other tomb, too plainly marked by a brief inscription on the wall, is that of the great Castruccio Castracani degli Antelminelli, sovereign of Lucca and Pisa, deceased in his forty-seventh year, the wonder and terror of Italy in the fourteenth century, one of the strongest moral characters that ever existed, after whom the existence of his country, for a moment so brilliant, seems to disappear, and of whom Machiavel, in his romantic and incomplete history of him, says that he would have surpassed Philip in Macedonia and Scipio at Rome. The Trinity has two chefs-d'œuvre of Lucchese artists: the Virgin suckling the infant Jesus, sculptured by Matteo Civitali, and the painting of the highaltar, by Paolini, which proves, despite Baldinucci, that this artist is not destitute of grace. The beautiful old church of Santa Maria foris portam, rebuilt about 1515, retains its front of the thirteenth century. Two paintings are by Guercino : St. Lucy and the Virgin; St. Francis and St. Alexander. The death of the Virgin is by a clever Lucchese painter of the fourteenth century, Angelo Puccinelli, and is dated 1386. Santa Maria de' Servi has three good paintings by Matteo Rosselli : a pleasing Presentation in the temple, the Madonna of Sorrows, greatly damaged, and a Nativity. At the principal altar of Saint Vincent and Saint Anastasius is a Circumcision, by Ligozzi, which in colouring and composition resembles Paolo Veronese and Titian. An illustrious Lucchese is buried in this church, Count Castruccio Buonamici, author of the books De Bello Italico and the commentary De Rebus ad Velitras Gestis, a pure, grave, and eloquent historian, who only wanted a grander subject. The Carmine has a Conception, by Vasari, which is meant to imitate Michael Angelo; and in the choir, a good picture by Perugino roughly handled by a retoucher. The front of Saint Christopher is important for the history of art, as it exemplifies the transition from the first Gothic style to the second, as may be seen by the door and round window in the middle, which are ingenious and fantastic works, and by the sculptures of the little arcades. The great Matteo Civi tali, interred in this church, dese more noble monument than the n slab that covers his bones. CHAPTER VI. Ducal palace.-Paintings.-Library.-Preto lace. Roman theatre. Lyceum. - Roy demy.-Painting by Annibale Carraccio.-Public Library. - Amphitheatre. - Pu chives.-Ramparts - Aqueducts.- Cultur pulation.-Lucchese. The piazza of the palace, which to have been laid out on the othe was the cause of one of those u demolitions common in our time occasioned the destruction of th church of the Madonna grande, || Lucchese architect Gherardo Pe of the sixteenth century. The palace, begun by Ammana though only half finished, one of th extensive royal palaces even in The grand and regal staircase of C marble was constructed by S. No a Lucchese architect, who direc different works of the palace. T furniture is of home manufactur it proves that the impetus given dustry by the French administrati been continued and encouraged. two rooms devoted to the galler sent chefs-d'œuvre by the first m viz.: by Raphael, his celebrated M de' Candelabri, in his grand st Francia, a Virgin, St. Anne, two and the little St. John, in his bes with these modest words: Fr aurifex Boloniensis p. (pain Francia, goldsmith, of Bologna) a dead with the Virgin and two superior to the former, and almo to Raphael; by Leonardo Vinci, Virgin and infant Jesus; by Co a St. John with his lamb, a little half figure; by Michael A Christ on the cross, with the and St. John, an expressive litt ing; by Guido, a St. Cecilia, a gure in his powerful manner; th tyrdom of St. Appollina, in h style; by Poussin, the Massacr Innocents, remarkable for com drawing, and expression; by Sa rato, a little head of the Virgin his most graceful Virgins; by chino, three Saints below, and Glory in which the Santa Cas retto is transported; by Barocci me tangere, well coloured; by Gherardo delle Notte, a Christ before Pilate, which has a wonderful effect of light and is one of the most remarkable paintings of this kind; of the three Carracci, a Christ restoring sight to a blindman, by Ludovico, in which the blindman is perfect; Christ raising the widow's son, a work full of soul, and one of Agostino's most sublime; Christ and the Canaanitish woman, by Annibale, valuable for facility of design and boldness of pencil. The library, modern, has already twenty-five thousand volumes and some rarities, the duke being an amateur of books. A Greek copy of the Gospels, apparently of the tenth century, has some miniatures of a good style, astonishing for the epoch. A barbarous Latin version of the Psalms, from the Hebrew text, by an unknown translator, is of the twelfth century. An autograph manuscript of Tasso contains some Latin verses addressed to persons of his day. The Libro di Locuzioni, another autograph manuscript, inedited, of the learned Vincenzo Borghini, of the sixteenth century, one of the Roman deputies and censors who corrected the Decameron, is esteemed a valuable work on grammar. Two editions of the fifteenth century are curious: the Trionf, by Petrarch, a little volume, the first book printed at Lucca, and by a Lucchese (Bartolommeo Civitali, 1477), and a Latin Grammar by Giovanni Pietro da Lavenza, a schoolmaster of Lucca, who is indebted for bis reputation to the learned author of the Literary History of Lucca, the marquis Cesare Lucchesini. The stern old Pretorio palace, now a tribunal, of the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the next, is a mixture of the Gothic and the style of the revival. Some remains of a Roman theatre announce an edifice of no great extent, but of the best period; this theatre is still called Aringo and Parlascio, from which it may be inferred that the citizens of Lucca met there in the middle ages for the purpose of conversation also. The Lyceum, organised in 1819, combines the different branches of public instruction, and has twenty-six professorships. S. Pacini, a clever professor, has composed an estimable work on 1 See ante, book 1. ch. v. Italian surgery. The royal academy, formerly called degl' Oscuri, composed of thirty-six members, with the duke for perpetual president, holds its sittings there every month, when every member in his turn reads some piece of his own composition. This academy has been publishing Transactions (Atti) since 1817, of which seven octavo volumes have already appeared. In an apartment of the Lyceum is an admirable painting by Annibale Carraccio, which would alone repay a journey to Lucca. It was formerly at San Giovannetto, and is said to have been carried away and concealed by a nun when the convent was suppressed: the city purchased it for 2001., not one tenth of its value. The college Carlo Lodovico, another good foundation begun in 1807 and finished in 1819, can accommodate eighty students. The establishment is half ecclesiastical and half laic, as the professors, the rector, and vice-rector, are priests, and the director, their superior, a layman. The public library occupies a spacious building. The librarian, S. Papi, deccased at the end of 1834, preceptor of Prince Ferdinand Charles, was an enlightened man, who had served as soldier and general in the Rajah of Travancore's army, had visited Egypt and Greece on his return; he also wrote the curious Letters on the East Indies, translated the Manual of Epictetus, Paradise Lost, Armstrong's Art of Health, and composed a great History of the French Revolution, for which his Eastern travels and residence at Lucca would scarcely seem to have prepared him. At the library may now be seen the remains of Paolini's immense painting of St. Gregory giving a dinner to poor pilgrims, with Christ amongst them, a rich harmonious composition, with the variety of Paolo Veronese, which heretofore excited the enthusiasm of a multitude of poets, and would be sufficient for the glory of that artist, the best painter of Lucca. The grand amphitheatre, encumbered within, but pretty well preserved on the outside, seems of the times of the first Cesars. Like the theatre, it must have been used for political meetings, as it was also called il Parlascio. The palace of the marquises Bernardini, in the piazza of Saint Benedict, pot * Deccased at the age of 75, May 10, 1832. 672 losophical improvement seems to prevailed for a long time in this state, which never had any Jesuits. Encyclopedia was reprinted the twenty-eight folio volumes (175 philanthropical institutions, such mad houses and mendicity asy though small, are numerous and managed; and Lucca, which w first town in Italy that had the g founding an hospital, as early as th 718, was also the first in souther to introduce vaccination as a publi far from the spot where Castruccio's tower and palace stood, is of the plain and solid architecture of Matteo Civitali. The old palace of the Guidiccioni is by his nephew Nicolao, likewise celebrated as a military architect. This palace, appropriated in 1822 to the public archives, is one of the most remarkable in Lucca, and displays little of the bad taste that prevailed at the epoch of its construction. The ramparts of Lucca, ancient fortifications which cost that petty state the sum of 955,162 crowns (220,4221), formerly supplied with handsome and harmless cannon, never fired except for salutes, and taken away by the French in 1799these ramparts form a long and charming Pietra Santa.—Massa.-Carrara.- Luni.—Sa promenade, well planted and fit for carriages, infinitely preferable to most of the dull corsi of Italy, and from it the mountains that surround Lucca present a fresh and pleasing amphitheatre. The aqueduct decreed by the French administration and finished in 1823, of great utility to Lucca, which till then had only unwholesome well water, is a grand construction of four hundred and fifty-nine arcades with semicircular arches, an honour to the talents of S. Nottolini. The traveller passing through the duchy of Lucca must be struck with the pleasing variety of the sites, the richness of the hills covered with vines, olives, and chesnuts, and must in particular admire the laborious intelligence of the Lucchese, an acute and subtle people, good farmers, who may be called the Normans of Italy. This astonishing agricultural prosperity, this population which, in proportion with the superficies of the soil, is one of the most numerous on the earth, proves the advantage of stnall estates, for nearly all even the mountaineers are landowners; every year, during the winter months when the labours of husbandry are suspended, the hundred and fiftieth part of this population emigrates, and finds employ in the hard but lucrative labours of the maremme of Tuscany or the islands of Corsica and Sardinia, whence it brings back additional capital to increase the public weal. A certain social and phi 1 M. Adrien Balbi, in his Balance politique du Globe for 1828, places before Lucca for population only Hamburg, Bremen, Frankfort, Lubeck, in which cases the territory consists of little but the town. The population of Lucca amounts to four sure. CHAPTER VII. Sarzanello.-View. Pietra Santa, a fine town, ha church, Saint Martin, that migh for a cathedral. The architecture middle of the fourteenth century good taste, and the front is de with several tolerable sculptures jects taken from the saint's history columns of the naves, half of peach coloured breccio, are of extrao beauty; the ancient octagonal ba of white marble, is ornamente elegant basso-relievos. Massa, near the sea, encircle mountains, seemed to me of a ch effect. The public square, in par I cannot forget; it is planted with trees in quincunx, which wer loaded with their golden fruit. In the square is the marble s the last sovereign of Massa, Mar trice d'Este, married to the a Ferdinand of Austria, union that to have been rather singularly by Tasso, when he represents duke of Lorrain, as being appri dream of the alliance of his ho that of Rinaldo: Sarà il tuo sangue al suo conin:isto; I went to the famous quarrie rara in the mountain; the ma we are accustomed to find in of the wonders of art or of na tivated and adorned is here to b hundred and fifty-six persons to each s It was established near the chur Silvester; a second was created in 721. Michael, and two others in 757 and 790 marble quarries of Corsica, it was wrongly pretended that they would advantageously replace those of Carrara and Tuscany, then less productive. An undertaking begun by Michael Angelo at Carrara, and completed in 1827, had just then opened a new quarry; marble was never more abundant; the yearly exports amount to 70,000 cubic palms (nearly 16,000 yards), and artists now require nothing but genius and great men. the bosom of savage nature. Limpid streams ripple along or form cascades among these blocks of dazzling whiteness; for the noble mineral, like some characters, has all its brightness in the mine, and does not require, as gold does, to be purified and polished ere it shine. It seems as if all these waste fragments that strew and embarrass the road might be ground and made into stucco no less solid or elegant than the marble itself. The view of this mountain of marble, which bears the fine name of Monte Sacro, and which the shining moon rendered still more resplendent, made a singular impression. I called to mind all the busts and statues of emperors in the museums and palaces of Rome; I felt that art had shown but little dignity in thus indifferently perpetuating the likeness of so many monsters. In contem-ed it, prevented the execution of this plating the enormous block that lay before me, I preferred its rough and primitive innocence to the splendid prostitution of the statuary, and I wished it might ever remain as it was, than betation. used to perpetuate the features and memory of the wicked. When Michael Angelo drew from Carrara the marble intended for the vast mausoleum of Julius II., he conceived the idea of cutting a colossus out of the peak of these mountains that advanced farthest into the sea for a kind of landmark for mariners. It is a matter of regret that one of the peripetia of the funeral tragedy, as Michael Angelo call project. Such a monument would now be very curious, and form a savage contrast with the cupola of Saint Peter's, a chef-d'œuvre of art and antique imi Nothing remains of the celebrated Luni but the ruins of two towers, of a vast amphitheatre, and traces of a church said to have been dedicated to Saint Peter. There are different opinions as to the destruction of this ancient capital of Lunigiana; by some historians it is attri rape committed on a young girl of his nation by one of the chief inhabitants of Luni. Dante, who in his exile had twice taken refuge in the environs of Luni, pretends that it perished through civil discord; it is more probable, as Villani supposes, that it was abandoned as unhealthy. This romantic nocturnal ramble to Carrara scarcely permitted me to visit its Academy, a perpetual popular school of sculpture, where children are instructed gratuitously from the most tender age, nor to observe certain very curious geo-buted to Alaric, who thereby avenged a logical phenomena in the quarries, such as that first noticed in 1819, of a kind of soft and transparent jelly which on exposure to the air suddenly becomes opaque, hard, and like chalcedony or fine porcelain. I especially regret that I was unable to penetrate to the subterranean labyrinth of the grotto del Tanone, so well described by Spallanzani, which is more than a mile in length, and even surpasses in extent and magnificence the grotto of Antiparos; or to that of Salla Mattana, less known and less accessible, but said to be still more extensive and interesting. In announcing the working of the white It is not surprising that Carrara has produced so great a number of sculptors, among whom we may notice Baratta, who distinguished himself at Rome, Giuliano Finelli at Naples, Pietro and Fernando Tacca at Florence, Danese Cattaneo at Venice. One of the best living sculptors of Italy, S. Tenerani, is of Carrara. The nobility even and the clergy practised sculpture there; the house of Count Giovanni Baratta was, at the close of last century, a se Sarzana, a clean, pretty little town, has a fine cathedral, which has the Sts. Eutychianus, Philip, and Genesius, by Solimene, and two good lunettes in Guido's style by its excellent painter Fiasella, called Sarzana. Sarzana, the native place of the wise, learned, and great pope Nicholas V., minary of artists; and several statues and groups by the Canon Primicerius Cibey, are cited at Carrara and in the environs. * Parad. can. XVI. 73. It was during Dante's residence with the Marquis Morello Malespina, lord of that country, that the long-lost seven first cantos of the Inferno were found and restored to him, which gave him courage to continue his poem. long called Nicholas of Sarzana, was at the beginning of the seventeenth century the residence of Louis-Marie-Fortuné Buonaparte, the head of Napoleon's family, who went over to Corsica in 1612, during the war against the Genoese, and settled at Ajaccio. He himself asserted his Italian and Florentine origin,' honoured by two literary compositions of a very different kind, the narrative of the sack of Rome in 1527, by Jacopo Buonaparte, and the pleasing comedy of La Vedova, by Nicolao. Above Sarzana, the old castle called Sarzanello, erected in 1321 by Castruccio Castracani when he attacked the place, and now the quarters of the veterans, presents an immense and varied view, which embraces at once hills and valleys, the course of the Magra, the ruins of Luni, the fort of Lavenza, the beach of Viareggio, the city of Pisa, the port of Leghorn, and the islands of Capraja and Gorgona. The new road from Sarzana to Genoa, So sweetly varied and picturesque, recalls at every step the remark of Plutarch, a moralist who loved to select his images from navigation, that the most agreeable journeys by land were those along the seaside, and when we embark at Lerici, that the pleasantest sea voyages were those made along the coast. The world is indebted to the tardy arrival of the felucca from Lerici for one of Alfieri's finest and most Roman tragedies, his Virginia, with which the accidental perusal of a Livy, belonging to a priest, brother to the post-master of Sarzana, inspired him, and with such fervour that, but for his impatience at the delay of the cursed felucca, he would have completed the piece at once, e l'avrei stesa d'un fiato. [BOOK century, Bartolommeo Fazio, of the politan academy, is a flourishing an pulous town. Its admirable gulf of the most extensive and safest in rope, was called under the French ministration to a high destiny. Bu vast military and naval establishme this Antwerp of the Mediterranean jected by Napoleon could not be cr at Spezia itself, the depth of wat its shore having been greatly dimin by sandbanks. The height that mands the creeks of Castagno, Porto nerc, Varignano, and degli Grazie, w be a superb position.3 On the coast of Marsola, sixty-five from the land, is a submarine four of fresh water, which bubbles up t surface; it seemed to me salt, but light and fresh if drunk from neare bottom by means of a tube-an unkı Arethusa, because discovered by sci and not alluded to by the poets. Sestri di Levante, a charming noted for its wax, pastes, and shell in its parish church the recent to Maria Brignole Balbi, with an expr basso-relievo of Friendship, we over her ashes, by S. Gaggini, a Genoese sculptor, and a touchin scription by the clever Ragusan La Gagliuffi, who died in February Sestri is perhaps the spot whence gulf of Rapallo, interspersed with r formed by the mountain of Port that juts out into the sea, and bor with pines, olives, cypresses, and nuts, appears the most magnif This superb gulf of Rapallo seems neighbour the gulf of Genoa wha of Salerno is to the gulf of Naples is to say, superior, but less famou cause it has no great city to give portance. Chiavari, of eight thousand i tants, situated in a fertile plai crowned with hills covered with and olives, is a well-built, indus and trading town. Its cloths me extensive sale, and its solid elega lante chairs reach the saloons of Pa are exported to America. This town seems to have a touch of civilisation; it has public schools la Spezi, by Count de Chabrol, t. 11, p. 47 Statistique de l'ancien département de Mo The first project, which would have cost million sterling, was reduced to one fourt! amount. |
