She was greatly puzzled. "I thought that America was under ground," she said.
I remembered Galileo and held my peace. Besides, in these days of universal knowledge, when we hear scientific terms lisped by infant lips, it is refreshing to see an example of fine old-fashioned ignorance. Yet this woman had better manners than are to be found in most drawing-rooms, a sweet, courteous dignity, and in matters which came within her personal knowledge great good sense and judgment. Only she had never learned that from the centre of the earth all directions are up.
Of course a stranger's first visit in Asisi is to the basilica of San Francesco, and, though I had seen it before, I lost no time in renewing my acquaintance with it. This church is not only the jewel of Asisi, but one of the most precious of Italy. It is among churches what a person of genius is in a crowd. The rich marbles one sees elsewhere suggest the mechanic in their arrangement, and one grows almost tired of them; but here the soul of Art and Faith has poured itself out, covering all the wide walls, the ceilings, the sides of arches, the ribs of groinings—every foot of space, in short—with life and color; and how much more precious is one of those solemn pearly faces than a panel of alabaster or the most cunning mosaic of marbles! In the upper church alone there are twenty-two large frescoes of Cimabue and thirty of Giotto. Over these pours the light from fourteen large colored windows, unimpeded by side-aisles. When the sun beats upon these windows the church seems to be filled with a transparent mist softly tinted with a thousand rich hues. The deep-blue, star-sown vault sparkles and the figures on the walls become a vision.
The upper church has been in danger of losing its beautiful choir, a marvel of carving and intarsio, which Cavalcasella, inspector of fine arts in Italy, removed for the odd reason that it was a work of the fourteenth century, while the church was of the thirteenth, and to be in perfect keeping should have a stone choir. I have not learned whether this hyper-purist will require of the congregation a thirteenth-century costume when the church is again open for service.
These beautiful stalls, one hundred and two in number, are now placed for safe-keeping in what was the infirmary of the adjoining college. Possibly, when the work going on pian piano in the church is completed, they may be restored to their original place. Their sombre richness would show well in that radiant atmosphere.
The work in the church is, however, well done, and was greatly needed, for those precious frescoes were gradually going to decay. No touch of pencil is allowed: the work is one of preservation merely, and is being conducted with the greatest care. The loosened intonaco is found by tapping lightly on the wall: plaster is then slipped underneath and the painting firmly pressed to its place. At first gesso was used, but it was found not to answer the purpose. Every smallest fragment of painting is saved, and the blank spaces are filled in with plaster which is painted a light gray. This freshens and throws out the adjoining colors.
It is customary to call the lower church "devotional." With many, a dark church is always devotional. I should rather call it sympathetic. Every sort of mood may here find itself reflected, and the sinner be as much at home as the saint. Anger and hate may hide as well as devotion: the artist may dream, the weary may rest, the stupid doze. The only objects which ever seemed to me utterly incongruous there were a brisk company of hurried tourists, red-covered guidebook in hand, clattering with sharp-sounding boot-heels up the dim nave and talking with sharp, loud voices at the very steps of the altar where people were kneeling at the most solemn moment of the mass. But even these invariably soften their tones and their movements after a while.
This church has always some pleasant surprise for the frequent visitor. The morning light shows one picture, the evening light another: the sunrise adorns this window, the sunset that. There is no hour from dawn to dark in which some gem of ancient painting does not look its best, while little noticed, if seen at all, at other hours. Some are seen by a reflected light; others, when the church is so dark that one may stumble against a person in the nave, gather to themselves the dim and scattered rays like an aureole, from which they look out with soft distinctness; and there are others, again, upon which a sun-ray, finding a narrow passage through arch after arch, alights with a sudden momentary glory that is almost startling.
It is a fascinating place, that middle church—never light, but always traversed by some varying illumination which is ever lost in shadows. And in those shadows how much may lurk of present material beauty and of beautiful memory! Here, before the chapel of St. Louis, Raphael lingered, learning the frescoed Sibyls of its vault so by heart that he almost reproduced them afterward in the Pace at Rome—that dear Raphael who did not fear being called a plagiarist, his soul was so full of beauty, and he so transfigured whatever he touched with that suave pencil of his that seemed to have been clipped in light for a color. And where did the feet of Michael Angelo rest when he stood in the transept and praised that Crucifixion painted on the wall? One might expect that the stones would have been conscious of the Orpheus they supported.
In the college adjoining the church there were a year ago but fifteen monks, and no others are admitted. When these fifteen shall be dead the convent—Sacro Collegio they call it—will pass entirely into the hands of the government, which now uses the greater part of it for a school for the sons of poor teachers, who are sent here from all parts of Italy.