and it is surprising that they only inspired Byron with a piece so frigid. Foligno, of twelve thousand souls, is rich, industrious, well-built, and the roads from Rome, Tuscany, and the Marches meet there. The majestic cathedral, uninjured by the dreadful earthquake of January 1832, has a baldachin imitated from Saint Peter's, and a good Sposalizio, by Ventura Salimbeni. Spello, a little town one league from Foligno, is full of antiquities. On the north side, the remains of a Roman gate, called the gate of Venus, are imposing. In 1722 some persons pretended to have discovered the tomb of Propertius, under a house still known as the poet's house and giving that name to the street used as a public promenade. By the side of an antique gate in the wall that runs along the road to Rome is a large phallus of stone, sculptured with a singular distich immodestly commemorating the fabulous glory and exploits of Orlando: Orlandi hic Caroli Magni metire nepolis Under these verses, travellers are shown the immense pretended measure of the giant, and the supposed mark of the knee, which is very high. The popular traditions and Italian imaginations really make Orlando the Hercules of the middle ages; they have multiplied his traces, his stories, his labours, not unlike those of the antique hero, and Ariosto only brilliantly embodied these different traditions handed down in songs and tales for more than six centuries.' Spello possesses the best paintings of Pinturicchio, namely, in the duomo, an Annunciation, a Nativity, the Dispute with the Doctors, his masterpiece, and, at the Franciscans, a St. Laurence, in which a little St John has been thought Raphael's. But Spello is chiefly indebted for reputation now to the excellent college, reformed and almost founded by Professor Rosi, one of the best regulated establishments in Italy with respect to the teaching, moral principles, personal comforts, and gymnastic exercises introduced by S. Rosi. See ante, book XIV. ch. xv. the tower of Orlando. The Bout of Roncesvalles, a poem, is one of these pathetic or burlesque songs diffused among the Roman peasants, given in part and analysed by CHAPTER III. Santa Maria degli Angeli.-Vision of St. Francis, by M. Overbeck. Assisi.-Minerva.- Antiquitles. Cathedral. Saint Clair.--Chie-a Nuova.--Convent. - Rapid execution of religious monuments in the middle ages. - Under-ground church. - Mausoleum of Hecuba of Lusignan.-Giotto's frescos.--On the real epoch of the revival.-Sibyls and Prophets, by Ingegno.-Portrait of Saint Francis. Upper church. - Fresco of Cimabue.-Tomb of Saint Francis. -Saint Francis.-Frati.-Convent. -Saint Damian.-Carceri. The church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, called also the Portioncula from the ground ceded to Saint Francis by the Benedictines to found his order there,this majestic church, executed by Galeaso Alessi and Giulio Danti on Vignola's designs, was greatly damaged by the earthquake of 1832. The roof opened and shut to again, the cupola and tower clashed in falling, and eight columns were broken. In the middle of the church there stood, as at Loretto, a small house converted into a chapel; rude walls, in which Saint Francis had given his rules, and resolved to practice evangelical poverty to the letter. The Vision of St. Francis d'Assisi, a remarkable fresco, by M. Overbeck, is the chefd'œuvre of that German and catholic painting, which goes back too systematically to the ancient Italian manner and almost to the infancy of the art, but which nevertheless has some naive and graceful details. Dante, like Homer, exact in his descriptions, gives a picturesque sketch of the situation of Assisi: Fertile costa d'alto monte pende." This town, dull, deserted, monastic, and full of Saint Francis, commanded by a high citadel now forsaken, and surrounded with battlemented walls and towers, was the birth-place of two elegant poets, Propertius and Metastasio. In the piazza, the ancient temple of Minerva, of uncertain epoch and now converted into the church of Santa Maria della Minerva, presents a superb portico of fluted columns, under which Mary Graham in the sequel to her Three Months' Residence in the Mountains near Rome. Parad. XI. 45. sundry antique fragments are collected | Saint Rufinus was modernised by the clever architect of the sixteenth century, Galeaso Alessi. A fine sarcophagus forms the high altar. sise, a great personage in his day, a seemingly too soon forgetful of Sal Francis's precepts of humility and verty, had obtained of the emperor Fi derick II. Saint Bonaventure fiere defended this magnificence; but we by the reproaches to which he repli how many enemies the mendicant o ders had already raised. Item quær Cum sancti patres laudentur, in casel et in vilibus habitaculis habitasse, qi est quod vos altas et magnas don erigitis, et oratoria sumptuosa, et ari latas magno pretio comparatis, e sitis pauperes et mendici, et contem tores mundanorum esse debeatis? The under-ground church, gloo and austere, breaths penitence and gri On a tomb supposed to be that of N colao Specchi of Assise, chief physici of Pope Nicholas V., is a superb vase porphyry, according to some antiqu The church and monastery of Saint Clare were built by Fra Filippo da Campello, pupil of Jacopo of Lapo, about the middle of the thirteenth century, not long after the death of the saint, one of those young, handsome, and rich virgins, who had followed the example of Saint Francis, and whose hair he cut off with his own hand. The body of the illustrious and first abbess of the Clarists is under the high altar. Near the cross-rians, a present from the Queen of C aisle are some frescos by Giotto, who painted all the church, which have escaped the mason's barbarous brush. The little church, called the Chiesa Nuova, begun in 1612, occupies the site of the house where Saint Francis was born. The traveller may there see the prison in which he was confined, bound like a madman, by his father, a rich tradesman, who was exceedingly provoked at the pious dissipation of his alms, and whence his more compassionate mother delivered him. The convent, on a rock, looks like a fortress at a distance; and though in this respect it resembles Mount Casino, it differs in character. One is a poor, begging, unlettered, plebeian convent; the other rich, pompous, learned, and aristocratic. This immense pile of buildings, formerly animated with thousands of monks, and in which a dozen are in a manner lost now, was erected in two years, from 1228 to 1230. We have already noticed one example of quick building in the middle ages: at that time popular devotion, excited by the indulgences preached by the monks, was more liberal and prompt than our budget votes or the pleasure of princes. The architect, selected from a great number of competitors, was Jacopo of Lapo or il Tedesco, father of the illustrious Arnolfo, whom Fra Elia, general of As 1 See ante, book xiv. ch. xli. Two prus, Hecuba de Lusignan, very obsc • See ante, book xi. ch. z. Da less alludes to this triumph of Giotto at | with the lower church. The frescos of Assisi in the celebrated verses: Credette Cimabue nella pintura Tener lo campo; ed ora ha Giotto il grido, Cimabue, the best of that Ennius of The body of Saint Francis, discovered in December 1818, and withdrawn from Paintings like these show that the de- the kind of subterranean sancta sancsignation of epoch of the revival is in- torum where it lay buried, has been correctly applied to the fifteenth and placed in a pretty mausoleum of stucco sixteenth centuries, and that it really and marble, surrounded by a light pabelongs to Giotto and the beginning of lisade, a modern and shop-like refinethe fourteenth; those two brilliant cenment, which is offensive on such a tomb, turies were the apogee of the art, which regarded by Sacchetti as the first in the shortly after began to decline. The im- world after the Holy Sepulchre.3 Saint mense Crucifixion, the best work of Francis, sung in sacred strains by Dante Pietro Cavallini, a Roman mosaist and and Tasso, whose order, founded by painter, pupil of Giotto, a work prized him in his twenty-fifth year, has existed by Michael Angelo for its grandeur, more than six centuries without the aid presents a number of angels weeping in of force or physical means, was one of the sky, and below a crowd of people those powerful men produced by the and soldiers full of variety in expression spirit and necessities of the times. He and costume. A Deposition from the had, therefore, for his first disciples and Cross, a skilful group; the Tomb of Jesus companions men of distinction, young Christ, and several passages from his enthusiasts, rich and beautiful maidens, life on the ceiling of this side, are by ladies of fashion, and one of the greatest Puccio Capanna, a Florentine artist, one poets then living, Friar Placidus, who of Giotto's pupils, who died young. The had been crowned poet by the emperor Stigmata of St. Francis are another Frederick II. As to the lower orders, masterpiece of this great and primitive they found in such an institution a kind master. A Massacre of the Innocents, of emancipation and security, and esby Jacopo Gaddi, was approved by Ra-caped serfdom by becoming monks. It phael. The most perfect paintings of is not surprising that the manners and this basilic are: the groups of the Sibyls discipline of such a multitude were soon and the Prophets, by Andrea of Assisi, a changed for the worse. We have alpupil of Perugino and a rival of Raphael, ready mentioned the accusations brought who was surnamed Il Ingegno (the Wit) against two of them even in Saint Bofrom his marvellous dispositions; he fell naventure's days, not fifty years after blind in the flower of his age, and his their foundation. The great writers of misfortune excites our regret and pity the sixteenth century are unanimous in no less than his talent our admiration. exclaiming against the vices of the Frati. The sacristy has some good frescos by Machiavel, who had approved of their Giorgetti, a pupil of Lanfranco, but institution so far as to say that it had without his negligence, and little known revived Christianity then languishing, except at Assisi his native place. In the and still kept it from perishing by the second sacristy, over a door, is a curious bad examples of the prelates and clergy, portrait of Saint Francis, by his conwho even approved of the doctrine of temporary Giunta of Pisa, the oldest Saint Francis as evangelical, drew the Italian master, with Guido of Siena. infamous Friar Timoteo of his Mandragora. Ariosto and Castiglione seem unjust and extravagant when they accuse The upper church is brilliant and luminous, forming an ingenious contrast • Purga!, XI. 94. The people believed that Saint Francis was concealed in a vault of the church till then inaccessible, where he was always praying or in ecstasy and would continue so to the end of the world. This plous search seemed to some persons a kind of profanation and sacrilege. Nov. 207. | 4 See canto x1. of the Paradiso, and the sonnets till. and xx. of Tasso, in the 111d part of the Rime. One of the oldest and most accredited commentators of Dante, in speaking of Dante's youthful resolution to become a monk, asserts that be wore the habit of Saint Francis for a short time. 5 Discorsi, lib. 1. cap. i. ル Saint Damian is the monastery of Saint Clare and Clarists; the relics of the saint are kept there, and among them a ring which was given to her by Pope Innocent IV. when he went to dine at Saint Damian; on the same occasion, having entreated her to bless the table, the loaves were found marked with miraculous crosses. At the bottom of the dormitory, is a walled up door, where Saint Clare, armed with the holy Sacrament, is said to have repulsed the Saracens, after they had taken Assisi and were already scaling the convent. the Frati of cruelty and the most enormous crimes.' It is demonstrated by facts that these monks, with all their scandals, had no share in any of the great catastrophes, persecutions, or massacres recorded in history. Tasso pretends that charity, like silence, does not exist in the convents of the Frati, except on paper and the walls. Perhaps the truest and most ingenious satire on the Frateria is to be found in a letter from Annibale Caro to his friend Bernardo Spina, a somewhat dissolute nobleman, who was inclined to become a frate; in this letter, a chef-d'œuvre of The hermitage of Santa Maria delle taste, reasoning, and eloquence, we Carceri, in the middle of woods and read: Non potete voi esser solitario | rocks, was the retreat of Saint Francis senza esser frate? Soggiunrete: and his companions, who went to mediChe? volete ch' io sia romito? Në ro- tate there in rustic cells. The church, mito, nè frate voglio che siate; ma which is of doubtful origin, and has even uomo, e uomo da bene, amico di Dio; been supposed built by Saint Francis, ritirato prima in voi stesso, che sarà il has on its walls one of those speaking più bello eremo che possiate trovare: crucifixes of the middle ages. In the di poi per appartarvi dagli uomini, | chapel of the Virgin, a Madonna, anridotto in qualche villa con li vostri other antique fresco, is anterior to the libri, con i vostri passatempi onesti, saint. The grotto or bed of Saint Frand' esercizj, di cacce, di pescagioni, dicis, the oratory where he almost lost agricoltura; in un' ozio con dignità, in his sight by his tears, are other monuuna religione senza ipocrisia; tolto ments of the labours and holy sorrows dal volgo, non dagli amici; dalle of bis penitence. In the oratory is the pompe, non dalle commodità; dalle crucifix which he used in his travels and brighe, non dalle azioni virtuose. A during his powerful sermons. It is requesto modo penso io che voi possiate lated that Cardinal Peretti, nephew of esser consolato, e buono e santo: e non Sixtus V., had obtained possession of sarete frate. In the present state of ci- this crucifix and placed it on a rich altar vilisation and in the midst of our stirring, but that it disappeared by night, and elegant, industrious, and improved so- returned to the extremity of his piou: ciety, the Capuchin, with his stick, his grotto, where it still remains. beard, his naked feet, his gown, and his wallet, is only a species of modern cynic, in disaccord with our poetic or puritanical Christianity, who is derogatory to religion by his hideous aspect, and whose begging, idle, unproductive monachism impoverishes a country. The two cloisters of Assisi correspond with the magnificence of the church. The Heads of Franciscans, by Adone Doni, the best painter of Assisi, in the sixteenth century, are of wonderful truth. The refectory, the largest and most superb of its kind, has a great Last Supper by Solimene, one of his most pleasing and rapid works. "Ingorda e sì crudel canaglia." Sat. V of Ariosto; Cortegiano, lib. I. Let. t. IV. p. 313. 3 They were constructed in the beginning of the sixteenth century under Paul III., who demolished CHAPTER IV. Perugia. Fortifications.- Churches.-Saint Peter -Carved work in the choir.-Cathedral.-Baruc cio's Deposition from the cross.-Chapel of the convent of San Sever.- Saint Angelo. -Saint Fran cis.-Gonfalone.-Braccio Fortebracci. Perugia, on a mountain, with its citadel formerly inhabited by the popes and its fortifications by Antonio San Gallo, the ditches of which are filled u and converted into a public promenade with a fine amphitheatre for the game o pallone, to which the Italian are much one of the finest quarters of the town for the pur pose. The following threatening inscription wa long legible in the court: Ad coercendam Perus norum audaciam Paulus III_ œd›ficavil. addicted, is picturesque, and its rude i aspect still accords very well with the reputed ferocity of its ancient inhabitants, dout less greatly softened now.' This fine town now appears rather deserted; its population has declined from forty thousand to fourteen thousand; but it is interesting with respect to art, antiquities, and literature. There are no less than a hundred and three churches at Perugia, without counting thirty regular monasteries and nunneries. The convent of the Benedictines of Saint Peter, one of the most extensive and richest ecclesiastical establishments in the Roman states, was formerly used for the diet of the order. The church, which has some of Vasari's best paintings, is more particularly remarkable for the fine wood carvings of the choir, executed from Raphael's designs. At the church of Saint Dominick, which retains nothing Gothic but a large window of coloured glass at the bottom of the choir, of a religious effect, is the mausoleum of Benedict XI., who died at Perugia in 1304, and not in 1301, a work esteemed for the closeness to nature of the pontiff's reclining figure, and the grace of the two augels that hold up the drapery. The oratory of Saint Peter the Martyr has a very elegant Madonna by Perugino, which has even been attributed to Kaphael. deed, it seems quite allowable for artists as well as writers. This chef-d'œuvre disappeared at the epoch of the first levy of paintings that followed the treaty of Tolentino, and nothing is known of it. The library of the chapter has several rare manuscripts, among them a Gospel, perhaps of the eighth century, and a Breviary of the ninth. In the church of Santa Maria del Popolo is a fine picture by Gherardi, a good Florentine painter, a pupil of Raphael, for the upper part, which is graceful; and for the lower part, which is spirited and vigorous, by Lattanzio della Marca, a clever artist of the sixteenth century, who quitted the pencil to become bargello (chief of sbirri) of Perugia, probably a more important office then than since. At the convent of Camaldulites of Saint Severus is a chapel painted in fresco by Raphael, greatly damaged by the carelessness of the monks, but indebted for its preservation to the attentions of the municipal magistrates. The great architect Galeaso Alessi, whose talents were an honour to Perugia, his country, was interred with great pomp in 1572 in the church of San Fiorenzo; but he obtained neither epitaph nor monument, though his family was rich and in the first rank of society at Perugia: perhaps this family had the weakness to blush for its artist, as if Michael Angelo was not of a house good enough? The curious church of Saint Angelo was built on an antique temple consecrated to Vulcan, with its materials and those of another temple situated at Civitella d'Arno not far distant; it seems to have retained its ancient circular form, which is equally appropriate to the requirement of christian worship. The cathedral of Saint Laurence, of a bold Gothic, has the celebrated Deposition from the Cross by Baroccio,executed while suffering from poison administered to him by certain envious artists in a repast to which they had invited him. This painting, very well composed, is in a chapel of great curiosity for its coloured windows, the work of P. Francesco di Barone Brunacci, a monk of Mount Casino, and of Costantino di Rosato, as well as for its ornaments in stucco and wood. A good Sposalizio, by Wicar, replaces the former one by Perugino, which offered The church of Saint Francis has lost the same beautiful perspective as that of most of the chefs-d'œuvre of painting his Saint Peter in the Sixtine, a plagia- with which it was formerly adorned. A rism often committed by Perugino, and tolerably good copy of Christ being laid which he defended by saying that he in the sepulchre was substituted for Ranever robbed any but himself; and, in-phael's original chef-d'œuvre by Paul V., The poison of Perugia, called acquella, was dreaded. This distich was written against a prelate who governed in a barassing manner: The oratory of La Giustizia, with a front ornamented with basso-relievos by the brothers della Robbia, has a fine Virgin by Perugino. Monsignor, non tanta fretta ; |