Rome, relying on the veneration which the nations entertained for her, and which kings felt they owed her as the fount of all authority, set her face against a new age, wherein might alone is right, and reason speaks on the side of vast battalions and by the mouth of artillery. What was the outrage which most of all grieved the Romans? The spoliation of the museums; for the people were disgusted with kings, nobles, and prelates, but not with the arts.
But the end of injustice is never far removed, and, as victory had borne them away, victory restored to Rome her popes and her monuments. Pius VII. who had filled the post left bare by spoliation, after his return, among other works, built the new wing across the Belvedere gallery. He left to us the Museo Chiaramonti, a gallery of paintings, few in number, but each a masterpiece, and the long gallery of antique inscriptions, arranged after the manner of the great Morcelli. Gregory XVI. gave us the Christian, Egyptian, and Etruscan museums, filled with the contents of the mysterious vaults of Latium, and the numerous vases, so wondrous, of Etruria and the Campagna, which had just come to light. He commenced the rebuilding of St. Paul’s, restored the Coliseum, excavated the Basilica Julia, refitted the Lateran Palace. Poletti the architect assisted him, aided by Agricola, Paoletti, Finelli, Tadolini, Botti, Tajetti, Sabatelli, Serani, Minardi, Coghetti, Bengoni. And as at first, Poussin, Mignard, Ponget, Claude Lorraine, Le Gros, Valedier, Quesnoy, Laboureur, Monot, Brill, Agincourt, etc., so afterward came the illustrious foreigners, Ingres, Thorwaldsen, Gibson, Pettrich, Frederick Overbeck, Voigt the engraver. From here were taken the statues of Hiram Powers for the Capitol of Washington, not to mention the objects of art carried away by the 80,000 foreigners who flock hither from all parts every year to gaze on the wonders of Rome. A Prussian society took up its quarters here, to illustrate the new and antique relics, in rivalry with our Archæological Academy. And the names of Fea, Nibby, Canina, Bartolomeo Borghese, Visconti, win reverence from the whole scientific world.
What can I say of Pius IX. that is not known to the whole world? Let me call to your minds what took place in the midst of the acclamations which greeted his accession. A deputation from the Society for the Propagation of the Faith being presented to him, when among the deputies he found the name of Overbeck, the most faithful representative of Christian art, he called him to himself, and gave him his special benediction, accompanied by words of holy affection. At his wish the court of the Quirinal, where Pius VII. was arrested, was painted; there is Overbeck’s Christ at the moment when the Jews thought to cast him from the mountain, and he escaped from their midst: thus representing at once the perils which are past and those which are to come.[117] Nor can I forget the emotion with which the Holy Father lamented to me the deaths, so close upon each other, of Poletti, Tenerani, Overbeck, and Minardi; nor the pleasure with which I recall the rearrangement he effected in the entire museum of the Vatican, and the marvellous statue of Augustus from the Villa of Livy with which he endowed it, and the metal colossus of Hercules, purchased with his own money, the Claudius of Lanuvius, and the Apoxiomenos in Parian marble, restored by Tenerani, and placed in the Vatican in 1851. There he placed also the Pomponia Azzia, found in the Appian Way, and the Ceres disinterred at Ostia, which he substituted for a poor Diana.
It was the time when at his simple summons all the bishops of the world hastened to the Vatican council. Magnificent spectacle!—which Rome alone can offer to the world, of all the representatives of the church united to discuss freely the truth which the Pontiff should proclaim infallibly. Those prelates, in the moments of their repose, were wont to admire on all sides the care which Pius IX. had lavished upon art. Here the circus of Caracalla restored, and the portico of Octavia disinterred; there, in the Roman forum, the portico of the Dii Majores and the apsis of the Basilica of Constantine. In another spot the Basilica of St. Paul is restored, the arena of the greatest artists in painting, sculpture, stained glass, and mosaics. He opened the confessions with their wealth of marbles and metals, in the two patriarchal basilicas, the Lateran and Liberian. He restored the mausoleums of St. Constantia, St. Clement on the side of Celio, St. Agnes, St. Cecilia, Santa Maria in Trastevere, St. Lorenzo without the walls, with the paintings of Fracassini, Mariani, and Grandi. Mariani painted St. Lucy of the Banner and Santa Maria in Aquiro, and Gugliari St. Augustine. Podesti and Consoni drew for the Vatican Palace the portraits of the most famous ecclesiastics of ancient or modern times; among which stand out the Martyrs of Fracassini, who has painted but too little. All these works gave rise not only to the ancient use of medals, but also to public monuments, such as the column of the Immacolata, the works of Poletti, and the statue cast from cannon by De Rossi.
In 1852 was formed a commission of archæology to chiefly examine the Christian monuments,[118] and explore the Catacombs, the theatre of those scenes of sacrifice, love, and resignation wherein society was regenerated, and where now De Rossi convinces us that scholarship and wit are not enough for speech, but that piety has a secret of its own to touch on things which are better felt than described.
The Egyptian Museum was increased by the monuments collected by Clot Bey. To the Etruscan were added statues, candelabra, sarcophagi from Bolsena, Tarquinia, and Viterbo. The Christian Museum of the Lateran was founded, to which the reopened Ostia sent mosaics, sarcophagi, and epigraphs. The Nomentian and Appian Ways were excavated still further, as far as Bovilla. And the emporium of marbles, the site of the seven cohorts of Virgil at Monte Fiore, and the ruins of the Palatine—which the Pontiff himself visited suddenly, giving an unexpected joy to the workmen, in the month of the celebration of Rome’s birth—attest how inexhaustible are the riches of this city, which, not to mention the seven great galleries, is indeed one vast gallery. And these excavations, whether designed or accidental, disclose a wealth ever beyond expectation, as is seen in the piazza of the Holy Apostles, the grove of the brothers Arvali, especially in the Church Della Pace, the piazza Navona, on the Monte Luziale, and in the new cemetery of the Jews.
That the Pontiff has not been behindhand in works of practical utility, we see in the Acqua Pia, in the palace of the house of reform, the military and civil hospitals, and that of peace, the tobacco manufactory, the adornments of the Pincio, the penitentiary, the bridges over the Tiber, the Piazza Pia and elementary school, and a new city commenced on the Viminal and Esquiline.
And while on this point, we see in the Exposition of the Baths of Diocletian, which Michael Angelo repaired with a respect not always shown by his followers, an example of a character which Rome alone of all the world can produce; and this collection of the objects of Catholic worship was the most beautiful hymn which the Pontiff raised against the blasphemy which precedes violence. This was a thought of the Pontiff’s. It was executed by his command, and at his own expense. He inaugurated it, closed it in person, and with his own hand distributed the prizes. Just indeed was the homage which the artists of every nation then represented in Rome paid to Pius IX., in the jubilee of his pontificate, the expression of which he left exposed for many days in the gallery of Raphael, where Mantovani, Consoni, and Galli at this day emulate the wondrous decorations of Sanzio and Giovanni da Udine.
The popes and ministers of the church have watched over art with special care, lest this chosen daughter of God should be sacrificed to his enemy. And now, what is left? In the face of these glories, how much misery saddens us! All the manifestations of the supremacy of materialism over what is spiritual are multiplied, and hence so many edifices purely industrial. The fever of making and unmaking on the spur of the moment, the race for life without the enjoyment of the least repose, have reduced art, which at first was an enthusiasm, afterwards a taste, now to a fashion and a luxury, bereft of the mighty force of our ancient community and the great-minded and holy faith of our fathers. What the romance is to history, the novel to the epic poem, the drama to the tragedy, the portrait and its kind are to the great artistic works and historic paintings, lost in common and epigrammatic subjects, and tortured with minutiæ.
And this is not the end. He who preserves a sense of shame, of charity, of faith, must either behold with loathing, or close his eyes, when he sees the pencil of the lithographer and even the pure light of heaven prostituted to dishonor whatever he has held most holy in faith and life, to tempt the senses with foulness that Sodom would have denounced. As they have made poison distil from their inkstands, so, with vile ignorance or hateful forethought, they have made art a pander for impurity and a school for the barricades and petroleum. From such frenzy, which terrifies the most daring and causes the most thoughtless to reflect, we hope that men will return to conscience; and in a world which, in order to cherish a better faith in its own greatness will believe no longer in God, this hope is sustained by seeing the Martyrs, of Giovanni Ferrari; the Angels above the Dead Christ, of Tabacchi; the Christian Martyr, of Argenti; the Assumption, of Morelli and Grigioletti; the Saint Joseph, of Bertini; the Saint Clair, of Mancinelli; the Saint Lucian in Prison, of Ceccarini; the Ecce Ancilla Domini, of Brioschi.