in the Colonna gardens behind the convent, under the shadow of the
laurel trees in the air fragrant with roses and orange blossoms, where
they sat with Rome spread out like a picture at their feet. That
beautiful terrace of the Colonna gardens, to which the visitor in Rome
to-day always makes his pilgrimage, with the ruined statues and the
broken marble flights of steps, is the scene of this meeting of Vittoria
Colonna, Michael Angelo, and Francesco d'Ollanda. On this second
occasion the sculptor asserted his belief that while all things are
worthy the artist's attention, the real test of his art is in the
representation of the human form. He extolled the art of design. He
emphasized the essential nature of nobleness in the artist, and added:--
"In order to represent in some degree the adored image of our Lord,
it is not enough that a master should be great and able. I maintain
that he must also be a man of good conduct and morals, if possible
a saint, in order that the Holy Ghost may rain down inspiration on
his understanding."
Of the relative degree of swiftness in work Michael Angelo said:--
"We must regard it as a special gift from God to be able to do that
in a few hours which other men can only perform in many days of
labor. But should this rapidity cause a man to fail in his best
realization it would be better to proceed slowly. No artist should
allow his eagerness to hinder him from the supreme end of
art--perfection."
Mr. Longfellow, in his unfinished dramatic poem, "Michael Angelo" (to
which reference has already been made), has one scene laid in the
convent chapel of San Silvestre, in which these passages occur:--
VITTORIA.
"Here let us rest awhile, until the crowd
Has left the church. I have already sent
For Michael Angelo to join us here."
MESSER CLAUDIO.
"After Fra Bernardino's wise discourse
On the Pauline Epistles, certainly
Some words of Michael Angelo on Art
Were not amiss, to bring us back to earth."
* * * * *
MICHAEL ANGELO, _at the door_.
"How like a Saint or Goddess she appears!
Diana or Madonna, which I know not,
In attitude and aspect formed to be
At once the artist's worship and despair!"
VITTORIA.
"Welcome, Maestro. We were waiting for you."
MICHAEL ANGELO.
"I met your messenger upon the way.
And hastened hither."
VITTORIA.
"It is kind of you
To come to us, who linger here like gossips
Wasting the afternoon in idle talk.
These are all friends of mine and friends of yours."
MICHAEL ANGELO.
"If friends of yours, then are they friends of mine.
Pardon me, gentlemen. But when I entered
I saw but the Marchesa."
Vittoria tells the master that the Pope has granted her permission to
build a convent, and Michael Angelo replies:--
"Ah, to build, to build!
That is the noblest art of all the arts.
Painting and sculpture are but images,
Are merely shadows cast by outward things
On stone or canvas, having in themselves
No separate existence. Architecture,
Existing in itself, and not in seeming
A something it is not, surpasses them
As substance shadow....
... Yet he beholds
Far nobler works who looks upon the ruins
Of temples in the Forum here in Rome.
If God should give me power in my old age
To build for Him a temple half as grand
As those were in their glory, I should count
My age more excellent than youth itself,
And all that I have hitherto accomplished
As only vanity."
To which Vittoria responds:--
"I understand you.
Art is the gift of God, and must be used
Unto His glory. That in art is highest
Which aims at this."
The poet, with his characteristically delicate divination, has entered
into the inner spirit of these two immortal friends.
Walter Pater, writing of Michael Angelo, truly says:--
"Michael Angelo is always pressing forward from the outward
beauty--_il bel del fuor che agli occhi piace_--to apprehend the
unseen beauty; _trascenda nella forma universale_--that abstract
form of beauty about which the Platonists reason. And this gives
the impression in him of something flitting and unfixed, of the
houseless and complaining spirit, almost clairvoyant through the
frail and yielding flesh."
Again we find Pater saying:--
"Though it is quite possible that Michael Angelo had seen Vittoria,
that somewhat shadowy figure, as early as 1537, yet their closer
intimacy did not begin till about the year 1542, when Michael
Angelo was nearly seventy years old. Vittoria herself, an ardent
Neo-Catholic, vowed to perpetual widowhood since the news had
reached her, seventeen years before, that her husband, the youthful
and princely Marquess of Pescara, lay dead of the wounds he had
received in the battle of Pavia, was then no longer an object of
great passion. In a dialogue written by the painter, Francesco
d'Ollanda, we catch a glimpse of them together in an empty church
at Rome, one Sunday afternoon, discussing indeed the
characteristics of various schools of art, but still more the
writings of St. Paul, already following the ways and tasting the
sunless pleasures of weary people, whose hold on outward things is
slackening. In a letter still extant he regrets that when he
visited her after death he had kissed her hands only. He made, or
set to work to make, a crucifix for her use, and two drawings,
perhaps in preparation for it, are now in Oxford.... In many ways
no sentiment could have been less like Dante's love for Beatrice
than Michael Angelo's for Vittoria Colonna. Dante's comes in early
youth; Beatrice is a child, with the wistful, ambiguous vision of a
child, with a character still unaccentuated by the influence of
outward circumstances, almost expressionless. Vittoria is a woman
already weary, in advanced age, of grave intellectual qualities.
Dante's story is a piece of figured work inlaid with lovely
incidents. In Michael Angelo's poems frost and fire are almost the
only images--the refining fire of the goldsmith; once or twice the
phoenix; ice melting at the fire; fire struck from the rock which
it afterwards consumes."
Visconti notes that among Italian poets, Vittoria Colonna was the first
to make religion a subject of poetic treatment, and the first to
introduce nature's ministry to man into poetry. Rota, her Italian
biographer, states that she died in February of 1547, in the Palazzo
Cesarini. This palace is in Genzano, on Lago di Nemi, and has been one
of the Colonna estates; but from Visconti and other authorities it is
evident that she died in Rome, either in the convent of Santa Anna or in
the palace of Cesarini, the husband of her kinswoman, Giulio Colonna,
which must have been near the convent in Trastevere, the old portion of
Rome across the Tiber. Visconti records that on the last evening of her
life when Michael Angelo was beside her, she said: "I die. Help me to
repeat my last prayer. I do not now remember the words." He clasped her
hand and repeated it to her, while her own lips moved, she gazed
intently on him, smiled and passed away. This translation has been made
of Vittoria Colonna's last prayer:--
"Grant, I beseech Thee, O Lord, that I may ever worship Thee with
such humility of mind as becometh my lowliness and such elevation
of mind as Thy loftiness demandeth.... I entreat, O Most Holy
Father, that Thy most living flame may so urge me forward that, not
being hindered by any mortal imperfections, I may happily and
safely again return to Thee."
It is recorded by an authority that her body, "enclosed in a casket of
cypress wood, lined with embroidered velvet," was placed in the chapel
of Santa Anna which has since been destroyed. Visconti says: "She
desired, with Christian humility, to be buried in the manner in which
the sisters were buried when they died. And, as I suppose, her body was
placed in the common sepulchre of the nuns of Santa Anna." Grimm
declares that he cannot discover the place of her burial, and Visconti
declares that her tomb remains unknown.
But it is apparently a fact that the body of Vittoria Colonna is
entombed in the sacristy of Santa Domenica Maggiore in Naples, the
sarcophagus containing it resting by the side of the one containing the
body of her husband, Francesco d'Avalos, Marchese of Pescara. This
church is one of the finest in Naples, with twenty-seven chapels and
twelve altars, and it is here that nearly all the great nobles of the
kingdom of Naples are entombed. Here is the tomb of the learned Thomas
Aquinas and here is shown, in relief, the miracle of the crucifix by
Tommaso de Stefani, which--as the legend runs--thus addressed the
learned doctor:--
"_Bene scripsisti de me, Thoma; quam ergo mercedem recipies?_"
To which he replied: "_Non aliam nisi te._"
It is in the sacristy in which lie all the Princes of the House of
Aragon that the sarcophagi of the Marchese and the Marchesa di Pescara
are placed side by side in the high gallery near the ceiling. The altar
has a fine Annunciation ascribed to Andrea da Salerno. The ceiling
(whose coloring is as fresh and vivid as if painted yesterday) is by
Solimena. Around the walls near the ceiling are two balconies or
galleries, filled with very large wooden sarcophagi, whose scarlet
velvet covers have faded into yellow browns with pink shades, many of
which are tattered and are falling to pieces. The casket containing the
body of Fernando Francesco d'Avalos, Marchese of Pescara (the husband of
Vittoria Colonna), has on it an inscription by Ariosto; and his portrait
(showing in profile a young face with blonde hair and a full reddish
brown beard) and a banner, also, is suspended above the casket. That
containing the body of the Marchesa, his wife (Vittoria Colonna), has an
aperture at the top where the wood is worn away and the embalmed form,
partly crumbled, may be seen. This seems strange to the verge of
fantasy, but it is, apparently, true. The writer of this volume visited
the Church of Santa Domenica Maggiore in Naples in December of 1906, and
was assured by the sacristan that this sarcophagus contains the body of
the Marchesa. Inquiries were then made of other prelates and of the
Archbishop, who gave the same assurance. Later, learned archaeologists in
Rome were appealed to, regarding this assertion made in Naples, and the
consensus of opinion obtained declares their assertion true. Professor
Lanciani has himself publicly expressed this conviction. Still, it
remains a curious question as to when this sarcophagus was placed in the
sacristy, for the date goes back into long-buried centuries.
Adjoining Santa Domenica Maggiore is the monastery in which Thomas
Aquinas lived and lectured (in 1272), and the cell of the great doctor
of philosophy is now made into a chapel. His lectures called together
men of the highest rank and learning and were attended by the king and
the members of the royal family. The entire locality of this church is
replete with historic association. The most distinguished of the
nobility of Naples have, for centuries, held their chapels in this
church, and in these are many notable examples of Renaissance sculpture.
The Accademia des Arcades of Rome, founded in the seventeenth century to
do honor to lyric art, celebrated the placing of a bust of Vittoria
Colonna in a gallery of the Capitoline, in May of 1865, by a resplendent
poetic festa. According to the gentle, leisurely customs of the land,
where it is always afternoon and time has no value, thirty-two poets
read their songs, written in Latin or in Italian, for this occasion,
which were published in a sumptuous volume to be preserved in the
archives of the Arcadians, who take themselves more seriously than the
world outside quite realizes. This bust of Vittoria Colonna was the gift
of the Duca and Duchessa of Torlonia of that period. It was crowned with
laurel, as that of Petrarca had been, and the government took official
recognition of the event.
Goethe was made a member of this Accademia that regarded itself as
reflecting the glories of the Golden Age of Greece, and which was a
century old at the time of his visit to Italy. "No stranger of any
consequence was readily permitted to leave Rome without being invited to
join this body," he recorded, and he wrote a humorous description of the
formalities of his initiation.
Mrs. Horatio Greenough was honored by being made a member of this
Accademia in recognition of her musical accomplishments, and the record
of it is placed on the memorial marble over her grave in the Protestant
cemetery in Rome. Every year, on Tasso's birthday (April 25), the
Accademia holds a festa in a little amphitheatre near "Tasso's oak," on
the Janiculum, at which his bust is crowned with laurel. The gardens in
which the seventeenth-century Arcadians disported themselves are now
known among the Romans as _il Bosco Parrasio degli Arcadi_.
Throughout Italy the fame of Vittoria Colonna only deepens with every
succeeding century. Her nobility of character, her lofty spirituality of
life, fitly crowned and perfected her intellectual force and brilliant
gifts. Although from the customs of the time the Marchesa lived much in
convents, she never, in any sense, save that of her fervent piety, lived
the conventual life. Her noble gifts linked her always to the larger
activities, and her gifts and rank invested her with certain demands and
responsibilities that she could not evade. She was one of the messengers
of life, and her place as a brilliant and distinguished figure in the
contemporary world was one that the line of destiny, which pervades all
circumstances and which, in her case, was so marked, absolutely
constrained her to fill. She had that supreme gift of the lofty nature,
the power of personal influence. Her exquisite courtesy and graciousness
of manner, her simple dignity and unaffected sincerity, her delicacy of
divination and her power of tender sympathy and liberal comprehension
all combined to make her the ideal companion, counsellor, and friend, as
well as the celebrity of letters and lyric art.
No poet has more exquisitely touched the friendship between Vittoria
Colonna and Michael Angelo than has Margaret J. Preston, in a poem
supposed to be addressed to the sculptor by Vittoria, in which occur the
lines:--
"We twain--one lingering on the violet verge,
And one with eyes raised to the twilight peaks--
Shall meet in the morn again.
* * * * *
... Supremest truth I gave;
Quick comprehension of thine unsaid thought,
Reverence, whose crystal sheen was never blurred
By faintest film of over-breathing doubt;
... helpfulness
Such as thou hadst not known of womanly hands;
And sympathies so urgent, they made bold
To press their way where never mortal yet
Entrance had gained,--even to thy soul."
This is the _Page de Conti_ that one reads in the air as he sails past
Ischia on the violet sea; and the _chant d'amour_ of the sirens catches
the echo of lines far down the centuries:--
"I understood not, when the angel stooped,
Whispering, 'Live on! for yet one joyless soul,
Void of true faith in human happiness,
Waits to be won by thee, from unbelief.'
"Now, all is clear. For _thy_ sake I am glad
I waited. Not that some far age may say,--
'_God's benison on her, since she was the friend
Of Michael Angelo!_'"
_So sometimes comes to soul and sense
The feeling which is evidence
That very near about us lies
The realm of spiritual mysteries.
The sphere of the supernal powers
Impinges on this world of ours.
The low and dark horizon lifts,
To light the scenic terror shifts;
The breath of a diviner air
Blows down the answer of a prayer:--
That all our sorrow, pain, and doubt
A great compassion clasps about,
And law and goodness, love and force,
Are wedded fast beyond divorce.
Then duty leaves to love its task,
The beggar Self forgets to ask;
With smile of trust and folded hands,
The passive soul in waiting stands
To feel, as flowers the sun and dew,
The One true Life its own renew._
WHITTIER.
"_For Thou only art holy. Thou only art the Lord. Thou only, O
Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the Glory of God the
Father._"
_Sometimes in heaven-sent dreams I do behold
A city with its turrets high in air,
Its gates that gleam with jewels strange and rare,
And streets that glow with burning of red gold;
And happy souls, through blessedness grown bold,
Thrill with their praises all the radiant air,
And God himself is light, and shineth there
On glories tongue of man hath never told._
_And in my dreams I thither march, nor stay
To heed earth's voices, howsoe'er they call,
Or proffers of the joys of this brief day,
On which so soon the sunset shadows fall;
I see the Gleaming Gates, and toward them press--
What though my path lead through the Wilderness?_
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
V
VOICES OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Oh, Italy! thy strength, thy power, thy crown
Lie in the life that in Assisi stirs
The heart, with impulse of self-sacrifice;
Where still St. Francis gathers weary souls
In his great love, which reaches out to all.
... His blessing falls
In clear sweet tones: "_Benedicat tibi
Convertat vultum suum ad te et
Det Pacem!_" Hushed and holy silence breathes
About the wanderer who lifts his heart
To catch the echo of that voice of love.
CELIA RICHMOND.
The mystic pilgrimage to Assisi, the "Seraphic City," prefigures itself
almost as a journey to the Mount of Vision. "Any line of truth that
leads us above materialism," says Dr. Wilberforce, Venerable Archdeacon
of Westminster Abbey, "that forces us to think, that encourages the
imagination to pierce the world's cobwebs, that forces us to remember
that we are enwrapped by the supernatural, is helpful and stimulating. A
human life lived only in the seen and felt, with no sense of the
invisible, is a fatally impoverished life, a poor, blind, wingless life,
but to believe that ever around us is a whole world full of spiritual
beings; that this life, with its burdens, is but the shadow which
precedes the reality; that here we are but God's children at school, is
an invigorating conviction, full of hope, productive of patience and
fruitful in self-control."
To an age imprisoned in the fear of God the "sweet saint," Francis,
brought the message of the love of God. To an age crushed under the
abuses of religion as an organization of feudal bishops and
ecclesiastics, St. Francis brought the message of hope and of joy. He
revealed to his age the absolute reality of the spiritual world that
surrounds us. He was born into a time when there existed on the one
hand, poverty and misery; on the other, selfish and debasing
self-indulgence of wealth and its corresponding oppression of the poor.
The Church itself was a power for conquest and greed. Its kingdom was of
this world. St. Bernard and others had nobly aimed to effect a reform
and had illustrated by their own lives the beautiful example of
simplicity and unselfishness, but their work failed in effectiveness
and permanent impress.
"Oh, beauty of holiness!
Of self-forgetfulness, of lowliness."
Not only in beauty, but in power does it stand. St. Francis brought to
the sad and problematic conditions of his time that resistless energy of
infinite patience, of a self-control based on insight into the divine
relationships of life, and of unfailing fidelity to his high purpose.
Through good report or through evil report he kept the faith, and
pressed onward to the high calling of God. The twelfth and the
thirteenth centuries had been a period of religious unrest and chaos. As
Archdeacon Wilberforce has so impressively said in the words quoted from
him, a life lived with no sense of the invisible is blind and
impoverished. The movement initiated by St. Francis proclaimed anew the
divine grace and love.
"Tokens are dead if the things live not. The light everlasting
Unto the blind is not, but is born of the eye that has vision."
Something not unlike this trend of thought must drift through the mind
of every one who journeys through the lovely Umbrian country to Assisi,
one of those picturesquely beautiful hill towns of Italy whose romantic
situation impresses the visitor. Seen from a little distance, one could
hardly imagine how it could be reached unless he were the fortunate
possessor of an airship. The entire region is most picturesque in
character. Journeying from Rome to Assisi there is a constant ascent
from the Campagna to the Apennines, and the road passes through wild
defile and valley with amethyst peaks shining fair against the sky, with
precipitous rocks, and the dense growth of oak and pine trees. In some
places the valley is so narrow that the hills, on either side, rise
almost within touch of the hand from the car window. The hill towns are
frequent, and the apex of these towns is invariably crowned with a
castle, a cathedral, or a ruin, and around it, circling in terraces, is
built the town. The charm largely vanishes when fairly in these circling
roads, for on either side are high walls, so that one's view is
completely bounded by them; but from the summit and from the upper
floors of the houses the most beautiful views are obtained. The Umbrian
region, in which are located Perugia, Assisi, Spello, Foligno, Spoleto,
Terni, Narni, and others, is simply the gem region of all Italy. The
Umbrians are the most ancient of the Italian people, and Assisi claims
to have been founded eight hundred and sixty-five years before the
founding of Rome. It was the scene of constant warfare, and the streets
are all underlaid by subterranean passages, in which the inhabitants
could disappear from their enemies.
To this ancient Umbrian city, from which went out the life and light
that carried wonderful currents of vitality and illumination to all
Italy and into almost all parts of the world, one comes as to a special
and a sacred pilgrimage. For this mediaeval town, perched on the top of a
rocky hill, is the birthplace of St. Francis, the founder of the
Franciscan order; in it were the scenes of his early life, and here, in
1226, at the age of forty-four years, he died. The convent-church of San
Francesco, built to his memory in 1230; the lower church, completed at
that date, while the upper was finished in 1253; the magnificent
Cathedral of Santa Maria Degli Angeli, completed in 1640; the Church of
Santa Chiara and the Duomo, are the points of interest.
[Illustration: SAN FRANCESCAN CONVENT-CHURCH, ASSISI
_Page 346_]
The purple Apennines, on one spur of which Assisi is built, are a
picturesque feature of lovely Umbria. The old houses of Assisi rise
white in the sunshine. The ancient walls still surround the city, and
its towers stand as they stood before the eyes of St. Francis, almost
seven centuries ago. The peak of Mt. Subasio, a neighboring peak of the
Apennines, looms above the colossal rock that crowns the hill around
whose top Assisi clusters in winding terraces. The massive pile of the
Francescan church and monastery--the two churches, one above the
other--forms an architectural group whose imposing aspect arrests the
eye of every traveller for miles around. The pointed arches of the
cloisters and the square campanile contrast rather than blend in an
effective and harmonious manner and resemble military fortifications
rather than an edifice of the church. The old walls still surround
Assisi, and the houses all rise white under the blue Italian sky. The
narrow streets, hardly wide enough for one carriage to pass another, are
so intricate in their curves as they climb the steep hill, that it
requires a faith hardly less than the traditional degree said to move
mountains to lead the visitor to suppose that he will ever emerge
from one that he has entered. Many of the houses along these curious
thoroughfares have no windows, the only light and air coming through the
open door. The bells from the campanile of the Francescan
convent-church, from the Duomo and from the Church of Santa Chiara ring
every quarter of an hour; and this constant clash of bells is almost the
only sound that breaks the silence of the mediaeval town, which lends
itself to visions and to dreams. On the very air is stamped the impress
of St. Francis. His personality, his teachings, his faith pervaded the
atmosphere in a way that no one could believe until he had himself
entered into the experience. In narration it cannot but seem like a
pleasing and half-poetic fancy; but the lingerer in this shrine of
religion and art will realize that the actual personality of the man who
trod these streets nearly seven hundred years ago is strangely before
him. Canon Knox Little, in a series of lectures on St. Francis of Assisi
delivered in the Ladye Chapel of Worcester Cathedral a few years since,
says of the panorama of the town:--