The Cuts represent unostentatious yet affectionate tributes to three of
the most illustrious names in literature and art: DANTE, and PETRARCH,
the celebrated Italian poets; and CANOVA, whose labours have all the
freshness and finish of yesterday's chisel. Lord Byron, whose enthusiasm
breathes and lives in words that "can never die," has enshrined these
memorials in the masterpiece of his genius. Associating Dante and
Petrarch with Boccaccio, he asks:
But where repose the all Etruscan three--
Dante and Petrarch, and scarce less than they,
The Bard of Prose, creative spirit! he
Of the Hundred Tales of Love--where did they lay
Their tones, distinguish'd from our common clay
In death as life? Are they resolved to dust,
And have their country's marbles naught to say?
Could not their quarries furnish forth one bust?
Did they not to her breast their filial earth entrust?[10]
[Illustration: (Dante's Tomb.)]
Dante was born at Florence in the year 1261. He fought in two battles,
and was fourteen times ambassador, and once prior of the republic.
Through one fatal error, he fell a victim to party persecution, which
ended in irrevocable banishment. His last resting-place was Ravenna,
where the persecution of his only patron is said to have caused the
poet's death. What an affecting record of gratitude! His last days at
Ravenna are thus referred to by an accomplished tourist:[11]
"Under the kind protection of Guido Novello da Polenta, here Dante found
an asylum from the malevolence of his enemies, and here he ended a life
embittered with many sorrows, as he has pathetically told to posterity,
'after having gone about like a mendicant; wandering over almost every
part to which our language extends; showing against my will the wound
with which fortune has smitten me, and which is so often imputed to his
ill-deserving, on whom it is inflicted.' The precise time of his death
is not accurately ascertained; but, it was either in July or September
of the year 1321. His friend in adversity, Guido da Polenta, mourned his
loss, and testified his sorrow and respect by a sumptuous funeral, and,
it is said, intended to have erected a monument to his memory; but, the
following year, contending factions deprived him of the sovereignty
which he had held for more than half a century; and he, in his turn,
like the great poet whom he had protected, died in exile. I believe,
however, that the tomb, with an inscription purporting to have been
written by Dante himself, of which I have here given an outline, was
erected at the time of his decease: and, that his portrait, in
bas-relief, was afterwards added by Bernardo Bembo, in the year 1483,
who, at that time was a Senator and Podestà of the Venetian republic."
Byron truly sings:
Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,
Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore;
Thy factions, in their worse than civil war,
Proscribed the bard whose name for evermore
Their children's children would in vain adore
With the remorse of ages.
There is a tomb in Arquà; rear'd in air,
Pillar'd in their sarcophagus, repose
The bones of Laura's lover.
* * * * *
They keep his dust in Arquà, where he died;
The mountain-village where his latter days
Went down the vale of years; and 'tis their pride--
An honest pride--and let it be their praise,
To offer to the passing stranger's gaze
His mansion and his sepulchre, both plain
And simply venerable, such as raise
A feeling more accordant with his strain
Than if a pyramid form'd his monumental fame.[12]
[Illustration: (Petrarch's Tomb.)]
"The tomb is in the churchyard at Arquà. Petrarch is laid, for he cannot
be said to be buried, in a sarchophagus of red marble, raised on four
pilasters on an elevated base, and preserved from an association with
meaner tombs. The revolutions of centuries have spared these sequestered
valleys, and the only violence that has been offered to the ashes of
Petrarch was prompted, not by hate, but veneration. An attempt was made
to rob the sarcophagus of its treasure, and one of the arms was stolen
by a Florentine through a rent which is still visible."[13]
The third Memorial is a red porphyry Vase containing the heart of
Canova. It is placed in the great hall of the Academy of Arts at Venice,
beneath the magnificent picture of the Assumption of the Virgin, by
Titian. The vase is ornamented with ormoulu, and bears the inscription
_Cor magni Canovae_, in raised gold letters. M. Duppa describes it
as "a vase fit for a drawing-room, not grand, nor lugubrious: it is
surmounted with a capsule of a poppy, which is a great improvement on a
skull and cross bones."
Canova was not only the greatest sculptor of his own but of any age.
Byron says--
Such as the great of yore, Canova is to-day.
[Illustration: COR MAGNI CANOVAE.]
He was, in great part, self-taught. In one of his early letters, he
says, "I laboured for a mere pittance, but it was sufficient. It was
the fruit of my own resolution; and, as I then flattered myself, the
foretaste of more honourable rewards--for I never thought of wealth."
He wrought for four years in a small ground cell in a monastery. From
his great mind originated the founding of the study of art upon the
study of nature. His enthusiasm was perfectly delightful: he made it a
rule never to pass a day without making some progress, or to retire to
rest till he had produced some design. His brother sculptors, hackneyed
in the trammels of assumed principles, for a time ridiculed his works,
till, at length, in the year 1800, his merits hecame fully recognised;
from which time till his death, in 1822, he stood unrivalled amidst the
honours of an admiring world.
[10] Childe Harold, canto 4, st. lvi.
[11] Duppa--Observations on the Continent.
[12] Childe Harold, canto 4, st. xxxi, xxxii.
[13] Notes to Childe Harold, ibid.--See Engraving of Petrach's
House at Arquà, _Mirror_, vol. xvii, p. 1.
* * * * *