“I have never, before I came here where so many of them have lived, realised the old masters as our comrades; I have never been so near them and felt them to be mortals exactly like ourselves. This city and its environs are so little changed, the greater part of them not at all, since those grand old Michael Angelesque days that one feels brought quite close to the old painters, seeing what they saw and walking on the very same old pavement as they walked on, passing the houses where they lived, and so forth.”
I was at that time bent on achieving my first “great picture,” to be taken from Keats’s poem “The Pot of Basil”; Lorenzo riding to his death between the two brothers:
So the two brothers and their murdered man
Rode past fair Florence,
but, fortunately, I resolved instead to put in further training before attacking such a canvas, and I became the pupil of a very fine academic draughtsman, though no great colourist, Giuseppe Bellucci. On alternate days to those spent in his studio I copied in careful pencil some of the exquisite figures in Andrea del Sarto’s frescoes in the cloisters of the SS. Annunziata.
The heat was so great that, as it became more intense, I had to be at Bellucci’s, in the Via Santa Reparata, at eight o’clock instead of 8.30, getting there in the comparative cool of the morning, after a salutary walk into Florence, accompanied by little Majolina, no signorina being at liberty to walk alone. What heat! The sound of the ceaseless hiss of the cicale gave one the impression of the country’s undergoing the ordeal of being frizzled by the sun. I record the appearance of my first fire-fly on the night of May 6th. What more pleasing rest could one have, after the heat and work of the day, than by a stroll through the vineyards in the early night escorted by these little creatures with their golden lamps?
The cloisters were always cool, and I enjoyed my lonely hours there, but the Bellucci studio became at last too much of a furnace. My master had already several times suggested a rest, mopping his brow, when I also began to doze over my work at last, and the model wouldn’t keep his eyes open. I record mine as “rolling in my head.”
I see in memory the blinding street outside, and hear the fretful stamping of some tethered mule teased with the flies. The very Members of Parliament in the Palazzo Vecchio had departed out of the impossible Chamber, and, all things considered, I allowed Bellucci to persuade me to take a little month of rest—“un mesetto di riposo”—at home during part of July and August. That little month of rest was very nice. I did a water colour of the white oxen ploughing in our podere; I helped (?) the contadini to cut the wheat with my sickle, and sketched them while they went through the elaborate process of threshing, enlivened with that rough innocent romping peculiar to young peasants, which gave me delightful groups in movement. I love and respect the Italian peasant. He has high ideas of religion, simplicity of living, honour. I can’t say I feel the same towards his betters (?) in the Italian social scale.
The grapes ripened. The scorched cicale became silent, having, as the country people declared, returned to the earth whence they sprang. The heat had passed even cicala pitch. I went back to the studio when the “little month” had run out and the heat had sensibly cooled, and worked very well there. I find this record of a birthday expedition:
“I suggested a visit to the convent of San Salvi out at the Porta alla Croce, where is to be seen Andrea del Sarto’s ‘Cenacolo.’ This we did in the forenoon, and in the afternoon visited Careggi. Enough isn’t said about Andrea. What volumes of praise have been written, what endless talk goes on, about Raphael, and how little do people seem to appreciate the quiet truth and soberness and subtlety of Andrea. This great fresco is very striking as one enters the vaulted whitewashed refectory and sees it facing the entrance at the further end. The great point in this composition is the wonderful way in which this master has disposed the hands of all those figures as they sit at the long table. In the row of heads Andrea has revelled in his love of variety, and each is stamped, as usual, with strong individuality. This beautifully coloured fresco has impressed me with another great fact, viz., the wonderful value of bright yellow as well as white in a composition to light it up. The second Apostle on our Saviour’s left, who is slightly leaning forward on his elbow and loosely clasping one hand in the other, has his shoulders wrapped round with yellow drapery, the horizontally disposed folds of which are the ne plus ultra of artistic arrangement. There is something very realistic in these figures and their attitudes. Some people are down on me when they hear me going on about the rendering of individual character being the most admirable of artistic qualities.
“At 3.30 we went for such a drive to Careggi, once Lorenzo de’ Medici’s villa—where, indeed, he died—and now belonging to Mr. Sloane, a ‘bloated capitalist’ of distant England. The ‘keepsake’ beauty of the views thence was perfect. A combination of garden kept in English order and lovely Italian landscape is indeed a rich feast for the eye. I was in ecstasies all along. We made a great détour on our return and reached home in the after-glow, which cast a light on the houses as of a second sun.