Lanzo
FROM S. Ambrogio we went to Turin, a city so well known that I need not
describe it. The Hotel Europa is the best, and, indeed, one of the best
hotels on the continent. Nothing can exceed it for comfort and good
cookery. The gallery of old masters contains some great gems.
Especially remarkable are two pictures of Tobias and the angel, by
Antonio Pollaiuolo and Sandro Botticelli; and a magnificent tempera
painting of the Crucifixion, by Gaudenzio Ferrari—one of his very finest
works. There are also several other pictures by the same master, but the
Crucifixion is the best.
From Turin I went alone to Lanzo, about an hour and a half’s railway
journey from Turin, and found a comfortable inn, the Hotel de la Poste.
There is a fine fourteenth-century tower here, and the general effect of
the town is good.
One morning while I was getting my breakfast, English fashion, with some
cutlets to accompany my bread and butter, I saw an elderly Italian
gentleman, with his hand up to his chin, eyeing me with thoughtful
interest. After a time he broke silence.
“Ed il latte,” he said, “serve per la suppa.” {131}
I said that that was the view we took of it. He thought it over a while,
and then feelingly exclaimed—
“Oh bel!”
Soon afterwards he left me with the words—
“Là! dunque! cerrea! chow! stia bene.”
[Picture: Mediæval Tower at Lanzo]
“Là” is a very common close to an Italian conversation. I used to be a
little afraid of it at first. It sounds rather like saying, “There,
that’s that. Please to bear in mind that I talked to you very nicely,
and let you bore me for a long time; I think I have now done the thing
handsomely, so you’ll be good enough to score me one and let me go.” But
I soon found out that it was quite a friendly and civil way of saying
good-bye.
[Picture: Piazza at Lanzo]
The “dunque” is softer; it seems to say, “I cannot bring myself to say so
sad a word as ‘farewell,’ but we must both of us know that the time has
come for us to part, and so”—
“Cerrea” is an abbreviation and corruption of “di sua Signoria,”—“by your
highness’s leave.” “Chow” I have explained already. “Stia bene” is
simply “farewell.”
The principal piazza of Lanzo is nice. In the upper part of the town
there is a large school or college. One can see into the school through
a grating from the road. I looked down, and saw that the boys had cut
their names all over the desks, just as English boys would do. They were
very merry and noisy, and though there was a priest standing at one end
of the room, he let them do much as they liked, and they seemed quite
happy. I heard one boy shout out to another, “Non c’ è pericolo,” in
answer to something the other had said. This is exactly the “no fear” of
America and the colonies. Near the school there is a field on the slope
of the hill which commands a view over the plain. A woman was mowing
there, and, by way of making myself agreeable, I remarked that the view
was fine. “Yes, it is,” she answered; “you can see all the trains.”
The baskets with which the people carry things in this neighbourhood are
of a different construction from any I have seen elsewhere. They are
made to fit all round the head like something between a saddle and a
helmet, and at the same time to rest upon the shoulders—the head being,
as it were, ensaddled by the basket, and the weight being supported by
the shoulders as well as by the head. Why is it that such contrivances
as this should prevail in one valley and not in another? If, one is
tempted to argue, the plan is a convenient one, why does it not spread
further? If inconvenient, why has it spread so far? If it is good in
the valley of the Stura, why is it not also good in the contiguous valley
of the Dora? There must be places where people using helmet-made baskets
live next door to people who use baskets that are borne entirely by back
and shoulders. Why do not the people in one or other of these houses
adopt their neighbour’s basket? Not because people are not amenable to
conviction, for within a certain radius from the source of the invention
they are convinced to a man. Nor again is it from any insuperable
objection to a change of habit. The Stura people have changed their
habit—possibly for the worse; but if they have changed it for the worse,
how is it they do not find it out and change again?
Take, again, the _pane Grissino_, from which the neighbourhood of Turin
has derived its nickname of _il Grissinotto_. It is made in long sticks,
rather thicker than a tobacco pipe, and eats crisp like toast. It is
almost universally preferred to ordinary bread by the inhabitants of what
was formerly Piedmont, but beyond these limits it is rarely seen. Why
so? Either it is good or not good. If not good, how has it prevailed
over so large an area? If good, why does it not extend its empire? The
Reformation is another case in point: granted that Protestantism is
illogical, how is it that so few within a given area can perceive it to
be so? The same question arises in respect of the distribution of many
plants and animals; the reason of the limits which some of them cannot
pass, being, indeed, perfectly clear, but as regards perhaps the greater
number of them, undiscoverable. The upshot of it is that things do not
in practice find their perfect level any more than water does so, but are
liable to disturbance by way of tides and local currents, or storms. It
is in his power to perceive and profit by these irregularities that the
strength or weakness of a commercial man will be apparent.
One day I made an excursion from Lanzo to a place, the name of which I
cannot remember, but which is not far from the Groscavallo glacier. Here
I found several Italians staying to take the air, and among them one
young gentleman, who told me he was writing a book upon this
neighbourhood, and was going to illustrate it with his own drawings.
This naturally interested me, and I encouraged him to tell me more, which
he was nothing loth to do. He said he had a passion for drawing, and was
making rapid progress; but there was one thing that held him back—the not
having any Conté chalk: if he had but this, all his difficulties would
vanish. Unfortunately I had no Conté chalk with me, I but I asked to see
the drawings, and was shown about twenty, all of which greatly pleased
me. I at once proposed an exchange, and have thus become possessed of
the two which I reproduce here. Being pencil drawings, and not done with
a view to Mr. Dawson’s process, they have suffered somewhat in
reproduction, but I decided to let them suffer rather than attempt to
copy them. What can be more absolutely in the spirit of the fourteenth
century than the drawings given above? They seem as though done by some
fourteenth-century painter who had risen from the dead. And to show that
they are no rare accident, I will give another (p. 138), also done by an
entirely self-taught Italian, and intended to represent the castle of
Laurenzana in the neighbourhood of Potenza.
[Picture: Study by an Italian Amateur, No. 1]
[Picture: Study by an Italian Amateur, No. 2]
If the reader will pardon a digression, I will refer to a more important
example of an old master born out of due time. One day, in the cathedral
at Varallo, I saw a picture painted on linen of which I could make
nothing. It was not old and it was not modern. The expression of the
Virgin’s face was lovely, and there was more individuality than is
commonly found in modern Italian work. Modern Italian colour is
generally either cold and dirty, or else staring. The colour here was
tender, and reminded me of fifteenth-century Florentine work. The folds
of the drapery were not modern; there was a sense of effort about them,
as though the painter had tried to do them better, but had been unable to
get them as free and flowing as he had wished. Yet the picture was not
old; to all appearance it might have been painted a matter of ten years;
nor again was it an echo—it was a sound: the archaism was not affected;
on the contrary, there was something which said, as plainly as though the
living painter had spoken it, that his somewhat constrained treatment was
due simply to his having been puzzled with the intricacy of what he saw,
and giving as much as he could with a hand which was less advanced than
his judgment. By some strange law it comes about that the imperfection
of men who are at this stage of any art is the only true perfection; for
the wisdom of the wise is set at naught, and the foolishness of the
simple is chosen, and it is out of the mouths of babes and sucklings that
strength is ordained.
[Picture: Study by a Self-taught Italian]
Unable to arrive at any conclusion, I asked the sacristan, and was told
it was by a certain Dedomenici of Rossa, in the Val Sesia, and that it
had been painted some forty or fifty years ago. I expressed my surprise,
and the sacristan continued: “Yes, but what is most wonderful about him
is that he never left his native valley, and never had any instruction,
but picked up his art for himself as best he could.”
I have been twice to Varallo since, to see whether I should change my
mind, but have not done so. If Dedomenici had been a Florentine or
Venetian in the best times, he would have done as well as the best; as it
is, his work is remarkable. He died about 1840, very old, and he kept on
improving to the last. His last work—at least I was told upon the spot
that it was his last—is in a little roadside chapel perched high upon a
rock, and dedicated, if I remember rightly, to S. Michele, on the path
from Fobello in the Val Mastallone to Taponaccio. It is a Madonna and
child in clouds, with two full-length saints standing beneath—all the
figures life-size. I came upon this chapel quite accidentally one
evening, and, looking in, recognised the altar-piece as a Dedomenici. I
inquired at the next village who had painted it, and was told, “un certo
Dedomenici da Rossa.” I was also told that he was nearly eighty years
old when he painted this picture. I went a couple of years ago to
reconsider it, and found that I remained much of my original opinion. I
do not think that any of my readers who care about the history of Italian
art will regret having paid it a visit.
Such men are more common in Italy than is believed. There is a fresco of
the Crucifixion outside the Campo Santo at Fusio, in the Canton Ticino,
done by a local artist, which, though far inferior to the work of
Dedomenici, is still remarkable. The painter evidently knows nothing of
the rules of his art, but he has made Christ on the cross bowing His head
towards the souls in purgatory, instead of in the conventional fine
frenzy to which we are accustomed. There is a storm which has caught and
is sweeping the drapery round Christ’s body. The angel’s wings are no
longer white, but many coloured as in old times, and there is a touch of
humour in the fact that of the six souls in purgatory, four are women and
only two men. The expression on Christ’s face is very fine, but
otherwise the drawing could not well be more imperfect than it is.