S. Pietro.
Very different in every way is the church of S. Pietro, which one reaches after passing through the gate of Porta Romana. “The Basilica of S. Pietro is so adorned with beauties,” says its faithful, but perhaps too fond, biographer, “that it would suffer and be overburdened were others added to it.” The praise is certainly high, but it has a certain grain of truth, and the church of S. Pietro, is, amongst the churches of Perugia, a jewel of inestimable price, for unlike all the others it has been left with all its treasures and its pictures in it (see note, p. 163).
The church and monastery of S. Pietro are built on the hill of Capraio or Calvary, which stretches away to the south of the town. They form the first object which catches the eye as one approaches the city on the line from Rome; they serve as a sure landmark from many distant points of Umbria, and one cannot stay long in the city without becoming sincerely attached to the beautiful group of pale brick buildings, crowned by their graceful campanile, which catch the sunrise and the sunset lights, and fascinate one’s fancy at every time and season.
It is difficult to decide the date of the first church of S. Pietro. Tradition says that it is built on the site of an old Etruscan temple, and that it was the first Christian building of Perugia, certainly it was the first cathedral. We hear that the earliest Christians of Perugia used to meet in subterranean passages under the present church of S. Costanzo, which stands on the same spur of hill as that of S. Pietro, and that there S. Costanzo, the second Bishop of Perugia, gathered his little flock together to “feed them with the milk of the holy word of God.” We know that the present basilica was built by a certain Abbot, Pietro Vincioli, a monk of the Benedictine order, who lived in the tenth century, and was a great friend of the Emperor Otto III. Bonazzi gives a delightful description of this Abbot and of his method of building and the miracles he employed for the purpose. It seems that Pietro was famous for his great sanctity and learning, and that he lived at a time when everybody imagined that the world was about to come to an end:
“He had rich friends, the Emperor among them, and the latter, who entertained the general superstition about the end of the world, gave him a great deal of money, with which the Abbot determined to build for himself the present church of S. Pietro. The Pope, the Emperor, and many other persons showered down donations and privileges for the purpose, and the new Benedictine monastery soon became celebrated, and its monks took an active and important part in the affairs of Perugia.... Although S. Pietro was of a somewhat surly temper,” continues Bonazzi, “he had the gift of miracles, and once when the Tiber was in heavy flood, and a mill belonging to the convent was threatened with destruction, the saint caused the waters to subside. On another occasion during the building of S. Pietro, the ropes which were raising one of the columns snapped in two, and the Saint caused the column to remain suspended in mid air until new ropes were brought, so that nobody was hurt. This particular column is the second on the left as you enter.... It is impossible to imagine,” Bonazzi continues, “how great was the sensation caused by these miracles, and for the time being, nobody thought any more about the end of the world—perhaps they hoped that our Saint had exorcised that, as well as the lesser catastrophes.”
Just as the Abbot had built his church in 963—a beautiful bare basilica, with colonnades, and naked raftered roof—so she remained till well down into the fifteenth century, waiting, as it were, for the raiment of the Renaissance to clothe her with fresh glories. Then gradually, first by the roofing of the ceiling, then by pictures, chapels, the enlargement of the sacristy and choir, and such things of rare and exquisite beauty as the stalls and the altar-piece of Perugino, S. Pietro grew into a thing of marvellous taste and finish. But it was an evil day in which some person ruined the original façade by adding the courtyard and the cloisters. In old times the campanile stood free of the church, and the front of the church had strange figures and frescoes on it, parts of which can still be seen by penetrating a dark passage under the bell-tower at the back of the little sacristy. (See Bonfigli’s fresco, p. 243.)
The history of the campanile of S. Pietro is a study in itself. This most lovely and unfortunate tower was for ever suffering at the hands of man or else the elements. Its chronicler is unable to discover the date of its first erection, but he tells us that it was probably built on the site of an old Etruscan tomb, which even now forms its basement. The earliest written record of the campanile is dated 1347, at which time we are told that it was so elegant, and so very richly adorned, that an early historian thought it to be the “loveliest in Tuscany,” yet a certain war-like Abbot, Fra Guidalotti, a man “who rather inclined to the affairs of war than the discipline of religion, with a view maybe to convert his campanile into a fortress, that it might thus better serve his war-like spirit,” began to claw it down. He got as far as the first obelisk, and in his evil operations he tumbled down the metal statue of the Saint which once adorned the summit. The engaging work of the Abbot was taken up and continued by Pope Boniface IX., who, in 1393, spent 180 florins in turning the gracious tower into a strong fortress! In 1468 the campanile was rebuilt by the monks at the great cost of 4000 florins, but some years later it was struck by lightning and much injured. “From this point onward,” writes its historian, “the history of the tower can only be traced through one continuous series of repairs, which injury from lightning necessitated.” These injuries were of such a sort and so continuous that finally the building showed signs of approaching ruin. Iron clamps were added, but the lightning continued to attack it. At last someone had the wisdom to put up lightning conductors, since when the tower is safe, and one of the loveliest points in the landscape is secured for us.
A door festooned with splendid garlands of fruit, carved deep in creamy marbles, leads from the courtyard into the church. The interior is heavily decorated, but though some of the pictures are far from good, the impression given by the whole is beautiful and pleasing; and the choir, which was added in 1400, is one of the loveliest things of its kind in Italy. The columns of the nave are some of the remains of the only pagan temple which was left in Perugia after the siege of Augustus (see S. Angelo, chapter vii.). With the exception of Perugino’s great altar-piece, S. Pietro has preserved nearly all the pictures which were painted for it. Amongst these is a good Pietà by Perugino (perhaps one of the panels out of the big picture at S. Agostino). There are three large canvases by Vasari in the chapel of the Holy Sacrament, a painting by Eusebio di S. Giorgio of the Adoration of the Magi on the wall outside and a picture by Guido Reni in the chapel of the Annunciation.[68] At the end of the left transept is a Pietà by Bonfigli. “Cette Piété incorrecte et pieuse,” as M. Broussole describes it. The picture hangs in a bad light between the Vibi chapel and the door, and at first only the white naked figure of Christ shines out on the dark blue gown of the virgin; but looking a little longer we find ourselves in the study of S. Jerome: one of those enchanting rooms which this particular saint inevitably inhabits, neat and exquisite in the arrangement of its benches and its lectern. Our Lady of Pity is sitting there, holding the dead figure of her son and kissing his head upon her shoulder. To her right is a figure of S. Leonard, to the left, and wholly unconscious of the tragedy, S. Jerome sits, smiling a little slyly. There is beautiful intarsia work (older than that in the choir) on the walls of the sacristy, and some fine illuminated books; lower down the church in the right transept, a beautiful bit of work by Salimbene of Siena, and on the last wall a fine picture of the school of Perugino, very rich and bright in colour. The two Alfanis have left ample specimens of their art in S. Pietro, and there are several of Sassoferrato’s copies of great masterpieces. But the greatest treasure of the church, like those of S. Lorenzo and S. Agostino, did not escape the terrible eye of Napoleon Bonaparte. Perugino’s great Assumption, which formed the glory of the high altar, is gone to France. Only six of the saints, battered and cut from their frames, linger like unhappy ghosts on the walls of the sacristy.
The altar in the chapel of the Vibi and Baglioni families is a lovely bit of Mino da Fiesole’s work. Vasari accuses this sweet-souled sculptor of a lack of originality—of a desire to copy the sentiment of his master (Desiderio da Settignano) rather than to draw straight for himself from the sources of nature. Be this as it may in the case of Mino’s portraits of people, those of his flowers in this particular piece of work are strangely realistic. We think he must himself have gathered and bound the garlands which hang from the narrow frieze, and in doing so he took for models the sharpest and the prickliest fruits and leaves of autumn: hazel nuts and tiny fir cones, their points just tipped with gold. The halos, too, on the angels’ heads, their wings, and the details of the architecture are all picked out with gold. White, clean, and flat and fair is Mino’s altar-piece in the Baglioni chapel. How different from the blood-stained hands and hearts of those same men who came to tell their beads here and be buried.
Long after other details in the church have been forgotten, its choir will remain a haunting vision of excessive beauty. Every inch of it is worked with exquisite care and finish, for the monks spared no pains or money, either in its construction or its decoration. Although a piece of the purest Renaissance fancy, it does not clash with the lines of the older basilica, and the two little pulpits of pietra serena, with their rich gilding, the organ lofts and the rather rococo frescoes on the ceiling, seem only to harmonise the meeting of the different styles of building. Raphael is said to have designed the stalls, but there is no sort of document to prove this. “Because our choir is the work of a genius, it does not follow that that genius should be Raphael ... genius is not the possession of one sole person,” pleads M. Cassinese. Raphael died in 1520, the present stalls were not finished till 1535, and they are probably almost entirely the work of Stefano da Bergamo and the men and boys whom the Bergamasque employed. Some few may be of an earlier date, for we know that the choir was begun in 1524, and that the work was interrupted by the same terrible pestilence as that which killed Perugino. In 1532, Stefano da Bergamo undertook the work of the choir. He worked steadily, and the monks of S. Pietro kept the most accurate account of what they paid him, and of how many measures of flour and pence they gave the men and boys whom he employed. Little is known of the life of Stefano da Bergamo; we do not even know from whom he learned his art, but M. Cassinese rightly concludes that he drew his inspiration from the divine Raphael, since his designs are purely Raphaelesque. The carving is unequal, and some of the stalls are infinitely lovelier than others. Note the ninth on the right of the choir: a mother and three children encircled by a heavy garland of fruit and flowers, and under them a child, with flying hair, playing with snakes. Note, too, the extraordinary rows of mythical beasts which lie upon the arms of the lower row of stalls; catch them in perspective one evening in the dusk—they will give you food for most fantastic dreaming. What minds, half childlike and half mad, these early carvers had!
The doors of the choir are the work of Fra Damiano of Bergamo. They are intarsia work, and show a most delightful fancy. They have unfortunately been much polished and restored; still what a jewel this panel is, which is said to represent the finding of Moses! Compare the banks of the Nile with this palace and this pleasaunce of the purest Renaissance. Its bulrushes are turned to pergolas, its pyramids to a maze of pillars and of marble terraces, and there is a bear in the foreground eating honey, a crane, a rabbit, a long-eared goat, and other beasts of singular delight. It is strange to think of Fra Damiano sitting in his rooms at Bologna and preparing these same decorative panels for a place which, maybe, he had never seen. Above the doors is a fresco attributed to Giannicola Manni(?), and when the doors open you step out straight upon a little balcony, and down below lies the Umbrian plain, without a break of building, and straight in front of you Assisi lies upon its broad, calm hillside.
The work for the stalls of S. Pietro was finished, it seems, in 1535, but the pieces were not put together till 1591. In that year, on the 4th of August, a native architect undertook to put the carvings in their places. He worked so steadily that on Christmas Eve of that same year, “at the first vespers of the feast, the choir was solemnly inaugurated in a musical mass sung by the friars.”
What a picture we have—the dull light of the candles on the winter morning and the monks singing together, in the midst of all their beautiful new woodwork!
A curious incident is told in connection with the choir of S. Pietro and three citizens of Perugia. When on the 20th of June 1859, the papal troops entered Perugia, a detachment of them were quartered in the church and monastery of S. Pietro, after the town had been seized, and three gentlemen of Perugia who had been fighting for her liberty at the gates found themselves cut off from the town and surrounded by the Swiss guard, who, however, were not conscious of their presence, in the monastery of S. Pietro. It will be remembered that the monks of S. Pietro, on this occasion, sided with the citizens, and one of them, Fra Santo, hustled the three gentlemen up into a little cupboard in the organ-loft where he kept them concealed for three whole days, feeding them, as best he could, with a little bread and water. One other gentleman, who was concealed in another part of the church, managed to escape under cover of certain dust-pans belonging to the friars, with which he passed himself off on the guard at the gates as a sacristan. Either he, or someone else, let the cat out of the bag about the gentlemen in the organ, and a most diligent search was set on foot. However, the little cupboard escaped notice for the time, and on the morning of the fourth day of their confinement, whilst the Papal guard were getting their pay, Fra Santo and another monk took from the stalls the ropes which they had cut from their bells on the preceding evening, and tying these to the balcony of the choir, they hastily let out the three gentlemen from the organ, who clambered down the ropes, and waving adieu to their benefactors, scampered off as quickly as they could across the open country. Five hours later the Pope’s guard went up into the organ, but even then they failed to discover the cupboard whence their enemies had so lately flown!
When, some time later, the monks of S. Pietro went to Rome to beg the Pope’s pardon for the part they had played against him in the siege of Perugia, the heaviest blame fell, of course, on Fra Santo; but his Holiness with extreme good sense thus put an end to the question: “If Fra Santo has done what you tell me he has, God has willed that he should do so, and we must ever respect the will of God.”
There are one or two lovely bits of della Robbia work in the refectory of the monastery, a fresco by Tiberio d’Assisi(?) in the chapel, and a fine well in one of the cloisters. The garden, too, is very charming, but it is not easy to get permission to wander in these pleasant places where popes and monks and men of learning spent such pleasant and such profitable hours. The place is now occupied by students as the whole convent was turned last year (1896) into a great agricultural college. (See Note, p. 163.)