Montepulciano and the Church of S. Biagio

Edward Hutton devoted a whole chapter to Montepulciano, a city that still retains its charm today. Even the Marzocco Inn appears to be still in existence. There was plenty of art to see, and he gave his usual description of all the works that had been collected in the Museum. But the greatest work of art could be found outside the city's walls, the Church of S Biagio.

 

The way from the station over some seven miles  of hill and dale to the lofty city of Montepulciano is one of the most splendid, the most beautiful in all Tuscany. The whole valley of the Chiana and beyond and beyond is spread out like some gracious fairyland, in which lie three magic lakes, and one of them is the loveliest in the world—the lakes of Chiusi, of Montepulciano, and of Trasimeno; beyond lie the great ever-lasting mountains of Umbria, and over all is a supreme and luminous peace. Little by little as you climb to the wonderful city of the beautiful name some great or delicate feature in the landscape impresses itself upon you, only to be replaced again and again by other details as fair as itself; the serene and graceful outline of Cetona, for instance, gives place to the tremendous and beautiful mass of  Mont’ Amiata far away, or the eagle’s nest of Monte Follonica, truly a city out of a fairy tale, draws your eyes from Chiusi, till at last as your heart is set on Montepulciano itself, which suddenly appears over the lower hills at a turning of the way, the rosy queen of all this fair country, a city of another world, a city of the pure and aloof mountains. (218) …

 

As yet, however, Montepulciano is by no means spoiled. It is true that the Marzocco Inn is not so charming as I feel it must have been when Symonds made it famous. A certain greediness which the unfortunate tourist excites, alas! spoils good manners, even the natural good manners of the Tuscan. Still the comfort of the inn, the cleanliness of your waiter, are—so it be well with the beds—in my opinion secondary matters. It is always possible to eat in the fields, and no one travels to sit in an inn parlour, but if all we have come to see has been “improved” away by the great vulgar legions of “progress,” it is a serious matter. Happily in Montepulciano there is still enough and to spare….it is impossible to praise too highly the beauty of the city and of the country in which she reigns, or to tell easily of the beauty of the works of art which still abide there—too many, alas! in a museum. (222)…

 

But it is only as we are leaving Montepulciano for Pienza perhaps that we see what is surely the most striking monument to her splendour at its greatest in the later Renaissance—I mean the beautiful church built for love  by Antonio da Sangallo beneath the western height of the town. Coming upon S. Maria della Consolazione, outside  one of the most unapproachable cities in all Italy, Todi in Umbria, I called it, in an eager burst of enthusiasm, the most beautiful church in all the world. Well, here you may see something very like it without going to the trouble of marching to Todi. S. Biagio of Montepulciano is, on a small scale, of course, what S. Pietro in Vaticano should have been, what it would have been but for the barbarian Reformation—a Greek cross under a dome. As you stand on the threshold it is upward that your gaze is drawn, irresistibly, by the great light and space of the design, the height and beauty of all the proportions. Here is a church full of light—a church not for repentance but for praise; the whole place seems to utter the great verses of the Te Deum Laudamus, in itself to give visible form to words in which alone we hear some faint echo of those the great archangels sing:--

 

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Saboath,

Pleni sunt coeli et terra majestatis gloria tuae.***

 

Is it not, as we pass on our way, for the words of this ineffable song that the olives lend their music, that the vineyards are hushed and all the flowers bend their heads?

*** Hutton included the full Latin text of the hymn. Click on this link to hear Kiri te Kanewa's rendition of the Sanctus from Gounod's Mass of St. Cecilia. 

 

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Foiano and Bettolle: Signorelli's Coronation of the Virgin

 

On his tour of southern Tuscany, Edward Hutton visited some of his favorite  small towns. In Foiano he came upon a masterpiece by Luca Signorelli. Nearby Bettolle was a masterpiece in itself, unspoiled by the modern world.

Fine though Foiano is and girdled with olives and golden with corn and joyful with fruitful vineyard, it is rather by reason of its wonderful views, for the ever delectable landscape that lies at its feet, that one would come to it, but that in the Collegiata is hidden away a signed and dated picture by Luca Signorelli of the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin. This grand and noble picture was painted in 1523 the year of Signorelli’s death, and was, in fact, the last he set his hand to. The Madonna, in a splendid robe of rose with a mantle of blue, fairer than the angels who attend her, kneels before our Lord Christ, who crowns her Regina virginem. On either side two angels play for joy, while St. Joseph, her guardian, still stands beside her, and S. Gabriel, who was her messenger, waits lest she should speak again and he not hear. Before her in the foreground kneels S. Martino, whose altarpiece this is, dressed in a golden cope, and that he won in exchange for the poor coat he gave the beggar for Christ’s sake. On his left hand stands S. Jerome and three monks, and behind him S. Mary Magdalene; and again, on the other side some fine old saint introduces the donor, Angelo Massarelli.

Signorelli was an old man when he conceived this majestic work, which has the unction of a canticle almost and we may be sure that he received some assistance, for not only were the figures of S. Gabriel and S. Mary Magdalen too feeble to have come from his wise hand, even though it trembled then, but in the predella only two of the four scenes are his. The four scenes represent the life of S. Martin and in the two Signorelli has given us with all his boldness and mastery of composition we see S. Martin in armour on his great white war-horse with his men-at-arms about him dividing his cloak with the beggar. In the other we see the saint kneeling before a Bishop with his two acolytes—a beautiful picture. 

 

Having seen this splendour after Mass, I do not see why the traveller should not make his way southward and walk back across the valley to Torrita, which may be reached directly from Foiano by road through Bettolle. It is a walk or drive of some ten or, maybe, twelve miles….

 

Bettolle…is a garden—a garden of chestnuts and vineyards and olives. I do not know that Bettolle is famous among Italians, if indeed it be famous at all for anything but its fairs; but for me it is one of the fairest of all villages, with a fine wine and a courteous people, and I wish it every sort of good there is to be had in this damnable age we live in, and that is the same thing as to repeat the old commandment to keep itself unspotted from the world. 

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Edward Hutton: Siena and Southern Tuscany, 1910, pp. 213-4.

Sinalunga and an Altarpiece by Girolamo del Pacchia

 

Edward Hutton liked Sinalunga because its churches still contained their works of religious art. He loved to see paintings in situ and complained of the removal of these works to museums like the the Uffizi. It is true that there is nothing like seeing a painting in the place where it was originally meant to be, but 100 years later I believe that many of these works would have been lost forever if they had not been removed. Moreover, when I saw crowds of people straining to see Michelangelo's Doni Tondo in the Uffizi, they did remind me of worshippers.

Pictures there are and to spare in this neglected town, but even today in the vulgar rush hither and thither of poor people who have no time to do anything gently, it would be unpardonable to take even Sinalunga by assault without some sort of introduction. Indeed, if it is thus we are to be compelled to visit the cities of our second fatherland they will lose half their interest for us; and as for their pictures, they might as well share the fate of their brethren and be imprisoned in those vast emporiums called Museums, where much the same crowd hustles and gapes as you may find at the entertainments of Barnum and Bailey. No picture howsoever lovely, howsoever holy and divine, can survive a single month in such an asylum as the Uffizi or the Academy of Siena. In some way, I know not rightly why, they fade and die there as in an intolerable captivity. Perhaps, like ourselves, these living and lively beings which we are so powerless to create strike roots as we do into their native earth, or into that place  to which love has brought them which they have learned to regard as home. Perhaps in the cold corridors of a Museum, they miss the prayers of the poor, the tears of the sorrowful, the thanks of those they have often assisted, the laughter of little children.  Certainly there is here some mystery we cannot wholly understand. Only we know that, however carefully we bear it away from its altar, that triptych, that panel, that picture of the Madonna will in its new place presently suffer some change, will seem to fade and die; and in delivering up to us, to the curious, cold eyes of the connoisseur, or the crowd what they think to be its secret it will suddenly move us no more, will tell us no longer of heavenly things, or interpret for us the dumb poetry of our hearts, but like a dead body in a dissecting room will tell us only those secrets which the corpse retains when the soul has vanished whither we cannot follow. …

 

Now since this is so, it is delightful to find no picture gallery or museum in Sinalunga… 

 

Now certainly what we should do first in Sinalunga after climbing into that lofty piazza before the church of S. Martino from the station is to wander through the narrow ways of the town… And when you have first lifted up your heart you may find again all your desire in the churches…

 

 

In S. Martino, besides the curious little shrine to the right of the western doors there is over the altar of the south transept a fine altarpiece of the Deposition, possibly from the hand of Girolamo del Pacchia…. His work has the usual composite quality of the sixteenth century, but here for once I think—or is it just my fancy?—he has brought something almost divine into a picture but for that would be a little mannered, a little lacking in sincerity. In a wide and beautiful valley where afar off we seem to recognize the beautiful lines of Monte Cetona and Mont’ Amiata. The cross itself hiding the height of Radicofani, Jesus our Saviour has been lifted from the Tree and now lies in His Mother’s lap supported by the Holy Women, while S. John carefully lifts away the crown of thorns from His brow, and S. Joseph of Arimethea and Simon of Cyrene wait in the background, the one with the precious ointment for His burial, the other with the holy relics—the instruments of the Passion—which he holds in his hands. And lo!  Though yesterday it was almost summer, it is bleak winter now; the little trees stand forlorn, stripped of their leaves, and all the world is bare and still with the stillness of death awaiting the Resurrection.*

 

 

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* Apparently, the altarpiece has since been removed from S. Martino, and can now be found in the collegiate church of S. Blasé.

 

Edward Hutton: Siena and Southern Tuscany, New York, 1910. Pp.209-210.

Edward Hutton: Visit to the Monastery of Mt. Oliveto

On his tour of southern Tuscany Edward Hutton visited the famous monastery of Monte Oliveto. Even though the frescoes of the life of St. Benedict by Signorelli and Sodoma remain, he believed that those frescoes are an impeachment of "the wanton stupidity that has drained away the life of such a place in mere barbarian revenge."

 

Moreover, on the road from Asciano to Monte Oliveto there is much of great beauty in the landscape beside the beauty of the desert. There is the majestic loveliness, the incomparable outline of Mont’ Amiata, the bizarre and haggard splendour of Radicofani, and both these wonders burst upon one suddenly and dramatically after climbing the longest hill some halfway to the monastery. 

 

There are many outlines of surpassing splendour in Italy; there are the hills of Cortona as seen from Montepulciano, there are Monte Cimino and Monte Venere as seen from Abbadia S. Salvatore, there are the hills of Vallombrosa as seen from Vincigliata, the whole splendour of Val d’Arno as seen from Empoli, and the Monte Pisani as seen from the leaning tower of Pisa; but there is no other outline that I have seen, even in my dreams, that may compare with that of Mont’ Amiata as seen from three different points—the Porta Romano of Siena, the platform behind the Cathedral of Pienza, and the desert hillside between Asciano and Monte Oliveto. Modern Italy has wantonly destroyed half her patrimony in a kind of pique, to humour fools or to mark what she conceives to be her “progress,” whither no one knows; but not yet has she thought or been able to destroy much of the superhuman loveliness with which God has endowed her…. (180)

 

But if one seeks destruction one has not far to go for it—only, indeed, as far as the monastery itself, hidden away among the worst precipices of the desert, which here the monks had made to blossom like a rose.

 

The great block of brick buildings which form the monastery, with its church, cloisters, and conventual houses, are the centre of a venerable oasis in this bare country, of an oasis which little by little the desert is claiming again. For the place is no longer a monastery, the monks having been deprived by the jealous Italian Government not only of the fruits of their labours, the houses they had built, the smiling garden they had contrived in the desert, but the right to labout at all. Nor in robbing them has modern Italy seen fit herself to fill their place. Her policy has been, here as elsewhere, that of a mere anarchist, eager in destruction, but too often careless or incapable of construction, or even, as here, of carrying on the good work of the monks she has robbed … (180-1)

The loss is Italy’s and ours; for while we as mere travellers may still find here the hospitality we seek, the Italian contadino and labourer are deprived of their employers; the land carefully and labouriously  redeemed and cultivated by the monks has been lost, and a host of people left without employment/ It is a striking spectacle, not uncommon in Italy, where the true Italians, the common people, have been more ruthlessly exploited by the middle classes, the bagmen from Piedmont, and all the riff-raff of the risorgimento, than anywhere else in Europe. (181)…

 

The last Abbot of Monte Oliveto, the holy and courageous Abbate di Negro, of the family of s. Catherine of Genoa, died in 1897. He remembered the now empty cloister and choir, filled by fifty white-robed monks. And then the peasants sang in the vineyards, and the corn was golden in July and reaped with joy, and the whole country-side was glad in those days. And now? – well, now there is only a horrid silence. * (184)

 

* Note: The Olivetani have been suppressed almost everywhere, like the rest of the Orders. Their General now lives in the little monastery of Settignano. May they long be left in peace. ###

 

Edward Hutton: Siena and Southern Tuscany, New York, 1910.