San Sepolcro and Piero della Francesca

 Edward Hutton concluded "Siena and Southern Tuscany" in Arezzo, but in that chapter he did include a side trip by rail to Borgo San Sepolcro to see the famous Resurrection by Piero della Francesca.

 

But the most beautiful of all these treasures to which Arezzo holds the key is Borgo San Sepolcro in the Tiber Valley. … There are very few things more lovely in the world than the upper valley of the Arno, but one of them is, I think, the upper valley of the Tiber. It is a landscape more virile than Umbria—a landscape by Piero della Francesca, in fact, and in Borgo it is his work you find, for the little town is his birthplace.

 

That “Resurrection of Christ” in the Municipio is perhaps the most beautiful representation of the triumph of Christ in the world. …

 

The fresco of the resurrection comes upon us with a kind of surprise; we had not suspected Piero of so much thoughtfulness. It is as though he had listened to some voice, or seen a vision, or on some fortunate day had been led away the captive of Love, … In the cold light of the earliest morning, mere sunless dawn as yet, Christ has risen and is standing in His tomb. His experience is in His face, the dawn of knowledge, perhaps of the sorrows of humanity. It is as though for the first time He had really understood the power of evil, to which, after all, we are so unwillingly the slaves, the hopeless misery of that state of imperfect love. The noise of Hell has furrowed His face, and He has only just escaped into our quiet world. Beneath that terrible and beautiful figure… lie four soldiers, sleeping in the noiseless twilight. Behind the green trees on the right the first exquisite frail light of dawn is coming to comfort the world, and with the return of the Prince of Life the first day of spring has come; already the flowers have blossomed and the trees have budded behind Him as he came out of the sunrise, and when he shall turn at last into the garden, where Mary will find Him, those bare boughs, that naked hill-side, that brown and sterile earth will quicken, too, even as the hills that He has already crossed. All the passion of the encounter with Death and the dead is graven on His face, and though men sleep He can know no rest; He is up before them, and the whole long day is waiting for Him…. For Piero has expressed not only the old magical truths of Paganism and Christianity, the joy of the world at the coming of Spring, the triumph of the Prince of Life in a world pallid with the fear of Death, but the subtler and more terrible thoughts, too, of the age of thought that was just then dawning on the world. …

 

It was as such things as these in my heart that I made my way back to Arezzo, and, regretting them, took my leave of Southern Tuscany.

 

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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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Cortona

Edward Hutton had his own favorite travel guide. He quoted him as an introduction to his visit to Cortona. but when he got there, his interests  differed from those of his guide.  He preferred a magnificent Annunciation by Far Angelico, and then spent most of this chapter on a life and appreciation of Cortona's St. Margaret.

“Traveller, thou art approaching Cortona! Dost thou reverence age—that fullness of years which as Pliny says, ‘in man is venerable, in cities sacred’? Here is that which demands thy reverence. Here is a city, compared to which Rome is but of yesterday—to which most other  cities of ancient renown are fresh and green. Thou mayest have wandered far and wide through Italy—nothing hast thou seen more venerable than Cortona. Ere the days of Hector and Achilles, ere Troy itself arose—Cortona was…. Hast thou respect for fallen greatness? Yon solemn city was once the proudest and mightiest in the land, the metropolis of Etruria and now—but enter its gates and look around.”  

 

Dear Dennis, companion of my boyhood, I have done thy bidding, and if I have forsaken what thou hast loved so eloquently for things that were hidden from thee—forgive me, master. It was thy hand led me thither, and in thy name I went. Also I did thy bidding. I “looked around,” and it seemed to me that Corythus was nothing to me, but Frate Elias very much, and as for heaven-born Dardanus, what was he after all beside S. Margaret, Sister of the Seraphs, Lily of the Fields? … 

 

Nothing, I think, in all Tuscany will impress and astonish the traveller more than his walks up and down Cortona through that maze of narrow precipitous streets between the sombre palaces founded on the naked tock, and cliffs and boulders that a hundred generations have been powerless to wear away. Cortona is indeed, as Dennis says, the most ancient of cities, nor is there any city in Italy that has kept so medieval an aspect. …

 

It will thus be seen that Cortona has much to offer us, a wall of immense antiquity, streets narrow and precipitous, palaces and buildings of the Middle Age. Happily, too, she possesses many of those more human works which smile at us from the early Renaissance. … 

 

Opposite the Duomo is the Church of Il Gesu, the baptistry built in 1505, and here, in fact, are preserved the great treasures of Cortona.

 

The finest of these is the exquisite Annunciation from S. Domenico, which under a delicate loggia just without the house at sunset in the cool of the day Madonna has been reading, when suddenly over the flowers Gabriel has come to her with his Ave Gratia Plena, and she has crossed  her white hands on her bosom, and, the book still open on her knee, has leaned a little breathlessly forward as though to escape, And indeed as the angel has said, the Lord is with her, the Dove hovers sweetly over her bright head, and God the Father Himself overhears His own message passing down under the arches. In the background, as though to show us quite clearly what is happening, we see as in a vision our first parents expelled from Paradise, that Eden to which Mary is about to win for us admission again …. 

 

It is strange that Cortona should have held almost at that same time two such different Franciscans as Frate Elias and S. Margaret—the one a great statesman who abhorred poverty, the other a poor woman who loved it. Elias built here in the city a vast palace full of every sort of splendour that later became the Vescovado, Margarita built the hospital and restored the church which, after being rebuilt, was to bear her name. And it is she who is the victor, not he, for all his power and wealth and greatness of mind. He is forgotten by all men save a few historians, while her name is still familiarly dear on the lips of the peasants and children, who invoke her, their all-powerful friend, as we may any day in the fields or the byways about her home:--

 

“O Lily of the fields,

 O violet of humility,

 O little Sister of the Seraphs,

           Ora pro nobis”

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Edward Hutton, Siena and Southern Tuscany, 1910, pp. 281-294. 

Chiusi

                                       Southern Tuscany: Chiusi

 

On his tour of Siena and Southern Tuscany Edward Hutton found beautiful views most everywhere. Ancient Chiusi was no exception. The town and its views were so exceptional that he had little interest in its famed Etruscan remains.

Nothing, I suppose, can well be more venerable than Chiusi, and as for the beautiful view you see thence, men must have loved it for some thousands of years. To the right rises Monte Cetona, like a vast pyramid shining in the sun, while to the left Citta del Pieve hides among the woods of its dear hills. Between, the valley opens north and south, the wide and fruitful valley of the Chiana, through a sweet and quiet world of villages and homesteads and sweetly breaking hills. How softly the evening falls there, and how wonderful is the light over hill and valley and mountain! It is easy to tell one is here on the verge of Umbria; one has but to go down into the valley, and in something less than a hundred yards one finds oneself in that mysterious country, “dim with valleys,” which Perugino, the landscape painter, has shown us in all his pictures well. Chiusi is, and has always been, the Mecca of the archaeologist, yet I am sure he never found anything there so lovely, half so consoling as that view over the valley and the light on the fair hills. And whatever Chiusi may be or may come to be for the world, a vast Etruscan necropolis or a huge factory town and railway terminus… for me she will ever remain what she was to me in those two brief days in which I sat like a lord in the Leone d’Oro, and, like my fathers before me, washed my goat’s cheese down with Montepulciano and smoked sigari on the doorstep as I watched the evening procession of the maidens and the beautiful ladies, who there, as in every other Italian town and village, take their constitutional after the work of the day. Chiusi is merely the best and loveliest of places in Tuscany because you may look from it as from a window on Umbria. It is a place from which you may overlook grey olives and green vineyards and golden corn, and beyond a fairy lake, and beyond the hills and then the mountains. I could watch just that for ever. I did my best. They came to me and spoke of Etruscan tombs, they told me of an Etruscan Museum….

 But what have I to do with the Etruscans or the Etruscans with me? My world, the world I love, lies before my eyes. May I not look at it and enjoy it a little before it is taken away from me, or spoiled for ever by some fool who wants to make money and benefit his country, as they say, by making it miserable and wretched? (273)…

 

As you wander through the place, quiet enough at any time of year, through the great empty piazza at the top of the town from red brick Church of S. Francesco, it is less of Chiusi than of the beautiful world in which she stands, scarcely more than an ancient graveyard, that you think. History here is but a tale that is told….Beside that marvellous and eternal beauty no trumpery tale of a dead civilization, of which we know nothing and can know nothing, is worth consideration for a moment. For here are the sun and the wind and the soft sky: let us lift up our hearts and rejoice in them, for too soon we also shall be of as little account as the Etruscans. (278)

 

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Edward Hutton: Siena and Southern Tuscany, New York, 1910.  

Radicofani

                                      

 

Edward Hutton's tour of southern Tuscany eventually took him to Radicofani, the hilltop stronghold of Ghino di Tacco, the thirteenth century bandit made famous by Dante and Boccaccio. Hutton tells Ghino's story but also finds much to value in this tiny town with the spectacular view.

Today Radicofani is a little naked village straggling round the jagged hill under the fortress, with three churches, a fine clock-tower, many old houses, and a beautiful palace, evidently the Palazzo del Governo, now a prison, covered with coats of arms; while without the gates are a Capuchin convent, a pretty place enough, among trees too, now secularized... 

Of the three churches within the walls,… S. Pietro has a wealth of beautiful things, the work of the Robbias, whom, as I suppose, the Sforza of Santa Fiora brought here… But then, since all the guide-books have ignored Radicofani, as they have ignored Mont’ Amiata, one expects to find nothing there, whereas both Radicofani and Santa Fiora are as rich in della Robbia ware as any city in Tuscany, save Florence…. (255)

The great thing to be had at Radicofani is the view—such a view as I think you may find nowhere else in all Tuscany, so wide it is, so majestic, and so beautiful. Let us remind ourselves of it. Across the deep and bitter ravine to the west rises Mont’ Amiata, an incredibly great and lovely thing, with Abbadia S. Salvatore just visible on the verge of the woods. To the north lies the Senese with its shining cities, with Siena itself visible at evening on the skirts of the farthest hills. To the east lies the splendid range of Cetona, with its tiny scattered villages and lofty, sweeping outline, shutting out Umbria and her hills. And to the south? To the south lies the whole breadth of the Patrimony.* No one who has once looked southward from Radicofani is ever likely to forget what he has seen. It is one of the great vistas of the world. It almost gives you Rome. Evening is the hour when that world stretched for your joy at your feet is the most lovely, and strangely enough most visible, for in the heat of the day a veil of mist hides it from the boldest eyes. But at night, when far and far away across the Umbrian hills, like a horn of pallid gold, like a silver sickle for some precious harvest, the moon hangs over the world, then little by little in her light that world at your feet becomes visible, at first never so faintly, as though still hidden in some impalpable but lovely veil…. Far away Lago di Bolsena shines like a jewel, Monte Cimino rises like a ghost beside Monte Venere, eternally separated the one from the other by the faint line of hills like a bow, against which Montefiascone rises  like a lovely thought in the unbreakable silence, the papal city of Viterbo lies like a white rose. And last of all in the farthest distance Monte Soracte, the lovely mountain, guards the desert of the Campagna and the immortal thing which it has brought forth—the City of Rome. (265-6)

 

 

* The Patrimony refers to the Papal States, that huge chunk of central Italy governed by the Pope for over 1000 years until it was forcibly taken over by the Italian government in the nineteenth century unification movement.

Edward Hutton: Siena and Southern Tuscany, New York, 1910.  

Montalcino and S. Antimo

 

Edward Hutton loved everything about Montalcino but above all, he praised the inn of the Lily (Il Giglio). He did not mention that Montalcino is the home of Brunello, one of the world's great wines. On leaving he made sure to visit the nearby twelfth century Abbey of S. Antimo, a site that my wife and I agree should not be missed. 

There is much talk in every guidebook, from Herr Baedeker through Murray to Joanne, of hotels—first-class, second-class, and tolerable, as they say in their curt, unexpansive way; but what does the ordinary traveller always on the look-out for the disgusting luxury of the “Ritz” or the “Carlton “ or the “Waldorf Astoria” understand I should like to know, of inns? Pure nothing…. Such places have nothing to say to travellers. Let us thank God for it. The inns I know in half a hundred places in Italy… are human places, where you will find friends, a soft bed, well-cooked food, a good wine, and a welcome. These places should be treasured in the memory and not too easily or widely published abroad; for an inn may be spoiled by its guests. Nevertheless, for once, out of pure charity and love of my fellow-men, I will praise the inn of the Lily… at Montalcino. I will say that it is the best I know, that I have been happy there, and that there I lived like a king. At night I slept soft and clean, I ate well punctually at the hours I had appointed, I was welcomed and I made friends, and from there I issued forth to see the magnificent town of Montalcino, tomb of the Sienese Republic; thither again I returned when I would, glad at heart, as to my own home. …

How can I praise you as I ought, O inn of the Lily, or wish you well enough? May you prosper always but not too much, may you ever be full of the world about you, may you gather in many strangers but not too many, and may S. Cristofano see to it that all these things come true for you. …

 

Seeing, then, that all these things are as they are, it is no wonder that one finds Montalcino delightful. And, indeed, who could find it anything else? It clings to the great hills high up like the nest of an eagle; it is set above the woods, across the olive gardens it looks to the desert, over the vineyards it looks to the hills…. (246)

 

The road which leaves the city thus by the hills will bring you in some eight miles to the forgotten abbey of S. Antimo.

 

The Abbey of S. Antimo was in the Middle Age one of the greater Benedictine monasteries in Italy, and indeed it was the most formidable ecclesiastical feud in Tuscany… Moreover, it was, and still is even in its ruin, one of the best examples in Italy of Romanesque architecture, or rather of that kind of Romanesque peculiar to the eleventh century…. We may note that one of the most notable features of this new style was the substitution of the vaulted stone roofs for the older wooden ones; now though this was of slow growth, beginning with the covering of the aisles when the nave was still roofed with wood, it became at last universal, though the mixed style was long used in Italy even in the twelfth century, when it seems the Abbey of S. Antimo was built.

 

As we see it today even, the Church of S. Antimo seems to us perhaps the most beautiful interior in Tuscany, though the cathedrals of Pisa and Lucca are maybe more firmly established in our hearts. But in any case it is so fine that it is worth any trouble to see, and since it lies within an easy drive  of Montalcino and on the direct road to the railway it should on no account be missed. (250-251)

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Pienza

 

 

Pienza is my favorite town in Italy. It was probably Edward Hutton's description that prompted my wife and I to visit on more than one occasion. The charming little town, now the self-proclaimed cheese capitol of Tuscany, still has its spectacular views. In Hutton's time the town did not have a inn, but now there is the lovely Hotel Corsignano.

A little later  I came to a great castle at a turning of the way over the bare hills, and then at last and suddenly Pienza came into full view, still some miles away, so I set out with renewed heart and won the gate at sunset.

And as it happened my angel went with me, for as I came up the one long street of the place into the piazza where the Duomo stands and the Palazzo del Municipio and the Palazzo Piccolomini, and indeed all the great buildings of Pienza, he led me, and I swear I knew nothing about it, behind the great church on to a narrow terrace, and there I watched the sunset. I could not have had greater good fortune. For it was not only the sunset I saw, but the sunset over a great bare world of mountains and valley—Mont’Amiata, now quite close, and Val d’Orcia—a world actually as beautiful and as strong as Castile, as beautiful, too, and as stony, as tremendous for its marvelous significance. Desolate beyond expression, that wide and desert valley, full of twilight, lay before me, and out of it rose Mont’Amiata, the greatest mountain in Tuscany, and its foundations were as the foundations of a nation. … (230-231)

 

The story of Pienza is like the fairy tale of Cinderella, which after all has Christian authority, for is it not written that the last shall be first? Before Pienza changed her name, before her wonderful, her incredible good fortune befell her, she was but a little good-for-nothing village of a few hundred inhabitants, and her name was Corsignano. Then in the first years of the fifteenth century a certain poor nobleman, exiled from Siena, came to the village to live by cultivating the few wretched acres which alone remained to him, for he was ruined.  With him came his young wife, as noble as himself, and presently in their little homestead she gave birth to a son, whom they called Enea Silvio. This child of the race of the Piccolomini, after a life of adventure, managing his affairs with great astuteness, and meeting with much good fortune, was presently elected Pope, and taking, in memory of Aeneas, after whom he was named, the title of Pius, and of his vanity, in the twinkling of an eye, as only a Pope can he turned the disreputable and dirty little village of Corsignano into the city of Pienza, building there a cathedral and certain palaces, and setting over to govern it a Bishop, that his name might be remembered for ever and his birth place be held in honour in saecula saeculorum…. (231-2)

Having settled this matter, let me hasten to add that as a village Pienza is one of the most charming and delightful places in the world, exceptional too, as villages go, in the possession of a fine cathedral and several palaces, to say nothing of pictures and a museum; and yet with all these, which Pius gave her, the finest thing and incomparably the loveliest and the best which she possesses was the gift of God—I mean  the great view she has of the mountains and the Val d’Orcia from the hill-side. For this she should give thanks daily, and we with her, for the rest, we can accept it with a certain complacence, seeing that it is there, not for our sakes at all, but to satisfy the vanity of Enea Silvio, the most human of the Popes who, in the name of Pius II, filled St. Peter’s Chair not unworthily from 1458 to 1464. (232-3)***

 

 

*** Pictured above is one of the three volumes of the autobiographical Commentaries of Pope Pius II published by the I Tatti Renaissance Library. They are more readable and delightful than any Papal encyclical, and provide an essential down to earth guide  to anyone interested in the Renaissance. 

Here is the Pope's description of his home town then called Cortignano.

From Sarteano the pope went to Cortigiano. There is a great mountain in the Val d’Orcia which rises up to a narrow plateau about a mile long. At the southeast corner stands a little town, not much to speak of, but possessed of a healthful climate, excellent wine, and all the other necessities of life. Traveling from Siena to Rome, one passes Cortigiano on the road to Radicofani, just after the castle of San Quirico. The town sits on a gentle rise three miles from the main road. (V. I, 281)

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Edward Hutton: Siena and Southern Tuscany, New York, 1910. 

Sinalunga

 

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.*

 

 

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* 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. 

Tragedy of Monte Oliveto Monastery

 On his tour of southern Tuscany Edward Hutton visited the famous monastery of Monte Oliveto. Even though the frescoes of the life of St. Benedict by Signorelli and Sodoma remain, he believed that those frescoes are an impeachment of "the wanton stupidity that has drained away the life of such a place in mere barbarian revenge."

 

Moreover, on the road from Asciano to Monte Oliveto there is much of great beauty in the landscape beside the beauty of the desert. There is the majestic loveliness, the incomparable outline of Mont’ Amiata, the bizarre and haggard splendour of Radicofani, and both these wonders burst upon one suddenly and dramatically after climbing the longest hill some halfway to the monastery. 

 

There are many outlines of surpassing splendour in Italy; there are the hills of Cortona as seen from Montepulciano, there are Monte Cimino and Monte Venere as seen from Abbadia S. Salvatore, there are the hills of Vallombrosa as seen from Vincigliata, the whole splendour of Val d’Arno as seen from Empoli, and the Monte Pisani as seen from the leaning tower of Pisa; but there is no other outline that I have seen, even in my dreams, that may compare with that of Mont’ Amiata as seen from three different points—the Porta Romano of Siena, the platform behind the Cathedral of Pienza, and the desert hillside between Asciano and Monte Oliveto. Modern Italy has wantonly destroyed half her patrimony in a kind of pique, to humour fools or to mark what she conceives to be her “progress,” whither no one knows; but not yet has she thought or been able to destroy much of the superhuman loveliness with which God has endowed her…. (180)

 

But if one seeks destruction one has not far to go for it—only, indeed, as far as the monastery itself, hidden away among the worst precipices of the desert, which here the monks had made to blossom like a rose.

 

The great block of brick buildings which form the monastery, with its church, cloisters, and conventual houses, are the centre of a venerable oasis in this bare country, of an oasis which little by little the desert is claiming again. For the place is no longer a monastery, the monks having been deprived by the jealous Italian Government not only of the fruits of their labours, the houses they had built, the smiling garden they had contrived in the desert, but the right to labout at all. Nor in robbing them has modern Italy seen fit herself to fill their place. Her policy has been, here as elsewhere, that of a mere anarchist, eager in destruction, but too often careless or incapable of construction, or even, as here, of carrying on the good work of the monks she has robbed … (180-1)

The loss is Italy’s and ours; for while we as mere travellers may still find here the hospitality we seek, the Italian contadino and labourer are deprived of their employers; the land carefully and labouriously  redeemed and cultivated by the monks has been lost, and a host of people left without employment. It is a striking spectacle, not uncommon in Italy, where the true Italians, the common people, have been more ruthlessly exploited by the middle classes, the bagmen from Piedmont, and all the riff-raff of the risorgimento, than anywhere else in Europe. (181)…

 

The last Abbot of Monte Oliveto, the holy and courageous Abbate di Negro, of the family of S. Catherine of Genoa, died in 1897. He remembered the now empty cloister and choir, filled by fifty white-robed monks. And then the peasants sang in the vineyards, and the corn was golden in July and reaped with joy, and the whole country-side was glad in those days. And now? – well, now there is only a horrid silence. * (184)

 

* Note: The Olivetani have been suppressed almost everywhere, like the rest of the Orders. Their General now lives in the little monastery of Settignano. May they long be left in peace. ###

 

Edward Hutton: Siena and Southern Tuscany, New York, 1910. 

Asciano: a Famous Painting

 

On his tour of Siena and Southern Tuscany, Edward Hutton's first stop after leaving Siena was Asciano whose claim to fame was its churches. One of them contained a famous depiction of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin. Although, modern scholars attribute the painting to an unknown Master, Hutton followed Bernard Berenson and gave it to Sassetta.

As you gaze southward from the platform of Siena, from the Porta Romana or the bastion of S. Barbara, you see before you, across the narrow gardens that hem Siena in and fill all her valleys with plenteousness, a country of a very different character, that has much in common with the bare uplands about Volterra, a strong and masculine country of vast and barren undulations, of low and restless clay hills, very tragic in aspect and full of mystery. 

 

Almost invisible at midday in the glaze of the summer sun, often hidden in early morning by the mists of the valleys, this strange wilderness reveals itself only at evening, when it seems to lie like a restless sea between the city and that far away fair mountain, Mont’ Amiata, whose beautiful and pure outline nothing can ever trouble or modify. Forbidding at first, little by little, as day by day, evening by evening, you gaze on that vast loneliness, it begins to attract you, to call you, to fascinate you; its little cities half-hidden here and there in the sombre billows of clay or suddenly shining out in a glint of stormy sunshine, or delicately revealed in some virginal dawn, beckon you from Siena, till at last you set out to find them where they are repeating their beautiful names—Asciano, Buonconvento, Montepulciano, Pienza, S. Quirico, Montalcino, Radicofani, Chiusi…. (175)

 

But the true splendour of Asciano lies in her churches, which are to be found alike in her three divisions. There is S. Agata in the town proper, the Collegiata since 1542, a fine and interesting building of the transition period. It is perhaps here that Asciano keeps her greatest treasure. For in the choir behind the high altar, on the left, is a magnificent altarpiece, an early work by Sassetta, representing the Birth of the Blessed Virgin, with scenes from her life. … It is certainly the earliest important work by Sassetta that has come down to us. It must have been one of the greatest and noblest works anywhere to be seen in Europe when it was new, for it is full of a sweet gravity, precision, and daintiness that still entrance us and lift up our hearts. In the midst, in a beautiful and lofty room before a cheerful fire… sits some sister, maybe of S. Anne, with the Blessed Virgin—our Life, our Sweetness, and our Hope—in her arms. A servant warms some linen before the crackling flames, while to and fro through the sunlit room angels softly pass and repass, intent on the service of their Queen. Nor are they forgetful of S. Anne, who, still abed, is served by one of them, while another waits on guard, fascinated by the little Virgin. To the left without sits S. Joachim, talking, it may be, with the doctor, while a little lad, perhaps S. Joseph, runs in from the garden, charmingly visible, with its well and cypress and border of flowers, through an open doorway. Above are three scenes: in the midst the Madonna and Child with four angels, to the left the death, and to the right the funeral of the Blessed Virgin. Nothing can exceed the intimate loveliness of this work. (175-176)

 

 

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 Edward Hutton: Siena and Southern Tuscany, New York, 1910. 

Siena: Duccio's Maesta

 Writing in 1910 Edward Hutton called Duccio's Maesta Siena's greatest achievement. After an account of the town-wide procession that accompanied the painting on its way to installation in the Duomo, he went on to describe the painting in his own inimitable fashion. 

 

Among the many fragments that go to make up the museum of the Opera, it is, after all, to that room on the third floor which holds Duccio’s broken Majestas that we shall return again and again. Before this marvellous altarpiece one often wonders whether this was not the greatest thing Siena ever accomplished in the world of action, in the world of art, in the world of the intellect. It alone, at any rate, endures for ever. (118)

 

Duccio was born about 1255, and already in 1278 he was employed as a painter by the state … He was the true founder of the Sienese school, which was in its own way as lovely in its results as, and perhaps more original in its aim than, the other schools of painting in Italy. Duccio seems to have got his training from some Byzantine master, perhaps in Constantinople itself, perhaps in Siena. (118-119)

 

The picture thus honoured is one of the great works of the Middle Age. In the midst, on a vast throne, is seated the Madonna Advocata Senesium, with her Divine Child in her arms. Four angels on either side gaze at this wonder, leaning dreamily on the back and sides of the throne, while in the right and left on either side six others stand on guard. In front of these stood SS. John Evangelist, Paul, Catherine, John the Baptist, Peter, and James; and before all in adoration knelt the four Bishops, the patrons of the city, SS. Savinus, Anasanus, Crescentius, and Vittorius. On the footstool of the six-sided throne was written—

 

MATER SANCTA DEI SIS CAUSA SENES REQUIRI SIS

               DUCCIO VITATE QUIA DEPINXXIT ITA.

 

This, being interpreted, prays, “Holy Mother of God, be thou the cause of rest to Siena, and to Duccio life, because he has painted thee thus.”

 

But this was not all. This altarpiece, as I have said, was set up over the high altar of the Duomo, and in those days the high altar stood under the cupola. It had therefore to be seen from both sides; from the nave where the people worshipped and from the choir where the Chapter was gathered. The Madonna enthroned with the divine child and Angels and Saints, as I have described it, faced the people, and beneath this was a gradino of nine panels.  In all, with the gradini, the altarpiece consisted of forty-four small panels beside the Majesta, only thirty-five of which remain in Siena…. (119-120)

 

It is a pity that the Sienese authorities cannot find a better room in which to place this, perhaps the greatest work in their possession. It should be re-erected, if not in a church—that might seem to be impossible—then in a room by itself. The missing panels could be replaced by copies. As it hangs at present it is impossible to appreciate its true effect. What it once would have been in the Duomo we shall never know. (120-121)

 

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Edward Hutton, Siena and Southern Tuscany, 1910.

Siena: Pius II and the Piccolomini Library

 

 

Edward Hutton's, Siena and Southern Tuscany contains many brief biographies, especially of little known local saints. Today, I present his brief biography of the famed humanist Pope, Pius II, and the library built by his successor to house his works. 

The Library is, then, really a monument to the great humanist Pope who canonized S. Catherine of Siena. The bronze doors were made by Antoniolo Ormanni. Over them is a fine fresco of the Coronation of Cardinal Francesco as Pius III. Within are the ten splendid frescoes of the life of Pius II by Pintoricchio.

 

Pius II was born in 1405. He was an adventurer of fine character, but an adventurer. He had no great convictions, but, unlike so many who are without them, he was capable of learning from experience. And then, if he was without convictions, he was also without prejudices. He made the most of life in no vulgar way, but with a success that proves his superiority. He was not one to mould the world, but to use it and enjoy it nobly. His early life is said to have been disorderly. He wrote much sensuous and even licentious verse, and a novel that might have come from the hand of Boccaccio in a moment of ennui. At twenty-six he became secretary to the Bishop of Fermo at the Council of Basle. There he made his reputation, and in the years between 1432 and 1435 he was employed on missions to England, Scotland, and Germany. He then followed Frederic III, reformed his life, took Orders, reconciled himself to the Pope, and was created Bishop of Trieste, and returning to Italy in 1456, he became Cardinal of Siena. On the death of Calixtus III, two years later, he was elected Pope, and, in reference to his name of Aeneas, took the title of Pius II. His reign was disappointing; it revealed his want of conviction and his opportunism. Instead of forming that confederation of Europe against the Turks…he wasted himself, his eloquence—which was considerable—and his material power—which was small—in breaking the unruly barons of the Romagna and the Marche…  The effort to regain Constantinople, worthy of all his energy, came to nothing, and, as though in remorse for his failure, we see him at last, feeble and suffering, borne to Ancona on a litter to bless and encourage the half-hearted and belated Crusade. There he died in August 1464. Looking back on his life now, it is as a scholar and a humanist he chiefly appeals to us. His long Commentaries are full of human pages and a real love of Nature that in the men of his day was only to be found again in Lorenzo de’ Medici and Leon Alberti. He was a mixture more strange than rare, of weakness and strength, of a vanity and idealism truly Sienese. He erred, but he did not deceive himself; he did not try to make himself out nobler than he was; and for his sincerity and frankness we respect him, so that his very inconsistencies come at last to seem the most real things about him, and his thoughts about life, so plentifully recorded, really spontaneous impressions are valuable to us on that account. And last, but not least, he had the courage of his opinions—he canonized S. Catherine….

 

Pintoricchio: Frescoes of the Life of Pius II.

 

Full as these works are of the petty detail that Pintoricchio loved, they are redeemed even from their faults of composition, even from their feebleness of structure, even from their lack of life, by the spaciousness of their landscape and the charm of their thousand incidents. They are a complete decoration to the room, though not perhaps a really splendid one, and they remain the masterpiece of the artist, and one of the brightest and most harmonious works of the Renaissance. *

 

 

 

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Edward Hutton: Siena and Southern Tuscany, 1910, pp. 116-118.

*Image courtesy of David Orme.

Siena: Duomo

  Edward Hutton did not admire the facade of Siena's Duomo but he did find much to admire in the interior. Many thanks to my friend David Orme for the images.

In so many of the cathedrals of Italy, the façade has little or no relation to the church which lies behind it; and here in Siena it might seem we have the most flagrant example of this fault. The façade of the Duomo of Orvieto, it is true, errs in the same way, though not so manifestly, for there at least the noble central door, so much larger than its fellows on either side, emphasizes the importance of the nave over the aisles, while here the three doors are of equal height. But this is by no means the only cause of Siena’s inferiority. As a façade pure and simple, that of Orvieto is noble and lovely in design, in decoration, and in colour. That of Siena is feeble in design, it suffers from too much decoration, and this is of a mean sort, and who but a fanatic can admire its colour? It fails everywhere in comparison with the work of Orvieto—it fails in order and in beauty. And if in its completeness it may not be compared with its sister at Orvieto, it fails, too, in its detail. At Orvieto sculpture has, with very happy effect, been more sparingly used, but what there is, is of a better and nobler kind. … (105)

If one is always disappointed with the façade of the Cathedral, what is one’s final impression of the interior? At first certainly you are bewildered and confused by those bands of black and white marble which so unfortunately diminish the spaciousness of what is, after all, a very spacious building; they halve its height and breadth and rob it of its dignity. But when, if ever, you have become accustomed to this oddity, you recognize that what charms you in a building full of contradictions is that in it which carries out the idea of all Latin building, an effect, yes, in spite of every sort of handicap, an effect of light and space, not so splendid certainly as you will find in such masterpieces as the Cathedrals of Pisa and Lucca or in the church of S. Croce in Florence, but light and space nevertheless, here where the fundamental feeling is rather Romanesque than Gothic, the predominating lines horizontal rather than perpendicular; and the decorations of the church, mainly of the Renaissance as they are, confirm the impression we receive from the building itself. … (111)

 But the finest and most interesting work of art in the Cathedral is the pulpit by Niccolo Pisano.… The plan is the same as that for the pulpit in the Baptistry of Pisa, but the work is richer and more clairvoyant. Octagonal in form, it possesses two more bas-reliefs than the pulpit of the Pisan baptistry, namely, the Massacre of the Innocents and a second scene of the Last Judgment. But in every relief, we find a more dramatic life and an art more naturalistic than in the earlier work. It is a masterpiece a little uncertain of itself, perhaps, but full of a new promise of joy.… (115)

 

 

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Edward Hutton: Siena and Southern Tuscany, New York, 1910