Cimabue and the time of Mantegna--roughly speaking, between the year
1200 and the year 1450--between the first emancipation of art from the
old Byzantine and Romanesque thraldom and the time when the new art had
so overspread the country that engravings of the most famous pictures
began to be sold in the streets in every important city in Italy. Only a
few years after Mantegna's death, Albert Duerer, the great painter
engraver of Nueremberg, appeared before the council of Venice to try and
get a copyright for his engravings, which were being so cleverly forged
by the famous Raimondi that the copies were sold in the Piazza of Saint
Mark as originals. In passing, it is interesting to remember that Duerer,
whose engravings now sell for hundreds of dollars each, sold them
himself at his own house for prices varying between the values of
fifteen and twenty-five cents, according to the size of the plate. The
Council of Venice refused him the copyright he asked, but interdicted
the copyist from using Duerer's initials.
The immense sale of prints popularized art in Italy at the very time
when the first great printing houses, like the Aldine, were popularizing
learning. Culture, in the same sense in which we use the word, became
preeminently the fashion. Everyone wished to be thought clever, and a
generation grew up which not only read Latin authors with pleasure,
wrote Latin correctly, and had some acquaintance with Greek, but which
took a lively interest in artistic matters, and constituted a real
public for artists, a much larger and a much more critical one than
could be found today among an equal population in any so-called
civilized country. The era of collectors began then, and Mantegna's old
master was the first of them. Every man of taste did his best to get
possession of some fragment of antique sculpture, everyone bought
engravings, everyone went to see the pictures of the great
masters--everyone tried to get together a little library of printed
books. It took two hundred and fifty or three hundred years to develop
the Renascence, but what it produced in Italy alone has not been
surpassed, and in many ways has not been equalled, in the four hundred
years that have followed it.
With its culmination, individualities, even the strongest, became less
distinctly defined, and the romantic side of the art legend was ended.
It is so in all things. The romance of the ocean belongs to those who
first steered the perilous course that none had dared before; many have
been in danger by the sea, many have perished in the desperate trial of
the impossible, but none can be Columbus again; many have done brave
deeds in untracked deserts, but none again can be the pioneers who first
won through to our West. The last may be the greatest, but the first
will always have been the first, the daring, the romantic, who did what
no man had done before them.
And so it is also in the peaceful ways of art. Giotto, Beato Angelico,
Lippo Lippi, Botticelli, never attained to the greatness of Lionardo or
Michelangelo or Raphael. Sober criticism can never admit that they did,
whatever soft-hearted enthusiasts may say and write. But those earlier
men had something which the later ones had not, both in merit and in
genius. They fought against greater odds, with poorer weapons, and where
their strength failed them, heart and feeling took the place of
strength; and their truth and their tenderness went straight to the
heart of their young world, as only the highest perfection of illusion
could appeal to the eyes of the critical, half-sceptic generation that
came after them.
And so, although it be true that art is not dependent on genius alone,
but also on mechanical skill, yet there is something in art which is
dependent on genius and on nothing else. It is that something which
touches, that something which creates, that something which itself is
life; that something which belongs, in all ages, to those who grope to
the light through darkness; that something of which we almost lose sight
in the great completeness of the greatest artists, but which hovers like
a halo of glory upon the brows of Italy's earliest, truest and tenderest
painters.
[Illustration]
REGION XIV BORGO
Borgo, the 'Suburb,' is the last of the fourteen Regions, and is one of
the largest and most important of all, for within its limits stand Saint
Peter's, the Vatican, and the Mausoleum of Hadrian--the biggest church,
the biggest palace and the biggest tomb in the whole world.
To those who know something of Rome's great drama, the Castle of Sant'
Angelo is the most impressive of all her monuments. Like the Colosseum,
it stands out in its round strength alone, sun-gilt and shadowy brown
against the profound sky. Like the great Amphitheatre, it has been
buffeted in the storms of ages and is war-worn without, to the highest
reach of a mounted man, and dinted above that by every missile invented
in twelve hundred years, from the slinger's pebble or leaden bullet to
the cannon ball of the French artillery. Like the Colosseum, it is the
crestless trunk of its former self. But it has life in it still, whereas
the Colosseum died to a ruin when Urban the Eighth showed his successor
how to tear down the outer wall and build a vast palace with a hundredth
part of the great theatre.
Sant' Angelo is a living fortress yet, and nearly a thousand years have
passed, to the certain knowledge of history, since it was ever a single
day unguarded by armed men. Thirty generations of men at arms have stood
sentry within its gates since Theodora Senatrix, the strong and sinful,
flashed upon history out of impenetrable darkness, seized the fortress
and made and unmade popes at her will, till, dying, she bequeathed the
domination to her only daughter, and her name to the tale of Roman
tyranny.
The Castle has been too often mentioned in these pages to warrant long
description of it here, even if any man who has not lived for years
among its labyrinthine passages could describe it accurately. The great
descending corridor leads in a wide spiral downwards to the central spot
where Hadrian lay, and in the vast thickness of the surrounding
foundations there is but stone, again stone and more stone. From the
main entrance upwards the fortress is utterly irregular within, full of
gloomy chambers, short, turning staircases, dark prisons, endless
corridors; and above are terraces and rooms where much noble blood has
been shed, and where many limbs have been racked and tortured, and
battlements from which men good and bad, guilty and innocent, have been
dropped a rope's length by the neck to feed the crows.
Here died Stephen Porcari, the brave and spotless; here died Cardinal
Carafa for a thousand crimes; and here Lorenzo Colonna, caught and
crushed in the iron hands of Sixtus the Fourth, laid his bruised head,
still stately, on the block--'a new block,' says Infessura, who loved
him and buried him, and could not forget the little detail. The story is
worth telling, less for its historical value than for the strange
exactness with which it is all set down.
Pope Sixtus, backed by the Orsini, was at war with the Colonna to the
end of his reign; but once, on a day when there was truce, he seems to
have said in anger that he cared not whom the Colonna served nor with
whom they allied themselves. And Lorenzo Colonna, Protonotary Apostolic,
with his brothers, took the Pope at his word, and they joined forces
with the King of Naples, fortifying themselves in their stronghold of
Marino, whence the eldest son of the family still takes his title. The
Pope, seeing them in earnest and fearing King Ferdinand, sent an embassy
of two cardinals to them, entreating them to be reconciled with the
Church. But they answered that they would not, for his Holiness had
given them permission to ally themselves with whom they pleased, and
refused them money for service, and they said that they could not live
without pay--a somewhat ironical statement for such men as the Colonna,
who lived rather by taking than by giving an equivalent for anything
received.
[Illustration: CASTLE OF SANT' ANGELO]
Then the Pope made war upon King Ferdinand, and when there had been much
bloodshed, and plundering and burning on both sides, Prospero Colonna
quarrelled with the Duke of Calabria, who was on Ferdinand's side and
for whom he had been fighting, and came over to the Church, and so the
Colonna were restored to favour, and the Pope made a treaty with the
King against Venice, and so another year passed.
But after that the quarrel was renewed between Pope Sixtus and Lorenzo
Colonna, on pretext that a certain part of the agreement to which they
had come had not been executed by the Protonotary; and while the matter
was under discussion, the Cardinal of Saint George, nephew of the great
Count Jerome Riario, sent word privately to the Protonotary Colonna,
warning him either to escape from Rome or to be on his guard if he
remained, 'because some one was plotting against him, and hated him.'
Wherefore Lorenzo shut himself up in the dwelling of Cardinal Colonna,
between the Colonna palace and Monte Cavallo on the Quirinal hill, and
many young men, attached to the great house, began to watch in arms,
day and night, turn and turn about. And when this became known, the
Orsini also began to arm themselves and keep watch at Monte Giordano.
Scenting a struggle, a Savelli, siding with Colonna, struck the first
blow by seizing forty horses and mules of the Orsini in a farm building
on the Tivoli road; and immediately half a dozen robber Barons joined
Savelli, and they plundered right and left, and one of them wrote a long
and courteous letter of justification to the Pope. But Orsini retorted
swiftly, 'lifting' horses and cattle that belonged to his enemies and
making prisoners of their retainers. Among others he took two men who
belonged to the Protonotary. And the latter, unable to leave Rome in
safety, began to fortify himself in the Cardinal's house with many
fighting men, and with many strange weapons, 'bombardelle, cerobottane,'
and guns and catapults. Whereupon the Pope sent for Orsini, and
commanded him, as the faithful adherent of the Church, to go and take
the Protonotary prisoner to his house. But while Orsini was marshalling
his troops with those of Jerome Riario, at Monte Giordano and in Campo
de' Fiori, the Pope sent for the municipal officers of the city and
explained that he meant to pardon the Protonotary if the latter would
come to the Vatican humbly and of his own free will; and certain of
these officers went to the Protonotary as ambassadors, to explain this.
To them he answered, in the presence of Stephen Infessura, the
chronicler who tells the story, that he had not fortified himself
against the Church, but against private and dangerous enemies, against
whom he had been warned, and that he had actually found that his house
was spied upon by night; but that he was ready to carry out the terms of
the old agreement, and finally, that he was ready to go freely to the
Pope, trusting himself wholly to His Holiness, without any earnest or
pledge for his safety, but that he begged the Pope not to deliver him
into the hands of the Orsini. Yet even before he had spoken, the Orsini
were moving up their men, by way of Saint Augustine's Church, which is
near Piazza Navona. Nevertheless Colonna, the Protonotary, mounted his
horse to ride over to the Vatican.
But John Philip Savelli stood in the way, and demanded of the officers
what surety they would give for Colonna; and they promised him safety
upon their own lives. Then Savelli answered them that they should
remember their bond, for if Colonna did not come back, or if he should
be hurt, he, Savelli, would be avenged upon their bodies. And Colonna
rode out, meaning to go to the Pope, but his retainers mounted their
horses and rode swiftly by another way and met him, and forced him back.
For they told him that if he went, his end would be near, and that they
themselves would be outlawed; and some said that before they would let
him go, they would cut him to pieces themselves rather than let his
enemies do it. And furiously they forced him back, him and his horse,
through the winding streets, and brought him again into the stronghold,
and bade the officers depart in peace.
And the second time two of the officers returned and told the
Protonotary to come, for he should be safe. And again he mounted his
horse, and struck with the flat of his blade a man who hindered him, and
leaped the barrier raised for defence before the palace and rode away.
And again his own men mounted and followed him, and overtook him at the
cross of Trevi, near by. And one, a giant, seized his bridle and forced
him back, saying, 'My Lord, we will not let you go! Rather will we cut
you in quarters ourselves; for you go to ruin yourself and us also.'
But when they had him safe within the walls, he wrung his hands, and
cried out that it was they who, by hindering him, were destroying
themselves and him. But many answered, 'If you had gone, you would never
have come back.' And it was then the twenty-first hour of the day, and
there were left three hours before dark.
But the Pope, seeing that Colonna did not come, commanded the Orsini to
bring him by force, as they might, even by slaying the people, if the
people should defend him; and he ordered them to burn and pillage the
regions of Monti, Trevi and Colonna. And with Orsini there were some of
those fierce Crescenzi, who still lived in Rome. And they all marched
through the city, bearing the standard of the Church, and they passed by
Trevi and surrounded the house on Monte Cavallo, and proclaimed the ban
against all men who should help the Protonotary; wherefore many of the
people departed in fear. Then Orsini first leapt the barrier, and his
horse was killed under him by a bombard that slew two men also; and
immediately all the Colonna's men discharged their firearms and
catapults and killed sixteen of their enemies. But the Orsini advanced
upon the house.
Then, about the twenty-third hour, the Colonna were weary of fighting
against so many, and their powder was not good, so that they fell back
from the main gateway, and the Orsini rushed in and filled the arched
ways around the courtyard, and set fire to the hay and straw in the
stables, and fought their way up the stairs, sacking the house.
They found the Protonotary in his room, wounded in the hand and sitting
on a chest, and Orsini told him that he was a prisoner and must come.
'Slay me, rather,' he answered. But Orsini bade him surrender and have
no fear. And he yielded himself up, and they took him away through the
smoking house, slippery with blood. They found also John Philip
Savelli, and they stripped him of the cuirass he wore, and setting their
swords to him, bade him cry, 'Long live Orsini!' And he answered, 'I
will not say it.' Then they wounded him deep in the forehead and smote
off both his hands, and gave him many wounds in face and body, and left
him dead. And they plundered all the goods of Cardinal Colonna, his
plate, his robes, his tapestries, his chests of linen, and they even
carried off his cardinal's hat.
So the Protonotary, on the faith of Orsini, was led away to the Pope in
his doublet, but some one lent him a black cloak on the way. And as they
went, Jerome Riario rode beside him and jeered at him, crying out, 'Ha,
ha! thou traitor, I shall hang thee by the neck this night!' But Orsini
answered Jerome, and said, 'Sir, you shall hang me first!' for he had
given his word. And more than once on the way, Riario, drunk with blood,
drew his dagger to thrust it into Colonna, but Orsini drove him off, and
brought his prisoner safely to the Pope. And his men sacked the quarter
of the Colonna; and among other houses of the Colonna's retainers which
were rifled they plundered that of Paul Mancino, near by, whose
descendant was to marry the sister of Mazarin; and also, among the
number, the house of Pomponius Letus, the historian, from whom they took
all his books and belongings and clothes, and he went away in his
doublet and buskins, with his stick in his hand, to make complaint
before the municipality.
Then for a whole month all that part of Rome which was dominated by the
Colonna was given over to be pillaged and burned by their enemies, while
in still Sant' Angelo, the tormentors slowly tore Lorenzo Colonna to
pieces, so that the Jewish doctor who was called in to prolong his life
said that nothing could save him, for his limbs were swollen and pierced
through and through, and many of his bones were broken, and he was full
of many deep wounds. Yet in the end, lest he should die a natural death,
they prepared the new block and the axe to cut off his head.
'Moreover,' says Infessura, in his own language, 'on the last day of
June, when the people were celebrating in Rome the festivity of the most
happy decapitation of Saint Paul the Apostle, whose head was cut off by
the most cruel Nero--on that very day, about an hour and a half after
sunrise, the aforesaid Holiness of our Sovereign Lord caused the
Protonotary Colonna to be beheaded in the Castle; and there were present
the Senator and the Judge of the crime. And when the Protonotary was led
out of prison early in the morning to the grating above the Castle, he
turned to the soldiers who were there and told them that he had been
grievously tormented, wherefore he had said certain things not true. And
immediately afterwards, when he was in the closed place below, where he
was beheaded, the Senator and Judge sat down as a Tribunal, and caused
to be read the sentence which they passed against him, although no
manner of criminal procedure had been observed, since all the
confessions were extorted under torture, and he had no opportunity of
defending himself.' Therefore, when this sentence had been read, the
Protonotary addressed those present and said: 'I wish no one to be
inculpated through me. I say this in conscience of my soul, and if I
lie, may the devil take me, now that I am about to go out of this life;
and so thou, Notary who hast read the sentence, art witness of this, and
ye all are witnesses, and I leave the matter to your conscience, that
you should also proclaim it in Rome,--that those things written in this
sentence are not true, and that what I have said I have said under great
torture, as ye may see by my condition.' He would not let them bind his
hands, but knelt down at the block, and forgave the executioner, who
asked his pardon. And then he said in Latin, 'Lord, into thy hands I
commend my spirit,' and called thrice upon Christ the Saviour, and at
the third time, the word and his head were severed together from his
body.
Then they placed the body in a wooden coffin and took it to Santa Maria
Transpontina, the first church on the right, going from the Castle
toward Saint Peter's, and when none came to take it away, they sent word
to his mother. And she, white-haired and tearless, with burning eyes,
came; and she took her son's head from the coffin and held it up to the
people, saying, 'Behold the justice of Sixtus,' and she laid it in its
place tenderly; and with torches, and the Confraternities, and many
priests, the body was taken to the Church of the Holy Apostles, and
buried in the Colonna Chapel near the altar.
But before it was buried it was seen in the coffin, and taken out, and
laid in it again, and all saw the torments which the man had suffered in
his feet, which were swollen and bound up with rags; and also the
fingers of his hands had been twisted, so that the inside was turned
clean outwards, and on the top of his head was a wound, where priests
make the tonsure, as though the scalp had been raised by a knife; and he
was dressed in a cotton doublet, yet his own had been of fine black
silk. Also they had put on him a miserable pair of hose, torn from the
half of the leg downwards; and a red cap with a trencher was upon his
head, and it was rather a long cap, and the narrator believed that the
gaolers had dressed him thus as an insult. 'And I Stephen, the scribe,
saw it with my eyes, and with my hands I buried him, with Prosper of
Cicigliano, who had been his vassal; and no other retainers of the
Colonna would have anything to do with the matter, out of fear, as I
think.'
Five hundred years had passed since Theodora's day, four hundred more
are gone since Lorenzo the Protonotary laid his head upon the block, and
still the tradition of terror and suffering clings to Sant' Angelo, and
furnishes the subject of an all but modern drama. Such endurance in the
character of a building is without parallel in the history of
strongholds, and could be possible only in Rome, where the centuries
pass as decades, and time is reckoned by the thousand years.
[ILLUSTRATION: HOSPITAL OF SANTO SPIRITO
From a print of the last century]
The main and most important memories in the Region of Borgo, apart from
the Castle, and Saint Peter's and the Vatican, are those connected with
the Holy Office, the hospital and insane asylum of Santo Spirito, and
with the Serristori barracks. In Rome, to go to Santo Spirito means to
go mad. It is the Roman Bedlam. But there is another association with
the name, and a still sadder one. There, by the gate of the long, low
hospital, is still to be seen the Rota--the 'wheel'--the revolving
wooden drum, with its small aperture, corresponding to an opening in the
grating, through which many thousand infants have been passed by
starving women to the mystery within, to a nameless death, or to grow up
to a life almost as nameless and obscure. The mother, indeed, received a
ticket as a sort of receipt by which she could recognize her child if
she wished, but the children claimed were very few. Within, they were
received by nursing Sisters, and cared for, not always wisely, but
always kindly, and some of them grew up to happy lives. Modern charity,
in its philistinism and well-regulated activity, condemns such wholesale
readiness to take burdens which might sometimes be borne by those who
lay them down. But modern charity, in such condemnation, does not take
just account of a mother's love, and believes that to receive nameless
children in such a way would 'encourage irresponsibility,' if not vice.
And yet in Rome, where half the population could neither read nor write,
infanticide was unknown, and fewer children were passed in through the
Rota yearly than are murdered in many a modern city. For the last thing
the worst mother will do is to kill her child; last only before that
will she part with it. Which was more moral, the unrestricted charity of
the Rota, or the unrestricted, legal infanticide of the old-fashioned
'baby-farm,' where superfluous children were systematically starved to
death by professional harpies?