with the capricious and confused boldness of the Joshua. The frescos of the roof are by Tiepolo, and the Mattathias by Cignaroli. The church of Saint Erasmus is ornamented with a painting dated 1538, by Colleone,a good painter of Bergamo, who, being neglected and despised in his own country, left it to attach himself to the court of Spain: just before his departure, the unfortunate artist, conscious of his talent, painted on the front of a house a horse which has been much praised by some writers, and added these wordsNemo propheta in patria. The finest church of Bergamo, Santo Maria Maggiore, with its lions of red marble supporting the columns of the front, displays the first traces of the foriner power of Venice. The fresco of the Assumption, by Cavagna and Ercole Procaccini, is majestic, full of life, and in Correggio's style. The St. Roch and The church of Saint Andrew is rethe St. Sebastian, by Lolmo, an es-markable for its paintings. The Virgin, teemed Bergamese painter of the six-her Son, and some saints, is an exquiteenth century, are in the taste and site work by Moretto. The three fine indrawing of the fourteenth. The Pas- cidents from the life of the saint, on sage of the Red Sea is by Luca Gior- | the roof, by Padovanino, are highly efdano: a Deluge, by Liberi, has energy fective, and perhaps this painter, so noted and variety. There is a fine painting in for his skill in foreshortening, never this church by Talpino, of Bergamo, the displayed a more astonishing example pupil and imitator of Raphael; the frescos of it. of the roof, on the left of the high altar, are a remarkable performance of Cyrus Ferri, a Roman painter, the companion of Pietro de Cortone and his cleverest pupa. Above the little door is a small fresco, much injured but still beautiful, by Giovanni Cariani, who with Cavagno and Talpino forms the triumvirate of the best Bergamese painters. The Colleoni chapel, founded by a famous warrior who is buried there, has an elegantly ornamented front. The here is mounted on a great horse of gilt wood, placed on the top of his superb mausoleum, a monument of interest for the history of art, by Amadeo, a Pavian artist of the fifteenth century, who also executed the three statues of the altar and some of the sculptures on the front. Colleoni, who first made use of field arfillery and invented ordnance carriages, belongs to the great school of the Sforzas, Braccios, Carmagnols, and Maltestis. who founded the art of war in Europe, and who prove that military genius, once the glory of Italy, has never been extinct among the Italians. The Colleoni chapei contains a large painting, representing the Battle in which Joshua stopped the sun, by Giuseppe Crespi, called Spagnuolo, a fantastical painter of the Bocnese school in its decline; and a Virgin full of grace, by Angelica Kauff-| man, which forms a strange contrast Saint Alexander in colonna, a church of the fifteenth century, has a rich and novel cupola, and many beautiful paintings, principally in the three sacristies. A Last Supper, of good design and colouring, though somewhat tinctured with the dryness of the fourteenth century, is by Caligarino, who from a shoemaker became an artist in consequence of the compliment paid him by his clever compatriot, Dossi, of Ferrara, on the shoes which he carried him appearing painted. A St. John Baptist, which has been attributed to the elder Palma, is by the younger; and in the oratory near the first sacristy is a good painting by Giovanni Jacopo Gavazzi, dated 1512. Saint Bartholomew has a delightful Madonna, one of the best works of Lotto; the next painting on the left is attributed to the elder Palma; but it may possibly belong to the younger. The sacristy contains five of Bramantino's works; three of Loŝto's; a young St. John, a masterpiece of Guercino or Cesare Gennari, is wrongly attributed to | Bassano. Saint Alexander della Croce has many fine paintings; a Deposition from the Cross, by Cignaroli; an Assumption, by Bassano; the St. Anthony the Abbot, by Talpino; the Coronation of the Virgin, by Moroni, and the two side painlings, attributed to Andrea Schiavone, a happy imitator of Titian: in the sacristies, St. Nicholas of Bari, by the elder Palma; a Crucifix, by Previtali; another by Moroni; four little saints, by Bramantino, and other works of the best Bergamese masters. The little oratory of Saint Jesus has, under a glass cover, an extraordinary painting of Christ carrying his cross, the only work at Bergamo by the celebrated and prolific painter Giambattista Castello, called il Bergamesco, who died in 1570, court painter at Madrid. Santa Maria delle Grazie has the St. Diego of Francesco Zucco, a good Bergamese painter, and pupil of the Campi, the rival of his clever compatriots Talpino and Cavagna; the painting of the high-altar is by the latter. lively and natural, is a charming figure, that, as Lanzi says, neither Raphael nor Correggio would have surpassed. The Daniel in the lions' den and the St. Francis, by Cavagna, placed on each side this picture, sustain their dangerous proximity tolerably well. The library of Bergamo has forty-five thousand volumes, the gift of private individuals. The Carrara school of painting and architecture was likewise founded by the generous man whose name it bears, Count Jacopo Carrara. In the absence of the patriotism and public spirit of free states, which they cannot possess, the Italians evince a love of art and of their native towns truly estimable, since it is habitual, and if its exercise be unproductive of glory, it has at least the advantage of being useful. This feeling At Santa Maria del Sepolcro is the St. Sigismund, one of Previtali's master-impels them to a sort of partial benevopieces. CHAPTER II. lence somewhat singular. I was sometimes surprised at the favour accorded to certain plays, as well as to certain actors School at Santa Grata.-Library.—Municipal patrio- and actresses; but I learned that it tism of the Italians.-Carrara school.-Painting perpetual in Italy.-Singers of Bergamo.-Old palace.-Tasso's Bergamese origin.-Palazzo della Podestadura. Harlequin. The small church of the Benedictine nuns of Santa Grata, with its gilding and tasteful ornaments, has all the brilliancy of a drawing-room. It contains a much-admired painting, which has been at Paris, the Virgin in an aureola and several saints beneath, the masterpiece of Talpino, thought worthy of Raphael by Vasari. This Bergamese convent of Benedictines, having been suppressed by an imperial decree given at Compiegne (one might call it a capitulary of the time of Charlemagne) on the 25th April 1810, was not suffered to revive, as most of the other women convents in Lombardy, except on the condition of becoming a girls'school, so stubborn and unchangeable is the Austrian government in its system of schools. The old convent of the Holy Ghost is converted into a house of industry. The church offers some fine celebrated paintings St. Anthony of Padua performing a miracle to convert a heretic, a painting of amazing effect, is not by Dominico, but Giovanni Viani his father, a pupil of Guido; the Madonna by Lotto, in which the little St. John playing with a lamb shows a joy so was because the author or performers were of the town; nostro veronese, nostro veneziano, nostro ferrareze, bolognese, etc., is an expression of everyday use, to designate some compatriot artist or writer. The Carrara school contains many paintings attributed to various masters; a portrait of Raphael, supposed to be by himself, seems worthy of him for the sweet and noble expression of the physiognomy. Among other portraits are seven by Van-Dyck, two by Titian, one by Pordenone, one by Giorgione, one by Albert Durer, and one by Holbein. The Galatea is by Orbetto; a small painting of Christ between the two thieves, of 1456, by Vincenzo Foppa, is affecting and clever for that epoch; its inscription, Vincentius Brixiensis fecit, decidedly proves that this illustrious painter belongs to Brescia, and not to Milan, as Lomazzo and his followers have pretended. Four Bacchanals, three of which are copied from Titian, are by Padovanino; a St. Catherine is by Lotto; the Virgin, the Infant Jesus and four saints by the elder Palma; a Holy Family, by Parmegiano; a Neptune, by Rubeus; two Pietys and a Magdalen are by Annibale and Agostino Carracci. A cabinet of prints, a collection of medals, and a pretty good number of plasters, likewise make part of the Carrara school. It is astonishing that, 1 vih so many helps and such means of ady, the Italian school has not attained greater eminence in the last three cenas Possibly this multitude of such perfect models is an obstacle to originalty and truth; artists, instead of looking within to their own resources, turn to things without, and wander in a vague Stremitation: and instead of expure, they ape Titian, Rapro Romano; copying and repastead of creating. The art then seems worthy to have given him birth, by the interest it ever continued to take in him. When he was detained in the hospital of Saint Anne, the town sent a petition to the duke of Ferrara in his favour, which was presented by one of its first citizens; there was also sent as a present at the same time a lapidary inscription interesting to the house of Este, which its sovereigns had long coveted. After his deliverance, Tasso went to Bergamo, was visited by the magistrates, kind of trade, an easy, regular, enthusiastically welcomed by his friends, sions occupation which recalls his admirers, and the lovely dames; and, rk made with singular self-gra- although it was fair time, his presence talion by Scipio Maffei, that if they was quite an event. Tasso has more pat badly in Italy, at all events they than once spoken of Bergamo as being dway painting. The musical ly-really his country, in his sonnets, dialogues, and letters, and the comparison he has made of the miseries of human life to the perplexities of a great fair may be regarded as a reminiscence of this town 3 directed for forty years by Mayer, er Bavarian composer, is another ion of art honourable to Bergamo. kind of miracle, this little town bis produced a greater number dent singers than any city in Italy; bas escaped during thirty years that flight of warblers, those hartenors who have enchanted EuMonbelli, Davide father and de incomparable Rubini. Tour de portico of the Palazzo vectragione, or palace of justice. t statue of Tasso in Carrara The father of the bard of the Glemme was of Bergamo; misforand proscription had obliged him the land of his birth, and to be a derer in Italy and France, for adtraced back and seems herethis poetic family Ludovico de maternal uncle, who was to Berlin the stead of a father, had dered in his house by robbers. The civic palace (della Podestadura), is one of the finest palaces planned by Scamozzi, but the upper part, which is not by him, and the statues over it, are in very bad taste. The great hall offers several remarkable paintings: St. Andrew d'Avellino celebrating mass, by Talpino; a Virgin, the Infant Jesus, with several saints overhead, and two Venetian magistrates kneeling below, by Felice Brusasorci, a noble and graceful painter; the great Conaculum, by Bronzino. The same piece contains also nu merous portraits of cardinals and other illustrious Bergamese. The councilchamber is not less curious: there are a portrait of Bembo, by Titian; the Adulterous woman, by Talpino; a ceiling by Francesco Bassano, and the original The of Torquato seems to protest designs of the great architect, the au the injustice of fate, which dewer of such a compatriot; it is an the inhabitants of Bergamo of the thor of the plan, so badly followed, of this very palace della Podestadura. It is the commonly received opinion of illustrious regret and noble that Harlequin sprung from the vallies partial appropriation of the near Bergamo, but German criticism and whom they lost, after passing erudition have just found him an Etrus. them the first days of his infancy. can genealogy.4 Bern, the primitive country of Tasso, Tena illustrata, part. 111, fol. 143. beautiful sonnet on Bergamo: Terra, bagna elc. Rome, part. 11, 448. and the de, xxvii. ixxxvi, cxxxi, and others, pubPiss in 1827. a che questa vita è simile ad una fiera sopopulosa, nella quale si raccoglie grandisAbadi mercanti, di ladri, di giacatori: chi primo si parte, meglio allogia: chi più indugla, si stanca, ed invecchiando divien bisognoso di molte cose; è molestato da' nemici, e circondato dall' insidie; al fine muore infelicemente." Letter to his kinsman the cavaller Enea Tasso, of Bergamo, cxxxlx of the Lett. ined. 4 See Schlegel's Course of dramatic literature, lesson VIII. there the church had been suppressed | thirty years, and I beheld it then encumbered with the forage of a Polish regiment. The body of Boetius had been put in the cathedral, but, in the language of the day, there were no funds to build him a tomb. Certainly the Liutprands and Othos, those princes of the middle ages that we look on as barbarians, some eight or ten centuries ago, had crected and magnificently enlarged the mausoleum of Boetius; they had not yet, to avoid rendering honour to virtue, adopted this eternal and invincible argument of our civilisation. The tomb of Liutprand was at first placed in the church of Saint Adrian, but some time after it was carried to the basilic of Saint Peter in ciel d'oro; in his will he desired that he might be interred at the feet of Boetius, that when he ceased to exist he might not seem to cease testifying his respect for that illustrious man. The coffin of this great king, as we are informed by a learned Pavian, was supported by four small marble columns; his statue in royal robes was placed above. The decision of the council of Trent caused the coffin to be taken down, as it was then decreed that the burial-place of saints only should be above the surface of the earth. The ashes of Liutprand were deposited at the foot of a pilaster in the choir; the original epitaph which told of his piety and valour, the wisdom of his laws, his conquest of the Roman state, and his victories over the Saracens in France when he flew to succour Charles Martel, the taking of Ravenna, Spoleto, and Benevento -all these signs of glory had disappeared, and nothing was left on his fallen The tomb of Boetius was erected in the church of Saint Augustine by the king of the Lombards, Liutprand, about 726; the emperor Otho III. erected another and a magnificent one in marble with a very remarkable inscription composed by Gerbert, afterwards pope under the name of Sylvester II. (Notize appartenenti alla storia della sa patria raccolle ed illustrate da Giuseppe Robolini, gentiluomo pavese. Pavia, 1826 et seq.; tom. 1. 240, and 11. 86.) Gerbert was one of the most learned men of his day, but he did not invent clocks as some have supposed (V. Gallia christiana, tom. x.); be was born in Auvergne, and may be added to the illustrious Auvergnats mentioned by M. de Chateaubriand in his Voyage à Clermont. Notizie appartenenti alla storia della sua patria, raccolte ed illustrate da Gluseppe Robolini, vol. 1. p. 94. 3 Petrarch, alluding to the birth of an illegitimate son previous to that of this daughter, avows tomb but the words, Here are the bones of king Liutprand; this simple inscription was one day destined to be itself ignobly smothered over with trusses of hay, and I sought it in vain. Pavia, called in the olden times the City of a hundred Towers, has but two now standing. One of those now thrown down, from its extravagant structure, was called the point downwards (pizzo| in giù). The tower which bears the name of Boetius is modern; the tradition even of his imprisonment in a tower can be traced no farther back than Jacopo Gualla, an historian of the fifteenth century. As to the site of the palace of the Lombard kings, probably near the church of Saint Michael, Iwas informed by a learned man whom I consulted that there were fourteen opinions on the subject, without counting his own, I believe; so I bad not the courage to look for its locality. In front of the Malaspina house are the busts of Boetius and Petrarch, men greatly differing in fortune, genius, and character, whom chance alone could have brought into juxta-position. An elegant inscription by Morcelli, placed beneath the bust of Boetius, informs us that it was near that spot where he was imprisoned, and composed his book on the Consolations of Philosophy. The inscription on Petrarch's bust states that he came to pass the autumns within the walls of that house, the residence of his son-in-law Brossano, architectural surveyor to Galeas Visconti, and husband of his natural daughter, a trifling incident, but somewhat crude, which sadly disconcerts our imaginings respecting the fidelity of Laura's bard. This daughter himself, with a sort of Italian simplicity singular enough, how he had thought of escaping from the passion which enslaved his mind and formed bis torment, by yielding to propensities somewhat less platonic. But he pretends that in spite of these indulgences he never really loved any but Laura. that he was always conscious of the disgracefulnes of such habits, and ultimately ridded himself o them in his fortieth year. Carm. lib. 1. Ep. 12, el Epist. ad Post. quoted by Foscolo, Essays on Pe trarch, XIII. On the death of a child of this daughter's, Petrarch composed some natural and touching Latin verses, which be had engraved on its tomb : Vix mundi novus bospes iter vitæque volantis the one who, in the absence of her father-in-law and husband, so cordially received Boccaccio when he visited Pavia, and notwithstanding his fifty-five years, his obesity, and pitiful appearance, he did not think it prudent to lodge in her house lest her reputation might be compromised. Marquis Ludovico Malaspina, who died in 1835, above eighty years of age, had erected at his own expense and from his own designs, a noble but plain edifice destined to receive his valuable collection of prints, and his paintings, among which there are not only some of the best Italian masters, but several of the Flemish school, as well quantity of antique works and the nevitable Egyptian museum, fortunately very extensive. The front is decorited with a basso-relievo presenting gures of Raimondi, Raphael, and Michael Angelo, by S. Monti of RaFenna, who also executed the statue of the Genius of the Arts, placed opposite the entrance-door. This handsome and useful foundation is besides an academy of the fine arts; it will perpetuate at the me time the memory of the taste, taents, and patriotism of its generous founder. CHAPTER VII. red of Saint Michael.-Cathedral. -Tomb of Saint Augustin.-Bridge. The Gothic church of Saint Michael, e of the oldest monuments of Christian ty, seems to be of the sixth cenramong the basso-relievos sculpred on the exterior of this old basilic, ay be remarked an Annunciation, in that noble instrument may be inferred. The frescos representing the Virgin's coronation, the Four doctors of the Church, and the painting over the altar of the Virgin, are curious productions of Andrino d'Edesia, a painter of Pavia, contemporary with Giotto. A St. Sebastian, and a St. Luke, by Moncalvo, are good. The vast majestic church del Carmine is of the fourteenth century. Several of its paintings are esteemed, namely: a Crucifix, by Malosso; St. Anne, by Moncalvo; St. Sebastian and divers saints, a painting in six compartments, inscribed with the name of Bernardino Cotignola, a painter of the sixteenth century, whose works are scarce. Santa Maria Coronata, commonly called de Canepanova, of a plain but noble architecture, is by Bramante; it contains some fine paintings: Jael and Sisera; David and Abigail, by Moncalvo; a Judith, an Esther, by Tiarini, an excellent painter of the Bolognese school; Rachel at the well; the Hebrews marching towards the land of promise, by Camillo Procaccini; and two other subjects from the Old Testament, by his brother Cesare. At Saint Marino, a Holy Family is attributed to Gaudenzio Ferrari; St. Jerome and the Virgin, to his illustrious pupil Bernardino Luini. Saint Francis has two good pictures: a St. Matthew, by Bernardino Campi; a St. Catherine, by Procaccini. Of the throng of deceptive remains which abound in Italy, Pavia, perhaps, possesses two of the most brilliant and best imagined. The first is the pompous pretended tomb of Saint Augustine, for which the child is already grown, ac- merly standing in the church of Saint arding to the Arian doctrine. The Peter in ciel d'oro, and now in the are expressive sculpture of Saint Mi- cathedral. The sculptures which ornawhich seems to have infused into Chris- ninety-five statues, in all four hundred kel is moreover suited to such a sect, ment it, consisting of fifty basso-relievos, the conquering, destructive, and and twenty figures, without including partial spirit of Islamism. In another animals, are a singularly remarkable -relievo, is an angel playing on a piece of workmanship of the close of the in, from which the great antiquity of fourteenth century, and the most con Test dolor, boc uno sors mea læta minus, wapa quater flexum peragraveral orbem. ors, fallor, obvia vita fuit. tum terris dedit urbs, rapuitque Papla : peror, hinc cœlo restituendus eram. Ta optaion of d'Agencourt, of Malaspina, in bis Guide of Pavia, and of Rosmini, in the History of Milan, has been recently contradicted by SanQuintino (Dell italiana architettura durante la dominazione longobarda, Brescia, 1829). According to San-Quintino, Pavia and the old church of Saint Michael were burnt in 924 by the Hungarians; so that the present church can only be of the end of the eleventh century. |