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"On the hard rock 'Twixt Arno and the Tiber, he from Christ Took the last signet." |
From the desolate fastnesses of Lavernia, which witnessed his ascetic life and ecstatic visions, to the fertile slopes of Assisi, where his bones found repose from self-inflicted hardships, the people rallied round him while alive, and revered him when dead. Nor did the religious revival which his preaching and example there effected pass away. Acknowledged by popes, favoured by princes, his order rapidly spread. In every considerable town convents of begging friars were established and endowed. Still, it was in his mountain-land that his doctrines took deepest root, among a race of simple men, reared amid the sublime combinations of Alpine and forest scenery, familiar from their days of dreamy youth with hills and glades, caverns and precipices, shady grottoes and solitary cells. The visionary tales of his marvellous life, penetrating the devotional character of the inhabitants, became favourite themes of popular superstition.
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"A spirit hung, Beautiful region! o'er thy towns and farms; And emanations were perceived, and acts Of immortality, in nature's course Exemplified by mysteries, that were felt As bonds on grave philosopher imposed, And armed warrior; and in every grove A gay or pensive tenderness prevailed."[119] |
Assisi in particular was the focus of the new faith. To its shrine flocked pilgrims laden with riches, which the saint taught them to despise. This influx of treasure had the usual destination of monastic wealth, being chiefly dedicated to the decoration of its sanctuary. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the best artists in Italy competed for its embellishment, and even now it is there that the student of mediæval art ought most to seek for enlightenment.
With the legends of St. Francis thus indelibly stamped on the inhabitants, and with the finest specimens of religious painting preserved at Assisi, it need scarcely be matter of surprise that devotional art, which we have endeavoured to describe, should have found in Umbria a fostering soil, even after it had been elsewhere supplanted by naturalist and pagan novelties; for the feelings which it breathed were those of mystery and sentiment—its beauty was sanctified and impalpable. By a people so trained, its traditional types were received with the fervour of faith; while to the limited range of its themes the miraculous adventures of the saint were a welcome supplement. The romantic character of these incidents borrowed from the picturesque features of the country a new but fitting element of pictorial effect, and for the first time nature was introduced to embellish without demeaning religious painting. But let us hear Rio, the eloquent elucidator of sacred art, upon this subject. "To the Umbrian school belongs the glory of having followed out the leading aim of Christian art without pause, and without yielding to the seductions of example or the distractions of clamour. It would seem that a peculiar blessing belongs to the spots rendered specially holy by the sainted Francis of Assisi, and that the odour of his sanctity has preserved the fine arts from degradation in that mountain district, where so many pious painters have successively contributed to ornament his tomb. From thence rose to heaven, like a sweet incense, prayers whose fervour and purity ensured their efficacy: from thence, too, in other times, there descended, like beneficent dew upon the more corrupt cities of the plain, penitential inspirations that spread into almost every part of Italy."
Since these pages were written I have met with a passage in the introduction of Boni's Italian translation of the work just quoted, which I subjoin, at the risk of some repetition, as a fair specimen of the ideas on Christian art now entertained by many on the Continent, but as yet little known to English literature.
"On the Umbrian mountains, by Assisi, slept, in the peace of Heaven, St. Francis, who left such sweet odour of sanctity in the middle ages. Round his tomb assembled, from every part of Christendom, pilgrims to pay their vows. With their offertories there was erected over his grave a magnificent temple, which became the point of concourse to all painters animated by Christian feeling, who thus displayed their gratitude to the Almighty for their endowment of genius, who in that solitude laid in a new store of inspiration, and who, after leaving on these walls a testimony of their powers, returned home joyful and enriched. Cimabue, among the first that raised a holy war against the Byzantine mannerism,[*120] there painted the most beautiful of his Madonnas; his pupil, the shepherd of Bondone, there traced those simple histories which established his superiority; thither sped the artists of Siena, Perugia, Arezzo, and the best of the Florentines,—the beatified Fiesole, of angelic life and works, Benozzo Gozzoli, Orcagna, Perugino, and, finally, Raffaele, the greatest of painters.
"Thus was there formed in the shadow of that sanctuary a truly Christian school, which sought its types of beauty in the heavens; or, when it laid the scene of its compositions here below, selected their subjects from the sainted ones of the earth. Its delight was to represent, now the Virgin-Mother kneeling before her Son, or seated caressing or holding him up for the veneration of patriarchs and saints; now the life of Christ, his preaching, his sufferings, his triumph; or, again, to embody the touching legends told in these simple times, or the martyrs crucified by early tyrants, or an anchorite's devotion in a lonely cave, or some beatified soul borne away on seraph's wings; or a religious procession, the miracle of a preacher, the solemnity of a sacrament: but ever, images of solace and of hope, cherubs singing and making melody, maidens contemplating with smiles the opening heavens, the scenes begun on earth but continued far beyond the clouds, where the Madonna and the Saviour are seen, radiant with serene exultation, beholding the concourse of suppliant faithful beneath."