It did not take a long time to exhaust the interest of Bassano, but we
were sorry to leave the place because of the excellence of the inn at
which we tarried. It was called "Il Mondo," and it had everything
in it that heart could wish. Our rooms were miracles of neatness and
comfort; they had the freshness, not the rawness, of recent repair,
and they opened into the dining-hall, where we were served with
indescribable salads and risotti. During our sojourn we simply enjoyed
the house; when we were come away we wondered that so much perfection
of hotel could exist in so small a town as Bassano. It is one of
the pleasures of by-way travel in Italy, that you are everywhere
introduced in character, that you become fictitious and play a part as
in a novel. To this inn of The World, our driver had brought us with a
clamor and rattle proportioned to the fee received from us, and
when, in response to his haughty summons, the cameriere, who had been
gossiping with the cook, threw open the kitchen door, and stood out to
welcome us in a broad square of forth-streaming ruddy light, amid the
lovely odors of broiling and roasting, our driver saluted him with,
"Receive these gentle folks, and treat them to your very best. They
are worthy of anything." This at once put us back several centuries,
and we never ceased to be lords and ladies of the period of Don
Quixote as long as we rested in that inn.
It was a bright and breezy Sunday when we left "Il Mondo," and gayly
journeyed toward Treviso, intending to visit Possagno, the birthplace
of Canova, on our way. The road to the latter place passes through a
beautiful country, that gently undulates on either hand till in the
distance it rises into pleasant hills and green mountain heights.
Possagno itself lies upon the brink of a declivity, down the side of
which drops terrace after terrace, all planted with vines and figs and
peaches, to a watercourse below. The ground on which the village is
built, with its quaint and antiquated stone cottages, slopes gently
northward, and on a little rise upon the left hand of us coming from
Bassano, we saw that stately edifice with which Canova has honored his
humble birthplace. It is a copy of the Pantheon, and it cannot help
being beautiful and imposing, but it would be utterly out of place in
any other than an Italian village. Here, however, it consorted well
enough with the lingering qualities of the old pagan civilization
still perceptible in Italy. A sense of that past was so strong with
us as we ascended the broad stairway leading up the slope from the
village to the level on which the temple stands at the foot of a
mountain, that we might well have believed we approached an altar
devoted to the elder worship: through the open doorway and between the
columns of the portico we could see the priests moving to and fro, and
the voice of their chanting came out to us like the sound of hymns to
some of the deities long disowned; and I remembered how Padre L----
had said to me in Venice, "Our blessed saints are only the old gods
baptized and christened anew." Within as without, the temple resembled
the Pantheon, but it had little to show us. The niches designed by
Canova for statues of the saints are empty yet; but there are busts by
his own hand of himself and his brother, the Bishop Canova. Among the
people was the sculptor's niece, whom our guide pointed out to us, and
who was evidently used to being looked at. She seemed not to dislike
it, and stared back at us amiably enough, being a good-natured, plump,
comely dark-faced lady of perhaps fifty years.
Possagno is nothing if not Canova, and our guide, a boy, knew
all about him,--how, more especially, he had first manifested his
wonderful genius by modeling a group of sheep out of the dust of the
highway, and how an Inglese happening along in his carriage, saw the
boy's work and gave him a plateful of gold napoleons. I dare say
this is as near the truth as most facts. And is it not better for the
historic Canova to have begun in this way than to have poorly picked
up the rudiments of his art in the workshop of his father, a maker of
altar-pieces and the like for country churches? The Canova family was
intermarried with the Venetian nobility, and will not credit those
stories of Canova's beginnings which his townsmen so fondly cherish.
I believe they would even distrust the butter-lion with which the
boy-sculptor is said to have adorned the table of the noble Falier,
and first won his notice.
Besides the temple at Possagno, there is a very pretty gallery
containing casts of all Canova's works. It is an interesting place,
where Psyches and Cupids flutter, where Venuses present themselves
in every variety of attitude, where Sorrows sit upon hard,
straight-backed classic chairs, and mourn in the society of faithful
Storks; where the Bereft of this century surround death-beds in Greek
costume appropriate to the scene; where Muses and Graces sweetly pose
themselves and insipidly smile, and where the Dancers and Passions,
though nakeder, are no wickeder than the Saints and Virtues. In all,
there are a hundred and ninety-five pieces in the gallery, and among
the rest the statue named George Washington, which was sent to America
in 1820, and afterwards destroyed by fire in the Capitol. The figure
is in a sitting posture; naturally, it is in the dress of a Roman
general; and if it does not look much like George Washington, it does
resemble Julius Cæsar.
The custodian of the gallery had been Canova'a body-servant, and he
loved to talk of his master. He had so far imbibed the family spirit
that he did not like to allow that Canova had ever been other than
rich and grand, and he begged us not to believe the idle stories of
his first essays in art. He was delighted with our interest in the
imperial Washington, and our pleasure in the whole gallery, which we
viewed with the homage due to the man who had rescued the world from
Swaggering in sculpture. When we were satisfied, he invited us, with
his mistress's permission, into the house of the Canovas adjoining
the gallery; and there we saw many paintings by the sculptor,--pausing
longest in a lovely little room decorated after the Pompeian manner
with _scherzi_ in miniature panels representing the jocose classic
usualities: Cupids escaping from cages, and being sold from them, and
playing many pranks and games with Nymphs and Graces.
Then Canova was done, and Possagno was finished; and we resumed our
way to Treviso, a town nearly as much porticoed as Padua, and having a
memory and hardly any other consciousness. The Duomo, which is perhaps
the ugliest duomo in the world, contains an "Annunciation," by Titian,
one of his best paintings; and in the Monte di Pietà is the grand and
beautiful "Entombment," by which Giorgione is perhaps most worthily
remembered. The church of San Nicolò is interesting from its quaint
and pleasing frescos by the school of Giotto. At the railway station
an admirable old man sells the most delicious white and purple grapes.