STUDY IN FLORENCE
Italy once more! Again the old palazzo at Albaro and the old friends
surrounding us! My work never relaxed, for I set up a little studio and
went in for life-size heads, and got more and more facility with the
brush. The kindly peasants let me paint them, and I victimised my
obliging friends and had professional models out from Genoa. That was a
very greatly enjoyed autumn, winter and spring, and the gaieties of the
English Colony, the private theatricals, the concerts at Villa
Novello--all those things did me good. The childish carnival revels had
still power over me--yea, _more_--though I _was_ grown up, and, to tell
the truth, I got all the fun out of them that was possible within
bounds. “The Red Cross Sketch Book,” which I filled with illustrations
of our journey out and of life at Genoa, I dedicated to the club and
sent to them when we left for Florence.
We found Genoa just as we had left it, still the brilliantly picturesque
city of the sea, its populace brightly clad in their Ligurian national
dress, the women still wearing the pezzotto, and the men the red cap I
loved; the port all delightful with oriental character, its shouting
muleteers and _facchini_, its fruit and flower sellers in the narrow
streets and entrances to the palaces--all the old local colour. Alas! I
was there only the other day, and found all the local charm had
gone--modernised away!
When we left Genoa in April my father tried to get a _vetturino_ to take
us as far as Pisa by road on our way to Florence, for auld lang syne,
but Antonio--he who used to drive us into Genoa in the old days--said
that was now impossible on account of the railway--“_Non ci conviene,
signore_!”--but he would take us as far as Spezzia. So, to our delight,
we were able once more to experience the pleasures of the road and avoid
that truly horrible series of suffocating tunnels that tries us so much
on that portion of the coastline. At Sestri Levante I wrote: “I sit down
at this pleasant hotel, with the silent sea glimmering in the early
night before me outside the open window, to note down our journey thus
far. The day has been truly glorious, the sea without even the thinnest
rim of white along the coast, and such exquisite combinations of clouds.
We left Villa Quartara at ten, with Madame Vittorina and the servants in
tears. Majolina comes with us; she is such a good little maid. We had
three good horses, but for the Bracco Pass we shall have an extra one.
There is no way of travelling like this, in an open carriage; it is so
placid; there is no hurrying to catch trains and struggling in crowds,
no waiting in dismal _salles d’attente_. And then compare the entry into
the towns by the high road and through the principal streets, perhaps
through a city gate, the horse’s hoofs clattering and the whip cracking
so merrily and the people standing about in groups watching us pass, to
sneaking into a station, one of which is just like the other, which
hasn’t the slightest _couleur locale_ about it, and is sure to have
unsightly surroundings.
“Away we went merrily, I feeling very jolly. The colour all along was
ravishing, as may be imagined, seeing what a perfect day it was and
that this is the loveliest season of the year. We dined at dear old
Ruta, where also the horses had a good rest and where I was able to
sketch something down. From Ruta to Sestri I rode by Majolina on the
box, by far the best position of all, and didn’t I enjoy it! The horses’
bells jingled so cheerily and those three sturdy horses took us along so
well. Rapallo and Chiavari! Dear old friends, what delicious
picturesqueness they had, what lovely approaches to them by roads
bordered with trees! The views were simply distracting. Sestri is a gem.
Why don’t water-colour painters come here in shoals? What colouring the
mountains had at sunset, and I had only a pencil and wretched little
sketch book.
“_Spezzia, April 28th, 1869._--A repetition of yesterday in point of
weather. I feel as though I had been steeped all day in some balmy
liquid of gold, purple, and blue. I have a Titianesque feeling hovering
about me produced by the style of landscape we have passed through and
the faces of the people who are working in the patches of cultivation
under the mulberries and vines, and that intense, deep blue sky with
massive white clouds floating over it. We exclaimed as much at the
beauty of the women as at the purple of the mountains and the green of
the budding mulberries and poplars. And the men and boys; what perfect
types; such fine figures and handsome faces, such healthy colour! We
left the hotel at Sestri, with its avenue of orange trees in flower, at
ten o’clock, and, of course, crossed the Bracco to-day. We dined at a
little place called Bogliasco, in whose street, under our windows,
handsome youths with bare legs and arms were playing at a game of ball
which called forth fine action. I did not know at first whether to look
well at them all or sketch them down one by one, but did both, and I
hope to make a regular drawing of the group from the sketch I took and
from memory. We stopped at the top of the hill, from which is seen La
Spezzia lying below, with its beautiful bay and the Carara Mountains
beyond. Here ends our drive, for to-morrow we take the train for
Florence.
“_Florence, April 29th._--Magnificent, cloudless weather. But, oh! what
a wearisome journey we had, the train crawling from one station to
another and stopping at each such a time, whilst we baked in the
cushioned carriage and couldn’t even have lovely things to look at,
surrounded by the usual railway eyesores. We passed close by the Pisan
Campo Santo, and had a very good view of the Leaning Tower and the
Duomo. Such hurrying and struggling at the Pisa station to get into the
train for Florence, having, of course, to carry all our small baggage
ourselves. Railway travelling in Italy is odious. It was very lovely to
see Florence in the distance, with those domes and towers I know so well
by heart from pictures, but we were very limp indeed, the wearisome
train having taken all our enthusiasm away. Everything as we arrived
struck us as small, and I am still so dazzled by the splendour of Genoa
that my eyes cannot, as it were, comprehend the brown, grey and white
tones of this quiet-coloured little city. I must _Florentine_ myself as
fast as I can. This hotel is on the Lung’ Arno, and charming was it to
look out of the windows in the lovely evening and see the river below
and the dome of the Carmine and tower of Santo Spirito against the clear
sky with, further off, the hills with their convents (alas! empty now)
and clusters of cypresses. No greater contrast to Genoa could be than
Florence in every way. Oh! may this city of the arts see me begin (and
finish) my first regular picture. _April 30th._--I and Papa strolled
about the streets to get a general impression of ‘_Firenze la gentile_,’
and looked into the Duomo, which is indeed bare and sad-coloured inside
except in its delicious painted windows over the altars, the harmonious
richness of which I should think could not be exceeded by any earthly
means. The outside is very gay and cheerful, but some of the marble has
browned itself into an appearance of wood. Oh! dear Giotto’s Tower,
could elegance go beyond this? Is not this an example of the complete
_savoir faire_ of those true-born artists of old? And the ‘Gates of
Paradise’! The delight of seeing these from the street is great, instead
of in a museum. But Michael Angelo’s enthusiastic exclamation in their
praise rather makes one smile, for we know that it must have been in
admiration of their purely technical beauties, as the gates are by no
means large and grand _as_ gates, and the bronze is rather dark for an
entrance into Paradise! I reverently saluted the Palazzo Vecchio, and am
quite ready to get very much attached to the brown stone of Florence in
time.
“_Villa Lamporecchi, May 1st._--We two and Papa had a good spell at the
Uffizi in the morning, and in the afternoon we took possession of this
pleasing house, which is so cool and has far-spreading views, one of
Florence from a terrace leading out of what I shall make my studio. A
garden and vineyards sloping down to the valley where Brunelleschi’s
brown dome shows above the olives.”
[Illustration: IN FLORENCE DURING MY STUDIES IN /69.]
Our mother did many lovely water colours, one especially exquisite
one of Fiesole seen in a shimmering blue midsummer light. That, and one
done on the Lung’ Arno, to which Shelley’s line
“The purple noon’s transparent might”
could justly be applied, are treasured by me. She understood sunshine
and how to paint it.
“_May 3rd._--I already feel Florence growing upon me. I begin to
understand the love English people of culture and taste get for this
most interesting and gentle city. The ground one treads on is all
historic, but it is in the artistic side of its history that I naturally
feel the greatest interest, and it is a delightful thing to go about
those streets and be reminded at every turn of the great Painters,
Architects, Sculptors I have read so much of. Here a palace designed by
Raphael, there a glorious row of windows carved by Michael Angelo, there
some exquisite ironwork wrought by some other born genius. I think the
style of architecture of the Strozzi Palace, the Ricardi, and others, is
perfection in its way, though at first, with the brilliant whites,
yellows and pinks of Genoa still in my eye, I felt rather depressed by
the uniform brown of the huge stones of which they are built. No wonder
I haunt the well-known gallery which runs over the Ponte Vecchio, lined
with the sketches, studies, and first thoughts of most of the great
masters. One delights almost more in these than in many of the finished
pictures. They bring one much more in contact, as it were, with the
great dead, and make one familiar with their methods of work. One sees
what little slips they made, how they modified their first thoughts,
over and over again, before finally fixing their choice. Very
encouraging to the struggling beginner to see these evidences of their
troubles!
“I have never, before I came here where so many of them have lived,
realised the old masters as our comrades; I have never been so near them
and felt them to be mortals exactly like ourselves. This city and its
environs are so little changed, the greater part of them not at all,
since those grand old Michael Angelesque days that one feels brought
quite close to the old painters, seeing what they saw and walking on the
very same old pavement as they walked on, passing the houses where they
lived, and so forth.”
I was at that time bent on achieving my first “great picture,” to be
taken from Keats’s poem “The Pot of Basil”; Lorenzo riding to his death
between the two brothers:
So the two brothers and their murdered man
Rode past fair Florence,
but, fortunately, I resolved instead to put in further training before
attacking such a canvas, and I became the pupil of a very fine academic
draughtsman, though no great colourist, Giuseppe Bellucci. On alternate
days to those spent in his studio I copied in careful pencil some of the
exquisite figures in Andrea del Sarto’s frescoes in the cloisters of the
SS. Annunziata.
The heat was so great that, as it became more intense, I had to be at
Bellucci’s, in the Via Santa Reparata, at eight o’clock instead of 8.30,
getting there in the comparative cool of the morning, after a salutary
walk into Florence, accompanied by little Majolina, no _signorina_ being
at liberty to walk alone. What heat! The sound of the ceaseless hiss of
the _cicale_ gave one the impression of the country’s undergoing the
ordeal of being _frizzled_ by the sun. I record the appearance of my
first fire-fly on the night of May 6th. What more pleasing rest could
one have, after the heat and work of the day, than by a stroll through
the vineyards in the early night escorted by these little creatures with
their golden lamps?
The cloisters were always cool, and I enjoyed my lonely hours there, but
the Bellucci studio became at last too much of a furnace. My master had
already several times suggested a rest, mopping his brow, when I also
began to doze over my work at last, and the model wouldn’t keep his eyes
open. I record mine as “rolling in my head.”
I see in memory the blinding street outside, and hear the fretful
stamping of some tethered mule teased with the flies. The very Members
of Parliament in the Palazzo Vecchio had departed out of the impossible
Chamber, and, all things considered, I allowed Bellucci to persuade me
to take a little month of rest--“_un mesetto di riposo_”--at home during
part of July and August. That little month of rest was very nice. I did
a water colour of the white oxen ploughing in our _podere_; I helped (?)
the _contadini_ to cut the wheat with my sickle, and sketched them while
they went through the elaborate process of threshing, enlivened with
that rough innocent romping peculiar to young peasants, which gave me
delightful groups in movement. I love and respect the Italian peasant.
He has high ideas of religion, simplicity of living, honour. I can’t say
I feel the same towards his _betters_ (?) in the Italian social scale.
The grapes ripened. The scorched _cicale_ became silent, having, as the
country people declared, returned to the earth whence they sprang. The
heat had passed even _cicala_ pitch. I went back to the studio when the
“little month” had run out and the heat had sensibly cooled, and worked
very well there. I find this record of a birthday expedition:
“I suggested a visit to the convent of San Salvi out at the Porta alla
Croce, where is to be seen Andrea del Sarto’s ‘Cenacolo.’ This we did in
the forenoon, and in the afternoon visited Careggi. Enough isn’t said
about Andrea. What volumes of praise have been written, what endless
talk goes on, about Raphael, and how little do people seem to appreciate
the quiet truth and soberness and subtlety of Andrea. This great fresco
is very striking as one enters the vaulted whitewashed refectory and
sees it facing the entrance at the further end. The great point in this
composition is the wonderful way in which this master has disposed the
hands of all those figures as they sit at the long table. In the row of
heads Andrea has revelled in his love of variety, and each is stamped,
as usual, with strong individuality. This beautifully coloured fresco
has impressed me with another great fact, viz., the wonderful value of
_bright yellow_ as well as white in a composition to light it up. The
second Apostle on our Saviour’s left, who is slightly leaning forward on
his elbow and loosely clasping one hand in the other, has his shoulders
wrapped round with yellow drapery, the horizontally disposed folds of
which are the _ne plus ultra_ of artistic arrangement. There is
something very realistic in these figures and their attitudes. Some
people are down on me when they hear me going on about the rendering of
individual character being the most admirable of artistic qualities.
“At 3.30 we went for such a drive to Careggi, once Lorenzo de’ Medici’s
villa--where, indeed, he died--and now belonging to Mr. Sloane, a
‘bloated capitalist’ of distant England. The ‘keepsake’ beauty of the
views thence was perfect. A combination of garden kept in English order
and lovely Italian landscape is indeed a rich feast for the eye. I was
in ecstasies all along. We made a great _détour_ on our return and
reached home in the after-glow, which cast a light on the houses as of a
second sun.
“_October 18th._--Went with Papa and Alice to see Raphael’s ‘Last
Supper’ at the Egyptian Museum, long ago a convent. It is not perfectly
sure that Raphael painted it, but, be that as it may, its excellence is
there, evident to all true artists. It seems to me, considering that it
is an early work, that none but one of the first-class men could have
painted it. It offers a very instructive contrast with del Sarto’s at
San Salvi. The latter immediately strikes the spectator with its effect,
and makes him exclaim with admiration at the very first moment--at
least, I am speaking for myself. The former (Raphael’s) grew upon me in
an extraordinary way after I had come close up to it and dwelt long on
the heads, separately; but on entering the room the rigidity and
formality of the figures, whose aureoles of solid metal are all on one
level, the want of connection of these figures one with the other, and
the uniform light over them all had an unprepossessing effect.
Artistically considered this fresco is not to be mentioned with
Andrea’s, but then del Sarto was a ripe and experienced artist when he
painted the San Salvi fresco, whereas they conjecture Raphael to have
been only twenty-two when he painted this. There is more spiritual
feeling in Raphael’s, more dignity and ideality altogether; no doubt a
higher conception, and some feel more satisfied with it than with
Andrea’s. The refinement and melancholy look of St. Matthew is a thing
to be thought of through life. St. Andrew’s face, with the long,
double-peaked white beard, is glorious, and is a contrast to the other
old man’s head next to it, St. Peter’s, which is of a harder kind, but
not less wonderful. St. Bartholomew, with his dark complexion and black
beard, is strongly marked from the others, who are either fair or
grey-headed. The profile of St. Philip, with a pointed white beard, gave
me great delight, and I wish I could have been left an hour there to
solitary contemplation. St. James Major, a beardless youth, is a true
Perugino type, a very familiar face. Judas is a miserable little figure,
smaller than the others, though on the spectator’s side of the table in
the foreground. He seems not to have been taken from life at all.
“On one of the walls of the room are hung some little chalk studies of
hands, etc., for the fresco, most exquisitely drawn, and seeming, some
of them, better modelled than in the finished work; notably St. Peter’s
hand which holds the knife. Is there no Modern who can give us a ‘Last
Supper’ to rank with this, Andrea’s and Leonardo’s?”
This entry in my Diary of student days leads my thoughts to poor
Leonardo da Vinci. A painter must sympathise with him through his
recorded struggles to accomplish, in his “Cenacolo,” what may be called
the almost superhuman achievement of worthily representing the Saviour’s
face. Had he but been content to use the study which we see in the Brera
gallery! But, no! he must try to do better at Santa Maria delle
Grazie--and fails. How many sleepless nights and nerve-racking days he
must have suffered during this supreme attempt, ending in complete
discouragement. I think the Brera study one of the very few satisfactory
representations of the divine Countenance left us in art. To me it is
supreme in its infinite pathos. But it is always the way with the truly
great geniuses; they never feel that they have reached the heights they
hoped to win.
Ruskin tells us that Albert Dürer, on finishing one of his own works,
felt absolutely satisfied. “It could not be done better,” was the
complacent German’s verdict. Ruskin praises him for this, because the
verdict was true. So it was, as regarding a piece of mere handicraft.
But to return to the Diary.
“We went then to pay a call on Michael Angelo at his apartment in the
Via Ghibellina. I do not put it in those words as a silly joke, but
because it expresses the feeling I had at the moment. To go to his
house, up his staircase to his flat, and ring at his door produced in my
mind a vivid impression that he was alive and, living there, would
receive us in his drawing-room. Everything is well nigh as it was in his
time, but restored and made to look like new, the place being far more
as he saw it than if it were half ruinous and going to decay. Even the
furniture is the same, but new velveted and varnished. It is a pretty
apartment, such as one can see any day in nice modern houses. I touched
his little slippers, which are preserved, together with his two walking
sticks, in a tiny cabinet where he used to write, and where I wondered
how he found space to stretch his legs. The slippers are very small and
of a peculiar, rather Eastern, shape, and very little worn. Altogether,
I could not realise the lapse of time between his date and ours. The
little sketches round the walls of the room, which is furnished with
yellow satin chairs and sofa, are very admirable and free. The Titian
hung here is a very splendid bit of colour. This was a very impressive
visit. The bronze bust of M. A. by Giovanni da Bologna is magnificent;
it gives immense character, and must be the image of the man.”
On October 21st I bade good-bye to Bellucci. His system forbade praise
for the pupil, which was rather depressing, but he relaxed sufficiently
to tell my father at parting that I would do things (_Farà delle cose_)
and that I was untiring (_istancabile_), taking study seriously, not
like the others (_le altre_). With this I had to be content. He had
drilled me in drawing more severely than I could have been drilled in
England. For that purpose he had kept me a good deal to painting in
monochrome, so as to have my attention absorbed by the drawing and
modelling and _chiaroscuro_ of an object without the distraction of
colour. He also said to me I could now walk alone (_può camminare da
sè_), and with this valedictory good-bye we parted. Being free, I spent
the remaining time at Florence in visits to the churches and galleries
with my father and sister, seeing works I had not had time to study up
till then.
“_October 22nd._--We first went to see the Ghirlandajos at Santa
Trinità, which I had not yet seen. They are fading, as, indeed, most of
the grand old frescoes are doing, but the heads are full of character,
and the grand old costumes are still plainly visible. From thence we
went to the small cloister called _dello Scalzo_, where are the
exquisite monochromes of Andrea del Sarto. Would that this cloister had
been roofed in long ago, for the weather has made sad havoc of these
precious things. Being in monochrome and much washed out, they have a
faded look indeed; but how the drawing tells! What a master of anatomy
was he, and yet how unexaggerated, how true: he was content to limit
himself to Nature; _knew where to draw the line_, had, in fact, the
reticence which Michael Angelo couldn’t recognise; could stop at the
limit of truth and good taste through which the great sculptor burst
with coarse violence. There are some backs of legs in those frescoes
which are simply perfect. These works illustrate the events in the life
of John the Baptist. Here, again, how marvellous and admirable are all
the hands, not only in drawing, but in action, how touching the heads,
how grand and thoroughly artistic the draperies and the poses of the
figures. A splendid lesson in the management of drapery is, especially,
the fresco to the right of the entrance, the ‘Vision of Zacharias.’
There are four figures, two immediately in the foreground and at either
extremity of the composition; the two others, seen between them, further
off. The nearest ones are in draperies of the grandest and largest
folds, with such masses of light and dark, of the most satisfying
breadth; and the two more distant ones have folds of a slightly more
complex nature, if such a word can be used with regard to such a
thoroughly broadly treated work. This gives such contrast and relief
between the near and distant figures, and the absence of the aid of
colour makes the science of art all the more simply perceived. Most
beautiful is the fresco representing the birth of St. John, though the
lower part is quite lost. What consummate drapery arrangements! The nude
figure _vue de dos_ in the fresco of St. John baptising his disciples is
a masterly bit of drawing. Though the paint has fallen off many parts of
these frescoes, one can trace the drawing by the incision which was
made on the wet plaster to mark all the outlines preparatory to
beginning the painting.”
These are but a few of my art student’s impressions of this
fondly-remembered Florentine epoch, which are recorded at great length
in the Diary for my own study. And now away to Rome!