A Crowning of the Virgin, a fine fresco | of 1422, by Sano Lorenzetti, who received 1,200 livres for it, still attests, though defaced, the precocious progress of painting at Siena. The fine gate of San Viene, formerly of Pispini, of 1326, by the architect Maestro Moccio, paints the faith and pious ardour of the Sienese. It was by this gate that the body of Saint Ansan, found by a shepherdess near the Arbia, made its solemn entry, headed by bishop Gualfred, amid the joyous acclamations of the people, who cried : Il santo viene, whence the name of the gate. It offers a superb Nativity, by Soddoma; the foreshortening of the angel is admired. The grand Fonte di Follonica, a restored edifice, of 1249, was presented in 1489 to the town of Siena by its clever architect the celebrated Francesco di Giorgio. He executed near this fountain the elegant Piccolomini Loggia, ordered by Pius II., where the lottery is now drawn, as well as the majestic Piccolomini (now the Government) palace, the finest in Siena, so remarkable for the entablature of its front. The Ghigi palace has been magnificently decorated by its possessor the marquis Angelo Ghigi, of Siena, a gentleman distinguished for his amenity and goodness this nobleman, now governor of Siena, instead of pompously installing himself at the Government palace, has the good sense to remain at his own house. The Ghigi palace is also a kind of exhibition of the products of Sienese industry, for its brilliant furniture is of home manufacture. The grand landscapes of the gallery are by Pianpianino, and S. Nenci has painted a little poetical fresco of Hope on the ceiling of a little saloon. A very splendid ball was given at this palace by the marquis Ghigi during the fêtes in August 1834 to the grand duke and his family. I had then an opportunity of remarking the charms, the gracefulness of the Sienese ladies, long famous in Italy. The fountain, still called Fonte Nuova, of the year 125), notwithstanding the inaccurate inscription which makes it only of 1298, is a masterly construction. The Fonte Branda, made in 1193 by 'Inf. xxx. 78. See the letter written on the 1st of March 1832 by S. A. Benci to Professor L. de Angelis of Siena, who has repiled thereto. the sculptor Bellamin at the con of the consuls of Siena, as the end inscription still states: ita Bella jussu fecit eorum, is not, perhaps pite the general belief, the Fonte 1 sung by Dante: Ma s' io vedessi qui l'anima trista Di Guido o d' Alessandro o di lor frate Per fonte Branda non darei la vista," which for very specious reasons have been in the Casentino and Borgo alla collina. This fountai be consoled with other verses t fieri, who speaks of it lovingly, a as of Siena: Fonte-Branda mi trae meglio la sete, The upper part, one of the a monuments of Sienese art, fell in and when I saw the fountain it wa by tanners. The pleasant and cool promen the Lizza: E in su la Lizza il fresco ventolino, ornamented with statues, occupi site of a rampart, designed by P and of a fortress erected in 15 Charles V., which the people of excited by France, demolished the following with such eagerness, tha were on the point of throwing dow very walls of the town. Opposite the old edifice intende drying cloth, stands a house, the ba tion of a joyous band of Sienese cureans of the middle ages, Dante so satirically ridicules: Tranne lo Stricca E tranne la brigata in che disperse Over the Carollia gate is this ins tion, said to have been made in 160 the grand duke Ferdinand, but it speaks to the traveller only, and is b 3 See Sonnets cxI. and CXII. 4 Alfieri, Son. GXII. 5 Inf. XXIX. 125. out by the polite hospitality of the Sie- | numerous, offers a free, gay, easy, and poetical style, in perfect uniformity with the character of the inhabitants, and nese : Cor magis tibi Sena pandit. In the dusty avenue of the Camollia painting seems in this case the true exgate: A Camollia ml godo il polverone, a column erected in 1452 marks the spot where the emperor Frederick met his consort Eleonora of Portugal, on the 23rd of February, conducted by the amiable Eneas Sylvius and accompanied by four hundred Sienese ladies, a cortege of honour that may give some idea of the then splendour and riches of Siena, which has so prodigiously fallen since the loss of its ancient liberty. CHAPTER XII. University.-Mausoleum of Arringhierl. The university of Siena, which dates from the year 1203, is now organized the same as that of Pisa; but it has rarely more than three hundred students, and the professors' appointments are in ferior. pression of society. The painters in this democracy were not a simple confraternity, nor a vain academy, but they formed a civil corps, from which the first magistrates were sometimes chosen, and their statutes received the approbation in 1355, not of the bishop, but of the government. Most of the schools are proud when they can cite two or three masters of the thirteenth century; the school of Siena has a considerable number of them, and some few of a remoter period. The institute of Fine Arts has secured several of their old and glorious works, formerly dispersed in the churches, viz. a St. Peter, and a St. John on a throne, though he is more frequently represented in the desert, of 1100, by Pierrolino or Pietro di Lino; a Christ, of 1215, by Guiduccio; a Virgin, of 1249, by Gilio di Pietro; a Crucifix, of 1305, by Massarello; an Annunciation, St. Paul, St. Romuald, a dinary for its time, the finest work of painting in four compartments, extraorSegna di Buonventura, a Sienese painter of the beginning of the fourteenth centry; a Crucifix, of 1344, and a St. Paul, by his son Nicolao; St. Michael, by The mausoleum of Nicolao Arringhieri, professor of law, formerly in the cloister of Saint Dominick, is curious as a work of art. It cannot be, as pretended on Cicognara's authority, by Goro di Gre-Simone di Martino; the Assumption, by gorio di Sanese, as his celebrated bassorelievos on the tomb of Saint Cerbonius at Massa della Maremma are of 1323 and this tomb is of 1374; it is more probably by the Sienese master Gano. The bassorelievo representing Arringhieri's lecture room is perfectly simple, natural, and true. It is impossible not to be struck by the importance, the consideration attached to instruction on beholding such a monument consecrated to a professor; the most illustrious of our times are assuredly treated much less magnificently than this legist of the fourteenth century. CHAPTER XIII. Institute of Fine Arts.-Slenese school —Painting, the expression of society. - Painters, a civil body and functionaries.-Old paintings. The antique school of Siena, the rival of the Florentine, and perhaps not less Alderi, sou. CXII. Pietri di Giovanni; the Crucifix, by Stefano di Giovanni; the St. Sebastian, by Andrea di Vanni. The more recent chefs-d'œuvre are: a Nativity, in Mantegna's manner, by Francesco di Giorgio, likewise a sculptor and famous architect of Siena in the fifteenth century; a St Nicholas preaching, of 1440, by Giovanni di Paolo of head; several saints, by Brescianino; a Siena, who has given the saint a Jupiter's Virgin and a Nativity, by Perugino; the Virgin visiting St. Elizabeth, and below, ture, by Pacchiarotto; the two little an Annunciation full of grace and nafigures of the Magdalen and Saint Reina, by Fra Bartolommeo; the St. Michael, the Trinity, the Birth of the Virgin, and particularly the St. Catherine stigmatised, by Beccafumi; this last painting is regarded as one of his best works, and in his first manner, before he had strained his talent by an impotent imitation of Michael Angelo's energy; a See date, book x1, ch. xill. 632 Catherine of Siena and of Socinus.-Miniatures. loured and gilded : a magnifice ornamented with nielle cover cious volume, which belong imperial chapel of Constanti sold at Venice on the fall of empire, and bought by the ag great hospital of Siena, when to the library. The manuscript of the prose translation of the En thirteenth century, by Ciamp de' Ugaruggieri, à Sienese, ex the late diligent librarian P. I Portfolios of Giorgio Sanese, Peruzzi, and Giu- Angelis, deceased in 1832. liano San Gallo.-Letters of Metastasio. The library of Siena, consisting of about fifty thousand volumes and five or six thousand manuscripts, is located in the ancient great hall of the celebrated Academy of the Intronati (Simpletons), which passes for the oldest in Italy, but its glory, like that of most other poetical academies of the same kind, is now nearly extinct. In the vestibule are the busts of the archdeacon Bandini (a writer on political economy, the author of a remarkable work on the Maremme, in which he anticipated, as early as 1737, the opinions of the French economists), whose books laid the foundation of the library in 1758, and of P. Giuseppe Azzoni, an Augustine, professor at the university, who had considerably augmented that of Saint Augustine now added to this; and several antique sculp tures. In the library itself are the busts of the satirical and learned Gigli, publisher of Saint Catherine of Siena, and of the great Sienese improvisatore Perfetti, crowned in 1725 at the Capitol with the laurel of Petrarch and Tasso, but his triumph doubtless escaped the strange accidents to which the Canzoniere was exposed.' The oldest manuscript is a copy of the Gospels in Greek, of the eighth or ninth century,spoken of by Montfaucon, though he did not see it. The characters are fine, the figures rather aukward, but well co Petrarch Informs us in his Latin letters that the aurel of the Capitol (taurea Capitolina) rendered him obnoxious to many envious persons; and that, on the day he was crowned, instead of the scented water usually sprinkled on such solemnities, he received on his bead a quantity of corrosive water which made blm bald for the rest of his life. His historian, Dolce, further relates that an old woman emptied on him a vessel full of stale urine, per ancient fitness of the Italia for that kind of work, in wh been since honoured by d'œuvre of Annibale Caro, Cesarotti, Monti. The manuscript of the Lette Catherine of Siena, who coul is by one of her secretaries, an contradict, by the correctness of style, Buffon's remark th who write as they speak, th speak well, write badly. Three autograph letters Socinus, who sprung from family of Siena, only recen are addressed to Belisario Bu Italian author of the sixteen who wrote against Dante; th of these letters, all in a good dated from Lyons, on the 2 and the 27th of September 1561 is dated from Bude on the 30 tober 1577. It is a singular c that such a saint as Catherine heresiarchs as the Socinians born in the same town; their manuscripts preserved at the Siena show the transports and delirium of faith beside its ab its hatred. Several manuscripts with t are curious with respect to art the Ordo officiorum Senensis executed drily, but in 1213, by of Siena, Oderico, bordered wit and little figures; the Gradua haps kept seven weeks for that very pu vala in sabbata septem ). Two other translations of the Eneld since Annibal Caro's, though of much l not deemed inferior; these translatio Angelucci and the P. Beverini. 3 The Malavolti palace, recently buil the site of their houses. ceto, of 1490, by the blessed Antonio Cerretani. The autographs of Francesco di Giorgio on civil and military architecture, illustrated with drawings by him, gave even then directions for mining and other underground works, which this great artist had taught the celebrated general of engineers Pietro Navarra, to whom the invention is too often attributed, though he was only the first to put it in practice. The portfolios of the two great artists of the fifteenth century, Baltassare Peruzzi and Giuliano San Gallo, are extremely curious. The portfolio of the latter is a small octavo, in which he has traced on parchment ornaments of exquisite taste, inscriptions, and even machines. The portfolio of Peruzzi, a quarto volume, is a precious collection of sketches of things that had pleased him or of his invention. There is, in particular, a sketch of the Sibyl, different from the fresco in the drapery and head-dress. The latter is more simple in the sketch, for the hair of the Sibyl is not surmounted by that kind of little yellow bonnet which Peruzzi afterwards added. A plan of fortification for the gate of Saint Mark of Siena, some unfinished works of which are still visible, proves that Peruzzi may be ranked with the great military engineers, like most able artists of that epoch. Divers autograph letters of Metastasio, of but little interest and published in part, are addressed twenty-five to P. Azzoni, from 1764 to 1782; sixty to abbé Pasquini, a Sienese man of letters, from 1744 to 1768; one, of the 1st of April 1773, is written to Maria Fortuna, a poetess of some celebrity; and another, of the 12th of November 1738, to the architect Bibiena. These autographs are in a bandwriting at once neat and elegant like his talent. Several display that complaisance and that weakness common to men of great renown of praising and seeming to admire all the books and verses presented to them. rence, are pleasant and worth seeing. L'Osservanza, one mile from Siena, is a vast convent of Franciscans, well situated on the hill della Capriola, with a fine wood of evergreen oaks and limpid springs in the valley. The church has great basso-relievos of the Crowning of the Virgin, in burnt earth, by the brothers Luca della Robbia, and a pathetic Calvary, by Riccio, horribly defaced, and well deserving to be repaired. The celebrated tyrant of Siena, Pandolfo Petrucci, called the Magnificent, the friend and correspondent of Machiavel, whose policy he cleverly practised, and the ally of Cesare Borgia, is interred in a vault of the convent, which had been enlarged by him. Pandolfo, when above seventy and infirm, died of an asthma in 1512, after oppressing his country for twentyfive years, from the day he was the first to scale its ramparts. The sons of the Magnificent were expelled and spoiled; his somewhat plain tomb, of travertine, was executed by one of Peruzzi's assistants, and it is easy to recognise the taste of that grand master in the disposition and ornaments. Three miles from Siena is the castle of Belcaro, celebrated for various historical events, and curious for its immense view. In the tenth century, when it was a feudal manor, Catherine induced the government of the republic to sanction the legacy which made it hers, and installed herself there with some young nuns; but the ardent founder of this convent could not rest quiet in such a solitude, and accordingly left it to run over France and Italy, to reconcile the differences between the pope and the Romans, between the people of Florence and the siguiory, and if death had not intervened, between the pope and the Neapolitan court. The holiness and abilities of Catherine had then made her a real mediating power. In the fifteenth century, Belcaro became once more a castle, and in the sixteenth it was the villa of the banker Crescentius Turamini, a lover of the arts, who employed Peruzzi to embellish it. On the ceiling of the vestibule is the great Judgment of Paris, cited by Lanzi as the masterpiece of the illustrious artist. Paris is seated with the goddess in front and three women behind, the waiting-maids of the former, who were not before known to have been in attendance; in the back ground, on the same side as the goddesses, are two rivers. A conjecture of certain competent judges is a sufficient eloglum for this fresco, which is not known enough it appears that it was executed from a design by Raphael, of whom Peruzzi had taken lessons at Rome; this design is now lost, though it was used by Marcantonio Raimondi, for the engraving he made from it, in 1539, of a Judgment of Paris, like the fresco. The Loggia of three arcades, at the end of the terrace, once presented ornaments, medallions, and little mythological figures in perfect taste; but this charming decoration, a happy imitation of the Loggia at the Vatican, was greatly injured by the rain and the whitewash which a mother's scruples had caused to be smeared over the most voluptuous figures about the end of last century; it will be indebted for its regeneration to the talent of S. Monti, of Šiena, a very skilful retoucher, who has already delivered them from a part of their rude veils, at the same time removing certain indecencies, and to the zeal of S. Camajori, whose family purchased Belcaro of the last Turamini in 1721, who found this villa almost in ruins, and, a worthy rival of his predecessor, the magnificent Crescentius, became its liberal and intelligent restorer. Like Palladio at Maser, Peruzzi, on his return from Rome, also risked his little Pantheon in the construction of the elegant chapel of Belcaro with its painted cupola. One feels, in the two villas which I have been the first of French travellers to describe, the admiration that the antique monument had excited in these two men of genius. This chapel is a condensation of Peruzzi's architectural talent. He has covered the quadrilateral and elliptical roof with exquisite figures and ornaments: small genii or angels support the escutcheon of the Turamini, whilst others show and scatter flowers and crowns; at the corners, are four angels bearing golden candelabra ; they have no wings, which the situation and their functions would hardly permit, but they do not seem less aerial or celestial on that account. The great Madonna in the midst of saints, most of whom are sufficiently cold and 'See ante, book v. ch. xxx. 2 See ante, ch. ix. formal, though correctly drawn, regarded as Peruzzi's by Wicar may be recognised by the Virgi of nobleness and modesty, and have left the work unfinished. tention to the principal figure and rence about the rest of the com was common with him, and v seen that in the Sibyl, she alone is of his pencil. Part of the ancient fortifica kind of long bastions, dependent villa, now form a very pleasant nade, wonderfully airy. There seen incrusted six balls shot by tillery of Charles V., an ally of Co when he besieged Siena in 1554. wrecks reminded me of the coura endurance of the citizens, and the lity of the peasants hanged by th my's general, the merciless marq Marignan, incensed because their daring braved his cannon, and wh fixed his head-quarters at Belcaro A small wood of holmoaks bord the villa. On a stone the followin posite verse of Petrarch is engrave E l'ombra folta, e l'aure dolci estiv The clergyman was my cicero Belcaro, and he did not fail to poin at the church a Madonna of the Ro curious for its antiquity. This and obliging guide boasted during walk of having withdrawn from a place a Cataletto. an excellent co another Cataletto, painted by Paco rotto, and now in England. I anxious to see it, though in the hen-h This wreck of painting excited in me little less regret than the ruins of ruzzi's frescos in the Loggia. It impossible not to be struck with expression of a head of St. Fra stigmatised, the nobleness of a donna, the beauty of a great St. nardin and the gracefulness of the o ments. Such is the power, the poetr Italian art! these figures on a kind bier, barely visible behind the fowls were roosting there, and in a musty pl hot enough to stifle one, caused me same emotions as the chefs-d'œuvre posed in the most brilliant galleries. 3 See ante, ch. iii. |