“There has not been a bit of real Etruscan ware made since that time,” reiterated the connoisseur, accentuating the dictum by tapping gently upon the specimen in his hand, and smiling into our interested faces, “Who asserts the contrary, lies!” yet more suavely.
He blew invisible dust from the precious vase; replaced it tenderly upon its shelf, and passed on to Egyptian mummies with the easy sociability of a contemporary. There are papyrii by the score in the archives of the University, and four thousand ancient MSS. in the “new” buildings which are “all print” to him. He rendered the long-winded hieroglyphical inscriptions upon sarcophagus and tablet as fluently as we would the news summary of Herald, Tribune or Times. A pleasant, gracious gentleman he proved to be withal. His courtesy to the party of strangers whose sole recommendation to his hospitality was their strangerhood, is held by them in grateful remembrance.
S. Petronio, the largest church in Bologna, is, like the Leaning Towers, unfinished, although begun in the fourteenth century. The Emperor Charles V. was crowned here. A vast, hideous barn without, it yet holds some valuables that well repay the trouble of inspection. The marble screens of the chapels; the inlaid and carved stalls, of a clear, dark brown with age; old stained glass that shames the gaudiness of later art; one or two fine groups of sculpture, and a very few good paintings enrich the interior. The astronomer Cassini drew, in 1653, the meridian-line upon the pavement of one of the aisles. Much of the stained glass is from the hand of the celebrated Jacob of Ulm. About the church is a bare, paved space, devoid of ornament or enclosure, that adds to the dreariness of the structure.
Guido Reni is buried in S. Domenico, a smaller edifice, enshrining the remains of its patron saint. The kneeling angel on one side of his tomb, and the figure of St. Petronious (a new worthy to us) upon the other, are by Michael Angelo. Guido Reni painted St. Dominic’s transfiguration within the dome, and, with one of the Caracci, frescoed the Chapel of the Rosary on the left. In the choir is the monument of King Enzio.
We had already seen the house in which he was confined for twenty-two years after the disastrous fight of Fassalta. He was the son of the Emperor Frederic II., and great-grandson of Barbarossa. Like his auburn-haired ancestor, Frederic II. waged war for twenty years with the Papal See, the Bolognese espousing the cause of the latter, and that of the Guelphs. Euzio’s gift from his father of the Kingdom of Sardinia was the pretext of the Pope’s second bull of excommunication against the Emperor, and the cause of the war which resulted for the brave young Prince in life-long captivity. His incarceration was rather the honorable detention of a prisoner-of-state than penal confinement. The Palazzo del Podestà was a luxurious home. Its Great Hall still bears his name. It was not in this audience-chamber that he received the visits of the most beautiful woman in Bologna, Lucia Vendagoli, whom he secretly married. Euzio was, at the time of his capture, but twenty-five years of age. At seventeen, he had fought his first battle under his father’s eye; at nineteen, was King of Sardinia; at twenty, was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial forces. To the bravery and knightly accomplishments of his illustrious great-grandfather, he united personal beauty and grace that made him irresistible to the fair patrician. Her passion for him and her wifely devotion are the theme of numberless ballads and romances, and were the solace of an existence that must else have been insupportable to the caged eagle.
From this union sprang the powerful family of the Bentivogli who carried on the hereditary feud with the Pope until the latter sued for peace and alliance. The Bentivogli were a stirring race and kept Bologna in hot water for as many decades as their founder passed years in the palatial prison. The staircase up which Lucia stole to meet her royal lover; the apartments in which their interviews were held, are still pointed out, although the palace is now a city hall where records are made and preserved.
We drove out to the Campo Santo upon the loveliest of June afternoons, passing, within the town-walls, the house of Rossini, built under his own eye, and the more modest abodes of Guercino and Guido Reni. The frescoes of this last are from the master’s brush, but we had not time to go in to look at them. “Something must be crowded out”—even in Bologna. For example, we visited neither soap nor sausage-factory.
The drives in the environs of the city are extremely beautiful, the roads good. The Campo Santo was, until the beginning of this century, a Carthusian Monastery. The grounds are entered through a gate in walls enclosing church, cloisters and arcades, with a level space literally floored with grave-stones. In this, the common burying-ground, were re-interred the greater part of the bones unearthed by the railway excavations through the Street of Tombs. Etruscans, Guelphs, Ghibellines and modern Bolognese sleep amicably and compactly together. Grass and purple clover spring up between the horizontal stones, and the roses in the path-borders load the air with sweetness. The distinguished dead have monuments in the arcades,—long corridors, filled with single statues and groups, usually admirable in design and workmanship. The vaults of the nobility are here, wealth combining with affection to set fitting tributes above the beloved and departed. There may be, also, a vying of wealth with wealth in the elaborate sculpture and multiplication of figures. I did not think of this in pausing at a father’s tomb on which stood upright a handsome lad of thirteen or thereabouts, the mother’s only surviving child. She had bowed upon his shoulder and buried her face in his neck in an agony of desolation, clinging to him as to earth’s last hope. The boy’s head was erect, and his arm encircled the drooping form. He would play the man-protector, but his eyes were full, and the pouting underlip was held firm by the tightened line of the upper. The careful finish of the details of hair and dress did not detract from the pathos of the group.
“That is not Art!” objected Prima, made critical by Roman art lectures and illustrative galleries.
“No!” I assented. “It is Nature!”