At five o’clock, we took our station on the wayside, one of a “jam” of carriages to wait for the coming of the royal cortege! In the intervals of waiting, I amused myself pointing out the coroneted equipages; they clustered around, their occupants apparently quite as eager as we to see the spectacle. Presently the chatter was hushed; eye-glasses of all kinds were adjusted; everybody’s gaze was on the Porta San Giovanni; a flash of scarlet shot through its arch; the jockey who always precedes the queen’s carriage, itself with its four steeds, most richly caparisoned—the coachman and two footmen in the brilliant scarlet uniform of the queen; and inside, the beautiful, gracious, happy-looking Marguerite, a queen indeed, if looks and bearing count! She bowed so queenly, and smiled so womanly, right and left, I no longer wonder that her subjects worship her. A number of gorgeous equipages followed; the pageant swept on, and the chill dusk hurried us home.
Another church was the quaint old building of St. Onofrio, on the Janiculus. It was reared to commemorate the piety of that saint, shown by a life of sixty years’ hermitage in the desert, reducing himself to the level of the brute creation. I confess my pilgrimage to his shrine was not from sympathy with any such idea of piety. Nor has it much in the way of art. Three frescoes by Domenichino, and one fresco, faded and injured by retouching, by Leonardo da Vinci, are all worth speaking of. But Tasso is buried there, and the cell he occupied is shown, full of souvenirs of him. It is a large room, with three windows, and commands some fine views. The souvenirs are a fresco portrait of him, life-size and most startlingly life-like; a bust in wax, autograph letters, chairs, etc. There is a garden attached, in which is an oak under which he used to sit. The view from that “coigne de vantage” is lovely. I seated myself where he might have sat to enjoy it. But—you have read about the pretty, glancing, green and gold lizards of Italy! Well, it seemed to me there was one at least to every blade of grass, to every twig, where anything could glide or dangle. A lady had carried one home with her the day before in the folds of her dress. I was not very ambitious to follow her example, so, perhaps very ingloriously, I decamped without delay.
There is a set of churches, three in number, called “The Three Churches of the Aventine,” from their being situated on that hill. Each has something of special interest, but I shall tell of only one, that of St. Sabrina. It contains Sassoferrato’s masterpiece, the “Madonna of the Rosary,” a really beautiful and interesting picture of this inexhaustible subject. The Madonna is giving a rosary to St. Dominicus, and the Christ-child another to St. Catherine; the latter with a childlike delight and benevolence in the giving, most admirably rendered. On the pillar in the nave is a good-sized black bowlder, with the legend attached that it was hurled by the devil at St. Dominicus when at prayer; such was his fury at this pious act. The flagstone on which the saint was kneeling was also shown. It has been removed from the floor and built into the wall. There is an orange tree in the garden, still vigorous and beautiful, planted by St. Dominicus. The good brothers make crosses and rosaries of its wood and sell them, thus “making an honest penny.” We bought some and took them to the pope to be consecrated!
This prowling about old churches, hunting up celebrated pictures, relics, legends, etc., comes to be a great fascination. As they are counted by hundreds, one can always have a place to go. The trouble is to make a selection. And—it is just as perplexing which to tell you about. There is one more, though, I do not like to leave out. It is small and not at all striking; stands beside the great Doria palace on the Corso, and right in the way, but comparatively few enter it. The name is St. Maria in Via Lata, and it is the church in which St. Paul and St. Luke taught.
There are really two churches, one entered from the street and the other beneath it, reached by descending a flight of steps. The latter is the one where the apostles preached, and very small and humble and dark; the custodian carried lighted tapers to insure our seeing. There were some faded frescoes on the walls, a well, the water of which burst forth miraculously for the baptism of converts under their preaching; and there is a fragment of the ancient Servian wall in one end that is very curious, with its huge blocks of stone arranged both upright and horizontally. In the upper church is preserved that remarkable picture of the head of Christ “begun by St. Luke and finished by an angel.” It is kept closely shut up in a cabinet over the alter, but a silver lira won an inspection. Faded, dingy, crude, all that can be said is that neither of the accredited artists could have worked from especial training or inspiration! From churches to studios—a natural transition. What galleries the former have been, and are, for the latter.
Strolling through the Via Margutta—“the artist’s quarter”—a large building arrested attention. On inquiring, we found, among many other studios in it, those of our Rodgers and Ives. Applying quite unceremoniously for admittance to the first, was accorded at once, and the son of Mr. Rodgers advanced and received us most courteously, and conducted us through several rooms, full of the completed works of his father, and a number of work-rooms full of busy workmen. Among the many admirable finished works, four particularly interested us: “The Lost Pleiad,” “Ruth,” “Somnambulist” and “The Blind Girl of Pompeii.” Never was the groping movement peculiar to the blind so touchingly rendered as in that slight, girlish figure. She is pressing forward against a strong wind, which is shown by the way her hair and skirts are blown backward, grasping her staff, and feeling her way equally, as it were, with it, and the sightless orbs directed so intently before her. What a curious mastery of the “cold, insensate marble” that can make the heart ache so!
We were equally unceremonious and fortunate in our reception at the studio of Mr. Ives. He was just going out, but turned at once, and accompanied us with the utmost kindness and graciousness through his rooms. There, too, were many well-filled, and others where the workmen’s chisels were busy. It was interesting to pause and watch the tiny chips and threads of marble dust as made under their skillful touches, and mark the delicate finish given thereby to lip and brow, the more tender curve to the dainty shoulder, the more graceful sweep to the trailing drapery. I gazed longest on a “young Bacchus,” a drooping “Ariadne,” that half elf, half human “Undine,” and that nymph of wood, water and wisdom, “Egeria.” The last, especially, drew me to it again and again. It is a sitting statue inclining somewhat forward, gazing earnestly at the right foot extending before it, and from the toes of which streams of water are gushing. The left foot is drawn back and is resting on the tip of the toes. There is little drapery, but the little is exquisitely wrought. The features are of ethereal beauty; the hair is arranged in a simple Grecian knot. She is sitting on a stump entwined with ivy; around its roots the wild acanthus spreads its beautiful leaves. The lovely creature! I think it will haunt me forever.
The third studio was that of an Italian artist. Besides his pictures, the rooms were adorned with tapestries, rugs and bric-a-brac. There were some most ingenious exhibitions of taste. In one room the light fell on crayons on glass, most attractive pictures. Passing to another room behind this, the light shone through these, converting them into exquisite transparencies. It was a desire to light what would have been otherwise a dark room, without marring the walls of the others by introducing windows. There were some portraits on his walls, wonderful as paintings, and carrying conviction of their faithfulness as likenesses. One was a queenly woman, with that splendid texture of flesh so often described by the words, “you can almost see the bones through it,” because of its transparency, features “clean cut as a cameo,” a warm fine glow on the cheek; elsewhere that pinkish pearl hue of youth and health; and heavy masses and braids of the richest golden hair, with the very glint of the burnished metal on it. I felt like plucking out a strand or two that they might never be turned to silver, and thinking of Aurora Leigh, kept asking myself “how many ingots went to make that dazzling sheen?” So realistic was this “vision of beauty,” one could easily believe it would turn and answer, did you speak to it.
It was, however, the last studio of the four where I went oftenest and lingered longest, and always with increasing pleasure—that of Dwight Benton, formerly of Cincinnati, and who favors the “Commercial” now and then with a delightful letter. Doubtless you have read them. His studio consists of two spacious rooms, most admirably lighted and tastefully fitted up. It is a gallery in itself, with its walls covered with “studies,” and its many easels filled with wonder-works of his never idle brush! Of late years he paints landscapes exclusively, and it may be added “con amore.” Such enthusiasm is bound to tell—so there are scenes from Capri that do not seem to belong to canvass at all—that strip of beach is there to stroll on; those cliffs you will climb sooner or later; the chickens aroost in the little boat drawn up in the shadow of a corner of that quaint old house, will have to fly for it by and by, when you will want it for a sail; in a few moments you are going up the steps to follow that tall, stately-looking peasant woman just disappearing in that old house, for you are eager to explore it. You look further! On another easel is a stretch of the Campagna, seen beyond and through some near ruins. There are patches of sunlight on the grass, not paint, but the warm, intangible sunbeams that drop from the sky to the earth—that wonderful Campagna! It rolls away in shifting arabesques and mosaics of all the hues
“That in the colors of the rainbow live
And play in the plighted clouds,”