The Story of Assisi Part 16

Upon entering the church of Santa Chiara out of the sunshine, we are struck with a sense of the coldness of its scant ornamentation, a want of colour, and a general idea that artists in first directing their steps to San Francesco had not had time to give much thought to the church of the gentle saint. Giottino is said by Vasari to have painted frescoes here, and they may be those ruined bits of colour in the right transept where it is only possible to distinguish a few heads or parts of figures here and there in what seems to be a procession, perhaps the Translation of St. Clare from San Damiano to San Giorgio.

It is said that their present condition of ruin is due to the German bishop Spader who, fearing that the nuns might see too much of the world through the narrow grating because of the number of people who came to see the frescoes, had them whitewashed in the seventeenth century. The people came less, the nuns were safer, but Giottino's (?) frescoes are lost to us and we do not bless the memory of the German bishop of a.s.sisi. The frescoes of the ceiling he did not touch, and we have in them some interesting work of an artist of the fourteenth century whose name is unknown, but who undoubtedly followed the Giottesque traditions, though not with the fidelity or the genius of the artist who painted the legend of St. Nicholas in San Francesco. In decorating the four spandrels he has been influenced by the allegories of Giotto, and the angels are grouped round the princ.i.p.al figures in much the same manner; they kneel, some with hands crossed upon their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, but they are silent worshippers with not a single instrument among them. The saints who stand in the midst of the angels in Gothic tabernacles are the Madonna with a charming Infant Jesus who grasps her mantle, and St. Clare; St. Cecilia crowned with roses, and St.

Lucy; St. Agnes holding a lamb, and St. Rose of Viterbo; St.

Catherine, and St. Margaret with a book in her hand. The artist has used such soft harmonious colours and bordered his frescoes with such pretty medallions of saints' heads and designs of foliage that one wishes he had been given the whole church to decorate and thus saved it from its present desolate appearance.

The large crucifix behind the altar, a characteristic work of that time, has been ascribed to Margaritone, Giunta Pisano, or Cimabue. It was painted, as the inscription says, by the order of the abbess Benedicta, who succeeded St. Clare and was the first to rule in the new convent, but the artist did not sign his name. The chapel of St.

Agnes contains a Madonna which Herr Thode with far-seeing eyes recognises through all its layers of modern paint as Cimabue's work.

There is also a much retouched, but rather charming picture of St.

Clare, painted according to its inscription in 1283. She stands in her heavy brown dress and mantle, a thick cord round her waist, and on either side are scenes from her life. The small triptych of the Crucifixion on a gold ground is an interesting work by the artist of the four frescoes of the ceiling, and a nearer view of some of the peculiarities of his style is obtained. It is impossible to mistake the long slender necks, the curiously shaped ears with the upper part very long, the narrow eyes, straight noses and small mouths, sometimes drooping slightly at the corners, which he gives his figures. He is another of those nameless painters who came to a.s.sisi in the wake of the great Florentine.

The visitor would leave Santa Chiara with a feeling of disappointment were it not for the chapel of San Giorgio, the original place so often mentioned in connection with St. Francis and now open to the public.

The crucifix of the tenth century, so famous for having bowed its head to St. Francis in the church of San Damiano bidding him to repair the ruined churches of a.s.sisi, is to be removed from the parlour, where it is temporarily kept, and placed behind the altar. The chapel, with a groined roof, is square, small and of perfect form, and ornamented with several frescoes. On the left wall is a delightful St. George fighting the dragon in the presence of a tall princess, her face showing very white against her red hair. There is a nave scene of the Magi, whose sleeves are as long and whose hands are as spidery as those of the princess; and above is an Annunciation. Behind the curtain in the fresco a small child is standing who is evidently the donor, but some people believe he represents the Infant Jesus, which certainly would account for the surprised att.i.tude of the Virgin. This wall was painted in the sixteenth century by some artist of the Gubbio school, but his name we have been unable to discover. Quite a different character marks the frescoes upon the next wall, which would seem to be the work of an Umbrian scholar of Simone Martini, or at least by one more influenced by the Sienese than the Florentine masters. There is a softness and an ivory tone in the paintings of the saints, a languid look in their eyes, a sweetness about the mouth peculiar to the Umbrian followers of Simone, who like him succeed less well with male than with female saints. Here the Madonna, seated on a Gothic throne against a crimson dais, with a broad forehead and blue eyes, her soft veil falling in graceful folds about her slender neck, is unusually charming. The St. George with his shield is perhaps less disappointing than St. Francis, but then Simone fails to quite express the nature of the Seraphic Preacher. We turn to St. Clare of the oval face and clear brown eyes, and feel that the painter had a subject which appealed to him, even to the brown habit and black veil which makes the face seem more delicate and fair. Above are the Crucifixion, Entombment and Resurrection, suggesting in the strained att.i.tudes of the figures a follower of Pietro Lorenzetti. Some remains of frescoes upon the next wall resemble those in the nave of the Lower Church, and probably also belong to the second half of the thirteenth century.

Indeed the architecture of the chapel bears a striking resemblance to San Francesco, so that although this is the original building of San Giorgio which existed long before the Franciscan Basilica, it was in all probability remodelled by Fra Campello, who may have given it the pretty groined roof.

But above all the works of art and all the views of church or convent, the pious pilgrim treasures the privilege of being able to gaze upon the body of the saint in the crypt below the high altar reached by a broad flight of marble stairs. St. Clare had been buried so far out of sight and reach that her tomb was only found in the year 1850, after much search had been made. Five bishops, with Cardinal Pecci, now Pope Leo XIII, and the magistrates of the town, were present at the opening of the sepulchre; the iron bars which bound it were filed asunder, and the body of the saint was found lying clad in her brown habit as if buried but a little while since; the wild thyme which her companions had sprinkled round her six hundred years ago, withered as it was, still sent up a sweet fragrance, while a few green and tender leaves are said to have been clinging to her veil. So great was the joy at discovering this precious relic that a procession was organised "with pomp impossible to describe."

[Ill.u.s.tration: SANTA CHIARA FROM NEAR THE PORTA MOJANO]

On the Sunday at dawn every bell commenced to ring calling the people to high ma.s.s, and never, says a proud chronicler, were so many bishops and such a crowd seen as upon that day. At the elevation of the Host the bells pealed forth again announcing the solemn moment to the neighbouring villages; soon after the procession was formed of lay confraternities, priests and friars, and little children dressed as angels strewed the way with flowers. The peasants, with tears raining down their cheeks, pressed near the coffin, and had to be kept back by some of the Austrian soldiers then quartered in a.s.sisi. First they went to the Cathedral, then to San Francesco, "the body of St. Clare thus going to salute the body of her great master. Oh admirable disposition of G.o.d." It was evening before they returned to the church of Santa Chiara, where the nuns anxiously awaited them at the entrance of their cloister to place the body of their foundress in the chapel of San Giorgio until a sanctuary should be built beneath the high altar. It was soon finished, ornamented with Egyptian alabaster and Italian marbles, and the body of St. Clare was laid there to be venerated by the faithful.

As pilgrims stand before a grating in the dimly lighted crypt the gentle rustle of a nun's dress is heard; slowly invisible hands draw the curtain aside, and St. Clare is seen lying in a gla.s.s case upon a satin bed, her face clearly outlined against her black and white veils, whilst her brown habit is drawn in straight folds about her body. She clasps the book of her Rule in one hand, and in the other holds a lily with small diamonds shining on the stamens. The silence is unbroken save for the gentle clicking of the rosary beads slipping through the fingers of the invisible nun who keeps watch, and as she lets the curtain down again and blows out the lights there is a feeling that we have intruded upon the calm sleep of the "Seraphic Mother."

FOOTNOTES:

[101] As the hated enemies of the Baglioni the Fiumi are often mentioned in the chronicles of Matarazzo, and they played an important part in the history of their native city. They were Counts of Sterpeto, and the village of that name on the hill to the west of a.s.sisi above the banks of the Chiaggio still belongs to the family.

[102] One of the first of the franciscans was Rufino, a nephew of Count Favorino's, whose holiness was such that in speaking of him to the other brethren St. Francis would call him St. Rufino.

CHAPTER X

_Other Buildings in the Town_

The Cathedral of San Rufino. Roman a.s.sisi. The Palazzo Pubblico.

The Chiesa Nuova. S. Paolo. Sta. Maria Maggiore. S. Quirico. S.

Appolinare. S. Pietro. The Confraternities (Chiesa dei Pellegrini, etc.). The Castle.

a.s.sisi is the only town we know of in Italy where the interest does not centre round its cathedral and a certain sadness is felt, which perhaps is not difficult to explain; St. Francis holds all in his spell now just as he held the people long ago, so that the saints who first preached Christianity to the a.s.sisans, were martyred and brought honour to the city, are almost forgotten and their churches deserted.

The citizens, though proud of their Duomo, with its beautiful brown facade, hardly appear to love it, and we have often thought that they too feel the sense of gloom and isolation in the small piazza, which makes it a place ill-fitted to linger in for long. Men come and go so silently, women fill their pitchers at the fountain but only the splashing of water is heard, and they quickly disappear down a street; even the houses have no life, for while the windows are open no one looks out, and the total absence of flowers gives them a further look of desolation. This part of the town was already old in mediaeval times, and the far away mystery of an age which has few records still lives around the cathedral and its bell tower. San Rufino stands in the very centre of Roman a.s.sisi and its history begins very soon after the Roman era, one might say was contemporary with it, as the saint whose name it bears, was martyred in the reign of Diocletian.

All the details of his death, together with the charming legend about the building of the cathedral, come down to us in a hymn by St. Peter Damian, who, although writing in 1052 of things which it is true happened long before, had very likely learnt the traditions about it from the a.s.sisans while he lived in his mountain hermitage near Gubbio. The story goes back to the time when the Roman consul of a.s.sisi received orders to stamp out the fast-spreading roots of Christianity, and began his work by putting to death St. Rufino, the pastor of the tiny flock. The soldiers hurried the Bishop down to the river Chiaggio and, after torturing him in horrible fashion, flung him into the water with a heavy stone round his neck. Some say that the Emperor Diocletian came in person to see his orders carried out. That night the a.s.sisan Christians stole down to the valley to rescue the body of their Bishop and place it in safety within the castle of Costano, which still stands in the fields close to the river but almost hidden by the peasant houses built around it. Here, in a marble sarcophagus he rested, cared for and protected by each succeeding generation of Christians who had learned from tradition to love his memory, and secretly they visited the castle in the plain to pray by the tomb of the martyred saint. Their vigilance continued until the fifth century, when the Christians had already begun to burn the Pagan temples and build churches of their own. Christianity, indeed, spread so rapidly throughout Umbria that other towns cultivated a love for relics, and fearing that the body of St. Rufino might be stolen from the castle in the open country, the a.s.sisans took the first opportunity of bringing it within the town. In the year 412 Bishop Basileo, with his clergy and congregation met at Costano, to seek through prayer some inspiration so that they might know where to take the body of their saint. As they knelt by his tomb an old man of venerable aspect suddenly appeared among them, and spoke these words in the Lord's name: "Take," he said, "two heifers which have not felt the yoke, and harness them to a car whereon you shall lay the body of St. Rufino. Follow the road taken by the heifers and where they stop, there, in his honour shall ye build a church." These words were faithfully obeyed: the heifers, knowing what they were to do, turned towards a.s.sisi, and brought the relics, through what is now the Porta S. Pietro, to that portion of the old town known as the "Good Mother"

because the G.o.ddess Ceres is said to be buried there. The heifers then turned slowly round, faced the Bishop and his people, and refused to move. For some obscure reason the place did not please the a.s.sisans, and they began to build a church further up the hill; but every morning they found the walls, which had been erected during the preceding day, pulled down, until discouraged, they submitted to the augury, and returned to the spot chosen by the heifers. Before long, over the tomb of the Roman G.o.ddess, arose the first Christian church of a.s.sisi, dedicated to San Rufino.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAMPANILE OF SAN RUFINO]

A few years ago the late Canon Elisei who has written many interesting pamphlets on the cathedral, obtained permission from the government to clear away the rubble beneath the present church; ma.s.ses of Roman inscriptions and pieces of sculpture were brought to light, together with part of the primitive church of Bishop Basileo, and the whole of what is known as the Chiesa Ugonia, from the Bishop of that name who built it in 1028. With lighted torches the visitor can descend to the primitive basilica and realise what a peaceful spot had been chosen for this early place of worship, while picturing the Christians as they knelt round the body of their Bishop, the light falling dimly upon them through the narrow Lombard windows. The six columns, with their varied capitals rising straight from the ground without the support of bases, give a somewhat funereal aspect, recalling a crypt rather than a church. The few vestiges of frescoes in the apse--St.

Mark and his lion, and St. Costanso, Bishop of Perugia--are said to be, with the paintings in S. Celso at Verona, the oldest in Italy after those in the catacombs at Rome. Ruins of other frescoes, perhaps of the same date, can be traced above the door of the first basilica, together with some stone-work in low relief of vine leaves and grapes, but it is difficult to see them without going behind a column built in total disregard of this lower building. The Roman sarcophagus is still in the apse where the altar once stood, but open and neglected, for the body of St. Rufino now lies beneath the altar of the present cathedral. It is ornamented in rough high relief with the story of Endymion; Diana steps from her chariot towards the sleeping shepherd, Pomona has her arms full of fruit and flowers, and there are nymphs and little G.o.ds of love and sleep. "It appeared to us," remarks one prudish chronicler of the church, "the first time we beheld it, that it was indecent to have present before the eyes of the faithful so unseemly a fable; our scruples we however laid aside in remembering that Holy Church is endowed with the power of purging from temples, altars and urns, all pagan abominations, and from superst.i.tion to turn them to the true service of G.o.d." No such scruples existed during the early times, and there is an amusing story of how the people wishing to place the marble sarcophagus, which had been left at Costano five centuries before, in the Chiesa Ugonia, were prevented by the Bishop who admired it, and had given orders that it should be brought to his palace at Sta. Maria Maggiore. A great tumult arose in the town, but although the people came to blows and the fight was serious on both sides, no blood was shed. A further miracle took place when the Bishop, determined to have his way, sent sixty men down to Costano who were unable to move the sarcophagus which remained as though rooted in the earth; and the event was the more remarkable as seven men afterwards brought it at a run up the hill to the church of San Rufino, where it remains to this day.

Already two basilicas had been built in honour of the saint, but the a.s.sisans dissatisfied with their size and magnificence, in the year 1134 called in the most famous architect of the day, Maestro Giovanni of Gubbio, who before his death in 1210 had all but completed the present cathedral and campanile. It is a great surprise when, emerging from the narrow street leading from the Piazza Minerva thinking to have seen all that is loveliest in a.s.sisi, we suddenly catch sight of the cathedral and its bell-tower. The rough brown stone which Maestro Giovanni has so beautifully worked into delicately rounded columns, cornices, rose-windows and doors with fantastic beasts, sometimes looks as dark as a capucin's habit, but there are moments in the late afternoon when all the warmth of the sun's rays sinks into it, radiating hues of golden orange which as suddenly deepen to dark brown again as the light dies away behind the Perugian hills.

All three doors are fine with their quaint ornaments of birds and beasts and flowers, but upon the central one Giovanni expended all his art. It is framed in by a double pattern of water-lilies and leaves, of human faces, beasts, penguins and other birds with a colour in their wings like tarnished gold. The red marble lions which guard the entrance, with long arched necks and symmetrical curls, a human figure between their paws, may belong to an even earlier period, and perhaps were taken by Giovanni da Gubbio from the Chiesa Ugonia to decorate his facade, together with the etruscan-looking figures of G.o.d the Father, the Virgin and St. Rufino in the lunette above. Just below the windows a long row of animals, such pre-historic beasts as may have walked upon Subasio when no man was there to interrupt their pa.s.sage, seem to move in endless procession, and look down with faces one has seen in dreams.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOOR OF SAN RUFINO]

The interior of the cathedral is a disappointment; at first we accuse the great Maestro Giovanni for this painful collection of truncated lines and inharmonious shapes, until we find how utterly his work was ruined in the sixteenth century by Galeazzo Alessi of Perugia. To understand what the church was five centuries before Alessi came, it is necessary to climb the campanile (only those who are attracted by ricketty ladders and dizzy heights are advised to make the trial), and when nearly half way up step out on to Alessi's roof, whence we can view the havoc he has made. But he could not spoil Giovanni's rose-windows, and through one of them we see the castle on its green hill and the town below, cut into sections as though we were looking at the Umbrian world through a kaleidoscope.

The outside of San Rufino is so lovely that we should be inclined to advise none to enter, and thus spoil the impression it makes, were it not for the triptych by Niccol da Foligno, "the first painter in whom the emotional, now pa.s.sionate and violent, now mystic and estatic, temperament of St. Francis' countrymen was revealed."[103] Here we find a dreamy Madonna with flaxen hair, surrounded by tiny angels even fairer than herself in crimson and golden garments folded about their hips. The lunettes above are studded with patches of jewel-colour, angels spreading their pointed wings upwards as they seem to be wafted to and fro by a breeze. Four tall and serious saints stand round the Virgin like columns; to the right St. Peter Damian busily writing in a book, and St. Marcello, an a.s.sisan martyr of the fourth century who might pa.s.s for a typical Italian priest of the present day. On the left is St. Rufino in the act of giving his pastoral blessing, and St. Esuberanzio, another of a.s.sisi's early martyrs, holding a missal.

They stand in a meadow thickly overgrown with flowers drawn with all Niccol's firm outline and love of detail. Fine as the picture is, it cannot compare with the charming predella where the artist has worked with the delicacy of a miniature painter. It represents the martyrdom of St. Rufino; in the first small compartment the Roman soldiers on horseback, their lances held high in the air, followed by a group of prying boys, watch the Bishop's tortures as the flames shoot up around him; and in the distance are two small hill-towns with the towers of Costano in the plain. Then follows the scene where two young a.s.sisan Christians have come down to the Chiaggio to rescue the body of their saint from the river. He lies stiffly in their arms, attired in his episcopal vestments, and the water has sucked the long folds of his cope below its surface. The last represents the procession of citizens led by Bishop Basileo bringing St. Rufino's body from Costano, and is one of the most exquisite bits of Umbrian painting. Niccol has placed the scene in early morning, the air is keen among the mountains, the sun has just reached a.s.sisi, seen against the white slopes of Subasio, and turns its houses to a rosy hue, while the tiny wood in the plain is still in deepest shadow. The white-robed acolytes mount the hill in the sunlight followed by the people and the heifers which ought, Niccol has forgotten, according to the legend, to have led the way.

The picture is signed Opus Nicholai De Fuligneo MCCCCLX.

The only other fine things in the cathedral are the stalls of intarsia work of carved wood, by Giovanni di Pier Giacomo da San Severino (1520), a pupil of the man who executed the far finer stalls in San Francesco. In the chapel of the Madonna del Pianto is a curious wooden statue of the Pieta, how old and whether of the Italian or French school it is difficult to say. A tablet records that in 1494 because of the great dissensions in the town this Madonna was seen to weep, for which she has been much honoured, as is shown by the innumerable ex-votos hung by the faithful round her altar.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DOME AND APSE OF SAN RUFINO FROM THE CANON'S GARDEN]

The marble statue of St. Francis is by the French artist, M. Dupre (a replica in bronze stands in the Piazza), while that of St. Clare is by his daughter, who both generously gave their work to a.s.sisi in 1882.

The statue of St. Rufino is by another Frenchman, M. Lemoyne.

The proudest possession of San Rufino is the font in which St.

Francis, St. Clare, St. Agnes and Frederick II, were baptised, and the stone is shown upon which the angel knelt, who in the disguise of a pilgrim a.s.sisted at the baptism of a.s.sisi's saint. Often did Francis come to San Rufino to preach when the small church of S. Giorgio could no longer hold the crowds who flocked to hear him, and the hut where the saint spent his nights in prayer and meditation before he preached in the cathedral is now a chapel. This was the place of the miracle when his companions at Rivo-Torto saw him descend towards them in a chariot of fire (see p. 238). In the time of the saint it was the cottage of a market-gardener and still stands amidst a vineyard, one of the prettiest and sunniest spots in the town, where vines, onions, wild flowers and cherry trees grow in happy confusion, and birds and peasants sing all day long.

The charm of the Cathedral is best realised after witnessing one of its many ceremonies, when the canons in crimson and purple, processions of scarlet clothed boys swinging censers, and the Bishop seated beneath a canopy of yellow damask his cope drawn stiffly to the ground by a fussing acolyte, recall some of the magnificence of the middle ages. The young priests bow low before the Bishop on their way to the altar, return to their seats and bow again; incense fills the church; the organ peals half drown the tenor's song, and through it all, from the stalls, drone the voices of the canons reciting their office. It is a gorgeous service but without a congregation, for even the beggars have not stolen in; and Niccol's Madonna looks out upon the scene with big soft eyes which seem to follow us into the darkest corners of the aisles.

ROMAN a.s.sISI.

a.s.sisi is so much a place of one idea--of one interest--around which everything has grown, that it is difficult to remember that a fairly important town existed in Roman times, and that the Roman buildings, still to be seen are, in the opinion of Mr Freeman, worth a visit even if the church of San Francesco had never arisen. Some pleasant hours may be pa.s.sed finding the sites of pagan monuments, the remains of ancient walls, and tracing the outline of the original town. In every case we see how Roman a.s.sisi has, in a very marked way, become part of Mediaeval a.s.sisi, palaces having been erected upon the foundations of Roman houses and Christian churches upon the sites of ancient temples.

The Temple of Hercules stood at the bend of Via S. Quirico (now Via Garibaldi) where it turns up to the ancient palace of the Scifi; while the Porta Mojano, near which old walls and part of an aqueduct can be seen, took its name from a temple of Ja.n.u.s which stood between it and the Vescovado. Standing a little off the Piazza Nuova, in a part of the town known as the "Gorga," are the remains of the amphitheatre. It would be difficult to find much of the original edifice, but houses having been built exactly on the ancient site its shape has been preserved, and this strange medley of old and new was thought worthy of a doric entrance gate by Galeazzo Alessi. Much the same thing has happened with many of the castles in the country near a.s.sisi, where the peasant houses are grouped round them in such a way that only by penetrating into the midst of a tangled ma.s.s of dwellings can the vestige of a tower be here and there discerned to remind us of its former state. a.s.sisi, though of no military importance at that time, aspired to become a little Roman town even more perfect than her neighbours on the hills. The broad and strongly built drain which extends from near the Porta Perlici beneath the Piazza Nuova to the garden behind San Rufino, is said to have been used to carry off the water from the amphitheatre after the mimic sea-fights which in Roman times were so popular. A use was found for all things, and in time of war a Roman drain proved a most efficient means of escape, especially when the Baglioni were raiding the town and putting to death all they met upon their road.

Some small remains of a Roman theatre are to be seen near the cathedral but so buried amidst a wild garden that it is difficult to form any just idea of its extent. The most splendid piece of masonry, a Roman cistern, lies beneath the campanile of the cathedral and can be easily looked into by the light of a torch, the sacristan even suggests a descent into its dark depths by means of a rickety ladder.

An inscription recording the proud fact that a.s.sisi possessed an amphitheatre has been removed to the cathedral where it is placed above the side entrance to the left. Other large portions of Roman walls are to be found at the back of a shop in the Via Portica and also in the Via San Paolo; both are marked upon the map. In those days the town seems to have been identical with what we now call old a.s.sisi, namely the quarter round San Rufino extending to the portion round San Francescuccio where are noticed the arched Lombard windows.

But by far the most interesting record of this early age is the Temple of Minerva, which in spite of the damage done when it was turned into a church, and the way in which the mediaeval buildings are crowded round it, yet remains one of the most beautiful of ancient monuments.

The raising of the Piazza makes it difficult to realise, without going below ground, how imposing the temple must have been when its steps led straight down to the Forum. This can be reached by descending from the Piazza into the "scavi," or excavations, where stands the great altar with drains for the blood of the victims; the long inscription giving the name of the donor of the Temple runs:

GAL. TETTIENVS PARDALAS ET TETTIENA GALENE TETTRASTILVM SVA PECVNIA FECERVNT, ITEM SIMVLACRA CASTORIS ET POLLVCIS. MVNICIPIBVS ASISINATIBVS DONO DEDER. ET DEDICATIONE EPVLVM DECVRIONIBVS SING. XV.

SEVIR. XIII. PLEBI X. DEDERVNT. S.C.L.D.

It is well known that Goethe went to a.s.sisi solely to see the Temple, and surprised the citizens by going straight down the hill again without stopping to visit San Francesco. He wished to keep unimpaired the impression this perfect piece of cla.s.sical architecture had made upon his mind, and we cannot refrain from translating his enthusiastic description of it for these pages.

"From Palladio and Volkmann I had gathered that a beautiful temple of Minerva, of the time of Augustus, was still standing and perfectly preserved. Asking a good-looking youth where Maria della Minerva was, he led me up through the city which stands on a hill. At length we reached the oldest part of the town, and I beheld the n.o.ble building standing before me, the first complete monument of ancient days that I had seen. A modest temple as befitted so small a town, yet so perfect, so finely conceived, that its beauty would strike one anywhere. But above all its position! Since reading in Vitruvius and Palladio how cities ought to be built and temples and other public edifices situated, I have a great respect for these things.... The temple stands half way up the mountain, just where two hills meet together, on a piazza which to this day is called the Piazza.... In old times there were probably no houses opposite to prevent the view. Abolish them in imagination, and one would look towards the south over a most fertile land, whilst the sanctuary of Minerva would be visible from everywhere. Probably the plan of the streets dates from long ago as they follow the conformation and sinuosities of the mountain. The temple is not in the centre of the Piazza, but is so placed that a striking, though fore-shortened, view of it is obtained by the traveller coming from Rome. Not only should the building itself be drawn but also its fine position. I could not gaze my full of the facade; how harmonious and genial is the conception of the artist....

Unwillingly I tore myself away, and determined to draw the attention of all architects to it so that correct drawings may be made; for once again have I been convinced that tradition is untrustworthy. Palladio, on whom I relied, gives us, it is true, a picture of this temple, but he cannot have seen it, as he actually places pedestals on the level whereby the columns are thrown up too high, and we have an ugly Palmyrian monstrosity instead of what is a tranquil, charming object, satisfying to both the eye and the understanding. It is impossible to describe the deep impression I received from the contemplation of this edifice, and it will produce everlasting fruit."[104]

S. PAOLO[105]

A little off the Piazza della Minerva is the old Benedictine church dedicated to St. Paolo, erected in 1074, when it probably stood alone with its monastery and not, as now, wedged in with other houses.

Built in the very heart of Roman a.s.sisi, its foundations rest upon solid walls of travertine, where a secret pa.s.sage reaches to the castle. In this part of the town there are several underground pa.s.sages spreading out in various directions, reminding us of the insecurity of life in the early times when Pagan consuls persecuted the weaker Christian sect. Just within the doorway of the church, now alas thickly coated with whitewash, is an ionic column belonging to some building of importance which must have stood within the Forum.

Few people visit S. Paolo as it is only mentioned in local guide-books, and the pa.s.sing stranger is generally told that there is nothing to see which is borne out by the modesty of its exterior; but no lover of the early Umbrian school who has the time to spare should fail to step in, if only for a moment, as on a wall to the left of the entrance is a large fres...o...b.. Matteo da Gualdo. He has signed the date in the corner--1475--though not his name, but it would be difficult to mistake so characteristic a work of this delightful painter. The Virgin, tall and stately, is accompanied by St. Lucy, who holds her eyes upon a dish and is clothed in a richly coloured orange gown falling in heavy folds about her; on the other side is St. Ansano, the patron of the Sienese, looking in his elegant green jacket, trimmed with fur, more like a courtier than a holy martyr. He holds his lungs in one hand, because he is a patron of people suffering from consumption, but why we know not, as there was nothing in the way he met his death in the river Arbia by the order of Diocletian to explain the presence of this strange symbol. He stands in Matteo's fresco very daintily by the Madonna's side, pointing her out to the small donor who is seen kneeling in a doorway. The colour is deep, perhaps a little crude, and if the figures may seem somewhat stiff and their draperies angular, all such defects are amply redeemed by the small angels on the arch above, who composedly gaze down upon the Madonna as they sing and play to her.