tury, Luca Guerci, has unluckily added a St. Anthony; a Visitation and Herodias dancing, by Melissi, a good Florentine painter of the seventeenth century. The bishop's palace, sumptuous and convenient, built in 1787 by the famous Scipione Ricci, would hardly be supposed the abode of a reformer, and its magnificence contrasts in a singular manner with the severe doctrines of Port Royal, which Ricci had attempted to transplant beyond the Alps. The door of the church of Saint Paul is perhaps by Giovanni Pisano, as well as the little statue set on the triangular summit of the front. The Christ in a glory and St. Gaetan is a boasted work of the Neapolitan painter De' Matteis. Fra Paolino del Signoraccio has imitated some heads from his illustrious master Fra Bartolommeo, in his Virgin on a throne in the midst of saints, among whom he is said to have placed the por-made its chapel. trait of their famous brother Dominican Savonarola. The seminary, of a much more bumble aspect, was also built by Ricci. An ancient church, from Vitoni's designs, is At the high altar of Santa Maria degl' Angeli is an Annunciation, by Luti, an excellent work unnoticed by Lanzi, and for some time attributed to Guido. The church of Saint Dominick has some few works by the first masters in painting and sculpture. The Virgin The grand arch of Saint Francis, by a with the infant Jesus in her arms, a German architect, although of 1294, is fresco by Fra Bartolommeo; St. Charles not in ogive. Saint Francis contains the Borromeo raising a child from the tomb of the learned physician, naturalist, dead, by Empoli, containing portraits of and agricultural writer Carradori, by the Rospigliosi family; the tombs of the Prato, one of the most zealous propagaparents of Clement IX., by Bernini; a tors, in Italy, of vaccination, which he Crucifixion with the Virgin, St. John had essayed on his own son. This church and St. Thomas Aquinas, who is em- and the convent offer some good and bracing the cross with enthusiasm ; the curious paintings: the Annunciation, by Adoration of the Magi, by Fra Paolino, Baldi, in which the erudite painter has who has painted himself in the latter drawn the Virgin standing, the Hebrew picture; St. Dominick receiving the mode of praying; a Nativity, by an rosary from the Virgin, by the third unknown author, for grace and sweetness Bronzino, who is seen in the background worthy of Andrea del Sarto; a Purifiviolently disputing about the price of the cation, by Poppi, pleasing in expression painting with the sacristan of the convent, and colouring; in the antique chapel of who appears utterly unmoved; the ele- Saint Louis, in the sacristy, the amazingly gant tomb of the professor of law Lazzari, preserved frescos of Puccio Capanna, by Bernardo Rossellini, which has an pupil of Giotto, nearly all whose paintexpressive and well composed basso-ings have perished; a St. Francis on relievo representing his class; an Assumption, by Matteo Rosselli; a St. Michael, by Francesco Romanelli; in the sacristy, the Virgin, St. Catherine of Siena, Magdalen, and St. Dominick, by Fra Paolino; St. Sebastian, St. Jerome and a bishop of the order of the Gesuati,' by Ghirlandajo. The church of Saint John the Baptist is another fine structure by the great architect of Pistoja, Vitoni. Among the paintings may be remarked a Virgin on a throne, by Fra Paolino, to which a sorry painter of Pistoja of the last cen An order founded in 1367 by Saint John Colombini of Siena, and suppressed in 1668 by C'ement IX. gold, by Lippo Memmi, from Simone's designs; the Resurrection of Lazarus, by the second Bronzino, who has represented the donor Sozzifanti under the features of the Frate; the Marriage of Cana, by Pagani, finished by his pupil Matteo Rosselli; a Virgin, after Guido, by his beloved and unfortunate pupil Elisabetta Sirani, a beautiful copy which has been struck by lightning and seems in conformity with the artist's destiny; the frescos of the monks' chapter room, in the first cloister, executed in 1386, by Capanna. * See ante, book VIII. ch. vi. 666 PISTOJA. [Book the manuscripts of the famous canc Pistoja Sozomeue, the companion Bruni Aretino and Poggio in the lean researches of the monastery of Saint C Commentary of Asconius Pedianus where he exhumed and transcribed among the manuscripts. The first ed some of Cicero's orations; which con of the Croce racquistata, by the po his autograph corrections, which se Pistoja, Francesco Bracciolini, exh for the second. The antique church of Saint Andrew, rebuilt inside in 1619, though the front is of 1166, has on the architrave, over the principal door, a curious monument of the same epoch, the Adoration of the Magi, a basso-relievo by Gruamonte; below, another sculptor, Enrico of Pistoja, a pupil of Giovanni Pisano, has represented the Visitation and an Annunciation the Virgin in the latter has an embryo on her breast, to express the sudden and positive effect of the miracle. A bust appears the portrait of Gruamonte; the small statue of St. Andrew, on the of Sciences, Letters, and Arts, has a An apartment of the Pistoja Acad outside, is by Giovanni Pisano. celebrated pulpit is but an inferior imita- throne with divers saints, and a His painting by Beccafumi, the Virgin tion of the one at Saint John the Evan-markable Annunciation, in two pict gelist. The St. Francis de Paule, by by Santi Titi. the third Bronzino, is a youthful performance. CHAPTER IV. Pretorio palace.-Palace della Communità.-Forteguerri.-Library.-Academy.-Houses. The Pretorio palace, now a court of justice, was built in 1368 on the houses of the Taviani and Bracciolani. Its exterior is picturesque, and the antique staircase is of remarkable architecture. The palace della Communità, formerly degli Anziani, is of the close of the thirteenth century. The black marble head near the middle window, is that of a traitor to his country, Filippo Tedici, the tyrant of Pistoja, who married Dialta, the daughter of Castruccio Castracani. Several similar heads without busts exist elsewhere as marks of ignominy, and that of the glorious Grandonio, one of the captains who aided the Pisans in the conquest of the Balearic isles, has been wrongly confounded with them. iron mace is reputed to have belonged to this valorous Pistojan, whose gigantic form, painted in clare-obscure, is in one of the rooms, with a barbarous quatrain in his honour. On the top of stairs is an old portrait in clare-obscure, by Cino. The palace della Communità, therefore, combines the political, warlike, and poetic reminiscences of Pistoja. The The Sapienza includes the public schools. This college takes its name of Forteguerri from Cardinal Nicolao the elder, who, in 1473, devoted a considerable sum to the instruction of youth. The library, rather superior, possesses Several of the houses of Pistoja, dwellings of distinguished men, pe tuate literary names and recollect and offer good collections of pain and books. Baron Bracciolini has received by ritance a duplicate of Poussin's Dea illustrious painter, and sent by him Germanicus, really by the hand of Rome as a present to a Puccini, wh through Pistoja. attended him when he fell ill on pa Giuseppe Rospigliosi, the fresco c In the chapel of the palace of P History of St. Catherine, good in louring, by Giovanni di San Giov comprises the portraits of all that fa Annunciation, by Filippo Lipp The Bracciolini house contains the elder, praised by Vasari, and orde the artist by Messer Jacopo Be in the person of the ecclesiastic re whom he has very naturally painted behind the angel. The Gothic house of the Canc an historical Italian family now e the graceful chisel of Donatello. has a pig in relievo, on the exterior nuns of Saint Michael, has a The Tolomei house, once a con venerable Boguet, one of those painted in distemper by our clev artists that Rome and Italy, where resided more than fifty years, b Desmarais, another Frenchmar well inspired, and five great fre died a few years since, presiden Lucca Academy of Fine Arts, gi invention and disposition, but fe See ante, book xv. ch. xxxlii. execution. A library of ancient and and sculptures. The St. John, over the modern books, very select, is duly sup-holy-water vase, is by Luca della Robplied with modern works by the Cav. Tolomei, the accurate annotator of his country's monuments of art. The house of the Cav. Bracciolini dall' Api takes this latter appellative from the permission to add the bees of the Barberini to his arms, which was obtained as a reward for the poem in twentythree cantos composed by Francesco Bracciolini in honour of the Election of Urban VIII., which poem was afterwards commented on by another pope, Clement IX. This house, called Castello Traetto, has in its garden a fine bust by Algardi, representing Bracciolini, in his poems of the Croce racquistata and the Scherno degli Dei, a kind of distant rival of Tasso and Tassoni. The Forteguerri house, which has a few paintings, was the cradle of the two men who have thrown most lustre on Pistoja, Cardinal Nicolao the elder, and the author of Ricciardetto, himself the son of a Jacopo Forteguerri, an elegant ■painter and excellent citizen of Pistoja. CHAPTER V. Monte Catiol.-Pescia-Lucca.-Cathedral.-Mausoleum of Pietro da Noceto, by Civitali.-Archives. -Saint Alexander.- Saint Romanus.-Saint Michel.-Clerks of the Mother of God.--Saint Fredian. -Saint Francis, Castruccio Castracani. Castruccio Buonamici. The ancient baths of Monte Catini, recommended by Cesalpine in his day, enjoy a deserved reputation. The building with arcades, an elegant and correct structure, is by Paoletti, the restorer, the Vien of architecture in Tuscany under Leopold; but it is little suited to this kind of baths. It is particularly to be regretted that the different springs and their conduits are not covered to preserve the warmth of the water which rises to twenty-six degrees (Réaumur). | Redi was of opinion that the baths of Monte Catini were principally efficacious in dysenteries, and he thought that it was rare for any person to die at Florence of that disease. Pescia, an industrious town, in a picturesque situation, has five thousand inhabitants. The elegant cathedral built in 1693 by the Florentine architect Ferri, has some remarkable paintings bia. The mausoleum of Baltassare Turini, the elegant creator of the Lante villa, passes for the best work of Raphael da Monte Lupo, who successfully imitated the style of his master Michael Angelo. An excellent Deposition from the cross, by Passignano, has been injudiciously varnished. The great Assumption of the choir, noble, well draped, is the masterpiece of Gazzi, a painter of Pistoja. The majestic high altar in marble, from the design of Vacca, a sculptor of Carrara, was erected by the musician Grossi of Pescia, oddly called Syphax. Lucca is as the chief town of that kind of prefecture given by Europe to a grandson of Louis XIV. Its situation in a plain almost enclosed by mountains, near the banks of the Serchio and the canal of Ozzori, is charming. Several of its churches and palaces are very interesting as works of art. The vast cathedral of Saint Martin dates from the year 1060, and the exterior front of three stories, by the sculptor Guidetto, is of 1204. A lunette, over the little door, has a Deposition from the cross, by Nicolao Pisano, expressive and well composed; and the architrave an esteemed Adoration of the Magi, by his son Giovanni. The interior of the church is principally ornamented with the chefs-d'œuvre of the great Lucchese sculptor, Matteo Civitali, whose works are nearly all confined to Lucca and Genoa, and who seems like the transi tion from the true art of the fourteenth century to the ideal of the fifteenth. The following are by him the pulpit, remarkable for the taste of its ornaments; the noble and elegant mausoleum of Pietro da Noceto, of Lucca, secretary to Pope Nicholas V., the Bembo of that premature Leo X.; the portrait in marble of his Mecenas and friend Count Domenico Bertini, a little exquisite work; two graceful and pious angels kneeling before the tabernacle in the chapel of the Holy Sacrament; the basso-relievos of the altar of St. Regulus, bishop of Lucca, who is there seen in pontifical robes sitting between two angels each holding an open volume for him; a small octagonal temple, seventeen years anterior 1 See ante, book xv. cb. xxxviii. 668 LUCCA. simplicity of its Lombard front; Saint Romanus, an old church to Bramante's at Saint Peter in Mon- | of this architrave seems perfectly [Boo torio; and lastly, the ideal statue of St. telligible. A Christ on the cro Sebastian, imitated by Perugino and the Virgin at its foot, with St. F regarded as the masterpiece of Civitali. and a nun, is a good painting by The tomb of Illaria del Caretto, wife of Paolo Guinigi, by Jacopo della Quercesco Vanni. cia, is a composition at once simple and elegant. A marble sarcophagus of Greek workmanship represents Bacchus on a car drawn by Centaurs, conducted by Cupid, and escorted by Fauns and Bacchantes. The altar of Liberty was consecrated to Christ in 1369 by the Lucchese, whom the emperor Charles IV., stimulated only by their gold, had delivered from the Pisan yoke; the grand statues, larger than nature, of Christ raised from the dead, with Peter and Paul, by Giovanni of Bologna, are not free from affectation both in the attitudes and draperies. Among the paintings may be remarked a Last Supper, by Tintoretto, which, notwithstanding some defect in perspective, has some angels in the upper part perfect; a Crucifixion, by Passignano; St. Peter and St. Paul, in the sacristy, by Ghirlandajo; the Virgin, St. Stephen and St. John, and a delightful little Angel playing on a lute, an excellent composition for design, expression, and colouring, by Fra Bartolommeo; a tender Visitation, by Ligozzi; the Presentation in the temple, by the second Bronzino, and the fresco of the Volto Santo, an antique picture greatly venerated at Lucca, by Cosmo Rosselli. The chapter archives and the archbishop's hold the first rank among the historical treasures that Italy can boast. The former contain more than four thousand parchment diplomas, the oldest of which dates from the year 774; the library, bequeathed in 1503 by the bishop Felino Sandei, has some precious manuscripts and scarce editions of the fifteenth century. The archbishop's archives comprise about ten thousand diplomas, of which three hundred belong to the eighth century, and two to the seventh, one of 686, the other of 685; the latter is per-tails do not precisely agree with haps the oldest in Italy. Saint John and its vast baptistry appear of the epoch of the Lombards; the Virgin and the twelve Apostles, of the architrave, over the grand portal, a sculpture of the end of the twelfth century, though still rude, shows by the relief that the revival had in some measure begun the Latin inscription bianchi, so called from the sacred nus, the first bishop of Lucca, w The church dedicated to Sain fered martyrdom under Nero, the designs of Baccio da Monte clever Florentine artist of the si century, long established in thi A Virgin and several saints Vanni; a Martyrdom of St. T expressive, by Testa, surnam chesino, the friend of Poussin, a ful and unfortunate artist, who, cident or despair, perished in th An old painting, in the sacr saints, the town of Lucca in the Crowning of the Virgin wit warrior with an orange at h and in front a bishop kneelin perhaps the one ordered of Castruccio Castracani, althoug is not always a very close obse market, is rather imposing. rior, still untouched, of the basta colonnade, is however very inferior. | Four figures, by the younger Lippi, at the chapel of the Crucifix, are natural and graceful. On the architrave of the side door of the old church of Saint Saviour is a Miracle of St. Nicholas the Priest, still rude, but displaying a kind of progress in the forms and the relief: it is by Biduino, one of those Lombard artists that flourished a short time before Nicolao Pisano. The Ascension, by the elder Zacchia, a good painter of Lucca in the sixteenth century, is not of his best works, the artist having aimed at a broader style than natural to him. a Lombards, is one of the most characteristic monuments in Italy, as the interior, still in the simple, bastard Roman style in use among that people, has not been altered as in the churches of Monza and Pavia. The front, of much later date, being only of the twelfth century, has a Christ in a glory, worshipped by two angels, a fine mosaic of the same epoch, and below the twelve Apostles, but far from being of so large a style. The eleven columns of the middle nave, antique, as well as their pedestals and capitals, some of which are even Greek, must have belonged to a Roman edifice: they are singularly slender, and it is quite a prodigy that they should have supported a wall and arches so lofty for more than eleven centuries. The marble basin which was used for baptism by immersion, on which are sculptured divers subjects of the old Testament, is a curious work of the end of the twelfth century. The elegant baptistry, by Nicolao Čivitali, bespeaks him a worthy nephew of Matteo. The Virgin crowned by the Eternal Father, with four saints below, by Francesco Francia, is remarkable for the heads, the colouring, and drapery. The figures in demi-relievo by Jacopo della Quercia, in the chapel of the Holy Sacrament, though he sometimes had a broader style, are nevertheless beautiful; the sculpture of his two sepulchral stones of the Trenta family is very good. One cannot help regretting the degraded state of the excellent frescos in the chapel of Saint Augustine, by Ami Aspertini, a compatriot and clever pupil of Francia. Santa Maria in corte Landini has Nativity of the Virgin, by Vanni; the Birth of John the Baptist, by Pietro Paolini, of Lucca, a happy imitator of Paolo Veronese; a Christ on the cross with two saints below, by Guido, which combines his two manners; his graceful Madonna della neve; an Assumption, by Luca Giordano. The church and convent belong to the regular clerks of the Mother of God, an educational congregation instituted about the close of the sixteenth century, by Giovanni Leonardi, of Diecimo, a village in the Lucchese territory, which has produced some learned men, and excellent Latinists, such as the celebrated P. Bartolommeo Beverini, the Livy of Lucca, one of the able Italian translators of the Eneid, a precocious scholar, who as early as his fifteenth year had written comments on the principal authors of the Augustan age. This congregation was spared in the general suppression of convents by the French administration. It possesses a library of The elegant front of the antique church about twenty thousand volumes, be- of Saint Peter Somaldi is of 1203, and queathed in part by the learned P. Gio- the basso-relievo of the architrave provanni Domenico Mansi, afterwards arch-bably by Guidetto. Two paintings are bishop of Lucca; the apartment is decorated with his portrait, a good work by Batoni, who was also of Lucca. The present architecture of Saint Augustine is of 1324. The Virgin with divers saints, by Paolini, is a new and able imitation of Paolo Veronese. The Annunciation, by the elder Zacchia, has some little figures in clare-obscure worthy of Polidoro di Caravaggio. The Epiphany, by Gessi, is graceful and well drawn. Saint Fredianus, an old basilic of the See ante, book xvII, ch, xiv. remarkable, St. Anthony the abbot and other saints, by the elder Palma, vigorous in expression and colouring; and an Assumption, by the elder Zacchia. Two tombs in the church of Saint Francis bear witness to the poetic and martial glory of Lucca. The first is that of Giovanni Guidiccioni, his best poet, the friend of Annibale Čaro, a harmo→ nious imitator of Petrarch, and who, with the platonic love then in vogue, could like him give vent to noble songs on the ills and oppression of Italy. The See ante, book v111, cb, v. |