_Bologna._
I HAVE recorded the Traveled American girl’s experience in the Venice
we mourned at leaving after eight days’ sojourn. In the parlor of
the Hôtel Brun, in Bologna, we met the Average Briton, a spinster of
linguistic and botanical tastes—artistic too, as presently appeared—who
was “stopping overnight,” in the city.
“Where there’s nothing to be seen, me dear,” she asserted to a
countrywoman of her own, in our hearing, “unless one has a fondness for
sausage. You remarked that they made a course of Bologna sausage at the
dinner-table. Ex’tror’nary—was it not? We thought it quite nasty. But
Bologna is a filthy old town—not a show-place at all. Nobody stops here
unless obliged to do so. We take the early train for Venice. Ah! there
is a wealth of art _there_!”
“Will you walk?” asked Caput of me, so abruptly that the A. B. lifted
her eye-glass at him.
The sidewalks are arcades, protected from sun and rain by roofs
supported upon arches and pillars. The shops were still open; the
pavements alive with strollers and purchasers. A cleanly, wide-awake
city it looked to be, even by night, and nowhere that we saw, dull or
“filthy.”
“I lose my patience at the contradiction of fools!” ejaculated my
escort, unnecessarily, his demeanor having already spoken for him.
“That of sinners is a bagatelle compared with it. I will take you
to-morrow, first to the University of Bologna, one of the oldest
institutions of learning extant. A University founded more than seven
hundred and fifty years ago,—if not, as some declare, established by
Theodosius in 425, and subsequently restored by Charlemagne. There were
often, as late as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, eight,
nine, ten thousand students in attendance at once in the various
departments, especially in the law-schools taught by the ablest
jurists of Europe. In anatomical research and discoveries, the medical
department gained almost equal fame. Galvani was a professor here, and
from the Bolognese University the knowledge of galvanism spread over
the civilized world. _You_ should be proud to know that there were
women-professors in this faculty centuries before ‘advanced ideas,’ and
the ‘co-education of the sexes,’ became fashionable jargon in America.”
“I have heard of Novella d’Andrea, the Hypatia of the fourteenth
century—fabled to have been so beautiful that she was obliged to sit
behind a screen when she lectured.”
“Upon Canon Law! The story is true. Inerius introduced here the study
of Roman law, and Novella was its able and eloquent expounder. Laura
Bassi received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University
about 1700. She was Professor of Mathematics and Physical Science.
Madame Manzolini, in the same century, taught Anatomy. Clotilda
Tambroni, Professor of Greek, died in 1817. The character of the
branches studied and taught by them is the most remarkable thing.
_Belles-lettres_ and modern languages would seem more natural.
“Bologna has produced nothing worthy of note except sausages! Yet the
king of linguists, Mezzofanti, was, likewise, a professor in this
University. Eight popes were born in Bologna, Benedict XIV. among
them, and other men far more eminent in their day and in ours, such
as Manfredi and Aldobrandini. In the Bolognese Accademia delle Belle
Arti are the very best paintings of a school that owes its name to
the city. Had that woman ever heard of Francesca Francia, Guido Reni,
Domenichino, or the three Caracci? Or, of the museum of Etruscan
curiosities in the University Buildings? Of the two Leaning Towers of
Bologna? Or, the Campo Santo? Sausage, forsooth! I _hate_ a fool!”
“So did Mr. F’s aunt!” said I, at this climax. We both laughed, and the
Average Briton was dismissed for pleasanter topics.
I was almost afraid, after this philippic, to hint that the Leaning
Towers, seen by the morrow’s light, were unfortunately like two
overgrown factory chimneys, canting tipsily to one side. They are of
grimy brick, devoid of ornament, and seven hundred and seventy years
old. Ugly, unfinished and useless, they impart a rakish, dissipated air
to an otherwise respectable quarter. The junior of the twain, and the
shorter, by one hundred and thirty-four feet, exceeds the greater in
obliquity. A century since, its inclination was eight feet southward,
three feet eastward, and it is said to have persisted in its downward
tendency during that hundred years. Its taller mate leans but three
feet out of the perpendicular.
Dante honors the shorter and more ungainly tower, by likening to it
Antæus, who was but a son of the clod himself. Prima found the passage
in the Inferno, and read it to us:
“Qual pare a riguardar la Carisenda
Sotto’l chinato, quando un nuvol vada
Sovr’ essa si, ch’ella in contrario penda;
Tal parve Anteo a me, che stava a bada
Di vederlo chinare:—”
A less mellifluous rhyme arose to English-speaking lips in surveying
the incomplete shaft:
“If I was so soon done for,
I wonder what I was begun for.”
When the unstable foundations became an admitted fact, why were not the
Asinelli and Garisenda torn down and built upon firmer ground, or the
materials otherwise appropriated?
We were bound for the University, having but made a _détour_ in our
drive thither, to see what the guide-books catalogued as the “most
singular structures in Bologna”—the drunken towers.
The buildings occupied by the famous school of learning are
comparatively modern, and were, until 1803, the palace of the Cellesi,
a noble family of Bologna. The library of one hundred thousand volumes
is arranged in an extensive suite of rooms, frescoed, as are some
of the corridors, with the coats of arms of former students in the
University.
“What if a student should not have a family escutcheon?” we suggested
to our guide.
The objection was as intelligible, we saw, at once, as if we had asked,
“Must every student have a head of his own in order to matriculate
here?”
While we speculated in our own vernacular as to the number of genuine
heraldic emblems four or five hundred American college-boys could
collect at such a demand from their Alma Mater, and the guide stood
by, puzzled and obsequious, we were accosted in excellent English by a
gentleman who had entered from another room.
“Can I be of service to you? We are proud of our University and happy
to show it to strangers.”
It was Sig. Giovanni Szedilo, of whose grammar of Egyptian
hieroglyphics we afterward heard much, and for the next three hours, he
acted as host and interpreter.
The Bolognese Street of Tombs has been uncovered within a decade. It
was disclosed by that searcher of depths and bringer of hidden things
to light—a railway cutting. The bared sepulchres gave up wonderful
treasures, and the ancient University, as next of age in the region,
became their keeper. In one room of the museum are large glass cases
fastened to the floor, by brickwork, I think. In these lay the exhumed
Etruscan skeletons amid their native dust. The removal of the graves
with their tenants was so skillfully effected that we saw them exactly
as they had lain in the ground. Sons of Anak all—and daughters as
well. The women were six feet in length and grandly proportioned.
Tarnished bracelets, from which the gems had dropped, encircled the
fleshless wrists, and a tiara had slipped from the brow of one with the
gentle mouldering back to ashes. “Can a maid forget her ornaments?”
The Etruscans believed that she would not be content in the next
world—wherever they located it—without them. In the hand of each
person lay the small coin that was to pay the Etruscan Charon for the
soul’s passage over the dark river. Always a river to Pagan and to
Christian, and too deep for man’s fording! Beside the skeleton of a
little girl was a tray set out with a doll’s tea-set, as we would call
it, pretty little vessels of Etruscan ware, that were a dainty prize of
themselves, in a “collector’s” eyes. We would not have touched them had
they been exposed to manual examination—although the craze for antique
pottery had possessed us for many years. The outstretching of the small
arm, the pointing fingers in the direction of the plaything were a
sufficient guard. Other toys were laid away with other children; now
and then, a vase, or a cup of choicer ware, beside an adult.
“Supposed to be two thousand years old!” said our erudite guide. “We
are assisted materially in our computation of dates by the articles
buried with them.”
A running lecture upon Etruscan pottery ensued, illustrated by the
large and perfectly-assorted collection in the museum. There were
five different and well-defined periods in the history of the art, we
learned, and how to discern the features of each. We marked its rise
and decline from the earthenware pot, roughly engraved and rudely
colored, and the dark, or black jug, with slightly raised and more
graceful designs upon a smooth surface—to the elegant forms of chalice
and vase, embellished with groups of allegorical figures, and painted
tales of love and war. These declined in beauty and finish until,
about fifty years before the Christian era, all traces of the renowned
manufacture were lost.
“There has not been a bit of _real_ Etruscan ware made since that
time,” reiterated the connoisseur, accentuating the dictum by tapping
gently upon the specimen in his hand, and smiling into our interested
faces, “Who asserts the contrary, _lies_!” yet more suavely.
He blew invisible dust from the precious vase; replaced it tenderly
upon its shelf, and passed on to Egyptian mummies with the easy
sociability of a contemporary. There are papyrii by the score in the
archives of the University, and four thousand ancient MSS. in the “new”
buildings which are “all print” to him. He rendered the long-winded
hieroglyphical inscriptions upon sarcophagus and tablet as fluently
as we would the news summary of Herald, Tribune or Times. A pleasant,
gracious gentleman he proved to be withal. His courtesy to the party
of strangers whose sole recommendation to his hospitality was their
strangerhood, is held by them in grateful remembrance.
S. Petronio, the largest church in Bologna, is, like the Leaning
Towers, unfinished, although begun in the fourteenth century. The
Emperor Charles V. was crowned here. A vast, hideous barn without, it
yet holds some valuables that well repay the trouble of inspection.
The marble screens of the chapels; the inlaid and carved stalls, of a
clear, dark brown with age; old stained glass that shames the gaudiness
of later art; one or two fine groups of sculpture, and a very few good
paintings enrich the interior. The astronomer Cassini drew, in 1653,
the meridian-line upon the pavement of one of the aisles. Much of the
stained glass is from the hand of the celebrated Jacob of Ulm. About
the church is a bare, paved space, devoid of ornament or enclosure,
that adds to the dreariness of the structure.
Guido Reni is buried in S. Domenico, a smaller edifice, enshrining
the remains of its patron saint. The kneeling angel on one side of
his tomb, and the figure of St. Petronious (a new worthy to us) upon
the other, are by Michael Angelo. Guido Reni painted St. Dominic’s
transfiguration within the dome, and, with one of the Caracci, frescoed
the Chapel of the Rosary on the left. In the choir is the monument of
King Enzio.
We had already seen the house in which he was confined for twenty-two
years after the disastrous fight of Fassalta. He was the son of the
Emperor Frederic II., and great-grandson of Barbarossa. Like his
auburn-haired ancestor, Frederic II. waged war for twenty years with
the Papal See, the Bolognese espousing the cause of the latter, and
that of the Guelphs. Euzio’s gift from his father of the Kingdom of
Sardinia was the pretext of the Pope’s second bull of excommunication
against the Emperor, and the cause of the war which resulted for the
brave young Prince in life-long captivity. His incarceration was rather
the honorable detention of a prisoner-of-state than penal confinement.
The Palazzo del Podestà was a luxurious home. Its Great Hall still
bears his name. It was not in this audience-chamber that he received
the visits of the most beautiful woman in Bologna, Lucia Vendagoli,
whom he secretly married. Euzio was, at the time of his capture, but
twenty-five years of age. At seventeen, he had fought his first battle
under his father’s eye; at nineteen, was King of Sardinia; at twenty,
was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial forces. To the bravery
and knightly accomplishments of his illustrious great-grandfather, he
united personal beauty and grace that made him irresistible to the fair
patrician. Her passion for him and her wifely devotion are the theme of
numberless ballads and romances, and were the solace of an existence
that must else have been insupportable to the caged eagle.
From this union sprang the powerful family of the Bentivogli who
carried on the hereditary feud with the Pope until the latter sued
for peace and alliance. The Bentivogli were a stirring race and kept
Bologna in hot water for as many decades as their founder passed years
in the palatial prison. The staircase up which Lucia stole to meet her
royal lover; the apartments in which their interviews were held, are
still pointed out, although the palace is now a city hall where records
are made and preserved.
We drove out to the Campo Santo upon the loveliest of June afternoons,
passing, within the town-walls, the house of Rossini, built under his
own eye, and the more modest abodes of Guercino and Guido Reni. The
frescoes of this last are from the master’s brush, but we had not time
to go in to look at them. “Something must be crowded out”—even in
Bologna. For example, we visited neither soap nor sausage-factory.
The drives in the environs of the city are extremely beautiful, the
roads good. The Campo Santo was, until the beginning of this century, a
Carthusian Monastery. The grounds are entered through a gate in walls
enclosing church, cloisters and arcades, with a level space literally
floored with grave-stones. In this, the common burying-ground,
were re-interred the greater part of the bones unearthed by the
railway excavations through the Street of Tombs. Etruscans, Guelphs,
Ghibellines and modern Bolognese sleep amicably and compactly together.
Grass and purple clover spring up between the horizontal stones,
and the roses in the path-borders load the air with sweetness. The
distinguished dead have monuments in the arcades,—long corridors,
filled with single statues and groups, usually admirable in design and
workmanship. The vaults of the nobility are here, wealth combining with
affection to set fitting tributes above the beloved and departed. There
may be, also, a vying of wealth with wealth in the elaborate sculpture
and multiplication of figures. I did not think of this in pausing at
a father’s tomb on which stood upright a handsome lad of thirteen or
thereabouts, the mother’s only surviving child. She had bowed upon his
shoulder and buried her face in his neck in an agony of desolation,
clinging to him as to earth’s last hope. The boy’s head was erect, and
his arm encircled the drooping form. He would play the man-protector,
but his eyes were full, and the pouting underlip was held firm by the
tightened line of the upper. The careful finish of the details of hair
and dress did not detract from the pathos of the group.
“That is not Art!” objected Prima, made critical by Roman art lectures
and illustrative galleries.
“No!” I assented. “It is Nature!”
The monument of Lætitia Murat Pepoli, Napoleon’s niece, is here, and
a matchless statue of King Murat in full uniform, sword in hand, one
advanced foot upon a piece of ordnance. Torn banners, a crown and other
trophies of victorious generalship, bestrew the ground. The pose of
head, the military carriage, the contained strength of the countenance
betoken the master of men and of himself.
A monument representing Christ, attended by angels floating in the air,
is a surprisingly lovely bit of “artistic trickery.”
Clotilda Tambroni is buried here, and in the cloisters are the busts
of men distinguished in science and in letters, Mezzofanti and Galvani
among them. When our erudite Sig. Giovanni seeks Etrurians and
Egyptians in the world of shades, the Bolognese will set up his marble
presentment beside his peers.
Among the “crowded outs” of Bologna was _not_ the Accademia delle Belle
Arti. We almost pitied—under the mollifying and refining influences of
our stay within its courts,—the Average British Spinster who had taken
the early train for Venice and the “wealth of art _there_.” Baedeker
and his followers designate as the “gem of the collection” Raphael’s
picture of S. Cæcilia’s trance while angels discourse heavenly music
above her head. One demurs at the decision in beholding, in the
same gallery, Guido Reni’s “Crucifixion,” his “Victorious Samson”
and “Slaughter of the Innocents;” Domenichino’s “Martyrs,” with
supplicating saints and angels in the upper part; the best works of the
Caracci and Francesca Francia; Peruginos—for those who like them; more
pleasing pictures from Guercino, the Sirani, and a host of artists of
less note.
We were to leave the uninteresting city at half-past twelve, the third
day after our arrival. The carriages stood at the door of the hotel,
piled with luggage, and the party, with one exception, were in their
places half an hour before the moment of the train’s departure for
Milan. Landlord, waiters, and _facchini_ were paid, vehicles engaged
and trunks brought down before Caput’s disappearance. Fifteen minutes
of tolerably patient waiting ended in inquiries among ourselves as to
who had seen him last and where. He had stepped around into the next
street, at eleven o’clock, we were assured by the proprietor. He would
be back very soon. Five restless minutes more, and the urbane host
ventured to ask if Monsieur had the “habitude” of losing trains. It was
the custom of some travelers. And what matter? It was an easy affair
to unload and dismiss the carriages and return to our apartments.
There were still unvisited attractions in Bologna. His smiles grew
broader, our anxiety more active as two, three, four minutes slipped
by. The fifth was upon us when a hot and hurrying figure dashed up
the street; sprang into the foremost carriage, and we drove off at a
gallop to the station. There, we had a breathless rush, as might have
been expected,—a scramble for tickets and seats. It was impossible
to secure a compartment for our party. The lunch-basket was in one
carriage; the fruit-basket in another. Nobody had her own satchel or
books. The Invaluable and Boy were separated by four compartments
from always-foreboding Mamma. We were fifty miles from the hills of
Bologna, and our eyes already sated with the watery flats, rice-fields
and broom-stick poplars of Lombardy before we found one another, our
respective belongings,—and our tempers.
The cause of the delay and consequent turmoil maintained his
equanimity, as was meet. For, had he not had another hour in the
University? Did he not offer me, as a peace-gift, photographs of the
portraits of the quintette of Lady-professors of Bologna, including the
perilously-fair Novella? Was he not brimming and bubbling over with
priceless information imparted by the benevolent librarian, and burning
benevolently to make us partakers of his knowledge? And, securely
buttoned in the breast-pocket of his traveling-coat, did he not possess
the Grammar of Egyptian Hieroglyphics, written in flowing Italian by
Sig. Giovanni Szedilo?