New Italian sketches

To comprehend Tintoretto's touch upon the pastoral idyll we must turn our steps to San Giorgio again, and pace those meadows by the running river in company with his Manna-Gathe...

St. Catherine, in this incomparable fresco, is a portrait, the history of which so strikingly illustrates the relation of the arts to religion on the one hand, and to life on th...

The family of Tolomei was among the noblest of the Sienese aristocracy. On May 10, 1272, Mino Tolomei and his wife Fulvia, of the Tancredi, had a son whom they christened Giovan...

Take yet another night. There had been a representation of Verdi's "Forza del Destino" at the Teatro Malibran. After midnight we walked homeward through the Merceria, crossed th...

A farewell to these memories of Urbino's dukedom should be taken in the crypt of the cathedral, where Francesco Maria II., the last Duke, buried his only son and all his tempora...

The last years of the fifteenth century were marked by the sudden rise of Cesare Borgia to a power which threatened the liberties of Italy. Acting as General for the Church, he...

The Colleoni, or Coglioni, family were of considerable antiquity and well authenticated nobility in the town of Bergamo. Two lions' heads conjoined formed one of their canting e...

Colleoni died in the year 1475, at the age of seventy-five. Since he left no male representative, he constituted the Republic of St. Mark his heir in chief, after properly provi...

The baptistery frescos, dealing with the legend of St. John, show a remarkable advance; and they are luckily in better preservation. A soldier lifting his two-handed sword to st...

Dimly burned the spark. But Gerardo, being aware of it, became a man again. Then, having taken counsel with the captain, both resolved to bear her to that brave man's mother's h...

At half-past three, Eustace and I again prepared ourselves for action. His gondola was in attendance, covered with the _felze_, to take us to the house of the _sposa_. We found...

After leaving La Magione, the road descends upon the Lake of Thrasymene through oak-woods full of nightingales. The Lake lay basking, leaden-coloured, smooth and waveless, under...

The landscape and the wine of Montepulciano are both well worth the trouble of a visit to this somewhat inaccessible city. Yet more remains to be said about the attractions of t...

The main object of a visit to Montefalco is to inspect its many excellent frescoes; painted histories of S. Francis and S. Jerome, by Benozzo Gozzoli; saints, angels, and Script...

Called to graver work at Orvieto, where he painted his gigantic series of frescoes illustrating the coming of Antichrist, the Destruction of the World, the Resurrection, the Las...

An Italian of this type, handsome as an antique statue, with the refinement of a modern gentleman and that intelligence which is innate in a race of immemorial culture, is a fas...

S. Quirico was keeping _festa_. The streets were crowded with healthy handsome men and women from the contado. This village lies on the edge of a great oasis in the Sienese dese...

In this theatre I mused one morning after visiting Fornovo; and the thoughts suggested by the battlefield found their proper atmosphere in the dilapidated place. What, indeed, i...

+---------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original | | document has been preserved....

Meanwhile the incantation swelled in shrillness, the electric shudders deepened. Alone in this elemental overture to tempest I took no note of time, but felt, through self-aband...

Giuseppe led us down those curious volcanic _balze_, where the soil is soft as marl, with tints splashed on it of pale green and rose and orange, and a faint scent in it of sulp...

Terribly verified as these words were destined to be--and they were no less prophetic in their political sagacity than Savonarola's prediction of the Sword and bloody Scourge--i...

In the picture-gallery at Modena there is a masterpiece of Dosso Dossi. The frame is old and richly carved; and the painting, bordered by its beautiful dull gold, shines with th...