Here are the same peculiarities as in most other Italian towns, but fraught with a deeper meaning, since we are at the headquarters of the religion which gives them birth: the frequent shrines at the street-corners, chiefly of the Blessed Virgin and the divine Infant, rudely enough represented, but denoting the steadfast faith of the people, and kept perpetually adorned by a lighted oil-lamp in a blue or red glass; the stalls in the markets, which, by the way, stand only in the dingier thoroughfares round the Pantheon and S. Eustachio; the strange medley of meat, vegetables, flowers, antiquities; in summer, the mounds of cut water-melons (the Roman’s favorite fruit), and the ricketty stands piled with figs in all the confused shades of purple, black, green, and white; in winter, the scaldini, or little square boxes filled with charcoal, which the market-women carry about everywhere—to market, to church, and very often to bed; the curious antique lamps of brass with two or three beaks, each bearing a weak flame, and the whole thing a copy, line for line, of the old Roman lamps of two thousand years ago; on S. Joseph’s day, the 19th of March, the stalls decorated with garlands of green, and heaped with fritellette (fried fish under various disguises); the peasant funeral winding slowly through the crowd, with the corpse, that of a young girl, lying uncovered, but enwreathed in simple flowers, on an open bier borne by the cowled members of a pious brotherhood specially dedicated to this work, and whose faces even are covered, leaving only the eyes visible through two narrow slits; the droves of Campagna oxen, cream-colored, mild, Juno-eyed, and with thick, smooth, branching horns; the flocks of Campagna buffaloes, shaggy and fierce, with eyes like pigs, humps on their necks, and short, crooked horns—a very fair impersonation of the evil one for an imaginary “temptation of S. Anthony”; then, finally, at Christmas time, the pifferari, peasants of the Abruzzi, whose immemorial custom it is to come on an annual musical pilgrimage to Rome, and play their mountain airs before every street-shrine in the city.
These latter are deserving of a more lengthened notice, and, indeed, no traveller can fail to be struck by the rugged picturesqueness of their appearance. Some one has not inappropriately called them the “satyrs of the Campagna,” though they belong rather to the mountain than to the plain. Their dress is that which we are erroneously taught to connect with the traditional ideal of a brigand (an ideal, by the way, very unjustly supposed to be realized by the honest, industrious, and deluded peasants of whom New York has recently said such hard things)—a high, conical felt hat, with a frayed feather or red band and tassels; a red waistcoat; a coarse blue jacket and leggings, sometimes of the shaggy hair of white goats (hence the title satyr), sometimes of tanned skin bound round with cords that interlace as far as the knee. The ample cloak common to all Roman and Neapolitan peasants completes the costume, and gives it a dignity which sits well upon them. Their instruments are very primitive, and the tunes they perform are among the oldest national airs of Italy, transmitted intact from father to son by purely oral teaching. They always go in couples, and, while one plays the zampogna, or bagpipe, the other accompanies him on the piffero, or pastoral pipe—a short, flute-like instrument. These are the men who make the fortunes of many an artist, and who, as models, are transformed as often as Proteus or Jupiter of old. The broad flight of steps leading from the Piazza di Spagna to the Pincian hill is their chief resort when off duty as pifferari, and on the lookout as models; and any guide could show you among them Signor So-and-So’s “Moses,” or Madame Such-a-one’s “S. Joseph,” besides innumerable other characters, Biblical and classical, sustained by at most only a dozen men of flesh and blood. A few women there are among them, some in the characteristic but rare costume which is erroneously supposed to be the only one worn in the neighborhood of Rome, namely, the square fold of spotless linen on the head (a style almost Egyptian in its massiveness) and narrow skirt of darkest blue, with an apron of carpet-like pattern and texture. A row of heavy coral beads encircles their throats, and the ample folds of their loose chemise of white cotton are confined by a blue bodice laced up the front. These figures suggest themselves as splendid models for a set of Caryatides, but they are more usually painted as typical peasant women, and sometimes, when old, as S. Elizabeth, S. Anne, or the Sibyls.
The confusion of gaily-attired or dark-robed figures in the streets is at first bewildering to the stranger, especially on a festival day, when one would think that the middle ages had broken up through the thin crust of levelling modern decorum. Here are Capuchin friars, in their coarse brown tunics confined round the waist by a white knotted cord, hurrying with large baskets on their arms from house to house to collect their meal of broken refuse; further on is a Papal zouave in his uniform of gray and his white half-leggings—a foreigner and very likely a noble, fair, slight, and dignified, like Col. de Charrette, the grandson of the great Vendean leader of 1793; here, again, comes an abbate, with his enormous black three-cornered hat and his long and ample cloak or garment gathered in a line of full, close folds at his back, and sweeping thence around his person with all the picturesque dignity of a Roman toga; jostling against this dark figure is the lithe, cat-like French soldier, cheery and open-faced; beyond him hurry lackeys in rich but faded liveries that look as if they had been fashioned out of tapestry; peasants in every garb, some clustering round a scrivano, or public letter-writer, established in the open air at a rickety table, with a few sheets of dirty paper and a heap of limp red wafers for his stock in trade; and others intent upon their birthright, i.e. noisy and successful begging.
Perhaps one of the most curious sights to a stranger is to be found in the back yards of houses inhabited by swarms of families who have but one well among them from which to draw water. The well is in the middle of the courtyard, and from it to every window of the house (and often of several adjoining houses) runs a strong wire cord. On this is slung a bucket, which is let down or drawn up by a pulley easily managed from the window; and all day long this ingenious manœuvre is constantly repeated with sundry whirring noises quite novel to the northern ear. It would need volumes to give any idea of the mere outer picturesqueness of Roman scenes, much more of the varied beauties that do not at once catch the eye. The Ghetto, or Jews’ quarter, affords one of the most peculiar street-sights. The streets here are narrower, darker, filthier than elsewhere, the stalls are dingier, the poverty more apparent. Rags everywhere and in every stage of dilapidation—rags hung out over your head like banners; rags spread on the knees of the industrious women, who with deft fingers are mending and darning them; rags laid in shelves and coffers; rags clothing the swarthy children that tumble about the grimy door-steps—a very nightmare of rags. And among them, exiles: gorgeous robes hidden away where you would least expect them, rare laces of gossamer texture and historical interest, brocades that once graced a coronation, and even gems that the Queen of Sheba might have envied. Mingled in race and broken in spirit as are these Jews, weak descendants of the stern old Bible heroes, one touching evidence of their loyalty to their ancient traditions remains. We were told of it by Dr. O——, of the Propaganda College, who had many friends among the Hebrew Rabbis. The Arch of Titus in the Forum, or what is now vulgarly called the Campo Vaccino (oxen’s field or market), is a magnificent trophy commemorating the last victory of Rome over Jerusalem. Its bassorilievi, both exterior and interior, represent the sacking of the Holy City and the despoiling of the temple. The carvings of the triumphal procession bearing aloft the rifled treasures of the Holy of Holies, the great seven-branched candlestick, the mystic table of the “loaves of proposition,” the golden bowls and censers, naturally enough excite feelings of bitter regret in the breast of the exiled and wandering race. So it happens that no good and true Jew passing through the Forum will ever follow the road that leads under this beautiful sculptured monument of his country’s fall, nor even let its shadow fall upon his head as he passes it by. This sign of faithful mourning certainly struck us as very significant and poetical. There are two synagogues in the Ghetto, and it is curious to reflect that these Hebrew temples were tolerated within the walls of Rome by a government which proscribed Anglican chapels and relegated the worship of the English visitors beyond the Porta del Popolo. This restriction may have unheedingly been called intolerant; but let us stay for a moment to examine its reason. Rome was a theocracy and swayed by directly opposite principles to any other existing state, and it could no more allow of promiscuous worship within its domain than of old the Hebrew high-priest could have allowed the Moabitish altars to be erected at the doors of the Ark of God. In speaking of the Rome of the popes, it is absolutely necessary for a non-Catholic to set his mind to a different focus from that which answers the ordinary purposes of travel and observation; it is necessary to do as Hawthorne says somewhere in his romance of the Marble Faun—that is, to look at the pictured window of a great cathedral from the inside, where the harmony of form, of color, and of distribution is plainly visible; not from the outside, where an unmeaning network of dark, irregular patches of glass vexes the eye of the gazer.
One is apt at first to wander through these Roman streets in the indecision brought on by l’embarras des richesses. Shall we seek the Rome of religion, of history, or of art? Shall we make a tour of the churches or the studios first? Or shall we go at once to the colossal ruins, and bury ourselves in the annals of the old republic? All these regions have been thoroughly explored, and there are guides, both living and dead, to lead one through the divers cities existing within the bosom of the whilom mistress of the world. The streets themselves are a series of pictures, from the Via Condotti—where the most finished masterpieces of antique jewellery are successfully imitated, and where wealthy strangers crowd round the counters, eager to take home keepsakes for less fortunate friends—to the Piazza Montanara, where the handsome peasants from the country mingle with the stalwart Frasteverini, who boast of being lineal descendants of the ancient Romans. One thing which is very apt to strike any thoughtful observer upon a first saunter through Rome (we speak of 1863) is the sovereignty of religion in every department of life. Art is wholly moulded by it, domestic life pervaded by it, municipal life simply founded on it. Every monument of note is stamped with its impress, as the Pantheon; every ruin is consecrated to its service, as the Coliseum. Every public building bears on its walls the keys and tiara of the Papacy side by side with the “S. P. Q. R.” of the city arms (Senatus Populusque Romanus). Even the private galleries are under government protection, and not one of the pictures can be sold without the leave of the authorities. The very collections of classic statuary are the work of successive ecclesiastical rulers. Education is essentially religious (as it always is in any country whose ideal still remains civilized and does not approximate to that of the irresponsible denizen of the forests), and at the same time national, since every nation has here its own representative college. The archæological discoveries in the catacombs and at the Dominican Convent of San Clemente open a new branch of research peculiar to Rome, while modern art instinctively follows in the same religious groove, and spends itself chiefly on the imitation of Christian mosaics, the manufacture of costly articles of devotion, such as reliquaries, crucifixes, rosaries, and the rivalry of both foreign and native artists to invent new æsthetical expositions of religious truth, new embodiments of religious symbols. From the street-shrines which we have passed to the studios of Christian artists and the examination of ancient Christian art there is, therefore, less distance than one would think. The same idea has created them, and the faith which keeps the lamp alight and inspires the pifferaro’s tribute is the same that guides the chisel of the sculptor and the brush of the painter. It is certainly a remarkable fact that in Rome there is perhaps less landscape-painting than in many other schools and centres of art, and that, too, in a country so picturesque, so full of that pathetic southern beauty of luminous atmosphere and intense coloring. The human element, and, above all, the religious, seems, as by divine right, to blot out every other in this mystic capital, not of the world alone, but of the whole realm of intellect. Classicism itself, the child of the soil, seems an alien growth here, and one wanders through miles of antique statuary as one would through some gigantic collection of exotics in a northern clime, expecting every moment to return to a different and more normal atmosphere. So it is not to be wondered at, when exploring the field of modern art, that so many of those wild-looking Germans, with long, fair hair and bushy beards, extravagance of costume, and universal abundance of the plaid shawl serving as an overcoat, should be engaged on S. Jeromes or S. Catherines rather than on Apollos or Minervas.
The Italians are best represented among the sculptors, and Tenerani, Giacometti, and Benzoni have made their religious statuary famous through the Christian world. Discarding the influence of the Renaissance, they have returned to the austere ideal so well understood by Canova and exemplified in his figures of Justice and Mercy on the tomb of Clement XIV. in S. Peter’s—the ideal which Michael Angelo forsook when he introduced “muscular Christianity” into art. Tenerani’s “Angel of Judgment,” intended for the tomb of a Prussian princess, is a magnificent conception. Colossal in size, and divinely impassible in expression, this grand figure stands as if in the last dread pause before the call, holding uplifted in his mighty hand the trumpet that is to awaken the dead. It is impossible to give an adequate impression of this statue, so majestic and so simple, with its massive drapery falling straight to the feet, not tortured with a thousand undignified wrappings, nor flying like a stiffly frozen scarf around the bared limbs, as it does on the wretched angels whom Bernini has perched upon the bridge opposite the Mole of Adrian. The two lifelike statues of Christ and his betrayer, Judas, which are placed at the foot of the Scala Santa, one of the most venerated shrines of Rome, are also Tenerani’s handiwork. Judas clutches a bag of money in his left hand, which he tries to hide behind his back, while his bent body and the low animal cunning in his look betray the sordid eagerness that prompts him. Opposite this statue is that of our Saviour, whose attitude, full of dignity and repose, is more that of a lenient judge than of an entrapped victim. As far as marble can be god-like, this figure borrows something of the lofty characteristics of its original; and it is to be noticed that sculpture can more easily than painting attain such quasi-perfection. We have all been repeatedly struck by the effeminacy of almost every representation of our Lord, but this danger is much diminished in marble, the material itself being more or less incapable of sensuous interpretation. This is very evident in entirely or partially undraped figures, which are redeemed from the alluring repulsiveness of the same subjects on canvas by a certain firmness of outline and breadth of contour suggestive of strength rather than tenderness, dignity rather than charm.
One very beautiful group in marble was the “Taking down from the Cross,” which in 1863 was still in the atelier of a German sculptor, whose name we have forgotten. The realistic details, such as the nails still embedded in the sacred hands of the Redeemer, the crown of thorns, the tears of the Magdalen who is embracing his feet, were marvellously and yet not painfully correct, while the whole expression of the artistically grouped figures was touchingly Christian. Benzoni’s Eve was another well-known masterpiece, of which many fac-similes by the sculptor himself were constantly sold to rich English or Russian patrons; but its chief merit was the wonderful hair, upon which the “mother of all the living” half sits, and which is chiselled with minute accuracy. The statue might be that of a beautiful bather or a grandly moulded Venus, save for the symbolic serpent twined around the stump of the tree on which she leans.
Gibson, the English sculptor, was the apostle of the revived art of tinting statues. He contended that such was the custom of the ancients, and brought forward many proofs in favor of his assertion, notably a statue of Augustus discovered at the baths of Livia during our stay in Rome, and which bore marks of gilding and vermilion on the fringes of its drapery. Gibson’s studio was a pagan temple, the representative of classic naturalism, very beautiful, but equally soulless. His tinted Venus was the marvel of the London Exhibition of 1862, and now he was at work giving the finishing touch to a very lovely tinted Hebe. The flesh was skilfully tinged to a faint pink hue, so faint that it suggested ivory with a glow upon it rather than actual flesh; and here and there, for instance, round the short kirtle and on the band around the forehead, ran a pencil-line of gold in delicate tracery. The artist, gray and withered, and pacing among his statues in a loose sort of déshabillé, reminded one of the ancient Greek philosophers discoursing on their favorite theories. He was altogether a cultivated and charming pagan, and had conceptions of the Greek myths which would have delighted Phidias. He explained his Bacchus to us most enthusiastically, dwelling on the mistake often made of delineating him as the bloated god of intemperance and coarse indulgence. “I have made him,” he said, pointing to his statue, crowned with vine-leaves, “not less beautiful than Apollo; for he was the god of youth and pleasure, of dance and song, and not the type of brutal revelry some people would have us believe. He left that to Silenus.” This statue was not tinted. Whether the ancients did or did not as a rule use color as an adjunct of sculpture, or whether, if they did, it was only in the degenerate stage of art, we cannot pretend to say; but, to our mind, such a practice seriously detracts from the severe beauty of statuary. It seems a pandering to passion, a compromise to allure the imagination, and even a confession of weakness on the part of the artist.
Story, the American sculptor, was and is by far the ablest representative of secular art in Rome. His two magnificent statues of Cleopatra and the Libyan Sibyl were the gems of the “Roman Court” in the London Exhibition of 1862. The former (or a replica of it) is in Mr. Johnston’s gallery of modern pictures in New York. Story has given his heroine something of the Egyptian type, thereby forsaking the arbitrary rule that decreed the Greek type only to be admissible in sculpture; and, if he has lost in mere physical beauty, he has amply gained in power. In his Cleopatra, he has not given us the voluptuous woman, but the captive queen, brooding over the fall of her sovereignty, looking into futurity with gloomy apprehension; for she sees her empire enslaved, her nationality wiped out, her dynasty forgotten. We dare not pity her, for she is above such a tribute; we cannot despise her, for we feel that contempt would not reach her. She is here the tangible embodiment of a principle rather than the splendid sinner of flesh and blood; and involuntarily we admire and reverence her, and are silent before her imperial woe. The Libyan Sibyl is not unlike the Cleopatra in general effect, and bears the same stamp of loftiness of mind on the part of the artist.
Of Hoffman, a very different sculptor, and the adopted son of Overbeck, we remember but one work, as he died between our first and second visits to Rome, and our recollection of him dates, therefore, from a somewhat childish period. This work was the bust of a Madonna, in which seemed blended in some indescribable way the softness of the painter’s art and the firmness of the sculptor’s. The head is slightly bent forward, and the eyes look modestly down. Over the back of the head falls a veil, and the brow is bound by a simple crown of fleur-de-lis. The expression is radiant yet grave, and the artist has ventured to use the help of gilding to embellish the veil and circlet. But how different the effect from that produced by Gibson’s tinting! The thread-like mediæval tracery that forms the half-inch border to the veil, and the line of gold that just defines the contour of the crown, have not the least disturbing effect in the harmony of the whole pure composition. One would think that this was the head of the white-robed Virgin in Beato Angelico’s fresco in the Convent of San Marco at Florence, translated into marble.