a certain 
particular motto taken from some passage in Scriptuie. The 
paper is folded and sealed at each fold; the lowest fold is 
opened first, so that only the name of the person voted for is 
seen ; but the number of the papers is careftiUy counted before 
anything is opened. If this number is found to be less than 
that of the cardinals present, the papers are burnt and every- 
thing is begun anew. If none of the cardinals have a sufficient 
number for dection, that is : two thirds of the entire votes, the 
papers are burnt without further examination, so that the 
nominators may remain unknown. If the sufficient number 
of votes is given, then the interior folds of the voting papers 
are unsealed to verify the nominators and the motto, of which 
each one doubtless keeps a copy. As matters might never 
end with the system of voting, there is another called the 
accessity which is the adhesion to a cardinal already voted for, 
and if the votes and accessions make a sufficient number, the 
election is good canonically. — De Brasses. 



Thoughts from Goethe 

I have now been here seven days, and by degrees have 
formed in my mind a general plan of the city. We go dili- 
gently backwards and forwards. While I am thus making 
myself acquainted with the plan of old and new Rome, viewing 
the ruins and the buildings, visiting this and that viUa, the 
grandest and most remarkable objects are slowly and leisurely 
contemplatjsd. I do but keep my eyes open and see, and 
then go and come again, for it is only in Rome one can duly 
prepare oneself for Rome. . . • We meet with traces both of 
majesty and ruin, which alike surpass all conception. . . . 
This vastness has a strangely tranquillising effect upon you in 
Rome, while you pass from place to place, in order to visit the 
most remarkable objects. In other places one has to search 
for what is important ; here one is oppressed and borne down 
by numberless phenomena. Wherever one goes and casts 
a look around, the eye is at once struck with some landscape — 
forms of every kind and s^le ; palaces ami ruins, gardens and 
statuary, distant views of villas, cottages and stabl^ triumphal 



ROME 375 

arches and columns^ often crowded so close together that they 
might all be sketched on a single sheet of paper. . . . 

I frequently stand still a moment to survey, as it were, the 
heights I have already won. With much delight I look back 
to Venice, that grand creation that sprang out of the bosom 
of the sea, like Minerva out of the head of Jupiter. In Rome, 
the Rotunda, both by its exterior and interior, has moved me 
to offer a willing homage to its magnificence. In St. Peter's 
I learned to understand how art, no less than nature, annihi- 
lates the artificial measures and dimensions of man. . . . 

Yesterday I visited the nymph Egeria, and then the 
Hippodrome of Caracalla, the nuned tombs along the Via 
Appia, and the tomb of Metella which is the first to give one 
a true idea of what solid masonry is. These men worked for 
eternity — all causes of decay were calculated, except the rage 
of the spoiler, which nothing can resist. ... In the evening 
we came upon the Coliseum, when it was abready twilight 
When one looks at it, all else seems little ; the edifice is so 
vast, that one cannot hold the image of it in one's soul — ^in 
memory we think it smaller, and then return to it again to 
find it every time greater than before. . . . 

Of the people I can say nothing more than that they are 
fine children of nature, who amidst pomp and honours of all 
kinds, religion and the arts, are not one jot different from 
what they would be in caves and forests. What strikes the 
stranger most, and what to-day is making ihe whole city talk, 
but only fa/J^, is the common occurrence of assassination* . . . 

I wish to see Rome in its abiding and permanent features, 
and not as it passes and changes with every ten years. Had 
I time, I might wish to employ it better. Above all, one may 
study history here quite differently from what one can on any 
other spot In other places one has, as it were, to read 
oneself into it from without ; here one fiemcies that he reads 
from within outwards: all arranges itself around you, and 
seems to proceed from you. All this holds good not only of 
Roman history, but also of that of the whole world. From 
Rome I can accompany the conquerors on their march to the 
Weser or to the Euphrates ; or if I wish to be a sight-seer, I 
can wait in the Via Sacra for the triumphant generals. . . . 

It becomes every day more difficult to fix the termination 
of my stay in Rome ; just as one finds the sea continually 
deeper the further one sails on it, so it is also with the 
examination of this city. — Goethe. 



376 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

ROMAN LIFE 
The Old Ghetto 

The existence of a colony of Jews so near to the Apostolic 
seat was a curious anomaly. . . . Hebrew blood was not 
shed in the middle ages in Rome, when it was being shed 
abundantly in Spain and France. The Popes preserved the 
Jews as specimens of a race accursed, which had to drag out 
its wretched existence till the end of the world : it was enough 
to keep the Jews at a distance, to humiliate and plunder them. 
They were first herded in the valley of Egeria, more than two 
miles from the San Lorenzo gate, and more than a league 
from the actual town. It was far enough and in the fourteenth 
century, the measure of severity was relaxed and they were 
allowed to Uve on the Transtevere. Between 1555 and 1559, 
they came nearer and Paul IV. settled them in the Ghetta 
The gates of their quarter were shut every night, at half past 
ten in summer and half past nine in winter ; if any one was 
shut out, he could not enter without bribing the soldiers of the 
guard. The lessors of the houses were either good Catholics, 
or religious communities, and they thought it a work of piety to 
exact the highest rents possible. This abuse excited the pity 
of Urban VIII. He thought it only just and foreseeing to fix 
the amount of the rentals once and for all. . . . Urban VIII. 
is dead . . . but his imprudent Bull still remained in force. 
Rents were increased all the world over, with the exception of 
the Ghetto. . . . 

Since 1847, the gates of the Ghetto have been demolished, 
and no visible barrier separates Jews from Christians. They 
have the legal right, if not the moral right, to settle and live 
where they please. ... It was also under the rule of Pius 
IX. that Israel ceased to provide the expenses of the carnival 
In the middle ages the Jews paid in person, for the town gave 
the citizens the festival of the Jews* race. Benedict XIV. 
replaced them by horses, which made infinitely better sport, 
but the Jews had to pay ransom in a yearly sum of 800 
crowns. — E. About 

Pasquin and Marforio 

Since the reputation of the famous Pasquin makes you 
desirous to be informed more particularly concerning him and 



ROME 377 

hb companion Mar/orio^ I will endeavour to satisfy your 
curiosity. The first is a mangled and disfigured statue, which, 
some think, was made for a Roman soldier ; it stands leaning 
against the wall of a house, at the comer of a place where 
several streets meet I know not whether you have heard of 
that pleasant answer which Alexander VI. is said to have 
given to those who advised him to throw Pasquin into the 
Tiber, because of the continual satires ' which that critical 
statue made against him: — *'I should be afraid," said he, 
'Mest it should be turned to a frog and trouble me both night 
and day with its croaking." 

Marforio is another maimed ^ure, by some said to have 
been a statue of Jupiter, or, according to others, of the Rhine, 
or of the Nera, which passes by Temi ; but all this is uncer- 
tain, as well as the etymology of the names of our two 
censurers. 'Tis very probable that it was formerly the mode 
to affix the pasquinades on the statue of Pasquin, but that 
custom is laid aside, and all the satirical invectives are still 
fathered on Pasquin, though they never come near him. Tis 
usual to make him answer the questions that are proposed to 
him by Marforio. — Misson, 

The Feast of S. Antony 

Yesterday, which was the festival of the Holy Abbot S. 
Antony, we had a merry day ; the weather was the finest in 
the world; though there had been a hard frost during the 
night, the day was bright and warm. One may remark, that 
all religions which enlaige their worship or their speculations 
must at last come to this, of making the brute creation in 
some degree partakers of spiritual favours. S. Antony, — 
Abbot or Bishop, — ^is the patron Saint of all four-footed 
creatures. ... All the gentry must on this day either remain 
at home, or else be content to travel on foot. And there 
are no lack of fearful stories, which tell how unbelieving 
masters, who forced the coachmen to drive them on this 
day, were punished by suffering great calamities. 

The church of the Saint lies in so wide and open a district, 
that it might almost be called a desert. On this day, however, 
it is full of life and fun. Horses and mules, with their manes 
and tails prettily, not to say gorgeously, decked out with 
ribbons, are brought before the little chapel, (which stands 
at some distance firom the church,) where a priest, armed 



378 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

with a brush, and not sparing of the holy water, which stands 
before him in buckets and tubs, goes on sprinkling the lively 
creatures, and often plays them a roguish trick, in order to 
make them start and frisk. Pious coachmen offer their wax- 
tapers, of larger or smaller size ; the masters send alms and 
presents, in order that the valuable and useful animals may go 
safely through the ^coming year without hurt or accidents. 
The donkeys and homed cattle, no less valuable and useful to 
their owners, have, likewise, their modest share in this blessing. 
—Goethe. 

Letters to a Saint 

The modem Romans are a very devout people. The 
Princess Doria washes the pilgrims' feet in Holy Week ; every 
evening, foul or fair, the whole year round, there is a rosaiy 
sung before an image of the Virgin, within a stone's throw of 
my window ; and the young ladies write letters to St Louis 
Gonzaga, who, in all paintings and sculpture, is represented as 
young and angelically beautiful. I saw a large pile of these 
letters a few weeks ago in Gonzaga's chapel, at the Church of 
St. Ignatius. They were lying at the foot of the altar, prettily 
written on smooth paper, and tied with silken ribands of various 
colours. Leaning over the marble balustrade, I read the 
following superscription upon one of them : — " Al* Angelico 
Giovane S. Luigi Gonzaga, — ^Paradise." — To the angelic youth 
St. Lewis Gonzaga, Paradise. A soldier with a musket kept 
guard over this treasure, and I had the audacity to ask him at 
what hour the mail went out — LangfeUow, 

Carnival in the Nineteenth Century 

The Corso is a street a mile long ; a street of shops, and 
palaces, and private houses, sometimes opening into a broad 
piazza. These are verandahs and balconies of all shapes and 
sizes to almost every house. . . . This is the great fountain- 
head and focus of the carnival. ... From all the innumerable 
balconies : from the remotest and highest, no less than from 
the lowest and nearest : hangings of bright red, bright green, 
bright blue, white and gold, were fluttering in the brilliant 
sui^ht. From windows and from parapets, and tops of 
houses, streamers of the richest colours, and draperies of the 
gaudiest and most sparkhng hues, were floating out upon the 
streets. The buildings seemed to have been literally turned 



ROME 379 

inside oat, and to have all their gaiety towards the highway. 
Shop-fronts were taken down, and the windows filled wi& 
company, like boxes at a shining theatre. . . . Every sort of 
bewitching madness of dress was there. • . . 

Carriages on carriages, dresses on dresses, colours on 
colours, crowds upon crowds, without end. Men and boys 
dinging to the wheels of coaches, and holding on behind, and 
following in their wake, and diving in among the horses' feet 
to pick up scattered flowers to sell again; maskers on foot 
(the drollest generally) in fantastic exaggerations of court 
dresses, surveying the throng through enormous eye-glasses, 
and always transported with an ecstasy of love on the discovery 
of any particularly old lady at the window; long strings of 
Polichinelli laying about them with blown bladders at the end 
of sticks ; a waggonfuU of madmen screaming and tearing to 
the life ; a coachful of grave mamelukes, with their horsetail 
standard set up in the midst ; a party of gipsy-women engaged 
in terrific conflict with a shipful of sailors ; a man-monkey on 
a pole surrounded by strange animals with pigs' faces, and 
lion's tails, carried under their arms or worn gracefully over 
their shoulders; carriages on carriages, dresses on dresses, 
colours on colours, crowds upon crowds, without end. . . • 

How it ever is cleared for the race that takes place at five, 
or how the horses ever go through the race, without going over 
the people, is more than I can say. But the carriages get out 
into the by-streets, or up into the Piazza del Popolo, and some 
people sit in temporary galleries in the latter place, and tens 
of thousands line the Corso on both sides, when the horses are 
brought out into the Piazza — ^to the foot of the same column 
which for centuries looked down upon the games and chariot- 
races in the Circus Maximus. At a given signal they are 
started off". Down the live lane, the whole length of the 
Corso, they fly like the wind, riderless, as all the world knows, 
with shining ornaments upon their backs, and twisted in their 
plaited manes, and with heavy little balls stuck full of spikes, 
dangling at their sides to goad them on. The jingling of these 
trappings, and the rattling of their hoofs upon the hard stones ; 
the dash and fury of their speed along the echoing street ; nay, 
the very cannon that are fired, these noises are nothing to the 
roaring of the multitudes : their shouts ; the clapping of their 
hands. But it is soon over — ^almost instantaneously. More 
cannon shake the town* The horses have plunged into the 



38o THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

carpets put across the street to stop them; the goal is 
reached. . . . 

But if the scene be bright, and gay and crowded, on the 
last day but one, it attains, on the concluding day, to such a 
height of glittering colour, swarming life and frolicsome uproar, 
that the bare recollection of it makes me giddy at this moment 
The same diversions, greatly heightened, and intensified in the 
ardour with which they are pursued, go on till the same hour. 
. . . The diversion of the Moccoletti, the last gay madness of 
the carnival, is now at hand ; the sellers of little tapers, like 
what are called Christmas candles in England, are shouting 
lustily on every side, " Moccoli, Moccoli ! Ecco Moccoli ! " a 
new item in the tumult ; quite abolishing that other item of 
" Ecco Fi6ri ! Ecco Fi6r — r — ^r ! "... As the bright hangings 
and dresses are all fading into one dull, heavy, uniform colour 
in the decline of the day, lights b^n flashing here and there 
in the windows, on the house-tops, in the balconies, in the 
carriages, in the hands of the foot-passengers : little by little, 
gradually, more and more, until the whole long street is one 
great glare and blaze of fire. Then everybody present has but 
one engrossing object, that is, to extinguish other people's 
candles, and to keep his own alight; and everybody, man, 
woman or child, gendeman or lady, prince or peasant, native 
or foreigner, yells and screams and roars incessantly, as a 
taunt to the subdued, "Senza Moccolo, Senza Moccolo!" 
(without a light, without a light !) until nothing is heard but 
a gigantic chorus of those two words. . . . 

In the wildest enthusiasm of the cry, and fullest ecstasy of 
the sport, the Ave Maria rings from the church steeples, and 
the Carnival is over in an instant — ^put out like a taper, with 
a breath. — Dickens. 

Lying in State 

Three days ago the old Prince Corsini died, and toKiay his 
body has been lying in state in the great palace of his family. 
It was in this palace that Christina, Queen of Sweden and the 
daughter of Gustavus Adolphus died. To-day the doors have 
been open, and every one who desired has been admitted to 
see the state apartments and the dead Prince. All sorts of 
persons have been going up the magnificent double flight of 
stairs, — ladies and gentlemen, poor women with their babies 
in their arms, priests, soldiers, ragged workmen, boys and girls, 



ROME 381 

and strangers of all kinds. There were no signs of mourning 
about the house, but in the first great saloon sat two men in 
black gowns, busily employed in writing, as if making inven- 
tories ; and in each of the next two rooms were two priests in 
their showy robes, performing separate masses, while many 
people knelt on the floors, and others streamed through to 
the apartment in which the corpse was laid out. Here, on a 
black and yellow carpet, in the middle of the floor, surrounded 
by benches which were covered with a black cloth on which 
was a faded yellow skeleton of a scythe, lay the body of the 
old man. He was eighty-nine years old ; but here was nothing 
of the dignity of age, or the repose of death. The corpse was 
dressed in full court-costume — in a bright blue coat, with gold 
laces and orders upon the breast, white silk stockings and 
varnished pumps. It had on a wig, and its lips and cheeks 
were roug^. At its feet and at its head was a candle burn- 
ii^; two hired mourners sat at each side, and two soldiers 
kept the crowd from pressing too near or lingering too long. 
The room, which was not darkened, was hung with damask 
and purple and gold, and the high ceiling was painted with 
gay frescoes of some story of the gods. It was a fit scene 
for the grave-digger's grim jokes and Hamlet's philosophy. — 
C, E, Norton. 

ARCHITECTURE AND ART 
St. Peter's 

I visited St. Peter's, that most stupendious and incom- 
parable Basilicum, far surpassing any now extant in the world, 
and perhaps, Solomon's Temple excepted, any that was ever 
built. The largeness of the piazza ^ before the portico is worth 
observing, because it affords a noble prospect of the Church, 

1 Shelley gives us a curious picture of Papal Rome in the following : 
**In the Square of St. Peter's there are about three hundred fettered 
criminals at work^ hoeing out the weeds that grow between the stones of 
the pavement Their legs are heavily ironed, and some are chained two 
by two. They sit in long rows, hoeing out the weeds, dressed in parti- 
coloured clothes. Near them sit or saunter groups of soldiers, armed with 
loaded muskets. The iron discord of those innumerable chains clanks up 
into the sonorous air, and produces, contrasted with the musical dashing of 
the fountains, and the deep azure beauty of the sky, and the magnificence 
of the architecture around, a conflict 0/ sensations allied to maoness. It 
is the emblem of Italy — moral degradation contrasted with the glory of 
nature and the arts." 



38» THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

not crowded up as for the most part is the case in other places 
where greate churches are erected. In this is a foontaine out 
of which gushes a river rather than a streeme, which ascending 
a good height breakes upon a round embosse of marble into 
millions of pearles that flEdl into the subjacent basons with 
greate noise ; I esteeme this one of the goodliest fountaines I 
ever saw. 

Next is the Obelisq trans^rted out of Egypt and dedicated 
by Octavius Augustus to Julius Csesar, whose ashes it formerly 
bore on the sumit ; but being since overturned by the Barba- 
rians, was re-erected with vast cost and a most stupendious 
invention by I>omenico Fontana, architect to Sixtus V. The 
Obelisk consists of one intire square stone without hieroglyphic, 
in height 72 foote, but comprehending the base and all 'tis 108 
foote high. It rests on 4 \yons of gilded copper. You may 
see through the base of the Obelisq and plinth of the piedestal. 
... It is reported to have taken a year in erecting, to have 
cost 37,975 crowns, the labour of 907 men and 75 horses. . . . 

Before the faciata of the church is an ample pavement. 
The church was first begun by St. Anacletus when rather a 
chapel, on a foundation as they give out of Constantine the 
Great, who in honour of the AposUes carried 12 baskets fiill of 
sand to the work. After him Julius II. took it in hand, to 
which all his successors have contributed more or less. The 
front is supposed to be the largest and best studied piece of 
architecture in the world ; to this we went up by four steps of 
marble. The first entrance is supported by huge pilasters; 
the volto within is the richest in the world, overlaid with gold. 
Between the five large antiports are columns of enormous 
weight and compass, with as many gates of brass, the work of 
Pallaiulo the Florentine, full of cast figures and histories in a 
deep relievo. Over this runs a terrace of like amplitude and 
ornament, where the Pope at solemn times bestowes his 
benediction on the vulgar. On each side of this portico are 
two campaniles, or towers, whereof there was but one per- 
fected, of admirable art On the top of all runs a balustrade, 
which edges it quite round, and upon this at equal distances 
are Christ and the twelve disciples of gigantic size and stature, 
yet shewing no greater than the life. Entering the church, 
admirable is the breadth of the volto or roof which is all 
carved with foliage and roses overlaid with gold in nature of a 
deep bass relievo, a rantiq. The nave, or body is in the form 
of a cross, whereof the foot part is the longest ; and at the 



ROME 383 

intemodium of the transept rises the cupola, which being all 
of stone and of prodigious height is more in compass than the 
Pantheon (which was the largest amongst the old Romans, and 
is yet entire) or any other in the world. The inside or concave 
is covered with most exquisite mosaics representing the Celestial 
Hierarchy, by Giuseppe d'Arpino, full of starrs of gold ; the 
convex or outside exposed to the aire, is cover'd with lead with 
great ribbs of metall double guilt (as are also the ten other lesser 
cupolas, for no fewer adorn this glorious structure) which gives 
a great and admirable splendor in all parts of the Citty. On 
the sum'it of this is fix'd a brasen globe gilt, capable of receiv- 
ing 35 persons. This I entered and engrav'd my name amongst 
other travellers. Lastly is the crosse, the access to which is 
betweene the leaden covering and the stone convex or arch- 
worke, a most truly astonishing piece of art. On the battle- 
ments of the Church, also all overlayd with lead and marble, 
you would imagine yourself in a town, so many are the cupolas, 
pinnacles, towers, juttings, and not a few houses inhabited by 
men who dwell there, and have enough to do to looke after 
the vast reparations which continually employ them. 

We descended into the body of the Church, which is full 
of collaterall Chapells and large Oratories, most of them ex- 
ceeding the size of ordinary Churches ; but the principal are 
fowre incrusted with most precious marbles and stones of 
various colours, adom'd with an infinity of statues, pictures, 
stately altars, and innumerable reliques. The altar-piece of 
St Michael being of Mosaiq I could not passe without 
particular note, as one of the best of that kind. The Chapel 
of Gregory XIII. where he is buried, is most splendid. Under 
the cupola, and in the center of the Church, stands the high 
altar, consecrated first by Clement VIII. adom'd by Paul V. 
and lately cover'd by Pope Urban VIII. with that stupendous 
canopy of Corinthian brasse which heretofore was brought 
from the Pantheon ; it consists of 4 wreath'd columns partly 
channeled and indrcrd with vines, on which hang little puti, 
birds and bees (the armes of the Barbarini), sustaining a 
baldachino of the same mettal. The 4 columns weigh an 
hundred and ten thousand pounds, all over richly gilt ; this 
with the pedestalls, crowne, and statues about it, form a thing 
of that sut, vastness, and magnificence, as is beyond all that 
man's industry has produced of the kind : it is the work of 
Bernini, a Florentine sculptor, architect, painter, and poet, 
who, a little before my coming to the Citty, gave a publiq 



384 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

Opera (for so they call shews of that kind) wherein he painted 
the scenes, cut the statues, invented the engines, composed the 
musiq, writ the comedy, and built the theatre. Opposite 
to either of these pillare, under those niches which with 
their columns support the weighty cupola, are placed 4 
exquisite statues of Parian marble, to which are 4 altars ; that 
of St. Veronica made by Fra. Mochi, has over it the Reliquary, 
where they shew'd us the miraculous Sudarium indued with the 
picture of our Saviour's face, with this inscription : " Salvatoris 
imaginem Veronicse Sudario excepta ut loci majestas decenter 
custodiret, Urbanus VIII. Pont Max. Marmoreum signum et 
Altare addidit, Conditorium extruxit et omavit." 

Right against this is that of Lon^nus, of a Colossean 
magnitude, also by Bernini, and over him the Conservatory of 
the iron lance inserted in a most precious chrystal, with this 
epigraph: "Longini Lanceam quam Iimocentius VIII. a 
Basagete Turcarum Tyranno accepit, Urbanus VIII. statui 
appositk et Sacello substructo, in exomatum Conditorium 
transtulit" 

The third Chapel has over the altar the statue of our 
countrywoman St. Helena, the mother of Constantine the 
Great, the worke of B<^, an excellent sculptor; and here 
is preserved a greate piece of the pretended wood of the holy 
crosse, which she is said to have first detected miraculously 
in the Holy I-and. It was placed here by the late Pope with 
this inscription : " Partem Crucis quam Helena Imperatrix h 
Calvario in Urbem adduxit, Urbanus VIII. Pont. Max. h 
Sissoriansl Basilic^ desumptam, additis ari et statuS, hie in 
Vaticano coUocavit" 

The 4th hath over the altar, and opposite to that of 
St. Veronica, the statue of St. Andrew, the work of Fiamingo, 
admirable above all the other ; above is preserved the head of 
that Apostle richly inchas'd. It is said that this excellent 
sculptor died mad to see his statue placed in a disadvantageous 
light by Bernini the chiefe architect, who found himselfe out- 
done by this artist The inscription over it is this : 

" St Andreae caput quod Pius II. ex Achaii in Vaticanum 
asportam dum curavit, Urbanus VIII. novis hie omamentis 
decoratum sacrisq' statute, ac Sacelli honoribus coli voluit" 

The Reliques shew'd and kept in this Church are without 
number, as are also the precious vessels of gold, silver, and 
gems, with the vests and services to be scene in the Sacristy, 
which they shew'd us. Under the high altar is an ample grot 



ROME 385 

inlaid with Pietra Com'essa, wherein half of the bodies of 
St. Peter and St Paul are preserved ; before hang divers greate 
lamps of the richest plate burning continually. About this 
and contiguous to the altar runns a balustrade in forme of a 
theatre, of black marble. Towards the left as you goe out of 
the Church by the portico, a little beneath the high altar is an 
old brasse statue of St. Peter sitting, under the soles of whose 
feete many devout persons rub their heads and touch their 
chaplets. This was formerly cast from a statue of Jupiter 
Capitolinus. In another place stands a columne grated about 
with yron, whereon they report that our BL Saviour was often 
wont to leane as he preached in the Temple. In the work of 
the reliquary under the cupola there are 8 wreathed columns 
which were brought from the Temple of Solomon. In another 
Chapell they shewed us the chayre of St. Peter, or as they 
name it, the Apostolical Throne ; but amongst all the Chapells 
the one most glorious has for an altar-piece, a Madona bearing 
a dead Christ on her knees in white marble, the work of M. 
Angelo. At the upper end of the Cathedral are several stately 
monuments, especially that of Urban VI 1 1. Round the cupola 
and in many other places in the Church are confession-seates 
for all languages, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, 
French, English, Irish, Welsh, Sclavonian, Dutch, etc., as it is 
written on their friezes in golden capitals, and there are still 
at confessions some of the nations. Towards the lower end of 
the Church and on the side of a vast pillar sustaining a weighty 
roof, is the depositum and statue of the Countess Matilda, a 
rare piece, with basso-relievos about it of white marble, the 
work of Bernini. Here are also those of Sixtus IV. and 
Paulus III., etc. Amongst the exquisite pieces in this 
sumptuous £aibric is that of the Ship * with St. Peter held up 
from sinking by our Saviour. . . . Nor is the pavement under 

^ Kogler wrote as follows : '' For the ancient basilica of S. Peter, 
Giotto executed his celebrated mosaic of the Navicella, which has an 
allegorical fonndation. It represents a ship, with the disciples, on an 
agitated sea ; the winds, personified as demons, storm against it ; above 
appear the Fathers of the Old Testament speaking comfort to the snfferers. 
According to the early Christian symbolisation, the ship denoted the 
Church. Nearer, and on the right, in a firm attitude, stands Christ, the 
Rock of the Church, raising Peter from the waves. Opposite sits a fisher- 
man in tranquil expectation, denoting the hope of the believer. The 
mosaic has frequently changed its place, and has undergone so many 
restorations that the composition alone can be attributed to Giotto. The 
fisherman and the figures hovering in the air are, in their present form, 
the work of Marcello Provcnzale." 

2 B 



386 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

the cupola to be passed over without observation, which with 
the rest of the body and walls of the whole Church, are all 
inlaid with the richest of Pietra Com'essa, in the most splendid 
colours of polished marbles, agates, serpentine, porphyry, 
chalcedony, etc., wholly incrusted to the very roof. Coming 
out by the portico at which we entered, we were shewn the 
Porto Santo, never opened but at the year of Jubilee. — 
Evelyn. 

Details of St. Peter's 

The Tomb of St. Peter. — We descended by a double 
marble staircase, to the brazen doors of the Confession, 
or Tomb of St. Peter, illuminated by more than a hundred 
never-dying lamps, twinkling unnecessarily in the eye of 
day; but within the sepulchre all is dark, and the tapers 
of our guides revealed its splendour very imperfectly to 
view. We entered one large, and four smaller subterranean 
chapels. Pavements of beautiful inlaid marble . . . laborious 
gilt paintings . . . and a profusion of other ornaments, richly 
adorn the interior ; while marble sculpture, and bronze bassi- 
relievi, on the splendid shrine of the apostles, represent the 
great miracles of their lives. . . . This holy sepulchre is 
surrounded by a circular vault, which is lined with the tombs 
of popes, saints and emperors, besides a lon^ list of deposed 
or abdicated princes. The last representatives of our own 
unfortunate Stuarts, the Emperor Otho, and a Queen of 
Jerusalem, are buried here. . . . Emerging from those gloomy, 
magnificent sepulchral regions of darkness and death, to upper 
day, we stopped to survey the great altar which stands above the 
Confession of St. Peter. . . . Above it rises the baldacchino^ a 
gilded and brazen canopy, made from the bronze . . . plundered 
from the Pantheon by Urban VIII. — Mrs, Eaton, 

The Image of St. Peter. — ^The grand object of adoration 
is, however, the image of St. Peter himself. It is pretended 
that he is no other than old Jupiter Capitolinus transformed 
into the saint ; ^ at all events he was, undoubtedly and con- 
fessedly, an ancient bronze statue— either a god or a consul — 

^ Mr. Lowrie (Christian Arckaology) Toices the opinion of many 
inqnirers who believe the statae to be an early Christian work and not an 
ancient Roman one. Mrs. Eaton ia certainly too poaitite. There is an 
altematlTe view that the statue was an Italian work of the thirteenth 
century. 



ROME 387 

and here he sits in state with the modem additions of a glory 
. on his head and a couple of keys in his hand, holding out his 
toe to be kissed by the pious multitude who continually crowd 
around it for that purpose. ... If I were to name a point 
from which the church is seen to^the best advantage, it should 
be nearly from this very statue of St. Peter. The magnificent 
arches and crossing aisles, falling into beautiful perspective, 
the tombs, the statues, the altars, retiring into shadowy dis- 
tance more powerfully touch the imagination — Mrs, Eaton, 

Mausoleum of Matilda. — ^Among the number of its 
splendid mausoleums, all raised to the memory of pontiffs and 
princes of the Church, or to enshrine the ashes of kings and 
queens, there is one which affords a striking commentary on 
the text of this mighty edifice. It is the tomb of the famous 
Countess Matilda, the most powerful ally the Church ever 
knew ; and her defence of the Popes and their system, and 
the bequest of her valuable patrimony to the Church, have 
obtained for her a monument in St. Peter's, to which her 
ashes were conveyed from Mantua by Pope Urban the Eighth. 
Her efiigy represents a stem and dogged-looking woman, one 
whose strong volition might have passed for genius — she holds 
the papal sceptre and tiara in one hand, and in the other the 
keys of the Church ! At her feet lies her sarcophagus, and its 
reUevos form the precious part of the monument. They 
represent the Emperor Henry the Fourth at the feet of Pope 
Gregory the Seventh, where Matilda had assisted to place him. 
The abject, prostrate, half-naked Emperor, surrounded by 
Italian Princes and ecclesiastical Barons, the witnesses of his 
shame and d^radation, forms a fine contrast to the haughty 
and all-powerful Pope. — Lady M&rgan. 

The Interior. — The chief monuments are placed against 
the pillars in the nave. These monuments are of great 
magnificence, especially those of Gregory XIII., of Queen 
Christina, Leo XL, Innocent XL and those of Paul HI. and 
Urban VIII. The floor is all of inlaid marbles. The roof is 
of stucco and golden mosaic. The arches under the dome are 
larger than a half circle, and bend in slightly towards the 
spring of the arch, an effect which some approve of and others 
blame. The four laige supports of the central dome are lined 
with fluted white marble. The Evangelists are placed in the 
angle above the cornice beneath the dome. Below . . . mns 
a great circular frieze on which the words " Tu es Petrus, et 
super banc petram," etc. etc., are written in mosaic on a gilt 



388 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

ground. These letters are four and a half feet high. Above 
the frieze the dome begins to rise. It is entirely covered with 
mosaics. At the top is a circular opening, above which is the 
lantern ; this is terminated by a high brazen ball siurmounted 
by a cross. — De Brasses, 

Papal Ministrations. — When the pope celebrates divine 
service, as on Easter Sunday, Christmas Day, Whit Sunday, 
St. Peter and St. Paul, etc., the great or middle doors of the 
church are thrown open at ten, and the procession formed, 
. . . preceded by a beadle carrying the papal cross, and two 
others bearing lighted torches, enters and advances slowly in 
two long lines between two ranks of soldiers up the nave. 
This majestic procession is closed by the pontiff himself seated 
in a chair of state ^ supported by twenty valets half concealed 
in the drapery that falls in loose folds from the throne ; he is 
crowned with his tiara and bestows his benediction on the 
crowds that kneel on all sides as he is borne along. When 
arrived at the foot of the altar he descends, resigns his tiara, 
kneels, and assuming the common mitre seats himself in the 
episcopal chair on the right side of the altar, and joins in the 
psalms and prayers that precede the solemn service. — Eustace. 

Good Friday Observances. — To-day I am just come 
from paying my adoration at St. Peter's to three extraordinary 
relics, which are exposed to public view only on these two 
days in the whole year, at which time all the confraternities in 
the city come in procession to see them. It was something 
extremely novel to see that vast church, and the most magnifi- 
cent in the world, undoubtedly, illuminated (for it was night) 
by thousands of little crystal lamps, disposed in the figure of 
a huge cross at the high altar, and seeming to hang alone in 
the air. All the light proceeded from this, and had the most 
singular effect imaginable as one entered the great door. Soon 
after came one after another, I believe, thirty processions, all 
dressed in linen frocks, and girt with a cord, their heads 
covered with a cowl all over, only two holes to see through 
left. Some of them were all black, others red, others white, 
others party-coloured; these were continually coining and 
going with their tapers and crucifixes before them ; and to 
each company, as they arrived and knelt before the great 
altar, were shewn from a balcony, at a great height, the three 
wonders, which are, you must know, the head of the spear 

^ There is an admirable sketch of a papal procession by Raphael in 
the Louvre. 



ROME 389 

that wounded Christ; St. Veronica's handkerchief, with the 
miraculous impression of his face upon it ; and a piece of the 
true cross. — T, Gray, 

Ceremonies. — Of all the Roman ceremonies the pontifical 
service at St. Peter's is without doubt the most majestic ; and 
if we add to it the procession on Corpus Christie in which the 
Pope bears the holy sacrament in solemn pomp along the 
colonnade then hung according to the ancient fashion with 
tapestry and graced with garlands, we shall have mentioned 
the two most splendid exhibitions perhaps to be seen in the 
universe. — Eustace, 

Confessionals. — Confessionals in every living language 
stand in St Peter's. Spaniards, Portuguese, French, English, 
Germans, Hungarians, Dutch, Swedes, Greeks and Armenians, 
here find a ghostly counsellor ready to hear and absolve in 
their native tongue. At stated times the confessors attend. 
... All had long wands, like fishing-rods, sticking out of the 
box. The people passing kneel down opposite the confessor, 
who touches their head with his wand. — ^rs, Eaton, 

The Vatican Palace 

The grand entrance is from the portico of St. Peter's by 
the Scala R^a, the most superb staircase perhaps in the 
world, consisting of four flights of marble steps adorned with 
a double row of marble Ionic pillars. This staircase springs 
from the equestrian statue of Constandne which terminates the 
portico on one side ; and whether seen thence, or viewed from 
the gallery leading on the same side to the colonnade, forms 
a perspective of singular beauty and grandeur. The Scala 
Regia conducts to the Sala R^a. . . . The battle of Lepanto, 
in which the united fleet of the Italian powers under the com- 
mand of Don John of Austria and under the auspices of Pius 
V. defeated the Turks, and utterly broke their naval power 
. . . forms a most appropriate ornament to the Sala Regia. 
... At one end of the Sala Regia is the Cappella Paolina, 
so called, because rebuilt by Paul III. The altar is supported 
by porphyry pillars and bears a tabernacle of rock crystal ; the 
walls are adorned with various paintings. ^ • . . 

Towards the other end of the hall, on the left, a door opens 
into the Cappella Sistina built by Sixtus IV. and celebrated 

^ Among them two frescoes by Michael Angelo, much blackened, how- 
ever, with the smoke of candles. 



390 THE BCX)K OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

for its paintings in fresco hy Michael Angelo and his scholars. 
These paintings which cover the walls and vaulted ceilings, 
are its only ornaments. . . . Opposite the Cappella Sistina 
folding doors open into the Sala Ducale remarkable only for 
its size and simplicity. Hence we pass to the Log^e di 
Raffaello, a series of open galleries in three stories, lining the 
three sides of the court of St. Damasus. ... In the thirteen 
arcades that compose this wing of the gallery is represented 
the History of the Old and part of the New Testament, 
beginning with the Creation and concluding with the Last 
Supper. . . . The Camere de Raffaello are a range of halls 
totally unfurnished and uninhabited. . . . Two antichambers 
large and painted by great masters, lead to the first hall called 
the Sala di Costantino, because adorned with the grand achieve- 
ments of that Christian hero; and thence to the second 
Camera, where the story of Heliodorus from the Maccabees, 
the interview of Pope Leo and Attila, the miracle of Bolsena, 
and above all, the deliverance of St. Peter from prison, attract 
and charm the eye. Then follow the third Camera with the 
School of the Philosophers, the Debate of the Holy Sacra- 
ment, the Judgment of Solomon, and Parnassus with its 
groves of bays, Apollo, the Muses and the poets whom they 
inspired : and the fourth with the Incendio del Borgo, the 
triumph of Pope Leo over the Saracens at Ostia, and the 
Coronation of Charlemagne. All these are the works of 
Raffaello. ^ 

After having traversed the court of St. Damasus and its 
adjoining halls and chapels, which may be considered as the 
state apartments of the Vatican, the traveller passes to that 
part of the palace which is called the Belvidere from its eleva- 
tion and prospect, and proceeding along an immeasurable 
gallery comes to an iron door on the left that opens into the 
library of the Vatican. ... A double gallery of two hundred 
and twenty feet long opening into another of eight hundred, 
with various rooms, cabinets and apartments annexed, form 
the receptacle of this noble collection. . . . The books are 
kept in cases ; and in the Vatican the traveller seeks in vain 
for that pompous display of volumes, which he may have seen 
and admired in other libraries. . . . The grand gallery which 
leads to the library terminates in the Museum Pio<^lementinum. 
Clement XVI. has the merit of having first conceived the idea 
of this museum and began to put it in execution. The late 
^ The art is described in our extracts from Taine. 



ROM£ 391 

Pope Pius VL continued it on a much larger scale. ... It 
consists of several apartments . . . some lined with marbles, 
others paved with ancient mosaics, and all filled with statues, 
vases, candelabras, tombs and altars. — Eustace. 

Evolution of Roman Churches 

The ancient Roman basilica, used for the purpose of their 
law-courts and as a rendez-vous for merchants and the people, 
is the prototype of the Christian churches : accordingly the 
seven principal cathedrals in Rome, S. Peter, S. John Lateran, 
S. Maria Maggiore, S. Croce in Gerusalemme, S. Paolo fiiori 
le Mura, S. Lorenzo, and S. Sebastiano are called Basilicas. 
The area of the interior was an oblong, terminating with a 
small porticHi elevated a few steps above the lower level ; and 
at the extremity was a large niche or absis, in the centre of 
which the praetor or presiding magistrate sat in his chair sur- 
rounded by the public functionaries. The larger portion of 
the area towards the entrance consisted either of a single nave, 
or three naves, or five naves, divided in both the latter cases 
by columns sui^)orting a continuous entablature ; and above 
was a flat ceiling. . . . The Roman churches however may 
perhaps owe a more ancient origin to the Pagan temples. . . . 
At all events the circular temples such as the Pantheon and 
the Temple of Vesta, the former of which was adapted to the 
offices of the Roman Catholic church, literally without any 
change at all, having evidently furnished the model of the 
numerous circular, oval and octagonal churches at present 
existing, ... the altars too of the Pa^;an temples have been 
adopted in the Roman churches with httle alteration. These 
may be said to be of two varieties, such as may be seen exist- 
ing in their original state on the circumference of the Pantheon : 
one, the adiculoy a term indicating the station where the 
ancients used to place the statues of their deities, and consist- 
ing of an altar-table upon the wall, protected by a pediment 
supported on a pair of columns ; and the other similarly pro- 
tected by a pediment and its colunms, but contained within 
an arched or rectangular recess, or within an absis. Another 
and a modern variety of altar also in use in the modem 
churches is merely an altar-table appended to the wall, 
without any other ornament than the altar picture, with which 
altars of every description in Rome are almost invariably 
surmounted. . . . 



392 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

Among the various appendages which (notwithstanding the 
above-mentioned characteristics retained) the forms and cere- 
monies of the early Christian worship rendered necessary to 
engraft upon the basilica, the first was the atrium or quad- 
rangle in front of the principal entrance and gable. The 
quadrangle with a fountain in the middle, of which the recep- 
tacle was called the caniharus^ was surrounded by a portico 
for the convenience of those penitents or neophytes whose 
state of probation was not sufficient to be permitted to 
advance nearer to the sanctuary. Immediately within the 
entrance of the church there was also a portico, called the 
narthex^ appropriated to the reception of the neophyte or 
catachumen more advanced in the order of privil^es ; and 
upon the walls of the church above, encompassing one, two or 
three sides of the building, was another portico, or rather 
gallery, for the convenience of women exclusively. The choir 
or presbytery, perhaps for the purpose of removing it from the 
position previously occupied by the 6aAa/*os^ in the pagan 
temples, was at first constructed on a quadrangular area in the 
middle of the nave, and enclosed by a low marble balustrade, 
outside of which upon the two angles towards the oitrance of 
the church, were a pair of marble pulpits, called ambones^ from 
one of which was read the epistle, and from the other, dis- 
tinguished by the paschal candlestick, the gospel The prac- 
tice, therefore, of having two pulpits, which has grown into use 
of late years in our English churches, proceeds evidently fW>m 
this origin. Of the above-mentioned distinctive features of the 
primary Christian churches, though all have generally dis- 
appeared for many centuries, some one or more specimen or 
specimens of each are yet in existence. For instance, in the 
church of S. Clemente, the most perfect model existing as well 
of the early Christian church as of the ancient Roman basilica, 
supposed to have been built by S. Clement, third bishop of 
Rome in succession after Peter the Apostle, in the ninety-first 
year of the Christian era, there is to be seen in perfect pre- 
servation the atrium outside the building. In the church of 
S. Clemente also, enclosed in the middle of the nave by a low 
balustrade of marble, is the choir or presbytery in the position 
above referred to ; and also outside the balustrade a pair of 
marble ambones, and in firont of the one on the left-hand side, 
a small column representing the paschal candlestick. The 
present is the only specimen in Rome of such a choir or 
' The elevated portion reserved to the priests. 



ROME 393 

presbytery, though there axe several of the ambones, of which 
the two finest pair are — one in the church of Aracoeli, and the 
other in the church of S. Nereo ed Achilleo, near the baths of 
Caracalla. . . . There is also in the church of S. Clemente, 
upon the gable wall above the entrance, one of the ancient 
galleries above-referred to, which was used to be appropriated 
to the female congr^ation. A better specimen of such a 
gallery is to be seen in the church of S. Agnese fuori le Mura, 
where it encompasses three sides instead of, as here, one side 
of the building only. In the church of S. Clemente also, in 
the absis at the extremity, may be seen, as well as in many 
others of the early churches, an episcopal chair of marble. In 
the church of S. Clemente there is not the narthex or inner 
portico, though specimens of these also may be seen in the 
churches of S. Silvestro in Capite^ S. Maria in Acquiro, S. 
Agnese fuori le Mura, S. Anastasia, and S. Lorenzo in Damaso, 
all, with the exception of S. Anastasia, the date of which is 
unknown, belonging to the third and fourth centuries. 

An important alteration in church architecture, the addition 
of the square brick tower or belfry to the firont gable of the 
basilica, took place in the year 772, when Adrian I. annexed 
the first of these towers ever constructed to the church of 
S. Francesca Romana, in the Forum ; and such appendages, 
built, as appears by several that remain at the present day, on 
a uniform model of extraordinary solidity, were applied to the 
Roman churches for several centuries afterwards, until super- 
seded by the dome. The first dome of the modem prolate 
form was erected by Sbctus IV. in the year 1483, upon the 
church of S. Agostino, and the model has since been adopted 
all over Europe.^ — Sir G. Head. 

St. John Lateran {^Basilica and Baptistery) 

This church is the r^ular cathedral of the bishop of 
Rome, and as such assumes the priority of all others, and the 

^ Any scientific classification of Roman churches is impossible. We 
have first taken the basilicas, then in succession those whose main interest 
is their mosaic work, or their mediaeval or Renaissance influence. In this 
arrangement St. Peter's itself would come very late, though many of the 
earlier churches were restored after its completion. The ecclesiastical 
classification was, we believe : (i) chapels and charitable foundations ; (2) 
national — served by officials of other states; (3) parish churches; (4) 
sutional churches, generally built on some martyr's tomb ; (5) cardinalist 
churches. 



394 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

pompous title of the Parent and Mother of all Churches, 
*' Ecclesiarum urbis et orbis mater et caput'' It was founded 
by Constantine, but it has been burnt, ruined, rebuilt and 
frequently repaired, since that period. Its magnitude cor- 
responds with its rank and antiquity, and the richness of its 
decorations are equal to both. The Basilica, like that of Santa 
Maria Ma^ore, has two porticoes. That which presents 
itself to the traveller coming from the latter church, consists of 
a double gallery one above the other, adorned with pilasters ; 
the lower range Doric, the higher Corinthian. On the square 
before this portico rises a noble obelisk, the most elevated of 
its kind. From its pedestal bursts an abundant stream that 
supplies all the neighbouring streets with water. The principal 
portico faces the south ; it consists of four lofty columns and 
six pilasters. The order is Composite ; the attic is adorned 
with a balustrade, and that balustrade with statues. A double 
order is introduced in the intervals and behind this frontis- 
piece, to support the gallery destined to receive the pontiff 
when he gives his solemn benediction ; though it is formed of 
very beautiful pillars, yet it breaks the symmetry and weakens 
the effect of the whole. Other defects have been observed 
in this front, and the height of the pedestals, the heavy 
attic with its balustrade, and the colossal statues that en- 
cumber it, have been frequently and justly criticised. Yet 
with all these defects it presents a very noble and majestic 
appearance. 

The vestibulum is a long and lofty gallery. It is paved and 
adorned with various marbles. Five doors open from it into 
the church, the body of which is divided into a nave^ and two 
aisles on each side. The nave is intersected by a transept, and 
terminated as is usual by a semicircular sanctuary. There are 
no rails nor partitions ; all is open, and a few steps form the 
only division between the clergy and the people: thus the 
size and proportions of this noble hall appear to the best 
advantage. Its decorations are rich in the extreme, and scat- 
tered with profusion, but unfortunately with little taste. The 
nave was renewed or repaired by Borromini, and is disfigured 
by endless breaks and curves, as well as overloaded with cum- 
bersome masses. 

The church was anciently supported by more than three 
hundred antique pillars, and had the same plan of decoration 
been adopted in its reparation as was afterwards employed at 
Santa Maria Maggiore, it would probably have exhibited the 



ROME 395 

grandest display of pillared scenery now in existence. But the 
architect it seems had an antipathy to pillars ; he walled them 
up in the buttresses, and adorned the buttresses with groups of 
pilasters ; he raised the windows, and in order to crown them 
with pediments, broke the architrave and frieze, and even 
removed the cornice : he made niches for statues, and topped 
them with crowns and pediments of every contorted form ; 
in short he has broken eveiy straight line in the edifice, and 
filled it with semicircles, spirals, and triangles. The roof 
formed of wood, though adorned with gilding in profusion, yet 
from too many and dissimilar compartments appears heavy 
and confused. The altar is small and covered with a Gothic 
sort of tower, said to be very rich, and certainly very ugly. 
The statues of the twelve apostles, that occupy the niches on 
each side of the nave with their graceful pillars of verde 
antico (antique green), are much admired. There are several 
columns also that merit particular attention ; among these we 
may rank the antique bronze fluted (Hilars that suf^ort the 
canopy over the altar in the chapel of the Santissimo Sacra- 
mento. Some suppose that these pillars belonged to the 
temple of Jupiter Capitolinus; others fancy that they were 
brought from the temple of Jerusalem : be these conjectures 
as they may, the columns are extremely beautiful 

The various chapels of this church deserve attention, either 
for their form or for their embellishments; but the Corsini 
chapd is entitled to particular consideration, and may be re- 
garded as one of the most perfect buildings of the kind existing. 
Inferior perhaps in size, and more so in splendour, to the 
Borghese Chapel, it has more simplicity in its form and more 
purity in its decoration. This chapel is in the form of a Greek 
Cross. The entrance occupies the lower, the altar the upper 
part; a superb mausoleum terminates each end of the tran- 
sept ; the rail that separates the chapel from the aisle of the 
church is gilt brass ; the pavement is the finest marble ; the 
walls are incrusted with alabaster and jasper, and adorned 
with basso rilievos; six pillars adorn the recesses, the two 
on each side of the altar are verde antico ; the four others are 
porphyry, their bases and capitals are burnished bronze. The 
picture over the altar is a mosaic, the original by Guido. 
The tombs with their statues are much admired, particularly 
that of Clement XII., the Corsini pontiff, whose body reposes 
in a laige and finely proportioned antique sarcophagus of 
porphyry. Four corresponding niches are occupied by as 



396 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

many statues, representing the Cardinal Virtues, and over each 
niche is an appropriate basso rilievo. The dome that canopies 
this chapel, in itself airy and well lighted, receives an additional 
lustre from its golden panels, and sheds a soft but rich glow 
on the marble scenery beneath it. On the whole, though the 
Corsini chapel has not escaped criticism, yet it struck me as 
the most beautiful edifice of the kind ; splendid without gaudi- 
ness ; the valuable materials that form its pavement, line its 
walls and adorn its vaults, are so disposed as to mix together 
their varied hues into soft and delicate tints ; while the size 
and symmetry of its form enable the eye to contain it with ease, 
and contemplate its imity, its proportions, and its ornaments, 
without effort 

The Baptistery of St. John Lateran, which according to the 
custom of the early ages still observed in almost all the cathe- 
drals of Italy, though near is yet detached from the church, is 
called S. Giovanni in Fonte, and is the most ancient of the 
kind in the Christian world. It was erected by Constantine, 
and is at the same time a monument of the magnificence of that 
emperor and the bad taste of the age. A small portico leads 
into an octagonal edifice, in the centre of which there is a large 
basin about three feet deep, lined and paved with marble. 
This basin is of the same form as the bmlding itself; at its 
comers stand eight beautiful pillars, which support eight others 
of white marble. . . . There are two chapels, one on each 
side of the Baptistery, formerly destined for the instruction 
and accommodation of the catechumens. In this chapel only, 
and only upon the eves of Easter and Pentecost, was public 
baptism administered anciently in Rome.^ — Eustace. 

ScALA Santa 

Opposite to the great entrance of the palace of the Lateran, 
stands the venerable chapel of the ScaLa Santa (holy steps) 

^ In his well-known book, the Holy Roman Empire^ Biyce has made 
special reference to the copy of the mosaic Lateran triclinium now over 
the fa9ade of St. John Lateran. This mosaic Bryce considers as typical of 
the theory of the mediaeval empire as the fresco in S. M. Novella. The 
mosaic represents Christ giving their mission to the apostles, and again 
Christ with Pope Sylvester, and Christ with the Emperor Constantine. 
To one he gives the key of heaven, the other the banner sarmounted 
by a cross. The mosaic is of particular interest when we remember 
Dante's theory of the proper limits of the power of Empire and Papacy 
respectively. 



ROME 397 

once a part of the ancient building. This chapel is the shrine 
of daily pilgrimage to the peasantry, many of whom were as- 
cending its holy steps on their knees, on the several days that 
we passed by it. The veneration paid to this flight of stairs 
arises from the five centre steps (said to be part of the staircase 
of Pontius Pilate's house) which were sanctified by the blood 
of Christ None can ascend it but on their knees ; and lateral 
steps are provided for those whose piety may not lead them to 
this painful genuflexion. — Lady Morgan. 

Sta. Maria Maggiore 

The Basilica Liberiana, or church of Santa Maria Maggiore, 
which derives its former appellation from Pope Liberius, in 
whose time it was erected, its latter, fix>m its size and magni- 
ficence, as being the first that bears the appellation of the 
Blessed Virgin. It is said to have been founded about the 
year 350, and has undergone many repairs and alterations 
since that period. It is one of the noblest churches in the 
world, and well deserves an epithet of distinction. It stands 
by itself on the highest swell of the Esquiline hill, in the midst 
of two great squares which terminate two streets of near two 
miles in length. To these squares the Basilica presents two 
fronts of modem architecture and of different decorations. 
The principal front consists of a double colonnade, one over 
the other, the lower Ionic, the other Corinthian ; before it on 
a lofty pedestal rises a Corinthian pillar supporting a brazen 
image of the Blessed Virgin. On the other side, a bold semi- 
circular front adorned with pilasters and crowned with two 
domes, fills the eye and raises the expectation. Before it, 
on a pedestal of more than twenty feet in height, stands an 
Egyptian obelisk of a single piece of granite of fifty, terminat- 
ing in a cross of bronze. These accompaniments on each 
side give the Basilica an air of unusual grandeur, and it must 
be allowed that the interior is by no means unworthy of this 
external magnificence. 

The principal entrance is, as usual in all the ancient 
churches, through a portico ; this portico is supported by eight 
pillars of granite, and adorned with corresponding marble pila- 
sters. The traveller on his entrance is instantly struck with the 
two magnificent colonnades that line the nave and separate it 
from the aisle. They are supported each by more than twenty 
pillars, of which eighteen on each side are of white marble. 



398 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

The order is Ionic with its regular entablature, the elevation 
of the pillars is thirty-eight feet, the length of the colonzBuie 
about two hundred and fifty. The sanctuary forms a semi- 
circle behind the altar. The altar is a la^e slab of marble 
covering an ancient sarcophagus of porphyry, in which the 
body of the founder formerly reposed. It is overshadowed 
by a canopy of bronze, supported by four lofty Corinthian 
pillars of porphjrry. This canopy, though perhaps of too 
great a magnitude for its situation, as it nearly touches the 
roof, is the most beautiful and best proportioned ornament 
of the kind which I ever beheld. The side walls supported 
by the pillars are divided by pilasters, between which are 
alternately windows and mosaics ; the pavement is variegated, 
and the ceiling divided into square panels, double gilt and 
rich in the extreme. There is no transept, but instead of it 
two noble chapels open on either side. The one on the right 
as you advance from the great entrance towards the altar, was 
built by Sixtus Quintus, and contains his tomb : it would be 
considered as rich and beautiful, were it not infinitely sur- 
passed in both these respects by the opposite chapel belonging 
to the Borghese family^ erected by Paul V. Both these chapels 
are adorned with domes and decorated with nearly the same 
architectural ornaments. But in the latter, the spectator is 
astonished at the profusion with which not bronze and marble 
only, but lapis-lazuli, jasper, and the more precious stones are 
employed. — Eustace. 

Sta. Crocb in Gerusalemme 

Remarkable only for its antique shape, and for the eight 
noble columns of granite that support its nave. Its firont is 
modem, of rich materials, but of very indifferent architecture. 
The semicircular vault of the sanctuary is adorned with paint- 
ings in fresco, which, though very defective in the essential 
parts, yet charm the eye by the beauty of some of the figures 
and the exquisite freshness of the colouring. The lonely 
situation of this antique basUica amidst groves, gardens and 
vineyards, and the number of mouldering monuments and 
tottering arches that surround it, give it a solemn and affecting 
appearance. — Eusfaa. 

It was originally built, within the limits of the gardens of 
Heliogabalus, called the Horti Variani, by S. Helena, the 
mother of Constantine, for the especial purpose of preserving 



ROME 399 

a sacred relique, said to be a portion of our Saviour's cross 
brought from Jerusalem ; and the site was hallowed by earth 
transported from Mount Calvary, and sprinkled under the 
church's foundations. ... It may seem extraordinary, con- 
sidering the importance naturally belonging to the building 
under the above circumstances, that from the time of its con- 
secration by S. Silvester, about the year 306, the accounts 
relating to it for many centuries afterwards are far more im- 
perfect than of very many ordinary Roman churches ; all that 
I find recorded of it is in fact, with the exception of vague 
and general allusions to various restorations, that it was rebuilt 
by Gregory II. about the year 715, and again by Lucius II. 
in 1 144, and finally, that having been conceded by Pius VI., 
about the year 1560 to the congregation of Cistercian monks, 
whose convent is annexed to the building ... it was put in 
the condition it appears in at present. . . . The basilica is 
constructed in the form of a triple nave, divided by compound 
piers faced with pilasters, and planted so as to comprise three 
intercolumnial spaces, of which the central is considerably 
narrower than the two others. . . . The choir or tribune is in 
the form of a spacious absis, of which the semidome is painted 
in fresco by Pinturicchio, on a subject relating to the dis- 
covery of our Saviour's cross at Jerusalem by Sta. Helena, and 
in colours, among which sky-blue predominates, all exceedingly 
vivid. ... On each side of the tribune a door leads from the 
transept to a crypt under the basilica, where the so-called 
fragment of our Saviour's cross, from which the title " Santa 
Croce " is derived, is deposited, though no person is permitted 
to see the relique without the Pope's special authority. — Sir 
G. Head. 

San Paolo Fuori* 

The patriarchal Basilica of St. Paul, called S. Paolo fuori 
delle Mura, at some distance from the Porta Ostiensis. . . . 
It was finished by Theodosius and his son Honorius, and 
afterwards, when shattered by earthquakes and time, it was 
repaired first by Leo III., and again, after a long interval, by 
Sixtus Quintus. Such was the respect which the public enter- 
tained for this church, and so great the crowds that flocked 
to it, that the emperors above-mentioned thought it necessary 
(if we may believe Procopius) to build a portico from the gate 
to the Basilica, a distance of near a mile. The magnificence 
^ FUoriy ue, ontside the city. 



400 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

of this portico seems to have equalled the most celebrated 
works of the ancient Romans, as it was supported by marble 
pillars and covered with gilt copper. But whatsoever may 
have been its former glory^ it has long since yielded to the 
depredations of age or b^barism, and sunk into dust without 
leaving even a trace to ascertain its former existence. The 
road is now unfrequented, and the church itselfi with the 
adjoining abbey belonging to the Benedictine monks, is almost 
abandoned during the summer months on account of the real 
or imaginary unwholesomeness of the air. 

The exterior of this edifice, like that of the Pantheon, 
being of ancient brick, looks dismal and ruinous. The portico 
is supported by twelve pillars, and forms a gallery or vestibulum 
lofty and spacious. The principal door is of bronze ; the nave 
and double aisles are supported by four rows of Corinthian 
pillars, amounting in all to the number of eighty. Of these 
columns, four -and -twenty of that beautiful marble called 
pavonazzo (because white tinged with a delicate purple), and 
the most exquisite workmanship and proportions, were taken 
from the tomb of Adrian {Castel S. Angela). The transept, 
or rather the walls and arches of the sanctuary, rest upon ten 
other columns, and thirty more are employed in the decora- 
tion of the tomb of the Aposde and of the altars. These 
pillars are in general of porphyry, and the four that support 
the central arches are of vast magnitude. Two flights of 
marble steps lead from the nave to the sanctuary : the pave- 
ment of this latter part is of fine marble ; that of the former, 
of shattered fragments of ancient tombs marked with inscrip>- 
tions. The altar stands under a canopy terminated by an 
awkward Gothic pyramid ; the circumference of the sanctuary 
is adorned with some very ancient mosaics. The walls of the 
nave and centre rest on arches carried from pillar to pillar ; 
those of the nave are high and covered with faded paintings. 
The length of the church is about three hundred feet, its 
breadth about one hundred and fifty, and from its magnitude, 
proportions, and materials, it undoubtedly furnishes all the 
means requisite, if properly managed, of rendering it one of 
the most noble, and perhaps one of the most beautiful, churches 
in the world. As it is, it presents a very exact copy of its 
ancient state, for it seems to have suffered considerable damage 
almost as soon as finished, from the wars, alarms, and devasta- 
tions that commenced in the reign of Honorius, and continued 
during several successive centuries. — Eustace, 



ROME 401 



San Lorenzo Fuori 



Constantdne the Great erected this basilica above the tomb 
of the martyred San Lorenzo, who, you will remember, was 
broiled to death upon a gridiron at Rome, and of St Stephen, 
the first martyr, who was stoned to death at Jerusalem ; though 
how his body, which was buried at that place by devout men, 
came to be deposited here, is not clearly explained. This 
basilica was for the most part rebuilt in the sixth and it is 
believed, in the eighth century also ; and the internal part, 
containing the confession, or tomb of the saint, alone remains 
of the original erection. It is distinguished by ten magnificent 
columns of pavonazetto marble, buried nearly to the top of 
their shafts below the pavement of this vile old church. The 
capitals of two of them are composite, adorned with sculptured 
trophies, instead of foliage; the rest are Corinthian. They 
support a second order of mean little columns ; and a gallery, 
which was customary in all the earliest churches, as well as in 
the Roman Basilica. The marble pulpits or reading-desks 
stand on each side of the church. On the right-hand side, 
in walking up the nave, is the Ionic column with a frc^ and 
a lizard sculptured on the capital, which Winckelmann and all 
the critics after him, declare to be the identical column that 
Pliny says was so marked by the two Spartan architects, 
Battrocus and Saurus, to perpetuate their names; and con- 
sequently it must have been brought here from the Temple of 
Jove, in the Portico of Octavia. 

There are two Christian tombs in this church, adorned 
with Bacchanalian images; one is behind the altar, and 
another, representing the vintage, is near the door. Imme- 
diately on the right of the door, on entering, there is, however, 
a far more beautiful sarcophagus, which contains the bones of 
an old cardinal, adorned with a Roman Marriage, sculptured 
in bas-relief. You see the propitiatory sacrifice — the bride- 
groom and the bride, attended by her train of paranympha or 
bride-maids, united by the Genius of Love; and above all, 
the assembled deities that bless or prosper the marriage state. 
By way of a specimen of the fine arts of a later and lower 
period, in the mosaic pavements in the middle of the church, 
you will see two Roman soldiers, of the barbarous ages, on 
horseback — most extraordinary figures! — or better still, ad- 
mire in the external portico of the church some fresco paint- 

2 c 



402 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

ings nearly washed out, representing, amongst other things, 
the Pope and Cardinals, apparently wanning themselves by 
the flames of purgatory, and the souls burning in them, some 
of which are lifted up by the hair of the heads, by black 
angels in red petticoats, looking thoroughly singed. This 
exquisite composition is in commemoration of the privil^e 
enjoyed by one particular subterranean chapel in this church, 
of liberating the souls in purgatory — ^for money. — Mrs. Eaian, 

San Sebastiano Fuori 

Some say it was built by Constantine, and it is supposed at 
all events to have had its origin in the third or the b^;inning 
of the fourth century, and to be situated on the site of the 
cemetery constructed by the Bishop of Rome, Callixtus L, 
about the year 218, in which cemetery S. Sebastian was buried. 
. . . With regard to the exterior appearance, though holding 
rank among the seven Roman basilicas, it is inferior to some 
of the ordinary churches in magnitude, and the frontage 
hardly exceeds the breadth of sixty feet The entrance is 
through a portico supported by three round-topped arches 
springing from columns, of which two pairs are of red granite 
and one pair granito del foro. The interior is constructed in 
the form of a sii^le nave, the only instance of a single nave 
among the seven basilicas. . . . 

From the nave of the basilica, by a portal from either side, 
there is a descent to the catacombs of S. Callixtus, who is 
said to be the first of the bishops of Rome who, at the com> 
mencement of the reign of Alexander Severus, converted to 
the purpose of public cemeteries these extraordinary subter- 
raneous passages, which are supposed to have been excavated 
in the first instance by the early Romans for the purpose of 
digging pozzolana for their buildings. . . . The catacombs on 
the present spot are considered the most extensive of all 
others in the neighbourhood of Rome, comprehending a 
regular series of underground passages communicating one 
with another, it is said, to the extraordinary and even in- 
credible distance of six miles ; it is moreover generally affirmed 
by the church authorities that no less than fourteen bishops 
and one hundred and seventy thousand martyrs were buried 
here at different periods. By traditional accounts of the 
Roman Catholic Church the bodies of St Peter and St Paul 
were also originally deposited here, though removed after- 



ROME 403 

wards, one to the celebrated sepulchre under the dome of St. 
Peter's, and the other to the cemetery of a Roman matron, St. 
Ludna, adjacent to the Basilica di St. Paolo on the banks of 
the Tiber.— Sir G, Head, 



San Clemente 

The church of St. Clement, in the great street that leads to 
St. John Lateran, is the most ancient church in Rome. It was 
built on the site, and was probably at first one of the great 
apartments of the house of the holy bishop whose name it 
bears. It is mentioned as ancient by authors of the fourth 
century (St. Jerome, Pope Zozimus, etc.), and is justly con- 
sidered as one of the best models that now exist of the 
original form of Christian churches. It has frequently been 
repaired and decorated, but always with a religious respect for 
its primitive shape and fashion. In front of it is a court with 
galleries, supported by eighteen granite pillars, and paved with 
pieces, of shattered marbles, among which I observed several 
fragments of beautiful verde antico. The portico of the chureh 
is formed of four columns of the same materials as the pillars 
of the gallery, and its interior is divided into a nave and aisles 
by twenty pillars of various marbles. The choir commences 
about the centre of the nave, and extends to the steps of the 
sanctuary ; there are two pulpits, called anciently Ambanes^ one 
on each side of the choir. A flight of steps leads to the 
sanctuary or chancel, which is terminated by a semicircle, in 
the middle of which stands the episcopal chair, and on each 
side of it two marble ranges of seats border the walls for the 
accommodation of the priests j the inferior clergy with the 
singers occupied the choir. In front of the episcopal throne, 
and between it and the choir, just above the steps of the 
sanctuary, rises the altar unencumbered by screens and con- 
spicuous on all sides. The aisles terminated in two recesses 
now used as chapels, called anciently Exedra or Cella^ and 
appropriated to private devotion in prayer or meditation. 
Such is the form of St. Clement's, which though not originally 
a basilica, is evidently modelled upon such buildings ; as may 
be seen not only by the description given of them by Vitruvius, 
but also by several other churches in Rome, which having 
actually been basilicae, still retain their original form with 
slight modifications. The same form has been retained or 
imitated in all the great Roman churches, and indeed in 



404 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

almost all the cathedral and abbey churches in Italy ; a form 
without doubt far better calculated both for the beauty of 
perspective and for the convenience of public worship than 
the arrangement of Gothic fabrics, divided by screens, insulated 
by partitions, and terminating in gloomy chapels. — Eustace. 

Sta. Agnese 

The Church of St. Agnes was built on the level of the 
Catacombs in which the body of the saint was found, con- 
sequently a considerable depth below the surface of the earth ; 
and you descend into it by a marble staircase. . . . The 
interior of the Church of St. Agnes, more than any other, 
preserves the form of the ancient civil basilica. The three 
naves, separated by sixteen ancient marble columns, and the 
form of the tribune at the top, beneath which the great altar 
now stands and the judge formerly sat, may be distinctly seen 
in most of the old Roman churches; but the peculiarity of 
this is the gallery, which was occupied by the audience in the 
Pagan Basilica, and by the women in the religious assemblies 
of the early Christians, — a custom, by the way, still in use 
among the Jews ; at least in the only one of their synagogues I 
ever entered, that at Rome. — Mrs, Eaton, 

SS. Cosmo e Damiano 

The church was erected in the year 521, by Pope Felix IV. 
. . , there are, however, no subsequent accounts of the church 
till the reign of Urban VIII., who about the year 1630 rebuilt 
it, at the same time raising the pavement on account of the 
humidity of the spot. . . . The entrance from the vestibule to 
the church is through a circular arch of very considerable 
depth, on each of the plain and whitewashed sides of which is 
engrafted an object which ... is of ordinary occurrence in 
the Roman churches, called a martyr's weight, or Lapis 
Martyrum, . . . Those in question, in size about twice the 
bigness of a man's head, are supposed to have been fiastened 
to the necks of Saints Cosmus and Damianus, when both 
the martyrs were thrown into the Tiber in the reign of 
Maximian. . . . 

At the extremity of the church, the choir immediately at 
the entrance of which stands the isolated high altar, is re- 
presented by a broad and magnificent absis, an original 



ROME 405 

portion of the church built by Pope Felix IV., of which the 
semidome is lined with curious mosaic of the sixth century, 
executed in a coarse style, indicative of the state of the arts at 
the period, but which, notwithstanding the apparently careless 
mechanical arrangement of the mosaic fragments is extraor- 
dinarily eflFective. The subject is Our Saviour, the Good 
Shepherd and the Apostles, die latter represented by twelve 
sheep the size of nature, and thrown into such bold relief that 
they seem like living ones. . . . On the left-hand side of the 
high altar is a door leading by a flight of steps to the crypt. . . . 
Here, not far from the entrance, the body of Pope Felix, the 
founder of the church, or St. Felix as is his designation, was 
discovered. — Sir G. Head, 

Sta. Maria in Trastevere 

The church is supposed to have been originally built in 
the form of a small oratory, about the year 222, by the Bishop 
of Rome, Callixtus I., on ground conceded by Alexander 
Severus for the especial use of the Christians, a spot where an 
ancient hospital for invalided soldiers, called the Tabema 
Meritoria, had stood previously. The building of Callixtus, 
at all events, was the first place of public worship ever estab- 
lished in Rome by the Christians. It was rebuilt in the year 
340 by the bishop, Julius I., and restored in 707 by John VII. ; 
also between the years 715 and 741 by Gregory II. and 
Gregory III. j by Adrian I. about the year 772, and by Bene- 
dict III. about the year 855; by Innocent II. in the year 
1139 ; and about the year 1447 Nicholas V. put it in the form 
it bears at present, after the designs of the architect Bernardino 
Rossellini, with the exception, however, of the portico, which 
was added, about the year 1700, by Clement XL With regard 
to the exterior, the portico is supported by five round-topped 
arches that spring from four columns of granito del foro, and 
its flat roof is protected by a balcony. The fa9ade of the 
church that rises in the rear of the portico is a remarkably low 
gable, to which is annexed a square brick tower of the middle 
ages ; the entablature of the gable is covered with mosaics 
executed in the time of Innocent II., in the twelfth century, 
representing the five wise virgins, together with the Madonna 
and the infant Saviour. The portico in its interior is broad 
and spacious, and upon the walls are engrafted a considerable 
number of interesting ancient inscriptions. 



4o6 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

The church is constructed in the form of a triple naye^ 
divided by ancient granite colunms. . . . The capitals, with 
the exception of four Corinthian, are Grecian Ionic, supposed 
to have belonged to the Temple of Isis and Serapis, inasmuch 
as there are to be observed interpolated in the volutes, which 
are extremely highly wrought, figures of Isis, Serapis and Hai^ 
pocrates. . . . The transept is elevated by a flight erf seven 
steps. ... In front of the main arch ... is a monument, of 
which the principal objects are a marble bas-relief representing 
the annunciation of the Holy Virgin, surmounted by a curious 
piece of mosaic executed in the ancient style in very small 
pieces representing a marine landscape, including fishing- 
vessels, water-fowls. — St'r G. Head, 

S. Grbgorio 

The spot where the church and convent now stand was 
originally the site of the paternal domicile of Gregory the 
Great. . . . Gregory having become a monk . . . and subse- 
quently having been raised to the papal chair in the year 590, 
the church originally dedicated to him under the present title 
was built after his death, at a period not precisely defined. . . . 
The first restoration that is recorded is the rebuilding of the 
portico in the year 1633 by the architect Gio. Battista Soria, 
at the private expense of Cardinal Scipio Borghese. After- 
wards the church was thoroughly restored in the year 1734 by 
the architect Francesco Ferrari, at the expense of the monks 
who at that time inhabited the convent. . . . The paintings, 
chiefly relating to circumstances in the life of Gregory the 
Great comprise an interesting display of costume at their early 
period of the Christian church. . . . The original cell that 
Gregory the Great occupied is ... a very small cell, of which 
the dimensions are about 6 feet by 10 feet in area, and of 
height corresponding. There is also to be observed . . . the 
original pontifical chair of Gregory. — Sir C Httul, 

Sta. Sabina 

The church . . . supposed to stand on the site of the 
temple of Juno Regina . . . occupies also the spot where the 
paternal residence of the saint to whom it is dedicated was 
situated. It was originally built by an Illyrian priest . . • 



ROME 407 

in the rdgn of the Bishop of Rome, Celestine. In the year 
824 it was restored by Eugenius II., and was afterwards rebuilt 
and reconsecrated in 1238 by Gregory IX. In 1541 it was 
again restored and embellished by Cardinal Cesarini, and 
further redecorated by Sixtus V. in 1587. . . . The interior 
is constructed in the form of a triple nave, divided by remark- 
ably fine Corinthian columns of Hymettian marble, supposed 
to have belonged to the ancient Temple. . . . The pavement 
is composed pardy of red tiles, partly of stripes of marble. . . . 
There is to be observed in the middle of the area a short 
spirally fluted column of white marble three or four feet in 
height, on which is placed a martyr's weight of the ordinary 
form and material ; and at the foot of the column is a slab of 
marble containing an inscription that serves to mark the spot 
where S. Dominic, the founder of the order of Dominicans, 
used to kneel down and pray. . . . The original cell of St. 
Dominic in the annexed convent of Dominicans is . . . about 
ten feet square, the ceiling fiat and composed of unpainted 
board and rafters, and the side walls on the right and on the 
left plain and unwashed. Opposite the entrance is a small 
primiUve-looking altar, faced widi marble inlaid in an arabesque 
pattern, with the exception of a circular tablet of seme santo 
for a central ornament The altar-picture is a portrait of S. 
Dominic^ — Sir G. HeeuL 

Sta. Maria dbgli Angeli 

The church . . . was originally constructed about the 
year 1560 by Pius IV., who employed Michael Angelo, then 
in the eighty-sixth year of his age, to appropriate to the pur- 
pose the magnificent oblong chamber belonging to the baths, 
called the Pinnacotheka, then remaining covered with its 
original roof in excellent preservation. The present appear- 
ance of the church, however, although the plan of a Greek 
cross adopted by Michael Angelo has been adhered to, is to be 
attributed principally to the architect Vanvitelli, who, in the 
year 1749, in the reign of Benedict XIV., made very con- 
siderable improvements. . . . The frontage of the whole 
exterior ... is so exceedingly plain and unpretending, not- 
withstanding that the church is the most beautiful perhaps 

^ The canred wood doors of Sta. Sabina are of the fifth century and shew 
the transition from the emblematic art of the catacombs to the more living 
art of the basilicas. 



4o8 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

of any of the Roman churches in the interior, that hardly any 
resemblance to the form of a church can be said to belong to 
it, but it rather resembles a very ordinary facade of a private 
dwelling. . . . 

Passing through the segment arch, whose ample span forms 
a most imposing entrance from the nave of the church into 
the transept, we enter at once, at the middle of the western 
flank, into the pinnacotheka of the baths of Dioclesian, meta- 
morphosed, it is true, into a Christian place of worship, but 
still retaining, without any material alteration or infringement, 
its original character. This celebrated chamber, taken as at 
present, is in length, from altar to altar at each extremity, 
406 palms, or 296^ feet ; in breadth, 90 feet ; and in height, 
to the centre of the vaulted ceiling, 90 feet. The origmal 
ceiling, of Dioclesian, which has already existed for sixteen 
centuries, ... is still capable, as far as human eye can per- 
ceive, of enduring many more. . . . The pavement, of inlaid 
marble, is the finest to be seen in Rome, with the exception 
of the new pavement of St. Paolo fuori le Mura, and of St. 
Peter's, though the latter, owing to the continual traffic in the 
Basilica, is in appearance much inferior. The whole vast area 
presents to the eye one splendid polished surface of marble 
of various descriptions and brilliant colours, disposed in all 
manner of figures and forms, curvilinear and rectilinear, all 
subsidiary and contributing to the main design, which, like a 
colossal carpet is surrounded by a broad border.^ — Sir G. Head, 

Sta. Prassede 

The titular saint of the church, S. Praxides or Prassede, 
was the daughter of the senator Pudens, in whose house, 
according to the traditions of the Roman church, the apostle 
S. Peter lived as a lodger, and the sister of S. Pudentiana. 
. . . The church was originally built about the year 822, by 
Paschal I., after which period I find no account of the restora- 
tions until the reign of Nicholas V., who repaired it about the 
year 1450 ; and it was afterwards embellished and put in the 
form and condition it is in at present by the celebrated cardinal 
more commonly known by the title of S. Carlo Borromeo. 
. . . Within is a wooden figure painted in natural colours, 

1 The church also contains Domenichino's Martyrdom of S. Sebastian^ 
originally painted in fresco in St Peter's, but removed hither by the archi- 
tect 21abaglia. 



ROME 409 

representing S. Prassede on her knees in the act of squeezing 
a sponge saturated with the blood of Christian martyrs into 
a t^in, in allusion to the practice by which S. Prassede, to- 
gether with her sister Pudentiana, according to the tradition 
of the Roman Church, used to collect the bodies of all the 
Christians they could find who had suffered martyrdom, and 
having consigned the remains to the earth, mingle the blood 
of the faithful all together in the holy well ... On the 
southern gable wall, on the right hand of the entrance, there 
is to be observed an . . . inscription on a marble tablet, re- 
lating to the remains of no less than 10,300 martyrs, deposited 
underneath the church at the beginning of the ninth century 
by Paschal U—Str G. Head. 

S. Stefano Rotundo 

The church of S. Stefano Rotundo, though mistaken by 
the antiquaries ... for several different ancient buildings, is 
generally believed, principally on the authority of Anastatius, 
to have been built about the year 470 by Pope Simplicius, 
though there are no accounts of its history subsequently until 
Nicholas V., finding it in an extremely dilapidated state, re- 
stored it about the year 1450, since which period, propped up 
rather than rebuilt, the form and condition at all events in 
which it was then left has never been altered. As regards its 
present appearance, and first of the exterior, which, as the 
name imports, is circular, the building consists of two concen- 
tric circular brick walls of exceedingly inferior masonry 
which the inner one, covered by a modem mushroom-formed 
roof of red tiles, slanting from the apex to the circumference, 
is three times as high as the outer one, which latter is con- 
nected with the other by a tiled pent-house roof slanting down- 
wards from the inner periphery. . . . The fresco paintings^ 
... are the joint performance of Pomerancio and Tempesta 
. . . comprising in minute detail the unspeakable sufferings 
inflicted on the early Christians in the da)^ of their persecu- 
tion. ... To recite a few of the principal foreground subjects, 
there may be seen the most graphic representations that the 

^ The church also contains a mosaic of the period of this pope, and 
over the head of one figure is a square aureole as seen in mosaic-work of 
the eighth and ninth centuries. Head (vol. ii. p. 242) names the only five 
other examples of the square aureole in Rome. 

' In the interior. 



4IO THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

imagination can conceive of a martyr immersed in a caldioa of 
boiling oil ; of another bound by cords, and extended <m his 
side, while molten lead is being poured into his ears; of 
another beii^ broiled to death within the body of a Ixazen 
bull ; of another cast into a yawning abyss swarming widi 
scorpions and serpents ; of martyrs torn in pieces by lions, 
t^ers and panthers, on the arena of the Colosseum. — Sir G. 
Head. 

Sta. Maria di Ara Cceli 

I went to the church of the Ara Coeli ^ ... up that Icmg 
flight of one hundred and twenty-four marble steps overtopping 
the Capitol, the site of the Temple of Jupiter Ferretrius, to see 
the Santo Bambino. As I was in the company of a devout 
Catholic, I put on my gravest face — ^which, however, I found 
it a hard matter to maintain. We were ushered into a side 
chapel off the sacristia, where, after waiting some time, one of 
the monks appeared. We intimated our wish to be presented, 
whereupon he straightway proceeded to light four candles on 
the altar, and to unlock the front panel, out of which he took 
a large gilt box. The box was covered with common, wear- 
able-looking baby-clothes, which he put on one side. He then 
placed it on the altar, and unfastened the lid ; several layers of 
white silk, edged with gold, were then removed, and at last 
appeared the Bambino, in the shape of an ugly painted doU, 
some two feet in length. A more complete little monster I 
never beheld — the face painted a violent red ; the hair, also 
wooden, in rigid curls ; altogether very like one of the acting 
troop in Punch's theatre. There was a gold and jewelled 
crown on its head, and the body — swathed in white silk, like 
an Italian baby — was covered with diamonds, emeralds, and 
pearls, but of no great size or value; the little feet were 
hollow, and of gold. Of all sights in the world, the Bambino 
ought to be the most humiliating to a Catholic. The monk 
said the Bambino was of dnque-cento workmanship, which they 
always do say, faute de tnieux^ and added, with a devout look, 
" Ma e Molto prodigioso'* When he goes to the sick, he rides 
in a coach sent for him, and is held up at the window to be 
adored. At Christmas there are no end of ceremonies, in 

^ " This church takes its name of * Ara Coeli ' from the Tulgu tnditioo 
of the Sibyl's prophecy to Augustus, of the birth of the Redeemer, and of 
his consequent consecration of an altar on this spot ' to the first-born of 
God.' "— J/rj. Eaten. 



ROME 41 X 

which he takes a prominent put ; first, the prestpia. But he 
is very great indeed at the Epiphany, when he is paraded up 
and down the church, escorted by bands of splendid military 
music, playing polkas, and then held up at the great door 
facing the hundred and twenty-four steps, on which the people 
kneel and worship him. — Mrs. Elliot 

Sta. Maria del Popolo 

It was originally built in the year 1099, by Pope Paschal 
II., for the express purpose of allaying the superstitious fears 
of the people, who imagined that the neighbourhood was 
haunted by the ghost of Nero, who is supposed to have been 
buried on the heights above, on the Monte Pincio, then the 
^^ CollU Hartularum.^^ In the year 1227 the church was re- 
built at the public expense, and dedicated to the Holy Virgin 
under its present title of S. Maria del Popolo ; and finally it 
was altogether reconstructed about the year 1480, under the 
auspices of Sixtus IV., by the architect Baccio Pintelli. The 
interior consists of a triple nave, divided by compound piers, 
or piers faced with half columns, and the ceiling is a plain 
whitewashed vault supported by arches which (one of the very 
rare instances to be met with in the Roman churches) incline 
to the pointed form of Gothic. . . . The second Chapel 
belongs to the Chigi family. . . . The paintings in the chapel, 
which are by no means well preserved, were designed by 
Raphael, and executed by the three artists Sebastiano del 
Piombo, Francesco Salviati, and VannL In the angles are four 
corresponding groups of statues. . . . 

The choir ... is square in area, the ceiling vaulted and 
divided into panels, curiously painted in fresco by Pinturicchio, 
with four portraits at the angles of four bishops of the Eastern 
Church, each laiger than life, and seated on the pontifical 
chair, with turban on head, and dressed in full Oriental cos- 
tume. . . . Upon the sidewalls are two very magnificent 
monuments . . . the one bearing an inscription with the date 
of 1505, of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, and the other, with an 
inscription of 1507 of Cardinal Recanati. . . . The low bas- 
relief which covers almost the whole surface of both monu- 
ments b considered a chef-tPceuvre of Andrea Sansovino, a 
species of sculpture for which he was particularly remarkable, 
comprising for the most part arabesque designs of foliage, 
executed with a degree of prominence hardly exceeding that 



412 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

of stamped paper, and relieved occasionally by figures of fruit, 
such as apples, pears, peaches, etc., in alto-relievo. The style 
altogether rather resembles the chasing on gold or silver than 
work on marble. Particularly, in the right-hand monument, 
there may be observed upon the centre tablet, underneath the 
sarcophagus, a very exquisite representation of a vine, of which 
the dense masses of curling leaves and grapes are undercut to 
an extraordinary depth. . . . 

Above the altar, which faces within the choir to the east, 
is an ancient picture of the Madonna, one among several 
others in Rome attributed to the pencil of St. Luke the 
Evangelist— 5ir G, Head, 

SS. Apostoli 

The church is said to have been originally built by the 
Emperor Constantine, immediately underneath his baths on 
the Quirinale, though there are no certain accounts of its 
various restorations till the early part of the fifteenth century, 
when Martin V. entirely rebuilt it, and at the same time b^an 
the Colonna palace adjoining. Subsequently, about the year 
1480, Sixtus IV. added the portico ; and Clement XL, about 
the year 17 10 renewed the church after the designs of the 
architect Francesco Fontana, suffering, however, the portico 
to remain as it existed previously. The portico, imlike those 
of the generality of Roman churches, is not a projecting one, 
but flush with the upper part of the building, containing nine 
entrances, through nine round-topped arches. . . . This spacious 
church is constructed in the form of a triple nave, divided by 
massive, compound piers, faced on three sides by pilasters in 
couples, and on the fourth side, or the side towards the side 
naves, by a pair of columns. ... At the extremity of the nave, 
facing downwards, is the monument of Clement XIV., the 
celebrated Ganganelli, said to have been sculptured by Canova 
at the age of twenty-five. — Sir G. Head. 

S. PlETRO IN ViNCOLI 

S. Pietro in Vincoli, so called from the chains with which 
St Peter was bound both in Rome and at Jerusalem, now 
preserved, as is believed, under the altar, was erected about 
the year 420, and after frequent reparations presents now to 
the eye a noble hall, supported by twenty Doric pillars of 



ROME 413 

Parian marble, open on all sides, adorned with some beautiful 
tombs, and terminating in a semicircle behind the altar. It 
is a pity that the taste of the age in which this edifice was 
erected should have been perpetuated through so many suc- 
cessive reparations, and the arches carried from pillar to pillar 
still suffered to appear ; while an entablature, like that of St 
Maria Maggiore, would have concealed the defect and rendered 
the order perfect. The pillars are too thin for Doric propor- 
tions, and too far from each other; very different in this 
respect from the Doric models still remaining at Athens. But 
the proportions applied by the ancient Romans to this order, 
rendered it in fact a distinct order, and made it almost an 
invention of their own. Among the monuments the traveller 
will not fail to observe a sarcophagus of black marble and of 
exquisite form, on the left hand ; and on the right, the tomb 
of Julius II., indifferent in itself, but ennobled by the cele- 
brated figure of Moses, supposed to be the masterpiece of 
Michael Angelo, and one of the most beautiful statues in the 
world. — Eustace, 

S. Giovanni de' Fiorentini 

The church . . . was built in the year 1488, at the expense 
of a company of Florentines, by the architect Giacomo della 
Porta, who has constructed it partly after a miniature model 
of St Peter's. It was restored m the year 1735 or thereabouts 
under the auspices of Clement XII., Corsini, by the architect 
Alessandro Galilei, who built the present fa9ade, which is of 
great pretension, and exceeds its due proportion in magnitude, 
though, as is common enough in the fa9ades of the Roman 
churches, nothing more than a bare naked wall that overtops 
the gable. . . . The high altar was built at the expense of the 
Falconieri family by Pietro da Cortona. The pediment, or 
rather frontispiece, is of extraordinary breadth and height. . . . 
The capitals of the columns and pilasters ... are ... of cota- 
nella — ^an almost solitary instance in the Roman churches of 
the capitals of a column being made of any description of 
coloured marble. . . . Above the altar, instead of an altar 
picture, is a magnificent marble group sculptured by Antonio 
Razzi of St John the Baptist baptizing our Saviour. — Sir C 
Head. 



414 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



S. Onofrio 

The convent of S. Onofrio, annexed to a church dedicated 
to the same saint, is situated immediately above the Salviatti 
palace, about mid-height upon the slope of the Janiculum. • . . 
The ground in front of the building, like the ground in front 
of the Fontana Paolina, is levelled in terrace-like form, and 
commands a magnificent view of the northern part of the dty, 
including St. Peter's and the Vatican, with Mount Soracte in 
the distance. The convent is a particular object of interest 
to visitors, in consequence of its having been the residence of 
Tasso, who passed his latter days and died there. ... In the 
library is to be seen a bust and an autograph of Tasso» with 
which exception no other reminiscences of die poet are pre- 
served here that I know of. The autograph consists of clear 
legible writing that entirely covers a quarter sheet of small- 
sized letter-paper ; and the bust, carefully preserved in a glass 
case, is of wax, coloured flesh colour as regards the head, and 
the remainder wood ; the resemblance, so said the fnar who 
conducted me, was taken from the dead body. — Sir G, Head, 

The Capucini 

Who has not seen, in the square of the Palazzo Barberini, 
that burial place of the Capuchin monks, where everything is 
dead, even the furniture ? . . . The work is a broidery of bones ; 
on places of rest cut in the walls lie the skeletons of Capuchins 
in their robes ; here one still has his skin, another his beard. 
Garlands made up of spinal columns decorate the bareness of 
the walls. The fantastic imagination of the monks has 
allowed itself every kind of funereal fancy in interlaced thigh- 
bones, wheels of elbows, baskets of shoulders, chandeliers 
hanging from the roof with sockets for candles cut into the 
skulls forming them. The earth of each room covered fifteen 
monks, laid regularly two by two. They are buried without 
coffins in holy earth, said to have been brought back during 
the crusades. In reality, it is a sort of pozzoiano mingled 
with arsenic. — E. About 

Minor Churches 

Sta. Bibiana. — In 470 Sta. Simplicia dedicated this church 
to Sta. Bibiana, who had lived in the locality. . . . Bernini 



ROME 415 

restored it in 1695. '^^^ statue of Sta. Bibiana, adorning the 
grand altar, is an admired work of Bernini's. . . . The church 
has eight antique columns, and frescoes by Pietro da Cortona, 
to the left in the nave. — SUndhetl. 

Sta. Cecilia. — Built in the locality where the house of 
the martyred saint was, and rebuilt in 821. Three naves 
separated by columns; a grand altar supported by four 
antique columns of black and white marble. On this very 
rich altar is seen a marble statue representing the saint as she 
was found in her tomb. . . . The position is curious, the 
saint leaning on the left arm, the head turned to the ground. — 
Stendhal, 

Sta. Francesca Romana. — Situated at the southern 
extremity of the Campo Vaccino facing towards the Capitoline, 
was commenced to be built by Paul I. about the year 760, and 
was completed about a dozen years afterwards by Adrian I., 
who added to the northern gable the first square brick tower 
ever appended to a Roman church, which remains to the present 
day in perfect preservation. — Sir G. Head. 

SS. Giovanni e Paolo. — The church ... is said to 
have been originally built on the site of the residence of 
two brothers (the saints and martyrs to whom it is dedicated, 
who were put to death by Julian the Apostate) . . . and was 
put in the condition it appears in at present by the architect 
Antonio Canevari, who diai in the reign of Clement XII. .. . 
The church, which is built in brick, is remarkable for display- 
ing in its exterior, here and there, characteristic indications, 
rarely to be met with in Rome, of the Lombard style of 
architecture. — Sir G, Head, 

San Giuseppe de' Falegnami. — ^This church is built im- 
mediately above the celebrated TuUian and Mamertine 
dungeons, though nothing further is related of its origin than 
that it belongs at present to a confraternity of carpenters. . . . 
An excavation [being] sunk to the level of the dungeons, the 
interior is converted to a holy shrine consecrated to the 
apostles Peter and Paul, who it is said were confined in its 
dungeons. — Sir G. Head. 

The Jesu.^ — In the interior the main interest is in the 

^ Though the Jesuits mre mnch given to magnificenoe in their churches 
<so much so that Gautier calb the florid late churches at Venice of the 
"Jesuit style "X their monasteries are very simple. This was particularly 
noted by P^re Labat in his visit to the general of the Jesuits at Rome. 
The saint in the text is Ignatius Loyola, founder of the order. 



4i6 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

superb chapel of St. Ignatius, a masterpiece of splendour 
and good taste. Nowhere can we find such a gorgeous 
collection of marbles. This chapel is placed between two 
pillars of fluted yellow antique marble, resting on bases of 
African breccia, red, yellow and black, surrounded by a frieze 
of bronze gilt foliage with bronze statues. The floor is made 
of mixed marbles, the altar steps are of porphyry, whilst the 
altar blazes with the rarest marbles, agates and Japis-lazuli, and 
the tomb in which the body of the saint is placed is of gilt 
bronze. Above is the statue of the saint in silver, inlaid with 
precious stones. — De Brasses, 

S. Marcello. — According to the tradition ... it was 
originally the dwelling-house of a Roman matron, S. Lucina. 
. . . Rebuilt by Adrian I. about the year 780 .. . Anally it 
was rebuilt in the year 15 19 in the reign of Leo X., after the 
designs of Giacomo Sansovino. . . . The interior is in the 
form of a single nave, with a flat coffered ceiling, very richly 
carved and gilded, and particularly remarkable for the number 
of scarlet cardinals' hats, which, as is the custom, are suspended 
over the tombs of the deceased owners. — Sir G. Head. 

Sta, Maria Aventina or Del Priorato. — It is supposed 
not to have been built previous to the thirteenth century. It 
was restored by Pius V., about 1570, and again about 1765 it 
was put in the condition it is in at present at the private 
expense of the Cardinal Rezzonico, who employed for the 
purpose the architect Piranesi, the church having been con- 
ceded by the reigning Pope, Clement XIIL, to the Knights of 
Malta, of whom the cardinal, his relative was Grand Prior. . . . 
The exterior of the building . • . has more the appearance 
of a fortification than a church. — Sir G. Head, 

Sta. Maria di Monte Santo. — Commenced in the year 
1662 by Alexander VIL, after the designs of the architect 
Rainaldi, under the immediate direction of Bernini, and com- 
pleted afterwards with funds raised on the unclaimed eflects of 
people who died of the plague. . . . The church, surmounted 
by an oval dome, is remarkable for the classical model of its 
tetrastyle portico.— 5i> G, Head. 

Sta. Maria Egiziaca. — This is said to be the temple 
built by Servius Tullius ; it is surrounded by eighteen columns 
of which six are isolated and the remainder half built in the 
walls. These columns are of the Ionic order and are 22 feet 
in height, being composed of tufa and travertine. . . . This 
temple was unearthed by Napoleon ; it had been changed into 



ROME 417 

a church in 872. On the left as we enter, is a model of the 
Holy Sepulchre. — Stendhal, 

Sta. Maria in Cosmedin. — Remarkable for its fine 
antique columns. The broad slab of marble placed under the 
portico was called by the people the Bocca dclla Verita, The 
man ^o took an oath placed his hand on the stone, and if he 
swore falsely, it never failed to close. — Stendhal, 

Sta. Maria Sopra Minerva. — Placed opposite an 
elephant supporting an obelisk. The Dominicans succeeded 
in giving this church a stem appearance, not unlike the 
Inquisition of Goa. To do so they adopted the Gothic order, 
. . . To the left of the grand altar is the C4w/ of Michael 
Angelo. — Stendhal 

San Pietro in Montorio. — We were surprised this 
moming at the fine view from this church, the finest view of 
Rome and one giving its most complete aspect. A day of 
sunshine should be chosen, when the clouds are driven by the 
wind ; then the domes of the other churches will be seen 
alternately in light and shadow. . . . The first chapel to the 
right here has the Flagellation painted by Sebastiano del 
Piombo, after Michael Angelo's design, if the tradition be 
correct. — Stendhal, 

Ss. SiLVESTRO E Martino ai Monti. — During the per- 
secution of the Christians, the Pope (before taking refuge in 
Mt St. Oreste) opened a subterranean oratory here. The 
church built over it was covered over, and forgotten till its 
discovery in 1650, when the actual church built in 500 was 
being restored. . . . We often went to admire the landscapes 
painted on the walls ... by Guaspre Poussin. — Stendhal 

Trinita de' Monti. — Built by Charles VIII. at the request 
of St. Frangois de Paul, and restored by Louis XVIII. . . . 
Here is to be seen the Descent from the Cross by Daniele de 
Volterra, who, instead of painting souls, paints vigorous and 
well-formed bodies. It is the manner of Michael Angelo, with- 
out his genius. — Stendhal 

PALACES 

Castle of St. Angelo 

At the end of Ponte Angelo stands the Castel Angelo, so 
called because . . . S. Gregory in a solemn procession during 
the plague saw an angel upon the top of Moles Adriani sheathing 
his sword to signify that God's anger was appeased. . . . Since 

2 D 



4i8 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

that time divers Popes have turned it into a formal castle 
Boniface the VIII., Alexander the VI., and Urban the VIII. 
have rendered it a regular castle, with five strong bastions, 
store of good cannons, and a constant garrison maintained in 
it From this castle I saw divers times these fortifications; 
and below divers great pieces of artillery made of the brass 
taken out of the Pantheon ; and they shewed us one great 
cannon which was made of the brazen nails only that nailed 
that brass to the walls of the Pantheon ; the length and form 
of those nails, is seen upon that cannon, to shew unto posterity 
how great they were, with these words upon it; ex clavis 
trahiaiibus Forticus Agrippa. In this castle are kept prisoners 
of state ; the 5 millions laid up there by Sixtus Quintus ; the 
Popes' rich triple crowns called R^ni, and the chief registers 
of the Roman church. — Lasseis. 



Spada Palace 

I can never praise sufficiently the frescoes by Aimibale 
Carracci in this palace, representing Ovid's Metamorphoses^ on 
the ceilings and the walls. Luigi and Agostino Canacd had 
a hand in some, but most of them are certainly by Annibale. 
In colour they surpass any work of Raphael. The Spada 
Palace contains the famous statue of Pompey, foimd in the 
ruins of Pompey's Curia where the senate had met together 
on the day Caesar was assassinated. It is undoubtedly the one 
at the foot of which great Csesar fell.* — De Brasses, 

COLONNA PaLACB 

The huge Colonna Palace has little outward pomp, but 
atones for that by the splendid staircase within, by its rich 
furniture, its orangery, and especially by its superb gallery, 
to be preferred on the whole to that of Versailles, and full of 
exquisite paintings. This gallery is supported by huge columns 
of yellow antique marble. . . . Even in Rome there is scarcely 
a room to be compared to this gallery. The ceiling is painted 
with scenes from the victory of Don John of Austria, and 
Prince Colonna, who was in command of the Catholic army 
at the battle of Lepanto. — De Brasses* 

' Another statue likewise claims the hononr. 



ROME 419 



The Borghbsb {Palace and Villa) 

The Palazzo Borghese, vulgarly called by the cockneys of 
Rome ^^ Cembalo (the harpsichord) di Borghesey* from its 
peculiar form, was the work of Pope Paul the Fifth (a 
Borghese). Its great court, its beautiful colonnades, supported 
by granite columns, are its distinguishing architectural features. 
It covers an immense space, and is a proud monument of 
the system it commemorates. What is called in Rome 
appartamento-a'pianUrrenOy vulgarly translated the ground- 
floor^ consists of eleven fine rooms, all dedicated to the 
gallery, and containing works of all the great masters of all 
countries. . . . The Villa Borghese, within the walls of the 
city, is almost the double of the palace, from which it is but 
a short walk, and once had a celebrity beyond all other Roman 
villas. It was built by Cardinal Scipio Borghese, the nephew 
of Paul the Fifth ; and with its gardens and lake, occupies a 
space of nearly three miles in circumference. The interior of 
this stupendous villa is filled with antique and modem sculpture, 
pictures and mosaics * — without, its grounds are covered with 
casinos, temples, citadels, aviaries and all that a gorgeous and 
false taste, with wealth beyond calculation, could crowd to- 
gether. — Lady Morgan. 

Palazzo Massimi 

The Palazzo Massimi, though one of the smallest and 
worst situated of the Roman palaces, is, I think, by far the 
prettiest building of them all. The simplicity of its Doric 
portico and court particularly pleased me, and does great 
credit to the taste of Baldazzar Peruzzi, who was its architect. . . . 
We visited this palace to see the famous Discobolus, found in 
the grounds of the Villa Palombari, on the iEsquiline Hill, 
which is the finest in the world — ^at least, above ground^ We 
were shewn a chapel, formerly a bed-room, in which that 
notable saint, Filipo Neri, raised from the dead a son of this 
noble house, on the i6th of March 1583, in consequence of 
which grand miracle St. Filipo Neri was canonised, the place 
was consecrated, and a solemn service is still annually per- 
formed in it upon the anniversary of the day. — Mrs. Eaton, 

^ This collection has been recently acquired by the state. 



420 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



Palazzo Rospigliosi 

On the roof of the Palazzo Rospigliosi is painted the cele- 
brated fresco of Guido's Aurora. Its colouring is clear, har- 
monious, airy, brilliant — ^unfaded by time. The Hours, that 
hand-in-hand encircle the car of Phoebus, advance with rapid 
pace. The paler, milder forms of those gentle sisters who 
rule over declining day, and the glowing glance of those who 
bask in the meridian blaze, — resplendent in the hues of heaven, 
— ^are of no mortal grace and beauty; but they are eclipsed 
by Aurora herself, who sails on the golden clouds before 
them, shedding " showers of shadowing roses " on the rejoicing 
earth, her celestial presence diffusing gladness and light and 
beauty around. Above the heads of the heavenly coursers 
hovers the morning star, in the form of a youthful cherub, 
bearing his flaming torch. Nothing is more admirable in this 
beautiful composition than the motion given to the whole. . . . 

From the Aurora of Guido, we must turn to the rival 
Aurora of Guerdno, in the Villa LudovisL In spite of Guido's 
bad head of Apollo, and in spite of Guercino's ms^c chiaro- 
scuro, I confess myself disposed to give the preference to 
Guido. . . . Guercino's Aurora is in her car, drawn by two 
heavenly steeds, and the shades of night seem to dissipate at 
her approach. Old Tithonus, whom she has left behind her, 
seems half awake ; and the morning star, under the figure of 
a winged genius bearing his kindled torch, follows her course 
In a separate compartment. Night, in the form of a woman, is 
sitting musing or slumbering over a book. She has much the 
character of a sibyl. Her dark cave is broken open, and the 
blue sky and the coming light break beautifully in upon her 
and her companions, the sullen owl and flapping bat, which 
shrink from the unwelcome ray. The Hours are represented 
under the figure of children, extinguishing the stars of night 
— Mrs, Eaton, 

Villa Farnesina 

The Villa Farnesina is rather a casino than a villa. ... It 
was built by Agostino Chigi, a private citizen and merchant 
of Rome, in the time of Leo the X., to whom a solemn 
banquet was given when it was finished. These Roman 
citizens shared with Popes and Princes the labours of the 
Bramantes and the Raphaels ; and one room of the Famesin« 



ROME 421 

is entirely painted by the pencil of Raphael and of his emi- 
nent pupils. Tbe subject of this precious fresco is the story 
of Galatea ; but the prima donna of the picture is a nymph 
carried off by a Triton. From the beauty of this finished 
work of Raphael's pencil, the eye is called off by the sketch of 
a head ! a colossal head ! Although drawn only with a burnt 
stick, yet not all the beauty of Raphael's Nereids, nor the 
grace of Volterra's Diana, can turn the attention from this 
wondrous headl Daniel da Volterra, a favourite pupil of 
Michael Angelo's, had been employed with the disciples of 
Raphael is painting the apartment, and prayed his immortal 
master to come and give an opinion of his work. Michael 
Angelo arrived at the Famesina before his pupil, and in the 
resdess impatience of ennui (the malady of genius) he snatched 
a bit of charcoal and dashed off that powerful head.^ — Ltufy 
Morgan, 

Raphael's Casino 

Many are the visits I have paid to the Casino of Raphael, 
which was the chosen scene of his retirement and adorned by 
his genius. It is about half a mile from the Porta del Popolo. 
The first wooden gate in the lane, on the right of the entrance 
into the grounds of the Villa Borghese, leads you into a vine- 
yard which you cross to the Casino di Raffaello ; for it still 
bears his name. . . . We passed through two rooms, painted 
by his scholars — the third, which was his bedroom, is entirely 
adorned with the work of his own hands. It is a small, 
pleasant apartment, looking out on a little green lawn, fenced 
in with wood irregularly planted. The walls are covered with 
arabesques, in various whimsical and beautiful designs, — such 
as the sports of children; Loves balancing themselves on 
poles, or mounted on horseback, full of glee and mirth; 
Fauns and Satyrs ; Mercury and Minerva ; flowers and curling 
tendrils and every beautiful composition that could suggest 
itself to a mind of taste, or a classic imagination in its most 
sportive mood. — Mrs. Eaton, 

Villa Albani 

Deep learning is generally the grave of taste. But the 
learning which is engaged in Greek and Roman antiquities, as 

^ Here, too, is Raphael's Cupid and Psyche series, unhappily never 
yet photographed. Raphael would seem to have been inspired by the 
amous classic painting called the Aldobrandini Nuptials. 



422 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

it embraces all that is beautiful in art, rather refines and regu- 
lates our perceptions of beauty. Here is a villa of exquisite 
design, planned by a profound antiquary. Here Cardinal 
Alexander Albani, having spent his life in collecting ancient 
sculpture, formed such porticoes and such saloons to receive 
it, as an old Roman would have done : porticoes where the 
statues stood free on the pavement between columns propor- 
tioned to their statiure; saloons which were not stocked but 
embellished with families of allied statues, and were full 
without a crowd. Here Winkelmann grew into an antiquary 
under the Cardinal's patronage and instruction, and here he 
projected his history of art, which brings this collection con- 
tinually into view. — Forsyth. 

Villa Medici 

It was in 1803 that the Academy of France, founded by 
the munificence of Louis XIV., moved away from the noise of 
the streets to the Villa Medici. Since that removal all the 
great painters of France have lived in the palace and dreamed 
m its fine garden. David, Pradier, Delaroche, Ingres and 
Vernet have left their names on its walls. The first view of 
the palace shows it to be vast and majestic, but without much 
ornamentation. We at once recognise the arms and flag of 
France above the door. The only attraction of the approach 
is an avenue of oaks, and a fountain falling into a broad vase. 
The first floor is taken up by the reception rooms, which are 
spacious and adorned with the finest Gobelin tapestry, which 
makes them in every way worthy of France. They lead into 
an admirable vestibule, adorned with old columns and casts 
from the antique. But the most charming part of the house 
is the fagade to the back, which holds a good place among the 
masterpieces of the Renaissance. The architect might almost 
have exhausted a mine of bas-reliefs for the adorning of the 
palace. The garden is of the same period, and dates from the 
time when the Roman aristocracy professed the most profound 
contempt for flowers. There is nothing here save trees with 
a scrupulously correct alignment. Six lawns, surrounded by 
hedges of a man's height, spread before the villa and carry the 
eye as far as Moimt Soracte which closes in the horizon. To 
the left some sixteen small lawns are shut in by lofty laurels, 
tall saplings and evergreen oaks. They meet above and cover 
the walks with fresh and mysterious shade. To the right, a 



ROME 423 

nobly-planned terrace encloses a wood of oaks, riven and con- 
torted by age. ... A little further, an entirely rustic vine- 
yard stretches to the -Porta Pinciana, where Belisarius is said 
to have begged. At any rate there is to be found the cele- 
brated inscription on a stone : Date obolum Belisario, The 
larger and smaller gardens are sprinkled with statues, figures 
of Hermes and marbles of all kind. Water flows in ancient 
sarcophagi or leaps from marble fonts : for water and marble 
are the two luxuries which Rome possesses in abundance. — 
jE. About 

The Fountains of Rome 

The fountains of Rome are, in themselves, magnificent 
combinations of art, such as alone it were worth coming to 
see. That in the Piazza Navona, a large square, is composed 
of enormous fragments of rock, piled on each other, and pene- 
trated as by caverns. This mass supports an Egyptian obelisk 
of immense height. On the four comers of the rock recline, 
in different attitudes, colossal figures representing the four 
divisions of the globe; the water bursts from the crevices 
beneath them. They are sculptured with great spirit ; one 
impatiently tearing a veil from his eyes; another with his 
hands stretched upwards. The Fontani di Trevi is the most 
celebrated, and is rather a waterfall than a fountain ; gushing 
out from masses of rock, with a gigantic figure of Neptune ; 
and below are two river gods, checking two winged horses, 
struggling up from amoi^ the rocks and waters. The whole 
is not ill conceived nor executed ; but you know not how 
delicate the imagination becomes by dieting with antiquity day 
after day ! The only things that sustain the comparison are 
Rafael, Guido, and Salvator Rosa. 

The fountain on the Quirinal, or rather the group formed 
by the statues, obelisk, and the fountain, is, however, the most 
admirable of all. From the Piazza Quinnale, or rather Monte 
Cavallo, you see the boundless ocean of domes, spires, and 
colunms, which is the City, Rome. On a pedestal of white 
marble rises an obelisk of red granite, piercing the blue sky. 
Before it is a vast basin of porphyry, in the midst of which 
rises a column of the purest water, which collects into itself 
all the overhanging colours of the sky, and breaks them into 
a thousand prismatic hues and graduated shadows — they fall 
together with its dashing water-drops into the outer basin. 
The elevated situation of this fountain produces, I imagine. 



424 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

this effect of colour. On each side, on an elevated pedestal, 
stand the statues of Castor and Pollux, each in the act of 
taming his horse ; which are said, but I believe wholly without 
authority, to be the work of Phidias and Praxiteles. These 
figures combine the irresistible energy with the sublime and 
perfect loveliness supposed to have belonged to their divine 
nature. The reins no longer exist, but the position of their 
hands and the sustained and calm command of their r^ard, 
seem to require no mechanical aid to enforce obedience- — 
ShelUy. 

Environs of Rome 

The excursions in the neighbourhood of Rome are charm- 
ing, and would be full of interest were it only for the changing 
views they afford, of the wild Campagna. But, every inch of 
ground, in every direction, is rich in associations, and in natural 
beauties. There is Albano,^ with its lovely lake and wooded 
shore, and with its wine, that certainly has not improved since 
the days of Horace, and in these times hardly justifies his 
panegyric. There is squalid TivoH, with the river Anio, 
diverted from its course, and plunging down, headlong, some 
eighty feet in search of it. With its picturesque Temple of the 
Sibyl, perched high on a crag ; its minor waterfalls glancing 
and sparkling in the sun ; and one good cavern yawning darkly, 
where the river takes a fearful plunge and shoots on, low down 
under beetling rocks. There, too, is the Villa d'Este, deserted 
and decaying among groves of melancholy pine and cypress- 
trees, where it seems to lie in state. Then, there is Frascad, 
and, on the steep above it, the ruins of Tusculum, where 
Cicero lived, and wrote, and adorned his favourite house (some 
fragments of it may yet be seen there), and where Cato was 

1 Near Albano, it may be noted, is the Lake of Nemi. Here was 
located the priest of Diana, who, Eustace reminds us, *' was always a 
fugitive, pernaps an outlaw or a criminal ; he obtained the honour by 
attacking and sla3ring his predecessor, and kept it by the same tenure, that 
is, till another ruffian stronger or more active dispossessed him in the same 
manner.*' The folklore connected with this remarkable custom has been 
discussed in Mr. R. W. Frazer's Golden Bough, The old legends of Nnma 
and the nymph Egeria, it will be remembered, belong to a valley a little 
south of Rome. Recently the two galleys permanently kept by Caligula 
on Lake Nemi and afterwards sunk, have been raised. Prince Orsini, the 
present owner, is forming a museum of the mosaic and bronzes recovered. 
Lear has described the ruined fourteenth-century town of Ninfa, left 
desolate for 500 years with its collegiate churches, " the walls of whidi 
still remain, overgrown with ivy." 



ROME 425 

born. We saw its ruined amphitheatre on a grey dull day, 
when a shrill March wind was blowing, and when the scattered 
stones of the old city lay strewn about the lonely eminence, 
as desolate and dead as the ashes of a long extinguished fire. 
— Dickens. 

THE ART OF ROME 
Raphael 

In all his early works and in almost all his Madonnas he 
was influenced by memories of Perugia. . . . The young 
women whom he paints are fresh from their first communion, 
their spirit as yet undeveloped ; Religion, while it has fostered 
them, has stunted their minds, and while they have a woman's 
body, they have the heart of a child. . . . Pass now to 
Raphael's pagan works. ... He loves the nude form, the 
vigorous joint of the thigh, the splendid vitality of a back 
crowded with muscles : everything, in fact, that makes a man 
a runner and an athlete. I know nothing finer than his sketch 
for the marriage of Alexander and Roxana, . . . The figures 
are undraped in this Greek festival whose nudity seems a part 
of nature, and in no way connected with indecency or lust, so 
innocent is the happiness, the careless gaiety of the youth, health 
and beauty of these bodies brought to perfection in the pakB- 
sfrum, with the grace of the best days of antiquity. A little 
Cupid tries to leap in the big cuirass that is too heavy for his 
limbs ; two others bear the hero's lance ; some put the shield 
on another who pouts, while they bear him in their dance with 
wild glee and cries of joy. The hero comes forward as gal- 
lantly as the Apollo Belvedere but with more manhood. 
Nothing can go beyond the dashing grace and lively smiles 
with which two young comrades shew him the gentle Roxana, 
who sits with her arms open to him. . . . 

I went to Santa Maria della Pace ... in the last chapel 
to the left of which are seen Raphael's Four Sibyls above an 
arch. They stand, sit or lean according to the form of the 
vaulting, and little angels complete the group, offering them 
parchments to write their prophecies. Solemn and peaceful, 
these are indeed superhuman creatures placed, like the god- 
desses of antiquity, above human action ; their calm attitudes 
shew their inmost souls, theirs is no disturbed nor transitory 
existence^ they live immutably in the eternal now. . . . 

I come back to the Vatican to a diflerent series of impres- 



426 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

sions. . . . First I examine the Loggie . . . and the mighty 
wrestler representing the God the Father, who with one stretch 
of his limbs comprehends infinity. I pass to the bent figure 
of Eve as she picks the apple ; her head beautiful above the 
strong muscles of a young body. . . . Next are the white 
Caryatides of the Hall of Heliodorus, true goddesses in their 
sublime grandeur and simplicity, akin to antique statues except 
in the expressions of mild virtue of the Junos and Minervas, 
existing as they do to turn their heads or upraise an arm in 
unchanging serenity. Raphael excels in these ideal figures 
and allegories. On the ceiling is Philosophy, the stem and 
calm, Jurisprudence, an austere virgin whose eyes are cast 
down while she lifts the sword, and fairest of all. Poesy. . . . 
Raphael gives them all his own grace, and even sometimes as 
in the Muses of the Parnassus ... we might think his heart 
had gone out to them. 

All this is forcibly displayed in the School of Athens. The 
groups on the steps, above and around the two philosophers, 
never did nor could exist, and this is the very reason of their 
beauty. The scene belongs to a more ideal world, which the 
eye of man has never seen, for it belongs to the spirit of the 
artist. . . . The young man, in the long white garment, with 
the angelic expression, walks like an apparition of thought. 
Another with curled locks bends over the geometrical diagram 
and his three companions by his side are as spiritual as him- 
self. It is a dream in the clouds ; and these figures like those 
seen in an ecstasy or a vision, may remain indefinitely in the 
same attitudes ; for them time does not pass away. . . . 

We are now in a Renaissance palace, before the Psyche 
series of Raphael. . . . They decorate a large dining-room 
veneered with marble ; the ceiling is rounded and framed by 
a garland of fruit and flower. Above each window the border 
opens to make room for the healthy bodies of Jupiter, Venus, 
Psyche, and Mercury. The assembly of the gods fills up the 
vaulted ceiling ; and if they could raise their eyes above the 
table groaning beneath gold-plate and strange fishes, the guests 
would see nsdced forms relieved on the background of Olym- 
pian blue. ... There is an exuberance of pagan strength in 
the figure that comes near to coarseness. In Roman art the 
feminine type is rather one of strength than elegance; the 
women, owing to the lack of exercise, become fleshly and fat; 
and this fulness is evidenced in many of the women of 
Raphael. . . . But the Psyche borne through the Air by Cupids 



ROME 427 

and Fenus entreafing Jupiter are fresh in delicious youth. 
And what can be said of the two flower-bearers with butter- 
fly's wings, the fascinating Grace who dances into the banquet, 
scarcely touching the ground with her foot ? ... In the spaces 
by the greater goddesses are flying children, a Cupid yoking 
a lion with a sea-horse; another diving into the soft water 
where he will sport and play, and finally white doves, little 
birds, hippogrifs, a dragon-formed sphinx and every fancy of 
ideal imagination. . . . What a difference from the timidity 
of Raphael's Christian art ! Between the Descent from the 
Cross ^ and the decoration of the Famese palace, the spirit of 
the Renaissance passed over him and enriched his genius with 
the greatest delight of life. — Taine. 

Papal Tapestries 

The great sacrifice to which I made up my mind of leaving 
behind me a lava streaming down from the summit of the 
mountain almost to the sea was richly compensated by the 
attainment of my purpose, by the sight of the tapestries which, 
being hung up on Corpus-Christi day, aflbrded the most 
splendid idea of Raphael, his scholars and his time. 

The working of tapestry with standing warp, called 
Hautelisse^ ,hBj^ by the date of those tapestries reached its 
highest perfection in the Netherlands. The gradual stages in 
the development of this art are not known to me. Down 
into the twelfth century, the single figures may have been 
wrought by embroidery or otherwise and then united into a 
whole by specially worked intermediate pieces. Examples of 
this we have in the coverings of the choir chairs of old cathe- 
drals, the work bearing some resemblance to the coloured 
window-panes whose pictures were at first composed of small 
pieces of coloured glass. In tapestries, needle and thread 
took the place of lead and tin bars in windows. All the early 
beginnings of the art are of this kind ; we have seen costly 
Chinese tapestries wrought in this way. 

Probably under the stimulus of Oriental specimens this 
art had attained its acm^ in the sumptuous commercial 
Netherlands at the beginning of the sixteenth century. 
Fabrics of this sort were carried back to the East, and were 
assuredly known in Rome, probably from imperfect patterns 
and drawings taken in a Byzantine style. Leo X., a great, 
^ In the Borghese. 



428 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

and in many, especially aesthetic, respects, a liberal-minded 
man, had a desire to see represented in free and large propor- 
tions on the tapestries immediately surromiding his presence 
such pictures as delighted his eye on walls ; and, accordingly, 
at his inducement, Raphael prepared the cartoons, selecting, 
happily, as the material for the embodiment of his great soul, 
such subjects as Christ's relation to his apostles, and then the 
achievements of these Christ-instructed men in the world after 
the ascension of their Master. 

On Coipus-Christi day you discerned for the first time 
the true purpose of the tapestries; converting as they did 
colonnades and open spaces into magnificent salons and 
pleasure-walks, while, at the same time, displaying to your 
eyes the faculty of the most gifted of men, the conjoint 
perfection of art and handicraft 

The Raphael cartoons, as now preserved for us in England, 
still remain the admiration of the world. — Goethe, 

Michael Angelo in the Vatican 

Superhuman beings as sorrowful as ourselves, bodies of 
gods contorted by earthly passions, an Olympus where human 
tragedies find an entrance, such is the inspiration that is 
breathed from the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. • Nothing is 
more unjust than to compare these works to the Stfyls and 
the Isaiah of Raphael. . . . There are souls, and there are 
thoughts, whose reaction is that of the thunderbolt as their 
action is that of the lightning: such are the conceptions of 
Michael Angelo. Of what is the reverie of his colossal 
Jeremiah as he dreams with eyes down-cast and his huge head 
bent on an enormous hand ? His floating hair falls in curls 
to his chest, his hands veined and furrowed like those of a 
labourer, his wrinkled brow, his impenetrable face, the lament- 
ing voice that seems pent in his body, gives a conception of 
one of those savage kings, hunters of the urus, who came to 
dash their impotent rage against the gates of the Roman 
Empire. Ezekiel turns in impetuous questioning, and his 
movement is so swift that the rush of air raises a portion of 
the mantle on his shoulder. Aged Persica, lost in the long 
folds of her falling garment, is immersed in the reading of a 
book which her knotted hands hold before her piercing eyes. 
Jonah falls with his head backward at the terrific apparition, 
while his fingers involuntarily reckon the forty days that are left 



ROME 429 

to Nineveh. Lybica, in her violent descent bears the great 
volume she has seized; Erythrea is a more warlike, a more 
lofty Pallas than her Athenian sister was of old. . . . 

These are but the contours of the vault, which throughout 
its two hundred feet of area, develops the histories of Genesis 
and the deliverance of Israel, the creation of the world, of 
man and woman, the fall, the exile of the first pair of mortals, 
the deluge, the brazen serpent, the murder of Holophemes, 
the punishment of Haman — in a multitude of tragical figures. 
. - . The human form as here represented, is all-expressive, in 
the skeleton, muscles, drapery, attitudes and proportion. . . . 
Moral energy emanates from every physical detail. . . . Look 
at Adam sleeping by Eve, whom the Creator has but now drawn 
from his ribs. Never before or since was human so deeply 
buried in his sleep : his huge body is prone, and his hugeness 
makes this lassitude the more striking. Awake, his hands now 
fallen, his limbs now listless, might contend with a lion. . . . 
Before the Adam and Eve, when expelled from Paradise, no 
man need look to the face for an expression of sorrow : it is 
in the entire torso, in the whirling limbs, in human carpentry 
and the setting of the internal parts, with the firmness of their 
Herculean joints, in the crashing and movement of the gnarled 
limbs that we find the complete conception. . . . The greatest 
achievement, in my opinion, is to be found in the twenty youth- 
ful figures seated on the cornices at the four points of each 
painting. These are painted sculptures giving us the concep- 
tion of an imknown and vaster world. Each figure is that of 
a youthful hero of the time of Achilles and Ajax, and of as 
high birth but even fiercer and more fiery energy. . . . Nature 
has produced nothing like them. Would that she had made 
us so ; were she minded to, she would have every type here ; 
for by the side of the giants and the heroes are viigins and in- 
nocent lads, an Eve fair in proud youth, a handsome Delphica, 
like a primitive nymph, whose eyes wander in naive wonder : — 
all of them sons and daughters of a colossal fighting race, but 
whose period gave them the smiling serenity, the simple joy 
and grace of the Oceanides of iEschylus or the Nausicaa of 
Homer. . . . 

The Last Judgment dXongsvdiQ is different The painter was 
in his sixty-seventh year and his inspiration was no longer 
the same. . . . Here he intentionally enlarges the body, and 
inflates the muscles. . . . We can but see the disciple of Dante, 
the friend of Savonarola, the solitary soul nourished on the 



430 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

menaces of the Old Testament, the patriot, the stoic, and the 
judge who bears the funereal pall of the liberty of Italy, and 
amid degraded characters and souls d^enerate, lives alone in 
the darkening days, to spend nine years on this gigantic work, 
his soul filled with thoughts of the Supreme Judge amid the 
anticipated echoes of the last day. — Taine. 

General Note on Rome 

Rome, with its obvious claims as the capital of the Re- 
public, the Empire, the Papacy, and finally of United Italy, 
may be looked upon as the epitome and museum of the art 
of all of the rest of Italy. Ceding the place to Ravenna, 
Pisa, and Verona for Byzantine, Romanesque, and Lombardic 
architecture ; it yet contains within it specimens of well-nigh 
anything attempted elsewhere, with the exception of Gothic 
architecture, a lacuna attributed to the absence of the Popes at 
Avignon. Rome, then, may be looked upon either as the intro- 
duction or the climax of a study of Italian art, preferably, to 
our thinking, the latter. Whichever view the reader takes, we 
would counsel him not to consider Rome as a town which can 
be seen and contrasted with organic wholes like Venice or 
Florence. That its buildings have a family likeness is true, 
for the spirit and influence of the Papacy is visible everywhere ; 
but it has to be noted that Rome itself never produced a great 
artist (though it produced the greatest popes) and always drew 
its craftsmen from other towns. A certain lack of the ideal and 
of artistic initiative is generally observable in large towns, and 
Rome was content to allure the most important mediaeval or 
renaissance craftsmen to her, allowing them the fi-eest choice 
of style, as long as they kept within die subjects and conven- 
tions of the ecclesiastical city. In consequence it is very 
difficult to say that there is any Roman school of painters or 
sculptors, although the main character of the town is to be 
seen through the methods of Bernini as much as those of 
Michael Angelo or Raphael Some such caution as this is 
necessary, for the traveller will often be perplexed in Rome, 
and ask, '' Is there any distinctively Roman art, in the same 
sense as there is a Venetian or a Florentine art?" The 
answer must be in the negative, and it becomes necessary to 
seek some clue through the lab3ninth of antiquity that Rome is. 

The only safe method of study* will be found to be the 
historical one. The unversed traveller generally goes first to 



ROME 431 

the Forum and thence to the Vatican, but the leap is too wide 
and calculated to give a false perspective. To begin with the 
Forum is an excellent course, but it may be suggested that the 
first study should be an entirely literary one, for the Forum 
contains very little even of the date of the later Republic. 
Some conception must be obtained of the early state of Rome 
and then the traveller will be prepared to understand the 
imperial remains in the Forum, the ruins of the Palatine and 
the Colosseum. In selecting a few picturesque descriptions of 
these spots we have purposely avoided anything savouring of 
archseology ; and the reader, while recognising the necessary 
insufficiency of the descriptions chosen, will we believe be 
nevertheless glad to have them. One comment may perhaps 
be of utility. The spectator will always be astonished at the 
numbers of buildings included in the small space between the 
Capitol and the Arch of Titus. But the ground-area is 
probably not less than that of the Acropolis of Athens, 
although the Greeks always placed their buildings with an 
exquisite sense of fitness and built them of far finer materials. 
The Roman was always practical in his architectural arrange- 
ments, and the land about the Forum — as the spot of the first 
settlement — was of enormous value. The advantage of the 
close juxta-position of the buildings for us modems is that the 
historical events of centuries were centred in the Via Sacra. 
It may be asked whether we have any existing sculpture 
which preserves the racial type of the Romans as the 
Parthenon frieze does that of the Greeks. Apart from the 
busts of the Emperors, we have a national record in the 
Trajan column. In a realistic way it gives us the physiog- 
nomy of the imperial Romans in a way which repays a most 
carefiil study. An examination of the lower portions of the 
casts in South Kensington Museum — the column is inaccessible 
in Rome — gives us a conception of personal fortitude which 
we associate with the head of Napoleon. Concerning the 
archaeology of the Forum Romanum it is dangerous to speak, 
because books written even a few years back are rapidly 
superseded. No very sensational discoveries are probable 
now that the earliest historic level has been reached by the 
excavations of Professor Giacomo Boni. He has revolutionised 
our ideas concerning the Via Sacra (that referred to by most 
writers being only a mediaeval road-way), has identified the 
sepulchre of Romulus and discovered a new church, Sta. 
Maria Antiqua, with a fresco of the eighth century. Professor 



432 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

Avioli, too, has demonstrated that a city existed before that 
found by Romulus. 

We have given but a brief description of the palaces on the 
Palatine, for little here is possible but archaeology. The House 
of Livia, however (probably, but not conclusively the house of 
the wife of Augustus), contains frescoes in a remarkable state 
of preservation, and of the highest artistic character. The 
arabesques of the atrium, the fancied view of a street from 
within, the illustrations of Polyphemus pursuing Galatea, and 
Hermes freeing lo from Argus are far superior in art to any 
Pompeian painting and give us some conception of what 
Greek fresco-work in Athens must have been. This house, to 
our thinking, is worth all the ruins of the Palatine, but their 
extensive peregrination brings the traveller to the house in a 
state of fatigue that leaves him cold to its historic beauty. 
After prolonged study of these wonderful rooms we would 
advise a journey to Tivoli to the remains of the Villa of 
Hadrian, not because much is to be seen, but because much 
of the finest statuary was found there. This private city, as 
we might almost call it, for it took up an area of 7 Roman 
miles, was built by Hadrian as a mimic representation of 
remarkable buildings seen during his triumphal progress round 
the Empire, a progress which was perhaps the apotheosis of 
Roman supremacy. Spartianus tells us that Hadrian re- 
produced at Tivoli buildings and landscapes such as the 
Lyceum,^ the Academy, the Prytaneum, the Poikilon, Canope, 
Tempe, and " that nothing might be omitted," Hades itself. 
Chateaubriand has described the remains in sketchy rhetoric, 
and Gaston Boissier {Promenades Archkologiques) has en- 
deavoured to give more accurate indications, but die villa is 
more to be studied in the spaciousness of such rooms as 
remain, and the general aspect than in any individual 
details. 

When some mental impression has been obtained of the 
architecture of an imperial palace, it may be filled in by the 
statues in the various museums. True that almost all of 
these statues have been restored, but this restoration does 
not detract from their aesthetic vaJue, and only increases the 
doubt as to some attributions and classical details of dress. 
Imperial sculpture is mostly to be found in the Capitoline, 
Vatican, Conservatorial, and other museums. The authority 

^ Hadrian's Greek buildings still preserved the Roman arch, as 
Boissier has pointed out. 



ROME 433 

here is W, Helbig, whose Classical Antiquities in Rome has 
been translated by J. F. and F. Muirhead. These antiquities 
are in themselves a study of extreme importance, and would 
be preferably taken after a residence in Athens. In so far, 
however, as classical sculptures or frescoes were discovered at 
a period when they affected Italian art, they link on to the 
study of Italy. The racial resemblance too between the art 
of the two epochs is striking, even where later imitation has 
been out of the question. 

We defer the consideration of the Colosseum till now, 
because though built under the Flavian dynasty, it is 
associated with the Christian martyrs. We have not printed 
any description of their tortures in the arena, because any- 
thing written to-day falls short of the reality of what must 
have been the spectacle of a human shambles. Reference 
may here be made, however, to a (Christian) clay lamp repro- 
duced in the text-books, representing a martyr exposed to a 
lion. This shows that the victims were placed on raised 
platforms, tied to a stake, and that the wild beasts ran up an 
inclined plane to them. The arena itself was comparatively 
low, to guard against the desperate leaps of the animals, but 
for the purposes of the dreadful exhibition the sufferers had to 
be raised. 

From the Colosseum a natural transition brings us to 
the Catacombs, the study of which has been elaborated with 
such marvellous insight by De Rossi. As in the case of the 
Forum, Rome has proved her absolute mastery in archaeological 
matters. The catacombs are the link between the primitive 
Church and the earliest remaining basilicas, and the accepted 
modem opinion is that there was nothing secret about the 
eucharistic celebrations or the burials in the catacombs. By 
the most ancient laws of Rome, no burials within the city 
were permissible ; and the Jewish communities in Rome had 
excavated their burial groimds in the tufa of the Campagna. 
At first the Christians shared the catacombs with the Jews ; 
then they constructed them on their own account Most 
were for purposes of burial, but some were expressly made for 
ceremonial purposes, and these latter shew in some structural 
details, such as the apse and presbytery, the germ of the 
basilicas. The inscriptions shew that Greek was for some 
time the language of the Church. The rich sculptured 
sarcophagi prove that there were men of position among the 
converts. Catacomb burial b^an to cease about the year 

2 B 



434 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

400, and several centuries are merely occupied by invasions 
from the north and the gradual depopulation. When the 
earliest existing churches came into being, they were buOt 
by a population, partly Italian with a certain proportion of 
Teutons, but few indeed of the imperial Romans. Much 
information is given on the whole subject in Lowrie's Christian 
Art and ArchaologVy and with some study of the actual cata- 
combs may be joined a walk through the Museo Kircheriano, 
containing in part Christian antiquities, and it may be mentioned 
that there is a collection of similar antiquities in the British 
Museum. Here again is a special study to be made, and one 
which almost overwhelms us with its richness. 

Passing to the basilicas,^ the most general theory is that 
their form was founded on the plan of the Roman houses, not 
the old Roman type, but the " atrium as it was embellished 
through the influence of the Greek peristyle." The atrium, of 
course, had to be roofed completely to make it suitable for 
Christian worship; the tadlinum, which was "the only re- 
minder of the sacred hearth," became the altar and the altar 
(originally of wood) became after the sixth century a chest 
containing saintly relics. Our extracts with regard to churches 
are as full as space permits, and give as accurate an account 
as can be expected : at any rate, we should only run the risk 
of making mistakes if we entered on the many technical 
questions involved. We will only add that as the catacombs 
are of vital interest for early frescoes, so the basilicas contain 
mosaics, lacking perhaps in the distinctive Byzantine note to 
be found at Ravenna, but of more interest to the Christian 
student. A symbolic work like the Christ Enthrone in the 
New/erusaiem in Sta. Pudenziana is a document of inestimable 
value as illustrating the spirit of the early church in Rome. 
Christian mosaic is mainly to be distinguished from ancient 
Roman mosaic in that the Christian work was glass-mosaic, 
used for illustrative purposes, and its general scheme of colour 
strengthened by a gold background. Roman mosaic was of 
a marble composite, and mostly used for floors in formal 
decorative designs, though historical compositions exist In 
the Renaissance a reversion was made to the Roman method 
owing to the discovery of various pavements. Many of the 
older cathedral pavements are inlaid marble traceries and not 
mosaic at alL 

In our historic research the next few centuries are not so 
^ A basilica, in its earliest sense of all, meant a king's house. 



ROME 435 

striking. The papacy had fallen upon troublous times. 
Charlemagne received the Imperial insignia from Pope 
Leo III. in 800, but the Holy Roman Empire soon was 
broken up into its constituent parts. Platina refers to 
several of the later popes as poniificuU or popelings. Rome 
had become a city of brawls, and the general corruption 
produced the attempt at regeneration of Arnold of Brescia. 
Rome was at this period a city of towers, — built for defensive 
purposes, — a type of which may be seen in those remaining 
at San Gemignano, or the Asinelli and Garisendi towers at 
Bologna. Brancaleone destroyed 140 of them in 1252. The 
Crusades, though they did not affect Italy as much as the 
northern peoples, are another reason for the lack of in- 
teresting remains during this period in Rome, whose history 
becomes even more void with the withdrawal of the Popes 
to Avignon in 1309, except for the short-lived power of Cola 
di Rienzo. 

As filling an important lacuna we may say a few words 
about the old basilica of St Peter's. Built in 326, and gradu- 
ally enlarged, the documentary restorations make it look like a 
church-fortress. Mounting a short flight of steps the ancient 
pilgrim would see a compact front with a belfry and the 
Vatican dwelling to his right, a guard-house to his left, and 
past these would enter a cloister with a small shrine in the 
middle. At the further end of this cloister was the portico 
and fagade of the church with Giotto's Navicella or " ship of 
the church" in mosaic. Passing into the cathedral, the pil- 
grim would find it something like S. Paolo fuoriy but with 
Corinthian columns raised on steps to the aisles. The famed 
bronze statue of St Peter probably had its place in the 
nave. 

It is regrettable that no writer should have entered into a 
comparison between St. Peter's and the Vatican at Rome and 
San Marco and the Doge's Palace at Venice. In each case 
the principal church and seat of government are contiguous ; 
in each case they embody the entire tradition of the respective 
cities. A moment's reflection shows how in Venice every- 
thing speaks of foreign conquest and enterprise oversea — even 
the body of St Mark was brought from Alexandria, and the 
materials of the building are from other places; whereas in 
Rome the basilica was built over the supposed resting-place of 
St. Peter, the materials were quarried from the palaces of the 
Caesars, and the general note is one of the history of Rome. 



436 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

New St Peter's in general decorati(Hi is mostly of the Bernini 
period, and its fragments of Giotto cannot compare with the 
earlier mosaics of San Marco. Had the old papal palace of 
the Lateran been spared, that together with the church of the 
Lateran would have become a complete parallel to San Marco 
and the Doge's Palace. 

When Martin V. returned to Rome in 1420^ he found a 
city that had been desolated by plague as well as Action. 
" When he came," wrote Platina, " he found the city of Rome 
so ruinated that it looked nothing like a city. You might 
have seen the houses rea4y to totter. . . . There was neither 
the face of a city nor any sign of civility there, the citizens 
seeming rather sojourners and vagabonds." There were few 
traces left of classic Rome, and the Renaissance crafbsmen had 
a free hand to build up a new city. Practically, the Rome we 
see to-day is an eighteenth-century town (with entirely recent 
quarters), but St. Peter's and the laiger palaces belong to the 
full tide of the Renaissance. Nicholas V. was the first pope 
to adopt an expressed policy of making religion visible in 
materifid grandeur. This he and his successors were able to 
do, because they were despotic rulers like the Sforzas or the 
Medici. Julius II. and Leo» called the Magnificent, adorned 
Rome with the buildings that Raphael and Michel Angdo 
have made memorable. 

There is in our time a hesitation to accept these two artists 
at the valuation which three centuries of worshippers have 
given them. This is to be attributed to our appreciation of 
the primitives, and our admiration for Velasquez and Rem- 
brandt. To understand the art of Raphael and Michel 
Angelo in Rome, we must remember the preponderating 
influence of the Papacy. Raphael's work illustrates in part 
the early history of Christian Rome, as well as such new 
doctrines as that based on the Miracle of Bolsena, but these 
subjects do not exclude that of the School of Athens, for 
Renaissance Catholicism considered itself the inheritor of the 
culture of all the ages. Michel Angelo, with his sterner 
temper, went directly back to the Old Testament and the 
Sibyls of ancient Rome, but here again the church considered 
itself the heir of both traditions. The two masters, working 
at the centre of Catholic authority, give us in their work a 
valuable commentary on the most important aspects of Re- 
naissance dogma. In a period of highly refined thought such 
as it was, the art appealed to complicated motives. The 



ROME 437 

Vatican frescoes sum up the experience of an era ; our recogni- 
tion of their value will depend on our knowledge of history and 
of human nature as developed in a culminating period of 
civilisation, beautiful with a sweetness that is premonitory of 
decay, overstrung with a conscious power that yet knows its 
great day is forever gone. 

The declining age of Renaissance, or rather, rococo art in 
Rome was marked by the work of Bernini, who with all his 
extravagance links on to the masters in the technique of his 
earlier sculpture. His monumental architecture, with all its 
faults, still influences almost every piece of street-decoration 
done in our own day. In his gay insouciance and facility 
Bernini is not unlike the Italian composers of opera. The 
last influence of Rome in art may be seen in the composed 
landscapes, with ruins plentifully intermingled, with which 
Piranesi and Claude expressed public taste while Canaletto 
was investing the buildings of Venice with a golden afterglow 
of decadent power. But while the Republic of Venice was to 
receive its coup de grace at the hands of Napoleon, the Papacy 
was only to lose its temporal power after several generations, 
and to regain many times over the spiritual influence which 
has indeed been so greatly enhanced by that loss. — Ed. 



NAPLES^ AND THE BAY OF NAPLES 



NAPLES 

The morrow after our arival, in the aftemoone, we hired a 
coach to carry us about the towne. First we went to the 
Castle of St. Elmo, built on a very high rock, whence we had 
an intire prospect of the whole Citty, which lyes in shape of a 
theatre upon the sea brinke, with all the circumjacent islands, 
as far as Capreae, famous for the debauched recesses of Tiberius. 
This Fort is the bridle of the whole Citty, and was well stor'd 
and garrison'd with native Spanyards. The strangenesse of the 
precipice and rarenesse of the prospect of so many magnificent 
and stately Palaces, Churches, and Monasteries, with the 
Arsenall, the Mole, and Mouat Vesuvius in the distance, all 
in full command of the eye, make it one of the richest landskips 
in the world. 

Hence we descended to another strong Castle, cal'd II 
Castello Nuovo, which protects the shore, but they would by 
no intreaty permit us to go in ; the outward defence seemes to 
consist but in 4 towrs, very high, and an exceeding deepe 
graft with thick walls. Opposite to this is the Toure of St. 
Vincent, which is also very stropg. 

Then we went to the very noble Palace of the Viceroy, 
partly old and part of a newer work, but we did not stay long 
here. Towards the evening we tooke the ayre upon the Mole, 
which is a streete on the rampart or banke rays'd in the Sea 
for security of their gallys in port, built as that of Genoa. 
Here I observed a rich fountaine in the middle of the Piazza, 

^ From Rome the traveller formerly went to Naples by way of Terra- 
cina, Gaeta, and Capua. Of Monte Cassino, seen from the railway on the 
journey south, Taine wrote : ** The chief Benedictine Abbey and the most 
ancient. It was founded in the sixth century, originally on the site of a 
temple of Apollo ; earthquakes several times destroyed it, and the present 
edifice dates from the seventeenth century." St. Benedict b of importance 
as the examplar of the earliest Italian monastidsm. M. A. Dantier has 
made a special study of the various Benedictine abbeys. 

438 




s^ 



NAPLES AND THE BAY OF NAPLES 439 

and adorn'd with divers rare statues of copper representing the 
Sirens or Deities of the Parthenope, spouting large streames of 
water into an ample shell, all of cast metall, and of great cost ; 
this stands at the entrance of the Mole, where we mett many 
of the Nobility both on horseback and in their coaches to take 
X^i'^ fresco from the Sea, as the manner is, it being in the most 
advantageous quarter for good ayre, delight, and prospect 
Here we saw divers goodly horses who handsomly become 
their riders, the Neapolitan gentlemen. . . . 

Climbing a steepe hill we came to the monastery and 
church of the Carthusians, from whence is a most goodly 
prospect towards the sea and citty, the one full of galleys 
and ships, the other of stately palaces, churches, monasteries, 
castles, gardens, delicious fields and meadows^ Mount Vesuvius 
smoaking, the Promontory of Minerva and Misenum, Capreae, 
Prochyta, Ischia, Pausilipe, Puteoli and the rest, doubtless of 
the most divertisant and considerable vistas in the world. . . . 

The building of the Citty is for the size the most magnifi- 
cent of any in Europe, the streetes exceeding large, well paved, 
having many vaults and conveyances under them for the sul- 
lage, which renders them very aweete and cleane even in the 
midst of winter. To it belongeth more than 3000 Churches 
and monasteries, and those the best built and adorn'd of any 
in Italy. They greately affect the Spanish gravity in /their 
habite ; delight in good horses ; the streetes are full of gallants 
on horseback, in coaches and sedans, from hence brought first 
into England by Sir Sanders Duncomb. The women are 
generaly well featured but excessively libidinous. The country- 
people so jovial and addicted to musick, that the very husband- 
men almost imiversaly play on the guitarr, singing and com- 
posing songs in prayse of their sweetehearts, and wil commonly 
goe to the field with their fiddle ; they are merry, witty, and 
genial, all which I much attribute to the excellent quality of 
file ayre. They have a deadly hatred to the French, so that 
some our company were flouted at for wearing red cloakes, as 
the mode then was. — Evelyn, 

Naples in the Eighteenth Century 

Naples is the only Italian town which really has the sense 
of a capital city. Its movement, the number of the people, 
the abundance and the perpetual noise of the carriages ; the 
court that is not without splendour in its formalities, and the 



440 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

life and pride of its chief personages : all this helps to give 
Naples the living and animated i^pearance which Paris and 
London have, but which Rome is entirely without The 
population here is excitable^ the middle classes affected, the 
higher nobility fastidious, and the lesser hungry for high- 
sounding titles, which were showered on them and to spare 
under the domination of the house of Austria. The Empetor 
has sold titles to the first comer, whence the proverb: Gsr- 
iainly he is a duke, alih&ugh not a gentleman, . . • The con- 
quest of this kingdom was no great trouble to the Spaniards. 
It will always be the prey of the first invader. . . . There is 
also another home defect of an incurable kind : it is the spirit 
of the masses, excessively perverse, evil, superstitious, treacher- 
ous, inclined to sedition, and always ready to pillage in the 
following of any Masaniello who seizes on the favourable 
chance of rebellion. — De Brasses. 

Amongst the amusements of Naples, I believe I did not 
mention the Corso. Here the Neapolitans display a magnifi- 
cence that amazes strangers, particularly on the gala-days. 
The coaches are painted, gilt and varnished so admirably as 
to exceed by many d^ees in beauty the finest in Paris : they 
are lined with velvet or satin, fringed with gold or silver. 
The Neapolitan horses are the most beautiful I ever saw; 
large, strong, high-spirited, with manes and tails as fine as 
flax, of a great length, and in waves. Their harness is as 
brilliant as it is possible to make them ; I shall only mention 
one set, by which you may judge of others ; the whole was 
made of blue and silver ; and the ornament that covered the 
top of the horse's manes represented rows of convolvuluses 
formed of the same materials, and finely executed : on their 
heads they bore white ostrich-feathers and artificial flowers. 
On these gala-days, the Neapolitan ladies drive with six, and 
often with eight horses; besides, a kind of sumpter horse, 
which does not draw, but is fastened on the outside, between 
the leaders and the next pair. This creature, over and above 
a profusion of ornaments, is covered with an incredible number 
of little bells, of which he seems very proud, kicking, prancing 
and plunging from time to time, as with design to hear his 
bells jingle. This horse is called balerina, 1 suppose from 
appearii^ to dance as he goes. — Lady MiUer, 



NAPLES AND THE BAY OF NAPLES 441 

Thoughts from Goethe 

That no Neapolitan will allow the merits of his city to be 
questioned, that their poets should sing in extravagant hyper- 
bde of the blessings of its site, are not matters to quarrel 
about, even though a pair of Vesuviuses stood in its neighbour- 
hood. Here one can almost cast aside all remembrances, even 
of Rome. As compared with this free open situation, the 
capital of the world, in the basin of the Tiber, looks like a 
cloister built on a bad site. . . . 

With sympathetic pleasure you respond to the exuberant 
gladness which here and everywhere salutes your eyes. The 
gay particoloured flowers and fruits in which nature here 
prmks hei^elf, invite men likewise to deck out themselves and 
their gear in the brightest colours possible. Silken cloths and 
sashes, flowers blooming on hats, adorn every son and daughter 
of man in any measure able to procure them. In the humblest 
houses, chairs and chests of drawers display gay flowers on 
gilded grounds. The very one-horse calashes blaze in burning 
red ; the carving gilt ; the horse in front tosses aloft in the air 
his artificial flowers, his bright red tassels, his tinselled bravery. 
Many of them carry their heads bushy with plumage, some 
even flaunting little flaglets which wave at every motion. We 
are wont to call the passion for gaudy colours barbaric and 
tasteless, and so in some respects it may be; yet under a 
p^ect serene blue sky, nothing is really gaudy, for nothing 
can outshine the sjdendour of the sun and his reflection in 
the sea. — Gat^. 

NEAPOLITAN L1FE» 

A Child's Funeral 

As the people are gay in life, so also in death no solemn 
black procession is suffered to disturb the harmony of the 
joyous world I saw a child borne to the grave. A large 
red-velvet cloth stitched with broad gold covered a broad 
bier ; on this stood a carved little box richly gilded and silver 
plated, wherein lay the white-robed child quite sufliised with 
rosy ribbons. At the four comers of the little box were four 
angels, each about two feet high holding large bimches of 

> Naples is still a town of numerous festas^ which may be found ade- 
quately aescribed in Stamer's IhUt Napolu 



442 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

flowers over the reposing child, and being held fast below 
only by wires moved at every motion of the bier, thus appear- 
ing to strew out mild reviving perfumes. The angels swung 
about with all the greater volubility that the procession sped 
along the streets, the priests at the head of it and the taper- 
bearers running rather than walking. — Goethe, 

A Water-Party 

It was a sort of f&te offered to Marie-Louise, by the King 
of Naples, and took place on the water. Never was there a 
more propitious night for such a festival, for not a breeze 
ruffled the calm bosom of the beautiful bay, which resembled 
a vast lake, reflecting on its glassy surface the bright sky 
above, which was glittering with innumerable stars. Naples, 
with its white colonnades, seen amidst the dark foliage of its 
terraced gardens, rose like an amphitheatre from the sea ; and 
the lights streaming from the buildings on the water, seemed 
like columns of gold. The castle of St Elmo crowned the 
centre of the picture ; Vesuvius, like a sleeping giant in grim 
repose, stood on the right, flanked by Mount St Angelo, and 
the coast of Sorrento fading into the distance; and on the 
left, the vine-crowned height of the Vomero with its palaces 
and villas, glancing forth from the groves that surround them, 
was crowned by the Mount Camaldoli, with its convent spires 
pointing to the sky. A rich stream of music announced the 
coming of the royal pageant ; and proceeded from a gilded 
barge, to which countless lamps were attached, giving it, when 
seen at a distance, the appearance of a vast shell of topaz, 
floating on a sea of sapphire. It was filled with musicians, 
attired in their glittering liveries ; and every stroke of the oars 
kept time to the music, and sent forth a silvery light from the 
water which they rippled. This illuminated and gilded barge 
was followed by another, adorned by a silken canopy from 
which hung curtains of tiie richest texture, partly drawn back 
to admit the balmy air. . . . The King himself steered the 
vessel, his tall and slight figure gently curved, and his snowy 
locks, falling over ruddy cheeks, shew that age has bent but 
not broken him. He looked simple, though he appears like 
one bom to command; a hoary Neptune, steering over his 
native element. — Lady Blessington, 



NAPLES AND THE BAY OF NAPLES 443 



The Lazzaroni 

The Lazzaroni are the porters of Naples ; they are some- 
times attached to great houses under the appellation of 
facchini della casa (house-porter), to perform commissions for 
servants, and to give assistance where strength and exertion 
are requisite ; and in such stations they are said to have given 
proofs of secrecy, honesty and disinterestedness, very unusual 
among servants. Their dress is often only a shirt and 
trowsers; their diet, maccaroni, fish, water-melon, with iced 
water, and not unfrequently wiiie; and their habitation, the 
portico of a church or of a palace. Their athletic forms 
and constant flow of spirits are sufficient demonstrations 
of the salutary effects of such plain food, and simple 
habits. . . . 

The name, or rather nickname, by which this class is 
designated, naturally tends to prejudice the stranger against 
them, as it seems to convey the idea of a sturdy beggar : its 
derivation is a subject of conjecture ; the most probable seems 
to be that adopted at Naples itself, which supposes it to 
originate from the Spanish word lacero^ derived from lacerus^ 
signifying tattered, torn, or ragged. — Eustace, 

Pantomimic Conversation 

Why do the b^gars rap their chins constantly, with their 
hands, when you look at them ? Everything is done in panto- 
mime in Naples, and that is the conventional sign for hunger. 
A man who is quarrelling with another, yonder, lays the palm 
of his right hand on the back of his left, and shakes the two 
thumbs — expressive of a donkey's ears — whereat his adversary 
is goaded to desperation. Two people bargaining for fish, the 
buyer empties an imaginary waistcoat pocket when he is told 
the price, and walks away without a word : having thoroughly 
conveyed to the seller that he considers it too dear. Two 
people in carriages, meeting, one touches his Ups, twice or 
thrice, holding up the five fingers of his right hand, and gives 
a horizontal cut in the air with the palm. The other nods 
briskly, and goes his way. He has b^n invited to a friendly 
dinner at half- past five o'clock, and will certainly come. — 
ZHckens, 



444 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



The Lotteribs 

There is one extraordinaiy feature in the real life of 
Naples, at which we may take a glance before we go — tiie 
Lotteries. 

They prevail in most parts of Italy, but are particularly 
obvious, in their efiects and influences, here. They are drawn 
every Saturday. They bring an immense revenue to the 
Government; and diffuse a taste for gambling among the 
poorest of the poor, which is very comfortable to the coffers of 
the State, and very ruinous to themselves. The lowest stake 
is one grain ; less than a ferthing. One hundred numbers — 
from one to a hundred, inclusive— «u% put into a box. Five 
are drawn. Those are the prizes. I buy three numbers. If 
one of them come up, I win a small prize. If two, some 
hundreds of times my stake. If three, three thousand five 
hundred times my stake. I stake (or play, as they call it) 
what I can upcm my numbers, and buy what numbers I 
please. The amount I play, I pay at the lottery office, where 
I purdiase the ticket ; and it is stated on the tidcet itself. 

Every lottery office keeps a printed bod^, an Universal 
Lottery Diviner, where every possible accident and circum- 
stance is provided for, and has a number against it For 
instance, let us take two carlini — about sevenpence. On our 
way to the lottery office, we run against a black man. Wlien 
we get there, we say gravely, " The Diviner." It is handed 
over the counter, as a serious matter of business. We look at : 
black man. Such a number. "Give us that." We look at : 
running against a person in the street *'Give us that" We 
look at the name of the street itself. "Give us that" Now, 
we have our three numbers. 

If the roof of the theatre of San Carlo were to fiedl in» so 
many people would play upoa the numbers attadied to such 
an accident in the Diviner, that the Government would soon 
close those numbers, and decline to run the risk of losing any 
more upon them. This often happens. Not long ago, when 
there was a fire in the King's Palac^ there was such a desperate 
run on fire, and king, and palace, that further stakes on the 
numbers attached to those words in the Golden Book were 
forbidden. Every accident or event, is supposed, by the 
ignorant populace, to be a revelation to the beholder, or party 
concerned, in connection with the lottery. Certain people 



NAPLES AND THE BAY OF NAPLES 445 

who haYe a talent for dreaming fortunately, are much aoug^t 
after ; and there axe some priests who are constantly favoured 
with visions of the lucky numbers, 

I heard of a horse running away with a man, and dashing 
him down, dead, at the comer of a street. Pursuing the horse 
with incredible speed, was another man, who ran so fost, that 
he came up, immediately after the accident. He threw 
himself upon his knees beside the unfortunate rider, and 
clasped his hand with an expression of the wildest grief. *' If 
you have life," he said, '* speak one word to me ! If you have 
one gasp of breath lef^ mention your age for Heaven's sake, 
that I may play that number in the lottery.** — Dickens, 

The "Toledo" 

The " Toledo " is every man's highway. It is the street of 
eating-houses, cafis and shops ; the artery which feeds and 
crosses every quarter of the town ; the river where the crowd 
bursts in like a flood. Aristocracy comes by in its carriage, 
the tradespeople sell their stuffs, the common people ti^e 
their siesta there. It is the nobleman's promenade, the 
merchant's bazaar, and the beggar's dwelling - house. — 
AUxandrt Dumas. 

Architecture 

To describe the public edifices of Naples would be to 
compose a guide. I shall therefore content myself with a 
few observations on some remarkable objects in them, or 
connected with them. Several churches are supposed to occupy 
the sites of ancient temples, the names and memory of which 
have been preserved by this circumstance. Thus the cathedral 
is said to stand on the substructions of a temple of Apollo ; 
that of the Santa Apostoli rises on the ruins of a temple of 
Mercury. S. Maria Maggiore was originally a temple of 
Diana, etc. Of these churches some are adorned with the 
pillars and the marbles of the temples to which they have 
succeeded. Thus the cathedral is supported by more than 
a hundred columns of granite, which belonged to the edifice 
over which it is erected; as did the forty or more pillars 
that decorated the treasury, or rather the chapel of St. 
Januarius. The church itsdf was built by an Angevin prince, 
and when scattered or rather destroyed by earthquakes, it 
was rebuilt by a Spanish sovereign. It is Gothic, but 



446 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

strangely disfigured by ornaments and reparations in diffe- 
rent styles. In the subterraneous chi^ under the choir is 
deposited the body of St. Januarius. His supposed blood is 
kept in a vial in the Tesoro (treasury), and is considered as 
the most valuable of its deposits, and indeed as the glory and 
the ornament of the cathedral and of the city itself. The 
blood of St. Stephen in the church of St. Gaudioso, be- 
longing to the Benedictine Nuns, is said to liquefy in the 
same manner; but only once a year on the festivsil of the 
martyr. 

The Santi Apostoli is in its origin perhaps the most 
ancient church in Naples, and was, if we may cr^it tradition, 
erected by Constantine upon the ruins of a temple of Mercury ; 
it has however been rebuilt partially more than once, and 
finally with great magnificence. The church of St. Paul 
occupies the site of a temple of Castor and Pollux ; the fix>nt 
of this temple, consisting of eight Corinthian pillars, was de- 
stroyed by the earthquake of 1688. Two only were restored, 
and now form part of the firontispiece of the church. The 
interior is spacious, well proportioned, and finely incnisted 
with marble. The chancel is very extensive, and all supported 
by antique pillars; it is supposed to stand over the theatre 
where Nero first disgraced himself by appearing as a public 
singer: some vestiges of this theatre may still be traced by 
an observing antiquary. The church of St Filippo Neri is 
remarkable for the number of ancient pillars that support its 
triple row of aisles on both sides of the nave. St Lorenzo^ 
belonging to a convent founded by Charles of Anjou, is a 
monument of the hatred which that prince bore to popular 
representation. It stands on the site of the Basilica Augusta, 
a noble and magnificent hall, which at the period of the first 
entrance of the French was the place of public assembly where 
the senate and people of Naples met in council. Charles 
suppressed the assemblies, demolished the hall, and in the 
year 1266 erected the church which now occupies its 
place. ... Of all the Neapolitan churches, that of Di Spirito 
Santo in the Strada Toledo is the most worthy of notice in my 
opinion, because the purest and simplest in architecture. 
The exterior is indifferent, or rather, it was never finished, or 
at least decorated. The interior is large, well proportioned, 
adorned with Corinthian pilasters, and a regular oitablature 
and cornice. — Eustace, 



NAPLES AND THE BAY OF NAPLES 447 



Pompeii ^ 

We made our excursion to Pompeii, passing through Por- 
tici, and over the last lava of Mount Vesuvius. I experienced 
a strange mixture of sensations, on surveying at once the 
mischiefs of the late eruption, in the ruin of villages, Deurms, 
and vineyards ; and all around them the most luxuriant and 
delightful scenery of nature. It was impossible to resist the 
impressions of melancholy from viewing the former, or not to 
admit that gaiety of spirits which was inspired by the sight of 
the latter. I say nothing of the Museum at Portici, which 
we saw in our way, on account of the ample description 
of its contents already given to the public, and because it 
should be described no otherwise than by an exact catalogue, 
or by an exhibition of engravings. An hour and half brought 
us from this celebrated repository to Pompeii. Nothing can 
be conceived more delightful than the climate and situation 
of this city. It stands upon a gently-rising hill, which com- 
mands the bay of Naples, with the islands of Caprea and 
Ischia, the rich coasts of Sorrento, the tower of Castel a Mare ; 
and on the other side. Mount Vesuvius, with the lovely country 
intervening. It is judged to be about an Italian mile long, 
and three and a half in circuit We entered the city at the 
little gate which lies towards Stabiae. The first object upon 
entering is a colonnade round a square court, which seems to 
have formed a place of arms. Behind the colonnade is a series 
of little rooms, destined for the soldiers' barracks. The columns 
are of stone, plastered with stucco and coloured On several 
of them we found names scratched in Greek and Latin ; 
probably those of the soldiers who had been quartered there. 
Helmets and armour for various parts of the body were dis- 
covered amongst the skeletons of some soldiers, whose hard 
fate had compelled them to wait on duty, at the perilous 
moment of the city's approaching destruction. Dolphins and 
tridents, sculptured in relief on most of these relics of armour, 
seem to show that they had been fabricated for naval service. 
Some of the sculptures on the arms, probably belonging to 
officers, exhibit a greater variety of ornaments. The taking 
of Troy, wrought on one of the helmets, is beautifully executed ; 

^ The impossibility of finding any correct archseological description of 
Pompeii in short compass makes it necessary to faU iMck on the earlier 
descriptions we have cnosen. 



448 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

and much may be said in commendation of the work of several 
others. 

We were next led to the remains of a temple and altar near 
these barracks. From thence to some rooms floored (as indeed 
were almost all that have been cleared from the rubbish) 
with tesselated mosaic pavements of various patterns, and 
most of them of very excellent execution. Many of these have 
been taken up^ and now form the floors of the rooms in the 
Museum at Portici, whose best ornaments of every kind are 
furnished from the discoveries at Pompeii. From the rooms 
just mentioned we descended into a subterraneous chamber, 
communicating with a bathing apartment It appears to have 
served as a kmd of office to the latter. It was probably here 
that the clothes used in bathing were washed. A fireplace, 
a capacious cauldron of bronze, and earthen vessels, proper 
for that purpose, found here, have given rise to the conjecture. 
Contiguous to this room is a small circular one with a fire- 
place, which was the stove to the bath. I should not forget 
to tell you that the skeleton of the poor laundress (for so the 
antiquaries will have it), who was very diligently washing the 
bathing clothes at the time of the eruption, was found lying 
in an attitude of most resigned death, not far from the washing 
cauldron in the office just mentioned. 

We were now conducted to the temple, or rather chapel, 
of Isis. The chief remains are a covered cloister ; the great 
altar on which was probably exhibited the statue of the god- 
dess ; a little edifice to protect the sacred well ; the pediment 
of the chapel, with a symbolical vase in relief, ornaments in 
stucco, on the front of the main building, consisting of the 
lotus, the sistrum, representations of gods, Harpocrates, Anubis, 
and other objects of Egyptian worship. The figures on one 
side of this temple are Perseus with the Gorgon's head ; on 
the other side. Mars and Venus, with Cupids bearing the arms 
of Mars. We next observe three altars of different sizes. On 
one of them is said to have been found the bones of a victim 
unconsumed, the last sacrifice having probably been stopped 
by the dreadful calamity which had occasioned it From 
a niche in the temple was taken a statue of marble : a woman 
pressing her lips with her forefinger. Within the area is a 
well, where the priest threw the ashes of the sni&rifices. We 
saw in the Museum at Portici some lovely arabesque paintings, 
cut from the walls of the cloister. The foliage which ran round 
the whole sweep of the cloister itself is in the finest taste. 



NAPLES AND THE BAY OF NAPLES 449 

Behind one of the altars we saw a small room, in which, our 
guide informed us, a human skeleton had been discovered, 
with some fish bones on a plate near it, and a number of 
other culinary utensils. We then passed on to another apart- 
ment, almost contiguous, where nothing more remarkable had 
been found than an iron crow : an instrument with which 
perhaps the unfortunate wretch, whose skeleton I have men- 
tioned above, had vainly endeavoured to extricate herself, this 
room being probably barricaded by the matter of the eruption. 
This temple, rebuilt, as the inscription imports, by N. Popidius, 
had been thrown down by a terrible earthquake, that likewise 
destroyed a great part of the city (sixteen years before the 
famous eruption of Vesuvius described by Pliny, which hap- 
pened in the first year of Titus, a.d. 79) and buried at once 
both Herculaneum and Pompeii. As I lingered alone in these 
environs sacred to Isis, some time after my companions had 
quitted them, I fell into one of those reveries which my 
imagination is so fond of indulging ; and transporting myself 
seventeen hundred years back, fancied I was sailing with the 
elder Pliny, on the first day's eruption, firom Misenum, towards 
Retina and Herculaneum ; and afterwards towards the villa of 
his friend Pomponianus at Stabise. The course of our galley 
seldom carried us out of sight of Pompeii, and as often as I 
could divert my attention from the tremendous spectacle of the 
eruption, its enormous pillar of smoke standing conically in 
the air, and tempests of liquid fire continually bursting out 
from the midst of it, then raining down the sides of the 
mountain, and flooding this beautiful coast with iimumerable 
streams of red-hot lava, methought I turned my eyes upon this 
fair dty, whose houses, villas, and gardens, with their long 
ranges of columned courts and porticos, were made visible 
through the universal cloud of ashes, by lightning from the 
mountain; and saw its distracted inhabitants, men, women, 
and children, running to and fro in despair. But in one spot, 
I mean the court and precincts of the temple, glared a con- 
tinual light. It was the blaze of the altars ; towards which I 
discerned a long-robed train of priests moving in solemn pro- 
cession, to supplicate by prayer and sacrifice, at this destructive 
moment, the intervention of Isis, who had taught the first 
&thers of mankind the culture of the earth, and other arts of 
civil life. Methought I could distinguish in their hands all 
those paintings and images, sacred to this divinity, brought out 
on this portentous occasion, from the subterraneous apartments 

2 F 



4SO THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

and mystic cells of the temple. There was every form of 
creeping thing and abominable beast, every Egyptian pollution 
which the true prophet had seen in vision, among the secret 
idolatries of the temple at Jerusalem. The priests arrived at 
the altars ; I saw them gathered round, and purifying the three 
at once with the sacred meal ; then, all moving slowly about 
them, each with his right hand towards the fire: it was the 
office of some to seize the firebrands of the altars, with which 
they sprinkled holy water on the numberless bystanders. Then 
began the prayers, the hymns, and lustrations of the sacrifice. 
The priests had laid the victims with their throats downward 
upon the altars ; were ransacking the baskets of flour and salt 
for the knives of slaughter, and proceeding in haste to the 
accomplishment of their pious ceremonies ; — when one of our 
company, who thought me lost, returned with impatience, and 
calling me off to some new object, put an end to my strange 
reverie. — Beckford, 

PoMPEiAN Architecture 

Since you last heard from me, we have been to see 
Pompeii, and are waiting now for the return of spring weather, 
to visit, first Paestum, and then the islands ; after which we 
shall return to Rome. I was astonished at the remains of 
this city; I had no conception of anything so perfect yet 
remaining. My idea of the mode of its destruction was 
this : — First, an earthquake shattered it, and unroofed almost 
all its temples, and split its columns; then a rain of light 
small pumice-stones fell ; then torrents of boiling water, mixed 
with ashes, filled up all its crevices. A wide, flat hill, fix}m 
which the city was excavated, is now covered by thick woods, 
and you see the tombs and the theatres, the temples and the 
houses, surrounded by the uninhabited wilderness. We 
entered the town from the side towards the sea, and first saw 
two theatres; one more magnificent than the other, strewn 
with the ruins of the white marble which formed their seats 
and cornices, wrought with deep, bold sculpture. In the 
front, between the stage and the seats, is the circular space, 
occasionally occupied by the chorus. The stage is very 
narrow, but long, and divided from this space by a narrow 
enclosure parallel to it, I suppose for the orchestra. On each 
side are the consuls' boxes, and below in the theatre at 
Herculaneum, were found two equestrian statues of admirable 



NAPLES AND THE BAY OF NAPLES 451 

workmanship, occupying the same place as the great bronze 
lamps did at Drury Lane. The smallest of the theatres is 
said to have been comic, though I should doubt. From both 
you see, as you sit on the seats, a prospect of the most 
wonderful beauty. 

You then pass through the ancient streets ; they are very 
narrow, and the houses rather small, but all constructed on an 
admirable plan, especially for this climate. The rooms are 
built round a court, or sometimes two, according to the extent 
of the house. In the midst is a fountain, sometimes surrounded 
by a portico, supported on fluted columns of white stucco ; the 
floor is paved with mosaic, sometimes wrought in imitation of 
vine leaves, sometimes in quaint figures, and more or less 
beautiful, according to the rank of the inhabitant There 
were paintings on all, but most of them have been removed to 
decorate the royal museums. Little winged figures, and small 
ornaments of exquisite elegance, yet remain. There is an 
ideal life in the forms of these paintings of an incomparable 
loveliness, though most are evidently the work of very inferior 
artists. It seems as if, from the atmosphere of mental beauty 
which surrounded them, every human being caught a splendour 
not his own. In one house you see how the bed-rooms were 
managed : — a small sofa was built up, where the cushions were 
placed ; two pictures, one representing Diana and Endymion, 
the other Venus and Mars, decorate the chamber, and a little 
niche, which contains the statue of a domestic god. The floor 
is composed of a rich mosaic of the rarest marbles, agate, 
jasper, and porphyry ; it looks to the marble fountain and the 
snow-white columns, whose entablatures strew the floor of the 
portico they supported. The houses have only one storey, 
and the apartments, though not large, are very lofty. A great 
advantage results from this, wholly unknown in our cities. 
The public buildings, whose ruins are now forests, as it were, 
of white fluted columns, and which then supported entablatures, 
loaded with sculptures, were seen on all sides over the roofs of 
the houses. This was the excellence of the ancients. Their 
private expenses were comparatively moderate ; the dwelling 
of one of the chief senators of Pompeii is elegant indeed, and 
adorned with most beautiful specimens of art, but small. But 
their public buildings are everywhere marked by the bold and 
grand designs of an unsparing magnificence. In the little 
town of Pompeii, (it contained about twenty thousand in- 
habitants,) it is wonderful to see the number and the grandeur 



45« THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

of their public buildings. Another advantage, too, is that, in 
the present case, the glorious scenery around is not shut out, 
and that, unlike the inhabitants of the Cimmerian ravines of 
modem cities, the ancient Pompeians could contemplate the 
clouds and the lamps of heaven ; could see the moon rise 
high behind Vesuvius, and the sun set in the sea, tremulous 
with an atmosphere of golden vapour, between Inarime and 
Misenum. 

We next saw the temples. Of the temple of iEsculapius 
little remains but an altar of black stone, adorned with a cornice 
imitating the scales of a serpent His statue, in terra-ootta, 
was found in the cell The temple of Isis is more perfect It 
is surrounded by a portico of fluted columns, and in the area 
around it are two altars, and many ceppi for statues ; and a 
little chapel of white stucco, as hard as stone, of the most 
exquisite proportion; its panels are adorned with figures in 
bas-relief, slightly indicated, but of a workmanship the most 
delicate and perfect that can be conceived. They are Egyptian 
subjects, executed by a Greek artist, who has harmonised all 
the unnatural extravagances of the original conception into 
the supernatural loveliness of his country's genius. They 
scarcely touch the ground with their feet, and their wind- 
uplifted robes seem in the place of wings. The temple in the 
midst raised on a high platform, and approached by steps, 
was decorated with exquisite paintings, some of which we 
saw in the museum at PorticL It is small, of the same 
materials as the chapel, with a pavement of mosaic, and fluted 
Ionic columns of white stucco, so white that it dazzles you to 
look at it. 

Thence through other porticos and labyrinths of walls and 
columns (for I cannot hope to detail everything to you), we 
came to the Forum. This is a large square, surrounded by 
lofty porticos of fluted columns, some broken, some entire, 
their entablatures strewed under them. The temple of Jupiter, 
of Venus, and another temple, the Tribunal, and the Hall of 
Public Justice, with their forests of lofty columns, surround 
the Forum. Two pedestals or altars of an enormous size 
(for, whether they supported equestrian statues, or were the 
altars of the temple of Venus, before which they stand, the 
guide could not tell), occupy the lower end of the Forum. 
At the upper end, supported on an elevated platform, stands 
the temple of Jupiter. Under the colonnade of its portico we 
sate, and pulled out our oranges, and figs, and bread, and 



NAPLES AND THE BAY OF NAPLES 453 

medlars (sorry fJEure, you will say), and rested to eat Here 
was a magnificent spectacle. Above and between the multi- 
tudinous shafts of the sun-shining columns was seen the sea, 
reflecting the purple noon of heaven above it, and supporting, 
as it were, on its line the dark lofty mountains of Sorrento, of 
a blue inexpressibly deep, and tinged towards their summits 
with streaks of new-fallen snow. Between was one small 
green island. To the right was Caprese, Inarime, Prochyta, 
and Misenum. Behind was the single summit of Vesuvius, 
rolling forth volumes of thick white smoke, whose foam-like 
column was sometimes darted into the clear dark sky, and fell 
in little streaks along the wind. Between Vesuvius and the 
nearer mountains, as through a chasm, was seen the main 
line of the loftiest Apennines, to the east. The day was 
radiant and warm. Every now and then we heard the sub- 
terranean thunder of Vesuvius ; its distant deep peals seemed 
to shake the very air and light of day, which interpenetrated 
our frames, with the sullen and tremendous sound. This 
scene was what the Greeks beheld (Pompeii, you know, was 
a Greek city). They lived in harmony with nature ; and the 
interstices of their incomparable columns were portals, as it 
were, to admit the spirit of beauty which animates this 
glorious universe to visit those whom it inspired. If such 
is Pompeii, what was Athens? What scene was exhibited 
from the Acropolis, the Parthenon,' and the temples of 
Hercules, and Theseus, and the Winds? The islands and 
the JEgean sea, the mountains of Argolis, and the peaks of 
Pindus and Olympus, and the darkness of the Boeotian forest 
interspersed? 

From the Forum we went to another public place; a 
triangular portico, half enclosing the ruins of an enormous 
temple. It is built on the edge of the hill overlooking the 
sea. That black point is the temple. In the apex of the 
triangle stands an altar and a fountain, and before the altar 
once stood the statue of the builder of the portico. Returning 
hence, and following the consular road, we came to the eastern 
gate of the dty. The walls are of enormous strength, and 
inclose a space of three miles. On each side of the road 
beyond the gate are built the tombs. How unlike ours ! They 
seem not so much hiding-places for that which must decay, as 
voluptuous chambers for immortal spirits. They are of marble, 
radiantly white ; and two, especially beautiful, are loaded with 
exquisite bas-reliefs. On the stucco-wall that incloses them 



454 THE BOOK OP ITALIAN TRAVEL 

are little emblematic figures, of a relief exceedingly low, of 
dead and dying animals, and little winged genii, and female 
forms bending in groups in some funereal office. The higher 
reliefs represent, one a nautical subject, and the other a Bac- 
chanalian one. Within the cell stand the cinerary urns, some- 
times one, sometimes more. It is said that paintings were 
found within ; which are now, as has been every^ing moveable 
in Pompeii, removed, and scattered about in royal museums. 
These tombs were the most impressive things of all. The 
wild woods surround them on either side; and along the 
broad stones of the paved road which divides them, you hear 
the late leaves of autumn shiver and rustle in the stream of 
the inconstant wind, as it were, like the steps of ghosts. The 
radiance and magnificence of these dwellings of the dead, 
the white freshness of the scarcely finished marble, the im- 
passioned or imaginative life of the figures which adorn them, 
contrast strangely with the simplicity of the houses of those 
who were living when Vesuvius overwhelmed them. 

I have forgotten the amphitheatre, which is of great magni- 
tude, though much inferior to the Coliseum. I now under- 
stand why the Greeks were such great poets ; and, above all, 
I can account, it seems to me, for the harmony, the unity, the 
perfection, the imiform excellence, of all their works of art 
They lived in a perpetual commerce with external nature, and 
nourished themselves upon the spirit of its forms. Their 
theatres were all open to the mountains and the sky. Their 
columns, the ideal types of a sacred forest, with its roof of 
interwoven tracery, admitted the light and wind; the odour 
and the freshness of the coimtry penetrated the cities. Their 
temples were mostly upaithric ; and the flying clouds, the stars, 
or the deep sky, were seen above. — Shelley. 

Vesuvius 

Vesuvius is, after the Glaciers, the most impressive ex- 
hibition of the energies of nature I ever saw. It has not the 
immeasurable greatness, the overpowering magnificence, nor, 
above all, the radiant beauty of the glaciers ; but it has all 
their character of tremendous and irresistible strength. From 
Resina to the hermitage you wind up the mountain, and cross 
a vast stream of hardened lava, which is an actual image of 
the waves of the sea, changed into hard black stone by en- 
chantment. The lines of the boiling flood seem to hang in 



NAPLES AND THE BAY OF NAPLES 4SS 

the air, and it is difficult to believe that the billows which 
seem hurrying down upon you are not actually in motion. 
This plain was once a sea of liquid fire. From the hermitage 
we crossed another vast stream of lava, and then went on foot 
up the cone — ^this is the only part of the ascent in which there 
is any difficulty, and that difficulty has been much exaggerated. 
It is composed of rocks of lava, and declivities of ashes ; by 
ascending the former and descending the latter, there is very 
little fatigue. On the summit is a kind of irregular plain, the 
most horrible chaos that can be imagined ; riven into ghastly 
chasms, and heaped up with tumuli of great stones and cinders, 
and enormous rocks blackened and calcined, which had been 
thrown from the volcano upon one another in terrible con- 
fusion. In the midst stands the conical hill from which 
volumes of smoke, and the fountains of liquid fire, are rolled 
forth forever. The mountain is at present in a slight state of 
eruption ; and a thick heavy white smoke is perpetually rolled 
out, interrupted by enormous columns of an impenetrable black 
bituminous vapour, which is hurled up, fold after fold, into the 
sky with a deep hollow sound, and fiery stones are rained down 
from its darkness, and a black shower of ashes fell even where 
we sat The lava, like the glacier, creeps on perpetually, with 
a crackling sound as of suppressed fire. There are several 
springs of lava ; and in one place it rushes precipitously over a 
high crag, rolling down the half-molten rocks and its own over- 
hanging waves ; a cataract of quivering fire. We approached 
the extremity of one of the rivers of lava ; it is about twenty feet 
in breadth and ten in height ; and as the inclined plane was 
not rapid, its motion was very slow. We saw the masses of 
its dark exterior surface detach themselves as it moved, and 
betray the depth of the liquid flame. In the day the fire is 
but slightly seen ; you only observe a tremulous motion in the 
air, and streams and fountains of white sulphurous smoke. 

At length we saw the sun sink between Caprese and 
Inarime^ and, as the darkness increased, the effect of the 
fire became more beautiful. We were, as it were, surrounded 
by streams and cataracts of the red and radiant fire ; and in 
the midst, from the column of bituminous smoke shot up into 
the air, fell the vast masses of rock, white with the light of 
their intense heat, leaving behind them through the dark 
vapour trains of splendour. We descended by torch-light, 
and I should have enjoyed the scenery on my return, but they 
conducted me, I know not how, to the hermitage in a state of 
intense bodily suffering. — ShelUy. 



4S6 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 



NOTES ON THE BAY OF NAPLES 

Three excoisioiis of interest may be made from Naples: 
the first, a trip in a row-boat westward to Misenom. Shdky 
has described this as follows : " We set off an hoar after sun- 
rise one radiant morning in a little boat ; there was not a cloud 
in the sky, nor a wave upon the sea, which was so translucent 
that you could see the hollow caverns clothed with the glaucous 
sea-moss, and the leaves and branches of those delicate weeds 
that pave the unequal bottom of the water. As noon ap- 
proached, the heat, and especially the light, became intense. 
We passed Posilipo, and came first to the eastern point of the 
bay of Puzzoli, which is within the great bay of Naples, and 
which again incloses that of Baiae. Here are lofty rocks and 
craggy islets, with arches and portals of precipice standing in 
the sea, and enormous caverns, which echoed fedntly with the 
murmur of the languid tide. This is called La Scuola di 
Viigilio. We then went direcdy across to the promontory of 
Misenum.** 

Misenum has been aptly described by Forsyth as " once 
the Portsmouth of the Roman Empire," and the magnificent 
natural harbour is well worth seeing. Shelley then continues : 
« We were conducted to see the Mare Morto, and the Elysian 
fields; and the spot on which Virgil places the scenery of 
the Sixth iEneid. Though extremely beautiful, as a lake, and 
woody hills, and this divine sky must make it, I confess my 
disappointment. The guide showed us an antique cemetery, 
where the niches used for placing the cinerary urns of the 
dead yet remain. We then coasted the bay of Baiae to the 
left, in which we saw many picturesque and interesting ruins ; 
but I have to remark that we never disembarked but we were 
disappointed — while from the boat the effect of the scenery 
was inexpressibly delightful" This warning may be followed, 
for little remains of the villas by which Sylla, Pompey, Tiberius 
and Nero made Baiae the fashionable watering-place of Rome. 

The second excursion should be a carriage-drive (beginning 
over the jolting lava-pavement) on the road running from 
Naples through an almost continuous line of villa^ to 
Sorrento. The sea-life of these little fishing towns is very 
curious, and the general view charmed Dickens, who went 
by rail. He wrote: ''Over doors and archwajrs, there are 
countless little images of San Geimaro, with his Canute's 



NAPLES AND THE BAY OF NAPLES 457 

hand stretched out, to check the fury of the Burning Moun- 
tain ; we are carried pleasantly, by a railroad on the beautiful 
Sea Beach, past the town of Torre del Greco, built upon the 
ashes of the former town destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius, 
within a hundred years; and past the flat-roofed houses, 
granaries, and macaroni manufactories to Castel-a-Mare, 
with its ruined castle, now inhabited by fishermen, standing 
in the sea upon a heap of rocks. Here, the railroad ter- 
minates; but, hence we may ride on, by an imbroken suc- 
cession of enchanting bays, and beautiful scenery, sloping 
from the highest summit of Saint Angelo, the highest neigh- 
bouring mountain, down to the water's edge — among vineyards, 
olive-trees, gardens of oranges and lemons, orchards, heaped-up 
rocks, green gorges in the hills — and by the bases of snow- 
covered heights, and through small towns with handsome, 
dark-haired women at the doors — ^and past delicious summer 
villas — ^to Sorrento, where the Poet Tasso drew his inspiration 
from the beauty surrounding him. Returning, we may climb 
the heights above Castel-a-Mare, and looking down among the 
boughs and leaves, see the crisp water glistening in the sun ; 
and clusters of wlute houses in distant Naples, dwindling, in 
the great extent of prospect, down to dice." 

The island of Ischia at the western entrance of the bay of 
Naples has not much interest, except that the scenery has a 
cunous Grecian aspect Addison wrote of the approach: 
" On the north end of the island stands the town and castle, 
on an exceeding high rock, divided from the body of the 
island, and inaccessible to an enemy on all sides. This island 
is larger, but much more rocky and barren than Prodta." 

For Capri (our third excursion) we may refer to Addison : 
*' The island lies four miles in length from east to west, and 
about one in breadth. The western part, for about two miles 
in length, is a continued rock, vastly high, and inaccessible 
on the sea-side. It has, however, the greatest town in the 
island, that goes under the name of Ana-Caprea, and is in 
several places covered with a very fruitful soil. The eastern 
end of die isle rises up in precipices very near as high, though 
not quite so lonp;, as the western. Between these eastern and 
western mountains lies a slip of lower groimd, which runs 
across the island, and is one of the pleasantest spots I have 
seen. It is hid with vines, figs, oranges, almonds, olives, 
myrtles, and fields of com, which look extremely fresh and 
beeiutifiil, and make up the most delightful little landscape 

2 G 



4S8 THE BOOK OF ITALIAN TRAVEL 

imaginable, when they are surveyed from the tops of the 
neighbouring mountains. Here stands the town of Capiea, 
the bishop's palace, and two or three convents. In the midst 
of this fruitful tract of land rises a hill, that was probably 
covered with buildings in Tiberius's time. There are still 
several ruins on the sides of it, and about the top are fotmd 
two or three dark galleries, low built, and covered with 
mason's work, though at present they appear overgrown with 
grass." 

The Blue Grotto has been portrayed by Mendelssohn: 
*' The sea fills the whole space of the grotto, the entrance to 
which lies under the water, only a very small portion of the 
opening projecting above the water, and through this narrow 
space you can only pass in a small boat, in which you must 
lie flat. When you are once in, the whole extent of the huge 
cave and its vault is revealed, and you can row about in it 
with perfect ease, as if under a dome. The light of the sun 
also pierces through the opening into the grotto from under- 
neath the sea, but broken and dimmed by the green sea-water, 
and thence it is that such magical dreams arise. The whole 
of the high rocks are sky-blue, and green in the twilight, 
resembling the hue of moonshine. . . . Every stroke of the 
oars echoes strangely imder the vault." 

In the gulf of Salerno, which can be seen from Capri, is 
Amalfi, that southern Pisa, with a similar early glory and 
similar &te, and Salerno with its memories of the Norman 
invasion of Sicily; further down is Paestum with its Greek 
temples. No better comment on the beauty of Southern 
Italy has been made than that of Goethe: "Now that aU 
these coasts and promontories, gulfs and bays, islands and 
necks of land, rocks and sand-belts, bushy hills, soft meadows, 
fruitful fields, ornamented gardens, cultivated trees, hanging 
vines, cloud-capt mountains and ever cheerful plains, difk 
and banks, and the all-surrounding sea, with so many changes 
and variations — ^now that all the$e have become the present 
property of my mind — ^now, indeed, for the first time does 
the Odyssey address me as a living r^ty." 



INDEX TO TOWNS 



Ancona, 199 
Atiisi, 318 

Bbrgamo, 309 
Bologna, 225 

Capri, 4S7 
Como, 2Gd 
Crema, 221 
Cremona, 222 

Fbrraka, 188 

Florence, Approach to, 253; In 
Sixteenth Century, 254; In Seven- 
teenth Century, 257 ; In Eigh- 
teenth Century, 262; Florentine 
Life, 264-269 ; Palazzo Vecchio, 
269; Duomo,273; Churches, 278; 
Palaces, 292-297 ; Art, 299 ; 
Environs, 307; General Note, 
310 

6bnoa» 234 

La Vbrna, 322 
Leghorn, 251 
Loretto, X97 
Lucca, 242 

Mantua, 185 
Milan, 211 
Modena, 224 
Monza, 210 

Naplbs, 438 

Orvibto, 329 



Padua, 179 
Pftrma, 223 
Pavia, 219 
Perugia, 3x5 
Pisa. 244 
Pompeii, 447 

Ravbnna. 190 

Rimini, 192 

Rome, Approach to, 331 ; Antiqui- 
ties, 333-352; Catacombs, 355; 
In Sixteenth Century, 3^9 ; In 
Seventeenth Century, 306; In 
Eighteenth Century, 371 ; Goethe 
on, 374 ; Roman life, 376-381 ; 
St Peter's, 381-389; Basilicas, 
39^-402 ; Qiurches, 403-417 ; 
Kuaces, 417-422 ; Environs, 424 ; 
Art, 425 ; General Note, 430 

San Marino, 193 
Siena, 323 

Turin, 233 

Urbino, 197 

Vbnicb, Approach to, iii; In 
Seventeenth Century, 114; In 
Eighteenth Century, 120 ; Goethe 
on, 129 ; Venetian Life, 133-140 ; 
San Marco, 141-155 ; Grand 
Canal, 161 ; Churches, 163-166 ; 
Art, 166; General Note, 169 

Verona, 172 

Vicenza, 177 



Printed by Ballanttnb, Hanson 6* Ca 
Edinbuigb 6* London 



*^ \J liJUl