Tower, was so-named from the fact that in it was placed the gold that
the Spanish ships brought from America, or because the King Don Pedro
hid his treasures there. Its form is octagonal with three receding
storeys, crowned by battlements and washed by the river. According
to tradition, this tower was built by the Romans and here the most
beautiful favourite of the King dwelt until the tower was joined to the
Alcazar by a building that was destroyed to make room for the Christina
promenade.
This promenade extends from Torre del Oro to the Duke of Montpensier’s
palace. It is thickly shaded by oriental plane-trees, oaks, cypresses,
willows, poplars, and other northern trees which the Andalusians
admire as we should admire the palms and aloes in the fields of
Piedmont and Lombardy. A large bridge spans the river and leads to the
suburb of Triana from which one sees the first houses on the opposite
bank. A long line of ships, _golettas_ (a species of light boat)
and barks are on the river; and between the Torre del Oro and the
Duke’s palace there is a constant coming and going of boats. The sun
was setting. A crowd of ladies swarmed through the streets, troops of
workmen crossed the bridge, the ships showed more signs of life, a band
hidden among the trees began to play, the river became rose-coloured,
the air was filled with the perfume of flowers, and the sky seemed to
be aflame.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF ORVIETO, ITALY.]
CATHEDRAL OF ORVIETO
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
On the road from Siena to Rome, half-way between Ficulle and Viterbo,
is the town of Orvieto. Travellers often pass it in the night-time.
Few stop there, for the place is old and dirty and its inns are
indifferent. But none who see it even from a distance can fail to be
struck with its imposing aspect, as it rises from the level plain upon
its mass of rock among the Apennines.
Orvieto is built upon the first of those huge volcanic blocks which are
found like fossils, embedded in the more recent geological formations
of Central Italy, and which stretch in an irregular but unbroken line
to the Campagna of Rome. Many of them, like that on which Civita
Castellana is perched, are surrounded by rifts and chasms and fosses,
strangely furrowed and twisted by the force of fiery convulsions. But
their advanced guard, Orvieto, stands up definite and solid, an almost
perfect cube, with walls precipitous to the north and south and east,
but slightly sloping to the westward. At its foot rolls the Paglia, one
of those barren streams which swell in winter with the snows and rains
of the Apennines, but which in summer-time shrink up and leave bare
beds of sand and pestilential canebrakes to stretch irregularly round
their dwindled waters.
The weary flatness and utter desolation of this valley present a
sinister contrast to the broad line of the Apennines swelling tier on
tier, from their oak-girdled basements set with villages and towers,
up to the snow and cloud that crown their topmost crags. The time to
see this landscape is at sunrise; and the traveller should take his
stand upon the rising ground over which the Roman road is carried from
the town--the point, in fact, which Turner has selected for his vague
and misty sketch of Orvieto in our Gallery. Thence he will command the
whole space of the plain, the Apennines, and the river creeping in a
straight line at the base; while the sun, rising to his right, will
slant along the mountain flanks and gild the leaden stream, and flood
the castled crags of Orvieto with a haze of light. From the centre of
this glory stand out in bold relief old bastions built upon the solid
tufa, vast gaping gateways black in shadow, towers of churches shooting
up above a medley of deep-corniced tall Italian houses, and, amid
them all, the marble front of the Cathedral, calm and solemn in its
unfamiliar Gothic state. Down to the valley from these heights there is
a sudden fall; and we wonder how the few spare olive-trees that grow
there can support existence on the steep slope of the cliff.
The great Duomo was erected at the end of the Thirteenth Century to
commemorate the Miracle of Bolsena. The value of this miracle consisted
in its establishing unmistakably the truth of transubstantiation. The
story runs that a young Bohemian priest who doubted the dogma was
performing the office of the mass in a church at Bolsena, when, at the
moment of consecration, blood issued from five gushes in the wafer,
which resembled the five wounds of Christ. The fact was evident to
all the worshippers, who saw blood falling on the linen of the altar;
and the young priest no longer doubted, but confessed the miracle,
and journeyed straightway with the evidence thereof to Pope Urban
IV. The Pope, who was then at Orvieto, came out with all his retinue
to meet the convert and do honour to the magic-working relics. The
circumstances of this miracle are well known to students of art through
Raphael’s celebrated fresco in the Stanze of the Vatican. And it will
be remembered by the readers of ecclesiastical history that Urban had
in 1264 promulgated by a bull the strict observance of the Corpus
Christi festival in connection with his strong desire to re-establish
the doctrine of Christ’s presence in the elements. Nor was it without
reason that, while seeking miraculous support for this dogma, he should
have treated the affair of Bolsena so seriously as to celebrate it by
the erection of one of the most splendid cathedrals in Italy; for the
peace of the church had recently been troubled by the reforming ardour
of the Fraticelli and by the promulgation of Abbot Joachim’s Eternal
Gospel. This new evangelist had preached the doctrine of progression
in religious faith, proclaiming a Kingdom of the Spirit which should
transcend the Kingdom of the Son, even as the Christian dispensation
had superseded the Jewish supremacy of the Father. Nor did he fail at
the same time to attack the political and moral abuses of the Papacy,
attributing its degradation to the want of vitality which pervaded the
old Christian system, and calling on the clergy to lead more simple and
regenerate lives, consistently with the spiritual doctrine which he
had received by inspiration. The theories of Joachim were immature and
crude; but they were among the first signs of that liberal effort after
self-emancipation which eventually stirred all Europe at the time of
the Renaissance. It was, therefore, the obvious policy of the Popes to
crush so dangerous an opposition while they could; and by establishing
the dogma of transubstantiation, they were enabled to satisfy the
growing mysticism of the people, while they placed upon a firmer basis
the cardinal support of their own religious power.
In pursuance of his plan, Urban sent for Lorenzo Maitani, the great
Sienese architect, who gave designs for a Gothic church in the same
style as the Cathedral of Siena, though projected on a smaller scale.
Fergusson in his _Handbook of Architecture_, remarks that these
two churches are perhaps, taken altogether, the most successful
specimens of “Italian pointed Gothic.” The Gottico Tedesco had never
been received with favour in Italy. Remains of Roman architecture, then
far more numerous and perfect than they are at present, controlled the
minds of artists, and induced them to adopt the rounded rather than
the pointed arch. Indeed, there would seem to be something peculiarly
Northern in the spirit of Gothic architecture: its intricacies suit
the gloom of Northern skies, its massive exterior is adapted to the
severity of Northern weather, its vast windows catch the fleeting
sunlight of the North, and the pinnacles and spires which constitute
its beauty are better expressed in rugged stone than in the marbles
of the South. Northern cathedrals do not depend for their effect upon
the advantages of sunlight or picturesque situations. Many of them
are built upon broad plains, over which for more than half the year
hangs fog. But the cathedrals of Italy owe their charm to colour and
brilliancy: their gilded sculpture and mosaics, the variegated marbles
and shallow portals of their façades, the light aërial elegance of
their campanili, are all adapted to the luminous atmosphere of a
smiling land, where changing effects of natural beauty distract the
attention from solidity of design and permanence of grandeur in the
edifice itself.
The Cathedral of Orvieto will illustrate these remarks. Its design is
very simple. It consists of a parallelogram, from which three chapels
of equal size project, one at the east end, and one at the north and
south. The windows are small and narrow, the columns round, and the
roof displays none of that intricate groining we find in English
churches. The beauty of the interior depends on surface decoration,
on marble statues, woodwork, and fresco-paintings. Outside, there is
the same simplicity of design, the same elaborated local ornament.
The sides of the Cathedral are austere, their narrow windows cutting
horizontal lines of black and white marble. But the façade is a
triumph of decorative art. It is strictly what Fergusson has styled a
“frontispiece”; for it bears no relation whatever to the construction
of the building. Its three gables rise high above the aisles. Its
pinnacles and parapets and turrets are stuck on to look agreeable. It
is a screen such as might be completed or left unfinished at will by
the architect. Finished as it is, the façade of Orvieto is a wilderness
of beauties. Its pure white marble has been mellowed by time to a rich
golden hue, in which are set mosaics shining like gems or pictures of
enamel. A statue stands on every pinnacle; each pillar has a different
design; round some of them are woven wreaths of vine and ivy; acanthus
leaves curl over the capitals, making nests for singing-birds or
Cupids; the doorways are a labyrinth of intricate designs, in which
the utmost elegance of form is made more beautiful by incrustations
of precious agates and Alexandrine glasswork. On every square inch
of this wonderful façade have been lavished invention, skill, and
precious material. But its chief interest centres in the sculptures
executed by Giovanni and Andrea, sons and pupils of Nicola Pisano. The
names of these three men mark an era in the history of art. They first
rescued Italian sculpture from the grotesqueness of the Lombard and the
monotony of the Byzantine styles. Sculpture takes the lead of all the
arts. And Nicola Pisano, before Cimabue, before Duccio, even before
Dante, opened the gates of beauty, which for a thousand years had been
shut up and overgrown with weeds. As Dante invoked the influence of
Virgil when he began to write his mediæval poem, and made a heathen
bard his hierophant in Christian mysteries, just so did Nicola Pisano
draw inspiration from a Greek sarcophagus, which had been cast upon
the shore at Pisa. He studied the bas-relief of Phædra and Hippolytus,
which may still be seen upon the tomb of Countess Beatrice, in the
Campo Santo, and so learned by heart the beauty of its lines, and the
dignity expressed in its figures, that in all his subsequent works we
trace the elevated tranquillity of Greek sculpture. This imitation
never degenerated into servile copying; nor, on the other hand, did
Nicola attain the perfect grace of an Athenian artist. He remained a
truly mediæval carver, animated with a Christian, instead of a Pagan
spirit, but caring for the loveliness of form which art in the Dark
Ages failed to realize.
Whether it was Nicola or his sons who designed the bas-reliefs at
Orvieto is of little consequence. Vasari ascribes them to the father;
but we know that he completed his pulpit at Pisa in 1230, and his death
is supposed to have taken place fifteen years before the foundation of
the Cathedral. At any rate, they are imbued with his genius, and bear
the strongest affinity to his sculptures at Pisa, Siena, and Bologna.
To estimate the influence they exercised over the arts of sculpture and
painting in Italy would be a difficult task. Duccio and Giotto studied
here; Ghiberti closely followed them. Signorelli and Raphael made
drawings from their compositions. And the spirit which pervades these
sculptures may be traced in all succeeding works of art. It is not
classic; it is modern, though embodied in a form of beauty modelled on
the Greek.
The bas-reliefs are carved on four marble tablets placed beside the
porches of the church, and corresponding in size and shape with the
chief doorways. They represent the course of Biblical history,
beginning with the creation of the world, and ending with the Last
Judgment. If it were possible here to compare them in detail with the
similar designs of Ghiberti, Michel Angelo, and Raphael, it might be
shown that the Pisani established modes of treating sacred subjects
from which those mighty masters never deviated, though each stamped
upon them his peculiar genius, making them more perfect as time added
to the power of art. It would also be not without interest to show that
in their primitive conceptions of the earliest events in history, the
works of the Pisan artists closely resemble some sculptures executed on
the walls of Northern cathedrals, as well as early mosaics in the south
of Italy. We might have noticed how all the grotesque elements which
appear in Nicola Pisano, and which may still be traced in Ghiberti,
are entirely lost in Michel Angelo, how the supernatural is humanized,
how the symbolical receives an actual expression, and how intellectual
types are substituted for mere local and individual representations.
For instance, the Pisani represent the Creator as a young man, standing
on the earth, with a benign and dignified expression, and attended
by two ministering angels. He is the Christ of the Creed, “by whom
all things were made.” In Ghiberti we find an older man, sometimes
appearing in a whirlwind of clouds and attendant spirits, sometimes
walking on the earth, but still far different in conception from the
Creative Father of Michel Angelo. The latter is rather the Platonic
Demiurgus than the Mosaic God. By every line and feature of his face
and flowing hair, by each movement of his limbs, whether he ride on
clouds between the waters and the firmament, or stand alone creating by
a glance and by a motion of his hand Eve, the full-formed and conscious
woman, he is proclaimed the Maker who from all eternity has held the
thought of the material universe within his mind. Raphael does not
depart from this conception. The profound abstraction of Michel Angelo
ruled his intellect, and received from his genius a form of perhaps
greater grace. A similar growth from the germinal designs of the Pisani
may be traced in many groups.
But we must not linger at the gate. Let us enter the Cathedral and see
some of the wonders it contains. Statues of gigantic size adorn the
nave. Of these the most beautiful are the work of Ippolito Scalza,
an artist whom Orvieto claims with pride as one of her own sons. The
long line of saints and apostles whom they represent, conduct us to
the high altar surrounded by its shadowy frescoes, and gleaming with
the work of carvers in marble and bronze and precious metals. But
our steps are drawn towards the chapel of the south transept, where
now a golden light from the autumnal sunset falls across a crowd of
worshippers. From far and near the poor people are gathered. Most of
them are women. They kneel upon the pavement and the benches, sunburnt
faces from the vineyards and the canebrakes of the valley. The old
look prematurely aged and withered--their wrinkled cheeks bound up in
scarlet and orange-coloured kerchiefs, their skinny fingers fumbling
on the rosary, and their mute lips moving in prayer. The younger women
have great listless eyes and large limbs used to labour. Some of them
carry babies trussed up in tight swaddling-clothes. One kneels beside
a dark-browed shepherd, on whose shoulder falls his shaggy hair; and
little children play about, half-hushed, half heedless of the place,
among old men whose life has dwindled down into a ceaseless round
of prayers. We wonder why this chapel alone in the empty Cathedral,
is so crowded with worshippers. They surely are not turned towards
that splendid Pietà of Scalza--a work in which the marble seems to
live a cold, dead, shivering life. They do not heed Angelico’s and
Signorelli’s frescoes on the roof and walls. The interchange of light
and gloom upon the stalls and carved work of the canopies can scarcely
rivet so intense a gaze. All eyes seem fixed upon a curtain of red silk
above the altar. Votive pictures and glass cases full of silver hearts,
wax babies, hands and limbs of every kind, are hung around it. A bell
rings. A jingling organ plays a little melody in triple time; and from
the sacristy comes forth the priest. With much reverence, and with a
show of preparation, he and the acolytes around him mount the altar
steps, and pull a string which draws the curtain. Behind the curtain
we behold Madonna and her child--a faint, old, ugly picture, blackened
with the smoke and incense of five hundred years, a wonder-working
image, cased in gold, and guarded from the common air by glass and
draperies. Jewelled crowns are stuck upon the heads of the mother and
the infant. In the efficacy of Madonna di San Brizio to ward off agues,
to deliver from the pangs of childbirth or the fury of the storm, to
keep the lover’s troth and make the husband faithful to his home,
these pious women of the marshes and the mountains put a simple trust.
While the priest sings, and the people pray to the dance-music of
the organ, let us take a quiet seat unseen, and picture to our minds
how the chapel looked when Angelico and Signorelli stood before its
plastered walls, and thought the thoughts with which they covered
them. Four centuries have gone by since those walls were white and
even to their brushes; and now you scarce can see the golden aureoles
of saints, the vast wings of the angels, and the flowing robes of
prophets through the gloom. Angelico came first, in monk’s dress,
kneeling before he climbed the scaffold to paint the angry Judge, the
Virgin crowned, the white-robed army of the Martyrs, and the glorious
company of the Apostles. These he placed upon the roof, expectant of
the Judgment. Then he passed away, and Luca Signorelli, the rich man
who “lived splendidly and loved to dress himself in noble clothes,” the
liberal and courteous gentleman, took his place upon the scaffold. For
all the worldliness of his attire and the delicacy of his living, his
brain teemed with stern and terrible thoughts. He searched the secrets
of sin and of the grave, of destruction and of resurrection, of heaven
and hell. All these he has painted on the walls beneath the saints of
Fra Angelico. First come the troubles of the last days, the preaching
of Antichrist, and the confusion of the wicked. In the next compartment
we see the Resurrection from the tomb; and side by side with that is
painted Hell. Paradise occupies another portion of the chapel.
After viewing these frescoes, we muse and ask ourselves why
Signorelli’s fame is so inadequate to his deserts? Partly, no doubt
because he painted in obscure Italian towns, and left few easel
pictures. Besides the artists of the Sixteenth Century eclipsed all
their predecessors, and the name of Signorelli has been swallowed up
in that of Michel Angelo. Vasari said that “_esso Michel Angelo
imitò l’andar di Luca, come può vedere ognuno_.” Nor is it hard
to see that what the one began at Orvieto the other completed in the
Vatican. These great men had truly kindred spirits. Both struggled
to express their intellectual conceptions in the simplest and most
abstract forms. The works of both are distinguished by contempt for
adventitious ornaments and for the grace of positive colour. Both
chose to work in fresco, and selected subjects of the gravest and most
elevated character. The study of anatomy, and the correct drawing of
the naked body, which Luca practised, were carried to perfection by
Michel Angelo. Sublimity of thought and self-restraint pervade their
compositions. He who would understand Buonarotti must first appreciate
Signorelli. The latter, it is true, was confined to a narrower circle
in his study of the beautiful and the sublime. He had not ascended
to that pure idealism superior to all the accidents of place and
time, which is the chief distinction of Michel Angelo’s work. At the
same time, his manner had not suffered from too close a study of the
antique. He painted the life he saw around him, and clothed his men and
women in the dress of Italy.
Such reflections, and many more, pass through our mind as we sit
and ponder in the chapel, which the daylight has deserted. The
country-people are still on their knees, still careless of the frescoed
forms around them, still praying to the Madonna of the Miracles. The
service is well-nigh done. The benediction has been given, the organist
strikes up his air of Verdi, and the congregation shuffles off, leaving
the dimly-lighted chapel for the vast sonorous dusky nave. How strange
it is to hear that faint strain of a feeble opera sounding where a
short while since, the trumpet-blast of Signorelli’s angels seemed to
thrill our ears!
THE BUILDINGS OF SHAH JEHAN
G. W. STEEVENS
The north-eastern approach to Agra is through a waste of land at the
same time flat and broken. Formless hillocks and ditches, colourless
sand and dead turf, the whole scene was mean and depressing. I raised
my eyes, and there, on the edge of the ugly prairie, sat a fair white
palace with domes and minarets. So exquisite in symmetry, so softly
lustrous in tint, it could hardly be substantial, and I all but cried,
“Mirage!” It was the Taj Mahal.
And now we were clanking over an iron bridge above a dark-green river
that filled barely a quarter of its sandy bed; deep, broad staircases
stepped down to its further bank with pillared pleasure-houses
overlooking them. Now on the right rose a great mosque, its bellying
domes zig-zagged with red and white; dawn from the left frowned the
weather-worn battlements of a great red fortress. This was the city of
Shah Jehan, emperor and devotee, artist and lover.
[Illustration: THE PEARL MOSQUE, INDIA.]
And this, in a few words, is the passionate story of Shah Jehan. He was
the grandson of Akbar the Great, the first Mogul Emperor of Hindustan.
While yet Prince Royal, conquering India for the Moguls, he married the
beautiful Persian, Arjmand Banu, called Mumtaz-i-Mahal, the chosen
of the palace, and loved her tenderly beyond all his wives for fourteen
years. But only a year after he became Sultan she died in travail of
her eighth child. Shah Jehan in his grief swore that she should have
the loveliest tomb the world ever beheld, and for seventeen years he
built the Taj Mahal. Also he built the palace of Agra, the fort and
palace of Delhi, and the great mosque of Agra; he took to wife many
fair ladies, and lived in all luxuriousness, ministering abundantly to
every sense, till he had reigned thirty years. Then his son Aurungzebe
rose up and dethroned him, and kept him a close prisoner in his own
private mosque, which he had built within the palace of Agra. There he
lived seven years more, attended by his daughter Jehanara, who would
not leave him, till at last, in 1645, being grown very feeble, he
begged to be laid in a chamber of the palace wherefrom he could see the
Taj Mahal. This was granted him, so that he died with his eyes upon the
tomb of the love of his youth. There they buried him beside her. And
his daughter, when her time came, wrote a Persian stanza begging that
no monument should be set up to “the humble transitory Jehanara,” and
praying only for her father’s soul.