Assisi: Portiuncula

   

The huge cathedral of St. Mary of the Angels was built to house the Portiuncula, the birthplace of the Franciscan order, and the last resting place of St. Francis. Below is Edward Hutton's moving description of the death of St. Francis.

Santa Maria degli Angeli, the Portiuncula, was, S. Bonaventura tells us, the spot on earth most beloved by S. Francis. Today the half-industrialized village which bears this name, in the plain about two miles below Assisi, close to the railway station, will, it may be, disappoint the traveller. In the midst of rather squalid surroundings he sees an enormous basilica, originally of the sixteenth century, under a dome which is said to have been designed by Vignola and which covers like a casket the little sacred chapel, the Portiuncula. But in the time of S. Francis the valley hereabouts was wooded and the little chapel of the Portiuncula was lonely among the trees, and until some wattle huts were built about it by his companions, nothing encroached upon its solitude….

As to S. Francis’s death: he had for long lain sick in the bishop’s palace within the walls of Assisi, but presently he asked to be borne to S. Mary of the Little Portion that he might yield up the breath of life in the place he had so much loved and in which he had received the breath of grace. When he had been borne thither, he lay on the ground, here in what is now the Transito chapel, his habit laid aside, naked in honour of Lady Poverty, while his companions wept, and one of them, divining his wish, took a habit with the cord and brought it, saying, “There I lend thee as unto a beggar and do thou receive them under holy obedience.” And at this he rejoiced, for in his zeal for poverty he was minded to possess not even a habit unless it were lent him by another. As at the outset of his conversion he had stood naked before the bishop, as in the ending of his life he was minded to quit the world naked. He recommended to his brethren the beloved Portiuncula. “This place is holy,” he told them, “hold it ever in veneration and never abandon it. If you are driven out by one door, return by another, for it is here the Lord has multiplied us and has shown us His Light and poured out His love in our hearts.”

 

He did not forget Sister Clare and sent her a message forbidding her to give way to sadness and promising that she and her daughters should see him again, which came to pass when his body was borne to Assisi by way of San Damiano. He remembered, too, the noble Roman Lady “Frate Jacoba”, as he called her. She too would be sad to learn that he had left the world without warning her, and he was already dictating a letter to her when the noise of a cavalcade was heard and the Lady Jacoba was herself come from Rome with her two sons. “the Lord be praised,” he said, “let the door be opened for the Rule is not for Brother Jacoba.” She had come furnished with all that was needed for the burial of the Poverello, a veil for his face, a cushion for his head, a sheet of haircloth for his body and wax for the funeral ceremonies. She had brought, too, some of the sweetmeats made of almonds which he loved. * He could but taste it; it was Bernard of Quintavalle, his first companion, who ate it.

 

Then turning to those about him, he told them to lay him on the ground and after he was dead to let him lie there for the space in which one may gently walk a mile. As his desire the Canticle of the Sun was constantly heard in the hut with the verse in praise of our sister the Death of the body which he had so recently made. He asked for bread, and having blessed it, distributed it to the brethren in imitation of Christ at the Last Supper.

 

The next day, his last, the Passion according to St. John was read to him, and at dusk of October 3, 1226, she to whom no one willingly opens the door entered. He saw her, received her courteously, “Be welcome, my Sister Death.” They placed him on the ground, ashes on his head, ashes and dust. Then with failing voice he intoned a Psalm with those about him: Voce mea ad Dominum clamavi: “Bring my soul out of prison that I may give thanks unto thy name…. **

 

Evening had stolen into the hut. There was a great silence. He seemed to be sleeping.

 

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*Note. She was a Frangipani and the sweetmeat bears her name to this day.

**Note. Psalm 141 (A.V. 142). 

 

Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, London, 1953. Pp. 23,  28-30.

View from Assisi

  

 

 

For Edward Hutton no visit to Assisi could be complete without a trek to the old Rocca Maggiore with its spectacular views.

 

There is one other visit, easier but quite as rewarding, to be paid at Assisi. I mean the climb up to the Rocca Maggiore, high above the Cathedral and the old ramshackle windy convent of San Lorenzo. Wandering about those ruined walls and turrets or lying in their shade you have before you, but in its fullness, the great view with which the loggias, balconies and windows of the Hotel Subasio have already delighted you on your first evening, only from here what is perhaps the loveliest and certainly the most serenely spacious of landscapes is more widespread under a greater breadth of sky. From here, before you lies the whole wide valley from Perugia to Spoleto—Umbria verde—they say, Umbria Santa rather, for your impression, in early morning or at sunset, is one of ineffable benediction. Under the great bank of Subasio and on the other side of the wide valley stand the little cities:  on this side under the cypresses Spello and pyramided Trevi, with the castle of Spoleto under the ilex-woods of Monteluco beyond. Foligno in the plain scarce visible, Montefalco clear above Foligno’s roof-tops and the Topino-misted  Bevagna with Cannara beside it and Bettona above on the long ridge of mountain, behind the dome of S. Mary of the Angels, where the Tescio stream winds away to Bastia, and the Topino and Chiascio meet and Torgiano stands with its towers, and at evening maybe one may catch a glimpse of amethystine Amiata on the verge of the Senese. Nothing more lovely, nothing more serene and full of a Franciscan peace could be imagined.

 

No, but now look northwards: the great bare mountains rise in a formidable rampart, seemingly impassable save where cut and gashed by precipitous gorges and ravines. It is a landscape of a nightmare, as tragic and bitter as that on the south is peaceful and serene. It was through these ravines that his companions, under the guard sent from Assisi, bore the dying saint by night in the glare of torches on his way home by that circuitous route from Siena, for fear of the Perugians. One has not really possessed oneself of Assisi and what it stands for till one has seen and considered both these views, not only the view over the valley of Spoleto, but this, too, over the gaunt mountains to the north. For in the life of S. Francis there was not only the serenity and  peace of Rivetorto and the Portiuncula, there was also the despair and bitterness of Poggio Bustone and Ponte Colombo. Those landscapes seem to sum up, as it were, the life of the little poor man, who, at so great a cost, saved the Church and civilization in the thirteenth century, and who remains in our minds, as Renan has said, as “after Jesus the only perfect Christian.”

 

 

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Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, London, 1953. Pp. 18-19. 

Assisi: Cimabue and Giotto

 

 

 

Edward Hutton regarded the Church of San Francesco as the source of all the Italian art to come. Below he discusses Cimabue and Giotto, even though many of the frescoes attributed to Giotto may have been done by his followers.  First, the lower church. 

 

In the right-hand transept is the grandly impressive work of Cimabue, a great fresco of the Madonna enthroned with angels and with St. Francis himself standing there. Though not painted in the saint’s lifetime, it is, one might think, a fine portrait and well preserved, whereas the figures of Virgin and Child have suffered much from restoration. …

The other frescoes in this right transept are the work of the assistants of Giotto and are for the most part concerned with the life of Our Lord. They are of great beauty; the frescoes of the Birth of Christ, and of the Flight into Egypt, are among the sweetest and loveliest things in the Lower Church….As one looks at these frescoes, one realizes, perhaps more easily than in the works in the vaults over the high altar, to what splendour Italian art was being called. And yet, if we compare them with that early picture of the Madonna and Child, by Cimabue, we are aware that, after all, something has been lost. How lovely that fresco of the Madonna and Child is, how sacred and noble, and how surely it marks for us the change that is coming from the Byzantine manner, to the manner of Giotto. [8-9]…

On to the Upper Church.

The nave, choir and both transepts were painted by Cimabue, according to Mr. Berenson, between 1277 and 1280, and at any rate by 1296, the date we find inscribed in the apse. These frescoes, ruined though they be, are Cimabue’s most important work and the most important series of medieval wall-paintings in Italy. The finest of these is the great Crucifixion on the left wall of the left transept, most tragic in its majesty, and the arch-angels and angels above. [11]

Death of Lord of Celano

 

Giotto or others, working on the long spaces below these marvellous  works, could not have escaped their authority. Day by day as they worked on the frescoes of the life of St. Francis, which it may well be are not from Giotto’s own hand, these frescoes of the earlier masters, in all their noble beauty, no doubt told many a secret.  There are twenty-eight frescoes…. All taken from the Legends of S. Bonaventura…They are among the best known works of art in the world and have been written about again and again. Though there might seem to be little if anything of the work of Giotto himself in these frescoes how magnificent is the gesture of Pietro Bernadone in the fresco where S. Francis has been taken before the bishop only to renounce his father for ever; how naturally, in another fresco—that of the death of the Lord of Celano—the saint rises in haste from the table where he is sitting; how lovely are those angels who bear him to heaven, clothed in light, in the ruined picture of his death. Designed or not by the young Giotto, these frescoes are, in their simplicity and naturalness, the centre of the movement that was soon to excite all Italy to enthusiasm. They are earlier than the work attributed to him in the Lower Church, and they remain among the most precious things in Italy, strewn though she is with the triumphs of art. [12-13]

I am indebted to my English friend David Orme for the images above. Here is a link to his excellent online tour of San Francesco and its artworks.

 

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Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, London, 1953. Pp. 8-13. 

Assisi: Simone Martini

  

 

 

Edward Hutton believed that in the upper and lower churches of San Francesco "the beginnings of Italian art can be studied." He began with the work of Simone Martini in the Chapel of San Martino.

 

As one passes into the nave of the great church the darkness is deeper. The walls are decorated with much destroyed frescoes by the Maestro di S. Francesco. The first chapel on the left, of San Martino, is painted in fresco by Simone Martini with scenes from the life of S. Martin. Simone Martini, born probably in Siena in 1283 was the pupil of Duccio, and not, so far as his work tells us, much influenced by Giotto. He has been called “the most lovable of all the Italian artists before the Renaissance”, and, indeed, looking on the strange beauty of his work here, who can doubt it? He is more aristocratic and refined than Giotto, has, indeed a sense of beauty subtler, though, perhaps less profound, than his. Is there anything in all pre-Renaissance art more lovely than these frescoes where S. Martin divides his cloak with a beggar, and later, as he lies asleep, has a vision of Christ wearing that same cloak? And best of all, perhaps, is that in which the young S. Martin girded with the sword and all the accoutrements of knighthood, his hands clasped in prayer. The gaiety of all that—the beauty of the young men who look on, the splendour and magnificence of the emperor, the charm of the thought, the perfection of the craft! A great master, you might say, and then you think of the life-enhancing work of Giotto, and all it meant to Italy, and means to us. And yet Simone Martini is a great painter, though scarcely an original painter, as Giotto is. He was content to carry out more exquisitely the ideas of his master, Duccio, by whom he seems always to have been overshadowed. There is nothing of the immense vitality of the Florentine. When his young men stretch out their arms, as in this fresco, you do not feel as though they might embrace you, as you do with Giotto over and over again.  Yet in his equestrian portrait of Guidoriccio da Fogliano, in Siena, he has created a captain who moves as surely and irresistibly towards his enemy as the Colleoni of Verrocchio or the Gattamelata of Donatello. It might be said that he was the most beautiful illustrator of the book of life in all the pre-Renaissance, the whole vitality and reality of life being in the text. One looks on these frescoes always with new joy, but never with the sense of life with which one gazes at Giotto’s work in Padua. S. Martin, in the upper line of the frescoes, is ordained, and retires to Albenga; he preaches in some city, possibly Tours; he restores a child to life, and at last dies. In all this work, too detailed to describe, one finds the same grace and entrancing beauty. The jambs of the windows are frescoed with fine busts and the entrance arch has beautiful full-length figures of saints. Even the glass in the windows here was also probably designed by Simone.

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Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, London, 1953. Pp. 5-6. 

Assisi: Church of San Francesco

   

 

 

Edward Hutton began his tour of Assisi in the church of San Francesco.

 

It is to this great triple church one comes first, by Porta San Francesco and the cloistered Piazza Inferiore, into the cool darkness of the lower church of San Francesco. It seems more like a fortress than a church as you climb the hill, built as it is on arches of stone against the hill-side; and this impression is greater yet if you approach Assisi by the old road from Bastiola. But as you enter the church you seem to have wandered back into the north with its twilight churches, where the sun never shines and they worship God in semi-darkness. And, indeed, it is not till evening that the level light of the setting sun throws a glory over a splendour that in the morning is rather felt than seen.

 

San Francesco is the grandiose tomb of the little poor man, who should have been buried in the lee of some wood where birds sing and the earth is carpeted with primroses. Begun by Frate Elias in 1228 for the Holy See, immediately after the death of the saint, San Francesco consists of two churches, superimposed one on another, to which a large crypt is now added. The lower church has a cavernous nave, lined with chapels, with an apse, and eastern and western transepts. Beneath this is the crypt, now enlarged, in the midst of which towers the rock to which the tomb of the saint, hidden for seven hundred years, is chained. Above the lower church is the radiant upper church, consisting of nave, apse and wide transept. San Francesco was completed in 1253….

 

It is here, in the upper and lower churches, perhaps, better than anywhere else in Italy, that the beginnings of Italian art can be studied.

 

The lower church, one of the most impressive buildings in the world, is precious with the paintings and the glass of the masters of the fourteenth century. It is the irony of fate that the darkness which fills the church should make a sight of all the splendour so difficult….

 

The Upper Church, in contrast with the Lower Church, is a temple of colour and light. It is as though the one symbolized the humble life of S. Francis on earth, the other his glory in heaven. Of the same form as the Lower Church, save that it has no chapels and no eastern transept, it gives us an idea of space and light and beauty such as we never receive in the Lower Church, where the low roof and the twilight mask the frescoes, the chapels, the colour on wall and ceiling, and even the very church itself, in the sombre, mysterious night of the catacombs. But in the Upper Church all is changed; it seems to glow like some perfect jewel, and almost to illuminate itself rather than to receive light from the sun shining over the world outside. And it is here are preserved some of the most precious early frescoes in Italy. (10)

 

 

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Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, London, 1953. Pp. 3-4, 10.

Assisi

   

 

 

Edward Hutton published "Assisi and Umbria Revisited" in 1953.  He began his account in the city of St. Francis.

Today there is nothing, can be nothing, in Assisi but the memory  of him who took Lady Poverty to wife. Yet the city we see but little resembles what it was in Francis’s day. What we see is not what he saw, but is, in fact, his creation. The city S. Francis knew had no San Francesco, no Sacro Convento, no Santa Chiara, and no Rocca towering over all. The western hill on which the triple church of San Francesco stands, the Collis Infernis or Collis Inferni, was divided from the city, quite outside which it stood, by a deep ravine which was only finally filled up and the upper and lower piazzas of San Francesco constructed in the sixteenth century. Before that the church was reached by a bridge over the ravine. Perhaps from very far off, from Perugia, for instance, we may have an impression of the city as S. Francis knew it, crouched on the skirts of Subasio. But there are, of course, many buildings within the city which he knew well; the Roman Temple, the great façade of the Duomo, and the churches, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Pietro, San Giacomo within the wall, San Damiano and the Carceri without. And he seems to have loved this, his birthplace, so well that, great traveller though he was, he never wanted to leave it, to go far away from it. The places he loved best were Monte Subasio, Rivotorto, the Portiuncula, San Damiano, the island in Lago Trasimeno, and Assisi itself, which he turned to bless with words of love as they bore him to the Portiuncula to die. Hardly one of these places, however, at all resembles what it was in his day, least of all his best-loved Rivotorto and Santa Maria degli Angeli. It is only the wide landscape that is the same and there is surely a divine harmony between the soul of S. Francis and this landscape of the valley of Spoleto which his early biographers seem instinctively to have understood.

 

And yet one finds oneself on his account wandering up and down the steep and climbing ways, through street and piazza where he played as a child, where he went gaily as a young man, which presently saw him begging his bread, and echoed alike with the scorn of his fellows and the irresistible words of his preaching. Here is the house, here is the stable, in which he was born; here the font in which he was baptized. Just beyond the walls is San Damiano where the Crucifix spoke to him. Here before Santa Maria Maggiore he stripped himself and repudiated his earthly father, Pietro Bernadone. There is the house of his first companion, Bernard of Quintavalle. And there in the Vescovado he lay till they bore him out of Porta Moiano on his last journey when he turned and blessed the city he loved, but could no longer see, on the way to S. Mary of the Angels, where he was to die. And finally, here in the great triple church dedicated in his honour, on the Collis Inferni, now the Collis Paradisi, we may venerate his dust.

 

 

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Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, 1953. Pp. 1-3.

Christmas in Dolcedorme

 Edward Hutton interrupted his tour of Umbria to spend the winter in Rome. But he did take time to visit Ulisse, his young traveling  companion, in the boy's hometown of Dolcedorme where they attending the Christmas Midnight Mass. Hutton's charming account is a unique historical document.

 

Ah! That Midnight Mass! … I am not likely to forget it. I had gone with Ulisse, who guided me through the dark and narrow ways, up to the Collegiata, enthroned above the city, under those enormous and precipitous rocks, like giant’s teeth, which distinguish Dolcedorme.

 

It is a large church, rebuilt after an earthquake, in the seventeenth century; but large and spacious though it was, it was full. And not only of the faithful, not only of the women and the poveri. The whole city seemed to be there when the bell sounded for the third time.

 

In their own place sat the women, young and old, devout enough, and for the most part already on their knees. Behind and about, against the pillars and side-altars, stood the men, a vast crowd. And the noise! The whole church was filled with it, and the air was already stifling.

 

Over all the tumult came at last the organ. In the cora they began to sing Te Deum. It was the end of Matins. Mass was about to begin.

 

Still the people came in under the heavy leather curtains. The church was packed. More candles were lighted: more music poured from the organ. Finally, in procession, behind the great Byzantine cross, came Sua Ecclenzia—the whole concourse bent like a field of corn under a wind—blessing as he came. He was to sing Mass. Over the Crucifix on the high altar his single candle shone.

 

Ulisse and I stood before a pillar on the Epistle side, half-way down the great nave. Mass began. Domine dixit ad me … Kyrie eleison … Christie eleison … Kyrie eleison.

 

Monsignor intoned the Gloria in excelsis. The organ burst out into a great peal of music, the bells rang, everyone sang or whistled. …Most whistled.

 

Whistled!

 

Not with the lips only as one whistles an air, but with the fingers in the mouth to make a noise, as much noise as possible. Still others had brought whistles with them, and were using them with all their might. 

 

I was astonished. I was scandalized. Surely my ears deceived me. It was so hot and the odour.…

 

But no, the whistling continued. There was Ulisse with both his fists at his mouth, whistling for all he was worth.

 

Ma come! Was this a theatre or a church? Was this some piece being hooted off the stage or the first Mass of Christmas? I turned to Ulisse.

 

“Ma si, signore, di qua e di la si fischia.”

 

“They’re whistling all over the place!” But why?

 

There was a little silence; the Gloria had finished itself.

 

Surely Monsignor would not continue? But no, the Mass proceeded as usual. The great Epistle proclaimed Him qui dedit semetipsium pro nobis, ut nos redimeret ab omni iniquitate….

 

The Gospel, known from childhood, unfolded itself from the edict of Caesar Augustus to the peace born on earth to men of good will.

 

Slowly we came to the Christmas Preface, the Christmas Sanctus, sung here to a strange dancing measure as in the picture of Botticelli. I had forgotten the unseemly interruption at the Gloria. I had forgotten everything.…

 

There it was again! Suddenly, at the Elevation! But worse than before, more exulting, more joyous, more insolently enthusiastic and rejoicing. It was beyond all possible bounds. In England….

 

“But what is it then?” I leant to Ulisse.

 

“Ma signore, it is the shepherds! E un pio ricordo dei suoni pastorali quando necque nostro Signore.” “A pious remembrance of the shepherds’ music when Our Lord was born.” But I… I, too, would whistle. I … I, too, whistled—only the sounds would not come. What could be the matter with my throat?

 

“Peccato!” whispered Ulisse, that one cannot hear also the voice of the ox and the ass.

 

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Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, London, 1953. Pp. 124-125.

Christmas in Dolcedorme

 Edward Hutton interrupted his tour of Umbria to spend the winter in Rome. But he did take time to visit Ulisse, his young traveling  companion, in the boy's hometown of Dolcedorme where they attending the Christmas Midnight Mass. Hutton's charming account is a unique historical document.

 

Ah! That Midnight Mass! … I am not likely to forget it. I had gone with Ulisse, who guided me through the dark and narrow ways, up to the Collegiata, enthroned above the city, under those enormous and precipitous rocks, like giant’s teeth, which distinguish Dolcedorme.

 

It is a large church, rebuilt after an earthquake, in the seventeenth century; but large and spacious though it was, it was full. And not only of the faithful, not only of the women and the poveri. The whole city seemed to be there when the bell sounded for the third time.

 

In their own place sat the women, young and old, devout enough, and for the most part already on their knees. Behind and about, against the pillars and side-altars, stood the men, a vast crowd. And the noise! The whole church was filled with it, and the air was already stifling.

 

Over all the tumult came at last the organ. In the cora they began to sing Te Deum. It was the end of Matins. Mass was about to begin.

 

Still the people came in under the heavy leather curtains. The church was packed. More candles were lighted: more music poured from the organ. Finally, in procession, behind the great Byzantine cross, came Sua Ecclenzia—the whole concourse bent like a field of corn under a wind—blessing as he came. He was to sing Mass. Over the Crucifix on the high altar his single candle shone.

 

Ulisse and I stood before a pillar on the Epistle side, half-way down the great nave. Mass began. Domine dixit ad me … Kyrie eleison … Christie eleison … Kyrie eleison.

 

Monsignor intoned the Gloria in excelsis. The organ burst out into a great peal of music, the bells rang, everyone sang or whistled. …Most whistled.

 

Whistled!

 

Not with the lips only as one whistles an air, but with the fingers in the mouth to make a noise, as much noise as possible. Still others had brought whistles with them, and were using them with all their might. 

 

I was astonished. I was scandalized. Surely my ears deceived me. It was so hot and the odour.…

 

But no, the whistling continued. There was Ulisse with both his fists at his mouth, whistling for all he was worth.

 

Ma come! Was this a theatre or a church? Was this some piece being hooted off the stage or the first Mass of Christmas? I turned to Ulisse.

 

“Ma si, signore, di qua e di la si fischia.”

 

“They’re whistling all over the place!” But why?

 

There was a little silence; the Gloria had finished itself.

 

Surely Monsignor would not continue? But no, the Mass proceeded as usual. The great Epistle proclaimed Him qui dedit semetipsium pro nobis, ut nos redimeret ab omni iniquitate….

 

The Gospel, known from childhood, unfolded itself from the edict of Caesar Augustus to the peace born on earth to men of good will.

 

Slowly we came to the Christmas Preface, the Christmas Sanctus, sung here to a strange dancing measure as in the picture of Botticelli. I had forgotten the unseemly interruption at the Gloria. I had forgotten everything.…

 

There it was again! Suddenly, at the Elevation! But worse than before, more exulting, more joyous, more insolently enthusiastic and rejoicing. It was beyond all possible bounds. In England….

 

“But what is it then?” I leant to Ulisse.

 

“Ma signore, it is the shepherds! E un pio ricordo dei suoni pastorali quando necque nostro Signore.” “A pious remembrance of the shepherds’ music when Our Lord was born.” But I… I, too, would whistle. I … I, too, whistled—only the sounds would not come. What could be the matter with my throat?

 

“Peccato!” whispered Ulisse, that one cannot hear also the voice of the ox and the ass.

 

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Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, London, 1953. Pp. 124-125.

Note: This post originally appeared on this site on 6/20/23.

Gubbio

Edward Hutton concluded his tour of Assisi and Umbria with a visit to Gubbio. He discussed its history at length and noted that it was not altogether insignificant in the history of Umbrian art. In particular, he praised the Madonna del Belvedere, a painting by Ottaviano Nelli in the Church of S. Maria Nuova.

 

It was on another early summer day that I set out from Perugia by the Porta Pesa for Gubbio, across the mountains. The way was musical with streams, for there had been rain in the night, and the world was refreshed and beautiful. Downhill into the valley of the Tiber I went, past the olives and the willows, whose leaves were dancing gravely in the wind, watching their own beauty in the shallows of the great river. Then when I had crossed the Tiber and had begun to climb, after about five miles I came on the left to the Franciscan convent of Farneto. …

 

I now came, as I climbed, into a desolate land of mountains and bare hill-sides, utterly forlorn and without the fellowship of trees or flowers. The wind was dismal and lonely, wandering over the moorland as if in search of companions. Now and again a shepherd clad in goatskins towered in silhouette against the farthest sky—a magnificent figure, simple and antique, keeping the world sweet; and sometimes a little group of trees, scarcely sufficient for a copse, whispered together as though in fear of the indestructible silence. Far away, the beautiful valleys of Umbria led me down innumerable vistas towards Subasio, and many a little city, full even yet of lovely things—the dreams made material of the great artists, or the lives of the saints. And all day the uplifted Apennine towered in the sunlight, with brows even yet white with snow that the sun dazzled with glory. …

\

I continued on my way. Presently, as I topped the ascent, a stupendous panorama rose before me over Gubbio and its valley, dominated by the five mountain peaks, the most formidable of which are Monte Catria, Monte Ingino and Monte Calvo. After another climb the road began its descent into the Eugubian plain and, crossing it in magical evening light, so tender and grave and serene, I entered Gubbio.

 

Gubbio is the dream of some medieval miniaturist; it must be, I thought, the only extant work of that most famous artist, Oderisi. Built on the lower slopes of Monte Calvo, the little city, now too small for its great old walls, lies in terraces one after another, where cypresses behind and among the palaces and churches point their joined hands ever upwards in that long life which is an everlasting prayer. … 

 

Leaving the cathedral and descending to the Via Venti Settembre or the Via Savelli della Porta, which runs parallel to it, and following either eastward towards the Porta Romana, at the end of Via Savelli stands the church of Santa Maria Nuova, which contains Ottaviano Nelli’s masterpiece, the Madonna del Belvedere. This is a mural painting, executed in tempera, not in fresco, and is one of the loveliest pieces of colour in all Umbrian painting, astonishingly fresh, and for the most part intact. The Virgin is seated in the centre, the Divine Child on her lap; she is looking at the spectator while the Child is blessing the donor, a woman, presented by an angel. About the Virgin, as though part of her court, are two musical angels, and two other angels hold aside a flowered curtain. Above, God the Father, among the cherubim and angels, crowns her. Two full-length figures of saints, SS. John Evangelist and Antony Abbot, who presents a kneeling donor, perhaps the husband of the woman on the other side, frame the idyllic scene within two spiral columns ornamented with Renaissance, even pagan figures. … This exquisite work is the best and most charming painting left in Gubbio.

                

            

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Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, London, 1953. Pp. 220-221, 229.

Perugia: Pinacoteca Vannucci

Edward Hutton devoted a lengthy chapter to the Pinacoteca Vannucci, Perugia'a picture gallery of Umbrian painting. He especially liked two famous altarpieces taken from their original locations. Looking at these magnificent paintings, it is hard to imagine what ordinary parishioners thought while attending Mass.

The Pinacoteca Vannucci, the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, on the top floor of the Palazzo Communale of Perugia, contains the most complete and representative collection of Umbrian pictures that has anywhere been brought together, as well as a number of early Sienese paintings and a few outstanding masterpieces of various schools; a Madonna and Child by Duccio di Buoninsegna, an altarpiece by Fra Angelico, and one by his pupil Benozzo Gozzoli, an altarpiece by Piero della Francesca and another by Luca Signorelli.

 

Unlike Florence and Siena, Umbria had no Giotto nor Duccio to point out the road she should follow in her art. Umbrian painting, which is not solely centered in Perugia, but which had several centres—Gubbio, Foligno, to name no others—in which it flourished, was really provincial in the true sense of the of the word. And it was from beginning to end the handmaid of the Church, and remained Christian when almost everywhere else art had become pagan. …

 

The two major single treasures of the gallery are the altarpiece by Fra Angelico and the altarpiece by Piero della Francesca.

Fra Angelico

The altarpiece by Fra Angelico is a masterpiece, indeed he never surpassed in feeling and quality some of the smaller figures. The Madonna and Child are enthroned under a baldacchino.  On either side are two angels, the foremost two offering baskets of roses. On panels at the sides are various full-length figures of saints: on the left S. Dominic and S. Nicholas, and these are the most exquisite; on the right S. John Baptist and S. Catherine of Alexandria, perhaps the work of an assistant. … Unfortunately, the face of the Virgin has been damaged; otherwise it seems to be in an excellent state, surprisingly bright in colour, and some of the figures of saints are of such beauty that I do not think Angelico ever surpassed them.

The large polyptych by Piero della Francesco is the other great single treasure of the gallery. It is a puzzling work. In the midst of a late Gothic altarpiece, the Madonna and Child enthroned in the centre with four full-length saints, SS. Anthony, John Baptist, Francis and Elisabeth at the sides, much in the form of Fra Angelico’s altarpiece here. Above in a seven-sided pediment, is the Annunciation; below are two rounds with figures of S. Clare and S. Agatha, and below in the predella three scenes: a miracle of S. Anthony, S. Francis receiving the Stigmata and a miracle of S. Elizabeth of Hungary. …

I find the main part of the altarpiece disappointing, as indeed are the predella scenes. But the Annunciation I find one of the most enchanting of Piero’s works. I can never leave it without returning again and again. And then how characteristic it is of the artistic moment dominated by perspective and the theories of Alberti and the practice of Brunelleschi, Laurana, Uccello and Masaccio! What that gracious and formidable angel is announcing to the Madonna, so classical in her monumentality and repose, is not the birth of Christ. but the rebirth, the renaissance, of Antiquity. It may well be that this is a work of Piero’s old age, but if so, your old men shall see visions.

 

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Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, London, 1953. Pp. 179, 184-186.

Perugia: Cathedral and Fountain

Below find Edward Hutton's description of Perugia's Cathedral and famous fountain. Apparently, the uppermost part of the fountain with its dragons has since been moved to a museum.

So the splendour and the terror of the past have sunk into the mediocrity of today. Beauty such as once belonged to Florence or Venice or Rome was perhaps never hers. She was a scarped crag on the mountains, burnt with fire, beaten by the wind, ringing with cold in the winter, splendid with the sun. Her Palazzo Communale was one of the most fierce and majestic in Italy and even her Cathedral was as relentless as a fortress, at least in appearance, but the destroying centuries have perhaps lent it something of their tolerance, giving the clinkered brick the surface and the colour almost of a precious stone. It is not beauty but strength and passion that you find in its brown walls that have been splashed with blood and washed with wine. A greater than any Baglioni has lain there. “There is no one,” says Thomas of Eccleston, “who dies as solitary and neglected as a Pope.” So it was with the greatest of them, Innocent III, who died in Perugia in 1216. The coffin still open, the body of the Pope was carried to the Cathedral, where the funeral was to take place. “It was then,” says Jacques de Vitry, who had just come to Perugia where the Papal court was in villegiatura, “it was then I really understood the nothingness of grandeur here below. The night preceding the funeral robbers broke into the Cathedral and despoiled the Pope of everything precious upon him. I saw with my own eyes his body, half naked, lying in the midst of the church already stinking.”

Indeed, within the Cathedral there is scarcely beauty at all, only silence, and space and a softer and more sombre light than is usual in an Italian church. And yet in its homely, if bare aspect it attracts you where a more splendid building might leave you cold. Its most precious possession, the wedding or betrothal ring of the Blessed Virgin, is kept under many locks in many caskets in the chapel to the left of the west door, and may be seen but four or five times during the year. Made from some agate stone, it is popularly believed to change its colour according to the hearts of those who look on it. … 

The beautiful fountain which stands in the midst of the piazza was built in 1277 from designs, it is said, by a Perugian artist, Fra Bevignate. The lovely statuettes and bas-reliefs which adorn it were designed and sculptured by Giovanni Pisano. On an august circular base of steps rest a many-sided basin with groups of columns to strengthen it at the corners. Above this rises a second basin, many-sided too, with statues at the corners, and from the midst of this is upreared a bronze bowl from which rises a magnificent group of nymphs and dragons; together they form one of the most exquisite designs ever achieved by the sculptors of the thirteenth century. This superb crown rises from a short pedestal and the writhing dragons rearing up with beating wings and each with one paw uplifted seem to beat time for their fantastic dance. Nowhere else has Giovanni Pisano shown such an ardour of imagination, such a unity of upward leaping rhythm.

 

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Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, London, 1953. Pp. 162-163, 165.