Italian cities

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SAN Di€<SD

ITALIAN CITIES

VOL. I.

JAN cmc

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\NGEUNE OUR BLASHFIELD

NEW YOr

HftARLES SCRIBNEF NS

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MILAN

ARCH/EOLOGICAL MUSEUM

IL BAMBAJA
TOMBAL EFFIGY OF GASTON DE FOIX

ITALIAN CITIES

BY

EDWIN HOWLAND BLASHFIELD

AND
EVANGELINE WILBOUR BLASHFIELD

VOLUME I

WITH FORTY-EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1902

Copyright, 1900, 1902
BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.

CONTENTS

OF THE FIRST VOLUME

RAVENNA PAGP

I. A BYZANTINE RELIQUARY 3

II. THE ART OF THE CHRISTIAN. SCULPTURE . 14

III. ARCHITECTURE. MOSAIC 27

IV. BEYOND THE WALLS 38

SIENA

I. GENERAL ASPECT OF THE CITY. THE

PALAZZO PUBBLICO 47

n. THE ANNUAL FESTIVAL 67

III. THE PRIMITIVE PAINTERS 73

IV. THE SIENESE SCHOOL OF PAINTING . . 89
V. SIENESE ART PATRONS 100

VI. THE SIEGE OF SIENA 110

VII. THE CATHEDRAL 130

VIII. PINTURICCHIO .136

IX. BAZZI . 145

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE FLORENTINE ARTIST 167

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 201

PARMA

I. THE DUCAL CITY 257

II. CORREGGIO 266

VI

ILLUSTRATIONS*

VOL. I.

TO FACE PAGE

1. Tombal effigy of Gaston de Foix by Agostino

Busti, called II Bambaja. Archaeological Mu-
seum (Sculpture Gallery) of the Brera, Milan.
Gaston de Foix, nephew of Louis XII., and
Governor of Milan, was killed at the battle of
Ravenna (1512) after a short military career
of two months, " quifut toute sa vie et son immor-
talitt" Frontispiece

2. The Good Shepherd. Statuette in the Museum of

the Lateran, Rome. According to some authori-
ties this is a work of the middle of the second
century A.D. Others ascribe it to the epoch of
the renaissance xmder Constantine. It is the
finest in style and execution of the nine figures
representing this subject which have been pre-
served 20

3. Daniel in the Den of Lions. Relief from one end

of a Christian Sarcophagus, Ravenna ... 22

4. Interior of the Basilica of San Apollinare Nuovo,

Ravenna. Built circa 500 under Theodoric the
Ostrogoth as an Arian cathedral dedicated to
St. Martin in Co&lo Aureo, it became Orthodox
in 570, and in the ninth century was renamed
New St. Apollinaris. The columns seen in the
reproduction were brought from Constantinople.

* Reproduced from photographs by Alinari, Florence.

vii

ILLUSTRATIONS

TO FACE PAOB

The mosaics are of the sixth and ninth centuries.
The choir and apse were remodelled in the
eighteenth century 28

5. Entrance court of San Francesco, Kavenna. This

church was called San Pietro until 1261. In the
court are early Christian sarcophagi and mediae-
val monuments 40

6. The Sala del Gran Consiglio in the Palazzo Pub-

blico of Siena. This hal1 is also called the Sala
del Mappamondo. At one end of it is seen
Simone Martini's " Maestd ; " a fresco representing
Madonna enthroned, surrounded by saints and
angels. At the left, over the arches, is an im-
mense fresco of the battle of Turrita (1363) by
Ambrogio di Lorenzo 60

7. The Kiss of Judas. Panel by Duccio di Buonin-

segna. This panel was one of twenty-seven, de-
picting scenes from the life of Christ, on the back
of the great altar-piece of the cathedral of Siena.
It was ordered in 1308, finished in 1311, and was
carried in procession with bells ringing and
trumpets sounding, to its station under the cen-
tral cupola of the Duomo. When the place of
the high altar was changed, the picture was re-
moved to the Canonicate, sawn apart, and the
panels separated; they are now in the Opera del
Duomo 78

8. An ancona, viz.: a Virgin and Child with Saints, by

Benvenuto di Giovanni in the Institute of Fine
Arts, Siena. Only the three principal panels
are produced here, the ancona proper including
pinnacles and a predella 96

9. I Gaudenti. Fragment from the fresco of "The

Triumph of Death " in the Campo Santo of
Pisa. This famous work has been variously ac-
viii

ILLUSTRATIONS

TO FACC PAGE

credited to Lorenzetti, to Orgagna, and to Nardo
Daddi. Signor Supino (Archivio Storico deW
Arte Italiana, vol. VII, pp. 21-40) ascribes it to
the Pisan, Francesco Traini. The costumes are
of the early fourteenth century .... . 104

10. Interior of the Cathedral of Siena seen looking

diagonally from the choir. The closely-striped
piers of the great central lantern are shown, also
the mosaic pavement, and at the right the pulpit
by Niccola Pisano (circa 1266) with its staircase
by Bernardino di Giacomo (1543) 130

11. The Death of Absalom. Mosaic picture ascribed

to Pietro del Minella from the pavement of the
Cathedral of Siena. The compositions, the oldest
dating from the fourteenth century and continu-
ing to our own time, are made not of tesserce but
of large pieces of stone somewhat after the man-
ner of what is now called Florentine Mosaic; on
these pieces the work is carried further in graffito.
The whole series of pictures is laid out in the
form of a huge cross 134

12. Interior of the Piccolomini Library, Siena. The

Library which opens from the north aisle of the
Duomo was built in 1495 by Cardinal Francesco
Piccolomini, was decorated in 1505-7 by Pintu-
ricchio with frescoes representing scenes from
the life of JEneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Pope
Pius II 138

13. Fresco by Pinturicchio from the vaulting of the

room known as the Hall of the Lives of the
Saints in the Borgia apartments of the Vatican.
This reproduction shows the peculiar juxtaposi-
tion of figures painted flatly, with objects, usually
ornament or architecture, modelled in relief, and
then colored or gilded. The Borgia apartments
ix

ILLUSTRATIONS

TO FACE PAQ1

were decorated under Alexander VI. by Pintu-
ricchio, and under Leo X. by Giovanni da Udine
and Perino del Vaga. Vasari says of the orna-
ments only some fifty years after they were exe-
cuted, "The methods now practised in stucco
were not known at that time, and the above men-
tioned ornaments are for the most part ruined."
The apartments were restored a few years ago at
the expense of Pope Loo XIII. The " ruin "
mentioned by Vasari has, however, resulted in
some beautiful discolorations and changes of tone 142

14. Head of an Apostle. Fragment from the " Christ

in the Garden," by Giovanni Bazzi, called II
Sodoma, in the Institute of Fine Arts of Siena . 151

15. Head of a Dancer. Fragment from the fresco of

" Fiorenzo bringing Wicked Women to the Con-
vent," by Giovanni Bazzi, called II Sodoma.
Cloister of the Convent of Monte Oliveto Mag-
giore, Province of Siena. This fresco, one of the
series representing scenes from the life of Saint
Benedict, was completed in 1506 158

16. Head of Eve. Fragment from "The Descent of

Christ into Limbo," by Giovanni Bazzi, called II
Sodoma, in the Institute of Fine Arts of Siena . 162

17. Head of a Girl. Fragment from "The Birth of

Mary," fresco by Domenico Bigordi, called II
Ghirlandajo, in the church of Santa Maria No-
vella, Florence. This cycle of frescoes in Santa
Maria Novella, though inferior in craftsmanship
to that in the Sassetti chapel of Santa Trinita,
is probably Ghirlandajo's most important work.
It was painted 1486-90 for Giovanni Tornabuoni,
represents scenes from the lives of the Madonna
and of John the Baptist, and is filled with con-
temporaneous portraits 178

x

ILLUSTRATIONS

TO FACE PAOK

18. Head of an unknown youth by Lorenzo di Credi.

Gallery of the Uffizi, Florence. Lorenzo's heads
of men young and old are his finest works. Cer-
tain of his drawings, notably those in the Louvre
and in the Uffizi, executed very simply with the
point and retouched with white, give a far higher
idea of his skill than do any of his paintings . . 188

19. Wall-fountain by one of the della Kobbia in the

church of San Niccolo da Tolentino, Prato. M.
Marcel Reymond attributes this work to Giovanni
della Robbia, but Giulio Carotti is convinced that
it is by a contemporary artist who is more akin
to Andrea della Robbia 196

20. Virgin, Child, and Saints. Altar-piece by Andrea

della Robbia in the church of Sant' Jacopo at
Gallicano in Tuscany 206

21. Piazza del Mercato Vecchio, showing the antique

column of Abundance in the ancient centre of
Florence, destroyed in 1890-92 to make way
for the present Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele . . 210

22. Tabernacle by Desiderio da Settignano, in the

chapel of the Sacrament, church of San Lorenzo,
Florence. This is one of the most exquisite and
important of Italian tabernacles. M. Marcel
Reymond believes that we have in this work
the earliest example of arabesques applied to
pilasters, replacing the fluting and the columns
of earlier Renaissance masters. M. Reymond is
also of the opinion that the simple base, the
heavy consoles supporting the tabernacle, and
the pedestals of the torch-bearers are due to
artists of the seventeenth century who modified
the work in 1677. The statue of Christ which
crowns the tabernacle has been accredited to
Baccio da Montelupo, but the general consensus
xi

ILLUSTRATIONS

TO FACX FAQI

of critical opinion not only accords it to Desiderio
but holds it to be one of the capital works of
the Renaissance 222

23. Head of a Youth. Fragment from the fresco, " The

Child brought to Life," by Domenico Bigordi,
called II Ghirlandajo, in the Sassetti chapel,
church of the Santissima Trinita, Florence . . 236

24. Fragment from " The Assumption of the Virgin,"

a fresco by Correggio in the Duomo of Parma.
The commission for this work was given to
Correggio in 1522. The reproductions show a
portion of the decoration of the octagonal cor-
nice, above which twelve colossal Apostles stand
against a painted balustrade, looking upwards at
the flying figures of the cupola, while behind
them youthful genii are lighting candelabra.
This plate is made from a photograph of one of
the series of water-color copies painted by Paolo
Toschi, as the photographs from the original are
so blurred as to be extremely difficult of repro-
duction 272

25. Fragment from " The Assumption of the Virgin,"

fresco by Correggio in the Duorao of Parma . . 278

26. Putti. Fragment of Correggio's picture " Danae "

in the Borghese Gallery, Rome. It is probable
that the " Danae " was one of the three pictures
painted for Federigo Gonzaga and by him pre-
sented to Charles V. after 1532 . . 288

xii

KAVENNA

VOL. I. — 1

RAVENNA

THE traveller who to-day goes from Eome to Flor-
ence by rail, through the noble mountains of Tuscany
and Umbria, bridges in a seven hours' journey a gap
of ten centuries in the history of art. He leaves
behind him the temples and arches, the Vatican's
marble population of half-nude gods and heroes ; he
comes to mediaeval towers, to saints and virgins, and
the frescoed folk of the fourteenth century swathed
in their heavy garments. The abrupt transition
bewilders him; the sudden change in his artistic
surroundings is almost inexplicable. How did it
come to pass? The gods and athletes did not all
die at once, nor the saints spring fully armed with
attribute and symbol from the brain of Giotto ;
surely there was some intermediate period of antici-
pation and recollection when these incongruous ele-
ments were slowly fused together, and when some
dim projection of the mediseval saint stood side by
side with a fast-fading memory of the antique demi-
god.

3

ITALIAN CITIES

To find the vanished centuries that wrought this
transformation one must ride northeast for seven
hours more to the Adriatic marshes. Fourteen
hundred years ago, when Italy flamed behind the
horsemen of Alaric, the Emperor Honorius fled to
the strongest city in the land, Eavenna, and with
his corrupt and motley court went one noble fugitive,
the genius of the Arts, who illustrates for all time
the name of her asylum.

In those days Ravenna was still a port ; but the
sea, which made her greatness, has by receding de-
stroyed her political importance, thus leaving her to
hold the more surely, in her slow decay, the buildings
of a time which she alone among cities fully repre-
sents, a time when pictorial Christian art had just
emerged from her prenatal condition of the cata-
combs into the light of imperial favor, and the archi-
tecture of the Eoman was beginning to be that of
the Christian. Thus Ravenna became the splendid
reliquary which preserved the dry bones of antique
art to be quickened by the breath of the Renaissance.
A unique link in the chain, she is the anomaly of
Italian towns, — a city of antitheses ; of pure water
in the midst of poisonous marshes, of impregnable
refuge among treacherous morasses.

Saved and lifted to high fortune by her submerged
territory, when all Italy elsewhere sunk under the
waves of barbarian invasion ; guarded, not besieged

4

RAVENNA

by the pestilence which walked without her walls,
she is antithetical even in superficial appearance, and
until our own times. Without are mean streets and
rough fa§ades ; within, color and splendor ; advanced
radicalism to-day has usurped the stronghold of
Greek hierarchy ; upon her friezes are the gaunt and
wasted faces of the Byzantine women, and in her
thoroughfares are the most beautiful of Italian girls.

Kavenna is the end of the old, the beginning of
the new. " Toward Home all ancient history tends,
from Borne all modern history springs ; " but here
for a brief moment the broad current of history was
dammed up into this little space, then ebbing away
even as the Adriatic has done, it left Eavenna full
of strange, stranded monuments of a time that has
elsewhere been swept out upon the tide into the ocean
of oblivion.

Among the graves of the buried past, the sarcoph-
agi of exarchs, captains, and priests, which He scat-
tered in the churches and the streets, — waifs from
the shipwreck of Italy when Alaric burst upon her,
— are the sepulchres and effigies of three rulers who
epitomize the art-history of the city : of Galla Pla-
cidia, the conquered Roman princess, who subjugated
in her turn and married her captor, and preserved to
Ravenna what remained of old-time splendor ; of
Theodoric the Ostrogoth, who infused the vigor of
the north into worn-out forms; of Justinian the

5

ITALIAN CITIES

Emperor, who dowered the city with the art heritage
of the Greek. The mausoleum of Placidia and the
Baptistery represent the first of the three groups
into which the buildings of the city fall; those
remains of the Theodosian epoch being followed by
the works of the Ostrogothic period, San Apollinare
Nuovo and the tomb of Theodoric, while the last
group, that of Justinian, boasts San Vitale and " Saint
Apollinaris in the Fleet." The little mausoleum of
Placidia may claim a first visit. There, for eleven
hundred years, her body sat upright in jewelled cere-
ments in her sarcophagus, and was the very type of
her city's mission. For in Eavenna antique art grew
rigid, swathed away in the embalming-cloths of con-
ventionality, gilded and stiffened, mummied within
the stone walls till, eight centuries having rolled by,
the spirit of antiquity arose again and the chrysalis
was forgotten, even as Galla's actual body crumbled
in fire and ashes at a moment when the Eenaissance
had attained its full strength. Eleven centuries
Galla sat in state, diademed and jewelled, in the
darkness, but in 1577 some children, peering through
an aperture in her sarcophagus, wishing to see better,
thrust in a lighted brand, and she was burned, —
robes, cypress- wood chair, and all, — a strangely
grotesque ending of this grim memorial; for, with
all its beauty, her little church stands as a monu-
ment to three invasions, and to the beginning of

6

RAVENNA

such slaughter, misery, and depopulation as the
world has not seen before or since. The little
church is under the invocation of Saints Nazarius
and Celsus, is only forty-six feet long by forty broad,
and upon the outside might be taken for some house
in which the workmen were wont to lay away their
tools at night. Inside it is as if one had crept into
the heart of a sapphire. Blue, the blue that glistens
jewel-like on the peacock's neck, is the prevailing
color, with great gold disks and drinking stags and
dull red borderings. Here one may put on the robe
of a catechumen and be of a church, which, tiny as
is the building, stands erect at its full height, omni-
potent over conquerors and conquered, among pagans
to be dispersed and barbarians to be converted.

Upon its vaults and friezes, as upon the leaves of
a missal, Christianity has written in jewelled letters
for all men to read, and in the midst of a tottering
world this new handwriting on the wall appeared to
the Belshazzar of the Eoman decadence. To read it
aright to-day, some of the historical conditions of
the time must be studied. These mosaic pictures
expressed the momentous changes of their age,
and a new art was announced in their forms and
colors.

The earlier Caesars and the founders of the
Church had alike been in their graves for nearly
four centuries, but the Koman empire had decayed

7

ITALIAN CITIES

and fallen, while the persecuted Church of Christ
had arisen, though with a strangely altered spirit,
to a mighty stature. Of the epoch which, reaching
from about 400 A.D. to 565, includes the buildings of
Galla, Theodoric, and Justinian, Byzantium was the
real theatre, Ravenna only an echo, but an echo
which has come to us clear and distinct, while the
voice of the parent city has been almost lost in the
tumult of the crusades and of the Turkish conquest.
The age was one of disintegration, yet one in which
particles were beginning to crystallize into new and
lasting shapes. The blood of the empire, poisoned
by luxury and tyranny, was drained by the sword
of the sectary within, of the barbarian without.
Theologians massacred one another for the differ-
ence of a letter in the alphabet ; the factions of
the chariot races slew one another in the hippo-
drome and divided the whole city into two camps,
while the Goth waited upon the frontier to destroy
the survivors. Thousands of men, smitten with a
strange madness, left family and country and fled
to the desert to starve and pray and see visions,
far from all human ties and duties.

It was an age of saints and schoolmen, of petty
emperors and great generals ; Ravenna, and Ravenna
alone, has preserved it for us in the traces of that
strange civilization of Constantinople which lingered
on for a thousand years till the sword of the Moslem

8

RAVENNA

gave the death-blow to what had been so long in
dying. Eome was no more, and with the found-
ing of Constantinople a new order of things began.
The city which rose upon the Bosphorus inherited
the vices but not the virtues of paganism ; the
military spirit, the religious toleration, the perfect
administration, of antique Eome disappeared. Out-
side, the barbarian was more frequently bribed than
driven from the frontier, alternately betrayed and
defended by venal generals. The city, unmindful
of its danger, abandoned itself to its passions for
brawling and chattering. The strife of the rival
chariot factions, the greens and the blues, filled the
streets with bloody tumult and shook the throne
itself. Only second in popular interest were the
religious dissensions ; and all classes, from the Em-
peror to the fisherman, joined in these struggles.
The subtile Greek intellect, ever given to word-
spinning, seized upon the dogmas of the new faith,
tore them to shreds, pieced them together again,
broidered them over with new devices, and, like
Penelope of old, spent days and nights in weaving
and ravelling the tangled web of theology. The
Sophists rose to life again in the heresiarchs and
churchmen, and there came no new Socrates to
silence them. Disputation grew deadly. What had
been mere difference of opinion with those who were
but seekers after truth became matter of life and

9

ITALIAN CITIES

death with those who arrogantly claimed to have
found the truth.

The annals of the time are filled with these fierce
outbursts of sectarian hatred ; mad riots ; oecumeni-
cal councils packed with armed ruffians and savage
Nitrian monks, where, after the inevitable violence
and bloodshed, a heavy bribo to the Emperor's cook
or chief eunuch settled the doctrinal point at issue.
For the Emperor was grand inquisitor in matters of
faith, the Empress not inactive ; and more than once,
to quote the words of Cyril, " the holy Virgin of the
court of heaven found an advocate in the holy Virgin
of the court of Constantinople."

The citizen who had left far behind him the days
of the palaestra and the academy, now decked in
curiously embroidered garments and loaded with
jewels, passed his time in the circus, an eager parti-
san of the greens or blues ; tarred on his favorite
bishop in the hotter strife of the synod ; applauded
some popular preacher in the churches, or, stripped
of his adornments, walked barefoot in penitential
procession.

The schools of philosophy were closed, and human
reason, lulled to sleep by formulae, dreamed fitfully or
muttered incoherently in nightmare creed quarrels.
The Church was the great career open to ambition,
and as human energy rushed impetuously into the new
channel, the artists were now enlisted in its service.

10

KAVENNA

Through its first centuries of faith and charity
Christian dogma was so simple, its ideal so con-
stantly present in men's minds, that no palpable
image was needed to explain the one or recall
the other, hut in the later days of dogmatic
definition, when the churchmen were tying up
their faith in orthodox packets, the artists were
required to label them with all the quaint fig-
ures of ecclesiastical heraldry. " Pictures are the
books of the ignorant," said Saint Augustine, and
to teach the ignorant the Church used them,
clothing the teaching, as did her founder, in the
garb of symbolism, — a language that could be under-
stood by the barbarian and the slave. But in what
material should these eternal truths be expressed?
Painting and sculpture were pagan and aristocratic,
governed entirely by antique tradition; devils in-
habited the statues of heathen gods, and before the
image of the Emperor many a Christian had gone
to martyrdom. There remained a minor art un-
polluted by heathen worship, used for merely deco-
rative purposes to ornament a fountain, line a niche,
or enliven a pavement. This could be safely em-
ployed without evoking comparisons in the minds
of the less devout or more artistic worshippers.
Just as a converted heathen slave might rise from
one church dignity to another until he ascended the
bishop's throne, so mosaic, at first a cheerful house-

11

ITALIAN CITIES

hold decoration, when Christianized became solemn,
hieratic, exchanged its dress of simple colors for a
gorgeous robe of purple and gold, climbed to
church wall and dome, and there set forth the mys-
teries of the faith and the glories of heaven. Yet
this new art was pagan in form and feeling; as
the fathers of the Church imitated the language
of Plato or Seneca, so the Christian artist bor-
rowed the imagery of paganism for the service of
his faith. It was the spirit of antiquity that ani-
mated him; its serenity, its cheerful acceptance of
inevitable law, its keen sense of the beauty of
life, were strong within him as he carved the
sarcophagus or decorated the apse.

There were no images of suffering or punishment,
no crucifixion, no last judgment, not even a martyr-
dom, though the young Church was still ruddy from
her baptism of blood. When later the art that had
its humble origin in the night of the catacombs
nourished in an imperial city on the walls of mighty
basilicas, its spirit was unchanged. The conversion
of Borne had left it unconverted. Greek example,
Greek moderation, still guided the artist's hand, for
the true artist is ever half a pagan. So, fraught
with a new meaning, the imagery ot paganism
found ready welcome within the Church. Here we
still see the vintage trodden out by loves, only now
it is the vintage of the Lord; the winged funeral

12

RAVENNA

genii become guardian angels of the Christian's
tomb; the crown of the Emperor, the reward of
the blessed ; the palm of the victorious athlete, the
martyr's emblem. The goddesses yield their attri-
butes: the dove becomes the visible sign of the
Holy Spirit; Juno's peacock the symbol of immor-
tality ; Diana's stag the hart of the Psalmist ; and
as in these same mosaics the Magi bring gifts to
the Mother of God, so each dethroned goddess pays
tribute to the new Queen of Heaven. Diana's
crescent, Minerva's serpent, lie beneath her feet;
Cybele gives the chair of state ; Circe the aureole ;
Juno the matron's veil and crown ; Flora her roses
and lilies, and Isis places the divine Child in Mary's
arms. Here even are the heroes of Greek myth,
chosen for some likeness to the founder of Chris-
tianity : Mercury leading the spirits of the departed ;
Orpheus, who descended into hell to save a soul, and
who draws all men to him by the power of music ;
Hercules, who came into the world to punish the
wicked, to deliver the oppressed, to do the tasks
and bear the burdens of others. In this Chris-
tianized Pantheon there are no new images ; Egypt
and Phoenicia contributed the fish, the cross, the
ship struggling through the waves, and the lamb.
The Good Shepherd — loveliest figure of all — was
a precious heritage from Greece.

13

n

MOSAIC had borrowed its motives from the declin-
ing art of sculpture. The marbles which fill the
Kavennese streets and churches will reveal the ex-
tent of these obligations. The sarcophagi and capi-
tals, some of them roughly and coarsely executed,
others of a relatively high degree of artistic excel-
lence, show the same subjects treated with the same
decorative feeling that we have seen on wall and
dome. But these Christian monuments, with their
doves and peacocks and stags, enlaced in a tangle
of vine and acanthus leaves, are the valedictorians
of a dying art. In looking at them we feel that
the race of sculpture has run its course. As the
long line of Florentine sculptors ended in a clever
goldsmith, so antique sculpture degenerated into the
carving of mere decorative motives, and with not-
able exceptions, like the ivory throne of Archbishop
Maximian, it is clumsy carving. To no other art
had the new faith proved as fatal, and the de-
cline of sculpture is synchronous with the rise of
Christianity.

For sculpture is essentially a Pagan art : its true
province is the nude human body ; its aim is the

U

RAVENNA

exposition of corporal strength and beauty. In
ancient Greece, where the national manners and
customs, ethics and ideals, favored its development,
it reached its meridian of glory. In the service of
religion it transformed the athlete into a god, the
fair woman into a goddess. It may be truly said
of the Greek sculptor that he had drawn the gods
down to earth and raised mortals to heaven. Con-
sequently sculpture was the consummate expression
in art of the genius of a nation which worshipped
physical perfection as the gift of the immortals,
which honored the gods by athletic games and
choral dances, and whose deities wore the flesh and
shared the nature of men. The concrete result of
this spirit, of this glorification of the flesh, this keen
aesthetic sense, this cultivation of the body, is Greek
sculpture. The Eoman conquerors accepted the
traditions and shared the feelings of the vanquished
Greeks. The young mother still prayed in the
temple of Venus that her child might be fair. The
youth still wrestled and ran in the gymnasia. Nud-
ity was holy. " Deus nudus est" wrote Seneca, and
Eoman flattery could find no greater tribute to
pay the Emperor than to carve his statue naked
"like a god."

The empire grew old and weak; and when the
time was ripe came the conversion of Home and the
triumph of Christianity, — a triumph that was fatal

15

ITALIAN CITIES

to antique sculpture. A new spirit unknown before
had come into the world, a spirit of active benevo-
lence and self-sacrifice, of active destruction and
persecution. The Pagan victors had left their
gods to the conquered; they themselves frequently
honored and adopted them; religious intolerance
was unknown to the Empire, and Home was the
Pantheon of the world. But to the Christian who
literally interpreted the words " he who is not with
me is against me," the Pagan temples and statues
were an offence and an abomination. He unhesitat-
ingly accepted the miracles which the superstitious
Pagans asserted had been wrought by their sacred
images ; he believed the prophecies of the oracles,
but he never doubted that they were the work of
devils seeking to delude mankind, and that the duty
of every true Christian was to destroy them. And as
a doctrine of demolition is generally acceptable to
the popular mind, the work was done only too well.

When it is remembered that the young Church was
largely recruited from the lowest classes of society,
the disinherited of the earth, it will be easily under-
stood how no aesthetic scruple, no consideration for
art, could prevent the wholesale destruction of the
sacred images.

A day of wrath had come upon the gods and those
who loved and worshipped them. Fierce Nitrian
monks from the desert, fired with fanatical zeal,

16

RAVENNA

pleasure-loving empresses in expiation of a sin or
two, orthodox prelates, headed the crusade against
them. Eude hands tore them from their desecrated
shrines ; axe and club shattered their round limbs
and marred the calm faces. The bronze was cast
into the furnace ; the gold and ivory disappeared ; the
marble was thrown into the lime-kiln or rolled into
the ditch. The rustic gods of vineyard, field, and
garden ; the chaplet-adorned Termini ; the marble
nymphs which protected wells and fountains; the
penates that sanctified, the hearth, — were ruthlessly
destroyed. The holy things which for centuries had
lent grace and joy to the peasants' daily toil; the
grottoes hung with votive faun-skins and shepherds'
pipes; the wayside shrines and sacred stones gar-
landed with field flowers and shining with libations,
which had been sacred to generations of men and
were the very soul of the land, — were broken and
defiled.

Long before the work of destruction was com-
pleted, the Christian sculptor had begun to carve on
the sarcophagi of the believer the images of the
heathen ; for like the paintings and the mosaics, this
sculpture was Pagan in feeling as well as in form.
Its symbols were but antique motives clumsily imi-
tated by unskilled artists working for poor patrons.
A stone-mason of the age of the Antonines would be
ashamed of such bungling work. The reverence

VOL. I. —2 17

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which we feel before the martyr's tomb should not
blind us to the fact that plastically this sculpture is
of little value. From the first it was of an inferior
character to contemporary Pagan work. Much of it
is almost ludicrous in its clumsiness, its lack of
technical knowledge, its poverty of invention. Most
of the figures look as though they had been made by
the hand of a child ; so lumpish and squat are they
that many of them are only four heads high. The
lions in the representations of the miracle of Daniel
look like puppies, and though the draped figures still
preserve a certain dignity, the nude has already be-
come grotesque, as in the fagades of early churches.
There are, of course, occasional exceptions, and the
sarcophagi of Ravenna show us Christian sculpture at
its best, notably in the altar-front of San Francesco,
with its beardless, Phoebus-like Christ and the noble
figures of the Apostles. The unruffled serenity of the
antique spirit shows itself, however, in these rude
carvings as well as in the mosaics. The mansuetude
and self-restraint of the sculptor is also in direct op-
position to the persecuting spirit of the Fathers of the
Church, who delighted to elaborate descriptions of
the torments of hell and the horrors of the judgment
day, and who, believing in the guilt of error, unhesi-
tatingly condemned both the virtuous and wicked
Pagan alike to an eternity of torture.

These sculptures are invaluable to the student of
18

RAVENNA

church history. In no other way is the difference
between the popular conceptions of Christian teach-
ing and the dogmas of the theologians so clearly
manifested as by a comparison between the tone of
the patristic writings and the spirit of contemporary
art. Uninfluenced by the gloomy doctrines of Au-
gustine and the grim asceticism of Jerome, the artists
invariably chose for representation the tender and
benignant aspects of their creed, which still appeal
to the heart with resistless force. The beautiful
story of the birth in the manger; the miracles of
mercy; the Ascension; the poetic figure of the
Good Shepherd, were their favorite themes. While
Tertullian was gloating over the future agonies of the
heathen actor and describing the torments of the
charioteer writhing in the flames of hell, what were
the sculptors chiselling on the believer's last resting-
place? Tragic and comic masks, antique symbols
signifying that life is but a player's part, to be well
acted for a brief season and resigned without regret ;
or they carved the race-horse bounding toward the
goal, — a symbol of the course of human life. The
most appealing figure of them all, the Good Shep-
herd, is no other than the Hermes Kriophoros who
saved the city of Tanagra from the plague by carry-
ing a ram around its walls, and in whose honor
Kalamis the sculptor made the votive statue which
served as a point of departure to the Tanagran pot-

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ters. These clay figurines of a beautiful adolescent,
with the staff and petasos, and the lamb upon his
shoulder, were in their turn imitated by the Christian
sculptor, who found in them a singularly felicitous
presentation of the benign shepherd of the most ten-
der and poetical of the Psalms. And, indeed, the
merciful god who saved the doomed city was no un-
fit avatar of him who saved not the city only, who
bore the burden of human wrong-doing, and was
himself the sacrificial lamb. Sometimes the kid
was placed upon his shoulder by the sculptor, who
was more compassionate than the Fathers who wrote :
" He saves the sheep, the goats he doth not save."

This unconscious mitigation of the cruelty and
bigotry of the theologians by the artists is very sig-
nificant. Art is the visible expression of the ideals
of the epoch in which it is produced, and the fact that
Christian art did not reflect this aspect of Christian
dogma proves not only that these beliefs were con-
fined to the learned, but that the artist was still
under the dominion of Pagan habits of thought. In
the humbler believers the temperate joy of the an-
tique world still lingered, and the deity of the young
faith was he who leads the soul beside the still
waters and who comforts her in the valley of the
shadow of death, rather than he who shall come to
judge the quick and the dead.

When the doctrines of predestination, original
20

RAVENNA

sin, and eternal punishment finally permeated the
masses of the people, the artist was quick to feel the
change in the moral atmosphere. Images of suffer-
ing and death were multiplied ; the Blessed Virgin's
face was painted black, and the sculptor finally ac-
cepted the tradition of the deformity of Christ, an idea
as repugnant to religious feeling as it is to the plastic
instinct.

Thus we trace the same Hellenic influence shap-
ing the moribund art of the sculptor and the nas-
cent art of mosaic. We left the mosaic-worker
translating the simple symbols of the stone-cutter
into the new medium of artistic expression. Mind
and hand were still under the tutelage of the Pagan ;
and when later historic scenes were introduced, the
same antique spirit characterized them. The artist's
childhood might have thrilled at his grandfather's
tales of the blood and martyrdom of Diocletian's
time ; his eyes might have looked with pride at the
marks of torture for the faith existent upon the
limbs of some old house-servant, yet when he made
his cartoon for the mosaic he put upon it Daniel
among the lions, the sacrifice of Isaac, the children
unharmed amid the flames, but no more intemperate
or realistic allusion to the persecutions which filled
the records of the Church.

Tradition was strong within him, and the artist of
Ravenna had not lost its dignity and self-restraint

21

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Outside, the mad controversialists might riot, — Do-
natist ruffians clubbing to death in default of the
steel their creed forbade them, with sticks and stones
a-flying ; but inside the arches of the Baptistery, at
his quiet work, the artist instinctively resisted the
bigotry and intolerance of his epoch. Only one
ominous figure in the tomb of Placidia shows the
schisms that were dividing the Church, — the figure
of the Saviour burning the heretical books. By an
unconscious irony it is placed directly opposite the
benignant image of the Good Shepherd ; and the two
conflicting aspects of Christianity — its bitter intol-
erance and its loving charity — confront each other
in this narrow space. The sun of Greek art was
setting, but it still shone upon Eavenna. The
mosaicist of San Apollinare saw about him in the
streets the stiff-robed Byzantines ; but he had seen,
too, the pagan temples with their friezes and tympana
and their figures clad in simple sweeping draperies,
so that his long procession of virgins and martyrs
moved in measured harmonies like the epheboi and
canephorse of the Parthenon. The grand white-
robed angels, the brown-locked, beardless Christ of
the apse, were calm and stately ; line and mass were
still noble ; beauty had passed away, but antique
dignity had survived the sack of Eome, and in a
fallen Greece the memory of the Zeus at Olympia
had not yet quite faded.

22

RAVENNA

END OF A SARCOPHAGUS
DANIEL IN THE LION'S DEN

RAVENNA

But it was only a tradition, not a living reality.
Tradition taught the artist a certain grandeur of
composition, a conventional position of head and
hands, a good treatment of the general lines of the
drapery, but it could do no more for him. There
was no body under the drapery, no muscles to move
the head or raise the hands. The face was a weak-
ened copy of the antique type, the cranium shrunken
and elongated ; the great hollow eyes and pinched
lips had no life in them; they could not move.
What Medusa of decadence had stricken these peo-
ple to stone ? What had so changed the type, so
utterly transformed the ideal of the artist ? Where
were the athletes, the gods, the goddesses he loved
so well, and how came these hollow-eyed wraiths in
their place? Was it incapacity of the artist or
degeneracy of the models? It was both, as the
history and conditions of Byzantium show us.

The Greek of Pericles's day, when he carved a
god or an athlete, went to the gymnasium or palaestra
and found his model in the youths who flashed by
in the foot-race ; watched the evenly developed
muscles strain and rise and fall in the tug of the
wrestling bout ; talked with the panting ephebos as
he scraped the dusty oil from the limbs that were
to be translated into marble.

He found the long folds of his draperies in the
sweep of the procession, his faun or bacchante in

23

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the rhythmical changes of the choragic dance, and
his fellow-citizens were his best models ; his work
was patriotic, ethical ; art was yet in the service of
religion, a grateful service, for the gods of that
religion were idealized and deified mortals. In
superior strength and beauty was their godhood
made manifest and these essential attributes could
be expressed in marble. Thus to the Greek the
statue of his god was at once ethical and sesthetic.
Ethical — for the Hermes of the palaestra spoke
eloquently to the Greek youth : Exercise, be tem-
perate, be patient, give your country a good soldier.
^Esthetic — for the Greek had a love for the beauty
of the human body unique in the history of art,
and as beauty was to him the visible expression of
the good, so a well-developed body was the highest
form of beauty. Compare these conditions with
those of Byzantium in the sixth century. Of the
Byzantine artist was required something which can-
not be expressed by form or color. A new religion
had arisen, which, far from honoring the body, re-
garded it as an instrument of shame and degrada-
tion, its corporal instincts as temptations of the
devil, its strength and beauty as a snare ; the flesh
was to be mortified by fasting and penance. To
the fathers of the Church it was a sin to frequent
the baths or throw the discus ; better in unwashed
sanctity to throw stones at heretic Arians. Greek

24

RAVENNA

temperance, Eoman self-control had yielded to the
fanaticism which filled the desert with many a
laura, emptying the camp and the gymnasium.
The world was changed; the hardy legionary had
become the gilded soldier of Honorius's palace or
the undisciplined Gothic mercenary, servant to-day,
master to-morrow, the calm athlete, with limbs
bronzed in the healthful sun of the palaestra, was
replaced by the macerated ascetic, blackened and
burned in the scorching African desert, and the
tranquil beauty of the Greek statue gave way to
the self-torturing genuflections of Stylites upon his
pillar. The body was to be reduced till it became a
semi-transparent envelope for the soul, a slender
bond to hold the aspiring spirit to earth, and the
plastic arts soon felt the influence of this asceticism.

The artists were required to give tangible form to
the new ideal. To this task they were inadequate ;
expression, dramatic movement, strong personality
they could not achieve ; they could only diminish
and attenuate. The body had to be covered, and
they soon forgot how the members of this covered
body were put together.

Costume, too, had become stiff and formal In-
stead of the clinging draperies of antiquity, that
showed the muscles under their folds, the Byzan-
tines loaded themselves with heavy robes of gold
embroidery, or when they wore thin tissues covered

25

ITALIAN CITIES

them with whole Bible stories in needlework that
falsified all natural lines. The simple mantle shrank
to a cape or scarf, clumsy and stiff with jewels, and
the swathed body became a mere prop for a mass of
brocade and gems.

Under such conditions the artists soon forgot the
lessons of the past ; each new figure was but a
weakened copy of some forerunner's copy, and, as
at Mount Athos or in modern Eussia, art-work was
taught by certain well-known and unchangeable
formulae. But while art became degraded in form
it grew glorious in color. This color was the gift
of the East to the western world ; oriental subtlety
filled the intellectual atmosphere, oriental color-
feeling dominated the aesthetic sense, and the sun
of Greek art, which rose white and clear in the
East, set in the purple and crimson that live upon
the walls of Kavenna.

26

m

AFTER visiting Galla's mausoleum, we follow the
fortunes of those Goths who were the eastern
brothers of Placidia's Ataulf, and go to San Apol-
linare. The basilica lifts its ugly front of blackened
brick, flanked by a simple round tower, and giving
no hint of its interior beauty. Within it is difficult
to conceive of anything more delightful to the eye
than its gold scroll-work upon blue, its dull red
upon gold. There are in the world few richer
decorations than the frieze of saints and virgins
moving across the solemn color of the church. It
is a three-aisled round-arched basilica, the friezes
filling magnificently the place which developed
into the triforium in later churches, while panels
of mosaic cover the walls between the windows of
the clerestory. " New St. Apollinaris," it is called.
It was new nearly fourteen hundred years ago, and
as it rose, course upon course, above the house-tops,
it saw in the distance the masts of the galleys in
the port of Classis, where later the bell-tower of
the other church built to the same saint took their
place.

27

ITALIAN CITIES

When Theodoric, the heretic, raised this golden
house for his Arian bishops, Martin, not Apollinaris,
received the dedication, and in violet tunic still
heads the procession of the saints. It was four
hundred years later that fear of the Saracen caused
the removal of the patron saint's bones from the
Classis and gave a new name to the church. In
the earlier times, when its flooring was being laid,
the sound of the purple shoes of the Emperors of
the West had hardly died away from the pavement
of Eavenna, and after the Ostrogoths they were
to come again on the feet of the exarchs of that
Justinian and Theodora who still blaze upon the
walls of San Vitale. A little later and the floor
of the basilica heard a very different tread, and rang
to the mailed heels of Charlemagne. Seizing both
the shadow and the substance, the great Charles
took the crown and the prestige at Eome, the col-
umns and the bas-reliefs at Ravenna, as, guarded
by Prankish soldiers, wain after wain laden with
the spoils of Theodoric's palace, the white oxen
of Emilia straining at the yoke, creaked away to-
ward Ingelheim and Aix-la-Chapelle. Franks and
even Lombards were, however, still in the future
when the Greek workmen on their scaffolding above
the capitals stood before the growing frieze, labori-
ously building with little cubes of gold and color
this " Palatium " of Theodoric, this " Classis " with

28

RAVENNA

INTERIOR OF SAN APOLL1NARE IS'UOVO

RAVENNA

its towers and ships, shaping the Magi and adding
one virgin after another till the whole tale of
twenty-two stood processional and complete, facing
the saints and patriarchs of the other side. He was
a real artist, this Greek, for he was of a real art
epoch. When he worked upon the friezes, some-
where about the year 560, the founder of the
church, Theodoric, had been long laid away under
the giant monolith which covers his tomb, and his
land had passed into the hand of the Byzantine
Justinian, in whose city of Constantinople a true
art-growth was stirring. There, in the new capital
of the world, ideas as new as the city were springing
up, and the nation was in that state of agitation
and ferment at all times productive of great results
for good or evil.

A double evolution was being accomplished.
From the theological counter-currents, the ideas of
bishops, — Greek, Latin, and African, — the evolution
of dogma ; from the art experience of East and
West, — the arcades of Spalato and of Syria and
the color-feeling of the oriental, — the evolution of
a new architecture. The Greek had become master
again in art. For five hundred years he had served
the Roman, and now, in throwing away his livery of
service, he threw away, too, all that false ornament
which the Roman had borrowed from him and
falsified in the borrowing. The Greek was master

29

ITALIAN CITIES

once more, and he determined that his architectural
ornament should be what it had always been in his
time of freedom, structural Not that he meant to
raise temples and propylsea; he served a new god,
and the new service had new needs, for which the
vault of the Eoman was admirably fitting. The
arch, therefore, he kept, and made the ruling prin-
ciple. But the heavy cornices, which once under a
roof protected nothing from a rain which did not
fall ; the super-imposed orders, with their pediments
and colonnettes, stuck unmeaningly upon structural
masonry, — he rejected unhesitatingly, substituting
surfaces with but slight projections, lightly though
richly carved, where the columns were true weight-
bearers, and there were no useless members. In
color, too, he was an innovator.

The ancient Greek, simple in his taste and
restricted by comparative poverty, used delicately
painted stuccoes upon his buildings. The wealthy
Eoman, quarrying from the whole known world,
replaced them with costly marbles, which he col-
lected from the ends of the earth. The polished
columns and incrusted slabs would admit of no less
lustrous fellowship in decoration ; by the side of
their splendid depth of tone, stucco and painting in
fresco looked poor and cheap. It was necessary to
find a wall-covering equally rich and brilliant, in
which the figures of saints, angels, and emperors,

30

RAVENNA

and the compositions from Bible history could be
represented. The chemistry of the earth had given
the marbles, with their endless variety. The Greek
set to work the chemistry of the laboratory. With
antimony, copper, tin, etc., he made slabs of glass
almost as various as the marbles; then cutting
them into little cubes, he produced with them the
richest artificial color in the world.

Our Greek artist had thus risen superior to the
decadent citizens about him ; perhaps he had stood
in the crowd at the completion of St. Sophia, and
had heard Justinian exclaim, "Solomon, I have
outdone thee." Indeed, in that great church, with
its wide reposeful curves and spaces, its cupola, its
simple round arches springing directly from the
capitals, its long rows of polished columns, he had
given the typical example of an architecture which
was to deeply influence the most solemn church
interior in Italy, that of St. Mark's of Venice,
and to impress the German feeling so strongly as
to give its own name of Byzantine to many a
Ehenish church for many a century to come. So it
is not enough to accredit Justinian with his great
code and pandects, or even with the exploits of those
practically pious, smuggler-missionaries, the good
old gentlemen who came journeying home from the
far East with silk-worms packed in their walking-
sticks. Besides the lawyer and manufacturer, we

ITALIAN CITIES

recognize in him the art patron of the black-browed,
close-curled artisan who stood upon the scaffold of
this church, — the patron of him and of his many-
sided brethren who busied themselves in the provi-
sion of art for all men, making costumes, Christian
in their swathing of the body from head to foot,
Greek in the transparency of their many-wrinkled
tissue; making sculpture, which western monks
borrowed long after they had become architects and
builders for themselves ; providing eight centuries
of Madonnas painted by receipt till Giotto tore up
the prescription and made one for himself. Ea-
venna's was an age of decadence, the end of the
Eoman empire ; but it was also an age of beginnings
of art propaganda, and the Greek artisan was the
first of a series of proselytizers extending to Manuel
Chrysoloras in the fifteenth century.

San Vitale, founded 526, consecrated in 547, and
supposed to be a derivation from the golden Temple
of Antioch, built by Constantine, is a typically
Byzantine building and the antecedent of the
church which Charlemagne raised at Aix-la-Cha-
pelle. To the architect as builder it is interest-
ing as the first western domed church, the dome
raised by Greek workmen long after Italy had for-
gotten the cunning which curved the cupola of the
Pantheon and vaulted the baths of Caracalla. To
the architect as decorative artist, and to all men, it

32

RAVENNA

is beautiful by reason of the wonderful mosaics
which cover its choir from arch to pavement.

It is hard to say enough of their unique color,
which is not silvery and gray, like that of modern
schools of painting; not tender like the Umbrian,
or warm and golden like that of the great Vene-
tians, but deep, glowing, and solemn, like the tone
of a bell or the thunder of an organ. There are the
gold of Byzantium, the purple of Csesar, the blues
and greens of the chariot factions. The walls
glisten with a sheen like that on a dove's neck, or
the wings of a moth butterfly ; with tawny red like
the rind of a pomegranate ; the blue of the Persian
turquoise melting imperceptibly into green, and
orange glowing into red or darkening into purple.
Even the delicate columns, coiffed with strange
capitals, are more like Indian ivory than marble.
To call it all an Aladdin's cave would be to suggest
the hard glitter of gems; this is rather a soft and
solemn splendor. Still the place shines with gold,
and may have suggested jewels to the imaginations
of northern conquerors. The Norseman of Caesar's
Varangian Guard, as he looked into the royal
mausoleum in the old times, when against the
deep-toned mosaic Placidia's sarcophagus still glit-
tered with its covering' of silver plates, may well
have thought that here indeed was the "dwarfs'
work," here the " dragon's treasure," here the
VOL. i. — 3 33

ITALIAN CITIES

gnomes' cavern of Scandinavian tradition, and the
crusading minnesinger may have echoed in his song
of the Venusberg his memories of the rich vaulting
of St. Vitalius. In the discreet and skilful use
of gold and in the toning of large masses, these
early mosaics far surpass those of St. Mark's at
Venice. Among the latter, many of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries make spots upon their
vast gold backgrounds, while even the earlier ones
lack the dignity of the examples at Eavenna. Gold
predominates there also, but in smaller masses
than at Venice ; next comes dark blue ; then a
green, neither warm nor cold, graduated with a
yellower green ; a very beautiful creamy white ;
dull red and a fine purplish brown follow in lesser
quantities.

The curious blunting of all angles by the little
cubes, and the consequent lines of reflected light
emphasizing the architecture, is a not altogether
pleasing, but noticeable and essential effect in mosaic
work. It is not too much to say that no decora-
tive wall-covering can equal mosaic. In the first
place, it is practically imperishable; Michelangelo
affirmed that oil-painting was for women, and
only fresco for men ; but his master, Ghirlandajo,
said well that mosaic was the true painting for
eternity.

The frescoed people of Lippi and Gozzoli flake
34

RAVENNA

and drop from the walls ; the panels of the cinque-
cento crack, and the tempera breaks away; the
canvases of Giorgione and Tintoretto blacken and
moulder; but Justinian and Theodora, upon the
choir of San Vitale, shine as brightly as if Belisarius
were still afield and Varangers yet in harness guard-
ing the palace of Constantinople.

If you go up into the galleries you will find the
cubes not a whit less fresh than those you buy now
at Murano. Again, this glass paste, opaque, semi-
opaque, and transparent, is equalled in depth and
richness by nothing except the finest stained glass.
Lastly, in their bed of cement, made with powdered
travertine and linseed oil, the little cubes cannot be
laid so that their faces shall be upon a perfectly level
plane ; the result is the varied tonality produced by
a thousand different degrees of reflection, giving an
indescribable richness of surface ; while the actual
gradations are remarkable, masses which from below
seem smooth spots of color proving to be exquisite
modulations running through twenty or more shades
of green, or blue, or brown. During our last visit
to Eavenna we were fortunate enough to climb to
the very dome of the Baptistery, where workmen
were putting supporting-irons into loosened portions
of the mosaic. Seen close at hand, these mosaics were
remarkable in their freedom of treatment. The color
was used almost as in a huge sketch painted with a

35

ITALIAN CITIES

full brush, and was, in the flesh tones, suggestive of
the best Pompeian fresco-work. In the great pictures
of Theodora and Justinian at San Yitale, which we
also examined on a scaffolding, and which are a cen-
tury later, the handling is more serre, the colors
deeper and more solemn, but less atmospheric.

The main body of San Vitale has been restored in
the true spirit of seventeenth-century bungling, and
the painted rose garlands of the dome, a proof of how
far human beings can be unperceiving of the fitting,
moulder away in the dampness from the water which
now and then rises stealthily upon the flooring of
the church, as if it would reflect in homage the
columns which, with their anchor-carved capitals, are
spoils from some antique temple of Neptune, — foul
water, however, and befitting the stricken fortunes of
the god. But the choir is splendid from top to pave-
ment; not an inch is uncovered. With the instinct
of true artists, who knew that in mosaic-work it was
all or nothing, and that no ordinary pigment could
stand beside it, they have clothed the whole in a
glittering jewelled mail, flowing over every jut and
angle, the soft color of which is yet an impenetrable
armor, hard enough to utterly resist the tooth of
time, which has so gnawed the other portions of the
church. On either side of the high altar the reflected
gold of the vestments and groundwork glows dully
like smouldering embers; indeed, it is the final

RAVENNA

smouldering of antique art from which a brand
shall be snatched for the rekindling. But this
glorious color ends by going to the head, like
strong wine, and provoking all sorts of impossible
analogies.

37

IV

AFTER such an orgy of visual pleasure, one longs for
the blue of the sky and the green of the meadows.
Outside Eavenna, dikes stretch their long brown
lines between fat rice-fields where the descendants
of Sidonius's frogs croak in Aristophanic chorus in
the stagnant water. In spring these pestilential
marshes are transformed into fields of fairylike
blossoms. Nature, in emulous imitation of art, an-
nually reproduces the color scheme of the Byzan-
tines in the blue of the waters and in the tender
green of the young blades of rice ; while tamarisks,
lilies, orchids, blossoming flags and rushes, suggest
the more vivid hues of the mosaics. Every foot of
this treacherous soil contains a buried treasure, flot-
sam and jetsam of the wreck of the antique world,
but the dragon that guards them is not the brown
serpent that you see all too often winding in and
out among the delicately brilliant flowers, but the
fever which stalks perennially over the vast fen.

Here and there islands rise out of the morass.
Santa Maria in Porto fuori raises its tower, once a
lighthouse to the Roman fleets, still a Christopher
to the devout peasant. A cross placed on a marble

38

RAVENNA

pillar shows the site of the basilica of San Lorenzo
in Csesarea. Finally, three miles of the old Fla-
minian Way bring us to a great lonely church,
" bearing its huge, long back along the low horizon
like some monster antediluvian saurian, the fit deni-
zen of this marsh world." This is the basilica of
San Apollinare in Classe, the last building of the
great age of Kavenna and sole vestige of the town
of Classis. Less well preserved than its name-
sake of the city, it is, since the destruction of San
Paolo fuori le Mura, the best example of the
manner in which rows of symbolical figures and
pictures in mosaic were employed in the decoration
of church interiors. Here is a complete collection
of the symbols of Christian art, — " the whole sacred
menagerie;" and every emblem, from the simple
monogram to the figure of the Fisherman, may be
found by the student of Christian archaeology.

The walls, ravaged by that enemy of Mother
Church, Sigismondo Malatesta, have been conscien-
tiously restored, but the mosaics of the apsis are
ancient, and in them as on a gorgeously illuminated
page we may read the glorification of the church of
Ravenna, — that church which, sustained by Byzan-
tium, claimed an equality with Eome and tried to
place its patron, Saint Apollinaris, on a spiritual level
with Saint Peter. Of the fruitlessness of this at-
tempt, the utterly desolate basilica, cold with the chill

39

ITALIAN CITIES

of twelve hundred winters, is an eloquent witness.
The portraits of the one hundred and thirty arch-
bishops of Ravenna, a ghostly synod, still throning it
over dead Christian quarrels, look down upon the
poisonous water which in spring invades the nave
and with the scummy surface of its gilded pools ap-
pears to mock the color of the mosaics. The latter,
important as they are to the student of church his-
tory, are artistically an anticlimax to one who comes
to them from the nobler and more richly colored
mosaics of San Vitale, and it is hardly worth while
to dilute the strength of the impression made by the
earlier and finer work. As the shadows climb the
still ruddy tower, an earthy chill fills the air,
the huge, deserted church begins to cover its rough
facade of brickwork with a clinging cobweb-like
robe of fever mist, and we hurry away to the
Pinetum.

After the Byzantine church-builders, seven cen-
turies of oblivion followed for Ravenna, when the
greatest name of the Italian middle ages, that of
Dante, illustrated her again. He died here in exile,
and the Piazza of San Francesco, where he lies
buried, epitomizes Ravenna, — Greek, mediaeval, and
republican. There, in the pleasant sunlight under
the Gothic arches, are the sarcophagi of early
Christians, dispossessed now and tenanted by Ra-
vennese lords of the middle ages; opposite is the

40

RAVENNA

ENTRANCE COURT OF SAN FRANCESCO

RAVENNA

accredited house of Francesca da Rimini ; Lord
Byron's window is just beyond; at one's right is
the tomb of Dante; and at one's left, loaded with
wreaths, a memorial tablet to Mazzini ; the " Divine
Comedy," "Childe Harold," and the epopsea of
modern Italian independence ! Could one ask for
richer suggestiveness of art and history ? It is, in-
deed, almost too rich and too complex. Here in
Italy, where the civilizations overlie one another, and
where history is piled strata upon strata, we are
perforce obliged to limit our impressions. In this
land which has been so much lived in, where there
has been so much doing and undoing, so over-much
hating and loving, memories are importunate and
spirits defy exorcism. On every hand the illus-
trious or romantic past crowds in upon the mind.
The Greek jostles the Etruscan; the Mediaeval
treads on the heels of the Roman ; Goth and Lom-
bard trample down the Byzantine ; the Mediaeval
burgher is hard pushed by the man of the Renais-
sance, and the Garibaldino elbows the soldier of
the French Republic. Each small city in the long
list of Italian towns is in one sense a microcosm
of the history of Italy. An arbitrary election of
certain aspects of such a city for contemplation is
almost involuntary, and becomes our only defence
against an overwhelming host of recollections and
associations.

41

ITALIAN CITIES

The art-lover, however, finds his field of contem-
plation much more restricted. Dealing with what
actually exists, not what has been, with only the
tangible vestiges of the past, his limitations of vision
and suggestion are instinctive rather than voluntary.
To him Ravenna is a reflection of Byzantium, and
evokes a clear, sharply defined image. But to the
student of events or manners or modes of thought
how much Ravenna stands for! to him the epoch
of Byzantine rule is but one of the pages in her
civic annals. The mere name of the city fills his
mind with long lines of figures which file through
the mean streets of the decaying town like the
mummers in a Renaissance " progress." Theodoric,
Boe'thius, Amalasuntha ; traits in the Northern
Italians of to-day which bear witness to the en-
during character of the Gothic conquest; axioms
from the " Consolations," the chariot roll of Gibbon's
periods, — are suggested by a fragment of wall or by
the tomb of the Ostrogoth, with its strange dome
like a gigantic wassail cup turned upside down.
French and Italian soldiers in serried charge or
orderly retreat ; Spanish veterans ; Bayard and the
" Loyal Serviteur ; " the young general who lies in
effigy at Milan, — whirl past the banks of the Ronco
summoned by a glimpse of the besmirched Colonna
dei Francesi. The decaying palace wall of the
Polentani conjures up the little shade of the child

42

RAVENNA

Francesca before " Amor, ch'a cor gentil ratio s'ap-
prende," led her to Paolo and death. The Italians,
who o£ all men love a lover best, will point you out
her image on the frescoed wall of Santa Maria in
Porto, where a slender Salome, arbitrarily christened
Francesca, receives the adoring homage of the youth
of Eavenna, which youth, being ardent, romantic,
and unoccupied, cultivates the emotions. To a
less sentimental spectator these battered frescoes
may serve to raise a sturdy, cheerful, Tuscan ghost,
for here Tradition will have it, though Eesearch
gives her the lie, Giotto painted and chatted with
his exiled friend, the poet whom Eavennese good-
wives declared had descended into hell, bringing
back its gloom on his stern face.

The Pinetum is an enchanted wood for the lover
of letters. To him the giant pines will sing the
praises of Dante, and he will find their solemn aisles
a fitter memorial to " il Divino " than the prim cupola
which rises over his bones. Shades of Boccaccio
and Byron and Alfieri people the forest glades, and
the tortured wraith of the once cruel lady who in
defiance of the mediaeval law, " Amor a nullo amato
amar perdona," dared " to fly from a true lover."

The Guiccioli palace suggests a comparison to
the Italy of Dante and the Malatesta, and the
Italy of opera and cicisbei, but they are hardly
farther asunder than are the two heroines for

43

ITALIAN CITIES

whom liberal-minded Eavenna has named her
squares of Bice Portinari and Anita Garibaldi.
The Pinetum is hallowed not only by the radiant
apparition of Beatrice, " vested in colors of the living
flame," but by the grave of Anita. Here, literally
hunted to death, Garibaldi's heroic wife died of
exhaustion while flying with her husband from the
Austrian soldiery, and not the least tragic of the
city's memories is the poignant story of that breath-
less chase.

The modern Kavennese, oppressed perhaps by
their mighty heritage, turn from an aristocratic
and feudal past to vote for Cipriani, a candidate
who was sent to the galleys for his political opin-
ions. Sono un popolo cattivo, a conservative Italian
acquaintance assured us, which we translated Radi-
cal Republican, after reading the election posters.
It is a not uncommon evolution, this of Ravenna
Vantica, from Csesarism to Populism, especially in
Italy, where scarcity and excessive taxation stimulate
hostile criticism of existing forms of government.

In spite, however, of the veneer of more recent
epochs, of literary associations and of mediaeval
episodes, Ravenna will remain the typical Byzantine
town, and her abiding attraction will always be
her churches, which, like the agate and onyx of the
desert, rough-crusted and ugly without, are within
all glorious.

44

SIENA

SIENA

SIENA, like a true daughter of Eome, is throned
superbly upon many hills, but the wolf and the
twins watch over a mediaeval city, and the ancient
Colonia Julia Senensis holds higher than any other
Italian town, save Florence, the double symbol of
church and state in the middle ages, the tower of
the cathedral and of the public palace.

We have seen the city in many phases: under
black clouds, with the hailstones shining in stormy
struggling sunlight against the sculptures of Fonte
Gaia and the rain-streamlets rushing down its steep
streets, and we have seen it set like a town in a
missal-border against a still, flat, blue background
of sky; we have seen it from the terraces of the
Osservanza rising above its walls, which overhung
the intermediate valley, and from distant, southern
Monte Oliveto, its towers of the Mangia and the
Cathedral dwindled to mere pin-points. We have
strolled through its narrow streets at all times and
all seasons ; have blinked at the dazzling facade of
the Duomo in the glare of noon, and lingered in

47

ITALIAN CITIES

the great Campo when it lay white and still in the
chill moonlight. We have watched the gray, bleak
hills on which the town is pedestalled turn to fresh-
est, tenderest green ; we have climbed the slopes of
the olive orchards and looked through scurrying
snowflakes at the ramparts rising above us, and
from every point, from without her gates and
within her walls, from the towers above and the
valley below, Siena makes one impression only
upon us : Etruscan town, Koman colony as she was,
the middle ages set their seal upon her, and she is
the typical Gothic city of Tuscany, almost of Italy.

Verona is Siena's only rival ; but Verona is rosy
and smiling, Siena is brown and truculent. She
has clutched sword and shield so tightly that she
can never quite lose the cramped look of the
defensive attitude; unlike Florence, she has not
unclasped her knightly girdle of battlements, and
the gates with port and ante-port complete are
far finer than those by the Arno ; the Eomana and
the Pispini look to this day as if Monluc were
still defending within and Duke Cosimo besieging
without.

Gothic, Siena was, not only in her outward ap-
pearance, but in her spirit, in her ideals, and in her
art; Gothic in her triple aspect of warrior, saint,
and sybarite. She fought with spiritual arms as
well as with actual weapons; she wore the cowl

48

SIENA

over the helmet, and the hand which held the
sword had grasped the scourge. She was not
truculent only ; under the steel hauberk was the
embroidered surcoat of knight and minstrel, and
under the nun's rough hair-cloth the mystic ecstasy
of Saint Catherine. The Civitas Virginis was also
the Molhs Sence of Beccadelli's poem, the city of
soft delights, of the pleasure-seekers of Folgore's
sonnets, of the rakes and bruisers of Sermini's and
Fortini's tales. It was the home of the love-story
(la novella amoroso) ; and it was in this stronghold
of saints and popes, of pietistic painters and de-
vout conservatives, that the latent hedonism which
underlay all the apparent asceticism of mediaeval
thought and life took artistic form.

There is a story told by the Sienese chroniclers
which seems prophetic of the city's attitude toward
the Eenaissance. In the early fourteenth century
an antique statue of Aphrodite was found in an
orchard near the town, — a relic probably of the
ancient Eoman burg. Enthusiasts ascribed it to
Lysippos, and when the new conduits were finished
and water flowed for the first time in the great
square, the image was set above the fountain which
was called Fonte Gaia, because of the joy the
people felt at the sight of it, some said, though
others affirmed that it was named to honor the
goddess of love and laughter.
VOL. i. — 4 49

ITALIAN CITIES

For fourteen years the statue stood with the
water flashing at its feet, and during these years
faction raged more hotly than ever before; the
Campo was a field of slaughter, and the fountain
ran red, as bleeding partisans crawled to its margin
to drink and die. It seemed as though strife were
mingled with its ripples and discord welled from
its brim. It was whispered that these contentions
were due to the honor paid to a heathen idol which
had usurped the place of Siena's celestial suzerain,
and that peace would not be restored to the city
until the goddess was cast out. The mediaeval
citizen knew his classics well enough to remem-
ber the mischief Dame Venus had wrought in
Troy-town.

The whispers became murmurs, the murmurs
ominous growls ; finally the Council of the Twelve
decreed the removal of the statue, and in order
that its maleficent powers might be utilized for
Siena's welfare, it was buried with thrifty hatred on
Florentine soil.

Thus was antiquity banished from Siena, and
when all Italy welcomed the Eenaissance, she shut
her gates against it ; her painters turned with pious
horror from the study of nature and sprinkled holy
water on heathen sculpture; her inspired saints
looked with contempt on the wisdom of the pagan,
and her fierce, luxurious nobles had no mind to

50

SIENA

dim their bright hawk eyes over "brown Greek
manuscripts."

It is difficult, almost impossible, to explain the
unique attitude of Siena toward the new move-
ment. Was it because in the forefront of the
Eenaissance marched those hated Florentines, her
hereditary foes? Was it the natural conservatism
of the mountaineer, or the mental immutability of
the devotee, who regarded all innovations as sacri-
legious ? Was it the old civic jealousy taking a new
form ? Did Siena feel instinctively that the vertical,
irregular, picturesque, Gothic architecture was more
suited to a hill-town than the porticoes and pedi-
ments of the Eenaissance? Had mediaeval paint-
ing become so identified in men's minds with the
religion it served that to abandon the one seemed
like renouncing the other as well?

Perhaps all of these considerations consciously and
unconsciously influenced the action of the Sienese
toward the revival of culture. At first they resisted
it as fiercely as they had the invading Florentine
armies ; and while contemporary Tuscan painters
were eagerly studying nature and antiquity, they
were reproducing the old, bedizened, Byzantine
Madonnas. When every Italian architect else-
where was designing cupolas and colonnades, Siena's
builders still clung to the Gothic ; Orvieto sent to
them for master-workmen for the cathedral until

51

ITALIAN CITIES

1450, and Gian Galeazzo Sforza summoned Fran-
cesco di Giorgio to compete for the fagade of the
great church of Milan as late as 1490.

Finally, when all Italy was permeated with the
new spirit and Siena was forced to open her gates
to Pinturicchio and Sodoma and Eossellino, it was
too late ; the creative power of the mighty impulse
was exhausted, and among the great artists of the
sixteenth century we do not find one Sienese. Siena
had but a brief span of time in which to accustom
herself to the new order of things, for in 1555 she
fell, sword in hand, bravely defending her liberty.
After her fall, utterly broken in spirit, she had
neither the money nor the inclination to follow
strange fashions, and in her many misfortunes was
fortunate in this, that no tawdry and pretentious
seventeenth century, no rococo and pedantic eight-
eenth century, marred her stern grandeur and her
delicate grace.

The history of Sienese art began with the victory
of Monteaperto (1260) and ended in the middle of
the sixteenth century with the extinction of Sienese
independence (1555). It has three distinct phases of
development, — Gothic, Gothic modified by foreign
influence, and Eenaissance art, the work of the
strangers or of Sienese masters imitating the work of
strangers. These different stages of growth may
be studied in the Public Palace, filled with frescoes

52

SIENA

where Sienese painting is most at home; in the
cathedral where the mediaeval artist begins to yield
to external pressure, and in the private palaces and
lesser churches where the Eenaissance eventually
triumphs over the native style. Finally, the com-
plete evolution of local painting from the early
Byzantine to the late Eoman manner may be seen
in the municipal picture-gallery.

The city itself is a gallery of pictures. The walls
form a triangle with its base to the south, and near
the centre of this triangle rises the Duomo upon the
crest of the highest hill. Below it to the east is the
civic heart of the city, the Campo, strangest of
squares, shaped like a great oyster-shell, with the
communal palace at its lower lip and holding one
precious pearl, Fonte Gaia.

Between the cathedral and the town hall cluster
palaces with the famous names of Nerucci, Spa-
nocchi, Saraceni, Piccolomini, and Tolomei ; while the
conventual churches are, as usual, nearer the
walls where the brethren may have gardens and
orchards. Saints Dominic and Francis are honored
mightily in Siena in huge piles to west and east of
the city's centre, and a daughter of Dominic has
made " the noble district of the Goose " almost as
famous as the Porziuncula of the Assisan saint.
The Concezione and Sant' Agostino to south and
southwest are imposing masses of church and con-

53

ITALIAN CITIES

vent and cloister. Peruzzi's Campanile of the Car-
mine and the towers of San Francesco and San
Domenico are simple in line and fine in effect. The
town walls, these churches and campaniles with the
two focal and ever present points of the Cathedral,
and the soaring Mangia tower make up the general
outline of Siena.

For the detail we must climb twisting streets
with clean, flat pavements and never a sidewalk,
where there are no rough walls, as at Perugia, but
all the masonry is neatly faced, and no sally as of
German oriel or French overhanging stories, not
even the protruding, grated windows of Florence,
break the smoothness of the Tuscan Gothic; here
the iron shuts down flatly and sternly within the
shallow, pointed recess, but on every side there is a
wealth of exquisitely wrought torch-and-banner-
rings. The palaces of the great Ghibelline nobles
cluster together around the Cathedral and the
Campo; the Pecci with its lion-guarded staircase,
the Buonsignori, the Salimbeni, are purely Sienese
in style. The latter rises high above a valley and
recalls Or San Michele in its height and squareness ;
the Governo and the Spanocchi, on the contrary, are
purely Florentine, though here and there are details
indicative of the more florid local taste. The Tolomei
is the most famous of them all, not for the stately
elegance of its facade, but because here, as every

54

SIENA

Sienese will tell you, lived the hapless Pia. The
story of this gentle victim of jealousy and malaria
is told in a few lines by Dante, and every Tuscan
knows the tale as well as that of Francesca da Rim-
ini. When we returned to Florence, Checha, our
maid, asked eagerly if we had seen Casa Tolomei.

The beautiful hammered iron-work, a native pro-
duct, seems to combine naturally with the brick,
and among the cities which possess a distinct type
of domestic architecture Siena deserves a high rank.
Her palaces unite the lightness of the Bolognese
and something of the richness of the Venetian
styles to the stern Gothic character of the Flor-
entine ; and though the magic wand of the cinque-
cento has waved over the bronze and marble which
burst into acanthus flower and curling scroll-work,
and Tuscan masters, in the ring of their chisels,
have awakened echoes of the Via Larga and Via
Strozzi, in the main lines of the facades Siena has
clung to the character that marked the days of
Monteaperto. Excellent restoration is being done
in these Sienese palaces and streets. It consists
mainly in removing the panels or the bricks which
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were
used to hide good Gothic work. Nowhere else in
Italy have we heard so much talk of restoration.
Even the conservative Franciscan brother at the
Osservanza and the Benedictine Padre at Monte

55

ITALIAN CITIES

Oliveto shared this interest. "Those saints are
well enough in Paradise, but here with this fif-
teenth-century architecture they are out of place,"
said the latter, pointing to some haloed eighteenth-
century sentimentalities simpering in their rococo
frames. " Ah ! " sighed our driver, " if they would
only take away all the ugly things stupid people
have put here, Siena sarebbe bellissima."

Siena is bellissima, in spite of this occasional
veneer of later times, and among her most charm-
ing features are her fountains. There is Fonte
Nuova lying, a still sheet of silver, under its Gothic
arches, Fonte Ovile crowned with green, and Fonte
Branda, clear as crystal.

For Saint Catherine's sake, we visited Fonte
Branda in the early morning, scrambling down
the steep path under blossoming trees and tufted
greenery until San Domenico towered just above
our heads on its hill-pedestal. All about us was
the pungent smell of tan, and at our hand sheep's
peltries lay upon wicker ovals, for all the world
as if some thirsty Roman maniple had stopped to
drink at the fountain and thrown its shields upon
the grass. Above, the cavalry men lounged on
the parapet before the church where Benincasa's
daughter saw the celestial vision ; before us the
washer-women pounded away at their linen ; farther
on, outside the gate, the city wall climbed at a

56

SIENA

sharp angle to where the Cathedral rode upon the
highest ridge, the campanile holding aloft above the
tiles and towers the black and white of the repub-
lic's arms.

Perhaps one's most vivid impressions of Siena as
a whole are these fountain-side visions of the up-
lifted city ; to close the eyes is still to see the
narrow ways climbing the slopes and piercing
brown arches; the close-set houses sweeping like
billows now downward, now upward, tossed here
and there into higher jet of palace or church,
breaking into a spray of towers, till all are crested
by the foam-like sculpture of the Duomo.

And the fountains themselves, lying flat and mir-
ror-like with still depths and glistening surface,
dancing in reflection upon the brown, groined vault-
ing above. They are wholly different from any
others, these grottoed wells of Siena, strange pres-
ences in a city, bringing within the walls the sense
of caverned, mountain-springing waters. Each with
its crown of verdure is an Egeria to whom the
mediaeval Numa might come for counsel and for
peace; a Gothic Egeria under her pointed arches,
for from Siena antiquity is thrust out. Here
the nymph is haloed ; close draped from throat
to heel, she passes, and the idyl itself is fixed
upon a background of gold.

If we return with the mediaeval law-giver to his
57

ITALIAN CITIES

palace, we shall find ourselves in the vast, curving
Campo. Geologists say that Siena is built on an
extinct volcano and this square occupied the place
of the old crater. Any student of the city's politi-
cal history will find a singular appositeness in this
site, for the old fire blazed perennially in the hearts
of the citizens and within the walls of the munici-
pal palace. For here it sits in state with its grace-
ful Mangia tower and a solemn assembly of palaces
fronting it in amphitheatre. Before it once stood
the monumental Virtues of Jacopo della Quercia's
fountain, now mere battered fragments in the Mu-
seum ; beside it soars the Mangia ; not as audacious
as the bell-tower of the old palace of Florence, it
is more aspirant and equally individual, with its
shooting stem, its bracketed battlements, its pillar-
surrounded bells and its sculptured wolves.

The little chapel before the palace, an ex voto of
the plague of 1348, though graceful in itself, is an
excrescence, and the huge building is far finer seen
from the rear. From under the beamed roof and
between the pillars of the market-place it looks the
Gothic palace of the chronicles ; its grating might
surely imprison every possible fantasy, every night-
mare horror. Here should be cobwebs, bloodstains,
and oubliettes by day, lurking assassins and bleeding
spectres by night, enacting the secret dramas of the
archives and passing up and down that mouldering

58

SIENA

staircase (like those we climb in dreams), which
goes burrowing through the pile, now low, now
aloft, now corbelled on the outside of the building,
now disappearing under a dark arch to lead on to
a vast loggia where a whole city council might sit
al fresco. The facade, a monstrous mass of brick,
opens a hundred Argus eyes of every size and shape,
and other windows still have been blocked up ;
above them are strange, string-course eyebrows ;
there are long wrinkling cracks in the brick-
work ; the gratings show like clinched teeth ; this
grim visage of the olden time is set firmly against
all the mischance of five hundred years, and frowns
even under the caress of the Tuscan sunshine.

Turning from the palace, one finds oneself in the
centre of a horseshoe with the piled up Carmine
and Sant' Agostino on the spurs of rock which
form each side of it. From one's feet the valley
dips away rapidly and deeply in range behind range
of low volcanic hills, till Monte Amiata pencils its
snow-crested sky-line against the southern horizon.
Thus sits the palace of the republic, the focal point
of a double amphitheatre natural and artificial, of
palaces upon one hand, of contado upon the other,
telling to those who can hear aright the story of
six hundred years and marking every hour that is
added to the tale of centuries.

Within it is far more unchanged than is the
59

ITALIAN CITIES

Palazzo Vecchio of Florence ; there Michelozzo and
Benedetto remodelled Arnolfo's hall, but Siena
seems to have instinctively understood that her
glories came earlier, and she clung to them. These
rooms are mediaeval ; the original construction is
hardly changed, and the prevailing impression is
one of half savage, clumsy grandeur made more
emphatic by the pure Gothicism of their decora-
tion, — a Gothicism which is rather belated for
the time. There is little of the thoughtful and
balanced ornament of the contemporaneous chapel
of the Spaniards in Florence, and little of the
austere elegance of the Bargello.

During the turbulent life of the old common-
wealth generation after generation of artists was
called to embellish this house of the people. It
was the central jewel of the city's civic crown, the
theatre of her municipal dramas, the focus of her
political life. As such, it was loved and respected
by all the different factions which each in its turn
ruled and misruled Siena. The decoration of the
palace went steadily on, no matter who held the
reins of government. Defeated candidates might
be thrown from the windows, riot might break up
the council, strife disperse the magistrates, the
painters' stipends were punctually paid. Minorities
flew to arms and majorities abused their victories ;
delation whispered in dark corners, and party hatred

60

SIENA

SALA IN PALAZZO PUBBLICO

SIENA

hunted its victims through these echoing chambers ;
the frescanti labored quietly on, celebrating the
republic's triumphs, the glories of her popes, or the
coronation of her heavenly sovereign, and through
the dissensions which made Siena a byword for civic
discord, the famous artists of the school, Martini
and Lorenzetti and Quercia and Lando, left their
handwriting on these walls and made of this the
typical town-hall of Italy.

In the Sala del Gran Consiglio, divided nearly
down the centre by a line of heavy arches, Sienese
painting may be seen at its best and worst. In
Sim one's great lunette filled by a charming and
astonishingly decorative composition there is beauty
of a delicate character in the heads of the
saints, and the narrow-lidded, purse-mouthed Ma-
donna has a grace and distinction unknown to
Giotto. But in Ambrogio di Lorenzo's battle of
Turrita (1363), where the little jointed lay figures
move across a flat, map-like background showing
every hill and stream and hamlet conscientiously
labelled, the painter becomes a child with a big
slate, and his picture is as na'if and confused as
a battle on an Egyptian pylon. The Renaissance,
however, has passed this way and left Sodoma's
Roman warrior-saints Victor and Ansanus, noble
and vigorous youths, visions of antique health and
beauty among these medisevals, and as unexpected

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here as Scipio would have been at Monteaperto.
On the wall above them is a return to the Gothic
art of Siena, and against a vast field a little, solitary
Guidoriccio, captain of the republic, rides, like a
mattress on horseback, in commemoration of the
siege of Montemassi (1328).

But Gothic painting can show us something finer
than this. Passing through the left nave or ante-
chapel, we find ourselves in the Sala delta Pace, the
Hall of Peace. In 1337 Ambrogio Lorenzetti began
to work on these walls. His business was to dem-
onstrate the principles and blessings of good gov-
ernment and the evils of misrule, and to express
them in that figurative language which could be read
by all the citizens alike, even by the peasant and
the wool-carder. Lorenzetti, who was something of
a philosopher, Vasari tells us, put the symbolism of
his time to good use, and though to us the thread
of allegory may seem too finely spun, the didactic
purpose did not exclude beauty of a noble and
monumental character, and the frescoes are a mural
decoration as well as a painted treatise.

Among these attendant Virtues of the well-gov-
erned state, each one gowned to the feet, sitting
grave and stately in a solemn row like the sculp-
tured figures on a mediaeval reliquary, there is one
that reclines, her wreathed head resting on her
hand. Helmet and shield lie under her feet, she

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SUNA

holds the olive branch like a sceptre, and her semi-
transparent robe hangs ungirdled like an antique
tunic.

This is the celebrated Peace which seems to have
floated hither from a Pompeian wall, a Pagan god-
dess, perhaps a Venus Victrix consorting with these
Christian Virtues. How came she here ? Symonds
suggests that this figure was copied from the mis-
chief-making Aphrodite of Lysippos. Ambrogio
had made a fine drawing from the statue, which
Ghiberti admired many years afterward. By an
irony of fate the goddess banished from the square
sat in the council-chamber. And if her influence
was indeed malign, if her own apple of discord had
been thrown down among the magistrates, she
could not have looked upon wilder deeds than
those that were constantly enacted here. It was
not the painter's fault. Had he not demonstrated
that the commonwealth should be surrounded by
all the Virtues, Cardinal, Christian, Pagan ; that its
right should be supported by armed might; that
the ruling body of twenty-four citizens should be
united by concord and governed by justice ? Had
he not also with rare political sagacity shown the
relative importance of the various virtues by the
different scales adopted for their personifications;
thus in civic administration faith is of small im-
portance while justice is essential. To prevent

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all possibility of mistake, their names are plainly
written over all the figures, and ribbons and scrolls
materially bind the elaborate allegory together,
while the whole scheme with its hierarchy of
municipal Virtues was doubtless suggested by some
erudite student of Aristotle or of Dante's De Mo-
narchia. The painter has also shown the practical
effects of good and bad government in a spirited
series of genre pictures, — episodes of contemporary
town life which appealed directly to the spectator's
memories and experience.

Truly the philosophic Anibrogio was not to blame
if Siena was "un guazzabuglio ed una confusione
di repuUiche piutosto che bene ordinata e instituta
republica"

Eepublic, commonwealth, the names are mislead-
ing and suggest to the modern mind something
akin to our own form of popular sovereignty. A
nominal vassalage to a German Cresar; a struggle
for independence ; a governing body or Monte com-
posed of patricians ; a popular revolution : a Balia of
merchants ; an uprising of the artisans ; native des-
potism, and finally submission to a foreign tyrant, —
this is a fair synopsis of the history of the Sienese
republic, nay, of many Italian republics as well.
" C'est la mile qui se gouverne plus follement que
toute ville d'ltalie" wrote grave De Commines a
century and a half after Ambrogio finished his

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SIENA

fresco, and mad indeed Siena must have been to
merit this distinction.

Imagine a state governed by miracles, a state
which sent ecstatic nuns and socialistic painters
on important embassies ; where the saints them-
selves became politicians, and the celestial court
terrorized or bribed voters by visions and prodigies ;
where a rain of blood or some such manifestation
of divine displeasure about election time would
upset the existing government and carry the entire
opposition into office at one sweep; where, when
the victors had murdered, confiscated, and exiled
sufficiently to produce a popular reaction of feeling,
a third party would appear to repeat the same
blunders and excesses. Sometimes a holy person-
age would have a revelation, and in obedience to
the divine mandate the whole city would turn out
in penitential procession. Eadicals and conserva-
tives, aristocrats and artisans, their shoulders bleed-
ing from the lash, knelt together on the cathedral
pavement and swore on the great crucifix to live in
peace together forever after. Eight pages of blood-
curdling maledictions were then read, wherein he
who should break his oath was cursed thoroughly
and comprehensively (for cursing was a fine art
in the Middle Ages with a vigorous vocabulary).
Afterward the notaries of the rival factions wrote
down the names of those who had sworn to main-
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ITALIAN CITIES

tain public tranquillity, and the adverse parties fell
on each other's necks. But the penitential torches
were hardly spent, the swords which Eeligion
bade men leave at the church-door were scarcely
sheathed, when, in spite of anathema, they were
out again and all parties were fighting once more.

The acts of the popular government (Novcschi)
were prophetic of the darkest days of the Eeign
of Terror in France. There were clubs like the
Jacobins ; secret societies ; lists of the suspected ;
spies in the prisons and revolutionary tribunals,
and yet amid all this disorder the virtues of self-
sacrifice, fidelity to friends and comrades ; devotion
to an ideal; fortitude and courage, all these quali-
ties that are developed by the militant attitude of
the soul, flourished as they never can in an indus-
trial republic.

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II

A FAINT echo of the old contests has lasted even to
our own times, and on every fifteenth of August
the Campo is again the theatre of strife. The
annual horse-race, the Polio, is run here in honor
of the city's patron, the Blessed Virgin ; and Siena,
which is frugal and sober enough for the rest of the
year, becomes a boisterous, ruffling spendthrift dur-
ing the festa.

This is no ordinary race, with professional jockeys,
lean, glossy horses, and a quiet fashionable crowd of
spectators betting in a bored and decorous way ; this
is a family affair of palpitating domestic interest.
The cattle are the thick-necked, stout little nags
that Beppo, the butcher boy, drives in his cart,
and that Gigi, the green-grocer's son, rides out to
the hillside farm, and the jockeys are Beppo and
Gigi themselves and their ilk: the onlookers are
their friends and relatives and rivals, the whole
town of Siena, and every able-bodied peasant in
the contado as well. It is only in Tuscany, where
there is no "brutalized lower class," that such
a work-a-day, popular affair could be a ceremony
and a spectacle. Perhaps, too, the fact that the
same thing has been done annually for the last

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five hundred years has much to do with its
picturesqueness.

These races are a contest between the seventeen
different wards of Siena, a survival of the old party
feuds. Each district contributes a horse and ten
men dressed in mediaeval costume. A few hours
before the race, each horse is blessed in the parish
church of the contrada to which it belongs.

One is rather impressed with the sporting char-
acter of the local saints; they are debonair, these
celestial potentates, and sometimes even playful,
so that to the modern shopkeeper it seems as
natural to ask their good-will for the horse that
is to run for the honor of Madonna and the dis-
trict, as it was for the mediaeval noble to hang the
wax image of his pet hawk before their altars.

The little company which enters the church with
the plunging, rearing horse looks as though it were
contemporary with the hawk's master. There is
the captain of the district, elderly, bearded, in full
armor; the rider wearing the helmet which later
he will change for a metal jockey-cap ; the
standard-bearers, the drummer, the dear, little
solemn pages who might have come hither from
some altar-piece of Botticelli or some pageant of
Gozzoli. All are splendid in satin trunks, brocaded
doublets, velvet mantles, and the tightest of pink
fleshings, while each tiny red cap is perched on

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SIENA

a mass of fuzzy hair. The fine costumes are worn
with ease and grace, though the beauty of the Ital-
ian youth is rather that of the faun than the
athlete. Everybody is very much in earnest and
quite lacking in the self-consciousness which would
paralyze a Northerner tricked out in tights and
long curls.

When the horse reaches the high altar, he is
blessed and sprinkled with holy water and led
away with much cheering. The church has lent
its aid to help him win the banner, which, if he
is successful, will hang with many others, some of
them centuries old, in the sacristy. The Campo
is also in gala dress. The grim palaces are all
aflaunt with banners, shields hang from every
window, and brilliant colors float from every
balcony. Over the pavement a track of earth has
been laid for the Polio, going entirely around the
Piazza; barriers have been placed along the inner
side of the half-circle thus formed, and on the outer
edge there are tiers of seats built up against the
surrounding house-walls.

Toward the Ave Maria every balcony, window,
and bench is filled, even the roofs are crowded,
and into the central space behind the barriers
some twenty thousand peasants have wedged them-
selves, the braided gold of their huge straw hats
flapping with anticipatory excitement.

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The course is cleared by mounted carabineers,
and the procession begins. First in orthodox, festi-
val fashion comes the town band in dark blue uni-
forms, then trumpeting loudly, nine heralds who
surely must have figured at some mediaeval tourna-
ment ; the companies of the various districts follow,
a stream of rich color against the palace walls ;
the standard-bearers playing graceful tricks with
their flags, the captain with his escort of four pages
armed with lances, the figurino, most gorgeous of
all, carrying the ward-banner with its emblem,
and lastly the fantino on horseback. The pageant
is closed by a modern facsimile of the Caroccio or
battle-car taken from the Florentines at Monte-
aperto (1260), by the victorious Sienese, who in
witness thereof set up its poles in their cathedral,
and in many other ways keep the memory of this
ancient victory green and Florence in a proper
state of retrospective humiliation. Meanwhile the
barebacked horses have been driven into a pen
formed of ropes, and each rider has received his
nerbo or whip made of ox-sinew, — a redoubtable
weapon which he is permitted to use not only on
his own horse, but on the rival jockeys and their
horses as well. This brutal custom is undoubtedly
a survival of earlier contests.

Finally all are mounted, a gun is fired, the rope
drops : there is a rush, a many-colored flash, horses

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SIENA

and riders shoot out on the track and are off at
last. One pony trips over the rope and falls like
a stone with his rider, who lies motionless, while
something redder than a blush streams over his
cheek. " It is nothing, nothing," your neighbor
on the balcony assures you ; " those boys are made
of india rubber ; to-day they are mangled and killed,
and to-morrow they will be amusing themselves."

The horses meantime are tearing around the
palpitating piazza; the jockeys are flogging right
and left with the cruel nerbo, and a wave of excite-
ment follows them. It is a fine sight ; the riders
have neither saddles nor stirrups and are one with
their mounts, but Sienese youth is guileless ; there
are no turf tricks here, no dark horses, no husband-
ing of speed until the decisive moment. Bear gets
the lead early in the race, keeps it and wins by
two lengths amid deafening cries of " Orso, Orso ! "
There is a deep growl from the conquered contrade
and a rush for the winner, but the Italian police-
men, those lions of martial aspect and fierce mus-
tachios, those lambs of gentle courtesy and softest
speech, have already closed around him. They
protect him until his company rallies and escorts
him in triumph to the church again, where he
hangs up the prize banner.

The athlete who brought home the wild olive
crown from the Olympian games, the young Eoman

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who hung up a trophy in the Capitol, were probably
not lacking in a proper appreciation of their own
merits, but their bumptiousness was as the humil-
ity of cloistered maidens, compared to the vain-
glory of the youth who wins the Palio, if one may
believe the local gossips. No wonder that Bazzi,
that adopted son and spoiled child of Siena, who
had gained many palii with his Barbary horses,
was prouder of his prizes than of his paintings,
and " would exhibit them to every one who came
to his house, nay, he would frequently make a
show of them at his windows," to the astonish-
ment and disgust of that shrewd business man
and conventional bourgeois, Giorgio Vasari.

79

Ill

MUCH prose poetry has been written about the Sien-
ese school of painting. Years ago Eio and Lindsay
struck a note which finds an echo in the appre-
ciation of the most modern critics. The literary
boulevardier still worships at the shrines of the
" Madones aux longs regards" and in their presence
even the stern and suspicious disciples of the " De-
tective school " of art criticism cease to scrutinize
and become lyrical. Perhaps no " Primitive " paint-
ing has inspired so much enthusiasm in men of
letters.

A study of the Sienese pictures, while it affords
little to justify these eulogies, stimulates a desire
to discover why this mediocre art has proved so
attractive.

We suspect that the panegyrists of the Sienese
masters regarded them from the aesthetic rather
than the plastic point of view ; that they confused
the material of representation with the manner of
representation, the aspect of an actual object pleas-
ing in itself with the pictorial presentation of such
an object.

There are many different degrees of visual pleasure :
iridescent glass, the changing lights of jewels, masses

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of gold and color, the mere splendor of gold itself,
and of "pure color unspoiled by meaning," are
pleasant to look upon and possess intrinsic charm
and value, a charm which appeals to the savage and
the child as well as to the aesthetically cultivated, and
which is " un vexed by thought."

There is joy for the eye as well in beautiful ob-
jects which are more highly differentiated, wherein
color is wedded to design ; in glistening tissues and
in dusky webs of Oriental needlework, and in intri-
cate mazes of tooling and damascening.

But there is a still sensuous but higher delight —
higher in the sense that it demands far more of the
beholder as well as of the artist — in color subordi-
nated to form and meaning. It is undeniable that
a nobler quality of appreciation is required to admire
Titian's Flora or Veronese's Family of Darius than
to appreciate a Persian tile or an Indian carpet.

It is to the more primitive aesthetic sense that the
Sienese painter appeals. He was a cunning crafts-
man in the use of the gilder's tools. He could chase
and damascene the most labyrinthine and exquisite
of patterns. He had an Oriental's feeling for textile
design and a goldsmith's love of minute and elabo-
rate ornament. His inventiveness, limited to acces-
sories, manifested itself in his treatment of them.

The undeveloped artist unable to paint beautiful
pictures loves to paint beautiful things, — things

74

SIENA

beautiful in themselves, — and he offers them (quite
unconsciously) as substitutes for competent painting.
Madonna's face may be a flat mask, her body a
simulacrum, but her halo and mantle-clasp modelled
in plaster, gilded and stuck on to the painted panel,
will be admirably designed. The painter limited in
his powers of expression gathers into his picture
the material which in real life pleases him and his
townsfolk, substituting suggestion for plastic reali-
zation. It is indisputable that suggestion is more
stimulating to the art critic than actual pictorial
achievement, which, possessing the means of complete
expression, stands in far less need of being helped
out, interpreted, and expounded than the imperfect
or undeveloped work of art which is necessarily
obliged to leave much to the imagination of the
spectator. In the last instance the field is open
to individual interpretation and for the formulation
of theories.

The inarticulate work of art appeals to the critic ;
he " discovers " it, pleads for it, reveals it. Indeed,
he soon ceases to see it objectively, and it often ap-
pears to him only through the medium which his
own fancy has created. Why has so much been
written about Botticelli and so little about Donatello ?
Why is Simone Martini more stimulating to eloquence
than Veronese ? Because Donatello and Veronese
deliver their own message, while Botticelli and Mar-

75

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tini are tentatively struggling for expression. The
master-craftsmen need no apologists, and offer no
handle to facile criticism. The impotent or imper-
fect Sienese painters, on the contrary, afford un-
limited opportunity for the onlooker to do a little
painting on his own account by the exercise of his
own fancy.

The amateur is also apt to mistake rudimentary
presentation of pictorial material for the voluntary
simplification of such material The eminently com-
petent selection of the essential and the elimination
of the non-essential is not easily distinguished by
the untrained in such matters from the incomplete-
ness which is the result of incompetence. Four-
teenth-century " simplicity " is not the same thing
as sixteenth-century generalization. The Sienese
triptychs have a specious air of intentional limita-
tion; their gorgeousness in color and ornament, their
undeniable decorativeness, have been accepted as
decoration, which is a very different thing. Their
shortcomings, lack of solidity and of construction,
to the eye of the practitioner, are those to which
the man of letters was most indulgent in the days
when "expression" and "feeling" were sought rather
than values and " enveloppement."

Perhaps it is also because this Sienese painting
affords a tempting opportunity for the establishment
of a rival cultus to that of the positive and realistic

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SIENA

Florentines. There are Aristideses in art and litera-
ture, and some critics weary of hearing Giotto called
"the Just."

Finally, to analyze or define the enduring charm
of a world-famous picture is a form of mental exer-
cise ; to rhapsodize over a Sano di Pietro or a Matteo
di Giovanni, to ascribe spiritual significance and mys-
tic meaning to works which are pictorially insignifi-
cant, is an inexpensive form of mental dissipation.

There is, on the other hand, no doubt that Siena
produced great artists. But she possessed no great
school, and the individuality which manifested itself
so turbulently in municipal and domestic life ceased
to express itself, with the notable exception of
Jacopo della Quercia, in the fine arts at an early
period of their development. The hand of tradi-
tion lay too heavily on her painters, and the history
of Sienese painting may be written in three words :
Duccio, Martini, Lorenzetti.

Thanks to the labors of Milanesi in the store-
house of Sienese archives, wherein are preserved all
the contracts made by the republic since the twelfth
century, we can calculate to a soldo what Simone
Martini and Arnbrogio Lorenzetti were paid for
their work, and lynx-eyed modern criticism has dis-
covered that frescoes long ascribed to them were
done by other hands; but of the personality of
Simone, Petrarch's friend and painter of Madonna

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Laura ; of the character of Lorenzetti, whom Vasari
records as leading the life of a gentleman and a
philosopher rather than that of an artist; of the
life of Duccio da Buoninsegna, the first master to
show "feeling" and "expression" in his heads, — we
know little save their names and their work.

But their work remains to praise them. Duccio's
altar-piece, hidden for many years in a closet in the
Opera del Duomo, is now placed where it can be
seen and studied. Does it justify the opinion of
those who consider Duccio a rival of Giotto, or has
the Florentine still the cry ? Take the best known
of Duccio's compositions which through photography
and engraving have become familiar to us : the Three
Maries at the Tomb or the Betrayal of Christ, and
place them beside Giotto's Death of Saint Francis
or the Banquet of Herod.

The two masters are absolutely different in char-
acter. Duccio derives directly from the Byzantines.
One would not be surprised to find his figures in a
manuscript of the time of Alexander Severus by
some illuminator who, though not as skilful as those
iconographic sculptors who filled out the series of
imperial busts, was nevertheless full of feeling for
subtle beauty and graceful movement. Giotto is a
pioneer, an innovator. In his paintings the medi-
aeval Italian enters art as a pictured presence, not
as the larva of the missal, but the real, living man

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SIENA

OPERA DEL DUOMO

DUCCIO DI BUONINSEGNA

THE KISS OF JUDAS

SIENA

of the Novelle of Sacchetti. Imagine a Eavennese
mosaic freed from its rigidity and made supple, the
color somewhat blackened, the faces human and
pleasing, and you have Duccio's figures. His art
was born in the catacombs and bred at Mont Athos.
Giotto's is a robust son of the people and of the
busy battle-filled fourteenth century. Duccio lin-
gers in the court of the Byzantine palace, but
Giotto shoulders aside the gilded praetorian at its
gate and goes out into the fields. Duccio is the de-
scendant of the gentleman of the old Empire, with
his refinement and his limitations. Giotto is the
mediaeval peasant, with all the peasant's vigor and
capacity for continued effort. In some respects,
Duccio surpasses Giotto, notably in subtlety of feel-
ing for beauty in his heads and in a certain delicacy
of sentiment, but Giotto is immeasurably Duccio's
superior in inventiveness, in dramatic feeling, in
composition, and, above all, in solidity. Duccio, for
all his power and science, is still Byzantine. Taken
altogether, Duccio is as distinctly a phenomenon as
Giotto, but he is a phenomenon which closes an
era, a sudden flash of flame springing high above
the environment of all his fellows, but going out
into darkness, whereas Giotto's is a steadily waxing
light, the harbinger of the morning, indeed the day
itself come to irradiate Italy and the world.

This cumulation which counts Giotto as an initial
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ITALIAN CITIES

force is so impressive to the student of art history
that he is apt to slight Duccio as a phenomenon,
but a little thought and study soon cause him to be
regarded as almost as puzzling a survival as Giotto
is a surprising precursor. Giotto, deriving from
Giovanni Pisano, and from every other sound and
progressive artistic influence of his time, is far more
important than Duccio, but hardly more astonishing.
If Giotto by strength, solidity, simplicity of feeling,
clearness of vision, overtops his fellow painters and
translates the vigor and dignity of Giovanni Pisano's
marbles on the flat surface of wall or panel into a
far freer and nobler composition, Duccio too has so
bettered all his instructors that he in turn seems
phenomenal.

Every great artist is more or less of a Janus,
looking backward to his master and his master's
master, and forward to a future of personal progress.
Duccio looks only backward, but how far he looks,
how clearly he sees, and beside him what blind bun-
glers are the monk-bred painters, his contemporaries,
when they strive to learn from Byzantine illumination,
mosaic, or ivory carvings ! Much has been written,
and well written, about Duccio's feeling for expres-
sion, for pathos, for poignant presentation of heart-
stirring scenes ; what is even more worthy of note
is a technical knowledge and capacity which (always
relatively considered) are amazing. Look at the

80

SIENA

delicate feet and hands of his apostles ; study their
faces, which are not only differentiated but individ-
ualized, and sometimes almost skilful in drawing.
Their painter saw over the heads of his contempora-
ries far back into the times of those great forefathers
of whom he is the unique descendant ; it is as
though Duccio turned monkish Latin into the
language of Claudian.

In elegance, grace, subtlety of feature, slender-
ness of proportion, Duccio excels ; in vitality, in
freedom of thought, as well as in robust solidity
and noble simplicity of composition, Giotto leaves
him hopelessly behind, for if Duccio is the final
efflorescence of the old, Giotto is the blossom of the
new art.

Petrarch, the first of the literary admirers of the
Sienese school, wrote in a friendly rather than a
judicial spirit the oft-quoted lines : " I have known
two excellent artists, Giotto of Florence and Simone
of Siena," for the latter with all his exquisite crafts-
manship, his feeling for grace and sweetness and
splendor, is by no means the equal of the great
Florentine. These two painters represent the male
and female principle in the art of the fourteenth
century: Giotto robust, dramatic, daring; Simone
delicate, conservative, poetic. Both of them are
intensely sincere ; both, if judged superficially, very
similar, because controlled by the conventionalities
VOL. i. — 6 81

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of the trecento. But compare one of the great
frescoes of Giotto in the lower church of Assisi, or
the Arena Chapel at Padua, with the lunette of
Simone which fills one end of the main hall in the
Palazzo Pubblico of Siena. Giotto, like a trecento
Eaphael or Michelangelo, has thrown aside all
superfluous ornament ; Simone's fresco, on the other
hand, is an expanded miniature, yet it is grand and
lovely at once, and a very ideal decoration, intensely
decorative to its every detail

But how inferior to Giotto in simplicity and
directness of composition are the frescoes in the
church of St. Francis at Assisi, and how much more
out of drawing than the least skilful of the Tuscan
master's are the half length figures in the same
church, delicate, thoughtful, and beautifully rich in
color as they are ! Yet in spite of his limitations,
Simone is the worthy Sienese counterpart of the
Florentine, standing to him in the fourteenth cen-
tury in something the same relation that Botticelli
bears to Ghirlandajo a hundred years later, with
this difference — their positions are reversed, Giotto
is greater than Martini, Botticelli greater than
Ghirlandajo, or at any rate more individual.

The portrait of Laura which, if we may believe
Vasari, Simone painted for Petrarch while he was in
Avignon has disappeared. More by far than its
original charm has come down to us in the two

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SIENA

sonnets which the grateful lover addressed to the
artist. In Simone's time, portraiture, in the modern
sense of the word, did not exist ; the epoch of the
portrait in the evolution of Italian art had not yet
come, nor did it arrive until a century later. The
authentic so-called portraits of the fourteenth cen-
tury have little more than an archaeological value.
The painter might reproduce such obvious peculiari-
ties as the cut of the hair and beard, the dress and
headgear ; these pictures are valuable to the student
of costume and of general types, and are indispen-
sable to the arcb.£eologist in all matters of identifi-
cation and date ; but the artist had not arrived at
a point where he was able to individualize and char-
acterize the features sufficiently to give a portrait any
artistic or historical value. Simone was undoubtedly
able to paint a head for Petrarch which represented
the type of woman to which Laura belonged. Her
blue eyes and her golden hair, her green velvet gown
and the general aspect of a handsome gentlewoman
of the fourteenth century, it was in the painter's
power to render. But the picture not only satisfied
but delighted Petrarch, and lovers are close observers
of the face that is dearest to them and stern critics
of attempts to reproduce its charm. Would Laura's
poet, he who had lingered so lovingly on every detail
of her " divina sembianza" have been transported by
a mere general presentation, a kind of " ideal " head of

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the pretty woman of the epoch ? To this objection we
may answer that Petrarch's opportunities of seeing
his adored lady had been comparatively few; that
Laura's image had become generalized in Petrarch's
mind, and that he saw the actual woman through a
kind of luminous mist created by his own unfulfilled
desire, and by the spiritual aspirations which he had
gradually habituated himself to associate with the
thought of her. When we remember also that men
seldom see in things plastic more than what they
are taught to see, and that realism in art was as yet
unknown, it is not so difficult to understand Petrarch's
enthusiasm over Simone's picture.

Simone, as is natural enough in a pupil of Duccio,
holds fast to the gold and purple of imperial tradi-
tion; he is under the shadow of the sceptre of
Byzantium, and cannot win free. The spell of the
effete, luxurious old civilization is on him. M.
Lafenestre calls him "an exquisite, delighting in
jewels of price and embroidered stuffs, an archae-
ologist borrowing liberally from antique costumes
and accessories." He manipulates this elegant detail
easily and gracefully ; to the taste for magnificence
which he shares with all the artists of the Sienese
school, he adds poetic feeling, and no painter of
his day has rendered so winsomely the type which
for a thousand years had incarnated man's desire for
beauty.

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His long-eyed, full-lipped Madonnas, jewelled like
reliquaries, are gentler and sweeter sisters of the
Empress Theodora. His narrow-lidded, aquiline pro-
files, anatomically absurd as they are, are potent to
suggest beauty, and the puissance of such suggestion
is not counteracted in the layman by the knowledge
of the construction which Simone lacks.

Delicate, subtile profiles of Egyptian goddesses cut
in lowest relief on dusky temple walls; Javanese
dancers glancing sidewise under long eyelids tinged
with kohl ; slender, languid Coptic girls praying in
the churches of Fostat, — such are the memories
evoked by Simone' s frescoes at Assisi and his "Ma-
jesty " in Siena. Indefinable yet penetrating is the
Oriental influence, subtle as the scent of jasmine or
sandal-wood which clings to the webs of Eastern
looms.

Yet Simone is the child of the middle ages as well
as the heir of Byzantium. They have dowered him
with tenderness and sweetness, and he paints his
Madonna "with a difference." His frescoes of the
legend of Saint Martin might serve as illustrations
(in the noblest sense) to some mediaeval romance
of chivalry, and his " Arming of the Knight " was
painted with Folgore da Gimignano's sonnets under
his eyes. The figures of his virgins and saints are
visible signs of the changes that chivalry and Chris-
tianity had effected in the Byzantine ideal of femi-

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nine beauty. It was not enough that Madonna
should be stately, she must be compassionate as
well ; antique serenity was softened into gentleness,
the physical perfection of Blessed Virgins and the
holy women should not only fill the eye, it must
intenerire il cuore. Sentiment, gentilezza di ciwre,
expression and mannered grace were what an emo-
tional, fervent society wanted, and what Simone
could express by delicate modifications and individ-
ual treatment of the old conventions. He bent the
proudly erect head of the Byzantine Madonna, and
turned it slightly sideways, and he elongated the
face, giving it a more delicate oval He lengthened
and slightly raised the lower eyelids, thus lending
to the eyes themselves the soft languor that the
Greek sculptors never failed to give to the statues
of Aphrodite. Thus was the dignified, Pagan patri-
cian of the Ravennese mosaics transformed into
the pensive, yearning, and, it must be confessed,
sometimes petulant Madonna of the triptychs. It is a
far cry from Queen Dido to Queen Iseult of Ireland,
from Cornelia to Griselda; but it is hardly longer
than from Our Lady of San Apollinare in Eavenna
to Our Lady of the Palazzo Pubblico.

The third artist of the trio, Ambrogio Lorenzetti,
is the most robust of the early Sienese masters. He
is almost massive in his great decoration of the
Municipal town hall, " Good and Bad Government,"

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though on the same wall he proves, if not the flexi-
bility of his genius, at least the catholicity of his
taste in his readiness to look with as favoring eyes
as Niccolk Pisano's own upon the antique, and to
paint a Pax which reclines with as much freedom
of movement as the Hera-Madonna on the Pisan
pulpit.

In this vast composition there is nothing of the
suavity and languid grace of Martini. Simone
spangles his fresco with shining ornament till his
saints seem so many mediaeval Buckinghams shaking
jewels from their garments. Lorenzo's frescoed folk
are soberly, even severely suited ; but Ambrogio, like
Simone, is a poet, though he speaks more gravely, and
he is a scholar, too, whose classical references make
Simone's archaeological paraphernalia seem almost
coquettish. Ambrogio is sturdily simple where
Simone is precieux, and robust where Simone is deli-
cate, or even slightly affected.

In considerations of this kind, we must constantly
bear in mind that these painters are primitive mas-
ters ; that many of their qualities must be considered
as purely relative ; that correct drawing was to them
an unknown quantity ; that skilful modelling was as
yet unattainable, and that they ignored anatomy, and
were innocent of any knowledge of perspective. The
portrait also did not exist in the trecento (despite the
assertions of those eager friars whose proprietary in-

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terest prompts them to find Laura and Petrarch,
Dante and the Duke of Athens, ritratti autentissimi,
on their church walls).

Yet it must be conceded that Lorenzetti, like
Duccio and Martini, possessed qualities that were as
positive as possible : virility, simplicity, dignity ; his
decoration in the Palazzo Pubblico, in which ethical
significance is united to feeling for monumental mass
and line and sensitiveness to human beauty, is the
most impressive production of any native Sienese
painter. The character of Lorenzetti's genius is well
defined by the terms Antoninus employed in the
description of his ideal being: "masculine, adult,
political, a ruler, and a servant of the gods."

IV

THE triad of masters left no successors, and for more
than a hundred years Sienese painting remained sta-
tionary. The condition of arrested development into
which the G-iotteschi sunk after the death of Giotto
bade fair to become perennial in Siena.

The energy of her painters was diverted into other
avenues. They became active politicians, sometimes
party leaders, and their lives were as dramatic as
their works were contemplative. A political career
then exacted considerable expenditure of vital force,
and but little remained for the pursuit of new meth-
ods in painting. Swaggering individualism is a very
different thing from personality, and it is not sur-
prising that the political activity and the revolu-
tionary ardor of the painter-demagogues were only
equalled by the intensity of their artistic conserva-
tism. They are unique figures in the history of art
and manners, and deserve a brief notice in any study
of Siena.

Apparently it was not until after the great plague
had levelled all ranks (1348), and the rise of the
popular party, that the painters dropped the brush
for the sword, and began to march under the banners

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they had painted. Sons o^ the people, members of
one of the lesser crafts, they were naturally factors
in the political revolutions of 1368 and 1483, and
were not only democrats but demagogues. Docu-
ments show us a certain type of populist painter di-
recting public affairs, age after age, like that Andrea
Vanni who was a correspondent of Saint Catherine.
He expelled the nobles in 1368, was ambassador to the
Florentines and to the Pope, became architect of the
Duomo and Captain of the People ; at the same time
he followed his profession, painting the gonfalon of
liberty for the Kepublic and the portrait of Saint
Catherine now in San Domenico, setting the blazon
of the Duke of Milan on the public palace, and filling
orders for altar-pieces.

The Demos in Siena was a good art patron to the
artist-partisans and a cruel master to a political
opponent, as Jacopo della Quercia found to his cost.
The government had plenty of commissions to be-
stow, and we find a political agitator like Benvenuto
di Giovanni illuminating the choir-books of the
cathedral and decorating the cupola ; a practical
politician, Giovanni Cini, painted the standard of
Liberty, and forty years later, still in favor, restored
his own work, which had been roughly handled.
After the victory of Camellia, where he had fought
as flag-bearer of his quarter, he was chosen to paint
the votive picture which commemorated the triumph

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of the Eepublic. It would be tedious to multiply
examples : all through the history of Siena the
artist is prominent as magistrate, innovator, soldier,
often as conspirator. Even in the sixteenth century,
when the older type of the citizen-painter was else-
where supplanted by the court-painter, the Sienese
still remained the turbulent burgher.

The biography of Pacchiarotto, one of the last of
the native artists, reads like a romance of the
French Eevolution. He was in every tumult ; when
in 1520 the city was convulsed by an outbreak of
party hatred, he was one of the faction which
strangled Alessandro Bichi in the archbishop's
palace, defeated the Pope's troops at Camollia, and
defied Clement VII. by tearing the bull launched
against Siena. Through him we have a glimpse of
the populist clubs, those hot-beds of lawlessness.
At first a member of the Libertini, he became later
a leader of the Bardotti (the scot free), composed
of Socialists or rather Communists of an advanced
type, which for some time terrorized the town.

The Bardotti, who called Saint Catherine their
patroness, met on Sundays to read Livy's Eoman
History, or Macchiavelli's Art of War, and to perfect
themselves in fencing, for every man was bound to
defend the institution at the sword's point, and to
challenge any one who spoke ill of it. Apparently
they fenced to some purpose, for the insolence of

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these swashbucklers became so unbearable that the
magistrates broke up the club. Pacchiarotto was
imprisoned, ruined, exiled from Siena, with a price
upon his head and a promise of a free pardon to
whomsoever should put him to death. While trying
to reach the church of the Osservanza for sanctuary,
to escape pursuit he was forced to hide himself for
two nights and days in a tomb with a corpse. After
many other misadventures, he died in poverty and
exile. Unfortunately, his most remarkable work has
perished ; on the walls of his own room he painted a
multitude of figures kneeling, bowing, and prostrat-
ing themselves in various attitudes of deference and
admiration. Here, surrounded by the homage so
stimulating to the orator, amid a silence which was
equally grateful, he rehearsed his political speeches,
and triumphantly confuted his opponents' argu-
ments. This art-work of poor Pacchiarotto may
commend itself to a later age, an age of many clubs
and over-much oratory, of willing talkers and re-
luctant listeners.

The ardent temperament which urged the artist
into public life sometimes sought other forms of
expression, and the Sienese painters were often zeal-
ous devotees. Many of them were workers in the
noblest of the city's charities, the great hospital.
Vecchietta left all his property to it, and Matteo di
Giovanni, painter of hideous massacres, had charge

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of a ward there, and is styled " il fervoroso fratello "
in the records.

But the painter-saint of Siena, the " Pictor famosus
et homo totus deditus Deo" was Sano di Pietro ; he
was a gentle spirit moving quietly among those sons
of Thunder, his fellow craftsmen. Some of the
scanty records of his blameless life are pathetic:
thus the books of the parish prove that though very
poor, with a wife and three little children to support,
he had adopted an orphan "for the love of God."
Sano, whose life was " one long hymn to the Virgin,"
was an innovator in his way ; while the fire-eaters
were as conservative in art as they were radical in
politics.

To the readers of Eio and Lindsay, to the student
of the evolution of art, the gallery of Siena pos-
sesses a unique interest. To the lovers of painting
who admire a dexterous or scientific manipulation
of material, or a pictorial and personal treatment of
well known subjects, it will not appeal.

The first bewildered question it suggests is, where
were the eyes of those art writers who compared
this gallery with those of Florence, and who con-
sidered the Sienese as rivals of the early Florentine
masters ? The dates of the pictures show that these
men were in the nursery, stumbling over the rudi-
ments, while Filippino and Ghirlandajo and Botti-

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celli were painting their frescoes. No wonder that
the Sienese held fast to the Lombard Bazzi when
he came a- visiting. Until then (1501) they had not
seen an artist who had mastered his material

While the Florentines were unearthing antiquity,
discovering the laws of perspective, drawing from
the nude and studying anatomy, their Sienese con-
temporaries were tranquilly copying Byzantine
motives. The artists of Siena, dear to the writers
on so-called Christian art, never passed through a
period of experiment and investigation ; they never
originated, but were imitators, always taking their
knowledge at second-hand, following, first, the Byzan-
tine tradition, and later, the Roman school under
Sodoma's influence ; leaping at once from immatur-
ity in Francesco di Giorgio and Matteo di Giovanni
to decadence in Beccafumi and Peruzzi.

What then was their contribution to art ?

The Sienese painter, as we have already seen, de-
tached the Byzantine mosaic from the wall of the
basilica ; borrowing the old motives and types, he
translated them into painting and produced the
altar-piece. This triptych or diptych, which was not
only set over the shrine, but found its way into
oratory and bedchamber also, brought art into
contact with daily life. He vivified Madonna ;
the stern, black-browed goddess of the churches of
Ravenna became a gracious, fair-haired lady; the

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attendant angels, instead of standing stiffly on either
side of the golden throne, grew graceful and sup-
pliant ; the rigid, staring saints unbent a trifle, and
occasionally there was an attempt at a dramatic
gesture or a tender expression. Working in a more
flexible medium, freedom of treatment grew little by
little, until the painter had loosened the golden
fetters of Byzantium and Art began to move. He
could only loosen them, however. He still clung to
the old forms for the brave soldier, the daring poli-
tician, was a timid conservative in his studio. Why,
after taking the first step, did he stop short? Why,
after having attained dramatic expression with
Duccio, grace with Simone Martini, and grandeur
with Lorenzetti, did he not march on with Giotto,
with Masaccio and Lippo ? Why, for two hundred
years, did he move in a vicious circle ?

The answer to this question may be found in a
glance at the environment of the painter.

In Siena the two influences which powerfully
affected Florentine art, the scholar's enthusiasm for
antique beauty, the burgher's love of facts and ex-
act detail, were lacking. Out of these apparently
conflicting tendencies grew the great art of Florence
and the Renaissance based on the study of antique
sculpture and the observation of nature. But if
Hellenism and shop-keeping obtained in Florence,
mysticism and free-booting were characteristic of

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Siena ; she was as proud of her saints and her popes
as her rival was of her poets and her historians and
her woollens; the intelligent curiosity, the love of
scholarship, the keen appetite for knowledge of the
Florentine, were in the Sienese replaced by an
ardent piety and an equally keen appetite for pleas-
ure. The positive common-sense and the burgher
virtues of Florence were despised in credulous and
impassioned Siena. She had spurned antique beauty,
and although two great sculptors, Jacopo della
Quercia and Vecchietta, called Siena home, they had
no influence apparently on her painters. Nor did
these painters study Nature, for their environment
acted upon them in a yet more direct and practical
way. What the pious and unlettered Sienese re-
quired of them were images of devotion, not objects
of art, something to pray to, not to criticise, a vision
of Paradise, not a glimpse of every-day life.

From the collection of altar-pieces in the gallery,
we can form a very clear idea of how the painters
supplied this want.

The triptych was a favorite form, a Maesth, or
Majesty (i. e. a Madonna and child sitting in state
surrounded by saints and angels) the most popular
subject. The Virgin, as befitted the sovereign of
Siena, is always represented as an aristocrat, a po-
tentate, a feudal princess. The Coronation and
Assumption are painted again and again, but we

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INSTITUTE OF FINE ARTS

BENVENUTO DI GIOVANNI
ANCONA

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look in vain for a Nativity, an Adoration of the
Shepherds, or of the Magi, subjects dear to the
Umbrian and Florentine schools.

" To the Sienese the golden background was
always inseparable from a devotional picture,"
wrote Eio in his " Art Chretien" adding, " this
must not be attributed to the narrowness of their
views, but to the extreme orthodoxy of their taste."
The background then behind the Queen of Heaven
is of dazzling, unshaded gold, wonderful intricate
patternings wander over the jewelled robes, real
gems shine in the " rich fret of gold " on Madonna's
head, the Saints are gorgeous in surcoats " embroid-
ered like a mead," and the peacock-winged angels
are no whit less fine. The Sienese had given the
Byzantine Madonna life ; the naturalistic Florentines
made her human. They took the diadem from her
brows ; they despoiled her of her regal robes ; they
bade her rise and walk. In their hands, the be-
jewelled patrician became a proud young mother ;
the divine Child, the little jointed puppet who sat
stiffly blessing a contemplating universe, a human
baby who played and crowed and wondered at his
own dimples, while meek Saint Joseph, who in
Eavenna and Siena was banished altogether from
the celestial court, enjoyed a sort of honorary
Papaship, and helped the dear little attendant
angels, just out of the nursery, to mind the baby.
VOL. i. — 7 97

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In a word, the Holy Family became the Human
Family.

The Florentine treatment of secondary figures,
the introduction of portraits, of domestic animals,
man's humbler brothers in the Presepio ; the land-
scape backgrounds with their flower-enamelled
meadows and winding streams, were almost as
distasteful to the Sienese devotee as was the vul-
garization of the Madonna. There was no feeling
for out-door Nature in the gilded altar-piece ; there
a Midas touch had turned the flowers to goldsmith's
work, and stiffened the glistening robes on the rigid
limbs. Occasionally an artist made a timid effort
to acquire a freer manner ; but he was too weak to
persevere, and he soon returned to the type that
" extreme orthodoxy of taste," which was such
a different thing from " narrowness of views," had
fixed for him. Thus deprived of the influence of
antiquity, of the study of Nature, nothing remained
but the Byzantine tradition qualified by touches
of personality in unimportant details, and Sano di
Pietro was considered an innovator because he painted
round, instead of almond-shaped eyes.

And yet in these pictures, with their flaring gold
and ultramarine, their plaster crowns and applied
ornaments, there is an unmistakable decorative
quality. There are exquisite conventional designs
in the halos and orfrays, and in the heads a certain

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stiff grace and awkward tenderness which possess
undeniable charm, — a charm which appeals even to
those who do not believe that a painter's feeling is
always in the inverse ratio to his technical ability,
and that the absence of knowledge implies the
presence of sentiment.

With the dawn of the sixteenth century Pinturic-
chio, the Umbrian, and Bazzi, the Lombard, came
to Siena, and the artists and their patrons awoke
to a comprehension of the grand, free art of the
Eenaissance and " orthodoxy of taste," and golden
" Majesties " vanished forever into the limbo of
things that were.

99

AND what manner of men were they, the patrons for
whom these solemn altar-pieces were painted, for
whom Madonna must be glued fast to her throne,
and the divine Child stiffly displayed in his jewelled
robes like the Sacrament in its monstrance ?

What was the theory of life, the moral standard,
the ideal of these buyers of gilded triptychs ?

These are difficult questions to answer, and com-
plex as were the Sienese, it were easier to define
their dominant trait, i. e. intensity ; their overflowing
vitality wreaked itself on so many different forms of
effort, the old volcanic fire ran in the veins of sinner
and saint, now devouring and destroying, now rising
in a pure flame, but glowing alike in ascetic, patriot,
and sybarite. Austere as the brown town looked
on its bare hill-top, it was famed for delicate living,
and the novels of Illicini and Sermini, the poems
of Beccadelli and Folgore, depict an artificial and
corrupt society given over to pleasure-seeking, — a
society which, though elegant and luxurious, lacked
the principles of true refinement. It possessed
neither moderation, self-control, nor mental poise ;
under the veneer of courtesy and high-flown senti-
100

ments, were the untamed instincts, the puerile super-
stitions of ruder times, ready to break bounds at any
moment. The young knight who bore down all the
lances in the tourney, and looked a very Saint Mi-
chael as he knelt in the cathedral, would burn and
slay like a brutal mercenary, and the youth who
fasted until he fainted in Lent, and tore his bare
shoulders with the scourge, would serenade his
neighbor's wife at Easter.

The time not spent in praying and fighting was
passed in a joyous fashion ; the fingers that could grasp
the sword-hilt and count the chaplet, were cunning
at the lute strings. Pleasant sinning led naturally
to unpleasant repenting. After a season of long
prayers and short commons, ginger was hotter than
ever in the mouth, and they who had plunged deep-
est in the emotional excesses of penitence were fore-
most in brawl or revel. Nor was this surprising.
The exercise of certain forms of piety is apt to co-
exist with worldliness, and religious aspiration is not
necessarily associated with moral rectitude. The
rigid observance of formulae was no restriction on
impulse or desire, and the Sienese undoubtedly
repeated his morning prayer before going out to sack
his neighbor's house.

And he was not merely a fighter and a free-liver,
he was an exquisite as well. " The Sienese are as
vain as the French," wrote Dante in the thirteenth
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century, and though he was not distinguished for
the impartiality of his opinions, the criticism was
just. They loved magnificence in dress ; their
weakness for millinery left its impress on their art ;
they bought the rich brocades which sober Florence
manufactured but rarely wore, and no doubt were
wont to lie awake o' nights " carving the fashion of
a new doublet;" the embroiderers and goldsmiths
of Siena were famous throughout Italy, and we can
still see their work on the celestial dandies and
jewelled saints of the picture gallery. They had a
pretty taste for dainty trifles, and imported musical
instruments from Germany, pearls and perfumes
from Venice, and from France ivory caskets and
mirror covers, delicately carved. They curled their
hair, and shaped their eyebrows like Chaucer's Ali-
son and admired a delicate pallor. Nor were they
wanting in mental artifices. When not ferocious,
they were courteous ; it was indispensable that a
lady should be sentimental, and a little languor was
considered becoming to a lover.

They were fond of novels ; not of the cynical, cruel
Florentine tales, but of stories of gentler jests and
light loves tinged with dreamy voluptuousness, set in
familiar backgrounds of gardens and arras-hung
chambers. They had their ethical code too, and
agreed " that the three most eminent virtues of a
generous nature are courtesy, gratitude, and liber-
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ality." They had but a poor opinion of learning;
among all those Greek and Latin manuscripts for
which their neighbors, the Florentines, were paying
such prices, there was not a single treatise on hawk-
ing or dog breaking. The minute and laborious
scholarship of the time had as few charms for the
devotee, as for the ruffling gallant who was as intel-
lectually apathetic as he was physically active. The
learned churchman was a rara avis in Siena until
the day of ^Eneas Sylvius. Why study with the
philosophers when one could dream with the mys-
tic ? Why plod with the humanist when one could
rise heavenward on the wings of ecstasy with the
saint ?

They were not unaccomplished, however. They
could improvise poetry of a thin impressionist qual-
ity ; write stories, not well, but in an unprofessional,
fashionable manner ; they played and sang " like peo-
ple of quality ; " they could dispute or rather argue,
as we say now-a-days (though perhaps the older
term was the truer one), principally on questions of
sentiment, and sometimes even convince a lady that
reputation was an excellent substitute for honesty.
Pious observances and a fantastic code of honor did
not prevent people from enjoying themselves ; on the
contrary, these restraints lent piquancy to much that
a more liberal age has robbed of savor.

For a pictorial presentation of Sienese social life,

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we can turn to a poet of the thirteenth century,
Folgore da San Gimignano, who, though a native of
the little burg which still wears a civic crown of
mediaeval towers, was a true son of luxurious Siena.

In a series of twelve sonnets addressed to a gay
company of Sienese gentlemen, he described with
the minuteness characteristic of his age, the pastimes
and occupations of the nobles. Each of these son-
nets, named after the months of the year, highly
finished as the miniatures of a missal-border, is a bril-
liant and animated picture of contemporary life.

In them the joyous company, the " godereccia,
spendereccia, brigata " of Dante rides past us, a gay
procession so vividly depicted that we seem to see
the patternings of the embroidered surcoats, and
touch the garlands of spring flowers, and hear the
jingling of harness and a sound of psalteries as
the cavalcade canters by in the easy swing of the
sonnet.

All travellers have learned, sometimes to their
cost, how often it is festa in Italy, and the holidays
were twice as numerous in the old times when
whole weeks were devoted to merry-making. After
the privations and suffering of a campaign or a
siege, the good things of life were enjoyed with a
keener zest; the very uncertainty of human exist-
ence caused men to live in the present and eagerly
snatch at each passing joy, and never were earthly
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CAMPO SANTO

FRANCESCO TRAIN! ?

I GAliDENTI

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delights more appreciated than by those who at
any moment might be obliged to renounce them
forever.

The great Italian nobles kept open house, corti
bandite, at Christmas, Pentecost, Easter, mid-sum-
mer, harvest-time, and all through the month of
May. To these festivals came not only belted
knights with their squires and varlets, their horses,
hawks, and hounds, but noble ladies with their
pages and bower-maidens ; and every one who could
sing a song or tell a story, poet and musician,
buffoon and juggler, found a warm welcome, free
quarters, and generous largesse.

It was the busy idleness of these " house-parties "
which Folgore described in his year of sonnets.
For these past-masters in the art of delicate living,
every season had its special diversion, every day its
pleasure-party, every evening its revel. In January
the " joyous companions " were installed in com-
fortable chambers, warmed by roaring fires, and
lighted by many torches, where they shook the dice
or leaned over the chess-board; while for exercise
they snowballed the girls whom they met in their
walks. February found them hunting boar and wild
goat, returning at night to mulled wine and part-
songs before the kitchen fire. In March the fishing
season began ; the painted boats skimmed over the
lakes, and the larger craft were made ready for rough
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weather ; eels, lampreys, and sturgeon were caught,
and no priests nor friars were invited to eat them.
With April the scene shifted, for the Tuscan spring
had come, not coyly and timidly as though loath to
leave the lap of winter, but royally, like a sovereign
taking possession of the land. On the fine grass of
the pleasaunce the Provencal dance was formed ;
the ladies sauntered through the flowery ways of
blossoming orchards, or cantered on Spanish jennets
between budding hedges ; the air was filled with the
throbbing of the lute and the sound of young men's
voices, while serenades sung the spring nights to
sleep. May was a festal month when the girls
went a-maymg and youths met in the tourney.
The sonnet is as crowded as a wall-panel of Pin-
turicchio with detail and color, and is filled with
the stir of the joust. The polished shields and
shining helms glistened in the southern sunshine ;
the lists were gay with brilliant housings and man-
tles and pennants; there was shivering of lances,
splitting of shields, and the armed breasts and fore-
heads of the horses clashed together. Down from
balcony and casement, where the girls leaned out,
came a shower of garlands ; a flight of golden
oranges was tossed up to the assailants, and then
there followed much discourse of love, punctuated
with kisses on cheek and mouth.

In June the gay folk retired to a small town
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perched on a wooded hill, — a fantastic town like
those we see in Pinturicchio's frescoes of the
Library, gleaming white among thick-leaved trees,
a town watered by many fountains, where the
lawns were threaded by streamlets, and the pleasant
ways were all embowered with trees, orange, palm,
and lemon. In this true believer's paradise, the
time was passed in mutual courtesies, for here was
Love lord paramount. (Le gente m sian tutte amo-
rose.) July was spent in Siena, cooled by the moun-
tain breezes and protected against the heat by the
thick walls of the palaces, and August was passed in
the mountains. In September the shooting season
opened. The goshawk shook its jesses, and the
falcon rose into the still air; wild fowl were shot
and snared; the bowstrings twanged, the dogs
strained at their leashes, and the hunters made
jests that were ancient in Dante's day. The sonnet
is a vividly realized bit of mediaeval venerie, and
still faintly echoes the sound of the horn and the
thin tinkle of the falcon's bells. In October there
was visiting, hunting, and shooting, dancing in the
long autumn evenings, and over-much drinking of
wine new and old. Painy November sent them to
the baths of Petriola, and the last sonnet of the
series ends the year with more junketing and a bit
of heartless advice.

Of the beliefs and doubts that were troubling
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men's minds, of the great causes that were at work
in the thirteenth century, this singer of fashionable
frolics and mediaeval finery gives us no hint. He is
blind and deaf to the new ideas, the soul-stirring en-
thusiasms which filled the intellectual atmosphere
and manifested themselves in Protean forms ; which
burst into song in Dante, ripened into scientific
inquiry in Frederick II., and made wise laws and
planned mad crusades in Saint Louis.

Of the noble ideals, of the divine yearning
which inspired the " Iruitatione," of the love that
with Beatrice's poet became religion, of the religion
that with Saint Francis became love, there is no
sign in Folgore's sonnets. He is no full-throated
nightingale to celebrate such themes, but only a
little grasshopper drunk with honey dew, chirping
shrilly of clear skies and plenteous harvests. But
his epicureanism never degenerates into coarseness,
and although he is too fond of wine-bibbing and
good cheer, he is a true Italian in his intense sus-
ceptibility to beauty in all its forms. It is interest-
ing to note in this forerunner of the Eenaissance
the survival of the indomitable joyousness of an-
tiquity which had endured through all the storms
that swept over Italy. A passionate appreciation
of the delight of the eye and of the pride of life
is as strong in Folgore as it was in Ovid, as it
continued to be in Claudian.

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And yet the descendants of these sybarites, pleas-
ure seekers themselves, set an example of heroism
to Europe ; this luxurious folk, exquisitely suscep-
tible to pain, starved to death by thousands rather
than sacrifice its civic liberty. It was of these
coquettish, squeamish ladies that Monluc wrote,
" I would rather undertake to defend Siena with her
women than Rome with her men." And if we
would learn what human beings can endure for a
beloved cause we must read the story of the siege
of Siena. It is not a pleasant story; indeed it
would be an intolerable one were it not that the
chronicle of cruelty and wrong is also a record of
supreme self-sacrifice, of torture and agonizing death
bravely borne for the sake of an ideal. A natural
shrinking from painful and repulsive images would
prevent us from opening these hideous pages in the
city's archives were it not for the glory as well as
the anguish of the civic martyrdom which they
reveal.

109

VI

IT is difficult to understand this last scene in
Siena's civic tragedy without a glance at the events
which preceded it. By the middle of the sixteenth
century the long struggle of Frenchman and Spaniard
for supremacy in the peninsula had ended. Since
the victory of Pavia, Charles V. had won every
move, and the French king, remembering the prison
of Madrid, played his losing game half-heartedly
and by proxy. The emperor, with a ferocious, un-
paid army at his back, was the true master of the
situation. Since his alliance with Pope Clement
VII. and his coronation at Bologna (1530), Italy,
terrorized by foreign troops and stunned by repeated
sacks and massacres, had sunk into political bondage
under a foreign monarchy and intellectual thraldom
under an elective priesthood. Tyranny, temporal and
spiritual, had made a desolation and called it peace.
Venice, the only strong Italian power, had been
weakened and dismembered by the Holy Father's
League of Cambrai; Cosimo de' Medici, richest
and most powerful of Italian potentates, new-
made duke of rebellious Florence, was a moneyed
lackey who paid for the privilege of imperial
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service, and the rest of the states of Italy were
nominally governed by puppets moved by the
emperor.

Siena, who had followed her old Ghibelline policy
and prostrated herself before Charles V., fared no
better than the other Italian towns.

In 1551 she had been for twenty-one years
under the yoke of the emperor, who had ruled, or
rather oppressed, the city by a patrician Balia backed
by a Spanish garrison. Again and again the burgh-
ers, after sending complaints and embassies to the
emperor, had risen against these petty despots, and
as often Cosimo de' Medici had terrified them into
submission again. Finally the erection of a citadel
by imperial order, to cow the city gave the death-
blow to Sienese Ghibellinism, and in despair the
old republic signed a treaty with Henry II. of
France.

In 1551 war broke out in Italy between the
French king and Charles V. Hostilities had just
begun when two illustrious Sienese exiles, Piccolo-
mini and Amerighi, at the head of three thousand
insurgents, appeared before the gates of Siena. The
brown ramparts were crowded with the burghers
who had braved the lance-blows of the Spanish
guards to welcome their countrymen. The leaders,
riding close under the walls, heedless of the Span-
ish fire, called on them to rise against their tyrants
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in the name of France and of liberty. Invoked by
these mighty names (potent to conjure with in
many an age and country) the quenchless spirit of
the old republic awoke again; the people rose as
one man and, unarmed as they were, stormed the
gates, which they opened to their countrymen.
Gathering force at every step, the wave of revolt
swept into the great market-place, driving the Spanish
soldiers before it, rushed through the narrow streets,
and surged around the gaunt Dominican convent
above Fonte Branda, where the foreign troops were
quartered. After much hard fighting the Spaniards
gave way and retreated in good order to the citadel,
and the Sienese were their own masters once
more (1552).

Rejoicings had not ceased when Louis de Lansac,
French ambassador at Rome, arrived in Siena ac-
companied by Cardinal Farnese and Niccolo Orsini.
To them the Spaniards, too proud to yield to mere
Italian burgesses, capitulated, and evacuated the
town (August, 1552), leaving the citadel to be de-
stroyed. Then occurred one of those dramatic epi-
sodes in which the history of the commonwealth
was so rich. As we read, the heroic figures detach
themselves from the yellowed pages and pass before
us in solemn procession. For to these passionate
patriots this demolition did not mean only the
destruction of a foreign stronghold, — it was the
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renunciation of a national ideal, of the emperor
whom Siena had loved and served for centuries.
Therefore this significant act was accomplished with
due ceremony. The captain of the people, the mag-
istrates and clergy, the nobles and burghers, crowned
with olive, marched under the national standard to
the citadel, and after a formal delivery of the keys
the trumpets sounded the charge ; from every church
tower rolled the answering thunder of the bells ;
the knights unbuckled their corselets, the monks
tucked up their gowns, the magistrates stripped off
their stately lucchi, seized pick and shovel, and with
deafening shouts of " France " and " Liberty," which
silenced the trumpets and made the bells swing
soundless in their towers, the demolition began.
" In one hour, more of the fortress on the side of
the city was destroyed than could have been re-
built in four months." In such joyous fashion
ended the first procession of the siege of Siena.
There were two more such " progresses " later, less
triumphal, perhaps, but more glorious.

For a time the palmy days of the old republic
seemed to have returned. Charles V.'s armies failed
to take Montalcino ; Cosimo, always on the winning
side, signed a treaty with Siena in which he prom-
ised to remain neutral, and the Due de Tormes
arrived with troops and military stores from France.
The emperor, angry with Cosimo and irritated by
VOL. i. — 8 113

ITALIAN CITIES

his own failure before Metz, sent a curt order to
disband the troops, " as the Duke of Florence was
determined to leave the French in Siena."

But the Duke of Florence wanted neither French-
men nor Spaniards in the city he coveted. A true
Medici, traitor to the heart's core, hoping for the
jackal's reward when the lion was glutted, he had
been playing a double game; Charles V.'s resent-
ment and the arrival of Piero Strozzi as lieutenant
of the King of France in Siena forced him to
make his first real move.

Piero Strozzi's father had been treacherously mur-
dered by Cosimo, Piero's own fortune had been
confiscated, and a price had been set upon his head.
"For revenge he was willing to move heaven and
earth, and even hell itself." Eich, high in the favor
of the Queen of France, Cosimo's own cousin ; an
able general fresh from the victory of Metz; re-
spected and admired in Florence, he was a for-
midable adversary to be met at once.

While reassuring the Sienese, Cosimo secretly
pledged himself to Charles V. to drive the French
from Siena with the help of the emperor's German
and Spanish troops. In concert with the Marquis
of Marignano he planned to enter the Maremma
and the Val-di-Chiana and to capture the fort out-
side the Camollia gate simultaneously. The first two
enterprises failed, but Marignano took the Palazzo

SIENA

del Diavolo and the fortress (1554), as the Sienese,
completely duped by Cosimo, were quite unpre-
pared for resistance. Piero Strozzi, who had been
fortifying in the Maremma, hurried back, and the
Camollia gate was strengthened with incredible
rapidity by the united labor of men, women, and
children.

The Sienese ladies turned this toil into a pageant,
to the great admiration of a certain French gentle-
man, who fortunately has left a detailed account of
the whole affair. This "Vicornte de Bourdeille,
Abbe de Brantosme et d'Andre*," then serving in
Siena, who was as good a judge of a gown as of
a stockade, and knew the points of a fine woman
as well as the range of his own arquebuse, saw
" on Saint Anthony's day in the month of January
three bands of Amazons appear at the Campo."
Each band was a thousand strong (toutes lelles,
vertueuses et Jionnestes dames], with its own banner,
colors, device, and noble leader; all were magnifi-
cently habited in violet, crimson, and white a la
Nympliale, the long cotes caught up to show
the steel greaves; the helmets crushing the curls
beneath them in a charming travesty of the grim
men-at-arms. Each lady carried a fascine on her
shoulder, " and all resolute to live or die for
liberty," they marched to the fort which was ris-
ing, course on course, under the enemy's guns and
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fell to work with a will; the whole city followed
them, and the walls rose as if by enchantment.
When the sun sank they re-formed in the Campo
and, ranged in battle order, sang a hymn to Siena's
sovereign Lady ; then, after they had every one knelt
a moment before that smiling Madonna which Bazzi
set against the rough wall of the old palace and re-
ceived the cardinal's blessing, " each one went to his
home resolved to do better in the future."

Meanwhile, in spite of hymns and blessings and
Amazons, Marignano, Cosimo's general, had com-
pletely blockaded the town, and Cosimo, throwing
off the mask, had sent twenty-five thousand men
into the field, had set a price of ten thousand
ducats on Strozzi's head, and declared his intention
of putting every Florentine taken in arms to death.

The war soon began to assume a ferocious charac-
ter owing to the inhuman orders sent from Florence
and executed to the letter by Marignano. Strozzi,
against his will, was obliged to make reprisals. One of
them is characteristic: a popular preacher was em-
ployed by the Sienese to pour oil on the flame
of hatred by reviling Cosimo in his sermons.

By March (1554) the country around the town
had become an arid desert; villa and farmhouse,
orchard and cornfield, had disappeared ; every mill
and aqueduct had been destroyed, and the Sienese,
penned in the city, had to look on hopelessly while
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the brave peasants who attempted to supply them
with food were tortured and hung by Marignano's
Spanish and German soldiers. Obsolete cruelties
were practised, and the episodes of the siege recall
the military atrocities of the fourteenth century.
But the perpetrators of these archaic barbarities,
the imperial veterans who had learned their hideous
lessons too well in the sacks of Rome and of Prato,
were met by spirits as fierce and resolute as their
own.

The desperate resistance which they encountered
everywhere culminated in that of the old peasant
woman who, after the capture of Turrita by Marig-
nano, persisted in shrieking " Lupa ! Lupa ! " (the war-
cry of Siena), instead of " Duca ! " (that of Florence).
Blows and kicks and sword-cuts could not silence
her ; half-mad with insults and tortures, she would
not desist, and when the soldiers, infuriated by the
resistance of so weak a thing, stripped, gagged, and
crucified her, nailing her like a hawk to the city
gate, every muscle of the agonized face which glared
between the wefts of her white hair showed that she
was still struggling to scream " Lupa ! Lupa ! " to her
tormentors. Indeed, it seemed as if the spirit of
the Eoman wolf on their standard had inspired the
Sienese ; as Marignano, egged on by Cosimo, safe in
the fortress-like palace of Florence, increased his
cruelties, the Sienese redoubled their heroism. The
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ITALIAN CITIES

inhabitants of the castelli, or walled towns, were
threatened with death if they resisted after the first
discharge of the besieger's artillery, but each tiny
burg, its walls manned by half a dozen combatants,
dared to withstand Cosimo's veterans. The citadel
of Asinalunga was defended by a Koman captain,
aided by four cross-bowmen and as many peasants,
against the best troops of Germany and Spain. He
was summoned and offered good terms, which he
refused. When finally forced to surrender, he was
brought to the Florentine general, De' Nobili, a
nephew of Julius III., who asked him what had
induced him to attempt a defence against an army.
His answer was worthy of record : " I remembered
the brave deeds of the Romans, and being a Eoman,
with arms in my hand, I wished to fight as became
a Roman." This calm reply sent the general into
a rage : " And like a Roman thou shalt die ! " he
yelled, cutting the prisoner over the head with his
sword. The soldiers finished the sorry work, and in
a few moments all that was left of him who had
remembered the Romans was thrown into the moat
to fatten the glutted crows, — the only living things
which were full-fed during the siege of Siena.

Although a pope's nephew generally fell below the
ethical standard of his age, this was a typical in-
stance of Cosimo's military methods and what scant
mercy the Sienese had to expect from his lieutenants.

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The history of this political war forms a melancholy
commentary on the brilliant civilization of the
Eenaissance ; in an age of royal knights and fashion-
able chivalry, of pious observances and religious
reformation, of courtly manners and exquisite refine-
ment, the commonest notion of fair play and the
admiration which courage, even in an opponent, com-
mands were conspicuously absent ; as for the milder
virtues of compassion for the conquered, or pity for
the sufferings of the enemy, if they existed at all,
they had no appreciable effect on human action.
Worst of all, these atrocities were ineffectual ; they
did not strike terror, and in each captured town a
new tragedy was enacted.

Meanwhile, the besieged were bearing their priva-
tions gallantly with that smiling fortitude which is
the Latin substitute for our sterner-lipped Northern
endurance. Provisions were scarce and dear, but the
poor were fed at the doors of the great houses. Pri-
vate fortunes were sacrificed to public necessities.
Games were celebrated, holidays kept, and if hunger
pinched, the jewelled girdles were drawn closer,
and the lips and cheeks that paled with fasting were
touched with those tiny red balls brought from the
Levant for Beauty's use in happier times, a patriotic
coquetry which Saint Bernardino himself would have
forgiven. And then there was daily comfort for high
hearts, if not for empty stomachs, in the diurnal
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ITALIAN CITIES

visit to the ramparts to jeer at Marignano's unsuc-
cessful efforts to change the siege into an assault;
and individual patriotism was much stimulated by
this direct personal contact with the enemy, — an en-
emy who was not a vague, dark mass under a cloud
of smoke several miles away, but a real, visible oppo-
nent, whose cross-bow twanged in the ear, whose
scaling-ladder rasped the stones at one's elbow ; so
near that one could count the rivets in his armor,
could see the blood gush from his wounds, could
hear his taunts and answer them with curses. As
artillery was still undeveloped and man was yet a
creature of primitive impulses, the rage of battle, the
gaudium certaminis, was still his.

News good and bad broke through Marignano's
lines to the besieged; money came as well over
the harried country from Paris, Lyons, Venice, and
Ancona, where banished patriots and generous sym-
pathizers had brought their gold or copper to the
market-place for the cause of Italian freedom, and the
rich Florentine exiles, Altoviti, Medici, and Soderini,
undeterred by the certain confiscation of their prop-
erty by Cosimo, gave their purses and their swords
to the Sienese.

But the promised aid from France was slow in
coming. Montmorenci, always opposed to the Ital-
ian war, was at the king's ear, and suspense had be-
come apprehension when a panting and dusty peasant
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brought tidings of a French squadron at Port' Ercole
with three thousand Grisons on board.

Cheered by the news, Piero Strozzi made a bold
move on Pontedera, by which he hoped to call Ma-
rignano away from Siena, and by joining the Grisons
and another French army from Mirandola to carry
the war into Florentine territory. As the French did
not join him the manoeuvre partially failed, but Siena
had a respite of two weeks, and Strozzi revictualled
his army from the French fleet in the Maremma
before he returned to Siena with its new French
governor, Monluc.

Blaise de Monluc has told the story of the siege
and his part in it in " Commentaries " which might
have been written with the point of his own sword ;
in these sharp, trenchant sentences, so different from
the ample, flowing periods of Brantome, the death
agony of the republic is told with a soldier's sim-
plicity. The man as he reveals himself in his work
was a typical Frenchman of the sixteenth century,
sagacious, honest, loyal, and cruel. A preux cheva-
lier at Siena, a ferocious bigot in France, his name,
which shines in Italian annals, is written in fire and
blood in the history of Protestantism.

While Siena was left under the care of this ruth-
less persecutor of Huguenots, Marignano after a sharp
skirmish in which he was much distressed had de-
camped, followed by Strozzi. Strozzi's campaigns
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ITALIAN CITIES

belong to the history of Italy ; only their results can
be considered here, and their effect on the besieged.
On August 3 (1554), terrible news came to Siena:
a great battle had been fought the day before
(August 2) at Marciano ; Strozzi had been defeated,
had lost twelve thousand soldiers, and with a broken
remnant of his cavalry had fled to Montalcino. A
few days later this report was verified by the reap-
pearance of Marignano and the renewal of the
blockade.

And now Siena began to starve in earnest: the
population of the town sank from thirty thousand
to ten thousand souls, and fifty thousand peasants
perished during this siege of fifteen months. Can
any description of individual suffering equal the
eloquence of these figures ? " At the close of the
war few of the old inhabitants remained," wrote
Adriani, and the fertile Maremma became a fever-
haunted waste. Cosimo had decreed pain of death
against any one who should bring or send provisions
to the starving city, but the heroic peasants daily
brought their scanty stores of oil and corn to relieve
her ; they were killed by hundreds, hung at the doors
of their blackened cottages, spitted on the roofs of the
rifled granges, or, worst fate of all, reserved for those
floating hells of stripes and chains and galls, the
Grand Duke's galleys. For the beloved city no
sacrifice was too great, no torment unendurable;
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SIENA

undeterred by death or mutilation they served her,
and when the town starved, it was because the peas-
ants themselves were dead of hunger. In " redeemed "
Italy, where monuments are rising fast to commem-
orate her heroes, no one celebrates these name-
less martyrs, no statue or tablet tells the story of
those who, famishing themselves, died to feed the
hungry.

Meanwhile, so high couraged were the burghers,
that though famine — not scarcity nor privation, but
actual famine — was in their streets, there was no
question of capitulation ; encouraged by Monluc, by
the French victories in Piedmont, and by the unfor-
tunate but indomitable Piero Strozzi, the Sienese
still hoped and endured. "As God lives, not one
man young or old stayed at home, all took arms res-
olute to eat their children before they would yield,"
wrote Monluc.

Again and again one of these starved soldiers
would fall lifeless out of the ranks or a sentry
would faint at his post, and daughter or sister would
put on his armor and keep his watch on the bastion.
Shadows that once were men plucked up the grass
between the cracks in the pavements and ate it;
gnawed at the raw hides in the tanners' quarter
like famished curs, and maddened with hunger in-
vaded the churches, tore down and devoured the
great altar candles, drank the oil from the lamps
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which hung before the shrines of the impassive
saints, those saints so deaf to prayers, so blind to
anguish.

It was not until they had grown wolfish from the
famine-pinch that the Sienese resolved on that ter-
rible sacrifice which in earlier days had so often
been made by the old commonwealths, the ejection
of the useless mouths.

Le bocche inutili were those who exhausted the
supplies and rendered no military service, who ate
and could not fight ; the beggars who in prosperous
times haunted the church doors and the monastery
gates, and by receiving their charities helped rich
folk to gain heaven ; the artisans of the poorer sort
and their families; the old and infirm poor; the
cripples and the physically afflicted ; the peddlers ;
the street singers, all those who gained a precarious
livelihood from day to day. These poor, emaciated
wretches were to be thrust out of the gates to die
between the walls and the enemy's camp.

Perhaps nothing in history is a plainer proof of
the immense difference which existed between the
man of the Renaissance and ourselves than the fact
that such a measure was passed and executed by
good citizens, and was considered by them to be not
only justifiable, but meritorious, a sacrifice on the
altar of civic liberty. But the sight which followed
it must have wrung the stoutest heart. To describe

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it adequately one would need the soul and the pen
of Dante's self.

These unfortunate creatures had lived in suspense
ever since the beginning of the scarcity. Hoping to
he forgotten, they had hidden themselves in holes
and corners until famine had forced them into the
streets again, where they starved publicly in hourly
apprehension of their fate. The order was not exe-
cuted without resistance, such resistance as age and
fear and weakness could make when driven to de-
spair. The phantoms struggled with the soldiers;
the cripples struck feebly at the lances with their
crutches ; the women, many of them with skeleton
babies in their lean arms, fought like wild-cats,
biting, scratching, and clinging with bleeding nails
to the house-walls, the doors, even to the stones of
the streets ; some of the older folk wrapping their
rags around them lay stubbornly down on the pave-
ment and were crushed or beaten to death by the
men-at-arms; some clung about the soldiers' knees
and were kicked along by the iron sollerets ; others
tried to escape and were hunted back again ; many
fell from weakness and were dragged along bruised
and bleeding ; the stronger craftsmen, rolling their
tatters about their lank arms, tried to fend off the
sword-strokes ; one or two stupefied by terror walked
on straight before them, staring with unseeing eyes
and groaning aloud ; while others besought the mercy
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of every passer-by, or begged for a few minutes' grace
to say a prayer before a shrine. From all this
wretchedness an awful clamor rose : shrieks for pity ;
curses in voices faint with hunger or hoarse with
fear ; blasphemies of all that man holds holy ; prayers
to every saint in heaven; screams of pain; heart-
shaking sobs; the dull thud of lance-blows on
meagre shoulders; yells inarticulate and inhuman
like the cries of tortured animals, and now and again
the loud mocking laugh of some miserable creature
crazed with fright.

Finally, in spite of their impotent resistance, the
work was done. When the last clutching, shrieking
wretch had been thrust through the postern and the
gate closed, came the turn of Marignano's soldiers.
Though there was no plunder to be had, yet for men
who had been diverted with autos da fc and Indian-
hunts there was sport left in this poor flesh which
could still suffer ; the stronger men were tortured by
past-masters in the art of torment until they had
told all that passed in the city and were then hung ;
the weaker and less fortunate were driven from town
to camp, from camp to town, hunted down by the
Spaniards and Sienese alike, and tossed to and fro
like scum on the waves until they perished in the
filth of the moat.

While Siena was afflicted with this " horrid spec-
tacle for humanity," as Galluzzi writing in milder
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SIENA

times termed it, there came a message from Cosimo,
the impresario of such spectacles. He assured the
government that he did not war against the liberties
of the Sienese, but only required them to place them-
selves under the emperor's protection. Charles V.
had declared Siena forfeited by rebellion to the im-
perial crown, and Cosimo offered himself as mediator
between the republic and the emperor. Henry II.
had given Siena permission to treat, but it was not
until March (1555), when all hope was dead and
when not one blade of grass remained uneaten in the
streets, that the intrepid city yielded ; the first am-
bassadors sent to Cosimo were still so high-hearted
that they proposed their impossible conditions as
boldly as though Siena were victualled for a twelve-
month, and were sent back by Cosimo. A fortnight
later eight others appeared in Florence, and on the
second of April the treaty, or rather the death-warrant
of the republic, was signed. The terms sounded well :
Siena was to remain free, but the emperor would
appoint twenty of the governing Balia and a garrison
would be admitted ; no citadel was to be built with-
out the consent of the people ; the forts thrown up
by Marignano around Siena should be demolished ;
a general amnesty (except for rebels) proclaimed;
the inhabitants could emigrate or remain in the city
as they chose, and the French should be allowed to
retire with flying colors.

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On the twenty-first of April (1555) the last pro-
cession of the siege was formed. On the harried
space around the walls, not long ago a smiling para-
dise of villas and gardens and thrifty farms and
orchards, Marignano's army was stationed to witness
the evacuation of Siena. Two rows of veterans in
complete armor were drawn up in double ranks out-
side the Eoman gate at which for nearly two years
they had battered in vain. In dead silence the herse
fell, and through the lane of steel marched six Gascon
battalions and four Italian columns, with Monluc
at their head. Mere tattered spectres they were,
their clothes in rags, their ranks sadly thinned,
but their arms were bright and the unconquered
white banner floated over the heads which were
still held high. Behind them came the self-exiled
Sienese who had learned from the fate of Florence
how a Medici kept faith with misfortune. Two
hundred and fifty noble houses and three hundred
and forty-five plebeian families preferring exile to
slavery, cast in their fortunes with the French and
went with the troops to Montalcino.

" I had seen," wrote Monluc, " a lamentable spec-
tacle when the useless mouths were ejected from
the city ; but I beheld more than equal misery in
the departure of those unhappy ones who left Siena
with us and in those who remained. Never in my
life did I behold so painful a parting, and though

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our soldiers had suffered every hardship, still this
separation afflicted them, and the more because they
were unable to preserve the public liberty. As for
me I suffered more ; I could not see this calamity
without tears, and sorrowing deeply for this people
which had shown itself so ardent in the preserva-
tion of its freedom."

This is the testimony of a connoisseur in misery,
and in truth it must have been a sorrowful sight
which moved even the pitiless to pity, for, touched
by the aspect of this homeless and friendless folk,
the Spanish soldiers brought their own bread and
distributed it to them as they passed, and Marignano
gave Monluc a scanty supply of provisions. But
these succors came too late, and the route across a
country so wasted that " from Montalcino to Siena,
from Siena to Florence, not a living spirit moved
upon the face of the land," was marked by the
bones of those who fell and died of hunger. And
with those patriots who could not bear to see the
enslavement of their country the spirit of civic
liberty departed from Siena.

VOL. r. — 9 129

VII

THAT admirers of minute designs and florid detail
could appreciate grandeur as well, no one can doubt
who has seen the plans of the Sienese cathedral
Its history is one of a grand result, and of far
grander, though thwarted endeavor, and it is hard
to realize to-day that the church as it stands is but
a fragment, the transept only, of what Siena willed.
From the state of the existing works no one can
doubt that the brave little republic would have
finished it had she not met an enemy before whom
the sword of Monteaperto was useless. The plague
of 1348 stalked across Tuscany, and the chill of
thirty thousand Sienese graves numbed the hand
of master and workmen; sweeping away the archi-
tect who planned, the masons who built, the
magistrates who ordered, it left but the yellowed
parchment in the Archivio which conferred upon
Maestro Lorenzo Maitani the superintendence of
the works.

The fa$ade of the present church is amazing in
its richness, undoubtedly possesses some grand and
much lovely detail, and is as undoubtedly sugges-
tive, with its white marble ornaments upon a pink
marble ground, of a huge, sugared cake. It is im-
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INTERIOR OF THE DUOMO

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possible to look at this restored whiteness with the
sun upon it ; the dazzled eyes close involuntarily
and one sees in retrospect the great, gray church
front at Eheims, or the solemn facade of Notre
Dame de Paris. It is like remembering an organ
burst of Handel after hearing the florid roulades of
the mass within the cathedral.

The interior is rich in color and fine in effect, but
the Northerner is painfully impressed by the black
and white horizontal stripes which, running from
vaulting to pavement, seem to blur and confuse the
vision, and the closely set bars of the piers are posi-
tively irritating. In the hexagonal lantern, how-
ever, they are less offensive than elsewhere, because
the fan-like radiation of the bars above the great
gilded statues breaks up the horizontal effect. The
decoration of the stone-work is not happy ; the use of
cold red and cold blue with gilt bosses in relief does
much to vulgarize, and there is constant sally in small
masses which belittles the general effect. It is
evident that the Sienese tendency to floridity is
answerable for much of this, and that having added
some piece of big and bad decoration, the cornice of
papal heads, for instance, they felt forced to do away
with it or continue it throughout.

But this fault and many others are forgotten when
we examine the detail with which later men have
filled the church. Other Italian cathedrals pos-
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sess art-objects of a higher order ; perhaps no other
one is so rich in these treasures. The great masters
are disappointing here. Eaphael, as the co-laborer
of Pinturicchio, is dainty, rather than great, and
Michelangelo passes unnoticed in the huge and
coldly elaborate altar-front of the Piccolomini. But
Marrina, with his doors of the library ; Barili, with
his marvellous casing of the choir-stalls ; Beccafumi,
with his bronze and niello, — these are the artists
whom one wonders at; these wood-carvers and
bronze-founders, creators of the microcosmic detail
of the Eenaissance which had at last burst triumph-
antly into Siena. This treasure is cumulative, as
we walk eastward from the main door, where the
pillars are a maze of scroll-work in deepest cutting,
and by the time we reach the choir the head fairly
swims with the play of light and color. We wan-
der from point to point, we finger and caress the
lustrous stalls of Barili, and turn with a kind of
confusion of vision from panel to panel ; above our
heads the tabernacle of Vecchietta, the lamp-bearing
angels of Beccafumi, make spots of bituminous color,
with glittering high-lights, strangely emphasizing
their modelling ; from these youths, who might be
pages to some Koman prefect, the eye travels up-
ward still farther, along the golden convolutions of
the heavily stuccoed pilasters to the huge, gilded
cherubs' heads that frame the eastern rose.
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Beneath the feet is labyrinth, that pictured pave-
ment which, so bad in principle, is yet so splendid in
reality. It is useless to theorize about its inappro-
priate ornament ; we follow its mazes, every one of us,
with that clue of Ariadne, the instinctive and natural
delight in form wedded to story which is in us all, from
the gaping peasant of Valdichiana to Dante studying
the pavement of Purgatory, and Godfrey forgetting
crown and crusade when once the pictured poems of
the windows and the walls had met his eyes.

One cannot sufficiently praise the beauty of this
niello work, which, wrought by Federighi and Bec-
cafumi, and worn by the feet of three centuries,
has been ably restored by Maccari and Franchi.
Here we found the old block-pictures of earliest
printed books, enlarged a thousand-fold, stretching
from pillar to pillar in their black and white marble.
Fortitude, Justice, and Prudence in their tondi,
austerely decorative in their simple lines ; divided
battle-pieces, where the knights had pillaged half
their armor from the tents of Scipio, and half from
the camp of Fornovo ; sieges where antique profiles
looked from the mediaeval sallets ; decorative, thick-
leaved trees; veritable tapestries in stone, with
dangling Absalom or conquering David ; the seven
ages of man ; all framed by lovely conventional
borders and friezes, medallions and patternrngs, one
more pleasing than the other.
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And, as if this were not enough, suddenly, at the
intersection of nave and transept, the glorious
pulpit of Niccola Pisano rises before one, a nude
antique athlete among these mediaeval princes.

On the left is the Piccolomini Library with its
gorgeous antiphonals and its frescoes. As we enter
the sculptured doors, it seems as though we had
opened a huge missal, and that the gold and ultra-
marine, the flat landscape, the ill-drawn but richly
costumed figures, and the floriated borders of one
of the great choir-books which line the room, had,
in some mysterious way, been transferred to its
walls.

It is incredible that these frescoes are four hundred
years old. Surely Pinturicchio came down from
his scaffoldings but yesterday. This is how the
hardly dried plaster must have looked to pope and
cardinals and princes when the boards were re-
moved, and when the very figures on these walls
— smart youths in tights and slashes, bright-robed
scholars, ecclesiastics caped in ermine, ladies with
long braids bound in nets of silk, crowded to see
themselves embalmed in tempera for curious after-
centuries to gaze upon.

The first four panels are the most charming ; they

are a little hard, a little spotty, a little vulgarized

by the applied ornaments of gilded plaster in high

relief, and yet what charm there is in the pensive,

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Dl'OMO

PIETRO DEL MINELLA

THE DEATH OF ABSALOM

SIENA

young faces, in the strange piled-up backgrounds,
and what variety and elegance in the costumes.

The subject is a moral tale of the Eenaissance :
how a good little boy, by minding his book and
obeying his pastors and masters, became a great
scholar, a cardinal, and finally a pope. And to those
who know the life of this saintly humanist, who was
also a passionate lover of beauty and the literary
forerunner of The'ophile Gautier and Taine, it is
pleasant to find this idyllic memorial of him in his
native town. The whole Library, too, is interesting
as an example of homogeneous decoration ; the
wainscoting is enriched with the antiphonals, the
vaultings shine with the grotesques of John of
Udine ; at one end of the room are the Piccolomini
shields all a-row under the red hats, while just above
the doorway Quercia has placed his muscular, nude
Adam and Eve, whom the angel is very properly
ejecting from the presence of all these finely dressed
folk, and whom we find again on Fonte Gaia, where
they are more at home.

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vm

As a homogeneous and characteristic decoration im-
portant in its extent and absolutely representative
of its time, Pinturicchio's series of subjects upon the
walls and ceiling of the Libreria ranks among the
most notable in Italy. The first impression derived
from it is that of its freshness, its remarkable preser-
vation ; the second is that of its gayety, its richness,
its ever fertile, tireless fancy ; the third is that of
its completeness, its homogeneity. These last two
impressions are altogether favorable, but the critic in
asking himself with some surprise how the first
impression of phenomenal preservation has obtained
soon realizes that it is the result of the sacrifice of
certain distinctly artistic qualities. Such wonder-
ful preservation, although immensely effective, does
not necessarily infer in this effectiveness the pres-
ence of those qualities which in a frescante may be
accounted as even technically the highest. The lib-
eral retouching a secco, that is to say, the repaint-
ing (by Pinturicchio) with dry color after the first
true fresco had been absorbed by the plaster, has
given to the work an astonishing brightness and an
occasional regilding of the parts originally touched

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with gold, has added to this brightness, until some
of these figures appear to have been painted only yes-
terday. But it must be understood that for the sake
of this brightness Pinturicchio sacrificed transparency
and harmony. The a secco retouching produces an
opacity of color wherever it is used ; in a word, the
painter has sacrificed true richness of color to that
factitious richness which is only brilliancy of surface.
The impression afforded by the Sienese Library, which
is genuine and abiding, is that of decorative complete-
ness, of homogeneousness, and of a certain splendid
gayety.

The secular impression is, above all, surprising,
as one passes through the doorway which opens directly
from the cathedral into the Library. The Duomo of
Siena, in spite of its nobility and beauty, is too
sumptuous, too much of a museum, to be accounted
among the most solemn of shrines ; but it is solemn
indeed if compared with its neighbor, the Library,
which stands at its side, and indeed almost within
it, like a pretty acolyte at the elbow of some gor-
geously robed archbishop. Here the Eenaissance
has full play in the carved pilasters, in the scroll-
work of the vaulting, and even in the stained glass,
and here M. Miintz, in criticising Pinturicchio, may
justifiably use his clever quotation of the tombal
inscription to the child who had danced for the
Eomans twelve hundred years before, " saltamt et
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placuit" But the painter, though no stylist, is a
true decorator in the abundance of his cheerful
motives, in his choice of entertaining material, and
the realization of a most picturesque effect ; by right
of all this, placuit truly, but by right of it also, he
pleases still, and will always please. He is no
dramatist, but he is a delightful story-teller, and, like
the mediaeval singers of interminable romance, he
rambles far afield, and often loses the thread of his
narrative in a labyrinth of episodes. But as the eye
wanders with a certain pleased curiosity from a jew-
elled caparison to a quaintly slashed jerkin ; from
a youthful, wistful face to a white castellated town
half hidden in sombre verdure, we pardon this wealth
of detail. The lovely adolescents, with their vague
wide-eyed glance and- their dreamy, distant smile ;
the sumptuous yet exquisite costumes ; above all,
the sense of inexhaustible, facile invention, blind
us at first to the defects in the drawing, and to the
isolation of the painted personages who, each one
of them, seems to be leading a separate existence
of his own, and has little or no relation to the other
figures in the same composition.

And not only the figures, but the groups also, are
isolated from each other, making a sort of open-
work pattern agreeable in general lines, nevertheless
too thin and lace-like to adequately represent such
dignified and balanced arrangement as the subjects
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INTERIOR OF PICCOLOMINI LIBRARY

SIENA

required: stately subjects, — royal marriages, pro-
cessions, councils. Many masters of the fifteenth
century cannot avoid confusion in their large com-
positions, but their masses, if awkwardly composed,
usually continue to be masses. Pinturicchio's groups
break up into little knots of people who stand in
somewhat papery silhouette against the background,
and in artists' phrase, his composition is often full of
holes. As for his draughtsmanship, he could draw on
occasion excellently, — witness the faces in his fresco
of the Sistine Chapel ; but he did not often rise to such
occasion ; perhaps because he was too hurried, or per-
haps because he did not care. At all events, whether
hurried or indifferent, he was exceptionally canny in
his relations with his patrons. He knew the influ-
ence of bright gold iipon both the clerical and the
laic imagination, the effect of the glitter of a gilded
surface in relief. " Ghirlandajo," says Vasari, " did
away in a great measure with those flourishes and
scrolls formed with gypsum on bole and gold, which
were better suited to the decoration of tapestry or
hangings than to the paintings of good masters."

If Pinturicchio had heard this criticism, he would
have smiled, ordered more gold and ultramarine,
and set his apprentices to kneading more gypsum.
He frankly substituted this material richness for
hard thinking, and, instead of giving careful drawing
to his figures, he was satisfied with that valuable
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decorative factor, a handsome general pattern. He
knew well how to spare his labor and so apportion
it that expenditure of time and thought should be
in economic relation to his result.

In giving to Pinturicchio his place in the history
of Italian art, the substitution of a rich surface for
the intellectual treatment which goes deeper, of
graceful pattern for a manipulation making greater
demands upon draughtsman and colorist, is the
most notable phenomenon to be considered.

This is because a mode of procedure common
within certain limitations to nearly all quattrocento
masters was pushed farthest by Pinturicchio, who,
just when gilded ornament in relief was to pass away
from all great mural painting, gave it a kind of
apotheosis in the Borgia apartments of the Vatican.
Some consideration of these famous apartments is
necessary to any real understanding of the painter's
methods, since he there gave them their fullest ap-
plication, using a tonality differing wholly from that
of the Libreria, and thereby rendering a study of
the latter all the more interesting.

On the walls of the Torre Borgia we at once
recognize the economic relation of parts; in the
hall of the " Lives of the Saints," for instance, the
large mural subjects are fairly well drawn and
grouped ; but when he came to the divisions of the
vaulting above, the painter no longer troubled

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self at all about execution, but set in the middle of
his space some handsome pattern, an sediculus, a
throne, or what not, modelled in relief in that gyp-
sum which Vasari condemned, and which lastly was
brightly gilded. On either side of the central pat-
tern he placed little men or women kneeling, climb-
ing, holding scrolls, all utterly weak in drawing,
weak even in the detail of their silhouette, but excel-
lent in their general pattern. Thus the artist, with
but little expenditure of the labor and thought which
he furnished, lavished the gold and ultramarine
which the Pope furnished, and obtained with the
minimum of personal output great richness, indeed
splendor, of result. Contrast all this with the meth-
ods of Eaphael as master-workman of the Vatican
loggie ; there his apprentices executed, even in the
darkest corners, in convolutions of tiniest scrolls
passing out of sight in a spandrel point behind some
jutting moulding, little figures which recalled, if ever
so roughly, the style and amplitude of the master.

The equivalent figures of Pinturicchio are starved
and pinched, poor little affairs with no reserve force
behind them, but in the general economy of a
decoration they, with much less of output, served
their purpose as well as the figurines which Raphael
inspired and his pupils drew, served it better, indeed,
in a way. Photographed and seen in detail by them-
selves, some of the figures of the loggie scroll-work
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or the Vatican tapestry "borders would make Pintu-
ricchio's little people of the ceilings seem children's
scrawls ; but the two painters had different results
in view, and produced them each in his own way.
Both wished for a rich effect, but Eaphael sought
cheerful elegance which should be neo-classic and
should not depart from the great tradition. Pintu-
ricchio refused to part with one jot of the quattro-
cento paraphernalia of the decoration ; he knew that
a Borgia bull in gold relief upon ultramarine, sur-
rounded by gilded scrolls backed by the same rich
blue, would "carry" better, would make a far
stronger effect as one looked along the vaulting,
than could any figurine in simple fresco, no matter
how large the movement, how good the modelling of
the muscles, that Perino or Giulio had executed and
Eaphael had inspired.

So Niccolo di Betto went on in his own way,
modelling his bulls and rams and little temples in
gypsum ; emphasizing the lines of a youth's armor,
breastplate and girdle, greaves and collar, with rows
of gilded disks, relieved slightly, but quite highly
enough to catch the light, and backing his figures
with a reticulated pattern again in relief of gold.

The painter of to-day shrugs his shoulders in sur-
prise at the method and stares in delight at the re-
sult, for the great artist Time has taken a share in
the work. When the color was fresh four hundred
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ROME

VATICAN

PINTURICCHIO

VAULTING FRESCO

SIENA

years ago, the violence in contrast in certain parts
must have been shocking, but now the ultramarine
has bloomed in spots of green and purple, the gold is
bright here, tarnished there ; disintegration of surface
has helped rather than hindered, and as a result is
seen the richest fresco-color in Italy ; only mosaic
or glass can surpass it.

We have gone afield with Pinturicchio and fol-
lowed Pope Pius from the Libreria of Siena to the
Vatican, but the journey is necessary to the full
comprehension of the painter's product ; and if before
leaving Rome in thought, we remember Niccolo's
frescoes in the churches of Ara Coeli and in S. M.
del Popolo ; even if on our way back to the Libreria
we stop at Spello, we shall find our painter, as in
the Vatican, always the man who succeeds by right of
fancy and fertility and by a frank renunciation of the
finest methods in mural painting in favor of greater
gorgeousness and richer surface. In the Borgia
apartments the dominant color effect is of ultrama-
rine and gold ; in the Libreria the basis is white, the
white of the plastered walls, and their light tonality
is what yields the cheerful quality which here
replaces the gorgeous richness of the Eoman work.

Against this light-colored background the drama

of the life of ^Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini as cardinal

and pope unrolls itself among emperors and queens,

guards and pages, bishops, priests, and Turks, who

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ITALIAN CITIES

stand under canopies or about thrones or carry papal
chairs, — canopies, thrones, and chairs alike furnish-
ing to Pinturicchio the raised gold patterns that he
loved, while soldiers offer to the artist their shields
and weapons for like embossing, and even the pages
of the middle distance contribute at least a trifle of a
belt-clasp or dagger-handle to be raised and gilded.
It is delightfully decorative, and yet the very nega-
tion of aerial perspective, since these distant figures
are brought forward by their relieved patterns to, as
it were, the footlights of the stage.

Certain critics have praised Pinturicchio's land-
scapes; they are indeed pleasant reminders of the
Umbrian background, a background at once so lovely
and so noble that any reminder of it is grate-
ful, but to compare them with the landscapes of
Perugino is injustice to the latter. Imagine a little
church or temple in raised and gilded gypsum stuck
against the middle distance of Pietro's solemn back-
ground of the Maddalena de' Pazzi fresco ; it would
seem and would be, an excrescence, but in the Li-
breria, where the art, good as it is, is on a lower plane,
belt-clasp and crown, throne and sword-handle, are
entertaining parts in a vastly entertaining whole.
And that it is entertaining, cheerful, wholesome, and
pleasant to the eye no one will deny. Pinturicchio
saltavit et placuit truly, and it is enough, for, alas 1
how many dance and how few please.

IX

FOR the complete expression of the complex soul
of her Siena had to wait for the dexterous Lombard
who in 1501 knocked at her gate. Here was indeed
a painter after her own heart. No frigid Florentine
this, with the memories of chisel-work in dusty
botteghe clogging his brush; no student of "anato-
mies " with a weakness for joints and attachments,
prone, therefore, to thrust a meagre Jerome or a
gaunt Magdalen into a tender brood of angels or the
blithest of Holy Families ; no curious, erudite ex-
perimenter seeking after a (possibly) fatiguing per-
fection and juggling with light and shadow; no
precisian or pedant he, but one to whom Tempera-
ment had been so bountiful that he had ignored
the favors of that more niggardly mistress, Training.
Invited to Siena by the noble family of the
Spauocchi, patronized by Chigi, Sodorna (Giovan
Antonio Bazzi) found his native element in the
capricious and voluptuous republic ; and Siena soon
discovered in him the whimsical scatterbrain and
facile painter, her most faithful exponent. She had
but scant enthusiasm for Beccafumi's cold acad-
emies ; she bestowed but a half-hearted admiration
VOL. i. —10 145

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on Peruzzi's spare elegance ; she disregarded the
strictures of the correct and respectable Vasari, and
loaded Bazzi with commissions and admiration.
What were mastery of perspective, unfailing sense
of proportion, balanced composition, compared with
a vivid personality expressing itself with agile facil-
ity and possessed of exquisite sensitiveness to grace
and beauty 1

And then the character of the man himself was
one to captivate the Sienese, among whom individu-
ality ran riot. Here was no Sano deditus Deo ; no
sour-faced frequenter of monks, but a good fellow ;
a contemner of conventions ; a dandy, devoted to fine
clothes ; a sporting man, too, with a pretty taste in
horseflesh, and a prince of jesters to whom a prac-
tical joke was dearer than reputation or personal
safety. What a wellspring of joy to the gilded
youth of Siena was this frolicsome gossip, who
would lay down his brush to finger the lute or
grasp the bridle, and who could paint you the suavest
Madonna in a studio full of roistering sparks.
Imagine the decorous and laborious Vasari visiting
such a lawless household, and the continual shocks
to which his bourgeois susceptibilities must have
been subjected. His animosity to Bazzi is almost
accounted for by the mere difference of tempera-
ment in the two men.

How could the " most noble art of design " be
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SIENA

worthily practised by a freakish fellow who made
friends and comrades of beasts, and who owned a
familiar raven which, to the mystification and annoy-
ance of dignified persons from Florence, could
exactly counterfeit his master's voice ? And was
not Bazzi's explanation, that he kept the bird by
him in order that it "might teach a theological
jackass how to speak," an aggravation of his of-
fence ? Could sound painting be reasonably expected
from a pretentious dauber who bought fast horses
like a noble, and who had the impudence to win the
race of Saint Barnaba in Florence over the heads of
Florentines, biped and quadruped ? It would seem
that effrontery could not go farther, but Sodoma had
found the means of gilding the refined gold of his
iniquity by insulting the Signory as well. Messer
Giorgio was constitutionally incapable of sym-
pathizing with a reckless wag who joyed in carry ing
a jest beyond the bounds of propriety, and who was
no respecter of persons.

Bazzi has paid dearly for his mocking humor, or
rather, his lawless indulgence of it. Vasari's biassed
judgment has formed opinion for four hundred years,
and the gifted Lombard has suffered from his cen-
sure. Poor Giovan Antonio ! much shall be forgiven
him, for he loved much those dumb sentient crea-
tures who can only reward kindness with devoted
affection that is all the truer, perhaps, because it is
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mute. They must be their pranksonie master's best
advocates with those who love man's " little brothers."
The other reasons for Vasari's unjust treatment
of Sodoma are as yet undiscovered. As a man (not
as an artist) the Lombard painter was constantly vili-
fied and abused by the usually impartial biographer.
Vasari's friendship and admiration for Beccafumi
may have prejudiced him against Bazzi, Beccafumi's
rival ; perhaps there is some truth in the story that
Bazzi laughed at Vasari's biographies (which were
seen by many in manuscript long before their pub-
lication), and thus roused the rancor of their author.
Wherever Vasari remains an art critic, he is honest
and unprejudiced ; his blame is just, his praise not
stinted, when he speaks of Giovan Antonio's best
works. When he writes of the man and not the
artist, he is, on the contrary, censorious, even bitter,
and most unfair ; the love of fine clothes, which
Vasari finds dignified and decorous in Leonardo, the
master, is ridiculous in Giovan Antonio, the " jack-
pudding " and " mountebank " pupil. Da Vinci's
admirable love for animals is equally reprehensible
in Bazzi ; and the latter's passion for racing, shared
by all the Sienese citizens and the Florentine nobles,
is most objectionable in the painter. In Siena it
was, and still is, accounted a great honor to win the
Polio. Indeed, what was vainglorious in Sodoma
was proper pride in a Florentine ; it was a Tuscan

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custom to decorate the windows upon festa days by
hanging out rich stuffs and banners, and the cloth-of-
gold racing-prizes of the Alessandri were famous in
Florentine archives. Whatever the Vercellese artist
does, as a man, is ill done, according to our author,
but we may remember that while several of Vasari's
stories told to the artist's discredit are disproved by
documents, not one is confirmed. Bazzi seems to
have spent the last years of his life in retirement at
Siena with his family, and Vasari's statement that
his wife was separated from him is unsupported by
documentary evidence. We know that in 1531 and
in 1541 she was living with him, and we have no
proof that she ever left him.

It is highly probable that, after all, Giorgio's in-
justice to Bazzi came primarily from an inability to
understand him. The whimsical, roguish Lombard,
with a little of the charlatan and much of the boy
in his character, was incomprehensible to the earnest,
studious, laborious Florentine, and Bazzi's love of
frolic and his light-hearted willingness to appear
worse than he was, gave Vasari sufficient cause to
distrust and despise him. The most charitable and
not wholly unreasonable estimate of Giovan Antonio's
character is that he was the sixteenth-century
counterpart of a type of artist constantly seen among
the students of the European art schools of to-day ;
namely, the Uagueur d'atelier, the studio-jester.
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The Uagueur is a madcap, sometimes an idler, some-
times a busybody; constantly boasting of his mis-
doings, which are always exaggerated, and sometimes
purely imaginary, and sacrificing anything at any
time for what he considers a joke. He is no re-
specter of persons, is more or less foul-mouthed,
generally more ; delights in being conspicuous, and,
above all, troublesome ; joys in shocking the respect-
able and outraging the conventional ; personal dignity
does not exist for him, and reserve is an unknown
quantity ; but he is quick-witted, good-hearted, and
as ready to help as to hinder. He is utterly im-
provident, and though sometimes capable of brilliant
artistic performances, is not a little handicapped
by laziness, though in time of war or revolution
the laziness gives way to action, and the Uagueur
has supported his convictions or served his country
as well as the most earnest of his comrades. Just
what Giovan Antonio was like we shall probably
never know ; Eaphael seems to have esteemed him,
and he was a favorite with the Sienese ; there is no
testimony to support the charges against him, and
the story of his domestic unhappiness is disproved
by documentary evidence. That he was often lazy
and indifferent seems to be shown by his work, but
we cannot call him weak artistically, for he was
distinctly individual and saw nature from a personal
point of view; perhaps no artist ever possessed
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SODOMA
HEAD OF A SLEEPING APOSTLE (FRAGMENT)

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more temperament than did this spoiled child of
painting.

Considered from the point of view of technique
pure and simple, Bazzi was unequal as draughtsman
and colorist, indifferent as composer. He could draw
excellently, but rarely did ; his heads are a souvenir
of Leonardo's with a strong added personality of
Bazzi's own ; as to their bodies, his figures often look
as if some of Eaphael's frescoed men and women
had been painted with so liquid a medium that they
had spread upon the walls and passed beyond their
outlines, until they seemed boneless and gelatinous.

M. Miintz, praising the figures of the Farnesina
frescoes, says of them, " Les figures sont du Raphael,
mais du Raphael plus fluide et plus suave." This
is precisely what they are to so great a degree that
their fluidity has made some of them relatively
shapeless and very unsatisfactory to the student,
although their suavity has, it is true, much of the
charm which never deserted Sodoma.

In these frescoes of the Oratory of San Bernardino
Giovanni has attempted to be monumental, and has
succeeded in obtaining a certain impressiveness and
an ensemble which is thoroughly characteristic of
the amplification that art had received in the begin-
ning of the sixteenth century, but these figures are
lacking in construction, still more are they lacking
in subtlety of drawing. They look exactly like
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figures in old tapestries, which have been stretched
and pulled until not one line in face or figure is
correct

The admirable figures (see especially the Saint Vic-
tor) in the Palazzo Pubblico have all the qualities
which belong to those in San Bernardino, and most
of the qualities which are lacking in the latter. The
grave and beautiful warrior-saints are constructed,
drawn, and modelled with seriousness and skill, and
they are noble in expression as well. The San Bene-
detto is also admirable. If Bazzi had always worked
as earnestly as he did upon these figures, few painters
would have equalled him. The frescoes at Monte
Oliveto without possessing the Florentine hardness
of contour, resemble Milanese work and are agree-
ably firm in silhouette, yet not dry or " cut out."
In spite, however, of an occasional effort to better
his slurring and slovenly manner of drawing, Bazzi
is generally lacking, and wilfully lacking, in "the
probity of art."

His color (being more an affair of temperament
and more instinctive) is sometimes warm and trans-
parent; sometimes distinguished, as in the " Swooning
of Saint Catherine," ; sometimes monochromatic, as in
the "Saint Sebastian;" is often pleasing and never
disagreeable.

He had little capacity as a composer of groups,
and was most at home when he had but one or
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two figures to deal with ; composition did not
come easily to him; lacking mental order and sen-
sitiveness to distribution of masses, deficient also
in the capacity for continued effort in a given di-
rection, which is indispensable to the evolution of
monumental composition, Bazzi is confused and inco-
herent when he attempts to handle a number of
figures. Nowhere are the abilities and the limita-
tions of a painter more clearly demonstrated than
in the chapel of San Domenico. There the noble
lines of the three figures in the " Swoon of Saint
Catherine " stand side by side with the jumbled
and crowded fresco of the "Execution of Tuldo,"
which affords a felicitous illustration of Degas's
criticism : " On fait unefoule avec cinq per sonnes, non
avec cinquante"

Sodoma's finest performances are his single figures,
and it is in them that we read his title clear to the
admiration of his contemporaries. The Saint Cathe-
rine fainting under the intolerable glory of her es-
pousal is one of those relatively rare works which
give to Bazzi a very high rank as a complete artist,
and not merely as an artist of phenomenal tempera-
ment. He has treated a very difficult subject not
only with charm but with skill and thought, adding
to his natural suavity a care in the grouping of the
three lovely heads, in the arrangement of the
draperies, and in the rendering of the latter, which
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is not often found in his works. As for the
spiritual side of the picture, it may be said that
the poignant delights of mysticism were never
more adequately interpreted. The "Saint Sebas-
tian," which "combines the beauty of the Greek
Hylas with the sentiment of Christian martyrdom,"
is in a certain delicate loveliness and simple pathos
unsurpassed by any work of its time. Yet in spite
of the fact that its comeliness is informed with
spiritual significance, that the representation of
suffering is free from exaggeration, in some subtle
way it announces the decadence, the work of Guido
Reni, and of the seventeenth century. Although
the drawing of the figure is far more serious, the
silhouette more studied, than in most of Bazzi's work,
it must be admitted that as a whole it is lacking
in solidity and is even papery-looking in its lack
of modelling.

The figure of Saint James on horseback, in the
church of San Spirito, has been much praised; but
though it fills the space decoratively it is a poor
affair in execution, slurred and careless, and is little
to the credit of a master who was capable of far
better work. The horse especially is singularly ill
drawn for the work of an artist who was himself a
sporting-man and a judge of horseflesh.

To estimate at their true value Bazzi's freshness
of feeling and natural charm combined with sensu-
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ousness and an unfailing sense of humor, we must
leave Siena and drive over a dull-colored cretaceous
soil furrowed by baize, to the monastery of Monte
Oliveto.

No environment could be more inspiring than the
magnificent mountain country about the convent,
made marvellously picturesque by the countless
ravines which seam the hills on either side of the
winding, ribbon-like road that leads from Buon
Convento to the monastery. From its terraces are
seen Montalcino on its aerial platform, the delicate
lines of Monte Amiata crowning a wide sweep of
hills, Chiusuri on its height, the valleys torn and
rent by the torrent-beds ; a strange landscape grand
and impressive in its desolation. Almost equally
stern and forbidding is the aspect of the monastery
itself, a huge pile of purplish-red brick, raised upon
gigantic buttresses above a wave-like crest of the
hill. Its austere lines are broken only by the
church with its square campanile and the machico-
lations of the fortress-like gate, pierced with loop-
holes, which defends the entrance of the long avenue
of cypresses leading to the convent courtyard.

Amidst these solemn surroundings, more sym-
pathetic to the fiery and virile genius of his prede-
cessor Signorelli than to the mischievous and
beauty-loving Bazzi, the cycle of Saint Benedict
was painted. In these frescoes, commenced in 1506
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and still in admirable preservation, there is nothing
which rises to the height of two or three of Sodoma's
best pictures, but as a series it is, on the whole, the
most amiable of his works. In their wide, sunlit
cloister, protected from damp and wind by the glass
with which the government has filled its outer
arches, nothing could be more cheerful or attractive
than these clear-colored frescoes, light in tone, free
in their handling, yet far more serres and close in
drawing than are many of the artist's more pre-
tentious pictures.

There is a certain childlike sweetness, a simplicity
of arrangement, a genial sense of humor which is
as completely suited to the presentation of these
indescribably petty miracles and trifling temptations
as the genius of Signorelli was unsuited to it. The
subjects themselves, forming " a painted novella " of
monastic life, are utterly puerile in character, and
their whole charm is in their treatment. Of such
motives as " Saint Benedict miraculously mends a
Sieve," Bazzi, by the beauty and sweetness of his
types ; by the introduction of portraits ; by perfect
naturalness ; above all, by that naif charm which
five years later was forever stricken from Italian art
by the splendors of the Stanze and the lightnings of
the Sistina ; by the qualities of simplicity, freshness,
and vivacity, Giovan Antonio turns these rather
absurd subjects into a series of pictures which please
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enduringly. The frescoes of the angles of the court
are more than pleasing and are executed with greater
thought and care than the smaller compositions.
Tradition whispers that this superior excellence was
the result of an increase in the painter's stipend,
that the agile brush " which danced to the sound
of coins " (ballava al suono dei denari) was prop-
erly piped to. Indeed, Bazzi's vivid personality, his
pranks and eccentricities, wove a brilliant scarlet
thread through the gray woof of the monks' lives, and
legend has been busy here and has handed down
an anecdote for each fresco. In one, Bazzi painted
the portrait of a greedy monk slyly abstracting his
meditative neighbor's manchet of bread ; in another
above the terse title, " Morenzo conduce male fern-
mine al convento," he earned his name of Mattaccio.

In this fresco, wherein the wicked Florentius, who
was the diabolus ex machina of the cycle of Saint
Benedict, and supplied the indispensable dramatic
element, brought singing and dancing women to the
convent to turn the good fathers' minds from holy
things. Hidden by his scaffolding, Bazzi painted
these winsome girls, who are even to-day utterly
bewitching and far too well calculated to turn poor
mortal man's thoughts from heaven to earth. These
seductive ladies were represented in the costume of
Mother Eve, their worthy predecessor in evil doing.
And we have only to remember the sweet, shame-
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faced figure of our peccant ancestress in the " Limbo "
of the Academy to realize how alluring they must
have been. Imagine the scandal, the laughter, the
scolding, which filled the cloister when the planks
were removed, and fancy the blissful elation of
Bazzi and his color-grinders and apprentices.

Of course the artist was immediately obliged to
turn milliner and to perform one of the most urgent
of the temporal works of mercy, but Sodoma was
willing enough to double his labor in the good cause
of a practical joke, and the group of girls, a harmony
of melodic lines and fluent movement, remains one of
the most delight-inspiring creations of the Renais-
sance. Every note in the scale of coquetry from
demure dignity to mocking provocation is delicately
yet surely touched by these long-limbed dancers
and coy donzelle. Plastically there is still some-
thing of the fifteenth rather than the sixteenth cen-
tury about these figures ; they are graceful, not
monumental; are suggestive of Leonardo da Vinci;
are characteristic of the northern as distinguished
from the Tuscan manner, and possess the rhythmic
movement and enticing loveliness of Bazzi's ideal
type.

In the student of rt the human document " the full-
length portrait of Giovan Antonio stimulates specu-
lation and seems to afford a clew to that strange
personality in which Ariel and Puck met on equal

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MONTE OLIVETO MAGGIORE

SODOMA

HEAD OF A DANCING GIRL (FRAGMENT)

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terms. In the long series of the portraits of the
Kenaissance painters many are nobler than this one,
none are more characterized ; and though the artistic
treatment is somewhat summary, the psychological
treatment is subtile. Nature wrote wag and dare-
devil in capital letters on this face, with its large
features, full lips, heavy brows, and irregular nose,
— a real nez fripon, witty and impertinent. Nor
does the characterization stop at the audacious, clever
head under its loose mane of black hair. In the
slender, lithe body of the gentleman rider (evidently
Bazzi's racers were no weight-carriers) ; in the in-
troduction of pet animals, the tame badger begging
for a caress, and the offensively loquacious raven ;
in the rich costume, bought by the painter from a
noble Milanese who had recently taken the habit,
we recognize the freakish model of Vasari's darkly
shaded portrait, made human and sympathetic by a
more genial brush.

M. Miintz tells us that justice will not be done
to this master until he has been placed near Cor-
reggio, indeed by his side (immediatement & cote de
lui). It is very rarely that one takes issue with the
enlightened criticism of the author of the Histoire de
I' Art pendant la Eenaissance, but in this case it is
impossible to accept his dictum. Great as he is,
Bazzi, if placed by the side of Correggio, stands on a
far lower plane. Charm he has and style to an
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extraordinary degree, but where in his work is there
any masterliness to be compared with that shown by
Correggio in his cupola of Parma or his Saint Je-
rome ? One is a discoverer and a creator, the other
a most gifted and inventive Master of the Eevels,
who can amuse and fascinate and delight, but to
whom the divine afflatus is denied.

The same charm of personality, of abandon, of
naturalness, which subjugated the Sienese is potent
over the critic who attempts to analyze the works
of the fantastic Lombard. Bazzi reminds one of
the old tale of the prince to whom all good things
were given and yet whose career was spoiled by the
malicious gift of one wicked fairy. No painter was
more richly dowered by nature : facility, elegance,
sweetness, were his ; a keen and delicate feeling for
grace of line and beauty of feature; remarkable
powers of assimilation, and a fertile fancy ; occasion-
ally he attained distinction, and he rarely, even in
his most careless moments, lacked style. But all
these great qualities were obscured by one fatal
defect, — frivolity. There is no better example of
how much and how little temperament can do for
an artist, or what painting becomes when it is
divorced from hard thinking and laborious study.
The absence of the appearance of effort, which is
such a different thing from the actual absence of
effort, is replaced in his work by a slovenliness that
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is the more irritating because we feel that it is wil-
ful negligence. Every one of his more ambitious
pictures manifests carelessness or lassitude in some
particular. His finest performances are his single
figures (the Roxana in Vienna or the Eve or the
Saint Sebastian) ; he lacked the mental coherence,
the capacity for intellectual tension, which are in-
dispensable for the planning and execution of large
compositions, and though pathos and poetic feeling
were within his scope, he was wanting in elevation
of thought and, above all, in conviction.

Yet when all these reserves are made, when we
have recovered from the annoyance produced by
the wanton neglect of splendid gifts, how much
remains to delight us in Bazzi's work. His sense
of humor, a rare quality and one that is almost in-
compatible with intense convictions, which enlivens
the frescoes of Monte Oliveto; his capacity for
characterization, his vitality, the diversity and sup-
pleness of his genius, are all potent factors in the
sum of our pleasure. The greatest of these is doubt-
less his sensitiveness to physical beauty, above all
the beauty of youth, of girls and adolescents. Who
can forget the undulating lines of his dancers'
slender bodies, or the morbid sweetness of the
swooning Catherine, or the lovely cowering figure
of Eve, or the coy, almost simpering, but altogether
bewitching Eoxana ? Equally persistent in the
VOL. i. — 11 161

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memory are the figures of the young warriors Alex-
ander and Saint Victor, the beautiful Vulcan of the
Farnesina villa, the transpierced Saint Sebastian, the
charming boys in the Saint Benedict cycle. Bazzi's
feminine ideal was derived from Leonardo's; less
distinguished, it is more seductive ; less noble than
the subtile Madonnas of Luini, it is more captivat-
ing. An oval face with languishing eyes, an over-
ripe curved mouth, the upper lip much fuller than
the lower one ; a delicate nose slightly retrousse ; a
softly rounded chin, and a slender, long-limbed body,
such was Giovan Antonio's type. Add to it those
arie di testa which Vasari admired, sometimes an
air of dreamy voluptuousness which is as far re-
moved from coarseness as it is from severity ; again,
a pathos and tenderness that suggest the influence
of Perugino, and a quality of youth and fresh-
ness, something dawn-like and spring-like, and you
have the ideal that took Siena by storm. Natur-
ally this sweetness often degenerates into insipid-
ity or becomes cloying; mere loveliness cannot
atone for the lack of nobility any more than
facility and fertility of invention can replace high
thought and strenuous endeavor; but, after all,
to analyze the faults of this alluring genius is
almost as destructive to the fine edge of the critical
spirit as to study the physical defects of a beautiful
person.

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HEAD OF EVE (FRAGMENT)

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To follow the triumphant progress of the Ee-
naissance which entered Siena so brilliantly with
Pinturicchio and Bazzi, would be a pleasant task;
to retrace, step after step, their wanderings about
the town from their homes in the Via dei Maestri,
over the " Contrada Pictorum " to the churches
where they worked, and to the palaces they painted,
would be an easy one. For they were ubiquitous
folk, and permeated the whole city, from the shrine
of its saints to its outer gates. Pleasant, too, it
would be to study the works and lives of Siena's
youngest sons, Peruzzi and Beccafumi ; pleasant to
follow reverently in the footsteps of that impas-
sioned daughter of Saint Dominic and the people,
Saint Catherine ; pleasant, also, but hardly as edify-
ing, to wander with the novelists through the olive-
orchards and those groves and gardens which ^Eneas
Sylvius dedicated to Venus.

Pleasantest of all it is to dwell awhile with the
memories that crowd these streets and haunt these
walls, — memories tragic, dramatic, romantic; for
the perfervid Ghibelline city was the home of
romance, from the days of Dante's minstrel singing
in the Campo for his friend's ransom, to our own
times, when Alfieri could be seen galloping outside
the Camollia gates in a whirlwind of dust. It is,
perhaps, this romantic past; perhaps the splendid
elans of self-sacrifice, the spontaneous acts of gener-
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osity in which her history is so rich ; the ardent
faith in God and man which never deserted her;
and the grandeur of her martyrdom, that lend Siena
an irresistible feminine charm. " II y a de la femme
dans tout ce que I'on aime." Her contradictions are
full of fascination and remind us that if, in her
hour of need, the town gave herself to Virgin Mary,
the Mother of Beauty has tarried within her walls
as well.

All those who know Siena have felt this subtile
coercion, and have opened their hearts to the beauti-
ful city which wrote upon its gate, " Cor magis tibi
Sena pandit"

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THE FLORENTINE ARTIST

THE FLORENTINE ARTIST

IN these days of triumphant specialism, when brush
and chisel, burin and aquafortist's tool, perform feats
that would have set the Eenaissance agog ; when a
phalanx of French artists stand armed cap-h-pie
with all the varied knowledge that the years have
brought to Ars Longa ; when art pours in from
England, Sweden, Eussia, Japan ; when America has
already started in the great torch race, sure to hold
the light high (how high perhaps we hardly dare to
dream), why is it that we turn again and again to
the old masters, the men of Florence and of Venice,
of the quiet galleries and palaces of a land older
than our own ?

Is it because they take us out of the bustle and
struggle and beckon us to their feet in the half
light of the chapterhouse, in the sun-dappled still-
ness of the cloister or the deserted chamber of state
where they sit enthroned and tranquil, nowise toil-
ing for recognition ? Is it not rather because theirs
was the springtime of art, because they were in the
gold of the morning and had its golden touch ?

Theirs was the high-hearted conviction which has
seen no disillusion. They had not even found out
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what they could not do, and their naif fervor set a
halo even on their awkwardness. Eternal youth
was theirs and its sublime confidence and audacity.
Spontaneity was theirs, and the joy of the explorer
as well. To-day we are bewildered worshippers at
many shrines, and are burdened with a too costly
heritage ; they were un vexed by warring ideals and
were the heirs of opportunity.

It is because they were the sons of morning that
we find even in their lesser works (" detur amanti ")
something to reward patient study, something of
the glamour of the reawakening, of the gladness of
earnest endeavor, of the serenity of achievement,
and, in spite of the science and perfected technique
of modern painting, the hill towns of Tuscany and
Umbria still rise as high altars of art; Eome yet
remains the painter's pantheon, and the lagoons of
Venice still shine for us with the color of Titian
and still hold the bituminous depths of Tintoretto.

Among all the Italian towns, Florence possesses
the highest place, for in that long period from 1300
to 1580, which covers the Italian Eenaissance in its
various phases, she was the focal point for at least
two hundred years. This epoch of art evolution
may be conveniently divided into four periods : that
of the precursors, of Niccola and Giotto ; that of the
early Eenaissance, with the group which surrounded
Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici ; of the full Eenais-
168

sance, when Eome called Tuscan and Umbrian alike
into her service; and of that later time which,
decadent elsewhere, saw the glorious supremacy of
Venice.

Thus through fully two-thirds of the art move-
ment Florence marched at the head of Italy, and we
see the Florentine first as the strong man in armor,
merchant and soldier at once, beating off Barbarossa,
conquering his civic rights one by one, and setting
the Phrygian cap of liberty upon his helmet ; a later
and milder age twists garlands about it, and sculp-
tures his shield, and his son grows up a pale-cheeked
student, with a crop of curls, a brush and chisel in
his scarsella and a great book clasped upon his
breast.

As we look at old pictures of this protagonist of
independence, this Athene of towns who wore helmet
and laurel alike and held palette and lance at once,
we see that five hundred years ago she was still the
grim-visaged and simple-mannered Florence of the
Divine Comedy.

We turn from the pages of the pictured record.
Another short hundred years transforms the for-
tress-city of Corso Donati into the palace-city of
Lorenzo de' Medici; the Eenaissance has come to
its full tide and the Florence of Dante, which, lovely
as it appeared in the dreams of the exile, was
brown and austere as a Franciscan friar in its out-
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ward semblance, had by the end of the fifteenth
century become a treasury of beauty. Many dif-
ferent causes had contributed to this result: com-
mercial prosperity ; municipal freedom ; the intense
civic pride, the passionate love of the city that
then stood for patriotism; the newly awakened
plastic sense ; the Italian desire to far figura ; the
lover's instinct to adorn the beloved ; and the posses-
sion of generations of artists equal to their task,
all united to dower Florence with innumerable
treasures. The best blood of the time was run-
ning into this new channel and coursing there more
and more strongly. The incessant warfare of earlier
times, the death-grapple between city and city and
between rival factions and greater and lesser guilds
had ended in utter exhaustion, an exhaustion
too often making way for a local tyrant; but
the marvellous vitality of Italy, which in one way
or another never flagged, showed itself in her art.
The hand, tired of striking with the sword, struck
lightly with the chisel, and the cunning Medici set
the unwitting artists to gilding the chains of Flor-
ence. There were chains indeed ; but the craftsman
lives in a republic of ideas, and his craft was honored
by the tyrant ; he alone of all men was free, for the
Inquisition had not yet begun to prescribe the
action of the people of fresco or panel, or to peer
through the eyeholes of its cowl into parchment
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THE FLORENTINE ARTIST

and picture to ferret out heresy. Cosimo the
Ancient might say in his cynical way that it took
only a few yards of scarlet cloth to make a burgher,
but he never applied his yard-measure estimate to
humanists or artists.

A noble field lay open to the latter; their works
did not disappear into private galleries; art be-
longed to the whole city, and was a matter of per-
sonal interest and pride to each citizen ; the facade
or the monument was his, and he walked out to see
it uncovered, in a flutter of pleasant excitement,
and quite prepared to fasten his epigram or his
sonnet at its base. For all Florence became at once
customer and connoisseur, and fairly went mad with
enthusiasm over its new masterpieces. The Sig-
niory mingled with the business of grave embassies
questions of decoration of public palaces, and
art matters were treated like affairs of state. A
daughter of the Eepublic, art's best service was
given to the city, to the market-place, the townhall,
and the church. This was no courtly official art,
shut up in palaces ; no burgher art, withdrawn into
rich men's houses or cramped into prettiness to
please a caprice ; no carefully nurtured exotic, for-
eign to all its environment; it was democratic,
municipal ; " of the people, by the people, for the
people ; " stooping to the humblest offices ; carving
the public fountain, where goodwives washed their
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cabbages and filled their clashing metal buckets,
and rising heavenward on the broad curves of
Brunelleschi's dome. It was a deep-rooted, many-
branched growth of the soil; an integral part
of daily life; a need, a passion, and a delight at
once.

It almost seemed as if Art, Orpheus-like, held
sway over nature. Rough crags piled themselves
up into palaces, iron bowed itself into lovely curves,
and bronze filled the hollow mould with fair shapes ;
glistening marbles covered the bare fagades ; acan-
thus and laurel, oak and ivy, lilies and pomegran-
ates twined around the church pillars, climbed
to the cornice and clustered about the deep-set
windows, ran over choir stalls, and thrust them-
selves between the yellowed parchments of the
choral books. With them came the birds to perch
among the bronze twigs and nest in the marble
foliage ; the lions crawled from their lairs to crouch
beneath church pillars; unicorns, griffins, and
strange sea-monsters came at the magician's bidding,
to support a shield or bound along a cornice. Night
lent her stars to roof a banqueting-hall ; the planets
shone over the exchange, and summer dwelt on the
painted wall while winter whitened the streets
outside.

Obedient to the call of Art the gods returned to
earth. Fauns lurked in the rose-thickets, and the
172

THE FLORENTINE ARTIST

falling fountain splashed the long limbs of reed-
crowned nymphs. Behind the laurels Apollo struck
his lyre, and in the shadow of oak and ilex glim-
mered the dryads. Eros again upheld beauty's
mirror, once more Athene looked down from the
library shelf and Italy remembered that she was
the child of Greece.

Art then held both life and death in her hands.
At her command the dead arose. She gave to
longing eyes the image of the loved one, and bade a
woman's face bloom for centuries. She touched the
bare walls of the cloister, and a celestial vision broke
through their chill whiteness. It was Art who laid
the laurel on the brow of the illustrious dead, and
such brief fame as we may know was hers to
bestow.

It was within the field of this world of art that
the hostile cities of the Eenaissance found their
one neutral ground, where the shrill voice of contro-
versy was hushed, and hatred dropped its dagger ;
where the old feud was forgotten ; where Guelph
and Ghibelline, Pallesco and Piagnone met as
friends, united by a common sympathy, swayed by
a common delight.

Something of this was dimly understood, even by

the little apprentices who ground the colors and

kept the clay moist. They knew that the masters

went and came unharmed through harried country

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ITALIAN CITIES

and hostile states ; they saw the Magnifico buy the
pictures of a follower of the Friar. Even civic strife
spared the artist who worked for the glory of the
town, and was therefore sacred to the man of the
Eenaissance, who, though he could hate fiercely and
strike hard, loved his city as a mother, and adorned
her like a bride.

The city so loved and so adorned was not very
different from the fair town set in the hollow of the
hills which we admire to-day ; it has lost its proud
zone of ramparts and the glow of mediaeval color,
but otherwise it is comparatively unchanged since
Donatello lodged in the street of the Melon, and
Benvenuto kept shop on the old bridge. Here we
can walk arm-in-arm with Gossip Vasari; every
turn brings us face to face with the memory of a
world-famed master. The very name of a street
suggests some great artistic achievement; a few
lines of inscription on a house-front start a train
of association which quickens the pulse of the lover
of beauty ; all about us the very stones are eloquent,
and if we would study the greatest of modern art
epochs, and understand the environment of the
Eenaissance artist, — the conditions under which
he lived and labored, — we have but to look at the
city upon which he set his seal as a king stamps
his effigy on the coin of the realm.

Four hundred years ago morning entered Flor-
174

THE FLORENTINE ARTIST

ence much as it does to-day, slipping unchallenged
through the ponderous gates, stealing like a gray
nun through the narrow streets, glimmering faintly
through the grated windows, and, leaving the lower
stories of the crag-like houses still dark and somhre,
touched with light the dome of the cathedral and
the crests of those stern towers which spring up-
ward like unsheathed swords to guard the white
and rosy beauty of our Lady of the Flower. As the
dawn struggled through the leaded casements, or
the deep arches of the workshop, it saw the artist
already at labor. Sometimes it paled the light
fixed to Michelangelo's forehead, with which,
"like a Cyclops," he worked through the long
night ; or surprised Master Luca patiently freezing
his fingers over his new invention, the terra invet-
riata ; or, maybe, it put out the lanterns which
Ghiberti's workmen carried in their nightly walks
from the furnaces in the Via Sant' Egidio to the
Baptistery. Work began early for the Florentine
artist ; for the painter, sculptor, architect, worker
in gold, iron, or wood, was first of all a handicrafts-
man with a handicraftsman's simple tastes and fru-
gal habits. Arte, art, meant but craft or trade, and
later, by extension, guild of craftsmen, and was
applied to the corporations of cloth-dressers and
silk-weavers, as well as to the associations of archi-
tects and sculptors.

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"Then painters did not play the gentleman;"
small distinction was made between the artist and
the artisan ; and, though now and then a banquet
at the new house in the Via Larga, or a little
junketing in Albertinelli's wine-shop, or a gay
supper at the Pot Luck Club (Compagnia del Paju-
olo), opposite the Foundling Hospital, might tempt
him to keep late hours, morning naps were excep-
tions, and the stone-mason, when he came through
the dim twilight of the shadowed streets ' to his
day's work on church or palace, found Brunelleschi
or Gozzoli there before him. No wonder such men
rose early ; the whole world of art lay before them,
unconquered, unexplored. The mysteries of nature
were to be solved, the lost treasures of antiquity
regained. The processes of technique, the media of
artistic expression, were to be discovered ; and for
such achievement the days were all too short, and
the nights as well. If they would play the slug-
gard, the voice of Florence itself awoke them ; for
with the broadening day the bells of Giotto's tower
began to ring the Angelus, filling the vibrating air
with solemn melody, as one after another, from the
iron throats of San Lorenzo, of San Michele, and of
Santa Felicita came answering peals, while on the
circling hills, gray with olive or dark with pine, the
bells of convent and chapel and parish church
echoed faintly, greeting each other with the angeli-
176

THE FLORENTINE ARTIST

cal salutation. There were few artists who did not
bow their heads and begin the day with the poetic
orison, honoring "the Word that was made flesh,
and dwelt among us ; " and what better prayer
could there be for men whose chief care lay in the
portrayal of that same flesh, and who were " to
paint man, man, whatever the issue."

Early as it was, the city was astir, and the streets
about the cathedral were thronged with people on
their way to early mass ; home-staying house-wives
were gossiping on the doorsteps as in Dante's day ;
long-gowned burghers, like Filippo Strozzi, who
built palaces, bought rare Greek manuscripts, and
bribed royalty, were abroad for their marketing, to
chaffer over a couple of fowls or a handful of vege-
tables. Groups of sun-burned peasants, in their
gayest gear, among them a fresh-faced girl or two of
the Nencia type, " white as cream-cheese and round
as a little sausage," were crowding into the Duomo
to say a few aves before some favorite shrine ; here
and there, with ink-horn at his belt, a scholar
passed — Pico or Poliziano — on his way to the
Medici palace, or the still, green gardens of the
Academy. Knots of leather-clad craftsmen, bare-
armed cloth-dressers from the Calimala, silk-weavers
bound for San Biagio, goldsmiths hurrying to their
work in the Pellicceria, jostled each other in the
narrow way. Here, too, were matrons of the old
VOL. i. — 12 ] 77

ITALIAN CITIES

school, austerely wrapped in cloak and wimple, and
blooming girls, whose pearl-wreathed hair and bare
throats were hardly shaded by transparent veils,
demurely conscious of the admiration they excited,
and not averse to letting a young painter's eyes en-
joy their comeliness. Had not Ginevra dei Benci,
one of the proudest beauties of Florence, sat for
Messer Domenico Bigordi ? and he who would see
the fair wife of Francesco Pugliese limned to the
life need only visit the little church outside the
walls, where Filippino painted her as Madonna.
What pretty girl was not ambitious to figure in a
fresco, or pose for a saint, tricked out with halo and
symbol ? When did adoration ever come amiss ? or
when was a bold glance and a fervently whispered
" bella " really resented ?

Meantime she who hoped some day to see her own
portrait as Saint Catherine or Barbara or Lucy, behind
the blazing altar-tapers, dimmed with the cloud of
fragrant smoke, enjoyed a somewhat grosser incense.
In this town of tiny streets and thickset houses,
whose inhabitants had grown up together in close
quarters, generation after generation ; where family
loves and hatreds were matters of heritage and tra-
dition, and where each man was as well acquainted
with his neighbor's affairs as with his own, none of
these young ladies were unknown to their admirers,
who could estimate each fair one's dower to a florin.

178

FLORENCE

SANTA MARIA NOVELLA

GHIRLANDAJO
HEAD OF A GIRL (FRAGMENT)

THE FLORENTINE ARTIST

On the heads and hands of these pretty girls the
passing goldsmith saw his own work in wreath and
ring, and when the whole parti-colored crowd swayed
and bent like a field of wind-swept irises as a priest
and a hurrying acolyte passed with the viaticum,
even while muttering a prayer for the soul about to
pass away, he recognized with pride the silver pyx
which had left his master's shop only a week ago.
Perhaps it was hardly out of sight before the street
began to resound with ringing hoofs and clashing
steel, as a company bound on a mission to Siena,
escorted by some thirty lances, clattered past; not
so fast but that the workmen from Niccolo Caparra's
forges could salute its gallant young captain, whose
fine armor, decorated with masques and lions' heads,
was their own handiwork. As the soldiers jingled
by, the high houses echoing their clangor tenfold,
the sculptor modelling a Saint George for the armor-
ers, looked long and wistfully after their leader,
who rode with shoulders well-squared and pointed
sollerets turned aggressively out, forcing the bur-
gesses to flatten themselves against walls or to
retreat incontinently under loggie, and reminding
more than one of that roaring young spark of the
Adimari, whose iron elbows and steel toes wrought
such havoc on Dante's neighbors.

These vividly costumed people of the Renaissance
have gone forever from the streets; they have

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ITALIAN CITIES

stepped into the gilded frames of altar-pieces, or
faded into the frescoed walls of choir and cloister ;
they have climbed the palace-stairs and vanished
into quiet galleries ; they sleep in state in the cano-
pied niches of Desiderio and Eossellino, and lie
under the pictured stones of Santa Croce. But the
background against which they moved is unaltered.
The churches and palaces where painter and sculp-
tor worked, the houses where they lodged, the
shops where they sold and taught, the beautiful
things they created are still there, and the palaces
of Brunelleschi and Michelozzo and Benedetto are
yet drawn up in line.

They bear a strange likeness to the mailed an-
cestors of their builders, these palaces, as they stand
facing each other like duellists with a perpetual
menace ; holding high their blazoned shields, peer-
ing distrustfully through their grated windows,
barred like the eyeholes of a helmet, thrusting out
their torch-holders, defiant gauntlets, into the street,
and flaunting their banners over the heads of the
passers-by. The deep cornice shades their stern
fronts like a hood drawn over a soldier's brows, and
as the knight wore a scarf of broidered work or a
collar wrought with jewelled shells and flowers over
his steel corselet, each rugged facade is softened into
beauty by sculptured shrine or gilded escutcheon,
cunningly forged lamp-iron and bridle-ring. Into

180

THE FLORENTINE ARTIST

the grim narrowness of each dark street had come
some touch of color, some bit of exquisite ornament ;
and as the painter hurried to his shop in the morn-
ing, or strolled at evening with his lute, he could see
on every side the work of some brother artist.
Close at hand was Donatello's stemma, where the
lion of the Martelli ramped upon his azure field;
under heavy wreaths of pale-tinted fruit a Eobbia
Madonna gleamed whitely; the huge fanale, or
torch-holder, at the corner, bristling with spikes
like some tropical cactus, was forged by Nicholas
the Bargain-Maker; the rough-hewn palace which
darkened the slit of a street, Benedetto of Majano
did not live to finish ; that window-grating Michel-
angelo designed, bending the bars outward in
beauty's service to hold the elbow cushion or the
caged nightingale or the handful of spring flowers
in their glazed pot of Faenza-ware; while be-
hind the half-open iron-studded doors Michelozzo's
columns rose between the orange-trees.

Who can over-estimate the artistic value of such
environment ; the unconscious training of the eye ;
the education of the perceptive faculties, the keen
stimulus and the wholesome restraint exercised by
the constant presence of a universally recognized
standard of excellence? The art student might
draw from the antique in the garden of San Marco,
or copy the frescoes of the Brancacci Chapel in good

181

ITALIAN CITIES

company, with Michelangelo and Raphael at his
elbow (running the risk of broken bones if he hap-
pened to be envied by the studio-bully Torrigiani),
and under his master's orders might work up de-
tails in a panel, or even follow a cartoon, but the
city itself was his real Academy.

All over this city the artists lodged and worked ;
the places still exist. There are dark arches where,
in spite of perpetual twilight, masterpieces grew
into being ; and there are stairways of heavy gray
stone that have been polished and channelled by
the shoes of masters who lived long ago.

In the Melon Street (now Via Ricasoli) the
memories thicken. There the long-gowned trecen-
tisti have walked ; Tafi, who set the solemn mosaic
upon the dome of the Baptistery, and with him
his roguish pupil, Buffalmacco, whose greatest
works of art were his monumental practical jokes.
Giotto, too, the chief of them all, caped and hooded
as we see him in the Portico of the Uffizi, had
come a little later to make the " house of the five
lamps" trebly illustrious. The lamps are still on
the house-front, glimmering above the little shrine
where the old painters often stopped to tell their
beads before the image of Our Lady, who had been
a good friend to their craft ever since the day she
sat for its patron, Saint Luke.

Perhaps they passed on thence to that garden
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THE FLORENTINE ARTIST

of the Gaddi, in the little street not far away, to
which the painter's pomegranate-trees gave the
name of Via del Melarancio, which it wears even
to-day. In the Calzaioli, just beyond the Bigallo,
and on the same side with it, about a hun-
dred years after Giotto, Donatello, and Michelozzo
"worked together like brothers, perfecting the art
of sculpture," carving that tomb of Pope John in
the Baptistery, which was the forerunner of all
the lovely, Tuscan-Renaissance tombal architecture.
Later their mallets rang behind the cathedral at
the corner of the Via dei Servi, while the minor
music of goldsmith's hammer and niellist's tool was
heard from the shops of Pollajuolo and Finiguerra,
in the Vacchereccia. Monasteries there are too
where famous artists once worked; convents where
the sisters painted, like that Plautilla Nelli, who
had to make Herods and Judases of the novices,
since no man might penetrate the walls. The
convents are secularized now, but we still find
them in all quarters of the city.

Ghiberti cast his gates in the Via Sant' Egidio ;
to-day the house shelters the quaint foreign grace
of Van der Weyden's Flemish Madonna, and gera-
niums now flame in the garden of the Via della
Pergola, where Benvenuto's furnaces once glowed
fiercely as the molten bronze became Perseus.

We visit Michelangelo the boy in the Via
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ITALIAN CITIES

Anguillara ; Michelangelo the old man in the
Via Ghibellina, and in Via Ginori are the stairs
down which the young Eaphael has often walked
with his host. Andrea del Sarto, with Franciabigio,
had his shop in that southern angle of the Piazza
Or-San-Michele, where a dark vault gives entrance
to a street so narrow that lovers might clasp hands
across it from the windows corbelled out above,
and where, too, the artists were next door to the
palace of their arch-patrons, the merchants of the
mighty guild of wool, with its blazon and loggia
and battlemented parapet. Fra Bartolommeo got
his nickname of Baccio della Porta from the
Eoman Gate near which he lived, and when later
he took the tonsure and renounced his art for a
time, his comrade, Albertinelli, discouraged by his
loss, dropped palette and brushes and opened a
wine-shop under those old houses of the Alighieri
where f " nacque il divino poeta."

II Eosso, with his apprentice Battistino and his
ape (whom the chronicles leave nameless), made life
merry for the monks of Santa Croce ; Cellini, born
near the modern iron markets and casting his bronze
in the Street of the Bower, studied first with Bandini
in the Furriers' Quarter, then, under the new dis-
pensation of Duke Cosimo, went with the other
goldsmiths to that Ponte Vecchio where the ap-
prentice lads were stationed to offer trinkets to

THE FLORENTINE ARTIST

the passing ladies, and to the same shop whence
his bust now looks down upon his successors. So
the tale runs, and the list is endless, for Florence
remembers her famous men, and the archives be-
neath the picture gallery of the Uffizi are crammed
with records that furnish us house, date, and name,
dry bones to which the chroniclers add life, the
life of the crowded, narrow-streeted city, with its
art, its industry, its busy hours, its leisure, and
even its fun and jokes.

For the hard-worked painters found time for the
latter, made time for them indeed. Woe to the
man who was conceited, credulous, or lazy; his
foible was exploited by a dozen past-masters in
the science of tormenting; Florentine tongues were
proverbially sharp, and constant practice in the
wordy warfare of the studio gave them an even
finer edge.

The greatest artists — Donatello, Brunelleschi,
and, earlier, Buffalmacco — concocted elaborate beffe
and burle, with no pity for their victims. The
temptation was great; the ages of faith had not
passed away ; many good folk, accustomed to believe
in miracles, afforded golden opportunities to the
practical joker; and if we may believe Sacchetti,
Ser Giovanni, and Boccaccio, the wags were equal
to the occasion. There was such a fund of credu-
lity lying idle ; it was so easy to make Calandrino
185

believe that he was invisible ; to persuade the
Doctor that he might sup with Helen and Cleo-
patra, and to convince II Grasso that he had changed
his identity, that we can hardly blame the painters
for farces in which the whole town joined, even the
good parish priest playing his part. This fun was
rifest perhaps at the noonday hour, when Luigi
Pulci takes us into that old market, around which
the studios were thickest set, and which, not many
years ago, stood just as it was when hungry in-
dustry, bent on dining, surged into the Mercato
Vecchio.

Here artists, great and small, masters and ap-
prentices, dined ; here was dinner enough for all
Florence; and the irregular square, round which
the tall, soot-stained houses crowded, was a glut-
ton's paradise, in which Margutte would have
found all the articles of his credo: his tart and
tartlet, his stuffed leccafichi, and his good wine.
There were meals for all tastes and all purses ; one
could lunch on fruit and eggs and cheese with
Donatello, or sup like a Magnifico on the boar that
grinned from the butcher's shop, and only two days
before was crunching the acorns of Vallombrosa.
There was good eating in the grimy, black shops,
where before a huge fire a spit revolved loaded with
trussed fowls and haunches of venison; and the
pastry-cook's was not to be despised with its deli-
186

THE FLORENTINE ARTIST

cious scent of spices and warm pasties, just off the
hot iron plates, set out in dainty white baskets ; its
ciambelli and cialdoni, buns and wafers; the crisp Jer-
lingozzi that poor Visino thought worth all the kings
and queens in Hungary, and those light, golden,
sugar-sprinkled pastykins which the Magnificent
Lorenzo sang of. These delicacies were not for the
apprentices ; they brought their own empty flasks
and canakins to the wine-shop, to be filled with
white Trebbiano ; they patronized the pork-butchers
buying whole strings of sausages; the poulterers
whose neighborhood gave the famous nickname of
Pollajuolo, and where one student at least bought
the caged wild birds and set them free, while
onlookers wondered at the odd caprices of young
Leonardo da Vinci.

Wine and bread, onions and sausages once con-
sumed, whether before the shops or on the steps
of Santa Maria in Campidoglio, the 'prentices went
back to the lottega, which was usually in the mas-
sive basement of a tall house, fronting some tiny
piazza or narrow street. The heavy, iron-barred
shutters, which at night closed its four arches,
were raised and fastened to the wall, and even the
ponderous door stood open, for light was precious
to the workers within. The lower half of these
arched openings was filled by counters of solid
masonry, to which a couple of seats were often
187

ITALIAN CITIES

added on the outer side. Within, the furnishing
was meagre enough ; a few heavy joint stools,
hacked by generations of students; a strong box;
a delicately wrought pair of bronze scales for weigh-
ing pearls, gold, silver, and precious colors; a
carved and gilded triptych frame hanging on the
wall waiting to be filled with the patron saints of
its future purchaser, and on one counter a small
anvil, a goldsmith's hammer, graver, and pincers, and
a goatskin bellows. A charcoal drawing or two was
stuck on the wall ; from a peg hung a fine jewelled
girdle, and on a bracket over the door were some
elaborately chiselled silver trenchers. At the back
a door led into the studio, lighted from the next
street, where the students worked under the
master's supervision, drawing, painting, modelling,
and carving.

The life of these art students was divided into
three sharply defined stages. The child of eight
or ten who was learning the rudiments of the
craft was called an apprentice ; the youth who
aided in the execution of important commissions,
an assistant (companion would be the literal trans-
lation of the Italian word); and the fully fledged
young artist who had begun to fly alone, a maestro,
or master. The whole training was eminently
practical; there were no medals, no exhibitions,
no public awards. Now and then there was a
188

FLORENCE

UFFIZI
LORENZO DI CREDI

HEAD OF AN UNKNOWN YOUTH

THE FLORENTINE ARTIST

great competition for some important civic monu-
ment, like the doors of the Baptistery or the facade
of the cathedral, to which not only Italians, but
artists from beyond the Alps were invited to send
designs ; but these were very rare, and by the end
of the fifteenth century had practically ceased to
exist. There were no academies ; no public art
schools and no government appropriations for
artistic instruction ; no official institutions, but
the state, while "ignoring art in the abstract,
encouraged the individual artist." To produce
something which somebody would want to possess,
to turn his knowledge of the beautiful, his mastery
of technical processes to some concrete end, was
the object of the education of the future artist,
a work-a-day genius ignorant of our modern for-
mula of art for art's sake. Pietro Vanucci painted
the Florentines on altar-curtains, while waiting for
the time when, as Perugino, he should work on the
walls of the Sistine Chapel; Eodolfo Ghirlandajo
" told sad stories of the death of kings " on
the baldacchino draperies for All-Souls-Day; and
Brunelleschi chased rings and set jewels while
dreaming of antique temples and giant domes.
Thus were executed not only the master-pieces we
admire to-day in the churches and museums of
Europe, but a whole series of minor works, which
surround the pictures and statues of the Renais-
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ITALIAN CITIES

sance like the fantastical bordering about the illu-
minated pages of the missal.

Art did not mean the production of pictures and
statues only; it meant a practical application of
the knowledge of the beautiful to the needs of daily
life. So the lottega hummed and buzzed with the
manifold business of the artist. If orders came in
his absence, the apprentices were to accept them all,
even those for insignificant trifles ; the master would
furnish the design, and the pupil would execute,
not from greed of gain, as with Perugino, but from
the pure joy in creative work which made Ghirlan-
dajo willing to decorate " hoops for women's
baskets," and at the same time long for a commis-
sion " to paint the whole circuit of all the walls of
Florence with stories," and which enabled him,
although he died at the age of forty-nine, to leave
behind him a second population of Florentines in
the choirs and chapels of her churches.

There were constant opportunities for the exer-
cise of this creative faculty. Orders did not cease.
Now it was a group of brown Carmelites who called
master and men to their church, to be at once
scene-setters, costumers, carpenters, and machinists
during the Ascension day ceremonies, and for the
angel-filled scaffolding from which various sacred
personages should mount to heaven. The Abbess
of St. Catherine's came in state to order designs for
190

THE FLORENTINE ARTIST

embroideries to lighten the heavy leisure of the
nuns ; some wealthy merchant, just made purveyor
of Florentine goods to the most Holy Father, would
put the papal escutcheon on the cornice of his house,
and wished to know what the master might demand
for his drawing; what for the pietra serena or
marble ; what for the sculpture, where to the keys
and tiara surmounting the arms of Eovere or
Medici should be added, as supporters, some device
of the painter's invention. Sometimes abbot or
prior brought a great order for the decoration of a
whole chapel or cloister, and the lottega palpitated
with expectant enthusiasm, in spite of which the
prudent master did not forget to specify in the con-
tract that for the said sum he would furnish the
paint, "except the gold and ultramarine," which
must be supplied by the monks ; for the brethren
dearly loved these costly colors, and the painter
well knew that without this important clause he
should have the prior always at his elbow demand-
ing, " more and more of the blue." Even the imagi-
nation of a Pope Julius II., equal to the conception
of a St. Peter's and of a mausoleum as big as a
church, could not rise above the monastic tradition,
and he could say, as he stood for the first time
beneath the awful prophets and sibyls of the Sistine
Chapel, " I don't see any gold in all this ! "

Sometimes there would come an embassy in
191

ITALIAN CITIES

gowns of state from some neighboring city, with
armed guards and sealed parchments, bringing a
commission for the painting of church or town-
hall, or a foreign trader from Milan or Genoa
would step in to haggle over a portrait. Most
welcome was a bridal party, for its manifold needs
gave work to the whole studio, even to the ten-
year old apprentices in the back shop. " Chi
prende moglie vuol quattrini" — he who takes a
wife needs cash — runs the Florentine proverb,
and we do not wonder at it when we realize what a
quantity of fine things a bridegroom was expected
to supply. There were the dower-chests, carved,
gilded, and painted with " Triumphs" of love or chas-
tity ; then the shrine, with its picture of Madonna
flanked by patron saints, for the bride's chamber,
and if the sposo was inclined to do things hand-
somely, the painter could add the portraits of
the future husband and wife in the inner side
of the gilded shutters; a chased and enamelled
holy-water basin, and sprinkler to hang beneath
it, of course, and for the tiring mirror, just arrived
from Venice, the master must design a silver
frame. Then, while our hand was in, why not
add a painted frieze of puttini on a blue ground to
run between the wainscoting and the beamed ceil-
ing ? Next (for the list was a long one) came the
damigella's book of Hours, wherein the tedium of
192

THE FLORENTINE ARTIST

long prayers was pleasantly enlivened by the con-
templation of goodly majuscules and fair min-
iatures. Important, too, was the plate, no small
item in days when a comfit salver or a tankard was
signed Verrocchio or Ghiberti. Then, objects of
momentous interest and of anxious consultation to
the whole party, came the jewels and their settings.
The buyers brought the raw material with them,
pearls and balas-rubies, the precious convoy of a
Venetian galley fresh from the far East; a big
turkis engraved with strange characters, torn from
the neck of an Algerian pirate by a Genoese sailor,
and an antique cameo unearthed in a Koman vine-
yard only a week before. Each jewel was then
examined, weighed, and entered in two account-
books, the painter's and the owner's, to prevent any
possibility of fraud or mistake.

Afterward ensued a most animated and dramatic
discussion of designs, details, and prices, during
which artist and customers vied with each other in
fine histrionic effects, followed in due time by an
amicable settlement and more entries in those
" diurnal books " which still exist among the domes-
tic archives of Florentine families to inform poster-
ity how many peacock feathers went to a garland,
how many hundredweight of tine pearls to a girdle,
and just how many florins, Macigni, Strozzi, or
Bardi paid for a buckle or a pouch-clasp.
VOL. i. — 13 193

ITALIAN CITIES

Strange as such varied orders would appear to a
modern artist, they seemed natural enough to the
painters and patrons of the Eenaissance, to whom
art meant, first of all, the embellishment of daily
life. In these days of specialists and perfected
processes, it is difficult to realize how wide a field
was then open to the creative artist, and in how
many different directions his personality sought
expression. All life was his, and all its forms ;
nothing was too small or too great, too trivial to
be tried, too difficult to be dared ; in him the audac-
ity of the revolutionist was united to the infinite
patience of the gem-cutter. He attended personally
to a thousand details now relegated to trained sub-
ordinates. He must answer for his materials, must
dabble in the grave art of the apothecaries (that
arte degli speziali e medici which called Dante
member), that the chemicals might be pure for
the color his apprentices ground. He must linger
in the Pellicceria, or Furriers' Quarter, choosing
fair, smooth vellum, and must anxiously test the
panel upon which Madonna should appear, lest
fine gold and costly ultramarine might be wasted
upon unseasoned wood. He must train his model,
watch the carving of his picture-frame, and see
that the oil was properly clarified. The sculptor
went to the quarries to select his blocks of marble,
and superintended their removal to the town ; he

194

THE FLORENTINE ARTIST

examined the jewel on which cameo or intaglio
was to be cut, and planned the scaffolding for his
colossal statues. The architect arranged all the
practical details for the execution of his designs,
invented machines for raising stones and beams,
built the bridges and platforms used by the work-
men, was his own foreman and master-builder,
and of him it might be truly said, " No stone
was laid that he did not wish to see" (Non
sarebbe murata una pietra, che non I' avesse valuta
vedere).

The chisel, the needle, the compass, the burin, the
brush, the goldsmith's hammer, the calligraph's pen,
even the potter's clay and the mason's trowel were
alike familiar to him. He could fill a dusky Gothic
chapel with a frescoed paradise, radiant with golden
heads and glimmering haloes and the sweep of
snowy wings, and fashion a woman's earring; he
could design embroidery patterns " in chiaro-oscuro
for certain nuns and other people;" and build a
bridge over Arno that has stood for five centuries,
against storm and flood, even when the river, swollen
with rain and laden with wrack, tossed its tawny
waves high against the piers and battered them
with uprooted trees and clods of earth and broken
beams. He could set a great cupola on the cathe-
dral walls, and write abusive sonnets to those who
declared he was tempting God by this achievement ;

195

ITALIAN CITIES

he could, on his way to Carrara to select marble
for a monument, casually, and as an incident of
his errand, survey and build a road over the tor-
rent-beds and sharp spurs of the mountain ; he
could " cramp his hand to fill his lady's missal
marge with flowerets ; " he could design a cartoon
for the tapestry-weavers, and crowd heaven's glories
into a gilded triptych, as well as he could make
scaling ladders and "armor warships." He could
decorate a dower-chest, and paint a cathedral apse,
and chisel a holy-water basin, while fortifying a
city ; he could write to a Duke of Milan, describing
his inventions for war-machines, bombs, and field-
pieces ; his plans for fortifications, canals, and
buildings, adding, as an after-thought, at the end
of the list, "in painting also I can do what may
be done as well as any, be he who he may."

He could handle a pen as well as a brush, and
fill the empty mould of the sonnet with the fiery
molten gold of real passion ; he could write trea-
tises on art, rich in wise precepts ; histories of
sculpture in which his own works were not slighted ;
dissertations on domestic economy and world-
famous lives of fellow-craftsmen. Using the style
like a chisel, carving character in broad, virile
strokes, moulding colloquial Italian like wax, he
could cast in the furnace of his own fierce nature
an unequalled full-length portrait of the man of

196

PRATO

SAN NICCOLO DA TOLENTINO
GIOVANNI DELLA ROBBIA ?

WALL-FOUNTAIN

d of

THE FLORENTINE AETIST

the Eenaissance, in " the best of modern autobiog-
raphies."

He could make scientific discoveries, solve math-
ematical problems, embroider an altar-cloth, invent
costumes for a masque, summon the gods of Olynix
pus to the magic circle of the seal ring, engrave
buttons in niello, illustrate Dante's Paradise and
Petrarch's Triumphs, design moulds for jellies
and confections, model statuettes in sugar paste,
and make of a banquet as rich a feast for the eye
as for the palate. He could inlay a corselet, paint
a banner for a procession with rose-crowned, pea-
cock-winged angels and gaunt patron saints, or cast
a huge church bell girdled with many patternings
and Gothic letters which still tell us "Franciscus
Fiorentinus me fecit ; " he could paint and glaze
a sweet water jar, or a cool-toned pavement, or a
shrine where, under heavy garlands, the cherubs
clustered close like doves in the shelter of the
eaves, around some sweet-faced saint.

And in these myriad forms of loveliness he could
immortalize his native town ; freely as he scattered
his riches over Italy, it was for Florence that he
reserved his most precious gifts ; it is to him,
the greatest of her sons, that she owes her proud
title of "The Beautiful." During long centuries
of shame, when the foreign yoke lay heavy on
her neck, the dead artists still served her ; she

197

ITALIAN CITIES

hid her misery and degradation under the splen-
did mantle of their consummate achievements,
which still sanctifies her and will make her a
place of pilgrimage as long as art has a single
votary.

For creeds decay, and scholarship grows musty,
and the wisdom of one century is the foolishness
of the next, but beauty endures forever. A scepti-
cal age smiles at the bigotry which condemned
Matteo Palmieri's picture, and yet is charmed by
the melancholy and mannered graces of Botticelli;
the scholar shudders at the barbarisms of the
famous humanists, but the sculptor still takes off
his cap to Donatello ; the mysticism of the Divine
Comedy rings strangely hollow on a modern ear,
but have the Night and Morning of Michelangelo
no meaning for us ? The scientist of to-day looks
with reverent pity at Galileo's rude telescope, but
the architect counts Brunelleschi's dome among the
miracles of his art. Leonardo's fortifications have
crumbled away ; his inventions are superseded ; only
the drawings remain of the famous flying machine,
but La Gioconda's mysterious smile has not ceased
to fascinate an older world.

198

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

199

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

IN the history of the arts and letters two cities
have been leaders of nations, Athens and Florence,
and two fountain-heads, the Ilyssus and the Arno,
have poured their waters into the fields of the
world. Ancient Athens is a ruin, but to-day the
little city of Florence holds the thoughtful as does
no other, even in Italy. It is not the past alone
which makes it interesting ; it is the fact that there
we have the printed page and the record in stone
side by side, that there more than anywhere else
the historic souvenir stands visible and tangible.

In Egypt the temples rise from the sands that
have covered the life of the people, and in Eome
the skeleton of the antique world stands bare and
gaunt uppn a soil which is itself the dust of bygone
civilizations ; but in Florence the same walls which
to-day resound to the traffic of the towns-people,
and the polyglot enthusiasm of the tourists, echoed
the talk of Dante and Guido Cavalcante ; the arches
that reverberate the loiterer's mandolin gave back
the music of Squacialupi and the songs of Lorenzo
the Magnificent as he " roamed the town o' nights "
with his companions. The same windows which

201

ITALIAN CITIES

see the English or American families starting with
their little red books to do the city, saw the hooded
Michelangelo stepping from his house in the Via
Ghibellina, bending over the staff kept there to this
day, and turning his face toward San Lorenzo, where
his giants lay waiting for him to free them from
their marble prison.

Paris has levelled her mediaeval streets to build
wide boulevards, and London's commerce has over-
laid the ancient city ; but in Florence you may go
with Michelangelo to San Lorenzo by the self-
same streets and turnings ; you may follow the
crowd trooping to hear Savonarola in the'Duomo ;
may pass the shops where immortal painters
worked, and stand before shrines at street-corners
famous in Florentine romance, where you walk
hand in hand with Boccaccio and Sacchetti as easily
as with Baedeker and Murray. Against the wall
at your elbow the shoulders of some Ghibelline
have been set hard, the stones rubbed by his mailed
shirt. The great dint in the stone was made by
the missile whirled from a mangonel upon some
tower that still rises brown and solid as ever.
" Magnificently stern and sombre are the streets of
beautiful Florence," said Dickens, and hardly any-
one has said better ; but if her beauty be somewhat
high and frowning, it lives with us the longer, and
all about her she wears a garland of olive, well

202

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

fitted to the city which opened the path of modern
thought.

The foreigners have loved Florence so much as to
make her half their own. To the Tuscan the fores-
tieri are as familiar as the Bargello itself, and it is
no mean proof of the dignity and beauty of the city
that the inevitable fringe of frippery which hangs
upon the skirts of a tourist invasion cannot belittle
her.

But it is not all frippery. No city has been more
admirably photographed than Florence. The Tus-
cans are a reading people, or at any rate there are
shops full of books, while Vieusseux's noble circulat-
ing library has hardly its equal. In it are histories
of Florence, big and little, by famous men of by-
gone centuries whose memorial tablets shine upon
the city walls to-day : the Villani, whose house is
in the Via de' Giraldi by the Bargello ; Macchiavelli
and Guicciardini, whose names you may see near
the Pitti palace; Varchi and Nardi and many
others; historians, partial and impartial, Piagnoni
and Medicean.

But to those forestieri who speak our English
language, no book in the long line has the fascina-
tion of the " Eomola " of George Eliot. As in the
words of Nello, Eomola seems the lily of Florence
incarnate against the brown background of the old
city. Florence seems more familiar and akin to us

203

ITALIAN CITIES

because we can follow her footsteps about it, and
see her between the great reformer and the Judas
who betrayed them both, and attended by a whole
Shakespearian train, — Nello, the barber ; Bratti,
the iron-monger ; Brigida, the dear old simpleton ;
Tessa, the little sleepy, loving animal, and many
others interwoven upon a background of the life and
thought of the time.

A whole panorama is unrolled for us, made living
by characters, some historic, some fictitious, but all
penetrated with the spirit of the fifteenth century,
and moving upon the great currents of the age, —
the desire for civic autonomy, the striving for re-
form, and the passionate enthusiasm for the resurgent
culture of antiquity. We listen to Savonarola in the
Duomo and to Capponi, speaking for liberty in the
palace of the Via Larga. The life of the scholars
passes before us in the intense earnestness of old
Bardo, or the witty trifling of the Medicean plotters
in the Eucellai gardens, and exhibits one of its most
characteristic sides in the sayings of the brilliant
smatterer, Nello. People famous in history meet
us ; some, like Piero di Cosimo, to take part in the
story, others only to appear and disappear. Artists
greet us for a moment, — wild young Mariotto
Albertinelli, with his model, emerges into the light
of festival-lamps upon the Annunziata place ; his
beloved friend, Fra Bartolommeo, stands in the glow

204

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

of the bonfire of vanities with Cronaca and Sandro
Botticelli ; young Niccolo Macchiavelli talks to us
as only George Eliot could make him talk. Charles
VIII. of France, whose almost monstrous face
we find to-day in a terra-cotta of the Bargello,
passes, — we see the slit of a mouth, and the
" miserable leg " upon the housings of gold, and the
expedition of the king to Naples, so heavy with
consequences to Italy and the world, becomes an
important factor in the story. "We listen to the
inevitable opponents of Savonarola and reform:
the artistic opponents, who sighed over the Boccac-
cios that burned upon the bonfire ; the brutal
opponents, in Dolfo Spini's compagnacci and their
hatred of all decency; the foolish opponents, in
Monna Brigida's thankfulness that the reformer
had "not quite turned the world upside down,"
since " there were jellies with the arms of the
Albizzi and Acciajoli on them" at the Acciajoli
wedding-feast. We stand upon the cathedral square
— Piagnoni at heart, every one of us — through the
author's wonderful chapter upon the trial by fire.
We starve with the city in its misfortunes, and
rejoice in its success ; we see the people of the
frescoes, and we hear the bells of Florence.

Every visitor to Italy carries away at least a
general impression of the city. It is an impression
of brown, old stone, of narrow streets, of enormously
205

ITALIAN CITIES

wide eaves, as if the palaces were shading their
window-eyes from the dazzling light; of sidewalk-
less streets, with polygonal blocks of pavement, like
an Etruscan wall laid flat; of fortifications and
battlements, seen overhead ; of massive gratings at
windows that show the pediments of the Kenais-
sance ; of still heavier ones, at those of the Gothic
times ; of escutcheons at palace-angles ; of projec-
tions corbelled out, throwing deep shadows and
suggesting machicolations through which were
dropped stones and beams in the days of street-
battle ; of shrines at corners, glassed and dusty
now, but out of which the long-eyed saints of the
fourteenth century look, wondering that the war-
cries are gone and that only the street-cries remain ;
of shadowed streets, and at some opening a burst of
sunlit facade of that checkered pattern, in black
and white, so dear to mediaeval Florentine eyes -t
while often and again, in semicircle of white and
blue, Madonna with the baby, " ringed by a bowery,
flowery angel brood," smiles upon one and says that
if war is transitory, beauty is immortal

Above all, one carries away in his memory the
image of those buildings which are the outgrowth of
the city, her stamp and mark, inseparable from her
as the Arno, and as familiar to the eyes of modern
travel as was the lily on the florin to the merchants
upon every medieeval 'change of Europe. They

206

GALLICANO

SANT' JACOPO

ANDREA DELLA ROBBIA

ALTAR PIECE

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

stand guard over the town like the stone saints
at the doorway of a church : the Cathedral, a huge
Christopher, lifting the cross upon the greatest of all
domes; the fair Campanile, like a Gabriel of the
Annunciation, wearing the lily of Florence, and call-
ing "Ave Maria" from its peal of bells; and the
Palazzo Vecchio, the Michael of the city, bearing
the shields of the republic, summoning the towns-
men to arms, and giving voice to the will of the
people. Then, too, there are San Giovanni, where the
Florentines are baptized, and Santa Croce, where
the great are buried ; the square strength of the
Bargello and the slender Badia tower that rings the
hour to the city.

All these make up Florence, and nearly all can
be included within a small rectangle bounded on
the south by the river, on the east by the Via del
Leoni and Via del Proconsolo running from the
Arno to the Cathedral ; the latter, with its vast
length, and the Baptistery to the west of it, making
a large part of the northern boundary, which is con-
tinued by the Via de' Cerretani to the western side,
formed by the Via de' Eondinelli, Piazza degli
Adimari, and Via Tornabuoni. Outside the rect-
angle historic quarters surround the great churches
of Santa Croce on the northeast ; San Lorenzo, the
Annunziata, and San Marco, on the north; and
Santa Maria Novella on the northwest. Besides
207

ITALIAN CITIES

these, there is that part of Oltr'arno including the
Via dei BardL

Within these limits, or nearly, the story of
Eomola runs, and about this little space you may
follow it, not in its details, — since it returns fre-
quently to the same places, — but in its main lines.
You may wake up with Tito under the Loggia de'
Cerchi and follow him to the Mercato, where he
found the people anxiously commenting upon the
death of Lorenzo de' Medici. The house of Bomola's
father in the Via dei Bardi may epitomize the life
of the scholar, the festival of the nativity of Saint
John give a glimpse of the artist, and with the scholar
and the artist we have the great figures of the Eenais-
sance, — the humanist who, from the heritage of
antiquity, set forth again the inward worthiness and
free agency of man, and the painter and sculptor
who once more gave expression to his outward
beauty. The scholars and artists of Florence may
thus stand as sponsors for the Titos and Tessas, the
Brattis and Nellos, and show us the palaces in which
the people of "Komola" lived, the people them-
selves, as they were painted upon church-wall or
carved on marble monuments. In the latter half of
the story the interest and, with it, the train of char-
acters converge upon the monastery of San Marco
and the Piazza della Signoria, where the fortunes of
the state work themselves out and the hopes of

208

Eomola are shattered. The monks of to-day, how-
ever shorn of their old importance, take us into
famous churches, and we may see the relics of Savon-
arola and follow his footsteps to the great square of
the Palazzo Vecchio, where the story ends.

After the noble prologue, the book opens upon
Tito awakening to the inquiring eyes of Bratti, the
ironmonger, from his sleep under the Loggia dei
Cerchi. The loggia is gone; but its place was in
the heart of the city, where the high houses crowd
together, and where the memorial tablets to the
great departed speak of many who had gone from
Florence before Tito's time, and of many who came
after him. It is a busy quarter of narrow streets,
where the procession had to close its ranks, and
where Guelph or Ghibelline found a short chain
quite long enough to link house to house and stop
the oncoming horse or foot of the enemy. A roar-
ing quarter it is where Dante heard the shouts of
battle, and where Tito, had he listened, could have
recognized the whole fugue of the arts of Florence,
those famous arti, major and minor, — the shuttles
of the woollen-makers, the chisels of the sculp-
tors, the pounding of the metal-workers in the
Ferravecchi street, the clicking hammers of the
goldsmiths, and the cleavers of the butchers, their
predecessors upon the Ponte Vecchio.

Only a few steps beyond the loggia lies the Mer-
VOL. r. — 14 209

ITALIAN CITIES

cato Vecchio, that famous square which is still pic-
turesque and busy (1887). The municipal broom
has swept away the butchers' and poulterers' stalls,
and much of that rather Augean market which old
Pucci sang, and municipal prudence has housed in a
museum the Eobbia angels, that used to shine
whitely over all the blood and dirt and confusion.

The Goddess of Plenty only a few years ago still
stood there, high on her column, a kind of Santa
Barbara to the tower of Or San Michele. For in
early times, when the microcosmic republic not
only furnished manufactures to the world, but made
its own bread to feed its own soldiers, the captains
of Or San Michele mounted the tower yearly and,
looking out upon the fields, decided by their appear-
ance what should be the current price of wheat.
The goddess is gone, column and all, but plenty still
reigns below in the market — and what a place it
is ! A wide rectangle, its centre unpaved ; the
houses, tall and short, crowded with windows, and
below, about three sides of the piazza, a noisy,
smoking, unfragrant medley of shops ; a constant
push and shouting ; a crossing of handcarts ; a fizz-
ing of spiders as the fat drips from polenta browning
nicely and eaten hot, a crackling of charcoal under
the chestnut braziers and open-air cooking of every
sort and kind. If Tito, after his nap, had found but
a grosso or so in his pocket, he would have taken

210

FLORENCE

PIAZZA DEL MERCATO VECCHIO

11, bi
market — and wh

pretty Tessa's kiss and cup of milk as dessert and
gone for his meal to one of those tempting alfresco
cook-shops, with its large, clear fire, its rows of
neatly dressed fowls and joints turning on their
spits, the hot cakes of chestnut-flour and crisp slices
of polenta fizzling in their pans, and its brass platters
and porringers engraved with quaint old patterns,
gleaming in the firelight. Here Tessa might find
her berlingozzi to-day or Baldassarre his bread and
meat ; and we may see their modern counterparts —
shabby men in long cloaks and slouched felt hats,
pretty girls in serge dresses and gay headkerchiefs
— see them best of all after nightfall, when the
brazier-fires seem to leap up higher and make wild
Eembrandt effects upon the faces of Bersaglieri
munching polenta under their waving cocks' feathers,
or brown peasants looking curiously at the rude
woodcuts heading the penny ballads that line the
walls. There is less "amateur fighting" on the
square than in the old times, less filching from
stalls, less gambling, for that is done decorously in
the state lotteries. Of four churches at the angles,
but two subsist in dirty, crazy fragments, and, in-
deed, there is perhaps less work for the devil whom
Saint Peter Martyr saw fly by, as he preached in the
open-air pulpit still remaining. The devil remains,
too, for many years later a young French artist
whom Florentines afterward learned to know as

211

ITALIAN CITIES

John of Bologna, visited his friends and patrons, the
Vecchietti, near by, and catching the devil, fixed
him to the angle of the palace, a grotesque, deco-
rative little monster, for tourists to visit and Accarisi
to copy on spoon-handles.

There are booths of every sort, full of gay goods ;
shawls, red, blue, and apricot, the joy of modern
Tessas ; booths full of animals, too ; here is a boy
dragging hens from a basket, — one squeak, two
squeaks, a whole demoniac panpipe of terror, till
half a dozen hang downward by their legs. A little
farther on, the parrots, in full consciousness of orna-
mental security, are shrieking what we feel sure are
scurril taunts at the hens ; upon the shop-front are
scores of wicker cages, their canaries filling high so-
prano parts in the chorus of the Mercato, while the
thrash of a machine, hidden somewhere, adds to the .
noise till the big bell of the Campanile booms a
diapason. You find Bratti at home just beyond the
bird-shop, where the street of the Ferravecchi
bristles with old iron. There are chains, bits of
harness, copper braziers in whole families of big and
little ; here and there among the metal are old
musical instruments, battered fiddles, a flute or so,
and slender, verdigrised brass lamps.

The Medici lived hard by here before they out-
grew their house and set Michelozzo to work upon
the palace of the Via Larga. Their noses were not

212

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

nice ; one might be of the Grandi, and yet like a leek
and rather enjoy the fish-market at the corner, whose
loggia, with its arches, columns, and medallions, is
a new-comer since the days of Bratti. And the
Medici were not alone in the quarter: the Amieri
were near them, and the Strozzi, surely as grandly
housed as ever were private citizens, had built their
huge palace here, with its back upon the " Onion
Place," the Piazza dei Cipolli. Its bases are lined
with the long stone seats so well known in Florence,
so convenient for the sturdy constituents of the old
nobles to stand upon of afesta to see the procession
go by, to sit on of week-days, selling their onions
and their spring flowers side by side.

Not far from the Mercato, in the Calimara, was
the shop of Burchiello, that Eenaissauce Figaro of
Florence, antecedent to the delightful character of
Nello, the barber. It was Nello's shop that next
received Tito and the story, and Tito looked out over
the barber's saucer and apron at nearly what we see
to-day. Some changes there have been, for Florence
has worked hard at the fagade of her cathedral, un-
veiling it this year, — some changes, but not many.
The stone of Dante has been piously built into the
wall, while Lapo and Brunelleschi are put on either
side of it to watch their work. But the fair tower
is the same ; " il mio bel San Giovanni " is lello still,
even beside its later and greater rival. The mighty
213

ITALIAN CITIES

dome rises as grand as when Michelangelo, his
horse's head turned toward Koine, looked back at it
from the hills, and avowed that he could do no bet-
ter, grand under the sunlight, under the starlight ;
grand when, on some high festival, covered with
lighted lamps, it sits like a jewelled mitre upon the
city, and grandest of all, perhaps, under the Italian
moon.

It was from the shop of Nello that Tito went
with his Figaro patron to the house of old Bardo, in
Oltr'arno.

The Via dei Bardi is still one of the most char-
acteristic parts of the city. The houses of the
Bardi are gone, but many such of the early times,
those which must have immediately taken their
place, remain. Among the frowning streets of
Florence it is one of the sternest, chill and wind-
swept : a long fortress, easily defended at its ends in
the days when the great family, unaided, could send
from its houses pikemen to hold the chain barri-
cades of the Ponte Vecchio and the Piazza Mozzi ;
cross-bowmen to send their bolts whizzing from
back windows into the enemy upon the bridges ;
artillerymen to work the mangonels upon the
tower-tops, to fling great stones over Santa Felicita
and up the Borgo San Jacopo, or even across the
river to the heart of the republican city, the square
of the Palazzo Vecchio. Not only could they fur-
214

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

nish all these and officer them with sons and
brothers and cousins, but they had their allies, too.
There were the Eossi, by the little church of Santa
Felicita, and the Frescobaldi, to hold the bridge of
the most holy Trinity. The bridge of the Fresco-
baldi has gone down in ruin before floods fiercer
than these faction struggles, and has been replaced
by the graceful arches of Ammanati, but the Ponte
Vecchio, which saw the gonfalons of the quarters —
the dove and the sun, the baptistery and the cross
— beaten back by the Bardi, but finally triumphant,
stands the same as ever, and says as steadfastly,
" Gaddi mi fece, il Ponte Vecchio sono," as in the
days when the great Taddeo set its buttresses
against the current.

To-day there are parts of the Via dei Bardi where
one may stand and not see, within the gentle curve
that bounds the vision, a single stone which tells of
modern times or anything but arched windows, jeal-
ous gratings, and thick oak doors, heavy with the
mass of spikes that stud them — a stern, forbidding
street, but with the beauty of dignity, simplicity,
and strength. There is little traffic there now ; oc-
casionally some fine carriage wakens the echoes of
the deep archways as it goes by to the palace of
the Capponi, whose name, great as that of the Bardi,
illustrates the place still. The street which was
" the filthy," the Via Pidigliosa, before the nobles

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built their palaces there, can never be even com-
monplace again. And, stern as it is, romance looks
down on one from the loggia whence Dianora dei
Bardi saw and claimed her husband as they led
him to execution, saving his life and the honor of
the Buondelmonti Kobbia's Madonna, too, blos-
soms like a flower among the dark palaces, above
the door of little Santa Lucia, the church in which
Eomola would have been married had not blind
Bardo's memories and anticipations beckoned him
to Santa Croce, where he had been wedded, and
where he hoped to lie buried.

Midway of the Via dei Bardi a path leads
sharply to the right, up the hill of San Giorgio,
where Tessa lived, and finally to the mediaeval
gate, with its frescoes and its sculptured St. George.
Beyond it opens the pleasant country, and at the
side is the fortress where, in blue woollen and
lacquer and pipe-clay, some thousand defenders of
the modern Tessas of Florence may be seen.

From the crashing palaces of the Oltr'arno nobles,
the cross-bolts and hurtling-stones of the battle of
the bridges, to the wordy combats, the poison-
tipped epigrams, the ponderously flung Latin taunts
of the humanists, is as far as from the early four-
teenth to the late fifteenth century ; but topographi-
cally it is no farther than a ten minutes' walk from
the Via dei Bardi to the palace of the Gherardeschi,

216

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

in the Borgo Pinti, where a tablet to Bartolommeo
Scala reminds us less of the secretary of the repub-
lic than of the scene of the culex in " Komola," the
suggestion of his quarrels with Politian.

It is, however, in the house of Eomola's father
that we are really made to participate in the enthu-
siasms of the man of letters. Bardo dei Bardi, the
blind old scholar, the collector of books and anti-
quities, the compiler and copyist of manuscripts,
is a familiar figure in the Italy of the fifteenth
century, the age of learning.

When Bardo planned the great work that he
and Tito were to write together, the first epoch of
humanism, that of discovery, had passed away, and
the second, that of compilation, had begun. In
both Florence had been in the vanguard. She had
welcomed the Greek professors from Byzantium,
who came rouged and painted, and clad in stiff,
hieratic robes, like the saints who stare down in
mosaic from the walls of Kavenna. She had her
own noble army of scholars: Boccaccio, Petrarch,
whose mother was born in this Via dei Bardi;
Poggio Fiorentino, who ransacked the transalpine
monasteries for books, and found many an old
Pagan author masquerading under frock and cowl,
and others, too, who might say with Ciriaco, "I
go to awaken the dead." And the dead was
awakened. Antiquity rose to life again, wearing
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ITALIAN CITIES

a strange garb, and with her simple, white chiton
pieced with bits of mediaeval motley and bespangled
with Byzantine tinsel; speaking a strange jargon
of corrupt Greek and barbarous Latin, but ragged
and stammering as she was, there was so much
human dignity and so much divine beauty about
her that no sooner was she seen than the new
Helena won the heart of the mediseval student.
A very Helena she was at first, seen dimly, as in
a magic mirror; mute or capricious to those who
sought most earnestly to learn her secrets; prone
to evil, with a "feather-headed" moral lightness
that frightened the devout, or so she seemed in the
dim light of the convent library, but when brought
into the Italian sunshine, the daylight of market-
place and lecture-room, she lost this mysterious
glamour, and gained in the losing.

All Florence welcomed her. The shop-keeping
republic patronized learning more generously than
king or pope : professors' chairs were endowed, libra-
ries founded, and famous scholars employed as am-
bassadors and secretaries. In Florence, scholarship
was not a mere ornamental fringe to the sober gar.
ment of daily duties ; it was warp and woof of that
garment, a part of life itself. Young girls, busy
merchants, men of pleasure, captains of adventure,
women of fashion, shared the enthusiasm for learn-
ing, and it is difficult nowadays to realize how

218

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

important the scholar's place became under such
conditions. Women had their part in this feast
of reason ; Komola's education by Chalcondilas, her
familiarity with Latin and Greek authors, was
not uncommon. Italy abounded in learned ladies;
princesses like Hippolita Sforza or Battista Monte-
feltro, who addressed Latin orations to popes and
emperors ; noble women who, like Cecilia Gonzaga,
wrote Greek beautifully; female professors who
filled many of the chairs of the Bolognese uni-
versity ; burghers' daughters, like Alessandra Scala,
to whom Politian and Marullus paid court, and
that Cassandra Fedeli, to whom Eomola intended
to apply when she left Florence after Tito's first
treason. For humanism was not only an accom-
plishment, it was a career ; in order to follow an
ordinary conversation a certain modicum of culture
was required, and a woman was obliged at least to
read, the result being a certain robustness of in-
tellect, which is so strong an element in Romola's
character.

Save in his generous temper, Bardo is a typical
scholar, with the maxims of the " Enchiridion " on
his lips and an intense craving for fame in his heart ;
too proud to cringe and flatter, too noble to fawn
for patronage and to pay its heavy price, and yet
not proud enough to disdain what others gained
through the sacrifice of their independence, and
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too often of their self-respect. But Bardo's wish
that through his collections his name should be
known and honored was not unreasonable in an
age that reverenced the tomb of Petrarch like that
of a saint, that preserved the study of Accursius
as though it were holy ground, and in which some
enthusiast, taking the lamp from below the crucifix
and placing it before a bust of Dante, exclaimed,
"Take it; thou art more worthy of it than the
Crucified!"

Modern Italy is at present quite too busy with
financial and economic problems to be enthusiastic
about literature, but we can still hear lectures on
Dante in the Florentine Collegio Eeale, and see
students almost as picturesquely cloaked as in the
old days when Boccaccio discoursed in San Stefano
on the same subject. A few years ago a lineal
descendant of the great scholars might be seen in
the person of the Marchese Gino Capponi, author
of the well-known history of Florence.

From the scholar's library, in which antiquity
was diligently studied in manuscript and inscription,
the story leads Tito to one of those street proces-
sions which, partly religious, partly civic, were also
largely, in their costume and arrangement, the out-
come of these very excursions into the ancient
authors, and no picture of Italian life in the fif-
teenth century would have been complete without

220

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

the suggestion which George Eliot gives of the festi-
val of Saint John's nativity. He is a famous saint
in Florence, and his is the oldest church, the Bap-
tistery, already old in the thirteenth century, when
Arnolfo covered it with the black-and-white pat-
tern which we see there now, and which must have
been still tolerably fresh when Nello's barber-shop
stood near it. Neither the wide interior of the
Duomo nor the many-chapelled Santa Croce is as
solemn as the incense-filled space of San Giovanni,
whose domed ceiling, as the eyes strain through
the darkness, gradually grows populous with a mul-
titude, amidst which the face of the colossal Christ
looks out and seems to vibrate upon the colored
gloom. The church is so old that it is quite doubt-
ful whether the Eomans did or did not found it,
and its pavement has been trod by generations of
famous Florentines and by famous guests of Flor-
ence, kings and emperors from the north, weavers
of Lucca learning those same pavement patterns by
heart for their webs, and tourist invaders with their
guide-books. The saint is popular outside of his
church, too ; you find him on all sides. The young
Saint John is the darling of the Eobbia and of the
angel painters, the Lippi and Botticelli. Eossellino
has set him up in marble, a tottering baby, over the
door of the Opera del Battistero; and he is the
beloved of Donatello, who " did " him again and

221

ITALIAN CITIES

again as an adolescent with thin cheeks and wide
eyes standing to-day among the sturdy Davids and
Cupids of the Bargello. The John Baptist of the
procession was, as G-eorge Eliot tells us, no such
lovely boy, but a rough contadino, glad of his basket
of bread and wine, which was let down to him from
a house on the square of tiny Santa Maria del
Campo still standing halfway along the Proconsolo
Street. Every city in Italy had, if not its Saint
John's feast, some other, but the Florentines led as in
other directions, for with their " Orfeo " of Politian,
their music of Squarcialupi, their garden concerts
with recitations, they were preparing the way for
the opera and the modern theatre.

The popularity of pageants in the churches and
streets was immense. After the allegories of Dante,
the " Triumphs " of Love and Fame and Chastity of
Petrarch, the greatest artists could not disdain the
setting and even the stage-carpentry of the pom-
pous ballet-spectacles in which kings of Scripture,
heroes of antiquity, the virtues and vices, elements
and attributes, marched and countermarched through
the cities of Italy. In the mysteries of the North
the missal borders of the middle ages had come to
life, with all their soldiers and saints, their devils
and dragons ; but the Italians, that people of artists,
added the myths of classical antiquity and in-
terwove their Bible with Ovid. Brunelleschi set

222

FLORENCE

SAN LORENZO
DESIDERIO DA SETTIGNANO

TABERNACLE

the,

h kin,

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

his copper spheres a-whirling and invented his
heaven of angels dancing in concentric rings, his
Gabriel lowered by pulleys from a star ; Donatello
built his colossal wooden horse for a Paduan pageant,
and Leonardo da Vinci superintended the festivals
at Milan.

The charming half-feminine soldier-saints and
heroes of Perugino in the Sala del Cambio of his
native city might be seen in their fantastic feathers,
their semi-Eoman costumes, upon the squares of
Perugia, in moralities and plays. The women of
Botticelli and Pollajuolo who with corseleted breasts
and drawn swords sit as Fortitude and Justice in
the Uffizi, passed throned upon the processional
chariots of Cecca. Mantegna's slender nymphs
filled the car of Venus, while the Theology and
Jurisprudence of Eaphael's Vatican ceiling were
not wanting.

The Florentines made a profession of organizing
festivals, and went about Italy as impresari ; while
the whole youth of the country, men and women,
took various parts, from merely walking in gay
procession, as in the painting of the Adimari mar-
riage on the famous dower chest, to filling the most
eccentric roles. They sat on the tops of high
columns, stood whitened as statues in niches, or even
descended perilously upon a rope from some church
faqade; while every writer tells of those historic

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ITALIAN CITIES

little boys who were gilded all over, and who are
variously stated to have died from the effect of,
and not to have been injured at all by, the gold leaf.
The naif simplicity of the early mysteries played
on a platform in church or refectory must have
embodied much that was lovely ; but as the morality
grew into favor, the personifications of various attri-
butes became more and more enigmatical, till the
plays were perambulating puzzles, set in accordance
with the overloaded fashions of the North. In Italy
culture had permeated a deeper and wider stratum.
The antique was already a tradition, and men knew
their Dante and Petrarch, Boiardo and Pulci, by
heart. Excrescences were pruned away ; mere rich-
ness gave place to form and taste. The pompous
prosing Victor Hugo presents so vividly in the
beginning of his " Notre Dame de Paris " was suc-
ceeded by epigrammatic verse or even the fine
poetry of Politian. Doubtless there lingered some
absurdities in these pageants, as when tumblers and
weight-lifters were seen at the same time with the
angels, or a ballet issued from the sides of a golden
wolf at Siena; indeed, Donatello's wooden horse of
Padua and Leonardo's equestrian statue of Ludovico
Sforza, performing mechanical evolutions at a festi-
val, partook of the same exaggerated taste. But we
may be sure that the pictures were fine when Bru-
nelleschi and Da Vinci stood by ; and if the painters

221

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

costumed and set the spectacles, the spectacles in
their turn reacted upon the painter's art.

Imagine how ardently Mantegna and Filippino
Lippi would have worked at the arrangement of a
procession; how Filippino would have expended
upon it the vivid fancy which Vasari tells us of, and
which he showed in the curiously devised trophies,
standards, and pseudo-Eoman architecture of the
Strozzi chapel in Santa Maria Novella. If Ghirlan-
dajo looked hard at the Florentines when about
their daily vocations, Sandro Botticelli was all eyes
as the car of the Virtues passed, and we can well be-
lieve that the pretty girls of the city vied with each
other to be chosen for this or that personification.
We see the sublimated reflection of these spectacles
on many a canvas or bas-relief of the fifteenth
century: in Botticelli's exquisite "Primavera;" in
Mantegna's " Triumph of Csesar " at Hampton Court ;
in the singing groups of Delia Eobbia ; the inter-
twined boys of the pulpit at Prato, and the panels,
pilasters, and friezes of the Eenaissance. So great
was the passion for spectacles that Savonarola
was forced to adapt it to the uses of his theoc-
racy; and in speaking to the multitude from the
pulpit of the Duonio, he clothed his vision of Christ
in the forms which the people had seen and under-
stood in the processions and pageants of the streets.
Perhaps, too, the great monk never entirely forgot

VOL.I. — 15 225

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the days when he laid down the lute in his native
Ferrara, the city of festivals.

Peculiarly famous in the arrangement of pageants
was that Piero di Cosimo who represents the artis-
tic side in Eomola, and who evidently was chosen
by George Eliot for his strong personality rather
than for his place in Italian art.

Far inferior in technique to most of his fellows,
his eccentricities, as has been the case with some
other painters, gave him more fame than his talent.
Vasari's sketch of his life reads like a character
study, and George Eliot closely followed his lines.
A few souvenirs of the old painter are still to be
found in Florence; the old Via Gualfonda, then
in the most lonely part of the town, is now one
of the great arteries of modern Florence, running
from the piazza of Italian independence to the
avenue of Filippo Strozzi, behind the Dominican
church of Santa Maria Novella, past the railway-
station. Here the painter shut himself up in his
studio, living on hard-boiled eggs, which, to save
time and firing, he would cook by fifties and hun-
dreds ; never allowing his rooms to be cleaned or his
garden pruned ; saying that such things were much
better left to nature ; stuffing his ears with wool to
drown the sound of the bells, the voices of the street,
and even the distant chanting of the monks, and
" living the life of a wild beast rather than a man."

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IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

A painter of lively fancy rather than imaginative
power, with more love of the grotesque than the
beautiful, he studied the caprices of nature. The
forms of strange plants and animals ; the fantastic
shapes of the clouds, and even the mildew stains upon
old walls, delighted him, " and he would describe
them so frequently that even to persons who could
take pleasure in such narratives, the relation at
length became tedious and tiresome." This is
a significant sentence when we remember that
Vasari's authority was his own master, Andrea
del Sarto, a pupil of Piero. Eeaders of "Komola"
will remember the sketches of loves playing with
armor, the white rabbit that twitched its nose
contentedly over a box of bran, and the tame
pigeons that Tito saw in the old man's den, and
they can still be seen in the picture of "Mars
and Venus" in the Nerli Palace.

The Piero of the novel is a type as well as
a personality, a type of the artistic nature that
found the pageantry and color of Lorenzo's time
more attractive than the severity of a Savonarola.
Piero's dislike of Savonarola was that of a great
many people not of the Dolfo Spini sort, who, look-
ing only at the surface of things, preferred a prince
who made life very pleasant for the few, rather
than the priest who would make it tolerable to the
many. Piero, whose business was to look at the
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ITALIAN CITIES

surface of things, naturally hated a man who wanted
" to burn all the color out of life ; " " to make every
woman a black patch against the sky," and to do
away with the gold brocades and velvet mantles,
the giostre and cavalcate, which paint so magnifi-
cently. Van Dyck could hardly be expected to
sympathize with the Puritans, and an enlightened
and art-loving tyrant is a better patron than a
capricious republic. There were Piagnoni painters,
men who saw the surface of things, or at least could
render it on canvas far better than Piero, who at
the same time could see somewhat below that same
superficies, and long for beauty of a more immate-
rial and nobler sort, like Botticelli and the young
Michelangelo, but Piero was not of their ilk.

The famous families of Florence were long-
lived. To-day in the Martelli Palace you visit the
statues which Donatello gave to a Martelli of the
fifteenth century ; it is by the courtesy of a Buona-
rotti that the relics in the house of Michelangelo
are shown ; the Strozzi, the Pazzi, and many others
are seen daily about the streets of the city; and
in Santa Croce, the tomb of a Capponi — a Gino
Capponi, like his great ancestor — is white and
shining in the marble of a recent date.

The private palaces of Florence are as character-
istic as its public buildings. They are the outcome

228

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

of civil strife, and through all the elegance of the
Renaissance appears the fortress. Within the win-
dows are the gratings that made scaling-ladders
useless ; below are doors which little save fire or
a battering-ram could force, and above is the loggia,
raised upon the house-top, beyond the chances of
street-battle. They are such houses as the one Ro-
mola lived in ; without they suggest the fortress, and
within they smack of the cloister, with - their long
passages, tiled floors, frequent stairs, and wide,
frescoed wall-spaces.

The tall towers are gone from these private palaces.
A fiat, issuing like a mediaeval Tarquin from the
Signoria, lopped them to an even level in the thir-
teenth century ; but the escutcheon, carved by some
famous artist, still advertises the nobility of the
former owner, who is often seen within, kneeling
before Madonna upon a gold ground; his palms
joined, and his subtle Florentine profile upturned
with reverential if somewhat proprietary interest.
In the Borgo degli Albizzi the palaces stand shoulder
to shoulder, Neri and Pazzi, Alessandri and Qua-
ratesi; for half the streets of Florence are named
for the great families. They have held history
and romance, tragedies of blows in the earlier
centuries, of poison in the later, and have shel-
tered the kindly family life Pandolfini tells of
in his "Del Governo."

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ITALIAN CITIES

The finest palace streets of Florence are the
Borgo degli Albizzi and the Via Tornabuoni. The
Borgo almost retains its old appearance, but the Tor-
nabuoni has been given up to the foreigner, especially
to the English or American visitor. Thither he
goes for his letters and his money ; there he reads
the papers at Vieusseux's, or loiters in Doney's
cafe"; there, in the shadow of the stern-looking
palace, designed by Michelangelo, he may buy
photographs of everything, big or little, in Flor-
ence ; there the tourists sit and study their guide-
books, in Baccio d'Agnolo's windows of the Hotel
du Nord. It is the oddest mixture in the city
of the old and the new. Before the huge Strozzi,
and opposite the flower-market, at Giacosa's, the
American and English girls eat candy or sweets,
according to their nationality ; or just beyond, under
Alfieri's house, look into the windows of the jewel-
lers' shops, discussing whether the devil of the
Mercato Yecchio or the St. George of Donatello is
better upon a spoon-handle ; whether a bearded
head or an athlete will please the longer upon an
intaglio or cameo ; whether photographs are better
mounted upon tinted paper or white ; in fact, dis-
cussing the thousand delightful trifles of foreign
travel, and of present-buying for those at home.

Not a few Americans have had close acquaintance
with the house in which George Eliot passed the
230

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

days when she was acquiring that exact knowledge
of Florentine topography which helps to make her
book so real. This was the villa of Mr. Thomas
Adolphus Trollope, which stood well out in the
country, but since then Florence has grown; it is
now within the city, and has become a pension. It
is a privilege to remember it as it was, with its
wealth of carving and Venetian glass, and its fine
oak-floored and leather-covered library, where the
genial old author proudly dragged from his shelves
folio after folio of the early Florentine historians,
manuscript and black-letter, and showed them by
the light of a stained-glass casement, which filled
the whole end of the room and framed Fiesole with
its rocks, its olives, and its towers.

If the palaces of the old Florentines are to be
found on all sides, so, too, their ancient inhabitants
stand ready to receive us, if we will but go to them.
Thanks to the painters, the costume of the end of
the fifteenth century can be reconstructed even to
its smallest details, and we know just how Tito
looked when he thrust his thumbs into his belt or
cast the lecchetto over his left shoulder, and can find
all Brigida's finery, from her pearl-embroidered cap
to her coral rosary, in many a blackened picture.
For even if costume was idealized and ennobled by
the artists under the influence of classical antiquity,
the innumerable portraits of the time represent it
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ITALIAN CITIES

as it was worn in daily life. The young Florentines
might clothe themselves in Mantegna's or Gozzoli's
draperies for a May-day festival or procession, but
when they sat to Ghirlandajo or Botticelli for their
portraits, they wore the mantle and kirtle or the
doublet and hose of the latest mode.

The most marked characteristics of this costume
are simplicity of line, unity of color, and sobriety of
ornament. Florentine elegance always had a touch
of severity. The silk brocades made in the town,
and sent to France and England, were seldom seen
at home. Except on festival days, the Florentines
wore their own woollen stuffs from the shops of the
Calimala. The general form of these garments is
familiar to us all : the fine-linen underwear, show-
ing at wrist and throat, or pulled through the
slashes at elbow and shoulder ; for the young men,
the long hose, fastened by points at the waist to the
tight-fitting jerkin ; the loose doublet, falling half-
way to the knee; the ample cloak, still worn in
Florence, and the tiny red cap, crowning a mass
of fuzzy curls. For the girls there were the close-
fitting gowns that revealed every line of the body ;
the flowing over-robe, shaped like a Greek tunic,
sometimes girdled in antique fashion ; a chaplet of
goldsmith's work or a net of pearls to confine the
long hair. For the elder folk there was the stately
lucco that fell in unbroken folds from neck to

232

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

ankle ; the great mantle lined with furs or velvet ;
the barret with its hanging scarf, ample protection
against the sharp tramontanes or the hot sun ;
grand gowns of rich, heavy stuffs and all sorts of
head and neck gear, from the transparent gauzes of
Fra Lippo's pictures to the thick veils of the Del
Sarto Madonnas, all most becoming to elderly faces.

In Italy the old canons of proportion were never
quite forgotten. The waist and hips were never
compressed, and the head was dressed so as to
appear relatively small. The huge head-dresses,
the towering horns and peaks, so popular in Eng-
land and Germany, the pinched waist and squeezed
hips of the French demoiselle and chatelaine, never
found favor in Italy. The mantle, the cloak, the
flowing veil, were essential parts of an Italian toilet
of any epoch, and even in the eighteenth century
Venetian women could still be majestic in hoops
and panniers.

Toward the end of the fifteenth century the study
of antique sculpture, the influence of the artists,
the newly awakened sense of aesthetic criticism,
began to find expression in costume. The propor-
tions of the human body, the beauty of its move-
ments, the elegance of its natural lines, were again
felt, after many centuries, and since the days of
peplos and himation they had not been more fully
expressed. Beautiful as the garments of ancient

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ITALIAN CITIES

Greece were, the Florentines were too truly artistic,
too thoroughly imbued with the principles of style,
to endeavor to imitate them. No doubt artists and
patrons looked upon antique drapery as an ideal, but
as something quite unsuited to modern conditions,
to a cold climate, to the activity of burgher life.

But the youths' doublet and hose, the girls'
tight-fitting, square-cut bodice, followed the lines of
their young bodies, and the older people wore the
long folds and ample draperies that lend grace and
dignity to the most uncomely. On the practical
character of these costumes, their fitness, their
style, in a word, we need not insist. They were
as fine in detail as in line. Here, as in every other
aspect of Eenaissance life, there was much perso-
nality ; ornament was individual ; seals, emblems,
arms, devices, the blazons of mediaeval heraldry, were
still in the immediate past, and to them the artists
lent beauty as well. So the girl's favorite flower
blossomed unfading in her silver garland; the
scholar's pet maxim, from Seneca or Cicero, was
embroidered on his pouch or graven on a medallion,
and charming trifles lent grace and originality to
the simplest dress.

The burgher's suit of plain cloth could not fail of
distinction when the medal in his cap was wrought
by Pisanello or Finiguerra, its device penned by
Politian, and when the seal-ring on his finger was

234

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

cut by some famous intagliatore, ancient or modern.
There were fewer silks and velvets in the brown
town than in Venice or Milan. A Florentine never
loved a silk simarre or a pearl necklace as he did a
fine cameo or a good bit of goldsmith's work, but of
the latter he showed a generous appreciation. On
the girdle, the pouch-clasp, the dagger-hilt, the gar-
land, cunning workmanship and artistic fancy were
lavished. Pretty things were not made by the
gross then, and each was a separate creation of the
artist. The shops of Cennini, the Ghirlandaji, and
the Pollajuoli were full of young students capable
of giving shape to any number of dainty conceits in
gold, silver, or niello. The art or trade of the gold-
smith was most honorable ; it counted among its
members the greatest of Florentine artists. Was
not Bigordi always the garland-maker, and did not
Brunelleschi set jewels before he set the great jewel
on the walls of Santa Maria ? We can find Tito's
dagger, and Eomola's golden girdle, and Tessa's
silver necklace and clasp, under glass in the
museum, and we can see Tito's mail-shirt in the
armory of the Bargello ; but time, cruel as Savona-
rola's bonfire, has devoured most of our actors'
properties, and only bits and shreds would remain
to us if the painters, the Florentine " fifth element,"
had not preserved them for us, and they show us not
only the costumes, but the actors themselves.
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ITALIAN CITIES

At this time the artists were passing through the
realistic phase of their art ; had abandoned the well-
ordered, symmetrically arranged heaven and hell of
the Giotteschi, and were carving and painting men
and things as they saw them in the every-day world
about them. With their help it is an easy task to
evoke the past : every palace becomes haunted,
every street crowded with familiar figures ; at every
corner we meet some well-known face ; the old
Florentines return to their old places. The most
indifferent traveller cannot help seeing them, be he
ever so blind.

If we take some of these characters of " Eomola "
and look for their counterparts in another art, with
a little patience we shall find them all. Ghirlandajo
will show us many of them, he who, if he did not
paint the walls of Florence, as he wished, portrayed
the world that moved within those walls. In the choir
of Santa Maria Novella the artist painted the stories
of the blessed Virgin and Saint John the Baptist,
but he has taken his pictures from contemporary life ;
he has painted his friends and neighbors, not ideal-
ized into cold abstractions, but real men and women
with keen, subtle faces, acute and critical, yet not
unkindly, sharpened by shop-keeping and the tra-
montana, but ennobled by wide culture and capable
of kindling into enthusiasm. Many of them are
ugly in line and modelling, bony and flaccid at

236

FLORENCE

\

SANTISS1AU TRINITA

GHIRLANDAJO

HEAD OF A YOUTH (FRAGMENT)

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

once, with an occasional quite abnormal develop-
ment of cheeks and chin. But character can do
much to beautify the most ill-favored. Each of
these figures is a definite personality, clearly and
distinctly marked, invaluable to the student of
history, with no softening of lines or angles, a por-
trait straight from life. Here we are face to face
with the old Florentines.

On the right is a group of humanists : Politian,
"whose juvenile ugliness was not less signal than
his precocious scholarship ; " Marsilio Ficino, brought
up as a Platonist from his cradle, " and whose mind
was, perhaps, a little pulpy from that too exclusive
diet," both spare and small, with pale faces ; Cristo-
foro Landino, white-haired and worn, in black gown
and 'barret. Behind them, among a group of grave,
gray-haired men, is a figure handsome and majestic
enough for Komola's godfather, Bernardo del Nero.
On the panel directly opposite is Tito, known in
Florence as II Bello, in dark mantle and red cap,
looking at us over his shoulder out of long brown
eyes ; here, too, — a genuine portrait, — is the mas-
sive strength of Niccol6 Caparra. On the left a
dark, bald man, in a plain russet suit, suggests Bal-
dassarre; and one shrewd face, with a humorous
twinkle in the keen eyes, must be Nello's ; while
near by is another actor in our drama, young Lorenzo
Tornabuoni, then in the Medicean bank.

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ITALIAN CITIES

For the peasants and some of the older folk,
pretty Tessa, meek, deaf Monna Lisa, bargaining
Bratti, and silly Brigida, we must go to Fra Filippo
Lippi, who was not afraid to paint very common-
place sinners as saints, little rustics as Madonnas,
and the street-urchins of Florence as boy-angels
and blessed bambini.

In the Bargello we find the strange head of
Charles VIII., ugliest of knight-errants, and the
bust of Macchiavelli, no longer the witty young
secretary of the republic, but the saturnine author
of " The Prince," worn and embittered by poverty,
disappointment, and the sad necessity of serving
those " Signori Medici."

In the cloister of the Badia is a plain sarcopha-
gus, surmounted by a bust, the tomb of Francesco
Valori, the fiery partisan of Savonarola; the mas-
sive features and long, straight hair remind one of
those Puritans and Covenanters with whom the
Piagnone had much in common. Little Lillo and
Ninna, and Savonarola's white-robed, olive-crowned
angiolini, we see again and again, for the beauty of
babyhood was first discovered and translated into
form by the artists of the Eenaissance. The por-
traits of Savonarola are too well known to every
tourist to require note or comment. One never tries
to find Romola herself ; we see her, as did her blind
old father, only as something vague and shining.

238

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

The November holiday of 1494, with its ugly
ending for Tito, sent him to Niccolo Caparra to buy
his mail-shirt, " the garment of fear." There is a
restaurant now at Niccolo's street-corner, but under
a house massive and picturesque enough to justify
the tablet to the memory of the old armor-maker.
Tito found Caparra forging spear-heads; and soon
after his prophetic anticipation was justified by the
entrance of Charles VIII. of France, whose short
occupation of Florence enabled Tito to sell the
library, betray the sacred trust of Bardo, and alienate
Komola.

The long hall of the Medici, now Eiccardi Palace,
upon the Via Cavour, in which Capponi tore the
treaty, — saying, " Then if you blow your trumpets,
we will ring our bells," — is greatly changed, and
suggests the flute and violin, not the trumpet. There
are rows of mirrors in rococo frames with Cupids
painted on them, and the long-arched ceiling has
been splashed by Luca fa Presto with an Olympus
of gods and goddesses. Not far from the palace is
the gorgeous church of the Santissima Annunziata,
between whose square and the hill of San Giorgio,
Tessa, in the intervals of her many naps, played
her poor little rdle. There the lamps, which swing
in a constellation of gold and silver, yield a " yellow
splendor in itself something supernatural and
heavenly to the peasant-women." A heavea of
239

ITALIAN CITIES

gilding and light and rich colors and sounds sur-
rounds them; at once their drama, their picture-
gallery, and their church ; an epitome of their hopes
and fears, and the vague wonder which is their
nearest approach to an appreciation of the beautiful

The lamps have been wonderful to thousands of
Tessas since the evening she brought her cocoons
there and, kneeling, looked at the handsome Saint
Michael and thought of Tito. To-day you may see
peasant-women, sad-faced and worn, as naive and
simple and dull as Tessa, if not as pretty, passing
under the often-proclaimed Giubbileo of its doors,
kissing the silver altar-front again and again and
bowing to the dark face of Andrea's Christ, looking
out from the splendor. Tessa is perhaps the only
character in the book who is the same to-day as in
the fifteenth century. Outward events make no
impression upon a mind too shallow to take account
of them, and the little Tuscan model from some cas-
tello of the surrounding hills, who sits to-day for the
Florentine artist, is as little affected by the facts of
United Italy and Eoma Capitale as was Tessa by
the entrance of the French or the war with Pisa.

The story takes us onward to the Medicean
plotters in the Eucellai gardens, and their world is
changed indeed. The gardens are beautiful still,
with ilex and cypress and olive ; but conspiracy
with epigram and lute and critical admiration of

240

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

antique gems, diplomacy which conferred its highest
honors upon the orator's Latinity, are as far removed
from us as the peacock roasted in its feathers.

After Tito foils the attempt of his foster-father in
the gardens, he is counterfoiled in turn by Eomola
in his own attempt to deliver Savonarola into the
hands of Dolfo Spini. For a time the reformer is
still in the ascendant, and we have the charming
pictures of the " angelic boys," whose descent upon
Tessa, and temporary conversion of Monna Brigida,
brighten the latter part of the story. But tragedy
soon meets us again in the Bargello. Nowhere in
Florence is the contrast between the past and the
present more marked than in the Bargello, that
older brother of the Palazzo Vecchio, once a place
of punishment and torture, the headquarters of the
podestd, or military governor of the city. Grim
memories cling about its massive walls; it has
stood sieges, held patriots and traitors, sheltered
tyrants, and seen blood flow in execution, massacre,
and revolt ; stone cells line the court and lead out
of ^the great halls ; in the council-chamber, now an
armory, is the trap-door of the ancient oubliette,
once filled with human bones, and the scaffold stood
in the centre of the famous court, which has been
little changed since Romola climbed the lion-guarded
staircase to look her last upon her godfather.
Kindly time has washed away the blood-stains and
VOL. i.— 16 241

ITALIAN CITIES

the painted traitors, hanging head downwards from
its walls; the stone escutcheons and lainbreqiiined
helmets of the old podestas still remain ; but instead
of the agonized crowd that then filled the loggia,
there is now a row of church-bells, graven with
words of peace and blessing ; in the chambers where
the torturer handled his tools, Eobbia's Madonnas
smile upon us ; and in the chapel, where the con-
demned received the last sacraments, Florence found
her poet, a young Dante, unembittered by exile.
Only the armory on the ground-floor and Pollajuolo's
condottiere recall the sterner uses of the old palace.

The monks of Florence, whose predecessors bore
the statue of the Impruneta, and opposed or sup-
ported Savonarola, have fallen upon evil days, but
they nurse their antique glories, and still go, pic-
turesque figures, about the streets. Once their
churches were so many ecclesiastical strongholds,
each brotherhood proud of its traditions and names ;
the Dominicans of Santa Maria Novella boasting
their Madonna of Cimabue and their frescoes of Ghir-
landajo; the Augustinians of Santo Spirito, proud
of their culture; the Carmelites, of their famous
brother, Filippo Lippi, and their Brancacci chapel,
that artistic sanctuary of the Eenaissance where
Michael Angelo and Eaphael looked and learned ;
the Dominicans of San Marco pointing to their
Angelic Brother, and to Fra Bartolornmeo; the

242

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

Franciscans, proud of their poverty and of their
magnificent church, and all prouder still of their
importance in the ecclesiastical body, their relics,
and their places in the processions of the town.
To-day their pride has passed away, and even their
proprietary interest in their art-treasures is sadly
diminished. San Marco has gone forever from its
monks, and the tourist pays his franc to see the An-
gelicos and visit the cell of the great reformer ;
Santa Croce is to be secularized as a Pantheon to
the dead Florentines and the Carmine is but a parish
church. But at least their frescoes all remain in situ,
and cannot easily be dragged from their places to a
gallery, a fortunate circumstance.

The brothers of the friars' churches are more
interesting than the priests of the parochial ones,
particularly those of Santa Maria Novella, which has
kept some of its monks and all of its art-treasures.
The mantle of Saint Dominic has descended but
lightly upon the shoulders of these good fellows, and
even his sombre souvenir cannot darken their smil-
ing faces. The memories of Savonarola, of the
saintly Bishop Antonino's works of mercy, and of
the angelic monk of Fiesole have come between.
There is little of Fra Angelico's poetry in them,
but they are gentle and kind to the poor, and a
namesake of the saint-bishop Fra Antonino, under
his black hood over the white mantle, was a really

243

ITALIAN CITIES

startling reminder of the greatest man of his great
order ; a coincidence to watch and study, with the
beetling brows, the deep-set, bright eyes, the thick
nose, full lips, and heavy jaw of Savonarola in Bar-
tolommeo's portrait; the fierce frown and sweet
smile the chroniclers tell us of. We were bidden by
him to be quite at home and paint at ease, with the
assurance that nobody was disturbed.

The sacristy was a little church-world, and grad-
ually one learned to take an intelligent interest in it.
Peasants and city poor entered for consolation in
heavy sorrow, and for the smallest gossip of daily
life. On some days there came a mighty shuffling,
echoing along the passages, and a flood of the per-
sonally conducted burst into sight, inundating every-
thing till one seized the canvas by its top, and the
easel by its legs, to preserve them ; while the tourists
climbed steps, read their books, studied the backs of
monuments, for the recondite always appealed to
them, and formed their ideas to quick music. A
sketch was always tempting to them, and just as on
the stage they would have applauded a real lamp-
post or a real horse-car, so a live artist at work was
for the nonce more absorbing than the pictures of a
dead one. They had little time, however, to look,
for they were involuntary impressionists and were
hurried away by their leader. These caravans were
always noisy and hurried, and no wonder, for a con-

244

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOIA

ductor who is at once dictionary, time-table, mentor,
friend, and whipper-in of stray couples, must be a
tired and a worried person.

The brothers divided the duty of cicerone cleverly.
Fra Giovanni, a stout, handsome monk, evidently
their best spokesman, explained their Ghirlandaji ;
for they are a more complicated people than the
other frescoed ones, because their names are often
known and may be catalogued to the visitor, not
only in the anticipation of luona mano, but with
real, corporate pride. " We have not such Giotti as
has Santa Croce," said he, one day, " but our Gaddi
and Memmi are unequalled in the world ; and as for
our Ghirlandaji" — here he interrupted himself to
jingle two keys at some distant tourists and call to
them, in a sort of subdued shout, " Do the gentlemen

wish to visit the Spanish chapel?" Brother

(his name has escaped our memories) could show
the other chapels, and any one who happened to be
near, in frock or out of it, monk or bell-ringer, would
cheerfully and unasked fling a bit of information to
any foreigner who happened to approach the object
named : " Terra invetriata, molto bella, Luca della
Roblia" The Eobbia fountain was beautiful indeed,
and it was a pleasure to see this noble art-work
taking its part in the daily uses of life, as the
brothers often and again washed their hands or
rinsed their fiaschi in it, nowise fearing the in-

U5

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junction running beneath the Madonna across the
marble : " Take heed that thy hands be pure if thou
washest here." Service after service passed out of
the little sacristy as we sat there, and the bell
took on a solemn sound for us when we learned that
it ushered forth the viaticum upon its frequent
errand to the sick and dying.

During another visit to Florence, two years later,
we saw Brother Antonino again, and he sat for a
study of his head. He looked as much like Savon-
arola as ever, but " the pleasant lust of arrogance "
in the great reformer was softened in him into a
gentle complacency that artists should wish to paint
him. To the remark, " So you are still at Santa
Maria Novella," he replied ; " I shall die here." Let
us hope so; it would be a pity that the church
should be secularized, that the " Sposa " of Michel-
angelo should have her nun's veil taken from her
and should exchange her cowled brothers for the
blue-coated guardians of a government museum.

In the latter half of "Eomola," the episodical
groupings of various characters whose dialogue is
framed by the mercato, or the loggia, or the shop,
are replaced by the continuous dramatic interest.
The fate of Eornola herself is interwoven with the
fate of the republic, and the background of the story
becomes the history of Florence. We follow the
heroine upon an upward current of suffering as she

246

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

loses, successively, husband, godfather, and teacher ;
upon the same current the city is borne along,
breathing hard in the struggle that preceded its
final agony, — the siege of 1529, — while George
Eliot makes Tito an active instrument in the for-
tunes of the state, without violating historical con-
sistency, and to Tito, whose " mind was a knife-edge,
working without the need of momentum," she adds
the bludgeon-like Dolfo Spini. We see the great
monk holding the people, first by enthusiasm, then
by the means which enthusiasts are often swept
into using when they feel the reins slipping from
them ; finally accepting, under pressure, the Francis-
can challenge to enter the fire. Before that, however,
the crowning bitterness of Romola's life is reached,
when her teacher, Savonarola, fails her, and Bernardo
del Nero goes to the scaffold. All the remainder of
the story that relates purely to the heroine is anti-
climax. We see Tito's knife-blade working noise-
lessly on, the edge turned always from himself,
severing women's heart-strings and men's lives, his
prosperity increasing with his treachery. The trial
by fire follows, and the Masque of the Furies, and as
Tito's fortunes are at their highest, the knife turns
in his hands, cutting his best-laid schemes to pieces.
After the death of the traitor comes the burning of
Savonarola, and the story ends.

The tragedy is lighted by the conversion of Monna
247

ITALIAN CITIES

Brigida on the day of the Pyramid of Vanities and by
the scenes with Bratti and Tessa. But the main
pathway of this latter portion of the story becomes
that from San Marco to the Piazza della Signoria,
along which pass figures, blessing and cursing;
cowled monks and armed rabble ; the torch and
the crucifix, but all tending forward, past the death
of Savonarola, to the apotheosis of Florence, when
she stood alone for liberty, and fell at last after her
famous siege.

It is one of the longest pathways trodden in the
story, for the convent is farther from the centre of
the city than most of the points already mentioned.
The nearest way from the palace is down the Cal-
zaioli to the Cathedral Place, then by the Via Cavour
to the Piazza di San Marco. Calzaioli is still the
busiest street in Florence, and in Eomola's time, far
narrower than now, bore the name of the Corso degli
Adimari at its northern end, and in the portion near
the old palace, that of the Via de' Pittori, for the
painters who helped give fame to Florence were
worthily lodged there. The Via Cavour was the
Via Larga (the wide street), on which still stands
the palace of Cosimo, the Ancient. A rather para-
doxical loss of its old name followed its second
widening, and a good choice has given to the street
of the first republic's enslaver the name of one of
the liberators of Italy.

248

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

San Marco, standing upon its wide piazza, is at
first disappointing. It is too trim, the edges of
wall and arch too sharp, too liberally covered with
white and yellow wash. It seems almost tame for
the great memories that should haunt it and walk
the bare corridors under the beamed roof. There
are plenty of them: memories of Bishop Antonino
and Fra Bartolommeo and the monk of Fiesole, all
giving way before those of the extraordinary man
who, from 1492 to 1498, was the central figure
of Italy; who drew upon himself the hatred of
the Pope and the Franciscans, the admiration of
Michelangelo and partisans of liberty; who recon-
ciled austerity with the love of beauty in the eyes
of such painters as Botticelli, Baccio della Porta,
and Lorenzo di Credi, and who believed that to
unlock the doors of Paradise the keys of Saint
Peter must be cleansed from the rust of the sloth-
ful popes, the blood of Sixtus and the Borgias.
Florence is so rich in famous men that her long
portico of the Uffizi has room for but a small por-
tion of them, but among them no name is more
essentially Florentine than that of the Ferrarese
Girolamo Savonarola. The traces of his footsteps
are visible enough in the city which has so well
retained its ancient appearance. Every one visits
his cell in San Marco, and sees his portraits there
and in the academy. His church has been modern-
249

ITALIAN CITIES

ized into seventeenth-century ugliness; but on the
night of the " Masque of the Furies," it echoed with
the fusillade of monks and acolytes firing from the
altar, and with the crash of blows as the scriptorius,
a kind of loving young Saint John to Savonarola,
beat back the compagnacci with his heavy crucifix.
Along the streets which, on the night of his arrest,
the reformer traversed between the armed guards
he had asked from the priors, we go to the Palazzo
Vecchio and the Piazza della Signoria.

There are in the world few grander buildings than
the citadel of Florentine liberty, the Palazzo Vec-
chio; it is an embodiment of militant beauty in
stone. In earlier times the scene of so much that
was noble and base, it became in the fifteenth cen-
tury the place of Savonarola's triumph and agony.
For there in the vast hall of that great council he
so labored to secure, he set a whole people to work
at a fever-heat of enthusiasm, with Michelangelo
and Leonardo da Vinci among the workers, that an
asylum might be created, a refuge and an appeal to
the many against the injustice of the few. The
Medici changed the place ; the arch-patrons of art
destroyed the designs of Angelo and Leonardo,
setting up the clumsy statues of Leo and the dukes,
and the ceilings of Vasari, celebrating Cosimo;
they wanted no unpleasant souvenir of the great
council. But the centuries have seen " the Medicean

250

IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

stamp outworn," and have placed the statue of the
monk in the middle of his hall.

Broad stairways lead to the base of the tower
whose machicolated parapet and column-supported
summit give it such unique character. A narrow
spiral leads up and up, each loophole-window showing
a higher sky-line, till, when the top is nearly reached,
under the battlements, between the corbels of which
are the shields of the republic, a horrible place opens
from the stairs into the wall. In it there is just
room for a stone bench the length of a man. The
small, heavy door swings outward. In this hideous
cell Savonarola lay for days, his body racked by the
torture, his mind by the consciousness that his ene-
mies were inventing and attributing to him lying
speeches to dismay his disciples. He left it only for
the stake. In the massive wall the window, less
than a foot square, splays in and funnels toward a
point; the one object visible from this slit in the
wall is the brown mass of Santa Croce, the strong-
hold of his enemies, the Franciscans, whence issued
the challenge for the trial by fire, the first fatal
downward step in the reformer's path.

A few paces above this inferno, Paradise itself
seems to open as the platform of the tower is reached.
Around one are the forked Ghibelline battlements ;
from their midst rise the four massive columns; a
dizzy staircase, winding about one of these, leads to
251

ITALIAN CITIES

the bells ; still another and narrower stairway takes
one, with care and stooping, to the cow-stall, the abode
of the antique vacca, the bell whose lowing called the
townsmen together. There it still hangs from beams
placed pyramidally and forming the point of the
tower. Above it, upon a vane, in violent foreshort-
ening, Marzocco, the lion of the republic, in that
attitude of ecstatic flourishing peculiar to lions in
such cases, waves his mane and tail high above his
brother Marzocco of the Bargello, and over all other
Marzocchi, bronze, marble, or wooden, in Tuscany.
Before one is the valley of the Arno from the moun-
tains of the Casentino to the dentelated Apennines
of Carrara, with the shining river curving down to
Pisa. Below is the city, and as one mounts, the
great buildings rise far above their fellows, as great
men in history rise to their true places in the past,
when seen from the present. The familiar land-
marks of the old time are still there, till we read
the city like a page of Villani or of Dino CompagnL
Palaces and churches stand to-day as when Guelph
and Ghibelline were names potent to conjure with
and to strike fire from steel ; streets and squares, as
when Savonarola quivered in the room below or
burned upon the piazza.

There is something new, too : " The Pope Angel-
ico is not come yet ; " but here at our hand, upon
the parapet, workmen are setting out lamps for the
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IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA

birthday of a queen who writes Savoy after her
name, and yet who gathers among those who acclaim
her with affection, Florentines and the antique ene-
mies of Florence, citizens of north and south, — a
queen of United Italy. For the ashes of Savonarola,
which were sown broadcast to the wind, have borne
seed in the days when the land cherishes the dust of
patriots and writes upon the stones of its cities the
names of Garibaldi and Mazzini, and Cavour and
Victor Emmanuel

The story of " Eomola " leaves us with a sense of
sadness and defeat. Savonarola died mute and un-
justified ; his friends and disciples robbed, murdered,
and driven into exile ; his life's work undone, and
the kingdom of God, he had labored to found, shaken
to its foundations. But only a few years after, under
a Medicean pope, he is solemnly rehabilitated by the
church; the historians estimate him at his true
value ; devotees make pilgrimages to his cell ; Fra
Bartolommeo paints him as the patron saint of his
order, and Eaphael places him in a frescoed Paradise
among a glorious company of prophets and sages.
To-day, in an Italy that does not love monks, Ferrara
raises his statue before the castle of the Estensi, and
in Florence, in the vastness of the great council-hall,
his colossal image. Many changes have come to his
beloved city ; but she is faithful to his memory, and
253

ITALIAN CITIES

those who do not reverence the priest honor the
patriot who withstood tyrants and loved freedom.

For here, in Italy, liberty has worn many guises ;
she has hidden herself in the scholar's gown and has
laughed in the motley. She has rioted in the Masque
of the Furies, and put on the soldier's corselet, the
poet's laurel, and the monk's frock and cowl. In our
own days we have seen her in the red shirt of Garibaldi,
when she came to take possession of the land. The
miracle that prophets and patriots prayed for in vain
has been wrought in its own time. After three hun-
dred years the prophecy of Savonarola has been ful-
filled, and the deliverers have come, not from without,
but within, not to save the city only, but the whole
country : a king whose proudest title was that of
honest man, and a soldier who unsheathed the sword
of righteousness. Italy is free from the Alps to the
straits. The narrow jealousies and fierce civic ha-
treds of province to province and town to town are
vanishing before the large ideal of national unity,
an ideal nobler than that of the great reformer,
and Florence can again write liberty upon her
banner above the lions and the lilies.

254

PARMA

PARMA

PARMA ! Correggio ! They are exchangeable words
for you and me and the art-loving of all countries,
since it is her possession of the work of Antonio
Allegri that gives the town importance. Upon that
Eoman road which passes straight through the city,
there was marching and countermarching from the
time when in 183 B.C. Marcus JEmilius Lepidus gave
his name to road and province alike and there were
doubtless deeds done that resounded throughout
Italy, but the road itself, stretching as it did from
Eimini to Piacenza, was, at least, just where Colonia
Julia Augusta Parma arose, itself the mightiest
thing in sight and memory. As far as our interest is
concerned, it passed along in obscurity for fifteen
hundred years, nowise illuminated by the constant
quarrels that gave to the town of which we write,
successive masters, until in the beginning of the
sixteenth century, precisely at this point of Parma,
the Via Emilia became irradiated, brilliant with
the name and presence of a famous artist.
VOL. i. — 17 257

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The exterior impress upon the city postdates
Correggio, for it was only after the Farnese came to
power that Parma had any settled government.
Once, when as a town of the Exarchate, she looked
to Ravenna for the password, she must have nourished
exceedingly, for the Byzantines called her the golden
city, and we should perhaps still have some solemnly
glittering mosaics, relics of that Chrysopolis, if the
Lombards had not destroyed the place in 773.
Afterward, and during the destructive activity
which began in the dark ages and continued through
mediaeval times, Parma had so many masters that
they might pass us like a panoramic show of his-
toric characters illustrating all times and costumes
for half a millennial : antipopes and popes ; Guelphic
captains, the Giberti, the Eossi, the Sanvitali ; John
XXII. ; Louis of Bavaria ; John of Bohemia ; Scala
lords of Verona ; Visconti of Milan ; Sforza too, and
lastly, Popes Julius II. and Leo X. The tiara finally
seemed to have settled firmly upon the city, and if
the Farnese who began to rule with Pierluigi were
not a delectable family, at least they provided a suc-
cession of seven dukes.

They, however, gave their town no such fatherly
care as was accorded by the Montefeltro to Urbino
or the Gonzaga to Mantua. Parma was too often
only the tail of the kite. Parmesan affairs were too
frequently watched, but from far away, from the
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PARMA

Papal Court or the throne of Spain or the marshes of
Flanders, by princes busied with outside interests.
Thus the present Parma grew up stately, formal, and
rather bare, dating from the Farnese and the late
sixteenth century and countersigned ducal by its huge
brick Castello. In Italy it was quintessentially
ducal to have just such a pile of masonry to hold the
master safely within and to hold the townsmen in
subjection without ; no well-regulated reigning family
could dispense with such a puissant aid to good
government. In the Eepublics it was different ; in
Siena and Florence, for instance, the Palazzo Pub-
blico came shouldering into the square, and if
Cosimo Pater Patriae wanted a palace for himself, he
built it on the street like any other man ; a fortress
it was, if you will, in its massiveness, but only one
of many such private strongholds scattered through-
out the city. More than this, he gave not a little
thought to private jealousy, and tore up Brunelles-
schi's ground-plans and elevations, lest their am-
bitious character should provoke republican envy.
On the contrary, Estensi, Gonzaga, Montefeltro,
Visconti, and Farnese alike set great, moat-girt
castles upon the town's edge, whence they could watch
and strike if need be. The Castello forms the princi-
pal feature of Ferrara, Mantua, Parma, and Urbino ;
it is huge in Milan also ; but there the great church
overshadows it with its presence. As one passes
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ITALIAN CITIES

from city to city, each castello seems bigger than the
other, and, taken together, they afford admirable ex-
amples of the beauty, picturesqueness, nobility even,
of brick when used in large masses. The great flat
expanses are impressive in their very blankness ; they
are blank, however, only as to lack of sculptured orna-
ment ; color they have in plenty given by sun and
rain, and flying dust, and here and there, as where
the Parmesan Castello overhangs the water, they
forsake their naked simplicity and break into a
whole mass of flying galleries and ports to once-
existent drawbridges.

Syrnonds thought Parma "perhaps the brightest
little Besidenzstadt of the second class in Italy ; " to
us it seemed (as with so much else in the peninsula)
that its brightness was wholly an affair of the season at
which you happened to visit it. It is gay and bright
in spring and summer, — what town is not in Italy ?
Then the band plays in the evenings, many of the
shops are still lighted and the people pour into
the square, or loiter homeward from Vespers at the
Steccata or the Duomo ; but in winter it appeared to
us unutterably sad, — sad as Modena, yielding in
melancholy only to Eavenna and Ferrara, and lack-
ing even the brightness of Ferrara's market-place.
For the grim castle of Mantua is relieved by the
quaint cheerfulness of the streets, that of Ferrara
by the cathedral's picturesque neighborhood; but
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PARMA

Parma's streets stretch unbroken, unrelieved by any
sally.

If primness were not so utterly foreign to Kenais'
sance life or to anything Italian that came after it, we
should call some of these streets prim ; perhaps a little
of the starch and powder of the court has gotten
into things; the place looks something more than
respectable, and during our last visit to Parma in the
winter, we remember not cabs, but heavy old family
carriages rolling slowly by, containing very possibly
children and grandchildren of Maria Louisa's ladies
of honor.

The loveliness of summer belongs to Parma in
common with other cities ; the vine-hung mulberry
trees take hands and dance in the fields about her as
around other towns, but Verona would be beautiful
in any weather, so would Venice or Florence or
Rome ; Parma needs sun in her gray streets and
blue sky above them. Our former visits had been
during spring and summer, but our last sojourn was
in winter days when snow covered everything
to the east of the Apennines, and when the white
fog pierced through your very bones. In the mist-
filled solitudes about the Duomo after nightfall the
cold fairly took you by the throat ; the Baptistery
shone with ice, and the porch-lions of the Cathedral
looked as though some eighteenth-century Faruese
had fitted powdered wigs upon them. The Torrente
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ITALIAN CITIES

from its bridges seemed a Phlegethon, a river of
whirling smoke, but felt like what it really was, a
reservoir of benumbing vapor.

In those days when we went into the Castello we
wondered, in the bitter cold, how men and women
with blood in circulation, and therefore capable of
congealing, could possibly keep alive there.

In one room we found a fine fire in a large sheet-
iron stove and thought delightedly that it was in
part at least for us poor human animals, custodians
and visitors, but no ! " It is kept burning always,"
said the custode, " in order that a perfectly even tem-
perature may help to preserve the two best pictures
of Correggio." It was a pretty tribute, this " fire that
burns for aye," to the tutelary genius of the place,
and logical enough, for Correggio keeps up the
foreign circulation of Parma; but it seemed a bit
inhuman, and reminded one tant soit peu of the Irish-
man who in freezing weather said, " Put the blanket
on the pig; 'tis he that pays the rint." Italians,
however, are really affectionate in their consideration
of art objects ; if they maltreat them, it is only
through ignorance, and Maria Louisa's refusal to
accept from Louis XVIII. a million francs for the
San Girolamo, although she was at the time in sore
straits for money, is perhaps the most honorable
thing chronicled concerning a lady whose life was by
no means destitute of good actions.

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PARMA

The Pinacoteca, as may be inferred from that
unique sheet-iron stove, is in the Castello ; but
Correggio is so great a glory that he claims consider-
ation by and for himself and should not be talked of
until after anything otherwise distracting about the
town is quite finished and done with.

In the castle, too, is the famous Teatro Farnese, as
strange as Palladio's Scena of Vicenza, and ten times
more impressive.

In all its decay it is still a beautiful Renaissance
theatre ; one of our companions longed to have it
summer-time that he might sleep for a night in the
midst of this departed magnificence. It would be
well to sleep soundly there and not walk ; only
ghosts could do that with safety, for the wood is
rotted to punk ; and the custode, saying, " Take care,
c'e pericolo" leads one up prescribed paths, where
beams have been placed to prop up the seats and
incidentally the guardian's perquisites. If one did
wake, one would perhaps see Poliziano's Orfeo, or
Machiavelli's Mandragora, moving in shadowy pan-
tomime across the vast stage, but, for our part, we
should rather expect to meet the ghosts of those
who played real dramas in the Castello, ghosts
made substantial by the portraits in the Pinacoteca
of dozens of Farnese. The latter are not a little
interesting to the student of history, and there are
notably a boy-duke Alessandro, an Elizabeth of
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France with her husband, and a terrible-looking
seventeenth-century Maria Farnese; while Moro,
Substermans, and Vandyck are among the painters.

We walked the ^Emilian Way from gate to gate
of the city, and even strolled into the outskirts ; and
after the Castello and the Duomo, San Giovanni, and
the Steccata, we of course visited the Camera of San
Paolo, where the place is still consecrate to women
and a normal school is sheltered in the convent.

But the group of buildings which called one again
and again was that upon the Cathedral square, made
up of the Duomo, the Baptistery, and San Giovanni
Evangelista. It is a sad, deserted place, unlike the
busy spots about the churches of Ferrara, Modena,
or Mantua. The Baptistery, godparent, it is said, to
every man and woman in Parma for many cen-
turies, is a grim Gothic structure, and in Benedetto
Antelami, the author of the sculptures upon its front,
certain critics consider that they recognize a day
star of Italian art, a true precursor of Niccola
Pisano.

" If Italians have not always painted well, at least
they have always painted," says one of their own
writers, and the Duomo's interior is a testimony to
the activity of eight hundred years. Sitting at the
further end of the choir, one noted close at hand
the archiepiscopal throne carved at about the time
of Hastings ; beyond in tawny marble was an altar
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PARMA

contemporary with the Lombard League ; above the
throne was a marble and gilt bas-relief of the
thirteenth century ; under a curtain and where later
stucco had been scraped away, one saw a Madonna
of the school of Giotto ; fifteenth-century stalls gave
us sitting room ; there was plenty of cinquecento and
seicento work, while two huge gilded candlesticks
and a barocco bench were of a time when Tiepolo
had already painted periwigged goddesses, and
Stendhal was about to write his " Chartreuse de
Parme." All these representatives of different ages
were within a radius of fifteen feet ; thus it is in
lands where people are in no hurry ; think of it, ye
architects, sculptors, painters, who contract in May
to decorate a building and must finish or forfeit by
the following April! But beautiful as is the old
Kornanesque basilica, one comes, not to see its grand
architecture of the middle ages, but to visit works
which were only possible to a man who had the
whole fifteenth century behind him and the influence
of the cinquecento, the culminating epoch of Italian
art, about him.

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SPACE, light, and motion were what Antonio Allegri
of Correggio most longed to express; for this ex-
pression he made the open heaven his field, and
masses of floating, soaring, human bodies, draped or
undraped, his material. The performance of such
a task required a temperament almost magically
endowed, but such a temperament he possessed, and
he gave it full scope in the dome of the Cathedral
of Parma and the cupola of San Giovanni. The
frescoes in these churches are his greatest achieve-
ments, and by them we may judge him. Their
arrangement is very similar, both represent an
assumption of Madonna or of the Saviour. Above,
in the centre of the dome, is the ascending Christ
or Mary with attendant or supporting angels ; where
the interior cornice surrounds the octagonal cupola
of the Duomo, apostles stand against a simulated
balustrade gazing upward, and on the pendentives
of both churches, saints and angels are seated upon
clouds. To those who, looking upon these frescoes,
think superficially, Correggio is as a painter of flying
angels and radiant glories, an arch-idealist ; to those
who reason more carefully, he is an arch-realist,

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PARMA

almost the realist of Italian art. What differentiates
him from the accepted realist is this : the latter only
too often makes realism and ugliness synonymous,
Correggio's is realism by selection applied only to
the beautiful. But it is realism ; not one painter in
the whole range of Italian art so hated what he
understood to be conventionality. If his subject is
above, it must be seen from underneath, no matter
how the point of view may detract from the beauty
of the work ; his architecture must be painted in
simulated perspective, and he will tolerate nothing
which by its perspective would fall out if it were
real

In his frescoes of San Giovanni which antedated
those of the cathedral, Correggio, first among the
artists of Italy, threw aside the whole architectonic
tradition of art and said to himself, " I will break
through tradition and cupola at once, will consider
that the walls are no longer there, and will make
a realistic heaven, where real figures among real
clouds shall be seen in real perspective, such as
would actually obtain." Nota bene, that a cupola,
a hollow dome without ribs or projections from the
plaster, is the only form to which such a trompe
Voeil, such illusory perspective, could be applied
without being ridiculous. Even here it is open to
criticism, but if any man ever existed for whom it
was entirely right to do this thing, that man was
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ITALIAN CITIES

Antonio Allegri of Correggio. Imitators have abused
his example until the abuse became detestable ; but
the example remains so brilliant, so satisfying, that
we blame only those who failed in their imitation.

The first and most potent factor in the effect of
his Assumption of the Duorno is its triumphant reali-
zation of aerial, transparent fresco-color of which in-
deed it is the earliest perfectly successful example
in Italy. To the artist, and above all to the artist
who has worked upon the plaster and knows how
readily overpainting becomes heavy and dead, the
marvellous lightness, silveriness, airiness of Correg-
gio's frescoes, especially of his frescoes of the Cathe-
dral, are an unceasing wonder.

Correggio's second factor is his distribution of
light ; his third, expression by movement. Leonardo
da Vinci had discovered light and shade ; Correggio
improved upon his invention. Leonardo experiment-
ing with many media painted shadows which have
fallen into blackness, Correggio, as Milanesi has
happily put it, " clarified Da Vinci's manner." Leo-
nardo pursued the light with profoundest observation ;
Correggio juggled with it : he did not ask it to be
mysterious, he was satisfied that it should be radi-
ant. He entertained himself with light, as Michel-
angelo entertained himself with muscular expression,
Raphael with composition ; like both the others,
he possessed his means and made it yield not only
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PARMA

enjoyment, but its ultimate force in certain direc-
tions. He composed with light more than with
lines, and here he came nearer to being conventional
than elsewhere, for there is a certain amount of
parti pris in his chiaroscuro, which, however, if not
exactly unconventional, is always real. As to his
third factor, Correggio is Perpetual Motion itself;
with him everything is in action.

That movement in repose which is so suited to the
demands of great mural art, which helps to make
Michelangelo's Pieta of St. Peter's so superb,
which informs so many figures of Eaphael, so many
altar-pieces even of the quattrocento, is quite absent
from Correggio's work. His angels of the dome
mount upward, cleave the air, toss and bend, bestride
clouds which they ride like curveting horses, but
they are never quiet for a moment.

Even in altar-pieces, where Eaphael's saints stand
firmly, though their lines may curve ever so grace-
fully, Correggio's figures undulate until they seem
almost out of equilibrium. Michelangelo's Del-
phic and Libyan Sibyls have superb movement, but
it is ponderated, it does not fatigue the onlooker ;
Correggio's Saints Jerome and Sebastian in the altar-
pieces to which they respectively give their names
are absolutely unsteady upon their feet. In sum
his movement in smaller pictures is often ineffective ;
but when he masses it in his great frescoes, it be-
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comes, on the contrary, a potent element of his
effect.

Smiling, youthful beauty is what Correggio elected
to paint. His sprite-like angels, naked youths and
maidens, who if measured by mortal span may have
lived for fourteen years, are dearest both to their
creator and to the onlooker. With tossing hair, wide
light-filled eyes, and parted lips they ride the
clouds upon the pendentives or uphold Madonna;
among them the babies tumble, with the same great
lustrous eyes and with little, realistic, formless,
toothless mouths. In the pendentives or about the
base of the cupola are patriarchs, prophets, and
saints, and here Correggio is puzzled; he would
juggle age away, would sprinkle it with the water
of Eternal Youth; it has no dignity for him; its
emaciation, its dryness, he will have none of; his
old men may be brawny, but they are over-plump,
over-muscled indeed, since in them Correggio shows
none of the science of expression through anatomi-
cal emphasis which Michelangelo possessed. Their
thick hair is always tumbling about and always
curling ; their beards evidently grow over full-lipped,
smiling mouths, and they are not very pleasing as
types. In some cases it seems as if Correggio had
but taken his youths and, clapping false beards
upon them, had said to patriarch or prophet, "I
care nothing for your face ; toss and turn your great

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PARMA

body in the light and in the half-light ; that is all the
help I ask of you." And yet they are fine. This
is what one says again and again before Correggio,
"and yet," and "in spite of," ending always with
surrender to a compelling enchantment and force.
Burckhardt with excellent analysis, Symonds with
admirable word-painting, have said much of the
psychological side of Correggio's types, have found
them wondrously beautiful, yet denied them power
to do good were they to live. In this essay,
however, we are considering not the psychological
but the purely artistic side of the painter. If
the authors of these lines may here for a mo-
ment intrude their own personality upon their
book, it would be to say that much in Cor-
reggio's point of view is unsympathetic, almost
antipathetic to them; all of his minor work, his
world-famous altar-pieces and mythological pictures
included, seems but loosely put together, if brought
into presence of the almost architecturally con-
structed composition of Raphael, the grave splendor
of Titian's Assumption, the profoundly sugges-
tive figures of Michelangelo. His sweetness even
appears but superficial after that of Leonardo.
Nevertheless, and in spite of all these reservations,
the authors of this essay, when first they came into
the presence of the dome of Parma, for awhile
at least had no capacity for anything but de-

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lighted admiration of a phenomenal art develop-
ment. Wholly phenomenal it is, and the surprise
of it adds not a little to its effectiveness. A day in
which one has a supreme artistic experience may
be marked by a whitest stone, and such a day should
be afforded by a first visit to Parma ; for there is an
immense sensation in coming suddenly into the
presence of the highest and best achievement of one
of the world's masters. Acquaintance with Correg-
gio's pictures in the galleries of Europe prepares
but in small measure for what awaits one in the
cathedral of Parma.

There the ordering of Correggio's work is as follows :
in the pendentives of the cupola are four seated
saints with many youthful angels, the seated figures
enthroned upon clouds. Twelve colossal apostles
stand along an octagonal cornice behind a painted
balustrade, looking upward at the Assumption of the
Virgin. Painted candelabra rise at the angles of
the cornice, and between them are many boy genii
standing, sitting, or reclining. Above them the
whole cupola is filled with clouds and a multitude of
flying figures surrounding the Virgin, who is borne
upward. Under the soffits of the arches to the
cupola are painted figures of genii, six of which are
by Correggio, the others by Mazzola-Bedoli.

The above is the material distribution of the fres-
coes. Considered generally, the result is the achieve-

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ouorno
CORREGGIO

ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN (FRAGMENT)

PARMA

ment of one of the few works which may be called
sublime. Technically considered, this Assumption
presents the first triumphantly successful realization
of aerial, transparent fresco-color. For the first
time also, save in the case of the same master's
frescoes of San Giovanni, architectonics are disre-
garded, and a whole cupola is shown as one undivided
and realistic composition. The color is beyond
criticism ; the arrangement, which in principle is, on
the contrary, distinctly open to criticism, is justified
by its result. It is splendidly, dazzlingly successful ;
and yet not only the few to whom it is antipathetic,
but the many who profoundly admire, may analyze
it and find in it certain germs of decadence.

To begin with, it is confused, and in the painter's
passion for realistic foreshortening he has frequently
sacrificed dignity, and has sometimes become frankly
awkward. The monumental grandeur of Eaphael
and Michelangelo is completely absent, but it
is replaced by another grandeur, which comes from
sweep and whirl and radiant figures so multiplied in
numbers that the very volume of the painter's creation
adds immensely to its power. They are upon every
side, these figures, bending and tossing, floating and
diving through clouds, hovering above the abysmal
void that is between the dome and the earth below
it. There is a lack of restraint, indeed, there is a
direct straining for that illusion which is not wholly
VOL. i. — 18 273

ITALIAN CITIES

in accordance with the principles of architectonic
decoration, but any violation of artistic conventions
is permissible to a genius who through rupture with
tradition creates new forms of beauty. Here is the
triumphant application of realism to a vision, not the
tranquil, contemplative vision of an older master, but
a moving vision, rapturous and ecstatic.

It must be admitted that the color of these fres-
coes, the element in fact which technically is most
admirable in the work, varies astonishingly under
varying conditions of the atmosphere. In spring
and summer when the light reflected from below and
admitted through the oculi fills the cupola, this color
seems all that we have said of it, — more cool and
silvery than any fresco-color which preceded it.
In the dark winter days and under a threatening
sky, it is quite different ; then the lower figures of
the cupola, those about the balustrade, are rather red
in their shadows, not quite bricky, but approaching
brickiness far more than in fine weather ; the upper
figures are cooler and those of the pendentives are
as silvery as ever. All this means that a decorator
can paint for only one set of atmospheric conditions,
and that in Italy the conditions are practically those
of an eight months' summer, when light pours into
the churches, even through the smallest openings,
and is reflected back and upward from pavement,
pillar, and wall. In one town after another the
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PARMA

traveler sets down in his diary, " The frescoes could
not be seen at all ; " that is because he goes to them at
the wrong season and at the wrong hours. If visited
at the right season and time, nearly every fresco in
Italy which is not injured beyond deciphering can
be well seen. And yet it is notable that wherever a
dome is decorated, and in spite of the fact that such
painting is planned as an enhancement to the church,
seen from the usual point of view, — that is, the
pavement, — the visitor is always taken to some higher
point of vantage and told, " Here is the proper place
from which to see the frescoes." This is to a certain
extent reasonable, since after the ensemble has pro-
duced its effect, there is always detail which makes
closer inspection interesting, for no artist who has
lived ever struck the exact mean of strength or
delicacy, permitting his work upon a very high
dome or ceiling to focus its entire carrying power
upon just one point of vision. This shifting
about of the spectator is an argument in favor of
concentrating dome decoration upon the penden-
tives, which can nearly always be admirably seen
from below.

In Parma, then as elsewhere, one may climb to a
higher point ; few people do, but it is well worth
the doing, and we supplemented each visit to the
church by a journey to the inter mural gallery which
surrounds the cupola. It is interesting to explore
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ITALIAN CITIES

the bones of these mediaeval monsters, these Roman-
esque and Gothic churches, which were not so time-
resisting as Greek temples, but whose dusty skeletons
had to be constantly patched and propped from
within as well as from without their epidermises of
brick or stone (for cupolas have often, like human
beings, three skins).

In the Parmesan Duomo, an exceptionally narrow
and steep stone staircase twists you up rapidly to
above the pendentives ; their outer surfaces — or
inner, as you please — rise in huge lumpish mounds
like giant shoulders heaving up the central dome ;
above them old, old beams are a framework of bones
to support the outer skin of tiles. The dust, the
cobwebs, the sharp contrasts of bright light and
black shadow, the worn steps, the bells amid their
ship-like cordage and wheels, make such places
unique in their quaintness. The guide pulls open
with an echoing rattle a small door in the thick wall ;
light bursts in ; below you is an awful depth ; two
iron bars, strong, but slight to the imagination, are
between you and it, and beyond the bars and the
abyss, the smiling giants of Correggio float lightly
over a dizzy gulf that makes your spinal marrow
creep. There is an admixture of horror with delight
in the first moment, and this feeling, combined with
a certain exaltation, and the excitement of suddenly
looking out from a dark, bewildering, cramped pas-

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PARMA

sage into a wide, light-filled dome, adds greatly to
the sense of vision.

They are close at hand now upon every side of the
spectator, floating or tossing, poised and hanging,
or shooting upward, while behind the main groups
is a background of smiling figures with close-set
shoulders and clinging arms, — " the young-eyed
cherubim " garlanding Madonna.

Here one is at last face to face with these much-
discussed types of Correggio. It is easy to follow
lines of obvious criticism, the faces all resemble
each other, they are idealizations, abstractions with
always the ripe, smiling mouth, the round cheeks,
the radiant eyes. They are all of one family, a
glorified, happy family. There is no terror here as
with Michelangelo, hardly any awe even, but when
the critic, having said all this, goes further and
would talk of prettiness or of insipid uniformity of
character, he ceases, utterly disarmed, for here in this
whirling mass is puissance, something of the tre-
mendous sweep that should come when the choir
sings, " Behold, God the Lord passeth by," and which
makes Correggio one of the half-dozen sublime
masters in Art.

These are not blessed spirits, they are sprites,
" they are fauns," says Burckhardt, and after him,
Symonds ; and it must be admitted that they sug-
gest the spirits of the Tempest rather than the

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angels and seraphs of the Bible, but their elfin beauty
needs not distract us from considering the general
effect. It is the very volume of this whirling, sweep-
ing mass that moves us. Where Correggio places one
or two of these shapes upon a canvas he plays to us
upon a flute and allures us with his piping, but
when he pours them upon us in hundreds he " un-
stops the full organ." If, as individual figures, they
are fairy-like, as a mass they are apocalyptic.

" But what good," persists Burckhardt, " could we
expect from these creations if they came to life " ?
and truly Correggio does seem more than half a
pagan or half a child in his cultus of pure joy. These
spirits do not suffer, feel no terror ; they do not know
any better than to be just simply and entirely
happy. But does not the critic, in insisting upon
their potentiality for good, set up an ethical standard
which it might be embarrassingly hard to uphold.
In looking at the face of Michelangelo's "Night,"
or his " Dawn," do we know what either would do
if she too began to breathe and move: she would
be titanic surely, but how would she use her
force ? Would she pull down Jupiter to help mortals
or for the mere pleasure of power ? Each has a giant's
strength, but might not she " use it like a giant " ?
What evil could we find in Correggio's people ? If
bright and joyous spirits are celestial, why, so are
his ; he laughs and smiles by choice, but he smiles

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DUOMO
CORREGGIO

ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN (FRAGMENT)

PARMA

as Michelangelo frowns, sublimely ; elevation is his,
and elevation is ethical, for in spite of his lack of
restraint and his exaggeration of illusion in mock
architecture, the outpouring of spirit, the sweep and
power, shown in his Assumption of the Virgin, make
him one of the half-dozen sublime masters of Italian
painting, and we echo Ludwig Tieck's words : " Let
no one say he has seen Italy, let no one think he
has learnt the lofty secrets of art, till he has seen
thee and thy cathedral, 0 Parma ! "

Correggio executed two other cycles of frescoes, —
the very secular decorations of the Camera di San
Paolo, and in the cupola of San Giovanni Evan-
gelista, an Ascension of Christ, a work which ante-
dated that of the Duomo. In the Ascension this
youth of twenty-six deliberately threw aside the
entire decorative paraphernalia of the fifteenth
century, the scrolls and thrones and embroidered
patterns, the flowers and fruits and garlands, and,
like a young soldier who in wishing to make a
supreme effort found his armor cumbersome, he cast
it from him and fought baresark. In return for
quattrocento ornament he accepted nothing but
nude bodies and the simplest of draperies as his
material.

Signor Corrado Eicci, the learned curator of the
Parmesan galleries, has published an admirable book
upon Correggio which all lovers of the artist should
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read. It is not often that one takes exception to
his reasoning, but it is difficult to agree with some
of his opinions regarding the frescoes of San
Giovanni. He thinks that because of their greater
restraint they surpass those of the Duomo, but what
they gain in simplicity and restraint they lose in
lack of volume. Correggio is not one of those
artists who are at their best when they are simplest,
and in the frescoes of San Giovanni he has made
most use of the types that were least congenial
to him, those of middle-aged or old men. Signer
Bicci compares these saints and apostles with those
of Michelangelo to the disadvantage of the latter.
"The ostentatious display of anatomical reliefs"
with Michelangelo never fails to show a perfect
competency, a knowledge of construction, which is
absent in Correggio ; his saints in the pendentives
are excellent, but his apostles about the Christ look
swollen ; their huge muscles are not modelled ; their
attitudes are as constrained as those of Michel-
angelo without showing the latter's knowledge of
construction or grandeur of line.

Having considered the two cupolas in their gen-
eral decorative impression, there remains in the
mind, as must be the case in the remembrance of
all great grouped masses, certain features which
stand out as adding to or detracting from that same
general effect, but even at the maximum of their
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PARMA

importance these remain details. Our opportunity
to study them is largely owed to the water- color
studies and line-engravings of Paolo Toschi, who
literally spent his life upon the scaffolding, examin-
ing and copying the crumbling frescoes of the
Duomo and San Giovanni. No more touching
tribute has been paid to a master in the whole
history of art. The sincerity of the copyist was
absolute, the ability very considerable, and yet care-
ful comparison of the copies with the originals,
while demonstrating even more fully our debt to
Toschi in showing how much since the engraver
did his work has actually faded from the plaster
beyond deciphering, shows also that the disciple,
with all his piety, somewhat weakened his subject.
He has at once refined (in the sense of smoothing
and softening) the modelling, and slightly vul-
garized the spirit of these great works. The re'
finement probably proceeded from the damaged
condition of the frescoes; that is to say, where
Correggio's modelling could no longer be seen,
Toschi put in that of the Italian settecento, and the
vulgarization again comes from the fact that the
engraver lived in the century of Tiepolo, not in
that of Raphael.

Looking, then, at details, we note first of all the
disadvantage of realistic sacrifice to foreshortening.
Christ and the Madonna, whose Ascension forms the
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subject of Correggio's two cycles, are the pettiest
things in the whole composition. Madonna may not
soar freely, but must be supported, and is violently
foreshortened ; hence her body is all knees and feet,
her face all chin and nostrils, while the frog-like
attitude of the Saviour has been cited for three
centuries. The outer rim of the garland of angels
is fringed with legs which kick rather aggressively
and monotonously ; somewhat more of compositional
spacing, through the use of cloud to cover and sim-
plify here and there, would have bettered the effect.
It is, however, quite possible that the flesh tones
may have darkened and the clouds remained light,
thereby changing and unduly emphasizing the paint-
er's original intention.

In examining the figures that stand about the
balustrade, one questions the entire justice of Burck-
hardt's and Symonds's strictures. Some of the youth-
ful figures are brilliantly beautiful; to say that they
are fauns is to say hardly enough, for if Michel-
angelo's people are fitted to strive and suffer for the
Almighty, these may surely sing his praises.

If we consider them technically, we recognize
Correggio's debt to Mantegna, and note that the
Parmesan looked closely indeed at those elephant-
riding, candelabrum-lighting youths of the " Triumph
of Caesar," and it is interesting to see how instinc-
tively this painter of the delicately joyous, even of

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PARMA

the ecstatic, noted and assimilated the more delight-
ful qualities of the proud, severe, and somewhat
hard Paduan master. The draperies in the Duomo
frescoes — as so often in other works of Correggio
— are in many cases bad; but the old men who
wear them, bending backward against the balus-
trade, are much finer and less sentimental in the
originals than in the translations of Toschi.

In San Giovanni Evangelista the saints of the
pendentives are more carefully and closely studied
than those of the Duomo, though they are not
so free and bold; in the cupola the Saint John
kneeling on his mountain summit is no longer the
plump, good-natured, half-apostle, half-Hercules
affected by Correggio, but an emaciated seer of
visions whose fire and beauty go far to redeem the
painter from the charge that his old men are not
virile.

Nevertheless, the more one studies it, the more
one feels that in spite of its confusion, the Assump-
tion of the Duomo is a greater and riper work than
the Ascension in San Giovanni, and yields Cor-
reggio's truest title to fame. In blithe force, spon-
taneity, and invention, perhaps most of all in daring,
it is unequalled, and its painter might sign it An-
tonius Audax as well and quite as aptly as Antonius
Lsetus.

If Correggio's true throne was in the Cathedral of
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Parma, we must not forget that he subjugated
Europe for three centuries after his death by his
smaller works: his six great altar-pieces, which
include the " Night " and the " San Girolamo," and
his mythological pictures, such as the Antiope, Leda,
and Danae, and his various Holy Families.

In his larger works he rules most potently by
power and sweep, in his smaller ones by charm.
There are those, and we are among them, who find
many of his Madonnas of the lesser panels insipidly
sweet, but there is magic in the poorest of them,
and in several of the large altar-pieces this magic is
all-compelling. Nevertheless we find in them the
same faults as in the frescoes. There is the same
indifference to grandeur of line, the same absence of
severity of any kind, the same carelessness in the
drawing and composition of drapery. It would be
hard to discover in the range of Italian art a more
ill-composed bit of draping than that of Saint Joseph
in the " Scodella Madonna." Too often the master
placed entirely lovely heads upon bodies whose sil-
houette was most awkward, the lack of grace proceed-
ing especially from two causes, — the tendency to
throw out the hip in a desinvoltura which results in
lack of equilibrium or at least of stability, and his
love of foreshortening, which now and again makes
Madonna upon her throne unpleasantly high-kneed
and thickset in appearance. The modern character

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PARMA

of many of his figures is astonishing ; that of the
Magdalen, for instance, in the " San Girolamo," while
certain details such as the white-capped girl in the
"Nativity" of Dresden seem like bits out of an
eighteenth-century picture. Undoubtedly this is be-
cause the painters of the seicento and settecento admired
and were greatly influenced by him. Another pecu-
liarity is his indifference to the conventional types
of sacred and holy personages, and which is more
noticeable in his altar-pieces than in his frescoes.

Very secular performances are some of them ; the
San Giorgio altar-piece of Dresden, for instance,
in which the figure of John the Baptist is perhaps
the most notable example of the artist's strange
conception of a saintly personage. Could any one
recognize the Precursor in this tall youth, round-
hipped as a woman, pointing to the Christ-child and
turning his face to the spectator with a smile more
than half mocking, as if he found the whole thing
an excellent piece of diversion. This time we have
a faun indeed, a faun with goatskin and all, and with
undoubtedly a wholly unascetic and natural aptitude
for locusts and wild honey. The delightful baby in
the foreground has no room in him for anything but
mischief ; the Christ-child, held by a squat and ill-
composed Madonna, is in playful mood, everybody is
debonnaire except Saint Francis, who is sentimental
and will be admired and imitated by seventeenth-cen-
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tury painters. Saint George, the eponym of the pic-
ture, is frank and virile, and for a wonder Correggio
has set him firmly on his legs, il est lien campe,
the French would say. Only too often Correggio
lets his standing figures sway like the John Baptist
aforesaid, or tumble about as do Jerome in the
"Giorno," and Joseph in the "Scodella."

The background of the picture is full of architectu-
ral ornaments which Mantegna would have chastened
greatly ; here surely are reservations enough, and yet
the San Giorgio altar-piece even in a black and white
reproduction is beautiful from one corner to the
other. Indeed, it shows well in black and white, for
the Dresden Correggios have suffered in color, while
the " Scodella " and the " Giorno," which Parma has
retained, have been better treated, — that is to say,
less retouched, than some of the former.

They vary under varying conditions ; in fair
weather the San Girolamo or " Giorno," as it is often
called, is golden and beautiful, and there is no doubt
in any weather about the charm of the very modern-
looking Magdalen, or the morbidezza in the treat-
ment of her face, and of the Christ-child's foot which
she presses against her cheek, but on dark days the
flesh seems brown in the shadows, and the whole
picture has a gummy look, while in the " Scodella "
the orange drapery is heavy in color and the blue
is raw. On the whole the "Deposition" and the
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PARMA

"Martyrdom of Flavius and Placida," both of which
are also in the Pinacoteca, while much less sym-
pathetic in character, are better and more Correggio-
like in color.

Correggio's indifference to grand lines is con-
stantly seen both in his bodies and his draperies.
Michelangelo, Raphael, or Titian would not have
tolerated the awkward lines in the " Antiope " of
the Louvre, yet it is very beautiful because of the
color which is Correggio's at his best point in oil-
painting.

It is not easy to write of Allegri's color ; there
seems to be nothing to particularize save in the
frescoes, where he has made a rainbow of opalescent
cloud and opalescent flesh. In his best easel pictures
it is at once natural and golden ; apparently his
draperies meant nothing to him, his flesh every-
thing. There is with him none of the organ tone of
Byzantine or Venetian color ; there are, if the musical
simile may be followed, no sudden changes, no
bursts from minor into major ; nor does Correggio
say with Veronese : " I will compose in great masses
of blue and red and yellow brocades until I have
a bouquet of gorgeous tints," he is satisfied with
warm, healthy flesh ; he is not grandly mysterious
like Rembrandt, yet he steeps his whole canvas in a
light-filled medium which penetrates and goes behind
things just as it does in Dutch pictures, only with
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Correggio these things are flying angels instead of
Flemish cobblers cross-legged on counters, nymphs
and cupids in place of peasants at a kermesse.

Out of these nymphs and cupids the master
made the material of his third cycle of frescoes in
Parma, that of the Camera di San Paolo.

The room is square with a high sixteen-sided,
vaulted roof. Correggio has borrowed Mantegna's
trellis-work from the " Madonna della Vittoria " and
has trained it all over the vaulting. Each of the
sixteen ribbed spaces terminates below with a lunette
and is pierced in the centre with an oval ; through
these ovals look the cupids in groups of twos; in
the lunettes are the nymphs and other mythological
personages, in very pleasing monochrome chiaro-
scuro. The cupids are more thickset and less lovely
than are the children of the Duomo and San Gio-
vanni, but they are full of life.

These frescoes, say the guidebooks, "are better
preserved than are Correggio' s others ; " so in a way
they are, but though they have kept their surface,
they have darkened, been smoked, perhaps, and the
color has lost its freshness far more than upon the
crumbling stucco of the Duomo' s cupola.

We have said that in Correggio's frescoes he rules

by power, in his easel pictures by compelling charm.

To say how compelling, one has only to recount

their migrations and vicissitudes. Signor Ricci

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CORREGGIO

PUTTI (FRAGMENT FROM THE DANAE)

PAEMA

gives chapters to their odyssey, and even a brief-
est epitome of some of their adventures is in-
teresting.

By the year 1580 or so Italians had forgotten all
about quattrocento masters ; the works of Eaphael,
Michelangelo, Titian, on the contrary, were treas-
ured, and no pictures were more loved at home or
coveted abroad than Correggio's. They were covertly
stolen, openly seked, and captured on the battlefield
in the enemy's baggage ; they were the cause of
riots, of deputations ; they endangered the safety of
cities ; they were carried to Paris by republicans
and to Stockholm by sovereigns ; worst of all, were
mercilessly cleaned, restored, and overpainted.

Let us take the six great altar-pieces, — the Nativ-
ity, the St. Sebastian, the St. George, the St. Francis,
the Scodella, and the San Girolamo. The four first
went to Dresden as a result of the famous purchase
made by the Elector of Saxony from the Duke of
Modena in 1746.

The St. Francis was painted in 1515 for a monas-
tery in the town of Correggio, Allegri's birthplace.
It remained in situ till 1638 ; then Jean Boulanger,
a French painter and envoy of the Duke of Modena
(sovereign of Correggio), installed himself in the
church to make a copy and soon after departed. A
little later it was rumored that he had carried off
the picture, the St. Francis. The citizens rang the
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alarm bell, went in deputation to Molza, the Duke's
representative, and denounced the theft of the altar-
piece ; Molza wrote to the Duke and laughed in his
sleeve : presently the picture appeared openly in the
ducal collection.

As for the St. Sebastian, somewhat before 1611
Ercole dell' Abate exposed it to the sun to " make
its colors blend ; " another artist " repaired it ; "
then Flaminio Torri repainted it almost entirely ;
last of all, it was " scratched " during transportation
to Dresden, says Raphael Mengs, and restored in that
city ; when Palmaroli removed the overpaints, he
brought to light cherubs' heads which had wholly
disappeared. It is no wonder that the Dresden
altar-pieces have lost somewhat of Allegri's color.

The beautiful " Nativity " more popularly known
as Correggio's " Night " was ordered by Alberto Pra-
toneri for a church in Reggio and finished in 1530.
Already in 1587 the Estensi coveted it, trying to
secure it by negotiation, and a century later they
stole it outright.

The "Madonna of San Giorgio," the secular
character of which as a picture we have already
mentioned, was painted for the Scuola of Saint Peter
Martyr in Modena, and was therefore directly under
the claws of the covetous Este dukes ; the ambassa-
dor of the latter to the French court promised the
picture to the Abbe" Dubois in return for diplomatic
290

PARMA

service ; the Duke disavowed the promise, though
the frightened envoy declared that the refusal might
cost him the city of Mirandola. Twenty years later
the Duke forcibly removed the work from the
church to his private gallery, and thus four of these
famous altar-pieces passed by way of Modena to
Dresden.

The San Girolamo, the " Day " of Correggio,
remained in the church of Sant' Antonio till the
beginning of the eighteenth century; then as the
church was rebuilding, and funds were lacking,
the Preceptor wished to .sell the picture, but Duke
Francesco Farnese refused to permit the sale.
Later it was reported that two kings were disputing
for the picture's purchase ; then Don Philippe de
Bourbon, Duke of Parma, placed it in the Acca-
demia. There it seemed safe, but in 1796 it made
the journey to Paris with the other masterpieces.
Francesco Eosaspina wrote of it : " The princes have
lost all power of guiding us. They cannot foresee
things which those of low rank would not fail to
perceive and prepare against. And we have to pay
the penalty of their folly ! I am so overcome that
I seem to have lost my wits and appetite together ! "
In 1815, however, it returned to Milan, and a year
later to Parma, this time to stay.

The last picture of the series, the " Madonna della
Scodella," was the most fortunate of all, escaping
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the attempts made to carry it off until 1796, when
it went to Paris, but came back with the San
Girolamo.

The chroniclers and Vasari in particular have
woven a kind of romance about Correggio ; he
has been represented as miserably poor, and en-
tirely self-made, having had no artistic environ-
ment. Vasari recounts the famous story that, having
been paid sixty scudi in copper, Antonio tried to
carry them on foot to his native town of Correggio,
and that from heat and fatigue he contracted a fever
of which he died. This factitious and unnecessary
enhancement of the interest attaching to him must
be renounced. He was born about 1494, and towards
1534 his father, Pellegrino Allegri, who possessed
a very fair landed property, gave a suitable dowry
to the daughter of Antonio, who also inherited from
his maternal uncle, Francesco Aromani. After the
death of Correggio the governor of Parma, Alessan-
dro Caccia, wrote to the Duke of Mantua, " I hear
that he has made comfortable provision for his
heirs." This disposes at once of the stories of ex-
aggerated poverty and of exaggerated prosperity
which various writers have told concerning the
family of the painter. His artistic success was com-
mercially considerable, though not what it should
have been. He had an important commission when
he was still a minor, and was kept busy through all
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PARMA

his short life, counting very great personages among
his patrons.

As for his artistic environment, the theory now
accepted is that he derived from the Ferrarese
school; he visited Mantua and was powerfully
influenced by the great Mantegna, and although it
is probable that he never saw Eome, it is still more
probable that he did have a suggestion and more
than a suggestion of Eaphael's and Michelangelo's
great creations through repliche, drawings and en-
gravings of their works. It must be remembered
that the character of the genius of the Roman school
was such that a drawing or a black and white repro-
duction of one of its masterpieces might act as an
inspirational force of highest order, whereas the
works of Giorgione and Titian, depending as they
do upon qualities which cannot be perfectly trans-
lated into black and white, have to be seen to be
stimulating. Raphael's works were popularized by
engraving at an early date, and his Sistine Madonna
could be seen in Piacenza, which was almost at
Correggio's doors, but even if our master had access
to no others, the frescoes and easel pictures of Man-
tegna would in themselves have sufficed to inspire
an artist of Correggio's calibre, while the works of
Leonardo must in turn have powerfully affected one
to whom chiaroscuro was an instinctive means of
expression.

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Though his own family was so modest in station,
Antonio grew up as the protege of Veronica Gambara
and close to the refinements of a court. Nothing is
more special to Italy of the Eenaissance than is the
existence of a great number of tiny but cultivated
capitals, to which the Weimar of the last century
affords a modern parallel. Antonio was protected
by Veronica, who was wife of the Lord of Cor-
reggio, and he . was even one of the witnesses to
the betrothal settlement of Chiara di Gianfrancesco
da Correggio when she was affianced to Ippolito,
the son of Veronica. Veronica Gambara was an in-
timate friend and correspondent of Isabella d'Este,
" the great marchioness," the most famous lady of her
time in North Italy, and it is highly probable that
when Antonio went to Mantua he was recommended
to Isabella by Veronica.

Thus modern research has proved that Vasari
wholly mistook the tragedy of Correggio's life, for
the tragedy came not from pinching want, but from
lack of really adequate appreciation. He was busy,
had many patrons, but none of them recognized
him for what he was, — the one man who, just as
Raphael died, stood ready to take up his succession,
in a more modern, less monumental way, in lighter
vein, if you will, but powerfully and worthily.
When Bembo, boasted connoisseur as he was, saw
the works of Antonio, he passed them by unheeding,

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PARMA

and at the meridian of the Renaissance, when great
artists were petted by popes and princes, and hon-
ored and loved by their fellows, Correggio, at the
very time that he was making not only his native
town, but also his provincial capital of Parma,
immortal, was himself, if we compare him with
Leonardo, Raphael, or Michelangelo, living in posi-
tive obscurity. This neglect could not but astonish
a Florentine or a Roman artist who saw his works,
and the tradition of it evidently grew into the
legend of the tragedy which Vasari recounts, the
story of the copper scudi. That Antonio did suffer
from the inability to give entire vent to his artistic
endeavor is only too well proved by the fact that
he never went to Rome, Florence, or further afield
than Mantua, although in Parma itself, if we reckon
wall surface as a criterion, few painters have had
an ampler opportunity, while hardly any have used
it so well. But complete appreciation was what he
lacked, and the latter part of his life was evidently
saddened by the lack of sympathy of his Parmesan
patrons. The monks did not spare criticism of his
frescoes in the Duomo, and leaving his work un-
finished, Correggio, this mighty master whose name
counts among the six or eight most famous in the
history of art, retired to his obscure native town
and ended his days there.

But if the work in the Cathedral was too original,
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too new, not to shock the Parmesan clergy, if a
canon satirizing its one weakness and blind to its
power could call it " a hash of frogs," there soon
came those trained to discern and who, having eyes,
saw. " Eeverse the cupola and fill it with gold," said
Titian, " and even that will not represent its worth."
" Eaphael himself has not equalled it," wrote Agos-
tino Caracci. The astonishing Giambattista Tiepolo,
last of the great Italian masters, came to look and
learn, and he is less astonishing when we have seen
what he saw. "Have Correggio's Putti grown up
yet and walked out of their frames ? " Guido Eeni
was wont to ask, whenever he met a citizen of
Modena, the town which held so many of Antonio's
masterpieces. These men knew Correggio for what
he was, one who had aided Leonardo and Kaphael,
Michelangelo and Titian, to place the topmost stones
of the shrine which Italy builded to the arts.

END OF VOL. I

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