Edward Hutton: Fermo and Monte Giorgio

Edward Hutton loved the hill towns of the Marches. He was especially impressed with Fermo: "The little walled city with its curious acropolis so wonderfully lifted up above its neighbors is the queen of all this country." In nearby Monte Giorgio he found a special treasure. 

Fermo

But, after all, Fermo is to be loved not for the works of art or architecture or painting which it has to show, bur for itself, for its own beauty and nobility, its wonderful command of the glorious world in which it stands up like a great tower or bastion looking so proudly across the mountains and the sea. No one, certainly, who has ever spent a few days within its walls can leave it without a real regret. For to live within its gates is to be made a partaker of the sky, to breathe an air so large and noble that even the greatest work of art, did it possess it, would be at last unregarded while we turned to Nature itself, here for once wholly satisfying and able, without leaving us a single resentment, to absorb us into herself, to overwhelm us with her largeness, her majesty, her sweetness. Those lines of hills that lead our eyes up to the great mountains, those mysterious sweet valleys, those silver gardens of olives against the darkness of the cypresses yonder, the spaciousness of the sky where God dwells, the largeness of the earth He has surely especially blessed; where in the world shall we possess them with such completeness as here, or where shall we be made at one with them so profoundly and without an afterthought? (195-6)…

Monte Giorgio

I know not rightly how to speak of this place which I love so much, nor how to persuade him who is secure in Fermo and set down at an inn more or less furnished with modern comforts, to visit a place so humble, so poor and so holy. For holy it is. Figure to yourself a little white village shining on the hills under the stainless sky above a thousand valleys—beautiful with vineyards and olive gardens, and surrounded by hills greater than its own, crowned by villages scarcely less fair. Such is Monte Giorgio, whose heart is the convent of S. Francis, which should be one of the most famous Franciscan shrines in Italy, for it was there that the Fioretti were written by the Ugolino da Monte Giorgio, who as he looked out of the window of his cell, could see shining across this blessed country all the little holy places of the March, humble Franciscan dwellings which figure in his beautiful book: Massa, Fallerone, Penna S. Giovanni, Fermo, Monterubbiano.

The convent, as we see it to-day, is fair enough and holy still and full of manuscripts, and there and in the olive garden about the place, one may, better than anywhere else in the world, turn the pages of that matchless volume in which all the simplicity and and charm of the Middle Age which produced S. Francis lies hid, as in no other book… the Fioretti is for all, for ever—for all who may find in their hearts, even in middle life, even in old age, that something of the little child, without which no one can enter the kingdom of heaven. (196-197)

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Edward Hutton: The Cities of Romagna and the Marches, NY, 1925.

Edward Hutton: Recanati

In his travels in Italy Edward Hutton often walked from town to town. Below he describes a nighttime walk and its surprising aftermath. While in Recanati, he also saw Lorenzo Lotto's Annunciation, "one of the most interesting pictures in the Marches."

Night had already fallen and hidden the sea, when I left Loreto to walk in the summer moonlight up to Recanati some seven miles away in the hills. Over all that great world of mountain and valley, darkness had fallen like a transparent veil, the luminous darkness of summer, out of which there came to me as I went the soft noises of the night, the hoot of an owl, the bark of a fox, the curious and bitter song of the night cecco among the olives, the wind among the leaves. I shall not forget the beauty of that way. The road lay over the hills; high in heaven, the moon, crescent still, hung like the immaculate Host in an invisible monstrance about which were set, for candles, innumerable stars. One by one as I went the little cities far away each on a hill-top shone out full of lights, glittered and was lost between the infinity of earth and sky….

Presently I came to the big gate, deserted and silent in the midst of the night. Up and up I passed through the paved, deserted streets between the tall houses, looking for the inn; missed it and had to return, back through the silent street, to find it at last with the help of another benighted like myself.

The first appearance of the Albergo della Pace was anything but promising. The entrance was at the bottom of a dirty, dark court, lighted only by a small lamp burning before an image of the Madonna; but it was too late and I too tired to trouble about appearances, and when the door was opened and a room was shown me I accepted it without demur and was soon in bed….

When I awoke it was to find the room still in darkness, for the window was closely shuttered. I jumped out of bed, and unhooked the iron fastening and thrust back the creaking casement, to be almost blinded by the sudden blaze of light. But when my eyes had grown accustomed to the sun, what a sight met my gaze! The whole world seemed to be spread out at my feet. The inn, it appeared, was set upon the city wall; fifty or sixty feet sheer below me the road wound down toward Loreto, and before me on their hill-tops rose half a hundred little cities, half lost in the sunlight, in a great world of mountain and valley backed by the far dim peaks of the central Apennine. It was a sight almost to stop the heart, so great it was; a landscape indeed, if it were a landscape, and not rather something in a dream, that could never be forgotten, and its gentle serene nobility won me at once. How often and how long I sat in that window in Recanati that I might never forget the lines of the hills, the sunlight and the shadow over the olive gardens, the visionary glory of those far-away peaks! (179-181)…

Lorenzo Lotto: Annunciation

But undoubtedly the most interesting work of art to be found in Recanati is Lotto’s picture of the Annunciation in the little church of S. Maria sopra Mercanti…. In a great and high room, very different from the Santa Casa, and open under a lofty round arch to a garden full of trees and a pergola, Madonna, who has been kneeling in prayer at a prie-dieu upon which lies an open book of hours, has suddenly turned away with uplifted protesting hands in astonishment and even fear at the sudden entrance of the archangel, S. Gabriel, whose streaming hair tells of the swiftness of his flight. So suddenly, indeed, has been the advent of the angel that Madonna’s little cat, asleep till then in some corner, scampers in terror across the room.  Under the arch appears God the Father, a majestic figure, His two hands stretched forth like those of a swimmer; He seems indeed to have dived down from heaven. The room is furnished with almost Flemish realism and completeness… (182-3)

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The Cities of Romagna and the Marches, NY, 1925.

Edward Hutton: Loreto and the Santa Casa

Edward  Hutton was warned by friends not to visit Loreto and its famous shrine because of the hordes of mutilated beggars that could be found there. He went anyway and found his friends were mistaken. He tells the whole story of the origins of the Holy House and then records his own impressions of the city and its shrine.

Loreto, which all the world sought these many centuries, is not only one of the holiest, but one of the most beautiful places in Italy. The most sacred shrine of the Blessed Virgin in the West, though not the only one which professes to hold something of the nature of a relic of the Mother of God, it is set most gloriously on its olive-clad hill looking eastward over the sea. It was on a summer afternoon that I came from Osimo to the golden house of Our Lady so strangely to be found in this little town of the March…. (164)

The Santa Casa of Loreto is the house in which the Blessed Virgin was born in Nazareth, miraculously transported hither by angels in the thirteenth century; since when it has been one of the major places of pilgrimage in Europe….

The pilgrims still come to it from all lands and in all seasons; not a week passes in the year but some kneel there who perhaps during their whole lives have dreamed of little else but the journey and the great sight at the end of it—the House of Her who is the Mother of God, the Mother of us all. …

It is a place for tears, and if there be any consolation here you will find it. For in its universal human appeal, it resolves all the bitterness of life for a moment into sweetness, all its pettiness into an act of worship, all its insecurity into security, all its doubt and hatred into assurance and love….

The Holy House of Loreto, if you choose to regard it as a superstition, must be one of that human and kindly sort which in every age has refreshed the weary, for its fruits have been altogether noble. It has produced a series of great works of art by some of the greatest masters of a great time, it has produced the Litany of the blessed Virgin, than which nothing lovelier was ever sung in heaven, and all over the world it has brought men together in love, and has comforted millions who were without consolation….

No shrine in all the world that I have ever seen is half so impressive as this little House of rude brick polished bright with kisses. Without, upon the marble of the platform about the Santa Casa, the sacristan points out two deep grooves in the marble that in the course of centuries have been worn so deep by the knees of the waiting pilgrims. I do not wonder. Here is a sanctuary claiming a holiness and antiquity beyond any other in Europe… Here, so the peasants think, as S. Ignatius and S. Carlo Borromeo thought, is the House of Mary, and the maiden from the Abruzzi comes here and dreams of the girlhood of Her who was to be the Mother of God, and crouched there, with beating heart, sees Gabriel in all the splendor of his snowy white wings, kneeling before Our Lady, hears the words that redeemed the world, AVE MARIA GRATIA PLENA, DOMINUS TECUM BENEDICTA TU IN MULIERIBUS… Indeed, I think he who is less simple of heart than this child should not enter that little House, sacred at least to the childhood of the world and hallowed now if only by the faith, the love, and the lives of such as she.

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Edward Hutton: The Cities of Romagna and the Marches, NY, 1925. 164-173.

Edward Hutton: Pesaro and Gradara

Edward Hutton's The Cities of Romagna and the Marches was written over 100 years ago and although Italy has changed, a traveler today can still appreciate the way he loved to sit, listen and observe the country and its people.  

Pesaro

It was a rainy morning when I left Rimini at last, and by train on account of the weather, for Pesaro; but I had not been in that delightful little city—one of the pleasantest in all the Marches—more than a few hours when the sun shone out again and Pesaro showed me a smiling face, as indeed I cannot but think she does to every one who enters her gates. I do not rightly know what it is in Pesaro that makes me feel always so happy there; whether it be the charm of her wide Piazza with its beautiful Palazzo della Prefettura, or the kindness and hospitality of her citizens, and not least of these who keep the inn, the Albergo Zongo, that noble old palace once a cardinal’s, dark and forbidding at first, but always to be remembered with pleasure and gratitude, or whether, after all,  one’s pleasure lies not so much in Pesaro herself as in the delight of the country in which she lies. Perhaps the happiness and lightness of heart that always comes to me in this little city by that shining morning sea is the result of all these charming things, for once to be had altogether and enjoyed without an afterthought.

Titian: Venus detail

For you may spend your morning pottering about the old town where there is nothing very serious to see, but where everything that meets your eye is graceful and charming. Your afternoon you may spend in the delightful rooms, gardens and terraces of the Villa Imperiale, where that Leonora, whom it is said Titian painted as Venus, as you may see in the Uffizi Gallery to this day, will seem to pass and repass, waiting the return of Francesco Maria of Urbino, or you may drive out to the great Rocca of Gradara, which the Malatesta built and held so long where there are two priceless treasures that certainly Pesaro cannot match *…. 

And for the evening, one strolls out of the great shadowy rooms of the Albergo Zongo and down the rough way into the Piazza and sits in the caffe under the arches of the Prefettura, listening to a country song, watching the people and catching now and then the tinkle of a mandolin, the throb of a guitar. All one’s days and nights in Pesaro are full of melodies, of form and colour and sound, and no one can be the least surprised that Rossini was born there, for the whole city and the hills and woods about it are full of music, to which the sea continually beats a grave and sober accompaniment gently breaking in a line of foam along the shore. (129-130)

*One of the art works in Gradara is a Della Robbia altarpiece.

The Robbia altarpiece is in a little desecrated chapel half-way up the Rocca. There we see the Madonna and Child with S. Jerome and Mary Magdalen, S. Catherine and S. Bonaventure, and beneath, in the predella, three scenes—S. Francis receiving the Stigmata, the Annunciation, and S. Mary Magdalen in the desert communicated by an angel. (137)

Edward Hutton: The Cities of Romagna and the Marches, NY, 1925.

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