Alinari

ADORATION OF THE MAGI (13TH CENTURY)

PULPIT IN THE CATHEDRAL OF BARGA

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Well might this fortress-temple detain us longer, but there is scant time to have a look at the other Della Robbias down in the heart of the town, to which we are conducted by a courteous and handsome little man of twelve, through the narrowest and steepest of byways, which threaten at times to plunge us into doorways or ditches, until we reach the Church of the Capuchins. This contains a Nativity, two good statues of St. Andrew and St. Anthony, an Annunciation, St. Francis receiving the Stigmata, and, finest of all, an Assumption of the Virgin, by Giovanni Della Robbia. The reverent figures of four saints gaze upward to Our Lady, seated within a mandorla of cherubs' heads and surrounded by angels with musical instruments; the four trumpeters at the top are most beautiful. In the predella are other flying angels with scrolls; a wreath of exquisite heads surround the ciborium, and two kneeling saints fill the corners. The whole work is framed with clusters of various fruits in their natural colours.

Reluctantly we turn from rock-throned Barga, "Half church of God, half castle 'gainst the Scot," and as we slip down into the valley through purpling shadows shot with crimson and gold we marvel at these people, who with one hand took their part fiercely in the cruel wars of despotism and with the other adorned churches and shrines with Della Robbia reliefs, representing a form of art so pure and cool and tranquil and, above all, infused with the deepest religious feeling. Then we suddenly remember that hereabouts is the region of the Pistojese Apennines, the favoured home of the highest Tuscan imagination, poetry and song, where the people—peasants, shepherds, and mountaineers—are not only hardy, handsome, and industrious as a class, but noted for gentleness and courtesy, love of home, and the native elegance of their common speech. It is said that "the dialect that most faithfully represents the pure Tuscan of Boccaccio's day is that of peasants of the Pistojese Apennines. It is here, round about San Marcello and Cutigliano, that the purest Tuscan is spoken—pure in its language, pure in its accent; and it is here that Manzoni and d'Azelio came—comparative foreigners both of them, the one a Lombard, the other a Piedmontese—to acquire the pure language for those romances which have delighted all Italy and all the world."[10]

It is in the Pistojese mountains that we hear those "charming folk songs, in which traditions of true gentleness and elevated feeling are so well exhibited, and account for the high romantic qualities of the impassioned verse."[11]