Lucca

Edward Hutton stopped at Lucca before taking leave of Tuscany. He particularly liked the Duomo and its sculptures.

 

But to-day Lucca is like a shadowy pool hidden behind the Pisan hills, like a forgotten oasis in the great plain at the foot of the mountains, a pallid autumn rose, smiling subtly among the gardens that girdle her round about with a sad garland of green, a cincture of silver, a tossing sea of olives. However you come to her, you must pass through those delicate ways, where always the olives whisper together, and their million leaves, that do not mark the seasons, flutter one by one to the ground; where the cicale die in the midst of their song, and the flowers of Tuscany scatter the shade with the colours of their beauty. In the midst of this half-real world, so languidly joyful, in which the sky counts for so much, it is always with surprise that you come upon the tremendous perfect walls of this city—walls planted all around with plane-trees, so that Lucca herself is hidden by her crown—a crown that changes at the year changes, mourning all the winter long, but in spring is set with living emeralds, a thousand and a thousand points of green fire that burst into summer’s own coronet of flame-like leaves, that fades at last into the dead and sumptuous gold of autumn. …

All that is best in Lucca, all that is sweetest and most naïve, may be found in the beautiful Duomo, which Pope Alexander II consecrated in 1070,--Pope Alexander II, who had once been bishop of Lucca….

It is, however, the façade that takes you at once by its ancient smiling aspect, the three great unequal arches, over which, in three tiers, various with beautiful columns, rise the open galleries we have so loved at Pisa.  Built, as it is said, in 1204 by Guidetto, much work remains in that beautiful frontispiece to one of the most beautiful churches in Italy…

The most beautiful and the most wonderful treasure that the church holds, that Lucca itself can boast of, is the great tomb in the north transept, carved to hold forever the beautiful Ilaria del Caretto, the wife of Paulo Guinigi,  whose tower still blossoms in the spring, since she has sat there. It is the everlasting work of Jacopo della Quercia, the Sienese. On her bed of marble the young Ilaria lies, like a lily fallen on a rock of marble, and in her face is the sweet gravity of all the springs that have gone by, and in her hand the melody of all the songs that have been sung; her mouth seems about to speak some lovely affirmation, and her body is a tower of ivory. Can you wonder that the sun lingers here softly, softly, as it steps westward, so that night creeps over her, kissing her from head to foot slowly like a lover? …

Hutton went on to discuss another sculptor, Matteo Civitali,  whose work could be found not only in the Duomo but throughout Lucca.

Matteo Civitali, the one artist of importance that Lucca produced, was born in 1435. He remains really the one artist, out of the territory of Florence, who has worked in the manner of the fifteenth-century sculptors of that city. His work is everywhere in Lucca,--here in the Duomo, in S. Romano. In S. Michele, in S. Frediano, and in the Museo in Palazzo Manzi. Certainly without the strength, the constructive ability that sustains even the most delicate work of the Florentines, he has yet a certain flower-like beauty, a beauty that seems ever about to pass away, to share its life with the sunlight that ebbs so swiftly out of the great churches where it is; and concerned as it is for the most part with the tomb, to rob death itself of a sort of immortality, to suggest in some faint and subtle way that death itself will pass away and be lost, as the sun is lost at evening in the strength of the sea.*

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*Note. A friend from the UK pointed out that Hutton had overlooked Lucca's most singular possession, the Volto Santo, perhaps the oldest wooden crucifix. However, it was my oversight. Not only did Hutton discuss the famous object, he also provided the whole legend.

Matteo Civitali: It was he who built the marble parapet, all of red and white, round the choir, the pulpit, and the Tempietto in the nave, gilded and covered with ornaments to hold the Volto Santo, setting there the beautiful statue of St. Sebastian, which we look at to-day with joy while we turn away from that strange and marvellous shrine of the holy face of Jesus which we no longer care to see. Yet one might think that crucifix strange  and curious for a pilgrimage, beautiful, too, as it is, with the lost beauty of an art as subtle and lovely as the work of the Japanese. (416)

 

 

Edward Hutton: Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa, second edition, London, 1908. Pp. 413-418.