It is with a peculiar charm and sweetness that Pisa offers herself to
the stranger, who maybe between two trains has not much time to give
her. And indeed to him she knows she has not much to offer, just a few
things passing strange or beautiful, that are spread out for him as at a
fair, on the grass of a meadow in the dust and the sun. But to such an
one Pisa can never be more than a vision, vanished as soon as seen, in
the heat of midday or the shadow of evening.
But for me, of all the cities that grow among the flowers in Tuscany, it
is Pisa that I love best. She is full of the sun; she has the gift of
silence. Her story is splendid, unfortunate, and bitter, and moves to
the song of the sea: still she keeps her old ways about her, the life of
to-day has not troubled her at all. In her palaces the great mirrors are
still filled with the ghosts of the eighteenth century; on her Lung'
Arno you may almost see Byron drive by to mount his horse at the gate,
while in the Pineta, not far away, Shelley lies at noonday writing
verses to Miranda.
It is on the Lung' Arno, curved like a bow, so much more lovely than any
Florentine way, that what little world is left to Pisa lingers yet.
Before one is the Ponte di Mezzo, the most ancient bridge of the city,
built in 1660, but really the representative of its forerunners that
here bound north and south together: _En moles olim lapidea vix aetatem
ferrus nunc mormorea pulchrior et firmior stat simulato Marte virtutis
verae specimen saepe datura_, you read on one of the pillars at the
northern end. For indeed the first bridge seems to have been of wood,
partly rebuilt of stone after the great victory off the coast of Sicily,
and finished in 1046[47]. This bridge, called the Ponte Vecchio, took
ten years to build, and any doubt we might have as to whether it was of
wood or stone is set at rest by Tronci,[48] who tells us that in 1382,
"Pietro Gambacorta, together with the Elders and the Consiglio dei
Cittadini, determined to rebuild in stone the bridge of wood which
passed over Arno from the mouth of the Strada del Borgo to that of S.
Egidio, for the greater ornament of the city, chiefly because there were
many shops on the bridge that impeded the view of the beautiful Lung'
Arno." One sees the bridge that was thus built, the foundations having
been laid with much ceremony, a procession and a sung mass, in a
seventeenth-century print in the Museo Civico.[49] There is a buttress a
quarter of the way from each end, on which houses were still standing.
Then in 1635 this bridge was carried away by a flood. A new bridge was
immediately built, only to be destroyed in the same way on 1st January
1644. In 1660 the present Ponte di Mezzo was finished by Francesco Nave
of Rome.
It was on these bridges that the great Pisan game the _Giuoco del Ponte_
was played,[50] a model of which may be found in the Museo. This new
bridge, at any rate, does not shut out the view of the beautiful Lung'
Arno, _il bello di Pisa_, as one writer calls it. Standing there you may
see the yellow river, curved like a bow, pass through the beautiful
city, between the palaces of marble, their wrinkled image reflected in
the stream, till it is lost in the green fields on its way to the sea;
while on the other side, looking eastward, on either side the river are
the palaces of Byron and Shelley, just before the hideous iron bridge,
where Arno turns suddenly into the city from the plain and the hills. To
the south of the bridge is the Loggia dei Banchi, and farther to the
west, on the Lung' Arno, the great palace of the Gambacorti rises, now
the Palazzo del Comune, and farther still, the Madonna della Spina, a
little Gothic church of marble; while if you pass a little way westward,
the Torre Guelfa comes into sight at the bend of the river among the
ruins of the old arsenal.
It is of course to the wonderful group of buildings to the north of the
city, just within the walls, that every traveller will first make his
way. Passing from Ponte di Mezzo down the Lung' Arno Regio, past the
Palazzo Agostini, beautiful in its red brick past Palazzo Lanfreducci
with its little chain and enigmatic motto, "Alla Giornata," past the
Grand Ducal Palace, you turn at last into the Via S. Maria, a beautiful
and lovely street that winds like a stream full of shadows to the Piazza
del Duomo. On your right is the Church of S. Niccolò, founded about the
year 1000 by Ugo, Marquis of Tuscany. It seems that with Otho III there
came into Italy the Marquis Hugh. "I take it," says Villani,[51] "this
must have been the Marquis of Brandenburg, inasmuch as there is no other
marquisate in Germany." His sojourn in Italy, and especially in our city
of Florence, liked him so well that he caused his wife to come thither,
and took up his abode in Florence as Vicar of Otho the Emperor. It came
to pass as it pleased God, that when he was riding to the chase in the
country of Bonsollazzo, he lost sight of all his followers in a wood,
and came out, as he supposed, at a workshop where iron was wont to be
wrought. Here he found men black and deformed, who in place of iron
seemed to be tormenting men with fire and with hammer, and he asked them
what this might be: and they answered and said that these were damned
souls, and that to similar pains was condemned the soul of the Marquis
Hugh by reason of his worldly life, unless he should repent. With great
fear he commended himself to the Virgin Mary, and when the vision was
ended he remained so pricked in spirit, that after his return to
Florence he sold all his patrimony in Germany and commanded that seven
monasteries should be founded. The first was the Badia of Florence, to
the honour of St. Mary; the second, that of Bonsollazzo, where he beheld
the vision; the third was founded at Arezzo, the fourth at Poggibonizzi,
the fifth at the Verruca of Pisa, the sixth at the city of Castello, the
last was the one at Settimo; and all these abbeys he richly endowed,
and lived afterwards with his wife in holy life, and had no son, and
died in the city of Florence on St. Thomas's Day in the year of Christ
1006, and was buried with great honour in the Badia of Florence.
Tronci[52] says, that beside the Badia di S. Michele di Verruca outside
Pisa, "this most pious Marquis" founded also the Church of S. Niccolò,
for the use of the Monks of S. Michele Fuori. The Church of S. Niccolò
has been altogether restored. The Campanile, however, the oldest tower
left in the city, is strange and lovely. It has been given to Niccolò
Pisano, but is certainly older than his day, and, resembling as it does
the tower of the Badia at Florence and of the Badia at Settimo, seems to
be of the same date as the church. There is a gallery joining the church
with the palace of the Grand Dukes, to which it served as chapel.
Coming as one does out from this narrow deserted street of S. Maria into
the space and breadth of the Piazza del Duomo, one is almost blinded by
the sudden light and glory of the sun on those buildings, that seem to
be made of old ivory intricately carved and infinitely noble. Standing
there as though left stranded upon some shore that life has long
deserted, they are an everlasting witness to the Latin genius, symbols
as it were of what has had to be given up so that we may follow life at
the heels of the barbarian Teuton.
It was in 1063,[53] after the great victory at Palermo, that the ships
of the Republic returning full of spoil, "after much discourse made in
the Senate,"[54] it was decided at last to build "a most magnificent
temple" to S. Maria Assunta, for it was about the time of her Festa,
that is to say, the 15th August, that the victory had been won. This
having been decided on, the Republic sent ambassadors to Rome to the
Pope and to King Henry of Germany, and the Pope sent the church many
privileges, and the King a royal dowry. So they began to build the
temple where stood the old Church of S. Reparata, and more anciently the
Baths of the Emperor Hadrian; and they brought marble from Africa,
Egypt, Jerusalem, Sardinia, and other far places to adorn the church. In
1065 we read that the Pope received under his protection the Chapter and
Canons of Pisa. The Cathedral was finished in about thirty years, and
was consecrated by Pope Gelasius II in 1118. The architects, two dim
names still to be read on the façade ever kissed by the setting sun,
were Rainaldus and Busketus. They built in that Pisan style which, as
some of us may think, was never equalled till Bramante and his disciples
dreamed of St. Peter's and built the little church at Todi, and S.
Pietro in Montorio. However this may be, the Duomo of Pisa, the first
modern cathedral of Italy, was to be the pattern of many a church built
later in the contado, and even in Lucca and Pistoja and the country
round about. It was a style at once splendid and devout, not forgetful
of the Roman Empire, yet with new thoughts concerning it, so that where
a Roman building had once really stood, now a Latin Church should stand,
white with marble and glistening with precious stones. It is strange to
find in this far-away piazza the great buildings of the city; and
stranger still, when we remember that S. Reparata, the church that was
destroyed to make room for the Duomo, was called S. Reparata in Palude,
in the swamp. It may be that Pisa was less open to attack on this side,
or that this being the highest spot near the city, a flood was less to
be feared. But there were other foes beside the flood and the enemy, for
the church was damaged by fire in 1595, and was restored in 1604.
The Duomo is a basilica with nave and double aisles[55], with a
transept flanked with aisles, covered by a dome over the crossing. Built
all of white marble, that has faded to the tone of old ivory, it is
ornamented with black and coloured bands, and stands on a beautiful
marble platform in the grass of a meadow. It is, however, the façade
that is the most splendid and beautiful part of the church. It consists
of seven round arches; in the centre and in each alternate arch is a
door of bronze made by Giovanni da Bologna in 1602. Above these arches
is the first tier of columns, eighteen in number, of various coloured
marbles, supporting the round arches of the first storey; above, the
roof of the aisles slopes gradually inwards, and is supported again by a
tier of pillars of various marbles, while above rise two other tiers
supporting the roof of the nave. On the corners of the church and on the
corners of the nave are figures of saints, while above all, on the cusp
of the façade, stands Madonna with Her Son in Her arms. The door in the
south transept is by Bonannus, whose great doors were destroyed in 1595.
Within, the church is solemn and full of light. Sixty-eight antique
columns, the spoil of war, uphold the church, while above is a coffered
Renaissance ceiling, of the seventeenth century. There is but little to
see beside the church itself, a few altar-pieces, one by Andrea del
Sarto; a few tombs; the bronze lamp of Battista Lorenzi, which is said
to have suggested the pendulum to Galileo, and that is all in the nave.
The choir screens, work of the Renaissance, are very lovely, while above
them are the _ambones_, from which on a Festa the Epistle and Gospel are
sung. The stalls are of the end of the fifteenth century, and the altar,
a dreadful over-decorated work, of the year 1825. Matteo Civitali of
Lucca made the wooden lectern behind the high altar, and Giovanni da
Bologna forged the crucifix, while Andrea del Sarto, not at his best,
painted the Saints Margaret and Catherine, Peter and John, to the right
and left of the altar. The capital of the porphyry column here is by
Stagio Stagi of Pietrasanta, while the porphyry vase is a prize from a
crusade. The mosaics in the apsis are much restored, but they are the
only known work of Cimabue,[56] and are consequently, even in their
present condition, valuable and interesting. The most beautiful and the
most interesting work of art in the Duomo is the Madonna, carved in
ivory in 1300 by Giovanni Pisano, in the sacristy. This Madonna is a
most important link in the history of Italian art; it seems to suggest
the way in which French influence in sculpture came into Italy. Such
work as this, by some French master, probably came not infrequently into
Italian hands; nor was its advent without significance; you may find its
influence in all Giovanni's work, and in how much of that which came
later.[57]
It is but a step across that green meadow to the Baptistery, that like a
casket of ivory and silver stands to the west of the Duomo. It was begun
in 1153 by Diotisalvi, but the work went very slowly forward. In 1164,
out of 34,000 families in Pisa subject to taxes, each gave a gold sequin
for the continuation of the work, but it was not finished altogether
till the fourteenth century. There are four doors; above them on the
east and north are sculptures of the thirteenth century.[58]
Truly, one might as well try to describe the face of one's angel as
these holy places of Pisa, which are catalogued in every guide-book ever
written. At least I will withhold my hand from desecrating further that
which is still so lovely. Only, if you would hear the heavenly choirs
before death has his triumph over you, go by night into the Baptistery,
having bribed some choir-boy to sing for you, and you shall hear from
that marvellous roof a thousand angels singing round the feet of San
Raniero.
Perhaps the loveliest thing here is the great octagonal font of various
marbles, in which every Pisan child has been christened since 1157; but
it is the pulpit of Niccolò Pisano that everyone praises.
Niccolò Pisano appears to have been born in Apulia, and to have come to
Pisa about the middle of the thirteenth century. We know scarcely
anything of his life. The earliest record in which we find his name is
the contract of 1265, in which he binds himself to make a pulpit for the
Duomo of Siena.[59] There he is called _Magister Niccolus lapidum de
paroccia ecclesie Sancti Blasii de Ponte, de Pisis quondam Petri_.
Another document of later date describes him as _Magister Nichola Pietri
de Apulia_. Coming thus to Pisa from Apulia, possibly after many
wanderings, in about 1250, his childhood had been passed not among the
Tuscan hills, but in Southern Italy among the relics of the Roman world.
It is not any sudden revelation of Roman splendour he receives in the
Campo Santo of Pisa, but just a reminder, as it were, of the things of
his childhood, the broken statues of Rome that littered the country of
his birth. Thus in a moment this Southerner transforms the rude art of
his time here in Tuscany, the work of Bonannus, for instance, the
carvings of Biduinus, and the bas-reliefs at San Cassiano,[60] with the
faint memory of Rome that lingered like a ghost in the minds of men,
that already had risen in the laws and government of the cities, in the
desire of men here in Pisa, for instance, for liberty, and that was soon
to recreate the world. If the Roman law still lived as tradition and
custom in the hearts of men, the statues of the gods were but hiding for
a little time in Latin earth. It was Niccolò Pisano who first brought
them forth.
The pulpit which he made for Pisa--perhaps his earliest work--is in the
form of a hexagon resting upon nine columns; the central pillar is set
on a strange group, a man, a griffin, and animals; three others are
poised on the backs of lions; while three are set on simple pediments on
the ground; and three again support the steps. A "trefoil arch" connects
the six chief pillars, on each of which stands a statue of a Virtue. It
is here that we came for the first time upon a figure not of the
Christian world, for Fortitude is represented as Hercules with a lion's
cub on his shoulder. In the spandrels of the trefoils are the four
Evangelists and six Prophets. Above the Virtues rise pillars clustered
in threes, framing the five bas-reliefs and supporting the parapet of
the pulpit; and it is here, by these the most beautiful and
extraordinary works of that age in Italy, that Niccolò Pisano will be
for ever remembered.
Poor in composition though they be, they are full of marvellous energy,
a Roman dignity and weight. It is antiquity flowering again in a
Christian soil, with a certain new radiance and sweetness about it, a
naïveté almost ascetic, that was certainly impossible from any Roman
hand.
On the far side you may see the Birth of Our Lord, where Mary sits in
the midst, enthroned, unmoved, with all the serenity of a goddess, while
in another part the angel brings her the message with the gesture of an
orator. Consider, then, those horses' heads in the Adoration of the
Magi, or the high priest in the Presentation, and then compare them with
the rude work of Bonannus on the south transept door of the Duomo; no
Pisan, certainly no Tuscan, could have carved them thus in high relief
with the very splendour of old Rome in every line. And in the
Crucifixion you see Christ really for the first time as a God reigning
from the cross; while Madonna, fallen at last, is not the weeping Mary
of the Christians, but the mother of the Gracchi who has lost her elder
son. In the Last Judgment it is a splendid God you see among a crowd of
men with heads like the busts in a Roman gallery, with all the aloofness
and dignity of those weary emperors. There is almost nothing here of any
natural life observed for the first time, and but little of the
Christian asceticism so marvellously lovely in the French work of this
age; Niccolò has in some way discovered classic art, and has been
content with that, as the humanists of the Renaissance were to be
content with the discovery of ancient literature later: he has imitated
the statues and the bas-reliefs of the sarcophagi, as they copied
Cicero.
To pass from the Baptistery into the Campo Santo, where among Christian
graves the cypresses are dying in the earth of Calvary, and the urns and
sarcophagi of pagan days hold Christian dust, is perhaps to make easier
the explanation we need of the art of Niccolò. Here, it is said, he
often wandered "among the many spoils of marbles brought by the
armaments of Pisa to this city." Among these ancient sarcophagi there is
one where you may find the Chase of Meleager and the Calydonian boar;
this was placed by the Pisans in the façade of the Duomo opposite S.
Rocco, and was used as a tomb for the Contessa Beatrice, the mother of
the great Contessa Matilda. Was it while wandering here, in looking so
often on that tomb on his way to Mass, that he was moved by its beauty
till his heart remembered its childhood in a whole world of such things?
It must have been so, for here all things meet together and are
reconciled in death.
Out of the dust and heat of the Piazza one comes into a cool cloister
that surrounds a quadrangle open to the sky, in which a cypress still
lives. The sun fills the garden with a golden beauty, in which the
butterflies flit from flower to flower over the dead. I do not know a
place more silent or more beautiful. One lingers in the cool shadow of
the cloisters before many an old marble,--a vase carved with
Bacchanalian women, the head of Achilles, or the bust of Isotta of
Rimini. But it is before the fresco of the Triumph of Death that one
stays longest, trying to understand the dainty treatment of so horrible
a subject. Those fair ladies riding on horseback with so brave a show of
cavaliers, even they too must come at last to be just dust, is it, or
like that swollen body, which seems to taint even the summer sunshine,
lying there by the wayside, and come upon so unexpectedly? What
love-song was that troubadour, fluttering with ribbons, singing to that
little company under the orange-trees, cavaliers and ladies returned
from the chase, or whiling away a summer afternoon playing with their
falcons and their dogs? The servants have spread rich carpets for their
feet, and into the picture trips a singing girl, who has surely called
the very loves from Paradise or from the apple-trees covered with
blossom, where they make their temporary abode. What love song were they
singing, ere the music was frozen on their lips by a falling leaf or
chance flutter of bird life calling them to turn, and lo, Death is here?
It is in such a place as this that any meditation upon death loses both
its sentimental and its ascetic aspect, and becomes wholly aesthetic, so
that it can never be before this fresco that such a contemplation should
be, as it were, "a lifelong following of one's own funeral." And indeed,
it is not any gross fear of death that comes to one at all here in the
mysterious sunshine, but a new delight in life. Those joyful pleasant
paintings of Benozzo Gozzoli, a third-rate master, but one who is always
full of joy and sunshine, with a certain understanding and love, too, of
the hills and the trees, seem to confirm us in our delight at the sun
and the sea wind, here in Italy, in Italy at last. For, indeed, in what
other land than this could a cemetery be so beautiful, and where else in
the world do frescoes like these stain the walls out of doors amid a
litter of antique statues, graves, and flowers over the heroic or holy
dead? Here you may see life at its sanest and most splendid moments. In
the long hot days of the vintage, for instance, when the young men tread
the wine-press, the girls bear the grapes in great baskets, and boy and
girl together pluck the purple fruit. Call it, if you will, the
Drunkenness of Noah, you will forget the subject altogether in your
delight in the sun and the joy of the vintage itself, where the girls
dance among the vines under the burden of the grapes, and the little
children play with the dogs, and the goodman tastes the wine. Or again,
in the fresco of the Tower of Babel: think if you can of all the mere
horror of the confusion, and the terror of death, but in a moment you
will forget it, remembering only that heroic Republic which amid her
enemies built her splendid city, her beautiful Duomo, her Tower like the
horn of an unicorn, and this Campo Santo too, where the hours pass so
softly, and the hottest days are cool and full of delight. The Victory
of Abraham is a battle gay with the banners of Pisa, when the Gonfalons
of Florence lay low in the dust. The Curse of Ham, with its multitude of
children, is just the departure of some prodigal for the Sardinian wars
on a summer evening beyond the city gate. Thus alone in this place of
death Pisa lives, ah! not in the desolate streets of the modern city,
but fading on the walls of her Campo Santo, a ghost among ghosts,
immortalised by an alien hand.
Coming last of all to the greatest wonder of the Piazza, it is really
with surprise you find the Campanile so beautiful, perhaps the most
beautiful tower of Italy. It is like a lily leaning in the wind, it is
like the slanting horn of an unicorn, it is like an ivory Madonna that
the artist has not had the heart to carve since the ivory was so fair.
Begun in 1174, it was designed by Bonannus. He made it all of white
marble, which has faded now to the colour of old ivory. Far away at the
top of the tower live the great bells, and especially La
Pasquareccia,[61] founded in 1262, stamped with a relief of the
Annunciation, for it used to ring the Ave. I think there can be no
reasonable doubt that the lean of the Tower is due to some terrible
accident which befell it after the third gallery had been built, for the
fourth gallery, added in 1204 by Benenabo, begins to rectify the
sinking; the rest, built in 1260, continues to throw the weight from the
lower to the higher side. As we know, the whole Piazza was a marsh, and
just as the foundations of the Tower of S. Niccolò have given a little,
so these sank much earlier, offering an unique opportunity to a
barbarian architect. There is, as has been often very rightly said, no
such thing as a freak in Italian art: its aim was beauty, very simple
and direct; nowhere in all its history will you find a grotesque such as
this. It is strange that a northerner, William of Innspruck, finished
the Tower the fifth storey in 1260; and it may well be that this Teuton
brought to the work something of a natural delight in such a thing as
this, and contrived to finish it, instead of beginning again. It seems
necessary to add that the tower would be more beautiful if it were
perfectly upright.
The Piazza del Duomo is full of interest. Almost opposite the Campanile,
at the corner of the Via S. Maria, is the Casa dei Trovatelli. It was
here, as I suppose,[62] that the Pisans built that hospital and chapel
to S. Giorgio after the great day of Montecatini.[63] Not far away,
behind the Via Torelli in Via Arcevescovado, is the archbishop's palace,
with a fine courtyard. If we follow the Via Torelli a little, we pass,
on the right, the Oratory of S. Ranieri, the patron saint of Pisa, where
there is a crucifix by Giunta Pisano which used to hang in the kitchen
of the Convent of S. Anna,[64] not far away, where Emilia Viviani was
"incarcerated," as Shelley says. Close by are the few remains of the
Baths of Hadrian. At the corner we pass into Via S. Anna, and then,
taking the first turning to the left, we come into the great Piazza di
S. Caterina, before the church of that name. Built in the thirteenth
century, it has a fine Pisan façade, but the church is now closed and
the convent has become a boys' school. Passing through the shady Piazza
under the plane-trees, we come into the Via S. Lorenzo, and then,
turning to the right into Vicolo del Ruschi, we come into a Piazza out
of which opens the Piazza di S. Francesco. S. Francesco fell on evil
days, and was altogether desecrated, but is now in the hands of the
Franciscans again. This is well, for the whole church, founded in 1211,
and not the Campanile only, is said to be by Niccolò Pisano.[65] Behind
it, in the old convent, is the Museo.
As you come into this desecrated and ruined cloister littered with
rubbish, among which here and there you may see some quaint or charming
thing, it is difficult to remember S. Francis. Yet, indeed, the place
was founded by two of his followers, the blessed Agnolo and the blessed
Alberto, and still holds in a locked room one of the most extraordinary
of his portraits. In the old Chapter-house are some fragments of the
pulpit from the Duomo by Giovanni Pisano, destroyed in the fire of 1595.
Here we may see very easily the difference between father and son. It is
no longer the influence of the antique that gives life to Italian
sculpture, but certainly French work, something of that passionate
restless energy that, whether we like it or not, puts certain statues at
Chartres, for instance, without shame beside the best Greek work. The
subjects of these panels are the same as those of Niccolò's pulpit in
the Baptistery; one could not wish for a better opportunity of comparing
the work of the two men who stand at the source of the Renaissance.
Passing through the cloister, we enter the convent through a great room
on the first floor, hung with the banners of the Giuoco del Ponte, and
bright with service books. In a little room on the left (Sala I) we come
into the gallery proper. Here, among all sorts of stained parchments, is
the precious remnant of the Cintola del Duomo, that girdle of Maria
Assunta which used to be bound round the Duomo.[66] It took some three
hundred yards of the fabric, crusted with precious stones, painted with
miniatures, sewn with gold and silver, to gird the Duomo. I know not
when first it was made, nor who first conceived the proud thought,[67]
nor what particular victory put it into his heart. Only the tyrant and
thief who stole it I know, Gambacorti, whom Pisa brought back from
exile.
In the chamber next to this are some strangely beautiful crucifixes by
Giunta Pisano, and a little marvellous portrait of S. Francesco on
copper with a bright red book in his hand.
Of the pictures which follow, but two ever made any impression upon me.
One, a Madonna and Child by Gentile da Fabriano, is full of a mysterious
loveliness that did not survive him; the other is an altar-piece from S.
Caterina by Simone Martini of Siena, where a Magdalen holds the delicate
casket of precious ointment, and, as though fainting with the sweetness
of her weeping, leans a little, her sleepy, languorous eyes drooping
under her heavy hair, which a jewelled ribbon hardly holds up. Something
in this "primitive" art has been lost when we come to Angelico, some
almost morbid loveliness that you may find even yet in the air about
Perugia and Siena, in the delicate flowers there, the honeysuckle which
the country people call _le manine della Madonnina_--the little hands of
the Virgin, and even in the people sometimes, in their soft gestures and
dreamy looks. And for these I pass by the pictures by Benozzo Gozzoli,
by Sodoma, and the rest, for they are as nothing.
It is, however, not a work of art at all that is perhaps the most
interesting thing in the Museo; but a model of the _Giuoco del Ponte_,
with certain banners, flags, bucklers, and such, once used by the Pisans
in their national game.[68] This _Giuoco_ was played on the Ponte di
Mezzo, by the people who lived on the north bank of the river and those
on the south, nor were the country folk excluded; and Mr. Heywood tells
us that it was no uncommon sight a quarter of a century ago "to see
hanging above the doorway of a contadino's house the _targone_ [or
shield] with which his sires played at Ponte."[69] The city and
countryside being thus divided into two camps, as it were, each chose an
army, that was divided into six _squadre_ of from thirty to sixty
_soldati_. The _squadre_ of the north were, Santa Maria with a banner of
blue and white; San Michele, whose colours were white and red; the
Calci, white and green and gold; Calcesana, yellow and black; the
Mattaccini, white, blue, and peach-blossom; the Satiri, red and black.
The southern _squadre_ were called S. Antonio, whose banner was of
flame colour, on which was a pig; S. Martino, with a banner of white,
black, and red; San Marco, with a banner of white and yellow with a
winged lion, and under its feet was the gospel, on which was written
_Pax tibi Marce_; the Leoni, with a banner of black and white; the
Dragoni, with a banner of green and white; the Delfini, with a banner of
blue and yellow. All these banners were of silk, and very large.[70]
Originally the game was played on St. Anthony's day, the 17th of
January; later, this first game came to be a sort of trial match, in
which the players were chosen for the _Battaglia generale_, which took
place on some later date agreed upon by both parties. Thus, I suppose,
if any noble visited Pisa, the _Battaglia generale_ would be fought in
his honour.
The challenge of the side defeated at the last contest having been
received, a council of war was held in both camps, and permission being
given by the authorities, on that evening, the city was illuminated. The
great procession (the _squadre_ in each camp, in the order in which I
have named them) took place on the day of battle, each army keeping to
its own side of Arno. Then the Piazza del Ponte for the northern army,
the Piazza de' Bianchi for the southern, were enclosed with palisades to
form the camps, and the battle began.
In order to save the _soldato_ from hurt, his head was covered with a
_falzata_ of cotton, and guarded by an iron casque with a barred
vizor.[71] The body was also swathed in cotton or a doublet of leather,
over which iron armour was worn. The arms, too, were covered with
quilted leather and the hands in gauntlets, and the legs were protected
with gaiters, while round the neck a quilted collar was tied to save the
collar bone. The only weapon allowed was the _targone_, a shield of wood
curved at the top, and almost but not quite pointed at the foot. At the
back of this were two handles, which were gripped by both hands, and
the blow delivered with the smaller end of the shield. When the press of
the fight was not very great, no doubt this shield was used as a club.
These _targoni_ were decorated with mottoes or a device, as we may see
from these now in the Museo; they were evidently even heirlooms in the
family which had the honour to see one of its members chosen for the
_Battaglia_.
Four _comandanti_ or captains on each side entered the battle itself.
Two of these on each side stood on the parapet of the bridge directing
their men. The two northerners wore a scarlet uniform with white
facings, the two southerners a green uniform with white facings. Two
other _comandanti_ in each army stood on the ground. The two first were
unarmed, and were not allowed to interfere with the fight, but the two
on the ground, who were allowed two adjutants, could scarcely have been
prevented from giving or receiving blows.
Before the fight began, the banner of Pisa, a silver cross on a red
ground, floated from a staff in the middle of the bridge. This was
lowered across the bridge to divide the two armies; and at the close of
the fight it was so lowered again, and, according as either side was in
the enemy's territory, so the victory went.
When the battle was over, the victorious side made procession through
the city. If the north had won, all Pisa north of Arno was alight with
bonfires, the houses were decorated, everyone was in the streets; while
south of Arno the city was in darkness, the people in their houses, not
a dog lurked without. Then followed, after a few days, the great trionfo
of the victors.
"The procession was headed," says Mr. Heywood, "by two trumpeters on
horseback, followed by a band of horsemen clad in military costumes, and
by war-cars full of arms and banners of the vanquished. Thereafter came
certain soldiers on foot with their hands bound, to represent prisoners
taken in the battle; then more trumpeters and drummers; and then the
triumphal chariot, drawn by four or six horses richly draped and adorned
with emblems and mottoes. It was accompanied and escorted by knights
and gentlemen on horseback. The noble ladies of the city followed in
their carriages, and behind them thronged an infinite people (_infinito
popolo_) scattering broadcast various poetical compositions, and singing
with sweet melodies in the previously appointed places, the glories of
the victory won, making procession through the city until night." After
dark, bonfires were lighted. On high above the triumphal car was set
some allegorical figure, such as Valour, Victory, or Fame.[72]
The last _Giuoco del Ponte_ was fought in 1807. "Certain pastimes," says
Signor Tribolati, "are intimately connected with certain institutions
and beliefs; and when the latter cease to exist, the former also perish
with them. The _Giuoco del Ponte_ was a relic of popular chivalry, one
of the innumerable knightly games which adorned the simple, artistic,
warlike life of the hundred Republics of Italy.... What have we to do
with the arms and banners of the tourneys? At most we may rub the
cobwebs away and shake off the dust and lay them aside in a museum."[73]
To come out of the Museo, that graveyard of dead beauty, of forgotten
enthusiasms, into the quiet, deserted Piazza di S. Francesco, where the
summer sleeps ever in the sun and no footstep save a foreigner's ever
seems to pass, is to fall from one dream into another, not less
mysterious and full of beauty. How quiet now is this old city that once
rang with the shouts of the victors home from some sea fight, or
returned from the Giuoco. Only, as you pass along Via S. Francesco and
turn into Piazza di S. Paolo, the children gather about you, reminding
you that in Italy even the oldest places--S. Paolo al Orto, for
instance, with its beautiful old tower that is now a dwelling--are put
to some use, and are really living still like the gods who have taken
service with us, perhaps in irony, to console themselves for our
treachery in watching our sadness without them.
It is certainly with some such thought as this in his heart the
unforgetful traveller will enter S. Pierino, not far from S. Paolo al
Orto, at the corner of Via Cavour and Via delle belle Torri. Coming into
this old church suddenly out of the sunshine, how dark a place it seems,
full of a mysterious melancholy too, a sort of remembrance of change and
death, as though some treachery asleep in our hearts had awakened on the
threshold and accused us. The crypt has long been used as a charnel
house, the guide-book tells you, but maybe it is not any memory of the
unremembered and countless dead that has stirred in your heart, but some
stranger impulse urging you to a dislike of the darkness, that dim
mysterious light that is part of the north and has nothing to do with
Italy. How full of twilight it is, yet once in this place a temple to
Apollo stood, full of the sun, almost within sound of the sea, when, we
know not how,[74] the Pisans received news of Jesus Christ, and,
forgetting Apollo, gave his temple to St. Peter. Then in 1072 they
pulled down that old "house of idols,"[75] and built this church,
calling it S. Pietro in Vincoli, perhaps because of the presence of the
old gods, perhaps because it was so dark--who knows; and on the 30th of
August 1119, Archbishop Pietro, he who brought the cross of silver from
Rome and put in it the banner of the city and led Pisa to victory in
Majorca, solemnly consecrated it.
I was thinking somewhat in this fashion, resting on a bench in that cool
twilight place, where the sounds of life come from very far off, when
out of the darkness an old man crept toward me; he seemed as old as the
church itself. "The Signore would see the church," he asked; "who can
the Signore wish for better than myself?--it is my own church, I am its
guardian." Truly he was very old: if he were Apollo, long and evil had
been his days; if he were St. Peter, indeed he was very like.
It was a long story of buried treasure, buried or lost I know not which,
that he tried to tell me, while he pointed to the beautiful pavement, or
caressed the old fading pillars, leading me up the broken steps into the
greater darkness of the nave, where he showed me one of the most ancient
pictures in Pisa, a great, mournful, and grievous crucifix, a colossal
Christ, His feet nailed separately to the cross, His body tortured and
emaciated, a hideous mask of death;--here in the temple of Apollo. "It
is here," said he, smiling, "that Paganism and Christianity were
married; and in the temple lie the dead, and in the church the living
pray, as you see, Signore, beside these old pillars that were not built
for any Christian house. Such is the splendour and antiquity of our
city. For, as you know, doubtless, the Duomo itself is built on the
foundations of Nero's Palace,[76] S. Andrea (not far away) was once a
temple of Venus, in S. Niccola we besought Ceres, and in S. Michele
called on Mars; such, Signore, is the splendour and glory of our
city...."
Evening had come when I found myself again on the Lung' Arno, in a world
neither Pagan nor Christian, in which I am a stranger.
* * * * *
Leaving behind you Ponte di Mezzo and the Lung' Arno, _quasi a modo d'un
archo di balestro_,[77] you come into the Borgo, under the low arches of
the old houses that make a covered way. This is perhaps the oldest part
of Pisa. Almost at once on your right you pass S. Michele in Borgo,
built probably just before his death by Fra Guglielmo, that disciple of
Niccolò Pisano. Fra Guglielmo died in the convent of S. Caterina, for he
had been fifty-seven years in the Dominican Order. Tronci tells us
that, being one day in Bologna, where he had gone with Niccolò his
master to make a tomb for S. Domenico, when the old tomb was opened he
secretly took a bone and hid it, and without saying anything presently
set out for Pisa. Arrived there, he placed the relic under the table of
the altar of S. Maria Maddalena, and was seen often by the brethren
praying there,--they knew not why. But at his death he revealed his
pious theft, and showed the bone in its place, and it was guarded and
shown to the people.
But S. Michele in Borgo is older than Fra Guglielmo, who died about the
year 1313. Certainly the crypt is ancient as are the pillars. A certain
_Buono_ is said to have built a church here in 990; but little, however,
now remaining can be of that date, the church as a whole being of about
1312, and, as I have said, probably the last work of Fra Guglielmo.
Passing up the Borgo, here and there we may see signs of ancient Pisa in
the sunken pillars, for instance, before a house in a street on the
left, Via del Monte, following which we come into the most beautiful
Piazza in Pisa, perhaps in Italy, Piazza dei Cavalieri, once the Piazza
dei Anziani.
On the right is the Church of the Knights of St. Stephen, Santo Stefano
dei Cavalieri; next to it is the beautiful palace of the Anziani, later
the Palazzo Conventuale dei Cavalieri, rebuilt by Vasari. Almost
opposite this is a palace under which the road passes, built to the
shape of the Piazza; it marks the spot where the Tower of Hunger once
stood, where the eagles of the Republic were housed, and where Conte
Ugolino della Gherardesca with his sons and nephews was starved to death
by Archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini. Opposite to this is the marble
Palazzo del Consiglio, also belonging to the Order of St. Stephen.
The Knights of St. Stephen, to whom, indeed, the whole Piazza seems to
be devoted, were a religious and military Order founded by Cosimo I,
Grand Duke of Tuscany, who sits on horseback in front of the beautiful
steps of the _Conventuale_. The object of the Order was to harry the
Moorish pirates of the Mediterranean, to redeem their captives, and to
convert these Moors to Christianity; nor were they wanting in war, for
they fought at Lepanto. Cosimo placed the Order under the protection of
St. Stephen, because he had gained his greatest victory on that saint's
day. The Knights seem to have been of two kinds: the religious, who took
three major vows and lived in the Conventuale under the rule of St.
Benedict, and served the Church of S. Stefano; and the military, who
might not only hold property but marry. Their cross is very like the
cross of Pisa, but red, while that is white.
In S. Stefano there is little to see, a few old banners, a series of bad
frescoes, and a bust of S. Lussorius by Donatello, perhaps,--at least,
that sculptor was working for eighteen months in the city. Before the
sixteenth century this Piazza must have been very different from what it
is to-day. Where S. Stefano stands now S. Sebastiano stood, that church
where the Anziani met so often to decide peace or war.[78] Close by was
the palace of the Podestà, while beyond the Palazzo Anziani rose the
Torre delle Sette Vie, Torre Gualandi, Torre della Fame, for it bore all
three names; only, the last came to it after the hideous crime of
Ruggiero. If we cross the Piazza opposite the Palazzo Conventuale, and
pass into Via S. Sisto, we come to the church of that saint, where also
the Grand Council used to meet. It was founded to commemorate the great
victories that came to Pisa on that day. Those antique columns are the
spoil of war, as Tronci tells us.[79] Returning to the Piazza, and
leaving it by Via S. Frediano, we soon come to the church of that saint,
with its lovely and spacious nave and antique columns. A little farther
on is the University, La Sapienza, founded by Conte Fazio della
Gherardesca in 1338. In that year Conte Fazio enlarged the Piazza degli
Anziani, so that _la nobilità_ should be able to walk there more
readily; and to render the city more honourable, with the consent of the
_Anziani_ and all the Senate, he founded a university, to lead the
greatest doctors to lecture there; and to establish the Theatre of the
Schools he sent ambassadors in the name of the Republic to Pope Benedict
for his authorisation. Needless to say, this was given and in 1340 we
find Messer Bartolo da Sassoferrato and Messer Guido da Prato, Doctor of
Physics, lecturing on "Chirugia."[80] In 1589, Galileo was Professor of
Mathematics here. The present building dates from 1493. Close by,
between the University and the Lung' Arno, are the remains of an old
gate of the city, Porta Aurea, and some remnants of towers.
Crossing Arno by Ponte Solferino, and turning along the Lung' Arno
Gambacorti to the left, we come suddenly upon a great Piazza in which an
old and splendid church is hidden away. And just as the Duomo, the great
church of the northern part of the city, is set just within the walls
far away from the Borgo, so here, in the southern part of Pisa, S. Paolo
a Ripa d'Arno is abandoned by the riverside on the verge of the country,
for the fields are at its threshold. And indeed, this desolate church is
really older than the Duomo, for, as some say, it served as the Great
Church of Pisa while the Cathedral was building. Founded, as the Pisans
assert, by Charlemagne in 805, it was rather the model of the Duomo, if
this be true, than, as is generally supposed, a copy of it. Bare for the
most part and empty, its original beauty and simplicity still remain to
it; nor should any who find it omit to pass into the priest's house, to
see the old Baptistery now in the hands of Benedictine nuns.
On our way back to Pisa by the Lung' Arno Gambacorti, we may look always
with new joy at the Torre Guelfa, almost all that is left of the great
arsenal built in 1200. And then you will not pass without entering, it
may be, S. Maria della Spina, where of old the huntsmen used to hear
Mass at dawn before going about their occasions.
And many another church in Pisa is devout and beautiful. S. Sepolcro,
which Diotisalvi made, he who built the Baptistery, a church of the
Knights Templars below the level of the way; S. Martino too, both in
Chinseca, that part of the city named after her who gave the alarm
nearly a thousand years ago when the Saracen sails hove in sight.--Ah,
do not be in a hurry to leave Pisa for any other city. Let us think of
old things for a little, and be quiet. It may be we shall never see that
line of hills again--Monti Pisani; it were better to look at them a
little carefully. A little while before to-day the most precious of our
dreams was not so lovely as that spur of the Apennines.