Those who have a day to spare at Montepulciano can scarcely spend it
better than in an excursion to Pienza and San Quirico. Leaving the city
by the road which takes a westerly direction, the first object of
interest is the Church of San Biagio, placed on a fertile plateau
immediately beneath the ancient acropolis. It was erected by Antonio di
San Gallo in 1518, and is one of the most perfect specimens existing of
the sober classical style. The Church consists of a Greek square,
continued at the east end into a semicircular tribune, surmounted by a
central cupola, and flanked by a detached bell-tower, ending in a
pyramidal spire. The whole is built of solid yellow travertine, a
material which, by its warmth of colour, is pleasing to the eye, and
mitigates the mathematical severity of the design. Upon entering, we
feel at once what Alberti called the music of this style; its large and
simple harmonies, depending for effect upon sincerity of plan and
justice of balance. The square masses of the main building, the
projecting cornices and rounded tribune, meet together and soar up into
the cupola; while the grand but austere proportions of the arches and
the piers compose a symphony of perfectly concordant lines. The music is
grave and solemn, architecturally expressed in terms of measured space
and outlined symmetry. The whole effect is that of one thing pleasant to
look upon, agreeably appealing to our sense of unity, charming us by
grace and repose; not stimulative nor suggestive, not multiform nor
mysterious. We are reminded of the temples imagined by Francesco
Colonna, and figured in his _Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_. One of these
shrines has, we feel, come into actual existence here; and the religious
ceremonies for which it is adapted are not those of the Christian
worship. Some more primitive, less spiritual rites, involving less of
tragic awe and deep-wrought symbolism, should be here performed. It is
better suited for Polifilo's lustration by Venus Physizoe than for the
mass on Easter morning. And in this respect, the sentiment of the
architecture is exactly faithful to that mood of religious feeling which
appeared in Italy under the influences of the classical revival--when
the essential doctrines of Christianity were blurred with Pantheism;
when Jehovah became _Jupiter Optimus Maximus_; and Jesus was the _Heros_
of Calvary, and nuns were _Virgines Vestales_. In literature this mood
often strikes us as insincere and artificial. But it admitted of
realisation and showed itself to be profoundly felt in architecture.
After leaving Madonna di San Biagio, the road strikes at once into an
open country, expanding on the right towards the woody ridge of Monte
Fallonica, on the left toward Cetona and Radicofani, with Monte Amiata
full in front--its double crest and long volcanic slope recalling Etna;
the belt of embrowned forest on its flank, made luminous by sunlight.
Far away stretches the Sienese Maremma; Siena dimly visible upon her
gentle hill; and still beyond, the pyramid of Volterra, huge and
cloud-like, piled against the sky. The road, as is almost invariable in
this district, keeps to the highest line of ridges, winding much, and
following the dimplings of the earthy hills. Here and there a solitary
castello, rusty with old age, and turned into a farm, juts into
picturesqueness from some point of vantage on a mound surrounded with
green tillage. But soon the dull and intolerable _creta_, ash-grey
earth, without a vestige of vegetation, furrowed by rain, and desolately
breaking into gullies, swallows up variety and charm. It is difficult to
believe that this _creta_ of Southern Tuscany, which has all the
appearance of barrenness, and is a positive deformity in the landscape,
can be really fruitful. Yet we are frequently being told that it only
needs assiduous labour to render it enormously productive.
When we reached Pienza we were already in the middle of a country
without cultivation, abandoned to the marl. It is a little place,
perched upon the ledge of a long sliding hill, which commands the vale
of Orcia; Monte Amiata soaring in aerial majesty beyond. Its old name
was Cosignano. But it had the honour of giving birth to AEneas Sylvius
Piccolomini, who, when he was elected to the Papacy and had assumed the
title of Pius II., determined to transform and dignify his native
village, and to call it after his own name. From that time forward
Cosignano has been known as Pienza.
Pius II. succeeded effectually in leaving his mark upon the town. And
this forms its main interest at the present time. We see in Pienza how
the most active-minded and intelligent man of his epoch, the
representative genius of Italy in the middle of the fifteenth century,
commanding vast wealth and the Pontifical prestige, worked out his whim
of city-building. The experiment had to be made upon a small scale; for
Pienza was then and was destined to remain a village. Yet here, upon
this miniature piazza--in modern as in ancient Italy the meeting-point
of civic life, the forum--we find a cathedral, a palace of the bishop,
a palace of the feudal lord, and a palace of the commune, arranged upon
a well-considered plan, and executed after one design in a consistent
style. The religious, municipal, signorial, and ecclesiastical functions
of the little town are centralised around the open market-place, on
which the common people transacted business and discussed affairs. Pius
entrusted the realization of his scheme to a Florentine architect;
whether Bernardo Rossellino, or a certain Bernardo di Lorenzo, is still
uncertain. The same artist, working in the flat manner of Florentine
domestic architecture, with rusticated basements, rounded windows and
bold projecting cornices--the manner which is so nobly illustrated by
the Rucellai and Strozzi palaces at Florence--executed also for Pius the
monumental Palazzo Piccolomini at Siena. It is a great misfortune for
the group of buildings he designed at Pienza, that they are huddled
together in close quarters on a square too small for their effect. A
want of space is peculiarly injurious to the architecture of this date,
1462, which, itself geometrical and spatial, demands a certain harmony
and liberty in its surroundings, a proportion between the room occupied
by each building and the masses of the edifice. The style is severe and
prosaic. Those charming episodes and accidents of fancy, in which the
Gothic style and the style of the earlier Lombard Renaissance abounded,
are wholly wanting to the rigid, mathematical, hard-headed genius of the
Florentine quattrocento. Pienza, therefore, disappoints us. Its heavy
palace frontispieces shut the spirit up in a tight box. We seem unable
to breathe, and lack that element of life and picturesqueness which the
splendid retinues of nobles in the age of Pinturicchio might have added
to the now forlorn Piazza.
Yet the material is a fine warm travertine, mellowing to dark red,
brightening to golden, with some details, especially the tower of the
Palazzo Communale, in red brick. This building, by the way, is imitated
in miniature from that of Florence. The cathedral is a small church of
three aisles, equally high, ending in what the French would call a
_chevet_. Pius had observed this plan of construction somewhere in
Austria, and commanded his architect, Bernardo, to observe it in his
plan. He was attracted by the facilities for window-lighting which it
offered; and what is very singular, he provided by the Bull of his
foundation for keeping the walls of the interior free from frescoes and
other coloured decorations. The result is that, though the interior
effect is pleasing, the church presents a frigid aspect to eyes
familiarised with warmth of tone in other buildings of that period. The
details of the columns and friezes are classical; and the facade,
strictly corresponding to the structure, and very honest in its
decorative elements, is also of the earlier Renaissance style. But the
vaulting and some of the windows are pointed.
The Palazzo Piccolomini, standing at the right hand of the Duomo, is a
vast square edifice. The walls are flat and even, pierced at regular
intervals with windows, except upon the south-west side, where the
rectangular design is broken by a noble double Loggiata, gallery rising
above gallery--serene curves of arches, grandly proportioned columns,
massive balustrades, a spacious corridor, a roomy vaulting--opening out
upon the palace garden, and offering fair prospect over the wooded
heights of Castiglione and Rocca d'Orcia, up to Radicofani and shadowy
Amiata. It was in these double tiers of galleries, in the garden beneath
and in the open inner square of the palazzo, that the great life of
Italian aristocracy displayed itself. Four centuries ago these spaces,
now so desolate in their immensity, echoed to the tread of serving-men,
the songs of pages; horse-hooves struck upon the pavement of the court;
spurs jingled on the staircases; the brocaded trains of ladies sweeping
from their chambers rustled on the marbles of the loggia; knights let
their hawks fly from the garden-parapets; cardinals and abbreviators
gathered round the doors from which the Pope would issue, when he rose
from his siesta to take the cool of evening in those airy colonnades.
How impossible it is to realise that scene amid this solitude! The
palazzo still belongs to the Piccolomini family. But it has fallen into
something worse than ruin--the squalor of half-starved existence, shorn
of all that justified its grand proportions. Partition-walls have been
run up across its halls to meet the requirements of our contracted
modern customs. Nothing remains of the original decorations except one
carved chimney-piece, an emblazoned shield, and a frescoed portrait of
the founder. All movable treasures have been made away with. And yet the
carved heraldics of the exterior, the coat of Piccolomini, "argent, on a
cross azure five crescents or," the Papal ensigns, keys, and tiara, and
the monogram of Pius, prove that this country dwelling of a Pope must
once have been rich in details befitting its magnificence. With the
exception of the very small portion reserved for the Signori, when they
visit Pienza, the palace has become a granary for country produce in a
starveling land. There was one redeeming point about it to my mind. That
was the handsome young man, with earnest Tuscan eyes and a wonderfully
sweet voice, the servant of the Piccolomini family, who lives here with
his crippled father, and who showed us over the apartments.
We left Pienza and drove on to S. Quirico, through the same wrinkled
wilderness of marl; wasteful, uncultivated, bare to every wind that
blows. A cruel blast was sweeping from the sea, and Monte Amiata
darkened with rain clouds. Still the pictures, which formed themselves
at intervals, as we wound along these barren ridges, were very fair to
look upon, especially one, not far from S. Quirico. It had for
foreground a stretch of tilth--olive-trees, honeysuckle hedges, and
cypresses. Beyond soared Amiata in all its breadth and blue
air-blackness, bearing on its mighty flanks the broken cliffs and tufted
woods of Castiglione and the Rocca d'Orcia; eagles' nests emerging from
a fertile valley-champaign, into which the eye was led for rest. It so
chanced that a band of sunlight, escaping from filmy clouds, touched
this picture with silvery greys and soft greens--a suffusion of vaporous
radiance, which made it for one moment a Claude landscape.
S. Quirico was keeping _festa_. The streets were crowded with healthy
handsome men and women from the contado. This village lies on the edge
of a great oasis in the Sienese desert--an oasis, formed by the waters
of the Orcia and Asso sweeping down to join Ombrone, and stretching on
to Montalcino. We put up at the sign of the "Two Hares," where a notable
housewife gave us a dinner of all we could desire; _frittata di
cervelle_, good fish, roast lamb stuffed with rosemary, salad and
cheese, with excellent wine and black coffee, at the rate of three
_lire_ a head.
The attraction of S. Quirico is its gem-like little collegiata, a
Lombard church of the ninth century, with carved portals of the
thirteenth. It is built of golden travertine; some details in brown
sandstone. The western and southern portals have pillars resting on the
backs of lions. On the western side these pillars are four slender
columns, linked by snake-like ligatures. On the southern side they
consist of two carved figures--possibly S. John and the Archangel
Michael. There is great freedom and beauty in these statues, as also in
the lions which support them, recalling the early French and German
manner. In addition, one finds the usual Lombard grotesques--two
sea-monsters, biting each other; harpy-birds; a dragon with a twisted
tail; little men grinning and squatting in adaptation to coigns and
angles of the windows. The toothed and chevron patterns of the north are
quaintly blent with rude acanthus scrolls and classical egg-mouldings.
Over the western porch is a Gothic rose window. Altogether this church
must be reckoned one of the most curious specimens of that hybrid
architecture, fusing and appropriating different manners, which
perplexes the student in Central Italy. It seems strangely out of place
in Tuscany. Yet, if what one reads of Toscanella, a village between
Viterbo and Orbetello, be true, there exist examples of a similar
fantastic Lombard style even lower down.
The interior was most disastrously gutted and "restored" in 1731: its
open wooden roof masked by a false stucco vaulting. A few relics, spared
by the eighteenth century Vandals, show that the church was once rich
in antique curiosities. A marble knight in armour lies on his back, half
hidden by the pulpit stairs. And in the choir are half a dozen rarely
beautiful panels of tarsia, executed in a bold style and on a large
scale. One design--a man throwing his face back, and singing, while he
plays a mandoline; with long thick hair and fanciful berretta; behind
him a fine line of cypresses and other trees--struck me as singularly
lovely. In another I noticed a branch of peach, broad leaves and ripe
fruit, not only drawn with remarkable grace and power, but so modelled
as to stand out with the roundness of reality.
The whole drive of three hours back to Montepulciano was one long
banquet of inimitable distant views. Next morning, having to take
farewell of the place, we climbed to the Castello, or _arx_ of the old
city! It is a ruined spot, outside the present walls, upon the southern
slope, where there is now a farm, and a fair space of short
sheep-cropped turf, very green and grassy, and gemmed with little pink
geraniums as in England in such places. The walls of the old castle,
overgrown with ivy, are broken down to their foundations. This may
possibly have been done when Montepulciano was dismantled by the Sienese
in 1232. At that date the Commune succumbed to its more powerful
neighbours. The half of its inhabitants were murdered, and its
fortifications were destroyed. Such episodes are common enough in the
history of that internecine struggle for existence between the Italian
municipalities, which preceded the more famous strife of Guelfs and
Ghibellines. Stretched upon the smooth turf of the Castello, we bade
adieu to the divine landscape bathed in light and mountain air--to
Thrasymene and Chiusi and Cetona; to Amiata, Pienza, and S. Quirico; to
Montalcino and the mountains of Volterra; to Siena and Cortona; and,
closer to Monte Fallonica, Madonna di Biagio, the house-roofs and the
Palazzo tower of Montepulciano.