government, has now been restored to the Franciscan order, of which
its patron saint was a member. San Vivaldo was born at San Gimignano
in the latter half of the thirteenth century, and after joining in
his youth the Tertiary Order of Saint Francis, retired to a hollow
chestnut-tree in the forest of Camporeno (the site of the present
monastery), in which cramped abode he passed the remainder of his life
“in continual macerations and abstinence.” After his death the tree
which had been sanctified in so unusual a manner became an object of
devotion among the neighbouring peasantry, who, when it disappeared,
raised on the spot an oratory to the Virgin. It is doubtful, however,
if this memorial, which fell gradually into neglect, would have
preserved San Vivaldo from oblivion, had not that Senancour of a saint
found a Matthew Arnold in the shape of a Franciscan friar, a certain
Fra Cherubino of Florence, who, early in the sixteenth century, was
commissioned by his order to watch over and restore the abandoned
sanctuary. Fra Cherubino, with his companions, took possession of the
forest of Camporeno, and proceeded to lay the foundation-stone of a
monastery which was to commemorate the hermit of the chestnut-tree.
The forgotten merits of San Vivaldo were speedily restored to popular
favour by the friar’s eloquence, and often, after one of his sermons,
three thousand people were to be seen marching in procession to the
river Evola to fetch building-materials for the monastery. Meanwhile
Fra Tommaso, another of the monks, struck by the resemblance of the
hills and valleys of Camporeno to the holy places of Palestine,
began the erection of the “devout chapels” which were to contain the
representations of the Passion; and thus arose the group of buildings
now forming the monastery of San Vivaldo.
As we drove up we saw several monks at work in the woods and in the
vegetable-gardens below the monastery. These took no notice of us, but
in answer to our coachman’s summons there appeared another, whose Roman
profile might have emerged from one of those great portrait-groups
of the sixteenth century, where grave-featured monks and chaplains
are gathered about a seated pope. This monk, whose courteous welcome
betrayed as little surprise as though the lonely glades of San Vivaldo
were daily invaded by hordes of sight-seers, informed us that it was
his duty to conduct visitors to the various shrines. The chapels of the
Passion are about twenty in number, and as many more are said to have
perished. They are scattered irregularly through the wood adjoining
the monastery, and our guide, who showed a deep interest in the works
of art committed to his charge, assured us that the terra-cotta groups
were undoubtedly due to Giovanni Gonnelli, _Il Cieco di Gambassi_, for
whose talent he seemed to entertain a profound admiration. Some of
the master’s work, he added, had been destroyed, or replaced by that
of “qualche muratore”; but he assured us that in the groups which had
been preserved we should at once recognize the touch of an eminent
hand. As he led the way he smilingly referred to Giovanni Gonnelli’s
legendary blindness, which plays a most picturesque part in the
artist’s biography. The monk explained to us that Gonnelli was blind
of only one eye, thus demolishing Baldinucci’s charming tradition of
portrait-busts executed in total darkness to the amazement of popes and
princes. Still, we suspected our guide of adapting his hero’s exploits
to the incredulity of the unorthodox, and perhaps secretly believing
in the anecdotes over which he affected to smile. On the threshold of
the first chapel he paused to explain that some of the groups had been
irreparably injured during the period of neglect and abandonment which
followed the suppression of the monastery. The government, he added,
had seized the opportunity to carry off from the church the Presepio
in high relief which was Gonnelli’s masterpiece, and to strip many of
the chapels of the escutcheons in Robbia ware that formerly ornamented
the ceilings. “Even then, however,” he concluded, “our good fathers
were keeping secret watch over the shrines, and they saved some of the
escutcheons by covering them with whitewash; but the government has
never given us back our Presepio.”
Having thus guarded us against possible disillusionment, he unlocked
the door of the first chapel on what he declared to be an undoubted
work of the master--the Descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Disciples.
This group, like all the others at San Vivaldo, is set in a little
apsidal recess at the farther end of the chapel. I had expected, at
best, an inferior imitation of the seventeenth-century groups in the
more famous Via Crucis of Varallo, but to my surprise I found myself
in the presence of a much finer, and apparently a much earlier, work.
The figures, which are of life-size, are set in a depressed arch, and
fitted into their allotted space with something of the skill which the
Greek sculptors showed in adapting their groups to the slope of the
pediment. In the centre, the Virgin kneels on a low column or pedestal,
which raises her partially above the surrounding figures of the
disciples. Her attitude is solemnly prayerful, with a touch of nun-like
severity in the folds of the wimple and in the gathered plaits of the
gown beneath her cloak. Her face, furrowed with lines of grief and age,
is yet irradiated by an inner light; and her hands, like those of all
the figures hitherto attributed to Gonnelli, are singularly graceful
and expressive. The same air of unction, of what the French call
_recueillement_, distinguishes the face and attitude of the kneeling
disciple on the extreme left; and the whole group breathes that air
of devotional simplicity usually associated with an earlier and less
worldly period of art.
Next to this group, the finest is perhaps that of “Lo Spasimo,” the
swoon of the Virgin at the sight of Christ bearing the cross. It is
the smallest of the groups, being less than life-size, and comprising
only the figure of the Virgin supported by the Marys and by two
kneeling angels. There is a trace of primitive stiffness in the attempt
to render the prostration of the Virgin, but her face expresses an
extremity of speechless anguish which is subtly contrasted with the
awed but temperate grief of the woman who bends above her; while the
lovely countenances of the attendant angels convey another shade of
tender participation: the compassion of those who are in the counsels
of the Eternal, and know that
_In la sua volontade è nostra pace_.
In this group the artist has attained to the completest expression of
his characteristic qualities: refined and careful modelling, reticence
of emotion, and that “gift of tears” which is the last attribute one
would seek in the resonant but superficial art of the seventeenth
century.
Among other groups undoubtedly due to the same hand are those of
Christ Before Pilate, of the Ascension, and of the Magdalen bathing
the feet of Christ. In the group of the Ascension the upper part has
been grotesquely restored; but the figures of the Virgin and disciples,
who kneel below, are apparently untouched, and on their faces is seen
that look of wondering ecstasy, that reflection of the beatific vision,
which the artist excelled in representing. In every group of the series
his Saint John has this luminous look; and in that of the Ascension it
brightens even the shrewd bearded countenances of the older disciples.
In the scene of Christ before Pilate the figure of Pilate is especially
noteworthy: his delicate incredulous lips seem just framing their
immortal interrogation. Our guide pointed out that the Roman lictor in
this group, who raises his arm to strike the accused Christ, has had
his offending hand knocked off by the zeal of the faithful.
The representation of the Magdalen bathing the feet of Christ is
noticeable for the fine assemblage of heads about the supper-table.
Those of Christ and of his host are peculiarly expressive; and Saint
John’s look of tranquil tenderness contrasts almost girlishly with the
majestic gravity of the neighbouring faces. The Magdalen herself is
less happily executed; there is something actually unpleasant in her
ramping four-footed attitude as she crawls toward the Christ, and the
figure is probably by another hand. In the group of the Crucifixion,
for the most part of inferior workmanship, the figures of the two
thieves are finely modelled, and their expression of anguish has been
achieved with the same sobriety of means which marks all the artist’s
effects. The remaining groups in the chapels are without special
interest, but under the portico of the church there are three fine
figures, possibly by the artist of the Spasimo, representing Saint
Roch, Saint Linus of Volterra, and one of the Fathers of the Church.
There are, then, among the groups of San Vivaldo, five which appear
to be by the same master, in addition to several scattered figures
presumably by his hand; all of which have always been attributed to
Giovanni Gonnelli, the blind pupil of Pietro Tacca. The figures in
these groups are nearly, if not quite, as large as life; they have all
been rudely repainted, and are entirely unglazed, though framed in
glazed mouldings of the familiar Robbian style.
Professor Ridolfi’s information was confirmed by the local tradition,
and there seemed no doubt that the groups of San Vivaldo had always
been regarded as the work of Gonnelli, an obscure artist living
at a time when the greatest masters produced little to which
posterity has conceded any artistic excellence. But one glance at the
terra-cottas sufficed to show that they could not have been modelled
in mid-seventeenth century: neither their merits nor their defects
belonged to that period of art. What had the sculptor of San Vivaldo
in common with the pupils of Giovanni Bologna and Il Fiammingo, that
tribe of skilled craftsmen who peopled every church and palace in
Italy with an impersonal flock of Junos and Virgin Marys, Venuses and
Magdalens, distinguishable only by their official attributes? The more
closely I studied the groups, the more the conviction grew that they
were the work of an artist trained in an earlier tradition, and still
preserving, under the stiffening influences of convention, a touch of
that individuality and directness of expression which mark the prime of
Tuscan art. The careful modelling of the hands, the quiet grouping, so
free from effort and agitation, the simple draperies, the devotional
expression of the faces, all seemed to point to the lingering
influences of the fifteenth century; not indeed to the fresh charm of
its noon, but to the refinement, the severity, of its close. The glazed
mouldings enclosing the groups, and the coloured medallions with
which the ceilings of the chapels are decorated, suggested a direct
connection with the later school of the Robbias; and as I looked I was
haunted by a confused recollection of a Presepio seen at the Bargello,
and attributed to Giovanni della Robbia or his school. Could this be
the high-relief which had been removed from San Vivaldo?
On returning to Florence I went at once to the Bargello, and found,
as I had expected, that the Presepio I had in mind was indeed the one
from San Vivaldo. I was surprised by the extraordinary resemblance of
the heads to some of those in the groups ascribed to Gonnelli. I had
fancied that the modeller of San Vivaldo might have been inspired by
the Presepio of the Bargello; but I was unprepared for the identity
of treatment in certain details of hair and drapery, and for the
recurrence of the same type of face. The Presepio undoubtedly shows
greater delicacy of treatment; but this is accounted for by the fact
that the figures are much smaller, and only in partial relief, whereas
at San Vivaldo they are so much detached from the background that they
may be regarded as groups of statuary. Again, the glaze which covers
all but the faces of the Presepio has preserved its original beauty
of colouring, while the groups of San Vivaldo have been crudely daubed
with fresh coats of paint, and even of whitewash; and the effect of
the Presepio is farther enhanced by an excessively ornate frame of
fruit-garlanded pilasters, as well as by its charming predella with
small scenes set between panels of arabesque. Altogether, it is a far
more elaborate production than the terra-cottas of San Vivaldo, and
some of its most graceful details, such as the dance of angels on the
stable-roof, are evidently borrowed from the earlier _répertoire_ of
the Robbias; but in spite of these incidental archaisms no one can
fail to be struck by the likeness of the central figures to certain of
the statues at San Vivaldo. The head of Saint Joseph in the Presepio,
for instance, with its wrinkled penthouse forehead, and the curled
and parted beard, suggests at once that of the disciple seated on the
right of Saint John in the house of the Pharisee; the same face, though
younger, occurs again in the Pentecostal group, and the kneeling female
figure in the Presepio is treated in the same manner as the youngest
Mary in the group of the Spasimo: even the long rolled-back tresses,
with their shell-like convolutions, are the same.
The discovery of this close resemblance deepened the interest of
the problem. It seemed hardly credible that a work of such artistic
significance as the Via Crucis of San Vivaldo should not long since
have been studied and classified. In Tuscany especially, where every
phase of fifteenth-century art, including its prolongation in the
succeeding century, has been traced and analyzed with such scrupulous
care, it was inconceivable that so interesting an example of an
essentially Italian style should have escaped notice. There could
be no doubt that the groups belonged to the period in question.
Since it was impossible not to reject at once the hypothetical
seventeenth-century artist content to imitate with servile accuracy
a manner which had already fallen into disfavour, it was necessary
to assume that a remarkable example of late _quattro-cento_ art had
remained undiscovered, within a few hours’ journey from Florence, for
nearly four hundred years. The only reasonable explanation of this
oversight seemed to be that, owing to the seclusion of the monastery
of San Vivaldo, the groups had never acquired more than local fame,
and that, having possibly been restored in the seventeenth century by
Giovanni Gonnelli or one of his pupils, they had been ascribed to him
by a generation which, having ceased to value the work of the earlier
artist, was profoundly impressed by the miraculous skill of the blind
modeller, and eager to connect his name with the artistic treasures of
the monastery.
To the infrequent sight-seers of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, there would be nothing surprising in such an attribution.
The perception of differences in style is a recently-developed faculty,
and even if a student of art had penetrated to the wilds of San
Vivaldo, he would probably have noticed nothing to arouse a doubt of
the local tradition. The movement toward a discrimination of styles,
which came in the first half of the nineteenth century, was marked, in
the study of Italian art, by a contemptuous indifference toward all but
a brief period of that art; and the mere fact that a piece of sculpture
was said to have been executed in the seventeenth century would, until
very lately, have sufficed to prevent its receiving expert attention.
Thus the tradition which ascribed the groups of San Vivaldo to Giovanni
Gonnelli resulted in concealing them from modern investigation as
effectually as though they had been situated in the centre of an
unexplored continent, and in procuring for me the rare sensation of
an artistic discovery made in the heart of the most carefully-explored
artistic hunting-ground of Europe.
My first care was to seek expert confirmation of my theory; and as a
step in this direction I made arrangements to have the groups of San
Vivaldo photographed by Signor Alinari of Florence. I was obliged to
leave Italy before the photographs could be taken; but on receiving
them I sent them at once to Professor Ridolfi, who had listened with
some natural incredulity to my description of the terra-cottas; and
his reply shows that I had not overestimated the importance of the
discovery.
“No sooner,” he writes, “had I seen the photographs than I became
convinced of the error of attributing them to Giovanni Gonnelli, called
_Il Cieco di Gambassi_. I saw at once that they are not the work of an
artist of the seventeenth century, but of one living at the close of
the fifteenth or beginning of the sixteenth century; of an artist of
the school of the Robbias, who follows their precepts and possesses
their style.... The figures are most beautifully grouped, and modelled
with profound sentiment and not a little _bravura_. They do not appear
to me to be all by the same author, for the Christ in the house of the
Pharisee seems earlier and purer in style, and more robust in manner;
also the swoon of the Madonna, ... which is executed in a grander style
than the other reliefs and seems to belong to the first years of the
sixteenth century.
“The fact that these terra-cottas are not glazed does not prove that
they are not the work of the Robbia school; for Giovanni della Robbia,
for example, sometimes left the flesh of his figures unglazed, painting
them with the brush; and this is precisely the case in a Presepio of
the National Museum” (this is the Presepio of San Vivaldo), “a work of
the Robbias, in which the flesh is left unglazed.
“I therefore declare with absolute certainty that it is a mistake to
attribute these beautiful works to Giovanni Gonnelli, and that they are
undoubtedly a century earlier in date.”
SUB UMBRA LILIORUM
AN IMPRESSION OF PARMA
Parma, at first sight, lacks the engaging individuality of some of the
smaller Italian towns. Of the romantic group of ducal cities extending
from Milan to the Adriatic--Parma, Modena, Ferrara, Urbino--it is
the least easy to hit off in a few strokes, to sum up in a sentence.
Its component features, however interesting in themselves, fail to
blend in one of those memorable wholes which take instant hold of the
traveller’s imagination. The “sights” of Parma must be sought for; they
remain separate isolated facts, and their quest is enlivened by few
of those happy architectural incidents which give to a drive through
Ferrara or Ravenna so fine a flavour of surprise.
[Illustration:
_A Characteristic Street_
E. C. Peixotto
PARMA. 1901.
]
The devotee of the fourteenth century, trained by Ruskin to pass
without even saluting any expression of structural art more recent
than the first unfolding of the pointed style, must restrict his
investigations to the Baptistery and the outside of the Cathedral; and
even the lax eclectic who nurses a secret weakness for the baroque and
rejoices in the last frivolous flowering of the eighteenth century,
finds little immediate satisfaction for his tastes. The general aspect
of Parma is in fact distinctly inexpressive, and its more important
buildings have only the relative merit of suggesting happier examples
of the same style. This absence of the superlative is, in many Italian
cities, atoned for by the episodical charm of the streets: by glimpses
of sculptured windows, pillared court-yards, and cornices projecting
a perfect curve against the blue; but the houses of Parma are plain
almost to meanness, and though their monotonous succession is broken
here and there by a palace-front embroidered with the Farnese lilies,
it must be owned that, with rare exceptions, these façades have few
palatial qualities but that of size. Perhaps not short of Ravenna could
be found another Italian town as destitute of the more obvious graces;
and nowhere surely but in Italy could so unpromising an exterior hide
such varied treasures. To the lover of Italy--the perennial wooer whom
every spring recalls across the Alps--there is a certain charm in
this external dulness. After being steeped in the mediævalism of Siena,
Perugia or Pistoja, after breathing at Vicenza, Modena and Bergamo the
very air of Goldoni, Rosalba, and the _commedia dell’ arte_, it is
refreshing to come on a town that holds back and says: “Find me out.”
Such a challenge puts the psychologist on his mettle and gives to his
quest the stimulus of discovery.
It may seem paradoxical to connect the emotions of the explorer with
one of the most familiar centres of artistic influence, but it is
partly because Parma is still dominated by Correggio that it has
dropped out of the emotional range of the modern traveller. For though
it is scarce a hundred years since our grandparents posted thither to
palpitate over the master, their æsthetic point of view is as remote
from ours as their mode of locomotion. By a curious perversity of fate
Correggio, so long regarded as the leading exponent of “sentiment,” now
survives only by virtue of his technique, and has shrunk to the limited
immortality of the painter’s painter. A new generation may rediscover
his emotional charm, but to the untechnical picture-lover of the
present day his prodigious manipulations of light and colour seldom
atone for the Turveydrop attitudes of his saints and angels and for the
sugary loveliness of his Madonnas. Lacking alike the frank naturalism
of such masters as Palma Vecchio and Bonifazio, the sensuous mysticism
of Sodoma and the fantastic gaiety of Tiepolo, Correggio seems to
typify that phase of cold sentimentality which dwindled to its end
in the “Keepsakes” of sixty years ago. Each generation makes certain
demands on the art of its own period and seeks certain affinities in
the art of the past; and a kind of personal sincerity is perhaps what
modern taste has most consistently exacted: the term being understood
not in its technical sense, as applied to execution, but in its
imaginative significance, as qualifying the “message” of the artist. It
is inevitable that the average spectator should look at pictures from
a quite untechnical standpoint. He knows nothing of values, brushwork
and the rest; yet it is to the immense majority formed by his kind that
art addresses itself. There must therefore be two recognized ways of
judging a picture--by its technique and by its expression: that is,
not the mere story it has to tell, but its power of rendering in line
and colour the equivalent of some idea or of some emotion. There is
the less reason for disputing such a claim because, given the power of
_seeing soul_, as this faculty may be defined, the power of embodying
the impression, of making it visible and comprehensible to others, is
necessarily one of technique; and it is doubtful if any artist not
possessed of this insight has received, even from his fellow-craftsmen,
a lasting award of supremacy.
Now the sentiment that Correggio embodied is one which, from the
present point of view, seems to lack the preserving essence of
sincerity. It is true that recent taste has returned with a certain
passion to the brilliant mannerisms of the eighteenth century; but
it is because they are voluntary mannerisms, as frankly factitious
as the masquerading of children, that they have retained their hold
on the fancy. As there is a soul in the games of children, or in
any diversion entered into with conviction, so there is a soul, if
only an inconsequent spoiled child’s soul, in the laughing art of
the eighteenth century. It is the defect of Correggio’s art that it
expresses no conviction whatever. He offers us no clue to the _état
d’âme_ of his celestial gymnasts. They do not seem to be honestly in
love with this world or the next, or to take any personal part in the
transactions in which the artist has engaged them. In fact, they are
simply models, smirking and attitudinizing at so much an hour, and so
well trained that even their individuality as models remains hidden
behind the fixed professional smile. The conclusion is that if they
are only models to the spectator, it is because they were only models
to Correggio; that his art had no transmuting quality, and that he was
always conscious of the wires which held on the wings.