her hands raised according to the old usage. In the sacristy, an antique porphyry vase is of fine shape and excellent workmanship. In the church of Saint Agatha, ornamented with rich columns, two of which on the left are spotted like a serpent's skin, the Saint and other saints is one of Longhi's good paintings. The splendid church of Saint Romuald, or Classe, erected in 1630, is become the chapel of the college of Ravenna, one of the best in Italy, having ninety boarders and two hundred dayscholars. Porphyry, African marble, cipollino, vert antique, alabaster, lapislazuli, are brilliant in this college chapel. It has some paintings: the Vision of St. Romuald, a good fresco by Barbiani; the Saint, by Guercino: St. Bartholomew and St. Severus, by Franceschini; St. Benedict, by Cignani; in the sacristy, the celebrated Resurrection of Lazarus, by Francesco da Cottignola. In the refectory, a grand fresco of the Marriage of Cana is by Luca Longhi and his son Francesco: the veil modestly thrown over the woman near the Saviour was added by Barbara Longhi, Luca's daughter, to satisfy the scruples, it is said, of Saint Charles Borromeo, then legate at Ravenna. The old church of Saint Francis, built about the middle of the fifth century, is interesting. In the chapel of the Crucifix, two columns of veined Greek marble are decorated with superb capitals by Pietro Lombardo, who also did the exquisite arabesque of the frieze and the pilasters. The Polenta family, immorialised by their hospitality to Dante, and the misfortunes of Francesca di Rimini, daughter of Guido da Polenta, had their burial-place in this church; one of these lords of Ravenna, Ostasio, who died in 1396, is represented sculptured on a large stone in the dress of the Franciscan order. On another stone is seen P. Enrico Alfieri d'Asti, general of the Franciscan order, deceased in 1405, at the age of ninety-two; and in the features of this monk of the fourteenth century, may be traced the high and stern physiognomy of his tragic descendant. The monument called Braccio-forte, by an unknown artist, was highly spoken The Decretals of Boniface VIII., of Mayence (1465); the Pliny of Venice (1469); the Bible of of by Canova; it represents a dead warrior, and would be a fine sculpture for a Campo Santo. CHAPTER III. Library.-Manuscript of Aristophanes.-Medals of Cicero.- Papyrus.-Academy of Fine Arts.-Palace of the Cav. R*****. The library of Ravenna, founded in 1714 by the abbé D. Pietro Cannetti of Cremona, considerably augmented in 1804 by libraries from suppressed convents, contains more than forty thousand volumes; it has seven hundred manuscripts and an equal number of editions of the fifteenth century, some of which are very scarce.1 The celebrated manuscript of Aristophanes, of the tenth century, perfect and unique, was used by Mr. Bekker for the Invernizi edition:1 it is to be regretted that he did not publish the Greek scholiast, which is indispensible for understanding the Athenian comedian. The manuscript of Ravenna recalls an instance of that municipal literary patriotism which animates the Italians, in the absence of the public feeling of free states which they cannot know; Eugène Beauharnais, the viceroy, wished to buy this manuscript; the town authorities refused and hid the volume; after that, Cardinal Consalvi ordered it to be sold to the king of Deumark, but met with the like resistance; so that two persons attached to the Copenhagen library were sent to take a copy. A manuscript of Dante is reputed to be of his day, and its version does not appear to have been consulted. In the cabinet of medals may be remarked the medal of Cicero, which, in the opinion of Visconti and other learned antiquaries, was struck by the town of Magnesia, near mount Sipylus, in Lydia, in commemoration of Cicero's benefits, when his son enjoyed the favour of Augustus, who had raised him to the highest dignities of the state, and entrusted him with the government of Asia. The silver medal of Pope Benedict III. is curious, as it fully refutes the fable of Pope Joan. The lapidarian museum offers a precious collection of inscriptions, pagan and christian, chiefly procured from the Venice (1476) with pretty miniatures; the Dante of pavement of the old basilic. The papyri of Ravenna were celebrated one only, of the twelfth century, of most extraordinary size and well preserved, may be seen in the archbishop's small library; it is a brief of Pope Pascal II., confirming the rights and privileges of the archbishops of Ravenna. The municipal patriotism which we have already praised in the Italians, created an establishment at Ravenna in 1827, at once useful and pleasing-the elementary Academy of Fine Arts, intended to promote improvements in the different arts and trades, and to disseminate taste and a sense of the beautiful. The pupils, of the province, receive for annual prizes three silver medals, and three gold ones for the triennial prizes. The museum, when first formed, comprised more than four hundred paintings of the best masters presented by the principal inhabitants; among them are some by Leonardo, Correggio, Domenichino, Guercino, Ludovico Carraccio, Guido, Albano, Tintoretto, Rubens, Poussin, and Luca Longhi, a clever painter of Ravenna in the sixteenth century, who scarcely ever quitted his native town, and consequently has not a reputation equal to his merits. Plasters of some antique chefs-d'œuvre and of fine modern works have been sent from Rome and Florence by generous donors who appreciated the excellent management and wise regulations of this beneficent foundation. I visited the palace of the Cav. J**** R******, embellished with taste and magnificence. A fine ceiling by Agricola represents the death of Camilla, queen of the Volscians; the head, calm, suffering, and rightly depicted by the artist without the "INDIGNATA sub umbras" of the poet, presents the features of madame Murat, whose daughter the Cav. R***** had married; an ingenious and touching allusion to a domestic catastrophe. * Villani says that he was buried a grande onore in abito di poeta. * The tract on Monarchy was put in the index by the council of Trent, but it was only put in the second class, as if to incicate that its political notions rather than religious doctrines were censured. ⚫ Dante's words to Branetto Latini, when he CHAPTER IV. Dante's Tomb.-Dante. The tomb of Dante is, for the imagination, the first monument of Ravenna, and one of the most illustrious tombs in the world. But the paltry tasteless cupola in which it was placed about the end of last century seems little worthy of such a sepulchre. The remains of the poet seem, like himself, to have had their catastrophes. About two years after his death, Guido da Polenta, who had offered him an asylum and given him a pompous funeral,' being expelled from Ravenna, Dante's body narrowly escaped disinterment from the church of the Minorites of Saint Francis, and his bones, like his book on Monarchy,' were menaced with the flames, by order of Cardinal Beltramo del Poggetto: the Florentines persecuted even his memory, and the pope had excommunicated him. A hundred and sixty years had elapsed when the senator Bernardo Bembo, podestà of Ravenna for the Venetian republic, and father of the cardinal, erected a mausoleum to him from the design of the able architect and sculptor Pietro Lombardo, which was repaired in 1692 by the cardinal legate Corsi of Florence, and rebuilt as it now stands in 1780 at the expense of one of his successors, Cardinal Valenti Gonzaga of Mantua. On the ceiling of the cupola are the four medallions of Virgil, Brunetto Latini, Dante's master, of whom he had so well learned come l' uom s'eterna, and of his protectors Can Grande and Guido. The aspect of this funereal marble of Dante, before which Alfieri had prostrated himself,4 which Byron had visited somewhat theatrically dressed in a superb military uniform, and on which he had deposited a volume of his works, causes a multiplicity of emotions that defy description. The misfortunes of this great man, condemned, stripped of his property, banished twenty years from Florence, touch the heart as much as his sublime genius confounds the soul. The verses of Ho meets him in hell, where his infamous propensities, and perhaps also his political opinions bad induced the poet to put him. Inf. can. Iv. 85. Prostrato innanzi a' tuol funerel marmi. See his fine sonnet 0 gran padre Alighier, etc. himself, which none spake before or after him; and like our great orator he can give a marvellous interest to the most ordinary things.3 Perhaps their inclination towards monarchy and in mer are those of an unhappy poet of a primitive age; the poem of Dante is the production of a victim of proscription, at an epoch of factions and fanaticism; exile inspired his verses, and his Florentine hell is the hell of parties, re-dependence of the court of Rome, their volutions, and civil war. Therefore Dante, forgotten, neglected for nearly two centuries, has been again and deeply felt since our own times have experienced the same storms.' His book is now as a symbol of liberty to the Italians; they love to take refuge therein, and their admiration seems to them patriotism. I have sometimes had the fortune to read several cantos with young persons of education to whom I was recommended, and I well remember their raptures when reading those magnificent passages on the glory, grandeur, or servitude of Italy this ardent enthusiastic commentary delighted me, utterly unlike the written commentaries that I had attempted to peruse. Dante has but little narrative; he makes his actors of the passions, the opinions which agitated his age, and the entire creation is the scene of his poem: Al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra." Like Bossuet, Dante has a language to 1 From the curious returns of S. Gamba (Serie de' testi di lingua italiana, no. 309), it is seen that there bad appeared nineteen editions of the Divina Commedia, between 1472 and 1500; forty, from 1500 to 1600; only five in the seventeenth century; thirty-seven, from 1700 to 1800; and more than fifty in the first twenty-five years of the nineteenth century. The Dante, of the pretty pocket edition of the Italian poets, published at Paris by Bultura, was the first exhausted. great faith, their fearless christianity, the clearness of their divinity,5 are other analogies between them. It is impossible to have a perfect knowledge of Dante without visiting Italy; to comprehend him, it is necessary to have contemplated the beauties of nature he describes or the works of art he has inspired; the old paintings of Giotto, Orgagna, Luca Signorelli, the grandeur of Michael Angelo, are his truest and most eloquent expositors. After a study of this kind, one would be tempted to exclaim, like the young Marcus Aurelius, of I know not what harangue, which must doubtless be far inferior to these verses: 0 omnia! 6 This poet of the thirteenth century has gone over the whole range of thought and feeling. Let us not boast so highly of our progress and improvements the arts of man, all that can be taught, may have advanced towards perfection, but intellect is not extended. The environs of Ravenna, with their ruins, their reminiscences, their desolate aspect, the vast marshes extending around, seem like another Campania of Rome inundated. The tour of the walls of these grand historical cities is one of my favourite walks: the walls of Rome are part of its most interesting monuments; at Ravenna, may still be seen the breaches made by the Barbarians, whom no ramparts can arrest unless defended by the patriotism and courage of the inhabitants. These weak walls showed me the end and renewal of empires. The tomb of Theodoric, built by himself, and from which this great prince, conqueror, legislator, patron of the arts and sciences, was ejected as an Arian, bas become Santa Maria della Rotonda. The solid monument of this first of the Gothic kings in Italy is a tolerably good imitation of the mausoleums of Augustus and Adrian, perfectly Roman in its style; it proves the ascendent that the conquered always obtain when more civilised than their conquerors. The placing of the enormous cupola, of a single stone, estimated by the architect Soufflot to weigh 450 tons, shows that there were engineers of extraordinary skill at that epoch. The tomb is buried to the top of the arcades, to such an extent has the soil been raised at Ravenna, as we shall bereafter sec. A quarter of a mile from the town, a plain Greek cross on a small fluted colamn. marks the spot where formerly stood the superb basilic of Saint Laurence in Cesarea, founded in 396 by Lauritius, first chamberlain of the emperor Honorius; it was destroyed in 1553, and its thirty columns of precious marble were all, except two placed in the church of Santa Maria in Porto, reRoved to Rome. Empires are not far from their fall when the chamberlains of princes can erect such splendid temples. An inscription on the Ponte nuovo Bates that it was built while Alberoni 'see the estimable work of Count Francesco Goanni, with the somewhat pompous title of 421 was legate of Romagna; one of the town gates has also received its name from this cardinal, a most insignificant puppet of fortune and intrigue beside the grand catastrophes of Ravenna. Saint Apollinarius in Classe, a vast superb basilic of the sixth century, in the Roman style, resembles, for taste, character, and richness, Saint Paul before its destruction. But if fire devoured the latter basilic, water seems likely to ruin Saint Apollinarius: being situated in the midst of marshes, the foundations are sometimes under water, and I could not pass under the high altar to visit the ancient tomb of the saint, because the rain water had penetrated there. Round the church are large marble tombs of the archbishops of Ravenna. In the gallery, beside the portrait of Saint Apollinarius, the first archbishop, is the unbroken series of his successors. The church of Ravenna, which boasts itself the eldest daughter of the church of Rome, like her knows the names of her pastors from the establishment of christianity. In the middle of the nave, between two tombs, the name and title of the emperor Otho III, inscribed on the wall, call to mind the fervent penances of this prince, to appease his remorse for the murder of bis enemy Crescentius and the prostitution of his widow to the German soldiers, crimes that she avenged by poisoning him, after he had yielded to her seductions as woman or physician, and perhaps as both. The old town of Classe, destroyed in 728 by Luitprand, king of the Lombards, was, as its name purports, adjacent to the sea, which is now four miles distant, so much is the soil raised and consolidated on its borders by the earth thrown up by the Po and the rivers that empty themselves into this sea. The sombre pine-forest (Pineta) which covers Ravenna towards the sea is like a funeral pall thrown by nature over the wrecks of this fallen city. This celebrated forest, one of the wonders of Italy, has its proper annals and historian.' It is no virgin forest of America, without history or name, but an illustrious forest the predecessors of those pines served to build the fleets of Augustus; transformed into Venetian ves Storia civile e naturale delle pinete Ravennate. Rome, 1774, quarto. sels, they carried the crusaders from Europe to Asia; but their sad posterity, sold to the navy contractors of neighbouring states, became the Austrian brig that protected the Turks or the little pontifical vessel insulted and plundered by the corsairs of Barbary, before France had resuscitated Greece and conquered Algiers. The Pineta is also interesting for its poetical associations: Dante mentions it; that intrepid fowler most probably hunted there; Boccaccio made it the scene of his extraordinary novel of Nastagio degli Onesti, the narrative of a tragic event which brought about the singular amorous conversion of the ladies of Ravenna; 3 and Byron, who alJudes but feebly to the Pineta,4 composed there, at the request of his mistress, the Prophecy of Dante, Popular tradition informs us that Dante frequently went to meditate in a solitary spot which still retains the charming name of Vicolo de' poeti. The proprietors some years ago seemed disposed to close this kind of lane; but the literary inhabitants of Ravenna interfered, and it continues public. Two miles from Ravenna, on the bank of the river Ronco, is a small pilaster of white marble, called the column of the French, a memorial of the battle gained by the troops of Louis XII. over the army of Julius II. and the king of Spain, on 'Purgat. can. XXVIII. 20. ⚫ Dante has drawn many admirable comparisons from fowling: Quasi falcone ch' esce di cappello, Parad, can. XIX, 34; VIII, 103, and XVIII, 45. He seems however to censure its excessive indulgence, and accuses himself of that weakness in this verse of the Purgatorio : Come far suole Chi dietro all' uccellin sua vita perde. Can. XXIII, 3. 3 Giorn. v, nov. VIII. E non fu questa paura cagione solamente di questo bene, anzi si tutte le Ravignane donne paurose ne divennero, che sempre poi troppo più arrendevoll a' placeri degli uomini furono che prima state non erano." This novel, versified by S. Strocchi, is one of the most charming of contemporary Italian poetry. Don Juan, can, III, cv. cvi. 5 The column was erected in 1557 by the president of Romagna, Pietro Dona Cesi; the inscription is : Hac. Petra. Petrus. Donat. Donatus. Iberos. Gallo qu: Hic. Casos. Casius. Hæc. memorans. Easter Sunday, April 11, 1512, in which Gaston de Foix was slain, in the twentyfourth year of his age. The monument of such a terrible engagement, which left twenty thousand men dead on the field, and made Bayard write from the spot : "If the king has gained the battle, the poor gentlemen have truly lost it,”—is little funereal or military; it is ornamented with elegant arabesques of vases, fruit, festoons, dolphins, and loaded with eight long tautological inscriptions, and one of them is a rather ridiculous jeu de mots. The speech that Guicciardini makes Gaston address to the soldiers on the banks of the Ronco, is one of the most lauded of those pieces, diffuse imitations of the harangues of ancient historians. Besides the illustrious captains present at this battle, such as Pescario, Fabrizio Colonna, the marquis della Palude, the celebrated engineer Pedro Navarra, taken prisoners by the French, and Anne de Montmorency, yet a youth, afterwards constable of France under four kings, who began his long disastrous military career amid this triumph, several persons eminent in letters were there : Leo X., then cardinal and papal legate to the Spaniards, was taken prisoner; 6 Castiglione and Ariosto were present. The bard of Orlando, who has alluded to the horrible carnage he witnessed there, 7 must have been powerfully impressed by 7 Nuoteranno i destrier fino alla pancia Quella vittoria fu più di conforto Ma nè goder possiam, nè farne festa, Can. XIV, st. VI, VII. In several passages of bis poem, Ariosto attributes the victory on this occasion to the skill and courage of the duke of Ferrara. It has been stated that Alfonso, in reply to an observation that part of |
