CALIfGttMiA 
 
 SAN Di<SD
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 JAN cmc 
 
 IA3 Jl 
 
 13 JAartWl 
 
 \NGEUNE OUR BLASHFIELD 
 
 NEW YOr 
 
 HftARLES SCRIBNEF NS 
 
 I9O2
 
 MILAN 
 
 ARCH/EOLOGICAL MUSEUM 
 
 IL BAMBAJA 
 TOMBAL EFFIGY OF GASTON DE FOIX
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWIN HOWLAND BLASHFIELD 
 
 AND 
 EVANGELINE WILBOUR BLASHFIELD 
 
 VOLUME I 
 
 WITH FORTY-EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 1902
 
 Copyright, 1900, 1902 
 BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS JOHN WILSON 
 AND SON CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 OF THE FIRST VOLUME 
 
 RAVENNA PAGP 
 
 I. A BYZANTINE RELIQUARY 3 
 
 II. THE ART OF THE CHRISTIAN. SCULPTURE . 14 
 
 III. ARCHITECTURE. MOSAIC 27 
 
 IV. BEYOND THE WALLS 38 
 
 SIENA 
 
 I. GENERAL ASPECT OF THE CITY. THE 
 
 PALAZZO PUBBLICO 47 
 
 n. THE ANNUAL FESTIVAL 67 
 
 III. THE PRIMITIVE PAINTERS 73 
 
 IV. THE SIENESE SCHOOL OF PAINTING . . 89 
 V. SIENESE ART PATRONS 100 
 
 VI. THE SIEGE OF SIENA 110 
 
 VII. THE CATHEDRAL 130 
 
 VIII. PINTURICCHIO .136 
 
 IX. BAZZI . 145
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE FLORENTINE ARTIST 167 
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 201 
 
 PARMA 
 
 I. THE DUCAL CITY 257 
 
 II. CORREGGIO 266 
 
 VI
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS* 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 TO FACE PAGE 
 
 1. Tombal effigy of Gaston de Foix by Agostino 
 
 Busti, called II Bambaja. Archaeological Mu- 
 seum (Sculpture Gallery) of the Brera, Milan. 
 Gaston de Foix, nephew of Louis XII., and 
 Governor of Milan, was killed at the battle of 
 Ravenna (1512) after a short military career 
 of two months, " quifut toute sa vie et son immor- 
 talitt" Frontispiece 
 
 2. The Good Shepherd. Statuette in the Museum of 
 
 the Lateran, Rome. According to some authori- 
 ties this is a work of the middle of the second 
 century A.D. Others ascribe it to the epoch of 
 the renaissance xmder Constantine. It is the 
 finest in style and execution of the nine figures 
 representing this subject which have been pre- 
 served 20 
 
 3. Daniel in the Den of Lions. Relief from one end 
 
 of a Christian Sarcophagus, Ravenna ... 22 
 
 4. Interior of the Basilica of San Apollinare Nuovo, 
 
 Ravenna. Built circa 500 under Theodoric the 
 Ostrogoth as an Arian cathedral dedicated to 
 St. Martin in Co&lo Aureo, it became Orthodox 
 in 570, and in the ninth century was renamed 
 New St. Apollinaris. The columns seen in the 
 reproduction were brought from Constantinople. 
 
 * Reproduced from photographs by Alinari, Florence. 
 
 vii
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 TO FACE PAOB 
 
 The mosaics are of the sixth and ninth centuries. 
 The choir and apse were remodelled in the 
 eighteenth century 28 
 
 5. Entrance court of San Francesco, Kavenna. This 
 
 church was called San Pietro until 1261. In the 
 court are early Christian sarcophagi and mediae- 
 val monuments 40 
 
 6. The Sala del Gran Consiglio in the Palazzo Pub- 
 
 blico of Siena. This hal 1 is also called the Sala 
 del Mappamondo. At one end of it is seen 
 Simone Martini's " Maestd ; " a fresco representing 
 Madonna enthroned, surrounded by saints and 
 angels. At the left, over the arches, is an im- 
 mense fresco of the battle of Turrita (1363) by 
 Ambrogio di Lorenzo 60 
 
 7. The Kiss of Judas. Panel by Duccio di Buonin- 
 
 segna. This panel was one of twenty-seven, de- 
 picting scenes from the life of Christ, on the back 
 of the great altar-piece of the cathedral of Siena. 
 It was ordered in 1308, finished in 1311, and was 
 carried in procession with bells ringing and 
 trumpets sounding, to its station under the cen- 
 tral cupola of the Duomo. When the place of 
 the high altar was changed, the picture was re- 
 moved to the Canonicate, sawn apart, and the 
 panels separated; they are now in the Opera del 
 Duomo 78 
 
 8. An ancona, viz.: a Virgin and Child with Saints, by 
 
 Benvenuto di Giovanni in the Institute of Fine 
 Arts, Siena. Only the three principal panels 
 are produced here, the ancona proper including 
 pinnacles and a predella 96 
 
 9. I Gaudenti. Fragment from the fresco of "The 
 
 Triumph of Death " in the Campo Santo of 
 Pisa. This famous work has been variously ac- 
 viii
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 TO FACC PAGE 
 
 credited to Lorenzetti, to Orgagna, and to Nardo 
 Daddi. Signor Supino (Archivio Storico deW 
 Arte Italiana, vol. VII, pp. 21-40) ascribes it to 
 the Pisan, Francesco Traini. The costumes are 
 of the early fourteenth century .... . 104 
 
 10. Interior of the Cathedral of Siena seen looking 
 
 diagonally from the choir. The closely-striped 
 piers of the great central lantern are shown, also 
 the mosaic pavement, and at the right the pulpit 
 by Niccola Pisano (circa 1266) with its staircase 
 by Bernardino di Giacomo (1543) 130 
 
 11. The Death of Absalom. Mosaic picture ascribed 
 
 to Pietro del Minella from the pavement of the 
 Cathedral of Siena. The compositions, the oldest 
 dating from the fourteenth century and continu- 
 ing to our own time, are made not of tesserce but 
 of large pieces of stone somewhat after the man- 
 ner of what is now called Florentine Mosaic; on 
 these pieces the work is carried further in graffito. 
 The whole series of pictures is laid out in the 
 form of a huge cross 134 
 
 12. Interior of the Piccolomini Library, Siena. The 
 
 Library which opens from the north aisle of the 
 Duomo was built in 1495 by Cardinal Francesco 
 Piccolomini, was decorated in 1505-7 by Pintu- 
 ricchio with frescoes representing scenes from 
 the life of JEneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Pope 
 Pius II 138 
 
 13. Fresco by Pinturicchio from the vaulting of the 
 
 room known as the Hall of the Lives of the 
 Saints in the Borgia apartments of the Vatican. 
 This reproduction shows the peculiar juxtaposi- 
 tion of figures painted flatly, with objects, usually 
 ornament or architecture, modelled in relief, and 
 then colored or gilded. The Borgia apartments 
 ix
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 TO FACE PAQ1 
 
 were decorated under Alexander VI. by Pintu- 
 ricchio, and under Leo X. by Giovanni da Udine 
 and Perino del Vaga. Vasari says of the orna- 
 ments only some fifty years after they were exe- 
 cuted, "The methods now practised in stucco 
 were not known at that time, and the above men- 
 tioned ornaments are for the most part ruined." 
 The apartments were restored a few years ago at 
 the expense of Pope Loo XIII. The " ruin " 
 mentioned by Vasari has, however, resulted in 
 some beautiful discolorations and changes of tone 142 
 
 14. Head of an Apostle. Fragment from the " Christ 
 
 in the Garden," by Giovanni Bazzi, called II 
 Sodoma, in the Institute of Fine Arts of Siena . 151 
 
 15. Head of a Dancer. Fragment from the fresco of 
 
 " Fiorenzo bringing Wicked Women to the Con- 
 vent," by Giovanni Bazzi, called II Sodoma. 
 Cloister of the Convent of Monte Oliveto Mag- 
 giore, Province of Siena. This fresco, one of the 
 series representing scenes from the life of Saint 
 Benedict, was completed in 1506 158 
 
 16. Head of Eve. Fragment from "The Descent of 
 
 Christ into Limbo," by Giovanni Bazzi, called II 
 Sodoma, in the Institute of Fine Arts of Siena . 162 
 
 17. Head of a Girl. Fragment from "The Birth of 
 
 Mary," fresco by Domenico Bigordi, called II 
 Ghirlandajo, in the church of Santa Maria No- 
 vella, Florence. This cycle of frescoes in Santa 
 Maria Novella, though inferior in craftsmanship 
 to that in the Sassetti chapel of Santa Trinita, 
 is probably Ghirlandajo's most important work. 
 It was painted 1486-90 for Giovanni Tornabuoni, 
 represents scenes from the lives of the Madonna 
 and of John the Baptist, and is filled with con- 
 temporaneous portraits 178 
 
 x
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 TO FACE PAOK 
 
 18. Head of an unknown youth by Lorenzo di Credi. 
 
 Gallery of the Uffizi, Florence. Lorenzo's heads 
 of men young and old are his finest works. Cer- 
 tain of his drawings, notably those in the Louvre 
 and in the Uffizi, executed very simply with the 
 point and retouched with white, give a far higher 
 idea of his skill than do any of his paintings . . 188 
 
 19. Wall-fountain by one of the della Kobbia in the 
 
 church of San Niccolo da Tolentino, Prato. M. 
 Marcel Reymond attributes this work to Giovanni 
 della Robbia, but Giulio Carotti is convinced that 
 it is by a contemporary artist who is more akin 
 to Andrea della Robbia 196 
 
 20. Virgin, Child, and Saints. Altar-piece by Andrea 
 
 della Robbia in the church of Sant' Jacopo at 
 Gallicano in Tuscany 206 
 
 21. Piazza del Mercato Vecchio, showing the antique 
 
 column of Abundance in the ancient centre of 
 Florence, destroyed in 1890-92 to make way 
 for the present Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele . . 210 
 
 22. Tabernacle by Desiderio da Settignano, in the 
 
 chapel of the Sacrament, church of San Lorenzo, 
 Florence. This is one of the most exquisite and 
 important of Italian tabernacles. M. Marcel 
 Reymond believes that we have in this work 
 the earliest example of arabesques applied to 
 pilasters, replacing the fluting and the columns 
 of earlier Renaissance masters. M. Reymond is 
 also of the opinion that the simple base, the 
 heavy consoles supporting the tabernacle, and 
 the pedestals of the torch-bearers are due to 
 artists of the seventeenth century who modified 
 the work in 1677. The statue of Christ which 
 crowns the tabernacle has been accredited to 
 Baccio da Montelupo, but the general consensus 
 xi
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 TO FACX FAQI 
 
 of critical opinion not only accords it to Desiderio 
 but holds it to be one of the capital works of 
 the Renaissance 222 
 
 23. Head of a Youth. Fragment from the fresco, " The 
 
 Child brought to Life," by Domenico Bigordi, 
 called II Ghirlandajo, in the Sassetti chapel, 
 church of the Santissima Trinita, Florence . . 236 
 
 24. Fragment from " The Assumption of the Virgin," 
 
 a fresco by Correggio in the Duomo of Parma. 
 The commission for this work was given to 
 Correggio in 1522. The reproductions show a 
 portion of the decoration of the octagonal cor- 
 nice, above which twelve colossal Apostles stand 
 against a painted balustrade, looking upwards at 
 the flying figures of the cupola, while behind 
 them youthful genii are lighting candelabra. 
 This plate is made from a photograph of one of 
 the series of water-color copies painted by Paolo 
 Toschi, as the photographs from the original are 
 so blurred as to be extremely difficult of repro- 
 duction 272 
 
 25. Fragment from " The Assumption of the Virgin," 
 
 fresco by Correggio in the Duorao of Parma . . 278 
 
 26. Putti. Fragment of Correggio's picture " Danae " 
 
 in the Borghese Gallery, Rome. It is probable 
 that the " Danae " was one of the three pictures 
 painted for Federigo Gonzaga and by him pre- 
 sented to Charles V. after 1532 . . 288 
 
 xii
 
 KAVENNA 
 
 VOL. I. 1
 
 RAVENNA 
 
 THE traveller who to-day goes from Eome to Flor- 
 ence by rail, through the noble mountains of Tuscany 
 and Umbria, bridges in a seven hours' journey a gap 
 of ten centuries in the history of art. He leaves 
 behind him the temples and arches, the Vatican's 
 marble population of half-nude gods and heroes ; he 
 comes to mediaeval towers, to saints and virgins, and 
 the frescoed folk of the fourteenth century swathed 
 in their heavy garments. The abrupt transition 
 bewilders him; the sudden change in his artistic 
 surroundings is almost inexplicable. How did it 
 come to pass? The gods and athletes did not all 
 die at once, nor the saints spring fully armed with 
 attribute and symbol from the brain of Giotto ; 
 surely there was some intermediate period of antici- 
 pation and recollection when these incongruous ele- 
 ments were slowly fused together, and when some 
 dim projection of the mediseval saint stood side by 
 side with a fast-fading memory of the antique demi- 
 god. 
 
 3
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 To find the vanished centuries that wrought this 
 transformation one must ride northeast for seven 
 hours more to the Adriatic marshes. Fourteen 
 hundred years ago, when Italy flamed behind the 
 horsemen of Alaric, the Emperor Honorius fled to 
 the strongest city in the land, Eavenna, and with 
 his corrupt and motley court went one noble fugitive, 
 the genius of the Arts, who illustrates for all time 
 the name of her asylum. 
 
 In those days Ravenna was still a port ; but the 
 sea, which made her greatness, has by receding de- 
 stroyed her political importance, thus leaving her to 
 hold the more surely, in her slow decay, the buildings 
 of a time which she alone among cities fully repre- 
 sents, a time when pictorial Christian art had just 
 emerged from her prenatal condition of the cata- 
 combs into the light of imperial favor, and the archi- 
 tecture of the Eoman was beginning to be that of 
 the Christian. Thus Ravenna became the splendid 
 reliquary which preserved the dry bones of antique 
 art to be quickened by the breath of the Renaissance. 
 A unique link in the chain, she is the anomaly of 
 Italian towns, a city of antitheses ; of pure water 
 in the midst of poisonous marshes, of impregnable 
 refuge among treacherous morasses. 
 
 Saved and lifted to high fortune by her submerged 
 territory, when all Italy elsewhere sunk under the 
 waves of barbarian invasion ; guarded, not besieged 
 
 4
 
 RAVENNA 
 
 by the pestilence which walked without her walls, 
 she is antithetical even in superficial appearance, and 
 until our own times. Without are mean streets and 
 rough faades ; within, color and splendor ; advanced 
 radicalism to-day has usurped the stronghold of 
 Greek hierarchy ; upon her friezes are the gaunt and 
 wasted faces of the Byzantine women, and in her 
 thoroughfares are the most beautiful of Italian girls. 
 
 Kavenna is the end of the old, the beginning of 
 the new. " Toward Home all ancient history tends, 
 from Borne all modern history springs ; " but here 
 for a brief moment the broad current of history was 
 dammed up into this little space, then ebbing away 
 even as the Adriatic has done, it left Eavenna full 
 of strange, stranded monuments of a time that has 
 elsewhere been swept out upon the tide into the ocean 
 of oblivion. 
 
 Among the graves of the buried past, the sarcoph- 
 agi of exarchs, captains, and priests, which He scat- 
 tered in the churches and the streets, waifs from 
 the shipwreck of Italy when Alaric burst upon her, 
 are the sepulchres and effigies of three rulers who 
 epitomize the art-history of the city : of Galla Pla- 
 cidia, the conquered Roman princess, who subjugated 
 in her turn and married her captor, and preserved to 
 Ravenna what remained of old-time splendor ; of 
 Theodoric the Ostrogoth, who infused the vigor of 
 the north into worn-out forms; of Justinian the 
 
 5
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 Emperor, who dowered the city with the art heritage 
 of the Greek. The mausoleum of Placidia and the 
 Baptistery represent the first of the three groups 
 into which the buildings of the city fall; those 
 remains of the Theodosian epoch being followed by 
 the works of the Ostrogothic period, San Apollinare 
 Nuovo and the tomb of Theodoric, while the last 
 group, that of Justinian, boasts San Vitale and " Saint 
 Apollinaris in the Fleet." The little mausoleum of 
 Placidia may claim a first visit. There, for eleven 
 hundred years, her body sat upright in jewelled cere- 
 ments in her sarcophagus, and was the very type of 
 her city's mission. For in Eavenna antique art grew 
 rigid, swathed away in the embalming-cloths of con- 
 ventionality, gilded and stiffened, mummied within 
 the stone walls till, eight centuries having rolled by, 
 the spirit of antiquity arose again and the chrysalis 
 was forgotten, even as Galla's actual body crumbled 
 in fire and ashes at a moment when the Eenaissance 
 had attained its full strength. Eleven centuries 
 Galla sat in state, diademed and jewelled, in the 
 darkness, but in 1577 some children, peering through 
 an aperture in her sarcophagus, wishing to see better, 
 thrust in a lighted brand, and she was burned, 
 robes, cypress- wood chair, and all, a strangely 
 grotesque ending of this grim memorial; for, with 
 all its beauty, her little church stands as a monu- 
 ment to three invasions, and to the beginning of 
 
 6
 
 RAVENNA 
 
 such slaughter, misery, and depopulation as the 
 world has not seen before or since. The little 
 church is under the invocation of Saints Nazarius 
 and Celsus, is only forty-six feet long by forty broad, 
 and upon the outside might be taken for some house 
 in which the workmen were wont to lay away their 
 tools at night. Inside it is as if one had crept into 
 the heart of a sapphire. Blue, the blue that glistens 
 jewel-like on the peacock's neck, is the prevailing 
 color, with great gold disks and drinking stags and 
 dull red borderings. Here one may put on the robe 
 of a catechumen and be of a church, which, tiny as 
 is the building, stands erect at its full height, omni- 
 potent over conquerors and conquered, among pagans 
 to be dispersed and barbarians to be converted. 
 
 Upon its vaults and friezes, as upon the leaves of 
 a missal, Christianity has written in jewelled letters 
 for all men to read, and in the midst of a tottering 
 world this new handwriting on the wall appeared to 
 the Belshazzar of the Eoman decadence. To read it 
 aright to-day, some of the historical conditions of 
 the time must be studied. These mosaic pictures 
 expressed the momentous changes of their age, 
 and a new art was announced in their forms and 
 colors. 
 
 The earlier Caesars and the founders of the 
 Church had alike been in their graves for nearly 
 four centuries, but the Koman empire had decayed 
 
 7
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 and fallen, while the persecuted Church of Christ 
 had arisen, though with a strangely altered spirit, 
 to a mighty stature. Of the epoch which, reaching 
 from about 400 A.D. to 565, includes the buildings of 
 Galla, Theodoric, and Justinian, Byzantium was the 
 real theatre, Ravenna only an echo, but an echo 
 which has come to us clear and distinct, while the 
 voice of the parent city has been almost lost in the 
 tumult of the crusades and of the Turkish conquest. 
 The age was one of disintegration, yet one in which 
 particles were beginning to crystallize into new and 
 lasting shapes. The blood of the empire, poisoned 
 by luxury and tyranny, was drained by the sword 
 of the sectary within, of the barbarian without. 
 Theologians massacred one another for the differ- 
 ence of a letter in the alphabet ; the factions of 
 the chariot races slew one another in the hippo- 
 drome and divided the whole city into two camps, 
 while the Goth waited upon the frontier to destroy 
 the survivors. Thousands of men, smitten with a 
 strange madness, left family and country and fled 
 to the desert to starve and pray and see visions, 
 far from all human ties and duties. 
 
 It was an age of saints and schoolmen, of petty 
 emperors and great generals ; Ravenna, and Ravenna 
 alone, has preserved it for us in the traces of that 
 strange civilization of Constantinople which lingered 
 on for a thousand years till the sword of the Moslem 
 
 8
 
 RAVENNA 
 
 gave the death-blow to what had been so long in 
 dying. Eome was no more, and with the found- 
 ing of Constantinople a new order of things began. 
 The city which rose upon the Bosphorus inherited 
 the vices but not the virtues of paganism ; the 
 military spirit, the religious toleration, the perfect 
 administration, of antique Eome disappeared. Out- 
 side, the barbarian was more frequently bribed than 
 driven from the frontier, alternately betrayed and 
 defended by venal generals. The city, unmindful 
 of its danger, abandoned itself to its passions for 
 brawling and chattering. The strife of the rival 
 chariot factions, the greens and the blues, filled the 
 streets with bloody tumult and shook the throne 
 itself. Only second in popular interest were the 
 religious dissensions ; and all classes, from the Em- 
 peror to the fisherman, joined in these struggles. 
 The subtile Greek intellect, ever given to word- 
 spinning, seized upon the dogmas of the new faith, 
 tore them to shreds, pieced them together again, 
 broidered them over with new devices, and, like 
 Penelope of old, spent days and nights in weaving 
 and ravelling the tangled web of theology. The 
 Sophists rose to life again in the heresiarchs and 
 churchmen, and there came no new Socrates to 
 silence them. Disputation grew deadly. What had 
 been mere difference of opinion with those who were 
 but seekers after truth became matter of life and 
 
 9
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 death with those who arrogantly claimed to have 
 found the truth. 
 
 The annals of the time are filled with these fierce 
 outbursts of sectarian hatred ; mad riots ; oecumeni- 
 cal councils packed with armed ruffians and savage 
 Nitrian monks, where, after the inevitable violence 
 and bloodshed, a heavy bribo to the Emperor's cook 
 or chief eunuch settled the doctrinal point at issue. 
 For the Emperor was grand inquisitor in matters of 
 faith, the Empress not inactive ; and more than once, 
 to quote the words of Cyril, " the holy Virgin of the 
 court of heaven found an advocate in the holy Virgin 
 of the court of Constantinople." 
 
 The citizen who had left far behind him the days 
 of the palaestra and the academy, now decked in 
 curiously embroidered garments and loaded with 
 jewels, passed his time in the circus, an eager parti- 
 san of the greens or blues ; tarred on his favorite 
 bishop in the hotter strife of the synod ; applauded 
 some popular preacher in the churches, or, stripped 
 of his adornments, walked barefoot in penitential 
 procession. 
 
 The schools of philosophy were closed, and human 
 reason, lulled to sleep by formulae, dreamed fitfully or 
 muttered incoherently in nightmare creed quarrels. 
 The Church was the great career open to ambition, 
 and as human energy rushed impetuously into the new 
 channel, the artists were now enlisted in its service. 
 
 10
 
 KAVENNA 
 
 Through its first centuries of faith and charity 
 Christian dogma was so simple, its ideal so con- 
 stantly present in men's minds, that no palpable 
 image was needed to explain the one or recall 
 the other, hut in the later days of dogmatic 
 definition, when the churchmen were tying up 
 their faith in orthodox packets, the artists were 
 required to label them with all the quaint fig- 
 ures of ecclesiastical heraldry. " Pictures are the 
 books of the ignorant," said Saint Augustine, and 
 to teach the ignorant the Church used them, 
 clothing the teaching, as did her founder, in the 
 garb of symbolism, a language that could be under- 
 stood by the barbarian and the slave. But in what 
 material should these eternal truths be expressed? 
 Painting and sculpture were pagan and aristocratic, 
 governed entirely by antique tradition; devils in- 
 habited the statues of heathen gods, and before the 
 image of the Emperor many a Christian had gone 
 to martyrdom. There remained a minor art un- 
 polluted by heathen worship, used for merely deco- 
 rative purposes to ornament a fountain, line a niche, 
 or enliven a pavement. This could be safely em- 
 ployed without evoking comparisons in the minds 
 of the less devout or more artistic worshippers. 
 Just as a converted heathen slave might rise from 
 one church dignity to another until he ascended the 
 bishop's throne, so mosaic, at first a cheerful house- 
 
 11
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 hold decoration, when Christianized became solemn, 
 hieratic, exchanged its dress of simple colors for a 
 gorgeous robe of purple and gold, climbed to 
 church wall and dome, and there set forth the mys- 
 teries of the faith and the glories of heaven. Yet 
 this new art was pagan in form and feeling; as 
 the fathers of the Church imitated the language 
 of Plato or Seneca, so the Christian artist bor- 
 rowed the imagery of paganism for the service of 
 his faith. It was the spirit of antiquity that ani- 
 mated him; its serenity, its cheerful acceptance of 
 inevitable law, its keen sense of the beauty of 
 life, were strong within him as he carved the 
 sarcophagus or decorated the apse. 
 
 There were no images of suffering or punishment, 
 no crucifixion, no last judgment, not even a martyr- 
 dom, though the young Church was still ruddy from 
 her baptism of blood. When later the art that had 
 its humble origin in the night of the catacombs 
 nourished in an imperial city on the walls of mighty 
 basilicas, its spirit was unchanged. The conversion 
 of Borne had left it unconverted. Greek example, 
 Greek moderation, still guided the artist's hand, for 
 the true artist is ever half a pagan. So, fraught 
 with a new meaning, the imagery ot paganism 
 found ready welcome within the Church. Here we 
 still see the vintage trodden out by loves, only now 
 it is the vintage of the Lord; the winged funeral 
 
 12
 
 RAVENNA 
 
 genii become guardian angels of the Christian's 
 tomb; the crown of the Emperor, the reward of 
 the blessed ; the palm of the victorious athlete, the 
 martyr's emblem. The goddesses yield their attri- 
 butes: the dove becomes the visible sign of the 
 Holy Spirit; Juno's peacock the symbol of immor- 
 tality ; Diana's stag the hart of the Psalmist ; and 
 as in these same mosaics the Magi bring gifts to 
 the Mother of God, so each dethroned goddess pays 
 tribute to the new Queen of Heaven. Diana's 
 crescent, Minerva's serpent, lie beneath her feet; 
 Cybele gives the chair of state ; Circe the aureole ; 
 Juno the matron's veil and crown ; Flora her roses 
 and lilies, and Isis places the divine Child in Mary's 
 arms. Here even are the heroes of Greek myth, 
 chosen for some likeness to the founder of Chris- 
 tianity : Mercury leading the spirits of the departed ; 
 Orpheus, who descended into hell to save a soul, and 
 who draws all men to him by the power of music ; 
 Hercules, who came into the world to punish the 
 wicked, to deliver the oppressed, to do the tasks 
 and bear the burdens of others. In this Chris- 
 tianized Pantheon there are no new images ; Egypt 
 and Phoenicia contributed the fish, the cross, the 
 ship struggling through the waves, and the lamb. 
 The Good Shepherd loveliest figure of all was 
 a precious heritage from Greece. 
 
 13
 
 n 
 
 MOSAIC had borrowed its motives from the declin- 
 ing art of sculpture. The marbles which fill the 
 Kavennese streets and churches will reveal the ex- 
 tent of these obligations. The sarcophagi and capi- 
 tals, some of them roughly and coarsely executed, 
 others of a relatively high degree of artistic excel- 
 lence, show the same subjects treated with the same 
 decorative feeling that we have seen on wall and 
 dome. But these Christian monuments, with their 
 doves and peacocks and stags, enlaced in a tangle 
 of vine and acanthus leaves, are the valedictorians 
 of a dying art. In looking at them we feel that 
 the race of sculpture has run its course. As the 
 long line of Florentine sculptors ended in a clever 
 goldsmith, so antique sculpture degenerated into the 
 carving of mere decorative motives, and with not- 
 able exceptions, like the ivory throne of Archbishop 
 Maximian, it is clumsy carving. To no other art 
 had the new faith proved as fatal, and the de- 
 cline of sculpture is synchronous with the rise of 
 Christianity. 
 
 For sculpture is essentially a Pagan art : its true 
 province is the nude human body ; its aim is the 
 
 U
 
 RAVENNA 
 
 exposition of corporal strength and beauty. In 
 ancient Greece, where the national manners and 
 customs, ethics and ideals, favored its development, 
 it reached its meridian of glory. In the service of 
 religion it transformed the athlete into a god, the 
 fair woman into a goddess. It may be truly said 
 of the Greek sculptor that he had drawn the gods 
 down to earth and raised mortals to heaven. Con- 
 sequently sculpture was the consummate expression 
 in art of the genius of a nation which worshipped 
 physical perfection as the gift of the immortals, 
 which honored the gods by athletic games and 
 choral dances, and whose deities wore the flesh and 
 shared the nature of men. The concrete result of 
 this spirit, of this glorification of the flesh, this keen 
 aesthetic sense, this cultivation of the body, is Greek 
 sculpture. The Eoman conquerors accepted the 
 traditions and shared the feelings of the vanquished 
 Greeks. The young mother still prayed in the 
 temple of Venus that her child might be fair. The 
 youth still wrestled and ran in the gymnasia. Nud- 
 ity was holy. " Deus nudus est" wrote Seneca, and 
 Eoman flattery could find no greater tribute to 
 pay the Emperor than to carve his statue naked 
 "like a god." 
 
 The empire grew old and weak; and when the 
 time was ripe came the conversion of Home and the 
 triumph of Christianity, a triumph that was fatal 
 
 15
 
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 to antique sculpture. A new spirit unknown before 
 had come into the world, a spirit of active benevo- 
 lence and self-sacrifice, of active destruction and 
 persecution. The Pagan victors had left their 
 gods to the conquered; they themselves frequently 
 honored and adopted them; religious intolerance 
 was unknown to the Empire, and Home was the 
 Pantheon of the world. But to the Christian who 
 literally interpreted the words " he who is not with 
 me is against me," the Pagan temples and statues 
 were an offence and an abomination. He unhesitat- 
 ingly accepted the miracles which the superstitious 
 Pagans asserted had been wrought by their sacred 
 images ; he believed the prophecies of the oracles, 
 but he never doubted that they were the work of 
 devils seeking to delude mankind, and that the duty 
 of every true Christian was to destroy them. And as 
 a doctrine of demolition is generally acceptable to 
 the popular mind, the work was done only too well. 
 
 When it is remembered that the young Church was 
 largely recruited from the lowest classes of society, 
 the disinherited of the earth, it will be easily under- 
 stood how no aesthetic scruple, no consideration for 
 art, could prevent the wholesale destruction of the 
 sacred images. 
 
 A day of wrath had come upon the gods and those 
 who loved and worshipped them. Fierce Nitrian 
 monks from the desert, fired with fanatical zeal, 
 
 16
 
 RAVENNA 
 
 pleasure-loving empresses in expiation of a sin or 
 two, orthodox prelates, headed the crusade against 
 them. Eude hands tore them from their desecrated 
 shrines ; axe and club shattered their round limbs 
 and marred the calm faces. The bronze was cast 
 into the furnace ; the gold and ivory disappeared ; the 
 marble was thrown into the lime-kiln or rolled into 
 the ditch. The rustic gods of vineyard, field, and 
 garden ; the chaplet-adorned Termini ; the marble 
 nymphs which protected wells and fountains; the 
 penates that sanctified, the hearth, were ruthlessly 
 destroyed. The holy things which for centuries had 
 lent grace and joy to the peasants' daily toil; the 
 grottoes hung with votive faun-skins and shepherds' 
 pipes; the wayside shrines and sacred stones gar- 
 landed with field flowers and shining with libations, 
 which had been sacred to generations of men and 
 were the very soul of the land, were broken and 
 defiled. 
 
 Long before the work of destruction was com- 
 pleted, the Christian sculptor had begun to carve on 
 the sarcophagi of the believer the images of the 
 heathen ; for like the paintings and the mosaics, this 
 sculpture was Pagan in feeling as well as in form. 
 Its symbols were but antique motives clumsily imi- 
 tated by unskilled artists working for poor patrons. 
 A stone-mason of the age of the Antonines would be 
 ashamed of such bungling work. The reverence 
 
 VOL. I. 2 17
 
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 which we feel before the martyr's tomb should not 
 blind us to the fact that plastically this sculpture is 
 of little value. From the first it was of an inferior 
 character to contemporary Pagan work. Much of it 
 is almost ludicrous in its clumsiness, its lack of 
 technical knowledge, its poverty of invention. Most 
 of the figures look as though they had been made by 
 the hand of a child ; so lumpish and squat are they 
 that many of them are only four heads high. The 
 lions in the representations of the miracle of Daniel 
 look like puppies, and though the draped figures still 
 preserve a certain dignity, the nude has already be- 
 come grotesque, as in the fagades of early churches. 
 There are, of course, occasional exceptions, and the 
 sarcophagi of Ravenna show us Christian sculpture at 
 its best, notably in the altar-front of San Francesco, 
 with its beardless, Phoebus-like Christ and the noble 
 figures of the Apostles. The unruffled serenity of the 
 antique spirit shows itself, however, in these rude 
 carvings as well as in the mosaics. The mansuetude 
 and self-restraint of the sculptor is also in direct op- 
 position to the persecuting spirit of the Fathers of the 
 Church, who delighted to elaborate descriptions of 
 the torments of hell and the horrors of the judgment 
 day, and who, believing in the guilt of error, unhesi- 
 tatingly condemned both the virtuous and wicked 
 Pagan alike to an eternity of torture. 
 
 These sculptures are invaluable to the student of 
 18
 
 RAVENNA 
 
 church history. In no other way is the difference 
 between the popular conceptions of Christian teach- 
 ing and the dogmas of the theologians so clearly 
 manifested as by a comparison between the tone of 
 the patristic writings and the spirit of contemporary 
 art. Uninfluenced by the gloomy doctrines of Au- 
 gustine and the grim asceticism of Jerome, the artists 
 invariably chose for representation the tender and 
 benignant aspects of their creed, which still appeal 
 to the heart with resistless force. The beautiful 
 story of the birth in the manger; the miracles of 
 mercy; the Ascension; the poetic figure of the 
 Good Shepherd, were their favorite themes. While 
 Tertullian was gloating over the future agonies of the 
 heathen actor and describing the torments of the 
 charioteer writhing in the flames of hell, what were 
 the sculptors chiselling on the believer's last resting- 
 place? Tragic and comic masks, antique symbols 
 signifying that life is but a player's part, to be well 
 acted for a brief season and resigned without regret ; 
 or they carved the race-horse bounding toward the 
 goal, a symbol of the course of human life. The 
 most appealing figure of them all, the Good Shep- 
 herd, is no other than the Hermes Kriophoros who 
 saved the city of Tanagra from the plague by carry- 
 ing a ram around its walls, and in whose honor 
 Kalamis the sculptor made the votive statue which 
 served as a point of departure to the Tanagran pot- 
 
 19
 
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 ters. These clay figurines of a beautiful adolescent, 
 with the staff and petasos, and the lamb upon his 
 shoulder, were in their turn imitated by the Christian 
 sculptor, who found in them a singularly felicitous 
 presentation of the benign shepherd of the most ten- 
 der and poetical of the Psalms. And, indeed, the 
 merciful god who saved the doomed city was no un- 
 fit avatar of him who saved not the city only, who 
 bore the burden of human wrong-doing, and was 
 himself the sacrificial lamb. Sometimes the kid 
 was placed upon his shoulder by the sculptor, who 
 was more compassionate than the Fathers who wrote : 
 " He saves the sheep, the goats he doth not save." 
 
 This unconscious mitigation of the cruelty and 
 bigotry of the theologians by the artists is very sig- 
 nificant. Art is the visible expression of the ideals 
 of the epoch in which it is produced, and the fact that 
 Christian art did not reflect this aspect of Christian 
 dogma proves not only that these beliefs were con- 
 fined to the learned, but that the artist was still 
 under the dominion of Pagan habits of thought. In 
 the humbler believers the temperate joy of the an- 
 tique world still lingered, and the deity of the young 
 faith was he who leads the soul beside the still 
 waters and who comforts her in the valley of the 
 shadow of death, rather than he who shall come to 
 judge the quick and the dead. 
 
 When the doctrines of predestination, original 
 20
 
 RAVENNA 
 
 sin, and eternal punishment finally permeated the 
 masses of the people, the artist was quick to feel the 
 change in the moral atmosphere. Images of suffer- 
 ing and death were multiplied ; the Blessed Virgin's 
 face was painted black, and the sculptor finally ac- 
 cepted the tradition of the deformity of Christ, an idea 
 as repugnant to religious feeling as it is to the plastic 
 instinct. 
 
 Thus we trace the same Hellenic influence shap- 
 ing the moribund art of the sculptor and the nas- 
 cent art of mosaic. We left the mosaic-worker 
 translating the simple symbols of the stone-cutter 
 into the new medium of artistic expression. Mind 
 and hand were still under the tutelage of the Pagan ; 
 and when later historic scenes were introduced, the 
 same antique spirit characterized them. The artist's 
 childhood might have thrilled at his grandfather's 
 tales of the blood and martyrdom of Diocletian's 
 time ; his eyes might have looked with pride at the 
 marks of torture for the faith existent upon the 
 limbs of some old house-servant, yet when he made 
 his cartoon for the mosaic he put upon it Daniel 
 among the lions, the sacrifice of Isaac, the children 
 unharmed amid the flames, but no more intemperate 
 or realistic allusion to the persecutions which filled 
 the records of the Church. 
 
 Tradition was strong within him, and the artist of 
 Ravenna had not lost its dignity and self-restraint 
 
 21
 
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 Outside, the mad controversialists might riot, Do- 
 natist ruffians clubbing to death in default of the 
 steel their creed forbade them, with sticks and stones 
 a-flying ; but inside the arches of the Baptistery, at 
 his quiet work, the artist instinctively resisted the 
 bigotry and intolerance of his epoch. Only one 
 ominous figure in the tomb of Placidia shows the 
 schisms that were dividing the Church, the figure 
 of the Saviour burning the heretical books. By an 
 unconscious irony it is placed directly opposite the 
 benignant image of the Good Shepherd ; and the two 
 conflicting aspects of Christianity its bitter intol- 
 erance and its loving charity confront each other 
 in this narrow space. The sun of Greek art was 
 setting, but it still shone upon Eavenna. The 
 mosaicist of San Apollinare saw about him in the 
 streets the stiff-robed Byzantines ; but he had seen, 
 too, the pagan temples with their friezes and tympana 
 and their figures clad in simple sweeping draperies, 
 so that his long procession of virgins and martyrs 
 moved in measured harmonies like the epheboi and 
 canephorse of the Parthenon. The grand white- 
 robed angels, the brown-locked, beardless Christ of 
 the apse, were calm and stately ; line and mass were 
 still noble ; beauty had passed away, but antique 
 dignity had survived the sack of Eome, and in a 
 fallen Greece the memory of the Zeus at Olympia 
 had not yet quite faded. 
 
 22
 
 RAVENNA 
 
 END OF A SARCOPHAGUS 
 DANIEL IN THE LION'S DEN
 
 RAVENNA 
 
 But it was only a tradition, not a living reality. 
 Tradition taught the artist a certain grandeur of 
 composition, a conventional position of head and 
 hands, a good treatment of the general lines of the 
 drapery, but it could do no more for him. There 
 was no body under the drapery, no muscles to move 
 the head or raise the hands. The face was a weak- 
 ened copy of the antique type, the cranium shrunken 
 and elongated ; the great hollow eyes and pinched 
 lips had no life in them; they could not move. 
 What Medusa of decadence had stricken these peo- 
 ple to stone ? What had so changed the type, so 
 utterly transformed the ideal of the artist ? Where 
 were the athletes, the gods, the goddesses he loved 
 so well, and how came these hollow-eyed wraiths in 
 their place? Was it incapacity of the artist or 
 degeneracy of the models? It was both, as the 
 history and conditions of Byzantium show us. 
 
 The Greek of Pericles's day, when he carved a 
 god or an athlete, went to the gymnasium or palaestra 
 and found his model in the youths who flashed by 
 in the foot-race ; watched the evenly developed 
 muscles strain and rise and fall in the tug of the 
 wrestling bout ; talked with the panting ephebos as 
 he scraped the dusty oil from the limbs that were 
 to be translated into marble. 
 
 He found the long folds of his draperies in the 
 sweep of the procession, his faun or bacchante in 
 
 23
 
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 the rhythmical changes of the choragic dance, and 
 his fellow-citizens were his best models ; his work 
 was patriotic, ethical ; art was yet in the service of 
 religion, a grateful service, for the gods of that 
 religion were idealized and deified mortals. In 
 superior strength and beauty was their godhood 
 made manifest and these essential attributes could 
 be expressed in marble. Thus to the Greek the 
 statue of his god was at once ethical and sesthetic. 
 Ethical for the Hermes of the palaestra spoke 
 eloquently to the Greek youth : Exercise, be tem- 
 perate, be patient, give your country a good soldier. 
 ^Esthetic for the Greek had a love for the beauty 
 of the human body unique in the history of art, 
 and as beauty was to him the visible expression of 
 the good, so a well-developed body was the highest 
 form of beauty. Compare these conditions with 
 those of Byzantium in the sixth century. Of the 
 Byzantine artist was required something which can- 
 not be expressed by form or color. A new religion 
 had arisen, which, far from honoring the body, re- 
 garded it as an instrument of shame and degrada- 
 tion, its corporal instincts as temptations of the 
 devil, its strength and beauty as a snare ; the flesh 
 was to be mortified by fasting and penance. To 
 the fathers of the Church it was a sin to frequent 
 the baths or throw the discus ; better in unwashed 
 sanctity to throw stones at heretic Arians. Greek 
 
 24
 
 RAVENNA 
 
 temperance, Eoman self-control had yielded to the 
 fanaticism which filled the desert with many a 
 laura, emptying the camp and the gymnasium. 
 The world was changed; the hardy legionary had 
 become the gilded soldier of Honorius's palace or 
 the undisciplined Gothic mercenary, servant to-day, 
 master to-morrow, the calm athlete, with limbs 
 bronzed in the healthful sun of the palaestra, was 
 replaced by the macerated ascetic, blackened and 
 burned in the scorching African desert, and the 
 tranquil beauty of the Greek statue gave way to 
 the self-torturing genuflections of Stylites upon his 
 pillar. The body was to be reduced till it became a 
 semi-transparent envelope for the soul, a slender 
 bond to hold the aspiring spirit to earth, and the 
 plastic arts soon felt the influence of this asceticism. 
 
 The artists were required to give tangible form to 
 the new ideal. To this task they were inadequate ; 
 expression, dramatic movement, strong personality 
 they could not achieve ; they could only diminish 
 and attenuate. The body had to be covered, and 
 they soon forgot how the members of this covered 
 body were put together. 
 
 Costume, too, had become stiff and formal In- 
 stead of the clinging draperies of antiquity, that 
 showed the muscles under their folds, the Byzan- 
 tines loaded themselves with heavy robes of gold 
 embroidery, or when they wore thin tissues covered 
 
 25
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 them with whole Bible stories in needlework that 
 falsified all natural lines. The simple mantle shrank 
 to a cape or scarf, clumsy and stiff with jewels, and 
 the swathed body became a mere prop for a mass of 
 brocade and gems. 
 
 Under such conditions the artists soon forgot the 
 lessons of the past ; each new figure was but a 
 weakened copy of some forerunner's copy, and, as 
 at Mount Athos or in modern Eussia, art-work was 
 taught by certain well-known and unchangeable 
 formulae. But while art became degraded in form 
 it grew glorious in color. This color was the gift 
 of the East to the western world ; oriental subtlety 
 filled the intellectual atmosphere, oriental color- 
 feeling dominated the aesthetic sense, and the sun 
 of Greek art, which rose white and clear in the 
 East, set in the purple and crimson that live upon 
 the walls of Kavenna. 
 
 26
 
 m 
 
 AFTER visiting Galla's mausoleum, we follow the 
 fortunes of those Goths who were the eastern 
 brothers of Placidia's Ataulf, and go to San Apol- 
 linare. The basilica lifts its ugly front of blackened 
 brick, flanked by a simple round tower, and giving 
 no hint of its interior beauty. Within it is difficult 
 to conceive of anything more delightful to the eye 
 than its gold scroll-work upon blue, its dull red 
 upon gold. There are in the world few richer 
 decorations than the frieze of saints and virgins 
 moving across the solemn color of the church. It 
 is a three-aisled round-arched basilica, the friezes 
 filling magnificently the place which developed 
 into the triforium in later churches, while panels 
 of mosaic cover the walls between the windows of 
 the clerestory. " New St. Apollinaris," it is called. 
 It was new nearly fourteen hundred years ago, and 
 as it rose, course upon course, above the house-tops, 
 it saw in the distance the masts of the galleys in 
 the port of Classis, where later the bell-tower of 
 the other church built to the same saint took their 
 place. 
 
 27
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 When Theodoric, the heretic, raised this golden 
 house for his Arian bishops, Martin, not Apollinaris, 
 received the dedication, and in violet tunic still 
 heads the procession of the saints. It was four 
 hundred years later that fear of the Saracen caused 
 the removal of the patron saint's bones from the 
 Classis and gave a new name to the church. In 
 the earlier times, when its flooring was being laid, 
 the sound of the purple shoes of the Emperors of 
 the West had hardly died away from the pavement 
 of Eavenna, and after the Ostrogoths they were 
 to come again on the feet of the exarchs of that 
 Justinian and Theodora who still blaze upon the 
 walls of San Vitale. A little later and the floor 
 of the basilica heard a very different tread, and rang 
 to the mailed heels of Charlemagne. Seizing both 
 the shadow and the substance, the great Charles 
 took the crown and the prestige at Eome, the col- 
 umns and the bas-reliefs at Ravenna, as, guarded 
 by Prankish soldiers, wain after wain laden with 
 the spoils of Theodoric's palace, the white oxen 
 of Emilia straining at the yoke, creaked away to- 
 ward Ingelheim and Aix-la-Chapelle. Franks and 
 even Lombards were, however, still in the future 
 when the Greek workmen on their scaffolding above 
 the capitals stood before the growing frieze, labori- 
 ously building with little cubes of gold and color 
 this " Palatium " of Theodoric, this " Classis " with 
 
 28
 
 RAVENNA 
 
 INTERIOR OF SAN APOLL1NARE IS'UOVO

 
 RAVENNA 
 
 its towers and ships, shaping the Magi and adding 
 one virgin after another till the whole tale of 
 twenty-two stood processional and complete, facing 
 the saints and patriarchs of the other side. He was 
 a real artist, this Greek, for he was of a real art 
 epoch. When he worked upon the friezes, some- 
 where about the year 560, the founder of the 
 church, Theodoric, had been long laid away under 
 the giant monolith which covers his tomb, and his 
 land had passed into the hand of the Byzantine 
 Justinian, in whose city of Constantinople a true 
 art-growth was stirring. There, in the new capital 
 of the world, ideas as new as the city were springing 
 up, and the nation was in that state of agitation 
 and ferment at all times productive of great results 
 for good or evil. 
 
 A double evolution was being accomplished. 
 From the theological counter-currents, the ideas of 
 bishops, Greek, Latin, and African, the evolution 
 of dogma ; from the art experience of East and 
 West, the arcades of Spalato and of Syria and 
 the color-feeling of the oriental, the evolution of 
 a new architecture. The Greek had become master 
 again in art. For five hundred years he had served 
 the Roman, and now, in throwing away his livery of 
 service, he threw away, too, all that false ornament 
 which the Roman had borrowed from him and 
 falsified in the borrowing. The Greek was master 
 
 29
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 once more, and he determined that his architectural 
 ornament should be what it had always been in his 
 time of freedom, structural Not that he meant to 
 raise temples and propylsea; he served a new god, 
 and the new service had new needs, for which the 
 vault of the Eoman was admirably fitting. The 
 arch, therefore, he kept, and made the ruling prin- 
 ciple. But the heavy cornices, which once under a 
 roof protected nothing from a rain which did not 
 fall ; the super-imposed orders, with their pediments 
 and colonnettes, stuck unmeaningly upon structural 
 masonry, he rejected unhesitatingly, substituting 
 surfaces with but slight projections, lightly though 
 richly carved, where the columns were true weight- 
 bearers, and there were no useless members. In 
 color, too, he was an innovator. 
 
 The ancient Greek, simple in his taste and 
 restricted by comparative poverty, used delicately 
 painted stuccoes upon his buildings. The wealthy 
 Eoman, quarrying from the whole known world, 
 replaced them with costly marbles, which he col- 
 lected from the ends of the earth. The polished 
 columns and incrusted slabs would admit of no less 
 lustrous fellowship in decoration ; by the side of 
 their splendid depth of tone, stucco and painting in 
 fresco looked poor and cheap. It was necessary to 
 find a wall-covering equally rich and brilliant, in 
 which the figures of saints, angels, and emperors, 
 
 30
 
 RAVENNA 
 
 and the compositions from Bible history could be 
 represented. The chemistry of the earth had given 
 the marbles, with their endless variety. The Greek 
 set to work the chemistry of the laboratory. With 
 antimony, copper, tin, etc., he made slabs of glass 
 almost as various as the marbles; then cutting 
 them into little cubes, he produced with them the 
 richest artificial color in the world. 
 
 Our Greek artist had thus risen superior to the 
 decadent citizens about him ; perhaps he had stood 
 in the crowd at the completion of St. Sophia, and 
 had heard Justinian exclaim, "Solomon, I have 
 outdone thee." Indeed, in that great church, with 
 its wide reposeful curves and spaces, its cupola, its 
 simple round arches springing directly from the 
 capitals, its long rows of polished columns, he had 
 given the typical example of an architecture which 
 was to deeply influence the most solemn church 
 interior in Italy, that of St. Mark's of Venice, 
 and to impress the German feeling so strongly as 
 to give its own name of Byzantine to many a 
 Ehenish church for many a century to come. So it 
 is not enough to accredit Justinian with his great 
 code and pandects, or even with the exploits of those 
 practically pious, smuggler-missionaries, the good 
 old gentlemen who came journeying home from the 
 far East with silk-worms packed in their walking- 
 sticks. Besides the lawyer and manufacturer, we
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 recognize in him the art patron of the black-browed, 
 close-curled artisan who stood upon the scaffold of 
 this church, the patron of him and of his many- 
 sided brethren who busied themselves in the provi- 
 sion of art for all men, making costumes, Christian 
 in their swathing of the body from head to foot, 
 Greek in the transparency of their many-wrinkled 
 tissue; making sculpture, which western monks 
 borrowed long after they had become architects and 
 builders for themselves ; providing eight centuries 
 of Madonnas painted by receipt till Giotto tore up 
 the prescription and made one for himself. Ea- 
 venna's was an age of decadence, the end of the 
 Eoman empire ; but it was also an age of beginnings 
 of art propaganda, and the Greek artisan was the 
 first of a series of proselytizers extending to Manuel 
 Chrysoloras in the fifteenth century. 
 
 San Vitale, founded 526, consecrated in 547, and 
 supposed to be a derivation from the golden Temple 
 of Antioch, built by Constantine, is a typically 
 Byzantine building and the antecedent of the 
 church which Charlemagne raised at Aix-la-Cha- 
 pelle. To the architect as builder it is interest- 
 ing as the first western domed church, the dome 
 raised by Greek workmen long after Italy had for- 
 gotten the cunning which curved the cupola of the 
 Pantheon and vaulted the baths of Caracalla. To 
 the architect as decorative artist, and to all men, it 
 
 32
 
 RAVENNA 
 
 is beautiful by reason of the wonderful mosaics 
 which cover its choir from arch to pavement. 
 
 It is hard to say enough of their unique color, 
 which is not silvery and gray, like that of modern 
 schools of painting; not tender like the Umbrian, 
 or warm and golden like that of the great Vene- 
 tians, but deep, glowing, and solemn, like the tone 
 of a bell or the thunder of an organ. There are the 
 gold of Byzantium, the purple of Csesar, the blues 
 and greens of the chariot factions. The walls 
 glisten with a sheen like that on a dove's neck, or 
 the wings of a moth butterfly ; with tawny red like 
 the rind of a pomegranate ; the blue of the Persian 
 turquoise melting imperceptibly into green, and 
 orange glowing into red or darkening into purple. 
 Even the delicate columns, coiffed with strange 
 capitals, are more like Indian ivory than marble. 
 To call it all an Aladdin's cave would be to suggest 
 the hard glitter of gems; this is rather a soft and 
 solemn splendor. Still the place shines with gold, 
 and may have suggested jewels to the imaginations 
 of northern conquerors. The Norseman of Caesar's 
 Varangian Guard, as he looked into the royal 
 mausoleum in the old times, when against the 
 deep-toned mosaic Placidia's sarcophagus still glit- 
 tered with its covering' of silver plates, may well 
 have thought that here indeed was the "dwarfs' 
 work," here the " dragon's treasure," here the 
 VOL. i. 3 33
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 gnomes' cavern of Scandinavian tradition, and the 
 crusading minnesinger may have echoed in his song 
 of the Venusberg his memories of the rich vaulting 
 of St. Vitalius. In the discreet and skilful use 
 of gold and in the toning of large masses, these 
 early mosaics far surpass those of St. Mark's at 
 Venice. Among the latter, many of the fifteenth 
 and sixteenth centuries make spots upon their 
 vast gold backgrounds, while even the earlier ones 
 lack the dignity of the examples at Eavenna. Gold 
 predominates there also, but in smaller masses 
 than at Venice ; next comes dark blue ; then a 
 green, neither warm nor cold, graduated with a 
 yellower green ; a very beautiful creamy white ; 
 dull red and a fine purplish brown follow in lesser 
 quantities. 
 
 The curious blunting of all angles by the little 
 cubes, and the consequent lines of reflected light 
 emphasizing the architecture, is a not altogether 
 pleasing, but noticeable and essential effect in mosaic 
 work. It is not too much to say that no decora- 
 tive wall-covering can equal mosaic. In the first 
 place, it is practically imperishable; Michelangelo 
 affirmed that oil-painting was for women, and 
 only fresco for men ; but his master, Ghirlandajo, 
 said well that mosaic was the true painting for 
 eternity. 
 
 The frescoed people of Lippi and Gozzoli flake 
 34
 
 RAVENNA 
 
 and drop from the walls ; the panels of the cinque- 
 cento crack, and the tempera breaks away; the 
 canvases of Giorgione and Tintoretto blacken and 
 moulder; but Justinian and Theodora, upon the 
 choir of San Vitale, shine as brightly as if Belisarius 
 were still afield and Varangers yet in harness guard- 
 ing the palace of Constantinople. 
 
 If you go up into the galleries you will find the 
 cubes not a whit less fresh than those you buy now 
 at Murano. Again, this glass paste, opaque, semi- 
 opaque, and transparent, is equalled in depth and 
 richness by nothing except the finest stained glass. 
 Lastly, in their bed of cement, made with powdered 
 travertine and linseed oil, the little cubes cannot be 
 laid so that their faces shall be upon a perfectly level 
 plane ; the result is the varied tonality produced by 
 a thousand different degrees of reflection, giving an 
 indescribable richness of surface ; while the actual 
 gradations are remarkable, masses which from below 
 seem smooth spots of color proving to be exquisite 
 modulations running through twenty or more shades 
 of green, or blue, or brown. During our last visit 
 to Eavenna we were fortunate enough to climb to 
 the very dome of the Baptistery, where workmen 
 were putting supporting-irons into loosened portions 
 of the mosaic. Seen close at hand, these mosaics were 
 remarkable in their freedom of treatment. The color 
 was used almost as in a huge sketch painted with a 
 
 35
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 full brush, and was, in the flesh tones, suggestive of 
 the best Pompeian fresco-work. In the great pictures 
 of Theodora and Justinian at San Yitale, which we 
 also examined on a scaffolding, and which are a cen- 
 tury later, the handling is more serre, the colors 
 deeper and more solemn, but less atmospheric. 
 
 The main body of San Vitale has been restored in 
 the true spirit of seventeenth-century bungling, and 
 the painted rose garlands of the dome, a proof of how 
 far human beings can be unperceiving of the fitting, 
 moulder away in the dampness from the water which 
 now and then rises stealthily upon the flooring of 
 the church, as if it would reflect in homage the 
 columns which, with their anchor-carved capitals, are 
 spoils from some antique temple of Neptune, foul 
 water, however, and befitting the stricken fortunes of 
 the god. But the choir is splendid from top to pave- 
 ment; not an inch is uncovered. With the instinct 
 of true artists, who knew that in mosaic-work it was 
 all or nothing, and that no ordinary pigment could 
 stand beside it, they have clothed the whole in a 
 glittering jewelled mail, flowing over every jut and 
 angle, the soft color of which is yet an impenetrable 
 armor, hard enough to utterly resist the tooth of 
 time, which has so gnawed the other portions of the 
 church. On either side of the high altar the reflected 
 gold of the vestments and groundwork glows dully 
 like smouldering embers; indeed, it is the final
 
 RAVENNA 
 
 smouldering of antique art from which a brand 
 shall be snatched for the rekindling. But this 
 glorious color ends by going to the head, like 
 strong wine, and provoking all sorts of impossible 
 analogies. 
 
 37
 
 IV 
 
 AFTER such an orgy of visual pleasure, one longs for 
 the blue of the sky and the green of the meadows. 
 Outside Eavenna, dikes stretch their long brown 
 lines between fat rice-fields where the descendants 
 of Sidonius's frogs croak in Aristophanic chorus in 
 the stagnant water. In spring these pestilential 
 marshes are transformed into fields of fairylike 
 blossoms. Nature, in emulous imitation of art, an- 
 nually reproduces the color scheme of the Byzan- 
 tines in the blue of the waters and in the tender 
 green of the young blades of rice ; while tamarisks, 
 lilies, orchids, blossoming flags and rushes, suggest 
 the more vivid hues of the mosaics. Every foot of 
 this treacherous soil contains a buried treasure, flot- 
 sam and jetsam of the wreck of the antique world, 
 but the dragon that guards them is not the brown 
 serpent that you see all too often winding in and 
 out among the delicately brilliant flowers, but the 
 fever which stalks perennially over the vast fen. 
 
 Here and there islands rise out of the morass. 
 Santa Maria in Porto fuori raises its tower, once a 
 lighthouse to the Roman fleets, still a Christopher 
 to the devout peasant. A cross placed on a marble 
 
 38
 
 RAVENNA 
 
 pillar shows the site of the basilica of San Lorenzo 
 in Csesarea. Finally, three miles of the old Fla- 
 minian Way bring us to a great lonely church, 
 " bearing its huge, long back along the low horizon 
 like some monster antediluvian saurian, the fit deni- 
 zen of this marsh world." This is the basilica of 
 San Apollinare in Classe, the last building of the 
 great age of Kavenna and sole vestige of the town 
 of Classis. Less well preserved than its name- 
 sake of the city, it is, since the destruction of San 
 Paolo fuori le Mura, the best example of the 
 manner in which rows of symbolical figures and 
 pictures in mosaic were employed in the decoration 
 of church interiors. Here is a complete collection 
 of the symbols of Christian art, " the whole sacred 
 menagerie;" and every emblem, from the simple 
 monogram to the figure of the Fisherman, may be 
 found by the student of Christian archaeology. 
 
 The walls, ravaged by that enemy of Mother 
 Church, Sigismondo Malatesta, have been conscien- 
 tiously restored, but the mosaics of the apsis are 
 ancient, and in them as on a gorgeously illuminated 
 page we may read the glorification of the church of 
 Ravenna, that church which, sustained by Byzan- 
 tium, claimed an equality with Eome and tried to 
 place its patron, Saint Apollinaris, on a spiritual level 
 with Saint Peter. Of the fruitlessness of this at- 
 tempt, the utterly desolate basilica, cold with the chill 
 
 39
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 of twelve hundred winters, is an eloquent witness. 
 The portraits of the one hundred and thirty arch- 
 bishops of Ravenna, a ghostly synod, still throning it 
 over dead Christian quarrels, look down upon the 
 poisonous water which in spring invades the nave 
 and with the scummy surface of its gilded pools ap- 
 pears to mock the color of the mosaics. The latter, 
 important as they are to the student of church his- 
 tory, are artistically an anticlimax to one who comes 
 to them from the nobler and more richly colored 
 mosaics of San Vitale, and it is hardly worth while 
 to dilute the strength of the impression made by the 
 earlier and finer work. As the shadows climb the 
 still ruddy tower, an earthy chill fills the air, 
 the huge, deserted church begins to cover its rough 
 facade of brickwork with a clinging cobweb-like 
 robe of fever mist, and we hurry away to the 
 Pinetum. 
 
 After the Byzantine church-builders, seven cen- 
 turies of oblivion followed for Ravenna, when the 
 greatest name of the Italian middle ages, that of 
 Dante, illustrated her again. He died here in exile, 
 and the Piazza of San Francesco, where he lies 
 buried, epitomizes Ravenna, Greek, mediaeval, and 
 republican. There, in the pleasant sunlight under 
 the Gothic arches, are the sarcophagi of early 
 Christians, dispossessed now and tenanted by Ra- 
 vennese lords of the middle ages; opposite is the 
 
 40
 
 RAVENNA 
 
 ENTRANCE COURT OF SAN FRANCESCO

 
 RAVENNA 
 
 accredited house of Francesca da Rimini ; Lord 
 Byron's window is just beyond; at one's right is 
 the tomb of Dante; and at one's left, loaded with 
 wreaths, a memorial tablet to Mazzini ; the " Divine 
 Comedy," "Childe Harold," and the epopsea of 
 modern Italian independence ! Could one ask for 
 richer suggestiveness of art and history ? It is, in- 
 deed, almost too rich and too complex. Here in 
 Italy, where the civilizations overlie one another, and 
 where history is piled strata upon strata, we are 
 perforce obliged to limit our impressions. In this 
 land which has been so much lived in, where there 
 has been so much doing and undoing, so over-much 
 hating and loving, memories are importunate and 
 spirits defy exorcism. On every hand the illus- 
 trious or romantic past crowds in upon the mind. 
 The Greek jostles the Etruscan; the Mediaeval 
 treads on the heels of the Roman ; Goth and Lom- 
 bard trample down the Byzantine ; the Mediaeval 
 burgher is hard pushed by the man of the Renais- 
 sance, and the Garibaldino elbows the soldier of 
 the French Republic. Each small city in the long 
 list of Italian towns is in one sense a microcosm 
 of the history of Italy. An arbitrary election of 
 certain aspects of such a city for contemplation is 
 almost involuntary, and becomes our only defence 
 against an overwhelming host of recollections and 
 associations. 
 
 41
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 The art-lover, however, finds his field of contem- 
 plation much more restricted. Dealing with what 
 actually exists, not what has been, with only the 
 tangible vestiges of the past, his limitations of vision 
 and suggestion are instinctive rather than voluntary. 
 To him Ravenna is a reflection of Byzantium, and 
 evokes a clear, sharply defined image. But to the 
 student of events or manners or modes of thought 
 how much Ravenna stands for! to him the epoch 
 of Byzantine rule is but one of the pages in her 
 civic annals. The mere name of the city fills his 
 mind with long lines of figures which file through 
 the mean streets of the decaying town like the 
 mummers in a Renaissance " progress." Theodoric, 
 Boe'thius, Amalasuntha ; traits in the Northern 
 Italians of to-day which bear witness to the en- 
 during character of the Gothic conquest; axioms 
 from the " Consolations," the chariot roll of Gibbon's 
 periods, are suggested by a fragment of wall or by 
 the tomb of the Ostrogoth, with its strange dome 
 like a gigantic wassail cup turned upside down. 
 French and Italian soldiers in serried charge or 
 orderly retreat ; Spanish veterans ; Bayard and the 
 " Loyal Serviteur ; " the young general who lies in 
 effigy at Milan, whirl past the banks of the Ronco 
 summoned by a glimpse of the besmirched Colonna 
 dei Francesi. The decaying palace wall of the 
 Polentani conjures up the little shade of the child 
 
 42
 
 RAVENNA 
 
 Francesca before " Amor, ch'a cor gentil ratio s'ap- 
 prende," led her to Paolo and death. The Italians, 
 who o all men love a lover best, will point you out 
 her image on the frescoed wall of Santa Maria in 
 Porto, where a slender Salome, arbitrarily christened 
 Francesca, receives the adoring homage of the youth 
 of Eavenna, which youth, being ardent, romantic, 
 and unoccupied, cultivates the emotions. To a 
 less sentimental spectator these battered frescoes 
 may serve to raise a sturdy, cheerful, Tuscan ghost, 
 for here Tradition will have it, though Eesearch 
 gives her the lie, Giotto painted and chatted with 
 his exiled friend, the poet whom Eavennese good- 
 wives declared had descended into hell, bringing 
 back its gloom on his stern face. 
 
 The Pinetum is an enchanted wood for the lover 
 of letters. To him the giant pines will sing the 
 praises of Dante, and he will find their solemn aisles 
 a fitter memorial to " il Divino " than the prim cupola 
 which rises over his bones. Shades of Boccaccio 
 and Byron and Alfieri people the forest glades, and 
 the tortured wraith of the once cruel lady who in 
 defiance of the mediaeval law, " Amor a nullo amato 
 amar perdona," dared " to fly from a true lover." 
 
 The Guiccioli palace suggests a comparison to 
 the Italy of Dante and the Malatesta, and the 
 Italy of opera and cicisbei, but they are hardly 
 farther asunder than are the two heroines for 
 
 43
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 whom liberal-minded Eavenna has named her 
 squares of Bice Portinari and Anita Garibaldi. 
 The Pinetum is hallowed not only by the radiant 
 apparition of Beatrice, " vested in colors of the living 
 flame," but by the grave of Anita. Here, literally 
 hunted to death, Garibaldi's heroic wife died of 
 exhaustion while flying with her husband from the 
 Austrian soldiery, and not the least tragic of the 
 city's memories is the poignant story of that breath- 
 less chase. 
 
 The modern Kavennese, oppressed perhaps by 
 their mighty heritage, turn from an aristocratic 
 and feudal past to vote for Cipriani, a candidate 
 who was sent to the galleys for his political opin- 
 ions. Sono un popolo cattivo, a conservative Italian 
 acquaintance assured us, which we translated Radi- 
 cal Republican, after reading the election posters. 
 It is a not uncommon evolution, this of Ravenna 
 Vantica, from Csesarism to Populism, especially in 
 Italy, where scarcity and excessive taxation stimulate 
 hostile criticism of existing forms of government. 
 
 In spite, however, of the veneer of more recent 
 epochs, of literary associations and of mediaeval 
 episodes, Ravenna will remain the typical Byzantine 
 town, and her abiding attraction will always be 
 her churches, which, like the agate and onyx of the 
 desert, rough-crusted and ugly without, are within 
 all glorious. 
 
 44
 
 SIENA

 
 
 SIENA 
 
 SIENA, like a true daughter of Eome, is throned 
 superbly upon many hills, but the wolf and the 
 twins watch over a mediaeval city, and the ancient 
 Colonia Julia Senensis holds higher than any other 
 Italian town, save Florence, the double symbol of 
 church and state in the middle ages, the tower of 
 the cathedral and of the public palace. 
 
 We have seen the city in many phases: under 
 black clouds, with the hailstones shining in stormy 
 struggling sunlight against the sculptures of Fonte 
 Gaia and the rain-streamlets rushing down its steep 
 streets, and we have seen it set like a town in a 
 missal-border against a still, flat, blue background 
 of sky; we have seen it from the terraces of the 
 Osservanza rising above its walls, which overhung 
 the intermediate valley, and from distant, southern 
 Monte Oliveto, its towers of the Mangia and the 
 Cathedral dwindled to mere pin-points. We have 
 strolled through its narrow streets at all times and 
 all seasons ; have blinked at the dazzling facade of 
 the Duomo in the glare of noon, and lingered in 
 
 47
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 the great Campo when it lay white and still in the 
 chill moonlight. We have watched the gray, bleak 
 hills on which the town is pedestalled turn to fresh- 
 est, tenderest green ; we have climbed the slopes of 
 the olive orchards and looked through scurrying 
 snowflakes at the ramparts rising above us, and 
 from every point, from without her gates and 
 within her walls, from the towers above and the 
 valley below, Siena makes one impression only 
 upon us : Etruscan town, Koman colony as she was, 
 the middle ages set their seal upon her, and she is 
 the typical Gothic city of Tuscany, almost of Italy. 
 
 Verona is Siena's only rival ; but Verona is rosy 
 and smiling, Siena is brown and truculent. She 
 has clutched sword and shield so tightly that she 
 can never quite lose the cramped look of the 
 defensive attitude; unlike Florence, she has not 
 unclasped her knightly girdle of battlements, and 
 the gates with port and ante-port complete are 
 far finer than those by the Arno ; the Eomana and 
 the Pispini look to this day as if Monluc were 
 still defending within and Duke Cosimo besieging 
 without. 
 
 Gothic, Siena was, not only in her outward ap- 
 pearance, but in her spirit, in her ideals, and in her 
 art; Gothic in her triple aspect of warrior, saint, 
 and sybarite. She fought with spiritual arms as 
 well as with actual weapons; she wore the cowl 
 
 48
 
 SIENA 
 
 over the helmet, and the hand which held the 
 sword had grasped the scourge. She was not 
 truculent only ; under the steel hauberk was the 
 embroidered surcoat of knight and minstrel, and 
 under the nun's rough hair-cloth the mystic ecstasy 
 of Saint Catherine. The Civitas Virginis was also 
 the Molhs Sence of Beccadelli's poem, the city of 
 soft delights, of the pleasure-seekers of Folgore's 
 sonnets, of the rakes and bruisers of Sermini's and 
 Fortini's tales. It was the home of the love-story 
 (la novella amoroso) ; and it was in this stronghold 
 of saints and popes, of pietistic painters and de- 
 vout conservatives, that the latent hedonism which 
 underlay all the apparent asceticism of mediaeval 
 thought and life took artistic form. 
 
 There is a story told by the Sienese chroniclers 
 which seems prophetic of the city's attitude toward 
 the Eenaissance. In the early fourteenth century 
 an antique statue of Aphrodite was found in an 
 orchard near the town, a relic probably of the 
 ancient Eoman burg. Enthusiasts ascribed it to 
 Lysippos, and when the new conduits were finished 
 and water flowed for the first time in the great 
 square, the image was set above the fountain which 
 was called Fonte Gaia, because of the joy the 
 people felt at the sight of it, some said, though 
 others affirmed that it was named to honor the 
 goddess of love and laughter. 
 VOL. i. 4 49
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 For fourteen years the statue stood with the 
 water flashing at its feet, and during these years 
 faction raged more hotly than ever before; the 
 Campo was a field of slaughter, and the fountain 
 ran red, as bleeding partisans crawled to its margin 
 to drink and die. It seemed as though strife were 
 mingled with its ripples and discord welled from 
 its brim. It was whispered that these contentions 
 were due to the honor paid to a heathen idol which 
 had usurped the place of Siena's celestial suzerain, 
 and that peace would not be restored to the city 
 until the goddess was cast out. The mediaeval 
 citizen knew his classics well enough to remem- 
 ber the mischief Dame Venus had wrought in 
 Troy-town. 
 
 The whispers became murmurs, the murmurs 
 ominous growls ; finally the Council of the Twelve 
 decreed the removal of the statue, and in order 
 that its maleficent powers might be utilized for 
 Siena's welfare, it was buried with thrifty hatred on 
 Florentine soil. 
 
 Thus was antiquity banished from Siena, and 
 when all Italy welcomed the Eenaissance, she shut 
 her gates against it ; her painters turned with pious 
 horror from the study of nature and sprinkled holy 
 water on heathen sculpture; her inspired saints 
 looked with contempt on the wisdom of the pagan, 
 and her fierce, luxurious nobles had no mind to 
 
 50
 
 SIENA 
 
 dim their bright hawk eyes over "brown Greek 
 manuscripts." 
 
 It is difficult, almost impossible, to explain the 
 unique attitude of Siena toward the new move- 
 ment. Was it because in the forefront of the 
 Eenaissance marched those hated Florentines, her 
 hereditary foes? Was it the natural conservatism 
 of the mountaineer, or the mental immutability of 
 the devotee, who regarded all innovations as sacri- 
 legious ? Was it the old civic jealousy taking a new 
 form ? Did Siena feel instinctively that the vertical, 
 irregular, picturesque, Gothic architecture was more 
 suited to a hill-town than the porticoes and pedi- 
 ments of the Eenaissance? Had mediaeval paint- 
 ing become so identified in men's minds with the 
 religion it served that to abandon the one seemed 
 like renouncing the other as well? 
 
 Perhaps all of these considerations consciously and 
 unconsciously influenced the action of the Sienese 
 toward the revival of culture. At first they resisted 
 it as fiercely as they had the invading Florentine 
 armies ; and while contemporary Tuscan painters 
 were eagerly studying nature and antiquity, they 
 were reproducing the old, bedizened, Byzantine 
 Madonnas. When every Italian architect else- 
 where was designing cupolas and colonnades, Siena's 
 builders still clung to the Gothic ; Orvieto sent to 
 them for master-workmen for the cathedral until 
 
 51
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 1450, and Gian Galeazzo Sforza summoned Fran- 
 cesco di Giorgio to compete for the fagade of the 
 great church of Milan as late as 1490. 
 
 Finally, when all Italy was permeated with the 
 new spirit and Siena was forced to open her gates 
 to Pinturicchio and Sodoma and Eossellino, it was 
 too late ; the creative power of the mighty impulse 
 was exhausted, and among the great artists of the 
 sixteenth century we do not find one Sienese. Siena 
 had but a brief span of time in which to accustom 
 herself to the new order of things, for in 1555 she 
 fell, sword in hand, bravely defending her liberty. 
 After her fall, utterly broken in spirit, she had 
 neither the money nor the inclination to follow 
 strange fashions, and in her many misfortunes was 
 fortunate in this, that no tawdry and pretentious 
 seventeenth century, no rococo and pedantic eight- 
 eenth century, marred her stern grandeur and her 
 delicate grace. 
 
 The history of Sienese art began with the victory 
 of Monteaperto (1260) and ended in the middle of 
 the sixteenth century with the extinction of Sienese 
 independence (1555). It has three distinct phases of 
 development, Gothic, Gothic modified by foreign 
 influence, and Eenaissance art, the work of the 
 strangers or of Sienese masters imitating the work of 
 strangers. These different stages of growth may 
 be studied in the Public Palace, filled with frescoes 
 
 52
 
 SIENA 
 
 where Sienese painting is most at home; in the 
 cathedral where the mediaeval artist begins to yield 
 to external pressure, and in the private palaces and 
 lesser churches where the Eenaissance eventually 
 triumphs over the native style. Finally, the com- 
 plete evolution of local painting from the early 
 Byzantine to the late Eoman manner may be seen 
 in the municipal picture-gallery. 
 
 The city itself is a gallery of pictures. The walls 
 form a triangle with its base to the south, and near 
 the centre of this triangle rises the Duomo upon the 
 crest of the highest hill. Below it to the east is the 
 civic heart of the city, the Campo, strangest of 
 squares, shaped like a great oyster-shell, with the 
 communal palace at its lower lip and holding one 
 precious pearl, Fonte Gaia. 
 
 Between the cathedral and the town hall cluster 
 palaces with the famous names of Nerucci, Spa- 
 nocchi, Saraceni, Piccolomini, and Tolomei ; while the 
 conventual churches are, as usual, nearer the 
 walls where the brethren may have gardens and 
 orchards. Saints Dominic and Francis are honored 
 mightily in Siena in huge piles to west and east of 
 the city's centre, and a daughter of Dominic has 
 made " the noble district of the Goose " almost as 
 famous as the Porziuncula of the Assisan saint. 
 The Concezione and Sant' Agostino to south and 
 southwest are imposing masses of church and con- 
 
 53
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 vent and cloister. Peruzzi's Campanile of the Car- 
 mine and the towers of San Francesco and San 
 Domenico are simple in line and fine in effect. The 
 town walls, these churches and campaniles with the 
 two focal and ever present points of the Cathedral, 
 and the soaring Mangia tower make up the general 
 outline of Siena. 
 
 For the detail we must climb twisting streets 
 with clean, flat pavements and never a sidewalk, 
 where there are no rough walls, as at Perugia, but 
 all the masonry is neatly faced, and no sally as of 
 German oriel or French overhanging stories, not 
 even the protruding, grated windows of Florence, 
 break the smoothness of the Tuscan Gothic; here 
 the iron shuts down flatly and sternly within the 
 shallow, pointed recess, but on every side there is a 
 wealth of exquisitely wrought torch-and-banner- 
 rings. The palaces of the great Ghibelline nobles 
 cluster together around the Cathedral and the 
 Campo; the Pecci with its lion-guarded staircase, 
 the Buonsignori, the Salimbeni, are purely Sienese 
 in style. The latter rises high above a valley and 
 recalls Or San Michele in its height and squareness ; 
 the Governo and the Spanocchi, on the contrary, are 
 purely Florentine, though here and there are details 
 indicative of the more florid local taste. The Tolomei 
 is the most famous of them all, not for the stately 
 elegance of its facade, but because here, as every 
 
 54
 
 SIENA 
 
 Sienese will tell you, lived the hapless Pia. The 
 story of this gentle victim of jealousy and malaria 
 is told in a few lines by Dante, and every Tuscan 
 knows the tale as well as that of Francesca da Rim- 
 ini. When we returned to Florence, Checha, our 
 maid, asked eagerly if we had seen Casa Tolomei. 
 
 The beautiful hammered iron-work, a native pro- 
 duct, seems to combine naturally with the brick, 
 and among the cities which possess a distinct type 
 of domestic architecture Siena deserves a high rank. 
 Her palaces unite the lightness of the Bolognese 
 and something of the richness of the Venetian 
 styles to the stern Gothic character of the Flor- 
 entine ; and though the magic wand of the cinque- 
 cento has waved over the bronze and marble which 
 burst into acanthus flower and curling scroll-work, 
 and Tuscan masters, in the ring of their chisels, 
 have awakened echoes of the Via Larga and Via 
 Strozzi, in the main lines of the facades Siena has 
 clung to the character that marked the days of 
 Monteaperto. Excellent restoration is being done 
 in these Sienese palaces and streets. It consists 
 mainly in removing the panels or the bricks which 
 in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were 
 used to hide good Gothic work. Nowhere else in 
 Italy have we heard so much talk of restoration. 
 Even the conservative Franciscan brother at the 
 Osservanza and the Benedictine Padre at Monte 
 
 55
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 Oliveto shared this interest. "Those saints are 
 well enough in Paradise, but here with this fif- 
 teenth-century architecture they are out of place," 
 said the latter, pointing to some haloed eighteenth- 
 century sentimentalities simpering in their rococo 
 frames. " Ah ! " sighed our driver, " if they would 
 only take away all the ugly things stupid people 
 have put here, Siena sarebbe bellissima." 
 
 Siena is bellissima, in spite of this occasional 
 veneer of later times, and among her most charm- 
 ing features are her fountains. There is Fonte 
 Nuova lying, a still sheet of silver, under its Gothic 
 arches, Fonte Ovile crowned with green, and Fonte 
 Branda, clear as crystal. 
 
 For Saint Catherine's sake, we visited Fonte 
 Branda in the early morning, scrambling down 
 the steep path under blossoming trees and tufted 
 greenery until San Domenico towered just above 
 our heads on its hill-pedestal. All about us was 
 the pungent smell of tan, and at our hand sheep's 
 peltries lay upon wicker ovals, for all the world 
 as if some thirsty Roman maniple had stopped to 
 drink at the fountain and thrown its shields upon 
 the grass. Above, the cavalry men lounged on 
 the parapet before the church where Benincasa's 
 daughter saw the celestial vision ; before us the 
 washer-women pounded away at their linen ; farther 
 on, outside the gate, the city wall climbed at a 
 
 56
 
 SIENA 
 
 sharp angle to where the Cathedral rode upon the 
 highest ridge, the campanile holding aloft above the 
 tiles and towers the black and white of the repub- 
 lic's arms. 
 
 Perhaps one's most vivid impressions of Siena as 
 a whole are these fountain-side visions of the up- 
 lifted city ; to close the eyes is still to see the 
 narrow ways climbing the slopes and piercing 
 brown arches; the close-set houses sweeping like 
 billows now downward, now upward, tossed here 
 and there into higher jet of palace or church, 
 breaking into a spray of towers, till all are crested 
 by the foam-like sculpture of the Duomo. 
 
 And the fountains themselves, lying flat and mir- 
 ror-like with still depths and glistening surface, 
 dancing in reflection upon the brown, groined vault- 
 ing above. They are wholly different from any 
 others, these grottoed wells of Siena, strange pres- 
 ences in a city, bringing within the walls the sense 
 of caverned, mountain-springing waters. Each with 
 its crown of verdure is an Egeria to whom the 
 mediaeval Numa might come for counsel and for 
 peace; a Gothic Egeria under her pointed arches, 
 for from Siena antiquity is thrust out. Here 
 the nymph is haloed ; close draped from throat 
 to heel, she passes, and the idyl itself is fixed 
 upon a background of gold. 
 
 If we return with the mediaeval law-giver to his 
 57
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 palace, we shall find ourselves in the vast, curving 
 Campo. Geologists say that Siena is built on an 
 extinct volcano and this square occupied the place 
 of the old crater. Any student of the city's politi- 
 cal history will find a singular appositeness in this 
 site, for the old fire blazed perennially in the hearts 
 of the citizens and within the walls of the munici- 
 pal palace. For here it sits in state with its grace- 
 ful Mangia tower and a solemn assembly of palaces 
 fronting it in amphitheatre. Before it once stood 
 the monumental Virtues of Jacopo della Quercia's 
 fountain, now mere battered fragments in the Mu- 
 seum ; beside it soars the Mangia ; not as audacious 
 as the bell-tower of the old palace of Florence, it 
 is more aspirant and equally individual, with its 
 shooting stem, its bracketed battlements, its pillar- 
 surrounded bells and its sculptured wolves. 
 
 The little chapel before the palace, an ex voto of 
 the plague of 1348, though graceful in itself, is an 
 excrescence, and the huge building is far finer seen 
 from the rear. From under the beamed roof and 
 between the pillars of the market-place it looks the 
 Gothic palace of the chronicles ; its grating might 
 surely imprison every possible fantasy, every night- 
 mare horror. Here should be cobwebs, bloodstains, 
 and oubliettes by day, lurking assassins and bleeding 
 spectres by night, enacting the secret dramas of the 
 archives and passing up and down that mouldering 
 
 58
 
 SIENA 
 
 staircase (like those we climb in dreams), which 
 goes burrowing through the pile, now low, now 
 aloft, now corbelled on the outside of the building, 
 now disappearing under a dark arch to lead on to 
 a vast loggia where a whole city council might sit 
 al fresco. The facade, a monstrous mass of brick, 
 opens a hundred Argus eyes of every size and shape, 
 and other windows still have been blocked up ; 
 above them are strange, string-course eyebrows ; 
 there are long wrinkling cracks in the brick- 
 work ; the gratings show like clinched teeth ; this 
 grim visage of the olden time is set firmly against 
 all the mischance of five hundred years, and frowns 
 even under the caress of the Tuscan sunshine. 
 
 Turning from the palace, one finds oneself in the 
 centre of a horseshoe with the piled up Carmine 
 and Sant' Agostino on the spurs of rock which 
 form each side of it. From one's feet the valley 
 dips away rapidly and deeply in range behind range 
 of low volcanic hills, till Monte Amiata pencils its 
 snow-crested sky-line against the southern horizon. 
 Thus sits the palace of the republic, the focal point 
 of a double amphitheatre natural and artificial, of 
 palaces upon one hand, of contado upon the other, 
 telling to those who can hear aright the story of 
 six hundred years and marking every hour that is 
 added to the tale of centuries. 
 
 Within it is far more unchanged than is the 
 59
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 Palazzo Vecchio of Florence ; there Michelozzo and 
 Benedetto remodelled Arnolfo's hall, but Siena 
 seems to have instinctively understood that her 
 glories came earlier, and she clung to them. These 
 rooms are mediaeval ; the original construction is 
 hardly changed, and the prevailing impression is 
 one of half savage, clumsy grandeur made more 
 emphatic by the pure Gothicism of their decora- 
 tion, a Gothicism which is rather belated for 
 the time. There is little of the thoughtful and 
 balanced ornament of the contemporaneous chapel 
 of the Spaniards in Florence, and little of the 
 austere elegance of the Bargello. 
 
 During the turbulent life of the old common- 
 wealth generation after generation of artists was 
 called to embellish this house of the people. It 
 was the central jewel of the city's civic crown, the 
 theatre of her municipal dramas, the focus of her 
 political life. As such, it was loved and respected 
 by all the different factions which each in its turn 
 ruled and misruled Siena. The decoration of the 
 palace went steadily on, no matter who held the 
 reins of government. Defeated candidates might 
 be thrown from the windows, riot might break up 
 the council, strife disperse the magistrates, the 
 painters' stipends were punctually paid. Minorities 
 flew to arms and majorities abused their victories ; 
 delation whispered in dark corners, and party hatred 
 
 60
 
 SIENA 
 
 SALA IN PALAZZO PUBBLICO
 
 SIENA 
 
 hunted its victims through these echoing chambers ; 
 the frescanti labored quietly on, celebrating the 
 republic's triumphs, the glories of her popes, or the 
 coronation of her heavenly sovereign, and through 
 the dissensions which made Siena a byword for civic 
 discord, the famous artists of the school, Martini 
 and Lorenzetti and Quercia and Lando, left their 
 handwriting on these walls and made of this the 
 typical town-hall of Italy. 
 
 In the Sala del Gran Consiglio, divided nearly 
 down the centre by a line of heavy arches, Sienese 
 painting may be seen at its best and worst. In 
 Sim one's great lunette filled by a charming and 
 astonishingly decorative composition there is beauty 
 of a delicate character in the heads of the 
 saints, and the narrow-lidded, purse-mouthed Ma- 
 donna has a grace and distinction unknown to 
 Giotto. But in Ambrogio di Lorenzo's battle of 
 Turrita (1363), where the little jointed lay figures 
 move across a flat, map-like background showing 
 every hill and stream and hamlet conscientiously 
 labelled, the painter becomes a child with a big 
 slate, and his picture is as na'if and confused as 
 a battle on an Egyptian pylon. The Renaissance, 
 however, has passed this way and left Sodoma's 
 Roman warrior-saints Victor and Ansanus, noble 
 and vigorous youths, visions of antique health and 
 beauty among these medisevals, and as unexpected 
 
 61
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 here as Scipio would have been at Monteaperto. 
 On the wall above them is a return to the Gothic 
 art of Siena, and against a vast field a little, solitary 
 Guidoriccio, captain of the republic, rides, like a 
 mattress on horseback, in commemoration of the 
 siege of Montemassi (1328). 
 
 But Gothic painting can show us something finer 
 than this. Passing through the left nave or ante- 
 chapel, we find ourselves in the Sala delta Pace, the 
 Hall of Peace. In 1337 Ambrogio Lorenzetti began 
 to work on these walls. His business was to dem- 
 onstrate the principles and blessings of good gov- 
 ernment and the evils of misrule, and to express 
 them in that figurative language which could be read 
 by all the citizens alike, even by the peasant and 
 the wool-carder. Lorenzetti, who was something of 
 a philosopher, Vasari tells us, put the symbolism of 
 his time to good use, and though to us the thread 
 of allegory may seem too finely spun, the didactic 
 purpose did not exclude beauty of a noble and 
 monumental character, and the frescoes are a mural 
 decoration as well as a painted treatise. 
 
 Among these attendant Virtues of the well-gov- 
 erned state, each one gowned to the feet, sitting 
 grave and stately in a solemn row like the sculp- 
 tured figures on a mediaeval reliquary, there is one 
 that reclines, her wreathed head resting on her 
 hand. Helmet and shield lie under her feet, she 
 
 62
 
 SUNA 
 
 holds the olive branch like a sceptre, and her semi- 
 transparent robe hangs ungirdled like an antique 
 tunic. 
 
 This is the celebrated Peace which seems to have 
 floated hither from a Pompeian wall, a Pagan god- 
 dess, perhaps a Venus Victrix consorting with these 
 Christian Virtues. How came she here ? Symonds 
 suggests that this figure was copied from the mis- 
 chief-making Aphrodite of Lysippos. Ambrogio 
 had made a fine drawing from the statue, which 
 Ghiberti admired many years afterward. By an 
 irony of fate the goddess banished from the square 
 sat in the council-chamber. And if her influence 
 was indeed malign, if her own apple of discord had 
 been thrown down among the magistrates, she 
 could not have looked upon wilder deeds than 
 those that were constantly enacted here. It was 
 not the painter's fault. Had he not demonstrated 
 that the commonwealth should be surrounded by 
 all the Virtues, Cardinal, Christian, Pagan ; that its 
 right should be supported by armed might; that 
 the ruling body of twenty-four citizens should be 
 united by concord and governed by justice ? Had 
 he not also with rare political sagacity shown the 
 relative importance of the various virtues by the 
 different scales adopted for their personifications; 
 thus in civic administration faith is of small im- 
 portance while justice is essential. To prevent 
 
 63
 
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 all possibility of mistake, their names are plainly 
 written over all the figures, and ribbons and scrolls 
 materially bind the elaborate allegory together, 
 while the whole scheme with its hierarchy of 
 municipal Virtues was doubtless suggested by some 
 erudite student of Aristotle or of Dante's De Mo- 
 narchia. The painter has also shown the practical 
 effects of good and bad government in a spirited 
 series of genre pictures, episodes of contemporary 
 town life which appealed directly to the spectator's 
 memories and experience. 
 
 Truly the philosophic Anibrogio was not to blame 
 if Siena was "un guazzabuglio ed una confusione 
 di repuUiche piutosto che bene ordinata e instituta 
 republica" 
 
 Eepublic, commonwealth, the names are mislead- 
 ing and suggest to the modern mind something 
 akin to our own form of popular sovereignty. A 
 nominal vassalage to a German Cresar; a struggle 
 for independence ; a governing body or Monte com- 
 posed of patricians ; a popular revolution : a Balia of 
 merchants ; an uprising of the artisans ; native des- 
 potism, and finally submission to a foreign tyrant, 
 this is a fair synopsis of the history of the Sienese 
 republic, nay, of many Italian republics as well. 
 " C'est la mile qui se gouverne plus follement que 
 toute ville d'ltalie" wrote grave De Commines a 
 century and a half after Ambrogio finished his 
 
 64
 
 SIENA 
 
 fresco, and mad indeed Siena must have been to 
 merit this distinction. 
 
 Imagine a state governed by miracles, a state 
 which sent ecstatic nuns and socialistic painters 
 on important embassies ; where the saints them- 
 selves became politicians, and the celestial court 
 terrorized or bribed voters by visions and prodigies ; 
 where a rain of blood or some such manifestation 
 of divine displeasure about election time would 
 upset the existing government and carry the entire 
 opposition into office at one sweep; where, when 
 the victors had murdered, confiscated, and exiled 
 sufficiently to produce a popular reaction of feeling, 
 a third party would appear to repeat the same 
 blunders and excesses. Sometimes a holy person- 
 age would have a revelation, and in obedience to 
 the divine mandate the whole city would turn out 
 in penitential procession. Eadicals and conserva- 
 tives, aristocrats and artisans, their shoulders bleed- 
 ing from the lash, knelt together on the cathedral 
 pavement and swore on the great crucifix to live in 
 peace together forever after. Eight pages of blood- 
 curdling maledictions were then read, wherein he 
 who should break his oath was cursed thoroughly 
 and comprehensively (for cursing was a fine art 
 in the Middle Ages with a vigorous vocabulary). 
 Afterward the notaries of the rival factions wrote 
 down the names of those who had sworn to main- 
 VOL. i. 5 65
 
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 tain public tranquillity, and the adverse parties fell 
 on each other's necks. But the penitential torches 
 were hardly spent, the swords which Eeligion 
 bade men leave at the church-door were scarcely 
 sheathed, when, in spite of anathema, they were 
 out again and all parties were fighting once more. 
 
 The acts of the popular government (Novcschi) 
 were prophetic of the darkest days of the Eeign 
 of Terror in France. There were clubs like the 
 Jacobins ; secret societies ; lists of the suspected ; 
 spies in the prisons and revolutionary tribunals, 
 and yet amid all this disorder the virtues of self- 
 sacrifice, fidelity to friends and comrades ; devotion 
 to an ideal; fortitude and courage, all these quali- 
 ties that are developed by the militant attitude of 
 the soul, flourished as they never can in an indus- 
 trial republic. 
 
 66
 
 II 
 
 A FAINT echo of the old contests has lasted even to 
 our own times, and on every fifteenth of August 
 the Campo is again the theatre of strife. The 
 annual horse-race, the Polio, is run here in honor 
 of the city's patron, the Blessed Virgin ; and Siena, 
 which is frugal and sober enough for the rest of the 
 year, becomes a boisterous, ruffling spendthrift dur- 
 ing the festa. 
 
 This is no ordinary race, with professional jockeys, 
 lean, glossy horses, and a quiet fashionable crowd of 
 spectators betting in a bored and decorous way ; this 
 is a family affair of palpitating domestic interest. 
 The cattle are the thick-necked, stout little nags 
 that Beppo, the butcher boy, drives in his cart, 
 and that Gigi, the green-grocer's son, rides out to 
 the hillside farm, and the jockeys are Beppo and 
 Gigi themselves and their ilk: the onlookers are 
 their friends and relatives and rivals, the whole 
 town of Siena, and every able-bodied peasant in 
 the contado as well. It is only in Tuscany, where 
 there is no "brutalized lower class," that such 
 a work-a-day, popular affair could be a ceremony 
 and a spectacle. Perhaps, too, the fact that the 
 same thing has been done annually for the last 
 
 67
 
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 five hundred years has much to do with its 
 picturesqueness. 
 
 These races are a contest between the seventeen 
 different wards of Siena, a survival of the old party 
 feuds. Each district contributes a horse and ten 
 men dressed in mediaeval costume. A few hours 
 before the race, each horse is blessed in the parish 
 church of the contrada to which it belongs. 
 
 One is rather impressed with the sporting char- 
 acter of the local saints; they are debonair, these 
 celestial potentates, and sometimes even playful, 
 so that to the modern shopkeeper it seems as 
 natural to ask their good-will for the horse that 
 is to run for the honor of Madonna and the dis- 
 trict, as it was for the mediaeval noble to hang the 
 wax image of his pet hawk before their altars. 
 
 The little company which enters the church with 
 the plunging, rearing horse looks as though it were 
 contemporary with the hawk's master. There is 
 the captain of the district, elderly, bearded, in full 
 armor; the rider wearing the helmet which later 
 he will change for a metal jockey-cap ; the 
 standard-bearers, the drummer, the dear, little 
 solemn pages who might have come hither from 
 some altar-piece of Botticelli or some pageant of 
 Gozzoli. All are splendid in satin trunks, brocaded 
 doublets, velvet mantles, and the tightest of pink 
 fleshings, while each tiny red cap is perched on 
 
 68
 
 SIENA 
 
 a mass of fuzzy hair. The fine costumes are worn 
 with ease and grace, though the beauty of the Ital- 
 ian youth is rather that of the faun than the 
 athlete. Everybody is very much in earnest and 
 quite lacking in the self-consciousness which would 
 paralyze a Northerner tricked out in tights and 
 long curls. 
 
 When the horse reaches the high altar, he is 
 blessed and sprinkled with holy water and led 
 away with much cheering. The church has lent 
 its aid to help him win the banner, which, if he 
 is successful, will hang with many others, some of 
 them centuries old, in the sacristy. The Campo 
 is also in gala dress. The grim palaces are all 
 aflaunt with banners, shields hang from every 
 window, and brilliant colors float from every 
 balcony. Over the pavement a track of earth has 
 been laid for the Polio, going entirely around the 
 Piazza; barriers have been placed along the inner 
 side of the half-circle thus formed, and on the outer 
 edge there are tiers of seats built up against the 
 surrounding house-walls. 
 
 Toward the Ave Maria every balcony, window, 
 and bench is filled, even the roofs are crowded, 
 and into the central space behind the barriers 
 some twenty thousand peasants have wedged them- 
 selves, the braided gold of their huge straw hats 
 flapping with anticipatory excitement. 
 
 69
 
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 The course is cleared by mounted carabineers, 
 and the procession begins. First in orthodox, festi- 
 val fashion comes the town band in dark blue uni- 
 forms, then trumpeting loudly, nine heralds who 
 surely must have figured at some mediaeval tourna- 
 ment ; the companies of the various districts follow, 
 a stream of rich color against the palace walls ; 
 the standard-bearers playing graceful tricks with 
 their flags, the captain with his escort of four pages 
 armed with lances, the figurino, most gorgeous of 
 all, carrying the ward-banner with its emblem, 
 and lastly the fantino on horseback. The pageant 
 is closed by a modern facsimile of the Caroccio or 
 battle-car taken from the Florentines at Monte- 
 aperto (1260), by the victorious Sienese, who in 
 witness thereof set up its poles in their cathedral, 
 and in many other ways keep the memory of this 
 ancient victory green and Florence in a proper 
 state of retrospective humiliation. Meanwhile the 
 barebacked horses have been driven into a pen 
 formed of ropes, and each rider has received his 
 nerbo or whip made of ox-sinew, a redoubtable 
 weapon which he is permitted to use not only on 
 his own horse, but on the rival jockeys and their 
 horses as well. This brutal custom is undoubtedly 
 a survival of earlier contests. 
 
 Finally all are mounted, a gun is fired, the rope 
 drops : there is a rush, a many-colored flash, horses 
 
 70
 
 SIENA 
 
 and riders shoot out on the track and are off at 
 last. One pony trips over the rope and falls like 
 a stone with his rider, who lies motionless, while 
 something redder than a blush streams over his 
 cheek. " It is nothing, nothing," your neighbor 
 on the balcony assures you ; " those boys are made 
 of india rubber ; to-day they are mangled and killed, 
 and to-morrow they will be amusing themselves." 
 
 The horses meantime are tearing around the 
 palpitating piazza; the jockeys are flogging right 
 and left with the cruel nerbo, and a wave of excite- 
 ment follows them. It is a fine sight ; the riders 
 have neither saddles nor stirrups and are one with 
 their mounts, but Sienese youth is guileless ; there 
 are no turf tricks here, no dark horses, no husband- 
 ing of speed until the decisive moment. Bear gets 
 the lead early in the race, keeps it and wins by 
 two lengths amid deafening cries of " Orso, Orso ! " 
 There is a deep growl from the conquered contrade 
 and a rush for the winner, but the Italian police- 
 men, those lions of martial aspect and fierce mus- 
 tachios, those lambs of gentle courtesy and softest 
 speech, have already closed around him. They 
 protect him until his company rallies and escorts 
 him in triumph to the church again, where he 
 hangs up the prize banner. 
 
 The athlete who brought home the wild olive 
 crown from the Olympian games, the young Eoman 
 
 71
 
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 who hung up a trophy in the Capitol, were probably 
 not lacking in a proper appreciation of their own 
 merits, but their bumptiousness was as the humil- 
 ity of cloistered maidens, compared to the vain- 
 glory of the youth who wins the Palio, if one may 
 believe the local gossips. No wonder that Bazzi, 
 that adopted son and spoiled child of Siena, who 
 had gained many palii with his Barbary horses, 
 was prouder of his prizes than of his paintings, 
 and " would exhibit them to every one who came 
 to his house, nay, he would frequently make a 
 show of them at his windows," to the astonish- 
 ment and disgust of that shrewd business man 
 and conventional bourgeois, Giorgio Vasari. 
 
 79
 
 Ill 
 
 MUCH prose poetry has been written about the Sien- 
 ese school of painting. Years ago Eio and Lindsay 
 struck a note which finds an echo in the appre- 
 ciation of the most modern critics. The literary 
 boulevardier still worships at the shrines of the 
 " Madones aux longs regards" and in their presence 
 even the stern and suspicious disciples of the " De- 
 tective school " of art criticism cease to scrutinize 
 and become lyrical. Perhaps no " Primitive " paint- 
 ing has inspired so much enthusiasm in men of 
 letters. 
 
 A study of the Sienese pictures, while it affords 
 little to justify these eulogies, stimulates a desire 
 to discover why this mediocre art has proved so 
 attractive. 
 
 We suspect that the panegyrists of the Sienese 
 masters regarded them from the aesthetic rather 
 than the plastic point of view ; that they confused 
 the material of representation with the manner of 
 representation, the aspect of an actual object pleas- 
 ing in itself with the pictorial presentation of such 
 an object. 
 
 There are many different degrees of visual pleasure : 
 iridescent glass, the changing lights of jewels, masses 
 
 73
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 of gold and color, the mere splendor of gold itself, 
 and of "pure color unspoiled by meaning," are 
 pleasant to look upon and possess intrinsic charm 
 and value, a charm which appeals to the savage and 
 the child as well as to the aesthetically cultivated, and 
 which is " un vexed by thought." 
 
 There is joy for the eye as well in beautiful ob- 
 jects which are more highly differentiated, wherein 
 color is wedded to design ; in glistening tissues and 
 in dusky webs of Oriental needlework, and in intri- 
 cate mazes of tooling and damascening. 
 
 But there is a still sensuous but higher delight 
 higher in the sense that it demands far more of the 
 beholder as well as of the artist in color subordi- 
 nated to form and meaning. It is undeniable that 
 a nobler quality of appreciation is required to admire 
 Titian's Flora or Veronese's Family of Darius than 
 to appreciate a Persian tile or an Indian carpet. 
 
 It is to the more primitive aesthetic sense that the 
 Sienese painter appeals. He was a cunning crafts- 
 man in the use of the gilder's tools. He could chase 
 and damascene the most labyrinthine and exquisite 
 of patterns. He had an Oriental's feeling for textile 
 design and a goldsmith's love of minute and elabo- 
 rate ornament. His inventiveness, limited to acces- 
 sories, manifested itself in his treatment of them. 
 
 The undeveloped artist unable to paint beautiful 
 pictures loves to paint beautiful things, things 
 
 74
 
 SIENA 
 
 beautiful in themselves, and he offers them (quite 
 unconsciously) as substitutes for competent painting. 
 Madonna's face may be a flat mask, her body a 
 simulacrum, but her halo and mantle-clasp modelled 
 in plaster, gilded and stuck on to the painted panel, 
 will be admirably designed. The painter limited in 
 his powers of expression gathers into his picture 
 the material which in real life pleases him and his 
 townsfolk, substituting suggestion for plastic reali- 
 zation. It is indisputable that suggestion is more 
 stimulating to the art critic than actual pictorial 
 achievement, which, possessing the means of complete 
 expression, stands in far less need of being helped 
 out, interpreted, and expounded than the imperfect 
 or undeveloped work of art which is necessarily 
 obliged to leave much to the imagination of the 
 spectator. In the last instance the field is open 
 to individual interpretation and for the formulation 
 of theories. 
 
 The inarticulate work of art appeals to the critic ; 
 he " discovers " it, pleads for it, reveals it. Indeed, 
 he soon ceases to see it objectively, and it often ap- 
 pears to him only through the medium which his 
 own fancy has created. Why has so much been 
 written about Botticelli and so little about Donatello ? 
 Why is Simone Martini more stimulating to eloquence 
 than Veronese ? Because Donatello and Veronese 
 deliver their own message, while Botticelli and Mar- 
 
 75
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 tini are tentatively struggling for expression. The 
 master-craftsmen need no apologists, and offer no 
 handle to facile criticism. The impotent or imper- 
 fect Sienese painters, on the contrary, afford un- 
 limited opportunity for the onlooker to do a little 
 painting on his own account by the exercise of his 
 own fancy. 
 
 The amateur is also apt to mistake rudimentary 
 presentation of pictorial material for the voluntary 
 simplification of such material The eminently com- 
 petent selection of the essential and the elimination 
 of the non-essential is not easily distinguished by 
 the untrained in such matters from the incomplete- 
 ness which is the result of incompetence. Four- 
 teenth-century " simplicity " is not the same thing 
 as sixteenth-century generalization. The Sienese 
 triptychs have a specious air of intentional limita- 
 tion; their gorgeousness in color and ornament, their 
 undeniable decorativeness, have been accepted as 
 decoration, which is a very different thing. Their 
 shortcomings, lack of solidity and of construction, 
 to the eye of the practitioner, are those to which 
 the man of letters was most indulgent in the days 
 when "expression" and "feeling" were sought rather 
 than values and " enveloppement." 
 
 Perhaps it is also because this Sienese painting 
 affords a tempting opportunity for the establishment 
 of a rival cultus to that of the positive and realistic 
 
 76
 
 SIENA 
 
 Florentines. There are Aristideses in art and litera- 
 ture, and some critics weary of hearing Giotto called 
 "the Just." 
 
 Finally, to analyze or define the enduring charm 
 of a world-famous picture is a form of mental exer- 
 cise ; to rhapsodize over a Sano di Pietro or a Matteo 
 di Giovanni, to ascribe spiritual significance and mys- 
 tic meaning to works which are pictorially insignifi- 
 cant, is an inexpensive form of mental dissipation. 
 
 There is, on the other hand, no doubt that Siena 
 produced great artists. But she possessed no great 
 school, and the individuality which manifested itself 
 so turbulently in municipal and domestic life ceased 
 to express itself, with the notable exception of 
 Jacopo della Quercia, in the fine arts at an early 
 period of their development. The hand of tradi- 
 tion lay too heavily on her painters, and the history 
 of Sienese painting may be written in three words : 
 Duccio, Martini, Lorenzetti. 
 
 Thanks to the labors of Milanesi in the store- 
 house of Sienese archives, wherein are preserved all 
 the contracts made by the republic since the twelfth 
 century, we can calculate to a soldo what Simone 
 Martini and Arnbrogio Lorenzetti were paid for 
 their work, and lynx-eyed modern criticism has dis- 
 covered that frescoes long ascribed to them were 
 done by other hands; but of the personality of 
 Simone, Petrarch's friend and painter of Madonna 
 
 77
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 Laura ; of the character of Lorenzetti, whom Vasari 
 records as leading the life of a gentleman and a 
 philosopher rather than that of an artist; of the 
 life of Duccio da Buoninsegna, the first master to 
 show "feeling" and "expression" in his heads, we 
 know little save their names and their work. 
 
 But their work remains to praise them. Duccio's 
 altar-piece, hidden for many years in a closet in the 
 Opera del Duomo, is now placed where it can be 
 seen and studied. Does it justify the opinion of 
 those who consider Duccio a rival of Giotto, or has 
 the Florentine still the cry ? Take the best known 
 of Duccio's compositions which through photography 
 and engraving have become familiar to us : the Three 
 Maries at the Tomb or the Betrayal of Christ, and 
 place them beside Giotto's Death of Saint Francis 
 or the Banquet of Herod. 
 
 The two masters are absolutely different in char- 
 acter. Duccio derives directly from the Byzantines. 
 One would not be surprised to find his figures in a 
 manuscript of the time of Alexander Severus by 
 some illuminator who, though not as skilful as those 
 iconographic sculptors who filled out the series of 
 imperial busts, was nevertheless full of feeling for 
 subtle beauty and graceful movement. Giotto is a 
 pioneer, an innovator. In his paintings the medi- 
 aeval Italian enters art as a pictured presence, not 
 as the larva of the missal, but the real, living man 
 
 78
 
 SIENA 
 
 OPERA DEL DUOMO 
 
 DUCCIO DI BUONINSEGNA 
 
 THE KISS OF JUDAS
 
 SIENA 
 
 of the Novelle of Sacchetti. Imagine a Eavennese 
 mosaic freed from its rigidity and made supple, the 
 color somewhat blackened, the faces human and 
 pleasing, and you have Duccio's figures. His art 
 was born in the catacombs and bred at Mont Athos. 
 Giotto's is a robust son of the people and of the 
 busy battle-filled fourteenth century. Duccio lin- 
 gers in the court of the Byzantine palace, but 
 Giotto shoulders aside the gilded praetorian at its 
 gate and goes out into the fields. Duccio is the de- 
 scendant of the gentleman of the old Empire, with 
 his refinement and his limitations. Giotto is the 
 mediaeval peasant, with all the peasant's vigor and 
 capacity for continued effort. In some respects, 
 Duccio surpasses Giotto, notably in subtlety of feel- 
 ing for beauty in his heads and in a certain delicacy 
 of sentiment, but Giotto is immeasurably Duccio's 
 superior in inventiveness, in dramatic feeling, in 
 composition, and, above all, in solidity. Duccio, for 
 all his power and science, is still Byzantine. Taken 
 altogether, Duccio is as distinctly a phenomenon as 
 Giotto, but he is a phenomenon which closes an 
 era, a sudden flash of flame springing high above 
 the environment of all his fellows, but going out 
 into darkness, whereas Giotto's is a steadily waxing 
 light, the harbinger of the morning, indeed the day 
 itself come to irradiate Italy and the world. 
 
 This cumulation which counts Giotto as an initial 
 79
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 force is so impressive to the student of art history 
 that he is apt to slight Duccio as a phenomenon, 
 but a little thought and study soon cause him to be 
 regarded as almost as puzzling a survival as Giotto 
 is a surprising precursor. Giotto, deriving from 
 Giovanni Pisano, and from every other sound and 
 progressive artistic influence of his time, is far more 
 important than Duccio, but hardly more astonishing. 
 If Giotto by strength, solidity, simplicity of feeling, 
 clearness of vision, overtops his fellow painters and 
 translates the vigor and dignity of Giovanni Pisano's 
 marbles on the flat surface of wall or panel into a 
 far freer and nobler composition, Duccio too has so 
 bettered all his instructors that he in turn seems 
 phenomenal. 
 
 Every great artist is more or less of a Janus, 
 looking backward to his master and his master's 
 master, and forward to a future of personal progress. 
 Duccio looks only backward, but how far he looks, 
 how clearly he sees, and beside him what blind bun- 
 glers are the monk-bred painters, his contemporaries, 
 when they strive to learn from Byzantine illumination, 
 mosaic, or ivory carvings ! Much has been written, 
 and well written, about Duccio's feeling for expres- 
 sion, for pathos, for poignant presentation of heart- 
 stirring scenes ; what is even more worthy of note 
 is a technical knowledge and capacity which (always 
 relatively considered) are amazing. Look at the 
 
 80
 
 SIENA 
 
 delicate feet and hands of his apostles ; study their 
 faces, which are not only differentiated but individ- 
 ualized, and sometimes almost skilful in drawing. 
 Their painter saw over the heads of his contempora- 
 ries far back into the times of those great forefathers 
 of whom he is the unique descendant ; it is as 
 though Duccio turned monkish Latin into the 
 language of Claudian. 
 
 In elegance, grace, subtlety of feature, slender- 
 ness of proportion, Duccio excels ; in vitality, in 
 freedom of thought, as well as in robust solidity 
 and noble simplicity of composition, Giotto leaves 
 him hopelessly behind, for if Duccio is the final 
 efflorescence of the old, Giotto is the blossom of the 
 new art. 
 
 Petrarch, the first of the literary admirers of the 
 Sienese school, wrote in a friendly rather than a 
 judicial spirit the oft-quoted lines : " I have known 
 two excellent artists, Giotto of Florence and Simone 
 of Siena," for the latter with all his exquisite crafts- 
 manship, his feeling for grace and sweetness and 
 splendor, is by no means the equal of the great 
 Florentine. These two painters represent the male 
 and female principle in the art of the fourteenth 
 century: Giotto robust, dramatic, daring; Simone 
 delicate, conservative, poetic. Both of them are 
 intensely sincere ; both, if judged superficially, very 
 similar, because controlled by the conventionalities 
 VOL. i. 6 81
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 of the trecento. But compare one of the great 
 frescoes of Giotto in the lower church of Assisi, or 
 the Arena Chapel at Padua, with the lunette of 
 Simone which fills one end of the main hall in the 
 Palazzo Pubblico of Siena. Giotto, like a trecento 
 Eaphael or Michelangelo, has thrown aside all 
 superfluous ornament ; Simone's fresco, on the other 
 hand, is an expanded miniature, yet it is grand and 
 lovely at once, and a very ideal decoration, intensely 
 decorative to its every detail 
 
 But how inferior to Giotto in simplicity and 
 directness of composition are the frescoes in the 
 church of St. Francis at Assisi, and how much more 
 out of drawing than the least skilful of the Tuscan 
 master's are the half length figures in the same 
 church, delicate, thoughtful, and beautifully rich in 
 color as they are ! Yet in spite of his limitations, 
 Simone is the worthy Sienese counterpart of the 
 Florentine, standing to him in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury in something the same relation that Botticelli 
 bears to Ghirlandajo a hundred years later, with 
 this difference their positions are reversed, Giotto 
 is greater than Martini, Botticelli greater than 
 Ghirlandajo, or at any rate more individual. 
 
 The portrait of Laura which, if we may believe 
 Vasari, Simone painted for Petrarch while he was in 
 Avignon has disappeared. More by far than its 
 original charm has come down to us in the two 
 
 82
 
 SIENA 
 
 sonnets which the grateful lover addressed to the 
 artist. In Simone's time, portraiture, in the modern 
 sense of the word, did not exist ; the epoch of the 
 portrait in the evolution of Italian art had not yet 
 come, nor did it arrive until a century later. The 
 authentic so-called portraits of the fourteenth cen- 
 tury have little more than an archaeological value. 
 The painter might reproduce such obvious peculiari- 
 ties as the cut of the hair and beard, the dress and 
 headgear ; these pictures are valuable to the student 
 of costume and of general types, and are indispen- 
 sable to the arcb.eologist in all matters of identifi- 
 cation and date ; but the artist had not arrived at 
 a point where he was able to individualize and char- 
 acterize the features sufficiently to give a portrait any 
 artistic or historical value. Simone was undoubtedly 
 able to paint a head for Petrarch which represented 
 the type of woman to which Laura belonged. Her 
 blue eyes and her golden hair, her green velvet gown 
 and the general aspect of a handsome gentlewoman 
 of the fourteenth century, it was in the painter's 
 power to render. But the picture not only satisfied 
 but delighted Petrarch, and lovers are close observers 
 of the face that is dearest to them and stern critics 
 of attempts to reproduce its charm. Would Laura's 
 poet, he who had lingered so lovingly on every detail 
 of her " divina sembianza" have been transported by 
 a mere general presentation, a kind of " ideal " head of 
 
 83
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 the pretty woman of the epoch ? To this objection we 
 may answer that Petrarch's opportunities of seeing 
 his adored lady had been comparatively few; that 
 Laura's image had become generalized in Petrarch's 
 mind, and that he saw the actual woman through a 
 kind of luminous mist created by his own unfulfilled 
 desire, and by the spiritual aspirations which he had 
 gradually habituated himself to associate with the 
 thought of her. When we remember also that men 
 seldom see in things plastic more than what they 
 are taught to see, and that realism in art was as yet 
 unknown, it is not so difficult to understand Petrarch's 
 enthusiasm over Simone's picture. 
 
 Simone, as is natural enough in a pupil of Duccio, 
 holds fast to the gold and purple of imperial tradi- 
 tion; he is under the shadow of the sceptre of 
 Byzantium, and cannot win free. The spell of the 
 effete, luxurious old civilization is on him. M. 
 Lafenestre calls him "an exquisite, delighting in 
 jewels of price and embroidered stuffs, an archae- 
 ologist borrowing liberally from antique costumes 
 and accessories." He manipulates this elegant detail 
 easily and gracefully ; to the taste for magnificence 
 which he shares with all the artists of the Sienese 
 school, he adds poetic feeling, and no painter of 
 his day has rendered so winsomely the type which 
 for a thousand years had incarnated man's desire for 
 beauty. 
 
 84
 
 SIENA 
 
 His long-eyed, full-lipped Madonnas, jewelled like 
 reliquaries, are gentler and sweeter sisters of the 
 Empress Theodora. His narrow-lidded, aquiline pro- 
 files, anatomically absurd as they are, are potent to 
 suggest beauty, and the puissance of such suggestion 
 is not counteracted in the layman by the knowledge 
 of the construction which Simone lacks. 
 
 Delicate, subtile profiles of Egyptian goddesses cut 
 in lowest relief on dusky temple walls; Javanese 
 dancers glancing sidewise under long eyelids tinged 
 with kohl ; slender, languid Coptic girls praying in 
 the churches of Fostat, such are the memories 
 evoked by Simone' s frescoes at Assisi and his "Ma- 
 jesty " in Siena. Indefinable yet penetrating is the 
 Oriental influence, subtle as the scent of jasmine or 
 sandal-wood which clings to the webs of Eastern 
 looms. 
 
 Yet Simone is the child of the middle ages as well 
 as the heir of Byzantium. They have dowered him 
 with tenderness and sweetness, and he paints his 
 Madonna "with a difference." His frescoes of the 
 legend of Saint Martin might serve as illustrations 
 (in the noblest sense) to some mediaeval romance 
 of chivalry, and his " Arming of the Knight " was 
 painted with Folgore da Gimignano's sonnets under 
 his eyes. The figures of his virgins and saints are 
 visible signs of the changes that chivalry and Chris- 
 tianity had effected in the Byzantine ideal of femi- 
 
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 nine beauty. It was not enough that Madonna 
 should be stately, she must be compassionate as 
 well ; antique serenity was softened into gentleness, 
 the physical perfection of Blessed Virgins and the 
 holy women should not only fill the eye, it must 
 intenerire il cuore. Sentiment, gentilezza di ciwre, 
 expression and mannered grace were what an emo- 
 tional, fervent society wanted, and what Simone 
 could express by delicate modifications and individ- 
 ual treatment of the old conventions. He bent the 
 proudly erect head of the Byzantine Madonna, and 
 turned it slightly sideways, and he elongated the 
 face, giving it a more delicate oval He lengthened 
 and slightly raised the lower eyelids, thus lending 
 to the eyes themselves the soft languor that the 
 Greek sculptors never failed to give to the statues 
 of Aphrodite. Thus was the dignified, Pagan patri- 
 cian of the Ravennese mosaics transformed into 
 the pensive, yearning, and, it must be confessed, 
 sometimes petulant Madonna of the triptychs. It is a 
 far cry from Queen Dido to Queen Iseult of Ireland, 
 from Cornelia to Griselda; but it is hardly longer 
 than from Our Lady of San Apollinare in Eavenna 
 to Our Lady of the Palazzo Pubblico. 
 
 The third artist of the trio, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, 
 is the most robust of the early Sienese masters. He 
 is almost massive in his great decoration of the 
 Municipal town hall, " Good and Bad Government," 
 
 86
 
 SIENA 
 
 though on the same wall he proves, if not the flexi- 
 bility of his genius, at least the catholicity of his 
 taste in his readiness to look with as favoring eyes 
 as Niccolk Pisano's own upon the antique, and to 
 paint a Pax which reclines with as much freedom 
 of movement as the Hera-Madonna on the Pisan 
 pulpit. 
 
 In this vast composition there is nothing of the 
 suavity and languid grace of Martini. Simone 
 spangles his fresco with shining ornament till his 
 saints seem so many mediaeval Buckinghams shaking 
 jewels from their garments. Lorenzo's frescoed folk 
 are soberly, even severely suited ; but Ambrogio, like 
 Simone, is a poet, though he speaks more gravely, and 
 he is a scholar, too, whose classical references make 
 Simone's archaeological paraphernalia seem almost 
 coquettish. Ambrogio is sturdily simple where 
 Simone is precieux, and robust where Simone is deli- 
 cate, or even slightly affected. 
 
 In considerations of this kind, we must constantly 
 bear in mind that these painters are primitive mas- 
 ters ; that many of their qualities must be considered 
 as purely relative ; that correct drawing was to them 
 an unknown quantity ; that skilful modelling was as 
 yet unattainable, and that they ignored anatomy, and 
 were innocent of any knowledge of perspective. The 
 portrait also did not exist in the trecento (despite the 
 assertions of those eager friars whose proprietary in- 
 
 87
 
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 terest prompts them to find Laura and Petrarch, 
 Dante and the Duke of Athens, ritratti autentissimi, 
 on their church walls). 
 
 Yet it must be conceded that Lorenzetti, like 
 Duccio and Martini, possessed qualities that were as 
 positive as possible : virility, simplicity, dignity ; his 
 decoration in the Palazzo Pubblico, in which ethical 
 significance is united to feeling for monumental mass 
 and line and sensitiveness to human beauty, is the 
 most impressive production of any native Sienese 
 painter. The character of Lorenzetti's genius is well 
 defined by the terms Antoninus employed in the 
 description of his ideal being: "masculine, adult, 
 political, a ruler, and a servant of the gods."
 
 IV 
 
 THE triad of masters left no successors, and for more 
 than a hundred years Sienese painting remained sta- 
 tionary. The condition of arrested development into 
 which the G-iotteschi sunk after the death of Giotto 
 bade fair to become perennial in Siena. 
 
 The energy of her painters was diverted into other 
 avenues. They became active politicians, sometimes 
 party leaders, and their lives were as dramatic as 
 their works were contemplative. A political career 
 then exacted considerable expenditure of vital force, 
 and but little remained for the pursuit of new meth- 
 ods in painting. Swaggering individualism is a very 
 different thing from personality, and it is not sur- 
 prising that the political activity and the revolu- 
 tionary ardor of the painter-demagogues were only 
 equalled by the intensity of their artistic conserva- 
 tism. They are unique figures in the history of art 
 and manners, and deserve a brief notice in any study 
 of Siena. 
 
 Apparently it was not until after the great plague 
 had levelled all ranks (1348), and the rise of the 
 popular party, that the painters dropped the brush 
 for the sword, and began to march under the banners 
 
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 they had painted. Sons o^ the people, members of 
 one of the lesser crafts, they were naturally factors 
 in the political revolutions of 1368 and 1483, and 
 were not only democrats but demagogues. Docu- 
 ments show us a certain type of populist painter di- 
 recting public affairs, age after age, like that Andrea 
 Vanni who was a correspondent of Saint Catherine. 
 He expelled the nobles in 1368, was ambassador to the 
 Florentines and to the Pope, became architect of the 
 Duomo and Captain of the People ; at the same time 
 he followed his profession, painting the gonfalon of 
 liberty for the Kepublic and the portrait of Saint 
 Catherine now in San Domenico, setting the blazon 
 of the Duke of Milan on the public palace, and filling 
 orders for altar-pieces. 
 
 The Demos in Siena was a good art patron to the 
 artist-partisans and a cruel master to a political 
 opponent, as Jacopo della Quercia found to his cost. 
 The government had plenty of commissions to be- 
 stow, and we find a political agitator like Benvenuto 
 di Giovanni illuminating the choir-books of the 
 cathedral and decorating the cupola ; a practical 
 politician, Giovanni Cini, painted the standard of 
 Liberty, and forty years later, still in favor, restored 
 his own work, which had been roughly handled. 
 After the victory of Camellia, where he had fought 
 as flag-bearer of his quarter, he was chosen to paint 
 the votive picture which commemorated the triumph 
 
 90
 
 SIENA 
 
 of the Eepublic. It would be tedious to multiply 
 examples : all through the history of Siena the 
 artist is prominent as magistrate, innovator, soldier, 
 often as conspirator. Even in the sixteenth century, 
 when the older type of the citizen-painter was else- 
 where supplanted by the court-painter, the Sienese 
 still remained the turbulent burgher. 
 
 The biography of Pacchiarotto, one of the last of 
 the native artists, reads like a romance of the 
 French Eevolution. He was in every tumult ; when 
 in 1520 the city was convulsed by an outbreak of 
 party hatred, he was one of the faction which 
 strangled Alessandro Bichi in the archbishop's 
 palace, defeated the Pope's troops at Camollia, and 
 defied Clement VII. by tearing the bull launched 
 against Siena. Through him we have a glimpse of 
 the populist clubs, those hot-beds of lawlessness. 
 At first a member of the Libertini, he became later 
 a leader of the Bardotti (the scot free), composed 
 of Socialists or rather Communists of an advanced 
 type, which for some time terrorized the town. 
 
 The Bardotti, who called Saint Catherine their 
 patroness, met on Sundays to read Livy's Eoman 
 History, or Macchiavelli's Art of War, and to perfect 
 themselves in fencing, for every man was bound to 
 defend the institution at the sword's point, and to 
 challenge any one who spoke ill of it. Apparently 
 they fenced to some purpose, for the insolence of 
 
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 these swashbucklers became so unbearable that the 
 magistrates broke up the club. Pacchiarotto was 
 imprisoned, ruined, exiled from Siena, with a price 
 upon his head and a promise of a free pardon to 
 whomsoever should put him to death. While trying 
 to reach the church of the Osservanza for sanctuary, 
 to escape pursuit he was forced to hide himself for 
 two nights and days in a tomb with a corpse. After 
 many other misadventures, he died in poverty and 
 exile. Unfortunately, his most remarkable work has 
 perished ; on the walls of his own room he painted a 
 multitude of figures kneeling, bowing, and prostrat- 
 ing themselves in various attitudes of deference and 
 admiration. Here, surrounded by the homage so 
 stimulating to the orator, amid a silence which was 
 equally grateful, he rehearsed his political speeches, 
 and triumphantly confuted his opponents' argu- 
 ments. This art-work of poor Pacchiarotto may 
 commend itself to a later age, an age of many clubs 
 and over-much oratory, of willing talkers and re- 
 luctant listeners. 
 
 The ardent temperament which urged the artist 
 into public life sometimes sought other forms of 
 expression, and the Sienese painters were often zeal- 
 ous devotees. Many of them were workers in the 
 noblest of the city's charities, the great hospital. 
 Vecchietta left all his property to it, and Matteo di 
 Giovanni, painter of hideous massacres, had charge
 
 SIENA 
 
 of a ward there, and is styled " il fervoroso fratello " 
 in the records. 
 
 But the painter-saint of Siena, the " Pictor famosus 
 et homo totus deditus Deo" was Sano di Pietro ; he 
 was a gentle spirit moving quietly among those sons 
 of Thunder, his fellow craftsmen. Some of the 
 scanty records of his blameless life are pathetic: 
 thus the books of the parish prove that though very 
 poor, with a wife and three little children to support, 
 he had adopted an orphan "for the love of God." 
 Sano, whose life was " one long hymn to the Virgin," 
 was an innovator in his way ; while the fire-eaters 
 were as conservative in art as they were radical in 
 politics. 
 
 To the readers of Eio and Lindsay, to the student 
 of the evolution of art, the gallery of Siena pos- 
 sesses a unique interest. To the lovers of painting 
 who admire a dexterous or scientific manipulation 
 of material, or a pictorial and personal treatment of 
 well known subjects, it will not appeal. 
 
 The first bewildered question it suggests is, where 
 were the eyes of those art writers who compared 
 this gallery with those of Florence, and who con- 
 sidered the Sienese as rivals of the early Florentine 
 masters ? The dates of the pictures show that these 
 men were in the nursery, stumbling over the rudi- 
 ments, while Filippino and Ghirlandajo and Botti- 
 
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 celli were painting their frescoes. No wonder that 
 the Sienese held fast to the Lombard Bazzi when 
 he came a- visiting. Until then (1501) they had not 
 seen an artist who had mastered his material 
 
 While the Florentines were unearthing antiquity, 
 discovering the laws of perspective, drawing from 
 the nude and studying anatomy, their Sienese con- 
 temporaries were tranquilly copying Byzantine 
 motives. The artists of Siena, dear to the writers 
 on so-called Christian art, never passed through a 
 period of experiment and investigation ; they never 
 originated, but were imitators, always taking their 
 knowledge at second-hand, following, first, the Byzan- 
 tine tradition, and later, the Roman school under 
 Sodoma's influence ; leaping at once from immatur- 
 ity in Francesco di Giorgio and Matteo di Giovanni 
 to decadence in Beccafumi and Peruzzi. 
 
 What then was their contribution to art ? 
 
 The Sienese painter, as we have already seen, de- 
 tached the Byzantine mosaic from the wall of the 
 basilica ; borrowing the old motives and types, he 
 translated them into painting and produced the 
 altar-piece. This triptych or diptych, which was not 
 only set over the shrine, but found its way into 
 oratory and bedchamber also, brought art into 
 contact with daily life. He vivified Madonna ; 
 the stern, black-browed goddess of the churches of 
 Ravenna became a gracious, fair-haired lady; the 
 
 94
 
 SIENA 
 
 attendant angels, instead of standing stiffly on either 
 side of the golden throne, grew graceful and sup- 
 pliant ; the rigid, staring saints unbent a trifle, and 
 occasionally there was an attempt at a dramatic 
 gesture or a tender expression. Working in a more 
 flexible medium, freedom of treatment grew little by 
 little, until the painter had loosened the golden 
 fetters of Byzantium and Art began to move. He 
 could only loosen them, however. He still clung to 
 the old forms for the brave soldier, the daring poli- 
 tician, was a timid conservative in his studio. Why, 
 after taking the first step, did he stop short? Why, 
 after having attained dramatic expression with 
 Duccio, grace with Simone Martini, and grandeur 
 with Lorenzetti, did he not march on with Giotto, 
 with Masaccio and Lippo ? Why, for two hundred 
 years, did he move in a vicious circle ? 
 
 The answer to this question may be found in a 
 glance at the environment of the painter. 
 
 In Siena the two influences which powerfully 
 affected Florentine art, the scholar's enthusiasm for 
 antique beauty, the burgher's love of facts and ex- 
 act detail, were lacking. Out of these apparently 
 conflicting tendencies grew the great art of Florence 
 and the Renaissance based on the study of antique 
 sculpture and the observation of nature. But if 
 Hellenism and shop-keeping obtained in Florence, 
 mysticism and free-booting were characteristic of 
 
 95
 
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 Siena ; she was as proud of her saints and her popes 
 as her rival was of her poets and her historians and 
 her woollens; the intelligent curiosity, the love of 
 scholarship, the keen appetite for knowledge of the 
 Florentine, were in the Sienese replaced by an 
 ardent piety and an equally keen appetite for pleas- 
 ure. The positive common-sense and the burgher 
 virtues of Florence were despised in credulous and 
 impassioned Siena. She had spurned antique beauty, 
 and although two great sculptors, Jacopo della 
 Quercia and Vecchietta, called Siena home, they had 
 no influence apparently on her painters. Nor did 
 these painters study Nature, for their environment 
 acted upon them in a yet more direct and practical 
 way. What the pious and unlettered Sienese re- 
 quired of them were images of devotion, not objects 
 of art, something to pray to, not to criticise, a vision 
 of Paradise, not a glimpse of every-day life. 
 
 From the collection of altar-pieces in the gallery, 
 we can form a very clear idea of how the painters 
 supplied this want. 
 
 The triptych was a favorite form, a Maesth, or 
 Majesty (i. e. a Madonna and child sitting in state 
 surrounded by saints and angels) the most popular 
 subject. The Virgin, as befitted the sovereign of 
 Siena, is always represented as an aristocrat, a po- 
 tentate, a feudal princess. The Coronation and 
 Assumption are painted again and again, but we 
 
 96
 
 SIENA 
 
 INSTITUTE OF FINE ARTS 
 
 BENVENUTO DI GIOVANNI 
 ANCONA
 
 SIENA 
 
 look in vain for a Nativity, an Adoration of the 
 Shepherds, or of the Magi, subjects dear to the 
 Umbrian and Florentine schools. 
 
 " To the Sienese the golden background was 
 always inseparable from a devotional picture," 
 wrote Eio in his " Art Chretien" adding, " this 
 must not be attributed to the narrowness of their 
 views, but to the extreme orthodoxy of their taste." 
 The background then behind the Queen of Heaven 
 is of dazzling, unshaded gold, wonderful intricate 
 patternings wander over the jewelled robes, real 
 gems shine in the " rich fret of gold " on Madonna's 
 head, the Saints are gorgeous in surcoats " embroid- 
 ered like a mead," and the peacock-winged angels 
 are no whit less fine. The Sienese had given the 
 Byzantine Madonna life ; the naturalistic Florentines 
 made her human. They took the diadem from her 
 brows ; they despoiled her of her regal robes ; they 
 bade her rise and walk. In their hands, the be- 
 jewelled patrician became a proud young mother ; 
 the divine Child, the little jointed puppet who sat 
 stiffly blessing a contemplating universe, a human 
 baby who played and crowed and wondered at his 
 own dimples, while meek Saint Joseph, who in 
 Eavenna and Siena was banished altogether from 
 the celestial court, enjoyed a sort of honorary 
 Papaship, and helped the dear little attendant 
 angels, just out of the nursery, to mind the baby. 
 VOL. i. 7 97
 
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 In a word, the Holy Family became the Human 
 Family. 
 
 The Florentine treatment of secondary figures, 
 the introduction of portraits, of domestic animals, 
 man's humbler brothers in the Presepio ; the land- 
 scape backgrounds with their flower-enamelled 
 meadows and winding streams, were almost as 
 distasteful to the Sienese devotee as was the vul- 
 garization of the Madonna. There was no feeling 
 for out-door Nature in the gilded altar-piece ; there 
 a Midas touch had turned the flowers to goldsmith's 
 work, and stiffened the glistening robes on the rigid 
 limbs. Occasionally an artist made a timid effort 
 to acquire a freer manner ; but he was too weak to 
 persevere, and he soon returned to the type that 
 " extreme orthodoxy of taste," which was such 
 a different thing from " narrowness of views," had 
 fixed for him. Thus deprived of the influence of 
 antiquity, of the study of Nature, nothing remained 
 but the Byzantine tradition qualified by touches 
 of personality in unimportant details, and Sano di 
 Pietro was considered an innovator because he painted 
 round, instead of almond-shaped eyes. 
 
 And yet in these pictures, with their flaring gold 
 and ultramarine, their plaster crowns and applied 
 ornaments, there is an unmistakable decorative 
 quality. There are exquisite conventional designs 
 in the halos and orfrays, and in the heads a certain 
 
 98
 
 SIENA 
 
 stiff grace and awkward tenderness which possess 
 undeniable charm, a charm which appeals even to 
 those who do not believe that a painter's feeling is 
 always in the inverse ratio to his technical ability, 
 and that the absence of knowledge implies the 
 presence of sentiment. 
 
 With the dawn of the sixteenth century Pinturic- 
 chio, the Umbrian, and Bazzi, the Lombard, came 
 to Siena, and the artists and their patrons awoke 
 to a comprehension of the grand, free art of the 
 Eenaissance and " orthodoxy of taste," and golden 
 " Majesties " vanished forever into the limbo of 
 things that were. 
 
 99
 
 AND what manner of men were they, the patrons for 
 whom these solemn altar-pieces were painted, for 
 whom Madonna must be glued fast to her throne, 
 and the divine Child stiffly displayed in his jewelled 
 robes like the Sacrament in its monstrance ? 
 
 What was the theory of life, the moral standard, 
 the ideal of these buyers of gilded triptychs ? 
 
 These are difficult questions to answer, and com- 
 plex as were the Sienese, it were easier to define 
 their dominant trait, i. e. intensity ; their overflowing 
 vitality wreaked itself on so many different forms of 
 effort, the old volcanic fire ran in the veins of sinner 
 and saint, now devouring and destroying, now rising 
 in a pure flame, but glowing alike in ascetic, patriot, 
 and sybarite. Austere as the brown town looked 
 on its bare hill-top, it was famed for delicate living, 
 and the novels of Illicini and Sermini, the poems 
 of Beccadelli and Folgore, depict an artificial and 
 corrupt society given over to pleasure-seeking, a 
 society which, though elegant and luxurious, lacked 
 the principles of true refinement. It possessed 
 neither moderation, self-control, nor mental poise ; 
 under the veneer of courtesy and high-flown senti- 
 100
 
 ments, were the untamed instincts, the puerile super- 
 stitions of ruder times, ready to break bounds at any 
 moment. The young knight who bore down all the 
 lances in the tourney, and looked a very Saint Mi- 
 chael as he knelt in the cathedral, would burn and 
 slay like a brutal mercenary, and the youth who 
 fasted until he fainted in Lent, and tore his bare 
 shoulders with the scourge, would serenade his 
 neighbor's wife at Easter. 
 
 The time not spent in praying and fighting was 
 passed in a joyous fashion ; the fingers that could grasp 
 the sword-hilt and count the chaplet, were cunning 
 at the lute strings. Pleasant sinning led naturally 
 to unpleasant repenting. After a season of long 
 prayers and short commons, ginger was hotter than 
 ever in the mouth, and they who had plunged deep- 
 est in the emotional excesses of penitence were fore- 
 most in brawl or revel. Nor was this surprising. 
 The exercise of certain forms of piety is apt to co- 
 exist with worldliness, and religious aspiration is not 
 necessarily associated with moral rectitude. The 
 rigid observance of formulae was no restriction on 
 impulse or desire, and the Sienese undoubtedly 
 repeated his morning prayer before going out to sack 
 his neighbor's house. 
 
 And he was not merely a fighter and a free-liver, 
 he was an exquisite as well. " The Sienese are as 
 vain as the French," wrote Dante in the thirteenth 
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 century, and though he was not distinguished for 
 the impartiality of his opinions, the criticism was 
 just. They loved magnificence in dress ; their 
 weakness for millinery left its impress on their art ; 
 they bought the rich brocades which sober Florence 
 manufactured but rarely wore, and no doubt were 
 wont to lie awake o' nights " carving the fashion of 
 a new doublet;" the embroiderers and goldsmiths 
 of Siena were famous throughout Italy, and we can 
 still see their work on the celestial dandies and 
 jewelled saints of the picture gallery. They had a 
 pretty taste for dainty trifles, and imported musical 
 instruments from Germany, pearls and perfumes 
 from Venice, and from France ivory caskets and 
 mirror covers, delicately carved. They curled their 
 hair, and shaped their eyebrows like Chaucer's Ali- 
 son and admired a delicate pallor. Nor were they 
 wanting in mental artifices. When not ferocious, 
 they were courteous ; it was indispensable that a 
 lady should be sentimental, and a little languor was 
 considered becoming to a lover. 
 
 They were fond of novels ; not of the cynical, cruel 
 Florentine tales, but of stories of gentler jests and 
 light loves tinged with dreamy voluptuousness, set in 
 familiar backgrounds of gardens and arras-hung 
 chambers. They had their ethical code too, and 
 agreed " that the three most eminent virtues of a 
 generous nature are courtesy, gratitude, and liber- 
 102
 
 SIENA 
 
 ality." They had but a poor opinion of learning; 
 among all those Greek and Latin manuscripts for 
 which their neighbors, the Florentines, were paying 
 such prices, there was not a single treatise on hawk- 
 ing or dog breaking. The minute and laborious 
 scholarship of the time had as few charms for the 
 devotee, as for the ruffling gallant who was as intel- 
 lectually apathetic as he was physically active. The 
 learned churchman was a rara avis in Siena until 
 the day of ^Eneas Sylvius. Why study with the 
 philosophers when one could dream with the mys- 
 tic ? Why plod with the humanist when one could 
 rise heavenward on the wings of ecstasy with the 
 saint ? 
 
 They were not unaccomplished, however. They 
 could improvise poetry of a thin impressionist qual- 
 ity ; write stories, not well, but in an unprofessional, 
 fashionable manner ; they played and sang " like peo- 
 ple of quality ; " they could dispute or rather argue, 
 as we say now-a-days (though perhaps the older 
 term was the truer one), principally on questions of 
 sentiment, and sometimes even convince a lady that 
 reputation was an excellent substitute for honesty. 
 Pious observances and a fantastic code of honor did 
 not prevent people from enjoying themselves ; on the 
 contrary, these restraints lent piquancy to much that 
 a more liberal age has robbed of savor. 
 
 For a pictorial presentation of Sienese social life,
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 we can turn to a poet of the thirteenth century, 
 Folgore da San Gimignano, who, though a native of 
 the little burg which still wears a civic crown of 
 mediaeval towers, was a true son of luxurious Siena. 
 
 In a series of twelve sonnets addressed to a gay 
 company of Sienese gentlemen, he described with 
 the minuteness characteristic of his age, the pastimes 
 and occupations of the nobles. Each of these son- 
 nets, named after the months of the year, highly 
 finished as the miniatures of a missal-border, is a bril- 
 liant and animated picture of contemporary life. 
 
 In them the joyous company, the " godereccia, 
 spendereccia, brigata " of Dante rides past us, a gay 
 procession so vividly depicted that we seem to see 
 the patternings of the embroidered surcoats, and 
 touch the garlands of spring flowers, and hear the 
 jingling of harness and a sound of psalteries as 
 the cavalcade canters by in the easy swing of the 
 sonnet. 
 
 All travellers have learned, sometimes to their 
 cost, how often it is festa in Italy, and the holidays 
 were twice as numerous in the old times when 
 whole weeks were devoted to merry-making. After 
 the privations and suffering of a campaign or a 
 siege, the good things of life were enjoyed with a 
 keener zest; the very uncertainty of human exist- 
 ence caused men to live in the present and eagerly 
 snatch at each passing joy, and never were earthly 
 104
 
 PISA 
 
 CAMPO SANTO 
 
 FRANCESCO TRAIN! ? 
 
 I GAliDENTI

 
 SIENA 
 
 delights more appreciated than by those who at 
 any moment might be obliged to renounce them 
 forever. 
 
 The great Italian nobles kept open house, corti 
 bandite, at Christmas, Pentecost, Easter, mid-sum- 
 mer, harvest-time, and all through the month of 
 May. To these festivals came not only belted 
 knights with their squires and varlets, their horses, 
 hawks, and hounds, but noble ladies with their 
 pages and bower-maidens ; and every one who could 
 sing a song or tell a story, poet and musician, 
 buffoon and juggler, found a warm welcome, free 
 quarters, and generous largesse. 
 
 It was the busy idleness of these " house-parties " 
 which Folgore described in his year of sonnets. 
 For these past-masters in the art of delicate living, 
 every season had its special diversion, every day its 
 pleasure-party, every evening its revel. In January 
 the " joyous companions " were installed in com- 
 fortable chambers, warmed by roaring fires, and 
 lighted by many torches, where they shook the dice 
 or leaned over the chess-board; while for exercise 
 they snowballed the girls whom they met in their 
 walks. February found them hunting boar and wild 
 goat, returning at night to mulled wine and part- 
 songs before the kitchen fire. In March the fishing 
 season began ; the painted boats skimmed over the 
 lakes, and the larger craft were made ready for rough 
 105
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 weather ; eels, lampreys, and sturgeon were caught, 
 and no priests nor friars were invited to eat them. 
 With April the scene shifted, for the Tuscan spring 
 had come, not coyly and timidly as though loath to 
 leave the lap of winter, but royally, like a sovereign 
 taking possession of the land. On the fine grass of 
 the pleasaunce the Provencal dance was formed ; 
 the ladies sauntered through the flowery ways of 
 blossoming orchards, or cantered on Spanish jennets 
 between budding hedges ; the air was filled with the 
 throbbing of the lute and the sound of young men's 
 voices, while serenades sung the spring nights to 
 sleep. May was a festal month when the girls 
 went a-maymg and youths met in the tourney. 
 The sonnet is as crowded as a wall-panel of Pin- 
 turicchio with detail and color, and is filled with 
 the stir of the joust. The polished shields and 
 shining helms glistened in the southern sunshine ; 
 the lists were gay with brilliant housings and man- 
 tles and pennants; there was shivering of lances, 
 splitting of shields, and the armed breasts and fore- 
 heads of the horses clashed together. Down from 
 balcony and casement, where the girls leaned out, 
 came a shower of garlands ; a flight of golden 
 oranges was tossed up to the assailants, and then 
 there followed much discourse of love, punctuated 
 with kisses on cheek and mouth. 
 
 In June the gay folk retired to a small town 
 106
 
 SIENA 
 
 perched on a wooded hill, a fantastic town like 
 those we see in Pinturicchio's frescoes of the 
 Library, gleaming white among thick-leaved trees, 
 a town watered by many fountains, where the 
 lawns were threaded by streamlets, and the pleasant 
 ways were all embowered with trees, orange, palm, 
 and lemon. In this true believer's paradise, the 
 time was passed in mutual courtesies, for here was 
 Love lord paramount. (Le gente m sian tutte amo- 
 rose.) July was spent in Siena, cooled by the moun- 
 tain breezes and protected against the heat by the 
 thick walls of the palaces, and August was passed in 
 the mountains. In September the shooting season 
 opened. The goshawk shook its jesses, and the 
 falcon rose into the still air; wild fowl were shot 
 and snared; the bowstrings twanged, the dogs 
 strained at their leashes, and the hunters made 
 jests that were ancient in Dante's day. The sonnet 
 is a vividly realized bit of mediaeval venerie, and 
 still faintly echoes the sound of the horn and the 
 thin tinkle of the falcon's bells. In October there 
 was visiting, hunting, and shooting, dancing in the 
 long autumn evenings, and over-much drinking of 
 wine new and old. Painy November sent them to 
 the baths of Petriola, and the last sonnet of the 
 series ends the year with more junketing and a bit 
 of heartless advice. 
 
 Of the beliefs and doubts that were troubling 
 107
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 men's minds, of the great causes that were at work 
 in the thirteenth century, this singer of fashionable 
 frolics and mediaeval finery gives us no hint. He is 
 blind and deaf to the new ideas, the soul-stirring en- 
 thusiasms which filled the intellectual atmosphere 
 and manifested themselves in Protean forms ; which 
 burst into song in Dante, ripened into scientific 
 inquiry in Frederick II., and made wise laws and 
 planned mad crusades in Saint Louis. 
 
 Of the noble ideals, of the divine yearning 
 which inspired the " Iruitatione," of the love that 
 with Beatrice's poet became religion, of the religion 
 that with Saint Francis became love, there is no 
 sign in Folgore's sonnets. He is no full-throated 
 nightingale to celebrate such themes, but only a 
 little grasshopper drunk with honey dew, chirping 
 shrilly of clear skies and plenteous harvests. But 
 his epicureanism never degenerates into coarseness, 
 and although he is too fond of wine-bibbing and 
 good cheer, he is a true Italian in his intense sus- 
 ceptibility to beauty in all its forms. It is interest- 
 ing to note in this forerunner of the Eenaissance 
 the survival of the indomitable joyousness of an- 
 tiquity which had endured through all the storms 
 that swept over Italy. A passionate appreciation 
 of the delight of the eye and of the pride of life 
 is as strong in Folgore as it was in Ovid, as it 
 continued to be in Claudian. 
 
 108
 
 SIENA 
 
 And yet the descendants of these sybarites, pleas- 
 ure seekers themselves, set an example of heroism 
 to Europe ; this luxurious folk, exquisitely suscep- 
 tible to pain, starved to death by thousands rather 
 than sacrifice its civic liberty. It was of these 
 coquettish, squeamish ladies that Monluc wrote, 
 " I would rather undertake to defend Siena with her 
 women than Rome with her men." And if we 
 would learn what human beings can endure for a 
 beloved cause we must read the story of the siege 
 of Siena. It is not a pleasant story; indeed it 
 would be an intolerable one were it not that the 
 chronicle of cruelty and wrong is also a record of 
 supreme self-sacrifice, of torture and agonizing death 
 bravely borne for the sake of an ideal. A natural 
 shrinking from painful and repulsive images would 
 prevent us from opening these hideous pages in the 
 city's archives were it not for the glory as well as 
 the anguish of the civic martyrdom which they 
 reveal. 
 
 109
 
 VI 
 
 IT is difficult to understand this last scene in 
 Siena's civic tragedy without a glance at the events 
 which preceded it. By the middle of the sixteenth 
 century the long struggle of Frenchman and Spaniard 
 for supremacy in the peninsula had ended. Since 
 the victory of Pavia, Charles V. had won every 
 move, and the French king, remembering the prison 
 of Madrid, played his losing game half-heartedly 
 and by proxy. The emperor, with a ferocious, un- 
 paid army at his back, was the true master of the 
 situation. Since his alliance with Pope Clement 
 VII. and his coronation at Bologna (1530), Italy, 
 terrorized by foreign troops and stunned by repeated 
 sacks and massacres, had sunk into political bondage 
 under a foreign monarchy and intellectual thraldom 
 under an elective priesthood. Tyranny, temporal and 
 spiritual, had made a desolation and called it peace. 
 Venice, the only strong Italian power, had been 
 weakened and dismembered by the Holy Father's 
 League of Cambrai; Cosimo de' Medici, richest 
 and most powerful of Italian potentates, new- 
 made duke of rebellious Florence, was a moneyed 
 lackey who paid for the privilege of imperial 
 110
 
 SIENA 
 
 service, and the rest of the states of Italy were 
 nominally governed by puppets moved by the 
 emperor. 
 
 Siena, who had followed her old Ghibelline policy 
 and prostrated herself before Charles V., fared no 
 better than the other Italian towns. 
 
 In 1551 she had been for twenty-one years 
 under the yoke of the emperor, who had ruled, or 
 rather oppressed, the city by a patrician Balia backed 
 by a Spanish garrison. Again and again the burgh- 
 ers, after sending complaints and embassies to the 
 emperor, had risen against these petty despots, and 
 as often Cosimo de' Medici had terrified them into 
 submission again. Finally the erection of a citadel 
 by imperial order, to cow the city gave the death- 
 blow to Sienese Ghibellinism, and in despair the 
 old republic signed a treaty with Henry II. of 
 France. 
 
 In 1551 war broke out in Italy between the 
 French king and Charles V. Hostilities had just 
 begun when two illustrious Sienese exiles, Piccolo- 
 mini and Amerighi, at the head of three thousand 
 insurgents, appeared before the gates of Siena. The 
 brown ramparts were crowded with the burghers 
 who had braved the lance-blows of the Spanish 
 guards to welcome their countrymen. The leaders, 
 riding close under the walls, heedless of the Span- 
 ish fire, called on them to rise against their tyrants 
 111
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 in the name of France and of liberty. Invoked by 
 these mighty names (potent to conjure with in 
 many an age and country) the quenchless spirit of 
 the old republic awoke again; the people rose as 
 one man and, unarmed as they were, stormed the 
 gates, which they opened to their countrymen. 
 Gathering force at every step, the wave of revolt 
 swept into the great market-place, driving the Spanish 
 soldiers before it, rushed through the narrow streets, 
 and surged around the gaunt Dominican convent 
 above Fonte Branda, where the foreign troops were 
 quartered. After much hard fighting the Spaniards 
 gave way and retreated in good order to the citadel, 
 and the Sienese were their own masters once 
 more (1552). 
 
 Rejoicings had not ceased when Louis de Lansac, 
 French ambassador at Rome, arrived in Siena ac- 
 companied by Cardinal Farnese and Niccolo Orsini. 
 To them the Spaniards, too proud to yield to mere 
 Italian burgesses, capitulated, and evacuated the 
 town (August, 1552), leaving the citadel to be de- 
 stroyed. Then occurred one of those dramatic epi- 
 sodes in which the history of the commonwealth 
 was so rich. As we read, the heroic figures detach 
 themselves from the yellowed pages and pass before 
 us in solemn procession. For to these passionate 
 patriots this demolition did not mean only the 
 destruction of a foreign stronghold, it was the 
 112
 
 SIENA 
 
 renunciation of a national ideal, of the emperor 
 whom Siena had loved and served for centuries. 
 Therefore this significant act was accomplished with 
 due ceremony. The captain of the people, the mag- 
 istrates and clergy, the nobles and burghers, crowned 
 with olive, marched under the national standard to 
 the citadel, and after a formal delivery of the keys 
 the trumpets sounded the charge ; from every church 
 tower rolled the answering thunder of the bells ; 
 the knights unbuckled their corselets, the monks 
 tucked up their gowns, the magistrates stripped off 
 their stately lucchi, seized pick and shovel, and with 
 deafening shouts of " France " and " Liberty," which 
 silenced the trumpets and made the bells swing 
 soundless in their towers, the demolition began. 
 " In one hour, more of the fortress on the side of 
 the city was destroyed than could have been re- 
 built in four months." In such joyous fashion 
 ended the first procession of the siege of Siena. 
 There were two more such " progresses " later, less 
 triumphal, perhaps, but more glorious. 
 
 For a time the palmy days of the old republic 
 seemed to have returned. Charles V.'s armies failed 
 to take Montalcino ; Cosimo, always on the winning 
 side, signed a treaty with Siena in which he prom- 
 ised to remain neutral, and the Due de Tormes 
 arrived with troops and military stores from France. 
 The emperor, angry with Cosimo and irritated by 
 VOL. i. 8 113
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 his own failure before Metz, sent a curt order to 
 disband the troops, " as the Duke of Florence was 
 determined to leave the French in Siena." 
 
 But the Duke of Florence wanted neither French- 
 men nor Spaniards in the city he coveted. A true 
 Medici, traitor to the heart's core, hoping for the 
 jackal's reward when the lion was glutted, he had 
 been playing a double game; Charles V.'s resent- 
 ment and the arrival of Piero Strozzi as lieutenant 
 of the King of France in Siena forced him to 
 make his first real move. 
 
 Piero Strozzi's father had been treacherously mur- 
 dered by Cosimo, Piero's own fortune had been 
 confiscated, and a price had been set upon his head. 
 "For revenge he was willing to move heaven and 
 earth, and even hell itself." Eich, high in the favor 
 of the Queen of France, Cosimo's own cousin ; an 
 able general fresh from the victory of Metz; re- 
 spected and admired in Florence, he was a for- 
 midable adversary to be met at once. 
 
 While reassuring the Sienese, Cosimo secretly 
 pledged himself to Charles V. to drive the French 
 from Siena with the help of the emperor's German 
 and Spanish troops. In concert with the Marquis 
 of Marignano he planned to enter the Maremma 
 and the Val-di-Chiana and to capture the fort out- 
 side the Camollia gate simultaneously. The first two 
 enterprises failed, but Marignano took the Palazzo
 
 SIENA 
 
 del Diavolo and the fortress (1554), as the Sienese, 
 completely duped by Cosimo, were quite unpre- 
 pared for resistance. Piero Strozzi, who had been 
 fortifying in the Maremma, hurried back, and the 
 Camollia gate was strengthened with incredible 
 rapidity by the united labor of men, women, and 
 children. 
 
 The Sienese ladies turned this toil into a pageant, 
 to the great admiration of a certain French gentle- 
 man, who fortunately has left a detailed account of 
 the whole affair. This "Vicornte de Bourdeille, 
 Abbe de Brantosme et d'Andre*," then serving in 
 Siena, who was as good a judge of a gown as of 
 a stockade, and knew the points of a fine woman 
 as well as the range of his own arquebuse, saw 
 " on Saint Anthony's day in the month of January 
 three bands of Amazons appear at the Campo." 
 Each band was a thousand strong (toutes lelles, 
 vertueuses et Jionnestes dames], with its own banner, 
 colors, device, and noble leader; all were magnifi- 
 cently habited in violet, crimson, and white a la 
 Nympliale, the long cotes caught up to show 
 the steel greaves; the helmets crushing the curls 
 beneath them in a charming travesty of the grim 
 men-at-arms. Each lady carried a fascine on her 
 shoulder, " and all resolute to live or die for 
 liberty," they marched to the fort which was ris- 
 ing, course on course, under the enemy's guns and 
 115
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 fell to work with a will; the whole city followed 
 them, and the walls rose as if by enchantment. 
 When the sun sank they re-formed in the Campo 
 and, ranged in battle order, sang a hymn to Siena's 
 sovereign Lady ; then, after they had every one knelt 
 a moment before that smiling Madonna which Bazzi 
 set against the rough wall of the old palace and re- 
 ceived the cardinal's blessing, " each one went to his 
 home resolved to do better in the future." 
 
 Meanwhile, in spite of hymns and blessings and 
 Amazons, Marignano, Cosimo's general, had com- 
 pletely blockaded the town, and Cosimo, throwing 
 off the mask, had sent twenty-five thousand men 
 into the field, had set a price of ten thousand 
 ducats on Strozzi's head, and declared his intention 
 of putting every Florentine taken in arms to death. 
 
 The war soon began to assume a ferocious charac- 
 ter owing to the inhuman orders sent from Florence 
 and executed to the letter by Marignano. Strozzi, 
 against his will, was obliged to make reprisals. One of 
 them is characteristic: a popular preacher was em- 
 ployed by the Sienese to pour oil on the flame 
 of hatred by reviling Cosimo in his sermons. 
 
 By March (1554) the country around the town 
 had become an arid desert; villa and farmhouse, 
 orchard and cornfield, had disappeared ; every mill 
 and aqueduct had been destroyed, and the Sienese, 
 penned in the city, had to look on hopelessly while 
 116
 
 SIENA 
 
 the brave peasants who attempted to supply them 
 with food were tortured and hung by Marignano's 
 Spanish and German soldiers. Obsolete cruelties 
 were practised, and the episodes of the siege recall 
 the military atrocities of the fourteenth century. 
 But the perpetrators of these archaic barbarities, 
 the imperial veterans who had learned their hideous 
 lessons too well in the sacks of Rome and of Prato, 
 were met by spirits as fierce and resolute as their 
 own. 
 
 The desperate resistance which they encountered 
 everywhere culminated in that of the old peasant 
 woman who, after the capture of Turrita by Marig- 
 nano, persisted in shrieking " Lupa ! Lupa ! " (the war- 
 cry of Siena), instead of " Duca ! " (that of Florence). 
 Blows and kicks and sword-cuts could not silence 
 her ; half-mad with insults and tortures, she would 
 not desist, and when the soldiers, infuriated by the 
 resistance of so weak a thing, stripped, gagged, and 
 crucified her, nailing her like a hawk to the city 
 gate, every muscle of the agonized face which glared 
 between the wefts of her white hair showed that she 
 was still struggling to scream " Lupa ! Lupa ! " to her 
 tormentors. Indeed, it seemed as if the spirit of 
 the Eoman wolf on their standard had inspired the 
 Sienese ; as Marignano, egged on by Cosimo, safe in 
 the fortress-like palace of Florence, increased his 
 cruelties, the Sienese redoubled their heroism. The 
 117
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 inhabitants of the castelli, or walled towns, were 
 threatened with death if they resisted after the first 
 discharge of the besieger's artillery, but each tiny 
 burg, its walls manned by half a dozen combatants, 
 dared to withstand Cosimo's veterans. The citadel 
 of Asinalunga was defended by a Koman captain, 
 aided by four cross-bowmen and as many peasants, 
 against the best troops of Germany and Spain. He 
 was summoned and offered good terms, which he 
 refused. When finally forced to surrender, he was 
 brought to the Florentine general, De' Nobili, a 
 nephew of Julius III., who asked him what had 
 induced him to attempt a defence against an army. 
 His answer was worthy of record : " I remembered 
 the brave deeds of the Romans, and being a Eoman, 
 with arms in my hand, I wished to fight as became 
 a Roman." This calm reply sent the general into 
 a rage : " And like a Roman thou shalt die ! " he 
 yelled, cutting the prisoner over the head with his 
 sword. The soldiers finished the sorry work, and in 
 a few moments all that was left of him who had 
 remembered the Romans was thrown into the moat 
 to fatten the glutted crows, the only living things 
 which were full-fed during the siege of Siena. 
 
 Although a pope's nephew generally fell below the 
 ethical standard of his age, this was a typical in- 
 stance of Cosimo's military methods and what scant 
 mercy the Sienese had to expect from his lieutenants. 
 
 118
 
 SIENA 
 
 The history of this political war forms a melancholy 
 commentary on the brilliant civilization of the 
 Eenaissance ; in an age of royal knights and fashion- 
 able chivalry, of pious observances and religious 
 reformation, of courtly manners and exquisite refine- 
 ment, the commonest notion of fair play and the 
 admiration which courage, even in an opponent, com- 
 mands were conspicuously absent ; as for the milder 
 virtues of compassion for the conquered, or pity for 
 the sufferings of the enemy, if they existed at all, 
 they had no appreciable effect on human action. 
 Worst of all, these atrocities were ineffectual ; they 
 did not strike terror, and in each captured town a 
 new tragedy was enacted. 
 
 Meanwhile, the besieged were bearing their priva- 
 tions gallantly with that smiling fortitude which is 
 the Latin substitute for our sterner-lipped Northern 
 endurance. Provisions were scarce and dear, but the 
 poor were fed at the doors of the great houses. Pri- 
 vate fortunes were sacrificed to public necessities. 
 Games were celebrated, holidays kept, and if hunger 
 pinched, the jewelled girdles were drawn closer, 
 and the lips and cheeks that paled with fasting were 
 touched with those tiny red balls brought from the 
 Levant for Beauty's use in happier times, a patriotic 
 coquetry which Saint Bernardino himself would have 
 forgiven. And then there was daily comfort for high 
 hearts, if not for empty stomachs, in the diurnal 
 119
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 visit to the ramparts to jeer at Marignano's unsuc- 
 cessful efforts to change the siege into an assault; 
 and individual patriotism was much stimulated by 
 this direct personal contact with the enemy, an en- 
 emy who was not a vague, dark mass under a cloud 
 of smoke several miles away, but a real, visible oppo- 
 nent, whose cross-bow twanged in the ear, whose 
 scaling-ladder rasped the stones at one's elbow ; so 
 near that one could count the rivets in his armor, 
 could see the blood gush from his wounds, could 
 hear his taunts and answer them with curses. As 
 artillery was still undeveloped and man was yet a 
 creature of primitive impulses, the rage of battle, the 
 gaudium certaminis, was still his. 
 
 News good and bad broke through Marignano's 
 lines to the besieged; money came as well over 
 the harried country from Paris, Lyons, Venice, and 
 Ancona, where banished patriots and generous sym- 
 pathizers had brought their gold or copper to the 
 market-place for the cause of Italian freedom, and the 
 rich Florentine exiles, Altoviti, Medici, and Soderini, 
 undeterred by the certain confiscation of their prop- 
 erty by Cosimo, gave their purses and their swords 
 to the Sienese. 
 
 But the promised aid from France was slow in 
 coming. Montmorenci, always opposed to the Ital- 
 ian war, was at the king's ear, and suspense had be- 
 come apprehension when a panting and dusty peasant 
 120
 
 SIENA 
 
 brought tidings of a French squadron at Port' Ercole 
 with three thousand Grisons on board. 
 
 Cheered by the news, Piero Strozzi made a bold 
 move on Pontedera, by which he hoped to call Ma- 
 rignano away from Siena, and by joining the Grisons 
 and another French army from Mirandola to carry 
 the war into Florentine territory. As the French did 
 not join him the manoeuvre partially failed, but Siena 
 had a respite of two weeks, and Strozzi revictualled 
 his army from the French fleet in the Maremma 
 before he returned to Siena with its new French 
 governor, Monluc. 
 
 Blaise de Monluc has told the story of the siege 
 and his part in it in " Commentaries " which might 
 have been written with the point of his own sword ; 
 in these sharp, trenchant sentences, so different from 
 the ample, flowing periods of Brantome, the death 
 agony of the republic is told with a soldier's sim- 
 plicity. The man as he reveals himself in his work 
 was a typical Frenchman of the sixteenth century, 
 sagacious, honest, loyal, and cruel. A preux cheva- 
 lier at Siena, a ferocious bigot in France, his name, 
 which shines in Italian annals, is written in fire and 
 blood in the history of Protestantism. 
 
 While Siena was left under the care of this ruth- 
 less persecutor of Huguenots, Marignano after a sharp 
 skirmish in which he was much distressed had de- 
 camped, followed by Strozzi. Strozzi's campaigns 
 121
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 belong to the history of Italy ; only their results can 
 be considered here, and their effect on the besieged. 
 On August 3 (1554), terrible news came to Siena: 
 a great battle had been fought the day before 
 (August 2) at Marciano ; Strozzi had been defeated, 
 had lost twelve thousand soldiers, and with a broken 
 remnant of his cavalry had fled to Montalcino. A 
 few days later this report was verified by the reap- 
 pearance of Marignano and the renewal of the 
 blockade. 
 
 And now Siena began to starve in earnest: the 
 population of the town sank from thirty thousand 
 to ten thousand souls, and fifty thousand peasants 
 perished during this siege of fifteen months. Can 
 any description of individual suffering equal the 
 eloquence of these figures ? " At the close of the 
 war few of the old inhabitants remained," wrote 
 Adriani, and the fertile Maremma became a fever- 
 haunted waste. Cosimo had decreed pain of death 
 against any one who should bring or send provisions 
 to the starving city, but the heroic peasants daily 
 brought their scanty stores of oil and corn to relieve 
 her ; they were killed by hundreds, hung at the doors 
 of their blackened cottages, spitted on the roofs of the 
 rifled granges, or, worst fate of all, reserved for those 
 floating hells of stripes and chains and galls, the 
 Grand Duke's galleys. For the beloved city no 
 sacrifice was too great, no torment unendurable; 
 122
 
 SIENA 
 
 undeterred by death or mutilation they served her, 
 and when the town starved, it was because the peas- 
 ants themselves were dead of hunger. In " redeemed " 
 Italy, where monuments are rising fast to commem- 
 orate her heroes, no one celebrates these name- 
 less martyrs, no statue or tablet tells the story of 
 those who, famishing themselves, died to feed the 
 hungry. 
 
 Meanwhile, so high couraged were the burghers, 
 that though famine not scarcity nor privation, but 
 actual famine was in their streets, there was no 
 question of capitulation ; encouraged by Monluc, by 
 the French victories in Piedmont, and by the unfor- 
 tunate but indomitable Piero Strozzi, the Sienese 
 still hoped and endured. "As God lives, not one 
 man young or old stayed at home, all took arms res- 
 olute to eat their children before they would yield," 
 wrote Monluc. 
 
 Again and again one of these starved soldiers 
 would fall lifeless out of the ranks or a sentry 
 would faint at his post, and daughter or sister would 
 put on his armor and keep his watch on the bastion. 
 Shadows that once were men plucked up the grass 
 between the cracks in the pavements and ate it; 
 gnawed at the raw hides in the tanners' quarter 
 like famished curs, and maddened with hunger in- 
 vaded the churches, tore down and devoured the 
 great altar candles, drank the oil from the lamps 
 123
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 which hung before the shrines of the impassive 
 saints, those saints so deaf to prayers, so blind to 
 anguish. 
 
 It was not until they had grown wolfish from the 
 famine-pinch that the Sienese resolved on that ter- 
 rible sacrifice which in earlier days had so often 
 been made by the old commonwealths, the ejection 
 of the useless mouths. 
 
 Le bocche inutili were those who exhausted the 
 supplies and rendered no military service, who ate 
 and could not fight ; the beggars who in prosperous 
 times haunted the church doors and the monastery 
 gates, and by receiving their charities helped rich 
 folk to gain heaven ; the artisans of the poorer sort 
 and their families; the old and infirm poor; the 
 cripples and the physically afflicted ; the peddlers ; 
 the street singers, all those who gained a precarious 
 livelihood from day to day. These poor, emaciated 
 wretches were to be thrust out of the gates to die 
 between the walls and the enemy's camp. 
 
 Perhaps nothing in history is a plainer proof of 
 the immense difference which existed between the 
 man of the Renaissance and ourselves than the fact 
 that such a measure was passed and executed by 
 good citizens, and was considered by them to be not 
 only justifiable, but meritorious, a sacrifice on the 
 altar of civic liberty. But the sight which followed 
 it must have wrung the stoutest heart. To describe
 
 SIENA 
 
 it adequately one would need the soul and the pen 
 of Dante's self. 
 
 These unfortunate creatures had lived in suspense 
 ever since the beginning of the scarcity. Hoping to 
 he forgotten, they had hidden themselves in holes 
 and corners until famine had forced them into the 
 streets again, where they starved publicly in hourly 
 apprehension of their fate. The order was not exe- 
 cuted without resistance, such resistance as age and 
 fear and weakness could make when driven to de- 
 spair. The phantoms struggled with the soldiers; 
 the cripples struck feebly at the lances with their 
 crutches ; the women, many of them with skeleton 
 babies in their lean arms, fought like wild-cats, 
 biting, scratching, and clinging with bleeding nails 
 to the house-walls, the doors, even to the stones of 
 the streets ; some of the older folk wrapping their 
 rags around them lay stubbornly down on the pave- 
 ment and were crushed or beaten to death by the 
 men-at-arms; some clung about the soldiers' knees 
 and were kicked along by the iron sollerets ; others 
 tried to escape and were hunted back again ; many 
 fell from weakness and were dragged along bruised 
 and bleeding ; the stronger craftsmen, rolling their 
 tatters about their lank arms, tried to fend off the 
 sword-strokes ; one or two stupefied by terror walked 
 on straight before them, staring with unseeing eyes 
 and groaning aloud ; while others besought the mercy 
 125
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 of every passer-by, or begged for a few minutes' grace 
 to say a prayer before a shrine. From all this 
 wretchedness an awful clamor rose : shrieks for pity ; 
 curses in voices faint with hunger or hoarse with 
 fear ; blasphemies of all that man holds holy ; prayers 
 to every saint in heaven; screams of pain; heart- 
 shaking sobs; the dull thud of lance-blows on 
 meagre shoulders; yells inarticulate and inhuman 
 like the cries of tortured animals, and now and again 
 the loud mocking laugh of some miserable creature 
 crazed with fright. 
 
 Finally, in spite of their impotent resistance, the 
 work was done. When the last clutching, shrieking 
 wretch had been thrust through the postern and the 
 gate closed, came the turn of Marignano's soldiers. 
 Though there was no plunder to be had, yet for men 
 who had been diverted with autos da fc and Indian- 
 hunts there was sport left in this poor flesh which 
 could still suffer ; the stronger men were tortured by 
 past-masters in the art of torment until they had 
 told all that passed in the city and were then hung ; 
 the weaker and less fortunate were driven from town 
 to camp, from camp to town, hunted down by the 
 Spaniards and Sienese alike, and tossed to and fro 
 like scum on the waves until they perished in the 
 filth of the moat. 
 
 While Siena was afflicted with this " horrid spec- 
 tacle for humanity," as Galluzzi writing in milder 
 126
 
 SIENA 
 
 times termed it, there came a message from Cosimo, 
 the impresario of such spectacles. He assured the 
 government that he did not war against the liberties 
 of the Sienese, but only required them to place them- 
 selves under the emperor's protection. Charles V. 
 had declared Siena forfeited by rebellion to the im- 
 perial crown, and Cosimo offered himself as mediator 
 between the republic and the emperor. Henry II. 
 had given Siena permission to treat, but it was not 
 until March (1555), when all hope was dead and 
 when not one blade of grass remained uneaten in the 
 streets, that the intrepid city yielded ; the first am- 
 bassadors sent to Cosimo were still so high-hearted 
 that they proposed their impossible conditions as 
 boldly as though Siena were victualled for a twelve- 
 month, and were sent back by Cosimo. A fortnight 
 later eight others appeared in Florence, and on the 
 second of April the treaty, or rather the death-warrant 
 of the republic, was signed. The terms sounded well : 
 Siena was to remain free, but the emperor would 
 appoint twenty of the governing Balia and a garrison 
 would be admitted ; no citadel was to be built with- 
 out the consent of the people ; the forts thrown up 
 by Marignano around Siena should be demolished ; 
 a general amnesty (except for rebels) proclaimed; 
 the inhabitants could emigrate or remain in the city 
 as they chose, and the French should be allowed to 
 retire with flying colors. 
 
 127
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 On the twenty-first of April (1555) the last pro- 
 cession of the siege was formed. On the harried 
 space around the walls, not long ago a smiling para- 
 dise of villas and gardens and thrifty farms and 
 orchards, Marignano's army was stationed to witness 
 the evacuation of Siena. Two rows of veterans in 
 complete armor were drawn up in double ranks out- 
 side the Eoman gate at which for nearly two years 
 they had battered in vain. In dead silence the herse 
 fell, and through the lane of steel marched six Gascon 
 battalions and four Italian columns, with Monluc 
 at their head. Mere tattered spectres they were, 
 their clothes in rags, their ranks sadly thinned, 
 but their arms were bright and the unconquered 
 white banner floated over the heads which were 
 still held high. Behind them came the self-exiled 
 Sienese who had learned from the fate of Florence 
 how a Medici kept faith with misfortune. Two 
 hundred and fifty noble houses and three hundred 
 and forty-five plebeian families preferring exile to 
 slavery, cast in their fortunes with the French and 
 went with the troops to Montalcino. 
 
 " I had seen," wrote Monluc, " a lamentable spec- 
 tacle when the useless mouths were ejected from 
 the city ; but I beheld more than equal misery in 
 the departure of those unhappy ones who left Siena 
 with us and in those who remained. Never in my 
 life did I behold so painful a parting, and though 
 
 128
 
 SIENA 
 
 our soldiers had suffered every hardship, still this 
 separation afflicted them, and the more because they 
 were unable to preserve the public liberty. As for 
 me I suffered more ; I could not see this calamity 
 without tears, and sorrowing deeply for this people 
 which had shown itself so ardent in the preserva- 
 tion of its freedom." 
 
 This is the testimony of a connoisseur in misery, 
 and in truth it must have been a sorrowful sight 
 which moved even the pitiless to pity, for, touched 
 by the aspect of this homeless and friendless folk, 
 the Spanish soldiers brought their own bread and 
 distributed it to them as they passed, and Marignano 
 gave Monluc a scanty supply of provisions. But 
 these succors came too late, and the route across a 
 country so wasted that " from Montalcino to Siena, 
 from Siena to Florence, not a living spirit moved 
 upon the face of the land," was marked by the 
 bones of those who fell and died of hunger. And 
 with those patriots who could not bear to see the 
 enslavement of their country the spirit of civic 
 liberty departed from Siena. 
 
 VOL. r. 9 129
 
 VII 
 
 THAT admirers of minute designs and florid detail 
 could appreciate grandeur as well, no one can doubt 
 who has seen the plans of the Sienese cathedral 
 Its history is one of a grand result, and of far 
 grander, though thwarted endeavor, and it is hard 
 to realize to-day that the church as it stands is but 
 a fragment, the transept only, of what Siena willed. 
 From the state of the existing works no one can 
 doubt that the brave little republic would have 
 finished it had she not met an enemy before whom 
 the sword of Monteaperto was useless. The plague 
 of 1348 stalked across Tuscany, and the chill of 
 thirty thousand Sienese graves numbed the hand 
 of master and workmen; sweeping away the archi- 
 tect who planned, the masons who built, the 
 magistrates who ordered, it left but the yellowed 
 parchment in the Archivio which conferred upon 
 Maestro Lorenzo Maitani the superintendence of 
 the works. 
 
 The fa$ade of the present church is amazing in 
 its richness, undoubtedly possesses some grand and 
 much lovely detail, and is as undoubtedly sugges- 
 tive, with its white marble ornaments upon a pink 
 marble ground, of a huge, sugared cake. It is im- 
 130
 
 SIENA 
 
 INTERIOR OF THE DUOMO
 

 
 SIENA 
 
 possible to look at this restored whiteness with the 
 sun upon it ; the dazzled eyes close involuntarily 
 and one sees in retrospect the great, gray church 
 front at Eheims, or the solemn facade of Notre 
 Dame de Paris. It is like remembering an organ 
 burst of Handel after hearing the florid roulades of 
 the mass within the cathedral. 
 
 The interior is rich in color and fine in effect, but 
 the Northerner is painfully impressed by the black 
 and white horizontal stripes which, running from 
 vaulting to pavement, seem to blur and confuse the 
 vision, and the closely set bars of the piers are posi- 
 tively irritating. In the hexagonal lantern, how- 
 ever, they are less offensive than elsewhere, because 
 the fan-like radiation of the bars above the great 
 gilded statues breaks up the horizontal effect. The 
 decoration of the stone-work is not happy ; the use of 
 cold red and cold blue with gilt bosses in relief does 
 much to vulgarize, and there is constant sally in small 
 masses which belittles the general effect. It is 
 evident that the Sienese tendency to floridity is 
 answerable for much of this, and that having added 
 some piece of big and bad decoration, the cornice of 
 papal heads, for instance, they felt forced to do away 
 with it or continue it throughout. 
 
 But this fault and many others are forgotten when 
 we examine the detail with which later men have 
 filled the church. Other Italian cathedrals pos- 
 131
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 sess art-objects of a higher order ; perhaps no other 
 one is so rich in these treasures. The great masters 
 are disappointing here. Eaphael, as the co-laborer 
 of Pinturicchio, is dainty, rather than great, and 
 Michelangelo passes unnoticed in the huge and 
 coldly elaborate altar-front of the Piccolomini. But 
 Marrina, with his doors of the library ; Barili, with 
 his marvellous casing of the choir-stalls ; Beccafumi, 
 with his bronze and niello, these are the artists 
 whom one wonders at; these wood-carvers and 
 bronze-founders, creators of the microcosmic detail 
 of the Eenaissance which had at last burst triumph- 
 antly into Siena. This treasure is cumulative, as 
 we walk eastward from the main door, where the 
 pillars are a maze of scroll-work in deepest cutting, 
 and by the time we reach the choir the head fairly 
 swims with the play of light and color. We wan- 
 der from point to point, we finger and caress the 
 lustrous stalls of Barili, and turn with a kind of 
 confusion of vision from panel to panel ; above our 
 heads the tabernacle of Vecchietta, the lamp-bearing 
 angels of Beccafumi, make spots of bituminous color, 
 with glittering high-lights, strangely emphasizing 
 their modelling ; from these youths, who might be 
 pages to some Koman prefect, the eye travels up- 
 ward still farther, along the golden convolutions of 
 the heavily stuccoed pilasters to the huge, gilded 
 cherubs' heads that frame the eastern rose. 
 132
 
 SIENA 
 
 Beneath the feet is labyrinth, that pictured pave- 
 ment which, so bad in principle, is yet so splendid in 
 reality. It is useless to theorize about its inappro- 
 priate ornament ; we follow its mazes, every one of us, 
 with that clue of Ariadne, the instinctive and natural 
 delight in form wedded to story which is in us all, from 
 the gaping peasant of Valdichiana to Dante studying 
 the pavement of Purgatory, and Godfrey forgetting 
 crown and crusade when once the pictured poems of 
 the windows and the walls had met his eyes. 
 
 One cannot sufficiently praise the beauty of this 
 niello work, which, wrought by Federighi and Bec- 
 cafumi, and worn by the feet of three centuries, 
 has been ably restored by Maccari and Franchi. 
 Here we found the old block-pictures of earliest 
 printed books, enlarged a thousand-fold, stretching 
 from pillar to pillar in their black and white marble. 
 Fortitude, Justice, and Prudence in their tondi, 
 austerely decorative in their simple lines ; divided 
 battle-pieces, where the knights had pillaged half 
 their armor from the tents of Scipio, and half from 
 the camp of Fornovo ; sieges where antique profiles 
 looked from the mediaeval sallets ; decorative, thick- 
 leaved trees; veritable tapestries in stone, with 
 dangling Absalom or conquering David ; the seven 
 ages of man ; all framed by lovely conventional 
 borders and friezes, medallions and patternrngs, one 
 more pleasing than the other. 
 133
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 And, as if this were not enough, suddenly, at the 
 intersection of nave and transept, the glorious 
 pulpit of Niccola Pisano rises before one, a nude 
 antique athlete among these mediaeval princes. 
 
 On the left is the Piccolomini Library with its 
 gorgeous antiphonals and its frescoes. As we enter 
 the sculptured doors, it seems as though we had 
 opened a huge missal, and that the gold and ultra- 
 marine, the flat landscape, the ill-drawn but richly 
 costumed figures, and the floriated borders of one 
 of the great choir-books which line the room, had, 
 in some mysterious way, been transferred to its 
 walls. 
 
 It is incredible that these frescoes are four hundred 
 years old. Surely Pinturicchio came down from 
 his scaffoldings but yesterday. This is how the 
 hardly dried plaster must have looked to pope and 
 cardinals and princes when the boards were re- 
 moved, and when the very figures on these walls 
 smart youths in tights and slashes, bright-robed 
 scholars, ecclesiastics caped in ermine, ladies with 
 long braids bound in nets of silk, crowded to see 
 themselves embalmed in tempera for curious after- 
 centuries to gaze upon. 
 
 The first four panels are the most charming ; they 
 
 are a little hard, a little spotty, a little vulgarized 
 
 by the applied ornaments of gilded plaster in high 
 
 relief, and yet what charm there is in the pensive, 
 
 134-
 
 SIENA 
 
 Dl'OMO 
 
 PIETRO DEL MINELLA 
 
 THE DEATH OF ABSALOM
 
 SIENA 
 
 young faces, in the strange piled-up backgrounds, 
 and what variety and elegance in the costumes. 
 
 The subject is a moral tale of the Eenaissance : 
 how a good little boy, by minding his book and 
 obeying his pastors and masters, became a great 
 scholar, a cardinal, and finally a pope. And to those 
 who know the life of this saintly humanist, who was 
 also a passionate lover of beauty and the literary 
 forerunner of The'ophile Gautier and Taine, it is 
 pleasant to find this idyllic memorial of him in his 
 native town. The whole Library, too, is interesting 
 as an example of homogeneous decoration ; the 
 wainscoting is enriched with the antiphonals, the 
 vaultings shine with the grotesques of John of 
 Udine ; at one end of the room are the Piccolomini 
 shields all a-row under the red hats, while just above 
 the doorway Quercia has placed his muscular, nude 
 Adam and Eve, whom the angel is very properly 
 ejecting from the presence of all these finely dressed 
 folk, and whom we find again on Fonte Gaia, where 
 they are more at home. 
 
 155
 
 vm 
 
 As a homogeneous and characteristic decoration im- 
 portant in its extent and absolutely representative 
 of its time, Pinturicchio's series of subjects upon the 
 walls and ceiling of the Libreria ranks among the 
 most notable in Italy. The first impression derived 
 from it is that of its freshness, its remarkable preser- 
 vation ; the second is that of its gayety, its richness, 
 its ever fertile, tireless fancy ; the third is that of 
 its completeness, its homogeneity. These last two 
 impressions are altogether favorable, but the critic in 
 asking himself with some surprise how the first 
 impression of phenomenal preservation has obtained 
 soon realizes that it is the result of the sacrifice of 
 certain distinctly artistic qualities. Such wonder- 
 ful preservation, although immensely effective, does 
 not necessarily infer in this effectiveness the pres- 
 ence of those qualities which in a frescante may be 
 accounted as even technically the highest. The lib- 
 eral retouching a secco, that is to say, the repaint- 
 ing (by Pinturicchio) with dry color after the first 
 true fresco had been absorbed by the plaster, has 
 given to the work an astonishing brightness and an 
 occasional regilding of the parts originally touched 
 
 136
 
 SIENA 
 
 with gold, has added to this brightness, until some 
 of these figures appear to have been painted only yes- 
 terday. But it must be understood that for the sake 
 of this brightness Pinturicchio sacrificed transparency 
 and harmony. The a secco retouching produces an 
 opacity of color wherever it is used ; in a word, the 
 painter has sacrificed true richness of color to that 
 factitious richness which is only brilliancy of surface. 
 The impression afforded by the Sienese Library, which 
 is genuine and abiding, is that of decorative complete- 
 ness, of homogeneousness, and of a certain splendid 
 gayety. 
 
 The secular impression is, above all, surprising, 
 as one passes through the doorway which opens directly 
 from the cathedral into the Library. The Duomo of 
 Siena, in spite of its nobility and beauty, is too 
 sumptuous, too much of a museum, to be accounted 
 among the most solemn of shrines ; but it is solemn 
 indeed if compared with its neighbor, the Library, 
 which stands at its side, and indeed almost within 
 it, like a pretty acolyte at the elbow of some gor- 
 geously robed archbishop. Here the Eenaissance 
 has full play in the carved pilasters, in the scroll- 
 work of the vaulting, and even in the stained glass, 
 and here M. Miintz, in criticising Pinturicchio, may 
 justifiably use his clever quotation of the tombal 
 inscription to the child who had danced for the 
 Eomans twelve hundred years before, " saltamt et 
 137
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 placuit" But the painter, though no stylist, is a 
 true decorator in the abundance of his cheerful 
 motives, in his choice of entertaining material, and 
 the realization of a most picturesque effect ; by right 
 of all this, placuit truly, but by right of it also, he 
 pleases still, and will always please. He is no 
 dramatist, but he is a delightful story-teller, and, like 
 the mediaeval singers of interminable romance, he 
 rambles far afield, and often loses the thread of his 
 narrative in a labyrinth of episodes. But as the eye 
 wanders with a certain pleased curiosity from a jew- 
 elled caparison to a quaintly slashed jerkin ; from 
 a youthful, wistful face to a white castellated town 
 half hidden in sombre verdure, we pardon this wealth 
 of detail. The lovely adolescents, with their vague 
 wide-eyed glance and- their dreamy, distant smile ; 
 the sumptuous yet exquisite costumes ; above all, 
 the sense of inexhaustible, facile invention, blind 
 us at first to the defects in the drawing, and to the 
 isolation of the painted personages who, each one 
 of them, seems to be leading a separate existence 
 of his own, and has little or no relation to the other 
 figures in the same composition. 
 
 And not only the figures, but the groups also, are 
 isolated from each other, making a sort of open- 
 work pattern agreeable in general lines, nevertheless 
 too thin and lace-like to adequately represent such 
 dignified and balanced arrangement as the subjects 
 138
 
 SIENA 
 
 INTERIOR OF PICCOLOMINI LIBRARY

 
 SIENA 
 
 required: stately subjects, royal marriages, pro- 
 cessions, councils. Many masters of the fifteenth 
 century cannot avoid confusion in their large com- 
 positions, but their masses, if awkwardly composed, 
 usually continue to be masses. Pinturicchio's groups 
 break up into little knots of people who stand in 
 somewhat papery silhouette against the background, 
 and in artists' phrase, his composition is often full of 
 holes. As for his draughtsmanship, he could draw on 
 occasion excellently, witness the faces in his fresco 
 of the Sistine Chapel ; but he did not often rise to such 
 occasion ; perhaps because he was too hurried, or per- 
 haps because he did not care. At all events, whether 
 hurried or indifferent, he was exceptionally canny in 
 his relations with his patrons. He knew the influ- 
 ence of bright gold iipon both the clerical and the 
 laic imagination, the effect of the glitter of a gilded 
 surface in relief. " Ghirlandajo," says Vasari, " did 
 away in a great measure with those flourishes and 
 scrolls formed with gypsum on bole and gold, which 
 were better suited to the decoration of tapestry or 
 hangings than to the paintings of good masters." 
 
 If Pinturicchio had heard this criticism, he would 
 have smiled, ordered more gold and ultramarine, 
 and set his apprentices to kneading more gypsum. 
 He frankly substituted this material richness for 
 hard thinking, and, instead of giving careful drawing 
 to his figures, he was satisfied with that valuable 
 139
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 decorative factor, a handsome general pattern. He 
 knew well how to spare his labor and so apportion 
 it that expenditure of time and thought should be 
 in economic relation to his result. 
 
 In giving to Pinturicchio his place in the history 
 of Italian art, the substitution of a rich surface for 
 the intellectual treatment which goes deeper, of 
 graceful pattern for a manipulation making greater 
 demands upon draughtsman and colorist, is the 
 most notable phenomenon to be considered. 
 
 This is because a mode of procedure common 
 within certain limitations to nearly all quattrocento 
 masters was pushed farthest by Pinturicchio, who, 
 just when gilded ornament in relief was to pass away 
 from all great mural painting, gave it a kind of 
 apotheosis in the Borgia apartments of the Vatican. 
 Some consideration of these famous apartments is 
 necessary to any real understanding of the painter's 
 methods, since he there gave them their fullest ap- 
 plication, using a tonality differing wholly from that 
 of the Libreria, and thereby rendering a study of 
 the latter all the more interesting. 
 
 On the walls of the Torre Borgia we at once 
 recognize the economic relation of parts; in the 
 hall of the " Lives of the Saints," for instance, the 
 large mural subjects are fairly well drawn and 
 grouped ; but when he came to the divisions of the 
 vaulting above, the painter no longer troubled 
 
 140
 
 SIENA 
 
 self at all about execution, but set in the middle of 
 his space some handsome pattern, an sediculus, a 
 throne, or what not, modelled in relief in that gyp- 
 sum which Vasari condemned, and which lastly was 
 brightly gilded. On either side of the central pat- 
 tern he placed little men or women kneeling, climb- 
 ing, holding scrolls, all utterly weak in drawing, 
 weak even in the detail of their silhouette, but excel- 
 lent in their general pattern. Thus the artist, with 
 but little expenditure of the labor and thought which 
 he furnished, lavished the gold and ultramarine 
 which the Pope furnished, and obtained with the 
 minimum of personal output great richness, indeed 
 splendor, of result. Contrast all this with the meth- 
 ods of Eaphael as master-workman of the Vatican 
 loggie ; there his apprentices executed, even in the 
 darkest corners, in convolutions of tiniest scrolls 
 passing out of sight in a spandrel point behind some 
 jutting moulding, little figures which recalled, if ever 
 so roughly, the style and amplitude of the master. 
 
 The equivalent figures of Pinturicchio are starved 
 and pinched, poor little affairs with no reserve force 
 behind them, but in the general economy of a 
 decoration they, with much less of output, served 
 their purpose as well as the figurines which Raphael 
 inspired and his pupils drew, served it better, indeed, 
 in a way. Photographed and seen in detail by them- 
 selves, some of the figures of the loggie scroll-work 
 141
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 or the Vatican tapestry "borders would make Pintu- 
 ricchio's little people of the ceilings seem children's 
 scrawls ; but the two painters had different results 
 in view, and produced them each in his own way. 
 Both wished for a rich effect, but Eaphael sought 
 cheerful elegance which should be neo-classic and 
 should not depart from the great tradition. Pintu- 
 ricchio refused to part with one jot of the quattro- 
 cento paraphernalia of the decoration ; he knew that 
 a Borgia bull in gold relief upon ultramarine, sur- 
 rounded by gilded scrolls backed by the same rich 
 blue, would "carry" better, would make a far 
 stronger effect as one looked along the vaulting, 
 than could any figurine in simple fresco, no matter 
 how large the movement, how good the modelling of 
 the muscles, that Perino or Giulio had executed and 
 Eaphael had inspired. 
 
 So Niccolo di Betto went on in his own way, 
 modelling his bulls and rams and little temples in 
 gypsum ; emphasizing the lines of a youth's armor, 
 breastplate and girdle, greaves and collar, with rows 
 of gilded disks, relieved slightly, but quite highly 
 enough to catch the light, and backing his figures 
 with a reticulated pattern again in relief of gold. 
 
 The painter of to-day shrugs his shoulders in sur- 
 prise at the method and stares in delight at the re- 
 sult, for the great artist Time has taken a share in 
 the work. When the color was fresh four hundred 
 142
 
 ROME 
 
 VATICAN 
 
 PINTURICCHIO 
 
 VAULTING FRESCO
 
 SIENA 
 
 years ago, the violence in contrast in certain parts 
 must have been shocking, but now the ultramarine 
 has bloomed in spots of green and purple, the gold is 
 bright here, tarnished there ; disintegration of surface 
 has helped rather than hindered, and as a result is 
 seen the richest fresco-color in Italy ; only mosaic 
 or glass can surpass it. 
 
 We have gone afield with Pinturicchio and fol- 
 lowed Pope Pius from the Libreria of Siena to the 
 Vatican, but the journey is necessary to the full 
 comprehension of the painter's product ; and if before 
 leaving Rome in thought, we remember Niccolo's 
 frescoes in the churches of Ara Coeli and in S. M. 
 del Popolo ; even if on our way back to the Libreria 
 we stop at Spello, we shall find our painter, as in 
 the Vatican, always the man who succeeds by right of 
 fancy and fertility and by a frank renunciation of the 
 finest methods in mural painting in favor of greater 
 gorgeousness and richer surface. In the Borgia 
 apartments the dominant color effect is of ultrama- 
 rine and gold ; in the Libreria the basis is white, the 
 white of the plastered walls, and their light tonality 
 is what yields the cheerful quality which here 
 replaces the gorgeous richness of the Eoman work. 
 
 Against this light-colored background the drama 
 
 of the life of ^Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini as cardinal 
 
 and pope unrolls itself among emperors and queens, 
 
 guards and pages, bishops, priests, and Turks, who 
 
 143
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 stand under canopies or about thrones or carry papal 
 chairs, canopies, thrones, and chairs alike furnish- 
 ing to Pinturicchio the raised gold patterns that he 
 loved, while soldiers offer to the artist their shields 
 and weapons for like embossing, and even the pages 
 of the middle distance contribute at least a trifle of a 
 belt-clasp or dagger-handle to be raised and gilded. 
 It is delightfully decorative, and yet the very nega- 
 tion of aerial perspective, since these distant figures 
 are brought forward by their relieved patterns to, as 
 it were, the footlights of the stage. 
 
 Certain critics have praised Pinturicchio's land- 
 scapes; they are indeed pleasant reminders of the 
 Umbrian background, a background at once so lovely 
 and so noble that any reminder of it is grate- 
 ful, but to compare them with the landscapes of 
 Perugino is injustice to the latter. Imagine a little 
 church or temple in raised and gilded gypsum stuck 
 against the middle distance of Pietro's solemn back- 
 ground of the Maddalena de' Pazzi fresco ; it would 
 seem and would be, an excrescence, but in the Li- 
 breria, where the art, good as it is, is on a lower plane, 
 belt-clasp and crown, throne and sword-handle, are 
 entertaining parts in a vastly entertaining whole. 
 And that it is entertaining, cheerful, wholesome, and 
 pleasant to the eye no one will deny. Pinturicchio 
 saltavit et placuit truly, and it is enough, for, alas 1 
 how many dance and how few please.
 
 IX 
 
 FOR the complete expression of the complex soul 
 of her Siena had to wait for the dexterous Lombard 
 who in 1501 knocked at her gate. Here was indeed 
 a painter after her own heart. No frigid Florentine 
 this, with the memories of chisel-work in dusty 
 botteghe clogging his brush; no student of "anato- 
 mies " with a weakness for joints and attachments, 
 prone, therefore, to thrust a meagre Jerome or a 
 gaunt Magdalen into a tender brood of angels or the 
 blithest of Holy Families ; no curious, erudite ex- 
 perimenter seeking after a (possibly) fatiguing per- 
 fection and juggling with light and shadow; no 
 precisian or pedant he, but one to whom Tempera- 
 ment had been so bountiful that he had ignored 
 the favors of that more niggardly mistress, Training. 
 Invited to Siena by the noble family of the 
 Spauocchi, patronized by Chigi, Sodorna (Giovan 
 Antonio Bazzi) found his native element in the 
 capricious and voluptuous republic ; and Siena soon 
 discovered in him the whimsical scatterbrain and 
 facile painter, her most faithful exponent. She had 
 but scant enthusiasm for Beccafumi's cold acad- 
 emies ; she bestowed but a half-hearted admiration 
 VOL. i. 10 145
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 on Peruzzi's spare elegance ; she disregarded the 
 strictures of the correct and respectable Vasari, and 
 loaded Bazzi with commissions and admiration. 
 What were mastery of perspective, unfailing sense 
 of proportion, balanced composition, compared with 
 a vivid personality expressing itself with agile facil- 
 ity and possessed of exquisite sensitiveness to grace 
 and beauty 1 
 
 And then the character of the man himself was 
 one to captivate the Sienese, among whom individu- 
 ality ran riot. Here was no Sano deditus Deo ; no 
 sour-faced frequenter of monks, but a good fellow ; 
 a contemner of conventions ; a dandy, devoted to fine 
 clothes ; a sporting man, too, with a pretty taste in 
 horseflesh, and a prince of jesters to whom a prac- 
 tical joke was dearer than reputation or personal 
 safety. What a wellspring of joy to the gilded 
 youth of Siena was this frolicsome gossip, who 
 would lay down his brush to finger the lute or 
 grasp the bridle, and who could paint you the suavest 
 Madonna in a studio full of roistering sparks. 
 Imagine the decorous and laborious Vasari visiting 
 such a lawless household, and the continual shocks 
 to which his bourgeois susceptibilities must have 
 been subjected. His animosity to Bazzi is almost 
 accounted for by the mere difference of tempera- 
 ment in the two men. 
 
 How could the " most noble art of design " be 
 146
 
 SIENA 
 
 worthily practised by a freakish fellow who made 
 friends and comrades of beasts, and who owned a 
 familiar raven which, to the mystification and annoy- 
 ance of dignified persons from Florence, could 
 exactly counterfeit his master's voice ? And was 
 not Bazzi's explanation, that he kept the bird by 
 him in order that it "might teach a theological 
 jackass how to speak," an aggravation of his of- 
 fence ? Could sound painting be reasonably expected 
 from a pretentious dauber who bought fast horses 
 like a noble, and who had the impudence to win the 
 race of Saint Barnaba in Florence over the heads of 
 Florentines, biped and quadruped ? It would seem 
 that effrontery could not go farther, but Sodoma had 
 found the means of gilding the refined gold of his 
 iniquity by insulting the Signory as well. Messer 
 Giorgio was constitutionally incapable of sym- 
 pathizing with a reckless wag who joyed in carry ing 
 a jest beyond the bounds of propriety, and who was 
 no respecter of persons. 
 
 Bazzi has paid dearly for his mocking humor, or 
 rather, his lawless indulgence of it. Vasari's biassed 
 judgment has formed opinion for four hundred years, 
 and the gifted Lombard has suffered from his cen- 
 sure. Poor Giovan Antonio ! much shall be forgiven 
 him, for he loved much those dumb sentient crea- 
 tures who can only reward kindness with devoted 
 affection that is all the truer, perhaps, because it is 
 147
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 mute. They must be their pranksonie master's best 
 advocates with those who love man's " little brothers." 
 The other reasons for Vasari's unjust treatment 
 of Sodoma are as yet undiscovered. As a man (not 
 as an artist) the Lombard painter was constantly vili- 
 fied and abused by the usually impartial biographer. 
 Vasari's friendship and admiration for Beccafumi 
 may have prejudiced him against Bazzi, Beccafumi's 
 rival ; perhaps there is some truth in the story that 
 Bazzi laughed at Vasari's biographies (which were 
 seen by many in manuscript long before their pub- 
 lication), and thus roused the rancor of their author. 
 Wherever Vasari remains an art critic, he is honest 
 and unprejudiced ; his blame is just, his praise not 
 stinted, when he speaks of Giovan Antonio's best 
 works. When he writes of the man and not the 
 artist, he is, on the contrary, censorious, even bitter, 
 and most unfair ; the love of fine clothes, which 
 Vasari finds dignified and decorous in Leonardo, the 
 master, is ridiculous in Giovan Antonio, the " jack- 
 pudding " and " mountebank " pupil. Da Vinci's 
 admirable love for animals is equally reprehensible 
 in Bazzi ; and the latter's passion for racing, shared 
 by all the Sienese citizens and the Florentine nobles, 
 is most objectionable in the painter. In Siena it 
 was, and still is, accounted a great honor to win the 
 Polio. Indeed, what was vainglorious in Sodoma 
 was proper pride in a Florentine ; it was a Tuscan 
 
 148
 
 SIENA 
 
 custom to decorate the windows upon festa days by 
 hanging out rich stuffs and banners, and the cloth-of- 
 gold racing-prizes of the Alessandri were famous in 
 Florentine archives. Whatever the Vercellese artist 
 does, as a man, is ill done, according to our author, 
 but we may remember that while several of Vasari's 
 stories told to the artist's discredit are disproved by 
 documents, not one is confirmed. Bazzi seems to 
 have spent the last years of his life in retirement at 
 Siena with his family, and Vasari's statement that 
 his wife was separated from him is unsupported by 
 documentary evidence. We know that in 1531 and 
 in 1541 she was living with him, and we have no 
 proof that she ever left him. 
 
 It is highly probable that, after all, Giorgio's in- 
 justice to Bazzi came primarily from an inability to 
 understand him. The whimsical, roguish Lombard, 
 with a little of the charlatan and much of the boy 
 in his character, was incomprehensible to the earnest, 
 studious, laborious Florentine, and Bazzi's love of 
 frolic and his light-hearted willingness to appear 
 worse than he was, gave Vasari sufficient cause to 
 distrust and despise him. The most charitable and 
 not wholly unreasonable estimate of Giovan Antonio's 
 character is that he was the sixteenth-century 
 counterpart of a type of artist constantly seen among 
 the students of the European art schools of to-day ; 
 namely, the Uagueur d'atelier, the studio-jester. 
 149
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 The Uagueur is a madcap, sometimes an idler, some- 
 times a busybody; constantly boasting of his mis- 
 doings, which are always exaggerated, and sometimes 
 purely imaginary, and sacrificing anything at any 
 time for what he considers a joke. He is no re- 
 specter of persons, is more or less foul-mouthed, 
 generally more ; delights in being conspicuous, and, 
 above all, troublesome ; joys in shocking the respect- 
 able and outraging the conventional ; personal dignity 
 does not exist for him, and reserve is an unknown 
 quantity ; but he is quick-witted, good-hearted, and 
 as ready to help as to hinder. He is utterly im- 
 provident, and though sometimes capable of brilliant 
 artistic performances, is not a little handicapped 
 by laziness, though in time of war or revolution 
 the laziness gives way to action, and the Uagueur 
 has supported his convictions or served his country 
 as well as the most earnest of his comrades. Just 
 what Giovan Antonio was like we shall probably 
 never know ; Eaphael seems to have esteemed him, 
 and he was a favorite with the Sienese ; there is no 
 testimony to support the charges against him, and 
 the story of his domestic unhappiness is disproved 
 by documentary evidence. That he was often lazy 
 and indifferent seems to be shown by his work, but 
 we cannot call him weak artistically, for he was 
 distinctly individual and saw nature from a personal 
 point of view; perhaps no artist ever possessed 
 150
 
 
 
 

 
 SIENA 
 
 INSTITUTE OF FINE ARTS 
 
 SODOMA 
 HEAD OF A SLEEPING APOSTLE (FRAGMENT)
 
 SIENA 
 
 more temperament than did this spoiled child of 
 painting. 
 
 Considered from the point of view of technique 
 pure and simple, Bazzi was unequal as draughtsman 
 and colorist, indifferent as composer. He could draw 
 excellently, but rarely did ; his heads are a souvenir 
 of Leonardo's with a strong added personality of 
 Bazzi's own ; as to their bodies, his figures often look 
 as if some of Eaphael's frescoed men and women 
 had been painted with so liquid a medium that they 
 had spread upon the walls and passed beyond their 
 outlines, until they seemed boneless and gelatinous. 
 
 M. Miintz, praising the figures of the Farnesina 
 frescoes, says of them, " Les figures sont du Raphael, 
 mais du Raphael plus fluide et plus suave." This 
 is precisely what they are to so great a degree that 
 their fluidity has made some of them relatively 
 shapeless and very unsatisfactory to the student, 
 although their suavity has, it is true, much of the 
 charm which never deserted Sodoma. 
 
 In these frescoes of the Oratory of San Bernardino 
 Giovanni has attempted to be monumental, and has 
 succeeded in obtaining a certain impressiveness and 
 an ensemble which is thoroughly characteristic of 
 the amplification that art had received in the begin- 
 ning of the sixteenth century, but these figures are 
 lacking in construction, still more are they lacking 
 in subtlety of drawing. They look exactly like 
 151
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 figures in old tapestries, which have been stretched 
 and pulled until not one line in face or figure is 
 correct 
 
 The admirable figures (see especially the Saint Vic- 
 tor) in the Palazzo Pubblico have all the qualities 
 which belong to those in San Bernardino, and most 
 of the qualities which are lacking in the latter. The 
 grave and beautiful warrior-saints are constructed, 
 drawn, and modelled with seriousness and skill, and 
 they are noble in expression as well. The San Bene- 
 detto is also admirable. If Bazzi had always worked 
 as earnestly as he did upon these figures, few painters 
 would have equalled him. The frescoes at Monte 
 Oliveto without possessing the Florentine hardness 
 of contour, resemble Milanese work and are agree- 
 ably firm in silhouette, yet not dry or " cut out." 
 In spite, however, of an occasional effort to better 
 his slurring and slovenly manner of drawing, Bazzi 
 is generally lacking, and wilfully lacking, in "the 
 probity of art." 
 
 His color (being more an affair of temperament 
 and more instinctive) is sometimes warm and trans- 
 parent; sometimes distinguished, as in the " Swooning 
 of Saint Catherine," ; sometimes monochromatic, as in 
 the "Saint Sebastian;" is often pleasing and never 
 disagreeable. 
 
 He had little capacity as a composer of groups, 
 and was most at home when he had but one or 
 152
 
 SIENA 
 
 two figures to deal with ; composition did not 
 come easily to him; lacking mental order and sen- 
 sitiveness to distribution of masses, deficient also 
 in the capacity for continued effort in a given di- 
 rection, which is indispensable to the evolution of 
 monumental composition, Bazzi is confused and inco- 
 herent when he attempts to handle a number of 
 figures. Nowhere are the abilities and the limita- 
 tions of a painter more clearly demonstrated than 
 in the chapel of San Domenico. There the noble 
 lines of the three figures in the " Swoon of Saint 
 Catherine " stand side by side with the jumbled 
 and crowded fresco of the "Execution of Tuldo," 
 which affords a felicitous illustration of Degas's 
 criticism : " On fait unefoule avec cinq per sonnes, non 
 avec cinquante" 
 
 Sodoma's finest performances are his single figures, 
 and it is in them that we read his title clear to the 
 admiration of his contemporaries. The Saint Cathe- 
 rine fainting under the intolerable glory of her es- 
 pousal is one of those relatively rare works which 
 give to Bazzi a very high rank as a complete artist, 
 and not merely as an artist of phenomenal tempera- 
 ment. He has treated a very difficult subject not 
 only with charm but with skill and thought, adding 
 to his natural suavity a care in the grouping of the 
 three lovely heads, in the arrangement of the 
 draperies, and in the rendering of the latter, which 
 153
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 is not often found in his works. As for the 
 spiritual side of the picture, it may be said that 
 the poignant delights of mysticism were never 
 more adequately interpreted. The "Saint Sebas- 
 tian," which "combines the beauty of the Greek 
 Hylas with the sentiment of Christian martyrdom," 
 is in a certain delicate loveliness and simple pathos 
 unsurpassed by any work of its time. Yet in spite 
 of the fact that its comeliness is informed with 
 spiritual significance, that the representation of 
 suffering is free from exaggeration, in some subtle 
 way it announces the decadence, the work of Guido 
 Reni, and of the seventeenth century. Although 
 the drawing of the figure is far more serious, the 
 silhouette more studied, than in most of Bazzi's work, 
 it must be admitted that as a whole it is lacking 
 in solidity and is even papery-looking in its lack 
 of modelling. 
 
 The figure of Saint James on horseback, in the 
 church of San Spirito, has been much praised; but 
 though it fills the space decoratively it is a poor 
 affair in execution, slurred and careless, and is little 
 to the credit of a master who was capable of far 
 better work. The horse especially is singularly ill 
 drawn for the work of an artist who was himself a 
 sporting-man and a judge of horseflesh. 
 
 To estimate at their true value Bazzi's freshness 
 of feeling and natural charm combined with sensu- 
 154
 
 SIENA 
 
 ousness and an unfailing sense of humor, we must 
 leave Siena and drive over a dull-colored cretaceous 
 soil furrowed by baize, to the monastery of Monte 
 Oliveto. 
 
 No environment could be more inspiring than the 
 magnificent mountain country about the convent, 
 made marvellously picturesque by the countless 
 ravines which seam the hills on either side of the 
 winding, ribbon-like road that leads from Buon 
 Convento to the monastery. From its terraces are 
 seen Montalcino on its aerial platform, the delicate 
 lines of Monte Amiata crowning a wide sweep of 
 hills, Chiusuri on its height, the valleys torn and 
 rent by the torrent-beds ; a strange landscape grand 
 and impressive in its desolation. Almost equally 
 stern and forbidding is the aspect of the monastery 
 itself, a huge pile of purplish-red brick, raised upon 
 gigantic buttresses above a wave-like crest of the 
 hill. Its austere lines are broken only by the 
 church with its square campanile and the machico- 
 lations of the fortress-like gate, pierced with loop- 
 holes, which defends the entrance of the long avenue 
 of cypresses leading to the convent courtyard. 
 
 Amidst these solemn surroundings, more sym- 
 pathetic to the fiery and virile genius of his prede- 
 cessor Signorelli than to the mischievous and 
 beauty-loving Bazzi, the cycle of Saint Benedict 
 was painted. In these frescoes, commenced in 1506 
 155
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 and still in admirable preservation, there is nothing 
 which rises to the height of two or three of Sodoma's 
 best pictures, but as a series it is, on the whole, the 
 most amiable of his works. In their wide, sunlit 
 cloister, protected from damp and wind by the glass 
 with which the government has filled its outer 
 arches, nothing could be more cheerful or attractive 
 than these clear-colored frescoes, light in tone, free 
 in their handling, yet far more serres and close in 
 drawing than are many of the artist's more pre- 
 tentious pictures. 
 
 There is a certain childlike sweetness, a simplicity 
 of arrangement, a genial sense of humor which is 
 as completely suited to the presentation of these 
 indescribably petty miracles and trifling temptations 
 as the genius of Signorelli was unsuited to it. The 
 subjects themselves, forming " a painted novella " of 
 monastic life, are utterly puerile in character, and 
 their whole charm is in their treatment. Of such 
 motives as " Saint Benedict miraculously mends a 
 Sieve," Bazzi, by the beauty and sweetness of his 
 types ; by the introduction of portraits ; by perfect 
 naturalness ; above all, by that naif charm which 
 five years later was forever stricken from Italian art 
 by the splendors of the Stanze and the lightnings of 
 the Sistina ; by the qualities of simplicity, freshness, 
 and vivacity, Giovan Antonio turns these rather 
 absurd subjects into a series of pictures which please 
 156
 
 SIENA 
 
 enduringly. The frescoes of the angles of the court 
 are more than pleasing and are executed with greater 
 thought and care than the smaller compositions. 
 Tradition whispers that this superior excellence was 
 the result of an increase in the painter's stipend, 
 that the agile brush " which danced to the sound 
 of coins " (ballava al suono dei denari) was prop- 
 erly piped to. Indeed, Bazzi's vivid personality, his 
 pranks and eccentricities, wove a brilliant scarlet 
 thread through the gray woof of the monks' lives, and 
 legend has been busy here and has handed down 
 an anecdote for each fresco. In one, Bazzi painted 
 the portrait of a greedy monk slyly abstracting his 
 meditative neighbor's manchet of bread ; in another 
 above the terse title, " Morenzo conduce male fern- 
 mine al convento," he earned his name of Mattaccio. 
 
 In this fresco, wherein the wicked Florentius, who 
 was the diabolus ex machina of the cycle of Saint 
 Benedict, and supplied the indispensable dramatic 
 element, brought singing and dancing women to the 
 convent to turn the good fathers' minds from holy 
 things. Hidden by his scaffolding, Bazzi painted 
 these winsome girls, who are even to-day utterly 
 bewitching and far too well calculated to turn poor 
 mortal man's thoughts from heaven to earth. These 
 seductive ladies were represented in the costume of 
 Mother Eve, their worthy predecessor in evil doing. 
 And we have only to remember the sweet, shame- 
 157
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 faced figure of our peccant ancestress in the " Limbo " 
 of the Academy to realize how alluring they must 
 have been. Imagine the scandal, the laughter, the 
 scolding, which filled the cloister when the planks 
 were removed, and fancy the blissful elation of 
 Bazzi and his color-grinders and apprentices. 
 
 Of course the artist was immediately obliged to 
 turn milliner and to perform one of the most urgent 
 of the temporal works of mercy, but Sodoma was 
 willing enough to double his labor in the good cause 
 of a practical joke, and the group of girls, a harmony 
 of melodic lines and fluent movement, remains one of 
 the most delight-inspiring creations of the Renais- 
 sance. Every note in the scale of coquetry from 
 demure dignity to mocking provocation is delicately 
 yet surely touched by these long-limbed dancers 
 and coy donzelle. Plastically there is still some- 
 thing of the fifteenth rather than the sixteenth cen- 
 tury about these figures ; they are graceful, not 
 monumental; are suggestive of Leonardo da Vinci; 
 are characteristic of the northern as distinguished 
 from the Tuscan manner, and possess the rhythmic 
 movement and enticing loveliness of Bazzi's ideal 
 type. 
 
 In the student of rt the human document " the full- 
 length portrait of Giovan Antonio stimulates specu- 
 lation and seems to afford a clew to that strange 
 personality in which Ariel and Puck met on equal 
 
 158
 
 MONTE OLIVETO MAGGIORE 
 
 SODOMA 
 
 HEAD OF A DANCING GIRL (FRAGMENT)
 
 
 

 
 SIENA 
 
 terms. In the long series of the portraits of the 
 Kenaissance painters many are nobler than this one, 
 none are more characterized ; and though the artistic 
 treatment is somewhat summary, the psychological 
 treatment is subtile. Nature wrote wag and dare- 
 devil in capital letters on this face, with its large 
 features, full lips, heavy brows, and irregular nose, 
 a real nez fripon, witty and impertinent. Nor 
 does the characterization stop at the audacious, clever 
 head under its loose mane of black hair. In the 
 slender, lithe body of the gentleman rider (evidently 
 Bazzi's racers were no weight-carriers) ; in the in- 
 troduction of pet animals, the tame badger begging 
 for a caress, and the offensively loquacious raven ; 
 in the rich costume, bought by the painter from a 
 noble Milanese who had recently taken the habit, 
 we recognize the freakish model of Vasari's darkly 
 shaded portrait, made human and sympathetic by a 
 more genial brush. 
 
 M. Miintz tells us that justice will not be done 
 to this master until he has been placed near Cor- 
 reggio, indeed by his side (immediatement & cote de 
 lui). It is very rarely that one takes issue with the 
 enlightened criticism of the author of the Histoire de 
 I' Art pendant la Eenaissance, but in this case it is 
 impossible to accept his dictum. Great as he is, 
 Bazzi, if placed by the side of Correggio, stands on a 
 far lower plane. Charm he has and style to an 
 159
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 extraordinary degree, but where in his work is there 
 any masterliness to be compared with that shown by 
 Correggio in his cupola of Parma or his Saint Je- 
 rome ? One is a discoverer and a creator, the other 
 a most gifted and inventive Master of the Eevels, 
 who can amuse and fascinate and delight, but to 
 whom the divine afflatus is denied. 
 
 The same charm of personality, of abandon, of 
 naturalness, which subjugated the Sienese is potent 
 over the critic who attempts to analyze the works 
 of the fantastic Lombard. Bazzi reminds one of 
 the old tale of the prince to whom all good things 
 were given and yet whose career was spoiled by the 
 malicious gift of one wicked fairy. No painter was 
 more richly dowered by nature : facility, elegance, 
 sweetness, were his ; a keen and delicate feeling for 
 grace of line and beauty of feature; remarkable 
 powers of assimilation, and a fertile fancy ; occasion- 
 ally he attained distinction, and he rarely, even in 
 his most careless moments, lacked style. But all 
 these great qualities were obscured by one fatal 
 defect, frivolity. There is no better example of 
 how much and how little temperament can do for 
 an artist, or what painting becomes when it is 
 divorced from hard thinking and laborious study. 
 The absence of the appearance of effort, which is 
 such a different thing from the actual absence of 
 effort, is replaced in his work by a slovenliness that 
 160
 
 SIENA 
 
 is the more irritating because we feel that it is wil- 
 ful negligence. Every one of his more ambitious 
 pictures manifests carelessness or lassitude in some 
 particular. His finest performances are his single 
 figures (the Roxana in Vienna or the Eve or the 
 Saint Sebastian) ; he lacked the mental coherence, 
 the capacity for intellectual tension, which are in- 
 dispensable for the planning and execution of large 
 compositions, and though pathos and poetic feeling 
 were within his scope, he was wanting in elevation 
 of thought and, above all, in conviction. 
 
 Yet when all these reserves are made, when we 
 have recovered from the annoyance produced by 
 the wanton neglect of splendid gifts, how much 
 remains to delight us in Bazzi's work. His sense 
 of humor, a rare quality and one that is almost in- 
 compatible with intense convictions, which enlivens 
 the frescoes of Monte Oliveto; his capacity for 
 characterization, his vitality, the diversity and sup- 
 pleness of his genius, are all potent factors in the 
 sum of our pleasure. The greatest of these is doubt- 
 less his sensitiveness to physical beauty, above all 
 the beauty of youth, of girls and adolescents. Who 
 can forget the undulating lines of his dancers' 
 slender bodies, or the morbid sweetness of the 
 swooning Catherine, or the lovely cowering figure 
 of Eve, or the coy, almost simpering, but altogether 
 bewitching Eoxana ? Equally persistent in the 
 VOL. i. 11 161
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 memory are the figures of the young warriors Alex- 
 ander and Saint Victor, the beautiful Vulcan of the 
 Farnesina villa, the transpierced Saint Sebastian, the 
 charming boys in the Saint Benedict cycle. Bazzi's 
 feminine ideal was derived from Leonardo's; less 
 distinguished, it is more seductive ; less noble than 
 the subtile Madonnas of Luini, it is more captivat- 
 ing. An oval face with languishing eyes, an over- 
 ripe curved mouth, the upper lip much fuller than 
 the lower one ; a delicate nose slightly retrousse ; a 
 softly rounded chin, and a slender, long-limbed body, 
 such was Giovan Antonio's type. Add to it those 
 arie di testa which Vasari admired, sometimes an 
 air of dreamy voluptuousness which is as far re- 
 moved from coarseness as it is from severity ; again, 
 a pathos and tenderness that suggest the influence 
 of Perugino, and a quality of youth and fresh- 
 ness, something dawn-like and spring-like, and you 
 have the ideal that took Siena by storm. Natur- 
 ally this sweetness often degenerates into insipid- 
 ity or becomes cloying; mere loveliness cannot 
 atone for the lack of nobility any more than 
 facility and fertility of invention can replace high 
 thought and strenuous endeavor; but, after all, 
 to analyze the faults of this alluring genius is 
 almost as destructive to the fine edge of the critical 
 spirit as to study the physical defects of a beautiful 
 person. 
 
 162
 
 SIENA 
 
 INSTITUTE OF FINE ARTS 
 
 SODOMA 
 HEAD OF EVE (FRAGMENT)
 
 
 
 . 

 
 SIENA 
 
 To follow the triumphant progress of the Ee- 
 naissance which entered Siena so brilliantly with 
 Pinturicchio and Bazzi, would be a pleasant task; 
 to retrace, step after step, their wanderings about 
 the town from their homes in the Via dei Maestri, 
 over the " Contrada Pictorum " to the churches 
 where they worked, and to the palaces they painted, 
 would be an easy one. For they were ubiquitous 
 folk, and permeated the whole city, from the shrine 
 of its saints to its outer gates. Pleasant, too, it 
 would be to study the works and lives of Siena's 
 youngest sons, Peruzzi and Beccafumi ; pleasant to 
 follow reverently in the footsteps of that impas- 
 sioned daughter of Saint Dominic and the people, 
 Saint Catherine ; pleasant, also, but hardly as edify- 
 ing, to wander with the novelists through the olive- 
 orchards and those groves and gardens which ^Eneas 
 Sylvius dedicated to Venus. 
 
 Pleasantest of all it is to dwell awhile with the 
 memories that crowd these streets and haunt these 
 walls, memories tragic, dramatic, romantic; for 
 the perfervid Ghibelline city was the home of 
 romance, from the days of Dante's minstrel singing 
 in the Campo for his friend's ransom, to our own 
 times, when Alfieri could be seen galloping outside 
 the Camollia gates in a whirlwind of dust. It is, 
 perhaps, this romantic past; perhaps the splendid 
 elans of self-sacrifice, the spontaneous acts of gener- 
 163
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 osity in which her history is so rich ; the ardent 
 faith in God and man which never deserted her; 
 and the grandeur of her martyrdom, that lend Siena 
 an irresistible feminine charm. " II y a de la femme 
 dans tout ce que I'on aime." Her contradictions are 
 full of fascination and remind us that if, in her 
 hour of need, the town gave herself to Virgin Mary, 
 the Mother of Beauty has tarried within her walls 
 as well. 
 
 All those who know Siena have felt this subtile 
 coercion, and have opened their hearts to the beauti- 
 ful city which wrote upon its gate, " Cor magis tibi 
 Sena pandit" 
 
 164
 
 THE FLORENTINE ARTIST
 
 THE FLORENTINE ARTIST 
 
 IN these days of triumphant specialism, when brush 
 and chisel, burin and aquafortist's tool, perform feats 
 that would have set the Eenaissance agog ; when a 
 phalanx of French artists stand armed cap-h-pie 
 with all the varied knowledge that the years have 
 brought to Ars Longa ; when art pours in from 
 England, Sweden, Eussia, Japan ; when America has 
 already started in the great torch race, sure to hold 
 the light high (how high perhaps we hardly dare to 
 dream), why is it that we turn again and again to 
 the old masters, the men of Florence and of Venice, 
 of the quiet galleries and palaces of a land older 
 than our own ? 
 
 Is it because they take us out of the bustle and 
 struggle and beckon us to their feet in the half 
 light of the chapterhouse, in the sun-dappled still- 
 ness of the cloister or the deserted chamber of state 
 where they sit enthroned and tranquil, nowise toil- 
 ing for recognition ? Is it not rather because theirs 
 was the springtime of art, because they were in the 
 gold of the morning and had its golden touch ? 
 
 Theirs was the high-hearted conviction which has 
 seen no disillusion. They had not even found out 
 167
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 what they could not do, and their naif fervor set a 
 halo even on their awkwardness. Eternal youth 
 was theirs and its sublime confidence and audacity. 
 Spontaneity was theirs, and the joy of the explorer 
 as well. To-day we are bewildered worshippers at 
 many shrines, and are burdened with a too costly 
 heritage ; they were un vexed by warring ideals and 
 were the heirs of opportunity. 
 
 It is because they were the sons of morning that 
 we find even in their lesser works (" detur amanti ") 
 something to reward patient study, something of 
 the glamour of the reawakening, of the gladness of 
 earnest endeavor, of the serenity of achievement, 
 and, in spite of the science and perfected technique 
 of modern painting, the hill towns of Tuscany and 
 Umbria still rise as high altars of art; Eome yet 
 remains the painter's pantheon, and the lagoons of 
 Venice still shine for us with the color of Titian 
 and still hold the bituminous depths of Tintoretto. 
 
 Among all the Italian towns, Florence possesses 
 the highest place, for in that long period from 1300 
 to 1580, which covers the Italian Eenaissance in its 
 various phases, she was the focal point for at least 
 two hundred years. This epoch of art evolution 
 may be conveniently divided into four periods : that 
 of the precursors, of Niccola and Giotto ; that of the 
 early Eenaissance, with the group which surrounded 
 Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici ; of the full Eenais- 
 168
 
 sance, when Eome called Tuscan and Umbrian alike 
 into her service; and of that later time which, 
 decadent elsewhere, saw the glorious supremacy of 
 Venice. 
 
 Thus through fully two-thirds of the art move- 
 ment Florence marched at the head of Italy, and we 
 see the Florentine first as the strong man in armor, 
 merchant and soldier at once, beating off Barbarossa, 
 conquering his civic rights one by one, and setting 
 the Phrygian cap of liberty upon his helmet ; a later 
 and milder age twists garlands about it, and sculp- 
 tures his shield, and his son grows up a pale-cheeked 
 student, with a crop of curls, a brush and chisel in 
 his scarsella and a great book clasped upon his 
 breast. 
 
 As we look at old pictures of this protagonist of 
 independence, this Athene of towns who wore helmet 
 and laurel alike and held palette and lance at once, 
 we see that five hundred years ago she was still the 
 grim-visaged and simple-mannered Florence of the 
 Divine Comedy. 
 
 We turn from the pages of the pictured record. 
 Another short hundred years transforms the for- 
 tress-city of Corso Donati into the palace-city of 
 Lorenzo de' Medici; the Eenaissance has come to 
 its full tide and the Florence of Dante, which, lovely 
 as it appeared in the dreams of the exile, was 
 brown and austere as a Franciscan friar in its out- 
 169
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 ward semblance, had by the end of the fifteenth 
 century become a treasury of beauty. Many dif- 
 ferent causes had contributed to this result: com- 
 mercial prosperity ; municipal freedom ; the intense 
 civic pride, the passionate love of the city that 
 then stood for patriotism; the newly awakened 
 plastic sense ; the Italian desire to far figura ; the 
 lover's instinct to adorn the beloved ; and the posses- 
 sion of generations of artists equal to their task, 
 all united to dower Florence with innumerable 
 treasures. The best blood of the time was run- 
 ning into this new channel and coursing there more 
 and more strongly. The incessant warfare of earlier 
 times, the death-grapple between city and city and 
 between rival factions and greater and lesser guilds 
 had ended in utter exhaustion, an exhaustion 
 too often making way for a local tyrant; but 
 the marvellous vitality of Italy, which in one way 
 or another never flagged, showed itself in her art. 
 The hand, tired of striking with the sword, struck 
 lightly with the chisel, and the cunning Medici set 
 the unwitting artists to gilding the chains of Flor- 
 ence. There were chains indeed ; but the craftsman 
 lives in a republic of ideas, and his craft was honored 
 by the tyrant ; he alone of all men was free, for the 
 Inquisition had not yet begun to prescribe the 
 action of the people of fresco or panel, or to peer 
 through the eyeholes of its cowl into parchment 
 170
 
 THE FLORENTINE ARTIST 
 
 and picture to ferret out heresy. Cosimo the 
 Ancient might say in his cynical way that it took 
 only a few yards of scarlet cloth to make a burgher, 
 but he never applied his yard-measure estimate to 
 humanists or artists. 
 
 A noble field lay open to the latter; their works 
 did not disappear into private galleries; art be- 
 longed to the whole city, and was a matter of per- 
 sonal interest and pride to each citizen ; the facade 
 or the monument was his, and he walked out to see 
 it uncovered, in a flutter of pleasant excitement, 
 and quite prepared to fasten his epigram or his 
 sonnet at its base. For all Florence became at once 
 customer and connoisseur, and fairly went mad with 
 enthusiasm over its new masterpieces. The Sig- 
 niory mingled with the business of grave embassies 
 questions of decoration of public palaces, and 
 art matters were treated like affairs of state. A 
 daughter of the Eepublic, art's best service was 
 given to the city, to the market-place, the townhall, 
 and the church. This was no courtly official art, 
 shut up in palaces ; no burgher art, withdrawn into 
 rich men's houses or cramped into prettiness to 
 please a caprice ; no carefully nurtured exotic, for- 
 eign to all its environment; it was democratic, 
 municipal ; " of the people, by the people, for the 
 people ; " stooping to the humblest offices ; carving 
 the public fountain, where goodwives washed their 
 171
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 cabbages and filled their clashing metal buckets, 
 and rising heavenward on the broad curves of 
 Brunelleschi's dome. It was a deep-rooted, many- 
 branched growth of the soil; an integral part 
 of daily life; a need, a passion, and a delight at 
 once. 
 
 It almost seemed as if Art, Orpheus-like, held 
 sway over nature. Rough crags piled themselves 
 up into palaces, iron bowed itself into lovely curves, 
 and bronze filled the hollow mould with fair shapes ; 
 glistening marbles covered the bare fagades ; acan- 
 thus and laurel, oak and ivy, lilies and pomegran- 
 ates twined around the church pillars, climbed 
 to the cornice and clustered about the deep-set 
 windows, ran over choir stalls, and thrust them- 
 selves between the yellowed parchments of the 
 choral books. With them came the birds to perch 
 among the bronze twigs and nest in the marble 
 foliage ; the lions crawled from their lairs to crouch 
 beneath church pillars; unicorns, griffins, and 
 strange sea-monsters came at the magician's bidding, 
 to support a shield or bound along a cornice. Night 
 lent her stars to roof a banqueting-hall ; the planets 
 shone over the exchange, and summer dwelt on the 
 painted wall while winter whitened the streets 
 outside. 
 
 Obedient to the call of Art the gods returned to 
 earth. Fauns lurked in the rose-thickets, and the 
 172
 
 THE FLORENTINE ARTIST 
 
 falling fountain splashed the long limbs of reed- 
 crowned nymphs. Behind the laurels Apollo struck 
 his lyre, and in the shadow of oak and ilex glim- 
 mered the dryads. Eros again upheld beauty's 
 mirror, once more Athene looked down from the 
 library shelf and Italy remembered that she was 
 the child of Greece. 
 
 Art then held both life and death in her hands. 
 At her command the dead arose. She gave to 
 longing eyes the image of the loved one, and bade a 
 woman's face bloom for centuries. She touched the 
 bare walls of the cloister, and a celestial vision broke 
 through their chill whiteness. It was Art who laid 
 the laurel on the brow of the illustrious dead, and 
 such brief fame as we may know was hers to 
 bestow. 
 
 It was within the field of this world of art that 
 the hostile cities of the Eenaissance found their 
 one neutral ground, where the shrill voice of contro- 
 versy was hushed, and hatred dropped its dagger ; 
 where the old feud was forgotten ; where Guelph 
 and Ghibelline, Pallesco and Piagnone met as 
 friends, united by a common sympathy, swayed by 
 a common delight. 
 
 Something of this was dimly understood, even by 
 
 the little apprentices who ground the colors and 
 
 kept the clay moist. They knew that the masters 
 
 went and came unharmed through harried country 
 
 173
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 and hostile states ; they saw the Magnifico buy the 
 pictures of a follower of the Friar. Even civic strife 
 spared the artist who worked for the glory of the 
 town, and was therefore sacred to the man of the 
 Eenaissance, who, though he could hate fiercely and 
 strike hard, loved his city as a mother, and adorned 
 her like a bride. 
 
 The city so loved and so adorned was not very 
 different from the fair town set in the hollow of the 
 hills which we admire to-day ; it has lost its proud 
 zone of ramparts and the glow of mediaeval color, 
 but otherwise it is comparatively unchanged since 
 Donatello lodged in the street of the Melon, and 
 Benvenuto kept shop on the old bridge. Here we 
 can walk arm-in-arm with Gossip Vasari; every 
 turn brings us face to face with the memory of a 
 world-famed master. The very name of a street 
 suggests some great artistic achievement; a few 
 lines of inscription on a house-front start a train 
 of association which quickens the pulse of the lover 
 of beauty ; all about us the very stones are eloquent, 
 and if we would study the greatest of modern art 
 epochs, and understand the environment of the 
 Eenaissance artist, the conditions under which 
 he lived and labored, we have but to look at the 
 city upon which he set his seal as a king stamps 
 his effigy on the coin of the realm. 
 
 Four hundred years ago morning entered Flor- 
 174
 
 THE FLORENTINE ARTIST 
 
 ence much as it does to-day, slipping unchallenged 
 through the ponderous gates, stealing like a gray 
 nun through the narrow streets, glimmering faintly 
 through the grated windows, and, leaving the lower 
 stories of the crag-like houses still dark and somhre, 
 touched with light the dome of the cathedral and 
 the crests of those stern towers which spring up- 
 ward like unsheathed swords to guard the white 
 and rosy beauty of our Lady of the Flower. As the 
 dawn struggled through the leaded casements, or 
 the deep arches of the workshop, it saw the artist 
 already at labor. Sometimes it paled the light 
 fixed to Michelangelo's forehead, with which, 
 "like a Cyclops," he worked through the long 
 night ; or surprised Master Luca patiently freezing 
 his fingers over his new invention, the terra invet- 
 riata ; or, maybe, it put out the lanterns which 
 Ghiberti's workmen carried in their nightly walks 
 from the furnaces in the Via Sant' Egidio to the 
 Baptistery. Work began early for the Florentine 
 artist ; for the painter, sculptor, architect, worker 
 in gold, iron, or wood, was first of all a handicrafts- 
 man with a handicraftsman's simple tastes and fru- 
 gal habits. Arte, art, meant but craft or trade, and 
 later, by extension, guild of craftsmen, and was 
 applied to the corporations of cloth-dressers and 
 silk-weavers, as well as to the associations of archi- 
 tects and sculptors. 
 
 175
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 "Then painters did not play the gentleman;" 
 small distinction was made between the artist and 
 the artisan ; and, though now and then a banquet 
 at the new house in the Via Larga, or a little 
 junketing in Albertinelli's wine-shop, or a gay 
 supper at the Pot Luck Club (Compagnia del Paju- 
 olo), opposite the Foundling Hospital, might tempt 
 him to keep late hours, morning naps were excep- 
 tions, and the stone-mason, when he came through 
 the dim twilight of the shadowed streets ' to his 
 day's work on church or palace, found Brunelleschi 
 or Gozzoli there before him. No wonder such men 
 rose early ; the whole world of art lay before them, 
 unconquered, unexplored. The mysteries of nature 
 were to be solved, the lost treasures of antiquity 
 regained. The processes of technique, the media of 
 artistic expression, were to be discovered ; and for 
 such achievement the days were all too short, and 
 the nights as well. If they would play the slug- 
 gard, the voice of Florence itself awoke them ; for 
 with the broadening day the bells of Giotto's tower 
 began to ring the Angelus, filling the vibrating air 
 with solemn melody, as one after another, from the 
 iron throats of San Lorenzo, of San Michele, and of 
 Santa Felicita came answering peals, while on the 
 circling hills, gray with olive or dark with pine, the 
 bells of convent and chapel and parish church 
 echoed faintly, greeting each other with the angeli- 
 176
 
 THE FLORENTINE ARTIST 
 
 cal salutation. There were few artists who did not 
 bow their heads and begin the day with the poetic 
 orison, honoring "the Word that was made flesh, 
 and dwelt among us ; " and what better prayer 
 could there be for men whose chief care lay in the 
 portrayal of that same flesh, and who were " to 
 paint man, man, whatever the issue." 
 
 Early as it was, the city was astir, and the streets 
 about the cathedral were thronged with people on 
 their way to early mass ; home-staying house-wives 
 were gossiping on the doorsteps as in Dante's day ; 
 long-gowned burghers, like Filippo Strozzi, who 
 built palaces, bought rare Greek manuscripts, and 
 bribed royalty, were abroad for their marketing, to 
 chaffer over a couple of fowls or a handful of vege- 
 tables. Groups of sun-burned peasants, in their 
 gayest gear, among them a fresh-faced girl or two of 
 the Nencia type, " white as cream-cheese and round 
 as a little sausage," were crowding into the Duomo 
 to say a few aves before some favorite shrine ; here 
 and there, with ink-horn at his belt, a scholar 
 passed Pico or Poliziano on his way to the 
 Medici palace, or the still, green gardens of the 
 Academy. Knots of leather-clad craftsmen, bare- 
 armed cloth-dressers from the Calimala, silk-weavers 
 bound for San Biagio, goldsmiths hurrying to their 
 work in the Pellicceria, jostled each other in the 
 narrow way. Here, too, were matrons of the old 
 VOL. i. 12 ] 77
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 school, austerely wrapped in cloak and wimple, and 
 blooming girls, whose pearl-wreathed hair and bare 
 throats were hardly shaded by transparent veils, 
 demurely conscious of the admiration they excited, 
 and not averse to letting a young painter's eyes en- 
 joy their comeliness. Had not Ginevra dei Benci, 
 one of the proudest beauties of Florence, sat for 
 Messer Domenico Bigordi ? and he who would see 
 the fair wife of Francesco Pugliese limned to the 
 life need only visit the little church outside the 
 walls, where Filippino painted her as Madonna. 
 What pretty girl was not ambitious to figure in a 
 fresco, or pose for a saint, tricked out with halo and 
 symbol ? When did adoration ever come amiss ? or 
 when was a bold glance and a fervently whispered 
 " bella " really resented ? 
 
 Meantime she who hoped some day to see her own 
 portrait as Saint Catherine or Barbara or Lucy, behind 
 the blazing altar-tapers, dimmed with the cloud of 
 fragrant smoke, enjoyed a somewhat grosser incense. 
 In this town of tiny streets and thickset houses, 
 whose inhabitants had grown up together in close 
 quarters, generation after generation ; where family 
 loves and hatreds were matters of heritage and tra- 
 dition, and where each man was as well acquainted 
 with his neighbor's affairs as with his own, none of 
 these young ladies were unknown to their admirers, 
 who could estimate each fair one's dower to a florin. 
 
 178
 
 FLORENCE 
 
 SANTA MARIA NOVELLA 
 
 GHIRLANDAJO 
 HEAD OF A GIRL (FRAGMENT)
 

 
 THE FLORENTINE ARTIST 
 
 On the heads and hands of these pretty girls the 
 passing goldsmith saw his own work in wreath and 
 ring, and when the whole parti-colored crowd swayed 
 and bent like a field of wind-swept irises as a priest 
 and a hurrying acolyte passed with the viaticum, 
 even while muttering a prayer for the soul about to 
 pass away, he recognized with pride the silver pyx 
 which had left his master's shop only a week ago. 
 Perhaps it was hardly out of sight before the street 
 began to resound with ringing hoofs and clashing 
 steel, as a company bound on a mission to Siena, 
 escorted by some thirty lances, clattered past; not 
 so fast but that the workmen from Niccolo Caparra's 
 forges could salute its gallant young captain, whose 
 fine armor, decorated with masques and lions' heads, 
 was their own handiwork. As the soldiers jingled 
 by, the high houses echoing their clangor tenfold, 
 the sculptor modelling a Saint George for the armor- 
 ers, looked long and wistfully after their leader, 
 who rode with shoulders well-squared and pointed 
 sollerets turned aggressively out, forcing the bur- 
 gesses to flatten themselves against walls or to 
 retreat incontinently under loggie, and reminding 
 more than one of that roaring young spark of the 
 Adimari, whose iron elbows and steel toes wrought 
 such havoc on Dante's neighbors. 
 
 These vividly costumed people of the Renaissance 
 have gone forever from the streets; they have 
 
 179
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 stepped into the gilded frames of altar-pieces, or 
 faded into the frescoed walls of choir and cloister ; 
 they have climbed the palace-stairs and vanished 
 into quiet galleries ; they sleep in state in the cano- 
 pied niches of Desiderio and Eossellino, and lie 
 under the pictured stones of Santa Croce. But the 
 background against which they moved is unaltered. 
 The churches and palaces where painter and sculp- 
 tor worked, the houses where they lodged, the 
 shops where they sold and taught, the beautiful 
 things they created are still there, and the palaces 
 of Brunelleschi and Michelozzo and Benedetto are 
 yet drawn up in line. 
 
 They bear a strange likeness to the mailed an- 
 cestors of their builders, these palaces, as they stand 
 facing each other like duellists with a perpetual 
 menace ; holding high their blazoned shields, peer- 
 ing distrustfully through their grated windows, 
 barred like the eyeholes of a helmet, thrusting out 
 their torch-holders, defiant gauntlets, into the street, 
 and flaunting their banners over the heads of the 
 passers-by. The deep cornice shades their stern 
 fronts like a hood drawn over a soldier's brows, and 
 as the knight wore a scarf of broidered work or a 
 collar wrought with jewelled shells and flowers over 
 his steel corselet, each rugged facade is softened into 
 beauty by sculptured shrine or gilded escutcheon, 
 cunningly forged lamp-iron and bridle-ring. Into 
 
 180
 
 THE FLORENTINE ARTIST 
 
 the grim narrowness of each dark street had come 
 some touch of color, some bit of exquisite ornament ; 
 and as the painter hurried to his shop in the morn- 
 ing, or strolled at evening with his lute, he could see 
 on every side the work of some brother artist. 
 Close at hand was Donatello's stemma, where the 
 lion of the Martelli ramped upon his azure field; 
 under heavy wreaths of pale-tinted fruit a Eobbia 
 Madonna gleamed whitely; the huge fanale, or 
 torch-holder, at the corner, bristling with spikes 
 like some tropical cactus, was forged by Nicholas 
 the Bargain-Maker; the rough-hewn palace which 
 darkened the slit of a street, Benedetto of Majano 
 did not live to finish ; that window-grating Michel- 
 angelo designed, bending the bars outward in 
 beauty's service to hold the elbow cushion or the 
 caged nightingale or the handful of spring flowers 
 in their glazed pot of Faenza-ware; while be- 
 hind the half-open iron-studded doors Michelozzo's 
 columns rose between the orange-trees. 
 
 Who can over-estimate the artistic value of such 
 environment ; the unconscious training of the eye ; 
 the education of the perceptive faculties, the keen 
 stimulus and the wholesome restraint exercised by 
 the constant presence of a universally recognized 
 standard of excellence? The art student might 
 draw from the antique in the garden of San Marco, 
 or copy the frescoes of the Brancacci Chapel in good 
 
 181
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 company, with Michelangelo and Raphael at his 
 elbow (running the risk of broken bones if he hap- 
 pened to be envied by the studio-bully Torrigiani), 
 and under his master's orders might work up de- 
 tails in a panel, or even follow a cartoon, but the 
 city itself was his real Academy. 
 
 All over this city the artists lodged and worked ; 
 the places still exist. There are dark arches where, 
 in spite of perpetual twilight, masterpieces grew 
 into being ; and there are stairways of heavy gray 
 stone that have been polished and channelled by 
 the shoes of masters who lived long ago. 
 
 In the Melon Street (now Via Ricasoli) the 
 memories thicken. There the long-gowned trecen- 
 tisti have walked ; Tafi, who set the solemn mosaic 
 upon the dome of the Baptistery, and with him 
 his roguish pupil, Buffalmacco, whose greatest 
 works of art were his monumental practical jokes. 
 Giotto, too, the chief of them all, caped and hooded 
 as we see him in the Portico of the Uffizi, had 
 come a little later to make the " house of the five 
 lamps" trebly illustrious. The lamps are still on 
 the house-front, glimmering above the little shrine 
 where the old painters often stopped to tell their 
 beads before the image of Our Lady, who had been 
 a good friend to their craft ever since the day she 
 sat for its patron, Saint Luke. 
 
 Perhaps they passed on thence to that garden 
 182
 
 THE FLORENTINE ARTIST 
 
 of the Gaddi, in the little street not far away, to 
 which the painter's pomegranate-trees gave the 
 name of Via del Melarancio, which it wears even 
 to-day. In the Calzaioli, just beyond the Bigallo, 
 and on the same side with it, about a hun- 
 dred years after Giotto, Donatello, and Michelozzo 
 "worked together like brothers, perfecting the art 
 of sculpture," carving that tomb of Pope John in 
 the Baptistery, which was the forerunner of all 
 the lovely, Tuscan-Renaissance tombal architecture. 
 Later their mallets rang behind the cathedral at 
 the corner of the Via dei Servi, while the minor 
 music of goldsmith's hammer and niellist's tool was 
 heard from the shops of Pollajuolo and Finiguerra, 
 in the Vacchereccia. Monasteries there are too 
 where famous artists once worked; convents where 
 the sisters painted, like that Plautilla Nelli, who 
 had to make Herods and Judases of the novices, 
 since no man might penetrate the walls. The 
 convents are secularized now, but we still find 
 them in all quarters of the city. 
 
 Ghiberti cast his gates in the Via Sant' Egidio ; 
 to-day the house shelters the quaint foreign grace 
 of Van der Weyden's Flemish Madonna, and gera- 
 niums now flame in the garden of the Via della 
 Pergola, where Benvenuto's furnaces once glowed 
 fiercely as the molten bronze became Perseus. 
 
 We visit Michelangelo the boy in the Via 
 183
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 Anguillara ; Michelangelo the old man in the 
 Via Ghibellina, and in Via Ginori are the stairs 
 down which the young Eaphael has often walked 
 with his host. Andrea del Sarto, with Franciabigio, 
 had his shop in that southern angle of the Piazza 
 Or-San-Michele, where a dark vault gives entrance 
 to a street so narrow that lovers might clasp hands 
 across it from the windows corbelled out above, 
 and where, too, the artists were next door to the 
 palace of their arch-patrons, the merchants of the 
 mighty guild of wool, with its blazon and loggia 
 and battlemented parapet. Fra Bartolommeo got 
 his nickname of Baccio della Porta from the 
 Eoman Gate near which he lived, and when later 
 he took the tonsure and renounced his art for a 
 time, his comrade, Albertinelli, discouraged by his 
 loss, dropped palette and brushes and opened a 
 wine-shop under those old houses of the Alighieri 
 where f " nacque il divino poeta." 
 
 II Eosso, with his apprentice Battistino and his 
 ape (whom the chronicles leave nameless), made life 
 merry for the monks of Santa Croce ; Cellini, born 
 near the modern iron markets and casting his bronze 
 in the Street of the Bower, studied first with Bandini 
 in the Furriers' Quarter, then, under the new dis- 
 pensation of Duke Cosimo, went with the other 
 goldsmiths to that Ponte Vecchio where the ap- 
 prentice lads were stationed to offer trinkets to
 
 THE FLORENTINE ARTIST 
 
 the passing ladies, and to the same shop whence 
 his bust now looks down upon his successors. So 
 the tale runs, and the list is endless, for Florence 
 remembers her famous men, and the archives be- 
 neath the picture gallery of the Uffizi are crammed 
 with records that furnish us house, date, and name, 
 dry bones to which the chroniclers add life, the 
 life of the crowded, narrow-streeted city, with its 
 art, its industry, its busy hours, its leisure, and 
 even its fun and jokes. 
 
 For the hard-worked painters found time for the 
 latter, made time for them indeed. Woe to the 
 man who was conceited, credulous, or lazy; his 
 foible was exploited by a dozen past-masters in 
 the science of tormenting; Florentine tongues were 
 proverbially sharp, and constant practice in the 
 wordy warfare of the studio gave them an even 
 finer edge. 
 
 The greatest artists Donatello, Brunelleschi, 
 and, earlier, Buffalmacco concocted elaborate beffe 
 and burle, with no pity for their victims. The 
 temptation was great; the ages of faith had not 
 passed away ; many good folk, accustomed to believe 
 in miracles, afforded golden opportunities to the 
 practical joker; and if we may believe Sacchetti, 
 Ser Giovanni, and Boccaccio, the wags were equal 
 to the occasion. There was such a fund of credu- 
 lity lying idle ; it was so easy to make Calandrino 
 185
 
 believe that he was invisible ; to persuade the 
 Doctor that he might sup with Helen and Cleo- 
 patra, and to convince II Grasso that he had changed 
 his identity, that we can hardly blame the painters 
 for farces in which the whole town joined, even the 
 good parish priest playing his part. This fun was 
 rifest perhaps at the noonday hour, when Luigi 
 Pulci takes us into that old market, around which 
 the studios were thickest set, and which, not many 
 years ago, stood just as it was when hungry in- 
 dustry, bent on dining, surged into the Mercato 
 Vecchio. 
 
 Here artists, great and small, masters and ap- 
 prentices, dined ; here was dinner enough for all 
 Florence; and the irregular square, round which 
 the tall, soot-stained houses crowded, was a glut- 
 ton's paradise, in which Margutte would have 
 found all the articles of his credo: his tart and 
 tartlet, his stuffed leccafichi, and his good wine. 
 There were meals for all tastes and all purses ; one 
 could lunch on fruit and eggs and cheese with 
 Donatello, or sup like a Magnifico on the boar that 
 grinned from the butcher's shop, and only two days 
 before was crunching the acorns of Vallombrosa. 
 There was good eating in the grimy, black shops, 
 where before a huge fire a spit revolved loaded with 
 trussed fowls and haunches of venison; and the 
 pastry-cook's was not to be despised with its deli- 
 186
 
 THE FLORENTINE ARTIST 
 
 cious scent of spices and warm pasties, just off the 
 hot iron plates, set out in dainty white baskets ; its 
 ciambelli and cialdoni, buns and wafers; the crisp Jer- 
 lingozzi that poor Visino thought worth all the kings 
 and queens in Hungary, and those light, golden, 
 sugar-sprinkled pastykins which the Magnificent 
 Lorenzo sang of. These delicacies were not for the 
 apprentices ; they brought their own empty flasks 
 and canakins to the wine-shop, to be filled with 
 white Trebbiano ; they patronized the pork-butchers 
 buying whole strings of sausages; the poulterers 
 whose neighborhood gave the famous nickname of 
 Pollajuolo, and where one student at least bought 
 the caged wild birds and set them free, while 
 onlookers wondered at the odd caprices of young 
 Leonardo da Vinci. 
 
 Wine and bread, onions and sausages once con- 
 sumed, whether before the shops or on the steps 
 of Santa Maria in Campidoglio, the 'prentices went 
 back to the lottega, which was usually in the mas- 
 sive basement of a tall house, fronting some tiny 
 piazza or narrow street. The heavy, iron-barred 
 shutters, which at night closed its four arches, 
 were raised and fastened to the wall, and even the 
 ponderous door stood open, for light was precious 
 to the workers within. The lower half of these 
 arched openings was filled by counters of solid 
 masonry, to which a couple of seats were often 
 187
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 added on the outer side. Within, the furnishing 
 was meagre enough ; a few heavy joint stools, 
 hacked by generations of students; a strong box; 
 a delicately wrought pair of bronze scales for weigh- 
 ing pearls, gold, silver, and precious colors; a 
 carved and gilded triptych frame hanging on the 
 wall waiting to be filled with the patron saints of 
 its future purchaser, and on one counter a small 
 anvil, a goldsmith's hammer, graver, and pincers, and 
 a goatskin bellows. A charcoal drawing or two was 
 stuck on the wall ; from a peg hung a fine jewelled 
 girdle, and on a bracket over the door were some 
 elaborately chiselled silver trenchers. At the back 
 a door led into the studio, lighted from the next 
 street, where the students worked under the 
 master's supervision, drawing, painting, modelling, 
 and carving. 
 
 The life of these art students was divided into 
 three sharply defined stages. The child of eight 
 or ten who was learning the rudiments of the 
 craft was called an apprentice ; the youth who 
 aided in the execution of important commissions, 
 an assistant (companion would be the literal trans- 
 lation of the Italian word); and the fully fledged 
 young artist who had begun to fly alone, a maestro, 
 or master. The whole training was eminently 
 practical; there were no medals, no exhibitions, 
 no public awards. Now and then there was a 
 188
 
 FLORENCE 
 
 UFFIZI 
 LORENZO DI CREDI 
 
 HEAD OF AN UNKNOWN YOUTH
 
 THE FLORENTINE ARTIST 
 
 great competition for some important civic monu- 
 ment, like the doors of the Baptistery or the facade 
 of the cathedral, to which not only Italians, but 
 artists from beyond the Alps were invited to send 
 designs ; but these were very rare, and by the end 
 of the fifteenth century had practically ceased to 
 exist. There were no academies ; no public art 
 schools and no government appropriations for 
 artistic instruction ; no official institutions, but 
 the state, while "ignoring art in the abstract, 
 encouraged the individual artist." To produce 
 something which somebody would want to possess, 
 to turn his knowledge of the beautiful, his mastery 
 of technical processes to some concrete end, was 
 the object of the education of the future artist, 
 a work-a-day genius ignorant of our modern for- 
 mula of art for art's sake. Pietro Vanucci painted 
 the Florentines on altar-curtains, while waiting for 
 the time when, as Perugino, he should work on the 
 walls of the Sistine Chapel; Eodolfo Ghirlandajo 
 " told sad stories of the death of kings " on 
 the baldacchino draperies for All-Souls-Day; and 
 Brunelleschi chased rings and set jewels while 
 dreaming of antique temples and giant domes. 
 Thus were executed not only the master-pieces we 
 admire to-day in the churches and museums of 
 Europe, but a whole series of minor works, which 
 surround the pictures and statues of the Renais- 
 189
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 sance like the fantastical bordering about the illu- 
 minated pages of the missal. 
 
 Art did not mean the production of pictures and 
 statues only; it meant a practical application of 
 the knowledge of the beautiful to the needs of daily 
 life. So the lottega hummed and buzzed with the 
 manifold business of the artist. If orders came in 
 his absence, the apprentices were to accept them all, 
 even those for insignificant trifles ; the master would 
 furnish the design, and the pupil would execute, 
 not from greed of gain, as with Perugino, but from 
 the pure joy in creative work which made Ghirlan- 
 dajo willing to decorate " hoops for women's 
 baskets," and at the same time long for a commis- 
 sion " to paint the whole circuit of all the walls of 
 Florence with stories," and which enabled him, 
 although he died at the age of forty-nine, to leave 
 behind him a second population of Florentines in 
 the choirs and chapels of her churches. 
 
 There were constant opportunities for the exer- 
 cise of this creative faculty. Orders did not cease. 
 Now it was a group of brown Carmelites who called 
 master and men to their church, to be at once 
 scene-setters, costumers, carpenters, and machinists 
 during the Ascension day ceremonies, and for the 
 angel-filled scaffolding from which various sacred 
 personages should mount to heaven. The Abbess 
 of St. Catherine's came in state to order designs for 
 190
 
 THE FLORENTINE ARTIST 
 
 embroideries to lighten the heavy leisure of the 
 nuns ; some wealthy merchant, just made purveyor 
 of Florentine goods to the most Holy Father, would 
 put the papal escutcheon on the cornice of his house, 
 and wished to know what the master might demand 
 for his drawing; what for the pietra serena or 
 marble ; what for the sculpture, where to the keys 
 and tiara surmounting the arms of Eovere or 
 Medici should be added, as supporters, some device 
 of the painter's invention. Sometimes abbot or 
 prior brought a great order for the decoration of a 
 whole chapel or cloister, and the lottega palpitated 
 with expectant enthusiasm, in spite of which the 
 prudent master did not forget to specify in the con- 
 tract that for the said sum he would furnish the 
 paint, "except the gold and ultramarine," which 
 must be supplied by the monks ; for the brethren 
 dearly loved these costly colors, and the painter 
 well knew that without this important clause he 
 should have the prior always at his elbow demand- 
 ing, " more and more of the blue." Even the imagi- 
 nation of a Pope Julius II., equal to the conception 
 of a St. Peter's and of a mausoleum as big as a 
 church, could not rise above the monastic tradition, 
 and he could say, as he stood for the first time 
 beneath the awful prophets and sibyls of the Sistine 
 Chapel, " I don't see any gold in all this ! " 
 
 Sometimes there would come an embassy in 
 191
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 gowns of state from some neighboring city, with 
 armed guards and sealed parchments, bringing a 
 commission for the painting of church or town- 
 hall, or a foreign trader from Milan or Genoa 
 would step in to haggle over a portrait. Most 
 welcome was a bridal party, for its manifold needs 
 gave work to the whole studio, even to the ten- 
 year old apprentices in the back shop. " Chi 
 prende moglie vuol quattrini" he who takes a 
 wife needs cash runs the Florentine proverb, 
 and we do not wonder at it when we realize what a 
 quantity of fine things a bridegroom was expected 
 to supply. There were the dower-chests, carved, 
 gilded, and painted with " Triumphs" of love or chas- 
 tity ; then the shrine, with its picture of Madonna 
 flanked by patron saints, for the bride's chamber, 
 and if the sposo was inclined to do things hand- 
 somely, the painter could add the portraits of 
 the future husband and wife in the inner side 
 of the gilded shutters; a chased and enamelled 
 holy-water basin, and sprinkler to hang beneath 
 it, of course, and for the tiring mirror, just arrived 
 from Venice, the master must design a silver 
 frame. Then, while our hand was in, why not 
 add a painted frieze of puttini on a blue ground to 
 run between the wainscoting and the beamed ceil- 
 ing ? Next (for the list was a long one) came the 
 damigella's book of Hours, wherein the tedium of 
 192
 
 THE FLORENTINE ARTIST 
 
 long prayers was pleasantly enlivened by the con- 
 templation of goodly majuscules and fair min- 
 iatures. Important, too, was the plate, no small 
 item in days when a comfit salver or a tankard was 
 signed Verrocchio or Ghiberti. Then, objects of 
 momentous interest and of anxious consultation to 
 the whole party, came the jewels and their settings. 
 The buyers brought the raw material with them, 
 pearls and balas-rubies, the precious convoy of a 
 Venetian galley fresh from the far East; a big 
 turkis engraved with strange characters, torn from 
 the neck of an Algerian pirate by a Genoese sailor, 
 and an antique cameo unearthed in a Koman vine- 
 yard only a week before. Each jewel was then 
 examined, weighed, and entered in two account- 
 books, the painter's and the owner's, to prevent any 
 possibility of fraud or mistake. 
 
 Afterward ensued a most animated and dramatic 
 discussion of designs, details, and prices, during 
 which artist and customers vied with each other in 
 fine histrionic effects, followed in due time by an 
 amicable settlement and more entries in those 
 " diurnal books " which still exist among the domes- 
 tic archives of Florentine families to inform poster- 
 ity how many peacock feathers went to a garland, 
 how many hundredweight of tine pearls to a girdle, 
 and just how many florins, Macigni, Strozzi, or 
 Bardi paid for a buckle or a pouch-clasp. 
 VOL. i. 13 193
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 Strange as such varied orders would appear to a 
 modern artist, they seemed natural enough to the 
 painters and patrons of the Eenaissance, to whom 
 art meant, first of all, the embellishment of daily 
 life. In these days of specialists and perfected 
 processes, it is difficult to realize how wide a field 
 was then open to the creative artist, and in how 
 many different directions his personality sought 
 expression. All life was his, and all its forms ; 
 nothing was too small or too great, too trivial to 
 be tried, too difficult to be dared ; in him the audac- 
 ity of the revolutionist was united to the infinite 
 patience of the gem-cutter. He attended personally 
 to a thousand details now relegated to trained sub- 
 ordinates. He must answer for his materials, must 
 dabble in the grave art of the apothecaries (that 
 arte degli speziali e medici which called Dante 
 member), that the chemicals might be pure for 
 the color his apprentices ground. He must linger 
 in the Pellicceria, or Furriers' Quarter, choosing 
 fair, smooth vellum, and must anxiously test the 
 panel upon which Madonna should appear, lest 
 fine gold and costly ultramarine might be wasted 
 upon unseasoned wood. He must train his model, 
 watch the carving of his picture-frame, and see 
 that the oil was properly clarified. The sculptor 
 went to the quarries to select his blocks of marble, 
 and superintended their removal to the town ; he 
 
 194
 
 THE FLORENTINE ARTIST 
 
 examined the jewel on which cameo or intaglio 
 was to be cut, and planned the scaffolding for his 
 colossal statues. The architect arranged all the 
 practical details for the execution of his designs, 
 invented machines for raising stones and beams, 
 built the bridges and platforms used by the work- 
 men, was his own foreman and master-builder, 
 and of him it might be truly said, " No stone 
 was laid that he did not wish to see" (Non 
 sarebbe murata una pietra, che non I' avesse valuta 
 vedere). 
 
 The chisel, the needle, the compass, the burin, the 
 brush, the goldsmith's hammer, the calligraph's pen, 
 even the potter's clay and the mason's trowel were 
 alike familiar to him. He could fill a dusky Gothic 
 chapel with a frescoed paradise, radiant with golden 
 heads and glimmering haloes and the sweep of 
 snowy wings, and fashion a woman's earring; he 
 could design embroidery patterns " in chiaro-oscuro 
 for certain nuns and other people;" and build a 
 bridge over Arno that has stood for five centuries, 
 against storm and flood, even when the river, swollen 
 with rain and laden with wrack, tossed its tawny 
 waves high against the piers and battered them 
 with uprooted trees and clods of earth and broken 
 beams. He could set a great cupola on the cathe- 
 dral walls, and write abusive sonnets to those who 
 declared he was tempting God by this achievement ; 
 
 195
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 he could, on his way to Carrara to select marble 
 for a monument, casually, and as an incident of 
 his errand, survey and build a road over the tor- 
 rent-beds and sharp spurs of the mountain ; he 
 could " cramp his hand to fill his lady's missal 
 marge with flowerets ; " he could design a cartoon 
 for the tapestry-weavers, and crowd heaven's glories 
 into a gilded triptych, as well as he could make 
 scaling ladders and "armor warships." He could 
 decorate a dower-chest, and paint a cathedral apse, 
 and chisel a holy-water basin, while fortifying a 
 city ; he could write to a Duke of Milan, describing 
 his inventions for war-machines, bombs, and field- 
 pieces ; his plans for fortifications, canals, and 
 buildings, adding, as an after-thought, at the end 
 of the list, "in painting also I can do what may 
 be done as well as any, be he who he may." 
 
 He could handle a pen as well as a brush, and 
 fill the empty mould of the sonnet with the fiery 
 molten gold of real passion ; he could write trea- 
 tises on art, rich in wise precepts ; histories of 
 sculpture in which his own works were not slighted ; 
 dissertations on domestic economy and world- 
 famous lives of fellow-craftsmen. Using the style 
 like a chisel, carving character in broad, virile 
 strokes, moulding colloquial Italian like wax, he 
 could cast in the furnace of his own fierce nature 
 an unequalled full-length portrait of the man of 
 
 196
 
 PRATO 
 
 SAN NICCOLO DA TOLENTINO 
 GIOVANNI DELLA ROBBIA ? 
 
 WALL-FOUNTAIN
 
 d of
 
 THE FLORENTINE AETIST 
 
 the Eenaissance, in " the best of modern autobiog- 
 raphies." 
 
 He could make scientific discoveries, solve math- 
 ematical problems, embroider an altar-cloth, invent 
 costumes for a masque, summon the gods of Olynix 
 pus to the magic circle of the seal ring, engrave 
 buttons in niello, illustrate Dante's Paradise and 
 Petrarch's Triumphs, design moulds for jellies 
 and confections, model statuettes in sugar paste, 
 and make of a banquet as rich a feast for the eye 
 as for the palate. He could inlay a corselet, paint 
 a banner for a procession with rose-crowned, pea- 
 cock-winged angels and gaunt patron saints, or cast 
 a huge church bell girdled with many patternings 
 and Gothic letters which still tell us "Franciscus 
 Fiorentinus me fecit ; " he could paint and glaze 
 a sweet water jar, or a cool-toned pavement, or a 
 shrine where, under heavy garlands, the cherubs 
 clustered close like doves in the shelter of the 
 eaves, around some sweet-faced saint. 
 
 And in these myriad forms of loveliness he could 
 immortalize his native town ; freely as he scattered 
 his riches over Italy, it was for Florence that he 
 reserved his most precious gifts ; it is to him, 
 the greatest of her sons, that she owes her proud 
 title of "The Beautiful." During long centuries 
 of shame, when the foreign yoke lay heavy on 
 her neck, the dead artists still served her ; she 
 
 197
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 hid her misery and degradation under the splen- 
 did mantle of their consummate achievements, 
 which still sanctifies her and will make her a 
 place of pilgrimage as long as art has a single 
 votary. 
 
 For creeds decay, and scholarship grows musty, 
 and the wisdom of one century is the foolishness 
 of the next, but beauty endures forever. A scepti- 
 cal age smiles at the bigotry which condemned 
 Matteo Palmieri's picture, and yet is charmed by 
 the melancholy and mannered graces of Botticelli; 
 the scholar shudders at the barbarisms of the 
 famous humanists, but the sculptor still takes off 
 his cap to Donatello ; the mysticism of the Divine 
 Comedy rings strangely hollow on a modern ear, 
 but have the Night and Morning of Michelangelo 
 no meaning for us ? The scientist of to-day looks 
 with reverent pity at Galileo's rude telescope, but 
 the architect counts Brunelleschi's dome among the 
 miracles of his art. Leonardo's fortifications have 
 crumbled away ; his inventions are superseded ; only 
 the drawings remain of the famous flying machine, 
 but La Gioconda's mysterious smile has not ceased 
 to fascinate an older world. 
 
 198
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 199
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 IN the history of the arts and letters two cities 
 have been leaders of nations, Athens and Florence, 
 and two fountain-heads, the Ilyssus and the Arno, 
 have poured their waters into the fields of the 
 world. Ancient Athens is a ruin, but to-day the 
 little city of Florence holds the thoughtful as does 
 no other, even in Italy. It is not the past alone 
 which makes it interesting ; it is the fact that there 
 we have the printed page and the record in stone 
 side by side, that there more than anywhere else 
 the historic souvenir stands visible and tangible. 
 
 In Egypt the temples rise from the sands that 
 have covered the life of the people, and in Eome 
 the skeleton of the antique world stands bare and 
 gaunt uppn a soil which is itself the dust of bygone 
 civilizations ; but in Florence the same walls which 
 to-day resound to the traffic of the towns-people, 
 and the polyglot enthusiasm of the tourists, echoed 
 the talk of Dante and Guido Cavalcante ; the arches 
 that reverberate the loiterer's mandolin gave back 
 the music of Squacialupi and the songs of Lorenzo 
 the Magnificent as he " roamed the town o' nights " 
 with his companions. The same windows which 
 
 201
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 see the English or American families starting with 
 their little red books to do the city, saw the hooded 
 Michelangelo stepping from his house in the Via 
 Ghibellina, bending over the staff kept there to this 
 day, and turning his face toward San Lorenzo, where 
 his giants lay waiting for him to free them from 
 their marble prison. 
 
 Paris has levelled her mediaeval streets to build 
 wide boulevards, and London's commerce has over- 
 laid the ancient city ; but in Florence you may go 
 with Michelangelo to San Lorenzo by the self- 
 same streets and turnings ; you may follow the 
 crowd trooping to hear Savonarola in the'Duomo ; 
 may pass the shops where immortal painters 
 worked, and stand before shrines at street-corners 
 famous in Florentine romance, where you walk 
 hand in hand with Boccaccio and Sacchetti as easily 
 as with Baedeker and Murray. Against the wall 
 at your elbow the shoulders of some Ghibelline 
 have been set hard, the stones rubbed by his mailed 
 shirt. The great dint in the stone was made by 
 the missile whirled from a mangonel upon some 
 tower that still rises brown and solid as ever. 
 " Magnificently stern and sombre are the streets of 
 beautiful Florence," said Dickens, and hardly any- 
 one has said better ; but if her beauty be somewhat 
 high and frowning, it lives with us the longer, and 
 all about her she wears a garland of olive, well 
 
 202
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 fitted to the city which opened the path of modern 
 thought. 
 
 The foreigners have loved Florence so much as to 
 make her half their own. To the Tuscan the fores- 
 tieri are as familiar as the Bargello itself, and it is 
 no mean proof of the dignity and beauty of the city 
 that the inevitable fringe of frippery which hangs 
 upon the skirts of a tourist invasion cannot belittle 
 her. 
 
 But it is not all frippery. No city has been more 
 admirably photographed than Florence. The Tus- 
 cans are a reading people, or at any rate there are 
 shops full of books, while Vieusseux's noble circulat- 
 ing library has hardly its equal. In it are histories 
 of Florence, big and little, by famous men of by- 
 gone centuries whose memorial tablets shine upon 
 the city walls to-day : the Villani, whose house is 
 in the Via de' Giraldi by the Bargello ; Macchiavelli 
 and Guicciardini, whose names you may see near 
 the Pitti palace; Varchi and Nardi and many 
 others; historians, partial and impartial, Piagnoni 
 and Medicean. 
 
 But to those forestieri who speak our English 
 language, no book in the long line has the fascina- 
 tion of the " Eomola " of George Eliot. As in the 
 words of Nello, Eomola seems the lily of Florence 
 incarnate against the brown background of the old 
 city. Florence seems more familiar and akin to us 
 
 203
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 because we can follow her footsteps about it, and 
 see her between the great reformer and the Judas 
 who betrayed them both, and attended by a whole 
 Shakespearian train, Nello, the barber ; Bratti, 
 the iron-monger ; Brigida, the dear old simpleton ; 
 Tessa, the little sleepy, loving animal, and many 
 others interwoven upon a background of the life and 
 thought of the time. 
 
 A whole panorama is unrolled for us, made living 
 by characters, some historic, some fictitious, but all 
 penetrated with the spirit of the fifteenth century, 
 and moving upon the great currents of the age, 
 the desire for civic autonomy, the striving for re- 
 form, and the passionate enthusiasm for the resurgent 
 culture of antiquity. We listen to Savonarola in the 
 Duomo and to Capponi, speaking for liberty in the 
 palace of the Via Larga. The life of the scholars 
 passes before us in the intense earnestness of old 
 Bardo, or the witty trifling of the Medicean plotters 
 in the Eucellai gardens, and exhibits one of its most 
 characteristic sides in the sayings of the brilliant 
 smatterer, Nello. People famous in history meet 
 us ; some, like Piero di Cosimo, to take part in the 
 story, others only to appear and disappear. Artists 
 greet us for a moment, wild young Mariotto 
 Albertinelli, with his model, emerges into the light 
 of festival-lamps upon the Annunziata place ; his 
 beloved friend, Fra Bartolommeo, stands in the glow 
 
 204
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 of the bonfire of vanities with Cronaca and Sandro 
 Botticelli ; young Niccolo Macchiavelli talks to us 
 as only George Eliot could make him talk. Charles 
 VIII. of France, whose almost monstrous face 
 we find to-day in a terra-cotta of the Bargello, 
 passes, we see the slit of a mouth, and the 
 " miserable leg " upon the housings of gold, and the 
 expedition of the king to Naples, so heavy with 
 consequences to Italy and the world, becomes an 
 important factor in the story. "We listen to the 
 inevitable opponents of Savonarola and reform: 
 the artistic opponents, who sighed over the Boccac- 
 cios that burned upon the bonfire ; the brutal 
 opponents, in Dolfo Spini's compagnacci and their 
 hatred of all decency; the foolish opponents, in 
 Monna Brigida's thankfulness that the reformer 
 had "not quite turned the world upside down," 
 since " there were jellies with the arms of the 
 Albizzi and Acciajoli on them" at the Acciajoli 
 wedding-feast. We stand upon the cathedral square 
 Piagnoni at heart, every one of us through the 
 author's wonderful chapter upon the trial by fire. 
 We starve with the city in its misfortunes, and 
 rejoice in its success ; we see the people of the 
 frescoes, and we hear the bells of Florence. 
 
 Every visitor to Italy carries away at least a 
 general impression of the city. It is an impression 
 of brown, old stone, of narrow streets, of enormously 
 205
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 wide eaves, as if the palaces were shading their 
 window-eyes from the dazzling light; of sidewalk- 
 less streets, with polygonal blocks of pavement, like 
 an Etruscan wall laid flat; of fortifications and 
 battlements, seen overhead ; of massive gratings at 
 windows that show the pediments of the Kenais- 
 sance ; of still heavier ones, at those of the Gothic 
 times ; of escutcheons at palace-angles ; of projec- 
 tions corbelled out, throwing deep shadows and 
 suggesting machicolations through which were 
 dropped stones and beams in the days of street- 
 battle ; of shrines at corners, glassed and dusty 
 now, but out of which the long-eyed saints of the 
 fourteenth century look, wondering that the war- 
 cries are gone and that only the street-cries remain ; 
 of shadowed streets, and at some opening a burst of 
 sunlit facade of that checkered pattern, in black 
 and white, so dear to mediaeval Florentine eyes - t 
 while often and again, in semicircle of white and 
 blue, Madonna with the baby, " ringed by a bowery, 
 flowery angel brood," smiles upon one and says that 
 if war is transitory, beauty is immortal 
 
 Above all, one carries away in his memory the 
 image of those buildings which are the outgrowth of 
 the city, her stamp and mark, inseparable from her 
 as the Arno, and as familiar to the eyes of modern 
 travel as was the lily on the florin to the merchants 
 upon every medieeval 'change of Europe. They 
 
 206
 
 GALLICANO 
 
 SANT' JACOPO 
 
 ANDREA DELLA ROBBIA 
 
 ALTAR PIECE

 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 stand guard over the town like the stone saints 
 at the doorway of a church : the Cathedral, a huge 
 Christopher, lifting the cross upon the greatest of all 
 domes; the fair Campanile, like a Gabriel of the 
 Annunciation, wearing the lily of Florence, and call- 
 ing "Ave Maria" from its peal of bells; and the 
 Palazzo Vecchio, the Michael of the city, bearing 
 the shields of the republic, summoning the towns- 
 men to arms, and giving voice to the will of the 
 people. Then, too, there are San Giovanni, where the 
 Florentines are baptized, and Santa Croce, where 
 the great are buried ; the square strength of the 
 Bargello and the slender Badia tower that rings the 
 hour to the city. 
 
 All these make up Florence, and nearly all can 
 be included within a small rectangle bounded on 
 the south by the river, on the east by the Via del 
 Leoni and Via del Proconsolo running from the 
 Arno to the Cathedral ; the latter, with its vast 
 length, and the Baptistery to the west of it, making 
 a large part of the northern boundary, which is con- 
 tinued by the Via de' Cerretani to the western side, 
 formed by the Via de' Eondinelli, Piazza degli 
 Adimari, and Via Tornabuoni. Outside the rect- 
 angle historic quarters surround the great churches 
 of Santa Croce on the northeast ; San Lorenzo, the 
 Annunziata, and San Marco, on the north; and 
 Santa Maria Novella on the northwest. Besides 
 207
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 these, there is that part of Oltr'arno including the 
 Via dei BardL 
 
 Within these limits, or nearly, the story of 
 Eomola runs, and about this little space you may 
 follow it, not in its details, since it returns fre- 
 quently to the same places, but in its main lines. 
 You may wake up with Tito under the Loggia de' 
 Cerchi and follow him to the Mercato, where he 
 found the people anxiously commenting upon the 
 death of Lorenzo de' Medici. The house of Bomola's 
 father in the Via dei Bardi may epitomize the life 
 of the scholar, the festival of the nativity of Saint 
 John give a glimpse of the artist, and with the scholar 
 and the artist we have the great figures of the Eenais- 
 sance, the humanist who, from the heritage of 
 antiquity, set forth again the inward worthiness and 
 free agency of man, and the painter and sculptor 
 who once more gave expression to his outward 
 beauty. The scholars and artists of Florence may 
 thus stand as sponsors for the Titos and Tessas, the 
 Brattis and Nellos, and show us the palaces in which 
 the people of "Komola" lived, the people them- 
 selves, as they were painted upon church-wall or 
 carved on marble monuments. In the latter half of 
 the story the interest and, with it, the train of char- 
 acters converge upon the monastery of San Marco 
 and the Piazza della Signoria, where the fortunes of 
 the state work themselves out and the hopes of 
 
 208
 
 Eomola are shattered. The monks of to-day, how- 
 ever shorn of their old importance, take us into 
 famous churches, and we may see the relics of Savon- 
 arola and follow his footsteps to the great square of 
 the Palazzo Vecchio, where the story ends. 
 
 After the noble prologue, the book opens upon 
 Tito awakening to the inquiring eyes of Bratti, the 
 ironmonger, from his sleep under the Loggia dei 
 Cerchi. The loggia is gone; but its place was in 
 the heart of the city, where the high houses crowd 
 together, and where the memorial tablets to the 
 great departed speak of many who had gone from 
 Florence before Tito's time, and of many who came 
 after him. It is a busy quarter of narrow streets, 
 where the procession had to close its ranks, and 
 where Guelph or Ghibelline found a short chain 
 quite long enough to link house to house and stop 
 the oncoming horse or foot of the enemy. A roar- 
 ing quarter it is where Dante heard the shouts of 
 battle, and where Tito, had he listened, could have 
 recognized the whole fugue of the arts of Florence, 
 those famous arti, major and minor, the shuttles 
 of the woollen-makers, the chisels of the sculp- 
 tors, the pounding of the metal-workers in the 
 Ferravecchi street, the clicking hammers of the 
 goldsmiths, and the cleavers of the butchers, their 
 predecessors upon the Ponte Vecchio. 
 
 Only a few steps beyond the loggia lies the Mer- 
 VOL. r. 14 209
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 cato Vecchio, that famous square which is still pic- 
 turesque and busy (1887). The municipal broom 
 has swept away the butchers' and poulterers' stalls, 
 and much of that rather Augean market which old 
 Pucci sang, and municipal prudence has housed in a 
 museum the Eobbia angels, that used to shine 
 whitely over all the blood and dirt and confusion. 
 
 The Goddess of Plenty only a few years ago still 
 stood there, high on her column, a kind of Santa 
 Barbara to the tower of Or San Michele. For in 
 early times, when the microcosmic republic not 
 only furnished manufactures to the world, but made 
 its own bread to feed its own soldiers, the captains 
 of Or San Michele mounted the tower yearly and, 
 looking out upon the fields, decided by their appear- 
 ance what should be the current price of wheat. 
 The goddess is gone, column and all, but plenty still 
 reigns below in the market and what a place it 
 is ! A wide rectangle, its centre unpaved ; the 
 houses, tall and short, crowded with windows, and 
 below, about three sides of the piazza, a noisy, 
 smoking, unfragrant medley of shops ; a constant 
 push and shouting ; a crossing of handcarts ; a fizz- 
 ing of spiders as the fat drips from polenta browning 
 nicely and eaten hot, a crackling of charcoal under 
 the chestnut braziers and open-air cooking of every 
 sort and kind. If Tito, after his nap, had found but 
 a grosso or so in his pocket, he would have taken 
 
 210
 
 FLORENCE 
 
 PIAZZA DEL MERCATO VECCHIO
 
 
 
 11, bi 
 market and wh 

 
 pretty Tessa's kiss and cup of milk as dessert and 
 gone for his meal to one of those tempting alfresco 
 cook-shops, with its large, clear fire, its rows of 
 neatly dressed fowls and joints turning on their 
 spits, the hot cakes of chestnut-flour and crisp slices 
 of polenta fizzling in their pans, and its brass platters 
 and porringers engraved with quaint old patterns, 
 gleaming in the firelight. Here Tessa might find 
 her berlingozzi to-day or Baldassarre his bread and 
 meat ; and we may see their modern counterparts 
 shabby men in long cloaks and slouched felt hats, 
 pretty girls in serge dresses and gay headkerchiefs 
 see them best of all after nightfall, when the 
 brazier-fires seem to leap up higher and make wild 
 Eembrandt effects upon the faces of Bersaglieri 
 munching polenta under their waving cocks' feathers, 
 or brown peasants looking curiously at the rude 
 woodcuts heading the penny ballads that line the 
 walls. There is less "amateur fighting" on the 
 square than in the old times, less filching from 
 stalls, less gambling, for that is done decorously in 
 the state lotteries. Of four churches at the angles, 
 but two subsist in dirty, crazy fragments, and, in- 
 deed, there is perhaps less work for the devil whom 
 Saint Peter Martyr saw fly by, as he preached in the 
 open-air pulpit still remaining. The devil remains, 
 too, for many years later a young French artist 
 whom Florentines afterward learned to know as 
 
 211
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 John of Bologna, visited his friends and patrons, the 
 Vecchietti, near by, and catching the devil, fixed 
 him to the angle of the palace, a grotesque, deco- 
 rative little monster, for tourists to visit and Accarisi 
 to copy on spoon-handles. 
 
 There are booths of every sort, full of gay goods ; 
 shawls, red, blue, and apricot, the joy of modern 
 Tessas ; booths full of animals, too ; here is a boy 
 dragging hens from a basket, one squeak, two 
 squeaks, a whole demoniac panpipe of terror, till 
 half a dozen hang downward by their legs. A little 
 farther on, the parrots, in full consciousness of orna- 
 mental security, are shrieking what we feel sure are 
 scurril taunts at the hens ; upon the shop-front are 
 scores of wicker cages, their canaries filling high so- 
 prano parts in the chorus of the Mercato, while the 
 thrash of a machine, hidden somewhere, adds to the . 
 noise till the big bell of the Campanile booms a 
 diapason. You find Bratti at home just beyond the 
 bird-shop, where the street of the Ferravecchi 
 bristles with old iron. There are chains, bits of 
 harness, copper braziers in whole families of big and 
 little ; here and there among the metal are old 
 musical instruments, battered fiddles, a flute or so, 
 and slender, verdigrised brass lamps. 
 
 The Medici lived hard by here before they out- 
 grew their house and set Michelozzo to work upon 
 the palace of the Via Larga. Their noses were not 
 
 212
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 nice ; one might be of the Grandi, and yet like a leek 
 and rather enjoy the fish-market at the corner, whose 
 loggia, with its arches, columns, and medallions, is 
 a new-comer since the days of Bratti. And the 
 Medici were not alone in the quarter: the Amieri 
 were near them, and the Strozzi, surely as grandly 
 housed as ever were private citizens, had built their 
 huge palace here, with its back upon the " Onion 
 Place," the Piazza dei Cipolli. Its bases are lined 
 with the long stone seats so well known in Florence, 
 so convenient for the sturdy constituents of the old 
 nobles to stand upon of afesta to see the procession 
 go by, to sit on of week-days, selling their onions 
 and their spring flowers side by side. 
 
 Not far from the Mercato, in the Calimara, was 
 the shop of Burchiello, that Eenaissauce Figaro of 
 Florence, antecedent to the delightful character of 
 Nello, the barber. It was Nello's shop that next 
 received Tito and the story, and Tito looked out over 
 the barber's saucer and apron at nearly what we see 
 to-day. Some changes there have been, for Florence 
 has worked hard at the fagade of her cathedral, un- 
 veiling it this year, some changes, but not many. 
 The stone of Dante has been piously built into the 
 wall, while Lapo and Brunelleschi are put on either 
 side of it to watch their work. But the fair tower 
 is the same ; " il mio bel San Giovanni " is lello still, 
 even beside its later and greater rival. The mighty 
 213
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 dome rises as grand as when Michelangelo, his 
 horse's head turned toward Koine, looked back at it 
 from the hills, and avowed that he could do no bet- 
 ter, grand under the sunlight, under the starlight ; 
 grand when, on some high festival, covered with 
 lighted lamps, it sits like a jewelled mitre upon the 
 city, and grandest of all, perhaps, under the Italian 
 moon. 
 
 It was from the shop of Nello that Tito went 
 with his Figaro patron to the house of old Bardo, in 
 Oltr'arno. 
 
 The Via dei Bardi is still one of the most char- 
 acteristic parts of the city. The houses of the 
 Bardi are gone, but many such of the early times, 
 those which must have immediately taken their 
 place, remain. Among the frowning streets of 
 Florence it is one of the sternest, chill and wind- 
 swept : a long fortress, easily defended at its ends in 
 the days when the great family, unaided, could send 
 from its houses pikemen to hold the chain barri- 
 cades of the Ponte Vecchio and the Piazza Mozzi ; 
 cross-bowmen to send their bolts whizzing from 
 back windows into the enemy upon the bridges ; 
 artillerymen to work the mangonels upon the 
 tower-tops, to fling great stones over Santa Felicita 
 and up the Borgo San Jacopo, or even across the 
 river to the heart of the republican city, the square 
 of the Palazzo Vecchio. Not only could they fur- 
 214
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 nish all these and officer them with sons and 
 brothers and cousins, but they had their allies, too. 
 There were the Eossi, by the little church of Santa 
 Felicita, and the Frescobaldi, to hold the bridge of 
 the most holy Trinity. The bridge of the Fresco- 
 baldi has gone down in ruin before floods fiercer 
 than these faction struggles, and has been replaced 
 by the graceful arches of Ammanati, but the Ponte 
 Vecchio, which saw the gonfalons of the quarters 
 the dove and the sun, the baptistery and the cross 
 beaten back by the Bardi, but finally triumphant, 
 stands the same as ever, and says as steadfastly, 
 " Gaddi mi fece, il Ponte Vecchio sono," as in the 
 days when the great Taddeo set its buttresses 
 against the current. 
 
 To-day there are parts of the Via dei Bardi where 
 one may stand and not see, within the gentle curve 
 that bounds the vision, a single stone which tells of 
 modern times or anything but arched windows, jeal- 
 ous gratings, and thick oak doors, heavy with the 
 mass of spikes that stud them a stern, forbidding 
 street, but with the beauty of dignity, simplicity, 
 and strength. There is little traffic there now ; oc- 
 casionally some fine carriage wakens the echoes of 
 the deep archways as it goes by to the palace of 
 the Capponi, whose name, great as that of the Bardi, 
 illustrates the place still. The street which was 
 " the filthy," the Via Pidigliosa, before the nobles 
 
 215
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 built their palaces there, can never be even com- 
 monplace again. And, stern as it is, romance looks 
 down on one from the loggia whence Dianora dei 
 Bardi saw and claimed her husband as they led 
 him to execution, saving his life and the honor of 
 the Buondelmonti Kobbia's Madonna, too, blos- 
 soms like a flower among the dark palaces, above 
 the door of little Santa Lucia, the church in which 
 Eomola would have been married had not blind 
 Bardo's memories and anticipations beckoned him 
 to Santa Croce, where he had been wedded, and 
 where he hoped to lie buried. 
 
 Midway of the Via dei Bardi a path leads 
 sharply to the right, up the hill of San Giorgio, 
 where Tessa lived, and finally to the mediaeval 
 gate, with its frescoes and its sculptured St. George. 
 Beyond it opens the pleasant country, and at the 
 side is the fortress where, in blue woollen and 
 lacquer and pipe-clay, some thousand defenders of 
 the modern Tessas of Florence may be seen. 
 
 From the crashing palaces of the Oltr'arno nobles, 
 the cross-bolts and hurtling-stones of the battle of 
 the bridges, to the wordy combats, the poison- 
 tipped epigrams, the ponderously flung Latin taunts 
 of the humanists, is as far as from the early four- 
 teenth to the late fifteenth century ; but topographi- 
 cally it is no farther than a ten minutes' walk from 
 the Via dei Bardi to the palace of the Gherardeschi, 
 
 216
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 in the Borgo Pinti, where a tablet to Bartolommeo 
 Scala reminds us less of the secretary of the repub- 
 lic than of the scene of the culex in " Komola," the 
 suggestion of his quarrels with Politian. 
 
 It is, however, in the house of Eomola's father 
 that we are really made to participate in the enthu- 
 siasms of the man of letters. Bardo dei Bardi, the 
 blind old scholar, the collector of books and anti- 
 quities, the compiler and copyist of manuscripts, 
 is a familiar figure in the Italy of the fifteenth 
 century, the age of learning. 
 
 When Bardo planned the great work that he 
 and Tito were to write together, the first epoch of 
 humanism, that of discovery, had passed away, and 
 the second, that of compilation, had begun. In 
 both Florence had been in the vanguard. She had 
 welcomed the Greek professors from Byzantium, 
 who came rouged and painted, and clad in stiff, 
 hieratic robes, like the saints who stare down in 
 mosaic from the walls of Kavenna. She had her 
 own noble army of scholars: Boccaccio, Petrarch, 
 whose mother was born in this Via dei Bardi; 
 Poggio Fiorentino, who ransacked the transalpine 
 monasteries for books, and found many an old 
 Pagan author masquerading under frock and cowl, 
 and others, too, who might say with Ciriaco, "I 
 go to awaken the dead." And the dead was 
 awakened. Antiquity rose to life again, wearing 
 217
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 a strange garb, and with her simple, white chiton 
 pieced with bits of mediaeval motley and bespangled 
 with Byzantine tinsel; speaking a strange jargon 
 of corrupt Greek and barbarous Latin, but ragged 
 and stammering as she was, there was so much 
 human dignity and so much divine beauty about 
 her that no sooner was she seen than the new 
 Helena won the heart of the mediseval student. 
 A very Helena she was at first, seen dimly, as in 
 a magic mirror; mute or capricious to those who 
 sought most earnestly to learn her secrets; prone 
 to evil, with a "feather-headed" moral lightness 
 that frightened the devout, or so she seemed in the 
 dim light of the convent library, but when brought 
 into the Italian sunshine, the daylight of market- 
 place and lecture-room, she lost this mysterious 
 glamour, and gained in the losing. 
 
 All Florence welcomed her. The shop-keeping 
 republic patronized learning more generously than 
 king or pope : professors' chairs were endowed, libra- 
 ries founded, and famous scholars employed as am- 
 bassadors and secretaries. In Florence, scholarship 
 was not a mere ornamental fringe to the sober gar. 
 ment of daily duties ; it was warp and woof of that 
 garment, a part of life itself. Young girls, busy 
 merchants, men of pleasure, captains of adventure, 
 women of fashion, shared the enthusiasm for learn- 
 ing, and it is difficult nowadays to realize how 
 
 218
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 important the scholar's place became under such 
 conditions. Women had their part in this feast 
 of reason ; Komola's education by Chalcondilas, her 
 familiarity with Latin and Greek authors, was 
 not uncommon. Italy abounded in learned ladies; 
 princesses like Hippolita Sforza or Battista Monte- 
 feltro, who addressed Latin orations to popes and 
 emperors ; noble women who, like Cecilia Gonzaga, 
 wrote Greek beautifully; female professors who 
 filled many of the chairs of the Bolognese uni- 
 versity ; burghers' daughters, like Alessandra Scala, 
 to whom Politian and Marullus paid court, and 
 that Cassandra Fedeli, to whom Eomola intended 
 to apply when she left Florence after Tito's first 
 treason. For humanism was not only an accom- 
 plishment, it was a career ; in order to follow an 
 ordinary conversation a certain modicum of culture 
 was required, and a woman was obliged at least to 
 read, the result being a certain robustness of in- 
 tellect, which is so strong an element in Romola's 
 character. 
 
 Save in his generous temper, Bardo is a typical 
 scholar, with the maxims of the " Enchiridion " on 
 his lips and an intense craving for fame in his heart ; 
 too proud to cringe and flatter, too noble to fawn 
 for patronage and to pay its heavy price, and yet 
 not proud enough to disdain what others gained 
 through the sacrifice of their independence, and 
 219
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 too often of their self-respect. But Bardo's wish 
 that through his collections his name should be 
 known and honored was not unreasonable in an 
 age that reverenced the tomb of Petrarch like that 
 of a saint, that preserved the study of Accursius 
 as though it were holy ground, and in which some 
 enthusiast, taking the lamp from below the crucifix 
 and placing it before a bust of Dante, exclaimed, 
 "Take it; thou art more worthy of it than the 
 Crucified!" 
 
 Modern Italy is at present quite too busy with 
 financial and economic problems to be enthusiastic 
 about literature, but we can still hear lectures on 
 Dante in the Florentine Collegio Eeale, and see 
 students almost as picturesquely cloaked as in the 
 old days when Boccaccio discoursed in San Stefano 
 on the same subject. A few years ago a lineal 
 descendant of the great scholars might be seen in 
 the person of the Marchese Gino Capponi, author 
 of the well-known history of Florence. 
 
 From the scholar's library, in which antiquity 
 was diligently studied in manuscript and inscription, 
 the story leads Tito to one of those street proces- 
 sions which, partly religious, partly civic, were also 
 largely, in their costume and arrangement, the out- 
 come of these very excursions into the ancient 
 authors, and no picture of Italian life in the fif- 
 teenth century would have been complete without 
 
 220
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 the suggestion which George Eliot gives of the festi- 
 val of Saint John's nativity. He is a famous saint 
 in Florence, and his is the oldest church, the Bap- 
 tistery, already old in the thirteenth century, when 
 Arnolfo covered it with the black-and-white pat- 
 tern which we see there now, and which must have 
 been still tolerably fresh when Nello's barber-shop 
 stood near it. Neither the wide interior of the 
 Duomo nor the many-chapelled Santa Croce is as 
 solemn as the incense-filled space of San Giovanni, 
 whose domed ceiling, as the eyes strain through 
 the darkness, gradually grows populous with a mul- 
 titude, amidst which the face of the colossal Christ 
 looks out and seems to vibrate upon the colored 
 gloom. The church is so old that it is quite doubt- 
 ful whether the Eomans did or did not found it, 
 and its pavement has been trod by generations of 
 famous Florentines and by famous guests of Flor- 
 ence, kings and emperors from the north, weavers 
 of Lucca learning those same pavement patterns by 
 heart for their webs, and tourist invaders with their 
 guide-books. The saint is popular outside of his 
 church, too ; you find him on all sides. The young 
 Saint John is the darling of the Eobbia and of the 
 angel painters, the Lippi and Botticelli. Eossellino 
 has set him up in marble, a tottering baby, over the 
 door of the Opera del Battistero; and he is the 
 beloved of Donatello, who " did " him again and 
 
 221
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 again as an adolescent with thin cheeks and wide 
 eyes standing to-day among the sturdy Davids and 
 Cupids of the Bargello. The John Baptist of the 
 procession was, as G-eorge Eliot tells us, no such 
 lovely boy, but a rough contadino, glad of his basket 
 of bread and wine, which was let down to him from 
 a house on the square of tiny Santa Maria del 
 Campo still standing halfway along the Proconsolo 
 Street. Every city in Italy had, if not its Saint 
 John's feast, some other, but the Florentines led as in 
 other directions, for with their " Orfeo " of Politian, 
 their music of Squarcialupi, their garden concerts 
 with recitations, they were preparing the way for 
 the opera and the modern theatre. 
 
 The popularity of pageants in the churches and 
 streets was immense. After the allegories of Dante, 
 the " Triumphs " of Love and Fame and Chastity of 
 Petrarch, the greatest artists could not disdain the 
 setting and even the stage-carpentry of the pom- 
 pous ballet-spectacles in which kings of Scripture, 
 heroes of antiquity, the virtues and vices, elements 
 and attributes, marched and countermarched through 
 the cities of Italy. In the mysteries of the North 
 the missal borders of the middle ages had come to 
 life, with all their soldiers and saints, their devils 
 and dragons ; but the Italians, that people of artists, 
 added the myths of classical antiquity and in- 
 terwove their Bible with Ovid. Brunelleschi set 
 
 222
 
 FLORENCE 
 
 SAN LORENZO 
 DESIDERIO DA SETTIGNANO 
 
 TABERNACLE
 
 
 the, 
 
 h kin,
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 his copper spheres a-whirling and invented his 
 heaven of angels dancing in concentric rings, his 
 Gabriel lowered by pulleys from a star ; Donatello 
 built his colossal wooden horse for a Paduan pageant, 
 and Leonardo da Vinci superintended the festivals 
 at Milan. 
 
 The charming half-feminine soldier-saints and 
 heroes of Perugino in the Sala del Cambio of his 
 native city might be seen in their fantastic feathers, 
 their semi-Eoman costumes, upon the squares of 
 Perugia, in moralities and plays. The women of 
 Botticelli and Pollajuolo who with corseleted breasts 
 and drawn swords sit as Fortitude and Justice in 
 the Uffizi, passed throned upon the processional 
 chariots of Cecca. Mantegna's slender nymphs 
 filled the car of Venus, while the Theology and 
 Jurisprudence of Eaphael's Vatican ceiling were 
 not wanting. 
 
 The Florentines made a profession of organizing 
 festivals, and went about Italy as impresari ; while 
 the whole youth of the country, men and women, 
 took various parts, from merely walking in gay 
 procession, as in the painting of the Adimari mar- 
 riage on the famous dower chest, to filling the most 
 eccentric roles. They sat on the tops of high 
 columns, stood whitened as statues in niches, or even 
 descended perilously upon a rope from some church 
 faqade; while every writer tells of those historic 
 
 223
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 little boys who were gilded all over, and who are 
 variously stated to have died from the effect of, 
 and not to have been injured at all by, the gold leaf. 
 The naif simplicity of the early mysteries played 
 on a platform in church or refectory must have 
 embodied much that was lovely ; but as the morality 
 grew into favor, the personifications of various attri- 
 butes became more and more enigmatical, till the 
 plays were perambulating puzzles, set in accordance 
 with the overloaded fashions of the North. In Italy 
 culture had permeated a deeper and wider stratum. 
 The antique was already a tradition, and men knew 
 their Dante and Petrarch, Boiardo and Pulci, by 
 heart. Excrescences were pruned away ; mere rich- 
 ness gave place to form and taste. The pompous 
 prosing Victor Hugo presents so vividly in the 
 beginning of his " Notre Dame de Paris " was suc- 
 ceeded by epigrammatic verse or even the fine 
 poetry of Politian. Doubtless there lingered some 
 absurdities in these pageants, as when tumblers and 
 weight-lifters were seen at the same time with the 
 angels, or a ballet issued from the sides of a golden 
 wolf at Siena; indeed, Donatello's wooden horse of 
 Padua and Leonardo's equestrian statue of Ludovico 
 Sforza, performing mechanical evolutions at a festi- 
 val, partook of the same exaggerated taste. But we 
 may be sure that the pictures were fine when Bru- 
 nelleschi and Da Vinci stood by ; and if the painters 
 
 221
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 costumed and set the spectacles, the spectacles in 
 their turn reacted upon the painter's art. 
 
 Imagine how ardently Mantegna and Filippino 
 Lippi would have worked at the arrangement of a 
 procession; how Filippino would have expended 
 upon it the vivid fancy which Vasari tells us of, and 
 which he showed in the curiously devised trophies, 
 standards, and pseudo-Eoman architecture of the 
 Strozzi chapel in Santa Maria Novella. If Ghirlan- 
 dajo looked hard at the Florentines when about 
 their daily vocations, Sandro Botticelli was all eyes 
 as the car of the Virtues passed, and we can well be- 
 lieve that the pretty girls of the city vied with each 
 other to be chosen for this or that personification. 
 We see the sublimated reflection of these spectacles 
 on many a canvas or bas-relief of the fifteenth 
 century: in Botticelli's exquisite "Primavera;" in 
 Mantegna's " Triumph of Csesar " at Hampton Court ; 
 in the singing groups of Delia Eobbia ; the inter- 
 twined boys of the pulpit at Prato, and the panels, 
 pilasters, and friezes of the Eenaissance. So great 
 was the passion for spectacles that Savonarola 
 was forced to adapt it to the uses of his theoc- 
 racy; and in speaking to the multitude from the 
 pulpit of the Duonio, he clothed his vision of Christ 
 in the forms which the people had seen and under- 
 stood in the processions and pageants of the streets. 
 Perhaps, too, the great monk never entirely forgot 
 
 VOL.I. 15 225
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 the days when he laid down the lute in his native 
 Ferrara, the city of festivals. 
 
 Peculiarly famous in the arrangement of pageants 
 was that Piero di Cosimo who represents the artis- 
 tic side in Eomola, and who evidently was chosen 
 by George Eliot for his strong personality rather 
 than for his place in Italian art. 
 
 Far inferior in technique to most of his fellows, 
 his eccentricities, as has been the case with some 
 other painters, gave him more fame than his talent. 
 Vasari's sketch of his life reads like a character 
 study, and George Eliot closely followed his lines. 
 A few souvenirs of the old painter are still to be 
 found in Florence; the old Via Gualfonda, then 
 in the most lonely part of the town, is now one 
 of the great arteries of modern Florence, running 
 from the piazza of Italian independence to the 
 avenue of Filippo Strozzi, behind the Dominican 
 church of Santa Maria Novella, past the railway- 
 station. Here the painter shut himself up in his 
 studio, living on hard-boiled eggs, which, to save 
 time and firing, he would cook by fifties and hun- 
 dreds ; never allowing his rooms to be cleaned or his 
 garden pruned ; saying that such things were much 
 better left to nature ; stuffing his ears with wool to 
 drown the sound of the bells, the voices of the street, 
 and even the distant chanting of the monks, and 
 " living the life of a wild beast rather than a man." 
 
 226
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 A painter of lively fancy rather than imaginative 
 power, with more love of the grotesque than the 
 beautiful, he studied the caprices of nature. The 
 forms of strange plants and animals ; the fantastic 
 shapes of the clouds, and even the mildew stains upon 
 old walls, delighted him, " and he would describe 
 them so frequently that even to persons who could 
 take pleasure in such narratives, the relation at 
 length became tedious and tiresome." This is 
 a significant sentence when we remember that 
 Vasari's authority was his own master, Andrea 
 del Sarto, a pupil of Piero. Eeaders of "Komola" 
 will remember the sketches of loves playing with 
 armor, the white rabbit that twitched its nose 
 contentedly over a box of bran, and the tame 
 pigeons that Tito saw in the old man's den, and 
 they can still be seen in the picture of "Mars 
 and Venus" in the Nerli Palace. 
 
 The Piero of the novel is a type as well as 
 a personality, a type of the artistic nature that 
 found the pageantry and color of Lorenzo's time 
 more attractive than the severity of a Savonarola. 
 Piero's dislike of Savonarola was that of a great 
 many people not of the Dolfo Spini sort, who, look- 
 ing only at the surface of things, preferred a prince 
 who made life very pleasant for the few, rather 
 than the priest who would make it tolerable to the 
 many. Piero, whose business was to look at the 
 227
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 surface of things, naturally hated a man who wanted 
 " to burn all the color out of life ; " " to make every 
 woman a black patch against the sky," and to do 
 away with the gold brocades and velvet mantles, 
 the giostre and cavalcate, which paint so magnifi- 
 cently. Van Dyck could hardly be expected to 
 sympathize with the Puritans, and an enlightened 
 and art-loving tyrant is a better patron than a 
 capricious republic. There were Piagnoni painters, 
 men who saw the surface of things, or at least could 
 render it on canvas far better than Piero, who at 
 the same time could see somewhat below that same 
 superficies, and long for beauty of a more immate- 
 rial and nobler sort, like Botticelli and the young 
 Michelangelo, but Piero was not of their ilk. 
 
 The famous families of Florence were long- 
 lived. To-day in the Martelli Palace you visit the 
 statues which Donatello gave to a Martelli of the 
 fifteenth century ; it is by the courtesy of a Buona- 
 rotti that the relics in the house of Michelangelo 
 are shown ; the Strozzi, the Pazzi, and many others 
 are seen daily about the streets of the city; and 
 in Santa Croce, the tomb of a Capponi a Gino 
 Capponi, like his great ancestor is white and 
 shining in the marble of a recent date. 
 
 The private palaces of Florence are as character- 
 istic as its public buildings. They are the outcome 
 
 228
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 of civil strife, and through all the elegance of the 
 Renaissance appears the fortress. Within the win- 
 dows are the gratings that made scaling-ladders 
 useless ; below are doors which little save fire or 
 a battering-ram could force, and above is the loggia, 
 raised upon the house-top, beyond the chances of 
 street-battle. They are such houses as the one Ro- 
 mola lived in ; without they suggest the fortress, and 
 within they smack of the cloister, with - their long 
 passages, tiled floors, frequent stairs, and wide, 
 frescoed wall-spaces. 
 
 The tall towers are gone from these private palaces. 
 A fiat, issuing like a mediaeval Tarquin from the 
 Signoria, lopped them to an even level in the thir- 
 teenth century ; but the escutcheon, carved by some 
 famous artist, still advertises the nobility of the 
 former owner, who is often seen within, kneeling 
 before Madonna upon a gold ground; his palms 
 joined, and his subtle Florentine profile upturned 
 with reverential if somewhat proprietary interest. 
 In the Borgo degli Albizzi the palaces stand shoulder 
 to shoulder, Neri and Pazzi, Alessandri and Qua- 
 ratesi; for half the streets of Florence are named 
 for the great families. They have held history 
 and romance, tragedies of blows in the earlier 
 centuries, of poison in the later, and have shel- 
 tered the kindly family life Pandolfini tells of 
 in his "Del Governo." 
 
 229
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 The finest palace streets of Florence are the 
 Borgo degli Albizzi and the Via Tornabuoni. The 
 Borgo almost retains its old appearance, but the Tor- 
 nabuoni has been given up to the foreigner, especially 
 to the English or American visitor. Thither he 
 goes for his letters and his money ; there he reads 
 the papers at Vieusseux's, or loiters in Doney's 
 cafe"; there, in the shadow of the stern-looking 
 palace, designed by Michelangelo, he may buy 
 photographs of everything, big or little, in Flor- 
 ence ; there the tourists sit and study their guide- 
 books, in Baccio d'Agnolo's windows of the Hotel 
 du Nord. It is the oddest mixture in the city 
 of the old and the new. Before the huge Strozzi, 
 and opposite the flower-market, at Giacosa's, the 
 American and English girls eat candy or sweets, 
 according to their nationality ; or just beyond, under 
 Alfieri's house, look into the windows of the jewel- 
 lers' shops, discussing whether the devil of the 
 Mercato Yecchio or the St. George of Donatello is 
 better upon a spoon-handle ; whether a bearded 
 head or an athlete will please the longer upon an 
 intaglio or cameo ; whether photographs are better 
 mounted upon tinted paper or white ; in fact, dis- 
 cussing the thousand delightful trifles of foreign 
 travel, and of present-buying for those at home. 
 
 Not a few Americans have had close acquaintance 
 with the house in which George Eliot passed the 
 230
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 days when she was acquiring that exact knowledge 
 of Florentine topography which helps to make her 
 book so real. This was the villa of Mr. Thomas 
 Adolphus Trollope, which stood well out in the 
 country, but since then Florence has grown; it is 
 now within the city, and has become a pension. It 
 is a privilege to remember it as it was, with its 
 wealth of carving and Venetian glass, and its fine 
 oak-floored and leather-covered library, where the 
 genial old author proudly dragged from his shelves 
 folio after folio of the early Florentine historians, 
 manuscript and black-letter, and showed them by 
 the light of a stained-glass casement, which filled 
 the whole end of the room and framed Fiesole with 
 its rocks, its olives, and its towers. 
 
 If the palaces of the old Florentines are to be 
 found on all sides, so, too, their ancient inhabitants 
 stand ready to receive us, if we will but go to them. 
 Thanks to the painters, the costume of the end of 
 the fifteenth century can be reconstructed even to 
 its smallest details, and we know just how Tito 
 looked when he thrust his thumbs into his belt or 
 cast the lecchetto over his left shoulder, and can find 
 all Brigida's finery, from her pearl-embroidered cap 
 to her coral rosary, in many a blackened picture. 
 For even if costume was idealized and ennobled by 
 the artists under the influence of classical antiquity, 
 the innumerable portraits of the time represent it 
 231
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 as it was worn in daily life. The young Florentines 
 might clothe themselves in Mantegna's or Gozzoli's 
 draperies for a May-day festival or procession, but 
 when they sat to Ghirlandajo or Botticelli for their 
 portraits, they wore the mantle and kirtle or the 
 doublet and hose of the latest mode. 
 
 The most marked characteristics of this costume 
 are simplicity of line, unity of color, and sobriety of 
 ornament. Florentine elegance always had a touch 
 of severity. The silk brocades made in the town, 
 and sent to France and England, were seldom seen 
 at home. Except on festival days, the Florentines 
 wore their own woollen stuffs from the shops of the 
 Calimala. The general form of these garments is 
 familiar to us all : the fine-linen underwear, show- 
 ing at wrist and throat, or pulled through the 
 slashes at elbow and shoulder ; for the young men, 
 the long hose, fastened by points at the waist to the 
 tight-fitting jerkin ; the loose doublet, falling half- 
 way to the knee; the ample cloak, still worn in 
 Florence, and the tiny red cap, crowning a mass 
 of fuzzy curls. For the girls there were the close- 
 fitting gowns that revealed every line of the body ; 
 the flowing over-robe, shaped like a Greek tunic, 
 sometimes girdled in antique fashion ; a chaplet of 
 goldsmith's work or a net of pearls to confine the 
 long hair. For the elder folk there was the stately 
 lucco that fell in unbroken folds from neck to 
 
 232
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 ankle ; the great mantle lined with furs or velvet ; 
 the barret with its hanging scarf, ample protection 
 against the sharp tramontanes or the hot sun ; 
 grand gowns of rich, heavy stuffs and all sorts of 
 head and neck gear, from the transparent gauzes of 
 Fra Lippo's pictures to the thick veils of the Del 
 Sarto Madonnas, all most becoming to elderly faces. 
 
 In Italy the old canons of proportion were never 
 quite forgotten. The waist and hips were never 
 compressed, and the head was dressed so as to 
 appear relatively small. The huge head-dresses, 
 the towering horns and peaks, so popular in Eng- 
 land and Germany, the pinched waist and squeezed 
 hips of the French demoiselle and chatelaine, never 
 found favor in Italy. The mantle, the cloak, the 
 flowing veil, were essential parts of an Italian toilet 
 of any epoch, and even in the eighteenth century 
 Venetian women could still be majestic in hoops 
 and panniers. 
 
 Toward the end of the fifteenth century the study 
 of antique sculpture, the influence of the artists, 
 the newly awakened sense of aesthetic criticism, 
 began to find expression in costume. The propor- 
 tions of the human body, the beauty of its move- 
 ments, the elegance of its natural lines, were again 
 felt, after many centuries, and since the days of 
 peplos and himation they had not been more fully 
 expressed. Beautiful as the garments of ancient 
 
 233
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 Greece were, the Florentines were too truly artistic, 
 too thoroughly imbued with the principles of style, 
 to endeavor to imitate them. No doubt artists and 
 patrons looked upon antique drapery as an ideal, but 
 as something quite unsuited to modern conditions, 
 to a cold climate, to the activity of burgher life. 
 
 But the youths' doublet and hose, the girls' 
 tight-fitting, square-cut bodice, followed the lines of 
 their young bodies, and the older people wore the 
 long folds and ample draperies that lend grace and 
 dignity to the most uncomely. On the practical 
 character of these costumes, their fitness, their 
 style, in a word, we need not insist. They were 
 as fine in detail as in line. Here, as in every other 
 aspect of Eenaissance life, there was much perso- 
 nality ; ornament was individual ; seals, emblems, 
 arms, devices, the blazons of mediaeval heraldry, were 
 still in the immediate past, and to them the artists 
 lent beauty as well. So the girl's favorite flower 
 blossomed unfading in her silver garland; the 
 scholar's pet maxim, from Seneca or Cicero, was 
 embroidered on his pouch or graven on a medallion, 
 and charming trifles lent grace and originality to 
 the simplest dress. 
 
 The burgher's suit of plain cloth could not fail of 
 distinction when the medal in his cap was wrought 
 by Pisanello or Finiguerra, its device penned by 
 Politian, and when the seal-ring on his finger was 
 
 234
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 cut by some famous intagliatore, ancient or modern. 
 There were fewer silks and velvets in the brown 
 town than in Venice or Milan. A Florentine never 
 loved a silk simarre or a pearl necklace as he did a 
 fine cameo or a good bit of goldsmith's work, but of 
 the latter he showed a generous appreciation. On 
 the girdle, the pouch-clasp, the dagger-hilt, the gar- 
 land, cunning workmanship and artistic fancy were 
 lavished. Pretty things were not made by the 
 gross then, and each was a separate creation of the 
 artist. The shops of Cennini, the Ghirlandaji, and 
 the Pollajuoli were full of young students capable 
 of giving shape to any number of dainty conceits in 
 gold, silver, or niello. The art or trade of the gold- 
 smith was most honorable ; it counted among its 
 members the greatest of Florentine artists. Was 
 not Bigordi always the garland-maker, and did not 
 Brunelleschi set jewels before he set the great jewel 
 on the walls of Santa Maria ? We can find Tito's 
 dagger, and Eomola's golden girdle, and Tessa's 
 silver necklace and clasp, under glass in the 
 museum, and we can see Tito's mail-shirt in the 
 armory of the Bargello ; but time, cruel as Savona- 
 rola's bonfire, has devoured most of our actors' 
 properties, and only bits and shreds would remain 
 to us if the painters, the Florentine " fifth element," 
 had not preserved them for us, and they show us not 
 only the costumes, but the actors themselves. 
 235
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 At this time the artists were passing through the 
 realistic phase of their art ; had abandoned the well- 
 ordered, symmetrically arranged heaven and hell of 
 the Giotteschi, and were carving and painting men 
 and things as they saw them in the every-day world 
 about them. With their help it is an easy task to 
 evoke the past : every palace becomes haunted, 
 every street crowded with familiar figures ; at every 
 corner we meet some well-known face ; the old 
 Florentines return to their old places. The most 
 indifferent traveller cannot help seeing them, be he 
 ever so blind. 
 
 If we take some of these characters of " Eomola " 
 and look for their counterparts in another art, with 
 a little patience we shall find them all. Ghirlandajo 
 will show us many of them, he who, if he did not 
 paint the walls of Florence, as he wished, portrayed 
 the world that moved within those walls. In the choir 
 of Santa Maria Novella the artist painted the stories 
 of the blessed Virgin and Saint John the Baptist, 
 but he has taken his pictures from contemporary life ; 
 he has painted his friends and neighbors, not ideal- 
 ized into cold abstractions, but real men and women 
 with keen, subtle faces, acute and critical, yet not 
 unkindly, sharpened by shop-keeping and the tra- 
 montana, but ennobled by wide culture and capable 
 of kindling into enthusiasm. Many of them are 
 ugly in line and modelling, bony and flaccid at 
 
 236
 
 FLORENCE 
 
 \ 
 
 SANTISS1AU TRINITA 
 
 GHIRLANDAJO 
 
 HEAD OF A YOUTH (FRAGMENT)
 
 

 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 once, with an occasional quite abnormal develop- 
 ment of cheeks and chin. But character can do 
 much to beautify the most ill-favored. Each of 
 these figures is a definite personality, clearly and 
 distinctly marked, invaluable to the student of 
 history, with no softening of lines or angles, a por- 
 trait straight from life. Here we are face to face 
 with the old Florentines. 
 
 On the right is a group of humanists : Politian, 
 "whose juvenile ugliness was not less signal than 
 his precocious scholarship ; " Marsilio Ficino, brought 
 up as a Platonist from his cradle, " and whose mind 
 was, perhaps, a little pulpy from that too exclusive 
 diet," both spare and small, with pale faces ; Cristo- 
 foro Landino, white-haired and worn, in black gown 
 and 'barret. Behind them, among a group of grave, 
 gray-haired men, is a figure handsome and majestic 
 enough for Komola's godfather, Bernardo del Nero. 
 On the panel directly opposite is Tito, known in 
 Florence as II Bello, in dark mantle and red cap, 
 looking at us over his shoulder out of long brown 
 eyes ; here, too, a genuine portrait, is the mas- 
 sive strength of Niccol6 Caparra. On the left a 
 dark, bald man, in a plain russet suit, suggests Bal- 
 dassarre; and one shrewd face, with a humorous 
 twinkle in the keen eyes, must be Nello's ; while 
 near by is another actor in our drama, young Lorenzo 
 Tornabuoni, then in the Medicean bank. 
 
 237
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 For the peasants and some of the older folk, 
 pretty Tessa, meek, deaf Monna Lisa, bargaining 
 Bratti, and silly Brigida, we must go to Fra Filippo 
 Lippi, who was not afraid to paint very common- 
 place sinners as saints, little rustics as Madonnas, 
 and the street-urchins of Florence as boy-angels 
 and blessed bambini. 
 
 In the Bargello we find the strange head of 
 Charles VIII., ugliest of knight-errants, and the 
 bust of Macchiavelli, no longer the witty young 
 secretary of the republic, but the saturnine author 
 of " The Prince," worn and embittered by poverty, 
 disappointment, and the sad necessity of serving 
 those " Signori Medici." 
 
 In the cloister of the Badia is a plain sarcopha- 
 gus, surmounted by a bust, the tomb of Francesco 
 Valori, the fiery partisan of Savonarola; the mas- 
 sive features and long, straight hair remind one of 
 those Puritans and Covenanters with whom the 
 Piagnone had much in common. Little Lillo and 
 Ninna, and Savonarola's white-robed, olive-crowned 
 angiolini, we see again and again, for the beauty of 
 babyhood was first discovered and translated into 
 form by the artists of the Eenaissance. The por- 
 traits of Savonarola are too well known to every 
 tourist to require note or comment. One never tries 
 to find Romola herself ; we see her, as did her blind 
 old father, only as something vague and shining. 
 
 238
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 The November holiday of 1494, with its ugly 
 ending for Tito, sent him to Niccolo Caparra to buy 
 his mail-shirt, " the garment of fear." There is a 
 restaurant now at Niccolo's street-corner, but under 
 a house massive and picturesque enough to justify 
 the tablet to the memory of the old armor-maker. 
 Tito found Caparra forging spear-heads; and soon 
 after his prophetic anticipation was justified by the 
 entrance of Charles VIII. of France, whose short 
 occupation of Florence enabled Tito to sell the 
 library, betray the sacred trust of Bardo, and alienate 
 Komola. 
 
 The long hall of the Medici, now Eiccardi Palace, 
 upon the Via Cavour, in which Capponi tore the 
 treaty, saying, " Then if you blow your trumpets, 
 we will ring our bells," is greatly changed, and 
 suggests the flute and violin, not the trumpet. There 
 are rows of mirrors in rococo frames with Cupids 
 painted on them, and the long-arched ceiling has 
 been splashed by Luca fa Presto with an Olympus 
 of gods and goddesses. Not far from the palace is 
 the gorgeous church of the Santissima Annunziata, 
 between whose square and the hill of San Giorgio, 
 Tessa, in the intervals of her many naps, played 
 her poor little rdle. There the lamps, which swing 
 in a constellation of gold and silver, yield a " yellow 
 splendor in itself something supernatural and 
 heavenly to the peasant-women." A heavea of 
 239
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 gilding and light and rich colors and sounds sur- 
 rounds them; at once their drama, their picture- 
 gallery, and their church ; an epitome of their hopes 
 and fears, and the vague wonder which is their 
 nearest approach to an appreciation of the beautiful 
 
 The lamps have been wonderful to thousands of 
 Tessas since the evening she brought her cocoons 
 there and, kneeling, looked at the handsome Saint 
 Michael and thought of Tito. To-day you may see 
 peasant-women, sad-faced and worn, as naive and 
 simple and dull as Tessa, if not as pretty, passing 
 under the often-proclaimed Giubbileo of its doors, 
 kissing the silver altar-front again and again and 
 bowing to the dark face of Andrea's Christ, looking 
 out from the splendor. Tessa is perhaps the only 
 character in the book who is the same to-day as in 
 the fifteenth century. Outward events make no 
 impression upon a mind too shallow to take account 
 of them, and the little Tuscan model from some cas- 
 tello of the surrounding hills, who sits to-day for the 
 Florentine artist, is as little affected by the facts of 
 United Italy and Eoma Capitale as was Tessa by 
 the entrance of the French or the war with Pisa. 
 
 The story takes us onward to the Medicean 
 plotters in the Eucellai gardens, and their world is 
 changed indeed. The gardens are beautiful still, 
 with ilex and cypress and olive ; but conspiracy 
 with epigram and lute and critical admiration of 
 
 240
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 antique gems, diplomacy which conferred its highest 
 honors upon the orator's Latinity, are as far removed 
 from us as the peacock roasted in its feathers. 
 
 After Tito foils the attempt of his foster-father in 
 the gardens, he is counterfoiled in turn by Eomola 
 in his own attempt to deliver Savonarola into the 
 hands of Dolfo Spini. For a time the reformer is 
 still in the ascendant, and we have the charming 
 pictures of the " angelic boys," whose descent upon 
 Tessa, and temporary conversion of Monna Brigida, 
 brighten the latter part of the story. But tragedy 
 soon meets us again in the Bargello. Nowhere in 
 Florence is the contrast between the past and the 
 present more marked than in the Bargello, that 
 older brother of the Palazzo Vecchio, once a place 
 of punishment and torture, the headquarters of the 
 podestd, or military governor of the city. Grim 
 memories cling about its massive walls; it has 
 stood sieges, held patriots and traitors, sheltered 
 tyrants, and seen blood flow in execution, massacre, 
 and revolt ; stone cells line the court and lead out 
 of ^the great halls ; in the council-chamber, now an 
 armory, is the trap-door of the ancient oubliette, 
 once filled with human bones, and the scaffold stood 
 in the centre of the famous court, which has been 
 little changed since Romola climbed the lion-guarded 
 staircase to look her last upon her godfather. 
 Kindly time has washed away the blood-stains and 
 VOL. i. 16 241
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 the painted traitors, hanging head downwards from 
 its walls; the stone escutcheons and lainbreqiiined 
 helmets of the old podestas still remain ; but instead 
 of the agonized crowd that then filled the loggia, 
 there is now a row of church-bells, graven with 
 words of peace and blessing ; in the chambers where 
 the torturer handled his tools, Eobbia's Madonnas 
 smile upon us ; and in the chapel, where the con- 
 demned received the last sacraments, Florence found 
 her poet, a young Dante, unembittered by exile. 
 Only the armory on the ground-floor and Pollajuolo's 
 condottiere recall the sterner uses of the old palace. 
 
 The monks of Florence, whose predecessors bore 
 the statue of the Impruneta, and opposed or sup- 
 ported Savonarola, have fallen upon evil days, but 
 they nurse their antique glories, and still go, pic- 
 turesque figures, about the streets. Once their 
 churches were so many ecclesiastical strongholds, 
 each brotherhood proud of its traditions and names ; 
 the Dominicans of Santa Maria Novella boasting 
 their Madonna of Cimabue and their frescoes of Ghir- 
 landajo; the Augustinians of Santo Spirito, proud 
 of their culture; the Carmelites, of their famous 
 brother, Filippo Lippi, and their Brancacci chapel, 
 that artistic sanctuary of the Eenaissance where 
 Michael Angelo and Eaphael looked and learned ; 
 the Dominicans of San Marco pointing to their 
 Angelic Brother, and to Fra Bartolornmeo; the 
 
 242
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 Franciscans, proud of their poverty and of their 
 magnificent church, and all prouder still of their 
 importance in the ecclesiastical body, their relics, 
 and their places in the processions of the town. 
 To-day their pride has passed away, and even their 
 proprietary interest in their art-treasures is sadly 
 diminished. San Marco has gone forever from its 
 monks, and the tourist pays his franc to see the An- 
 gelicos and visit the cell of the great reformer ; 
 Santa Croce is to be secularized as a Pantheon to 
 the dead Florentines and the Carmine is but a parish 
 church. But at least their frescoes all remain in situ, 
 and cannot easily be dragged from their places to a 
 gallery, a fortunate circumstance. 
 
 The brothers of the friars' churches are more 
 interesting than the priests of the parochial ones, 
 particularly those of Santa Maria Novella, which has 
 kept some of its monks and all of its art-treasures. 
 The mantle of Saint Dominic has descended but 
 lightly upon the shoulders of these good fellows, and 
 even his sombre souvenir cannot darken their smil- 
 ing faces. The memories of Savonarola, of the 
 saintly Bishop Antonino's works of mercy, and of 
 the angelic monk of Fiesole have come between. 
 There is little of Fra Angelico's poetry in them, 
 but they are gentle and kind to the poor, and a 
 namesake of the saint-bishop Fra Antonino, under 
 his black hood over the white mantle, was a really 
 
 243
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 startling reminder of the greatest man of his great 
 order ; a coincidence to watch and study, with the 
 beetling brows, the deep-set, bright eyes, the thick 
 nose, full lips, and heavy jaw of Savonarola in Bar- 
 tolommeo's portrait; the fierce frown and sweet 
 smile the chroniclers tell us of. We were bidden by 
 him to be quite at home and paint at ease, with the 
 assurance that nobody was disturbed. 
 
 The sacristy was a little church-world, and grad- 
 ually one learned to take an intelligent interest in it. 
 Peasants and city poor entered for consolation in 
 heavy sorrow, and for the smallest gossip of daily 
 life. On some days there came a mighty shuffling, 
 echoing along the passages, and a flood of the per- 
 sonally conducted burst into sight, inundating every- 
 thing till one seized the canvas by its top, and the 
 easel by its legs, to preserve them ; while the tourists 
 climbed steps, read their books, studied the backs of 
 monuments, for the recondite always appealed to 
 them, and formed their ideas to quick music. A 
 sketch was always tempting to them, and just as on 
 the stage they would have applauded a real lamp- 
 post or a real horse-car, so a live artist at work was 
 for the nonce more absorbing than the pictures of a 
 dead one. They had little time, however, to look, 
 for they were involuntary impressionists and were 
 hurried away by their leader. These caravans were 
 always noisy and hurried, and no wonder, for a con- 
 
 244
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOIA 
 
 ductor who is at once dictionary, time-table, mentor, 
 friend, and whipper-in of stray couples, must be a 
 tired and a worried person. 
 
 The brothers divided the duty of cicerone cleverly. 
 Fra Giovanni, a stout, handsome monk, evidently 
 their best spokesman, explained their Ghirlandaji ; 
 for they are a more complicated people than the 
 other frescoed ones, because their names are often 
 known and may be catalogued to the visitor, not 
 only in the anticipation of luona mano, but with 
 real, corporate pride. " We have not such Giotti as 
 has Santa Croce," said he, one day, " but our Gaddi 
 and Memmi are unequalled in the world ; and as for 
 our Ghirlandaji" here he interrupted himself to 
 jingle two keys at some distant tourists and call to 
 them, in a sort of subdued shout, " Do the gentlemen 
 
 wish to visit the Spanish chapel?" Brother 
 
 (his name has escaped our memories) could show 
 the other chapels, and any one who happened to be 
 near, in frock or out of it, monk or bell-ringer, would 
 cheerfully and unasked fling a bit of information to 
 any foreigner who happened to approach the object 
 named : " Terra invetriata, molto bella, Luca della 
 Roblia" The Eobbia fountain was beautiful indeed, 
 and it was a pleasure to see this noble art-work 
 taking its part in the daily uses of life, as the 
 brothers often and again washed their hands or 
 rinsed their fiaschi in it, nowise fearing the in- 
 
 U5
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 junction running beneath the Madonna across the 
 marble : " Take heed that thy hands be pure if thou 
 washest here." Service after service passed out of 
 the little sacristy as we sat there, and the bell 
 took on a solemn sound for us when we learned that 
 it ushered forth the viaticum upon its frequent 
 errand to the sick and dying. 
 
 During another visit to Florence, two years later, 
 we saw Brother Antonino again, and he sat for a 
 study of his head. He looked as much like Savon- 
 arola as ever, but " the pleasant lust of arrogance " 
 in the great reformer was softened in him into a 
 gentle complacency that artists should wish to paint 
 him. To the remark, " So you are still at Santa 
 Maria Novella," he replied ; " I shall die here." Let 
 us hope so; it would be a pity that the church 
 should be secularized, that the " Sposa " of Michel- 
 angelo should have her nun's veil taken from her 
 and should exchange her cowled brothers for the 
 blue-coated guardians of a government museum. 
 
 In the latter half of "Eomola," the episodical 
 groupings of various characters whose dialogue is 
 framed by the mercato, or the loggia, or the shop, 
 are replaced by the continuous dramatic interest. 
 The fate of Eornola herself is interwoven with the 
 fate of the republic, and the background of the story 
 becomes the history of Florence. We follow the 
 heroine upon an upward current of suffering as she 
 
 246
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 loses, successively, husband, godfather, and teacher ; 
 upon the same current the city is borne along, 
 breathing hard in the struggle that preceded its 
 final agony, the siege of 1529, while George 
 Eliot makes Tito an active instrument in the for- 
 tunes of the state, without violating historical con- 
 sistency, and to Tito, whose " mind was a knife-edge, 
 working without the need of momentum," she adds 
 the bludgeon-like Dolfo Spini. We see the great 
 monk holding the people, first by enthusiasm, then 
 by the means which enthusiasts are often swept 
 into using when they feel the reins slipping from 
 them ; finally accepting, under pressure, the Francis- 
 can challenge to enter the fire. Before that, however, 
 the crowning bitterness of Romola's life is reached, 
 when her teacher, Savonarola, fails her, and Bernardo 
 del Nero goes to the scaffold. All the remainder of 
 the story that relates purely to the heroine is anti- 
 climax. We see Tito's knife-blade working noise- 
 lessly on, the edge turned always from himself, 
 severing women's heart-strings and men's lives, his 
 prosperity increasing with his treachery. The trial 
 by fire follows, and the Masque of the Furies, and as 
 Tito's fortunes are at their highest, the knife turns 
 in his hands, cutting his best-laid schemes to pieces. 
 After the death of the traitor comes the burning of 
 Savonarola, and the story ends. 
 
 The tragedy is lighted by the conversion of Monna 
 247
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 Brigida on the day of the Pyramid of Vanities and by 
 the scenes with Bratti and Tessa. But the main 
 pathway of this latter portion of the story becomes 
 that from San Marco to the Piazza della Signoria, 
 along which pass figures, blessing and cursing; 
 cowled monks and armed rabble ; the torch and 
 the crucifix, but all tending forward, past the death 
 of Savonarola, to the apotheosis of Florence, when 
 she stood alone for liberty, and fell at last after her 
 famous siege. 
 
 It is one of the longest pathways trodden in the 
 story, for the convent is farther from the centre of 
 the city than most of the points already mentioned. 
 The nearest way from the palace is down the Cal- 
 zaioli to the Cathedral Place, then by the Via Cavour 
 to the Piazza di San Marco. Calzaioli is still the 
 busiest street in Florence, and in Eomola's time, far 
 narrower than now, bore the name of the Corso degli 
 Adimari at its northern end, and in the portion near 
 the old palace, that of the Via de' Pittori, for the 
 painters who helped give fame to Florence were 
 worthily lodged there. The Via Cavour was the 
 Via Larga (the wide street), on which still stands 
 the palace of Cosimo, the Ancient. A rather para- 
 doxical loss of its old name followed its second 
 widening, and a good choice has given to the street 
 of the first republic's enslaver the name of one of 
 the liberators of Italy. 
 
 248
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 San Marco, standing upon its wide piazza, is at 
 first disappointing. It is too trim, the edges of 
 wall and arch too sharp, too liberally covered with 
 white and yellow wash. It seems almost tame for 
 the great memories that should haunt it and walk 
 the bare corridors under the beamed roof. There 
 are plenty of them: memories of Bishop Antonino 
 and Fra Bartolommeo and the monk of Fiesole, all 
 giving way before those of the extraordinary man 
 who, from 1492 to 1498, was the central figure 
 of Italy; who drew upon himself the hatred of 
 the Pope and the Franciscans, the admiration of 
 Michelangelo and partisans of liberty; who recon- 
 ciled austerity with the love of beauty in the eyes 
 of such painters as Botticelli, Baccio della Porta, 
 and Lorenzo di Credi, and who believed that to 
 unlock the doors of Paradise the keys of Saint 
 Peter must be cleansed from the rust of the sloth- 
 ful popes, the blood of Sixtus and the Borgias. 
 Florence is so rich in famous men that her long 
 portico of the Uffizi has room for but a small por- 
 tion of them, but among them no name is more 
 essentially Florentine than that of the Ferrarese 
 Girolamo Savonarola. The traces of his footsteps 
 are visible enough in the city which has so well 
 retained its ancient appearance. Every one visits 
 his cell in San Marco, and sees his portraits there 
 and in the academy. His church has been modern- 
 249
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 ized into seventeenth-century ugliness; but on the 
 night of the " Masque of the Furies," it echoed with 
 the fusillade of monks and acolytes firing from the 
 altar, and with the crash of blows as the scriptorius, 
 a kind of loving young Saint John to Savonarola, 
 beat back the compagnacci with his heavy crucifix. 
 Along the streets which, on the night of his arrest, 
 the reformer traversed between the armed guards 
 he had asked from the priors, we go to the Palazzo 
 Vecchio and the Piazza della Signoria. 
 
 There are in the world few grander buildings than 
 the citadel of Florentine liberty, the Palazzo Vec- 
 chio; it is an embodiment of militant beauty in 
 stone. In earlier times the scene of so much that 
 was noble and base, it became in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury the place of Savonarola's triumph and agony. 
 For there in the vast hall of that great council he 
 so labored to secure, he set a whole people to work 
 at a fever-heat of enthusiasm, with Michelangelo 
 and Leonardo da Vinci among the workers, that an 
 asylum might be created, a refuge and an appeal to 
 the many against the injustice of the few. The 
 Medici changed the place ; the arch-patrons of art 
 destroyed the designs of Angelo and Leonardo, 
 setting up the clumsy statues of Leo and the dukes, 
 and the ceilings of Vasari, celebrating Cosimo; 
 they wanted no unpleasant souvenir of the great 
 council. But the centuries have seen " the Medicean 
 
 250
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 stamp outworn," and have placed the statue of the 
 monk in the middle of his hall. 
 
 Broad stairways lead to the base of the tower 
 whose machicolated parapet and column-supported 
 summit give it such unique character. A narrow 
 spiral leads up and up, each loophole-window showing 
 a higher sky-line, till, when the top is nearly reached, 
 under the battlements, between the corbels of which 
 are the shields of the republic, a horrible place opens 
 from the stairs into the wall. In it there is just 
 room for a stone bench the length of a man. The 
 small, heavy door swings outward. In this hideous 
 cell Savonarola lay for days, his body racked by the 
 torture, his mind by the consciousness that his ene- 
 mies were inventing and attributing to him lying 
 speeches to dismay his disciples. He left it only for 
 the stake. In the massive wall the window, less 
 than a foot square, splays in and funnels toward a 
 point; the one object visible from this slit in the 
 wall is the brown mass of Santa Croce, the strong- 
 hold of his enemies, the Franciscans, whence issued 
 the challenge for the trial by fire, the first fatal 
 downward step in the reformer's path. 
 
 A few paces above this inferno, Paradise itself 
 seems to open as the platform of the tower is reached. 
 Around one are the forked Ghibelline battlements ; 
 from their midst rise the four massive columns; a 
 dizzy staircase, winding about one of these, leads to 
 251
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 the bells ; still another and narrower stairway takes 
 one, with care and stooping, to the cow-stall, the abode 
 of the antique vacca, the bell whose lowing called the 
 townsmen together. There it still hangs from beams 
 placed pyramidally and forming the point of the 
 tower. Above it, upon a vane, in violent foreshort- 
 ening, Marzocco, the lion of the republic, in that 
 attitude of ecstatic flourishing peculiar to lions in 
 such cases, waves his mane and tail high above his 
 brother Marzocco of the Bargello, and over all other 
 Marzocchi, bronze, marble, or wooden, in Tuscany. 
 Before one is the valley of the Arno from the moun- 
 tains of the Casentino to the dentelated Apennines 
 of Carrara, with the shining river curving down to 
 Pisa. Below is the city, and as one mounts, the 
 great buildings rise far above their fellows, as great 
 men in history rise to their true places in the past, 
 when seen from the present. The familiar land- 
 marks of the old time are still there, till we read 
 the city like a page of Villani or of Dino CompagnL 
 Palaces and churches stand to-day as when Guelph 
 and Ghibelline were names potent to conjure with 
 and to strike fire from steel ; streets and squares, as 
 when Savonarola quivered in the room below or 
 burned upon the piazza. 
 
 There is something new, too : " The Pope Angel- 
 ico is not come yet ; " but here at our hand, upon 
 the parapet, workmen are setting out lamps for the 
 252
 
 IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA 
 
 birthday of a queen who writes Savoy after her 
 name, and yet who gathers among those who acclaim 
 her with affection, Florentines and the antique ene- 
 mies of Florence, citizens of north and south, a 
 queen of United Italy. For the ashes of Savonarola, 
 which were sown broadcast to the wind, have borne 
 seed in the days when the land cherishes the dust of 
 patriots and writes upon the stones of its cities the 
 names of Garibaldi and Mazzini, and Cavour and 
 Victor Emmanuel 
 
 The story of " Eomola " leaves us with a sense of 
 sadness and defeat. Savonarola died mute and un- 
 justified ; his friends and disciples robbed, murdered, 
 and driven into exile ; his life's work undone, and 
 the kingdom of God, he had labored to found, shaken 
 to its foundations. But only a few years after, under 
 a Medicean pope, he is solemnly rehabilitated by the 
 church; the historians estimate him at his true 
 value ; devotees make pilgrimages to his cell ; Fra 
 Bartolommeo paints him as the patron saint of his 
 order, and Eaphael places him in a frescoed Paradise 
 among a glorious company of prophets and sages. 
 To-day, in an Italy that does not love monks, Ferrara 
 raises his statue before the castle of the Estensi, and 
 in Florence, in the vastness of the great council-hall, 
 his colossal image. Many changes have come to his 
 beloved city ; but she is faithful to his memory, and 
 253
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 those who do not reverence the priest honor the 
 patriot who withstood tyrants and loved freedom. 
 
 For here, in Italy, liberty has worn many guises ; 
 she has hidden herself in the scholar's gown and has 
 laughed in the motley. She has rioted in the Masque 
 of the Furies, and put on the soldier's corselet, the 
 poet's laurel, and the monk's frock and cowl. In our 
 own days we have seen her in the red shirt of Garibaldi, 
 when she came to take possession of the land. The 
 miracle that prophets and patriots prayed for in vain 
 has been wrought in its own time. After three hun- 
 dred years the prophecy of Savonarola has been ful- 
 filled, and the deliverers have come, not from without, 
 but within, not to save the city only, but the whole 
 country : a king whose proudest title was that of 
 honest man, and a soldier who unsheathed the sword 
 of righteousness. Italy is free from the Alps to the 
 straits. The narrow jealousies and fierce civic ha- 
 treds of province to province and town to town are 
 vanishing before the large ideal of national unity, 
 an ideal nobler than that of the great reformer, 
 and Florence can again write liberty upon her 
 banner above the lions and the lilies. 
 
 254
 
 PARMA
 
 PARMA 
 
 PARMA ! Correggio ! They are exchangeable words 
 for you and me and the art-loving of all countries, 
 since it is her possession of the work of Antonio 
 Allegri that gives the town importance. Upon that 
 Eoman road which passes straight through the city, 
 there was marching and countermarching from the 
 time when in 183 B.C. Marcus JEmilius Lepidus gave 
 his name to road and province alike and there were 
 doubtless deeds done that resounded throughout 
 Italy, but the road itself, stretching as it did from 
 Eimini to Piacenza, was, at least, just where Colonia 
 Julia Augusta Parma arose, itself the mightiest 
 thing in sight and memory. As far as our interest is 
 concerned, it passed along in obscurity for fifteen 
 hundred years, nowise illuminated by the constant 
 quarrels that gave to the town of which we write, 
 successive masters, until in the beginning of the 
 sixteenth century, precisely at this point of Parma, 
 the Via Emilia became irradiated, brilliant with 
 the name and presence of a famous artist. 
 VOL. i. 17 257
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 The exterior impress upon the city postdates 
 Correggio, for it was only after the Farnese came to 
 power that Parma had any settled government. 
 Once, when as a town of the Exarchate, she looked 
 to Ravenna for the password, she must have nourished 
 exceedingly, for the Byzantines called her the golden 
 city, and we should perhaps still have some solemnly 
 glittering mosaics, relics of that Chrysopolis, if the 
 Lombards had not destroyed the place in 773. 
 Afterward, and during the destructive activity 
 which began in the dark ages and continued through 
 mediaeval times, Parma had so many masters that 
 they might pass us like a panoramic show of his- 
 toric characters illustrating all times and costumes 
 for half a millennial : antipopes and popes ; Guelphic 
 captains, the Giberti, the Eossi, the Sanvitali ; John 
 XXII. ; Louis of Bavaria ; John of Bohemia ; Scala 
 lords of Verona ; Visconti of Milan ; Sforza too, and 
 lastly, Popes Julius II. and Leo X. The tiara finally 
 seemed to have settled firmly upon the city, and if 
 the Farnese who began to rule with Pierluigi were 
 not a delectable family, at least they provided a suc- 
 cession of seven dukes. 
 
 They, however, gave their town no such fatherly 
 care as was accorded by the Montefeltro to Urbino 
 or the Gonzaga to Mantua. Parma was too often 
 only the tail of the kite. Parmesan affairs were too 
 frequently watched, but from far away, from the 
 258
 
 PARMA 
 
 Papal Court or the throne of Spain or the marshes of 
 Flanders, by princes busied with outside interests. 
 Thus the present Parma grew up stately, formal, and 
 rather bare, dating from the Farnese and the late 
 sixteenth century and countersigned ducal by its huge 
 brick Castello. In Italy it was quintessentially 
 ducal to have just such a pile of masonry to hold the 
 master safely within and to hold the townsmen in 
 subjection without ; no well-regulated reigning family 
 could dispense with such a puissant aid to good 
 government. In the Eepublics it was different ; in 
 Siena and Florence, for instance, the Palazzo Pub- 
 blico came shouldering into the square, and if 
 Cosimo Pater Patriae wanted a palace for himself, he 
 built it on the street like any other man ; a fortress 
 it was, if you will, in its massiveness, but only one 
 of many such private strongholds scattered through- 
 out the city. More than this, he gave not a little 
 thought to private jealousy, and tore up Brunelles- 
 schi's ground-plans and elevations, lest their am- 
 bitious character should provoke republican envy. 
 On the contrary, Estensi, Gonzaga, Montefeltro, 
 Visconti, and Farnese alike set great, moat-girt 
 castles upon the town's edge, whence they could watch 
 and strike if need be. The Castello forms the princi- 
 pal feature of Ferrara, Mantua, Parma, and Urbino ; 
 it is huge in Milan also ; but there the great church 
 overshadows it with its presence. As one passes 
 259
 
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 from city to city, each castello seems bigger than the 
 other, and, taken together, they afford admirable ex- 
 amples of the beauty, picturesqueness, nobility even, 
 of brick when used in large masses. The great flat 
 expanses are impressive in their very blankness ; they 
 are blank, however, only as to lack of sculptured orna- 
 ment ; color they have in plenty given by sun and 
 rain, and flying dust, and here and there, as where 
 the Parmesan Castello overhangs the water, they 
 forsake their naked simplicity and break into a 
 whole mass of flying galleries and ports to once- 
 existent drawbridges. 
 
 Syrnonds thought Parma "perhaps the brightest 
 little Besidenzstadt of the second class in Italy ; " to 
 us it seemed (as with so much else in the peninsula) 
 that its brightness was wholly an affair of the season at 
 which you happened to visit it. It is gay and bright 
 in spring and summer, what town is not in Italy ? 
 Then the band plays in the evenings, many of the 
 shops are still lighted and the people pour into 
 the square, or loiter homeward from Vespers at the 
 Steccata or the Duomo ; but in winter it appeared to 
 us unutterably sad, sad as Modena, yielding in 
 melancholy only to Eavenna and Ferrara, and lack- 
 ing even the brightness of Ferrara's market-place. 
 For the grim castle of Mantua is relieved by the 
 quaint cheerfulness of the streets, that of Ferrara 
 by the cathedral's picturesque neighborhood; but 
 260
 
 PARMA 
 
 Parma's streets stretch unbroken, unrelieved by any 
 sally. 
 
 If primness were not so utterly foreign to Kenais' 
 sance life or to anything Italian that came after it, we 
 should call some of these streets prim ; perhaps a little 
 of the starch and powder of the court has gotten 
 into things; the place looks something more than 
 respectable, and during our last visit to Parma in the 
 winter, we remember not cabs, but heavy old family 
 carriages rolling slowly by, containing very possibly 
 children and grandchildren of Maria Louisa's ladies 
 of honor. 
 
 The loveliness of summer belongs to Parma in 
 common with other cities ; the vine-hung mulberry 
 trees take hands and dance in the fields about her as 
 around other towns, but Verona would be beautiful 
 in any weather, so would Venice or Florence or 
 Rome ; Parma needs sun in her gray streets and 
 blue sky above them. Our former visits had been 
 during spring and summer, but our last sojourn was 
 in winter days when snow covered everything 
 to the east of the Apennines, and when the white 
 fog pierced through your very bones. In the mist- 
 filled solitudes about the Duomo after nightfall the 
 cold fairly took you by the throat ; the Baptistery 
 shone with ice, and the porch-lions of the Cathedral 
 looked as though some eighteenth-century Faruese 
 had fitted powdered wigs upon them. The Torrente 
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 from its bridges seemed a Phlegethon, a river of 
 whirling smoke, but felt like what it really was, a 
 reservoir of benumbing vapor. 
 
 In those days when we went into the Castello we 
 wondered, in the bitter cold, how men and women 
 with blood in circulation, and therefore capable of 
 congealing, could possibly keep alive there. 
 
 In one room we found a fine fire in a large sheet- 
 iron stove and thought delightedly that it was in 
 part at least for us poor human animals, custodians 
 and visitors, but no ! " It is kept burning always," 
 said the custode, " in order that a perfectly even tem- 
 perature may help to preserve the two best pictures 
 of Correggio." It was a pretty tribute, this " fire that 
 burns for aye," to the tutelary genius of the place, 
 and logical enough, for Correggio keeps up the 
 foreign circulation of Parma; but it seemed a bit 
 inhuman, and reminded one tant soit peu of the Irish- 
 man who in freezing weather said, " Put the blanket 
 on the pig; 'tis he that pays the rint." Italians, 
 however, are really affectionate in their consideration 
 of art objects ; if they maltreat them, it is only 
 through ignorance, and Maria Louisa's refusal to 
 accept from Louis XVIII. a million francs for the 
 San Girolamo, although she was at the time in sore 
 straits for money, is perhaps the most honorable 
 thing chronicled concerning a lady whose life was by 
 no means destitute of good actions. 
 
 262
 
 PARMA 
 
 The Pinacoteca, as may be inferred from that 
 unique sheet-iron stove, is in the Castello ; but 
 Correggio is so great a glory that he claims consider- 
 ation by and for himself and should not be talked of 
 until after anything otherwise distracting about the 
 town is quite finished and done with. 
 
 In the castle, too, is the famous Teatro Farnese, as 
 strange as Palladio's Scena of Vicenza, and ten times 
 more impressive. 
 
 In all its decay it is still a beautiful Renaissance 
 theatre ; one of our companions longed to have it 
 summer-time that he might sleep for a night in the 
 midst of this departed magnificence. It would be 
 well to sleep soundly there and not walk ; only 
 ghosts could do that with safety, for the wood is 
 rotted to punk ; and the custode, saying, " Take care, 
 c'e pericolo" leads one up prescribed paths, where 
 beams have been placed to prop up the seats and 
 incidentally the guardian's perquisites. If one did 
 wake, one would perhaps see Poliziano's Orfeo, or 
 Machiavelli's Mandragora, moving in shadowy pan- 
 tomime across the vast stage, but, for our part, we 
 should rather expect to meet the ghosts of those 
 who played real dramas in the Castello, ghosts 
 made substantial by the portraits in the Pinacoteca 
 of dozens of Farnese. The latter are not a little 
 interesting to the student of history, and there are 
 notably a boy-duke Alessandro, an Elizabeth of 
 263
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 France with her husband, and a terrible-looking 
 seventeenth-century Maria Farnese; while Moro, 
 Substermans, and Vandyck are among the painters. 
 
 We walked the ^Emilian Way from gate to gate 
 of the city, and even strolled into the outskirts ; and 
 after the Castello and the Duomo, San Giovanni, and 
 the Steccata, we of course visited the Camera of San 
 Paolo, where the place is still consecrate to women 
 and a normal school is sheltered in the convent. 
 
 But the group of buildings which called one again 
 and again was that upon the Cathedral square, made 
 up of the Duomo, the Baptistery, and San Giovanni 
 Evangelista. It is a sad, deserted place, unlike the 
 busy spots about the churches of Ferrara, Modena, 
 or Mantua. The Baptistery, godparent, it is said, to 
 every man and woman in Parma for many cen- 
 turies, is a grim Gothic structure, and in Benedetto 
 Antelami, the author of the sculptures upon its front, 
 certain critics consider that they recognize a day 
 star of Italian art, a true precursor of Niccola 
 Pisano. 
 
 " If Italians have not always painted well, at least 
 they have always painted," says one of their own 
 writers, and the Duomo's interior is a testimony to 
 the activity of eight hundred years. Sitting at the 
 further end of the choir, one noted close at hand 
 the archiepiscopal throne carved at about the time 
 of Hastings ; beyond in tawny marble was an altar 
 264
 
 PARMA 
 
 contemporary with the Lombard League ; above the 
 throne was a marble and gilt bas-relief of the 
 thirteenth century ; under a curtain and where later 
 stucco had been scraped away, one saw a Madonna 
 of the school of Giotto ; fifteenth-century stalls gave 
 us sitting room ; there was plenty of cinquecento and 
 seicento work, while two huge gilded candlesticks 
 and a barocco bench were of a time when Tiepolo 
 had already painted periwigged goddesses, and 
 Stendhal was about to write his " Chartreuse de 
 Parme." All these representatives of different ages 
 were within a radius of fifteen feet ; thus it is in 
 lands where people are in no hurry ; think of it, ye 
 architects, sculptors, painters, who contract in May 
 to decorate a building and must finish or forfeit by 
 the following April! But beautiful as is the old 
 Kornanesque basilica, one comes, not to see its grand 
 architecture of the middle ages, but to visit works 
 which were only possible to a man who had the 
 whole fifteenth century behind him and the influence 
 of the cinquecento, the culminating epoch of Italian 
 art, about him. 
 
 265
 
 n 
 
 SPACE, light, and motion were what Antonio Allegri 
 of Correggio most longed to express; for this ex- 
 pression he made the open heaven his field, and 
 masses of floating, soaring, human bodies, draped or 
 undraped, his material. The performance of such 
 a task required a temperament almost magically 
 endowed, but such a temperament he possessed, and 
 he gave it full scope in the dome of the Cathedral 
 of Parma and the cupola of San Giovanni. The 
 frescoes in these churches are his greatest achieve- 
 ments, and by them we may judge him. Their 
 arrangement is very similar, both represent an 
 assumption of Madonna or of the Saviour. Above, 
 in the centre of the dome, is the ascending Christ 
 or Mary with attendant or supporting angels ; where 
 the interior cornice surrounds the octagonal cupola 
 of the Duomo, apostles stand against a simulated 
 balustrade gazing upward, and on the pendentives 
 of both churches, saints and angels are seated upon 
 clouds. To those who, looking upon these frescoes, 
 think superficially, Correggio is as a painter of flying 
 angels and radiant glories, an arch-idealist ; to those 
 who reason more carefully, he is an arch-realist, 
 
 266
 
 PARMA 
 
 almost the realist of Italian art. What differentiates 
 him from the accepted realist is this : the latter only 
 too often makes realism and ugliness synonymous, 
 Correggio's is realism by selection applied only to 
 the beautiful. But it is realism ; not one painter in 
 the whole range of Italian art so hated what he 
 understood to be conventionality. If his subject is 
 above, it must be seen from underneath, no matter 
 how the point of view may detract from the beauty 
 of the work ; his architecture must be painted in 
 simulated perspective, and he will tolerate nothing 
 which by its perspective would fall out if it were 
 real 
 
 In his frescoes of San Giovanni which antedated 
 those of the cathedral, Correggio, first among the 
 artists of Italy, threw aside the whole architectonic 
 tradition of art and said to himself, " I will break 
 through tradition and cupola at once, will consider 
 that the walls are no longer there, and will make 
 a realistic heaven, where real figures among real 
 clouds shall be seen in real perspective, such as 
 would actually obtain." Nota bene, that a cupola, 
 a hollow dome without ribs or projections from the 
 plaster, is the only form to which such a trompe 
 Voeil, such illusory perspective, could be applied 
 without being ridiculous. Even here it is open to 
 criticism, but if any man ever existed for whom it 
 was entirely right to do this thing, that man was 
 267
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 Antonio Allegri of Correggio. Imitators have abused 
 his example until the abuse became detestable ; but 
 the example remains so brilliant, so satisfying, that 
 we blame only those who failed in their imitation. 
 
 The first and most potent factor in the effect of 
 his Assumption of the Duorno is its triumphant reali- 
 zation of aerial, transparent fresco-color of which in- 
 deed it is the earliest perfectly successful example 
 in Italy. To the artist, and above all to the artist 
 who has worked upon the plaster and knows how 
 readily overpainting becomes heavy and dead, the 
 marvellous lightness, silveriness, airiness of Correg- 
 gio's frescoes, especially of his frescoes of the Cathe- 
 dral, are an unceasing wonder. 
 
 Correggio's second factor is his distribution of 
 light ; his third, expression by movement. Leonardo 
 da Vinci had discovered light and shade ; Correggio 
 improved upon his invention. Leonardo experiment- 
 ing with many media painted shadows which have 
 fallen into blackness, Correggio, as Milanesi has 
 happily put it, " clarified Da Vinci's manner." Leo- 
 nardo pursued the light with profoundest observation ; 
 Correggio juggled with it : he did not ask it to be 
 mysterious, he was satisfied that it should be radi- 
 ant. He entertained himself with light, as Michel- 
 angelo entertained himself with muscular expression, 
 Raphael with composition ; like both the others, 
 he possessed his means and made it yield not only 
 268
 
 PARMA 
 
 enjoyment, but its ultimate force in certain direc- 
 tions. He composed with light more than with 
 lines, and here he came nearer to being conventional 
 than elsewhere, for there is a certain amount of 
 parti pris in his chiaroscuro, which, however, if not 
 exactly unconventional, is always real. As to his 
 third factor, Correggio is Perpetual Motion itself; 
 with him everything is in action. 
 
 That movement in repose which is so suited to the 
 demands of great mural art, which helps to make 
 Michelangelo's Pieta of St. Peter's so superb, 
 which informs so many figures of Eaphael, so many 
 altar-pieces even of the quattrocento, is quite absent 
 from Correggio's work. His angels of the dome 
 mount upward, cleave the air, toss and bend, bestride 
 clouds which they ride like curveting horses, but 
 they are never quiet for a moment. 
 
 Even in altar-pieces, where Eaphael's saints stand 
 firmly, though their lines may curve ever so grace- 
 fully, Correggio's figures undulate until they seem 
 almost out of equilibrium. Michelangelo's Del- 
 phic and Libyan Sibyls have superb movement, but 
 it is ponderated, it does not fatigue the onlooker ; 
 Correggio's Saints Jerome and Sebastian in the altar- 
 pieces to which they respectively give their names 
 are absolutely unsteady upon their feet. In sum 
 his movement in smaller pictures is often ineffective ; 
 but when he masses it in his great frescoes, it be- 
 269
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 comes, on the contrary, a potent element of his 
 effect. 
 
 Smiling, youthful beauty is what Correggio elected 
 to paint. His sprite-like angels, naked youths and 
 maidens, who if measured by mortal span may have 
 lived for fourteen years, are dearest both to their 
 creator and to the onlooker. With tossing hair, wide 
 light-filled eyes, and parted lips they ride the 
 clouds upon the pendentives or uphold Madonna; 
 among them the babies tumble, with the same great 
 lustrous eyes and with little, realistic, formless, 
 toothless mouths. In the pendentives or about the 
 base of the cupola are patriarchs, prophets, and 
 saints, and here Correggio is puzzled; he would 
 juggle age away, would sprinkle it with the water 
 of Eternal Youth; it has no dignity for him; its 
 emaciation, its dryness, he will have none of; his 
 old men may be brawny, but they are over-plump, 
 over-muscled indeed, since in them Correggio shows 
 none of the science of expression through anatomi- 
 cal emphasis which Michelangelo possessed. Their 
 thick hair is always tumbling about and always 
 curling ; their beards evidently grow over full-lipped, 
 smiling mouths, and they are not very pleasing as 
 types. In some cases it seems as if Correggio had 
 but taken his youths and, clapping false beards 
 upon them, had said to patriarch or prophet, "I 
 care nothing for your face ; toss and turn your great 
 
 270
 
 PARMA 
 
 body in the light and in the half-light ; that is all the 
 help I ask of you." And yet they are fine. This 
 is what one says again and again before Correggio, 
 "and yet," and "in spite of," ending always with 
 surrender to a compelling enchantment and force. 
 Burckhardt with excellent analysis, Symonds with 
 admirable word-painting, have said much of the 
 psychological side of Correggio's types, have found 
 them wondrously beautiful, yet denied them power 
 to do good were they to live. In this essay, 
 however, we are considering not the psychological 
 but the purely artistic side of the painter. If 
 the authors of these lines may here for a mo- 
 ment intrude their own personality upon their 
 book, it would be to say that much in Cor- 
 reggio's point of view is unsympathetic, almost 
 antipathetic to them; all of his minor work, his 
 world-famous altar-pieces and mythological pictures 
 included, seems but loosely put together, if brought 
 into presence of the almost architecturally con- 
 structed composition of Raphael, the grave splendor 
 of Titian's Assumption, the profoundly sugges- 
 tive figures of Michelangelo. His sweetness even 
 appears but superficial after that of Leonardo. 
 Nevertheless, and in spite of all these reservations, 
 the authors of this essay, when first they came into 
 the presence of the dome of Parma, for awhile 
 at least had no capacity for anything but de- 
 
 271
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 lighted admiration of a phenomenal art develop- 
 ment. Wholly phenomenal it is, and the surprise 
 of it adds not a little to its effectiveness. A day in 
 which one has a supreme artistic experience may 
 be marked by a whitest stone, and such a day should 
 be afforded by a first visit to Parma ; for there is an 
 immense sensation in coming suddenly into the 
 presence of the highest and best achievement of one 
 of the world's masters. Acquaintance with Correg- 
 gio's pictures in the galleries of Europe prepares 
 but in small measure for what awaits one in the 
 cathedral of Parma. 
 
 There the ordering of Correggio's work is as follows : 
 in the pendentives of the cupola are four seated 
 saints with many youthful angels, the seated figures 
 enthroned upon clouds. Twelve colossal apostles 
 stand along an octagonal cornice behind a painted 
 balustrade, looking upward at the Assumption of the 
 Virgin. Painted candelabra rise at the angles of 
 the cornice, and between them are many boy genii 
 standing, sitting, or reclining. Above them the 
 whole cupola is filled with clouds and a multitude of 
 flying figures surrounding the Virgin, who is borne 
 upward. Under the soffits of the arches to the 
 cupola are painted figures of genii, six of which are 
 by Correggio, the others by Mazzola-Bedoli. 
 
 The above is the material distribution of the fres- 
 coes. Considered generally, the result is the achieve- 
 
 272
 
 PARMA 
 
 ouorno 
 CORREGGIO 
 
 ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN (FRAGMENT)
 
 PARMA 
 
 ment of one of the few works which may be called 
 sublime. Technically considered, this Assumption 
 presents the first triumphantly successful realization 
 of aerial, transparent fresco-color. For the first 
 time also, save in the case of the same master's 
 frescoes of San Giovanni, architectonics are disre- 
 garded, and a whole cupola is shown as one undivided 
 and realistic composition. The color is beyond 
 criticism ; the arrangement, which in principle is, on 
 the contrary, distinctly open to criticism, is justified 
 by its result. It is splendidly, dazzlingly successful ; 
 and yet not only the few to whom it is antipathetic, 
 but the many who profoundly admire, may analyze 
 it and find in it certain germs of decadence. 
 
 To begin with, it is confused, and in the painter's 
 passion for realistic foreshortening he has frequently 
 sacrificed dignity, and has sometimes become frankly 
 awkward. The monumental grandeur of Eaphael 
 and Michelangelo is completely absent, but it 
 is replaced by another grandeur, which comes from 
 sweep and whirl and radiant figures so multiplied in 
 numbers that the very volume of the painter's creation 
 adds immensely to its power. They are upon every 
 side, these figures, bending and tossing, floating and 
 diving through clouds, hovering above the abysmal 
 void that is between the dome and the earth below 
 it. There is a lack of restraint, indeed, there is a 
 direct straining for that illusion which is not wholly 
 VOL. i. 18 273
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 in accordance with the principles of architectonic 
 decoration, but any violation of artistic conventions 
 is permissible to a genius who through rupture with 
 tradition creates new forms of beauty. Here is the 
 triumphant application of realism to a vision, not the 
 tranquil, contemplative vision of an older master, but 
 a moving vision, rapturous and ecstatic. 
 
 It must be admitted that the color of these fres- 
 coes, the element in fact which technically is most 
 admirable in the work, varies astonishingly under 
 varying conditions of the atmosphere. In spring 
 and summer when the light reflected from below and 
 admitted through the oculi fills the cupola, this color 
 seems all that we have said of it, more cool and 
 silvery than any fresco-color which preceded it. 
 In the dark winter days and under a threatening 
 sky, it is quite different ; then the lower figures of 
 the cupola, those about the balustrade, are rather red 
 in their shadows, not quite bricky, but approaching 
 brickiness far more than in fine weather ; the upper 
 figures are cooler and those of the pendentives are 
 as silvery as ever. All this means that a decorator 
 can paint for only one set of atmospheric conditions, 
 and that in Italy the conditions are practically those 
 of an eight months' summer, when light pours into 
 the churches, even through the smallest openings, 
 and is reflected back and upward from pavement, 
 pillar, and wall. In one town after another the 
 274
 
 PARMA 
 
 traveler sets down in his diary, " The frescoes could 
 not be seen at all ; " that is because he goes to them at 
 the wrong season and at the wrong hours. If visited 
 at the right season and time, nearly every fresco in 
 Italy which is not injured beyond deciphering can 
 be well seen. And yet it is notable that wherever a 
 dome is decorated, and in spite of the fact that such 
 painting is planned as an enhancement to the church, 
 seen from the usual point of view, that is, the 
 pavement, the visitor is always taken to some higher 
 point of vantage and told, " Here is the proper place 
 from which to see the frescoes." This is to a certain 
 extent reasonable, since after the ensemble has pro- 
 duced its effect, there is always detail which makes 
 closer inspection interesting, for no artist who has 
 lived ever struck the exact mean of strength or 
 delicacy, permitting his work upon a very high 
 dome or ceiling to focus its entire carrying power 
 upon just one point of vision. This shifting 
 about of the spectator is an argument in favor of 
 concentrating dome decoration upon the penden- 
 tives, which can nearly always be admirably seen 
 from below. 
 
 In Parma, then as elsewhere, one may climb to a 
 higher point ; few people do, but it is well worth 
 the doing, and we supplemented each visit to the 
 church by a journey to the inter mural gallery which 
 surrounds the cupola. It is interesting to explore 
 275
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 the bones of these mediaeval monsters, these Roman- 
 esque and Gothic churches, which were not so time- 
 resisting as Greek temples, but whose dusty skeletons 
 had to be constantly patched and propped from 
 within as well as from without their epidermises of 
 brick or stone (for cupolas have often, like human 
 beings, three skins). 
 
 In the Parmesan Duomo, an exceptionally narrow 
 and steep stone staircase twists you up rapidly to 
 above the pendentives ; their outer surfaces or 
 inner, as you please rise in huge lumpish mounds 
 like giant shoulders heaving up the central dome ; 
 above them old, old beams are a framework of bones 
 to support the outer skin of tiles. The dust, the 
 cobwebs, the sharp contrasts of bright light and 
 black shadow, the worn steps, the bells amid their 
 ship-like cordage and wheels, make such places 
 unique in their quaintness. The guide pulls open 
 with an echoing rattle a small door in the thick wall ; 
 light bursts in ; below you is an awful depth ; two 
 iron bars, strong, but slight to the imagination, are 
 between you and it, and beyond the bars and the 
 abyss, the smiling giants of Correggio float lightly 
 over a dizzy gulf that makes your spinal marrow 
 creep. There is an admixture of horror with delight 
 in the first moment, and this feeling, combined with 
 a certain exaltation, and the excitement of suddenly 
 looking out from a dark, bewildering, cramped pas- 
 
 276
 
 PARMA 
 
 sage into a wide, light-filled dome, adds greatly to 
 the sense of vision. 
 
 They are close at hand now upon every side of the 
 spectator, floating or tossing, poised and hanging, 
 or shooting upward, while behind the main groups 
 is a background of smiling figures with close-set 
 shoulders and clinging arms, " the young-eyed 
 cherubim " garlanding Madonna. 
 
 Here one is at last face to face with these much- 
 discussed types of Correggio. It is easy to follow 
 lines of obvious criticism, the faces all resemble 
 each other, they are idealizations, abstractions with 
 always the ripe, smiling mouth, the round cheeks, 
 the radiant eyes. They are all of one family, a 
 glorified, happy family. There is no terror here as 
 with Michelangelo, hardly any awe even, but when 
 the critic, having said all this, goes further and 
 would talk of prettiness or of insipid uniformity of 
 character, he ceases, utterly disarmed, for here in this 
 whirling mass is puissance, something of the tre- 
 mendous sweep that should come when the choir 
 sings, " Behold, God the Lord passeth by," and which 
 makes Correggio one of the half-dozen sublime 
 masters in Art. 
 
 These are not blessed spirits, they are sprites, 
 " they are fauns," says Burckhardt, and after him, 
 Symonds ; and it must be admitted that they sug- 
 gest the spirits of the Tempest rather than the 
 
 277
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 angels and seraphs of the Bible, but their elfin beauty 
 needs not distract us from considering the general 
 effect. It is the very volume of this whirling, sweep- 
 ing mass that moves us. Where Correggio places one 
 or two of these shapes upon a canvas he plays to us 
 upon a flute and allures us with his piping, but 
 when he pours them upon us in hundreds he " un- 
 stops the full organ." If, as individual figures, they 
 are fairy-like, as a mass they are apocalyptic. 
 
 " But what good," persists Burckhardt, " could we 
 expect from these creations if they came to life " ? 
 and truly Correggio does seem more than half a 
 pagan or half a child in his cultus of pure joy. These 
 spirits do not suffer, feel no terror ; they do not know 
 any better than to be just simply and entirely 
 happy. But does not the critic, in insisting upon 
 their potentiality for good, set up an ethical standard 
 which it might be embarrassingly hard to uphold. 
 In looking at the face of Michelangelo's "Night," 
 or his " Dawn," do we know what either would do 
 if she too began to breathe and move: she would 
 be titanic surely, but how would she use her 
 force ? Would she pull down Jupiter to help mortals 
 or for the mere pleasure of power ? Each has a giant's 
 strength, but might not she " use it like a giant " ? 
 What evil could we find in Correggio's people ? If 
 bright and joyous spirits are celestial, why, so are 
 his ; he laughs and smiles by choice, but he smiles 
 
 278
 
 PARMA 
 
 DUOMO 
 CORREGGIO 
 
 ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN (FRAGMENT)
 
 PARMA 
 
 as Michelangelo frowns, sublimely ; elevation is his, 
 and elevation is ethical, for in spite of his lack of 
 restraint and his exaggeration of illusion in mock 
 architecture, the outpouring of spirit, the sweep and 
 power, shown in his Assumption of the Virgin, make 
 him one of the half-dozen sublime masters of Italian 
 painting, and we echo Ludwig Tieck's words : " Let 
 no one say he has seen Italy, let no one think he 
 has learnt the lofty secrets of art, till he has seen 
 thee and thy cathedral, Parma ! " 
 
 Correggio executed two other cycles of frescoes, 
 the very secular decorations of the Camera di San 
 Paolo, and in the cupola of San Giovanni Evan- 
 gelista, an Ascension of Christ, a work which ante- 
 dated that of the Duomo. In the Ascension this 
 youth of twenty-six deliberately threw aside the 
 entire decorative paraphernalia of the fifteenth 
 century, the scrolls and thrones and embroidered 
 patterns, the flowers and fruits and garlands, and, 
 like a young soldier who in wishing to make a 
 supreme effort found his armor cumbersome, he cast 
 it from him and fought baresark. In return for 
 quattrocento ornament he accepted nothing but 
 nude bodies and the simplest of draperies as his 
 material. 
 
 Signor Corrado Eicci, the learned curator of the 
 Parmesan galleries, has published an admirable book 
 upon Correggio which all lovers of the artist should 
 279
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 read. It is not often that one takes exception to 
 his reasoning, but it is difficult to agree with some 
 of his opinions regarding the frescoes of San 
 Giovanni. He thinks that because of their greater 
 restraint they surpass those of the Duomo, but what 
 they gain in simplicity and restraint they lose in 
 lack of volume. Correggio is not one of those 
 artists who are at their best when they are simplest, 
 and in the frescoes of San Giovanni he has made 
 most use of the types that were least congenial 
 to him, those of middle-aged or old men. Signer 
 Bicci compares these saints and apostles with those 
 of Michelangelo to the disadvantage of the latter. 
 "The ostentatious display of anatomical reliefs" 
 with Michelangelo never fails to show a perfect 
 competency, a knowledge of construction, which is 
 absent in Correggio ; his saints in the pendentives 
 are excellent, but his apostles about the Christ look 
 swollen ; their huge muscles are not modelled ; their 
 attitudes are as constrained as those of Michel- 
 angelo without showing the latter's knowledge of 
 construction or grandeur of line. 
 
 Having considered the two cupolas in their gen- 
 eral decorative impression, there remains in the 
 mind, as must be the case in the remembrance of 
 all great grouped masses, certain features which 
 stand out as adding to or detracting from that same 
 general effect, but even at the maximum of their 
 280
 
 PARMA 
 
 importance these remain details. Our opportunity 
 to study them is largely owed to the water- color 
 studies and line-engravings of Paolo Toschi, who 
 literally spent his life upon the scaffolding, examin- 
 ing and copying the crumbling frescoes of the 
 Duomo and San Giovanni. No more touching 
 tribute has been paid to a master in the whole 
 history of art. The sincerity of the copyist was 
 absolute, the ability very considerable, and yet care- 
 ful comparison of the copies with the originals, 
 while demonstrating even more fully our debt to 
 Toschi in showing how much since the engraver 
 did his work has actually faded from the plaster 
 beyond deciphering, shows also that the disciple, 
 with all his piety, somewhat weakened his subject. 
 He has at once refined (in the sense of smoothing 
 and softening) the modelling, and slightly vul- 
 garized the spirit of these great works. The re' 
 finement probably proceeded from the damaged 
 condition of the frescoes; that is to say, where 
 Correggio's modelling could no longer be seen, 
 Toschi put in that of the Italian settecento, and the 
 vulgarization again comes from the fact that the 
 engraver lived in the century of Tiepolo, not in 
 that of Raphael. 
 
 Looking, then, at details, we note first of all the 
 disadvantage of realistic sacrifice to foreshortening. 
 Christ and the Madonna, whose Ascension forms the 
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 subject of Correggio's two cycles, are the pettiest 
 things in the whole composition. Madonna may not 
 soar freely, but must be supported, and is violently 
 foreshortened ; hence her body is all knees and feet, 
 her face all chin and nostrils, while the frog-like 
 attitude of the Saviour has been cited for three 
 centuries. The outer rim of the garland of angels 
 is fringed with legs which kick rather aggressively 
 and monotonously ; somewhat more of compositional 
 spacing, through the use of cloud to cover and sim- 
 plify here and there, would have bettered the effect. 
 It is, however, quite possible that the flesh tones 
 may have darkened and the clouds remained light, 
 thereby changing and unduly emphasizing the paint- 
 er's original intention. 
 
 In examining the figures that stand about the 
 balustrade, one questions the entire justice of Burck- 
 hardt's and Symonds's strictures. Some of the youth- 
 ful figures are brilliantly beautiful; to say that they 
 are fauns is to say hardly enough, for if Michel- 
 angelo's people are fitted to strive and suffer for the 
 Almighty, these may surely sing his praises. 
 
 If we consider them technically, we recognize 
 Correggio's debt to Mantegna, and note that the 
 Parmesan looked closely indeed at those elephant- 
 riding, candelabrum-lighting youths of the " Triumph 
 of Caesar," and it is interesting to see how instinc- 
 tively this painter of the delicately joyous, even of 
 
 282
 
 PARMA 
 
 the ecstatic, noted and assimilated the more delight- 
 ful qualities of the proud, severe, and somewhat 
 hard Paduan master. The draperies in the Duomo 
 frescoes as so often in other works of Correggio 
 are in many cases bad; but the old men who 
 wear them, bending backward against the balus- 
 trade, are much finer and less sentimental in the 
 originals than in the translations of Toschi. 
 
 In San Giovanni Evangelista the saints of the 
 pendentives are more carefully and closely studied 
 than those of the Duomo, though they are not 
 so free and bold; in the cupola the Saint John 
 kneeling on his mountain summit is no longer the 
 plump, good-natured, half-apostle, half-Hercules 
 affected by Correggio, but an emaciated seer of 
 visions whose fire and beauty go far to redeem the 
 painter from the charge that his old men are not 
 virile. 
 
 Nevertheless, the more one studies it, the more 
 one feels that in spite of its confusion, the Assump- 
 tion of the Duomo is a greater and riper work than 
 the Ascension in San Giovanni, and yields Cor- 
 reggio's truest title to fame. In blithe force, spon- 
 taneity, and invention, perhaps most of all in daring, 
 it is unequalled, and its painter might sign it An- 
 tonius Audax as well and quite as aptly as Antonius 
 Lsetus. 
 
 If Correggio's true throne was in the Cathedral of 
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 Parma, we must not forget that he subjugated 
 Europe for three centuries after his death by his 
 smaller works: his six great altar-pieces, which 
 include the " Night " and the " San Girolamo," and 
 his mythological pictures, such as the Antiope, Leda, 
 and Danae, and his various Holy Families. 
 
 In his larger works he rules most potently by 
 power and sweep, in his smaller ones by charm. 
 There are those, and we are among them, who find 
 many of his Madonnas of the lesser panels insipidly 
 sweet, but there is magic in the poorest of them, 
 and in several of the large altar-pieces this magic is 
 all-compelling. Nevertheless we find in them the 
 same faults as in the frescoes. There is the same 
 indifference to grandeur of line, the same absence of 
 severity of any kind, the same carelessness in the 
 drawing and composition of drapery. It would be 
 hard to discover in the range of Italian art a more 
 ill-composed bit of draping than that of Saint Joseph 
 in the " Scodella Madonna." Too often the master 
 placed entirely lovely heads upon bodies whose sil- 
 houette was most awkward, the lack of grace proceed- 
 ing especially from two causes, the tendency to 
 throw out the hip in a desinvoltura which results in 
 lack of equilibrium or at least of stability, and his 
 love of foreshortening, which now and again makes 
 Madonna upon her throne unpleasantly high-kneed 
 and thickset in appearance. The modern character 
 
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 PARMA 
 
 of many of his figures is astonishing ; that of the 
 Magdalen, for instance, in the " San Girolamo," while 
 certain details such as the white-capped girl in the 
 "Nativity" of Dresden seem like bits out of an 
 eighteenth-century picture. Undoubtedly this is be- 
 cause the painters of the seicento and settecento admired 
 and were greatly influenced by him. Another pecu- 
 liarity is his indifference to the conventional types 
 of sacred and holy personages, and which is more 
 noticeable in his altar-pieces than in his frescoes. 
 
 Very secular performances are some of them ; the 
 San Giorgio altar-piece of Dresden, for instance, 
 in which the figure of John the Baptist is perhaps 
 the most notable example of the artist's strange 
 conception of a saintly personage. Could any one 
 recognize the Precursor in this tall youth, round- 
 hipped as a woman, pointing to the Christ-child and 
 turning his face to the spectator with a smile more 
 than half mocking, as if he found the whole thing 
 an excellent piece of diversion. This time we have 
 a faun indeed, a faun with goatskin and all, and with 
 undoubtedly a wholly unascetic and natural aptitude 
 for locusts and wild honey. The delightful baby in 
 the foreground has no room in him for anything but 
 mischief ; the Christ-child, held by a squat and ill- 
 composed Madonna, is in playful mood, everybody is 
 debonnaire except Saint Francis, who is sentimental 
 and will be admired and imitated by seventeenth-cen- 
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 tury painters. Saint George, the eponym of the pic- 
 ture, is frank and virile, and for a wonder Correggio 
 has set him firmly on his legs, il est lien campe, 
 the French would say. Only too often Correggio 
 lets his standing figures sway like the John Baptist 
 aforesaid, or tumble about as do Jerome in the 
 "Giorno," and Joseph in the "Scodella." 
 
 The background of the picture is full of architectu- 
 ral ornaments which Mantegna would have chastened 
 greatly ; here surely are reservations enough, and yet 
 the San Giorgio altar-piece even in a black and white 
 reproduction is beautiful from one corner to the 
 other. Indeed, it shows well in black and white, for 
 the Dresden Correggios have suffered in color, while 
 the " Scodella " and the " Giorno," which Parma has 
 retained, have been better treated, that is to say, 
 less retouched, than some of the former. 
 
 They vary under varying conditions ; in fair 
 weather the San Girolamo or " Giorno," as it is often 
 called, is golden and beautiful, and there is no doubt 
 in any weather about the charm of the very modern- 
 looking Magdalen, or the morbidezza in the treat- 
 ment of her face, and of the Christ-child's foot which 
 she presses against her cheek, but on dark days the 
 flesh seems brown in the shadows, and the whole 
 picture has a gummy look, while in the " Scodella " 
 the orange drapery is heavy in color and the blue 
 is raw. On the whole the "Deposition" and the 
 236
 
 PARMA 
 
 "Martyrdom of Flavius and Placida," both of which 
 are also in the Pinacoteca, while much less sym- 
 pathetic in character, are better and more Correggio- 
 like in color. 
 
 Correggio's indifference to grand lines is con- 
 stantly seen both in his bodies and his draperies. 
 Michelangelo, Raphael, or Titian would not have 
 tolerated the awkward lines in the " Antiope " of 
 the Louvre, yet it is very beautiful because of the 
 color which is Correggio's at his best point in oil- 
 painting. 
 
 It is not easy to write of Allegri's color ; there 
 seems to be nothing to particularize save in the 
 frescoes, where he has made a rainbow of opalescent 
 cloud and opalescent flesh. In his best easel pictures 
 it is at once natural and golden ; apparently his 
 draperies meant nothing to him, his flesh every- 
 thing. There is with him none of the organ tone of 
 Byzantine or Venetian color ; there are, if the musical 
 simile may be followed, no sudden changes, no 
 bursts from minor into major ; nor does Correggio 
 say with Veronese : " I will compose in great masses 
 of blue and red and yellow brocades until I have 
 a bouquet of gorgeous tints," he is satisfied with 
 warm, healthy flesh ; he is not grandly mysterious 
 like Rembrandt, yet he steeps his whole canvas in a 
 light-filled medium which penetrates and goes behind 
 things just as it does in Dutch pictures, only with 
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 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 Correggio these things are flying angels instead of 
 Flemish cobblers cross-legged on counters, nymphs 
 and cupids in place of peasants at a kermesse. 
 
 Out of these nymphs and cupids the master 
 made the material of his third cycle of frescoes in 
 Parma, that of the Camera di San Paolo. 
 
 The room is square with a high sixteen-sided, 
 vaulted roof. Correggio has borrowed Mantegna's 
 trellis-work from the " Madonna della Vittoria " and 
 has trained it all over the vaulting. Each of the 
 sixteen ribbed spaces terminates below with a lunette 
 and is pierced in the centre with an oval ; through 
 these ovals look the cupids in groups of twos; in 
 the lunettes are the nymphs and other mythological 
 personages, in very pleasing monochrome chiaro- 
 scuro. The cupids are more thickset and less lovely 
 than are the children of the Duomo and San Gio- 
 vanni, but they are full of life. 
 
 These frescoes, say the guidebooks, "are better 
 preserved than are Correggio' s others ; " so in a way 
 they are, but though they have kept their surface, 
 they have darkened, been smoked, perhaps, and the 
 color has lost its freshness far more than upon the 
 crumbling stucco of the Duomo' s cupola. 
 
 We have said that in Correggio's frescoes he rules 
 
 by power, in his easel pictures by compelling charm. 
 
 To say how compelling, one has only to recount 
 
 their migrations and vicissitudes. Signor Ricci 
 
 288
 
 RQME 
 
 BORGHESE GALLERY 
 
 CORREGGIO 
 
 PUTTI (FRAGMENT FROM THE DANAE)

 
 PAEMA 
 
 gives chapters to their odyssey, and even a brief- 
 est epitome of some of their adventures is in- 
 teresting. 
 
 By the year 1580 or so Italians had forgotten all 
 about quattrocento masters ; the works of Eaphael, 
 Michelangelo, Titian, on the contrary, were treas- 
 ured, and no pictures were more loved at home or 
 coveted abroad than Correggio's. They were covertly 
 stolen, openly seked, and captured on the battlefield 
 in the enemy's baggage ; they were the cause of 
 riots, of deputations ; they endangered the safety of 
 cities ; they were carried to Paris by republicans 
 and to Stockholm by sovereigns ; worst of all, were 
 mercilessly cleaned, restored, and overpainted. 
 
 Let us take the six great altar-pieces, the Nativ- 
 ity, the St. Sebastian, the St. George, the St. Francis, 
 the Scodella, and the San Girolamo. The four first 
 went to Dresden as a result of the famous purchase 
 made by the Elector of Saxony from the Duke of 
 Modena in 1746. 
 
 The St. Francis was painted in 1515 for a monas- 
 tery in the town of Correggio, Allegri's birthplace. 
 It remained in situ till 1638 ; then Jean Boulanger, 
 a French painter and envoy of the Duke of Modena 
 (sovereign of Correggio), installed himself in the 
 church to make a copy and soon after departed. A 
 little later it was rumored that he had carried off 
 the picture, the St. Francis. The citizens rang the 
 VOL. i 19 289
 
 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 alarm bell, went in deputation to Molza, the Duke's 
 representative, and denounced the theft of the altar- 
 piece ; Molza wrote to the Duke and laughed in his 
 sleeve : presently the picture appeared openly in the 
 ducal collection. 
 
 As for the St. Sebastian, somewhat before 1611 
 Ercole dell' Abate exposed it to the sun to " make 
 its colors blend ; " another artist " repaired it ; " 
 then Flaminio Torri repainted it almost entirely ; 
 last of all, it was " scratched " during transportation 
 to Dresden, says Raphael Mengs, and restored in that 
 city ; when Palmaroli removed the overpaints, he 
 brought to light cherubs' heads which had wholly 
 disappeared. It is no wonder that the Dresden 
 altar-pieces have lost somewhat of Allegri's color. 
 
 The beautiful " Nativity " more popularly known 
 as Correggio's " Night " was ordered by Alberto Pra- 
 toneri for a church in Reggio and finished in 1530. 
 Already in 1587 the Estensi coveted it, trying to 
 secure it by negotiation, and a century later they 
 stole it outright. 
 
 The "Madonna of San Giorgio," the secular 
 character of which as a picture we have already 
 mentioned, was painted for the Scuola of Saint Peter 
 Martyr in Modena, and was therefore directly under 
 the claws of the covetous Este dukes ; the ambassa- 
 dor of the latter to the French court promised the 
 picture to the Abbe" Dubois in return for diplomatic 
 290
 
 PARMA 
 
 service ; the Duke disavowed the promise, though 
 the frightened envoy declared that the refusal might 
 cost him the city of Mirandola. Twenty years later 
 the Duke forcibly removed the work from the 
 church to his private gallery, and thus four of these 
 famous altar-pieces passed by way of Modena to 
 Dresden. 
 
 The San Girolamo, the " Day " of Correggio, 
 remained in the church of Sant' Antonio till the 
 beginning of the eighteenth century; then as the 
 church was rebuilding, and funds were lacking, 
 the Preceptor wished to .sell the picture, but Duke 
 Francesco Farnese refused to permit the sale. 
 Later it was reported that two kings were disputing 
 for the picture's purchase ; then Don Philippe de 
 Bourbon, Duke of Parma, placed it in the Acca- 
 demia. There it seemed safe, but in 1796 it made 
 the journey to Paris with the other masterpieces. 
 Francesco Eosaspina wrote of it : " The princes have 
 lost all power of guiding us. They cannot foresee 
 things which those of low rank would not fail to 
 perceive and prepare against. And we have to pay 
 the penalty of their folly ! I am so overcome that 
 I seem to have lost my wits and appetite together ! " 
 In 1815, however, it returned to Milan, and a year 
 later to Parma, this time to stay. 
 
 The last picture of the series, the " Madonna della 
 Scodella," was the most fortunate of all, escaping 
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 the attempts made to carry it off until 1796, when 
 it went to Paris, but came back with the San 
 Girolamo. 
 
 The chroniclers and Vasari in particular have 
 woven a kind of romance about Correggio ; he 
 has been represented as miserably poor, and en- 
 tirely self-made, having had no artistic environ- 
 ment. Vasari recounts the famous story that, having 
 been paid sixty scudi in copper, Antonio tried to 
 carry them on foot to his native town of Correggio, 
 and that from heat and fatigue he contracted a fever 
 of which he died. This factitious and unnecessary 
 enhancement of the interest attaching to him must 
 be renounced. He was born about 1494, and towards 
 1534 his father, Pellegrino Allegri, who possessed 
 a very fair landed property, gave a suitable dowry 
 to the daughter of Antonio, who also inherited from 
 his maternal uncle, Francesco Aromani. After the 
 death of Correggio the governor of Parma, Alessan- 
 dro Caccia, wrote to the Duke of Mantua, " I hear 
 that he has made comfortable provision for his 
 heirs." This disposes at once of the stories of ex- 
 aggerated poverty and of exaggerated prosperity 
 which various writers have told concerning the 
 family of the painter. His artistic success was com- 
 mercially considerable, though not what it should 
 have been. He had an important commission when 
 he was still a minor, and was kept busy through all 
 292
 
 PARMA 
 
 his short life, counting very great personages among 
 his patrons. 
 
 As for his artistic environment, the theory now 
 accepted is that he derived from the Ferrarese 
 school; he visited Mantua and was powerfully 
 influenced by the great Mantegna, and although it 
 is probable that he never saw Eome, it is still more 
 probable that he did have a suggestion and more 
 than a suggestion of Eaphael's and Michelangelo's 
 great creations through repliche, drawings and en- 
 gravings of their works. It must be remembered 
 that the character of the genius of the Roman school 
 was such that a drawing or a black and white repro- 
 duction of one of its masterpieces might act as an 
 inspirational force of highest order, whereas the 
 works of Giorgione and Titian, depending as they 
 do upon qualities which cannot be perfectly trans- 
 lated into black and white, have to be seen to be 
 stimulating. Raphael's works were popularized by 
 engraving at an early date, and his Sistine Madonna 
 could be seen in Piacenza, which was almost at 
 Correggio's doors, but even if our master had access 
 to no others, the frescoes and easel pictures of Man- 
 tegna would in themselves have sufficed to inspire 
 an artist of Correggio's calibre, while the works of 
 Leonardo must in turn have powerfully affected one 
 to whom chiaroscuro was an instinctive means of 
 expression. 
 
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 Though his own family was so modest in station, 
 Antonio grew up as the protege of Veronica Gambara 
 and close to the refinements of a court. Nothing is 
 more special to Italy of the Eenaissance than is the 
 existence of a great number of tiny but cultivated 
 capitals, to which the Weimar of the last century 
 affords a modern parallel. Antonio was protected 
 by Veronica, who was wife of the Lord of Cor- 
 reggio, and he . was even one of the witnesses to 
 the betrothal settlement of Chiara di Gianfrancesco 
 da Correggio when she was affianced to Ippolito, 
 the son of Veronica. Veronica Gambara was an in- 
 timate friend and correspondent of Isabella d'Este, 
 " the great marchioness," the most famous lady of her 
 time in North Italy, and it is highly probable that 
 when Antonio went to Mantua he was recommended 
 to Isabella by Veronica. 
 
 Thus modern research has proved that Vasari 
 wholly mistook the tragedy of Correggio's life, for 
 the tragedy came not from pinching want, but from 
 lack of really adequate appreciation. He was busy, 
 had many patrons, but none of them recognized 
 him for what he was, the one man who, just as 
 Raphael died, stood ready to take up his succession, 
 in a more modern, less monumental way, in lighter 
 vein, if you will, but powerfully and worthily. 
 When Bembo, boasted connoisseur as he was, saw 
 the works of Antonio, he passed them by unheeding, 
 
 294
 
 PARMA 
 
 and at the meridian of the Renaissance, when great 
 artists were petted by popes and princes, and hon- 
 ored and loved by their fellows, Correggio, at the 
 very time that he was making not only his native 
 town, but also his provincial capital of Parma, 
 immortal, was himself, if we compare him with 
 Leonardo, Raphael, or Michelangelo, living in posi- 
 tive obscurity. This neglect could not but astonish 
 a Florentine or a Roman artist who saw his works, 
 and the tradition of it evidently grew into the 
 legend of the tragedy which Vasari recounts, the 
 story of the copper scudi. That Antonio did suffer 
 from the inability to give entire vent to his artistic 
 endeavor is only too well proved by the fact that 
 he never went to Rome, Florence, or further afield 
 than Mantua, although in Parma itself, if we reckon 
 wall surface as a criterion, few painters have had 
 an ampler opportunity, while hardly any have used 
 it so well. But complete appreciation was what he 
 lacked, and the latter part of his life was evidently 
 saddened by the lack of sympathy of his Parmesan 
 patrons. The monks did not spare criticism of his 
 frescoes in the Duomo, and leaving his work un- 
 finished, Correggio, this mighty master whose name 
 counts among the six or eight most famous in the 
 history of art, retired to his obscure native town 
 and ended his days there. 
 
 But if the work in the Cathedral was too original, 
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 ITALIAN CITIES 
 
 too new, not to shock the Parmesan clergy, if a 
 canon satirizing its one weakness and blind to its 
 power could call it " a hash of frogs," there soon 
 came those trained to discern and who, having eyes, 
 saw. " Eeverse the cupola and fill it with gold," said 
 Titian, " and even that will not represent its worth." 
 " Eaphael himself has not equalled it," wrote Agos- 
 tino Caracci. The astonishing Giambattista Tiepolo, 
 last of the great Italian masters, came to look and 
 learn, and he is less astonishing when we have seen 
 what he saw. "Have Correggio's Putti grown up 
 yet and walked out of their frames ? " Guido Eeni 
 was wont to ask, whenever he met a citizen of 
 Modena, the town which held so many of Antonio's 
 masterpieces. These men knew Correggio for what 
 he was, one who had aided Leonardo and Kaphael, 
 Michelangelo and Titian, to place the topmost stones 
 of the shrine which Italy builded to the arts. 
 
 END OF VOL. I 
 
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