This is the inscription on his tomb in the church of the Frati. I read it twice over, but it would not do. Why grieve for the immortals? One is not exactly one’s-self on such occasions, and enthusiasm has its intermittent and stubborn fits; besides, mine is, at present, I suspect, a kind of July shoot, that must take its rise from the stock of former impressions. It spread aloft on the withered branches of the St. Peter Martyr, and shot out more kindly still from seeing three pictures of his, close together, at the house of Signor Manfrini (a Venetian tobacconist), an elaborate Portrait of his friend Ariosto—sharp-featured and tawny-coloured, with a light Morisco look—a bronzed duplicate of the Four Ages at the Marquess of Stafford’s—and his Mistress (which is in the Louvre) introduced into a composition with a gay cavalier and a page. I was glad to see her in company so much fitter for her than her old lover; and besides, the varied grouping gave new life and reality to this charming vision. The two last pictures are doubtfully ascribed to Giorgioni, and this critical equivoque was a source of curiosity and wonder. Giorgioni is the only painter with respect to whom this could be made a question (the distinction between Titian and the other painters of the Venetian school, Tintoret and Paul Veronese, is broad and palpable enough)—and for myself, I incline to attribute the last of the three chef d’œuvres above enumerated to Giorgioni. The difference, it appears to me, may be thus stated. There is more glow and animation in Giorgioni than in Titian. He is of a franker and more genial spirit. Titian has more subtilty and meaning, Giorgioni more life and youthful blood. The feeling in the one is suppressed; in the other, it is overt and transparent. Titian’s are set portraits, with the smallest possible deviation from the straight line: they look as if they were going to be shot, or to shoot somebody. Giorgioni, in what I have seen of his pictures, as the Gaston de Foix, the Music-piece at Florence, &c. is full of inflection and contrast; there is seldom a particle of it in Titian. An appearance of silence, a tendency to still-life, pervades Titian’s portraits; in Giorgioni’s there is a bending attitude, and a flaunting air, as if floating in gondolas or listening to music. For all these reasons (perhaps slenderly put together) I am disposed to think the portrait of the young man in the picture alluded to is by Giorgioni, from the flushed cheek, the good-natured smile, and the careless attitude; and for the same reason, I think it likely that even the portrait of the lady is originally his, and that Titian copied and enlarged the design into the one we see in the Louvre, for the head (supposed to be of himself, in the background) is middle-aged, and Giorgioni died while Titian was yet young. The question of priority in this case is a very nice one; and it would be curious to ascertain the truth by tradition or private documents of any kind.
I teazed my valet de place (Mr. Andrew Wyche, a Tyrolese, a very pleasant, companionable, and patriotic sort of person) the whole of the first morning at every fresh landing or embarkation by asking, ‘But are we going to see the Saint Peter Martyr?’ When we reached the Church of Saint John and Saint Paul, the light did not serve, and we got reprimanded by the priest for turning our backs on the host, in our anxiety to find a proper point of view. We returned to the charge at five in the afternoon, when the light fell upon it through a high-arched Gothic window, and it came out in all its pristine glory, with its rich, embrowned, overshadowing trees, its nobly-drawn heroic figures, its blood-stained garments, its flowers and trailing plants, and that cold convent-spire rising in the distance amidst the sapphire mountains and the golden sky. I found every thing in its place and as I expected. Yet I am unwilling to say that I saw it through my former impressions: this picture suffices to itself, and fills the mind without an effort; for it contains all the mighty world of landscape and history, grandeur and breadth of form with the richest depth of colouring, an expression characteristic, powerful, that cannot be mistaken, conveying the scene at the moment, a masterly freedom and unerring truth of execution, and a subject as original as it is stately and romantic. It is the foremost of Titian’s productions, and exhibits the most extraordinary specimen of his varied powers. Most probably, as a picture, it is the finest in the world; or if I cannot say it is the picture which I would the soonest have painted, it is at least the one which I would the soonest have. It is a rich feast to the eye, ‘where no crude surfeit reigns.’ As an instance of the difference between Titian and Raphael, you here see the figures from below, and they stand out with noble grandeur of effect against the sky; Raphael would have buried them under the horizon, or stuck them against the landscape, without relief or motion. So much less knowledge had he of the picturesque! Again, I do not think Raphael could have given the momentary expression of sudden, ghastly terror, or the hurried, disorderly movements of the flying Monk, or the entire prostration of the other (like a rolling ruin) so well as Titian. The latter could not, I know, raise a sentiment to its height like the former; but Raphael’s expressions and attitudes were (so to speak) the working out of ‘foregone conclusions,’ not the accidental fluctuations of mind or matter—were final and fixed,[[47]] not salient or variable. I observed, in looking closer, that the hinder or foreshortened leg of the flying monk rests upon the edge of a bank of earth, from which he is descending. This explains the action of the part better, but I doubt whether this idea of inequality and interruption from the broken nature of the ground is an addition to the feeling of precipitate fear and staggering perplexity in the mind of the person represented. This may be an hypercriticism. The colouring of the foremost leg of this figure is sufficient to prove that the utter paleness of the rest of it is from its having faded in the course of time. The colour of the face in this and the other monk is the same as it was twenty years ago; it has sustained no injury in that time. But for the sun-burnt, well-baked, robust tone of the flesh-colour, commend me to the leg and girded thigh of the robber. What a difference between this and Raphael’s brick-dust!—I left this admirable performance with regret; yet I do not see why; for I have it present with me, ‘in my mind’s eye,’ and swear, in the wildest scenes of the Alps, that the St. Peter Martyr is finer. That, and the Man in the Louvre, are my standards of perfection; my taste may be wrong; nay, even ridiculous—yet such it is.
The picture of the Assumption, at the Academy of Painting at Venice, which was discovered but the other day under a load of dirt and varnish, is cried up as even superior to the St. Peter: it is indeed a more extraordinary picture for the artist to have painted; but for that very reason it is neither so perfect nor so valuable. Raphael could not paint landscape; Titian could hardly paint history without the help of landscape. A background was necessary to him, like music to a melodrame. He had in this picture attempted the style of Raphael, and has succeeded and even failed—to admiration. He has given the detached figures of the Roman school, the contrasted, uniform colours of their draperies, the same determined outline, no breaking of the colours or play of light and shade, and has aimed at the same elevation and force of expression. The drawing has nearly the same firmness with more scope, the colouring is richer and almost as hard, the attitudes are imposing and significant, and the features handsome—what then is wanting? That glow of heavenward devotion bent on ideal objects, and taking up its abode in the human form and countenance as in a shrine; that high and abstracted expression, that outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace, which Raphael alone could give in its utmost purity and intensity. One glimpse of the Crowning of the Virgin in the Vatican is worth it all—lifts the mind nigher to the subject, dissolves it in greater sweetness, sinks it in deeper thoughtfulness. The eager headlong enthusiasm of the Apostle to the right in a green mantle is the best; the lambent eyes and suffused glow of the St. John are only the indications of rosy health, and youthful animation; the Virgin is a well-formed rustic beauty with a little affectation, and the attitude of the Supreme Being is extravagant and distorted. Raphael could have painted this subject, as to its essential qualities, better; he could not have done the St. Peter Martyr in any respect so well. I like Titian’s Martyrdom of St. Lawrence (notwithstanding the horror of the subject) better than the Assumption, for its characteristic expression, foreshortening, and fine mellow masses of light and shade. Titian could come nearer the manner of Michael Angelo than that of Raphael, from an eye for what was grand and impressive in outward form and position, as his frescoes of Prometheus, Cain and Abel, and another grotesque and gigantic subject on the ceiling of one of the churches, shew. These, in picturesque grouping, in muscular relief, and vastness of contour, surpass Michael Angelo’s figures in the Last Judgment, however they may fall short of them in anatomical knowledge or accuracy. I also was exceedingly delighted with the Salutation of the Virgin at the Academy, which is shewn as one of his masterpieces, for the mixture of airy scenic effect with the truth of individual portraiture. The churches and public buildings here bear ample testimony to the powers of Titian’s historic pencil, though I did not see enough of his portraits in private collections, of which I had hoped to take my fill. In the large hall of the Academy of Painting are also the fine picture of the Miracle of Saint Mark by Tintoret, an inimitable representation of a religious and courtly ceremony by Paris Bourbon (inimitable for the light, rich, gauze-colouring, and magical effect of the figures in perspective), and several others of vast merit as well as imposing dimensions. The Doge’s Palace and the Council-Chamber of the Senate are adorned with the lavish performances of Tintoret and Paul Veronese; and in the allegorical figures in the ceiling of the Council-Chamber, and in the splendid delineation of a Doge returning thanks to the Virgin for some victory over the Infidels, which occupies the end of it, I think the last-named painter has reached the top of his own and of Venetian art. As an art of decoration, addressing itself to the eye, to the vain or voluptuous part of our constitution, it cannot be carried farther. Of all pictures this Thanksgiving is the most dazzling, the most florid. A rainbow is not more rich in hues, a bubble that glitters in the sun is not more light and glossy, a bed of tulips is not more gaudy. A flight of angels with rosy hues and winged glories connects the heavenly and the earthly groups like a garland of blushing flowers. The skill and delicacy of this composition is equal to its brilliancy of effect. His marriage of Cana (another wonderful performance) is still at Paris: it was formerly in the Refectory of the church of St. Giorgio Maggiore, on an island on the opposite side of the harbour, which is well worth attention for the architecture by Palladio and the altar-piece in bronze by John of Bologna, containing a number of figures (as it appears to me) of the most masterly design and execution.
I have thus hastily run through what struck me as most select in fine art in this celebrated city. To enumerate every thing would be endless. There are other objects for the curious. The Mosaics of the church of St. Mark, the Brazen Horses, the belfry or Campanile, the arsenal, and the theatres, which are wretched both as it relates to the actors and the audience. The shops are exceedingly neat and well-stocked, and the people gay and spirited. The harbour does not present an appearance of much traffic. In the times of the Republic, 30,000 people are said to have slept every night in the vessels in the bay. Daniell’s Hotel, at which we were, and to which I would recommend every English traveller, commands a superb view of it, and the scene (particularly by moonlight) is delicious. I heard no music at Venice, neither voice nor lute; saw no group of dancers or maskers, and the gondolas appear to me to resemble hearses more than pleasure-boats. I saw the Rialto, which is no longer an Exchange. The Bridge of Sighs, of which Lord Byron speaks, is not a thoroughfare, but an arch suspended at a considerable height over one of the canals, and connecting the Doge’s palace with the prison.
CHAPTER XXIV
We left Venice with mingled satisfaction and regret. We had to retrace our steps as far as Padua, on our way to Milan. For four days’ journey, from Padua to Verona, to Brescia, to Treviglio, to Milan, the whole way was cultivated beauty and smiling vegetation. Not a rood of land lay neglected, nor did there seem the smallest interruption to the bounty of nature or the industry of man. The constant verdure fatigued the eye, but soothed reflection. For miles before you, behind you, and on each side, the trailing vines hung over waving corn-fields, or clear streams meandered through rich meadow-grounds, and pastures. The olive we had nearly left behind us in Tuscany, and were not sorry to part with its half-mourning appearance amidst more luxuriant scenes and various foliage. The country is quite level, and the roads quite straight for nearly four hundred miles that we had travelled after leaving Bologna; and every foot or acre of this immense plain is wrought up to a pitch of neatness and productiveness, equal to that of a gentleman’s kitchen-garden, or to the nursery-grounds in the neighbourhood of London. A gravel-pit or a furze-bush by the roadside is a relief to the eye. There is no perceptible difference in approaching the great towns, though their mounds of green earth and the mouldering remains of fortifications give an agreeable and romantic variety to the scene; the whole of the intermediate space is literally, and without any kind of exaggeration, one continued and delightful garden. Whether this effect is owing to the felicity of the soil and climate, or to the art of man, or to former good government, or to all these combined, I shall not here inquire; but the fact is so, and it is sufficient to put an end to the idea that there is neither industry nor knowledge of agriculture nor plenty out of England, and to the common proverbial cant about the sloth and apathy of the Italians, as if they would not lift the food to their mouths, or gather the fruits that are drooping into them. If the complaints of the poverty and wretchedness of Italy are confined to the Campagna of Rome, or to some districts of the Apennines, I have nothing to say; but if a sweeping conclusion is drawn from these to Italy in general, or to the North of it in particular, I must enter my protest against it. Such an inference is neither philosophical, nor, I suspect, patriotic. The English are too apt to take every opportunity, and to seize on every pretext for treating the rest of the world as wretches—a tone of feeling which does not exactly tend to enhance our zeal in the cause either of liberty or humanity. If people are wretches, the next impression is that they deserve to be so; and we are thus prepared to lend a helping hand to make them what we say they are. The Northern Italians are as fine a race of people as walk the earth; and all that they want, to be what they once were, or that any people is capable of becoming, is neither English abuse nor English assistance, but three words spoken to the other powers; ‘Let them alone!’ But England, in the dread that others should follow her example, has quite forgotten what she herself once was. Another idea that the aspect of this country and of the country-people suggests, is the fallacy of some of Mr. Malthus’s theories. The soil is here cultivated to the greatest possible degree, and yet it seems to lead to no extraordinary excess of population. Plenty and comfort abound; but they are not accompanied by an appearance of proportionable want and misery, tracking them at the heels. The present generation of farmers and peasants seem well of; the last, probably, were so: this circumstance, therefore, does not appear to have given any overweening presumptuous activity, or headstrong impulse to the principle of population, nor to have determined those fortunate possessors of a land flowing with milk and honey, from an acquaintance with the good things of this life, to throw all away at one desperate cast, and entail famine, disease, vice, and misery on themselves and their immediate descendants. It is not, however, my intention to enter into politics or statistics: let me, therefore, escape from them.
We reached Verona the second day: it is delightfully situated. Mr. Addison has given a very beautiful description of the Giusti gardens which overlook it on one side. They here shew you the tomb of Juliet: it looks like an empty cistern in a common court-yard: you look round, however, and the carved niches with the frescoes on the walls convince you that you are in the precincts of an ancient monastery. The guide also points to the part of the wall that Romeo leaped over, and takes you to the spot in the garden where he fell. This gives an air of trick and fiction to the whole. The tradition is a thousand years old: it is kept up with a tender and pious awe: the interest taken in the story of a passion faithful to death shews not that the feeling is rare, but common. Many Italian women have read Shakspeare’s tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, admire and criticise it with great feeling. What remains of the old monastery is at present a Foundling Hospital. On returning from this spot, which is rather low and gloomy, we witnessed the most brilliant sight we had seen in Italy—the sun setting in a flood of gold behind the Alps that overlook the lake of Garda. The Adige foamed at our feet below; the bank opposite was of pure emerald; the hills which rose directly behind it in the most fantastic forms were of perfect purple, and the arches of the bridge to the left seemed plunged in ebon darkness by the flames of light that darted round them. Verona has a less dilapidated, pensive air than Ferrara. Its streets and squares are airy and spacious; but the buildings have a more modern and embellished look, and there is an appearance of greater gaiety and fashion among the inhabitants. The English sometimes come here to reside, though not in such crowds as at Florence, and things are proportionably less dear. The Amphitheatre is nearly as fine and quite as entire as that at Rome: the Gate of Galienas terminates one of the principal streets. We met with nothing remarkable the rest of the way to Milan, except the same rich, unvaried face of the country; the distant Alps hanging like a thin film over the horizon, or approaching nearer in lofty, solid masses as we advanced; the lake of Garda embosomed in them, and the fine fortress of Peschiera buried in its almost subterranean fastnesses like a mole; the romantic town of Virli, with a rainbow glittering over its verdant groves and hills; a very bad inn at Brescia, and a very excellent one at Treviglio. Milan was alive and full of visitors, thick as the ‘motes that people the sun-beam;’ it felt the presence of its lord. The Emperor of Austria was there! Milan (at least on this occasion) was as gay as Bath or any town in England. How times and the characters of countries change with them! In other parts of Italy, as at Rome and at Florence, the business of the inhabitants seemed to be to hide themselves, neither to see nor be seen: here it was evidently their object to do both. The streets were thronged and in motion, and the promenades full of carriages and of elegantly-dressed women, as on a festival or gala-day. I think I never saw so many well-grown, well-made, good-looking women as at Milan. I did not however see one face strikingly beautiful, or with a very fine expression. In this respect the Romans have the advantage of them. The North has a tinge of robust barbarism in it. Their animation was a little exuberant; their look almost amounts to a stare, their walk is a swing, their curiosity is not free from an air of defiance. The free and unrestrained manners of former periods of Italy appear also to have been driven northward, and to have lingered longer on the confines. The Cathedral or Duomo is a splendid fabric of white marble: it is rich, vast, and the inside solemn and full of a religious awe: the marble is from a quarry on the Lago Maggiore. We also saw the celebrated theatre of the Gran Scala, which is of an immense size and of extreme beauty, but it was not full, nor was the performance striking. The manager is the proprietor of the Cobourg Theatre (Mr. Glossop), and his wife (formerly our Miss Fearon) the favourite singer of the Milanese circles. I inquired after the great pantomime Actress, Pallarini, but found she had retired from the stage on a fortune. The name of Vigano was not known to my informant. I did not see the great picture of the Last Supper by Leonardo nor the little Luini, two miles out of Milan, which my friend Mr. Beyle charged me particularly to see.
We left Milan, in a calash or small open carriage, to proceed to the Isles Borromees. The first day it rained violently, and the third day the boy drove us wrong, pretending to mistake Laveno for Baveno; so I got rid of him. We had a delightful morning at Como, and a fine view of the lake and surrounding hills, which however rise too precipitously from the shores to be a dwelling-place for any but hunters and fishermen. Several English gentlemen as well as rich Milanese have villas on the banks. I had a hankering after Cadenobia; but the Simplon still lay before me. We were utterly disappointed in the Isles Borromees. Isola Bella, belonging to the Marquis Borromeo, indeed resembles ‘a pyramid of sweetmeats ornamented with green festoons and flowers.’ I had supposed this to be a heavy German conceit, but it is a literal description. The pictures in the Palace are trash. We were accosted by a beggar in an island which contains only a palace and an inn. We proceeded to the inn at Baveno, situated on the high road, close to the lake, and enjoyed for some days the enchanting and varied scenery along its banks. The abrupt rocky precipices that overhang it—the woods that wave in its refreshing breeze—the distant hills—the gliding sails and level shore at the opposite extremity—the jagged summits of the mountains that look down upon Palanza and Feriole, and the deep defiles and snowy passes of the Simplon, every kind of sublimity or beauty, changing every moment with the shifting light or point of view from which you beheld them. We were tempted to stop here for the summer in a suite of apartments (not ill furnished) that command a panoramic view of the lake hidden by woods and vineyards from all curious eyes, or in a similar set of rooms at Intra on the other side of the lake, with a garden and the conveniences of a market-town, for six guineas for the half year. Hear this, ye who pine in England on limited incomes, and with a taste for the picturesque! The temptation was great, and may yet prove too strong. We wished, however, to pass the Simplon first. We proceeded to Domo d’ Ossola for this purpose, and the next day began the ascent. I have already attempted to describe the passage of Mont Cenis: this is said to be finer, and I believe it; but it impressed me less, I believe owing to circumstances. The road does not wind its inconceivable breathless way down the side of the same mountain (like the circumgyrations of an eagle), gallery seeing gallery sunk beneath it, but makes longer reaches, and passes over from one side of the valley to the other. The ascent is nearly by the side of the brook of the Simplon for several miles, and you pass along by the edge of precipices and by slender bridges over mountain-torrents, under huge brown rugged rocks, hanging over the road like mighty masses of ruins or castle walls—some bare, others covered with pine-trees to the top; some too steep for any plant to grow on them, others displaying spots of verdure, the thatched cottage, and the winding path half-way up, and dallying with vernal flowers and the winter’s snow to the last moment. The fir generally clothes them, and its spiny form and dark hues combine well with their ‘star-ypointing pyramids,’ and ashy paleness. The eagle screams over-head, and the chamois looks startled round. Half-way up a little rugged path (the pathway of their life) loitered a young peasant and his mistress hand in hand, with some older people behind, following to their peaceful humble home—half hid among the cliffs and clouds. We passed under one or two sounding arches, and over some lofty bridges. At length we reached the village of the Simplon, and stopped there at a most excellent inn, where we had a supper that might vie, for taste and elegance, with that with which Chiffinch entertained Peveril of the Peak and his companion at the little inn, in the wilds of Derbyshire. The next day we proceeded onwards, and passed the commencement of the tremendous glacier of the Flech Horr. Monteroso ascended to the right, shrouded in cloud and mist, at a height inaccessible even to the eye. This mountain is only a few hundred feet lower than Mont-Blanc, yet its name is hardly known. So a difference of a hair’s breadth in talent often makes all the difference between total obscurity and endless renown! We soon after passed the barrier, and found ourselves involved in fog and driving sleet upon the brink of precipices: the view was hidden, the road dangerous. On our right were drifts of snow left there by the avalanches. Soon after the mist dispersed, or we had perhaps passed below it, and a fine sunny morning disclosed the whole amazing scene above, about, below us. On our right was the Swartzenberg, behind us the Simplon, on our left the Flech Horr, and the pointed Clise-Horn—opposite was the Yung-Frow, and the distant mountains of the lake of Geneva rose between, circled with wreaths of mist and sunshine: stately fir-trees measured the abrupt descent at our side, or the sound of dimly-seen cataracts; and in an opening below, seen through the steep chasm under our feet, lay the village of Brigg (as in a map) still half a day’s journey distant. We wound round the valley at the other extremity of it: the road on the opposite side, which we could plainly distinguish, seemed almost on the level ground, and when we reached it we found a still greater depth below us. Villages, cottages, flocks of sheep in the valley underneath, now came in sight, and made the eye giddy to look at them: huge cedars by the road-side were interposed between us and the rocks and mountains opposite, and threw them into half-tint; and the height above our heads, and that beneath our feet, by being perceptibly joined together, doubled the elevation of the objects. Mountains seem highest either when you are at their very summits and look down on the world, or when you are midway up, and the eye takes in the measure of their height at two distinct stages. I think the finest part of the descent of the Simplon is about four or five miles before you come to Brigg. The valley is here narrow, and affords prodigious contrasts of wood and rock, of hill and vale, of sheltered beauty and of savage grandeur. The red perpendicular chasm in the rock at the foot of the Clise-Horn is tremendous; the look back to the snow-clad Swartzenberg that you have left behind is no less so. I grant the Simplon has the advantage of Mont Cenis in variety and beauty and in sudden and terrific contrasts, but it has not the same simple expansive grandeur, blending and growing into one vast accumulated impression; nor is the descent of the same whirling and giddy character, as if you were hurried, stage after stage, and from one yawning depth to another, into the regions of ‘Chaos and old Night.’ The Simplon presents more picturesque points of view; Mont Cenis makes a stronger impression on the imagination. I am not prejudiced in favour of one or the other; the road over each was raised by the same master-hand. After a jaunt like this through the air, it was requisite to pause some time at the hospitable inn at Brigg to recover. It only remains for me to describe the lake of Geneva and Mont Blanc.
CHAPTER XXV
We left the inn at Brigg, after having stopped there above a week, and proceeded on our way to Vevey, which had always been an interesting point in the horizon, and a resting-place to the imagination. In travelling, we visit names as well as places; and Vevey is the scene of the New Eloise. In spite of Mr. Burke’s philippic against this performance, the contempt of the Lake School, and Mr. Moore’s late Rhymes on the Road, I had still some overmastering recollections on that subject, which I proposed to indulge at my leisure on the spot which was supposed to give them birth, and which I accordingly did. I did not, on a re-perusal, find my once favourite work quite so vapid, quite so void of eloquence or sentiment as some critics (it is true, not much beholden to it) would insinuate. The following passage, among others, seemed to me the perfection of style:—‘Mais vois la rapidité de cet astre, qui vole et ne s’arrête jamais; le tems fuit, l’occasion échappe, ta beauté, ta beauté même aura son terme, elle doit flétrir et périr un jour comme un fleur qui tombe sans avoir été cueilli!’ What a difference between the sound of this passage and of Mr. Moore’s verse or prose! Nay, there is more imagination in the single epithet astre, applied as it is here to this brilliant and fleeting scene of things, than in all our fashionable poet’s writings! At least I thought so, reading St. Preux’s Letter in the wood near Clarens, and stealing occasional glances at the lake and rocks of Meillerie. But I am anticipating.