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Lizzie W. Champney, Three Vassar Girls in Italy. A Holiday Excursion of Three College Girls Through the Classic Lands, Boston: Estes and Lauriat, 1886

 

A letter from Florence

Nat has just brought me a letter from Victoria:

 

CASA BELLA, November 18.

DEAR LITTLE PHOEBE,--I know you are anxious to hear from me and from my small patient. And Beatrice really deserves that name, for a more gentle and patient little creature I never met. I will not tell you all the details, how several operations have been necessary to remove the splintered bones; suffice it that she is a little heroine, and that she is so far on the road to recovery that I shall join you ere long. How does the statue of Hygeia progress? I know you must enjoy Calliope’s studio, it is such a fascinating nook. I think with immense satisfaction of the friendship which must be growing between you two girls. You will do good, and get good from each other. Calliope is too intense; she needs you to brighten and sweeten her life. [Note by Phoebe. –There, this covers me with shame and confusion. I shall go to see Calliope at once. To think that I have been a fortnight in Rome without going near her! It is a burning shame!]

She has had some bitter disappointments. Some day, when you have won her confidence, you must get her to tell you about the gas-fixture man who engaged her to make a bronze candelabrum which was a great success, but who cunningly managed the business part so that she gained neither reputation nor money from it. The life of every artist is full of struggle. As I have been walking the streets of Florence, I have tried to think myself back to the year 1504, and to imagine the coming of Raphael, a young and unknown man, from the country town of Urbino to this great art center. Leonardo Da Vinci then was in the prime of his success, and Michael Angelo, lonely and gloomy, was battling with adverse fate. Here was lying Vasari, with no prophetic vision to foretell the fulsome praise which he would one day lavish on the world-accepted Raphael; crafty, two-faced Machiavelli; Fra Bartolommeo (sic), the inspired artist monk; Cardinal Bibbiena, the jovial man of the world; and Bembo, a

“Rose-I’-the-hat-rim Canon, cross at neck,

And silk mask in the pocket of the gown.”

I wonder what they all thought of the country youth and his new pictures. I can imagine one of his Madonnas or some other of his early pictures on private exhibition, and the Florentine connoisseurs and art critics filing by it with remarks not unlike those we hear nowadays; for art cant is as old as church cant. The first looker-on, who had not as yet heard the others give their opinion, might doubtfully mutter, “Not bad!” and crooking his hand into a funnel, eye the picture from a distance, waiting for some one else to break the ice. Then another, more courageous, obeying his natural instincts, might exclaim over the grace of composition and the exquisite sentiment of the picture, until some autocrat of the day poured cold water upon his enthusiasm by declaring the style “antiquated, servile imitation and affected sentimentality.”

Next Machiavelli might cry, “When shall we have a national Art? Michale Angelo paints only athletes, and Perugino tells us his swollen muscles resemble a sack filled with walnuts; Da Vinci paints in twenty different styles; and here is this new adventurer desiring to introduce another manner.”

Then an architect might admire the background, and announce himself lover of the new science of perspective; and a poet would desire that a picture should be only vaguely suggestive of something mysterious and mystical. And so the procession troops by; one lamenting the lack of strength and realism, another wishing that it had been more decoratively treated, a third sighing for a modernly local stamp, and the rest praising and dispraising every several detail. I can imagine how Raphael closed his ears to the critics, both malicious and flattering, and worked out manfully his mission to cheer the heart and elevate the mind.

Michael Angelo seems to me, on the contrary, to have been affected by the gabble of tongues. Proud and sensitive, the iron entered into his soul; and though he fought bravely and overcame, something of the effort as well as the force of the wrestler is visible in all his works. I have no doubt that by this time you have been to see his “Moses.” Tell me if the grand figure does not impress you as one who has conquered by force of will.

This is hardly telling you about Florence, but I remember that you were always fonder of people than of pictures. Just now the art world here is excited about some frauds perpetrated in one of the galleries. It seems that a picture by one of the old masters has been removed and a copy substituted. Detectives are now on the watch in London and Paris for the sale of the original picture. Every one wonders how the change could have been made, but the rogue will infallibly be discovered. The copy was recognized by the artist who executed it. I had a little conversation with him, and he told me that he had been painting on the copy a long time, and that he noticed a distinguished-looking stranger who frequently loitered through the galleries, seemed to take an interest in his work, and often paused behind him and watched his progress. When the painting was finished the stranger purchased it, paying with a check signed by Torlonia, the Roman banker. Of course the signature turned out to be a forgery, and shortly after the original picture disappeared and the copy was found in its place. It is a little extraordinary that the change was not immediately detected, for the canvas on which the picture was painted was slightly smaller than the original, it being a rule that no copies can be made of exactly the same size of any painting. The new canvas was artfully made to fit into the frame by the addition of a gold mat, and for several days it remained unnoticed.

The most alarming feature of it all to me is, that from the artist’s description of the man who bought his picture, I believe him to be the Mr. Bartlett of whom I caught a glimpse in Venice, and who deceived us all so cleverly in Brazil under the name of Senator Silva y Palacios. To think that this consummate rogue is wandering about in Italy, perpetrating frauds upon confiding people, is enough to make one turn entirely from modern society and devote one’s attention to the past.

Florence is full of the ghosts of the people who have lived here, some of them as rascally as our modern villains, and others who seem to us at this distance heroes and even saints.

The Medici take up most room after the artists; from Lorenzo the Magnificent, who lifted his family to kingly power, and Giovanni, whom we know better as Leo X, patron of arts and letters, to the fair and wicked women of that family who became queens of France—Catherine, wife of Henry II, the unnatural mother, and Marie, queen of Henry IV.

After all, I am mistaken; the earnest monk who stirred the hearts of all Florence with his fiery utterances, and refused Lorenzo absolution upon his death-bed unless he would give back liberty to the city, was grander than all the Medicis. It was under a damask rose-tree in the gardens of St. Mark that Savonarola began his preaching, where the Medicis had at great expense collected marvels of ancient art for the instruction of artists. Many of the artists came to hear him, and were so moved by his eloquence that Fra Bartolommeo and others burned their pictures and gave themselves to the Church. For a time he swept all Florence with him. But the reaction came, and Savonarola was burned in the public square in 1498; and every March, when the anniversary comes round, the populace strew violets on the pavement. I have been reading “Romola” and seeking out the localities which George Eliot mentions. I wandered about the Duomo, the grand cathedral which takes its name from its magnificent dome, the largest in the world.

Michael Angelo, when called to Rome to build St. Peter’s, looked back upon it lovingly, and exclaimed, “Like it I will not, better I cannot.” It is lighted by beautiful stained-glass windows, and without, standing isolated from the building, is the lovely Campanile.

 

“And of all I saw and of all I praised,

The most to praise and the best to see

Was the startling bell-tower Giotto raised.”

 

Slender and straight it is,—a lily of architecture. They say that Giotto designed to have a flame-shaped spire on the summit; then, surely, it would have reminded one of a candle with aspiring, climbing flame. As it is, it is a glorious candlestick, such as John in his vision might have seen set to represent the churches. I paused long before the Ghiberti gates, the doors of the Baptistery, which Michael Angelo said were worthy of the gates of Paradise; and we came home over one of the bridges which span the Arno, and saw other bridges with their arches reflected in the glimmering water. It was fairy-land. Afterward I took a little walk in the Loggia and bought a bit of Florentine mosaic—only a trifle, a little pin with design of jasmine blossoms, but it will always recall to me the city of flowers, and my pleasant stay with this kind-hearted Florentine family. A very unexpected circumstance has happened to me here. I desired that some surgeon should examine Beatrice’s hand, to assure the family that it had been properly treated. They had spoken often of a Signor Steele—something, an Englishman in whom they had great confidence, but the name did not strike me as familiar; and you may judge of surprise when, after the examination, I was introduced to the Doctor Stillman whose skill and devotion saved the life of Professor Holmes on our South American journey. He was as much astonished as I, for he had never heard of my studying medicine, and had declared that the child’s accident had been skillfully treated. He is an earnest, unassuming man, whom I thoroughly like; and now that we have the same profession, we have a common interest. He is watching the war-cloud which appears to be settling over Europe, and thinks of offering his services as surgeon to the English cause, and of hurrying away to Afghanistan. I wish he could meet you and possibly he may; for he talked consistently of Rome, as though it were on the way to the seat of war.

Yesterday we drove over the hills in the suburbs. The villas glistened pale yellow and white among the green foliage, and the city lay below us a great flower garden—the Duomo the rose, and the Campanile the lily, of the parterre. We drove to the Protestant cemetery just outside the Porta Pinta. One might say of it as Keats did of the one at Rome where he and Shelley lie buried—that it would make one in love with death, to be buried in so sweet a place. Nowhere else I have seen such beautiful box hedges. We found Mr. Browning’s grave, a sarcophagus of white marble, the only inscription, “E.B.B., Ob. 1861,” and on the reverse a lyre and a medallion. Theodore Parker is also buried here.

But I shall see you soon that it is not necessary for me to tell you of the wonders of art at the Uffizi and Pitti palaces (the latter looks, from without, like a penitentiary); of the “Venus de’ Medici,” Raphael’s “Fornarina,” and the “Madonna della Seggiola;” of the Palazzo Vecchio, Santa Croce, and the Convent of St. Mark, with the frescos of Fra Angelico; of Michael Angelo’s statue of “David” and Donatello’s sculptures.

I have not said half enough of little Beatrice. She is a bright child with odd fancies, who likes to talk with grown people. One of her particular friends is a clerical gentleman, who visits often at the house, and whom we all call Fra Giuseppi. Her French governess was taking her to walk one day, I think in the Boboli Gardens, when Beatrice saw a statue which seemed to her to resemble Fra Giuseppi, with his little skull-cap and waving locks. But the statue had lost its nose, and Beatrice spied this slight defect at once. “Send for Dottore Vittoria,” she cried, “quick, quick, to mend Fra Giuseppi’s nose.”

Were it not that the dear child still requires treatment, even beautiful Florence could not detain me, for I have an unaccountable feeling that you need me. You have not been ill or imprudent, I hope. Write a line to tell me that you are quite well, for if I were at all superstitious I should fancy that evil were lurking near you. On a spire which I can see from my window there is an iron weathercock shaped like a grotesque demon, and he points steadily toward Rome. Is the north wind giving me the megrims? From the Prince of the Power of the Air may all sweet influences fend you!

Lovingly always, VITTORIA