As sounds of sweetest music, heard at eve,
When summer dews weep over languid flowers,
When the still air conveys each touch, each tone,
However faint--and breathes it on the ear
With a distinct and thrilling power, that leaves
Its memory long within the raptur'd soul.--
--Even _such_ thou art to me!--and thus I sit
And feel the harmony that round thee lives,
And breathes from every feature. Thus I sit--
And when most quiet--cold--or silent--_then_
Even then, I feel each word, each look, each tone!
There's not an accent of that tender voice,
There's not a day-beam of those sunbright eyes,
Nor passing smile, nor melancholy grace,
Nor thought half utter'd, feeling half betray'd
Nor glance of kindness,--no, nor gentlest touch
Of that dear hand, in amity extended,
That e'er was lost to me;--that treasur'd well,
And oft recall'd, dwells not upon my soul
Like sweetest music heard at summer's eve!
Yesterday we visited the church of San Lorenzo, the Laurentian
library, and the Pietra Dura manufactory, and afterwards spent an hour
in the Tribune.
In a little chapel in the San Lorenzo are Michel Angelo's famous
statues, the Morning, the Noon, the Evening, and the Night. I looked
at them with admiration rather than with pleasure; for there is
something in the severe and overpowering style of this master, which
affects me disagreeably, as beyond my feeling, and above my
comprehension. These statues are very ill disposed for effect: the
confined _cell_ (such it seemed) in which they are placed is so
strangely disproportioned to the awful and massive grandeur of their
forms.
There is a picture by Michel Angelo, considered a chef-d'oeuvre,
which hangs in the Tribune, to the right of the Venus: now if all the
connaisseurs in the world, with Vasari at their head, were to harangue
for an hour together on the merits of this picture, I might submit in
silence, for I am no connoisseur; but that it is a disagreeable, a
hateful picture, is an opinion which fire could not melt out of me. In
spite of Messieurs les Connaisseurs, and Michel Angelo's fame, I would
die in it at the stake: for instance, here is the Blessed Virgin, not
the "Vergine Santa, d'ogni grazia piena," but a Virgin, whose
brick-dust coloured face, harsh unfeminine features, and muscular,
masculine arms, give me the idea of a washerwoman, (con rispetto
parlando!) an infant Saviour with the proportions of a giant: and what
shall we say of the nudity of the figures in the back-ground;
profaning the subject and shocking at once good taste and good sense?
A little farther on, the eye rests on the divine Madre di Dio of
Correggio: what beauty, what sweetness, what maternal love, and humble
adoration are blended in the look and attitude with which she bends
over her infant! Beyond it hangs the Madonna del Cardellino of
Raffaelle: what heavenly grace, what simplicity, what saint-like
purity, in the expression of that face, and that exquisite mouth! And
from these must I turn back, on pain of being thought an ignoramus, to
admire the coarse perpetration of Michel Angelo--because it is Michel
Angelo's? But I speak in ignorance.[F]
To return to San Lorenzo. The chapel of the Medici, begun by Ferdinand
the First, where coarse brickwork and plaster mingle with marble and
gems, is still unfinished and likely to remain so: it did not interest
me. The fine bronze sarcophagus, which encloses the ashes of Lorenzo
the Magnificent, and of his brother Giuliano, assassinated by the
Pazzi, interested me far more. While I was standing carelessly in
front of the high altar, I happened to look down, and under my feet
were these words, "TO COSMO THE VENERABLE, THE FATHER OF HIS
COUNTRY." I moved away in haste, and before I had decided to my
own satisfaction upon Cosmo's claims to the gratitude and veneration
of posterity, we left the church.
At the Laurentian library we were edified by the sight of some famous
old manuscripts, invaluable to classical scholars. To my unlearned
eyes the manuscript of Petrarch, containing portraits of himself and
Laura, was more interesting. Petrarch is hideous--but I was pleased
with the head of Laura, which in spite of the antique dryness and
stiffness of the painting, has a soft and delicate expression not
unlike one of Carlo Dolce's Madonnas. Here we saw Galileo's
forefinger, pointing up to the skies from a white marble pedestal; and
exciting more derision than respect.
At the Pietra Dura, notwithstanding the beauty and durability of some
of the objects manufactured, the result seemed to me scarce worth the
incredible time, patience, and labour required in the work. _Par
exemple_, six months' hard labour spent upon a butterfly in the lid of
a snuff-box seems a most disproportionate waste of time. Thirty
workmen are employed here at the Grand Duke's expense; for this
manufacture, like that of the Gobelins at Paris, is exclusively
carried on for the sovereign.
_Nov. 20._--I am struck in this place with grand beginnings and mean
endings. I have not yet seen a finished church, even the Duomo has no
façade.
Yesterday we visited the Palazzo Mozzi to see Benvenuto's picture,
"The Night after the Battle of Jena." Then several churches--the Santa
Croce, which is hallowed ground: the Annonciata, celebrated for the
frescos of Andrea del Sarto; and the Carmine, which pleased me by the
light elegance of its architecture, and its fine alto-relievos in
white marble. In this church is the chapel of the Madonna del Carmele,
painted by Masuccio, and the most ancient frescos extant: they are
curious rather than beautiful, and going to decay.
To-day we visited the school of the Fine Arts: it contains a very
fine and ample collection of casts after the antique; and some of the
works of modern artists and students are exhibited. Were I to judge
from the specimens I have seen here and elsewhere, I should say that a
cold, glaring, hard _tea-tray_ style prevails in painting, and a still
worse taste, if possible, in sculpture. No soul, no grandeur, no
simplicity; a meagre insipidity in the conception, a nicety of finish
in the detail; affectation instead of grace, distortion instead of
power, and prettiness instead of beauty. Yet the artists who execute
these works, and those who buy them, have free access to the marvels
of the gallery, and the treasures of the Pitti Palace. Are they sans
eyes, sans souls, sans taste, sans every thing, but money and
self-conceit?
_Nov. 22._--Our mornings, however otherwise occupied, are generally
concluded by an hour in the gallery or at the Pitti Palace; the
evenings are spent in the Mercato Nuovo, in the workshops of artists,
or at the Cascina.
To-day at the gallery I examined the Dutch school and the Salle des
Portraits, and ended as usual with the Tribune. The Salle des
Portraits contains a complete collection of the portraits of painters
down to the present day. In general their respective countenances are
expressive of their characters and style of painting. Poor Harlow's
picture, painted by himself, is here.
The Dutch and Flemish painters (in spite of their exquisite pots and
pans, and cabbages and carrots, their birch-brooms, in which you can
count every twig, and their carpets, in which you can reckon every
thread) do not interest me; their landscapes too, however natural, are
mere Dutch nature (with some brilliant exceptions), fat cattle,
clipped trees, boors, and windmills. Of course I am not speaking of
Vandyke, nor of Rubens, he that "in the colours of the rainbow lived,"
nor of Rembrandt, that king of clouds and shadows; but for mine own
part, I would give up all that Mieris, Netscher, Teniers, and Gerard
Douw ever produced, for one of Claude's Eden-like creations, or one of
Guido's lovely heads--or merely for the pleasure of looking at
Titian's Flora once a day, I would give a whole gallery of Dutchmen,
if I had them.
In the daughter of Herodias, by Leonardo da Vinci, there is the same
eternal face he always paints, but with a peculiar expression--she
turns away her head with the air of a fine lady, whose senses are
shocked by the sight of blood and death, while her heart remains
untouched either by remorse or pity.
His ghastly Medusa made me shudder while it fascinated me, as if in
those loathsome snakes, writhing and glittering round the expiring
head, and those abhorred and fiendish abominations crawling into life,
there still lurked the fabled spell which petrified the beholder. Poor
Medusa! was this the guerdon of thy love? and were those the tresses
which enslaved the ocean's lord? Methinks that in this wild
mythological fiction, in the terrific vengeance which Minerva takes
for her profaned temple, and in the undying snakes which for ever hiss
round the head of her victim--there is a deep moral, if woman would
lay it to her heart.
In Guercino's Endymion, the very mouth is asleep: in his Sybil the
very eyes are prophetic, and glance into futurity.
The boyish, but divine St. John, by Raffaelle, did not please me so
well as some of his portraits and Madonnas; his Leo the Tenth, for
instance, his Julius the Second, or even his Fornarina: and I may
observe here, that I admire Titian's taste much more than Raffaelle's,
_en fait de maîtresse_. The Fornarina is a mere _femme du peuple_, a
coarse virago, compared to the refined, the exquisite La Manto, in the
Pitti Palace. I think the Flora must have been painted from the same
lovely model, as far as I can judge from compared recollections, for I
have no authority to refer to. The former is the most elegant, and the
latter the most poetical female portrait I ever saw. At Titian's Venus
in the Tribune, one hardly ventures to look up; it is the perfection
of earthly loveliness, as the Venus de' Medici is all ideal--all
celestial beauty. In the multiplied copies and engravings of this
picture I see every where the bashful sweetness of the countenance,
and the tender languid repose of the figure are made coarse, or
something worse: degraded, in short, into a character altogether
unlike the original.
I say nothing of the Gallery of the Palazzo Pitti; which is not a
collection so much as a _selection_ of the most invaluable gems and
masterpieces of art. The imagination dazzled and bewildered by
excellence can scarcely make a choice--but I think the Madonna Della
Seggiola of Raffaelle, Allori's magnificent Judith, Guido's Cleopatra,
and Salvator's Catiline, dwell most upon my memory.
* * * * *
_Nov. 24._--After dinner, we drove to the beautiful gardens of the
Villa Strozzi, on the Monte Ulivetto, and the evening we spent at the
Cocomero, where we saw a detestable opera, capitally acted, and heard
the most vile, noisy, unmeaning music, sung to perfection.
_Nov. 26._--Yesterday we spent some hours at Morghen's gallery,
looking over his engravings; and afterwards examined the bronze gates
of the Baptistery, which Michel Angelo used to call the gates of
Paradise. We then ascended the Campanile or Belfry Tower to see the
view from its summit. Florence lay at our feet, diminished to a model
of itself, with its walls and gates, its streets and bridges, palaces
and churches, all and each distinctly visible; and beyond, the Val
d'Arno with its amphitheatre of hills, its villas, and its
vineyards--classical Fesole, with its ruined castle, and Monte
Ulivetto, with its diadem of cypresses; luxuriant nature and graceful
art, blending into one glorious picture, which no smoky vapours, no
damp exhalations, blotted and discoloured; but all was serenely bright
and fair, gay with moving life, and rich with redundant fertility.
"O dell' Etruria gran Città Reina,
D'arti e di studj e di grand' or feconda;
Cui tra quanto il sol guarda, e 'l mar circonda,
Ogn' altra in pregio di belta s' inchina:
Monti superbi, la cui fronte alpina
Fa di sè contra i venti argine e sponda:
Valli beate, per cui d'onda in onda
L'Arno con passo signoril cammina:
Bei soggiorni ove par ch' abbiansi eletto
Le grazie il seggio, e, come in suo confine,
Sia di natura il bel tutto ristretto, &c."
Filicaja will be pardoned for his hyperboles by all who remember that
he was himself a Florentine.
* * * * *
28.--"Corinne" I find is a fashionable _vade mecum_ for sentimental
travellers in Italy; and that I too might be _à la mode_, I brought it
from Molini's to-day, with the intention of reading on the spot, those
admirable and affecting passages which relate to Florence; but when I
began to cut the leaves, a kind of terror seized me, and I threw it
down, resolved not to open it again. I know myself weak--I feel myself
unhappy; and to find my own feelings reflected from the pages of a
book, in language too deeply and eloquently true, is not good for me.
I want no helps to admiration, nor need I kindle my enthusiasm at the
torch of another's mind. I can suffer enough, feel enough, think
enough, without this.
Not being well, I spent a long morning at home, and then strayed into
the church of the Santo Spirito, which is near our hotel. There is in
this church a fine copy of Michel Angelo's Pietà, which a monk, whom I
met in the church, insisted was the original. But I believe the
_originalissimo_ group is at Rome. There are also two fine pictures, a
marriage of the Virgin, in a very sweet Guido-like style, and the
woman taken in adultery. This church is the richest in paintings I
have seen here. I remarked a picture of the Virgin said to be
possessed of miraculous powers; and that part of it visible, is not
destitute of merit as a painting; but some of her grateful devotees,
having decorated her with a real blue silk gown, spangled with tinsel
stars, and two or three crowns, one above another, of gilt foil, the
effect is the oddest imaginable. As I was sitting upon a marble step,
philosophizing to myself, and wondering at what seemed to me such
senseless bad taste, such pitiable and ridiculous superstition, there
came up a poor woman leading by the hand a pale and delicate boy,
about four years old. She prostrated herself before the picture, while
the child knelt beside her, and prayed for some time with fervour;
she then lifted him up, and the mother and child kissed the picture
alternately with great devotion; then making him kneel down and clasp
his little hands, she began to teach him an Ave Maria, repeating it
word for word, slowly and distinctly, so that I got it by heart too.
Having finished their devotions, the mother put into the child's hands
a piece of money, which she directed him to drop into a box,
inscribed, "per i poveri vergognosi"--"for the bashful poor;" they
then went their way. I was an unperceived witness of this little
scene, which strongly affected me: the simple piety of this poor
woman, though mistaken in its object, appeared to me respectable; and
the Virgin, in her sky-blue brocade and her gilt tiara, no longer an
object to ridicule. I returned home rejoicing in kinder, gentler,
happier thoughts; for though I may wish these poor people a purer
worship, yet, as Wordsworth says somewhere, far better than I could
express it--
"Rather would I instantly decline
To the traditionary sympathies
Of a most rustic ignorance,--
This rather would I do, than see and hear
The repetitions wearisome of sense
Where soul is dead, and feeling hath no place."
The Ave Maria which I learnt, or rather _stole_ from my poor woman,
pleases me by its simplicity.