_With the Skeletons._
In the Piazza Barberini is the Fountain of the Triton by Bernini,
one of the least objectionable of his minor works. A chubby, sonsie
fellow is the young Triton, embrowned by wind, water and sun, seated
in a shell, supported by four dolphins and blowing into a conch with
a single eye to business that should, but does not act as a salutary
example to the tribe of beggars, models and gossips who congregate
around him.
From the right of the spacious square leads the street on which stands
the Palace of the Barberini,—I had nearly written the Bee-hive, so
intimate grows the association between the powerful family and these
busy stingers to one who has studied the Barberini monuments, erected
by them while living, and to them when defunct. I have consistently
and resolutely refrained, thus far, from plying my readers with
art-criticisms—fore-ordained to be skipped—of pictures and statues
which do not interest those who have never seen them, and fail to
satisfy those who have. I mention the picture of Beatrice Cenci by
Guido Reni because it is the most wonderful portrait extant. Before
seeing it, I fairly detested the baby-face, with a towel wound about
the head, that looked slyly backward at me from the window of every
print-shop. Of the principal feature so raved about by Byronic youths
and bilious school-girls, it might be said,—
“Thou hast no speculation in the eyes
That thou dost glare with.”
The other lineaments would have been passable in a Paris doll.
Believing these caricatures—or some of them—to be tolerable copies of
the original, we lived in Rome four months; made ourselves pretty well
acquainted with the half-dozen good pictures among the host of poor
ones in the Palazzo Doria, and the choice gems in the small Academia di
San Luca; we had seen the Aurora of the Rospiglioso, the Antinöus upon
the mantel in Villa Albani; Venus Victrix and Daphne in the Borghese,
and the unrivaled frescoes upon the walls and ceilings of the Palazzo
Farnese, besides going, on an average, once a week to the Capitoline
and Vatican museums;—yet never been persuaded by friends wiser or less
prejudiced than we, to enter the meagrely supplied art-gallery of the
Barberini Palace. When we did go it was with a languor of curiosity
clogging our steps and dulling our perceptions, which found no stimulus
in the two outer apartments of the suite. There were the usual
proportion of Holy Families, Magdalenes, and Portraits, to an unusual
number of which conscientious Baedeker had affixed interrogation-points
casting worse than doubt upon their origin;—Christ among the
Doctors—which it is difficult to imagine was painted by Dürer, but easy
to believe was “done” in five days; Raphael’s Fornarina, a shade more
brazen and a thought less handsome than the bar-maid of the same title,
in the Uffizzi at Florence, and so plainly what she was, one is sorry
to trace Raphael’s name upon her bracelet. Then the guide suddenly
turned toward the light a small, shabby frame hung upon a hinge—and a
soul looked at us!
“The very saddest picture ever painted or conceived. It involved an
unfathomable depth of sorrow, the sense of which came to the observer
by a sort of intuition.... It is infinitely heart-breaking to meet her
glance and to feel that nothing can be done to help or comfort her;
neither does she ask help or comfort, knowing the hopelessness of the
case better than we do.”
Hawthorne comprehended and expressed the spirit of the composition (if
it be a fancy sketch, as latter-day iconoclasts insinuate), and the
language of the doomed girl’s eyes. Even he has told but a part of the
story; given but a hint of the nature of the charm that holds cool
critic and careless stroller spell-bound before this little square of
canvas. There is sorcery in it pen nor tongue can define. It haunted
and tormented us until the possession was provoking. After coming
many times to experience the same thrill—intense to suffering if we
gazed long;—after dreaming of her by day and by night, and shunning,
more disgustfully than ever, the burlesques in the shops—“the poor
girl with the blubbered eyes,”—we tried to forget her. It was weak
to be thus swayed by a twenty-inch painting; unworthy of people who
fearlessly pronounced Perugino stiff, and had not been overwhelmed
to rapturous incoherence by the sprawling anatomical specimens left
by Michael Angelo to the guild of art-lovers under the name of the
“Last Judgment.” Saying and feeling thus,—we took every opportunity
of slipping without premeditation, or subsequent confession into the
Barberini Palace;—finally leaving the picture and Rome, no better able
to account for our fascination than after our first grudging visit.
Returning to the square of the Triton after one of these bootless
excursions, we ascended a short avenue to the plain old church of the
Capuchins. A Barberini founded this also, and the convent next door,—a
cardinal, and brother to Urban VIII. He made less use of the bees and
Bernini in his edifices than did his kinsman. That he had a juster
appreciation of true genius, was evinced by his hospitable attentions
to Milton when he was in Rome. Church annals record, moreover, the
circumstance that Cardinal Barberini availed himself no further of the
family wealth and aggrandizement than to give liberally to the poor and
endow this church and monastery. He is buried beneath the high altar,
and a modest stone bears the oft-borrowed epitaph—“_Hic jacet pulvis,
cinis, et nihil!_”
There are famous paintings in this church,—the chapel nearest the
entrance containing Guido Reni’s “St. Michael,” while upon the walls
of the next but one is a fine fresco of the “Death of St. Francis,” by
Domenichino. The crypts are, however, the popular attraction of the
place.
The burial-vaults of the Capuchin brotherhood are not vaults at all
in the sense of subterranean chambers. They are four in number, of
fair size, open on one side to the corridor which is lighted by grated
windows. The inner walls are banks and rows of dried skeletons, whole
and dismembered.
“Does it take long to upholster an apartment in this style?” asked Mark
Twain, contemplating the decorations of the crypt.
The wicked witticism sounded in our ears in his exquisite drawl, as,
amazed to discover how slightly shocked we were, we raised curious eyes
to the geometrical figures traced in raised lines upon the ceiling.
These are composed of the small bones of the human form, skillfully
assorted and matched. Pillars and niches are built of thigh, leg and
arm bones. Each niche has its skeleton, stayed in an upright posture
by a cord knotted about his waist, securing him to a hook behind. All
wear the costume of the order;—a butternut-colored gown, the cowl
framing the skull. Some tiny skeletons lie upon compact beds of bones
close to the ceiling.
“Children!” we said, in French, to the guide. “How is that?”
“Children of the Barberini,” was the answer. “Therefore, entitled to a
place here. Our founder was a Barberini.”
“And were _they_ buried for a while, and then disturbed—dug up?”
“Why not?”
He was a stalwart fellow, with bare, horny feet; a rusty beard falling
below his breast; and a surly face, that did not relax at these
questions, nor at our comments, in our own tongue, upon what we saw.
The floor of the chambers is light, mellow soil, like that of lately
weeded and raked flower-beds. To carry out the conceit, rows of sticks,
labeled, were stuck along one side, that might mark seed-rows. So much
of the original soil as remains there was brought from Jerusalem. In
each grave a deceased monk slumbers twenty-five years, then makes room
for the next comer, and is, himself, promoted, intact or piece-meal, as
architectural needs demand—
“To a place in the dress, or the family circle,” supplied Prima, with
praiseworthy gravity.
Caput, usually an exemplar in the matter of decorum, was now tempted to
a quotation as irreverent as the saucy girl’s comment.
“‘Each of the good friars in his turn, enjoys the luxury of a
consecrated bed, attended with the slight drawback of being forced to
get up long before day-break, as it were, and make room for another
lodger.’”
“Miriam’s model, known to the friars as Brother Antonio, was buried in
the farthest recess,” said I, leading the way to it. “Do you remember
that he lay in state before the altar up-stairs when she and Donatello
visited the church? And how the guide explained that a brother, buried
thirty years before, had risen to give him place? _That_ is probably
the ejected member.”
The worthy designated wore an air of grim jollity, of funereal
festivity, indescribable and irresistible. Dangling by the middle from
his hempen girdle, his head on one shoulder, his cowl awry, he squinted
at us out of its shadow with a leer that would have convicted of
drunkenness anybody less holy than a barefoot friar, and less staid of
habit than a skeleton of fifty years’ standing. Struggling to maintain
composure, I accosted the sacristan. He was standing with his back to
us, looking out of the window, and had certainly not seen our smiles.
“Which of these was disinterred last?”
He pointed to one whose robe was less mouldy than the rest, and upon
whose chin yet bristled the remnant of a sandy beard.
“Which was his grave?”
Another silent gesture.
“What is the date of the latest interment?”
“1869,” incisively.
“Have there been no deaths in the convent since then?”
“Yes!” The disdainful growl was in good _English_. “We bury no more in
this ground. Victor Emmanuel forbids it!”
An Italian murmur in the depths of his frowsy beard was not a
benediction upon the tyrant. Members of monastic orders cursed him
more deeply in private, as they would have banned him openly, by
bell and by book, had they dared, when he commanded, that same year,
the conscription of young men for the Italian army to extend to the
native-born neophytes and pupils in convents and church-schools.
“VITTORIO EMMANUELE!” The musical name was very clearly printed at the
foot of a placard, glazed and hung in the vestibule of the Collegio
Romano. Guide-books of a date anterior to that enunciated so venomously
by our Capuchin, in describing the museum attached to this institution,
were fain to add:—“The museum can be seen on Sundays only, 10-11
o’clock, A.M. Ladies not admitted.”
By the grace of the printed proclamation, throwing open the collection
of antiquities and library to well-behaved persons of both sexes, we
passed the unguarded doors, mounted the stone staircase, dirty as are
all Roman stairs, and were, without let or hindrance, in the midst of
what we wished to examine and from which there is no conceivable reason
for excluding women.
Most of the Catacomb inscriptions that could be removed without
injury to the tablets bearing them, have been deposited elsewhere for
safe-keeping and more satisfactory inspection than is consistent with
the darkness of the underground cemeteries. The shelves, arranged
like those in modern vaults, stripped of the stone fronts that once
concealed their contents, are still partially filled with fine
ashes—sacred dust, mixed with particles from the friable earth walling
and flooring the labyrinth of narrow passages. Fragments of sculptured
marble lie where they have fallen from broken altars or memorial
slabs, and in the wider spaces used as oratories, where burial-rites
were performed, and, in times of sorest tribulation, other religious
services held, there are traces of frescoes in faded, but still
distinguishable colors.
In the Collegio Romano are garnered most interesting specimens
of the mural tablets brought from catacombs and columbaria. The
Christian Museum of San Giovanni in Laterano embraces a more extensive
collection, but in the less spacious corridors and rooms of the
Collegio, one sees and studies in comfort and quiet that are not to
be had in the more celebrated halls. In the apartment devoted to
Christian antiquities are many small marble coffers, sculptured more
or less elaborately, taken from columbaria. These were receptacles for
the literal ashes of the departed. They are out of keeping with our
belief that the early Christians regarded incremation with dread as
destructive, in the popular mind, of the doctrine of the resurrection
of the body. They committed their beloved dead tenderly to the keeping
of the earth, with a full recognition of the analogy between this act
and seed-planting, so powerfully set forth by St. Paul. Else, why the
Catacombs? These cinerary caskets, whether once tenanted by Christian
or pagan dust, merit careful notice. They are usually about twelve or
fourteen inches in height, and two or three less in width. The lid
slopes gently up from the four sides to form a peaked centre like a
square house-roof, with pointed turrets or ears at the corners. The
covers were firmly cemented in place when deposited in the columbaria.
We saw one or two thus secured to protect the contents, but all have
probably been broken open, at one time or another, in quest of other
treasure than relics precious to none save loving survivors. The lids
of many have been lost.
The mural slabs were arranged against the wall as high as a man could
reach. The lettering—much of it irregularly and unskillfully done—is
more distinct than epitaphs not thirty years old, in our country
church-yards. The inscriptions are often ungrammatical and so spelt
as to betray the illiterate workman. But there is no doubt what were
the belief and trust of those who set them up in the blackness and
damps of a Necropolis whose existence was scarcely suspected by their
persecutors.
“IN CHRISTO, IN PACE,” is the language of many, the meaning of all. It
may be only a cross rudely cut into soft stone; it is often a lamb,
sometimes carrying a cross; a dove, a spray meant for olive, in its
mouth—dual emblem of peace and the “rest that remaineth.” The Greek
Alpha and Omega, repeated again and again, testify that these hunted
and smitten ones had read John’s glorious Revelation. On all sides, we
saw the, to heathen revilers, mystical cypher, early adopted as a sign
and seal by the Christians, a capital P, transfixing a St. Andrew’s
Cross.
From one stained little slab, we copied an inscription entire and
_verbatim_.
[Illustration:
Puer Decessit Qui vixit
Nomine Dulcis’us Annos V
Mensis VI]
Above Benjamin Franklin’s baby-daughter, buried beside him in the
almost forgotten corner of an intra-mural graveyard, we can, with
pains, read—“_The dearest child that ever was_.” We thought of it and
of another “child” whose brief, beautiful life is summed up in words as
apt and almost as few:—
“The sweetest soul
That ever looked with human eyes.”
O, holy Nature! the throbbing, piercèd heart of parenthood! the same in
the breast of the mother who laid her boy to sleep, until the morning,
in the starless night of the Catacombs, as within the Rachel who weeps
to-day beside the coffin of her first, or latest-born!
We had seen the wall in Nero’s barracks from which the famous
“_Graffito Blasphemo_” was taken, about ten years before. To behold
the sketch itself was one of our errands to this Museum. It is a
square of cement, of adamantine hardness, in a black frame, and hangs
in a conspicuous position at the end of the principal corridor. The
story, as gathered from the caricature and the place in which it
was discovered, is probably something like this:—A party of Nero’s
soldiery, gathered in a stall or barrack belonging to the Imperial
household, amused themselves by ridiculing one of their number who had
been converted to Christianity. Paul was, about that time, dwelling
in his own hired house in Rome, or as a prisoner awaiting trial or
execution. A part of the richly-sculptured marble bar indicating the
Tribune in the Basilica Jovis, before which he was tried, is still
standing, not a bow-shot from where the lounging guards made a jest
of their comrade’s new faith. One of them drew, with the point of his
sword, or other sharp instrument, upon the plastered wall, a rough
caricature, representing a man with the head of an ass, hanging upon a
cross. His hands are bound to the transverse arms, his feet rest upon a
shorter cross-piece fastened to the upright beam. From this position,
the head looks down upon a small figure below, who raises his hand in a
gesture of adoration more intelligible to the pagan of that date than
to us. A jumble of Greek and Latin characters, crowded between and
under the figures, points the ribald satire, “_Alexamenos adores his
God_.” Nero went to his account. The very site of his Golden House is a
matter of dispute among archæologists who have bared the foundations
of the palace of the Cæsars. But after eighteen hundred years, when the
rubbish was dug out from the soldiers’ quarters, there appeared the
blasphemer’s sketch, as distinct as if drawn at last week’s debauch.
From the observatory of the Collegio Romano a signal is given daily, at
twelve o’clock, for the firing of the noon cannon from the Castle of
San Angelo. As we entered the Piazza di Spagna on our return, the dull
boom shook the air. The streets were full of people, the day being a
fine one in early Spring, and, as happens every day in the year, every
man, from the _cocchière_ upon his box, to the _élégant_ strolling
along the shady side of the square to digest his eleven o’clock
breakfast, looked at his watch. Not that the Romans are a punctual
people, or moderately industrious. “The man who makes haste, dies
early,” is one of their mottoes. “_Dolce far niente_” belongs to them
by virtue of tongue and practice. “Lazzaroni” should be spelled with
one z, and include, according to the sense thus conveyed to English
ears, tens of thousands besides professional beggars.
There is no pleasanter place in which to be lazy than in this
bewitching old city. Our own life there was an idyl, rounded and pure,
such as does not come twice to the same mortal. The climate, they
would have had us believe was the bane of confiding strangers, was to
us all blessedness. Not one of us was ill for a day while we resided
in the cozy “_appartamento_” in Via San Sebastiano; nor was there a
death, that winter, among American visitors and residents in Rome.
For myself, the soft air was curative to the sore lungs; a delicious
sedative that quieted the nerves and brought the boon, long and vainly
sought—Sleep! My cough left me within a month, not to return while we
remained in Italy. We made the natural mistake of tarrying too late in
the Spring, unwilling to leave scenes so fair, fraught with such food
for Memory and for Imagination. After mid-April, the noon-day heat was
debilitating, and I suffered appreciable diminution of vigor.
I do not apologize for these personal details. Knowing how eagerly
invalids, and those who have invalid friends, crave information
respecting the means that have restored health to others, I write
frankly of my own experience in quest of the lost treasure. It would
be strange if I could think of Rome and our home there without felt
and uttered gratitude. Convalescence was, with me, less a rally of
energies to battle with disease and weakness, than a gradual return,
by ways of pleasantness and paths of peace, to physical tranquillity,
and through rest, to strength. I hardly comprehended, for awhile, that
I was really getting better; that I might be well again in time. I
only knew that to breathe was no longer pain, nor to live labor that
taxed the powers of body and spirit to the utmost. There was so much
to draw me away from the contemplation of my own griefs and ailments
that I could have supposed the new existence a delusion, my amendment a
trick of fancy. I forgot to think of and watch myself. I had all winter
but one return—and that a slight one, induced by unusual exertion—of
the hæmorrhages that had alarmed us, from time to time, for two years
preceding our departure from America. The angel of healing had touched
me, and I knew it not.
One morning I had gone, as was my custom, to a window in the _salon_,
so soon as I left my bed-chamber; thrown it open and leaned upon the
balcony-railing to taste the freshness of the new day. We clung to our
pillows, as a family rule, until the sonorous cry of the vendor of a
morning journal arose to our drowsy ears.
“Popolo Ro-ma-a-no!”
“There is Old Popolo!” Boy would shout from his crib. “It is eight
o’clock!”
It was half-past eight on the day of which I speak, and the shops were
not yet open; the Piazza deserted but for a flock of goats and the
attendant contadini who milked them from one door to another for their
customers. Birds were twittering among the trees in the Pincian Gardens
upon my left; there was a lingering flush of pink in the sky that would
be, within an hour and until evening, of the “incomparable sweet” blue,
American heavens put on after one thunder-shower, and before another
blackens them. In Italy nobody calls the exquisite depth of color “a
weather-breeder.” A church-bell was ringing so far away that it was
a musical pulse, not a chime. Down the Via della Croce to my right,
over half a mile of tiled roofs, round and distinct in the dry, pure
atmosphere, towered the Castle of San Angelo—the bronze angel on the
summit sheathing the sword of pestilence, as Pope Gregory affirmed he
beheld him at the approach to the Tiber of the penitential procession
headed by the pontiff. As the goats turned into the Via del Babuino,
the faint tinkle of their bells was blent with the happy laugh of a
young contadina. I quaffed slow, delicious draughts of refreshment that
seemed to touch and lift the heart; that lulled the brain to divinest
dreaming.
Then and there, I had a revelation; bowed my soul before my Angel of
Annunciation, I should not die, but live. Then and thus, I accepted
the conviction that, apart from the intellectual delight I drew from
our present life—the ministry of sky and air, of all goodly sights and
sounds and the bright-winged fancies that were a continual ecstasy, was
to my body—HEALTH! That hour I thanked GOD and took courage!