Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa Part 8

[57] There is a miracle picture, S. Maria sotto gli Orcagni in the Duomo. Mr. Carmichael, in his book, _In Tuscany_, gives a full account of this picture. See also my _Italy and the Italians_, pp. 117-120.

[58] Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _op. cit._ vol. i. p. 103.

[59] Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _op. cit._ vol. i. p. 109.

[60] See below, p. 134.

[61] See _On the Old Road through France to Florence_ (Murray, 1904), in which Mr. Carmichael wrote the Italian part. He has much pleasant information about the bells of Pisa, p. 223.

[62] Was it here, or in the Ospedale dei Trovatelli close to S. Michele in Borgo? cf. Tronci, p. 179.

[63] See p. 95.

[64] Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _op. cit_, vol. i. p. 146, note.

[65] See _Pisa_. da I.B. Supino, 1905, p. 43.

[66] See p. 91.

[67] Mr. Carmichael (_On the Old Road through France to Florence_, p.

224) says it must have been worth 30,000 of our money.

[68] Let me refer the reader again to Mr. William Heywood's exhaustive work on Italian mediaeval games, _Palio and Ponte_, Methuen, 1904.

[69] See also F. Tribolati, _Il Gioco del Ponte_, Firenze, 1877, p. 5.

[70] Many of these banners are hung in the great Salone--the first room you enter on the first floor of the Museo.

[71] All the coverings and armour are ill.u.s.trated in the _Oplomachia Pisana_ of Camillo Borghi. (Lucca, 1713.)

[72] There is a rich literature of poems and _Relazioni_, etc., on the _Gioco del Ponte_.

[73] F. Tribolati, _Il Gioco del Ponte_, Firenze, 1877. See also Heywood, _op. cit._ p. 136.

[74] Yet it is said that St. Peter himself came to Pisa from Antioch, and founded the Church of S. Pietro in Grado, and consecrated Pierino first bishop of Pisa; cf. Tronci, _op. cit._ p. 3.

[75] Tronci, _op. cit._ p. 23.

[76] He said palace, and palace it may be, for the baths are a quarter of a mile away.

[77] So a nineteenth-century writer calls it. Leopardi, too, cannot find words enough to express its beauty: "Questo Lung' Arno e uno spetaccolo cos bello cos ampio cos magnifico," etc.

[78] It was in S. Sebastiano that Ruggiero condemned Count Ugolino and his sons.

[79] Tronci, _op. cit._ p. 30.

[80] Tronci, op. cit. p. 343.

VII. LIVORNO[81]

It was only after many days spent in the Pineta, those pinewoods that go down to the sea at Gombo, where the silent, deserted sh.o.r.e, strewn with sea-sh.e.l.ls and whispering with gra.s.s, stretches far away to the Carrara hills, that very early one morning I set out for Livorno, that port which has taken the place of the old Porto Pisano,[82] so famous through the world of old. Leaving Pisa by the Porta a Mare, I soon came to S.

Pietro a Grado, a lonely church among the marshes, that once, as I suppose, stood on the seash.o.r.e. It was here St. Peter, swept out of his course by a storm on his way from Antioch, came ash.o.r.e before setting out again for Naples, entering Italy first, then, on the sh.o.r.es of Etruria. So the tale goes; but the present church seems to be a building of the twelfth century. Its simple beauty, which the seawind and the sun have kissed for seven hundred years, seems to give character to the whole plain, so ample and green, beyond the wont of Italy; but, indeed, here we are on the threshold of the Maremma, that beautiful, wild, deserted country that man has not yet reclaimed from Death, where the summer is still and treacherous in its loveliness, where in winter for a little while the herdsmen come down with their cattle from the Garf.a.gnana, and the hills musical with love songs. On the threshold of that treacherous summer, as it were, this lonely church stands on guard.

Within, she is beautiful, in the old manner, splendid with antique pillars caught about now with iron; but it is perhaps the frescoes, that have faded on the walls till they are scarcely more than the shadows of a thousand forgotten sunsets, that you will care for most. They are the work of Giunta Pisano, or if, indeed, they are not his they are of his school,--a school already decadent, splendid with the beauty that has looked on death and can never be quite sane again. No one, I think, can ever deny the beauty of Giunta's work; it is full of a strange subtilty that is ready to deny life over and over again. He is concerned not with life, but chiefly with religion, and with certain bitter yet altogether lovely colours which evoke for him, and for us too, if we will lend ourselves to their influence, all the misery and pessimism of the end of the Middle Age, its restlessness and ennui, that find consolation only in the memory of the grotesque frailty of the body which one day Jesus will raise up. All the anarchy and discontent of our own time seems to me to be expressed in such work as this, in which ugliness, as we might say, has as much right as beauty. It is, I think, the mistake of much popular criticism in our time to a.s.sert that these "primitive" painters were beginners, and could not achieve what they wished. They were not beginners, rather they were the most subtle artists of a convention--and all art is a convention--that was about to die. If one can see their work aright, it is beautiful; but it has lost touch with life, or is a mere satirical comment upon it, that Giotto, with his simplicity, his eager delight in natural things and in man, will supersede and banish.

In him, Europe seems to shake off the art and fatality of the East, under whose shadow Christianity had grown up, to be altogether transformed and humanised by Rome, when she at the head really of humanism and art should once more give to the world the thoughts and life of another people full of joy and temperance--things so hard for the Christian to understand. And it is really with such a painter as Giunta Pisano that Christian art pure and simple comes to end. Some divinity altogether different has touched those who came after: Giotto, who is enamoured of life which the Christian must deny; Angelico, whose world is full of a music that is about to become pagan; Botticelli, who has mingled the tears of Mary with the salt of the sea, and has seen a new star in heaven, and proclaimed the birth not of the Nazarene, but the Cyprian.

But it is not such thoughts as these you will find in Livorno, one of the busiest towns in Italy, full of modern business life; material in the manner of the Latin people that by reason of some inherent purity of heart never becomes sordid in our fashion.

"There is absolutely nothing to see in Leghorn," says Mr. Hare. Well, but that depends on what you seek, does it not? If you would see a Tuscan city that is absolutely free from the tourist, I think you must go to Livorno. It is true, works of art are not many there; but the statue of Grand Duke Ferdinand, with four Moors in bronze chained to his feet, a work of Piero Jacopo Tacca, made in 1617-1625, is something; though I confess those chained robbers at the feet of a petty tyrant who was as great a robber, he and his forebears, as any among them, are in this age of sentimental liberalism, from which who can escape, a little disconcerting. Ferdinand has his best monument in the city itself, which he founded to take the place of Porto Pisano, that in the course of centuries had silted up. In order to populate the new port, he proclaimed there a religious liberty he denied to his Duchy at large.

His policy was splendidly successful. Every sort of outcast made Livorno his home--especially the Jews, for whom Ferdinando had a great respect; but there were there Greeks also, and _nuovi christiani_, Moors converted to Christianity. These last, I think, indeed, must have been worth seeing; for no doubt Ferdinand's politic grant of religious liberty did not include Moors who had not been "converted to Christianity."

But the great days of Livorno are over; though who may say if a new prosperity does not await her in the near future, she is so busy a place. Livorno la cara, they call her, and no doubt of old she endeared herself to her outcasts. To-day, however, it is to the Italian summer visitor that she is dear. There he comes for sea-bathing, and it is difficult to imagine a more delightful seaside. For you may live on the hills and yet have the sea. Beyond Livorno rises the first high ground of the Maremma, Montenero, holy long ago with its marvellous picture of the Madonna, which, as I know, still works wonders. Here Byron lived, and not far away Sh.e.l.ley wrote the princ.i.p.al part of _The Cenci_.

Pa.s.sing out by tramway by the Porta Maremmana, you come to Byron's villa, almost at the foot of the hills, on a sloping ground on your right. Entering by the great iron gates of what looks like a neglected park, you climb by a stony road up to the great villa itself, among the broken statues and the stone pines, where is one of the most beautiful views of the Pisan country and seash.o.r.e, with the islands of Gorgona, Capraja, Elba, and Corsica in the distance. Villa Dupoy, as it was called in Byron's day, is now in the summer months used as a girls'

school: and, indeed, it would be easy to house a regiment in its vast rooms, where here and there a seventeenth century fresco is still gorgeous on the walls, and the mirrors are dim with age. From here the walk up to Our Lady of Montenero is delightful; and once there, on the hills above the church, the rolling downs towards Maremma lie before you without a single habitation, almost without a road, a country of heath and fierce rock, desolate and silent, splendid with the wind and the sun.

The Church of Madonna lies just under the crest of the hill, and is even to-day a place of many pilgrimages: for the whole place is strewn and hung with thank-offerings, silver hearts, shoes, crutches, and I know not what else, among the pathetic pictures of her kindly works. The picture itself, loaded now with jewellery, is apparently a work of the thirteenth century; but it is said to have been miraculously brought hither from Negroponte. It was found at Ardenza close by, by a shepherd, who carried it to Montenero, where, as I suppose, he lived; but just before he won the top of the hill it grew so heavy he had to set it down. So the peasants built a shrine for it; and the affair getting known, the Church inquired into it, with the result that certainly by the fifteenth century the shrine was in charge of a Religious Order; to-day the monks of the Vallombrosan Benedictines serve the church.

One returns always, I think, with regret from Montenero to Livorno; yet, after all, not with more sadness than that which always accompanies us in returning from the country to any city, howsoever fair and lovely.

G.o.d made the country; man made the town; and though in Italy both G.o.d and man have laboured with joy and done better here than anywhere else in the world, who would not leave the loveliest picture to look once more on the sky, or neglect the sweetest music if he might always hear the sea, or give up praising a statue, if he might always look on his beloved? So it is in Italy, where all the cities are fair; flowers they are among the flowers; yet any Tuscan rose is fairer far than ever Pisa was, and the lilies of Madonna in the gardens of Settignano are more lovely than the City of Flowers: come, then, let us leave the city for the wayside, for the sun and the dust and the hills, the flowers beside the river, the villages among the flowers. For if you love Italy you will follow the road.

FOOTNOTES:

[81] Livorno, in the barbarian dialect of the Genovesi, Ligorno; and hence our word Leghorn. It is excusable that we should have taken St.

George from Genoa, but not that we should have stolen her dialect also.

[82] Perhaps, but Bocca d'Arno, that delicious place, is far and far to-day from Livorno.

VIII. TO SAN MINIATO AL TEDESCO

The road from Pisa to Florence, out of the Porta Fiorentina, to-day the greatest gate of the city, pa.s.ses at first across the Pisan plain, beside Arno though not following it in its wayward and winding course, to Cascina at the foot of those hills behind which Lucca is hidden away: Monti Pisani

"Perche i Pisani veder Lucca non ponno."

And unlike the way through the Pineta to the sea, the road, so often trodden by the victorious armies of Florence, is desolate and sombre, while beside the way to-day a disused tramway leads to Calci in the hills. On either side of this road, so deep in dust, are meadows lined with bulrushes, while there lies a village, here a lonely church. It is indeed a rather sombre world of half-reclaimed marshland that Pisa thus broods over, in which the only landmarks are the far-away hills, the smoke of a village not so far away, or the tower of a church rising among these fields so strangely green. For Pisa herself is soon lost in the vagueness of a world thus delicately touched by sun and cloud, and seemingly so full of ruinous or deserted things like the beautiful great Church of Settimo, whose tower you may see far away in the golden summer weather standing quite alone in a curve of the river; so that you leave the highway and following a little by-road come upon Pieve di S.

Ca.s.siano, a basilica in the ancient Pisan manner set among the trees in a shady place, and over the three doors of the facade you find the beautiful work of Biduino da Pisa, as it is said, sculptures in relief of the resurrection of Lazarus, the entry of Christ into Jerusalem, a fight of dragons, and certain subjects from the Bestiaries.

Another lonely church, set, not at the end of a byway by the river, but on the highroad itself, greets you as you enter Cascina. It is the Chiesa della Madonna dell' Acqua, rebuilt in the eighteenth century. In this wide plain there are many churches, some of them of a great antiquity, as S. Jacopo at Zambra and S. Lorenzo alle Corti, and in the hills you may find a place so wonderful as the Certosa di Calci, a monastery founded in 1366, but altered and spoiled in the seventeenth century, and the marvellous Church of S. Giovanni there. Cascina itself is as it were the image of this wide flat country between the hills and the Maremma, where the sun has so much influence and the shadows of the clouds drift over the fields all day long, and the mist shrouds the evening in blue and silver. Desolate and sober enough on a day of rain, when the sun shines this gaunt outpost of Pisa, for it is little more, is as gay as a flower by the wayside. The road runs through it, giving it its one long and almost straight street, while behind the poor houses that have so little to boast of, lies a beautiful old Piazza, with a great palace seemingly deserted on one side and an old tower and a church with a beautiful facade on another. Always a prize of the enemy, Cascina in the Pisan wars fell to Lucca, to the Guelph League, and to Florence. Its old walls, battered long ago, still remain to it, so that from afar, from the Pisan hills, for instance, it looks more picturesque than in fact it proves to be.

The high road, Via Pisana, as it is still called, though, indeed, it was more often the way of the Florentines, sometimes almost deserted, sometimes noisy with peasants returning from market, finds the river again at Cascina only to lose it, however, till after a walk of some five miles you come to Pontedera, a wild and miserable place, full of poor and rebellious people, who eye you with suspicion and a sort of envy. Yet in spite of the proclamation of their wretchedness, I think of them now in London, as fortunate. At least upon them the sun will surely shine in the morning, the unsullied infinite night will fall; while for us there is no sun, and in the night the many are too unhappy to remember even that. There in Pontedera they preach their socialism, and none is too miserable to listen; these poor folk have been told they are unhappy, and, indeed, Pontedera is not beautiful. Yet on a market day you may see the whole place transformed. It has an aspect of joy that lights up the dreary street. All day on Friday you may watch them at their little stalls, which litter Via Pisana and make it impa.s.sable.

You might think you were at a fair, but that a fair in England, at any rate, is not so gay. All along the highway that runs through the town in front of the shops and the inn you see the stalls of the crockery merchants, of the dealers in lace and stuffs, of those who sell macaroni and pasti, and of those who sell mighty umbrellas. And it is then, I think, that Pontedera is at her best; life which ever contrives in Italy to keep something of a gay sanity, disposing for that day at least of the surliness of this people, who are very poor, and far from any great city.