Beloved: I had your last letter on Friday: all your letters have come in
their right numbers. I have lost count of mine; but I think seven and two
postcards is the total, which is the same as the numbers of clean and
unclean beasts proportionately represented in the ark.
Up here we are out of the deadliness of the heat, and are thankful for it.
Vineyards and olives brush the eyes between the hard, upright bars of the
cypresses: and Florence below is like a hot bath which we dip into and
come out again. At the Riccardi chapel I found Benozzo Gozzoli, not in
crumbs, but perfectly preserved: a procession of early Florentine youths,
turning into angels when they get to the bay of the window where the altar
once stood. The more I see of them, the greater these early men seem to
me: I shall be afraid to go to Venice soon; Titian will only half satisfy
me, and Tintoretto, I know, will be actively annoying: I shall stay in my
gondola, as your American lady did on her donkey after riding twenty
miles to visit the ruins, of--Carnac, was it not? It is well to have the
courage of one's likings and dislikings, that is the only true culture
(the state obtained by use of a "coulter" or cutter)--I cut many things
severely which, no doubt, are good for other people.
Botticelli I was shy of, because of the craze about him among people who
know nothing: he is far more wonderful than I had hoped, both at the
Uffizi and the Academia: but he is quite pagan. I don't know why I say
"but"; he is quite typical of the world's art-training: Christianity may
get hold of the names and dictate the subjects, but the artist-breed
carries a fairly level head through it all, and, like Pater's Mona Lisa,
draws Christianity and Paganism into one: at least, wherever it reaches
perfect expression it has done so. Some of the distinctly primitives are
different; their works inclose a charm which is not artistic. Fra
Angelico, after being a great disappointment to me in some of his large
set pictures in the Academia and elsewhere, shows himself lovely in fresco
(though I think the "crumb" element helps him). His great Crucifixion is
big altogether, and has so permanent a force in its aloofness from mere
drama and mere life. In San Marco, the cells of the monks are quite
charming, a row of little square bandboxes under a broad raftered
corridor, and in every cell is a beautiful little fresco for the monks to
live up to. But they no longer live there now: all that part of San Marco
has become a peep-show.
I liked being in Savonarola's room, and was more susceptible to the
remains of his presence than I have been to Michel Angelo or anyone
else's. Michel Angelo I feel most when he has left a thing unfinished;
then one can put one's finger into the print of the chisel, and believe
anything of the beauty that might have come out of the great stone
chrysalis lying cased and rough, waiting to be raised up to life.
Yesterday Arthur and I walked from here to Fiesole, which we had
neglected while in Florence--six miles going, and more like twelve
coming back, all because of Arthur's absurd cross-country instinct,
which, after hours of river-bends, bare mountain tracks, and tottering
precipices, brought us out again half a mile nearer Florence than when
we started.
At Fiesole is the only church about here whose interior architecture I
have greatly admired, austere but at the same time gracious--like a
Madonna of the best period of painting. We also went to look at the
Roman baths and theater: the theater is charming enough, because it is
still there: but for the baths--oblongs of stone don't interest me just
because they are old. All stone is old: and these didn't even hold water
to give one the real look of the thing. Too tired, and even more too
lazy, to write other things, except love, most dear Beloved.