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. 

Montepulciano and S. Biagio

 Edward Hutton devoted a whole chapter to Montepulciano, a city that still retains its charm today. Even the Marzocco Inn appears to be still in existence. There was plenty of art to see, and he gave his usual description of all the works that had been collected in the Museum. But the greatest work of art could be found outside the city's walls, the Church of S. Biagio.

 

The way from the station over some seven miles  of hill and dale to the lofty city of Montepulciano is one of the most splendid, the most beautiful in all Tuscany. The whole valley of the Chiana and beyond and beyond is spread out like some gracious fairyland, in which lie three magic lakes, and one of them is the loveliest in the world—the lakes of Chiusi, of Montepulciano, and of Trasimeno; beyond lie the great ever-lasting mountains of Umbria, and over all is a supreme and luminous peace. Little by little as you climb to the wonderful city of the beautiful name some great or delicate feature in the landscape impresses itself upon you, only to be replaced again and again by other details as fair as itself; the serene and graceful outline of Cetona, for instance, gives place to the tremendous and beautiful mass of  Mont’ Amiata far away, or the eagle’s nest of Monte Follonica, truly a city out of a fairy tale, draws your eyes from Chiusi, till at last as your heart is set on Montepulciano itself, which suddenly appears over the lower hills at a turning of the way, the rosy queen of all this fair country, a city of another world, a city of the pure and aloof mountains. (218) …

 

As yet, however, Montepulciano is by no means spoiled. It is true that the Marzocco Inn is not so charming as I feel it must have been when Symonds made it famous. A certain greediness which the unfortunate tourist excites, alas! spoils good manners, even the natural good manners of the Tuscan. Still the comfort of the inn, the cleanliness of your waiter, are—so it be well with the beds—in my opinion secondary matters. It is always possible to eat in the fields, and no one travels to sit in an inn parlour, but if all we have come to see has been “improved” away by the great vulgar legions of “progress,” it is a serious matter. Happily in Montepulciano there is still enough and to spare….it is impossible to praise too highly the beauty of the city and of the country in which she reigns, or to tell easily of the beauty of the works of art which still abide there—too many, alas! in a museum. (222)…

 

But it is only as we are leaving Montepulciano for Pienza perhaps that we see what is surely the most striking monument to her splendour at its greatest in the later Renaissance—I mean the beautiful church built for love  by Antonio da Sangallo beneath the western height of the town. Coming upon S. Maria della Consolazione, outside  one of the most unapproachable cities in all Italy, Todi in Umbria, I called it, in an eager burst of enthusiasm, the most beautiful church in all the world. Well, here you may see something very like it without going to the trouble of marching to Todi. S. Biagio of Montepulciano is, on a small scale, of course, what S. Pietro in Vaticano should have been, what it would have been but for the barbarian Reformation—a Greek cross under a dome. As you stand on the threshold it is upward that your gaze is drawn, irresistibly, by the great light and space of the design, the height and beauty of all the proportions. Here is a church full of light—a church not for repentance but for praise; the whole place seems to utter the great verses of the Te Deum Laudamus, in itself to give visible form to words in which alone we hear some faint echo of those the great archangels sing:--

 

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Saboath,

Pleni sunt coeli et terra majestatis gloria tuae.***

 

Is it not, as we pass on our way, for the words of this ineffable song that the olives lend their music, that the vineyards are hushed and all the flowers bend their heads?

*** Hutton included the full Latin text of the hymn. Click on this link to hear Kiri te Kanewa's magnificent rendition of the Sanctus from Gounod's Mass of St. Cecilia. 

 

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Foiano, Bettolle, and Signorelli

 On his tour of southern Tuscany, Edward Hutton visited some of his favorite  small towns. In Foiano he came upon a masterpiece by Luca Signorelli. Nearby Bettolle was a masterpiece in itself, unspoiled by the modern world.

Fine though Foiano is and girdled with olives and golden with corn and joyful with fruitful vineyard, it is rather by reason of its wonderful views, for the ever delectable landscape that lies at its feet, that one would come to it, but that in the Collegiata is hidden away a signed and dated picture by Luca Signorelli of the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin. This grand and noble picture was painted in 1523 the year of Signorelli’s death, and was, in fact, the last he set his hand to. The Madonna, in a splendid robe of rose with a mantle of blue, fairer than the angels who attend her, kneels before our Lord Christ, who crowns her Regina virginem. On either side two angels play for joy, while St. Joseph, her guardian, still stands beside her, and S. Gabriel, who was her messenger, waits lest she should speak again and he not hear. Before her in the foreground kneels S. Martino, whose altarpiece this is, dressed in a golden cope, and that he won in exchange for the poor coat he gave the beggar for Christ’s sake. On his left hand stands S. Jerome and three monks, and behind him S. Mary Magdalene; and again, on the other side some fine old saint introduces the donor, Angelo Massarelli.

Signorelli was an old man when he conceived this majestic work, which has the unction of a canticle almost and we may be sure that he received some assistance, for not only were the figures of S. Gabriel and S. Mary Magdalen too feeble to have come from his wise hand, even though it trembled then, but in the predella only two of the four scenes are his. The four scenes represent the life of S. Martin and in the two Signorelli has given us with all his boldness and mastery of composition we see S. Martin in armour on his great white war-horse with his men-at-arms about him dividing his cloak with the beggar. In the other we see the saint kneeling before a Bishop with his two acolytes—a beautiful picture. 

 

Having seen this splendour after Mass, I do not see why the traveller should not make his way southward and walk back across the valley to Torrita, which may be reached directly from Foiano by road through Bettolle. It is a walk or drive of some ten or, maybe, twelve miles….

 

Bettolle…is a garden—a garden of chestnuts and vineyards and olives. I do not know that Bettolle is famous among Italians, if indeed it be famous at all for anything but its fairs; but for me it is one of the fairest of all villages, with a fine wine and a courteous people, and I wish it every sort of good there is to be had in this damnable age we live in, and that is the same thing as to repeat the old commandment to keep itself unspotted from the world. 

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Edward Hutton: Siena and Southern Tuscany, 1910, pp. 213-4.