The Worn Red Lions
of the Ancient Porch
E. C. Peixotto
PARMA. 1901.
The most noteworthy building which arose in Parma under the shadow of the lilies is, however, the famous theatre built by Aleotti for Duke Rannuccio, and opened in 1620 to celebrate the marriage of Odoardo Farnese with Margaret of Tuscany. Externally it is a mere outgrowth of the palace; but to those who feel a tenderness for the vivacious figures of the commedia dell’ arte and have followed their picturesque wanderings through the pages of Gozzi and Goldoni, the interior is an immediate evocation of the strolling theatrical life of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—that strange period when players were passed on from duchy to principality to perform at wedding-feasts and to celebrate political victories; when kings and princes stood sponsors to their children, and the Church denied them Christian burial.
The Farnese theatre is one of those brilliant improvisations in wood and plaster to which Italian artists were trained by centuries of hurriedly-organized trionfi, state processions, religious festivals, returns from war, all demanding the collaboration of sculptor, architect and painter in the rapid creation of triumphal arches, architectural perspectives, statuary, chariots, flights of angels, and galleons tossing on simulated seas: evanescent visions of some pays bleu of Boiardo or of Ariosto, destined to crumble the next day like the palace of an evil enchanter. To those who admire the peculiarly Italian gift of spontaneous plastic invention, the art of the plasticatore, to borrow an untranslatable term, such buildings are of peculiar interest, since, owing to the nature of their construction, so few have survived; and of these probably none is as well preserved as Aleotti’s theatre. The ceiling of painted canvas is gone, and the splendid Farnese dukes bestriding their chargers in lofty niches on each side of the proscenium are beginning to show their wooden anatomy through the wounds in their plaster sides; but the fine composition of the auditorium, and the throng of stucco divinities attitudinizing in the niches and on the balustrades, and poised above the arch of the proscenium, still serve to recall the original splendour of the scene. The dusty gloom of the place suggests some impending transformation, and when fancy has restored to the roof the great glass chandeliers now hanging in the neighbouring museum, their light seems to fall once more on boxes draped with crimson velvet and filled with lords and ladies in the sumptuous Spanish habit, while on the stage, before a gay perspective of colonnades and terraces, Isabel and Harlequin and the Capitan Spavento, plasticatori of another sort, build on the scaffolding of some familiar intrigue the airy superstructure of their wit.
In the adjoining palace no such revival is possible. Most museums in Italy are dead palaces, and none is more inanimate than that of Parma. Many of the ducal treasures are still left—family portraits by Suttermans and Sir Antony Mor, Bernini-like busts of the Bourbon dukes of Parma, with voluminous wigs and fluttering steinkerks; old furniture, old majolica, and all those frail elaborate trifles that the irony of fate preserves when brick and marble crumble. All these accessories of a ruined splendour, catalogued, numbered and penned up in glass cases, can no more revive the life of which they formed a part than the contents of an herbarium can renew the scent and murmur of a summer meadow. The transient holders of all that pomp, from the great Alexander to the Duchess Marie Louise of Austria, his last unworthy successor, look down with unrecognizing eyes on this dry alignment of classified objects; and one feels, in passing from one room to another, as though some fanciful heroic poem, depicting the splendid vanities of life, and depending for its effect on a fortunate collocation of words, had been broken up and sorted out into the different parts of speech.
This is the view of the sentimentalist; but from that of the student of art the museum of Parma is perhaps more interesting than the palace could ever have been. The Correggios are in themselves an unmatched possession; the general collection of pictures is large and varied, and the wealth of bronzes and marbles, of coins, medals and architectural fragments of different schools and periods, would be remarkable in any country but Italy, where the inexhaustible richness of the small towns is a surprise to the most experienced traveller.
On the whole, the impression carried away from Parma is incomplete and confusing. The name calls forth as many scattered images as contradictory associations. It is doubtful if the wanderer reviewing from a distance his Italian memories will be able to put any distinct picture of the place beside the concrete vision of Siena, Mantua or Vicenza. It will not hang as a whole in the gallery of his mental vignettes; but in the mosaic of detached impressions some rich and iridescent fragments will represent his after-thoughts of Parma.