Wherever Michael Angelo's hand has been, devoutest attention is instinctively aroused; when the master speaks, all others hold their peace. Nowhere perhaps is the mysterious power of supreme silence more effectually shown than in the awe-inspiring crypt of the Medici Chapel. How tremendous is that figure of the "Pensieroso" standing there motionless like a silent sentinel over death, awaiting the blast of the last trump! What repose and grace, too, in the figure of Night, or rather of Sleep, "that knits up the ravelled sleave of Care," beside the robust form of Day lying bound and fettered as it were, till the last dawn shall come. It is the deep meaning hidden in all Michael Angelo's work, as well as the combination of nature and fancy in the attitudes of his statues, which gives them that intensity of expression so specially characteristic of his mighty genius. The huge proportions of his figures are but a type of the deep bed worn by the torrent of his mighty thoughts, and thus it is that any imitation of a form of art which nothing but his genius had power to fill and quicken is foredoomed to seem both pompous and bombastic. But time and lack of funds forbade my tarrying on my road to Germany, so I can do no more than mention Florence, and the pleasant recollections I took away with me. I passed through the deserted city of Ferrara, and spent a couple of days in Padua to see the beautiful frescoes of Giotto and Mantegna.
During my stay in Italy I had made acquaintance with the three great cities which are the art centres of that favoured land—Rome, Florence, and Naples. Rome, the City of the soul; Florence, the City of the mind; Naples, the home of brilliant sunlight, of wild and dazzling gaiety.
I was about to make the acquaintance of a fourth, which, like the others, holds a great and glorious place in the history of art. For the geographical position of the city has given Venice and Venetian art a distinct and unique character of their own.
Cheerful or sad, sunlit or gloomy, rose-red or deadly pale, smiling or darkly forbidding, each and all by turns, Venice is one perpetual kaleidoscope, a weird mixture of the most contradictory impressions, a pearl, I might almost say, cast into a dark and noisome place. Venice! she charms like any sorceress! She is the native haunt of the most radiant form of art. She has cast a flood of sunshine on the painter's canvas!
Unlike Rome, which waits your pleasure, draws you slowly onwards step by step, until you fall into an utter and never-ending thraldom of admiration, Venice takes swift hold upon your senses, and fascinates you at one fell swoop. Rome is serene and soothing, Venice heady and exciting. The intoxication of her charms is tinged (it was at least in my case) with a sort of nameless melancholy, like a captive's sense of loneliness. Is it the shadow cast by the dark deeds of former days, to which the city seems predestined by its very situation? It may be. But whether it be so or not, I cannot fancy any one staying long in this semi-amphibious City of the Dead without growing to feel half choked and plunged into deep depression. With its sleeping waters lapping in dismal silence round the walls of its old palaces, and its gloomy shadows whence the groan of some murdered noble seems to float, Venice is a city of terror; disaster hangs around her even now!
But yet, in the full sunlight, what can be more fairylike than the Grand Canal, or those glittering lagoons whose waves seem made of liquid light! What vivid power clings to those relics of departed splendour, which seem to call aloud to the blue sky, beseeching it to save them from the abyss that slowly but surely sucks them down, and will end some day by engulphing them for ever!
Rome stands for meditation, Venice for intoxication. Rome is the great Latin ancestress whose conquests are destined to give the world one catholic and universal language—a prelude and a means to another Catholicism, deeper and vaster yet. Venice is a true Oriental—Byzantine, not Greek; she makes one think much more of Satraps than of Pontiffs, of Eastern luxury rather than of Athenian or Roman dignity.
Even San Marco, with all its wonders, is more of a mosque than a basilica or a cathedral; it appeals far more to the imagination than to the deepest feelings of the soul. The splendour of the mosaics and gilding, pouring a stream of dark rich tints from the roof of the dome to its very base, is utterly unique. I know nothing like it either in strength of colouring or powerfulness of effect.
Venice breathes passion, as distinct from love. I was bewitched the moment I arrived, but I left it without the pang I felt on quitting Rome—a sure sign and measure of the impression each city had produced on me.
Naples is like a smile from Greece; the horizon glowing with purple and azure, the blue sky reflected by the sapphire sea, even the ancient name, Parthenope, carry us back to that brilliant civilisation on which nature had bestowed such an exquisite setting. But Venice smiles on the traveller in quite a different way. She is coaxing and she is false, like a feast laid out on the trap-door of a dungeon. This doubtless is why involuntarily I felt more relief than regret when I departed, in spite of the masterpieces of art and the mysterious and magic charm I left behind me.