We set out then for Ferrara, in our kind friend’s post-chaise; that is,
my maid and I did: our good-natured gentlemen creeping slowly after in
the broken coach; and how ended this project for insuring safety? Why in
the chaise losing its hind wheel, and in our return to the carriage we
had quitted. But it is for ever so, I think;--the sick folks live always,
and the well ones die.
We took turn therefore and left our friends; but could not forbear a
visit to Cento, where I wished much to see what Guercino had done for
the ornament of his native place, and was amply repaid my pains by the
sight of one picture, which, for its immediate power over the mind, at
least over mine, has no equal even in Palazzo Zampieri. It is a scene
highly touching. The appearance of our Saviour to his Mother after his
resurrection. The dignity, the divinity of the Christ! the terror-checked
transport visible in the parent Saint, whose expressive countenance
and pathetic attitude display fervent adoration, maternal tenderness,
and meek humility at once! How often have I said, _this_ is the finest
picture we have seen yet! when looking on the Caraccis and their school.
I will say no more, the painter’s art can go no further than _this_.
My partial preference of Guercino to any thing and to every thing,
shall not however bribe me to suppress my grief and indignation at his
strange method of commemorating his own name over the altar where he was
baptised, which shocks every protestant traveller by its profaneness,
while the Romanists admire his invention, and applaud his piety. Guercino
then, so called because he was the _little one-eyed man_, had a fancy
to represent his _real_ appellation of _John Francis Barbieri_ in the
church; and took this mode as an ingenious one, painting St. John upon
the right hand, St. Francis on the left, as two large full-length
figures, and God the Father in the middle with a _long beard_ for
_Barbieri_.
This is a mixture of Abel Drugger’s contrivance in the Alchymist, and
the infantine folly of three babies I once knew in England, children
of a nobleman, who were severely whipt by their governess for playing
at Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, sitting upon three chairs, with
solemn countenances, in order to impress their tender fancies with a
representation of what the good governess innocently and laudably had
told them about the mysterious and incomprehensible Trinity. Let me add,
that the eldest of these babies was not six years old, and the youngest
but four, when they were caught in the blasphemous folly. Our Italians
seem to be got very little further at forty.
Padua appears cleaner and prettier than it did last year; but so many
things contribute to make me love it better, that it is no wonder one is
prejudiced in its favour. It was _so_ difficult to get safe hither, the
roads being very bad, the people were so kind when we were here last, and
the very inn-keeper and his assistants seemed so obligingly rejoiced to
see us again, that I felt my heart quite expand at entering the Aquila
d’oro, where we were soon rejoined by Mr. and Mrs. Greatheed, with whom
we had parted in the Romagna, when they took the Perugia road, instead
of returning by Bologna, a place they had seen before. Had we come
three days sooner we might have seen the transit of Mercury from Abate
Toaldo’s observatory; but our own transit took up all our thoughts, and
it is a very great mercy that we are come safe at last. I think it was as
much as four bulls and six horses could do to drag us into Rovigo.
Bologna la Grassa
Ma Padua la passa[31],
say the Venetians: and round this town where the heat is indeed
prodigious, they get the best vipers for the Venice treacle, I am told.
Here are quantities of curious plants to be seen blooming now in the
botanical garden, and our kind professor told me I need not languish so
for horse chesnuts; for they would all be in flower as we returned up the
Brenta from Venice. “They are all in flower _now_, Sir,” said I, “in my
own grounds, eight miles from London: but our English oaks are not half
so forward as yours are.” He recollected the aphorism so much a favourite
with our country folks; how a British heart ought not to dilate with the
early sunshine of prosperity, or droop at the first blasts of adverse
fortune, as the British oak refuses to put out his leaves at summer’s
early felicitations, and scorns to drop them at winter’s first rude shake.
Well! I have once more walked over St. Antony’s church, and examined the
bas-reliefs that adorn his shrine; but their effect has ceased. Whoever
has spent some time in the Musæum Clementinum is callous to the wonders
which sculpture can perform.
Has one not read in Ulloa’s travels, of a resting-place on the side of a
Cordillera among the Andes, where the ascending traveller is regularly
observed to put on additional clothing, while he who comes down the
mountain feels so hot that he throws his clothes away? So it is with the
shrine of St. Antonio di Padua, and one’s passion for the sculpture that
adorns it: while Santa Giustina’s church regains her power over the mind,
a power never missed by simplicity, while great effort has often small
effect. But we are hastening to Venice, and shall leave our cares and our
coach behind; superfluous as they both are, in a city which admits of
neither.