FLORENCE (Continued).
June 8th.--I went this morning to the Uffizi gallery. The entrance is
from the great court of the palace, which communicates with Lung' Arno at
one end, and with the Grand Ducal Piazza at the other. The gallery is in
the upper story of the palace, and in the vestibule are some busts of the
princes and cardinals of the Medici family,--none of them beautiful, one
or two so ugly as to be ludicrous, especially one who is all but buried
in his own wig. I at first travelled slowly through the whole extent of
this long, long gallery, which occupies the entire length of the palace
on both sides of the court, and is full of sculpture and pictures. The
latter, being opposite to the light, are not seen to the best advantage;
but it is the most perfect collection, in a chronological series, that I
have seen, comprehending specimens of all the masters since painting
began to be an art. Here are Giotto, and Cimabue, and Botticelli, and
Fra Angelico, and Filippo Lippi, and a hundred others, who have haunted
me in churches and galleries ever since I have been in Italy, and who
ought to interest me a great deal more than they do. Occasionally to-day
I was sensible of a certain degree of emotion in looking at an old
picture; as, for example, by a large, dark, ugly picture of Christ
hearing the cross and sinking beneath it, when, somehow or other, a sense
of his agony, and the fearful wrong that mankind did (and does) its
Redeemer, and the scorn of his enemies, and the sorrow of those who loved
him, came knocking at any heart and got entrance there. Once more I deem
it a pity that Protestantism should have entirely laid aside this mode of
appealing to the religious sentiment.
I chiefly paid attention to the sculpture, and was interested in a long
series of busts of the emperors and the members of their families, and
some of the great men of Rome. There is a bust of Pompey the Great,
bearing not the slightest resemblance to that vulgar and unintellectual
one in the gallery of the Capitol, altogether a different cast of
countenance. I could not judge whether it resembled the face of the
statue, having seen the latter so imperfectly in the duskiness of the
hall of the Spada Palace. These, I presume, are the busts which Mr.
Powers condemns, from internal evidence, as unreliable and conventional.
He may be right,--and is far more likely, of course, to be right than I
am,--yet there certainly seems to be character in these marble faces, and
they differ as much among themselves as the same number of living faces
might. The bust of Caracalla, however, which Powers excepted from his
censure, certainly does give stronger assurance of its being an
individual and faithful portrait than any other in the series. All the
busts of Caracalla--of which I have seen many--give the same evidence of
their truth; and I should like to know what it was in this abominable
emperor that made him insist upon having his actual likeness perpetuated,
with all the ugliness of its animal and moral character. I rather
respect him for it, and still more the sculptor, whose hand, methinks,
must have trembled as he wrought the bust. Generally these wicked old
fellows, and their wicked wives and daughters, are not so hideous as we
might expect. Messalina, for instance, has small and pretty features,
though with rather a sensual development of the lower part of the face.
The busts, it seemed to me, are usually superior as works of art to those
in the Capitol, and either better preserved or more thoroughly restored.
The bust of Nero might almost be called handsome here, though bearing his
likeness unmistakably.
I wish some competent person would undertake to analyze and develop his
character, and how and by what necessity--with all his elegant tastes,
his love of the beautiful, his artist nature--he grew to be such a
monster. Nero has never yet had justice done him, nor have any of the
wicked emperors; not that I suppose them to have been any less monstrous
than history represents them; but there must surely have been something
in their position and circumstances to render the terrible moral disease
which seized upon them so generally almost inevitable. A wise and
profound man, tender and reverent of the human soul, and capable of
appreciating it in its height and depth, has a great field here for the
exercise of his powers. It has struck me, in reading the history of the
Italian republics, that many of the tyrants, who sprung up after the
destruction of their liberties, resembled the worst of the Roman
emperors. The subject of Nero and his brethren has often perplexed me
with vain desires to come at the truth.
There were many beautiful specimens of antique, ideal sculpture all along
the gallery,--Apollos, Bacchuses, Venuses, Mercurys, Fauns,--with the
general character of all of which I was familiar enough to recognize them
at a glance. The mystery and wonder of the gallery, however, the Venus
de' Medici, I could nowhere see, and indeed was almost afraid to see it;
for I somewhat apprehended the extinction of another of those lights that
shine along a man's pathway, and go out in a snuff the instant he comes
within eyeshot of the fulfilment of his hopes. My European experience
has extinguished many such. I was pretty well contented, therefore, not
to find the famous statue in the whole of my long journey from end to end
of the gallery, which terminates on the opposite side of the court from
that where it commences. The ceiling, by the by, through the entire
length, is covered with frescos, and the floor paved with a composition
of stone smooth and polished like marble. The final piece of sculpture,
at the end of the gallery, is a copy of the Laocoon, considered very
fine. I know not why, but it did not impress me with the sense of mighty
and terrible repose--a repose growing out of the infinitude of trouble--
that I had felt in the original.
Parallel with the gallery, on both sides of the palace-court, there runs
a series of rooms devoted chiefly to pictures, although statues and
bas-reliefs are likewise contained in some of them. I remember an
unfinished bas-relief by Michael Angelo of a Holy Family, which I touched
with my finger, because it seemed as if he might have been at work upon
it only an hour ago. The pictures I did little more than glance at, till
I had almost completed again the circuit of the gallery, through this
series of parallel rooms, and then I came upon a collection of French and
Dutch and Flemish masters, all of which interested me more than the
Italian generally. There was a beautiful picture by Claude, almost as
good as those in the British National Gallery, and very like in subject;
the sun near the horizon, of course, and throwing its line of light over
the ripple of water, with ships at the strand, and one or two palaces of
stately architecture on the shore. Landscapes by Rembrandt; fat Graces
and other plump nudities by Rubens; brass pans and earthen pots and
herrings by Terriers and other Dutchmen; none by Gerard Douw, I think,
but several by Mieris; all of which were like bread and beef and ale,
after having been fed too long on made dishes. This is really a
wonderful collection of pictures; and from first, to last--from Giotto to
the men of yesterday--they are in admirable condition, and may be
appreciated for all the merit that they ever possessed.
I could not quite believe that I was not to find the Venus de' Medici;
and still, as I passed from one room to another, my breath rose and fell
a little, with the half-hope, half-fear, that she might stand before me.
Really, I did not know that I cared so much about Venus, or any possible
woman of marble. At last, when I had come from among the Dutchmen, I
believe, and was looking at some works of Italian artists, chiefly
Florentines, I caught a glimpse of her through the door of the next room.
It is the best room of the series, octagonal in shape, and hung with red
damask, and the light comes down from a row of windows, passing quite
round, beneath an octagonal dome. The Venus stands somewhat aside from
the centre of the room, and is surrounded by an iron railing, a pace or
two from her pedestal in front, and less behind. I think she might
safely be left to the reverence her womanhood would win, without any
other protection. She is very beautiful, very satisfactory; and has a
fresh and new charm about her unreached by any cast or copy. The line of
the marble is just so much mellowed by time, as to do for her all that
Gibson tries, or ought to try to do for his statues by color, softening
her, warming her almost imperceptibly, making her an inmate of the heart,
as well as a spiritual existence. I felt a kind of tenderness for her;
an affection, not as if she were one woman, but all womanhood in one.
Her modest attitude, which, before I saw her I had not liked, deeming
that it might be an artificial shame, is partly what unmakes her as the
heathen goddess, and softens her into woman. There is a slight degree of
alarm, too, in her face; not that she really thinks anybody is looking at
her, yet the idea has flitted through her mind, and startled her a
little. Her face is so beautiful and intellectual, that it is not
dazzled out of sight by her form. Methinks this was a triumph for the
sculptor to achieve. I may as well stop here. It is of no use to throw
heaps of words upon her; for they all fall away, and leave her standing
in chaste and naked grace, as untouched as when I began.
She has suffered terribly by the mishaps of her long existence in the
marble. Each of her legs has been broken into two or three fragments,
her arms have been severed, her body has been broken quite across at the
waist, her head has been snapped off at the neck. Furthermore, there
have been grievous wounds and losses of substance in various tender parts
of her person. But on account of the skill with which the statue has
been restored, and also because the idea is perfect and indestructible,
all these injuries do not in the least impair the effect, even when you
see where the dissevered fragments have been reunited. She is just as
whole as when she left the hands of the sculptor. I am glad to have seen
this Venus, and to have found her so tender and so chaste. On the wall
of the room, and to be taken in at the same glance, is a painted Venus by
Titian, reclining on a couch, naked and lustful.
The room of the Venus seems to be the treasure-place of the whole Uffizi
Palace, containing more pictures by famous masters than are to be found
in all the rest of the gallery. There were several by Raphael, and the
room was crowded with the easels of artists. I did not look half enough
at anything, but merely took a preliminary taste, as a prophecy of
enjoyment to come.
As we were at dinner to-day, at half past three, there was a ring at the
door, and a minute after our servant brought a card. It was Mr. Robert
Browning's, and on it was written in pencil an invitation for us to go to
see them this evening. He had left the card and gone away; but very soon
the bell rang again, and he had come back, having forgotten to give his
address. This time he came in; and he shook hands with all of us,
children and grown people, and was very vivacious and agreeable. He
looked younger and even handsomer than when I saw him in London, two
years ago, and his gray hairs seemed fewer than those that had then
strayed into his youthful head. He talked a wonderful quantity in a
little time, and told us--among other things that we should never have
dreamed of--that Italian people will not cheat you, if you construe them
generously, and put them upon their honor.
Mr. Browning was very kind and warm in his expressions of pleasure at
seeing us; and, on our part, we were all very glad to meet him. He must
be an exceedingly likable man. . . . . They are to leave Florence very
soon, and are going to Normandy, I think he said, for the rest of the
summer.
The Venus de' Medici has a dimple in her chin.
June 9th.--We went last evening, at eight o'clock, to see the Brownings;
and, after some search and inquiry, we found the Casa Guidi, which is a
palace in a street not very far from our own. It being dusk, I could not
see the exterior, which, if I remember, Browning has celebrated in song;
at all events, Mrs. Browning has called one of her poems "Casa Guidi
Windows."
The street is a narrow one; but on entering the palace, we found a
spacious staircase and ample accommodations of vestibule and hall, the
latter opening on a balcony, where we could hear the chanting of priests
in a church close by. Browning told us that this was the first church
where an oratorio had ever been performed. He came into the anteroom to
greet us, as did his little boy, Robert, whom they call Pennini for
fondness. The latter cognomen is a diminutive of Apennino, which was
bestowed upon him at his first advent into the world because he was so
very small, there being a statue in Florence of colossal size called
Apennino. I never saw such a boy as this before; so slender, fragile,
and spirit-like,--not as if he were actually in ill health, but as if he
had little or nothing to do with human flesh and blood. His face is very
pretty and most intelligent, and exceedingly like his mother's. He is
nine years old, and seems at once less childlike and less manly than
would befit that age. I should not quite like to be the father of such a
boy, and should fear to stake so much interest and affection on him as he
cannot fail to inspire. I wonder what is to become of him,--whether he
will ever grow to be a man,--whether it is desirable that he should. His
parents ought to turn their whole attention to making him robust and
earthly, and to giving him a thicker scabbard to sheathe his spirit in.
He was born in Florence, and prides himself on being a Florentine, and is
indeed as un-English a production as if he were native of another planet.
Mrs. Browning met us at the door of the drawing-room, and greeted us most
kindly,--a pale, small person, scarcely embodied at all; at any rate,
only substantial enough to put forth her slender fingers to be grasped,
and to speak with a shrill, yet sweet, tenuity of voice. Really, I do
not see how Mr. Browning can suppose that he has an earthly wife any more
than an earthly child; both are of the elfin race, and will flit away
from him some day when he least thinks of it. She is a good and kind
fairy, however, and sweetly disposed towards the human race, although
only remotely akin to it. It is wonderful to see how small she is, how
pale her cheek, how bright and dark her eyes. There is not such another
figure in the world; and her black ringlets cluster down into her neck,
and make her face look the whiter by their sable profusion. I could not
form any judgment about her age; it may range anywhere within the limits
of human life or elfin life. When I met her in London at Lord Houghton's
breakfast-table, she did not impress me so singularly; for the morning
light is more prosaic than the dim illumination of their great tapestried
drawing-room; and besides, sitting next to her, she did not have occasion
to raise her voice in speaking, and I was not sensible what a slender
voice she has. It is marvellous to me how so extraordinary, so acute, so
sensitive a creature can impress us, as she does, with the certainty of
her benevolence. It seems to me there were a million chances to one that
she would have been a miracle of acidity and bitterness.
We were not the only guests. Mr. and Mrs. E------, Americans, recently
from the East, and on intimate terms with the Brownings, arrived after
us; also Miss F. H------, an English literary lady, whom I have met
several times in Liverpool; and lastly came the white head and
palmer-like beard of Mr. ------ with his daughter. Mr. Browning was very
efficient in keeping up conversation with everybody, and seemed to be in
all parts of the room and in every group at the same moment; a most vivid
and quick-thoughted person, logical and common-sensible, as, I presume,
poets generally are in their daily talk.
Mr. ------, as usual, was homely and plain of manner, with an
old-fashioned dignity, nevertheless, and a remarkable deference and
gentleness of tone in addressing Mrs. Browning. I doubt, however,
whether he has any high appreciation either of her poetry or her
husband's, and it is my impression that they care as little about his.
We had some tea and some strawberries, and passed a pleasant evening.
There was no very noteworthy conversation; the most interesting topic
being that disagreeable and now wearisome one of spiritual
communications, as regards which Mrs. Browning is a believer, and her
husband an infidel. Mr. ------ appeared not to have made up his mind on
the matter, but told a story of a successful communication between Cooper
the novelist and his sister, who had been dead fifty years. Browning and
his wife had both been present at a spiritual session held by Mr. Hume,
and had seen and felt the unearthly hands, one of which had placed a
laurel wreath on Mrs. Browning's head. Browning, however, avowed his
belief that these hands were affixed to the feet of Mr. Hume, who lay
extended in his chair, with his legs stretched far under the table. The
marvellousness of the fact, as I have read of it, and heard it from other
eye-witnesses, melted strangely away in his hearty gripe, and at the
sharp touch of his logic; while his wife, ever and anon, put in a little
gentle word of expostulation.
I am rather surprised that Browning's conversation should be so clear,
and so much to the purpose at the moment, since his poetry can seldom
proceed far without running into the high grass of latent meanings and
obscure allusions.
Mrs. Browning's health does not permit late hours, so we began to take
heave at about ten o'clock. I heard her ask Mr. ------ if he did not
mean to revisit Europe, and heard him answer, not uncheerfully, taking
hold of his white hair, "It is getting rather too late in the evening
now." If any old age can be cheerful, I should think his might be; so
good a man, so cool, so calm, so bright, too, we may say. His life has
been like the days that end in pleasant sunsets. He has a great loss,
however, or what ought to be a great loss,--soon to be encountered in the
death of his wife, who, I think, can hardly live to reach America. He is
not eminently an affectionate man. I take him to be one who cannot get
closely home to his sorrow, nor feel it so sensibly as he gladly would;
and, in consequence of that deficiency, the world lacks substance to him.
It is partly the result, perhaps, of his not having sufficiently
cultivated his emotional nature. His poetry shows it, and his personal
intercourse, though kindly, does not stir one's blood in the least.
Little Pennini, during the evening, sometimes helped the guests to cake
and strawberries; joined in the conversation, when he had anything to
say, or sat down upon a couch to enjoy his own meditations. He has long
curling hair, and has not yet emerged from his frock and short hose. It
is funny to think of putting him into trousers. His likeness to his
mother is strange to behold.
June 10th.--My wife and I went to the Pitti Palace to-day; and first
entered a court where, yesterday, she had seen a carpet of flowers,
arranged for some great ceremony. It must have been a most beautiful
sight, the pavement of the court being entirely covered by them, in a
regular pattern of brilliant lines, so as really to be a living mosaic.
This morning, however, the court had nothing but its usual stones, and
the show of yesterday seemed so much the more inestimable as having been
so evanescent. Around the walls of the court there were still some
pieces of splendid tapestry which had made part of yesterday's
magnificence. We went up the staircase, of regally broad and easy
ascent, and made application to be admitted to see the grand-ducal
apartments. An attendant accordingly took the keys, and ushered us first
into a great hall with a vaulted ceiling, and then through a series of
noble rooms, with rich frescos above and mosaic floors, hung with damask,
adorned with gilded chandeliers, and glowing, in short, with more
gorgeousness than I could have imagined beforehand, or can now remember.
In many of the rooms were those superb antique cabinets which I admire
more than any other furniture ever invented; only these were of
unexampled art and glory, inlaid with precious stones, and with beautiful
Florentine mosaics, both of flowers and landscapes,--each cabinet worth a
lifetime's toil to make it, and the cost a whole palace to pay for it.
Many of the rooms were covered with arras, of landscapes, hunting-scenes,
mythological subjects, or historical scenes, equal to pictures in truth
of representation, and possessing an indescribable richness that makes
them preferable as a mere adornment of princely halls and chambers. Some
of the rooms, as I have said, were laid in mosaic of stone and marble,
otherwise in lovely patterns of various woods; others were covered with
carpets, delightful to tread upon, and glowing like the living floor of
flowers which my wife saw yesterday. There were tables, too, of
Florentine mosaic, the mere materials of which--lapis lazuli, malachite,
pearl, and a hundred other precious things--were worth a fortune, and
made a thousand times more valuable by the artistic skill of the
manufacturer. I toss together brilliant words by the handful, and make a
rude sort of patchwork, but can record no adequate idea of what I saw in
this suite of rooms; and the taste, the subdued splendor, so that it did
not shine too high, but was all tempered into an effect at once grand and
soft,--this was quite as remarkable as the gorgeous material. I have
seen a very dazzling effect produced in the principal cabin of an
American clipper-ship quite opposed to this in taste.
After making the circuit of the grand-ducal apartments, we went into a
door in the left wing of the palace, and ascended a narrow flight of
stairs,--several tortuous flights indeed,--to the picture-gallery. It
fills a great many stately halls, which themselves are well worth a visit
for the architecture and frescos; only these matters become commonplace
after travelling through a mile or two of them. The collection of
pictures--as well for their number as for the celebrity and excellence of
many of them--is the most interesting that I have seen, and I do not yet
feel in a condition, nor perhaps ever shall, to speak of a single one.
It gladdened my very heart to find that they were not darkened out of
sight, nor apparently at all injured by time, but were well kept and
varnished, brilliantly framed, and, no doubt, restored by skilful touches
if any of them needed it. The artists and amateurs may say what they
like; for my part, I know no drearier feeling than that inspired by a
ruined picture,--ruined, that is, by time, damp, or rough treatment,--and
I would a thousand times rather an artist should do his best towards
reviving it, than have it left in such a condition. I do not believe,
however, that these pictures have been sacrilegiously interfered with; at
all events, I saw in the masterpieces no touch but what seemed worthy of
the master-hand.
The most beautiful picture in the world, I am convinced, is Raphael's
"Madonna della Seggiola." I was familiar with it in a hundred engravings
and copies, and therefore it shone upon one as with a familiar beauty,
though infinitely more divine than I had ever seen it before. An artist
was copying it, and producing certainly something very like a fac-simile,
yet leaving out, as a matter of course, that mysterious something that
renders the picture a miracle. It is my present opinion that the
pictorial art is capable of something more like magic, more wonderful and
inscrutable in its methods, than poetry or any other mode of developing
the beautiful. But how does this accord with what I have been saying
only a minute ago? How then can the decayed picture of a great master
ever be restored by the touches of an inferior hand? Doubtless it never
can be restored; but let some devoted worshipper do his utmost, and the
whole inherent spirit of the divine picture may pervade his restorations
likewise.
I saw the "Three Fates" of Michael Angelo, which were also being copied,
as were many other of the best pictures. Miss Fanny Howorth, whom I met
in the gallery, told me that to copy the "Madonna della Seggiola,"
application must be made five years beforehand, so many are the artists
who aspire to copy it. Michael Angelo's Fates are three very grim and
pitiless old women, who respectively spin, hold, and cut the thread of
human destiny, all in a mood of sombre gloom, but with no more sympathy
than if they had nothing to do with us. I remember seeing an etching of
this when I was a child, and being struck, even then, with the terrible,
stern, passionless severity, neither loving us nor hating us, that
characterizes these ugly old women. If they were angry, or had the least
spite against human kind, it would render them the more tolerable. They
are a great work, containing and representing the very idea that makes a
belief in fate such a cold torture to the human soul. God give me the
sure belief in his Providence!
In a year's time, with the advantage of access to this magnificent
gallery, I think I might come to have some little knowledge of pictures.
At present I still know nothing; but am glad to find myself capable, at
least, of loving one picture better than another. I cannot always "keep
the heights I gain," however, and after admiring and being moved by a
picture one day, it is within my experience to look at it the next as
little moved as if it were a tavern-sign. It is pretty much the same
with statuary; the same, too, with those pictured windows of the Duomo,
which I described so rapturously a few days ago. I looked at them again
the next morning, and thought they would have been hardly worthy of my
eulogium, even had all the separate windows of the cathedral combined
their narrow lights into one grand, resplendent, many-colored arch at the
eastern end. It is a pity they are so narrow. England has many a great
chancel-window that, though dimmer in its hues, dusty, and perhaps made
up of heterogeneous fragments, eclipses these by its spacious breadth.
From the gallery, I went into the Boboli Gardens, which are contiguous to
the palace; but found them too sunny for enjoyment. They seem to consist
partly of a wilderness; but the portion into which I strayed was laid out
with straight walks, lined with high box-hedges, along which there was
only a narrow margin of shade. I saw an amphitheatre, with a wide sweep
of marble seat around it, enclosing a grassy space, where, doubtless, the
Medici may have witnessed splendid spectacles.
June 11th.--I paid another visit to the Uffizi gallery this morning, and
found that the Venus is one of the things the charm of which does not
diminish on better acquaintance. The world has not grown weary of her in
all these ages; and mortal man may look on her with new delight from
infancy to old age, and keep the memory of her, I should imagine, as one
of the treasures of spiritual existence hereafter. Surely, it makes me
more ready to believe in the high destinies of the human race, to think
that this beautiful form is but nature's plan for all womankind, and that
the nearer the actual woman approaches it, the more natural she is. I do
not, and cannot think of her as a senseless image, but as a being that
lives to gladden the world, incapable of decay and death; as young and
fair to-day as she was three thousand years ago, and still to be young
and fair as long as a beautiful thought shall require physical
embodiment. I wonder how any sculptor has had the impertinence to aim at
any other presentation of female beauty. I mean no disrespect to Gibson
or Powers, or a hundred other men who people the world with nudities, all
of which are abortions as compared with her; but I think the world would
be all the richer if their Venuses, their Greek Slaves, their Eves, were
burnt into quicklime, leaving us only this statue as our image of the
beautiful. I observed to-day that the eyes of the statue are slightly
hollowed out, in a peculiar way, so as to give them a look of depth and
intelligence. She is a miracle. The sculptor must have wrought
religiously, and have felt that something far beyond his own skill was
working through his hands. I mean to leave off speaking of the Venus
hereafter, in utter despair of saying what I wish; especially as the
contemplation of the statue will refine and elevate my taste, and make it
continually more difficult to express my sense of its excellence, as the
perception of it grows upon one. If at any time I become less sensible
of it, it will be my deterioration, not any defect in the statue.
I looked at many of the pictures, and found myself in a favorable mood
for enjoying them. It seems to me that a work of art is entitled to
credit for all that it makes us feel in our best moments; and we must
judge of its merits by the impression it then makes, and not by the
coldness and insensibility of our less genial moods.
After leaving the Uffizi Palace, . . . . I went into the Museum of
Natural History, near the Pitti Palace. It is a very good collection of
almost everything that Nature has made,--or exquisite copies of what she
has made,--stones, shells, vegetables, insects, fishes, animals, man; the
greatest wonders of the museum being some models in wax of all parts of
the human frame. It is good to have the wholeness and summed-up beauty
of woman in the memory, when looking at the details of her system as here
displayed; for these last, to the natural eye, are by no means beautiful.
But they are what belong only to our mortality. The beauty that makes
them invisible is our immortal type, which we shall take away with us.
Under glass cases, there were some singular and horribly truthful
representations, in small wax figures, of a time of pestilence; the hasty
burial, or tossing into one common sepulchre, of discolored corpses,--a
very ugly piece of work, indeed. I think Murray says that these things
were made for the Grand Duke Cosmo; and if so, they do him no credit,
indicating something dark and morbid in his character.
June 13th.--We called at the Powers's yesterday morning to leave R-----
there for an hour or two to play with the children; and it being not yet
quite time for the Pitti Palace, we stopped into the studio. Soon Mr.
Powers made his appearance, in his dressing-gown and slippers and
sculptor's cap, smoking a cigar. . . . . He was very cordial and
pleasant, as I have always found him, and began immediately to be
communicative about his own works, or any other subject that came up.
There were two casts of the Venus de' Medici in the rooms, which he said
were valuable in a commercial point of view, being genuine casts from the
mould taken from the statue. He then gave us a quite unexpected but most
interesting lecture on the Venus, demonstrating it, as he proceeded, by
reference to the points which he criticised. The figure, he seemed to
allow, was admirable, though I think he hardly classes it so high as his
own Greek Slave or Eva; but the face, he began with saying, was that of
an idiot. Then, leaning on the pedestal of the cast, he continued, "It
is rather a bold thing to say, isn't it, that the sculptor of the Venus
de' Medici did not know what he was about?"
Truly, it appeared to me so; but Powers went on remorselessly, and
showed, in the first place, that the eye was not like any eye that Nature
ever made; and, indeed, being examined closely, and abstracted from the
rest of the face, it has a very queer look,--less like a human eye than a
half-worn buttonhole! Then he attacked the ear, which, he affirmed and
demonstrated, was placed a good deal too low on the head, thereby giving
an artificial and monstrous height to the portion of the head above it.
The forehead met with no better treatment in his hands, and as to the
mouth, it was altogether wrong, as well in its general make as in such
niceties as the junction of the skin of the lips to the common skin
around them. In a word, the poor face was battered all to pieces and
utterly demolished; nor was it possible to doubt or question that it fell
by its own demerits. All that could be urged in its defence--and even
that I did not urge--being that this very face had affected me, only the
day before, with a sense of higher beauty and intelligence than I had
ever then received from sculpture, and that its expression seemed to
accord with that of the whole figure, as if it were the sweetest note of
the same music. There must be something in this; the sculptor
disregarded technicalities, and the imitation of actual nature, the
better to produce the effect which he really does produce, in somewhat
the same way as a painter works his magical illusions by touches that
have no relation to the truth if looked at from the wrong point of view.
But Powers considers it certain that the antique sculptor had bestowed
all his care on the study of the human figure, and really did not know
how to make a face. I myself used to think that the face was a much less
important thing with the Greeks, among whom the entire beauty of the form
was familiarly seen, than with ourselves, who allow no other nudity.
After annihilating the poor visage, Powers showed us his two busts of
Proserpine and Psyche, and continued his lecture by showing the truth to
nature with which these are modelled. I freely acknowledge the fact;
there is no sort of comparison to be made between the beauty,
intelligence, feeling, and accuracy of representation in these two faces
and in that of the Venus de' Medici. A light--the light of a soul proper
to each individual character--seems to shine from the interior of the
marble, and beam forth from the features, chiefly from the eyes. Still
insisting upon the eye, and hitting the poor Venus another and another
and still another blow on that unhappy feature, Mr. Powers turned up and
turned inward and turned outward his own Titanic orb,--the biggest, by
far, that ever I saw in mortal head,--and made us see and confess that
there was nothing right in the Venus and everything right in Psyche and
Proserpine. To say the truth, their marble eyes have life, and, placing
yourself in the proper position towards them, you can meet their glances,
and feel them mingle with your own. Powers is a great man, and also a
tender and delicate one, massive and rude of surface as he looks; and it
is rather absurd to feel how he impressed his auditor, for the time
being, with his own evident idea that nobody else is worthy to touch
marble. Mr. B------ told me that Powers has had many difficulties on
professional grounds, as I understood him, and with his brother artists.
No wonder! He has said enough in my hearing to put him at swords' points
with sculptors of every epoch and every degree between the two inclusive
extremes of Phidias and Clark Mills.
He has a bust of the reigning Grand Duchess of Tuscany, who sat to him
for it. The bust is that of a noble-looking lady; and Powers remarked
that royal personages have a certain look that distinguishes them from
other people, and is seen in individuals of no lower rank. They all have
it; the Queen of England and Prince Albert have it; and so likewise has
every other Royalty, although the possession of this kingly look implies
nothing whatever as respects kingly and commanding qualities. He said
that none of our public men, whatever authority they may have held, or
for whatever length of time, possess this look, but he added afterwards
that Washington had it. Commanders of armies sometimes have it, but not
in the degree that royal personages do. It is, as well as I could make
out Powers's idea, a certain coldness of demeanor, and especially of eye,
that surrounds them with an atmosphere through which the electricity of
human brotherhood cannot pass. From their youth upward they are taught
to feel themselves apart from the rest of mankind, and this manner
becomes a second nature to them in consequence, and as a safeguard to
their conventional dignity. They put themselves under glass, as it were
(the illustration is my own), so that, though you see them, and see them
looking no more noble and dignified than other mortals, nor so much so as
many, still they keep themselves within a sort of sanctity, and repel you
by an invisible barrier. Even if they invite you with a show of warmth
and hospitality, you cannot get through. I, too, recognize this look in
the portraits of Washington; in him, a mild, benevolent coldness and
apartness, but indicating that formality which seems to have been deeper
in him than in any other mortal, and which built up an actual
fortification between himself and human sympathy. I wish, for once,
Washington could come out of his envelopment and show us what his real
dimensions were.
Among other models of statues heretofore made, Powers showed us one of
Melancholy, or rather of Contemplation, from Milton's "Penseroso"; a
female figure with uplifted face and rapt look, "communing with the
skies." It is very fine, and goes deeply into Milton's thought; but, as
far as the outward form and action are concerned, I remember seeing a
rude engraving in my childhood that probably suggested the idea. It was
prefixed to a cheap American edition of Milton's poems, and was probably
as familiar to Powers as to myself. It is very remarkable how difficult
it seems to be to strike out a new attitude in sculpture; a new group, or
a new single figure.
One piece of sculpture Powers exhibited, however, which was very
exquisite, and such as I never saw before. Opening a desk, he took out
something carefully enclosed between two layers of cotton-wool, on
removing which there appeared a little baby's hand most delicately
represented in the whitest marble; all the dimples where the knuckles
were to be, all the creases in the plump flesh, every infantine wrinkle
of the soft skin being lovingly recorded. "The critics condemn minute
representation," said Powers; "but you may look at this through a
microscope and see if it injures the general effect." Nature herself
never made a prettier or truer little hand. It was the hand of his
daughter,--"Luly's hand," Powers called it,--the same that gave my own
such a frank and friendly grasp when I first met "Luly." The sculptor
made it only for himself and his wife, but so many people, he said, had
insisted on having a copy, that there are now forty scattered about the
world. At sixty years, Luly ought to have her hand sculptured again, and
give it to her grandchildren with the baby's hand of five months old.
The baby-hand that had done nothing, and felt only its mother's kiss;
the old lady's hand that had exchanged the love-pressure, worn the
marriage-ring, closed dead eyes,--done a lifetime's work, in short. The
sentiment is rather obvious, but true nevertheless.
Before we went away, Powers took us into a room apart--apparently the
secretest room he had--and showed us some tools and machinery, all of his
own contrivance and invention. "You see I am a bit of a Yankee," he
observed.
This machinery is chiefly to facilitate the process of modelling his
works, for--except in portrait-busts--he makes no clay model as other
sculptors do, but models directly in the plaster; so that instead of
being crumbled, like clay, the original model remains a permanent
possession. He has also invented a certain open file, which is of great
use in finishing the surface of the marble; and likewise a machine for
making these files and for punching holes through iron, and he
demonstrated its efficiency by punching a hole through an iron bar, with
a force equivalent to ten thousand pounds, by the mere application of a
part of his own weight. These inventions, he says, are his amusement,
and the bent of his nature towards sculpture must indeed have been
strong, to counteract, in an American, such a capacity for the
contrivance of steam-engines. . . . .
I had no idea of filling so many pages of this journal with the sayings
and characteristics of Mr. Powers, but the man and his talk are fresh,
original, and full of bone and muscle, and I enjoy him much.
We now proceeded to the Pitti Palace, and spent several hours pleasantly
in its saloons of pictures. I never enjoyed pictures anywhere else as I
do in Florence. There is an admirable Judith in this gallery by Allori;
a face of great beauty and depth, and her hand clutches the head of
Holofernes by the hair in a way that startles the spectator. There are
two peasant Madonnas by Murillo; simple women, yet with a thoughtful
sense of some high mystery connected with the baby in their arms.
Raphael grows upon me; several other famous painters--Guido, for
instance--are fading out of my mind. Salvator Rosa has two really
wonderful landscapes, looking from the shore seaward; and Rubens too,
likewise on a large scale, of mountain and plain. It is very idle and
foolish to talk of pictures; yet, after poring over them and into them,
it seems a pity to let all the thought excited by them pass into
nothingness.
The copyists of pictures are very numerous, both in the Pitti and Uffizi
galleries; and, unlike sculptors, they appear to be on the best of terms
with one another, chatting sociably, exchanging friendly criticism, and
giving their opinions as to the best mode of attaining the desired
effects. Perhaps, as mere copyists, they escape the jealousy that might
spring up between rival painters attempting to develop original ideas.
Miss Howorth says that the business of copying pictures, especially those
of Raphael, is a regular profession, and she thinks it exceedingly
obstructive to the progress or existence of a modern school of painting,
there being a regular demand and sure sale for all copies of the old
masters, at prices proportioned to their merit; whereas the effort to be
original insures nothing, except long neglect, at the beginning of a
career, and probably ultimate failure, and the necessity of becoming a
copyist at last. Some artists employ themselves from youth to age in
nothing else but the copying of one single and selfsame picture by
Raphael, and grow at last to be perfectly mechanical, making, I suppose,
the same identical stroke of the brush in fifty successive pictures.
The weather is very hot now,--hotter in the sunshine, I think, than a
midsummer day usually is in America, but with rather a greater
possibility of being comfortable in the shade. The nights, too, are
warm, and the bats fly forth at dusk, and the fireflies quite light up
the green depths of our little garden. The atmosphere, or something
else, causes a sort of alacrity in my mind and an affluence of ideas,
such as they are; but it does not thereby make me the happier. I feel an
impulse to be at work, but am kept idle by the sense of being unsettled
with removals to be gone through, over and over again, before I can shut
myself into a quiet room of my own, and turn the key. I need monotony
too, an eventless exterior life, before I can live in the world within.
June 15th.--Yesterday we went to the Uffizi gallery, and, of course, I
took the opportunity to look again at the Venus de' Medici after Powers's
attack upon her face. Some of the defects he attributed to her I could
not see in the statue; for instance, the ear appeared to be in accordance
with his own rule, the lowest part of it being about in a straight line
with the upper lip. The eyes must be given up, as not, when closely
viewed, having the shape, the curve outwards, the formation of the lids,
that eyes ought to have; but still, at a proper distance, they seemed to
have intelligence in them beneath the shadow cast by the brow. I cannot
help thinking that the sculptor intentionally made every feature what it
is, and calculated them all with a view to the desired effect. Whatever
rules may be transgressed, it is a noble and beautiful face,--more so,
perhaps, than if all rules had been obeyed. I wish Powers would do his
best to fit the Venus's figure (which he does not deny to be admirable)
with a face which he would deem equally admirable and in accordance with
the sentiment of the form.
We looked pretty thoroughly through the gallery, and I saw many pictures
that impressed me; but among such a multitude, with only one poor mind to
take note of them, the stamp of each new impression helps to obliterate a
former one. I am sensible, however, that a process is going on, and has
been ever since I came to Italy, that puts me in a state to see pictures
with less toil, and more pleasure, and makes me more fastidious, yet more
sensible of beauty where I saw none before. It is the sign, I presume,
of a taste still very defective, that I take singular pleasure in the
elaborate imitations of Van Mieris, Gerard Douw, and other old Dutch
wizards, who painted such brass pots that you can see your face in them,
and such earthen pots that they will surely hold water; and who spent
weeks and months in turning a foot or two of canvas into a perfect
microscopic illusion of some homely scene. For my part, I wish Raphael
had painted the "Transfiguration" in this style, at the same time
preserving his breadth and grandeur of design; nor do I believe that
there is any real impediment to the combination of the two styles, except
that no possible space of human life could suffice to cover a quarter
part of the canvas of the "Transfiguration" with such touches as Gerard
Douw's. But one feels the vast scope of this wonderful art, when we
think of two excellences so far apart as that of this last painter and
Raphael. I pause a good while, too, before the Dutch paintings of fruit
and flowers, where tulips and roses acquire an immortal bloom, and grapes
have kept the freshest juice in them for two or three hundred years.
Often, in these pictures, there is a bird's-nest, every straw perfectly
represented, and the stray feather, or the down that the mother-bird
plucked from her bosom, with the three or four small speckled eggs, that
seem as if they might be yet warm. These pretty miracles have their use
in assuring us that painters really can do something that takes hold of
us in our most matter-of-fact moods; whereas, the merits of the grander
style of art may be beyond our ordinary appreciation, and leave us in
doubt whether we have not befooled ourselves with a false admiration.
Until we learn to appreciate the cherubs and angels that Raphael scatters
through the blessed air, in a picture of the "Nativity," it is not amiss
to look at, a Dutch fly settling on a peach, or a bumblebee burying
himself in a flower.
It is another token of imperfect taste, no doubt, that queer pictures and
absurd pictures remain in my memory, when better ones pass away by the
score. There is a picture of Venus, combing her son Cupid's head with a
small-tooth comb, and looking with maternal care among his curls; this I
shall not forget. Likewise, a picture of a broad, rubicund Judith by
Bardone,--a widow of fifty, of an easy, lymphatic, cheerful temperament,
who has just killed Holofernes, and is as self-complacent as if she had
been carving a goose. What could possibly have stirred up this pudding
of a woman (unless it were a pudding-stick) to do such a deed! I looked
with much pleasure at an ugly, old, fat, jolly Bacchus, astride on a
barrel, by Rubens; the most natural and lifelike representation of a
tipsy rotundity of flesh that it is possible to imagine. And sometimes,
amid these sensual images, I caught the divine pensiveness of a Madonna's
face, by Raphael, or the glory and majesty of the babe Jesus in her arm,
with his Father shining through him. This is a sort of revelation,
whenever it comes.
This morning, immediately after breakfast, I walked into the city,
meaning to make myself better acquainted with its appearance, and to go
into its various churches; but it soon grew so hot, that I turned
homeward again. The interior of the Duomo was deliciously cool, to be
sure,--cool and dim, after the white-hot sunshine; but an old woman began
to persecute me, so that I came away. A male beggar drove me out of
another church; and I took refuge in the street, where the beggar and I
would have been two cinders together, if we had stood long enough on the
sunny sidewalk. After my five summers' experience of England, I may have
forgotten what hot weather is; but it does appear to me that an American
summer is not so fervent as this. Besides the direct rays, the white
pavement throws a furnace-heat up into one's face; the shady margin of
the street is barely tolerable; but it is like going through the ordeal
of fire to cross the broad bright glare of an open piazza. The narrow
streets prove themselves a blessing at this season, except when the sun
looks directly into them; the broad eaves of the houses, too, make a
selvage of shade, almost always. I do not know what becomes of the
street-merchants at the noontide of these hot days. They form a numerous
class in Florence, displaying their wares--linen or cotton cloth,
threads, combs, and all manner of haberdashery--on movable counters that
are borne about on wheels. In the shady morning, you see a whole side of
a street in a piazza occupied by them, all offering their merchandise at
full cry. They dodge as they can from shade to shade; but at last the
sunshine floods the whole space, and they seem to have melted away,
leaving not a rag of themselves or what they dealt in.
Cherries are very abundant now, and have been so ever since we came here,
in the markets and all about the streets. They are of various kinds,
some exceedingly large, insomuch that it is almost necessary to disregard
the old proverb about making two bites of a cherry. Fresh figs are
already spoken of, though I have seen none; but I saw some peaches this
morning, looking as if they might be ripe.
June 16th.--Mr. and Mrs. Powers called to see us last evening. Mr.
Powers, as usual, was full of talk, and gave utterance to a good many
instructive and entertaining ideas.
As one instance of the little influence the religion of the Italians has
upon their morals, he told a story of one of his servants, who desired
leave to set up a small shrine of the Virgin in their room--a cheap
print, or bas-relief, or image, such as are sold everywhere at the shops
--and to burn a lamp before it; she engaging, of course, to supply the
oil at her own expense. By and by, her oil-flask appeared to possess a
miraculous property of replenishing itself, and Mr. Powers took measures
to ascertain where the oil came from. It turned out that the servant had
all the time been stealing the oil from them, and keeping up her daily
sacrifice and worship to the Virgin by this constant theft.
His talk soon turned upon sculpture, and he spoke once more of the
difficulty imposed upon an artist by the necessity of clothing portrait
statues in the modern costume. I find that he does not approve either of
nudity or of the Roman toga for a modern statue; neither does he think it
right to shirk the difficulty--as Chantrey did in the case of Washington
--by enveloping him in a cloak; but acknowledges the propriety of taking
the actual costume of the age and doing his best with it. He himself did
so with his own Washington, and also with a statue that he made of Daniel
Webster. I suggested that though this costume might not appear
ridiculous to us now, yet, two or three centuries hence, it would create,
to the people of that day, an impossibility of seeing the real man
through the absurdity of his envelopment, after it shall have entirely
grown out of fashion and remembrance; and Webster would seem as absurd to
them then as he would to us now in the masquerade of some bygone day. It
might be well, therefore, to adopt some conventional costume, never
actual, but always graceful and noble. Besides, Webster, for example,
had other costumes than that which he wore in public, and perhaps it was
in those that he lived his most real life; his dressing-gown, his drapery
of the night, the dress that he wore on his fishing-excursions; in these
other costumes he spent three fourths of his time, and most probably was
thus arrayed when he conceived the great thoughts that afterwards, in
some formal and outside mood, he gave forth to the public. I scarcely
think I was right, but am not sure of the contrary. At any rate, I know
that I should have felt much more sure that I knew the real Webster, if I
had seen him in any of the above-mentioned dresses, than either in his
swallow-tailed coat or frock.
Talking of a taste for painting and sculpture, Powers observed that it
was something very different and quite apart from the moral sense, and
that it was often, perhaps generally, possessed by unprincipled men of
ability and cultivation. I have had this perception myself. A genuine
love of painting and sculpture, and perhaps of music, seems often to have
distinguished men capable of every social crime, and to have formed a
fine and hard enamel over their characters. Perhaps it is because such
tastes are artificial, the product of cultivation, and, when highly
developed, imply a great remove from natural simplicity.
This morning I went with U---- to the Uffizi gallery, and again looked
with more or less attention at almost every picture and statue. I saw a
little picture of the golden age, by Zucchero, in which the charms of
youths and virgins are depicted with a freedom that this iron age can
hardly bear to look at. The cabinet of gems happened to be open for the
admission of a privileged party, and we likewise went in and saw a
brilliant collection of goldsmiths' work, among which, no doubt, were
specimens from such hands as Benvenuto Cellini. Little busts with
diamond eyes; boxes of gems; cups carved out of precious material;
crystal vases, beautifully chased and engraved, and sparkling with
jewels; great pearls, in the midst of rubies; opals, rich with all manner
of lovely lights. I remember Benvenuto Cellini, in his memoirs, speaks
of manufacturing such playthings as these.
I observed another characteristic of the summer streets of Florence
to-day; tables, movable to and fro, on wheels, and set out with cool iced
drinks and cordials.
June 17th.--My wife and I went, this morning, to the Academy of Fine
Arts, and, on our way thither, went into the Duomo, where we found a
deliciously cool twilight, through which shone the mild gleam of the
painted windows. I cannot but think it a pity that St. Peter's is not
lighted by such windows as these, although I by no means saw the glory in
them now that I have spoken of in a record of my former visit. We found
out the monument of Giotto, a tablet, and portrait in bas-relief, on the
wall, near the entrance of the cathedral, on the right hand; also a
representation, in fresco, of a knight on horseback, the memorial of one
John Rawkwood, close by the door, to the left. The priests were chanting
a service of some kind or other in the choir, terribly inharmonious, and
out of tune. . . . .
On reaching the Academy, the soldier or policeman at the entrance
directed us into the large hall, the walls of which were covered on both
sides with pictures, arranged as nearly as possible in a progressive
series, with reference to the date of the painters; so that here the
origin and procession of the art may be traced through the course of, at
least, two hundred years. Giotto, Cimabue, and others of unfamiliar
names to me, are among the earliest; and, except as curiosities, I should
never desire to look once at them, nor think of looking twice. They seem
to have been executed with great care and conscientiousness, and the
heads are often wrought out with minuteness and fidelity, and have so
much expression that they tell their own story clearly enough; but it
seems not to have been the painter's aim to effect a lifelike illusion,
the background and accessories being conventional. The trees are no more
like real trees than the feather of a pen, and there is no perspective,
the figure of the picture being shadowed forth on a surface of burnished
gold. The effect, when these pictures, some of them very large, were new
and freshly gilded, must have been exceedingly brilliant, and much
resembling, on an immensely larger scale, the rich illuminations in an
old monkish missal. In fact, we have not now, in pictorial ornament,
anything at all comparable to what their splendor must have been. I was
most struck with a picture, by Fabriana Gentile, of the Adoration of the
Magi, where the faces and figures have a great deal of life and action,
and even grace, and where the jewelled crowns, the rich embroidered
robes, and cloth of gold, and all the magnificence of the three kings,
are represented with the vividness of the real thing: a gold sword-hilt,
for instance, or a pair of gold spurs, being actually embossed on the
picture. The effect is very powerful, and though produced in what modern
painters would pronounce an unjustifiable way, there is yet pictorial art
enough to reconcile it to the spectator's mind. Certainly, the people of
the Middle Ages knew better than ourselves what is magnificence, and how
to produce it; and what a glorious work must that have been, both in its
mere sheen of burnished gold, and in its illuminating art, which shines
thus through the gloom of perhaps four centuries.
Fra Angelico is a man much admired by those who have a taste for
Pre-Raphaelite painters; and, though I take little or no pleasure in his
works, I can see that there is great delicacy of execution in his heads,
and that generally he produces such a Christ, and such a Virgin, and such
saints, as he could not have foreseen, except in a pure and holy
imagination, nor have wrought out without saying a prayer between every
two touches of his brush. I might come to like him, in time, if I
thought it worth while; but it is enough to have an outside perception of
his kind and degree of merit, and so to let him pass into the garret of
oblivion, where many things as good, or better, are piled away, that our
own age may not stumble over them. Perugino is the first painter whose
works seem really worth preserving for the genuine merit that is in them,
apart from any quaintness and curiosity of an ancient and new-born art.
Probably his religion was more genuine than Raphael's, and therefore the
Virgin often revealed herself to him in a loftier and sweeter face of
divine womanhood than all the genius of Raphael could produce. There is
a Crucifixion by him in this gallery, which made me partly feel as if I
were a far-off spectator,--no, I did not mean a Crucifixion, but a
picture of Christ dead, lying, with a calm, sweet face, on his mother's
knees ["a Pieta"].
The most inadequate and utterly absurd picture here, or in any other
gallery, is a head of the Eternal Father, by Carlo Dolce; it looks like a
feeble saint, on the eve of martyrdom, and very doubtful how he shall be
able to bear it; very finely and prettily painted, nevertheless.
After getting through the principal gallery we went into a smaller room,
in which are contained a great many small specimens of the old Tuscan
artists, among whom Fra Angelico makes the principal figure. These
pictures are all on wood, and seem to have been taken from the shrines
and altars of ancient churches; they are predellas and triptychs, or
pictures on three folding tablets, shaped quaintly, in Gothic peaks or
arches, and still gleaming with backgrounds of antique gold. The wood is
much worm-eaten, and the colors have often faded or changed from what the
old artists meant then to be; a bright angel darkening into what looks
quite as much like the Devil. In one of Fra Angelico's pictures,--a
representation of the Last Judgment,--he has tried his saintly hand at
making devils indeed, and showing them busily at work, tormenting the
poor, damned souls in fifty ghastly ways. Above sits Jesus, with the
throng of blessed saints around him, and a flow of tender and powerful
love in his own face, that ought to suffice to redeem all the damned, and
convert the very fiends, and quench the fires of hell. At any rate, Fra
Angelico had a higher conception of his Saviour than Michael Angelo.
June 19th.--This forenoon we have been to the Church of St. Lorenzo,
which stands on the site of an ancient basilica, and was itself built
more than four centuries ago. The facade is still an ugly height of
rough brickwork, as is the case with the Duomo, and, I think, some other
churches in Florence; the design of giving them an elaborate and
beautiful finish having been delayed from cycle to cycle, till at length
the day for spending mines of wealth on churches is gone by. The
interior had a nave with a flat roof, divided from the side aisles by
Corinthian pillars, and, at the farther end, a raised space around the
high altar. The pavement is a mosaic of squares of black and white
marble, the squares meeting one another cornerwise; the pillars,
pilasters, and other architectural material is dark brown or grayish
stone; and the general effect is very sombre, especially as the church is
somewhat dimly lighted, and as the shrines along the aisles, and the
statues, and the monuments of whatever kind, look dingy with time and
neglect. The nave is thickly set with wooden seats, brown and worn.
What pictures there are, in the shrines and chapels, are dark and faded.
On the whole, the edifice has a shabby aspect. On each side of the high
altar, elevated on four pillars of beautiful marble, is what looks like a
great sarcophagus of bronze. They are, in fact, pulpits, and are
ornamented with mediaeval bas-reliefs, representing scenes in the life of
our Saviour. Murray says that the resting-place of the first Cosmo de'
Medici, the old banker, who so managed his wealth as to get the
posthumous title of "father of his country," and to make his posterity
its reigning princes,--is in front of the high altar, marked by red and
green porphyry and marble, inlaid into the pavement. We looked, but
could not see it there.
There were worshippers at some of the shrines, and persons sitting here
and there along the nave, and in the aisles, rapt in devotional thought,
doubtless, and sheltering themselves here from the white sunshine of the
piazzas. In the vicinity of the choir and the high altar, workmen were
busy repairing the church, or perhaps only making arrangements for
celebrating the great festival of St. John.
On the left hand of the choir is what is called the old sacristy, with
the peculiarities or notabilities of which I am not acquainted. On the
right hand is the new sacristy, otherwise called the Capella dei
Depositi, or Chapel of the Buried, built by Michael Angelo, to contain
two monuments of the Medici family. The interior is of somewhat severe
and classic architecture, the walls and pilasters being of dark stone,
and surmounted by a dome, beneath which is a row of windows, quite round
the building, throwing their light down far beneath, upon niches of white
marble. These niches are ranged entirely around the chapel, and might
have sufficed to contain more than all the Medici monuments that the
world would ever care to have. Only two of these niches are filled,
however. In one of them sits Giuliano de' Medici, sculptured by Michael
Angelo,--a figure of dignity, which would perhaps be very striking in any
other presence than that of the statue which occupies the corresponding
niche. At the feet of Giuliano recline two allegorical statues, Day and
Night, whose meaning there I do not know, and perhaps Michael Angelo knew
as little. As the great sculptor's statues are apt to do, they fling
their limbs abroad with adventurous freedom. Below the corresponding
niche, on the opposite side of the chapel, recline two similar statues,
representing Morning and Evening, sufficiently like Day and Night to be
their brother and sister; all, in truth, having sprung from the same
father. . . . .
But the statue that sits above these two latter allegories, Morning and
Evening, is like no other that ever came from a sculptor's hand. It is
the one work worthy of Michael Angelo's reputation, and grand enough to
vindicate for him all the genius that the world gave him credit for. And
yet it seems a simple thing enough to think of or to execute; merely a
sitting figure, the face partly overshadowed by a helmet, one hand
supporting the chin, the other resting on the thigh. But after looking
at it a little while the spectator ceases to think of it as a marble
statue; it comes to life, and you see that the princely figure is
brooding over some great design, which, when he has arranged in his own
mind, the world will be fain to execute for him. No such grandeur and
majesty has elsewhere been put into human shape. It is all a miracle;
the deep repose, and the deep life within it. It is as much a miracle to
have achieved this as to make a statue that would rise up and walk. The
face, when one gazes earnestly into it, beneath the shadow of its helmet,
is seen to be calmly sombre; a mood which, I think, is generally that of
the rulers of mankind, except in moments of vivid action. This statue is
one of the things which I look at with highest enjoyment, but also with
grief and impatience, because I feel that I do not come at all which it
involves, and that by and by I must go away and leave it forever. How
wonderful! To take a block of marble, and convert it wholly into
thought, and to do it through all the obstructions and impediments of
drapery; for there is nothing nude in this statue but the face and hands.
The vest is the costume of Michael Angelo's century. This is what I
always thought a sculptor of true genius should be able to do,--to show
the man of whatever epoch, nobly and heroically, through the costume
which he might actually have worn.
The statue sits within a square niche of white marble, and completely
fills it. It seems to me a pity that it should be thus confined. At the
Crystal Palace, if I remember, the effect is improved by a free
surrounding space. Its naturalness is as if it came out of the marble of
its own accord, with all its grandeur hanging heavily about it, and sat
down there beneath its weight. I cannot describe it. It is like trying
to stop the ghost of Hamlet's father, by crossing spears before it.
Communicating with the sacristy is the Medicean Chapel, which was built
more than two centuries ago, for the reception of the Holy Sepulchre;
arrangements having been made about that time to steal this most sacred
relic from the Turks. The design failing, the chapel was converted by
Cosmo II. into a place of sepulture for the princes of his family. It is
a very grand and solemn edifice, octagonal in shape, with a lofty dome,
within which is a series of brilliant frescos, painted not more than
thirty years ago. These pictures are the only portion of the adornment
of the chapel which interferes with the sombre beauty of the general
effect; for though the walls are incrusted, from pavement to dome, with
marbles of inestimable cost, and it is a Florentine mosaic on a grander
scale than was ever executed elsewhere, the result is not gaudy, as in
many of the Roman chapels, but a dark and melancholy richness. The
architecture strikes me as extremely fine; each alternate side of the
octagon being an arch, rising as high as the cornice of the lofty dome,
and forming the frame of a vast niche. All the dead princes, no doubt,
according to the general design, were to have been honored with statues
within this stately mausoleum; but only two--those of Ferdinand I. and
Cosmo II.--seem to have been placed here. They were a bad breed, and few
of them deserved any better monument than a dunghill; and yet they have
this grand chapel for the family at large, and yonder grand statue for
one of its most worthless members. I am glad of it; and as for the
statue, Michael Angelo wrought it through the efficacy of a kingly idea,
which had no reference to the individual whose name it bears.
In the piazza adjoining the church is a statue of the first Cosmo, the
old banker, in Roman costume, seated, and looking like a man fit to hold
authority. No, I mistake; the statue is of John de' Medici, the father
of Cosmo, and himself no banker, but a soldier.
June 21st.--Yesterday, after dinner, we went, with the two eldest
children, to the Boboli Gardens. . . . . We entered by a gate, nearer to
our house than that by the Pitti Palace, and found ourselves almost
immediately among embowered walks of box and shrubbery, and little
wildernesses of trees, with here and there a seat under an arbor, and a
marble statue, gray with ancient weather-stains. The site of the garden
is a very uneven surface, and the paths go upward and downward, and
ascend, at their ultimate point, to a base of what appears to be a
fortress, commanding the city. A good many of the Florentines were
rambling about the gardens, like ourselves: little parties of
school-boys; fathers and mothers, with their youthful progeny; young men
in couples, looking closely into every female face; lovers, with a maid
or two attendant on the young lady. All appeared to enjoy themselves,
especially the children, dancing on the esplanades, or rolling down the
slopes of the hills; and the loving pairs, whom it was rather
embarrassing to come upon unexpectedly, sitting together on the stone
seat of an arbor, with clasped hands, a passionate solemnity in the young
man's face, and a downcast pleasure in the lady's. Policemen, in cocked
hats and epaulets, cross-belts, and swords, were scattered about the
grounds, but interfered with nobody, though they seemed to keep an eye on
all. A sentinel stood in the hot sunshine, looking down over the garden
from the ramparts of the fortress.
For my part, in this foreign country, I have no objection to policemen or
any other minister of authority; though I remember, in America, I had an
innate antipathy to constables, and always sided with the mob against
law. This was very wrong and foolish, considering that I was one of
the sovereigns; but a sovereign, or any number of sovereigns, or the
twenty-millionth part of a sovereign, does not love to find himself, as
an American must, included within the delegated authority of his own
servants.
There is a sheet of water somewhere in the Boboli Gardens, inhabited by
swans; but this we did not see. We found a smaller pond, however, set
in marble, and surrounded by a parapet, and alive with a multitude of
fish. There were minnows by the thousand, and a good many gold-fish; and
J-----, who had brought some bread to feed the swans, threw in handfuls
of crumbs for the benefit of these finny people. They seemed to be
accustomed to such courtesies on the part of visitors; and immediately
the surface of the water was blackened, at the spot where each crumb
fell, with shoals of minnows, thrusting one another even above the
surface in their eagerness to snatch it. Within the depths of the pond,
the yellowish-green water--its hue being precisely that of the Arno--
would be reddened duskily with the larger bulk of two or three
gold-fishes, who finally poked their great snouts up among the minnows,
but generally missed the crumb. Beneath the circular margin of the pond,
there are little arches, into the shelter of which the fish retire, when
the noonday sun burns straight down into their dark waters. We went on
through the garden-paths, shadowed quite across by the high walls of box,
and reached an esplanade, whence we had a good view of Florence, with the
bare brown ridges on the northern side of the Arno, and glimpses of the
river itself, flowing like a street, between two rows of palaces. A
great way off, too, we saw some of the cloud-like peaks of the Apennines,
and, above them, the clouds into which the sun was descending, looking
quite as substantial as the distant mountains. The city did not present
a particularly splendid aspect, though its great Duomo was seen in the
middle distance, sitting in its circle of little domes, with the tall
campanile close by, and within one or two hundred yards of it, the high,
cumbrous bulk of the Palazzo Vecchio, with its lofty, machicolated, and
battlemented tower, very picturesque, yet looking exceedingly like a
martin-box, on a pole. There were other domes and towers and spires, and
here and there the distinct shape of an edifice; but the general picture
was of a contiguity of red earthen roofs, filling a not very broad or
extensive valley, among dry and ridgy hills, with a river-gleam
lightening up the landscape a little. U---- took out her pencil and
tablets, and began to sketch the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio; in doing
which, she immediately became an object of curiosity to some little boys
and larger people, who failed not, under such pretences as taking a
grasshopper off her dress, or no pretence at all, to come and look over
her shoulder. There is a kind of familiarity among these Florentines,
which is not meant to be discourteous, and ought to be taken in good
part.
We continued to ramble through the gardens, in quest of a good spot from
which to see the sunset, and at length found a stone bench, on the slope
of a hill, whence the entire cloud and sun scenery was fully presented to
us. At the foot of the hill were statues, and among them a Pegasus, with
wings outspread; and, a little beyond, the garden-front of the Pitti
Palace, which looks a little less like a state-prison here, than as it
fronts the street. Girls and children, and young men and old, were
taking their pleasure in our neighborhood; and, just before us, a lady
stood talking with her maid. By and by, we discovered her to be Miss
Howorth. There was a misty light, streaming down on the hither side of
the ridge of hills, that was rather peculiar; but the most remarkable
thing was the shape into which the clouds gathered themselves, after the
disappearance of the sun. It was like a tree, with a broad and heavy
mass of foliage, spreading high upward on the sky, and a dark and
well-defined trunk, which rooted itself on the verge of the horizon.
This morning we went to the Pitti Palace. The air was very sultry, and
the pavements, already heated with the sun, made the space between the
buildings seem like a close room. The earth, I think, is too much stoned
out of the streets of an Italian city,--paved, like those of Florence,
quite across, with broad flagstones, to the line where the stones of the
houses on each side are piled up. Thunder rumbled over our heads,
however, and the clouds were so dark that we scarcely hoped to reach the
palace without feeling the first drops of the shower. The air still
darkened and darkened, so that by the time we arrived at the suite of
picture-rooms the pictures seemed all to be changed to Rembrandts; the
shadows as black as midnight, with only some highly illuminated portions
gleaming out. The obscurity of the atmosphere made us sensible how
splendid is the adornment of these saloons. For the gilded cornices
shone out, as did the gilding of the arches and wreathed circles that
divide the ceiling into compartments, within which the frescos are
painted, and whence the figures looked dimly down, like gods out of a
mysterious sky. The white marble sculptures also gleamed from their
height, where winged cupids or cherubs gambolled aloft in bas-reliefs; or
allegoric shapes reclined along the cornices, hardly noticed, when the
daylight comes brightly into the window. On the walls, all the rich
picture-frames glimmered in gold, as did the framework of the chairs, and
the heavy gilded pedestals of the marble, alabaster, and mosaic tables.
These are very magnificent saloons; and since I have begun to speak of
their splendor, I may as well add that the doors are framed in polished,
richly veined marble, and the walls hung with scarlet damask.
It was useless to try to see the pictures. All the artists engaged in
copying laid aside their brushes; and we looked out into the square
before the palace, where a mighty wind sprang up, and quickly raised a
prodigious cloud of dust. It hid the opposite side of the street, and
was carried, in a great dusky whirl, higher than the roofs of the houses,
higher than the top of the Pitti Palace itself. The thunder muttered and
grumbled, the lightning now and then flashed, and a few rain-drops
pattered against the windows; but, for a long time, the shower held off.
At last it came down in a stream, and lightened the air to such a degree
that we could see some of the pictures, especially those of Rubens, and
the illuminated parts of Salvator Rosa's, and, best of all, Titian's
"Magdalen," the one with golden hair clustering round her naked body.
The golden hair, indeed, seemed to throw out a glory of its own. This
Magdalen is very coarse and sensual, with only an impudent assumption of
penitence and religious sentiment, scarcely so deep as the eyelids; but
it is a splendid picture, nevertheless, with those naked, lifelike arms,
and the hands that press the rich locks about her, and so carefully
permit those voluptuous breasts to be seen. She a penitent! She would
shake off all pretence to it as easily as she would shake aside that
clustering hair. . . . . Titian must have been a very good-for-nothing
old man.