Pencillings by the Way / Written During Some Years of Residence and Travel in Europe

by Nathaniel Parker Willis

All Florence is ringing with the miracle. The city fountains have for some days been dry, and the whole country was suffering for rain. The day before the moon changed, the procession began, and the day after, when the sky was full of clouds, the holy picture in the church of the Annunciata, "painted by St. Luke himself," was solemnly uncovered. The result was the present miracle of rain, and the priests are preaching upon it from every pulpit. The padrone of my lodgings came in this morning, and told me the circumstances with the most serious astonishment.

I joined the crowd this morning, who are still thronging up the via de Servi to the church of the Annunciata at all hours of the day. The square in front of the church was like a fair—every nook occupied with the little booths of the sellers of rosaries, saints books, and pictures. We were assailed by a troop of pedlars at the door, holding leaden medals and crucifixes, and crying, at the top of their voices, for fidele Christiani to spend a crazie for the love of God.

After crowding up the long cloister with a hundred or two of wretches, steaming from the rain, and fresh from every filthy occupation in the city, we were pushed under the suspended leather door, and reached the nave of the church. In the slow progress we made toward the altar, I had full opportunity to study the fretted-gold ceiling above me, the masterly pictures in the side chapels, the statuary, carving, and general architecture. Description can give you no idea of the waste of splendor in these places.

I stood at last within sight of the miraculous picture. It is painted in fresco, above an altar surrounded with a paling of bronze and marble projecting into the body of the church. Eight or ten massive silver lamps, each one presented by some trade in Florence, hung from the roof of the chapel, burning with a dusky glare in the daylight. A grenadier, with cap and musket, stood on each side of the bronze gate, repressing the eager rush of the crowd. Within, at the side of the altar, stood the officiating priest, a man with a look of intellect and nobleness on his fine features and lofty forehead, that seemed irreconcilable with the folly he was performing. The devotees came in, one by one, as they were admitted by the sentinel, knelt, offered their rosary to the priest, who touched it to the frame of the picture with one hand, and received their money with the other, and then crossing themselves, and pressing the beads to their bosom, passed out at the small door leading into the cloisters.

As the only chance of seeing the picture, I bought a rosary for two crazie (about three cents), and pressed into the throng. In a half hour it came to my turn to pass the guard. The priest took my silver paul, and while he touched the beads to the picture, I had a moment to look at it nearly. I could see nothing but a confused mass of black paint, with an indistinct outline of the head of the Madonna in the centre. The large spiked rays of glory standing out from every side were all I could see in the imperfect light. The richness of the chapel itself, however, was better worth the trouble to see. It is quite encrusted with silver. Silver bassi relievi, two silver candelabra, six feet in height, two very large silver statues of angels, a ciborio (enclosing a most exquisite head of our Saviour, by Andrea del Sarto), a massive silver cornice sustaining a heavily folded silver curtain, and silver lilies and lamps in any quantity all around. I wonder, after the plundering of the church of San Antonio, at Padua, that these useless riches escaped Napoleon.

How some of the priests, who are really learned and clever men, can lend themselves to such barefaced imposture as this miracle, it is difficult to conceive. The picture has been kept as a doer of these miracles, perhaps for a century. It is never uncovered in vain. Supernatural results are certain to follow, and it is done as often as they dare to make a fresh draught on the credulity and money of the people. The story is as follows: "A certain Bartolomeo, while painting a fresco of the annunciation, being at a loss how to make the countenance of the Madonna properly seraphic, fell asleep while pondering over his work; and, on waking, found it executed in a style he was unable to equal." I can only say that St. Luke, or the angel, or whoever did it, was a very indifferent draughtsman. It is ill drawn, and whatever the colors might have been upon the pallet of the sleepy painter, they were not made immortal by angelic use. It is a mass of confused black.

I was glad to get away from the crowd and their mummery, and pay a new tribute of reverence at the tomb of Giovanni di Bologna. He is buried behind the grand altar, in a chapel ornamented at his own expense, and with his own inimitable works. Six bas-reliefs in bronze, than which life itself is not more natural, represent different passages of our Saviour's history. They were done for the Grand Duke, who, at the death of the artist, liberally gave them to ornament his tomb. After the authors of the Venus and the Apollo Belvidere, John of Bologna is, in my judgment, the greatest of sculptors. His mounting Mercury, in the Florence gallery, might have been a theft from heaven for its divine beauty.

In passing out by the cloisters of the adjoining convent, I stopped a moment to see the fresco of the Madonna del Sacco, said to have been the masterpiece of Andrea del Sarto. Michael Angelo and Raphael are said to have "gazed at it unceasingly." It is much defaced, and preserves only its graceful drawing. The countenance of Mary has the beau reste of singular loveliness. The models of this delightful artist (who, by the way, is buried in the vestibule of this same church), must have been the most beautiful in the world. All his pictures move the heart.

LETTER LI.

FLORENTINE PECULIARITIES—SOCIETY—BALLS—DUCAL ENTERTAINMENTS—PRIVILEGE OF STRANGERS—FAMILIES OF HIGH RANK—THE EXCLUSIVES—SOIREES—PARTIES OF A RICH BANKER—PEASANT BEAUTY—VISITERS OF A BARONESS—AWKWARD DEPORTMENT OF A PRINCE—A CONTENTED MARRIED LADY—HUSBANDS, CAVALIERS, AND WIVES—PERSONAL MANNERS—HABITS OF SOCIETY, ETC.