Italy, the Magic Land
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Title: Italy, the Magic Land
Author: Lilian Whiting
Release date: August 10, 2009 [eBook #29658]
Language: English
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Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Emanuela Piasentini and the
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[Illustration: _Temple, Taormina_]
ITALY
THE MAGIC LAND
BY
LILIAN WHITING
AUTHOR OF "THE FLORENCE OF LANDOR," "THE LAND OF
ENCHANTMENT," "THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL," ETC.
"And, under many a yellow star,
We dropped into the Magic Land!"
_Illustrated from Photographs_
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1907
_Copyright, 1907_,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
_All rights reserved_
Published November, 1907
THE GRIFFITH-STILLINGS PRESS, BOSTON, U.S.A.
TO
ELLA
(MRS. FRANKLIN SIMMONS)
WHOSE EARTHLY FORM REPOSES IN THE BEAUTIFUL ROMAN CEMETERY,
WHERE POETIC ASSOCIATIONS WITH KEATS AND SHELLEY HAUNT
THE AIR,--UNDER THE SCULPTURED "ANGEL OF THE RESURRECTION,"
WITH ITS MAJESTIC SYMBOLISM OF THE
TRIUMPH OF IMMORTALITY,--BUT WHOSE RADIANT
PRESENCE STILL TRANSFIGURES THE LIFE THAT
HELD HER IN IMMORTAL DEVOTION,--
THESE PAGES ARE INSCRIBED,
WITH THE UNFORGETTING LOVE OF
LILIAN WHITING.
ROME, ITALY, May Days, 1907.
"_Nor Life is ever lord of Death,
And Love can never lose its own._"
PREFATORY NOTE
That Florence, the "Flower City," receives only a passing allusion in
this record of various impressions that gleam and glow through the days
after several visits to the Magic Land, is due to the fact that in a
previous volume by the writer--one entitled "The Florence of
Landor"--the lovely Tuscan town with its art, its ineffable beauty, and
its choice social life, formed the subject matter of that volume. Any
attempt to portray Florence in the present book would savor only of the
repetition of loves and enthusiasms already recorded in the previous
work in which Walter Savage Landor formed the central figure. For that
reason no mention of Florence, beyond some mere allusion, is attempted
in these pages, which only aim to present certain fragmentary
impressions of various sojourns in Italy, refracted through the prism of
memory. Whatever inconveniences or discomfort attend the traveller
swiftly fade, and leave to him only the precious heritage of resplendent
sunset skies, of poetic association, of artistic beauty. In spirit he is
again lingering through long afternoons in St. Peter's till the golden
light through the far windows of the tribune is merged into the dusk of
twilight in which the vast monumental groups gleam wraith-like. Again
he is ascending the magnificent _Scala Regia_, and lingering in the
Raphael Stanze, or in the wonderful sculpture galleries of the Vatican,
or sauntering in the sunshine on the Palatine. In memory he is again
spellbound by ancient and mediæval art. In the line of modern sculpture
the work of Franklin Simmons in Rome is a feature of Italy that haunts
the imagination. No lover of beauty would willingly miss his great
studios in the Via San Nicolo da Tolentino, with their wealth of ideal
creations that contribute new interest to the most divine of all the
arts.
"The world of art is an ideal world,--
The world I love, and that I fain would live in;
So speak to me of artists and of art,
Of all the painters, sculptors, and musicians
That now illustrate Rome."
The mystic charm of the pilgrimage to Assisi; the romance that reflects
itself in the violet seas and flaming splendors of the sky on the shores
of Ischia and Capri; the buried treasures of Amalfi; the magnetic
impressiveness of the Eternal City,--all these enter into life as new
forces to build and shape the future into undreamed-of destinies.
L. W.
THE BRUNSWICK, BOSTON,
October Days, 1907.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I THE PERIOD OF MODERN ART IN ROME 3
II SOCIAL LIFE IN THE ETERNAL CITY 127
III DAY-DREAMS IN NAPLES, AMALFI, AND CAPRI 227
IV A PAGE DE CONTI FROM ISCHIA 281
V VOICES OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI 341
VI THE GLORY OF A VENETIAN JUNE 389
VII THE MAGIC LAND 423
INDEX 459
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Temple, Taormina _Frontispiece in Photogravure_
Angel, Church of San Andrea delle Fratte, Rome _Page_ 12
Detail from the Stuart Monument, St. Peter's, Rome " 24
Tomb of Clement XIII, St. Peter's, Rome " 32
"The Genius of Death," Detail from the Tomb
of Clement XIII, St. Peter's, Rome " 43
"La Fortuna," Accadémia di San Luca, Rome " 47
Spanish Steps, Piazza Trinità dei Monti, Rome " 72
Tomb of Pio Nono, San Lorenzo (Fuori le Mura) Rome " 75
"The Dance of the Pleiades" " 92
"Grief and History," Detail from Naval Monument,
Washington " 105
"The Genius of Progress Leading the Nations" " 108
"Mother of Moses" " 112
"Valley Forge" " 116
La Pieta, St. Peter's, Rome " 120
Villa Medici, Rome " 134
Entrance to Villa Pamphilia-Doria, Rome " 159
Statue of Christ, Ancient Church of San Martina, Rome " 193
Castel San Angelo and St. Peter's, Rome " 204
Porta San Paola, Pyramid of Caius Cestius, Rome " 216
Castel Sant'Elmo, Naples " 231
Ancient Temple, Baiæ " 241
Ischia, from the Sea " 282
La Rocca, Ischia " 294
Castello di Alfonso, Ischia " 306
Detail from "Parnassus," Raphael Stanze, Palazzo
Vaticano, Rome " 311
Vittoria Colonna, Galleria Buonarroti, Florence " 320
San Francescan Convent-Church, Assisi " 346
St. Francis d'Assisi, The Duomo, Assisi " 366
Santa Chiara, The Duomo, Assisi " 375
Baiæ and Ischia, from Camaldoli " 382
Ruins of the Greek Theatre, Taormina, Sicily " 429
Ponte Vecchio, Florence " 434
Campo Santo, Genoa " 453
"_Rest we content if whispers from the stars
In wafting of the incalculable wind
Come blown at midnight through our prison-bars._"
THE MAGIC LAND
_By woodland belt, by ocean bar,
The full south breeze our forehead fanned;
And, under many a yellow star,
We dropped into the Magic Land._
* * * * *
_We heard, far-off, the siren's song;
We caught the gleam of sea-maids' hair;
The glimmering isles and rocks among
We moved through sparkling purple air._
_Then Morning rose, and smote from far
Her elfin harps o'er land and sea;
And woodland belt, and ocean bar
To one sweet note sighed--"Italy!"_
OWEN MEREDITH.
ITALY, THE MAGIC LAND
I
THE PERIOD OF MODERN ART IN ROME
But ah, that spring should vanish with the Rose!
That youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close?
The nightingale that in the branches sang,
Oh, where and whither flown again,--who knows?
OMAR KHAYYAM.
ROME, as the picturesque city of the Popes in the middle years of the
nineteenth century, was resplendent in local color. It was the Rome of
sunny winters; the Rome of gay excursions over that haunted sea of the
Campagna to pictorial points in the Alban and Sabine hills; the Rome of
young artist life, which organized impromptu festas with Arcadian
freedom, and utilized the shadow or the shelter of ruined temples or
tombs in which to spread its picnic lunches and bring the glow of
simple, friendly intercourse into the romantic lights of the poetic,
historic, or tragic past. There were splendid Catholic processions and
ceremonials that seemed organized as a part of the stage scenery that
ensconced itself, also, with the nonchalance of easy possession, in the
vast salons of historic palaces where tapestried walls and richly
painted ceilings, arched high overhead, with statues dimly seen in
niches here and there, and the bust of some crowned Antoninus, or
radiant Juno, gleaming from a shadowy corner, all made up the
_mise-en-scène_ of familiar evenings. There were lingering hours in the
gardens of the Villa Medici into whose shades one strolled by that
beguiling path along the parapet on Monte Pincio, through the beautiful
grove with its walks and fountains. The old ilex bosquet, with its
tangled growth and air of complete seclusion, had its spell of
fascination. Then, as now, the elevated temple, at the end of the main
path, seemed the haunt of gods and muses. In all the incidental, as well
as the ceremonial social meeting and mingling, art and religion were the
general themes of discussion. This idyllic life--
"Comprehending, too, the soul's
And all the high necessities of art"--
has left its impress on the air as well as its record on many a page of
the poet and the romancist. The names that made memorable those
wonderful days touch chords of association that still vibrate in the
life of the hour. For the most part the artists and their associates
have gone their way--not into a Silent Land, a land of shadows and
vague, wandering ghosts--but into that realm wherein is the "life more
abundant," of more intense energy and of nobler achievement; the realm
in which every aspiration of earth enlarges its conception and every
inspiration is exalted and endowed with new purpose; the realm where, as
Browning says,--
"Power comes in full play."
The poet's vision recognizes the truth:--
"I know there shall dawn a day,
--Is it here on homely earth?
Is it yonder, worlds away,
Where the strange and new have birth,
That Power comes in full play?"
The names of sculptor, painter, and poet throng back, imaged in that
retrospective mirror which reflects a vista of the past, rich in ideal
creation. Beautiful forms emerge from the marble; pictorial scenes glow
from the canvas; song and story and happy, historic days are in the
very air. To Italy, land of romance and song, all the artists came
trooping, and
"Under many a yellow Star"
they dropped into the Magic Land. If the wraiths of the centuries long
since dead walked the streets, they were quite welcome to revisit the
glimpses of the moon and contribute their mystery to the general
artistic effectiveness of the Seven-hilled City. All this group of
American idealists, from Allston and Page to Crawford, Story, Randolph
Rogers, Vedder, Simmons, and to the latest comer of all, Charles Walter
Stetson, recognized something of the artist's native air in this Mecca
of their pilgrimage.
It was, indeed, quite natural, on account of the stupendous work of
Michael Angelo and the unrivalled museums of the Vatican, that Rome
should have become pre-eminently the artistic centre of the nineteenth
century and should have attracted students and lovers of art from all
parts of the world. The immortal works of the two great periods, the
Greek and the Renaissance,--the art that was forever great because it
was the outgrowth of profound religious conviction,--were enshrined in
the churches and the galleries of Rome. The leading countries of Europe
sent here their aspiring students and established permanent academies
for their residence. Germany, France, and England were thus represented.
Thorwaldsen came as a pensioner from the Academy of Fine Arts in
Copenhagen; and it was during his life, and that of the noble Canova,
that Rome began to be recognized as the modern world-centre of art. Was
it not a natural sequence that the early painters and sculptors who came
to study under the stimulating influences of the great masterpieces of
the past should linger on in the city whose very air became to them the
breath of inspiring suggestion? Where but in Rome would have come to
Crawford the vision of his "Orpheus" and of his noble Beethoven? or to
Story his "Libyan Sibyl," and that exquisite group, "Into the Silent
Land"? or to Vedder his marvellous creations of "The Fates Gathering in
the Stars," the "Cumæan Sibyl," or the "Dance of the Pleiades"? to
Simmons his triumphant "Angel of the Resurrection," and "The Genius of
Progress Leading the Nations"? or to Stetson that ineffable vision of
"The Child," and that wonderful group called "Music"? whose coloring
Titian or Giorgione might well mistake for their own.
Under the Pontifical _régime_ the general character of Rome was mediæval
and religious. The perpetual festas of the church made the streets
constantly picturesque with their processions of monks, and friars, and
priests, and these wonderful blendings of color and scenic effect
stimulated the artistic sense. The expenses of living in Rome were then
only a fraction of what the cost is at the present time; and as the city
was the resort of the wealthy and cultured few, the artists were
surrounded by the stimulus of critical appreciation and of patronage.
Their work, their dreams, were the theme of literary discussion, and
focussed the attention of the polite world. Their studios were among the
important interests to every visitor in the Eternal City. In those days
the traveller did not land with his touring car at Naples, make "the
run" to Rome in a record that distanced any possibilities of railroad
trains, pass two or three days in motoring about the city and its
environs, seeing the exterior of everything in a dissolving view and the
interior of nothing,--as within this time, at least, he must flash on
in his touring car to Florence. On the contrary, the traveller proceeded
to Rome with serious deliberation, and with a more realizing sense of
undertaking a journey than Walter Wellman experiences in attempting to
fly in his aero-car to the North Pole and send his observations across
the polar seas by wireless telegraphy. The visitor went to Rome for a
winter, for a year, and gave himself up to leisurely impressions. Rome
was an atmosphere, not a spectacle, and it was to be entered with the
lofty and reverent appreciation of the poet's power and the artist's
vision.
In Rome, Thomas Cole painted some of his best pictures; and in Rome or
Florence wrought a long list of painters and sculptors. Whether in the
Eternal City or in the Flower City, their environment was alike
Italy--the environment of the Magic Land. Among the more prominent of
all these devotees of Beauty several nationalities were represented.
Each might have said of his purpose, in the words of William Watson:--
"I follow Beauty; of her train am I,
Beauty, whose voice is earth and sea and air;
Who serveth, and her hands for all things ply;
Who reigneth, and her throne is everywhere."
Among these artists there flash upon memory the names of Vanderlyn,
Benjamin West, Allston, Rauch, Ange, Veit, Tenerani, Overbeck, Schadow,
Horace Vernet, Thorwaldsen, John Gibson, Hiram Powers, Crawford, Page,
Clark Mills, Randolph Rogers, William Rinehart, Launt Thompson, Horatio
and Richard Greenough, Thomas Ball, Anne Whitney, Larkin G. Mead, Paul
Akers, William Wetmore Story, Harriet Hosmer, J. Rollin Tilton, and,
later, Elihu Vedder, Moses Ezekiel, Franklin Simmons, Augustus St.
Gaudens, and Charles Walter Stetson, the name of Mr. Stetson linking the
long and interesting procession with the immediate life of to-day. Of
these later artists Story, Miss Hosmer, Ezekiel, Vedder, Simmons, and
Stetson are identified with Rome as being either their permanent or
their prolonged residence. Mr. St. Gaudens was a transient student,
returning to his own country to pursue his work; and of two young
sculptors, Hendrick Christian Anderson and C. Percival Dietsch, time has
not yet developed their powers beyond an experimental stage of brilliant
promise.
[Illustration: ANGEL, CHURCH OF SAN ANDREA DELLE FRATTE, ROME
Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini
_Page 32_]
The Rome of the artists of clay and canvas was also the Rome of the
poets and romancists, of authors in all lines of literary achievement.
How the names of the procession of visitors and sojourners in the
Eternal City, from Milton, Goethe, and Mme. de Staël to Henry James,
Marion Crawford, Richard Bagot, and Grace Ellery Channing (Mrs. Charles
Walter Stetson), gleam from that resplendent panorama of the modern past
of Rome! Like the words in electric fire that flash out of the darkness
in city streets at night, there shine the names of Shelley and of Keats;
of Gladstone, on whom in one memorable summer day, while strolling in
Italian sunshine, there fell a vision of the sacredness and the
significance of life and its infinite responsibility in the fulfilment
of lofty purposes. What charming associations these guests and
sojourners have left behind! Hawthorne, embodying in immortal romance
the spirit of the scenic greatness of the Eternal City; Margaret Fuller,
Marchesa d'Ossoli, allying herself in marriage with the country she
loved, and living in Rome those troubled, mysterious years that were to
close the earthly chapter of her life; Robert and Elizabeth Browning,
the wedded poets, who sang of love and Italy; Harriet Beecher Stowe,
finding on the enchanted Italian shores the material which she wove
with such irresistible attraction into the romance of "Agnes of
Sorrento;" Longfellow, with his poet's vision, transmuting every vista
and impression into some exquisite lyric; Lowell, bringing his
philosophic as well as his poetic insight to penetrate the untold
meaning of Rome; Thomas William Parsons, making the country of Dante
fairly his own; Thackeray, with his brilliant interpretation of the
_comédie humaine_; Emerson, who, oblivious of all the glories of art or
the joys of nature, absorbed himself in writing transcendental letters
to his eccentric, but high-souled aunt, Mary Moody Emerson; Ruskin,
translating Italian art to Italy herself; Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe and
his poet wife, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, in the first flush of their bridal
happiness, when Mrs. Howe's impassioned love for the Seven-hilled City
inspired many a lyric that mirrors the Roman atmosphere of that day;
Kate Field, with a young girl's glad enthusiasm over the marvellous
loveliness of a Maytime in Rome, and her devotion to those great
histrionic artists, Ristori and Salvini; George Stillman Hillard,
leaving to literature the rich legacy of his "Six Months in
Italy,"--a work that to this day holds precedence as a clear and
comprehensive presentation of the scenic beauty, the notable monumental
and architectural art, and the general life and resources of this land
of painter and poet. Other names, too, throng upon memory--that of
William Dean Howells, painting Italian life in his "Venetian Days," and
charming all the literary world by his choice art; and among later work,
the interesting interpretations of Rome and of social life in Rome, by
Marion Crawford, Henry James, and Richard Bagot,--in chronicle, in
romance, or in biographical record. During the last quarter of the
nineteenth century, indeed, the visitors to Rome--authors, artists,
travellers of easy leisure--defy any numerical record. Mrs. Louise
Chandler Moulton, poet, romancist, and delightful _raconteur_ as well,
has recorded some charming impressions of her various sojourns in Rome
both in her "Random Rambles" and in "Lazy Tours." Of the Palatine Hill
we find her saying:--
"Sometimes we go to the Palace of the Cæsars, and look off upon the
heights where the snow lingers and the warm light rests, making
them shine like the Delectable Mountains. Nearer at hand are the
almond trees, in flower, or the orange trees, bright at once with
their white, sweet blossoms and their golden fruit."
Mrs. Moulton writes of the "stately dwellers" in Rome whom time cannot
change; and to whom, whenever she returns, she makes her first visit;
some of whom are in the mighty palace of the Vatican and some of whom
dwell in state in the Capitol.
"The beautiful Antoninus still wears his crown of lotus in Villa
Albani and the Juno whom Goethe worshipped reigns forever at the
Ludovisi," she writes; "I can never put in words the pleasure I
find in these immortals." Mrs. Moulton loved to wander in the Villa
Borghese "before the place is thronged with the beauty and fashion
of Rome as it is in the late afternoon. I do not wonder that Miriam
and Donatello could forget their fate in these enchanted glades,"
she wrote, "and dance as the sunbeams danced with the shadows.
Sometimes I seem to see them where the sun sifts through the young
green leaves, and her beauty--her human, deep-souled beauty--and
his fantastic grace are the only things here that cannot change.
"The walls will crumble; the busts of kings and heroes and poets
will lose their contours, the lovely Roman ladies also grow old and
fade, and vanish from sight and from memory; but still these two,
hopeless yet happy, will dance in these wild glades immortally
beyond the reach of the effacing years."
The visit to Rome of the Rev. Dr. Phillips Brooks--later the Bishop of
Massachusetts--is immortalized in the most lifelike portrait bust of the
great preacher ever modelled; a bust in which the genius of the
sculptor, Franklin Simmons, found one of its noblest expressions, and
has perpetuated, with masterly power, the energy of thought, at once
profound and intense, in the countenance of Bishop Brooks. These, and
many another whom the gods have loved and dowered with gifts, rise
before any retrospective glance over the comparatively recent past of
Rome. Bishop Brooks passed there the Holy Week of one Lenten season,
and of the Miserere in the Sistine Chapel he wrote that it was certainly
the most wonderful music to which he had ever listened; and he added:--
"The Miserere in the Sistine, the Benediction from the balcony, the
solemn moment of the elevation of the Host on Easter, and the
illumination of St. Peter's, these all seem to reach very
remarkably the great ideal of the central religious commemoration
of Christendom."
It was in the winter of 1828 that Mr. Longfellow first visited Rome,
which "is announced," he wrote, "by Nero's tomb," and he quotes Dupaty's
lines:--
"Quoi! c'est là Rome? quoi!
C'est le tombeau de Neron qui l'annonce."
Mr. Longfellow expressed his love for the Eternal City, and in a
personal letter[1] he said:--
"I have been so delighted with Rome that I have extended my
residence much beyond my original intention. There is so much in
the city to delay the stranger; the villages in the environs are so
beautiful, and there is such a quiet and stillness about everything
that, were it in my power, I should be induced to remain the whole
year round. You can imagine nothing equal to the ruins of Rome. The
Forum and the Coliseum are beyond all I had ever fancied them; and
the ruined temples and the mouldering aqueducts which are scattered
over the Campagna; I do not believe there is a finer view in the
world than that from the eastern gate of the city, embracing the
Campagna, with its ruined aqueducts diverging in long broken
arcades, and terminated by the sweep of the Albanian hills,
sprinkled with their white villages, and celebrated in song and
story! But the great charm of the scene springs from association;
and though everything in Italy is really picturesque, yet strip the
country of its historic recollections,--think merely of what it is,
and not of what it has been,--and you will find the dream to be
fading away.
"You would be shocked at the misery of the people, especially in
the Pope's dominions: but their element seems to be in rags and
misery; and with the ceremonials of their religion and the holidays
of the church, which average nearly three a week, they are
poor--and lazy and happy. I mean, happy in their way."
In a later visit the poet was domiciled in an hotel on the Piazza
Barberini, where the wonderful view included then the entire city "to
where St. Peter's dome darkens against the sunset." Of this visit his
brother, Rev. Samuel Longfellow, writes:--
"Here Mr. Longfellow became for the season the centre of the group
of American visitors and resident artists, whose well-known names
need not be recounted. Here he made, also, acquaintances among the
Italians,--especially the Duke of Sermoneta, the Dantean scholar,
and Monsignore Nardi, of the papal court. The Pope himself he did
not visit. An interesting acquaintance was that made with the Abbé
Liszt, who was spending the winter in Rome, having rooms in the
abandoned Convent of Santa Francesca, in the Forum. Calling there
one evening, in company with Mr. Healy the artist, the inner door
of the apartment was opened to them by Liszt himself, holding high
in his hand a candle which illuminated his fine face. The picture
was so striking that Mr. Longfellow begged his companion to put it
upon canvas,--which he did; and the painting now hangs in the
library of Craigie House. At a morning visit, Liszt delighted the
party with a performance upon his Chickering pianoforte.
"To see Rome, as all travellers know, is a work for many months;
and it was pursued with tolerable diligence. But Mr. Longfellow was
never a good sight-seer. He was impatient of lingering in picture
galleries, churches, or ruins. He saw quickly the essential points,
and soon tired of any minuter examination."
But long, indeed, before nineteenth-century artists and authors laid
siege to the Eternal City, in the far-away years of 1638, Milton visited
Rome, and there still remains the tablet, on the wall of the _casa_ in
the Via delle Quattro Fontane in which he stayed, a tablet bearing an
inscription giving the date of his visit; as, also, in Via Machella,
there is an inscription marking the place where Scott lived during his
visit to Rome. Goethe made his memorable tour to Italy in 1786--fourteen
years before the dawn of the nineteenth century--and wrote: "I feel the
greatest longing to read Tacitus in Rome;" and again (an observation
with which every visitor to the Eternal City will sympathize) he
noted:--
"It grows more and more difficult for me to render an account of my
residence in Rome, for as we always find the sea deeper the further
we go, so it is with me in observation of this city.... Wherever we
go and wherever we stand, we see about us a finished
picture,--forms of every kind and style; palaces and ruins; gardens
and wastes; the distant and the near houses; triumphal arches and
columns,--often all so close together that they might be sketched
on a single sheet. One should have a thousand points of steel with
which to write, and what can a single pen do? and then in the
evening one is weary and exhausted with the day of seeing and
admiring. Here one reads history from within outward."
Chateaubriand, who in his earliest youth had visited America as the
guest of Washington, passed the winter of 1803-4 in Rome, and his
pictorial transcriptions of the city and its environs are among the most
exquisite things in literary record. As, for instance, this description
of a sunset from Monte Mario:--
"I was never weary of seeing, from the Villa Borghese, the sun go
down behind the cypresses of Monte Mario, and the pines of the
Villa Pamphili planted by Le Notre. I have stood upon the Ponte
Molle to enjoy the sublime spectacle of the close of day. The
summits of the Sabine hills appeared of lapis lazuli and pale gold,
while their bases and sides were bathed in vapors of violet or
purple. Sometimes lovely clouds, like fairy cars, borne along by
the evening wind with inimitable grace, recall the mythological
tales of the descent of the deities of Olympus. Sometimes old Rome
seems to have spread all over the west the purple of her consuls
and her Cæsars, beneath the last steps of the god of day. This rich
decoration does not vanish so quickly as in our climate. When we
think the hues are about to disappear they revive on some other
point of the horizon; one twilight follows another and the magic of
sunset is prolonged."
It was in the same year that Mme. de Staël visited Rome and recorded, in
her glowing romance, "Corinne," the impressions she received. In the
spring of 1817 Lord Byron found in Rome the inspiration that he
transmitted into that wonderful line in "Childe Harold":--
"The Niobe of Nations! There she stands."
It was two years later that Shelley passed the spring in the
Seven-hilled City, retiring to Leghorn later, to write his tragedy of
"The Cenci."
In Rome the visitor follows Michael Angelo and Raphael through the
various churches and museums. The celebrated sibyls of Raphael are in
the Santa Maria della Pace; his "Isaiah" is in San Agostino and his
"Entombment" in the Casino of the Villa Borghese. While the sublime work
of Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel is always one of the first
things in Rome to which the traveller goes to study that incomparable
work portraying the Creation--the Prophets and the Sibyls, the Angels
and the Genii, that record the impassioned power of the master--yet all
footsteps turn quickly, too, to the church called San Pietro in Vincoli,
near the house in which Lucrezia Borgia lived, in which is the colossal
Moses of Michael Angelo. As it stands, it fails to convey the first
design of the great sculptor. Originally intended for the tomb of Pope
Julius II, the plan included a massive block of marble (some forty by
twenty feet) surmounted by a cornice and having its niches, its columns,
and its statues, of which the Moses was to have been one. It would then
have been judged relatively to the entire group, while now it is seen
alone, and thus out of the proportions that were in the mind of the
artist. The entire conception, indeed, was to unite sculpture and
architecture into one splendid combination. "Thus the statue of Moses
was meant to have been raised considerably above the eye of the
spectator," writes Mr. Hillard, "and to have been a single object in a
colossal structure of architecture and sculpture, which would have had a
foreground and a background, and been crowned with a mass at once
dome-like and pyramidal. Torn, as it is, from its proper place; divorced
from its proportionate companionship; stuck against the wall of a
church; and brought face to face with the observer,--what wonder that so
many of those who see it turn away with no other impressions than those
of caricature and exaggeration!"
Mr. Hillard adds:--
"But who that can appreciate the sublime in art will fail to bow
down before it as embodied in this wonderful statue? The majestic
character of the head, the prodigious muscles of the chest and
arms, and the beard that flows like a torrent to the waist,
represent a being of more than mortal port and power, speaking with
the authority, and frowning with the sanctions of incarnate law.
The drapery of the lower part of the figure is inferior to the
anatomy of the upper part. Remarkable as the execution of the
statue is, the expression is yet more so; for notwithstanding its
colossal proportions, its prominent characteristic is the
embodiment of intellectual power. It is the great leader and
lawgiver of his people that we see, whose voice was command, and
whose outstretched arm sustained a nation's infant steps. He looks
as if he might control the energies of nature as well as shape the
mould in which the character of his people should be formed. That
any one should stand before this statue in a scoffing mood is to me
perfectly inexplicable. My own emotions were more nearly akin to
absolute bodily fear. At an irreverent word, I should have expected
the brow to contract into a darker frown, and the marble lips to
unclose in rebuke."
[Illustration: DETAIL FROM STUART MONUMENT, ST. PETER'S, ROME
Antonio Canova
_Page 33_]
William Watson condenses his impressions of this majestic sculpture in
the following quatrain.--
"The captain's might, and mystery of the seer--
Remoteness of Jehovah's colloquist,
Nearness of man's heaven-advocate--are here:
Alone Mount Nebo's harsh foreshadow is miss'd."
The impressive group of sculptures and buildings on the
Campidoglio--where once the shrine of Jupiter Capitolinus stood--owes
its present picturesque scheme largely to Michael Angelo. The
fascination of the long flights of steps leading from the Piazza
Aracöeli to the Capitoline, where the ancient bronze equestrian statue
of Marcus Aurelius forever keeps guard, is indescribable. The historic
statues of Castor and Pollux mark the portals; on either hand there are
seen the Muses of ancient sculpture, the Palazzo Senatoriale and the
Palazzo dei Conservatori. There is in the entire world no more classic
ground than is found in this impressive grouping of art and
architecture.
The genius of Raphael has recorded itself in those brilliant and
imperishable works that enthrall the student of art in the Raphael
stanze in the Vatican. He was imbued with the spirit of Greek art, and
while Titian is a greater colorist, while Correggio, Botticelli,
Perugino, and other artists that could be named equal or exceed Raphael
in certain lines, yet as the interpreter of the profoundest thought, and
for his philosophic grasp and his power to endow his conceptions with
the most brilliant animation, he stands alone. The religious exaltation
of "The Transfiguration" reveals the supreme degree of the divine genius
of Raphael. That this painting was the last work of his life, that it
was placed above his body as it lay in state, and was carried in his
funeral procession, invests it with peculiar interest.
As a draftsman Raphael was second only to Michael Angelo, with whom he
must forever share the immortality of fame. The Academy in Venice holds
some of his choicest drawings, and in the Venetian sketch-book in the
National Gallery in London are many of his small pictures, including
that of the "Knight's Dream."
It was in the autumn of 1508, when Raphael was in his twenty-fifth year,
that he was called to Rome in the service of the Pope. The Pontiff at
this time was Pope Julius II, whose successor was Leo X, and under their
pontificates (from 1508 to 1520) Raphael produced these masterpieces
which stand unrivalled in the world save by the creations of Michael
Angelo in the Capella Sistina. The celebrated "Four Sibyls" of Raphael
are not, however, in the stanze of the Vatican, but in the Church of San
Maria della Pace. In the Palazzo Vaticano these four wonderful stanze
entrance the visitor; the Stanza della Signatura, the Stanza d'Eliodoro,
the Stanza dell'Incendio and the Sala di Constantino.
For the decoration of these stanze several painters from Umbria had been
summoned,--Perugino, Sodoma, Signorelli, and others; but when Raphael
had produced the "Disputa" in the Sala della Signatura, Pope Julius II
recognized the work as so transcendent that he ordered the other artists
to cease and even had some of their paintings obliterated that there
might be more space for the exercise of Raphael's genius. In the
"Disputa" are glorified the highest expressions of the human
intellect--the domain portrayed being that of Theology, Philosophy,
Poetry, and Justice. The splendor of this creation transcends all
attempts of interpretation in language. Against a background of gold
mosaic are portrayed these typical figures enthroned on clouds where
genii flit to and fro bearing tablets with inscriptions. Theology holds
in the left hand a book, while the other points to the vision of angels;
Poetry, laurel-crowned, is seen seated on a throne with books and lyre;
Philosophy wears a diadem, and Justice, with her balance and her sword,
is also crowned. The title of this marvellous work is misleading. Its
message is not that of disputation but of beatitude. At the altar are
grouped the congregation; the mystic spell of heavenly enthusiasm
enfolds the scene as an atmosphere, as above the heavens open and the
glorified Christ, surrounded by the saints who have kept the faith, is
disclosed to the devotees kneeling below, while a choir of listening
angels bend over them from the distant clouds in the background.
Under Poetry are grouped Apollo and the Muses, and the figures of Homer,
Dante and Virgil, of Petrarcha, Anacreon and Sappho, of Pindar and of
Horace are recognized. The great scholars seen in the Philosophy include
Plato and Aristotle, while in the groups under Justice, Moses and Solon
are seen.
"Raphael seems to have never known despair," remarked Franklin Simmons
of the work of this divine genius. "His paintings reveal no struggle,
but seem to have been produced without effort, as if brought into
existence by an enchanter's wand."
No observation could more vividly interpret the wonderful effect
produced on the student by Raphael, and he cannot but recall the truth
expressed in these lines of Festus:--
"All aspiration is a toil;
But inspiration cometh from above
And is no labor."
The inspiration of Raphael was of the noblest order. His genius, his
kindling enthusiasm, his ecstasy of religious devotion, have left an
imperishable heritage to art. By his transcendent gifts he represents
the highest manifestation of the art of painting in the Renaissance. For
the true note in art lies in spiritual perception. Not so brilliant a
colorist as Titian, he was more the interpreter of the extension of
human activity into that realm of the life more abundant, and with his
extraordinary facility of execution he united exquisite refinement and
unerring sense of beauty and the masterly power in composition that
fairly created for the spectator the visions that his soul beheld. "I
say to you," said Mr. Bryce recently in a press interview,--"I say to
you, each oncoming tide of life requires and needs men of lofty thought
who shall dream for it, sing for it, who shall gather up its tendencies,
formulate its ideals and voice its spirit." One of those men of lofty
thought who thus dream for the ages was Raphael, and his power and glory
have left an ineffaceable impress upon human life. He was the divinely
appointed messenger of beauty, and he was never disobedient to the
heavenly vision.
"Time hath no tide but must abide
The servant of Thy will;
Tide hath no time, for to Thy rhyme
The ranging stars stand still."
The decline of art after Michael Angelo and Raphael was marked. The very
splendor and power of their creations, instead of inspiring those who
immediately followed them, produced almost the inertia of despair. In
the reverence and awe and admiration with which these transcendent
masterpieces were approached any power to originate seemed futile by
contrast. Imitation rather than creation became the method adopted,
resulting in an increased poverty of design and feeble execution. The
art of the sixteenth century deteriorated rapidly till the baroco style
was in evidence. One reason, too, for the decline was in that art was no
longer so exclusively dedicated to the high service of religion, but
aimed, instead, to please and to procure patrons, and thus were all
worthy standards lowered to pernicious levels.
A sculptor who left his impress upon the sixteenth-century art was
Lorenzo Bernini, a Neapolitan (born in 1598) who died in Rome in 1685.
The work of Bernini has a certain fascination and airy touch that, while
it sometimes degenerates into the merely fantastic and even into tawdry
and puerile affectations, has at its best a refinement and grace that
lend to his sculptures an enduring charm, as seen in his "Apollo and
Daphne" (a work executed in his eighteenth year) which is now in the
Casino of the Villa Borghese. Bernini's name is perpetuated in the
colossal statues on the colonnade of St. Peter's, the great bronze
angels with their draperies streaming to the winds on the Ponte San
Angelo, and in the vast fountain in the Piazza Navona. In the court of
the Palazzo Bernini is one of the most interesting of his works--a
colossal figure, allegorical in significance, illustrating "Truth
Brought to Light by Time." One of the most important works of
Bernini--now placed in the Museo Nazionale--is the group of "Pluto and
Proserpine."
[Illustration: TOMB OF CLEMENT XIII, ST. PETER'S, ROME
Antonio Canova
_Page 42_]
The influence that was to reform and regenerate the art of sculpture in
the sixteenth century came with the great and good Canova, with which
was united that of Flaxman and of Thorwaldsen. The heavenly messengers
are always sent and appear at the time they are most needed. Neither
Truth nor Art is ever left without a witness.
"God sends his teachers unto every age,
To every clime, and every race of men,
With revelations fitted to their growth
And shape of mind; nor gives the realm of truth
Into the selfish rule of one sole race."
Canova's genius and services were widely recognized. In 1719 he was made
a Senator; he was ennobled with the title of Marchese of Ischia and
granted a yearly allowance of three thousand scudi; and his noble and
generous enthusiasms, not less than his genius, have left their record
on life as well as on art. When he died (in Venice, Oct. 3, 1822) his
work included fifty-nine statues, fourteen groups, twenty-two monuments,
and fifty-four busts. The statue of Pius V and the tomb of Clement XIII
are his greatest works, and the latter is perhaps even increasingly
held as a masterpiece of the ages.
Canova, warned by the fatal influence of imitation in art in the
sixteenth century, frequently counselled his pupils against copying his
own style and constantly urged them to study from the Greeks. He advised
them to visit frequently the studios of other artists, "and especially,"
he would add, "the studios of Thorwaldsen, who is a very great artist."
In the early part of the nineteenth century contemporary sculpture in
Rome was led by the three great artists,--Canova, Thorwaldsen, and
Gibson. In 1829 Gibson had the honor of being elected a member of the
Accadémia di San Luca in place of the sculptor Massimiliano, who had
then just died. Cammuccini, the historical painter, proposed Gibson, and
with the ardent assistance of Thorwaldsen he was elected resident
Academician of merit. "Like Canova, Thorwaldsen was most generous to
young artists," says Gibson of the great Danish master, "and he freely
visited all who required his advice. I profited greatly by the knowledge
which this splendid sculptor had of his art. On every occasion when I
was modelling a new work he came to me, and corrected whatever he
thought amiss. I also often went to his studio and contemplated his
glorious works, always in the noblest style, full of pure and severe
simplicity. His studio was a safe school for the young, and was the
resort of artists and lovers of art from all nations. The old man's
person can never be forgotten by those who saw him. Tall and strong,--he
never lost a tooth in his life,--he was most venerable looking. His kind
countenance was marked with hard thinking, his eyes were gray, and his
white locks lay upon his broad shoulders. At great assemblies his breast
was covered with orders."
Thorwaldsen (born in Copenhagen, Nov. 19, 1770) went to Rome in
1797--sent by the government of Denmark as a pensioner. It is said that,
in his enthusiasm for Rome, Thorwaldsen dated his birth from the hour he
entered the Eternal City. "Before that day," he exclaimed, "I existed; I
did not live." For nearly fifty years--until his death in 1844--he lived
and worked in Rome, occupying at one time the studio in Via Babuino that
had formerly been that of Flaxman.
John Gibson, who went to Rome in 1817,--twenty years after Thorwaldsen
first arrived,--had the good fortune to be for five years a pupil of
Canova, whose death in 1822 terminated this inestimable privilege. The
elevation of purpose that characterized the young English student made
his progress and development a matter of peculiar interest to the
master. Gibson, also, bears his testimony to the stimulus of the Roman
environment. "Rome above all other cities," he says, "has a peculiar
influence upon and charm for the real student; he feels himself in the
very university of art, where it is the one thing talked about and
thought about. Constantly did I feel the presence of this influence.
Every morning I rose with the sun, my soul gladdened by a new day of a
happy and delightful pursuit; and as I walked to my breakfast at the
Caffè Greco and watched with new pleasure the tops of the churches and
palaces gilt by the morning sun, I was inspired with a sense of daily
renovated youth, and fresh enthusiasm, and returned joyfully to the
combat, to the invigorating strife with the difficulties of art. Nor did
the worm of envy creep round my heart whenever I saw a beautiful idea
skilfully executed by any of my young rivals, but constantly spurred on
by the talent around me I returned to my studio with fresh resolution."
Again to a friend Gibson writes:--
"I renewed my visits to the Vatican, refreshing my spirits in that
Pantheon of the gods, demigods, and heroes of Hellas.... In the art
of sculpture the Greeks were gods.... In the Vatican we go from
statue to statue, from fragment to fragment, like the bee from
flower to flower."
These five years in which Canova, Thorwaldsen, and Gibson lived and
wrought together--although the youngest of this trio was still in his
student life--form a definite period in the history of modern art in
Rome. The dreams, the enthusiasm, the devotion to ideal beauty which
characterized their work left its impress and its vitality of
influence--a mystic power ready to incarnate itself again through the
facility of expression of the artists yet to come. To the young men
whose steps were turned toward Rome in these early years of the century
just passed, how great was the privilege of coming into close range of
the influence of such artists as these; to study their methods; to hear
the expression of their views on art in familiar meeting and
conversation! These artists were closely in touch with that "lovely and
faithful dream which came with Italian Renaissance in the works of
Pisani, Mino di Fiesole, Donatello, Michael Angelo, and Giovanni da
Bologna--all who caught the spirit of Greek art." Artistic truth was the
keynote of the hour, and it is this truth which is the basis of the
highest conception of life.
"Art's a service,--mark:
A silver key is given to thy clasp
And thou shalt stand unwearied night and day,
And fix it in the hard, slow-turning wards
To open, so that intermediate door
Betwixt the different planes of sensuous form
And form insensuous, that inferior men
May learn to feel on still through these to those,
And bless thy ministration. The world waits for help."
In their true relation art and ethics meet in their ministry to
humanity, for only in their union can they best serve man. All the
nobler culture has its responsibility in service. "Many a man has a
blind notion of stewardship about his property, but very few have it
about their knowledge," said Bishop Phillips Brooks, and he added: "One
grows tired of seeing cultivated people with all their culture cursed by
selfishness." To the true idealist--as distinct from the mere
emotionalist with æsthetic tastes--selfishness is an impossible prison.
The only spiritual freedom lies in the perpetual sharing of the fuller
life. The gift shared is the gift doubled. Art is the spiritual glory of
life; the supreme manifestation, the very influence of spiritual
achievement. Mr. Stillman, discussing the revival of art, has
questioned: "Does the world want art any longer? Has it, in the present
state of human progress, any place which will justify devotion to it?"
He questions as to whether man is still
"Apparelled in celestial light,"
or whether he has lost "the glory and the freshness" of his dreams.
"No one can admit," continues Mr. Stillman, "that the human
intellect is weaker than it was five or twenty centuries ago; but
it is certain that if we take the pains to study what was done five
centuries ago in painting, or twenty centuries ago in sculpture,
and compare it with the best work of to-day, we shall find the
latter trivial and 'prentice work compared with the ordinary work
of men whose names are lost in the lustre of a school.
"Then, little men inspired by the Zeitgeist, painted greatly; now,
our great men fail to reach the technical achievement of the little
men of them. There is only one living painter who can treat a
portrait as a Venetian artist of 1550 A.D. would have done it, and
how differently in the mastery of his material! If we go to the
work of wider range, the Campo Santo of Pisa, the Stanze, the
Sistine Chapel, the distance becomes an abyss; the simplest
fragment of a Greek statue of 450 B.C. shows us that the best
sculpture of this century, even the French, is only a happy
child-work, not even to be put in sight of Donatello or Michael
Angelo. The reason is simple, and already indicated. The early men
grew up in a system in which the power of expression was taught
from childhood; they acquired method as the musician does now, and
the tendency of the opinion of their time was to keep them in the
good method."
Is this not too narrow and sweeping a judgment? The art of portraiture
certainly did not die with the Venetian painters of 1550, however great
their work; and if there be but "one living painter" who can treat
portrait art like the early Venetians, there are scores of artists who
achieve signal success by other methods of treatment.
At all events, these three men, Canova, Thorwaldsen, and Gibson, worked
with the conviction that art is service. With Victor Hugo, Canova could
have said: "Genius is not made for genius; it is made for men.... Let
him have wings for the infinite provided he has feet for the earth, and
that, after having been seen flying, he is seen walking. After he has
been seen an archangel, let him be still more a brother.... To be the
servant of God in the march of progress--such is the law which regulates
the growth of genius."
They worked and taught by this creed. Thorwaldsen, on first arriving in
Rome, wandered for three years, it is said, among the statues of gods
and heroes, like a man in a dream. The atmosphere of the earlier day
when Titian was employed by the king of Portugal and Raphael by the Pope
to create works of great public importance still lingered and exerted
over Thorwaldsen, and over all artists susceptible to its subtle
influence, a peculiar spell. Its power was revealed in his subsequent
works--the "Christ;" the sculptured groups for tombs in St. Peter's and
in other churches; the poetic reliefs symbolizing "Day" and "Night;"
"Ganymede Watering the Eagle;" the "Three Graces," "Hebe," and many
others.
Among Canova's works his immortal masterpiece is the monumental memorial
group for the tomb of Pope Clement XIII in St. Peter's. The Pope is
represented as kneeling in prayer. The modelling of the entire figure is
instinct with expression. The fine and beautiful hands express reverence
and trust. The countenance is pervaded with that peace only known to the
soul that is in complete harmony with the divine power. The Holy Father
has taken the tiara from his head and it lies before him on the
cushion on which he kneels. Although the entire portrayal of the figure
reveals that devotion expressed in the solemn and searching words of the
church service, "And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord,
ourselves, our souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy, and living
sacrifice unto thee,"--although it is the very utmost rendering of the
soul to God, it is yet the deliberate, the joyful, the living acceptance
of divine love and no mere trance of ecstasy. No more wonderful figure
in all the range of sculpture has been created than the Clement XIII of
Canova.
[Illustration: "THE GENIUS OF DEATH,"
DETAIL FROM TOMB OF CLEMENT XIII,
ST. PETER'S, ROME
Antonio Canova
_Page 43_]
The group is completed by two symbolic figures representing Religion and
Death. The former is personified as a female figure holding a cross; the
latter sits with his torch reversed. Grief, but not hopeless and
despairing sorrow, is portrayed; it is the grief companioned by faith
which ever sees
"The stars shine through the cypress trees."
The base of the monument represents a chapel guarded by lions.
Pistolesi, the great Italian authority on the sculpture of St. Peter's
and the Vatican galleries, notes that the lions typify the firmness and
the force and the courage, "_la fortezza dell'anima_," that so signally
characterized Clement XIII. There is probably no sacred monument in the
realm of all modern art which can equal this creation in its delicacy,
its lofty beauty, and the noble message that it conveys.
The oldest art school, the Accadémia di San Luca, founded in 1507 by
Sixtus, when he called to Rome all the leading artists of Europe to
assist in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, is an organization that
magically links the present with the days of Canova, Thorwaldsen, and
Gibson, as it linked them, also, with the remote and historic past. The
father of the present custodian of the Academy knew Thorwaldsen well.
The grandfather of the gifted Italian sculptor, Tadolini (who has
recently completed the tomb for Pope Leo XIII, placed in the Basilica of
San Giovanni Laterano), modelled the bust of Thorwaldsen, and in one
gallery hangs the great Danish sculptor's portrait, painted by himself.
The first director of San Luca was Federigo Zuccaro. In the early years
of the nineteenth century this Academy was a vital centre of art life,
and it is still a school that draws students, although the visitor who
does not loiter and linger in his Rome may fail to know of this most
alluring place. The San Luca is in the Via Bonella, one of the old,
dark, narrow, and gloomy streets of the oldest part of Rome,--a short
street of hardly more than two blocks, running between the Via
Alessandra and the Forum. Hawthorne vividly pictures all this old Rome
when he speaks of the "narrow, crooked, intricate streets, so
uncomfortably paved with little squares of lava that to tread over them
is a penitential pilgrimage; so indescribably ugly, moreover; so cold,
so alley-like, into which the sun never falls and where a chill wind
forces its deadly breath into our lungs; the immense seven-storied,
yellow-washed hovels, or call them palaces, where all that is dreary in
domestic life seems magnified and multiplied; those staircases which
ascend from a ground floor of cook shops and cobblers' stalls, stables
and regiments of cavalry, to a middle region of princes, cardinals, and
ambassadors, and an upper tier of artists just beneath the unattainable
sky: ... in which the visitor becomes sick at heart of Italian
trickery, which has uprooted whatever faith in man's integrity had till
then endured;" the city "crushed down in spirit by the desolation of her
ruin and the hopelessness of her future;" one recalls these words when
passing through the unspeakable gloom and horror and desolation and
squalor of ancient Rome. In these surroundings one's cab stops at "No.
44," and ringing the bell the door is open, whether by super-normal
agency or by some invisible terrestrial manipulation one is unable to
determine; but in the semi-darkness of the narrow hall he discerns
before him a flight of steep stairs, and, as no other vista opens, he
reasons that, by the law of exclusion, this must be the appointed way.
Along the wall are seen, here and there, some antique casts from
Trajan's Column, and reliefs from Canova and Thorwaldsen. The galleries
above hold only a small and a comparatively unimportant collection of
pictures. There are marines from Vernet and Claude Lorraine; a "Venus
Crowned by the Graces" from Rubens; Giulio Romano's copy of Raphael's
"Galatea,"--the original of which (in the Villa Farnesina) represents
Galatea surrounded by Nymphs, Cupids, and Tritons, being carried in a
shell across the sea. There is a Cupid, and also the "Fortuna" of Guido
Reni,--the latter a figure of ineffable grace floating in the air. One
of Raphael's early works representing "St. Luke Painting the Madonna" is
here. There are several works by Titian, but these have less than would
be expected of the glory usually associated with his name; and a Vandyke
representing the Virgin and Child, with two angels playing, the one on a
lute, the other on the violin.
[Illustration: "LA FORTUNA," ACCADÉMIA DI SAN LUCA, ROME
Guido Reni
_Page 47_]
One salon filled with portraits of artists is especially interesting,
and that of Thorwaldsen is so feminine in its costume and the parting of
the hair, that it is almost inevitably mistaken for that of a woman.
Guido's graceful "Fortuna" is represented as a female figure flying
through the air, her long hair streaming in the wind, and the picture
recalls to one the Greek legend of Opportunity, as told by Kainos. The
legend runs:--
"'Of what town is thy sculptor?'
"'Of Lukzon.'
"'What is his name?'
"'Lysippos.'
"'And thine?'
"'Opportunity, controller of all things.'
"'But why standest thou on tiptoe?'
"'I am always running.'
"'Why, then, hast thou wings on both feet?'
"'I fly like the wind.'
"'But wherefore bearest thou a razor in thy right hand?'
"'As a sign to men that I am sharper than any steel.'
"'And why wearest thou thy hair long in front?'
"'That I may be seized by him who approaches me.'
"'By Zeus! And thou art bald behind?'
"'Because once I have passed with my winged feet no one may seize
me then.'"
From one landing, on the steep narrow staircase of San Luca, opens the
Biblioteca Sarti, an art library of some fifteen thousand volumes. The
sculpture gallery is now closed and can only be entered by special
permission. This is the more to be regretted as it contains the
principal collections in Rome of the original casts of the works of
Thorwaldsen and Canova.
The latter-day artists who have been setting up their Lares and Penates
in Rome at various periods during the early and into the later years of
the nineteenth century have found the Eternal City in strong contrast
with its twentieth-century aspects, however it may have differed from
the Rome of the Popes. The earlier American artists to seek the
Seven-hilled City were painters; and Allston, Copley, and Stuart had
already distinguished themselves in pictorial art before America had
produced any sculptor who could read his title clear to fame. It is to
Hiram Powers (born in Vermont in 1805) that America must look as her
first sculptor, chronologically considered, closely followed by Thomas
Crawford, who was but eight years his junior, and by Horatio Greenough,
who was also born in the same year as Powers, and who preceded him in
Italy, but whose work has less artistic value. Mr. Greenough has left a
colossal (if not an artistic) monument to his gifts in stately shaft
marking Bunker Hill which he designed. Problematic in their claim to
artistic excellence as are his "Washington"--a seated figure in the
grounds of the Capitol in Washington--and his group in relief called
"The Rescue" in the portico of the Capitol, his name lives by his
personality as a man of liberal culture and noble character, if not by
his actual rank in art. First of the American group in Italy, he was
followed by Powers, who sought the ineffable beauty and enchantment of
Florence in 1837. Horatio Greenough died in comparatively early life,
leaving perhaps the most interesting of his works in a relief (purchased
by Professor George Ticknor, the distinguished historian of Spain)
"representing in touching beauty and expression a sculptor in an
attitude of dejection and discouragement before his work, while a hand
from above pours oil into his dying lamp, an allegory illustrative of
the struggles of genius and the relief which timely patronage may extend
to it."
Mr. Powers passed his entire life in Florence. His work attracted great
attention and inspired ardent appreciation. In portrait busts Powers was
especially successful; and his "Greek Slave," his "Fisher Boy," "Il
Penseroso," and "Proserpine" impressed the art-loving public of the time
as marked by strong artistic power and as entitled to permanent rank in
sculpture.
Mr. Crawford died young; but his name lives in the majestic bronze
statue of "Beethoven" which is in the beautiful white and gold interior
of Symphony Hall, in Boston; and his "Orpheus" and some other works
claim high appreciation. Writing of Crawford, Mr. Hillard said:--
"Crawford's career was distinguished by energy, resolution, and
self-reliance. While yet a youth, he formed the determination to
make himself an artist; and with this view went to Rome--alone,
unfriended, and unknown--and there began a life of toil and
renunciation; resisting the approaches alike of indolence and
despondency. His strength of character and force of will would have
earned distinction for powers inferior to his. Nothing was given to
self-indulgence; nothing to vague dreams; nothing to unmanly
despair. He did not wait for the work that he would have, but
labored cheerfully upon that which he could have. Success came
gradually, but surely; and his powers as surely proved themselves
to be more than equal to the demand made upon them."
On the death of Mr. Crawford, Thomas William Parsons wrote a memorial
poem in which this stanza occurs:--
"O Rome! what memories awake,
When Crawford's name is said,
Of days and friends for whose dear sake
That path of Hades unto me
Will have no more of dread
Than his own Orpheus felt, seeking Eurydice!
O Crawford! husband, father, brother
Are in that name, that little word!
Let me no more my sorrow smother;
Grief stirs me, and I must be stirred."
Thomas Ball, who went in early manhood to Florence, where he remained
until when nearly at the age of fourscore he returned to his native
land, still continues, at the age of eighty-five, to pursue the art he
loves. He has created works, as his equestrian statue of "Washington" in
the Public Gardens and his "Lincoln Freeing the Slave" in Park Square,
both in Boston; his great Washington Memorial group in Methuen,
Massachusetts; his "Christ Blessing Little Children," and many other
historic and ideal sculptures, that seem endowed with his beautiful and
winning spirit as well as with his rare gifts. Larkin G. Mead chose
Florence rather than Rome for his home and work. His noble "River God,"
placed at the head of the Mississippi near St. Paul, as well as other
interesting creations, link his name with that of his native land.
Randolph Rogers, a man of genius; Rinehart, Paul Akers, and Thompson all
died before the full maturity of their powers; Akers at the early age of
thirty-six, leaving, as his bride of a year, the poet, Elizabeth Akers
Allen, who, under the _nom de plume_ of "Florence Percy," has endeared
herself to all lovers of lyric art. In a monograph on Paul Akers,
written after his death, the writer says of his studio in Rome:--
"Linked with this studio is Hawthorne's tale of 'The Marble Faun,'
as Kenyon's studio was none other than Paul Akers's. Though
Hawthorne in his romance saw fit to lay the scene in the rooms once
occupied by Canova, it was in the Via del Crecie that he wove the
thread of his Italian romance.
"Paul Akers's growing reputation and increase of work ere long made
it necessary for him to seek a more commodious studio, and he took
rooms once occupied by the famous Canova. Here he had made under
his supervision copies in marble of many of the famous works of the
Vatican and the Capitol. The largest collection of these was a
commission from Mr. Edward King of Newport, and among them were
busts of Ariadne, Demosthenes, and Cicero, and a facsimile of the
'Dying Gladiator' which Mr. King presented to the Redwood Library
of Newport.
* * * * *
"During his first winter in Rome he was permitted by the
authorities to make a cast of a mutilated bust of Cicero which had
long lain in the Vatican. A critic writing from Rome in 1857 says
of this bust of Cicero: 'Mr. Akers obtained permission to take a
cast from it; he then restored the eye, brow, and ears, and
modelled a neck and bust for it in accordance with the temperament
shown by the nervous and rather thin face. He has succeeded
admirably. It is the very head of the Vatican, yet without the
scars of envious time, and sits gracefully on human shoulders,
instead of being rolled awkwardly back upon a shelf.' This bust is
unlike the portrait which so long passed for Cicero's, but has been
identified by means of a medal which was struck by the Magnesians
in honor of the great orator during his consulate, and is now the
authorized portrait of Cicero. The finest of Paul Akers's creations
executed during his stay in Rome are 'St. Elizabeth of Hungary,'
which represents the princess at the moment the roses have fallen
to the ground; 'Una and the Lion,' an illustration of the line in
Spenser's 'Faerie Queene,'--
'Still while she slept he kept both watch and ward;'
the head of Milton and the 'Pearl Diver.' The 'Pearl Diver,' now
owned by the city of Portland, represents a youth stretched upon a
sea-worn rock and wrapped in eternal sleep. The arms are thrown
above the head, and about the waist is a net containing
pearl-bearing shells for which he has risked his life. There is no
trace of suffering; all is subdued to beauty. It is death
represented as the ancients conceived it, the act of the
torch-reverting god. This youth, who has lost his life at the
moment when all that for which he had dared was within his grasp,
suggests Paul Akers's own untimely death on the eve of his
triumph."
It was from his Roman studio that Mr. Akers wrote to a friend:--
"Yesterday Browning called. He looked a long time at my Milton, and
said it was Milton, the man-angel. He praised the wealth of hair
which I had given the head, and then said that Mrs. Browning had a
lock of Milton's hair, the only one now in existence. This was
given her by Leigh Hunt, just before his death, who had the records
proving it to be genuine. The hair was, he said, like mine. He
invited me to visit him in Florence, where he would show me the
first edition of Milton's poems, marked to indicate the peculiar
accent which the poet sometimes adopted, a knowledge of which makes
clear somewhat that otherwise seems discordant. Milton was so great
a musician that there could have been no fault in sound in his
compositions. He looked over my books; said my edition of Shelley
was one which he had corrected for the press, not from a knowledge
of the original MS., but from his internal evidence that so it must
have been; said Poe was a wonderful man; spoke of Tennyson in the
warmest terms. Took up a copy of his own poems published in the
United States, and remarked that it was better than the English
edition, yet had some awful blunders, and wished me to allow him to
correct a copy for me. My head of the 'Drowned Girl' caught his eye
and interested him. I told him that I had thought of Hood's 'Bridge
of Sighs.' He then said that Hood wrote that on his deathbed, and
read it to him before any one else had seen it. Hood was doubtful
whether it was worth publishing. To-morrow Mrs. Browning is to
come; she has been quite ill since she came to Rome, and I have
seen her but once. I derive much comfort from the friendship of
Charlotte Cushman. She has just gone from here. She has frequent
breakfast parties; I have attended but one. Mr. and Mrs. James T.
Fields, Wild, the painter, and myself were the guests. Fields I
like much."
The first works of Mr. Akers were two portrait busts, of Longfellow and
of Samuel Appleton. Of his bust of Milton, Hawthorne in the "Marble
Faun" has said:--
"In another style, there was the grand, calm head of Milton, not
copied from any one bust or picture, yet more authentic than any
of them, because all known representations of the poet had been
profoundly studied and solved in the artist's mind. The bust over
the tomb in Greyfriar's Church, the original miniatures and
pictures wherever to be found, had mingled each its special truth
in this one work--wherein likewise by long perusal and deep love of
'Paradise Lost,' the 'Comus,' the 'Lycidas,' and 'L'Allegro,' the
sculptor had succeeded even better than he knew in spiritualizing
his marble with the poet's mighty genius. And this was a great
thing to have achieved, such a length of time after the dry bones
and dust of Milton were like those of any other dead man."
Richard Greenough and the painter, Mr. Haseltine, were prominent figures
among the early American group of the nineteenth-century artists in
Rome. There came Emma Stebbins, who modelled a fine portrait bust of
Charlotte Cushman; and Anne Whitney, whose statues of Samuel Adams and
of Leif Ericson adorn public grounds in Boston; whose life-size statue
of Harriet Martineau is the possession of Wellesley College; and whose
"Chaldean Astronomer," "Lotus-Eater," and "Roma"--a figure personifying
the Rome of Pio Nono--reveal her power in ideal creation.
The name of Harriet Hosmer stands out in brilliant pre-eminence among
those of all women who have followed the plastic art. Her infinite charm
of personality seems to impart itself to her work, and she has the gift
to make friends as well as to call forms out of clay--the success of
friendship being one even more permanently satisfying. In her early life
as a girl hardly more than twenty, she sought Rome, living with art as
her chaperon. Her versatility, her picturesque individuality, and her
imaginative power all combined to win sympathetic recognition. Gibson,
whose guidance was particularly well adapted to develop her gifts,
received her into his own studio and took a deep interest in her work.
It was during the period of her early efforts that Hawthorne was in
Rome, and she is graphically depicted in his notebooks in her boyish cap
at work in the clay. Gibson was an artist, _con amore_, and Miss
Hosmer's joyous abandon to her art captivated his sympathy. "In my art
what do I find?" he questioned; "happiness; love which does not depress
me; difficulties which I do not fear; resolution which never abates;
flights which carry me above the ground; ambition which tramples no one
down." Master and pupil were akin in their unwearied devotion to art. Of
Gibson, whose absence of mind regarding all the details of life made him
almost helpless in travel and affairs, Miss Hosmer used gleefully to say
that he "was a god in his studio, but God help him out of it!" This
glancing sprite of a girl, frightening her friends by her daring and
venturous horseback riding; gravitating by instinct to offer some
generous, tender aid to the sick, the destitute, or the helpless; the
life and light of gay dinners and of social evenings; working from six
in the morning till night in her studio, "with an absence of
pretension," says Mrs. Browning, "and simplicity of manners which accord
rather with the childish dimples in her rosy cheeks than with her broad
forehead and high aims," had the magic gift that merged her visitors and
patrons into enthusiastic friends; and Mrs. Browning has chronicled the
pretty scene when Lady Marion Alford, the daughter of the Earl of
Northumberland, knelt before the girl artist and slipped on her finger
a ring--a precious ruby set with diamonds--as a token of her devotion.
Reading Miss Hosmer's life still further backward, the reader is
transported, as if on some magic carpet, to St. Louis, in the United
States, where a noble and lofty man, Hon. Wayman Crow,--a generous
friend, a liberal patron of the arts, a man of the most refined tastes
and culture, whose great qualities were always used in high
service,--first aided Miss Hosmer to the preliminary studies in her art,
and whose accomplished and lovely daughters (now Mrs. Lucien Carr of
Boston, Mrs. Edwin Cushman of Newport and Rome, and Mrs. Emmons of
Leamington, England) were as a trio of sisters to the young artist. And
"the flowing conditions of life" bear on this lifelong friendship until
a fair young girl, Élise (the daughter of Mrs. Emmons), catches up this
sweet tie and as an accomplished and lovely young woman in Roman
society, when these "flowing conditions" had come down even into the
season of 1906-7, Miss Emmons cherished the fame of Harriet Hosmer and
enjoyed the privilege of a constant correspondence with the
distinguished artist. So the past links itself again with the present;
and who can tell where any story in life begins or ends in the constant
evolutionary progress?
Miss Hosmer's work attracted wide attention. Her majestic statue of
"Zenobia;" the winsome "Puck;" the impressive statue of "Beatrice
Cenci," representing her as she lay in her cell in Castel San Angelo the
night before her execution,--these and other works of hers are of an
interesting character and will hold their permanent rank in sculpture.
Were all the muses present at the christening of William Wetmore
Story--sculptor, musician, poet and painter, jurist and man of letters,
and the friend whose social relationships made life a thing of beauty--
"To winds and waterfalls,
And autumn's sunlit festivals,
To music and to music's thoughts
Inextricably bound"?
Mr. Story made his first visit to Italy in 1847; not at that time with
any fixed purpose of exchanging his profession of the law for art. He
loved literature, and his grace and ease in expression had already
manifested his literary talent; he had an inclination toward
modelling--it could hardly, at this time, have been called by a stronger
name--and curiously enough with him the usual conditions were reversed
and he received a commission for a statue of his father, Judge Story,
before he had made any definite turning toward the art of sculpture. A
young man of versatile gifts and accomplished scholarship, sculpture was
to him one among the many attractive forms of art rather than the
supreme attraction; and it was the stimulus of the given work that
determined him as a sculptor, rather than his determination to be a
sculptor that determined the work. Among the goddesses of life Destiny
must, perhaps, be allowed a place. At all events, after Mr. Story's
initial glance at Italy, he sought Rome again a year later, and this
time it was his choice for life, however unrevealed to his eye were the
resplendent years that lay before him. He had fallen under the spell of
the Magic Land. In a letter to Lowell, Mr. Story had questioned how he
should ever endure again "the restraint and bondage of Boston." It was
the picturesque Rome of the Popes that he first knew. The years of
1848-49 were those of revolutionary activities in Italy. Pio Nono, one
of the most saintly and beloved of the Popes,--whose mortal form now
rests in that richly decorated chapel in old San Lorenzo, _fuori le
mura_, on the site of the church that Constantine founded on the burial
place of St. Lawrence,--made his flight to Gaeta and the Roman republic
was established. It was a dramatic scene when Pio Nono returned (April
12, 1850), entering Rome by the Porta San Giovanni. The scene from this
gate was then, as now, one of the most impressive in the Eternal City.
It was in this vast Basilica of San Giovanni Laterano that Pio Nono
entered that April day, leaving his carriage and walking alone to the
altar, where he knelt in devotion. A splendid procession awaited without
to accompany the Holy Father to the Papal Palace. The superb state
carriages conveyed princes and foreign ambassadors and great nobles.
From the Piazza San Giovanni to St. Peter's every house was illuminated,
and the populace cheered and waved until the very air vibrated with
sound and color. These were the days when the methods of government were
a visible spectacle, a drama, making the life in Rome a daily
illuminated missal.
The Storys, on their return to Italy, located themselves for a time in
Florence, where they met the Brownings, and that lifelong friendship
between the poet and the sculptor was initiated. In these happy
Florentine days Mr. Story worked in his studio while his wife read to
him the life of Keats, then just issued, written by Monckton Milnes,
later Lord Houghton. But the "flowing conditions" soon bore them onward
to Rome, where they settled themselves in the Via Porta Pinciana, and
met the Crawfords, who were domiciled in the Villa Negroni. In these
Roman days, too, appeared Mr. Cropsey, of poetic landscape fame, and
here, too, was Margaret Fuller. Mazzini was then a leading figure in the
Chamber of Deputies,--"the prophet not only of modern Italy, but of the
modern world." He found Italy "utilitarian and materialistic, permeated
by French ideas, and weakened by her reliance on French initiative. He
was filled with hope that Italy might not only achieve her own unity,
but might once more accomplish, as she had in the Rome of the Cæsars and
the Rome of the Church, the unity of the Western world. 'On my side I
believe,' he says, 'that the great problem of the day was a religious
problem, to which all other questions were but secondary.'" He was
asserting that "we cannot relate ourselves to the Divine, but through
collective humanity. It is not by isolated duty (which indeed the
conditions of modern life render more and more impossible), nor by
contemplation of mere Power as displayed in the material world, that we
can develop our nature. It is rather by mingling with the universal
life, and by carrying on the evolution of the never-ending work."
The studios of Mr. Crawford in those days were in the Piazza delle
Terme, near the Baths of Diocletian. William Page, the painter, was
domiciled on the slope of the Quirinal where he painted a portrait of
Charlotte Cushman which Mrs. Browning described as "a miracle"; one of
Mrs. Crawford; the head of Mrs. Story, which he insisted upon presenting
to her husband; and a magnificent portrait of Browning which the artist
presented to Mrs. Browning. "Both of us," wrote Robert Browning of this
gift, "would have fain escaped being the subjects of such princely
generosity; but there was no withstanding his delicacy and
noble-mindedness." Mrs. Jameson was much in Rome in the early years of
the 1850-60 decade, living in the old port by the Tiber nearly opposite
to the new and splendid building of the law courts. Near the Tarpeian
Rock Frederika Bremer had perched, in a tiny room of which she took all
the frugal care, even to washing the blue cups and plates when she
invited the Hawthornes to a tea of a simplicity that suggested, indeed,
the utmost degree of "light" housekeeping. Thomas Buchanan Read was one
of the hosts and guests of this social group, and it was at a dinner he
gave that Hawthorne met Gibson, whose conversational talents were
evidently (upon that occasion) chiefly employed in contemning the
pre-Raphaelite school of painters and emphasizing the need of sculptors
to discover and to follow the principles of the Greeks,--"a fair
doctrine, but one which Mr. Gibson fails to practise," observes
Hawthorne. The Brownings were variously bestowed in Rome through
succeeding winters,--in the Bocca di Leone, in the Via del Tritone and
elsewhere. Mrs. Browning, as her "Casa Guida Windows" and many other
poems attest, took always the deepest interest in Italian politics.
American and English friends come and go, but the little group of
residents and the more permanent sojourners, as the Hawthornes and the
Brownings, continue their daily variations on life in the social dinners
and teas, the excursions and the sight-seeing of the wonderful city.
Only the magician could "call up the vanished past again" and summon
into an undeniable materialization those charming figures to come forth
out of the shadowy air of the rich, historic past, and stand before us
in the full light of contemporary attention. Not alone this group of
choice persons, but the environment of their time, the very atmosphere,
are demanded of this necromancy. The figure of Adelaide Kemble (Mrs.
Sartoris) is one of these, and the tradition still survives of a concert
given in the splendid, spacious hall of the Palazzo Colonna where she
was the prima donna of the occasion. There were also musicals at the
house of Mrs. Sartoris, where the guests met her famous sister, Fanny
Kemble. Mrs. Browning was fond of both the sisters, and said of them
that their social brilliancy was their least distinction. She found
them both "noble and sympathetic," and her "dear Mr. Page" and "Hatty"
(Miss Hosmer) "an immense favorite with us both," she said of her
husband and herself; these and the Storys made up the special circle for
the Brownings in Rome. "The Sartoris house has the best society in
Rome," writes Mrs. Browning to Miss Mitford, "and exquisite music, of
course. We met Lockhart there and my husband sees a good deal of him....
A little society," she says, "is good for soul and body, and on the
Continent it is easy to get a handful of society without paying too dear
for it. This is an advantage of Continental life."
Mrs. Browning greatly admired the work of Mr. Page, whose portraits she
found "like Titian's." But the tinted statues of Gibson seemed to her
inartistic. His famous painted Venus she called "pretty," but only as a
wax doll might be, not as a work of genuine art. Then Thackeray and his
two daughters came; Miss Anne (now known to the world of literature as
Anne Thackeray Ritchie) was a special favorite with Mrs. Browning.
Coming to Rome at one time from Florence in midwinter, the Brownings
found that the Storys had taken an apartment for them (in the Via Bocca
di Leone), and they arrived to find lighted fires and lamps. Their
journey had included a week's visit at Assisi, studying the rich art of
Cimabue and Giotto in the church of the great Franciscan monastery. Mrs.
Browning visited studios in Rome and found that of Mr. Crawford more
interesting to her than Mr. Gibson's, but no artist is "as near" to her,
as she herself says, as Mr. Page. The Storys left the Porta Pinciana to
live at No. 93 in the Piazza di Spagna, and in the same house with the
Brownings, in the Bocca di Leone, Mr. Page had his apartment. To Lowell,
Mr. Story wrote of the Brownings:--
"The Brownings and we became great friends in Florence, and, of
course, we could not become friends without liking each other. He,
Emelyn says, is like you. He is of my size, but slighter, with
straight black hair, small eyes, a smooth face, and manner nervous
and rapid. He has great vivacity, but not the least humor; some
sarcasm, considerable critical faculty, and very great frankness
and friendliness of manner and mind. Mrs. Browning will sit buried
up in a large easy-chair listening and talking very quietly and
pleasantly. Very unaffected is she.... I have hundreds of statues
in my head, but they are in the future tense. Powers I knew very
well in Florence. He is a man of great mechanical talent and
natural strength of perception, but with no poetry in his
composition, and I think no creative power.... I have been to hear
Allegri's 'Miserere' in the Sistine Chapel, with the awful and
mighty figures of Michael Angelo looking down from the ceiling; to
hear Guglielmi's 'Miserere' in St. Peter's, while the gloom of
evening was gathering in the lofty aisles and shrouding the
frescoed domes, was a deeply affecting and solemnly beautiful
experience. Never can one forget the plaintive wailing of the
voices that seemed to implore pity and pardon."
It was in 1856 that the Storys located themselves in Palazzo Barberini,
which Bernini designed and which was built "out of the quarry of the
Coliseum" by Urban VIII. It is one of the wonderful old palaces of
Rome,--this mass of Barberini courts, gardens, terraces, and vast
apartments, with the interminable winding stairs, where on one landing
Thorwaldsen's lion lies before the great doors decorated with the arms
of Popes and princes. Here the old Cardinal Barberini lived his stormy
life; here are the gallery and the library,--the latter stored with
infinite treasures of ancient documents, old maps whose portrayal of the
earth bears little resemblance to the present, and famous manuscripts
and volumes in old vellum, some fifty thousand in all. In the Barberini
gallery are a few noted works,--Raphael's "Fornarina," Guido's "Beatrice
Cenci," a "Holy Family" by Andrea del Sarto, and others.
[Illustration: SPANISH STEPS, PIAZZA TRINITÀ DEI MONTI, ROME
_Page 72_]
The Via delle Quattro Fontane, on which the Palazzo Barberini stands,
might well be known as the street of the wonderful vista. One strolls
down it to the Via Sistina and to Piazza Trinità de' Monti at the head
of the Spanish steps (the Scala di Spagna), pausing for the loveliness
of the view. Across the city rises the opposite height of Monte Mario,
and to the left the Janiculum, now crowned with the magnificent
equestrian statue of Garibaldi, which is in evidence from almost every
part of Rome. As far as the eye can see the Campagna stretches away,
infinite as the sea--a very Campagna Mystica. The luminous air, the
faint, misty blue of the distance, the deep purple shadows on the hills,
make up a landscape of color. At the foot of the Spanish steps the
flower venders spread out their wares,--great bunches of the
flame-colored roses peculiar to Italy, the fragrant white hyacinths,
golden jonquils, baskets of violets, and masses of lilies of the valley.
On many a night of brilliant moonlit glory the artistic sojourners in
Rome lingered on the parapet of the Pincian Hill watching the moonlight
flood the Eternal City until churches and palaces seemed to swim in a
sea of silver. Or in the morning, when the rose-red of dawn was aglow,
there seemed to hover over the city that wraith of mist whose secret
Claude Lorraine surprises in his landscapes. These dawn visions of
mysterious, incredible beauty are a part of the very identity of Rome.
There were mornings when the Hawthornes with Mrs. Jameson or some other
friend would drive out to the old San Lorenzo (_fuori le mura_), the
church founded by Constantine in 330 on the site where the body of St.
Lawrence was buried. At various periods the church was enlarged and
finally, as recently as in 1864, Pio Nono had great improvements made
under the architect Vespignani. In the piazza in front was placed an
immense column of red granite, some sixty feet high, with the statue of
St. Lawrence, a standing figure, at the top. It is most impressive. The
colonnade at the entrance of the church is decorated with frescoes and
contains two immense sarcophagi, whose sides are beautifully sculptured
with reliefs. The roof is supported by six Ionic columns. Entering the
church one finds an interior of three aisles divided by colossal columns
of Oriental granite. In the middle aisle, on both sides the galleries,
are fresco paintings illustrating the martyrdom of St. Lawrence and of
St. Stephen, one series on the right and the other on the left. One of
these paintings, especially, of the life of St. Lawrence, is strangely
haunting to the imagination. It represents the youthful, slender figure,
nude, save for slight drapery, laid on the gridiron while the fire is
being kindled under it and the fagots shovelled in. The physical
shrinking of the flesh--of every nerve--from the torture, the spiritual
strength and invincible energy of the countenance, are wonderfully
depicted. The great aisle was painted by order of Pius IX by Cesare
Fracassini; in it are two pulpits of marble. A double staircase of
marble conducts to that part of the Basilica of Constantine which by
Honorius III was converted into the presbytery. It is decorated at the
upper end by twelve columns of violet marble which rise from the level
of the primitive basilica beneath. At the end is the ancient pontifical
seat, adorned with mosaic and precious marbles. The papal altar is under
a canopy in the Byzantine style. The pavement of this presbytery is
worthy of particular attention. Descending to the confessional which is
under the high altar the tomb of the martyred saints, Lawrence, Stephen,
and Justin, is found.
[Illustration: TOMB OF PIO NONO, SAN LORENZO (FUORI LE MURA), ROME
_Page 75_]
It was the request of Pio Nono that his mortal body should rest here,
where it is placed in a simple tomb, according to his own instructions;
but the chapel is very rich in decoration which was paid for by money
sent from all parts of the world.
The chapel walls are entirely encrusted in mother-of-pearl, gilt bronze,
and beautiful marbles. The mosaic paintings are formed of gold and
precious stones of fabulous value. This interior is perhaps the richest
in the world in its decoration. San Lorenzo is a patriarchal church, and
one of the seven pilgrimage churches of Rome. Near San Lorenzo is the
Campo Verano, a cemetery containing many beautiful memorial sculptures.
In those days, half a century ago, the entrance most often used by
visitors to Rome was through the Via Flaminia and the Porta del Popolo,
opening on the Piazza del Popolo, rather the most picturesque and
impressive place in all Rome. On the left is the Pincian Hill (Monte
Pincio), with its rich terraces, balustrades, its beautiful porticos
filled with statuary, its groves of cypress and ilex trees; a classic
vision rising on the sight and enchanting the imagination. On the side
opposite the Porta three roads diverge in fan shape--the Via Babuino,
the Corso, and the Ripetta, with the "twin churches" side by side; one
between the Babuino and the Corso, the other between the Corso and the
Ripetta.
The Corso (which was the ancient Flaminian Way) runs straight to the
Piazza Venezia at the foot of the Capitoline Hill. This Piazza del
Popolo was widened and decorated by Pius VII. It is formed by two
semicircles, adorned with fountains and statues, and terminated by four
symmetrical edifices. In the semicircles are colossal groups in marble,
and a road opposite the Pincio leads to the Ponte Margherita and the
Prati di Castello.
The obelisk in the centre of the piazza was brought to Rome from
Heliopolis by Cæsar Augustus and originally stood in the Circus Maximus.
It was erected here by Pope Sixtus V, and it is nearly a hundred feet in
height. It is formed of red granite, and while it has been broken in
three places, the hieroglyphics are still legible. This obelisk was
first erected in Egypt as a part of the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis,
in a period preceding that of Rameses II. After the battle of Actium,
Augustus transported it to Rome, and it was first placed in the Circus
Maximus, but during the reign of Valentinian it fell from its pedestal
and lay buried in the earth, until in the sixteenth century Pope Sixtus
V had it placed in the centre of the Piazza del Popolo, and consecrated
it to the cross. The two inscriptions are on opposite sides. One thus
reads:--
"The Emperor Cæsar, son of the divine Cæsar Augustus, Sovereign
Pontiff, twelve times Emperor, eleven times Consul, fourteen times
Tribune, having conquered Egypt, consecrated this gift to the Sun."
The other inscription is as follows:--
"Sixtus V, Sovereign Pontiff, excavated, transported, and restored
this obelisk, sacrilegiously consecrated to the Sun by the great
Augustus, in the great Circus, where it lay in ruins, and dedicated
it to the cross triumphant in the fourth year of his pontificate."
The Church of Santa Maria del Popolo is built into the very wall of
Monte Pincio on the site of Nero's tomb. It dates back to 1099, and
consists of three naves and several chapels. In the first chapel is a
"Nativity" by Pinturicchio, who also painted the lunettes. Another
chapel belongs to the Cibo family, and is rich in marbles and adorned
with sixteen columns of Sicilian jasper. The "Conception" is by Maratta,
the "Martyrdom of St. Lawrence" by Morandi, and the "St. Catherine" by
Volterra. The "Visitation" was sculptured by Bernini in 1679. The third
chapel is painted by Pinturicchio (1513), and the fourth has an
interesting bas-relief of the fifteenth century. The picture of the
Virgin, on the high altar, is one of those attributed to St. Luke; the
paintings on the vault of the choir are by Pinturicchio. The two marble
monuments are, from their perfection of design and execution, reckoned
among the best modern works. They are by Cantucci da S. Savino. In the
chapel following is an "Assumption" by Annibale Carracci; the side
pictures are by Caravaggio. The last chapel but one in the small nave is
the Chigi chapel, and is one of the most celebrated in Rome.
Raphael gave the designs for the dome, the paintings of the frieze, and
the altar picture. This latter was begun by Del Piombo and finished by
Salviati. The statue of Daniel is by Bernini. The front of the altar and
the statues of Jonah and Elijah were done by Lorenzetto (1541), from
designs by Raphael. Outside this chapel is the monument of Princess
Odescalchi Chigi (1771), by Paolo Posi. The stained windows of the choir
belong to the fourteenth century, and in the sacristy and the vestibule
are monuments also of the fourteenth century and of the fifteenth.
Luther resided in the convent attached to this church when he was in
Rome.
There is a legend that a large walnut tree grew on the site of Nero's
tomb in whose branches innumerable crows had their home, and that they
devastated all that part of Rome. An appeal was made to the Virgin, who
declared that the crows were demons who kept watch over the ashes of
Nero, and ordered the tree to be cut down and burned, the ashes being
scattered to the air, and that, on the spot, a church should be built to
her honor. This was accomplished, and the crows no more troubled the
Eternal City.
The gardens of Lucullus were on the Monte Pincio. The view of the
terraced hillside from the Piazza del Popolo is one of the most
impressive in Rome.
The Hawthornes left Rome in 1859; and the death of Mrs. Browning in June
of 1861 left the little circle of the Roman winters irreparably broken.
"Returning to Rome," wrote Story to Charles Eliot Norton, "I have not
one single intimate ... no one with whom I can walk any of the higher
ranges of art and philosophy." Mr. Story had modelled the busts of both
Mr. and Mrs. Browning during their sojourns in Rome; in 1853 Harriet
Hosmer had made the cast of the "clasped hands" of the poets, the model
having since been cast in bronze; Mr. Page had, as already noted,
painted a portrait of Robert Browning; and Mr. Leighton (afterward Sir
Frederick) had made a beautiful portrait sketch of Mrs. Browning. In
later years all these memorials, with other paintings or plastic
sketches of the wedded poets, were grouped in Mr. Barrett Browning's
palace in Venice.
At this time Mr. Story had completed his "Cleopatra," which Hawthorne
had embalmed in literary mention in "The Marble Faun;" and beside his
"Judith," "Sappho," and other lesser works, he had achieved one of his
finest successes in the "Libyan Sibyl." Both the "Cleopatra" and the
"Sibyl" became famous. Whether they would produce so strong an effect at
the present stage of twentieth-century life is a problem, but one that
need not press for solution. Mr. Story was singularly fortunate in
certain conditions that grouped themselves about his life and combined
to establish his fame. These conditions, of course, were largely the
outer reflection of inner qualities, as our conditions are apt to be;
still, the "lack of favoring gales" not infrequently foredooms some
gallant bark to a disastrous course.
"Man is his own star....
* * * * *
Our acts, our angels, are, for good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still,"
it is true; yet has not Edith Thomas embodied something of that
overruling destiny that every thoughtful observer must discern in life
in these lines?--
"You may blame the wind or no,
But it ever hath been so--
Something bravest of its kind
Leads a frustrate life and blind,
For the lack of favoring gales
Blowing blithe on other sails."
Only occasionally have we
"... the time, and the place,
And the loved one all together."
Mr. Story's nature was eminently sympathetic with the other arts; he was
himself almost as much a literary man as he was a sculptor; he was the
friend and companion of literary men, and to the fact that art in the
middle years of the nineteenth century was far more a literary topic
than a matter of critical scrutiny, Mr. Story owed an incalculable
degree of his fame. He was an extremely interesting figure with his
social grace, his liberal culture, and his versatile gifts. His life was
centred in choice and refined associations. If not dowered with lofty
and immortal original genius, he had a singular combination of talent,
of fastidious taste, and of the intellectual appreciation that enabled
him to select interesting ideal subjects to portray in the plastic art.
These appealed to the special interest of his literary friends and were
widely discussed in the press and periodicals of the day. It is a
_bonmot_ of contemporary studio life that Hawthorne rather than Story
created the "Cleopatra," and one ingenious spirit suggests that as Mr.
Story put nothing of expression or significance into his statues, the
beholder could read into them anything he pleased; finding an empty
mould, so to speak, into which to pour whatever image or embodiment he
might conjure up from the infinite realm of imagination. One of the
latest of these contemporary critics declares that "Story declined
appreciably, year by year, falling away from his own standard; haunted
to the point of obsession by visions of mournful female figures,
generally seated, wrapped in gloom. It seems strange," this critic
continues, "that so active a mind should dream of nothing but brooding,
sinister souls, of bodies bowed in grief, or tense with rage. Never
once, apparently, did there come to him a vision of buoyancy and grace;
of a beauty that one could love; of good cheer and joy of very living;
always these unwholesome creatures born of that belated Byronic
romanticism."
This criticism, while it has as little appreciation of Mr. Story's
exquisite culture and of the taste and refinement of his art as the
general rush of the motor car and telephonic conversational life of the
first decade of the twentieth century has of the thoughtful, the poetic,
the leisurely atmosphere of Mr. Story's time, is yet not without a keen
flashlight of truth. Painting had its reactionary crisis from the
pre-Raphaelite ideals and the _intransigeants_ have had their own
conflicts in which they survived, or disappeared, according to the
degree of artistic vitality within. Sculpture and literature must also
meet the series of tests to which the onward progress of life persists
in subjecting them, and those who are submerged and perish can only
encourage the survivors as did the Greeks, as sung by Theocritus:--
"A shipwrecked sailor, buried on this coast,
Bids you set sail.
Full many a gallant ship, when we were lost,
Weathered the gale."
"As we refine, our checks grow finer," said Emerson. As life becomes
more elaborate and ambitious, the critical tests increase. Contemporary
fame can be created for the artist by favorable contemporary comment;
but it rests with himself, after all; it rests in the abiding
significance of his work--or the lack of it--as to whether this fame is
perpetuated. That of Mr. Story does not hold within itself all the
qualities that insure the appreciation of the present day. It is, as the
critic of the hour expresses himself, "too literary,"--too largely a
question of classic titles which appealed to the mid-nineteenth-century
authors whose judgment of art the twentieth century finds particularly
amusing. Henry James has somewhere held up to ridicule the early Beacon
Hill Boston for its impassioned devotion to the "attenuated outlines" of
Flaxman's art. But the work of Story will survive all transient
variations of opinion, even of the present realistic age; for is not
true realism, after all, to be found in the eternal ideals of truth,
grace, dignity, refinement, significance, and beauty? These qualities
have a message to convey; and no one can study with sympathetic
appreciation any sculpture of William Wetmore Story without feeling that
the work has something to say; that it is not a mere reproduction of
some form, but is, rather, an idea impersonated, and therefore it has
life, it has significance. The criticism of the immediate hour is not
necessarily infallible because it is contemporary. What does William
Watson say?
"A deft musician does the breeze become
Whenever an Æolian harp it finds;
Hornpipe and hurdy-gurdy both are dumb
Unto the most musicianly of winds."
It is an irretrievable loss if, in the passion for the _vita nuova_, a
generation, or a century, shall substitute for the Æolian harp the mere
hornpipe and hurdy-gurdy of the hour. In another of his keenly critical
quatrains William Watson embodies this signal truth:--
"His rhymes the poet flings at all men's feet,
And whoso will may trample on his rhymes.
Should Time let die a song that's pure and sweet,
The singer's loss were more than matched by Time's."
Art is progressive, and the present is always the "heir of all the ages"
preceding; but it cannot be affirmed that it invariably makes the best
use of its rich inheritance.
There are latter-day sculptors who excel in certain excellences that
Story lacked; still, it would not be his loss, but our own, if we fail
in a due recognition of that in his art which may appeal to the
imagination; for, whatever the enthusiasms of other cults may be, there
are qualities of beauty, strength, and profound significance in the art
of Story that must insure their permanent recognition. Still, it remains
true that Mr. Story owes his fame in an incalculable degree to the
friendly pens of Hawthorne and others of his immediate circle,--Lowell,
Motley, Charles Eliot Norton, Thackeray, Browning,--friends who,
according to the latest standards of art criticism, were not unqualified
nor absolute judges of art, but who were in sympathy with ideal
expression and recognized this as embodied in the statues of Story.
Browning wrote to the London _Times_ an article on Mr. Story's work, in
which he conjured up most of the superlative phrases of commendation
that the limits of the English language allow to praise his work, none
of whose marshalled force was too poor to do him reverence. The
versatile gifts of Story's personality drew around him friends whose
influence was potent and, indeed, authoritative in their time.
Still, any analysis of these conditions brings the searcher back to the
primary truth that without the gifts and grace to attract about him an
eminent circle of choice spirits he could not have enjoyed this potent
aid and inspiration; and thus, that
"Man is his own star,"
is an assertion that life, as well as poetry, justifies. In the full
blaze of this fundamental truth, it is, not unfrequently, the
mysterious spiritual tragedy of life that many an one as fine of fibre
and with lofty ideals
"Leads a frustrate life and blind,
For the lack of favoring gales
Blowing blithe on other sails."
Mr. Story was himself of too fine an order not to divine this truth.
With what unrivalled power and pathos has he expressed it in his
poem--one far too little known--the "Io Victis":--
"I sing the song of the Conquered, who fell in the Battle of
Life,--
The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed
in the strife;
Not the jubilant song of the victors, for whom the resounding
acclaim
Of nations was lifted in chorus, whose brows wore the chaplet
of fame,
But the hymn of the low and the humble, the weary, the
broken in heart,
* * * * *
Whose youth bore no flower on its branches, whose hopes
burned in ashes away,
From whose hands slipped the prize they had grasped at, who stood
at the dying of day
With the wreck of their life all around them...."
In this poem Mr. Story touched the highest note of his life,--as poet,
sculptor, painter, or writer of prose; in no other form of expression
has he equalled the sublimity of sentiment in these lines:--
"... I stand on the field of defeat,
In the shadow, with those who are fallen, and wounded, and
dying, and there
* * * * *
Hold the hand that is helpless, and whisper, 'They only the
victory win
Who have fought the good fight, and have vanquished the
demon that tempts us within;
Who have held to their faith unseduced by the prize that the
world holds on high;
Who have dared for a high cause to suffer, resist, fight,--if
need be, to die.'"
Such a poem must have its own immortality in lyric literature.
For a period of forty years the home of the Storys in Palazzo Barberini
was a noted centre of the most charming social life. Mr. Story's
literary work--in his contributions of essays and poems to the _Atlantic
Monthly_; in his published works, the "Roba di Roma," "Conversations in
a Studio," his collected "Poems," and others--gave him a not transitory
rank in literature which rivals, if it does not exceed, his rank in
art.
Meantime other artists were to take up their permanent abode in the
Seven-hilled City,--Elihu Vedder in 1866; Franklin Simmons two years
later; Waldo and Julian Story, the two sons of William Wetmore Story,
though claiming Rome as their home, are American by parentage and
ancestry; and Mr. Waldo Story succeeds his father in pursuing the art of
sculpture in the beautiful studios in the Via San Martino built by the
elder Story. In 1902 Charles Walter Stetson, with his gifted wife, known
to the contemporary literary world by her maiden name, Grace Ellery
Channing, set up their household gods and lighted their altar fires in
the city by the Tiber, ready, it may be, to exclaim with Ovid:--
"Four times happy is he, and times without number is happy,
Who the city of Rome uninterdicted enjoys."
[Illustration: "THE DANCE OF THE PLEIADES"
Elihu Vedder
_Page 92_]
If art is a corner of the universe seen through a temperament, the
temperament of Mr. Vedder must offer an enthralling study, for it seems
to be a lens whose power of refraction defies prophecy because it deals
with the incalculable forces. His art concerns itself little with the
æsthetic, but is chiefly the art of the intellect and the imagination.
All manner of symbols and analogies; the laws of the universe that
prevail beyond the stars; the celestial figures; the undreamed
significance in prophecy or in destiny; omens, signs, and wonders; the
world forces, advancing stealthily in the shadows of a dusky twilight;
the Fates, under brilliant skies, gathering in the stars; oracles and
supernatural coincidences that lurk in undreamed-of days; the Pleiades
dancing in a light that never was on sea or land; unknown Shapes that
meet outside space and time and question each other's identity; the dead
that come forth from their graves and glide, silent and spectral,
through a crowd, unseen by any one; the prayer of the celestial powers
poured forth in the utter solitude of the vast desert,--it is these that
are the realm of Vedder's art, and what has the normal world of portrait
and landscape to do with such art as this? Can it only be relegated to a
class, an order, of its own, and considered as being--Vedderesque? It
seems to stand alone and unparalleled. In his work lies the
transfiguration of all mystery. Vedder never paints nature, in the
sense of landscapes, and yet one often feels that he has the key to the
very creation of nature; that he has supped with gods and surprised the
secrets of the stars. Do the winds whisper to him?--
"The Muse can knit
What is past, what is done,
With the web that's just begun."
How can he find the design to phrase his thought--this painter of ideas?
"Can blaze be done in cochineal,
Or noon in mazarin?"
Whatever the Roman environment may have done for Allston, Page, and
Story, there is no question but that to Vedder it has been as his soul's
native air. For him the sirens sing again on the coast; the sorceress
works her spell; the Cumæan Sibyl again flies, wraithlike, over the
plain, clasping her rejected leaves of destiny which Tarquin in his
blindness has refused to buy. The Rome that lies buried under the ages
rises for Vedder. His art cannot be catalogued under any known division
of portrait, landscape, marine, or genre, but it is simply--the art of
Vedder. It stands alone and absolutely unrivalled. The pictorial
creations of Vedder are as wholly without precedent or comparison as if
they were the sole pictorial treasures of the world. The visitor may
care for them, or not care, according to his own ability to comprehend
and to recognize the inscrutable genius there manifested; but in either
case he will find nowhere else, in either ancient or contemporary art,
any parallel to these works.
One could well fancy that to any interrogation of his conceptions the
artist might reply:--
"I am seeker of the stone,
Living gem of Solomon.
But what is land, or what is wave,
To me, who only jewels crave?
* * * * *
I'm all-knowing, yet unknowing;
Stand not, pause not in my going."
In the rich, weird realm of Omar Khayyam's Persian poem, the Rubaiyat,
Mr. Vedder found the opportunity of his life for translating its thought
into strange, mystic symbolism. Never were artist and poet so blended
in one as in Vedder's wonderful illustrations for this poem. It has
nothing in common with what we ordinarily call an illustrated work. It
is a great treasure of art for all the ages. It is a very fount of
inspiration for painter and poet. An exquisite sonnet suggested by "The
Angel of the Darker Cup" is the following by Louise Chandler Moulton:--
"She bends her lovely head to taste thy draught,
O thou stern Angel of the Darker Cup!
With thee to-night in the dim shades to sup,
Where all they be who from that cup have quaffed.
She had been glad in her own loveliness, and laughed
At Life's strong enemies who lie in wait;
Had kept with golden youth her queenly state,
All unafraid of Sorrow's threat'ning shaft.
"Then human Grief found out her human heart,
And she was fain to go where pain is dumb;
So Thou wert welcome, Angel dread to see,
And she fares onward with thee, willingly,
To dwell where no man loves, no lovers part,--
Thus Grief that is, makes welcome Death to come."
The sonnet, the stanza, and the pictorial interpretation all form one
beautiful trio in poetic and graphic art.
Writing of Mr. Vedder, Mr. W. C. Brownell speaks of the personal force
in a picture and says that with Vedder this personal force is
imagination,--"the imagination of a man whose natural expression is
pictorial, but who is a man as well as a painter; who has lived as well
as painted, who has speculated, pondered, and felt much.... It is this,"
he continues, "that places Vedder in the front rank of the imaginative
painters of the day." Of Mr. Vedder's painting called "The Enemy Sowing
Tares," Mr. Brownell writes:--
"... Here you note a dozen phases of significance. The theme is
unconventional; the man has become the archenemy; the night is
weird and awe-inspiring; the tares represent the foe of the
church--money; they are sown at the foot of the cross--the symbol
of the church.... Mr. Vedder has not passed his life in Rome for
nothing. His attitude is in harmony with the spirit of the Sistine
and the Stanze."
One of the interesting and mystical works of Vedder is "The Soul between
Doubt and Faith,"--three heads, that of the Soul hooded and draped,
looking before her with eyes that seem to discern things not seen by
mortals; the sinister face of Doubt at the left, the serene, inspiring
countenance of Faith at the right. It is a magical picture to have
before one with its profoundly significant message. The works of Mr.
Vedder will grow more priceless as the years pass by. They are pictures
for the ages.
In Mr. Ezekiel, another American artist whose almost lifelong home has
been in Rome, is a sculptor whose touch and technique have won
recognition. In a recumbent figure of Christ is seen one of the best
examples of his art. It is pervaded by the classic influences in which
he has lived. The studios of Mr. Ezekiel, in the ruins of the old Baths
of Caracalla, are very picturesque and his salon, with its music, its
wealth of books including many rare and beautiful copies, and its old
pictures and bric-a-brac, is one of the fascinating interiors of the
Eternal City.
The visitor who is privileged to see the Story studios in the Via San
Martino finds Mr. Waldo Story occupying these spacious rooms where the
flash of a fountain in the court, a view of the garden, green-walled by
vines, with flowers and shrubs and broken statues, make the place
alluring to dreamer and poet. In these rooms may be seen many of the
elder Story's finest statues in cast or marble, the "Libyan Sibyl,"
"Nemesis," "Sappho," the "Christ," "Into the Silent Land," and others,
with many portrait busts, among which are those of Browning, Shelley,
Keats, Theodore Parker, Mrs. Browning, Marchesa Peruzzi de Medici (Edith
Story), John Lothrop Motley, one of Story's nearer friends, and Lord
Houghton.
In the work of Mr. Waldo Story one admirable portrait bust is of Cecil
Rhodes. A decorative work, a fountain for the Rothschild country estate
in England, is charmingly designed as a Galatea (in bronze), standing in
a marble shell that is drawn by Nereids and attended by Cupids. The
happy blending of marble and bronze gives to this work a pleasing
variety of color. Another decorative design is that of "Nymphs Drinking
at the Fountain of Love." These studios are among the most interesting
in Rome.
It was in 1868 that Franklin Simmons, then a young artist from Maine,
turned to Rome as his artistic Mecca. Since then the Eternal City has
always been his home, but his frequent and prolonged sojourns in America
have kept him closely in touch with its national life. Mr. Simmons is
the idealist who translates his vision into the actuality of the hour
and who also exalts this actuality of the hour to the universality of
the vision. In the creation of portrait busts and of the statues and
monumental memorials of great men he infuses into them the indefinable
quality of extended relation which relegates his work to the realm of
the universal and, therefore, to the immortality of art, rather than
restricting it to the temporal locality. Louis Gorse observes that it is
not the absence of faults that constitutes a masterpiece, but that it is
flame, it is life, it is emotion, it is sincerity. Under the touch of
Mr. Simmons the personal accent speaks; to his creative power flame and
life respond, and to no sculptor is the truth so admirably stated by M.
Gorse more applicable.
Mr. Simmons has been singularly fortunate in a wide American
recognition, having received a liberal share of the more important
commissions for great public works of sculpture. The splendid statue,
_al fresco_, of the poet Longfellow for his native city, Portland, was
appropriately the work of Mr. Simmons as a native of the same state; the
portrait statues of General Grant, Gov. William King, Roger Williams,
and Francis H. Pierrepont, all in Statuary Hall in the Capitol in
Washington; the portrait busts of Grant, Sheridan, Porter, Hooker,
Thomas, and other heroes of the Civil War; the colossal group of the
Naval Monument at the head of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington,--are
all among the works of Mr. Simmons.
Like all artists who, like the poet, are born and not made, Mr. Simmons
gave evidence of his artistic bent in his early childhood. After
graduating from Bates College he modelled a bust of its president, and a
little later, going to Washington (in the winter of 1865-66), many of
the noted men of the time gave him sittings, and in a series of portrait
busts his genius impressed itself by its dignity of conception and an
unusual power of sympathetic interpretation. He modelled the bust of
Grant while he was the General's guest in camp, taking advantage of
whatever spare minutes General Grant could give for sittings in the
midst of his pressing responsibilities; and it is perhaps due to this
unusually intimate intercourse with the great hero, and the _rapport_,
not difficult of establishment, between two men whose natures were akin
in a certain noble sincerity and lofty devotion to the purest ideals,
that Mr. Simmons owes the power with which he has absolutely interpreted
the essential characteristics of General Grant in that immortal portrait
statue in the Capitol.
Washington is, indeed, the place to especially study the earlier work of
Franklin Simmons. An important one is the Logan memorial,--an equestrian
statue which is considered the finest work in sculpture in the capital,
and which is the only statue in the United States in which both the
group and the pedestal are of bronze. The visitor in Washington who
should be ignorant of the relative rank of the great men commemorated by
the equestrian memorial monuments of the city might be justified in
believing that General Logan was the most important man of his time, if
he judged from the relative greatness of his statue. When Congress
decided upon this group, Mr. Simmons was requested to prepare a model.
This proving eminently acceptable, Mr. Simmons found himself, quite to
his own surprise, fairly launched on this arduous work, involving years
of intense concentration and labor. For this monumental work was to be
not merely that of the brave and gallant military leader,--a single idea
embodied, as in those of Generals Scott, Sheridan, Thomas, and
others,--but it was to be a permanent interpretation of the
soldier-statesman, mounted on his battle-horse; it was to be, in the
comprehensive grasp of Mr. Simmons, the vital representation of the
complex life and individuality of General Logan and, even more, it must
reflect and suggest the complex spirit of his age. In this martial
figure was thus embodied a manifold and mysterious relation, as one of
the potent leaders and directive powers in an age of tumultuous
activities; an age of strife and carnage, whose goal was peace; of
adverse conditions and reactions, whose manifest outcome was yet
prosperity and national greatness and splendid moral triumph. All these
must be suggested in the atmosphere, so to speak, of the artist's work;
and no sculptor who was not also an American--not merely by ancestry and
activity, but one in mind and heart only; one who was an intense
patriot and identified with national ideas--could ever have produced
such a work as that of the Logan monument. So unrivalled does it stand,
unique among all the equestrian art of this country, that it enchants
the art student and lover with its indefinable spell. When this colossal
work was cast in bronze, in Rome, the event was considered important.
The king and the Royal family visited the studio of Mr. Simmons to see
the great group, and so powerfully did its excellence appeal to King
Umberto that he knighted Mr. Simmons, making him Cavaliere of the Crown
of Italy. Nor was Mr. Simmons the prophet who was not without honor save
in his own country, for his _alma mater_ gave him the degree of M.A. in
1867; Colby College honored him with the Master's degree in 1885, and in
1888 Bowdoin bestowed upon this eminent Maine artist the same degree. In
1892 Mr. Simmons married the Baroness von Jeinsen, a brilliant and
beautiful woman who, though a lady of foreign title, was an American by
birth. An accomplished musician, a critical lover of art, and the most
delightful of hostesses and friends, Mrs. Simmons drew around her a
remarkable circle of charming people and made their home in the Palazzo
Tamagno a notable centre of social life. No woman in the American colony
of the Seven-hilled City was ever more beloved; and it was frequently
noted by guests at her weekly receptions that Mrs. Simmons was as
solicitous for the enjoyment of the most unknown stranger as for those
of rank and title who frequented her house. Her grace and loveliness
were fully equalled by her graciousness and that charm of personality
peculiarly her own. Her death in Rome, on Christmas of 1905, left a
vacant place, indeed, in many a home which had been gladdened by her
radiant presence. One of the most beautiful works of Mr. Simmons is a
portrait of his wife in bas-relief, representing her standing just at
the opening of parted curtains, as if she were about to step behind and
vanish. It is a very poetic conception. A bust of Mrs. Simmons, also, in
his studio, is fairly a speaking likeness of this beautiful and
distinguished woman. It is over her grave in the Protestant cemetery
that Mr. Simmons has placed one of his noblest ideal statues, "The Angel
of the Resurrection,"--a memorial monument that is one of the art
features of Rome to the visitor in the Eternal City.
[Illustration: "GRIEF AND HISTORY," DETAIL FROM NAVAL MONUMENT,
WASHINGTON
Franklin Simmons
_Page 105_]
The brilliant and impressive Naval Monument, or Monument of Peace, as it
is known in Washington, placed at the foot of Capitol Hill on
Pennsylvania Avenue, is eloquent with the power of heroic suggestion
that Mr. Simmons has imparted to it. The work breathes that exaltation
of final triumph that follows temporary defeat. Those who died that the
nation might live, are seen in the perpetual illumination of
immortality. Not only has Mr. Simmons here perpetuated the suffering,
the sacrifices of the Civil War, but that sublime and eternal truth of
victory after defeat, of peace and serene exaltation after conflict, and
the triumph of life after death, are all immortally embodied in this
group crowned with those impressive and haunting figures, "Grief" and
"History," which are considered as among the most classically beautiful
and significant in the range of modern sculpture.
In the early winter of 1907 Mr. Simmons was invited by the American
Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Hon. Whitelaw Reid, to send
for Dorchester House, London, three busts of distinguished
Americans,--those of Alexander Hamilton, Chief Justice Chase, and Hon.
James G. Blaine, which Mr. Reid, in visiting the Roman studios of Mr.
Simmons, had seen and greatly admired. The Ambassador observed that he
"would like a few Americans, as well as so many Roman Emperors," about
him.
These portrait busts all reveal an amazing force and mastery of work.
The fine sculptural effect of the Hamilton and the wonderful blending of
subtle delicacy of touch and vigor of treatment with which the nobility
of character is expressed, mark this bust as something exceptional in
portrait art. It has a matchless dignity and serene poise. The bust of
Chief Justice Chase is a faithful and speaking reproduction of the very
presence of its subject, instinct with vitality; and the fire and force
and brilliancy of the bust of Hon. James G. Blaine fairly sweeps the
visitor off his feet. The modelling is done with an apparent
instantaneousness of power that is the highest realization of creative
art. It is the magnetic Blaine, the impassioned and eloquent statesman,
that rises before the gazer.
Mr. Simmons has long been a commanding figure in plastic art. No
American sculptor abroad has, perhaps, received so many important public
commissions as have been given to him. He has created nearly a score of
memorial groups; he has modelled over one hundred portrait busts and
statues. His industry has kept step with his genius. The latest success
of Mr. Simmons in the line of monumental art is the statue (in bronze)
of Alexander Hamilton, which was unveiled at Paterson, N. J., in May of
1907. The splendidly poised figure, the dignity, the serene strength and
yet the intense energy of the expression and of the entire pose are a
revelation in the art of the portrait statue.
It is not, however, true that Mr. Simmons has ever resigned himself to
the necessity of producing portrait and memorial sculpture exclusively.
In the realm of the purely ideal Mr. Simmons finds his most felicitous
field for creative work. A bas-relief entitled "The Genius of Progress
Leading the Nations," with all its splendid fire and action, the _motif_
being that of the spirits Life and Light beating down and driving out
the spirits of darkness and evil; "The Angel of the Resurrection," with
its glad, triumphant assertion of the power of the immortal life; the
poetry and sacredness of maternity as typified in the "Mother of Moses;"
the statues of the "Galatea" and the "Medusa," and other ideal
creations, indicate "the vision and the faculty divine" of Mr. Simmons.
To a very great degree his art is that which the French describe as the
grand manner, and to this is added a spiritual quality, a power of
radiating the intellectual purpose, the profounder thought and the
aspiration of the subject represented.
[Illustration: "MOTHER OF MOSES"
Franklin Simmons
_Page 108_]
One of the most charming of these ideal works is a statue of "Penelope,"
represented seated in the chair, her rich robe falling in graceful
folds, and the little Greek fillet binding her hair. The face bears a
meditative expression, into which has entered a hint of pathos and
wistfulness in the dawning wonder as to whether, after all, Ulysses will
return. The classic beauty of the pose; the exquisite modelling of the
bust and arms and hands, every curve and contour so ideally lovely; the
distinction of the figure in its noble and refined patrician elegance,
are combined to render this work one that well deserves immortality in
art, and to rank as a masterpiece in modern sculpture.
[Illustration: "THE GENIUS OF PROGRESS LEADING THE NATIONS"
Franklin Simmons
_Page 107_]
Another of his ideal figures, "The Promised Land," is a work of great
spiritual exaltation and beauty. An Israelite woman has just arrived at
the point when before her vision gleams the "Promised Land"; the face
tells its own story of all she has passed through,--the trials, the
sadness, the obstacles to be overcome; but now she sees the fulfilment
of her hopes and dreams. It is a most interesting creation, and one in
which is portrayed the artist's spiritual insight and susceptibility to
poetic exaltation. To one visitor to Mr. Simmons's studio this statue
suggested the following lines:--
Fair on her sight it gleams,--the Promised Land!
The rose of dawn sifts through the azure air,
And all her weariness and toil and care
Vanish, as if from her some tender hand
Lifted the burden, and transformed the hour
To this undreamed-of sense of joy and power!
The rapture and the ecstasy divine
Are deep realities that only wait
Their hour to dawn, nor ever rise too late
To draw the soul to its immortal shrine.
O Sculptor! thy great gift has shaped this clay,
To image the profoundest truth, and stand
As witness of the spirit power that may
Achieve the vision of the Promised Land!
[Illustration: "VALLEY FORGE"
Franklin Simmons
_Page 110_]
In a statuette in bronze called "Valley Forge," Mr. Simmons has fairly
incarnated the entire spirit of the Revolutionary period in that
mysterious way recognized only in its result; all that unparalleled
epoch of tragic intensity and sublime triumph lives again in this work.
The fidelity to a lofty ideal which essentially characterizes Mr.
Simmons is as unswerving as that of Merlin, who followed "The Gleam."
"Great the Master
And sweet the Magic
When over the valley
In early summers,
Over the mountain,
On human faces,
And all around me
Moving to melody,
Floated the Gleam."
This American sculptor who, in his early youth, sought the artistic
atmosphere of Rome as the environment most stimulating to his dawning
power, who accepted with unfailing courage the incidental privations of
art life in a foreign land more renowned for beauty than for comfort,
who
"... never turned his back, but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,"
has expressed his message in many purely ideal works,--the message that
the true artist must always give to the world and that leads humanity to
the crowning truth of life, that of the ceaseless progress of the soul
in its immortality.
For the brief and significant assertion of the apostle condenses the
most profound truth of life when he says:--
"To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is
life and peace."
In these words are imaged the supreme purpose of all the experiences of
the life on earth; and to the artist whose works bear this lofty message
of the triumph of spirituality, his reward shall appear, not in the
praise of men, but in the effect on character that his efforts have
aided to exalt; in the train of nobler influences that his work shall
perpetually inspire and create.
Mr. Simmons has always found Rome potent in fascination. One may not
want to go to St. Peter's every day, but one knows it is there, and
there is some inexplicable satisfaction in being where it is possible to
easily enter this impressive interior. One may not go near the Forum
for a month, or even a season, but the knowledge that one may find it
and the wonderful Palatine Hill any hour of any day is a perpetual
delight. The Vatican galleries, with their great masterpieces; the
Sistine Chapel, the stately, splendid impressiveness of San Giovanni
Laterano; the wanderings in Villa Borghese, and the picturesque climbing
of the Spanish steps, even all the inconveniences and deprivations,
become a part of the story of Rome which the artist absorbs and loves.
The studios of Mr. Simmons in the Via San Nicolo da Tolentino are a
centre of artistic resort, and his personal life is one of distinction
amid the picturesque beauty and enchantment of the Eternal City.
For many years (until the death of Mrs. Simmons in 1905) the sculptor
and his wife had their home in the beautiful Palazzo Tamagno in the Via
Agostino Depretis, where one of those spacious apartments of twenty to
thirty rooms, only to be found in a Roman palace, was made by them a
brilliant centre of social life. Mrs. Simmons was herself a musical
artist, with impassioned devotion to music; and her rare personal charm
and distinction of presence drew around her a most interesting
circle. Her receptions were for many years a noted feature of Roman
society. The social life in Rome is very brilliant, interesting, and
fascinating. The sight-seeing is a kind of attendant atmosphere,--the
perpetual environment offering, but not intruding itself. People come to
Rome for reasons quite disconnected with the Golden House of Nero or the
latest archæological discoveries in the Forum. The present, rather than
the past, calls to them, and the present, too, is resplendent and
alluring.
Of the foreign painters in Rome, Charles Walter Stetson, whose work
recalls the glory of the old Italian masters, is especially
distinguished for his genius as a colorist. No visitor in Rome can
afford to miss the studio of one of the most imaginative of modern
artists. A wonderful picture still in process is a genre work with
several figures, called "Music." An idyllic scene of a festa amid the
ilex trees--with the Italian sky and the golden sunshine pervading a
luminous atmosphere, while the joyous abandon of the dancers appeals to
all who love Italy--is one of the many beautiful pictorial scenes of Mr.
Stetson which enchant the eye and haunt the imagination. Another
picture is called "Beggars,"--a name that illy suggests its splendor.
There is the façade of a church to which a long flight of steps leads
up, a procession of cardinals and friars in their rich robes, while at
one side the groups of beggars shrink into the darkness. It is an
impressive commentary upon life.
For a long period, through the early and middle years of the nineteenth
century, Rome held her place as the world centre of modern artistic
activity. Great works of poetic and ideal sculpture elevated the general
public taste to a high degree of appreciation. The standards were not
ingeniously adjusted to mere spectacular methods whose sole appeal was
to the crude fancy of possible patrons. Art held her absolute and
inviolate ideals, and the spirit of her votaries might well have been
interpreted in Mrs. Browning's words:--
"I, who love my art,
Would never wish it lower to suit my stature."
The tone of public appreciation is raised to a high quality only when
the artist refuses to sell his soul for a mess of pottage. He may, to
be sure, need the pottage, but the price is too great. Rather will he
find his attitude expressed in these wonderful lines:--
"I can live
At least my soul's life without alms from men.
And if it be in heaven instead of earth,
Let heaven look to it--I am not afraid."
All art that has within itself true vitality must ever be the leader and
the creator of the popular taste; only when it falls into decadence does
it become the servile follower.
It is a serious question as to the degree in which the art of to-day
keeps faith with the eternal ideals. The great expositions of the past
quarter of a century, while they have contributed immeasurably to the
popularization of art and to the familiarization of the public with the
work of individual painters and sculptors, have yet, in many ways, been
a demoralizing influence in their insidious temptation to produce
pictures or plastic art calculated to arrest immediate attention, thus
putting a premium on the spectacular, the sensational, on that which
makes the most immediate and direct appeal to the senses. The work
becomes fairly a personal document wrought with perhaps an almost
amazing finesse, but utterly failing in power to inspire joyous
sensibility to beauty or to impart to the gazer that glow of radiant
energy which lofty art invariably communicates to all who respond to its
infinite exaltation.
All great art is inspired by religious ideals. Painting and sculpture
give to these a presence. Under their creative power are these ideals
manifested. To embody them in living form becomes the absolute
responsibility of the artist. In Greece all the fortunate conditions to
produce great art were curiously combined and pre-eminently supported by
the conjunction of events and by the prevailing sentiment of the time.
The artist drew his inspiration from the most exalted conception of life
embodied in gods rather than in men. Art, too, was an affair of the
state. It was the supreme interest and held national importance. The
temple was erected to form an inclosure for the statue, rather than that
the statue was created as an adornment for the temple. The greatest
gifts were consecrated to the service of art, and under these
stimulating influences it is little wonder that artistic creation
achieved that vital potency which has thrilled all succeeding
centuries and has communicated to them something of the divine air of
that remote period. With the Renaissance in Italy art culminated in the
immortal work of Raphael and Michael Angelo. In the Sistine Chapel,
where that sublime grouping of prophets and sibyls speaks of the very
miracle of art in their impassioned fire and glow; where the figures,
the pose, the draperies are so grandly noble and infused with dignity
and presence,--the very atmosphere is vocal with the language of the
spirit and the expressions of religious reverence. These marvellous
shapes of grandeur and sublime intimations carry the soul into a
conscious communion with the divine. In these stupendous works Michael
Angelo has given to all the ages the message of the highest exaltation
of art. In the technique, in the marvellous dignity of the sentiment, in
the depth of the feeling involved, in the grace and power of the
composition, these works embody the artistic possibilities of painting.
Are such works as those of Canova and Thorwaldsen no longer created?
Can it be that art is no longer of national importance? In our own
country vast appropriations are made for internal improvements of all
kinds, while art that kindles and re-enforces life is almost ignored.
Our government--the government of the richest country in the
world--appropriated $200,000 for a memorial monument to General Grant to
be placed in Washington, while Italy--whose resources are so slender in
comparison--appropriates seven million dollars--thirty-five times the
amount--for her great monument to Victor Emmanuel which is now being
erected in Rome to stand near the Capitol and the Palace of the
Quirinale. Great art has always been closely associated with great
devotion to religious ideals. The artist was the servant of the Lord,
and it was his supreme purpose to embody the aspirations of the age and
render his works a full and complete symbol of those true realities of
life which have their being in the spiritual universe rather than in the
changing temporal world of the outer universe. The so-called realism of
the day is based on a false interpretation. "The things that are seen
are temporal, while the things that are not seen are eternal." True
realism is in spiritual qualities, not in physical attributes. True
realism is found in such works as Canova's sublime group, where the
figures of Religion and of Death forever impress all who stand before
this magnificent monument; it is found in Thorwaldsen's "Christ;" in
Franklin Simmons's "Angel of the Resurrection,"--in such works as those
that have a language for the soul, rather than in a "Saturnalia."
Again, another fatal rock on which art must inevitably make shipwreck is
the theory that it is good to perpetuate ugliness, in either painting or
in sculpture. The permanent reality of life is beauty. So far as any
person or object departs from this enduring reality, so far it is the
result of distortion and deformity, and these, being the temporary, the
accidental, the deficient, should not be perpetuated in ideal creation.
It is an Apollo who embodies the permanent ideal of manhood--not a
cripple or a hunchback. Still further: art should not only refuse to
embody the defective, which is a mere negative; it should not only give
form to the utmost perfection it beholds in nature or in humanity, but
beyond this the responsibility is upon the artist to penetrate into
loftier realms, to catch the vision not revealed to mortals. The artist
is, by virtue of his high calling, a co-worker with God. An English wit
has declared that life copies art rather than that art copies life. In
this he expresses a truth rather than a merely clever epigram. It is the
artist's business to lead, not to follow. Only as he leads does he
fulfil his divinely appointed destiny. "I maintain that life is not a
form of energy," writes Sir Oliver Lodge; "that it is not included in
our present physical categories; that its explanation is still to be
sought. And it appears to me to belong to a separate order of existence,
which interacts with this material frame of things, and while here
exerts guidance and control on the energy which already here exists; for
although they alter the quantity of energy no whit, and though they
merely utilize available energy like any other machine, live things are
able to direct inorganic terrestrial energy along new and special paths,
so as to achieve results without which such living agency could not have
occurred." Does it for an instant seem that a great scientist's
theoretical speculations of the laws of the universe and of organic life
have no connection with the province of art? On the contrary. Truly does
Balzac exclaim: "Is not God the whole of science, the all of love,
the source of poetry?" The artist is he who enters into the divine
realm; who discerns the divine creations as the true ideals of humanity,
and who interprets to the world the sublime significance of the divine
thought. Shall such an artist degrade his power by portraying
ugliness--the mere defects of negations and distortions? Shall he
degrade life by calling these the realities?
[Illustration: "LA PIETA," ST. PETER'S, ROME
Michael Angelo
_Page 117_]
The painter or sculptor who holds that it is as truly art to represent
distortion and repulsiveness as it is to represent beauty is as false to
his high calling as would be the poet who should insist that doggerel
and mere commonplace truisms expressed in rhyme are poetry. Compare, for
example, two statues, Cecioni's "_La Madre_," in which a woman's utter
lack of personal attraction is so complete as to make her fairly
repulsive to the gazer, and the "Mother of Moses," by Franklin Simmons,
in which the mystic beauty, the very ideal of maternity, is embodied.
Which of these statues is calculated to uplift and to exalt all who come
near? This marvellously beautiful creation of Mr. Simmons shows a woman
of exquisite delicacy and loveliness sitting, slightly bending forward,
holding her baby to her breast. The modelling of the draped figure with
the bare arms and neck revealing the tender curves, the yielding
delicacy of the flesh and that inscrutable light upon the beautiful
countenance, whose expression suggests that she is looking far into the
future of the infant whom she holds in her arms, are a wonderful
portrayal of the mystery and the sacredness of motherhood. The one
statue degrades maternity; the other ennobles and exalts. The one
embodies a pernicious and a false ideal; the other embodies the ideal
that must appeal to all that is noble and divine in human life, and it
thus ministers to moral progress by its contribution to the elevation of
the social tone. For indeed, life follows art. It is art that exerts
this powerful influence upon life which it may lead to loftier heights
or drag down to the moral abyss. The artist is not merely the portrayer
of existing types; he is the inspirer of those ideal types which human
life should recognize as its pattern, its model to be followed and
ultimately achieved. The world needs ideal and poetic art to minister to
the attainment of the true social life and to the full and complete
expression of man himself.
Do not the visions of Fra Angelico and Botticelli still inspire the
artist of to-day with the absolute realization of all the deep
significance of the past?
"Is there never a retroscope mirror,
In the realms and corners of space,
That can give us a glimpse of the battle,
And the soldiers face to face?"
Religion and art are inseparably united. In its true significance
religion takes precedence of all else in that its influence is felt in
every department and in every direction and expression of man's
activity. It is the inexhaustible fountain of that lofty energy which
communicates itself to every channel that carries inspiration to life
and to art. Religion is the influence that redeems the mere shallow,
surface presentation,--the petty trick to capture popularity, and holds
art true to its real purpose. The glory of the mediæval art of Italy
owed its greatness to religion. Cimabue and Giotto were directly
inspired by that spring of a diviner life given to Italy and later to
the world of that "sweet saint," Francis of Assisi. In an age of cruelty
and terror he brought the new message that man is dear to God; that the
soul is ceaselessly joyful; that man, created in the divine image, is a
part of the divine life, and that only when he lives in this response
and recognition does he truly live at all. In this restatement of the
truth that Jesus came to proclaim, St. Francis opened the way for a
revival of art, and opened the gates of that infinite and divine energy
which has immortally recorded itself for all ages in the "Divina
Comedia" of Dante. The irresistible wave of power which resulted from
that liberating of thought, feeling, and emotion by the work of St.
Francis expressed itself in the sublimest poem of all the ages, and in
that glorious triumph of art that is still the treasure and the source
of artistic inspiration.
It is only when the world is lifted out of the limitations of the
material by a period of great art that humanity is brought into close
and inspiring relation with the living Christ.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
_Men and women make the world,
As head and heart make human life._
MRS. BROWNING.
* * * * *
_Alas, our memories may retrace
Each circumstance of time and place;
Season and scene come back again,
And outward things unchanged remain;
The rest we cannot reinstate,
Ourselves we cannot re-create,
Nor set our souls to the same key
Of the remembered harmony._
LONGFELLOW.
_And as, after the lapse of a thousand years, you stand upon that
hallowed spot, the yellow Tiber flowing sluggishly beneath you, the
ruins of the Eternal City all around you speaking of fallen
greatness, the mighty Basilica of St. Peter rising before you like
some modern tower of Babel that would monopolize the road to
heaven, the eye rests upon the figure of the Archangel sheathing
his glittering sword upon the summit of the Castle of St. Angelo,
and the heart asks, Why should that be a legend? Why should that be
a projection of a morbid and devout imagination? Why should it not
have been the clairvoyance of supernatural ecstasy opening the
world of spirits? It was no unreality when the angel of God, with
his sword drawn in his hand, withstood the prophet Balaam. It was
no morbid imagination when the angel of God smote with the edge of
the sword the first-born of the land of Egypt. It was no imposture
when the shining hosts of the army of the Almighty smote the
Assyrians. It was no deception when Gabriel, the King's messenger
from the court of heaven, was sent to comfort Daniel by the river
Hiddekel; or when he announced to the maiden, whom all generations
have called blessed, that she was to be the mother of the Divine
Redeemer.... The written Word from first to last is full of the
holy angels. It begins with angels, it ends with angels._
THE VENERABLE ARCHDEACON WILBERFORCE,
Westminster Abbey.
II
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE ETERNAL CITY
And others came,--Desires and Adorations,
Winged Persuasions and Veiled Destinies!
SHELLEY.
In what ethereal dances!
By what eternal streams!
POE.
Social life in Rome is no misnomer. From the most stately and beautiful
ceremonials of balls at the court of the Quirinale, in ducal palaces, or
at the embassies; of dinners whose every detail suggests stage pictures
in their magnificence, to the simple afternoon tea, where conversation
and music enchant the hours; the morning call _en tête-à-tête_, and the
morning stroll, or the late afternoon drive,--a season in Rome
prefigures itself, by the necromancy of retrospective vision, as a
resplendent panorama of pictorial scenes. There rise before one those
mornings, all gold and azure, of loitering over the stone parapet on
Monte Pincio, gazing down on the city in her most alluring mood. The
new bridge that is to connect the Pincio with the Villa Borghese is a
picturesque feature in its unfinished state; but the vision traverses
the deep ravine and revels in the scene of the Borghese grounds carpeted
with flowers. Its picturesque slopes under the great trees, with a view
of Michael Angelo's dome in the near distance, are the resort of morning
strollers, who find that lovely picture of Charles Walter Stetson's--a
stretch of landscape under the ilex trees, the scarlet gowns of the
divinity students giving vivid accents of color here and there--fairly
reproduced in nature before their vision. One should never be in haste
as the bewildering beauty of the Roman spring weaves its emerald
fantasies on grass and trees, and touches into magical bloom the scarlet
poppies that flame over all the meadows, and caress roses and hyacinths
and lilies of the valley into delicate bloom and floating fragrance
until the Eternal City is no more Rome, but Arcady, instead--one should
never be in haste to toss his penny into the _Fontane de Trevi_. Yet in
another way it may work for him an immediate spell that defies all other
necromancy. Judiciously thrown in, on the very eve of departure, it is
the conjurer that insures his return; but at any time prior to this it
may even weave the irresistible enchantment that falls upon him and may
prevent his leaving at all. Nor can he summon up the moral courage to
regret even the missing of all other engagements, and the failure to
keep faith with his plans. For in the May days Rome falls upon him anew,
like a revelation, and he is ready to confess that he has never seen her
who sees her not in her springtime loveliness. The Italian winter by no
means lives up to its reputation. It is not the chill of any one special
day that discourages one from any further effort to continue in this
vale of tears, but the cold that has, apparently, the chill and dampness
and cold of all those two thousand and two hundred and sixty winters
that have gone before which concentrate themselves in the atmosphere.
One could presumably endure with some degree of courage, if not
equanimity, the chill in the air of any _one_ winter; but when all the
chill and cold that has ever existed in more than the two thousand
winters of the past concentrates itself in the winter, say, of 1906-7,
why, patience ceases to be a virtue although one that the sojourner in
Rome is particularly called upon to practise if he fares forth to visit
churches and galleries in the winter.
Torrents of rain pour down, rivalling the cloud-bursts of Arizona.
Virgil's cave of the winds apparently lets loose its sharpest blasts.
Tramontana and sirocco alternate, and each is more unendurable than the
other.
The encircling mountains are white with snow. The streets are a sea of
mud, for they are paved with small stones, and except in the new Villa
Ludovisi quarter and along the Via Nazionale and a few other of the
newer thoroughfares there are no sidewalks, the foot passengers (in all
old Rome) pressing close to the wall to avoid the dangerously near
proximity of carts and cabs. This rough pavement makes all driving hard
and walking difficult. The Roman lady, indeed, does not walk; and the
visitors who cannot forego the joy of daily promenades enter into the
feelings of that nation which is said to take its pleasures sadly. But
spring works a transformation scene. The air is filled with the most
transparent shining haze; the sky lacks little of that intense, melting
blue that characterizes the ineffable beauty of the skies in Arizona;
and ruins and fragments and strange relics--ghosts of the historic
past--are all enshrined in trailing green and riotous blossoms. To drive
on the terraced roads of Monte Mario with all Rome and the emerald-green
Campagna before one; through the romantic "Lovers' Lane," walled in by
roses and myrtle; to enjoy the local life, full of gayety and
brilliancy, is to know Rome in her most gracious aspects. One goes for
strolls in the old Colonna Gardens, where still remain the ruins of the
Temple of the Sun and of the Baths of Constantine. The terraces offer
lovely views over the city. The old palace is occupied by the present
Prince Colonna, and it is not unfrequently the scene of most elaborate
and gorgeous receptions where the traditional Roman splendor is to be
found. A series of arched bridges over the narrow street of the Via
della Pilotta connect the Gardens with the Colonna Palace in the Piazza
San Apostoli. Very fine old sarcophagi are half buried in trailing vines
on the slope of the hill, dark with magnificent cypress trees. The
Colonna Gardens are a very dream of the past, in their ruins of old
temples, their shattered statues, their strange old tablets and
inscriptions, and their grand view of the Capitol.
In one's retrospective vision of a Roman season all the inconveniences
and discomforts of the winter disappear, leaving only the beauty and the
enjoyment to be "developed," as the photographer would say, on the
sensitive plate of memory.
No one really knows Rome until he has watched the transcendent
loveliness of spring investing every nook and corner of the Eternal
City. The picturesque Spanish steps are a very garden of fragrance, the
lower steps of the terraced flight being taken possession of by the
flower venders who display their wares,--masses of white lilac,
flame-colored roses, rose and purple hyacinths and baskets of violets
and carnations. Did all this fragrance and beauty send up its incense to
Keats as he lay in the house adjoining, with the musical plash of
Bernini's fountain under his window? It is pleasant to know that by the
appreciation of American and English authors, the movement effectively
directed by Robert Underwood Johnson, this house consecrated to a poet's
memory has been purchased to be a permanent memorial to Keats and to
Shelley. A library of their works will be arranged in it; and portraits,
busts, and all mementos that can be collected of these poets will render
this memorial one of the beautiful features of Rome.
From the flower venders and the circulating libraries in the Piazza di
Spagna that allure one in the morning, from the fascinating glitter of
the little Via Condotti which is, in its way, the rue de la Paix of
Rome, one leisurely climbs the steps to where the great obelisk looms up
in front of the Convent Church of the Trinità di Monti and on, across
the Piazza di Trinità, toward the Pincian, one wanders along the brow of
the hill surmounted by the low stone parapet. The view is a dream of
beauty. Over the valley lies Monte Mario, crowned with the Villa Madama,
silhouetted against the blue Roman sky; and the commanding dome of St.
Peter's, the splendid new white marble buildings of the Law Courts, the
domes of other churches, all make up a picturesque panorama, while on
the Janiculum the great equestrian statue of Garibaldi can be descried.
Strolling on, one turns into the gardens of the Villa Medici, the
French Academy of Art, in which the present director, the great Carolus
Duran, is domiciled and in which twenty-four students--of painting,
sculpture, music, and architecture--are maintained at the expense of the
French government for several years, the twenty four being chosen from
those who have given signal proof of their ability. The Villa Medici
has, perhaps, a more beautiful site than any other building in Rome.
Facing the west, with the Janiculum and Monte Mario forever before it,
while below lies the Piazza di Spagna and the Piazza del Popolo, and all
the changing splendors of the sunset sky as a perpetual picture gallery,
the situation is, indeed, magnificent. It is still conceivable, however,
that Monsieur Carolus Duran must have many quarters of an hour when he
longs for the brilliancy and the movement and the stimulus of his Paris.
The gardens of the Villa Medici are large, but they are laid out with
narrow paths bordered with box, forming a wall as impervious as if of
stone, and dark and damp by the shade of foliage. These walks are paved
with gravel, and are always damp. These formal rectangles and alleys are
utterly shut in, so that in any one part one can see only the two
dense green walls of box that inclose him and the glimpse of sky
overhead,--not precisely a cheering promenade. This is the Italian idea
of a garden. Much broken sculpture, weather-stained and defective, is
placed all along the way, and the perpetual Roman fountain is always
gushing somewhere.
[Illustration: VILLA MEDICI, ROME
_Page 134_]
Another phase of the Roman season may rise before one in the stately
beauty of any old historic palace, where the hostess, all grace and
sweetness, receives her guests in the apartment in which Galileo had
been confined when imprisoned in Rome. The approach to this _piano
nobile_ was up a flight of easily graded marble stairs, where in
frequent niches stood old statues. The large windows in the corridor on
the landing were curtained with pale yellow, thus creating a golden
light to fall on the old sculptured marbles. One salon was decorated
with Flaxman's drawings on the wall, in their classical outlines. From a
steep, dark stone stairway, down which one descended (at the imminent
risk of a broken neck in the darkness and from the irregular stairs
rudely carved in the stone), one emerged on a landing, where a little
door opened into the balcony of the chapel, a curious, gloomy place,
with tombs and altar and shrine, and some very poor old paintings. One's
progress to it recalled the lines from Poe's "Ulalume":--
"By a route, obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only."
Then, sitting in one of the richly decorated salons at afternoon tea in
this same old palace one day, while an accomplished harpist was
discoursing delicate music from its vibrating chords, flights of birds
kept passing a window, making a scene like that of a Wagner opera. The
groups present, largely of the Roman nobility, the titled aristocracy,
resembling so closely some of the old portraits in the palazzo that it
was easy to recognize that they were all one people, descendants of the
same race.
Many of the guests looked, indeed, as if they had stepped from out the
sumptuously carved frames on the wall. At these pretty festas one meets
much of the resident Roman world. The guests assembled seem to be
speaking in all the romance languages. There are Russian and Spanish as
well as Italian, French, German, and English at these alluring teas.
All the salons of the spacious apartments are thrown open, and the men
in their picturesque court dress or military costume, and the women and
girls in dainty gowns, make up an alluring scene. The salons are richly
furnished and abound in works of art, old pictures, inlaid cabinets,
carvings, rich vases, busts, and statuettes. The library, with its
wealth of books; the music room; the salon for dancing; the supper room,
and the quiet rooms where groups gather before the blazing open fires,
grateful in these lofty rooms whose temperature suggests the frozen
circles of Dante,--all make up a delightful picture. One meets the most
varying individualities. A Russian lady of title may confide her
conviction that her country is ruined, and that she never desires to
return to it. Italy is the country that attracts not only political
refugees from other European countries, but many who are out of sympathy
with conditions elsewhere and who find the cosmopolitan society and the
varied interests of this land of sunshine their most enjoyable
environment.
One pleasant feature of a Roman winter is that of the usual course of
lectures given by Professor Lanciani. The celebrated archæologist is a
man of special personal charm, and his conversation, as well as his
public lectures, is full of interest and value. The lectures are given
under the auspices of the Società Archeologica, and a special subject
recently discussed was the celebration to be held in 1911 in Rome. One
project for this celebration includes the plan to lay out a carriage
road around the Forum and the Palatine, and also around the Baths of
Titus and of Caracalla, extending the drive to all those places included
between the Appian and the Latin Way, the Villa Celimontana and the
Circus Maximus.
Professor Lanciani discussed the artistic history of Rome and the
different appearances the city took on in different periods; the
regulation plan drawn up by Julius Cæsar and accepted and carried out by
Augustus, by which one-fifth of the total area of the city was reserved
for public parks. In the third century of the empire the city was
inclosed by parks and crossed from end to end by delightful portico
gardens, where valuable works of art were collected. During the period
of the Renaissance there were the famous villas and the Cesarini Park
on the slopes of the Esquiline, and after regretting the many
unnecessary acts of vandalism committed since 1870 in Rome, Professor
Lanciani suggested that a complete reconstruction of the Baths of
Caracalla should be made, to serve in 1911 as the Exhibition Building.
He believed no artistic difficulties would present themselves, as in the
fifteenth century different architects took plaster casts of the
decorations of the statues and of every detail of the Baths. The
archæological exhibition would be arranged in the two large halls,
another hall would be for concerts, another for lectures, the others for
different congresses to be held.
In this way Rome would inaugurate for 1911 the Mediæval Museum in Castel
Sant'Angelo, the mediæval collections in the Torre degli Anguillara, and
the grand archæological exhibition in the reconstructed Baths of
Caracalla.
Italian women are by no means behind the age in their organizations to
aid in social progress. The most important one in Italy is that of the
leading women of the nobility and aristocracy, called "The Society for
Women's Work," which holds annual meetings, over which Lady Aberdeen,
the president of the International Council, and the Contessa Spalletti,
the president of the National Council of Italy, preside. Many of the
prominent women of the Italian nobility are taking active part in the
larger outlook for women; and in this movement Margherita, _la Regina
Madre_, leads the way, supported by a large following of the titled
nobility.
"Margherita holds the hearts of the people," remarked Cora, Contessa di
Brazzá Savorgnan, at a brilliant little dinner one night, and no
expression could more admirably represent the feeling of the nation
toward the Queen Mother.
Queen Elena as the reigning sovereign has, of course, her exclusive
royal prerogatives, and she has youth and initiative and precedence; but
Margherita is a most attractive woman, with learning and accomplishments
galore, and she has an art of conversation that allures and fascinates
visiting foreigners of learning and wit, as well as of rank. Roman
society is not large numerically, and the same people are constantly
meeting and consolidating their many points of contact and interest.
Social life in these Italian cities is the supreme occupation of the
residents, and one must concede that in proportion as one meets the same
people constantly does society gain in dramatic interest. With each
person who is in any sense an individual the play of life begins. It
gains in dramatic sequence as it proceeds. The Eternal City is a
wonderful scenic setting for the human drama.
Local gossip suggests perceptible rivalry between the stately palace of
the King and the pink palace on the hill, in which Margherita holds her
state with not less ceremony than that observed at the Court of the
Quirinale. It is a beautiful thing for a country to have in it a woman
of high position, of leisure and of culture, who is so admirably fitted
to be the friend of the people as is Margherita. She is a connoisseur in
art; she has a most intelligent interest in science; she is a critical
lover of literature; she is a wise and judicious and deeply sympathetic
leader in all philanthropic work and purposes. One can hardly visit
painter or poet or artist in any line, or school, institute, or
association, but that he hears of the personal sympathy and
encouragement bestowed by this noble and beautiful Italian Queen,--the
_Regina Madre_.
Practically there are, indeed, two courts in Rome; that of the Palazzo
Margherita seeming to quite rival that held at the Palazzo Quirinale.
The palace of the Queen Mother is an imposing three-story structure of
pink-hued marble, with beautiful gardens and terraces, and adjoining it,
in the palace grounds, is a marble villa, used for the entertainment of
royal guests. This palace has been the residence of Margherita when in
Rome since the tragic death of King Umberto, in 1900. It is in the
Ludovisi quarter, and stands on the very site of the Gardens of Sallust.
The Queen Mother receives noted visitors constantly, and entertains
visiting royalties and members of the aristocracy. No great man of
science, literature, and art visits Rome without seeking a presentation
to the liberal-minded and accomplished _Regina Madre_, who is one of the
most winning and attractive of all the royal women of Europe.
It has become quite a feature in introducing young girls to present them
first in private audience to Margherita, and then later to Queen Elena
at the Court of the Quirinale. Surely no girl could be given a lovelier
idea of womanhood than that embodied in the Dowager Queen. When the poet
Carducci died in the early months of 1907, Margherita sent beautiful
messages of consolation to his family, and, later, to his home city of
Bologna she sent the following letter:--
"I announce that I make a free gift to the city of Bologna of the
house where Giosuè Carducci passed the last years of his life, and
the library he collected there.
"Bologna, that showed such affectionate hospitality for Giosuè
Carducci for so many years, and surrounded him with so much
devotion, will know, I feel sure, how to carefully preserve this
remembrance of the greatest poet of modern Italy.
MARGHERITA."
The Syndic replied in a letter hardly less fine in its expression of
Bologna's appreciation, and with assurances that the name of the first
Queen of Italy will in future be forever associated with Italy's
greatest modern poet.
The Regio Palazzo del Quirinale is near the Capitol, in the older part
of the city, and only a small part of this is shown to visitors when
the King and Queen are in residence. The Sala Regia may be seen, the
chapel in which are preserved a large number of the wreaths and the
addresses sent from all parts of the civilized world on the occasion of
the death of Victor Emmanuel II, and a suite of reception rooms, the
throne room with many historic portraits, the Sala des Ambassadeurs, and
the audience chamber, containing Thorwaldsen's "Triumphal Procession of
Alexander the Great," a gift from Napoleon I. In the small chapel of the
Annunciation is an altar piece by Guido Reni.
To artists the Queen Mother is most generously kind. One of the younger
Italian sculptors, Turillo Sindoni, Cavaliere of the Crown of Italy,
whose latest creation is a very beautiful statue of St. Agnes, has his
studios in the Via del Babuino, and to especially favored visitors he
sometimes exhibits a beautiful letter that he received from Margherita,
who purchased two of his statues. With the letter expressing her warm
appreciation of his art was an exquisite gift of jewelled sleeve-links.
Notwithstanding the fascinating lectures of Professor Lanciani and the
valuable and interesting work in the Forum that is being accomplished
under the efficient directorship of Commendatore Boni, yet all the roads
that traditionally lead to Rome do not converge to the palace on the
Palatine. Modern Rome is only mildly archæological, and while it takes
occasional recognition of the ancient monuments, and drives to the crypt
of old St. Agnes, to the tomb of Cecilia Metella, and may manage a
descent into the catacomb of St. Calixtus, it is far more actively
interested in its dancing and dining and driving. As a scenic background
for festivities Rome is a success, and as one comes into social touch
with the titled nobility, and the resident life, by birth or adoption,
one finds a city of infinite human interest and picturesque
possibilities.
Between the "Whites" (the loyal followers of the Palazzo Quirinale and
the King) and the "Blacks" (the devoted followers of the Palazzo
Vaticano and the Pope) a great gulf is fixed over which no one may
cross.
Pope Pius X is wonderfully accessible, considering the great
responsibilities and duties he has on him, and his generous goodness,
his gracious tact and the beauty of his spirit endear him to all,
Catholic or Protestant alike, for every one recognizes in him the
Christian gentleman, whose ideals of gentleness and inspiring
helpfulness impress themselves on all who are so fortunate as to meet
him.
The most impressive ceremonial receptions of the "Blacks" are those
given at the Spanish Embassy in the Piazza di Spagna. At the Embassy or
in the private palace of any Roman noble which a Cardinal honors by
accepting an invitation, he is received according to a most picturesque
old Roman custom. At the foot of the stairs two servants bearing lighted
torches meet his Eminence, and, making a profound obeisance, escort him
to the portals of the grand reception salon and await, in the corridor,
his return. On his departure they escort him in the same way down the
staircase.
In the College of Cardinals and among the many interesting
individualities of the Vatican, the most marked figure is that of the
Cardinal Secretary of State, Merry del Val. He occupies the Borgia
apartments, which are hung with tapestry and ornamented with the most
unique and valuable articles _de vertu_,--wonderful vases, inlaid
cabinets, old tapestries, paintings, statues, busts, and ivories. These
Borgia apartments are one of the most interesting features of the
Palazzo Vaticano, and may be seen now and then by special permission
when the Cardinal secretary is out, or when he may be pleased to retire
into his more private salons in the apartment while the others are
shown. Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val is an impressive personality, whose
life seems strangely determined by destiny. His father was an _attaché_
of the Spanish embassy to the Court of St. James when the future
Cardinal was born in 1865. In 1904, at the early age of thirty-nine, he
was advanced from the soutane violet of the bishop to the mantelletta
scarlet of the cardinal, and after the accession of the present Pope,
Pius X, he was appointed to the highest office in the Vatican, that of
Secretary of State, the Pope paying him the high tribute because of his
"devotion to work, his capability and absolute self-negation."
Cardinal Merry del Val has had a wonderful training of experience and
circumstances. At the early age of twenty-two he was a member of the
papal embassy commissioned to the jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887. He
was also appointed a member of the embassy from the Vatican to attend
the funeral of Emperor William I; and at the jubilee of Francis Joseph,
Emperor of Austria, Cardinal (then Bishop) Merry del Val was the sole
and accredited representative of the Holy See, as he was also at the
coronation of King Edward. The Spanish Cardinal is the special trusted
counsellor of the royal family of Spain.
In Rome, Cardinal Merry del Val is an impressive figure. He is always
attended by his _gentiluomo_, who is gorgeously arrayed in knee
breeches, military hat and sword. This gentleman in waiting walks behind
him on a promenade, sits in his carriage and stands near him in all
religious ceremonies. His equipage is well known in the Eternal City,--a
stately black carriage drawn by two massive black horses with luxurious
flowing manes.
It is freely prophesied in Rome that the Cardinal secretary is destined
to yet exchange the mantelletta scarlet for the zucchetta white, when
Pius X shall have gone the way of all his predecessors in the papal
chair. He is the Cardinal especially favored by Austria and Spain.
Although the conflict with France was at first ascribed to Cardinal
Merry del Val, he has of late been completely exonerated from blame,
even by the French prelates and clergy.
Cardinal Merry del Val represents the most advanced and progressive
thought of the day. He is an enthusiastic admirer of Marconi and the
marvels of wireless telegraphy; he is an advocate of telephonic service,
electric motors, electric lights, and of phonographs and typewriters for
the Vatican service. He is a great linguist, speaking English, French,
and German as well as Spanish, which is his native tongue, and Italian,
which has become second nature. He is a good Greek scholar and a
profound Latin scholar, and he speaks the ancient Latin with the fluency
and the force of the modern languages. He is, indeed, a remarkable
twentieth-century personality and one who has apparently a very
interesting life yet to come in his future.
At the Villa Pamphilia Doria, built by a former Prince Doria, the
largest villa in the Roman environs and the finest now remaining, the
Cardinal enjoys his game of golf, of which he is very fond. The Doria
family rendered the villa magnificent in every respect. Besides the
spacious avenues, woods, fountains, a lake, and cascades, are various
edifices, among which is one in the form of a triumphal arch, decorated
with ancient statues; the casino of the villa in which are preserved
some ancient marbles and several pictures; the beautiful circular
chapel, adorned with eight columns of marble and other stately
ornaments. There is a monument erected by the present Prince Doria to
the memory of the French soldiers who were killed there during the siege
of 1849. From the terrace of the palace there is a magnificent view of
the environs of Rome, as far as the sea. In consequence of excavations,
some columbaria, sepulchres, inscriptions, and other relics have been
found, which have attracted much attention from archæologists.
It is near these grounds that the "Arcadians" still hold their _al
fresco_ meetings. The society dates back to 1690, and the first _custos_
(whose duty was to open and close the meetings) was Crescimbeni. The
"Arcadians" organized themselves to protest against the degeneracy of
Italian poetry that marked the seventeenth century. To keep their
meetings a secret from the populace the "Arcadians" held their meetings
in an open garden on the slope below San Pietro in Montorio,--a terrace
still known as "Bosco Parrasio degli Arcadi."
One of the enchanting views in Rome is from the Piazza San Giovanni. One
looks far away past the Coliseum in its ruined grandeur and the _casa_
where Lucrezia Borgia lived, and in the near distance is the colossal
pile of San Giovanni di Laterano, its beautiful and impressive façade
crowned with the statues of the apostles silhouetted against the western
sky. In the piazza formed by the church, the museums, and the Baptistery
of San Giovanni and the Scala Santa is one of the most remarkable
obelisks in Rome, ninety-nine feet in height, formed of red granite and
carved with hieroglyphics. This shaft is placed on a pedestal which
makes it in all some 115 feet in height. It was placed in 1568 by Sixtus
V. The museums of the San Giovanni are the "Museo Sacro" and the "Museo
Profano,"--the latter founded by Pope Gregory XVI, and very rich in
sculptures and mosaics. The "Museo Sacro" was founded by Pio Nono, and
is rich in the antiquities of the Christian era. Within San Giovanni
the visitor finds himself in a vast interior divided by columns of
verd-antique into three aisles, each of which is as wide as, and far
longer than, the interior of an ordinary church. Statues fill the
niches, and the chapels and confessionals are all beautifully decorated.
The Corsini Chapel is the richest and was executed by order of Clement
XII, in honor of St. Andrew Corsini, who is represented in a rich mosaic
painting copied from Guido. Two sculptured figures, "Innocence" and
"Penitence," stand before the altar, and above is a relief depicting St.
Andrew protecting the Florentine army at the battle of Anghiari.
The tomb of Pope Clement XII (who himself belonged to the Corsini family
and who was an uncle of Cardinal Corsini) is in a niche between two
columns of porphyry, and there is a bronze statue of the Pope. On the
opposite side is a statue of Cardinal Corsini, and in the crypt below
are tombs of the Corsini family. On the altar--always lighted--is a
"Pieta" by Bernini, of which the face of the Christ is very beautiful.
Near the centre of the Basilica is a rich tabernacle of precious stones,
defined by four columns of _verde antico_, and it is said that the
heads of St. Peter and St. Paul are preserved here. The table upon which
Christ celebrated the Last Supper is placed here, above the altar of the
Holy Sacrament, a sacred relic that thrills the visitors. In one chapel
is a curious and grotesque group of sculpture,--a skeleton holding up a
medallion portrait, while an angel with outstretched wings hovers over
it.
San Giovanni has the reputation of being absolutely the coldest church
in all Rome, which--it is needless to remark--means a great deal, for
they all in winter have the temperature of the arctic regions. In all
these great churches there is never any heat; no apparatus for heating
has ever been introduced, and the twentieth century finds them just as
cold as they were in the centuries of a thousand years ago. This
colossal Basilica is considered the most important church in the world,
as it is the cathedral of the Pontiff. It was founded in the third
century by Constantine, destroyed by fire in 1308, and rebuilt by Pope
Clement V, and every succeeding Pope has added to it. The façade is of
travertine, with four gigantic columns and six pilasters, and the
cornice is decorated with colossal figures of Jesus and a number of the
saints. There are five balconies, the middle one being always used for
papal benedictions. In the portico is the colossal statue of Constantine
the Great. Within the columns are of _verde antico_; the ceiling was
designed by Michael Angelo; the interior is very rich in sculpture, and
there are some fine paintings and the chapels are most beautiful, one of
them containing a tabernacle comprised wholly of precious stones. Above
the altar of the Holy Sacrament the table upon which Christ celebrated
the Last Supper with the disciples is preserved. It is wonderful to look
upon this most sacred and significant relic.
It is in this church that the tomb of Leo XIII has been constructed by
the eminent Italian sculptor, Tadolini, opposite the tomb of Innocent
III. The work was completed in the spring of 1907, the design being a
life-size portrait statue of the Pope with two figures, one on either
side, representing the church and the workman-pilgrim, forming part of
the group. This is one of the most memorable monuments of all Rome, and
the tomb of the great Leo XIII will form a new shrine for Christian
pilgrimage.
Included in the group of structures that form the great Basilica of San
Giovanni is the Scala Santa, which offers a strange picture whenever one
approaches it. These twenty-eight marble steps that belonged to Pilate's
house in Jerusalem are said to have been once trodden by Jesus and may
be ascended only on one's knees. At no hour of the day can one visit the
Scala Santa without finding the most motley and incongruous throng thus
ascending, pausing on each step for meditation and prayer. These stairs
were transported from Jerusalem to Rome under the auspices of St.
Helena, the Empress, about 326 A.D., and in 1589 they were placed by
Pope Sixtus V in this portico built for them with a chapel at the top of
the stairs called the "Sancta Sanctorum," formerly the private chapel of
the Popes. In this sanctuary is preserved a wonderful portrait of the
Saviour, painted on wood, which is said to have been partly the work of
St. Luke but finished by unseen hands. The legend runs that St. Luke
prepared to undertake the work by three days' fasting and prayer, and
that, having drawn it in outline, the painting was done by angelic
ministry, the colors being filled in by invisible hands. In ancient
times--the custom being abolished by Pius V in 1566--this picture was
borne through Rome on the Feast of the Assumption and the bearer halted
with it in the Forum, when the "Kyrie Eleison" would be chanted by
hundreds of voices.
Myth and legend invest every turn and footfall of the Eternal City, and
there are few that are not founded on what the church has always called
supernatural manifestations, but which the new age is learning to
recognize as occurrences under natural law.
The story of Luther's ascent of the Scala Santa is thus told:--
"Brother Martin Luther went to accomplish the ascent of the Scala
Santa--the Holy Staircase--which once, they say, formed part of
Pilate's house. He slowly mounted step after step of the hard
stone, worn into hollows by the knees of penitents and pilgrims.
Patiently he crept halfway up the staircase, when he suddenly stood
erect, lifted his face heavenward, and in another moment turned
and walked slowly down again.
"He said that as he was toiling up a voice as if from heaven spoke
to him and said, 'The just shall live by faith.' He awoke as if
from a nightmare, restored to himself. He dared not creep up
another step; but rising from his knees he stood upright like a man
suddenly loosed from bonds and fetters, and with the firm step of a
free man he descended the staircase and walked from the place."
The entire legendary as well as sacred history is almost made up of
instances of the interpenetration of the two worlds; the response of
those in the spiritual world to the needs of those in the natural world.
Pope Paschal recorded that he fell asleep in his chair at St. Peter's
(somewhere about 8.20 A.M.) with a prayer on his lips that he might find
the burial place of St. Cecilia, and in his dream she appeared to him
and showed him the spot where her body lay, in the catacombs of
Calixtus. The next day he went to the spot and found all as had been
revealed to him. The miraculous preservation of St. Agnes is familiar to
all students of legendary art. Throughout all Rome, shrine and niche
and sculpture, picture, monument, arch and column, speak perpetually of
some interposition of unseen forces with events and circumstances in
this part of life. The Eternal City in its rich and poetic symbolism is
one great object lesson of the interblending of the two worlds, the
natural and the spiritual. The first stage regarding all this marvellous
panorama was entire and unquestioning acceptance; the succeeding stage
was doubt, disbelief; the third, into which we are now entering, is that
of an enlightened understanding and a growing knowledge and grasp of the
laws under which these special interpositions and interventions occur.
For that "according to thy faith be it unto thee," is as true now in the
twentieth century as it was in the first. The one central truth that is
the very foundation of all religious philosophy is the continuity of
life and the persistence of intercourse and communion, spirit to spirit,
across the gulf we call death. The evidences of this truth have been
always in the world. The earliest records of the Bible are replete with
them. The gospels of the New Testament record an unbroken succession
of occurrences and of testimony to this interpenetration of life in the
Unseen with that in the Seen. Secular history is full of its narrations
of instances of clairvoyance, clairaudience, and of communications in a
variety of ways; and the sacred and legendary art of Rome, largely
founded on story and myth and legend, when seen in the light of
latter-day science is judged anew, and the literal truth of much that
has before been considered purely legendary is revealed and realized.
One reads new meanings into Rome when testing it by this consciousness.
It is a city of spiritual symbolism. It is a great object lesson
extending over all the centuries. Making due allowance for the
distortion and exaggeration of ages of testimony, there yet remains a
residuum indisputable. The Past and the Present both teem with record
and incident and experience proving that life is twofold, even now and
here; that all the motives and acts of the life which we see are
variously incited, modified, strengthened, or annulled by those in the
realm of the Unseen.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO VILLA PAMPHILIA-DORIA, ROME
_Page 159_]
The intelligent recognition of this truth changes the entire conduct of
life. It entirely alters the point of view. It extends the horizon line
infinitely. Instead of conceiving of life as a whole, as comprised
between the cradle and the grave, it will be regarded in its larger and
truer scope as a series of experiences and achievements, infinite in
length and in their possibilities and unbroken by the change we call
death. This will impart to humanity a new motor spring in that greater
hope which puts man in a working mood, which makes him believe in the
value of that which he undertakes, which encourages him to press on amid
all difficulties and against all obstacles. Increasing hope, all
activity is proportionately increased. It was an event of incalculable
importance to the progress of humanity when the swift communication by
cable was established between America and Europe. It is one of
infinitely greater importance to establish the truth and enlarge the
possibility of direct communication with the world of higher forces and
larger attainment and scope than our own. This communication exists and
has always existed, but it has been regarded as myth and legend and
phenomenon rather than as a fact of nature whose laws were to be
ascertained and understood. It must be made clear as an absolute
scientific demonstration that the change of form by the process we call
death does not put an end to intelligent and rational intercourse, but
that, indeed, instead of setting up a barrier, it removes barriers and
renders mutual comprehension far clearer and more direct than before.
This realization alters the entire perspective of life, and is the new
Glad Tidings of great joy.
It is something of all this that the Eternal City suggests to one as he
makes his pilgrimages to shrine and cloister and chapel and Basilica.
The mighty Past is eloquent with a thousand voices, and they blend into
a choral harmony of promise and prophecy for the nobler future of
humanity.
At the foot of the Scala Santa, on either side, are statues of Christ
and Judas, and of Christ and Pilate, very interesting groups by
Jacometti, and there is also a kneeling statue of Pio Nono.
The statue of Judas is considered one of the most notable of the late
modern Italian sculpture.
The Rome of to-day is in strange contrast even to the city that Page and
Hawthorne knew, in the comparatively recent past; and the Rome of the
ancients is traced only in the churches and the ruins. It is a _mot_
that one hears every language spoken in Rome, except the Italian! So
largely has the Seven-hilled City become the pleasure ground of foreign
residents. The contrast between the ordinary breakfast-table talk in
Rome and in--Boston, for instance, or Washington, is amusing. In the
Puritan capital it usually includes the topic of weather predictions and
the news in the morning paper, with whatever other of local or personal
matters of interest. In Washington, where the very actors and the events
that make the nation's history are fairly before one's eyes, the
breakfast-table conversation is apt to turn on matters that have not yet
got into the papers,--the evening session of the previous night,
perhaps, when too long prolonged under the vast dome to admit of its
having been noted in the morning press. But in Rome the breakfast-table
talk is apt to be of the new excavations just taken from the bed of the
Tiber; the question as to whether the head of St. Paul could have
touched (at the tragic scene of his execution) at three places so far
apart as the tri-fontanes; or a discussion of the marvellous freshness
of the mosaics in the interior of the Palace of the Cæsars; or, again,
of the last night's balls or dinners, and matters most frankly
_mondaine_, and of contemporary life.
The American Embassy, whose location depends on the individual choice of
the Ambassador of the time, is now in the old Palazzo del Drago on the
corner of the Via Venti Settembre and the Via delle Quattro Fontane. The
street floor, like all the old palaces, is not used for living purposes.
The portiere, the guards, the corridors, and approaches to the
staircases monopolize this space. The piano nobile is the residence of
the beautiful and lovely Principessa d'Antuni, the youthful widow of the
Principe who was himself a grandson of Marie Christine, the Queen of
Spain. The young Princess who was married to him at the age of
seventeen, ten years ago, is left with three little children, of whom
the only daughter bears the name of her great-grandmother, the Spanish
Queen. Perfectly at home in all the romance languages, an accomplished
musician, a thinker, a scholar, a student, a lovely figure in life, a
beautiful and sympathetic friend is the Princess d'Antuni. She is "of a
simplicity," as they say in Italy, investing the dignity of her rank
with indescribable grace and sweetness. The two long flights of stairs
that lead up to the secundo piano in the Palazzo del Drago--the floor
occupied by the American Embassy--have at least a hundred steps to each
staircase, yet so broad and easy of ascent as hardly to fatigue one.
These flights are carpeted in glowing red, while along the wall are
niches in each of which stands an old statue, making the ascent of the
guest seem a classic progress.
The Palazzo del Drago has an elevator, but elevator service in Rome is a
thing apart, something considered quite too good for human nature's
daily food, and the slight power is far too little to permit any number
of people to be accommodated, so on any ceremonial occasion the elevator
is closed and the guests walk up the two long flights. The total lack of
any mastery of mechanical conditions in Italy is very curious.
The grand ball given at the American Embassy just before Ash Wednesday
in the winter of 1907 was a very pretty affair. Up the rose-red carpeted
stairs the guests walked, the statues looking silently on, but
apparently there was no Galatea to step down from her niche and join the
happy throng. In the antechamber each guest was asked to write his name
in the large autograph books kept for that purpose, and then, passing
on, was received by the Ambassador and Ambassadress in the first of the
splendid series of salons thrown open for the occasion. At this time it
was Mr. and Mrs. Henry White who represented the United States, and won
the hearts of all Rome as well, and assisted by their charming daughter,
Miss Muriel White, they made this ball an affair to leave its lovely
pictures in memory. The scenic setting of an old Roman palace captivates
the stranger. It may not impress him as especially comfortable, but it
is certainly picturesque, and who would not prefer--at least for the
"one night only" of the traditional _prima donna_ announcements--the
pictorially picturesque and magnificent to the merely comfortable? The
lofty ceilings, painted by artists who have long since vanished from
mortal sight, make it impossible to attain the temperature that the
American regards as essential to his terrestrial well-being, and as the
only sources of heat were the open fireplaces the guests hovered around
these and their radii of comfortable warmth were limited. In one salon
there was one especially beautiful effect of a great jar of white lilacs
placed before a vast mirror at sufficient distance to give the mirror
reflection an individuality as a thing apart, and the effect was that of
a very garden of paradise. The music was fascinating, the decorations
all in good taste, and the occasion was most brilliant,--_très
charmante_ indeed. The American ambassadress was ablaze with her famous
diamonds, her corsage being literally covered with them, and her
coiffure adorned with a coronet, but the temperature soon forced the
ambassadress to partially eclipse her splendor with the little ermine
shoulder cape that is an indispensable article for evening dress in
Rome. The temperature does not admit the possibility of _décolleté_
gowns without some protection, when these resplendent glittering robes
that seem woven of the stars are worn. Among the more distinguished
guests, aside from the _corps diplomatique_ and the titled nobility of
Rome and visiting foreigners, were M. Carolus Duran, the celebrated
portrait artist of Paris, and among other interesting people were Miss
Elise Emmons of Leamington, England, a grand-niece of Charlotte Cushman.
M. Carolus Duran was very magnificent, his breast covered with jewelled
orders and decorations from the various societies, academies, and
governments that have honored him. He is a short man and has grown quite
stout, but he carries himself with inimitable grace and dignity, and in
his luminous eyes one still surprises that far-away look which Sargent
so wonderfully caught in his portrait of the great French artist,
painted in his earlier life.
The number of spacious salons with their easy-chairs and sofas enabled
all guests who desired to ensconce themselves luxuriously to do so, and
watch the glittering scene. The supper room and the salon for dancing
were not more alluring than the salons wherein one could study this
brilliant throng of diplomates, titled nobility, distinguished artists,
social celebrities, and those who were, in various ways, each _persona
grata_ in Rome. Among those at this particular festivity were the
American novelist, Frank Hamilton Spearman, with Mrs. Spearman. In late
American fiction Mr. Spearman has made for himself a distinctive place
as the novelist whose artistic eye has discerned the romance in the new
phases of life created by the extensive systems of mountain railroading,
and the great irrigation schemes of the far West, which have not only
opened up new territory, but have called into evidence new combinations
of the qualities most potent in human life,--love, sacrifice, heroism,
devotion to duty, and tragedy and comedy as well. In his novels, "The
Daughter of a Magnate" and "Whispering Smith," in such vivid and
delightful short stories as "The Ghost at Point of Rocks," which
appeared in _Scribner's Magazine_ for August of 1907, Mr. Spearman has
dramatized the pathos, the wit, the vast and marvellous spirit of
enterprise, the desolation of isolated regions, the all-pervading
potency and one may almost say intimacy of modern life made possible by
the Arabian Nights' dream of wireless telegraphy, "soaring" cars,
long-distance telephoning, and lightning express train service in cars
that climb the mountains beyond the clouds, or dash through tunnels with
ten thousand feet of mountains above them. Mr. Spearman is the novelist
_par excellence_ of this intense _vie modernité_.
On Washington's Birthday, again, the stately salons of the American
Embassy in the old Palazzo del Drago were well filled from four to six
with an assemblage which expressed its patriotism and devotion to
Washington by appearing in its most faultless raiment and in an apparent
appreciation of the refreshment tables, from which cake and ices, tea
and various other delicacies, were served.
The informal weekly receptions at the Embassy are always delightful, and
the dinners and ceremonial entertainments are given with that faultless
grace which characterizes the American ambassadress.
The American consulate is always a charming centre in Rome, and in the
present residence of Consul-General and Mrs. De Castro, who have
domiciled themselves on a lofty floor of a palace in the Via Venti
Settembre, commanding beaut
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