It was curious to pass, with the impression left by this costly and
ingenious toy upon our minds, at once to the amphitheatre in Verona,
which, next to the Coliseum, has, of all the works bequeathed us
by the ancient Roman world, the greatest claim upon the wonder and
imagination. Indeed, it makes even a stronger appeal to the fancy. We
know who built the Coliseum, but in its unstoried origin, the Veronese
arena has the mystery of the Pyramids. Was its founder Augustus,
or Vitellus, or Antoninus, or Maximian, or the Republic of Verona?
Nothing is certain but that it was conceived and reared by some mighty
prince or people, and that it yet remains in such perfection that the
great shows of two thousand years ago might take place in it to-day.
It is so suggestive of the fierce and splendid spectacles of Roman
times that the ring left by a modern circus on the arena, and absurdly
dwarfed by the vast space of the oval, had an impertinence which
we hotly resented, looking down on it from the highest grade of the
interior. It then lay fifty feet below us, in the middle of an ellipse
five hundred feet in length and four hundred in breadth, and capable
of holding fifty thousand spectators. The seats that the multitudes
pressed of old are perfect, yet; scarce a stone has been removed from
the interior; the aedile and the prefect might take their places again
in the balustraded tribunes above the great entrance at either end of
the arena, and scarcely see that they were changed. Nay, the victims
and the gladiators might return to the cells below the seats of the
people, and not know they had left them for a day; the wild beasts
might leap into the arena from dens as secure and strong as when first
built. The ruin within seems only to begin with the aqueduct, which
was used to flood the arena for the naval shows, but which is now
choked with the dust of ages. Without, however, is plain enough the
doom which is written against all the work of human hands, and which,
unknown of the builders, is among the memorable things placed in the
corner-stone of every edifice. Of the outer wall that rose high over
the highest seats of the amphitheatre, and encircled it with stately
corridors, giving it vaster amplitude and grace, the earthquake of six
centuries ago spared only a fragment that now threatens above one of
the narrow Veronese streets. Blacksmiths, wagon-makers, and workers
in clangorous metals have made shops of the lower corridors of the old
arena, and it is friends and neighbors with the modern life about it,
as such things usually are in Italy. Fortunately for the stranger, the
Piazza Bra flanks it on one hand, and across this it has a magnificent
approach. It is not less happy in being little known to sentiment, and
the traveller who visits it by moonlight, has a full sense of grandeur
and pathos, without any of the sheepishness attending homage to that
battered old coquette, the Coliseum, which so many emotional people
have sighed over, kissing and afterwards telling.
But he who would know the innocent charm of a ruin as yet almost
wholly uncourted by travel, must go to the Roman theatre in Verona.
It is not a favorite of the hand-books; and we were decided to see it
chiefly by a visit to the Museum, where, besides an admirable gallery
of paintings, there is a most interesting collection of antiques in
bronze and marble found in excavating the theatre. The ancient edifice
had been completely buried, and a quarter of the town was built over
it, as Portici is built over Herculaneum, and on the very top stood a
Jesuit convent. One day, some children, playing in the garden of one
of the shabby houses, suddenly vanished from sight. Their mother ran
like one mad (I am telling the story in the words of the peasant who
related it to me) to the spot where they had last been seen, and fell
herself into an opening of the earth there. The outcry raised by these
unfortunates brought a number of men to their aid, and in digging to
get them out, an old marble stairway was discovered. This was about
twenty-five years ago. A certain gentleman named Monga owned the land,
and he immediately began to make excavations. He was a rich man, but
considered rather whimsical (if my peasant represented the opinion
of his neighbors), and as the excavation ate a great deal of money
(_mangiava molti soldi_), his sons discontinued the work after his
death, and nothing has been done for some time, now. The peasant
in charge was not a person of imaginative mind, though he said the
theatre (supposed to have been built in the time of Augustus)
was completed two thousand years before Christ. He had a purely
conventional admiration of the work, which he expressed at regular
intervals, by stopping short in his course, waving both hands over the
ruins, and crying in a sepulchral voice, "_Qual' opera_!" However,
as he took us faithfully into every part of it, there is no reason to
complain of him.
We crossed three or four streets, and entered at several different
gates, in order to see the uncovered parts of the work, which could
have been but a small proportion of the whole. The excavation has been
carried down thirty and forty feet below the foundations of the modern
houses, revealing the stone seats of the auditorium, the corridors
beneath them, and the canals and other apparatus for naval shows, as
in the great Amphitheatre. These works are even more stupendous than
those of the Amphitheatre, for in many cases they are not constructed,
but hewn out of the living rock, so that in this light the theatre is
a gigantic sculpture. Below all are cut channels to collect and carry
off the water of the springs in which the rock abounds. The depth of
one of these channels near the Jesuit convent must be fifty feet below
the present surface. Only in one place does the ancient edifice rise
near the top of the ground, and there is uncovered the arched front
of what was once a family-box at the theatre, with the owner's name
graven upon the arch. Many poor little houses have of course been
demolished to carry on the excavations, and to the walls that joined
them cling memorials of the simple life that once inhabited them. To
one of the buildings hung a melancholy fire-place left blackened with
smoke, and battered with use, but witnessing that it had once been the
heart of a home. It was far more touching than any thing in the
elder ruin; and I think nothing could have so vividly expressed the
difference which, in spite of all the resemblances noticeable in
Italy, exists between the ancient and modern civilization, as that
family-box at the theatre and this simple fireside.
I do not now remember what fortunate chance it was that discovered
to us the house of the Capulets, and I incline to believe that we
gravitated toward it by operation of well-known natural principles
which bring travellers acquainted with improbabilities wherever they
go. We found it a very old and time-worn edifice, built round an
ample court, and we knew it, as we had been told we should, by the cap
carven in stone above the interior of the grand portal. The family,
anciently one of the principal of Verona, has fallen from much of its
former greatness. On the occasion of our visit, Juliet, very dowdily
dressed, looked down from the top of a long, dirty staircase which
descended into the court, and seemed interested to see us; while her
mother caressed with one hand a large yellow mastiff, and distracted
it from its first impulse to fly upon us poor children of sentiment.
There was a great deal of stable litter, and many empty carts standing
about in the court; and if I might hazard the opinion formed upon
these and other appearances, I should say that old Capulet has now
gone to keeping a hotel, united with the retail liquor business, both
in a small way.
Nothing could be more natural, after seeing the house of the Capulets,
than a wish to see Juliet's Tomb, which is visited by all strangers,
and is the common property of the hand-books. It formerly stood in a
garden, where, up to the beginning of this century, it served, says my
"Viaggio in Italia," "for the basest uses,"--just as the sacred prison
of Tasso was used for a charcoal bin. We found the sarcophagus under
a shed in one corner of the garden of the Orfanotrofio delle
Franceschine, and had to confess to each other that it looked like a
horse-trough roughly hewn out of stone. The garden, said the boy
in charge of the moving monument, had been the burial-place of the
Capulets, and this tomb being found in the middle of the garden, was
easily recognized as that of Juliet. Its genuineness, as well as its
employment in the ruse of the lovers, was proven beyond cavil by a
slight hollow cut for the head to rest in, and a hole at the foot "to
breathe through," as the boy said. Does not the fact that this relic
has to be protected from the depredations of travellers, who could
otherwise carry it away piecemeal, speak eloquently of a large amount
of vulgar and rapacious innocence drifting about the world?
It is well to see even such idle and foolish curiosities, however, in
a city like Verona, for the mere going to and fro in search of them
through her streets is full of instruction and delight. To my mind, no
city has a fairer place than she that sits beside the eager Adige, and
breathes the keen air of mountains white with snows in winter, green
and purple with vineyards in summer, and forever rich with marble.
Around Verona stretch those gardened plains of Lombardy, on which
Nature, who dotes on Italy, and seems but a step-mother to all
transalpine lands, has lavished every gift of beauty and fertility.
Within the city's walls, what store of art and history! Her
market-places have been the scenes of a thousand tragic or ridiculous
dramas; her quaint and narrow streets are ballads and legends full
of love-making and murder; the empty, grass-grown piazzas before
her churches are tales that are told of municipal and ecclesiastical
splendor. Her nobles sleep in marble tombs so beautiful that the dust
in them ought to be envied by living men in Verona; her lords lie in
perpetual state in the heart of the city, in magnificent sepulchres of
such grace and opulence, that, unless a language be invented full
of lance-headed characters, and Gothic vagaries of arch and finial,
flower and fruit, bird and beast, they can never be described. Sacred
be their rest from pen of mine, Verona! Nay, while I would fain bring
the whole city before my reader's fancy, I am loath and afraid to
touch any thing in it with my poor art: either the tawny river,
spanned with many beautiful bridges, and murmurous with mills afloat
and turned by the rapid current; or the thoroughfares with their
passengers and bright shops and caffès; or the grim old feudal towers;
or the age-embrowned palaces, eloquent in their haughty strength of
the times when they were family fortresses; or the churches with the
red pillars of their porticos resting upon the backs of eagle-headed
lions; or even the white-coated garrison (now there no more), with its
heavy-footed rank and file, its handsome and resplendent officers,
its bristling fortifications, its horses and artillery, crowding the
piazzas of churches turned into barracks. All these things haunt my
memory, but I could only at best thinly sketch them in meagre black
and white. Verona is an almost purely Gothic city in her architecture,
and her churches are more worthy to be seen than any others in North
Italy, outside of Venice. San Zenone, with the quaint bronzes on its
doors representing in the rudeness of the first period of art the
incidents of the Old Testament and the miracles of the saints--with
the allegorical sculptures surrounding the interior and exterior of
the portico, and illustrating, among other things, the creation of
Eve with absolute literalness--with its beautiful and solemn crypt
in which the dust of the titular saint lies entombed--with its minute
windows, and its vast columns sustaining the roof upon capitals of
every bizarre and fantastic device--is doubtless most abundant in that
Gothic spirit, now grotesque and now earnest, which somewhere appears
in all the churches of Verona; which has carven upon the façade of
the Duomo the statues of Orlando and Olliviero, heroes of romance, and
near them has placed the scandalous figure of a pig in a monk's robe
and cowl, with a breviary in his paw; which has reared the exquisite
monument of Guglielmo da Castelbarco before the church of St.
Anastasia, and has produced the tombs of the Scaligeri before the
chapel of Santa Maria Antica.
I have already pledged myself not to attempt any description of these
tombs, and shall not fall now. But I bought in the. English tongue, as
written at Verona, some "Notices," kept for sale by the sacristan,
"of the Ancient Churg of Our Lady, and of the Tombs of the most
illustrious Family Della-Scala," and from these I think it no
dereliction to quote _verbatim_. First is the tomb of San Francesco,
who was "surnamed the Great by reason of his valor." "With him the
Great Alighieri and other exiles took refuge. We see his figure
extended upon a bed, and above his statue on horsebac with the vizor
down, and his crest falling behind his shoulders, his horse covered
with mail. The columns and capitals are wonderful." "Within the
Cemetery to the right leaning against the walls of the church is the
tomb of John Scaliger." "In the side of this tomb near the wall of
Sacristy, you see the urn that encloses the ashes of Martin I.," "who
was traitorously killed on the 17th of October 1277 by Scaramello of
the Scaramelli, who wished to revenge the honor of a young lady of his
family." "The Mausoleum that is in the side facing the Place encloses
the Martin II.'s ashes.... This building is sumptuous and wonderful
because it stands on four columns, each of which has an architrave
of nine feet. On the beams stands a very large square of marble that
forms the floor, on which stands the urn of the Defunct. Four other
columns support the vault that covers the urn; and the rest is adorned
by facts of Old Testament. Upon the Summit is the equestrian statue as
large as life." Of "Can Signorius," whose tomb is the most splendid
of all, the "Notices" say: "He spent two thousand florins of gold,
in order to prepare his own sepulchre while he was yet alive, and
to surpass the magnificence of his predecessors. The monument is as
magnificent as the contracted space allows. Six columns support the
floor of marble on which it stands covered with figures. Six other
columns support the top, on that is the Scaliger's statues....
The monument is surrounded by an enclosure of red marble, with six
pillars, on which are square capitols with armed Saints. The rails of
iron with the Arms of the Scala, are worked with a beauty wonderful
for that age," or, I may add, for any age. These "rails" are an
exquisite net-work of iron wrought by hand, with an art emulous of
that of Nicolò Caparra at Florence. The chief device employed is a
ladder (_scala_) constantly repeated in the centres of quatre-foils;
and the whole fabric is still so flexible and perfect, after the lapse
of centuries, that the net may be shaken throughout by a touch. Four
other tombs of the Scaligeri are here, among which the "Notices"
particularly mention that of Alboin della Scala: "He was one of the
Ghibelline party, as the arms on his urn schew, that is a staircase
risen by an eagle--wherefore Dante said, _In sulla Scala porta il
santo Uccello_."
I should have been glad to meet the author of these delightful
histories, but in his absence we fared well enough with the sacristan.
When, a few hours before we left Verona, we came for a last look it
the beautiful sepulchres, he recognized us, and seeing a sketch-book
in the party, he invited us within the inclosure again, and then ran
and fetched chairs for us to sit upon--nay, even placed chairs for
us to rest our feet on. Winning and exuberant courtesy of the Italian
race! If I had never acknowledged it before, I must do homage to it
now, remembering the sweetness of the sacristans and custodians of
Verona. They were all men of the most sympathetic natures. He at San
Zenone seemed never to have met with real friends till we expressed
pleasure in the magnificent Mantegna, which is the pride of his
church. "What coloring!" he cried, and then triumphantly took us into
the crypt: "What a magnificent crypt! What works they executed
in those days, there!" At San Giorgio Maggiore, where there are a
Tintoretto and a Veronese, and four horrible swindling big pictures by
Romanino, I discovered to my great dismay that I had in my pocket but
five soldi, which I offered with much abasement and many apologies
to the sacristan; but he received them as if they had been so many
napoleons, prayed me not to speak of embarrassment, and declared that
his labors in our behalf had been nothing but pleasure. At Santa
Maria in Organo, where are the wonderful _intagli_ of Fra Giovanni da
Verona, the sacristan fully shared our sorrow that the best pictures
could not be unveiled as it was Holy Week. He was also moved with us
at the gradual decay of the _intagli_, and led us to believe that, to
a man of so much sensibility, the general ruinous state of the church
was an inexpressible affliction; and we rejoiced for his sake that it
should possess at least one piece of art in perfect repair. This was
a modern work, that day exposed for the first time, and it represented
in a group of wooden figures The Death of St. Joseph. The Virgin and
Christ supported the dying saint on either hand; and as the whole was
vividly colored, and rays of glory in pink and yellow gauze descended
upon Joseph's head, nothing could have been more impressive.