I always cross myself and genuflect when I go into a Roman Catholic church, as a mark of respect, but Jones and Gogin say that any one can see I am not an old hand at it. How rudimentary is the action of an old priest! I saw one once at Venice in the dining-room of the Hotel la Luna who crossed himself by a rapid motion of his fork just before he began to eat, and Miss Bertha Thomas told me she saw an Italian lady at Varallo at the table-d’hôte cross herself with her fan. I do not cross myself before eating nor do I think it incumbent upon me to kneel down on the hard floor in church—perhaps because I am not an English bishop. We were sorry for this one and for his young lady, but it was their own doing.
We then went into the Libreria to see the frescoes by Pinturicchio—which we did not like—and spent some little time in attending to them. On leaving we were told to sign our names in a book and did so. As we were going out we met the bishop and his lady coming in; whether they had been kneeling all the time, or whether they had got up as soon we were gone and had spent the time in looking round I cannot say, but, when they had seen the frescoes, they would be told to sign their names and, when they signed, they would see ours and, I flatter myself, know who we were.
On returning to our hotel we were able to collect enough information to settle in our own minds which particular bishop he was.
A day or two later we went to Poggibonsi, which must have been an important place once; nothing but the walls remain now, the city within them having been razed by Charles V. At the station we took a carriage, and our driver, Ulisse Pogni, was a delightful person, second baritone at the Poggibonsi Opera and principal fly-owner of the town. He drove us up to S. Gimignano and told us that the people still hold the figures in Benozzo Gozzoli’s frescoes to be portraits of themselves and say: “That’s me,” and “That’s so and so.”
Of course we went to see the frescoes, and as we were coming down the main street, from the Piazza on which the Municipio stands, who should be mounting the incline but our bishop and his lady. The moment he saw us, he looked cross, stood still and began inspecting the tops of the houses on the other side of the street; so also did the lady. There was nothing of the smallest interest in these and we neither of us had the smallest doubt that he was embarrassed at meeting us and was pretending not to notice us. I have seldom seen any like attempt more clumsily and fatuously done. Whether he was saying to himself, “Good Lord! that wretch will be putting my kneeling down into another Alps and Sanctuaries or Ex Voto”; or whether it was only that we were a couple of blackguard atheists who contaminated the air all round us, I cannot tell; but on venturing to look back a second or two after we had passed them, the bishop and the lady had got a considerable distance away.
As we returned our driver took us about 4 kilometres outside Poggibonsi to San Lucchese, a church of the 12th or 13th century, greatly decayed, but still very beautiful and containing a few naïf frescoes. He told us he had sung the Sanctus here at the festa on the preceding Sunday. In a room adjoining the church, formerly, we were told, a refectory, there is a very good fresco representing the “Miraculous Draught of Fishes” by Gerino da Pistoja (I think, but one forgets these names at once unless one writes them down then and there). It is dated—I think (again!)—about 1509, betrays the influence of Perugino but is more lively and interesting than anything I know by that painter, for I cannot call him master. It is in good preservation and deserves to be better, though perhaps not very much better, known than it is. Our driver pointed out that the baskets in which the fishes are being collected are portraits of the baskets still in use in the neighbourhood.
After we had returned to London we found, in the Royal Academy Exhibition, a portrait of our bishop which, though not good, was quite good enough to assure us that we had not been mistaken as to his diocese.
The Etruscan Urns at Volterra
As regards the way in which the Etruscan artists kept to a few stock subjects, this has been so in all times and countries.
When Christianity convulsed the world and displaced the older mythology, she did but introduce new subjects of her own, to which her artists kept as closely as their pagan ancestors had kept to their heathen gods and goddesses. We now make believe to have freed ourselves from these trammels, but the departure is more apparent than real. Our works of art fall into a few well-marked groups and the pictures of each group, though differing in detail, present the same general characters. We have, however, broken much new ground, whereas until the last three or four hundred years it almost seems either as if artists had thought subject a detail beneath their notice, or publics had insisted on being told only what they knew already.