Italian Days and Ways

by Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

As I was drifting away into dreamland to the sound of some sweet, distant bells (the bells are always ringing in Assisi), Zelphine called in to me from her room, "Do you think there is a spot on the habitable globe where one would not be likely to meet some person who had known some one who had met a friend of our friends?" With this puzzle floating through my mind, rather hazily I confess, I fell asleep, soothed by a pleasant sense of the smallness of the world and the friendliness of the inhabitants thereof.

This morning we banished from our minds all irrelevant present-century associations, and have spent our Sunday in the goodly company of the early Franciscans. An enthusiastic party of five, for even Angela has succumbed to the influences of Assisi, we made our way to the Church of San Francesco, which we approached across a wide piazza framed on both sides by long arcades. Through the great Gothic portal, with its rich carvings, we passed into the twilight beauty of the lower church, for even on a bright May morning the light in this vast basilica is "dim and religious." The arches of the nave and chapel are richly decorated, as you will see from the pictures that I send you; but it was not until we reached the south end of the eastern transept that we realized the full beauty of these decorations, whose color glowed like jewels in the light that reached them from three windows in the far apse. Over the vaulting above the high altar are the wonderful frescoes of Giotto. In one of the most beautiful of these paintings the artist has represented the marriage of Francis with Lady Poverty. The cold, pale bride, her white robe torn by the acacia thorns around her, draws away from her lover as if to warn him of the trials and hardships that are in store for him who links his life with hers. She, who, as Dante says,

"slighted and obscure,

Thousand and hundred years and more remain'd

Without a single suitor, till he came,"

is now crowned with love and honor by the adoring Francis. Dante's face appears among the many representative and mythological spectators who are gathered around the altar, where Christ himself gives the hand of the saint to the Lady Poverty, while the angels above rejoice over the holy marriage. A wonderful conception is this, rich in color and in devotional feeling, worthy of the hand and mind of the realistic and imaginative Giotto.

After studying the four symbolic compositions above the high altar we turned to Cimabue's work in the western transept, of which in many places only the lovely lines remain, as much of the color has faded out. If only something could be done to save the noble, sincere work of those who are now recognized as early masters and regenerators of art! The colors are fading so fast from the walls of San Francesco that very soon these valuable frescoes will be lost to the world.

As we turned to enter the sacristy, from which a stairway leads to the upper church, Miss Morris called our attention to a very interesting fresco of the Madonna and Child near the door of the sacristy. In this charming little painting the Madonna, instead of gazing upon the Child with adoring love or placid content, as in so many pictures, looks into his uplifted face with a wondering, questioning look in her eyes. Miss Morris, who is not only an artist of some merit but an investigator of no mean order, stood before the painting and looked her questions, upon which our guide explained, partly in English and more in Italian, that in this picture, by Lorenzetti, the Bambino is represented as speaking for the first time. The figures are a bit stiff and wooden, but the face of St. Francis, on the left, is full of devotional feeling, and there is something indescribably touching in the attitude of the Child as he turns lovingly and confidingly toward his mother, with words upon his baby lips that all Christendom would gladly hear. We missed Miss Morris an hour later, when we were crossing the piazza, and found that she had returned to the little fresco, drawn to it by an irresistible fascination.

From a narrow winding stairway we stepped into the lofty, spacious upper church, lighted by large, three-storied Gothic windows which flood the interior with sunshine. Here in twenty-eight great frescoes, executed by the pupils of Giotto, more or less faded and in some places badly restored, we followed the life of St. Francis from the early days when he is represented as giving his cloak to a beggar to his final parting with his brothers.

When we at last emerged from the upper church and made our way down the outside stairway to the piazza, the scene which met our eyes seemed strangely modern and bizarre to us whose minds were filled with thoughts of St. Francis and his holy life. All along the side of the piazza were long tables filled with relics, rosaries, and the ubiquitous postal-card, which represents everything, real or imaginable, that has been seen or could be seen in Assisi. Old women and little girls were spreading out their wares under the very shadow of the sanctuary, and we, noticing the pinched, careworn faces of the women and the poor, scanty clothing of the pretty little girls who helped them, could not grudge them the limited revenue that comes to them from their Sunday sales. The little money that reaches these Assisian peasants is chiefly from tourists, and from a lace-making industry that has recently been established here. Miss Morris says that these old women were intoxicated with delight over the brilliancy of their financial prospects when they were told that they could make ten cents a day by lacework, if they plied their needles and shuttles industriously. Does not everything in life depend upon the point of view?