George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers

by George Edmund Street

September 6.

We started at 5.30 A.M. for Assisi.... The sacristan took us up through the sacristy by a staircase which opens into the north transept of the upper church. From the gloom of the lower church to the flood of coloured light in the upper the contrast is very great. The latter is in all respects one of the most joyous buildings I have ever seen, bold, nervous and simple in its design, exquisitely harmonious in all its colouring, and in most respects unharmed by the hand of the restorer. Obviously however the frescoes on the roof are losing their colour and being gradually washed out. This is not difficult to account for when one sees the state of the outer roof of the church, which, I have no doubt, admits an ample supply of wet at the top of the groining. The upper church is used only on some few great days during the year and is I suppose even less cared for. It gave me a pang to be shown into such a building by a door in a corner, to see the principal door permanently closed, grass growing thick upon the dreary piazza in front of it: it was even more mournful, I think, than is the sad solitude of the great group at Pisa.

I am much puzzled by the interior of this upper church. I cannot get out of my head the impression that they [the two “churches”] were designed and in part executed by Frenchmen. The detail of the groining piers and their capitals and bases are so peculiarly and characteristically French that (seeing how very different Italian work of the same date was) I cannot believe that they were ever wrought by Italian hands from French designs, because sculpture of foliage was just one of these things in which the character of different schools was so marked that it was impossible to get any but Frenchmen to do such work as this. Above this point I do not feel the same thing because I see that the window traceries, though very fair, have a feature peculiar to Italian Gothic—in the way in which the circles, etc., in the tracery are put under the main arch, just touching but not uniting with it. The string under the windows has for a considerable portion of its length a complete English dog-tooth. The whole of the walls are painted. Below the string-course, which is very high from the floor, is, first a painted imitation of hangings (much like our thirteenth century patterns) in which the diaper is continued regularly without reference to folds in the draperies; then a row of noble frescoes by Giotto; and above the string on each side of the windows other frescoes by Cimabue. The roof is by the latter, and the groining bays are alternately blue studded with stars, and frescoed in subjects. The latter have a predominance in the ground of a rich chrome—reddish yellow—and the ribs throughout are bordered with wide patterned borders. The contrast of colours is admirable and finer than anything I have seen. The borders round the work done by Giotto are very inferior to those in Cimabue’s work. The latter[5] are all severely flat and geometrical, indulging, after a few feet of plain pattern, in a quatrefoil

or one inscribed on a square, painted with a head on a blue ground. Giotto’s, on the other hand, though in some respects very beautiful, indulge too much in perspective, e.g. each division between the groining piers is divided into the subjects by painted and shaded imitations of twisted columns bearing cornices. There are some features of interest in the work beyond the exquisite beauty. To me it was new to find Cimabue painting with so little rudeness and so much magnificent simplicity and breadth of purpose. I note another of Giotto’s frescoes is interesting as showing the original use of the painted roods of which we have seen so many. I think there can be little doubt they were to be placed on the rood-screen, as he distinctly shows them, and, curiously, I find in this upper church the two ends of the ancient rood-beam sawn off a foot from the wall. This was a few feet west of the crossing. The transepts, altar and stalls are all modern in their arrangements.

Externally there is nothing to notice save the fine west door and circular window over it, of a type peculiar so far as I have seen to the churches of Assisi. The glass in the nave windows is certainly old and good, very little white introduced.

After seeing this most interesting building well, we betook ourselves to the not very easy work of climbing about the city to see the other churches. The whole place is as decayed, forlorn and dirty as the smallest and rudest of fishing villages in the worst out-of-the-way parts of Cornwall, spread out to ten times the extent. Old walls remain nearly all round, with gateways, and at the highest point the picturesque ruin of a castle.

The west end of the cathedral is fine and the campanile by its side is also of noble size and good character though built with very rough stone....

September 7.

We left Perugia this morning at 6 A.M. in the banquette of the diligence for Arezzo. The day was charming so that we enjoyed the ride thoroughly, though we had done it all so lately on our way to Perugia.