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[Illustration: _Temple, Taormina_]
ITALY
THE MAGIC LAND
BY
LILIAN WHITING
AUTHOR OF "THE FLORENCE OF LANDOR," "THE LAND OF
ENCHANTMENT," "THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL," ETC.
"And, under many a yellow star,
We dropped into the Magic Land!"
_Illustrated from Photographs_
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1907
_Copyright, 1907_,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
_All rights reserved_
Published November, 1907
THE GRIFFITH-STILLINGS PRESS, BOSTON, U.S.A.
TO
ELLA
(MRS. FRANKLIN SIMMONS)
WHOSE EARTHLY FORM REPOSES IN THE BEAUTIFUL ROMAN CEMETERY,
WHERE POETIC ASSOCIATIONS WITH KEATS AND SHELLEY HAUNT
THE AIR,--UNDER THE SCULPTURED "ANGEL OF THE RESURRECTION,"
WITH ITS MAJESTIC SYMBOLISM OF THE
TRIUMPH OF IMMORTALITY,--BUT WHOSE RADIANT
PRESENCE STILL TRANSFIGURES THE LIFE THAT
HELD HER IN IMMORTAL DEVOTION,--
THESE PAGES ARE INSCRIBED,
WITH THE UNFORGETTING LOVE OF
LILIAN WHITING.
ROME, ITALY, May Days, 1907.
"_Nor Life is ever lord of Death,
And Love can never lose its own._"
PREFATORY NOTE
That Florence, the "Flower City," receives only a passing allusion in
this record of various impressions that gleam and glow through the days
after several visits to the Magic Land, is due to the fact that in a
previous volume by the writer--one entitled "The Florence of
Landor"--the lovely Tuscan town with its art, its ineffable beauty, and
its choice social life, formed the subject matter of that volume. Any
attempt to portray Florence in the present book would savor only of the
repetition of loves and enthusiasms already recorded in the previous
work in which Walter Savage Landor formed the central figure. For that
reason no mention of Florence, beyond some mere allusion, is attempted
in these pages, which only aim to present certain fragmentary
impressions of various sojourns in Italy, refracted through the prism of
memory. Whatever inconveniences or discomfort attend the traveller
swiftly fade, and leave to him only the precious heritage of resplendent
sunset skies, of poetic association, of artistic beauty. In spirit he is
again lingering through long afternoons in St. Peter's till the golden
light through the far windows of the tribune is merged into the dusk of
twilight in which the vast monumental groups gleam wraith-like. Again
he is ascending the magnificent _Scala Regia_, and lingering in the
Raphael Stanze, or in the wonderful sculpture galleries of the Vatican,
or sauntering in the sunshine on the Palatine. In memory he is again
spellbound by ancient and mediaeval art. In the line of modern sculpture
the work of Franklin Simmons in Rome is a feature of Italy that haunts
the imagination. No lover of beauty would willingly miss his great
studios in the Via San Nicolo da Tolentino, with their wealth of ideal
creations that contribute new interest to the most divine of all the
arts.
"The world of art is an ideal world,--
The world I love, and that I fain would live in;
So speak to me of artists and of art,
Of all the painters, sculptors, and musicians
That now illustrate Rome."
The mystic charm of the pilgrimage to Assisi; the romance that reflects
itself in the violet seas and flaming splendors of the sky on the shores
of Ischia and Capri; the buried treasures of Amalfi; the magnetic
impressiveness of the Eternal City,--all these enter into life as new
forces to build and shape the future into undreamed-of destinies.
L. W.
THE BRUNSWICK, BOSTON,
October Days, 1907.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I THE PERIOD OF MODERN ART IN ROME 3
II SOCIAL LIFE IN THE ETERNAL CITY 127
III DAY-DREAMS IN NAPLES, AMALFI, AND CAPRI 227
IV A PAGE DE CONTI FROM ISCHIA 281
V VOICES OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI 341
VI THE GLORY OF A VENETIAN JUNE 389
VII THE MAGIC LAND 423
INDEX 459
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Temple, Taormina _Frontispiece in Photogravure_
Angel, Church of San Andrea delle Fratte, Rome _Page_ 12
Detail from the Stuart Monument, St. Peter's, Rome " 24
Tomb of Clement XIII, St. Peter's, Rome " 32
"The Genius of Death," Detail from the Tomb
of Clement XIII, St. Peter's, Rome " 43
"La Fortuna," Accademia di San Luca, Rome " 47
Spanish Steps, Piazza Trinita dei Monti, Rome " 72
Tomb of Pio Nono, San Lorenzo (Fuori le Mura) Rome " 75
"The Dance of the Pleiades" " 92
"Grief and History," Detail from Naval Monument,
Washington " 105
"The Genius of Progress Leading the Nations" " 108
"Mother of Moses" " 112
"Valley Forge" " 116
La Pieta, St. Peter's, Rome " 120
Villa Medici, Rome " 134
Entrance to Villa Pamphilia-Doria, Rome " 159
Statue of Christ, Ancient Church of San Martina, Rome " 193
Castel San Angelo and St. Peter's, Rome " 204
Porta San Paola, Pyramid of Caius Cestius, Rome " 216
Castel Sant'Elmo, Naples " 231
Ancient Temple, Baiae " 241
Ischia, from the Sea " 282
La Rocca, Ischia " 294
Castello di Alfonso, Ischia " 306
Detail from "Parnassus," Raphael Stanze, Palazzo
Vaticano, Rome " 311
Vittoria Colonna, Galleria Buonarroti, Florence " 320
San Francescan Convent-Church, Assisi " 346
St. Francis d'Assisi, The Duomo, Assisi " 366
Santa Chiara, The Duomo, Assisi " 375
Baiae and Ischia, from Camaldoli " 382
Ruins of the Greek Theatre, Taormina, Sicily " 429
Ponte Vecchio, Florence " 434
Campo Santo, Genoa " 453
"_Rest we content if whispers from the stars
In wafting of the incalculable wind
Come blown at midnight through our prison-bars._"
THE MAGIC LAND
_By woodland belt, by ocean bar,
The full south breeze our forehead fanned;
And, under many a yellow star,
We dropped into the Magic Land._
* * * * *
_We heard, far-off, the siren's song;
We caught the gleam of sea-maids' hair;
The glimmering isles and rocks among
We moved through sparkling purple air._
_Then Morning rose, and smote from far
Her elfin harps o'er land and sea;
And woodland belt, and ocean bar
To one sweet note sighed--"Italy!"_
OWEN MEREDITH.
ITALY, THE MAGIC LAND
I
THE PERIOD OF MODERN ART IN ROME
But ah, that spring should vanish with the Rose!
That youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close?
The nightingale that in the branches sang,
Oh, where and whither flown again,--who knows?
OMAR KHAYYAM.
ROME, as the picturesque city of the Popes in the middle years of the
nineteenth century, was resplendent in local color. It was the Rome of
sunny winters; the Rome of gay excursions over that haunted sea of the
Campagna to pictorial points in the Alban and Sabine hills; the Rome of
young artist life, which organized impromptu festas with Arcadian
freedom, and utilized the shadow or the shelter of ruined temples or
tombs in which to spread its picnic lunches and bring the glow of
simple, friendly intercourse into the romantic lights of the poetic,
historic, or tragic past. There were splendid Catholic processions and
ceremonials that seemed organized as a part of the stage scenery that
ensconced itself, also, with the nonchalance of easy possession, in the
vast salons of historic palaces where tapestried walls and richly
painted ceilings, arched high overhead, with statues dimly seen in
niches here and there, and the bust of some crowned Antoninus, or
radiant Juno, gleaming from a shadowy corner, all made up the
_mise-en-scene_ of familiar evenings. There were lingering hours in the
gardens of the Villa Medici into whose shades one strolled by that
beguiling path along the parapet on Monte Pincio, through the beautiful
grove with its walks and fountains. The old ilex bosquet, with its
tangled growth and air of complete seclusion, had its spell of
fascination. Then, as now, the elevated temple, at the end of the main
path, seemed the haunt of gods and muses. In all the incidental, as well
as the ceremonial social meeting and mingling, art and religion were the
general themes of discussion. This idyllic life--
"Comprehending, too, the soul's
And all the high necessities of art"--
has left its impress on the air as well as its record on many a page of
the poet and the romancist. The names that made memorable those
wonderful days touch chords of association that still vibrate in the
life of the hour. For the most part the artists and their associates
have gone their way--not into a Silent Land, a land of shadows and
vague, wandering ghosts--but into that realm wherein is the "life more
abundant," of more intense energy and of nobler achievement; the realm
in which every aspiration of earth enlarges its conception and every
inspiration is exalted and endowed with new purpose; the realm where, as
Browning says,--
"Power comes in full play."
The poet's vision recognizes the truth:--
"I know there shall dawn a day,
--Is it here on homely earth?
Is it yonder, worlds away,
Where the strange and new have birth,
That Power comes in full play?"
The names of sculptor, painter, and poet throng back, imaged in that
retrospective mirror which reflects a vista of the past, rich in ideal
creation. Beautiful forms emerge from the marble; pictorial scenes glow
from the canvas; song and story and happy, historic days are in the
very air. To Italy, land of romance and song, all the artists came
trooping, and
"Under many a yellow Star"
they dropped into the Magic Land. If the wraiths of the centuries long
since dead walked the streets, they were quite welcome to revisit the
glimpses of the moon and contribute their mystery to the general
artistic effectiveness of the Seven-hilled City. All this group of
American idealists, from Allston and Page to Crawford, Story, Randolph
Rogers, Vedder, Simmons, and to the latest comer of all, Charles Walter
Stetson, recognized something of the artist's native air in this Mecca
of their pilgrimage.
It was, indeed, quite natural, on account of the stupendous work of
Michael Angelo and the unrivalled museums of the Vatican, that Rome
should have become pre-eminently the artistic centre of the nineteenth
century and should have attracted students and lovers of art from all
parts of the world. The immortal works of the two great periods, the
Greek and the Renaissance,--the art that was forever great because it
was the outgrowth of profound religious conviction,--were enshrined in
the churches and the galleries of Rome. The leading countries of Europe
sent here their aspiring students and established permanent academies
for their residence. Germany, France, and England were thus represented.
Thorwaldsen came as a pensioner from the Academy of Fine Arts in
Copenhagen; and it was during his life, and that of the noble Canova,
that Rome began to be recognized as the modern world-centre of art. Was
it not a natural sequence that the early painters and sculptors who came
to study under the stimulating influences of the great masterpieces of
the past should linger on in the city whose very air became to them the
breath of inspiring suggestion? Where but in Rome would have come to
Crawford the vision of his "Orpheus" and of his noble Beethoven? or to
Story his "Libyan Sibyl," and that exquisite group, "Into the Silent
Land"? or to Vedder his marvellous creations of "The Fates Gathering in
the Stars," the "Cumaean Sibyl," or the "Dance of the Pleiades"? to
Simmons his triumphant "Angel of the Resurrection," and "The Genius of
Progress Leading the Nations"? or to Stetson that ineffable vision of
"The Child," and that wonderful group called "Music"? whose coloring
Titian or Giorgione might well mistake for their own.
Under the Pontifical _regime_ the general character of Rome was mediaeval
and religious. The perpetual festas of the church made the streets
constantly picturesque with their processions of monks, and friars, and
priests, and these wonderful blendings of color and scenic effect
stimulated the artistic sense. The expenses of living in Rome were then
only a fraction of what the cost is at the present time; and as the city
was the resort of the wealthy and cultured few, the artists were
surrounded by the stimulus of critical appreciation and of patronage.
Their work, their dreams, were the theme of literary discussion, and
focussed the attention of the polite world. Their studios were among the
important interests to every visitor in the Eternal City. In those days
the traveller did not land with his touring car at Naples, make "the
run" to Rome in a record that distanced any possibilities of railroad
trains, pass two or three days in motoring about the city and its
environs, seeing the exterior of everything in a dissolving view and the
interior of nothing,--as within this time, at least, he must flash on
in his touring car to Florence. On the contrary, the traveller proceeded
to Rome with serious deliberation, and with a more realizing sense of
undertaking a journey than Walter Wellman experiences in attempting to
fly in his aero-car to the North Pole and send his observations across
the polar seas by wireless telegraphy. The visitor went to Rome for a
winter, for a year, and gave himself up to leisurely impressions. Rome
was an atmosphere, not a spectacle, and it was to be entered with the
lofty and reverent appreciation of the poet's power and the artist's
vision.
In Rome, Thomas Cole painted some of his best pictures; and in Rome or
Florence wrought a long list of painters and sculptors. Whether in the
Eternal City or in the Flower City, their environment was alike
Italy--the environment of the Magic Land. Among the more prominent of
all these devotees of Beauty several nationalities were represented.
Each might have said of his purpose, in the words of William Watson:--
"I follow Beauty; of her train am I,
Beauty, whose voice is earth and sea and air;
Who serveth, and her hands for all things ply;
Who reigneth, and her throne is everywhere."
Among these artists there flash upon memory the names of Vanderlyn,
Benjamin West, Allston, Rauch, Ange, Veit, Tenerani, Overbeck, Schadow,
Horace Vernet, Thorwaldsen, John Gibson, Hiram Powers, Crawford, Page,
Clark Mills, Randolph Rogers, William Rinehart, Launt Thompson, Horatio
and Richard Greenough, Thomas Ball, Anne Whitney, Larkin G. Mead, Paul
Akers, William Wetmore Story, Harriet Hosmer, J. Rollin Tilton, and,
later, Elihu Vedder, Moses Ezekiel, Franklin Simmons, Augustus St.
Gaudens, and Charles Walter Stetson, the name of Mr. Stetson linking the
long and interesting procession with the immediate life of to-day. Of
these later artists Story, Miss Hosmer, Ezekiel, Vedder, Simmons, and
Stetson are identified with Rome as being either their permanent or
their prolonged residence. Mr. St. Gaudens was a transient student,
returning to his own country to pursue his work; and of two young
sculptors, Hendrick Christian Anderson and C. Percival Dietsch, time has
not yet developed their powers beyond an experimental stage of brilliant
promise.
[Illustration: ANGEL, CHURCH OF SAN ANDREA DELLE FRATTE, ROME
Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini
_Page 32_]
The Rome of the artists of clay and canvas was also the Rome of the
poets and romancists, of authors in all lines of literary achievement.
How the names of the procession of visitors and sojourners in the
Eternal City, from Milton, Goethe, and Mme. de Stael to Henry James,
Marion Crawford, Richard Bagot, and Grace Ellery Channing (Mrs. Charles
Walter Stetson), gleam from that resplendent panorama of the modern past
of Rome! Like the words in electric fire that flash out of the darkness
in city streets at night, there shine the names of Shelley and of Keats;
of Gladstone, on whom in one memorable summer day, while strolling in
Italian sunshine, there fell a vision of the sacredness and the
significance of life and its infinite responsibility in the fulfilment
of lofty purposes. What charming associations these guests and
sojourners have left behind! Hawthorne, embodying in immortal romance
the spirit of the scenic greatness of the Eternal City; Margaret Fuller,
Marchesa d'Ossoli, allying herself in marriage with the country she
loved, and living in Rome those troubled, mysterious years that were to
close the earthly chapter of her life; Robert and Elizabeth Browning,
the wedded poets, who sang of love and Italy; Harriet Beecher Stowe,
finding on the enchanted Italian shores the material which she wove
with such irresistible attraction into the romance of "Agnes of
Sorrento;" Longfellow, with his poet's vision, transmuting every vista
and impression into some exquisite lyric; Lowell, bringing his
philosophic as well as his poetic insight to penetrate the untold
meaning of Rome; Thomas William Parsons, making the country of Dante
fairly his own; Thackeray, with his brilliant interpretation of the
_comedie humaine_; Emerson, who, oblivious of all the glories of art or
the joys of nature, absorbed himself in writing transcendental letters
to his eccentric, but high-souled aunt, Mary Moody Emerson; Ruskin,
translating Italian art to Italy herself; Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe and
his poet wife, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, in the first flush of their bridal
happiness, when Mrs. Howe's impassioned love for the Seven-hilled City
inspired many a lyric that mirrors the Roman atmosphere of that day;
Kate Field, with a young girl's glad enthusiasm over the marvellous
loveliness of a Maytime in Rome, and her devotion to those great
histrionic artists, Ristori and Salvini; George Stillman Hillard,
leaving to literature the rich legacy of his "Six Months in
Italy,"--a work that to this day holds precedence as a clear and
comprehensive presentation of the scenic beauty, the notable monumental
and architectural art, and the general life and resources of this land
of painter and poet. Other names, too, throng upon memory--that of
William Dean Howells, painting Italian life in his "Venetian Days," and
charming all the literary world by his choice art; and among later work,
the interesting interpretations of Rome and of social life in Rome, by
Marion Crawford, Henry James, and Richard Bagot,--in chronicle, in
romance, or in biographical record. During the last quarter of the
nineteenth century, indeed, the visitors to Rome--authors, artists,
travellers of easy leisure--defy any numerical record. Mrs. Louise
Chandler Moulton, poet, romancist, and delightful _raconteur_ as well,
has recorded some charming impressions of her various sojourns in Rome
both in her "Random Rambles" and in "Lazy Tours." Of the Palatine Hill
we find her saying:--
"Sometimes we go to the Palace of the Caesars, and look off upon the
heights where the snow lingers and the warm light rests, making
them shine like the Delectable Mountains. Nearer at hand are the
almond trees, in flower, or the orange trees, bright at once with
their white, sweet blossoms and their golden fruit."
Mrs. Moulton writes of the "stately dwellers" in Rome whom time cannot
change; and to whom, whenever she returns, she makes her first visit;
some of whom are in the mighty palace of the Vatican and some of whom
dwell in state in the Capitol.
"The beautiful Antoninus still wears his crown of lotus in Villa
Albani and the Juno whom Goethe worshipped reigns forever at the
Ludovisi," she writes; "I can never put in words the pleasure I
find in these immortals." Mrs. Moulton loved to wander in the Villa
Borghese "before the place is thronged with the beauty and fashion
of Rome as it is in the late afternoon. I do not wonder that Miriam
and Donatello could forget their fate in these enchanted glades,"
she wrote, "and dance as the sunbeams danced with the shadows.
Sometimes I seem to see them where the sun sifts through the young
green leaves, and her beauty--her human, deep-souled beauty--and
his fantastic grace are the only things here that cannot change.
"The walls will crumble; the busts of kings and heroes and poets
will lose their contours, the lovely Roman ladies also grow old and
fade, and vanish from sight and from memory; but still these two,
hopeless yet happy, will dance in these wild glades immortally
beyond the reach of the effacing years."
The visit to Rome of the Rev. Dr. Phillips Brooks--later the Bishop of
Massachusetts--is immortalized in the most lifelike portrait bust of the
great preacher ever modelled; a bust in which the genius of the
sculptor, Franklin Simmons, found one of its noblest expressions, and
has perpetuated, with masterly power, the energy of thought, at once
profound and intense, in the countenance of Bishop Brooks. These, and
many another whom the gods have loved and dowered with gifts, rise
before any retrospective glance over the comparatively recent past of
Rome. Bishop Brooks passed there the Holy Week of one Lenten season,
and of the Miserere in the Sistine Chapel he wrote that it was certainly
the most wonderful music to which he had ever listened; and he added:--
"The Miserere in the Sistine, the Benediction from the balcony, the
solemn moment of the elevation of the Host on Easter, and the
illumination of St. Peter's, these all seem to reach very
remarkably the great ideal of the central religious commemoration
of Christendom."
It was in the winter of 1828 that Mr. Longfellow first visited Rome,
which "is announced," he wrote, "by Nero's tomb," and he quotes Dupaty's
lines:--
"Quoi! c'est la Rome? quoi!
C'est le tombeau de Neron qui l'annonce."
Mr. Longfellow expressed his love for the Eternal City, and in a
personal letter[1] he said:--
"I have been so delighted with Rome that I have extended my
residence much beyond my original intention. There is so much in
the city to delay the stranger; the villages in the environs are so
beautiful, and there is such a quiet and stillness about everything
that, were it in my power, I should be induced to remain the whole
year round. You can imagine nothing equal to the ruins of Rome. The
Forum and the Coliseum are beyond all I had ever fancied them; and
the ruined temples and the mouldering aqueducts which are scattered
over the Campagna; I do not believe there is a finer view in the
world than that from the eastern gate of the city, embracing the
Campagna, with its ruined aqueducts diverging in long broken
arcades, and terminated by the sweep of the Albanian hills,
sprinkled with their white villages, and celebrated in song and
story! But the great charm of the scene springs from association;
and though everything in Italy is really picturesque, yet strip the
country of its historic recollections,--think merely of what it is,
and not of what it has been,--and you will find the dream to be
fading away.
"You would be shocked at the misery of the people, especially in
the Pope's dominions: but their element seems to be in rags and
misery; and with the ceremonials of their religion and the holidays
of the church, which average nearly three a week, they are
poor--and lazy and happy. I mean, happy in their way."
In a later visit the poet was domiciled in an hotel on the Piazza
Barberini, where the wonderful view included then the entire city "to
where St. Peter's dome darkens against the sunset." Of this visit his
brother, Rev. Samuel Longfellow, writes:--
"Here Mr. Longfellow became for the season the centre of the group
of American visitors and resident artists, whose well-known names
need not be recounted. Here he made, also, acquaintances among the
Italians,--especially the Duke of Sermoneta, the Dantean scholar,
and Monsignore Nardi, of the papal court. The Pope himself he did
not visit. An interesting acquaintance was that made with the Abbe
Liszt, who was spending the winter in Rome, having rooms in the
abandoned Convent of Santa Francesca, in the Forum. Calling there
one evening, in company with Mr. Healy the artist, the inner door
of the apartment was opened to them by Liszt himself, holding high
in his hand a candle which illuminated his fine face. The picture
was so striking that Mr. Longfellow begged his companion to put it
upon canvas,--which he did; and the painting now hangs in the
library of Craigie House. At a morning visit, Liszt delighted the
party with a performance upon his Chickering pianoforte.
"To see Rome, as all travellers know, is a work for many months;
and it was pursued with tolerable diligence. But Mr. Longfellow was
never a good sight-seer. He was impatient of lingering in picture
galleries, churches, or ruins. He saw quickly the essential points,
and soon tired of any minuter examination."
But long, indeed, before nineteenth-century artists and authors laid
siege to the Eternal City, in the far-away years of 1638, Milton visited
Rome, and there still remains the tablet, on the wall of the _casa_ in
the Via delle Quattro Fontane in which he stayed, a tablet bearing an
inscription giving the date of his visit; as, also, in Via Machella,
there is an inscription marking the place where Scott lived during his
visit to Rome. Goethe made his memorable tour to Italy in 1786--fourteen
years before the dawn of the nineteenth century--and wrote: "I feel the
greatest longing to read Tacitus in Rome;" and again (an observation
with which every visitor to the Eternal City will sympathize) he
noted:--
"It grows more and more difficult for me to render an account of my
residence in Rome, for as we always find the sea deeper the further
we go, so it is with me in observation of this city.... Wherever we
go and wherever we stand, we see about us a finished
picture,--forms of every kind and style; palaces and ruins; gardens
and wastes; the distant and the near houses; triumphal arches and
columns,--often all so close together that they might be sketched
on a single sheet. One should have a thousand points of steel with
which to write, and what can a single pen do? and then in the
evening one is weary and exhausted with the day of seeing and
admiring. Here one reads history from within outward."
Chateaubriand, who in his earliest youth had visited America as the
guest of Washington, passed the winter of 1803-4 in Rome, and his
pictorial transcriptions of the city and its environs are among the most
exquisite things in literary record. As, for instance, this description
of a sunset from Monte Mario:--
"I was never weary of seeing, from the Villa Borghese, the sun go
down behind the cypresses of Monte Mario, and the pines of the
Villa Pamphili planted by Le Notre. I have stood upon the Ponte
Molle to enjoy the sublime spectacle of the close of day. The
summits of the Sabine hills appeared of lapis lazuli and pale gold,
while their bases and sides were bathed in vapors of violet or
purple. Sometimes lovely clouds, like fairy cars, borne along by
the evening wind with inimitable grace, recall the mythological
tales of the descent of the deities of Olympus. Sometimes old Rome
seems to have spread all over the west the purple of her consuls
and her Caesars, beneath the last steps of the god of day. This rich
decoration does not vanish so quickly as in our climate. When we
think the hues are about to disappear they revive on some other
point of the horizon; one twilight follows another and the magic of
sunset is prolonged."
It was in the same year that Mme. de Stael visited Rome and recorded, in
her glowing romance, "Corinne," the impressions she received. In the
spring of 1817 Lord Byron found in Rome the inspiration that he
transmitted into that wonderful line in "Childe Harold":--
"The Niobe of Nations! There she stands."
It was two years later that Shelley passed the spring in the
Seven-hilled City, retiring to Leghorn later, to write his tragedy of
"The Cenci."
In Rome the visitor follows Michael Angelo and Raphael through the
various churches and museums. The celebrated sibyls of Raphael are in
the Santa Maria della Pace; his "Isaiah" is in San Agostino and his
"Entombment" in the Casino of the Villa Borghese. While the sublime work
of Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel is always one of the first
things in Rome to which the traveller goes to study that incomparable
work portraying the Creation--the Prophets and the Sibyls, the Angels
and the Genii, that record the impassioned power of the master--yet all
footsteps turn quickly, too, to the church called San Pietro in Vincoli,
near the house in which Lucrezia Borgia lived, in which is the colossal
Moses of Michael Angelo. As it stands, it fails to convey the first
design of the great sculptor. Originally intended for the tomb of Pope
Julius II, the plan included a massive block of marble (some forty by
twenty feet) surmounted by a cornice and having its niches, its columns,
and its statues, of which the Moses was to have been one. It would then
have been judged relatively to the entire group, while now it is seen
alone, and thus out of the proportions that were in the mind of the
artist. The entire conception, indeed, was to unite sculpture and
architecture into one splendid combination. "Thus the statue of Moses
was meant to have been raised considerably above the eye of the
spectator," writes Mr. Hillard, "and to have been a single object in a
colossal structure of architecture and sculpture, which would have had a
foreground and a background, and been crowned with a mass at once
dome-like and pyramidal. Torn, as it is, from its proper place; divorced
from its proportionate companionship; stuck against the wall of a
church; and brought face to face with the observer,--what wonder that so
many of those who see it turn away with no other impressions than those
of caricature and exaggeration!"
Mr. Hillard adds:--
"But who that can appreciate the sublime in art will fail to bow
down before it as embodied in this wonderful statue? The majestic
character of the head, the prodigious muscles of the chest and
arms, and the beard that flows like a torrent to the waist,
represent a being of more than mortal port and power, speaking with
the authority, and frowning with the sanctions of incarnate law.
The drapery of the lower part of the figure is inferior to the
anatomy of the upper part. Remarkable as the execution of the
statue is, the expression is yet more so; for notwithstanding its
colossal proportions, its prominent characteristic is the
embodiment of intellectual power. It is the great leader and
lawgiver of his people that we see, whose voice was command, and
whose outstretched arm sustained a nation's infant steps. He looks
as if he might control the energies of nature as well as shape the
mould in which the character of his people should be formed. That
any one should stand before this statue in a scoffing mood is to me
perfectly inexplicable. My own emotions were more nearly akin to
absolute bodily fear. At an irreverent word, I should have expected
the brow to contract into a darker frown, and the marble lips to
unclose in rebuke."
[Illustration: DETAIL FROM STUART MONUMENT, ST. PETER'S, ROME
Antonio Canova
_Page 33_]
William Watson condenses his impressions of this majestic sculpture in
the following quatrain.--
"The captain's might, and mystery of the seer--
Remoteness of Jehovah's colloquist,
Nearness of man's heaven-advocate--are here:
Alone Mount Nebo's harsh foreshadow is miss'd."
The impressive group of sculptures and buildings on the
Campidoglio--where once the shrine of Jupiter Capitolinus stood--owes
its present picturesque scheme largely to Michael Angelo. The
fascination of the long flights of steps leading from the Piazza
Aracoeeli to the Capitoline, where the ancient bronze equestrian statue
of Marcus Aurelius forever keeps guard, is indescribable. The historic
statues of Castor and Pollux mark the portals; on either hand there are
seen the Muses of ancient sculpture, the Palazzo Senatoriale and the
Palazzo dei Conservatori. There is in the entire world no more classic
ground than is found in this impressive grouping of art and
architecture.
The genius of Raphael has recorded itself in those brilliant and
imperishable works that enthrall the student of art in the Raphael
stanze in the Vatican. He was imbued with the spirit of Greek art, and
while Titian is a greater colorist, while Correggio, Botticelli,
Perugino, and other artists that could be named equal or exceed Raphael
in certain lines, yet as the interpreter of the profoundest thought, and
for his philosophic grasp and his power to endow his conceptions with
the most brilliant animation, he stands alone. The religious exaltation
of "The Transfiguration" reveals the supreme degree of the divine genius
of Raphael. That this painting was the last work of his life, that it
was placed above his body as it lay in state, and was carried in his
funeral procession, invests it with peculiar interest.
As a draftsman Raphael was second only to Michael Angelo, with whom he
must forever share the immortality of fame. The Academy in Venice holds
some of his choicest drawings, and in the Venetian sketch-book in the
National Gallery in London are many of his small pictures, including
that of the "Knight's Dream."
It was in the autumn of 1508, when Raphael was in his twenty-fifth year,
that he was called to Rome in the service of the Pope. The Pontiff at
this time was Pope Julius II, whose successor was Leo X, and under their
pontificates (from 1508 to 1520) Raphael produced these masterpieces
which stand unrivalled in the world save by the creations of Michael
Angelo in the Capella Sistina. The celebrated "Four Sibyls" of Raphael
are not, however, in the stanze of the Vatican, but in the Church of San
Maria della Pace. In the Palazzo Vaticano these four wonderful stanze
entrance the visitor; the Stanza della Signatura, the Stanza d'Eliodoro,
the Stanza dell'Incendio and the Sala di Constantino.
For the decoration of these stanze several painters from Umbria had been
summoned,--Perugino, Sodoma, Signorelli, and others; but when Raphael
had produced the "Disputa" in the Sala della Signatura, Pope Julius II
recognized the work as so transcendent that he ordered the other artists
to cease and even had some of their paintings obliterated that there
might be more space for the exercise of Raphael's genius. In the
"Disputa" are glorified the highest expressions of the human
intellect--the domain portrayed being that of Theology, Philosophy,
Poetry, and Justice. The splendor of this creation transcends all
attempts of interpretation in language. Against a background of gold
mosaic are portrayed these typical figures enthroned on clouds where
genii flit to and fro bearing tablets with inscriptions. Theology holds
in the left hand a book, while the other points to the vision of angels;
Poetry, laurel-crowned, is seen seated on a throne with books and lyre;
Philosophy wears a diadem, and Justice, with her balance and her sword,
is also crowned. The title of this marvellous work is misleading. Its
message is not that of disputation but of beatitude. At the altar are
grouped the congregation; the mystic spell of heavenly enthusiasm
enfolds the scene as an atmosphere, as above the heavens open and the
glorified Christ, surrounded by the saints who have kept the faith, is
disclosed to the devotees kneeling below, while a choir of listening
angels bend over them from the distant clouds in the background.
Under Poetry are grouped Apollo and the Muses, and the figures of Homer,
Dante and Virgil, of Petrarcha, Anacreon and Sappho, of Pindar and of
Horace are recognized. The great scholars seen in the Philosophy include
Plato and Aristotle, while in the groups under Justice, Moses and Solon
are seen.
"Raphael seems to have never known despair," remarked Franklin Simmons
of the work of this divine genius. "His paintings reveal no struggle,
but seem to have been produced without effort, as if brought into
existence by an enchanter's wand."
No observation could more vividly interpret the wonderful effect
produced on the student by Raphael, and he cannot but recall the truth
expressed in these lines of Festus:--
"All aspiration is a toil;
But inspiration cometh from above
And is no labor."
The inspiration of Raphael was of the noblest order. His genius, his
kindling enthusiasm, his ecstasy of religious devotion, have left an
imperishable heritage to art. By his transcendent gifts he represents
the highest manifestation of the art of painting in the Renaissance. For
the true note in art lies in spiritual perception. Not so brilliant a
colorist as Titian, he was more the interpreter of the extension of
human activity into that realm of the life more abundant, and with his
extraordinary facility of execution he united exquisite refinement and
unerring sense of beauty and the masterly power in composition that
fairly created for the spectator the visions that his soul beheld. "I
say to you," said Mr. Bryce recently in a press interview,--"I say to
you, each oncoming tide of life requires and needs men of lofty thought
who shall dream for it, sing for it, who shall gather up its tendencies,
formulate its ideals and voice its spirit." One of those men of lofty
thought who thus dream for the ages was Raphael, and his power and glory
have left an ineffaceable impress upon human life. He was the divinely
appointed messenger of beauty, and he was never disobedient to the
heavenly vision.
"Time hath no tide but must abide
The servant of Thy will;
Tide hath no time, for to Thy rhyme
The ranging stars stand still."
The decline of art after Michael Angelo and Raphael was marked. The very
splendor and power of their creations, instead of inspiring those who
immediately followed them, produced almost the inertia of despair. In
the reverence and awe and admiration with which these transcendent
masterpieces were approached any power to originate seemed futile by
contrast. Imitation rather than creation became the method adopted,
resulting in an increased poverty of design and feeble execution. The
art of the sixteenth century deteriorated rapidly till the baroco style
was in evidence. One reason, too, for the decline was in that art was no
longer so exclusively dedicated to the high service of religion, but
aimed, instead, to please and to procure patrons, and thus were all
worthy standards lowered to pernicious levels.
A sculptor who left his impress upon the sixteenth-century art was
Lorenzo Bernini, a Neapolitan (born in 1598) who died in Rome in 1685.
The work of Bernini has a certain fascination and airy touch that, while
it sometimes degenerates into the merely fantastic and even into tawdry
and puerile affectations, has at its best a refinement and grace that
lend to his sculptures an enduring charm, as seen in his "Apollo and
Daphne" (a work executed in his eighteenth year) which is now in the
Casino of the Villa Borghese. Bernini's name is perpetuated in the
colossal statues on the colonnade of St. Peter's, the great bronze
angels with their draperies streaming to the winds on the Ponte San
Angelo, and in the vast fountain in the Piazza Navona. In the court of
the Palazzo Bernini is one of the most interesting of his works--a
colossal figure, allegorical in significance, illustrating "Truth
Brought to Light by Time." One of the most important works of
Bernini--now placed in the Museo Nazionale--is the group of "Pluto and
Proserpine."
[Illustration: TOMB OF CLEMENT XIII, ST. PETER'S, ROME
Antonio Canova
_Page 42_]
The influence that was to reform and regenerate the art of sculpture in
the sixteenth century came with the great and good Canova, with which
was united that of Flaxman and of Thorwaldsen. The heavenly messengers
are always sent and appear at the time they are most needed. Neither
Truth nor Art is ever left without a witness.
"God sends his teachers unto every age,
To every clime, and every race of men,
With revelations fitted to their growth
And shape of mind; nor gives the realm of truth
Into the selfish rule of one sole race."
Canova's genius and services were widely recognized. In 1719 he was made
a Senator; he was ennobled with the title of Marchese of Ischia and
granted a yearly allowance of three thousand scudi; and his noble and
generous enthusiasms, not less than his genius, have left their record
on life as well as on art. When he died (in Venice, Oct. 3, 1822) his
work included fifty-nine statues, fourteen groups, twenty-two monuments,
and fifty-four busts. The statue of Pius V and the tomb of Clement XIII
are his greatest works, and the latter is perhaps even increasingly
held as a masterpiece of the ages.
Canova, warned by the fatal influence of imitation in art in the
sixteenth century, frequently counselled his pupils against copying his
own style and constantly urged them to study from the Greeks. He advised
them to visit frequently the studios of other artists, "and especially,"
he would add, "the studios of Thorwaldsen, who is a very great artist."
In the early part of the nineteenth century contemporary sculpture in
Rome was led by the three great artists,--Canova, Thorwaldsen, and
Gibson. In 1829 Gibson had the honor of being elected a member of the
Accademia di San Luca in place of the sculptor Massimiliano, who had
then just died. Cammuccini, the historical painter, proposed Gibson, and
with the ardent assistance of Thorwaldsen he was elected resident
Academician of merit. "Like Canova, Thorwaldsen was most generous to
young artists," says Gibson of the great Danish master, "and he freely
visited all who required his advice. I profited greatly by the knowledge
which this splendid sculptor had of his art. On every occasion when I
was modelling a new work he came to me, and corrected whatever he
thought amiss. I also often went to his studio and contemplated his
glorious works, always in the noblest style, full of pure and severe
simplicity. His studio was a safe school for the young, and was the
resort of artists and lovers of art from all nations. The old man's
person can never be forgotten by those who saw him. Tall and strong,--he
never lost a tooth in his life,--he was most venerable looking. His kind
countenance was marked with hard thinking, his eyes were gray, and his
white locks lay upon his broad shoulders. At great assemblies his breast
was covered with orders."
Thorwaldsen (born in Copenhagen, Nov. 19, 1770) went to Rome in
1797--sent by the government of Denmark as a pensioner. It is said that,
in his enthusiasm for Rome, Thorwaldsen dated his birth from the hour he
entered the Eternal City. "Before that day," he exclaimed, "I existed; I
did not live." For nearly fifty years--until his death in 1844--he lived
and worked in Rome, occupying at one time the studio in Via Babuino that
had formerly been that of Flaxman.
John Gibson, who went to Rome in 1817,--twenty years after Thorwaldsen
first arrived,--had the good fortune to be for five years a pupil of
Canova, whose death in 1822 terminated this inestimable privilege. The
elevation of purpose that characterized the young English student made
his progress and development a matter of peculiar interest to the
master. Gibson, also, bears his testimony to the stimulus of the Roman
environment. "Rome above all other cities," he says, "has a peculiar
influence upon and charm for the real student; he feels himself in the
very university of art, where it is the one thing talked about and
thought about. Constantly did I feel the presence of this influence.
Every morning I rose with the sun, my soul gladdened by a new day of a
happy and delightful pursuit; and as I walked to my breakfast at the
Caffe Greco and watched with new pleasure the tops of the churches and
palaces gilt by the morning sun, I was inspired with a sense of daily
renovated youth, and fresh enthusiasm, and returned joyfully to the
combat, to the invigorating strife with the difficulties of art. Nor did
the worm of envy creep round my heart whenever I saw a beautiful idea
skilfully executed by any of my young rivals, but constantly spurred on
by the talent around me I returned to my studio with fresh resolution."
Again to a friend Gibson writes:--
"I renewed my visits to the Vatican, refreshing my spirits in that
Pantheon of the gods, demigods, and heroes of Hellas.... In the art
of sculpture the Greeks were gods.... In the Vatican we go from
statue to statue, from fragment to fragment, like the bee from
flower to flower."
These five years in which Canova, Thorwaldsen, and Gibson lived and
wrought together--although the youngest of this trio was still in his
student life--form a definite period in the history of modern art in
Rome. The dreams, the enthusiasm, the devotion to ideal beauty which
characterized their work left its impress and its vitality of
influence--a mystic power ready to incarnate itself again through the
facility of expression of the artists yet to come. To the young men
whose steps were turned toward Rome in these early years of the century
just passed, how great was the privilege of coming into close range of
the influence of such artists as these; to study their methods; to hear
the expression of their views on art in familiar meeting and
conversation! These artists were closely in touch with that "lovely and
faithful dream which came with Italian Renaissance in the works of
Pisani, Mino di Fiesole, Donatello, Michael Angelo, and Giovanni da
Bologna--all who caught the spirit of Greek art." Artistic truth was the
keynote of the hour, and it is this truth which is the basis of the
highest conception of life.
"Art's a service,--mark:
A silver key is given to thy clasp
And thou shalt stand unwearied night and day,
And fix it in the hard, slow-turning wards
To open, so that intermediate door
Betwixt the different planes of sensuous form
And form insensuous, that inferior men
May learn to feel on still through these to those,
And bless thy ministration. The world waits for help."
In their true relation art and ethics meet in their ministry to
humanity, for only in their union can they best serve man. All the
nobler culture has its responsibility in service. "Many a man has a
blind notion of stewardship about his property, but very few have it
about their knowledge," said Bishop Phillips Brooks, and he added: "One
grows tired of seeing cultivated people with all their culture cursed by
selfishness." To the true idealist--as distinct from the mere
emotionalist with aesthetic tastes--selfishness is an impossible prison.
The only spiritual freedom lies in the perpetual sharing of the fuller
life. The gift shared is the gift doubled. Art is the spiritual glory of
life; the supreme manifestation, the very influence of spiritual
achievement. Mr. Stillman, discussing the revival of art, has
questioned: "Does the world want art any longer? Has it, in the present
state of human progress, any place which will justify devotion to it?"
He questions as to whether man is still
"Apparelled in celestial light,"
or whether he has lost "the glory and the freshness" of his dreams.
"No one can admit," continues Mr. Stillman, "that the human
intellect is weaker than it was five or twenty centuries ago; but
it is certain that if we take the pains to study what was done five
centuries ago in painting, or twenty centuries ago in sculpture,
and compare it with the best work of to-day, we shall find the
latter trivial and 'prentice work compared with the ordinary work
of men whose names are lost in the lustre of a school.
"Then, little men inspired by the Zeitgeist, painted greatly; now,
our great men fail to reach the technical achievement of the little
men of them. There is only one living painter who can treat a
portrait as a Venetian artist of 1550 A.D. would have done it, and
how differently in the mastery of his material! If we go to the
work of wider range, the Campo Santo of Pisa, the Stanze, the
Sistine Chapel, the distance becomes an abyss; the simplest
fragment of a Greek statue of 450 B.C. shows us that the best
sculpture of this century, even the French, is only a happy
child-work, not even to be put in sight of Donatello or Michael
Angelo. The reason is simple, and already indicated. The early men
grew up in a system in which the power of expression was taught
from childhood; they acquired method as the musician does now, and
the tendency of the opinion of their time was to keep them in the
good method."