An Autobiography Part 3

CHAPTER V

STUDY IN FLORENCE

Italy once more! Again the old palazzo at Albaro and the old friends surrounding us! My work never relaxed, for I set up a little studio and went in for life-size heads, and got more and more facility with the brush. The kindly peasants let me paint them, and I victimised my obliging friends and had professional models out from Genoa. That was a very greatly enjoyed autumn, winter and spring, and the gaieties of the English Colony, the private theatricals, the concerts at Villa Novello--all those things did me good. The childish carnival revels had still power over me--yea, _more_--though I _was_ grown up, and, to tell the truth, I got all the fun out of them that was possible within bounds. "The Red Cross Sketch Book," which I filled with ill.u.s.trations of our journey out and of life at Genoa, I dedicated to the club and sent to them when we left for Florence.

We found Genoa just as we had left it, still the brilliantly picturesque city of the sea, its populace brightly clad in their Ligurian national dress, the women still wearing the pezzotto, and the men the red cap I loved; the port all delightful with oriental character, its shouting muleteers and _facchini_, its fruit and flower sellers in the narrow streets and entrances to the palaces--all the old local colour. Alas! I was there only the other day, and found all the local charm had gone--modernised away!

When we left Genoa in April my father tried to get a _vetturino_ to take us as far as Pisa by road on our way to Florence, for auld lang syne, but Antonio--he who used to drive us into Genoa in the old days--said that was now impossible on account of the railway--"_Non ci conviene, signore_!"--but he would take us as far as Spezzia. So, to our delight, we were able once more to experience the pleasures of the road and avoid that truly horrible series of suffocating tunnels that tries us so much on that portion of the coastline. At Sestri Levante I wrote: "I sit down at this pleasant hotel, with the silent sea glimmering in the early night before me outside the open window, to note down our journey thus far. The day has been truly glorious, the sea without even the thinnest rim of white along the coast, and such exquisite combinations of clouds.

We left Villa Quartara at ten, with Madame Vittorina and the servants in tears. Majolina comes with us; she is such a good little maid. We had three good horses, but for the Bracco Pa.s.s we shall have an extra one.

There is no way of travelling like this, in an open carriage; it is so placid; there is no hurrying to catch trains and struggling in crowds, no waiting in dismal _salles d'attente_. And then compare the entry into the towns by the high road and through the princ.i.p.al streets, perhaps through a city gate, the horse's hoofs clattering and the whip cracking so merrily and the people standing about in groups watching us pa.s.s, to sneaking into a station, one of which is just like the other, which hasn't the slightest _couleur locale_ about it, and is sure to have unsightly surroundings.

"Away we went merrily, I feeling very jolly. The colour all along was ravishing, as may be imagined, seeing what a perfect day it was and that this is the loveliest season of the year. We dined at dear old Ruta, where also the horses had a good rest and where I was able to sketch something down. From Ruta to Sestri I rode by Majolina on the box, by far the best position of all, and didn't I enjoy it! The horses'

bells jingled so cheerily and those three st.u.r.dy horses took us along so well. Rapallo and Chiavari! Dear old friends, what delicious picturesqueness they had, what lovely approaches to them by roads bordered with trees! The views were simply distracting. Sestri is a gem.

Why don't water-colour painters come here in shoals? What colouring the mountains had at sunset, and I had only a pencil and wretched little sketch book.

"_Spezzia, April 28th, 1869._--A repet.i.tion of yesterday in point of weather. I feel as though I had been steeped all day in some balmy liquid of gold, purple, and blue. I have a t.i.tianesque feeling hovering about me produced by the style of landscape we have pa.s.sed through and the faces of the people who are working in the patches of cultivation under the mulberries and vines, and that intense, deep blue sky with ma.s.sive white clouds floating over it. We exclaimed as much at the beauty of the women as at the purple of the mountains and the green of the budding mulberries and poplars. And the men and boys; what perfect types; such fine figures and handsome faces, such healthy colour! We left the hotel at Sestri, with its avenue of orange trees in flower, at ten o'clock, and, of course, crossed the Bracco to-day. We dined at a little place called Bogliasco, in whose street, under our windows, handsome youths with bare legs and arms were playing at a game of ball which called forth fine action. I did not know at first whether to look well at them all or sketch them down one by one, but did both, and I hope to make a regular drawing of the group from the sketch I took and from memory. We stopped at the top of the hill, from which is seen La Spezzia lying below, with its beautiful bay and the Carara Mountains beyond. Here ends our drive, for to-morrow we take the train for Florence.

"_Florence, April 29th._--Magnificent, cloudless weather. But, oh! what a wearisome journey we had, the train crawling from one station to another and stopping at each such a time, whilst we baked in the cushioned carriage and couldn't even have lovely things to look at, surrounded by the usual railway eyesores. We pa.s.sed close by the Pisan Campo Santo, and had a very good view of the Leaning Tower and the Duomo. Such hurrying and struggling at the Pisa station to get into the train for Florence, having, of course, to carry all our small baggage ourselves. Railway travelling in Italy is odious. It was very lovely to see Florence in the distance, with those domes and towers I know so well by heart from pictures, but we were very limp indeed, the wearisome train having taken all our enthusiasm away. Everything as we arrived struck us as small, and I am still so dazzled by the splendour of Genoa that my eyes cannot, as it were, comprehend the brown, grey and white tones of this quiet-coloured little city. I must _Florentine_ myself as fast as I can. This hotel is on the Lung' Arno, and charming was it to look out of the windows in the lovely evening and see the river below and the dome of the Carmine and tower of Santo Spirito against the clear sky with, further off, the hills with their convents (alas! empty now) and cl.u.s.ters of cypresses. No greater contrast to Genoa could be than Florence in every way. Oh! may this city of the arts see me begin (and finish) my first regular picture. _April 30th._--I and Papa strolled about the streets to get a general impression of '_Firenze la gentile_,'

and looked into the Duomo, which is indeed bare and sad-coloured inside except in its delicious painted windows over the altars, the harmonious richness of which I should think could not be exceeded by any earthly means. The outside is very gay and cheerful, but some of the marble has browned itself into an appearance of wood. Oh! dear Giotto's Tower, could elegance go beyond this? Is not this an example of the complete _savoir faire_ of those true-born artists of old? And the 'Gates of Paradise'! The delight of seeing these from the street is great, instead of in a museum. But Michael Angelo's enthusiastic exclamation in their praise rather makes one smile, for we know that it must have been in admiration of their purely technical beauties, as the gates are by no means large and grand _as_ gates, and the bronze is rather dark for an entrance into Paradise! I reverently saluted the Palazzo Vecchio, and am quite ready to get very much attached to the brown stone of Florence in time.

"_Villa Lamporecchi, May 1st._--We two and Papa had a good spell at the Uffizi in the morning, and in the afternoon we took possession of this pleasing house, which is so cool and has far-spreading views, one of Florence from a terrace leading out of what I shall make my studio. A garden and vineyards sloping down to the valley where Brunelleschi's brown dome shows above the olives."

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN FLORENCE DURING MY STUDIES IN /69.]

Our mother did many lovely water colours, one especially exquisite one of Fiesole seen in a shimmering blue midsummer light. That, and one done on the Lung' Arno, to which Sh.e.l.ley's line

"The purple noon's transparent might"

could justly be applied, are treasured by me. She understood sunshine and how to paint it.

"_May 3rd._--I already feel Florence growing upon me. I begin to understand the love English people of culture and taste get for this most interesting and gentle city. The ground one treads on is all historic, but it is in the artistic side of its history that I naturally feel the greatest interest, and it is a delightful thing to go about those streets and be reminded at every turn of the great Painters, Architects, Sculptors I have read so much of. Here a palace designed by Raphael, there a glorious row of windows carved by Michael Angelo, there some exquisite ironwork wrought by some other born genius. I think the style of architecture of the Strozzi Palace, the Ricardi, and others, is perfection in its way, though at first, with the brilliant whites, yellows and pinks of Genoa still in my eye, I felt rather depressed by the uniform brown of the huge stones of which they are built. No wonder I haunt the well-known gallery which runs over the Ponte Vecchio, lined with the sketches, studies, and first thoughts of most of the great masters. One delights almost more in these than in many of the finished pictures. They bring one much more in contact, as it were, with the great dead, and make one familiar with their methods of work. One sees what little slips they made, how they modified their first thoughts, over and over again, before finally fixing their choice. Very encouraging to the struggling beginner to see these evidences of their troubles!

"I have never, before I came here where so many of them have lived, realised the old masters as our comrades; I have never been so near them and felt them to be mortals exactly like ourselves. This city and its environs are so little changed, the greater part of them not at all, since those grand old Michael Angelesque days that one feels brought quite close to the old painters, seeing what they saw and walking on the very same old pavement as they walked on, pa.s.sing the houses where they lived, and so forth."

I was at that time bent on achieving my first "great picture," to be taken from Keats's poem "The Pot of Basil"; Lorenzo riding to his death between the two brothers:

So the two brothers and their murdered man Rode past fair Florence,

but, fortunately, I resolved instead to put in further training before attacking such a canvas, and I became the pupil of a very fine academic draughtsman, though no great colourist, Giuseppe Bellucci. On alternate days to those spent in his studio I copied in careful pencil some of the exquisite figures in Andrea del Sarto's frescoes in the cloisters of the SS. Annunziata.

The heat was so great that, as it became more intense, I had to be at Bellucci's, in the Via Santa Reparata, at eight o'clock instead of 8.30, getting there in the comparative cool of the morning, after a salutary walk into Florence, accompanied by little Majolina, no _signorina_ being at liberty to walk alone. What heat! The sound of the ceaseless hiss of the _cicale_ gave one the impression of the country's undergoing the ordeal of being _frizzled_ by the sun. I record the appearance of my first fire-fly on the night of May 6th. What more pleasing rest could one have, after the heat and work of the day, than by a stroll through the vineyards in the early night escorted by these little creatures with their golden lamps?

The cloisters were always cool, and I enjoyed my lonely hours there, but the Bellucci studio became at last too much of a furnace. My master had already several times suggested a rest, mopping his brow, when I also began to doze over my work at last, and the model wouldn't keep his eyes open. I record mine as "rolling in my head."

I see in memory the blinding street outside, and hear the fretful stamping of some tethered mule teased with the flies. The very Members of Parliament in the Palazzo Vecchio had departed out of the impossible Chamber, and, all things considered, I allowed Bellucci to persuade me to take a little month of rest--"_un mesetto di riposo_"--at home during part of July and August. That little month of rest was very nice. I did a water colour of the white oxen ploughing in our _podere_; I helped (?) the _contadini_ to cut the wheat with my sickle, and sketched them while they went through the elaborate process of threshing, enlivened with that rough innocent romping peculiar to young peasants, which gave me delightful groups in movement. I love and respect the Italian peasant.

He has high ideas of religion, simplicity of living, honour. I can't say I feel the same towards his _betters_ (?) in the Italian social scale.

The grapes ripened. The scorched _cicale_ became silent, having, as the country people declared, returned to the earth whence they sprang. The heat had pa.s.sed even _cicala_ pitch. I went back to the studio when the "little month" had run out and the heat had sensibly cooled, and worked very well there. I find this record of a birthday expedition:

"I suggested a visit to the convent of San Salvi out at the Porta alla Croce, where is to be seen Andrea del Sarto's 'Cenacolo.' This we did in the forenoon, and in the afternoon visited Careggi. Enough isn't said about Andrea. What volumes of praise have been written, what endless talk goes on, about Raphael, and how little do people seem to appreciate the quiet truth and soberness and subtlety of Andrea. This great fresco is very striking as one enters the vaulted whitewashed refectory and sees it facing the entrance at the further end. The great point in this composition is the wonderful way in which this master has disposed the hands of all those figures as they sit at the long table. In the row of heads Andrea has revelled in his love of variety, and each is stamped, as usual, with strong individuality. This beautifully coloured fresco has impressed me with another great fact, viz., the wonderful value of _bright yellow_ as well as white in a composition to light it up. The second Apostle on our Saviour's left, who is slightly leaning forward on his elbow and loosely clasping one hand in the other, has his shoulders wrapped round with yellow drapery, the horizontally disposed folds of which are the _ne plus ultra_ of artistic arrangement. There is something very realistic in these figures and their att.i.tudes. Some people are down on me when they hear me going on about the rendering of individual character being the most admirable of artistic qualities.

"At 3.30 we went for such a drive to Careggi, once Lorenzo de' Medici's villa--where, indeed, he died--and now belonging to Mr. Sloane, a 'bloated capitalist' of distant England. The 'keepsake' beauty of the views thence was perfect. A combination of garden kept in English order and lovely Italian landscape is indeed a rich feast for the eye. I was in ecstasies all along. We made a great _detour_ on our return and reached home in the after-glow, which cast a light on the houses as of a second sun.

"_October 18th._--Went with Papa and Alice to see Raphael's 'Last Supper' at the Egyptian Museum, long ago a convent. It is not perfectly sure that Raphael painted it, but, be that as it may, its excellence is there, evident to all true artists. It seems to me, considering that it is an early work, that none but one of the first-cla.s.s men could have painted it. It offers a very instructive contrast with del Sarto's at San Salvi. The latter immediately strikes the spectator with its effect, and makes him exclaim with admiration at the very first moment--at least, I am speaking for myself. The former (Raphael's) grew upon me in an extraordinary way after I had come close up to it and dwelt long on the heads, separately; but on entering the room the rigidity and formality of the figures, whose aureoles of solid metal are all on one level, the want of connection of these figures one with the other, and the uniform light over them all had an unprepossessing effect.

Artistically considered this fresco is not to be mentioned with Andrea's, but then del Sarto was a ripe and experienced artist when he painted the San Salvi fresco, whereas they conjecture Raphael to have been only twenty-two when he painted this. There is more spiritual feeling in Raphael's, more dignity and ideality altogether; no doubt a higher conception, and some feel more satisfied with it than with Andrea's. The refinement and melancholy look of St. Matthew is a thing to be thought of through life. St. Andrew's face, with the long, double-peaked white beard, is glorious, and is a contrast to the other old man's head next to it, St. Peter's, which is of a harder kind, but not less wonderful. St. Bartholomew, with his dark complexion and black beard, is strongly marked from the others, who are either fair or grey-headed. The profile of St. Philip, with a pointed white beard, gave me great delight, and I wish I could have been left an hour there to solitary contemplation. St. James Major, a beardless youth, is a true Perugino type, a very familiar face. Judas is a miserable little figure, smaller than the others, though on the spectator's side of the table in the foreground. He seems not to have been taken from life at all.

"On one of the walls of the room are hung some little chalk studies of hands, etc., for the fresco, most exquisitely drawn, and seeming, some of them, better modelled than in the finished work; notably St. Peter's hand which holds the knife. Is there no Modern who can give us a 'Last Supper' to rank with this, Andrea's and Leonardo's?"

This entry in my Diary of student days leads my thoughts to poor Leonardo da Vinci. A painter must sympathise with him through his recorded struggles to accomplish, in his "Cenacolo," what may be called the almost superhuman achievement of worthily representing the Saviour's face. Had he but been content to use the study which we see in the Brera gallery! But, no! he must try to do better at Santa Maria delle Grazie--and fails. How many sleepless nights and nerve-racking days he must have suffered during this supreme attempt, ending in complete discouragement. I think the Brera study one of the very few satisfactory representations of the divine Countenance left us in art. To me it is supreme in its infinite pathos. But it is always the way with the truly great geniuses; they never feel that they have reached the heights they hoped to win.

Ruskin tells us that Albert Durer, on finishing one of his own works, felt absolutely satisfied. "It could not be done better," was the complacent German's verdict. Ruskin praises him for this, because the verdict was true. So it was, as regarding a piece of mere handicraft.

But to return to the Diary.

"We went then to pay a call on Michael Angelo at his apartment in the Via Ghibellina. I do not put it in those words as a silly joke, but because it expresses the feeling I had at the moment. To go to his house, up his staircase to his flat, and ring at his door produced in my mind a vivid impression that he was alive and, living there, would receive us in his drawing-room. Everything is well nigh as it was in his time, but restored and made to look like new, the place being far more as he saw it than if it were half ruinous and going to decay. Even the furniture is the same, but new velveted and varnished. It is a pretty apartment, such as one can see any day in nice modern houses. I touched his little slippers, which are preserved, together with his two walking sticks, in a tiny cabinet where he used to write, and where I wondered how he found s.p.a.ce to stretch his legs. The slippers are very small and of a peculiar, rather Eastern, shape, and very little worn. Altogether, I could not realise the lapse of time between his date and ours. The little sketches round the walls of the room, which is furnished with yellow satin chairs and sofa, are very admirable and free. The t.i.tian hung here is a very splendid bit of colour. This was a very impressive visit. The bronze bust of M. A. by Giovanni da Bologna is magnificent; it gives immense character, and must be the image of the man."

On October 21st I bade good-bye to Bellucci. His system forbade praise for the pupil, which was rather depressing, but he relaxed sufficiently to tell my father at parting that I would do things (_Fara delle cose_) and that I was untiring (_istancabile_), taking study seriously, not like the others (_le altre_). With this I had to be content. He had drilled me in drawing more severely than I could have been drilled in England. For that purpose he had kept me a good deal to painting in monochrome, so as to have my attention absorbed by the drawing and modelling and _chiaroscuro_ of an object without the distraction of colour. He also said to me I could now walk alone (_pu camminare da se_), and with this valedictory good-bye we parted. Being free, I spent the remaining time at Florence in visits to the churches and galleries with my father and sister, seeing works I had not had time to study up till then.

"_October 22nd._--We first went to see the Ghirlandajos at Santa Trinita, which I had not yet seen. They are fading, as, indeed, most of the grand old frescoes are doing, but the heads are full of character, and the grand old costumes are still plainly visible. From thence we went to the small cloister called _dello Scalzo_, where are the exquisite monochromes of Andrea del Sarto. Would that this cloister had been roofed in long ago, for the weather has made sad havoc of these precious things. Being in monochrome and much washed out, they have a faded look indeed; but how the drawing tells! What a master of anatomy was he, and yet how unexaggerated, how true: he was content to limit himself to Nature; _knew where to draw the line_, had, in fact, the reticence which Michael Angelo couldn't recognise; could stop at the limit of truth and good taste through which the great sculptor burst with coa.r.s.e violence. There are some backs of legs in those frescoes which are simply perfect. These works ill.u.s.trate the events in the life of John the Baptist. Here, again, how marvellous and admirable are all the hands, not only in drawing, but in action, how touching the heads, how grand and thoroughly artistic the draperies and the poses of the figures. A splendid lesson in the management of drapery is, especially, the fresco to the right of the entrance, the 'Vision of Zacharias.'

There are four figures, two immediately in the foreground and at either extremity of the composition; the two others, seen between them, further off. The nearest ones are in draperies of the grandest and largest folds, with such ma.s.ses of light and dark, of the most satisfying breadth; and the two more distant ones have folds of a slightly more complex nature, if such a word can be used with regard to such a thoroughly broadly treated work. This gives such contrast and relief between the near and distant figures, and the absence of the aid of colour makes the science of art all the more simply perceived. Most beautiful is the fresco representing the birth of St. John, though the lower part is quite lost. What consummate drapery arrangements! The nude figure _vue de dos_ in the fresco of St. John baptising his disciples is a masterly bit of drawing. Though the paint has fallen off many parts of these frescoes, one can trace the drawing by the incision which was made on the wet plaster to mark all the outlines preparatory to beginning the painting."

These are but a few of my art student's impressions of this fondly-remembered Florentine epoch, which are recorded at great length in the Diary for my own study. And now away to Rome!

CHAPTER VI

ROME

That was a memorable journey to Rome by Perugia. I have travelled more than once by that line, and the more direct one as well, since then, and I feel as though I could never have enough of either, though to be on the road again, as we now can be by motor, would be still greater bliss.

But the original journey took place so long ago that it has positively an old-world glamour about it, and a certain roughness in the flavour, so difficult to enjoy in these times of Pulman cars and Palace Hotels, which make all places taste so much alike. The old towns on the foothills of the Apennines drew me to the left, and the great sunlit plains to the right, of the carriage in an _embarras de choix_ as we sped along. Cortona, Arezzo, Castiglione--Fiorentin--each little old city putting out its predecessor, as it seemed to me, as more perfect in its picturesque effect than the one last seen. It was the story of the Rhine castles and villages over again. The Lake of Trasimene appeared on our right towards sundown, a sheet of still water so tender in its tints and so lonely; no town on its malaria-stricken banks; a boat or two, water-fowl among the rushes and, as we proceeded, the great, magnified globe of the sun sinking behind the rim of the lake. We were going deep into the Umbrian Hills, deep into old Italy; the deeper the better. We neared Perugia, where we pa.s.sed the night, before dark, and saw the old brown city tinged faintly with the after-glow, afar off on its hill. A ma.s.sive castle stood there in those days which I have not regretted since, as it symbolised the old time of foreign tyranny. It is gone now, but how mediaeval it looked, frowning on the world that darkening evening. Hills stood behind the city in deep blue ma.s.ses against a sky singularly red, where a great planet was shining. There was a Perugino picture come to life for us! Even the little spindly trees tracing their slender branches on the red sky were in the true _naf_ Perugino spirit!

How pleased we were! We rumbled in the four-horse station 'bus under two echoing gateways piercing the ma.s.sive outer and inner city walls and along the silent streets, lit with rare oil lamps. Not a gas jet, aha!

But we were to feel still more deeply mediaeval, whether we liked it or not, for on reaching the Hotel de la Poste we found it was full, and had to wander off to seek what hostel could take us in through very dark, ancient streets. I will let the Diary speak:

"The _facchino_ of the hotel conducted us to a place little better than a _cabaret_, belonging, no doubt, to a chum. I wouldn't have minded putting up there, but Mamma knew better, and, rewarding the woman of the _cabaret_ with two francs, much against her protestations, we went off up the steep street again and made for the 'Corona,' a shade better, close to the market place. My bedroom was as though it had once been a dungeon, so ma.s.sive were the walls and deep the vaulting of the low ceiling. We went to bed almost immediately after our dinner, which was enlivened by the conversation of men who were eating at a neighbouring table, all, except a priest, with their hats on. One was very loquacious, shouting politics. He held forth about '_Il Mastai_,' as he called His Holiness Pope Pius the Ninth, and flourished renegade _Padre Giacinto_ in the priest's face, the courteous and laconic priest's eyebrows remaining at high-water mark all the time. The shouter went on to say that English was '_una lingua povera e meschina_' ('Poor and mean'!)"

The next morning before leaving we saw all that time allowed us of Perugia, the bronze statue of Pope Julius III. impressing me deeply.

Indeed, there is no statue more eloquent than this one. Alas! the Italians have removed it from its right place, and when I revisited the city in 1900 I found the tram terminus in place of the Pope.

"_October 27th._--After the morning's doings in sunshine the day became sad, and from Foligno, where we had a long wait, the story is but of rain and dusk and night. We became more and more apathetic and bored, though we were roused up at the frontier station, where I saw the Papal _gendarmes_ and gave the alarm. Mamma went on her knees in the carriage and cried, '_Viva Il Papa Re!_' We all joined in, drinking his health in some very flat 'red _grignolino_' we had with us. I became more and more excited as we neared the centre of the earth, the capital of Christendom, the highest city in the world. In the rainy darkness we ran into the Roman station, which might have been that of Brighton for aught we could see. I strained my eyes right and left for Papal uniforms, and was rewarded by Zouaves and others, and lots of French (of the Legion) into the bargain.

Then a long wait, in the 'bus of the Anglo-American Hotel, for our luggage; and at last we rattled over the pavement, which, with its cobble stones, was a great contrast to the large flat flags of Florence, along very dark and gloomy streets. An apartment all crimson damask was ready prepared for us, which looked cheery and revived us.

"_October 28th_, 56, _Via del Babuino._--The day began rather dismally--looking for apartments in the rain! The coming of the c.u.menical Council has greatly inflated the prices; Rome is crammed.

At last we took this attractive one for six months, '_esposto a mezzogiorno_.' Facing due south, fortunately.

"The sun came out then, and all things were bright and joyous as we rattled off in a little victoria to feast our eyes (we two for the first time) on St. Peter's. Papa, knowing Rome already, knew what to do and how best to give us our first impressions. An epoch in my life, never to be forgotten, a moment in my existence too solemn and beyond my power of writing to allow of my describing it! I have seen St. Peter's. No, indeed, no descriptions have ever given me an adequate idea of what I have just seen. The sensation of seeing the real thing one has gazed at in pictures and photographs with longing is one of peculiar delight.