Chapter 17
The evening concluded with a lively burlesque, entitled "_Il Mercato d'Amore_" which represented Love as setting up a shop to sell "_la Mercanzia della Gioventù_." The list of his stock in trade, though it could not boast of much originality, was given with admirable wit and vivacity. In conclusion, Love being threatened with a bankruptcy, took shelter, as the poet assured us, in the bright eyes of the ladies present. This farewell compliment was prettily turned, and intended, of course, to be general: but it happened, luckily for Sestini, that just opposite to him, and fixed upon him at the moment, were two of the brightest eyes in the world. Whether he owed any of his inspiration to their beams I know not; but the _à-propos_ of the compliment was seized immediately, and loudly applauded by the gentlemen round us.
Sestini is a young man, apparently about five-and-twenty: of a slight and delicate figure, and in his whole appearance, odd, wild, and picturesque. He has the common foreign trick of running his fingers through his black bushy hair; and accordingly it stands on end in all directions. A pair of immense whiskers, equally black and luxuriant, meet at the point of his chin, encircling a visage of most cadaverous hue, and features which might be termed positively ugly, were it not for the "_vago spirito ardento_" which shines out from his dark eyes, and the fire and intelligence which light up his whole countenance, till it almost kindles into beauty. Though he afterwards conversed with apparent ease, and replied to the compliments of the company, he was evidently much exhausted by his exertions. I should fear that their frequent repetition, and the effervescence of mind, and nervous excitement they cannot but occasion, must gradually wear out his delicate frame and feeble temperament, and that the career of this extraordinary genius will be short as it is brilliant.[U]
_April 8._--As Maupertuis said after his journey to Lapland--for the universe I would not have missed the sights and scenes of yesterday; but, for the whole universe, I would not undergo such another day of fatigue, anxiety, and feverish excitement.
In the morning about ten o'clock, we all went down to St. Peter's, to hear high mass. The absence of the Pope (who is still extremely ill) detracted from the interest and dignity of the ceremony: there was no general benediction from the balcony of St. Peter's; and nothing pleased me, except the general _coup d'oeil_; which in truth was splendid. The theatrical dresses of the mitred priests, the countless multitude congregated from every part of Christendom, in every variety of national costume, the immensity and magnificence of the church, and the glorious sunshine--all these enchanted the eye; but I could have fancied myself in a theatre. I saw no devotion, and I felt none. The whole appeared more like a triumphal pageant acted in honour of a heathen deity, than an act of worship and thanksgiving to the Great Father of all.
I observed an immense number of pilgrims, male and female, who had come from various parts of Italy to visit the shrine of St. Peter on this grand occasion. I longed to talk to a man who stood near me, with a very singular and expressive countenance, whose cape and looped hat were entirely covered with scallop shells and reliques, and his long staff surmounted by a death's head.
I was restrained by a feeling which I now think rather ridiculous: I feared, lest by conversing with him, I should diminish the effect his romantic and picturesque figure had made on my imagination.
The exposition of the relics was from a balcony half way up the dome, so high and distant that I could distinguish nothing but the impression of our Saviour's face on the handkerchief of St. Veronica, richly framed--at the sight whereof the whole multitude prostrated themselves to the earth: the other relics I forget, but they were all equally marvellous and equally credible.
We returned after a long fatiguing morning to an early dinner; and then drove again to the Piazza of St. Peter's, to see the far-famed illumination of the church. We had to wait a considerable time; but the scene was so novel and beautiful, that I found ample amusement in my own thoughts and observations. The twilight rapidly closed round us: the long lines of statues along the roof and balustrades, faintly defined against the evening sky, looked like spirits come down to gaze; a prodigious crowd of carriages, and people on foot, filled every avenue: but all was still, except when a half-suppressed murmur of impatience broke through the hushed silence of suspense and expectation. At length, on a signal, which was given by the firing of a cannon, the whole of the immense façade and dome, even up to the cross on the summit, and the semicircular colonnades in front, burst into a blaze, as if at the touch of an enchanter's wand; adding the pleasure of surprise to that of delight and wonder. The carriages now began to drive rapidly round the piazza, each with a train of running footmen, flinging their torches round and dashing them against the ground. The shouts and acclamations of the crowd, the stupendous building with all its architectural outlines and projections, defined in lines of living flame, the universal light, the sparkling of the magnificent fountains--produced an effect far beyond any thing I could have anticipated, and more like the gorgeous fictions of the Arabian Nights, than any earthy reality.
After driving round the piazza, we adjourned to a balcony which had been hired for us overlooking the Tiber, and exactly opposite to the Castle of St. Angelo. Hence we commanded a view of the fireworks, which were truly superb, but made me so nervous and giddy with noise and light and wonder, that I was rejoiced when all was over. A flight of a thousand sky-rockets sent up at once, blotting the stars and the moonlight--dazzling our eyes, stunning our ears, and amazing all our senses together, concluded the Holy Week at Rome.
To-morrow morning we start for Florence, and to-night I close this second volume of my Diary. Thanks to my little ingenious Frenchmen in the Via Santa Croce, I have procured a lock for a third volume, almost equal to my patent _Bramah_ in point of security, though very unlike it in every other respect.
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_Viterbo_, _April 9._--"In every bosom Italy is the _second_ country in the world, the surest proof that it is in reality the _first_."
This elegant and just observation occurs, I think, in Arthur Young's travels; I am not sure I quote the words correctly, but the sense will come home to every cultivated mind with the force of a proverbial truism.
One leaves Naples as a man parts with an enchanting mistress, and Rome as we would bid adieu to an old and dear-loved friend. I love it, and grieve to leave it for its own sake; it is painful to quit a place where we leave behind us many whom we love and regret; and almost or quite as painful, I think, to quit a place in which we leave behind us no one to regret, or think of us more; a feeling like this mingled with the sorrow with which I bade adieu to Rome this morning.
Our journey has been fatiguing, _triste_, and tedious.
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_Radicofani_, _10th._--I could almost regret at this moment that I am past the age of romance, for I am in a fine situation for mysterious and imaginary horrors, could I but feel again as I did at gay sixteen; but, alas! _ces beaux jours sont passés_! and here I am on the top of a dreary black mountain, in a rambling old inn which looks like a ci-devant hospital or dismantled barracks, in a bed-room which resembles one of the wards of a poor-house, one little corner lighted by my lamp, and the other three parts all lost in black ominous darkness; while a tempest rages without as if it would break in the rattling casements, and burst the roof over our heads; and yet, insensible that I am! I can calmly take up my pen to amuse myself by scribbling, since sleep is impossible. I can look round my vast and solitary room without fancying a ghost or an assassin in every corner, and listen to the raving and lamenting of the storm, without imagining I hear in every gust the shrieks of wailing spirits, or the groans of murdered travellers; only wishing that the wind were rather less cold, or my fire a little brighter, or my dormitory less _infinitely_ spacious; for at present its boundaries are invisible.
The first part of our journey this morning was delightful and picturesque; we passed the beautiful lake of Bolsena and Montepulciano, so famous for its wine (_il Rei di Vino_, as Redi calls it in the _Bacco in Toscana_). Later in the day we entered a gloomy and desolate country; and after crossing the rapid and muddy torrent of Rigo, which, as our _Guide des Voyageurs_ wittily informs us, we shall have to cross _four_ times if we are not drowned the _third_ time, we began to ascend the mountainous region which divides the Tuscan from the Roman states--a succession of wild barren hills, intersected in every direction by deep ravines, and presenting a scene, sublime indeed from its waste and wild grandeur, but destitute of all beauty, interest, magnificence and variety.
I remember the strange emotion which came across me, when--on the horses stopping to breathe on the summit of a lofty ridge, where all around, as far as the eye could reach, nothing was to be seen but the same unvarying, miserable, heart-sinking barrenness, without a trace of human habitation, except the black fort or the highest point of Radicofani--a soft sound of bells came over my ear as if brought upon the wind. There is something in the sound of bells in the midst of a solitude which is singularly striking, and may be cheering or melancholy, according to the mood in which we may happen to be.
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_Florence, April 14._--I have not written a word since we arrived at Sienna. What would it avail me to keep a mere journal of suffering? O that I could change as others do, could forget that such things have been which can never be again! that there were not this tenacity in my heart and soul which clings to the shadow though the substance be gone!
This is not a mere effusion of low spirits; I was never more cheerful. I have just left a gay party, where Mr. Rogers (whom by special good fortune we meet at every resting-place, and who dined with us to-day) has been entertaining us delightfully. I disdain low spirits as a mere disease which comes over us, generally from some physical or external cause; to prescribe for them is as easy as to disguise them is difficult: but the hopeless, cureless sadness of a heart which droops with regret, and throbs with resentment, is easily, very easily disguised, but not so easily banished. I hear every body round me congratulating themselves, and _me_ more particularly, that we have at last reached Florence, that we are so far advanced on our road homewards, that soon we shall be at Paris, and Paris is to do wonders--Paris and Dr. R** are to _set me up_ again, as the phrase is. But I shall never be set up again, I shall never live to reach Paris; none can tell how I sicken at the very name of that detested place; none seem aware how fast, how very fast the principle of life is burning away within me: but why should I speak? and what earthly help can now avail me? I can suffer in silence, I can conceal the weakness which increases upon me, by retiring, as if from choice and not necessity, from all exertion not absolutely inevitable; and the change is so gradual, none will perceive it till the great change of all comes, and then I shall be at rest.
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Florence looked most beautiful as we approached it from the south, girt with her theatre of verdant hills, and glittering in the sunshine. All the country from Sienna to Florence is richly cultivated; diversified with neat hamlets, farms and villas. I was more struck with the appearance of the Tuscan peasantry on my return from the Papal dominions than when we passed through the country before: no where in Tuscany have we seen that look of abject negligent poverty, those crowds of squalid beggars which shocked us in the Ecclesiastical States. In the towns where we stopped to change horses, we were presently surrounded by a crowd of people: the women came out spinning, or sewing and plaiting the Leghorn hats; the children threw flowers into our barouche, the men grinned and gaped, but there was no vociferous begging, no disgusting display of physical evils, filth, and wretchedness. The motive was merely that idle curiosity for which the Florentines in all ages have been remarked. I remember an amusing instance which occurred when I was here in December last. I was standing one evening in the Piazza del Gran Duca, looking at the group of the Rape of the Sabines: in a few minutes a dozen people gathered round me, gaping at the statue, and staring at that and at me alternately, either to enjoy my admiration, or find out the cause of it: the people came out of the neighbouring shops, and the crowd continued to increase, till at length, though infinitely amused, I was glad to make my escape.
I suffered from cold when first we arrived at Florence, owing to the change of climate, or rather to mere weakness and fatigue: to-day I begin to doubt the possibility of outliving an Italian summer. The blazing atmosphere which depresses the eyelids, the enervating heat, and the rich perfume of the flowers all around us, are almost too much.
_April 20._--During our stay at Florence, it has been one of my favourite occupations to go to the Gallery or the Pitti Palace, and placing my portable seat opposite to some favourite pictures, minutely study and compare the styles of the different masters. By the style of any particular painter, I presume we mean to express the combination of two separate essentials--first, his peculiar conception of his subject; secondly, his peculiar method of executing that conception, with regard to colouring, drawing, and what artists call handling. The former department of style lies in the mind, and will vary according to the feelings, the temper, the personal habits, and previous education of the painter: the latter is merely mechanical, and is technically termed the _manner_ of a painter; it may be cold or warm, hard, dry, free, strong, tender: as we say the cold manner of Sasso Ferrato, the warm manner of Giorgione, the hard manner of Holbein, the dry manner of Perugino, the free manner of Rubens, the strong manner of Carravaggio, and so forth; I heard an amateur once observe, that one of Morland's Pig-sties was painted with great _feeling_: all this refers merely to mechanical execution.
I am no connaisseur; and I should have lamented, as a misfortune, the want of some fixed principles of taste and criticism to guide my judgment; some nomenclature by which to express certain effects, peculiarities, and excellencies which I felt, rather than understood; if my own ignorance had not afforded considerable amusement to myself, and perhaps to others. I have derived some gratification from observing the gradual improvement of my own taste: and from comparing the decisions of my own unassisted judgment and natural feelings, with the fiat of profound critics and connaisseurs: the result has been sometimes mortifying, sometimes pleasing. Had I visited Italy in the character of a ready-made connaisseur, I should have lost many pleasures; for as the eye becomes more practised, the taste becomes more discriminative and fastidious; and the more extensive our acquaintance with the works of art, the more limited is our sphere of admiration; as if the circle of enjoyment contracted round us, in proportion as our sense of beauty became more intense and exquisite. A thousand things which once had power to charm, can charm no longer; but, _en revanche_, those which _do_ please, please a thousand times more: thus what we lose on one side, we gain on the other. Perhaps, on the whole, a technical knowledge of the arts is apt to divert the mind from the general effect, to fix it on petty details of execution. Here comes a connaisseur, who has found his way, good man! from Somerset House, to the Tribune at Florence: see him with one hand passed across his brow, to shade the light, while the other extended forwards, describes certain indescribable circumvolutions in the air, and now he retires, now advances, now recedes again, till he has hit the exact distance from which every point of beauty is displayed to the best possible advantage, and there he stands--gazing, as never gazed the moon upon the waters, or love-sick maiden upon the moon! We take him perhaps for another Pygmalion? We imagine that it is those parted and half-breathing lips, those eyes that _seem_ to float in light; the pictured majesty of suffering virtue, or the tears of repenting loveliness; the divinity of beauty, or "_the beauty of holiness_," which have thus transfixed him? No such thing: it is _fleshiness_ of the tints, the _vaghezza_ of the colouring, the brilliance of the carnations, the fold of a robe, or the fore-shortening of a little finger. O! whip me such connaisseurs! the critic's stop-watch was nothing to this.
Mere mechanical excellence, and all the tricks of art have their praise as long as they are subordinate and conduce to the general effect. In painting as in her sister arts it is necessary
"Che l'arte che tutto fa nulla si scuopre."
Of course I do not speak here of the Dutch school, whose highest aim, and highest praise, is exquisite mechanical precision in the representation of common nature and still life: but of those pictures which are the productions of mind, which address themselves to the understanding, the fancy, the feelings, and convey either a moral or a poetical pleasure.
In taking a retrospective view of all the best collections in Italy and of the Italian school in particular, I have been struck by the endless multiplication of the same subjects, crucifixions, martyrdoms, and other scripture horrors;--virgins, saints, and holy families. The prevalence of the former class of subjects is easily explained, and has been ingeniously defended; but it is not so easily reconciled to the imagination. The mind and the eye are shocked and fatigued by the succession of revolting and sanguinary images which pollute the walls of every palace, church, gallery, and academy, from Milan to Naples. The splendour of the execution only adds to their hideousness; we at once seek for nature, and tremble to find it. It is hateful to see the loveliest of the arts degraded to such butcher-work. I have often gone to visit a famed collection with a secret dread of being led through a sort of intellectual shambles, and returned with the feeling of one who had supped full of horrors. I do not know how _men_ think, and feel, though I believe many a man, who with every other feeling absorbed in overpowering interest, could look unshrinking upon a real scene of cruelty and blood, would shrink away disgusted and sickened from the cold, obtrusive, _painted_ representation of the same object; for the truth of this I appeal to men. I can only see with woman's eyes, and think and feel as I believe every woman _must_, whatever may be her love for the arts. I remember that in one of the palaces at Milan--(I think it was in the collection of the Duca Litti)--we were led up to a picture defended from the air by a plate of glass, and which being considered as the gem of the collection, was reserved for the last as a kind of _bonne bouche_. I gave but one glance, and turned away loathing, shuddering, sickening. The cicerone looked amazed at my bad taste, he assured me it was _un vero Correggio_ (which by the way I can never believe), and that the duke had refused for it I know not how many thousand scudi. It would be difficult to say what was most execrable in this picture, the appalling nature of the subject, the depravity of mind evinced in its conception, or the horrible truth and skill with which it was delineated. I ought to add that it hung up in the family dining-room and in full view of the dinner-table.
There is as picture among the chefs-d'oeuvres in the Vatican, which, if I were pope (or Pope Joan) for a single day, should be burnt by the common hangman, "with the smoke of its ashes to poison the air," as it now poisons the sight by its unutterable horrors. There is another in the Palazzo Pitti, at which I shiver still, and unfortunately there is no avoiding it, as they have hung it close to Guido's lovely Cleopatra. In the gallery there is a Judith and Holofernes which irresistibly strikes the attention--if any thing would add to the horror inspired by the sanguinary subject, and the atrocious fidelity and talent with which it is expressed, it is that the artist was a _woman_. I must confess that Judith is not one of my favourite heroines; but I can more easily conceive how a woman inspired by vengeance and patriotism could execute such a deed, than that she could coolly sit down, and day after day, hour after hour, touch after touch, dwell upon and almost realize to the eye such an abomination as this.
We can study anatomy, if (like a certain princess) we have a taste that way, in the surgeon's dissecting-room; we do not look upon pictures to have our minds agonized and contaminated by the sight of human turpitude and barbarity, streaming blood, quivering flesh, wounds, tortures, death, and horrors in every shape, even though it should be all very _natural_. Painting has been called the handmaid of nature; is it not the duty of a handmaid to array her mistress to the best possible advantage? At least to keep her infirmities from view and not to expose her too undressed?
But I am not so weak, so cowardly, so fastidious, as to shrink from every representation of human suffering, provided that our sympathy be not strained beyond a certain point. To _please_ is the genuine aim of painting, as of all the fine arts; when pleasure is conveyed through deeply excited interest, by affecting the passions, the senses, and the imagination, painting assumes a higher character, and almost vies with tragedy: in fact, it _is_ tragedy to the eye, and is amenable to the same laws. The St. Sebastians of Guido and Razzi; the St. Jerome of Domenichino; the sternly beautiful Judith of Allori; the Pietà of Raffaelle; the San Pietro Martire of Titian; are all so many tragic _scenes_ wherein whatever is revolting in circumstances or character is judiciously kept from view, where human suffering is dignified by the moral lesson it is made to convey, and its effect on the beholder at once softened and heightened by the redeeming grace which genius and poetry have shed like a glory round it.
Allowing all this, I am yet obliged to confess that I am wearied with this class, of pictures, and that I wish there were fewer of them.
But there is one subject which never tires, at least never tires _me_, however varied, repeated, multiplied. A subject so lovely in itself that the most eminent painter cannot easily embellish it, or the meanest degrade it; a subject which comes home to our own bosoms and dearest feelings; and in which we may "lose ourselves in all delightfulness," and indulge unreproved pleasure. I mean the _Virgin and Child_, or in other words, the abstract personification of what is loveliest, purest, and dearest, under heaven--maternal tenderness, virgin meekness, and childish innocence, and the _beauty of holiness_ over all.