Adjoining to the cathedral is the ancient palace of the bishop. The great hall seems to have been a fine Gothic edifice, but is now a store-house, and we could not persuade the owner to admit us. Another part has pointed windows divided by mullions, and with an immense width of ornament in brickwork surrounding them. This was erected in 1417. Similar windows abound in Orvieto, except that the arch is generally semicircular.
There have been several other Gothic churches in Orvieto, but they have been modernized, and present nothing remarkable. The church of San Michele must have been an elegant little Saxon edifice in its original form, but it is cut to pieces in all directions. Under the church of San Domenico is a sepulchral chamber, by the architect Sanmicheli. Its form is octagonal, with a double square appended to one side; the effect is pleasing. A little out of the town is the church of San Lorenzo, erected by the same architect. This is also octagonal, and put me in mind of that at Fiascone, but it is a much superior performance. The outside has a face of four pilasters, with a pediment over the two central ones. The middle space is about double that of the sides, and the arch occupying it seems to give a reason for the difference. The ornamental façade appears to be inscribed in a square, and the proportion is pleasing, but there is a high, plain, stuccoed octagon above, which injures the effect. The inside also is very good. The order is Corinthian, but with a cornice so plain that it might almost be called Tuscan; yet it is by no means offensive.
We of course visited the famous Pozzo of San Gallo, which was dug in order to supply Orvieto with water during a siege. It consists of a well of brickwork, surrounded by two spiral, inclined planes, one of which you may go down, and ascend by the other. In the outer cylinder, the upper part is cut through the volcanic tufo which supports itself; but the lower part being in the clay, is executed in brickwork, so that in the same well, you have bricks below, and the native rock above. This well is now useless, as the inhabitants prefer going out of the town for their good water. San Gallo built the Palazzo Soliana in this city, which is a very elegant structure; it is now a convent. Most of the palaces of Orvieto were designed by Ippolito Scalzi, and if there is nothing very striking in the architecture, they may be praised for just proportions and a pleasing distribution of the parts. Some of them are very large. The Palazzo Gualtieri contains some very admirable large chalk drawings, and the owner was polite enough to show us a small collection of gems of first-rate excellence.
From Monte Fiascone, a long descent brought us into the naked plain of Viterbo. Before arriving at the town, we pass the Bollicame, a pool, whence some sort of gas escapes in such quantity as to give the water the appearance of boiling with great violence in several places. In shallow parts near the edges, the water was hardly tepid; but approaching as nearly as I could to those places where the agitation was considerable, I found it as warm as my hand could well bear. It has but little smell.
Viterbo is a curious looking city, with abundance of caverns in the perpendicular faces of the rocks, bordering a little valley which passes through it. The Duomo has a range of columns on each side, with grotesque capitals, supporting semicircular arches. These, and perhaps parts of the choir, are ancient; the rest is modernized without any accordance with the style of the original. The Trinità is a handsome modern church. Its form is that of a Latin cross, with a dome in the centre. That of San Francesco is a large building. The transept has pointed vaulting, and there are two fine archways of the pointed style leading into chapels, and some Gothic tombs. It boasts also a Pietà painted by Sebastian del Piombo, from designs by Michael Angelo. The friars would sell it, if they could obtain permission and a purchaser.
We resumed our journey at half past six the next morning, and wound up the hill of Monte Cimino, which rises above the city; here we are still on volcanic ground, which I believe continues all the way to Rome, with perhaps some partial exceptions. A thick fog concealed the route we had passed, and it was only for a minute that we were able to distinguish the rocky point at Radicofani. To the left were the chain of the Apennines, whose summits were white with snow, and nearer to us, a little south of east, the detached mountain of Soracte. The Lake of Vico formed a beautiful object, irregular in its form, with steep woody hills on one side, and a country nearly flat on the other. We thought we saw a stretch of the Tiber, and were told that had the air been clear we might have seen Rome. To the west was the Mediterranean; my first view of the sea so long the centre of the civilized world, was hazy, and indistinct, so that I beheld doubtingly, and did not feel the pleasure of a sudden and perfect vision. Before the descent to Ronciglione, a small road conducts the traveller to Capraruola, where he finds a great palace of the Farnese family, considered as one of the finest productions of Vignola. The form is pentagonal, but I do not perceive that any thing is gained by this peculiarity. The situation is on the slope of a hill, with the village, consisting of one long, straight, descending street, opposite to the entrance. The woods are rich and the view very fine, but for the site of a building there are positions lower down which would be much superior. The building is magnificent by the size and simplicity of the mass, which is however, perhaps, rather too high in proportion to its extent. The basement and Ionic order above it are finely proportioned, but there are many things to be blamed in the whole composition. The little bastions which the architect has introduced at the angles are trifling, and quite insufficient to give the appearance of a fortress; and it would be bad if they did. The internal circular court is fine, but it is rather the general form which pleases than any peculiar merit in the management. Some of the apartments are noble, but on the whole I was rather dissatisfied, both with the inside and the out. I had been told that some of the original drawings of Vignola were in the hands of a peasant in this neighbourhood, but I inquired for them in vain. We visited the church of the Teresiane to admire a painting of Guido. The architect of that building has made each side of the nave a distinct composition, by which he has entirely destroyed the unity of the whole. This preservation of unity is at least as important in architecture as in the other fine arts, but it has been sadly transgressed. The road wound down to Ronciglione, where we stopt to dine, or breakfast, call it which you please. This is a town seated on the edge of a rocky chasm, and on a point of rock which divides this chasm into two branches. I cannot think of a better object of comparison than Shanklin Chine; you must conceive it four times as wide, and the cliffs twice as high, fringe them with ilex and other shrubs, and put some large trees in the hollow. Here I apprehend we entered upon the Campagna di Roma, “A dreary waste, expanding to the skies;” not entirely uncultivated, or uninhabited, but neither the one nor the other is at all in proportion to the extent; it is not flat, but varied by hills and vallies; or rather it is an inclined plane, intersected by vallies, sometimes as much as one hundred and fifty feet in depth, with steep, broken, and often rocky banks, more or less covered with brushwood, and a few trees scattered here and there.
The ancient city of Sutri, built by the Pelasgi, if we may trust to an inscription over the gate, stands on the edge of this plain, at some distance from the high road. The cross road which conducts to it is bad, but is passable by a carriage: a paved road from Monte Rosi has been suffered to decay. The first object which strikes the traveller is a perpendicular face of rock, full of niches and ancient tombs, on the left of the road. We discover traces of columns cut in the rock, and pediments are frequent. Sometimes the form of an arch is counterfeited. Several recesses remain, which were probably occupied by tablets with inscriptions, but the tablets themselves are all gone. A narrow valley divides these monuments from an insulated hill or rock, whose perpendicular sides are perhaps as full of tombs, and niches, as the preceding; but they are in great measure obscured by shrubs and ivy. The principal object in this mass is an amphitheatre cut in the tufo. It is not perfectly regular, for there are two precinctions in some parts, and in others only one; and there are also, in parts where the hill is most elevated, indications of columns on the surface of the rock, which here rises considerably above the highest step. Not content with thus cutting the steps in the substance of the hill, the authors have made a subterraneous corridor and vomitories. In a few places we find a little brickwork, to supply deficiencies in the natural mass, and there probably has been more, yet except the wearing away of the steps, the whole construction is nearly perfect.
In another part of this hill is a little subterranean church, consisting of a nave and side-aisles. The vestibule is an ancient tomb, and a tradition, or invention, of ancient martyrs here imprisoned, has given a motive to the formation of the church. Sutri itself is seated on a long rocky point, and here and there a fragment of the ancient wall remains. The town stands on a perpendicular rock for nearly the whole circuit, and chambers, or ornaments, have been cut into it; but not to the same degree as in the eminences before mentioned. In one place we observed the representation of a sort of grating. We met with nothing worthy of particular notice in the town itself, but beyond it, there has been a magnificent bridge, erected in the eighteenth century, which united the town with the adjoining hills. This was ruined by the French, (in 1798, I believe) who also destroyed great part of the town; as was likewise the case at Ronciglione. We had only allotted a few hours to Sutri, but the cuttings in the rock are so numerous and so extensive, that this place would offer plenty of employment for a day, independent of drawing and measuring. Sutri was an Etruscan city, and though I will not vouch to you that all these monuments are prior to the dominion of the Romans, yet I think it probable that some of them are of a very early date, and they carry back the imagination to a period beyond authentic history, and excite those vague dreams of ancient civilization and splendour in which it is so delightful to indulge. The situation is very pleasant, the vegetation rich and luxuriant, and the scenery striking and picturesque. We observed no antiquity at Monte Rosi, except some parts of the pavement of a Roman road, but proceeded to Baccano, where we stopped for the night. It is an almost solitary inn, in the midst of a naked, little, round valley, which perhaps like so many others in this part of the world, has once been the crater of a volcano. After supper, at about nine o’clock, the waiter came in to tell us that it was not just to sit up so late, and consume his master’s wood and candles. Next morning (the 31st) we again started at half past six, and saw Rome, or at least the dome of St. Peter’s, from the summit of the first hill. The country became even more desolate, yet there is no dead flat; the soil does not seem bad, and the parts which are cultivated, and still more the entire cultivation of the same sort of land in and about Rome, announce that we must not seek in natural causes alone for this desolation. About four miles from Rome the country improves again, and we have some fine views in approaching the city, with a foreground of rugged cork trees, and bushes of ilex; broken ground and woody hollows; but so many reflections rush into the mind on entering Rome, that one has hardly time to consider whether it is beautiful or not. We entered at the Porta del Popolo, at about eleven o’clock in the morning, and had to go through the accustomed ceremonies at the custom-house; but having brought you to Rome I will now conclude my letter.
LETTER XXIII.
ROMAN ANTIQUITIES.
Rome, January, 1817.