A Walk to 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.