NOTES OF A TOUR IN CENTRAL ITALY TO WHICH ARE APPENDED A FEW NOTES FROM A LATER TOUR
II
NOTES OF A TOUR IN CENTRAL ITALY
(From a notebook of 1857)
August 20, 1857.
Left town at 8.30 P.M. by South-Eastern Railway for Folkstone. A close push for it, as I was an unwilling auditor of Lord Riverdale in the House of Lords till 7 P.M. I then had a conference with the Bishop of Oxford.
I left them to settle if possible the Divorce question and rushed home just in time to pack and be off. A very quiet passage over to Boulogne was seconded by a weary hour’s waiting at the station before the train started.
We reached Paris at 9.10 and drove to the Hôtel de l’Europe and then wandered about for the day seeing sights. Tried for but could see no good MSS. Drove to the Bois de Boulogne and went to the Pré Catalan, for which I cannot say much. By dint of watering the grass vigorously they get it to look very green, but it is coarse stuff, more like a water meadow in texture than an English lawn. The Pré Catalan without a soul in it except the show men, etc. eating al fresco dinners, is rather slow, so we came back soon. In the afternoon went to the Hippodrome. The best thing probably was the racing between three men each riding a four-in-hand and going at a great pace. Dined at Véfour’s and then off to the station, and in a rash moment, and in submission to the peremptory order of a grand railway clerk, booked ourselves through from Paris to Turin. The train was very full but I rested tolerably well and awoke in the morning just in time to get a glimpse of the cathedral at Tournus.[3] At Mâcon we changed to another train and crossing the Saône turned off toward Geneva; the country invisible in a thick fog till we reached Ambérieu, the junction with the line from Lyons, where it rose sufficiently to disclose an exceedingly picturesque situation. From this point up to Culoz, where we left the line, the country is very wild and beautiful. The railway runs up a very narrow winding valley hemmed in with grand hills, showing here and there fine bold bluffs of rock. The stream, a mountain torrent, was nowhere—but wide banks of well-worn stones show that it is powerful enough after rain or in the winter and spring. At Culoz we embarked on a long and very shaky steamboat, the “Coquette,” and going stern foremost a half mile down the rapid Rhone (here a dirty white colour) we finally turned out of it into a sort of canal which connects the Lac du Bourget with the Rhone. Our steamer was so long that in getting along we invariably just touched land at one end and occasionally at both, but by dint of great energy in the steering and by aid of men who ran along the bank to push us off, we were safely discharged into the lake. The water here is of the blue green which one remembers at Geneva. The banks are precipitous and the lake, though not very large, very pretty. The Dent du Chat on the south-west is a fine hill, and the high bold hill above Culoz stands out to great advantage over the immense, perfectly flat, meadow which occupies the space between the Rhone and the lake, and which to-day is full of haymakers,—I should say some two or three hundred—all hard at work. We embarked at a temporary kind of port called S. Innocent and went thence by railway to Chambéry. Here we stopped for five hours to see the cathedral, wash and eat. The cathedral is of small interest. Its flamboyant west front is fairly good of its kind. On the whole the church wants dignity, and gives the impression of a parish church more than of a cathedral. The castle which rises above the west side of the town has not much old remaining. The chapel is poor flamboyant with some good stained glass in the apse. The king has a fine papered and cushioned gallery at the west end. I looked into one or two other churches but found no old features.
The situation of Chambéry is exquisite. It is hemmed in on all sides by mountains, and their outlines are generally unusually sharp and bold, finishing as many of them do with great bluffs of rock. A figure resting on the fore-quarters of four elephants who spout water from their trunks is the most remarkable modern feature in the city. It is to the memory of General ——[4], a great benefactor. The streets contain few old houses: I saw one of the sixteenth century nearly all windows. The fronts of the shops have the old arrangement of a stone arch the whole width of the front and a bold stone counter.
We left Chambéry at 5.30 P.M. for S. Jean de Maurienne. The scenery as long as we could see it was beautiful, but the clouds were low and at the point where Mont Blanc ought to have been seen they effectually prevented our seeing anything. At S. Jean we took possession of the diligence for Turin and saw nothing till we were well up on the mountain from Lons-le-Bourg. It took us two hours to scale this height, pulled at a slow pace by nine mules and two horses. The ascent was uninteresting but we gradually came upon more and more snow and the pass increased in interest. There is a small lake at the top and a dreary drive across a crest led us to the fine part of the descent. This is, for the last hour and a half before reaching Susa, singularly fine, finer indeed, I am inclined to think, than any descent I have yet seen. The mountains are fine in their outlines, and the road winds backward and forward between chestnut and walnut trees. Susa is mainly remarkable for its beautiful situation among mountains with snowy peaks always in sight, and a burning sun just now. The cathedral has a good campanile of brick and a west front built on by the side of an old Roman gateway, whose scale makes that of the church seem very small. The spire of the cathedral is covered with small pieces of copper (I think) cut like slates. The interior is painted all over in the worst possible taste. Indeed throughout the Sardinian dominions there seems to be a passion for painting shaded imitations of tracery upon walls and groining. Chambéry cathedral is a notable specimen of this and Susa not much better. We left Susa at 8.30 P.M. and reached Turin at 10.30. I expected nothing here and was agreeably disappointed. A city cannot fail to be charming which has at the end of every street such a view, of mountains and snow at one end and hills at the other, as Turin can show. And then, though quite modern, its streets have that narrow picturesque character so universal in Italy, and in every way leave a pleasanter impression than one would expect from maps and descriptions....
The women in Turin wear handkerchiefs on their heads. The streets are some of them arcaded, by arcades filled with stalls of all kinds of wares—but fruit is the staple commodity now. The effect is to make the place look rather shabby and rubbishy. There is not one church of any interest. The view of the city from the opposite bank of the Po is charming, owing to the immense chain of Alps spreading from right to left all behind the city, and the hills above the Po are very respectable, rising as they do about 2000 feet above the city to where they are crowned by the church called the Superga.
We left Turin at 5.30 and reached Genoa at 9.30. The views of the Alps by sunset very charming. At Asti we had a bottle of the effervescing vin d’Asti brought to our carriage, and could not resist indulging in the pleasant draught....
The notes on Genoa appear in the second edition of Brick and Marble.
August 29, Pisa.
My expectations were very high here and were a little disappointed. The Gothic work in the grand group is mainly confined to the Campo Santo and the baptistery, and in the former the traceries are, as Pisano’s always are, very unscientific and more like a confectioner’s work than an architect’s, whilst the latter has undergone such an amount of “restoration” that not one old crocket is left and barely one old piece of tracery. There is abundant evidence however in the Spina chapel and in the few portions of the original marble still left in the Baptistery that Pisano could do his work in a way very different from what we do, and I therefore prefer to think only of what his work once was and not of what it is. The external design is very striking and if the cone above the dome were properly finished with a circle of canopied traceries and figures I have no doubt its effect would be perfect. The traceries, carvings, etc., when looked into are very bad, and it should be seen therefore from a distance. The interior looks much older than the exterior and there can be no doubt that this must be the case, notwithstanding the inscription which says it was “ædificata de novo” in 1728. Unquestionably this must refer to the destruction of the exterior which left the interior all but untouched. The dome is in part covered with red tiles and in part with metal.
The Campo Santo is architecturally not pleasing. Its large traceries, unskilful and long, never at all fit on to the capitals of the shafts that support them—but its great length and size are very effective and the court with its greensward and some tall cypress trees at the centre, the mountains blazing in the sun and the deep blue sky above, combine to make a very charming picture. The great treasure here is the frescoes with which its walls are covered. Orcagna’s great fresco of the Last Judgement quite and more than came up to my hopes. It is a wonderful work and full of exquisitely natural treatment of figures in most delicate colours. The aureole round the figure of our Lord is too green, I think, otherwise the dignity of the figure is unmatched if not unapproachable.
The cathedral is not to my mind a pleasing structure. Like most of the great churches in this part of the world, it is raised on a basement of several steps extending in front of it on every side. It is Romanesque in character throughout, its nave of great height and the crossing covered with a low and ugly tiled dome. The columns between the nave and aisles (there are two aisles on each side) are either antique or closely copied from the antique and have nowhere any trace either in their proportions or sculpture of any really Romanesque character. The columns everywhere have the entasis distinctly developed. All the walls are arcaded externally and striped with black marble. All the Pisan and Luccan buildings are similarly striped and (unlike the architecture at Genoa) the black forms but a very small proportion of the whole wall. It is generally spaced regularly, and introduced at springings and sills of windows and under cornices, and there is no approach even to irregularity in its arrangement. The roof is one of a class of heavy panelled wooden roofs which were common here in the Renaissance period, similar in idea to the roof of the Banqueting House at Whitehall. The aisles are pleasing, vaulted without ribs. In the old glass, of which some quantity remains, the colours are very rich, there is scarcely any white (if any) and the designs are almost entirely made of lead lines and not by painting. The pulpit has two figures and some lions under the columns which were preserved from an older pulpit said to be the work of Giovanni Pisano. The detail of all the ornamental mouldings is completely Roman, the egg and tongue being everywhere finely introduced....
Of domestic buildings Pisa retains very extensive remains, inasmuch as almost every house bears evidence of being mediaeval, but they have been so much cut about that there is little to be seen now at all perfect. There is an elaborate brick and terra cotta front to a house on the Lungarno but it is of very late date—almost Renaissance in much of its detail and very flat, regular, and ineffective.
On the opposite side of the Arno is another old house now used as the Custom House; this is of stone but its traceries and details are poor, very much like those of the Ptolomei palace at Siena. The windows are shafted, but the capitals of the shafts are generally too large for the arch mouldings which they have to support, and the mouldings, if they may be called so, do not unite properly and are singularly ineffective. Most of the old houses seem to have had a row of plain pointed arches rising some twenty feet from the ground line, but I could not make out whether they had been filled in with windows, or whether they belonged to the stage of stables and coach houses so universal in these Italian towns. The work is either brick or stone, but in no case did I see the two materials countercharged.
On the Sunday evening there was a grand procession of a figure of the B. V. M., with a vast number of attendants all with lighted candles, a military band, and a few cavalry to bring up the rear. The view from the lowest bridge looking up the Arno, with the picturesque outlines of the bold hills above Pisa behind the towers, is one of the most charming I remember.
A railway journey from Pisa of an hour brought us to Lucca. The railway cuts some fine hills, and passes by the ruins of a large castle close to the station before Lucca.
Lucca is entirely enclosed within elaborate brick fortifications, there being, I think, no vestige of suburbs on any side. The ramparts are well planted with trees, and the view of them from below, giving an impression of the tall walls covered with trees and these surmounted by the tall towers of the town, is fine. The view of the surrounding mountains is, too, very exquisite.
Of course our first object was the cathedral. Its west front need hardly be described. Its detail is very rich and beautiful and there is a great deal of very good inlaid work. In the upper part subjects from field sports are introduced, whilst lower down they are mainly geometrical patterns. Some of the shafts are inlaid. The three great arches which stretch across this front give a dignity to it in which S. Michele, Lucca, Pisa cathedral, and the other imitations, are quite wanting. They are remarkable for the way in which their arches are treated; these are semicircular and the width of the voussures is two or three times as great at the crown as at the springing—the effect is good. An image is cut in the right-hand upper end of this front.
All the walls and arches are partially striped with black, the black courses being very thin with a considerable space between them. The north and south walls of the nave and transepts are cased in much later work than the west front and are good specimens of Italian pointed of the thirteenth century. The carving of foliage in this work is very bad and what little moulding there is hardly looks like the work of Gothic men. There is a good inlaid string-course under the windows. A fine campanile stands a little in advance of the south-west angle of the cathedral. It is of Romanesque date and built of brownish rough stone below and of white stone (or marble) above; it is of very considerable height and effect. The interior is certainly grand but disappointing—almost all the arches are semicircular but (as the groining bays are not square) the wall ribs of the groining bays are pointed, and this gives in some way a general effect of pointed to the whole work. The main arches are round, but they were so covered with red hangings that it was impossible to see much of them. The triforium is of great height and consists in each bay of two round-head windows, filled in with slight tracery—the whole is of poor character and badly proportioned. Above these two windows is a small circular window which serves for clerestory. The groining of the nave is painted richly. It has broad borders next the ribs and the wall is painted blue, and figures in the centre of each painted in a circle. The borders have a good many white lines, but there is no gold in any part of the work.
The planning of the transepts is very singular. They are divided by an arcade down the centre, and as the nave arcades and triforia are continued across them some singular combinations are produced. The pavements have small compartments of Italian fifteenth century geometrical patterns in mosaic, surrounded by square arrangements of plain black and white.
Close to the cathedral is S. Giovanni, which, though not otherwise remarkable, has an immense baptistery built on against its north transept; it is a square of about fifty-seven feet internally and covered with a square vault of a domical form. The old font has been removed.
Near the south end of the cathedral is the little chapel of S. Maria della Rosa. It is a small low building of about the proportions of the Spina chapel, and mainly remarkable for the window tracery in its side wall. This is, like all other tracery hereabouts, unpalatable to me. The windows are shafted and I suppose therefore that they must have had their glass put in frames inside. This seemed to have been the case in the Spina chapel. There are dates of 1309 and 1333 on the building, the latter on part of a door which in England I should venture to call Renaissance. We could not get inside but saw through a window that the interior had been completely modernized....
When we reached Siena we found the station elaborately decorated with wreaths and flowers in pots, banners, and every possible kind of railway utensil (even portions of engines), and all in honor of the Pope who had left that morning for Città della Pieve on his way home after a tour through various parts of Italy. He seemed to have been greatly fêted at Siena.
Siena is situated on the irregular summit of a considerable hill. All streets are up and down and in some places very precipitous. A sort of natural amphitheatre in the centre of the city—the Piazza del Campo—is the chief point round which the rest is built, containing the Palazzo Pubblico, a grand Gothic building, out of the end of which soars the finest campanile, after that at Verona, that I have seen. On the circle of the Campo opposite the Palazzo Pubblico are some old houses but not any of special interest. The Palazzo Pubblico is of the usual type of brick buildings here and very regular.... The campanile is brick without break or ornament of any kind for a great height, and then is boldly corbelled forward on all sides; the whole of the work is in stone. The arches of the machicoulis, the bands round them, and some older parts, are rendered much more distinct by the introduction of lines of black marble. Seen by a bright moonlight this campanile possesses such an exquisite contour that nothing can be much more beautiful. The contrasts of colours too are most admirably arranged, and the exceeding simplicity of the lower part cannot be too much praised.
A considerable ascent leads from the Campo to the east end of the cathedral. This has a central door and on entering you find a small chapel under the altar of the cathedral gained out of the slope of the ground. The detail of this chapel and of the east end of the cathedral above it is by far the best example of Gothic work in the city. There are all kinds of things which, to an eye used to the exceptional skill and care in fitting one part to another usual among northern architects, are very unscientific-looking, but nevertheless this work is original in its character and certainly beautiful in its effect. It is of white marble striped sparingly with black. A flight of steps leads up from the east end to a north doorway in the east wall of the immense unfinished work which, though in the position of a south transept, would really have been rather larger than the existing nave of the cathedral.
This south transept is quite unfinished though very considerably advanced. Its south wall shows that the vaulting was to have been semicircular in section like that of the nave. The proportions of the whole are very bold and fine.... The rest of the exterior has been much modernized. The west front is much like that of Orvieto but I don’t know how much is original. There is very little in it which I should accept as really pointed architecture. The foliage and the feeling of the whole is very Renaissance and the steep gables are all sham and are very unpleasantly conspicuous in a distant general view of the church. The campanile, coursed in black and white in nearly even proportions (two courses of white material for one course of colours), is Romanesque, of very great height, and follows the usual rule of increasing its number of openings in each stage. It is capped with square spirelets at the angles, and a low octagon spire, I think of stone—this I thought had crockets, but I found they were only some arrangements for illumination in honour of the Pope’s visit.... Internally the church has been painfully modernized; a row of Popes’ heads—about as artistic as a row of barber’s blocks—is ranged all round above the nave arcade, and the whole of the church has been plastered and painted in the most abominable manner. The walls are striped in exactly equal courses (about eight and a half inches in height) of black and white. The effect is certainly too bizarre. There are no good specimens of carving, and the detail of groining ribs, arches, etc., is hopelessly bad. All of the pavements are covered with subjects formed by inlaying and incising the marbles which compose them. There is a certain grandeur in the completeness of the idea but the effect is not good....
We spent some hours to great advantage in the Accademia. The collection of pictures of the early Sienese school is wonderfully rich and gave me a very high idea of the power of some of the men whose names one does not often hear.
There are three or four tondos similar to that at San Domenico and a considerable number of reredoses of various sizes. A favorite subject is the B. V. M., surrounded by saints in the outer compartments. Nothing can exceed the beauty of some of the angels. In all, the wood seems to have had canvas laid on it which was prepared with a thick layer of size, and on this gold was laid all over preparatory to painting. In some the colour has peeled off and left the gold with lines for the outline of the figures scratched on it. Generally speaking the preservation of the colours in these pictures is something quite marvellous, not a crack being visible anywhere; may this be attributed to the gold ground?
The later pictures are not so interesting nor is the collection of them so complete as it is of the others. Room III is that in which the work is most beautiful. There were several students at work drawing from the life, and in one of the rooms all the designs submitted in competition for prizes were exhibited. The architectural designs were generally very commonplace but one or two for a holy-water stoup showed power of drawing and some fancy. Renaissance is the only style thought of....
September 2.
The view from Cortona is very fine, over the broad Val de Chiana with the end of Lake Thrasimene full in view, and the irregular mountain outlines of Monte Cortona and other heights filling up the whole of the background.
We left after only two hours’ pause and soon reached the head of the lake. We were busy making out all the sites of the battle (which may be done with great vividness), when we reached the Papal dogana. There were two difficulties—first, my passport was improperly viséd but this I got over; and second, our driver had no visé at all, and it was half an hour before he was allowed to take us on as far as the next village under strict promise to come back again at once. It rained heavily as we started and we lost some of the beauty of this the best part of our drive. Thrasimene is a grand sheet of water but wants some striking feature on its banks, some jutting out rocks or mighty hills plunging perpendicularly into its depths, to make it thoroughly attractive. Now it has a deserted look: its banks are not grand and yet no houses or villages show there and one gets a rather gloomy impression. The place at which we changed our horse, Pasignano, is a miserable Italian village,—and how miserable that is I can hardly say—with its fair proportion of beggars, i.e., every one whose eye you catch holds out a hand immediately for a mezzo baioccho. It is prettily situated, and, as one of the places at which vetturini stop on the road to Rome, ought to be rather better favoured as to an inn. The only one did not look promising and we preferred fasting to trying it. A few miles more and we left the lake, and aided by two bullocks climbed a steep hill above its banks, reached the cathedral and village of Magione, and drove the rest of the way by moonlight to Perugia where we were heartily glad to find ourselves at 10.30 P.M. very ready for something to eat.
September 4.
Lucca in its flat, surrounded by mountains, Pisa grand with water and hills, Genoa with the blue Mediterranean at its feet, Siena on its lofty though arid hills, and Arezzo with its fine prospect of cultivated valley girt with hills, must all, lovely as they are, give way to Perugia, seated on the irregular summit of a mountain, looking one way toward Thrasimene and Monte Cortona, another toward the irregular peaks of the Appenines, a third down the rich flat valley of the Tiber, and last of all toward the noble mountain against whose streaked side stands whitely shining in the distance the object of many an artistic as well as many a religious aspiration, the shrine of the great saint of Assisi. Add to this beauty of situation a beauty of atmosphere which we never dream of in England, and the picture is complete.
Certainly since we have been here this has been no land of cloudless blue skies. We have had glorious weather, and yet without any doubt the most glorious cloud scenery we have ever known anywhere. Sometimes a violent storm in the distance and another close at hand, sunsets short in duration but brilliant to excess while they last, and in midday a purple, blue or violet tint over every portion of the wonderful landscape....
September 6.
We started at 5.30 A.M. for Assisi.... The sacristan took us up through the sacristy by a staircase which opens into the north transept of the upper church. From the gloom of the lower church to the flood of coloured light in the upper the contrast is very great. The latter is in all respects one of the most joyous buildings I have ever seen, bold, nervous and simple in its design, exquisitely harmonious in all its colouring, and in most respects unharmed by the hand of the restorer. Obviously however the frescoes on the roof are losing their colour and being gradually washed out. This is not difficult to account for when one sees the state of the outer roof of the church, which, I have no doubt, admits an ample supply of wet at the top of the groining. The upper church is used only on some few great days during the year and is I suppose even less cared for. It gave me a pang to be shown into such a building by a door in a corner, to see the principal door permanently closed, grass growing thick upon the dreary piazza in front of it: it was even more mournful, I think, than is the sad solitude of the great group at Pisa.
I am much puzzled by the interior of this upper church. I cannot get out of my head the impression that they [the two “churches”] were designed and in part executed by Frenchmen. The detail of the groining piers and their capitals and bases are so peculiarly and characteristically French that (seeing how very different Italian work of the same date was) I cannot believe that they were ever wrought by Italian hands from French designs, because sculpture of foliage was just one of these things in which the character of different schools was so marked that it was impossible to get any but Frenchmen to do such work as this. Above this point I do not feel the same thing because I see that the window traceries, though very fair, have a feature peculiar to Italian Gothic—in the way in which the circles, etc., in the tracery are put under the main arch, just touching but not uniting with it. The string under the windows has for a considerable portion of its length a complete English dog-tooth. The whole of the walls are painted. Below the string-course, which is very high from the floor, is, first a painted imitation of hangings (much like our thirteenth century patterns) in which the diaper is continued regularly without reference to folds in the draperies; then a row of noble frescoes by Giotto; and above the string on each side of the windows other frescoes by Cimabue. The roof is by the latter, and the groining bays are alternately blue studded with stars, and frescoed in subjects. The latter have a predominance in the ground of a rich chrome—reddish yellow—and the ribs throughout are bordered with wide patterned borders. The contrast of colours is admirable and finer than anything I have seen. The borders round the work done by Giotto are very inferior to those in Cimabue’s work. The latter[5] are all severely flat and geometrical, indulging, after a few feet of plain pattern, in a quatrefoil
or one inscribed on a square, painted with a head on a blue ground. Giotto’s, on the other hand, though in some respects very beautiful, indulge too much in perspective, e.g. each division between the groining piers is divided into the subjects by painted and shaded imitations of twisted columns bearing cornices. There are some features of interest in the work beyond the exquisite beauty. To me it was new to find Cimabue painting with so little rudeness and so much magnificent simplicity and breadth of purpose. I note another of Giotto’s frescoes is interesting as showing the original use of the painted roods of which we have seen so many. I think there can be little doubt they were to be placed on the rood-screen, as he distinctly shows them, and, curiously, I find in this upper church the two ends of the ancient rood-beam sawn off a foot from the wall. This was a few feet west of the crossing. The transepts, altar and stalls are all modern in their arrangements.
Externally there is nothing to notice save the fine west door and circular window over it, of a type peculiar so far as I have seen to the churches of Assisi. The glass in the nave windows is certainly old and good, very little white introduced.
After seeing this most interesting building well, we betook ourselves to the not very easy work of climbing about the city to see the other churches. The whole place is as decayed, forlorn and dirty as the smallest and rudest of fishing villages in the worst out-of-the-way parts of Cornwall, spread out to ten times the extent. Old walls remain nearly all round, with gateways, and at the highest point the picturesque ruin of a castle.
The west end of the cathedral is fine and the campanile by its side is also of noble size and good character though built with very rough stone....
September 7.
We left Perugia this morning at 6 A.M. in the banquette of the diligence for Arezzo. The day was charming so that we enjoyed the ride thoroughly, though we had done it all so lately on our way to Perugia.
Here I shall note down a few of the things we have discovered on the road:—
Hay and corn stacks are all made round a tall pole fixed in the ground. Another piece of wood nailed across often converts this into a cross over the corn.
In Arezzo cathedral during tierce a black cat was howling about the cathedral in a most ludicrous manner. It belongs to the church and is always howling about, sitting on altars, and so forth. Foreigners never care about taking animals into church with them. Dogs are special church-goers in Italy!
About Perugia the women’s costume is good: white sleeves, blue skirt, pink bodice and bright handkerchief over the head. The women usually wear immense straw hats about two feet six inches in diameter, generally pinned on to the back of the head and flapping back to shade none of the face. Between Arezzo and Florence the women often wear round beaver hats with broad flat brims—and very ugly they are. Women carry a fan instead of a parasol. Women in Genoa wear white veils.
The staple production of much of Tuscany, Siena, and the Papal States seems to be olives. The trunks of the trees are always very old, crushed down in the centre and sometimes two or three feet in diameter. The branches are young wood and always trained out so as to leave a hollow circle in the centre. The colour is a very blue green and as they are planted everywhere in lines and at regular intervals, they do not improve either the near or the distant view of the landscape. Maple trees are trained in the same way for the purpose of growing vines. The vines are festooned sometimes from tree to tree and at others festooned round the tree itself.
The ploughs here are very clumsy, they have a very heavy wooden frame with an iron shoe put on in front. It does not turn the dirt over but only digs a rough furrow in the ground. Oxen are always used for all agricultural work. They are ringed through the nose and a cord, fastened to this ring and passing under a rope between the horns, serves as a rein. The carts are so made that they are loaded far out on the pole to the shoulder of the men.
All houses here have a pigeon house raised above the roof. On it are painted some flying pigeons on a white ground. It is generally a large construction and looks like a look-out room at first.
It is curious that we never see a bird flying about, yet we eat at dinner every day portions of two or three. Where do they all come from?
All the houses are built over stables.
Wayside churches seem almost always to have a small window on each side of their western door protected by a grating and with a shutter inside. Often there is an arcaded porch above.
September 8.
We left Arezzo at 6 A.M. in the diligence for Florence. With such a bourne the pace of an Italian diligence is very aggravating—five and a quarter miles an hour is the average speed, and the poor wretches of horses have to go stages of twenty miles without stopping. The road is very interesting. It passes nearly all the way through hilly country rich in olives and vines and with the grand outlines of the Appenines in the immediate neighborhood. I saw not one architectural feature in the entire journey. We passed through two or three small towns busy with festivities in honour of the Nativity of the B. V. M. but their churches seemed to be all modern.
After passing ——[6] we recommenced a long ascent and aided by four mules and ponies achieved the highest point after about two hours of the hardest work under the hottest of suns. Here I caught a glimpse of Florence in the distance; but about three miles further the whole city suddenly opened to the view, filling up the valley of the Arno with its campanile and dome thrown out grandly by a passing shadow upon the delicate blue and violet tints of the Pistojese mountains in the background. Fiesole was on our right and the whole country between it and Florence seemed to be dotted over with villas, looking gay and lovely in the brilliant sunshine. Behind Fiesole a long hill of rich reddish brown stood out from the rest and afforded by its contrast with the other colours of the landscape as complete a whole as can be imagined. It is in vain to describe such a view: it is the most exquisite of the kind that I have ever seen, and words cannot carry the impression of an effect not produced solely by facts but in part undoubtedly by sentiment.
A long drive through suburbs brought us to an old gate (shorn of its old Florentine machicoulis, however) where we were detained nearly half an hour about our passports and luggage, and this done we soon arrived at our inn, crossing the Arno by the Ponte alle Grazie and passing in our way the Palazzo Vecchio, Or San Michele and Giotto’s tower. The latter was looked for eagerly and rewarded my anxious eyes. It is certainly the most lovely piece of building I have ever seen. I shall say no more but go on to journalize on the buildings as I am able....
Street’s appreciation of Florence was intelligent, ardent, and characteristic, but is, more than any other of his notes, a journal intime. I have respected his sincerities.
September 13.
We spent the whole of the afternoon very profitably at Pistoia. The cathedral has not much architectural character. The west front has a good simple Romanesque door and an open arcade all across in front. At the north-west stands a very lofty and massive campanile, plain below but arcaded richly above with arcades that have the appearance of being put on in front of the real tower instead of helping to support it. They have semicircular arches and then have their tympana filled in with chequer patterns in white and black marble. The whole of this arcaded part of the steeple is coursed in alternate white and dark green: the lower part is of stone. Internally the cathedral has little to show. There is a moderately good monument near the west end to a professor who is represented lecturing; no mark of his religious faith (I think) is introduced.[7] ... Opposite the cathedral’s west front stands the fine baptistery. This is octangular in plan and built in equal courses of white and dark marble. Its external effect is very good indeed. It has a western door[8] and north and south doors and a small chancel projected on the west side. The design recalls in some respects the baptistery at Pisa and must have been built about the time that was altered. The interior unfortunately is as plain and bare as whitewash can make it. The great octangular font in the centre is of the same kind of work as the screens at S. Miniato, Byzantine in the character of its sculpture, but delicate and elaborate in its detail and altogether a good specimen: it is executed mainly in white marble....
In another church, S. Bartolomeo, I found a pulpit (also dated, etc.) made by Guido da Como in 1250. This is square in plan, supported partly in the wall and partly on three shafts, two of which rest on lions’ backs and the third on a sitting figure of a woman. The sculpture is rude but vigorous. The whole of the sides is covered with subjects, and at the angles are three figures, or rather one figure with two others looking out from behind him. The subjects are described by inscriptions under each in Latin.
Going from here to the church of S. Giovanni Evangelista, we saw a similar pulpit of later date and superior workmanship but evidently very closely copied from the work in S. Bartolomeo. The two angle columns remain, both resting on lions’ backs. The lions have been turned round so as both to face the west wall,—a most ridiculous position. It is clear indeed that all of these pulpits have been taken down and reconstructed. In this work the central column at S. Giovanni has been taken away. It seems to me that this pulpit at S. Bartolomeo is the prototype of all those for which the Pisani have so much credit. Giovanni Pisano is said to have sculptured the pulpit in S. Giovanni and if so (and I think it seems probable) he simply copied the older work. I do not know what the pulpit of S. Andrea is like, but I have little doubt that it was really from this pulpit that they obtained their idea for all their very similar works.
The south front of S. Giovanni is arcaded in the Pisan fashion (with lozenge panels in the arches) and above arcaded with two rows of elaborate arcading. The whole elevation is remarkable in its effect. The roof is of the usual type, with long tie-beams, and quite flat in pitch....
We were followed about everywhere here by two very dirty and very ragged urchins who took us to see everything. They knew about the pulpits, talked about Luca della Robbia, etc., and when I gave them an indivisible coin, about which they quarrelled, they settled the matter by putting it into the poor box. How unlike any English boys altogether! We were immensely amused by their sharp impudence.
The inn at Pistoia looked out on green shrubs and gardens, very pleasant: the consequence was not so pleasant—the being kept awake half the night and bitten in all directions by our troublesome enemies the mosquitoes. We had to turn out early to join the diligence which arrived by railway from Florence at 7.30 A.M. We made a brilliant start but very soon altered our pace, the road beginning to ascend almost immediately, and then for about four hours we toiled slowly up the slopes of the Appenines, at first with six and afterwards with eight horses. The day was fine but misty so that we lost very much of the distant view. The scenery is fine but not alpine. It reminded me more of the Jura, save that the hills seem here more to be shaken confusedly about and not to range themselves into regular lines or masses. The olive tree was seen for the last time as we went up and then we came through great numbers of Spanish chestnuts, and lastly for half an hour at most through a bleak, open and treeless country.
The descent was very different, down a narrow valley, following the windings of the mountain stream, with fine combinations of scenery and views. Stopped at La Porretta for dinner, and then on through a fine country but along a miserable road constantly crossing the (now dry) beds of mountains torrents. The soil is exceedingly liable to land slips and seems to be sliding about in all directions—of course road-making is difficult. At Vergato, a small village or town on this part of the road, the old Palazzo Pubblico was passed, covered with coats of arms in the usual way and distinguished by its Ringhiera still perfect and jutting out into the narrow street. We reached Bologna at 8 P.M. A wall and gate was passed about a mile from the town; I could not understand what wall it was.
September 15.
S. Petronio is the grandest church in Bologna. Its west front is of immense size and width but left nearly all in rough brick, the door and basement alone being finished. This part of the work is of poor character and the sculpture[9] (except in a stela on the south-west door which I thought very vigorous) not particularly good. The interior is magnificent....
S. Francesco is one of the finest churches in the town but shabby and decayed outside and “painted and decorated” to such an extent inside as to have destroyed nearly all its good effect. I never saw anything more vile. The whole church is of brick and it has an apsidal east end with an aisle all round the apse and chapels beyond. The buttresses are “flying” but very heavy. The west door is good and indeed the whole west front is striking. The windows are new but appeared to me to be probably copies of the original windows. The campanili are curious. There are two—one much smaller than the other and both on the south side of the choir. They form a curious combination in the views from the east....
September 16.
The ride to Ferrara was very uninteresting—about four and a half hours; we had left the hills altogether and saw nothing at all of any distant country. The land was rich with vines, mulberry trees and rice plantations, but certainly not picturesque. The grapes were being picked, and we met everywhere here and in Bologna waggons bearing magnificent casks for the reception of the grapes. These carts have a great beam from back to front elaborately carved and ornamented with colour, and wheels also carved and ornamented. They are really very handsome and put one in mind of the framework for guns of Queen Elizabeth’s time. They are always drawn by white oxen.
Here the Brick and Marble volume takes up the tale. To 1872 belongs a notebook particularly spirited in text and drawings. It opens:
1872—With M. S. and Jessie Holland (afterwards J. M. A. Street)
February 24.
Left London at 8.35, and reached Paris at 7 A.M. ...
Towns generally built on hills. Curious number of churches in which the tower and spire at one end and a very high choir at the other have a low nave between them. The scenery has the large French character, owing to absence of hedgerows and the very long lines of trees—generally lanky poplars closely set. Just before Dijon, at Plombières, I saw a very pretty tiled spire, tiles of golden yellow, green, etc., very rich and charming in colour;—green not at all blue-green.
Reached Mâcon at 8.30 and after coffee walked out to try to see something. Moon rose beautifully over the opposite side of the Saône, here a very fine looking river. Walked about nearly in vain but came at last on remains of a church of some interest.[10] It has two octagonal towers, the lower part of which seems to be Romanesque, and a nave of some forty feet long with an enormous central doorway of the fifteenth century, and aisle arches on each side of it (now glazed) of the twelfth century,—choir entirely destroyed, and a small cloister arcade built up in front. The whole has been all but destroyed and then I suppose just patched up by some good-intentioned antiquary. It is (at least in the dark) an architectural puzzle.
February 25.
Called at 4.30 and off by train for Genoa via Turin at 6 A.M. As we left and crossed the Saône saw that the church I had discovered last night was the only old looking church, and that the cathedral is an entirely new stone building. It was a fine frosty morning and we could do no more than keep ourselves warm by shutting up windows, and so seeing but little through the hoar frost on the glass.
At Culoz we had a second breakfast and found the hills all about us suddenly looking like mountains owing to the snow on all their higher points. When we came back from Geneva last year, fresh from the Alps, we hardly deigned to look at them, and to-day they seem to all of us about as lovely and grand as they could be. At Culoz we changed carriages and then, keeping by the pretty Lac du Bourget, were soon at Chambéry, and then all the way to Modane we entertained ourselves by the discovery, first on one side then on the other, of snow mountains of the first magnitude! At Modane carriages are changed again for Italy, passports are examined, and then we start for the tunnel. The railway runs round Lons-le-Bourg, where we used to take sledges for the Mont Cenis, and then ascends winding round until the mountain above Modane is reached. Here the tunnel begins and we were just twenty-six minutes passing through it. I promised every one spring, oranges in fruit, and trees in full foliage when we really reached Italy; but it was just the opposite, for there was more snow, by very much, when we reached Bardonnecchia than when we left Modane. We caught one or two views of churches and I just managed to secure a note of Susa seen in the most picturesque way far below us. We reached Turin at 6.42, got some dinner at the railway station and had some much too sweet vin d’Asti, and started again at 7.35 for Genoa, where we arrived at midnight.
February 29, Genoa.
A glorious morning welcomed us to this most delightful town. It was really like summer and the views in all directions were most exquisite. Even before I got up I saw through my window the beautiful outline of the mountains of the Riviera all covered with snow, and just a line of the blue Mediterranean above and beyond the crowd of vessels below us in the port. We had rooms at Feder’s hotel—now Trombetta’s—and our bedroom had an oratory in it with a very elaborately carved altar, etc., which has been not very reverently turned now into a sleeping room.
I spent most of my day at the new English church directing the workmen, etc. Lunched with the Shelbells, but did not see Brown the consul, who had gone off to a castle he had bought near Sestri. The church looks fairly well, but it is difficult to make anything lofty enough to compete with the enormous houses which it is the fashion to build now in Genoa and with which it is surrounded.
Walked a little about the city: into the Via Nuova which is straight for the greater part of its length (instead of curved as I fancied)—up and down the goldsmith’s street which seems always to lead to everything—into the cathedral and some of my other old friends among the churches. Noticed particularly the sumptuous effect which the painted palaces produce. The palace now used by the British consul is covered outside with painting, a good deal of which remains in fair condition whilst the two arcades round the courtyard are in a very fairly perfect state. The doors to the houses in Genoa had commonly an oblong panel of sculpture over them. These were cut in slate at or near Savona. The Gothic houses here have arcades below, and corbel tables under the second floor, and the windows divided into lights by very delicate shafts. The best samples are the Doria houses close to S. Matteo.
We left Genoa at 9.00 by steamer for Livorno. The boat was small and full of passengers, but I slept well on the floor of the cabin till we reached our port soon after 5 A.M.
March 1.
Started by the 9.12 train for Empoli. Murray describes Empoli in such terms as made us feel no regret at having to stop there those three hours. Unfortunately his description turned out to be all wrong, and we found but little to see or sketch. The best thing there is the steeple of the collegiata. The front of this church is a work of about 1600 in white marble and serpentine. And the Pallei building opposite to it is entirely seventeenth century, but has some wall painting outside which somewhat redeems its otherwise uninteresting walls.
Our train left Empoli at 2.25 and did not reach Orvieto till nearly 10. During the first part of the journey I was well employed making sketches from the windows of the carriage of Certaldo, S. Gemignano, etc. We caught some beautiful glimpses of Siena as we dashed by, and then as we passed through the wretched country just to the south of it, we gradually lost the daylight, and slept away the hours till Orvieto was reached. Here the station by daylight looks just under the town, but it took us forty minutes to drive up.
March 2, Orvieto.
I was out before breakfast and spent a long, busy, and happy day here. The town is perched on the top of a rock which is on most sides a precipice at first and then a long slope carries the eye on to the river and valleys at the bottom. Beyond on all sides are distant hills to be seen, one of them very picturesque in outline. In summer it must be a perfect view, but now the olives are the only trees in leaf, and their colour is so sad that it does not do much for the landscape.
The old walls exist round much of the town. They are generally set back a few feet from the edge of the rock so as to leave a passage outside, which in its turn is defended by battlements built on the cliff. The lay of the ground reminds one of Toledo, but the country is more open, and the river is not a Tagus and does not produce much effect on the landscape. The views which may be had from various points of the rocks and walls are, however, superb, and I have seldom seen anything more striking. On the other hand there is no building of sufficient importance in the town to give the best effect to the views. The cathedral, not having any tower, produces but little general effect, and the only towers are some of the plain square family fortress towers like these sketched at S. Gemignano.
MASTER MATTHEW’S PORCH AT SANTIAGO
The cathedral more than fulfilled my expectations. The west front is in its way very beautiful, delicate and refined—perhaps over-refined everywhere, and beautiful in the symmetry of its arrangement. But it is still not a great success. My great interest here is in the sculpture of the piers between and at the sides of the doors. First of all, I must say that they strike me as too small and delicate for their place. This is their one fault. If they were to be there they ought to be, as they are, small and in low relief so as not to interfere with the flatness and look of strength in the walls. The sculpture in the northern pier—the days of creation—is perhaps the most beautiful of the four. Nothing can be much more refined in feeling or treatment. The heads are a little exaggerated. The next pier which contains the succession of the seed of Abraham seems to me to be altogether inferior to the others. The third and fourth (from the north) are equal, or nearly, to the first, though a little more crowded. In the last the figure of our Lord surrounded by an aureole of angels, in the Last Judgement, is beautifully designed. The foliage decorations of all this work are very natural in their treatment and extraordinarily skilful. The play of relief in leaves, whose extreme projection from the face of the marble is often not more than an eighth of an inch, is of the most delicate, subtle and artistic description. Contrast the skill with which it is treated with the workmanship in the south door, and the difference of power will be seen.
The interior is very large and simple—the architectural detail generally very poor. Columns (large cylinders with exaggerated capitals of queer semi-classic detail) carrying alternated arches, show the characteristic faults of the Pisan school of architects. The clerestory has long, simple, traceried windows, and the best detail is in the east window, which has good geometrical tracery, is of very long proportion, and is filled with stained glass of beautiful design—subjects in square panels. The effect of its colour is perfect. All round it are paintings by Agnolino of Orvieto, not very fresh now, but giving a colour of the most tender kind to the interior, to which the simple black and white striped construction of the columns and walls leads the eye up gradually and well. In the east window the glass is divided into small panels. There are four lights but in spite of the irregularity caused by this even number the grounds of the subjects are all countercharged, alternately ruby and blue....
What Street said, and what he thought, of Siena and Orvieto, is nearly unique. At Viterbo and Toscanella, he could only see and feel the first what others have since made familiar. Corneto is less known.
March 4.
Looking back to Viterbo I saw it lighted up with beautiful effect by a sudden burst of sunshine. Its towered walls were in deep shade whilst a cloud of light, wind-started from the town behind, caught the bright sunshine and seemed to set the steeples of the town in a sort of halo. Behind rose the high mountain and to the left of this, in the far distance, a line of snow-capped mountains which added immensely to the beauty of the view. This open country is very charming—clouds casting their shadows here and there and a horizon always lovely in the pure colour of the mountains or hills which fringe it. All the way we had Montefiascone in full view.
Corneto stands on a steep hill above the marshy flat which borders the Mediterranean. Its old walls and towers standing generally on a rocky base give it a very imposing appearance, but its interest seems to be mainly Etruscan. The inn at which we stopped made amends for any lack in the churches by its extremely good character. It is of late fourteenth century work, but the internal courtyard with its open arcades on two sides is most beautiful. The front towards the street shows in some of its detail and especially in the construction of the masonry in its upper portion, the influence of the Renaissance. The building formed originally three sides of a quadrangle with a passage-way corbelled out on the wall which forms the fourth side. The lower storeys have fine open arcades, and the third a series of delicate shafts with very effective capitals oblong in plan, carrying a white marble lintel under the wall plate. The whole scheme is one of extreme beauty and has much of the effect of being earlier in date than it really is....
With a few notes on Rome, and the exquisite drawing of a living acanthus leaf at Paestum, the book dies away into a sort of Journal, that records talks with the Bishop of Gibraltar and Père Hyacinth,—“I found him very pleasant and intelligent.”