distinction by his descendants. This monument was erected by Canova in
1807. Compared with the monuments of the fifteenth century and of the
Renaissance, which are to be seen in such splendid profusion in
Florence, these tombs seem so inferior that it is impossible not to
wonder how the decadence was brought about. It is not at Florence alone
that this feeling manifests itself; for at Venice, in the splendid
temple of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, beside the tombs of doges and
condottieri of the fifteenth century there stands that wretched monument
upon which the great name of Titian has been traced. This is evidently
the result of an inevitable law to which humanity is subject. Genius
comes into the world, grows, spreads, and covers the earth with its
shadow; then slowly the sap runs back from the verdant trunk, the tree
yields less luscious fruit and flowers not so fair, until at last the
branches wither and the tree dies.
Close beside Alfieri is buried Machiavelli, his tomb, like so many of
the others, being of modern erection, and consequently less beautiful
than if it had been the work of a sculptor who had studied in the school
of Ghiberti or Donatello. By the side of Machiavelli rests Luigi Lanzi,
a name less generally known, tho celebrated in his time as an
historiographer of painting, or an art critic as we should now call him.
His friend, Chevalier Ornofrio Boni, prepared the design for his tomb,
which was executed at public cost. The pulpit--a fine specimen of
fifteenth-century sculpture, carved by Benedetto da Maiano at the cost
of Pietro Mellini, who presented it to the church--is well worth close
inspection; and close by, between the tombs of Lanzi and Leonardo
Bruni, is a group in freestone, representing the Annunciation. This was
one of the first of Donatello's works, and gave an earnest of his future
genius.
The tomb of Leonardo Bruni Aretino is one of the five or six greatest
works of this nature which ever left the sculptor's hands; it has been
used as a model by the sculptors of all the tombs in Santa Maria del
Popolo at Rome. The monument to Leonardo Bruni is the highest expression
of sculptural art, combining all the taste of ancient Greece with the
grace, the power, the calm, the supreme harmony, and the perfection
which genius alone confers, its tranquil and subdued beauty comparing
favorably with the theatrical effect and garish splendor of the
monuments in St. John Lateran and St. Peter's at Rome. The superb
mausoleums of Leopardi and of the Lombardi at Venice are, perhaps,
equally beautiful; but I am inclined to give the preference to the work
of Bernardo Rossellini. He became acquainted with Leonardo Bruni at the
Papal Court, where he, as well as Leo Battista Alberti, was a director
of the pontifical works. The Madonna let into the upper part of the
monument is by Andrea Verocchio....
In visiting Santa Croce it is impossible not to feel how erroneous are
the views often held as to the exact place which will be allotted in the
roll of history to the men of the day. Many of the names in this
Pantheon are almost unknown, the tomb next to that of Galileo containing
the dust of Mulazzi-Signorini, who has never been heard of out of Italy.
Another unavoidable reflection is that the talent of the sculptor is
rarely in proportion to that of the man whose memory he is about to
perpetuate. Machiavelli was commemorated by two obscure sculptors like
Foggini and Ticcati, and Michael Angelo by Battista Lorenzi. What has
the world not lost by the refusal of Michael Angelo's offer to erect a
tomb to Dante when the city of Florence was about to ask Ravenna to
restore his remains to her!
The convent annexed to Santa Croce was also built by Arnolfo. It was
originally occupied by the Franciscan monks, and it was here that, from
1284 to 1782, the Inquisition held its sittings. The notorious
Frenchman, Gaulthier de Brienne, Duke of Athens, who for a brief period
ruled Florence as Captain of the People, selected this monastery as his
residence in June, 1342, but having in September of the same year
succeeded in getting himself elected ruler of Florence for life, he
removed to the Palazzo Vecchio. His reign, however, was of only brief
duration, for the year following he was expelled by the people.
THE UFFIZI GALLERY[39]
BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
What can be said of a gallery containing thirteen hundred pictures? For
my own part I abstain. Examine catalogs and collections of engravings,
or rather come here yourself. The impressions borne away from these
grand store-houses are too diverse and too numerous to be transmitted
by the pen. Observe this, that the Uffizi is a universal depot, a sort
of Louvre containing paintings of all times and schools, bronzes,
statues, sculptures, antique and modern terracottas, cabinets of gems,
an Etruscan museum, artists' portraits painted by themselves,
twenty-eight thousand original drawings, four thousand cameos and
ivories and eighty thousand medals. One resorts to it as to a library;
it is an abridgment and a specimen of everything....
We ascend the great marble staircase, pass the famous antique boar and
enter the long horseshoe corridor filled with busts and tapestried with
paintings. Visitors, about ten o'clock in the morning, are few; the mute
custodians remain in their corners; you seem to be really at home. It
all belongs to you, and what convenient possessions! Keepers and
majordomos are here to keep things in order, well dusted and intact; it
is not even necessary to give orders; matters go on of themselves
without jar or confusion, nobody giving himself the slightest concern;
it is an ideal world such as it ought to be. The light is excellent;
bright gleams from the windows fall on some distant white statues on the
rosy torso of a woman which comes out living from the shadowy obscurity.
Beyond, as far as the eye can see, marble gods and emperors extend away
in files up to the windows through which flickers the light ripple of
the Arno with the silvery swell on its crests and eddies.
You enter into the freedom and sweet repose of abstract life; the will
relaxes, the inner tumult subsides; one feels himself becoming a monk,
a modern monk. Here, as formerly in the cloisters, the tender inward
spirit, chafed by the necessities of action, insensibly revives in order
to commune with beings emancipated from life's obligations. It is so
sweet no longer to be! Not to be is so natural! And how peaceful the
realm of human forms withdrawn from human conflict! The pure thought
which follows them is so conscious that its illusion is transient; it
participates in their incorporeal serenity, and reverie, lingering in
turn over their voluptuousness and violence, brings back to it plenitude
without satiety.
On the left of the corridors open the cabinets of precious things--the
Niobe hall, that of portraits, that of modern bronzes, each with its
special group of treasures. You feel that you have a right to enter,
that great men are awaiting you. A selection is made among them; you
reenter the Tribune; five antique statues form a circle here--a slave
sharpening his knife; two interlocked wrestlers whose muscles are
strained and expanded; a charming Apollo of sixteen years whose compact
form has all the suppleness of the freshest adolescence; an admirable
Faun instinct with the animality of his species, unconsciously joyous
and dancing with all his might; and finally, the "Venus de Medici," a
slender young girl with a small delicate head, not a goddess like her
sister of Milo, but a perfect mortal and the work of some Praxiteles
fond of "hetairae," at ease in a nude state and free from that somewhat
mawkish delicacy and bashful coquetry which its copies, and the restored
arms with their thin fingers by Bernini, seem to impose on her.
She is, perhaps, a copy of that Venus of Cnidus of which Lucian relates
an interesting story; you imagine while looking at her, the youths'
kisses prest on the marble lips, and the exclamations of Charicles who,
on seeing it, declared Mars to be the most fortunate of gods. Around the
statues, on the eight sides of the wall, hang the masterpieces of the
leading painters. There is the "Madonna of the Goldfinch" by Raphael,
pure and candid, like an angel whose soul is a bud not yet in bloom; his
"St. John," nude, a fine youthful form of fourteen, healthy and
vigorous, in which the purest paganism lives over again; and especially
a superb head of a crowned female, radiant as a summer noonday, with
fixt and earnest gaze, her complexion of that powerful southern
carnation which the emotions do not change, where the blood does not
pulsate convulsively and to which passion only adds a warmer glow, a
sort of Roman muse in whom will still prevails over intellect, and whose
vivacious energy reveals itself in repose as well as in action.
In one corner a tall cavalier by Van Dyck, in black and with a broad
frill, seems as grandly and gloriously proud in character as in
proportions, primarily through a well-fed body and next through the
undisputed possession of authority and command. Three steps more and we
come to the "Flight into Egypt," by Correggio, the Virgin with a
charming spirited face wholly suffused with inward light in which the
purity, archness, gentleness and wildness of a young girl combine to
shed the tenderest grace and impart the most fascinating allurements.
Alongside of this a "Sibyl" by Guercino, with her carefully adjusted
coiffure and drapery, is the most spiritual and refined of sentimental
poetesses.
I pass twenty others in order to reserve the last look for Titian's two
Venuses. One, facing the door, reclines on a red velvet mantle, an ample
vigorous torso as powerful as one of Rubens' Bacchantes, but firmer--an
energetic and vulgar figure, a simple, strong unintellectual courtezan.
She lies extended on her back, caressing a little cupid naked like
herself, with the vacant seriousness and passivity of soul of an animal
in repose and expectant. The other, called "Venus with the Dog," is a
patrician's mistress, couched, adorned and ready. We recognize a palace
of the day, the alcove fitted up and colors tastefully and magnificently
contrasted for the pleasure of the eye; in the background are servants
arranging clothes; through a window a section of blue landscape is
visible; the master is about to arrive.
Nowadays we devour pleasure secretly like stolen fruit; then it was
served up on golden salvers and people sat down to it at a table. It is
because pleasure was not vile or bestial. This woman holding a bouquet
in her hand in this grand columnar saloon has not the vapid smile or the
wanton and malicious air of an adventuress about to commit a bad action.
The calm of evening enters the palace through noble architectural
openings. Under the pale green of the curtains lies the figure on a
white sheet, slightly flushed with the regular pulsation of life, and
developing the harmony of her undulating forms. The head is small and
placid; the soul does not rise above the corporal instincts; hence she
can resign herself to them without shame, while the poesy of art,
luxury and security on all sides comes to decorate and embellish them.
She is a courtezan but also a lady; in those days the former did not
efface the latter; one was as much a title as the other and, probably,
in demeanor, affection and intellect one was as good as the other. The
celebrated Imperia had her tomb in the church of San Gregorio, at Rome,
with this inscription: "Imperia, a Roman courtezan worthy of so great a
name, furnished an example to men of perfect beauty, lived twenty-six
years and twelve days, and died in 1511, August 25." ...
On passing from the Italian into the Flemish galleries one is completely
turned around; here are paintings executed for merchants content to
remain quietly at home eating good dinners and speculating over the
profits of their business; moreover in rainy and muddy countries dress
has to be cared for, and by the women more than the men. The mind feels
itself contracted on entering the circle of this well-to-do domestic
life; such is the impression of Corinne when from liberal Italy she
passes to rigid and dreary Scotland. And yet there is a certain picture,
a large landscape by Rembrandt, which equals and surpasses all; a dark
sky bursting with showers among flocks of screaming crows; beneath, is
an infinite stretch of country as desolate as a cemetery; on the right a
mass of barren rocks of so mournful and lugubrious a tint as to attain
to the sublime in effect. So is it with an andante of Beethoven after an
Italian Opera.
FLORENCE EIGHTY YEARS AGO[40]
BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
There is a great deal of prattle about Italian skies; the skies and
clouds of Italy, so far as I have had an opportunity of judging, do not
present so great a variety of beautiful appearances as our own; but the
Italian atmosphere is far more uniformly fine than ours. Not to speak of
its astonishing clearness, it is pervaded by a certain warmth of color
which enriches every object. This is more remarkable about the time of
sunset, when the mountains put on an aerial aspect, as if they belonged
to another and fairer world; and a little after the sun has gone down,
the air is flushed with a glory which seems to transfigure all that it
encloses.
Many of the fine old palaces of Florence, you know, are built in a
gloomy tho grand style of architecture, of a dark-colored stone, massive
and lofty, and overlooking narrow streets that lie in almost perpetual
shade. But at the hour of which I am speaking, the bright warm radiance
reflected from the sky to the earth, fills the darkest lanes, streams
into the most shadowy nooks, and makes the prison-like structures
glitter as with a brightness of their own.
It is now nearly the middle of October, and we have had no frost. The
strong summer heats which prevailed when I came hither, have by the
slowest gradations subsided into an agreeable autumnal temperature. The
trees keep their verdure, but I perceive their foliage growing thinner,
and when I walk in the Cascine on the other side of the Arno, the
rustling of the lizards, as they run among the heaps of crisp leaves,
reminds me that autumn is wearing away, tho the ivy which clothes the
old elms has put forth a profuse array of blossoms, and the walks murmur
with bees like our orchards in spring. As I look along the declivities
of the Appenines, I see the raw earth every day more visible between the
ranks of olive-trees and the well-pruned maples which support the vines.
If I have found my expectations of Italian scenery, in some respects,
below the reality; in other respects, they have been disappointed. The
forms of the mountains are wonderfully picturesque, and their effect is
heightened by the rich atmosphere through which they are seen, and by
the buildings, imposing from their architecture or venerable from time,
which crown the eminences. But if the hand of man has done something to
embellish this region, it has done more to deform it. Not a tree is
suffered to retain its natural shape, not a brook to flow in its natural
channel. An exterminating war is carried on against the natural herbage
of the soil. The country is without woods and green fields; and to him
who views the vale of the Arno "from the top of Fiesole," or any of the
neighboring heights, grand as he will allow the circle of the mountains
to be, and magnificent the edifices with which the region is adorned, it
appears, at any time after mid-summer, a huge valley of dust, planted
with low rows of the pallid and thin-leaved olive, or the more dwarfish
maple on which vines are trained.
The simplicity of nature, so far as can be done, is destroyed; there is
no fine sweep of forest, no broad expanse of meadow or pasture ground,
no ancient and towering trees clustered about the villas, no rows of
natural shrubbery following the course of the brooks and rivers. The
streams, which are often but the beds of torrents dry during the summer,
are confined in straight channels by stone walls and embankments; the
slopes are broken up and disfigured by terraces; and the trees are kept
down by constant pruning and lopping, until half way up the sides of the
Appenines, where the limit of cultivation is reached, and thence to the
summit is a barren steep of rock, without herbage or soil. The grander
features of the landscape, however, are fortunately beyond the power of
man to injure; the lofty mountain-summits, bare precipices cleft with
chasms, and pinnacles of rock piercing the sky, betokening, far more
than any thing I have seen elsewhere, a breaking up of the crust of the
globe in some early period of its existence. I am told that in May and
June the country is much more beautiful than at present, and that owing
to a drought it now appears under disadvantage....
Florence, from being the residence of the Court,[41] and from the vast
number of foreigners who throng to it, presents during several months of
the year an appearance of great bustle and animation. Four thousand
English, an American friend tells me, visit Florence every winter, to
say nothing of the occasional residents from France, Germany, and
Russia. The number of visitors from the latter country is every year
increasing, and the echoes of the Florence gallery have been taught to
repeat the strange accents of the Slavonic. Let me give you the history
of a fine day in October, passed at the window of my lodgings on the
Lung Arno, close to the bridge.
Waked by the jangling of all the bells in Florence and by the noise of
carriages departing loaded with travelers, for Rome and other places in
the south of Italy, I rise, dress myself, and take my place at the
window. I see crowds of men and women from the country, the former in
brown velvet jackets, and the latter in broad-brimmed straw hats,
driving donkeys loaded with panniers or trundling hand-carts before
them, heaped with grapes, figs, and all the fruits of the orchard, the
garden, and the field. They have hardly passed, when large flocks of
sheep and goats make their appearance, attended by shepherds and their
families, driven by the approach of winter from the Appenines, and
seeking the pastures of the Maremma, a rich, but, in the summer, an
unhealthy tract on the coast.
The men and the boys are drest in knee-breeches, the women in bodices,
and both sexes wear capotes with pointed hoods, and felt hats with
conical crowns; they carry long staves in their hands, and their arms
are loaded with kids and lambs too young to keep pace with their
mothers. After the long procession of sheep and goats and dogs and men
and women and children, come horses loaded with cloths and poles for
tents, kitchen utensils, and the rest of the younglings of the flock.
A little after sunrise I see well-fed donkeys, in coverings of red
cloth, driven over the bridge to be milked for invalids. Maid-servants,
bare-headed, with huge high carved combs in their hair, waiters of
coffee-houses carrying the morning cup of coffee or chocolate to their
customers, baker's boys with a dozen loaves on a board balanced on their
heads, milkmen with rush baskets filled with flasks of milk, are
crossing the streets in all directions. A little later the bell of the
small chapel opposite to my window rings furiously for a quarter of an
hour, and then I hear mass chanted in a deep strong nasal tone.
As the day advances, the English, in white hats and white pantaloons,
come out of their lodgings, accompanied sometimes by their hale and
square-built spouses, and saunter stiffly along the Arno, or take their
way to the public galleries and museums. Their massive, clean, and
brightly-polished carriages also begin to rattle through the streets,
setting out on excursions to some part of the environs of Florence--to
Fiesole, to the Pratolino, to the Bello Sguardo, to the Poggio
Imperiale. Sights of a different kind now present themselves. Sometimes
it is a troop of stout Franciscan friars, in sandals and brown robes,
each carrying his staff and wearing a brown broad-brimmed hat with a
hemispherical crown. Sometimes it is a band of young theological
students, in purple cassocks with red collars and cuffs, let out on a
holiday, attended by their clerical instructors, to ramble in the
Cascine. There is a priest coming over the bridge, a man of venerable
age and great reputation for sanctity--the common people crowd around
him to kiss his hand, and obtain a kind word from him as he passes.
But what is that procession of men in black gowns, black gaiters, and
black masks, moving swiftly along, and bearing on their shoulders a
litter covered with black cloth? These are the Brethren of Mercy, who
have assembled at the sound of the cathedral bell, and are conveying
some sick or wounded person to the hospital. As the day begins to
decline, the numbers of carriages in the streets, filled with
gaily-drest people attended by servants in livery, increases. The Grand
Duke's equipage, an elegant carriage drawn by six horses, with coachmen,
footmen, and out-riders in drab-colored livery, comes from the Pitti
Palace, and crosses the Arno, either by the bridge close to my lodgings,
or by that called Alla Santa Trinità, which is in full sight from the
windows. The Florentine nobility, with their families, and the English
residents, now throng to the Cascine, to drive at a slow pace through
its thickly-planted walks of elms, oaks, and ilexes.
As the sun is sinking I perceive the Quay, on the other side of the
Arno, filled with a moving crowd of well-drest people, walking to and
fro, and enjoying the beauty of the evening. Travelers now arrive from
all quarters, in cabriolets, in calashers, in the shabby "vettura," and
in the elegant private carriage drawn by post-horses, and driven by
postillions in the tightest possible deer-skin breeches, the smallest
red coats, and the hugest jack-boots. The streets about the doors of the
hotels resound with the cracking of whips and the stamping of horses,
and are encumbered with carriages, heaps of baggage, porters,
postillions, couriers, and travelers. Night at length arrives--the time
of spectacles and funerals.
The carriages rattle toward the opera-houses. Trains of people,
sometimes in white robes and sometimes in black, carrying blazing
torches and a cross elevated on a high pole before a coffin, pass
through the streets chanting the service for the dead. The Brethren of
Mercy may also be seen engaged in their office. The rapidity of their
pace, the flare of their torches, the gleam of their eyes through their
masks, and their sable garb, give them a kind of supernatural
appearance. I return to bed, and fall asleep amid the shouts of people
returning from the opera, singing as they go snatches of the music with
which they had been entertained during the evening.
III
VENICE
THE APPROACH FROM THE SEA[42]
BY CHARLES YRIARTE
To taste in all their fulness his first impressions of Venice, the
traveler should arrive there by sea, at mid-day, when the sun is high.
By degrees, as the ship which carries him enters the channels, he will
see the unparalleled city emerging from the lap of the lagoon, with its
proud campaniles, its golden spires, its gray or silvery domes and
cupolas. Advancing along the narrow channels of navigation, posts and
piles dot here and there with black that sheet of steel, and give
substance to the dream, making solid and tangible the foreground of the
illusive distance.