SEEMS at first sight a very sorrowful town, and has a general air of
melancholy that surprises one, as it is very handsomely and regularly
built; and set in a country so particularly beautiful, that it is not
easy to express the nature of its beauty, and to express it so that
those who inhabit other countries can understand me.
The territory belonging to Bologna la Grassa concenters all its charms
in a happy _embonpoint_, which leaves no wrinkle unfilled up, no bone to
be discerned; like the fat figure of Gunhilda at Fonthill, painted by
Chevalier Cafali, with a face full of woe, but with a sleekness of skin
that denotes nothing less than affliction. From the top of the only
eminence, one looks down here upon a country which to me has a new and
singular appearance; the whole horizon appearing one thick carpet of the
softest and most vivid green, from the vicinity of the broad-leaved
mulberry trees, I trust, drawn still closer and closer together by
their amicable and pacific companions the vines, which keep cluttering
round, and connect them so intimately that no object can be separately
or distinctly viewed, any more than the habitations formed by animals
who live in moss, when a large portion of it is presented to the
philosopher for speculation. One would not therefore, on a flight and
cursory inspection, suspect this of being a painter's country, where no
prominence of features arrests the sight, no expression of latent
meaning employs the mind, and no abruptness of transition tempts fancy
to follow, or imagination to supply, the sudden loss of what it
contemplated before.
Here however the great Caraccis kept their school; here then was every
idea of dignity and majestic beauty to be met with; and if _I_ meet with
nothing in nature near this place to excite such ideas, it is _my_
fault, not Bologna's.
If vain the toil,
We ought to blame the culture,--not the soil.
Wonderful indeed! yet not at all distracting is the variety of
excellence that one contemplates here; such matters! and such scholars!
The sweetly playful pencil of Albano, I would compare to Waller among
our English poets; Domenichino to Otway, and Guido Rheni to Rowe; if
such liberties might be permitted on the old notion of _ut pictura
poesis_. But there is an idea about the world, that one ought in
delicacy to declare one's utter incapacity of understanding pictures,
unless immediately of the profession.--And why so? No man protests, that
he cannot read poetry, he can make no pleasure out of Milton or
Shakespear, or shudder at the ingratitude of Lear's daughters on the
stage. Why then should people pretend insensibility, when divine
Guercino exerts his unrivalled powers of the pathetic in the fine
picture at Zampieri palace, of Hagar's dismission into the desert with
her son? While none else could have touched with such truth of
expression the countenances of each; leaving him most to be pitied,
perhaps, who issues the command against his will; accompanying it
however with innumerable benedictions, and alleviating its severity with
the softest tenderness.
He only among our poets could have planned such a picture, who penned
the Eloisa, and knew the agonies of a soul struggling against
unpermitted passions, and conquering from the noblest motives of faith
and of obedience.
Glorious exertion of excellence! This is the first time my heart has
been made really alive to the powers of this magical art. Candid
Italians! let me again exclaim; they shewed us a Vandyke in the same
palace, surrounded by the works of their own incomparable countrymen;
and _there_ say they, "_Quasi quasi si può circondarla_[Footnote: You
may almost run round her.]." You may almost run round it, was the
expression. The picture was a very fine one; a single figure of the
Madona, highly painted, and happily placed among those who knew, because
they possessed his perfections who drew it. Were Homer alive, and
acquainted with our language, he would admire that Shakespear whom
Voltaire condemns. Twice in this town has Guido shewed those powers
which critics have denied him: the power of grouping his figures with
propriety, and distributing his light and shadow to advantage: as he
has shewn it _but twice_, however, it is certain the connoisseurs are
not very wrong, and even in those very performances one may read their
justification: for Job, though surrounded by a crowd of people, has a
strangely insulated look, and the sweet sufferer on the fore-ground of
his Herodian cruelty seems wholly uninterested in the general distress,
and occupies herself and every spectator completely and solely with her
own particular grief.
The boasted Raphael here does not in my eyes triumph over the wonders of
this Caracci school. At Rome, I am told, his superiority is more
visible. _Nous verrons_[Footnote: We shall see.].
The reserved picture of St. Peter and St. Paul, kept in the last chamber
of the Zampieri palace, and covered with a silk curtain, is valued
beyond any specimen of the painting art which can be moved from Italy to
England. We are taught to hope it will soon come among us; and many say
the sale cannot be now long delayed. Why Guido should never draw another
picture like that, or at all in the same style, who can tell? it
certainly does unite every perfection, and every possible excellence,
except choice of subject, which cannot be happy I think, when the
subject itself is left disputable.
I will mention only one other picture: it is in an obscure church, not
an unfrequented one by these pious Bolognese, who are the most devout
people I ever lived amongst, but I think not much visited by travellers.
It is painted by Albano, and represents the Redeemer of mankind as a boy
scarce thirteen years old: ingenuous modesty, and meek resignation,
beaming from each intelligent feature of a face divinely beautiful, and
throwing out luminous rays round his sacred head, while the blessed
Virgin and St. Joseph, placed on each side him, adore his goodness with
transport not unmixed with wonder: the instruments of his future passion
cast at his feet, directing us to consider him as in that awful moment
voluntarily devoting himself for the sins of the whole world.
This picture, from the sublimity of the subject, the lively colouring,
and clear expression, has few equals; the pyramidal group drops in as of
itself, unsought for, from the raised ground on which our Saviour
stands; and among numberless wild conceits and extravagant fancies of
painters, not only permitted but encouraged in this country, to deviate
into what _we_ justly think profane representations of the deity:--this
is the most pleasing and inoffensive device I have seen.
The august Creator too is likewise more wisely concealed by Albano than
by other artists, who daringly presume to exhibit that of which no
mortal man can give or receive a just idea. But we will have done for a
while with connoisseurship.
This fat Bologna has a tristful look, from the numberless priests,
friars, and women all dressed in black, who fill the streets, and stop
on a sudden to pray, when I see nothing done to call forth immediate
addresses to Heaven. Extremes do certainly meet however, and my Lord
Peter in this place is so like his fanatical brother Jack, that I know
not what is come to him. To-morrow is the day of _corpus domini_; why it
should be preceded by such dismal ceremonies I know not; there is
nothing melancholy in the idea, but we shall be sure of a magnificent
procession.
So it was too, and wonderfully well attended: noblemen and ladies, with
tapers in their hands, and their trains borne by well-dressed pages, had
a fine effect. All still in black.
Black, but such as in esteem
Prince Memnon's sister might beseem;
With sable stole of cypress lawn,
O'er their decent shoulders drawn.
I never saw a spectacle so stately, so solemn a show in my life before,
and was much less tired of the long continued march, than were my Roman
Catholic companions.
Our inn is not a good one; the Pellegrino is engaged for the King of
Naples and his train: the place we are housed in, is full of bugs, and
every odious vermin: no wonder, surely, where such oven-like porticoes
catch and retain the heat as if constructed on set purpose so to do. The
Montagnola at night was something of relief, but contrary to every other
resort of company: the less it is frequented the gayer it appears; for
Nature there has been lavish of her bounties, which seem disregarded by
the Bolognese, who unluckily find out that there is a burying-ground
within view, though at no small distance really; and planting
themselves over against that, they stand or kneel for many minutes
together in whole rows, praying, as I understand, for the souls which
once animated the bodies of the people whom they believe to lie interred
there; all this too even at the hours dedicated to amusement.
Cardinal Buon Compagni, the legate, sent from Rome here, is gone home;
and the vice-legate officiated in his place, much to the consolation of
the inhabitants, who observed with little delight or gratitude his
endeavours to improve their trade, or his care to maintain their
privileges; while his natural disinclination to hypocritical manners, or
what we so emphatically call _cant_, gave them an aversion to his person
and dislike of his government, which he might have prevented by
formality of look, and very trifling compliances. But every thing helps
to prove, that if you would please people, it must be done _their_ way,
not your own.
Here are some charming manufactures in this town, and I fear it requires
much self-denial in an Englishwoman not to long at least for the fine
crapes, tiffanies, &c. which might here be bought I know not how cheap,
and would make one _so_ happy in London or at Bath. But these
Customhouse officers! these _rats de cave_, as the French comically call
them, will not let a ribbon pass. Such is the restless jealousy of
little states, and such their unremitted attention to keep the goods
made in one place out of the gates of another. Few things upon a journey
contribute to torment and disgust one more than the teasing enquiries at
the door of every city, who one is, what one's name is? what one's rank
in life or employment is; that so all may be written down and carried to
the chief magistrate for his information, who immediately dispatches a
proper person to examine whether you gave in a true report; where you
lodge, why you came, how long you mean to stay; with twenty more
inquisitive speeches, which to a subject of more liberal governments
must necessarily appear impertinent as frivolous, and make all my hopes
of bringing home the most trifling presents for a friend abortive. So
there is an end of that felicity, and we must sit like the girl at the
fair, described by Gay,
Where the coy nymph knives, combs, and scissars spies,
And looks on thimbles with desiring eyes.
The Specola, so they call their museum here, of natural and artificial
rarities, is very fine indeed; the inscription too denoting its
universality, is sublimely generous: I thought of our Bath hospital in
England; more usefully, if not more magnificently so; but durst not tell
the professor, who shewed the place. At our going in he was apparently
much out of humour, and unwilling to talk, but grew gradually kinder,
and more communicative; and I had at last a thousand thanks to pay for
an attention that rendered the sight of all more valuable. Nothing can
surpass the neatness and precision with which this elegant repository is
kept, and the curiosities contained in it have specimens very uncommon.
The native gold shewed here is supposed to be the largest and most
perfect lump in Europe; wonderfully beautiful it certainly is, and the
coral here is such as can be seen nowhere else; they shewed me some
which looked like an actual tree.
It might reasonably lower the spirits of philosophy, and tend to
restraining the genius of remote enquiry, did we reflect that the very
first substance given into our hand as an amusement, or subject of
speculation, as soon as we arrive in this great world of wonders, never
gets fully understood by those who study hardest, or live longest in it.
Coral is a substance, concerning which the natural historians have had
many disputes, and settled nothing yet; knowing, as it should seem, but
little more of its original, than they did when they sucked it first. Of
gold we have found perhaps but too many uses; but when the professor
told us here at Bologna, that silver in the mine was commonly found
mixed with _arsenick_, a corroding poison, or _lead_, a narcotic one;
who could help being led forward to a train of thought on the nature and
use and abuse of money and minerals in general. _Suivez_ (as Rousseau
says), _la chaine de tout cela_[Footnote: Follow this clue, and see
where it will lead you to.].
The astronomical apparatus at this place is a splendid one; but the
models of architecture, fortifications, &c. are only more numerous; not
so exact or elegant I think as those the King of England has for his own
private use at the Queen's house in St. James's Park. The specimens of
a human figure in wax are the work of a woman, whose picture is
accordingly set up in the school: they are reckoned incomparable of
their kind, and bring to one's fancy Milton's fine description of our
first parents:
Two of far nobler kind--erect and tall.
This University has been particularly civil to women; many very learned
ladies of France and Germany have been and are still members of it;--and
la Dottoressa Laura Bassi gave lectures not many years ago in this very
spot, upon the mathematics and natural philosophy, till she grew very
old and infirm; but her pupils always handed her very respectfully to
and from the Doctor's chair, _Che brava donnetta ch'era!_[Footnote: Ah,
what a fine woman was that!] says the gentleman who shewed me the
academy, as we came out at the door; over which a marble tablet, with an
inscription more pious than pompous, is placed to her memory; but
turning away his eyes--while they filled with tears--_tutli
muosono_[Footnote: All must die.], added he, and I followed; as nothing
either of energy or pathos could be added to a reflection so just, so
tender, and so true: we parted sadly therefore with our agreeable
companion and instructor just where her cenotaph (for the body lies
buried in a neighbouring church) was erected; and shall probably meet no
more; for as he said and sighed--_tutti muosono_[Footnote: All must
die.].
The great Cassini too, who though of an Italian family, was born at Nice
I think, and died at Paris, drew his meridian line through the church of
St. Petronius in this city, across the pavement, where it still remains
a monument to his memory, who discovered the third and fifth satellites
of Jupiter. Such was in his time the reputation of a mineral spring near
Bologna, that Pope Alexander the Seventh set him to analyse the waters
of it; and so satisfactory were his proofs of its very slight importance
to health, that the same pope called him to Rome to examine the waters
round that capital; but dying soon after his arrival, he had no time to
recompence Cassini's labours, though a very elegantly-minded man, and a
great encourager of learning in all its branches. The successor to this
sovereign, Rospigliosi, had different employment found for _him_, in
helping the Venetians to regain Candia from the Turks, his
disappointment in not being able to accomplish which design broke his
heart; and Cassini, returning to Bologna, found it less pleasing than it
was before he left it, so went to Paris, and died there at ninety or
ninety-one years old, as I remember, early in this present century, but
not till after he had enjoyed the pleasure of hearing that Count
Marsigli had founded an academy at the place where he had studied whilst
his faculties were strong.
Another church, situated on the only hill one can observe for miles, is
dedicated to the Madonna St. Luc, as it is called; and a very beautiful
and curiously covered way is made to it up the hill, for three miles in
length, and at a prodigious expence, to guard the figure from the rain
as it is carried in procession. The ascent is so gentle that one hardly
feels it. Pillars support the roof, which defends you from a sun-stroke,
while the air and prospect are let in between them on the right hand as
you go. The left side is closed up by a wall, adorned from time to time
with fresco paintings, representing the birth and most distinguished
passages in the life of the blessed Virgin. Round these paintings a
little chapel is railed in, open, airy, and elegantly, not very
pompously, adorned; there are either seven or twelve of them, I forget
which, that serve to rest the procession as it passes, on days
particularly dedicated to her service. When you arrive at the top, a
church of a most beautiful construction recompenses your long but not
tedious walk, and there are some admirable pictures in it, particularly
one of St. William laying down his armour, and taking up the habit of a
Carthusian, very fine--but the figure of the Madonna is the prize they
value, and before this I did see some men kneel with a truly idolatrous
devotion. That it was painted by St. Luke is believed by them all. But
if it _was_ painted by St. Luke, said I, what then? do you think _he_,
or the still more excellent person it was done for, would approve of
your worshipping any thing but God? To this no answer was made; and I
thought one man looked as if he had grace enough to be ashamed of
himself.
The girls, who sit in clusters at the chapel doors as one goes up,
singing hymns in praise of the Virgin Mary, pleased me much, as it was
a mode of veneration inoffensive to religion, and agreeable to the
fancy; but seeing them bow down to that black figure, in open defiance
of the Decalogue, shocked me. Why all the _very very_ early pictures of
the Virgin, and many of our blessed Saviour himself, done in the first
ages of Christianity should be _black_, or at least tawny, is to me
wholly incomprehensible, nor could I ever yet obtain an explanation of
its cause from men of learning or from connoisseurs.
We have in England a black Madonna, very ancient of course, and of
immense value, in the cathedral of Wells in Somersetshire; it is painted
on glass, and stands in the middle pane of the upper window I think, is
a profile face, and eminently handsome. My mind tells me that I have
seen another somewhere in Great Britain, but cannot recollect the spot,
unless it were Arundel Castle in Sussex, but I am not sure: none was
ever painted so since the days of Pietro Perugino I believe, so their
antiquity is unquestionable: he and his few contemporaries drew her
white, as Sir Joshua Reynolds and Pompeio Battoni.
Whilst I perambulated the palaces of the Bolognese nobility, gloomy
though spacious, and melancholy though splendid, I could not but admire
at Richardson's judgment when he makes his beautiful Bigot, his
interesting Clementina, an inhabitant of superstitious Bologna. The
unconquerable attachment she shews to original prejudices, and the
horror of what she has been taught to consider as heresy, could scarcely
have been attributed so happily to the dweller in any town but this:
where I hear nothing but the sound of people saying their rosaries, and
see nothing in the street but people telling their beads. The Porretta
palace is hourly presenting itself to my imagination, which delights in
the assurance that genius cannot be confined by place. Dear Richardson
at Salisbury Court Fleet Street, and Parson's Green Fulham, felt all
within him that travelling can tell, or experience confirm: he had seen
little, and Johnson has often told me that he had read little; but what
he did read never forsook a memory that was not contented with
retaining, but fermented all that fell into it, and made a new creation
from the fertility of his own rich mind.--These are the men for whom
monuments need not be erected.
They in our pleasure and astonishment,
Do build themselves a live long monument;
as Milton says of a much greater writer still.
But the King of Naples is arrived, and that attention which wits and
scholars can retain for centuries, may not be unjustly paid to princes
while they last.
Our Bolognese have hit upon an odd method of entertaining him however:
no other than making a representation of Mount Vesuvius on the
Montagnuola, or place of evening resort, hoping at least to treat him
with something new I trow. Were the King of England to visit these _cari
Bolognese_, surely they would shew him Westminster Bridge, with a view
of the Archbishop's palace at Lambeth on one side the river, and
Somerset-house on the other.
A pretty throne, or state-box, was soon got in order, _that it was_; and
the motion excited by carrying the fire-works to have them prepared for
the evening's show, gave life to the morning, which hung less heavily
than usual; nor did the people recollect the church-yard at a distance,
while the merry King of Naples was near them. His Majesty appeared
perfectly contented and good-humoured, and happy with whatever was done
for his amusement. I remember his behaviour at Milan though, too well to
be surprised at his pleasantness of disposition, when my maid was
delighted to see him dance among the girls at a Festa di Ballo, from
whence I retired early myself, and sent her back to enjoy it all in my
domino. He played at cards too when at Milan I recollect, in the common
Ridotto Chamber at the Theatre, and played for common sums, so as to
charm every one with his kindness and affability.
I am glad however that we shall now be soon released from this upon the
whole disagreeable town, where there is the best possible food too for
body and mind; but where the inhabitants seem to think only of the next
world, and do little to amuse those who have not yet quite done with
this. If they are sincere mean time, God will bless them with a long
continuance of the appellation they so justly deserve; and those
travellers who pass through will find some amends in the rich cream and
incomparable dinners every day, for the insects that devour them every
night; and will, if they are wise, seek compensation from the company of
the half animated pictures that crowd the palaces and churches, for the
half dead inhabitants who kneel in the streets of Bologna.