PLAIN- TOWNS ITALY EGERTON^R^ WILLIAMS -JR Class ^ JD ^. k^i Book Copyright)!". COPYRIGHT DEPOSKT. ^p ©ffcrtou K. ^tlUame, Jr. PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY; THE CITIES OF OLD VENETIA. Fully Illustrated. HILL TOWNS OF ITALY. Fully Illus- trated. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY Boston and New York PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY UDINE. PIAZZAl TTORIO EMANUELE. ■p^ PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY C|)e Cities of (J^lli 'grenetia BY EGERTON R. WILLIAMS, Jr. Author of " Hill-Towns of Italy," " Ridolfo," etc. ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY ^fte fiitietisi&e pie^? Cambrilige 1911 x^ ^^*^ i COPYRIGHT, 191 1, BY EGERTON R. WILLIAMS, JR. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published October iqil ©CI.A300379 To the truest, most faithful, and most reliable of friends Ernest Boyd Millard whose lifelong constancy and sterling character have pre- served in the oft clouded heavens a circle of brightness that has never narrowed, this work is dedicated as a slight mark of the affectionate gratitude and esteem for which I can find no adequate expression. Oh! land, to mem'ry and to freedom dear. Land of the melting lyre and eonqu'ring spear. Land of the vine-clad hill, the fragrant grove. Of arts and arms, of genius and of love, Hear, fairest Italy! Though now no more Thy glitt'ring eagles awe th' Atlantic shore. Nor at thy feet the gorgeous Orient flings The blood -bought treasures of her tawny kings; Though vanished all that formed thine old renown. The laurel garland, and the jewelled crown, Th' avenging poniard, the victorious sword. Which reared thine empire, or thy rights restored; Yet still the constant Muses haunt thy shore. And love to linger where they dwelt of yore. MACAUIiAY. PREFACE ' The issuance of this volume, designed as a companion book to the Hill-Towns of Italy, marks the second step in the execution of a project which was conceived at the time of the latter's production; and which was confirmed in my mind by the kind reception accorded the Hill-Towns by the public. Eight years, it is true, have since passed; but it was not until four years ago, on laying aside all other business and coming to Italy to dwell, that I was able at last to devote myself to the preparation of this work, — a work exceedingly more laborious than the former, and requiring far more time for its due completion, both from the nature of the ground it covers and from the wider scope which I have endeavored to give it, but, like the former, a work of love. From the hill-towns of central Italy I turned by contrast to the great northern plain, seeking, as I had done with the mountain-regions, that section of it which is most filled with interest of every kind. Such is the province of Venetia. It is a daring thing, I know, to offer at this day a book dealing with cities so oft written about as Padua and Verona, each of which, also, requires and has received a full volume for its entire elucidation. They are, however, but a small though necessary part of this work; which endeavors to be an exposition of the whole region of old Venetia, setting forth all its towns and countryside worth visit- ing, in the realms of history, art, and natural beauty, including the varied peoples and their ways, with re- ferences to a good part of the authorities who have at X PREFACE anytime written upon those subjects; taking the reader with me as a companion in my wanderings, from day to day. Most of the towns covered — especially in the dis- tricts of the Polesine, the Trevisan Marches, and Fri- uli, more than half of the total number — have been very little and but casually written about in our language, some of them not at all; while in the case of the larger cities, their political and artistic history and associations had to be collated from a large number of different sources. Thus the field which I have aimed at has not hitherto been occupied : the gathering within one cover of all that information and description which may enable the fireside reader to see the whole of the lovely Veneto through my eyes, and which may at the same time act as a helpful guide to the hurried traveler. Whether I have succeeded in this aim, it remains for the reader to decide. Venetia should be visited and read about, for the same reasons that make it the most beautiful and fascinating section of that wondrous plain, for which the nations of man have struggled and bled since the dawn of civilization. The story of the Veneto surpasses in interest and significance even that of Lombardy or Emilia, and cannot be too closely grasped by him who would know the gradations of human progress. Its towns are deathless monuments on the advancing path of human culture, liberty, and the science of free government. Under the Romans, mighty Padua was the third city of the Empire, — following only upon Rome and Cadiz; Verona and Brescia were also centres of the first magnitude, and Cividale and Aquileia were the guardians of the frontier; for from Padua to the latter marched the great highway to the Orient, and from PREFACE xi Verona and her neighbor led the teeming arteries of commerce across the Alps. Under the Goths, Odoacer, Theodoric, and their successors held royal sway upon the Adige, where Alboin subsequently ruled his Lom- bards, and fell by the assassins' steel. In fact, with the fall of Rome the fount and centre of Italian power shifted to the northern plain, to its industrious cities, who conserved within their walls all that remained of Roman knowledge, law, and customs, commingling not with the barbarians, preserving the freedom and handicrafts of their citizens, asserting through the dark ages the individualities and the rights of Roman municipalities, uniting in the glorious Lombard League to shake from their land the oppressive rule of the foreign emperors, — until they burst from the long shadow as the leaders and propagators, with Florence, of the rising Renaissance. Nothing is more inspiring than the annals of Padua, Verona, Brescia, and Vicenza in those four hundred years succeeding the end of barbaric rule, from the loosening of the Prankish grip to the middle of the thir- teenth century, when as indomitable little republics, fighting off the pretensions of Pope and Emperor, advancing steadily the causes of human knowledge, civilization, and free government, while London and Paris lay still in the mire of savagery, they embellished their paved piazzas with those marvelous series of churches and civic buildings, constructed with an art drawn from their own untutored minds and expressing their own vivid individualities, which still demon- strate to our wondering eyes how lightly upon them lay that shadow of the Middle Age ! Then was founded that great university which drew its scholars by the thousands from every country on the globe, which for centuries placed Padua far in the van of human xii PREFACE thought and progress, and disseminated her culture through the barbaric nations of the north. Followed at a distance by the institutions of Verona and Vicenza, it led the way from mental obscurity into the bright fields of Humanism. In the succeeding era of the despots, the Veneto maintained its leading position. In the Polesine it produced that resplendent race of tyrants, the oldest and most cultured of all, who from their conquest of that district descended upon Ferrara, Modena, and Reggio, placing the proud name of Este amongst the antecedents of all royal lines. From the Trevisan Marches appeared that most famous and powerful of early despots, Ezzelino da Romano, who reduced the whole province beneath his bloody yoke, and has left in many a town his still visible and fearful imprint. The subsequent Delia Carrara of Padua, and Delia Scala of Verona, stood foremost among the tyrants of the dawning Renaissance, illustrious for their con- quests as for their patronage of science, literature, and the arts, and they began the remodeling of their subject cities on the alluring lines of to-day. After them came "the mightier power which caused their fall, the great Republic that stretched her resistless arms slowly over the whole eastern plain, endowing it for all time with the lustre of her name. Venice brought to the long battling cities peace, order, prosperity, and a benevolent, paternal rule that caused them to leap forward in the onrush of the Renaissance, and develop those magnificent schools of painting, sculpt- ure, and architecture which made Venetia the jewel- casket of Italy. Thus was inaugurated that wonder-working era which crowned the Veneto's historical importance with a beauty that is possessed by no other province. PREFACE xiii that spread through every town and hamlet, and was bound into all the circumstances of their lives. Venice became the adored ideal of her emulative subjects. Vicenza's grand school of architecture, led by the im- mortal Palladio, Scamozzi, and Calderari, united with the great Sammicheli of Verona, and with Sansovino, Coducci, and the other builders of the Sea Queen, in remoulding the Veneto cities into a lustrous semblance of their suzerain. In his home town Palladio erected that marvelous Basilica which was the chef d'ceuvre of the Renaissance. Over the field of sculpture pre- sided the royal genius of Donatello, from the crown of his glittering masterpieces at S. Antonio of Padua; and his brilliant followers, Rizzo, Leopardi, and the Lombardi, joined with Riccio, Sansovino, and the latter's disciples, in the splendid adornment of the Veneto's churches and piazzas. In the field of painting the province rose still more supreme. Cultured Padua had led the way at the beginning of the trecento by calling to her Giotto him- self, who left his imperishable. masterpieces upon the walls of her Church of the Arena; and Verona had followed by producing that astonishing pair of artists, Altichieri and d'Avanzo, whose works in Padua prove them to have been Giotto's greatest successors of the century. The quattrocento saw initiated in that same city the momentous school of Squarcione, from whose portals emerged the leading genius of the new age, Andrea Mantegna; and the contemporary school of Verona soared by the early cinquecento into such a brilliancy, glowing with the gorgeous canvases of Liberale, dai Libri, Caroto, the Morone, Cavaz- zola, and a dozen other renowned masters, that no one who has failed to study them can know the full achievements of Italian art. At Vicenza labored the xiv PREFACE refulgent Montagna and Buonconsiglio; at Castel- franeo, the superb Giorgione and his pupils; at Bas- sano, the famous family of the Da Ponte. Brescia's school reached its apogee in the lustrous works of Moretto and Romanino. To the woods of Friuli the eyes of the world were drawn by the exploits of Por- denone, Pellegrino da S. Daniele, Giovanni da Udine, and others. To the masterpieces of all these schools and artists of the first rank, scattered sparkling throughout the towns and villages of the plain, were added those of the mighty Venetian masters, — from the Bellini to Palma Vecchio, from Tiziano to Tiepolo. Such is the feast of loveliness which the province offers to the traveler, and which it has been my pleasant duty to set forth in these pages. Accuracy I have striven to maintain, without diffuseness or un- necessary detail, repeating only so much of the history and distinctive traits of each school and master, giving only so much description of the leading works, as may enable the reader to grasp their true significance and beauty. "He who would comprehend the Italians of the Renaissance," said Symonds, "must study their art. . . . Not only is painting the art in which Italians, among all the nations of the world, stand unapproach- ably alone, but it is also the one that best enables us to gauge their genius at the time when they impressed their culture on the rest of Europe. In the history of the Italian intellect, painting takes the same rank as that of sculpture in Greece." — It may be that I should apologize for intruding the lists of the principal works in the great galleries of Padua, Vicenza, Ve- rona, and Brescia; but the stay-at-home reader can easily skip those paragraphs, and to the others they will afford an enlightening conception of the delights offered by those respective cities. PREFACE XV Fascinating, however, as are the countless artistic masterpieces and the picturesque architectural dress of these towns of the Veneto, interesting as are their historical and literary relics and associations, there is still more to interest the stranger, in the natural scenery of their settings and countrysides, and the marked diversity of their appearance, customs, and inhabitants. Let no one associate them, because they are plain-towns, with the ideas of sameness or mono- tony. The plain of the Veneto is so narrowed between the Alps and the sea that the serrated mountain-ridges ever loom vast and grim before the eyes, fancifully backgrounding the towered city, or the rich cham- paign, dotted with glistening Venetian villas and om- nipresent campanili; while to the west of Padua the landscape is further beautified by the far-seen chains of the Euganean and Berici Hills. Every district has its distinctive natural characteristics and charm, — from the Veronese with its battlemented medieval strong- holds, the Polesine with its numerous little walled cities at the feet of the Euganei, and the Trevisan Marches with their mighty rivers and high-perched castles, to strange Friuli with its dark blanket of for- est. The towns themselves display marked divers- ities, in their picturesque piazzas dominated by grand old churches and palaces, their looming medieval towers, their neighboring mountain-summits, and the generally present castle of the bygone signori, glower- ing down from its adjacent eminence. Among all those cities that owned the sovereignty of Venice, two only are left without these pages : Bergamo and Crema were for a time Venetian, it is true, but are omitted because they were much more identified with Lombardy, of which province they form integral parts, being but a few miles distant from, and long governed xvi PREFACE by, its capital, Milan, whose shadow has lain upon them all the centuries. They would properly, there- fore, take their places, and I hope will at some future date, in a volume dealing with that region of the Sforzas and the Visconti; which would also include captivating Cremona, and the glorious Mantua of the princely Gonzaghi. The untraveled reader may wonder, though the voyageur will not, why I have taken pains to mention the names and qualities of many of the inns that enter- tained me upon these sojourns. But it is unquestion- able that there is no one piece of information so valu- able to the success and comfort of a traveler, and so eagerly sought for from his confreres, as judgment founded upon personal experience of the hotels in a district or city to which he may at any future date pay a visit. At the risk, therefore, of criticism from the few who are inclined to seek for base motives, but in order to be of assistance to those who will yet travel through Venetia, I have given the names and good points of the hostelries that afforded me comfort and fair service, without any knowledge of the errand upon which I was bound. Even in the smallest places, nearly everywhere through the Veneto, good treat- ment can be obtained for the traveler who is willing to put up with simplicity and eat in the Italian mode; it is only a question of knowing which albergo to repair to, — as it is of knowing which hotel among the many in the larger cities. If my descriptions of the design of the larger towns be supplemented by the purchase of the cheap local maps, or by references to the fine plans contained in Baedeker's Northern Italy, the reader will follow my movements and observations with greater clear- ness, and the visitor upon the spot will have the pleas- PREFACE xvii ure of hunting out for himself every object worth seeing, without the objectionable aid of native guides. The Baedeker's possession is advisable, of course, for more reasons than this ; since the present volume is not adaptable to usurp all its functions as a guidebook, but rather to supplement its very condensed and lim- ited information, — not only in the way of omissions, but particularly in the various realms that it has no space to enter. My thanks are due to the excellent Commendatore Alinari, for the kind permission which enables me properly to illustrate this book. Some of the districts, however, — the Polesine, Trevisan Marches, and most of Friuli, — have been photographed still less than they have been described; and there it was neces- sary to take some views of my own, as best I could with the poor film furnished in Italy. My thailks are due also to a number of local savants and connoisseurs, besides those herein mentioned, who drew for my assistance upon their accumulated stores of art-know- ledge and archaeology. Above all, I acknowledge with a full heart my deep indebtedness to the wife whose enthusiasm first in- spired, then supported me in the heavy task, during these three years of continuous study, travel, and la- bor; without whose inestimable aid in the researching and annotation of hundreds of volumes, the word "Finis" would probably never have been written. E. R. W. Venice, July 1, 1911. CONTENTS I. THE BRENTA AND THE PALACE OF STRA . . 3 II. PADUA THE LEARNED 28 III. PADUA AND S. ANTONIO 62 IV. VICENZA THE PALATIAL ...... 97 V. BASSANO, CITTADELLA, AND CASTELFRANCO . 138 VI. TREVISO AND THE VILLA GIACOMELLI . . 177 VII. FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 224 VIII. UDINE AND CIVIDALE 271 IX. VERONA LA DEGNA . . . . . . .322 X. VERONA LA MARMORINA 351 XI. BRESCIA THE BRAVE .418 XII. BRESCIA LA FERREA 454 XIII. MONTAGNANA, ESTE, AND MONSELICE . . 497 XIV. ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA . . .540 INDEX 589 ILLUSTRATIONS Udine. Piazza Vittorio Emanuele .... Frontisjnece r Map 3 / Stra. The Rotal Villa 8 *^ Stra. The Grand Hall, Royal Villa 24/ Padua. Basilica of San Antonio, with the Statue of ^ Gattamelata. (Donatello) 40^ Padua. Bas Relief, St. Anthony recalling to Life a Youth to prove the Innocence of his Father. (G. Campagna) 56 Padua. Altar with Bronzes. (Donatello) . . .72 VicENZA. Palazzo della Ragione. (Palladio) . . . 98 ^ VicENZA. Madonna and Saints, in the Church of San Stefano. (Palma Vecchio) 104 '/ ViCENZA. Garden of Palazzo Quirini 112 1' Vicenza. Baptism of Christ, in the Church of S. Corona. (Giovanni Bellini) 120 ' Vicenza. Palazzo da Schio, formerly known as the Casa Aurea or Ca d' Oro (The Golden House) . . . 128^1 Vicenza. Villa Rotonda by Palladio and Scamozzi . 136 Vicenza. Public Museum 136 ' Varese. General View of the Monte Sacro . . . 138 ^ xxii ILLUSTRATIONS Vakese. Church of Santa Makia del Monte and the Last Chapel 142 Bassano. The River Brenta with the Wooden Bridge 146 ^ Bassano. Piazza Vittorio Emanuele and Church of St. John Baptist 146 ^ Bassano. The City Wall .150^ *Bassano. The Western River Bank 154 ^ Marostica. View of Ancient Walls and Castle . . 158 V CiTTADELLA. ThE BaSSANO GaTE AND ViEW OF THE WaLLS 162 ' Castelfranco. Remains of the Old Castle of the Twelfth Century 166 ^ Castelfranco. Madonna and Child with Saints. (Giorgione) 170 ^ CONEGLIANO. GATEWAY TO OlD ToWN. — CaSTLE HiLL IN Background . . . 194 '^ Treviso. Piazza dei Signori . 194 » Treviso. Annunciation. (Tiziano) 208 v *Maser. Villa Giacomelli. Central Pavilion . . 214^ Maser. Villa Giacomelli. Entrance, with Fountain AND Little Temple . '214 j Maser. Villa Giacomelli. Detail of Wall. (Paolo Veronese) 220 '' Udine. Palazzo Comunale. Town Hall — Fifteenth AND Sixteenth Centuries 234 ' CiviDALE. San Peltrudis. Early Lombard Sculptures 274 Verona. Old Castle Bridge 326 . ILLUSTRATIONS xxiii Verona. Church of Santa Maria in Organo (St. Mary's OF THE Organ) 326 ^ Verona. The River Adige from the Ponte Navi . . 340 ^ Verona. Church of St. Anastasia 350 " Verona. The Virgin and Child Enthroned. (Girolamo DAI LiBRi) 366 Verona. Altar Triptych in Church of San Zeno Maggiore. (Andrea Mantegna) 380 Verona. Tomb of Romeo and Juliet 394 Verona. View in the Giusti Gardens 406 " SoAVE. The Castle and Wall, looking Northward . 414 '' Brescia. Palazzo Municipale. (Fromentone da Brescia) 440 ^' Brescia. The Cross of St. Helena. (In the Museutm of Christian Art) 490 ^ Battaglia. a Farm on the Canal 540 ' Battaglia. The Castle of St. Helena .... 548 Near Battaglia. The Castle of Cattajo with Moat and Bridge 558''' Arqua. a Peasant's House '. 568 Arqua. Parish Church and Petrarch's Tomb . . . 568' Arqua. The House of Petrarch 582 The reproductions marked with an asterisk (*) are from photographs by the author. All others are by Fratelli Alinari, Florence, and are used by their courteous permission. PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY CHAPTER I THE BRENTA AND THE PALACE OF STRA Once did she hold the gorgeous East in fee. And was the safeguard of the West; the worth Of Venice did not fall below her birth, — Venice, the eldest child of Liberty. — And what if she has seen those glories fade. Those titles vanish, and that strength decay; Yet shall some tribute of respect be paid When her long life has reached its final day. — Wordsworth. The steamer was pushing her prow swiftly through the still, wide waters of the Lagoon, as we sat upon her after-deck looking backward at the receding domes and towers of Venice. Over the blue, mirroring ex- panse they rose, more dimly now, arched gloriously by the still bluer dome of the Italian sky. For months we had been living amongst them, living over again their wonderful bygone centuries of strife and tri- umph: from the ruins of Torcello we had watched in fancy the Queen of the Sea once again build herself from out that primitive confederation of lagoon-girt isles, whose capital shifted from one beach to another, until it came at last from Malamocco to rest upon that Rivo Alto which centres the Venice of to-day; with Pietro Orseolo the Great we had sailed in her first grand fleet of warships, to impose the rule of the Re- public upon the shores of the Adriatic; with Domenico Michiel we had crested the Mediterranean to relieve 4 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem from assailing heathen, conquer the beautiful isles of the Levant, and carry home saintly bodies from violated sepulchres; with Enrico Dandolo we had accompanied the Cru- saders to Zara and the capture of Constantinople, and seen the sway of Venice extend from that wealthy capital over a hundred fair cities of the Orient; with Michele Steno we had watched the Mistress of the Sea turn at last from her own domain and begin the subjugation of the Italian mainland ; we had wondered as Padua fell into her power, despoiled of the princely Delia Carrara, and Vicenza and Verona, from the kingdom of the ruined Scaligers, then Brescia and Bergamo, from the falling Visconti, and Rovigo and Adria from the enfeebled Estensi, — until that beau- tiful rich territory thenceforth known as the Veneto, bore the winged lion of St. Mark from the Adda on the west and the Po on the south, to Aquileia and Udine in the far northeast. We had seen in these memories the Turk come to Constantinople, and despoil Venice one by one of her possessions over the sea; but only more firmly had she held to thaf fair kingdom of North Italy, attaching the people to her by gifts of public freedom and bene- volence, and the adornment of their towns, until not even all the great powers of Europe, leagued against her by the Pact of Cambrai, could sever those cities from their willing allegiance. Unto the end brought by the French Revolution three centuries later, they re- mained to Venice, the last but richest product of all her conquests, when all the others had departed. Then it was, while the League of Cambrai assailed, while the Turk was despoiling Venice over-sea, and the Veneto alone remained true to her, that in the decline of her physical power there had blossomed THE BRENTA 5 forth like a wondrous orchid her aesthetic culture of the Renaissance. We had seen the Bellini bringing to perfection their marvelous canvases, and the still greater school developing with Giorgione, Titian, and Jacopo Palma the elder, in a marble city now re- splendent with bright frescoes on every house fagade, with beautified interiors luxuriant in her own fine sculpture and glassware, and the cloths and precious ornaments of the East. Then it was, too, that with that sudden keen appre- ciation of the beautiful, and great increase of luxury, we had seen the whole external life of Venice alter, and her nobles turn from their commercial strife of centuries to the ownership of landed estates. The city had lost her commercial primacy with the dis- covery of the new route to India around the Cape; trading became neither lucrative nor fashionable; and we had watched the famous old houses one by one turn sadly to the Veneto, and invest their remaining wealth in lands and country villas. We had seen the territory of Padua, the whole eastern Veneto to the foothills of the Alps, become filled with the nobles' wide-spreading estates, and dotted from end to end with their Renaissance chateaux, in which they passed the summers and autumns in villeggiatura. Thus had a new fashionable existence arisen; and the inevitable rivalry for the possession of the fairest villas increased amongst the patricians, until many families actually beggared themselves in building and entertaining beyond their means. It was a curious corner of history and architecture, about which many people know little or nothing, — this strange trans- ference of the Venetian nobles to the mainland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It had hap- pened to strike my interest exceptionally, in descend- 6 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY ing the eras of Venetian history, — and it was the reason why we were now en voyage to the mouth of the river Brenta. Four days before our departure we had been wan- dering through the mazes of the extensive Museo Civico, in its beautiful modern-romanesque palace near the head of the Grand Canal; and in a little room on the top floor, not always visited, we had come upon an extraordinary, perfect model of a giant villa of the Renaissance. It was the actual building-model of the great chateau erected in those days of rivalry by the Pisani family, on the banks of the Brenta, — the so-called Palace of Stra. As we gazed upon its pro- totype in miniature, I could well understand how it came to eclipse all other patrician villas, — to such an extent that no attempt was ever made to surpass it. Looking at its vast extent of halls, courts, corridors, and suites, imperial in space and number, our minds actually failed to comprehend how a single private family could have accomplished it. Nothing better exemplifies the hugeness of those bygone fortunes of Venetian nobles; but, gazing at it, we longed to see the structure itself. The Brenta became naturally the first seat of the patricians' country-houses, since it is the stream nearest to Venice; upon and along it ran always the highway to Padua and the west, before the Austrians constructed the modern railway-bridge. It flows a little to the north of Padua, and thence easterly into the Lagoon at Fusina, some four miles south of the present railroad. It was inevitable that in former days the first and chief line of noble villas should arise along this watery highway; and there the Pisani erected their palace. Communication along the an- cient route is still maintained, by a small steamer from THE BRENTA 7 the Piazzetta to Fusina, and an electric tramway thence upon the old highroad to Padua. I had never thought of pursuing this route before; but it would be a new and pleasant way of reaching Padua. In going to the latter city I was but starting upon the execution of a plan I had had in mind for years, and for which the visit to Stra was an appropriate opening. For years I had thought of some day traveling through the length and breadth of the great northern plain of Italy, — that richest section of the inhabited world, for which nations have fought since time immemorial, — and inspecting carefully one by one its many illustrious cities, which heretofore I had seen but hurriedly. During our stay in Venice, and our living over again her centuries of glory, this de- sire had crystallized into the first aim of visiting that hinterland, fairest and chief portion of the Lombard Plain, which the Republic had so forcefully made her own, and beautified with her wealth and genius. So the spring had passed, the summer had come with its flooding golden light, and I was on my way at last to the Veneto. What more fitting, I thought, than that I should first observe the scenes of the Sea Queen's primal conquests on the mainland, follow her historic highway of so many generations, and view the landed estates and villas to which her patricians first re- moved. Then would come Padua, appropriately, the first prominent city to fall to her victorious arms. It was a beautiful July day. We were happy with anticipations and the lovely scenes about us, while the steamer moved evenly, silently, through the still water. Gazing at those white domes and campanili, ever receding, sinking, our thoughts had been coursing again over the marvelous centuries that had produced them, and held them safe, inviolate, from all assault 8 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY or rapine. Here and there out of the wide blue mirror rose other walls and towers, upon islets small and large, — medieval monasteries, churches, and public insti- tutions. How many times, I thought, had this same path across the Lagoon been followed by Venetians, and by all the illustrious travelers who sought their city's charms, for a thousand years before railroads were dreamed of! What a procession it must have been in those old days, of craft of every size and style and beauty, passing each other where now the steamer cruised in solitude! The low-lying mainland, at first hardly distinguish- able over the blue but for the trees that dotted it, had now come close at hand, revealing the narrow mouth of the little Brenta, but no sign of human habitations save one or two buildings on the bank. Fusina was hidden behind the woods on the right. The steamer came alongside a quay; we debarked through a very modern shed, and found the electric train of two hand- some new coaches waiting on the other side. I blessed my fortune that the old, rickety, smoky steam-tram, of whose discomforts I had heard, had gone the way of the past. In another minute we were rolling rapidly up the valley of the Brenta, with the stream on our left, and a flat, wooded countryside to right. What a difference this from the old-fashioned method of ascending the river, which the Venetians followed for twelve hundred years, before electricity or rails were thought of! Evelyn spoke of it in 'his trip of 1645: "We changed our barge and were then drawne by horses thro' the river Brenta, a strait chanell as even as a line for 20 miles, the country on both sides deliciously adorned with country villas and gentlemen's retirements." ^ And Lady Morgan wrote ^ John Evelyn, Diary and Letters. THE BRENTA 9 of her trip of 1819: "It is a delightful thing to roll along the banks of the Brenta — on a fine, bright, sunny, holiday morning ! — The canal lying through a laughing, lovely, fertile champagne; — the elegant marble villas to the left, with their Palladian fagades, their green verandas, and parterres of orange trees, inducing the belief that they are still lorded by the Foscarini and the Bembi of the great and free days of Republican Venice!" ^ While Byron rhapsodized of the journey by eventide: — Gently flows The deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues instil The odoriferous purple of a new-born rose. Which streams upon her stream, and glassed within it glows. Two companions were going with me as far as Padua, destined to accompany me also while there; but when I should go on to Vicenza and Bassano, it must be alone. It was a pleasure to all three of us to drink in with our eyes the soft greenery of the grass and trees, after being so long immured amongst the stones of Venice. On leaving the coast behind, wide cultivated fields appeared, white stuccoed farmhouses glowing brilliantly in the hot sun, churches, little villages, and distant campanili ever rising above the level of the distance, — that distinctive mark of Veneto scenery. The highway accompanied us, — together with the river, — a white, dusty, hard, macadamized road, smooth as asphalt, laden with mules and peasants, and carts drawn by creamy oxen or diminutive don- keys. It was almost as thickly settled as an English village-street, and the tram made a stop every five minutes at some larger aggregation of buildings. Soon we came to a stretch along the river, where the first villas of the Venetian patricians burst upon ^ Lady Morgan, Italy, vol. II. 10 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY our view. Alas, they were mostly, as we soon found, in a condition of sad decay. Nearly all of them had been plastered outside with stucco; and this, neg- lected and unpainted for ages, crumbling and falling off in places, joined with the close-shuttered and boarded windows, and the overgrown gardens, to give them an aspect desolate and melancholy. Along the river banks they extended, on both sides, mile after mile, uniform in their large size. Renaissance lines, rococo decorations, and abandoned, ruinous ap- pearance. Even when they were of stone, or enlivened by modern plebeian tenants, the decay, the weedy, tangled grounds, everything about them, emphasized the sad contrast with what must once have been.^ This, then, was all that was left of that extraordin- ary, artificial, highly cultured and peculiar social ex- istence, which was the first of its sort in Europe, which set the mark that the French and English nobility later sought to attain; that first return to the soil by a whole polished upper class, after the dangers of country-life in the Dark Ages had been removed. Here were the boarded up, .mouldering salons and ball-rooms where they had played, and practiced the art of conversa- tion, and danced into the small hours; here were the densely overgrown gardens once so carefully ornate, with statues still upreared but dilapidated and forlorn, where they had walked and whispered gallantries in ^ Some of these were constructed by Palladio, and by other famous architects and artists. On the very brink of the " bello ed allegrissimo fiume," — as Cardinal Bembo designated the Brenta, in a letter from his Paduan villa — still rises Palladio's Palazzo Foscari, which Giacomo Zanella thus describes in his Vita di Andrea Palladio: "On the ground- floor are the rooms for the servizio della casa ; by two magnificent stair- cases at the sides one ascends to the Ionic loggia; the great hall is made in the shape of a cross; in the corners are commodious chambers, and overhead, smaller bedrooms." THE BRENTA 11 the cool of the afternoon; here were the ruined casinos, pavilions, and summer-houses, where they had loved to contrast rusticity with silks and laces. It was not difficult to construct it all in the mind again, that so-long-past life that thought not of the morrow; repeopling these decadent edifices with the gay creatures who once made them shine, refilling these mouldering mews with the horses and painted, swung carriages, that once occupied this same road at sunset with a procession of brilliant coloring. These villas were beautiful then; as Mrs. Piozzi — Doctor Johnson's Mrs. Thrale — indicates to us in the bright commentary on her travels, by her enthusiastic remark upon "the sublimity of their architecture — the magnificence of their orangeries, the happy con- struction of the cool arcades, and general air of festiv- ity which breathes upon the banks of this truly wizard stream, planted with dancing, not weeping willows." ^ But through the tall trees of a park upon our right there now suddenly flashed upon our eyes the vision of a distant, white. Renaissance fagade, seen down a long green vista; then we turned a corner, ran swiftly along a high park-wall, and passed before a building of proportions so imposing and monumental, that we knew it could be nothing else than the Palace of the Pisani. Our conviction was confirmed a minute later by the stoppage of the tram, and the calling out of the station of Stra. We debarked in a village-street, be- fore a solitary inn, with naught but scattered dwell- ings in sight. ^ Mrs. Piozzi, Glimpses of Italian Society in the 18th Century. In Shakespeare's day Lady Arundel, wife of the noted art-collecting earl, and Sir Henry Wotton, who was thrice ambassador to Venice, 1604-25, both had splendid villas upon the river; and their example was followed by innumerable Englishmen of high rank during the two succeeding cen- turies. — Vide L. Pearsall Smith, Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton. 12 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Leaving our luggage at the locanda, we walked back the half-mile to the palace, along the highway, with the Brenta close upon our right. Along the farther side of the stream stretched more Renaissance villas of goodly size, all boarded up, shuttered and decaying, with the invariable baroque statues looking sadly out from the tangles of shrubbery. But on our left soon rose the high stone wall of the park of the Pisani, and through an ornamental gateway at its corner we looked down a beautiful, far, green vista to the shining white fagade of which we had first caught a glimpse. Grand as the building was, larger and handsomer than any villa we had seen, it was but the stables, or mews, of the establishment; so we were informed by the people of the adjacent farm- house, — and were directed to follow the park- wall to the palace entrance. Another five minutes' walk brought us to the villa, whose mighty fagade looked directly upon the high- way and the river. Its magnificent proportions and harmonious lines, radiantly white in the rays of the summer sun', dazzled and overwhelmed us as we stood gazing upward. The noble delineations were genu- inely Palladian; a grand central pavilion, three stories in height, was thrust forward from the mass, holding Corinthian half-columns running the height of the two upper stories, and supporting a pediment with a beautiful stuccoed frieze of wreaths and putti; the long wings, of two stories, ended in smaller pavilions of simpler design, with a quiet rusticated basement, and on the upper floor, Ionic pilasters in couples be- tween the heavily corniced windows; while on the gables of the pavilions and along the balustrades topping the wings, rose against the sky-line many statues and decorative urns; the whole exhibiting a THE BRENTA 13 harmony of lines, an accurate proportion of openings to solid, and an absence of over-ornamentation, that were charming and impressive beyond words. Large dark clouds had been hastily gathering in the sky for one of those heavy thunder-storms so frequent here in the summer, and we entered the simple main doorway of the palace as the first large drops began to fall. Though the portal was open there was no person in sight. The central hall ran through to the back of the villa, forming in the middle a double colonnade between open courts at the sides. We walked through it to the rear doorway, where again the sight of the gleaming ecurie greeted us, rising majestically behind a long stretch of lawn and flower-gardens, framed by the woods on each hand. The black sky now vomited thunderbolts and a rush of hail, that was soon driving into the courts pellets as large as fair-sized cherries. It is just such tropical storms that the peasants dread more than anything else that can happen, annihilating in a few minutes, as they often do, the labors of a year. We shuddered irresistibly, then, realizing the ter- rible destruction that was happening about us, wiping out the means, the happiness, of scores, perhaps hun- dreds of families. For the poor Lombard peasant who owns or rents his farm — unsupported by a landlord — lives nowadays upon such a close margin between the usurer and ruin, that a single hailstorm like this one not only destroys his crops of the season, but effects his entire downfall. Only those can survive who live upon the mezzeria, or sharing-system, with a good landlord to tide them over the year, at his own expense. Such are the countless, unknown tragedies of the plain. The keeper of the palace, which is now a national monument, appeared when the storm was over, fifteen 14 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY minutes later, explaining that he had been occu- pied in closing the windows ; and he proceeded to conduct us over the piano nobile. We went first to the great central salon, or ball-room, directly over the colonnade between the courts. Its dimensions and beauty were truly amazing: it is two stories in height, with imitation-stucco decorations in the way of pi- lasters, cornices, and mouldings, all cleverly painted with realistic shadows, and with a balcony around the upper story, having a splendid, open-work, bronze railing. Its chief attraction, however, is the huge ceiling-painting by Tiepolo. As from a glorious azure heaven, of whitest clouds and infinite depth, angels and beings of the upper world flock to chant the glorification of the Pisani. While not a great work, and lacking in only too many points as a first-class fresco, it fulfills the one supreme function of a ceiling- picture, — it is decorative; and its bright, joyous colors, its sense of space and freedom, illumine the whole hall with their gayety. Thence we were conducted on an interminable round of the chambers of the piano nobile, which have the rare distinction of still containing much of their old furniture. We saw a billiard-room filled with in- different paintings, and rooms and suites decorated in all sorts of usual and unusual styles of the decad- ent Renaissance ; we saw the royal bed once occupied by the Emperor Maximilian of Austria, when he stayed here for a time, the suite and bedroom used by Victor Emmanuel II in the strenuous days of the Risorgimento, — and, finally, the gilded, lavishly deco- rated chamber and couch of the great Napoleon, when he was accomplishing the downfall of the ancient Republic of Venice. Quite as one would expect, this chamber and couch THE BRENTA 15 of the soldier of fortune, gi-devant bourgeois, were very much more elaborate and ornate than any of the others; they had been made over and redecorated in the manner of the First Empire, — beautifully, it must be said, — even to the embroidering of the imperial crown and letter "N." I could not help but think, as I gazed upon that pillow pressed by the conqueror, of the vast upheaval just then coming to the whole civilized world from the one head that had there reclined. We did not have time to visit the now empty mews, once filled with scores of blooded horses and silken carriages, nor to walk along the inviting shady avenues of the park; but were obliged to hurry to catch our train for Padua. Again we coursed along the high- road, through the densely populated and cultivated countryside, past village after village; and, as Hazlitt said of the same road in 1826, "the whole way was cultivated beauty and smiling vegetation. Not a rood of land lay neglected, nor did there seem the smallest interruption to the bounty of nature or the industry of man. For miles before you, behind you, and on each side, the trailing vines hung over waving corn- fields (wheat). Every foot and acre of this immense plain is wrought up to a pitch of neatness and pro- ductiveness equal to that of a gentleman's kitchen- garden. The whole is literally, and without any kind of exaggeration, one continued and delightful gar- den." 1 Mendelssohn, on his first visit here four years later, wrote home with delight: "Venetian villas were occa- sionally visible from the road; our way led past houses, trees and gardens like a park. The whole country had a festive air, as if a prince were expected to make his ^ William Hazlitt, Notes of a Journey through France and Italy. 16 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY grand entry, and the vine-branches with their rich purple grapes, hanging in festoons from the trees, made the most lovely of all festive wreaths." ^ But my thoughts turned now to the wonderful old city that we were approaching. I had already visited Padua on several occasions, during fifteen years past, but each time casually and not fully, seeing sufficient really only to whet the desire for a completer under- standing of her treasures of art and history. Padua is truly one of the greatest towns of Italy, and always has been, — in historic accomplishments, in size and power, in Renaissance culture, in science, literature, and art. Her importance began in very early ages. The founder is said by the inhabitants, who thoroughly believe the statement of Virgil, to have been Antenor, the brother of Priam of Troy, at the head of a band of Trojan survivors. (How those confreres of Hector did duty as founders of Italian towns!) In reality the town was first Etruscan, then Celtic; and after the Celts' subjugation, about 200 B.C., became very power- ful under Roman rule, being the second largest city in the whole peninsula. The Latin writer Strabo relates that she was able to send forth an army of two hundred thousand, — of course much exaggerated, but signi- ficant of her former size. Livy, who was born and died in Padua, says that her confines once extended to the sea. With the decline of Roman power, as was inevitable with all the cities situated upon the plain, she suffered attack and rapine from one savage in- vader after another, being burned to the ground by Attila, by the Lombards in 601, and by the Huns about 900; until very little was left of her former amplitude, and naught of her magnificence. Well did Dante cry: ^ Mendelssohn's Letters from Italy and Switzerland. THE BRENTA 17 Where 't is the lot of tyranny to mourn. There Heaven's stern justice lays chastising hand On Attila, who was the Scourge of Earth.^ In the succeeding Middle Ages Padua gradually raised her head again, struggled with the other towns against the emperors, and instituted a free, republi- can form of government, building for its use the huge and celebrated civic structure called the Palazzo della Ragione. In 1222 she joined the march of learning by founding her great university, which after seven cen- turies of proud distinction still stands among the foremost of the world. Then came the day of that extraordinary and never- to-be-forgotten tyrant, Ezzelino da Romano, the first of his kind, — who has left his bloody traces, not only in Padua, but over the whole of the Veneto. Unique amongst three centuries of bloodthirsty Italian des- pots, for the extent to which his cruelty exceeded all others', his career of over thirty years' unbridled con- quest and excesses is the best proof of how such ty- rants ruled by fear alone. Originally but a small noble of the Trevisan marches, he became by his fight- ing ability captain of the imperial forces in Lombardy, recognized as such by Frederick II, and honored by him with his daughter's hand. With such armed power behind Ezzelino, gathered from the Ghibelline towns, he proceeded, nominally in the name of the Emperor but really for his own aggrandizement, to subdue and lay waste one city after another that would not voluntarily submit, until his sway extended from the Po and the Adda to high Pieve di Cadore in the Alps. Every step in this path of conquest was marked by bloody cruelties that to us to-day seem beyond hu- ^ Dante's Inferno, canto xii; Gary's translation. 18 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY man deeds. Padua was one of the first cities to fall under his assault, and one of the greatest sufferers from his bloodthirstiness. The inhabitants had un- wisely pulled down, in their anger, the old dwelling of his family, — some remains of which still exist in the Via S. Lucia; and this he revenged by a sack and massacre extending for many days. After that he impressed into his army the major portion of the able- bodied men, constructed a formidable fortress for his own residence, and built eight large prisons, which he kept crammed to overflowing by all persons of any sex or age for whom he could conceive the slightest animosity. Although these imprisoned thou- sands were constantly depleted by appalling tortures and executions, new unfortunates were as swiftly hurried into their places. Later on, for a revolt against him by the Paduans in his absence, Ezzelino seized, tortured, and executed the whole body of their com- patriots in his army, some eleven thousand in number. Such was the monster whom Symonds has well described, as "a small, wiry man, with terror in his face and enthusiasm for evil in his heart, who lived a foe to luxury, cold to the pathos of children, dead to the enchantments of women. His one passion was the greed of power, heightened by the lust for blood." ^ Dante placed him in the lowest circle of Hell beside Attila : — These are the souls of tyrants who were given To blood and rapine. Here they wail aloud Their merciless wrongs. — That brow. Whereon the hair so jetty clustering hangs. Is Ezzelino! ^ And Ariosto spoke of him in the Orlando FuriosOt canto XXXIII, as — ^ J. A. Symonds, Age of the Despots. ' Dante's Inferno, canto xn; Gary's translation, THE BRENTA 19 Fierce Ezzelino, that most inhuman lord. Who shall be deemed by man a child of Hell, And work such evil, thinning with the sword Who in Ansonia's wasted cities dwell." Ezzelino was defeated at last, in 1259, by a combina- tion of the many enemies whom he had raised all over Italy; he was made a prisoner, though wounded, but tore off his bandages until he bled to death. His memory has never ceased, among the peasantry of the Veneto, to be the subject of devilish myths, and the mention of his name is sufficient to quell an obstrep- erous child. Ezzelino's fall signaled the time of Padua's great- est power and prosperity since Roman days. Relieved and joyous, free and self-governing, she plunged into the building and adornment of those other splendid structures that distinguish her to-day, — the Church of S. Antonio, the Baptistery, the Churches of the Arena and the Eremetani. In 1318 the Paduan Guelfic captain, Jacopo della Carrara, was elected by his com- patriots as "Capitano del Popolo"; he assumed ab- solute power, and founded the subsequent dynasty of despots of that name. For a while they lost their city to the Della Scala of Verona, but soon recovered it. They were a distinctly manly and generous race, maintaining their authority by an upbuilding of the city, and the happiness which they conferred. There are few finer figures of those times than that unfortun- ate Francesco della Carrara, who was despoiled of his power by Gian Galeazzo Visconti of Milan in 1388, and his son Francesco Novello, who experienced a series of romantic adventures in his attempts to regain the throne. These finally succeeded in 1390, wheft on the dark night of June 19 he s'^am the river, entered the town alone, without forces, and was welcomed 20 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY with such joy by the citizens that they rose in arms and expelled the Visconti garrison. In 1405, after Gian Galeazzo's death, however, the Venetians, having successfully played off for some time the Carrara and the Visconti against each other, now seized Padua by treachery, and took Francesco and his sons in an iron cage to Venice, where they were strangled. Harsh as was this treatment of the des- pots, that of the people of Padua was such that she soon became one of the Republic's most loyal sub- jects; caressed, adorned, and prosperous under the sway of the doges, above all with assured peace, she carried the white Lion of St. Mark with pride unto the end. During the terrible war of the League of Cambrai, 1508-16, when the united great nations overwhelmed the Republic, and her towns departed from their allegiance, Padua remained true, and re- pelled with success the attack of the Emperor Maxi- milian's army, though it was a hundred thousand strong.^ But the jnost important events in the history of Padua lay outside of her politics, in the fields of sci- ence, religion, and art. Her great university has ever played the most prominent part in her life, drawing, as it has, for centuries, such multitudes of the first minds of Europe to its lecture-halls. Padua "ranks with Florence in the ardor with which she threw herself into the humanistic movement and devoted herself to the revival of the classical ideals, and recon- struction of the antique civilization. Her university, receiving students from both sides of the Alps, formed ^ To those wishing a fuller account of Paduan annals, and to those mak- ing a long stay in the city, I recommend The Story of Padua by Cesare Foligno, in the Medieval Towns Series, which has been issued since this volume went to press; in it the town's history is accurately and elaborately narrated, and her manifold points of interest are intimately described. THE BRENTA 21 at the beginning of the fifteenth century the centre of intellectual culture; nobles, poets, and philosophers spurring each other on in the work of research and exploration."^ Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Thomas Hoby, Fynes Mory- son, and many other prominent intellectual English- men of the Elizabethan Age, here perfected their edu- cation; and in the succeeding century it became a common thing for Oxford men to repair to Padua after their graduation. Thus was the Renaissance of learn- ing transplanted to Britain. Among the later pilgrims came Oliver Goldsmith, in 1755, earning his way on foot by playing the flute, and procuring by his labors at the University that degree of M.B. on which was founded his claim to the title of Doctor. Here it was that Petrarch came towards the end of his life, and made a home in the neighboring town of Arqua for his various collections, where his friendly protector, Jacopo II della Carrara, often journeyed to visit him; here it was that Torquato Tasso, long after, when "not yet turned seventeen, passed a pub- lic examination in canon and civil law, philosophy, and theology, with universal eulogy, and astonish- ment of that learned university "; ^ and in the fol- lowing year published his heroic poem "Rinaldo," the beginning of his fame; while Dante, in the course of his wanderings, found at Padua for some years a congenial residence, obtaining honors and susten- ance by lecturing in the University. The artist whom the latter met at Padua in 1306, with whom he formed an intimate friendship, and whom he often used to watch while at work, introduces us to the remarkable and early importance of the city as a ^ M. Crutwell, Andrea Mantegna. * Mrs. TroUope, Homes and Haunts of the Italian Poets, ii, 113. 22 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY centre of art: for it was Giotto himself. Dante's own comment shows the latter's position then : — O powers of man ! how vain your glory, nipt E'en in its height of verdure, if an age Less bright succeed not. Cimabue thought To lord it over painting's field; and now The cry is Giotto's, and his name eclipsed.* Padua was one of the first towns of Italy to enter with zeal into the new birth of Art; she called Niccolo and Giovanni Pisano to her as soon as they became famous, and Giotto as soon as he had made his genius known to the world; offering to the latter works of a size such as he was never elsewhere called upon to execute. He covered the huge walls of the Palazzo della Ragione with frescoes, — alas, now utterly de- stroyed; he painted, according to Vasari, "una bellis- sima capella" in the Church of S. Antonio, of which there remain now but questionable ruined fragments; and, last but chief, he lined the nave of the little church of Madonna dell' Arena with that marvelous series of frescoes depicting the lives of Christ and the Virgin, which have ever since remained the most im- portant product of pictorial art. ^ Following the time of Giotto, Padua called to her that great pair of Veronese painters, Altichieri da Zevio and Jacopo d'Avanzo, who surpassed not only all others of the fourteenth century, but sometimes even Giotto himself in lifelikeness and realism; that curious pair who so steadfastly labored together, about whom so little is known, and of whose extensive works so little is left us. But Padua, pushing on with zeal, began now to produce painters of her own: first, Giusto Padovano, who about 1378 filled her quaint little Romanesque ^ Dante's Purgatorio, canto xi; Gary's translation. THE BRENTA 23 baptistery, with that extraordinary series of New Testament pictures which still remain to make us wonder; then, in the early fifteenth century, the teacher Squarcione, who from a tailor made himself by long travel and study the founder of Padua's real school of art, training many scores of students by the process of copying from the antique sculpture of his collections. This process made the Paduan school almost the earliest to grasp the secret of rendering "tactile values,"^ enabling them to depict objects with real- istic solidity; it also gave them disagreeable manner- isms of stiffness and lack of beauty; but beyond, and forgetting all else, it produced for us that magnificent artist who was able, while seizing the truth of tactile value, to keep and develop his own sense of grace and color, who became Padua's greatest representative, and the foremost of his time in all north Italy — An- drea Mantegna. This profound genius, born at Vicenza in 1431, entered at the age of ten into the circle of Paduan students; at seventeen he began producing finished pictures; and, most fortunately, while yet a very young man, he made the acquaintance and friend- ship of that pioneer of Venetian beauty, Jacopo Bel- lini, whom Padua had called to her as she had so many others. Their intimacy is shown by the fact that Mantegna married Jacopo's daughter, in 1453. There can be no doubt, therefore, as to who saved Andrea from the stiffness and harshness general to the Paduan school, and aided and inspired him to the grace and glow of color which he later manifested. He may also have taken some of his opulent hues from the German painters, who, says Lord Lindsay, * This is Mr. Berenson's happy phrase. 24 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY *' abounded at Padua about the middle of the fifteenth century; and it is to them, and their predecessors, if I mistake not, that Italy owes the first introduction of that rich coloring, exhibited as early as 1371 by Lorenzo Veneziano."^ About this same time, also, in 1444, Padua had summoned to her the Florentine sculptor Donatello, fresh from his triumphs by the Arno; he came with a circle of assistants, and proceeded, not only to orna- ment S. Antonio with a wonderful series of bronze statues, crucifixes, and bas-reliefs, but to model and cast the first lifesize equestrian statue made in bronze since ancient times. This was the likeness of Venice's condottiere-general, Gattamelata, which excited so much astonishment and marveling over the whole of Europe. There can be no doubt also that with such significant works going on about him, the young Man- tegna drew from them further inspiration and know- ledge. All fitted him for his coming triumph, when, employed with other assistants by Squarcione, some- time between 1453 and 1459, to decorate for the Ovetari family their chapel in the Church of the Eremetani, his six frescoes on the lives of Saints James and Christopher raised him at one bound to the supremacy of his day. Like the Brancacci chapel at Florence, which after 1428 became the resort of artists anxious to study the attainment of realism by Masaccio, so after 1458 did this chapel of the Ere- metani become the teacher of succeeding generations. It was with a deep longing to behold once more these exceptional relics of the Renaissance, that I looked eagerly forward as the electric train brought us closer to Padua's medieval walls. We had left the Brenta, turning southwestward, and were ap- * Lord Lindsay, Christian Art. STRA. THE GRAND HALL, ROYAL VILLA. THE BRENTA 25 preaching the city at its northeastern corner. The rich plain in which Padua lies, now spread around us in its luxuriance of gardens, shrubbery; and massive trees, is backed immediately on the west by the Euganean Hills, — that outpost of the Alps which stretches so far to the south as to rise like a group of solitary islands from the sea. On the east lies the Lagoon, on the north the Brenta, on the south, at a further distance, the Po. Through this plain flows the Bacchiglione, from the Alps, along the northern side of the Euganean Hills, then southeastward into the Lagoon; and this is the stream which of old was the life of Padua, filtering through it and around it in a network of spreading canals, that mark the suc- cessive extensions of the city's moats. A glance at the map of the town reveals this fact quite clearly. In the centre one sees a small quadri- lateral, marked out by the two arms into which the Bacchiglione was first divided by the spade, to flow around the walls of the then little town and join again on the eastern side.^ And in the middle of this, the oldest portion of the city, one sees, as he would expect, the gathered buildings of the Duomo, the Baptistery, and the Palazzo del Capitanio, with their piazzas; while close at hand rise also the Municipio and Pal- azzo della Ragione, upon the ancient piazzas of the fruit and vegetable markets {dei Frutti and delle Erbe) . A very old highway runs through the centre from south to north, from the first-mentioned structures to 1 In early times Padua was thus watered by the Bacchiglione alone; but after the warring Vicentines had once or twice diverted the course of that stream down its secondary channel, via Este and the Po, leaving the Pad- uans high and dry, and therefore forced to come to terms, the latter in 1314 dug the still existing canal which brings the water of the Brenta, from Stra, into the fosses of the city. It was this which gave the direct water- communication with Venice. 26 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY the northern Roman gate of the Ponte MoHno; whence it continues through the medieval gateway of the Barriera Mazzini, ending eventually at the modern railway station. It is of various names in its different sections, the northern half having been formerly called Via Maggiore, and lately renamed after Dante. Around this oldest, central section one notes the successive extensions of the city's walls, as the place grew in size, marked by further deviations of the Bacchiglione for moat-purposes; there being thus added to the original town two sections on the south side, one on the east, and one on the north and west, outlining in all a space many times as large as the primordial. Within this large area, delimited still by the heavy wall and flowing fosse of the Middle Ages, the modern city is shrunk to but a quarter of its Re- naissance extent; and yet it has a population of nearly ninety thousand. So much I had observed upon former visits; and I saw now that the electric tramway was leading us into town by a directly northern entrance. The scattered houses of the suburb toward the railway station were already about us; we ran swiftly through the homely dwellings and factories, turned to the left, south- ward, crossed an arm of the Bacchiglione which once served as the northern moat, and in an instant were coming to a stop amongst what seemed like a chaos of Roman ruins. And so they were; for we had stopped in a new street beside the crumbling ancient walls of the Roman amphitheatre, in the northern corner of the eastern section of the city, — that Arena which found its unending fame centuries after its original uses had terminated, by furnishing the site and ma- terial for the church to the Madonna which Giotto made immortal. THE BRENTA 27 The high old circling walls of pinkish stone hid from our present view the church within; we could see only that other treasure of Padua, the Church of the Eremetani, lying adjacent on the south, with its cloisters now occupied by lolling soldiery. A single carriage was in waiting for chance passengers. Secur- ing this, and piling our heavy luggage into it, we drove at once to the old tavern of curious name which has comforted so many travelers, — the Fanti Stella d'Oro. Two blocks to the south, a block to the west, — across the first eastern moat, which is now a picturesque canal between medieval houses, through what was once the Porta Altinate of the Romans, — and we found ourselves in the Piazza Garibaldi, on which the other go looks down. CHAPTER II PADUA THE LEARNED Antenor, from the midst of Grecian hosts Escaped, was able safe to penetrate The Illyrian bay, and see the interior realms Of the Tiburni, and to pass beyond — !l^unded the walls of Padua, and built The Trojan seat, and to the people gave A name, and there affixed the arms of Troy. Now, laid at rest, he sleeps in placid peace. — Crouch's Virgil. It was now the middle of the afternoon. Rather ex- hausted by the heat of the trip, we at once sought a siesta in the comfortable chambers secured at low figures, after ascertaining that that arrangement for meals would prevail which is now customary in most northern Italian towns: viz., morning cafe complet at lire 1.25, and tabled la carte for the other meals. This method is not only more satisfactory to most foreign- ers, who are very tired of long table d'hote meals and usually fond of a certain few dishes, but it is also much more inexpensive for a party. By five o'clock we had sallied out for our first walk of revisit about the charming old city. Our starting- point, the Piazza Garibaldi, is one of two widenings of that other main thoroughfare of the central section which curves around from its north gate and along its eastern side, just within the old eastern moat; Via Garibaldi they call it, also Via Otto Febbraio and Via Roma. It has become by accident the centre of mod- ern life and shopping. In its middle part the old PADUA THE LEARNED 29 arcades that lined it have been done away with, and hundreds of modern shops installed, whose gay win- dows shine with finery. Modern well-dressed crowds are ever pushing along its sidewalks, or occupying them with cafe-tables, and in the evenings it is proudly a-glitter with electric lights and signs. I, however, wished to have the sensation of entering the city as of old, through its northern gates, as one usually enters from the railway station; so we followed Via Garibaldi northwest to Via Dante, and went out the latter to the station; then turned around. Ap- proaching the town thus customarily, the old sights greeted me one by one with the joy of recognition. The chestnuts on the broad highway were larger than ever, hiding the ugliness of the new, adjacent suburb. There in the centre of the road was the ornamental pillar with its reminiscence of Venetian loyalty, — the inscription that tells one: "Here was the rampart where our compatriots defeated Maxi- milian, and revenged the iniquity of the League of Cambrai, and the invasion of the foreigner, Sept. 29, 1509." Then the ramparts loomed up before us on the right, those marking the city's greatest exten- sion: huge brick walls, massive and undecayed, with a round bastion at the corner, and the moat before them still flowing. We passed through this wall by the lofty, glower- ing, medieval, brick gate known as the Barriera Maz- zini, and immediately behind it saw to the left the familiar mass of the Church of the Carmini; while to the right rose the first suggestion of Ezzelino da Romano, the still intact tower of one of his twelve fortress-prisons, brick above, upon a foundation of enormous Roman stones. I could hardly repress a shudder as I thought once more of the countless tor- 30 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY turing deaths that must have occurred within that masonry. Opposite, in pleasant contrast, stood before the church a wreathed statue of the genial Petrarch. It reminded me also of our own poet, Chaucer, who is said to have met Petrarch in this city, when he "learnt from him the story of Griselda, reproduced in the Clerk's Tale.''^ A few more southerly steps, and we were on the Ponte Molino, before the northern gate of the Roman city, over that arm of the Bacchiglione which was the fosse of the Roman wall. It is a stream here quite broad and swiftly flowing, lined with large trees and overhanging, decaying houses; a little restaurant to the right extends over the water with a covered veranda, whose set tables and flasks suggest happy carousings of summer evenings. The foundations of the five arches which thus conducted the ancient Via Aurelia into the city, still show their Roman work- manship. But that which most draws the eye is the huge masonry of the gate, with its great stone blocks of the republican era, fitted evenly together, and its medieval additions frowning and crumbling over- head. Here it was, as an inscription reminds us, that Francesco Novello swam the stream by night, entered the town, and roused the people to that memorable expulsion of the Milanese; and it was from this tower of the gateway that Galileo, it is said, when lecturing at the University, used by night to sweep the heavens with his glass. We kept straight down the Via Dante, which now exhibited that characteristic of the plain-towns which is so specially evident in Padua, — the colonnades along the house-fronts. Here they are often on both sides of the way, — as they used to be, everywhere, ^ W. W. Skeat's Chaucer. PADUA THE LEARNED 31 in the Middle Ages, — confining the street proper to a dark strip hardly ten feet in width. They have a unique interest, all their own in Padua, these heavy arcades extending for miles, that give to the traveler such grateful shade from the burning summer sun and shelter from the storms of winter. They are so clearly the constructions of every age: brick pillars, stone pillars, stuccoed pillars, columns of the same diversity, columns with rudely cut, prim- itive capitals of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with Gothic capitals of the fourteenth and early fif- teenth, with Renaissance capitals in gradual develop- ment to the rococoism of the seventeenth; all bear the marks of the period of their making, and remind one incessantly of the many generations of change and strife that have flowed beneath them. Pursuing our dim way along them down the Via Dante, past barred windows, quaint little shops and dirty little cafes, we noticed on the right a handsome Gothic palazzo of the Venetian style, having exquisite pointed windows in dainty terra-cotta mouldings, including a central one of six lights with a genuine Gothic marble balcony. A little farther on, the cen- tral Piazza dei Signori suddenly opened, called nowa- days the Unita d'ltalia, and we found ourselves under the old Venetian Lion on its column, before the rem- nant of the vast bygone palace of the Renaissance despots, once famed throughout Italy as the Reggia Carrarese. This remnant is the so-called Palazzo del Capitanio, which faces the piazza on the west: a medium-sized building, distinguished by a monumental Renaissance stone gateway of two stories in the centre, through which leads a street to the rear. This archway, with its handsome flanking columns, is considered one of 32 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY the finest works of the architect Falconetto, exe- cuted in 1523; the upper part of the surmounting tower, however, dates from the fourteenth century, and from it looks forth the enormous clock that is said to be the earliest striking one in Europe. It was constructed in 1344-64 by a certain Giacomo Dondi, whose descendants are still accordingly endowed with the patronymic of "Dondi dell' Orologio." Under the clock-face is the broad inscription, — " Senatus Venetus Andrea Gritti Principe," which makes that famous long-gone doge seem but of yesterday; and over that stands the white marble relief of the Lion of St. Mark. How much it has meant, that most celebrated insigne, — and what extraordinary pride and care did the subject towns display in showing it. The first acts that Venice did after conquering a place, were to place the relief of the Lion on the fagade of the palace of government, the statue of the Lion on a white marble column in the central piazza, and the banner of the Lion on a red Venetian mast. Most of those statues in the Veneto were destroyed by the Austrians during their supremacy; this one of Padua is a modern substitute, and the column is a relic of the Roman Forum, dug up in 1764. For this Palazzo del Capitanio the great Palladio constructed an outside staircase. We walked through the archway, along the deep brick mass of the build- ing, for some distance to the rear, and there finally discovered what I had never noticed before, — a small rear courtyard, illumined like a treasure-house by the resplendent white mass and beautiful lines of the stairway. It rises in two covered flights, straight- away, to a right-angled landing at the top, undecorated save for the heavy balustrade and the unfluted Ionic PADUA THE LEARNED SS columns. There is no frieze, no sculpture; it is grand and beautiful simply from its perfect proportions and noble, harmonious lines. Close beside this to the right rises the detached Li- brary of the University, an uninteresting brick build- ing, on the exterior, but containing an immense hall with frescoes by Campagnola, the pupil of Titian, who was one of the best of the late sixteenth-century paint- ers of the Paduan school. This Sala dei Giganti, like the original building itself, was formerly a part of the mighty Reggia ; when it was frescoed under Jacopo II della Carrara, by D'Avanzi and Guariento, with sub- jects suggested by the despot's dear friend, Petrarch. These were subsequently covered over by Campag- nola's work, — all but two interesting portraits : one of Petrarch himself, the other of his Paduan disciple, Lombardo della Seta. Nearby remains the chapel of the great palace, also now occupied by the University, and once frescoed by Guariento. The Reggia was mainly erected by Ubertino della Carrara (about 1345), and contained a score or two of different, connected structures, with over four hun- dred rooms, surmounted by an imposing array of battlemented towers. Its principal, eastern front ex- tended from the Piazza del Duomo on the south, to the Vicolo S. Niccolo, some distance north of the Piazza; its westward extent was nearly as long, to the Via deir Accademia, behind the Library. Besides the offices of government, stables, servants' quarters, etc., its princely apartments were famed for that magnificence of decoration and furnishing which has been so well described for us by the Paduan annalist, Bernardino Scardeoni. The numerous noble courts, arcades, and flowered gardens complemented its brilliancy. It was connected with the western ramparts, and Ezzelino's 34 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY castle on the southwest, by a covered passage raised on further arcades. Yet of all that grandeur there sur- vive to-day only these renovated buildings of the Library, the Palazzo del Capitanio — which was occupied by the Venetian Podestas — and the struct- ure adjoining the latter on the south, used now for the Monte di Pieta. It being now after six o'clock the Library was closed for the day; so we returned to the piazza, to examine the charming Renaissance loggia that adorns it upon the south. This Loggia del Consiglio, as it is called, is in reality the first thing to catch one's eye on entering the piazza, so superior to all else is it in grace and finish. It has the dainty simplicity of the early Renaissance, having been constructed about 1493, and consists of a deep arcade or loggia, sur- mounted by a single upper story with double and triple windows; the arcade is approached by a wide flight of steps, and embellished with a pretty balus- trade and six monolithic marble columns with Co- rinthian capitals. The building is otherwise entirely of white stone, and delightfully effective, so much so that we did not for several minutes notice the statue which it holds in the loggia — Vittorio Emanuele II in his full regalia as the Conqueror. We continued to follow the Via Dante, passing immediately on the right another fine Renaissance fagade of simple lines, handsome in spite of the hid- eous red boarding of its upper windows, and having a large ornamental entrance, — the Monte di Pieta; beyond it opened soon the Piazza del Duomo, with the Cathedral looming on the west, and the Bishop's Palace on the south. The latter, originally erected about 1300, was rebuilt in 1474, and contains in its grand salon an excellent example of a Renaissance PADUA THE LEARNED 35 hall, adorned with a frieze of fifty portraits of the bygone primates; it holds also a portrait by Guariento of the poet Petrarch, who was, thanks to Jacopo II, a canon of the Cathedral, and dwelt for some time in the House of the Canons. Neither edifice was of strik- ing appearance, the Duomo having but the unfinished brick fagade which is so common. More interesting were the Romanesque lines of the little ancient brick Baptistery, at the church's northeast corner, dating from the middle of the thirteenth century; it is drum- like in structure, with a flat dome, and no ornamenta- tion save two rows of Byzantine mouldings, — yet it has its own quaint effectiveness. Adjacent on the north side of the piazza we saw a handsome detached Renaissance archway, of the Doric order, — the so- called Area Vallaresso, which was erected by G. B. della Scala in 1632. We entered the Duomo. The flap of the leathern curtain admitted us to that strange region into which a mighty church transforms itself at eventide and vespers: a vast chiaroscuro into which great pillars mount, through which filter dim rays of red and pur- ple and gold from lofty windows, and where the glitter of starlike candles scintillates softly from gilded altar- piece and jeweled monstrance. Here and there in the dusk a darker shadow reveals that higher phenome- non, — a kneeling spirit in silent communion with the Almighty. Seen thus the simplest building takes on a form and significance of moving emphasis, recall- ing to the observer from the shadowy past those myr- iads of bygone figures, that have travailed and passed away. The original edifice on this spot was a work, it is said, of the seventh century ; which was reconstructed in 1124, in 1400, and finally, in 1524-75. The present 36 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY structure, aside from its size and fine proportions, is of little interest; but it preserves in its sacristy a number of precious old reliquaries, miniatures, vessels, etc., besides a group of pictures of some worth, by Pado- vanino, Schiavone, Campagnola, and Bassano. On account of the dusk it was now out of the ques- tion to inspect the interior of the Baptistery; so we returned to the Piazza Unita d' Italia, and traversed the block on its east to those other ancient squares, the Piazzas dei Frutti and delle Erbe, which lie re- spectively on the north and south sides of the vast Palazzo della Ragione. Nothing stranger than this mighty structure greets the eyes of the traveler in all North Italy; no amount of revisiting can accustom him to its size. Its medie- valism is so apparent, in the Gothic parapet and the Romanesque columns and frieze of the prodigious logge, that the mind is at once led back to the dark- ness of that twelfth century which gave it birth, and one marvels that it could have left us such a produc- tion. Apparently four stories in height, the whole of the upper three consists of one immense hall, with a curving wooden roof, tinned upon the outside, which arches from one wall to the other. The logge, added in 1306, are two-storied arcades that extend along the entire hundred and fifty yards of each side; the lower consists of ponderous masonry arches, now occupied by shops; the upper, of a colonnade of light marble columns, connected by a marble balustrade. Next to this on the east we noticed, in passing, the Palazzo del Municipio, a richly ornamented but irregular building of the cinquecento, connected with the Salone — as the Paduans call the Palazzo della Ragione — by a heavy archway over the intervening street. Walking around to the eastern front of this PADUA THE LEARNED 37 structure, we found ourselves on the Via Otto Feb- braio, and directly before the large building of the University on its farther side. This occupies a full square block, is faced with an interesting late-Re- naissance fagade in stone, and contains a magnificent cortile by Jacopo Sansovino, — which was now shut to us by the lateness of the hour. We turned up the thoroughfare toward the hotel, past the Post OflSce on our right, and I pointed out to my companions what is really one of Padua's chief curiosities — the Caffe Pedrocchi, directly opposite, which occupies a large stuccoed building between three streets, faced with three handsome Doric porticoes, approached by flights of steps and ornamented with sculptured lions. This was the site of the spacious ancient Forum, bril- liantly laid out under the Julian Emperors; of which significant remains were discovered during the caffe's construction. We came back to it later, after dinner, through the crowded way glittering with a thousand lights, and found it also thronged and aglow, like a scene on the boulevards of Paris. Evtry evening while in Padua we sat on one of its porticoes, consuming coffee and ices, watching the well-dressed crowds at their nightly amusements. On the morning after our first walk, which had covered the approach to town and the central sec- tion, we sallied forth early for some interior observa- tion, determined to commence with that which was earliest and of greatest importance, — the frescoes of Giotto. So we repaired again to the ruined Arena on the northeast, — located just outside the ancient city, as was the Romans' invariable custom, — and to the medieval structures which had been built from its material. 38 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY So throughly did the medievals use up the stones of the amphitheatre that we found now within its walls of enceinture naught but lawns and flower-beds, care- fully tended by the municipality, with several recent excavations, showing at the bottom various finds of broken columns and entablatures. The ruins when more extensive had been granted by the Emperor Henry III, in 1090, to the Delesmanini family — from whom they were purchased about 1300 by one Enrico Scrovegno; he erected from them in 1303 a chapel to the Madonna, in order to redeem, it is said, a repu- tation made by his father for miserliness and usury, — so bad that Dante placed him in the seventh circle of his Inferno. Enrico also enlarged and beautified the palace of the Delesmanini, occupying the ground between the chapel and the entrance, so that it was long famed as one of the grandest mansions in North Italy; of it, however, not a trace now remains except the pillars of the gateway. In 1306 Enrico induced Giotto, still a young man and recently risen to fame by his paintings in Florence and at the Vatican, to come to Padua and decorate the chapel. There it stood now before us in the centre of the inclosure, a building so small and plain that one could hardly realize its significance in the history of art. A keeper let us in through the iron railing round- about, and a step through the little doorway brought us into an aisleless, round-arched nave, without col- umns or chapels, having simply a slightly raised tribune, a plain high-altar, and four plastered walls from which the still bright colors of the deathless com- positions glowed down upon us. They were lighted by a triple Gothic window high in the entrance-wall, six lancet windows on the right side, and two in the apse. Between the two last-mentioned lay the tomb PADUA THE LEARNED 39 of Enrico Scrovegno, a late trecentist work, repre- senting him in the then accepted fashion, lying in armor upon the cover; and the walls of the choir were covered with frescoes by some followers of Giotto, of no importance. Giotto's frescoes are confined to the nave, which they illuminate in four great rows of separate tab- leaux, thirty-nine in all, beginning at the top to the right of the choir-arch and continuing clear around and back across the arch, gradually descending, until they end with the huge representation of the Last Judgment on the entrance wall. Before this master- piece of human genius words are futile; sensations vainly struggle, as they rush across the consciousness, to disentangle themselves and stand forth; one can only sit for a long time and gaze, gaze with the whole soul at one scene after another, sinking ever deeper into the atmosphere of that wonderful Biblical land, feel- ing ever more keenly impressed upon one the infinite pathos of Jesus' life and the infinite beauty of his character. In that these scenes do depict the history of the lives of Christ and his Mother, commencing with the Rejection of Joachim's offering because he was child- less, and ending with the Ascension, lies a fact that should have special attention as a light upon their power. Books have been written upon Giotto's break- ing away from the old traditions and opening a new era of lifelikeness and individualism, upon his being the first to grasp the secret of tactile values, upon his inception of the dramatic and of true story-telling, upon his adoption of coloring in broad masses and lighter tones, upon his discovery of the proper laws of composition, of the handling of masses, of darkness and light, of natural, dignified action; and all these 40 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY wondrous inceptions are seen here displayed. But there is more than that. The true highest end and aim of representation should be, is bound to be, the setting-forth of some- thing spiritual, the striking of a psychic chord which shall vibrate in the soul of the observer. This is the truth which William W. Story seized upon, and devel- oped in his remarkable sculptures. This is the truth, often unrecognized, which has always confined good art to the depicting of the human form, as the only medium by which the spiritual can be expressed. In proportion as the human beings represented display the higher attributes, and by their expression and action set forth a spiritual idea or the exaltation of a godlike quality, in that same proportion does the spectator thrill in response. When therefore a painter goes be- yond the use of ordinary mortals, to the depicting of Him who alone has been perfectly divine in life and character, whose every action and very aspect must have radiated spirituality and uplifted all that beheld him, the painter uses the one, perfect, highest medium for his accomplishments; so that if the work be well done, it must speak to the soul of the spectator as could nothing else inanimate. Of course it was not in pursuance of this truth, now so patent to us, that the medieval artists devoted themselves exclusively to Biblical subjects, or that Giotto covered these walls with illustrations of the lives of Jesus and the Virgin; but because, until the time of the full Renaissance, it was entirely by the Church and the Monastery, and upon the churches and the monasteries, that they were given their work. The vast majority of the people were then unable to read; and so, as in this Chapel, the Church spread the divine story before them in pictures which they could PADUA. BASILICA OF SAN ANTOXIOT .,-x»;-v— ,~^^r [TH THE STATUE OF GATTAMELATA. PADUA THE LEARNED 41 not fail to understand, and profit by. Nevertheless it was inevitable that Art, when ascending and expand- ing, should do so by the exposition of the spiritual in man; and should begin to decline when it transferred its representations, as it did in the sixteenth century, to the mythology of the heathen, without soul. Raphael's myth of Cupid and Psyche in the Corsini Palace at Rome, just about marks the turning-point. Giotto, whether or not he ever formulated this truth to himself in words, at any rate must have known and appreciated the superior power of expres- sion in the divine story, for he was always portraying it, and spiritual ideas, even when given entire latitude as to subject. Thus, with his intuitive genius, he de- veloped an ideal form of the Christ, which in my opin- ion has never since been surpassed and very seldom equaled. That was the great task: to depict a human shape from which should radiate all the highest beau- ties of the soul, which should be beautiful in appear- ance while yet full of manly strength and sorrowed by trials, which should be radiant though sad, powerful though meek, majestic though lowly, divine though human. How many, many painters have tried it in succeed- ing generations, and are still trying it ! And when has one ever succeeded in properly combining all those opposing qualities, and presenting to us an image that to our souls cried, "This is Christ"? Nearly always the failure comes in the inability to combine with the necessary fairness and gentleness that manliness and power which are also necessary. Generally the result is effeminate. I know of no Christ but Giotto's to which my heart can go out without one reservation. With such reflections in mind, what a profound sense comes upon one, as he examines these frescoes. 42 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY not only of the marvel of their making when they were done, and their leadership through all the centu- ries, but of their still existing superiority in the expo- sition of the Divine, — in their power to thrill the soul of the observer. It is true that of the thirty-nine pictures the first twelve are devoted to the life of the Virgin before Jesus' birth, — following the accounts of the Apocryphal gospels known as the "Protevan- gelion" and "Gospel of St. Mary"; but one must remember that this is appropriate, in a chapel dedi- cated to the Virgin, and that Giotto must have aimed to set forth one continuous epic, from the inception of her life to the culminating Crucifixion.^ Though the figures are about life-size, no one would imagine it, in looking at them high upon the walls. No more of them are put into any one picture than is necessary for the idea, with careful composition and balancing, and comfortable free spaces; and the back- ground, whether of land or architecture, is but little developed, so that the eye is not attracted from the characters. The dramatic action is easy, natural, dig- nified, and yet of wonderful expressiveness; there is always grace, both in the ensemble and in the separate figures; the colors are laid on in Giotto's broad masses and light tones, so effective in wall-decoration; the faces are all keenly individualized; the solids and forms represented have the tangible realism and solidity that no one before Giotto attained. Yet above all these marvels of execution and expression is the mar- velous figure of the Saviour; whether raising Lazarus, entering Jerusalem upon the ass, washing the feet of the Apostles, or suffering crucifixion. He is always ^ For a fuller discussion of these frescoes, see Ruskin's monograph on the chapel; or Andrea Moschetti's La Cappella degli Scrovegne e gli Affreschi di Giotto in Essa dipinti, Alinari, Florence, 1904. PADUA THE LEARNED 43 the perfect man, the Son of God. Manliness and power shine from Him, while yet He is meek and lowly; all the qualities that we would seek, all the experiences that He had suffered, radiate from that beautiful countenance which seems more than human. The composition and dramatic action in the Rais- ing of Lazarus are of the strongest in the series; there, too, is one of the finest figures of Christ, in the very act of summoning back the spirit to the decaying body. The Maries kneel before Him in fear and adora- tion, while the spectators cry aloud in their amaze- ment. In the betraying kiss of Judas, the counten- ance of Jesus while suffering the kiss turns a look upon the traitor of infinite, sad reproach, that once seen can never be forgotten. The entry into Jeru- salem has a realism, in the people climbing the palm trees to break off branches, and doffing their cloaks and skirts to spread before the ass's feet, that makes one comprehend the eventful doings of that day as never before. When we see the great tragedy ended by the Depo- sition in the Tomb, surrounded by weeping apostles and friends, then there comes, in the Resurrection, one of the fine touches of Giotto, significant of his infinite care, — in that the form of the risen Christ, though of the same physical likeness as before, is no longer the same. It has become unearthly; and its spirituality is clearly marked. This is so also in the Ascension. In the life of the Virgin there are two especially marked pictures: first, the meeting at the Golden Gate between Joachim and Anna, after their separa- tion, in which there is most moving pathos in the manner in which the elderly couple cling to each other, and Anna fondly holds Joachim's head while kissing 44 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY him, — significant of the true, pure love of the long and happily married; secondly, the Salutation of Elizabeth to the Virgin, upon the latter's visit, which is full not only of pathos but of profound physiognom- ical meaning. These frescoes did more than open the eyes of the world to the possibilities of painting; the forms in which Giotto cast many of the compositions became types for those subjects, which succeeding artists proceeded to follow for centuries. In looking at the two last-mentioned pictures one has to remember that for generations thereafter the two meetings be- came reproduced countlessly in the very same fashion, even to the identical manner in which Elizabeth seizes the Virgin, looking into her face. In the Vir- gin's presentation at the Temple we see for the first time that flight of steps, with the waiting high priest at the head of them, up which the girlish figure kept climbing for so many succeeding ages. Here is the prototype of the Worship of the Magi, with the fore- most kissing the Divine Child's foot, the other two standing in the rear with their costly offerings in hand, and the camels of the caravan behind; of the Flight into Egypt, with Mary and the Child upon a donkey, and Joseph walking; of the realistic Crucifix- ion, with the brutal soldiers parting the garments on one side, and the Virgin fainting between her friends on the other. Giotto adheres to the sacred narrative in that she is standing, — "stabat mater," — but the fainting idea became so seized upon and developed, that eventually she was depicted as prone upon the ground. Paolo Veronese was fond of this method. In that same fresco is seen one of Giotto's ideas which, most unfortunately, was not long followed : the representation of the superhuman, intangible forms PADUA THE LEARNED 45 of the angels, flying roundabout and consoling the Sufferer, by showing them always at two-thirds length, — as if just appearing phantom-like from the air. The dire results of neglecting this precept are well shown in the angels and flying saints of Tintoretto long after, which are portrayed in full with such fidelity that one always feels that their heavy bodies are about to fall ponderously on the persons beneath. Likewise with Giotto's Last Supper, here represented properly with the apostles all around the table: he would not deviate from truth as did the later artists, in placing the diners upon one side only. About the walls of the nave, under the lowest series of tableaux, Giotto also depicted in separate panels, in grisaille, fourteen single figures illustrative of the Virtues and Vices; monumental works of their kind, which here usually pass unnoticed, but anywhere else would stand preeminent. Like the frescoes above, in which — to quote F. Mason Perkins — " Giotto may truly be said not only to have perfected the icono- graphy of Byzantium and the Middle Ages, but to have permanently fixed the laws of religious compo- sition," so also in these figures, "he succeeded in formulating a series of allegorical representations which, on account of their powerful significance of imagery, were handed down by his successors as gen- erally accepted types of those abstract qualities which they symbolized." ^ I did not upon this visit neglect to examine more carefully than theretofore the great fresco of the Last Judgment on the entrance wall, which Mr. Perkins styles "at once the grandest and the most monumental of all Giotto's works." High in the centre sits the same beautiful figure of the Saviour, in a vesica-piscis, 1 F. M. Perkins, Giotto. 46 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY with the twelve apostles throned to right and left and a host of angels filling the sky above, while He looks downward with welcoming hand to the elected souls, with the saints and martyrs at their head; on the right below is Satan, as a horned, partly human form, swal- lowing sinners and devoting them to horrible punish- ments; and directly over the doorway is the interest- ing group of Enrico Scrovegno receiving from three charming saints the model of the chapel. We went for a while into the little sacristy to the left of the choir, to look at the statue of Enrico Scro- vegno, standing in a niche with prayerful hands: a fine example of the great Giovanni Pisano, — to whom is also attributed the quaint Madonna upon the altar. In the sacristy also was kept the grand crucifix painted by Giotto on wood, which formerly hung in the trib- une. Then we returned to the chapel door, and lin- gered a last moment before departing, "gazing on these silent but eloquent walls, to re-people them with the group, pnce, as we know, five hundred years ago, assembled within them : Giotto intent upon his work, his wife Cinta admiring his progress, and Dante, with abstracted eye, — conversing with his friend." ^ Hours had passed us by, and it was lunch-time; but in the afternoon, after a siesta, we returned to the same location, for a visit to the adjacent Church of the Eremetani, — built likewise from the stones of the Arena. Its plain fagade is of no interest; but imme- diately upon entering I was struck, as formerly, with the strangeness of the interior. It has, like the Ma- donna deir Arena, that curious characteristic of the later thirteenth century, when it was built, — an un- adorned nave without aisles or columns, having vast bare wall-spaces, intended to be brightened with fres- ^ Lord Lindsay, Christian Art. PADUA THE LEARNED 47 coes, and once so covered, but now coldly and mono- tonously whitewashed. This bareness is emphasized by its extraordinary length; and its arched wooden roof is of Oriental style, painted fantastically blue and white. The origin of that peculiar roof was this: there lived at that epoch in Padua a certain Augustinian monk, one Fra Giovanni, who had visited India as a missionary, and brought back with him the design of the covering of an Indian hall. This design was first applied by the Paduans to the roofing of their enorm- ous hall in the Salone, and then, as it solved the problem admirably, to this huge nave of the Ere- metani, which would not appear fantastic but for the ridiculous coloring. Thereafter it was copied far and wide through northern Italy, in the greatest churches and civic buildings. Affixed high upon the walls to right and left of the entrance, we saw two fine Gothic tombs of the Delia Carrara (Ubertino and Jacopo minore), removed hither from the destroyed Church of S. Agostino, Jacopo's being distinguished for its Latin inscription, composed by his grateful friend, Petrarch. Both were sculptured by Andriolo de' Santi, the noted architect of the Church of S. Antonio. On the entrance wall itself were two rather pretty altars of painted terra- cotta, products of the school of Donatello's pupil, Bellano. There was naught else to enliven the nave but two or three simple altars on each side, against the long blank spaces. The choir, with its adjacent chapels, was almost equally uninteresting, having only some damaged frescoes by the Byzantine-mannered Guariento, — although they are, perhaps, the best of his known works. This cold nave, however, was once the scene of 48 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY tremendous human passions; for here it was that on the day before Christmas,* 1585, occurred the penulti- mate act in the wondrous, terrible drama of Vittoria Accoramboni, — that drama so perfectly character- istic of the unbridled lusts and horrors of the decaying Renaissance, which has left behind it no worse relic and no stronger epitome; that tragedy over which so many authors of many tongues have lingered, and which John Webster immortalized in his stage-epic of The White Devil. To sum up what is so well known, Vittoria Acco- ramboni, — so famed for her beauty that from a poor girl of unknown family she had become the wife of Francesco Peretti, nephew of the Cardinal Montalto, subsequently Pope Sixtus V, — not satisfied with such a rise, schemed with her brother for her husband's assassination, in order to marry the brutal Duke of Bracciano, chief of the Orsini; and, after escaping decapitation in prison for the murder, and three times wedding the duke, following different papal decrees annulling the marriage, fled with him from the court of Sixtus to far-off Padua. Here they had no sooner established themselves and their retinue, in various rented palaces in the city and on the Lago di Garda, than Bracciano died, — of poison, it is supposed, at the hands of his enemies; leaving Vittoria well pro- vided for by his will, yet subject to the power of his nephew and executor. Prince Ludovico Orsini. The latter, who had bitterly hated her from the first, and opposed her marriage, immediately did all that he could to thwart and despoil her; and soon ended by invading at night her palace near the Arena, with forty armed, masked bravos. This was the Palazzo Cavalli which still stands opposite the church, de- voted nowadays to a school of army engineering. PADUA THE LEARNED 49 They found Vittoria at her prie-dieu, costumed for bed, and slew her with many daggers; including in the slaughter her young and innocent brother Flaminio, as he sang to his lute, unconscious of danger. Next day the two corpses were laid out together in an open coffin in this Church of the Eremetani; and all day long the people of Padua crowded by with rising ire. In the dimness of the nave I could almost see again that strange, weird scene: the fair body of Vittoria upon the black velvet pall, its white exposed breast gaping redly with the wounds, — still so gloriously lovely in her crown of golden hair, that the gazing bourgeois forgot, as they looked, her past of crime, and with ever-increasing anger raised their hands, and swore revenge upon the murderer. The finale quickly followed: Prince Ludovico had intrenched himself with his followers in his palace hardby; the people of Padua called out their soldiers, armed at large, and besieged the murderer with mus- ket, firebrand, and cannon; his men fell dying, his dwelling tottered, and he surrendered. Such was Padua's Christmas Day of 1585. Two days later, Prince Ludovico Orsini met his doom of strangulation in the dungeons of Venice; seventeen of his surviving bravos were hanged, decapitated, and quartered, eight condemned to the galleys, and six to long terms in prison. Well could Webster cry of those princes of the Renaissance : — These wretched eminent things Leave no more fame behind 'em than should one Fall in a frost and leave his print in snow. What a contrast to pass from that scene to the little chapel adjoining the right transept of the church, dedicated to Saints James and Christopher, — and find true fame immortal blazoned there by the paint- 50 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY er's quiet brush. Here it was, about 1453, that Squar- cione was commissioned by the Ovetari family to depict the lives of those saints; that he delegated the work to his pupils Niccolo Pizzolo, Bono da Farrara, Ansuino da Forli, and Andrea Mantegna; and that from the resulting compositions the renown of Man- tegna soared starlike to the sky, never to sink. Un- fortunately a number of the frescoes have now become so much damaged and erased as to spoil both their details and their appearance as a whole; but enough still remains, including several whole pictures of Andrea's, to make us understand how he, theretofore an unknown youth, came before their completion to be sought by the Marchese Gonzaga to ornament his court at Mantua, — and became at a bound the object of the flocking world's praises. The illustrations from the life of St. Christopher are on the right wall, those of St. James on the left; Mantegna's works are the two lowest on the right, and the four lowest on the left, — large panels with life-size figures, which show by their marked differ- ences in execution and expression the great step for- ward made by the youth while engaged in their com- position. In the earlier ones, the second series of St. James, we notice more attention given to the archi- tecture and landscape than to the figures, which are immobile, rather stiff, and without expression; but in the four later (including what we can decipher of the defaced Death and Burial of St. Christopher) the human forms rise to a positive grandeur in their graceful dignity, individuality, and power. Above all is their marvelous solidity, which has a finished real- ism that delights the rested eye. The middle series on the left — St. James baptizing a convert in the street, and appearing before Herod — PADUA THE LEARNED 51 have in spite of their statuesqueness a beauty all their own, in the splendid perspective, the realism of the buildings and the countryside, the pleasing, balanced composition, and the most extraordinary use (for that period) of actual light and shade. In the very real soldier who stands alone, turning his head away from Herod as though in grief and disapproval, one sees the countenance of Mantegna himself, as he was then, a youth of twenty-five; and what better than that lined, worn face could tell one of his young years of unceasing application and study. Likewise, as the legend has it, the broad counten- ance of Squarcione is visible, in the Execution of St. Christopher, upon the burly soldier with spear in hand, who is looking over his shoulder at the rather amusing bulk of the condemned giant-saint, which they are vainly trying to fill with arrows. The latter are not merely stopped miraculously in the air, but one of them has flown back into the eye of the watch- ing and blaspheming king. This can barely now be discerned. The execution of St. James has more pa- thos, as he lies on the ground, with the uplifted mallet about to descend and dash out his brains; and the head of the saint projects from the wall in a manner that is genuinely startling. To left of this he is on his way to execution, and has stopped in a crowded city street to heal a suppliant unfortunate; in this scene there is a remarkable disposition of grouping and thronged movement, with the same fine realism as to buildings and perspective, and a very easy, pow- erful, dramatic action. Through all the pictures runs Mantegna's great characteristic, which so many paint- ers strive after to-day, — the depicting of the clothed human form so that the observer is clearly conscious of the body beneath, in all its solidity and articulations. 52 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY The other frescoes in the chapel are of importance only to show one the tendencies of Squarcione's school, and emphasize how far Mantegna rose above them. Besides the upper panels of the lives of Saints James and Christopher, — the former executed by Ansuino and Bono da Ferrara, — they consist of repre- sentations of the four evangelists on the ceiling, and some excellent work by Pizzolo on the wall and vault- ing of the apse behind the altar; including a large Assumption of the Virgin in which she is drawn with much tactile value and dignity. Good critics also attribute to Pizzolo the two first scenes concerning St. James. On finishing the examination of this chapel, we had done with the sights of the northeastern quarter; and when we resumed our walk upon the following morning, I took my companions back to the central section, to visit the interiors which we had there omitted. We started south down Via Garibaldi, but, just before reaching the nearby Piazza Cavour, stepped up the narrow Via S. Andrea to the right for a short distance, to see a mutilated, ancient, sculp- tured figure of a cat, — unmistakably a cat, of heroic size, — seated upon a column cut from the same kind of gray stone, old enough apparently to date from Roman days. This was the famed "Gatta di S. An- drea," — originally intended to be a lion, the device of the surrounding ward, — which was raised in 1212 to celebrate the citizens' victory, with Ezzelino, over Aldobrandino d' Este. Returning to Via Garibaldi, we went on to the University, whose doors were now open, and a stream of students passing in and out. As we entered through the large deep archway to the central court, flanked by four Doric half-columns supporting a heavy entabla- PADUA THE LEARNED 53 ture, I thought of how many, many generations that stream of eager, aspiring youth had been so passing, — even since before the days of Dante, — and reflected upon the airs of antiquity assumed by some modern universities that can boast of a century's existence. Even the curious, loving nickname, bestowed on this one of Padua by the students and people, — II Bo, — dates from a famous tavern, with the sign of the ox, that existed on this spot more than four hundred years ago. Up to 1493 the various component schools were scattered about the city ; but in that year the Venetian Government, as one of the first, wise moves in its new possession, collected them all into the large building theretofore occupied by the "Osteria del Bo." The edifice subsequently underwent many reconstructions, receiving the present dignified f agade in the latter part of the sixteenth century. The number of students is now about fourteen hundred, comparing well with the largest institutions of other countries to-day, but a shrinkage indeed from the eighteen thousand reported to us from the Early Renaissance. The strikingly beautiful central court that we entered dates from the cinquecento, by the hands of the great Sansovino; two stories of rhythmical white colonnades with rounded arches, the lower of the Doric order, the upper of Ionic, flashed down upon us from all four sides their charming lines with reliev- ing shadows; the pedestals of the Ionic columns were sculptured with reliefs, and between them stretched a handsome balustrade; the Doric frieze of the first story was ornamented, in the spaces between the customary triglyphs, by circles, globes, musical instru- ments and bucrania, — sure mark of the commenced Decadence, as was also the line of lions' heads above the upper columns, with conventional designs inter- 54 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY laced between. The cornice was small, and made of acanthus consoles at intervals. Round about the four walls hung countless armorial bearings of by- gone prominent graduates, and over the balustrade hung groups of present undergraduates, in earnest discussion. We mounted the staircase to the upper story, and visited the great hall of the University, on the court's eastern side: a magnificent chamber, with a large rostrum, many curving rows of fine seats, and a richly painted ceiling; the four walls being closely studded with the wooden, gilded coats of arms and crests of former generations, hundreds upon hundreds, glis- tening with gold-leaf and animated by countless strange heraldic figures. The portiere pointed out to us a number of crests of celebrated personages of the Renaissance. Here Galileo taught mathematics, from 1598 to 1608. Women sometimes in those days at- tended here also, — as we had noticed, in ascending the staircase, by the statue of the famed Elena Lucrezia Pi;^copia, who on account of her remarkable erudition received here a doctor's degree about the middle of the seventeenth century, — one of the earliest to be bestowed upon the gentler sex. The portiere then accompanied us to the top-floor front, where we saw one of Padua's most interesting relics: the first anatomical arena ever constructed in Europe, — in 1482, — whose lines have been followed by all succeeding ones: six tiers of oval wooden benches with railings, rising steeply one above the other to the ceiling, with the operating-table in the confined central space, placed on a trap-door by which it could be raised from a basement below with the body already in position. The whole construction was of wood, now cracked and worn by time, but PADUA THE LEAENED 55 still, after four centuries and more of use, in surpris- ingly good condition. As I thought of the brilliant light that had spread from this room into the modern knowledge of the human body, — while we slowly descended the stairs and left the famous precincts, — Shelley's lines passed through my mind: — In thine halls the lamp of learning, Padua, no more is burning; — Once remotest nations came To adorn that sacred flame. — Now new fires from antique light Spring beneath the wide world's might. Traversing the passage along the left side of the Municipio opposite, we came at once to the Piazza delle Erbe and the south side of the mighty Salone, where a wide outside staircase ascends to its hall. Mounting this, we rang a bell by a hanging cord, and were admitted by a woman keeper for a small fee, — stepping from the first-floor loggia immediately into the vast inclosure. As my eye swept over its ninety- one yards of length, thirty yards of width, and thirty- two yards of height, to the gigantic wooden span over- head, I wondered again how the medievals could ever have done it. In such a space the two colossal, black- stone, Egyptian statues of Neith by the doorway looked nothing unusual, and the giant wooden model of Donatello's horse for the Gattamelata statue, at the west end, seemied no more than life-size. The acreage of floor was increased to the eye by the lack of all furniture; naught encumbered it except the statues mentioned, and a curious dark-stone pedestal in the northeast corner, — the Lapis Vitwperii, upon which for centuries defaulting debtors were stood in the piazzas, to be cleared from insolvency by the fire of their creditor's tongues. 5Q PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY All around the immense walls, in three hundred and nineteen separate compartments, run fully as curious quattrocento frescoes, by one Zuan Miretto and another, representing the signs of the Zodiac and other astro- nomical bodies, of allegorical meaning. It was these walls, or this roof, that Giotto once tinted with his magic brush, — a labor marvelous for size as well as beauty, if he covered all the space; but a fire in 1420 destroyed the work, leaving us with no conception of what would have been one of the world's chief treas- ures. The hall had just then been rebuilt, when Giotto worked upon it; originally three chambers, they had been converted into one in 1306, with the aid of the wide roof whose design Fra Giovanni brought back from India. There above us it still sprang from wall to wall, a mighty, open- wood work construction, in the same lines as that of the Eremetani, mounting from each side to the peak in a succession of half -arches, one upon another. How dusty, bare, silent, and deserted was this strange place which has held such priceless artistic treasure, "where the very shadows seem asleep as they glide over the wide, unpeopled floor, [and] it is not easy to remember that this was once the theatre of eager intrigues, ere the busy stir of the old burg was utterly extinguished." ^ We went down to examine Donatello's wooden horse, — a huge, lifelike figure with a modern head, teeming with muscular energy, which was praised by poets to the skies when it came from the master's hand, the first man-made charger since ancient days. Behind it to the right, on the end wall, we noticed a little monument to Livy, containing the bones of his freedman Titus Halys, which were when first found ^ J. A. Symonds, Fine Arts, chap, ii, p. 60. to H > O Ph O H B H o . tn 2 ^ w o H CO o I - « PADUA THE LEARNED 57 mistaken for the historian's. Other Roman relics and inscriptions line the walls of the loggia without, on the north side, where we looked down upon the flocked toadstool-covers of the market-stands in Piazza dei Frutti, and the morning pandemonium of the bartering populace rose to our ears. Descending, we made our way through the crowd westward to Via Dante and the Duomo. The piazza before the latter was vacant and silent as ever, and the sun poured into it somnolently; three soldiers were in fact asleep together before the triumphal arch of the Carrara. I found the sacristan within the Duomo, and brought him out to let us into the an- cient, round Baptistery, which is always kept locked. Exclamations of astonishment burst from my com- panions' lips as we stood in that strange cubic nave, of the twelfth century, gazing at its quadrangular walls and flat dome : the whole structure, every square inch of its surface above the wainscoting, — on walls, dome, entranceway, presbytery, chapels, even to the soffits of all the arches opening into the chapels, — was covered with vivid, dramatic frescoes that irra- diated the dusk with countless colors! Never have I seen another building so completely painted; a huge flower-garden, it has properly been called. But if now so exuberant in hues, what must it have been when Giusto Padovano first did this work, in 1378, more than five centuries ago. He was not a first-class artist; his drawing was faulty, his compositions ill-arranged, his work lacking in grace, lifelikeness and natural expression; but what a world of energy, dramatic exposition, and true, deep feeling, was poured into these representations of the sacred story, — and still shines from their earnest figures, straight to the heart of the observer. No- 58 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY where have I seen a more perfect setting-f orth of that profound religious emotion which the Renaissance at first excited in the trecento Itahans. The work, it is true, was considerably retouched by Luca Brida in the eighteenth century, — to which are due its present bright colors; but he was singularly careful not to injure the lines of the master. The cycle is commenced on the southern wall by the portrayal of the life of John the Baptist, and con- tinued on the northern and western walls and the chancel arch of the eastern, by those of the Virgin and the Saviour; the small chamber of the chancel is lined on all sides with some forty scenes of the Apo- calypse, — "the most complete and comprehensive illustration of the Apocalypse ever attempted in painting,"^ — and its cupola contains the customary Descent of the Holy Ghost; while the lower parts of the dome of the nave are adorned with the history of the Book of Genesis, as far as the placing of Joseph in the well, and its centre holds a remarkable, serried Gloria. In -the last, "Our Saviour stands in the centre, within a circle of light, and below Him, in a vesica piscis, the Virgin, erect, with her hands raised in prayer, as at St. Mark's and in the Duomo of Murano. To their right and left sit, in different atti- tudes, and with their distinctive emblems, the saints of God, male and female, five rows deep, in a vast circle; the effect is singularly brilliant, and reminds one of Dante's comparison of the church in heaven to a snow-white rose."^ This, says the same distin- guished author, "is the first instance, I believe, of the style of composition subsequently adopted by Cor- reggio and later painters, but originally, as in the present instance, imitated from the mosaics." ^ Lord Lindsay, Christian Art. PADUA THE LEARNED 59 Besides this, perhaps the first painted Gloria, of most interest to us were the fervid, energetic tableaux of the sacred Hves, so rich in significant incident and earnest feeling as to impress one in spite of all their faults. Through them all shone forth the preponderating in- fluence and example of Giotto; nearly everywhere a repetition of his ideas of composition, expression, and color; below Altichieri also in their setting-forth, yet bearing the distinctive marks of the emotion behind the hand that drew them. Here were already again the Child-Virgin on her way up the temple steps to the waiting high priest, the Last Supper with the sleeping St. John upon Jesus' breast, and a Betray- ing Kiss of Judas practically identical with that of the Arena; there were other scenes, however, which Giotto had not represented, and in which Giusto shows himself capable of original composition. From this building we went on to the only remaining sight of interest in the central section, the large castle of Ezzelino in its southwest corner, whose grim battle- mented tower still glowers down over the whole city as when that devil kept it filled with tortured suf- ferers. This keep, however, is about all that one can see of it, for the original castle has been rebuilt and inclosed with later and more extensive structures, which are occupied as barracks and an astronomical observatory; the walls of Ezzelino being visible on the south and west sides only, where they back darkly upon two arms of the first city moat. There were originally two towers, of great height and strength, which the people called the Zilie, after their architect; one of them was demolished in the sixteenth century, and the other reduced to its present size in 1769, when adapted to observatory uses. The extensive and ter- rible mass of dungeons which Zilio constructed under- 60 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY ground, he himself was one of the first doomed pris- oners to enter. They must still exist, in large part, though sealed from modern eyes. We wandered thence for a while through the narrow winding ways of the southeastern portion of the central section, — the most ancient part of Padua; true medieval ways of dirt and shadows, too con- fined for arcades, leaned over by high, gaunt, stone dwellings or walls of crumbling stucco, with an occa- sional larger palace of Renaissance days in more pre- tentious lines. This quarter continues across the arm of the Bacchiglione forming the first eastern city moat, into the southerly part of the town's eastern addition; and into this part I took my companions after lunch, by way of the Via S. Francesco, which runs south- eastward from the University. Hard behind the buildings of the University, the ancient moat, now a picturesque narrow stream of muddy water, creeps between decaying backs of medieval houses and frequent leafy gardens; and immediately beyond this, we came upon the very dwelling which Dante occupied when living in Padua, six centuries ago: an excellently preserved, stuccoed palace of Gothic lines, the windows with tracery in their pointed arches which clearly had been renewed in ironwork. This modern touch, and the fresh-looking grayish paint over all, made it difficult for the mind to grasp that in those very walls had worked and slept the author of the Divine Comedy. Opposite, on the south side of the street, in a recess at a house corner, stands a relic still older : an ancient stone sarcophagus, surmounted by pillars supporting a brick trecento canopy, — which is thoroughly be- lieved by most Paduans to contain the remains of their Trojan founder, Antenor. I tested the truth of PADUA THE LEARNED 61 this by inquiring of a number of passing citizens; their responses were as positive as unanimous. As a mat- ter of fact, however, the sarcophagus was unearthed in 1274, while digging a cellar, and in it "was found a skeleton of mighty size, still grasping a sword, with a crude Latin inscription from which the excited populace insisted that this was the tomb of Antenor. Modern criticism looks upon it as the burial-place of some Hungarian invader of the ninth century." ^ A few paces beyond this diverges to the right, southward, the Via del Santo; and we slowly followed it to that great block of buildings, which in the minds of the Italians distinguishes Padua far beyond the rest of her possessions, and which is certainly for us next in interest to the frescoes of Giotto : the enormous church and cloisters of St. Anthony of Padua, with their attendant courts and chapels. Stretching over acres upon acres of ground, they form one of the most celebrated groups of edifices in all Italy, and a saintly shrine second only to that of St. Francis of Assisi. ^ C. Hare, Dante the Wayfarer. CHAPTER III PADUA AND S, ANTONIO " And whither journeying ? " — " To the holy shrine Of Sant' Antonio in the city of Padua." — Samuel Rogees, Italy. It is difficult for a foreigner to realize how large a part St. Anthony occupies in the Italian Catholic mind, until he has lived for some time in the country, and visited this city where the saint labored and died. St. Anthony was a follower of St. Francis; but far greater than that which repairs to Assisi is the steady concourse of pilgrims who throng to Padua year after year, to lay their hands in prayer against the sar- cophagus containing the sacred relics; and extensively as the Church of St. Francis has been adorned by the great artists of the past, far more so has been this church of his follower, until the devotion of six centu- ries has gathered here one of earth's grandest collec- tions of artistic treasures. The impulse of Cathol- icism to beautify its holy places has found here a most remarkable exposition. He was a Portuguese — St. Anthony — whose thoughts turned to self-sacrifice and religious zeal from his very childhood; first betaking himself as a missionary to the fanatical Moors, then obliged by illness to return to Europe, a happy wind drove his vessel to the northern shores of Italy, where he was attracted to Assisi by the fame of St. Francis's preaching, and at once embraced the latter's cause with unequaled ardor. Far and wide then he traveled for years, in the Franciscan habit, preaching with a PADUA AND S. ANTONIO 63 fervor that converted whole multitudes, and whole cities in a body, until the fame of his sanctity became second to that of St. Francis only. Miraculous powers were attached to him by the people; and eventually his life and holy deeds became one of the most beauti- ful legends of the Church. Countless are the miracles attributed to him, and thoroughly believed in by the devout; one often portrayed is that of his preaching to the fishes of the sea, who rose to the surface to listen to him, when the inhabitants of Rimini would not; many others are of dead persons restored to life, — a young girl that had been drowned, a child that had been scalded, a noble lady stabbed by her husband, a youth slain by the brother of his inamorata, etc. Well known is the story of the heretic Boradilla, who required a miracle to remove his doubts; and St. Anthony, with the Host in hand, at once by a word of command forced the mule which Boradilla was driving to kneel before the sacred object. The latter years of the Saint's life were spent in Padua, where he greatly comforted the inhabitants in their horrible existence under Ezzelino, and fearlessly confronted that tyrant himself with the memorable words: "O most cruel tyrant, and mad dog! the ter- rible sentence of God hangs over thee. When wilt thou cease to spill the blood of innocent men.?" Whereupon '*they saw the monster, whom all feared, fall upon his knees, with a cord about his neck, before the man of God, confessing his sins and imploring pardon." ^ Even after his death the Saint continued to appear and sustain the Paduans under Ezzelino's continued cruelties. He died at the early age of thirty- six, in 1231, exhausted by his life of hardship and sac- rifice; and the very next year was canonized, and the * Perkins, Tuscan Sculptors. 64 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY vast church to contain his shrine commenced by the devoted people, — who have ever since called him by no other name than "II Santo." He was exceedingly fond of children, was often supported in his trials by visions of the infant Christ, and is not only therefore identified with child-life and love, but usually repre- sented as carrying the little Jesus in his arms. The first sight of the mighty temple erected over his remains is always an amazing one. My companions were duly surprised, as we came upon it behind its wide, stone-paved piazza at the south end of the Via del Santo, — so gigantic was the mass of buildings, so lofty the gabled peak of the church, crowned by its extraordinary throng of Oriental pointed domes and minarets, whose blue spires soared from every part into the bluer sky, and made the whole edifice seem a creation of dreamland. S. Marco of Venice was clearly responsible for the design, as it has fathered so many Byzantine-domed structures over the terri- tories of Venetia. The chuj'ch faces westward, with the extensive piazza before it and upon the north, along the south- ern side of which run the adjacent lower buildings containing the chapel of S. Giorgio, the Scuola del Santo, and the part of the monastery made over into the city's museum of fine arts. First to attract our attention, however, after the soaring domes and min- arets, was the fine bronze equestrian statue rising upon a very high stone pedestal, opposite the north- western angle of the fagade, — a wonderful war-horse of heroic size, mounted by a stern-visaged knight whose presence commanded the whole inclosure. It was the Gattamelata of Donatello. What a marvel- ous work — so perfectly life - like, so vigorous and powerful, so dominating! the first bronze horseman PADUA AND S. ANTONIO 65 since the days of Rome, yet after four centuries of existence still unsurpassed. We turned from it to consider the facade, which is one of the most unusual of North Italy, partly in that it is constructed, like the rest of the edifice, of a strange brick of yellowish hue, — "a most vile ma- terial wherewith to attempt the construction of a noble church. Stone is used very sparingly in the voussoirs of the arches, etc." ^ The great Niccolo Pisano was the architect, however, and has not failed to give us a Gothic fagade of imposing lines. Its most striking feature is a charming colonnade, of pointed arches upon slim marble shafts, with light marble balustrades between the shafts and above it, — which crosses just below the gable; below this are four huge, recessed Gothic arches, the two outer wider than the inner ones, and between the two inner a lower, rounded, recessed doorway, topped by a rounded niche containing an ancient statue of the Saint. In the outer arches are two small, rectangular side door- ways, each with two deep lancet windows overhead; while each of the inner arches contains a single lancet opening, still narrower and longer. Above the colon- nade, the gable holds a simple rose-window, with a double Gothic one on each side, of trefoil lights, and — with that variation which ever in Italy accom- panies the Gothic — a Romanesque cornice of little round arches along the sloping eaves. From the peak soars a three-storied minaret with an acute spire, backed by one of the looming domes, tinned, and painted azure. From the intersection of the nave with the wide transept rises a large colonnaded drum, upon which towers highest of all a tinned spire, bearing a winged angel to the clouds. The whole construction ^ Street, Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages, chap, vii, pp, 117-18. 66 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY is most strange, in its medley of the Romanesque, the Gothic, and the Byzantine. Approaching more closely the main portal, we ob- served in its lunette the famous fresco placed there by Mantegna at the age of twenty-one, — the brown- f rocked figures of Saints Anthony and Bernardino, chief lieutenan/ts of the Franciscan order, holding be- tween them the golden monogram of Christ, glistening like a sunburst; a work unfortunately now retouched and much ruined, but still exhibiting what a power of modeling and disposition the master had at* that age acquired. Below it are handsome, modern bronze doors, containing in high-relief four beautiful Gothic niches with the four leaders of the Franciscan order, — the two already mentioned and Saints Bona Ven- tura and Louis of Toulouse. We entered the nave — and stood overpowered by the vast space of incense-scented gloom, whose mighty stone pillars towered to dim domes far above; it was pierced in the distant choir by shafts of light from lofty windows, that fell upon a wondrous, gleaming high-altar, adorned with lovely bronze figures which stood upon its top about a majestic crucifix. It was the famous altar of Donatello. The lofty roof is sub- divided into two bays and two domes alternately, and the piers to support the latter are so heavy as almost to conceal the lower aisles and give the effect of a nave only; it is the chief fault of the construction. The upper wall-spaces that once were covered by fres- coes of the early masters, which must have beauti- fully illumined the edifice with their flood of color and gold-leaf, now stand whitewashed and cold, — a result of the fire of 1748; but waves of beauty still pour from the pictures and sculptured monuments upon the piers, and the massed treasures of the choir. PADUA AND S. ANTONIO 67 There is a grandeur about all the rear part of the structure : two great domes, one over the intersection of the transept, and the other over the high-altar, shower down their mystic light; tall, graceful, pointed arches circle round the apse, opening into the ambu- latory behind; and before the choir rises an exquisite rood-screen, of pavonassa columns with sculptured bases and Corinthian capitals, upholding round arches with richly decorated edges and soffits, upon whose entablature stand a crowd of saintly figures. Behind these we saw still higher the bronze saints and twink- ling candles of the high-altar; and the long marble floor stretching up to them was dotted with dark living figures, moving ceaselessly to and fro in the religious silence. Concentrating our attention upon details, it was first struck by a most engaging painting upon the first pier to the right, facing the entrance, — a Virgin and Child, with four Franciscan saints, by the compara- tively unknown early cinquecentist, Antonio Boselli of Bergamo; a work of delightful grace and coloring, of that calm, sweet, joyous expression that moves the heart of the observer. On the opposite first pillar we saw another Madonna, of the fourteenth century and more primitive, — the so-called "Madonna of the Blind," which is supposed by the Paduans to have miraculous healing power. The second piers are faced by ornate, sculptured tombs of the Late Renaissance, — that on the right being of the famous Cardinal Bembo, poet and connoisseur, friend of the great, patron of artists and literati, whose "Paduan retreat became the rendezvous of all the ablest men in Italy, the centre of a fluctuating society of highest culture";^ ^ J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy. — Cattaneo modeled this bust at Rome, in 1552, under the oversight of Sansovino and Tiziano. 68 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY and that on the left, of Alessandro Contarini, by Sammicheli, adorned with several of those hideous negro forms characteristic of the Venetian baroque. But one chapel opens from the aisles, that of the Sacrament, midway on the right, where we noticed two fine bronze gates, and the tombs of Gattamelata and his son, against the walls, in red, white and black marbles. Then we came to the right transept, which is occupied by the Chapel of S. Felice, as the left tran- sept is by the "Cappella del Santo," — two of the chief wonders of the place. We stood in the dusky nave, delighted, turning our eyes from the beauties of one chapel to the other, — from the exquisite marble screens which face them, to the rich bronzes, sculp- tures, paintings, hanging-lamps and silver candelabra glittering within; while between them towered the precious rood-screen with its saintly figures, backed by the great altar and bronzes of Donatello. Few other churches in Christendom can give just such a fairy scene of artistic splendor. The two^ chapel-screens alone are magnificent and unique; that to the right, of Gothic lines and highly colored marbles, built in 1372-76, — that on the left, of the Renaissance, glistening in white and azure marbles, and harmonious carvings; both are arcaded below, and adorned in the upper divisions by statues in regularly placed niches, by richly hued panels and dainty designs, by string-courses and pilasters with diversified reliefs; dainty relief -work also decorates the quoins and soffits of the arches; while in the pointed arches of the one hang fine old Oriental brass lamps, dimly burning, and through the rounded arches of the other gleam the beauties of its sanctuary under the massed candle-lights of its altar, — splen- did silver candelabra shaped into putti and flowers. PADUA AND S. ANTONIO 69 bronze angel-statuettes, and, around the walls in recesses, a succession of large marble high-reliefs representing miracles of St. Anthony, — life-size figures that seem to move and breathe in the golden light. ^ This last was the "holy of holies"; for the Saint's body lay under its altar-top, ever attended by burning tapers, ever prayed over by the Franciscan brethren, ever worshiped by the endless stream of the devout, who knelt in rows of little chairs facing the sanctuary, and filed one by one around the altar to the rear of the sarcophagus, to kiss and weep against its marble block, and beg assistance in their troubles. "The nave was filled with decrepit women and feeble child- ren, kneeling by baskets of vegetables and other pro- visions, which, by good St. Anthony's interposition, they hoped to sell advantageously in the course of the day. Beyond these, nearer the choir, knelt a row of rueful penitents, smiting their breasts and lifting their eyes to heaven."^ In the Chapel of S. Felice we saw only a high cin- quecento altar, approached by steps with handsome railings, and surmounted by five saintly statuettes;^ but round upon the walls were those wonderful fres- coes, which follow Giotto's in interest as well as time, — the celebrated work of Altichieri and Jacopo d' Avanzo. How many times I have returned to study ^ The brilliant Riccio was the designer of this Cappella del Santo, about 1500, and directed its commencement; the work was continued by Gio- vanni Minello and Sansovino, until 1531, and thereafter finished by Fal- conetto. ^ Beckford, Italy, vol. i. ' This chapel was constructed for the Marchese di Soragna in 1372 by Andriolo, then head architect of the church; the five statues, also by his hand, represent the Marchese and his wife, and Saints Peter, Paul, and James. — Bartolomea degli Scrovegni, who is believed to have been poisoned by her husband, Masilio dalla Carrara, lies behind the altar. no PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY those pictures, rejoicing in their realism, power, and individuality. The genius, as is recognized to-day, was that of Altichieri, the founder of the school of Verona, who developed under the study of Giotto, and was the first great painter of North Italy to suc- ceed the master. This work was commenced by him, with d'Avanzo's assistance, in 1376. On the left wall, the lunettes of the rear wall, the spaces of the right wall beside the window, and the lunettes of the outer wall above the arches, is depicted, in eleven, large and small, graphic scenes, the legendary life of St. James, to whom the chapel was originally dedicated, — vivid, dramatic pictures, filled with striking figures of ex- traordinary lifelikeness, in both garb and action, and of high individual character, telling the story with conciseness and power. But, chief of all, from the whole space of the rear wall beneath the moulding, stand forth the hundred variegated figures of the tremendous Crucifixion. Sadly faded as they are from their pristine glory of brilliant coloring, damaged and obscured, cl6se inspection still reveals their strength of composition, drawing, and significance, combined in a realism never surpassed. Giotto's leadership and influence, of course, are everywhere visible : the backgrounds, perspective, and often the architecture show the same limitations; the tactile values, action, arid expression are as fine as anything of the master himself, and the realism in places is beyond him. The scene will ever linger in my memory that shines from the third lunette: a stretch of sandy seashore at dusk, before the castle of Queen Lupa, which rises in the rear, of decent proportions and sombre picturesqueness, with the Queen and her sister looking down from a balcony; on the beach the forms of Hermogenes and Philetes, just laying the PADUA AND S. ANTONIO 71 body of St. James upon a long stone, which is shaping itself at the touch into a sarcophagus; finally, the waiting boat with its prow upon the strand, and a mysterious-looking angel holding the rudder. So mystic is the little scene, so dark and heavy in atmo- sphere and shadows, so weird in movement and expres- sion, so natural in drawing and perspective, that one finds a shudder stealing down his back. It is a finely spaced, effectively arranged, dramatic composition; and the others are not far behind it. But the Crucifixion is the chef-d'oeuvre, — an enorm- ous work, thirty feet or more in length, and perhaps fifteen feet high. In the already accepted fashion, the saints and friends of Christ are massed upon one side, the soldiers and enemies upon the other; the former weep, the latter scoff and cast dice for the gar- ments; and on the outskirts are many people engaged indifferently in their everyday occupations, with streets, buildings, gossip, barter, and the various domestic animals. These, however, are but the back- ground for the supreme tragedy, whose brutality is as well conveyed by the soldiers' callousness as is its poignant grief by the emotions of the saints. Remark- able figures are they, every one of that throng, — natural, yet highly individualized, garbed appropri- ately for the epoch, intensely alive, and marked with keen expressions. It is a work that would rank among the highest in any age of development, — yet how marvelous when we realize that it was done in that far-away, primitive trecento, by its crude methods, one of the first truly realistic crucifixions, if not the very first. "Altichieri combines many faults of those later Tuscan painters: exaggerated love of costume and finery, delight in detail, preoccupation with local 72 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY color. . . . The accessories absorb him. . . . The spec- tator is in danger of forgetting the Figure upon the Cross. . . . Good quahties consist in clearness of narration, effective massing, and fine distances. The composition and facial types, fresh and memorable; the architecture handled with loving precision and perspective, though the naive and unmathematical is seldom wanting. The portrait-heads are individual- ized to the utmost limits permitted by form in that day, while to this gift of direct observation is added a power of rendering the thing seen, surpassed by Giotto alone." ^ We crossed the nave to the Cappella del Santo, and examined next its exquisitely carved pilasters,^ and the series of high-reliefs around its walls. There are nine scenes, commencing with the Ordination of St. Anthony on the left wall; the others represent certain of the miracles, four of them being resuscitations of dead persons. They were executed between 1500 and 1530, by Sansovino, Tullio Lombardo, and several other artists of the Venetian school. Especially inter- esting we found the last scene, by Antonio Lombardo, in which the Saint is causing a little child to bear wit- ness in favor of its mother, and all the forms are very Greek in treatment, from that artist's study of the antique; while most beautiful of all to us was Giro- lamo Campagna's Resuscitation of a Youth, in which the figures are of an ideal beauty, grace, and tense significance. As we examined those on the back wall the steady stream of devotees kept passing by the holy tomb, mostly women of the lower class, who laid 1 Berenson, North Italian Painters. ^ One of these beautiful pilasters, by Girolamo Pironi of Vicenza, is especially remarkable for the delicate grace of its grapevines, with birds, snakes, etc., among the leaves, wrought with elaborate accuracy. PADUA. ALTAR WITH BRONZES. (DONATELLO.) PADUA AND S. ANTONIO 73 their heads and lips against the marble altar-back, pressed to it rosaries and other objects for a blessing, and repeated their prayers aloud ecstatically; some- times they wept and moaned, in an emotion that regarded none surrounding. I wished that I might have such comforting faith in the powers of the in- animate. After looking also at the richly sculptured silver candelabra, and the white and gold decoration of the ceiling that completed the effect, we entered by a small doorway an adjacent chapel on the east, filled with contrasting gloom, in which still forms knelt murmuring before an altar, and through which softly percolated the picturesque hues of old frescoes and the colored marbles of medieval tombs. This was the Cappella della Madonna Mora, the only remaining portion of the earlier Church of S. Maria Mater Domini, which stood upon this ground in St. An- thony's day. In 1852 the chapel was carefully re- stored; but there still stands upon its altar the statue of the "Madonna Mora" (a black-faced image) which the Saint was wont to adore. Off from it on the north opens a smaller chapel, a recess whose walls are cov- ered with ruined, retouched frescoes of Giusto Pada- vano, now of little worth. In the adjacent left aisle of the church, which here is prolonged as an ambulatory around the choir, we noticed the peculiar baroque monument of Caterino Cornaro, father of the Caterina whom Venice adopted as the Republic's daughter, and gave as a bride to the King of Cyprus; then we made the circuit of the ambulatory, peering through the locked wickets of its seven successive chapels, at the modern frescoes and sculptures adorning them. The central one of these, — the Cappella del Te- soro, or Sanctuary, constructed by Perodi about 1690, 74 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY — lying directly behind the high-altar, is lavishly decorated with marbles and gold-leaf, and contains some remarkable relics (shown by the monks for three and one half lire) — such as fine gold-work of the cinquecento, and the chin, tongue, hair, and other pleasant fragments of St. Anthony. The other six chapels have been allotted to and decorated by the different chief nationalities; that at the north end best pleased us by some really fine modern paintings of New Testament scenes, extraordinary in that the artist had achieved, for once, the Early Renaissance simplicity and strength of composition and color. After all, I thought, we could paint to-day as well as four centuries ago, if our artists would thus return to the great precepts and the uplifting themes; but my mind wandered sadly to the recent Venetian art exhibition of late canvases from all over Europe, in whose thousands there were few indeed that were not petty, in subject, in composition, in dignity, and heart-appeal. We puny moderns paint things without true feeling,' or elevation, and try to make up for the lack of heart-interest by tricks of atmosphere and manner. I fear that our art will never be great again, until we return to the methods that glorified it in the past, with minds reattuned to simplicity and truth. From the southern end of the ambulatory we mounted at last, by a few steps through a side door, into the elevated choir. Several assistant sacristans were constantly engaged in exhibiting its beauties to the unceasing throng of visitors, — chiefly pilgrims to the shrine. Our attention was first drawn to the two sides of the marble screen, separating the choir from the aisles, which were designed by Donatello; they were of solid construction, some ten feet or more in height, adorned with pilasters, panels, and patterns PADUA AND S. ANTONIO 75 of white and colored marbles; and each carried six bronze plates of reliefs, from the Old Testament, about two feet square — ten of them by Bellano (1488), the Paduan sculptor who learned from Dona- tello, and two by his pupil Andrea Riccio (1507) — like paintings in their wealth of background, detail, and crowds of small figures in dramatic, action. Riccio's, as Mr. Perkins said, "at once place him on a higher level than his master." The whole constitute an effect of remarkable splendor and beauty; while each plate is a study, in itself, of the possibilities of bronze in vivid portrayal. Fascinating as were these to us, they were forgotten when we turned to the altar. This was reconstructed in 1895 after Donatello's original design, and adorned upon both sides with his exquisite bronze reliefs. The main body is raised upon five steps of precious mar- bles, and faced completely with bronze placques, — a central square, representing the half-figure of Christ with two little angels lowering it to the tomb, and ten oblong panels, containing the master's celebrated little angel-musicians, with two more of them on the ends. They are utterly charming, these rounded baby- figures, blowing with puffed cheeks upon their various instruments. At the rear of this base rises the ante- pendium, of glistening Carrara cut into lovely pilas- ters, panels, and a wreathed cornice, and faced with three larger bronzes : a square Pieta in the centre, and two wide plates, representing miracles of St. Anthony, at the sides. The two last, with their two companion pieces on the altar's back, are the finest work of all, truly wonderful in their perspective, handling of masses, and expressiveness. Fitly topping all this are the seven life-size bronze statues rising above, and the crucifix rising again above them, bearing a form of 76 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Christ that seems unsurpassed, for its union of realism with grace. A quaint Madonna stands just below His feet, holding her Babe, with Saints Francis and An- thony at her sides. All but the two sainted bishops on the ends are from the master's own hands. Here, then, are gathered upon one altar a score and a half of the world's greatest masterpieces of sculp- ture. We understood their perfection when we stopped to remember that Donatello came to Padua at the very height of his powers. "The third period of Donatello's artistic development, comprising the years (1444-54) spent at Padua, is the time of matur- ity in technical skill and in range of thought. Dona- tello is now fifty-eight years old; for about forty years he has been constantly studying nature, the antique, and his trade. One might reasonably expect, then, to find in this, the only important commission outside of his own city, a tour deforce. And such it is : for it com- prises reliefs which are his masterpieces in relief, sep- arate statues of great character and beauty, and much ornamental detail exquisitely designed and wrought. ... In artists like Donatello, however, the energy of imagination is so great that it extends itself over a broader field, and the intelligence is so penetrating that it sees in each object its own significant features. Therefore we have sculpture ranging in technique from the equestrian statue of Gattamelata to the delicate bas-relief of the young St. John, and in sub- ject, from the joy of singing children to the agonized repentance of a Magdalen." ^ There is one more masterpiece in this choir, that of Riccio, — a magnificent bronze candelabrum nearly twelve feet high, formed into a great variety of lovely designs and figures from Christian and heathen lore, ^ Freeman, Italian Sculptors, chap. v. PADUA AND S. ANTONIO 77 upon a half-dozen graduated divisions.^ Also inter- esting is the full-length, contemporary portrait of St. Anthony, which is said to be his most accurate like- ness, — placed near the left-hand entrance. After examining this, we had just enough of the day left to pay a visit to the buildings adjoining the church on the south, which are entered by doors in the right aisle. We saw the large Chiostro del Capitolo, with its handsome Gothic arcades and medieval tombs; the small Chiostro del Noviziato, the rooms above which are still occupied by the friars; the sacristy, with its tarsia-work from Squarcione's designs and its marble ornamentation by Bellano; and other rooms and pass- ages occupied by Gothic tombs. Here was formerly the "bellissima cappella" of S. Jacopo, — spoken of by Vasari as having been so splendidly frescoed by Giotto, — which is probably identical with the later chapter- house; the frescoes, alas, have long disappeared, although the brethren exhibit some alleged fragments of them in a row of ruined saints in the "Cappella del Capitolo." Still more fragmentary we found the re- mains of the cloister in which St. Anthony used to walk, belonging to the former Church of S. Maria, — a small, broken colonnade behind the apse, adorned with Gothic bits of terra-cotta. On the next day we visited the buildings which extend from the southwest angle of the church along the south side of its piazza, — little brick structures of Gothic lines and Romanesque cornices, with long homely brick pilasters dividing their fagades, in Lom- 1 It was "by this magnificent Paschal candlestick," said Perkins, in his Italian Sculptors, that Andrea Briosco, called Riccio from his curling hair, obtained his great reputation. "This noble work of art is divided by rich cornices — and is crowned by a rich vase. . . . Every portion is wrought out with the utmost care, not a detail neglected, nor is any part of its surface unadorned." 78 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY bard fashion. The jfirst is but the screen of an ancient graveyard, whose monuments are visible through its pointed gateway; the second is the flat-gabled "Cap- pella S. Giorgio," which Altichieri and d' Avanzo have made immortal. One of the church's sacristans brought a huge key that opened the door of the simple; round-arched entrance, locked us within, and went away again, saying that he would return in a half-hour. We hardly noticed it, so affected were we by the sight of that extraordinary nave: the whole four walls are frescoed from top to bottom in one vast mass of brightly colored dramatic scenes, whose hundreds of life-size figures, clad in costumes and armor of old, stand forth with vivid power, — moving, struggling, tortur- ing, pressing in brilliant throngs, before backgrounds of fanciful architecture. There are twenty-two large tableaux, some much injured, some almost entirely de- faced; but the majority have a remarkable brightness, with joyous colorings that brought to our realization the pristine brilliancy of such pictures of the trecento. The storie^ that they portray are of strong and tragic interest : the legends of St. Lucia and St. Cate- rina on the right wall, that of St. George on the left; the Crucifixion and Coronation of the Virgin are on the altar-wall, and by the entrance, the Annuncia- tion, Adorations of the Shepherds and the Magi, the Circumcision, and the Flight into Egypt. Especially stamped upon my mind is the scene of St. Lucia being taken to execution, where she has refused to move, and the oxen harnessed to drag her have fallen to their knees; upon her pure uplifted face is an expression of sublime confidence in the divine goodness that one cannot easily forget.^ The execution of St. Catherine ^ "She stands as unmoved and still as if communing with God in the midst of a desert, — her whole figure and attitude, her utter, effortless. PADUA AND S. ANTONIO 79 also is of unusual expressiveness and power, — the same profound feelings being manifest in her sweet countenance, while the wheel that was to rack her flies asunder. The scenes as to St. George are filled with very forceful knightly figures, clad in glistening chain-armor. Through all the pictures the realism is unbroken, of wonderfully accurate drawing and solid- ity for the period, with dignified movement, and ex- ceeding power of disposition and expression. Every time that I have seen these frescoes I have been more impressed by their superiority in such respects to any that followed them for a hundred years; while for pure, deep feeling they have seldom been surpassed in any epoch. In them, said Layard, "the spirit of Christian chivalry finds, for the first and almost for the last time, its voice in the painting of Italy." In the power, too, that is here displayed, of handling crowds, of balancing masses, and managing so as to bring out strongly and pointedly the chief idea of every tableau, Altichieri stands preeminent. These works of his should certainly be more appreciated and studied by the world at large than they have been hitherto.^ From the chapel we finally stepped next door, to the so-called "Scuola del Santo," a building erected by the Brotherhood of St. Anthony in 1499-1505, according to the customary model of those fraternity- unresistant immobility, forming the most marked contrast with the frenzied efiforts of the oxen, and the rabid rage of her persecutors." — Lord Lindsay. ^ "Every variety of character" — wrote Lord Lindsay in his Christian Art — " is discriminated with a degree of truth that startles one; — feeling, simplicity, and good taste, prevail throughout; — there are crowds of figures, but no confusion; the coloring is soft and pleasing, the backgrounds are more usually of the most gorgeous and exquisite architecture. The author comes very near Masaccio in his peculiar merits, while in Christian feeling, invention, and even in composition, he surpasses him." 80 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY schools, with a large meeting-hall upon the upper floor. Around the four walls of this hall, above the wainscoting, extend seventeen large frescoes, painted in different centuries, from the fifteenth to the eight- eenth, representing — of course — events of the Saint's life. They were not clearly discernible to us by the dim light from the grimy windows, nor was the parrot- like chatter more enlightening, of the crone who fol- lowed us about, and responded to questions simply by repeating her monologue. The best of the pictures are the three done by Dom. Campagnola, and the three by Titian;^ though all are badly injured and some ruined completely. Titian's have also been so spoiled by restorations as to be no representations of his power; they portray certain of the Saint's miracles, — the causing of the infant to give evidence for its accused mother (number 1), the resuscitation of the wife slain by her husband (number 11), and the healing of the boy who cut off his foot in remorse for having struck his mother (number 12). On leaving the hall, as our eyes were somewhat tired of painting, we walked around to the famous old botanical garden of Padua, founded in 1545, which lies close by on the south. The narrow street leading from the piazza in that direction took us across two small arms of the Bacchiglione, the second of which runs just before the garden and is prettily shadowed by its leaning trees and bushes. Through a locked iron gate we could see graveled paths winding off through the cool shade of the wood, lined by many varieties of shrubs, — an inviting contrast to the ^ These, and the rest of Titian's frescoes executed in Padua, were painted by him at an early age, about 1511, when he resided here for a while on account of the financial depression and other troubles in Venice, caused by the war of the League of Cambrai. PADUA AND S. ANTONIO 81 heat and glare of the sun. We pulled a wire that rang a bell, and were shortly admitted by an intel- ligent caretaker, who conducted us over the grounds. Surprise and pleasure filled us at the size and beauty of the giant trees that surrounded us on all sides, shutting off in a moment that medieval Italy in which we had been living, with its shadeless plain, and bare streets and piazzas, transporting us apparently to some quiet English dell; a charming transition, which made me suddenly realize that all Lombardy could be like this, covered with great trees and lawns and copses, would men permit it. It has the neces- sary deep soil, the temperate climate, the rainfall; and must have been so covered in bygone ages. All the monarchs of the North were here, — elms, oaks, and beeches, as grand as any of English pride. We saw the hickory that is one hundred and fifty years old and one hundred and twenty feet tall, the aged, hollow plane tree (dating from 1680) that is the an- cestor of all the planes in western Europe, and, finally, inclosed in a many-sided house of its own, the cele- brated palm (ChamcBTops humilis) planted about 1580, that was so admired by Goethe on his visit of 1786. The front side of its dwelling was now open (it is closed only in winter-time) and we could clearly see the dozen different trunks, within the close foliage, that raise it sixty feet or so from the ground, into an imposing yet graceful mass. This stands in the eastern portion of the grounds, which is laid out as a wide extent of flower-beds and squares of shrubs, with a long greenhouse running along the outer side, and other palms and exotic plants scattered about. Here are countless varieties of growth usually unknown to the Temperate Zone, and many others brought from the Orient. "It is 82 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY pleasant and instructive," said Goethe, "to walk through a vegetation that is new to us. With ordin- ary plants, as well as with other objects that have been long familiar to us, we at last do not think at all; and what is looking without thinking?"^ That afternoon we completed the sights of the Pi- azza of S. Antonio by paying our visit to the Museo Civico, which is next to the Scuola del Santo, and like it occupies a portion of the old monastery buildings. A handsome aspect has, however, been given it by a modern marble fagade of Renaissance lines, and a truly beautiful modern staircase, all of white stone, on the left of the entrance hall. The end of this hall opens into an old arcaded cortile of the friars, pictur- esquely occupied now, in corridors and centre, by an assemblage of ancient sarcophagi, monuments, and bits of sculpture, including the fragments of a Roman temple excavated from the ancient forum, on the site of the Gaffe Pedrocchi. The upper front hall, into which the stairway debouches, has been richly built over, and filled with many casts of the most renowned antique sculptures ; through a glass door it is continued as a book-lined gallery of the library, but before this door another one to the left opens into the first hall of the paintings. All of Padua's great pictures, as has been seen, lie without this collection, which is neither extensive nor distinguished; yet it contains a number of works that always afford one pleasure. In the first salon, which consists of three rooms thrown into one and still partially divided, there hang a good Palma Vecchio, a Madonna with two saints, of his usual warm rich coloring and tone, with a beautifully graduated land- scape; a landscape by Giorgione, that well exhibits ^ Goethe, Autobiography: Letters from Switzerland and Traveli in Italy. PADUA AND S. ANTONIO 83 his powers of perspective and atmosphere; an unfin- ished Titian^ with half-figures of Christ, three apostles and three other persons, of strong realism and individ- uality; and a delightful example of that fine cinque- centist, Boccaccio Boccaccino, of Cremona, who has not yet come fully into his own, — a Madonna with two female saints, much faded in its delicate tints, but still showing his characteristic tone of golden shades, his soft flesh-work, and peculiar grace. All three figures are painted from the same model, which he used so constantly. In the centre of the room is a superb, unusual, Japanese vase of large size, brilliantly decorated with warriors in full suits of their curious ancient armor, on wide fields of snow, — of a com- position and perspective almost Occidental. The second room, running to the right from near the end, showed us greater treasures: foremost among them, three Giovanni Bellini Madonnas, one of which (415) is especially well preserved, with rich broad hues of green and orange and crimson, and the far blue peaks of the Alps in the rear, as seen across the Lagoon ; one of his brother's characteristic processions of people in sixteenth-century garb, and animals, before a town of that epoch, with many churches and towers looking over its heavy walls, — labeled the "Visit of the Magi"; one of Francia's calm, sweet- faced Madonnas, surrounded with angels, exquisitely moulded and finished; one of Antonello da Messina's realistic portraits, of a man of forty much in need of a shave; another Madonna by Boccaccino, with that lovely limpid eye which he developed; a splendid Holy Family by Garofalo, in an extraordinary back- ground of land and sea and distant blue mountains, of very fine modeling, subdued coloring, and skillful use of light, — though his lack of genius emerges in 84 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY the want of expression; lastly, an important example of Pordenone, — a Madonna with two saints, wanting in emotion, but of that soft, rich tone and coloring, which mark him so distinctively. Later in the year, when I was searching over various Friulan towns for works of Pordenone, I wished that I could find others of this excellence. The third hall opened at the extreme end of the first, extending far to the right, lighted only from its lofty ceiling, and glowing with the countless hues of a hundred large canvases, that led up to one great mas- terpiece on the end wall : it was in a massive gold frame of exceptional richness, — the chef-d'oeuvre of the gal- lery, the Madonna and Saints of Romanino. We approached at once to examine it. It is rare to find Romanino's work far from Brescia, and this is an excellent specimen. The Madonna sits enthroned, of life-size, holding her Child, with four saints standing at the sides, a girlish child-angel seated on the step of the throne, playing a tambourine, and two others holding a crt)wn over the Madonna's head. It is a splendid display of deep, harmonious coloring, based upon the lovely rose-shade of the Virgin's gown, and glittering with much gold. Very graceful, too, are the figures and composition, in that master's usual full curves; but, like so many of his works, it lacks feeling and expression. It is pietistic on the surface only, — repose without joy of soul. In the same room are two more of his paintings, smaller, — another Madonna and Saints, of similar qualities, and a Last Supper poorly composed. We noticed two Tintorettos — one a portrait, the other a realistic scene of the Magdalen washing Jesus' feet, very fine in atmosphere, natural disposition, and expression. There were also two ex- pressive portraits of Venetian patricians by Titian; PADUA AND S. ANTONIO 85 an overcrowded, undignified Paolo Veronese; an ex- cellent Tiepolo, at that master's best, representing S. Patrizio preaching to the people in his bishop's robes; and, best of all, a very beautiful Previtali, a signed panel of Madonna, Child, and a donor, radiat- ing indescribable charm from its golden light-effect, luminous atmosphere, and softness of countenance. Also belonging to the Museo Civico, and well worth examination by any one who has the time, are various lesser collections: majolica- ware, porcelain, cameos, bronzes, ivory-carvings, wood-carvings, laces, coins and medals, tapestries, miniatures, autographs, text- iles, old costumes and furniture, etc.; besides the prehistoric and Roman antiquities, the geological col- lection, the modern paintings and sculptures, and the precious documents amongst the archives. The library, too, contains many valuable works. In the eastern part of the huge southern section of the city, there are, besides the Orto Botanico already described, two prominent objects of unusual interest; and one of them is very unusual. This is the vast piazza known for recent ages by the name of "Prato della Valle," now misnamed Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, distant a couple of blocks to the west of the Botani- cal Garden. Its popular name during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and still occasionally heard, was the Zairo, — a corruption of the Latin theatro; for here the Romans had an immense theatre, in which, ac- cording to Strabo and Tacitus, they celebrated once every thirty years the games commemorating Ante- nor's founding of the city. The medieval bishops and nobles used the building as a quarry, so that its stones and marbles are scattered through the walls of Padua. The later name, Prato della Valle, records the marshy nature of the ground. 86 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY We first went down there on a lovely summer morning, when there was not a cloud in the sky, and the sun was already beginning to render the baked streets uncomfortable. It was consequently a marked relief to emerge upon that great open space of mov- ing airs, and feast our eyes upon the luxuriant foliage of its wooded central oval, which preserves the out- line of the ancient theatre. Hundreds of huge plane trees were there, solidly massed, with graveled walks percolating their shade, surrounded by a stone-banked canal of flowing water that coolly reflected the leafy boughs bending far overhead. Across the water led four ornamental bridges from the four sides of the oval, — to one of which we hurried, through the in- tense glare and heat of the down-beating sun. This much was ordinary; but on the balustrades of the bridges, and the parapets of the canal all around the extended circle, rises a procession of heroic statues of every age, so numerous and so varied that at the first sight one can only stare in bewilderment. Surely so many statues were never elsewhere gathered in one place. It is like a city of people of stone. They stand in every sort of costume of the bygone centuries, in every kind of posture, from every rank of human greatness, — poets, generals, philosophers, kings, statesmen, princes, professors, literati, — all the men of note who have at any time attended Padua's Uni- versity, to teach or to learn. Not Padua alone has erected them, but cities and courts all over Europe, to perpetuate the memory of their illustrious sons. The four bridges are distinguished by the company of popes and doges, in all the grandeur of their crowns and ceremonial robes; but the dignity of these, and too many others, unfortunately, is marred by their baroque style of scu-lpture, — the wind-tossed, cum- PADUA AND S. ANTONIO 87 brous, convoluted garments, convulsive attitudes, and wild gestures that make us shrink away.^ It is only, however, when one stands here, looking at the far-extended throng of immortals, that he fully real- izes what a part in history has been played by the University of Padua. Walking in the refreshing shade of the mighty plane trees, our eyes turned from the statuary to the far lines of buildings fronting the piazza. Nearly all were simple three-storied dwellings, some on the north and east being ensconced in the green of little gardens ; but in the centre of the west side our gaze was caught by a larger, ornamental structure of red brick, faced by two imposing Gothic arcades, the upper twice the height of the lower. It was the so-called Loggia Muni- cipale, or Amulea, an excellent example of the possi- bilities of brick in graceful dignity and power. It is little used except on that annual occasion when this whole immense space becomes alive and teeming, — the yearly fair of the Festival of St. Anthony, June 13-16; then does the deserted piazza blossom far and wide with the crowded umbrellas, tents and canvas roofs of traders and entertainers from all over Italy; while these groves resound with music and the laugh- ter of thousands, these avenues reecho with the hoof- beats and cheers of horse-races, and from those Gothic loggie orators speak, and authorities bestow the prizes. It is one of the last, great, characteristic Italian fairs remaining to us from the Middle Ages; and is spe- cially interesting because its inauguration, in 1275, was made to celebrate the city's release from the ^ It was this "vulgar, flaunting statuary" that roused the wrath of Mr. WilUam Hazlitt; "the most clumsy, afifected, paltry, sprawling figures cut in stone, that ever disgraced the chisel!" (Hazlitt's Journey through France and Italy in 1826.) And yet they are but ordinary, everyday baroque-work. 88 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY terrible clutches of Ezzelino. All over Italy, too, that festival of St. Anthony, protector of children, is cele- brated with churchly pomp. We had been in Venice when last it occurred, and well remembered the holy week of services, fasting, and entertainments, in all the parishes of the city. Many important events oc- curred on this broad area during the Middle Ages, when it had become a desolate swamp, outside the city walls. It was the scene of many a desperate battle between the Paduans and besieging foes. Here Pietro della Vigna made his memorable speech to the citizens, on behalf of the Emperor Frederick II. It was never fully drained again until the eighteenth century, when the Venetian Government dug the present elliptical canal, with its trees and statues. Our stroll was finally turned to the southeast, where we observed the piazza to be dominated by a massive pile of religious buildings, the foremost of which was a huge church topped by various Byzantine domes, with a tall, unfinished, rough-brick fagade, above a flight of wide-spreading steps. They were the convent and church of S. Giustina, the renowned female saint of Padua, who was the daughter of the barbarian King Vitalicino (or Vitaliano) and was martyred by the Emperor Maximian. According to the legend, Venetia's conversion to Christianity was commenced by St. Mark, and upon the latter's call to Rome by St. Peter, was continued by St. Prosdocimo, St. Mark's disciple, who became the first Bishop of Padua. By healing hundreds of sufferers afflicted with the plague, he won the attention and belief of the barbarian monarch, Vitalicino, then holding sway at Padua, who was forthwith baptized, together with his daughter and all his court. Giustina devoted her life to the cause, and died rather than yield herself to PADUA AND S. ANTONIO 89 Maximian. She and Prosdocimo therefore became the city's patron saints; which glory they shared until St. Anthony was added to them, in 1232. We crossed to the church, which was jfirst built in 453, when its wealth of treasures and embellishments drew the praises of several of the early chroniclers. That edifice, however, was finally demolished by the great earthquake of 1117. This, the third church, was commenced in 1502 from the plans of the brilliant architect, Fra Girolamo of Brescia, and carried grad- ually to completion through the genius of Andrea Briosco (or Riccio), Alessandro Leopardi of Venice, and Andrea Morone of Bergamo. The result is an undying monument to their abilities. Two relics still survive from the earliest edifice, — the pair of medi- eval lions, or griflSns, flanking the main portal. The extensive convent, with its several fine cloisters, has now been handed over to the soldiery, whom we saw lolling about the doorways on the right. It was there that the Emperor Frederick II stayed, with his brilliant retinue of knights and noblemen, when visit- ing Ezzelino in January, 1239; and the latter provided him with shows and entertainments of such magnifi- cence, that he felt obliged to declare he had never any- where seen their equal. Mounting the church steps, and running successfully the gauntlet of the many beg- gars waiting to waylay pilgrims, we entered at once the nave, which is of splendid Renaissance lines and impressive proportions. A sense of exceeding spacious- ness and beauty enveloped us, purely from the size and harmony of the parts; for all has been whitewashed, save the brown capitals of the pilasters, the cornice, and the yellowish ribs of the lofty, arched roof. The choir contributes sensibly to the effect, with its wide semicircle of rich oak stalls, radiating, as a sculptured 90 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY whole, a thousand exquisite curved lines and surfaces ; and the five domes far overhead lend their majesty. All of these imposing features, in spite of the absence of rich marbles and sculpture, as Sir Henry Wotton felt impelled to remark, "do yet ravish the beholder (and he knows not how) by a secret harmony in the proportions."^ It is one of the finest examples of the pure classical revival, adapted to ecclesiastical uses. The nave, three hundred and sixty-four feet long by ninety-eight feet wide, is flanked by lofty aisles and rows of chapels ; and the spacious transept reaches a breadth of two hundred and fifty feet. In the right aisle we found a fine canvas by Luca Giordano over the fourth altar, — the Death of St. Scholastica, of deep expressiveness and true genius, — ■ and a less worthy Palma Giovane over the fifth, repre- senting St. Benedict and his disciples. At the end of the right transept an open passage led us to two dark, curious little chapels, occupied by a number of pray- ing devotees: the first containing a well, at the bottom of which lie the bones of many early Paduan martyrs, a grating into the former prison of S. Daniele, and, adjacent below, the catacomb holding the original graves of S. Giustina and S. Prosdocimo. It seems that in the year 1050 the then bishop, Bernando, was granted a vision during his sleep, in which he saw the bodies of St. Julian and many other martyrs, buried here underground; whereupon he proceeded to exca- vate, discovering not only the remains revealed during his slumber, but also the corpses of St. Maximus and St. Felicita. Such was the origin of the well. As for Saints Giustina and Prosdocimo, the former now lies beneath the high-altar of the church, and the latter, under the side-altar devoted to his worship. ^ L. P. Smith, Sir Henry Wotton ; Life and Letters, PADUA AND S. ANTONIO 91 The second chapel, of S. Luca, was adorned with a recumbent statue of the latter saint before the altar, some frescoes by Campagnola, and over the altar a painted, gold-framed head of the Madonna, alleged to have been brought from Constantinople in the eighth century, and to be very holy. It was this last object that the devout were worshiping, including a country parish priest who told me in an awed whisper of the miracles which it had peformed. I responded that it looked to me exceedingly like a very modern painting, which could not be at best over a hundred years old ; whereat the good man was deeply horrified, and assured me fervently that the legend was true. We returned to the nave, at whose upper end, in a chapel to the right of the choir, is a beautiful marble Pietd, of several life-size figures, — a seventeenth-cen- tury work, by Parodi, remarkably executed and of much feeling. Then we inspected the striking choir- stalls. They are divided by double arms, the lower of which are all carved alike, but the upper all dif- ferently; from the latter rise slim, oak, Corinthian columns to the rich entablature, upon which stand charming putti between the head-pieces; while on each back are two scenes cut in relief, the lower from the Old Testament and the upper from the New, different with every stall. These reliefs were executed from designs by Campagnola about 1556, and are not individually of much excellence; but the whole effect is extraordinarily pleasing. It is greatly added to by the huge canvas of Paolo Veronese on the end wall, with its beautiful gilded frame, whose double columns on each side and heavy entablature are in form and size somewhat like a Corinthian temple; the picture, representing the martyrdom of S. Giustina, though riotous in rich colors, has the faults of Veronese's 92 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY later works in being too crowded, diffuse and unrest- f ul, — in a word, unsatisfactory, almost unmeaning, upon closer inspection. By a door to right of the choir, through a long pass- age, we visited the remaining fragment of the original, early church, — its choir, which has stalls with panels of tarsia- work that are quaint but not unusual; then we returned to the left transept, and inspected the church's most interesting relic. This is an iron case against the north wall, barred with strips of iron across its open top, but permitting one to see within two coffins, one inside the other, mouldering in deep decay : the very coffers in which the body of St. Luke (according to the legend) was carried from Constan- tinople to Venice in 1177. There is said to be some possibility of truth in the story; at any rate, it brought vividly home to me, as never before, a sense of the actual corporeal existence of those figures usually so mystical, — our Saviour and his apostles. Under the tomb in the centre of this transept, also, which is handsomely adorned with serpentine and alabaster, are alleged to lie some of the portions of St. Luke's earthly frame. Another interesting place in this same quarter of the city is the garden of the Palazzo Giustinian, which we found not far from S. Antonio, on the north side of the Via Cesarotti running eastward from the Piazza del Santo. The palazzo itself is a later construction, on the site of the Early-Renaissance palace of Alvise Cor- naro; but in the garden to the rear still remain the delightful casino, loggia, and arcades built for Cor- naro by Falconetto, about 1524. The latter was then over sixty years of age, at the height of his powers. Bart. Ridolfi collaborated in executing the rich stucco decorations, and Dom. Campagnola in painting the PADUA AND S. ANTONIO 93 Raphaelesque frescoes. Their combined work produced a charming example of the fanciful, high-Renaissance, palatial architecture and decoration, on mythological lines, in the manner of Giulio Romano that glorified the superb Reggia of the Gonzaghi; almost the only example of that work still remaining to Padua, and, considering all things, in fair condition. The two- storied arcades, prettily draped with vines, connect the rear loggia with the casino, and the latter with the palace, running along their eastern sides. The loggia, consists of open arcades surmounted by a single large hall, used for banquets; a purely classical, stone struc- ture, adorned with statues in external niches, and stucco-framed frescoes in the archways. In the casino many small rooms, elegantly decorated on their ceil- ings with stucchi and arabesques, surround the octa- gonal music-room of the ground floor and the open loggia of the upper; the latter, as well as the portal, being further adorned with marble divinities posed in niches. There was another prominent building of Padua which we had not yet visited, — the so-called Scuola del Carmine, adjacent to the church of that name which we had passed on our walk to and from the sta- tion. I remember that we went to it on the afternoon of this same day; and after briefly looking over the well-proportioned church, with its excellent specimen of Varotari (Padovanino) on the last altar to the right, we were passing through the passage on the east side leading to the annexed cloister, when we encount- ered the parroco himself. He was a tall, spare, broad- shouldered man of about forty, neatly dressed, with classic, intellectual features and handsome eyes, — one of that fine type of Italian gentlemen, courteous and learned, who cheerfully resign all ambitions for 94 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY a life of well-doing and brotherly love. He was in- stantly interested in our quest and in rendering us what service he could: took us into the cloister, where a number of small boys were playing, pointed out the beauties of its old columns and arches, told us of the school which had taken the place of the bygone monks, and finally conducted us to the former oratorio, — a large chamber next the street, — where he ex- plained with eloquent criticism the frescoes covering its walls. Then with rare thoughtfulness and dignity he left us alone to consider the paintings, impressed deeply by his powerful but delightful personality. "You see," I said to my companions, "there are still Italians like Doctor Antonio." Yet this was no very exceptional parroco; hundreds such, perhaps thousands, live their modest, unselfish lives, all over Italy; I have met a score of them myself, first and last. The frescoes that still shone brightly from the four walls of the low-roofed chapel, were divided into a dozen large scenes, with figures near life-size, impressively scattered before charming landscapes and architect- ure, — of striking differences in style and treatment, yet all of light tone and coloring, and collectively of most engaging effect. They portray scenes from the life of the Virgin and her parents, and were executed by Titian and several Paduan cinquecentists. The poorest, ascribed to the lesser artist, Dario Campag- nola, are fortunately on the window wall ; on the long space of the left wall are- four by Girolamo da Santa Croce, better than most of his other preserved works, of a composition and movement that are dignified, graceful, and pleasing, though lacking in individual grace of feature, and expression; their realism, too, is injured by the too general introduction of six- teenth-century costumes alongside the Biblical per- PADUA AND S. ANTONIO 95 sonages. In the Sposalizio young long-hosed gallants of the cinquecento even stand on the platform beside the bridegroom. By some critics these four tableaux are accredited to Giulio Campagnola, the father of Titian's pupil, Domenico. The three pictures of the Nativity, the Circumcision, and the Magi, on the entrance-wall, by Dom. Campagnola, have figures more natural and better modeled, of excellent spacing and disposition, though also wanting the divine spark of genius. The group of St. Joseph, the Virgin, and the Divine Child just born, is especially attractive. But when we turned to the altar-wall, true genius struck us with its power, never better emphasized than by these surroundings : it was a Titian, sadly injured, but glowing still in all its harmonies of line and color, — the meeting of Saints Joachim and Anna at the Golden Gate. What a contrast to the others were these forms of solidity and actuality, with their pro- found expression of true love relieved from fears. Beside them, on the altar, was a contrast still greater as to beauty, — a little canvas of the Madonna and Child by Palma Vecchio, of his exquisite pureness of line and richness of shade. It was the same lovely, noble countenance that looks forth from his Santa Barbara at Venice, and is possessed by so many of his illustrious women. The remainder of our stay in Padua was devoted to the objects of minor interest, concerning which I shall be brief. Two of them are found in the central section: the Scuola S, Rocco, abutting on the little Piazza of S. Lucia, and the Church of S. Pietro, a little west of the University Library. The latter contains pictures by Varotari and Palma Giovane, and a colored terra- cotta relief by Bellano; the main hall of the former is pleasantly frescoed by Titian's disciples, — Gualtiero, 96 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Dom. Campagnola, and Stefano dall' Arziere. In the southern section, S. Michele, just beyond Ezzelino's castle, contains some interesting, early, anonymous frescoes; and in S. Maria in Vanzo, close at hand on the east, may be seen some of Dom. Campagnola's best work, besides a good Entombment by Jacopo Bassano, and a splendid, though injured. Madonna with Saints by Bart. Montagna of Vicenza. In the eastern section, a good walk takes one first to S. Francesco, a short way beyond Dante's house; where he finds a delightful series of frescoes by Titian's pupil, Girolamo del Santo, a high-altar piece by Paolo Vero- onese (representing the Ascension) , examples of Palma Giovane and Dom. Campagnola, and the fragments of the splendid bronze tomb of Pietro Roccabonella, which was begun by Bellano and finished by Riccio. Continuing from this eastward, past the great building of the Ospitale Civile, one reaches the little Church of S. Massimo, in the street of the same name, with its three fine specimens of the art of G. B. Tiepolo; and some distance ^beyond that, at the eastern limits of the city, he arrives at the imposing Renaissance gate of the Porta Portello, which was designed in 1518 by Guglielmo Gigli of Bergamo, in the form of a Roman triumphal arch, very richly decorated, — an inter- mediate between the styles of the Lombardi and Pal- ladio. Two other city gates, both constructed by Falconetto, are worthy of inspection by him who makes a long stay, — the Porta S. Giovanni and the Porta Savonarola; they are excellent examples of the most classical period of the Revival. CHAPTER IV VICENZA THE PALATIAL Beneath is spread like a green sea The waveless plain of Lombardy, Bounded by the vaporous air. Islanded by cities fair. The old words of Shelley repeated themselves softly in my mind as I looked from the window of the express which was rushing northwestward to Vicenza. So perfectly flat was the ground that even this slight elevation commanded quite a view, — always the same: innumerable fields of wheat and Indian corn, occasional orchards, with garlands of vines swinging from tree to tree in Umbrian fashion, then corn again, always corn, lifting its tall stalks in countless parallel rows that waved gently in the early morning breeze. Between the fields ran lines of trees as fences, often also across the fields in rows, a rod or so apart, — elm, ash, beech, horse-chestnut, and especially the deli- cate mulberry, for the silk- worm cultivation; while willows in general shaded the banks of the many ir- rigating-ditches, and tall poplars marked the frequent roads, breaking the cold winds that sweep the plain in winter and early spring. Richness was the distinguishing characteristic of this wonderful alluvial country, and denseness of pop- ulation, — the two concomitant qualities that have made the nations fight for it since time immemorial. The ploughed or upturned earth was always black and loamy, looking of primeval wealth; the crops had 98 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY a growth, the vegetation a luxuriance, such as one seldom sees anywhere else, — the only discordant element being the stunted majority of the trees, stout knobby trunks crowned with sprouts of this year's shooting, that showed the practice prevalent here as elsewhere in Italy of stripping off the boughs for fuel. The peasants in fact have nothing else to burn. But the obtruding feature of the landscape was the con- stant presence of habitations; everywhere over the meadows rose the white walls of houses, shining from surrounding foliage, sometimes single but as often in village groups ; — always the presence of man, be- trayed if in no other way by the never-absent cam- panili of his churches. When I think of Lombardy, that image rises in my mind, — of slender towers soaring far above a great sea of vegetation, capped with spires or pointed cupolas, upon belfries of round arches and white stone shafts; near at hand, in the middle distance, far-away and haze-shrouded, each marks an invisible town, with scores or hundreds of teeming, crowded old dwellings, dominated by their parish churches with swelling Byzantine domes, that often are seen afar beside the campanili ; and if one stops to listen, in the leaf -rustling silence there steals upon the ear the music of their bells, at early morn, at sun-stilled noon, at balmy, roseate eventide, surg- ing from every direction over the tree-tops, blending into a chime whose mellow tones seem laden with all the sorrows of the tragic past. Often the train ran through, or by, these little plain-towns, affording quick glimpses of dirty, cobble- paved streets, shadowed by tall, crumbling, dirty buildings, with old stucco walls stained or crudely colored, dark archways, littered courtyards, sunlit piazzas occupied by ancient well-covers and women .^ VICEXZA. PALAZZO D A RAGIONE. (PALLADIO.) VICENZA THE PALATIAL 99 filling jars, dilapidated rococo church fagades, narrow ways blocked by clumsy wagons harnessed to sleepy oxen, and everywhere children, rolling in the dirt, playing, crying, running beside the track. When passed at a little distance they were more pleasing to the eye, — the solidly massed white walls seen through intervening verdure, with their uniform red- tiled roofs, little surrounding gardens, and picturesque towers soaring against the blue. All these small un- walled towns are as much a development of the three last centuries as are the solitary farmhouses that now dot the landscape, — an evolution of more peaceful days. Often we passed close to one of the latter, but its wall-inclosed front yard littered with straw and manure-piles, its filthy stables and pig-pens under the same roof (sometimes under the very floor) of the living-rooms, its whole appearance and air of decay and neglect, showed little advancement over the ignor- ance of the Middle Ages. Of course there were excep- tions, — dwellings clean and well-kept; and now and then my eyes were also gladdened by the sight of a charming villa, set amidst lawns and shady grounds. The roads were very frequent, invariably of splendid form and firmness, and their travelers were invariably the slow-moving teams of white or creamy oxen. The streams were fully as frequent, of a number and size always astonishing to the traveler upon his first visit to Lombardy, bearing swiftly to the sea the endless melted snows of the Alps, and often adorned with old mills and huge revolving wheels. About the only re- minders or relics of the distant past were the occa- sional, battlemented, dark walls and towers of a castle of the dark ages, looming over the tree-tops as grimly as in days of lance and foray, though often now but a ruined and empty shell. 100 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Such were the regular features of the plain; but to-day, as the express rushed on without a stop, my gaze roamed on beyond them to the south, to an appearance not always present, that crowned the landscape with its majesty. This was the lofty out- line of the Euganean Hills, upon which the poet penned those lines about the plain. There they swelled in the blue, hazy distance, in all their beauty of curving lines and smiling, village-dotted flanks, add- ing to the scene that touch of grandeur withr ut which its flatness might become monotonous. It is a curious position that they occupy, so far isolated from the mother Alps; but they are not alone in this. For, as we left them gradually to rear, washed upon the west by a sea of verdure that stretched to the horizon, from this same sea ahead I saw another hill-chain rising, the brother of the Euganean in general shape and out- line. It was the Monti Berici, the first outwork of the Alps thrown southward upon the plain, as the Colli Euganei are the second. So much nearer to the moun- tains are the Berici that a narrow valley only inter- venes on their northwest; and it is exactly at the east- ern end of this defile that is located the city of Vicenza. From the rich slopes of the wooded hills, dotted white with a thousand villas, my thoughts turned to the ancient town which we were so rapidly approaching, looking backward from its strategical situation in command of this important pass, to the part in history that it has played. Vicenza, it is true, has never been large enough to act a leading part, and has been aflSliated in turn with the fortunes of her stronger neighbors, Padua, Verona, Milan, and Venice; but she was important enough to be one of the first prizes for which those powers hun- gered and fought, and has consequently endured more VICENZA THE PALATIAL 101 vicissitudes than if she had been independent. When she had struggled from early medieval darkness into a self-sustaining municipality, which fought bravely as a member of the two Lombard Leagues against the two Imperial Fredericks, — like Padua and all the cities of this region, she fell into the diabolical clutches of Ezzelino, and encountered the greatest disaster of her history in being assaulted by the Im- perial troops in 1236, and almost utterly destroyed by sack anr\ fire. When she re-arose with courage from her ashes, there immediately ensued one of the strang- est occurrences of all times, — the career of Era Gio- vanni of Vicenza. This extraordinary man was a Dominican monk, who "undertook the noble task of pacifying Lom- bardy. Every town in the north of Italy was at that time torn by the factions of the Guelphs and Ghibel- lines; private feuds crossed and intermingled with political discords; and the savage tyranny of Ezzelino had shaken the fabric of society to its foundations. It seemed utterly impossible to bring this people for a moment to agreement. Yet what popes and princes had failed to achieve, the voice of a single friar accom- plished."^ Era Giovanni commenced his wonderful preaching at Bologna in 1233, where his eloquent de- pictions of the horrors of warfare, and the beauties of reconciliation and forgiveness, so moved every class of the populace that enmities were laid aside and order installed. Then he moved to Padua, where he was received with great enthusiasm, and soon accomplished similar results. "Treviso, Eeltre, Bel- luno, Conegliano, and Romano, the very nests of the grim brood of Ezzelino, yielded to the charm. Verona, where the Scalas were about to reign, Vicenza, Man- ^ Symonds, Age of the Despots, Appendix iv. 102 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY tua, and Brescia, all placed themselves at the disposi- tion of the monk, and prayed him to reform their constitution."^ Finally Fra Giovanni played his great stroke, and "bade the burghers of all the towns where he had preached to meet him on the plain of Pasquara, in the country of Verona. . . . More than four hundred thou- sand persons . . . appeared on the scene. This multi- tude included the populations of Verona, Mantua, Brescia, Padua, and Vicenza, marshaled under their several standards," besides contingents from many other places, and a large aggregation of princes and ruling nobles. So forcibly did the friar address them, with such powers of hypnotic influence, that he in- duced all present to swear to a friendly confedera- tion, — another league of the Lombard cities, which should establish peace upon a firm foundation. What stranger incident in history than this ! Sad it is, then, to see with what human frailty Fra Giovanni undid his glorious work. Giddy with success, he made the people of ViceYiza and Verona appoint him their sov- ereign lord, with "the titles of Duke and Count. The people, believing him to be a saint, readily acceded to his wishes." But once in possession of absolute power, the friar's whole nature seemed to undergo a change; the frenzy of persecuting fancied heretics seized him, and his blood-guiltiness became like that of Ezzelino. At last, when he had burned at the stake sixty prominent Veronese in a body, the populace rose against him in arms, beat down his guards, and in- carcerated him in a dungeon. He came forth from it, eventually, to find himself without a follower in the land, and sank into an obscure grave. Ezzelino kept his heavy hand upon Vicenza until ^ Symonds, Age of the Despots, Appendix iv. VICENZA THE PALATIAL 103 his death in 1259; but even then she could not secure freedom, for the ambitious leaders of Padua proceeded to subjugate her, and asserted their rule until 1311, when she became the object of the cupidity of the Delia Scala, newly risen despots of Verona. War for Vicenza's possession then ensued, in which the Pad- uans were led by that brilliant soldier Jacopo da Carrara, whom seven years later they elected to be their lord; but the celebrated Can Grande, greatest of the Delia Scala, was at the head of the Veronese forces, and dictated Vicenza's cession in 1319 at the gates of Padua herself. So was the example of Ezze- lino followed, here and all over North Italy, and his death succeeded by the upgrowth of a swarm of tyrants, to whom the fierce local struggles between Guelfs and Ghibellines gave their opportunity. As time went on, the lesser potentates sank one by one under the assaults of the more powerful, and their territories were absorbed in the larger states. Thus the Scaligers, after erecting under Can Grande a king- dom of huge proportions, fell victims in rapid decay to the power of the Milanese Visconti, who seized Vicenza in 1387. She became a part of the wide territories accumulated by that greatest and vilest of medieval despots, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, the Viper, whose unexpected death in 1404 alone probably saved all Italy from union under his yoke. His vast posses- sions, from the Alps to the states of Rome, gathered by such an infinitude of baseness and treachery, crumbled to pieces at a stroke, — divided, not only between his sons, but amongst the neighboring de- spoiled and covetous powers. Vicenza was claimed and marched upon by the Carrara, which proved to be the latters' undoing; for while their army stood before the Vicentine walls, Gian Galeazzo's widow called the 104 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Venetian Republic to her aid. It was a fatal call. Up to this time Venice had chiefly confined her mighty energies to the sea; now she turned them definitely upon the mainland; with irresistible power she swept the Carrara out of Padua, and not only seized that city for her own, but also Vicenza, Bassano, and Verona, as "the price for her support of the Visconti," — who had no option but to submit. These cities, and their outlying territories, were the second enlargement of the Veneto, which had commenced with the Trevi- san Marches taken some time before from Padua. Vicenza, flattered, embellished, and given a measure of self-government by her new conqueror, found now that peace and comfort which she had hitherto vainly sought, and became flrmly devoted to the Venetian sway. She vigorously supported the Mistress of the Sea in her succeeding wars of the quattrocento, endur- ing on one occasion, for her sake, a siege that reduced the inhabitants to eating rats and grass, and almost decimated them, until, after months of heroic suffer- ing, the enemy were dislodged by a succoring Vene- tian army. Venice always stood by her subject cities; but when the League of Cambrai in 1508 united against her all the great powers of Europe, seeing resistance vain, she politically offered to Vicenza and the other towns complete freedom of action, that they might surrender without destruction. Vicenza accordingly yielded to the Imperialists; but soon after, ashamed of such conduct, re-tendered her al- legiance to the Republic. This manly though imprud- ent course brought upon the city its second great disaster; for the Prince of Anhalt proceeded to march upon her, in 1510, dispersed the insufficient Venetian forces of Commandant Baglioni, and seized the place with fury and rapine. *'The people of Vicenza also VICEXZA. MADOXXA AND SAINTS, IX THE CHURCH OF SAX STEFAXO. (PALMA VECCHIO.I VICENZA THE PALATIAL 105 fled before the invaders; but about six thousand, who had thought to conceal themselves in a disused quarry- near the town, were tracked to their hiding-place, and all of them suffocated by the orders of a French cap- tain of adventure, named d'Herisson." ^ Even this terrible event did not destroy the people's Venetian patriotism, and at the dissolution of the League of Cambrai, along with all their sister towns, they returned voluntarily and gladly to their old allegiance ; — wonderful testimony to the beneficence of the Republic's rule. At the final extinction of the Republic by Bonaparte, Vicenza shared the fate and vicissitudes of her neighbors, which ended in the hateful Austrian domination. In the glorious Risorgi- mento she furnished more than her share of the heroes, and again played a noble and courageous part, espe- cially in the war of 1848-49. The Austrian general Nugent was marching west- ward his corps in May, 1848, to unite with Marshal Radetsky's army, shut up in the Quadrilateral; but when he came to Vicenza, the little city, guarded only by a few thousand volunteers and Swiss Papal troops, to the Marshal's astonishment put up a formidable defense. Across the valley, across the flanks of the enfolding hills, everywhere the heavy Austrian at- tacks were intrepidly rolled back for hour after hour, the women assisting at the barricades, the showers of shells falling in the streets being greeted only by shouts of "Viva l' Italia!" So roughly were the Aus- trians handled that they gave it up, and started across the Berici Range in the night, toward Verona. Yet a few days later Radetsky tried to take his revenge, by sending back 24,000 men and 54 guns to punish the insolent town. ^ Brown, Venice: An Historical Sketch of the Republic. 106 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY The Vicentines were now reinforced from Venice, and from Padua by the troops of General Dorando, who took command; and all night long on the 23d of May, while the lightning vied in flashing with the guns, the attacks of the enemy on Monti Berici were met and driven back. "Fiery missiles fell into the town, the cannon roaced on the walls and from the barricades; at last, on the next morning, after pro- digious feats of valor, in which the Swiss troops took their full share, the enemy retired, after having thrown the dead and wounded into the flames. . . . Thus Vicenza for the second time had to congratulate itself on its escape." ^ Sad it is, then, to know, after such heroism, that Radetsky himself returned on the 8th of June, mounted the hills to the south, and, ad- vancing on their crests, succeeded in commanding the city with his guns, and so forcing its surrender. "Thus fell Vicenza; its defense is the more remarkable as the city was without regular fortifications, and held out simply from the courage of its brave defenders." ^ Vicenza also attained an honored place in the art of the Renaissance, developing her own distinctive schools of painting and architecture. But in the former her importance was due to three men only: not Mantegna, in spite of his being born here, for he labored elsewhere, — but the late quattrocentist Gio- vanni Speranza, and the early cinquecentists Bar- tolommeo Montagna and Giovanni Buonconsiglio, — the great part of whose works are still confined to their native town, beautifying its churches and palaces. Buonconsiglio's tendencies were clearly Venetian, in ^ Emilio Dandolo, The Italian Volunteers, or L»mbard Rifle Brigade. ^ Ibid. — It was here that Massimo d' Azelio, while taking his part bravely in the defense, received the musket-ball in his leg. As he wrote to his daughter from Ferrara on June 17, — "Dopo aver fatto tutti gli forzi possibili, si e capitolato, avendo avuto onorevoli condizioni." VICENZA THE PALATIAL 107 coloring and composition, and he attained consider- able beauty in his pietistic pictures; but Montagna*s was a stronger and more individual spirit, develop- ing marked characteristics, with peculiar, powerful figures, striking expressiveness, and much study of realism, — with at the same time much repose, and exceeding loveliness in tone and line. So distinctive are his works, in their breadth of conception gained by his years of travel, that for the art-lover they alone are worth a journey to Vicenza. Giovanni Bellini, Cima da Conegliano, and particularly Palma Vecchio, turned aside from their Venetian works to paint some splendid canvases for the churches of Vicenza, that are also well worth the visit in themselves. But it is in the department of architecture that Vicenza shone preeminent; for she produced Tommaso Fromentone, Vincenzo Scamozzi, Calderari, and, chief of all, the great Andrea Palladio.^ The latter was born and educated here, and spent his best years in adorning the city that he loved, until the imprint of his genius shone from her every street, and she be- came the palatial Vicenza that we see to-day. Not only did Palladio rebuild his own town into a vision of beauty, — it was his masterful mind that gave a new impulse in the middle cinquecento to the already decaying architecture of the Renaissance, reverted it to the first principles of strength and harmony of lines, without depending on adornment for effect, and re-discovered that extensive use of outer columns which was more true to the Roman styles, and has been to the modern world the chief legacy of the classic. In a word, it is to Palladio that we owe the final, predominant form of Renaissance architecture. ^ Vicenza is further distinguished as the home of Italy's greatest recent novelist, Fogazzaro, who died there but a few months ago. 108 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY But every Englishman, and every American, owes him a special debt: it was from Palladio's style, set forth in his palaces and churches at Venice and Vi- cenza, that Inigo Jones and the English artists, at- tracted at last from their long resistance, drew the forms of the English Renaissance, — which, lightened and slightly modified in America by the use of wooden materials, became her one native style, the Colonial. The revolution which Palladio accomplished, he did by discarding all that had immediately preceded him, and going straight back to the study and applica- tion of antique forms and lines, as seen in the build- ings still remaining from Roman times. Symonds says of him: "The greatest builder of this period was Andrea Palladio of Vicenza, who combined a more complete, analytical knowledge of antiquity with a firmer adherence to rule and precedent, than even the most imitative of his forerunners. . . . One great public building of Palladio — the Palazzo della Ragione at Vicenza — may be cited as perhaps the culminating point of pure Renaissance architecture."^ And Goethe: "I say of Palladio, he was a man really and intrinsically great, whose greatness was out- wardly manifested. . . . What an imposing effect have his edifices. . . . There is indeed something divine about his designs, which may be exactly com- pared to the creations of the great poet, who out of truth and falsehood elaborates something between them both, and charms us with its borrowed exist- ence. ^ The building mentioned by Symonds — the old Broletto, or town-hall, of Vicenza — was externally rebuilt by Palladio in a form at once so magnificent and so joyously beautiful that it is not only his mas- ^ Symonds, Fine Arts. * Goethe, Autobiography ; Letters from Italy. VICENZA THE PALATIAL 109 terpiece, and the culminating point of Renaissance architecture^ but one of the very few greatest Italian structures of all time and all places. I knew this before going there. I had learnt that one had no right to think he knew Italy, who had not observed and studied this chef d'ceuvre of her artistic perihelion. It therefore was the loadstone that drew me to Vicenza, with an impatience momentarily greater as my train approached the foot of the Monti Berici. We crossed a small stream; it was the Bacchiglione, — still the Bacchiglione, — which waters Vicenza long before it reaches Padua. The Vicentines, when at their frequent wars with the Paduans, as hereinbefore stated, used to dam it up south of their city; which converted the land east of Monti Berici into a swamp, but deprived Padua of drinking-water and power. Dante speaks of this, — Ma tosto fia che Padova al palude Cangera I'aqua che Vicenza bagna Per esser al dover le genti crudi. Immediately after, we crossed another small stream, — likewise flowing southward, — the Retrone, which here unites with the Bacchiglione, after the former has circled the city upon the south and the latter upon the north. Then we stopped in a covered station, surprisingly large for a place of 45,000; from which I emerged to find the town itself well to the north, and a wide stretch of grassy level fields intervening, cov- ered near the walls with a handsome grove of giant plane trees, I gave my bag to a facchino and started on foot over the avenue across the fields, which proved to lead straight north to the city's southwest- ern gate ; but before I reached the gate I had a charm- ing sight, — a promenade diverging southeasterly 110 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY from the avenue, through the plane wood, with arboreal monarchs on each side arching its far, shady vista. Here, as I subsequently learned, repair the youth and fashion of Vicenza on summer evenings, to stroll amid the scents of greenery with the lamps of fireflies lighting the shadows. The Porta Castello opened before me, an old arch- way between medieval buildings, dominated by the tall picturesque tower which the Scaligers built during their possession, to keep watch and ward over the city and country. Through the gate I entered a little piazza of the same name, extending transversely, and saw Vicenza's main thoroughfare, the Corso Principe Umberto, leading straight before me to the northeast for a long way, — narrow but dignified, shadowed by impressive Palladian palaces. It in fact crosses the city, to the bridge on the northeast over the Bacchi- glione. But what immediately caught my eye with interest was a tall, two-storied, unfinished structure at the south end of the piazza, only two windows in width, but of exceeding grace and power combined; it was the celebrated Palazzo del Conte Porto al Cas- tello, once called by the people the Ca' del Diavolo, and which, so many authorities allege, would if finished have been Palladio's most handsome private palace. It was not completed, as Zanella puts it, because "I'animodeinostrinobili era maggiore delle rendite,"^ By this noble fragment the visitor is introduced at his first step to Palladio's principal method of con- struction, — the running of pilasters or half-columns the height of the upper stories, surmounted by a heavy frieze and cornice. Here they are Corinthian half- columns, standing upon very massive pedestals which occupy the whole of the spaces between the simple * Giacomo Zanella, Vita di Andrea Palladio. VICENZA THE PALATIAL 111 basement windows; while tlie single upper story is loftier than two of usual size, and its windows between the columns are adorned with pediments and heavy balconies. There is no other ornamentation, except the relieved garlands of the frieze; yet it is handsomer than any mass of decoration could be. On the left side of the piazza stands a statue of Gari- baldi (they all look about alike, these statues of the Liberator), and next it on the northeast, at the be- ginning of the Corso, a palace of Vincenzo Scamozzi's, — the Palazzo Bonin. It is a good example of his powers: an open Doric colonnade on the first story, without arches, Ionic half-columns on the second story, separating windows like those of the Ca' del Diavolo, and surmounted by a continuous heavy cornice, — and a short third story, of Corinthian pilasters between simple squared windows. Like Palladio, Scamozzi used columns, and heavily pedimented windows, for most of his effects of grace or power. ^ — But next to this building, on the left, was my destination, the principal inn existing to-day in Vicenza, located in an old palace behind an attractive, well-flowered gar- den. The former "Hotel de la Ville," once so praised by travelers, has disappeared; but I found this Al- bergo Roma excellent for a small place. Its stately old rooms and halls made me feel like a visitor to some noble house; which impression was enhanced when we sat down to dine that evening in the open, scented air of the garden, with screening bushes shut- ting out the everyday world. In the afternoon, however, when the sun had sunk a little toward the western hills, I started out for my ' How well he succeeded will be remembered by all travelers, when they call to mind his magnificent Procuratie Nuove, on the south side of the Piazza of St. Mark. 112 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY tour of first impressions ; and never have I had a more delightful walk, more full of enjoyable surprises and fresh bursts of beauty or picturesqueness. "In a word, this sweet Towne has more well-built Palaces than any of its dimensions in all Italy, besides a number begun and not yet finished (but of stately design)." ^ These "contribute in the whole to give Vicenza an appearance of splendour and beauty not common even in Italy." ^ I had no sooner stepped from the garden into the street than the first of the long series confronted me upon the opposite side, — the Palazzo Loschi, built in the eighteenth century, nevertheless of Palladian style. The heavy half -columns along the upper stories, the stern basement, and rich entabla- ture, lent an air of grandeur and impressiveness to the narrow way; and here was prominent a later char- acteristic of this style, the row of projecting human heads, carved from stone, with fearful grimaces and distortions, ornamenting the keystones of the win- dow arches. These were positively so grotesque and varied that I 'stood spellbound for a moment under their evil glances, as if they carried hypnotic influ- ence. Strange indeed are the eccentric channels into which decadent art will run.^ Away before me to the northeast stretched the Corso, resplendent with other palaces at intervals as far as the eye could reach, — an endless array of shops and inviting caffes in the ground floors, the narrow sidewalks and pavement thronged with a crowd fresh from their midday siesta. As I strolled along I found ^ Evelyn, Diary and Letters. ^ Eustace, Classical Tour through Italy. ' In this palace was preserved till recently one of Italy's most valuable artistic relics, — which America can now pride herself upon possessing, for it hangs in Mrs. . Gardner's gallery at Boston. This is Giorgione's famous Christ bearing the Cross. viceinZA. garde: F PALAZZO QUIRINL VICENZA THE PALATIAL 113 that by no means were all the fine buildings in Palla- dio's manner; there were Gothic palaces, with charm- ing pointed windows, and many of the Earlier Renais- sance forms, of the quattrocento and first half of the cinquecento. Most pleasant of all, I found that the entrance-hallways, including those in simple unadorned fagades, almost invariably opened directly into gar- dened courts; so that the eye was gladdened by a succession of engaging vistas, through hallways and ornamental wickets, of green masses of shrubbery and gorgeous flower-beds. This is a characteristic of Vicenza that never fails to impress the most careless traveler, and ever after calls up, with the mention of her name, visions of groves and blossoms framed by old cortili.^ Beyond the second street on the left (still narrower, and darker, were these little side ways) loomed up the large and picturesque Palazzo Thiene, and beyond the third street the double Palazzo Braschi, — all three splendid Gothic edifices of the quattrocento, built of brick once plastered but now more or less bare again, with balconies and pointed windows of stone or marble framework, exquisite in design and delicate enrichment. Most of these Gothic arches were trefoil, with plain heavy cusps, foliage capitals, spiral mouldings at the angles of the jambs, and dainty balustrades or bal- conies; many were also slightly ogive, with delicate labels, capped by ornamental balls or vases. Still farther on, rose on the opposite or south side the con- ^ Some of the noble mansions, nearer the outskirts of the city, are backed by gardens of wide extent and noted loveliness, which are well worth seeing when admission can be procured. Particularly pleasing are those of the Marchese Salvi, and of the Palazzo Quirini, with their ordered profusion of groves, walks, lawns, and shrubberies, embellished everywhere by marble sculptures and fountains. 114 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY trasting Palazzo Porto, with one of Scamozzi*s monu- mental f agades, as powerful and grandiose in its ponder- ous columns as tiie Gothic structures were light and fanciful; and through its wide central hall was visible a beautiful courtyard, ennobled by fine Doric col- umns and entablature. Then, beyond the Via Zanella leading to the left, I came on that side to the fairest Gothic building of them all, the famous Palazzo da Schio, looking as if the pride of the Grand Canal of Venice had been bodily transported to soar magni- ficently above this narrow way. From its second and third stories, besides many single lovely windows, shone two delightful colonnades of four ogive arches, cusped and labeled, with slender marble shafts crowned by exuberant capitals, and connected at their bases by balustrades; on each side of them opened single windows of similar style, adorned with balconies pro- jecting widely on elaborately carved consoles, — at whose upper corners sat the quaintest imaginable little marble figures of putti and lions, holding armorial shields. Close beyond this again on the left, I passed the dwell- ing of Palladio, having a simple early f agade with broad spaces intended to be frescoed, and once so adorned, as the lingering fragments gave evidence. Finally the Corso debouched into the northern end of a spacious piazza, named after Vittorio Emanuele II; and front- ing it on the corner to the right, I saw the grand pal- ace built by Palladio in 1566 for the noble family of Chieregati, now devoted to the municipal collections of art, antiquities, and natural history. It is cer- tainly one of his most imposing creations: on the ground floor is an extensive Doric colonnade, without arches, with simple Doric frieze; and the Ionic colon- nade above this is broken in the centre by a project- VICENZA THE PALATIAL 115 ing pavilion q,dorned with half -columns, over the pedi- ments of whose windows recline sculptured figures nearly life-size; the whole effect being monumental rather than graceful, — which is increased by the row of statues upon the eaves. At the northeast angle of the piazza I saw another of Palladio's buildings, the celebrated Teatro Olympico which he constructed on ancient lines ; naught was visible on the outside, how- ever, but a mass of irregular, unfaced structures sur- rounding a wide, cluttered entrance-court; and a sign informed me that the ingress now was upon the back street.^ Putting off this visit until later, I returned along the Corso as I had come, passing through the arcades which line its central part, and not turning until I had almost reached the hotel. There I veered to the south by the short Via Loschi, beside the palace of that name, and came quickly to a little piazza overshad- owed on the east by a huge church, whose fagade was remarkably like that of S. Antonio at Padua. It was the Duomo. Its front is crossed by the same five, large, recessed Gothic arches, the central one contain- ing a simple squared doorway and the next two hold- ing lancet windows, — while in the centre of the flat gable opens a broad rose-window. It is not very hand- some. I advanced into the widening of the piazza on the south side of the church, where stands a recent * From that street behind the theatre the Ponte degli Angeli spans the Bacchiglione, connecting with the eastern quarter of the city; whose six thoroughfares radiate fan-like from the Piazza Venti Settembre at the bridge's end. Here, not far distant, may be visited the Church of S. Pietro Apostolo, with its statues of Adam and Eve by Albanese, and its beauti- ful relief of Charity over the portal, executed in marble by Canova. — From the southern end of Piazza Vittorio Emanuele the Viale of the same name leads southward, — a shady embankment dividing the two rivers, which affords a pleasant promenade; and the walk may be continued to the marble arch of Palladio at the foot of Monti Berici. 116 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY monument to Victor Emanuel, overlooked on the west by the long, very attractive fagade of the Episcopal Palace. This pleased me exceedingly by its noble simplicity : the basement heavily rusticated, with un- framed oblong windows, the upper story adorned only with Doric half -columns, between balconied windows which were framed by Ionic pilasters upholding pedi- ments. Yet it was constructed as late as 1819. The building itself, however, is fully four centuries old; as is proved by the charming court-fagade, or arcade (to the right within), which was erected by Fromen- tone in 1494. It is a little masterpiece, worthy of the fame of him who designed the glorious Municipio of Brescia; and by the Vicen tines is often proudly called, after its author, the Loggia di Fromentone. I entered the Duomo, to find myself in a long, low, Gothic-arched nave, with no aisles, but chapels open- ing directly from each side; and saw at the end a highly elevated choir of Renaissance lines, with a dome just before it. Little light came through the narrow windows to relieve the dusk, which was al- ready somewhat peopled with persons at their after- noon devotions. Making the round of the chapels, I discovered but three interesting works of art, — a canvas of Madonna and Saints by Montagna, fourth on the left, a Death of the Virgin by Lorenzo Ve- neziano, fifth on the right, and the elaborate monu- ment of Bishop Girolamo Schio, executed by Palla- dio's disciples, Girolamo Pironi and Maestro Giovanni. The Montagna was unfortunately greatly faded, but I could see that the colors must once have been rich and harmonious; the saintly figures were still grace- ful and pleasing, though a little disappointing in their want of feeling and expression. There was still time enough before dinner to visit VICENZA THE PALATIAL 117 Vicenza's great monument, Palladio's capo di lavoro; and I turned my steps eastward with a heart beating somewhat faster than usual, full at the same time of the keenest anticipations, and fear lest I should en- counter disappointment. The exterior of the Duomo's apse surprised me into a moment's stop, — a splendid construction all in red marble, with white basement and angle-strips, and large lancet windows; there are few, if any, in the plain-towns to surpass it. A narrow way, Via Garibaldi, runs from it eastward, parallel with Corso Umberto, between very old houses, little shops whose contents bulge upon the pavement, and stalls for the sale of every sort of produce. Following this, and threading my way through the crowd that traflBcked and gossiped, in a couple of blocks it ended suddenly before a mighty building of dazzling white arches that shone gloriously in the blaze of the sinking sun. It could be no other than the Basilica Palladiana. Lowering my eyes, I turned to the left, past a statue of Palladio, into the wide Piazza dei Signori stretching far to the east, — crossed to its northern side, and then faced about toward the Basilica. Never shall I forget the utter amazement that held me motionless, the bewildering sensation of not be- lieving my eyes, and the final rush of overwhelming feelings, — as the magnificent glowing spectacle tow- ered before me in the golden halo of sunset, like an enchantment or a dream of fairyland. The whole vast structure was of marble,^ glittering in the level sun- rays like some unreal edifice from hands that were more than mortal, — like the wondrous palace that sprang from earth at the touch of Aladdin's lamp, or ^ Marble, at least, to all intents and appearances; though as a fact it is a calcareous carbonate of extraordinary hardness, called, after the place of its quarrying, the pietradi Piovene. 118 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY that which the gods raised for Cadmus while he slept. The long rows of superb arches, one above the other, resting fairylike on beautiful columns free of walls, seemed to mount into the air without sustenance or weight, bearing against the blue the forms of heroes turned to stone by the Medusa's head. It was a lace- work of marble held aloft by unseen power, through whose pattern ran curves of ethereal grace, inter- threaded with countless pillars of elegance and maj- esty. No words could portray this sublime creation from the brain of man, no photograph reveal its daz- zling beauty in the sunset glow. Yet here it slept in this little town, like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty, unknown and unnoticed by the hordes of travelers who pass within a mile of it on the speeding cars, year after year. It was hard to realize that within that marble splendor stood an aged, brick, Gothic edifice of medi- eval times; yet so it was, and a closer inspection could just discern in the shadows of the deep arcades some of the pointed arches of the original Broletto. The latter was not a handsome building, and it was by order of the Signoria that Palladio in 1549 began the construction of this classic covering, — therefore one of his earliest works, although not completed until nearly seventy years later. ^ The lower of the two ^ The work of erection was supervised by Palladio himself for thirty years, up to his death in 1580; but it was not fully completed until 1614. He was aided, from time to time, by many of his pupils and followers. Praise, for instance, is especially due to the very talented Girolamo Pironi (author of the exquisite pilaster fronting the Cappella del Santo at Padua) for the many sculptures which embellish the free spaces of the lower arcade. Palladio's, however, was the guiding mind; and to him was given all praise by the commission to examine the artistic and historical monu- ments of Venetia, which was appointed by the Archduke Ferdinand Maxi- milian, Governor-General, in 1859. "This building" — they reported — "is without doubt the cajjolavoro of Palladio, and that in which he best VICENZA THE PALATIAL 119 arcades is of course Doric, and the upper Ionic; the arches in each case spring from coupled, detached columns, one behind the other, and are separated by piers adorned with long half-columns reaching from base to cornice. There is no other ornamentation, beyond the balustrades of the second story and the roof, and the statues surmounting the latter; the beauty of this wonderful edifice comes purely from its harmony of parts and lines, — the greatest exem- plar that I know of the truth that true loveliness lies not in adornment. Over the arcades soars from within a tall third story of contrasting heavy wall- spaces, topped by a huge, curving, tinned roof like that of the Salone at Padua; and these, I realized now, were of the primal building. My eyes wandered from the lofty arch of the roof to the still loftier tower that dominates the whole construction at its northeast angle, soaring into the clouds like the Mangia of Siena; square in shape, of unstuccoed brick, endowed with a slim elegance and lightness, it projects almost its whole width into the piazza at the eastern end of the fagade, and, far aloft, above a graceful belfry with double arches of white marble on each side, alters to an octagonal cylinder of three divisions, capped by a Byzantine-looking dome and columned lantern. This last is two hundred and sixty-five feet above the pavement. I walked to its foot, and observed there a large marble tablet in a classic frame of pilasters and entablature, bearing many names in rows: they were the Vicentines who had given their lives for their country in the Risorgi- mento; — and to my mind, as I looked, returned the demonstrated his knowledge of the application of the rules of ancient Roman architecture. The design is noble, simple, grandiose, harmonious." See Monumenti Artistici e Storici delle Provincie Venete. 120 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY picture of that terrible struggle of 1848 upon Monte Berici, wlien its slopes ran red with their valiant blood. Some twenty feet above this was a handsome Renais- sance archway relieved in marble, containing the sculptured figures of the Madonna, Child, and two Saints, — an engaging group, graceful and well exe- cuted. As far again above this stood the old Venetian Lion, of whitest marble and proudest mien, reminding me in an instant of what I had for the moment for- gotten, — that to the beneficence of the Republic's rule were due this great Basilica, and most of the splendors of the city. Beyond the tower, still fronting on the piazza, extends the addition to the Basilica, also built by Palladio, which is devoted to the courts, and called therefore the Tribunale, — an edifice of entirely dif- ferent style, having five stories of heavy stone walls pierced by regular and simple windows; while oppo- site this, equidistant at the eastern end of the piazza, rise the two Venetian columns, nobly proportioned, of shining marble, topped by the memorable figures of the Lion and the Saint. They looked so new to me as to suggest reproduction; but even at that it is ever touching, — this undying allegiance to the Mistress of the Sea, long after her sun of glory has sunk be- neath the horizon. I now faced about westward, and found new beau- ties irradiated by the sunset glow on the piazza's northern flank: chief of these, and very exceptional, the long fagade of the Monte di Pieta in the centre, glittering like a kaleidoscope from the vivid colors of new frescoes laid over all its wall-spaces from top to bottom. These were recently finished reproductions of the original paintings, that had utterly faded out in the rains and sun of several centuries. The build- VICENZA. BAPTISM OF CHRIST, IN THE CHURCH OF S. COROXA. (GIOVAXNI BELLIXI.) VICENZA THE PALATIAL 121 ing itself was plain, but the mass of gorgeous tableaux, designs, and crowning frieze made it radiant as a tropical flower; and closer inspection of the Biblical scenes depicted, revealed a pleasing excellence of com- position and action, at once decorative and dramatic. To the west of this palace, across a narrow side street, the three-storied Palazzo del Capitanio glis- tened in its heavy arches and wealth of ornament. Cubical in shape, its fagade separated into three di- visions by ponderous Corinthian half -columns of brick reaching from pavement to cornice, its three arches of the ground floor opening into a deep, shadowy loggia, — it is a strange building, almost purely a monument, erected by Palladio in 1571. The large windows over the arcade are adorned with massive balconies, and every foot of wall-space is covered with terra-cotta worked into figures and designs. This last character- istic is still more prominent on the side towards the street, which is adorned with half a dozen statues and decorated from top to bottom with still more cotta reliefs, of every sort, — human figures, masks, mus- ical instruments, scrolls, etc. The structure has there- fore a special interest, in being almost the only repre- sentative in Padua of the Renaissance method of terra-cotta decoration, which rose to such noble heights in the hands of the artists of Cremona and Milan. It evidently arrived here too late. — Of the statues on the street side, two, representing Peace and Victory, commemorate the Venetian victory of Lepanto over the Turks. Above the loggia stretches a single broad hall, used for meetings of the Signoria and other city bodies, which was adorned with ceiling-paintings by Fasolo, now removed to the Pinacoteca. Another edifice that now attracted my attention rose from the very centre of the painted Monte di 122 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Pieta, as different from the colored walls on each side as day is from night; this was another white marble fa- gade, of most exquisite, dainty, Renaissance lines, which caught on the rebound and flashed to my eyes, as I stood there watching, the last, roseate, sunset gleams from the Basilica. It consisted only of two delicate arcades, of three arches each, crowned by a baroque pediment adorned with a charming relief and five statues. Four Corinthian half-columns embellished each story, at the sides and between the arches; and in all the spandrils of the latter were reclining sculp- tured figures, women below and lovely putti above. One could hardly realize that this very classic edifice was a church, — the Church of S. Vincenzo, — for nothing more removed from religious ideals could be imagined; yet so it went in those extraordinary cinquecento days, when the whole populace was breathing the very air of antiquity, when priests and cardinals were connois- seurs in Greek mythology, and the very duomos were penetrated by goddesses disguised as saints. Through tTie middle of the Basilica runs a public passage from north to south, occupied, as well as the arcades, by the stalls of vendors of provisions; the upper floor was designed as the customary great hall, for the meetings of the large Communal Council, and the ground floor to serve as a covered market, — showing how little they then thought of the sights and smells which disgust us to-day.^ As I strolled through the passage at this evening hour, however, the stalls were all closed and boarded and their keep- ers gone. On the south side I found myself elevated a full story above the ground, which there is open as a small piazza in the shadows of tall old houses, and, to ^ The ball can still be seen, on application to the proper authority, but aside from its size has little of interest to repay the trouble. VICENZA THE PALATIAL 123 judge by the odor emanating from its deserted booths, is used as a fish market. A wide stairway descends from the arcade to this Piazza delle Erbe, and at its eastern side a bridge leaps from the palace to a picturesque, medieval brick tower, grim with heavily barred win- dows and battlements, evidently still occupied as a prison; the bridge itself is beautified by a lovely, triple. Renaissance window, that seems curiously out of place in such surroundings. Map in hand, I strolled down the piazza and took the first turning westward, somewhat beyond, to find myself in a very narrow, dark way sloping gently up- hill, labeled the Contrada Proti. (It is a peculiarity of Vicenza that most of her streets are called Contrada, instead of Via.) Quickly here upon the left appeared the object of which I was in search, — the very re- markable, so-called Casa Pigafetti. Its marble fagade rose before me, narrow and three-storied, — one of the strangest and most elaborate that I had ever encountered: a round-arched doorway, and a little, square, strongly barred window on each side of it, pierced the basement wall, which was faced to half its height with arabesque reliefs, amongst them being the motto, "/Z n'y est rose sans espine"; slender spiral col- umns with foliage caps stood at the jambs of the door- way, other spiral columns at the corners of the build- ing, running its whole height, and others again at the angles of the three Gothic windows of the second story; three balconies upheld the window-ledges of the third story, trefoil in shape, the left-hand one upon consoles composed of griffins ; and this third story was most ornate of all, — its Gothic windows being decor- ated at the angles with columns of vases placed one upon another, the topmost richly flowering, — its panels cut with elaborate designs, and griffins in high- 124 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY relief bearing escutcheons, — while its cornice, in weird contrast, was in curious, broken. Renaissance lines. This puzzling medley of unconventional and wanton ideas was erected about 1480 for Antonio Pigafetti, the sea-captain, but by what designer no one knows. I speculated vainly about it as I walked back to the hotel in the falling dusk, delighted with my memorable ramble, — eager, with that appetite which none but a traveler knows, for the dinner spread upon tempt- ing white tables, under colored lantern lights, in the greenery of the garden. Next morning I was out betimes, on my way to Vicenza's two churches which are renowned for their paintings. Both are in the section north of Corso Umberto, toward its eastern end; and I came first to S. Stefano, by turning a short way up the Contrada Zanella, which it fronts upon the east. The building itself is unimportant, its fagade being of an ordinary, modern, Renaissance design ; but from its altar in the left transept shines one of the most glorious canvases of Palma Vecchio, — his celebrated St. George, with the Madonna and Santa Lucia. The Madonna sits high in the middle, holding the sacred Child erect upon her left knee, with a lovely little girl-angel play- ing a guitar at her feet and dreamily singing; in the rear is an attractive landscape of hills and groves, domed by a sky of Italian blueness, with cumulus white clouds; but chief of all is the grand figure of St. George upon the left, clad cap-a-pie in glistening Milanese armor, and holding a staff flying his stand- ard. His noble, heroic countenance, with flowing hair, his steadfast gaze, his whole attitude and ex- pression, radiate manliness and spirituality combined, — a superb accomplishment. In pleasing contrast to his martial sternness are the VICENZA THE PALATIAL 125 sweet gentleness of the Virgin's face, the soft curves of St. Lucia's jSgure, the lustrous fairness of the Babe, and the deep resplendence of golden tone and richest colors. By such surroundings the knightly form is set forth and emphasized, with the sunlight glittering softly from his burnished corselet, greaves, and brassarts; never have I seen elsewhere so powerful, so realistic, and yet so ideal a St. George, — not even in Carpaccio's of the Schiavoni, nor Mantegna's of the Accademia. In nearly every respect that one can think of, this is a perfect pietistic painting; if there be a noticeable want, it is only in the blankness of the Madonna's face, which, with downcast eyes, is rather vacant of expression; but who can dwell upon this, before the inspired grandeur of the Knight's. I looked also for an instant at a poor specimen of Tintoretto, representing St. Paul, in the first chapel on the left; then went on to the Church of S. Corona, which lies a block farther to the east, just off the Corso, — a Dominican edifice, built in the last years of the thirteenth century, with a Gothic red-brick fagade looking not a tenth of that age.^ But its com- monplace dusky interior revealed to me treasure after treasure : two quaint frescoes by Speranza, — a Madonna on the entrance wall, and a group of angels beside the second altar to theleit; another quattrocentist Madonna and Saints, fourth to the left, by unknown hands, accompanied by "a number of Fogolino's puffy angels" ^ (1530); an Adoration of the Magi by Paolo Veronese, third to the right, having a graceful Madonna and Child, and still showing its original gor- ^ In this church Palladio was originally buried ; but his body was later removed to the general cemetery, where it lies under a monument sculp- tured by the talented De Fabris. '^ Crowe and Cavalcasalle. 126 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY geous coloring, — but an excellent example of Paolo's method of taking richly gowned Venetian patricians, posing them in attitudes, and labeling the result a scriptural event; a very good Leandro Bassano, repre- senting S. Antonio giving alms, third to the left, with his usual, dark, luminous atmosphere, and fine tactile values and execution; the splendid, gilt, Gothic tombs of the Thiene family, in the chapel to the right of the choir; and a superb example of Montagna, in a beauti- ful Renaissance frame, on the second altar to the left. This last was a group of five saints, the Magdalen in the centre, of an Umbrian, golden softness and repose, their flesh malleable yet strongly moulded, full of grace in composition and attitude. Here I saw Mon- tagna's powers, — his rich tone, harmonious coloring, symmetry of forms, clear-cut execution, and above all, restfulness. Such a feeling of dreamy, sweet peace came over me as I gazed, that I would have liked to live on with those happy saints in their angelic region. Last and chief of all, however, came the famous Baptism of Christ by Giovanni Bellini, on the fifth altar to the left, — one of that great master's few large canvases, and one of his few most perfect works. Books have been written upon this masterpiece, but its wondrous charm cannot be conveyed. The Saviour stands in the centre, with gentle, radiant countenance and hands folded upon his breast, nude but for a loin- cloth, his feet upon the pebbles of the brook; the Bap- tist stands upon the bank to the right, considerably higher, leaning with outstretched arm to pour the cup of water upon the sacred head; three angels of heav- enly loveliness watch from the left bank, one kneel- ing and two standing; in the rear is a remarkable land- scape, both fair and picturesque, — a vale bounded by swelling mountains on whose flanks perch towered VICENZA THE PALATIAL 127 castles; and at the apex of the azure dome of sky appears the half -figure of the Almighty, surrounded by winged putti-heads, with His hands spread out in blessing, and the Dove of the Holy Ghost speeding earthward. Over all is a tone of infinite richness and warmth, shimmering with hidden golden light, into which blend softly the brown and blue tints of the lofty hills; the upper sky is gilded by the sun already set, with floating, fleecy cloudlets; but lower down it is of fathomless blue. Beautiful as are these access- ories, and the forms and faces of the heavenly watch- ers, so excellent is the composition that the eye is ever led back and focussed on the Christ. There at last are a countenance and figure, executed since Giotto's time, that rise very near to our lofty ideals of the Perfect Man: a wonderful combination of manly strength and exquisite grace, powerful yet delicate, with a lustre more than mortal radiating from within; a face of celestial beauty that yet is virile, stamped indefinably with his sorrows, thoughtfulness, and love. What a profound emotion shines forth from his eyes, from the tense dark figure of St. John, from the trembling suspense of the angelic witnesses, from the awful majesty of the Father! Surely this is one of the very grandest works, not of Italy alone, but of all the world. Leaving the church, I proceeded to the end of the Corso and the building of the Teatro Olympico of Palladio, then circled round to the street in rear of it, and found a door where I could obtain entrance. The female portiere led me through several disused corri- dors and rooms, until we emerged suddenly upon the end of the stage. Vicenza's famous relic of the classic revival lay before me, — a genuine reproduction in stucco of a theatre of the ancients. Behind a slightly 128 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY sunken, semicircular pit for the chorus, rose the seats in thirteen tiers, topped by an ornamental screen of Corinthian columns supporting a balustraded entabla- ture, with statues in niches between the columns, and surmounting the balustrade. The stage, with no foot- lights, was backed at a short distance by a most sumptuous classical fagade, three stories in height, which bent forward at right angles at the ends; in its centre a high arch afforded a deceptive vista of an an- cient city street, lined by palaces, leading straightaway to a distant city gate; and smaller squared doorways at the sides gave similar vistas running obliquely. Between and above these openings the entire fagade was extravagantly embellished with a succes- sion of niches in classic frames, holding statues, with Corinthian columns and half -columns, topped by other statues, and tableaux of reliefs on the third story; — the whole being about as rich as possible an assemblage of ancient architectural forms, with count- less stuccoed figures in Roman garb. Even the dimin- utive palace fronts on the deceptive sloping streets were overloaded with cracked and crumbling statuary. But it is wonderfully preserved for stucco-work, and one of the best resuscitations of the past to be found anywhere. It was entirely Palladio's idea, started by him in 1579, though not inaugurated until after his death, when Sophocles' (Edipus Tyrannus was pro- duced first, in 1584. '^ Ever since then there have been ^ This is the oldest of the classic Renaissance theatres, because that built by Alfonso I of Ferrara for Ariosto has long disappeared. Scamozzi soon followed this with his charming court-theatre for Vespasiano Gon- zaga at Sabbioneta (1588-90), and G. B. Alleotti, another pupil of Palladio, constructed the celebrated Teatro Farnese at Parma in 1618-28; both still exist, although in ruinous condition. Palladio's work, therefore, was the prototype of these; and he followed closely the precepts of Vitruvius, as may be seen, with a few private divergences. The ninety-five statues are supposed to be portraits of the local academicians of his day, who fum- VICENZA. PALAZZO DA SCHIO, FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE CASA AUREA OR CA D' ORO (THE GOLDEN HOUSE). VICENZA THE PALATIAL 129 and still are, productions of the Greek dramas at intervals, as well as other plays; and it affords Vicenza a convenient assembly-hall for large gatherings. The remainder of that morning, and the afternoon also, I spent in the Museo Civico, across the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele. Scattered about the ground floor and in the court of the palace, I found fragments of a Roman theatre and other antiquities ; the upper floor, reached by a stairway to the left in the court, is nearly all devoted to the collection of paintings. Here I en- tered first the fine large hall occupying the central pavilion, which must have been a splendid salon when inhabited by the Chieregati family, for it was typical of Late-Renaissance grandeur and formality. Room number one opened from this to the left rear, — a small chamber toward the Corso, — and the series continued through other chambers along the same side, proceed- ing west. In the first four of them were the best of the large assortment of pictures. Room I revealed to me a pleasing Domenichino, — the Baptist as a boy, preaching, half -seated against a rock, with a lamb by his side; also a group of the Four Ages by Van Dyck, — the woman very lovely, with white soft flesh and speaking eyes and lips, and roses in her hands, — the sleeping babe very pretty. Room II exhibited an excellent Holy Family with St. Catherine, by Campagnola, graceful and rich in tone, in an exquisite evening landscape, — and five, sep- arate, interesting Madonnas. One of these was by ished the funds. A century ago the bTiilding was falling to pieces, but was repaired in 1816 through the generosity of Conte Orazio Porto; during which reparations the present new roof was superimposed, and painted in 1828 by Picutti. — The adjoining structure, with its now disused halls and chambers, was added to the theatre in 1582 by Scamozzi's designs; and from its name, theOdeon, seems to have served the Academy for its pur- poses of dramatic culture, and for entertainments. 130 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Giovanni Bellini, in his usual method, but injured; another, by Titian, also injured, but still of exceeding beauty in form and color; a third, by Mocetto, Bel- lini's pupil, with the Child held erect on the left knee before a green tapestry, — an example of what exquis- ite paintings often came in that period from artists of minor rank; a fourth was labeled Timoteo Viti and signed "Joannes Belinus," — doubtless a forgery; for, though of attractive moulding and lighting, it was not at all in Bellini's style, but more like Raphael's master, in the flesh work; while the fifth (number 207) was by an unknown artist, — a superb creation of the Venetian school, of striking beauty in the face and hands. In Room III was another mystery, a portrait of a young man with flowing golden hair C^SS) bearing the unmis- takable marks of the manner of Leonardo da Vinci, and probably by Luini or Solario or another of his pupils. Here also I found to my delight a very early and lovely work of Cima, — the Madonna with Saints James and Jerome, of his usual golden tone and grace- ful repose. Iloom iv contained the Montagnas, and other chief works of the Vicentine school: most beautiful of all was that master's group of the Ma- donna with Saints John and Jerome, splendidly com- posed, modeled, and colored, of fine atmosphere and perspective. Among other masters were Jacopo Bas- sano's Madonna with Saints Catherine and Mary Magdalen, and Girolamo del Toso's Madonna with Saints Catherine and ApoUonia; both engaging ta- bleaux; — but the Montagnas, with their peculiar grace and pietistic feeling, their glow of tone and rich coloring, alone repaid me for my journey. The remaining rooms in the rear contained inferior paintings, portraits, Murano glassware, engravings, drawings, architectural plans of Palladio, Scamozzi, VICENZA THE PALATIAL 131 and Calderari, and the collections of coins and natural history. Returning to the entrance-hall, whose spa- cious walls were lined with the better quality of pic- tures, I found an unusually grand specimen of Jacopo Bassano, — a majestic tableau of the Rettori of Vi- cenza kneeling to the Madonna, with Saints Mark and Vincenzo by her side; a large, powerful work, in his customary dark tone, of striking modeling, and light and atmospheric effects. Here also was an anonymous but extremely beautiful Madonna with two Saints (number 5) of splendid fleshwork, coloring, and grace, with a lovely background on the right, of rounded hills crested by towered and battlemented towns. Another day I spent in wandering about the still unvisited parts of the ancient city, particularly those north of the Corso Umberto, looking for interesting palaces and churches. Commencing where I had the other day, at Santo Stefano, I found immediately opposite, in the same Contrada Zanella, another of Palladio's unfinished but monumental palaces, — the Thiene, constructed for Vicenza's long preeminent, noble family of that name.^ It has an extraordinary f agade : the basement of bricks laid to resemble blocks of rusticated rough stone, the great windows of the piano nobile adorned at their angles with Ionic col- umns encased in cubic stone blocks at intervals (a hideous decadence) and the whole structure giving a ponderous Egyptian-like effect, — the beginnings of the Rococo. The back of this palace is lighter and more graceful, because of earlier construction, its win- dows being relieved with simple cotta mouldings and the wall-spaces colored with modern frescoes. ^ This edifice, now occupied by the Banca Populare, represents but one quarter of the original plans drawn by Palladio, — which, if carried out, would have given us one of the few most princely residences of the whole peninsula. 132 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY The Corso Porti, which this back looks upon, has a number of other fine buildings, — it is a street of palaces. Opposite the Thiene stands the Porto Bar- barano, also by Palladio, an example of his best work, imposing with its heavy string-courses and rows of Ionic and Corinthian half-columns; and further to the north, on the left, rise in perfect contrast a whole group of buoyant Gothic structures, beautiful both in the ensemble and individually. Colonnaded win- dows of four ogive, trefoil arches, grace their second stories, also single windows with charming, Gothic, marble balconies; and through sculptured entrance- arches one looks into colonnaded Gothic courts with delightful staircases. Then comes another Palladian palace, the second of the two Colleoni standing side by side, of which the first is Gothic; and so it continues through the quarter, — airy and massive styles in close juxtaposition, one setting off the other. In the northern part of the Contrada S. Lorenzo, farther to the west, I found the Gothic church of that name, datiflg from 1185, — a spacious dusky edifice of good proportions, adorned with the tombs of Mon- tagna and Scamozzi; it fronts on a, little piazza decor- ated with a'monument to the poet Giacomo Zanella, who was a Vicentine. Near the Corso in this same street stands one of Palladio's finest efforts, the great Palazzo Valmarana. I ended my tour at the extreme northwestern part of the town, where the smaller Church of S. Rocco gave me what I had been seeking, a good example of Buonconsiglio; — for the one or two of his canvases in the Museo were not impressive. This, however, was an exquisite pietistic canvas, a Madonna with four saints, of blissful repose and truly wonderful coloring.^ ^ A conception of the true height of Buonconsiglio's undoubted genius VICENZA THE PALATIAL 133 On my last day at Vicenza I combined a ramble over the southern section with my visit to Monti Berici. After some wandering I struck the Basilica Palladiana, and turned directly southward by the street from the Piazza Erbe; it quickly crossed the nar- row Retrone, affording me an excellent view of the bridge next on the east, the graceful, white Ponte S. Michele, which was constructed on classic lines, with a single wide span, by Palladio. My way, the Corso SS. Apostoli, continued southward between three- storied, stuccoed dwellings, past the large Teatro Garibaldi with its huge classic portico, until I came to the enceinture-street, formerly just inside the city wall, called Porta S. Giuseppe; in this, just to the left, still stands one of the city gates (for the walls are de- molished) — the Porta del Luzzo, its arch of great stones being intact from Roman days, with brick additions of the Middle Ages. Further to the left, inside, I discovered one of the most curious little houses that it has ever been my lot to see : of general Renaissance lines, its basement was built of irregular stones and broken bricks, with windows framed by stucco set to represent rusticated stone blocks; the windows of the upper story were framed by half- columns of brick chipped all over their rounding sur- faces; beside these were two niches holding statues, and over them ran a stone Doric frieze surmounted by other statues; — altogether a potpourri of fascinat- ing horror. Beyond the gate I followed to the right for a short way the old city moat, still flowing with water, and struck a road which took me southward to the foot of can best be obtained, strange to say, at the little town of Montagnana (q. v.), for which he painted three or four canvases of extraordinary size and beauty. 134 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Monti Berici; this it climbed gently between rows of majestic trees until it reached the beginning of the brick arcade, constructed in the quattrocento to cover the pious pilgrims ascending on their knees, and give them holy stations at which to stop and pray. From all over northern Italy they came for generations, — merely because some one in 1428 had alleged that the Virgin had appeared to him on the summit; and the Church of Madonna del Monte had therefore been erected over the spot, with supposed miraculous pow- ers of healing. Italy has many such pilgrimage arcades, but this is surely one of the longest. Away up the fertile green slope I could see it climbing, climbing, until it turned to the right at three hundred and fifty yards distance, and continued as far again: an un- broken arched corridor with much-worn steps, open only on the left between the pillars, with landings every few rods adorned by crucifixes and fair frescoes of the life of the Saviour. The peasants no longer ascend on their knees, but some of them do pray at all the stations,, — doubtless sent up for penances by their confessors. As I slowly mounted, my thoughts reverted again to those bloody days of 1848, when this same religious passage was the scene of terrible struggles, the Ital- ians using it as one of their chief defenses, and fighting with the bayonet on each landing in turn, until the steps were choked with the dead and dying. — Then my eyes were arrested by another road ascending the hill some way to the east, and by a glittering white object at its foot, which on closer observation and in- quiry proved to be a beautiful ornamental arch of Re- naissance days, — the Arco delle Scalette of Palladio, crowned with statues and a Venetian Lion. — At last I reached the summit, after running the fire of a num- VICENZA THE PALATIAL 135 ber of holy-relic sellers near the top, and saw the church rising before me on broad, high steps, in the shape of a Greek cross, — as it was reconstructed in 1688. Far below on the north lay the thousands of roofs of Vicenza in their warm red tiles, surmounted by towers here and there, packed closely in the luxuriant vale, with the foothills of the Alps soaring behind, on the west and northwest, higher and ever higher, till they became distant dark peaks against the sky. Far away to the east spread the plain of Venetia, an im- mense, verdurous, green ocean, sparkling with the white dots of farmhouses and villages, its haze-shrouded horizon describing a great quarter-circle, from Bassano to Padua; and to the south extended the top ridge of the Berici, along which Radetskyhad finally advanced, dark with woods upon the summit and upper flanks, from whose umbrageous depths peeped glistening villa-towers and grim, castellated keeps. Within the church I found one of those overdecked, overgilded, Late-Renaissance interiors, with fine col- umns hidden by gaudy cloths with gilt fringe, and altars adorned by tinseled, crowned Madonnas; but one altar, to the right of the choir, held a genuine treasure, a masterpiece of Montagna, representing the Pietd. The body of the Christ was of most realistic moulding, and very clearly dead, though not at all spiritual in aspect; the Madonna's attitude and grief were moving, as were St. Joseph's, who, wringing his hands at the left in agony, apparently feels that he cannot approach closer to that holy intimacy of Mother and Son. In a room back of the choir on the floor below I saw another good painting, the celebrated Banquet of Paolo Veronese which was cut to pieces by the Aus- 186 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY trian troopers in 1848; it has been admirably pieced together, and shows a typical, huge, Veronese dining- scene, with all its accessories of colonnades, stairways, marbles, richest vestments, fine plate, Venetian patri- cians, climbing urchins, and varied animals. Near this room was a charming little Gothic cloister, with a handsome Renaissance well-top. Behind the church on the east were two monuments to those who died fighting on this spot in 1848, one of them a statue dedicated by Vicenza to "The Genius of the Insur- rection.'* On descending the arcade, at the turning-point half- way down I bore to the east along a lower ridge, whose gradual slope to the southeast conducted me past some fine villas, to the famous residence known as the "Ro- tonda," built by Palladio for the Marchese Capra. It is one of the master's most pure and most successful creations: a central square structure of two stories, containing a circular domed hall, and adorned on each of the four sides with a massive, Ionic, six-columned portico, approached by lofty steps and crowned with statues.^ Here, upon Radetsky's final assault in 1848, over three thousand trained Austrian troops were held at bay for hours by three hundred young students of the University. What a spirit blazed in those brave hearts, — the spirit that makes miracles possible; naught else could have accomplished the wonder of free, united Italy. I found two interesting excursions that can be easily ^ This imposing design has often been reproduced in English villas, at Chiswick, Tunbridge Wells, and elsewhere, and particularly at the royal French estate of Marly. — The Villa Valmarana, near the Rotonda, con- tains several frescoes by G. B. Tiepolo, in his usual decorative manner. A fine example of Montagna may also be found in the environs, — a beautiful canvas of the Madonna between Saints John and Anthony, at the Church of S. Giovanni Ilarione. VICENZA. VILLA ROTONDA BY PALLADIO AND SCAMOZZL VICENZA. PUBLIC MUSEUM. VICENZA THE PALATIAL 137 taken from Vicenza within a day's time. The first, and more important, is by the little railway to the Val d' Asti, which passes the towns of Thiene and Schio, situated where the foothills slope into the plain some fifteen miles to the north, — the birthplaces of the two great Vicentine families known by their names. Thiene has one of the castles that belonged to Barto- lomeo Colleoni, decorated with a number of fine paint- ings: a series of frescoes by Paolo Veronese, another by Battista Zellote of Verona, and one of Gaudenzio Ferrari's characteristic, beautiful angels making mel- ody. From here it is a splendid drive along the foot- hills eastward to Bassano, through the fascinating, picturesque old town of Marostica, with its Rocca and its Renaissance villas.^ Schio, a city of thirteen thousand people, is of less account, although its large Duomo and cemetery are worth seeing if one is there, also several of its grand houses. The second trip is by the tramway up the Valdagno to the northwest, passing Montecchie, with its huge ruined castles of that family (the Montagues of Shakespeare's Verona) and the handsome Villa Cordellina, decorated with frescoes by G. B. Tiepolo. From the town of Valdagno it is a pretty mountain-drive to the celebrated Baths of Recoaro, with their numerous large hotels. ^ See next chapter, at the close of " Bassano." CHAPTER V BASSANO, CITTADELLA, AND CASTELFEANCO The hamlets rested on the Tyrol's brow. The Asolan and Euganean hills. The Rhsetian and the Julian, — sadness fills Them all, for Eccelin vouchsafes to stay Among, and care about them; day by day Choosing this pinnacle, the other spot, A castle building to defend a cot. Robert Bbowning's Sordello. I DEPARTED from Vicenza, not by the main line of rail- road by which I had come, but over the branch line extending northeasterly through Cittadella and Castel- franco to Treviso, parallel with the bases of the Alps and about ten miles distant therefrom. This fair region, one of the richest of Venetia, is a long gradual slope from the mountains to the sea-level, percolated by countless swift streams that are fed by the melted snows, and thickly covered by habitations and vil- lages. Besides its exceptional fertility — due to the abundant watering and good drainage, and its eleva- tion of one to four hundred feet above the marshiness of the lower lands — it has always been an important field for travellers to or from the north, traversed and fought over by invading armies since the dawn of Italy. For into its smiling meadows debouch two great routes from the Tyrol and German lands: one near the middle of its Alpine barrier, — the Val Su- gana, which is the defile of the Brenta, — the other at its eastern end, the Valley of the Piave, descending from the Cadore country with its three well-trodden BASSANO 139 passes. Just where the Brenta emerges from its gap, sits the Httle but important city that has always guarded for Italy the Sugana Pass, — Bassano; which therefore has ever been an object of fierce contentions, and subjected to as many external vicissitudes as a city of the first rank. Bassano, a place of but fifteen thousand inhabitants to-day and never much larger, was an object of tender solicitude to the rulers of Imperial Rome, and of rapa- cious desire to all the medieval tyrants of northeastern Italy, from the bloody Ezzelino downward. In general it shared the successive fortunes of its neighbor, Vicenza. After suffering much from the cruelties of Ezzelino, — who was Bassano's hereditary lord, and had constructed over the town one of his heavy for- tresses, where he and his brother Alberico often re- sided, — the city followed Vicenza into the clutches of the Delia Carrara, and, after their defeat by Can Grande, into the possession of the Scaligers; with the fall of the latter it became the prey of the Visconti, was one of the many towns included in the duchy with which the Emperor Wenceslaus in 1395 invested Gian Galeazzo, and was left by the latter to his son Filippo Maria. With Vicenza, finally, when Filippo's mother made that ominous call for aid, Bassano and all this region found happier days in the iron grasp of Venice. As the Republic neared its end, nearly four centuries later, under the victorious advance of Napoleon against the Austrians, Bassano was the scene of that battle which proved the doom of her suzerain. Wormser, with his second great Austrian army, defeated and driven up the Adige, had re- turned into Italy by the Val Sugana, followed all the way by the untiring French; just as he had finally regained the open country at Bassano, Napoleon over- 140 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY took and forced him to give battle; and the citizens, watching the terrible conflict from their walls, saw the French power emerge supreme over the shattered and dispersed Austrians. The fall of the ancient Republic became then only a matter of months. The little city also took her peculiar and secure posi- tion in the history of art, by giving birth in the heyday of the Renaissance to the several generations of the family of Da Ponte. The first of these famous painters —usually called after their town instead of by their family name — was Francesco, the elder, who labored at the close of the quattrocento^ and in the earlier, more confined, pietistic manner, with a grace and pictur- esqueness all his own. His son Jacopo was the greatest of them all, bringing to full development their charac- teristic dark "tone and hazy, shadowy, luminous atmo- sphere. He was followed by his three sons, Leandro, Francesco the younger, and Girolamo, of whom the first-named best sustained the tradition, some of his numerous works being truly of wonderful merit. But so distinctive is* the method of them all, that they are the one family of artists whose pictures can be de- tected at a glance by the veriest tyro. Many and scattered as are their works, and capable of being well studied at Venice, still their native city is the one place where they can be fully understood and appreciated; for there are far more of them here than in any other town, and they have been gathered side by side in one large hall of the Museo. The train that conveyed me from Vicenza was made up of a half-dozen very old and worn-out little coaches, of four to five compartments each, upholstered with very soiled and frayed cloth on very hard seats; and they swayed and rocked like a ship in a gale, to the jerks of a puffy little engine fit for the scrap-heap, at BASSANO 141 degrees of inclination sufficient to alarm an unhabitu- ated foreigner. As we rolled slowly through the end- less fields, of corn and by the everpresent habitations, always overlooked by distant cam'panili, the Alps accompanied us on the north, their noble line of snow- clad peaks soaring above the nearer summits black with forests. At the station of Cittadella I had to change to another branch line, running from Padua to Bassano; the little town itself, famous for its perfect medieval walls, was hidden at some distance by the abundant trees. The second train was very like the first in composi- tion and action; and it was slowly indeed that we climbed the northward slope to the mountains. I still sat upon the left, and as my eyes roamed over the dis- tant villages to the west, my thoughts once more re- verted to the monstrous Ezzelino; for it was here, in this happy-looking country between Vicenza and Bas- sano, at a place called Priola, that he perpetrated the most celebrated of all his infamies, and perhaps the most inhuman outrage of any that this world has suf- fered. The villagers, well knowing what to expect in any event, had offered what resistance they could to the tyrant's troops; and when their castle fell, Ezze- lino took every man, woman, and child alive in the place, regardless of age or condition (some accounts say two thousand in number), destroyed their eyes, cut off their noses and legs, and cast them into the fields to die of weakness and want. No wonder the Pope declared a crusade against him as an infidel and a scourge to mankind. The approaching Alps had steadily loomed higher and higher, until the greater peaks disappeared be- hind the foothills, now close at hand, and the level slppe changed into long rounded swells. Bassano came 142 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY in sight to the left, behind her medieval walls, and we stopped at a station some way to the south of them. I stepped into one of the two little rickety albergo omni- buses in waiting, and was jolted heavily over the cob- blestones, through a picturesque old city gate with high Gothic arch, down a narrow street that led north- ward to the centre of the town. There I found three piazzas, running east and west, connected by short passages ; the middle one much larger than the others, and fronted by the principal church and cafles. The inn proved to be just off the western piazza, — an old, irregular building behind a little court, with a littered stableyard on one side; the ground floor occupied by the kitchen and dining-rooms, the bedrooms hidden about dark winding passages above. The house was full of guests from neighboring towns, who made the cor- ridors reecho with their continuous shouting, — the peasants' customary tone of conversation; and I learned that a bicycle-meet was to occur here on the morrow, the participants riding in battalions from their respective villages. After a dinner in company with various gentlemen who ate with their hats on (according to the peasant's manner), consumed alarming quantities of meat and macaroni with the sole aid of their knives, and roared continuously at each other with deafening bellows, I solaced my nerves with' some caffe nero at a sidewalk table in the main piazza; and then found a cinematograph exhibition, which gave a performance of five numbers for the modest sum of thirty centesimi, in the first class. Moving pictures are now the one great amusement of the Italians. There is hardly a town so small as not to possess at least one such show; and the prices are usually twenty centesimi for the. second class. y^M BASSANO 143 thirty or forty for the first. ^ Here the national love of tragedy is prominently manifested; the popular piece must have plenty of blood-letting, and above all a harrowing j^m5, that leaves most of the charac- ters upon the ground. Especially successful this even- ing was the story of Parasina; when it ended with the death of herself and Ugo upon the block, a united sigh of satisfaction arose from the excited populace. The concluding number, as always, was supposed to be very funny — *' comicissima," — and consisted of the usual chase of one person by many others, at whose clearly intentional tumbles the audience roared with delight. I had an unsuccessful night, disturbed until 4 or 5 A.M. by a tremendous carousal in the eating-rooms below, constantly increased by new arrivals, — shouts and songs alternating with speeches, that invariably wound up with the modern Italian imitation of the Anglo-Saxon cheer, — a languid "Eep! — Eep! — Urrah!" — that sounded as if it pained the deliver- ers; and it was therefore rather late in the morning when I again returned to the main piazza, to find that it had' been decorated during the night by a dozen red masts bearing bright streamers and festoons ; while all around the walls were pasted placards, announcing in large letters the various prizes that were to be con- ferred, — upon the best-decorated bicycle, the most fanciful characterization, the most comical rider, and so forth. It is curious to notice how in rural Italy the modern fads, customs, and fashions follow faithfully 1 In the cities there is often also a third class, costing ten centesimi; at which rate children and private soldiers are nearly everywhere admitted, — the latter proving the mainstay of the business in garrison-towns. As a teacher for them of general information, it is invaluable; and one sees them, night after night, drinking in with open mouths the wonders of this world. 144 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY those of the northern nations from five to ten years behind; and so the bicycle frenzy is now at the height which it attained with us a decade ago. There is nothing monumental about this old market- place, nor suggestive of the town's historic past, ex- cept the lofty, medieval, brick tower rising above the house-tops at the northeast corner, and the town clock-tower, on the north side, which has an open loggia in its first floor, supported on Romanesque col- umns, and a Gothic balustrade across its top, where the town bell swings in the open. The buildings, arcaded upon the east, west, and north sides, have very plain, stuccoed, modern-looking f agades. All traces of the frescoes that once adorned them have dis- appeared. The south side is dominated by the huge Church of S. Giovanni Battista, with a Late-Renais- sance fagade, its central pediment upheld by four great Corinthian half-columns, — too baroque in the whole effect to be imposing. Nothing exhibited the decrepitude of age, except the Gothic belfry-arches and battlenvents of the brick tower, — only remnant of the former palace of the Venetian podestas, — and a lonely crumbling statue of some mitred saint, on a rococo column at the western end. I entered the church, which proved to be of curious shape, its spacious nave running parallel with the fagade, the recess of its choir opening in the middle of the farther side; but on an altar to left of the choir stood a very beautiful painting by Girolamo da Ponte, representing St. Filomena, — a dainty white figure full of exquisite softness, grace, and expressive loveli- ness, elegantly modeled and posed, with two other saints at her sides, and a Madonna and Child of unus- ual beauty overhead. It was a revelation to me of the full powers of that artist. To the right of the choir BASSANO 145 was an excellent canvas of his father, Jacopo, — S. Antonio di Padova between two angels, with a cherub below and others above ; opposite it on the entrance wall was his St. Paul preaching in the Roman Forum; both were finely conceived and drawn, in his usual, soft, dark tone and atmosphere. In the sacristy I found an extraordinary thing: a lifesize terra-cotta group behind glass, representing St. John baptizing Jesus, attended by David and another prophet and five angels, — clearly a Tuscan work of the beginning of the cinquecento, and alleged by the parroco to be a labor of the rare Giovanni Minelli de' Bardi. The once rich coloring still lingers on the well-composed, expressive figures, which, — with the exception of the fine Christ and one or two of the angels — are not graceful, though dignified and full of feeling. When I came out, the piazza was more closely thronged than before, and companies of cyclists were already arriving by the long, straight way from the southern gate, topped by its open loggia, — exciting cheers of enthusiasm by their patchwork costumes, flags, and loads of flowers, more or less covered by the dust of the roads. What especially struck me was the number of accompanying children, likewise fanci- fully arrayed in upholstery and tassels, manfully working their little legs on diminutive machines, and clearly exhausted, — some of them not over four or five years of age. Not having further time to lose, I made my way with diflBculty back to the lower piazza, from whose foot a narrow descending street led me westward to the river Brenta, and the picturesque old wooden bridge across its rapid waters. Here was all the interest for which I had looked in vain in the city's centre; it was a delightful picture, — the mountains soaring close on the north with vast 146 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY precipitous flanks, green or darkly wooded, tlie wide stream emerging from its gorge and bounding, splash- ing along over beds of shining pebbles, and the line of diversified crumbling houses on the farther bank, lean- ing over the ripples with moss-grown walls, decayed wooden balconies, broken red-tiled roofs, and little courts shady with foliage; while over their roofs rose the spires of poplars and cypresses from adjacent gardens. It was quite a suburb of Bassano, on the farther shore. That side was level ground, stretching for some distance to the Alpine wall on the west, lux- uriantly dotted with groves of trees, shining villas, and clusters of dark cypresses; while to the south it merged into the boundless plain, covered by an opales- cent haze of heat.^ Not the least of the picture was the curious bridge that strode over the bluish-gray water on piers of oaken beams, wooden also in its parapets, and the gabled roof with its numerous supporting pillars. The former stone bridge was destroyed by the French on that memorable occasion of 1796. Across the worn plank- ing was coming a steady procession of peasantry, afoot, on mule-back, and in little two-wheeled vehicles, — packed like sardines, six in a box, seated upon the floor with legs dangling over; all doubtless eager to behold the wonders of the bicycle-meet. Advancing upon the bridge I gazed delightedly, amidst the hub- bub, at the brightly colored groups of women washing 1 So charming is this landscape that it quite carried away the imagina- tion of Mr. William Beckford, when he descended through the Sugana Pass. "It was now I beheld," he wrote, "groves of olives, and vines cluster- ing the summits of the tallest elms; pomegranates in every garden, and vases of citron and orange before almost every door. — I felt sensations of joy and novelty run through my veins, on beholding this smiling land of groves and verdure." — W. Rockford, Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal. BASSANO. THE RIVER BRENTA WITH THE WOODEN BRIDGE. BASSAXO. PIAZZA VITTORIO EMANUELE BASSANO 147 on the bank below, at tlie foaming rapids, the strips of gleaming sand, and the mill-wheels turning lazily; then I caught the scene's completing note, — two grim, dark, medieval towers soaring against the sky, upon the top of the rising ground to the northeast, casting over the landscape the spell of the dread past of battle-axe and dungeon. For they rose from the old fortress of Ezzelino, that has echoed with such countless cries of suffering and sorrow. I decided to make my way to the castle, and on re- turning to the little piazza at the bridge's end came immediately upon another interesting relic, — a tall, aged, stuccoed house standing upon the elevated north- ern side of the area, part- way up the hill; clearly a medieval structure, that once was covered with rich frescoes. From this location came the surname of Bassano's family of painters, — for it was the resid- ence of the "Da Ponte." There they all lived, from generation to generation, four hundred years ago, that here seemed but as yesterday. An old dame, who had paused by my side, assured me that there were no per- sonal relics of the family remaining within; so I pressed on up the slope, until I finally reached, by a round- about course, another open space far above the stream and not far from the precincts of the fortress. Here the view over the flat country to the west was more extensive and lovelier; it presented the aspect of a luxuriant park, massed with rich copses, glistening with villas ensconced in dales and perched on verdant knolls, with rows of poplars lining hidden roads and cypresses gathering their dark points around ancient monasteries. In one spot they outlined the square of a large camposanto, the burial-ground of Bassano, whose white stones gleamed through the shadowy groves. But the closely hemming mountains were the 148 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY majesty of the scene, soaring behind from steep foot- hills to massive peaks; and far to the southwest ap- peared the Monti Berici, across the intervening vale that held the towers of Vicenza. Turning my back at last upon this enchanting land- scape, I proceeded toward the castle of Ezzelino, and came quickly to the fortress-wall, fronting the street. It was of typical medieval construction, and well pre- served, as was also the high-arched gateway. Within, however, to my surprise, I found nothing older than some plastered dwellings and a large stuccoed church, which was the Duomo; but no better use could have been made of the stones which the despot used for cruelties. Only the outer shell remains from his con- structions, and the taller of the two towers, whose grimness is modified by the bushes spreading over its broken summit; the other, plastered and adorned with a belfry, serves as the campanile of the church. I was glad to step out of the intense heat of the sun into the latter's cool interior. It consisted of a nave without aisles, and a choir-recess at the end. To the right and upon the end wall were three mediocre paintings, alleged by the sacristan to be products of Leandro da Ponte; one of them was amusing, a battle of St. George and the Dragon, in which the beast was a fiend of partly human shape, spitting fire, clawing the poor saint, and painfully hooking him with a barbed tail like a boat-hook. On an altar near this, to the right of the choir, was a kneeling marble figure of St. Catherine, with a head by Guarinai; and its face was of most emotional, gentle, pathetic beauty. On the left wall was a copy of Leandro Bassano's Circum- cision.' Leaving this rather unsatisfactory cathedral, I stopped just outside the fortress-gate to admire a BASSANO 149 painted Renaissance mansion on the east, known as the house of Lazzaro Buonamici; I could see that the critics were right in considering it a splendid specimen of the arabesque style of decoration, for the wall- spaces were covered with curious patterns, of grace and vivid coloring. I took the street leading straight away southward from the castle, parallel with the river, and soon stopped again, before a high battle- mented wall constructed of that strange medley of cobblestones and broken bricks which characterizes medieval masonry. Set in this wall, in utter contrast, was a handsome, marble. Renaissance gateway; set upon it, some way from the gate, was a bust of King Humbert, covered with faded wreaths; and set within it was the courtyard of a ruinous old palace, adorned with a picturesque, roofed, outside staircase. It was, as I learned, the so-called Palazzo Pretorio. I looked for a while at the arched gateway, with its unusual decoration of diamond reliefs all over the frame; then my interest was diverted to a house- front across the way just beyond, holding fragments of a large fresco which still clearly showed a fine group of lifesize saints and warriors. The composition was probably a Massacre of the Innocents, and its pink and crimson prevailing hues were still bold enough to reveal its original wealth of gorgeous coloring. It lifted for an instant, like a lightning flash, the veil from those cinquecento days when Bassano, with all her sister-cities, was embellished from end to end with such vivid paintings, and her every street blazed like a hothouse of tropic orchids, — radiant in hue as towns of man never have been since. The street ended in the upper of the central piazzas, close by the old, Gothic, brick tower which I had noticed before, and which is said to be the solitary 150 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY remnant of the palace of the Venetian podestas. On the south a brick church fully as ancient turned its side to the piazza, decorated with a Romanesque brick cornice around its eaves; and adjacent to this I found a large Romanesque cloister, with a curious round tower from some bygone building in its corner. From the eastern end of this piazza another street runs southward, and in this, shortly to the right, stands the city's Museo Civico with its various collections. It was after lunch when I repaired to the Museum, forcing my way with difficulty through the crowds, which, denser than ever, were watching the judging of the different bicycle contests in the market-place. Upon entering, I was shown at once to the first floor of the large building, into a central rotunda from which branched at right angles three fair-sized halls. That to the left was filled with plaster casts from the sculp- tures of Canova, and two or three of his original mo- dels (Canova was born near Bassano, at the little village of Possagno,^ and lies buried there in a church which he biiilt) ; that to the right held the municipal collection of general paintings; and that to the rear contained the remarkable aggregation of the works of the Da Ponte. I lost no time in investigating the latter, which proved to be excellently arranged in chronological order. First there were two or three canvases by Francesco the elder, rather stiff in their figures but quaint and ^ Possagno is worth a visit by those having the time, if only for the sake of the pleasing drive. It lies about ten miles northeast of Bassano, at the foot of the imposing precipices of Monte Gruppa; and the good highway thither leads via the village of Romano, immortalized as the birthplace of Ezzelino and his tribe. The residence of Canova may be seen at Possagno. The church which he built is a small imitation of the Pantheon at Rome; it contains his tomb, an altar-piece painted by him, one of his sculptures (a splendid bronze relief of the Entombment), and a fine canvas by Porde- none, called his Madonna della Misericordia. BASSANO 151 pleasing, — especially the large Madonna with Saints Peter and Paul, before an engaging landscape of blue lake and bluer mountains. Then came the works of Jacopo ; perhaps the finest of these was the Baptism of Lucille by S. Valentino, — an effective composition, strongly lighted ; but there was the usual anachronism of Venetian sixteenth-century dress, and even the kneeling devout Lucille was garbed in a shimmering white satin gown with a rope of pearls. It was wonder- fully moulded as to the figures, with much realism of action and atmosphere; many consider it Jacopo's masterpiece. Others of his pictures here, however, were nearly as good, — the Nativity, the Circumcision, and S. Martino, especially, — all excellently composed and vigorously drawn, with powerful light-effects. . The S. Martino lingers with me as a most knightly form, on horseback, in full armor but for the head, giving his cloak to a beggar whose wretchedness and rags form a striking contrast; the horse is splendidly modelled, the knight's face full of beneficent feeling. Finally came the works of the third generation; fore- most of which was Leandro's large canvas represent- ing the Podestd of Bassano, Lorenzo Capello, with his two small sons and their tutor, making obeisance to the Madonna and Saints Clement and Bassiano (dated 1597) — a magnificent group of graceful figures, finely spaced and disposed, of excellent tactile value, in the sun-filtered, heavy atmosphere of a hazy sum- mer afternoon ; the shades of coloring, too, were lovely, concentrating in the central rich carmine of the cloak of the podestd. To fill up the final wall-spaces of this hall there were a number of modern paintings, including five beautiful landscapes, of splendid air- and golden light-effects, and three of Roberto Roberti's (1837) charming Ve- 152 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY netian scenes. The third hall, to right of the rotunda, contained a surprising quantity of works of many other schools and epochs, and several that were quite pleasing. Among these was a Madonna with the Child and infant St. Catherine, ascribed to Giovanni Bellini, — but, although of considerable worth, the features were too poor for that master; also a Ma- donna with the child John the Baptist and another saint, by Bonifazio Pitati, very rich in tone, grace and modeling; a Christ with Mary Magdalen, in a wonder- ful evening landscape fringed by golden sky, athwart which rise the black spires of cypresses, — by an unknown author, exquisite in moulding and expres- sion; and one of Bonifazio's Last Suppers, well com- posed and realistically drawn. There was further a very Giottesque Crucifixion, in tempera on wood, one of the few remaining panels of Guariento, of Padua. The whole gallery is but one more instance of the in- exhaustible wealth in artistic treasures of the count- less little cities of Italy. In the outskirts of Bassano I found a delightful example of the statuesque villas of the Late-Renais- sance, the Ca' Rezzonico, constructed in the eight- eenth century for the great Venetian family of that name, who for generations held their villeggiatura here, in much pomp. It is of course a stuccoed build- ing, according to the style of that epoch, but of at- tractive lines and proportions, with square towers at the corners; it has a noble stone portal of baroque design, surmounted by a head of Jupiter, and ap- proached by wide-spreading steps. To right and left of these steps run heavy stone parapets adorned with vases, busts, and classic statues, while other sculp- tures, shrubs, and flower-beds ornament the front lawn to its massive balustrade upon the road. From BASSANO 153 the centre of each side of the villa, high walls, screening the grounds in the rear with customary privacy, stretch at right angles to columned pavilions, and are pierced halfway by classic archways, through which one sees mythological divinities posed in gleaming marble against the green of luxuriant foliage. The interior is still more splendid: a spacious, beautiful atrium greets the entering visitor's eye, two stories in height and balustraded around the upper gallery; all is light in hue, of glistening carved marble or delicately moulded stucco, with a surprising absence of decadent effects ; the grand marble stairway rises at one side, approached through an imposing portico, and over this, and the various arched doorways, are posed harmonious groups of sculptured figures.^ So perfectly has it all preserved the atmosphere of that courtly, splendor-loving period, that, as one gazes, he half-unconsciously expects to see entering a silk- clad noble in periwig and rapier. Within the city I discovered but one more item of special interest, the Church of Madonna delle Grazie, which is remarkable for its corner altar, — canopied, sculptured symmetrically in both stone and wood, and holding a strange ancient Madonna in an exquisite Renaissance frame. Without the city, but easily reached by carriage over the fine roads in sixty to ninety minutes, there remained of interest the little towns of Marostica and Asolo, both situated amongst the first foothills of the Alps, — the former about five miles to the west, the latter about ten miles to the east. But as they are not plain-towns, I will sum them up ^ Amongst the artistic treasures here is preserved a bas-reHef by Canova, representing the Death of Socrates. — The Villa Parolini I found to be another mansion of the environs worth visiting, for the sake of its enchanting park; and the Church of SS. Trinita, at least until recently, contained an excellent Crucifixion by Jacopo da Ponte. 154 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY by saying that Marostica contains quaint arcaded streets, a piazza with Venetian columns, mouldering Renaissance palaces, medieval town- walls with pict- uresque gateways and crumbling towers, a striking old ruined fortress, called the Rocca, and a number of fine villas with very pleasing grounds; while Asolo is famed as the place to which the widowed Queen Caterina Cornaro retired, after handing over Cyprus to the Republic, and where she lived- long in much well-doing, the centre of a highly cultured circle, — including Cardinal Pietro Bembo, who there com- posed his "Asolanum";^ it contains the villa which the ex-queen and her court occupied, as well as several others, and holds in its church a beautiful early work of Lorenzo Lotto, — a Madonna with two saints, of his usual superb coloring. Browning loved Asolo, — and dwelt there long; it inspired his "Pippa Passes," and "Asolando."^ A fascinating trip by rail from Bassano is up the new road through the tremendous defile of the Val Sugana, to T:he lovely Lake of Caldonazzo and the charming old city of Trento; whence it is but a step northward to Bozen and the Tyrol, ^ or a step south- ^ This celebrated work of that great connoisseur, who has been well called "the dictator of letters of his period," and whom Cellini depicted so cleverly in his Autobiography, was written before he had become an intimate of the glorious Gonzaga court of Isabella d' Este at Mantua; and its contents, as Mrs. Oliphant has put it, were "about the fantastic little court of Queen Catherine Cornaro at Asolo, a small Decameron, full of the unreal prettiness, the masques, the posturing, and versifications of the time." He lies buried in S. Antonio at Padua (q. v.), where he also dwelt many years. ^ To foreigners distressed by the midsummer heat of Venetia, there is no course so enjoyable and so inexpensive as to journey direct to Bozen by this new road (7 hours, 18 lire in the second class). There the hot weeks may be passed delightfully at the 4000 feet elevation of Klobenstein, on the adjacent Ritten, reached easily by funicolare, — where these words are being penned ; or one may seek any other of the scores of cool Tyrolese vil- lages on the neighboring heights. CITTADELLA 155 ward to Verona. This same new line has been con- ducted from Bassano straight across the plain to Venice, passing Castelfranco midway; forming thus the shortest route between Venice and the north. On leaving Bassano for Cittadella, however, I had to descend by the same branch road that had brought me up. We rattled and swayed down the imper- ceptible slope, leaving the Alps ever farther and smaller behind us, and were at Cittadella Station in a surprisingly short time; — so powerful is the aid of gravity to a distressed and aged Italian locomotive. It was, as usual in the Italian summer-time, a won- drous clear day, with floods of golden light from a cloudless sky; and nature seemed very lovely in spite of the heat, as I walked toward the town between umbrageous trees and fertile fields glowing with flow- ers. To the right of the road soon appeared a little stream of sleeping water, sunk between sloping banks, dotted with water-plants and shaded by overhanging boughs ; then through the dense foliage I discerned the farther bank mounting to a height of some twenty to thirty feet above the level, and carrying upon its summit an ancient, massive city wall, curving far to left and right, crowned by decaying battlements which reflected themselves peacefully in the silent fosse. In their interstices, and upon the tops of the huge square towers at intervals, shrubs and bushes flourished, and part-way up the crumbling face of the brick curtain crept the tendrils and leaves of ivy. It was the wall of Cittadella, famous to-day for its exceptional preservation. Seven centuries ago it was built, long before Ezzelino and his brother tyrants ; the Paduans did it, to erect this little town into a fortress against the Trevisans, who on their side had made it necessary by fortifying Castelfranco. What greater 156 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY contrast with those turbulent, fratricidal days could there be, than this serene and lovely spot, bathed in a silence emphasized by the hum of noonday insects. I rested awhile upon the grassy bank, under the curving branches that dipped the still water; and it was diffi- cult indeed to realize that over that very wall before me men had fought and bled — had poured down stone and iron and boiling oil upon their brothers climbing from below — had piled up the slain until they choked and crimsoned this peaceful stream. And all for what cause? Only because they, children of the same race and the same speech, chanced to live some in one town and some in another. These fortifications did not avail to save Cittadella from incurring the successive despotisms of her neigh- bors. With them she passed from Delia Carrara to Delia Scala, to Visconti, to the Serene Republic; but so little has she been that she has earned no part nor mention in that troublous history; — and the same obscurity operated to preserve her walls, bringing them strangely to the front to-day as an admirable specimen of a medieval fortress. Resuming my walk, I came shortly beyond to the southern and principal gateway of the town, the Porta Padovana, jutting considerably forward from the wall beside a guard-tower of extra size, and approached by a brick bridge of later construction. On its decaying stuccoed fagade, between the long narrow apertures where once emerged the supporting beams of the drawbridge, still stood the marble Venetian lion; over this was a modern clock-face, and above that again the ancient alarm-bell, hanging under a Renaissance canopy with four columns. To the right of the gate a modern plastered house had found a foothold between the moat and the wall, and upon the bridge lounged a CITTADELLA 157 dozen idlers in very modern dress; but to the left the long battlements extended as of old, presenting a charming picture through the ash trees, cypresses, and drooping willows that lined the stream. The tunnel-like entrance arch admitted me to three, separate, square ante-ports, one behind another, hemmed by lofty crenellated walls, and connected by similar dark archways; certainly, I thought, it would not be an easy matter to take such a gate by assault. When I emerged again into the sunshine, the main street, Borgo Vicenza, extended straightaway before me to the north, of most unusual width, lined by three- storied, modern-looking buildings. The plan of the little city I found to be very simple, and pleasing : four gates in all pierce the circular enceinture, at each of the cardinal points of the compass, named after the neighboring city on each side; two thoroughfares con- nect these entrances, crossing the town in straight lines and intersecting at its centre; and at this centre lies the piazza, or market-place, with the parish church. Looking up the Borgo Vicenza, I could see the Porta Bassano at its other end, and that at such a comparatively short distance that no one would think there could be ten thousand inhabitants in the place. The broad street was arcaded on each side, affording me a grateful relief from the down-beating sun as I passed one little shop after another, and nearly as many dark caffes ; the last were all crowded to over- flowing, — for it was a festa. I stepped into one of these narrow drinking-places — the villager's sole club and recreation — and found that it opened behind into a pleasant arbor shaded by luxuriant vines, where a dozen peasants were gossiping and singing over bottles of wine on plain board tables. I took a glass of beer, which proved to be quite fair. 158 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY and listened for a minute to the conversation; they were discussing sociaHsm and its theories, — if not with a broad grasp, at least with strong feeling and partisanship. Nothing is more significant of the future than the constantly increasing spread of those doc- trines amongst the lower classes; the Mayor of Rome to-day is a socialist; and his party seems to be steadily advancing from municipal to governmental control. The central piazza proved to be of considerable size, with the Municipio overlooking it on the west from a columned Palladian f agade, — a comparatively mod- ern structure, — and the church rising on the north side. The latter was a large brick edifice, faced by six huge half -columns, also of brick, but possessing white, Corinthian, plaster caps; the Corinthian cornices of the pediment were likewise of stucco, and the base- ment of white limestone. Next it I observed a dwell- ing bearing remains of a large, early, figured fresco, with traces still lingering of its once florid coloring. Here crossed the east and west thoroughfare, its vistas framed by similar modest dwellings and ending in the lofty arches of the other two city gates, — Porta Treviso and Porta Vicenza. Shortly to eastward on this Via Venti Settembre stood the Prefettura, its f agade showing fragments of extensive painting, and adorned with a red marble Renaissance doorway, over which was the old Vene- tian lion, of the usual polished white marble. Evid- ently there had been little outward change here since the days of the Republic's podestas. TheTrevisan gate at the east end bore also, over its heavy archway, the remains of a large mural painting. The Porta Bassano at the north was the most heavily fortified entrance of the four; here there were four separate fortified ports, a number which I have very seldom seen elsewhere, U kg":*.: if ' _,.■ :i ' ^^3 •i •Tfei w m ^r^r-.'-^ ... , .i.-^ai£^ tiniiTiJilii ' ^ ^s^^?;.-';^^ ^.!«i*^ pv i^^ 1*;:'. '.^ ^^^' P^-- '^^^... 4 - '4'^ ^ • ^«#^- 'C?;;_;i' ^^■^ '' :.'«: b^.',: »",. j.^ • . « i^^S^^f':^ .'■ ,■,'.>"■■■ R ■::"-^i •;'. i; J3I i^^^ ■*rv-i.-.-.. !jf^^;^ \ ' ■' N A ... ^9 1^, ■ J - ■55'h^^ ^^a^^r ?5SP g:~ '■•T CITTADELLA 159 that I remember, — two inside the wall, one within its thickness, and one outside. All over them, and upon the wall proper, which here was as lofty in places as seventy-five feet above the moat, were battlements of unusual length, — those upon the foremost ante-port being Ghibelline, or forked. The fosse, here also, had lost all its warlike aspect under the peaceful shade of cypresses and drooping willows ; and its rounding inner bank, mounting high to the brickwork, was prettily covered with shrubs and shade-trees. Returning to the church, I found the morning con- gregation just streaming out, and entered past them into the spacious nave. There were no aisles ; and upon the side altars, to my surprise, stood a number of inter- esting canvases. The first on the left held a work of Leandro Bassano, an azure Madonna in clouds, above S. Francesco and other saints, including a bishop of marvelously embroidered robe; — a strongly painted picture, of fine tone and grace and modeling. Next it was a remarkable Crucifixion from the same hand, representing the Father as bending from heaven to embrace the dying Son upon the Cross, with the Ma- donna and various other saints grouped below, and — curiously enough — Christ again represented as the Child in his mother's arms; this was also a strong work, clearly and vigorously drawn and moulded, in an exquisite deep rich tone, with hazy atmosphere, and softest coloring in broad masses. There were, further, a good Pieta of the school of Mantegna, clearly show- ing that master's style, and in the sacristy, a most realistic Supper in Emmseus by Francesco Bassano the younger. So once more was it demonstrated that in wonderful Italy no village is too small to have its masterpieces. As I wended my way back to the station, I passed, 160 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY outside the southern gateway, on the left, a building that was an enlightening example of the way in which these small towns are still erecting fine edifices; it was a newly finished mansion of three or four stories, of remarkably pure and beautiful Renaissance lines, — a delight to the eye. Twenty minutes later I had caught my train, and was speeding (?) to Castelfranco. We went a little north of east, through the same ever fer- tile landscape, varied only by the lofty ridge of the Alps keeping us company on the left; and in half an hour or less I had descended at my destination. This was not, I will own, without considerable misgivings; for the sun was already well toward the horizon, and the necessity stared me in the face of spending the night in this out-of-the-way place. But I plucked up my cour- age with the reflection, that in Italy a bed is always comfortable, and followed a porter with my bag on his shoulder to the first-named hosteli*y in the guidebook. Ten minutes northward walking brought us into the town, and^five more to its central piazza. Then there loomed suddenly before me a castle of such size as I had never seen before, — its vast, battlemented, brick wall sweeping on northward from tower unto tower for full half a mile, apparently, topped in the centre by a keep of huge proportions, while to the westward ran another side of equal length; both walls rose upon an artificial bank thirty to forty feet in height, at whose foot flowed the ancient sluggish moat; and over their battlements within soared other towers, and domes, and roofs of buildings. It was a startling sight to burst upon one's view so unexpectedly, impressive in its grandeur, its sense of might, and intimacy with medieval days. At each corner of the fortress — the southeastern one where I stood, and those which I could discern at the ends of the two sides — were CASTELFRANCO 161 square piles of enormous massiveness; but those in the middle of the lines were by far the loftiest, and evid- ently guarded of old the entrances ; that on the south- ern wall had had a belfry added to its summit, and beside it there loomed above the battlements the high white apse and dome of a large church. Thus I saw that this was not an individual castle, but a town-fortress, containing streets and varied buildings; — it was the original Castelfranco, which the Trevisans erected as their fortified outpost against the raiding Paduans in 1199, and also to act as a re- straint upon the freebooting proclivities of the Cam- posampiero family, who occupied a stronghold not far away (now demolished). "The colony of Trevisans who first settled here lived entirely outside the castle, and pledged themselves to maintain 200 horse for the defense of the frontier. In return for this service they were exempt from certain taxes, and therefore called their dwelling 'Free Castle.' " ^ They earned their ex- emption, for there was an almost constant state of warfare, brigandage, and harassing tactics against Treviso's enemies on this side, until the territory was acquired by Venice in 1329, — the first step of the Republic upon the mainland. Under her sway Castel- franco was seldom disturbed; the chief exception being the advance of the Emperor Maximilian during the War of Cambrai, when the fortress was saved from destruction only by an obsequious surrender. Prior to that, however, — during the later quattro- cento, — the castle was occupied, with the consent of the Venetian Government, by the powerful condot- tiere Tuzio Costanzo, who had gained this recom- pense by his services for the Republic, and kept it while he lived. Now it remained but the centre of the ^ Horatio F. Brown, In and Around Venice. 162 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY modern, enlarged town of twelve thousand inhabitants, and the long open areas on its north and east sides formed the people's market-place and piazza. Lines of dwellings that looked fully as aged as the fortress frowned at it across the sunlit spaces, rising upon continuous arcades with decrepit, ancient pillars, shad- owing diminutive shops that seemed to have slept for centuries. In the northeast corner was the only life, and there it was over-abundant; for the whole popu- lation were evidently gathered there en masse, watch- ing a small boy draw lottery numbers from a cage, in alternations of breathless interest and surging howls. Through this excited crowd my guide led the way with considerable difficulty, and immediately ushered me into a carriage entrance penetrating the buildings upon the piazza's northern flank. On the right of this passage, in the rear, was a worn, dirty, stone staircase, and on the left a typical Italian kitchen, with its large brick hearth for the open fire, and rows of highly burnished copper utensils decorating the smoky walls. "Ecco!" 'cried the facchino, proudly waving his hand, and setting down my bag, "un grande albergo!" To judge by his tone the native fondly conceived it an hotel of the premier order. — "Where is it.^^" I asked, gazing blankly around, while my heart sank with a leaden dismay. "Here," he responded, again indicating the kitchen, "and above," ^ pointing upward; "and this is where one eats," — with a flourish of his hand around the dirty passage and toward the stableyard behind. I began to wish that I had never heard of Castelfranco. Not a living soul was to be seen. I got rid of my enthusiastic companion with half a lira, and after some search unearthed from a closet a little wizened old woman, who moved by jerks, with a terrible volubil- CASTELFRANCO 163 ity of which I could hardly catch a word, and whose blazing little eyes held the light of a lunatic. I finally understood that no room could be had at present, be- cause all were occupied by the town gentry in viewing the lottery-drawing; nothing whatever could be done until that epoch-making event should be terminated. After sitting around the kitchen for half an hour, how- ever, the yelling outside subsided, the people gradu- ally dispersed, and a landlady appeared to conduct me to a chamber. It was a huge old room on the first-floor front, with a lofty arched ceiling, sparsely furnished with an iron bed and washstand, a decayed wooden dresser, table, and single chair, — which were lost in the shadows. The little old woman, who ap- peared to have been permanently assigned to me, tot- tered in and out from the adjacent hall, bringing towels and water, and chattering without cessation, demand- ing what I wanted to eat, where I came from, how long I should stay, when I should retire and rise, and a hundred other things, — until I shut and locked the door upon her in despair. Then she would not allow me to rest, — continually returning to bang upon the door and scream more questions, and finally station- ing herself to babble through the keyhole. The queer- est part of all this was, that it was not the acting of a complete lunatic, but simply the endeavors of a peas- ant, who seldom sees a person of the upper class, to render herself exceedingly helpful and agreeable; I have often had encounters of this nature in remote places, though never another so extreme. To get away from her noise I withdrew to the fur- ther window, thrusting my head out, leaning over the sill, and found myself opposite the northeast corner of the castle, with a splendid view down its north and east sides. The sun had set, and the upward-stealing 164 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY shadows were emphasizing the massiveness of the great walls and towers, rising from the still darker masses of trees and shrubbery along the moat's high, sloping, inner bank. The thought came, of the vast labor that it must have taken to pile up such a bank of earth, — thirty to forty feet in height, and a sixth of a mile long on each side of the quadrangle, — seven hundred years ago, when they had no implements but picks and spades, no powder to blast with, nor steam engines to drill or shovel. The chief tower, in the centre of the east side, bore a large clock-face of later days; and upon its summit an octagonal open lantern lifted its columns and pointed cupola against the deep blueness of the sky, with its stripes of fleecy gold. Behind that very keep, within those walls, had met in long-gone days the solemn conclave of Lombardy's strongest Ghibelline rulers, — the noble chieftains of the Visconti, the Gonzaghi, the Estensi, and the Delia Carrara, to cement their solemn federation against the pretensions of John of Bohemia. It was on August 6, 1332. The Emperor had temporarily gone to Avignon, to confer with Pope John XXII, leaving his son Charles at Parma to act as general viceroy in his absence; and the opportunity was seized by some of the leading plain-towns to league themselves for mutual support, — for "the Ghibelline nobles were afraid lest he might engage in a conspiracy with the Pope to crush their power."^ It was almost the only occasion through all the centuries that those four antagonistic, warring families met together in peace and harmony. In my fancy I could see that pomp of arms and blazonry, the courtyards ringing with the tread of knights and flash- ing with their shields and pennons ; — each prince striv- ing to impress the others, and, while he greeted them ^ Oscar Browning, Guelphs and Ghibellines, chap. xii. CASTELFRANCO 165 with honeyed words and ermine robes, wearing under the latter a shirt of mail, and watching every move- ment for a dagger thrust, every wine-cup for a treach- erous poison. It was a hundred and fifty years after this that Tuzio Costanza acquired the fortress. In 1495, when the Venetians had leagued with the other powers to drive Charles VIII out of Italy, and the League had appointed Francesco Gonzaga its commander-in-chief, Tuzio headed his own company under the latter, and won such fame by his exploits against the French that the Duke of Orleans bestowed upon him the famous appellation of "the best lance in Italy." Tuzio's son Matteo became a condottiere also, and fought with his company for Venice, as his father had done; he was in the way of attaining renown, when he was slain at Ravenna in 1504, — and the broken-hearted father brought home the body to his castle. Matteo was buried in the old church of the fortress, under a tomb that became celebrated for its beauty; and Giorgione, his friend, immortalized his knightly form in color. Immediately before my window, upon the sward of the fosse's outer bank opposite the corner tower, stood a memorial that led my thought to these softer, pleas- anter channels. It was a gleaming marble statue, upon a high, well-shaped pedestal, of a comely youth clad in charming cinquecento costume of rich, embroidered doublet and long-hose, with a graceful cloak falling from his shoulders, and a jaunty velvet cap upon his curls; and in his left hand he held a painter's palette, in his right a brush. ^ It was Giorgione himself — the great Giorgione; "born halfway between the moun- tains and the sea, that young George of Castelfranco 1 This charming work was executed in 1878, by the Venetian sculptor, Benvenuti. 166 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY — Stout George they called him, George of Georges, so goodly a boy he was. Have you ever thought what a world his eyes opened on — what a world of mighty life — of loveliest life, when he went down, yet so young, to the marble city, and became himself as a fiery heart to it?"^ I know naught in our language besides this splendid simile of Ruskin's that so well conveys the immediate, powerful effect which the genius of this marvelous youth had upon the Venice and the art of the Renais- sance. It was in 1477 that he first saw the light in this little town, a child by his father's side of the locally prominent Barbarelli family, while his mother was a peasant from Vedalago; and from the tenderest age his whole impressionable and passionate soul devoted itself to absorbing the beauty of all existing things, — throbbed with it, and radiated it with tongue and brush to all about him. His physical personality also reflected this love of the beautiful; when he had gone to labor at Giovanni Bellini's studio, and grown to first manho9d, his commanding figure, noble head, and graceful, dignified deportment, quickly drew from the Venetians that sobriquet by which he is still known. Like the proverbial flashing meteor, as has been well said, his star soared above his master's and all others', glowed unsurpassably brilliant in the meridian, and as quickly perished of its own internal fires. Who that knows Giorgio Barbarelli through his works, does not love him, — and who that is acquainted with the sad- ness of his early fate, does not compassionate it?^ "In his works two characteristics prevail, senti- ^ Tuthill, Precious Thoughts from RusJcin. ^ He died in 1512 at Venice, at the age of 33, his heart broken — so it is said — by the faithless conduct of his inamorata, Cecilia, in secretly transferring her affections to Giorgio's pupil, Pietro Luzzo. The remains lie near those of his friend Matteo Costanzo, in the Castelfranco cemetery. CASTELFRANCO 167 ment and color, both tinged with his peculiar temper- ament; the sentiment is noble but melancholy, and the color decided, intense, and glowing. He was the first Venetian who cast aside the antiquated con- straint of the Bellini school, treated art with freedom, and handled his colors in a bold, decided manner. The works of Giorgione are amongst the most rare and beautiful examples of the Venetian school."^ Alas, that they are so very rare; to come upon one is like finding a coruscating ruby in a bed of sand. Who does not cherish with keen delight the memory of that wonderful Concert in the Pitti, with its at- mosphere of languorous dreamy eventide through which the musicians' strains are stealing! Kugler's famous summary is the best: "His paint- ings generally have a luminous power and subdued in- ternal glow, the sternness of which forms a singular contrast to the repose which prevails without; and his portraits represent an elevated race of beings capable of the noblest and grandest efforts." It was the very rareness of these supreme works which had brought me to Castelfranco; not that this his native town, as one would naturally suppose, con- tains any number of them; but because here exists one canvas that, in the opinion of many critics, is the great- est and most glorious of them all. It hangs in the parish church of S. Liberale; — not a portrait, like the majority of his works, but a large pietistic tableau, of the Madonna enthroned with Saints Liberale and Francesco by her side. At this point in my meditations a renewed and louder shrieking through the keyhole by my crazed attendant recalled me with the information that it was time to go down and dine. I descended with fore- ^ Shedd, Famous Painters and Paintings. 168 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY boding, and was placed at a small table in the dusty carriageway, in the company of a number of hatted gentlemen, who, as usual, bellowed at each other and drank wine until they grew perilously red in the face. However, the soup and macaroni were excellent, and I "made out" surprisingly well. When it was time to retire, my faithful attendant led me to my chamber with a lighted candle, and continued her running, chattering performance of the afternoon, until I put her out and told her to return no more. When she had finally disappeared, I recollected that I had no drinking-water, and looked for a bell; there was none. I shouted, and banged the table in the great shadowy hall, but no one came. I descended the staircase, — and found the doors at its bottom tightly locked. The situation faced me that I was alone in this queer old building, and bolted in. It was one of the strangest predicaments that my travels have ever given me. In those huge gaunt halls, so full of shadows and silence, it had a sinister, alarm- ing aspect; I knew nothing whatever about this place, and all the old tales of travelers robbed in out-of-the- way inns began to course through my head. Every act of the old woman and the other queer inmates assumed a new significance, as I paced up and down through the darkness ; because I could obtain no water, I immediately acquired a thirst of extraordinary in- tensity; I noticed for the first time that the candle was old and low, and would soon leave me in an appal- ling gloom; finally the thought of a possible fire came to me, starting perhaps in some other part of the building, when I should be trapped like a mouse, — for the windows were twenty feet from the stones below. Wrought by all these ideas to desperation — I laugh now whenever I think, of it — I took up a CASTELFRANCO 169 heavy chair, again descended the stairs, and battered furiously upon the panels of the doors, making a din that would have roused the seven sleepers. For a long time there was no response; I redoubled my efforts, — and at last heard feet approaching, a key turn in the lock, and saw a sleepy, round, night-capped face thrust in before me, with an expression of comical bewilderment that I shall never forget. "By the Madonna! what was happening .f* Was the house falling down.^^ — Had the spirits gone after the signore? — What was the signore doing with that chair.f*" — Considerably discomfited and abashed, but still angry, I made my complaints as to the ab- sence of bell, water, and candle; the woman brought me the two latter articles, reclosed the door, and I heard the key again turn in the lock. I was obliged to return to the upper hall; and then, at a sudden remem- brance of all her words, the horrors commenced to travel down my back in rapid waves. — "Had the spirits gone after the signore!" — Great Heavens! Then there were supernatural beings in these dismal chambers, that were accustomed now and then to "go after" unfortunate visitors! — This was worse than before ; — locked alone in an ancient palace, haunted by spectres, that visited their wrath upon intruders ! Of course I do not believe in ghosts, — who does.'* — but I am not ashamed to confess that I shivered as I looked horror-stricken around the shadowy corners, dreading each second to behold some fearful appari- tion. I wished now with all my soul that I had never heard of Castelfranco. Each dark piece of furniture assumed, as my eye fell upon it in the dusk, some shapeless, moving form; each step that I cautiously made, echoed into some semblance of unearthly noise. 170 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY I stole to my chamber door, feeling that all about me were unseen malevolent beings, reaching toward me with their ghostly hands. Then an actual sound that was no echo shrilled from the dark end of the hall, — a frightful squeak, or gibber, of fiendlike accents, — that lifted my hair straight upon end and completed my discomfiture. I bounded into the room, slammed and bolted the door, and threw off my clothes faster than I had ever done in my life, not daring to look around; — crawling into bed in a minute, under the shelter of the sheets, as good Mr. Pickwick did when he had read the autobiography of the madman. When I awoke in the morning, with the sunshine pouring brightly in, how ludicrous seemed the inci- dents of the night — how I laughed as I recalled them. And that final uncanny sound, — why, it was naught but the squeak of a mouse in the wall ; the ghosts were mice, and nothing more. — But, I took care not to spend another night in such a prison. After an early breakfast I entered the fortress upon its northerft side, where a later brick bridge crosses the moat, and the lofty wall is broken down for some dis- tance. To the west from the bridge, the fosse has at this place more than its usual garniture of grassy slopes with shrubs and flowers, for hence extends upon the outer bank a fine row of giant plane trees, and beneath them, a pleasant shady promenade beside the silent water. On the evening previous I had walked here for a while, and encountered, in the darkness pierced only by twinkling caffe-lights across the piazza, quite a number of coupled lovers, strolling in signifi- cant silence and contiguity. This morning the scene was very different, for it was clearly another festa: the two lines of buildings fronting the piazza were bril- liant with the waving red, white, and green of the CASTELFRANCO. MADONNA AND CHILD WITH SAINTS. (GIORGIONE.) CASTELFRANCO 171 national colors; crowds moved about aimlessly, the men stiff and awkward in their holiday clothes; and now came the town band with a flourish of trumpets, pompously marching to the national air, cheered by the populace and followed by a long string of men and boys. But the dignity of the procession was sadly injured by the musicians having no uniforms, and being all in shirt-sleeves, with an extraordinary variety of soiled and threadbare waistcoats. I could not help laughing at their ludicrous appearance, and the per- fect solemnity with which their orderless tail mean- dered after them. Up and down the long piazzas they marched, all that morning, ceaselessly tooting the same air, whose tired strains followed me into every street. The fortress I found to be quartered just like Citta- della, by two main thoroughfares crossing at right angles in the centre. The one which I now entered ran from the northern gateway (utterly destroyed) to the church at the south end; and few traces of age were visible in the freshly painted stucco buildings that confined it closely without arcades. Still narrower side ways, like alleys, diverged occasionally between brick walls more clearly aged and dilapidated. On the left I passed the town theatre, which — as usual with every Italian borough, however small — was large and carefully ornate, with great columns supporting a classic portico. Shortly beyond was the intersection of the east and west avenue, presenting quite a differ- ent aspect because of the huge, towered gateways overlooking it at the ends; upon this also, just to the left, stood the Municipio, — a simple but well-designed Kenaissance structure, arcaded on the ground story. I continued to S. Liberale, whose lofty fagade look- ing down the street was likewise of modern Renais- 172 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY sance design; it was exceptionally light in color, being of painted stucco, and imitated a Doric temple, with four enormous half-columns supporting a cornice and pediment of that order. Statues crowned the flat gable, and adorned the side parapets of the entrance court; while behind on the right soared the old, dark, central tower of the southern wall, with battlements topping its added belfry. That was the original, early campa- nile, but this was not the original church, for which Giorgione painted his altar-piece, — in which he was buried, and to which Tuzio Costanzo brought the body of his warrior-son ; that structure had been razed, and this late, pretentious edifice reared in its place, while the tombs of the two friends were removed to the local cemetery. I found the single doorway open, and lifting the heavy leathern curtain, passed within. A beautiful, spacious nave of Renaissance design greeted me, with a lofty, arched roof, an elevated choir, backed by a rounded apse, and similar apses at the ends of the. short transept; the lower aisles were divided off by heavy piers, and arches springing from Ionic half- columns at their sides, over which ran a handsome block cornice; while above the intersection of nave and transept rose a majestic dome. All was in glisten- ing white, except the accentuating brown trimmings on the capitals, mouldings, and entablature. No paint- ings of merit were in the church proper, but I found them in the sacristy, to the left of the choir; its walls were covered with pictures, forming the only public collection in Castelfranco. Among them were several by Paolo Veronese, fres- coes brought hither from the nearby Villa Soragna: two female figures representing Justice and Temper- ance, over the doors, — both graceful, well-modeled. CASTELFRANCO 173 and beautifully clothed, and a ceiling-piece represent- ing Fame blowing her trumpet, with old Father Time, wearing an hour-glass for a hat. Besides these was a canvas, in the rear passage, a lovely Marriage of St. Catherine in that master's best style, faded indeed as to colors, but exceedingly well-composed, dignified, and expressive. Here was also a Circumcision by Palma Giovane (signed, 1610), with individually charming figures of soft, well-moulded flesh-work, and of a fine, rich tone; but — as so often with him — the figures were too numerous, crowded, and unrestful. The said rear passage led me to the space behind the high altar, which is kept carefully locked and the key intrusted to one certain man only, who had to be sent for to open the door. There was good reason for such care, for there, alone upon the apse-w^all, glis- tened that treasure of treasures beyond all price, — Giorgione's pala. The Madonna appears seated upon a marble throne, which is taller than the heads of the two standing saints, — its lower base of red marble, with a medallion of the Costanzi arms in its centre, its pedestal of glittering Carrara, draped in the middle with a falling damask rug of exceeding beauty. The throne itself is of simplest possible design, relieved only by a striped, grass-colored carpet under the Ma- donna's foot, and a cloth of red-and-gold, flow^ering pattern at her back. The long-lashed eyes of her pure, exquisite face are downward cast, her left hand rest- ing upon the rectangular marble arm of the seat, her right hand and knee holding the sacred Infant, who looks towards S. Liberale. Nothing could be more simple also than the Madonna's garb, — the loose, open-necked bodice of velvet-green, the full-draped, unadorned robe of softest rose, and the white linen kerchief upon her head. 174 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Back of the throne there runs across the stage at man's height a dark-carmine screen, which sets forth well the two forms before it of monk and warrior, and reveals behind it a distant landscape of indescribable charm, — verdurous groves and castellated hill, spreading vale and dim blue mountains crowned by towered cities, all swathed in heavy, shimmering air. But that to which the eye turns from the beauteous Madonna, is the knightly, youthful form of S. Libe- rale: clad cap-a-pie in glittering mail he stands, even to helmet, gusset, and genouilliere, — a short-sword at his side, in one hand a staff whose pennon droops above his head; a manly, noble, martial figure, with the sunlight glistening upon the polished facets of the armor, — yet gracious in his bearing, and gentle in the boyish face that looks with quiet eyes from the un- visored casque. These were the face and form, tradi- tion tells us, of Matteo Costanzo; and the armor is •that very mail which lies carved upon Matteo's mar- ble figure on his tomb. Once besides this his friend Giorgio portrayed him, in that identical S. Liberale which was bequeathed by Samuel Rogers to the Brit- ish National Museum, and which was the study-piece for this. Over the whole picture, arranged with such happy symmetry and balance, disposed with such repose and gracefulness, radiates that magical glow of gold and crimson intermixed that seems to pour forth from some hidden fiery interior, — that lifts the simple scene and quiet figures into a glimpse of heavenly glory, and makes us long for such beatitude. Well indeed may the greatest of critics pronounce, that "foremost among the productions acknowledged by successive generations as true Giorgiones, we should place the altarpiece — in the Church of Castelfranco."'^ ^ Crowe and Cavalcaselle. CASTELFRANCO 175 When I left the church, it was to stroll thoughtfully down to the fortress's eastern gate, with the lofty clock- tower above it; and there, as I traversed its tunnel-like entrance, upon the outer keystone of the central arch my wandering eyes lighted upon a little painting of surprising beauty, that to me as certainly bore the marks of Giorgione as did the masterpiece I had left. The shadows that would hide it from most passers-by have preserved its lovely coloring with exceptional vigor. It is a simple fresco of the Madonna and Child, exquisite in the lines and moulding of the forms, as well as the grace of the attitudes; and the fair-haired child is truly one of the few loveliest that I have ever seen. I made inquiries as to its authorship, but nothing is known with certainty. The piazza without this gate is used for cattle fairs on Fridays, — when it must be a curious sight to see it packed with those hundreds of white and pearly oxen, in row after row, to the confining arcades. At its southeast corner I found a house with fairly well- preserved, Late-Renaissance frescoes on its fagade, amusing in design; in one of them was Hercules, slay- ing the lion, — in another, strangling in his arms a rather laughable, kicking Antaeus. Three other dwell- ings of the town, which a guide is necessary to point out, are of some interest: one of them the ancient ruinous residence of the Costanzi, in the Vicolo del Paradiso (what should we think of an Anglo-Saxon street labeled the Heavenly Way?), distinguished now by nothing particular except the family escutcheon in the gable toward the court; another being the house in which Giorgione was born, — although of questioned authenticity. The third is the house where the master customarily stayed when revisiting the city; it is located near the church, upon the same 176 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY piazza, — as I afterwards found; — a plain stuccoed building, much altered from the pristine plan, but still showing traces of its illustrious occupant in the re- mains of his frescoes upon the ceiling of the former hall. These represent every sort of instrument, mus- ical and otherwise, amidst an extraordinary' assem- blage of human heads and skulls, masks, helmets, shields, gorgons, books, easels, hour-glasses, etc., all of which seem to have been sketched in a spirit of amusement, yet with a clear fertility of sprightly fancy, and an undeniable power of execution and decorativeness ; — qualities which confirm our belief in the correctness of their attribution to Barbarelli, whose spirit was ever gay in those days when he lingered here amidst a few chosen disciples.^ ^ Amongst those pupils for a time was Pordenone, who had followed Giorgione from the studio of Bellini, eager to acquire the mastery of these wondrous new developments, which — he could well see — would raise painting to its meridian. This it was which made him the great master that he became. CHAPTER VI TREVISO AND THE VILLA GIACOMELLI Fair Italy! Thou art the garden of the world, the home Of all Art yields, and Nature can decree. Even in thy deserts, what is like to thee? Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste More rich than other climes' fertility; Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced With an immaculate charm which cannot be defaced. — LoED Byhon. Twenty miles north of Venice, halfway between the Alps and the lagoons, sits the ancient city known to the Romans as Tarvisium, and to the modern Italians as Treviso, which formerly guarded the great highway from the Serene Republic to the north, as Padua guarded that to the west. When Titian made one of his frequent journeys to the Dolomites, to the high Cadore country and picturesque Pieve where he was born, he would follow this highway of all the centuries, — from the shore of the Lagoon, or Mestre, by horse- back to Treviso, where he lay overnight ; then across the wide bed of the Piave to Conegliano at the foot of the hills, and Serravalle at the head of its ascending vale; whence the pass of the Col Vicentin led the tide of travel by a short cut over the mountains, to Belluno and the upper valley of the Piave. From Belluno the artist had another long day's ride up that magnificent defile to the place of his nativity and boyhood, perched upon its castled hill far above the joining waters of the Piave and the Boite, — where the signory and the population were wont to receive their illustrious fellow- 178 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY citizen with joyous eclat. From Pieve the countless travelers for German lands pressed on by either of the three excellent passes leading to the valley of the Drau and the Tyrol. That which conduced to Treviso's ancient import- ance, even more than this route, was her location upon the greatest of all lines of communication, — that over the Julian Alps to the northeast: the land route from Italy to Dalmatia, Hungary, and the Orient, — the way by which those swarms of barbaric invaders poured into the plain of Lombardy. For the various passes united at Udine, and led westward by one high- way, to join the northern road at Conegliano, Treviso was early made a Roman Municipium, and, legend has it, by Julius Csesar himself. It suffered greatly from the barbarian invasions and sank into obscurity ; to rise again in the twelfth century as the dominant town of all this section of the plain, in which there was no other large place as far as the confines of Udine. For a glorious time the little republic flourished, maintained* its independence, and fought with Padua on the south; but it was in this beautiful, rich terri- tory, well watered by swift streams, — known as the Trevisan Marches, — that Ezzelino attained his first successes as a conqueror; he seized Treviso at the be- ginning of his career, and his brother Alberic long governed her with tyrannous power. ^ After Ezzelino's death in 1259, the little city fell before the Carrara, was later captured by Can Grande della Scala, — who 1 Here it was that Alberico, angered by the seizure of his daughter Adelisa and her husband Rinaldo d'Este, who were taken as hostages by Frederick II, shut himself up in 1239, imprisoning all the city officials and defying the Emperor's power. In consequence whereof the luckless Trevisans had to endure a long and frightful siege from the Paduans and other imperialists, which ended in Alberico's extinction, and their annexa- tion for a time to the Paduan domains. TREVISO 179 died here, at the height of his fame, in 1329, — and finally was taken by the intervening Venetians, in 1339, when Treviso and her immediate territory — including Castelfranco, Conegliano, and other smaller places — formed the first mainland possessions of the Republic, upon the peninsula.^ In 1356, Treviso was already so attached to her sovereign as to endure without flinching a long and terrible siege from Lewis the Hungarian; in 1380, she faced another from Francesco Carrara; and she con- tinued to bear manfully the attacks dealt against the Mistress of the Sea throughout all the wars of those cen- turies, standing by her unto the coming of Napoleon. From 1813 onwards Treviso suffered with her sister- towns the odious domination of the Austrian; but in the revolution of 1848 she played an heroic part, endur- ing a siege and bombardment without proper rneans of defense, until forced to yield by overwhelming power, After the final victory of 1866, her plebiscite for union with the Kingdom of Italy was noteworthy for the fact that out of 6990 votes cast not one was against the proposition. The city is located at the confluence of the small rivers Sile and Botteniga; Dante lingered in his wan- derings at their place of junction, struck by the beauty of the swift, tree-shaded streams, which he mentioned in the Paradiso (ix, 43) — the latter under the appella- tion of Cagnan. In the history of art, Treviso has been of little importance, developing no school of merit like her sister-towns, no single artist of high rank; nor did she turn herself in Renaissance days to much cultiva- 1 This was a part of the despoliation of the weak Mastino II della Scala, Can Grande's successor, which was worked in concert by the Venetians, the Visconti, and the Delia Carrara; and which ultimately reduced the huge Scala kingdom to naught but the adjacent cities of Verona and Vicenza. 180 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY tion of painting or architecture. Her most interesting buildings come down to us from the earher times of Romanesque and Gothic designs; and her indulgence in the brush was mainly confined to the coloring of facades, — in which respect she "furnishes the most modern specimens of house decoration, giving proof of a deep study of the great Mantegnesque examples." ^ At the end of the trecento the little known but highly interesting Tommaso da Modena came here to fill the churches and monasteries with his frescoes; but the Trevisans poorly followed his excellent example and influence, developing only second- and third-rate artists like Dario, Pietro Pennachi, and the latter's son Girolamo. This Girolamo da Trevlso was the best of the lot, — having benefited by the influence of Squarcione and his Paduan school, — and did more than any of the others to beautify his town.^ But Treviso could give birth to great artists if she could not teach them ; to the studios of Venice she sent that illustrious trio, Rocco Marconi, Lorenzo Lotto, and Paris Bordone, — of whom, however, but very few specimens remain in their native place. The plan of Treviso shows an oblong quadrangle, whose east and west diameter is nearly twice the length of the north and south ; and is delimited still by its huge Renaissance brick walls and moat. The Botteniga strikes it at the centre of the northern side, dividing forthwith into a half-dozen branches, two of which follow the moat to right and left and supply its water, the others of which flow through the city, marking out as they do so the limits of the original ^ Crowe and Cavalcaselle. ^ Pennachi was an unimportant pupil of Carpaccio. Girolamo, of more talent, became finally one of the chief engineers of the English King, Henry VIII, for whom he built various structures and fortresses, and was slain while prosecuting for him the siege of Boulogne. TREVISO 181 smaller town, and turning many mill-wheels with their swift impetus. The Sile, coming from the west, enters the moat at the southwest corner and courses broadly along it to the southeastern angle, dividing, for half the distance, into two arms that inclose a long, narrow island at the centre of the southern side, — the right-hand arm being the city fosse, the left-hand and broader arm flowing between tree-shaded quays. Into this last empty the different branches of the Botteniga, its main branch joining towards the island's eastern end. In the very centre of the town lies appropriately its chief piazza — "Dei Signori," — from which the prin- cipal thoroughfare, under the names of Via Venti Set- tembre and Via Vittorio Emanuele, runs windingly down, across the island, to the main gate at the middle of the southern wall. Just without this gate — the Barriera Vittorio Emanuele — stands the railroad station; and here I debarked late in the afternoon, after an uneventful three-quarter-hour's run from Castelfranco, hoping that in this place of thirty-five thousand inhabitants I should find a comfortable, modernized hotel. Across the sunny piazza I saw the flowing moat, and behind it the great, grim, brick walls of the cinquecento, masked on the right hand by the foliage of a charming little park extending eastward along the stream; through its cool shade meandered gravelled paths, attended by flower-beds, and upon its benches sat many loung- ers, watching a dozen stately swans sporting in the water under the shadows of the battlements. I climbed into the 'bus of the hotel to which I had been recommended at Vicenza, — endowed with that common but pleasing name of Stella d' Oro (Golden Star) , — and rattled away over the cobbles, through 182 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY the Barrier, over a long piazza crossing the island, and a bridge at its end across the main arm of the Sile. Picturesque old houses backed upon the water's north- ern bank, and a pleasant, shady quay adorned the southern. Thence the Via Vittorio Emanuele took us winding between ancient houses, freshened by mod- ern paint and plaster, filled with trim little shops, until at an eastward bend we crossed the first arm of the Botteniga — a narrow, dark, dirty stream between aged walls, that once formed here the moat of the primal town; and immediately beyond it we drew up before an imposing, handsome building occupying a block of its own, having a garden on the side toward the water. It was the hotel; and very much aston- ished and pleased was I to find such a one in a little town of this size, seldom visited by foreigners. They gave me an attractive, newly furnished room over the garden, where I was nightly lulled to sleep by the rhythmical murmur of the current; and the table, — which, like the other towns, was entirely a la carte — prcJved of equal excellence. Thus can one live in provincial Italy on the fat of the land, at a price of no more than eight to nine francs per day. After dinner, under the trees in the garden, illum- ined by colored lanterns, I strolled northeastward up the Via Venti Settembre — how much Italians ever make of that occupation of Rome! — to the Piazza dei Signori. The dark battlemented form of the four- teenth century Prefettura loomed up on its eastern side, with caffe lights shining from its heavy arcades; other caffes illumined the nearer side of the area, and all of them had spread their crowd of little tables far out upon the flagged pavement, occupying half the open space. Seated at them, and moving through them with visiting gossip, were throngs of well-dressed peo- TREVISO 183 pie, — the aristocracy of Treviso, taking their evening outing. Other throngs less aristocratic strolled up and down in the space between the phalanxes of tables, and massed themselves strongly at the piazza's south- ern end. Here there rose another arcaded building, of Renaissance lines, with lofty arches, — the palace of the governmental telegraph department, occupied also by the city fire department, and the museum of paint- ings. Before this I now discerned a band-stand erected, filled with ornate regimental musicians, about to com- mence the evening concert. I took a seat at a table, and enjoyed my caje noir, watching the people and listening to the music. The band played at intervals selections — as usual — from the German and Italian operas ; it is always a wonder to me what excellent instrumentalists are found, and developed, amongst the youths of every Italian regiment. The people, well though not smartly dressed, the women in styles less fashionable than in the larger cities, sipped their coffee and liqueurs and innocuous syrups, clearly with more enjoyment in their conversation than in the drinks, as is the national way. I ascertained that these concerts occurred upon tv/o or three evenings a week, as in all garrison towns; but these good gossiping Trevisans would be found here every night. They sat in family parties about the tiny tables, talking and laughing with incessant volubility, sometimes all at once; while those gentlemen who evidently conceived themselves especially popular or witty, moved from group to group with elaborate salu- tations and smiling quips. Villari has so succinctly expressed this phase of Italian life that I can do no better than repeat his words : — "The streets and cafes are places of rendezvous for all classes. The idle section of the jeunesse doree pass 184 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY more than half the day lounging about the main streets, chattering and gossiping. Even men of business and hard-working professional men prefer to meet in the street or at some cafe to discuss their affairs and see their friends, rather than in their own homes. Differ- ent cafes are frequented by different classes. One is the resort of the officers, another that of university professors, another of students, another of lawyers. The ordinary cafe is at best a somewhat dismal resort; it is dusty, stuffy, and uncomfortable; the chairs are apt to collapse, the sofas are dingy, and cleanliness is not remarkable."^ To this should be added that in a small place like Treviso the central piazza, rather than the streets, is the general rendezvous; it is the drawing- room of a large and very friendly household, whose members are more at home in it than in the chambers where they reside; to use the old metaphor, it is the true heart of the city, where beats its pulse, and form its feelings; and its life pours forth through all the arteries, to flow back like the tide. When I "returned to this piazza next morning, the dim mass of the Prefettura had resolved itself into a structure of most interesting details: the piazza run- ning from northwest to southeast, the palace occupies three quarters of its northeastern flank, — a huge, three-storied edifice of yellowish brick, with two great, projecting wings inclosing a good section of the square. It comes from Romanesque days, having been first constructed in 1184, and much rebuilt in the past cen- tury. The whole ground story of the right wing is a large open loggia, half -filled by the tables of a caffe; and along the first story of the main body and the left wing, runs a round-arched brick arcade, upon glistening, white stone pillars. * Luigi Villari, Italian Life in Town and Country. • TREVISO 185 But its chief beauty lies in the long series of splen- did triple Romanesque windows upon the second story, carefully restored; the three arches of each being adorned with terra-cotta labels over their brick quoins, and supported by two pairs of coupled shafts of polished marble, — all recessed within a large arch outlined in terra-cotta placques. Other Romanesque windows adorn the third story of the main body", — dainty little double lights, each with a single pair of coupled shafts, one behind the other; while over them runs a Romanesque brick cornice, surmounted by Ghibelline battlements, — which continue along the right wing. Soaring over the whole, from the rear of the central structure, is the majestic municipal tower, its lofty stuccoed face unbroken save by the clock and two tiny embrasures, its deep-arched belfry frowning war-like from its crenellations. Altogether, this is one of the few most interesting and characteristic public buildings erected in North Italy during the era of the municipal republics. I looked at the marble tablets covering the pillars of the right wing toward the inclosed space, and found them to be the town's memorials to the heroes of the Risorgimento. On the other side of this wing is a superb outer stairway, with marble balustrade, rising upon arches to a Gothic doorway in the second story; and in the centre of the adjacent section of the piazza stands a marble statue of Independence, as a female in classic garb leaning upon a battleflag-standard and holding a wreath of laurel. I traversed a passage through the middle of the palace, to another, smaller piazza in its rear, upon which it looks with a broad arcade sustained by slim columns rising from a parapet; under this arcade open the doors of two small churches, side by side, — S. 186 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Vito and S. Lucia, — dating from the fifteenth cen- tury. The latter bore formerly the curious name of the Madonna of the Prisons, — which used to be adjacent ; in it condemned prisoners received the last rites of the Church before being executed in the piazza without, and their poor mutilated bodies were then interred in the vaults. Neither of the edifices contains anything rem'arkable, — beyond a fair canvas by Titian's nephew, Marco Vecellio, over the high-altar of S. Vito. Immediately next to them, however, under the same palatial roof, are the rooms of the local Monte di Pieta, in one of which hangs a very unusual painting, generally ascribed to Giorgione; an attendant showed it to me, in a sort of council chamber on the first floor. It represents the dead form of our Lord, nude but for a loincloth, sitting upon the lid of his sarcophagus with one leg inside the latter and one outside, leaning backward against some winged 'putti who are pushing and pulling to accomplish the interment; a ghastly sounding subject, and the picture is even more brutal than it sounds, — the Christ's figure being disagree- ably muscular, in hardened bunches, the skin of deadly leaden hue, the aspect of the face horrifying; and it is so violently foreshortened that, interesting as it is to artists, it must strike the average beholder unpleas- antly. It is powerful and realistic, — that cannot be denied, — and the moulding of the flesh is of most exceptional solidity; also the 'putti, taken separately, are very graceful, charming little forms, while the toning and coloring are of that deep gorgeousness peculiar to Barbarelli. Yet it did not seem to me to be that master's work. "If in all [his] canvases we have examined, the com- mendable features are quiet movement, just propor- tion and gentle shape, here we are bound to admire the TREVISO 187 colossal torso and herculean limbs of a giant, the mus- cular strength and fleshy growth of angels aping juv- enile athletes, and a tendency to depict strong action or equally strong foreshortening. In the dashing fresco which Pordenone finished at San Niccolo of Treviso ... we observe the same neglect of drawing, the same display of flesh and muscle, and similar contractions of extremities."^ It is really, therefore, with small room for doubt, one of Pordenone's works done soon after his graduation from Giorgione's teaching; the products of which period have ever since been mis- taken for the master's. From the northwest side of the Piazza dei Signori the chief thoroughfare continues in that direction under the name of Via Calmaggiore. Starting now up this, my eyes rested first upon the old Renaissance palace to the right, at the corner of street and piazza, whose fagade is covered with rustica up to the fourth story, all of the same heaviness, — a rather extraor- dinary design. The effect is bad, and is accentuated by the lack of any cornice. This is really the left wing of the Prefettura; its side towards the piazza bears a lower continuation of the arcades, on marble pillars, and three upper rows of simple oblong windows di- vided by graduated marble pilasters, — from Doric on the first floor to Corinthian on the third. Adjacent to this upon the street is a fagade more quaint and interesting, — the Casa Alessandrini, likewise of cm- quecento design; it rises upon an arcade of two wide arches only, and terminates in a simple wooden roof, but is adorned with two beautiful Renaissance bal- conies; and all over the stucco of the three stories are the remains of excellent frescoes executed by the cinquecentist Pozzasaretto, — a number of the large ^ Crowe and Cavalcaselle, ii, 3. 188 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY figures being clearly preserved, in that queer dark pink or roseate tint of flesh used upon house-fronts. The way continued, narrow and shadowy between heavy arcades on both sides, picturesque with its old fagades of every style and epoch, alive under the colon- nades with bright, varied little shops and throngs of people. Crumbling Romanesque dwellings frowned down, dwellings with details of Gothic days, dwellings of the Renaissance age, — adorned with columns, or handsome window frames only, or marble balconies, or large fragmentary frescoes of pink and carmine hues. Finally the apse and side of a great church loomed upon my left, with a huge unfinished campanile of massive stones, so ponderous as to confirm without words the story that the Trevisans once started to build a tower higher than that of any other city, and had to relinquish the attempt as beyond their means. These were the campanile and body of the Duomo. I followed a diverging way between the two, passing on the right, adjacent to the former, an aged, moulder- ing houscwith curious, heavily barred windows and an outside staircase, and next to this again, the an- cient Baptistery, — a tumbledown brick structure with Romanesque mouldings ; then I emerged upon the ex- tensive piazza over which the Cathedral faces north- westward. This Piazza del Duomo is fully a hundred and fifty yards long from southwest to northeast, and half as broad. It is gloriously dominated and brightened by the Duomo's mighty facade, with its six huge Ionic columns rising upon their lofty flight of steps, — a most successful example of modern classicism, having been added in the last century to the original edifice of the twelfth and fifteenth.^ To right of it stretches ^ It is mostly a Renaissance structure, Jhaving been entirely remodeled TREVISO 189 the long Vescovado, or Bishop's Palace, of Late- Renaissance design, with an elaborate columned en- trance and arabesque frescoes. Its right wing, front- ing the piazza on the southwest, is an older structure of two stories only, having a whole architectural scheme painted on its flat stuccoed wall, — pilasters, rustica, cornice, ornamental panels, string-course, niches containing vases, frames to the windows, and even a frescoed balustrade across the top. I began to think the very windows must be painted too. Across the sunny open space, diagonally opposite the Cathedral and behind a row of shade trees, rises the Tribunale, or court-house, — a fine, large, modern building. On the northeast side is one of Treviso's most interesting house-fronts, dating from Renaissance days, with various pretty details, including a four- windowed loggia with openwork marble panels; and above the loggia its whole wall is frescoed in once rich, cinquecento designs of fertile fancy, — among them mermaids sporting in a sea, and at the very top a curious checkerboard effect in red and white. I mounted the high steps of the Duomo and entered, finding myself in a broad, vaulted nave without tran- septs, crowned by three successive domes, — the sec- ond over the choir, and third over the retro-choir; at the sides were single, lower aisles, flanked by very shallow chapels. The spacious structure was of good Renaissance lines, simple but well-proportioned, and majestic in effect, — almost the only architectural decoration being the rosettes upon the soffits of the arches. The stuccoed pillars were painted light-brown, likewise all the trimmings, leaving in glistening white on the earlier foundations by Pietro Lombardo, in 1485-1505; and the majestic classic interior is one of the Lombardi's best titles to fame. The red marble lions of the portico are relics of the medieval church. 190 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY the side walls and arches, the sections of the vaulting, and illumined domes. A handsome tesselated pave- ment of red and white marbles completed the scene. But there were masterpieces here also; and I com- menced the round, — noticing immediately upon the first altar to the right a pleasing old canvas of Madonna and Saints, of rich tone, good drawing, and pious atmo- sphere, holding a delightful little girl-angel upon the step of the throne, who with a plaintive air crushes some flowers to her bared bosom. I was told that the author was unknown. In the second chapel I saw Bor- done's Adoration of the Shepherds, with excellently modeled, expressive figures, in a weird landscape of hills and ruined temple, and over all a heavy, shad- owy air-effect, in that master's peculiar, rich, brown tone. Here against the second pillar was also a relief of the Lombardi, representing the Visitation, — a beau- tiful thing, with an expression in Elizabeth's face very deep and wonderful for stone. But in the chapel to the right of the choir I came upon the gem of the whole place, and of Treviso, — Titian's Annunciation : the Madonna is kneeling upon a checkered marble floor, toward the spectator, but with her lovely, pensive face turned over the left shoulder to greet the angel; the latter, apparently a girl-child of twelve, has just alighted with outspread wings, bearing the lily in her left hand and raising the right hand in blessing; behind her stretches darkly afar a tempestuous scene of rugged mountains and rolling clouds, through which bursts from heaven a stream of light, following the holy messenger. This is very grand, and would be entirely so but for the presence of one contrasting, even laughable figure: it is a little, wizened old man, wrapped in a cloak and hood, crouching and peering round the rear corner of TREVISO 191 the marble wall upon the left, — of course, the donor, but a more ridiculous donor never obtruded himself upon holy personages. A painted terra-cotta bust of this wealthy Trevisan, Broccardo Malchiostro, — who provided the money for the building and adornment of the chapel, and after whom it is therefore named, — stands at one side; it is of about the same date, 1520, as the pict- ure which he procured from Titian. At the same time he induced Pordenone to aid in the decoration; who thereupon, with the assistance of his chief pupil, Pomponio Amalteo, placed a series of frescoes upon the walls and cupola, — the Salutation and the Adoration of the Magi, below, and a heavenly vision of the Eternal Father surrounded by angels, overhead. Though formerly, and doubtless justly, considered of great worth, these have been so damaged during the centuries that they now attract little notice. — Near by, on the left wall of the antechapel, is a fres- coed Madonna of 1487, — a specimen of the work of Girolamo da Treviso. Just off this chapel is the sacristy, in which I was shown another canvas by Bordone and a picture of the original, Gothic Duomo. In the handsome Cappella del Sagramento, to the left of the choir, constructed by Lorenzo and Battista Bregni, the altar consists of an elegant tabernacle of marble, — a cinquecento monu- ment to Bishop Zanotti, covered with small bronze figures of saints and putti, and adorned, in front, with bronze plates bearing New Testament scenes in relief. By some this masterpiece is said to be the work of the Lombardi; by others, of the brothers Bregni.^ To the ^ According to Mr. Perkins (in his Italian Sculptors) this was unques- tionably done by Pietro Lombardi. "The ornamental marblework upon the tomb," he says, "would be alone sufficient to establish the sculptor's 192 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY right of it are two niches in the wall, containing angels by Sansovino. In the left aisle, third chapel, I found the church's third treasure, a once delightfully colored group of three saints and a donor, by Bissolo,^ graceful, quiet, and softly, charmingly pietistic. In the second chapel was still another Bordone, — S. Lorenzo with four other saints, of fine, warm, dark tone and atmosphere, and considerable attractiveness. The first chapel held a very excellent modern work, of St. Francis raising the dead. Leaving the Duomo, I strolled away down the con- tinuation of Via Calmaggiore, known as Via Canova; and found what I was seeking a few paces on the right, — the house of Giuseppe Olivi. This was the patriot who, being podestd of Treviso when the rising of 1848 broke out, called all the people together here before his dwelling, and addressing them amidst intense ex- citement, proclaimed the end of the Austrian domin- ion; a provisional government was immediately formed, of which Olivi was elected president; and with much wisdom he governed the town, defending it bravely against the Austrian bombardment and attacks until they succumbed to superior numbers. The house was a dainty, but not remarkable. Renaissance struc- ture, with a long balcony across the upper story and a tablet to the patriot's memory; as I gazed at the bal- cony, the figures that stood upon it on that memorable day seemed to live again, and the street to surge with reputation. Its most remarkable feature is an exquisite sculptured frieze, which seems to have been worked out with a needle rather than with a chisel, — finely and delicately as it is wrought." 1 Francesco Bissolo was a native of Treviso, who studied his art under Giovanni Bellini, but soon threw off all the constraints of the Bellini man- ner, developing a strong individual style, of much beauty in the forms and coloring. TREVISO 193 that wildly excited multitude, till I could begin to real- ize the passions of the time. Returning to the piazza, I looked back down Via Calmaggiore at the picture which was made by its old houses opposite the Baptistery, — dwellings from the earliest medieval times, such as are still found in Tre- viso by the dozen, with first floors projecting widely over the walk on massive beams ; and from one of their little casements leaned a figure belonging to the same epoch, — a maiden in quaint bodice of flaring red, with a crimson cap upon her ebon hair. There are two interesting walks to be taken from this piazza, and as I gazed I debated them in mind, ending by taking the Via Cornarotta which leads northeast from the side of the frescoed house. It proved a narrow, quaint way, with an out-of-the- world, forgotten air, shadowed by old crumbling pal- aces that looked deserted. Two of these were of at- tractive Renaissance lines; another had a second story projecting far over the street, countless years showing in every beam. In about two hundred yards I came to the Muni- cipio, at the angle of a cross-street, — a good modern building, but strangely located, in this quiet quarter. Next it was the most curious old dwelling yet discov- ered, with ground-floor windows of little, heavily barred slits, like a prison; and opposite this were more houses with the ancient projecting floors. Southward this Via del Municipio would lead me directly to the Pre- fettura; but I turned northward upon it, across the long, spacious Piazza dei Fillipini (wherever got they that name. 5^) to the ramparts of the city, looming mighty now before me.^ Below the great embankment ^ These were constructed near the end of the quattrocento by the great Veronese architect, Fra Giocondo; and earned their fame by resisting many a fierce assault and bombarding siege. 194 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY ran a street, the Via delle Mura, outlining its massive bulk indefinitely to west and east; by a path I mounted to its broad top, planted now with rows of shade trees, under which ran the graveled promenade that is the principal walk of the modern citizens. The reason for its popularity was evident at once; for over the brick parapet I saw the stupendous Alps soaring near at hand, like a gigantic, precipitous, and serrated wall — rising here quickly to far elevations with few interpos- ing foothills; over the shoulders of the foremost were thrust glittering snow-peaks, and to the foot of the rocky wall swept the fertile plain, beautiful with woods and grain-fields and shining villas. From out this plain came pouring the stream of the Botteniga, filling the moat beneath my feet, but mostly plunging underneath the wall, to reappear upon the inner side divided into three or four branches. This was just to the right of where I had mounted; and on walking to the spot I saw between two of the radiating arms a delightful rustic islet, piled with rough cement blocks into a tiny hill, atop which sat a summer- house overgrown with creepers. A lovely scene, of a kind most unexpected. It was attached to a neighboring shady garden by a rustic foot-bridge; and beyond it the swift waters rushed on diversely between the backs of buildings and other gardens, till lost to sight. Adjacent to the stream without the wall was some- thing still more unusual and surprising: a modern city suburb of the upper class, the first one I had yet found, consisting' of a road lined with very recent, ornate dwellings, separated amongst lawns and mead- ows. The North Italians have at last discovered, then, the joys of having one's own house, in rural surroundings; but as I gazed, I saw, alas! that they have not yet discovered the veranda, — that which CONEGLIANO. GATEWAY TO OLD TO WX. — CASTLE HILL IN BACKGROUND. TREVISO. PIAZZA DEI SIGXOKL TREVISO 195 gives rural life most of its charm. These brand-new villas were so extraordinary in design and ornamenta- tion, so exemplary of the awfully misguided taste of the modern Italians, that they were worth walking miles to see; such a nameless patchwork of walls, pavilions, recesses, chimneys, flat roofs, pent-roofs, archways, mansards, — in no style nor method ever known to man, with brick here and stone there, plain stucco here and rough stucco there, glaring each in half a dozen frightful, discordant colors, daubed from eaves to basement with every sort of discordant orna- ment (forgive the name!), — they were an abominable concatenation that would shake the nerves. To cap the climax, upon their surrounding lawns was not one sheltering tree, nor the sign of one planted; they stood forth naked in all their lurid pride. I turned my head and hurried eastward along the rampart, hoping that living next to Nature will yet bring them her quiet harmony. Some way beyond the river I went down the first street to the south, and shortly, on a left-hand turn- ing, came to the interesting little Church of S. Maria Maddalena, of the sixteenth century. The edifice itself is in no way remarkable, but within it are sev- eral good paintings of Paolo Veronese. Four of them are upon the side walls, large tableaux representing the Resurrection of Lazarus, the Magdalen at Christ's feet, the Sacrifice of Abraham, and the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden; not being in Paolo's last, over- crowded, over-ornamented style, I enjoyed much their rich tone, strong modeling, and brilliant colors. Over the high-altar is another, and over the altar to the left of the choir, the best of them all, — one of those smaller crucifixion scenes which that master painted so tenderly, with the Madonna lying fainting at the 196 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Cross's foot, supported by other female saints, and over all the scene a sombrous, awesome, murky atmo- sphere. There is another, almost identical with this canvas, in the Church of S. Sebastiano at Venice. Nearly as much as the paintings did I enjoy the con- versation of the parrocOy who showed me them, — a thorough Italian gentleman, of erudition and most engaging manners. From the church I stepped back to the rampart, and followed it again to the main northern gateway, near its eastern end, — the Porta S. Toma, renamed lately after Mazzini. This is one of the handsomest city gates in North Italy; it is a great, ponderous, square structure, rising athwart the wall, stuccoed except upon its outer face, and capped by a flat dome with a marble statue of St. Paul. In the middle of its long, dark passage I found high upon the left wall a little shrine of extraordinary beauty, — a marble high-relief of the Madonna and Child adored by warriors and an- gels, clearly a Renaissance work of the best period, and of very exceptional grace and expressiveness. It is unfortunate that such a gem should be so little known, and its author also. Without the passage there was a fine stone bridge crossing the wide moat, from which a clear view was commanded of the gate's splendid f agade ; it reminded me of the ornamentation upon the Renaissance court-fagade of the Palace of the Doges, — the six Corinthian marble columns, three on each side of the archway, rising from pedes- tals, carved with St. Mark's Lion in relief, to rect- angular projections of the entablature, — the elabo- rately relieved panels between them, cut with shields and piles of arms, and the great winged lion with his gospel, glowering from atop the arch, above the en- graved date of MDXViii. TREVISO 197 Over the bridge was passing each way a continual procession of contadini, afoot or mule-back, or driving two- wheeled carts; and as I watched, I thought of how many, many generations that same march of travel had been traversing this same gate, passing on up that white road to Germany and Austria, Dalma- tia, and Byzantium. I thought of Titian riding through the archway on his steady old nag, a stately picture in his flowing white beard and velvet gown and cap, jogging on toward his native mountains and early friends; and the dashing Pordenone spurring through on his fiery steed, on a visit to dazzle his townspeople with his honors and jeweled finery. In this eastern quarter of Treviso beyond the Bot- teniga, there is but one more object of general inter- est, — the Church of S. Maria Maggiore, toward the southeastern corner. I went directly down to it now by the Borgo Mazzini, which soon opened into the largest piazza of this city of large spaces, yclept del Mercato; — and from its southern end, still down, by Via Stangade, in which I passed on the left the notice- able Casa Lezze Casellati, — more completely cov- ered, with better preserved frescoes, than any other I had seen. Unfortunately, they were not good frescoes; yet the house as a whole was very striking, — its fagade ruddy with the flames of Troy, from which yEneas was just stalking forth with Anchises on his back. Shortly beyond I came to S. Maria Maggiore, a huge church, with a curious, cream-colored, stucco front, pierced by three round and two long, square- headed windows, framed by brown cotta mouldings; beside it stood another ponderous unfinished campanile, — the medieval Italians were ever ambitious beyond their powers. The spacious, dusky interior contained 198 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY several objets d'art of interest : over the entrance door, a painting by Palma Giovane, — the Descent from the Cross; upon the high-altar, a richly colored pietis- tic canvas, attributed to Palma Vecchio; off the left aisle, a semicircular chapel, filled with many decadent frescoes by Jacopo Laura in 1590; and, principally, the ornate Renaissance tomb of the condottiere Mercurio Bua, — who, like most of them, fought for Venice. This monument is a large marble slab against the left wall, cut with three scenes in high-relief, and seven charming niches holding maidens with pitchers and rounded putti; — all by Bambaja, of the Milanese school (1480-1548). It is attractive in many respects, though showing evidence of the first decadence. Across the bare, sunny piazza before this church I noticed a quaint house of the trecento, well preserved, and typical of the Gothic secular style in its doors and windows of pointed arches, and other picturesque details. Before it led the Via Carlo Alberto northwest, — one of the very few instances in which I have found a street named after that noble, unfortunate initiator of Italian unity; and this paucity I think very strange. It took me to the city post-oflSce, where I crossed the main arm of the Botteniga — with a view of pictur- esque old mills amidst the current — to the Piazza and church of S. Leonardo, shortly east of the central piazza. The building is insignificant; but on the right wall of its nave I saw a pleasing old painting of the Madonna and Child, accredited to Giovanni Bellini, and certainly much in his style. Just a block south of this piazza lies the great civic hospital of Treviso, occupying an enormous quad- rangle between four streets, — one of the largest and best institutions of that kind in Italy, the land of hospitals; it was founded in 1332, and has been re- TREVISO 199 peatedly enlarged, until it can, I believe, accommo- date nearly a thousand patients. I looked through the windows at the rows of clean little rooms, shining with white walls and whiter linen, and thought what a mar- velous godsend it must be to the poor of this locality. The nursing sisters completed the scene, with their immaculate caps and sweet, unselfish faces. Shortly to the west of this piazza, upon a narrow way, I found the strange decaying loggia, dating as far back as 1195, which they call the Loggia dei Cavalieri, because it originally served as an assembly-place for the nobles. Square in shape, but one lofty story in height, it has five round arches on each side, supported on marble pillars; being extraordinarily well propor- tioned and harmonious for a building of that so-called dark age, and much like a Renaissance structure, — so much so as to make one realize that the classic style had never died out entirely. Within there are said to be fragments of very early frescoes; but I could not see them, for the building has become so tottering that the authorities have boarded it up entirely. Adjacent to it is the small Piazza delle Erbe, usually filled with fruit and vegetable stalls, and littered with their refuse; from which it is but a step northwestward to the rear of the Prefettura. But I followed southwest the Via Umberto, upon which the Loggia faces, until it brought me to the Via Vittorio Emanuele just above the hotel, — completing thus my first giro through Treviso. Li the little southeast section of the original town, a triangular space between Via Umberto and the main branches of the Sile and Botteniga, there are several objects of some interest, which I hunted up one after- noon. Firstly, I found a sma,ll three-sided piazza in the section's western angle, near the hotel, fronted by two 200 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY large palaces and the Church of S. Andrea, the latter standing upon the highest point in the city; within it hang two attractive paintings, — a picture of St. Andrew by Bevilacqua, over the high-altar, and one of Giovanni Bellini's glorious golden Madonnas, with S. Lucia and S. Crisostomo. Opposite on the west stands the Renaissance palace of Count degli Azzoni, huge and imposing, once beauti- fied by frescoes now vanished, with a spacious orna- mental cortile; on the south rises the residence of the Conti d' Onigo, renowned for the vast and beautiful garden that stretches clear to the Sile, resplendent with statues, vases, grottoes, and kiosks, and stretching over the water the boughs of its stately trees. There seems an unusual darkness in the deep shade of that grassy bank, and well may it be; for it was the scene, in 1903, of the tragedy of self-destruction that cut off the last scion of that famous family, — a sad end to its centuries of grandeur. Upon the Via Regina, — which divides this section, leading from the Piazza dei Signori straight south- easterly to the middle bridge over the Sile, — I found an exceptionally interesting Renaissance dwelling, well down on the east side, near the river, adorned with four stories of charming windows and other pleas- ant details, besides remnants of frescoing in graceful designs; and on reaching the immense civic hospital shortly to east of it, I discovered a way down its left flank to the river, that was a vista lifted bodily from the twelfth century. It could not have been touched for hundreds of years. So narrow that I could almost reach from wall to wall, rudely paved and filthy, it was covered and darkened by the far protruding first floors of a long row of ancient houses which thrust out decaying beams from their crumbling walls. Walk- TREVISO 201 ing through this medieval, dusky passage, past little iron-studded doors and slit, prison-like windows, I almost expected to see a bravo step out before me with cloak, gauntlet, and dagger. The contrast at its end was all the greater, when I emerged suddenly upon the broad] sunny quay and splashing blue water of the Sile, which rushed over a weir into glistening white foam. Away to the west stretched the green line of luxuriant maple trees upon its farther bank, to where the vista was arched by a roseate gilded bow from the vanished sun ; immediately on the left the main arm of the Botteniga came roaring in, under the broad stone arches of the quay; and the joined waters soon turned at right angles to the south, sweeping on between rows of foliage. Such was their confluence, where Dante once lingered in admiration. I strolled upon the bridged embankment over the junction, and there, as Italy never fails in gentle feel- ings, stood midway over the torrent a tasteful monu- ment in marble: no statuesque form, but a simple medallion on the face of a pyramid, graved with the poet's laureled head in profile; and under that, the words that he wrote in memory of this spot, in canto IX of the immortal Paradiso : — E dove Sile e Cagnan s' accompagna — — Ah, that great, unfortunate wanderer from realm to realm, with no home to lay his head, exiled from all he loved so tenderly, — as I thought of him standing melancholy on this spot, Rossetti's lines came to my mind : — — Arriving only to depart, From court to court, from land to land. Like flame within the naked hand His body bore his burning heart. That still on Florence strove to bring God's fire for a burnt offering. 202 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY I walked on farther, down the stream in the dreamy sunset glow, till, traversing the ramparts and joining its southern arm, it swept united eastward along the base of the city wall. Here was a lovely spot, with gardens upon one side trailing over the battlements, and woods of thick trees upon the other, as far as the huge round bastion at the town's southeastern corner; peaceful now at eventide with strolling couples, where "swords once flashed and arrows flew, and lifeblood stained the water another hue." One morning I went to the Duomo by a shorter, directer route than that through the central piazza, by little streets west of Via Calmaggiore and parallel with it. I passed by the small church of S. Gregorio, near the piazza, insignificant in design as well as size; but on glancing over it found an excellent work of Palma Giovane. In Italy no sod is too poor to hide a violet. Shortly beyond I found a thing still more pleasing, — a splendid Gothic palace, rising upon a noble arcade of pointed arches, with exquisite Gothic windows and other details. This was hidden in a byway a block south of the retired Piazza Pola ; surround- ing which, and all about the neighborhood, I found a number of interesting old houses, of different styles. The Gothic dwellings are the rarest in Treviso, but here and there one is unexpectedly discovered, — usually arcaded upon the ground story, of bricks with handsome cotta plaques adorning the quoins, some- times on primitive pillars, sometimes on columns of shining marble. That fine Lombard cotta-work would beautify the homeliest building. From the west corner of the Piazza Pola one of the oldest streets of the city runs southwestward, a pic- turesque vista of ruinous two-story houses with wide- projecting floors. Beyond this a very narrow, dark TREVISO 203 way brought me to the apse of the Cathedral, looming overhead Hke a colossus; and I circled round it through one of those curious hidden areas of Italian cities, devoted to the lowest class of wineshops and houses. Here in the very shadow of the Duomo were low dark places filled with tuns and barrels, and bulging them upon the area, with dirty tables, rush-seated chairs, and emptied bottles, — noisy all the nights, deserted at this hour but for one or two lazy, sleeping tatter- demalions. I came out upon the Piazza del Duomo, and took the Via Ganova northwest, past Olivi's house. It led me to the Borgo Cavour, Treviso's broadest street, running to the only western gateway. Porta Cavour, which pierces the ramparts near the city's northwest corner. Here were fresh, dignified, modern buildings, a church, — S. Agnese, — and opposite the latter, on the right, the extensive edifices of the Biblioteca and Museo Comunale. The former is noted for its collec- tion of valuable manuscripts. In the latter was for- merly kept the city's collection of paintings, now re- moved to the palace on the central piazza. After much hammering, I routed out a spectacled old gentleman in knee-breeches, who confessed himself to be a professor of art, and the guardian of the place, but asserted that there was nothing now to be seen here, and nobody ever came.to see it. I insisted, however, until he turned me over to his good dame, with a sigh, and a bunch of enormous rusty keys. She conducted me back through the passage, to several rooms packed and littered with ancient and medieval bits of sculpture and architecture, which a couple of wood-turners were now using as a workshop. I poked about through the huge, heterogeneous, dis- orderly mass, unearthing a number of things of con- 204 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY siderable interest, including one or two medieval stone Madonnas of quaint grace. Then my conductress took me upstairs, and unlocked one forgotten cobwebbed room after another, till a full score of them stood open in dust and decay to my astonished eyes. Here were old paintings, etchings, engravings, sculp- tures in marble, bronze, porcelain and terra-cotta. Delft ware, Gubbio ware, faence, majolica, carvings in ivory and wood, textile fabrics of every sort and costumes of every age, laces, miniatures, gems, cameos, manuscripts plain and illuminated, Murano glass, German stained glass, spinets, harpsichords, lutes, psalteries, medieval arms and armor, tapestries, em- broideries, churchly vestments, candelabra, furniture of many epochs, — in a word, every sort of human instrument or manufacture, possessing artistic merit or historical association, produced or used during the past ten centuries. All these were scattered through the rooms and corridors without order or arrangement, piled in heaps, thrust in corners, spread behind glass cases, haftging upon the walls, and all alike covered with the dust and cobwebs of years. It was a gold- mine of the countless artistic treasures and produc- tions of the long-past generations. Here were all the things that once beautified their castles and medieval houses, — that sprang into joyous life in the glamour of the Renaissance, — that they used and lived with in those strange, varied ages. Digging here, it was easy to reconstruct in mind a medieval household, or a palace of the cinquecento, with these very articles that had played such a part, — even to the gowns, the laces, and silken coats of the human beings that had dwelt amongst them. There was an intimacy about these thousands of orderless relics, cast thus on one side as if used but TREVISO 205 yesterday, — a lack of formality and tagged arrange- ment, of removal to a distance in stiff rows and cate- gories, — that took me into those bygone days, revivi- fied for me their life and dwellings, and warmed my heart towards those very human people of long-past ages, in a way that no conventional museum nor expo- sition had ever succeeded in doing. It seemed to me like the garret of a great house, to which its inmates had just been casting their worn-out finery; and that I should find them all alive again on descending the stairs, walking about in costumes and amongst furn- ishings like these thrown aside. It was a unique ex- perience, a unique opportunity, in this modern world with its sad, eternal sameness ; which — alas — can no longer be repeated at this spot. For the good dame informed me that they were even now at work classi- fying and arranging this heterogeneous mass, to shape it into a fine museum with formal rooms and ordered cases ; — another display to chill the heart and under- standing. Chief of all the treasures which this mine produced for me were a score of extraordinary trecento frescoes, that had been transferred bodily on strips of plaster from an ancient church now turned into a barrack. They hung upon the walls of the first long hall I en- tered, illuminilQg its dusty shade with their still bright hues, in broad, soft masses; and their lovely, rounded forms, with charming eyes, smiled at me from glowing medieval groups, — feminine saints performing mira- cles, or going to their execution. But that which made me stop to consider was their power of execution, the moulding of those well-drawn figures, the way in which they stood forth from the level real and tangible, — a wonderful ability in a painter of the fourteenth century. There were few indeed, closely following 206 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Giotto, who could learn that power. And these strong figures were naturally yet gracefully arranged, in compositions of dramatic vigor, speaking their parts with elevated sincerity and effect. Who could this painter be.'' I had never seen his work before. The woman also did not know. But when we descended, the professor in knee-breeches answered me, with a shout of amazement, — " Tommaso da Modena!" Why, of coui'se; who else could it have been.'' But if Tommaso possessed such powers as these, it is a pity they are not more widely known. I decided to re- pair at once to inspect his other works, at the great Dominican Church of S. Niccolo. Before leaving the Museum buildings I looked out of a rear window at the extensive stretch of woodland behind them. Here, in the very northwest corner of the city, was a wide area of groves and gardens, once the private grounds of nobles, which the Signory were now converting, with the aid of paths and shrubbery, into an attractive public park. When finished, it will be an addition to Treviso's beauties that should de- light any visitor from the North, longing for the shade and coolness of his native wealds. S. Niccolo, really the principal sight of the city, stands in its southwestern corner, approached by a long, straight, wide thoroughfare of the same name, that leads directly west from Via Vittorio Emanuele, shortly below the hotel. This street widens, halfway, into the Piazza Bressa; and upon this piazza's north- ern side I found the town's most interesting house: a Renaissance dwelling, covered upon its stuccoed f agade with frescoes of extraordinary preservation, — frescoes of huge, saintly figures, arrayed in the long- hose and puffed sleeves of the middle cinquecento, — powerful, well-moulded figures with thick necks, glow- TREVISO 207 ing with brilliant colors, — the figures of Pordenone, This is the only fagade remaining to us of the several which that artist painted here, — and one of the very, very few remaining anywhere in Italy from the hand of an old master of the first rank. As far again beyond this, loomed up the giant struc- ture of the Dominican church upon the left; it is a Gothic edifice of the beginning of the trecento, — erected under the direction of Pope Benedict XI, who was an inmate of its monastery, — and has been for its many treasures constituted a national monument. Its face is to the west, its left side towards the street. The red brick exterior, pierced by lancet windows, presented to me no special merit; and I entered by the great front doorway, as the sun was sinking in a sea of gold. Ah! what a mighty, dusk-laden interior was this, soaring on colossal white pillars to indefinite heights, traversed by slender light-rays from the lofty windows, and crowned in the far distance by a glistening altar under a curving apse, in the centre of which glowed a great and radiant picture from a golden frame; through the chiaroscuro, breathing the incense of centuries, filtered softly, sweetly, the old hues of saintly frescoes from every pillar and wall, smiling from quaint figures in medieval garb. How strange was this effect, — to behold on each large white column a form of heroic size, faintly lustrous, livened by the dusk, martial in mail and sword or holy in flowing vestments; while many others gazed with them at the visitor from the walls of the stuccoed aisles. Recovering from the first weird sensation, I saw that they were all, or nearly all, trecento work; the executors had been Tommaso da Modena, chiefly, and several fellow artists; those of Tommaso being clearly 208 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY distinguished by their superiority of drawing and moulding, having natural rounded faces with keen eyes of strong expressiveness. Especially lovely was his St. Agnes, immediately to the left, with the tiny lamb nestling in her left hand, — also the St. Cather- ine, on the fourth column to the right. Behind the latter, on the wall of the right aisle, there glowered suddenly before me a form so gigantic and monstrous as to take my breath away, — a bare-legged Colossus, forty feet in height, strange and terrible for a second in the masking eventide. But it was only a fresco of St. Christopher, painted by Antonio da Treviso in 1410, — perhaps the largest painted figure in exist- ence. The noble proportions of this vast edifice, one of the few grandest Gothic interiors of Italy, struck me with a keen delight, — so free and majestic are the lines. Lofty, striped, pointed arches leap from one mighty column to another, and rise triumphally before and behind the choir, whose apse is luminous with seven taU lancet windows; the arched roof is of the wooden construction of the Eremetani of Padua, soar- ing buoyantly far above the gleaming marble floor. No chapel recesses break the sweeping lines of the con- fining walls; but little altars stand against them, one in each bay, under its two lofty windows. . Over the main doorway I saw another quaint early fresco, of the Annunciation; the great church is a gen- uine gallery of primitive artists, a class all by itself. But I went on to the later paintings around the apse. In the chapel to the right of the choir, over the altar, is the famous large canvas of Sebastiano del Piombo, representing the risen Christ surrounded by the twelve apostles, all standing, and St. Thomas putting his fingers to the wound in the Saviour's side; while under- TREVISO. A>'>UIsCIATION. (TIZIAXO.) TREVISO 209 neatli appear the half -figures of six proud Trevisans, priests and women. It is a splendid work, of noble dignity and earnestness, exceedingly rich in tone and coloring, — so grand, indeed, that many insist it to be a production of Giovanni Bellini. Upon the walls of this chapel are other frescoes by Tommaso da Modena, similar in style and merit to those upon the columns. On entering the choir my heart was lifted in delight by two superb products of the Renaissance. On its left wall before the altar stands the celebrated tomb of Count Agostino Onigo, — one of the finest accom- plishments, if not the masterpiece, of Pietro and Tullio Lombardi: two beautiful marble sarcophagi, one above the other, both exquisitely enriched by delicate reliefs, project from the wall within a large marble oval, — the lower supported by two heavy corbels, the upper by fanciful lion's claws resting on the former; the lower adorned at its centre and angles with three lovely 'putti holding horns of plenty, and between them, two wreaths of fruited branches con- taining fine Roman heads in profile; the upper cut with a spread eagle in centre, and round about it the daintiest possible arabesques of convoluted foliage. From one corbel to the other, another garland, pon- derously rich, depends in a semicircle, enclosing a porphyry medallion with marble wings; and on the top of all stand three striking marble forms: the Count- Senator in the middle, stern and powerful, with his square, clean-shaven face and robe of honor, — two charming little pages at the sides, in doublet, long- hose and flowing curls, each holding a shield with the Onigo lion rampant, each a perfect foil to the dignity of the noble. But this is not all: for around the marble oval is a huge frame of bright arabesques in 210 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY color, and at its foot to right and left, two splendid cinquecento warriors in glowing finery, so naturally- painted that they stand forth tangible, in their haughty pride. By many this frescoing is called the work of Bellini; but more likely it is that of Jacopo de' Barbari. There are few monuments like this, — so successful, on such a scale, in its charming combina- tion of the two branches of art. The other masterpiece here is that great picture which glistens down the nave from the centre of the apse- wall, high above and behind the altar; as I stepped nearer, it opened upon me with a refulgent glory almost divine, — the radiance of form and color characteristic of those chefs d'oeuvre that glorified the Renaissance, and made Italy the treasure-casket of the world. Like the sunset which I had left without, its gorgeous colors burst from the glowing tone; in a celestial atmosphere the Madonna sat enthroned, amidst saintly figures of monks and bishops, of bea- tific serenity. Seldom have I seen a more perfect, clean-cut 'execution than this, which caused the forms to stand forth living beings, and beings of superhuman beauty, with their spiritual faces and glossy robes. Between them, on a velvet carpet over marble steps, reclined a flowing-haired angel of celestial loveliness, playing softly on a psaltery with rapt, upturned gaze; but loveliest of all was the sweet Madonna, over whose gentle head rose the high, ornate back of the marble throne, and, still higher, the curving dome of the covering pavilion, whose marble arches opened upon a sky of cumulous white clouds. Whose hand made this wondrous thing of beauty, worthy of Titian or Palma.'^ It was a pair of hands, — Fra Marco Pensabene, of Venice, the Dominican, who commenced the work, and Girolamo Savoldo, of TREVISO 211 Brescia, who completed it ; the latter's paintings are distinguished for their high beauty and finish, for this same depth of tone and color, and refinement of draw- ing, while no such other splendid relic of the former's brush is known; so I conceive this to be chiefly the product of Savoldo's genius. Says the critic, Professor Giovanni Milanese, — "Gli artisti sentono una mano che seppe fondere insieme il magico colorire del Gior- gione col divino disegnare di Raffaele." ^ When I had turned at last from this delight, and was glancing at the curious baroque monument of Pope Benedict XI on the right wall, in which the Pope is sculptured as seated between two cherubs, before a wildly tossing curtain, — a gentle voice at my side an- nounced the abbot of the monastery, the Reverend Professor Ogniben, a man of charming culture and deportment. He chatted a while engagingly about his artistic treasures, and then led me to the sacristy and the adjacent cloister! In the former he discovered to me two canvases of Palma Giovane, and out of the latter opened a square chamber of exceptional interest, — the old oratory of the friars, dating from at least 1170. In the centre of the rear wall a large Byzantine fresco of the Crucifixion confronted me, executed about that date, but remarkably preserved. Two saints stood beside the nude, contorted form of the dying Saviour; four angels, likewise weeping, appeared in the air above; and under quaint wooden canopies at the sides were Saints Paul and Peter; — altogether a work, for that period, of wonderfully good drawing and sincere expression. This room was called, after the fresco, the Cappella del Crocefisso. All around the ancient walls other ^ The artists perceive a hand that knew how to mingle the magic col- oring ofGiorgione with the divine designing o£ Raphael. 212 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY painted figures looked down upon me, primitive also, but so realistic and lifelike as to excite a still greater surprise; they were all Dominican friars, seated each within a little cell, before a table laden with books or parchments, reading or writing, with their earnest faces highly individualized, — faithful portraits, as was evident, of brothers who had made their mark in the world. Here were, as the inscriptions indicated. Saints Pietro Martire and Thomas Aquinas, Popes Innocent V and Benedict XI, and many that had earned fame in other ways. But my surprise at such realistic modeling and expression in works evidently of the trecento, was dissipated when the good abbot re- vealed the author, — "Tommaso da Modena." I thanked him when I left, for opening my eyes to the full merits of that little known artist; and he sent next day to my hotel an illustrated booklet of seventy-five pages devoted to the beauties of S. Niccolo. Before departing, however, I made with the courteous father another round of the church, in which he pointed out to me several of its minor jewels: another canvas or two of Palma Giovane, an attractive altar-top by Girolamo Campagna, a picture by Francesco Bassano, and other works of lesser interest, including one by Marco Vecellio. After this visit I had but one more to pay in Tre- viso, — which took me, the next day, back to the cen- tral piazza where I had begun. The handsome Renais- sance structures at its southern angle are twain, connected by a high arcade; the right-hand loggia, of the fire and telegraph building, being supported on Doric columns encased in rings; the left-hand loggia consisting of rusticated arches, bearing an upper story of three windows, with coupled Ionic half-columns between them and at the angles. In this 'piano nobile TREVISO 213 were three large chambers, in which I found the city's collection of paintings now established, — though not yet entirely hung. Two of the rooms contained works of the Renaissance period, mostly of small account; the third, some good modern canvases, including sev- eral of high merit. In the first chamber I enjoyed two fine portraits by Leandro Bassano, of a young man and his wife, and a picture of a Dominican monk by Lorenzo Lotto, of much naturalism and individuality. In the second room were, amongst many others, a sublime Madonna by Giovanni Bellini ; a Holy Family with Saints Roch and Sebastian, by Paolo Veronese, not well composed, but having graceful figures superbly modeled; one of Tin- toretto's lifelike portraits, of Bartolommeo, the father of Bianca Capello; a splendid Adoration of the Magi by an unknown hand, possessing an extensive hilly landscape graduated softly from brown hues to blue, and beautifully toned and colored; also two exquisite works by Paris Bordone, — the first a Madonna on a high pedestal, before a stretch of pretty country, with a baby angel at her feet and two saints at the sides, — the second (claimed by some to be a Palma Vecchio, and very much in his style), being a most lovely Holy Family, very rich in hues, graceful, and skillfully lighted, with softest and most attractive fleshwork, — a painting of the very first rank. This was, it is true, a small collection for Italy; but what countless enco- miums would it not bring forth, what offers of count- less gold, if it could be bodily transported across the sea. There is another Lorenzo Lotto, perhaps finer than any of the foregoing canvases, just outside of Treviso, in the village church of S. Cristina, five miles distant; it is a Madonna enthroned with saints, of his usual high 214 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY sensuousness and gorgeous coloring, and to my mind well worth the drive. But there is a far greater object to be visited from this city, — the renowned Villa Giacomelli, perhaps the most artistic of all those numerous chateaux that were built about the country by the patricians of Venice.^ It stands just at the foot of the Alps, some fifteen miles northwest of Treviso and ten miles east of Bassano; easily to be visited, therefore, by carriage from the latter place, but more comfortably by rail from Treviso to Cornuda, three miles distant. There, where the slopes of the foothills commence, just without the little village of Maser, this monument of the Renaissance was raised by the prominent Venetian family of Barbaro, — Marcanto- nio Barbaro, Procurator of St. Mark, and his brother Daniele, the Patriarch of Aquileia, — and was made immortal by the conjoint labor of three of the great- est artists of the age. Palladio designed the palace, Paolo Veronese painted it, Alessandro Vittoria en- riched it .with his sculptures. What a vision is raised for us by the sound of those three names together; where else is there such a resid- ence, constructed in all three branches of art by the leading masters of its period.^ The fame of Villa Bar- baro soon resounded far and wide when it was finished, raising it at once to a chief place in the galaxy of Venetian country-houses, celebrated by visiting artists and literati, and the scene subsequently of many a fete of the great world in the seventeenth and eight- ^ A third trip that should be taken from Treviso, by travelers endowed with time, is by rail up the valley of the Piave to Feltre and Belluno; a journey of delightful scenery, which reaches its maximum at Belluno, upon its isolated lofty rock girdled by great mountain ranges. The city is picturesque also in its winding medieval streets, shadowed by quaint old houses and dignified palaces of the Renaissance; it has a fine Titian, a Cathedral by Palladio, and charming walks on all sides. MASER. VILLA GIACOMELLI. CENTRAL PAVILION. MASER. VILLA GIACOMELLI. ENTRANCE, WITH FOUNTAIN AND LITTLE TEMPLE. TREVISO 215 eenth centuries.^ In it died Lodovico Marin, the last Doge of Venice, to the possession of whose family it had passed; from the Marin it descended through marriage to the Masena family, and from them by similar process to the Giacomelli, by whose name it is to-day generally known. One bright morning, therefore, I was rolling north- westward across the plain toward the mountains, on the line that climbs the valley of the Piave to Feltre and Belluno; and I watched the Alpine wall come steadily closer and higher, while the train slowly abated its momentum on the ever increasing grade of the unseen slope. Away on each side stretched the smiling fields of corn and vine, the vineyards radiating far rows of stunted trees, from which the garlands swung glistening with bright leaf and tendril and new- fledged grape : — I must say That Italy 's a pleasant place to me, ' Who love to see the sunshine every day. And vines (not nailed to walls) from tree to tree Festooned, much like the back scene of a play.* At the town of Montebello, where joins the branch from Castelfranco and Padua, we met the first of the foothills; behind it came a wild stretch of wooded country, undulating in long swells, over which the engine panted slowly to the second line of hills. At their very feet I disembarked, in the scattered village of Cornuda; and securing a little vehicle, started west- ward on the old highway to Asolo and Bassano. It was a delightful drive: the road was level, but on ^ It was here that Lord Burlington — who was enamored of Palladio's works, and had made a journey into Italy in order to hunt down some of his lost designs — claimed to have discovered a number of the great mas- ter's plans and notes, which the English nobleman published in his eu- logium of 1730. * Lord Byron, Beppo. 216 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY both sides of this restricted upland section of the plain rose the hills' dark, wooded flanks, loftier on the north, — dotted amidst their umbrageous wildness with occasional white villages topped by campanili, with towered gray castles, and glistening villas. The floor of the vale was richly cultivated; but here too were trees in exceptional abundance, in groves and orchards, shading the gardens and lining the fields. It did not seem like Italy, nor did the frequent farmhouses along the road, except for the old, broken, stucco walls, and front barnyards littered with refuse and manure. Venice was like Florence in the peace that she gave her territory, permitting living upon the soil at an age when everywhere else it was impossible. For the same reason her patricians could build country-places of beauty, instead of fortified castles, from the cinque- cento downward. The fine, hard road wound along between hedges and trees, fields of Indian corn and wheat, vineyards and orchards; now and then we passed a group of peas- ants traveling in their regular mode, — packed five or six into a tiny two-wheeled cart without seat or springs, their heavy boots dangling from front and rear, as they sat on the bottom back to back, their round red faces peering curiously from beneath large caps, over the big market-baskets upon their laps. After some three quarters of an hour we traversed the straggling village street of Maser, and just beyond it came to a beautiful, classic, stuccoed church at the left of the road, with glittering white columns and ornate pediment; it was the chapel of the Villa Gia- comelli, constructed in 1580.^ ^ This was also Palladio's work, and is ornamented by the plaster- sculpture of Vittoria. The latter executed the adjacent ornamental foun- tain, in the middle of the road, which is a faithful example of the taste of the later cinquecento. VILLA GIACOMELLI £17 Near by were a large sculptured fountain, in the very decorative style of the Late-Renaissance, and a large closed gateway on the right, through whose bars I saw a graveled avenue leading straightaway up a long slope, between brick parapets crowned at intervals by charming little statues of putti. At the upper end of this pleasing vista, unshaded by any trees, stretched the long, imposing fagade of the villa itself, glittering marble-like over the green fields and across the fertile valley. What an admirable, commanding situation this was; and how the whiteness of its stuccoed columns and arcades gleamed in the sun, against the wood of tall pines rising darkly behind! In the centre, looking directly down the avenue, projected a graceful, two-storied pavilion, with four Ionic half-columns supporting a pediment filled with a sculptured tableau; from this centre ran somewhat lower arcades to right and to left, — simple stuccoed arches on stucco piers, with sloping red-tiled roofs, and two stories of windows gazing from under them; at the ends were pavilions, rising on similar arches more widely spaced, which had no openings in their upper floors, but instead, large painted sun-dials. Before the front door lay a handsome circular flower- bed, with four marble divinities standing around it; other statues adorned the plot before the villa, and the glitter was complemented by a series of tall white chim- neys rising from the tiles. I walked on slowly up the driveway, and, as I did so, thought of the countless il- lustrious guests that had walked here in past days, — warriors, statesmen, artists, poets, — the great men of three successive centuries. I bent my steps to a door in the right arcade, intro- duced myself to the housekeeper, a very pleasant person, learned that the proprietors were fortunately 218 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY absent, and hence received a permission to look over the piano nohile. One of the finest traits of the Itahan nobihty is the gracious readiness with which they suffer strangers to inspect their homes. A maid who was detailed to guide me led the way up the main staircase, from the beginning of the right arcade to the rear hall of the central pavilion; this last was a large square chamber, with gleaniing white parietes illumined by a flood of light from the back windows and doorway, with a handsome dining-table in the centre, and rich furniture and canvases about the walls. But that which irradiated the apartment with gorgeous hues was its lofty arched ceiling, brilliantly painted from end to end, representing a heaven of white rolling clouds, peopled with a beautiful, spectacular assemblage of classic gods and goddesses. It was the Olympus of ancient Greece; and upon the wall over the entrance glowed a banquet scene, at which the diners here below doubtless often looked up, quaffing their wine in jovial imitation of the gods and their cups of nectar. Above the windows shone another such Olympic tableau; and along the upper sides extended realistic balustrades, upon whose rail- ings leaned silken cinquecento figures, returning the gaze of those below, in the company of monkeys, dogs, and parrots, — inevitable companions of the Renais- sance nobility. The frescoing was completed by single figures of Olympians on the four pendentives of the vaulting. All these many graceful divinities, in their more or less nude forms of splendid modeling and lus- trous flesh, their brilliantly tinted, flowing draperies and hair, their beautiful countenances and impressive mien, — radiated the joys of life, the harmonies of art, the pleasures of the table, the enchantments of fair women, the bliss of paradise, on sumptuous waves VILLA GIACOMELLI 219 of color that must have inspired the mortal banqueters with a like felicity. Paolo Cagliari was in the very prime of his powers, between fifty and sixty years of age, when with his magic brush, rioting in those dreams of carnal happi- ness and magnificence that most quickened it, he lifted this chamber to the immortality which is here depicted. With the constant increase of his fame and wealth, love of splendor and ostentation had grown upon him, step by step with his own joyous revelings, till it spread itself resplendent in these gorgeous scenes of feasting and mythology, and produced elsewhere those strange gigantic canvases of banquets glittering in princely pomp. Then he could no longer portray a group of simple piety, — a picture that would speak to the heart; and when he tried, the martyrdom that was attempted emerged as a glistening show of silks and jewels. So was produced that Death of S. Gius- tina at Padua, and the great Marriage of Cana in the Louvre. Strangest of all, but perfectly typical of the epoch, Paolo at the same time asserted a piety pro- found, and was constant in his churchly devotions. Only a few years after painting this villa, in 1588, he died in the very "odor of sanctity." The full, complete beauty of this dining-hall was not, however, revealed to me until I stepped to the open doorway in the rear, — to be struck by a sight that held me motionless : a little garden lay before me, level with the floor, holding in its centre a basin of water with a tinkling fountain ; and behind it, close at hand, circling round upon all sides, rose a wall of stucco shaped into one great mass of sculpture, glistening and coruscating in the dazzling sunlight enough to blind the unexpecting eyes. This, then, was Vittoria's addi- tion to the palace, — a statued garden such as no other 220 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY age would have produced. The wall sloped upward to a flat central gable, under which an archway formed the entrance to a grotto, guarded by two giant forms leaning against the jambs, — Atlantes supporting the entablature; while over the entablature, and all around the curving walls, shone a score of other gleaming figures, nude and beautiful, from the midst of gar- lands, futti, niches, shields, and piles of ancient arms, all executed in high-relief. One large garland of fruits drooped across the arch-top, supported by two lovely, winged, female divinities leaning upon its quarters, — a very unique and charming design; above their heads rose the peak of the long, flat gable, having a heavy, block cornice, and at their sides, in the angles be- tween the eaves and lower cornice, glowed the joyous reds and blues of two oblong frescoes in rococo frames, — Venus playing with Cupid, in cinquecento coiffure, and little else. Under the cornice on both sides were niches at inter- vals, containing the statues, with panels of arms be- tween "them, and drooping garlands mounted astride by the most charming cherubs. The whole construc- tion was surmounted, on the front of its peak, by an- other moulded Venus, whose form shone like living alabaster against the black pines towering behind. Such was the classical vision that poured its irides- cent curves through the wide openings of the salon, to complement the painted paradise overhead. My guide now opened a door in the left wall, and revealed four successive chambers on that side, all looking upon the garden, luxuriously furnished as bed- and living-rooms, and bearing evidences of late occupation. Upon their ceilings disported the Greek immortals of Veronese in decorative poses, though few in number compared with the hall; in the first room >IASER. VILLA GIACOMELLI. DETAIL OF WALL. (PAOLO VERONESE.) VILLA GIACOMELLI 221 was also a lovely fresco of Madonna and Child; in tlie last, a very handsome canopied bed of former times, and upon the end wall, a painting of startling deceptiveness. This was an open doorway, through which a huntsman was just entering, accompanied by a dog, — and his features were those of Paolo Cagliari himself. He was a good-looking man, of fair beard and good proportions, on whom the years sat very easily, — resembling more a merry country squire than one's idea of an artist. On the other side of the hall I was shown four sim- ilar rooms. The first again contained a Madonna on the wall and Greek divinities on the ceiling; the third was decorated in Pompeian style, with little panels of pretty landscapes amongst the grotesques (not the work of Cagliari) ; and in the fourth was another painted open doorway on the end wall, this time admitting the person of an attractive woman, — the wife of Vero- nese. Thus he and she still look down the vista of the rooms he glorified, through the open doorways all in a line, till their glances find each other at the distant ends. In this final chamber stood another gorgeous bed, upon its ceiling gambolled graceful 'putti, and on the walls were various paintings by Paolo's pupils; — a bewitching ensemble, which, I fancy, would hold in the country most of the year any art-lover having the joy of its occupancy. Last of all I was conducted to the main hall, which occupies the front part of the central pavilion, ad- jacent to the dining-salon. It is in the form of a Greek cross, with four chambers filling the corners between the arms. In the centre is a four-sided divan topped by a marble statue; overhead are charming arab- esques covering the whole of the vaulted ceilings ; and round about the walls, eight frescoes by Veronese, PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY representing niches containing brightly tinted, alle- gorical, female figures, — symbolizing the different branches of music. But besides these, Paolo had placed here two more of those curious, deceptive, open doorways, apparently leading into the cham- bers, — double doors in each case, with one of each pair partly ajar, and two youthful figures just step- ping through them, a girl and a boy, clad in the pretty costumes of Paolo's age. Over all the wall- spaces not so utilized, he had constructed with his brush an elaborate architectual scheme in grisaille, with pilasters, cornices, and little panels of designs and figures; into which scheme the imitation niches and doorways were carefully fitted. Amongst these painted pilasters I also discerned a number of grisaille medallions bearing heads; and my guide informed me that they were likenesses of the Barbaro family, and of the three great artists who had labored here for them. She then opened the two front rooms, always the guest-chambers of the villa, which were beautiful with wood mosaic floors, ornate stucco chimneys, and ceilings glowing with the opulent colors of Veronese. One of these very decorative pic- tures was the so-called "Matrimony," or antique wedding-scene; the other, a scene of Bacchus in the vintage, finely composed and modeled, radiant with the spirit of Omar Khayyam, — the joy of Beaded bubbles winking at the brim. The scene from the windows here was fully as lovely: the flowered circle with its shining marbles, the majes- tic avenue lined by statues, the green, gardened slope to the luxuriant valley, the dark hills against the blue horizon with their forests of pines. No wonder the Venetian patricians loved to linger here, with beauty surrounding them both within and without.' VILLA GIACOMELLI The grandiose hall, the whole sumptuous villa, are a brilliant exemplar of that old courtly life of gay villeggiatura; also — I thought, as I wended my way back to Treviso — of the utter artificiality of the Renaissance society of the decadence, when the elaborate social forms and ceremonies were as hollow as the stucco imitations roundabout. Then did men forget that underlying first principle upon which true art must stand, upon which had been erected the fab- ric of its glory when the Renaissance was young, — that principle which Browning has so well expressed: It is the glory and the good of Art, That Art remains the one way possible Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine at least.^ ^ Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book. CHAPTER VII FROM TREVISO TO UDINE We've sent our souls out from the rigid north, On bare white feet which would not print nor bleed. To climb the Alpine passes, and look forth Where booming low the Lombard rivers lead To gardens, vineyards, all a dream is worth. — Mrs. Browning, Casa Guidi Windows. Northward, along the great highway of the centuries, laid deep and lasting by Roman arms, the highway plodded over by such countless caravans of merchants, on their way to and from the countries of the north and east, the highway tramped by so many imperial armies on their march to Thrace and Syria, by so many barbaric hosts on their way to the mastery of Rome, — Alaric with his Visigoths, Attila with his Huns, Theodoric with his Ostrogoths, Alboin with his Lombards; — what would all those myriads have thought, in what deadly fear would those conquerors have fallen prostrate, could they have beheld this giant demon of steel and fire that whirled me over their storied route! Here was the mile-wide bed of the dashing Piave, which used to hold their legions in check a month or more, when its spring flood burst from the confining mountains over the helpless plain, — now a huge desert of cobbles and boulders shining brightly in the sun, over which the train crawled carefully on shaky spans, finding to-day naught of that hurtling deluge, but a peaceful little stream meandering through the stones.^ ^ The great problem of the Veneto has ever been the confining to one FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 225 On its farther side the Alpine wall loomed closely now, upon the left, sweeping from southwest to the far northeast, faced by gentler, tree-clad hills, that gleamed with villages and castles. On one of those smiling heights edging the plain there stood, I knew, the grand old castle of S. Salvatore, rendered famous by the brush of Pordenone; the highway bent west- ward to it, through the adjacent village of Susegana, which lay in a dell hidden from my sight. But stead- ily, as we ran on, the train approached the base of the hills, and in a few miles came against it, at the station of Conegliano. I disembarked, deposited my luggage at the parcel-room, and emerged into a stately, tree- lined avenue leading straightaway west to the massed buildings of the town, surmounted by a height with a ruined castle. There stands an ancient castle On yonder mountain-height. Where, fenced with door and portal. Once tarried steed and knight.^ It was a beautiful vista: over the white walls and red roofs rose ponderous old campanili; over them all mounted the steep hillside, its vineyards unbroken but for the battlemented wall climbing on the left from one shattered tower to another; and adjacent to the grim keep of the castle, surrounded by the sentinel spires of tall cypresses, glistened a villa with a classic, col- course of these numerous rivers across the plain; whose flooded onrush, in the steep and comparatively short descent between the Alps and the sea, not only carried into the latter the washed soil of the mountains, but swept away the precious earth of the level, leaving behind only a desert of broken rock. Modern engineering science has succeeded in binding them with mighty dikes, whose summits have continually to be raised, as the beds of the streams rise year by year. Even then, breaks and disastrous washouts often occur, in times of unusual rain, spreading desolation over large tracts of country. ^ Translated from Goethe by Aytoun and Martin. 226 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY umned fagade. As I gazed, I thought of the stormy ages that had rolled over this little, out-of-the-way, but important city. Conegliano, as I have said, was always the junction of the two great highways to the north and east, and therefore a link in the chain of communication that no power would ignore. She was a fortress, perched upon this battlemented hill, controlling the traffic of the two routes at her will. In the ages of Rome's de- cline she suffered the perils of her location, in siege and sack and destruction by the passing invaders, over and over, — another little section of those bar- baric horrors that never were written in detail and man will never know. In the succeeding Middle Ages, she rested long under the hard yoke^ of the Trevisan Republic, and was then successively taken by Ezzelino, the Delia Carrara, and Delia Scala, — until, along with Treviso and the rest of the Marches, she found rest and safety in the bosom of the Serene Republic. Venice then rebuilt the castle that overlooked the town, and re-strengthened the protecting walls that crept down from it to envelop the buildings at the foot of the slope, installing a podestd that governed hence- forth, from a seat more commanding than in any other of her towns save Brescia. In the following century the artist was born who did more to make Conegliano known than all the incidents of her history. Gian Battista Cima was a boy in those very streets before me, under the shadow of the great fortress of the podestd which made such a lasting impression upon his 1 That the yoke of Treviso over the Marshes was hard, we find by such entries as this in the annals of Friuli: " In 1164 war is begun upon Treviso by the league of the Coneglianesi with Ceneda and with Ottone, Bishop of Belluno, protected by Valdarico, the Patriarch of Aquileia, who ex- horted them to free themselves from obedience to the Trevisans." — F. di Manzano's compilation of the Annali del Friuli. (Author's trans.) FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 227 mind; but the impression of the Alpine peaks was stronger still, and when he had wandered to Venice in search of artistic learning, drawn by the marble city like steel to a magnet, those gentle pictures which he soon began to produce under the influence of Gian Bellini, full of golden tones and pietistic peace, carried always in their backgrounds the line of his native hills. Thence did the Venetians name him Cima, — the Italian word for mountain-top, — Cima da Conegli- ano. At the mention of that name, what lovely visions rise before us, what inspired, holy figures, full of grace and dignity, lost in ecstatic contemplations, standing in idyllic landscapes, — whose distant towered castle with flanking walls was the frowning memory of the child. But he dearly loved his native place; — often, as time went on, he returned to visit it, and took a share in filling its streets with joyous colors on their house-fronts. "Amongst rude decorations of this kind at Cone- gliano we notice a slender neatness and regularity in delineations of the human shape, and a reddish tinge of flesh, familiar to Cima: yet Cima's productions have little else to remind us of local influences, and we are at a loss to name an artist in Friuli to whom he owes any marked feature of his style." ^ Besides these fres- coes, now entirely vanished, he executed for the Duomo one of his finest canvases, — a large Madonna and Saints, the chief sight and treasure of his city to- day. The avenue extending from the station was not long; and advancing down it I came soon to a wide transverse thoroughfare along the base of the hill, faced upon the east side with three- and four-storied stuccoed buildings of modern appearance, containing ' Crowe and Cavalcaselle. 228 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY shops and caffes. Upon its west side stretched gardens of shrubbery and flowers, some twenty-five yards in width, backed by closely set, rear walls of dwellings, of even height; and these curved gently with the street line as it swept to north and south, circling with the foot of the hill. Then the truth broke sud- denly upon me: this was the line of the vanished city wall, that once stood with its moat upon the ground now covered by these gardens, — leaving the houses that had risen just within the wall as the present demarcation of the ancient burg. Directly before me, looking down the road to the station, where once had opened the main gateway of the fortress, now opened a corresponding entrance through the line of old build- ings, — a wide, deep, shadowy passage beneath them, entered by a triple archway, and approached by a cement-flagged promenade. Through this modern gateway, and up and down this main street that formerly had been but a road outside the fortification, throngs of people were con- tinually passing; it was a very busy scene, enlivened further by bicycles and crowds of peasants' vehicles. Over the roofs of the wall of houses, to the left, rose one ancient touch, — a huge, heavy, Romanesque campanile, with a belfry of three arches, capped by a pointed Byzantine cupola, speaking of countless age in every line and crumbling stone; it was — as I soon learned — the campanile of the Cathedral. Far higher, behind it, soared the green slope of the hill, to the great, black donjon glowering down still as when the podestd kept watch from it over the city and plain. I approached and traversed the gateway, coming out within upon the central piazza of the old town, a fair-sized, stone-paved, empty space, burning fiercely in the sun, — once pleasingly named after their great FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 229 man, Cima, now weighted with the appellation of Venti Settembre. On its left rose a mass of old houses, hiding the side of the Duomo; on its right, the little Palazzo Municipale, with a loggia on the ground floor, of Renaissance design and some attempt at grace; but the chief edifice looked down from the elevated rear side, — a monumental, ponderous structure of decad- ent Renaissance style, with heavy, bare wall-spaces and classic pediments, partly Greek in effect, partly Egyptian. The wide main body of it had two lofty divisions, — plain, stuccoed basement and piano nobile; in its centre there projected well forward and to the height of a third story a massive pavilion, hold- ing on its first floor as the building's chief feature a large loggia, whose two middle supports were detached caryatids of mammoth size and ugliness. Before the three square windows of its third story stood plaster statues, copies of the antique; at the ends of the main body were two slight pavilions, adorned on the first floor by temple-like constructions, of four heavy pilas- ters and pediment, with long windows between the central pilasters, before which stood two other heroic statues. Other pediments crowned the loggia and cen- tral pavilion, and other heavy pilasters of uncouth shape framed the first-floor windows; while the three doorways of the basement were not framed at all. Seldom have I seen anywhere a more extraordinary and peculiar design, — so ponderous and clumsy, with such a bad mixture of styles ; yet in spite of all, retaining a certain nameless dignity and power. This curious structure was the town's opera-house; and posters were affixed to the walls announcing a grand presentation of Carmen for that evening. Think of it, — a country place of only ten thousand inhabitants, with a huge palace for the housing of 230 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY their operatic seasons. — O wonderful Italy; — where else could be found such a people! Adjacent to the gateway on the south, a handsome Renaissance dwelling looked across at the theatre, .having elegant windows, beautifully cut as to their mouldings, and one unusual corner window with a balcony very richly sculptured. From the piazza the street swept curving to north and south, between tall old stuccoed houses, — those on the east side forming the inclosing wall; deep, shadowy arcades ran below on both sides, and here and there were lingering por- tions of the bright frescoes that had once embellished the city. To the right I found a number of Renaissance palaces, once full of grandeur and noble families, now put to common uses, with stables in their ornamental cortili. Immediately to the south, on the west side of the way, rose the Duomo, undistinguishable as to its fagade from the rest of the row of buildings, except for the abundant frescoes of Old Testament scenes between the openings of the upper story; below con- tinued the arcade, upon large, plastered, Gothic arches; above were a number of double Romanesque windows; and the paintings were remarkably pre- served, both in lines and colors, affording an excellent idea of the appearance of the streets of four centuries ago. There were tableaux of the Deluge, King David with his harp, and other Judaical incidents, not very well drawn but full of bright hues and picturesqueness. The interior, which I entered directly from the arcade, proved an utter contrast from the aged f agade, — an arched nave of Renaissance lines, simple and regular, aisles with side chapels, and a deep choir with a chapel on each hand. On the last altar to the left I found the pala of Cima, — a great glowing group of FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 231 the Madonna enthroned between St. John, St. An- thony, and four others, including two women. The splendid tone was much darkened by age, but the duskiness perhaps enhanced the grace and solidity of the quiet figures, — especially the two lovely girl- angels sitting at the foot of the throne and making melody. As was so often the case with Cima, no pro- nounced feeling nor expression emanated from the persons; but there were dreamy atmosphere, soft, har- monious coloring, and a pensive, happy restfulness. "In the background . . . the models of architecture and ornament are taken from the cupola chapels of S. Marco; the Virgin's head is of a regular Bellinesque type, and the angels . . . seem inspired from those of Giovanni Bellini."^ In the wall of the chapel to the left of the choir, the priests had recently constructed a grotto of imitation rock, placed within it a brand-new wax Madonna, and hung the sides of it with many silver-gilt hearts; then the story was sent abroad that miracles had been worked by the figure, and it found countless prompt believers, as such yarns always do in Italy. Already the Madonna had her throng of devotees, — of whom I saw several kneeling before the grotto, — and had received a lot of true testimonials and valuable gifts. I emerged and walked about the streets for a while, looking mainly at the fragments of frescoes on fagades, in which Conegliano abounds. The famous old house of the Borgo della Madonna was especially interest- ing, — a three-storied structure rising on the usual arcade, having the spandrils of its arches painted with bright pictures, and varied cinquecento tracery over the upper stories. The identity of the artist was shown by a shield of arms supported by an angel, with * Crowe and Cavalcaselle. 232 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY the word "Darius," — the same Dario who worked at Treviso. There are, I was told, other paintings inside the house; but it was closed and I could not enter. I found a number of other old fagades almost as pleas- ing, of varied age and excellence, some having mot- toes with the pictures ; many were in a state of preserva- tion beyond that of other towns, and the figures were well modeled for such decorative work, though stiff and gaudily colored. Finally, returning to the central piazza, I started up the narrow way beside the theatre, to climb to the castle. After passing the two higher streets parallel with the main one, it turned to the left, and mounted beside the old wall of circumvallation, steadily and steeply, till a chapel was reached near the top, — a quaint little old chapel, called the Madonna of the Snows; a pretty name, which indicates the severity of the winters here. Now the path turned somewhat to the right again, between high garden walls, which prevented any sight of the classic villa that I had observed from below, and brought me to the summit at the very foot of the castle wall, in the shadow of the great tower looming far into the blue. Alas, this tower proved to be all that was left of the once powerful fortress. It had been the donjon-keep, rising upon the east, or town side, of the quadrangular fortification; but of all the rest naught remained ex- cept the outline of the quadrilateral, marked by walls of the old stones that were but shadows of the original, — all around which soared lines of spear-like cypresses. The entrance was by a gate in the middle of the north side. Within, where formerly had stood around the courtyard palatial stone buildings full of the splendor of Venetian might, now lay amidst the shadowy cypresses only a ruinous graveyard of falling head- FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 233 stones. Gone were the great halls, the hundreds of chambers, the courts, the stables, the battlemented walls, the guarding towers, — gone so long that the very memory of their centuries of glory had faded from the people's minds, and the cemetery which had taken their place had fallen to a like decrepitude. Even the custodian was an aged, tottering wreck of a human being. The keep, to whose foot he led me, had been pre- served through the superior massiveness of its con- struction. Attached to its base lingered also two or three ancient chambers, in which the custode dwelt, with his family. I climbed the tower, from one square loft to another, by ladder-like stairs mounting from successive rough-boarded floors to similar ceilings; and stopped in one compartment to study some pa- pers affixed to the wall. One of these was a complete plan of the original fortress, intensely interesting, showing every portion and use of the vast structure; the others were photogravures of two of Cima's most renowned pictures, in whose background were clear views of the castle as it looked in his day, — a mighty, dark mass of towers and curtains, crowning the sugar- loaf hill. At the summit a splendid panorama lay spread around me, — the city at my feet, the hazy plain stretching to indefinite distance, sparkling with white- walled farms and villages; the rounded hills upon the other side, glowing with cultivated meadows, copses of woods, and charming villas, — divided by luxuriant vales, and rising gradually to the mountain-peaks, bare and serrated. From the red roofs below came the rattle of drums, and a chorus of bugles playing a lively air, to the march of some unseen company; reminding me again of the bloody sword of Mars ever 234 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY hovering over this lovely landscape. The Teutons may come in their legions again, some day, down this highway to the richest of all plains, as they have come so many times during the centuries. Descending, I made the circuit of the walls, by the tall dark cypresses, discovering on the south side a picturesque modern villa with most attractive garden, and at the northwest corner a partly destroyed round tower of extraordinary thickness, where once the pow- der of the fortress was kept. Outside the walls upon the north was an open space once used for the parade, where the views of the surrounding vales and hills were more uninterrupted than from the keep. To the northwest I saw the mountain- wall open like a wedge, admitting a valley that crept from the plain far into its bosom; that was where I was going, to Ceneda and Serravalle at the head of that fair valley. It was the old route to Belluno and the north. But first there was another trip to be made; and returning as I had mounted, to the piazza of Conegli- ano, I secured a rig for the modest sum of six francs, with a sfeepy boy for a driver, and set out southward upon the great highway to Treviso. For once the horse was a lively one, — I had bargained for that, — and we rattled between the buildings of the modern south- ern extension of the town, into a suburb of recent upper-class villas, like that I had seen at Treviso, — scattered over sunny lawns, with colors that could be heard miles away. The road between them, stretching straightaway to the southwest as far as the eye could reach, was a beautiful vista between giant plane trees, which spread their welcome shade overhead and gave intermittent glimpses of the lovely hills upon the right. What wonderful roads are these of Italy ; this one had a surface perfectly curved from the centre down to FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 235 the draining-ditches on the sides, from which it was separated by round granite posts every few yards, — a vast expense. It was macadamized as hard as stone, doubtless upon the original Roman foundation deep below, — twenty centuries old, and as strong as ever; and no dust rose from it to disturb the traveler. Every one or two hundred yards was a heap of broken stones, — material for repair, always kept at hand. An ab- solutely perfect highway, — yet no different from the others which lead over every Italian township, except in these two extraordinary rows of planes, closely planted and of tall height, beautiful as a dream, all descendants of that one old monarch in the garden of Padua. Like a dream, too, were the vistas that they afforded of the accompanying hills. Backward rose the height of the fortress, with its grim tower and columned villa and circling spires of cypresses; next it soared a cul- tivated mount, then one topped by a castle with com- plete, gray, battlemented walls and keep, ensconced in luxuriant foliage; and so they stretched on, hill after hill, parallel with the road and far away toward the mountains, smiling with bright fields, green vineyards, and gray olive groves, picturesque with dark patches of wood and towered castles, glistening with fair white villas amongst the trees, — while ever in the back- ground, in contrasting majesty, soared the precipitous bare flanks of the Venetian Alps. After four or five miles of this delightful scenery we came to the little cross-roads village of Susegana, scattered with modern houses at the foot of a hill that stood somewhat forward and separated from the chain. Up this last wound an avenue of shady horse- chestnuts, and on its summit stood a castle grander than any I had yet beheld. It was S. Salvatore, the 236 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY famous seat of the great family of the Colalti, possess- ors of this village and all the countryside far and wide; — one of the few medieval chateaux that still remain, intact and occupied, attached to the original name and fortune : — That old pile, Which flanks the cliff with its gray battlements Flung here and there, and, like an eagle's nest, Hangs in the Trevisan.^ The Counts of Colalto, centuries ago, obtained this royal residence at the cost of much blood and strug- gle, and afterwards fought bravely in the wars of Venice; from father to son it has steadily descended all these generations, who have manifested such ex- ceptional wisdom and prudence that the present count still enjoys the estates of his first noble ances- tor. Their name itself came from this height where they first took residence: "Giovanni di Col-alto" was simply "John of the high hill."^ At the top of the shady avenue we reached a level space just below the walls, surrounded by later dwell- ings of the family's retainers, and, at its end, a gate- way in the fortification. Here an old servant made his appearance, to whom I transmitted my desire; he vanished for a while, reappeared, and stated that the family were away and the majordomo had therefore ^ Rogers, Italy. 2 Of all the blue-blooded families of Europe, the Colalti are, beyond question, one of the purest and most ancient, — tracing their line unbrok- enly to the sixth century. They were, says Manzoni, "one of the most noble and illustrious families that King Alboin (of the Lombards) brought with him into Italy; and he left them in Friuli. They are of allied blood with the princely house of Brandenburg. Charlemagne confirmed their jurisdiction and fief, and his successors did the same. A great number of them distinguished themselves, in war and in churchly dignities, and they have also been distinguished by their illustrious connections with the principal families of Italy." — Annali del Friuli. FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 237 consented to my seeing the main courtyard and the chapel. Once more I was in luck. The old man, court- eous in manners, like most servants of high Italian houses, led me over the ancient drawbridge, under the portcullis, still ready to descend, and up a sloping graveled way that wound between the base of the castle and the edge of a precipice on the northwest side; there had been no danger of attack here, and so there was but a small parapet topping the abyss. How many generations of gleaming knights and medi- eval cavalcades had wound down this same approach, with glistening steel and pennons, on destrier and palfrey. It curved to the west along the summit's western edge, passed through another gateway, and entered a long, wide, stately court, faced upon the east by a line of palatial edifices, four and five stories in height; on the right it first jutted out over the precipice into a little garden, — commanding splendid views of the vale below and the girdling chain of hills, where doubtless the ladies were used to sit in the afternoons of long ago, — and then was walled in by a quaint lit- tle church of simple lines, with its right side upon the court. At the opposite end of the flagged area rose another palace, faced by a monumental flight of steps adorned with statues, at whose head opened a large archway closed by handsome iron gates ; and through the latter was visible a lovely rose-garden, backed by a Renaissance wall surmounted charmingly by a row of marble divinities. I stopped to enjoy this attractive vista; then exam- ined more attentively the buildings on the left. They were of several different styles and epochs, not archi- tecturally ornate, but fairly proportioned and impos- ing; the oldest portion of all the present buildings had 238 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY been at the north end of this Hne, — so they told me, — dating from about 1200, but was only lately entirely rebuilt, with the exception of a massive outside stair- way of Romanesque days which still led to the main doorway in the first floor. The other structures were covered upon their extensive stretches of plaster by modern frescoing, — designs in grisaille, which had rather a tasteful effect. The old servant opened the chapel for me, whose interior of cracked and crumbling stucco clearly dated also from the thirteenth century, and was covered from end to end with bright-hued frescoes of different ages. It was a joy to my eyes, — a typical private chapel of medieval grandees. The little nave was filled with the rude benches on which the retainers had heard mass for hundreds of years, excepting the space in the centre of the right side occupied by the great family pew, surrounded by a heavy rectangular rail- ing; the seats within the latter were nearly as rude as those without, but of course my ladies had always cushions carried by their maids. Opposite to this, against the left wall, was a stone tomb of some Colalto of the time of the Crusades; and another tomb was against the end wall, behind the simple high-altar. Under this flagged floor, if the legend of Samuel Rogers were true, lay long hid from human ken a sepulchre of horror, a subterranean vault containing the pier in which, hundreds of years ago, the "White Lady" who haunted the castle was walled alive. Rogers has told the story well in his verses upon "Coir Alto": ^ she was a maid, gentle and fair, named 1 Rogers, Italy. Many critics, T know, consider it to have been a fab- rication of the poet, — according to his wont. The incident of the mirror, certainly, may have come from the similar legend of the Castello Estense at Ferrara. FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 2S9 Cristine, of a melancholy habit, dressed always in spotless white like a nun, and was tiring-woman to the countess of her day. The latter, seated one evening before her mirror, submitting her hair to the ministrations of the maid, bade a farewell to her noble lord, who was leaving on a journey; then turning to the glass, she caught, as she thought, a reflection of — A smile, a glance at parting, given and answered. That turned her blood to gall. — That very night The deed was done. — They led her forth, the unhappy lost Cristine, Helping her down in her distress — to die. No blood was spilt. — Fresh as a flower just blown. And warm with life, her youthful pulses playing, She was walled up within the castle wall — Under the chapel. — There nightly at that hour. In her white veil and vesture white she stands Shuddering — her eyes uplifted and her hands Joined as in prayer; then like a blessed soul Bursting the tomb, springs forward, and away Flies o'er the woods and mountains. Issuing forth. The hunter meets her in his hunting-track; The shepherd on the heath, starting, exclaims — 'T is the White Lady! I could not learn that the people of the castle, or those of the countryside, believe in the legend, nor that any of them have ever beheld the ghost. Rogers added that in his day one old retainer, hunting, saw it in the morning mists, and was so terrified that he never went forth again; also that the very mirror which occasioned all the mischief was still to be seen. Along the right wall of the chapel, between the win- dows, and on the entrance wall over the doorway; ran a series of quaint figures and tableaux of the trecento, more or less obliterated, with Giottesque saintly heads and forms emerging from the ruin here and there, in restful, haloed simplicity, — their broad, light hues 240 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY and gilding commingling in one general, sweet, golden tone. But on the left wall — what a contrast ! Over its free spaces rioted the huge figures, bold actions and high colors of the Late-Renaissance, — bull-like . forms of reddish flesh, in long-hose and puffed sleeves, energetically enacting scenes from the New Testament, — the familiar forms of Pordenone. Here were the Magi, Annunciation, Journey to Egypt, Raising of Lazarus, and Meeting with the Magdalen. On the rear wall was the last Judgment; on the rear portion of the right wall, St. Jerome, and the Salutation of Elizabeth; and on the ceiling, the four Evangelists. They were badly injured, and did not seem well com- posed, nor of much expression or feeling; but they were of course quite decorative, and finely modeled, with individual figures of considerable grace. The form of the Madonna was always sweet and attractive; and the Flight into Egypt showed somewhat more merit than the rest. But I was disappointed by their wretched condition, which hindered any decent appreciation. It was, for these paintings I had come, but that which proved of far more enjoyment was the visit which I now paid to the castle proper; the majordomo yielded to my persuasions, and opened the sacred precincts. Penetrating the eastern buildings by a passage in the ground floor, I found on their farther side, above the ramparts, a long narrow garden of ex- ceeding loveliness, — beds of flowers, and fine shrubs, with geometrically winding paths; a stone circular fountain adorned its centre, filled with goldfish, and an enormous yew tree of great age shaded its northern end. The plastered walls of the castle looked down with hues as gay as the flowers, — frescoes of gods and goddesses and cherubs, floating upon clouds, in the high flesh-tints of Pordenone; queer designs, of FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 241 no discernible aims, and not especially attractive. Most pleasing of all was the view, from the garden parapet, of the grounds below; thick trees swept around with the circling enceinture of the castle walls at twenty to thirty yards' distance, hiding the outer battlements and the rest of the hill, and forming a pleasant screen for the privacy of the noble family; and within them, ten yards or so below, lay another beautiful garden, shining like a jewel-case, with hand- some palms and orange and lemon trees. Over the waving tops of the surrounding foliage was visible the wide luxuriant plain, stretching into the hazy distance. From this idyllic scene, I stepped through a door- way near the yew into the main hall of the castle, in the renovated wing. A magnificent white stpne stair- way in three divisions led to the upper hall, which opened grandly on the staircase well; the ascent was commanded by a life-size portrait of a dignified elderly gentleman, with a small white beard, and features of much pride and benevolence. It was the present Count Colalto, who, they told me, did not belie his counten- ance, being a man of exemplary kindness, and well beloved;^ he and his family were at present at their palace in Vienna, where they spend most of their time, ' — visiting the castle only during the summer months and late autumn. He has other palaces at Gratz, Paris, Venice, Rome, and the Riviera, which also ab- sorb much of his leisure. Such is the life of a modern nobleman of wealth. The upper hall was richly de- corated, in contrast to the bare, polished, stone walls, ^ The Count exempliSes that hereditary virtue which has enabled his long line to continue so well the family health, possessions, and dignities. His benevolence is both deep and practical, being shown in model dairies, factory buildings, etc., upon his different estates, — one of which I saw at the foot of the hill, on my departure. 242 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY with old rugs, vases, tapestries, and paintings; among the latter being a lovely, early quattrocento panel of the Madonna adoring her Child, and two good can- vases, dated 1494 and 1510, by little-known artists, one of them including a Madonna of extraordinary beauty. The furniture was worthy of inspection, being fine, modern, Venetian imitations of carved medieval chairs and settees ; so that the whole salon was a per- fect reproduction of a castle hall of the Middle Ages. Near by I was shown a room that was a delightful example of the trecento, — its walls completely cov- ered with light, Giottesque frescoes, the beams of its wooden ceiling painted with designs, the furniture all careful imitations of that period. I was not admitted to the other buildings of this row, where the family and. their guests dwell, but learned that the rooms were decorated and furnished in various styles of the past two centuries, and contained a number of valu- able old masters. They took me to the edifice at the end of the courtyard, which dates from the sixteenth century, «,nd is now little used. On its first floor front was the Salle d'Armes, composed entirely of arms and armor used by the Colalti and their followers in the wars of the Renaissance period, — bearing the dents of the blows of sword and musket-ball, and other ev- idences of long use. Amongst every kind of medieval implement, especially interesting were the battle- axes and truncheons, which few men of to-day could wield, the engraved corselets, the curious early com- binations of spear and pistol (the latter set in the shaft), the long narrow bronze cannons, the clumsy arquebuses and other primitive guns, and the com- plete equestrian suits of mail upon mounted knightly figures. But what made them all of an interest far beyond that of such collections in museums, was the FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 243 knowledge that they had stood the brunt of many a battle, upon the shoulders and in the hands of the men who had lived in this same castle, — the ancestors of those here to-day. On the ceiling of the well of the grand staircase lead- ing to this hall I saw a large round fresco by Tiepolo, in his usual airy manner, and in the disused chambers at the side, other examples of his work, amidst profuse decorations in the Pompeian style. From the last room a door admitted me to the terrace above the rear of the charming rose-garden, and to the company of its rows of statues ; thence there was another beauti- ful view, of the tree-lined battlements below, the ordered gardens adjacent to them on the slope with- out, which seemed to girdle the whole enceinture with their flowered walks, — and the lustrous vale and smil- ing hills upon the south. What a perfect elysium was this castle in the air, richer than a castle in Spain be- cause endowed with the glorious dome and caressing sun of Italy, — the embodied realization of one's fond- est fancies, lovelier than any dream in its circling flow- ered terraces and shady groves, suspended above this enchanting landscape, thrilling with its countless memories of centuries of history and ancestral associ- ations! It will linger with me ever, as one of the happiest remembrances of my life. I returned to Conegliano by the stately avenue of planes, stopping for a few minutes at the parish church of Susegana to see its altar-piece, which is a pietistic tableau by Pordenone, in better preservation and pleasingly effective; and by five o'clock I was again rolling northward on a train, into that extensive valley that penetrates like a wedge the Alpine wall, to the foot of the Col Vicentin. The track followed the west- ern side of the vale, along the slopes rising near at 244 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY hand, until a height, jutting far into the plain like a peninsula, rose before our path and sent us curving round its headland. Looking up to its long summit, I saw near the end three separate old castles perched upon it, two of them in far advanced and picturesque ruin, the third still strong with towers and battle- ments and shining casements. At the foot of the de- clivity, upon the level, here somewhat narrowed be- tween the headland and the opposite wall, glistened the red roofs of many houses, whose white fagades and campanili flocked about us as we slowed to a stop. A neighbor informed me that this was Ceneda, that the surviving castle overhead was inhabited by its bishop, and the larger of the ruined ones had been that of the medieval seigneurs.^ There is always a reason for the existence, or loca- tion, of an Italian town; and I saw at once how Ce- neda had first come into being, — because of this neck through which the highway of the North was forced, commanded of old by the fortress on the height. Be- yond it, when we resumed our course, the level ground opened wide again, into a basin that was a glowing treasure-house of richest fields and vineyards, and prosperous dwellings lining shady roads. It was excep- tionally luxuriant, even for Italy, being protected from cold winds by the enfolding mountains, which narrowed soon again as we proceeded to the end; and it ^ The Conti di Ceneda are another very ancient and illustrious family, of Lombard origin; being descended from a certain Count Giovanni, to whom in 739 King Luitprand granted the fief of Ceneda, together, with many others. His descendants devolved the actual government of the little city upon its Bishop, as a feudatory, who held sway for centuries, until replaced by the family of Camino. The Counts themselves continued to occupy the castle on the hill until comparatively modern times, when it was suffered to fall to pieces, and they removed to one of their other residences; having evidently preserved a part of their possessions through all vicissitudes. FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 245 was thickly settled as one continuous, spreading vil- lage. In fact, it is now all one incorporated city, three or four miles in length; for the town of Ceneda was in the year 1879 joined with that of Serravalle at the apex of the valley, forming a total population of twenty-two thousand souls, including all the country- side between; and it has been renamed as one unit, after the liberating King, — Vittorio. I descended at the terminal station, to find myself still a full mile and more below the ancient burg of Serravalle. Wishing to stop at its heart, I disdained the temptations of the modern first-class hotel opposite the station, where I saw gayly dressed Italians loung- ing in pleasant grounds, — a genuine summer-resort, — and taking an omnibus, was ported up the long straight highway to the head of the vale, where clus- tered thickly the tall old houses of the original town, within their medieval walls. We entered the walls by a four-storied, battlemented, stone and stucco gateway, which was also the municipal clock- and bell-tower, and over whose battlements loomed imposingly the vast mountain-sides ahead, black with forests. Within, the highway became a narrow medieval street, dark- ened by picturesque stuccoed dwellings rising upon arcades, and finally debouched into the town's piazza, just beyond the inn which I was seeking. It was a typical country hostelry, of the third class, entered by a dark driveway under the arcade, with the eating-rooms on the left of the passage, and the kitchen in the rear beside the stable-yard. The boni- face, who proved a very agreeable man and most anxious to please, led me to one of the two front chambers on the first floor, which was meagrely furn- ished with an iron bed and washstand, an old wooden dresser, and single chair; but it had the chief desidera- 246 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY turn, — clean linen, — and was certainly cheap at the price, a franc and a quarter. I settled my belongings, and walked out again to the street and the near-by piazza. The high old stuccoed houses changed their simple dress as they approached this centre of the town, to an ornateness that surprised me, — displaying fine Renaissance windows and balconies, and Gothic de- tails still more pleasing. On the left of the opening of the square, I was arrested by a Gothic palace of mag- nificent design: above a colonnade of pointed arches rose a piano nohile of colonnaded Gothic windows stretching clear across the fagade, upon marble shafts with elaborate foliage-capitals; two lights larger than the others occupied the centre, opening upon a lovely Gothic marble balcony; in the third story were two single windows, and one quadruple, of similar form; all of them were slightly ogive, and decorated upon the tip of the point with little vase-like reliefs; while at the summit this delightful construction was crowned by a well-proportioned cornice. Here the piazza ex- panded easterly from the street, which kept straight on along the left flank of a hill that loomed up in the very apex of the vale; from the eastern end of the square another street led up a defile, passing the hill on that side; and over the height between them extended a whole section of the ancient town. Very soon the situation was made clear to me: here was the oldest, original quarter of Serravalle, perched upon this eminence that blocked the pass to the north; — a better medieval position could hardly be con- ceived. After the earliest days the town had crept down into the valley, eventually forming its central piazza out of what had doubtless been at first its market-place outside the southern walls. The square FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 247 was surrounded by three- and four-storied, stucco buildings of Renaissance times, with goodly stone bal- conies and columned windows above the ground-floor colonnades, — except at the eastern end, where it was flanked by a dashing stream; over this a short stone bridge led to another open space beside the large Cathedral. The latter was of ugly, bare, plastered walls, with its entrance door apparently in its apse, westward turned, before which from the very bank of the stream rose the heavy detached campanile, — • also plastered, and terminating in an octagonal lan- tern and red-tiled spire. But that which gave to the whole piazza a dignity and picturesqueness of excep- tional strength, was the towering closely, upon its three sides, of the mighty, precipitous mountain-walls, which loomed far overhead, with rocky crags and black, wooded summits, hemming in the shadowed vale like a canyon. Strange indeed was this effect, of xA.lpine grandeur and wildness glowering down upon the very roofs of a town-square. On the left hand, perched upon one precipitous crag, sat the ruins of a gray stone building, said to have been a castle of the Counts of Ceneda, by which they guarded the precious northern road and exacted heavy toll from the passing travelers. Well underneath it, extensive landslides had scarified the mountain's face, and made the scene more awesome; and just at its foot, in the piazza's northwestern angle, sat the pic- turesque old Palazzo Municipale, a quaint relic of the trecento. A deep, shadowy loggia occupied its ground floor, behind three round arches on Gothic marble columns; over the centre of the latter was the ringhiera, with a Gothic marble balustrade, and on each side of it a charming triple window of trefoil arches; while beside the palace rose a curious old tow^r 248 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY upon a pointed archway, capped 'by a Renaissance belfry, and covered, on its falling plaster, with many shields of bygone syndics or podestas. The remains of the Venetian Lion still lingered over the ringhiera; and upon the walls of the loggia shone the softened colors of fragments of old frescoes, including a group of Madonna and Saints that were still quite decorative. Of the history of Serravalle and Ceneda, of which this building formed a part, it is only necessary to say that it followed that of Conegliano;^ and of their art, that they never produced any good painter, except Jacopo da Valentina, who studied under the early Vivarini of Venice, was a follower of Squarcione and Crivelli, and became more known for his severe mould- ing than for grace or coloring. Dario painted their house-fronts; and Basaiti the Venetian, Francesco da Milano, Carpaccio, and Amalteo, the pupil of Porde- none, came to aid in adorning their churches. The last-named is alleged by Crowe and Cavalcaselle to have been the author of these frescoes of the town loggia. Bjit greatest of all the stranger artists who decorated the twin cities was Titian; his daughter married and resided here, and he was used to stop over with her, on his trips to Pieve, for weeks and months at a time. On some such occasions he painted the two wonderful canvases which have beautified and made famous the two cathedrals. It was still light enough to see the interior of Serra- valle's Duomo, — which I remember as a well-pro- portioned, rather pleasing edifice with an elevated choir; it contained some of Amalteo's highly colored, ^ The possession of the Conti di Ceneda was interrupted by the ambitious Trevisans about the beginning of the twelfth century. Against their pre- tensions the Cenedese repeatedly rebelled, often with bloody battles and reprisals, until Ezzeliao laid his iron hand upon the Marches. FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 249 highly energetic work, and formerly a canvas of Car- paccio's, which I could not find; but dwarfing all else was the great Titian on the choir-wall. It is dated 1547, and represents the Madonna between Saints Peter and Andrew, — a grand tableau, dignified, almost majestic, toned like a reverberating bronze bell of deep, inspiring note, glowing with the master's splendid, harmonious hues; — the kind of harmony at which one gazes and gazes, till he is lost in its golden atmosphere of celestial peace, thrilled with the lofty impulses that radiate from the holy faces. Em.erging into the dusk of eventide, and returning to the inn, I enjoyed an excellent dinner in which the 'piece de resistance was a plate of those poor little birds that the hunters shoot by the myriad, — beccaficchi, — whose tiny bodies do not yield a mouthful apiece; — and yet the people wonder why their crops are being every year more destroyed by insects, and vainly march forth statues of the Madonna to disperse the pests. I was fed in solitary state at a separate table in the rear; and found much diversion in the doings of a crowd of peasants who seemed to be celebrating the festa of some friend. Though they drank only wine, they became quite intoxicated, and then loudly displayed their histrionic abilities, till the place was a perfect bedlam. But my sleep afterwards was easy, on the always comfortable Italian bed; and early in the morning I was again in the piazza, rejoicing in the inspiration of the fresh mountain air. This time I pushed on beyond, by the main street, along the west base of the hill, until I finally passed through an aged gateway in the northern city wall, and found the valley opened out again, rich and lovely, between the close-confining mountain flanks. On through this charming dale ran the white highway, 250 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY toward the peaks of the Col Vicentin looming grimly ahead, — on to Belluno, and the majestic beauties of the gorge of the Piave. I returned to town by the diverging way around the hill's eastern base, passing quarries high up on the terraces of the mountain, mills along the plunging waters of the stream, and ter- raced gardens of old palaces, suspended on the hill- side in faded grandeur. In the first portion of this pleasant walk, the out- ward progress, I observed near the northern city wall an old church of Gothic times, — S. Giovanni Bat- tista, — whose dusky, worn interior glowed with a number of excellent paintings. To chance upon some unknown church, and discover a few artistic treasures unpublished to the world, is sometimes a pleasure greater than would be the finding of a gold nugget in an abandoned mine. The good parroco, in a thread- bare cassock with the sleeves rolled up, unshaven and dirty, was vigorously polishing the silver of the altar in the sacristy. A young man of thirty-five, doubtless without Jhfluential connections, having obtained no better charge than this out-of-the-way parish and its ruinous edifice, with few communicants, and poverty too severe to permit assistants, he had — as I learned — with his own hands restored the building, and recalled the allegiance of the people. He told me, simply, how he had found a lot of old soiled canvases in the base- ment, cleaned them with bread and wine, and hung them upon the bare altars and choir-walls. There was nothing exceptional about him, — but one must ad- mire such loving souls that are not ashamed of hard manual lg.bor in the service of good; and there are many, many, such poor, devoted, slaving priests in Italy. Among his unearthed paintings were four of sur- prising merit : two groups of three saints on the first FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 251 and second altars to the right, by the little known Francesco Frizimelaga (signed, dated 1607), of much quiet grace, harmonious color, and gentle feeling; a splendid example of Jacopo Valentina (signed, dated 1502), on the first altar to the left, — a panel of the Madonna and four Saints, with an especially fine figure of the Baptist, displaying Jacopo's rich, deep tone and sincerely pietistic qualities, so attractive that I stood wondering why his fame is not wider; and behind the high-altar, a large Baptism of Christ by Francesco da Milano, well disposed and tinted, of much expression and power. A traveler who happened to be spending some time at Serravalle would do well also to look up the paint- ings of Basaiti — who has left us so many pleasing pictures — at the churches of S. Lorenzo and S. Silvestro alia Costa; also the work of Valentina at S. Giustina, and that of Jacobello del Fiore in the Hospital of S. Lorenzo. When I went to Ceneda, it was by the omnibus of the inn, in the afternoon hours, down the long straight highway as far as the railroad station, and thence on foot the remaining mile or so, through streets lined thickly with modern-looking dwellings and shops, with the fields behind the latter open and cultivated. The long space of the valley between the original towns has thus been covered in recent times, in a curi- ous combination of stretches of open country, village streets, and scattered clusters of habitations, with occasional handsome grounds about gaudy villas; the largest of these clusters being naturally around the station, opposite to whose ornate stone terraces stretch various beautiful lawns with stately shade trees. On arriving in old Ceneda, at the foot of its castled promontory, successive directions from passers- 252 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY by brought me safely through its winding ways to the main piazza; which Kes at the southern base of the headland, beneath the medieval mansion of its bishop. The latter's cathedral fronts upon the piazza's eastern end, — a great, plain, stuccoed structure; on its north side is the little Municipio, with the proverb- ial loggia; and before it extends the long, dirt-paved area, between separate three-storied buildings, to the wall and terraced gardens of the Marchesa Costantini, at the western end. These, famed far and wide in a land of beautiful gardens, raise over the wall mighty elms and beeches that allow but a glimpse of the handsome villa in their bosom, and stretch afar up the slope of the mountain, here curved to the south, in a luxuriance of copses, shady paths, and areas of shrubs, flowers, and exotic plants, surpassing descrip- tion. At the far summit stands a temple of classic lines, looking down with its noble white portico over the riotous verdure below. I stepped first into the Duomo, which opened to me a spaciotis nave of simple Renaissance lines, lower aisles with shallow chapels, a transept adorned by a pompous dome, and a large choir elevated above an ancient crypt. Its Renaissance renovation makes it look unlike an edifice which has played the great part that it has in this people's history; — the bishop and his canons having been foremost, through all the centuries, in every public advancement, and equally so in the development of art; as they were the medium by which several foreign artists came to Ceneda, — called to embellish the walls and altars of the Duomo. Here then were the chief relics of those long-gone visits, the main objets d'art of the twin cities, — their collection of paintings. Amongst the throng of them that shone from altar- FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 253 tops and wall-spaces were, firstly, a Coronation of the Virgin by Jacobello del Fiore (about 1408), primitive and quaintly graceful; secondly, two superb works of Jacopo Valentina, — of whom his town may well be proud. These were a Madonna with Saints Anthony and Sebastian, second to the left (signed, 1510), dis- playing a little donor at the bottom ; and a Madonna with Saints Biasio and John the Baptist, and donor, fourth to the right, showing a rich marble throne, with a clear blue sky behind it dotted by fleecy clouds, and also two charming little ])utti-heeids ; both pictures were highly finished and deeply toned, of attractive coloring and atmosphere, with Madonna figures of remarkable beauty. Less in importance were the two Palma Gio vanes; — a Baptism of Christ, first to the left, having a good form of the Baptist, — not emaciated, for once, — with a dazzling angel holding the Saviour's garment; and a risen Christ, in the chapel to the left of the choir, of Palma's characteristic vaulting type, to me rather displeasing. In the sacristy were two small Tiepolos, one of them a Crucifixion of considerable power of expression. But far and away beyond all the others, beyond any painting that I had seen since leaving Venice, was the large and marvelous picture that greeted me in the third chapel to the right, astounding me by the unexpectedness of such a find, and the grandeur of its beauty. I had received no warning that a great masterpiece remained here; it is mentioned in none of the guidebooks; and the coming thus suddenly upon its dramatic loveliness was an experience not to be forgotten. It was one of those rare, great works that at the first glance speak in trumpet-tones to the mind and heart, a vivid, realistic, yet idyllic tableau, of exceptional 254 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY force and feeling, radiating power and loveliness and intense expressiveness combined; it glowed with a profound internal radiance that made the scene celes- tial, and a deep iridescence of gorgeous coloring, that fell upon the soul like a burst of stately melody from a pealing organ; it was mantled in shadowy atmo- sphere, through which the piercing light touched every salient form with glory, — and held speaking, living figures, of perfect lifelikeness, and superhuman beauty. The idea of the picture was simple and time worn, its setting-forth most poetical and enchanting. It exemplified perfectly the loftiness of genius, — which conceives an everyday theme in terms of grandeur, moulds it in a novel, fascinating shape, and strikes fire from its spirited feeling to the heart of the observer. This was, then, only a tableau of the Madonna en- throned between Saints Roch and Sebastian, standing at her sides; but to the right and rear of the canopy that sheltered them, stretched a countryside of vivid tragedy, wild and fearsome in the shrouding pall of •night, whose heavy, murky atmosphere wrapped every object in indefinable awesomeness. Over this wild scene lowered a turbulent, black sky with rolling masses of storm-clouds, menacing and advancing, appearing to hold in their turbid depths thunderbolts straining at the leash; while all Nature ceased its breath in that dread silence before the elements' explosion. The coming peril was made manifest by a touch of gentle light from the hidden moon, silvering the inky clouds' lower edges above the distant hori- zon, accentuating with its peaceful ray the terrible wrathfulness of the storm; but the striking, purposed contrast was in those gathered saintly figures, serene and lovely, whose faces, expressive of heavenly calm FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 255 and holy thought, were Hfted to the Eternal with no fear of what earth could do. Such grandeur of tone and chiaroscuro, such incom- parable power and grace united, such a combination of all the potentialities of the brush, — but one genius that ever lived in this North Italy could have accom- plished them; — it was Tiziano. This was Titian's second masterpiece executed for the twin cities; and I will say truthfully, having studied nearly all his works, that to me it seems one of the two or three greatest of them all. It may not make upon all others the same profound impression, — it cannot; people are too varied in tastes; — but from me that impression has never departed, — has lingered as a steadfast, sub- lime glory; and to any true lover of painting, its appeal must be worth the whole journeying through the towns of Venetia. Previtali, that splendid artist of Bergamo who at- tained the nearest of them all to pure, unalloyed beauty, painted for this same cathedral about the year 1500 an Annunciation, which Titian is reported by Ridolfi to have much admired; but I could not find it, and the sacristan asserted no knowledge of it. So I finished my visit by gazing at the fine old Gothic bishop's chair, attractively carved, with inset niches containing wooden statuettes, — and at the model of the proud new fagade now planned for the Duomo, set against the first pillar to the left; then I crossed the sunny piazza to the Palazzo Municipale. This curious Renaissance structure is of two stories: a ground-floor loggia behind five arches on square brick pillars, slightly elevated and approached by marble steps; and an upper, stuccoed division contain- ing three double-arched stone windows, — the central one being the customary ringhiera, with balcony, and 256 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY a ruined Venetian Lion overhead. I entered the deep loggia, noticing upon its walls damaged portions of extensive frescoes in the manner of Pordenone. There had been three large pictures. On the left wall re- mained a group of life-size persons, with a cluster of houses perched above them on a rock, crowded with people in the windows and balconies, — realistic, very substantial people, in gay cinquecento costumes; on the rear wall was a cortege of heroic cavaliers and foot-soldiers emerging from a city gate, passing a poor woman seated by the roadside with a youth's head in her lap, all backed by a wide landscape of a valley hemmed by rolling mountains, in excellent perspective; on the right wall was another city gate, framing a vista of palatial buildings, — also a monarch seated upon his throne, surrounded by courtiers. These were but fragments of the original scenes, which doubtless por- trayed incidents in the life of some saint; but they were vividly realistic and tangible, of dignified action and strong expression, and very impressive in their throngs of brilliantly costumed figures. The work was strong enough for Pordenone's own; but the artist was his pupil, Pomponio Amalteo. It was a most un- usual painting for a public place, a veritable curiosity, — and a good example of what fine work Amalteo could do. I continued up the piazza to the gateway at its end into the Costantini grounds, sent in my visiting-card to the Marchesa, and was graciously permitted to walk about under the guidance of the head gardener. The villa, an elaborate modern structure, stood on the level, surrounded closely by flower-beds, shrubberies, gravel paths, and clumps of great trees, with the stables and garage shortly to the right. Immediately behind these buildings commenced the hillside, which mounted FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 257 steadily afar in one luxuriant thicket of horticulture, — an indescribable, orderly tangle of glades of rare and majestic trees, groups of plants of every species, indigenous and exotic, and beds of shrubs and flowers of a myriad lovely varieties, — with huge greenhouses concealed in copses, brilliant with more tender beau- ties; while everywhere ran winding paths, — affording enchanting glimpses, as they climbed, of the town and distant plain and frowning mountains, — leading to rustic seats and summer-houses, perched on shady knolls. Near the summit was a large kiosk, with an unin- terrupted view over the tree-tops, where the family and their guests were wont to take their tea of after- noons; but this famous old Venetian family had lost its last male representative on the recent death of the Marchese, and must soon disappear. The classic stone building at the top proved to be a mausoleum, — church above and burial crypt below, — contain- ing the remains of the Marchese and others of his line. I gazed for a while at the grand panorama spread below in the glow of sunset, — the far extended white buildings and campanili of Ceneda, the promon- tory with its castles, hiding Serravalle from sight, the endless plain softly green in the level, golden sun-rays, the mighty wall of the Alps stretching indefinitely to the northeast; — and I envied for a moment these Venetian patricians who have such gardens of Eden for their villeggiatura. As I looked, the golden rays lifted themselves from the ground to the rounded white clouds far aloft, and began to color them with wondrous hues of pink and rose and scarlet; then, from the shadows stealing over the plain, arose the soft, sweet note of a vesper-bell, — then another, of more mellow tone, and a third, still 258 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY farther distant; till soon they were calling from every campanile, far and near, — and the united clamor, sweeping over the unbroken level, seemed a fusion of all the heart-cries of the desolating centuries. Now was the hour that wakens fond desire In men at sea, and melts their thoughtful hearts Who in the morn have bid sweet friends farewell; And pilgrim newly on his road, with love Thrills, if he hear the vesper-bell from far. That seems to mourn for the expiring day.^ There are two other delightful excursions to be made from Serravalle, — in the mountains near at hand, each readily covered within the light of a single day : one, to the famous castle of Brandolin on Monte Cisone, — a magnificent old stronghold, finely situ- ated and decorated; the other, to the celebrated forest on a wide tableland near the Col Vicentin, that be- longed to the Venetian State, and was thence called the Bosco del Consiglio. The Republic used it for piles to sustain the marble city, and in the building of her ships, for which it furnished for centuries excep- tional masts and spars. It is a wild, untenanted, mysterious tract of mountain country, of lofty, ghost- like forest glades, and beautiful vistas of the peaks on one hand, the far-stretching plain below on the other. Early one morning I returned down the valley by its branch railroad to the junction of Conegliano, and took the main line eastward, leading to Udine and the end of the plain. Now I entered the region called Friuli, — the corner between the slopes of the Julian Alps and the lagoons, — thinking, as the train sped on, of all that I had read concerning its woods and wild- ness, its aloofness and peculiar people, its countless sorrows under the invader's heel, and its long, pathetic ^ Gary's translation of Dante, Purgatorio, canto viii. FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 259 retardation in civilization and art. As we left the Tre- visan Marches behind, the Alps receded, and the plain assumed a different aspect. An extraordinary num- ber of large swift streams dash across it from the mountains, bearing their silt to the bars and salt marshes along the coast of the Adriatic, pushing the latter farther seaward year by year, ever extending the mainland, by the same alluvial process which has made it all. Every few minutes we crossed another river, — different branches of the historic Livenza, flowing insignificant in the present summer drought, through winding channels in their wide stony beds; but in the melting spring-times and rainy autumns they are roaring giants, that hurl along boulders and trees from the Alpine slopes, stop the tide of travel, and often devastate the fields. In some parts these torrents have made beds two to four miles in width, covered with the invariable rounded stones, that glisten to a far distance in the beating sun.^ Where oleanders flushed the beds Of silent torrents gravel spread; And, crossing, oft we saw the glisten Of ice, far up on a mountain head.^ All Friuli was densely forested in ancient and medi- eval times, — which contributed much to its people's ^ * Before these streams were confined within their modem dikes, they were continually, during the countless centuries, changing their courses from one decade to another; which, added to the annual floods, bore every- where the best part of the soil into the sea, leaving the plain covered with but a thin, poor deposit of earth, impregnated with sand and pebbles and scattered over with boulders, fit only for the growth of forests and the grazing of cattle. For the same cause the population was ever scanty and poor, dwelling apart in the woods from the rest of humanity, and so devel- oping that uncouth patois which is still in use. Venice much improved their condition; and in modern times there has been a great gain in all directions, particularly in the redemption and cultivation of the soil. * Lord Tennyson. 260 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY crudity and peculiar character, — and is still so cov- ered with trees as to present the general appearance, from a height, of one great wood; they line the roads and fields, and stand in more frequent copses than in Lombardy. A large extent of the cleared land is so regularly covered with water as to be useless for crops ; these untilled meadows, the omnipresent streams and woods, the absence of frequent habitations, and the comparative sparseness of the towns, all joined to give the country-side an aspect quite different from the rest of Venetia. It was a somewhat desolate, mournful ap- pearance, that slowly, inappreciably affected my spirits while I stayed in Friuli, — imparted the sensation of being far from the Italy I love, and made me long, after a week or so, to get away. Ouida well expressed this sentiment in her vagrant Pascarel: "All Friuli is sad and unlovely; if it were not for the glimpses of the Alps away there toward Venice, it would be hateful, — that desolate, historic land that had every road of it stamped bare by the iron heel of Barbarossa." On this first day, however, I descended from the train somewhat less than halfway to Udine, at the ancient town of Pordenone, which produced the painter of that name. It was the Portus Naonis of Roman days, was despoiled by Alaric, destroyed by Attila, tramped down again by Theodoric and Alboin, seized by the Carlovingians, and, after the end of the latters' rule, had begun to enjoy a little independence when it be- came the prey of the Austrian and Italian despots.^ * The earliest Friulan chronicles report the city and its territory to have been, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, in the possession of certain " Dukes of Austria and Styria," from whom it passed, in 1222, to the powerful Friulan family of Castello, allied to that of Ceneda. From them it was forcibly seized, in 1270, by the Patriarch of Aquileia, who during those ages claimed the territorial as well as the ecclesiastical rights as far west as the river Mincio, and in large part maintained them. Pordenone FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 261 Its aloofness did not save the city from the common fate of the eastern plain-towns : it was reached after, and grasped in turn, by the Delia Carrara, the Delia Scala, the Visconti, and the Venetians. Under the Republic it at last flourished once more, awoke to the Renaissance, when this had grown to maturity farther south, and developed during the cinquecento its own tardy school of painting, which colored its house fronts and adorned its churches. From these local artists — deprived by their remoteness of the teach- ings of the great schools and masters, until Gian Bellini's time — emerged one of the two geniuses to whom Friuli gave birth, whose success was the more remarkable and praiseworthy considering the primi- tive conditions of his native art and the smallness of his early advantages. Giovanni Antonio Licinio (de' Sacchis or de' Cuti- celli, according to different authorities upon the fam- ily name) was born at Pordenone in 1483, passed there his early years, and in his later period of renown and wealth often returned there for considerable visits, during which he decorated churches and palaces with the fruits of his mature powers. While still living as a youth under the parental roof he was wounded by his brother in a quarrel, and in consequence went away, abandoning his family name for the assumed one of Regillo. The place to which he first went to study his art is alleged by some authorities to have been the small school of Castelfranco, but by Ridolfi and others — continued to be a bone of contention between the Patriarchs and the Aus- trian dukes (the De' Castello having transferred their claim to the Haps- burgs) until the Delia Carrara stepped in, toward the end of the trecento. Prom them it was seized by Can Grande della Scala; and from his weak successor, Mastino II, it was taken by the Visconti, — so that for a few years this district formed a part of the immense kingdom of Gian Galeazzo. Upon his death it was occupied by Venice. 262 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY which opinion is accepted by Lanzi — to have been the neighboring city of Udine, where he acquainted him- self with the extraordinary productions of that other, preceding, great painter of FriuH, Pellegrino da San Daniele. Subsequently ( or as Rinaldi states, in the first place) he journeyed to Venice and became a worker in the studio of Giovanni Bellini, in the com- pany of Titian and Giorgione. But it was the last- named artist who most excited the young Friulan's admiration and waxing powers; whether or not he fol- lowed Giorgione to Castelfranco, certain it is that he adopted the latter's style, attained much of his pe- culiar glowing tone and coloring, and followed his manner to the end, while developing later some de- cidedly variant characteristics. I had seen at Treviso, in the debated Entombment, how entirely similar was the work of the youthful painter to that of his adored Barbarelli. The Venetians, according to their habit, did not call him Regillo, but "II Pordenone"; and the appel- lation has clung, — which is perhaps fortunate, for it serves to distinguish him from his cousin Bernar- dino Licinio, who produced works of less ability in a somewhat similar style. As Pordenone advanced in his strength of original conception, bold execution, and vigorous action and expression, until he became after Barbarelli's death one of the chiefs of the Vene- tian school, he traveled all over North Italy decorating churches, palaces, and castles. His was an exceptional, restless, forceful, ardent spirit, which shines reechoed from his daring, powerful pictures, with their massive, bold, energetic figures in brilliant costumes; his large frescoes were therefore very striking productions; and he executed them in all the different northern states and courts, from Piacenza in the southwest to Udine FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 263 in the northeast. But, unfortunately, most of them have perished, and those remaining are rarely in a good condition. His frescoes in his native place enjoy the distinction of being authentic beyond a question, because they are described in a still existing autograph of the master; and I eagerly hoped to find them in a decent preservation. His smaller, pietistic canvases, however, were so entirely different from the frescoes, often, as to make one wonder if he had not a double personality; they were as gentle, dignified, refined, and serenely lovely as the larger works were bold and vigorous. The station lies to the south of the little city, now of but five thousand inhabitants, with a long, straight, modern thoroughfare leading north from it to the central piazza. Leaving my luggage in deposit, I fol- lowed this broad way between its late stuccoed build- ings, seeing no signs of the medieval walls. The fairly wide piazza was bounded by the same sort of modern structures, and crossed by the main street running east and west, which was a section of the great high- way from Italy to the Orient. It was unusually wide, paved with cobblestones, and lined on both sides by continuous arcades of every age and style, upon which rose four-storied buildings of stone and plaster. Most of the old town lay to the north of this avenue, which very likely was originally but a road along the outside of the southern walls, — as at Conegliano. In its western portion I found nothing of interest; but its eastern contained an interesting variety of edi- fices, from quaint Gothic arcades and fagades to pon- derous palaces of the Late-Renaissance; and between a forking of the way, facing down it toward the piaz- za several hundred yards distant, rose the curious old Gothic Palazzo Municipale. The appearance of this 264 PLAIN-TOWKS OF ITALY building was unique: the main body had three triply recessed, large, pointed arches in the ground floor, opening into the customary, deep, shadowy loggia, and three corresponding openings in the upper floor, of which the central was a simple doorway, and the outer were triple Gothic windows, topped by brick mouldings in the form of geometrical tracery within a terra-cotta label. These windows were a curiosity that would have wildly aroused the enthusiasm of the late Mr. Street in his Gothic wanderings. Over them ran a trecento cornice in the shape of connected, brick trefoil arches resting upon corbels: and from each upper corner rose a strange square turret, — an open belfry of four trefoil arches (one to each side) sustained by mar- ble columns, and surmounted by an acute brick spire. The structure dates, it is said, from as early as 1291. But the queerest feature was the narrow portico which projected from the building's centre and rose two full stories above the cornice, like a tower: its first division, a Gothic archway upon marble columns of unusual weight; its second, a rounded archway with a balustrade, forming a ringhiera balcony entered by the aforesaid doorway; its third and fourth divisions, solid, square brick bodies, with marble columns at the angles; and upon the face of the third story stood a huge clock-face, upon the summit of the fourth was a bell swinging in the open, with two bronze figures beside it, to strike the hours with hammers, — so much like the clock-tower of St. Mark's as to make one gaze for a moment in astonishment. All of this delightful old edifice was of unstuccoed, unpainted brick, except the score of marble columns, and some marble blocks at the angles of the portico's first division. In the Italian civic buildings of Gothic times, I know nothing resembling it. FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 265 The upper story of the palazzo contains the city's collection of paintings; but before visiting that, I turned into the left branch of the forking street, where the great, ponderous form of the Cathedral stood looking across at the palazzo's side. Its fagade was but partly finished, as far as the tops of the shafts of the white stone columns, that rose to the height of a single story, — appearing strange, indeed, without any capitals, just as they stood when the masons dropped their tools far back in Renaissance days. Above them the wall was of bare plaster only; but in their centre stood the completed main doorway, in a Renaissance marble frame of exceeding loveliness. The faces of its pilasters were cut with arabesque reliefs, its rich entablature was surmounted by a finely moulded arch, and within this arch, beside it, and upon it, stood four very old statues, of the Saviour, a saint, and two angels. Following the former loyalty of the Municipio, in its careful resemblance to the Venetian clock-tower, this edifice was dedicated to S. Marco. Inside it I found a wide, flat-arched nave, without aisles, with shallow chapels at the sides, a transept, and a raised choir flanked by chapels ; — all in quiet, unadorned Renaissance lines, covered with shining plaster. Though commenced in 1360, the building was not completed and decorated until during the quaftrocento. This was the simple, spacious church that Por- denone worked for at several different periods, and enriched with his genius. Immediately upon the first altar to the right stood the best of those produc- tions, a canvas of a beauty so refined and lustrous, that I was transfixed with delight. It was one of his smaller pietistic works, thoroughly gentle, blissful, dignified, and strong, component of the qualities of Bellini and 2Q6 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY, Giorgione. It was a Holy Family of his more repose- ful, early period (1515) — the graceful form of the Ma- donna standing alone in the centre, St. Joseph hold- ing the sacred child, and St. Christopher at the other side; behind them a curious rocky landscape, with a village and some ancient ruins ; dark clouds overcast- ing the sky above, through which fell a golden, crim- son light upon the pleasing figures, wrapped in a glo- rious warm tone and atmosphere. The quiet, refined coloring had faded into still more delicate hues, ac- cordant with the peaceful rapture of those beautiful faces. In the first little chapel of the right transept were some small, damaged frescoes, representing scenes from the New Testament, said to be by Pordenone's school, — not first-class pictures, but of good spacing and action, and high coloring; and the altar-piece was a Holy Family by A. Matteo, containing a lovely Ma- donna, of rich tone and happy tints. Adjacent upon a pillar I observed one of Pordenone's frescoes, — the two forms of Saints Roch and Erasmus, the former in the artist's own lineaments; though sadly injured, they were still full of strength and individuality. In the second chapel of this transept, behind its altar, appeared a very old fresco of the Madonna and two saints, by an unknown hand, also much damaged, but interesting for its {-emarkable power, and the beauty of the Holy Virgin. Behind the altar I found Pordenone's third work, a large canvas of his later period of massive, strenu- ous figures (1535). It represents the glorification of St. Mark, with a number of other saints of heroic size, including S. Alessandro in gleaming armor, and three charming little angels playing instruments. The coloring, once so gorgeous, has faded away, leav- FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 267 ing the huge forms without any very pleasing attri- butes; but it illustrates the master's exceptional abil- ity in forceful, clean, well-modeled drawing. As Va- sari well said, "He stood preeminent above them all, surpassing his predecessors in the conception of his pieces, in design, in boldness, and the use of his colors in his frescoes, in rapidity, in grandeur of relief, and indeed in every other accomplishment of the art"; and Lanzi, "Pordenone seemed to vie with Giorgione in spirit, a spirit equally daring, resolute, and great, surpassed by no other, perhaps, in the Venetian school." 1 There was one more first-class painting in this Duomo, a splendid example of Fogolino of Vicenza, over the third altar on the left of the nave; it repre- sented the Madonna with Saints Biagio and Apol- lonia, in his restricted but restful quattrocento style, remarkably well disposed and modeled, the tone and color gone, but still of enticing grace, — especially in the lovely Virgin. The picture has been for cen- turies highly esteemed in Pordenone, whose people call it the Madonna della Colonna. During the same period the Cathedral had another, similar Fogolino of much renown, which I could find no trace of, — an Apotheosis of St. Francis, between Saints Daniel and John the Baptist. In the small baptismal chapel on the left I saw the original wooden sides of the ancient font, preserved in glass cases, covered with uncom- monly quaint little pictures from the life of the Baptist, by an unknown master, — not Pordenone, as alleged by the simple natives; the scenes of the Birth and the Banquet of Herod were unusually good. On leaving the church I examined a fine old oak ^ Lanzi, History of Painting, vol. ii, p. 147. 268 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY bench of five seats, placed against the entrance wall, within a railing, and richly and beautifully carved; it was the former seat of the city's podestd and as- sessors, brought here for preservation from the Muni- cipio, — a relic of the highest development of that wood sculpture which in this land of forests was its first chief art. I recrossed to the municipal palace, climbed the stairway behind the loggia to its upper floor, and in- vestigated the pictures, which were hung around the sides of the main salon in front. ^ Among the several dozen were a few of striking excellence : a large canvas (number 1) of Saints Roch, Sebastian, and Gothard, with two exquisite cherubs at their feet, making mu- sic under an open temple-roof, — of tender, golden tone and light, but of unknown authorship; a specimen of Alessandro Varotari, manifesting, for once, real genius, — which I had always thought he wanted, — showing the Madonna with the infant Christ, who is receiving a lily from a female personifying Justice, St. Mark standing at the right with his Lion (an un- usual picture, exceptionally preserved and conspicuous, yet of daintiest grace and coloring, and fine atmo- spheric and light-effects); thirdly, a small, restored, but lovely work of Leandro Bassano's, — a Madonna with Saints Catherine and John the Baptist, replete with excellence of composition and modeling, rich, soft coloring and sombrous tone, having a background, to the left, of a Diaz-like landscape, and to the right, of a bright green curtain, before which the attractive Madonna worships her Son with downcast eyes; 1 This was the chamber, I was told, in which Pordenone's municipal council had met for six hundred years; that unique assembly of nobles and bourgeois, which governed the city so well and steadily during all the changes and agitations of the Middle Age. The room itself was redeco- rated in the Renaissance. FROM TREVISO TO UDINE 269 finally, and chiefly, the extraordinary, long, narrow fresco by Pordenone, which was removed from his house when the latter was demolished in 1838, and hung clear across the end of the chamber. This is a strange paysage, of much variety, clearly painted by the master for diversion in his light- some hours: it shows a fertile valley, with a distant village at the foot of two hills, on whose shoulders rise aged castles (an exact likeness of Ceneda, even to the Duomo tower), with the line of the serrated Alps behind, and a grove at one side; before the latter dance a number of peasants to the playing of flutes, while others sit about or drink beer, in genuine Flemish genre style. It is very curious and interesting for the versatility and gay spirit it mani- fests, — for nothing ""more opposite to the glorious Holy Family of the Cathedral could easily be imag- ined; and it shows Pordenone a good master of land- scape, with strong powers of realistic atmosphere and perspective. After this there was nought else to be done but walk around the streets of the old town on the north, look- ing for remains of frescoed facades, and hunting up Pordenone's other paintings in the scattered churches. Crowe and Cavalcaselle said in their day," We find here house decoration as frequent as elsewhere, Mantegnesque in spirit and above the style of Dario"; but now, at any rate, it was very little to be seen. In the church "di Torre" was a delightful Pordenone canvas, of the Madonna enthroned between four saints and some pretty angels; and in those of "di Villanova" and "di Roraigrande" were frescoes of his upon the choir- vaultings, representing the Evangel- ists with their symbols, and prophets and doctors of the Church general. Altogether, that master's native 270 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY city, though Httle interesting in itself, and though lacking an example of his great dramatic frescoes, affords perhaps the best comprehension to be obtained anywhere now of the deep versatility of his genius, in its varying moods and different ages. ""^ CHAPTER VIII UDINE AND CIVIDALE The moon is up, and yet it is not night — Sunset divides the sky with her — a sea Of glory streams along the Alpine heights Of blue Friuli's mountains. — Childe Harold. Of all the storied lands of Europe this is the most pa- thetic and the most laden with sorrowful memories. The sunset that lies upon its peaks shines not so much with glory as with the crimson blood of its countless slain inhabitants ; and its advancing shadows hold the smoke of numberless burning habitations. Friuli has been the most important and perilous frontier of all the world's long ages. It became Rome's outpost as early as 183 B.C., when, having subdued the Boii and taken over the control of the half of the plain south of the Po, she founded Aquileia at the foot of the eastern Alps and the Adriatic, as a guard against further incursions of the Celtic tribes. The ^Emilian and Cas- sian highways were then extended to the north, and Roman cities stretched gradually over the plain, to Padua, Concordia, Opitergium (Oderzo), Utina, and Portus Naonis. From their Forum Julii at the Alpine base, this whole district in later days obtained its name of Friuli. Henceforth it was a perpetual battle- ground for the Latin people; hardly had it recovered from the long wars of the Roman subjugation of the Celts, when it became the scene of conflicts between the candidates for the imperial throne. Proconsuls marching their legions from the Orient found their 272 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY advance contested at the end of the Alpine passes, and the garrisoned cities of the plain defying their pro- gress. When Constantinople became a capital, there were as many devastating legions marching the other way, from the day when Constantine rushed with only twenty thousand veterans to snatch the crown from Licinius. Ah, how many unremembered times did those wretched Friulan towns suffer siege, assault, and fiery destruction, at the hands of their fellow citizens, in those two centuries of civil strife. Yet it was only a preparation for the terrible ages that followed. From the invasion of the Visigoths in 403 A.D., with Alaric at their head, the vast onrush of barbarians from the East turned Friuli into a blood- deluged and smoking desert. Attila with his Huns in 452 first earned here his appellation of the "Scourge of God"; the unlucky province, as in every case, re- ceived the full brunt of the savages' first lust and wrath, and scarcely one builded stone was left upon another. After Udine, Aquileia herself was seized and destroyedi The castle hill that rises in Udine's centre from the perfect level, is said to have been thrown up by Attila's order, that he might watch from its sum- mit the burning of the sister-city, — an impossible legend, strangely like that about the monster Nero, yet showing by its very excess what an ineffaceable impression of horror was made by the conqueror's brutality. So fell magnificent Aquileia, with her my- riad marble temples, baths, porticoes, and palaces, one of the few grandest productions of Roman genius and civilization. Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Bologna, nearly all the great cities of the plain, sank with most of the little ones into ashes, before this incarnate fiend. But from the despoiled fugitives left of Aquileia's population, who had fled for a safe retreat to the UDINE AND CIVIDALE 273 marshy islands of the lagoons, rose that city of fairy- land destined to be greater than them all, and to rule them in after days with immortal splendor. Following the Huns, in 489, ruined Friuli was de- scended upon by Theodoric and his Ostrogoths. They were confronted on the Isonzo, that flowed past the remains of Aquileia, by Odoacer, the recently ap- pointed ruler of Italy, king of the settled Visigothic tribes, who were intrenched in a fortified camp; and one of those momentous battles of the world took place, of which this unfortunate district saw so many. The Ostrogoths — in spite of inferior numbers, and of being incumbered by their long trains of women and children, oxen and belongings — swam the river, took the fortresses by fierce assault, and scattered their ene- mies far and wide. Theodoric seized what was left of the poor Friulan towns, but did not burn them, — an act he was above; he went on to defeat Odoacer at a decisive battle near Verona, occupy all of North Italy, and reign very justly till his death in 527. Then came the armies of the great Justinian, to reconquer Italy for the Byzantine throne, and make Ravenna the seat of his viceroy's government. Then Alboin and his Lombards, in 568, who grasped Friuli and the greater part of the peninsula with a grip which did not relax for two hundred years. Alboin divided his new realm into thirty-six separate duchies, of which Friuli was one; and this he bestowed upon his nephew Gisulf, who immediately placed his capital at Forum Julii, — thenceforth known as Cividale. Gisulf, after a noble reign, perished in defending his duchy against the invading Mongolian Avars, in the early years of the succeeding century; once more the miserable people suffered the consequence of their frontier location. It was then that occurred the mem- 274 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY orable tragedy of Romilda, the Lombard princess, who opened the gates of Forum Julii to her barbarian lover, saw her city ruined under her eyes, and reaped that horrible, exceptional fate which Gibbon so viv- idly narrates.^ A large number of luckless Friulans were borne away captive, the men to be massacred in Pannonia, the women and children doomed to the worse fate of slavery. Finally came the Franks under Charlemagne, who seized the oft-conquered towns and constituted the province a county of his own realm, toward the close of the eighth century. Under the loose sway of the Prankish counts the Church gradually assumed the chief power in Friuli. Counts and Archbishops dwelt together in Cividale; the latter having removed there from ruined Aquileia, after their return from Grado, — a place in the adja- cent lagoons, where they and many of their flock had found asylum during the ravages of the Huns. The Archbishop was Patriarch of Friuli, Istria, and Dal- matia, and when he departed from Grado, had left there in 'charge a local bishop, whose see was soon rapidly increased by the arrival of more refugees. After the coming of the Lombards with their Arian faith, it was embraced by the Patriarch of Aquileia,^ along with all his subject bishops, excepting Grado alone; Elias, Bishop of Grado, thereupon seized the opportunity to obtain from Pope Pelagius II in 579 a law making him and his successors the Patriarchs of the Lagoons and Istria. Such was the foundation of the Metropolitan See of Venice; which grew in power constantly with the growth of the island towns, and provoked the envious hatred of Cividale. ^ Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. iv. 2 This was the primate's customary title, and continued to be so after the removal to Cividale, and to Udine. CIYIDALE. SAX PELTRUDIS. EARLY LOMBARD SCULFTURES. UDINE AND CIVIDALE 275 For six hundred years the reverend Patriarchs of Aquileia, not satisfied with their sway upon the main- land, — which extended to the Mincio in the west, — never ceased their efforts to recover the lost territory of Istria and the Lagoons; and the history of Friuli became in part a series of wars waged by one holy pre- late against the other. Several times the hot attacks upon Grado by the Friulans, led by their Patriarch, succeeded in taking the city and expelling its churchly ruler; but at last Venice took a hand in favor of the latter, after one of these expulsions, effected with the aid of the Emperor Frederick. She attacked Aqui- leia with her war-fleet, and brought its Patriarch in chains to the Doge's palace. Thereafter his success- ors were obliged for many generations to send to the Republic a yearly, ironical tribute of twelve pigs. The result of these centuries of strange warfare be- tween Friuli and the Lagoons was the end of the Pa- triarchs' dominance over the Friulans, and their entire subjection to Venice. In the first years of the fifteenth century the Emperor Sigismund waged war against the Serene Republic, and the Patriarch of Aquileia, with his allied forces, once more siezed the opportun- ity to attack Grado and the towns of the lagoon; but Venice acted quickly, and before the Emperor could send assistance, overran and conquered the whole Friulan territory, and, despite all combinations and excommunications, retained it as her permanent pro- vince. Cividale was occupied in 1419, Udine in 1420, and the latter — then grown to be the larger city, and the seat of the Patriarchs — was made the capital of the province; while the primates themselves were reduced to simple archbishops, without any temporal power. ^ ^ This revolution left the Patriarch of Grado alone in his primacy; but in 1445 the Venetians removed his seat to St. Mark's, — to produce long after, from one of its holders, the good Pope that reigns to-day. 276 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Friuli now had peace at last; prosperity developed under the kind Venetian rule, and with it the retarded arts of the Renaissance. The wood-carvers of the forests laid aside the chisel and took up the brush, laboriously teaching themselves, for two generations, the principles of drawing. So were evolved without outside teaching those two quaint painters of the lat- ter part of the quattrocento, the best of their fellows, — Domenico da Tolmezzo and Andrea Bellunello; they turned out earnest, naive, sentimental pictures, with little power of modeling, grace, or coloring, but decidedly good considering their authors' lack of advantages. Their figures and groups of holy person- ages were drawn with a faithfulness, a sincerity, a deep feeling, that lift the results above mere categories of points successful or failed, into expositions of two lovable, believing human souls. One forgets the brush in thinking of the artist. To them, if to any painters that have lived, are applicable Lytton's significant words : — • For Art in Nature made by Man, To Man the interpreter of God.^ At last, about 1500, the methods of Venetian paint- ing penetrated the country, and graduates of the school of Giovanni Bellini awoke the Friulans with their graceful work. Of these the first to gain pro- minence were Giovanni Martini, and that Martino d' Udine, Friuli's primary genius, who was called "Pel- legrino" (singular) by his master, on account of his unusual ability, and "da S. Daniele" after the town where he long resided and executed his masterpieces. They were great rivals; but "the style of the former was harsh and crude, though not destitute of grace, "^ and the latter far excelled him both in execution and ^ Lord Lytton, The Artist. ^ Lanzi, History of Painting. UDINE AND CIVIDALE 277 in beauty. Girolamo da Udine also developed a charm- ing Bellinesque manner. After these men came the disciples of Titian and Giorgione, — including Friuli's second genius, Por- denone, and that excellent decorator, Giovanni da Udine, with whom all are familiar from his labors in Rome; he studied under Raffaele as well as Barbarelli, and brought into Friuli upon his return that use of grotesques, named after Raphael, with which he became chiefly identified. In the next generation, in- cluding Pordenone's disciple, Amalteo, who was con- siderably above his fellows, the art entered upon its steady decline; and produced thenceforth no Friulan worker of first-rate ability, — if we except Antonio Carnio, in the seventeenth century, in whom was the last flare-up of the dying fire. Udine, the Roman Utina, which has taken the place of Aquileia and Cividale as the capital of Friuli, lies less than ten miles from the eastern Alpine wall, and some twenty miles north of the lagoons, upon the Roggia Canal, connecting the rivers Torre and Cormor, upon either side. About five miles to its northwest rises the chain of foothills, separated from the Alps, in which nestles the town of S. Daniele. The reason for Udine's existence in earliest times, and its survival of all dis- asters, is that it has always been the junction of the highways, once traversed by horse and now by train, which enter the plain from Austria; — one of these passes descending from the north by the valleys of the Tagliamento and the Fella, the other crossing by way of Gorz on the east. This was an important position, strategically as well as commercially; and the history of Udine, accordingly, has been in large part that of Friuli. It succeeded Cividale as the virtual capital of the province about 1248, when it was formally 278 . PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY designated by the Patriarch of Aquileia as the resi- dence of his successors. When the Venetians seized the province in 1420, Udine held out under siege beyond the other cities, endeavoring to preserve the safety of her patriarchal ruler; but when the latter fled by stealth to the Count of Gorizia, Udine became an unwavering Vene- tian subject. After Napoleon in 1797 had chased the Austrians out of Italy, following them to the very gates of the Julian Alps, it was at the little village of Campo Formio, only four miles from the capital, that the terms of peace were arranged and signed. Al- though by them France received the Netherlands, and Austria recognized the independence of the Cisalpine and Ligurian Republics, Friuli and all the Venetian territories east of the Adige passed under a foreign yoke; and when, after sixty years of suffering and struggling, Friuli was finally freed by the war of 1866, Udine saw the Austrian boundary drawn hardly a dozen miles beyond, leaving in their hated hands Gorizia, Trieste, Istria, and Dalmatia, — all the east- ern lands of Venice, vibrating still with her speech and pride, and which Italians will never rest satisfied till they have joined once more to the motherland. The castle hill of Udine — which certainly has every appearance of artificial construction — stood at the northern side of the oval of the original, smaller town, whose outline is still clearly visible upon the plan, marked by the broad streets replacing the walls; to-day all this is inclosed in the middle of the modern city, — a quadrilateral many times the former size; so that the castle now stands a little north of the city's centre. The Roggia Canal penetrates the quadrangle on its northern side, flows around the east side of the original oval, — which it completely encircled as a UDINE AND CIVIDALE 279 moat in the first place, — and emerges on the south by the side of the railroad station. The lofty embankment of the Renaissance walls is still standing upon the southern, eastern, and eastern half of the northern sides of the rectangle, and on its western side has been replaced by a shady parkway. Roundabout the old citadel, inevitably, are found the centres of the city's life: along its western base lies the lengthy, ancient market-place, still called the Mer- cato Vecchio; at its southern angle lies the smaller Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, fronted by the Municipio, the town loggia, the clock- and bell-tower, and the or- nate, arched entrance to the castle grounds; and on its northeastern flank stretches the vast Piazza d'Armi, five hundred yards long by three hundred wide. To the south of this piazza and the hill, rise the other chief public buildings, — the Duomo, Prefet- tura. Archbishop's Palace, and Tribunale. From the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele the principal thorough- fare runs southeasterly, past the Cathedral, under the names of Via Posta and Via Aquileia, to the main gate called Porta Aquileia. This pierces the southern city wall a little east of the station; and some dis- tance west of it opens another gateway called Porta Cussignacco, from which the other main street runs windingly, under different names, through the promi- nent Piazzas Garibaldi and Venti Settembre, north- ward to the market-place. Between these two city gates, outside the ramparts and yet north of the rail- road tracks, a new residence quarter has lately arisen, containing a number of avenues with glaring modern houses, standing in extensive lawns and gardens, — which stretch behind the buildings and do not hide their ugliness. When, therefore, I had arrived late in the afternoon 280 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY from Pordenone, after a journey of no special interest, beyond the crossing of the wide stony bed of the his- torical Tagliamento,^ — this new section was my first glimpse of Udine. I entered the omnibus of the Al- bergo Italia, theretofore recommended to me as a fam- ous old hostelry, and was driven westward through the aforesaid modern streets to Porta Cussignacco. Here an official of the octroi duties appeared and went through the usual performance, opening the door and asking if we had anything dutiable, shutting it again before we had fairly responded with the customary negative. It is strange how the cities cling to that antiquated method of raising revenue, — for taxing food and drink is the unfairest of all systems, bearing heavily upon the poor and hardly touching the rich; but I had found of late a few towns that had abolished it, like Vittorio and Conegliano; and at any rate it is more civilly executed than years ago, when I some- times had to suffer the entire ransacking of my lug- gage. _ Inside'the gate the way became instantly medieval, — narrow and dark, between aged, stuccoed dwellings, — and so led us windingly to the broad Piazza Venti Settembre, four or five hundred yards southwest of the castle, and to the inn facing it upon its western end. The usual driveway pierced the arcade of the buildings, to the stable-yard behind; on the left of the passage ^ As an instance of the extraordinary rapidity with which these rivers have raised their beds since they were confined by dikes, showing the tre- mendous masses of stony detritus brought annually from the Alps, which they used to scatter over the plain, it should be noted that the town of Codroipo, on the Tagliamento's left bank, now lies at a level some thirty feet below the torrent's present bed. One can therefore understand the devastation caused when such a stream breaks loose. In flood-times there is a watchman, night and day, to every hundred yards upon the dikes. Casarsa, on the Tagliamento's right bank here, holds in its church some fairly good frescoes of Pordenone, of his middle period (1525). UDINE AND CIVIDALE 281 and yard were the dining-rooms and kitchen, while a stairway on the right ascended to the upper hall, and the dark tortuous corridors leading to the chambers of the different jfloors. The heavy, cumbrous furniture looked unaltered from a couple of centuries ago; but everything was quite clean and comfortable, and its very age produced that sensation of homelikeness which is so pleasing in the old-fashioned country inns. I was given a fine large bedroom looking upon the rear garden; and found the cooking excellent. When I went out the next morning, the deserted shadowy piazza of the evening hour had altered to a dazzling scene of active life; the sun poured down from a cloudless sky upon a village of canvas roofs dotting the inclosure, which joined with the flagged pavement in radiating the flood of light. It was now the grain market of the city, but the booths shone richly with nearly every kind of produce; the old peasant women who tended them chattered and laughed noisily, children rolled and shrieked in every corner, and crowds of men and house-wives trafficked and ges- ticulated. The old house-fagades surrounding the place complemented the scene, with their deep ar- cades on piers and heavy pillars, their stained stucco faces of the upper stories, and windows of every by- gone shape and condition. In the centre was a hand- some stone fountain of Renaissance days, with two basins, and near the western end, a lofty marble column surmounted by a quaint, crowned figure of the Madonna. Just behind this rose the only building of any pretensions, adjacent to the inn, — a marble- faced, religious structure of rococo design, ugly in its details of window-frame, niche, and gable, but effective as a glowing whole, with its ornate, columned belfry, and baroque statues lining the cornice. 282 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Moving through the crowd, I saw a couple of men in garb so strange that I did not for an instant dis- cern their occupation; they wore long, black, single- breasted coats reaching to their feet, with no braid nor other ornamentation, and ported high hats and long heavy batons, — presenting altogether a most funereal appearance, and reminding me of nothing so much as an undertaker combined with a poor Eng- lish country beadle. But they were gendarmes, and it was the regular police costume of the city. Aston- ishingly different, this, from the gold lace, epaulettes, cocked hats, fancy swords, and general bird-of -paradise costume of the usual Italian gendarme; and it demon- strates better than a chapter of description the similar difference in the character of these North Italians from that of their brethren farther south. They are so much nearer to northern coldness, quiet, and sim- plicity, which detest showiness, and the use of cold steel in the time of peace. The same sort of police uniform, modeled upon those of England and Hol- land, prevails in some of the other North Italian towns. From the end of this piazza I followed a street north- eastward that brought me shortly to the front of the Cathedral, which is set off by open spaces on three sides, and backs upon the Via della Posta; — a spacious brick building of the thirteenth century, originally of the transition style between Romanesque and Gothic, but with its once noble fagade mutilated by baroque portals. These were just in process of being removed, in a wholesome restoration. I could see the original main entrance, cleared of the mean additions, revealed as a beautiful pointed archway, recessed with elaborate mouldings, in which lingered the foot-rests and can- opies of vanished statuettes; and in the tympanum UDINE AND CIVIDALE 283 was one of those delightfully quaint, early reliefs, — of the Crucifixion and the Lamb. Above, there stretched across the f agade from shoul- der to shoulder one of those interesting, Lombardesque, arcaded cornices, of crossed round arches springing from coupled, slender shafts, the intersections form- ing pointed trefoils; at the ends of this arcade, and in the gable, were three circular, brick, false windows, recessed with many mouldings, which doubtless once were filled with open tracery. There were two more handsome Gothic portals, in the sides of the church, which had never been demolished and still partly pre- served their exquisite marble sculptures; and far above the roof soared the ponderous old six-sided campanile. In the extensive, dusky interior I found the un- usual design, for Venetia, of a nave with two aisles on each side, — the outer, lower aisles being ar- ranged as two series of open chapels; six enormous pillars lined the nave, and shorter pillars divided the inner from the outer aisles; there was no transept, but an elevated -presbytery extended from wall to wall, arched by frescoed groinings and a double dome painted with a cloudy paradise; the choir was further elevated; and the only light penetrating the chiaroscuro entered through the dome and the small clerestory windows. On the wall over the main entrance pranced a Late-Renaissance equestrian statue (1617) of General Count Antonini of Udine;^ the other main sculptures ^ This statue, with a similar one to Marc, di Manzano in the Duomo of Cividale, was erected by the Venetian Government to the memory of those two valiant Friulan captains, who fell fighting against the imperial- ists. The remarkable manner in which this great church, with its broad open presbytery and choir, elevated above the nave, is adapted to show- ing off the magnificent ceremonies that have been traditional with the patriarchate^ is also worthy of attention. 284 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY were two remarkable benches of choir-stalls at the ends of the presbytery, richly carved with designs and reliefs of Biblical scenes and martyrdoms, also an an- cient marble sarcophagus behind the high-altar, with Early-Christian reliefs crudely depicting the Flagella- tion and the Crucijfixion, — a very interesting relic. The church was a veritable gallery of Friulan paint- ings, containing works of Bellunello, Domenico da Tolmezzo, Girolamo da Udine, Giovanni Martini, Pellegrino da S. Daniele, Amalteo, and Pordenone, besides other masters of less importance; and chief of them all were the two splendid specimens of those long dead rivals. Martini and Pellegrino, standing appro- priately side by side, on the first two altars to the left. Martini's (done in 1501) represents St. Mark enthroned between two bishops; and, though faded in tone and color, leaving now only estimates as to its original brilliancy, it is of excellent composition and drawing, and a certain picturesque grace. Pellegrino's (done in 1502) has the advantage of much better preservation, and is generally more effective and lovely, showing the superiority of his genius. This really famous picture represents St. Joseph holding in his arms the infant Christ, with the young St. John leaning near by against a railing and gazing tenderly at the Child, — and a stately background of classic building, ruinous and romantic; there is a curious, died-out, old-gold tone, with a sense of gentle and seraphic feeling; and the boyish form of the Baptist is thoroughly enchanting, Lanzi says of the former, that it is "the richest speci- men which appeared from his [Martini's] hands," and of the latter, that it is "still worthy of admiration for its architecture," and each of its figures "displays the finest contours and the best forms." ^ 1 Lanzi, History of Painting. UDINE AND CIVIDALE 285 Pordenone's works were in the sacristy, — three small canvases, of which one, the burial of a saint, was poor and of doubtful authenticity. The other two, Christ raising Lazarus and a bishop healing a woman, were full of exceptional feeling and good atmosphere, and one contained a very grand figure of the Saviour. From this room the old sacristan conducted me across the street on the south side of the Duomo to a little church called the Chiesa alia Purita, which he opened with his keys and showed me lined about with large paintings. It was a single-storied chapel, with a flat ceiling and another floor above it, simple in lines and fur- nishings and of modern appearance; but it dated from the seicento, and had been decorated with nine pic- tures by the Tiepoli, father and son. Now the Tie- poli were artists very little fitted to adorn a sacred place or reproduce a religious scene, and I gazed at this their attempt to swim in an alien element with much curiosity. The work of Giovanni Battista, the father, consisted of one of his large, circular ceiling frescoes, intended to represent the Ascension of the Virgin; and showed his customary white clouds, blue spaces, and scattered flying figures, in his usual gay tone and tints. There was actually no difference from his regular reproductions of Olympus and Greek gods, if I except possibly the uplifted, rapt face and pose of the Virgin's figure, which were undeniably devotional. Otherwise it was positively amusing. The work of Tiepolo, junior, consisted of eight large pictures in grisaille upon the walls, above the wainscoting, re- presenting both Old and New Testament scenes : such as Elias and the bears, — a strong and realistic tableau; the entry into Jerusalem, — with an unbearded Christ; Jacob dying amidst his twelve sons, — of excellent PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY dramatic force; the Sons of Maccabeus, — finely composed and acted, — and so on. These pictures, though poor in modehng and grace, had much power and dramatic value, and showed the son much superior to the father in versatility and expression. From the rear of the Duomo I now followed the Via Posta northwestward, coming quickly to the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele. Before my delighted eyes opened one of the most pictureque city squares of all Italy, — so varied, so faced with beautiful architect- ure, so adorned with handsome arcades, columns, and statuary, so imposingly dominated by the vast castle towering upon its hilltop overhead, that I stood still, enraptured. The place is an elongated rectangle stretching northwest and southeast, with the citadel rising above its northern corner; the continuation of the Via Posta extends with its tramway tracks along the southwestern flank, divided from the rest of the open by a stone parapet, upon which the remaining, larger space is terraced as a monumental promenade, sloping gently with the hill's first inclination up to a splendid portico on the right. This portico is an exquisite Renaissance arcade, long and deep, entirely of glistening marble, whose fair, rounded arches rise upon slender Ionic columns; an approaching flight of marble steps extends the whole length; and in the centre it is lifted to two stories by a square pavilion, faced by a huge archway, twice the height of the colonnade, which is sustained by triple clusters of Ionic shafts. Behind the pavilion rise a graceful dome and lantern, upon whose left the muni- cipal clock- and bell-tower soars into the blue. This is another beautiful Renaissance monument, in two divisions visible above the top parapet of the loggia: the first of heavy, rusticated, stone blocks, faced by UDINE AND CIVIDALE 287 the old relief of the winged Venetian Lion, the second containing the clock-face, with handsome large Ionic columns at its angles, upholding a ponderous entab- lature; while on its flat summit stand the customary- Venetian bell, and bronze figures wielding hammers. What a reverence and admiration all these towns must have had for their overlord, to reproduce so faithfully and repeatedly the various features of her Piazza of St. Mark. Higher still than the bell and its beaters rises the great castle upon its eminence, gazing proudly down through a hundred windows upon the square at its feet, commanding the whole city and the country far and wide. But castle as it is still always called, the appel- lation is a misnomer; for the original fortress,^ dating from Roman days, was destroyed in the quattrocento, and the height recrowned in 1517 by this Renaissance palace, built by Giovanni Fontana. So that instead of a ponderous fortress greeting my eyes, I saw a palatial, six-storied, flat-roofed edifice, faced with plaster now decaying, and endowed with a severe sameness by its countless square-headed windows, which had no other ornamentation than simple ledges and cornices. Its only unusual feature was the lofty basement, rising to half the total height and separated from the piano nohile by a cornicione fully as heavy as the top one. The church of the castle was visible on its right, de- tached, marked for a church only by the huge cam- panile, which rose in several long divisions to an ornate Renaissance belfry, with a pointed dome topped by a monstrous, flying, bronze angel, far above the palace- roof. Around the palace were also visible the green lawns of the hilltop, and bunches of trees on each side. ^ In that building dwelt the patriarchal rulers of Udine, from the thir- teenth century. 288 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Within the huge building — once occupied by the stately Venetian Government, and its political prisoners, groaning in the underground dungeons left from an- cient days — now remained nothing whatever, as I was told, except the city's collections of art and antiquity. I lowered my eyes again to the piazza, and advanced upon the terrace to examine the imposing lines of sculpture that make it radiant. If the Anglo-Saxon people in general once realized the incalculable bene- fit rendered to a city by an abundance of heroic monu- ments, which not only make it beautiful and beloved, but awaken and sustain in the inhabitants sentiments of civic patriotism and ambition, some of their wealthy philanthropists would certainly divert their money to such embellishments. Here was a whole city made im- pressive by the inspiring monuments of its piazzas. Before the great central archway of the portico, reared a fine equestrian statue of Victor Emmanuel, in bronze, upon a lofty marble pedestal, which was covered with faded wreaths deposited by patriots. At the middle of the northern end rose a splendid marble Goddess of Peace, throned high above an encircling stairway, — a memento of the pact of Campo Formio. Here, too, upon the front corners of the terrace, were those happy reminders of the glorious Venetian Re- public, her invariable twin columns, — bearing the Lion of St. Mark and the Goddess of Justice. Colossal figures of Hercules and Csecus guarded the main ap- proach, and an oval marble fountain of three basins cooled the dazzling air with its tinkling waters. But the greatest, loveliest, and most memorable factor of this whole scene I have purposely left un- touched until the end, — the fairylike palace of rose- and-white marbles facing it upon the left, more beauti- ful than the loggia, the clock-tower, the sculptured UDINE AND CIVIDALE 289 monuments, — more striking than all of them to- gether. It was a structure of dreamland, an edifice of seafoam thrown up by the waves and shining rose- ate in a sunset glow; it was another of those marvel- ous buildings which the Italians of Gothic times created for their town halls and ducal palaces, to make us wonder to-day at so much loveliness in solid matter, — of that wonderful company which includes the Palazzi Municipali of Perugia, Siena, Verona, and Cremona, — of the unsurpassable type of the Doge's palace at Venice. As the good old Udinese copied their clock-tower from St. Mark's, so also, when they built a new Municipio in 1457, they re- produced on a smaller scale the sublime lines and coloring of the Palazzo Ducale. This exquisite specimen of Gothic work is more a scintillating jewel than a majestic monument, — a ruby whose gleaming rays illumine joyously the whole piazza, and to enjoy a sight of which right willingly I would send a friend all the way from Venice. It is the contrast and complement of that other palatial wonder, the Basilica of Vicenza. All around its first story runs the splendid Gothic colonnade of the doges, but more delicate and ethereal, on more slender, fluted columns, with elaborate foliage caps; between them extend the sections of a superb Gothic balustrade, its railing of white marble, and its dainty balusters of alternate serpentine and Carrara, Within is one great loggia covering the whole ground floor, whose pave- ment is elevated a half-dozen steps above the street, — which are arranged semicircularly before the two central arches. The approach at the southern end, where the ground is lower, is by a handsome double stairway, having the same dainty balustrade. Over the red-and-white voussoirs of the pointed 290 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY arches rise the sheer marble walls to the lofty cornice, in alternate horizontal strata of rose color and white, broken only by the few but carefully balanced win- dows, three on each side. The central of these win- dows on the front side consists of a colonnade of five trefoil arches on marble shafts, and has one of the most perfect Gothic ringhiera balconies existing, supported on voluptuously modeled corbels, with a railing con- taining panels of geometrical open tracery. The other windows are of similar graceful construction, with three trefoil arches instead of five. Still another winsome feature is the marble Ma- donna standing at the southeastern angle over the corner column, under a luxurious Gothic canopy covered with crockets, finials, and spire, holding her Babe in one hand and a model of a fortress in the other, — a very fine early work, which has always been especially revered by the Udinese. I entered the wide, darkened loggia by the front steps, and found its roof upheld by rows of columns similar io those of the fagade, supporting rounded arches; here had been the meeting-place of the people for hundreds of years, — and a number of groups were at this moment conversing loudly in different bays, with a continual going to and fro. On the rear wall to the right I found the famous Madonna of Pordenone, so dear to the inhabitants, — a frescoed figure of truly wonderful loveliness, with something of a Raphael- esque contour to her rounded cheeks, and a softness of well-modeled flesh, a grace of posture, a sweetness of expression, quite impossible to conceive without beholding. The Virgin with her Child stands before a curtain, which just permits a glimpse to the rear of a distant hill-town on its rocky crag, backed by ser- rated mountains. In a separate compartment just UDINE AND CIVIDALE 291 below, before a marble pillar in a different landscape, three ravishing child-angels are making music with song and psaltery. Restored it is, of course, but very skillfully, in the original, softly bright, harmonious colors, broadly massed. Its seraphic beauty lights up the whole loggia, and no one who has seen it can deny the power of graceful, pietistic repose to its author, nor refuse him a debt of gratitude. Some critics — wrongly, I think — claim that the painter was Gio- vanni da Udine. Pordenone once executed another Madonna for this piazza, upon the wall of the opposite loggia; but I looked for it in vain, and only discovered it eventually in the civic museum. A conflagration in 1876 quite gutted the upper story of the Municipio, so that the fine, heavy, oak-beamed roof which I now saw was a very recent reproduction of the original. A passage arching the narrow street in the rear led me to a large lofty hall in the annex; this was a still older building, that has always served for municipal purposes, containing the oflSces of vari- ous departments ; and its great hall has been for count- less generations the principal assembly chamber of the city. Around its walls hung many canvases, in several rows, including a large number of unusual size. None of them were very noteworthy, but the best of the Renaissance works were a Gathering of the Manna by Grassi, the Udinese, a Last Supper by Amalteo, and Saints Agostino and Girolamo by Martini, — which Lanzi calls remarkable for its power of coloring. I found here a functionary willing to show me the upper floor of the Municipio, above the loggia, and we ascended to it by a marble staircase beside the pass- age. There were four large chambers, with fine hard- wood floors and furniture, and hideous arabesques covering the lofty walls and ceilings, the results of the 292 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY reconstruction; they contained plenty of those green baize tables which Italian officialdom is so fond of, and ponderous armchairs arranged formally for the sittings of councils and committees. Upon the lower parts of the walls were a few old canvases, of no importance; of which the most noticeable was a Pomponio Amalteo, representing Christ appearing to some kneeling, pompous officials in very sumptuous dress. After this I left the piazza for the Mercato Vecchio, which extends from its northwestern angle, in the same direction, along the base of the hill, — rather a very broad street than a piazza proper. It is lined with old, four-storied, stuccoed buildings, rising upon continu- ous colonnades, having shops and caffes in the ground floors and faint traces of bygone frescoes on their fagades. One block to the west of it I came to the Mercato Nuovo, where the trade of produce now con- gregates, under the customary canvas roofs and um- brellas, — a smaller, square-shaped piazza, quite crowded by the merchants and buying housewives. In their midst rose another statue of the Virgin, an- other splashing fountain, and at the farther end a strange but elegant, old well-head, with four marble columns, and a fifth upon their summit. Ah, those countless, charming, picturesque old market-places of Italy, thronged with her warm-hearted people and filled with the products of their genius, — how the heart goes out to them, of one who has lived among them! At the western end of this piazza stands the Church of S. Giacomo, a handsome, Late-Renaissance edifice entirely sheathed with marble and highly decorated with sculpture; and upon an adjacent wall is an excel- lent old fresco of the Madonna. The Via Canciani UDINE AND CIVIDALE 293 leads thence southward to the Piazza Venti Settem- bre; and I followed it back to my hotel. Upon my next visit to the central piazza, I climbed the hillside to the castle. The entrance to the grounds was by a rusticated stone archway with Doric half- columns/ in the northeastern angle behind the God- dess of Peace; within which I found a driveway curv- ing up the slope alongside a fascinating, arcaded passage, consisting of a number of long flights of steps. These were arched over by masonry, and lined upon the left by a series of delightful Gothic arcades, consisting of trefoil, ogive arches in stucco, supported by marble columns with primitive foliage capitals. The steps were worn by centuries of climbers; and my thoughts reverted to all the myriads of visitors that had mounted here before me in long past ages, — in silken doublet and long-hose, velvet gown and feathered cap, and all the varying gay costumes left us only in pictures. Ah, what pictures must not those old arcades have seen, — what whisperings of love, and hatred, and ambition, what pomp of proud patricians, and misery of poor prisoners going to their doom! I mounted between the east end of the castle and the church, and on the farther, northern, side discovered a wide, grass-grown parade covering the summit, with the true fagade of the edifice looking down upon it; a grand, double, circular stairway of two stories led majestically to the principal portal, in the piano nobile. The custode, who dwelt in a little building be- side the church, sent his wife to conduct me over the palace, and she admitted me through a small doorway of the basement, into a large hall where doubtless the ^ This finely proportioned structure, with its marked sense of power, was probably designed by Palladio upon his visit here in 1556, during which year it was erected. But there is nothing certain about it. 294 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY guards once lounged. It was utterly denuded now, as were all the halls and chambers of the immense struc- ture. A number of the ground-floor rooms contained the city's collection of old sculpture and bits of archi- tecture, — looking deserted and forlorn amidst the lofty, echoing, cold walls. There was nothing remarkable here; but adjacent lay the entrance to the interesting old dungeons, hidden amongst the ancient foundations on which the present edifice was raised. I crept through those places of terrible memories by flickering candlelight, which revealed countless painful scratchings on the walls, of phrases and fragments of verse, — groans of dying unfortunates torn from them by their agony, of which every one represented unspeakable sufferings unto death. It was entirely dark at midday in those horrible stone boxes, where mortals had confined each other since the days of Rome, and where the Venetian Gov- ernment immured its political opponents. One needs occasionally to descend into some such oubliettes of past times, to be properly grateful for living to-day. We ascended to the great entrance hall of the pal- ace, in the centre of the 'piano nobile, directly above the guard hall and still more spacious; the principal portal opened from it, upon the top landing of the grand external staircase. I looked over its ponderous coffered ceiling, — richly gilded, the panels adorned with painted tableaux, — and its lofty walls covered with decadent Renaissance frescoes, arranged in cu- rious large scenes, more or less defaced, — imagining the countless brilliant gatherings which they had witnessed under the Venetian rule. How many and many a stately assembly of Friulan patricians had curtsied here in laced coat and periwig under the Gov- ernor's eagle eye, — in what an outward splendor of UDINE AND CIVIDALE 295 music and ceremony, with what an inner trembling at the remembrance of the black dungeons yawning beneath their tripping feet, and pulsating with the groans of dying wretches who had been their friends, their relatives, their brothers. The rule of the terrible Ten was omnipotent here as in Venice; and no man knew when a touch upon the shoulder might take him forever from human ken. The adjacent suites of chambers, in the western wing, were filled now with the city's collection of paintings: several rooms, first, containing specimens of the old Friulan masters, then others containing modern works left by recent legacies. They had been removed here but a few weeks ago from the Palazzo Bartolini beyond the Mercato Vecchio, — which still preserves the Municipal Library. It was not a large nor an impressive collection; but, like even the small- est museum of inexhaustible Italy, it had some works of such merit and enticement as to make the whole an agreeable memory. The first room held pictures of the earliest periods, both before and just after the institution of Venetian methods; chief and most pleasing among them being the two masterpieces of Girolamo da Udine, whose warm, golden tone and graceful, well-modeled, Bel- linesque figures were a striking contrast to the more primitive, stiff panels, resembling tapestries. One of the two represented S. Domenico, with six captivating girl-angels making melody, outlined against a sky of enchanting blueness, in a glowing harmony of colors; the other was Girolamo's Coronation of the Virgin, between the Magdalen and John the Baptist, — a work of most powerful spacing, effective disposition, and clear perspective, with figures of vigorous mould- ing and quiet dignity. The Eternal Father is portrayed 296 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY as seated upon a simple cloth-covered form before a hanging velvet curtain, behind which to the far dis- tance stretches the Plain of Friuli, to its castled foot- hills and craggy Alps; the Madonna kneels at his right hand upon a lower step, with meek, downcast coun- tenance and folded hands, while the Almighty places a crown upon her coif; the two saints stand to right and left, and a tiny, chubby, winged cherub, perched upon the lowest step, is handling meditatively a lute. The wide free spaces, the warm, dreamy tone, the strong, simply-robed figures, the broad, rich masses of color, all conjoin to make this an exceptional work, and overshadow its lack of expression. In the second room the principal object was Porde- none's Madonna, which formerly adorned the public loggia, — a lovely female form, gentle and winsome, of his usual powerful moulding and vivid flesh-color. In the third room I was struck by a piece of silk embroidery surpassing anything in that line I had ever seen, — an extraordinary curiosity and artistic chef d'oeiivre combined; it was a veritable painting in thread, showing a pair of lions couchant, of most vivid lifelikeness and vigorous grace. Here was also an ex- traordinary modern canvas, that seized the beholder with its tragic expressiveness like a breathless vise : it represented a lone man and woman upon a mountain- top, clasping each other with agonized, terror-stricken faces, surrounded by the advancing flood, beaten by the thundering elements ; — a profound accomplish- ment, executed by F. Giuseppini, who died in 1862. The remaining four or five rooms contained indiffer- ent etchings, woodcuts, engravings, and ordinary modern paintings. The view from the windows of all of them was impressive, — over the red-tiled roofs and campanili of the city below, across the adjacent, UDINE AND CIVIDALE 297 barren-looking plain with its glistening river-beds, to the rounded foothills and towering mountains. On the following day I set out from the central piazza for an examination of the quarter east of the hill, following the Via Manin, which runs easterly from the place's southeastern angle, along the southern base of the height. It is a short street, and halfway upon the left I passed a delightful Old Renaissance palace covered with a reddish-brown stucco; its far- projecting wooden roof shadowed a fine colonnaded window of five arches, with marble shafts, and double marble balconies of handsome design; while the plas- ter held inset below it an ancient relief of the Madonna, Child, and 'putti. The way debouched into a bay at the southern angle of the vast Piazza d' Armi, which I saw stretching a third of a mile before me to the northwest, adorned in the centre with a large oval grove of trees, and holding a second, triangular grove in its far apex. It reminded me of Padua's Prato della Valle, and shimmered with the same fierce sunniness. I crossed it, however, to the curious Church of the Beata Vergine delle Grazie on the eastern side, enjoy- ing in passing the unusual beauty of the trees, — horse- chestnuts, and planes of magnificent dimensions, one of the latter being fully six feet in diameter. The church rose at the top of an imposing flight of steps, with a classical fagade of four mammoth Corinthian stucco columns. Adjacent on the right were some charming old cloisters, of Gothic arches sustained by primitive columns, with bits of early frescoing in the lunettes, and shapely palms of several species embel- lishing the court. The interior of the edifice proved to be one glitter- ing mass of modern bright decoration, carried to the extreme, — the ceiling covered with gay-hued fres- 298 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY coes, the walls with gilding, plaster statues, painted wooden reliefs, and other frescoes, of appalling poor- ness and number. It was another "miracle-working" church, — which accounted for all these riches, that the priests had reaped from the credulous pilgrims. Two rooms, on the right and left immediately after entering, were hung to the ceiling, upon their four walls, with objects of every sort supposed to have been given by thankful, cured suppliants,. — crutches, wooden limbs, wooden heads, frames containing chromos, harrowing pictures of sick-beds, crude repre- sentations of the miracles performed, — thousands of them, and doubtless in great part true witnesses; Lourdes shows us what implicit faith will do. A con- tinuous stream of peasants was coming and going, with awed faces, many of them purchasing mementoes and trinkets for deposit from the vendors upon the steps. And the object of all this worship and belief was but an old canvas painted with a figure of the Madonna, hidden behind an embroidered cloth over the altar in the left chapel. At the southern end of the Piazza d' Armi stands the Tribunale, or court-house, and upon its south side, facing westward over a little park running southeast- erly from the end of the Via Manin, the huge palace of the Archbishop.^ This was the building to which I now bent my steps, to see the frescoes of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and Giovanni da Udine, decorating its piano nohile. The Bishop was luckily away in the mountains, and a sole caretaker left in charge, who ^ This small but pleasant Giardino Pubblico, with its groves of cypresses, preserves in its knolls some fragments of the embankment of the earliest eastern city-wall, with the latter's moat — the Roggia Canal — still flow- ing softly by. The palace was a late cinquecento erection of the Archbishops — no longer Patriarchs and rulers, owing to the Venetian dominion ; in it at different times stayed Pope Pius VI, Napoleon I, and Victor Emmanuel. UDINE AND CIVIDALE 299 conducted me up the grand winding staircase of six flights, with pardonable pride. Upon the ceihng of its well was one of Tiepolo's characteristic circular fres- coes, this time representing the Fall of the Angels, — a work of real power, in which the falling, whirling forms seemed to rush downward before the eyes. The grand suite was upon the third-story front, as often in Friuli, commencing with a large throne-room opening from the stairway, which was adorned with portraits of all the Bishops of Udine, and the Patriarchs of Aquileia before them, back to the first tenant of the oflSce. The ceiling-painting was modern. But the ad- joining so-called gallery, or reception-room, contained six paintings by Tiepolo: a "tondo" upon the ceiling, showing the Sacrifice of Isaac, and five scenes from the same story upon the walls, of which two were in brown monochrome. The largest and best picture was Jacob appearing to Rachel and her sister, though the figures of the Sacrifice were the better moulded, and its angel, an alluring apparition. The tangibility was in general rather poor, and the colors too light, but the composition was good and the dramatic action and expression surprisingly so. The second chamber, or Sala Rossa, contained Tiepolo's remaining labors, — a large Judgment of Solomon upon the centre of the ceiling, beautifully colored, well grouped and posed, but not individually graceful nor realistic, — and four figures of prophets in the corners. The third room, or state bedchamber, was charac- teristically adorned by Giovanni da Udine, with five of his customary little panels, in the centre and corners of the ceiling, — which often make one feel that he must have distrusted his power to draw large figures. They represented scenes from the life of Christ, — the giving of the keys to Peter (central), the multiplication 300 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY of the loaves and fishes (best of the lot, with a noble form of the Saviour), the meeting with the Centurion, Jesus preaching from a boat in the lake, and Judas receiving the betrayal money. They were second-class work, showing clearly that little pains had been taken. I was more interested in the fourth chamber, — a fine large library, lined with handsome cases and count- less old tomes, with a delicate oak balustrade around the second story, surmounted by graceful wood-carved putti, and a bright modern ceiling-painting. It was an interesting example of the delightful old libraries hidden in private palaces all over Italy : — For Italy 's the whole earth's treasury, piled — With coins of scholars' fancy, which, being rung On workday counter, still sound silver-proof: In short, with all the dreams of dreamers young.^ The most pleasing sight of all came last, in the private chapel off the throne-room, whose pala con- sisted of a delectable Madonna by Palma Giovane, in partial chiaroscuro, her child standing upon a little cloud upheld by a baby-angel; — a splendidly modeled work, with rich, soft, flesh-portrayal, of exceeding grace and quiet feeling. When I went down I noticed the courtyard in the rear, — a large space surrounded by a stately stone wall crowned with many marble statues, and holding in its centre a lovely Old Renais- sance well-top. The building itself was of no interest externally, the huge f agade being of plainest, unadorned stucco. I sat down for a while in the Public Garden be- fore it, — a pretty, cooling spot, consisting of varied, tree-clad knolls and dells, through which flowed the shining strip of the Roggia Canal. ^ On its western side ^ Mrs. Browning, Casa Guidi Windows. 2 Southward the garden merges into the broad Via Gorgni, which, occupying the site of the earliest walls, and still accompanied by the moat (the Roggia), bends round in a wide curve to' the Piazza Garibaldi in the southwest. UDINE AND CIVIDALE 301 rose amongst shady groves the irregular old brick mass of the Prefettura. One block west of this again, on the east side of the Via Posta, a little south of the Duomo, I found, later on, a private palace even more interest- ing to me than the Arcivescovado. This was the Palazzo Tinghi, upon which Pordenone once lavished his genius, both inside and out; the paint- ings are unusually preserved, and, though unknown to the guidebooks, constitute one of Udine's principal sights. The fagade was entirely painted by that great master, about 1527; and sufficient remains to show us, for once, how dazzling the effect of such work must have been. It extends over all the abundant wall- spaces, — between the windows, over the arcade, as courses between the stories, and as a frieze beneath the eaves; the different backgrounds being tinted in delightful soft monochromes of light brown, ochre, reddish-brown, white, and golden brown, — upon which appear happily contrasted life-size figures of Greek gods and goddesses, mythological heroes, and antique groupings, each in a single color harmonious with its setting, — white forms on ochre, brown on white. In the frieze, prettiest of all, a series of charming white figures in ancient costume extends the whole width of the house, engaged in making sacrifice upon altars, and other pursuits, all exquisitely outlined against a back- ground of golden brown. Between the third-floor win- dows are four panels of similar scenes, whose white- robed participants shine like cameo-cuts against gleaming gems, — of lavender glow, of orange-brown, of rose-red, and emerald-green. Judged by this lin- gering effect, the whole classic composition must have coruscated in its early years like a transplanted rain- bow. As for the inside paintings, I was informed that the 302 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY chambers of the piano nobile embellished by Porde- none had been during the centuries entirely built over, — all but one room, in the very centre, which was now used by a certain dentist, Doctor Clanfero. He proved to be a most pleasant man, and made me free of the apartment. Here I had the pleasure of beholding a pri- vate salon decorated by a great master, — a rare treat, worth many of the best canvases. It was a little square room, with the lower parts of the walls covered by three elaborate landscapes and an Annunciation, prob- ably from other hands; but the magnificent frieze was indubitably by Pordenone, — a brilliant, superbly sus- tained series of frolicking putti, intertwined with vines and grotesques, the design of perfect grace and regu- larity, the flowers and leaves exquisitely drawn, the lovely, fresh cherubs delightful beyond words. Through the twining verdure ran a multitude of unnatural but vividly realistic beasts and birds, with long necks and human lineaments, ugly and fascinating. By the same master were the two sphinxes at the sides of the landscape on the right wall, — which had an uncanny likeness to the side look of his feminine saints, — and the two similar weird beasts above them, with male heads. Never had I seen anything quite equal, in its like, to this grotesque but joyous and bewitching fan- tasy. Remembering Pordenone's paysage at his birth- place, these landscapes were . possibly also his work, with their pleasing aggregation of lakes and woods and mountains, overlooked by enchanted castles, peopled by uncouth rustics gamboling in the foreground. I discovered an interesting short walk through the southern portion of the city, starting down from Piazza Venti Settembre to Piazza Garibaldi, — so called after the bronze statue of the Liberator occupy- ing its centre, with a drawn sword under his folded UDINE AND CIVIDALE 303 arm. Before this was the house from which the "altis- simo eroe" spoke to the Udinese, on March 1, 1867, those " words of patriotism and glory " which the tablet records; behind it was the large Renaissance building of the Institute of Technology, having a central, higher pavilion faced with eight two-storied half-columns and pilasters. Round the corner to the southwest I found a very prepossessing, modern Renaissance, red-brick house, with handsome marble windows and loggia, and a curious frieze of painted festoons. The Via Gorgni ran thence to the east, which I fol- lowed to the church and extensive cloisters of S. Spirito. The former was nothing; but the latter, now secularized and occupied by tenants, were bounded by tall double colonnades, — the lower of flat arches, the upper of stucco pillars supporting a wooden, tiled roof, — altogether very quaint and picturesque. A block to the north of this, next the huge structure of the Ospedale Civile (it is always a wonder, what great and well-equipped hospitals these small Italian cities have), I visited the church of the Franciscans, — of no account externally, but endowed with a resplendent high-altar piece by Pellegrino da S. Daniele. It was a Madonna standing upon clouds, which were upheld by various saints, — a very darkly toned work, with finely moulded flesh of a rich reddish tinge. Over another altar was a canvas by Amalteo. Another and last walk took me into the northern quarter, starting from the exceptionally wide Via Zanoni, — a block west of the Mercato Nuovo, — which represents a section of the original western city- wall. Here also, the old moat still flows along its side, — an arm of the Roggia, — laving the bases of the dwellings in Venetian style; and to reach the street each house has a little bridge thrown over the water. 304 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY A number of housewives, as I gazed, were kneeling upon the sidewalk washing the family linen before their own doors; in other sections I had seen a similar use of the canal waters at the backs of the dwellings. Near by, on the street leading north from the Mer- cato Nuovo, I found the little Church of S. Pietro Martire, containing an elegant example of Tiepolo's peculiar genius as a ceiling painter, — a large fresco of the Madonna in glory, with Saints Francis and Catherine and a number of lovely angels, all suspended upon clouds above a templed city, in which S. An- tonio is visible dispensing alms. This church has also a living wonder, — the only Italian sacristan who refuses tips, and yet shows his building courteously. The painting by Carpaccio which used to be here I could obtain no trace of. This street curves round to the north end of the Mercato Vecchio, at the northwest base of the castle hill, looming steeply overhead, — near the so-called Casa di Risparmio, and several other very old build- ings with, wide-projecting wooden eaves, showing re- mains of extensive frescoing. On one of them linger still three clear heroic figures, of gods or saints (about the same to the polytheistic lower classes), possessed of considerable tactile value and well proportioned, with flesh of that usual, queer, reddish-brown tinge. At the very end of the street, in the shadow of the castle, I came to that Palazzo Bartolini which contained the library, and, formerly, the art collection; upon looking it over, the pleasant directors of the institution showed me a magnificent canvas of Palma Giovane which had not yet been transferred. It was a very large work, perhaps twelve feet by six, representing St. Mark with the standard of Udine before the Virgin with her Child, an elderly saint in UDINE AND CIVIDALE 305 priest's cassock, and a number of very winsome an- gels, while to the right through a window was visible in the distance the castle hill, with the loggia and clock-tower at its foot; — a grand composition, of the first rank, with perfectly modeled figures of high grace and expressiveness, in a dark and hazy atmosphere that lent enchantment, sparkled with golden lights and romantic feeling, and softened the glow of the sumptuous hues. — By the time this is read, it will doubtless have been hung in the castle. From this point the prominent Via Gemona runs northward to the gate of the same name in the centre of the northern city wall. Following it, I came soon to a small piazza dominated on the left by the large Palazzo Caiselli, inhabited for many generations by one of Udine's chief families; its fagade was another example of how strangely imposing the old Italian palaces can be, though having but simple stuccoed walls and unadorned windows. It comes, I believe, from the careful balancing of the openings, their just proportion to the solid, and the invariable heavy cor- nice full of dignity. This one contains some works of Tiepolo and a Tintoretto of repute; but the noble pro- prietor was away in the mountains, and I could not be admitted for lack of his permission. A little beyond, on the east side, loomed up the majestic palazzo of the Banca d' Italia, a splendid Renaissance structure, with long-and-short rustica- work at the angles, rusticated half -columns along the first story, and Corinthian half-columns above; though of two divisions only, its enormous eaves projected at a height equal to half a dozen of our modern puny floors. The stately, columned entrance-hall, with its impressive stairway, framed a vista of the luxuriant garden in the rear, whose marble statues 306 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY gleamed against masses of tangled verdure, percolated by a silver stream of flowing water. Finally, I reached, upon the same side, the interest- ing, quaint, little house once inhabited and decorated by Giovanni da Udine, and still cherished for his sake by the faithful people, — as a tablet witnessed. Its ground story consisted of the usual arcade, but on the upper story the master had expended his fertile fancy in exceptional lines: at the sides of the one real window were painted false ones, — of circular shape, representing medieval glass in small round panes, — and six pretty painted panels with classic mouldings, of which one contained a most engaging little relief of the Madonna and Child. The view which Giovanni enjoyed from this residence was surprisingly pleasant: the long straight street stretched on to the distant gateway, paralleled on the right by a splashing stream, that washed the old house-fronts and turned a heavy mill-wheel; and far above the arched gate loomed the dark flanks of the wooded Alps near at hand, wafting fresh bneaths of the free, pine-scented breezes from their alluring summits. Amidst those very hills, sheltered in the noble val- ley of the Tagliamento near its entrance upon the plain, nestle the two picturesque old towns of Gemona and Venzone; which contain various pictures of the early Friulan masters, well worth visiting to any lover of the art. S. Daniele also, in the foothills to the north- west, holds in its Cathedral a fine altar-piece of Por- denone, representing the Trinity, and in its Church of S. Antonio, that magnificent series of frescoes which have given Pellegrino his chief title to fame. I did not upon this occasion visit either of these places, for they are strictly hill-towns, and my researches were con- fined to the Italian plain. Nor did I for the same rea- UDINE AND CIVIDALE 307 son go to Grade or Aquileia, for those are practically sea-towns, and part of Austrian territory. But no un- confined traveler should omit the sight of their most interesting relics, — their wonderful Romanesque ca- thedrals of countless age, their remains of Roman temples, bath's, and palaces, their ancient mosaics, sculptures, monuments, glassware, metal-ware, cotta- ware, jewels, and artistic objects of every class, their delightful medieval frescoes and carvings, and their Renaissance paintings and chisel-work, including the beautiful pala by Pellegrino. As for the latter artist, a journey to S. Daniele is not necessary to become thoroughly acquainted with his genius and personality; that can be accomplished through his works in Udine, combined with those in the most important of all the neighboring Italian places, — Cividale. To Cividale then I went, when I had finished my walks in the city; but not for Pelle- grino alone, — far from it. Cividale has many other important interests; its historical buildings and re- mains date from all four periods: from the days of the Roman Forum Julii, the fortified gateway of the Alps; from those of the powerful Lombard capital, under Gisulf and his successors; from those of the patri- archate, under the later dukes and counts, and under the sovereign sway of the archbishops ; and from those of the Venetian dominion, with its edifices and artistic treasures of the Renaissance. Cividale especially con- tains many rare relics of the Lombard and Frankish period, probably beyond those of any other place, and, above all, the extraordinary Lombard Chapel of S. Peltrudis, which is one of the greatest memorials of that race.^ ^ Gisulf placed his seat of power at Cividale in 568, and ruled there very ably until 611, when he was slain, together with most of his chieftains, in 308 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY The little city, nowadays possessed of but ten thou- sand inhabitants, has a peculiarly interesting situation at the very foot of the wall of the Julian Alps, — the most oriental city of Italy, at the very beginning (or end) of its vast northern plain. It lies almost directly east of Udine, about ten miles distant, at the mouth of the defile of the Natison River. I started out early one morning by taking the tram from the central piazza of Udine down the long main street to the Porta Aquileia, — stopping off shortly before reaching the battlemented, towered gate to examine the Church of S. Pietro which was passed; for it contained the final specimen of Pellegrino in the city. Then I took a local train of aged little cars at the station, and rattled unevenly over the plain, across the glistening stony beds of the Torre and the Matina, to the foot of the advancing mountains. Cividale Station proved to be a half-mile from the centre of the town, and a kind priest showed me the way to the latter through the winding narrow streets. The central piazza was adorned with a fountain surmounted by a statue of a female armed with a Roman cuirass, and was surrounded by arcaded houses and market-stalls. heroically resisting the attack of the fierce Avars upon the city. In 737, under the reign of Duke Pemmone, Calisto the Patriarch effected a coup- de-main: being no longer able, like his predecessors, to reside in Aquileia on account of the harassing attacks of the Byzantines, he had shortly before removed to the Castle of Cormons, which proved altogether too small for his state; taking advantage of a temporary absence of the Duke from Cividale, he suddenly descended upon the city, forcibly ejected the Bishop Amatore from the vescovado, and made himself at home. Nor did the Duke dare to interfere on his return, — when Calisto had already com- menced the erection of the grand church and the Baptistery of S. Gio- vanni, in commemoration of his exploit. Thus strangely was installed the Patriarchate at Cividale; which took up the reins of temporal government when they dropped from the hands of the later Prankish Counts, and continued to hold sway there until the removal to Udine in the latter part of the thirteenth century. UDINE AND CIVIDALE 309 One of the houses was of fair Gothic design, with pointed stone arches and painted panels above them. The place appeared to have died long, long ago; hardly a living being was in sight, and those that were, were aged women drawing water. The piazza lay a number of blocks west of the river, which ran to the south; immediately on the east I came to another open space, fronted by the Municipio on the right and the Duomo and Arcivescovado on the left. The Palazzo Municipale was a little building of red-and-white marble, with the usual ground-floor loggia, built of Gothic arches and adorned with plaques to the memory of Garibaldi and Victor Em- manuel; and it had a curious outside stairway to the upper floor. Beyond it stretched a row of very old dwellings of a picturesque reddish-brown color. The Cathedral ^ was a huge edifice of stuccoed walls, recon- structed in the quattrocento, with a stone f agade, of mixed styles, completed by Pietro Lombardo about 1502; — the lower part, with its three arched doorways, being Gothic in type, while the upper contained a central, Renaissance window of three lights, and a rococo gable. Beside it on the right rose a short and very heavy campanile, of stone and composite, having a clock-face and the usual open belfry. The Bishop's Palace was adjacent on the church's left rear, fronting the northern end of the piazza with a large fagade of Late-Renaissance design; it rose upon a stout arcade, bearing imbedded jn its upper plaster the remains of a relief of the Venetian Lion, and a very old and curious stone Madonna. ' The earlier church was the one commenced by Calixtus in 737; be- hind it he built his huge and famous palace, now vanished, which contained eighty rooms and spacious halls, magnificently decorated with mosaics and marbles. 310 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY This place was more dead than the other. The Duomo was locked up, the sacristan gone to Udine; and I had a long task finding a living person with one of its keys. When I finally entered, I found the in- terior very spacious and handsome, — three mighty stone columns on each side, with Romanesque cap- itals, dividing the lofty, round-arched nave from the slightly lower aisles with their Gothic vaulting, the pavements being of gray-and-white marbles, the walls of stucco with gray stone trimmings. In the first bay of the right aisle stood one of the most interesting Lombard relics, the ancient Baptistery of Calixtus (or Calisto), — the very font which he had constructed for his new church, upon his arrival in 737. It was a small, octagonal, marble construction, of eight slight columns rising upon heavy vertical slabs, upholding solid arches cut from other slabs, with a flat roof, and no cornice, — all materials from some Roman temple, thus refitted together by the Lom- bards to make a covered font for immersion. The Corinthian capitals of the columns were unusually rich, having very prominent drooping leaves. The top slabs, of the arches, were cut with various long Latin inscriptions and figures; the bottom ones were engraved with divers designs, two being of Roman workmanship and four others of Lombard. These last four pieces, "executed in relief by lowering the surface of the stone — within which the details are indicated by furrows dug out,"^ have long excited interest among antiquarians for their exceptional grace of drawing and excellence of execution, — considering that period, when reliefs were generally so rude; the two front slabs have been removed for preservation to the city museum, and a later font installed within, of ^ Perkins, Italian Sculptors. UDINE AND CIVIDALE 311 Renaissance form. The Lombard reliefs stiil remain- ing on the structure consist of the emblems of the Evangelists, and fanciful figures, — somewhat crude compared with modern work, but extraordinary for the eighth century. Over the central portal of the church stood the gilded equestrian statue to Marc, di Manzano, companion to that of Udine's Cathedral, which Venice erected in the early seicento ; below it was the Renaissance tomb of Nicolo Donato (1497), surmounted by statues of the Virgin and two saints. The aisles did not have the customary chapels, but altars affixed directly to the walls. Over the first altar to the left hung a fine Late-Renaissance canvas, by Pietro Meri, of 1671, — S. Giacomo, with Saints Stephen and Lorenzo at his sides; much like the Bassano work in its dark flesh and dusky atmosphere, and full of charming grace. The next altar held a specimen of Sebastiano Seccante, chief fellow- artist of Amalteo (1537) — another group of three saints (Joseph, Roch, and Sebastian) before a ruined Doric temple; a work of warm tone, mystical atmosphere, and grace of composition though not of figure. St. Joseph supports a fascinating Child, stretch- ing out his little fingers in blessing. Adjacent was a remarkable crucifix of the ninth century, found long afterward underground, made of painted wood, with a striking countenance, most lifelike and agonized; it shows that the Lombard sculptors could be realistic, on occasion. Over the third and fourth altars, respectively, were splendid examples of the two Palmas, nephew and uncle: the one an entrancing group of St. Elizabeth with four female companions, under the Cross in glory surrounded by pidti; the other a strong vision of the risen Saviour before the Magdalen, with the S12 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY sepulchre and its guarding angels to the right, and to the rear an extensive landscape of lake and town and mountain, glowing under a sunset sky, — not a can- vas of individual grace, but of superb tone, atmo- sphere, and coloring. There was a second Palma Gio- vane in the chapel to the left of the choir, — a dark and tragic stoning of St. Stephen, illumined by the dazzling figure of the martyr, — also one of his un- successful Last Suppers; and near them, a brilliant Renaissance marble altar of 1558, attractively adorned with sculpture, though having some modern additions, of vases and a cupola. The -pala of the high-altar is a famous silver ante- pendium of 1204; in its centre are the larger relieved forms, of the Madonna and several angels, — very fine for that early period, — and roundabout them, three rows of little saints, standing. Above it rises a silver crucifix of the same epoch. Near by, on the choir's left side, I saw the seventeenth-century throne of the Patriarchs, curiously plain, made of thin pieces of wood pointed red. How many and many a cardinal had sat proudly in that chair, and had his red stock- ings removed with awful ceremony. The choir was much elevated, above the ancient crypt, remodeled in the eighteenth century; and upon the right of the handsome, ascending, marble steps, stood the older patriarchal seat, of the eighth century, constructed of heavy, plain, marble slabs. Think of it, — a chair occupied by the same line of rulers for over eleven hundred years; it had been the simple throne of all those majestic warrior-prelates who swayed Friuli for so long, and fought with Grado and the Lagoons. It was wonderful to realize that every one of them had occupied this very seat, in all his grandiose medieval state, beginning with the fabulous St. Calixtus himself. UDINE AND CIVIDALE 313 An Amalteo and a fourth Palma Giovane adorned the chapel to the right of the choir, — representing the Annunciation, and a group of three saints. By it opened the door to the coretto, or little choir, used in the winter-time because of its superior warmth; it had a pala by G. B. Tiepolo, showing S. Antonio Abbate kneeling to the Virgin, — a curious picture, as his pietistic efforts usually were. Behind this room were the large sacristy and the Consiglio dei Canonici, or Cathedral Council. The second and third altar-pieces of the right aisle were school pieces of Palma Giovane, rather pleasing in their effects. Leaving the Duomo, I was led down a narrow way behind it to an ancient archway, which was probably a gate of the Roman walls; a little carpenter popped out of a workroom above it, and accompanied me without to the northern flank of the huge convent of the Ursulines, which stretches over a good part of that northernmost section of the city. Its outer wall is now the city boundary, and it backs upon the west bank of the river. On this spot originally stood a little Roman temple, which Peltrudis, the pious daughter of one of the Lombard dukes, in the eighth or ninth century converted into a chapel, and established a convent in the buildings adjacent. At her death she was buried in the chapel, and subsequently canonized; and the edifice bears her name to this day. Now the result of this good lady's actions was that the Lombard sculptures of the best period, with which she embellished this chapel in its transformation from a temple, were carefully preserved intact and in- violate during a thousand years thereafter, in the unbroken sanctuary of the Ursulines; while nearly all other artistic objects of the same epoch became de- stroyed, in the unending warfare of Friuli. At the S14 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY end of that millennium, when artists were lamenting that there were so few examples left of good Lombard sculpture, the town of Cividale suddenly awoke to the fact that it carried hidden in its breast the one undis- turbed religious building of Lombard days, with a wealth of their artistic work to be found nowhere else; so the signory condemned the edifice for public uses, detached it from the nunnery, and put the little car- penter in charge. He led me over the fields outside the northern wall, to the river-bank, opened a wicket on its very edge, and took me southward again, between the top of the bank and another wall, until we reached the chapel. The broad muddy waters of the Natison were rushing far below, deep-set between their high, clay shores, and along the farther side stretched the eastern sec- tion of the city, — the quarter of S. Martino; promi- nent among its scattered buildings was a huge, grim prison of modern look, and upon one of the first range of foothills towering close behind, black and menacing with theift endless forests, soared the keep and battle- ments of a great gray castle. Very picturesque was its appearance, unchanged with its hemming woods from the far-off days when Lombard workmen built it stone on stone; and my guide informed me that it was still occupied by the descendants of its first baron. We entered first an anteroom filled with Roman tab- lets and architectural fragments, and then what was once the portico of the temple, but is now the chapel's tribune, — for the heathen edifice looked toward the river, and the Christian one looks away from it. The four handsome marble columns that once adorned the portico, now upheld the rood-beam, and some old marble slabs, fixed between them, partly screened the tribune from the nave. This little nave had neither UDINE AND CIVIDALE 315 aisles nor side chapels, but a simple wagon-arclied roof; and over its plastered walls rioted the fragmentary lines of mostly vanished frescoes, — haloed golden heads, faint outlines of saintly forms, glimpses of feet or arms, and narrowed eyes just looking through the stains of centuries. The Byzantine saints upon the right wall are said to have been placed there in Peltrudis's time; those two wooden-looking figures high upon the left wall were added about the year 1000; and the rest were trecento products of the school of Giotto, on both walls and the vaulting and the three divisions of the trib- une. The curious, richly carved, Gothic, wooden stalls running round the nave, under a continuous, dainty, curving cornice of the same material, as high as the rood-beam, were also trecento work; and very pleasing were the countless varied arabesques cut and painted all over their backs and arms. The two extra-large seats on the entrance wall were for the abbess and her coadjutor; the two front rows of smaller seats, with low, uncomfortable backs, were for the novices; and I wondered to think how many, many generations of nuns and novices had sat in these same stalls, singing in the gloom, hidden far away here from the turbulent advancing world. But the great interest of this edifice lay in the upper part of its entrance wall, above the doorway and the cornice, where I saw the marvelous Lombard sculpt- ures which have so rightly astonished modern criti- cism. So amazing was this sudden revelation to me of what those long-gone medievals could do, that I could hardly believe I was beholding a work performed pre- vious to the trecento. It was all in plaster, of a peculiar whiteness and ductility, executed with such profound skill that one would deem it the product of an over- 316 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY ripe art, instead of a dark age of new beginnings. Im- mediately over the doorway extended a relieved cor- nice of very daintiest design, and a large ornamental arch just clear of the wall, consisting of the most exquisite openwork one could imagine. Of its four parallel parts or strata, the second and chief was an enchanting tracery of grapevine, whose leafy tendrils, in a series of. convolutions, carried bunches of most seductive contour; — a thing not only perfectly unique, but uniquely beautiful, which I have seen nothing quite like in all my wanderings. The first and third strata were peculiar, slender mouldings, and the fourth, or outer one, a succession of quaint forms re- sembling antique lyres. Over this archway was a strange, effective string course, or cornice across the wall, consisting of linked, starlike forms of delicate narcissi; upon it in the centre, a deep, narrow niche, framed by two sturdy columns with foliage caps and an openwork arch of flowering design; within this niche sat a stiff, wooden, bishop's image of tjie fourteenth century, of no account, — but on each side stood three wonderful tall figures in three- quarter relief, of Peltrudis and five sister saints. These statues of heroic size, with their little feet upon one cornice and their shapely heads beneath another of the same delicacy, were almost perfectly preserved after their existence of a thousand years, and exhibited a style of mien and garb, a method of dainty execution, not only utterly amazing considering their period, but absolutely different from those of any other age, — with an inexpressible kind of gracefulness and dignity that stands quite alone. What a thorough delight it was to find such an artistic treasure of an epoch considered savage, — to behold a method of sculpture emerging from long-past darkness which is UDINE AND CIVIDALE 317 entirely foreign to those we know, displaying forms and graces strange to our own ideals, yet brilliantly attractive. These unique figures were not of Roman workmanship, nor Byzantine, nor of the customary medieval styles; neither do they resemble any Re- naissance productions, nor the uncouth modelings left us elsewhere by the Lombards. They stand in a classi- fication all their own.^ The figures are exceptionally short-waisted, with long legs and disproportionately short arms ; but those that are belted wear gowns falling from just below the bust in Empire fashion, in long straight folds, to broad and richly embroidered hems, — bestowing the inevitable slender gracefulness of that mode; their hands, with drooping sleeves long from the elbow, hold crosses and chaplets pressed against their breasts ; their necks are wreathed with jeweled necklaces, and their locks adorned with royal crowns. These four are princesses. The other two, beside the central niche, are nuns swathed closely in robes of elegant drapery, with simple coifs across their heads, and hands outstretched in exhortation. In spite of the stiffness of the attitudes and the poor proportions of these forms, which betray the By- zantine influence of their period, they are unutterably captivating, with a haunting charm which defies analy- sis ; it must come partly from the exquisite drapery of the robes, partly from the fair, rounded limbs outlined beneath in wondrous moulding, partly from the gentle, maiden-like inturning of the knees (a stroke of true genius) , and, above all, from the serene loveliness of the ^ "Nor do we know," says Mr. Perkins, "of any other so perfect ex- ample of that transition period in Italian architecture, when the Roman and Byzantine elements seemed to hesitate, before blending into the Romanesque." {Italian Sculptors.) 318 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY virgin faces. How under heaven could a man of those rough times, in a country of barbarians Hke the Longo- bards, have learned to model such beautiful, stately heads, such pure, maidenly countenances of rapt expression, and such forms of alluring contour, dis- played beneath finely fitted and elegant robes! It is a miracle. But what is still more interesting is the originality of the style, which has a medieval direct- ness and simplicity in its lines, as well as a touch of Byzantine obliqueness and angularity, yet produces a vivid realism, and a weird, striking grace that re- minds me of nothing so much as the art of the Japan- ese. The sarcophagus in which S. Peltrudis was buried I saw still lying in a corner of the choir, with no notice- able ornamentation; it had been opened by the muni- cipality seven years previous, and some dust and frag- ments of bone beheld by the officials, who closed them up again. — I departed with my guide, left him at his Roman gateway, and walked to the bridge that car- ries the niain street over the river a little east of the Cathedral. It is a handsome bridge, of stone arches and piers and Renaissance workmanship, called the Ponte del Diavolo, — for no reason that I could find, except perhaps from the queer Italian fondness for naming such structures after his Satanic Majesty; and an imposing vista was given by it, of the rushing waters far below in their yellow banks, and the mountains towering black and grim above its distant bend. Just beyond it, on the left side of the way, rose the small churches of S. Martino and S. Maria dell' Ospedale (or de' Battuti). They were not remarkable externally, but contained several important objects. S. Martino held the famous altar of Duke Pemmone, which he presented on restoring the edifice, about UDINE AND CIVIDALE 319 735, — covered with very crude reliefs, formerly colored, of the Epiphany, the Visitation, and Christ seated between angels, — quite the opposite of the fine art of S. Peltrudis. The three Magi are said to be portraits of Duke Rachis and Pemmone's two other sons. In S. Maria I found Cividale's superb master- piece of Pellegrino, over its high-altar, — a canvas of surpassing loveliness, divided into three compart- ments: in the centre was the Madonna with four female saints, and a child-angel at her feet between Saints Donato and John the Baptist, the former hold- ing a model of the city in his hands; while St. Sebas- tian stood in the right division, St. Michael in the left. It was a work of exquisitely soft tone and shad- ing, and deep, rich flesh- tints, of symmetrical group- ing, and dazzling beauty, both in the individual figures and in the tout ensemble; the figures were splendidly modeled, the coloring was a gorgeous scheme, and the features of the Madonna and her companions, quite enchanting. The only failure was in its lack of decided expression and feeling. Near by on the altar wall were hung two other little pieces by the same hand, — some winsome cherubs, that were probably fragments of a larger work. The local Church of S. Maria in Valle also contains a specimen of Pellegrino, inviting, but not as grand a picture as the former, which Lanzi says is "enumerated among the rarest paintings of Friuli." Returning to the Piazza of the Duomo, I visited after lunch the Museo Civico on its western side. It was a good-sized building of two floors, given up entirely to the various collections; and a truly wonderful ag- gregation they were, not merely for a place of Civi- dale's size, but for any city; for here lay the greatest collection of Lombard relics existing to-day, with the 320 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY possible exception of the jeweled articles of Monza Cathedral. The two large halls of the ground floor were spread with architectural fragments, tablets, and sculptures of the Roman Forum Julii, and the larger, stone objects of the Lombard period, including rude monuments, weapons, and the remarkable sarco- phagus of the first duke, Gisulf . The learned custodian, Signor Mattia Banino, dis- played the results of many years of study in indicating to me the countless points of interest. Upstairs, the various rooms held in glass cases the smaller Lombard relics, of every branch of their civilization, and above all the precious articles that belonged to the Cath- edral treasury. Among these amazing proofs of Lom- bard artistic skill were the ivory pax, or plate, con- taining a relief of the Crucifixion, adorned with lapis- lazuli and many other gems, which Count Ursus of Ceneda was wont to kiss after mass in the customary sign of peace; a gospel with exquisite backs of carved wood; an ivory casket covered with reliefs of religious scenes and figures, of extraordinary merit; and many other delightful objects in ivory, wood, and silver, em- bellished with Byzantine-looking carvings or studded heavily with precious stones left from Roman days. There were fascinating works also of the later, me- dieval periods, including the very prayer-book used by St. Elizabeth of Thuringia, bound in elegant ivory backs and containing duecento miniatures, — the psalter that once belonged to Queen Gertrude of Hungary, and crucifixes, paxes, coffers, goblets, plates, of every kind of material and rich ornamentation. They opened to my eyes visions of royal luxury in the "Dark Ages," fairly overwhelming in artistic wealth, with princesses making everyday use of articles so precious that a queen of to-day would lock them up in TJDINE AND CIVTOALE 321 her vaults. Here also were many of the various little articles, household and decorative, used in Imperial Roman days; coins of every epoch from the republican down, including one with a contemporary view of the newly finished Coliseum; glassware of Roman make and Venetian; medieval ivory sculptures by the score; and a lot of those glistening tomes executed in early monasteries, with page-settings and miniatures as brilliant as flashing jewels. Such were but a few of the contents of this treasure-house of olden times, that after so many centuries makes us its revelation of the artistic genius of the barbarian invaders, and of the darkest age of history.^ On the day following, I was once more aboard train, swiftly leaving sad Friuli behind me, retracing my steps without a stop to Treviso. There I took the branch-line to Vicenza, where connection was made with the main line to the west. And the close of a long day's journeying found me entering with the sinking sun a great city whose marble quays and streets blazed ruby-tinted in the after-glow, raising in my heart a psean of joy as I gazed at their beauty and grandeur, — the city of Italy that stands below only Rome and Florence and Venezia, — Verona la Degna. ^ A final item of interest in regard to Cividale is that it was the birth- place of that wonderful actress, Adelaide Ristori ; and the house in which that event occurred can still be pointed out. CHAPTER IX VERONA LA DEGNA Am I in Italy? Is this the Mincio? Are those the distant turrets of Verona? And shall I sup where Juliet at the masque Saw her loved Montague, and now sleeps by him? — ROGEES. So felt I, as I stood once again in this greatest of the plain-towns, grandest of them all in her glorious past leadership in warfare, literature, and art, superbest in her situation, loveliest still in her miles of marble palaces and churches, her statued life, her school of painting surpassing all the others, her whole exposition of the finest accomplishments of man. Looking upon the broad Adige dashing mightily between her quays and castled hills, I reflected once more upon the tre- mendous-history which it had made and witnessed. That which Ruskin said of the inspiring city echoed from my heart: "Though truly Rouen, Geneva, and Pisa have been the centres of teaching to me, Verona has given the coloring to all they taught. She has virtually represented the fate and the beauty of Italy to me; and whatever concerning Italy I have felt, or been able with any charm or force to say, has been dwelt with more deeply, and said more earnestly, for her sake." ^ The greatness of Verona was the inevitable result of her situation, — as the place made inevitable the growth of a powerful city. Two thirds of the way from the Piedmontese highlands to the sea, where the plain of ^ Ruskin, Prasterita, vol. ii. VERONA LA DEGNA 323 Italy is broadest, the wide stream of tlie Adige bursts forth from its majestic valley, which like a plough- share the river has furrowed straight through the beetling Alps from far-off Bozen, Innsbruck, and the lands of the Teutons. Wonderfully direct is that moun- tain-road, almost as if drawn to a line, and of remark- ably gentle grade also, rising but little above the level of the plain through the heart of the towering peaks. Here then, as Ruskin says, is "the great gate out of Germany into Italy, through which not only Gothic armies came, but after the Italian nation is formed, the current of northern life enters still into its heart through the mountain artery, as constantly and strongly as the cold waves of the Adige itself." This is the pass to which Bassano was a side door, through the Valsugana as far as Trent; and it was vastly more important than that other pass via the Piave and Ca- dore, — which was handy for Venice alone. Southward of the huge lake of Garda the Rhaetian Alps have thrown an outwork of foothills upon the plain, and a little further to the east, that formidable projecting bastion which terminates in the Monti Be- rici; between these promontories is the wedge-shaped bay into which the Adige debouches. Dashing from its valley the' stream rushes along the bay's eastern side, laves the western bases of the last few rounded hills, and empties its waters upon the plain. Here, upon those final small elevations, grew the ancient city of Verona, extending down their slopes to the watery highway, crossing it to the farther side, and spreading westward along the level peninsula between the last two bends of the river. For the Adige comes down in windings like a letter S, whose head is toward the northwest, whose centre line extends northeasterly; the hills rise from the east side of its lower half; and PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY the growing city crept southwesterly over the lower inclosure till it stretched far and wide beyond. The wall of the Roman town cut across this penin- sula at about half its length; the wall of the Visconti exactly embraced it; and the final great fortifications of the Venetians, celebrated as the most powerful of Renaissance times, and in fact quite impregnable, swept in a huge semicircle from the centre of the letter's top line to the end of the bottom, encompass- ing a large section to the west. The eastern fortifica- tions retained their original location, in an irregular line along the summits of the hills a third to a half- mile from the river's lower bend, adorned with strong fortresses at the highest points, and enfolding at their southern end a wide corner of the plain. This ancient quarter of the city, called by the people Veronetta, — or little Verona, — is very narrow in its northern part, being closely confined between the Adige and the steep height of S. Pietro, which was the town's birthplace and has ever been its citadel; but toward the south the eminences gradually recede as the stream curves away southwest, allowing the quarter to widen out in the shape of a triangle. Since the days of the Goths and Lombards, when Theodoric and Alboin successively inhabited the com- manding castle of S. Pietro, the public buildings and centres of life have been entirely on the western bank, and Veronetta has steadily dwindled in importance; until to-day it remains but a mostly forgotten corner of the majestic city, visited only for the splendid old churches that dot its silent streets. The one ex- ception to this decadence is the long, busy thorough- fare of the Venti Settembre, leading straight through its southern portion, from the Ponte delle Navi to the principal city gate at the southeastern angle, called VERONA LA DEGNA S^5 Porta Vescovo, — shortly without which lies the main railway station; but the traffic with which the railroad causes this avenue to be crowded, never stops at its shops nor diverges into its side ways, — it flows unrestingly across the river to the modern centres of trade, religion, and amusement. It was the trade that flowed from earliest days up and down the long Adige Valley, — taking Italian products to the German countries, and bringing their products back, — that erected Verona, sitting astride and guarding the route, into a city of such size and power. Just so since the beginnings of time have trade-routes made and unmade the great cities of the world. We know not how early men dwelt on this spot, but they certainly did so in the fourth century B.C., for many remains of that period have been dug up around the city. By the commencement of the third century B.C. Verona was already ruled by Rome, — in consequence, it is believed of voluntary submis- sion; in B.C. 89 she obtained the privileges of a Latin colony, and about 42 became a Roman Municipium. Her importance continually increased; for she stood at the confluence of several great Roman highways, leading from all directions, and uniting for the north. In the Imperial days her troubles began, for faction fiirst, and foe afterwards, aimed always to seize this key to the Alps. At Verona met the legions of Ves- pasian in 69 A.D., weary from their long march from Syria, with the troops of the Emperor Vitellius; and from the series of resulting battles the former assumed the sceptre of the world. Decius and his legions, later on, slew the Emperor Philip without Verona's walls. The Emperor Gallienus extended and strengthened those walls, including within them for the first time the huge amphitheatre; and Claudius II in 268 saved 326 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY the city from an irruption of the northern barbarians, who were pouring down the valley. More momentous than these events, however, was the battle at Verona in 312 between the hosts of Con- stantine and Maxentius, when the former marched from his kingdom of Gaul to hurl the latter from his Roman throne. Constantine was victorious, — and again, later, at Rome; he united under his own sway the countries of the West and East, and made Christianity at last the religion of the State; — which position, ex- cept for short relapses, such as that of Julian, was thenceforth maintained. With the coming of Alaric in 402, Verona entered upon the critical portion of her history, since she be- came one of the chief objects of the barbarian in- vaders, and a capital of their kingdoms. As Ruskin has well said, "There are no tragedies like the tra- gedies of Verona under the Gothic and Lombard Kings. "^ Alaric was retreating from Italy after the disastrous battle of PoUentia, when the fairness of Verona tempted him to turn aside and seize her; but the great Stilicho was on hand with his pursuing le- gions, and under the very walls of the city inflicted a terrific beating upon the Goths which permitted but a portion of their host to ascend the valley. Under Attila, fifty years later, Verona was not so fortunate : the magnificent Roman city, with her countless marble palaces, baths, temples, theatres, which we can only imagine now from the size of the relics, was left sacked and burning by the Huns when they marched away. Much, however, was not destroyed, and the ruins were soon rebuilt in a baser style. Then came Odoacer, King of the Visigoths remain- ing in Italy, who displaced the last Emperor of the ^ Ruskin, Verona, and other Lectures. VERONA, OLD CASTLE BRIDGE. VERONA. CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA IN ORGANO (ST. MARY'S OF THE ORGAN.) VERONA LA DEGNA 327 West, Romulus Augustulus, and ruled Italy under the title of Patrician granted by Constantinople. He not only occupied Verona, but was the first ruler to make it his seat of power. Who could help being enthralled by those gracious, gardened hills, palace- and castle- crowned, with the bright ribbon of the Adige winding at their feet. The beautiful city, glowing with her white and roseate marbles, with Ravenna now took Rome's place as capital of Italy; and held it through generations of changing dynasties. Odoacer was ele- vated in 476; and only thirteen years later that other branch of his race, the Ostrogoths, descended from the Julian Alps with the great Theodoric at their head. I have already mentioned how they defeated Odoacer on gaining the Friulan plain, and scattered the Visi- goths before them.^ The latter were reorganized at Verona, and when Theodoric had slowly approached, made before its walls their final stand. So did the city once more witness a battle deciding the fate of empire. Theodoric was triumphant, and Odoacer with his remaining soldiers fled to Ravenna, where he was killed some years later by the conquer- or's own hand. The latter took his defeated adver- sary's place in the palaces of Verona, lifting the town into a prosperity and world-importance that have 'made his name predominant in her history. Who* thinks of Verona, thinks of the great warrior and law- giver throned upon her castled heights, rebuilding her stately streets, reconstructing the political fabric and the justice of ancient Rome. Theodoric loved Verona, and admired beyond all others her beautiful location. He rebuilt the old for- tress-citadel upon the hill of S. Pietro into a magni- ficent structure that was both a palace and a castle; ^ See beginning of last chapter. 328 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY and there he reigned, looking down over the wide city at his feet. With the stones of the Roman ruins, and particularly those from the Arena, he constructed many other palaces and fortresses, baths and public buildings, — restored the aqueduct, and strengthened the outer walls. After the death of Odoacer, he dwelt much at Ravenna also, but Verona was the residence that he most enjoyed. There in his Gothic palace he often received in state the envoys of the northern nations, who took back to their tribes those stories of his power that gave rise to the German legends of the mighty "Dietrich von Bern." Theodoric is said to have disliked and somewhat repressed the Catholic religion, — which therefore added to those legends the tale of his demoniacal chase; this (among many other places) was represented in the reliefs carved on the fagade of the Veronese Church of S. Zeno, five centuries later. Christian- ity had settled very early in Verona, so much so that her first bishop, S. Euprepio, is said to have been appointed by St. Peter himself; her whole first score of bishops were saints, and the eighth of them, St. Zeno, became through his unusual learning and devo- tion the city's most prominent spiritual intercessor. Three different churches were named after him; and the one just spoken of is the largest in the town, as* well as the most interesting. During the reign of Dio- cletian, about 300, the renowned martyrdom occurred here of Saints Fermo and Rustico: the former was a noble who refused to recant his faith though offered pardon, the latter a poor, devoted friend who shared his belief; they were executed in the Arena with hor- rible tortures, before the whole delighted populace. The story has it that the fire on which they were placed was extinguished by a heaven-sent fall of rain. VERONA LA DEGNA 329 so that they had to be decapitated; and ever since then, through all the ages, their names have been prayed to in times of drought, — often with curious success. During the Byzantine repossession of Italy under Justinian, his forces for a while seized and occupied Verona. The Ostrogoths expelled them, — by an- other great battle before the city, — but the Goths had become so weakened that their last king, Teias, was soon defeated and slain by Narses, in the year 560, and their power came to an end. Narses retired to hold sway at Rome as the viceroy of the Emperor; but eight years later, as he was dying, the mighty Lom- bards crossed the Alps under the leadership of their king, Alboin, and seized upon the plain which after- wards assumed their name, with no Italian army to oppose them. Pa via became their capital and metro- polis; but Alboin lingered also in the palaces of Verona, and came there to that tragic end which has immor- talized the name of Rosamund. To sum up the oft-told tale, she was the daughter of Cunamund, King of the Gepidse, the third of the Gothic nations, who had kept to their homes in the Balkan Plain; Alboin had conquered them before he started for Italy, slain Cunamund, and made his skull into a cup that always "adorned" his table. The fair Rosamund, as beautiful as she was guileful and licen- tious, became Alboin's queen. One evening at Verona, when he was exceptionally drunk at the daily banquet, he filled the skull-cup with ruddy wine and forced his wife to quaff from the ghastly relic of her father. Ah, shades of Sophocles and Euripides, — not even you could have imagined a more creepy drama. The queen, teeming with vengeance, stepped down from her dignity to the joint love of Helmichis the 330 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY armor-bearer and Peredeus the warrior; together they slew Alboin, — when his wife had sent away all serv- ants, lulled him to sleep, and "urged the reluctant conspirators to the instant execution of the deed."^ Her dream of reigning in his stead was quickly dis- pelled by the wrathful chiefs. She fled with her two lovers and young daughter to the Byzantine exarch who ruled at Ravenna, captivated him also, and at his jealous suggestion poisoned Helmichis, while Peredeus had his eyes put out. Her own due fate was not want- ing; for when Helmichis had drunk half the enven- omed cup and felt its instant effect, with a dagger to Rosamund's bosom he made her take the rest of it; shrieking and writhing, she quickly followed him into the final arms of death. Lombard dukes and kings succeeded Alboin inter- mittently at Verona. The third sovereign, Antharis, made the romantic wooing of Theodolinda, daughter of the Bavarian King Garibaldo, which has been so often since reproduced in varied form ; under the guise of his own emissary to the Bavarian Court he loved and won her. She it was who turned the Lombards from their Arian religion to the Roman Catholic. About two centuries later, already decadent, they yielded Verona to the attacks of Pepin, King of France; and Desiderius, their last king, in 774 was forced to surrender his capital and his whole country to Pepin's invincible son, Charlemagne. The Lombard had given Charlemagne his daughter, Desideria, in marriage, to avert the storm, but the Frenchman soon repudiated her and sent her home; in the resulting warfare her brother Adelchi fortified and held Verona, but it was taken in siege by a large French army, and soon constituted the capital of a French county. ^ Gibbon, vol. iv, chap. XLV. VERONA LA DEGNA 331 Nothing better shows the fascination of ancient Verona than the effect she produced upon the tri- umphant Carlovingians. Pepin spent there all the time that he could spare; Charlemagne himself relaxed and rested on the lovely banks of the Adige. The populace cherished for centuries memories of Pepin's power and benevolence, and till recently pointed out a stone seat in the ruins of the older castle of S. Pietro, from which they said he had administered his unbiased justice. A reminder of the residence of Charlemagne exists in the quaint statues of Roland and Oliver adorning the sides of the main portal of the Cathedral. The Prank- ish Counts following the latter ruled at Verona for some eighty years, until in 886 the last of them was overthrown by that strange, ambitious character, Duke Berengarius of Friuli, who, though foiled in his aims to sway all Italy, made himself a kingdom out of the Lombard Plain, and reigned over it at Verona until 923. His death was another tragedy : he was mur- dered by a favorite noble, Flambert, whom he had already forgiven one plot of assassination and heaped high with favors, and who struck the fatal blow as the King embraced him. Berengarius's kingdom crumbled with his death, but Verona and her territory were successively the prey of Rudolph, Duke of Burgundy, and Hugh, Duke of Provence; three of his own line followed the latter, and then the Germans at last stepped into their fated hegemony of North Italy, with the invasion, in 962, of the Emperor Otho I. Verona was the first city met and taken by him ; and she not only settled into a long German subjection, under the immediate rule of ap- pointed marquises, but developed a strong Imperial feeling, becoming the leading and most faithful Ghi- belline city in the peninsula. This condition lasted 332 PLAIN-TOWKS OF ITALY until the middle of the twelfth century, when the cruelties and rapine of the Emperor Frederick I, or Barbarossa, caused Verona to join with the other plain-towns, in 1164, to form a convention for their joint defense. This was the so-called Lombard League, which fought the Emperor so long and bitterly that he had eventually to retreat from Italy; it was re- newed against his grandson Frederick II, in 1226, and resulted again in such triumphant success that no German emperor followed him into the peninsula for a space of sixty years. These successes not only insured the power of the communes over the country, they also overcame the conquerors, by bringing forth the race of local despots. While the two struggles continued, each town was rent by the fighting factions of Guelph and Ghibel- line, — for there was always a party who sympathized with the emperors. In Verona the Guelphs were favored by the Cappelletti family of nobles, and the Ghibellines were led by the Montecchi, — the same ad- versaries that Shakespeare has presented to us under the names of Capulets and Montagues, Juliet belong- ing to the one and Romeo to the other. The leaders of the Guelphs were the great family of San Bonaf acio, who succeeded at one time in expelling the Montecchi and their allies, and then called in the Marchese d' Este, Azzo VI, to rule the city as podestd. The Estensi had not yet seized upon Ferrara, and swayed their primitive territory in the Euganean Hills. Azzo held forth in Verona for a while, till the Montec- chi and other exiles, with the aid of his own uncle, re- gained the city by a surprise. Azzo escaped, procured reinforcements, retook the city, fought the Ghibel- lines from street to street and house to house, for several weeks, and finally exterminated what was left VERONA LA DEGNA 333 of them in their last remaining stronghold. This was one of the most ferocious and desperate civic struggles of the Middle Ages. Soon afterwards came the League's war with Fred- erick II, which extended desultorily over twenty -five years. Seven years after its commencement, in 1233, Era Giovanni the peacemaker held that astounding meeting of all the plain-towns, to make a union of peace, which gathered on the plain of Pasquara, three miles from Verona's walls. ^ The pact which the vast multitude swore to did not long endure. The friar became ruler of Verona, but after his already men- tioned feat of burning sixty citizens in a body, was cast down and imprisoned. The city's third despot quickly succeeded, — the worst and strongest of them all. Ezzelino da Romano was unwisely named by the Veronese to be their captain, at the desire of Freder- ick II, when the latter occupied the city in 1236; and he made himself absolute master for over a score of years. In 1238 his marriage to the Emperor's natural daughter Selvaggia was celebrated with much pomp at the local Church of St. Zeno. Ezzelino's cruelties were much the same at Verona as elsewhere; and when he died in 1259, it was only to leave the city to a follower who founded a whole dynasty of masterful tyrants. This was Mastino della Scala, the first of his line, who was chosen podestd by the voice of the people as soon as Ezzelino was dead. The Della Scala were a local family of merchants, of no known ancestry, who had come into prominence under Ezzelino by having three of their male members suffer death, and Mastino mount to favor and power in order to save his own skin. They were not extremely ^ See chapter on Vicenza. 334 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY wealthy, like the Medici, but climbed far more quickly to absolute sway through their abilities as warriors and rulers. The first five of them, with the exception of Alboino, were remarkable conquerors and states- men, adored by the people; they made Verona once more the capital of a great state, the first power and city of northern Italy, and bestowed upon her a pro- sperity, a beauty, and a height of culture which she had not seen since the days of Theodoric. Their re- maining six rulers were ever more decadent tyrants, who lost all that their predecessors had gained, reduced the people to misery, and exterminated themselves by a process of fratricide such as the horrified world had never beheld before. Their descent was as rapid and catastrophic as their ascent had been proud and glori- ous, and their whole course was run in the short period of one hundred and twenty-eight years. Mastino the founder was but podestd and capitano, — an honest, kindly, forceful man, who did not at- tempt any show of absolute power. He quieted the troubled city, exiled the agitators, and began the Scala kingdom by the conquest of Mantua, Pa via, Piacenza, and the upper valley of the Adige. In 1277 he was unsuspectingly murdered by unknown parties while walking one evening near his palace through a covered passage called the "Vol to Barbaro." Leaving no son, he was succeeded in authority by his brother Alberto, who reigned as absolute despot until 1301. Alberto not only strengthened his hold upon the conquests of Mastino, but extended his sway to Reggio, Parma, Vicenza, Riva, Castel d' Arco, Este, Feltre, and Bel- luno. He ruled wisely, consulted the welfare and hap- piness of his peoples, and began that series of princely buildings which constitute the beauty of the Verona of to-day. VERONA LA DEGNA 335 Alberto left three sons, who ruled in turn: Barto- lommeo, first, for a few years until his death; Alboino, also for but a few years, until 1311; and Can Grande, the greatest Scala of them all. The latter two in fact reigned together until Alboino's ideath. Can Grande being always the captain and real master. He was a prince whose preeminence in his period it is impossible to overestimate. After Alboino's decease he made himself sole ruler of the greater part of North Italy, — the head of a state whose size and power dwarfed to insignificance the territories of all his neighbors. At war he was a consummate genius, the foremost of his time, extending the Scala possessions by rapid campaigns to Padua, Treviso, Monselice, Brescia, Modena, Lucca, Bassano, and Cividale, until his king- dom stretched from the far eastern end of the Friulan Plain and the Alpen fastnesses of Cadore, to Milan and Bergamo upon the west, and the stream of the Arno beyond the Apennines. This was the largest state that medieval North Italy ever saw, — with the exception of the brief con- quests of Gian Galeazzo Visconti fourscore years later; it included a dozen of the fairest and richest cities of the peninsula, and yielded to its sovereign the vast private income of seven hundred thousand florins in gold, which was surpassed by no European potentate save the King of France. Can Grande be- came the dazzling cynosure of all Western eyes, the leader of Italy; and his capital, Verona, the centre to which flowed this unceasing stream of gold, of power, and adulation, became the glittering hub of attraction to the world of literature, art, magnificence, and courtly life. For Can Grande was more than a conqueror; he was a dilettante, a lover of all the graces and accom- 336 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY plishments, drawing around him the greatest minds and artists of his age. In the Renaissance and the revolution of manners, that were now in full swing, he played a leading part. The Scala love of building was inherited by him, and he urged on with reckless ex- penditure a host of architects, masons, and sculptors, gathered from every side. Giotto came to Verona, at his solicitation, and started her school of painting with a series of works now vanished. He drew to his Court, encouraged, and patronized those foremost in learning and literature, of every branch and land; and enter- tained handsomely the chief exiles of all other states. His violence and small vices were overbalanced by many splendid traits, — generosity, integrity, kindli- ness, consideration, courtesy, justice, all in a large de- gree, — with a loftiness and grandeur of soul far above his day. His tremendous thirst for glory was remarkably commingled with, and tempered by, a love of his city and country, and desires for the welfare of the people. High as he, had climbed, his ambitious spirit yearned higher still. He had become the dominant leader of all the Ghibellines, and they, adoring his magnanim- ity, looked to him as the long-awaited savior of Italy; in their hopes, as in his own, he was to reconquer the whole peninsula for the Imperial cause, and rule the united kingdom as the Emperor's vicar. This position for North Italy had already been conferred upon him by Henry VII. These ambitions and hopes are set forth in the writings of Dante, — the most illustrious of all the exiles and literati whom Can Grande entertained at Verona. Dante lingered long with him, and with his brothers before him, at their palaces in the city and castles roundabout, forming one of that renowned VERONA LA DEGNA 337 courtly circle, highly honored by his royal hosts, and himself highly esteeming the conqueror, — to whom he dedicated his Paradiso. What he looked to Can Grande to accomplish is shown in the oft-quoted pas- sage of the Inferno, canto i, where the latter is clearly indicated by the "greyhound" (veltro) who was to come and destroy the papal wolf, and reunite Italy under the Imperial sway. Dante afterwards fell out with Can Grande, and left his Court for good. Nor did the latter live to fulfill any of the greater hopes enter- tained; for, like his brothers and all succeeding Sca- ligers, who seemed to have but weak constitutions, he died before he was forty, suddenly, at Treviso, in 1329. And his empire fell to pieces as quickly as it had been made. It was in the reign of Alboino, just preceding Can Grande, that Shakespeare placed his tragedy of Romeo and Juliet; although, as a matter of fact, the Montecchi and Capelletti had ended their high positions and enmity long before. The whole story of the lovers is doubtless equally unreal, having its source in one of the tales of the cinquecento romancer, Luigi di Porto; though there are not wanting people who claim that such persons really existed, and were buried together in the sarcophagus which was long pointed out in the old Capuchin cemetery. Can Grande left no sons, and the inheritance of his great state fell into the incapable hands of Mastino II, the elder son of Alboino. This prince had the con- queror's ambition without his ability or depth of soul. Instead of consolidating the loosely hung terri- tories, like a man of sense, he quickly alarmed the neighboring powers, already envious, by his prepara- tions for further conquests. Venice, Florence, Milan, Ferrara, and Mantua promptly leagued themselves 338 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY together to avert this danger, attacked the tyrant unitedly, and despoiled him of everything except Verona and Vicenza. It was he who commenced the unparalleled system of fratricide of his house, by killing Bishop Bartolommeo della Scala with his own hand. In him began the degeneration of the stock; which was grafted into the Visconti by the marriage of his daughter Caterina to Barnabo of that family, — a fact of interest, because from her Milan's world-renowned opera-house received its name, "La Scala." Upon Mastino's death in 1351, the throne of Ve- rona again fell to three brothers, his legitimate sons, who were as weak and criminal as the former trio had been strong and noble. Can Grande II, the eldest, ruled till 1359; Cansignorio, the second, followed him for sixteen years; and Paolo Alboino, the youngest, shared the power for a while in name only. There were also a number of illegitimate brothers, including Freg- nano, who had some character and ability. He was loved by the people, and headed them in a revolt against the tyranny of Can Grande II, when the latter had driven them to desperation with his im- positions. It was perhaps unfortunate that Fregnano did not succeed; but Can Grande slew him on the Ponte delle Navi, and dispersed the mob. The result was the despot's erection of that fortress on the bank of the Adige now called the Castel Vecchio, or Castle of the Scaligers, with its strange, picturesque, Gothic bridge crowned by forked battlements; and there he shut himself up from the danger of rebellion, holding the bridge to receive aid from his brother-in- law, the Marquis of Brandenburg, up the valley, in case of another rising. Death soon caught him, however, by an insidious, treacherous hand more base VERONA LA DEGNA 339 than himself, more dangerous than the people, — a hand which should have been extended to defend him, which penetrated all bars, and proved itself the vilest of all murderers. It was Cansignorio. This inhuman monster killed his brother with his own dagger, and, mounting the throne, deprived the latter's three sons of their inheritance. With that inconsistency so characteristic of medieval Italians, however, once firmly seated, he devoted himself to the embellishment of the city and the welfare of the people. Such a queer compound is little to be under- stood to-day, — but he certainly did much for Verona; among other things, the public gardens near the Scaliger palaces were opened, the Ponte delle Navi was rebuilt in a grander form, painting was encour- aged by abundant frescoing in his own and other noble houses, and marble monuments and statues were scattered richly through the town. His chief good work was the aqueduct bringing potable water to the city, which still spouts forth from the handsome foun- tain that he placed in the central piazza. He built himself a Gothic tomb far surpassing those of his pre- decessors, so large and sumptuous that it is evident he intended it to secure him a posthumous fame. Throughout his day Cansignorio was very pious and devout; — what a commentary upon the failure of a faith which teaches that salvation is earned by pro- fessions alone. He had no sons except two of illegit- imate birth, Bartolommeo II and Antonio; and to insure their inheritance of the throne, he crowned his devotions and good deeds by another deliberate fratri- cide, — the murder of poor Paolo Alboino, long con- fined in prison walls. Then he died contented, in 1375, and his sons took his seat together. Bartolommeo, the elder, was by far the better of 340 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY the two, and for six years administered the two cities with considerable justice. But the course of degenera- tion was not yet run out. Bartolommeo had fallen in love with a fair daughter of the Nogarola family, who had another suitor in a son of the Malaspina; Antonio slew his brother, sleeping on his bed, with the aid of hired bravos, and deposited the corpse at night-time in the street before the Nogarola mansion. Next day, with its discovery, Antonio accused Malaspina of the bloody deed, and arrested him, together with the Nogarola girl and her father, declaring the latter to have been its instigators. All thrfee were put to hor- rible tortures in the hopes of forcing a feigned con- fession; they disappointed the fratricide by asserting their innocence until death ended their sufferings. That turned the accusations of the people upon the true murderer. He endeavored to dissipate them by a wonderful fete. Antonio's betrothed bride, the celebrated Samari- tana, beautiful but heartless daughter of the despot of Ravenna, arrived shortly after this with a jeweled cavalcade, and the lord of Verona seized the opportun- ity to make a festivity such as even those pageant- loving ages seldom saw. There were processions of thousands of silk-clad, begemmed nobles, with at- tendants, pages, musicians, heralds, in every sort of extravagant costume, and banners, flags, canopies, with showers of gold, silver and sweetmeats, through which Samaritana rode a white horse like a glistening fairy. The ancient Arena witnessed the strangest scenes of its bloody history; the same glittering court- iers and maidens acted for the gathered populace jousts and plays, including the siege of a "castle of love" erected in the centre, which was defended by girls raining sweets and flowers, and captured by VERONA LA DEGNA 341 swains. These entertainments lasted for twenty-seven consecutive days; and their expense was so vast, to- gether with the folHes which Samaritana began soon to commit, that Antonio found his exchequer denuded when Milan and Padua stood suddenly hostile before him. Stripped and friendless by his own deeds, he could put up no effectual defense against the Carrarese troops led by the great English condottiere, Sir John Hawkwood; and on the night of November 18, 1387, the last of the Scaligers stole secretly and alone from the palaces and the city where his ancestors had so brilliantly reigned. The Visconti immediately oc- cupied Verona, while the Carrara seized Vicenza. The Visconti chief at this time was the renowned Gian Galeazzo, who was engaged in building up his wide- spread state. He extended Verona's outer wall across the peninsula, rebuilt the fortresses upon the hilltops, and continued the construction of palatial edifices. Verona was to be the second brightest gem in the Vis- conti crown; but his death in 1402 dissipated all those dreams. Francesco Carrara at once took the city, un- resisting, and installed in the princely chair Guglielmo, the bastard son of Can Grande II. The latter died so instantly, within twenty -four hours, that it cannot be called a restoration ; and the cause is often laid at the door of him who profited by it, — Carrara. He was proclaimed lord of Verona; — and Caterina, Duchess Dowager of Milan, called the Venetians to the aid of her infant sons. We know what followed: the Republic extinguished the house of Carrara and seized its territories, while Verona suffered willingly the subjection of St. Mark. Henceforth there was peace in the city, though some- times trouble roundabout, during the wars of Venice, 342 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY when condottieri generals had to be paid, to keep them outside the walls. During the war of the League of Cambrai, Verona, released like the rest of the Vene- tian towns from their allegiance, inclined once more to the Imperial cause which she had so long repre- sented in the peninsula; she shut her gates against the distressed Venetian army retreating from its de- feat at Ghiaradadda, solemnly re-tendered her sub- jection to the Emperor, Maximilian I, and received him in her midst in 1509, with much 6clat. At the end of the war, in 1517, she was restored to Venice; and in the meantime had suffered so extremely from Ger- man rapacity, extortion, and bloodthirstiness, that her people were forever cured of their Ghibelline prefer- ences. Such rejoicings were never again seen as when they returned to the benevolent rule of St. Mark. The saint's marble Lions were brought out from their hiding-places, and reerected with songs of joy. Then it was that the Republic constructed those formidable fortifications around the city which be- came the wonder of their time; nothing like them is even yet to be seen in Europe. Verona, now of only eighty thousand inhabitants, was then doubtless the habitat of at least one hundred and fifty thousand, as evidenced by her wide extent. Venice was determ- ined never to lose the marble city again, and she did not, until she fell herself. The renowned Veronese architect, Michele Sammicheli, foremost of his age in that profession, built those miles of gigantic stone walls, with their tremendous bastions, sallyports, scarps and counterscarps, with mountainous embankments, and a moat like a deep broad river; and in them he con- structed five new and ornamental gates, whose beauti- ful Renaissance archways still span the tides of travel. No trouble now for nearly three centuries marred VERONA LA DEGNA S43 the city's steady prosperity, beyond another visitation in 1630 of that most terrible of all enemies, the plague, which had already fiercely attacked her on half a dozen or more occasions. This time it reduced her popula- tion to the pitiful figure of only twenty thousand; but in a few years, with Italy's unending prolificness, the streets were again re-peopled. Toward the end of the Republic, Verona for a time afforded an asylum to the French Pretender, afterwards Louis XVIII, who was duly sent away in consequence of representations from the Directory; but when Bonaparte arrived upon the plain with his army, he used the fact of that asylum as a pretext for occupying the city. On the night of April 17, 1797, occurred that bloody, desperate up- rising against the French which is known as the "Veronese Vespers"; it was a frightful massacre, which continued for three whole days, with resistance to the troops advancing to the garrison's aid; but the result was only a firmer hold and worse exactions by Napoleon. From the Peace of Luneville, in 1800, the city was curiously divided between the French and Austrians, until 1805, — the right bank of the Adige being French territory and the left Austrian; then it was entirely French till 1814, and after the latter date, entirely Austrian until 1866. During the last-named period, Verona became the chief stronghold of the foreign yoke, the foremost member of the celebrated Quadri- lateral. In the final war of 1866, the second disas- trous battle of Custozza was fought close without the city, the people listening to the thunder of the cannon with anxious hearts; and with its close came a long, harrowing line of Italian prisoners and wounded, who were confined in the great Arena as a prison. But the long awaited freedom soon arrived; the Austrians 344 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY retreated, and in November of that same year Victor Emmanuel made his triumphal entry into the city amidst the tears of the welcoming populace. Verona's history in art and letters has been as dis- tinctive and proud as her political position. Among her early, native-born, great writers were Catullus, iEmilius Macer, Pomponius Secundus, and the elder Pliny; her private palaces have always been celebrated for their libraries, and her University has been pro- minent ever since its foundation by the sons of Charle- magne. In recent times she has produced Aleardi the patriotic poet, Pompei, Pindemonte, and Scipione Maffei the historian. But especially original and glorious was Verona's school of painting, which developed on its own separ- ate lines of distinguished beauty, until in the cinque- cento it gradually merged itself with the school of Venice. So uniquely lovely and striking are its accom- plishments, — for the most part to be seen only at Verona herself, — that he who has not beheld them can form no proper idea of the full powers of Italian art. Can Grande originated Veronese painting by bringing Giotto to the city; and Giotto left behind there a pupil who became the true founder of its school. This was Altichieri, whose chief remaining works, however, are at Padua. He and D' Avanzo struck off a little from Giotto's line, and left the diverging path for their successors. Martini of Verona worked in their time, and Pisanello (1380-1451), the great medalist, followed them; the latter labored mostly at his won- derful medallions, but executed in his city some fres- coes also, of the very first rank for their periqd . Others were painted by him in the Doges' Palace. He was the first artist to be renowned for his careful reproduc- tions of animal life. VERONA LA DEGNA 345 Pisanello left behind him, amongst other pupils, three that became prominent quattrocento artists, — Stefano da Zevio, and Francesco and Girolamo Benaglio. In the next generation, at the end of the quattrocento, uprose the greatest Veronese of them all : Liberale, Girolamo dai Libri, Francesco Morone, and Paolo Morando or Cavazzola. This was the quartette that immortalized the school. Working well into the cinquecento, at the very height of the Renaissance, filled with religious feeling and an extraordinary love of grace and coloring, they turned out those scores of canvases that blaze from the churches and palaces of Verona, with a gorgeous beauty quite astounding to the stranger. Most of these men had been bred as miniaturists, which work was greatly practiced here, and so had developed that painstaking minuteness which gives to their work a perfection of finish, a careful loveliness of every slightest detail, seen nowhere else, and makes it more enjoyable than can be expressed. They de- voted themselves to pietistic tableaux, in which they expressed profound religious happiness, and which they set forth with a nicety of drawing and grouping, a celestial grace, and a glory of coloring quite Oriental in its rich harmonies. The works of Girolamo dai Libri were especially unparalleled for their wondrous love- liness, — those of Morone for their power and depth also; they all developed a depth of pious sentiment considerably beyond that of other schools. Liberale, the most advanced and far-seeing of his associates, left for the second generation of the cinque- centists some pupils of genius that formed another remarkable quartette, — Caroto, Bonsignori, Torbido, and Domenico del Riccio, called Brusasorci. Of these Caroto was the greatest, having a most unique and 346 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY effective gracefulness, and much force; Torbido devel- oped a style very much like Giorgione's; Bonsignori was a renowned portrait painter; and Brusasorci ad- vanced beyond them all into the free field of the later Renaissance, discarding all precedents, working with an originality and power of genius worthy of the deepest study. Liberale's other pupils, Falconetto, and Paolo and Niccolo Giolfino, as well as Farinata and Antonio Badile, who were influenced by him, were able artists of the same period without the fire of genius, but who nevertheless produced some occasional striking pieces. Badile was the uncle and teacher of the great man who ended the long list, — who became a thorough Vene- tian, and yet, by reason of being named after his native city, has represented it more to the general world than all his predecessors: this was Paolo Veronese (sur- named Cagliari), — and with him the glorious school of Verona passed away. On the last leg of my journey from Vicenza to Verona, I 'passed through scenery that had close con- nections with this history. The route for the first half of the way lay southwesterly, along the narrow vale between the Monti Berici and the Alpen foothills, whose rounded slopes glistened with far-off villages and ancient castles peeping from the woods. A more beautiful valley could hardly be conceived. About a third of the distance through it, perched high upon the shoulder of a near eminence on the right, the ruined towers of the medieval stronghold of the Montecchi were seen, with the clustering white walls of the village bearing their name, — Montecchio. This was one of the largest and richest castles of North Italy in those days when Romeo made love to Juliet; and to it as an impregnable fortress the family and their retainers VERONA LA DEGNA 347 would retire, whenever worsted in their struggles in Verona. To-day it is but an empty shell, though still picturesque and formidable from afar. At Montebello, two thirds of the way through, a later country-place was passed, — the splendid villa of the Conti Arrighi; and when we emerged upon the wide plain again, and turning westward, stopped at the town of San Bonifacio, only three miles to the south of us lay the village where Napoleon in 1796 gained his momentous victory of Arcole; and only two miles to the north, frowning in plain view from its hill- top, sat the important Scala castle of Soave, to which the Court so often retreated, and where Dante enjoyed himself in its illustrious company. Then we passed the little town of Caldiero, lying where the valley of the lUasi debouches upon the plain; and looking up its long straight defile, I fancied I could discern at least one of those two other famous castles of the Scaligers that guarded it of old, — Illasi and Tregnano. All around Verona thus they sat, those strongholds of the tyrants, on both sides of the Adige, dominating the vales of the mountains, and glowering over the plain. Soon we rumbled into the huge covered station of Verona, and, separating myself as soon as possible from the flowing crowd, I took a vettura for the city. It was the sunset hour. Up a wide, tree-shaded avenue to the imposing stone arch of the Porta Vescovo, and along the Via Venti Settembre, we coursed, through its endless throng of wagons, carriages, and tram cars, between its modern-looking, plastered facades, — until at length I found myself once more rolling over the grand arches of the historic Ponte delle Navi. Once again I beheld the muddy, whirling waters of the Adige, the great stone quays, crowned with stately 348 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY boulevards, and the lovely hillsides, curving round from north to southeast, gray with forests of olive groves, and topped with bastioned citadels glistening in the level sun. But loveliest of all was the rounded height of S. Pietro, blocking the end of the river vista, rising steeply with gleaming buildings, tier on tier from the very quay, graced still above these by a row of tall black cypresses like sentinels on guard, and crowned upon its summit with an imposing edifice that glowed golden in the western blaze. It was the latest castle of S. Pietro, constructed by the Austrians upon the foundations of Theodoric and the Romans, — a long three-storied edifice, with square, towering pavilions at the corners. I thought of Theodoric also, and all the stirring, eventful history of these shores, as I lowered my eyes to the rushing waters : — Green Adige, 't was thus in rapid course And powerful, that thou didst murmur 'neath The Roman bridges sparkling from thy stream p?hine ever-running song unto the sun. When Odoacer, giving way before The onrush of Theodoric, fell back; And 'midst the bloody rack about them passed Into this fair Verona, blonde and straight Barbarian women in their chariots, singing Songs unto Odin; while the Italian folk Gathered about their Bishop and put forth To meet the Goths the supplicating Cross.^ And this same stream whose waters had made a city great, — how had they not scourged and devas- tated it through all the centuries! I thought of the many times repeated floods, furious and resistless, which it had poured from its mountain-gorge through the level streets, and far and wide over the plain, throwing down, undermining, drowning, carrying * M. W. Arms's translation of Carducci. VERONA LA DEGNA 349 away, its multitudinous prey of human beings and their works, receding at last only to leave behind its final sting of pestilence. In 589, when Duke Antharis wedded Theodolinda, the whole city and countryside were buried fathoms deep in such an avalanche of waters, with such a terrible destruction of lives, build- ings, animals, and crops, that its horror remained with the people for long ages after. Then it was that oc- curred the strange reputed miracle of S. Zeno, — when the roaring flood refused to strike those sacred walls, banked itself up, and rushed divided on. Again and again the Adige repeated its pitiless assaults, — one of them, as late as 1757, leaving the city almost a depopulated ruin. But to-day modern engineering has hemmed the dangerous torrent into those mighty stone embankments that I saw before me, and the great muraglioni or dikes leading across the plain; so that its powers of destruction are forever ended. As we came off the bridge, I saw facing it the tall Gothic apse of the huge brick Church of S. Fermo, one of Verona's finest edifices, perpetuating the mem- ory of her sainted martyr. We turned at a right angle into the long straight thoroughfare leading north- ward to the grand Piazza delle Erbe, at the very centre of the town. Roundabout it at close distances lie all the chief hotels; and for several hours, well into the evening, I searched through them for the best accom- modations, at reasonable rates, for a prolonged stay. With some I was acquainted from former visits, into the others I made close investigation; but it seemed that every one of them was either too fancy in its prices, too antiquated in its means, too dirty, or too poor in table. At last, just when I was about giving it up, I found exactly what I was hunting for: a thor- oughly Italian caravansary, but newly furnished. 350 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY immaculately clean, not too large for good service and homelikeness, quiet, centrally located, with excellent cooking, a genial host, and very reasonable rates. It was entitled the "Aquila Nera," and was situated in a retired spot on the Via Quattro Spade, a little west of the Piazza Erbe, with its rooms overlooking a silent courtyard; and there I passed, with my companions who joined me, as enjoyable a sojourn as Italy has ever given me. Verona is too vast, her sights too manifold, to be more than enumerated within the limits of a single chapter, and enumerated without a word of descrip- tion. Those who wish a detailed catalogue or guide will find it in the pages of Baedeker or Murray, or bet- ter still, within the covers of that pleasant little vol- ume, Verona, by Alethea Wiel, of the series of Medieval Towns, — in which also the history has been well re- lated. I have neither space nor desire to follow use- lessly in their footsteps; but shall transcribe my own gambles, from day to day, endeavoring through them to give an idea of the general plan and appearance of the historic city, of her principal avenues, piazzas, buildings, and monuments, of her life and people, and of the chief masterpieces of painting, showing the characteristics and unique powers of her wonderful school. VER()XA. CHURCH OF ST. ANASTASIA. CHAPTER X VERONA LA MARMORINA Still westward hold thy way, till Alps look down On old Verona's walled and classic town. Fair is the prospect; palace, tower, and spire. And blossomed grove, the eye might well admire. — Nicholas Mitchell. *'In Verona the gutters are of marble. The ledge you lean upon, the flight of steps going up outside a house, the posts which block a street against the wheels, the fountain in the market-place, are all of white or red marble. Pillars of white or red marble hold up the overhanging roofs of shops, and the shopkeepers paste their advertisements over marble. Every street has its marble doorway, window, or balcony, shaped after a (fine ^Renaissance pattern or carved with beautiful ornament. . . . And there are monsters enough in red and white marble, crouching at the doors of churches, leaning over from the lintels, and carved in slabs let into the walls of houses. . . . And the two colors of Veronese marbles, red and white, are repeated in bricks, in pavements, in castles, churches, palaces, and bridges; till at sunset the whole city seems to flush with ruddy light." ^ How true I felt this, as I walked once more the en- deared and fascinating streets, glowing with their wealth of rich material and design, teeming with their memories of past glories and tragedies. I was making my way, on the morning after my arrival, to the near Piazza Erbe, the centre of the city and its life. ^ Arthur Symons, Cities of Italy. 352 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY The great Arena, standing farther to the southwest, at about the middle of the Viseonti wall inclosing the peninsula, is surrounded by another large piazza, an immense one, named recently after Vittorio Eman- uele, but still generally known by its old appellation of Piazza Bra. That is second in importance, — lighted at night by the blazing windows of caffes, thronged with tables and moving people, resounding with the music of the garrison's band; and from its northeastern angle runs a narrow street called Via Nuova, directly to the southern end of Piazza Erbe. This street is the town's principal promenade and shopping-centre, its asphalt pavement being denied to vehicles, and given up entirely to the endless crowds of pedestrians; through it I was now proceeding, threading the lively groups, looking into the bright little shops that make the slender way strangely like to the Venetian Merceria. Then I stood at the southern end of Piazza Erbe, gazing up its long and wonderfully picturesque vista, framed by fine, old, four-storied buildings with their traces of nearly vanished frescoes, crowded with its hundreds of large, white umbrellas over market- stalls, adorned with its ancient monuments fiiat bear such memories of the pulsating past; and I felt those memories surge up within me like a storm. Few piazzas in all Italy can compare with this one. Of it the enraptured Dickens said, "It is so fanciful, quaint, and picturesque a place, formed by such an extraor- dinary and rich variety of fantastic buildings, that there could be nothing better at the core of even this romantic towri."^ Its shape is peculiar, — the length from north to south being perhaps four times the breadth, and the western side curving gently in a broad ^ Pictures from Italy. VERONA LA MARMORINA 353 arc. In the middle of that side I saw the delightful, Gothic Casa dei Mercanti rising on its heavy arcade, dating as far back as 1301, designed by Alberto della Scala for the merchants' guilds, but latterly used for the commercial courts. It was really more Romanesque than Gothic, being of the transition period: its brick arches were rounded, with alternate red and white voussoirs, supported by heavy marble columns; and the upper windows had charming double lights, sepa- rated by coupled, slender shafts, — while battlements crowned the roof. The rest of the buildings on that side were private houses, once occupied by noble fam- ilies; and the last few fagades still glowed with linger- ing portions of paintings, by Liberali and Girolamo dai Libri, well enough preserved to show how very lovely they must once have been. Opposite, in the centre of the right side, rose the simple stuccoed facade of the old Palazzo della Ra- gione, or city hall, surmounted to a tremendous height by the imposing municipal clock- and bell-tower, called the Torre Lamberti, which was constructed in 1172, — according to the local story, by the family of that name. It was of brick, square in shape till near the top, where it ended in an octagonal belfry; huge clock-faces adorned it more than halfway up; then came a beautiful, triple, Gothic window on each side, with marble shafts and red-and- white brick arches; and each side of the belfry bore a similar, double win- dow, long and narrow, leaving the great bells swinging visibly in the open air. At the end of the same side I saw the Casa dei Mazzanti, where Alberto della Scala was living when he founded the Mercanti, its lofty wall-spaces covered with enormous painted figures of gods and goddesses, nude forms of reddish brown, — Venus and Cupids, 354 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY and Titans struggling, — and at the very angle a hideous Assumption of the Virgin. The end of the vista was blocked by a striking Renaissance f agade of marble, the Palazzo Maffei, looking down over the piazza with its row of marble statues crowning the cornice; and immediately on its left soared the bell- tower built by Cansignorio when he adorned the piazza. I lowered my eyes to the pavement of the square, — practically hidden by the crowd of canvas toadstools, and the congested throngs of people that pushed and trafficked among the booths, — and noticed again with pleasure the fine old monuments that raised their heads in dignity. They stretched along the centre line at regular intervals, lending history to the scene. The first, at the south end, was the ancient Gothic market- cross, of red marble; farther on rose a canopy supported by four marble pillars, elevated upon three steps, and terminating in a point and ball, — the so-called Tribuna, of 1207, from which decrees and judgments were given for centuries ; near the centre sat the round fountain, built, according to tradition, by King Pepin, or Alboin, but first put to its present use by Cansig- norio, — its splashing porphyry basin being fed from the mouths of masks about the central pillar, and the pillar surmounted by a strange, amusing figure of "Verona," antique in body, badly medieval in head, holding a tin scroll in the hands, and topped by a tin crown; while at the northern end appeared the lovely Venetian column, of gleaming marble, which was reerected with such joy at the close of the War of Cambrai; its winged Lion was displaced in 1797, — when "Bonaparte addressed a manifesto to the Doge, which . . . was followed by a decree ordering the French Minister to leave Venice, . . . and the Lion of St. Mark to be pulled down in all the continental territories of VERONA LA MARMORINA 355 Venice"; ^ — the first reprisal for the rebellion against the French occupation. But it was put up once more in 1888. The busy populace filled the square and overflowed into the picturesque arcades in the first stories of the surrounding buildings, underneath which were shops and caffes. As I elbowed through the crowd, past the monuments, deafened by the pandemonium on every side, the variegated contents of the stalls fell under my eyes; every kind of produce peculiar to Italian life was exposed and freely handled, — all varieties of grains, vegetables, fruits and fowls, pitiful little slain birds by the hundred, live singing-birds in cages, mushrooms and other fungi, flowers, plants, boots and clothing, owls and eagles attached to poles by strings, combs, brushes, and other articles of toilet and the household, live turtles crawling over the stocks of goods, — in a word, every conceivable kind of ornamental or usable thing, and all mixed together in a confusion beyond words. I thought of how many ages this morning traffic had so continued, — from the far-off days when this place had been the Forum of the Roman city, when it had been used by the ancients as a circus also, and resounded with the rumble of racing chariots. I gazed at the western walls, still keeping the oval shape of the circus, to observe more closely those extraordinary outside frescoes that had been executed by Verona's two greatest artists. Girolamo's consisted of a Madonna with two saints, and a group of saints or apostles above them, — well spaced, composed, and colored, the Child still very lovely, the Madonna but formerly so; they were altogether much superior to any exterior painting I had found in the plain. ^ Bourrienne, Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte. 356 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Liberale's work was not so pleasing: a Coronation of the Virgin in antique style, and below it a group of Adam and Eve, — two heroic naked figures, with the woman-headed serpent between them. Roundabout were still also visible several series of Cupids and wreaths and rich arabesques, with a separate figure of an ancient warrior. Turning back a little now, I entered the passage just to the left of the Palazzo Ragione, topped by two slen- der balustraded arches, the second holding suspended by a rope one of those jawbones of whales, or ante- diluvian mammals, which exercise such a curious fasci- nation upon the Italian imagination; this second arch- way opened into the famous Piazza dei Signori, one of the few most interesting little squares of Italy. Here the Scala princes had reigned and built, and from them it had received its name and beauty. As I en- tered at its southwestern angle, on my right immedi- ately was the handsome side of the Palazzo Ragione, and beyond it, across an archway, the Palazzo della Tribunaler; the Prefettura confronted me upon the east, the Palazzo dei Giuriconsulti rose upon the west, and upon the north side, glistening like a colossal gem, shone the wonderful marbled fagade of the peerless Palazzo del Consiglio. All of these were products of the Scala genius for building. Upon the last three sides, adjacent to the said palaces, opened other passages of similar width; but one and all were covered by brick or marble arches like that through which I had just entered, and two were surmounted by marble statues ; so that the place was inclosed in a complete ring of palatial splendor, — quiet and deserted compared with the noisy Piazza Erbe, but seeming to radiate still the dignity and magnificence of the court of the Scaligers. VERONA LA MARMORINA 357 The construction of the Palazzo Ragione on this side was like the Gothic of its tower, — two upper stories of alternate courses of red bricks and white marble, with some splendid triple windows, above a ground story of marble arches; at its eastern end was a curious Late-Renaissance surfacing of dark-painted stucco, two stories in height and five windows wide, with all its openings beautifully decorated by terra- cotta mouldings, and by relieved medallions containing portrait-heads of the Scala princes. An archway led me into its majestic courtyard, around three sides of which ran a lofty arcade, of stone quoins upon heavy stone pillars; and at its west side rose a grand marble stair- ,way of the quattrocento, sustained on Gothic arches, having a lovely balustrade; its once extended upper landing had become perilous, and been mostly re- moved. This space was formerly the Mercato Vecchio. It commanded an impressive view of the great muni- cipal tower at its northwest corner. Returning to the Piazza dei Signori, I advanced to the neighboring Palazzo Tribunale; it had a heavy, red-brick tower at its nearest angle, which contained little strongly barred windows, and was topped by grim forked battlements; — a veritable donjon, as it had proved to be in long-past days for many an enemy of the Scaligers, confined in it by the latter without charge or warning. According to local story the whole of these prisoners were once murdered together, — their number running from fifty to four hundred, according to the authority. A tablet in the palace wall stated that Cansignorio had inhabited it from 1359 to 1375, and that it was in the sixteenth century remodeled for the Venetian Podestas. Its general design was of rich Renaissance work, with an entrance arch of fine proportions and 358 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Corinthian grace, and an extraordinary long balcony on the second floor supported by very deep marble con- soles. In its large courtyard, one side bore still some Renaissance frescoes representing a whole architect- ural scheme in great detail, with an angel blowing a trumpet in the centre; while the passage out from its south side was covered with a most unique marble arch- way of the decadent period, seemingly constituted of many kinds of implements of war, — the supporting columns being cannons resting upon drums for bases, and having capitals of mortars loaded with round shot. The west side of the court was a quaint, three-storied, brick loggia, restored as of old, upon the original an- cient columns and supporting Gothic arches. Coming out, I stopped to look at the statue of Dante, facing the palace from the centre of the piazza, exe- cuted by Ugo Zannoni in 1865, after the accepted type; then I inspected the plain Palazzo Prefettura on the east, which was originally the private palace of Mas- tino I, built by him in 1272, and inhabited by him and his successors. This was the residence in which Giotto painted at Can Grande's order, and Altichieri a little later, — in which Bartolommeo I received Dante upon the poet's first arrival, and where Dante spent many subsequent days and months. It has been remodeled by successive rulers, till Mastino would not recog- nize it to-day. The original fine stone arches have been built-in and plastered over, dismally ; but I could clearly see their outlines on the upper stories, as well as the blocks of old reliefs that have been defaced. Another handsome entrance-arch, by Sammicheli, admitted me to its picturesque court, open to the north, framed on the south and west sides by imposing stone colonnades, sustaining brick, or brick and white stone, arches; the alternate heavy pillars and columns. VERONA LA MARMORINA 359 with rough-leaved capitals, had their bases two feet underground, showing that the level has risen that much since their setting, six hundred years ago. The upper division of the court's western fagade was re- cently restored, with a close imitation of the medieval, red-and-white, arched windows, with their handsome marble railings. All this red-and-white work is a prominent characteristic of old Verona architecture, particularly the Gothic, being apparently — as has been said — a repetition of her marble hues; it is de- lightfully effective, whether in brick alone, or brick with marble or limestone, and becomes endeared to one's heart by its happy repetitions. From this palace I crossed to that of the Giuricon- sulti opposite on the west, — a queer, ponderous, rococo structure, built in 1278, and, like the others, remodeled in the cinquecento; it has very ugly windows in its stuccoed fagade, — made unusual by a two-storied, stone entrance- arch, as high as those guarding the passages; over this is a weird construction in the centre of the top story, consisting of four Doric pilasters ris- ing from a balustrade to a plain pediment surmounted by dwarf obelisks. Atop the arch crowning the pas- sage on its right, I observed a statue of the historian, Scipione Maffei; and just behind this, in the north- west corner, opened a dark, narrow courtyard be- tween old houses, whose centre was brightened by a most lovely Renaissance well-top. From the rear side of the court, a low arched way led obscurely under the dwellings to the Piazza Erbe, — the "Volto Bar- baro,"^ where Mastino I was killed in 1277. No more fitting spot for an assassination could be devised. I returned at last to the gem of all the Scala build- ^ So called, not from the barbaric deed mentioned, but from the former palace of the Barbaro family, which was adjacent. 360 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY ings, the pride of Verona, which I had purposely left until the end ; and I speak truly when I say that words can give little conception of the glorious beauty of the Palazzo del Consiglio. What the Basilica Palladiana is to the plain-towns in magnificence and majesty, this unparalleled structure is in delicate, dainty loveli- ness. Built at the very height of the Renaissance, by command of the Republic in 1497, every development and artifice of the science of classical architecture was utilized for its success, — precious marbles, moulded terra-cotta, painted stucco, and sculpture, being deftly interwoven into a scheme of color that makes it a glow- ing mosaic, a softly chromatic lacework, whose unob- trusive tints happily accentuate the fairylike design. Its genius is that of Fra Giocondo, Verona's great architect, who deserves far more general fame than he has received; besides erecting several noted build- ings in Verona, and in other North Italian cities, he assisted in the construction of St. Peter's, and labored brilliantly for eight years in France under the orders of Louis 5^11.1 Designed for a town hall, this palace has the inevit- able loggia in the ground floor, faced by a colonnade of unsurpassable delicacy and grace; above several steps rises a dainty balustrade, from which spring seven slender marble columns with Corinthian capitals, to uphold lightly moulded arches ; in the upper division are four delightful double windows, framed by pilas- ters wrought with gilded arabesques, and topped by lunettes containing gilt, relieved designs; under them runs a painted string-course of wreaths and flowers, from which, at the angles and between the windows, larger stuccoed pilasters, arabesqued and prettily ^ He was also a remarkable engineer, — as is evidenced by his famous walls of Treviso, already described. VERONA LA MARMORINA 361 painted in gold, rise to sustain the gilded cornice; between the windows and pilasters are frescoed pan- els, and- medallions of elegant form; while five marble statues surmount the eaves. The loggia is entirely faced with gray marble, and studded with white plaster medallions holding heads of illustrious Veronese ; beside the doorway in its rear wall are two life-size bronze figures by Girolamo Cam- pagna, representing the Annunciation, and round- about, the busts of other natives. The fine oaken ceil- ing, heavily beamed and paneled, is exceptionally rich. I found the caretaker of the palace in the adjacent Prefettura, and visited the princely rooms above the loggia. They consist of a splendid central salon, now used by the Provincial Council, and two smaller cham- bers at the sides, — all recently redecorated in the original style. Especially beautiful are the doorways of exquisite Renaissance design, in stone or gilded wood, framed by pilasters with their faces carved in at- tractive arabesques; also the magnificent quattrocento ceiling of the salon, elaborately paneled, sculptured, and gilded. The council chamber also contains four large striking canvases by Paolo Veronese, of much merit and beauty, — two being scenes from Verona's history, and two, allegorical tableaux concerning the city, personified as a woman; the strongest is that of the Roman Emperor receiving Verona's crown, of ex- ceeding grace and skillful light-effects. Here also are some damask curtains, ballot boxes, and velvet chairs from the adjacent Scala palace, all of the cinque- cento or earlier. In the afternoon I returned to this piazza, and de- scended the narrow street leaving it at the southeast corner, to the near-by Church of S. Maria Antica, — and the celebrated tombs of the Scaligers. This little 362 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY old Gothic edifice, dating from the eleventh century, is where the princes were wont to worship, and in its small open yard they sleep, appropriately near the palaces where they reigned. The church's north- ern (or left) side is toward the street, removed a dozen yards, leaving room for the small cemetery between it and the sidewalk. The inclosing iron grille, rising from a red-marble parapet to a height of ten feet, and crowned with quaint Gothic statues, bends round to the wall of the edifice near its western end, leaving a clear approach to its single doorway there located. As I approached the spot, I saw first the superb Gothic monuments of Mastino II and Cansignorio rising behind the railing at the outer angles of the in- closure, and soaring far into the air with their pointed canopies capped by statues ; then, the low church wall, of red-and- white courses, pierced only by the entrance and three tiny arched windows; and lastly, the tomb of the great Can Grande, rising from the lintel of the doorway, to a pyramidal point far above the eaves. Topping this and the other monuments were eques- trian figures, in marble, like all of the work, mailed cap-a-pie, both horses and men, and bearing huge winged helmets against the blue. No scene more picturesque, or significant of medieval days, could be found in all Italy. So exquisitely charming were those open masses of trefoil arches, pointed pediments, statuettes, and crocketed spires, all soaring gracefully heavenward, — it was like stumbling upon a garden of frozen white flowers, with the many fairies flitting amongst them turned to stone. Can Grande's tomb is severe and strong, befitting the conqueror; the sarcophagus is carved in bas-relief with scenes from his life, and bears two statuettes, but the Gothic arches of the sheltering canopy are un- VERONA LA MARMORINA 363 adorned, and the pyramidal spire rising from its roof has but a few crockets at the angles. Mastino's mon- ument, at the northwest angle of the yard, is a rich three-storied structure, — its first two divisions rising by corner columns only; the second contains the elab- orately carved sarcophagus, with the decedent's re- clining figure, and its surrounding arches, with their pediments, are heavily decorated. His equestrian fig- ure has its vizor drawn; and the popular story goes that it was so executed because, after Mastino's mur- der of his kinsman. Bishop Bartolommeo, he never wished his face to be seen again. This monument, executed by one Perino da Milano, otherwise unknown, is the best of them all; — Can- signorio's, though still larger, and more elaborate, being over-decorated and more poorly sculptured. Still, it is a wonderful sight, with its forest of flowering pinnacles and scores of pleasing statuettes. Save that it is hexagonal in shape, instead of square, its vertical divisions are like those of Mastino ; but roundabout the second division rise six separate small canopies holding bronze statues of saintly heroes, and round the spire cluster six others, still smaller, containing bronze females representing virtues, with half a dozen marble "virtues" seated in shell-like niches in the bases of the elongated gables. The six columns surrounding the sarcophagus are spirally twisted ; four angels stand at the corners of the recumbent knight; and on the sides are relieved scenes, — which include a portrayal of Cansignorio being welcomed to Heaven by the Saviour and His Mother ! Over every part is an exuberance of decoration unsurpassed for amount and detail, though betraying the initial decadence of the style. Its artist was Bonino, of the celebrated Campione family.^ ^ "This magniBcent structure," says Perkins, in his Italian Sculptors, 364 PLAIN-^TOWNS OF ITALY Such is the tomb which that villainous fratricide raised during his life, surrounding his dead form with all the excellencies which it wanted when alive, trust- ing, with them and the beguiling beauties of sculp- ture, to earn an undeserved happy immortality. All over the monument his emblems are repeated ; and the Scala ladder (which is the name's Italian meaning) is cunningly wrought throughout the inclosing grille. I entered the little yard, paying a small fee to the cus- todian who guards the gate, and inspected the minor tombs scattered about, fastened to the church wall and lying upon the ground. Most of them are simple, heavy sarcophagi, — that of Mastino I being distin- guished by a cross carved on its side; Alberto's, his faithful brother, is cut with various devices, and a relief of the deceased kneeling to the Madonna; and that of the bastard Giovanni della Scala projects from the wall with some most attractive early carving, of the Madonna and saints in elaborate niches. I en- tered the church also, to find a genuinely Romanesque interior, with low narrow aisles, — separated from the nave by crude heavy columns, — and round arches supporting a flat roof. It was very dark and still, with a pervading feeling of vast age. I turned down the narrow street leading to the right beside the churchyard, passing on the left a remark- able ancient house dating from the eleventh century, tumbledown and picturesque, with a battlemented wall screening a courtyard now desecrated by a filthy stable.^ At the end of the short block, and to the right, "is the embodiment of the profusely splendid, wayward, lawless life of these princes. We find in it the same strange admixture of paganism and Christianity, license and childlike faith, architecturally expressed by Ro- man and Gothic elements, extravagance of style and simplicity of line." ^ The local story, that this was a palace of Romeo's family, is an inven- tion for the beguilement of tourists. VERONA LA MARMORINA 365 upon the south of the Palazzo Tribunale, the pretty- little park of the Piazza dell' Independenza opened before me, shaded by a giant oak and handsome palms and fir trees, having a bronze equestrian statue of Garibaldi in its centre, — noticeable because, for once at least, the horse's feet were correctly placed. This was the private garden attached to Cansignorio's pala- tial residence, which he devoted to the uses of the people. Under the trees were many benches, occupied by loungers and nursemaids. It is a favorite gathering- spot, as I afterwards found, for the populace on sum- mer evenings. On its west side rises the long, stuccoed, rococo Palazzo della Posta. Close by on the east lies the river, with the Ponte Umberto, halfway between the other principal bridges of delle Navi and di Pietra. Returning to the corner of the churchyard, I walked a block eastward, — past a fine old Gothic palace on the left, — then a block northward, emerging into the small piazza of S. Anastasia, fronted on the right by that glorious church; it is one of the most perfect Gothic edifices in the plain, — a work of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The great plain brick f agade, whose marble facing has been finished along the base only, and around the portal, seemed vast and impos- ing upon its high flight of steps. Before it sits a marble figure of Paolo Veronese, palette in hand, upon a lofty pedestal; and on the north rises the side of the little brick Church of S. Pietro Martire, — with its two Gothic doorways, and pointed windows, — which was founded by the Brandenburg soldiers in the guard of Can Grande. Between the rear of it and S. Anastasia I saw a short brick waU, with an arched gateway sur- mounted by a Gothic tomb ; it was the beautiful tomb of Guglielmo da Castelbarco, which Ruskin pronounced "the most perfect Gothic monument in the world." S66 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Like those of the Scala, it consists of a carved sarcophagus with a reclining figure, topped by a can- opy of trefoil arches supporting a quadrilateral pyra- mid; but the sculptured decorations are dignified and charming, and the proportions very symmetrical. Through the barred gate I saw a little abandoned yard attached to S. Pietro, containing three ether Gothic tombs of once prominent persons, — also well pro- portioned and designed, though not so ornate. Still another Gothic monument was the splendid portal of S. Anastasia which I now approached; it was tall and deeply recessed, beautifully arched and moulded, and contained two doorways, in whose lunettes, and in the pediment, were fourteenth-century frescoes. But the interior was so surpassingly grand as to drive away all thoughts of aught else. The noble, aspiring nave, long and very lofty, soared upon glistening white columns and pointed arches to a groined vaulting, whose cells, as well as the soffits of the arches, were covered with that remarkable and lovely frescoing in designs, of the early quattrocento, which is unique in Late-Gothic work. The lofty aisles, likewise handsomely groined and painted, bore their side altars affixed directly to the walls; the dim light percolated from lancet windows ; and behind the gleam- ing high-altar under the distant triumphal arch, the short choir ended in a graceful apse. The church was filled with exceptional works of art. By the first two columns crouched two curious marble figures of hunch- backs, bearing holy-water basins on their shoulders, of which the left one was by Paolo Veronese's father. The right transept contained §ome remarkable paint- ings: a St. Paul by Cavazzola, of striking power and coloring, a Madonna and Saints by Girolamo dai Libri — one of the most beautiful and perfect pietistic works VERONA. VIRGIN AND CHILD ENTHRONED. (GIROLAMO DAI LIBRI.) VERONA LA MARMORINA 367 I have ever seen; and, in the second chapel to the right of the choir, a superb example of Altichieri, that is about the only one now remaining to Verona. This is a fresco representing a number of mailed knights kneeling before the Madonna, strong in composition, action, and lifelikeness, dignified, and impressive, — a brilliant exposition of his wonderful powers. As for the Girolamo, — I have kept a photograph of its fascinating beauty, with every detail like a cameo, set up in my room wherever I have gone, from that day to this. In the next chapel were three rare examples of Mar- tini, D' Avanzo, and Stefano da Zevio, and high upon the transept wall over the chapel arch, one of the two remaining frescoes by the latter's master, Pisanello, representing St. George mounting his charger after the death of the dragon. Though greatly injured by the damp, which has removed the saint's figure and the whole left side of the picture, enough lingers still — in the spectators and various skillfully executed ani- mals — to prove his worthiness of his fame. There is almost no coloring left, but a fine modeling, and a striking perspective of the fantastical castles perched on a hilltop to the rear. In this same chapel the sac- ristan showed a figure of Christ alleged to be by Man- tegna(.'^), which was being entombed by two cherubs, executed by his pupils; and around the window were seventeen extraordinary terra-cotta reliefs of the life of Christ, vigorous, dramatic tableaux, from the Flor- entine quattrocento school. The left transept afforded me two more interesting works: a group of frescoes in the first chapel, by the quattrocentist Francesco Benaglio, — consisting of three scenes from the life of Christ, which showed well how inferior he was to Altichieri, so long before, — and an 368 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY engaging panel by Liberale, high, on the west wall, of Saints Magdalen, Clara, and Catherine, the Magdalen posed above the others, clothed only in her golden hair, and attended by two angels. This was a very graceful group, of finely-modeled figures, having little coloring, as usual with him, but displaying his strong powers of realistic flesh- work and vivid feeling. In the right aisle I observed a strange, painted, terra- cotta group of the Entombment, — a fifteenth-century work of unusual dramatic force, the figures life-size and natural; also, as a frame to the fourth altar, an interesting reproduction on a smaller scale of the famous Arco de' Gavi of the Romans, — a marble triumphal arch which until modern times stood near the Castel Vecchio, and was the city's chief object of beauty. In the left aisle, finally, were four fairly good pictures, two specimens each of the work of the cinque- centists, Niccolo Giolfino and Michele da Verona, — the former's style being very free and advanced, the latter's curiously antique; here also was a resplendent Renaissance altar-frame of astonishing decorativeness, including nine statues and a dozen marble columns. — Seldom is there a church to be found anywhere with such a wealth of artistic treasures of the first class. Later, I obtained from the quay a view of its back, showing clearly its splendid proportions, graceful apse, and tall, imposing, Gothic campanile. My next walk, on the following morning, took me farther northeast to the extreme end of the peninsula, occupied by the group of the Cathedral buildings. The Via Duomo from the Piazza of S. Anastasia led me directly northward a few blocks to the piazza of the Duomo, upon which the latter fronts westward. This great edifice was first erected about 800, over a temple to Minerva, but now stands a Gothic structure VERONA LA MARMORINA 369 of the trecento, with a twelfth-century, Romanesque choir and fagade, of the Lombard style; — its chief material being red and white marbles in courses upon the sides. The picturesque front, of yellowish-brown marble below and whitened brick at the top, appealing through its Lombard mixture of heaviness and light details, was very pleasing to me, with the exception of the two large pointed windows of later date. The roof has a double pitch or gable, — the second and loftier one being over the centre only, — with Lombard, arcaded cornices along each, and five pinnacles rising from the corners and apex. The main attraction is the two-storied porch, round-arched in both divisions but thoroughly Gothic, and of graceful lightness in the slender supporting columns that rise from the backs of antique crouching lions. Its entrance is exquisitely and deeply recessed; at the sides of it stand the small relieved figures of Roland and Oliver, already men- tioned, very quaint in style and execution. The interior is not so noble and imposing as S. Anastasia, being much lower, and widely open through the extreme spacing of the four clustered Gothic pillars on each side, with their flat arches; nor is it adorned with frescoes upon the vaulting, — whose groining- cells are unhappily blue with gilt stars. The wide aisles have no chapels, and the curious altar-frames reach to their vaultings, nearly as high as that of the nave. These frames are painted architectural schemes, by Falconetto, representing grand marble arches adorned with exuberant sculptures and statues, — an absurd effect, which is heightened by the supposed statues being colored brightly, as if they were live personages posing there aloft. At the end of the nave I saw Sammicheli's splendid choir-screen, — a semi- circular roodloft of yellowish-cream marble, open 370 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY above, with fine Ionic columns carrying a simple entablature. Far above this again, over the triumphal arch, a vividly tinted fresco of the Annunciation looked down from its group of fancy angels; and be- hind, from the vaulting of the apse, glowed Torbido's large fresco of the Assumption of the Virgin, which was designed by Giulio Romano. There were a few very enjoyable works of art here, among the large number: on the second altar to the right, Liberale's charming panel of the Magi, — re- plete with bright colors and happy fancies, reminding me strongly of the great Florentine, Gozzoli, — and three canvases by Giolfino, — a Pieta, and two groups of saints, of considerable fairness and gentleness; at the end of the right aisle, the beautiful Gothic tomb of St. Agatha, from 1353, showing in marble a nun's form of tender loveliness lying upon a bier, with four angels at the corners, covered by an exquisitely designed and sculptured Gothic canopy, — the whole supported by other columns, and adorned from base to lofty sum- mit with a marvelous wealth of carving ; the beautiful Renaissance framework of the shallow chapel contain- ing the tomb ; the fine old bronze reliquaries and mon- strances upon its altar; the frescoes of Torbido in the choir, from the life of the Virgin; and last, but chiefly, in a stately frame by Sansovino over the first altar to left, Titian's enchanting picture of the Assumption. This celebrated work, though much darkened and dis- colored, is a superlative composition of lifelike dra- matic figures, of intense expression, — the large forms of the apostles grouped about the empty sarcophagus, in wonder, having just perceived the Madonna borne above them on a cloud, kneeling with folded hands, gazing sweetly back at them. In the same aisle, upon the organ and under its loft, I found some very cap- VERONA LA MARMORINA 371 tivating work by Brusasorci, including a number of angels of bewitching beauty. Ah, in Verona, one is continually dazzled by the enticing loveliness of her painted feminine forms, and the unspeakably joyous glory of their coloring. Through a door to the left of the choir I passed to the adjacent early Church of S. Maria Matriculata, studded with old Roman columns like a crypt, and beyond it, to the tenth-century Baptistery, S. Giovanni in Fonte, — a thoroughly Byzantine structure, with a restored roof, dimly lighted by tiny arched windows in the right and end walls, which were bare and white. Diverse columns and pillars of ancient Roman edi- fices, with rounded arches, separated the nave from the low narrow aisles. An air of vast antiquity per- meated this dusky place, assisted by the fragments of Byzantine frescoes here and there, — saintly figures drawn like mosaic; there were also a Madonna and several saints of the tenth century, and various tab- leaux of the quaint trecento. The custode exhibited a Pieta which he said was by Mantegna, — a badly in- jured panel, still betraying masterly anatomy and expressivensss ; also a Baptism of Christ by Farinato, on a huge scale. Most interesting was the old baptis- mal font in the centre, dating from at least 1200, — a high octagonal basin of yellow marble, its sides cut with remarkable New Testament scenes, having in its middle the red marble tub in which the priest was wont to keep himself dry while immersing the converts. The reliefs were very wonderful for work of that dark age, especially the journey into Egypt; — so lifelike, dignified, and well composed were they, with little appearance of Byzantine moulds. Adjacent to this edifice I visited the little twelfth century church of S. Elena, included, like the others, 372 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY in the cathedral close; in it, according to the legend, Dante in 1320 gave his Latin lecture of "De Aqua et Terra." It is a bare, barnlike place, wooden-roofed, with some finely carved choir-stalls, and containing two good pictures, — a Deposition by Falconetto, and a lovely Madonna and Saints in a glowing sunset scene, alleged to be the work of Brusasorci. Returning to S. Maria, we found on its farther, western side a pleasing old cloister of about 1200, with colonnades of coupled slim red shafts; and underneath it, exposed in places by opened pits, a splendid Roman mosaic pavement, in graceful designs of vases, birds, animals, an olive tree, a dove eating grapes, etc., ex- ■ ecuted with great naturalness, in harmonious hues of black and white and red. The intelligent caretaker of this portion of the buildings assured me that the pavement, which had been but recently discovered, was proved to extend to the dimensions of one hundred and fifty by four hundred feet, and had un- questionably been the flooring of a Roman bath. West agaifl of the cloister extends the Palazzo dei Canonici, — from which I just then saw the Archbishop emerge in full ceremonial robes, and pass by me into the Duomo. The palace contains a celebrated library of ancient manuscripts, the Biblioteca Capitolare, including codexes of unsurpassable value, from the fifth to the ninth centuries. In it Petrarch brought to light the letters of Cicero. The Bishop's residence lies at the east end of the Cathedral, and I now left the church by the south door to walk around to it. From this side the exterior view of the huge red-and-white edifice was most imposing, — with the buttresses topped by pinnacles, the wide projecting transept, and the chapel apses embellished by effective pilaster-strips. The side porch VERONA LA MARMORINA 373 was like the main one, on a somewhat smaller scale, with delightful old carvings of weird beasts and Eombard capitals. On reaching the rear of the build- ing, its lofty apse presented a handsome sight; and still more pleasing, across the way, was a sudden vista revealed to me through a barred gate, of the richly verdurous garden of the Palazzo Zamboni, — flowers of every shade, masses of varied foliage, marble statues gleaming against them, tinkling fountains, and peaceful paths wandering in the shade. Just beyond, on the north side of the street, I came to the Vescovado, behind a courtyard screened by a high wall. Upon entering, this wall proved to be an arcade toward the court, supported by a variegated lot of very old columns, each different from the others, — one of them being cut all over with little Gothic arches; the story above them, showing traces of having once been entirely frescoed in arabesques, was pierced with Gothic windows. On the west projected the apse of the Duomo; on the east was a Renaissance arcade of two divisions; on the north, the ancient stuccoed fagade of the palace, bearing marble Gothic windows and a medieval tower, with several old statues at its foot. I rang at the main doorway, under a portico, and an aged servitor showed me over the piano nohile. In its private chapel were exhibited three delicious little panels by Liberale, — the Magi, and the Birth and Death of the Virgin — exquisitely composed and colored, realistic, yet with an idyllic atmosphere, and executed with the perfect finish of miniatures. To the right of the central tower we entered a very fine old Gothic chamber, with a beautifully carved wooden ceiling, Gothic stone doorways, and vertical wall-beams also attractively carved, — a rare treasure to find in Italy now. Here was a curious 374 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY specimen of Caroto, — the Resurrection of Lazarus, — with rather unpleasing figures but a briUiant tone and landscape. Then I was taken to the great hall on the second-floor front, containing an altar and a big fireplace, adorned with indifferent landscapes frescoed in large scale around the walls, and, above the latter, in an unbroken circuit at the cornice, the full-length portrait figures of all the Bishops of Verona, from St. Peter to Pisamus in 1668, executed by Brusasorci. They were portrayed as standing upon a gallery, two between each pair of pillars, — were powerfully drawn, and of most extraordinary individuality, although mostly produced from the imagination. From jthe northern rooms I looked directly upon the rushing river, across a pretty little terraced garden. This was just the spot where the stream bends from its northeastern course around to a southeasterly one ; and on walking a hundred paces to the southeast, through the irregular Piazza Brolo with its old stuccoed houses, I came to the ancient Ponte di Pietra,^ crossing to the foot of the castle hill. Its foundations and two of its arches are still Roman. Traversing the picturesque, medieval, towered gateway that arches its end, I stood upon it for a while watching the enchanting scene around me, — the glistening hill with its palace and beetling cypresses, the massive stone quays along the east side, the decrepit old buildings here backing upon the west bank, the floating wooden mills anchored in the rushing water, with heavily turning wheels, con- nected by narrow foot-bridges with the shore, — and the lovely green heights billowing away on the north- east, crowned with stone fortresses. ^ So named by the medievals in distinction from their one other bridge, the Ponte delle Navi, which, as its name signifies, was then a wooden con- struction upon floats. VERONA LA MARMORINA 375 Turning southward from the bridge, to return to my hotel and lunch, by the street that curves around westerly to the vicinity of S. Anastasia, I noticed on its right side an excellent example of one of the medie- val Veronese customs: an aged building containing a shop for dry groceries, — which in Italy are always sold separately from the fresh produce, — adorned under its cornice with a painted frieze composed of several varieties of those wares. Such was its sign. But this frescoing dated from the sixteenth century, showing that the same business had been carried on there for four hundred years, probably by the same family, — a thing not uncommon here. Think of a business house founded at the time of the discovery of the new world, — and only a retail shop of the small- est class, at that. Near where this Via Ponte Pietra strikes the Via Duomo, I passed another interesting edifice, — a beautiful old palace with an adjacent statued garden seen through a wicket, as lovely as a dream of the most courtly days of long ago. That afternoon I visited the extreme part of Veron- etta north of the castle hill, and including the latter; starting out over the modern iron bridge named after Garibaldi, which crosses just west of the Piazza del Duomo. From the bridge opened a charming prospect up the river, southwest, closed by the huge brick mass of the castle of the Scaligers at its farther bend, topped with formidable towers and battlements, — and by its extraordinary crenelated bridge, which certainly must be unlike any other in the world. It is heavy, dark, and menacing, borne on ponderous piers, flanked and crowned with towers, and slopes steeply from the castle to the northern shore. This side of it the cur- rent was filled with half a dozen more floating mills, whose great revolving wheels showed its tremendous 376 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY force. To the eastward was another line of old dwell- ings, backing upon the water with mouldering walls and bits of garden, curving from the hill of S. Pietro up the left bank, to a vast brick church in a sun-baked piazza, which faced westward with its right flank upon the stream. It was my first objective point, the Church of S. Giorgio in Braida, which contains many fine paintings, — amongst them, Girolamo's master- piece, and Verona's. The Venetian city wall curves round the edifice, striking the river between it and the Ponte Garibaldi; so I quickly found myself walking through a little park along the moat, which was stone-banked to a depth of thirty feet. Then I crossed it by a bridge to a white-stone city gate of good Renaissance lines, set in the shadow of a huge round corner bastion, and, penetrating the long dark archway, emerged upon the Piazza of S. Giorgio. Its plain rococo fagade of light stone was uninteresting; but on being admitted through its side door by an old woman, the sacristan's wife, I stood antidst a glittering display of paintings sur- passing nearly every church I had ever seen. The absence of aisles and transepts permitted the decora- tions of the side altars, set in shallow recesses, as well as those of the twin gilded organ-lofts and the choir, to pour their wealth of brilliant colors upon the observer like a princely gallery of art; a fine soft light illuminated the canvases from the white-washed dome, and a further beauty shone from the handsome Renaissance marble railing inclosing the elevated choir, with its eight surmounting bronze statues of saints. Dominating this galaxy with its rich clear tone, glowed the great masterpiece of Girolamo dai Libri from the fourth altar on the left. I remember still the sensations with which I gazed upon it, entranced. To VERONA LA MARMORINA 377 describe it, — there was naught but a Madonna simply throned before an alluring landscape of fields, woods, and hills dotted with castles, under the fruited lemon tree which was the master's emblem, — with Saints Zeno and Lorenzo Giustiniani standing at her sides, and three angels of incredible beauty singing at her feet; but what words could give an idea of its unutterable charm, its serene loveliness of figure, atmosphere and expres- sion, its sense of a millennial tranquillity surpassing earthly joys, whose note is struck by the melody of those enchanting singers. Deeply golden is the tone, the inner glow; the figures stand forth with a fidelity to nature as striking as their haunting grace; their faces of celestial loveliness, calm but beautiful, fill the be- holder with delight, and the sumptuous, gleaming col- ors of their embroidered robes fuse into one scintillating harmony. Truly this was the zenith of Verona's art, — the representative of its highest ideas and excellencies. The other most prominent specimens of the school here were a realistic, well-modeled Martyrdom of St. Lawrence by Stefano da Zevio, exhibiting his ad- vanced powers ; two pleasing, brightly hued specimens of Caroto, — an Annunciation and a St. Ursula with her virgins, both showing his peculiar grace; and a Martyrdom of St. George in Paolo Veronese's later manner, — perhaps the best work of his yet remaining in his native town. But I was also pleased by superb examples of the two great masters of Brescia, — an- other Martyrdom of St. George, by Romanino, and a Madonna in clouds above five female saints, by Mo- re tto; the former was in four separate panels, of much realism and expressiveness, the latter in Moretto's characteristic, unmistakable tone, of silvery gray, — displaying surpassing beauty in the rounded figures, and their dignified, restful disposition. 378 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY From S. Giorgio I followed the street southeast, parallel with the bend of the river, to the smaller Church of S. Stefano. This was another red-and- white edifice, with a simple portal in its plain f agade of the eleventh century, topped by a rose-window and ap- proached by steps. The original church here was the oldest in Verona, its first cathedral, destroyed by Theodoric in the sixth century; the present one was built upon its remains, — turning the ancient choir into a crypt by constructing a new choir above it. After some trouble in finding the sacristan at his dwelling near by, I was admitted to the nave, which appeared short and narrow, separated by stucco pillars and arches from the low, restricted aisles, and covered by a mod- ern wooden ceiling; the presbytery was exceptionally elevated, and approached by narrow stairs in the aisles, between which extended a red marble railing. Under this railing steps descended to the dark crypt; and over it was visible the high-altar, with a bright modern fresco above it. There were but two chapels to the right, and one to the left; — altogether a most un- usual, strange edifice, with an air of exceeding anti- quity. In the second chapel to the right was a picture by Brusasorci, of good tactile value, — S. Stefano aiding Christ to carry the Cross, with eight saints below; in the first chapel were two tombs at the sides, holding the remains of two bishops and forty early martyrs. Climbing to the presbytery, which was lengthened like a transept, I saw another work of Brusasorci in its central dome, — the Saviour and four Evangelists, with the instruments of the Passion curiously scattered over the adjacent vaulting, — and at its right end, a Caroto of beautiful bluish tinting, representing the Madonna with Saints Peter and Andrew, before a VERONA LA MARMORINA 379 wide landscape. Here was another queer construction, a highly raised ambulatory around the small choir, reached by steps at each side of the high-altar; in its walls were embedded ancient columns, and at its rear stood the first episcopal seat of Verona, dating from the sixth century, simply made of heavy marble slabs. To the left in the presbytery was a fresco by Stefano da Zevio, a Coronation of the Virgin, with a host of pretty angels roundabout, and an Annunciation below. Descending the twelve steps to the crypt, past an antique statue of St. Peter, from the third century, it appeared to extend the full width of the presbytery above, — which was supported by a row of ancient columns down the middle. Here was the original choir, under the later one, and the original ambulatory, likewise elevated and approached by steps at each end. It seemed strange to stand in the very edifice ruined by Theodoric fourteen centuries ago. S. Stefano has also an unusually picturesque tower, of Romanesque design, rising upon the dome, and visible only from above. I climbed the hill of S. Pietro, from the east end of the Ponte di Pietra, and soon commanded a clear view of this curious old tower; it is of brick, very broad, and octagonal in shape, consisting of two stories of open arcades, each containing eight double arches. The steep, narrow way, a veritable staircase, mounted between decaying old houses, bore to the right between walled fields, and finally brought me, out of breath, to an esplanade before the castle. Here the panorama was superb; just below me stretched the line of cypresses, below them again a medieval cloister, and then the ruins of the excavated Roman theatre, which stood against the base of the hill a little south of the bridge; the rows of broken white seats. 380 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY the flagged pit, the shattered stage, lay beneath me Hke a plan. Beyond them flowed the shining river with its bright quays; and the sea of tiled roofs, with towers of every age, extended far away between the silvery windings to the sunburnt open plain. Toward the north this crept into the enfolding mountains, with their black flanks and dentated outlines. In the castle itself there was nothing to see; this modern barrack, rising behind its inclosed, empty court, has hidden from sight the ruins of Theodoric .and Gian Galeazzo. Soldiers lounged in the windows, and sentries guarded the open gates. I thought of what a different view the Ostrogoth must have be- held when he reigned on this summit, — the imperial marble city, still largely existing, in its splendor of baths, temples, and palaces; of which to-day there remained beneath my eye only those broken frag- ments of the theatre below, and the distant mutilated arches of the Arena. From the northern end of Piazza Erbe runs one of the main thoroughfares of the city, a little south of west, under the successive names of Corso Porta Borsari and Corso Cavour, directly to the Castel Vecchio of the Scaligers; whence it continues as a modern wide avenue to the far-off Porta Palio. The Hotel Aquila Nera is located midway between Corso Borsari and Via Nuova; and just an equal distance to the north beyond the former rises the large Church of S. Eufemia, the remaining object of interest in the eastern half of the peninsula. It is a brick structure of the thirteenth century, of general Gothic type, crowded closely between houses, with only a small open space before the fagade. It has a curious brick front, with two long windows at the sides of a simple Gothic door- way, and an old tomb fastened under each window, — VEROXA. ALTAR TRIRTY( H IX CHUKCll OF SAX ZEXU MAGGIORE. (AXDREA MAXTEGNA.) VERONA LA MARMORINA 381 the right one of the fourteenth century, the left of shapely Renaissance design, by Sammicheli. Another tomb by Sammicheli is attached to the south wall near the side portal, — to whose marble reliefs my eyes were first drawn, on arriving early one morning, pre- pared for a long walk to the western quarters, I entered the nave at once, finding a long, wide, aisle- less space, with altars affixed to its bare walls and a flat vaulting overhead, having no transept, and but a small choir, with flanking chapels. The right chapel was formerly distinguished by some grand frescoes of Caroto, — which have now been practically destroyed by the damp and by retouching, — also his master- piece of the three Archangels, upon canvas, which has now been removed to the city museum. Over the side altars there remained a Brusasorci, — of the Madonna in clouds with saints below, very light in tone, coloring, and weight, — and a fine example of Moretto of Bres- cia, similar in subject, but with far more grace and ex- pression, in his strange green tone. There is a super- stitious custom in some parts of Italy of retaining half- witted men as assistant sacristans ; and the one in this church was the most daft I had yet encountered. He wandered about mumbling to himself, and could be made to understand nothing. Close by in this street I noticed a house with fine Gothic windows and a beautiful Gothic balcony of openwork marble; and on returning to Corso Borsari, I observed the adjacent little Church of S. Giovanni in Foro, which — as its name implies — was first built in the ancient days when the near-by Piazza Erbe was still the Forum, and whose present fagade bears some pleasing Gothic details. Then I marched west- ward, with the tracks of the tramway, soon reaching a stone screen that blocked the street from wall to wall. 382 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY rising to a height of three stories, with two large arches in the ground story for the passage of vehicles. It was the Porta Borsari of the Romans, — the outer shell of one of their city gates. This very interesting relic of the building of Gallie- nus still preserved much of the original adornment upon its face, and was especially significant to me, because this decoration was the forerunner of the Re- naissance style : here were the half -columns, the pilas- ters, the pediments, and classic window-frames, — the whole key-note of the Renaissance method. One might testify that it was a relic of the sixteenth cent- ury, — aside from the age of the stones. Beside the two large arches in their Corinthian settings, was a smaller archway for pedestrians, and over them were two divisions of half a dozen little windows each, round-headed, and set in double frames, — some of which are demolished. But it is a standing proof of the directness with which the Italian Renaissance style was reproduced from the later Roman. The Corso Cavour, which I now followed, was wider and rnore imposing, and so lined with fine palaces as to rank first in the city. Immediately to the right rose the Renaissance, rococo Palazzo Ponzoni; to the left, the house of the painter Niccolo Giolfino, showing traces of the frescoes with which he had once covered it; next it were the little Piazza and Church of SS. Apostoli, having a medieval tower made of all sorts of material, and three ancient Roman tombs afiixed to its wall. Beyond, still on the left side, rose the splen- did Palazzo Bevilacqua of Sammicheli, with a lofty, rusticated, stone fagade of exceeding beauty, and a handsome court possessing a good open stairway. Opposite this structure stood an old Gothic archway, capped by a statue of St. Lawrence with his gridiron. VERONA LA MARMORINA 383 — the entrance to the restricted yard and side portal of the Church of S. Lorenzo; this is one of Verona's most interesting edifices, said to have been first built in the fifth century upon a ruined temple of Venus. The present church of the eleventh century is thor- oughly Romanesque, and delightfully picturesque. Its fagade, turned westward upon another little court entered from the quay, is like a medieval stronghold in appearance, with round towers at the angles, pierced only by loophole apertures, and but a narrow wall- space between them, cut with a single doorway and tiny windows; the material is fully as odd-looking, being unplastered red brick and yellowish tufa, in alternate rough courses. When I entered, by a later side portico of Renais- sance design, it was to stand amazed at the strange- ness of the interior: here was a genuine, early Roman basilica, with two-storied arcades all around a narrow nave, like S. Agnese fuori le Mura at Rome; they were heavily constructed, of the same red-and- white mate- rials, with piers of grouped columns and single col- umns, alternately; a light, marble, classic cornice sur- mounted the lower arches, and the vaulting was whitewashed. Naught else was plastered, not even the rough walls of the apsidal choir, pierced by little unframed windows far aloft. Through other such tiny openings in the upper gallery walls, shafts of yellow light from glass of that hue percolated the dusk with a weird, antique effect. These bare walls had all been plastered and frescoed long ago, however, as was evident by the small irregular fragments of such work in Byzantine style, lingering here and there in corners. One Renaissance canvas occupied the apse wall, — a rich, glowing Madonna and Saints by Brusasorci. 384 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Continuing my way down the Corso Cavour, after passing some more fine palaces, including Sammicheli's majestic Palazzo Canossa, — I reached the Castel Vecchio, and the piazza on its east side stretching from street to river. This space contains a bronze statue of Cavour, — who deserves more such memorials, — and commands a clear view of the stronghold with its battlemented bridge. Heavy square towers stand at the four angles of the castle, no higher than its walls; a moat, now dry, surrounds it, and the keep raises its fierce, lofty head above the springing of the bridge in the rear wall. A very peaceful look is given the eastern part by the insertion of modern windows and the growth of trees and vines in the grassy fosse; but I found the central and western portions still perforated by the old slanting apertures for the fire of arquebuses and carronades; and across the main drawbridge, through the guard-tower of the entrance, I saw sol- diers filling the spacious courtyard as of yore. For the place is now a barrack, with no ingress allowed. A* separate lane through its western part, for the convenience of the public, led me between high walls, under several archways, to the entrance of the bridge and its guarding keep. Contadini with asses laden with panniers were passing in and out. Climb- ing the side parapet of the bridge, I looked between two of its eight-foot battlements at the frowning river-wall of the castle, and the tawny Adige dashing below. To-day thou still, O tireless fugitive. Dost murmuring pass upon thy way, beneath The Scaligers' old battlemented bridge.'- In those very walls, I reflected, the cowardly Can Grande II huddled himself from the people's gaze, ^ M. W. Arms's translation of Carducci. VERONA LA MARMORINA 385 and met the death which he sought to avoid, at the hand of his murderous brother. But turning away, I followed the quay along the right bank, which here curved to the northward with the stream; and after walking more than a third of a mile, swerved west- ward to the large Piazza of S. Zeno. Here in the ex- treme northwestern corner of the city stands its great- est church, between the fortifications and the river, facing the walls over a vast, dirt-paved, sunny piazza, and turning its apse upon the hurtling waters. This quarter, perhaps populous in the prime of Venetian days, is now mostly bare and deserted, — a congeries of silent, walled lanes between wide stretches of shady gardens, with a few scattered dwellings. Looking over the empty square vibrating with heated air, loomed the impressive fagade of the his- toric church, simple and dignified, constructed of yellowish-white stone, — one of the finest accomplish- ments of Lombard art. The nave with its gable is much loftier than the slanting roofs of the aisles; along the eaves runs an arcaded cornice; a handsome rose- window tops the canopied portal, and pilaster-strips in Lombard fashion are attached vertically at short intervals. There is no other window, the only other decoration being a Romanesque arcade of little blind arches, like very small double windows blocked up, crossing the fagade near the top of the portal. The canopy of the latter is a simple round-arched gable, supported by slender columns rising from red-marble, antique lions, with stone panels at the sides contain- ing many Lombard reliefs, and other painted reliefs in the tympanum. The building was begun about 900 and completed in 1178, when the peace was signed between the League and Frederick Barbarossa; its design indicates the culmination of that architect- 386 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY ural period which Ruskin calls "the introduction of Christianity into barbaric minds." ^ Adding to the dignity given the edifice by its iso- lated situation, are the two large towers isolated at the sides, of equal age but diverse appearance; — the campanile being to the right, in red-and- white courses like the sides of the church, tall, square, and without windows to its two-storied belfry, which is surmounted by a spire with corner pinnacles; the other being a square, red-brick, battlemented tower, patched, blocked up and reopened like a crazy-quilt, — all that remains of the medieval monastery, where the Em- perors were wont to stay. Advancing to the church's portal, I studied the curious Lombard reliefs beside it, thoroughly characteristic in their archaic figures of huntsmen, animals, and other evidences of Lombard out-door life, including the celebrated "Chase of Theodoric." The legend is represented by the King as a horseman chasing a stag, which he vainly and wildly follows to the very gates of Hell. But when the bronze doors of the entrance were before me, I forgot everything else in incredulous won- der at their decoration. I was looking upon bronze reliefs of the ninth century, in forty-eight divided squares, — the only artistic work of such a nature remaining to us from that dark age, and to me the most interesting object in all Verona. The panels, about a foot in diameter, contain miniature figures of much crudity, enacting scenes from the Old and New Testaments, without backgrounds or any regularity of composition, much as a child would draw; but what ^ Ruskin, Verona, and other Lectures. — According to Mr. Perkins {Italian Sculptors) the church was founded in the sixth century, and com- pleted by Emperor Otho I in the tenth; but I cannot see where he obtained , his authority. VERONA LA MARMORINA 387 pen could describe their extraordinary dramatic action, their vigor, and intensity of feehng! They are fasci- nating beyond compare, — these uncouth forms, with the strange pointed hats of the Lombards, coming down to us from that far-off silent time of artistic ignorance; here were tense dramatic composition and motion, significance of pose and expression, five centu- ries before Giotto. After a long inspection, I passed through the inner doors, down several steps into the nave, which stretched majestically before me with rhythmically curving arches, like a pealing anthem, and soaring far aloft to a handsome wooden roof similar to Padua's Eremetani; bare stone and brick were everywhere, in red-and-white courses; it had a beauty above that of riches. It is one of the noblest edifices I know, — one of the few grandest churches of all Italy. The compa- ratively small, but lofty, round arches, resting upon alternate piers and columns, divide off the much lower aisles, which have neither altars nor chapels; a great length marks its stern, sublime grandeur ; the distant choir rises high upon the visible arches of the crypt behind the central descending steps, — its front balus- trade crowned with marble statues ; and over the high- altar in the rear towers a Gothic triumphal arch, fram- ing the groined and vertical divisions of the graceful apse, glistening at the top with frescoes. Here it was that Ezzelino in 1238 led the daughter of the Emperor to the altar. Oh, for a magic glass to call up again that spectacle, — the glittering nobles in their silken long-hose and jewels, the long-trained ladies, the men- at-arms in gleaming casques and corselets, — holding back the motley, gay crowd of bourgeois, — the Em- peror on his throne, and the Archbishop in all his glory! 388 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY By the first column to the left I noticed the ancient . porphyry vase, nearly ten feet in diameter, which according to the legend was brought to S. Zeno from Rome by a demon; and on the choir parapet, its quaint Byzantine statues of Christ and the apostles, of the thirteenth century. On the right wall of the choir hangs Verona's most cherished painting, in an ex- quisitely carved Renaissance frame, — the celebrated panel of Madonna and Saints by Mantegna (1459) which wrought such a revolution in the Verona school, and set the type for its pietistic work. Though ported to Paris by Napoleon, and carried back (minus the three predelle, which are now but copied), it is still marvelously beautiful. It is divided by Corinthian columns into three verti- cal compartments; the throned Madonna sits in the central division, surrounded by captivating, melodi- ous putti, with suspended wreaths of luscious fruits overhead; four bright-robed saints stand in each of the side c©mpartments, and between the rear pillars of the covering portico is visible a turquoise-blue sky striped with whitest clouds. The glorious, well-pre- served coloring is a scheme of richest blues and orange and lavender, the grace of the forms supernal, the atmosphere and expression of a celestial, calm felicity. Compared with Mantegna's still earlier works, the influence of Bellini is dominantly manifest. In the crypt I beheld five rows of antique marble columns, of every shape and sort of capital, including horrid mouthing beasts and deformed humans in large numbers, and at the back, the bronze sarcophagus of S. Zeno upon a marble pedestal. The cloisters, off the north aisle, are lovely, composed of arcades with coupled little red-marble columns, of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with crude-leaved capitals; and VERONA LA MARMORINA 389 various early tombs lie in the corridors, — the latter being the entire contents of the "museum" which the guidebooks speak of. Two sides of the rectangle have Romanesque arches and two have Gothic arches. Here the Emperors were used to walk with the abbots when staying at the monastery, many centuries ago. In Dante's day the abbot was Giuseppe, bastard son of Alberto della Scala, for which appointment Alberto is rebuked in the Purgatorio, canto xix. I stepped over to the near-by gate and bastion of S. Zeno, in the city wall, and enjoyed outside a splen- did view of the fertile plain and looming mountains, the tremendous fortifications with their deep moat and mighty embankments, the stone bastion with its angles and sallyports, and the handsome Renaissance fagade of the gate, erected by Sammicheli, in yellow brick with stone trimmings. Then I followed the out- side road along the walls for a third of a mile south- ward, to the bastion and gate of S. Bernardino, close inside ivhich I came to the renowned church of that name. Rising behind a courtyard with extensive ar- cades was its simple brick fagade, fronting southward, having a Renaissance marble doorway, two lancet Gothic windows beside it, and a rose-window over- head. The monastery of the Franciscans — by whom the edifice was built in the quattrocento and to whom it still appertained — lay upon the west side; it had now been secularized, — except one cloister, reached through the church, where dwelt the few friars left. I saw three of them passing about, — reverend, white- haired figures, of much dignity and pathos, — tend- ing the building with a touching care. The interior proved to be a nave with one aisle on the right, separated by four arches, with no transept, and only an end recess for the high-altar; four altars 390 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY were affixed to the bare, white, left wall, and five chapels opened from the aisle. The roof was flat and of painted wood. The first chapel I found covered upon the walls and arched ceiling with indifferent frescoes by Giolfino, and bearing over its altar an excellent copy of the great canvas of Madonna and Saints by Cavazzola, which formerly stood there. The original, like so many of the best pictures of the churches, had been removed to the city museum. In the second chapel was a good specimen of Bonsignori, a Madonna with two saints and two baby-angels, of golden tone and rich coloring, though little or no expression. Morone's frescoes in the fourth chapel were practically destroyed; but the fifth glowed like a huge jewel, with solid walls of bright paintings by Caroto, Giolfino, and Francesco Morone, and other copies of Cavazzola. At the end here was the Cappella Pellegrini of Sammicheli's design, a beau- tiful domed rotonda faced with marble. In the little choir, to the left, hung a very lovely example of Be- naglio, a typle panel in close imitation of Mantegna's at S. Zeno, of exceeding grace, high finish, and glow- ing tone, but lacking the latter's tender simplicity. The cloister contained more frescoes of Giolfino, of little importance. But in the old library of the monastery, entered by a separate doorway in the front street, the municipal custodian showed me a work of much importance, — the truly marvelous frescoes of Francesco Morone executed in 1503. They extend all around the square wooden-roofed chamber, above the wainscoting and beneath an exquisitely painted frieze of convoluted wreaths; and consist of two rows of medallions and portraits of the most prominent Franciscans, with a large scene of life-size figures covering the end wall. This last is a most striking and beautiful composi- VERONA LA MARMORINA 391 tion, very freely spaced in a pleasing landscape, — the throned Virgin in the centre, surrounded by angels, a kneeling bourgeois couple at her feet, Saints Francis and Claire standing by her, and the five protomartyrs advancing on one side, the four doctors on the other. The genuflexing couple are Leonello Sacramoso and his wife, to whom we are indebted for this delight. The tone is a ravishing light blue, which runs throughout the robes and lake and distant mountains in a joyous scheme; the figures are superbly modeled, exceedingly graceful, and of marked individuality, — which ap- plies also to all the portraits, — and the heads are distinctly powerful and realistic as to the men, ten- derly lovely as to the Madonna. My next walks were through the southwestern quar- ter, between Corso Cavour and the lower river, com- mencing with the Church of S. Maria della Scala on my own street, — just south of Via Nuova, — which was founded by Can Grande. It is stuccoed white, without and within, the exterior being noticeable only for a good Renaissance stone doorway, the interior for its spacious form, without aisles or transept, and its broad ceiling, plastered and painted in designs. Over the side- altars stand a Brusasorci, — St. Ursula and her virgins; a Giolfino, the descent of the Holy Ghost ; and a charm- ing example of Francesco Morone, — a group of three saints, with donors, and an Annunciation. Most in- teresting was the little chapel to the right of the choir, containing sixteen frescoed panels from the life of S. Filippo Benissi, in the style of Altichieri, portraying every sort of dramatic incident, strongly rendered, with dignity, and well-drawn figures. Documents recently discovered seem to establish that this was the work of Badile, Paolo Veronese's master; but it must have been done long before his time. 392 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Shortly southwestward now, I came at last to the Arena, whose mighty dark stone oval fills the eastern part of the wide Piazza Bra, Its outer wall has been entirely demolished, except for one fragment on the northeast, four arches wide and three stories high, enough to give an idea of its former external appear- ance. The fagade was built of huge roughened granite blocks, with pilasters on the piers between the arches, and corniced string-courses, — simple, but powerful and effective. The second wall — which everywhere else is now the outer one, and but two stories high — is constructed of the same heavy stones, with inter- mediate floors of arched composite. — In the wall of a dwelling at the piazza's southeastern corner, I saw imbedded fragments of the earlier Roman city wall, that had excluded the amphitheatre — having doubtless, in fact, been built before it; and near by on the south side were two well-preserved Renaissance frescoes on the house fagades, of considerable charm. Entering the Arena by one of its northern archways (it formerly had forty-seven on the exterior, marked by Roman numbers on the keystones), I stood in the long central oval, surrounded by the endless swelling tiers of seats, still kept smooth and unbroken, which, vast as they now were, reached to only two thirds of their former height. At intervals steps ascended, smaller than the large blocks forming the seats, and every few yards, above the five-foot parapet, and along the higher tiers, were openings for ingress and egress. At the northern and southern ends, the oval was par- tially broken by the archways giving entrance to the centre, topped by balustraded terraces, for the seating of princes. Thoughts of the cruel Roman games that had drenched this same arena so many times in blood, crowded upon me, with visions of the madly VERONA LA MARMORINA 393 shouting populace; — thoughts of the martyrdoms here of Saints Fermo and Rustico, and the hundred and odd dissenting "Paterani" from Sirmione, burned aHve by Mastino I, in 1276; thoughts of the happier tour- naments of Renaissance days, the jousts of Antonio della Scala, with his besieged "Castle of Love," and the bull-fights introduced toward the end of the eighteenth century. Several emperors and many princes enjoyed those bull-fights, including Napoleon the Great, in 1802 and 1807. Here sat the famous Congress of Sover- eigns of 1822, when the ruling princes from all over Europe witnessed a memorable night-illumination of the amphitheatre. Here the great Ristori made her first appearance, — and many another histrionic or operatic genius. Finally I thought of those terrible days of the Risorgimento, when these walls reechoed the groans and sighs of wounded Italian prisoners; and of the joyful day of 1866, when Victor Emmanuel received here the acclaiming homage of the Veronese. Since then the structure has continued to be occa- sionally used on festive occasions, with a number of remarkably beautiful eflPects. The mighty circle, breathing beauty, seems The work of genii in immortal dreams. So firm the mass, it looks as built to vie With Alps' eternal ramparts towering nigh. — Glistening and pure, the summer sunbeams fall. Softening each sculptured arch and rugged wall. We tread the Arena; blood no longer flows. But in the sand the pale-eyed violet blows. ^ As I gazed over the extensive Piazza Bra on emerg- ing, it was a fair sight : the great ruin of the Arena on the east, the imposing Palazzo Municipale on the south, — in classic style, with its central portico of 1 Nicholas Mitchell. S94 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY eight huge Corinthian columns, — and the "Gran Guardia Vecchia," or old city guard-house, to west, of powerful, Late-Renaissance lines, its basement rusti- cated and arcaded upon heavy piers, its lofty 'piano no- bile adorned with coupled Doric half-columns between the corniced windows; while on the north stretched the long row of bright ca£fes, with their extruding tables, and in the centre rose a statue of Victor Emmanuel II, before grassy plots filled with trees and flower-beds. From the guard-house southward extended a section of the tall city wall of the Visconti, made of brick and cobblestones in true medieval style, paralleled by the wide Via Pallone to the river; on its north side was the so-called Portoni, — a former city gate, composed of two large arches of stone, fifty feet high, surmounted by battlements, with a fianking, battlemented tower of brick. Through the gateway I saw the broad Corso Vittorio Emanuele extending straightaway southwest to the Porto Nuova, between large modern buildings, including several prominent palaces of noble fami- lies. The broad low structure of the Porto Nuova was visible in the distance. We occasionally went out there by tram car, admired its handsome Renaissance design by Sammicheli, and took a delightful walk outside the walls, northward, to the Porta S. Zeno, where we found a tram to convey us home again. The road led under trees along the huge embankment without the moat, and past the colossal bastions of light stone, with their advanced walls and ports, — of which I often thought, that in their miles of great blocks enough fine stone had been used to rebuild the whole city, discard its brick entirely, and leave a palatial wonder. But no; — the medievals would economize in their dwellings, and lavish countless VERONA. TOMB I KG AND JULIET. VERONA LA MARMORINA 395 riches on their fortifications. These gigantic mounds of earth, too, within and without the fosse, which stretched Brobdingnagian around the whole vast cir- cuit, and must have required the labor of an innumer- able host, for many years, — imagine embankments fifty feet high and a hundred and fifty wide, made without the aid of steam ; — on them had been expended enough work to build another large city. The inner bank, and the enormous moat, are also faced with mighty granite blocks, mile after mile. Truly, these incredible walls of earth and stone are one of the marvels of the world. The view all the way was uncommonly lovely, with the sun upon our backs, displaying the wide wooded plain with its sparkling white farmhouses and villages, the towering moun- tains to west and north, with their dark precipitous flanks, the glittering snow-peaks in the rear, and the penetrating gorge of the Adige. — Outside the Porta Nuova, also, lies the subsidiary railroad station of that name, recently finished, and coming into much use. Just to the right of the Portoni stands the Teatro Filarmonico, with a handsome Renaissance fagade, and a large portico of Ionic columns upon its south side; before this portico extends a court, inclosed by Renaissance arcades of dainty, fluted, Doric columns, and containing architectural fragments, altars, tab- lets, sculptures, inscriptions, and other relics of Roman days, — all forming the Museo Lapidario, founded by Scipione Maffei. On stepping through the Portoni, one sees the old moat of the Visconti wall, still flowing darkly between the back walls of houses. One day I followed the wall southward to the river, along Via Pallone, striking the stream at the lowest city bridge, Ponte Aleardi; and here to the right, just without 396 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY the Visconti moat, in the former, abandoned grounds and cemetery of the Capuchin monastery, next the Adige, I found the reputed tomb of Romeo and Juliet, guarded by a municipal custodian. In a fragment of the old monastery cloisters, charm- ingly arcaded upon two sides with slim marble shafts and brick arches, rising from parapets, lies an uncov- ered sarcophagus of red marble, filled to overflowing with the visiting-cards of faithful believers, — believers in spite of all evidence. The custode says gravely that the lovers were buried together in this coffin, in the Capuchin cemetery close at hand. Yet there are sacri- legious persons who state that the sarcophagus was not long ago a washing-trough; further, that neither Romeo nor Juliet ever existed in the flesh, and con- sequently they never were buried. Let one believe as he listeth ; — at any rate, this tomb is a pretty spot, framed by its little garden on each side, with shady trees, roses, aloes, climbing vines, and other shrubs and flowers; and the custode claims to prove his story by pointing out the remains of the monument which formerly covered the sarcophagus, — some columns, and broken bits of entablature, scattered about the grass. Lovers! Ye have not loved in vain: the hearts Of millions throb around ye. This lone tomb One greater than Mantua's prophet eye foresaw In her own child or Rome's, hath hallowed; And the last sod or stone a pilgrim knee Shall press (Love swears it, and swears it true) is here.^ There now remained to visit on the western bank only the great Church of S. Fermo, at the end of the Ponte delle Navi. On my way to it one afternoon, I stopped to examine with interest the so-called Arco Leoni, — the remains of a Roman city gate, built into ^ Walter Savage Landor. VERONA LA MARMORINA 397 the side wall of a house on the east side of the Via Leoni, leading from Piazza Erbe to the bridge; they consisted of some half-visible columns and entabla- ture, of rich sculpturing, — which probably covered what was then, as now, the chief entrance to the an- cient city. The southern Roman wall, therefore, ran from the Adige here, — just north of the Ponte delle Navi, excluding the latter, — westward to meet the western wall at a right angle near the Arena. But on that same street, close to Piazza Erbe, I had first passed a building associated with what has just been related, — the house of the Capelletti; for they were real people, whatever the doubt may be con- cerning their poet-created daughter; and legend has always given this dwelling as their abode. It is a nar- row, five-storied structure of brick, on the east side of the confined way, pierced by a large archway in the ground story and by four rounded windows in each of the others, — its only balcony hanging on heavy corbels at the fourth floor. "Heavens!" I thought involuntarily, "what a climb poor Romeo had!" — The height of it was as disenchanting as were the dirty vans and refuse of the stable-yard seen through the archway. One must shut his eyes to modern meta- morphoses : — But chief we seem to hear at evening hour The sigh of Juliet in her starlit bower. Follow her form slow gliding through the gloom. And drop a tear upon her mouldered tomb.^ The face of S. Fermo is toward the west, its north side upon the street which is the westward continua- tion of Ponte delle Navi; so that its fine proportions are clearly visible. From the bridge, or the street, one sees a noble apse, a wide transept, a tall campanile 1 Nicholas Mitchell. 398 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY rising from their angle to a spire with corner pinnacles, and, on turning the transept, a beautiful old Gothic porch covering the side entrance, — a canopy of pointed arches, above a recessed pointed doorway, approached by fourteen steps. The choir and transept are both of plain red brick, except for curious unordered patches of light stone; the nave's side is also of brick, but with a deep marble basement, and double Gothic windows with marble mullions; its wide brick Gothic frieze continues around the apse. The fagade, looking upon an open bay from the street, has a round-arched, deeply recessed portal approached hy spreading steps, and four lancet windows overhead, — being marbled to the top of the entitance, and of brick and marble in alternate courses above that. Altogether it is a very lovely and picturesque example of Lombard Gothic, charming by its very oddities ; it was constructed early in the trecento, — during "the period of vital Chris- tianity, and of the development of the laws of chivalry and forms.of imagination, which are founded on Chris- tianity," ^ — and which are nowhere better shown. On entering, by the customary side portal, I found myself in a long broad nave, without aisles or columns, with a larch- wood roof like the Eremetani; at the end were three chapels, with the high-altar in the centre, faced by a semicircular screen of creamy marble ex- tending into the nave; and over the side wall-spaces not covered by altars or monuments, over the end wall above the three chapels, was a world of old frescoing, in every hue and state of decay, glowing like a vast cloud- land of antique saints and angels. A lovely Annuncia- tion on the left wall, showing the Virgin's bedchamber within a quaint Gothic dwelling, is the only other relic of Pisanello's painting in Verona; the rest of them — ^ Ruskin, Verona, and Other Lectures. VERONA LA MARMORINA 399 Madonnas, Crucifixions, groups of saints, martyrdoms — are by Martini, Stefano da Zevio, and other early Veronese masters, — in delightful soft old tints, ex- hibiting dignity and deep feeling. The first chapel to the left, some way down, holds Caroto's beautiful pala of the Madonna and St. Anne in glory, with saints below, — forms wondrously moulded, of exceeding grace and softness, with a striking maternal joy and pride in the fair face of the Virgin. Next this opens a little room containing Riccio's brilliant, luxurious, marble monument to Girolamo della Torre, with bronze plates of reliefs, and supporting sphinxes, that are but copies of the originals taken to Paris, but possessing still the original charming frieze around the marble base, and its exquisitely sculptured columns. There are further a canvas of Liberale, two of Tor- bido, examples of Farinato and Brusasorci, a fine, Gothic, trecento pulpit, and a small chapel in the right transept containing tombs of titled descendants of Dante. But the greatest interest of all lies in the ex- tensive crypt, — the remains of a very early church over which the later one was erected. It is reached by a stairway, through the sacristy; and its various kinds of early columns and bits of frescoing, endowed with intense significance for the antiquarian, date as far back in some instances as the latter part of the eighth century. Across the bridge from S. Fermo, and just to the right on the broad tree-lined quay, facing the river, stands the Palazzo Pompei containing the city's art collections. Its two-storied stone facade is of most attractive Renaissance lines, — a rusticated base- ment, and 'piano nohile of Doric half-columns support- ing a Doric frieze and cornice, with windows capped 400 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY by masks. But leaving its contents to the last, I passed it by one morning on my way to visit the rest of the eastern quarter, — to inspect again the fine old churches scattered through its silent streets. First in modern interest, however, is the great cemetery to the south, just without the fortifications, reached from the eastern end of Ponte Aleardi by a splendid avenue of tall trees. Entirely surrounding it in the Italian style is a vast square structure, with a classic portico on its western front; high colonnades run around its inner sides, adorned with countless tombs, in and against the walls. These are decorated with many modern sculptures, in the recent style addicted to realism and minute details, — such as the family weeping over their dead. The huge, rectangular grass plot in the centre is one mass of graves, headstones, flat stones, and monu- ments, with shrubs and flowers, but no trees; and the graves are kept always fresh with flowers as none but Italians do. One time we were present on the annual "Day of the Dead," when the whole city seemed to have turned its steps that way, clad in sad clothes and burdened with wreaths and blossoms; it was a wonder- ful sight to see this mourning, unanimous multitude, depositing their tributes of undying affection, and praying over their departed. The first church to which I went was S. Paolo di Campo Marzo, to the right on Via Venti Settembre, but a few rods from the bridge. It has a simple, stuc- coed, Renaissance fagade, with a stone tower, and a simple nave without aisles or columns ; over a side altar is one of Girolamo dai Libri's delightful pictures of the Madonna and Saints, beautiful beyond expression; in a chapel off the right transept, a similar canvas by Paolo Veronese, of considerable grace, — also some VERONA LA MARMOEINA 401 injured frescoes by him, and a panel by Bonsignori; in the sacristy, a handsome Caroto, — the Madonna with Saints Peter and Paul, of which the Madonna possesses a grand, imperial form, of exceeding beauty, superbly drawn and moulded. There are, further, some of the works of Farinato. Next I wandered to Veronetta's chief church, SS. Nazzaro e Celso, farther to the east at the foot of the heights, on the long street diverging from Via Venti Settembre near the gate, and running fairly straight to Ponte di Pietra. The first S. Nazzaro was a grotto in the face of the hill, where the earliest Christians worshiped in troublous times; I found it behind a machine factory on the right of the present edifice, — several connected chambers hewn in the cliff, with lingering fragments of quaint frescoes of that remote period, probably the fifth century. The holy place has been desecrated, and the paintings almost en- tirely destroyed by the machinists who ply their trade there in an adjunct to the main factory. I am sur- prised that the city, usually so alert, has not long ago adopted preservative measures. The present church was first built in the eleventh century, and then restored in the sixteenth, when its five aisles were made into three. Before it extends a wide inclosed court, having a curious decadent Renais- sance gateway, upheld by four Doric columns ap- parently tied with stone mourning-cloths, and having a frieze of "papal tiaras. The brick, gabled f agade, with lean-to aisles, has a Gothic marble doorway, two long windows, and a very pretty, sculptured rose-window. The interior is usually closed, and I remember I had a long hunt through the neighborhood to find an assistant sacristan with a key to the side door. Once entered, I saw a rather low, groined nave, separated by stucco 402 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY pillars and round arches from still lower aisles; the latter with pointed vaultings, and side altars directly against their walls; the choir deeply recessed behind a Gothic triumphal arch, with no flanking chapels. Over the side altars were paintings by Farinato and Brusasorci, and a true example of Badile, a charming Madonna and Saints, of rich tone and good execution. The chief interest lay in the Capella S. Biagio, off the left transept, — one of Verona's foremost artistic shrines. It was heavily frescoed by Falconetto, Cavaz- zola, and Montagna; the latter's work being especially strong and dramatic,^ Cavazzola's especially lovely. The 'pala was a glorious Bonsignori, with exquisite predelle by Girolamo dai Libri, — perfect gems of painting; and upon the left wall hung an entrancing Madonna and Saints by Moretto. The walls of the choir held large scenes from the lives of Saints Nazzaro and Celso, by Farinato, of much dramatic interest; the sacristy contained two excellent" canvases of Montagna, and a curious trip- tych of Benaglio; with two more Montagnas — strong, clear works — on its outer wall. My next object was of a very different nature, — a pleasant change from churches. About halfway up the street already mentioned stands the large Palazzo Giusti, with a long, Renaissance, stuccoed f agade, and in the rear lie its celebrated gardens, extending well up the hillside. A central archway admitted me to the courtyard, backed by an iron grille; and through an opened gate in the latter the portiere made me free of the grounds. A magnificent sight now rose before me, — the stateliest avenue that could be imagined, lined ^ These frescoes, together with the canvases in the sacristy, give one really a better conception of the full powers of Bart. Montagna than his works in his native city, Vicenza. VERONA LA MARMORINA 403 by two rows of tall black cypresses, leading straight- away across the level and grandly up the steep slope, to a balustraded stone terrace perched far aloft, and to another line of cypresses extended at right angles along the height, backed by a graceful wood. It had much of the impressive loveliness of the Villa d' Este. To right and left upon the restricted level stretched inviting swards, glowing flower-beds, banks of shrub- bery, fountains, and water-basins; climbing vines had verdurously beautified the walls of palace and enceint- ure; an artist was painting a picturesque building on the left, quite overgrown with creepers. I ascended the avenue, and wandered up the wooded hillside by winding, shady paths, which led me at last to the open terrace; thence extended an enchanting prospect, — the lofty cypresses and seductive gardens, the ivy-clad palace, the far-sweeping ocean of tiled roofs with soaring towers, the distant, haze-covered plain, and the imposing mountains looming to the north. Verona, thy tall gardens stand erect. Beckoning me upward. Let me rest awhile Where the birds whistle hidden in the boughs.^ And rest I did, lulled to a dreamy state by the whis- perings of the leaves, gazing visionary over the storied scene before me. It was still another day, therefore, when I advanced to finish Veronetta's sights, crossing the Adige by the modern iron Ponte Umberto, opposite the Giusti gar- dens. This course brought me first to the Church of S. Tommaso Cantuariense, or St. Thomas of Canter- bury, just beyond the bridge, situated upon what was formerly an island in the river; but the eastern arm * Walter Savage Landor. 404 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY has been filled up, forming now the wide street known as "Interrato dell' Acqua Morta," which bends from quay to quay in a long curve. The church has a fine, regular, Gothic fagade of brick, with a recessed door- way, and one rose- and two long windows of geomet- rical tracery. The street on its left side is illuminated by three house fronts with well-preserved frescoes, one or two of them in Caroto's bright style, and one a fair copy of Leonardo's Last Supper. Entering, I found a strange, lofty, white-stuccoed interior, adorned with four varied altars on each side, having no transept, and three chapels in the end wall, with the high-altar in the middle one. Here lay the great Sammicheli, under his bust in the right wall; near it were two splendid paintings, a Liberale and a Girolamo dai Libri, and in the little sacristy I saw the beautiful, moving picture by Garofalo, — a Madonna with the infants Jesus and John, — which has been made so familiar to all the world by countless repro- ductions.* Behind the high-altar hung a shapely Caroto, and over the left altars stood two of those numberless lovely pictures of Madonna and Child by unknown masters of the Veronese school. I then proceeded to my last great church, S. Maria in Organo, which stands a little north of Palazzo Giusti, backing upon its street from the west, and entered from the said Acqua Morta. Close by is the Via Seminaria, with the Episcopal College, a large seminary, a huge monastery made into a barrack, a fine palace or two, and some dainty, alluring, Renais- sance balconies. S. Maria, founded as far back as the seventh century, but now a structure of the twelfth, though not a large church, is one of Verona's principal treasure-houses. Behind the usual Veronese courtyard it raises a droll, unfinished, low fagade, marble-faced VERONA LA MARMORINA 405 to the height of the Renaissance portal and ground- windows, — which are separated by Corinthian half- columns, — and of unadorned red brick and white stone in the flat gable. The interior is still more curious: a short, low, round-arched nave, very dark, with wide-open aisles separated by four slight columns on each side; a tran- sept elevated by six steps, with a chapel at each end and one on each side of the choir; the vaultings all painted with designs and arabesques; the walls above the low side arches covered with Old Testament scenes by Francesco Morone. This remarkable wealth of diversified color, in designs, frescoed pictures, and glowing canvases everywhere the eye turns, makes a spectacle of Oriental splendor. Morone's 'pala in the third altar recess to the left is better preserved, more finished, and more beautiful than his frescoes, — being an utterly fascinating group of Madonna and Saints, of unsurpassable richness. Savoldo's gorgeous pala next it is almost equally entrancing; making a pair of canvases that can never be forgotten. The walnut choir-seats before the high-altar are exceptionally adorned, having painted landscapes on their backs by Cavazzola and Brusasorci ; the latter has three power- ful frescoes in and above the chapel to the left of the choir; and the chapel to the right contains three real- istic tableaux by Giolfino. At the end of the right transept a stranger enters, — the brilliant Guercino of Bologna, with two canvases amongst the most striking in Verona, — two jewels of a wondrous, glittering finish, superbly modeled and true to life, yet lovely beyond all words; one represents S. Francesca Romana with an angel, — the other, the same figures, with the addition of the saint's brother and several companions and guards. A third Guer- 406 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY cino, once also here but now in Rome, has been replaced by a copy. Near these, aloft, are three frescoed figures, of the Archangels with Tobias, by Cavazzola. The finest of all the treasures, however, lie in the retro-choir and the adjacent sacristy, — gems of art to which I have many a time returned in joy. Amidst the splendid, carved choir-stalls stands a marvelous candelabrum of ebony and walnut, sculptured with richest details by the genius of Fra Giovanni da Ver- ona, who was a member here of the monastic brother- hood of Monte Oliveto, to whom the church formerly belonged; and the sacristy has been turned by him into a veritable temple of wood-carving and tarsia. All around it stretches a high oaken pailfeling of inde- scribably delicate sculpturing, — columns, cornice, arches, frieze, and entablature, all radiant with an endless variety of minutest designs and arabesques; and between the columns are the paneled backs of seats, more remarkable still, with tarsia of incred- ible deceptiveness and fertile fancy, — not merely the usual objects of everyday life, but scenes with the perspective and atmosphere of painting, show- ing streets, palaces, castles, towns, and landscapes. Though not advancing to the depiction of human life, attained by the Bergamasque masters alone, in their own class these stand at the head. One inter- esting scene depicts in its background the ruinous Castle of Theodoric, as it looked about 1500. Over the paneling, next the ceiling, extends a series of frescoed portraits of the monks of Oliveto, by Morone, of speaking lifelikeness and strongest indi- viduality; including Fra Giovanni himself, with his hair whitened by his task of many years. Most of the others are popes, kings, princes, doges, and great men VEROXA. VIEW IN THE GIUSTI GARDENS. VERONA LA MARMORINA 407 of the world; and the sacristan indicates two of them who were ex-monarchs of Britain in the eighth cen- tury. On the ceiling is, further, a half-figure of the Saviour, surrounded by a circle of putti-heads; and in one corner hangs a very lovely Madonna and Saints, by Girolamo dai Libri, — or, as Mr. Berenson thinks, by Mocetto of Venice.^ From S. Maria I repaired to the little, ancient Church of S. Giovanni in Valle, shortly to the north upon the slope of the hill, — a quaint edifice dating from the fifth century, and practically unchanged from Romanesque days. Its small fagade is distinguished by naught but a fresco of Stefano da Zevio over the doorway, bright and pleasing; its narrow wooden- roofed nave — with alternate pillars of white stone and columns of Verona marble, having diverse, queer, old capitals — ends in a choir raised above seven central steps, with side steps descending to the crypt. The walls above the low side arches, once covered with frescoes, are now white and bare, with a few tiny Romanesque windows; but a graceful picture by Bertolini, and a fresco of Stefano da Zevio, dec- orate the right aisle. In the small crypt, upheld by six ancient marble columns and two strange, taper- ing pillars, I found two early Christian sarcophagi, covered with reliefs of extraordinary realism and dig- nity; and in the sacristy, several fairly good Renais- sance paintings. In the yard on the right was visible a fragment of the long-demolished cloisters, — a colon- nade, with charming little coupled columns, of great antiquity. * It is certainly much in the style of the beautiful canvas of Mocetto in the Vicenza gallery, and would raise still higher the fame of that re- tiring pupil of Bellini. On the other hand, how account for the peculiar lemon tree, Girolamo's emblem ? 408 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY From here I proceeded to the ruined Roman theatre, near the Ponte di Pietra, stopping a moment on the way to inspect the Gothic, brick facade of the little Church of S. Chiara, with its marble portal and pretty windows, and its quaint^ medieval relief of a giant Ma- donna protecting devotees with her cloak. SS. Siro e Libera, another very early church, built high upon one side of the theatre, had been closed and was to be taken down. This clearing-away, and much other recent ex- cavation, had laid bare most of the Roman remains, as I had observed them from the hilltop; it was still more interesting to walk about the pavement of the pit, through the unroofed antechambers, over the frag- ments of the marbled stage, and, climbing the lofty seats, left here and there in broken patches, to call up visions of the magnificent spectacles that once had been enacted there below. Even marine spectacles had had their place, on seas of real water, pumped from the adjacent river. How far they were ahead of our little njodern shows ! At last, one day, I bent my steps to the city museum, and began a slow investigation of its countless trea- sures. It has a marvelous collection of paintings, especially for so small a city, — nineteen rooms filled to overflowing, — which must certainly be ranked next to the municipal galleries of Florence, Venice, and Milan; and above all, here alone can one obtain a comprehensive idea of the glorious art of Verona. The entrance hall opens directly upon a square court, packed with pieces of ancient sculpture and architect- ure; in the many rooms extending to the rear of it, I inspected the collections of Roman and Etruscan ^ By this I mean, executed with exceptional quaintess ; for of course it was customary in the trecento thus to depict the Madonna, personify- ing the Church. VERONA LA MARMORINA 409 coins, vases, bronzes, and reliefs, of prehistoric tombs and antiquities, of fossils and natural history speci- mens, of medieval statuary, and other sculptures. On the staircase, to the left of the entrance hall, began the overflowing paintings; — seven framed frescoes of Giolfino, representing the arts and sciences, and three works of Paolo Veronese, greeting me as I climbed to the upper floor. I emerged at its northern end, with the first half-dozen rooms of the series stretching be- fore me southward along the fagade; and these con- tained the chief of the treasures. The stairway and landing being numbered i, and the office to its right — with some unimportant pictures — numbered ii, therefore with the large room iii, directly before me, the collection proper began. Space forbids more than the slightest summary. This room iii contained the earlier Veronese works, of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in which the gallery is not very rich, — Pisanello and his pupils, and some unknown masters; all quaint, pietistic works, with slim, graceful figures, in the already partly de- veloped, rich, Veronese coloring. Room iv was chiefly Liberale's, — a delightful aggregation of pictures, with figures possessing his peculiar, fine, light skin, and fleecy, golden hair, of his nameless, peculiar charm, that gives such spiritual beauty to the rough-hewn faces. Room v was mainly Girolamo's, and therefore more aglow with unadulterated, serene beauty than any other; — exquisite groups of heavenly forms, gathered around the Madonna, under his emblem of the lemon tree. But here also stood Caroto's famous group of the three Archangels with Tobias, — nearly life-size figures, of a startling, unearthly loveliness and power, unlike any others ever painted. Room vi, at the end, belonged to Morone and Cavazzola, contain- 410 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY ing the latter's wonderful set of masterpieces depicting the Passion, in whose unutterably dazzling brilliancy of hue the Verona coloring found its meridian. Of the rear chambers, room ix contained Torbido's bewitching Tobias and the Angel, a splendid Baptism of Christ by Paolo Veronese, and some other fine mis- cellaneous pieces; room xiv, a gracious, life-size fresco by Fr. Morone; room xvii, some specimens of other schools, including an excellent, characteristic Perugino, a resplendent La Francia, and a captivating panel of the Magi, in an enchanting landscape (number 95) by Eusebio di S. Giorgio, Perugino's gifted disciple. Room XIX, finally, was a superb collection from other schools, numerous and valuable; among them I espe- cially enjoyed a very curious but characteristic Carlo Crivelli, two golden, serene Cimas, Mantegna's Holy Family with an Angel, — of remarkable modeling and lif elikeness, — Palma Vecchio's glorious Magi, Boni- fazio's striking Last Supper, Moretto's extraordinary Head of Christ, Lanzani's beautiful Madonna with infants, Mansueti's Madonna and St. Jerome, in an inspiring landscape, and two of Gian Bellini's lovely, dreamy Madonnas. There were also three rooms filled with modern paintings, whose pettiness would give a shock to any soul, after visiting the lofty spheres of the grandeur and genius of old. I have already spoken of the castles lying about Verona, which belonged mostly to the Scaligers in their day. The principal ones still standing, in more or less ruinous condition, are nine in number, — five upon the west of the Adige, four upon the east; and no visit to Verona is complete without some knowledge of them. Those to the east are reached by carriage or steam tramway from the Porta Vescovo, along the VERONA LA MARMORINA 411 base of the hills, parallel with the railway. In two miles one arrives at the village of San Michele, birth- place of the great architect; not very far from which is the picturesque castle of Montorio, perched upon a height with three great towers, commanding a beau- tiful view of the village-dotted landscape, and the battlemented city wall of Verona crowning the west- ern ridges. It is closed to the public; but on one occasion two ladies of our party succeeded in penetrat- ing, only to find an empty shell. Originally erected in Roman times, it was still intact when used by the Scaligers. But the chief Scala castle, and perhaps the most in- teresting of North Italy, is at Soave, — already mentioned as seen from the passing train. There the gay Court often betook itself for rest; there the princes hunted and hawked, and Dante passed lazy summer days with Can Grande. The tram above mentioned carried me one day to Soave village, which I found sur- rounded by a picturesque wall and moat, with a pon- derous, well-preserved, battlemented gateway, whose open arch framed a charming vista of the main street, with its stuccoed, sun-beaten buildings. At its north- ern end I came to the large, classic fagade of the par- ish-church, whose spacious basilica-interior proved to contain a magnificent canvas of Dom. Morone, in the choir, — a Madonna and Saints of resplendent coloring. Opposite, and at the street's adjacent fork- ing, rose two fine old Gothic palaces, with battle- ments, remains of frescoes, and an arcaded loggia with a delightful, Gothic, marble stairway. Here, in a pharmacy I obtained the requisite permesso ; and climbed the steep hillside on the east, to the towered castle. It is the only one of them all which has been re- 412 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY stored, — and that accurately, in its medieval style. Its lofty, well-conditioned walls once formed a link in those of the town, which still creep up the slope on each hand; and its main entrance was on the outer, eastern side, over the town moat by a drawbridge, — through a guard-tower, outer court, and inner, port- cullised gateway. So I entered, as did the Scaligers, — to avoid passing through the town, — and stood in the large, rectangular, main courtyard, with the battlements on three sides and the inner court on the left. Traversing a final wall, I reached that inner courtyard, on the southern and highest point of the hilltop, — a semicircular inclosure, that formerly held all the residential buildings of the princes. Of those there now remained but a two-storied stone structure in the west corner, and the great keep in the middle of the curving southern wall, — this of brick, though the fortifications were mostly of stone. In the ground-floor of the building I saw the long guard- room, with, the guards' rude beds, tables, stands of arms, etc., all restored as in the days of Can Grande; up the picturesque outer stairway, overhung by a very lovely iron lantern, I found five interesting rooms, also accurately remodeled in decorations and furnishings, — two drawing-rooms, a bedchamber, a dining-room and a cabinet. Here were tables, chairs, drawers, etc., all quaintly carved in trecento fashion, lamps and stands of decorat- ive wrought iron, a huge canopied bed, and a dining- table carefully set with crudely figured majolica ware, half -opaque blue glassware in medieval goblets and de- canters, large earthen pitchers for wine, and curiously shaped forks and spoons, — just then coming into princely use; also arms and armor, and walls frescoed in trecento manner, including one original figure of that VERONA LA MARMORINA 413 period; — in a word, every furnishing and disposition to give a picture of that far-off life as exact as if one were living it here and now. Very crude, we should call it, — the picturesqueness soon vanishing before an acquaintance with its discomforts and lack of re- finements. Yet to Can Grande and his contemporaries it seemed an age of wondrous luxury; and so it was, compared with the life of their grandfathers, but one century previous. "In those times, says a writer about the year 1300, speaking of the age of Frederick II (1200-1250), the manners of the Italians were rude. A man and his wife ate off the same plate. There were no wooden- handled knives, nor more than one or two drinking- cups in a house. Candles of wax or tallow were un- known; a servant held a torch during supper. The clothes of men were of leather, unlined; scarcely any gold or silver was seen on their dress. ... A small stock of corn seemed riches. . ', . The pride of man was to be well provided with arms and horses; that of the nobility, to have lofty towers, of which all the cities of Italy were full. But now, frugality has been changed for sumptuousness; everything exquis- ite is sought after in dress, — gold, silver, pearls, silks, and rich furs. Foreign wines and rich meats are required." ^ Such was the alteration in one hundred years, — to the days of Dante and Giotto, shown in this castle. Remains of the earlier periods were visible in lance- heads, truncheons, other implements, and coins, found on the premises; and more stirring still, were Roman coins, lost by the Roman occupants sixteen centuries ago, and now brought again to the light. An upper door let me out upon the adjacent battlements in the ^ Hallam, Middle Ages, vol. ii, part 2, chap. ix. 414 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY rear, whose promenade looked down the steep hill- side, rich with vine and olive, guarded by the descend- ing city wall with its crumbling towers, to the town far below, shining cheerfully in the green fields, — the wooded, dark foothills and Alps to the north, and the limitless plain upon the south. I climbed the mighty, hollow keep to its lofty summit, whence the view was still more extensive; at its bottom yet re- mained the horrible pit, where they once tossed the bodies of the condemned. In the centre of the inner courtyard, lingered the ancient, worn well-head, upon which Dante must often have leaned or sat, while pacing the green be- tween the palatial buildings, now gone. At Can La Grande's court, no doubt, Due reverence did his steps attend; The ushers on his path would bend At ingoing as at going out.^ The buildings for the lodging of the servants, men- at-arms, ^nd horses, doubtless encircled the outer courtyard; but they have all disappeared. I crossed it again, and departed by another gate on the north side, under an aucient fresco of the Madonna. Thence, by carriage to Caldiero and up the Illasi Valley, I journeyed to the village and castle of that name, enjoying a view of the latter upon its hilltop for an hour before my arrival. The Scaligers obtained it from Pope Nicholas V, and upon their destruc- tion it passed to the Conti Pompei of Verona, whose last representative died in 1885, leaving his city pal- ace to the Signoria for the museum. Upon one occa- sion, when tearing down an old wall of the castle, he found the chained skeleton of an ancestress, the * Rossetti, Dante at Verona. VERONA LA MARMORINA 415 Countess Ginevra, who had been punished for infidel- ity by her husband long ago, in a manner similar to the "White Lady" of Colalto. At the piazza of Illasi I saw a fine, classic Municipio, and near it the hand- some villa and gardens of the Marchese Carlotti. The castle, though nearly as picturesque from below, in its great tower, massive stone body and ruinous walls, is not as interesting as Soave, — being neither as old, nor kept in the medieval state. It consists of a projecting keep, on the north side, and an adjacent square building of three to four stories, both battle- mented, and surrounded by the broken remains of the enceinture. All around it on the hillsides lies the beautiful Pompei estate, dense with olive groves and vineyards, white-spotted with excellent tenants' dwellings; and the prospect over them of the rich valley with its many villages is enchanting. The ascent from the town is a full two miles; and let no one who makes it omit first to obtain in the piazza a permit to visit the castle, or he will not be admitted. After a small siesta at a horrible country inn, where one basin-full of water per chamber was supposed to be suflicient for the day, I returned to Verona at eventide by the steam tramway, making connection at Caldiero. In the same valley of Illasi, farther north, lie the re- mains of Tregnano castle, — consisting of a huge keep and a crumbling outer wall with small towers. Of the castles on the west bank Sirmione, situated on the peninsula of that name at the southern shore of Lake Garda, is the most interesting after Soave. It is a beautiful spot, occupied by large Roman villas in an- cient times. The great fortress is a glowering, fanciful mass of tall irregular towers and forked battlements, with two entrances, and several courts and inner walls. 416 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY all surrounded by mighty, towered, outer walls. Of all the castles of this region, it is the most famed in song and story. The Scala castles of Villafranca, Nogarole, and Va- leggio lie near together southwest of Verona upon the plain. I went by train to the first-named, erected in 1202 by the Veronese republic as a fortress against the Mantuans; from it Mastino II and Can Grande II constructed the vast wall known as the "Serraglio" for miles across the level, with moats and towers for sentinels, to protect their territory from Mantuan as- saults. I found the castle to be a large ruined quadri- lateral at the south of Villafranca village, its walls of brick and cobblestones, three to five feet thick, surrounded by a slimy moat, with square towers at the corners, and a formidable keep and two guard- towers beside the entrance in the northern side. Nothing remains of the other buildings save a small structure over the ingress, still inhabited; gardens flourish everywhere within, and the peasants have made a road through the middle. This was the fortress which Ezzelino besieged in 1233, in which the people of Mantua with their families took refuge in 1404 from the cruelties of Galeazzo Gonzaga, and from which they repulsed his fierce attacks. Though often so at- tacked during the centuries, it never fell. In the vil- lage, in 1859, was signed the peace between France and Austria, ceding J^ombardy to Italy. Five miles to the west sits Valeggio, another Scala fortress, guarding the Mincio; halfway to it rises a monumental column marking the battlefield of Cus- tozza, where the Italians were twice so bitterly de- feated; — but close at hand also, seen from Villa- franca's keep, rise the towers marking the fields of the great victories of S. Martino and Solferino. This VERONA LA MARMORINA 417 is sacred ground, watered with the blood of the mar- tyrs for Freedom, decorated with imposing memorials, and sought by hosts of free Italians year after year, in a solemn, patriotic pilgrimage. Italia! by the passion of thy pain That bent and rent thy chain; Italia! by the breaking of the bands. The shaking of the lands; Beloved, O men's mother, O men's queen, — Arise, appear, be seen! ^ ^ Swinburne, A Song of Italy. I CHAPTER XI BEESCIA THE BRAVE Brescia la forte, Brescia la ferrea, Brescia lionessa d' Italia. —Dante. noblest Brescia, scarred from foot to head. And breast-deep in the dead, ■• Praise him^ from all the glories of thy graves. That yellow Mella laves With gentle and golden water, whose fair flood Ran wider with thy blood. — Swinburne. Brescia the brave, the iron-hearted, — Brescia the lioness of Italy ! Even as far back as Dante's time she was so known, — foremost in every danger, leader in every struggle against oppression. And to what a glori- ous climax came that lofty spirit, that heart of steel, in the heaving, storm-tossed time of the Risorgimento, — when never a day passed without some fresh hero, some new martyr, issuing from her impassioned people to battle for liberty, — when against all odds, all pos- sibilities, she struggled desperately on, till the streets lay piled "breast deep in the dead" ! A century before that, Baretti had mistaken her fieriness for bragga- docio; and his words reveal in her the same defiant valor: "The people of Brescia made it formerly a point of honor to be great bullies; and I remember the time myself when it was dangerous to have any dealings with them, as they were much inclined to quarrel merely for a whim, and would presently chal- lenge one to fight with pistol or blunderbuss." ^ 1 Garibaldi. * Baretti, Manners and Customs of Italy. BRESCIA THE BRAVE 419 Evelyn in his day remarked their intrepid mettle, reflected in their large manufacture of firearms, which has ever been and still is a prominent industry. Brescia is also celebrated for her extensive Roman remains, which are third in size of all Italy, and reveal her importance among the ancients. She must then have been a happy, prosperous city, for history has small record of her affliction with wars, courts, or great events. Catullus spoke of her as "Brixia, Veronse mater amata mese,"^ and Virgil represented her river Mella, now a smooth, yellow stream of no large size, as — — tonsis in vallibus ilium [florem] Pastores et curva legunt prope flumina Mellae.* Probably the lack of a commanding or critical site was responsible for Brescia's early peace. She sits just as far to the west of the southern end of Lake Garda as Verona does to the east, and likewise at the end of a mountain valley (the Val Trompia of the Mella), with her citadel upon the last hill, and her houses spreading from its slope far out upon the plain; but the valley leads only to some mountain hamlets, and Brescia commands no pass, navigable river, nor other trade- route.^ Thus she had no strategic value; yet to-day she ^ " Brescia, beloved mother of my Verona." 2 Georgics, iv, 277, 278. ^ It must be noted, however, that Brescia was the customary stopping- place, one day's journey from Milan, upon the great Roman road from the latter place to Friuli and the Orient; and as such, she not only handled a large amount of commerce (including that bound northward via Verona), but impressed her charms upon many an emperor, who showed his re- membrance in material ways, Caesar endowed the city with Roman citi- zenship; and Augustus richly embellished it with public buildings and monuments; hence its imperial name of Colonia Augusta Civica di Brescia. Further royal attentions made it a city " ripristinata, donata di augustali munificenze." — F. Odorici, Storie di Brescia, dai primi tempi all' etd, nostra ; — to whose ten learned volumes the reader is referred for the town's fullest and most accurate annals. 420 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY possesses a population nearly as large as Verona's, — seventy thousand, — and is one of the chief industrial centres of Italy. With Verona, Brescia successively shared the dis- asters and occupations of the various barbarian na- tions; and became an occasional dwelling-place for Desiderius, the last Lombard King, who left the mark of his residence in buildings still standing. With the loosening of the grip of the Frankish Counts, the city's fast developing martial spirit set up an independent republic, about 1073, and proceeded to assert an active part in Lombard affairs. One of the first heroes she sent forth was the great free-thinking monk, Arnold of Brescia, who first preached against the riches and corruption of the clergy, advocated the freedom of the soil and the holiness of poverty, roused the Romans during their revolution of 1143 to such mad- ness that they sacked the monasteries, and was finally burnt at the stake in 1155 by Pope Hadrian IV. He has become to all liberal Italians the initiator and representative of free speech and advanced ideas; and when his monument in Rome was recently unveiled a violent anticlerical rioting took place. The Brescian Republic was as Guelph as Verona was Ghibelline, and, beginning with Frederick I, struggled unceasingly against the Imperial preten- sions; it was a prominent member of both Lombard leagues, suffered a losing siege from the first Frederick, and endured a victorious siege from the second Fred- erick in 1237, which he was forced to raise after sixty- eight days of fruitless attacks. Twenty-one years later, however, it fell into the terrible power of Ezze- lino, as a result of the internecine strife between Guelph and Ghibelline, which, up to the coming of the next Emperor, Henry VII, in 1310, rent every Lombard BRESCIA THE BRAVE 421 city till it succumbed to the grasp of some tyrant. The monster of them all chained his Brescian enemies to a rock in the open plain, and let them perish of hunger. But only one year later the Brescians obtained their revenge by deserting at a critical moment from his army; and Ezzelino was struck down by a Brescian soldier in the Guelphic host. The republic was rein- stated, endured some threescore years longer, and fell forever in 1332 before the martial genius of Can Grande della Scala. When the proud city emerged from the weaker grip of Mastino II, about 1335, it was only to feel the viler yoke of the perfidious Visconti, who had united with the Carrara in despoiling the de- generate Scaliger. Thus early did Brescia become an important part of Visconti territory, — joined to the fortunes of the race of the Viper ;'^ and in order to understand her subsequent history, it will be necessary to summarize here that race's record. The family of Della Torre had paved the way for Milanese tyranny by asserting absolute power over that city, as the result of prolonged struggles; so that when Otho Visconti, Archbishop of Milan, in 1277 suddenly seized and imprisoned the Della Torre, his sole authority was recognized without trouble. Later he associated with him in the government his nephew Matteo, obtained from the Emperor the ap- pointment of them both as Imperial Vicars, and secured the people's acceptance of Matteo as his heir. Both of these were very strong men, and Matteo be- came "the model of a prudent Italian despot. . . . He ruled his states by force of character, craft, and insight, more than by violence or cruelty." ^ His * The Visconti standard and emblem represented an infant in the mouth of a snake. 2 Symonds, Age of the Despots. 422 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY successors followed his example. From 1302 to 1310 he was temporarily ousted by the Delia Torre and the Guelphs; but with the advent of Henry VII in the latter year, his welcome by the Delia Torre, and his attempt to extort money from the Milanese, the peo- ple rose, expelled Emperor and Delia Torre together, and recalled the Visconti. The Guelphic cities every- where rose, and Brescia had to endure in consequence another distressing Imperial siege, which this time overcame her. Matteo's son Galeazzo succeeded him as despot in 1322, and Galeazzo's son Azzo followed, who subjug- ated ten neighboring cities, including Brescia, and left a large kingdom at his death in 1339, to Lucchino, another son of Matteo. Lucchino secured possession of Parma and Pisa also ; and was soon succeeded by his brother Giovanni. "The Visconti now took the place of the Delia Scala as by far the most powerful of all the houses of the Lombard Plain. Giovanni held the lord- ship of sixteen flourishing Italian towns," ^ including Brescia, Bergamo, Crema, and Cremona. He was Archbishop of Milan as well as temporal ruler, — "the friend of Petrarch, and one of the most notable characters of the fourteenth century." ^ Upon his death the huge domains were for a time divided be- tween the three sons of his brother Stefano: Barnabo received the four cities last mentioned, Matteo the southern towns, and Galeazzo the western, while Genoa and Milan were to be ruled jointly. But the territories were soon reunited by the master political craftsman of the trecento, the ablest of all the Visconti, the greatest of all Italian despots, — Gian Galeazzo. Matteo was assassinated by his brothers; Galeazzo ^ Oscar Browning, Guelfs and Ghihellines. ^ Symonds, Age of the Despots. BRESCIA THE BRAVE 423 died ; Gian Galeazzo, as his only son, succeeded him in 1378 in possession of the western towns, and, by long deceiving his uncle Barnabo with a mask of timid- ity, finally induced him, in 1385, to come out of Milan with his sons, and greet his nephew as the latter passed by with an escort of horsemen. It was a fatal error; for Gian Galeazzo with a word to his soldiers seized Barnabo and the sons, entered Milan, imprisoned them, and declared himself sole ruler of the Visconti domains. Then began those endless, far-reaching, secret schemings to make himself the master of all Italy, by any means discoverable, — treachery, mur- der, bribery, the sowing of dissension and suspicion, the deception of friends and foes, the hiring of con- dottieri to make wars, etc., — means which resulted in the steady addition to his state of one city after another, until it extended from the Alps to the Um- brian Plain, from Friuli to Piedmont and Liguria. While the rest of Italy trembled before the giant hand closing irresistibly upon them, suddenly, how- ever, in 1402, the plague carried off this archetype of Machiavelli's ideal prince.^ His dominions by his will were equally divided between the two legitimate infant sons, for whom the widowed Duchess Caterina was appointed guardian ; Giovanni Maria was to have Milan, and half the subject cities, including Brescia and Bergamo, — Filippo Maria, the other half, with Pavia for his capital. But — the formidable captains of adventure whom Gian Galeazzo had trained and held in leash, at the head of the forces which he had helped them gather, instantly disregarded this will, and acted for themselves ; while in those cities which they did not seize, the old local tyrants bobbed up again. * Machiavelli, De Principatibus. 424 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Pandolfo Malatesta, the condottiere, with his troops grasped Brescia in the turmoil. Francesco della Car- rara took Verona. The Duchess now made her error of calHng the Venetians to her aid, — who expelled the Carrara from Verona, Vicenza, and Padua, but kept the spoil for their own. Catherine was soon poisoned; Gian Maria was murdered at Milan, where he had been indulging in the most inhuman atrocities ever known; and Filippo Maria, likewise a cruel degener- ate but more crafty and ambitious, proceeded step by step to recover his father's dominions, by his father's methods. He was a vile, hideous, cowardly creature, who hid himself from all men in secret chambers, and even constructed canals with high walls by which to pass unperceived from palace to palace; but he had inherited his father's power of using abler men. He discovered Carmagnola, making him captain of his armies; and the latter between 1412 and 1422 success- ively dislodged the swarm of lesser tyrants, including Malatesta from Brescia; and so recovered most of the Visconti territories. Then Filippo renewed his father's designs upon Italy, and attacked the more southerly states, with Francesco Sforza the elder as his general, — who, it is said, started life as a woodchopper. When Sforza was killed, his great son of the same name succeeded him. Carmagnola had been so bril- liantly successful that the mean spirit of Filippo was jealous, and disgraced him. It was his fatal error. Carmagnola fled to Venice, induced the Republic to yield to the entreaties of Florence to form a league against Milan, and in 1426 led a powerful Venetian army to victory over the Duke. Brescia was the first fruit of the campaign, and, with her surrounding lands, became from that time a happy and prosperous Venetian subject. Car- BRESCIA THE BRAVE ' 425 magnola drove the Milanese back on every side; Sforza revolted against the Duke and took for a while the other side, bought over by the Floren- tines. Carmagnola had such great successes that he became too independent and indolent for the Vene- tian Council of Ten; who finally suspected him of treasonable correspondence with Filippo, executed him, and placed Gattamelata in charge of their forces. The condottiere, Niccolo Piccinino, of Perugia, led the Milanese in the ensuing campaign, with much ability. Now occurred the memorable siege of Brescia in 1439-40, by Filippo Visconti's army. The city had already grown so fond of the Republican rule that she "held out against unheard-of sufferings," — while Gattamelata strove to relieve h^r. The re-provision- ing of the city was finally accomplished by an unparal- lelled feat, which has gone reverberating through the annals of warfare: "Six ships and twenty-five lighter boats were built at Venice, taken up the Adige to Mori, just below Ala, and there placed upon rollers and greased boards; more than two thousand oxen were employed to haul them uphill, into the waters of the little lake of S. Andrea, From S. Andrea they were hauled in like fashion over a depression in Monte Baldo, and gradually lowered down the western slope till they reached the lake [of Garda] at Torbole."^ Brescia was thus re-stored, to the amazement of Pic- cinino; who was also soon defeated by Sforza, advanc- ing from the south, and escaped with his own life only "by being carried in a sack on the shoulders of one of his men." In 1442 Sforza was reattached to Duke Filippo by succeeding in the marriage which he demanded with * Brown, Venice: A Historical Sketch of the Republic. 426 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY the latter's only child, Bianca. Soon after Filippo ^ died, in 1447, without having succeeded, in spite of all his desperate attempts, in recovering either Brescia or Bergamo; which thenceforth remained loyal and pro- sperous Venetian cities, undisturbed in their allegiance, except during the War of the League of Cambrai, 1508-16. At the beginning of that terrible period of warfare, after the first disastrous defeat of the Venetians, Brescia at once surrendered to the French; but the people were so maltreated, that they revolted on Feb- ruary 3, 1512. Thereupon the renowned Gaston de Foix — the "Thunderbolt of Italy," a nephew of Louis XII — took the city by assault, only sixteen days later, and gave it over to sack and massacre. This was one of the most terrible events of the Re- naissance age. For days the French troops hunted down the citizens, pillaged, and destroyed, until the city was a complete wreck, burned in large part, and most of tjie Brescians who had not fled beforehand were slain. Chevalier Bayard, the Knight " sans peur et sans reproche," who was wounded in the assault, stated in his diary that over twenty-two thousand persons, of every age and sex, filled the streets with their corpses. Brescia, till then one of the richest cities of North Italy, was completely ruined, and never entirely recovered from the destruction. The survivors now remembered that twenty-six years pre- viously this calamity had been prophesied to them, for their sinfulness, by a wandering monk, — ■ the martyr, Girolamo Savonarola! ^ Filippo Maria, the last of the Visconti, was shortly succeeded in the dukedom of Milan by Francesco Sforza, his son-in-law, who reigned till 1466. Five princes of the disastrous Sforza line rapidly followed him; his grandson Francesco II, the last duke, coming to his end in 1526, when Milan and its territories became a part of the Spanish dominions. BRESCIA THE BRAVE 427 After the Peace of 1516, which ended the war of Cambrai, Brescia was returned to Venice, and thence- forth remained steady in her allegiance until the end of the Republic.^ With Verona she afterward endured the Austrian tyranny, but less patiently, and more resentfully, her spirit of freedom rising more fiery with every year of slavery, until she became the burn- ing soul and centre of the revolution in Lombardy. From Brescia there emanated an ever increasing stream of conspiracies, plots, organizations, and heroic leaders, against the foreign dominion; the grand old castle upon her height was extended, strengthened, and filled with Austrian battalions, to watch the seething city at their feet. These ebullitions at last burst forth in the rising of 1848, when Brescia's spirit had permeated and roused the whole of Lombardy; like a whirlwind the Bres- cians sprang to arms, assumed their preconceived organization, and appointed as their leader Count Martinengo, — the noble, devoted head of an historic family, descended from that Tebaldo Martinengo to whom the Emperor Otho I for his bravery gave fifteen castles and the Order of the Red Eagle. When this first attempt was ended by the defeat of the Piedmont- ese and their Italian auxiliaries, under Charles Albert, ^ An interesting incident of the Venetian period was the grandiose reception and entertainment, lasting twelve days, given by Giorgio Cor- naro, the Podesta, to his sister, the ex-Queen of Cyprus, on one of her three excursions from the solitude of Asolo {q.v.). "A guard of forty youths met her outside the town. . . . Triumphs and allegorical' pageants followed. . . . The Queen entered the city in a chariot of state drawn by four white horses, horned like unicorns. Jousts by torchlight were given, and the jousters marched in procession, with helmets on their heads from whose crests burnt flames. It was Caterina's last royal ceremony. . . . But Venice showed herself jealous of this play at mimic royalty, and Giorgio was soon after recalled." — Horatio Brown, Studies in the His- tory of Venice. 428 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY at Novara, on March 23, 1849, — Brescia alone of the Lombard cities refused to yield, having again risen against the garrison, under Count Martinengo and the young hero Tito Speri, captured the Austrian gov- ernor, and blockaded his five hundred troops in the citadel. It was a magnificent foolhardiness, which in its very failure raised countless patriots from the blood of the slain. ^ Austrian batteries were massed about the city, and day after day, from them and from the castle, was poured a terrible storm of shot and shell that spared neither child nor woman, fired the houses in a score of places, and turned the streets into a blazing shambles. Despite everything, the citizens would not yield, pre- ferring death to that foreign domination. The pity of it all was, that General Haynau, the Austrian leader, knew of the result at Novara, but would not reveal it to the Brescians; he did not want them to have a valid reason for yielding; he was determined to exterminate them through their very courage. Finally the advanc- ing enemy, whose progress was bitterly contested from building to building, and street to street, hemmed the remaining Brescians into the central piazza, with "scenes of such atrocious cruelty as baffle descrip- tion. . . . The misfortunes of Brescia can only be equaled by its heroic bravery; and the name of this city has become sacred to all true Italians."^ The decimated remnant at last surrendered. Tito Speri and the other surviving leaders were ultimately allowed to go free; but several years later, for a ^ "The Brescians are up!" cried George Meredith, in his romance, Vittoria. "Brescia is always the eagle that looks over Lombardy!" And the gifted author, who spoke of the Risorgimento as the first and greatest enthusiasm of his youth, described later with a thrilling power the flight of the surviving patriots from the captured city. ^ The Italian Volunteers; Appendix, note D. BRESCIA THE BRAVE 429 discovered conspiracy, Speri was confined, with many others, in the castle, which was one huge prison-house of patriots; then he was conveyed to the fortress of Mantua, and garroted. He was but twenty-eight years of age. The insurrection of 1849, however, be- came famous as "The Ten Days of Brescia"; and Haynau was known henceforth as "The Hyena of Brescia, — execrated throughout the civihzed world." ^ The city, nevertheless, was not dismayed; her intrepid spirit soon soared fiercely once more. Ten years of ceaseless plotting followed, — often discovered, as in the said cabal of 1851-52, which sent so many illus- trious citizens to the scaffold; and after the Peace of Villafranca, which freed Brescia, but left eastern Venetia still in Austrian hands, the Brescians con- tinued to agitate, plot, and organize, until the Italian Government was obliged, for form's sake, to arrest a large number of them in 1862, who were preparing a raid upon Austrian territory, under Garibaldi. Brescia's school of art was as distinct in personality as was her people's character; and though her artists were never numerous, they were strong, unique, and interesting. The Paduan school made the founda- tion, as elsewhere in Lombardy, — through Vincenzo Foppa, the pupil of Mantegna, and Ferramola and others of Foppa's disciples. Vincenzo Civerchio of Crema painted in Brescia about that time, and left the impress of his genius. Foppa it was who started the first school of Milan, also, in the latter half of the quattrocento. Ferramola, "a cold and disagreeable colorist,"^ survived the destruction of 1512, and left widespread works; a fellow-laborer of his, about 1500, was one Paolo Zoppo, a native Brescian also, said * Orsi, Modern Italy. * Layard, Handbook of Painting. 430 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY to have been a pupil of Perugino and Giovanni Bellini. But now came the early cinquecentists, Brescia's greatest masters. Girolamo Romanino (1485-1566), who was the son of an obscure painter, and is said to have been early influenced by Civerchio's grace and power, completed his art education at Venice and Padua, where "from studying the works of Giorgione he acquired that brilliant golden coloring for which his works are celebrated."^ I had already seen good examples of them at Padua and Verona; but nearly all of them remain at Brescia, where he lived long and had many pupils. His only rival, and the greatest of all Brescians, was Alessandro Bonvicini, called II Moretto (1498-1555), the most of whose pictures are also in his native town, — though I had observed at Verona several specimens of his characteristic "silvery tone." f Moretto passed his whole life in Brescia; studying under Feriiamola first, then imitating Titian and the Venetians, he eventually "formed a style of his own, which ... is distinguished ... by a cool, tender, and harmonious scale of color which has a peculiar charm, and is entirely his own. . . . He almost rivaled Titian in the stateliness and dignity of his figures. . . . Moretto was of a gentle, pious nature, and his works are almost exclusively of a quiet, relig- ious character."^ It is related that he was wont to fast and pray long when composing a painting of a Madonna or other holy personage, and in such a way painted two or three canvases by inspiration, which attained miraculous powers. Geronimo Savoldo (1508-48) was the third great Brescian master, — who, however, seldom stayed ^ Layard, Handbook of Painting. BRESCIA THE BRAVE 431 there, having moved to Venice, where "he is known to have become one of the most formidable of Titian's rivals; not, indeed, in works of a large scale, but in smaller pieces conducted with an exquisite degree of care,"^ To me his works are invariably most delight- ful. The next generation, in the middle and latter part of the cinquecento, consisted chiefly of Moretto's pupils; foremost among them was Giovanni Battista Moroni, the renowned portrait painter, who was unsurpassed in that line. Perhaps ahead of them all, however, except Moroni, was Romanino's son-in-law and dis- ciple, Lattanzio Gambara, who painted imposing scriptural scenes, and "various histories and fables truly beautiful."^ After these men came the decad- ence. My journey from Verona to Brescia was accom- plished without incident, beyond the usual over- crowding of the train always found upon the main lines. The passengers were mostly commercial Ital- ians, who travel nowadays very much more than for- merly ; they pile luggage and wraps in the empty seats of a compartment, and often use every possible means, including glowering, snarling, and refusal to move, to deter others from entering, — being still, as a class, remarkably medieval in all ideas regarding their own comfort. The usual majority of traveling Italians, however, are very courteous. The train soon entered the swelling, rounded, low hills thrown forward by the Alps to the south of Lake Garda, and stopped awhile at Peschiera, at the lake's southeastern cor- ner, — beside its effluent, the historic river Mincio. The Mincio flows directly southward, wide and deep, 1 Lanzi, History of Painting. 432 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY past Valeggio and Mantua to the Po, and has always been of much strategic importance. Peschiera, a Httle place of eighteen hundred people, "buried in its al- most subterranean fastnesses like a mole," ^ has also been important in a strategic way only, having been a fortress for centuries, and a corner of the celebrated Austrian "Quadrilateral." A number of its huge bas- tions and moats were passed close at hand, — the same which were so bravely carried by the Pied- montese on May 30, 1848. Then we proceeded along the lake's southern shore, with beautiful views over its wide, blue expanse to the imposing Alps between which it gradually narrowed, — giving a far vista of wondrous grandeur. Charming white towns and hamlets dotted the receding, lux- uriant shores, and glistened from the dark Alpine flanks. Here extended the slim peninsula of Sirmione;^ and afar on the northwestern bank, stretched at the foot of those glowering peaks, lay the lovely pro- tected coast-strip known as the Riviera, fragrant and enchanting with its orange and lemon groves, and its verdure of eternal summer. To it well apply Goethe's enthusiastic lines : — Dost know the land of lemon flowers. Of dusky, gold-flecked orange bowers? The breath of the azure sky scarce heaves The myrtle and high laurel leaves.* * Hazlitt, Journey through France and Italy in 1826. 2 Poets from the classic days to Tennyson have extolled the loveliness of this spot, and its enchanting Benacus. We remember Thomas Moore's translation of Catullus: — Sweet Sirmio! Thou the very eye Of all peninsulas and isles That in our lakes of silver lie. Or sleep enwreathed by Neptune's smiles. * R. H. Schauffler's translation. BRESCIA THE BRAVE 433 We stopped another minute at Desenzano, at the southwest angle, a pleasant, modern-looking town of some five thousand inhabitants, whence the steamers ply to the other ports. Then starting a last time, and leaving the gracious lake behind, we crossed the plain northwesterly to the next spur of the Alps, rolled along its olive-covered, southern flanks for half a dozen miles, and reached Brescia at its farther ex- tremity. The station proved to be close without the southern wall, near the "Porta Stazione" at its western end. I climbed into the 'bus of the principal albergo, and was jolted through this gateway and up the wide, modern-looking Corso Vittorio Emanuele, north- eastward toward the city's centre. But when about halfway to the centre, we turned to the right, into the important thoroughfare which, under the names of Corsos Palestra, Zanardelli, and Magenta, crosses the city from west to east; and proceeding in the latter direction, we soon stopped in the wide, brilliant Zanar- delli, before the albergo on its southern side. The old courtyard of the hotel had been modernized into a glass-covered hall, with the restaurant on one side, as usual, and the stairs upon the other. Here for the first time in the plain-towns I was displeased; the prices appeared out of all proportion to the poor ac- commodation, the service was far from pleasant to me, and the pompous landlord particularly dis- agreeable. But I reflected that it was only for a week or two, and endured my troubles philosophically. As far back as Hazlitt's time, the bad inns of Brescia were a cause of complaint.^ The castle hill of Brescia, which, like Verona's, gave origin to the town, rises at the northeastern corner of ^ Hazlitt, Journey through France and Italy in 1836 {sopra). 434 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY the quadrilateral, — whose sides turn generally to- ward the four points of the compass; it is a detached height, thrown forward some way from the southwest- ern angle of the mountain-chain; the hills retreat to the east and north, leaving a small section of the plain — the once beautiful vale of the Mella — extending behind the citadel for several miles. There a modern quarter has recently grown up, with the erection of dozens of factories, constituting Brescia's industrial life; so that their ugly windows, chimneys, and smoke- palls are conveniently separated and hidden by the lofty hill. Upon the latter the Romans built their fortress, and at its southern foot, their templed city, whose extent is still distinguishable by the regular network of right- angled streets, occupying about a sixth of the area of the present town. This Roman section is delimited on the west by the medieval piazzas, del Duomo and del Comune, — which now lie exactly in the city's centre, — by the.Corso Magenta on the south, the city wall on the east, and the steep hillside on the north. At the middle of the foot of this verdurous hillside stand the imposing remains of the great Temple to Hercules erected by the Emperor Vespasian; before which ex- tended the ancient Forum, — still partly open, with exiguous fragments of its classic buildings, under the modern name of Piazza del Museo. For the reconsti- tuted Temple has been fitly utilized as a museum of antiquities. I understood, then, the reason for the unusual width of the Corso Zanardelli (formerly called Corso del Teatro, on account of the location here of all the theatres) when I emerged upon it next morning for my preliminary walk: it occupies the site of the ancient southern wall. An early-medieval extension of the BRESCIA THE BRAVE 435 Roman town is also indicated upon the map, — its wall running westward halfway along the Corso Palestra, then northward along the Via della Pace and Via delle Battaglie; thus including the central piazzas and the early public buildings and churches. The Corso was quite modern in appearance, — stuc- coed modern buildings, tramway tracks, clanging cars, a crowd of vehicles, and a greater crowd of pedestri- ans; but on its northern side was a continuous deep arcade, with an upper story containing two windows over each wide arch, and over them again a series of extraordinary large chimneys, perched upon the very eaves; — while thirty feet back of these rose a man- sard roof carrying a hanging garden with trellised vines. Altogether a picturesque construction, — with a great triumphal arch in its centre, and its deep ar- cades filled with caffe-tables. At its western end, where the Corso changes its name to Palestra, the Via delle Spaderie — a quaint cogno- men, this "Street of the Sword-Shops" — diverges northward to Piazza Comune, three hundred yards distant. That one of the principal streets should have such a name fairly demonstrates the city's ancient activity in that line. Evelyn said in 1645: "Here I purchased . . . my fine carabine, which cost me nine pistoles; this Citty being famous for these firearms. . . . This Citty consists most in artists, every shop abounding in gunns, swords, armores, etc."^ — But first I sought the Piazza Nuova, — just off the Corso Palestra to the right, a block farther west, — used for the fruit and vegetable market. Here the scene was * Evelyn, Diary and Letters. — Here stood the workshop of the re- nowned armorer, Maso of Brescia; who is supposed to have wrought the very fine chain shirt in which Tito Melema sought to save his life. {Romola.) 436 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY more medieval: two- and three-storied, old stucco houses surrounded the village of canvas-roofed booths, glaring in the sun, thronged with chattering, gesticu- lating people; the strange, large chimneys again sur- mounted the eaves, and at the west end rose a pretty marble fountain, bearing a shapely Cupid astride a dolphin. Behind this loomed a heavy rococo palace, of stucco with painful ornamentations, — one of the former residences of the Martinengo family, now occupied by the city health- and police-offices. I noticed some of the gendarmes, with costumes and batons much like those of Udine. Returning to the narrow Via delle Spaderie, I fol- lowed its crowded arcades to Piazza Comune (or Vecchia), where the arcades became two-storied and monumental, — along its eastern end. Westward before me stretched the paved open square, to a pa- latial structure of such superb and dazzling beauty that I stood rooted in surprise: a great mass of white and silvery gray marbles flashed brilliantly the radiant lines of arches, columns, pilasters, balustrades and carved cornices, assembled in the glorious harmony of the stately Renaissance, with a bewildering wealth of sculpture. Majestically imposing in the colossal arches and pillars, yet joyous and graceful in the countless rich details, that did not overload the purity of design, it glistened in the morning sunlight like an epitome of the great classic revival. It was Brescia's far-famed Palazzo Municipale, — one of the grandest efforts of the Renaissance. The general design is quite the same as many another Municipio of the plain-towns, — the three ground- floor arches, opening into the public loggia, and. the single upper story, pierced by three ornate windows; but what a difference in the magnitude of the scale, — BRESCIA THE BRAVE 437 the arclies, and the Corinthian half -columns facing their piers, rising to a height of thirty feet and more; the upper division towering twice as high again, far above the five-storied buildings near. And what a difference in the wealth of material and ornament: the exquisite carved arabesques on the faces of the upper pilasters; the convoluted foliage with charming putti, enriching the lovely frieze; the delicate, gleaming balustrades upon the cornices; the finely sculptured heads looking forth from apertures in the arch-span- drils; the sculptured Cupids gracing the eaves; — all conveyed to me a sense of enchantment, with the silvery glowing tone of a picture by Moretto. "La Loggia" — as the people like to call it — though commenced by the architect Fromontone in 1492, under the orders of that magnificent builder, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, reflects mostly the genius of Sansovino; Palladio, too, modelled those beautiful window-frames, with the unusual carved cornices. The original design intended a dome upon the sum- mit, — which there is talk of now adding. The great hall upon which the windows opened, splendidly decorated by Palladio, was celebrated as one of the stateliest in Italy; but was unhappily destroyed by a fire in 1575. In the adjacent northwest angle of the piazza I observed a curious house which they had once com- menced to ornament in consonance with the palace, but had evidently stopped at the second story, leaving the upper bare stuccoed wall at a queer variance with the stone pilasters, ornate cornice, and handsome pedi- mented doorway below. Elsewhere handsome build- ings surrounded the piazza with a fit frame. On the south stood the long, three-storied palace, marble- faced and well-proportioned, of the Monte di Pieta, 438 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY having pleasing Renaissance windows and two monu- mental, arched entrances. The eastern was framed by Corinthian pilasters, the western similarly inclosed, — with a double arcaded passage below, running most gracefully on central Corinthian columns through to a rear street; over it was a delightful colonnaded win- dow, of seven arches on dainty marble shafts, sculpt- ured roundabout with shields and arabesques. It would be difficult to find anywhere a more delicious bit of the Renaissance. On the east side of the piazza, the lofty arcade, car- ried upon white granite pillars, was adorned overhead with panels of shining black marble, a clock-face in the centre, and the municipal bell swinging openly upon the roof, with the usual bronze hammer-bearers to strike the hours. Again the loving imitation of St. Mark. At the northeast corner a heavy, medieval, stone fortress tower rose above the roofs, grimly battle- mented; and below it stood Brescia's monument to the heroes of the "Ten Days," showing the city as a marble female crowning her sons. I entered the loggia of the Municipio, which was adorned simply with the fine, monolithic, supporting columns, of Corinthian type, and a very lovely portal with four small columns at the sides, having delicate details of carved arabesques and serpentine medal- lions. Through an atrium I reached the grand stair- case of white stone, whose lofty roof was decorated with modern stucco reliefs and paintings; it had a beautiful balustrade, and marble paneling at the sides. But all this was modern; the original stairway — which mounted at each side of the atrium, and of which I saw a remaining landing, broken off just above the doorway — having been destroyed in the fire of 1575. The great upper hall then extended all BRESCIA THE BRAVE 439 the way back, over the well where this later staircase now mounted in the rear. An attendant at its top took me into the remaining half of the hall, in front; though entirely denuded of its marbles, and in a chaotic state of commenced renovation, the shapely, grouped, brick columns around the walls suggested visions of its former glory. These conceptions were proved correct a moment later, when, in looking over the oflfices partitioned off in the rear, I was shown a little painting, representing the hall's original design and appearance, of truly wonderful beauty; two other paintings represented the plan of the domed fagade, and the new hall now in process of construction. One office had an elegant, painted, wooden ceiling, of Re- naissance design, — put up immediately after the fire. On emerging I inspected the sides and back of the palace, finding the unusual fact that the rich design of the fagade had been carried entirely around, so that every aspect presented the same sumptuous and dazzling decoration of varied marbles; and the sides, from their much longer sweep, produced a deeper feeling of power and immensity. Italy has few struct- ures so perfectly carried out and entirely harmonized. Having now seen Brescia's capo di lavoro, I strolled through the archway of the clock-tower, eastward for a block, between closely set old stuccoed buildings, and southward then, immediately into the vast and stately Piazza del Duomo. On to the south it extended, for two hundred yards, with a breadth of fully seventy yards, to a handsome modern palace at the farther end; picturesque old buildings, painted in softened tints of brown, pink, ochre, and green, lined the western side; on the left rose first the renowned Broletto, with its diversified, Romanesque fagade, of fascinating in- 440 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY terest; then the stupendous form of the Duomo Nuovo, with its ponderous, Late-Renaissance, stone front and soaring dome; and finally, the quaint, round building of the Duomo Vecchio, looking very aged and ugly in its rough-stone walls, beside the white magnificence of its successor. The huge Broletto, or old town-hall, I perceived extended a long way north from the piazza, along the narrow street issuing from that angle, and quite a dis- tance to the east, along the street between it and the Duomo Nuovo, — occupying thus a large block by itself. It is famous as one of Italy's finest Roman- esque buildings, abounding in varied, engaging de- tails of many different generations. It has all the force, dignity, and charming native developments of the civic structures erected in those ages when the cities were proud and glorious republics, not yet subjected to the debasements of tyranny. Therefore, though not so finished and perfectly beautiful as Gian Ga- leazzo's Municipio, it possesses, instead, a sense of stern power and grandeur, lightened by diverse de- tails of exquisite loveliness, — with a pathos arising from their manifestation of the victories won by those remote artisans, struggling by patriotic inspiration to overcome the difficulties of artistic ignorance. For it is a work of artisans, with each generation building differently from its predecessors, — rather than the product of an architect's design; and so it expresses the aspiring soul, the fiery spirit, of those long-gone people, written here clearly in brick and stone, — the im- perishable record of their struggles and slow advances. "In no way" — wrote the learned Symonds — "is the characteristic diversity of the Italian communities so noticeable as in their buildings. Each district, each town, has a well-defined peculiarity, reflecting the BRESCIA. PALAZZO MTNICIFALE (^FROAIENTUNK DA liKE.SCIA.) BRESCIA THE BRAVE 441 specific qualities of the inhabitants and the conditions under which they grew in culture." ^ The Broletto was mostly built between 1187 and 1227, was continued in the quattrocento , and badly in- jured by horrible rococo changes in the seicento; but a restoration of the parts so mutilated had been recently commenced, in the original style. Broadly speaking, there were five different structures: the first on the corner next the Duomo, of white stone, with a fine, round-arched portal, a long, corbelled balcony, and a series of triple, Romanesque, marble windows on the second storyj that were really the most beautiful fea- ture of the whole building; — the triple round arches resting upon coupled red-marble shafts, and all in- closed within a large arch, recessed with mouldings. Two of these windows adorned the f agade, the others ex- tended all along the side toward the Duomo; some had been barbarously closed up in the seventeenth century, but were now being restored. The second part of the f agade, proceeding northward, was a high square tower of browned stone, unbroken, except for three loop- holes, to its battlemented belfry; the third was a long extent of gray stone, in the two lower stories, and of red brick in the topmost, with irregularly scattered, lovely, red-and- white windows, including several of three and four lights, with white marble shafts; all the upper windows had originally been of that charm- ing design,^ and will be so replaced ; the southernmost of those remaining, placed just over the arched entrance to the courtyard, was the ancient ringhiera, from ^ J. A. Symonds, Fine Arts, chap. ii. ^ These exquisite specimens of native duecento work, among the hand- somest to be found anywhere, have the voussoirs of their arches alternately red and white; while the graceful slender columns of white marble are coupled one behind the other, in pairs. 442 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY which proclamations and addresses were made to the assembled people for centuries. Next came a striking composition of the quattro- cento, in brick with terra-cotta decoration, — the fagade of the abandoned Church of S. Agostino, once a part of the Broletto: it had an interesting Gothic doorway, with curious, medieval, stone lions' heads projecting roundabout from the wall, a charming cotta rose-window, and above that a fine pointed window; — but all three were blocked up and spoiled. Finally came a very early structure, on the corner, and extending along the northern side, composed of heterogeneous medieval materials and very homely, — except for the shapely cbtta frieze and cornice. Adja- cent to this northwestern corner a tiny park stretched up the first slope of the castle hill, — which here loomed far overhead; the fresh green of the few massed trees and the shrubbery, inclosed between high old dwell- ings, delighted my tired eyes; and before them I noticed a Bnarble statue gleaming, — a young soldier of fiery air, with musket and powder-horn, but common garments, and a face so inspired with patriotic fervor that the figure seemed to speak before my very gaze. It was Tito Speri, — fitly remembered here, at the foot of that fortress which he led his fellow citizens to assault, and on the very spot where occurred the bloodiest struggle of the conflict. Turning back, I entered the courtyard of the Bro- letto, — a wide space arcaded on the north and east sides, presenting another fanciful mixture of styles; the northern arcade was two-storied and of Renais- sance design, the eastern, Gothic; the original western one had been built up; and the windows above were scattered in picturesque irregularity and diversity, — including three more, on the south side, of those lovely BRESCIA THE BRAVE 443 Romanesque ones with three and four arches. Four pairs of their coupled, red-marble shafts were prettily twisted in spiral coils. The old stone walls had been patched, blocked up and reopened, till they looked much like a checker board. People were continually passing in large numbers, using the court as a conduit from one street to another; they stood in groups, shouting at each other with an echoing din; vehicles passed also, the drivers using the arcades for stalls, and leading their horses to drink at the central fountain. I crossed to the eastern arcade, supported on heavy stone piers, and found it double, with "another row of piers running down the centre. . . . The groining has transverse and diagonal ribs, the former being very remarkable, and, as not unfrequently seen in good Italian work, slightly ogeed." ^ This peculiarity struck me, however, as quite unusual, especially in a cloister. There was a long stately stone stairway here, which I ascended to the first floor, and there inspected a num- ber of courtrooms and council-chambers, filled with the customary green baize tables ; several of the rooms on the south side retained the original early ceilings, with frescoes in crumbling Renaissance designs; and there were two of the original big Romanesque win- dows. But I have seldom seen dingier furniture than that which disgraced these public apartments. I next repaired to the Duomo Nuovo, whose white rococo fagade, erected about 1600, is more imposing than pleasing; it is in two divisions, with Corinthian half -columns and pilasters for ornament; there are three ugly squared doorways, and one upper window; enormous as the dome is, — third largest in all Italy, — it is concealed from the front by the lofty gable. ^ Street, Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages. 444 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Like the Municipio, no expense has been spared in qarrying the same wealth of material and decoration around the sides and rear. The adjacent old cathe- dral, called from its shape "La Rotonda," dated orig- inally from the seventh century; but in its present form is of the tenth or eleventh, — as the medieval walls of rough stone bear witness. Its large central drum is pierced by a row of round- arched windows near the top, is decorated with Lom- bard pilaster-strips, and an arcaded cornice, and sur- rounded by a one-stt>ry lean-to, in which opens the main portal, of rococo design; a subsidiary entrance is in the northwest side. This latter is of brick, round- arched, with an old fresco of the Madonna and Saints in its lunette, and opens upon a railed area eight feet below, reached by steps from the street, — showing how much the street level has risen since the build- ing's erection. Eight feet in eight centuries, — slowly, imperceptibly, by the mere bringing of country mud on horses' hobfs and the deposit of waste; such was the inevitable consequence of the old method of throwing all garbage into the unpaved streets, — which buried all the ancient cities so far beneath our levels. It was now afternoon, and the cathedrals were both closed for the siesta hour; but on another day I en- tered the Duomo Nuovo, and stood surprised in its vast, majestic interior, shaped like a Greek cross, dwarfing all things with its far-off vaulting and stu- pendous dome. The dimensions were not only magni- ficent, but in perfect proportions, and all in light hues. The enormous white piers separating nave from aisles were adorned with Corinthian half-columns and pilasters, rising to a rich frieze and cornice; the barrel- vaulting of creamy stucco carried boldly decorated ribs; around the great drum, in its flood of light, rose BRESCIA THE BRAVE 445 other pilasters and cornices, terminating in the dome that soared wonderfully to heaven. By the first two piers stood modern monuments to deceased bishops, with some of the excellent sculpture of recent days; and over the second altar to the right — affixed, like the others, directly to the side wall — stood another and very striking modern work, a mag- nificent Renaissance pala-iraine, of four huge gilded columns upholding a gilded entablature, embellished with two marble statues. It contained a painting by Gregoletti, of Christ healing the sick. Next to this came a genuine Renaissance work, of exceeding at- tractiveness: an exquisitely carved marble sarcopha- gus, crowned by three statuettes, and cut upon the front side with three panels of reliefs, containing many small figures of fine execution and dramatic action, — scenes from the lives of the saints whose bodies lay within; these were Saints Apollonius and Philas- trus, — early Bishops of Brescia. After one more look about the colossal edifice, re- flecting how superior it was in luminosity and grace to the Duomo of Florence, — which is of much the same size and general plan, — I followed the guiding sac- ristan down a passage to the right, descending a flight of steps, into the presbytery of the Duomo Vecchio. The circular nave of the tenth century lay still lower, surrounded by eight heavy piers bearing rounded arches, all of bare rough stone, likewise the wall above them, in which the series of unframed windows ad- mitted the light. Behind the piers circled an ambu- latory, somewhat higher, — in which I was shown a remaining section of the frescoes, coeval with the build- ing, that once covered its vaulted roof; they were per- fectly Byzantine, exactly like mosaic in design and effect. Real, modern mosaic covered the floor of the 446 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY nave; but the sacristan lifted a trap-door, displaying a piece of tlie original pavement, one thousand years old.i Upon the west side of the ambulatory, adjacent to the seldom used main entrance, I saw two fragments of the old stairways, supported on heavy columns against the wall, which once mounted to the tower there, that was demolished in 1708. The ambulatory further contained some interesting early tombs and reliefs; chief among them, the magnificent red-marble tomb of Bishop Berardo Maggi, dated 1308. On the cover of the sarcophagus lies the Bishop in full robes, with mitre and crozier, — the four Evangelists, in minia- ture, sitting at his head and feet; also at the head and feet, in separate niches, are the two martyred bishops, ApoUonius and Philastrus, and the two protecting saints of Brescia, Faustinus and Jovita. Behind the reclining form winds a most quaint procession of little figures, — the priests who composed the decedent's funeral corlege, carrying all the picturesque parapher- nalia of the epoch. On the sides are St. George and the dragon. Saints Peter and Paul, and an extraordi- nary large tableau of the decedent being first received into a monastery, showing the friars headed by their abbot, the friends and relatives, and two of the monks administering the oath to the novice. The artist was probably Ugo da Campione, and it is one of his finest works. * Among the innumerable grand pageants and historic ceremonies that have been enacted on that pavement, — for every civic act of medieval days was consecrated by the Church, — we may note the momentous occasion of May 30, 1431, when, Brescia having been at last occupied by Venice, and Filippo Visconti straining every resource to recover the city, amid a gorgeous concourse of all her notabilities the already beloved "standard of San Marco was solemnly consigned to Carmagnola; — and lie took the field in force." — Brown, Studies in the History of Venice. BRESCIA THE BRAVE 447 Faustinus and Jovita, of whom the Brescians think so very highly, were brothers, natives of the city, who were converted by that same St. Apollonius, and devoted their property and hves to well-doing; but being finally accused of the crime of Christianity, which they admitted and refused to recant, they were thrown to the lions, — who of course declined to injure them, — and were then beheaded. A curious tenth- century relief of St. Apollonius adorned the wall near the tomb. On the east side of the ambulatory were a very lifelike and graceful trecento relief of the Ma- donna, and two more interesting tombs: that of Bishop Lambertino di Bologna, of 1349, having the customary recumbent figure on the top, and the Madonna with seven standing saints upon the front; and another of 1479, in a niche having an elegant marble Renaissance frame. Here steps ascended from the rotonda to the am- bulatory and from the latter to the presbytery, — which was remarkably wide, and was added consider- ably later, together with the long choir and apse. Upon the apse wall hung Moretto's splendid As- sumption of the Virgin, — whose noble, majestic figure, seldom equalled in gracious dignity, hovers in clouds amidst lovely child-angels, above the apostles grouped in attitudes of amazement. The tone was luxurious, golden above and silvery below, and the whole effect superbly brilliant. At its sides hung two Romaninos, of his poorer quality, suffering sadly by the comparison; but below it was a sublime master- piece of Palma Vecchio's, an Adoration of the Shep- herds, of a grandeur of composition and figures, a magnificence of tone, coloring, and luminous, golden atmosphere, that exalt the observer instantly into a celestial sphere. The Virgin with her Infant sits at 448 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY the right, the Shepherds kneel at the left, and behind them stretches a lustrous landscape, with flocks of sheep and stately trees dotting the near velvety sward, and mighty mountains looming blue in the distance. It is indeed impossible to conceive anything more beautiful than Palma's best works. Here also was an alleged Giorgione, a Christ falling under the Cross, which is certainly not the product of that master, though indeed very rich in hue and glow. And in a chapel to the right of the choir, having a cinquecento marble railing, adorned with six charm- ing putti, I saw five more Morettos, — a large canvas of Elias sleeping in the Wilderness, with a child-angel bringing food, and four small paintings of the Evan- gelists. Here was another Romanino, — a group of people at table, dispensing charity. In the chapel on the left is hidden a supposed piece of the true Cross, — which is exhibited once every ten years, when the people become frantic with excitement; their perfect credulity is sometimes rather pitiful. The crypt below the choir and presbytery follows their shape, with twenty columns from ancient Ro- man edifiqes, of every size and form, arranged in sev- eral rows; their capitals are partially Roman, partially work of the fourth and fifth centuries, — when this Church of S. Filastro was constructed. Over the altar, where SS. Filastro and Apollonio were formerly buried, is an almost destroyed fresco of that same period, re- presenting the Saviour and the two saints, in classic embroidered robes of many colors. I could with difficulty realize that I looked upon a painting exe- cuted in the days of Constantine or Theodosius.^ ^ This extraordinary relic of Imperial days, though undoubtedly re- touched at a later epoch, shows that even before the coming of Byzantine art Roman painting, already thoroughly decadent, had commenced to run BRESCIA THE BRAVE 449 On the second morning of my stay I visited the Piazza della Posta, in the rear of the Broletto, com- manding a fair view of the overshadowing castle- hill, with its long green slope extensively covered with trees, and at the summit a large building of rough stone, flanked by towers. This I knew was the main structure of the ancient fortress, which the Austrians had built over, and used as a prison for the patriots. On the piazza's eastern side lay the central post-office, also the building of the Queriniana Library, dating from 1750, containing a number of rare old manu- scripts (including Dante and Petrarch), medieval tomes illustrated with miniatures, and other books of the ninth and tenth centuries; but its best treasures have been transported to the Museo Medievale. Proceeding a couple of blocks eastward, I came to the Piazza del Museo, long and narrow, occupying the centre of the ancient forum; and looking down it from the first slope of the hillside, as of old, stood the re- constructed Temple of Hercules. Advancing near, I saw that its remaining original materials consisted of the high stone steps, their flanking parapets of un- faced brick, the bases and lower portions of nine of the ten great Corinthian columns, one entire column, and the major part of the brick wall of the cellce, — - from which, as elsewhere, the marble had been taken. The fragmentary columns had been recently finished, the walls of the cellce completed, and a new roof super- imposed ; so that the exterior appearance, save for the marble facing, was as gracefully impressive as eighteen centuries ago.^ into those stifiF, angular, lifeless moulds, of conventional effigies, which were all that could be produced by the mosaics of the succeeding centuries. But there is here, in the richly embroidered garments, a fascinating hint of the art's preceding powers. ^ When Vespasian in 69 arrived with his army from the East, marching 450 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY How strange it was to walk up these same worn steps that such numberless Roman sandals had ascended in that long-ago. Here were the same three doorways (with modern frames), and behind them the same three lofty cellce, where the ancients prayed and sacrificed to the gods. The central, larger chamber, on whose rear platform had stood the statue of Hercules, even retained a part of its original mosaic flooring, roped off in the middle, adorned with fine figures of ani- mal life. Around the walls of all three rooms were placed Roman remains of sculpture and architecture,^ glass and earthenware, coins and bronzes, including some fragments of the huge image of Hercules, bits of the temple's beautiful entablature, and a few hand- some pieces of Roman armor. But the most celebrated object of this "Museo Ci- vico Eta Romana" was its marvelous bronze figure of a female charioteer, over life-size, called the "Statue of Victory," — which occupied the centre of the left chamber. Her form is superbly modeled in the best Greek style, clad only in a thin clinging robe, whose along the Subalpine Road, Brescia gave him a hearty welcome; and sent her militia tg aid his general. Ant. Primo, in the assault and capture of Cremona, — the last stronghold of Vitellius. In remembrance thereof, Vespasian, the following year, ordered the erection of this splendid temple at the head of the Brescian forum, and its rich decoration also, at his own expense. Hence the name by which it has ever been commonly known, — the Temple of Vespasian. ^ This celebrated collection demonstrates in two ways the size and magnificence of ancient Brescia : firstly, by its remains of so many distinct- ive buildings of high class, — palaces, porticoes, temples, monuments, etc., — discovered in all parts of the modern city, and extensively in the surrounding fields; secondly, by its remarkable aggregation of tablets and other inscriptions, worthy of the deepest study, whose words substantiate not only the grandeur of the Roman town, but also its importance, — as reflected in the numerous visits recorded of emperors and other exalted personages, and their many decrees and acts for the municipality's benefit. — As further evidence there is the interesting series of fragments of splen- did mosaic pavements, clearly from public edifices of the highest rank. BRESCIA THE BRAVE 451 loose folds are girded naturally about the hips, — and which is fastened together upon the shoulders, with the right fastening slipped down upon the arm; the hair is bound about the temples with a fillet, and the back provided with wings, — which the Greeks seem to have given to their goddess Nike; the left foot is slightly raised upon a block, the lovely head turned slightly to the left, and the arms extended in the same direction, with fingers flexed as if grasping the reins. For long after her discovery in 1826, this attitude was thought explained by placing the left upper hand on the top of a shield, whose bottom rested upon the hip, and putting a crayon in the lower right hand, as if she were writing upon the shield. But recently it has been discovered (why not long ago, I cannot imagine) that the glance from under her lowered brows is directed keenly at some point a little distant on her left, and of nearly the same height, also that her hands are more naturally shaped to hold a pair of reins than a shield and pencil. It is indubitable: she was standing in a chariot, driving, with her eyes upon the horses' heads, the reins passing first through her upper hand and secondly through her right. If the whole biga was of the same superlative excellence as this inspiring charioteer, what a wonderful sight it must have been! She has all the dignity, grace, and power of an Olympian goddess; and is rightly placed among the half dozen greatest remaining statues of antiquity. Two other relics of the forum exist: one, a Corinth- ian column with a fragment of its entablature, and its base approached by steps, located in an excavation on the east side of the piazza, about fifteen feet below the level of the street, — showing that the forum's pavement was that much lower than the present; 452 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY this was clearly a portico, such as surrounded all the imperial forums. The other relic consists of some lofty- columns embedded in a house wall, — somewhat to the south of the modern piazza, in the right-hand street leaving its bottom, — which have been identified as a part of the Roman Curia. In the same neighborhood I found another, unidentified bit of ancient architect- ure, likewise built into a wall, and likewise calling to mind, by its hint of stately colonnades, porticoes, and temples, how magnificent this spot must once have been.^ It was enough to make one sigh, to look around at the present shabby, ugly buildings and dingy, nar- row streets. How had there come so vast a change? Not through the abused barbarians, says the modern critic; ^ — although Alaric in 401 threw down the walls of that superb ancient city, and ruined many buildings in his sack, while Attila in 450 repeated the process. The greatest destruction ensued gradually in the following centuries, when through the changes in laws, customs and habits of thought under the Lombard rule, the impoverished and oppressed citizens abandoned their old amusements, and allowed the theatres, temples and public edifices to fall together into ruin. Then began their steady spoliation for the building of habi- tations, and the erection by the nobles of their palace- ^ All these various remains, says Dr. Giovanni Labus in his fine work on the Vari Monumenti Antichi in Brescia, "record many great and majestic edifices; amongst which were a theatre, also an amphitheatre, . . . and a most imposing temple, indicated by a mighty column discovered in the garden of Count Luzzago." A part of the foundations of the great theatre has been found in the yard of the building directly east of the Temple of Hercules, — lately used as a barrack, and therefore very difficult of access; as was to be expected, the ancients had made use of the hillside for that purpose. The amphitheatre, by equal custom, lay out upon the plain, beyond the southern walls. ^ Dr. Giovanni Labus, idem. BRESCIA THE BRAVE 453 fortresses. The disastrous fires of 776 and 1097, and the violent earthquakes of 1117 and 1212, completed the destruction; for after each catastrophe, there was no quarry so handy as the stones of the Roman ruins. The wonder is, then, that the drum of a single column yet remains on its original spot, to remind us of the vanished magnificence and glory of Brescia Augusta. CHAPTER XII BRESCIA LA FERREA Yet not in vain, although in vain, O men of Brescia, on the day Of loss past hope, I heard you say Your welcome to the noble pain. — Ah! not for idle hatred, not For honor, fame, nor self-applause, But for the glory of the cause You did what will not be forgot. — Arthur Clough. From ancient Brescia I advanced to medieval Brescia, by leaving the old forum for the group of churches a block farther east, — in one of which is located her Museo Medioevale. This is the desecrated edifice of S. Giulia, a little to the left, upon the east side of the next street, Via Gambara, and at the very foot of the castle hill. The street which I was following. Via Santa Giulia, runs east and west at the bottom of the slope ; and here, in this angle between the two ways. King Desiderius erected the great convent of S. Giulia, a large block of buildings now containing three churches, — S. Salvatore, S. Giulia, and S. Maria del Solario.^ The last faces upon Via S. Giulia a little ^ This was done by the King partly as a religious offering, partly for the sake of his daughter Ansilperga, who wished to take the veil. Accordingly she became the first Abbess of the convent, choosing Santa Giulia for its patron, and surrounding herself with a following of noble maidens from the highest Lombard aristocracy. To females of such birth the convent was thereafter always restricted, causing it to be considered, until its closure, one of the two or three most select in Europe. Its wealth was in accord- ance, for Desiderius had most richly endowed it. BRESCIA LA FERREA 455 beyond the corner; S. Salvatore lies behind S. Giulia, at a lower level. The convent is abolished now, its two oldest churches kept only as antiquities, and the third given over to the uses of the museum. S. Giulia was too recent to serve as an antique, having been constructed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ; and accordingly I found its f agade to be of Renaissance design, surprisingly handsome, all in gleaming white stone. It had two lofty divisions, both adorned with fine Corinthian pilasters, and sur- mounted by a gable. Entering by a side passage, on showing my governmental pass I was admitted by the custode to the spacious interior. Here a unique sight confronted me: a wide, high-arched nave without aisles, columns, or transept, with a choir of the same width and height, and an intervening presbytery marked by two triumphal arches; the plastered walls and ceiling of the choir being covered with huge glis- tening frescoes, vividly colored; while the whole space was filled from end to end with monuments, statuary, showcases, weapons, armor, ivory carvings, architect- ural fragments, bronzes, — a vast collection of objets d'art of every size and kind, all products of the "Dark Ages," and demonstrating how far from dark they really were. The choir, built first as a church in itself, about 1466, carried three curious stucco arches on each side wall, inclosing altars ; the nave, built in 1599, carried a hand- some stone frieze and cornice roundabout, sustained by Corinthian pilasters ascending between its side altar places. I first examined the vivid, retouched frescoes of the choir, finding the side recesses also completely painted with scenes, — on the back walls, lateral spaces, soffits, and wall above, — all exceedingly bright, dramatic, and picturesque; these were works 456 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY of Ferramola, Zoppo, and the younger Foppa, — thus varying from quattrocento simpHcity to cinquecento freedom. The abundant retouching had greatly ob- scured the original mannerisms; but the pictures were still interesting, and the tout ensemble presented a more brilliant effect than any of like nature I had found. The work on the right was Zoppo's, — and the poorest, — consisting of scenes from the Passion ; that in the first two recesses on the left was Ferra- mola's, mostly ruined by the "restorer," but includ- ing a Deposition finely composed and full of feeling; that on the end wall was Foppa's, and much the best, consisting of a huge Crucifixion, with eight small tableaux at the sides, and below. The Crucifixion was an excellent picture, not retouched, being strongly spaced and disposed, and quietly colored, with well- drawn figures of considerable grace and expression, and an originally fine background and sky-effect. The paintings on the upper side-walls, above the archways, were better preserved, and generally better done, than those below them; they were entirely from the New Testament; but their authorship is uncertainly scat- tered amongst the three artists and their pupils. The third archway on the left contained something, however, that was more beautiful and impressive than all the brushwork, — the magnificent marble mauso- leum of Count Marcantonio Martinengo : a celebrated cinquecento sculpture, among the richest in North Italy. It was in the accepted form of a sarcophagus raised upon columns, which rested upon an ornamental base; but in this instance it backed against the wall, leaving but three sides exposed, with pilasters corre- lating to the four columns in front; and its height was unusual, being fully ten feet. The exuberant and fanciful decoration of the cinquecento covered every- BRESCIA LA FERREA 457 thing with richest reliefs, — columns, base, pilasters, back panels, entablature, and sarcophagus; the frieze was of bronze plates, with a great many little figures in procession; five large square plates adorned the sarcophagus, showing scenes from the Passion; three round ones decorated the rear panels, and a number of little round ones the bases of the columns; — but seventeen altogether of these bronze pieces still re- mained in France, whither they had been carried in the wars. Those returned to their places are the best work of the monument, especially the scene of the Scourging, — and the populace fleeing from a plague, upon the frieze. Further lustre is added to the tomb by the varied colors of the marbles, — white above, gray in the entablature, white in the capitals and the plinths of the columns and pilasters (these plinths are cut with mermaids at the angles), and silvery gray again in the shafts and bases. Charming arabesques are relieved upon the white rear panels, and draped about the columns and pilasters; and the circular bronze plaques in the bases of the latter bear fascinating little groups, of two to four figures each. At the end of an hour's inspection, I kept finding new delightful de- tails that had yet escaped me. Unfortunately, the worker of this masterpiece is unknown. A whole day could comfortably be spent in examin- ing the treasures that crowd these wonderful halls. Prominent among them I noticed a remarkable Dutch seicento ivory sculpture, half life-size, placed in the presbytery, — representing very realistically the Sacri- fice of Abraham; foremost in the nave were some cases of Lombard jeweled work, including the renowned Cross of Galla Placidia, about four feet high, Greek in shape, made of wood covered with silver and embossed 458 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY with two hundred and twelve different antique gems and cameos. These stones were mainly of large size, of every ancient epoch and origin, and studded both the sides very closely. At the centre of one side was a wooden, gilded, archaic figure of the throned Christ, and at the other, a Crucifix. The crudeness of the Christ, and of the cuttings of some of the gems done at that period, — the very mountings of the stones, in clumsy bands of silver, all showed the artistic dark- ness of the makers. But most interesting of all, and, in fact, one of the half-dozen most interesting relics of North Italy, was the aureographic miniature at the bottom of one side, showing with a startling lifelikeness, fairly photo- graphic, a young mother with her two children. Here I was looking upon persons dead fourteen centuries, — historically famous persons, — Galla Placidia her- self, with her young son Valentinian III, and her daughter Honoria! It was indeed startling, to have these royal personages suddenly emerge from the far- off, classic age of Rome, — which has left us no other such photographic likenesses, — and look one as nat- urally in the face, garbed with simple costumes, as if they were alive to-day. It seemed incredible that I could really be beholding ancient Romans, — in a picture of their own mystical era. Upon the dark circle of the glass, the three busts appeared looking out at me, — Placidia and her young son of seven or eight years seated in front, Honoria standing in the rear; they were clad, as I have said, in the very simplest of garments, which rather accentuated the homeliness of their elongated features; the females wore a sort of pompadour roll, brushed from their high foreheads, and Placidia had also a pearl necklace about her throat, and pearl pendants in her ears. In coloring BRESCIA LA FERREA 459 and faithfulness to nature, it was quite like a daguerreo- type of sixty years ago.^ Placidia was the daughter of Theodosius the Great, reared with every advantage of education and accom- plishment; and when at his death the Empire was definitely divided between her brothers Arcadius and Honorius, she accompanied the latter to his Roman throne. Then came Alaric, with his three successive sieges of the Capital, — upon whose surrender Placi- dia became a Gothic captive, compelled to follow about Italy in their train. The cowardly Honorius had taken refuge in Ravenna. His sister, then about twenty years of age, must have had greater charms than are shown in this likeness of the woman of thirty -five, for she soon fascinated Adolphus, the brother-in-law and brilliant general of Alaric; and when Adolphus became King of the Visigoths, at Alaric's death soon after- ward, Placidia married him, despite the thunders of the Emperor. ^ This wonderful aureograph was executed for Placidia, about 425, by Bonnerio, a Greek artificer, probably domiciled at Ravenna, where she was reigning. From her it passed into the possession of the cathedral treasury there; where it still lay when King Desiderius, two centuries later, placed a prelate favorite of his, one Michele, on the vacant archiepiscopal throne by force of arms. Michele in return stripped the treasury of its choicest valuables for a thank-offering to the King, including amongst them the Cross of Placidia, and many of the other jewels now exposed in the Mu- seum. Desiderius, doubtless stricken by superstitious fears, soon turned over the valuables so earned to his daughter Ansilperga, as Abbess of S. Giulia, — thinking thus to make his peace with an offended Heaven. The Cross and jewels then remained in the treasury of the convent until the dissolution of the latter, when they became the property of the munici- pality of Brescia. — Bonnerio, says Sig. Odorici, "extended over the round glass a gold leaf, and upon that, with most subtle skill, by the strokes and points of a pen outlined these portraits. The gems represented he then worked in silver; leaving us his own name in the gold, he removed the superfluity of the leaf, and covered the work with a dark-blue tinting. There resulted distinct gradations of the chiaroscuro, the variety of acces- sories, the most delicate shades of the imperceptible mezzotints." — Storie Bresciane (sopra). 460 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Adolphus then became reconciled with Honorius, and led his barbarian host, as Roman general-in-chief , to bring back the rebellious Gauls to their allegiance. His queen accompanied him, and at Narbonne, accord- ing to Gothic custom, their delayed wedding-feast was celebrated upon the first anniversary of their nup- tials. Adolphus made his gift to the bride in the shape of "fifty beautiful youths, in silken robes, [who] car- ried a basin in each hand; and one of these basins was filled with pieces of gold, the other with precious stones of an inestimable value." ^ This vast wealth of gems was "an inconsiderable portion" of the endless treasures seized by the barbarians in Italy, where the gold and precious stones of the world had been accumulating for four hundred years, drawn by the conquerors from every country. An indescribable sensation seized me as I realized that these very gems before me, which had been Placidia's, must have come to her in those same basins from Adolphus. What stranger and more intimate contact with the remote past could there be, than this lifting of its veil for an instant's revelation. But when the Goths had subjugated Gaul, and ad- vanced into Spain for a similar purpose, Placidia's troubles began: her first child died, Adolphus was assassinated, and his widow — "dragged in chains by his insulting assassin." ^ The latter was also murdered, after seven days; Wallia became king, and consented to a treaty with Honorius by which his sister was re- turned to him. She arrived joyfully at Ravenna, only to find that a new marriage for her had already been arranged, — with the Roman general, Constantius. Placidia, resisting, was forced to yield; but she soon came to love her manly husband, and bore him the * Gibbon, vol. iii, chap. xxxi. * Gibbon, vol. in, chap, xxxrii. BRESCIA LA FERREA 461 two children now before me. Again misfortune came, with the death of Constantius, and a subsequent quar- rel with Honorius; which obliged Placidia and her children to seek a refuge in Constantinople, with her nephew Theodosius the younger. The death of Honorius followed, and Theodosius by force of arms seated the child Valentinian III on the Western throne, with his mother Placidia as regent. Valentinian was then six years of age, so this por- trait must have been executed within a year or two afterward. He grew up a dissolute, weak youth, leav- ing the reins of government to his mother, who held them amidst ever increasing anxieties and dangers, for twenty-five years. The Goths, the Vandals, and the Huns pressed her territories more firmly upon every side; and internal rebellions added to the con- stant ferment, Spain and Africa were lost, the north- ern provinces overrun. Amidst it all, Placidia's trou- bles were aggravated by the conduct of her daughter. This pure-eyed Honoria whom I looked upon, only four or five years later, at sixteen years of age, yielded to the illicit love of the chamberlain Eugenius; upon its discovery the shame of the royal family became published to all the world, and Honoria was imprisoned for fourteen years in the Court of Constantinople. At last in despair she made secret advances to Attila, King of the Huns, who had once desired her; upon the discovery of this offense she was returned in horror to Italy, and *'the ceremony of marriage was performed with some obscure and nominal husband, before she was immured in a perpetual prison."^ Attila again demanded her as his bride; and she would eventually have been given up to him, for the safety of Italy, had he not suddenly expired in the arms of a new addi- ^ Gibbon, vol. ni, chap. xxxv. 462 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY tion to his countless wives, — just as Honoria was about to be taken from her prison. She therefore occu- pied it until her death. Placidia died in 450, worn out by all her sorrows and anxieties, leaving Italy to the hands of the worth- less Valentinian, who hurried the country to its doom. Incapable of gratitude or forethought, he murdered with his own hand, out of jealousy, the only man who could have preserved his kingdom from the encroach- ing barbarians, and who had acted as such preserver for twenty years, — his general, Aetius. This deed he followed with the violation of the wife of the promin- ent Senator, Maximus. The latter took his revenge; and only five years after Placidia's death her son fell under the swords of assassins, leaving Rome to the ter- rible sack of Genseric and the Vandals, three months later. Such was the miserable fate of these innocent children that I gazed upon. I turned my eyes to the examination of the other exhibits. There were handsome faience and majolica, statuettes, bronzes, Venetian glass and enamel, medal- lions and coins, niello work and Limoges enamel, marble sculpture and reliefs, — every sort of artistic workmanship, of the medieval and Early-Renaissance eras; perhaps most pleasing of all to me were the ivory carvings, of that delicacy and quaint grace in ivhich the Late-Roman and Middle Ages excelled. Amongst these was prominent the so-called "Lip- sanoteca," a cross-shaped reliquary of the fourth century, covered with remarkably lifelike figures, well disposed in natural, easy, dramatic action; also, the three extraordinary diptychs, — one of the fourth century (the "Querinianum"), with figures of truly wonderful modeling and beauty, and two of the sixth century (the "Boethius" and " Lampadius ") , of BRESCIA LA FERREA 463 which the former showed much decadence, and the latter was almost crude. From the choir, — near a cinquecento lecturn of beautiful carving and tarsia, and a long case laden with medieval choirbooks having exquisite minia- tures, — I had looked through a barred opening next the floor, into a much lower stone hall with rows of ancient columns. On now descending a flight of stairs, this hall proved to be the nave of S. Salvatore. The eighth-century structure of King Desiderius had been recently restored from a crumbling condition, leaving the old Roman columns where they had been, five ou one side and seven on the other, diverse in size and shape and capitals. After S. Michele of Pavia, this is the oldest standing church of the Lombards in its original state. In the end wall opened a low recess that once contained the high-altar; and under this lay a crypt containing more ancient columns, thirty-six in number, smaller than those above, but quite ridicu- lously variegated, and set astonishingly close together. I observed some neglected, decaying frescoes here: to the right in the antechamber, several by Romanino, mostly destroyed ; on the entrance wall of the nave and in a denuded chapel to the left, a number by Foppa and his pupils, — including some charming scattered angels here and there, flying aimlessly, and a Cruci- fixion of superior grace and quality. To the right opened another little, dark, bare room, in which I stood for a while gazing with an unavoidable feeling of sad- ness at a slab in its flagged floor; for under that had once been laid to rest, so long ago as to be almost entirely forgotten, that unfortunate woman. Desid- erata (also called Ermengarda), the sister of Ansil- perga the first Abbess, and the daughter of Desiderius, the last Lombard King, who consented to be a sacrifice 464 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY to save her country, but was spurned and sent home again by Charlemagne.^ The war then resulted which ended in the destruction of her father's realm. How near it was all brought by this physical contact; what a dreary, desolated resting-place was this for the wife of Charlemagne, — but yet how consonant with the dissolution of her family and race! The last of the three convent churches now drew my attention, — S. Maria del Solario, whose fagade of the twelfth century proved to be most extraordin- ary: it was built of huge Roman blocks taken from ancient edifices, as the fragmentary Latin inscriptions showed; and the lofty bare wall was pierced only with a left-hand doorway and two tiny barred windows on the ground story, and two larger but simple windows on the second story. The only ornamentation was a Lombard frieze and string-course; and at the top rose a Romanesque octagonal drum, having a colonnaded window of six lights in its front side. The custodian of the museum, who kept also the key to this church, and had therefore accompanied me, now extended the information that the prison-like openings of the ground floor formerly gave light to the convent's treasure- chamber, and that the church was upon the floor above. We entered and ascended the old worn stairs, while I reflected 'how strange it felt to be climbing to a church located like a bedchamber. Its interior was still stranger: square in shape, of medium size, with its plastered walls broken only by three round arches on the east side, for altars, and by the two little windows on the south side, and covered overhead with a wide ^ The reason for this famous divorce, though ascribed by several of the old chroniclers to the physical condition of the unfortunate woman, has ever been shrouded in a peculiar mystery. BRESCIA LA FERREA 465 flat dome, — it yet gleamed and flashed with a thou- sand bright tints radiating from every wall and arch- way, which moved with countless vivid, life-size fig- ures, arranged in groups and large scenes, from New Testament history. The effect to a stranger entering was startling. These frescoes, said the custode, were the work of Bernardino Luini, the Milanese, and his followers, between 1513 and 1518; and the graceful figures, so remarkably preserved in the freshness of their gay coloring, bore out the statement with their Leonardesque faces. Yet the absence of any genius, or even high ability, indicated that if Luini took the contract, and made the designs, the brushwork must have been entirely by his pupils. The three altar-recesses contained two groups of Madonna and Saints, and a group of monks; over them was a large Crucifixion, of superior quality; on the left wall, below, were four panels from the life of S. Giulia, and above them, a huge Last Supper; the right wail, from bottom to top, held a group of saints, a Conversion of St. Paul, and Christ bearing the Cross. All the pictures were principally distinguished for their strong free spacing, and their graceful figures, draped finely in garments of striking hue; being thus very decorative, — though neither dramatic nor of much feeling. My thoughts turned involuntarily upon the twenty generations of sombre nuns that had wor- shiped in this chamber, — until Napoleon suppressed the convent in 1797; and upon the countenances of lofty rank that had been hidden behind all those com- mon veils. Seven queens had been among them, and one hundred and nine princesses; while the rest had been daughters of the highest nobility. Yet their life was not hard, for they had to wait upon them numer- ous humble serving women of the lay-sister class. 466 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Another walk througli this eastern quarter took me jQrst to the Church of S. Clemen te, a little to the south of Piazza del Museo, facing north upon a narrow lane named after it. The fagade was one of those Late- Renaissance, stucco creations, with stone trimmings; the interior was a dark basilica without aisles or tran- sept, but with a large chapel at the end, whence Moretto's great canvas of Madonna and Saints glowed down from the high-altar with a brilliancy that dis- pelled the gloom; and from the side altars glistened, in beautiful tones, four other Moretto masterpieces, — which join in making the place a monument to his genius. I know but few other churches so entirely given over to the glory of a single artist of the first rank. On the first altar to the left stood the remarkable picture of St. Ursula and her Virgins, of life-size, — the lovely form of the saint in the centre, holding in one hand the banner of the Church, a crown of gold and jewels upon her head, her eyes directed sadly but sweetly to the danger concealed upon the right; it is a scene of brighter tone and stronger lighting than was usual with Moretto. Over the second altar I saw the Madonna "with Saints Catherine of Siena and Cather- ine of Alexandria, seated aloft upon a high stone altar draped with a handsome rug, and Saints Jerome and Paul standing below, — the scene darkly toned, the colors faded, the lustre lingering only in the silken sheen of the Madonna's light blue robe, and the chief beauty resting in her charming, expressive face. Over the third altar I observed Christ in glory with the Cross, and Abraham and Melchizedek below, the priest handing the warrior bread and wine ; these forms were also life-size and powerful ; and in the dark gray tone, without light or color, the strongly modeled figure of the Christ looked very melancholy. BRESCIA LA FERREA 467 Opposite on the right side, over the second altar, glowed Moretto's famous composition of Saints Cecilia, Agnes, Agatha, Lucia, and Barbara, — five rounded female figures, taken from the same model, of exquisite grace and pensiveness, very naturally composed; again, however, the coloring was lost, and the tone gray and cold, without effective background. The greatest work of them all was the high-altar piece, of the Madonna in glory above three standing male saints, and two female saints seated at the lower cor- ners, within an architectural hemicycle, — the Ma- donna carrying her Child and surrounded by putti; a most brightly hued, luminous, and blissful scene, with effective light and shadow, grace of form and arrangement, and an expression of deep feeling. From this church I passed to another two blocks farther east, S. Maria Calchera, containing important examples of both of Brescia's great masters, — behind a stucco fagade of rococo ugliness. The interior was also rococo, overladen with offensive stucco ornament- ation, — a nave of two domes without aisles or tran- sept, having stucco pilasters rising between the side altars, to a very rich cornice, with the only light com- ing dimly from top windows on the right. Over the first altar to the left stood Moretto's wonderful picture of Christ at dinner with Simon, and Mary bathing his feet, — of great naturalness in the persons, postures, expressions, and accessories, in a dusky atmosphere and dim light; though the colors again had faded, the deep feeling in Mary's agonized, penitent face and Christ's benevolent, Jewish features, together with the realism of the garments, table, and in fact the whole setting, made an appeal of profound emotion. Second to the right was a Romanino of best quality, St. ApoUonius blessing the Host, between four persons 468 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY on each side, two kneeling, all richly clothed in green and gold, and executed with pleasing flesh-work and accessories; the saint, facing outward, was backed by a low altar carrying a painting of the Pieta, which was cleverly differentiated from the reality. In a little chapel on the right I found another, small Moretto, — the dead Christ on his tomb, at the foot of the Cross, with Saints Dorothea and Jerome kneeling by it; much damaged, but still full of grace and sentiment. Behind the high-altar rose a Visitation, of life-size, containing a number of spectators watching the per- formance, including a charming Brescian girl in cinquecento costume; this was one of the canvases painted for Brescia by Calisto Piazza of Lodi, during a visit of some duration. The street running along the northern side of this church, Via Trieste, is the main thoroughfare of the eastern section, extending from Piazza del Duomo to the sole eastern gate. Porta Venezia. As I followed it eastward, it soon opened on the left into the vast Mercato Nuovo, whose tree-lined, sunny quadrangle, then deserted, is regularly crowded by the stalls of produce ^tnd herds of animals. Another block to the east opened the Mercato dei Grani, just within the gate, in whose centre loomed Brescia's modern monu- ment to her great son of long ago, — Arnold the Free- thinker. Upon a handsome, two-storied pedestal of stone, faced with four remarkable bronze tablets, showing dramatic scenes from the friar's life in high- relief, — rose his heroic bronze figure in the attitude of preaching. To the left of it was a tiny park, upon the embankment of the old city wall, from which were visible the picturesque green hillsides stretching to north and east from their adjacent angle, covered richly with vineyards and lines of cypresses, dotted BRESCIA LA FERREA 469 with glistening villas in hues of pink, brown, white, and yellow. Outside the gate, an avenue of splendid horse-chestnut trees extended straightaway to the far southeast, its hard white road lined on one side by a steam tramway, — the highway to Verona, the famous, ancient Via Subalpina. Turning back along the Corso Magenta for a way, and then southward along the Via Arsenale, which runs from Piazza del Museo, I reached the Piazza Moretto in the southeastern corner of the city, — so called from the modern bronze monument to the master in its centre. It is a striking work: at the foot of a high white-granite pedestal sits the bronze female figure of Fame, reading her book, and on the top stands Moretto, in cinquecento long-hose, doublet, cloak, and velvet cap, — a handsome figure, of heroic size, with palette in one hand and brush in the other. It has a fit location: for directly behind stands the large Palazzo Martinengo, containing the city's picture-gallery of the same name; the palace was devised for that pur- pose by the Count's will in 1887, — a noble life ending with a noble deed.^ On the piazza's south side rises the Church of S. Afra, facing westward upon the street with a front of ugly stucco. S. Afra is renowned in Brescia for its curious con- struction — a later church upon an early one — and for its paintings of the Venetian school. A double flight of steps ascends some eight feet to the portal, ^ "Moretto," says Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco, in her Zom- hard Studies, "did a great deal of work for different members of the family, and decorated several of their houses. The Palazzo Martinengo della Fabbrica [also at Brescia] contains frescoes by him, showing eight fair daughters of a Count Martinengo with their favorite dogs." These fres- coes, covering the four sides of one large room, are beautiful beyond words; their backgrounds filled with exquisite landscapes of flowered parterres and castled hills, before which sit the lovely girls, on marble parapets draped with Oriental rugs. 470 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY under whose landing a barred window permits one a sight of the dusky, columned, lower edifice, like a cellar. It is over a thousand years old; the upper edi- fice was built in 1580, and I found it, therefore, of fair Renaissance lines, the nave bordered by Renaissance pillars and arches, which divided off the aisles. But the immediate impression came from the vast crowd of frescoes that glistened from the sides of the pil- lars, the sides and soffits of the arches, the wall spaces, and the ceiling, — innumerable designs of arabesques, intertwined with musical instruments, and pink putti scrambling up and down the pillars, also interspersed with figured scenes in panels; the colors, though much faded, still showing a hundred gay tints, that fairly showered down from every side. Over the second altar to the left, affixed to the wall of the aisle, glowed one of Paolo Veronese's rich com- binations of color, — a Martyrdom of S. Afra: upon a platform amidst an eager crowd of people, backed by classic buildings, kneeled the saint in an incongruous ball-dress of white satin, heavily embroidered, — a lovely form, with uplifted, rapt expression on the vir- ginal face* which strongly contrasted with the dark, rough executioner who seized her. Behind the high- altar hung a most extraordinary Tintoretto, of glisten- ing blue tone and flooded light from an open sky, in which Christ was ascending between Moses and Elijah, borne upwards by fluttering putti, — while the three apostles were visible below on the mountain- top, amazed and fearful; the garments were bright- hued, and between the two groups rolled the light-blue clouds, shot with glittering sunrays. Who would have dreamt that this could have been painted by the som- bre master of darkness and shadow, who composed the dusky canvases of the Scuola S. Rocco, who filled BRESCIA LA FERREA 471 all Venice with his gloomy, tragic pictures, — who was the apostle of uncolored realism and the drama, opposed to the beauty of gay hues. This very paint- ing of his own hands gainsays his creed: in spite of its flood of light and bright colors, it is dramatic, power- ful, impressive; while its loveliness strikes a chord of heavenly music. Over the south doorway, finally, hung Titian's splendid picture of the Woman taken in Adultery, — in half -figures, as so often with his designs; that of the Saviour being a great conception, full of beauty, mild- ness, and stern majesty commingled, a celestial power shining in his radiant face as He reproves the evil elders crowding round; the woman herself is very fair and penitent; there is a depth to the golden tone, the sumptuous coloring, and the atmosphere, that fills the scene with awe. — A sobbing startled me as I gazed, — a miserable, tearful sobbing, from a rent heart. I looked around, and in the shadows of the adjacent altar recess beheld dimly two aged peasant women, kneeling to a mummified corpse exposed behind a glass front; to this alleged relic of some saint they were mumbling beseeching prayers with outstretched hands, while tears fell down the furrowed cheeks and choked their utterance. Some deep disaster threat- ened them, — the note of it was in their cries. The solace of the Roman Church to such poor souls struck me with a new force; ignorant beyond our conception, correspondingly credulous, they would draw from the supposed powers of that body a comfort that no spirit- ual communion could give them, and go homeward with a new peace and hope. Westward from the Piazza Moretto the Via Moretto extends across the city, parallel with Corso Zanar- delli, on its south. Leaving my examination of the 472 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY massed treasures of the Galleria Martinengo until I should have seen all the scattered paintings of the churches, I followed this street, so pleasantly named, to the Church of S. Alessandro at the next corner. It has a plain, stuccoed front, of Renaissance details in pilasters and cornice, a basilica-interior, with arched, ribbed ceiling painted yellow, and four altars recessed in each wall, separated by Corinthian three-quarter columns of roseate marble. It is remarkable for a fine specimen of that rare old master, Civerchio, on the second altar to the right, — a Pieta upon wood, some- what faded, but still of warm tone and atmosphere, with ungraceful figures possessing the artist's peculiar charm and expressiveness. The Madonna holds her dead Son, the Magdalen his feet, and roundabout stand Saints Paul, Michael, and another, backed by the Cross-laden hill of Calvary. Hare claims this to be an Umbrian work. But the predelle are unmistak- ably Civerchio's, showing scenes from the Passion and the Resurrection which are of high finish and strongly spaced, effective grouping, with wide landscapes of excellent perspective, and delightful, warm coloring. Adjaceiit, first on the right, I observed another pleasing quattrocento work, a beautiful Annunciation by Frate Michelangiolo da Piacenza, in an exquisite Gothic frame; the minute and loving care of the min- iaturist was visible in the fine texture, pattern, and embroidery of the robes of cloth-of-gold. Five still earlier pictures, by another hand, covered the predelle, — very charming scenes, from the life of the Virgin, of distinguished ability for the period. Fourth on the same side was a strong pala by Gambara, of the man- acled Christ crowned with thorns, with a bended head of noble, harrowing expression; and under it was a very graceful little marble Pietd, in relief, endowed BRESCIA LA FERREA 473 with much sentiment, by an unknown artist of the same period. Two blocks to the north of this and half a block to the east, I found the Palazzo Tosio, — another noble mansion devised some time ago to the city, with its comprehensive collections of art, but now of compar- atively little interest on account of the removal of its Old Masters to the Galleria Martinengo. The marbles of first rank were also transferred. I was shown over a large suite of rooms on the piano nobile, handsomely decorated in Late-Renaissance styles, containing mod- ern paintings and sculptures; among those ornamented in white-and-gold were a curious hall at the west end, lighted only from a sky-light, adorned with white Doric columns, having its walls entirely covered with little landscapes, — some of them very good; and an oval chamber near by, very tasteful and pretty, con- taining two large, blue Sevres vases, edged with gold, which were given by Napoleon III to Count Tosio; these were unusually interesting, because painted on their sides with excellent likenesses of the Emperor and his lovely young bride, Eugenie. Opposite this palace, at number 19, I had through an open gateway a delicious vision of the long-gone past : down a luxuriant green vista of shrubs and trees, and over a high brick wall, I saw a beautiful old Gothic colonnade, with one of its arches crowned by a marble goddess; and there, above the shady greenery of the garden, two persons were walking, — gray- haired tutor and handsome youth, arguing some re- condite point, looking as if they had stepped from a page of Boccaccio. In visiting the west side of the city I divided it into two parts, — the first south of Corso Palestra, con- taining three important churches close together, the 474 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY second north of the Corso, containing palaces of in- terest as well as churches. The latter walk I took first, starting from the Corso up Via Dolzani, the continua- tion of Corso Vittorio Emanuele. Here I came im- mediately to Palazzo Masperi, another former resi- dence of the Martinengo family, celebrated as the most striking private palace in Brescia. It is a nar- row, three-storied Renaissance structure, covered with exuberant decoration like an edifice of fairyland, — sculptured door-jambs and cornices, beautiful triple windows, side windows with baroque cornices, a richly carved balcony, an elaborate string-course, and above all, a wonderful sculptured frieze, of arabesques with gamboling amorini. A little to the west, in the adjacent Via del Palazzo Vecchio, I passed another famous old Brescian man- sion, the Palazzo Calzavellio, — its vast stuccoed fagade containing a splendid Renaissance doorway, in a frame of fluted Corinthian pilasters, with a hand- some double-window above it, heavy marble balconies, and faint traces of extensive frescoes that once cov- ered the wide spaces between the windows. Such a construction was designed for the frescoes, — with a broad painted frieze above them. Close by on the opposite side was a fine example of the modernized Renaissance palace, with rebuilt, imposing portal and corniced windows ; and at the angle of the next street- crossing, loomed another huge, stuccoed palazzo, with a Renaissance balcony of enormous dimensions. It is an unceasing wonder, what a modern, small family can do with these giant residences; in large part, as a fact, they showed evidences of being deserted. Northward up the Via della Pace from this corner, past a gigantic, brick church-fagade with a great stone portal, and another vast palace, of rococo design, I BRESCIA LA FERREA 475 reached, at the angle with the Corso Garibaldi, the strange stone tower called the Torre della Pallata, which is visible from all over the city. It is square in shape, about fifty feet thick, built of heavy stone blocks, with buttresses at the corners and giant bat- tlements on the lofty summit, — as curious a relic of medieval days as could be found anywhere. Some of the blocks in the spreading base measure four feet by two; the west side of it is decorated with a large ornamental fountain of baroque style, sporting a Triton blowing twin trumpets, some reclining divini- ties, and a Goddess of Plenty seated at the top. The broad thoroughfare of Corso Garibaldi evenly bisects the western part of the city, running from Piazza del Comune to the only western gate, in the centre of the western wall, — Porta Milano ; the Torre della Pallata stands just halfway between those ex- tremities. Proceeding westward now upon the Corso, — which is quite modern in appearance and business, — and passing a fine Palladian stone palace upon the right, containing a grand, columned loggia of two sto- ries, — I came eventually to a wide piazza before the Porta Milano, having an old bastion of the city wall upon the south. The present gate consisted of two square low buildings with Doric porticoes, guarding the street where it crossed, by a modern bridge, the medieval fosse. In the piazza rose an equestrian bronze statue of the Liberator, with a superb bronze lion at bay on the front of the pedestal. One block to the northeast, upon the Via S. Rocco, which parallels Corso Garibaldi, I found the interest- ing Church of S. Maria delle Grazie. In its plain stuccoed facade there was an earlier Gothic portal, with almost indistinguishable, antique lions, and a quattrocento relief of Madonna and Saints in the 476 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY lunette. Entering by anbther doorway at the left, I stood, to my surprise, in a delightful Early-Renais- sance cloister, at the side of the church, consisting of two little paved courts, divided and surrounded by colonnades. A door in its left corridor opened into a modern pilgrimage sanctuary; and the walls of all the corridors were hung with the quaint gifts of success- ful pilgrims, mostly rude pictures of scenes of sickness, accident, and healing, harrowing in their effect. The dark sanctuary, gleaming faintly with burning lamps swung from chains, consisted of a three-sided gallery inclosing a lower shrine, which contained the altar with the saintly relics; alternate pillars and col- umns, fluted and spiral, with inset colored marbles, sustained the rounded arches of the gallery; under the latter hung the lamps, diffusing a deep golden glamour upon the successive frescoes of the outer wall. These, though modern, were designed and softly tinted in trecento style, with gilded figures outlined against dusky backgrounds. The gilding and coloring, the richly veined marble on every side, the incense-laden dusk, the golden lamplight, all combined to produce that exotic, Oriental effect, which appeals so strongly to the sensuous nature of the Italians, and instantly strikes the chords of their religious emotions. The priests could devise no more successful means for impressing the credulous devotees, and drawing the silver from their pockets. A side-doorway from the cloister admitted me to the church, which was as dark and curious as the sanctuary; the low-arched nave was flanked by columns, and still lower aisles, having a flat dome above each bay of the latter, and altars affixed directly to the walls; and over every foot of surface rioted an awful scheme of stucco reliefs, twisting over the vaulting, walls, arches, and BRESCIA LA FERREA 477 domes, — forced upon the attention by a barbaric gild- ing. The vulgar effect was enhanced by the plaster material of the arches and capitals, the common black cloths draped around the columns and hang- ing between them, edged with tinsel gilt fringe, and the horrible scroll-like shields of arms attached to the cloths, painted in gaudy gold and silver. Much as I had seen of this vile sort of "decoration," this before me was the worst yet found. I gladly turned away to the pictures. The best of them were a Foppa, of Madonna and Saints, on the first altar to the left, — faded, dark and colorless; and two Morettos, over the high altar and in the chapel to the right of it. The first of the latter, a Nativity, it was very difficult to observe; it seemed to be different from the master's usual style, with many figures in confused activity; the second was most attractive, — a Madonna in glory, with saints below, in a strange, rich, dark tone, from which the three saints stood forth bathed in a silvery light, splendidly portrayed, with a fine combination of vivid realism, graceful dignity, and restful peace. Continuing eastward along Via S. Rocco, I passed on the left a palace with clear remains of cinquecento frescoes, in many large panels, having figures of the customary reddish-brown tint; — and finally reached, just to the right in a side way, the renowned old Church of S. Giovanni Evangelista. Its fagade of rough brickwork held a simple Renaissance stone portal ; its dusky interior consisted of a nave and aisles, — separated by piers faced with Corinthian half- columns, upholding a plain cornice, with connecting round arches, — and a large choir flanked by chapels. The side chapels held some remarkable paintings: a very beautiful Francia, — the Trinity adored by 478 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY angels, first to the left, considered one of his few best works; a Wedding of the Virgin by Romanino, fourth on the left; and Moretto's animated Massacre of the Innocents, third on the right, which is a harmony of golden browns and light blues, in his "silvery" tone. There was a second fine Moretto, in a magnificent Renaissance frame behind the high-altar, — repre- senting God the Father, the Madonna in clouds sur- rounded by putti, and four saints below in a sunset after-glow, — altogether of a dark tone and yet lumin- ous beauty; and finally, there were the treasures of the wonderful Cappella Corpus Domini, at the end of the left aisle, — a precious shrine of Brescian art, painted by Moretto and Romanino together. Here was Civerchio's great Entombment, in a most exquisitely carved and gilded Renaissance frame over the altar, revealing at a glance the profound genius of that master, — noble in conception, execution, action, lifelikeness, and tender emotion. The Maries and the Apostles are letting down the dead Saviour into the sepulchre, slowly, gently, with heart-rending grief. — On the right wall are five powerful Morettos: Elijah in a dark" and terrible wilderness, with an attending angel of superhuman loveliness; the Israelites collect- ing manna; portrait figures of St. Mark and St. Luke; and one of the grandest Last Suppers in existence, superb in natural modeling, atmosphere, and tense dramatic expression, — wanting only in the weakness of the Christ. The sternness of these early works is said to be due to Romanino's influence. Over them, on the soffits of the side arch, Moretto also painted six prophets. The rest are Romanino's works: five correspond- ing pictures on the opposite wall, six prophets above them, and a beautiful Coronation of the Virgin in BRESCIA LA FERREA 479 the lunette over the altar, which is strongly com- posed and drawn, with much majesty, grace, and indi- vidual charm. This was my first revelation of his full powers. His side paintings are less attractive: a Re- surrection of Lazarus, Mary Magdalen before Christ, Saints John and Matthew, and a family worshiping the Sacrament. But altogether this little chapel contains a glory of great brushwork, seldom equaled outside of museums. There remained one more large church in this quar- ter, S. Maria del Carmine, a block and a half to the north; but my visit to it did not require much time. The only beauty in its rough brick fagade was a curious marble portal, flanked with Renaissance col- umns but recessed in Gothic fashion; the former fresco in its lunette by Ferramola had disappeared. Its lofty, spacious, bare interior — of nave and aisles separated by stucco pillars, with Romanesque capi- tals and round arches — contained no longer any treasure of art. Foppa's ceiling-painting had also lost all its value. Upon the walls and vaulting were the ruined frescoes and the lingering remnants of the arabesques, that once covered them from end to end; and at the termination of the left aisle stood a strange Calvary of painted plaster, in a cave dimly lamplit, with life-size, mouthing figures. The apse wall held a superb Renaissance frame, containing a badly injured Annunciation, with a still lovely Madonna. In all this ruin and echoing desolation I felt like one who treads alone Some banquet-hall deserted, Whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead. And all but he departed. As I strolled back to the hotel, I noticed some wine- presses being operated in the street that were of 480 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY modern, mechanical make: a tub with a piston-cover thrust downward by a screw, squeezing the juice out of apertures at the bottom. Placed upon hand-carts, they were being hauled from house to house, to press each family's grapes at its own door; and the liquid ran over the sides, along the gutters, staining them red, — like Dickens's Paris of the Revolution. In Verona (for it was now October) I had observed the general use of the old-fashioned vats, likewise dragged around upon carts, with ragged youths dancing bare- foot upon the grapes. Chestnut roasters also now filled the streets with their little charcoal ovens, radiating appetizing odors; and venders of raw chestnuts and walnuts spread their wares in piles, to dry, on strips of canvas along the curb. In the evening I usually repaired for my after-dinner coffee to the caffes under the arcades across the way from the hotel, which are frequented by the Brescian elite, and enlivened by the strains of a large orchestra. Many of the company played cards regularly, with those pasteboards so strange to Anglo-Saxon eyes, upon which the suits are swords, sceptres, dies, etc., and theroj'alties are creatures unrecognizable. So fond are the people of music, that on coming out I never failed to find a large crowd blocking the wide street, listening in rapt silence to the orchestra within. Inter- spersed between the caffes were the new features of North Italian life, — American bars, in little rooms where the beverages are taken standing, at cheaper prices and without the necessity of tips; the drinks, however, are as light as elsewhere, being coffee, na- tive wines, beer, syrups, liqueurs, vermouth, bitters, and various French and domestic appetizers and aperitifs, of weird appearance and taste, but little strength; only now and then is a glass of absinthe or BRESCIA LA FERREA 481 cognac sold, for the natives have no Hking for strong spirits. Besides the several theatres roundabout, including the opera-house, there were also half a dozen cine- matograph shows, at which I passed an occasional evening, and which were invariably crowded. Such was the extent of the Brescians' dissipation. The Corso Zanardelli, which they thought very cosmo- politan in its arc-lights and few electric illumina- tions, was already by eleven o'clock nearly deserted; and before midnight the whole town was asleep. It still exhibits all the old provincial peculiarities. The shops, invariably little, are confined each to a sur- prisingly narrow line; if one wishes to procure some pins, he must, as elsewhere, hunt up the one place where they are sold. Advertising is unheard of, or any effort to increase trade. The little newspapers (?), of two or four small sheets, contain very slight news indeed of the outside world, and what there is, is gen- erally copied from foreign journals and several days old; their contents consist mainly of local happenings, articles and letters written by ambitious local literati, and poetic effusions. All speeches upon any occasion whatsoever are carefully reported in full, and fulsome obituary notices are a specialty. These last are also posted all about the city, — together with notices and addresses to the citizens, of every sort and subject. One becomes accustomed to being startled by poster- headings in large black letters, — "Citizens! Atten- tion .' " — or "Beware ! Fellow Citizens ! ' ' Every local event, every election, every patriotic anniversary, is preceded by a veritable war of placards between the opposing parties. When Ferrer was shot at Barcelona, the indignation of the Socialistic masses broke out violently in North 482 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Italy; the people filled this streets with noisy groups, and fierce posters cried in mourning-black: "Lavora- tori! — In segno di protesto contro 1' assassinio di Francesco Ferrer! commesso dalla feroce reazione ges- uitica spagnuola, poiche il lutto e di tutte le nazioni civili, di tutti i popoli liberi che detestano le inf amie del dogma, Noi Vi Invitiamo — ad astenervi dal lavoro nel pomeriggio di quest' oggi! [Signed] La Commis- sione Esecutiva della Camera del Lavoro." ^ And they did abstain from labor; the workmen marched through the streets in a great procession, with gloomy, defiant brows, shouting hoarsely for liberty: "Down with the priests! Down with the Jesuits!" — while the police accompanied them in nervous fear, dreading every moment an attack upon the churches. It was another demonstration of the ever increasing Socialistic fervor of the Italian masses, — which will end, who knows where? Certainly this country is, in freedom of the person, speech, and press, in the sacredness of property-rights, in all that appertains to liberty, and popular rule, very far advanced over Austria, — which is hated the more for that TTery reason, — and in fact over all the Euro- pean countries save France, the Lowlands, and Scan- dinavia. Nowhere in the world, not even in England, is there such general order, and absence of crimes upon property and of premeditated violence, as in the Italy of to-day. Burglary and highway robbery, for in- stance, are now practically unknown. Nowhere in the world is the person so perfectly safe, — if we omit ^ "Workmen! — In sign of protest against the assassination of Fran- cesco Ferrer, committed by the ferocious Jesuitical reaction of the Span- iards, since the grief is shared by all the civilized nations, by all free peo- ples who detest the infamy of dogmatism. We invite You — to abstain from work this afternoon! (Signed) The Executive Committee of the Chamber of Labor." , BRESCIA LA FERREA 483 southern Italy, with its violence proceeding from pas- sion. There is nothing more for the people to desire unless it be a moderation of the too heavy taxes, or a republican form of government; but the House of Savoy has been too great a benefactor, — the King is too noble, beloved, and thoroughly democratic in his benevolence, to be placed on one side. One morning I started out to visit the trio of south- western churches, by taking a tramcar at the next corner, which traversed the Corsos Palestra and Vit- torio Emanuele to the station. The Brescian tram- ways are quite like those of the other smaller cities, — having little cars run by electric trolleys, and di- vided by partitions into first- and second-class com- partments; the fares are graduated according to the class and distance, varying from two to ^vesoldi,^ — the most satisfactory of all methods; the cars do not stop at every corner, but at certain equidistant points marked by signboards, upon hail; and the passenger is always furnished with a ticket upon paying, which he is required to keep in sight, and which not only identi- fies his payment but also the place at which he should descend. Furthermore, the stubs of the tickets when returned to the company's office constitute an effect- ual check upon the money received by the guards, and render stealing impossible, — a safeguard which American tramways have long vainly sought. At Via S. Nazzaro, halfway to the gate, I descended and walked a block to the west, reaching at the ad- jacent corner the huge mass of SS. Nazzaro e Celso. It is rather a modern church (1780), with a classic stucco fagade, adorned by full-length, Corinthian half -columns, a heavy cornice, and a gable surmounted ^ A soldo is practically equivalent to an American cent, or an English halfpenny. 484 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY by half a dozen Berniniesque plaster statues. The interior proved to be a spacious Renaissance basilica, with an atrium separated from the nave by four mass- ive Corinthian columns, shallow side chapels divided by similar half-columns, and a slightly elevated choir of the same width. From the apse wall a great canvas by Titian radiated its refulgent glory over the whole edifice, supplementing its pure, cold lines. The atrium contained over the side entrances two large works of Vincenzo Foppa, the scourging and the beheading of Saints Nazzaro and Celso, of fairly good anatomy and expression, but otherwise not at- tractive; another Foppa, that once graced the organ doors, lay in the sacristy, — an Annunciation, with a Madonna of much sentiment. The Titian is a panel- piece of five sections, in his wonderful warm tone and golden light and flesh-work, of grand modeling and lifelikeness, and exceeding grace; around the central panel, of the Resurrection, are placed the separate figures of St. George, Messer Averoldo the donor, and St. Sebastian, — the latter form remarkable for its solidity and writhing anguish (instead of the usual absurd complacency) ; — and above them is a lovely Annunciation with very noble forms. Besides this work the church is renowned for four superb and priceless Morettos: a silvery Coronation of the Virgin, with four saints below, — a picture of striking figures, gracefully composed before a delight- ful landscape, but not so inspiring as tableaux of deeper tone "and color; a Christ in glory, surrounded by 'putti, with two saints below, — more golden in tone, but more crowded and disorderly; an Adoration of the Child, whose chiaroscuro is so profound as to leave visible only the shining Babe upon the ground, with the dusky, kneeling forms of the Madonna, BRESCIA LA FERREA 485 Saints Nazzaro and Celso, St. Joseph, and several others, while a flock of putti are dimly outlined behind, — a charming scene, full of reverence, and happy, stray glints of light upon faces and armor; lastly, in the sacristy, a smaller Adoration upon wood, — of the same darkness, with the last gleams of sunset visible through a window, across distant mountains, — and another Annunciation, of much sweetness, in separate medallions at the sides. Adjacent hangs a Meeting of Joachim and Elizabeth, in Moretto's style and color- ing, and thought by many critics to be his product, though it is not certain. Almost opposite the fagade rises the large, preten- tious Palazzo Fe, a very baroque, stucco building of the same epoch. Returning to Corso Vittorio Eman- uele, and proceeding northward, I came quickly to the curious little Church of Madonna dei Miracoli. Its rich front of the Early-Renaissance holds a most ex- traordinary marble porch, — four advanced columns upon a parapet, upholding a very broad entablature topped by a curving gable, and all exquisitely carved with a wealth of minute traceries astonishing to be- hold; similarly carved are the faces of the four ad- jacent pilasters on the fagade proper; seldom is there to be found such a mass of beautiful, delicate detail. As the interior was of no importance, I kept on along the Corso, observing a fine Late-Renaissance palace on the opposite side, impressive from the heavi- ness of its columned window-frames and -cornices, sur- mounted by large globes and busts ; and turning to the left, I reached in a few paces the great Church of S. Francesco, which faces northward upon the Corso Palestra. This f agade is of the Gothic period, built of browned stone, having a simple portal, the remains of an interesting, Gothic, terra-cotta frieze, and a beauti- 486 PLAIN TOWNS OF ITALY ful rose-window. The long, low, dark nave is flanked by columns with Doric capitals and rounded arches, and by aisles with chapels on the left side only. There are four first-class paintings here, including two of transcendent beauty : a Marriage of the Virgin by the rare Francesco da Prato, first altar to the left, — of fine golden tone and interior atmosphere, and a Virgin with all the loveliness and bashful grace which a bride should have; a detached fresco of the school of Giotto, under glass, second on the right, — a Pieta, of very deepest feeling, wonderful for its age; Moretto's renowned group of Saints Margaret, Jerome, and Fran- cis, standing in a portico with two putti hovering over- head, — a scene of celestial peace and beauty; and Romanino's sublime masterpiece of the Madonna and Saints, blazing from its magnificent carved frame be- hind the high-altar like a vision of heavenly glory. The lovely, throned Madonna, exquisitely moulded and poised, clad in a lustrous crimson robe, is holding to her breast the Holy Child, while charming 'putti flutter above; the Franciscan saints below are well- balanced, nobly drawn, and gracefully expressive, in the same gorgeous coloring; while the whole composi- tion is backed by a sky of seductive blueness. A richer glory of hues could not be found in all the Italian schools. It is "the most celebrated and most Palm- esque work of Romanino — grand in contrast of cowl and frock — but still more grand in contrast of look and expression." ^ I had now wandered long enough through city streets, and longed for a breath of the green nature ever visible on the castle hill. The direct ascent leads up from the little Piazza Tito Speri; the gradual one, taken by the tramway, makes a three-quarter circle ^ Crowe and Cavalcaselle. BRESCIA LA FERREA 487 beginning at the northwest corner. But I first fol- lowed a pleasant walk along the eastern flank, starting from the converted Church of S. Giulia, and passing immediately the very old, little edifice of S. Cristo, perched to the left at the top of a long, walled incline. I stopped to examine its curious fagade, constructed half of white Roman blocks, upon some of which ro- settes and other carvings could still be seen, and half of stucco, and containing a Gothic rose-window, also a Gothic frieze of terra-cotta plaques, glazed and col- ored; the interesting early portal, framed by marble pillars strangely cut with ancient reliefs of putti, shields, vases, etc., had a lintel of a single, now broken, stone, relieved with winged ^wi^i-heads, horns of plenty, and a half -figure of Christ, — the Pagan and Christian carvings thus being intermingled; while the lunette held an early fresco of two prettily tinted angels. The Via Gambara thence led me northward along the slope, gradually rising, between green gardens high upon the left and a charming little valley below on the right, until I reached a small park at the north- east shoulder of the hill, and at the angle of the city wall. This wall ascended the valley, turned here, and bore away westward along the top of the northern pre- cipice of the hill, amalgamating finally with the castle wall, frowning with towers. The paths of the little park climbed upon the embankment at its angle, and yielded pleasant views on every side; there were the beautiful neighboring hill-slopes again, cypress- and villa-crowned, the luxuriant plain, stretching south- east into the haze of distance, and the northern valley, once so fair, now belching smoke from a score of tall chimneys, whose broad factories sparkled with hun- dreds of windows. But in them were the wealth and happiness of the 488 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Brescia of to-day, — a more joyful sight to the native than all the. landscapes of Eden. Into such manufac- turing has gone all the best and bluest blood of north- ern Italy, the nobles turning their hands and old for- tunes to a commerce no longer debasing, since it is the sole means of regenerating their country; and in con- sequence they are rebuilding the cities, and reaping for themselves new fortunes of a surprising size. Hence comes that unending stream of automobiles that cov- ers the plain and assails the Alps in summer, to the wonder of tourists, who know not that these modern Lombards have made incomes of a hundred thousand to five hundred thousand francs per year. Luigi Villari has well expressed this change: "The Lombard nobility is the most progressive section of the Italian upper classes, and the richest. It is of burgher origin, and . . . has taken the lead in the new industrial and commercial movement. . . . Many of the oldest names in the country are now connected with silk factories, engineering works, and banks. They are active, public-spirited, and exercise some political influence." And again: "A new type of late years has risen into prominence in Italian society, — the man of business. The old Italian commercial spirit has revived once more. — The typical uomo d' af- fari is generally a Piedmontese or a Lombard. He is a shrewd, intelligent person, educated perhaps in a Swiss or a German commercial college, speaking several languages, and ready on the spot whenever he sees a market for his wares." ^ Close by this corner stood the lonely church and monastery buildings of S. Pietro, surrounded by trees. The church had a peculiar f agade of stucco, painted in imitation of an elaborate, stone, architectural design, ^ Luigi Villari, Italian Life in Town and Country. BRESCIA LA FERREA 489 in which the real doorway and windows were given fanciful deep frames. The monastery wall contained a marble portal very prettily sculptured. I knocked at this, and was admitted by a lay porter to two con- nected Renaissance cloisters, the first containing a charming marble well-top. Of all the Olivetans that had walked and prayed here for centuries, but three or four now remained. Turning into the church, I found a handsome well-proportioned interior of gray sandstone, erected by Sansovino, — with niches for the side altars, divided by Corinthian pilasters inset with imitation verde-antique medallions; while some frescoes by Zoppo adorned the upper walls. After this walk I visited the Galleria Martinengo. Around its courtyard lie a number of ground-floor rooms, not shown unless demanded, containing the sculptures and casts from Palazzo Tosio; among them, Thorvaldsen's two very lovely plaques of Night and Day, Ferrari's powerful group after the Laocoon, Ba- ruzzi's exquisite Silvia, seated upon the ground tying her hair, Pampaloni's wonderful little praying girl, — childish, upturned, sincere and trustful, that has been so endlessly copied, — and some very pleasing plaster compositions by recent Lombard sculptors. Mount- ing the grand staircase, I came to the entrance hall of the picture gallery, hung with the earlier Brescian works; chief amongst them, Foppa's Last Supper, — with the apostles, for once, properly seated around the table, — and his lunette of Madonna and Child. Then I entered the main room, upon the north side, to be confronted at once by the masterpieces of the school, — a room hung solidly with great canvases, of wondrous glow and coloring. Moretto's works here are the grandest of his production, — including the celebrated St. Nicholas presenting children to the 490 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Madonna, the Madonna with two infants in glory and four saints below, the Descent of the Holy Ghost, the Adoration of the Child, the Christ at Emmaus, and the St. Anthony enthroned; — all pictures of ideal pietistic loveliness and expression. They are almost entirely in his "silvery tone," illumined with soft and richly gleaming hues; and the handsome figures, per- fectly lifelike and gracefully posed, exhibit a full, warm, rounded flesh-work which adds exceedingly to the beauties of expression. This appeared also a main characteristic of the Ro- maninos present, which were otherwise much varied, — according to his custom. Some were detached frescoes, with figures too large for such a room, — including a Christ at Emmaus with a very noble head. Among his canvases were a Pietd, an Adoration of the Child, — both very dark, — a Coronation of the Vir- gin, of heroic size and very impressive, a weird Christ bearing the Cross, clad in a white satin robe, and an injured group of St. Paul with four other saints. A few other schools were represented, by several striking works: a miniature procession on wood by Mantegna, of extraordinary tinting, a wonderful panel of the Madonna and two infants by Francia, a damaged Madonna by the same, two of Moroni's superb portraits, a lovely angel's head by Timoteo Viti (?), a magnificent Adoration of the Child by Lorenzo Lotto, gorgeously colored and finished, an interesting Bearing of the Cross by the rare Marco Palmesano da Forli, an Ecce Homo by Gian Bellini, and finally, a marvelous little work of Raphael's, representing the half-figure of Christ, showing at a glance how far he surpassed all others in lifelike moulding, golden flesh work, and nameless grace. In the adjacent third room there were a few more BRESCIA. THE CROSS OF ST. HELENA. (IN THE MUSEUM OF CHRISTIAN ART.) BRESCIA LA FERREA 491 exceptional works, among a large number of average merit: a Christ healing a blind man, by Barbieri, a splendid triptych by Civerchio, — in which winged putti were crowning S. Nicolo, with vivacious joy, — and one of Savoldo's exquisitely beautiful composi- tions, an Adoration, in the stable at night-time, with a remarkable bluish moonlight effect seen through the open window, silvering the distant streams and moun- tains. The fourth room proved of little account; like- wise the series of chambers on the other side, devoted to engravings, drawings, etc. That afternoon I climbed the castle hill, by the steep footpath from Piazza Tito Speri at its southwest angle. To the right, then to the left through a tunnel under houses, and up a long flight of steps, — I reached the first circling roadway of the park; straight ahead still, over graveled paths, now ascending through the young wood, now turning, twisting, mounting steps at inter- vals, and winding again, — at last I emerged upon the southwestern corner of the summit, which proved to be surprisingly broad. There was room without the great quadrilateral of the fortress for a wide shady parkway and a stretch of turf; the old gray walls of broken stone rose stout and high behind their moat, looked over by varied buildings from the still higher ground within. To the east appeared the citadel proper, a ruined stone castle of shattered towers, perched upon the loftiest point, inclosing the ga- bled, barnlike structure which the Austrians had remodeled for their prison; on the left gleamed sev- eral frightful new edifices of yellow stucco, hideous in design, betraying by their "exposition style" that Brescia had just been holding here some kind of show. The view outwardly from the corner was most ex- 492 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY tensive toward all but eastern points, being especially fine of the city spread below and the busy northern vale. After enjoying it, I entered the fortress by its main portal in the middle of the southern wall; on traversing whose deep dark archway, I stood in the precincts so long hated, menacing, and inaccessible. Pyramids of cannon-balls were reminders of those days when thousands such were hurled upon the roofs and streets below. Procuring an admission ticket at the entrance, for the city's Museo del Risorgimento, I was conducted past the new exhibition buildings, up the farther height of the castle, — approaching the latter on its western side. On this small peak of the summit has stood the cita- del of Brescia from the earliest known age; here the Romans built their acropolis, and eventually adorned it with a marble temple, whose massive columns and. gilded tiles flashed far and wide across the plain. ^ The foundations of the later, medieval stronghold are Roman. Even at this great height I found a moat around it, necessarily dry, however, and crossed next the southwest tower by a pair of the original draw- bridges; the broader one, for carriages, was raised against the wall; the slender one, for foot passengers, was let down by the medieval balance-beam. In this same grim, loop-holed round-tower, said my guide, was first imprisoned Tito Speri. Inside the wall still another ascent rose before me, between crumbhng stone buildings, to the supreme point where the tem- ple had stood, one hundred and one metres above the city streets, — now a bare spot with fragments of the Roman foundations; the edifice was partly conserved ^ "The Brescians, also in this respect imitators of Rome, placed an altar to the Genius of their Colony on the Campidoglio. Its base was discovered in 1816." — Odorici, Storie Bresciane (sopra). BRESCIA LA FERREA 493 till modern times by reason of having been turned into the early Church of S. Salvatore. This was at the eastern side of the fortress ; adjacent, on the west of the open, rose the castle building proper, with its rough gray walls; and the mighty round keep of medieval days stood detached beside it. From its lofty summit the white-coated foreigners used to watch the plain, for signs of a rising against their tyranny. Their gaze covered a wide tract of country; for in clear weather the towers of Cremona and Piacenza are visible to the south, — the latter fifty miles away, at the foot of the Apennines. Burning with glory, rosy in the sunset, Lombardy's plain lay far and wide before them; Swayed the Virgilian lake even as a bridal Veil of maidens.^ The custodian opened the door of the main building, in its southern front, and we mounted some dark stairs to the two upper stories; both were completely filled with interesting relics of the Risorgimento, of every nature, recalling all the various aspects and trib- ulations of that terrible epoch, and passing them in review before the mind, with a new and vivid proxim- ity that was wrought from the contact with such sur- viving objects. Here were the placards which had been posted from week to week in the streets of Brescia, during the days of war and rebellion, — reporting the latest successes or defeats of the patriotic cause, incit- ing the people to courage and sacrifice, calling them to arms, or assembly, or contribution of means; they were a burning, harrowing, intimate record of human agita- tions, surpassing in revivifying power any history ever written. ^ Maud Holland's translation of Carducci. The Virgilian lake refers, of course, to the reed-bound waters of Mantua. 494 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Here was the table that Garibaldi then slept upon, his saddle and carriage, his letters of blazing zeal to Brescia and her leaders; here were the precious memen- toes of Tito Speri, — his arms, writings, clothes, hand- kerchief, — any commonplace thing that had been sanc- tified by his touch; there were similar mementos of other heroes, in large number, also relics of the periods of plotting and organization, — in the shape of secret communications, signs, manuals, agreements, etc., — and relics of the war periods, in the form of guns, swords, cannons, uniforms, and other equipments. Es- pecially interesting were the wretched old muzzle-load- ing muskets, — with which poor instruments the patri- ots struggled against modern rifles, — and the pathetic attempts at regimentals, with which they often took the field. Finally, in the low, top rooms of the gable, illumined dimly from little barred windows set in the four-foot stone walls, I observed with keen sympathy the nu- merous steel manacles, — foot- and leg-irons, — still attached to their heavy chains, fastened at short inter- vals to the walls, with which the heroic prisoners had been loaded like wild beasts. There they had been chained, side by side, against the bare cold stones, awaiting the dawn that should lead them forth to death. So affecting was it all, so vividly did it recall those frightful days, that I breathed with a real relief when we emerged again into the sunshine, into the realization that Freedom was here at last, safe and undying. It were not Freedom if thou wert not free, Nor wert thou Italy, — O mystic rose ingrained with blood, impearled With tears of the whole world! ^ * Swinburne, Song of Italy. BRESCIA LA FERREA 495 Another interesting walk to the city's outskirts is that westward to the great Camposanto, which one first sees at a distance, from the castle-hilltop. It consists of the customary quadrangle, here quite ex- tensive, lined on the four sides by rows of imposing cypresses; the usual tombs of modern sculpture adorn the inner arcades, some of them really beautiful; and at the centre of the green rises the principal monu- ment, — a lofty round tower upon a wide heavy base, tipped with a pointed dome, to which one can ascend by spiral stairs. One other monument greeted me, with a farewell to Brescia, upon the afternoon when I repaired to the station to depart. It beautifies a pleasant grass-plot without the Porta Stazione, adjacent to the road, — standing thus to welcome the arriving traveler or God-speed the departing. It is a striking composition, unique and vigorous, with all the fire of the modeling Italian genius, arresting by its very strangeness an eye wearied of all the conventional designs: at the top of half a dozen steps rises a plain marble screen, some ten feet high and twenty feet broad; upon this stands another section of similar size, embellished with a prominent high-relief of impressive beauty, — a madly dashing quadriga, driven by a majestic, helmeted Goddess of Fame, holding a deceased hero with one arm and a symbol of glory in the other hand. The symbol, the reins, and a few other points are touched with goldleaf, of glittering brilliance, which bestows upon the whole a dazzling splendor befitting the theme; and before the lower screen, upon a pedestal between the steps, stands a noble bronze figure, of heroic size and look, clad in the stately gown of a doctor of laws or philosophy. Placed some fifty feet back from the street, upon a gentle grassy knoll, encircled by flower- 496 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY beds in front, and finely backed by a row of cypresses, — against whose massed, dark foliage the marble glistens and the horses plunge, — the whole superb construction is an ideal encomium of the patriotic statesman, Zanardelli. He was another leader of those glorious days of strife and unification ; his residence — whence he ad- dressed the people, and emerged to guide them in their crises — had been shown to me on Via S. Giulia. And so the last thing I saw, as I went away, was still another memorial of Brescia's heroic temper, — a final re- minder of her lofty, intrepid spirit, that led the way to freedom through blood and fire. Beautiful Italy! — golden amber Warm with the kisses of lover and traitor! Thou who hast drawn us on to remember. Draw us to hope now; let us be greater By this new future than that old story. ^ ^ Mrs. Browning, Italy and the World. CHAPTER XIII MONTAGNANA, ESTE, AND MONSELICE The land that holds the rest in tender thrall For love's sake in them all. That binds with words, and holds with eyes and hands. All hearts in all men's lands. — Swinburne. Through the endless wheat-fields of the middle plain, now yellow with stubble, now green with the sprout- ing winter crop, now crossed by numberless files of stripped mulberry trees stretching as far as the eye could reach, I was rolling southeastward from Verona to the historic district of the Polesine. Seaward now, toward the fair Euganean Hills, — this time upon their southern side, whence sprang that foremost of all Italian princely races, more famous even than the Visconti, — the House of Este. I was approaching the immemorial cradle of that great family, the most an- cient — aside from Savoy — of all ruling Italian dynas- ties, the origin of whose power and nobility was so re- mote as to be lost in the mists of time; that family which counts among its descendants nearly every European sovereign of to-day, from King George V to the pettiest German grand duke. I was nearing the primeval stronghold, at the foot of the Colli Euga- nei, from which they drew their name, and sallied forth to their earliest conquests over the whole sur- rounding region between the hills and the Po, — from Legnago on the west to the Adriatic on the east. This was the district of the Polesine, celebrated from Roman days for the richness of its alluvial soil. 498 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY washed down and watered by innumerable streams, always thickly inhabited by a prosperous agricultural people, with a dozen or more wealthy little cities of five to fifteen thousand inhabitants. It was this fertile region that the warlike Estensi ruled from the earliest period of the Middle Age, and made the basis of all their future fame and power. " Alberto Azzo II," says Gregorovius, " who is originally mentioned as Marchio di Longobardia (Marquis of Lombardy) governed the territory from Mantua to the Adriatic and the region about the Po, where he owned Este and Rovigo. . . . These lords, . . . who first appeared about the time of the Lombard invasion, were descended from a fam- ily whose remote ancestor was one Albert. The names Adalbert and Albert assume in Italian the form Oberto, from which we have the diminutives Obizzo and Azzo. . . . Alberto Azzo II married Kunigunde, daughter of Count Guelph III of Swabia, and in this way the famous German family of Guelph became connected with the Oberti and drawn into Italian politics. When Alberto Azzo died. in the year 1096, — more than one hundred years old, — he left two sons, Guelph and Folco; Gruelph inherited the property of his maternal grandfather, Guelph III, in whom the male line of the house became extinct in 1055. He went to Germany, where he became Duke of Bavaria, and founded the Guelph line. Folco inherited his father's Italian pos- sessions." ^ He and his son continued to dwell at Este and lord it over the Polesine; but his grandson, Azzo V, married the Marchesella Adelardi, heiress of the leader of the Guelphs in the city of Ferrara, toward the close of the twelfth century, — and domiciled him- self in Ferrara, as his father-in-law's successor. This was the beginning of the Estense leadership of the ^ Gregorovius, Lucretia Borgia. MONTAGNANA 499 whole Guelphic cause, and their domination of Fer- rara. Within a few years, in 1208, Azzo VI, the next Marquis of Este, drove the Ghibelline faction entirely from the city, and was elected by the people as their hereditary ruler. "In this way the Este established the first tyranny on the ruins of a commune." While living at Este, the marquises had given the most of their attention to Padua, considering them- selves the champions of the Guelphic party in that town, and indulging in frequent strife with the city over questions of territory. After removing to Ferrara, they kept up this strife, having a continuous struggle to preserve their ownership of the Polesine. They re- turned to Este only for an occasional villeggiatura; but they did not wish to lose the fertile region upon which the Paduans, Veronese, and Venetians looked with such covetous eyes, and which they fought over for nearly three centuries. During Ezzelino da Romano's lordship of Padua, he made especial efforts to wrest the towns of the Polesine from the Estensi; but Azzo VII (1215-64) successfully resisted, becoming Ezzelino's bitterest and most steadfast enemy, and finally effect- ing the combination that pulled him to earth in 1259. Azzo was so financially weakened by the long struggle that in the following year he sold Este, Cerro, and Calaone to the commune of Padua, receiving them back as fiefs, under an annual tribute. His son, Obizzo II (1264-93,) was a strong ruler, ex- tending the Estense sway to Modena and Reggio; but his grandson, Azzo VIII (1293-1308), suffered the loss of various important lands and castles in this re- gion, at the hands of the Paduans and Alberto della Scala. The next marquis. Fresco, lost practically all of the district; but Can Grande della Scala in his turn despoiled the Paduans, seizing in 1317 the strongholds 500 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY of Montagnana, Este, Monselice, and other towns, and finally gaining possession of Padua itself. The Scala dominion of the Polesine lasted twenty years. In 1337, Venice, Florence, the Delia Carrara, and Es- tensi entered into a secret treaty to crush Mastino II della Scala, which was carried out, and by which the Estensi recovered their cherished territory. Venice thereafter protected the Estensi against the Paduans, until she took Padua herself, in 1405; receiving in re- turn many special privileges of trading and transporta- tion. The Polesine, therefore, at this period enjoyed about a century and a half of peace and prosperity, while the Este princes flourished at Ferrara, celebrated far and wide for the culture and brilliancy of their Court. The classic revival, in which they took such a lead, was brought by them also to Este and its sur- rounding territory; they embellished the ancestral town, and gave many a grand entertainment in the ancient castle on its knoll, where there was usually some member of the family residing. This splendid period reached its apogee under Lion- ello (1441^50), Borso (1450-71), and Ercole (1471- 1505), a trio of princes justly famed for their culture, magnificence, and patronage of all the arts. Borso was created by Emperor Frederick II the Duke of Modena and Reggio, Count of Rovigo and Com- machio ; and by Pope Paul VII was constituted Duke of Ferrara, — a nominal papal fief. Ercole, however, fell into disaster, becoming embroiled in a war with the Serene Republic, which had long coveted the Polesine, and now seized it forcibly, about 1480. From that time till the coming of Bonaparte, Este, Montagnana, and the rest of this district throve under the wise and equitable rule of Venice. She rebuilt those mighty walls and towers which still encircle MONTAGNANA 501 Montagnana in all their massiveness, quite undecayed, and render it to,-day an ideal example of the fortified Renaissance town; she strengthened the old castles of Este and Monselice, the main strongholds of the region, which before the days of cannon were prac- tically invulnerable; and she brought increased pros- perity to Rovigo, Battaglia, and all the eastern part of the Polesine, by reconstructing and maintaining in good order that network of canals which still carries their rich produce cheaply to market.^ As far as Legnago, — which must not be confounded with Legnano, the birthplace of Italian freedom, north of Milan, — my route lay within the district of the noted Austrian "Quadrilateral"; the broad Adige was its eastern boundary, and the fortress of Legnago its southeastern corner. On this ride the plain had as- sumed its beautiful dress of autumn-gold. The lines of drooping, yellow willows 'along the frequent streams and irrigating-ditches, the occasional straight files of poplars along the highways, and groves of beetling cypresses around graveyards and old monastery buildings, all relieved the flatness of the landscape. There were russet plane trees also, shading the roads and gathered about the farmhouses and villages, with now and then a small orchard of fruit trees next a dwelling. The fields were mostly restricted to the valuable mulberry; but everywhere surrounding them, serving as divisional lines, and occupying in rows all the vineyards, were those arboreal species from which the people derive their scanty fuel, — elm, beech, ash, birch, etc., — their knobby boles now graced ^ There are records of canals in this district as early as the days of the Celts, which Rome duly enlarged and extended; but during the Middle Ages they fell into disuse and ruin. Their renovation was commenced by the Estensi, and completed by the Republic, which also added to their size and number. 502 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY by the summer's growth oi boughs, soon to be cut away. These last, moreover, in the vineyards, aided in pro- ducing what was the fairest feature of the whole land- scape, — owing to the graceful way in which the vines are trained through this section:^ around each tree, with its crown of this year's tender boughs, was planted a circle of stakes, leaning outward, bound to the trunk and to each other by strings, along which the grape tendrils clambered in the prettiest fashion. This was the prevalent method, though I noticed others, and occasionally an instance of the lovely Umbrian fashion of swinging long festoons from tree to tree. One charming feature of this countryside was unusual, — the abundance of hedges everywhere, along the roads and between the fields; not as trim as English hedges, but still very ornamental. Water, as usual, was much in evidence, the ditches and canals for draining and irrigation being ever in sight, with now and then a field entirely swamped; a great many are flooded at the rainy season, but cultivable in the others. Every foot of available ground is carefully tilled in this region, not an acre being allowed for woodland or pasture; and the crop, aside from the vine, is always wheat, wheat, — with the sole excep- tion of a very little barley, and some market-garden- ing near the towns; which is curiously different from the ubiquitousness of maize farther north. Another marked difference from the northern plain was the scarcity of the dwellings: but rarely did an isolated farmhouse appear, and then it was of the usual stained and crumbling stucco, — dwelling, stables, and pig-sty under one roof, surrounding a 1 By the section here described, is meant the country around Legnago and Montagnana. MONTAGNANA 503 yard heaped with manure and refuse of every kind; while before it stood generally a sort of little outhouse whose use I could not discern, with a queer peaked roof of thatch or rushes, like a Malay hut. With these few exceptions, the teeming population was still gathered into villages, like the Middle Ages, — countless vil- lages, each with its long history, its individuality, its dialect, its characteristics of building, and labor, and customs. For there is no nation so utterly gregarious as the Italians, — for whom life is so much a matter of human society. Their idea' of a pleasant locality, remarked Mrs. Piozzi, is expressed in the phrase, **Cio e con un mondo d' amici cosi. . . . No human being suffers solitude so ill as does an Italian. They can hardly believe that there is existing a person who would not willingly prefer any company to none." ^ And how devotedly they become attached to their own little town or hamlet! "The provincials," says Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco, "whatever be their class, still speak their own familiar idiom when alone. Each separate dialect is a bond of union, a freemasonry, an echo from home in distant parts, — home, which in Italy is less an emotion of the hearth than of the sunlight as it falls upon the native valley, the village campanile, the piazza with the plane trees and the bowling-ground, the fountain with the brown- armed girls." ^ Yet to the stranger these numberless hamlets of the plain are as alike as their railway sta- tions, ever flitting by. Ah, those stations, — surely they must all have been poured into a single mould: the long, uncovered platform, the two-storied building of creamy yellow stucco, with its half-dozen doorways marked in plain black lettering, the stretch of regular, ^ Mrs. Piozzi, Glimpses from Italian Society, etc.; with an introduction by Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco. 504 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY flowered turf at each end, separating off the little cubical outhouses and the water-tank, the avenue of plane trees leading, straight as a die, from the rear of the building to the adjacent borough, — what traveler does not know them! Carea, — where the line from Verona to Rovigo connects with that from Mantua to Monselice, — and Legnago, the former fortress, both appeared to be towns of some size, with a fresh, restored look as if they had been rebuilt of late. Legnago in fact has nearly fifteen thousand inhabitants now, and is said to be flourishing; yet there is nothing to call the stranger to descend and pay it a visit. Half a dozen miles far- ther on, we reached Bevilacqua, the first town of the Polesine; and here on the left appeared a magnificent castle, of red brick with white stone trimmings, either recently built or splendidly restored; its square form was heavily battlemented, with great, machicolated towers at the angles; it stood amidst a park of large and handsome trees, beside a stream crossed by a fine double-arched bridge. Beyond it, to the far northeast, I caught the first view of the Euganean Hills, their gentle slopes and rounded summits wrapped in the mist of distance. Another four or five miles brought us to Monta- gnana, and two minutes later I was driving up the cus- tomary avenue to the town in an antiquated rattle- trap of a public vettura, at the cost of eight soldi for the half-mile distance. The fields on each side were rather bare of trees, giving me a clear view of the grand old walls we were approaching. Far away to the east and west they stretched, as straight as a plumb-line, a mile or more in length, varied at regular intervals by imposing hexagonal towers, loftier than the tall curtains between them; ten of these towers I MONTAGNANA 505 counted, every one as exact and unbroken as if not a century had passed since its erection. Not a battle- ment appeared missing from their summits, nor from the even, solid lengths of wall, whose clay-colored bricks seemed endowed with all the weight and dura- bility of stone. I could recall no other brick fortifica- tions in the land, of such exceptional size and regular- ity, and such perfect preservation. They concealed all the city's buildings save a few tiled roofs, and the looming forms and campanili of the churches. In this whole southern wall, it was evident, there had been originally no opening whatever; for medieval Montagnana had but two directions, east and west, having grown up along the highway from Este to Mantua, beside which it is strung out as an attenu- ated rectangle, but four or five blocks in width. There was little or no passage at right angles to this line, and so they confined themselves to two gates only, at the narrow ends, which were towered and castellated into a state of invulnerability. The railroad with its sta- tion had altered that condition of affairs^ and so I saw now before me a modern opening for the approach, in the shape of two rounded archways near the middle of the wall ; the broad moat had been filled with earth, on which we passed solidly to the inner side. A single block then to the north, and we entered the one great thoroughfare of the town, — the ancient highway, — which runs straight between old arcades and stuccoed buildings of three stories, from one principal gateway to the other. A bit to the east here, on the left side, I descended at the primitive little Albergo Arena, the best thing in the way of an inn that the place could offer. The aged host and his dame bustled around with an excitement which revealed that a forestiere in Mon- 506 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY tagnana is a very rare bird indeed; not that they manifested any idea of plucking me, — they were too simple for any such citified ideas. On one side of the usual driveway entrance to the court, was the clean-looking kitchen with its brick hearth and cop- per utensils; on the other, the general guest- and- eating-room, beside which mounted the crooked narrow stairs; the first floor was a maze of winding passages and different levels, amongst which I was given a bare but clean front room, for the modest sum — without bargaining — of one franc and a half per day. My meals were cooked by the good dame her- self (they had but one helper) , and, though served on the coarsest of linen with iron forks, were thoroughly enjoyed; for there are certain things any North-Italian can cook well, — minestra, veal cutlet alia Milanese, macaroni, and native vegetables, — and they nearly always have some good wine to add a zest.^ In the cool of the afternoon I started out for my pre- liminary stroll, making eastward again on the main thoroughfare, beneath its ancient stucco arcades, sus- tained by pillars of every shape and condition; and a comparatively few steps opened out the Piazza Grande, stretching northward from the street to a most surprising extent. It was a vast space, of great age and picturesqueness; paved with cobblestones around the sides, and with flagstones in the broad rectangular centre, where stood the city's marble monument to Vittorio Emanuele II; surrounded by diversified arcades, in aged stuccoed buildings of every type and color; while the huge brick mass of the Duomo projected boldly into the area from its north- ^ One must, however, ask for Tuscan or Piedmont vintages, if he wishes the best obtainable; the Veronese are but fair, while those of the plain in general are no longer palatable. (See next chapter.) MONTAGNANA 507 east angle, reaching halfway to the monument. In contrast with its simple, massive form of yellowish brown brick, the houses glowed with a score and more of bright and variegated hues, softened by time into a certain harmony, — gray tints, cream, red, green, pink, white, brown, yellow, azure, russet, vermilion, dark blue, all commingled into a happy prismatic sheen. The arcades were entirely round-arched, save at the northern end of the east side next the church, where a very old dwelling — one of three stories, like the majority — rose upon Gothic arches with ponderous, spreading piers. Adjacent stood two houses of almost equal antiquity, one resting upon similar stuccoed piers, the other upon gray-stone Doric columns; after which, going south, appeared a couple in which the arcades were two-storied, — one supported by heavy, rusticated, stone piers, the other by hexagonal stone pillars ; behind these at some distance soared a mighty, medieval, brick tower, which proved to belong to the castello of the eastern gate. Nearly as ancient as these crumbling buildings were those of the northern por- tion of the piazza, beyond the Duomo ; but its south- ern side was of the later Renaissance, centred by a large stuccoed palazzo with brown-stone trimmings, curiously painted pink upon its string-course, brown with white veinings upon its entablature, and light green in its upper body, veined with pink and white. On its left stood another palazzo, topped with two of the oddest ornamental chimneys that I have ever seen, — huge stone structures upon the eaves, carved like swelling Oriental turrets, — strange relics of the rococo. The first half of the western side alone was modern, composed of five classic edifices of rather imposing 508 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY design, with handsome arcades, cornices, and bal- conies; the one upon the corner being exceedingly ornate, with gray stucco relievo upon its architraves, window-frames, and cornicione. Under the fifth arcade I found, to my surprise and pleasure, a first- class modern caffe, recently started, — the "Caffe Loggia" of Pietro Stefani; a fact of much significance to travelers, because here one is able to obtain good cafS-au-lait in the morning, cafi noir in the evening, afternoon tea when wanted, and all the customary beverages, besides the daily and illustrated journals, — which Montagnana had never seen before. Im- mediately beyond it is the local theatre, with a noble entrance loggia adorned by Doric columns of gray granite, — where traveling companies often give per- formances, including vaudeville. Advancing to the northern portion of the piazza, I observed two interesting Renaissance palaces on its western side: the first, a small quaint edifice of Pal- ladian style; the second, a most eccentric old dwelling of preposterous hues. Its round arches below were painted in imitation of inset red-marble panels, and topped by a creamy-yellow entablature, with medal- lions in the spandrils containing busts ; the first-floor windows were pointed, tipped with reliefs of fruit and foliage, and set in rectangular frames, between which the body was colored red and green in checkered designs; the second-floor windows were circular, in square frames, interspersed by octagonal panels of reddish tint, holding white medallions with busts in grisaille; the string-courses were arcaded, and the fantastic cornice was upheld by sculptured bat-like creatures; down the angles extended two pilaster strips, painted, like all the rest, in imitation of red and green veined marble. It was a weird specimen of the MONTAGNANA . 509 deepest decadence of the Renaissance. On the east side rose another good Palladian mansion, with a Doric colonnade; and a third handsome palazzo adorned the street leading northward from the left- hand corner, covered with an interesting old wooden roof, projecting widely on wooden consoles. The street was broad, and arcaded on both sides, but ended only a block away, against a grim tower of the north- ern wall. The sombre old Cathedral, amidst all this palatial architecture, so surprising in a town of ten thousand souls, stood solitary, massive, and uncouth, like a relic of some darker, savage era, — as indeed it was; the vast brick walls, supported by clumsy spreading buttresses at the sides and angles, had once been encased in stucco, which now was practically all crum- bled away; their plainness was relieved by naught but simple pilaster-strips between the buttresses, a crude arcaded cornice, a marble portal, and three slen- der open canopies topping the flat gable, holding each a bell within its Corinthian columns. There was no campanile; the transepts ended in lower apses, decor- ated in Lombard fashion with pilaster-strips; and a pair of simple side porches, upon low arches, snuggled into the angles between transepts and nave. Further evidences of the building's Gothic period, — probably the early fifteenth century, — were offered in the re- markable paucity and the lancet form of the windows, only two or three in each side; while the stern fagade had but a single one, circular in shape, without frame or tracery. The marble portal — I found, upon advancing to it — was a later addition to the Gothic body, of the high Renaissance : a pair of fluted Corinthian columns on each side of the round-arched doorway supported 510 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY a broad entablature, of which the chief feature was a circular niche in the middle, holding a well-executed and rather pleasing half -figure of the Madonna with her Child. The two simple brick pilaster-strips rising beside the portal, were oddly broken off at mid-height, for a fifth of their length, and protruded like chim- neys above the sloping arcaded cornice; they are, I believe, absolutely unique. Another peculiar feature was the huge clock-face in the gable, just above the plain circular window. In the right wall of the nave, externally, I found embedded several ancient marble inscriptions, and two or three simple early tombs. High upon a buttress of the right transept appeared a strange marble relief like a coat-of-arms, showing two jputti or genii beside a hound, and inscribed, *'Divo Prothomartiri Stephano." The interior of this unusual church, when I ex- amined it next morning, proved to be equally peculiar: it was very lofty, dark, and cool, and especially bare, being designed in a queer mixture of Gothic and Re- naissance forms, which showed the transition period. The rouiid-arched, plastered nave, without aisles or chapels, ended in a still darker choir, mysteriously illumined by five long blue windows of much opaque- ness, and approached by three broad red-marble steps. Along the side walls of the nave ran oaken panelings and benches like choir seats, with prettily carved cornices, broken midway by a single altar on each hand; that on the left was of horrible baroque form, the other had a most beautiful. Renaissance, marble frame, exquisitely sculptured on every part with foliations interspersed with tiny 'putti, and surmounted by sev- eral statuettes upon the cornice. This frame held a large and magnificent canvas by Buonconsiglio, — signed, dated 1513, — representing Mary Magdalen MONTAGNANA 511 between St. Anthony of Padua and an archangel grasping the hand of Tobias; these glorious, life-size figures stood apparently in a domed rotunda, — the Magdalen upon a pedestal, — and were colored with delightful simplicity in rich shades of crimson, white, and brown. It alone was worth the trip to Monta- gnana. Above it, along the marble frieze, gamboled a most charming line of cherubs in high-relief, sur- passingly winsome in their grace and joyousness. I did not succeed in ascertaining the sculptor's name. The old pavement of the nave was tessellated in red and white marbles; the organ-loft was perched over the main entrance, and a small altar was located in each front corner. There was no dome; the transepts were short and apsidal, containing altars between pairs of lancet windows, — baroque in form, though of polished granite and Siena marble. The southern pala was unimportant, but that of the high-altar was by Buonconsiglio again, — another exceptionally large canvas, depicting the Transfiguration: Christ is shown talking with Moses and Elias, upon a cloud that seems to press down upon the three dazed and prostrate apostles, gazing up with awe and amazement at the angels hovering above the speakers. It is not so high a work as the other; for the Christ seems to be posing, the apostles are distorted, convulsed, in group- ing and movement, and none of them are quite life- like, — doubtless due to the retouching. The stucco framework of this apse was unusual, — a triumphal arch, adorned with rosettes upon its soffit, upheld by giant Corinthian columns on high double bases, which were decorated each with a series of ten busts in relievo; seven tall depressed arches extended round the apse, framing the windows, and supporting an elabo- rate entablature with a row of little heads upon the 512 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY frieze, — while their spahdrils held other busts, within medallions. The half -dome contained an enormous fresco of the Ascension, aged and damaged, but of splendidly effective composition, — endless throngs of angels being visible within the gates of the opened Paradise, above the twelve heroic figures of the apostles. It was powerfully conceived and drawn, and once must have been sublime; its author appeared to be unknown. The sides of the choir were richly adorned with oaken panelings above the double row of stalls: Corinthian pilasters, formerly gilded upon their delic- ate reliefs, framed five lofty panels on each wall, that held painted scenic tableaux and large individual figures; these were evidently by different hands, for those on the left were better, — including a Flight into Egypt with a charming Madonna, in a pleasing, finely toned landscape. The pavement of the choir also was exceptionally rich, and very old, being inlaid with diamonds in black, red, and yellow marbles. In the left transept appeared a third great canvas by Buonconsiglio, — the Madonna being crowned by two flying 'putti, seated between Saints Roch and Sebastian, in a marbled hall sustained by Corinthian columns; the putti and the Sebastian being retouched out of any semblance to reality, but the face of St. Roch still showing the power of the master. The Vir- gin's form, clad simply in a red bodice and green robe, remained the best of the three, although her head did incline rather too sentimentally on one shoulder. Another large Renaissance canvas hung in the right transept, — an odd one, depicting a Venetian naval battle with the Turks; probably a relic of the fame of the Venetian Admiral Pisani, who had a country palace at Montagnana, and lies buried here. MONTAGNANA 513 This same morning the piazza presented an appear- ance very different from its vacant neatness of the pre- ceding evening: it was fulfilling its primary functions as a market-ground. The whole of the paved central space was a mass of booths with bright, tented cov- erings, vending every variety of produce, clothing, and household articles; a dense crowd thronged their narrow alleys, and the surrounding streets were jammed with country vehicles and peddlers' wagons. In the cool of the afternoon, when the great part of this gathering had already subsided, I strolled east- ward on the main street, to the tall edifice of the Muni- cipio close at hand upon the right. It stood somewhat back from the way, a three-storied brick palazzo, covered cleverly with stucco to resemble rusticated stone (which was now much worn off) and of attractive Renaissance design: the ground story was arcaded, with triple openings and square piers, forming a loggia two bays deep, in which stood the handsome portal, framed by Corinthian columns; the windows above were divided by Ionic pilasters, coupled at the angles. This building was erected by the great Sammicheli, and long occupied by the Venetian Podestas. I mounted the main staircase just within the por- tal, and succeeded in finding a considerate oflScial to show me about. The principal apartment was the large Sala del Consiglio on the second floor, to the right, which retained its original marble pavement and noble carved oak roof. Here I found Buonconsiglio's remaining picture, very little retouched and in fine condition: it depicted the throned Madonna, with two charming child-angels playing musical instru- ments at her feet, — Saints Paul and Sebastian and a bishop standing to the right, Saints Peter and John the Baptist and another on the left, — all posed 514 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY within a small vaulted rotunda sustained by columns. The tone was delieiously golden; the life-size figures were of great naturalness and splendid beauty, su- perbly colored, in a subdued golden light. Especially lovely was the face and form of the Madonna, and all of them were expressive of celestial bliss; — truly an extraordinary picture to preside over the meetings of a small town council.^ The adjacent hall of the Ar- chivio Vecchio, upon the front, contained a beautiful red-marble chimney-piece by Sammicheli; the other rooms were modernized and of no special interest. The main street continued eastward between aged stucco houses of two and three stories, colored with kaleidoscopic effect, and arcaded on both sides, — inter- spersed with an occasional colonnade without arches; and down each side street to the right, but one block distant, was seen the accompanying city wall, sur- mounted by its tall battlements and mighty towers, with its fighting-platform sustained by a succession of huge brick arches. Finally the way debouched into a broad piazza before the great castle of the eastern gate, called the Porta S. Zeno, — a typical aggregation of medieval ernbattled structures, trans- porting one bodily to the bellicose sixteenth century. Somewhat to the right and far to the left stretched the three-storied, battlemented, brick edifice of the castello, pierced by the three successive ports of the dark, tun- neled gateway, — the third, or anteport, extending beyond the walls. To the right the old building was ^ ^ This masterpiece appears to me Buonconsiglio's finest surviving work, surpassing even his beautiful pala of S. Rocco at Vicenza. In it he ap- proaches nearest to the ineffable grace and coloring of Palma Vecchio, upon whom he clearly modeled his style, after his study of the latter's methods at Vicenza and Venice. This was one of the master's last works; and makes us sorrowful indeed that he died at the early age of thirty - three, with such a promise of future glories unfulfilled. MONTAGNANA 515 entered by a ponderous rusticated archway, above . which opened handsome double-arched windows in the upper stories; beyond this extended a lower structure of stucco, — marked " Cavallerizza " over its entrance, — which embraced the whole southeastern angle of the city walls; to the left the castle was pierced by another grand archway, but the deep windows were square-headed and plain. Two massive keeps soared behind the more southern buildings, — one in the rear of the "Cavallerizza," the hexagonal corner tower of the ramparts; the other just beside the anteport, the square guard-tower of the entrance and donjon of the fortress. Through all these edifices and the piazza poured an abundance of martial life, — for here was located the large garrison of Montagnana, consisting mostly of cavalry. Soldiers lounged everywhere, in doors, in windows, in the open ; scores were rubbing down their horses before the castle, and exercising them in the square; through the momentarily opened gate of the " Cavallerizza " I saw its vast yard filled with other steeds and troopers, similarly engaged. On traversing the deep dark gateway, over whose well-like ports the mighty donjon loomed like a menacing Colossus, I found the same scenes being enacted in the broad dry bed of the fosse : a hundred or two of cavalrymen were currying their chargers in the shade of the tall horse- chestnuts along the outer bank, and trying to teach them various feats and tricks. The walls had been pierced with rows of modern windows and doorways, and a modern extension of the castle encroached upon the sward. As for the gateway, it was untouched, con- serving still its massive cinquecento gates of bolted wood, between the first and second ports; although the approach was a later bridge of masonry, on whose 516 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY parapets sat a throng of citizens watching the soldiers. From this the highway extended straightaway to the east, between an indefinite succession of villas and large dwellings, with occasional gardens; and the first edi- fice on the left was an imposing Palladian palace adorned with Doric half-columns below and Ionic above, all of creamy stucco. It was the villa of Ad- miral Pisani, whose arms were visible in the pediment, flanked by two reclining female figures of marble. On its farther side extended a baroque, one-storied chapel, which contains the Admiral's tomb, — said to be an excellent piece of Renaissance sculpture. This was a branch of the same opulent family that built the Palazzo Stra on the Brenta; it existed until recent years, when by the marriage of a sole surviving daughter its pos- sessions passed to the Conti Giusti. The Count was not now in residence, and without his personal per- mission I was unable to enter. I strolled for half a mile down the road, admiring the graceful vagaries of villa architecture, — the ar- cades, lo^ge, towers, and dainty cotta-work, the walls overhung by draperies of vine, and the beautiful gar- dens adorned with statues and pavilions. On return- ing to Piazza Grande, I inspected the street leading southward from it, which was one startling rainbow of vivid hues, including rose, lavender, bistre, ochre, and various other gaudy tints, all recently renewed. At its end, backing upon the city wall, rose the old, abandoned Church of S. Francesco, a brick edifice of pleasing Gothic lines, topped by a handsome campanile, with a belfry of double ogive arches on coupled marble shafts. Near by on the west I found the strangest garden wall that I ever saw, resembling a vermilion postage-stamp from Turkey or Persia. MONTAGNANA 517 Immediately west of the albergo, on the main street, rose an interesting Gothic palazzo of the early quat- trocento: its charming feature was a colonnaded win- dow of five ogive arches with rectangular cusps, in the middle of the piano nohile, — their points relieved with foliated caps, — and two balconies of exquisite, marble, open-work railings, extending at the window's ends, upon elaborate marble consoles. Flanking these were single windows of similar design, underset by frescoed red busts in panels; and the ground-floor arcade upon Corinthian columns, contained a delight- ful Renaissance portal. This handsome palace, and a number of others upon the main thoroughfare, of more purely Renaissance design, gave proofs of the extens- ive use of Montagnana in earlier days as a place of villeggiatura for the noble Venetian families. I walked on, toward sunset, to the western city gate. Porta Legnago, which as a gateway, pur et simple, proved more formidable than the eastern, though not accompanied by any castle; it had five ports, — two without the wall, one within its breadth, and two inside, all surrounded by lofty battlemented erections; the outer ports protruding upon the bridge of masonry that spanned the now grassy moat. Domi- nating these was the customary great tower, of colos- sal height, splendidly machicolated and crenelated. The preservation here, as elsewhere, was very re- markable. Beyond it the highway plunged at once into the luxuriant open country. The little city has a couple of parallel back streets, north of the main one, and half a dozen widely spaced at right angles; all without arcades, save for a few solitary houses, and well interspersed with gardens. These I wandered through in the sunset-hour, glancing over the several additional churches, of uninteresting 518 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY rococo design; — and tHe next morning early, was away for Este, catching a train at 7 or 8 a.m. The journey contained nothing noteworthy, — only a gradual nearing of the rounded Euganean Hills, which rose slowly higher and more distinct, till I descended at their very feet. On emerging from the little station I saw the two southernmost peaks towering immedi- ately to the north, — the end of the chain, obscuring the others by their bulk; they were smoothly topped, verdant cones, checkered by grain-fields here and there, with one white-walled village perched upon a shoulder halfway up, and another ensconed in the far saddle between the twin summits, fifteen hundred feet in air. From the lower slopes a long sharp ridge projected southward into the plain, and upon the end of this was located, I found, the ancient castle of the Estensi. The town grew up along its western side, reaching now half a mile farther south, to the railway; — a sleepy but prosperous little city of eleven thousand people. Ariosto made a famous play of words upon its name, and its prosperity of his day: — And because Charles shall say in Latin, "Este /" — (That is, — be lords of the dominion round !) Entitled in a future season Este Shall with good omen be that beauteous ground; And thus its ancient title of Ateste Shall of its two first letters lose the sound.^ Taking a vettura, I drove north along the main thoroughfare, Via Principe Umberto, which was lined at first by comparatively modern buildings, but later ran between aged stucco houses of faded hues, arcaded on both sides, till it debouched into the spacious Piazza Maggiore. This stretched westward from the street, ^ Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, canto Lxv; Rose's translation. — "Charles" is Charlemagne. This is a double pun, for by the second "Este" the poet refers to the Italian word meaning summer-time, — hence, fertility. ESTE 519 which continued again beyond it for several blocks; but I had not to go so far, for half a block beyond the square, on the left hand, I was set down at the town's best hostelry, — as it was recommended to me, — the "Albergo Cavallino," conducted by the good dame Giuseppina Zannini. She gave me her principal guest-room, a large and comfortable chamber on the first-floor front; and I had naught to complain of but the inevitable company at meal-times of the usual ob- streperous citizens. Of course one can always escape such company by dining in one's room, but I prefer to observe the life of these small places. It being still early at my arrival, I soon returned to Piazza Maggiore, which, as I now observed, lay just a block west of the foot of the ruined fortress of the Estensi, — being connected with the latter by a short street. The broad square was paved, as at Monta- gnana, by medieval cobbles around the sides and gray flags reticulated with white lines in the middle; at its north centre stood a handsome relic of the Old Regime, — a tall, red Venetian mast upheld by a gray sand- stone base, carved with four lions couchant at the corners. Roundabout stretched a picturesque assort- ment of old stuccoed buildings, variegated in design and color, and in the form of their ground-story arcades. The supports of the latter were bewilderingly varied, showing every epoch from the Romanesque to the basest rococo; there was but one instance of pointed arches, — the fine old Gothic palazzo at the left end of the western side, with windows in painted trefoil frames, upon a checkered body of red and cream. Under the arcade of the adjacent bright red building I later found the town's first-class caffe, frequented by the officers and signori. The eastern row of edifices was the most ancient and 520 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY mouldering, with shops occupying the ground floors. The northern was centred by a pretentious Renais- sance palace, adorned with balustrades and Corin- thian pilasters on the upper stories, and topped by a line of dwarf obelisks. In the middle of the southern side stood the Palazzo Municipale, thrusting its pon- derous bulk forward from the row, — a stuccoed edi- fice with baroque windows, and a clock-face in its gable, resting upon a broad deep loggia of granite columns; these were of polished dark gray, arranged in couples, and sustaining flat rounded arches. The ringhiera-halcony projected before a central window of triple arches, over which was an inscription stating, "Da qui— Garibaldi— parlo — 26 Febbraio, 1867." Where did he not speak, ^ — that tireless patriot .? At the back of this loggia I observed a lifelike bronze bust of Vittorio Emanuele II, before a marble niche; and upon the third story of the right wing I noticed the old Estense arms in large relief, — a Roman warrior and a female standing beside a shield carved with a heavily battlemented castle of three towers, the cen- tral highoipt. There being nothing of importance to see within this palace, which was so long the seat of the Venetian Podestas, I took the short eastern street to the foot of the hillside, gazing as I walked at the picture afforded by its verdant slope. The broad grassy descent was dotted with small trees, and en- folded by the ancient, battlemented walls of the Este fortress, which curved down on each hand from the ruined citadel at the summit. Of this citadel, the primary residence of that great family in the Dark Ages, there remained visible but a semicircular brick wall, concave in shape, tall and crenelated, reaching from one shattered square tower to another, with the lofty donjon of the castle still soaring skyward from ESTE 521 the middle; all were beautifully covered with ivy, jclimbing over every part and drooping from the battle- ments.^ From the flanking keeps the enceinture walls descended in successive steps to the plain; each step marked by another tower, broken and overgrown, a mere shell of its quondam solidity. The Estensi themselves descended, as time ad- vanced, from that primeval rocca to a more civilized habitation at the bottom of the slope, built just within the basic line of the fortress; by the time they removed to Ferrara this had been extended to nearly the full length of that line, and embraced the outer wall itself, over which the palace looked westward upon the town with a myriad of grim windows, turrets and towers. Of what stirring scenes and princely pageants was it not the theatre, — that vanished medieval abode, so picturesque and celebrated, furnished in the most lavish manner of the later Middle Age. In the Renais- sance epoch, when its owners had removed to Ferrara, it was covered with stucco and gradually altered ac- cording to the ideas of the classic revival, to fulfill its new position as the villa of a cultured prince. But following the transfer of Este to Venice, during the war of the League of Cambrai and other troublous times of the cinquecento, the deserted palace several times took fire, burning wing by wing, till naught remained stand- ing but the central portion. This was finally acquired by Doge Mocenigo, who remodeled it to serve his family as a country villa, and the ruined parts were cleared away. So it has continued to the present day, the villa being seized by the authorities of late, for use as a museum of the antiquities of the town ; beside ^ These three ancient towers, it is very interesting to note, were without doubt the originals of the three depicted on that coat-of-arms which became one of the most famous in the world. 522 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY which they have built a new "Istituto Femminile," on a portion of the ground once covered by the pal- ace's left wing. What I now beheld, therefore, as I advanced to the street running north and south along the foot of the slope, — - the street that formerly bordered the basic wall of the fortress, — was the original, battlemented, brick wall itself, still standing, except in the middle portion, where it was broken by the edifices of the Villa Mocenigo; at the far angles, two blocks distant from each other, stood the old corner towers of the enceinture, square and shattered. The central build- ings were in three parts, all relics of the Estense Pal- ace : at the left rose a two-storied structure, of rough brick and cobblestones below, in alternate courses, and stucco-work above, with rusticated windows; next came a brick wall of five filled arches containing three doors and two windows, behind which rose a two-storied brick edifice apparently unaltered from Estense days, decorated with five small white-stucco shields of the family arms; before it stood the life-size plaster figure of a Roman warrior, astride of a shield in Perugino's manner. The left-hand doorway here was marked, "Museo"; before it on a column, standing upon a heap of rocks surrounded by evergreen shrubs, was posed a modern bronze bust of the poet-patriot, Felice Cavallotti, who was a resident of Este. To the right of this stretched what was apparently a low, stuccoed common dwelling. The old brick wall on each side of these buildings was prettily draped with ivy, which at the northern end hung like a scarlet blanket from the battlements. Two gateways were visible in these stretches of wall, closed by iron grilles. Advancing to the south- ern one, I saw within a sort of little park covering the ESTE 523 level space, shaded by fine trees, clearly a remnant of the princely grounds of the Estensi. The other wicket, near the northern end, proved to open into the area taken for the female institute; behind a fair extent of turf and flower-beds stood the modern building, — a quietly designed edifice of stucco; and behind that rose the picturesque old northern wall of the fortress, climbing the verdurous hillside in suc- cessive steps, with ivy-grown towers. Continuing northward on this same street, through a block of decayed stucco dwellings, I reached at its end a cross-street, up which, to the right, was seen an ornamental yellow-sandstone gateway of the Renais- sance; behind this a charming shady avenue extended up the hillside, here increased in height, and covered with verdant terraces and stately groves. Amidst these bowers a large villa was glimpsed to the left, and near by a marble bust of Carducci gleamed against a sylvan background. It seemed, in the noon-heat, like a vista of paradise, blissful with its warblings of count- less unseen birds. It was — so a passer-by told me — the Villa Benvenuti, celebrated for its beautiful views across the plain, as far as the Apennines and the snowy Alps. The proprietors, unfortunately, chanced to be away, so that I could not procure admission. Turning westward upon this cross-street, and pass- ing the Via Cavour, upon which my inn was located, I reached an enormous red brick church on the right side of the way, of strange oval form, with a false front rising to three-quarter height, left rough for a facing never put on. It was the Cathedral of S. Tecla. Attached to its rear was a tall, rounded choir chapel, seen from one side. The fagade held three oblong doorways, simply framed in marble, and two unframed 524 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY square windows over the side portals. At the left rear soared the handsome brick campanile to a great height, smoothly faced without windows, but with an unfinished belfry of two arches per side; before this stood a small stuccoed structure, of baroque lines and reddish hue, covering the side entrance. The baroque interior I visited later : its form, of a lofty oval rotunda capped by a flat dome, is peculiar but effective; a large oval fresco adorns the centre of the domed roof, from which radiating ribs descend to a gallery upon the cornice, running beneath the five oblong windows there inserted on each side; over the main doorway is a rich oaken music-loft, flamboyantly carved, de- corated on the bottom with six paintings in baroque frames; opposite opens the choir, through an arch nearly as lofty as the dome, its square recess having a separate cupola, and an apse four times taller than its width. Five depressed archways run along each side of the nave, three of them holding altars, the fourth holding a pulpit on one hand, the side entrance on the other, and the fifth framing a chapel on each hand beside the choir ; between these archways ascend Corinthian pilasters to the high cornice, which con- tinue also around the choir. The paintings were poor, with two exceptions: the high-altar piece was an exceptionally fine work of Gian Battista Tiepolo, — a huge canvas represent- ing Este prostrate under the plague, and the demons of the latter being driven away by the Almighty, thanks to the prayers of Santa Tecla; her upturned, imploring countenance was very holy and beautiful, and the dramatic disposition and action were quite successful. On the third altar to the left stood a simi- lar, smaller work, of golden tone, but poor in facial beauty save for the enchanting swarm of putti around ESTE 5^5 the Father. The baptismal font of solid porphyry was also noteworthy. The second morning I devoted to the Museum, which proved surprisingly rich in Roman and pre- Roman relics. The ground-floor vestibule contained two interesting sculptures of the duecento, evidently the supports of holy-water basins ; the one portraying a bearded saint, the other holding three figures back to back, in three-quarter relief, — Adam, Eve, and the female tempter. The latter piece was truly remarkable. Mounting the grand staircase of Mocenigo's period, I inspected several spacious halls filled with remains of the stone and bronze ages, — with cases of imple- ments of every nature, and many vases of great value; the famed "graffiti" vases were specially noticeable; also those studded with blue nails, and the earliest ceramics in red and black. These Pelasgian relics are not surpassed anywhere, and constitute a revelation of the handicrafts of that mysterious race which ante- dated the Etruscans, — the same that built the Cyclo- pean walls of Spoleto and Amelia.^ On the ground story I was then shown two halls of artistic Roman remains, all — like the prehistoric ob- jects above — discovered in this neighborhood, and together establishing its occupation by civilized communities for thirty centuries past. The numerous bronzes of Latin culture, including several heads finely individualized and expressive, the excellent glassware, with specimens of Egyptian style, and especially the superior mosaics, all indicated a Roman settlement of large size and wealth, corresponding to the reports of history. Mosaic-work, it appears, was a prominent industry of Ateste, which was long famed for its deli- ' See Hill-Towns of Italy, — Spoleto and Amelia; the Etruscan Mu- seum of Perugia. 526 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY cate materials and artistic productions. Quite a num- ber of their sarcophagi and cinerary urns also were here, dug up in the adjacent necropolis. There was further a large quantity of the anterior Etruscan relics, including many good vases, — though not equal to the collections of Perugia and central Italy. ^ During the afternoons I sought out three interesting short walks from the piazza. One led southward on the main street, investigating the heterogeneous variations in its old arcades and polychromatic houses, which showed every sort of pier, column, and pillar, some- times colonnaded without arches, and reflecting the changes of twenty generations. Thus I reached the ancient, ruinous Church of S. Martino, on the right of the way, surmounted by a picturesque leaning tower in the centre. It appeared parallel with the street, behind a little close, and exhibited traces of vanished frescoing. The nave was extremely low and gabled, its narrow arched entrance being framed by two pil- asters and a cornice; to the left of the tottering tower was a Lombard drum upon the roof, with a Roman- esque, arcaded, brick cornice. This edifice must come from at least the thirteenth century. Its interior is said to be modernized and uninteresting; but it was filled with scaffolding for repairs, and I could not enter. Another stroll was westward from the piazza's northern end, along the broad, arcaded Via Vittorio Emanuele, which soon narrowed to a fantastic stuc- coed tower of Renaissance days, spanning the street with a stone archway through its ground story. The latter was heavily rusticated, the second story held a huge clock-face, and the third was an open belfry of double arches, framed by rusticated Doric pilasters ^ Hill- Towns of Italy. ESTE 527 of pinkish hue, and topped by forked battlements. It was the Porta Vecchia, — a city gate, and at the same time the city clock- and bell-tower; its erection took place, according to an inscription, in the year 1690. Just beyond it flowed the old city moat, still a broad and freshly running stream, arched by a heavy bridge; it was the Frussine, which rises in the Valdagno.^ The brick garden walls extending along its eastern bank to the right and left, were the only remains of the quondam ramparts. To the west for some distance stretched the later quarter of the town, several blocks wide and long. To the left of the Porta Vecchia, within, stood the small baroque Church of S. Rocco, with a queer Byzantine-domed campanile like a minaret; beside it ran the narrow Via Monache southward, just inside the former town wall, lined by a series of mouldering dwellings of vast age, with exterior corbelled chimneys. At its end rose the dismantled old Church of the Archangel Gabriel, from which another ancient way, the Via S. Rocco, ran east between crumbling ar- cades to the Municipio; the Gothic arches showed their longevity. Seldom anywhere have I seen a quarter more forlornly aged and picturesquely decrepit. The third walk was westward into the newer sec- tion, along the street of the Duomo, through another former city gate. Inquiries brought me to the Chiesa dei Socqui, or S. Maria delle Consolazioni; in which large and queerly shaped edifice I found a splendid gem of painting, — a most beautiful specimen of Cima * Vide the end of chapter iv. It is formed by the junction, near Mon- tecchio, of the Agno and two other streams. Somewhat northwest of Este it is joined by the Liana, from Monti Berici, whose northern branch was originally the main outlet of the Bacchiglione, and was on several occasions utilized by the Vicentines, when at war with the Paduans, for an entire diversion this way of the Bacchiglione's water. See chapter ii. 528 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY da Conegliano. It was a panel of the Madonna hold- ing her Child, dressed as a nun and seated before a dark curtain, with a slight vista of Cima's beloved mountains on the left. The babe looks appealingly into the sad, tender face of the mother, who bends her head to him lovingly and thoughtfully; — a scene of the truest simplicity and sweetest sentiment. And, for- tunately, it is still in good preservation. Another and very pleasant walk, or rather climb, affording inspiring views across the plain, is that to the village mentioned as located halfway up the hill- side. This may be prolonged, by trained pedestrians, through the saddle with the other village, and over the hills to Arqua, the home of Petrarch, which is about seven miles distant on the southeastern slopes of the Euganai; or the journey may be taken by carriage, — a delightful drive, which can be finished at Battaglia or Monselice. Arqua is but five miles from either of the latter places, so that the excursion to it is usually performed from one of them, — pre- ferably Battaglia. That was my plan; so the third morning fbund me again aboard an early train, on my way to Monselice, which I was resolved to visit in that one day, and reach a comfortable hotel at Ro- vigo by nightfall. Monselice (the Mons Silicis of the Romans), another town of eleven thousand inhabitants, owes its modern importance to being the junction of the railway from Mantua with the main line from Bologna to Padua; also to its location at the head of the Battaglia Canal to Padua, — to feed which a part of the waters of the Frussine are diverted eastward along the foot of the hills. But in olden times Monselice was far more im- portant, because the protecting castle which gave it being was until the days of modern cannon the MONSELICE 529 acknowledged key to the whole region, and the chief defense of Padua upon the south; its position was prac- tically invulnerable, upon an isolated rocky pinnacle five hundred feet high, — at the foot of whose slope the town collected. This crag rises just opposite the southeastern angle of the Euganean Range, from which it is divided by only a narrow pass ; and with its crowning, castellated ruins, is a familiar memory to all travelers approaching Venice from the south. Tas- soni ^rote of it long ago: — Vien poi Monselice, in contra I'armi e i sacchi Sicuro gia per frode e per battaglia. In former times, therefore, the first object of all captains seeking to conquer the Polesine, or the dis- trict of Padua, w^as the reduction of this formidable fortress.^ Padua was once actually its dependency, under the Lombard seigneurs of the seventh century. It belonged from the ninth century to the Marquises of Este, and was consequently an object of ceaseless contention on the part of the Paduans, who dreaded its eternal menace, and often sought to capture it by force or stratagem. This was finally effected by Ezze- lino in 1237, we know not how, when he was over- running the territory prior to taking Padua herself; and the castle's seizure was the signal for the city's ^ The Romans had a stronghold on this height, and doubtless the Celts and Etruscans before them; the same foundations endured through all the ages, and still exist. Having passed through the hands of the Ostrogoths, into those of Narses and the Byzantines, it was desperately held by the latter against the Lombards for thirty-four years after their arrival on the plain, constituting thus practically the last point in Italy over which floated the flag of the Eastern Empire, At last, in 602, the Lombards suc- ceeded in effecting its capture, but only — it is believed — after a long- drawn-out siege which won its way through hunger. Upon the conquest of Charlemagne the castle became the property of the Estensi, because he made them his feudatory lords of the whole district. 530 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY yielding. The Estensi never forgave this wrong, nor rested till they had brought Ezzelino low, and recov- ered their fortress; but about the end of that century they lost it again, to the Paduans, during the disasters of Azzo VIII and Fresco. The commune did not long enjoy its coveted possession, for Can Grande della Scala descended upon the city in 1317, and "Monselice, the key of the defense of Padua, was taken by Della Scala through the bribery and cowardice of the garrison. One by one all the castles of the district came into his hands'';^ he manned them with powerful garrisons, and held them till the city gave in. When the Della Carrara, with the aid of their allies, recovered Padua from the weak grasp of Mastino II, in 1337, "only the castle of Monselice remained to the Scalas ; and soon Marsilio (della Carrara) and the Rossi besieged it as the most strategic point in the territory. It was, moreover, the key to the Polesine and part of the lagoons, and therefore of great political importance. But the fortress withstood all attacks, and only^ surrendered to Ubertino a year later," ^ presumably from famine. In due course thereafter it passed, with Padua, into the strong hands of Venice, which held it until gunpowder had annihilated its importance; whereupon it was suffered to decay. It was only about a twenty minutes' ride from Este, straight east along the foot of the hills, accompanied by the slender branch of the Frussine on the left; the curv- ing lofty slopes, hardly a mile away, never looked more beautiful, in their variegated blanket of green fields and yellow foliage, combined with the livelier glisten of white-walled villages. We joined the main line, turned liorth upon it, and running a short distance between the hills and the precipitous crag of Monselice, which ^ Cesare Foligno, Story of Padua. * Ibid. MONSELICE 531 now appeared on the right, stopped at its station, to the northwest of the town. Depositing my luggage, I at once walked down the tree-lined highway of ap- proach, which wound toward the southwestern base of the mighty rock; its western face was sheer preci- pice for the first two or three hundred feet, showing the bright feldspathic stone uncovered by vegetation, which made the ruined fortress on the pointed summit appear quite inaccessible. No one could here discern that the other sides were gentle, verdurous declivities. I reached that reminder of ancient civilization, still in excellent condition, — the Battaglia Canal, — and saw before me the old western city wall, stretching along its farther bank; this was built of stone, and still preserved its grim battlements, and shattered towers rising at intervals. Shortly to the left it ended at the northwestern bastion, whence I saw the north- ern rampart running east toward the rock. The former city gate, — if there was any, — at the end of the bridge which I now traversed, had entirely vanished. One block to the east I reached the main street, running south to the town's centre; this was the Via Umberto I, lined by three-storied stucco houses with- out arcades, with a modern look because of repainting; but the colors here had not the vividness of Este and Montagnana. A few minutes more brought me to a striking Renaissance palazzo, rising to the left on the first incline of the hill, opposite a short arcade filled with shops and caffes; it was a stuccoed edifice with curious, heavy, gray-stone trimmings, and faced by a colonnaded portico of the latter material. To the left of the portico opened a massive, rusticated, arched por- tal, twenty feet high, and across the first floor stretched an enormously heavy, balustraded, stone balcony, fully forty feet long. Immediately beyond came the 532 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY central cross-roads, whose left arm climbed the hill- side in steps for fifty yards, between the Palazzo Muni- cipale on its left and the Monte di Pieta on its right. The former was a simple stucco building, entered by its right side, from the steps, holding beside the portal a tablet to Garibaldi adorned with dainty bronze foliage; another tablet, on the front, was inscribed to Vittorio Emanuele II, saying that he carried the Italian arms here on August 1, 1866, and concluding rhapsodically, — "Oh! Momento! — Dieci lustri di lutti e catene — vendicati!"^ This was a remarkably picturesque spot. The build- ing of the Monte di Pieta bore on its second story a charming Renaissance loggia, three arches wide and two bays deep, approached by a handsome open stairway of two flights, — all in creamy stucco, with gray sandstone trimmings ; and in its side wall it held a graceful double-arched window, with a balustrade and diamond bars. The broad street-stairway mounted past the latter, to the face of an imposing Gothic palace fifty yards up the steep slope, before which it turned abruptly to the right, and continued ascending southeastward. The piano nobile of the palace con- tained a stately row of six double-arched trefoil windows, on a body of red and creamy blocks formed into large diamonds ; over its roof rose a grand old battlemented stone tower, and far above that soared the precipitous hillside, to its castellated peak. Turning round from this vista, I saw the central Piazza Vittorio Emanuele extending eastward, and then south, in the shape of a broad "L"; lined on the right side by mouldering stucco arcades and houses, and dominated by the picturesque old city clock-tower ^ "Oh! Illustrious Moment! — Fifty years of sorrows and chains — revenged!" MONSELICE 533 at the farther end. This was also of crumbHng stucco, with no opening below its belfry of triple arches, crowned by forked battlements; before its base curved a graceful white loggia of Renaissance design, orna- mented with Corinthian half-columns between the arches. To its left, after two buildings, was visible a section of the ancient city wall close behind, of the im- pressive height of three full stories. The piazza was well flagged in gray stone, and the aged edifices round- about were gayly colored in soft tints of pink, lavender rose, orange, and vermilion. I followed the Via Umberto farther southward, through arcades on the right hand only, to another and smaller piazza, of triangular form, where the main street forked ; one branch continuing along the south- ern base of the hill, the other running southward to Rovigo; each leading between simple houses, soon broken by shady gardens of villas. To the left here rose a ponderous Renaissance palazzo of four stories, resting upon an arcade of heavy square stone pillars, with equally heavy balustrades, fancifully wrought in sandstone or cement, adorning all the round-arched windows. Clearly the aristocracy of this place in Venetian days were families •bf much wealth. Return- ing to the main piazza, I climbed the street-stairs up the hillside, veering southward before the Gothic palace, where the way became a sloping promenade. The huge grim tower behind the palace proved to be a Gothic dwelling itself, very aged and ruinous, its windows mostly blocked or boarded up ; it was — so I learned — the ancient Palazzo Marcello of eventful history, where the Princes of Este used to reside when staying in the town. Whether they erected it I could not ascertain; but from their possession it passed to other noble families, who have occupied it to the 534 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY present time. Its owner now is the Contessa Geraldi; but so dilapidated has its whole structure recently become, through vast age, that she usually resides in another palace on the plain. The interior is said to be still richly furnished, with many memorials of its historic past. Beyond its grounds came those of some hidden villa, stretching up the steep slope to the left in a wood of young trees, with cultivated turf, amongst whose groves a balustraded white terrace was discernible, crested by gleaming statues; while a long dark file of pointed cypresses descended along the farther bound- ary. Here, then, I was turning the southwestern angle of the hill, and reaching its more gentle and arboreous declines; the way continued always upward, curving gradually to the left, with more precipitous descents upon the right. Via Duomo, it was named; for it led to the Cathedral. Four contiguous medieval buildings of strange design now appeared, the last two shaped like battlemented towers, with other towers attached irregularly to their rear; it was evidently once a forti- fied manor) though now inhabited by families of the poorest class. There followed a high stuccoed wall, crowned with the most droll and eccentric stone stat- ues of misshapen dwarfs, in a long row, with enormous, grimacing heads and humped backs; a fine Renaissance archway, framed in Doric columns, permitted a vista of a very long stairway of many flights, flanked every few feet by stone statues in couples, leading straight- away through a greenwood to a far ornamental grotto; this was adorned with Doric columns and statuary upon its face, and topped by a balustrade with more statues, — a fair sight, indeed, against the sylvan background. To the right of it appeared a decaying stucco palazzo of the Renaissance, the successor of MONSELICE 535 the medieval stronghold just passed, and the seat — as I was told — of the Conti Nani. The dwarfs were, therefore, a play upon the family name.^ On the right hand here, there extended a little shady terrace, whose parapet overlooked the streets of the town below, lying amidst a sea of dying foliage; across the luxuriant plain Este was clearly visible, with the towers of its ruined castle. The Duomo next appeared, upon a similar and broader terrace, rising behind a paved court with its left side to the road, — a singular location for the principal church of the town. It was a fair-sized, stuccoed edifice, decorated with brick pilas- ter-strips, an arcaded cornice along the gable, and a porch over the single doorway consisting of detached marble columns sustaining a rounded stucco archway. Its interior, I found, had been entirely remodeled : the low broad nave was without aisles or transept, and freshly whitewashed; over an altar against the right wall stood a quaint early polyptich, showing S. Gius- tina among six other saints, — retouched out of recog- nition of the original work; a second and later picture of S. Giustina — the church's patron — hung between the windows of the little choir, — a well-moulded, rather prepossessing figure, of the later Venetian school. The under side of the high-altar canopy had a still better painting, in the style of Palma Vecchio, re- presenting the Almighty in clouds, surrounded by putti, with his right hand outstretched in benediction; and over the altar to the left of the choir was a pleasing cinquecentoY enetian panel, of the Madonna and Child, uninjured by any retouching. The authors of these works appeared to be unknown. On continuing beyond the Duomo, its fine old cam- panile was revealed, at a rear corner, rising in five divi- ^ "Nani" is the Italian word for dwarfs. 536 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY sions of red brick, with as many arcaded cornices, and a double-arched battlemented belfry. Here the high- way ended at a Renaissance gateway, whose stone pillars were crowned by huge sculptured lions; behind which opened a terrace with a bayed stone parapet, commanding a wide view; at its back a white stuccoed archway admitted me to a private road extending on upward along the southern face of the hill, with the stone parapet on its right and a row of seven white chapels at regular intervals on the left, rising upon flights of steps. These were backed and separated by a line of delightful old cypresses. At the end loomed a huge mass of buildings perched on a projecting crag, behind which the ancient city wall descended steeply from the fortress to the plain. The walk had assumed a character of fascinating, unique beauty; the view was an inspiration: sprinkled afar through the sea of verdure below were gleaming towns and villages surmounted by their campanili, interspersed with the countless red tiles and white walls of separate farmhouses, ensconced in groves of poplars and cypresses, looking very serene and bliss- ful in the warm golden sunlight. Directly below lay the square, walled cemetery of Monselice, cypress- bound, with its shining chapels, stones, and monu- ments; and straightaway to the distant south, like a plumb-line, extended the ancient highway to Rovigo, — a splendid, unending avenue of tall golden maples or plane trees. I felt like Rogers, when he cried: — The promised land Lies at my feet in all its loveliness. — And lo! the sun is shining; and the lark Singing aloud for joy, — to him is not Such sudden ravishment as now I feel At the first glimpse of fair Italy! ^ * Rogers, Italy. MONSELICE 537 The chapels contained only little cubicles, with sim- ple altars, surmounted each by an old canvas portrait of a saint; but over them were prettily draped thick curtains of honeysuckle vines. At the top of the ascent opened a flowered courtyard, backed by a handsome Renaissance palace covered with columns and statu- ary, having a dark Gothic tower at its left end. It was the Villa Valier, formerly Duodo; owned for centuries by the Conti Duodo, but now passed by the marriage of a surviving daughter to the historic Venetian family of Balbi- Valier. It had a stuccoed fagade of 1740, with trimmings and sculptures of gray and light-brown stone; the three arched portals below and the windows above were all flanked by pairs of half-columns em- bracing niches with statues; and rectangular panels of varied reliefs extended above the niches. On the right stood the small private church of the villa, with its apse on the very verge of the abyss, — a glistening white edifice with yellow garniture, faced by a three- arched portico, and topped by a cupola and a slender campanile; it was connected with the mansion by the latter's projecting right wing. The strange sight v/as upon the left : here there rose a high balustraded stone terrace, approached at the ends by two heavy opposing stairways, topped by giant statues, — between which opened a triple- arched grotto; behind it mounted a very broad and lofty flight of steps, to another terrace adorned with an artificial pyramid of rough rocks, backed by a semicir- cular pink wall containing a row of empty niches and crowned by a row of statues. The hollow pyramid held a shrine dedicated to St. Francis of Assisi; hence the whole queer construction is called the "Grotta di S. Francesco." Above it soared the steep upper hill- side, covered with vines, to the ruinous circular en- 538 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY ceinture of the castle, within which naught remained but the empty, massive donjon. A long straight flight of narrow steps climbed to it, at the left side of the Grotta, entered by a locked iron wicket; all this sum- mit of the hill belongs now to the Conte Valier, with- out whose permission one cannot ascend, — and at present he was away. To the left of the wicket ex- tended another wall, beautifully overgrown with vines, containing three niches with marble busts of the last Counts of Duodo. The custodian of the place, who had now appeared, conducted me through the little church, which was erected, he said, about 1600. It was a graceful edifice, decorated with some taste and in perfect repair; but the only noteworthy feature was the presence of twenty- five mummified martyrs, — that is, early Roman Christians, — who were dug out of the Catacombs by Pope Paul V, about 1607, and sent to the Conte Duodo of that day as an invaluable gift. They reposed in cof- fins with glass sides, inserted in the walls of the little nave; and were one and all dressed in the gaudiest, cheapest 'circus-clothes," ornamented with an abund- ance of tinsel and gilt fringe, — the tawdry breeches, stockings, and coat-arms being slit, to expose the des- sicated limbs. The withered toes were purposely pro- truded from the shoes, but the hands were inclosed in coarse white gloves, — the right holding the palm- leaf of martyrdom, the left the cup of the Vinum San- guince. Above the ridiculous gilt epaulettes and neck- gauds projected the grinning, eyeless, fleshless skulls; which combined with the childish finery and exposed limb-bones to render the whole exhibit at once lud- icrous, horrible, and repulsive. As for the palace, I was obliged to be satisfied with the information that it was furnished in a style of MONSELICE 539 "royal magnificence." So I returned to the town, procured a very late lunch, and catching a south- ward train about 5 p.m., arrived well before sunset at the pleasant old inn of the "Corona Ferrea" in Rovigo. CHAPTER XIV ROVIGO, ARQiUA, AND BATTAGLIA I leave thee, beauteous Italy ! — no more From the high terraces at eventide To look supine into thy depths of sky, — Thy golden moon between the cliff and me. Or the dark spires of fretted cypresses Bordering the channel of the milky way. — Walter Savage Landor. There seems to be a peculiar natural law amongst northern Italians that restricts their small cities to be- tween ten and eleven thousand population. Rovigo is still another of its numerous examples. This is surpris- ing, because Rovigo has the history, the reputation, and the appearance of a considerably larger town. It is the stately capital of a province, and of the whole region of the Polesine, — located about fifteen miles south of Monselice, three miles south of the Adige, and ten north of the Po, upon the canalized stream called the Naviglio Adigetto, which lends to the place a sort of Venetian aspect. Its history, its extent, its palaces, churches, monuments, and artistic riches, all indicate a past in which it was a much larger city, of influence and coveted wealth. Its origin goes back beyond Roman times, when the Latin name of the town — from which the Italian is derived — was Rhodigium, whose flowery significance bespeaks the fertility of the soil. Ariosto mentioned it, in the Or- lando Furioso, canto xli, — And that fair town, whose produce is the rose. The rose which gives its name in Grecian speech. s --- '- -^ *•,—»*- 4 '■'^^"'^-^ w ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 541 By situation the centre and natural metropolis of that fertile district, Rovigo was certainly during the Middle Ages the most opulent and cherished town of the Estensi, and following their removal to Ferrara, remained first in their possessions, after Modena and Reggio. In 1308 it was seized from the unfortunate Fresco by his uncle Francesco, through a coup de maiuy and sold at once by the latter to Padua; nine years later it was taken with the rest of the Paduan fiefs by Can Grande della Scala; but with the fall of the Scala kingdom after Can Grande's death, it was repos- sessed by the house of Este. In 1404, during a war waged by the Marchese Niccolo III and the Pope against Venice, Rovigo was violently attacked by the Republic's army, and her territory overrun with fire and sword; Niccolo, "beset by Venetian forces on land and water, his capital threatened by starvation, his subject cities in flames, was compelled to purchase peace by the surrender of the city and territory of Rovigo to Venice." ^ In 1438 they were restored to Niccolo by the Republic, in order to secure his alliance against Filippo Maria Visconti. In 1481, during the war of Pope Sixtus IV against the Republic, in which Duke Ercole d'Este had the ill- judgment to support the former's side, the arms of Venice once more as- cended the Po, ravaged the Polesine, and besieged its unfortunate capital. "By the middle of the summer [of that year] the tri- umph of the Venetians all along the Po was complete, and Rovigo became isolated. An attempt to send re- inforcements from Ferrara failed, and the Venetians, apparently not realizing its helpless situation, offered generous conditions if the citizens would surrender spontaneously. On August 14, Casparo da San Seve- ^ E. Noyes, Story of Ferrara. 542 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY rino entered the town in the name of the Signoria of Venice."^ The Peace of Bagnolo, shortly after, eon- firmed its cession to the Republic, with the greater part of the Polesine. " The loss of Rovigo was a bitter and humiliating blow for the Duke, — but he was too weak to protest. — The Golden Age [of Este] was gone, never to return." Alfonso, the next duke, made a desperate effort to recover these domains during the War of the League of Cambrai; but Venice, beaten and exhausted as she was, refused to relax her grip; and Rovigo remained a part of her territories until the end of the Republic. The city, therefore, as we now be- hold it, is a thoroughly Venetian town: which was reconstructed and adorned by its suzerain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The railway station, where the main line connects with branches to Verona and Chioggia, lies some dis- tance to the northwest of the city; which is approached by an avenue of plane trees bending alternately to the south and the east, and finally settling itself in the latter direction upon entering the old town itself. Here it becomes the Via Umberto I, — a broad straight thoroughfare without arcades, running between four- storied stucco dwellings and Venetian palaces; and here upon the left is located the excellent "Corona Ferrea," — or Inn of the Iron Crown, — recently re- christened, by the man who has endowed it with mod- ern comforts and cleanliness, as "Bracchi's Hotel." It was the best hostelry that I had found since leaving Verona, at the same time of very reasonable prices ; and the usual traveler could do no better than make it his head-quarters, while visiting the various places in the vicinity. On the morning after my arrival, I started eastward ^ E. G. Gardner, Ariosto: the King of Court-Poets. ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 543 to the central piazza, examining, as I slowly proceeded, the interesting edifices of the street. Immediately to the right, at the angle of the Via Minilli, rose a splen- did old Gothic palazzo of the Venetian type : four sto- ries high, of stucco, with colonnaded trefoil windows in the middle of the first two fioors, flanked by single windows of the same design with balconies of flamboyant tracery; the eaves being graced by a curi- ous parapet made of large stucco fleurs-de-lys. Back of this on the side street was a contrasting Renais- sance palace, of stucco, red brick, and terra-cotta, equally charming in design; each of its three stories held a large central archway, flanked by two pairs of double arched windows, all with bright frames and pillars of brick, — the windows topped by winged cotta medallions with busts; another feature was the four beautiful pilaster-strips reaching from ground to bat- tlements, made of brick with fine open tracery of terra- cotta. A pretty little terraced garden on its left looked down upon a dark stream that here appeared, flowing eastward between quays shaded by endless rows of big horse-chestnut trees; it was the Naviglio Adigetto. Thoroughly Venetian was this picturesque scene: the muddy water, twenty yards in breadth, was sunk deeply between its old brick embankments, broken at intervals by steps descending to landings ; a succession of bridges, of stone, brick, and iron, marked the long vista on each hand, dusky beneath its dense, arching foliage, — so dense that it concealed all but the first stories of the aged stucco buildings facing the quays. Here was the original grand thoroughfare of the town, that gave it life and prosperity for many ages before the present; and still there remained a fair part of that water-borne traffic, — evidenced by the three 544 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY barges which I saw slowly advancing. Their method of propulsion was the laboring one of four centuries ago, — long poles thrust against the bottom by men walking from prow to stern. The innumerable bridges prevent the use of the tow-line. Silent, however, were the confining rows of houses, and nearly deserted were the shady quays; on the southern bank a medieval brick tower soared far into the sky, broad, windowless, and shattered at the top, — the donjon-keep, as I later found, of the ruined Venetian citadel. As I retook my way eastward on Via Umberto, which now changed its name to Via Angeli, continuous ar- cades sprang up on the left side, and on the right ap- peared a great Renaissance palace of imposing lines; its stuccoed body emphasized the ponderous arched portal of rusticated stone, topped by a balustrade, the stone-framed baroque windows, and the third-story pediment with its shield of arms and Roman trophies. Opposite this rose a handsome palazzo of unique de- sign, — every brick of its fagade being separately rus- ticated, and of lavender hue with light-gray trimmings, over a dark-brown stucco arcade. There followed it an impressive, long colonnade of heavy Doric columns, extending before many different edifices. Then the street ended; and a short turn to the north debouched at once into the central piazza. But at this very angle on the left, fronting eastward, I found the splendid Palazzo Roncalli, erected by Sammicheli in 1555 : three huge rusticated arches, of stucco cleverly imitating stone, with mouthing bearded heads upon the keystones, formed the ground loggia; in the piano nohile opened six handsome arched windows, with bal- ustrades, divided by Ionic pilasters, all in dark-gray stucco or cement; and the third story held a series of small quadrangular windows, below the heavy cornice. ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 545 Immediately beyond it, through a lofty archway, I entered the southwest corner of the spacious, impos- ing, and picturesque Piazza Vittorio Emanuele. It was delightfully Venetian, in its characteristics of size, dignity, and grace, combined with a manifest unaltering age. The southern third was paved with cobbles for horse-traffic, the rest, with worn gray flags; the greater length of the parallelogram, however, was from east to west. In the centre stood a heroic marble figure of the victorious king, and south of it rose the glorious old Venetian Lion, upon a tall marble shaft. On all sides extended tall arcades, — those at the north including the second-story windows. The arches were all rounded; the first columns of the southern side were a splendid Corinthian series, of marble; in the middle of the western side stretched a ponderous, stuccoed, Doric colonnade; but' else- where the supports were chiefly quadrangular stuccoed piers or pillars. The buildings were likewise stuccoed, of three or four stories, colored in soft tints of brown and green. At the left end of the northern side the prin- cipal caffe was in evidence, protruding its throng of tables and chairs far out upon the pavement. In the adjacent angle, facing east, stood the Palazzo Comunale with the bell-tower on its left; the latter rose in four divisions, — a rusticated stone base, two long stages of plain, windowless stucco, and a balus- traded Renaissance belfry, of a single arch on each side. Beside its base extended two broad stucco arches of brown hue, the right one covering a narrow street dart- ing west, with an open marble stairway from the street to the upper floor ; to the left of the latter on the rear wall of the loggia I saw a marble medallion with a fair bust of Dante, and an inscription dated 1865. The upper floor was adorned with a beautiful nine-arched 546 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY window on square pillars, of brown stucco; the central arch forming a niche in which stood a life-size marble statue of the Madonna, in the style of Sansovino, holding a Child that gazed forth very prettily and naturally; before it projected a baroque ringhiera- balcony, whose heavy balustrade continued along the entire colonnade. The frieze overhead was a series of frescoed panels, — coats-of-arms and medallions, in varying brown shades, centred by a relief of the shield of Rovigo. Two more reliefs, modern busts, graced the opposing end walls of the loggia : one of the poet, Felice Cavallotti, with adornments in the way of wreaths, a spread eagle, a lion's head, etc. ; the other of Giuseppi Mazzini, likewise decorated. All this was really but the ornamental portion of the Municipio's fagade; for the city occupied also the upper floors of the plain building on the right, up to and beyond the corner, including the suites devoted to the city library and art collection; the latter being approached by another entrance, marked "Accademia dei Concordi," ad- jacent to the caffe upon the left. Another interesting structure I observed at the piazza's southeastern angle, facing north, — the pa- lazzo of the "Universita Popolare": this was faced by an extravagant, nondescript portico, fan-shaped in plan, rising upon a flight of seven or eight steps; the tall, rusticated arches, of gray stucco simulating stone, were separated by half-columns that continued above the cornice, bearing plaster Roman trophies, of odd appearance. Back of this rose a lofty gabled wall, adorned solely with two great shields of arms, be- tween reclining figures, flags, and warlike instruments, all modeled in stucco. Under the portico were some modern busts in circular niches. Judicious was Lord Broughton's remark, that "there is no country which ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 547 can contend with Italy in the honors heaped upon the great men of past ages. . . . There is scarcely a vil- lage in which the traveler is not reminded of the birth, or the residence, or the death, or the actions of one or more of the offspring of a soil fruitful in famous men." ^ From the right end of the northern side of the piazza, the Via Orefici led me in one block to the Piazza Gari- baldi, — a smaller space, yet of good general size; in its centre I observed a splendid equestrian bronze statue of the hero, very lifelike and powerful. On its west side rose the new, stuccoed building of the post- office, in Renaissance style, with a trio of handsome arched windows. From its east side another street conducted me shortly to the Porta S. Bartolommeo in the old city wall, — a huge round archway topped by brick battlements; the wall itself was vanished, supplanted by a line of houses toward the south. Fol- lowing the narrow way before these, I quickly crossed the Adigetto, — a fair vista with its long straight quays and luxuriant shade trees; to the left an an- cient dwelling of purple hue, crowned by pointed battlements, backed upon the stream a garden that was one great mass of rose-bushes and -vines, the lat- ter shaped into an arcaded parapet along the water. Beyond this soared far into the blue a colossal old guard-tower of the ramparts, occupied by a modern five-storied habitation, two windows broad, which nevertheless did not reach to its summit. Another ponderous arched gateway succeeded, spanning a street upon which I returned to the west; very soon it brought me to an enormous brick church on the left, facing westward over a small, dilapidated piazza. It was Rovigo's Cathedral, — "II Redentore." * Lord Broughton, Remarks Made in Severed Visits to Italy (1816-54). 548 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY This edifice — which is more directly reached by turning southward at the end of Via Angeli (sopra) — has an apse, a drum, and a transept, all of massive size commensurate with the nave. It is a recent building, not a hundred years old. The unfinished fagade is of rough brickwork, with three plain doorways, crowned by a statue of Christ in the middle; the vast interior is well proportioned and designed, in pleasing Renais- sance lines that avoid over-adornment and escape the baroque. The lofty vaulted nave has three deep altar recesses in each whitened wall, arched, and divided by huge Corinthian columns, that sustain the contin- uous, heavy block cornice. The dark semicircle of choir stalls is richly carved, and near by stands a magnificent bronze candelabrum of the high-Renais- sance, sculptured in the lavish style of Riccio; three bound slaves are figured around the base, charming little putti sit with folded arms about the upper shaft, and other delicate forms of exceeding grace and nat- uralness are wrought throughout the luxuriance of ornamentation. Although I made every effort for sev- eral days to ascertain the sculptor, nothing appeared to be known except that it had been handed down for centuries in the chapter. The paintings here were decadent and uninteresting. Continuing westward from the Duomo, I reached in another block the so-called Piazza del Castello, on the southern bank of the Naviglio, — a long narrow space fronted by aged, grimy, stucco dwellings; directly back of which, entered through a short alley, stretched the enceinture of the ancient citadel. Of its buildings naught remained but two shattered brick towers, lean- ing in opposite directions, — the taller of which I had remarked from the opposite bank, — and the southern wall of the castle, some twenty feet high, curving out- ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 549 wardly from one keep to the other. The enormous height of the stern windowless donjon — fully two hundred and fifty feet — indicates the former size and power of this medieval fortress of the Estensi; here their governors resided, and the princes them- selves, when visiting the town; here the Venetian Podestas in their turn held for centuries a semiregal sway. The scene of so much grandeur was now a re- fuse-littered farmyard, with a few stunted trees and a weedy, neglected garden. That afternoon I paid my visit to the most import- ant church of the town, both historically and artist- ically, by returning to Piazza Garibaldi and strik- ing north from it a short distance. Here, behind a small area, rose the grand old edifice of S. Francesco, fronted by a later, eighteenth-century fagade of stucco; four massive Ionic half -columns supported the pediment of the nave, and two Ionic pilasters adorned each of the lower wings; the pediment was filled with a group of large plaster figures representing the Ma- donna amidst various saints, and five statues of other saints graced the eaves. The interior was of similar lines to the Duomo, but somewhat smaller, — a work, however, truly of the High-Renaissance period, and of attractive dignity and graceful proportions. Its importance lay in the paintings that remained from the same period. The chief of these I found over the first altar to the right, a picture so glorious that it alone was well worth the journey to Rovigo: it was an exceptionally large panel by Cima da Conegliano, depicting the Baptism of Christ, — and remarkably well preserved. The Christ stands at the left in a small pool of water, and St. John at the right, slightly higher, emptying with one hand the blessed cup; at the extreme left kneels 550 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY a small winged angel holding a garment; overhead is a brilliant burst of golden sun-rays, from whose centre appears the descending Dove, with two tiny angels visible just above it, extending a white scarf in crescent form; in the rolling masses of red-gold clouds many little flying cherubs are seen; the background exhibits a fair blue lake, with a walled and towered city on its verge, overhung by an immense, rocky, and fantastic crag. The work is most admirable for its peculiar tone of burnished bronze, its luminous color-scheme and glossy finish, its efiFective composition, and its grace- ful, lifelike, finely modeled figures, agitated by sin- cere emotions. It has many points of likeness with the master's great Baptism in S. Giovanni in Bragora, Venice; and was executed considerably later than that masterpiece, in 1513, -— according to the date at the top of the unique Renaissance frame. This frame was the original inclosure adopted by Cima, because he adorned it with several figures: on the pedestals of the columns are painted St. Louis and St. Anthony of Padua to the right. Saints Roch and Francis to the left; on the middle of the base is a me- dallion containing a crowned and crucified Christ, most beautiful and touching, full of tenderest feeling and expression; and in the pediment is visible the aw- ful form of the Almighty, seated with one hand upon a globe, the other pointing heavenward, the hair and beard flying, and the cloak blown above his head, by a gale so realistic that one seems to hear it roar. — The second altar to the right held another large tavola, also excellent, by Domenico Panetti, the Ferrarese: it re- presented the Madonna throned between Saints Peter and Andrew, with a vase of the prettiest, most natural flowers standing on the pavement before the throne, and two crowns depending by beads from the front ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 551 corners of the surmounting canopy. The Virgin was quite Peruginesque in face and attitude, very grace- fully moulded, with folded hands and little feet peep- ing from under her simple blue robe, — altogether a most enchanting figure. The Babe and the two elderly saints were not of so high a standard; but the tone and finish were richly golden, and the background dis- played the far Lombard plain, poetically shrouded in the blue haze of a summer's day. At the end of the right transept I found a large and dramatic Descent of the Holy Ghost, by that rare artist, Girolamo Carpi of Ferrara, — a work of ex- traordinary vividness and intensity, with most real- istic and expressive figures. The Madonna, for once at least, is portrayed at her proper age; the apostles are plainly stricken with awe and amazement; there is no visible background, but overhead hangs a dark- lined cloud with a blazing centre, whose flames burst downward through a dozen apertures. The high-altar piece was another fine work, though much injured by time: in a glory of clouds appeared a very lovely Madonna, surrounded by a group of charming angels; below stood Francis of Assisi between two other saints, accompanied by the two kneeling donors, — Cavaliere Amelio Silvestri and his wife. It was an ex- ceptionally good specimen of Benvenuto Tisi, called Garofalo. Adjacent to the left transept I was shown a hand- some sacristy. Here there was a large stone relief of 1572, representing the Virgin between Saints Lawrence and John the Baptist, — fairly well done. Over one doorway hung a beautiful though damaged canvas by Giovanni Cariani of Bergamo, in his most Palmesque style, depicting St. Francis presenting the donor to the throned Madonna; the attractive Virgin exhib- 552 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY ited a decided resemblance to Palma's celebrated model, and the Child, leaning forward with an inter- ested look, was unusually winsome and intelligent. Over another door was an anonymous picture of the same school, — a Holy Family with St. Catherine, to whom the Babe stretches forth his tiny hands, in delight; though not of so high an order as the other, it was prettily designed and of good significance. The chamber was filled with a lot of fine old carved fur- niture, richly foliated, — presses, tables, and chairs. A little to the northeast of this I found the curious church called La Rotonda, or La Chiesa Municipale, because it was reconstructed and adorned by the city in 1887. It is a huge octagon, both inside and out, sit- uated at the northern end of an astonishingly broad avenue lined by even files of stuccoed dwellings, — named the Piazza Venti Settembre. It is surrounded by a broad one-storied portico, also octagonal, whose level roof is upheld by a continuous colonnade of massive Doric columns of stucco, which lend to the edifice a peculiar dignity. On its north side, detached, in a little shady court, rises the tremendous brick cam- fanile to a gigantic height, embellished with white stone trimmings, a baroque belfry, and an octagonal Byzantine lantern. In the corridor of the portico I ob- served many old monuments, tombs, and inscriptions, of every epoch. The interior presented a unique ap- pearance, — a vast rotunda without aisles or columns, encircled by choir stalls and rows of immense can- vases, capped by a flat painted roof. The stalls were of carved oak, against an oaken wain- scoting, separated by benches from the central space; they were broken by simple doorways on three sides, and a single huge gilt altar on the fourth; over the paneling extended a line of decadent, ^eicento paintings. ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 553 then a circle of niches in gilded frames, seven per side, — three occupied by black wooden statues and four by smaller pictures ; then another row of large canvases, two per side; and finally, the line of windows, three per side, in gilt frames with Corinthian pilasters, just beneath the cornice of blue and gold. A quadrangular space before the altar was railed off for the choir, upon the old marble pavement of checkered red and cream. The painted roof, I was told, was a modern work of stretched canvas. All these pictures were more or less poor, even ugly, but the edifice itself was a most in- teresting freak of neo-classicism. I beheld some first-class paintings, however, when I repaired to the city gallery, on the second morning. Entering by the door beside the caffe, I mounted a grand staircase at the end of a dark passage, and at its top found the municipal library occupying a spacious rear chamber; the front chamber, still larger, contained the body of the art collection, but the flower of it was gathered in a small room between the others. This gallery is a recent aggregation of old pictures, which a generation ago were scattered through Rovigo's churches and convents, and in private collections of noble families that had descended from Renaissance days; the palaces of the Campanari, the Mattomi, the Ferrari, the Silvestri, the Basaiti, all had accumu- lations of note, which, as Lanzi remarked, "abounded with many celebrated figure painters, no less of the Venetian than of other Italian schools," and which to-day, save for some alienations, are here assembled. The Casa Barufi alone seems to have kept its paintings at home. The exhibit in the smaller room was of amazing value, for so small a town and gallery. Nearly every picture of the several score was worth careful atten- 554 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY tion, and a large proportion were works of the first class. Of a special interest were the few specimens of the earliest Venetian school; foremost among them a singular panel of St. Lucy and her miracles, signed by "Quiricius De Joanes d' Alemagna, 1462,"^ — the full-length figure of the saint, in her dress of cloth-of- gold, being moulded with much charm, and crowned by two tiny putti; while the miracles are depicted in six small tableaux at the sides. There were also of that period a Coronation of the Virgin by Luigi Vivarini the Elder, in bad condition (number 158) and a Ma- donna with S. Agnese byBartolommeo Vivarini, really graceful in its lines (number 204). By Carpaccio there was a Holy Family, of finely modeled half -figures, now much faded (number 205); by Cima da Conegliano, a lovely seated half -figure of the Madonna with her Child, before a pleasant far landscape of green slopes and blue mountains (number 207) ; by Gentile Bellini (signed, 1501) a beautiful Madonna, with the Babe posed before her on a table, seated on white cushions, — showing what enchanting pietistic work he could do when he wished (number 208) ; and by Giovanni Bellini were two splendid specimens : a well-preserved, glow- ing panel of the Madonna and Child (signed, 1516), she clad in a scarlet cloak, and of exquisite flesh-work, the Babe extremely winsome (number 206); and a Marriage of St. Catherine, somewhat retouched but still very attractive, with the faces of the women charmingly rounded and seraphic (number 210). Of the succeeding generation there were equally grand examples, — chief among them four delightful Palma Vecchios: two were lifelike portraits (numbers ^ According to Crowe and Cavalcaselle, this Quiricius was a pupil of Giovanni d' Alemannus. The painting is esteemed of priceless value: it came from the Campanari collection. ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 555 183-84) ; the third, a group of the Madonna and Saints Elena and Girolamo, nearly life-size, in good condi- tion, with forms and countenances of striking beauty, in his usual warm golden tone (number 186) ; and the fourth, a similar group, of the Madonna between Saints Roch and John, unfortunately mostly ruined, but the Virgin still of tender loveliness (number 187). There were three Pordenones, — two of them poor portrait heads (numbers 159-60), the third a group of Saints Lucy, Agnes, and Catherine, all from the same model, pleasingly rounded but of no expression, and badly faded (number 161). There were five por- traits by Tintoretto, the best being of Doge Andrea Gritti, — a powerful head (number 163) ; a life-size, impressive figure of St. Paul by Sebastiano del Pi- ombo (number 182) ; a Circumcision in the manner of Catena, signed by Marco Belli (number 211) ; a splen- did large Scourging of Christ, by Bonifazio, so su- perior that it was long accredited to Giorgione (num- ber 200), and a picture of the infants, Jesus and John, playing with a lamb, by Titian, badly darkened but still of much charm (number 192). I observed further a retouched copy of one of Titian's Madonnas (num- ber 194); a copy of the famous head in Giorgione's Bearing of the Cross, formerly at Vicenza, — executed by Basaiti, according to Crowe and Cavalcaselle ^ (number 202) ; a small head of a young man, very nat- ural and strong, from the school of Giorgione, — and perhaps by himself (number 203) ; and a very effective portrait by G. B. Tiepolo (number 185). From the Veronese school, finally, came a very quaint though confused Adoration of the Magi, by Paolo's master, ^ " In which Lombard regularity of features and gloss of surface are so marked, that the picture has been thought worthy of Leonardo da Vinci. The execution betrays the hand of Basaiti, or Pre vi tali." 556 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Badile (number 176). In a case at one side there reposed a few old illuminated books, including a Bible with unusually large pictures, by the school of Giotto; and at another side lay a glass-covered Re- naissance mould, relieved with the most exquisite pos- sible arabesques and minute figures. The front hall, many times larger and loftier, was filled with a throng of inferior works; but amongst them my eye caught at once a fine example of the rare Jacopo Valentina, of Ceneda, — a small Madonna and Child (number 61); also a panel of Christ bearing the Cross, by Mantegna, much injured but still very characteristic (number 107), and a good Ecce Homo by Gianpetrino (number 109). Of further interest were a Domenichino, — St. Jerome in the desert, of his usual manner (number 131), an interesting large canvas of the Magi by Fe- derigo Zuccari (number 114), and four life-size figures of saints by Dosso Dossi, of conspicuous grace and col- oring (numbers 147, 151) ; also a copy of one of Peru- gino's Madonnas, and an admirable Madonna with two infants from the school of Raphael (number 90) . By foreign masters there were several pieces of note: a small Nativity, very quaint and interesting, signed by Holbein Luca von Ley den (number 71), a Madonna crowned by S. Zaccaria, by Jan Mabuse, 1528 (num- ber 76) , a Christ crowned with thorns by Jan Holbein (77), a superb portrait of Ferdinand I by the same, — or, as some critics assert, by Hans von Schwaz (number 75), and three excellent small studies said to be by Albrecht Diirer, — which is doubtful, — depict- ing a Venus, a Christ bearing the Cross, and Adam and Eve (numbers 78, 79, 80). — Altogether, as before remarked, this is an astonishing gallery for its size and location, and well worth a day's examination. On my last day at Rovigo I paid a visit to the old ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 557 Casa Barufi, situated shortly beyond the Duomo, within whose walls that prominent and once wealthy family have dwelt since Renaissance times. I found the mansion divided by a broad hallway running to the shady garden in the rear; narrow stairs at the left conducted me to a similar hall above, where the fam- ily's collection of pictures had hung apparently undis- turbed for four hundred years. Frames and panels alike were worm-eaten, and all were obscured by the agglomerated dirt of centuries. The several score of paintings were productions almost entirely of the cin- quecento, with a remarkable predominance of great names, to whom for the most part they seemed to me justly accredited; though not works of the first import- ance, they were valuable for their freedom from re- touching, and a thorough cleaning would soon remove the accumulated grime. The most valuable specimen was an undeniable, attractive panel of Giovanni Bel- lini, representing the Madonna with her Child and St. Anne, between two standing, manly figures in graceful quattrocento costume, of deep-red hue; it was evidently an early work, and, aside from the worm-holes, was in excellent condition. Two other early panels were in the manner of the Vivarini, both Madonnas, — one really of exceptional beauty; and a third, depicting the Adoration of the Child, with three little angels singing on the roof over- head, was apparently by the rare Lorenzo Parentino. By Paolo Veronese there were two indubitable por- traits, — a splendidly moulded female and a lifelike warrior, — as well as two life-size canvases of a charm- ing sibyl and a young saint. Of Tiepolo the elder there were three examples, — two peculiar Madonnas, and a Holy Family full of delightful paternal feeling; another Holy Family, exceedingly dirtied but still of 558 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY true loveliness in the Madonna and the romantic land- scape, was unmistakably by Paris Bordone. Of more doubtful authority than these — executed perhaps by pupils, or imitators — were the two pictures in the style of Palma Vecchio, and the single specimens of the manner of Perugino, Van Dyke, Garofalo, Luca von Ley den, and Guido Reni; some of these, however, possessed very pleasing qualities, which would be greatly enhanced by cleansing, and could then be more surely passed upon. — As this curious old collection was under negotiation for sale when I beheld it, it will very likely be removed from Rovigo by the time these lines are read. Inquiry by any traveler of the learned director of the city gallery will establish the fact with- out trouble. An interesting trip may be taken from Rovigo over the eastern branch railway to Adria and Chioggia, whence the lagoon may be crossed by steamer to Ven- ice. Adria, from which the Adriatic derived its name, is now situated some fifteen miles from the ever ad- vancing coast-line, upon which it was in ancient times an important port; it is a larger place than Rovigo, having fifteen thousand inhabitants, yet has only two things, besides its old palaces, to attract the traveler's attention, — the collections of antiquities in the Museo Civico and the house of Signor Bocchi. These, how- ever, are not distinguished for their rarities or beauties, consisting in great part of Etruscan vases more or less shattered, whose number serves to show the size of the city in pre-Roman days. Chioggia is even less noteworthy; but it is picturesque in location and in its old arcaded houses, and the sail up the lagoon is delightful. On the present occasion, however, I retraced my ^'^ ■p^r~i 1^ wg^H 1^ i l^^l^ Ir ■^ 1 ■'Wi '^^i^pmp* JHiH«9 '■ ^ % 1 .■ ^-"^=M : 1 1 \ ■■?! « >y •' .. 'Ml & 2 . -• In ^ »»il ^^^v. J0 ,>^m M L ■■ _ f^ ri r^n n k s ^Sfflk ' 1^ nl » 1* ■ Ks-' ffl » 1^ ip ^ m f I" - ' .; L - — ^ r '^ J 1^ l^V fl fc • W^^V 1 r m ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 559 steps as far as Monselice, and continued five miles be- yond the latter place, to the village of Battaglia, lying at the eastern foot of the Euganei, upon the canal named after it. Padua is but eleven miles to the north- east, and Arqua but four miles to the west, UDon a shoulder of the outer line of hills. In itself an insigni- ficant hamlet, Battaglia is distinguished by the pre- sence of two famous chateaux, — the great Castle of Cattajo, and the Villa S. Elena, of the Counts of Emo; it is further renowned for its therapeutic mineral springs of boiling temperature, to whose Stabilmento dei Bagni invalids flock for the cure of disorders of the blood and skin. These baths date from the days of the Romans, as do those of Abano six miles to the north; for since primeval times the whole district has continued to show signs of volcanic origin and activity, in the shape of boiling springs of water and mud, sulphuric emana- tions, exudations of gas, and grottoes of heated vapor; and in Imperial days the wide fame of its healing pow- ers brought enormous throngs to the various baths, and marked them with the seal of fashion. Abano — whose very name comes from bagno, or bath — was the Aquae Patavinse of the Romans, and a resort still more popular than Battaglia.^ The historian Livy was born there. But to-day it is a little, forgotten village ^ The buildings erected by the ancients at Abano were of imposing grandeur and beauty, — baths, palaces, temples, theatres, etc. ; and in the gardens of her attractive villas countless great men sought reinvigoration. Theodoric so appreciated the healing powers of the waters that he thor- oughly restored the then decaying edifices. But under the Lombards, in 601, " Agilulf burned the very ancient Baths of Abano, and destroyed the famous buildings raised there by the Romans." — F. Manzano, Annali del Friuli. — Now, in consequence, there is naught to see there worth a visit. There have been recent excavations, yielding returns of some value; but the latter have been carried away to museums. 560 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY and the springs of Battaglia alone are still frequented. Ariosto wrote : - — — 'Twixt Brenta and Athesis, beneath those hills (Which erst the good Antenor so contented With their sulphurous veins and liquid rills, And mead, and field, with furrows glad indented. That he for these left pools which Xanthus fills. And Ida, and Ascanius long lamented) Till she a child should in the forests bear. Which little distant from Ateste are.^ The railway station proved to be several hundred yards west of the village; but the 'bus of the Grand Hotel des Thermes was in waiting, and quickly trans- ported me to the first houses of the borough, then through a gateway on the right into the beautiful park of the hotel. I saw its stately trees extending east to the high dyke of the Battaglia Canal, and southward in a magnificent avenue half a mile in length, to the right of whose termination soared a sugar-loaf hill crowned by a lordly Renaissance chateau, visible far above the foliage. This was the Castello of S. Elena, to which the grounds really appertained; and the springs, I was informed, gushed forth at the eastern foot of the solitary eminence, where the baths are lo- cated. The Grand Hotel, then, was a speculative erec- tion by the proprietor of the chateau a generation or two ago, designed with its modern luxuries to form an additional attraction for wealthy invalids. It occupies the northeastern corner of the park, facing toward the street to the station, with its right wing overlooking the canal: an enormous, stuccoed edifice of three sto- ries, surrounded on the park side by pleasant flowered gardens, through which winds the graveled drive to its main entrance at the southwest angle. From this portal, along the south side of the main ^ Orlando Furioso, canto xli; Rose's translation. ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 561 structure, extends a vast hallway, or winter garden, exceedingly long and broad, and so lofty that it em- braces three tiers of windows on the left; on the right it is lighted by a row of glass-closed arches as big as the choir windows of a Gothic cathedral; the marble pavement is covered with palms and other potted plants, interspersed with statues and wicker tables and chairs. Here the hundreds of guests lounge away their time ; and very pleasant lounging I found it. The great windows open upon a wide charming flower-garden, backed by a grove of forest monarchs, amongst which is seen a grassy mound topped by an ancient ruin; to the west of the grove commences the superb quadru- ple avenue of plane trees leading southward to the baths. Beyond this hall one crosses a court to the long eastern wing, stretching southward, on whose farther side (or rather, front) another portal opens directly upon the quay of the canal. Through this I sallied forth soon after my arrival, — for it was still morning, — to take a look at the village. Save for the few houses along the road to the sta- tion, I found the hamlet to consist of two picturesque rows of old buildings facing each other across the canal, and extending northward from the hotel for sev- eral hundred yards; — the most unique little village, and one of the most pleasing in vista, that it has ever been my lot to encounter. Except for the architecture and the absence of trees, it might have been bodily transplanted from Holland. The recently painted stucco houses, of two and three stories, had also much of the neatness of the Dutch. The quays they lined so solidly were only about twenty feet wide, bor- dered next the water by stout brick parapets; between which, at a depth of several yards, the stream flowed peacefully to the north, mirroring in its surface the 562 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY intense blue of the sky. It was perhaps twenty yards in width. A graceful brick bridge spanned it midway of the village with a single high arch, mounted by steps; a similar crossing was visible in the distance, beyond which the vista was terminated by a solitary group of very tall poplars, stripped of branches to their tufted summits. The files of dwellings also were relieved of monotonous lowness by the lofty tower and drum of the parochial church upon the right; this exhibited a dignified Late-Renaissance f agade, beside which the campanile soared gracefully aloft, in stucco trimmed with stone, to an octagonal, arcaded belfry with a Byzantine cupola. A few simple little shops occupied the ground floors of the central buildings, and a single country inn — the Albergo Italia — displayed its sign on a clean, comfortable-looking house. A dozen or more of farm- ers' two- wheeled carts were scattered about the quays, drawn by horses, oxen, aud diminutive gray donkeys. The watery highway was deserted save for a solitary old barge, blunt-nosed and decayed, but loaded with fresh produce, which was being laboriously poled along by a man and a boy. — I reentered the hotel, passed through to the garden, and strolled southward down the splendid avenue of planes. A broad expanse of turf led straightaway between the two inner rows of arching verdure, flanked by promenades between the outer rows; it was a beauti- ful vista, accentuated by the domed and towered cha- teau on its green knoll to the right. This was built by the rich Selvatico family of Venice, about 1690, passed to the ownership of the German Counts of Wimpffen about 1850, and from them, not long after, to the present Counts of Emo, who are likewise occasionally spoken of as the Conti di S. Elena. At the end of the ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 563 avenue the buildings of their contadini appeared first upon the right, in an open field, — long brick struct- ures faced with colonnades of brick pillars, under which were lofts for the storage of grain and hay ; and some of the laborers themselves were visible near by, — men and women clad in bright-hued garments and red kerchiefs, reaping and raking a meadow of rich grass, with light-hearted song and laughter. Beyond this field succeeded the dense woodland reaching to the hill, through which led a graveled path bearing westward from the avenue's end. This shady alley, as I later found, led directly to the bath- ing establishment at the foot of the eminence, passing along the outer bank of the narrow canal inclosing the private gardens of the count, which occupy the middle portion of the wood. A short turn to the left along the eastern arm of this stream, brought me to a point affording an exquisite vista of the castle: the water itself was delightfully banked with dense rose-bushes ; behind it there opened through the wold a long narrow perspective of alternating flower-beds and shrubberies, framed on each hand by ornamental trees of many species, intersected by winding paths; at its far end rose a magnificent flight of stone steps, climbing the hillside straightaway for over a hundred yards' ascent, between innumerable potted cacti; and at the summit, upon a wide balustraded terrace, stood the imposing, stuccoed chateau, with its central dome and battle- mented corner towers. These last were square and ponderous, and between them the fagade was orna- mented by a sort of two-storied portico, of triple arches divided by massive columns, approached by a double stairway from the terrace. No view more charmingly picturesque could be conceived. Circling the wall of roses guarding this enchanted 564i PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY ground, I found a rustic bridge upon the south side that invited me within; strolling then through its fairy glades, I reached finally a broad expanse of flower- beds only, extending along the base of the height, and almost entirely devoted to roses, — still partly bloom- ing. What could be fairer than such a garden below one's castle windows, at the foot of its grand stairway ! The Stabilmento dei Bagni stood upon the right, be- hind a stuccoed wall; to the left stretched an extension of the wood, beyond a row of hot-houses. This proved to be the loveliest grove of the park, intersected by grand " cathedral aisles," enlivened by heavenly carol- ings from a host of feathered songsters. Here amongst the oleanders, ilexes, and magnolias, sleeping duskily under overhanging boughs, I found the four "lakes," or irregularly shaped basins, within which the saline waters bubble forth from beds of mineral ooze. Only to-day is the secret of their mysterious healing powers at last revealed: they are strongly radio-active. The Conte Emo, I learned from a gardener, was now in residence at the chateau, so that visiting it was for the time suspended; later I saw his three pretty, fair-haired children, playing amongst the glades of the sequestered weald, in the company of a costumed bonne. Recrossing the rose-garden I inspected the Stabilmento, — a long, plain stuccoed building of two stories, with a gateway at its left leading to a small grotto in the base of the hill, where two hot springs gurgled from the rocks into hewn basins, from which steam arose in clouds. Cups attached to chains showed that here the habitues drink their daily potions. At this season, however, none were to be seen; they flock here in the winter-time and the spring, — the present guests of the hotel being the last of the summer so- journers. ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 565 Within the building the keeper showed me the bath- rooms, with their individual modern tubs, and couches for massaging; the lounging room in the centre; the cooling reservoirs of water; the bedrooms upstairs for those too ill to stay at the hotel; and finally, in the hill- side at the back, the two large grottoes, or rather caves, raised to a fearful temperature by the steam from the boiling springs. Here the patients linger from eight to twenty minutes, passing from the less heated cave to the greater; then they enter the outer chambers to be douched and massaged. The very same method, as far as can be known, and pursued on the very same spot, in the identical grottoes, used by the ancient Ro- mans, — whose long white robes, in fact, still wrap the courageous bathers. In the cool of the afternoon I set forth again, through the village, northward along the dike of the canal, to the Castle of Cattajo. This famous relic of the Renais- sance period has a double interest, as being the only Veneto residence remaining to that princely family which once owned the whole district, — the House of Este. It was first erected by the wealthy Obizzi, of Padua, by whose name it was long known, and from the Estensi it finally passed to the possession of the Austrian branch of their house, which alone survives. It, however, is in reality Estense through the distaff only: Beatrice, the sole child of Duke Ercole III, the last ruling prince of Modena and Reggio (died 1803), married the Archduke Ferdinand, of the younger branch of the House of Austria, who came therefore into possession of that duchy on the fall of Napoleon. His descendants, though they lost the duchy again by the unification of Italy, have retained the name of Este. The present representative of the name. Arch- duke Francis Ferdinand, confines himself to his 566 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY Austrian estates, not having visited Cattajo, I was told, for a space of fourteen years. My way led along the stream's eastern bank, through a rich and beautiful countryside, ennobled by the lofty hills looming closely on the west. A picturesque farmhouse was passed on the water's edge, ensconsed in trees, quickened by numerous geese and ducks pad- dling noisily along the shore. A quarter of an hour's walking brought the castle into sight, perched majes- tically on the left behind a broad deep fosse, and backed by a densely wooded hillside on the north. It was an imposing spectacle: an enormous rectangle of cream-coloted stucco, three stories in height, whose top windows were visible over the battlements of the southern wall of enceinture, — which was three or four times as long as the eastern front; at its northeastern corner rose the original, earlier building, shaped gen- erally like a giant cube five stories in height, con- structed of yellow, stained, and crumbling stucco; its bare walls with their simple oblong windows were crested \fy no relieving cornice, but grimly crenel- ated.^ Sentry boxes stood at intervals along the extended southern parapet, significant of the days of incessant war. Picturesqueness was added by the lofty woodland sweeping close behind, and the shrouding grove of smaller trees cresting the inner bank of the vast fosse. The latter was spanned by a graceful brick bridge of three large arches, adorned at the eastern end by an ornamental stone gateway, and at the west- ern by two massive pillars holding heroic statues of Hercules and Silenus. ^ Behind this again, on the upper part of the isolated hill, concealed by its thick groves of tall trees, stands the preceding fortified residence of the Middle Ages, — a ruinous, frowning old keep of dark stone, distinguishable only from the sunken gardens on the south. ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 567 When I reached and advanced upon this bridge, I saw a private road leading straight westward from it before the long southern wall, evidently crossing the estates to the slopes of the hills several miles distant. To the right of the statued pillars extended the castle's eastern front, rising upon a stone-banked terrace overlooking the deep moat, which carried a parapet crowned with a row of huge stone balls, and a grove of low but stout evergreens cut into sugar-loaf forms. These evidences of Renaissance culture contrasted forcibly with the grim, lofty, battlemented fagade behind, soaring "much in the style of the old castles of Provence. Lofty rooms," wrote Eustace, "long galleries, winding staircases, and dark passages, fit it admirably for the purposes of a novelist, and render it equally proper for the abode of a great baron, for the receptacle of a band of robbers, for the scene of nightly murders, or for the solitary walk of ghosts and of spec- tres." 1 On crossing the bridge, the wide sunken gardens of the chateau were revealed to the left of the road, strik- ingly embellished with ordered flowerbeds, hedges, potted plants, shrubberies, orangeries, clumps of mag- nolias, groves and avenues of stately trees, and pretty basins of water, — stretching away for many acres to the south and west. On this fair prospect looked down the upper windows, over the battlements of the south- ern wall. In the latter appeared the main entrance, — a monumental Renaissance archway two stories in height, adorned with four Doric half-columns, two statues at the sides, and four weather-beaten statues ^ Eustace, Classical Tour through Italy, vol. i. — How the reality of all this, he might have added, would have delighted the terror-loving soul of Mrs. Radcliffe; it would surely have inspired her with a tale more weird and dreadful than the Mysteries of Udolpho, — which, for that matter, might well itself have been placed here. 568 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY on the top. Beyond it the southern wall continued westward for three hundred yards and more, relieved by crenelated towers at its middle and farther corner. Near the first of these was an open gateway, entering which I found myself in an outer court of almost equal length, extending between the wall and the castle; to the right there mounted a flight of stone steps to a high balustraded terrace shaded by rows of clipped evergreens, and decorated by Doric columns tipped with stone balls, — the private garden of the seigneurs. The custodian, who now appeared, informed me that visitors were not at present admitted, because the Arch- duke was engaged in transferring to Austria all of the chateau's portable objects d'art, and everything was in confusion. As evidence I saw numerous packing-cases lying about, and sculptures nailed up in crates. The collection of antiquities, I knew, had been transported to Vienna in 1895 : this further stripping would leave the historic place with naught but the valueless por- tion of its old furniture, and the frescoes on the walls ; it was saddening, — and a proof of the Archduke's decision to return here no more. I asked if he were here now, and learned that only his orders had arrived. It was a disappointment which no offers of mine — strange to say — had any success in overcoming; and I trust that other travelers will be more fortunate. The three fine portraits on canvas by Paolo Veronese may have vanished, but his large ceiling-painting will remain, which covers one of the royal suite of five grand salons; these are otherwise decorated by a magnificent series of frescoes by Zelotti, depicting the achieve- ments and the glorification of the Obizzi; and in the private chapel, or Oratorio di S. Michele, there should remain a number of good pictures by the Venetian school of the later cinquecento. — But though I failed ARQUA. A PEASANT'S HOUSE. ARQUA. PARISH CHURCH AND PETRARCH'S TOMB. ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 569 in this, I was amply repaid for my walk by a long stroll through the sunken gardens, which yielded new and varied beauties at every turn of the paths; the woods alone were delightful, composed of monarchs of vast age and size; and the views afforded of the full extent of the great chateau were picturesque beyond the or- dinary, revealing over the main buildings the mighty old keep and embattled fortress concealed in the bushy elms of the upper hillside. As I walked slowly back to Battaglia in the sunset hour, my gaze was turned upon those lovely green hills so close upon the right, "still retaining the name of one of the earliest tribes that peopled Paduan terri- tory. . . . They were formerly, it seems, inhabited by a race of soothsayers, who vied with the Tuscans in the art of looking into futurity." ^ How proper, then, that they should have become the final residence of that grandest of all seers, whom Symonds called "the great awakener of Europe from mental lethargy, — the apostle of scholarship, the inaugurator of the humanistic impulse of the fifteenth century." In their verdurous recesses high above the plain, Petrarch spent the last five years of that wonderful life which struck off the age-long fetters of the human intellect, and ushered mankind into the rebirth of its mentality. To-morrow I should make my pilgrimage to that sacred shrine, where the poet's genius blazed its last fire upon the adoring world; — my final pilgrimage, of all these months of journeying, which had brought me thus back, in an enormous circle, to the point of my departure. Over there to the northeast, I could almost see upon the level horizon the domes and towers of Venice, whence I had started. Since they receded from my view, I had visited all that hinterland * Eustace, Classical Tour, vol. i. 570 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY which she so gloriously made her own, and the scores of towns and cities that bore in their piazzas the white Lion of St. Mark. Venetia had been traversed from end to end, presenting to my retrospection one vast exposition of the arts and science of the Renaissance. What more fitting end to all this wandering, then, than a pilgrimage to the tomb of that immortal who opened to men the gates of this world of culture. On the shoulder of one of those fair hills reposed that tomb, and close by it the modest home in which the great poet breathed his last; that home to which Francesco della Carrara the elder so often repaired for consultation and advice, and so many illustrious men came to sit at the feet of genius. It is difficult for one not a student to comprehend what a tremendous influence was diffused from that humble house through the Italian world of the trecento, an influence which has ever since gone on widening and increasing. Petrarch had "inspired ideas and modes of thought which pre- ceding scholars had possessed in their own brains, but could not communicate to society." ^ "The study of Latin writers had never been wholly neglected in Italy; but Petrarch introduced a more profound, liberal, and elegant scholarship, and communicated to his countrymen that enthusiasm for the literature, the history, and the antiquities of Rome, which divided his own heart with a frigid mistress and a more frigid muse." 2 " He was the first to understand the value of public libraries, the first to accumulate coins and inscriptions as the sources of accurate historical in- formation, the first to preach the duty of preserving ancient monuments." ^ ^ H. C HoUway-Calthorp, Petrarch; His Life and Times. ^ Macaulay, Essays on Machiavelli, and Petrarch. ' Synionds, Revival of Learning. ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 571 "With Petrarch, and because of him, the classical spirit resumed its sway. . . . Charm defies analysis. It is evident from his whole career that he possessed both intellectual and personal charm to a rare degree; he fascinated men's imagination and fired their hearts. Entire strangers came as pilgrims — and having seen the poet, went back to spread the fame of him through all lands. So his reputation grew, and his influence became more potent every day; and the studies that he loved, from being the monopoly of a handful of scholars, became the inspiration of the world's cul- ture." ^ " From this time, the admiration of learning and genius became almost an idolatry among the people of Italy. Kings and republics, cardinals and doges, vied with each other in honoring and flattering Pe- trarch. Embassies from rival states solicited the honor of his instructions. His coronation agitated the Court of Naples and the people of Rome as much as the most important political transaction could have done. . . . To the man who had extended the dominion of her ancient language — who had erected the trophies of philosophy and imagination in the haunts of ignorance and ferocity — whose spoils were the treasures of an- cient genius rescued from obscurity and decay — the Eternal City offered the just and glorious tribute of her gratitude. . . . He who had restored the broken link between the two ages of human civilization was crowned with the wreath which he deserved from the moderns who owed to him their refinement, from the ancients who owed to him their fame." ^ It was at the height of this celebrity and power that Petrarch came to dwell at Padua, and shortly after- ward, tired of the life of court and city, retired to "the hospitable house of the Augustinian friars at Arqua. ^ H. C. Hollway-Calthorp, sopra. * Macaulay, sopra. 572 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY He was so charmed with the beauty of the place, that he got Lombardo da Serico to negotiate for the pur- chase of a plot of ground, comprising a vineyard and an orchard of oHves and other fruit trees. Here he built a house, which still stands, structurally un- altered, and bears witness to the simplicity of his domestic habits and his appreciation of beautiful scenery." ^ This was in 1369. Francesco della Carrara senior, the Despot of Padua, who, like his predecessor, Jacopo II, always manifested towards Petrarch a peculiar reverence and affection, frequently took his place in the stream of pilgrims which henceforth wended steadily to Arqua; and that Petrarch returned the esteem, became evident when he left for a while this beloved retirement to go as Francesco's envoy to Venice, and there secured peace for him from the menacing Senate. That memorable occasion was the poet's last appearance in the world. On the morning of his seventieth birthday, July 20, 1374, he was found in his library sleeping his last sleep, with an open book on the desk before him. Early upon the following morning I was en voiturey and driving down the canal-road on my way to Arqua. The cloudless sky presaged one of those glorious days that often bless the Italian autumn. The route fol- lowed the crest of the dike southward for a mile or so, toward the isolated cone of Monselice, plainly visible across the plain, then turned directly westward to the hills. The land that we traversed was of the usual deep fertility, sparsely dotted with stuccoed farm- houses of modern look, — small, poverty-marked dwellings, attached to barns faced by porticoes of brick pillars, which sheltered empty lofts for grain ^ H. C. HoUway-Calthorp, sopra. ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 573 and hay. This sad poverty of crop and people was vastly increased all over Venetia and Lombardy of late years, ever since the great blights that began to strike the vines and the silkworms in the middle of the past century. Those blights, a direct result of the extermina- tion of the birds, destroyed at their first attack prac- tically all the vines of the plain, which till then had been among the sweetest and most delicate of Italy, and in subsequent attacks have devastated the re- plantings again and again, so that the vintages of to- day are not a third of what they once were, and their products are coarse and heavy. These wines, now so inferior to the once despised Piedmont vintages, that the latter constitute the delicacy of the present, are yet so dear that the peasants can no longer drink them save on grand occasions. The last blight I had my- self seen in this very year, — the grapes hanging gray and withered throughout so many sections that their produce would amount to almost nothing. As for the silkworms and the mulberry trees, they too have steadily suffered from increasing insect scourges, that have reduced many districts to destitution. When one adds the terrible summer hailstorms, which have be- come much more frequent of late years, the reasons for poverty are apparent. But behind these physical afflictions lie the condi- tions of peasant life that have kept the tillers of the soil from rising up again with new determination: firstly, their profound ignorance, and use of antedi- luvian methods; secondly, their unhappy subjection to usurers, in the absence of any sensible system of finance; thirdly, the wretched system of taxation, and its heaviness, which press hardest of all upon the farmer; fourthly, and chiefly, the conditions of land ownership and tenure. Nearly all of the plain is still 574 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY in the hands of large proprietors, to an unhappy extent absentees, whose broad acres are looked after by a class of middlemen, or factors. From these the peasants rent their little farms, which usually have been in the tenancy of the same family for genera- tions; but those who pay their rent entirely in money are as rare as the individual peasant proprietors, whose numbers have been greatly reduced by the hard times. A fair percentage pay partly in money, partly in wheat or other crops, — which is called the contratto misto. The mezzaria system, which prevails in Tuscany and central Italy, is more used upon the plain than any other: by it the landlord furnishes the land and buildings, the repairs, the draft animals, and occasionally certain implements, and receives one-half the crops, — from which again he has to pay the taxes; when oxen die or vines wither, he has to replace them, and when crops fail, from hail or blight, he has to supply provisions to keep his contadini alive. This system did very well in the old times of plenty, but of late it has impoverished the owners and tenants together, the latter falling continually deeper in debt to the former, who^ receive little or no income. The other forms of contract, variations of this sys- tem, are beyond enumeration, altering with every district and nearly every estate; the differences being in the things which the proprietor is bound to furnish, and the varying shares into which the different crops are to be divided. But all these methods have achieved the same result, — an ignorant, improvident de- pendence on and indebtedness to the master, who is thus pulled downhill along with his tenants. Under such conditions a single disaster — a blight, a fire, or hailstorm — sends the peasant to the village usurer for money to buy new implements or stock, or ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 575 even clothes and food ; and having taken this down- ward step, he can never recover himself, but ends in complete ruination. The equal division of land which the Italian law enforces between all the heirs of a decedent owner, has greatly added to this evil state of affairs, by its continual parceling out of farms into smaller and smaller pieces, with-the concomitant changes in tenancy and heavy transfer taxes. The peasants, it is well known, no longer have the stamina to work as they once did, on account of their impoverished diet; this again results in poorer crops, and still less food. They live chiefly, save in the Lombard wheat districts, on 'polenta, or corn flour, with the addition of a little rice, and cabbages, turnips, onions, or other cheap vegetables, generally eaten raw, or in soup. Eggs, chickens, cheese, and meat are too dear for home consumption, save on Tarefestas; and then only do they take a little of the coarse wine, which does not suffice, as did the former abundance and fine quality, to make up for the deficiences of their diet. As for coffee and tea, they are practically un- known; even salt is a grudged luxury, so heavily is it taxed. The farm servants fare worse than their mas- ters, receiving their wages in the shape of the simplest possible food, with lodging, firewood, and a fraction of the crops they raise. In such a state of society it is not a matter for wonder that the educated parish priests obtain an emolument of only £20 a year, and fall victims to the pellagra with their flocks. It is easy to see how the noble landlords of the Veneto, who had already incurred so many sacrifices under the Aus- trians and the Risorgimento, through their patriotism, have since then been gradually reduced to comparative penury. And one can judge how vastly were needed those model farms with modern methods, established 576 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY by Marchese Stangi and Baron Franchetti, near Cre- mona and Mantua, to prove to Italians that the fault has lain with the men, not the soil, and that the an- cient adage is still true> — " La vanga ha la punta d' oro." 1 "The drive to Arqua," wrote Symonds, "takes one through a country which is tenderly beautiful, because of its contrast between little peaked mountains and the plain. It is not a grand landscape. . , . Its charm is a certain mystery and repose, — an unde- fined sense of the neighboring Adriatic, a pervading consciousness of Venice unseen, but felt from far away." ^ The description of the final approach written by Hobhouse (later Lord Broughton) when he and Byron made their visit of September, 1817, presents an accurate picture: "Across a flat, well- wooded meadow, you come to a little blue lake, clear but fathomless, and to the foot of a succession of acclivi- ties and hills, clothed with vineyards and orchards, rich with fir and pomegranate trees, and every sunny forest shrub. From the banks of the lake the road winds into the hills, and the church of Arqua is soon seen between a cleft where two ridges slope towards each other, and nearly inclose the village. The houses are scattered at intervals on the steep sides of these summits." ^ All this is more than a thousand feet above the plain, — a long slow climb, — on the slope of the great hill sustaining the twin peaks. Mounting thus from the east into the straggling hamlet, but a few houses had been passed when we debouched suddenly into a piazza upon a small pla- teau somewhat below the notch, extending to the left ^ "The spade has the point of gold." ^ J. A. Symonds, Sketches and Studies in Italy. ^ Broughton, Remarks Made in Several Visits to Italy. ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 577 from the narrow street; at its end, upon a broad ter- race flanked by cypresses, behind a semicircular yard inclosed by a stone-capped parapet, stood the queer old parochial church, built of stucco, painted a soft blue. Its central body appeared a simple cube, a story and a half in height, in which opened two cor- niced doorways topped by fan-lights ; at its sides were small square wings of a single story, containing two shorter doorways topped by round lights; and over the left of these, in the rear, rose the modest, stuccoed cam'panile, — its single-arched belfry, adorned with pilasters, being surmounted by an octagonal lantern with a Byzantine cupola. In the centre of the rounded fore-court stood the tomb of Petrarch, I glanced, as I dismounted from the vettura, at the two buildings flanking the piazza : that to the left was a ruinous Gothic palazzo, evidently now used as a barn, holding in its upper floor many fair ogive trefoil windows, of stucco frames with terra-cotta labels, — double-arched on the fagade, with slender stone shafts, and single-arched at the sides ; that to the right was the village inn, an aged, two-storied, stucco building, carrying the sign, — "Albergo-Trattoria-al Petrarco." Before its northern side the street continued up the hill to the notch; into the yard at its southern side my vetturino disappeared with his horse. As I ad- vanced to the churchyard the unique beauty of its position was revealed: the terrace on which it lay was raised between steep descents, — that on the left being covered with massed orange trees, from which soared two of the tall pointed cypresses, while on the right fell a roadway from the face of the inn, to a line of dwellings down the slope. The other three cypresses rose from a narrow terrace between it and the court parapet. 578 PLAIN TOWNS OF ITALY Over this southern declivity of the mountain, then, the church was perched on a narrow shoulder, looking straight down into the valley, which opens eastward into the plain. Over the orangery on the left I saw the variegated beauties far below, — the rich, check- ered fields, the patches of yellow foliage, and the gleaming farmhouses and hamlets, — which clam- bered also up the opposite mountainside, and spread eastward from the vale into the hazy, distant level of the plain. To the right my gaze was higher led, to the twin summits just above, encircled by their joint necklace of bright stuccoed dwellings, which in spite of their vivid hues were clearly of mouldering age, — save only two huge modern structures of cream color, at the extreme left. Some of the old buildings penetrated the cleft, where another church was pic- turesquely posed. A third churchly edifice, of imme- morial age, lay at my feet across the falling road, the plaster long crumbled from its medieval stones; the pointed arch of its portal, and those of the four tre- foil windows above — the central one double-arched, the fourth in the gable — showed an erection of the early GotKic period. Now it was a ruinous dwelling, which added to its quaint appearance. With this glance around, I stepped up to the storied sepulchre, — a sense of veneration strong upon me, at the realization that I stood in the presence of that illustrious dust, greater than all the princes of earth. It was surrounded by an iron railing, upheld by four stone posts at the corners; upon a plain double base rose the four stocky, quadrangular pillars sustaining the large sarcophagus, of simple Paduan form. All was of red Verona marble; but on the front centre of the gabled lid, some eight or nine feet from the ground, stood a bronze bust of the poet, above a bronze scroll. ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 579 There was no other adornment, beyond the Latin inscriptions. Three more inscriptions and a shield of arms hung on the church's fagade directly behind, one of which commemorated the celebration of the fifth centenary of the poet's death, held here by United Italy on July 18, 1874. The entire simplicity of this monument was most satisfying, aggrandized as it is by its lofty, wind-swept throne, girdled by the eter- nal volcanic hills. "Fit resting-place," said Symonds, *'for what remains to earth of such a poet's clay! It is as though archangels, flying, had carried the marble chest and set it down here on the hillside, to be a sign and sanctuary for after-men. Bending here, we feel that Petrarch's own winged thoughts and fancies, eternal and aerial, have congregated to be the ever- ministering and irremovable attendants over the shrine."^ It is a late day to quote those beautiful lines which Byron wrote after that first visit of 1817; but what account of this place would be complete without a reference to them.?^ — There is a tomb in Arqua; reared in air. Pillared ia their sarcophagus, repose The bones of Laura's lover. . . . He arose To raise a language, and his land reclaim From the dull yoke of her barbaric foes. Watering the tree which bears his lady's name With his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame.^ It was the poet Petrarch, the singer of a hopeless love, that appealed to Byron rather than the scholar. He came later upon a second visit, "when he brought the lady of his love," the fair Contessa Guiccioli; — "she who knows his sonnets by heart," said Byron, **and who recites them as only an Italian mouth can. ^ J. A. Symonds, sopra. * Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, iv, xxx. 580 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY . . . Petrarch is the poetical idol of the women of Italy." ^ "Though Dante was an admirable sonnet- eer," wrote Sidney Lee, "it was his successor, Pe- trarch, whose example gave the sonnet its lasting vogue in Europe. . . . Every sonneteer of western Europe acknowledged Petrarch to be his master; and from Petrarchian inspiration came the form and much of the spirit of Shakespeare's sonnets." ^ As I gazed upon the tomb, I thought of that sad day of 1374 when the bard's remains were carried here from his house. The " funeral was celebrated with great pomp; Francesco da Carrara might be trusted to see to that. He himself attended, with a train of cour- tiers; four bishops took part in the ceremony, and the bier was carried by sixteen doctors of law. Petrarch's body was dressed in a red gown, — according to some, the royal robe which Robert of Naples had given him for his crowning, according to others, the dress of a Canon of Padua. . . . The sarcophagus [was] constructed by his son-in-law." Long afterward, "at a time when the tomb stood in need of repair, an arm was stolen [by a Florentine, through a rent still visible] which is said to be now preserved at Madrid; and among the relics kept in Petrarch's house, the caretaker shows with misplaced satisfaction a box which contains one of the poet's fingers." ^ This, how- ever, is the only disturbance that the remains have suffered. Entering the church, I found it cubical in form, with a cubical high-altar recess on the east side, and an organ-loft on the west side, supported on four gray 1 The Countess of Blessington. The Idler in Italy (1828). * Sidney Lee on Sir Philip Sidney, in his Great Englishmen of the Sixteenth Century. ' H. C. Hollway-Calthorp, sopra. RO VIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 581 columns of imitation marble; against each of the other walls stood a modest side altar, one of which was a pleasing Renaissance work of sculptured marble, with a pair of life-size cherubs at its front angles; upon it was a seicentist Baptism of the Saviour, somewhat in Palma Giovane's style, within a rich frame of the same epoch, elaborately carved with putti, human faces, festoons of flowers, etc. The walls and flat roof were whitewashed, and the former hung with a curi- ous array of small modern pictures, mainly lithographs. Two old canvases, however, flanked the chancel arch, of which the left one was evidently from the school of Paolo Veronese, — depicting the Madonna in glory between Saints Francis and Clara, above a throng of persons, including a pope, a princess, and several cardinals; the figures were really excellent, being both natural and of considerable grace and expression. Petrarch's famous fountain, of which he wrote and drank, I found a little below the church, springing from the slope under an archway of masonry, doubt- less added since his day. The sweetness of the water justified all his praises. After this I mounted the main street to the upper piazza in the notch, following a couple of housewives carrying water home in the Euganean fashion, — with a pail slung at each end of a long wooden bow across the shoulders. An odd thing about this village was that it was not solidly built, but the houses were scattered separately about the hillside, amongst gardens. From the ruined fragments of an ancient castle at the top, which a native informed me had once been the Venetian citadel, another street bearing southward led me quickly to the poet's house, perched, like the church, on a narrow terrace overlook- ing the southern valley. It stood at the end of a small garden, now densely overgrown with trees and shrubs, 582 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY save for the confined walk leading to the modern gates of ornamental ironwork. The two-storied stucco dwell- ing, two rooms deep and four in breadth, appeared wonderfully preserved, as if but one or two generations had passed since Petrarch's occupancy; its present ex- cellent condition is due to an association which years ago purchased the place, to conserve it as a lasting memorial. The entrance is by a narrow portico pro- jecting from the middle of the fagade, consisting of a single archway below, and a double-arched loggia above, approached by a flight of steps from the left. Ascending these, escorted by the well-informed cus- todian whom my ring had brought to the gates, I found myself before three handsome, trefoil, ogive arches, supported by slender white stone columns, in the middle of which was the door, and at the sides two sixteenth-century windows of circular leaded panes. ^ Within opened the wide entrance hall, with a red tiled floor, brown stucco walls, and a wooden ceiling which Petrarch had painted with countless little squares containing brown circles. Around the upper walls extended a cinquecento frieze of frescoed panels, three per side, illustrating the story of Petrarch and Laura, as set forth in his sonnets. One or both of them appear in each scene, amidst charming landscapes through which winds the Sorga River, with the town of Vau- cluse discerned in the distance, where the poet saw and loved his ideal; and under each tableau are writ- ten its appropriate verses from the Canzoni di Laura. This charming idea is well carried out, the work hav- ing been skillfully retouched about twenty years ago. ^ Restorations, or reproductions, of the original trecento windows. In several rooms; however, the framework of Petrarch's day is still preserved; and here and there, especially in his study, linger a number of the little round trecento panes, distinguished by their yellowish opaqueness. ARQUA. THE HOTi OF PETRARCH. ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 583 The entrance hall runs through to the rear wall, in which opens another doorway, between two win- dows. Roundabout stand two tables, a desk and two chairs of the trecento, heavily framed and carved all over with curious scrolls, — recently brought here to exemplify the furniture of Petrarch's day. In a cen- tral, modern, glass case repose the visitors' books bear- ing illustrious signatures, amongst which I saw those of Byron, Queen Margherita, King Umberto, etc.; also a photographic reproduction of a page of Petrarch's original manuscript in the Vatican, and a fine copy of the first printed edition of his works, from the press of Aldo Manutio at Venice. The back room on the right was the poet's bed- chamber, now unfurnished; here there were similar cinquecento frescoes, illustrating the canzoni on Laura's death. Adjacent in front was the kitchen, with the handsome chimney-piece of soft creamy stone (from the neighborhood) , under which the poet's meals were cooked; here the frescoes illustrated his poem on Africa. The wooden ceiling retained his painted de- signs; and over one doorway stood the beautiful terra- cotta bust of the dead Lucrezia, which he so much admired, — an excellent piece of sculpture, with its head thrown back toward the right shoulder, and eyes closed. On the chimney-front was painted a reclining, Titianesque Venus, representing the suicide of Cleo- patra. The left front chamber was the poet's dining- room, adorned with a similar chimney-piece, which in the Late-Renaissance had been painted with a copy of Titian's group of Venus, Cupid, and Vulcan, — now retouched and of graceful effect. The other frescoes here were very crude. Over the rear doorway, in a baroque frame with a glass cover, rested the cele- brated mummy of Petrarch's cat, underwrit by an 584 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY inscription in Latin which testifies that she was the poet's first love, not Laura, and that to her are due the thanks of humanity for saving from the rats his pre- cious manuscripts. The ceiling was a modern imita- tion of the others; and on the north wall was a modern bronze bust of Petrarch, dated 1902. In the left rear were two undersized rooms, entered only from the last; the larger was his study, or library, illumined still by the window of his day, with its little round leaded panes ; the smaller was his retreat for writing and reading, especially at night, lighted by a similar but smaller window.^ Here it was that he was found dead, before his unfinished epitome of the Lives of Illustrious Men. The armchair in which he worked, and died, is preserved in a glass case in the study, together with the desk at which he sat, — the former being exquisitely carved on the back with the most delicate designs. Here also I saw his bookcase, whose two doors were relieved with countless tiny square panels, having perforations of "X" shape, — nearly all destroyed by early visitors. On the wall was pointed out to me the remaining decipherable stanza of the sonnet which Alfieri wrote there on his visit, with his signature barely visible underneath. ^ Wonderful indeed it was to reflect that in this very room, half a thousand years ago, with the aid of this ^ This was really a closet, between the study and the hall, entered solely from the former; just wide enough to contain his desk and armchair, before the window. ^ These famous lines are as admirable for their tenderness of sentiment as for their melody; they began, — O Cameretta, che gia in te chiudesti Quel Grande alia cui fama e, angusto il mondo — Alfieri's memorandum at this time also shows his feelings: "I visited, once more, the tomb of our master in love, the divine Petrarch ; and then, as at Ravenna, consecrated a day to meditation and verse." ROVIGO, ARQUA, AND BATTAGLIA 585 same furniture, the thoughts were penned which led the way for mankind from the darkness of barbarism to the Hght of culture. "Even after death [that of Laura] had placed the last seal on his misery," said Macaulay, "we see him devoting to the cause of the human mind all the strength and energy which love and sorrow had spared. He lived the apostle of liter- ature; — he fell its martyr: — he was found dead with his head reclined on a book." ^ There were two more rooms to be seen, added on to the west end after Petrarch's time, and filled now with portraits, busts, relics of the Delia Carrara, early editions of Petrarch's works. Renaissance furniture, etc., all more or less connected in interest with his life and fame. Finally, I stepped from the rear door upon the balcony above the valley, guarded still by its original curved iron railing, upon which the poet loved to lean and gaze at his view: there directly below spread the little field which was laden with his cher- ished vines and olive trees, — now a vineyard only; be- yond stretched "the glowing gardens in the dale im- mediately beneath, [and] the wide plain, above whose low woods of mulberry and willow, thickened into a dark mass by festoons of vines, tall single cypresses and the spires of towns are seen in the distance, stretching to the mouths of the Po and the shores of the Adriatic." ^ Glorious indeed was this view which lured the poet here to dwell, — all unchanged from the days when his eyes rested upon it : the girdling conical peaks soaring in majesty to the right, the pastoral vale below, the vast mountain-side opposite climbing from fertile meadows to the bare summit, the red-tiled village clam- bering up the hither slope to the left, and the immense, ^ Macaulay, Essay on Petrarch. ^ Lord Broughton, sopra. 586 PLAIN-TOWNS OF ITALY green, haze-shrouded, plain extending indefinitely be- yond the valley's end, with its eternal sense of mystery and menace of the sea. When I had bidden good-by to the sanctuary, regained my vettura, and started from the village down the far descent, the beauty of that sublime panorama came upon me with redoubled feel- ing; and at the first knoll I stopped, to gaze upon it once more. My journeying was over; behind me lay all that wonderful hinterland which Venice conquered with the sword, and clothed in the loveliness of the Renaissance; and ahead of me, just below that dim horizon which seemed to bear the murmur of the waves, soared the golden domes and spires of the Suzeraine herself, — the Immortal Republic, beckon- ing me back to her glorious rest. In this final look, the great plain seemed to grow more lustrous, — still more like an emerald velvet strown with the spark- ling diamonds of its innumerable hamlets, as if to dis- play to me for the last time its full and matchless charm. And as I gazed farewell, the melody of the poet was ringing in my ears, like the silver chimes of monastery bells across a shadow-stealing vale : — • Farewell, land of love, Italy, Sister-land of Paradise: With mine own feet I have trodden thee. Have seen with mine own eyes; I remember, thou forgettest me, — I remember thee.^ 1 C. G. Rossetti. THE END INDEX INDEX Abano, town of, 559. Accoramboni, Vittoria, 48, 49. Adige river, 322-325, 347-349, 395, 396. Adria, town of, 558. Agilulf, 559. Agriculture of the plain, 13, 15, 97, 98, 260, 501, 502, 572-576. Alaric, 224, 272, 326, 459. Alberic da Romano, 139, 178. Alboin. 224, 273, 324, 329. Aleardi, 344. Aleotti, G. B., 128. Altichieri da Zevio, 22, 69, 70, 71, 78, 79, 344, 358, 367, 391. Amalteo, Pomponio, 191, 248, 256, 277, 284, 291, 292, 303, 313. Amusements of townspeople, 142, 143, 145, 182-184, 480, 481. Aquileia, 271, 272, 275; Patriarchs of, 260, 274, 275, 278, 299, 308, 312. Antenor, 16, 28, 60, 61, 85. Antharis, 330, 349. Antonello da Messina, 83. Areola, 347. Arnold of Brescia, 420, 468. Arqua, buildings of, 577, 578; church, 577, 580, 581; drives to, 528, 572, 576; fountain, 581; Petrarch, 569-572, tomb of, 577- 580, house of, 581-585- situation, 528, 559, 572, 576. Asolo, 153, 154. Attila, 16, 224, 272, 326, 452, 461, 462. Avars, the, 273, 274. Bacchiglione, the, 25, 26, 30, 60, 80, 109, 110, 527. Badile, Antonio, 346, 391, 402, 556. Barbarelli, Giorgio (see Giorgione). Bardi, Giovanni Minelli de', 145. Baruzzi, 489. Basaiti, 251, 555. Bassano: albergo, 142; art of, 140; Bardi, Minelli de', 145; Bellini, Giovanni, 152; bicycle meet, 142, 143, 145; Bonifazio, 152; Brenta, the, 138, 139, 145, 146; bridge, the old wooden, 145, 146; Buonamici, house of, 149; Ca' Rezzonico, 152; camposanto, 147; Canova, 150, 153; cinematograph, 142, 143; Da Ponte, family of, 140; Da Ponte, Francesco, 140, 150, 151; Da Ponte, Francesco, Jr., 140, 159; Da Ponte, Girolamo, 140, 144; Da Ponte, house of the family, 147; Da Ponte, Jacopo, 140, 145, 151; Da Ponte, Leandro, 140, 148, 151, 268; Duomo, 148; excursions from, 152, 153, 154; Ezzelino, 139, 141; castle of, 147, 148; S. Giov- anni Battista, church of, 144, 145; Guariento, 152; Guarinai, G., 148; history, 139, 140; hotel, 142; jour- ney to, 137, 138; Madonna delle Grazie, church of, 153; Minelli de' Bardi, 145; Museo Civico, 150; Palazzo Pretorio, 149; piazzas, central, 143, 145, 149; Pitati, Bon- ifazio, 152; Pordenone, 150; Pos- sagno, 150; Roberti, Roberto, 151; situation, 139; street paint- ing, 149; SS. Trinita, 153; view from castle, 147; Villa Parolini, 153; western quarter, 145, 146, 147. Bassano family, 140. Bassano, Francesco, 140, 150, 151, 212. 590 INDEX Bassano, Francesco, Jr., 140, 159. Bassano, Girolamo, 140, 144. Bassano, Jacopo, 36, 96, 130, 131, 140, 145, 151, 153. Bassano, Leandro, 126, 140, 148, 151, 159, 213, 268. Baths of Recoaro, 137. Battaglia: Albergo Italia, 562; as- pect of, 561, 562; baths, history of, 559; canal, 528, 531, 560, 561, 562; Castle of Cattajo, 565-569; Es- tensi, the, 565; Grand Hotel des Thermes, 560, 561; Obizzi, the, 565, 568; parish church, 562; situ- ation of, 559; springs of, 559, 564; Stabilmento dei Bagni, 559, 564; vapor grottoes, 565; Villa S. Elena, 559, 562; Veronese, Paolo, 568; Zelotti, 568. Bayard, Chevalier, 426. Bellano, Bart., 47, 75, 77, 95, 96. Belli, Marco, 555. Bellini, Gentile, 83, 554. Bellini, Giovanni, 83, 107, 126, 127, 130, 152, 198, 209, 210, 410, 490, 554, 557. Bellunello, Andrea, 276, 284. Belluno, 214, 215. Bembo, Cardinal, 10, 154; tomb of, 67. Benaglio, Francesco, 345, 367, 390, 402. Benaglio, Girolamo, 345. Berengarius, 331. Bergamo, 4. Berici, Monti, 100, 105, 106, 120, 133-136, 346. Bevilacqua, 200, 504. Bissolo, 192. Boccaccino, Boccaccio, 83. Bonifacio, S., village of, 347. Bonifazio, 152, 410, 555. Bonsignori, Francesco, 345, 346, 390, 401, 402. Bordone, Paris, 180, 190, 191, 192, 213. Bosco del Consiglio, 258. BoselH, Antonio, 67. Bozen, 154, 323. Brandolin Castle, 258. Bregni, brothers, 191. Brenta Canal, 25. Brenta River, 6, 8-10, 12, 138, 139, 145, 146. Brescia : S. Af ra, church of, 469-471 ; S. Agostino, church of, 442; Alaric, 452; S. Alessandro, church of, 472; amusements, 480, 481 ; Ansilperga, 454, 459, 463; Arnold of Brescia, 420, 468; art of, 429-431; Attila, 452, 461; Barbieri (Guercino), 491; Baruzzi, 489; Bayard, Chevalier, 426; Bellini, Giovanni, 490; Broletto, 439-443; cafes and bars, 480; Camposanto, 495; Car- magnola, 424, 425; Carrara, della, the, 421, 424; castle and castle hill, 433, 434, 491-494; Catullus, 419; character of the people, 431; Charlemagne, 464; Civerchio, Vmcenzo, 429, 472, 478, 491; S. Clemente, church of, 466, 467; clock tower, 438; Cornaro, Queen Caterina, 427; Corso Zanardelli, 433, 434, 435, 481; S. Cristo, church of, 487; cross of Galla Placidia, 457, 458, 459; customs of the people, 480, 481; Desiderata, 463, 464; Desiderius, 420, 454, 459, 463; Duomo Nuovo, 440, 443-445; Duomo Vecchio, 440, 445; Ezzelino, 420, 421; Ferra- mola, 429, 430, 456; Ferrari, 489; Foppa, Vincenzo, 429, 477, 484, 489; Foppa the Younger, 456; fortress, 491, 492; Forum, Roman, 449-452; S. Francesco, church of, 485, 486; Francia, 477, 490; Fred- erick Barbarossa, 420; Fromen- tone, 437; Galleria Martinengo, 469, 489-491; Galla Placidia, 457-462; Gambara, Lattanzio, 431; Garibaldi, 429, 494; Gaston de Foix, 426; S. Giovanni Evan- INDEX 591 gelista, church of, 477-479; S. Guilia, church of, 454-458, 462; Gregoletti, 445; Haynau, General, 428, 429; history, 419-429, 450, 452, 453; hotel, 433; Lotto, Lor- enzo, 490; Luini, Bernardino, 465; Madonna dei Miracoli, church of, 485; Mantegna, 490; manufactur- ing, 487, 488; Marco Palmesano da Forli, 490; S. Maria Calchera, church of, 467; S. Maria del Car- mine, church of, 479; S. Maria del Solari, church of, 454, 464, 465; S. Maria delle Grazie, church of, 475-477; Martinengo, Count, 427, 428, 469, tomb of, 456, 457; Mer- cato dei Grani, 468; Mercato Nuovo, 468; II Moretto (Alessan- dro Bonvicini), 430, 447, 448, 466, 467, 468, 469, 477, 478, 484, 485, 486, 489, 490; Moretto, statue of, 469; Moroni, G. B., 431, 490; Museo Civico Eta Romana, 450, 451; Museo del Risorgimento, 492-494; Museo Medioevale, 449, 454-458, 462; SS. Nazzaro e Celso, church of, 483-485; Palazzo Calzavellio, 474; Palazzo Fe, 485; Palazzo Masperi, 474; Palazzo Municipale, 436-439; Palazzo To- sio. 473; Palladio, 437; Palma Vecchio, 447, 448; Pampaloni, 489; patron saints, 445; Piazza, Calisto, 468; Piazza Comune, 434, 436; Piazza del Duomo, 434, 439; Piazza del Museo, 449; Piazza della Posta, 449; Piazza Moretto, 469; Piazza Nuova, 435; Piazza Tito Speri, 442, 486; S. Pietro, church of, 488, 489; plan of, 434; Porta Milano, 475; Porta Stazi- one, 433, 495; Prato, Francesco da, 486; Queriniana Library, 449; Raphael, 490; Risorgimento, 418, 428; Roman Brescia, 419, 434, 449-453; Roman painting, 448; Roman theatre, 452; Romanino, Girolamo, 430, 447, 448, 463, 467, 468, 478, 479, 486, 490; S. Salva- tore, church of, 454, 455, 463, 493; Sansovino, 437, 489; Savoldo, Geronimo, 430, 431, 491; Scali- gers, the, 421 ; Sforza, Francesco, 424, 425; shops, the, 481; situa- tion, 419; socialism of the people, 481, 482; Speri, Tito, 428, 429, 442, 492, 494, tomb of, 442; Tem- ple of Hercules, 434, 449; Ten Days of, 429; Ten Days monu- ment, 438; Thorvaldsen, 489; Tintoretto, 470; Titian, 471, 484; Torre della Pallata, 475; tram- ways, 483; Venice, rule of, 424- 427; Veronese, Paolo, 470; Ves- pasian, 449, 450; Via delle Spa- derie, 435, 436; Via Gambara, 487; Victory, statue of, 450, 451 ; Vis- conti, Gian Galeazzo, 437; Vis- conti, the, 421, 422, 424, 425; Viti, Timoteo, 490; wine-presses of the streets, 479, 480; Zanardelli monument, 495, 496; Zoppo, Paolo, 429, 456, 489. Brusasorci, 345, 346, 371, 372, 378, 381, 391, 399, 402, 405. Buonconsiglio, Giovanni, 106, 132, 133, 510, 511, 512, 513, 514. Cafe-life, 182-184, 480. Calderari, 107, 131. Calisto (St. Calixtus), 308, 309, 310. Cambrai, League of, 4, 20, 29, 104, 105, 342, 427. Campione, Ugo da, 446. Campagna, Girolamo, 72, 212, 361. Campagnola, Dario, 94. Campagnola, Domenico, 33, 36, 80, 91, 92, 95, 96, 129. Campagnola, Giulio, 95. Campo Formio, 278. Canova, 150, 153. Capelletti (Capulets), the, 332, 337, 397. Carea, town of, 504. 592 INDEX Cariani, Giovanni, 551, 552. Carmagnola, 424, 425. Carnio, Antonio, 277. Caroto, F., 345, 374, 377, 390, 399, 401, 404, 409. Carpaccio, V., 248, 554. Carpi, Girolamo, 551. Carrara, della, the, 19, 103, 139, 164, 178,226,261,341,421,500. Carrara, della, Francesco, 19, 179, 341, 424, 570, 572, 580. Carrara, della, Francesco Novello, 19, 30. Carrara, della, Jacopo 1, 19, 103. Carrara, della, Jacopo II, 21, 33, 35, 47. Carrara, della, Ubertino, 33, 47. Casarsa, 280. Castelfranco: albergo, 162, 163, 168- 170; castle, 160, 161, 163, 171; church, 171-174; conclave of, 164; Costanza house, 175; Costanza, Matteo, 165, 166, 172, 174; Cos- tanza, Tuzio, 161, 165, 172; fairs of, 175; festa, 170; fortress, 161, 164, 171; eastern gate of, 175; Giorgione, life and work, 165-167, statue of, 165, pala of, 173, 174, frescoes of, 175, 176, house of, 175; history, IQl, 164, 165; Municipio, 171; lottery-drawing, 163; Palma Giovane, 173; piazza, 160, 175; Pordenone, 176; promenade along the fosse, 170; unpleasant experi- ence, 168-170; Veronese, Paolo, 172, 173; walls and battlements, 160. 164, 165. Cattajo, Castle, 565-569. Catullus, 344, 419, 432. Cavallotti, Felice, bust of, 522. Cavazzola, 345, 366, 390, 402, 405, 406, 409, 410. Ceneda {see Serravalle): Amalteo, 256; aspect, 252; counts of, 244, 247, 248; Duomo, 252, 253; Fiori, Jacobello del, 251, 253; Marchese Costantini, gardens of, 252, 256, 257; Municipio, 252; Palazzo Municipale, 255, 256; Palma Giovane, 253; Tiepolo, 253; Titian, 253-255; Valentina, Jacopo, 253; Vescovodo, 252. Charlemagne, 274, 330, 331, 464, 518, 529. Chaucer, 30. Chioggia, 558. Cima da Conegliano, 107, 130, 226, 227, 230, 231, 410, 528, 549, 550, 554. Cittadella: Bassano, Francesco, 159; Bassano, Leandro, 159; church, 158, 159; fosse, 159; history, 155, 156; main streets, 157; Municipio, 158; piazza, 158; Porta Bassano, 157, 158; Porta Padovana, 156, 157; Porta Trevisana, 158; Pre- fettura, 158; situation, 155; Vene- tian Lion, 158; walls, city, 141, 155, 156, 157. Civerchio, Vincenzo, 429, 430, 472, 478. 491. Cividale : Amalteo, 313 ; Baptistery of Calixtus, 310; Calisto (Calixtus) 308, 309; Chapel of St. Peltrudis, 307, 313-318; Convent of the Ursulines, 313-318; Duomo, 309 310-313; history, 273-275, 307, 308; S. Maria de' Battuti, 318 319; S. Maria in Valle, 319; S Martino, church of, 318, 319 S. Martino, quarter of, 314; Men Pietro, 311; Museo Civico, 319- 321; Palazzo Municipale, 309 Palma Giovane, 311, 312, 313 Palma Vecchio, 311; Patriarchs; 274, 275, 308, 312; Pellegrino, 319 Ponte del Diavolo, 318; Seccante, Sebastiano, 311; situation, 308 314; Tiepolo, G. B., 313. Codroipo, 280. Colalto, castle and counts of, 236- 243. Conegliano: aspect, 225; Casa Borgo della Madonna, 231; castle, 225, INDEX 593 226, 232, tower of, 232, 233, view from, 233; Cima, Gian Battista, life and work, 226, 227, pala of, 230, 231; Dario, 232; Duomo, 227, 228, 230; history, 226; opera- house, 229; Palazzo Municipale, 229; Piazza Venti Settembre, 229; situation, 226. Constantine, 272, 326. Cormor river, 277. Cornaro, Queen Caterina, 154, 427. Costanzi, the, 161, 165, 166, 172. 174, 175. Crivelli, Carlo, 410. Customs of citizens, 375, 480-482. Custozza, 343, 416. Dandolo, Enrico, 4. Daniele, S., town of, 306. Dante, 21, 22, 46, 60, 179, 201, 336, 337, 358, 372, 411, 414. Da Ponte, Francesco, 140, 150, 151, 212. Da Ponte, Francesco, Jr., 140, 159. Da Ponte, Girolamo, 140, 144. Da Ponte, Jacopo, 36, 96, 130, 131, 140, 145, 151, 153. Da Ponte, Leandro, 126, 140, 148, 151, 159, 213, 268. Dario, 180, 232, 269. D'Avanzo, Jacopo, 22, 33, 69, 70, 78, 344, 367. D'Azelio, Massimo, 106. Delia Scala {see Scala). Desenzano, 433. Desiderius, 330, 420, 454, 459, 463. Domenichino, 129, 556. Donatello, 24, 55, 64, 66, 68, 74, 75, 76. Dorando, General, 106. Dossi, Dosso, 556. Diirer, Albrecht, 556. Elena, S., Castle, 559, 560, 563, 564. Este: albergo, 519; Archangel Ga- briel, church of, 527; Bacchiglione River, 527; castle, 520; Cathedral of S. Tecla, 523. 524; Cima da Conegliano, 528; clock and bell tower, 526, 527; Estensi, history of the, 498-500; Frussine River, 527; history, 498-501; S. Maria delle Consolazioni, church of, 527, 528; S. Martino, church of, 526; moat, 527; mosaics, Roman, 525; Museum, 525; Palazzo Munici- pale, 520; Piazza Maggiore, 518, 519; Pelasgian relics, 525; Porta Vecchia, 527 ; S. Rocco, church of, 527; Roman relics, 525; situa- tion, 518; Tiepolo, G. B., 524; Via Monache, 527; Via Principe Um- berto, 518; Via Vittorio Emanu- ele, 526; Villa Benvenuti, 523. Estensi, arms of, 520. Estensi, castle of {see Este). Estensi, the, 498-500, 518, 519, 529, 530, 533, 541, 542, 565. Euganean Hills, 25, 100, 497, 504, 518, 528, 529, 530, 559, 569. Eusebio di S. Giorgio, 410. Ezzehno da Romano, 17-19, 52, 59, 63, 88, 89, 101, 102, 139, 141, 178, 226, 333, 387, 420, 421, 499, 529, 530. Falconetto, 32, 69, 92, 96, 346, 369, 372, 402. Farinato, P., 346, 371, 399, 401, 402. Farming systems of plain, 573-576. See Agriculture; Peasant-life. Fasolo, 121. Ferramola, 429, 430, 453. Ferrara, Bono da, 50, 52. Ferrari, Gaudenzio, 137, 489. Fiore, Jacobello del, 251, 253. Floods of Venetia, 224, 259, 280, 348, 349. Fogazzaro, A., 107. Fogolino, 125, 267. Foppa, the younger, 453. Foppa, Vincenzo, 429, 477, 484, 489. Forli, Ansuino da, 50, 52. 594 INDEX Forum Julii, 271, 273, 274. See Cividale. Fra Giocondo of Verona, 193, 360. Fra Giovanni da Verona, 406. Fra Giovanni of Vicenza, 101, 102, 333. Fra Girolamo da Brescia, 89. Francia, 83, 410, 477, 478, 490. Frederick I, Barbarossa, 101, 332, 420. Frederick II, Emperor, 17, 88, 89, 101, 332. 333, 420. Freedom of person, speech, and press, 482. Friuli, art of, 276, 277; description of, 258-260; history of, 260, 261, 271-276. Frizimelaga, Francesco, 251. Fromentone, Tommaso, 107, 437. Frussine river, 527. Fusina, 6, 7. Galileo, 30, 54. Galla Placidia, life and cross of, 457- 462. Gambara, Lattanzio, 431. jGarda, Lake, 431-433. Garofalo, 83, 404, 551. Gaston de Foix, 426. Gattamelata, t4, 425; statue of, 55, 56, 64, 65. Gemona, 306. Giacomelli, Villa, see Maser. Gianpetrino, 556. Giocondo, Fra, da Verona, 193, 360. Giolfino, Niccolo, 346, 368, 370, 382, 390, 391, 405, 409. Giolfino, Paolo, 346. Giordano, Luca, 90. Giorgione, 82, 165-167, 172, 173- 175, 186,187, 555. Giotto, 21, 22, 37-46, 56, 336, 358. Giovanni, Fra, da Verona, 406. Giovanni, Fra, da Vicenza, 101, 102, 333. Giovanni da Udine, 291, 298, 299, 300, 306. Girolamo da Santa Croce, 94, 95. Girolamo da Treviso, 180, 191. Girolamo da Udine, 277, 284, 295, 296. Girolamo dai Libri, see Libri. Girolamo del Toso, 130. Gisulf, 273, 307. Giuseppini, F., 296. Goldsmith, Oliver, 21. Gonzaga, Vespasiano, 128. Grado, 274, 275, 307. Grassi, 291. Guariento, 33, 35, 47, 152. Guercino, 405, 406, 491. Haynau, General, 428, 429. Holbein, Jan, 556. Honoria, 458, 461, 462. Honorius, 459, 460, 461. lUasi, 347, 415. Jones, Inigo, 108. Justinian, Emperor, 273, 329. Landlords of Venetia, 574, 575. Legnago, 501, 504. Leopardi, Alessandro, 89. Leyden, Luca von, 556, 558. Liberale, 345, 346, 356, 368, 370, 373, 404, 409. Libri, Girolamo dai, 345, 355, 366, 367, 376, 377, 400, 402, 404, 407, 409. Livenza river, 259. Livy, 16, 56, 57, 559. Lombard League, 101, 102, 332, 420. Lombardi, the, 189, 190, 191, 209. Lombardo, Antonio, 72. Lombardo, Pietro, 189, 191, 209. Lombardo, Tullio, 72, 209. Lombardy, Plain of, see Plain. Lotto, Lorenzo, 180, 213, 490. Luini, Bernardino, 465. Mabuse, Jan, 556. Macer, Emilias, 344. INDEX 595 Maffei, Scipione, 344. Maggi, Bishop Berardo, tomb of, 446. Malamocco, 1. Mansueti, 410. Mantegna, Andrea, 23, 50, 51, 52, 66, 106, 367, 371, 388, 410, 490, 556. Manufacturing, modern, 488. Marco Palmesano da Forli, 490. Marconi, Rocco, 180. Marostica, town of, 137, 153, 154. Martinengo, Count, 427, 428, 469. Martini, Giovanni, 276, 284, 291. Martini of Verona, 344, 367. S. Martino, 416. Maser, village of, 214; frescoes by P. Veronese, 214, 219; trip to, from Treviso, 214; Villa Giacomelli, 214, 216-223, erected by Palladio, 214, 216, stucco work by A. Vit- toria, 214, 216. Meri, Pietro, 311. Michiel, Domenico, 3, 4. Minelli, Giovanni, 69, 145. Mocetto, 130, 407. Monselice: Balbi-Valier, villa and family, 537, 538; Battaglia canal, 531; castle, history and aspect, 528, 529, 530; castle hill, 531, 534, 537, 538; cemetery, 536; city clock- tower, 532, 533; Duodo, Conti, 537, 538; Duomo, 535; Estensi, the, 529, 530, 533; Frussine, 527, 528; Garibaldi Memorial, 532; Geraldi, Contessa and Palazzo, 533, 534; S. Giustina, 535; Grotta di S. Francesco, 537; history, 529, 530; main street, 531; martyrs, bodies of, 538; Monte de Pieta, 532; palaces, noble, 533; Palazzo dei Conti Nani, 535; Palazzo Marcello, 533; Palazzo Munici- pale, 532; Piazza Vittorio Eman- uele, 532, 533; situation, 528, 529; Villa Valier, 537, 538; walls, 531. Montagna, Bart. , 96, 106, 107, 116, 126, 130, 135, 402. Montagnana: albergo, 505; aspect of the country, 497, 498, 502, 503; Buonconsiglio, 510, 511, 512, 513, 514; castello, 514; Cavallerizza, 515; district of the Polesine, 497; Duomo, 506, 509-512; S. Fran- cesco, church of, 516; history of the Polesine, 497-501 ; main street, 514; Municipio, 513; Piazza Grande, 506-508, 513,516; Porta Legnago, 517; Porta S. Zeno, 514; Sammicheli, 513, 514; tomb of Admiral Pisani, 512; Villa Pisani, 516; Vittorio Emanuele II, monu- ment to, 506; walls of, 500, 501. Montagues, the, see Montecchi. Monte Berici, 100, 105, 106, 120, 133, 134, 135, 136, 346. Monte Cisone, 258. Montebello, 347. Montecchi, the, 332, 346; castles of, 137, 346. Montecchio, village of, 137, 346. Montorio, 411. Moretto, 377, 381, 402, 410, 430, 447, 448, 466, 467, 468, 469, 477, 478, 484, 485, 486, 489, 490. Morone, Andrea, 89. Morone, Domenico, 411. Morone, Francesco, 345, 390, 405, 409, 410. Moroni, G. B., 431, 490, Music, regimental, 183. Napoleon the Great, 14, 15, 105, 139, 179, 278, 298, 343, 347, 354, 493. Narses, 329, 529. Naviglio Adigetto, 540, 543, 547, 548. Newspapers of Venetia, 481. Nugent, General, 105. Octroi duties, 280. Odoacer, 273, 326, 327, 328. Olivi, Giuseppe, 192. 596 INDEX Orderliness of Venetia, 482. Orseolo, Pietro, 3. Padovanino, Alessandro Varotari, 36, 93, 95, 268. Padovano, Giusto, 22, 23, 57-59. Padua: Accoramboni, Vittoria, 48, 49; Altichieri, 22, 69-72, 78, 79; An- tenor, 16, 28, 60, 85; Antonello da Messina, 83; S. Antonio, 62-64, 87, 88; S. Antonio, church of, 19, 22, 24, 47, 64-77; Area Vallaresso, 35; Archbishop's Palace, 34, 35; Arena, 26, 37; Ariosto, 18; art of, 22-24; Attila, 16; Bacchiglione river, 25, 26, 60, 80; Baptistery, 19, 35, 36, 57-59; Barriera Maz- zini, 26, 29; Bassano, Jacopo, 96; Bellano, 47, 75, 95, 96; Bellini, Gentile, 83; Bellini, Giovanni, 83; Bellini, Jacopo, 23; Boccaccino, Boccaccio, 83; Boselli, Antonio, 67; Brenta Canal, 25; Cafle Pedroc- chi, 37, 82; Campagna, G., 72; Campagnola, Dom., 33, 36, 80, 91, 92, 95, 96; Cappella S. Giorgio, 78; Carmine, church of, 29, 93; Carmine, Scuola del, 93-95; Car- rara, della, Francesco, 19, 20; Carrara, dell», Francesco Novello, 19, 20, 30; Carrara, della, Jacopo I, 19; Carrara, della, Jacopo II (Minore), 21, 33, 47; Carrara, della, Ubertino, 33, 47; Carrara, delle (Jacopo Minore and Uber- tino), tombs of, 47; castle of Ezze- lino, 18, 59; Chaucer, 30; collec- tions, various, of city, see Museo Civico; Dante, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22 60; D'Avanzo, Jacopo, 22, 33, 69 70, 78, 79; Delesmanini Palace, 38 Donatello, 24, 55, 56, 64, 66, 74 75, 76; Dondi, Giacomo, clock, 32 Duomo, 35, 57-59; Eremetani. church of the, 19, 24, 46, 49-52 Ezzelino, 17, 18, 19, 52, 59, 63, 88 89; Ezzelino's prisons, 18, 29 Falconetto, 32, 69, 92, 96; Fer- rara. Bona da, 50, 52; Forli, An- suino da, 50, 52; Fra Giovanni, 47, 56; Fra Girolamo of Brescia, 89; S. Francesca, 96; Francia. 83; Frederick II, 17, 88, 89; Gali- leo, 30, 54; gallery of art, see Museo Civico; Garofalo, 83; Gatta di S. Andrea, 52; Gattamelata, statue, 24, 55, 64 ; Giordano, Luca, 90; Giorgione, 82; Giotto, 21, 22, 38-46, 56; Girolamo del Santo, 96; S. Giustina, 88, 90, 91; S. Giustina, church of, 88, 89; Gua- riento, 33, 47; history, 16-24, 499, 500, 529, 530; hotel, 27, 28; League of Cambrai, 20; Leopardi, A., 89; Livy, 16, 56; Loggia del ConsigUo, 34; Loggia Municipale, 87; Lombardo, Antonio, 72; Lom- bardo, TulHo, 72; Madonna dell' Arena, church of, 22, 37-46; main streets, 28, 29; Mantegna, 23, 24, 50, 51, 66; S. Maria in Vanzo, church of, 96; S. Massimo, church of, 96; S. Michele, church of, 96; Minello, G., 69; Miretto, Zuan, 56; moats, 25, 26, 27, 28, 59, 60; Mon- tagna, B., 96; Monte di Pieta, 34; Morone, A., 89; Museo Civico, 82-85; Orto Botanico, 80, 81; Padovano, Giusto, 22, 57; Pado- vanino, 36, 93, 95; Palazzo Cav- alli, 48; Palazzo del Capitanio, 31, 32, 34; Palazzo Giustinian, 92; PalladJo, 32; Palma Giovane, 90, 96; Palma Vecchio, 82, 95; Parodi, 73, 91; Pironi, G., 72; Petrarch, 21, 30, 33, 35, 47; Piazza dei Frutti, 36, 57; Piazza del Duomo, 33, 34; Piazza delle Erbe, 36, 55; Piazza Unit^ d'ltalia (deiSignori), 9; S. Pietro, church of, 95; Pisano, Giovanni, 22, 46; Pisano, Niccolo, 22, 65; Pizzolo, Niccolo, 50, 52; plain of, 25, 26; Ponte Molino, 26, 30; Pordenone, 84; Porta INDEX 597 Altinate, 27; Porta Portello, 96; Porta S. Giovanni, 96; Porta Savonarola, 96; Prato della Valle, 85, 87; Previtali, 85; S. Prosdo- cimo, 88,89, 90;Reggia Carrarese, 31, 33; Riccio, A., 69, 75, 77, 89, 96; Ridolfi, Bart., 92, 93; Rocca- bonella, Pletro, tomb of, 96; Ro- man Forum, 32, 37, 82; Roman- ino, 84; Salone, 17, 22, 36, 47, 55; Sammicheli, 68; Sansovino, J., 37, 53, 69, 72; Santi, Andriolo de', 47, 69; Scala, della, the, 19; Schia- vone, 36; Scrovegno, Enrico, 38, 39, 46; Scuola del Santo, 79; Scuola S. Rocco, 95; Squarcione, 23, 24, 50, 51, 77; Tasso, Tor- quato, 21; Tiepolo, 85, 96; Tin- toretto, 84; Titian, 80, 83, 84, 94, 95; University, 17, 20, 21, 37, 52- 55, 86, 87; University, library of, 33; Venetian Lion, 31, 32; Vene- tian rule, 20; Veronese, Paolo, 85, 91, 96; Via Dante, 26, 29, 30, 31; Via Garibaldi, 28, 29, 37; Visconti, Gian Galeazzo, 19, 20; Vittorio Emanuele II, statue of, 34; walls of, 26, 27, 29, 30; Zilie (by Zilio, and his fate), 59, 60. Palladio, Andrea, 10, 12, 32, 107, 108, 110, 114, 115, 117, 118, 120, 121, 125, 127, 128, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 136, 216, 293, 437. Palma Giovane, 90, 95, 173, 198, 202, 211, 212, 253, 300, 304, 311, 312, 313. Palma Vecchio, 82, 95, 107, 124, 198, 213, 311, 410, 447, 448, 554, 555. Pampaloni, 489. Panetti, Domenico, 550. Parodi, 73, 91. Paterani, sect of, 393. Patriarchs of Aquileia, see Aquileia. Peasant life, 98, 99, 216, 259, 502, 503, 573-575. Pelasgian relics, 525. Pellegrino da S. Daniele, 276, 284, 303, 306, 307, 308, 319. Pensabene, 210. Pepin, 330, 331. Perugino, 410. Peschiera, 431, 432. ' Petrarch, 21, 30, 33, 35, 47, 372, 570, 571, 572, 577, 579-585. Piave, the, 138, 177, 214, 215, 224. Piazza, Calista, 468. Piazza-life, 182-184. Pindemonte, 344. Piombo, Sebastiano del, 208, 555. Pironi, G., 72, 116, 118. Pisanello, 344, 345, 367, 409. Pisani, the, 6, 11, 14, 516. Pisano, Giovanni, 22, 46. Pisano, Niccolo, 22, 65. Pizzolo, N., 50, 52. Plagues, 343, 349. Plain, description of, 15, 97-100, 215, 216, 259, 260, 501-503, 572, 576. Pliny, 344. Polesine, canals of, 501. Polesine, history of, 497-501. Police of Venetia, 282, 436. Pompei, Conti and Castle of, 414. Popular rule, 158, 482. Pordenone: Bassano, L., 268; Dario, 269; Duomo, 267; Fogolino, 267; history, 260, 261; II Pordenone, life of, 261, 262, paintings of, 265- 270; Palazzo Municipale, 263; picture gallery, 268; town of, 260; Varotari, A. (Padovanino), 268. Pordenone, II, 84, 150, 176, 187, 191, 207, 240, 243, 261-263, 265-270, 277, 280, 284, 285, 290, 291, 296, 301, 302, 306, 555. Possagno, town of, 150. Prato, Francesco da, 486. Previtali, 85, 255. Quadrilateral, 343, 432, 501. Quiricius de Joanes d' Alemagna, 554. 598 INDEX Radetsky, Marshal, 105, 135, 136. Raphael, 490. Recoaro, 137. Retrone river, 109. Riccio, Andrea, 69, 75, 89, 96, 399. Ridolfi, Bart., 92. Risorgimento, 105, 119, 134, 136, 192, 393, 427-429. Ristori, Adelaide, 321, 393. Rivers and dikes of Veneto, 224, 225, 259, 280. Roads of Venetia, 234, 235. Roggia Canal, 277, 278, 279, 300, 303. Romanino, Girolamo, 84, 377, 430, "447, 448, 463, 467, 478, 479, 486, 490. Romeo and Juhet, 332, 337, 346; tomb of, 396. Romilda, 274. Rosamund, 329, 330. Rovigo: Accademia dei Concordi, 546; Badile, A., 555, 556; Basaiti, 555; Belli, M., 555; Bellini, Gen- tile, 554; Bellini, Giovanni, 554; Bonifazio, 555; Cariani, Giovanni, 551; Carpaccio, 554; Carpi, Giro- lamo, 551; Casa Barufi, 553, 557; Cathedral, 547, 548; Cima da Conegliano, ^9, 550, 554; citadel, 548; Domenichino, 556; Dossi, Dosso, 556; S. Francesco, church of, 549 ; Garof alo, 551; Gianpetrino, 556; Giorgione, 555; history, 540- 542; Holbein, Jan, 556; hotel, 542; La Rotonda, 552; Luca von Ley- den, 556; Mabuse, Jan, 556; Man- tegna, 556; Naviglio Adigetto, 540, 543, 547, 548; Palazzo Com- unale, 545; Palazzo Roncalli, 544; Palma Vecchio, 554; Panetti, Domenico, 550; Piazza del Cas- tello, 548; Piazza Garibaldi, 547, 549; Piazza Venti Settembre, 552; Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, 545; picture gallery, 553-556; Porde- none, 555; Porta S. Bartolommeo, 547; Quiricius d'Alemagna, 554; Sammicheli, 544; von Schwaz, Hans, 556; Sebastianoidel Piombo, 555; situation, 540; Tiepolo, 555; Tintoretto, 555; Titian, 555; Uni- versita Popolare, 546; Valentina, Jacopo, 556; Venetian Lion, 545; Vivarini, Bart., 554; Vivarini, Luigi, 554; Zuccari, Federigo, 556. Salvatore, S., castle: Colalti, the, 236, 241, 242; description of, 236- 243; history of, 236; legend of, 238, 239; paintings of Pordenone, 240. Sammicheli, Michele, 68, 342, 358, 369, 381, 382, 384, 389, 390, 394, 513, 514, 544; tomb of, 404. Sansovino, Jacopo, 37, 53, 67, 72, 192. 437, 489. Santi, Andreolo de', 47, 69. Savoldo, G., 210, 211, 405, 491. Scala, Can Grande della, 103, 139, 178, 261, 335-337, 411, 412, 413, 414, 421, 530, 541. Scala, the della, 19, 103, 139, 179, 226, 261, 333-341, 347, 411, 412, 416, 421, 500, 530, 541. See also Verona. Scamozzi, Vincenzo, 107, 111, 114, 129. Schiavone, 36. Schio, town of, 137. Serravalle {see Ceneda): albergo, 245, 249; Amalteo, 248; art of, 248; aspect, 246; Basaiti, 248, 251 Bosco del Consiglio, 258;Brandolin Castle, 258; Carpaccio, 248 castle, 247; Duomo, 247, 248, 249, 252; excursions from, 258; Fiore, Jacobello del, 251; Frizimelaga, Francesco, 251; S. Giovanni Bat tista, church of, 250; history, 248 S. Lorenzo, church of, 251; main streets, 246, 249; Milano, Fran cesco da, 248, 251; Palazzo Muni cipale, 247; situation 245; Titian, INDEX 599 248, 249; Valentina, J. da, 248. 251 ; Venetian Lion, 248; walk out- side the gates, 249, 250. Sforza, Francesco, 424. Sforzas, the, 424-426. Shakespeare, 332, 337, Shops of Venetia, 375, 481. Sidney, Sir Philip, 21. Sirmione, 415, 432. Soave, 347, 411-414. Socialism, spread of, 158, 481, 482. Solferino, 416. Speranza, Giovanni, 106. Speri, Tito. 428, 429, 442, 492, 494. Squarcione, 23, 24. 50, 51. Steno, Michele, 4. Stra, Palace of, 6, 11, 12-15. Susegana, church of. 243; village of, 235; Pordenone, 243. Tagliamento river, 280. Tasso, Torquato. 21. Theodolinda. 330, 349. Theodoric the Great, 224, 273, 324, 327, 328, 348, 378, 379, 380, 559. Theodosius, 459, 461. Thiene, town of, 137. Thorvaldsen. 489. Tiepoli. the. 99. Tiepolo. G. B., 14, 85, 96, 136, 285, 298. 299, 304, 313, 555. Tintoretto, 84, 125, 213, 305, 470, 555. Titian, 80, 83, 84, 95, 190, 214, 248, 249, 253-255, 370, 471, 484, 555. Tolmezzo, Domenico da, 276, 284. Tommaso da Modena, 180, 205. 206, 207, 208, 209, 212. Torbido, 345, 346, 370, 410. Torcello. 3. Torre river. 277, 308. Tramway systems. 483. Tregnano. 347, 415. Trento. 154. Treviso: S. Agnese, church of, 203; Alberic, 178; Amalteo, 191; S. Andrea, church of, 200; Antonio da Treviso, 208; art of, 179, 180; bands, Italian (music), 183; Bas- sano, F., 212; Bassano. L.. 213; Bellini. Giovanni. 198, 200, 209, 213; Bevilacqua, 200; Biblioteca, 203; Bissolo, 192; Bordone, Paris, 180, 190, 191, 192, 213; Botteniga river, 179, 180. 182. 194. 198. 201; Botteniga and Slle, confluence of, 201; Bregni. the. 191; cafe and cafe life. 183; cafes, 182, 184; Cam- pagna, G., 212; Casa Alessandrini, 187; Casa Lezze Casellati, 197; S. Cristina, 213; Dante, monu- ment to, 201; Dario, 180; Duomo, 188, 189, 202; Ezzelino, 178; Fra Giocondo of Verona, 193; Gior- gione, 186; Girolamo da Treviso, 180, 191; S. Gregorio, church of, 202; history, 178, 179; hospital, 198; hotel, 181; Lombardi, the, 190, 191, 209; Lombardo, Pietro, 189, 191; Lotto, Lorenzo, 180, 213; S. Lucia, church of, 186; Marconi, Rocco, 180; S. Maria Maddalena, church of, 195; S. Maria Maggiore, church of, 197; moat, 180, 181, 194; Monte di Pieta, 186; Municipio, 193; Museo Comunale, 203-206; S. Niccolo, church of, 206-212; Olivi, Giu- seppe, house of, 192; Onigo, Count Antonio, palazzo, 200, tomb of, 209; Palma Giovane, 198. 202, 211, 212; Palma Vecchio, 198. 213; Pennachi, Pietro, 180; Pensa- bene, Fra Marco, 210; Piazza dei Signori, 181, 182-184, 187, 212; piazza life, 182-184; Piazza Pola, 202; picture gallery, 213; plan of, 180; Pordenone, 187, 191, 197, 207; Porta Cavour, 203; Porta Mazzini, 196; Porta S. Toma, 196; Pozzasaretto, 187; Prefettura, 182, 184, 185, 187; rampart-walk, with view, 193, 194, 195, 196; Sanso- vino, 192; Savoldo, 210; Sebas- 600 INDEX tiano del Piombo, 208; Sile river, 179, 181, 182, 201; situation, 178; suburb, 194; Tintoretto. 213; Titian, 191, 197; Tommaso da Modena, 180, 206, 207, 212; tribu- nale, 189; Vecellio, Marco, 186, 212; Veronese, Paolo, 195, 213; Vescovado, 189; Via Cornarotta, 193; Via Regina, 200; Via Venti Settembre, 181, 182; Via Vittorio Emanuele, 181, 182; S. Vito, church of, 186; walls, 180, 193. Udine: Amalteo, 277, 284, 291, 292, 303; archbishop, and palace, 298, 301; art of, 276; Attila, 272; Banca d'ltalia, 305; Beata Vir- gine delle Grazie, church of, 297; Bellunello, Andrea, 276, 284; Carnio, A., 277; Casa di Respar- mio, 304; castle, 272, 278, 286, 287, 293, 294; castle archway, 293; Cormor river, 277; Duomo, 282; gallery of paintings, 295, 296; S. Giacomo, church of, 292; Giar- dino Pubblico, 298, 300; Giovanni da Udine, 277, 291, 298, 299, 306; Girolamo da Udine, 277, 284, 295; Giuseppini, F., 296; Grassi, 291; history of, 871-275, 278; hotel, 280; library, city, 295, 304, 305; Martini, Giovanni, 276, 284, 291; Mercato Nuovo, 292; Mercato Vecchio, 279, 292; moat, 298, 300, 303; museum of sculpture, 294; Palladio, 293; Palazzo Bartolini, 304; Palazzo CaiseUi, 305; Pal- azzo Municipale, 288-292; Pal- azzo Tinghi, 301 ; Palma Giovane, 300, 304; Patriarchs, 274, 275, 278, 298, 299; Pellegrino, 276, 284, 303, 308; Piazza d'Armi, 279, 297; Piazza Garibaldi, 302; Piazza Venti Settembre, 280, 281; Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, 279, 286; S. Pietro, church of, 308; S. Pietro Martire, church of, 304; plan, 278, 279; Pordenone, 277, 284, 285, 290, 296, 299, 301, 302; Porta Aquileia, 279, 308; Prefettura, 301; Roggia Canal, 277, 278, 298, 300, 303; S. Spirito, church of, 303; Tiepoli, the, 285; Tiepolo, G. B., 285, 298, 299, 304, 305; Tintoretto, 305; Tolmezzo, Do- menico da, 276, 284; Torre river, 277; Venetian Lion, 287, 288; Vescovado, 298, 301; Via Gorgni, 300, 303; Via Posta, 286; Vittorio Emanuele, statue of, 288; walls, earliest, 298, 300; walls. Renais- sance, 279. Val d'Asti, 137. Val Sugana, 139, 146, 154. Valdagno, 137. Valeggio, 416. Valentina, Jacopo da, 248, 251, 253, 556. Valentinian III, 458, 461, 462, Van Dyke, 129. Varotari, Alessandro, see Padovan- ino. Vecellio, Marco, 212. Veneziano, Lorenzo, 24, 116. Venice, history, 3-5, 20, 104, 105, 139, 226, 274, 275, 278. 341, 342, 424-427, 500, 541, 542. Venzone, 306. Verona: Adige, the, 323, 325, 347, 348, 349, 384; Alaric, 326; Alboin, 324, 329, 330; Aleardi, 344; Altich- ieri, 344, 358, 367, 391; Amphi- theatre, see Arena; S. Anastasia, church of, 365, 366; Antharis, 330, 349; SS. ApostoU, church of, 382; Arco de' Gavi. 368; Arco Leoni, 396; Arena, 328, 340, 343, 392, 393; art of, 344; Attila, 326; Ba- dile, Antonio, 346, 391, 402; Bap- tistery, 371; Bellini, Gian, 410; Benaglio, Francesco, 345, 367, 390, 402; Benaglio, Girolamo, 345; Berengarius, 331; S. Bernardino, INDEX 601 church of, 389, 390; Bertolini, 407; Biblioteca Capitolare, 372; Boni- fazio, 410; Bouino, 363; Bonsig- nori, 345, 346, 390, 401, 402; Brusasorci, 345, 346, 371, 372, 374, 378, 381, 383, 391, 399, 402, 405; Campagna, G., 361; Capel- letti (Capulets), the, 332, 337, 397; Caroto, 345, 374, 377, 378, 381. 390, 399, 401, 404, 409; Car- rara, Francesco della, 341; Casa dei Mercanti, 353; Casa dei Moz- zanti, 353; castel S. Pietro, 324, 327, 348, 379; castel Vecchio, 338, 380, 384; castle of Illasi, 414; castle of Montorio, 411; castle of Sirmione, 415; castle of Soave, 347, 411-414; Castle Tregnano, 415; castle of Valeggio, 416; castle of Villafranca, 415, 416; Catullus, 344; Cavazzola, 345, 366, 390, 402, 405, 406, 409; cemetery, 400; Charlemagne, 330, 331; S. Chiara, church of, 408; Cima da Cone- gllano, 410; Congress of Sover- eigns, 393; Crivelli, Carlo, 410; Dante, 336, 347, 372, 411, 414, statue of, 358; D' Avanzo, 344, 367; Duomo, 368-371; S. Elena, church of, 371; Ezzelino, 333, 387; S. Eu- femia, church of, 371, 372, 380, 381; Eusebio di S. Giorgio, 410; Falconetto, 346, 369, 372, 402; Farinato, 346, 371, 399, 401, 402; S. Fermo, church of, 349, 396-399; floods of the Adige, 348, 349; Fra Giocondo, 360; Era Giovanni da Verona, 406; Fra Giovanni da Vi- cenza, 333; Francia, 410; Freder- ick II, 332, 333; Frederick Bar- barossa, 332; gallery of art, 399, 408-410; Gallienus, 325, 382; gar- dens, public, 339; Garibaldi, statue of, 365; Garofalo, 404; Giardini Giusti, 403; Giolfino, Nic- colo, 346, 368, 370, 382, 390, 391, 405, 409, house of, 382; Giolfino, Paolo, 346; S. Giorgio in Braida, church of, 376; Giotto, 336, 358; S. Giovanni in Foro, church of, 381; S. Giovanni in Valle, church of, 407; Gran Guardia Vecchia, 394; Guercino, 405; history, 322-344; hotel, 349; Justinian, 329; Lanzani, 410; Lib- erale, 345, 353, 356, 368, 370, 373, 399, 404, 409; Libri, Girolamo dai, 345, 353, 355, 366, 376, 400, 402, 404, 407, 409; S. Lorenzo, church of, 383; Macer, ^Emilius, 344; MafFei, Scipione, 344, 395, statue of, 359; Mansueti, 410; Mantegna, 367, 371, 388, 410; S. Maria Antica, church of, 361; S. Maria della Scala, church of, 391; S. Maria in Organo, church of, 404-407; S. Maria Matricu- lata, 371, 372; Martini of Verona, 344, 367, 399; Michele da Verona, 368; moat, the Visconti, 396; Montagna, Bart., 402; Montagues, the,5ee Montecchi ; Montecchi,the, 332, 337, 346; Moretto, 377, 381, 402, 410; Morone, Francesco, 345, 390, 391, 405, 406, 409, 410; Museo Civico, 408-410; Museo Lapi- dario, 395; Napoleon the Great, 343, 393; Narses, 329; SS. Naz- zaro e Celso, 401, 402; Odoacer, 326, 327; Palazzo Bevilacqua, 382; Palazzo Canossa, 384; Pal- azzo dei Canonici, 372; Palazzo dei Giuriconsulti, 356, 359; Pal- azzo del Consiglio, 356, 360, 361; Palazzo del Tribunale, 356, 357; Palazzo della Posta, 365; Palazzo Mafifei, 354; Palazzo Municipale, 393; Palazzo Pompei, 399; Pal- azzo Ponzoni, 382; Palazzo Ra- gione, 353, 356, 357; Palazzo Zamboni, 373 ; Palma Vecchio, 410 ; S. Paolo di Campo Marzo, church of, 400; Paterani, massacre of the, 393; Pepin, 330; Perugino, 410; 602 INDEX Petrarch, 372; Piazza Bra, 352, 392, 393; Piazza Brolo, 374; Pi- azza dei Signori, 356; Piazza dell' Independenza, 365; Piazza delle Erbe, 349, 355; Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, see Piazza Bra; S. Pietro Martire, church of, 365; Pinacoteca, 408-410; Pinde- monte, 344; Pisanello, 344, 367, 398, 409; plagues of Venetia, 343, 349; Pliny, 344; Pompei, Conti, 414; Pompei, the poet, 344; Pom- ponius Secundus, 344; Ponte Aleardi, 395, 400; Ponte delle Navi, 338, 339, 347, 374, 397; Ponte di Pietra, 374, 379; Ponte Garibaldi, 376; Porta Borsari, 382; Porta Nuova, 394,395; Porta S. Bernardino, 389; Porta S. Zeno, 389, 394; Porta Vescovo, 325, 347; Portoni, the, 394, 395; Prefettura, 356, 358; Riccio, 399; Risorgi- mento, 343, 393; Roman baths and mosaics, 372; Roman theatre, 379, 408; Romanino, 377; Ro- mano, Giulio, 370; Romeo and Juliet, 332, 337, 346, tomb of, 396; Rosamund, 329, 330; Saints Fermo and Rustica, 328, 393; Sammicheli, •342, 358, 369, 381» 382, 384, 389, 390, 394, tomb of, 404; Sansovino, 370; Savoldo, 405; Scala, della, 333-341, 356, tombs of, 361-364; Scala, Alberto della, 334, 353; Scala, Alboino della, 334, 335; Scala, Antonio del- la, 339, 340, 341; Scala, Bartolom- meo della, 335, 340, 358; Scala, Can Grande della, 335-337, 358, tomb of, 362, 363; Scala, Can Grande II della, 338, 384; Scala, Consignorio della, 338, 339, 354, 357, tomb of, 362, 363; Scala, Mastino della, 333, 334, 358, 359, 393; Scala, Mastino II della, 337, tomb of, 362, 363, 364; Scaligers, the, tombs of, 361-364; Shake- speare, 332, 337; SS. Siro e Libera, church of, 408; situation, 322, 323; S. Stefano, church of, 378, 379; Teatro Filarmone, 395; Theo- dolinda, 330, 349; Theodoric the Great, 324, 327, 348, 379; Titian, 370; tomb of Count of Castel- barco, 365; tombs of the Scaligers, 361-364; S. Tommaso Cantuari- ense, 403; Torbido, 345, 370, 399, 410; Torre Lamberti, 353; Tri- buna, 354; Venetian Lion, 354; Venetian rule, 341-343; Veronese, Paolo, 346, 361, 377, 400, 409, 410, statue of, 365; Veronese Ves- pers, 343; Veronetto, 324, 375, 401, 403; Vescovado, 373; Via Nuova, 352; Via PonteiPietra, 375; Victor Emmanuel II, entry of, 344, 393, statue of, 394; Visconti, Gian Galeazzo, 335, 341; Volte Barbaro, 334, 359; wall, the Vis- conti, 324, 352, 394; walls. Re- naissance, of Sammicheli, 324, 342, 376, 389, 394, 395; walls, Roman, 324, 328, 382, 392, 397; S. Zeno, 328, 349, church of, 385-389; Zevio, Stefano da, 345, 367, 377, ^ 379, 399, 407. Veronese, Paolo, 85, 91, 96, 125, 126, 135, 137, 172, 195, 213, 218-222, 346, 361, 377, 400, 401, 409, 410, 470, 568. Vespasian, 325, 449, 450. Vicenza: art of, 106-109; Arco delle Scalette, 134; Bacchiglione, the, 109; Banca Populare, 131; Basil- ica, 108, 117-120, 122; Bassano, J., 130, 131; Bassano, L., 126; Bellini, Giovanni, 126, 130; Buon- consiglio, G., 106, 132; Calderari, 107, 131; Campagnola, Dom., 129; Casa Pigafetti, 123; Cima da Conegliano, 107, 130; S. Corona, church of, 125; Corso Porti, 132; D'Azelio, Massimo, 106; Domeni- chino, 129; Duomo, 115-117; INDEX 603 Ezzelino, 101, 102; Episcopal palace, 116; Fasolo, 121; Fogaz- zaro. A., 107; Fogolino, 125; Fra Giovanni, 101, 102; Fromentone, Tommaso, 107, 116; gallery of art, 129; Girolamo del Toso, 130; history, 100-106; Jones, Inigo, 108; S. Lorenzo, church of, 132; Madonna del Monte, 134; Manteg- na, Andrea, 106; Mocetto, 130; Monte Berici, 100, 105. 106, 120, 133, 134, 135; Montagna, Bart., 106, 116, 126, 130, 135; Montagna, tomb of, 132; Monte di Pieta, 120; Museo Civico, 129; Palazzo Bo- nin. 111; Palazzo Braschi, 113; Palazzo Chieregati, 114; Palazzi CoUeoni, 132; Palazzo da Schio, 114; Palazzo del Capitanio, 121; Palazzo del Conte Porto al Castello, 110; Palazzo Loschi, 112; Palazzo Porto-Barbarano, 132; Palazzo Quirini, 113; Palazzo Thiene, 113, 132; Palazzo Valmarana, 132; Palladio, Andrea, 107, 108, 110, 114, 117, 118, 120, 121, 127, 131, 132, 133, 134; Palladio, tomb and statue of, 125; Palma Vecchio, 107, 124; Piazza dei Signori, 117; Piazza delle Erbe, 122, bridge of, 123; Picutti, 129; Pironi, Giro- lamo, 72, 116, 118; Ponte S. Michele, 133; Porta Castello, 110; Porta del Luzzo, 133; Porto, Conte Orazio, 129; Retrone, the, 109, 133; S. Rocco, church of, 132; Scamozzi, V., 107, 111, 114, 129; Scamozzi, tomb of, 132; situation, 100; Speranzi, Giovanni, 106, 125; S. Stefano, church of, 124; Teatro Olympico, 115, 127; Tintoretto, 125; Titian, 130; trip to, 97-100; Van Dyke, 129; Venetian Lion, 120; Venetian rule, 104; Vene- ziano, Lorenzo, 116; Veronese, Paolo, 125, 135; Via Garibaldi, 117; S. Vicenzo, church of, 122; Villa of Marchese Salvi, 113; Villa Rotonda, 136; Viti, Timoteo, 130; Vittorio Emanuele, tomb of, 116; Zanella, G., statue of. 132. Villa Cordellina, 137. Villa Giacomelli, 214, 216-223. Villa S. Salvatore, 235, 236, Villafranca, 416. Villages of the Plain, 97-99, 503. Vine culture, 502, 573-576. Visconti, Gian Galeazzo, 19, 20, 103, 139, 261, 341, 422, 423, 437. Visconti, the, 103, 139, 261, 341, 421-426. Viti, Timoteo, 130, 490. Vittoria, Alessandro, 214. 219, 220. Vittorio. town of, see Ceneda and Serravalle. Vivarini, Bartolommeo, 554. Vivarini, Luigi, 554. Wine-presses of the streets, 479, 480. Wines of Venetia, see Vine culture. Wormser, General, 139. Wotton, Sir Henry, 11, 90. Zelotti, Battista, 137. 568. Zevio, Stefano da. 345. 367, 377, 379, 399, 407. Zoppo, Paolo, 429. 456, 489. Zuccari, Federigo, 556. CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A >3! One copy del. to Cat. Div. NOV -^ iqif? LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 008 966 143 2 g