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.*
###
* 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment