_In the Footsteps of St Catherine_
"In the name of God, Amen. To the honour and praise and reverence of
God, and of His Mother, Madonna Holy Mary Virgin, and of all the Saints
of God, and to the honour and exaltation of the Holy Roman Church, and
of the Commune and of the People of the City of Siena, and to the good
and pacific state and to the increase of the Spedale of Madonna Holy
Mary Virgin of Siena, which is placed in front of the chief church of
the said City, and of the Rector and Brothers of the Chapter of the said
Spedale, and to the recreation of the sick and poor and foundlings of
the said Spedale."
Thus open the Statutes of 1305 of the famous Spedale of Siena, the
united hospitals of Santa Maria della Scala. The buildings occupy the
whole side of the Piazza del Duomo opposite the façade. According to the
legends, the Spedale was founded at the end of the ninth century by a
cobbler named Sorore, who began by lodging pilgrims who passed through
Siena on their way to Rome, and mending their shoes, then nursing those
of their number who fell sick by the way, and ended by founding a sort
of order or company of men--the "Frati Ospitalieri"--to carry on his
work. Thus began the hospital for the sick; while a dream of a devout
woman, who saw upon this spot a ladder reaching up to Heaven, and little
children passing up it into the arms of the Blessed Virgin, caused a
home for foundlings to be united to it. Modern writers, however,
question the existence of the Beato Sorore, and assign the foundation of
the Spedale to the eleventh century.[103] Be that as it may, throughout
the whole course of Sienese history the Spedale has a sublime record of
devotion and charity, especially in those terrible epochs--that recurred
again and again at intervals--when the pestilence and black death
devastated Siena. Its revenues were largely increased by donations from
the Bishops, by papal commutations of vows, and by bequests from victims
of the pestilence who, having lost their natural heirs, bequeathed all
that they had to the institution. The order of the "Frati Ospitalieri"
was reformed in the thirteenth, and lasted on till the end of the
sixteenth century. The Rector of the Spedale, in the days of the
Republic, had the right of sitting in the Consistory with the Signoria.
Beyond the entrance-hall is a large room known as the Pellegrinaio,
because originally intended for the reception of pilgrims, with a
pleasant view from the window at the end. The walls and ceiling are
covered with frescoes--those on the walls being practically unique in
the story of Sienese art. They represent scenes from the history and
illustrate the work of the Spedale. On the right are three by Domenico
di Bartolo. They represent the marrying of the maidens, with the Baptism
of the children and their nursing (1440); the giving of alms (1443); the
care of the sick and diseased (1440). We are struck at once by their
realism, which we shall find nowhere else in Sienese painting; some of
the heads are powerful, there is excellent grouping and a study of
Sienese costumes in the Quattrocento which is of no small value to the
student. But withal there is a certain uncouthness, at times exaggerated
to the verge of grotesqueness. The painter is following the Florentine
methods, but is not fully equipped with Florentine science; the nude
figure which we see in the foreground of the second fresco is a striking
innovation in a Sienese picture, but it will not stand the
comparison--which it inevitably invites--with the naked youths in
Masaccio's famous scene of St Peter baptising in the Carmine of
Florence. The two frescoes on either side of the window are unimportant.
Then, on the left wall, is another by Domenico di Bartolo (1443), fairly
well preserved, representing the granting of privileges to the Spedale,
in the person of its Rector, by Celestine III.; a magnificent young
Sienese gentleman in the costume of the fifteenth century stands in the
centre of the picture. The next fresco, the entry into the Spedale and a
lady of Siena taking the robe of the order, is by Priamo di Pietro della
Quercia, the brother of the more famous Giacomo; it is somewhat in the
style of Domenico, but with more than his uncouthness and falling a long
way below his excellence. Following that, by Domenico di Bartolo, badly
preserved, is the increase of the buildings of the Spedale with alms
given by the Bishop, the group of horsemen approaching, and nearly
riding down the builder, being presumably fresh benefactors inspired by
the episcopal example. The fresco over the door on the left is by
Vecchietta and represents the "Scala del Paradiso," the dream of the
devout woman, in which the little deserted children are seen mounting up
the ladder to be received into the arms of the Mother of God.
There are other frescoes of less importance in other parts of the
Spedale. In the room on the left of the entrance is a fresco by
Beccafumi, one of his early works, painted in 1512, representing the
meeting of Joachim and Anne. The Infirmary of San Pietro has unimportant
frescoes by Vecchietta, and (inclosed in a tabernacle) the "Madonna of
Mercy," by Domenico di Bartolo. In the Infirmary of San Pio a "Beato
Sorore" is likewise ascribed to Domenico, and in the Infirmary of San
Galgano is a Crucifixion by Taddeo di Bartolo. The church of the
Spedale, dedicated to the Madonna of the Annunciation, was built in the
fifteenth century. The bronze Christ over the high altar is by
Vecchietta; the organ is said to have been designed by Peruzzi.
In the vaults under the Spedale are the meeting-places of several devout
confraternities, which are said to trace their origin from the first
Sienese Christians, the converts of St Ansanus, who met in secret on
this spot in the days of the Roman persecutions. You enter by the last
door in the Piazza. The chapel of Santa Maria sotto le Volte dello
Spedale, now sometimes called Santa Caterina delle Notti, was the
oratory of the "Disciplinati of the Virgin Mary of the Spedale." St
Catherine was intimately associated with this confraternity, which was
conspicuous for its active works of charity, and to which a number of
her disciples belonged. One of her latest letters was written from Rome
to the Prior and Brothers of the Company.[104] It was whilst praying
here in 1380 that Stefano Maconi heard a voice in his heart telling him
that Catherine was dying, and he at once hastened to Rome to receive her
last injunctions. In a little cell, adjoining the oratory, St Catherine
passed long hours in prayer, and from it she assisted at the offices of
the Disciplinati. Here is still shown the hard bed of stone upon which
she slept, in the intervals of tending the sick at the hospital. In a
room beyond, belonging to the confraternity of St Catherine, are some
pictures; a Madonna and Child with Saints by Taddeo di Bartolo, and four
small paintings, much restored, in the manner of Girolamo del Pacchia.
One of the latter represents the members of the confraternity dressed as
you may still see them at the door of St Catherine's house on the day
of her festa. Before reaching the oratory, another flight of steps to
the left leads down to the meeting-place of the Confraternity of the
Madonna. Here are a number of pictures, including a Holy Family by
Bazzi; St Catherine leading Pope Gregory back to Rome (though, as a
matter of fact, she was present only in spirit) by Benvenuto di
Giovanni; a Madonna and Child with Saints by Sano di Pietro. Hung very
high up are two small triptychs--the one representing the Crucifixion,
Flagellation, Entombment--the other the Blessed Virgin with the two
Catherines and other Saints. Mr Berenson ascribes them to Duccio and
Fungai respectively. Beyond is the chapel of the confraternity, with
remains of frescoes by some pupil of Ambrogio Lorenzetti.
San Bernardino commenced his religious life as a member of this
confraternity of Our Lady's Disciplinati. When the pestilence broke out
anew in 1400, and the Spedale was overwhelmed with the sick and the
dying, Bernardino collected a band of young men to aid the Rector in his
task, and devoted himself to the plague-stricken for four months, while
his cousin, Tobia, attended to the women.
From the back of the Spedale the Via di Valle Piatta leads to the little
church of San Sebastiano, the oratory of the Contrada della Selva. Its
interior is in the form of a Greek cross. It was built by Girolamo di
Domenico Ponsi, at the end of the fifteenth century, and its sacristy
contains Madonnas by Matteo di Giovanni and Benvenuto. The adjoining
convent, originally of the Gesuate, has since 1818 been the Foundling
Hospital--Ospizio dei Gettatelli.
From the Via di Valle Piatta the steep Via del Costone winds down the
side of the hill upon which the Duomo and Spedale stand, to the
Fontebranda. Let us take this way into the valley--for we shall be
[Illustration: FONTEBRANDA]
treading in the steps of St Catherine. Here, in her sixth year, she was
returning with her brother from a visit to their sister Bonaventura,
whose husband had a house near the Tower of St Ansanus, and had reached
the turning at which the great red brick mass of San Domenico first
becomes fully visible--rising up grandly on the brow of the opposite
hill, over the humble valley of the tanners and dyers. A shrine and a
faded fresco on the left at the corner still mark the spot of her first
vision. "She saw in the air, above the church of the Friars Preachers of
Siena, our Saviour seated on a wondrous throne, robed as Sovereign
Pontiff, accompanied by the Holy Apostles. He gazed lovingly and
smilingly upon her, and with His holy hand making the sign towards her
of the most holy Cross, He blessed her."[105]
At the foot of the hill is the famous Fontebranda, with its colonnade of
three arches and its four lions' heads. Although the first certain
mention of it is in a document of 1081, and in its present form it only
dates from the middle of the thirteenth century, the fountain has been
famous throughout Tuscany from time immemorial. Possibly, when Siena was
the Roman colony of the Sena Julia, the soldiery of the legions drank
from its waters; before them, the fair-haired Senonian Gauls--if we
accept that form of the legend of the foundation of the city--may have
lingered a moment by it as they followed Brennus in his march to Rome.
It hardly needs the adventitious fame that has accrued to it from the
supposition--stated as a fact by the earliest commentators, but at
present generally rejected by scholars--that it is the Fonte Branda
recorded by Dante in the thirtieth canto of the _Inferno_, for whose
waters, even to cool the burning thirst of Hell's foulest circle,
Maestro Adamo would not have given the sight of his aristocratic
seducers sharing his agony. There is a curious tradition that certain
streets of Siena were--or possibly still are--infested by were-wolves,
who rush through the city at night, and throw themselves into
Fontebranda to recover human form.[106] Be that as it may, Fontebranda
gives its name to the whole of the picturesque district--"il Rione di
Fontebranda"--below the two hills upon which the Duomo and San Domenico
respectively stand. The valley is still, as in St Catherine's days, the
haunt of the tanners and the dyers, and redolent of that peculiar odour
of the curing of hides that ever after haunts the lover of Siena.
The steep Via Benincasa--once the Via de' Tintori--leads up from
Fontebranda into the town. It is the headquarters of the most typical
and vivacious of the Sienese contrade--the "Nobile Contrada dell'Oca." A
few houses up the street, on the left, is a graceful building in the
style of the early Renaissance, which now occupies the site of the house
of Giacomo Benincasa: the _Oratorio di Santa Caterina in Fontebranda_.
"Many from beyond the mountains," so runs an entry in the _Libro dei
decreti di Concistoro_, at the time when Catherine's canonisation was in
progress at Rome, "French, Venetians, Romans and of other nations who
have come to your city, have with great diligence asked for the house
where dwelt in your city the blessed Catherine of Siena; and they have
gone to it with great reverence and devotion, kneeling down in many
places and kissing the walls and the door, saying with many tears: Here
she stood and touched, that precious vessel and gift of God, blessed
Catherine of Siena, who in her life did so many miracles. And many have
wondered that the Commune of Siena in that place has not made some
temple to the praise of God and honour of that Spouse of Christ."[107]
The house had passed through many hands since the death of St Catherine
(who, during the latter part of her life, lived with her mother in
another house in the present Via Romana), and was then in a ruinous
condition, as the document just quoted goes on to state. But in 1464 the
inhabitants of the Costa Fontebranda petitioned the Signoria to buy the
house, offering themselves to pay all the rest of the expenses for the
building and adornment of the chapel or oratory, "the which they are
disposed to do in such form and so well adorned, that it will be to the
honour of God and St Catherine of Siena and of your Magnificent Signory,
and the consolation of all your city." The oratory was begun in the same
year and finished in 1473, after several appeals from the Esecutori di
Gabella to the Signoria for aid in money. In one of these, they remind
the Signoria that "it pertains to the Republic to study that spiritual
devotions and divine temples should increase in the city; especially in
yours, because of the celestial gift of the sweetest liberty which we
enjoy among very few cities in the world." And in another they set forth
that, with the aid of their Magnificent Lordships, the oratory has been
built, "which has been a thing very devout and honourable, especially by
reason of the great concourse of citizens and strangers who go there on
the days of her feast"; but that they need some more things to make it
complete--such as a picture for the altar, candlesticks, an image of the
Saint in high relief, and a sacristy--for which they want three hundred
gold florins.[108]
The lower chapel--now the church of the Contrada--is the one referred to
in these documents, the upper oratories being the result of later acts
of devotion. It is uncertain who was the architect; a certain Francesco
di Duccio del Guasta, as well as Antonio Federighi and other masters,
seems to have had a hand in it. Over the door is a relief of St
Catherine with Angels--an unworthy work by Urbano da Cortona--and on the
façade are the four shields: the _Libertas_ and the _balzana_ between
the Lion of the People and the Goose of the Contrada. The church was the
workshop of Giacomo Benincasa and his sons. Over the altar is a statue
in coloured wood of their glorious daughter and sister, by
[Illustration: HOUSE OF ST CATHERINE]
Neroccio. The five frescoed _putti_ above and the scene of the reception
of the Stigmata are probably by Girolamo del Pacchia. On the right wall
are two admirable frescoes by Girolamo who, like all true Sienese, was
never so truly inspired as when painting Catherine. In the first, she is
saving two Dominican friars from a band of robbers by her intercession.
In the second, she is visiting the convent of Santa Agnese of
Montepulciano, and when she stoops to kiss the foot of the dead virgin
it moves itself to meet her lips, while "a very white manna falling like
heavenly dew" descends upon her. Here the painter has combined two
different legends about her visits to Montepulciano. The two girls
kneeling on the left are Catherine's two nieces (Lisa's daughters) whom
she placed in the convent; the young man in the foreground is apparently
Neri di Landoccio. On the left wall we see her raising up Messer Matteo
di Cenni, the Rector of the Casa della Misericordia, "a notable servant
of God and very devout to this Virgin," when he lay dying of the
pestilence; her figure is full of wonderful dignity and sweetness. This
also is by Girolamo del Pacchia. The fresco representing the Saint at
Florence, assailed by the Ciompi, is by Ventura Salimbeni.
We go up the stairs--which, without unduly stretching a point, we may
surely imagine to be those up which Monna Lapa saw her little daughter
ascending without touching the ground. On the left, we enter a small
oratory, which was one of the rooms of the Benincasa family--probably
that in which they took their meals together. The frescoes, by the
modern Sienese painter, Alessandro Franchi, represent legendary scenes
of Catherine's childhood and life in the family, and her earliest
visions before her public life began. They are at least unpretentious
and devout in sentiment, and the one in which the worthy dyer finds his
daughter at prayer, with the mystical dove hovering over her head, is
decidedly pretty. The picture over the altar, of her receiving the
Stigmata, is perhaps by Girolamo di Benvenuto. The little cell beyond is
the chamber which was made over to her as her own, when her father was
convinced that she was following a supernatural call. Under the wooden
covering of the floor is the very pavement upon which her feet trode,
and, shown beneath bars and glass, is the hard pillow of bricks upon
which her head rested when she slept. Out of the little window above it,
she gave food to the poor--for these rooms are practically on a level
with the upper street. In a glass case certain relics of hers are
preserved; her scent-bottle for the sick; the lantern which she carried
when she visited the plague-stricken or went to the hospital after dark;
the handle of the stick with which she walked--the stick we see
sometimes in her pictures; her veil and a piece of her hair-shirt; and
the covering in which her head was brought from Rome to Siena.
At the head of the stairs, on the right, is the door opening out upon
the little side street that runs off from the steep Costa Sant' Antonio,
by which the house is more usually entered. It bears the inscription
"The house of Catherine, the Spouse of Christ," and when we mount up
into the little court and loggia, we may read another hard saying on our
left: "Living, I beheld Him whom I loved." The design of the court and
loggia is ascribed to Baldassare Peruzzi. Here are two oratories. The
first--which is said to have been Monna Lapa's kitchen--is now somewhat
gorgeously decorated in the style of the Renaissance; the ceiling and
pavement (which latter is kept covered) belong to the end of the
sixteenth century. Over the altar, the picture representing the
reception of the Stigmata--which we find repeated in one form or another
in each of these chapels--is by Fungai. The pictures--with fine
Renaissance pilasters between--date from the latter part of the
sixteenth century onwards, and represent scenes from St Catherine's
life, with other Saints and Beati of Siena. In contrast with those in
the lower oratory, they are largely concerned with her later life and
with her public actions; her saving the souls of the tortured felons;
her freeing a woman from an evil spirit (by Pietro Sorri); her
persuading the Roman People to submit to Pope Urban (by Alessandro
Casolani); and her inducing Gregory to return to Rome. The more
artistically important of the series are her mystical marriage with
Christ, by Arcangiolo Salimbeni, and her canonisation by Pope Pius II.
(with the Blessed Bernardo and the Blessed Nera of the Tolomei below),
by Francesco Vanni. The second oratory--the _Oratorio del
Crocifisso_--was built in the sixteenth century on the site of the
garden of the family. Over the altar is the sacred Crucifix from Santa
Cristina at Pisa--a painting ascribed to Giunta Pisano--praying before
which, on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, 1375, in that little church on the
banks of the Arno, Catherine is said, like Francis of Assisi, to have
received in her flesh the _ultimo sigillo_. "I saw," she told Frate
Raimondo, "our Crucified Lord coming down upon me surrounded by a great
light. Thereat by the force of my spirit, that desired to go forth and
meet its Creator, my body was constrained to rise. Then from the marks
of His most sacred wounds I saw descend upon me five bloody rays, which
were directed towards the hands, the feet and the heart of my body.
Wherefore, knowing the mystery, I cried out suddenly, 'Ah, my Lord God,
I beseech you, let not these wounds appear outwardly in my body; it is
enough for me to have them internally.' Then whilst I was yet speaking,
before those rays reached me, their blood-red colour changed to a
marvellous brightness, and in the semblance of pure light they came to
the five parts of my body, to wit, the hands, the feet, and the
heart."[109]
In the Via Benincasa to the right of the door of the church--over which
is a bust of Catherine by Giacomo Cozzarelli, who is said to have
designed the loggia--are the rooms belonging to the "Nobile Contrada
dell'Oca." In the Sala delle Adunanze, you may see the trophies that
their _fantini_, or jockeys, have won in the race for the Palio.
The Contrada should be visited on the Sunday after the feast of Santa
Caterina. The whole Via Benincasa is decorated--_ammaiata_, as they say
in Siena--with bunting, with the flags of their own and the allied
contrade, with brackets to hold lights and with white wooden geese in
every form of flight or rest, but always combined with a green perch and
a red bracket to give the Italian tricolour which is also the _divisa_
of the Contrada. The corners of the streets that lead into the Via
Benincasa are guarded by larger wooden geese of this type, set upon the
walls of the houses, while at the bottom of the street, at the church,
the way is closed by a temporary tabernacle and altar. From earliest
morning, Mass is offered up unceasingly in the three oratories, while
the _figurino_ (the gaily decked representative of the Contrada) and the
_alfieri_, waving their banners and preceded by a band, march through
the city, to pay honour in this fashion to the houses of their friends
and the headquarters of the allied contrade. All through the day the
throng moves unceasingly through the street and the sacred house, until
in the evening there is the procession. Starting from the parish church
of Sant' Antonio, it makes its way down the steep, densely packed Via
Benincasa. Following the band, comes the _figurino_; then a long train
of little children dressed as saints and angels--foremost among
[Illustration: VIA DELLA GALLUZZA]
them being a group of three, a little boy, a little girl, and an elder
girl, representing the Sposalizio of Caterina with the divine Bambino
under the patronage of the Madonna. The brothers of the Company of St
Catherine follow, bearing the silver bust of their patroness, with the
priest of the Contrada. The end of the procession is brought up by the
picturesque young Ancients, waving and tossing up their banners in the
approved Sienese fashion, until all the steep, crowded Via Benincasa
seems a whirling mass of colour.
And St Catherine's power of healing factions in her native city has not
yet ceased. In this present year of grace, 1902, on the day in which the
popolani of the Oca celebrated the feast of their glorious patroness,
there was a solemn reconciliation between them and the rival Contrada of
the Torre, the healing of the famous feud of many years' standing. I am
writing too soon after the event to know whether the peace has proved
durable!
Upon the hill above Fontebranda rises the great red brick church of San
Domenico--after the Duomo the most important Gothic ecclesiastical
building in Siena. It dates almost from the very beginning of the
Dominican order, being begun shortly after 1220, though not finished
until the middle of the fifteenth century. St Dominic himself may be
said to have presided over its beginning, and the Angelical Doctor has
walked in the cloisters where once the convent was. The soaring
Campanile was raised in 1340. Though considerably altered--in the
sixteenth century it was used as a fortress from which the Spanish
soldiery might command the city--it is always the same building that St
Catherine knew, and that is so intimately connected with the events of
her life; presumably there are few buildings in Italy so quick with the
living spirit of one woman. Her beloved Dominicans, alas, are here no
longer; the convent was suppressed by the French invaders at the
beginning of last century, and, after the restoration of the Austrian
Grand Dukes, the Benedictines were substituted for the Dominicans. The
black monks have gone too--leaving a few to serve the church--and the
convent has been transformed into barracks for the cavalry of modern
Italy.
The interior has been completely restored, but its original austere
simplicity is still preserved. The picture over the third altar on the
right in the nave, representing the Assassination of St Peter Martyr,
and painted by Arcangiolo Salimbeni in 1579, is one of the most
meritorious works of the later school of Sienese painters. Over the last
altar on the right the altar-piece is formed of three different pictures
by different artists and without the slightest connection with each
other, save that they were all painted in the latter part of the
fifteenth century; the Nativity of the Saviour is by Francesco di
Giorgio, one of his best works, showing a curious imitation of Luca
Signorelli in the adoring Angels and shepherds; above, the Pietà with
Angels, St Michael and the Magdalene, is by Matteo di Giovanni; the
predella--representing St Catherine's visions, the Martyrdom of St
Sebastian, the Massacre of the Innocents, St Dominic preaching, St Mary
of Egypt--is ascribed to Fungai. Over the high altar the beautiful
marble Ciborium, with the risen Christ above and the four Evangelists
below, is the work of one of the chief Florentine sculptors of the
latter half of the Quattrocento, Benedetto da Maiano. The two marble
Angels, kneeling on either side of the altar, are also his. There is a
fine view of the Duomo from the back of the choir. In the second chapel,
to the left of the choir, is one of the loveliest and most
characteristic pictures of the Sienese school--the "Santa Barbara"
painted by Matteo di Giovanni in 1479. The Virgin Martyr of the Tower
sits enthroned, in robes gorgeous with gold and embroidery, accompanied
by St Mary Magdalene and St Catherine of the Wheels; two Angels crown
her, two more make melody behind her throne. The faces of the three
women--particularly the golden-haired maidens, Catherine and
Barbara--are full of pensive sweetness; they have dreamed among the
lilies all day and all night of love, such passionless love as that of
which the _Vita Nuova_ tells, while the faction fights have splashed
Siena's streets with blood, and in her palace chambers the things have
been done of which her novelists speak. And, surely, when the Angels
sing to their lutes or viols, it will be no hymn, but some such amorous
canzone as that with which Casella refreshed Dante's soul on the shores
of Purgatory. The lunette above represents the Adoration of the Magi,
and was especially stipulated for by the worthy bakers who gave Matteo
the commission. The bright picture opposite shows a trace of the
influence of Benozzo Gozzoli; it represents the Madonna and Child with
Saints and Angels, with the Pietà and four Angels in the lunette, and
was painted by Benvenuto di Giovanni in 1483. In the chapel beyond there
is another Matteo di Giovanni: the Madonna and Child with Angels, St
Jerome and the Baptist, in three divisions, with a rocky landscape
background, damaged and neglected. In the chapel on the right of the
choir, the Madonna of the Rosary--or rather the Deity with Saints,
surrounding an old votive picture of the Madonna--is by Bazzi, the
predella of the fifteen mysteries being by one of his pupils. The second
chapel on the right belonged to the "German Nation" of the University of
Siena, and is full of tombstones of noble young German students, who
came to the famous Studio to acquire wisdom, and found a grave. One
epitaph begins, _Svevia me genuit, Senae rapuere sed ossa_. The chapel
has the pathos that inevitably clings to the thought of hopes cut short,
of untimely death in a foreign land.
It is not for these things that we visit San Domenico to-day, but for
the glorious chapel of St Catherine. Over it we read another of those
hard sayings that sum up, mystically, the story of her inner life: "This
chapel holds the head of Catherine. Dost thou seek her heart? Nay, that
Christ bears inclosed in His breast." The shrine itself, over the altar,
which contains this sacred relic--sacred, surely, to all lovers of the
noblest things in the literature of mysticism no less than to Roman
Catholics--is a work of the third quarter of the fifteenth century, and
is probably by Giovanni di Stefano. The frescoes on either side of
it--representing the _Svenimento_, St Catherine fainting into the arms
of her two attendant nuns, Alessia and Francesca, overcome by the glory
of the vision of her celestial Bridegroom, and St Catherine miraculously
fed with the Food of Angels in the Sacred Host--are by Bazzi, and were
painted in 1526. Hardly elsewhere (save, perhaps, in the St Sebastian of
the Uffizi painted in the previous year) has the wayward painter of
Vercelli touched such a height of inspiration; in conception and
execution alike, they are among the supreme triumphs of Italian art. The
fresco on the left--representing the execution of Niccolò di Toldo, St
Catherine ecstatically following the upward flight of the soul she has
saved--is also Bazzi's, but less excellent. It is overcrowded and badly
composed, carelessly executed in parts; the brawny figure and bearded
head of the victim hardly suggest the delicate young nobleman, the
_agnello_ of the _Leggenda minore_ whose blood has been unjustly
shed;[110] but nothing could be more beautiful than the kneeling figure
of the Saint herself. The beautiful pilasters between the frescoes, and
the Angels and Prophets under the arch, are likewise Bazzi's. Bazzi left
the work unfinished, and some fifty years after his death Francesco
Vanni took
[Illustration: _The Ecstasy of St. Catherine._
_Detail from Bazzi's Fresco._]
it up, in 1593. By Vanni (who, of course, will not be confused with
Andrea di Vanni, Catherine's contemporary and friend) is the picture on
the right, painted in oil colours, where she is seen liberating a
possessed woman from a demon; by him, too, are the figures of her two
first biographers, the Blessed Raimondo da Capua and Frate Tommaso Nacci
Caffarini, the authors of the _Leggenda_ and the _Leggenda minore_
respectively. Beautiful as the shrine is--and it would have been perfect
in its harmony had only Bazzi completed the decorations--it is
impossible at times not to feel that there is something more
melodramatic in its treatment than quite accords with the simpler spirit
of the dyer's daughter of Fontebranda. The _graffito_ work in coloured
marble on the pavement represents Aesculapius among wild beasts. It is
doubtful whether this is connected with the fact that several physicians
of the Benzi family were buried in the chapel, or a part of the
decorations in honour of the Saint.
San Domenico should be visited on the day of St Catherine's Feast, which
in Siena is kept on April 29th. The nave is hung with the bright banners
of the contrade; Mass after Mass is offered up without intermission
throughout the morning at the shrine, while crowds of the devout humbly
and silently approach the altar, to be fed with that Bread of the
Angels, "which," says the collect for that day, "sustained even the
temporal life of the blessed Virgin Catherine." The curtain is raised,
and behind the gilded bars of the shrine the pale, strange face appears,
its features still recognisable. The altar blazes with candles and
glares with artificial lilies, while natural flowers, lilies of the
valley and white roses--more fitting tribute to her who so loved the
simple flowers of the field--are offered up at the chapel rails. And, in
this sudden advent of reality, Bazzi's beautiful melodrama palls.
In the sacristy, on this day, are shown certain other relics--her
discipline; her portable altar-stone; the sacramental cloths which she
made for it with her own hands; the bull from Pope Gregory at Avignon
granting her the dispensation to have Mass upon it wherever she went;
and one of her fingers. The latter relic is--somewhat
unfittingly--carried in procession through the church at sunset. The
sacristy contains a banner painted with the Assumption of the Blessed
Virgin by Bazzi.
The chapel on the right of the entrance, the Cappella delle Volte, over
which is a large painted Crucifix of the fifteenth century, was not
separated from the rest of the church in the days of St Catherine, as it
is now. It was the chapel in which she habitually prayed, and by one of
its pillars she knelt always, to hear Mass in the church below. Here her
visions came to her, here had she those strange mystical revelations of
the Divine Word. "Disposing wondrous ascensions in her heart, Catherine
went up these steps, to pray in the chapel to Christ her Spouse." Thus
runs the writing over the original steps, piously preserved and guarded
by bars, on the left, by which Catherine mounted into the cell of
mystery; not those modern ones by which we now go up into the little
chapel that witnessed this wondrous union of a woman's mind and heart
with the suprasensible.
It is somewhat bare to-day, painfully coated with modern paint and
whitewash. It is hung with paintings representing scenes from her life
and death, of little value from an artistic point of view, though
one--that of her walking with her Master and Spouse--has a certain
pathos and sweetness. Two narrow pictures over the
entrance--representing her giving the cross of her rosary, and clothing
the Divine Beggar with her robe--are earlier and better than the larger
canvasses. But over the altar is a priceless treasure, the famous
portrait of her by her friend and correspondent Andrea di Vanni,
perhaps painted in her life-time and in any case her authentic likeness,
in which the _mantellata_ is giving her hand to kiss to a kneeling
follower of her own sex--in the way to which (when men were concerned)
such exception was taken during her life. In the centre of the chapel a
piece of the old pavement where she trode--walked with Christ, in the
phrase of the legend--is religiously preserved. Elsewhere, marble
tablets on the floor are marked with heart, cross or robe, and
inscribed: "Christ changeth heart with Catherine"; "Catherine bestoweth
her cross on Christ"; "Catherine clothes Christ with her robe." For into
this chapel, as into others, the beggars came--and among them the
disguised Spouse of her soul. Still may we see the pillar against which
she leaned in her ecstasies--the pillar that is idealised in Bazzi's two
frescoes on either side of the shrine below--though now it is covered
and modernised like the rest of the chapel. An inscription hung upon
it--a seventeenth century copy of one of much older date (but not
earlier than her canonisation)--strikes the keynote of the whole chapel,
and I will therefore translate it in full:--
"In this chapel, there befell many wonderful actions to St Catherine of
Siena, among the which are those set down below, as the blessed Raimondo
her confessor telleth, and they are also known by ancient tradition,
besides the many others that befell in this present church.
"Here she was clothed in the habit of St Dominic, and she was the first
virgin who up to that time had been thus clothed.
"Here she stayed apart to hear the divine offices, and here continually
had she divine colloquies, conversing familiarly with Jesus Christ her
Spouse. Here she said the divine office, she had frequent ecstasies, and
for the most part in these she used to lean against this pilaster, in
one of which ecstasies she was zealously portrayed by a painter on the
wall outside of this chapel.[111] And from that time this pilaster has
been, and still is formidable to the furies of Hell, and many persons
possessed of devils have been delivered thereby.
"Here she gave a little cross of silver, that she had threaded to her
rosary, to Jesus Christ in the shape of a poor man, who afterwards told
her that He would show it on the Day of Judgment to all the world.
"Here she gave her vest to Jesus Christ in the shape of a poor man, who
afterwards robed her with an invisible robe whereby she never again
suffered cold.
"Here Jesus Christ appeared to her surrounded by light, as she was
wishing to descend by this place and go back to her house; and when
straightway she fell to the ground thereat, He opened her breast and put
there His own heart, saying, 'Lo, most dear daughter mine, even as the
other day I took from thee thy heart, so now do I give thee Mine own, by
the which shall thou ever live.'
"While she was leaning in ecstasy against this pilaster, a candle that
was there alight, in honour of some saints, fell upon the veils of her
head and entirely burnt itself out upon them, without doing any harm or
making any mark.
"While her confessor, Frate Raimondo, was celebrating Mass at the altar
of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, she remained at the foot of this
chapel and desired to be fed with the Holy Communion; but because it was
late, and the confessor knew not that she was there, she stayed there
patiently; then did Jesus Christ in person communicate her with part of
the Host consecrated at that Mass, and the confessor, not finding it,
remained much afflicted until it was revealed to him by her."
To many of us these things may seem mere priestly legends, and we may
find, even in Catherine's more solemn revelations, but little to meet
our daily needs. Assuredly, few would maintain that Christ actually
appeared, objectively, to His servant--that she walked with Him in aught
save the spirit--that He spoke words to her otherwise than in her own
heart. Yet, who shall set limits to the potential ascents of the human
spirit when held so slightly by its _mortal velo_, when so little
encumbered or shadowed by the _nube di sua mortalità_ as was that of
Caterina Benincasa? In those mystical suprasensible regions--during that
half hour in which there is silence in Heaven--Catherine was a voyager
alone, a sure wanderer in fields where our footsteps to-day cannot tread
even in imagination. Let us adapt to ourselves the word of Frate
Raimondo: "We are in the valley, and we presume to judge concerning what
is on the summit of the Mountain."