Arezzo

 Edward Hutton completed his tour of Siena and southern Tuscany with a long chapter on Arezzo. He devoted most of the chapter to an account of the works of Piero della Francesca that he found in its churches: the Legend of the True Cross, and an image of Mary Magdalen.  

 

Rome, Florence, Siena, Assisi are what they are because of the nature of the country in which they lie. It is the same with Arezzo. Her incommunicable allure strikes you at once as soon as you enter her gates—a certain smiling aspect, subtle and discreet and yet very charming and simple seeming in its welcome, its pleasantness and serenity. Yet nothing, I think, in the history of Arezzo…would lead you to expect an aspect so happy, so merely delightful. Nothing in her history! But I am wrong, for it was here both Maecenas and Petrarch were born. It would be impossible to doubt it even though we had no irrefutable proof of the fact, and indeed I think no men have better expressed their birthplace unless—well, unless it be Vasari, who was also an Aretine. These three men perfectly explain Arezzo; its orderliness, its delight, its extraordinary charm, its profound disregard of anything that matters, of anything but a certain décor and endless gossip. … (297)

 

It is as a city of profound quiet  that we find her today, set with trees and great open spaces within her fair walls of brick at the head of those three valleys at the foot of the mountains.

 

Full of monuments as she is to her illustrious dead, it is not to them but to her churches we look for evidence of her splendour. Nor are we disappointed, for her churches perfectly reflect her history—they are full of the best works of alien masters.

 

There is S. Francesco, for instance, which one comes to first on leaving the station: a Franciscan church, of course, built nobly in the Franciscan style in 1322…. But what we come to S. Francesco to see is not the work of such masters as these, but the strong and beautiful work of Piero della Francesca in the choir—work that one cannot better anywhere in Tuscany, nor, indeed, easily find its match.

 

The legend of the Holy Cross, its history from the beginning of the world until it was discovered by the Emperor Heraclius and later by S. Helena, which Piero della Francesca has painted here—by far the most considerable piece of work that he achieved during his whole life—is one of the most curious dreams of the Christian mind. No longer upheld in its entirety by the Catholic church, it is nevertheless true in its intention, since, for the Middle Age, at least, the Cross was indeed a lovely branch of the Tree of Life which is in the midst of the Paradise of God…. (306)

 

It is this golden legend that Piero has painted so vigorously  here in the choir of S. Francesco. How far are we in contemplating these frescoes from the passionate asceticism, the unearthly beauty of Fra Angelico or Simone Martini! It is as though a new desire had suddenly been born into the world—a desire for life where Simone, after all, would have been content with beauty. What magnificent vitality have those beautiful women, how valiant are those men, how puissant those angels! And, above all, Piero has filled heaven and earth with radiant light. It is in the clear and nimble air, in the fair white light of our real and beautiful daylight, that he alone of his contemporaries has dared at last to paint man and woman in all the sweet energy of life, full of that long breath of God which at dawn in a garden first gave us light…. (311)

One lonely and magnificent figure he left behind him at Arezzo in the Cathedral—a figure of S. Mary Magdalen, very noble and reticent. She adorns no altar, but in a quiet corner of the great church… she stands very sorrowful, she alone of all those clouds on clouds of saints really understands. Well, it is always so; we find Piero emotionally under the influence of the Middle Age, and yet himself perhaps a kind of emancipator or deliverer from its mysticism… For he, too, was occupied rather with his art than with the expression of ideas about religion. He was the first painter, perhaps, to study perspective scientifically. Problems of light, the action of light on beautiful faces or hair, the action of light upon light, would certainly seem to have fascinated him almost all his life long. And yet he has not discarded the ideas that were then gradually becoming less insistent in the world, but in all their modesty and beauty he has used them without question as a means of attaining a beauty bought with much toil and feverish endeavour. His Magdalen is not the ecstatic and splendid courtesan that we see in Titian’s canvas, but a beautiful and lonely woman, who will ever remember that lingering dawn in the garden, when, in the midst of her passionate  weeping, the gardener came so quietly and spoke her name, and in a moment she knew Him whom she had loved. (313)

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Florence: Titian in the Pitti Palace

Edward Hutton ended his tour of the Pitti Palace with a discussion of its collection of Titian masterpieces by the hand of Titian, the famed Venetian master, whom he regarded as the "greatest painter of Italy, of the world."

 There remains to be considered the splendid ever living work of Titian. The early work of the greatest painter of Italy, of the world, greatest in the variety, number, and splendour of his pictures, is represented in the Pitti, happily enough by one of the most lovely of all Italian paintings, the Concert so long given to Giorgione. A monk in cowl and tonsure touches the keys of a harpsichord, while beside him stands an older man, a clerk and perhaps a monk too, who grasps the handle of a viol; in the background, a youthful and ambiguous figure, with a cap and plume, waits, perhaps on some interval to begin a song. Yet, indeed, that is not the picture, which, whatever its subject may be, would seem to be more expressive than any other in the world. Some great joy, some great sorrow, seems about to declare itself. What music does he hear, that monk with the beautiful sensitive hands, who turns away towards his companion? Something has awakened in his soul, and he is transfigured. Perhaps for the first time, in some rhythm of the music, he has understood everything, the beauty of life which passeth like a sunshine, now that it is too late, that his youth is over and middle age is upon him. His companion, on the threshold of old age, divines his trouble and lays a hand on his shoulder quietly, as though to still the tumult of his heart. Like a vision, youth itself, ambiguous, about to possess everything waits, like a stranger, as though invoked by the music, on an interval that will never come again, that is already passed.

 

If Titian is really the sole painter of this picture, how loyal he has been to his friend, to that new spirit which lighted Venetian art  as the sun makes beautiful the world. But indeed one might think that , even with Morelli, Crowe, and Cavalcaselle, and Berenson against us, not to name others who have done much for the history of painting in Italy, we might still believe, not altogether without reason, that Giorgione had some part in the Concert, which after all passed as his altogether for two hundred and fifty years… that figure of a youth, so ambiguous in its beauty—could any other hand than Giorgione’s have painted it? does it ever appear in Titian’s innumerable masterpieces at all? Dying as he did at the age of thirty-three, Giorgione must have left many pictures unfinished, which Titian, his friend and disciple almost, may well have completed, and even signed, in an age when works, almost wholly untouched by a master, were certainly sold as his.

 

Titian’s other pictures here, with the exception of the Head of Christ and the Magdalen, are portraits all…

 

In another portrait of about the same time, the Young Englishman, we have Titian at his best. The extraordinarily beautiful English face, fulfilled with some incalculable romance, is to me at least by far the most delightful portrait in Florence. One seems to understand England, her charm, her fascination, her extraordinary pride and persistence, in looking at this picture of one of her sons. All the tragedy of her kings, the adventure to be met with on her seas, the beauty and culture of Oxford, and the serenity of her country places, come back to one fresh and unsullied memories of the defiling and trumpery cities that so lately have begun to destroy her….

Titian: Mary Magdalen

For Titian seems to have created life with something of the ease and facility of a natural force; to have desired always Beauty as the only perfect flower of life; and while he was not content with the mere truth, and never with beauty divorced from life, he has created life in such abundance that his work may well be larger than the achievement of any two other men, even the greatest in painting; yet in his work, in the work that is really his, you will find nothing that is not living, nothing that is not an impassioned gesture reaching above and beyond our vision into the realm of that force which seems to be eternal.

 

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Edward Hutton: Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa, second edition, London, 1908. Pp. 341-345.

Arezzo and Piero della Francesca

Edward Hutton completed his tour of Siena and southern Tuscany with a long chapter on Arezzo. He devoted most of the chapter to an account of the works of Piero della Francesca that he found in its churches: the Legend of the True Cross, and an image of Mary Magdalen.  

 

Rome, Florence, Siena, Assisi are what they are because of the nature of the country in which they lie. It is the same with Arezzo. Her incommunicable allure strikes you at once as soon as you enter her gates—a certain smiling aspect, subtle and discreet and yet very charming and simple seeming in its welcome, its pleasantness and serenity. Yet nothing, I think, in the history of Arezzo…would lead you to expect an aspect so happy, so merely delightful. Nothing in her history! But I am wrong, for it was here both Maecenas and Petrarch were born. It would be impossible to doubt it even though we had no irrefutable proof of the fact, and indeed I think no men have better expressed their birthplace unless—well, unless it be Vasari, who was also an Aretine. These three men perfectly explain Arezzo; its orderliness, its delight, its extraordinary charm, its profound disregard of anything that matters, of anything but a certain décor and endless gossip. … (297)

 

It is as a city of profound quiet  that we find her today, set with trees and great open spaces within her fair walls of brick at the head of those three valleys at the foot of the mountains.

 

Full of monuments as she is to her illustrious dead, it is not to them but to her churches we look for evidence of her splendour. Nor are we disappointed, for her churches perfectly reflect her history—they are full of the best works of alien masters.

 

There is S. Francesco, for instance, which one comes to first on leaving the station: a Franciscan church, of course, built nobly in the Franciscan style in 1322…. But what we come to S. Francesco to see is not the work of such masters as these, but the strong and beautiful work of Piero della Francesca in the choir—work that one cannot better anywhere in Tuscany, nor, indeed, easily find its match.

 

The legend of the Holy Cross, its history from the beginning of the world until it was discovered by the Emperor Heraclius and later by S. Helena, which Piero della Francesca has painted here—by far the most considerable piece of work that he achieved during his whole life—is one of the most curious dreams of the Christian mind. No longer upheld in its entirety by the Catholic church, it is nevertheless true in its intention, since, for the Middle Age, at least, the Cross was indeed a lovely branch of the Tree of Life which is in the midst of the Paradise of God…. (306)

 

It is this golden legend that Piero has painted so vigorously  here in the choir of S. Francesco. How far are we in contemplating these frescoes from the passionate asceticism, the unearthly beauty of Fra Angelico or Simone Martini! It is as though a new desire had suddenly been born into the world—a desire for life where Simone, after all, would have been content with beauty. What magnificent vitality have those beautiful women, how valiant are those men, how puissant those angels! And, above all, Piero has filled heaven and earth with radiant light. It is in the clear and nimble air, in the fair white light of our real and beautiful daylight, that he alone of his contemporaries has dared at last to paint man and woman in all the sweet energy of life, full of that long breath of God which at dawn in a garden first gave us light…. (311)

One lonely and magnificent figure he left behind him at Arezzo in the Cathedral—a figure of S. Mary Magdalen, very noble and reticent. She adorns no altar, but in a quiet corner of the great church… she stands very sorrowful, she alone of all those clouds on clouds of saints really understands. Well, it is always so; we find Piero emotionally under the influence of the Middle Age, and yet himself perhaps a kind of emancipator or deliverer from its mysticism… For he, too, was occupied rather with his art than with the expression of ideas about religion. He was the first painter, perhaps, to study perspective scientifically. Problems of light, the action of light on beautiful faces or hair, the action of light upon light, would certainly seem to have fascinated him almost all his life long. And yet he has not discarded the ideas that were then gradually becoming less insistent in the world, but in all their modesty and beauty he has used them without question as a means of attaining a beauty bought with much toil and feverish endeavour. His Magdalen is not the ecstatic and splendid courtesan that we see in Titian’s canvas, but a beautiful and lonely woman, who will ever remember that lingering dawn in the garden, when, in the midst of her passionate  weeping, the gardener came so quietly and spoke her name, and in a moment she knew Him whom she had loved. (313)

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