A QUAINT OLD STUDIO IN ROME, A QUEER OLD PAINTER, AND A LOVELY PICTURE
The exterior does not indicate the remotest relationship with a studio. I must have misunderstood the père’s directions. I wish these artists would show some consideration for errant humanity, and number their quarters. Now, that wall which begins on the street and backs in behind the rubbish-pile might pass for a parapet but for the green door with a bell-rope dangling from the upper panel, which compromises its military character at once. It might pass for a convent wall. Indeed, the little church which seems to have been pushed entire right out of the farther end might be accepted as a very respectable declaration to that effect. But a more accurate observation of the premises is fraught with diffidence in the latter conjecture. A portion of an unpretentious dwelling-house, which is incorporated with that part of the wall abutting on the Via del Colosseo, and the appearance at one of the windows of a fossilized old woman who proceeds to hang out linen, dispel effectually the monastic probability intimated above. But why indulge in speculations? The most summary, and after all most rational, way of solving my doubts is to approach the green door, pull the bell-cord, enter, and, si monumentum quæris, circumspice. Pulling the bell-rope produced an inquiring bark from a dog within. Then the door opened slowly, and just wide enough to admit a visiting card, insinuated edgeways. But, as if not liking my appearance, it closed with a short but very decisive slam. I
took a short survey of my person, with the view of assuring myself that there was nothing in my dress or carriage which would excite a suspicion bearing reference to burglary. I had just come to a conclusion very flattering to my integrity, when a shrill female voice screamed from across the way, “Tira! spingi!”—Pull! push! I turned my immediate attention to the practical application of these laconic instructions. Nothing to pull but the bell-rope, nothing to push but the door. Another tug at the hemp, a canine response from within, the door opened as before, I pushed, entered, and the slamming process was repeated. I turned around with the view of confronting the slammer—a rope, a pulley, and a weight. He has a taste for mechanics, thought I. At the top of a few steps I saw a friendly-looking house-dog, who sniffed apologetically, and then whisked himself about, as if expressing a hearty welcome. If I had not had positive reason afterwards to arrogate to myself this compliment, I should have gone away with the conviction that the dog sniffed with satisfaction because the mingled odor of lemon, of orange, and of a hundred fragrant flowers which floated on the air was inexpressibly gratifying. I found myself in a quadrangular enclosure not unlike the cloister of a convent. The central plot was planted with orange and lemon trees, and with every kind of vegetable. It only lacked the traditional well in the centre, with the iron-bound bucket resting
on the edge, and the iron rods for pulley, wrought into the form of a cross, to make it a perfect little cloister. ‘Tis true that the resemblance might be impaired by the large chicken-coop in the corner, which emitted a chorus of cackling suggestive of a prosperous barnyard. But a flourishing coop is no contemptible accessory to the effects of a religious community; and as for its encumbering the cloister, that is very easily explained. The consideration of the civil power for religious communities has disencumbered them of all their property outside the walls, and even extended itself to everything within that is worth taking care of. A marble pavement of variegated pieces, formed into mosaics of no definable pattern, extends around the garden. The walls of the house are studded with fragments of sarcophagi and frieze-work—here the hand of a child, there a lion’s head, yonder a foot—while these are interspersed with lamps of terra-cotta, such as are found in the Catacombs; and, high above all, a row of Roman vases let into the wall as far as the neck gives it the appearance of a battery of cannon. The well, which, sunk in the centre of the garden, would have completed the picture of a cloister, is over against the wall. An attempt had been made to apply a fly-wheel and a crank, with some other complicated machinery of ropes and pulleys, to the process of drawing water, but evidently didn’t approach a success, as the crank is rusty and the rope frayed with age and exposure. On the other side of the garden stands a large cistern of water literally alive with gold-fish. The house itself is built around the garden, save the portion enclosed by the wall. It is but one story high generally. It seems, however,
that the builder, some time after the completion of the lower story, wanted to try the effect of another story; so, with an utter disregard of architectural designs and proportions, he raised the four walls at the fenestral apertures of which the fossil appeared. I ascertained afterwards that this addition forms the “apartments” of her antiquity. On the corner diagonally opposite arises a similar portion, which is reached by stairs on the outside—evidently the residence of the lord of the premises. A railing extends around the roof, while vines on trailers and a great fig-tree, which towers out of the garden and up to the roof, give the establishment quite an Oriental aspect. We only want a patriarch taking his evening promenade on the roof, and we have Syria in the shadow of the Colosseum. While I was contemplating all this the dog barked impatiently, ran ahead to an open door underneath a pent roof, and then trotted back, giving me to understand that he was very impatient to usher me in there. A Maltese cat appeared on the scene, walked furtively around me, inspected me from head to foot, and finally came to a halt in front of me and fixed his great, amber eyes upon me with an inquiring look, as which should say, “Are your intentions peaceful?” My addressing him by the name of “puss” seemed to satisfy him, and he trotted on with the dog.
The first object which met my gaze as I entered the door caused me to start back with a shudder; for I was not prepared for such a sight. On a table, stretched at full length, lay a human skeleton, with the head turned towards the door. It seemed to have taken that position of itself, with a view of seeing who passed in and out. The floor was littered with cartoons and bits of old lumber.
In a corner stood an ancient-looking painting of a skeleton seated in a meditative attitude—one bony leg crossed on the other, the elbow planted on the knee, and the chin resting on the hand. It had not the appearance of a caricature, for the lipless mouth and fleshless jaws wore a solemn and awful expression, which the most intemperate and frivolous fancy could not associate with the ridiculous. The walls, too, were covered with cartoons of different sizes, some of which were very beautiful. One especially struck me with admiration. It represented the Eternal Father gazing out into the chaotic darkness which preceded the great act of volition, “Fiat lux.” The perfection of the actus purus and existentia, which are identical in God, was powerfully expressed in the intensely active expression of the eyes and forehead. While all this occurred to me, a consciousness of the spirit of love, which mellowed and softened the sternness of that face, affected me. Passing another door, I found myself in a large room painted a Pompeian red. My first impression was that I had walked into the laboratory of an alchemist—a very justifiable impression. A long table in the middle of the room was crowded with vials of all sizes and every variety of form, containing liquids of the strangest colors. Crucibles, mortars, glass tubes, bellows, scales, and spirit-lamps were scattered over the table confusedly. A row of shelves garnished one of the walls, and upon them were arranged, in something like order, busts of different sizes and casts in plaster of arms, legs, feet, and hands. From the beams of the ceiling dangled a number of little cherubs of Berninian propensities—that
is to say, they were very plump, very short, and kicked and doubled themselves up into the most impossible attitudes for little fellows of their exaggerated proportions. These, coupled with several chunks of half-wrought clay tumbled promiscuously into one corner, and a number of modelling tools, a sponge, and an elevated stool, would perhaps incline the visitor to the belief that he was in the sanctum of a sculptor. The other three walls were covered with pictures representing a variety of subjects, sacred and profane. Here a muscular, sightless Samson coped with the pillars of the temple of the Philistines, to the seemingly intense interest of a demure cardinal on the opposite wall. There Justice poised her scales in front of a sketch, which the most unpractised eye would have no difficulty in recognizing as the work of Fra Angelico, portraying the Last Judgment. The activity of the devils as they scourged the damned into the bottomless pit is striking. Farther on a “Battle of the Centaurs” afforded an interesting anatomical study. But the sweetest picture of all was a little one not over a foot square, which represented with vivid simplicity the dispute between the two hermits, St. Paul and St. Anthony. The latter holds up one hand argumentatively, and points with the other to the untouched loaf, while his earnest face seems to say: “Paul, take up the loaf and break it.” Paul looks respectful, but not overcome. He leans upon his long staff with both hands, and contemplates the loaf with a face betokening his resolution not to touch it, at least until more conclusive arguments be adduced; and, after all, it is a quiet, domestic sort of a
picture. Beside this was another of about the same dimensions—one that pleased the eye not so much as the heart. It was St. Jerome in the wilderness. The crucifix is suspended high upon a thin sapling, and the great doctor kneels off at a distance, and prays with his hands joined before his breast. It is one of those prayerful pictures which recall Fra Bartolomeo, but the coloring was Timoteo Vite’s, and none else’s. In the corner of the room nearest the window I observed a ladder, made of iron bars, fastened into the wall, which terminated in a trap-door in the ceiling. At the foot of this ladder, right under the window, stood what seemed to be a sedan-chair. It was covered on all sides with oilcloth turned wrongside out. Before this chair stood an easel, on the easel a small picture, which I perceived was being touched by a brush; and I observed, furthermore, that the brush was manipulated by a hand of powerful proportions, such a hand as would have been enough of itself to build up that strange old house from the foundation-stone. Then a man’s head, adorned with gray locks and an old cap with a pair of turned-up flaps, emerged from the darkness, and I saw a pair of dark, bright, benevolent eyes smiling up at me. The face was bronzed, the beard gray and not heavy, but growing in a heavy instalment around the mouth and chin, then light on the under jaws, and developing into a bushy abundance in the direction of the ears. It was a pleasant, happy face, still possessing the ingenuous expression of the happy boy. As he worked himself out of the nook in which he was ensconced, and stood up to welcome me, giving me at the same time a grip of that
powerful hand which I associated above with the construction of the house, but which then referred me to a blacksmith-shop, I had an opportunity of surveying his figure.
I should have said, rather, I saw an old dressing-gown of brown stuff which buttoned closely at the chin, was tied around him with a rope, and terminated in a pair of heavy brogans. I introduced myself by stating that the père had requested me to call and see how the picture was doing. “Ah! there it is,” said the old man, and a smile of happy excitement mantled upon his face as he looked at the little picture on the easel, La Notte del Correggio. He gazed more intently than before, and then sank down quietly on one knee and scanned the face of the kneeling Virgin Mother, in whose face is reflected that wonderful intense light which concentrated in the face of the Child, as if desirous of seeing underneath the coloring. “The spirit of Correggio is here,” continued he in a musing strain; “no man living possessed his secret of blending colors into one another. I will not touch the face of the Child.”
“Then you believe,” said I, “that this is an original?”
“I feel it,” added he warmly. “Correggio may repeat himself, but he cannot be copied, at least in two pictures, his Giorno and his Notte. The dominating, character of Correggio’s paintings in oil, that something which proclaims him on the instant, is the coloring, penetrating and brilliant as enamelling—of such a kind that the lights assume an indefinable splendor, the shadows have a depth and transparency which no painter, and much less a copyist, ever produced, save Correggio. There”—and he arose and drew the curtain over
the window, until the room was nearly dark—“you need no light to see that picture; it has its own light in the divinity which is effulgent from the face of the Infant. Tell me the copyist who effected this, and I will venerate him as Correggio’s other self.”
A word of explanation is necessary here. The Notte is a picture representing the Nativity. The Child is in the arms of the kneeling Mother. “The radiant Infant, and the Mother who holds him, are lost in the splendor which has guided the distant shepherds. A maiden on one side, and a beautiful youth on the other, who serves as a contrast to an old shepherd, receive the full light, which seems to dazzle their eyes; while angels hovering above appear in a softened radiance. A little farther back Joseph is employed with his ass, and in the background are more shepherds with their flocks. Morning breaks in the horizon. An ethereal light breaks through the whole picture, and leaves only so much of the outline and substance of the forms apparent as is necessary to enable the eye to distinguish objects.” This picture is at present in the gallery of Dresden, and the foregoing is the description of it given by Kugler. The same writer adds in a note: “Smaller representations of this subject, with similar motives and treated in the same manner as the Dresden picture, exist in various places. An excellent little picture of the kind is in the Berlin museum, No. 223, and is there ascribed to the school of Correggio.” That Correggio himself reproduced smaller representations of this scene, preserving only the three prominent figures of the Infant, the Mother, and St. Joseph, is notorious. It was a favorite subject of the great master’s, as is evident
in the very counterpart of the Notte, because of its wonderful light—St. Jerome, or Giorno—“Day.” Coindet, in his Histoire de la Peinture en Italie, speaking of the Notte, says that, on account of the celestial light which emanates from the divine Child, the picture “has been called ‘Night,’ just as the St. Jerome is often called ‘Day,’ by the Italians, who thus express the striking light of that picture. Is it necessary to say that that light is as harmonious as it is brilliant, and that the celebrity of those two pictures, ‘Night’ and ‘Day,’ is due above all to the perfection of the chiaroscuro?”
The picture which the old man was restoring is one of the “smaller representations” spoken of by Kugler. It required no restoration as far as the coloring was concerned. That was deep and brilliant as ever. Not the lights but the shadows needed retouching, and the old man showed himself a good artist, as well as a reverent admirer, when he said he would not touch the face of the Child. The wonderful durability of the coloring, which every one knows to be one of the grand characteristics of Correggio’s productions, is admirable in the little picture. M. Coindet says that frequent analyses of some of Correggio’s paintings, with the view of discovering the secret of this durability, have produced results more curious than useful. Upon the chalk, he says, the artist appeared to have laid a surface of prepared oil, which then received a thick mixture of colors, in which the ingredients were two-thirds of oil and one of varnish; that the colors seemed to have been very choice, and particularly purified from all kinds of salts, which, in process of time, eat and destroy the picture; and that the before-mentioned use
of prepared oil must have greatly contributed to this purification by absorbing the saline particles. It is, moreover, commonly believed that Correggio adopted the method of heating his pictures either in the sun or at the fire, in order that the colors might become, as it were, interfused, and equalized in such a way as to produce the effect of having been poured rather than laid on. Of that lucid appearance which, though so beautiful, does not reflect objects, and of the solidity of the surface, equal to the Greek pictures, Lomazzo says that it must have been obtained by some strong varnish unknown to the Flemish painters themselves, who prepared it of equal clearness and liveliness, but not of equal strength. The history of the little picture in question is not known to any precision. It was brought to Rome from Madrid by the late Cardinal Barili, who received it as a present from a Spanish nobleman while he was nuncio to the court of Madrid. After the death of the cardinal it was exposed for sale with many other pictures, mostly of indifferent merit. The probabilities are that it would have fallen into the hands of some son of Jewry, and disappeared, perhaps for ever, into a dark and dingy lumberroom of the Ghetto. A better fate was in store for the gem. The père saw it, admired it, purchased it, and rested not until he had placed it in the hands of the venerable artist in the quaint old studio, of whom no better eulogium can be pronounced than that implied by the members of the Academy of St. Luke, who, having been requested by Prince Borghese to hold a consultation on the restoration of Raphael’s “Deposition,” unanimously chose the old man to do it. He has since been
entrusted with the delicate and important commission of restoring the principal pictures in the gallery of the Vatican. That he did justice to the little Notte requires no proof. He possesses the necessary requisites for such a task—the skill of an artist, the love of an artist, and the humility of an artist. The picture is now in New York City, and, as an old painter once said laconically, in pronouncing his opinion on a painting, “ex ipsa loquitur”—it speaks of itself. But I have left the old man standing outside the parenthesis, palette in hand, and a smile irradiating his countenance which would be the instant destruction of legions of blue fits. He saw me look inquiringly at the prayerful St. Jerome, and divined my desire of knowing something, about it.
“Painted by Timoteo Vite,” said he, “and I’m to copy it for the good père and send it off to America. Going to be in good company, too!” And he pointed his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the lightsome “Night.”
Then I turned towards the “Dispute of the Hermits.”
“That was an effort of mine when I was eighteen. I never thought it would go to the New World when I worked at it.”
Laying down the palette, he asked me if I wished to walk around the house. I was only too glad of the invitation. As we passed out of the door he pointed towards the ladder in the corner, and said laughingly:
“Jacob’s ladder when it rains; only there are no angels ascending and descending. My room is above—an old man’s contrivance.”
As we walked up on the roof, he narrated with the complacency of a little boy how he built the house himself; how he was somewhat discouraged
in digging the foundation when the folks laughed at him; how he built the outside wall first, to hide himself from the observation of the passers-by, and after that he got along finely. At this juncture I stopped to examine a large cage on the roof. It contained several white mice.
“They are pleasant little fellows, especially when the moon shines,” said my host, and, stooping down, he opened the little door, whereat several of the little creatures ran out into his hand.
Replacing them with some difficulty—for they seemed reluctant to be shut up again—we went down the stairway and over to the part of the building opposite the studio. As we passed the door I looked in again at the grim skeleton, and then turned away quickly. But he laid his hand gently on my shoulder, and said:
“You young people don’t like the sight of skeletons, because they tell an unpleasant truth very plainly. I call that skeleton the Naked Truth; it’s a splendid antidote against a disease called pride.”
As we passed the chicken-coop he had to caress a few favorite bantlings. Then came an old storeroom, then a carpenter-shop, then a blacksmith-shop, where he told me he did all his own carpentering and smithing; then a hole in the wall containing a wheelbarrow, pickaxes, and spades, with which he amused himself in the evening, as, indeed, the lovely little garden attested. The gold-fish in the cistern seemed to be his especial favorites.
When he dipped his hand in the water they all flocked around and nibbled it vigorously. Nor did they evince the slightest disinclination to be caught. I remarked that the cistern was large enough to bathe in.
“Precisely,” he answered; “I made it for that purpose—the fish were a second thought. I learned to swim in there. It is very pleasant on a warm evening.”
I asked him how long he labored in building up his little home.
“Seven years, like Jacob; only the patriarch had the advantage of me there, too—he got a Rachel in the end, and I have only—” He paused and looked about him. The friendly dog and cat had appeared on the scene, a hen began to cackle boisterously, which left no doubt in the minds of the neighbors that the great feat of laying an egg had just been achieved. The little shadow which saddened his face for a moment passed away in an instant, and he completed the sentence—“this live-stock.”
“And your art,” I subjoined.
“And my art,” he admitted pleasantly. “Say,” he added, as he saw me moving towards the steps which led down to the garden door, “do you think the good père would like to sell that picture?”
I thought not—I was sure he would not; and, with a promise to come and see him often, I left him. I have gone to the old studio repeatedly since, and each visit has been a new confirmation of my first impression—that he was the happiest old artist in the Eternal City.