The members of San Francescuccio, or Delle Stimate, ever to and fro upon some errand of mercy, belong to the most important confraternity, and own one of the most picturesque chapels in the towns. When its doors are open during early Mass or Benediction the sound of prayer and chanting comes across the quiet road, and in the blaze of candle-light is seen the great Crucifixion of Ottaviano Nelli (?) in the lunette of the wall above the altar. At other times, the chapel being so sunk below the level of the road with no windows to light it, both fresco and the charming groined roof, blue as that of San Francesco, can with difficulty be seen. The pent roof outside overshadows some Umbrian frescoes by Matteo da Gualdo recording the famous miracle of the roses which flowered for St. Francis in the snow, and which he offered to the Virgin at the Altar of the Portiuncula. On the wall to the right are some ruined frescoes in terra-verde by a scholar of Matteo.
Another confraternity in this street is San Crispino, which once possessed a picture by Niccolò Alunno, but that has long since disappeared, and only faint patches of colour remain above its gateway. There are many other confraternities, but as they do not all possess pictures of interest, we only mention three others; and first of these, the Oratory of St. Anthony the Abbot, or Chiesa dei Pellegrini, which every visitor to Assisi ought to visit.[108] After the Church of San Francesco it is by far the most important sight of the town; a Lombard façade, a Roman temple, or a mediæval castle, delightful and beautiful as they are, may be seen elsewhere, but we know nothing with such individual charm as the little chapel of St. Anthony, in the Via Superba. So often a hundred vicissitudes arrested the adornment of a building during those troubled times of the middle ages, but here we find a small and perfectly proportioned oratory decorated with frescoes upon the ceiling and upon every wall, by two Umbrian masters who have sought to make it a complete and perfect sanctuary of Umbrian art.
Built in 1431 by the piety of the brotherhood of St. Anthony the Abbot, it served as a private chapel to the adjoining hospital, where pilgrims coming to pray at the shrine of St. Francis found food and shelter for three days. The liberal donations given by Guidantonio, Duke of Urbino and sometime Lord of Assisi, whose devotion to the saint was great, may have enabled the confraternity to adorn it with its many frescoes. Outside, in the arched niche above the door, are the patrons of the chapel, St. Anthony and St. James of Campostello, that great saint of pilgrims, with a frieze of small angels above them playing upon various instruments, also by Matteo da Gualdo. To him we owe the fair Madonna over the altar who gazes so dreamily before her, and sits so straight upon her throne. Angels gather round bending towards their instruments with earnest faces; Matteo's angels can never only calmly pray, they must sing or else play on tambourines, viole d'amore, cymbals and organs. Less pleasing are the large figures of St. James and St. Anthony, while in contrast to them are the slender winged figures on either side bearing tall candelabra, and moving forward with such stately step, their white garments sweeping in long folds behind them, their fair curls just ruffled by the air. Surely Matteo must have been thinking of a group of babies at play in the cornfields, or under the hedges near his own Umbrian town, when he painted that frieze of laughing children, with little caps fitting so closely round their heads, who are tossing the branches of red and white roses up into the air. Each one is different, and all are full of graceful movement. They divide the frescoes below from that of the Annunciation, which recalls the manner of Boccatis da Camerino, the master of Matteo. He paints a swallow, the bird of returning spring, perched outside the Virgin's bedroom, to symbolise the promise of redemption, and a lion cub meant to represent the lion of Judah walks leisurely towards the Madonna.
Matteo da Gualdo, as the inscription tells, worked here in 1468, and Pier Antonio da Foligno, known as Mezzastris, came in 1482 to paint the rest of the chapel, and upon the right wall he related the most famous of St. James' miracles in a naïve and delightful manner. The legends tell how in the time of Pope Calixtus II, a certain German with his wife and son on their way to the saint's Spanish shrine of Campostello lodged at Tolosa, where their host's daughter fell in love with the fair young German. But he, being a cautious youth, resisted every advance of the Spanish maiden, who sought to avenge herself by hiding a silver drinking cup belonging to her father in his wallet. The theft was discovered, and the judge of Tolosa condemned the young pilgrim to be hanged. Pier Antonio has painted the scene when the father and mother, after visiting Campostello, return to take a last look at the place where their son was executed and find him well: "O my mother! O my father!" he says, "do not lament for me, as I have never been in better cheer, the blessed Apostle James is at my side, sustaining me and filling me with celestial joy and comfort." In the fresco near the altar the story is continued; the judge, stout and imposing as one of Benozzo Gozzoli's Florentine merchants, is seated at a table in crimson and ermine robes surrounded by his friends, when the pilgrim and his wife arrive and beg him to release their son. Somewhat bored at being interrupted at his banquet he mocks them, saying: "What meanest thou, good woman? Thou art beside thyself. If thy son lives so do these fowls before me." No sooner had he spoken than, to the astonishment of all, the cock and hen stood up on the dish and the cock began to crow, as we see in Mezzastris' fresco. On the opposite wall are miracles of St. Anthony. In the fresco near the door he is sitting in the porch of the church surrounded by his companion hermits; they are watching the arrival of camels which, in answer to the saint's prayer, have brought a supply of food neatly corded on their backs. The artist has pictured the desert with sandy mountains, little flowers growing in the burning sand and thick grass in the wood by the convent. In the second fresco St. Anthony, beneath a portico of lapis lazzuli and green serpentine, is distributing the food brought by the friendly camels, to the beggars, who appear as suddenly upon the scene as the beggars do in an Assisan street.
The four figures in the ceiling, Pope Leo III, St. Bonaventure, St. Isidor of Seville and St. Augustine, and the angels with shield-shaped wings, are also by Mezzastris. A graceful piece of his work is the Christ above the door, in a glory of angels who form a wreath around Him with their wings like sheaves of yellow wheat. Delightful, but very different from Matteo's, are the cupid-angels flying across the sky on clouds, and the two seated playing with a shield upon which is painted the pilgrim's scallop-shell.
MONTE FRUMENTARIO IN THE VIA PRINCIPE DI NAPOLI
The figure of St. James near the door is of small interest, being a much restored work of a pupil of Perugino; but in the dark corner on the other side is, says Mr Berenson, a youthful work of Fiorenzo di Lorenzo. It is the young St. Ansano holding his lungs suspended daintily from one finger as in the fresco of S. Paolo, and looking so charming in his page's dress, his fair curls falling about his shoulders. He stands at the entrance of a cave with pointed rocks above, and saxifrage and ferns delicately drawn are growing in their crevices. Would that Mezzastris had given his pupil a larger space of wall to work on, so that we might have had more saints and landscapes like these. We leave the chapel with regret, giving one last look at Matteo's Madonna and his frieze of child-angels, and then go out into the long broad Via Principe di Napole. Its fine palaces, once the abode of some of the richest nobles of the town, have now been turned into schools and hospitals, and our thoughts once more revert to the past days of prosperity and magnificence as we walk along this grand but silent street where the grass grows unmolested between the stones. A little way further on to the right is the fine loggia of the Monte Frumentario which in olden times was an agricultural Monte di Pietà, where the peasants who had no other possessions than the produce of the fields would come to pawn their grain in time of need. The door is finely sculptured, and the delicate chiselling of the capitals of the pillars of the loggia mark it as a work of the fourteenth century. Not far from the Chiesa dei Pellegrini, but to the left, stands one of the oldest Assisan houses which does not seem to have suffered much alteration since it was built. It was the lodge of the Comacine guild of workers, who have left their sign of the rose between the compass over the entrance, and two pieces of sculpture, showing that those to whom the house belonged were people who worked at some trade. It does not appear to have been a dwelling-house, but only a place where the members of the guild, employed in building the different civil and religious buildings for the Assisans, could meet together to discuss their interests, draw out their plans and execute different pieces of their work. They probably did not build the house, but perhaps in the year 1485, which is the date above the door, adapted for their use one already standing.[109] It is always pointed out as the Casa di Metastasio, but his paternal dwelling is a less interesting house, standing at the angle of Via S. Giacomo and Via S. Croce, which can be reached from the Comacine Lodge by the steep by-street of S. Andrea. Metastasio, though the Trapassi were Assisans, had little to do with the town as his family were engaged in trade at Rome, where he was born in 1698. There he was found improvising songs to a crowd of wondering people by the celebrated Vincenzo Gravina, who adopted and educated him. When set to music, Metastasio's poetry brought all Rome to his feet and earned him the title of Cæsarean poet from the Emperor Charles VI; he ended his life at the court of Vienna as the favourite of Maria Theresa, honoured by all the great musicians of the day. Truly he has little to do with Assisi, yet he must be added to the list of her numerous illustrious citizens.