I did not on my former visits say any thing to you about the Academy in this place, and I will now endeavour to supply the deficiency. I first visited the school of design; the drawings used as copies are far inferior to those of Rome, both in selection and execution. The exclusive admiration of the Tuscans for what is Tuscan, is here a great disadvantage. The collection of casts is a very good one, but in many of the figures, the parts have not been carefully put together; it occupies three rooms. In architecture and ornament, the Academy of San Lucca has the advantage; whether you consider the means of instruction, or the progress actually made by the pupils. The library is not rich in large folios; and what is an artist’s library without them? The gallery of painting contains some good Peruginos, and many pictures which are admired by the Tuscans, merely because they are Tuscan. However, if they have little charm for the painter, they possess much interest, as elucidations of the history of the art.
Another subject of attention which I have before neglected, is the execution of pictures and ornaments in hard stones (pietre dure) such as agates and jaspers, which are usually inlaid in some dark coloured stone. It is a government manufacture, but I inquired what might be estimated as the expense of a moderate sized slab of porphyry, with an inlaid wreath and quiver, and was informed that it would be about 6000 sequins. It is a beautiful and durable manufacture, but by no means in proportion to the expense. The performers speak with a sort of contempt of the easily made mosaics of Rome. The museum of the grand duke contains very considerable treasures in natural history, but is chiefly celebrated for its anatomical wax models, particularly those relating to childbirth; perhaps not the best subject for an exhibition so completely public, but admirable for the truth and accuracy of imitation.
On the 11th of May I went up Monte Asenario with Dr. Carlo Passerini, assistant professor of botany here. The distance from Florence is about eleven miles, and nearly all of it on an ascent. It is passable for a carriage, except about half a mile from the summit, which I should think must be as much as 2000 feet above the Arno. The view presents a great succession of wild, Apennine scenery, consisting of steep banks and angular ridges, rather than of rocks and precipices, a great deal of brushwood, but little timber. To the east, one point arose, with a few spots of snow, which I judge to be the mountain whence the Tiber takes its rise. To the west and north-west were several snowy summits. The botany offered perhaps more rarities to an Italian than to an Englishman. There were some Alpine plants, and a few others which I had not seen before, and several English plants which my companion considered as prizes. We stopt at a villa of the grand duke called Pratolino. He has lately extended its bounds; and its future circuit, for the late accessions are not yet united in a common fence, will exceed five miles. What is now included (and the present extent is considerable) is really in the English style; with too many serpentine walks perhaps, a defect not uncommon in our country, but without all the ins and outs, and crincum-crancums of what is usually called on the continent an English garden. The mixture of fine trees and lawns, with the views of the deep and cultivated valley below, and occasionally of the wider vale of the Arno, form a delightful scene.
I took leave of my Florentine friends on Thursday, and on Friday the 14th of May set off for Leghorn. The road has little hill, but the valley of the Arno, sometimes extending into a rich and extensive plain, sometimes contracted between steep and rocky banks, half covered with stone pines, forms a continued source of interest. To the north, at a distance rose the Apennines, still tipped with snow in various places, and in particular one abrupt mountain almost detached from the rest, formed a bold and magnificent object. On all this we turned our backs in order to reach Leghorn, and passed about sixteen miles of dead flat, everywhere cultivated. There are pretty high hills, perhaps of an elevation of six or seven hundred feet, beginning about two or three miles from the city, which greatly embellish the scene. Leghorn is a lively, bustling place, with wider streets than most of the Italian cities, bordered, not with palaces, but with respectable looking houses; these are usually very lofty, and the lowest, or perhaps the two lowest stories are often appropriated to the purpose of warehouses. I have to mount two pair of stairs to reach the lowest floor of my inn, and the magazines below, contain, among other things, a quantity of salt fish, whose perfume is certainly no recommendation to the apartments above.
Pisa has been a noble city, and its history is very interesting, but you know I do not trouble you with the histories of cities, though I do sometimes with that of particular buildings, which I am afraid you consider much less interesting; but the shoemaker must not go beyond his last. Ample remains still exist of its ancient magnificence, and four of the most conspicuous and celebrated objects are found in a large grass-grown piazza at the northern angle of the city. We here meet with a style of architecture, which I believe is peculiar to this part of Italy. The Cathedral is 297 feet long, 108 wide on the body of the nave, 228 on the length of the transept. The front is 127 feet high. The lower part exhibits a range of seven arches, resting on six attached columns and two pilasters. The middle arch is larger than the others. Over these are nineteen smaller arches, occupying the whole extent. This brings us up to the roof of the side aisles, and a second row of arches corresponding with these in size, and nearly in height, is cut off on the sides by the sloping roof, so that there are nine entire arches and five commencements on each side: above these is a range of eight arches, somewhat higher than either of those immediately below them, forming the end of the clerestory, and as many more, taller in the middle and diminishing in height towards the sides, occupy the gable or pediment: each arch here is perfect, but it rests on a lower base, while under the roof of the aisles the arches are cut off. The lines of the centre part are not carried down, so as to preserve the appearance of a self-supported mass; it is not a lofty centre with two lower wings, but one building, finishing in a truncated pediment, surrounded by another smaller one, of which the pediment is entire. In the four upper stories all the arches rest on insulated columns. I am thus particular in my description, not because I admire the arrangement, but because it characterizes a style of architecture which prevailed in these parts in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The architect of this church was Busketus. I write it with the Latin termination, because our knowledge of him proceeds from a Latin epitaph. He is preferred in this composition to the Dulichian leader. The one by his wisdom destroyed the walls of Troy, while the other raised those of this basilica. This Dulichian leader must be Ulysses; and the name of the place has nothing to do with Busketus; and yet this appears to be the only authority for the usual opinion, that he was a Greek artist. If we could determine whence he had copied the peculiarities of his architecture, we might perhaps make a reasonable guess at his country; but as far as I can find, if they did not originate in his own mind, his types have been destroyed. The time in which he lived is not exactly fixed; some authors asserting, on the strength of documents which they pretend to have examined, that the church was begun in 1005, and finished in 1015; while others, supported by an inscription on the building, which seems decisive, assert that it was begun in 1063, and conclude from some early Pisan writers, that it was finished in 1092. The difference is of no great consequence. On the flank of the edifice, a range of pilasters corresponds with the columns of the front, and like them is surmounted with arches; but the second range of pilasters on the side, occupies the height both of column and arch in the front, and supports a continued architrave. The clerestory presents a range of arches on attached columns, considerably wider apart than the upper pilasters of the side aisles: this want of exact correspondence may not be a defect, since there is no necessary connexion between the parts, but it disappoints the eye. The dome has no great elevation, and is surrounded in the lower part by a range of insulated columns supporting arches. Whether these are part of the original design, I know not; but some ornaments with which they are crowned, and perhaps the dome itself, I conclude to have been restorations after a fire which took place in 1596. The whole design of the flank has a simplicity and harmony which are very pleasing. We enter by magnificent bronze doors, sculptured from the designs of Giovanni Bologna de Douay; an addition I do not recollect to have before met with, and which seems to trace the art from Flanders. The subordinate artists have all names which point them out as Italians.
Internally, the building forms on the ground plan a Latin cross, with double aisles to the nave and square part of the choir, with sixty-eight columns supporting arches on the ground-floor, and four piers supporting an elliptical dome. The lateral tribunes however, do not open entirely into the nave, and consequently rather appear as two additional edifices, than as forming what should properly be called a transept. Above the first order there are galleries, with a pier over each column below, and supporting an arch of the same extent, but divided into two smaller arches by the help of a little, intermediate column. Above these arches is a high wall, in the upper part of which are small, semicircular headed windows. Milizia sneers at these insignificant openings; yet they shed a pleasant, diffused light, without ever becoming in themselves important objects. The ceiling is flat: that of the side aisles alone is vaulted: thus you see the internal disposition is very much like that of some of the Roman basilicas. The galleries of the choir are rather higher than those of the nave, and the pointed arch occurs at the extremity of the latter. The lower columns may be classed in two sizes, those which divide the side aisles being smaller than those of the nave, but each range has varieties. The larger are of granite; of the smaller, some are granite, some marble, of various sorts; two or three are fluted, the rest are plain; and these smaller columns differ also in height, giving sufficient proof of their having been made up of the materials of more ancient buildings. Some perhaps were brought from the East, as the Pisans carried on at that epoch a very extensive commerce. Some of the capitals are Composite, but more are Corinthian; and these vary in diameter, height, character, and proportion to the column. The apophysis is generally large, and the bases are of meagre, and ill understood Attic, but not all precisely alike, or bearing the same proportion to the columns. One base only is of the form peculiar to the Corinthian order. Some of the granite appears to be that of Sardinia, or of the isle of Elba, and columns of this material could hardly have come from the Levant. We may observe also pavonazzo, cippolino, and Egyptian granite. A large plinth at bottom, and a sort of pedestal above the capital, have enabled the architect to spring all his arches from the same height.
The Baptistery stands nearly opposite to the western front of the cathedral. This is a large, circular building, above 160 feet in diameter externally, and about 176 feet high. It was begun in 1152, and finished in 1154, the architect being Dioti Salvi. The whole of what appears to the eye up to the dome is of marble. At bottom there is a circle of twenty three-quarter columns supporting as many arches, and in the spaces, four richly ornamented doorways, and fifteen small windows. Above these is a circle adorned with sixty small, detached columns, supporting arches, every two arches being surmounted with a triangular gable, and between every two gables is a pinnacle. Over this is another story, with twenty small windows, each also with its gable, and a buttress in each interval, surmounted by an open shrine or tabernacle. Above all this is a dome, and above the dome an obtuse cone. This is its present state, but you know no small controversy has arisen with respect to this building, because if all these Gothic ornaments really formed part of the original design, it proves the use of that style of architecture as early as the middle of the twelfth century. The controversy can only last at a distance, for every practised eye which looks at the work with such an object, must discern that all these pointed ornaments are certainly additions of a posterior date. The first range of gables dividing the building into thirty parts instead of twenty, as is the case above and below, quite destroys the symmetry and unity of design; at the same time it is easier to pronounce what was not, than to determine what was, the original termination of this part. I strongly suspect that when first erected, this baptistery terminated in a spire or cone, rising on the inner circuit of arches, which I shall presently describe, and that the present obtuse cone rising above the dome, formed a part of the original spire. The dome itself is quite inessential to the rest of the building, and if taken away, all the important parts would be complete without it; the little cupola which at present terminates the cone, I should also pronounce to be an addition, as it harmonizes with the rest neither in appearance nor construction.
Internally, we find a circle of eight columns and four piers, supporting twelve arches, with a gallery above, divided in the same manner; but instead of columns of Sardinian or Elban granite like those below, there are only piers formed of joined pilasters; and above these two stories of arches, rises the cone, which is exposed to view internally for its whole height.
The Pulpit is of an octagonal form, supported on columns; and a large, octagonal, marble inclosure is provided for baptism by immersion; in the centre of this basin, there is now a lofty pedestal supporting a statue. This furniture (for such it actually is) is very handsome; but the building itself wants finish, and one cannot say that it is well proportioned.
In the same square with the cathedral and baptistery is the Campo Santo, built to receive a cargo of earth from the Holy Land, which might sanctify the ground which was to contain the relicks of the illustrious Pisans. It is an oblong, or rather rhomboidal court, very narrow in proportion to its length, surrounded by arcades of white marble. All the arches of this arcade except four, have been filled with a sort of Gothic tracery, entirely detached in the construction; differing considerably in the style of work; and to introduce which the old mouldings and ornaments have in places evidently been cut away; yet this like the baptistery has been made a subject of dispute. We have two inscriptions to help us in the dates, one of them stating the completion of the building in 1283, under the direction of Giovanni Pisano; the other the completion of the arches, which doubtless applies to this tracery, in 1464. This building is rendered more interesting by the ancient paintings with which the walls are nearly covered; and also by several sarcophagi, and other remains of antiquity, which it contains.