The Abbess gave up one of her own rooms for his accommodation, brought him water for a bath, and at supper sat him at the table at her own right hand.
"And about the frescos?" asked the Abbess.
"Yes, the frescos—your room shall be done first. I will begin the work in the morning," replied Antonio. The confidence of the youth made the Abbess smile.
Many of our finest flowers are merely transplanted weeds. Transplantation often works wonders in men. When Fate lifted Antonio Allegri out of the little village of Correggio and set him down in the city of Parma, a great change came over him. The wealth, beauty and freer atmosphere of the place caused the tendrils of his imagination to reach out into a richer soil, and the result was such blossoms of beauty, so gorgeous in form and color, that men have not yet ceased to marvel.
The Convent of San Paola is a sacred shrine for art-lovers—they come from the round world over, just to see the ceiling in that one room—the room of the Abbess Giovanni, where Antonio Allegri, the young man from Correggio, first placed his scaffolds in Parma.
The village of Correggio is quite off the beaten track of travel. You will have to look five times on the map before you can find it. It is now only a village, and in the year Fourteen Hundred Ninety- four, when Antonio Allegri was born and Cristoforo Colombo, the Genoese, was discovering continents, it was little better than a hamlet. It had a church, a convent, a palace where dwelt the Corregghesi—the Lords of Correggio—and stretching around the square, where stood the church, were long, low, stone cottages, whitewashed, with trellises of climbing flowers. Back of these cottages were little gardens where the peas, lentils, leeks and parsley laughed a harvest. There were flowers, flowers everywhere— none was too poor to have flowers. Flowers are a strictly sex product and symbol the joy of life; and where there are no flowers, there is little love. Lovers give flowers—and they are enough—and if you do not love flowers, they will refuse to blossom for you. "If I had but two loaves of bread, I'd sell one of them and buy white hyacinths to feed my soul"—that was said by a man who loved this world, no less than the next. Do not defame this world—she is the mother that feeds you, and she supplies you not only bread, but white hyacinths to feed your soul.
On market-day in every Italian town four hundred years ago, just as now, the country women brought big baskets of vegetables and also baskets of flowers. And you will see in those markets, if you observe, that the people who buy vegetables usually buy sprays of mignonette, bunches of violets, roses upon which the dew yet sparkles, or white hyacinths. Loaves alone are not quite enough—we want also the bread of life, and the bread of life is love, and didn't I say that flowers symbol love?
And I have noted this, in those old markets: often the pile of flowers that repose by the basket of fruit or vegetables is to give away to the customers as tokens of good-will. I remember visiting the market at Parma one day and buying some cherries, and the old woman who took my money picked up a little spray of hyacinth and pinned it to my coat, quite as a matter of course. The next day I went back and bought figs, and got a big moss-rose as a premium. The peculiar brand of Italian that I spoke was unintelligible to the old woman, and I am very sure that I could not understand her, yet the white hyacinths and the moss-rose made all plain. That was five years ago, but if I should go back to Parma tomorrow, I would go straight to the Market-Place, and I know that my old friend would reach out a brown calloused hand to give me welcome, and the choicest rose in her basket would be mine—the heart understands.
That spirit of mutual giving was the true spirit of the Renaissance, and in the forepart of the Sixteenth Century it was at its fullest flower. Men gave the beauty that was in them, and Vasari tells of how at Correggio the peasants, who had nothing else to give, each Sunday brought flowers and piled them high at the feet of the Virgin.
There were painters and sculptors at the village of Correggio then; great men in their day, no doubt, but lost now to us in the maze of years. And there was, too, a little court of beauty and learning, presided over by Veronica Gambara. Veronica was a lover of art and literature, and a poet of no mean quality. Antonio Allegri, the son of the village baker, was a welcome visitor at her house. The boy used to help the decorators at the church, and had picked up a little knowledge of art. That is all you want—an entrance into the Kingdom of Art, and all these things shall be added unto you. Veronica appreciated the boy because he appreciated art, and great lady that she was, she appreciated him because he appreciated her. Nothing so warms the cockles of a teacher's heart as appreciation in a pupil. The intellect of the village swung around Veronica Gambara. Visitors of note used to come from Bologna and Ferrara just to hear Veronica read her poems, and to talk over together the things they all loved. At these conferences Antonio was often present. He was eighteen, perhaps, when his sketches were first shown at Veronica's little court of art and letters. He had taken lessons from the local painters, and visiting artists gave him the benefit of advice and criticism. Then Veronica had many engravings and various copies of good pictures. The boy was immersed in beauty, and all he did he did for Veronica Gambara. She was no longer young—she surely was old enough to have been the boy's mother, and this was well. Such a love as this is spiritualized under the right conditions, and works itself up into art, where otherwise it might go dancing down the wanton winds and spend itself in folly.