Sanseverino and Madonna Pacis

In Sanseverino Edward Hutton found a beautiful work of art but more than anything else it was the city and its people, living things that a guide book could never express, that impressed him. 

Sanseverino, in the narrow valley of the Potenza, under the steep hill upon which its Castello still stands, wins you at once by its beauty, its smiling aspect, its air of the Middle Age, of whose works it is full, and of which it might well stand as an example in its picturesque and daring loveliness. The days one spends there wandering from the beautiful long Piazza so happily arcaded on the south, from church to church up to the old Castello, entered by that prodigious gateway, Porta S. Francesco, on the hill, are all days of delight and happiness. There can be no one who has ever wandered through these long valleys, or climbed these great hills, but has rejoiced to enter Sanseverino and regretted to depart, though it be for a city so marvelous as Camerino, or so hospitable and delicious as Matelica. For Sanseverino, in some wonderful way known only to itself, renews one’s youth and one’s first careless delight in Italy—in these beautiful hill cities always so surprising to an Englishman, who is wont to build his towns and villages anywhere rather than upon a hill; but, then, how much that is left to us in England is as old as Sanseverino? (235)

Madonna Pacis

This is the beautiful work of Pintoricchio, and it probably dates from about 1496. It represents in a beautiful landscape—a valley with far-away mountains and curious rocks beneath woods—Madonna seated with her little Son standing on a rich cushion on her knee, as He blesses the donor, a priest…who kneels humbly, his hands pointed in prayer. In Our Lord’s left hand is a crystal ball surmounted by a little cross; and on either side of Madonna is an angel. Above, in the lunette, appears God the Father, surrounded by the cherubim. This very noble work is called the Madonna of Peace, Madonna Pacis, and its effect upon one is just that; it is as though all the softness of Umbria had suddenly crept, on some summer afternoon, into this harder and more violent country of narrow, broken valleys, and precipitous mountains, and had left here for ever this much of its own beatitude…. (239)

When the traveler has seen these things he has seen perhaps the finer sights of Sanseverino, but no one should forget that the city remains—remains to be loved and for our delight. Anyone can follow a guide book, if he can find one, from church to church and picture to picture, but let not such an one deceive himself; when he has seen everything that is there set down there must always remain the city itself with its by-ways, shrines and, above all, its people and the life and happiness of the place. These, in such a book as this, I have not the space nor perhaps the skill to speak of, as they should be spoken of. They remain, when all is said, not merely what is best worth seeing in Sanseverino, but are rightly understood Sanseverino itself. For all that we look for and search out with so much industry is dead, after all, but these are living, and by our pleasure in them, ourselves may judge ourselves. (242)

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Edward Hutton: The Cities of Romagna and the Marches, NY, 1925.

Edward Hutton: Tolentino

Before the unification of Italy, Romagna and the Marches had been part of the Papal States for about a thousand years. Hutton viewed unification as a conquest of the South by the northern Kingdom of Piedmont, a conquest in which he believed more was lost than gained by cities like Tolentino.

St. Nicholas Basilica, Tolentino

The truth would seem to be that the cities under the Papal dominion enjoyed a far greater measure of real freedom than those subject to a mere Signore, and that the difference between being actually independent and being subject to the Pope was a negligible one. Says an historian of Tolentino: “The Accoramboni were never lords in Tolentino. It is false to assert it. We were always free under the Church. The people of Tolentino would never endure tyranny. The men of Camerino—yes; but we were made of different stuff.” And this feeling, which we may be sure was based on substantial fact, was really universal throughout the Romagna and the Marches. When the Piedmontese came in, in 1860, “the people of Ravenna,” we read, “were forced to the polling booth at the point of the bayonet.” And this new liberty was recommended to those who enjoyed the reality for ages! (229)

The most famous citizen of Tolentino was St. Nicholas (1245-1305), an Augustinian monk. 

Tolentino, it may be thought, as the birthplace of a great saint, may have been more Papal than her neighbors, but in fact this is not so. The great figure of S. Nicholas is not in any sense of the word political; its appeal is altogether human and universal…. 

Perugino: S. Nicholas

It might seem that in S. Nicholas of Tolentino we have an example of that rare sweetness of character which is perhaps in greater or lesser degree the portion of all the saints, but which in him was so overwhelming that men and women followed him, flocked to his Masses, or sought him in the confessional for no other reason. As a preacher, no doubt, he was amazingly successful, but rather by reason of some inward sweetness and charm than of the victorious eloquence of his mere words. For thirty years he lived in Tolentino in the Augustinian convent there, a star in the March, something which men could not explain or dismiss from their minds, women knelt to kiss his robe, and even those in the flower of their age gladly heard his voice, as though it had been some sweet far-away music. By the very beauty of his nature he drew thousands from the half-brutal worldliness in which they lived, and seems indeed to have brought to them something of the strange incomprehensible beauty of his own vision. (229-230)

On the way to Tolentino Hutton passed through tiny Monte San Giusto and mentioned a painting by Lorenzo Lotto.

 

Beyond Pausula, by a rough and hilly road across the Cremone valley, we come to the little walled town of Monte San Giusto, and there in the church of S. Maria is a Crucifixion by Lotto, painted in 1531. (227)

I wonder if he actually saw this magnificent painting by the Venetian master. The small church of S. Maria in Telusiano is hard to find and the painting would have been difficult to see before the invention of coin-operated lighting. A few years ago my wife and I visited Monte San Giusto to see the painting. Here is a link to my account.

Lorenzo Lotto: Crucifixion detail

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Edward Hutton: The Cities of Romagna and the Marches, NY, 1925.

Edward Hutton: Amandola

Edward Hutton's descriptions of Italian inns and the hospitality he found there are some of his most charming passages. As he noted, in Italy it would be wrong to judge by appearances even in the most humble town or inn.

It was already night when, after a brief halt at Comunaza , a wretched but beautifully situated village of the lower hills, the dilegenza came up to the gate of Amandola and stopped in a bleak Piazza at the foot of the little hill town, of which I could discern nothing but a gaunt and shadowy tower. There was no sign of an inn, but presently I was led by the hand over the cobbles, for it was very dark, to a little door that opened on a vast kitchen reeking with a most savoury smell of cooking. The place was full of light and warmth, and crowded with all kinds of people, peasants and a priest or two, but especially I noticed an amazingly ugly old woman, who presently came up to me and demanded my business. Then when she knew I desired a bed she took me by the hand and led me up a foul and broken stairway to the first floor of her home, where, to my astonishment, I saw that all was fair and clean, as was the room and bed she offered me. And here let me say at once that my days in Amandola were all days of delight and happiness. It is never well in Italy to judge by appearances, and in Amandola, as I soon found, least of all. Nowhere have I received greater kindness; nowhere have I found so nice a courtesy. Nothing I required was denied me; everything was done for my comfort and pleasure. I slept soft and I lived well, I found the best company in the world, among the shepherds and peasants and priests of the mountains. They brought me fruit out of their little store, the children danced and sang songs for me, the shepherds blew the mountain airs on their pipes and told me tales of the snow, of witches and the evil eye, and of the adventures of Our Lady fleeing with our little Lord from Herod and the Pharisees, which befell, it seems, but yesterday, as is indeed most true. And so I who had feared to stay a single night in Amandola, remained for my own delight a whole seven days, not one of which I reckoned ill-spent or unrepaid, though Amandola itself is little more than a village. (214-215) …

Figure to yourself a little place of rosy brick piled up on a great precipitous hillside, on the crest or saddle of which it is spread out eastward, threaded by rude and stony streets between gaunt houses. A wretched place enough, but filled with a people so hospitable and charming that when I think of the Marches Amandola appears in my mind as the heart and rose of a country which for friendliness and charm is second to none in Italy.

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Edward Hutton: The Cities of Romagna and the Marches, NY, 1925.

Edward Hutton: Fermo and Monte Giorgio

Edward Hutton loved the hill towns of the Marches. He was especially impressed with Fermo: "The little walled city with its curious acropolis so wonderfully lifted up above its neighbors is the queen of all this country." In nearby Monte Giorgio he found a special treasure. 

Fermo

But, after all, Fermo is to be loved not for the works of art or architecture or painting which it has to show, bur for itself, for its own beauty and nobility, its wonderful command of the glorious world in which it stands up like a great tower or bastion looking so proudly across the mountains and the sea. No one, certainly, who has ever spent a few days within its walls can leave it without a real regret. For to live within its gates is to be made a partaker of the sky, to breathe an air so large and noble that even the greatest work of art, did it possess it, would be at last unregarded while we turned to Nature itself, here for once wholly satisfying and able, without leaving us a single resentment, to absorb us into herself, to overwhelm us with her largeness, her majesty, her sweetness. Those lines of hills that lead our eyes up to the great mountains, those mysterious sweet valleys, those silver gardens of olives against the darkness of the cypresses yonder, the spaciousness of the sky where God dwells, the largeness of the earth He has surely especially blessed; where in the world shall we possess them with such completeness as here, or where shall we be made at one with them so profoundly and without an afterthought? (195-6)…

Monte Giorgio

I know not rightly how to speak of this place which I love so much, nor how to persuade him who is secure in Fermo and set down at an inn more or less furnished with modern comforts, to visit a place so humble, so poor and so holy. For holy it is. Figure to yourself a little white village shining on the hills under the stainless sky above a thousand valleys—beautiful with vineyards and olive gardens, and surrounded by hills greater than its own, crowned by villages scarcely less fair. Such is Monte Giorgio, whose heart is the convent of S. Francis, which should be one of the most famous Franciscan shrines in Italy, for it was there that the Fioretti were written by the Ugolino da Monte Giorgio, who as he looked out of the window of his cell, could see shining across this blessed country all the little holy places of the March, humble Franciscan dwellings which figure in his beautiful book: Massa, Fallerone, Penna S. Giovanni, Fermo, Monterubbiano.

The convent, as we see it to-day, is fair enough and holy still and full of manuscripts, and there and in the olive garden about the place, one may, better than anywhere else in the world, turn the pages of that matchless volume in which all the simplicity and and charm of the Middle Age which produced S. Francis lies hid, as in no other book… the Fioretti is for all, for ever—for all who may find in their hearts, even in middle life, even in old age, that something of the little child, without which no one can enter the kingdom of heaven. (196-197)

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Edward Hutton: The Cities of Romagna and the Marches, NY, 1925.

Edward Hutton: Recanati

In his travels in Italy Edward Hutton often walked from town to town. Below he describes a nighttime walk and its surprising aftermath. While in Recanati, he also saw Lorenzo Lotto's Annunciation, "one of the most interesting pictures in the Marches."

Night had already fallen and hidden the sea, when I left Loreto to walk in the summer moonlight up to Recanati some seven miles away in the hills. Over all that great world of mountain and valley, darkness had fallen like a transparent veil, the luminous darkness of summer, out of which there came to me as I went the soft noises of the night, the hoot of an owl, the bark of a fox, the curious and bitter song of the night cecco among the olives, the wind among the leaves. I shall not forget the beauty of that way. The road lay over the hills; high in heaven, the moon, crescent still, hung like the immaculate Host in an invisible monstrance about which were set, for candles, innumerable stars. One by one as I went the little cities far away each on a hill-top shone out full of lights, glittered and was lost between the infinity of earth and sky….

Presently I came to the big gate, deserted and silent in the midst of the night. Up and up I passed through the paved, deserted streets between the tall houses, looking for the inn; missed it and had to return, back through the silent street, to find it at last with the help of another benighted like myself.

The first appearance of the Albergo della Pace was anything but promising. The entrance was at the bottom of a dirty, dark court, lighted only by a small lamp burning before an image of the Madonna; but it was too late and I too tired to trouble about appearances, and when the door was opened and a room was shown me I accepted it without demur and was soon in bed….

When I awoke it was to find the room still in darkness, for the window was closely shuttered. I jumped out of bed, and unhooked the iron fastening and thrust back the creaking casement, to be almost blinded by the sudden blaze of light. But when my eyes had grown accustomed to the sun, what a sight met my gaze! The whole world seemed to be spread out at my feet. The inn, it appeared, was set upon the city wall; fifty or sixty feet sheer below me the road wound down toward Loreto, and before me on their hill-tops rose half a hundred little cities, half lost in the sunlight, in a great world of mountain and valley backed by the far dim peaks of the central Apennine. It was a sight almost to stop the heart, so great it was; a landscape indeed, if it were a landscape, and not rather something in a dream, that could never be forgotten, and its gentle serene nobility won me at once. How often and how long I sat in that window in Recanati that I might never forget the lines of the hills, the sunlight and the shadow over the olive gardens, the visionary glory of those far-away peaks! (179-181)…

Lorenzo Lotto: Annunciation

But undoubtedly the most interesting work of art to be found in Recanati is Lotto’s picture of the Annunciation in the little church of S. Maria sopra Mercanti…. In a great and high room, very different from the Santa Casa, and open under a lofty round arch to a garden full of trees and a pergola, Madonna, who has been kneeling in prayer at a prie-dieu upon which lies an open book of hours, has suddenly turned away with uplifted protesting hands in astonishment and even fear at the sudden entrance of the archangel, S. Gabriel, whose streaming hair tells of the swiftness of his flight. So suddenly, indeed, has been the advent of the angel that Madonna’s little cat, asleep till then in some corner, scampers in terror across the room.  Under the arch appears God the Father, a majestic figure, His two hands stretched forth like those of a swimmer; He seems indeed to have dived down from heaven. The room is furnished with almost Flemish realism and completeness… (182-3)

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The Cities of Romagna and the Marches, NY, 1925.

Edward Hutton: Loreto and the Santa Casa

Edward  Hutton was warned by friends not to visit Loreto and its famous shrine because of the hordes of mutilated beggars that could be found there. He went anyway and found his friends were mistaken. He tells the whole story of the origins of the Holy House and then records his own impressions of the city and its shrine.

Loreto, which all the world sought these many centuries, is not only one of the holiest, but one of the most beautiful places in Italy. The most sacred shrine of the Blessed Virgin in the West, though not the only one which professes to hold something of the nature of a relic of the Mother of God, it is set most gloriously on its olive-clad hill looking eastward over the sea. It was on a summer afternoon that I came from Osimo to the golden house of Our Lady so strangely to be found in this little town of the March…. (164)

The Santa Casa of Loreto is the house in which the Blessed Virgin was born in Nazareth, miraculously transported hither by angels in the thirteenth century; since when it has been one of the major places of pilgrimage in Europe….

The pilgrims still come to it from all lands and in all seasons; not a week passes in the year but some kneel there who perhaps during their whole lives have dreamed of little else but the journey and the great sight at the end of it—the House of Her who is the Mother of God, the Mother of us all. …

It is a place for tears, and if there be any consolation here you will find it. For in its universal human appeal, it resolves all the bitterness of life for a moment into sweetness, all its pettiness into an act of worship, all its insecurity into security, all its doubt and hatred into assurance and love….

The Holy House of Loreto, if you choose to regard it as a superstition, must be one of that human and kindly sort which in every age has refreshed the weary, for its fruits have been altogether noble. It has produced a series of great works of art by some of the greatest masters of a great time, it has produced the Litany of the blessed Virgin, than which nothing lovelier was ever sung in heaven, and all over the world it has brought men together in love, and has comforted millions who were without consolation….

No shrine in all the world that I have ever seen is half so impressive as this little House of rude brick polished bright with kisses. Without, upon the marble of the platform about the Santa Casa, the sacristan points out two deep grooves in the marble that in the course of centuries have been worn so deep by the knees of the waiting pilgrims. I do not wonder. Here is a sanctuary claiming a holiness and antiquity beyond any other in Europe… Here, so the peasants think, as S. Ignatius and S. Carlo Borromeo thought, is the House of Mary, and the maiden from the Abruzzi comes here and dreams of the girlhood of Her who was to be the Mother of God, and crouched there, with beating heart, sees Gabriel in all the splendor of his snowy white wings, kneeling before Our Lady, hears the words that redeemed the world, AVE MARIA GRATIA PLENA, DOMINUS TECUM BENEDICTA TU IN MULIERIBUS… Indeed, I think he who is less simple of heart than this child should not enter that little House, sacred at least to the childhood of the world and hallowed now if only by the faith, the love, and the lives of such as she.

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Edward Hutton: The Cities of Romagna and the Marches, NY, 1925. 164-173.

Edward Hutton: Pesaro and Gradara

Edward Hutton's The Cities of Romagna and the Marches was written over 100 years ago and although Italy has changed, a traveler today can still appreciate the way he loved to sit, listen and observe the country and its people.  

Pesaro

It was a rainy morning when I left Rimini at last, and by train on account of the weather, for Pesaro; but I had not been in that delightful little city—one of the pleasantest in all the Marches—more than a few hours when the sun shone out again and Pesaro showed me a smiling face, as indeed I cannot but think she does to every one who enters her gates. I do not rightly know what it is in Pesaro that makes me feel always so happy there; whether it be the charm of her wide Piazza with its beautiful Palazzo della Prefettura, or the kindness and hospitality of her citizens, and not least of these who keep the inn, the Albergo Zongo, that noble old palace once a cardinal’s, dark and forbidding at first, but always to be remembered with pleasure and gratitude, or whether, after all,  one’s pleasure lies not so much in Pesaro herself as in the delight of the country in which she lies. Perhaps the happiness and lightness of heart that always comes to me in this little city by that shining morning sea is the result of all these charming things, for once to be had altogether and enjoyed without an afterthought.

Titian: Venus detail

For you may spend your morning pottering about the old town where there is nothing very serious to see, but where everything that meets your eye is graceful and charming. Your afternoon you may spend in the delightful rooms, gardens and terraces of the Villa Imperiale, where that Leonora, whom it is said Titian painted as Venus, as you may see in the Uffizi Gallery to this day, will seem to pass and repass, waiting the return of Francesco Maria of Urbino, or you may drive out to the great Rocca of Gradara, which the Malatesta built and held so long where there are two priceless treasures that certainly Pesaro cannot match *…. 

And for the evening, one strolls out of the great shadowy rooms of the Albergo Zongo and down the rough way into the Piazza and sits in the caffe under the arches of the Prefettura, listening to a country song, watching the people and catching now and then the tinkle of a mandolin, the throb of a guitar. All one’s days and nights in Pesaro are full of melodies, of form and colour and sound, and no one can be the least surprised that Rossini was born there, for the whole city and the hills and woods about it are full of music, to which the sea continually beats a grave and sober accompaniment gently breaking in a line of foam along the shore. (129-130)

*One of the art works in Gradara is a Della Robbia altarpiece.

The Robbia altarpiece is in a little desecrated chapel half-way up the Rocca. There we see the Madonna and Child with S. Jerome and Mary Magdalen, S. Catherine and S. Bonaventure, and beneath, in the predella, three scenes—S. Francis receiving the Stigmata, the Annunciation, and S. Mary Magdalen in the desert communicated by an angel. (137)

Edward Hutton: The Cities of Romagna and the Marches, NY, 1925.

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