The Tomb of the Volumnii.
About three miles from Perugia, down at the foot of one of the last hills which fall into the valley of the Tiber, a mysterious necropolis of Perusia Etrusca was discovered many years ago on the property of Count Baglioni. It was a big necropolis full of innumerable urns of more or less artistic interest, and the land about the hill seemed honeycombed with small vaults holding their respective sarcophagi and ashes.
Some time later—so tradition tells us—whilst a peasant was driving his oxen over a field in this same place one of the oxen fell forward. When the man came up to see what had happened, he found that the creature had stumbled through the stones of a great arch which covered a hitherto unsuspected subterranean passage.[108]
When the hole thus made was examined it was found to be in truth a steep staircase cut in the tufa and covered over by a travertine vaulting. It led steeply down to a huge door of travertine, and when this was opened, the wonderful tomb, belonging to the private family of the Volumnii, was disclosed. Unfortunately the ox was not the first person to open up this extraordinary place. The earth and dust of centuries had, it is true, fallen in upon it, but in the Roman times it had been already ransacked for its possible treasures. Beautiful and extraordinary as the place is, haunted by the silent grandeur and mystery of the dead, it is not quite complete, and many of the urns are missing in its first compartments. Still, as Dennis says, “it is one of the most remarkable in Etruria.... To enter the tomb,” he continues was to him “like enchantment, not reality, or rather it was the realization of the pictures of subterranean palaces and spell-bound men, which youthful fancy had drawn from the Arabian Nights, but which had long been cast aside into the lumber room of the memory, now to be suddenly restored.... The impressions received in this tomb first directed my attention to the antiquities of Etruria,” Dennis adds, and many people will echo his words.
Leaving the dust and the sunlight, the green trees and the sunny banks of the outside Umbrian world, we plunge down a narrow staircase and through the tall doorway of travertine into the darkness of the Etruscan sepulchre, and find ourselves in a dim, low vestibule with stone seats round it, small chambers branching off to right and left, and one large chamber at the end. Strange and fascinating heads look down upon us from the ceiling, marvellous little deities, suspended by many leaden chains, hang silent, as though they dreamed, above our heads. Weird serpents’ heads pierce through the walls and seem to hiss at us; and in the dim light of the candles we realize a whole new world of wonderful and deep set imagery, combining with that solid sense of comfortable respectability peculiar to the race of men who lie here.
The tomb of the Volumnii has a strong and a convincing individuality. In this fact consists its charm. The necropolis was built for one family. The clear cut inscription on the door post at the entrance points to this, the name repeated again and again upon the tomb proves it yet more forcibly.[109]
To get a first and full impression of the place it is well to sit down on one of the low stone seats which run round the walls of the vestibule. These benches were probably used by members of the family in the peculiar fashion of the Etruscans. We hear that in order to bring themselves nearer to the dead and to communicate with the Spirit of Death, they would come to the sepulchres at night-fall and sleep beside the urns of their dead friends—their brothers, wives, their children or their lovers—and there receive visions from the souls which always hovered near the place where the body was buried. Members of the Volumnii family who were courageous enough, or peaceful enough in their own souls to do this thing, must have received strong and convincing visions from surroundings so unearthly and mysterious.
A great round disk, the sun probably, guards the entrance door of the vestibule. It seems to rise up out of the sea; two dolphins plunge head foremost into the waves beneath it; and under these, above the left lintel of the door, a great wing stretches, one knows not whence or whither, into the darkness all around it.
On the opposite wall, and guarding the tomb, is another great disk covered with scales, or as some say laurel leaves, and a splendid head in its centre. The face is grandly moulded and belongs to the best period of Etruscan art, when the souls of the artists were probably steeped in the art of Greece. The expression is calm, pure, and full of strength. It is probably meant to represent the God Numa, though some imagine it to be Apollo himself. Below it are two busts which are supposed to be portraits of Apollo in his two qualities of shepherd and of poet; and guarding the disk, two great scimitars with birds perched over them. (It is imagined that the Etruscans shared the Greek belief about birds sympathising in the death of mortals. The flight and ways of birds, certainly formed a large part of their religion, but in this case nothing can be actually proved). Vermiglioli having studied various other points in the necropolis, suggests that the Volumnii were a race of warriors and that the scimitars were a symbol of their warlike ways.
Passing through this second doorway one stands in the actual presence of some members of the family of the Volumnii. There they sit together on their beautiful stuccoed urns: “each on a snow-white couch” says Dennis, “with garlanded brow, torque-decorated neck, and goblet in hand—a petrifaction of conviviality—in solemn mockery of the pleasures to which for ages on ages they have bidden adieu.”[110]
They are surprisingly real, this family, and they sit there now, just exactly as they were sitting two thousand years or more ago.[111] The figures and the sarcophagi are made of terra-cotta covered by a dead white stucco which gives them a singularly modern look. Each sarcophagus has the head of a Medusa on it, but of a marvellously fair Medusa, a creature to adore, a woman to attract, a creature incapable of inspiring aught save admiration.[112]
The sarcophagus in the centre of the group appears to have belonged to Aruns Volumnius the head of the family. It is the most heavily decorated of the set. Aruns lies on a well-draped couch. Two mysterious figures—Furies, but attractive Furies—guard his urn. They are a splendid piece of work, and have naturally enough been compared with the work of Michelangelo; there is something muscular about them, and their pose
is tragic, like that which the sculptor of the Renaissance delighted to give to his figures. Unfortunately the fresco, which was perfect when the tomb was opened, has fallen to bits in the damp air which enters through the open door. To Aruns’ left his daughter sits on her urn, to his right his son, and next to his son the beautiful young wife Veilia, or Velia. One could write a romance about Veilia. The beauty of her profile haunts one like a dream. Was she an Etruscan or some woodland creature? Surely the dull and conventional gentleman to whom she was early married bored her into a decline? Certain it is that she died young, and that the sculptor who made this portrait of her, loved and understood the beauty of her human face, and drew it in as faithfully as he had drawn the dull one of her husband and his family. All the other portraits have the usual respectable Etruscan stamp upon them. Veilia alone has a touch of the divine.
One beautiful little sarcophagus in the group differs from all around it. It is exquisite in all its detail and built in the form of a temple with doors and Corinthian columns, pent roof, and exquisite tracery upon its walls. (The inscriptions upon it are written both in Roman and Etruscan characters; but although this sounds like a delightful dictionary they do not appear to coincide.) Four exquisite sphinxes and a little frieze of lions’ heads guard the roof; heavy garlands of fruit and flowers hang from the skulls of oxen on the panels; and birds and butterflies—symbols of the immortality of the human soul—are marvellously carved about them.
The remaining cells have each some beautiful and interesting thing in them, but the main historical interest is passed after the chambers of the Volumnii urns; and the most beautiful things to note are the heads of the Gorgons or Medusas carved in the tufa of the ceilings. Some say that these heads are portraits of the family. Their eyes and teeth are painted white. They seem to stare at one with calm kind eyes which have looked into the centuries and realised the futility of human things.
To the present writers the Medusa of the Etruscan people is its greatest and its most attractive study. She is always grand, beautiful and mysterious; the material and conventional aspects of the Etruscan race vanish and fly before her steady gaze, and in the Volumnian tomb she reigns supreme.
CHAPTER XII
In Umbria
L’Apennin est franchi, et les collines modérées, les riches plaines bien encadrées commencent à se déployer et à s’ordonner comme sur l’autre versant. Cà et là une ville en tas sur une montagne, sorte de môle arrendi, est un ornement du paysage, comme on en trouve dans les tableaux de Poussin et de Claude. C’est l’Apennin, avec ses bandes de contre-forts allongés dans une péninsule étroite, qui donne à tout le paysage italien son caracterè; point de longs fleuves ni de grandes plaines: des valleés limitées, de nobles formes, beaucoup de roc et beaucoup de soleil, les aliments et les sensations correspondantes; combien de traits de l’individu et de l’histoire imprimés par ce caractère!
H. Taine, Voyage en Italie.
WE cannot study the history of a single town without acquiring a certain knowledge of the towns around it, for the character of one set of people was formed and influenced by that of another, and the land on which cities are built is often in itself an explanation of their past. In no country perhaps are these facts more strongly marked than in Umbria, where even the smallest hamlet is perched upon a high hill-side as though to provoke attention, and where the larger cities glare at each other from commanding eminences, seeming, even in this peaceful nineteenth century, to challenge one another by the mere aspect of their mighty walls.
We cannot stay long in Perugia without getting its surrounding landscape stamped upon our minds. That circle of small cities so distinctly seen: Assisi, Spello, Foligno to the east, Montefalco, Trevi, Bettona, and Torgiano to the south, and Città della Pieve westwards, all of them perched upon their separate hill-top around the bed of the now vanished lake (see chapter i.), excite one’s fancy and one’s longing, at first perhaps unconsciously, and later with an irresistible persistence. Finally we are driven to pack our trunks and wander out amongst them.
From a practical point of view, travelling in Umbria, even in its most remote villages, is made extremely easy. The inhabitants are friendly and courteous, and utterly unspoiled by tourists. The inns are clean, the main roads excellent; prices reasonable, and carriages, with few exceptions, good. From a romantic or artistic point of view, nothing can excel the charm of such travelling. We are weary of hearing the stated fact that every town in Italy is worth the visiting; but, however hackneyed the remark, we must make it once again in the case of the towns around Perugia. Each has an individual charm, a long and carefully recorded history. We exclude Assisi, for that town is a study in itself, a thing above and apart. Assisi may be called the Jerusalem of Italy; its connection with one of the greatest Saints of the Catholic world has made its churches monuments of art and history, a centre for pilgrims and for painters throughout a period of nearly seven hundred years; and quite apart from its history as a town (the walls of Assisi date back to 400 B.C.) this presence or possession of the saints has excited a whole literature of art and of devotion.
But besides the towns we have mentioned above, there are a host of other cities very near: Gubbio, Arezzo, Città di Castello, Terni, Spoleto, Narni, Orvieto, Chiusi, Cortona and many others less or better known. It is the diversity and contrast of these towns which charms one, but space forbids that we should offer anything beyond a few small travelling notes concerning one or two of them.