vettura to the Maschere; a poor little inn, about eighteen miles
distant; there we slept, but I let my companions proceed without me the
next day, meaning to follow them on foot. A wet morning detained me some
time, and when at length I set off, the clouds were still hanging low on
the mountains. I had dressed myself as lightly as possible, and I felt
it rather cold. The walk was however delightful. The scenery everywhere
fine, but so equally so, that it did not tempt the pencil; cultivated
valleys, sloping hills, and woody mountains, succeeded one after
another. The highest point of the pass is called the Fiuta; it has the
reputation of being always windy, and when I crossed it, fully
maintained its fame. I was much amused by the figures who passed me,
closely wrapped up in their cloaks, with their hats tied fast upon their
heads, and shrinking from the blast. The northern side is more wild than
the south. There is less wood, and more rock, and one or two remarkable
crags. They are however ragged crags, and have nothing of the solidity
of the Alpine masses. Further on are considerable cliffs, which are kept
naked and perpendicular, by the action of water at the bottom. These
produce a very different effect on the mind from the precipices of the
Alps, whose firmness seems to defy vegetation. I left the road before
reaching Pietra Mala, in order to see what is called the Volcano. I was
directed to a tract of broken ground of no great extent, but though
frequently within a hundred yards of the spot, it was a considerable
time before I discovered the flames, putting my hand in the meanwhile to
every crack in the soil, to try if I could feel any warmth, and
imagining from time to time that I perceived a sulphureous smell; at
last however, I succeeded, and it was certainly very curious to see a
portion of a field on fire without any apparent cause. The flames issued
from a space twenty-two feet long and five feet wide, and there were
traces of its action for about four times that space. It is always of
more consequence in winter and wet weather, than it is in summer. A
plant was growing within a yard of the flames, and corn within about two
yards, evidently ripened by their warmth beyond the rest of the field.
There was no visible smoke, not the least smell of sulphur, but that of
a clear coal fire; no soot is deposited, but a trifling white
efflorescence is observable on some of the stones exposed to the flames.
The soil about it seemed to be clay mixed with fragments of limestone,
and the flames issued from among these fragments, or perhaps partially
among rocks of the same nature _in situ_, but I think they were all
detached pieces. The cliffs at a little distance appeared to be also of
limestone, but in some little brooks which the road passes, the rock had
rather the appearance of a grit. There are likewise some black ragged
crags in the neighbourhood.
From this place I passed through Pietra Mala, and went to the boiling
spring, which deserved its name still less than the volcano, for there
was no water. Its situation was marked by a little spot of bare ground,
not three yards in diameter, in the midst of a meadow; and in the middle
of this is a small saucer-shaped hollow, about three feet in diameter,
in which the earth retained a little moisture. On the application of a
candle to the edges of this saucer, they took fire, which showed that a
vapour was issuing from the spot, but I could perceive no smell, either
before or after the application of flame. My guide had filled some
bottles with water at a brook by the way, in order to fill them with the
gas at the spring, but the total absence of water disappointed him. Such
bottles of air are kept corked up by the people of the inn, who, when
they wish to show the effect to strangers, apply a light to the mouth,
pouring water at the same time into the bottle. I slept at Scarica
l’Asino, and returned to my old quarters at Bologna, but the bed-room I
had used before was occupied by a Roman marquis, commissioned, as I
understood, from the Holy See, to correct some abuses in the collection
of the taxes. Another therefore was assigned to me, within that of the
master and mistress, who told me that I should find the doors always
open, and might pass through it whenever I pleased, without occasioning
any inconvenience. The Roman gentleman, and another, a lawyer from
Ancona, were always of the dinner party, and instead of dressing for the
meal, as in England, we always undrest, pulling off the coat which had
been used for walking about in the city, and generally the waistcoat and
neckcloth, and putting on a nankin jacket. Dinner is not a company meal,
that is, not one at which persons make an exhibition to their friends of
the luxuries they have the means of furnishing to them, but it is by no
means a solitary one, and here, besides the persons living in the house,
seven in number, there was generally some friend to partake of it.
Of Bologna I have already said all that occurs to me. I left it on the
19th, and went to Modena, where I hardly found so much to interest me as
I had anticipated. There is a large ducal palace, and a Gothic
cathedral, which is not handsome. Internally, the lower arches seem to
be circular, and most of the upper ones pointed: there is a wheel, or
marigold window over the entrance, where the rays are formed of little
columns, and finish in pointed arches. The choir is elevated, and in the
sub-choir below it, we find a forest of little shafts, some of which
rest on figures of animals. The front columns at the doorways, both of
the west and south entrance, are supported on animals. The principal
front consists of a higher gable in the middle, and a sloping roof on
each side, the middle division occupying about half the entire extent:
and it has a large wheel window, already mentioned, in the upper part.
There is sometimes a simplicity and good proportion in the general
design of a façade of an Italian Gothic, which is very pleasing;
[Illustration: Illustration of façade]
and in some instances the disposition of the smaller parts is well
managed. I would not recommend that they should be copied altogether,
but they afford useful hints for design. Most of these are unfinished,
and by this at least we avoid having the building spoilt by bad details.
The usual ornament consists of ranges of little arches under the
cornices. There is a Gothic cathedral at Reggio, but it has been nearly
all modernized, and hardly deserves notice. The Madonna di Consolazione
is a very handsome modern church. The form is a Greek cross, with arms,
whose depth is equal to the breadth, and a semicircle is added to form
the choir. At Parma there is a cathedral built in the eleventh century,
and dedicated in 1105; not Gothic, since there are no pointed arches in
the original work. The vaulting of the nave is elliptical: a
circumstance I do not remember having met with elsewhere in a building
of this era. The whole is darkly painted; the vaulting of the nave by
Girolamo Mazzola, and the walls by a Lactantius Gambara. The dome at the
intersection is ornamented with one of the most celebrated productions
of Coreggio, and I am willing to believe that it is very fine; but it is
lighted by a set of little windows just below the painting, which render
a good view of it impossible; it has also been damaged by the wet. The
choir is elevated, and there is a chapel beneath it full of columns,
more considerable than that at Modena, and presenting some very
picturesque effects. The front here forms one large gable, plentifully
adorned with horizontal and inclined ranges of small arches, and minute
ornamental arches under the raking cornice, such as I have before
described to you at Milan and Verona. It has no leading feature, and I
much prefer the division into three parts. The shafts of the doorway
rest as usual on animals. This front has no circular window.
Just by the cathedral is the Baptistery, a high octagonal building,
erected about 1196, by an architect of the name of Antelmi, or Antélami.
On the outside the entrance is formed by a large arch, with three shafts
on each side, as in Gothic buildings, and four colonnades, one above
another, of small shafts over it, with a wide and nearly plain band
between each. The upper, a fifth range, has still smaller shafts, placed
closer together, and pointed arches; it is probably an addition to the
original design; but as the building was certainly not completed before
1260, it may never have been finished in any other manner. The angles
are rounded, or rather, they are truncated, and replaced by two plane
surfaces, and finished at the summit by turrets, but the upper part of
these is not coeval with the rest of the building. The inside is
sixteen-sided.
There is another cupola finely painted by Coreggio, at the church of St.
John the Evangelist, and this, though liable to a similar objection in
the mode of lighting, yet is more intelligible than that at the
cathedral, from the smaller number and greater size of the figures. The
church is somewhat in the Brunelleschi style. I next went to the
Steccata, said to be a work of Bramante. Some portions of the tribune
were painted by Parmegiano, not the whole, for having received a
considerable portion of the money agreed upon, and not proceeding as
fast as the monks expected, they imprisoned him in order to oblige him
to complete his contract, at which he was so enraged that he spoilt
great part of what he had executed, and quitted the place. The church is
a Greek cross, with very short arms, and a semicircular end to each. It
is very darkly painted; the internal proportions are fine, and there is
something of a pleasing solemnity in its gloomy appearance. On the
outside, the central dome rests on a drum, ornamented with small columns
and arches, which has a good effect, but the rest is not worth
criticism.
There is a very fine collection of paintings at the academy at Parma;
some of them have been at Paris, but I believe all have been restored to
Parma to which it had any claim. Among these is the exquisite picture of
St. Jerome, by Coreggio, which you must have seen at the Louvre, and
several other admirable paintings by that artist, but nothing which can
be compared to this. There are also many fine productions of the Lombard
and Bolognese schools. Here is also an interesting museum of antiques,
consisting principally of objects found at Velleia, a city destroyed by
the fall of a mountain, about the end of the fourth century; and a
public library, containing eighty thousand volumes; the cases are about
fifteen feet high, and the moveable steps as much as nine, but the
librarian assured me that this disposition was not found inconvenient.
All these are contained in a great palace, intended by the dukes of
Parma for their residence, but certainly not on a scale corresponding
with the extent of their dominions. Only about half of the design has
been erected, and great part of that is still unfinished, yet besides
the establishments already mentioned, it contains a great theatre, 300
feet long, which in fact is neither beautiful nor convenient, but very
remarkable on account of the distinctness with which one hears even a
low voice on the stage through every part; it is all of wood, and all
the planks are disposed vertically, which is not consistent with the
plan usually adopted for the distant propagation of sound. There is also
another smaller theatre, and I know not what besides, all upon the first
floor. I have resolved not to tire you with accounts of paintings,
otherwise I should be tempted to say a little more of those which form
the great boast of this city. The language here is a mixture of
Milanese, Bolognese, and Venetian, “_Se vol vder nteck chais_,” said a
boy to me, who wanted to obtain a little money by shewing me the
Baptistery, to which I certainly did not want his guidance. You are to
pronounce the letters as if you were reading English. The police officer
who took my passport at the gate was startled at its length, “_tutt
quest passport_,” and to save himself the labour of reading it,
requested to know if I were “_posdent o ngoziant_,” and when I had
satisfied him on that point, begged for something to buy “_npocdpan_.”
From Parma I proceeded to Mantua. In this part of Italy the vines are
frequently supported on elms, but the elms are small, and universally
pollards. The Indian corn was just showing its silky filaments, but all
the sorts of grain you have in England were cleared away. We crossed the
Po by a ferry; the water was muddy, as I believe it always is; the banks
are a sandy loam, and the water is continually eating away the earth on
one side, and depositing its silt on the other. These changes of its bed
are said to be productive of frequent litigations. I cannot say much for
the pleasantness of the road, which lay entirely on a dead flat, but in
a fertile and highly cultivated country. Mantua is situated very low,
and in the midst of the waters, and the fortifications have none of that
show, which one is apt to expect from their military reputation: but I
believe this lowness, and want of appearance, is one source of its
strength. I observed on the road, parties of women winding silk out of a
large cauldron, where the water was kept nearly boiling by a fire
underneath it.
As in the time of its greatest prosperity, Giulio Romano was made the
arbiter of everything that was erected at Mantua, I expected to have
found some degree of uniformity of style in its buildings, but on the
contrary it is, I think, the most whimsical and capricious in its
architecture of any city in Italy. The cathedral was a Gothic building
of brick, and one or two fragments of the old edifice remain in a very
picturesque style. The side chapels form a range of extremely acute
gables, or perhaps I should say pediments, for the horizontal cornice is
continued across them, while there is merely a small moulding on the
rake, which cannot be called a cornice, and it is difficult to give them
an appropriate name; below are two lancet windows, and turrets between
the chapels, rising on a sort of buttress. I do not pretend to decide
upon the date. It was altered, or perhaps rather rebuilt by Giulio
Romano; and the inside is from his designs, but with some more modern
alterations. As it stands now it might be esteemed a bad imitation of
Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, but with double ranges of side-aisles. The
columns stand very wide apart. Giulio Romano was fond of giving an
appearance of squareness in his principal divisions, as I have already
observed to you in the account of some of his works. The clerestory is
an upper order of pilasters, which as usual in churches of this design,
is too large in proportion to the lower. There is not a window over
every intercolumn, but they alternate with niches. The first aisle on
each side is arched; the second has a flat covering. The church forms a
cross with a small cupola at the intersection; it is too high in
proportion to its width.
The Palace of the Tè is said, but erroneously, to have derived its name
from its ground plan presenting a form similar to that of the letter.
This is also of the architecture of Giulio Romano. The spaces between
the columns or pilasters are nearly as wide as they are high. In the
internal architecture there is little to admire, but there is a great
deal of fine painting by this artist and his pupils.
There are two churches in Mantua, built from the design of L. B.
Alberti. The first I shall mention is that of St. Sebastian. The front
has, on the ground level, an arcade of five arches, with pilasters
between, very small in proportion to the great square mass above. The
entablature, which finishes the building under the pediment, is cut by a
little arch, which contains a window, and underneath this _has been_ a
fresco of Andrea Mantegna. Internally, the room has the shape of a Greek
cross, with slight recesses, one of which is filled up with a gallery
supported on columns and arches, very well introduced; but the details
are not good, and the whole is whitewashed. The other, and much the
finer church, is that of Sant Andrea, which may fairly be considered as
one of the handsomest in Italy. The doorway is ornamented with an
imitation of the pilaster foliage in the Villa Medici at Rome, which I
have before mentioned to you, and it is well drawn, and well executed,
except that a vase is substituted at the bottom for the beautiful group
of acanthus leaves which exists in the original. Internally, the nave is
supported on pilasters, which are alternately about three and a half,
and seven diameters apart, the largest spaces being arched chapels. The
pilasters are all panelled, and filled with painted ornaments, which
have rather too much opposition of colour. The vault is unbroken, and
has regular square panels. The principal light is from the drum of the
cupola, but there are also semicircular windows at the extremities of
the side chapels, and small circular windows over the narrower
interpilasters, which would be better omitted. This edifice was begun in
1470, but the whole was not completed till so late as 1782, so that
considerable alteration may have been made in the original design. It is
about 340 feet long, and the nave is about 60 feet wide and 90 high.
There is a bridge over the branch of the Mincio which traverses the
city, on which Giulio Romano erected an open arcade for the fish-market.
Over the arches is a low story, divided into nearly square compartments,
and a window in each. The design is good, as is that of the public
slaughter-house, also built over the river, and which is still plainer,
as there is no cornice over the arches, and no mouldings or panelling
above, except the cornice which crowns the building.
Mantua, you know, is in a great measure surrounded by a lake, formed by
damming up the waters of the Mincio. This lake is traversed by two long
bridges, or perhaps I should rather call them dams, which are in some
parts perforated by arches, to let out the superfluous water. At the
extremity of the upper bridge there is a gateway attributed to Giulio
Romano, which is really a handsome composition; but it would be
difficult to describe it. The dwelling of this painter-architect is also
exhibited. He has been very whimsical in the composition, and one can
see no object for the mode in which he has managed it.
Mantua upon the whole is neither a fine city, nor in a pleasant
situation. The best part is the Piazza Virgiliana, which is a large
square, surrounded with trees, and open on one side to the lake, and to
the distant Alps.
From Mantua I descended in a passage-boat to Ferrara, but there is no
great beauty of river scenery either on the Mincio or the Po. We did not
reach Ponte di Lago Scuro till past nine, and an insolent underling at
the customhouse, told us we might carry our things back to the boat, for
that nothing would be passed that night, nor should we ourselves be
permitted to proceed. After waiting a little while however, the superior
made his appearance, and all our matters were arranged without farther
difficulty, but the stories we heard of a gang of robbers going about
the country in small parties, induced us to put up with very bad
accommodations at Ponte di Lago Scuro, rather than to go at once to
Ferrara. There were several circumstances which persuaded me that these
stories were excessively exaggerated, but it was most prudent to stay.
The bridges over the Po, from one of which this place derives part of
its name, have less claim to the appellation than any I ever saw. A
string of eight or ten boats is made by fastening them together with
long ropes; the upper one is moored in the middle of the river, and the
ferry-boat is attached to the lowest, and by help of a large rudder, on
which the stream acts diagonally, swings across from one side of the
water to the other. On the next morning we reached Ferrara at half-past
eight, and I spent the day in looking at the architecture and paintings
of the city. I have already mentioned the Duomo in a former letter, but
as I surveyed it at this time more at my leisure, I shall give you some
further account of it. It was consecrated in 1135, and of this ancient
part, the front, and great part of the sides still remain. Internally,
however, all the earlier work is destroyed or covered up. The
semicircular end of the choir was erected in 1499. For the ancient
sculpture we have the name of a certain Nicolaus:
“Fo Niclao sculptore
“E Gliemo fo l’auctore.”
but we have not the name of the architect who designed the façade; for
this _Gliemo_ was Guglielmo degli Adelardi, a nobleman, at whose expense
the church was built. The architect of the circular part is said to have
been a Ferrarese, of the name of Biagio Rosette, one of the early
restorers of Italian architecture, who died in 1516, but I know not at
what age, and I cannot find his name in Milizia. The remainder of the
part beyond the transept was modernized in 1637, and the rest of the
church between 1712 and 1735. The front is divided into three equal
parts, each surmounted with a gable, and ornamented with horizontal
ranges of pointed arches, and smaller arches also pointed, are disposed
under the rake of the gable. In each gable there is a small
wheel-window. The porch has a semicircular arch resting on columns.
Whatever may be said for ranges of arches supported on columns, these
single arches, with merely one slender column on each side, must be
reprobated in every style of architecture. A small turret resting on a
square base carried down to the ground, and crowned with a pinnacle,
separates the gables, and a similar ornament seems to have been adopted
at the extreme angles of the front, but the upper part of them has been
destroyed. The flanks are ornamented, not with pointed, but with
semicircular arches. There is, however, an ornament above the upper
range, which exhibits the reversed arch, but it may have been an
addition. This want of correspondence between the side and front, makes
one suspect that they are not precisely of the same date, and the flank
is probably the oldest, as the architecture corresponds with that of
other edifices in Italy of the eleventh century, and the early part of
the twelfth; the front I should think posterior to the dedication. The
inside contains some good paintings, but nothing fine in architecture,
and there are many fine pictures in the churches and palaces of the
city, but nothing of first-rate excellence. The best are principally by
Guercino and Garofalo. The general style of architecture is much
superior to what I have lately seen north of the Po. The city does not
boast any remarkable building, any more than any of the very fine
paintings, but the palaces have an air of solidity and magnificence. The
straight streets in the new parts of the town want houses, and there are
too many traces of decay; yet, when an enumeration was made in 1784,
Ferrara and its suburbs contained 31,253 inhabitants, which is far more
than you would suppose from present appearances. As it seems to possess
no advantages of situation either for commerce or habitation, we may
wonder that it should contain so many, but in the time of its glory, in
the thirteenth century, under the family of Este, at first as chief
magistrates, and afterwards as hereditary governors, either acting
independently, or holding of the pope, Ferrara is computed to have
contained more than twice the number. Its greatest celebrity arises from
its association with the names of Ariosto and Tasso, who paid in praise,
the ambiguous patronage of the house of Este. The habitation of Ariosto
is still shewn; it was built by himself. It is a pity he had not a
better architect. His chair and inkstand, and a portion of the original
manuscript of the Orlando are preserved in it.