At setting off [from Incisa], we were surrounded by beggars as usual, the
most interesting of whom were a little blind boy and his mother, who had
besieged us with gentle pertinacity during our whole stay there. There
was likewise a man with a maimed hand, and other hurts or deformities;
also, an old woman who, I suspect, only pretended to be blind, keeping
her eyes tightly squeezed together, but directing her hand very
accurately where the copper shower was expected to fall. Besides these,
there were a good many sturdy little rascals, vociferating in proportion
as they needed nothing. It was touching, however, to see several
persons--themselves beggars for aught I know--assisting to hold up the
little blind boy's tremulous hand, so that he, at all events, might not
lack the pittance which we had to give. Our dole was but a poor one,
after all, consisting of what Roman coppers we had brought into Tuscany
with us; and as we drove off, some of the boys ran shouting and whining
after us in the hot sunshine, nor stopped till we reached the summit of
the hill, which rises immediately from the village street. We heard
Gaetano once say a good thing to a swarm of beggar-children, who were
infesting us, "Are your fathers all dead?"--a proverbial expression, I
suppose. The pertinacity of beggars does not, I think, excite the
indignation of an Italian, as it is apt to do that of Englishmen or
Americans. The Italians probably sympathize more, though they give less.
Gaetano is very gentle in his modes of repelling them, and, indeed, never
interferes at all, as long as there is a prospect of their getting
anything.
Immediately after leaving Incisa, we saw the Arno, already a considerable
river, rushing between deep banks, with the greenish line of a duck-pond
diffused through its water. Nevertheless, though the first impression
was not altogether agreeable, we soon became reconciled to this line, and
ceased to think it an indication of impurity; for, in spite of it, the
river is still to a certain degree transparent, and is, at any rate, a
mountain stream, and comes uncontaminated from its source. The pure,
transparent brown of the New England rivers is the most beautiful color;
but I am content that it should be peculiar to them.
Our afternoon's drive was through scenery less striking than some which
we had traversed, but still picturesque and beautiful. We saw deep
valleys and ravines, with streams at the bottom; long, wooded hillsides,
rising far and high, and dotted with white dwellings, well towards the
summits. By and by, we had a distant glimpse of Florence, showing its
great dome and some of its towers out of a sidelong valley, as if we were
between two great waves of the tumultuous sea of hills; while, far
beyond, rose in the distance the blue peaks of three or four of the
Apennines, just on the remote horizon. There being a haziness in the
atmosphere, however, Florence was little more distinct to us than the
Celestial City was to Christian and Hopeful, when they spied at it from
the Delectable Mountains.
Keeping steadfastly onward, we ascended a winding road, and passed a
grand villa, standing very high, and surrounded with extensive grounds.
It must be the residence of some great noble; and it has an avenue of
poplars or aspens, very light and gay, and fit for the passage of the
bridal procession, when the proprietor or his heir brings home his bride;
while, in another direction from the same front of the palace, stretches
an avenue or grove of cypresses, very long, and exceedingly black and
dismal, like a train of gigantic mourners. I have seen few things more
striking, in the way of trees, than this grove of cypresses.
From this point we descended, and drove along an ugly, dusty avenue, with
a high brick wall on one side or both, till we reached the gate of
Florence, into which we were admitted with as little trouble as
custom-house officers, soldiers, and policemen can possibly give. They
did not examine our luggage, and even declined a fee, as we had already
paid one at the frontier custom-house. Thank heaven, and the Grand Duke!
As we hoped that the Casa del Bello had been taken for us, we drove
thither in the first place, but found that the bargain had not been
concluded. As the house and studio of Mr. Powers were just on the
opposite side of the street, I went to it, but found him too much
engrossed to see me at the moment; so I returned to the vettura, and we
told Gaetano to carry us to a hotel. He established us at the Albergo
della Fontana, a good and comfortable house. . . . Mr. Powers called in
the evening,--a plain personage, characterized by strong simplicity and
warm kindliness, with an impending brow, and large eyes, which kindle as
he speaks. He is gray, and slightly bald, but does not seem elderly, nor
past his prime. I accept him at once as an honest and trustworthy man,
and shall not vary from this judgment. Through his good offices, the
next day, we engaged the Casa del Bello, at a rent of fifty dollars a
month, and I shall take another opportunity (my fingers and head being
tired now) to write about the house, and Mr. Powers, and what appertains
to him, and about the beautiful city of Florence. At present, I shall
only say further, that this journey from Rome has been one of the
brightest and most uncareful interludes of my life; we have all enjoyed
it exceedingly, and I am happy that our children have it to look back
upon.
June 4th.--At our visit to Powers's studio on Tuesday, we saw a marble
copy of the fisher-boy holding a shell to his ear, and the bust of
Proserpine, and two or three other ideal busts; various casts of most of
the ideal statues and portrait busts which he has executed. He talks
very freely about his works, and is no exception to the rule that an
artist is not apt to speak in a very laudatory style of a brother artist.
He showed us a bust of Mr. Sparks by Persico,--a lifeless and thoughtless
thing enough, to be sure,--and compared it with a very good one of the
same gentleman by himself; but his chiefest scorn was bestowed on a
wretched and ridiculous image of Mr. King, of Alabama, by Clark Mills, of
which he said he had been employed to make several copies for Southern
gentlemen. The consciousness of power is plainly to be seen, and the
assertion of it by no means withheld, in his simple and natural
character; nor does it give me an idea of vanity on his part to see and
hear it. He appears to consider himself neglected by his country,--by
the government of it, at least,--and talks with indignation of the byways
and political intrigue which, he thinks, win the rewards that ought to be
bestowed exclusively on merit. An appropriation of twenty-five thousand
dollars was made, some years ago, for a work of sculpture by him, to be
placed in the Capitol; but the intermediate measures necessary to render
it effective have been delayed; while the above-mentioned Clark Mills--
certainly the greatest bungler that ever botched a block of marble--has
received an order for an equestrian statue of Washington. Not that Mr.
Powers is made bitter or sour by these wrongs, as he considers them; he
talks of them with the frankness of his disposition when the topic comes
in his way, and is pleasant, kindly, and sunny when he has done with it.
His long absence from our country has made him think worse of us than we
deserve; and it is an effect of what I myself am sensible, in my shorter
exile: the most piercing shriek, the wildest yell, and all the ugly
sounds of popular turmoil, inseparable from the life of a republic, being
a million times more audible than the peaceful hum of prosperity and
content which is going on all the while.
He talks of going home, but says that he has been talking of it every
year since he first came to Italy; and between his pleasant life of
congenial labor, and his idea of moral deterioration in America, I think
it doubtful whether he ever crosses the sea again. Like most exiles of
twenty years, he has lost his native country without finding another; but
then it is as well to recognize the truth,--that an individual country is
by no means essential to one's comfort.
Powers took us into the farthest room, I believe, of his very extensive
studio, and showed us a statue of Washington that has much dignity and
stateliness. He expressed, however, great contempt for the coat and
breeches, and masonic emblems, in which he had been required to drape the
figure. What would he do with Washington, the most decorous and
respectable personage that ever went ceremoniously through the realities
of life? Did anybody ever see Washington nude? It is inconceivable. He
had no nakedness, but I imagine he was born with his clothes on, and his
hair powdered, and made a stately bow on his first appearance in the
world. His costume, at all events, was a part of his character, and must
be dealt with by whatever sculptor undertakes to represent him. I wonder
that so very sensible a man as Powers should not see the necessity of
accepting drapery, and the very drapery of the day, if he will keep his
art alive. It is his business to idealize the tailor's actual work. But
he seems to be especially fond of nudity, none of his ideal statues, so
far as I know them, having so much as a rag of clothes. His statue of
California, lately finished, and as naked as Venus, seemed to me a very
good work; not an actual woman, capable of exciting passion, but
evidently a little out of the category of human nature. In one hand she
holds a divining-rod. "She says to the emigrants," observed Powers,
"'Here is the gold, if you choose to take it.'" But in her face, and in
her eyes, very finely expressed, there is a look of latent mischief,
rather grave than playful, yet somewhat impish or sprite-like; and, in
the other hand, behind her back, she holds a bunch of thorns. Powers
calls her eyes Indian. The statue is true to the present fact and
history of California, and includes the age-long truth as respects the
"auri sacra fames." . . . .
When we had looked sufficiently at the sculpture, Powers proposed that we
should now go across the street and see the Casa del Bello. We did so in
a body, Powers in his dressing-gown and slippers, and his wife and
daughters without assuming any street costume.
The Casa del Bello is a palace of three pianos, the topmost of which is
occupied by the Countess of St. George, an English lady, and two lower
pianos are to be let, and we looked at both. The upper one would have
suited me well enough; but the lower has a terrace, with a rustic
summer-house over it, and is connected with a garden, where there are
arbors and a willow-tree, and a little wilderness of shrubbery and roses,
with a fountain in the midst. It has likewise an immense suite of rooms,
round the four sides of a small court, spacious, lofty, with frescoed
ceilings and rich hangings, and abundantly furnished with arm-chairs,
sofas, marble tables, and great looking-glasses. Not that these last are
a great temptation, but in our wandering life I wished to be perfectly
comfortable myself, and to make my family so, for just this summer, and
so I have taken the lower piano, the price being only fifty dollars per
month (entirely furnished, even to silver and linen). Certainly this is
something like the paradise of cheapness we were told of, and which we
vainly sought in Rome. . . .
To me has been assigned the pleasantest room for my study; and when I
like I can overflow into the summer-house or an arbor, and sit there
dreaming of a story. The weather is delightful, too warm to walk, but
perfectly fit to do nothing in, in the coolness of these great rooms.
Every day I shall write a little, perhaps,--and probably take a brief nap
somewhere between breakfast and tea,--but go to see pictures and statues
occasionally, and so assuage and mollify myself a little after that
uncongenial life of the consulate, and before going back to my own hard
and dusty New England.
After concluding the arrangement for the Casa del Bello, we stood talking
a little while with Powers and his wife and daughter before the door of
the house, for they seem so far to have adopted the habits of the
Florentines as to feel themselves at home on the shady side of the
street. The out-of-door life and free communication with the pavement,
habitual apparently among the middle classes, reminds me of the plays of
Moliere and other old dramatists, in which the street or the square
becomes a sort of common parlor, where most of the talk and scenic
business of the people is carried on.
June 5th.--For two or three mornings after breakfast I have rambled a
little about the city till the shade grew narrow beneath the walls of the
houses, and the heat made it uncomfortable to be in motion. To-day I
went over the Ponte Carraja, and thence into and through the heart of the
city, looking into several churches, in all of which I found people
taking advantage of the cool breadth of these sacred interiors to refresh
themselves and say their prayers. Florence at first struck me as having
the aspect of a very new city in comparison with Rome; but, on closer
acquaintance, I find that many of the buildings are antique and massive,
though still the clear atmosphere, the bright sunshine, the light,
cheerful hues of the stucco, and--as much as anything else, perhaps--the
vivacious character of the human life in the streets, take away the sense
of its being an ancient city. The streets are delightful to walk in
after so many penitential pilgrimages as I have made over those little
square, uneven blocks of the Roman pavement, which wear out the boots and
torment the soul. I absolutely walk on the smooth flags of Florence for
the mere pleasure of walking, and live in its atmosphere for the mere
pleasure of living; and, warm as the weather is getting to be, I never
feel that inclination to sink down in a heap and never stir again, which
was my dull torment and misery as long as I stayed in Rome. I hardly
think there can be a place in the world where life is more delicious for
its own simple sake than here.
I went to-day into the Baptistery, which stands near the Duomo, and, like
that, is covered externally with slabs of black and white marble, now
grown brown and yellow with age. The edifice is octagonal, and on
entering, one immediately thinks of the Pantheon,--the whole space within
being free from side to side, with a dome above; but it differs from the
severe simplicity of the former edifice, being elaborately ornamented
with marble and frescos, and lacking that great eye in the roof that
looks so nobly and reverently heavenward from the Pantheon. I did little
more than pass through the Baptistery, glancing at the famous bronze
doors, some perfect and admirable casts of which I had already seen at
the Crystal Palace.
The entrance of the Duomo being just across the piazza, I went in there
after leaving the Baptistery, and was struck anew--for this is the third
or fourth visit--with the dim grandeur of the interior, lighted as it is
almost exclusively by painted windows, which seem to me worth all the
variegated marbles and rich cabinet-work of St. Peter's. The Florentine
Cathedral has a spacious and lofty nave, and side aisles divided from it
by pillars; but there are no chapels along the aisles, so that there is
far more breadth and freedom of interior, in proportion to the actual
space, than is usual in churches. It is woful to think how the vast
capaciousness within St. Peter's is thrown away, and made to seem smaller
than it is by every possible device, as if on purpose. The pillars and
walls of this Duomo are of a uniform brownish, neutral tint; the
pavement, a mosaic work of marble; the ceiling of the dome itself is
covered with frescos, which, being very imperfectly lighted, it is
impossible to trace out. Indeed, it is but a twilight region that is
enclosed within the firmament of this great dome, which is actually
larger than that of St. Peter's, though not lifted so high from the
pavement. But looking at the painted windows, I little cared what
dimness there might be elsewhere; for certainly the art of man has never
contrived any other beauty and glory at all to be compared to this.
The dome sits, as it were, upon three smaller domes,--smaller, but still
great,--beneath which are three vast niches, forming the transepts of the
cathedral and the tribune behind the high altar. All round these hollow,
dome-covered arches or niches are high and narrow windows crowded with
saints, angels, and all manner of blessed shapes, that turn the common
daylight into a miracle of richness and splendor as it passes through
their heavenly substance. And just beneath the swell of the great
central dome is a wreath of circular windows quite round it, as brilliant
as the tall and narrow ones below. It is a pity anybody should die
without seeing an antique painted window, with the bright Italian
sunshine glowing through it. This is "the dim, religious light" that
Milton speaks of; but I doubt whether he saw these windows when he was in
Italy, or any but those faded or dusty and dingy ones of the English
cathedrals, else he would have illuminated that word "dim" with some
epithet that should not chase away the dimness, yet should make it shine
like a million of rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and topazes,--bright in
themselves, but dim with tenderness and reverence because God himself was
shining through them. I hate what I have said.
All the time that I was in the cathedral the space around the high altar,
which stands exactly under the dome, was occupied by priests or acolytes
in white garments, chanting a religious service.
After coming out, I took a view of the edifice from a corner of the
street nearest to the dome, where it and the smaller domes can be seen at
once. It is greatly more satisfactory than St. Peter's in any view I
ever had of it,--striking in its outline, with a mystery, yet not a
bewilderment, in its masses and curves and angles, and wrought out with a
richness of detail that gives the eyes new arches, new galleries, new
niches, new pinnacles, new beauties, great and small, to play with when
wearied with the vast whole. The hue, black and white marbles, like the
Baptistery, turned also yellow and brown, is greatly preferable to the
buff travertine of St. Peter's.
From the Duomo it is but a moderate street's length to the Piazza del
Gran Duca, the principal square of Florence. It is a very interesting
place, and has on one side the old Governmental Palace,--the Palazzo
Vecchio,--where many scenes of historic interest have been enacted; for
example, conspirators have been hanged from its windows, or precipitated
from them upon the pavement of the square below.
It is a pity that we cannot take as much interest in the history of
these Italian Republics as in that of England, for the former is much the
more picturesque and fuller of curious incident. The sobriety of the
Anglo-Saxon race--in connection, too, with their moral sense--keeps them
from doing a great many things that would enliven the page of history;
and their events seem to come in great masses, shoved along by the agency
of many persons, rather than to result from individual will and
character. A hundred plots for a tragedy might be found in Florentine
history for one in English.
At one corner of the Palazzo Vecchio is a bronze equestrian statue of
Cosmo de' Medici, the first Grand Duke, very stately and majestic; there
are other marble statues--one of David, by Michael Angelo--at each side
of the palace door; and entering the court I found a rich antique arcade
within, surrounded by marble pillars, most elaborately carved, supporting
arches that were covered with faded frescos. I went no farther, but
stepped across a little space of the square to the Loggia di Lanzi, which
is broad and noble, of three vast arches, at the end of which, I take it,
is a part of the Palazzo Uffizi fronting on the piazza. I should call it
a portico if it stood before the palace door; but it seems to have been
constructed merely for itself, and as a shelter for the people from sun
and rain, and to contain some fine specimens of sculpture, as well
antique as of more modern times. Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus stands
here; but it did not strike me so much as the cast of it in the Crystal
Palace.
A good many people were under these great arches; some of whom were
reclining, half or quite asleep, on the marble seats that are built
against the back of the loggia. A group was reading an edict of the
Grand Duke, which appeared to have been just posted on a board, at the
farther end of it; and I was surprised at the interest which they
ventured to manifest, and the freedom with which they seemed to discuss
it. A soldier was on guard, and doubtless there were spies enough to
carry every word that was said to the ear of absolute authority.
Glancing myself at the edict, however, I found it referred only to the
furtherance of a project, got up among the citizens themselves, for
bringing water into the city; and on such topics, I suppose there is
freedom of discussion.
June 7th.--Saturday evening we walked with U---- and J----- into the
city, and looked at the exterior of the Duomo with new admiration. Since
my former view of it, I have noticed--which, strangely enough, did not
strike me before--that the facade is but a great, bare, ugly space,
roughly plastered over, with the brickwork peeping through it in spots,
and a faint, almost invisible fresco of colors upon it. This front was
once nearly finished with an incrustation of black and white marble, like
the rest of the edifice; but one of the city magistrates, Benedetto
Uguccione, demolished it, three hundred years ago, with the idea of
building it again in better style. He failed to do so, and, ever since,
the magnificence of the great church has been marred by this unsightly
roughness of what should have been its richest part; nor is there, I
suppose, any hope that it will ever be finished now.
The campanile, or bell-tower, stands within a few paces of the cathedral,
but entirely disconnected from it, rising to a height of nearly three
hundred feet, a square tower of light marbles, now discolored by time.
It is impossible to give an idea of the richness of effect produced by
its elaborate finish; the whole surface of the four sides, from top to
bottom, being decorated with all manner of statuesque and architectural
sculpture. It is like a toy of ivory, which some ingenious and pious
monk might have spent his lifetime in adorning with scriptural designs
and figures of saints; and when it was finished, seeing it so beautiful,
he prayed that it might be miraculously magnified from the size of one
foot to that of three hundred. This idea somewhat satisfies me, as
conveying an impression how gigantesque the campanile is in its mass and
height, and how minute and varied in its detail. Surely these mediaeval
works have an advantage over the classic. They combine the telescope and
the microscope.
The city was all alive in the summer evening, and the streets humming
with voices. Before the doors of the cafes were tables, at which people
were taking refreshment, and it went to my heart to see a bottle of
English ale, some of which was poured foaming into a glass; at least, it
had exactly the amber hue and the foam of English bitter ale; but perhaps
it may have been merely a Florentine imitation.
As we returned home over the Arno, crossing the Ponte di Santa Trinita,
we were struck by the beautiful scene of the broad, calm river, with the
palaces along its shores repeated in it, on either side, and the
neighboring bridges, too, just as perfect in the tide beneath as in the
air above,--a city of dream and shadow so close to the actual one. God
has a meaning, no doubt, in putting this spiritual symbol continually
beside us.
Along the river, on both sides, as far as we could see, there was a row
of brilliant lamps, which, in the far distance, looked like a cornice of
golden light; and this also shone as brightly in the river's depths. The
lilies of the evening, in the quarter where the sun had gone down, were
very soft and beautiful, though not so gorgeous as thousands that I have
seen in America. But I believe I must fairly confess that the Italian
sky, in the daytime, is bluer and brighter than our own, and that the
atmosphere has a quality of showing objects to better advantage. It is
more than mere daylight; the magic of moonlight is somehow mixed up with
it, although it is so transparent a medium of light.
Last evening, Mr. Powers called to see us, and sat down to talk in a
friendly and familiar way. I do not know a man of more facile
intercourse, nor with whom one so easily gets rid of ceremony. His
conversation, too, is interesting. He talked, to begin with, about
Italian food, as poultry, mutton, beef, and their lack of savoriness as
compared with our own; and mentioned an exquisite dish of vegetables
which they prepare from squash or pumpkin blossoms; likewise another
dish, which it will be well for us to remember when we get back to
the Wayside, where we are overrun with acacias. It consists of the
acacia-blossoms in a certain stage of their development fried in
olive-oil. I shall get the receipt from Mrs. Powers, and mean to deserve
well of my country by first trying it, and then making it known; only I
doubt whether American lard, or even butter, will produce the dish quite
so delicately as fresh Florence oil.
Meanwhile, I like Powers all the better, because he does not put his life
wholly into marble. We had much talk, nevertheless, on matters of
sculpture, for he drank a cup of tea with us, and stayed a good while.
He passed a condemnatory sentence on classic busts in general, saying
that they were conventional, and not to be depended upon as trite
representations of the persons. He particularly excepted none but the
bust of Caracalla; and, indeed, everybody that has seen this bust must
feel the justice of the exception, and so be the more inclined to accept
his opinion about the rest. There are not more than half a dozen--that
of Cato the Censor among the others--in regard to which I should like to
ask his judgment individually. He seems to think the faculty of making a
bust an extremely rare one. Canova put his own likeness into all the
busts he made. Greenough could not make a good one; nor Crawford, nor
Gibson. Mr. Harte, he observed,--an American sculptor, now a resident in
Florence,--is the best man of the day for making busts. Of course, it is
to be presumed that he excepts himself; but I would not do Powers the
great injustice to imply that there is the slightest professional
jealousy in his estimate of what others have done, or are now doing, in
his own art. If he saw a better man than himself, he would recognize him
at once, and tell the world of him; but he knows well enough that, in
this line, there is no better, and probably none so good. It would not
accord with the simplicity of his character to blink a fact that stands
so broadly before him.
We asked him what he thought, of Mr. Gibson's practice of coloring his
statues, and he quietly and slyly said that he himself had made wax
figures in his earlier days, but had left off making them now. In short,
he objected to the practice wholly, and said that a letter of his on the
subject had been published in the London "Athenaeum," and had given great
offence to some of Mr. Gibson's friends. It appeared to me, however,
that his arguments did not apply quite fairly to the case, for he seems
to think Gibson aims at producing an illusion of life in the statue,
whereas I think his object is merely to give warmth and softness to the
snowy marble, and so bring it a little nearer to our hearts and
sympathies. Even so far, nevertheless, I doubt whether the practice is
defensible, and I was glad to see that Powers scorned, at all events, the
argument drawn from the use of color by the antique sculptors, on which
Gibson relies so much. It might almost be implied, from the contemptuous
way in which Powers spoke of color, that he considers it an impertinence
on the face of visible nature, and would rather the world had been made
without it; for he said that everything in intellect or feeling can be
expressed as perfectly, or more so, by the sculptor in colorless marble,
as by the painter with all the resources of his palette. I asked him
whether he could model the face of Beatrice Cenci from Guido's picture so
as to retain the subtle expression, and he said he could, for that the
expression depended entirely on the drawing, "the picture being a badly
colored thing." I inquired whether he could model a blush, and he said
"Yes"; and that he had once proposed to an artist to express a blush in
marble, if he would express it in picture. On consideration, I believe
one to be as impossible as the other; the life and reality of the blush
being in its tremulousness, coming and going. It is lost in a settled
red just as much as in a settled paleness, and neither the sculptor nor
painter can do more than represent the circumstances of attitude and
expression that accompany the blush. There was a great deal of truth in
what Powers said about this matter of color, and in one of our
interminable New England winters it ought to comfort us to think how
little necessity there is for any hue but that of the snow.
Mr. Powers, nevertheless, had brought us a bunch of beautiful roses, and
seemed as capable of appreciating their delicate blush as we were. The
best thing he said against the use of color in marble was to the effect
that the whiteness removed the object represented into a sort of
spiritual region, and so gave chaste permission to those nudities which
would otherwise suggest immodesty. I have myself felt the truth of this
in a certain sense of shame as I looked at Gibson's tinted Venus.
He took his leave at about eight o'clock, being to make a call on the
Bryants, who are at the Hotel de New York, and also on Mrs. Browning, at
Casa Guidi.