The Madonna of St. Agostino
From a photograph
I also went to see the appartamento Borgia, newly opened at the Vatican. It contains one of the most splendid pieces of decoration I have ever seen—three rooms painted by Pinturicchio; they have been closed for twenty years, having been used as libraries; the walls were covered with books. The Pope has gone to great expense to put them in order, and has thrown them open to the public. Artistic Rome has gone mad about them. They surpass everything in the way of decoration here save the Sistine Chapel and the Stanze of Raphael.
June 29 and 30, 1897.
To-night the Feast of St. Peter is to be celebrated by a dinner-party on the terrace. That old statue of Jupiter in the great church across the way,—now held venerable as a portrait of St. Peter—is dressed in his best vestments, his finest tiara, and wears his most sumptuous sapphire ring on his stiff forefinger. As the whole Borgo is under the protection of St. Peter, I always make a little feast on his day. There are many sermons preached about him; I heard an excellent one in a neighboring church. The object of the saints’ days is to keep alive the memory of noble lives. Just as on Washington’s Birthday the old stories of Valley Forge and Yorktown are recited year after year, so the story of Peter is told on the 29th of June every year. I was surprised to hear Signor Rodolfo Lanciani say he thought it possible St. Peter had actually been in Rome, and that in his opinion the great church may cover his last resting-place as well as perpetuate his name.
Ripe figs are supposed to be eaten first on St. John’s Day, the 24th of June. Tradition says that the first plate of figs was always presented on that day to Pope Pius the Ninth. Either figs are late this season or Pompilia has been slow about finding them, for the purple figs which were served with cold boiled ham for our luncheon to-day are the first we have seen this season. Naturally there was no second course to such a superlative first. The terrace dinner was a great success. The table was set under the pergola covered thick with the second crop of roses. We hung lucerne (brass lamps for burning olive oil) from the yellow canes of the crossed bamboos and lighted the farther end of our airy dining-room with colored lanterns. Among the guests were Monsignor William O’Connell, director of the American College, a genial Irish-American priest, and Dr. William Bull, physician to the American Embassy, guide, philosopher, and friend of all wandering Americans. He is beloved of artists, a collector of antiquities, a genial, not a melancholy Dane, a wise physician, and one of the most picturesque figures in our Roman world. The sun was still staining the sky when we sat down. By the time old Nena brought the ices from the trattoria below, the full yellow moon came up over the Sabine Hills, flooding every corner with its yellow light. Below, in the baker’s shop, the nightingale sang to the roses. Our best rose, il Capitano Christi, is a very large, flat, pink rose, growing on a stiff stalk with long, fierce thorns. It opens wide as a saucer, and is of the most rapturous, tender color. It is grafted on an excellent commonplace red rose-tree, a generous and prolific bloomer, which yields a brave harvest, the first to blossom, the last to wither, always to be depended on if I want roses in a hurry. The Captain gives a rare rose, never more than one at a time, but I know that it is to the Captain’s rose that the baker’s nightingale sings.
IV
A PRESENTATION TO LEO THE THIRTEENTH
Palazzo Rusticucci, November 20, 1897.