VI
TOMB OF ILARIA DEL CARRETTO
(Detail)
BY JACOPO DELLA QUERCIA
A certain marquis of Carretto, living in Lucca at the close of the fourteenth century, had a daughter named Ilaria. Ilaria was like Helen of Troy, "a daughter of the gods, divinely tall and most divinely fair."[23] Her face was delicately cut in a patrician mould, and she carried her head with the air of a princess. The marquis must have been proud of his beautiful daughter, and as she grew into womanhood he looked about for a suitable match for her. There was little romance about marriages in those days, and when a rich widower sought Ilaria's hand, she was doubtless thought by all a very fortunate maiden.
Her husband, Paolo Guinigi, was the signor or lord of the city of Lucca, and though somewhat despotic in temper was at least without vices. He was besides the richest man in Italy. In his treasury, says the historian, "diamonds and rubies, emeralds and pearls, were counted by hundreds." The palace awaiting the bride was magnificently furnished. There was linen from Paris and other French cities, exquisite in quality and in stores so abundant as to delight the heart of a housewife. The walls were hung with tapestries of many colors woven in Arras. Priceless vessels of gold and silver adorned the table. Nor were signs of learning lacking. There was a library, well stocked with the works of classical authors, written in manuscript in the manner of the times.
So far as surroundings make for happiness Ilaria may well have been a happy woman. We like to fancy her queenly figure moving through the stately apartments of the palace or on the green terraces of the garden. But she did not long enjoy the splendors of her surroundings, for two years after her marriage she died. Her husband then ordered of the sculptor Jacopo della Quercia a marble tomb to be placed in the cathedral. On the sarcophagus lay the portrait figure of the lady herself; the sides were richly carved with cherubs holding festoons of flowers, and above was a canopy.
Ilaria lies with hands crossed just where they would naturally fall in her sleep.[24] Her feet rest against a little dog, which, according to the old writer, Vasari, was an emblem of conjugal fidelity. It is surely no harm to fancy that the little creature was the lady's pet. The gown is girdled high, and falling in long, straight folds, is wrapped about the feet. Over this is worn a mantle made with large, loose sleeves, and a high flaring collar, which comes well up under the chin.[25]
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Alinari, photo.John Andrew & Son, Sc. |
| DETAIL OF TOMB OF ILARIA DEL CARRETTO (JACOPO DELLA QUERCIA) Cathedral, Lucca |
Our illustration shows only the head and shoulders of the figure. The head rests on a pillow in a hollow shaped to receive it, and the shoulders are supported by a second and larger cushion underneath. Ilaria's waving hair is parted over the high brow, and brought down on each side the face, completely concealing the ears. A few short tendrils have escaped, and curl daintily over the forehead. She wears a large flower-wound wreath or crown, set aslant over the shapely head. It may be that this is a sort of head-dress worn in her time. No one can look at the face without thinking of a flower, and most of all of the lily. The mouth is moulded in exquisite curves; Ilaria was, indeed, a bewitching woman.
Had the fair marchioness lived to middle age her fortunes would have been sadly altered. In 1430 there was a political upheaval in Lucca, and Guinigi was driven from the city.[26] His palace was pillaged, and the mob even laid desecrating hands upon Ilaria's tomb. An attempt to remove it seems to have been frustrated, and it was dropped on the floor of the transept, where it now stands. It lost, however, the canopy and one ornamented side of the base.
As a work of art, Ilaria's tomb has been greatly admired by critics. Even in our little picture we can, with no great training, see how well the sculptor has rendered the texture of the hair and the softness of the plump chin. Even the tassels on the cushion are carved with clever imitative skill. We must be careful to look at the face just as the sculptor intended it to be seen, not upright, but lying horizontally. It is only thus that we get the significance of the beautiful continuous line across forehead and nose. The line of the head-dress exactly follows that of the hair, and is drawn at the same angle as the edge of the collar, which it meets. In the triangular space thus formed is fitted the lovely profile of the face. Ruskin has written with much enthusiasm of the merits of Ilaria's tomb. From it, he declared, one may receive "unerring canon of what is evermore lovely and right in the dealing of the art of man with his fate and his passions." Still more helpful is his interpretation of the feeling which the sculptor has conveyed. After first explaining that "every work of the great Christian schools expresses primarily conquest over death," he shows that this particular tomb has "all the peace of the Christian eternity." We may see, he says, "that the damsel is not dead but sleepeth; yet as visibly a sleep that shall know no ending until the last day break and the last shadows flee away."[27]
[23] Tennyson's "A Dream of Fair Women."
[24] Not "folded below her bosom," nor "laid on her breast," as in two familiar descriptions.
[25] That this mantle was a prevailing style of the period among the aristocracy, we judge from an old Spanish painting, in which King Ferdinand of Aragon and his queen both wear it. The picture is reproduced in Carderara's Iconografia Española, and copied in Planché's Cyclopedia of Costumes.
[26] The exact date is here given because of the vagueness of some writers who refer to the event as "not many years" and "within twenty years" after Ilaria's death in 1405.
[27] Quoted by Sydney Colvin in an article on Jacopo della Quercia, in the Portfolio, 1883. See also Modern Painters, Part III.