YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

immutuummmauaoum wmnMHiuuumm

Sx. Jfl&ris
CfTlcttcm fiaAl Server

THE ROAD IN TUSCANY

THE

ROAD IN TUSCANY
A COMMENTARY BY
MAURICE HEWLETT

V mi son un che, quando
Amor mi spira, noto, ed a quel modo
Che dStta dentro, vo signiiicando. 24 Purg. 52.

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1909

Copyright, 1904,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

LAtv
TG3 v/, 2,

Kortoooo 39rr«s
J. 8. dishing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
PAGE
Lucca to Pisa ..... i

CHAPTER II
Into the Southern Hills : Pisa to Certaldo . 26
CHAPTER III
The Ghosts of San Gimignano . . . 52
CHAPTER IV
Volterra ...... 82
CHAPTER V
Greve and Pesa: San Casciano, Poggibonsi,
Colle ...... 105

vi THE ROAD IN TUSCANY

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER XII
Montepulciano

PAGE

Volterra to the South: Massa Marittima . 125
Appendix — Histories of Massa Marittima 139
CHAPTER VII
Grosseto and the Coast Road : Orbetello . 142
CHAPTER VIII
Across Country — Grosseto to Siena . . 155
Appendix — The Death and Burial of Cas-
truccio Castracane . . . .167
CHAPTER IX
Siena ....... 170
Appendix — Sienese History . . . 199
CHAPTER X
The Portrait of Livia .... 204
CHAPTER XI
Val d' Arbia: Buonconvento — Monte Oliveto
— San Quirico — Pienza . . . 243

26S

CONTENTS vii

CHAPTER XIII
PAGE
Val Di Chiana: Siena to Cortona — Trasimeno 280

CHAPTER XIV
Arezzo : Quick and Dead .... 297
Appendix — Historical Notes on Arezzo . 323
CHAPTER XV
Arezzo to Florence : the Casentino, the
Consuma ..... 327
CHAPTER XVI
Conclusion : the Heart of the Country . 342
INDEX  369

ILLUSTRATIONS

PHOTOGRAVURES

Pisa 

•

Frontispiece

Duomo Pisa, N. Transept

To face page 16

The Candelabra, Pisa

' 22
Baptistry, Lucca ....
' 32
San Gimignano
69
The Certosa, Florence .
' 109
Towards the Porta Romana, Florence
117
Cathedral Steps, Siena .
174
Siena from Sant' Agata .
' 18-2
Piazza San Giovanni, Siena .
186
Baptistry, Siena ....
: 192
The Lizza, Siena ....
' 216
San Domenico, Siena
' 224
The Campo, Siena ....
< 232
Siena ......
< 240
Porta Romana, Siena
244
The Church, Monte Oliveto .
' 250
Corso, Arezzo 
300
Santa Maria della Pieve, Arezzo
308
The Bishop's Tomb, Arezzo .
318
THE ROAD IN TUSCANY

IN THE TEXT
PAGE
Pisa  2
Pisa .  3
Campo Santo, Pisa  4
The Arsenal, Pisa  5
Lungarno, Pisa ......... 6
Door of Cathedral, Pisa  7
Pisa . .  8
Pisa .  9
Piazza del Duomo, Pisa . . . . . . • . 1 1
Pisa from the Lucca Road  12
Campo Santo, Pisa . . . . . . • 13
The Borgo, Pisa  15
Via S. Maria, Pisa  17
Pisa  18
Pisa  19
Pisa  23
Castello Vincigliata . . ..... 25
Torre della Fame, Pisa ........ 27
The Arno at Pisa  31
San Miniato dei Tedeschi  -33
Empoli  37
Empoli ........... 39
The Piazza, Empoli ........ 41
Pontedera .  45
Certaldo, Boccaccio's House ....... 49
San Gimignano ........ 55
S. Gimignano  57
S. Gimignano ......... 59
S. Gimignano  61
S. Gimignano  63
S. Gimignano  . 64

ILLUSTRATIONS xi
PAGE
Washing- Place, S. Gimignano  65
Gate, San Gimignano ....... 67
S. Gimignano  71
Palazzo Publico, S. Gimignano ...... 73
S. Gimignano ......... 75
The Walls, S. Gimignano ....... 76
S. Gimignano ......... 77
Collegiate Church, S. Gimignano ...... 79
The Villa Boecklin, Florence  81
The Road to Volterra  83
Volterra . ...... -87
Volterra  91
On the Walls, Volterra .  95
Volterra  97
Market Place, Volterra  101
Via Romana, Florence  107
The Certosa, Florence  1 1 1
Val di Pesa  113
The Certosa, Florence  115
The Porta Romana, Florence  117
Poggibonsi  TI9
The Castle of Poggibonsi  121
Porta Romana from outside . . . . • ¦ -123
Poggio Imperiale, Florence  124
Colle  I27
Massa Marittima  T33
The Piazza, Massa Marittima  137
A Shrine, Ponte Vecchio  H1
Near Orbetello .  H3
The Ferry Road to Orbetello  146
The Frontier Fort in the Maremma  H9
Orbetello  IS1
Orbetello  :53

xii THE ROAD IN TUSCANY
PAGE
Roccastrada  • T57
Roccastrada  J59
Walls of Siena .  163
Montalcino  165
On the Mugnone, Florence  169
Siena  • I71
Piazza San Domenico, Siena  • T73
The Market, Siena  175
Casa del Consuma, Siena  ¦ 177
Siena  179
Fonte Ovile, Siena ......... 181
Palazzo Tolomei, Siena  184
The Servi, Siena  185
The Cathedral, Siena  187
The Red Palace, Siena  189
Siena  191
The Ossersanza, Siena  . 195
On the Way to Siena  205
Piazza, Siena  209
Market, Siena  213
House of St. Catherine  219
Siena .......... 223
Fonte Nuovo, Siena ........ 227
San Domenico, Siena  .231
Via Salicotto, Siena  233
Vicolo al Vento, Siena ........ 237
Siena — a Covered Way  . 241
S. Quirico, Monte Amiata  „ 245
Montaperto, Siena .  247
In the Church, Monte Oliveto  249
The Country at Monte Oliveto ...... 253
S. Quirico  255
Church, S. Quirico .  257

ILLUSTRATIONS

xm

PAGE

Montepulciano .  2gt
Palazzo Publico, Pienza  263
At the Villa Bacchlin  2D4
Montepulciano  257
Montepulciano .  271
Montepulciano .  271;
Evening — The Arno, Florence  279
Cortona ......... 281
Cortona ••-....... 283
Cortona — Pallone  28c
Cortona .  287
A Gateway, Cortona ........ 280
Street, Cortona . . . . . . . . .201
Farm near Montepulciano  293
Castiglione dell' Lago  295
Arezzo  299
The Market-place, Arezzo  301
The Cathedral, Arezzo ........ 305
The Cathedral, Arezzo  309
Arezzo  3H
The Prison, Arezzo  313
Piazza, Arezzo  31c
Doorway in the Tornabuoni, Florence . 326
On the Consuma ......... 329
Piazza, Bibbiena ......... 333
Upper Val d' Arno  336
La Verna from Bibbiena  337
The Valley of the Upper Arno  340
On the Arno, Florence  341
Poppi  347
Villa Crawford  367

CHAPTER I
LUCCA TO PISA
From his high grass bastion at Lucca, San
Donato pointed me the way across the marsh, his
pastoral staff benevolently extended
, Outlook of
Over waving fields of buttercups. San Donato:
™, -i,i r Kipafratta.
I here was no wind that morning for
the kites of the long-skirted Seminarists; and
afar off over the golden meads you could only just
see Monte San Giuliano. That mountain which
once hid mortal enemies from each other —
Which Lucca hides from Pisan eyes,
was veiled in the midst of great heat. Not until
I was nearly below his breast could I see how
closely wooded he is, how velvety with fir and
ilex — and to get there was a two hours' business ;
for you have to follow the Serchio's reach towards
the sea, and accost the hills first at a narrow
throttle, whereof Nozzano is the barbican and
.Ripafratta holds the keys. If I were minded
VOL. II I B

2 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
once more to discourse of wars, Ripafratta or
Nozzano would furnish me a text — Nozzano
clumped together on a rock, with church, castle,
village, carved, as it seems, out of one piece,
blended in one, rearing one ragged head to the
weather, but dipped to the midriff in bright

green ; Ripafratta, too, hardy little mercenary of
war, in red and brown clouts — or, if you like, a
camp wench, anybody's price. But I am aweary
of Tuscan campaigning, which was like nothing
so much as the bickering of street dogs in an
Eastern town — a snarling encounter, a sudden
rush, uproar, indiscriminate ripping and rolling,
and then peace, when the battles are swept into
a side-alley or fire another quarter of the city.

i LUCCA TO PISA 3
What does it matter if Lucca had Ripafratta
for a year, and Pisa for two years more, when
Florence got all in the end ? We drove through
the dishevelled place, spying for the first sight of
Pisa, and getting it soon. For when you have
left the hillsides where are the villas of old Pisan

princes — of Spanish dignity and seclusion — and
the woods and shady places loved by Lucca, at Ri-
goli you are in the Pisan Maremma. From the
very edge of this treeless flat, over pale earth caked
and cracked, scummy ditches and scant grass, you
may look to a line where sea and sky are one,
and (with Dante's traveller) in that bar of fire
and blended mist " hail the tremulous sea-shore."
Anon, in that same golden distance, you will see

THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.

three solemn bulks, mammoths savouring the
solace of the water; one heaped like a mountain
of flame-colour, one with a placid back shining
wet, one reeling apart; huge creatures at their
mysteries, all alike shadowy in heat. You are
I, j v ' 0 'A! MfShj
m>i!iliA:;

Ci^-^ jr^CTiJii

CAMPO SANTO, PISA.

now in touch with what makes Pisa famous, and
stays the pilgrims all agog for Rome — the trinity
of marble, first and last testimony of Pisa in pride.
Pisa herself lies long and low to the south —
belfries, cupolas, and thrust-up loggias. Very far
away, beyond all this temporal power, a cloud-
country stands half revealed, the blue folds of the
hills which keep Siena inviolate.

LUCCA TO PISA

True delta country is this, dry, shadowless,
full of smart to the eyes; one is but ten miles
or so, yet worlds away, from the
green bowers of Lucca. Expect no
delicate mysteries here, no beauties hidden, no

The miracle.

R.

THE ARSENAL, PISA.

Mt -<JLv^.'. - '^<Xj__

coy, reluctant streets, no arching shade or grassy
walks ; but be prepared for a miracle. You drive
directly to a brick wall, the road turns a sharp
angle at the gate, your horses scrape and slide
on the flags as you pull up for the dazio : in a
green field, suddenly, the three giants glare at
you, as if you had disturbed their peace, flaunt
ing crimson in your face, white light, angry

6

THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.

purple, lace of stone, streams of orange rust —
monstrous, overwhelming, blinding and intoler
able. They subdue you by their size, by their
breaking of every known, comfortable rule. The
Tower of Babel (which dared to bully God) must

LUNGARNO, PISA.

have been like this, and like this thrust aside for
its pains; this great domed heap might stifle
more than the Christian graces; this shining
church could never ape Christian humility.
Imagine the sight: a broad green field, and
three colossi vaunting their splendours alone
in it! It may well be doubted if the travelled

i LUCCA TO PISA 7
world has a greater sight to show than this
stupendous group on the edge of a little dead
town. Accident helps design ; it had needed the
concurrence to be so shocked by Pisa. At Siena
you may have a better view of a great church,

¦A-.-- hs~-.- -----

P\ #*-N

m v*A,t- ' .-''¦. W'^Afw

DOOR OF CATHEDRAL, PISA.

and a wonderful tiger-moth it looks, swooning
there on the rock. But the belfry adds no
wonder; the baptistry is out of sight. In colour,
at least, the Florentine group is far more lovely
— if you could only see it. Arezzo has a noble
church — Orvieto, Assisi — one can name two
score. But these things ! They dazzle, they
are alone to dazzle. They brave it like brides,

8

THE ROAD IN TUSCANY

CHAP.

and each is more insolent than the last. Pick
them to pieces if you choose : it is easy ; but get
your breath first. There is something here which
makes judgment drunk. The cupola is more than
Byzantine — it is Russian. But the purple bloom

of it ! But the lacery out of which this strange
flower grows! Is the baptistry overweening?
Does it make out the gate of the Pisan heaven
to be greater than the goal? Is not the belfry
an undercut spiral, a core of stone with a gallery
twisted about it? Is it lawful to treat stone as
if it were pith of rushes ? All this may be true,
and yet make no matter. See them at dawn

LUCCA TO PISA

9

before the shadows fall, see them raying heat and
light like suns at noon, see them under the stare
of the moon — and cavil no more. You will come
to think them essays of the Demiurge, and will
as soon dare to approve the everlasting hills.

13 ,j wMf
P ul vil fen in u : .%£§&

'A

Si

-41

:JtA*A!

The Pisans, having built for themselves this
church, baptistry, and belfry, which were and
are still mirabilia mundi, and having 0f the piSans
added to them an acre for their dead, ^d their fate.
than which you will find no better, contented
themselves with so great feats of art, and built no
more; but taking to politics and warfare, con
sidering the advantage over Genoa, conversion

10 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
of Saracens, lordship of islands, conquest of
Tuscany, and such like, became the shuttlecocks
of various tyrants, mortgaged themselves to get
out of debt, were then bought by Florence from
a Milanese rip, and made slaves for five centuries.
The most arrogant nation between Po and Tiber,
with the cleanest pretensions to Roman descent
— and Etruscan if they had but known it — they
paid the dearest for this nobility of theirs, and
found the Florentines (like upstarts buying an
cestry) as well able to purchase honour as any
other market stuff. Here you have the history
of Pisa in a nutshell ; and her streets and squares
and melancholy Spanish air will speak it for you
better than I can. Of Pisa in pride those great
buildings are all that is left — standing apart from
the rest, as well they may.
Pisa in subjection — the Medici imprint, the
taint of the Grand Dukes — begins the moment
you turn your back on the Leaning Tower. You
need go no farther than a bowshot to smell the
fard and hair-powder, and see in your mind's eye
the sedan chairs go swaying down the bare
street, the starched and wigged effigy speechless
behind the glass. Gian Gastone, a dribbling old
fop, smirks on the Piazza of the Knights — last of
the Medici line. Stucco-faced as the place is,
trimmed and shuttered as it is, you would never

LUCCA TO PISA

u

suppose it to hide up the hulk of that dreadful
tower where Ugolino and his four boys gnawed
their fingers until —
Piu che il dolor pote il digiuno.
" Hunger did that which grief could never."

: ¦g&MV*fcfc..Ad t*StM*m~fcj«»iL.

PIAZZA DEL DUOMO, PISA.

But there it is, for all that, the skeleton of Pisa's
whitewashed cupboard, and Gian Gastone thrusts
his lip at it. The rest of his race are with him
in line upon the palace front, thick-lipped, narrow-
browed, fish-eyed, and dull. Before them all
Cosimo the First, a bully, but a man, bestrides
a trampling horse. Let him be Cassar with his
foot on Pisa's neck. Pisa was his, for he made it.

12

THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.

He founded the Order of the Knights of Saint
Stephen, laid out the Piazza to do it honour, built
works of a church for its chapter, and had his
cosimo Primo. statue to f ront it. For what it is, the
stately pretence of a tyrant, you could hardly have

PISA FROM THE LUCCA ROAD.

a finer piazza — spacious and dignified, set about
with tall buildings ; chivalric, too, as the times
understood chivalry. The rest of the town agrees
with it so well, one supposes it is owing to the
same powerful hand. The main streets are broad,
and squalor decently veiled. The Lungarno is
superb ; no rags and tatters dipping into the
stream as those of the Borgo at Florence, nothing

LUCCA TO PISA

13

to obtrude upon the march of the river; and a
nobly curving river it is, full and broad, held in

lis

S '^\

li

;A^

I ! §
Iii
_- . aj^fi '¦& & k'A\ • - -

mwi^

by a fine wall and wide carriage-way, and on
either side a row of palaces which, if not splendid

14 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
(as in truth they are not), have a substantial air,
and announce their fitness to hold gentlemen.
Two such, of English blood, two of them did
contain, as the polite will remember. Byron's,
facing south, is a square brown building dressed
with white stone, broad-eaved and shuttered as it
should be, the picture of solid comfort. That is
a grace which the noble owner for the time being
had neither desired nor deserved.1 Shelley's
house, near the Bridge of the Fortress, close to
the bend of the river, is larger, and is very white ;
that, also, perfectly the " family mansion " of the
auctioneer. If he had the whole of it, which I
can hardly suppose, he had " ample verge and
room enough " to escape from Leigh Hunt, and
a garret in which to lock up Godwin. I don't
know where Byron kept his pea-fowl. They
lived somewhere in the environs, en pension.
The Arno here at Pisa has a turbid wave and
„ a . banks of clay, yet nourishes certain
Reflections J J
upon fisher- large fish, of which I have eaten, and
men. .
(to judge by symptoms of the tide
way), certain small, never seen by me in net or

1 It was the Lanfranchi palace, and had need to be large. Medwin
says that Byron came to Pisa with "seven servants, five carriages, nine
horses, a monkey, a bull-dog and a mastiff, two cats, three pea-fowl, and
some hens." The proprietor of all this gear occupied the first floor,
guarded by the bull-dog — which knew Shelley, but refused to be comforted
by Medwin.

LUCCA TO PISA

15

dish. But up river and down, on either bank,
do squat Pisans, working seines or rods, to

THE BORGO, PISA.

every man his umbrella as a screen from sun or
rain. I suppose they were at it while Ugolino
was agonising in the Tower ; and that when

16 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
Neri Capponi was battering the walls with his
mangonels, there were peaceful Pisans aligned
below the Fortezza watching a bunch of worms
on a string. Tuscany is full of such contrasting
thoughts, for the sights that provoked them are
still here. Below this bridge, over the square
houses and the river wall, there looms to this day
the bulk of a great fortress and a tower beside it
which looks like a blind giant. Shelley believed
it to be the Tower of Famine, but he was wrong.
There is another above bridge, hidden deep in
trees. Those two old warriors have seen some
wickedness in their days and have helped to do
it. The Pisans crouch underneath them now at
their peaceful, fruitless task, and their daughters
or sweethearts come and minister to their needs
out of handkerchiefs and case-bottles. So, in
many an old fresco, while the Saviour of the
world is hanging on His cross, and His friends
pity or gaze up in ecstasy from the foot of it,
there will be a pink town on a hill in the distance,
towered and walled, and belted with a silver river.
Mules will lead flour-sacks through the gate, there
will be a boat in mid-stream, a man fishing from
the bank. On a terrace over the battlements will
sit a lady bleaching her hair — a lover and a poet
will be near her, one expressing (from a scroll)
the sentiments of the other. Someone will say,

*w

r ^ *

¦P" ..;¦.-. ¦ "«*

"»•«

HI'-

m ^«m ¦ ¦ .jam

'-A. ¦

¦¦>,-

'**

<& 1

i \ JK-^1

" £¦,

^k ^ A«
¦'• JM
Iu .
w
JljjgU*.. y^SB
tH ^^rapr ' jflfl
''' ¦
i *"8
b ¦-SSJ* ¦¦' ' jHS
lsk 1 '^flffl hy 'S'1 fl
Bp|' w ' .# gJB
"¦-¦ ^
oSpBB
**»'• IShAw'-^35'^
J
| | jfiO/^'
K§§W ¦¦
"">.?%&. ¦¦/ '. ",>.£
rf&w *8
war**- A' flH ¦HJI
>f n
til
a-1 ¦ «
;'; vii
|| IgjgS ¦
w-- w&Am%< •]
1 iv ¦
i « 1 |
A_lr-
¦YMp i
LB
tA.i- sit sf£\
W
I 1
'" ¦ If1 Bl
aL 9
Ail ¦
ps[ ¦ > ill
^IMl.^u
I f
'•¦'ill
OP U^J *&
¦¦ ¦ ;. :
Rt il
mL-^SQ^i
TTTT*
i. ¦ ft i
'a' -^ ifaSy
f^
By A'- ,y% '
^¦kin^ JHnKA
x «t - > n ¦ an if
Alt' ^
«-"***
f tTMgg***^.'
,- siv^SS
^T^*^ f^gJ^M
s;^_.
¦Bi/
iWWi^&Kt/" «-^S
LUCCA TO PISA

17

an instance, here, of the ideality of Italian art!
But not a bit of it. The man has given you
what he saw every day. His city was at war,

A

?Q0 m

v., A

S9K

¦Y -A«4) } M |

1 {Jj;»fi V >^V/i.-v*-ir; j,! ,V
flpW^ <fA' 'Plfl "¦' '.'.mi ¦
A,..,.; ..- ../ --sr

VIA S. MARIA, PISA.

the enemy at the gate. There would be burn
ings, pillagings, ravishings, and such like ; some
body would be getting hanged on a gibbet. All
day the bells would be swinging, all night the
beacons would flare. God would go to His grave

i8

THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.

in order that men might one day stir out of theirs.
But still the mules would creep up the hill, women
hear tales of love, and men go a-fishing.

Nor would you ever guess, to see the Pisans
go about their business, that they are
A good inn. J
the descendants of a race enslaved,
though Shelley guessed it, or thought he did,

Amid the desolation of a city
Which was the cradle and is now the grave
Of an extinguished people. . . .

LUCCA TO PISA

19

There is no desolation nowadays : the place has
a very Spanish air to me with its tall, inscrutable

houses and empty streets. There is a good inn
up a dark lane — La Cervia its name — kept by a

20 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
stately widow, and kept in good order. To hear
her rate the maids, to see the waiters fly, is to be
assisting at a comedy of Goldoni's. " Padrona,
si," " Padrona, no," is all they dare say to her. I
came upon her one morning cheapening a fish.
It was a vast fish, and a good (as I can testify,
who ate of it afterwards) ; the proud taker of it
knew its merits and was voluble upon them.
The Padrona listened without changing a muscle;
she heard every word, but never moved a hair.
At the end, still looking at the fish, she asked,
" Quanto domandi ? " The man smiled wistfully,
shrugged, and murmured some supposed price.
She heard him, though I did not ; her bosom
laboured with a tumult and was delivered of a sigh.
She lifted the gill of the fish with a contemptuous
finger, and — " Pah ! " says she, and lets it down
again with a splash. After that she condescended
to name her own price, which was immediately
accepted. She asked me at dinner, did I not
think it an admirable fish ? And as fresh as
fresh !
Muddy or not, and fishy as it is fished, the
Arno here is a noble stream, running full-flooded
to the sea. The Pisans made more
A nohle game. . .
of it than the Florentines ever could ;
for not only did they trade upon it, sending out
their argosies east and west, but they took their

i LUCCA TO PISA 21
pleasure there, nobly as befits. Noble is the
word for the river, and it should be recorded for
the field of a very noble game played yearly upon
it to within time of living memory. They called
it the Giuoco del Ponte, the Bridge Game. I
found a room in the museum devoted to its relics
— flags, targes, suits of padded leather, challenges
on satin, acceptances full of flourish, sonnets of
victory, sonnets of defiance, hortatory sonnets,
Chi 1' antiche pompe, e'l fiero Giuoco
Or mi rammenta. . . .
elegies, old prints dedicated to the patron of the
year, with that patron's boat in the foreground
and himself in tie-wig, his chapeau de bras ex
tended in the air, standing to cheer the com
batants. Once it was " I nobilissimi Signori,
Maria Contessa di Lanesborough e Giacomo
King": the English of the eighteenth century
were fond of Pisa. Lastly, there is a model of
the Ponte di Mezzo, with the parties of either
side striving in what used to be called (and was)
" mimic warfare " — the phrase seems part of the
game. This is how it was played. Mezzogiorno
(that is, Pisa south of the Arno) challenged
Tramontana, Pisa over the water ; or it might be
the other way round, according to previous
victory. The day and hour appointed, the

22 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
battles assembled, each on his own side of the
river. Amidbridge were two marshals of the
fight with the banners of Pisa. Each contrada
sent a dozen men, and there were six contrade on
either side ; twelve dozen men, as I make it, were
to contend for the bridge, armed in helmet and
breastplate, and a targe — that is, a narrow, pointed
shield of wood, fixed on the fore-arm, the sharp
end at the elbow, and projecting. It may be
conceived from this much that the game was
simple : it was as simple as a battle. At gun-fire
the opposing sides rushed on to the bridge where
the marshals stood. They tried, not to push
each other back, but to cross ; after an hour
the gun sounded again, and every man stood
where he was. One of the marshals threw a
cord to the other, who drew it taut. That side
won which had the more men in the enemy's
half bridge. This was the game at its simplest ;
no doubt it was complicated by local hatreds, by
hot blood, vainglory, and the presence of sweet
hearts upon the housetops. If the contrada feel
ing was anything approaching that of Siena — and
there is no reason to suppose the Pisans less
Tuscan than most — the havoc must have been
tremendous, and many a man mortally hurt by a
thrust of the targa. In the old prints they show
you boats herded under the bridge to save the

'. .^/t£as.

LUCCA TO PISA

23

gtuocatori, who are tumbling into the river like
frogs from a rushy bank. It seems that if the
enemy saved you from the water you were a
prisoner; for at either bridge end there are
pounds, ticketted Prigionieri. The tall houses
on each side of Arno are filled with spectators ;

ladies and their cavaliers are at the windows,
chambermaids and theirs on the roof, footboys
cling to the chimney-pots. The nobility are in
barges on the flood, with their banners trailing
behind, dipt in the water. I observed my Lady
Lanesborough's lozenge thus employed : her lady
ship and the Honourable Mr. King in the stern

24 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.!
of the vessel were applauding. Mr. King waved
his hat with the air of the Marquis of Granby at
Minden. There is not the least suggestion of the
proud, passionate old Pisa of great days. The
wigs and plaster of the eighteenth century are
everywhere ; the Lorrainers have accomplished
what the Medici began ; Pisa is transmogrified.

CASTELLO VINCIGLIATA.

CHAPTER II
INTO THE SOUTHERN HILLS : PISA TO CERTALDO
Era, Elsa, Ema, Evola, and Pesa are the five
sister rivers which flow from the mountains of
The choice Volterra into Arno, between Prato-
of roads. magno and the sea. Their names
are symphonies, and so are they: green water,
grey banks, and yellow sands form the whole
chord of the upland colour. Any one of their
valleys will afford you harmonious escape from a
plain whose opulence is cloying. You do not
come to Tuscany to soak in sap-green. Choose,
then, which valley to ascend : from Pontedera
you may follow the Era through bald downs to
Volterra, or by Evola take a rougher road by
Montopoli to the great shoulder of Monte Maggio,
which hides San Gimignano from her windy
neighbour. My own choice was for neither of
these — though by either I should have escaped
the sooner — but for Elsa. I would endure the
high road even unto Empoli, see the Arno's long
26

chap, n PISA TO CERTALDO

27

reach there ; then, having climbed the height of
San Miniato, whose tall tower can be observed
twenty miles away, follow that gentlest sister of
the five — slow- winding Elsa — to Boccaccio's town
on the hill ; thence by long circuits I should win
San Gimignano. So I kept the hither side of
Chianti, and missed San Casciano in the Val

*

<

feegfaM

iwoj...

^ & i-r-i Mm

-£¦¦*-' ww&*i

v -»*

' H t&M?^

,-^.v. .  .. ..

TORRE DELLA FAME, PISA.

di Pesa, and Lorenzo's mountain torrent, the
Ombrone, which (after his manner) he turned
into a nymph, and doted on — in ottava rima,
perfectly melodious and as empty as a bladder.
One must miss something in a country where
every turn of the road brings you to a jut of rock,
and every rock has bred a nation.
' Let me count the gains rather than the losses

28 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
of that fine spring morning. After the drab
outskirts of Pisa, the Maremma and
Caseina,
Pontedera, the dyked road, I gained Caseina, a
walled towns. ., , , .. ' t. .. . .
walled arcaded town at the limit ot
the Vico Pisano, grey within a red husk of walls,
inexhaustibly picturesque; then came Pontedera,
walled again — and with each a thrill. That is
a thing you may count upon — that flutter of
expectancy and its full reward — whenever you
approach a walled town by road. By road,
observe, but not otherwise. Seen thus, the wall
must be negotiated ; you must pass through the
gates with other wayfarers. A walled city is like
a veiled bride. What is one about to embrace ?
There are no gradations, no straggling line of
suburbs to water down the type before you reach
the heart. The truth is flashed upon you plump
and plain. You leave the fields, you clear the
gates — here is Caseina, here Pontedera for good
or ill. To them, through them and beyond, an
inexorable white road runs as straight as a ruled
line towards Florence, and (sure sign of Florentine
dominion) the cypresses begin to lift their heads,
in groves by the wayside, sable as night, or
sparsely in the fields, one sooty flame striking up
in a hedgerow: —
Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi —
the Mantuan's image for a very Mantuan land-

ii PISA TO CERTALDO 29
scape. It was a Sunday in late April when I saw
all these lazy riches ; the sun and the larks in
the sky seemed the only active things. The men
were in the wineshops and the women in church
— or most of them. But some frowsy, dark-
browed girls craned from upper windows in Pon
tedera to see us clatter through ; some heavy young
men were asleep on benches by the tavern door;
some dogs were catching at flies as they drowsed.
All's one to Pontedera whether Pisa or Florence
be lord ! Yet this is a road of memories ; armies
have trampled it. There's not a crumbling wall
between the two cities that has not been wetted
with blood.
Immediately after Pontedera a low spur of
hill starts up from the level, runs the north
parallel of your road for a league or
so, and bears a crown. You cannot ^MarialS-^
fail to notice Santa Maria-in- Monte, Monte; aPi0US
observance.
pink and white upon a boss of sage-
green, with her white belfry gleaming in the sun.
It lies across the water; just before you, east
by south, you have Rotta-upon-Arno, a ruddy-
brown village with a square tower, where they
make bricks out of Arno mud. The river makes
a deep bend to kiss Rotta's dusky cheek ; and a
pretty country thing she is, though she looks
across the flood to a prettier, her pale sister on a

30 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
green throne — which we should call Saint Mary-
at-Hill. How many towns go partners in the
mercies of Arno ! Lastra and Signa, Montelupo
and Capraja — and now these two. And so it is
that the fairer is ever the more remote. Here
Rotta plays the saucy romp of the highway, the
fancy of any fattore in a two-wheeled cart.
Modesty abides, I gather, behind the green
lattices of St. Mary's. Yet admire at Rotta the
lonely stretches of the river above it and below ;
placid breadths of water scarcely streaked by a
dabchick — a triangle sail, maybe, beating up —
rows of service poplars, silver grey — golden
water meadows behind them — a peaceful, smil
ing, Sunday country. By a bridge over the Cie-
cina brook you will see Montopoli above the valley
of Evola, a long hill town very boldly fired by the
sun, with a red tower predominant — tattered
ensign of her ancient state. There is a more
comfortable sight near at hand — a trick they
have, when pence fail, of making bowers for the
Madonna of clipped yews. The hedgerows here
are of yew more often than not. Within any
length of it you may see her darkling, like a bird
on a nest of eggs, and always a bunch of wild
flowers before her, fresh from the wayside.
Once, indeed, and just hereabouts, I found her
caged in an old egg-box, and that perched in the

II

PISA TO CERTALDO

3i
hedge. An egg-box, I do assure you, with a
wreath of buttercups and daisies all about it. I
don't mind confessing that I was moved — as
who would not be ? How our country prospers,
nourishes the virtues, tells the truth, spends its
happy ease, without the Madonna to smile
approval, to admonish or to counsel, I do not in

l«!!|gji»M

m
w?**2^ '¦' ;

J$

-

THE ARNO AT PISA.

the least understand. Still less how, having once
had her for its friend, it could ever have decided
to do without her. It is not a racial matter ; she
is by no means a Latin goddess ; you will see
her in Germany, Belgium, Russia, Ireland, Greece.
The people of all these countries adore her
openly, but we are too shamefaced, it seems.
A tale of love will always send some tongue into

32 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
some cheek. We do not choose to own that we
love our mothers; and if one of us love God
he had better not say so. Therefore we deny
ourselves this pretty bosom-friendship, choke up
this ever-running fount of emotion, and ask our
boys and girls to love Virtue. Lord help us !
It is very well to extenuate an egg-box shrine,
and to exhibit it as the sorry remnant of that
burning faith which built Florence a dawn-
coloured church, and made Lucca della Robbia's
descendants marquesses. The only answer is,
that, to be sure, it is no greater thing than the
two mites in the treasury, but yet one may be as
glad of one as of the other. For one person who
can serve God in spirit and in truth there should
be a thousand who can do it only in egg-boxes
and buttercups. And so sure as a woman sets a
pious picture in an egg-box and puts a nose
gay in front of it, she is a lover, I'll trouble you,
and therefore she is blessed.
As the land closes in upon the river the coun
try grows fantastically fair. An amphitheatre
of abrupt monticules reveals itself,
San Miniato de- on each a towered town, a castle,
Tfidfisclii a heap of monastery building, or a
gleaming white villa, cypress-haunted ; but the
highest is always that which carries San Miniato-
of-the-Germans, a city impossible to be hid. I

¦to --,

5^

n

PISA TO CERTALDO

33

turned aside from the Empoli road to see it for
the sake of Pier delle Vigne, a pleasant poet and
much-injured statesman. Nor did I repent,
though I suppose my horses did, for it stands
upon a rock, the highest of a series of three, round
each of which we had to creep afoot. Cypresses
led us the way, and heavy-booted peasants, trudg-

SAN MINIATO.

ing home from the fields in companies, the women
singing like wood-birds at dusk, the men apart.
The town has a castellated keep and gatehouse,
a little octagonal church, a little round church, an
ugly collegiate church, and on the summit of its
final rock, higher than the highest belfry, the
great shaft, cleft in the midst, which is the terrific
menace of all the valleys about. That was where

VOL. II

34 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
the Suabian Emperors had their high seat and
bed of justice. There judged, there sonnetteered,
and there pined Pier delle Vigne, from whom
Dante, brushing by him in the hell-wood of sui
cides, tore a gnarly limb. According to his own
account, he was a faithful servant of Caesar's, but
he used a privilege for which a man must pay dear:
I am that one who held both keys
Of Frederick's heart, which I dispensed,
Opening and shutting with such ease,
There was no man but found it fenced.
Envy, he says :
Envy the whore, who from the gates
Of Caesar never takes her eyes —
envy, the disease in the bones of princes, undid
him. The story says that in this tower they
blinded him by means of the red-hot basin,1 and
that from this very rock, as he was being led to
his death at Pisa, he dashed himself headlong:
My spirit, driven by scornful gust
To ease in death the sting of scorn,
To my just self made me unjust.
Milton never wrung stronger juices from common
words. But if we fail to understand why Cato
was to be at large in Purgatory while Pier grew
writhen in Hell — seeing each had preferred death
1This torment has a verb of its own: bacinare, to wit. The atrocity
must have been as common as boycotting.

PISA TO CERTALDO

35

to his dishonour — it may be because great Rome
seems to us greater without such accommodations.
Let Cato stand with his own, say we. But Dante
thought not.
Pier is a ghost for whom the great tower
stands spokesman ; other there were who now
have no witness in this little old town. riea,S!intthinga
Whitewash covers all the blood- to San Miniat0-
stains made by Mangiadori rending Malpigli, or
Malpigli stabbing Mangiadori in the dark. They
have put up a monument to Garibaldi where you
would have looked to see one to the Stupor
Mundi. The church, which must have heard
those rascals sing O Salutaris Hostia, is bare of
any sign that so it did. It stands in a little empty
piazza, which it graces with a tondo of the Della
Robbia, no more out of place and no less fragrant
than a flower in a wall — being, indeed, the same
sort of artless accident of the sun's to all ap
pearance, and as different from its brethren as
one flower differs from another. A stooping
Madonna, deeply curtseying with crossed arms,
an angel frizzed like a signorino, God the Father
with His meinie of cherubim approving from the
sky. Good title deeds for a marchese the like of
these ! Beyond that, the church reveals frescoes
and mild Tuscan altar-pieces — thin, happy things
— and a wise old priest teaching the Catechism to

36 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
a score of children, doing the best he could for
the reputation of San Giuseppe. There is a
scouring drive to be done — circle after circle of
road at an angle of forty-five — before you recover
the plain of Empoli. A fat Samminiatese passed
me on this declivity, swaying in his tax-cart as his
horse galloped down with a loose rein. Good,
easy man, he had his spectacles on his nose and
read the Corriere della Sera. Neither the terrors
of the steep nor the purple and grey stretches of
the great valley, half revealed in the gathering
dusk, had any interest for him.
Empoli seemed a hiving, unaired place after
that empty mountain town. Its one long street
Empoli in the was thronged with Sunday passen-
piam. gers, and every window had its elbow-
cushion, and pair, or two pair, of shoulders thrust
out. There you have a pastime of which the
Tuscan woman never tires. When she has passed
the age of being looked at, she will look — from
a window. Men go to the cafe : the woman's
cafe is the street, and the window-sill her little
table. As for the promenade, it is a solemn
ritual in which the following points are observed.
The girls walk together in mid street, the young
men on either side of them. The girls go one
way, the young men meet them going the other;
meet and pass ; but there are no recognitions,

PISA TO CERTALDO

37

greetings, salutations, sidelong looks. Conversa
tion is in undertones, no one laughs, and no one
stops walking. You never saw such a mummery,
so devoutly done. A few steps aside there is a
piazza set with trees, a public garden well kept —

EMPOLI.

and empty. Beyond that, again, you find a bridge
over a long reach of river, an embanked way, a
parapet upon which not to sit is an absurdity.
No one sits there. Yet there are fishermen to be
seen setting their lines aslant the flood, singing
plaintive songs as they work ; there are the skew-
sails of barges urging slowly home in the twilight

38 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.ii
— all the romantic riverine business is here. But
no! The drift of fashion has left this spacious
theatre bare ; the Empolitani shuffle in procession
up and down that very street where they are slaves
every day of the week ; and Nunziata, who will
trundle a mop here to-morrow, must be unknown
to Olinto, to whom to-morrow she may laugh her
" buon di." Such are the Sunday diversions of a
town which once held the fate of Florence within
its walls. For it was in this very Empoli that
they held a council —
After the havoc and the rout
Which tinctured gules the Arbia's wave ;
and here Farinata degli Uberti, exiled Florentine
though he was, " with his face gravely perturbed,"
says Villani, up and spoke his piece in her
defence : Alone I was, there in that place
Where every will saw Florence razed,
I on her side with open face.
This is the account he makes of it to Dante ; and
it seems to have been true. He shook his fist at
Provenzano Salvani, the great Sienese captain,
whose mind was that Florence should be laid level
with the ground, and whose eloquence had nearly
moved the council to agree with him. " If that
beast," says Farinata — and one can read the scorn

4°

THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.

of one city for the other trembling in his deep
tones — " If that beast tread not out the fire he
has kindled, I will build him a cage whence he
will never get loose; and such a bonfire will I
heap round about it that he will never live to
quench it." No doubt he meant what he said,
and no doubt was able to have performed it.
The upshot was that they made a peace at
Castelfiorentino in Val d' Elsa, which lasted just
as long as such pacts usually did : to be exact,
not six years. Benevento followed at just that
interval of time, Tagliacozzo two years later.
Farinata, who had enabled Florence to win those
two battles and so recover what she had lost,
was (as a consequence) further from her than he
had ever been. Tantcene animis ! So great a
race and such little wars ! I think one must be
strongly enamoured of the drums and trumpets of
history to care for such toy symphonies.
To those who love Wordsworth's "pastoral
melancholy," and in low grey hills and willows
The vai about a sluggish grey brook can
castetforen- reaP their <luiet harvest, the long
tino- road by Elsa, from Empoli to
Boccaccio's town, will need no enhancing. To
bolder spirits it will be redeemed by the sense of
adventure which never fails the traveller when, by
how slow degrees soever, he leaves the plain —

n PISA TO CERTALDO 41
and by two sights justificatory. Castelnuovo
huddled on a cliff exactly big enough to hold it,
is one, and the other is Capanaiolo with a tall
Pucci villa. Hereabouts, also, let me tell the
humorous, they lead pigs by a string and collar
round the neck — and do no better.

mi k

¦»4#

f- • A' ' ,wrtf of • . . ,
J'

J?

THE PIAZZA, EMPOLI.

Of Castelfiorentino, a precipitous town full of
children, dust, and flies, there is nothing so com
fortable to say. It is well-looking from without,
but within cavernous and starved — like Dante's
wolf — Che di tutte brame
Sembiava carca nella sua magrezza.1
I think the people must have been veritably
1 Whose gaunt ribs looked
A cage for all the lusts.

42 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
famished, for they crowded about us like desperate
cats — hollow-eyed, patient, asking faces they had.
This unspeakable endurance of the Tuscan poor
— is there anything like it in the world ? The
sight of us to their fevered eyes — smug, sleek,
broad-clothed foreigners that we were — would
have egged Lancashire on to murder and Paris to
ghoul's work. These people looked their hunger,
said nothing, and bore no grudges. Theirs is one
of those cases where a lower town has gathered
about the highway and the rails, and left the old
stronghold to itself. The Castello, the Podesta,
the Cathedral, the wonder-working Madonna, the
old apparatus of township, are derelict on the hill,
where once upon a day they were all to all. There
must be a dozen churches — all as dead as King
Pandion — in that dead town. Shops with nothing
to sell, and old women who lack the means of
buying, are to be seen there, and faded children
languidly playing in the gutter. They are
querulous, too, like little convalescents after fever.
But there are palaces in the streets, and the
fortress-houses of an older generation, and frescoes
dropping flake by flake, and grease on dumb altars
a hundred years cold. It is ill-work dying on a
hill-top; but to live there if you can must be
good. You come to a tougher stock than Castel-
fiorentino, with much hardy green wood in it still,

n PISA TO CERTALDO 43
if you are patient of a few more miles of dull road.
A turn in this, round the shoulder of a brae,
reveals a bluff of sandstone rock, a headland
thrust far out into the valley; upon it stands a
ruddy town, with heavy old red towers, three or
four. You will find a hale growth up there — or
certainly I did. That is Certaldo, where Master
John Boccas, as our betters called him, "a right
worthy clerk," was alive and dead on December
21, 1375. Look to the right of it — but far to the
right. Among folded hills, blurred by the heat,
stand up the shafts of San Gimignano ; and so
one old town watches another, while you may
wonder at two.
You may wonder at three, if you please, though
the third is a spirit. High above Certaldo, on
the watershed between Elsa and Lost
Pesa, lay — and still lies buried, so Semif0Ilte'
|they say — the wondrous city of Semifonte :
•absolutely once there, and now absolutely
vanished. The mind storing little of it, the
fancy can build at large. Castles in Spain —
castles in Semifonte ! It may have been Etruscan,
Roman, Longobard, Gothic, Frankish — chi lo sa?
The first strife that ever fell out between Florence
and Siena was before its walls. That was an
eleventh-century affair, and even then it was said
to have been a splendid town. In another two

44 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
hundred years it was destroyed, and so effectually
that not a stone was left behind. This is a fate
too extraordinary for any cities save those of the
plain ; I give it as it is told, but I cannot believe
it. Deep under the grass sod Semifonte must be
lying, as I picture it, body-perfect, awaiting the
resurrection of us all. At that tremendous hour
when Charlemagne shall walk forth from the
Untersberg, shaking his long sleep from eyes and
hair, and Arthur be brought back in his barge of
queens from Avilion, the hillside of Petrognano
will open her mouth, and we shall see the spires
and domes of Semifonte — the gonfalon floating
from the towers of the signiory — the cathedral
doors open for Mass — all shall be as it was before.
What a city to visit! The Rocca, quadrangular
citadel " beautiful and inconceivably strong," the
Porta Grande of cut stone: the tower of it —
Torre del Leone — two hundred and thirty feet
high, having a gallery wreathed about it, all of
arches upon marble columns, and on the top a
grey stone lion of colossal size, who held in his
paws the banner of Semifonte. Here had been
sights. There were fountains of abundant water
cut and arcaded into the rock, and others which
coursed down the streets in marble conduits; there
were forty churches, monasteries, palaces of the
greater clergy, strongholds of the chiefs ; one can

PISA TO CERTALDO

45

conceive the rest. That were a city to visit —
which had never known the Medici, nor the

PONTEDERA.

neo-classicists, nor sixteenth-century surfeit —
Benvenuto Cellini, John of Bologna, Paolo
Giovio and all his crew ; nor seventeenth-century

46 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
simulacra — fair white tombs full of putrid bones ;
nor eighteenth-century pomatum — Metastasio and
his fellow-jigsters. Semifonte would arise a
perfect whole and clean, from the days of Pisa's
great building, and Lucca's — a revenant from
strong old times, like Ogier the Dane, when men
were men before they could hope to be poets, and
painters did not take themselves to be prophets,
and God and the devil were as near at hand as
Emperor and Pope. Cities came and went, and
quicklier in Tuscany than elsewhere. " Se tu
riguardi Luni ed Urbisaglia, Come son ite" says
old Cacciaguida to Dante. The sea left some to
wither on dunes, the land swallowed up others
inch by inch, but Semifonte went out like the
dream of a night. So splendid, and so to vanish !
I am content to believe any marvel you may have
to tell me of Semifonte.
To return to Certaldo. There is a lower
town there, as at Castelfiorentino, and much busi
ness done about the railway station ;
Certaldo, . J
Boccaccio's inns also there are, highly favoured by
bagmen. Commerce is a snug jade
o' these days. For you and me, whose traffic is
with more impalpable bales, who have " intelletto
d' amore " and such like, we can leave our carriage
there, and walk up a stepped path — paved like a
mill-race and worn as smooth — to the old town

n PISA TO CERTALDO 47
and the citadel. Boccaccio's birth and death
place, which I saw not without a pulse for his jolly
sake, is all red and brown-purple, has a castellated
Palace of the People, ragged battlements, bar
bicans, loggias, belfries — all good old wind-wasted
things. His own house, la di lui casa as they say
(rather, as they write), has a tower, one of the two
fine ones left, from the top of which you can see
San Gimignano showing off five of her thirteen
giants, and the snaky road by which you must
presently travel to reach them. Catamount's nest
that it is, Certaldo's streets go round about the
rock like sentinel's walks, and can never know a
cart-wheel. Plodding mules, with tender feet and
ears drooping like tassels to the ground, carry up
firing and corn-meal and yarn for the looms.
Other provand than this the true Certaldesi leave
to the bourgeois below, and grow sleek upon
their hard-fetched fare. Their women are hand
some, as they ought to be, with green eyes, dusky
skins, fair, tangled hair. They carry themselves
bolt upright, like all mountaineers, but with
better reason than most, for their figures are
remarkable. The men sing gay songs, are
happy and free-mannered ; and if Boccaccio
is not at the bottom of that, the deuce is. If
you set these deductions down to my fancy you
will be wrong. I saw here what I have never

48 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
seen elsewhere in all long Italy, a man stop and
kiss a girl in open street. No offence either.
He was a baker, who came — a floury amorino —
saw, and considered the bend of her industrious
head, and stooped and kissed her as she sat sew
ing at her door. Her lovers and acquaintances
about her saw nothing amiss, nor was she at all
put out. After so flagrant an achievement the
madcap went a whole progress of gallantry down
the street, none resenting his freedoms. He
danced with one good wife, chucked another's
chin, and lifted a third bodily into the air, singing
all the while. You see these feats in old prints
now and then — in Callot, for instance, though very
rarely in Italian prints (never, I believe, in Zocchi)
— they are almost inconceivable in real life, yet
here seemed fitting enough. It was allowed that
the baker was un pd allegro, but clearly in this
town they hold to the opinion of their great man
that " bocca baciata non perde ventura." There
is nothing to be seen in Boccaccio's house but
what is outside it, so to say; the great open view
of the downs, the incidents of the cheerful street.
It is quite otherwise with the Palazzo del Com
mune, a Gothic structure in red brick and stone
facings, of the Sienese type. The Custode's wife
is very proud of her charge. She exhibits in the
court a whole nosegay of painted shields. Here

PISA TO CERTALDO

49

are Ridolfi, Capponi, Pucci of Florence — bygone
Podestas; here are Guinigi of Lucca, Visconti of

H7

*'.*:

liiii i ;-

CERTALDO, BOCCACCIO'S HOUSE.
Milan, Tolomei, Piccolomini, Salimbeni of Siena.
"All this fine blazonry," says she, "points to a

50 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
time when Certaldo was a great city, like Siena " ;
and here is one of many cases where a place,
always dependent upon Florence, has been inviol
ably attached to the southern city by the heart
strings. The remains of fresco, too, in church
and chapel and hall, point to the same thing.
Grave, full-throated Sienese Madonnas, blue
cloaks over their brocades, preside at assem
blies of doctors, seraphic and militant. Saint
Catherine with her pinched and faithful face is
much here, San Michele in Roman greaves and
breastplate, the languorous works of Sodoma and
his tribe — all crumbling, and all the better, I
think; but all tending to Siena. One has left
the Florentine dominion ; one has come into
the south. Florence governed all the south, but
Siena reigned.
From across a weir in Elsa you can see how
boldly Certaldo heaps itself up, and how its house-
a weir in walls, continuing the planes of the
Elsa. rock, make curtains of defence against
escalade. As I watched it, eating my bread and
white cheese in the flecked shade of poplars, there
seemed a glow upon the place which proceeded
from within. It was warm red, warm grey, warm
yellow. Lichen covers the brickwork closely,
and, like the gold-leaf which fhe old gilders used
to lay upon red, is all the richer for the under-

ii PISA TO CERTALDO

5i

tinge. This is where a road turns off to San
Gimignano from the trunk which runs on to Colle
and Siena — a delectable junction of shade and
tumbling water made for the sweet uses of
luncheon. By this very bend Boccaccio may
have sat, and watched (as I did) the brown boys
dip their legs in water and scream to each other
as the trout leaped the weir. If he came when I
did he would have exulted no less in the spring
finery and chorus of nightingales, and have had
more excuse than he seems to have sought for
the opinion — which has been combated since
his time — that this world is a garden. To what
other end than man's solace and delight does this
green water flow? Why, otherwise, is there a
nightingale in every bright bush ? Easy, hopeful,
secure philosopher ! Here, at any rate, it is good
to be, eating bread and cheese, drinking red wine,
taking breath for a larger air. We may pour
libation here, and cry unto the amorous gods of
Siena ; for we are in their country by this, and
have left the plodders of the Arno behind us.
Henceforward our commerce must be in windier
streets, and all the water we find will spring from
the heart of rocks. We are in the way of Fonte-
branda and the Aqua Diana, with five steep miles
before us to San Gimignano.

CHAPTER III
THE GHOSTS OF SAN GIMIGNANO
The white mud which boils in the Bulicame of
Viterbo, and served the loose women there for
The lie of the lustral water in Dante's day, is
land- churned in the hills of Volterra, a
few miles west of San Gimignano. A pilgrim
age thither will take you into places whose
desolation freezes the very office of the sun ;
travelling that road you will discover how this
town of towers is built upon a green tongue of
land pushed out into the drab Maremma. The
dark bulk of a hill, the Poggio Commune, is the
tongue's point, from which you can see at once
the towers of San Gimignano, and Volterra
keeping watch and ward over her grey leagues.
The frontier-fortress of these ancient enemies,
Castel San Gimignano, is on the further side of
that hill. Better wine is not trodden in Tuscan
vats than the clean red liquor you may buy
52

ch. iii GHOSTS OF SAN GIMIGNANO 53
there.1 But it is grown in the Chianti, and not
where they crush the grapes ; all the fruitful land
lies to the east. Of this you may be assured by
a dawn watch. Make your orisons early, rise
before the sun, open your window and lean head
and breast out into the shadowless, grey calm.
Like great crested waves heaving to a shore, see
the landscape tend towards the barrier hills. You
are looking into the heart of Tuscany, if you
are looking east. Elsa is below you, with woody
sides, and Poggibonsi upon a little mound just
across Elsa ; the first wave-crest is the hither
ridge of Chianti, then comes Radda in violet
distance, then the further Chianti, a blue-black
bar. Over that, but hidden, are Arno, running
north for a space, Arezzo, and the Apennines.
But between you and the first Chianti chain the
land is hollowed out like a cup, which you may
see on misty mornings filled to the brim with
fleecy white. It breaks like surf against the bar ;
it has drowned Elsa and her little towns, Certaldo,
Poggibonsi, Barberino, and the rest of them.
Wait, however, and watch. To see the sun burn
the top of the ridge, come glowing up behind
it, and strike the cloud-sea with a broad path
*It was famous in the 1 6th century. "Di quindi," says Leandro
Alberti, " si traggono buone Vernace da annoverare fra i nobili vini
d' Italia." Descrittione d' Italia. Venice, 1588, p. 51.

54 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
of glory, is one of the sights of this place of
faery. It fits you for your day to come, and is
the apocalypse of your night of mysteries. For
San Gimignano is a spell-bound place ; ghosts are
about it by day, and the night is full of their voices.
I know of none whose outside show is more of
a mask to its inside truth. Seen fairly from the
The truth and Jong file of cypresses, which signifies
the seeming. y0Ur near approach to the Porta San
Matteo, it looks to be of imposing ugliness, with
a mountainous grandeur all its own. You think
of storied heaps of ruin, derelict Baalbec, or
Persepolis of gaunt propylons — " courts where
Jamshid gloried and drank deep." Blind towers,
windowless houses, blank walls, present an in
scrutable front : you think, a town cut in blocks,
like something of the East, where men build
against the sun. To enter the gate is to trust
oneself to the uncouth companionship of giants.
But not at all : the moment you are within you
discover the truth. It is all gigantic still, but
not monstrous, not humiliating ; solemn and
wonderful, rather, and silent, a place where
beautiful pale people tread softly and never lift
their voices, and dream-children, frail as breath
and coloured as faintly as wood-flowers, come
and stand about you, full of secret knowledge
which they are forbidden to impart. The contrast

iii GHOSTS OF SAN GIMIGNANO 55
is extreme; an abode fashioned by Titans for

SAN GIMIGNANO.

themselves, inhabited now by a people for whom

56 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
the loggias and belvederes of Gozzoli's frescoes,
all the delicate windless days of his fancy, would
be the proper setting. The whole town is so
much of a piece. You can well imagine it to
have been hacked out of the solid by huge
contrivers, a fortress dug from the live rock ; the
towers and square barbicans and double walls
pared down to that semblance ; open spaces
cleared by force of the pick ; and about these the
streets drilled into busy tracery of tunnels, galleries,
archways, stepways. From the piazza three such
tunnels run steeply down into the dark ; high on
a broad stair a church-front stands sharply out ;
but above that you may see five, seven, eight
monster towers, blank cubes of masonry, afforest
ing the sky. There is no ornament, no colour,
no gradation between the white and the black.
All is, in fact, one weathered silver or one hollow
of dark, and all of one age. It sounds grimly, so
described, yet it is anything but that. A friendly
and gentle race inhabits it, but with so alien an
air that you are apt to think them settlers in a
deserted city, who have never ceased to be cowed
by their enormous lodging. They are many
sizes too small, and (as I read the books) so they
have ever been. You will be wrong to think
them the product of isolation and hunger, and
their fragility a mountain anaemia. The history

ra GHOSTS OF SAN GIMIGNANO 57

of San Gimignano is all pathetic, all a faltered
treble in the minor. Their gallantries — for they

S. GIMIGNANO.

were gallant — move tears rather than heart-beats.
Their heroes can only be seen through a mist

58 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
of unavailing pity, and nowadays mournful birds
sing their elegy. For they are famous, not for
what they did, but for what they suffered. Their
hierarch is Santa Fina, a precocious little
macerating baggage of thirteen, pretty to death,
as they say, who found a kind of still ecstasy
rotting on a plank. Sienese by instinct, pre
dilection, and the lie of the land, they fell a-
quarrelling with Volterra in early days, and
bickered ineffectually for a hundred and fifty
years. The natural result flowed beautifully true.
In mid-fourteenth century Florence assumed the
lordship and never let go.
There is very little chivalry in all this ;
nothing of a kind, for instance, which would have
painted chivalry inspired that most chivalrous poet,
and the facts. Messer Folgore of this place. He
chose rather for Siena, the home of Tuscan
chivalry, and the Spendereccia house, with its
quaint gospel of clothes and frittering. It was
to the " brigata nobile e cortese," which he found
there, that he dedicated his high-bred, thin rhymes ;
to young men with such ruffling names as
Tingoccio, Atuin di Togno, ed Ancajano,
Bartolo, e Mugaio, e Fainotto.
He thought them, or said that he did, like
Lancelot and the sons of King Ban of Benwick ;
but what is curious is that his feudal verses find

m GHOSTS OF SAN GIMIGNANO 59
feudal illustration upon the walls of the Communal
Palace here. There is a broad sheet of fresco,
blue and gold, in this place, very much in the
Sienese manner ; but it was another hand which
commented upon Folgore, an earlier hand, with
an extraordinarily Norman touch. This shows

S. GIMIGNANO.

you a great chase in the doing, running dogs after
a boar, huntsmen with spears and horns, a
wooded mountain landscape, with white harts
flying through the trees. On the adjoining wall
an Ardinghelli, fat-jowled, shaven tyrant — Scolaio,
of that stock, Archbishop of Tyre — stiff as
William on the linen of Bayeux, receives tribute
of the game. Men lead dogs in leash ; there are

60 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
hooded hawks ; near by a page holds his stallion
by the bridle. Then a tournament. Knights
in chain mail and surcoats of silk run a course
with spears, then fight the sword-bout afoot :
Prodi e cortesi piu che Lancilotto,
Se bisognasse con le lance in mano,
Fariano torneamenti a Cambelotto.
So sings Folgore, dazzled by the bravery of his
spendthrifts; but the Camelot of his fancy and
election was Siena, and the lists the flags of
the Campo. Nor is prowess a word for the Ar
dinghelli either; so stoutly depicted here, they
live in history as victims rather than heroes.
They — of Norman origin as I suppose — and
the Salvucci did the fighting, which no Tuscan
The Ardingheiu city ever failed of, or failed to pay for
brethren. jn ^e jong run> Their towers are
standing, a couple to each name, but their houses
are gone. Cheek by jowl they reared up in the
Piazza and sustained vendetta for two centuries.
Then a deed was done — it was in 1352, just
before the Florentine occupation — which drowned
their puny hatreds in innocent blood. Benedetto
Strozzi, a Florentine, was Podesta, who, upon un
just suspicion, fostered (as the suspects believed),
by whisperings of the Salvucci, seized by night
and imprisoned two brethren of the Ardinghelli.
Primeranno and Rossellino were their flowery

hi GHOSTS OF SAN GIMIGNANO 61
names ; one may suspect them of beauty. On
this account or another, but probably on this (for

S. GIMIGNANO.

the Tuscans always suffered handsome tyrants
gladly, and the standard of beauty was not high),

62 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
the two lads had lovers in the town, to one of
whom one of them threw a letter from the window
of his prison. Word was then sent to Florence
of Strozzi's doings, petitions went, warnings,
entreaties, which had their effect. The priors
were unwilling to risk extremities, knowing,
perhaps, their Strozzi. At any rate they sent
him a letter of reprieve by a messenger on a good
horse. Further communication passed between
the boys in gaol and the San Gimignanesi ;
Strozzi intercepted one of these, and determined
to act. He visited his victims at midnight, and
told them they were to die within four hours.
Die they did, by decollation, before their own
house in the Piazza. An hour or so late came in
the reprieve, delayed by a flood in Elsa. Reprisals
followed upon this hasty murder. The Ardinghelli
rose one night, fired the palace of the Salvucci
and drove the owners into the hills, there to
couch with the fox. Some of them sought out
foxes of another sort, and went to Florence with
their griefs. This was just what Florence had
desired. She arrayed a host, marched up the
Val d' Elsa and the long hill from Certaldo in
great strength. Five years' seigniory and a
Podesta, permanently of Florentine choosing were
the wages of this day's work. Within a year —
mark the irony of the thing — on the motion of the

m GHOSTS OF SAN GIMIGNANO 63
Ardinghelli, Florence was asked to take the

^- ...:... ^-^

..aAAA-A-

mSh

S. GIMIGNANO.

lordship altogether. She did. That fortress on

64 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
Monte Staffoli, the citadel which commands the
whole town, is her work.
Now, at night, from the ghostly towers the
owls tell the watches with startled, haunting cries.
Kiou! falters one in a lonely treble, and Kiou!
comes from afar, like the sudden sob of a child

S. GIMIGNANO.

hurt. These are the uneasy sprites of Primeranno
and Rossellino Ardinghelli grieving each to other
as they re-enact their last night upon earth.
Other voices in the dark are to be heard, but none
so forsaken as these. Watchmen stray round
about the walls heartening each other every hour.
" All' erta, sentinello ! " you hear close at hand.

in GHOSTS OF SAN GIMIGNANO 65
Wait a little, and catch the distant assurance of

WASHING-PLACE, S. GIMIGNANO.

the other, " All' erta sto ! " But the owls repine

VOL. II

66 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
without ceasing : a patient iteration which touches
the heart, not because the sorrow is so great, but
because the mourners are so small.
I never saw a town so poor with a folk so
gentle under their misery. Every one asks, but
nobody begs — that is, they wait near
La Miseria. . ....
by, searching your face with their
immense eyes, saying nothing, hoping against
hope that you will read and understand their
necessity. " La miseria fa vendere ogni cosa,"
said a poor gentlewoman to me one day. She
lived in the corner of one vast room of a palace :
a fresco was on the wall, which was what I had
come to see. I think she was npt without hopes
that, in my magnificent foreign way, I should lay
down a roll of banknotes, and send in workmen
to chip out the painting from the wall. If these
were her dreams she did not utter them, but it
was not hard to see that she was prepared to sell
her shelter from the wind. That palace of hers
— for it was her own ! A great approach through
a gateway into a courtyard, a flight of shallow,
marble stairs to the pian nobile, and then that
long bare hall with coffered ceiling, two fireplaces
(but never a fire), frescoed walls, all the garniture
of the old noble life, and this poor soul encamped
in it with a deal table, a chair, and a paraffin lamp
for all her service. Works of the Florentine

in GHOSTS OF SAN GIMIGNANO 67
masters are not to be seen on these terms : there
was nothing to be done but bend the head and
go. I left on tiptoe, as if I had ignorantly tres
passed upon a mystery. And had I not ? Was
she not a figure of the San Gimignanesi trembling
in this city of towers too big for them ?

GATE, SAN GIMIGNANO.

One more act of this tragic pageant — for play
you cannot call it where it is all in dumb show.
Standing on the steps of the inn, considering the
various little diversions of the piazza — gossips at
the well, a policeman being shaved on the pave
ment, the nearing bells of the diligence from
Poggibonsi, and what not — I became aware of a

68 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
very old man bowing bareheaded before me.
He was in such rags as a scarecrow could not
maintain in my country, but he had silver-white
hair. His hat was in his hand ; he bowed down
before my splendour — God forgive me — as if I
myself had been a god. I was humiliated to the
dust. If by any shocking act of insult or con
tumely I could have stung him into dignity I
declare I would have done it. Anything to make
him hold up his head, cover it, and put me in my
place. But no ! A silver-haired old man, purified
by eighty years' lustration in the waters of misery,
he bowed himself down to me, and I could only
escape by degrading him still lower. I suppose
I gave him money ; he blessed my lordship as he
went away. "Italy," thought I, "is abased like
thee. All the glories of her name and blood;
Caesar's empery, Peter's throne, the immortal
eyes of Dante, the wine of Beatrice's spirit, are
set out, as on a huckster's tray, to be so many
lures for our shillings. Italy is upon the town,
trades her beauties, and cherishes them only that
they may fetch the more. We, therefore, who
ought to make our prayer of humble access on our
knees before we dare lift our eyes to her immortal
shape, saunter through her cities with lorgnettes,
doubt if Giotto painted this, think he might have
bettered that, and measure the fingers and toes of

C/> QA

7*7s?7,s t%449tAa?Z'd&b0<

in GHOSTS OF SAN GIMIGNANO 69
Baldovinetti's angel-children to see whether they
are the fruit of wedlock or bastardy ! " So it is,
then, that San Gimignano is all Italy in small.
The treasure of old sorrow is so sacred a thing
that one can hardly dare look full upon it, I think.
But Italy offers it for sale or hire. You can buy
your share in it from Cook and Sons, and Herr
Baedeker has engrossed the catalogue. La miseria
fa vendere ogni cosa.
And here am I, who ought to be glossing
Herr Baedeker's text, railing at my stock-in-trade.
I shall not be his scholiast here
because the things which he did not "T^1|arth
see seem to me so much more pre- every common
1 sight."
cious than those which he did see.
He saw the museum, but I saw the custode of
it, a very noble priest. He saw the fresco, but I
its poor, patient proprietress. He saw the inn
and said it was a good one. So it is ; but I
saw the innkeeper's pretty daughter, and was
witness to the unuttered, unutterable passion of
the waiter for her. Afflicting torment! It was
highly detrimental to the service. If I forbear to
speak of this tragi-comedy, and pass it over for
some of the master-pieces of the Florentine
school which fill two churches here, it is not
because I think these latter are so much to the
purpose in San Gimignano — for indeed they are

70 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
far from the purpose — as things which are the
efflorescence of the very soil and air ; a but rather
that I may speak of Santa Fina, and yet again in
praise of the incomparable Ghirlandajo, who has
dignified her maudlin legend beyond belief, and
made a beautiful and tender little drama out of
the clot-brained ecstasies of the hagiologist.
Let no one henceforward refuse Ghirlandajo
the name of poet. This is what he has done
„ , „ here. The acts of Santa Fina are
Santa Fina
in legend, written at large in a little octavo, —
" Ragguaglio istorico della vita, miracoli e culto
immemorabile della gloriosa vergine Santa Fina
di Sangimignano raccolto a consolazione de' suoi
divoti e dedicato alia medesima Santa da Pietro
Paolo Maria de' Medici, nobil Patrizio e Acca-
demico Fiorentino," — where you may find within
that flood of verbiage which only an Italian can
command, the thin wisp of weed which stands
for the deeds of her short life. At two years
old she was in the way of saintship, at four she
began to fast ; at eight a little boy gave her an
apple at the well-head, and she took it: "Where
upon she was taken with great affliction, fear
and horror at the fault, and lively prayed our
1 The point in which all centres is this, for the traveller : will he
study Tuscany or the Tuscans? I do not hesitate to say that I find
people more entertaining than pictures, and more germane to the matter
of us all.

iii GHOSTS OF SAN GIMIGNANO 71
Lord Jesus Christ, with fervent orations and with
tears, that He, by the intercession of His holy

S. GIMIGNANO.
Mother and the merits of the Pontiff Saint
Gregory, to whom she bore particular devotion,

72 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
would inflict such pains upon her body that never
more might she have occasion to sin. And this
most urgent prayer of hers was heard by the
Most High" — who smote her with extreme
bodily infirmity, as you shall hear. At ten years
old she took to her bed of board — five feet by
two, and there she lay, rotting and rotting, until
at fifteen she died. For she neither moved nor
would be moved for common purposes of cleanli
ness: "per la quai duro decubito attaccatasi la
carne alia detta tavola, e venuta finalmente a
marcirsi, oltre ai vermi che scaturirono dalla
putredine quivi formata, vi concorrevano persino
i topi a lacerarla, quando non vi era chi li dis-
cacciasse, conforme attestarono molte persone de-
gne di fede, che in occasione di visitarla vedeano
uscire detti animali dalle concavita, che rodendo
avevano fatte in quella tormentatissima parte ;
soffrendo cosi e giorno e notte con generosa pazi-
enza, come pub credere ognuno, un complesso ben
grande d' inusitati tormenti : " I excuse myself
from translating these disgustful imaginings — as
to which it may be added, for the sake of the curi
ous, that worse are to be found in the book — and
will add simply, that her mother died by act of
devil and permission of God before the saint was
at the end of her glorious decomposition; that
Saint Gregory in splendour announced her own

iii GHOSTS OF SAN GIMIGNANO 73
approaching death; and that her nurse, one
/ 1 m

1

:: ,,

|.i

*'vA

it ¦:. "V

'^A;A t

I •u.
¦fiA'iKi
If ui
fl

41 fL.

.:i-.!,a.l-:l.^l./.;;-^„'™Wl-

ft-iiLv.1?^!!^^?- 1im~

PALAZZO PUBLICO. S. GIMIGNANO.

Beldia, through touching her corrupted body got

74 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
infection in the hand. Die at last she did, at
fifteen years old — having done (on the hagio-
logist's own showing) nothing but rot — ; and on
the day of her death the bells of San Gimignano
rang of themselves ; and when they had got her
off the plank to which she was loathsomely glued,
she diffused unearthly, seraphic fragrance, and
cured at a touch the stricken hand of Beldia. On
my conscience there is no more. Now see what
Ghirlandajo makes of it in his two frescoes.
As I read him, his Mystery is in two acts.
The first is in the cottage, where Fina lies
Ghiriandajo's mortally stricken and on a plank bed,
version. jJut exqUisitely decent, with pure face,
still body, and intent, feverish eyes. There is
extraordinary solemnity, a hush, over the clean,
whitewashed place, which is poor enough of all
but the graces of the land. Outside the door
are roses and the full sun ; through the unglazed
window you can see a dappled sky, blue distance
of wooded hill. Saint Gregory floats in at the
door in cope and mitre ; cherubim are his acolytes,
with inhuman, little burning faces ; he gives his
message, " Prepare thyself, daughter " ; and Santa
Fina never moves her bright eyes from his face.
Hers is too desperate a case for astonishment;
moreover, as one bedridden for many years, she
has the egoism of the sick, and takes this

iii GHOSTS OF SAN GIMIGNANO 75
annunciation as her due. The old woman at
her head, whose hand supports her, is not
astonished either, but looks shrewdly at the
apparition, as if suspicious. And in that she is
a true cottage woman. She, too, accepts the

S. GIMIGNANO.

honour as her daughter's due. The other woman
— for there are two sitting with the girl, on low
stools by her bench — lifts her hand. She is
startled, but no one moves. It is all hushed
over with the coming of the shadow.
Santa Fina, says Ghirlandajo, did not die in
the cottage, as the hagiologist reports, and there
were no filthy ceremonies of rat-chasing or

76 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
rending blue flesh from boards. When they
I

%n

^?*<

/>v m

THE WALLS, S. GIMIGNANO.

had brushed out her long rippling hair, and

m GHOSTS OF SAN GIMIGNANO 77
clothed her in a thin silk gown from neck to feet,
she was carried on a bier to a little oratory, and
there with prayers and the chanting of boys'

S. GIMIGNANO.

voices she lay and waited for the Bridegroom,
herself the meek and fair bride. In due course
the light of day became an offence and her eye
lids a burden ; so she closed them, and began
the last vision. Frightened a little, a little need
ing her mother, she reached out a hand, and

78 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
found what she needed. It was her last act ; for
as she did it, she sighed — and that was all. Now,
while all this was doing, an angel of God flew
from tower to tower and set the bells ringing —
but softly, lest the San Gimignanesi should think
Volterra was come upon them unawares. Ghir
landajo saw him at it, a trim little figure, cleaving
the blue with crisp wings, hovering a moment —
like a white butterfly — as he touched a bell, then
flitting to the next tower.
The waies, through which my weary steps I guyde
In this delightful land of Faery,
Are so exceeding spacious and wyde,
And sprinckled with such sweet variety. . . .
If Ghirlandajo, the old shop-keeping artist, could
sprinkle the unholy spawn of cloister-thoughts, it
was because he was a poet without knowing it.
All honour to him !
Another highly poetical piece may not be
omitted: I mean Benozzo's fresco in Sant'
Agostino. It is one of many by this
Benozzo. , J
delightful contriver, for he has set
out in candid order the whole story of that
gloomy hero, from the age when he was spanked
to that at which he was received into heaven ;
but charming as these are — full of cavaliers,
ladies, and pretty boys in the most delightful
architecture out of Mr. Buzzard's bride-cake

iii GHOSTS OF SAN GIMIGNANO 79
shop — there are better of the sort at Pisa, which

COLLEGIATE CHURCH, S. GIMIGNANO.
illuminate, moreover, wholesomer stories. But

80 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
over the Sebastian altar is a very different affair,
wherein Benozzo has shown his seriousness for
once, and done what I have never seen attempted
before or since. There has been — there is in
progress — a pestilence, whereunder the people
sicken suddenly, stiffen, and die. Sebastian in
blue stands upon his tomb with a host of devotees
clinging, kneeling, crying, raving about him.
Angels crown him and break arrows in the sight
of God omnipotent, who with His chivalry
about Him and the Holy Ghost in His lap,
Himself holds an arrow, as acceptable tribute
from His servant.
But — the plague not stayed — before God
kneel Christ and his mother, wooing His high
clemency. Christ shows his wounded side —
" Father, see where they pierced me. Stay now,
therefore, Thy hand : let my torment suffice ! "
But Mary — the meek girl stung at last — with a
gesture of extraordinary passion and pride, rip's
open her bodice and lays bare her bosom. " By
these breasts whereon Thou didst hang — save
the San Gimignanesi." The appeal cannot be
gainsaid. I never saw a thing so daring done
so well. It is exactly another of those little
strokes of real imagination which lifts shop-
keeping Benozzo, with shop-keeping Domenico
his neighbour, out of the rank of tradesman to

iii GHOSTS OF SAN GIMIGNANO 81
that of poet. Such a thing ill done has immor
talised many worse painters than Benozzo Gozzoli.
This apart, Sant' Agostino is a fine bare
preacher's church, of the barn-roof order (as it
should be), with a mort of dead Austin friars in
low relief upon the pavement. Opposite the
door of entry is a great piece — the Adoration of
the Cross — with a fine landscape of the Arno and
Pisa spread about it.
[Note. — The traveller shall remark in the Collegiate
Church of this town two wooden statues by the door — as to
which, if he care to know it — ¦ I have something to say at the
end of the next chapter.]

'JJ^itlW
THE VILLA BCECKLIN, FLORENCE.

CHAPTER IV

VOLTERRA

A tall shepherd, motionless upon the verge of
a bare hill, frightened my vetturino badly. One
Pathetic saw the creature stand up there like
fallacy. a weather-tossed old tree, in severe
isolation against the sky, with something long,
and thin, and straight under his arm. It proved
to be an umbrella, which might well have been a
gun; certainly, if landscape has anything to do
with the procreation of brigands, a gun it should
have been. For after leaving Castel San Gimi
gnano and the deep woods which come next —
woods which clothe the sides of gorges, woods of
dense boscage and wet spaces, of grey shale,
black ilex, cyclamens, and ever-falling water;
after climbing to Spicchiaiola, and resting there
in the shade in communion with the curate's
niece — familiarmente trattando with this amiable
woman over a flask of the curate's wine ; after
such-and-such comfortable assurances of all being
82

CHAP. IV

VOLTERRA

83

well, the country side changed for the worse,
grew bald and sinister, as if a blighting wind had
swept over it ; and instead of smiling, grinned.
The sun was not hidden, yet ceased to shine ;
the sun stared. Hearts might well sink and
nerves go taut. The landscape was hostile,

THE ROAD TO VOLTERRA.

inspiring terrors ; the pathetic fallacy — prodigious
egotism, only possible to poets and the Hebrews
of old — was never so plausible. Trombino, from
sitting squarely on his box, looking comfortably
at his horses' wagging ears, and flicking them
when he could with his whip, was now all eyes
and ears of his own. Brutto paese! but he
meant more than that. He was off his balance ;

84 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
no longer a disposer, but a huddled thing to be
disposed of. Every dreary heave of that pale
wilderness spoke to him of menace, of adverse
gods, of earth estranged and ourselves forsaken,
cowering in the midst. He was all agog for
alarms ; Pan had resumed his mastery, had this
once jaunty fellow at his mercy, and could have
palsied the heart of him and cloven his tongue
to palate by any sudden shock. Say, there had
been a cacciatore in those wastes who, pursuing
finch or thrush to the utterance, should have let
off his piece, Trombino would have tumbled to
his prayers. But no sound broke the heavy
suspense ; the sick land lay stupid, clammy with
fear. Trombino drooped, the whip drooped, the
horses crawled like lice.
The awful form of the man on the hill, rigidly
waiting, changed all this ; or, rather, embodied it.
The landscape had found its voice ; here was
something more wearing to stretched nerves than
a sudden ambush.
'''Con rispetto parlaitdo," said Trombino from
his perch, "there on that hill-crest awaits us a
brigand. Momently we are all dead men."
There is only one attitude to assume with a
Tuscan servant upon occasions of difficulty or
stress, that of cheerful permanence, of inexorable,
but benevolent, order. Avanti is the word for

IV

VOLTERRA 85

the road — otherwise, why is one there ? There
fore 
" Sempre avanti, Trombino" said I ; and
counted, not without confidence, upon his fine
manners. " Come lei crede" said Trombino, and urged
his beasts towards the brigand. "Avanti, hep!"
— he cracked his whip till the spell-bound welkin
rang. Good soul, with exactly the same words
and act he would have obeyed me though the
"Chimaera had stood fire-belching in his road.
Nay, had the earth yawned and discovered him
a pit of blackness, Avanti from me had made a
Quintus Curtius of him. It made no difference
at all that the brigand resolved into a musing
shepherd. You pass a tower on the left, shortly after
leaving a wayside calvary and gipsy camp. A
tower, do I say? Such as it is, it Montedeiia
stands on a hill of its own, dominat- Torre-
ing the desolation, the picture of maimed nudity ;
for whereas it was square once and looked out
with a bold face to all the airts, now but a single
wall stands up to speak of a thousand years'
attacks. In 925, as I read the books, King
Hugh gave to Bishop Adelard the Monte Della
Torre, with this tower then upon it, to be a
warning to the San Gimignanesi ; who countered,

86 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
I suppose, with their castle some eight miles to
the east — that Castel San Gimignano where they
sell clean wine, a Vernace with a fame as old as
the fortress. And all these things are in a con
catenation accordingly. San Gimignano, abode
of gentler misfortune, makes a wine-shop of its
outpost : Volterra, snarling wolf that can never be
tamed to turn a spit, stands at its sentry-go and
crumbles brick by brick as the weather will have
it, and snarls at every wound. But I digress, if
Volterra will not. Hereafter a little, from a'
higher ground, you will see that the lowlands
which stretch away to the south have not been
blighted with the accursed fate of the city. Soft
purple valleys are enfolded down there ; a floating
haze over all gives you the thought that there
stirs an enchanted sea, whose islands are the
little hills, each crowned with a glimmering burgh.
I saw Pomarance — Heavens, the Arabian name!
— and nearer in, Casole d' Elsa, Monte Guidi,
San Dalmasio. Next to Semifonte, which no
body can ever see, because it lies buried in the
bosom of a grey down, I regretted Pomarance,
which perforce I left, red and misty in the south,
while I climbed ever higher to harsh Volterra.
Round the naked knee of a hill I had my first
view of it. Trombino pointed it out : " Ecco
Volterra ! " If he added not his Deo gratias,

rv

VOLTERRA

87

I mistake him. It lay in the afternoon, in the
sun's eye, as they say, upon what seems to be
the highest of these mountains of mud, and
presented an extraordinarily squalid appearance.
I quarrel with other of Macaulay's images : he
loved rhetoric too well, I doubt. Cortona could

VOLTERRA.

never have lifted a diadem of towers to heaven
in any pre-eminent way. It lies now, where it
must have lain from old-time, like a cemetery
strewn upon a hillside. And so here, his "lordly
Volaterrae " shows at first view a squat heap of
brown building and one or two stunted towers,
posts for cattle to scratch at. This is not a city
which could ever have looked lordly, for it climbs

88 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
the apex of its hill and falls down, more than
half, on the other side ; so that from whatever
point you make your approach there is none of
the culmination which a hill-town should have.
The great fortress by the gate impresses itself
upon you as you draw near ; monstrous bulk,
monstrous strength, such dignity as consists with
mass, it has. The huge walls are of a piece;
work of giants, titanic, but not lordly. Etruscan
heads directed all this immensity ; what goaded
slave-hordes wrought it, I know not. It looks as
inert and spiritless as convict labour; gloomier
Etruscan stronghold Herr Baedeker can never
have seen. Fiesole is savage, Chiusi mournful,
Perugia a termagant ; Volterra has the dulness
of the brute.
You do but get a premonition of it as you
climb the weary leagues into the town, and have
Terrific no time to enlarge it, since you are to
appan ion. ^ s]10c;]ce(j aga;n_ When the sinister
country has you fast, when your spirits have
flagged to their lowest, suddenly, a huge blood-
coloured cliff confronts you, clothed in scrub to
the peak, the Mons Tumba of this muddy waste.
Backed by a storm-cloud, abode for vampires and
snakes, spell-struck into silence, it terrifies you.
It is as if all your flying fears, winging to a point,
should take shape: a bare grey land, a storm

iv VOLTERRA 89
brewing in the north, and a blood-red cliff dead in
your way. Thus fared knights-errant in the old
tales when they took their lives in their hands.
"And Pereduc journeyed three days and three
nights over the desert. And he came to a great
mountain in the midst, which was as red as blood,
and hight Pavidus." " Brutto paese ! " quoth
Trombino, a snug youth for choice.
John Villani, most friendly of historians, always
on the look-out for the letter of introduction to
antiquity, says that Volterra was first Bevis of
called Antonia, and that, " according HamPton-
to the romances," here we have the origin of the
good Beuves of Antonia. By this long bow-shot
he arrogates to the Volterrani our English hero,
the late-born, the chaste, the pudibond Bevis of
Hampton, whom Drusiane (much to his confusion)
kissed under the table. I believe he got his story
from the " Dittamondo," where, Fazio says,
We saw Volterra near by this
On a great hill, as strong and old
As any town of Tuscany's,
Antonia hight, whence, I am told,
Came Bevis, who, for Drusiane's sake,
Oversea suffered heat and cold.
I cannot agree with this poet, holding, as I must
(in first-rate company), that the hero was of
Southampton. The " Reali di Francia," a hostile

go

THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.

witness, says that all England rejoiced at his
birth. It is true that the faithful tutor of the
child, according to the same authority, was called
Sinibaldo dalla Rocca San Simone, which is not
a Hampshire name; and it may well be that this
rocca was the lurid bluff on the road to Volterra
before which I am keeping you horrific while I
muse. Now I have never learned the name of
this bluff ; but if Sinibaldo (whom we call Saber)
was lord of it, there was a great education for
young Bevis, and the wicked Duodo of Maganza
might have had old besieging it. But these,
perhaps, are not practical speculations.
Once past this fatal place you have the grim
bulk of the fortezza towering over your way. As
my own cortege crawled up, I
The madmen. .
remember that a little company of
madmen strayed about us, going slowly home
wards to Volterra — fit pinfold ! — herded by one
man in a Government cap. He seemed glad of
my company, so I conversed with him a little.
His madmen were very old, but had, he told me,
all been homicides in their day. Solitary confine
ment had done its work; they would lay hands
suddenly on no other men. So the law allows
them to roam at will, to pick wild-flowers and
twist garlands for their white pows : a peaceful
ending to their labours. They looked upon us,

IV

VOLTERRA

9i

our equipage and advance, with mild unwondering
eyes. Once we had been grist for their long
knives, but now were less than the flowers in the
hedgerow. After life's fitful fever . . .
A straggling suburb succeeded, a row of drab
houses, a cheerless trattoria with unglazed

¦Pf*"-

VOLTERRA.

windows, pigs, chickens, children, stern-faced
women in men's hats — here are disjected notes.
A diligence came tearing down the hill, full of
scared pale people escaping from Volterra; but
we crept ever upwards and trailed painfully by
the walls, the watch-tower, the great boulder of
the fortress, and entered the doomed city by the
Florence Gate. Trombino flogged the horses

92 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
into a feeble canter, and brought us up to the
door of the old inn with some sort of a rattle.
Cut a thin reed from scream-beset Scamander
For hazard of this music !
No one came out to receive us. It might
have been a dead-house ; and so it was. Wind-
tortured abode of madmen and grey murderers !
Heart of earthquakes, fallen, still falling Volterra !
It wanted but this. But I must endeavour to be
calm. To our notions — whose inns are as good as
our hotels are bad — there is no comfort, but much
hospitality in a Tuscan inn. At
Volterra. y .
Volterra, the fact is that 1 had
neither; but there were reasons. Mr. Car-
michael, in a recent and agreeable work, shows
that he found something to his taste. His land
lord, however, was not dying of typhoid as mine
was. To me all Volterra was exactly accursed,
from the landlord to the land. A raw sea-mist
was blown upon a searching wind through all
the corridors of the house. Mad old women
whispered and chuckled to themselves in corners,
pawing and patting, as it seemed to me, waxen
figures of the stricken host. Now and then there
came a scurrying of fear-fanned feet, now and
then the clanking of pails, the sudden banging of
doors. A daughter of the house was in tears, her

iv VOLTERRA 93
sister in hysterics ; the doctor spat upon the floor,
signifying his diagnostic pother. Death alone sat
hale in the guest-chambers, and had bespoken the
chief seat at the feast. Clearly, all these things
were far from Mr. Carmichael, who was able to
ruminate with unencumbered mind upon the
Etruscans, the alabaster industry, and the land
slip — as most pleasantly he does in his little
Tuscan book. To me the gloom, the shadow,
the cruel sea-wind with its tainted burden of fog,
blighted the eyes, and perhaps struck a palsy
upon the judgment. But I am by no means so
sure that this, which has been foretold by the
road, is not sealed to Volterra by history. Books
are not alone in the world to have their weaving
fates. Far more truly than they, towns speak the
nature of men and their sort in this life. I can
read the chronicles or not, as I choose, but
cannot fail to read in dark and silent streets,
in bare piazzas, and naked grey walls of ragged
church and ragged palace, confirmation of the
godless rule of wicked old prince-bishops. Hark
to their names ! Hildebrand, Ranier, Payn, and
suchlike, implying all that was to follow: the
treachery of the led against their leaders, eager
to forestall that of the leaders against themselves ;
the black nightwork of Rinaldo degli Albizzi and
Palla Strozzi, and that havoc which Lorenzo

94 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
wrought there when he killed man, woman, and
boy, and the child at the breast — for which also,
according to Savonarola's friends, he died without
housel. Of such is the history of Volterra. Its bishops
were princes of the empire, stark men and
Ghibellines, belying the fisherman.1 To their
tyranny succeeded that of a traitor-race, the
Belforti, begun in treachery and ending by it.
The Duke of Athens lorded it here for a year;
but that was all the length of rope allowed him.
He had time to build the Rocca Vecchia, and
might, with a little more grace, have been its
first tenant. The gods saw otherwise : he was
not to die in prison. Florence, which in that
fortunate year of hers (1254) had reduced Pistoja,
beaten Siena in the open, and by that stroke
secured Montalcino, Montennana, and Poggi
bonsi, had gone on from that last place across
the frightful country to Volterra and had had it
by luck — Florence then got her first taste of a
city she was afterwards to sack three times be
fore she could retain it for ever. Villani's tale of
this capture is a good one. He says that
the Florentines left Poggibonsi to come hither

1 When a bishop was also a prince the world was too much with him ;
he was never for the Church, it seems. Arezzo had similar masters,
Ghibellines to a man.

rv

VOLTERRA

95

because Volterra was Ghibelline and the Guelphic
League just then in ascendancy. There was no
thought of taking, even of attacking, one of the
strongest positions in Italy; if they could lay
waste the country round about they would go
home well pleased. But God, says Villani,

ON THE WALLS, VOLTERRA.

gave them victory suddenly, for the Volterrani,
seeing the host close to their gates, with
great pride and arrogance came flooding out
— all their chivalry without order of war, or
captains, or battalia — and fell upon the Floren
tines from the vantage of the hill. The
Florentine knights, encouraging each other,
singularly bold for such a timorous race, stormed

96 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
up and drove the offenders back upon their posts.
All went streaming in, besiegers and besieged,
fighting and hurtling together. The keepers of
the gate, seeing (as they thought) their own
people in confusion, had no care but to give them
entry-room. In they came, and the Florentines
with them. They secured the gates and the
fortress as well. Thinking to have harried the
contado, they found themselves masters of the city.
The prince-bishop and clergy, cross in hand,
came from the church to plead ; handsome
ladies came, their hair loose, crying for mercy
and peace. It is to the credit of the Florentines,
if it is true, that they did neither mischief nor
spoil. They reformed the Signiory according to
their Guelphish lights, banished the heads and
chastened the members of the Ghibelline faction,
and then went on their victorious way. This was
their first hold upon Volterra. Lasting hold came
in the fifteenth century, a grip thrice cemented in
the citizens' blood.
Within this harsh stronghold beleaguered by
the wind do dwell a stern, rock-faced people
who take no notice whatsoever of the
The Volterrani. traveller, either to beg or to demand
of him, either to rob, him or to sell to him. This
is so singular a thing that it deserves mention,
if not repetition. It is the one place in Tuscany

iv VOLTERRA 97
where I have never been asked for a soldo, nor
ever been informed that anything I might happen
to look at was to be had for money. In San
Gimignano, you may remember, a woman would
have sold me the side of her house because I asked
leave to look at a fresco ; at Siena, one day, a

VOLTERRA.

wretch was to offer me a far dearer merchandise.
Nothing of the kind here. Men and women go
silently their ways, and which is which is hard to
tell, for they dress their heads alike — first a felt
hat, then a handkerchief over it, tied under the chin
— and alike they have the square jaws and low
foreheads of Romans. They are a stunted race,
as the pines would be which could thrive upon the

98 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
stony ground and live out the salt gale which
blows day and night. With their bullet-heads
and stiff-angled drapery, I can see them on some
Arch of Constantine or another, in severe relief,
serried closely in battle-array, or about the altar
of a household god. The piazza on market
morning showed me just such an effect, when the
buyers and sellers stood there in the fine rain,
gleaming like old marbles, as expressionless and
little wetted as they. What women ! To woo
a bride from Volterra would be to adventure
among the Scythians. You would have to fight
with your chosen maid — it would be an affair
of muscles, tussles, and hard knocks. Having
grassed her, you would throw her over your
shoulder, like a dead stag, or a Lapith haled
home by a Centaur, and so bear her to your
house. Et Venus in silvis, indeed ! One cannot,
of course, be precise upon the point, yet there is
every reason to suppose that, like the Amazons,
these fierce virgins are maimed.
They wear Roman colours, deep and lurid ;
grass-green kirtles or sea-blue, orange shawls,
orange and black kerchiefs. They carry little
crescent sickles in their hands, tools whose use
against anything but the person of the lover, or
their own, it is hard to see. To buy and sell
sickles, and for no other apparent purpose, they

rv VOLTERRA

99

hold a market ih early morning in the Piazza of
the Priors, a gaunt open space surrounded by
great strongholds, the east end of the Cathedral
being one, half smothered in a palace wall.
Whiles, as the Scots has it, they go off to church,
and hear masses, or pay uncouth worship to huge
blind gods, roughed out of wood, and painted in
their own colours — green, orange, crimson, and
black. I believe a fleshed sickle is the most
acceptable oblation a youth or maiden can pay.
Such are the Volterrani, and such their gloomy
delights. A strange feature of the place is its general
likeness to Florence. It is much what Florence
might have become had some malign deity set
it to shrivel and lose blood upon the top of a
mud-mountain. From the ramp of a little piazza,
which you will find not far from the Porta del
Arco — between that and the Porta San Felice —
you may look down upon a cascade of grey roofs
descending to the plain, beyond which a broken
headland juts into the sea. Just thereabouts,
where the Cecina brook hopes to end its trouble,
all is new and wild and beautiful. But if you
look then behind you, upwards, you see the land
marks of a withered Florence — dome, baptistry,
campanile ; the Palazzo Vecchio, with its Tower
of the Cow ; beyond, again, the Bargello, with the

ioo THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap, rv
skeleton belfry. The illusion is for the mo
ment complete, until you realise that the charm
is not there. Then you see that the build
ings want dignity, warmth, character; that they
are a discord ; that they do not represent Vol
terra so much as travesty Florence.
Nevertheless the Cathedral has an impressive-
ness of its own. It is on a grand scale, and has
aceiling of surpassing splendour. This
is of wood, deeply coffered, enriched
with figures in blue, green, and gold. The
central square is held by the Spirito Santo en
compassed in a cloud of seraphs. In octagons
on all sides of him are saints, their heads tend
ing towards him, their bodies from the middle
downwards embedded in the wood. Here is
a wonderful parallelogram of forces — bishops in
golden copes and mitres, yellow-haired virgins in
splendid brocades, deacons in dalmatics of white
and gold — the saints in levee dress all yearning
and spearing to their point of bliss : a fine con
ception, finely achieved. The august fowl seems
to be hovering, more hawk than dove, and those
others, witnesses and messengers of His, to get
their swiftness from Him. They have strong and
handsome faces, broad shoulders, deep chests,
immense proportions ; they must be twice the
size of men, and any one of them would serve

QO'Wf ' 1 s

T~1'

J«f

M^«^
5^ -5^ J iSf.w**1
NX
MARKET PLACE, VOLTERRA.
102 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
for figurehead to a line-of-battle ship. Imps of
a race of giants, colossal divinities ! To look
on men and women at their prayers under the
shadow of those burnished wings is to drift back
to a day when it was universal belief that God
made earth for His disport, gave it a flick to set
it spinning, and then forgot all about it. The
heavenly throng, busy with a vaster pageantry,
was in full sight of men ; yet man, except for
some chance errantry from on high, had no
existence there. But and if a straying son of
God saw a daughter of man, that she was fair,
then some beauty or another of ours, walking
shyly the green ways of earth, would on a sudden
be caught up in a gusty draught of enormous
love, whelmed and lost in flame — and shine
thereafter a lesser light in that high galaxy.
Thus mankind, according to this theology, would
fitfully preserve a clue to godkind.
But in a chapel of the south transept you can
see the graven images of Volterra even better
than in the nave. Up there, on the ceiling, you
may have their theology ; here, at kissing range,
is their religion. It is figured by stiff and huge
wooden gods dumbly enacting a scene from some
blunt old tragedy. Though Herr Baedeker calls
it a " Deposition from the Cross," it had far
better stand for the Passion of Prometheus.

rv VOLTERRA

103

This group, one of the most extraordinary to
be seen in Italy, is composed of figures nearly
eight feet high, coloured in coarse crimson,
blue, and green. One thinks not of the calm
Olympians, but of their forerunners, " Kronos,
and Ge, and murdered Ouranos," of monstrous
revenges, vast pangs, before such a scene. The
mystical dolours, reveries, and tender regrets of
Christianity appear local. I suppose the piece
cannot be earlier than the twelfth century in
sober truth ; but of this I am sure, that the
fashioners of it, and those who fulfil their worship
in its contemplation, are not of the new circum
cision. No son of man hangs here, no hand
maid of the Lord bewails him, nor a Joseph of
Arimathy offers the hospitality of his new tomb.
No ! vast, blind forces writhe and suffer ; these
are cosmical throes ; the sun goes down in blood
into the sea, and earth stands by, passive and
mute, as fixed as her own fate. So here it is
that the fierce daughters of Volterra, sickles in
their hands, come and offer dreadful self-sacrifice.
And here a rock-browed son of the place, leading
some virgin captive, espouses her with bloody
rites.1
1 Let not the traveller fail to notice, whithersoever he go in European
countries, the wooden statues in churches. Art is not always a full-dress
business; you are apt to get nearer to the root of the matter in the borgo
than in the piazza grande. Roughly speaking, I do helieve that the

104 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.iv
homelier the stuff and the nearer to hand, the more expressive of emotion
the art becomes. Thus, it is undoubtedly true that the Tanagra figurini
tell you more of Greece than the great smooth marbles which stare
through you out of their sightless eyes. In Italy, clay proved a happier
material than bronze, and wood came very near to clay. In the museum
at Pisa are some beautiful wooden figures of girls — slim, Gothic, low-
bosomed creatures in white and blue gowns, with whom the traveller may
come to terms at once. I know not what they represented first; but I
felt in their company as a child with her household of dolls about her.
I was at home with them; they are made of a stuff that once lived,
fibrous stuff not different from myself, with marrow in it and sap, and
much dependence upon the sun, the earth, and the wind. Whereas
between stone, cut from the chill shoulder of the mountain, and me there
is an unbridgeable gulf. And if I feel so in beholding, what must not
the worker have felt as he wrought ? To go on, at San Gimignano, by
the west door of the Collegiata, there is a wooden group — Gabriel in red
(red, I think) on one side, Virgin in blue on the other — of more value to
private devotion, that of the bedside and the dark, than all the Parthenon,
Sistine Chapel, six-feet putti in Saint Peter's, Golden Altar of Saint
Mark's put together. Delia Quercia did not disdain wood. The fairest
of his Junoesque Madonnas is cut from the heart of a tree, and stands in
a golden robe above the altar of San Martino at Siena. From wood
Donatello hewed his haggard Magdalene ; and one knows what the
Spaniards made of it and how close they could draw us to the Agony of
Christ. Above them all, to my thinking, is the Volterran group, quite
alone in Tuscan art. Nor is anything so terrible, so colossal, and so
dim known to me in sculpture. Lastly, it is worth while to reflect
whether, in the flat art, anything can approach in poignancy the mosaic
of Ravenna and Torcello — and to remember that of the stuff of that art
they also make beer-bottles.

CHAPTER V
GREVE AND PESA : SAN CASCIANO, POGGIBONSI,
COLLE
The great old highway from the north to Rome
went through Arezzo ; but Florence possessed
three of her own. One was from Empoli by the
Val d' Elsa, which now we know ; another, nearer
home, turned south at Montelupo ; the third (and
best for Florentine purposes) ran out by the
Porta Romana, followed the Greve to San
Casciano, then took to the Pesa, and joined the
Val d' Elsa road at Poggibonsi. Thence to
Siena is but some fourteen miles.
Upon this great outlet of Florence, and of the
monstrous cube of masonry it contains, I shall
only make two observations. The _. _
J Via Eomana :
first is, that the Via Romana by itself thePaiaceof
J the Wig.
is enough to prove that Florence was
never built for wheeled traffic ; the second con
cerns the Pitti Palace. If it was ever required
105

106 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap, v
to be proved that you can design an enormous
building so badly that it will look half its size,
here is the proof to hand. One has but to
compare it with the Strozzi, which is about half,
and looks twice, as big, to be convinced. Luca
Pitti, most fatuous, most futile of the Florentines !
He promised himself that he would build a house
which would hold Filippo Strozzi's in its cortile.
Firstly, he did not build it; and next, when it
was done, although the vaunt was true, nobody
would ever believe it. What his own masons
would have made of it cannot now be known,
for Brunelleschi and Michelozzo were no mean
builders ; but they never touched it after his
downfall, and for near a hundred years it stood
a shell. Then Eleonora of Toledo, Cosimo
Primo's beautiful wife, admired it ; her lord
bought it for nine thousand gold florins — surely
a very low price, but it is the Osservatore's
figure — got Ammanati to add the wings; and
lived in it, he and nine grand dukes after him.
" Whoever," says the watchful Osservatore,
"takes upon himself to pronounce that this
edifice is a mountain of masonry, is not consider
ing at all, as he should, the noble design, the
strength, and the beauty of the parts, among
which is a series of heads of lions upon the
parapet of each ground-floor window, in age and

VIA ROMANA, FLORENCE.

108 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
character so varied that they form a natural
history of this wild beast, so much revered by
the Florentines." This is very well ; but the
Osservatore himself may here be observed in
the trammels of the Florentine sin. In matters
of art curious ornament was always a snare to
these people. To the last they could never
perceive that the facade of a church was not to be
only a white wall on which to stick hippogriffs.
There is no doubt that the deftness of the
execution of the Seven Ages of Lions upon this
lumpy front completely redeemed it in the
Osservatore's eyes.
I like to remember that in this monumental
cage lived Giovanni Gastone's Wig, the last of
the Medici. In an old engraving which I possess
you may see it start for an airing in a coach and
six: the carabiniers present arms, the courtiers
bow until their noses appear between their legs,
guns fire, the beggars limp forward with petitions.
With a fine young man on either hand, one to
hold a powder-box, the other a comb, the Wig
goes in state to high mass in San Lorenzo, above
the tombs of its ancestors. This is a great
picture ; and so is this, where Chiabrera, a rococo
poet, hymns the glories of the Pitti. His form
is odic and interrogatory.

J

rA

j^ftT" TJIlf

^^^^tAA^^A^#^*§

fe#X§

1 A^A

f^SiS

^n&tue/Uo&as. tjAAoit
v GREVE AND PESA 109
Pitti, albergo di Regi,
Per lestagion festose,
Quai nelle notte ombrose,
Furo i maggior tui pregi ?
Quando udisti d' Orfeo note dogliose
Ver la Citta di Dite,
O quando il pie d' argento
In te degno mostrar 1' alma Anfitrite ?
O quando al bel concento
Di tumburi guerrieri
Fur tanti Duci altieri
D' infinito ornamento ?
The scholiast defeats his purpose, glossing
here. North, east, and west, the tramways have
done for the roads out of Florence what the
railways have done for the country
side. Halfway to Pistoja a tram and other
runs, another to Signa, another to
Rovezzano. The south parts are no exception ;
there is a tramway to San Casciano which, by
driving the whole of the traffic into half of the
road, has taught us terrible things. I have found
it a dangerous quag in the wet, and in the dry
one long bolster of dust. The best stretches of
it — and it is a beautiful road — are ruined by this
misery. Up the hill, however, and beyond the
suburb which, as usual, signalises the gate and
the dazio, on a plateau of rock, stands the brown
Certosa, and looks like a fortress — and has been
one in its day. A fine wood of cypress slopes

no THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
away to the west of it ; above the high wall you
see a tower, the steep gables of the church ; you
can make out the cloister, and on the north side
the messuages of the monks. Personally, I care
little for the inside of this or any monastery
in Tuscany, excepting always St. Mark's of
Florence.1 I find this Certosa tawdry, insincere,
ceremonious, and rococo, containing, nevertheless,
one good thing — the tomb of Lorenzo Acciaiuoli.
The town just before, it is Galluzzo, one mean
street ; and then, below Tavernuzze, which
looks very fine, high up in a cleft of the rocks
— white and grey, it is, with one thin tower —
your road bears to the right, and piercing the
ridge 2 by another cleft, enters a finely-wooded
rising country, with the Greve, which failed to
drown Buondelmonte's grandsire, running be
tween ferny banks. The road is indeed vile,
but the setting altogether lovely: an ample
curve round an amphitheatre of rocks. These
rise boldly in tiers, and are clothed to the
very top with pines, so delicate that they look
1 The Seicento stifled the community life in all sorts of ways. It bred
much unwholesome and prurient thought, and it smothered the buildings
in stucco and plaster. Notable examples abound. To take but two,
consider Monte Oliveto by Buonconvento, and the famous La Verna
above Bibbiena. This Certosa is just such another. In the case of
San Marco, mercifully, they stopped in time.
2 This ridge is actually the Chianti, the more easterly of the two.
You have to cross the western ridge also to get to Poggibonsi,

GREVE AND PESA

in

like tufted velvet. Nothing more dainty gay
could be imagined than this glen as I saw it last.
The blue-green river ran musical among the

THE CERTOSA, FLORENCE.

stones, eglantine and woodbine dipped as it
passed ; the broom was in flower, the acacias and
the may. Nightingales sang at large, the frogs
and cicale made a jingling accompaniment ; the
sun was in the heavens, a soft gale stirred the

112 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
pines. It was good to be there — but ah, better
to be in England. Mr. Browning was not the
only man to know that, but he was the first to
say it ; and perhaps I am not the second.
And beautiful as this Val di Greve undoubtedly
is, it is not of the Tuscan but of the general
picturesque. Characteristic Tuscany is in the
next valley.
Emerging from San Casciano, a town which
only looks well from a distance, and calls for no
remark ; you get to the open country,
San Casciano, .
Pesa, vai di with the western Chianti ridge
Chianti. .
straight before you. A country is
this aboundingly fertile; olives, with flax, corn
and maize in between them, mulberry trees to
carry the vines. Not an inch of ground is wasted
— a sight which would have gladdened the eyes
of Mr. Arthur Young, and would have gladdened
them more if he had not speculated what, with
proper appliances, the yield might have been.
I found a plough by the wayside just here and
stayed to examine it. The whole was of wood,
including the share. It had no wheels, but had
to be haled by main force of two oxen through
the marl. I suppose it drove a furrow of six
inches. It is almost exactly that which Virgil
describes in the Georgics — if that make matters
any better. But as to the produce, for my

GREVE AND PESA

H3

own part, I shall not care greatly what amount
they win from their splendid earth until I can
be sure that the yield goes into the right
mouths. At present I fear it does not.
The proprietor is content, the fattore content
(or he ought to be) ; the contadino peddles
along, and at all events fills his belly from

VAL DI PESA.

the ground he tills. He looks to do, and
does, no more. But the labourer? Practically,
he starves; a fine, limber, gentle-mannered
animal, beautiful when he is young, but too
soon old, he is always hungry, never knows
the taste of meat. And yet he is a poet:
Musam meditatur avena ! — to twist the tag,
Edinburgh fashion.
Let us now cross Pesa by a fine bridge of

VOL. II

ii4 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
brick and accost the western Chianti. Once you
are across it, you are in the Val d' Elsa ; but you
must rise and dip, and rise again before you see
Poggibonsi and San Gimignano's towers. You
go up by a cypress wood, whose tops are like
spears in an ambush, and round about a rocky
spur, which in these parts they call Poggio
Petroio, and so gradually top the first blade of
the two-edged down. It is some of the best land
in Tuscany, a tilth of corn and wine and oil
indeed, and I could not traverse it without a
sense that I was on holy ground. For between
Strada, just beyond Pesa Bridge, and Tavarnelle
on the crest lay Semifonte, the buried city.1 The
smiling fields — all in their spring finery of red-
brown diapered with green — the olives, which
look lavender in the sun, know nothing of it.
Look from ridge to ridge, look east, look west;
San Casciano far behind you is the only town
to be seen. Here stood Semifonte ! Well,
perhaps the olives grow the better for its
bones. Tavarnelle, wide-streeted and comfortable, is
Eisa, and ail on the very top of this Chianti ridge ;
herlittletowns. a mUe Qr mQre beyQnd -^ yQU rQund
a corner and come in full view of the broad
Val d' Elsa, than which I know no prospect
1 See Chapter ii., where I have spoken at large about this place.

GREVE AND PESA

"5

more attractive in a quiet way of its own. It is
pastoral country, yet with a spice of classic for-
A"A A^~~ A

j-^r-\

^
; r \ j A

THE CERTOSA, FLORENCE.

mality in the way the towns are dotted in, each
exactly fitting its own pedestal. It is, we may
say, a Claude Lorrainish, Nicholas Poussinesque
sort of country : nymphs, goats, ruins, towns on

116 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
hill-tops, bunchy trees, and a velvety texture
over all. It has character; it has some mystery,
for all those far-off towns look more grandiose
than in fact they are. It is quietly but admir
ably composed ; it chastens the fancy ; it leads
the mind from the politicians to the people, from
the artists to the artisans. To put the matter in
a nutshell, it is exactly like Gray's Elegy — a
restrained, academic landscape. Immediately
before you, as you stand, is Barberino, heaped
up like a cairn upon the top of a mound — a warm
foxy-brown and cream-coloured village, with an
open-work belfry to its church and a look-out
tower as warden of the east. Here, as I have
always chosen to suppose, lived La Nencia, that
nymph of the orchards whose loves Lorenzo sang
most excellently well.1 Indeed, I thought that I
had seen her as I passed, in an olive garden, with
a yellow shawl over her head. Over and beyond
Barberino, over the western slope, you can just
see the roofs of Certaldo ; beyond that again,
looking S.-W., sheer across the vale, deep in
1 It is certain, I am bound to confess, that she lived in Barberino di
Mugello, a village in the upper Val di Sieve, near Scarperia. There is
internal evidence. Not only is the poem an admirable burlesque of the
Rispetti daily made in those parts, but the hero of it, " povero Vallera
sventurato " fetches his images from local sources. For instance —
Se mi dicessi, quando Sieve e grossa,
— Gettati dentro : i' mi vi getteria.
This is conclusive.

¦M

L~A<?tew/i^A<^<JA*z<^,yiAmia?i&.^AA?/i^

GREVE AND PESA

117

purple shadows, is San Gimignano, sad little
city, with its thirteen towers clumped together
into seven. Further round towards the south

THE PORTA ROMANA, FLORENCE.

is Poggibonsi, a warm heap of buildings, with
a tower or two. The prospect should please
you. Poggibonsi is a merry town, where I heard

118 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
more laughter in half an hour than in Florence
in a week. It has two fine churches,
Poggibonsi. ,.
externally, and a castello, so ornate
and trim that I suspect it of rifacimento, and
the town of having wasted its pence. The great
church has a Tuscan belfry of the true sort — a
turretted tower; the invariable palladian facade
is stuck against the body of the nave, with the
invariable result that it is misleading seen
from before and ridiculous from any other point
of view. The interior is neo-classical, in the
manner of Santo Spirito at Florence — a plain
cross in shape, with Doric columns and entab
lature, painted grey and white. The result is
ugly but decent. There are some Pollajuolesque
frescoes on the walls, mild, dextrous, and anaemic.
San Domenico, the other church, has nothing
whatever within, and without is sadly encum
bered by buildings. It has an odd, but success
ful belfry — a square trunk carrying pinnacles and
balls at each corner ; out of that a turret with
a cone, and atop of all a brass vane. Corpus
Christi was at hand ; there was great prepara
tion for the feast when I was there : the mer
riest, haphazardest business of tintacks, tinsel,
and turkey-red tassels that ever I saw. I like
better the Piedmont custom, which you may see
in the Alpine villages between Turin and the

v GREVE AND PESA 119
Mont Cenis. There they stick the streets with
green boughs, and carpet the pavement with
flowers, to commemorate the sacrament ; thus
earth is made green and red in honour of earth
made Flesh and Blood.
At the Aquila, a pleasant country inn, I broke
my fast. Commercianti kept me company, and

POGGIBONSI.

roasted the padrona over a dry fire of wit. But
she knew her men. This was part of the meal
— the relish, without which they could not eat
bread. She ran off her list of dishes, with an
apparent hopefulness of tone which her looks
belied. Bistecche ? and she waited. " Leave
them to repair the permanent way." Cotolette
di vitello ? " Dio caro, are there no soldiers in
Poggibonsi ? " There was, in fact, a regiment

120 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
bivouacked in the Piazza San Domenico. The
jokes may have been old, though they were
fired off with gusto ; for each she had a deprecat
ing grin. Manzo bollito, then? She was sure
these signori would be pleased. I waited for the
outcry ; but, by Heaven, they ate it ! The whole
was a great comedy ; and so was it, that one
of my friends called for a clove of garlic, and
industriously wiped his plate and knife with
it before he would suffer his meat to touch
either. My long day ended at Colle, in a rough inn of
the lower town. I have been here many times,
and in all sorts of weather, — for the
place lies at a crossing of four high
roads, — but have never failed to be struck by the
noble appearance of the upper town — a street of tall
palaces, of great gates, and one proud old tower,
lining with a double row the spine of rock. Many
and many a city has fallen gently to decay ; and
some ignobly, like Ravenna, and some beautifully,
like Ferrara. But Colle has met death with
heroism, and so splendid was the craftsmanship
which stood her up, that nothing has fallen yet.
Only the perishable stuff, the wood, plaster, and
mortar, has dropped out : the stone blocks remain
immovable; the huge cornices, mortised into
place, may still be used against the weather.

GREVE AND PESA

121

Sienese by choice, Florentine by fate, below this
street of hers of great houses was fought that

m

****»— L-

THE CASTLE OF POGGIBONSI.

fight between the rival cities where Provenzano
Salvani met his shameful death. It turned on a

122 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
comma. There had been a prediction — Villani
says it was a wile of the Devil's — whispered in
Provenzano's ear: — " Anderai e combatterai,
vincerai, no morrai alia battaglia, e la tua testa
fia la piu alta del campo." To this he trusted.
Thou shalt go up and fight, thou shalt prevail,
not in battle shalt thou die, and may thy head be
highest in the field. Battle was joined in the
valley below; but De Montfort with the Florentines
outnumbered the Ghibellines, outflanked them,
and drove them back into their trenches. There
they stayed, while the others prepared the assault.
And then Cavolino Tolomei, a Sienese exile,
enemy of the house of Provenzano, disguised
himself and went about the trenches, seeking the
captain ; whom, when he had found, he followed
in and out, and leaping upon him in a lonely
place, stabbed him through and through, and cut
off his head, and fixed it high on a lance and bore
it off in full sight of the Sienese. And thus was
fulfilled that lying prophecy, which had been
spoken with this intention, — "Anderai e com
batterai, vincerai no, morrai alia battaglia, e la
tua testa fia la piu alta del campo " ; Thou shalt go
up and fight, thou shalt prevail not, in battle shalt
thou die, and may thy head be highest in the field.
He did not prevail, in battle he died, and his head
was high above all others. Then it was that the

GREVE AND PESA

123

Sienese fled and were massacred as they flew;
and then also Sapia, that virago of party, who

PORTA ROMANA FROM OUTSIDE.

had watched from her tower the havoc of her
own countrymen with beastly delight, turned her
burning face to God and cried out at Him —

124 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.v
" Henceforth I fear Thee no more ! " Dante
gives her a flick as he passes her.
Savia non fui, avvegna che Sapia
Fossi chiamata,
the lady confesses herself. Pier Pettignano saved
her by prayer.1
1 He sold combs on the bridge at Pisa, and was a famous fakir of
Siena.

POGGIO IMPERIALE, FLORENCE.

CHAPTER VI
volterra to the south: massa marittima
I must fetch backwards from this point, and pick
up my line at Volterra, whence I pushed on farther
into the south part of Tuscany, nor rested until I
had touched its uttermost limit at Orbetello.
I consider Semifonte to have been the fairest
city in Tuscany, because I have never seen it.
Next to that I had been accustomed . Pomarance.
to place Pomarance, partly because it
also I had never seen, partly because of its
fragrant name. If it be a habit peculiar to poets
to mistake names for things,1 then I am a poet;
for it was impossible for me to suppose that a
place called Pomarance could be other than
exquisite. Hereby I was betrayed into a fatuity
which I shall not attempt to conceal. Instead
of going on from Colle to Siena, and from Siena
to the south, securing by these means not only
1 But is by no means so. The vice is common to politicians, tacti
cians, and the religious. 1 25

126 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
a good road but also a sight of San Galgano,
what must I needs do but chase this Fata
Morgana of a Pomarance ? Folly of a fool !
The little place, which from a distance seems
coloured like a Killarney rose, is a very good
sort of town, but only in one sense out of the
way. That, it undoubtedly is. For, first of
all, you have those dread leagues over chasmy
mud to pass — Spicchiaiola, the Monte della
Torre, Bevis of Hampton's blood-coloured cliff;
then the abhorred climb beneath the walls of
Volterra. I saw the place, as vast and inert in
the sun as it had been of old in drizzling fog.
Again I saw severe maids in felt hats, sickles in
girdle ; again I felt my hairs on end. Within
sight of the fatal gate — at the Garibaldi monu
ment — you turn and go down a sloping road
into the valley. And far ahead of you rose-
coloured Pomarance, in Emerson's pretty phrase,
" sweetly torments us with invitations to its own
inaccessible home."
To be perfectly plain, as dull a little town
as you may wish to avoid is the Pomarance of
practice, but it is set upon a fine brae, and
commands a view of others as fine or finer. In
particular, the view of Volterra impresses itself
upon the memory. Many a city (notably
Montepulciano) makes a grander flight into the

VI

MASSA MARITTIMA

127

clouds, but none shows more strength, none
seems more charged with fate. The country side,
over which your eye must needs roam, adds to
the impressiveness — so vacant, so weather-cursed
it is. There is also to be seen, at eight miles'
distance, Rocca Sillana, that massive castle alone
upon a hill, from whose keep you may survey the

whole length and breadth of Tuscany: I speak
as a fool, for I have not tested it. Sir Henry
Layard certifies as to the length, for he says
that your range extends from the Apennines into
Umbria. Local report adds a sight of both seas.
After this there is climbing to be done:
Vassi in Sanleo, e discendesi in Noli ;
Montasi su Bismantova in cacume
Con esso i pie ; ma qui convien ch' uom voli . . .

128 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
It is much an affair of that sort. You climb a
great circular hill-road by cliffs of shining mica ;
The way you l°°k across a gorge to a pyramidal
to Massa. rock ^e denuded core, doubtless, of a
volcano), wooded from base to point, and see
atop of it the invariable frontier castle, a warden
of the western sea for the prince-bishops of
Volterra. Upon the top of the next hill you will
have a full view of Lardarello and the boracic
acid works — if such you desire — and, more
picturesque, of Monte Cerbole, a little round
and walled village capping justly its mountain.
Its mountain is isolated, set in the middle of a
glen ; behind it a broad down rises equably to
the sky-line. There is nothing in this eyrie of
savages to distinguish it from any other. You
may count such places by scores and fifties ;
withal, they never fail to stir the pulse. An odd
thing about them is this, that whereas they are on
a much lower level than the Apennine villages,
they carry altogether more weight. Fivizzano,
for instance, in the Garfagnana, is walled and
towered, and fulfils the top of a rock, just as
this Monte Cerbole. Yet Monte Cerbole, Roc
castrada, Radicofani, and others like them are
horrific ; Fivizzano, San Marcello, " picturesquely
situate," to quote a favourite phrase of Herr
Baedeker's. One reason, I take it, may be that

vi MASSA MARITTIMA 129
these Volterran hills are all volcanic; they are
more abrupt; the towns upon them gain value,
and seem (as they actually are) more inac
cessible than those of the mountainous north.
The Apennines make architecture a ridiculous
pretence ; but among these downs, to continue
the sheer of a cliff some fifty or a hundred feet is
to achieve something.1 One more of these savage
nests, and I have done with them for the present.
Castelnuovo in Val di Cecina is the last of them
upon the stage to Massa Marittima; the last of
them, and as good as any — a stern, ruddy village,
rising in steps up the rock of its foundation,
charged to overflowing with tangle-haired women
and children, fierce and wild. They herd and
clamber about you with yells ; or they watch you,
bold-eyed, from their doors. Life here is that of
one great family. All must have common blood,
for there can be none which has not been mingled
in the isolation of hundreds of years. Not a
door, as I passed, but was wide open ; not a
window had a pane of glass in it. A huddle of
stone byres, I assure you — a life lived here with
out privacy or the desire of it. Marriage-bed,
child-bed, sick-bed, death-bed, and upon each
1 In the same way Salisbury Plain makes Stonehenge a foolishness.
But imagine those ranked boulders in Hyde Park. They would look
monstrously. Salisbury Plain is on far too great a scale.
vol. n K

130 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
in turn the eyes of whoso pleased to turn them
that way. Why not? For all that, some ten
paces removed from the last hovel in the
street, under a knotty old thorn-tree, I saw
a youth courting a maid retired from the
rest. She looked down at her fingers rest
less in her lap ; he bent his head to whisper
in her ear. One does whisper then in the
Tuscan hills ! I had imagined one stormed, not
wooed, a girl.
Aweary of volcanoes and abrupt, dreary
villages, the reader will be as glad as I am to
Massa consider a town of pretence. Massa
Marittima. Marittima, when you reach it, — and
the ways are long to do that, — will approve itself
worthy your sore feet, though the wise Dennis
did not think so.1 It is old, it has a magnificent
church, it is on the edge of a plain and a shore
peopled thick with memories. Hereby were
Populonia, Vetulonia, Ansedonia, Talamon. But
hear old Fazio :
. . . vedi piana
Con altri colli la Maremma tutta,
Dilettevole molto e poco sana.
Ivi e Massa, Grosseto, e la distrutta

1 Massa Marittima was one of the few cities of the Maremma which
betrayed him out of his urbanity. "A mean, dirty place," says he,
" without an inn." He speaks of its " dreary dulness," and prefers the
mosquitoes of Follonica. I don't agree with him at all.

vi MASSA MARITTIMA 131
Civitavecchia, ed ivi Populonia
Ch' appena pare, tanto e mal condutta,
La e ancora dove fu Ansedonia,
La e la cava dove andar a torme
Si crede i tristi, ovvero le demonia.
Well might the honest man believe that troops
of devils rode shrieking through the night. The
view of the Maremma which you get from the
citadel of Massa shows you a flat plain of un
speakable desolation. In Fazio's day — as in
Dennis's — it was thick in a jungle of scrub and
brushwood. Dante tells you :
Non han si aspri sterpi ne si folti,
Quelle fiere selvagge che in odio hanno,
Tra Cecina e Corneto i luoghi colti.1
To my own mind it looks infinitely more hag
ridden now than any wooded prospect could ever
look. However, I must not anticipate what I
was destined to see of it in a few days' time.
Let me return to Massa Marittima.
The city occupies the western slopes and the
1 Dennis says that it was thick with wood when he first saw it in
1847. "The boar, the roebuck, the buffalo, and wild cattle" lurked in
it in those days. Everything was then in a state of primitive nature ; a
dense wood ran wild over the plain ... a tall underwood of tamarisk,
lentiscus, myrtle, dwarf cork-trees . . . fostered by the heat and moisture
into an extravagant luxuriance, and matted together by parasitical plants
of various kinds."
There is nothing of this now, of course. The brakes are all cut down,
some of the land is under the plough ; but the soil is so poor that very
little rewards the husbandman.

132 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap,
top of a long and very steep hill, and consists of
one serpentine street which turns upon itself
three times before it reaches the citadel. Thus
it happens that the back door of the inn is in the
first stretch of the spiral, and that to reach the
front door you must either ascend some sixty
steps or walk a quarter of a mile. Here and
there precipices are to be discovered between
the houses, and stepped ways up them, which
give short cuts to the stout of heart. But,
naturally, such traffic as there is — and there is
next to none — must work its way round and
round about. In the long course of this one
street you will discover some fine buildings : a
Palazzo del Podesta, a Palazzo Comunale, a really
noble church, one of the very best in the south
of Tuscany, a Gothic washing-place, and atop of
all the Citadel. Ruined palaces there are in
abundance, of the true, inscrutable southern kind ;
Sienese in type, effect, and material — grey stone,
namely, plain and heavy, flat-fronted, with a
pian nobile of Venetian windows.
In one of these was born the raciest saint in
the calendar, and by all accounts the most free-
a great spoken — San Bernardino of Siena,
Massetan birth. nQ Jess a man> j ^^ ^^ h()w.
ever, that the Massetani can claim more of him
than to have cradled him, and to have given him

VI

MASSA MARITTIMA

i33

a mother. His father, Tollo di Dino di Baldo
Albizeschi, was a Sienese gentleman of family ;
Nera di Bernardino di Ranieri Avveduti of
Massa was his mother. Orphaned at five years
old, he was taken to Siena to live with his aunt

MASSA MARITTIMA.

of the mother's side, Donna Diana, and only
returned to Massa to sell his belongings. One
more connection with his birthplace he had. It
was a Massetano — Padre Galgano — who. in 1402
admitted him into the Franciscan order. He
said his first mass in 1404. A man of extra
ordinary burning zeal he was, as all the world
knows, of native pungency, and of sound political

134 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
sagacity. He did, indeed, far more than Savona
rola, who had no sagacity at all, and really
more than Saint Catherine, his countrywoman,
who had a great deal. For if she moved the
Pope, he moved Christendom, and has moved it
ever since. The tale of his invention of the
divine monogram may be fable x — though I see
no reason to suppose it so: that he used it in
his mission is entirely true. Its success was
as remarkable as his own; since the invention,
or introduction, of the rosary there has never
been so moving a device. You may say, " A
formula the more." I am not at all concerned
to deny it. The world was ruled by formulas
before J. -J. Rousseau and his friends set about
to destroy them; and just as much as he did
but substitute new formulas for old ones, so the
world is still ruled by them since Jean-Jacques
died and was buried. Is not the Cross itself a
formula? Nay, have we not been driven to
contrive higher formulas yet ? And, to put it
at its lowest, that is a wise man and a statesman
who can found a formula and carry it through.
1 It is very well known. San Bernardino made so many converts by
his preaching that he ruined those sort of men and women who live on
the vicious. One of these — a maker of dice he was — came to see him,
with his grievance that what was fish to the preacher's net was starvation
to his. Bernardino thereupon traced out the I. H. S. upon a stone, and
bade him make tablets with that upon them instead of his deuce, ace, and
tray. And so he did.

vi MASSA MARITTIMA 135
For by such the world has always been wagged,
and there seems to be no other way.
If the palaces of Massa recall Siena, the
cathedral church of San Cerbone 1 is nearer the
great model of Lucca. There is Mass? church|
none to approach its grandeur in witll0Ut
Siena. It is in shape a severely long and plain
basilica, with a triply-arcaded facade, an arcaded
side, with a clerestory in black and white bars. It
has a lead cupola — which is like Siena — upon an
octagon of brick, a square stone belfry with a
conical cap of pink brick ; and out of this belfry
pushes and flourishes a fig-tree. The facade is
fantastic but perfectly successful. I have said
that there are three arcades of round arches ; and
it is true. But the uppermost arcade is deeper
than the others, and behind it you may discover a
true Gothic window with flamboyant tracery. Italy
at large has the secret of this composite building
which breaks all the rules and looks beautiful.
The colour here is as variegated as a spring
parterre — warm pink, French grey, pale lemon-
yellow, black, lichen-gilt stone. Severity, age,
permanence: think of their value in a yeasty
little state such as this where parties change as

1 Dennis, perversely out of touch with this place, calls it "a neat
edifice," which it precisely is not. Not Lassels, who applied it to Siena
church, made worse choice of an adjective.

136 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
the wind veers, and to-day you embrace Siena,
and to-morrow you spring at her throat. Chris
tianity, the Church, the Faith — these three, who
then were one, never changed, though Popes
raised armies and burned and pillaged like
condottieri. All Italy, I say, had the secret of
this ; but only Tuscany had the great way of
doing it. You cannot accuse Ligurian archi
tecture of style ; nor Venetian architecture when
it takes such forms, for instance, as the Santo of
Padua. But Pisa, Lucca, this Massa Marittima
— they compel your admiration, partly by effron
tery, but mainly by character. And character in
a man is style in art.
Inside, this church is still splendid in its old
age. Pale old Sienese frescoes — dreamy Madon
nas, languishing: saints and angels,
and within. ° & ° '
knights on horseback, hawks and
greyhounds — are still on the walls. Even Dennis
admired the baptismal font. He says it is made
of one block of stone, and very likely it is. At
any rate it is large enough to swim or drown in,
has a beautiful scroll-work screen of iron round
about it, and ancient carvings upon its four
sides — semi- Byzantine things, where the waves of
Jordan fall like a cope over the Saviour's shoulders ;
and for its feet lions mangling prostrate lambs.
A date, 1267, is upon it. The church itself was

VI

MASSA MARITTIMA

137

built in Bishop Albert's time in 1225. At the
west end there are also carvings in black basalt:
grotesque, dwarfed images of holy persons, earlier
in date by the look of them, and not unlike those
figures of Roland and Oliver which one remembers
at Verona.

THE PIAZZA, MASSA MARITTIMA.
The church and palaces of Government are at
the second turn of the spiral, upon an outpushing
spur of the hill, called 1' Oriolo. The citadel—
Below them is the public fountain— Monte Eegio.
a deep and broad tank under Gothic arches, like
Fontebranda at Siena. To reach the citadel,
which was the castle of the bishops when they

138 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
lorded it here,1 you must climb the last third of
the spiral, to the top of the hill which is called
Monte Regio. If you do this you will find what
I believe, and Dennis unwillingly admits, to have
been the original Etruscan town : Vetulonia or
another, all's one now. There is here, to all
intents and purposes, a separate town behind
walls. A great square tower rises in the midst —
the bishop's rock of offence. The walls are built
in courses of stone and tufa ; but Dennis says —
and no doubt he is right — the blocks are not big
enough to be Etruscan. There is therefore
nothing but tradition to go upon in this matter of
Etruscan Massa ; but I shall refer you to Dennis,
if you don't know him already — a mature old
Scots gentleman, an enthusiast and .a great
scholar, you will find him. His book is one of
the few good ones written about Tuscany.
A great and broad view of the Maremma,
misty purple when I saw it, brooding but not
unkindly, shows the traveller whither he must
tend on the morrow if he wishes to find
Grosseto.
1 See the Appendix to this chapter for an outline of Massa's history.

vi MASSA MARITTIMA 139

APPENDIX
HISTORIES of massa marittima
There are two histories of this little nation — a political, which
is worthless, and a domestic, which is tragic, and might be of
the highest instruction. But its only historian — an industrious
Dottore Luigi Petrocchi — has heard the drums and trumpets
too kindly to have much of an ear left for the groanings of the
poor. Massa was always the seat, and by degrees became the
principality of a bishop ; and so remained until the first
quarter of the thirteenth century, when Bishop Albert, falling
heavily into debt, pawned to the Massetani their own liberties
and immunities. There was a relapse for a few years, but the
city acted as a full-fledged republic in 1225. Its first outside
struggles were with the highland chiefs round about it —
notably with the Pannocchieschi, and Aldobrandeschi of Santa
Fiora, very notable and puissant ruffians — as to whom Mr.
William Heywood has much of interest to report in his
Ensamples of Fra Filippo (pp. 205 sqq.). This was the
way of all Tuscan communes. The Massetani prevailed
against some of them. In 1232 Ranuccio di Guglielmo
and Ildebrandino di Malpollione with their following became
citizens en bloc. Thus, having sowed peace outside the walls,
they had to reap discord within, and were driven into the
camp of this or that stronger nation according as the winds
blew at home. They leagued with Pisa against Florence,
with Florence against Pisa and Castruccio ; they sided with
Volterra against San Gimignano ; they joined the Ghibelline
League, the Guelf League ; but on the whole they remained
loyal to Siena and the Emperor, and, borrowing money
from that state, were taken into what was virtually a servitude.
In the fall of Siena Massa was involved, and so severe
had been the yoke upon them that the. Massetani were the

140 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
first subject-state of the Sienese dominion to submit to
Cosimo of Florence. With the weight of his heavy, but
fatherly hand upon them, their political history stops short
at this point.
But neither Cosimo, who was a just man, nor Francis, who
was not unkindly, could help Massa against her real and
constant enemy. Long before the Medici rule, long before
the Sienese, had reached its harvest, the Maremma had begun
to levy tribute. The marshes encroached upon the hill, the
jungle rotted year by year. Minotaur that it was, it demanded
a yearly tribute of youth, and got it. Repetti shows that in
1428 the population of the city had fallen to 400 lost souls.
What it must have been in 1560 one cannot imagine ; accord
ing to Dr. Petrocchi, in 1737, when Gian Gastone's wig was
taken off, there were only 26 poderi in cultivation in all the
contado, and no more than 527 persons alive within the walls.
The saw ran in that time —
Va' a Massa ; guardala e passa.
The Lorrainers finally saved the place, after one false
start. Francis III., thinking population was the needful
thing, colonised Massa with 146 families from the Rhine
country, 600 souls in all. Land, corn, a yoke of oxen,
were given to each household, which was bidden then
to thrive and replenish the earth. There seemed to those
poor Rhinelanders only one way to do that, which was to die :
that they did with extraordinary rapidity. One by one their
houses were left empty. They perished utterly : left no
descendants, says Repetti. The two Leopolds really brought
salvation in by draining the swamps and letting in the hill-
torrents. The Ghirlanda bog, the Ronna, the Pozzajone, the
Venella were all ditched and emptied ; but Leopold II. had
to get the horrible lagoon of Piombino pumped before he
could cut his drains. And here is Repetti's table of popula
tion to speak for the house of Lorraine :

VI

MASSA MARITTIMA

141

In 1640 there were 165 families of 586 souls
.. :745 >, 145 » 442 „
» l833 „ 457 » 2482 „
„ 1839 „ 446 „ 2840 „
It is these peaceful feats of the Lorrainers that make men
still regret the days of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany.

gf mm d

A SHRINE, PONTE VECCHIO.

CHAPTER VII
GROSSETO AND THE COAST ROAD: ORBETELLO
I have reason to believe that, had I gone from
Massa to Follonica, from Follonica to Grosseto, I
should have been better justified in
Choice of roads. ,
heading this chapter as 1 have. 1
should have got more sea and more of a coast
road ; but I should also have got more sand,
which seems incredible. For the benefit of the
adventurous, however, I say that there is such a
road, three times as long as the other, not always
carriageable, but giving you Follonica to inspect,
and the pineta to traverse — both of which I
missed. What did I gain ? Possibly something
in the matter of roads, though it was mighty little,
for a three-quarter wind was raging which blew
the grit in my face and smothered up the marshes
in grey smoke. What else? Nothing, upon
my honour, but a few hours more in Grosseto,
and a nearer view of the Maremma Grossetana.
This did not strike me, though it was forlorn
142

chap, vn GROSSETO — ORBETELLO 143
enough, as being so arid as the Pisan marshes;
and certainly it held none of the sinister menace

NEAR ORBETELLO.

of the Volterran wilderness. It is cut up, as the
Lincolnshire Fens are, into large fields with

144 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
grass dykes and ditches between them. A cer
tain amount of land is under the plough ; cattle
and sheep feed some off; a good deal of grass
had been put up for hay, which was being
carried when I was there — on the 24th of
May. No doubt it is infected land : there are
no villages anywhere in sight, and such tene
ments as there are — railway stations and the
like — have wire gauze over the windows. The
mosquito's bite, they say now, is death. It may
have been a mosquito that killed young Pia de'
Tolomei, whose life and death the critics are
denying with one accord. They rave.1 There
is a range of low hills — the Monti d' Alma —
which you must cross, driving my way to Gros
seto. La Pia's prison stood just at the foot of
these, facing north. The Castello di Pietra it is
called ; but it lay far from my road, with none of
its own, so I never saw it. Here in these
swamps, amid standing pools and tangled brakes,
sterile breadths of reed, out of sight or call of man,
she than whom Siena had made nothing more
fair, grew hollow-cheeked and filmy-eyed, and
very ready for Death when he had pity upon her.
1 This is one of those fruitless, empty exercises so much in vogue at the
present. Francesca's age, La Pia's marriages, Beatrice's substance : how
in the name of Wonder can such things matter? Dante, the author (as far
as we are concerned) of their being, has provided for all these things.
I adhere to Keats' dictum in these matters.

VII

GROSSETO — ORBETELLO 145

Beautiful, poignant, slim figure of a young girl,
carved immortal in one line :
Siena mi fe, disfecemi Maremma.
It is after passing these hills that the Grossetan
Maremma, strictly speaking, begins. It is not
near so wide as ours in Lincolnshire,
for you are never out of sight of the
hills ; but it is excessively miserable. I think we
scarcely passed more than one substantial house :
the rest were hovels. One such I do remember
— Monte Pescali by name, a villa of pretence,
standing, cypress-girt, upon a little hill, with a
carriage-drive, flower-beds, and many statues
gleaming in groves of ilex and myrtle. A palazzo
it was called by a little boy of whom I inquired
its name. After this, enormous plains opened on
either hand, some broken up, some left fallow, in
which the great dun cattle stood motionless, each
apart from other, staring into space. Whether
they were wild or tame I know not : they were a
forbidding spectacle. At last, half-hidden in a
clump of trees, I descried Grosseto, and was
thankful. It has prosperity, it has many industries, a
brisk air of business, a first-rate inn — the Stella
d' Italia, one of the best in Tuscany1 — but it has
1 Here Dennis agrees with my ruling. He lays it down as the best
inn between Pisa and Rome. I would go further, and say that I only

146 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
lost the picturesque. It has rebuilt its Palazzo
Comunale in the most modern antique. I hardly
remember a villa on the Riviera as its parallel.
Harsh red brick, pointed to death with white
plaster; thin, exaggerated battlements which
could not withstand a boy's catapult; painted
mouldings — but enough. The Cathedral is no

THE FERRY ROAD TO ORBETELLO.

better. An extremely ancient site, a finely severe
shape, once of striped marble (of which some few
bars remain), it has been coated in and out with
plaster, and painted in stripes of red and yellow.
These mimic the hue but not the tone, nor of
course the quality, of the marbles which lie under-
know one to approach it between Genoa and Rome — the Croce di Malta
at Spezzia. But inns have their traditions. From what Dennis says, the
excellence of the Stella d' Italia goes with the good-will of the house.

VII

GROSSETO — ORBETELLO 147

neath all this rubbish, awaiting the general
resurrection.1 Leaving Grosseto, your road is never far from
the sea, and at Orbetello, as it seems, takes you
bodily into it. For a small portion of To Orbetello :
your course, a range of low limestone Talamone-
hills, lies between you and it: the Monti dell'
Uccellina is the name of them, at whose southern
extremity you behold Talamone standing in the
water — a heap of pale ruin. Here was the place
where Telamon the companion of Jason upon
the Argo may or may not have set up his rest ;
what is certain is that the Sienese, among many
crack-brained projects, had one of making it
their Leghorn. Sapia, sending messages by
Dante , from her toilsome way up the Hill of
1 There is little or nothing to be said here of the history of Grosseto.
The Counts of Sovana (Aldobrandeschi) had it under the Emperor, and
sub-enfeoffed a kinsman, whose descendants held it until the thirteenth
century. In 1224 the Sienese sacked and possessed themselves of it ;
save for a very few years — from the death of Frederick II. to the morrow
of Montaperto, when there was a republic of Grosseto under Grossetan
consuls — it depended upon Siena, and with that city fell to Cosimo.
The real history, as in Massa's case, began with the tussle of the Grand
Dukes and the Marshes. The first three Medici did much, the remainder
let all go to ruin ; so the Lorrainers had to begin again. What the two
Leopolds accomplished — in the banking' of the Ombrone and poldering of
the accursed Pescaja of Castiglione, may be read at large in Repetti (s.v.) ;
and fine reading it is for those who see in this kind of warfare the real
heroism which it involves. Here are his figures :
In 1640 there were 238 families of 1340 souls
» 1745 » 2I2 » M „
» 1833 .. 452 .. 2321 »

148 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
Purgation to her kinsfolk upon earth, tells him
where to look for them.
Tu li vedrai, she says, tra quella gente vana
Che spera in Talamone, e perderagli
Piii di speranza che a trovar la Diana ;
Ma piu vi metteranno gli ammiragli.
Bitter scorn, all. this: — "You will find them
among that windy folk who trust in Talamone,
and will lose more good hope there than in
digging for Diana — and their admirals will lose
yet more." The Diana was that supposed
underground river for which the Sienese were
always groping under their hill ; but even that
was a more hopeful scheme than to deepen the
Ombrone and cut a navigable waterway from
Siena to it, and from it to Talamone. The
houses that huddle there were once called a city;
the broken mole once made a haven. A few
poor fevered wretches linger there now; and the
bay is so choked with silt and weed that, accord
ing to Dennis, there is scarcely water enough to
float a coasting steamer in. You cross a couple of
creeks by ferry-boats — one before Talamone, one
after it. The second of them is the Albegna,
and marks what was the southern extremity of
Tuscany until the Congress of Vienna in 1814.
A little fortress on the further bank is testimony
of that. For Orbetello and that delta of land

vn GROSSETO — ORBETELLO 149
between the Albegna and the Fiora formed the
Presidij — the last garrison of the Empire in Italy.
Not all the Medici strength in Cosimo I., nor any
of their guile in his successors, could get that
away from the Kings of Spain, or of Naples, their
successors in this inheritance. However, it was
Tuscan for more than half a century, though

THE FRONTIER FORT IN THE MAREMMA.
there is little enough show of it there now. From
opposite Talamone until you cross the draw
bridge, by which alone access is possible, you see
it beyond you, lying as it seems in the sea;
behind it rises the Monte Argentario, a rocky,
green-clad island of two peaks. On the further
promontory of the mainland lay — and there still
lies ruined — Ansedonia, a great Etruscan city.
Orbetello, in fact, lies upon a sandy isthmus

150 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
connecting Italy with Monte Argentario. What
once was sea on either hand has been enclosed
by the action of wind and tide into two lagoons.1
Strange, amphibian little place that it is — half
fortress, half fishing village. It had great
strength once — so much is evident in
Orbetello. . °
its double line of defence, the ports
and antiports. Traces of the Spanish occupancy
are not awanting. Fountains, statues, obelisks,
carry the castles and lions upon escutcheons,
and pompous ascriptions to Carlos and Philip
and Ferdinand below them. There is a certain
excess of plaster-magnificence in building which
is unlike Tuscany. Audacity was a mark of the
Cinquecento, tawdry luxuriance of the Seicento;
but to swagger and strut in plaster was never
a Tuscan foible. It may be coincidence, or
it may be an evidence of blood, but it is the
fact that in the poor, pretentious church of
this town the altars are adorned with dolls
in glass cases exactly as you find them in
Spain. I did not remark any pronounced
Spanish type in the inhabitants : nobody was
superbly idle enough, nobody stared at me as
if I were at once curious and beneath contempt,
1 There are therefore three isthmuses, so to speak. Orbetello stands
upon the first formed of them. The others were no doubt made by the
same agents as had made the first.

VII

GROSSETO — ORBETELLO 151

nobody was to be seen chasing a woman as if she
were his natural prey; many wore rags, but
none as if they were a mantle-royal. No : the
Orbetellani were as busy, playful, hungry and
patient, as fond of their children and little dogs,

ORBETELLO.

as decorous without care to be so, as apt to dis
play and as deprived of the means to do it, as
any of their lovable kindreds on the mainland.
It may be true that their Toscanity dates but
from the nineteenth century; they had been
Tuscans aforetime without knowing it.
They say that the two salt-water lagoons are
unwholesome, and I daresay they are. . They are

152 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
blue, however, and laugh as innumerably as ever
the waves of the ^Egean ; and they are full of
large fish. , In the creeks and inlets are many
little flat-bottomed boats wherein to adventure
them. Dennis says that the fishing is done by
night, with torches and spears. They " burn the
water," in fact. I did not see any such thing;
but an old man, whose acquaintance I made over
a pipe, told me that a good deal was net-work.
Lines they had, and stake-nets. He said that
the fish were poor eating, and the bigger they
were the poorer they were. The little ones,
however, were excellent — a kind of whitebait.
He showed me portions of the old walls : roba
antichissima, he said, roba etrusca. And then,
pointing his hand southwards to a headland,
" See," said he, " the ancient city of Ansedonia :
a wonderful place, by all accounts." It was like
a misty blot in the blue — little or nothing to be
seen. I asked him about Orbetello: he confessed
it a miserable lodging. The winds cut it all to
pieces in the winter,. and the sea very often broke
through the sandy bar. In the summer it was
full of fever. By talking about it he seemed to
become suddenly aware of its ill-fortune. He
looked wildly about him, then at me. " Che
brutto paese ! " he said, " cursed by the water,
cursed by , the land ! " He nodded his head :

VII

GROSSETO — ORBETELLO

153

" Brutto ! brutto paese ! " He lived there, he
added, because he had been born there. He was
a fisherman: out yonder — he pointed across the
lagoon to a reed-encumbered strip — were his nets.
In the public gardens I saw palm trees and

ORBETELLO.

women with children; and I conversed with the
gardener. He knew, his business, I found out,
though it is none of our business who garden at-
home ; for he saw me pulling snails off his carna
tions and seemed to wonder what I was about.
But he showed me feats of his which were beyond
my powers : cannas and cactuses, to wit, growing
like weeds in the open. His carnations would

r54 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.vh
have been excellent if the snails had not been
more excellent ; his roses, which he succeeded in
growing under trees, were by no means bad ; his
stocks grew like saplings ; his verbenas and phloxes
were flowering shrubs. In lilies I think I could
have beaten him ; he could not grow delphiniums
— I could only pity his attempt towards it ; his
bamboos, as he admitted, were vexed by the salt-
gales. He knew not the name of hollyhock. We
sized each other up, boasted of what we could
and extenuated what we must. He presented
me with a nosegay; we parted on very good
terms, he to his watering, I to the garlicky inn
and a night with the fauna of Orbetello. It is a
poor and dull little town, in sooth. I can only
promise the traveller such comfort as may accrue
from lying in mid-lagoon between Ansedonia and
Talamone, cities of Etruria. For the rest, he will
be capered over by fleas, and will toss under the
shadow of mosquitoes' wings. There is little else.
Orbetello is a name of some pretence ; it has few
diversions and a bad inn — and there's no more
to say.

CHAPTER VIII
ACROSS COUNTRY  GROSSETO TO SIENA
To the landlord of the Stella d' Italia at Gros
seto I owe many things — cool and sun-guarded
chambers, wine and pasta of the best, Ataieofmy
a sunk marble bath and abundance landlord-
of water, the sight of his hairless dog, and the
attendance of his handsome serving-maid ; but
for one thing I cannot praise him. As a guide
to the roads of his country he is not only in
competent, but believes himself . the contrary.
Of the three ways from Grosseto to Siena — one
good, one bad, one impossible — he stoutly re
commended the last.1 He said that he himself
1 The high-road*, which is (for Southern Tuscany) excellent, goes by
Monte Pescali, Roccastrada and Chjusdino, the two last being fine hill-
towns — Roccastrada one of the very finest. I have only seen it from a
distance^ Close to Chmsdino is -the ruined Cistercian abbey of San Galgano
— the model (never approached) of Gothic building in all the Sienese
dominion. An alternative road is to follow that by which I. was induced
to adventure as far as Paganico, thence to.Montalcino and Buonconvento.
Here you join the Via Romana, and have a -good level course to the gate
of Siena. Montalcino is the great attraction. Qf this £oad. Mine gave me
little but a fired brake and an appetite. 155

156 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
always used it, that it was shorter than the others
by some eighteen miles, that it had poca salita
and little dust, that it was in excellent repair.
In short, it was madness to go by any other.
The truth is that it is the route of the crows when
they wish to go to Siena; it is a dead straight;
over hill over dale, thorough bush thorough briar.
It is not to be mistook; for when you see a
mountain before you, you know you must scale it,
and when an abyss yawns, you know you must
leap down. There is no dust, it is true, for most
of it is at the height where super-terrestrial winds
rage from one peak to another; but it is fur
rowed by the channels of winter torrents. It is
not graded, not engineered in any way. It is, as
I say, a track marked out by the droppings of
crows as they wing a flight to the North from
the pickings of dead cattle in the Maremma.
Possibly the shepherds of the Garfagnana use it,
as they feed their way to their own mountain
pastures in the summer — it is nothing to them,
to the crags upon which they perch, or the zigzag
paths over which they go barefoot. But to Flor
entine horses, or automobiles of France, it is a
deadly enterprise.
Your few gains may be counted on the fingers
of your right hand : a derelict mountain village
or two, a view of Roccastrada upon your left

viii GROSSETO TO SIENA 157
hand and of Montalcino on your right —
Montalcino and that great range of hills, Monte

ROCCASTRADA.

Amiata, Monte Labbro, Monte Civitella, and the
rest, which divide the Ombrone from the Orcia.

158 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
This, of course, is something; and something is
the woodland nature of the road. These hills —
for you cross the chain upon which Roccastrada
stands — are densely wooded, and their only deni
zens are charcoal-burners, their dogs and their
cattle ; and the only buildings their squat kilns.
I don't forget Paganico — that is great gain,
nor the view of Siena. To those only I address
myself. From Grosseto to Batignano the road presents
the usual features of the Maremma Grossetana —
of which I, for one, have had more
 mt ' than enough. It passes nearly, but
does not discover, the site of the Etruscan city of
Rusellse ; 1 Batignano itself, a cheerless little rock
village of grey and russet, is the only haunt of
men in all this region. Then, after an up and
down woodland road, very English, being mostly
grown with oak and hornbeam, you see in front
of you Paganico — that, too, like an English walled
hamlet — red brick with a red church and square
tower, not unlike Old Basing in Hants, with ivied
walls of defence broken in many places. It
stands upon a ridge of the land, and in the valley
below it the Ombrone runs between woody banks,
1The intrepid Dennis fought his way to Rusellae through a jungle so
dense that he had to cut it with bill and axe. It is on the steep wooded
hill of Moscona; some two miles off the road on the right. • -

vm GROSSETO TO SIENA 159
crisply over a pebble beach, and takes to itself a

ROCCASTRADA.

rbrook called Gretano. But the Ombrone is by
,no means like an English river; its colour is

160 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
peacock-green, its wave is semi-opaque, and its
winter course too furious for our level and com
fortable land.
Nor is Paganico English by any means the
moment you are within the great gateway, which
still stands, with its fellow at the other end of the
street. It is built a square — about the size, let
us say, of the Piazza Annunziata at Florence —
within double walls, and has been arcaded all
round in its days of prosperity. The houses
are tumbling this way and that, there is hardly a
window with unbroken glass. The pavements —
for the whole was once paved — have been broken
up, weeds alone flourish at Paganico ; there are
no shops, no signs of wheeled traffic, very few
people, and, worst sign of all in Tuscany, very
few children. One prosperous house in the
whole place could I see — a whitewashed house
with a wall of its own and an iron gate, through
which I made out a flowery terrace and some
orange-trees in tubs.
These are signs that Paganico has fallen on
evil days, that it has known greater. Some one
of the Pannocchieschi clan had it under Sienese
suzerainty; a shield of their arms is still to be
seen outside the church ; but its position made it
important. It was fortified by the Frati Umiliati,
— a warlike body of religious, chamberlains,

vni GROSSETO TO SIENA 161
ex officio, of Siena — and many times besieged,
once by Castruccio himself.1 Then, when the
Medici had it, it was created a Marquessate for
Don Antonio, called by that name — I mean the
lad whom Bianca Capello, a barren wife, bought
in the Via del Fosso. Other Marquesses — the
Patrizii of Siena, a great family — it knew. But
now they are as dead as Adonais, and very
soon Paganico will mingle dust with them.
Last of it to go, I predict, will be the church,
a sturdy, squared rectangle of brick, with the
English tower aforesaid. That this has been a
well-adorned place in days long past and over,
may be due to a miraculous crucifix which still
hangs there behind a curtain, and has done
wonders among the people within the last thirty
years, as various tablets record. " Most ancient,
most venerable is the image of the Crucified
carved in wood, which is adored in the parish
1 It was iu 1328, the last year of his life, and as busy as any. He
had subdued a rising in Pisa in the spring of the year ; he stayed a
serious attack of the Florentines upon Pistoja in September, whereof he
died. But in August he had dashed out southward to assist the Pan
nocchieschi snatch Monte Massi in the Maremma from the Sienese ;
Paganico lay in his road, — which was mine the other day, — so he raised his
engines of war about it and very shortly had it at his discretion. He
succeeded also at Monte Massi, but being called off suddenly to Pistoja, was
forced to leave it. The Sienese, helped by Florence, had it again after a
brisk assault, and were highly elated at their success. That fine equestrian
figure painted in the Palazzo Pubblico — Guido Riccio of Modena upon a
much-housed horse — commemorates the exploit. See the Appendix to
this chapter for the death of Castruccio.
VOL. II M

162 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
church of Paganico, and can be traced there into
the thirteenth century " ; so says the severe Repetti
with unwonted warmth. He adds that there are
about its altar pictures by Taddeo di Bartolo,
which I confess I didn't see there. I saw a
pretty Benvenuto di Giovanni over the west
door, and a whole chapelful of Lorenzettesque
frescoes in the choir — Nativity, Epiphany,
Weighing of Souls, Last fudgment — with no
particular merit but their seriousness and mellow
aspect to recommend them. Other pictures were
there, seicento, but not impossibly so ; sober,
dark, and academic pieces they appeared — none
of your pink mammoths and blue-flounced angels,
of the sort Pocetti set shrieking at you in
Florence. Lastly, on a lunette outside a north
door, there do remain the vestiges of a beautiful
thing, of the Simone Memmi school : a tall fair
Virgin holding up an overgrown Bimbo, Saint
John Baptist and an angel in attendance — the
whole swaying together, sweet and graceful,
coloured warm orange, crimson, and green.
While we saw the sights of Paganico, the
Pagani saw us and our equipage, and marvelled
greatly. The whole population of some fifty
souls — I take it some were afield cutting clover —
stood about the carriage. A pleasant and friendly
race they were, entirely cut off from any such

vin

GROSSETO TO SIENA

163

world as we moved in, yet entirely contented.
They were very thin, very unclothed, and as
brown as nuts. The women wore the hats of
Siena, those haloes of lemon-coloured straw than
which no head-gear in the world is more becom-

- r

WALLS OF SIENA.

ing to a pretty girl, nor any more disastrous to a
plain one.
The road is stiU long and inconceivably toil
some to Siena, leading through a spacious upland
country, mainly through woods, but
J J ° V Imposta,
with clearings here and there which Petrioio,
, , -xr 1 u s-\ i Siena.
show you the deep Val d Orcia and
the grey hills beyond. From the summit of

1 64 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
L' Imposta, indeed, you have a view on either
hand ; on the right Montalcino to the far north
east, a dark red fringe to the mountain, then the
whole rang-e of Monte Amiata with clouded
crown ; on the other hand, where the country
rises and falls more gently, Civitella is to be seen,
a little warm town with a single tower, and,
almost on the sky-line, a clump of building on a
height which I believe was Roccastrada. After
L' Imposta comes a gentle fall, then a long and
winding climb through ilex woods, and a terrific
descent into the gorge of the Farma, which made
my brake red-hot. At the foot of this really im
possible hill are the swift green river, a steep
bridge, a ruined fortress in a green wood, and a sul
phur spring gushing white vapour from the rocks.
This is Petriolo, once a famous bath, where Pope
Pius II. was wont to dip his anointed person.1 I
gather that it is still used during the summer,
though I did not see the bath itself. There was
an inn, however, where (an old woman told me) I
could have lived like a signorone for three liras
a day. At this point you are eighteen miles from
Siena, and may begin to look out for the frontier
1 Montaigne, most diligent in hunting out medicated baths in Italy,
missed Petriolo. He tried two in the Sienese country — Vignone, near
San Quirico, and Naviso by Montefiascone.

VIII

GROSSETO TO SIENA

165

fortresses. There are many of them perched
about upon the hillsides and ridges, — San
Lorenzo, Stigliano, Fitello, and others, — but it is
nine miles more before you see the city. Then
you pass a village on a common, and just beyond

MONTALCINO.

that have a magnificent apparition of the moun
tain's flushed crown: Siena herself, carmine and
white, upon her own three-capped hill. No town
makes so splendid a show as this one; no hill-
town in all Tuscany, nor any city in all Italy.
The Zebra tower gleams like an agate, the
Mangia tower is like a red lily. Splendid from
any side — to be seen from twenty miles' distance-

1 66 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
on the approach from Rome — I think this is the
best view of all. The hill is so green and the city
so rosy; you look upon it from an almost equal
height ; it seems to be sailing in the cloud. But
to reach the walls you have much still to do ; you
must descend far into the gorge, and get up again
by long circuits to the Gate of St. Mark. Thence
your way is through streets of red palaces — empty
streets, very silent — to the Piazza Tolomei and
good fare at the Albergo La Toscana, which
once housed a Tolomei chief.

APPENDIX
THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF CASTRUCCIO CASTRACANE
Since my last mention of this hero is to be here, here is as
good a place as any to report his death. It was in 1328, as
has been said above, at the close of a year of great business.
John Villani tells the story — so well that it cannot be bettered.
Let him speak for me, therefore.
" Now when Castruccio had got back Pistoja by his pro
found science, and care, and prowess, in the manner which we
have related already, he regarrisoned and replenished the
place with men and stores, and put the Ghibellines into it
again ; and returned to his city of Lucca with glory and honour
after the fashion of an emperor in triumph ; and found him
self at a very height of renown and respect, such as no lord or
tyrant of Italy had obtained for three hundred years or more
— as the chronicle will bear out ; and, moreover, lord of the

VIII

APPENDIX 167

cities of Pisa and Lucca, of Pistoja and the Lunigiana, of a
great part of the Genoese shore, and of more than three
hundred walled towns. And then, as it pleased God, who,
for the debt we owe to Nature, draws in the big with the little,
and the rich with the poor, he — through excess of undue
fatigues undertaken with his host at Pistoja (as standing
armed at all times, now riding, now afoot, setting the
guards and relieving the pickets of his force, overseeing the
siege engines, cutting the trenches, ah, and working at them
with his own hands lest any one should say, Catch him working
in the dog-days) — he, I say, was taken with a chronic fever,
whereof he sickened and fell very ill. And, in truth, more
than enough good men of his, when they left Pistoja, sickened
and died. Among other notables there was Master Galeasso
de' Visconti of Milan, who was in Castruccio's service, but had
been a great lord and tyrant on his own account before the
Bavarian deprived him of his estate — lord of Milan he had
been, and of Pavia, Lodi, Cremona, Como, Bergamo, Novara,
and Vercelli ; and he died a wretched death, a soldier in Cas
truccio's pay. And this showeth that a man may stretch the
sentences of God, but not overpass them.
" Now Castruccio, before he fell sick, remembering that
the Bavarian was on his way back from Rome, and would
be offended with him for having upset his emprise of that
realm, by staying in Tuscany, and by resuming the city of
Pisa into his dominions against leave and authority, was
afraid of what he might do — even that he might deprive him
of his signiory and estate just as he had deprived Galeasso
of Milan ; and he was about to go to work for a secret treaty of
agreement with the Florentines, when, as it pleased God,
his sickness overtook him, and there he lay; and, growing
worse, established his last will, leaving Henry his eldest son
Duke of Lucca, and directing, that as soon as he should be
gone, without any days of mourning, this Henry should post
to Pisa with his cavalry and overrun the city, and so keep

1 68 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
his authority alive ; and this done he departed this life, on
Saturday, the third of September 1328. In person this
Castruccio was very limber, and tall, and of a great appear
ance, bluntish looking, not fat, fair and inclined to be pale,
with straight yellow hair about a comely face. In age when he
died he was forty-seven years. And a little before his death,
when he knew it was upon him, he said to his closest friends :
' Here I lie adying ; and when I am dead you'll see the web
unravelled ' — which was his Lucchese way of saying, You will
see revolution, or, You will see my world depart. And he
prophesied justly, as you will presently see. And, as we now
know from his nearest kindred, he confessed himself, and took
the sacrament decently, and had the holy oil ; but he re
mained in his great error, never admitting that, he had
sinned against God by the wounds he had dealt to His
holy Church, soothing his conscience with the belief that
he had acted rightly for the good of the Empire and his
own State. So he departed, and they kept his death a
secret until the 10th September; and as he had left it to
be done, so did his son Henry with his knights overrun the
cities of Pisa and Lucca, and broke up assemblies of the Pisans
wherever he found them. Which done he went back 'to
Lucca and performed the dule, clothing all his people in black,
and with ten horses to draw the bier, covered with silken
housings and with ten flags — with the arms of the Empire'
two, with those of his duchy two, with his own two, and one
for Pisa, one for Lucca, one each for Pistoja and Luni. So
they buried him with great honour in Lucca, in the place of
the Friars Minor of Saint Francis, on the 14th September.
This Castruccio had been an intrepidand magnanimous tyrant,
wise and wary, anxious and laborious, expert in arms, provi
dent in warfare, highly adventurous in his undertakings, highly
feared and respected ; in his days he did some fine and notable
feats, and proved a very scourge to his countrymen, to the
Florentines, Pisans, Pistojese, and to all the Tuscan nations

vm

APPENDIX

169

in those fifteen years of his lordship over Lucca. He was
cruel in that he dealt death and torture to men, thankless for
the services he got in his need, desirous ever for new friends
and for dependents, very proud of his estate and dominion,
and above all things in the world desired to be lord of
Florence and a king in Tuscany. And the Florentines re
joiced and hugged themselves at his death, scarcely able to
believe that dead indeed he was." — (Gio. Vill. 10. 86.)

ON THE MUGNONE, FLORENCE.

CHAPTER IX
SIENA
I name the two cities of Tuscany in which it is
pleasant to live to be Lucca and Siena ; and they
are the only two which have reckoned
Siena and
Lucca eom- up pleasure among the assets of life.
And I say that there are two cities
in Tuscany which excel all the others in beauty,
and whose beauty consists mainly in elegance ;
and that these are Lucca and Siena. And lastly
I say that, of any two Tuscan cities which one
could pick out as alike in the quantity of their
charm, it would be impossible to find two more
dissimilar in the quality of it than this chosen
pair. For one is impossible to be hid, the other
most difficult to find. One flaunts it on the top
of a mountain, the other nestles darkling in a
thicket. And as for the people, if the Lucchese
are the salt of the earth, the Sienese are the
mustard. The Lucchese have prospered quietly,
the Sienese have blusterously failed. And yet,
with all their recluse ways, you cannot walk the
170

CHAP. IX

SIENA

171

streets of Lucca without seeing signs of great
and forcible character; and flamboyant, pre
posterous, absurd as the Sienese have been and
still are, it is not possible to affirm that any one
thing they have said or done is unworthy of

f^^^T' Jr

NEAR SIENA.

great blood, or a proof of ignoble desire. If —
and here is another likeness in diversity — if the
Lucchese have left no name in history, it is
because they have never tried to make one ; if
the Sienese, it is because they have always failed.
Over and over again they have bid for a starry
crown ; but above that of all the Tuscan nations

172 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
their history is futile, stultifying, and outrageous.
They have no literature, no Dante, no Sacchetti ;
no science, no Galileo ; no great art, no Giotto, no
Michael Angelo; no Castruccio, no Farinata, no
Medici, no Machiavelli. What Florence was able
siena and to do had been clean impossible for
Florence. Siena, which started earlier on the
race and had the greater advantage. Money she
had ; but foresight, power, magnanimity, longa
nimity, were wanting in Siena. These things,
which are testimonies and fruits of character,
abounded in Florence : Siena had none of them.
And yet a walk down one street of the place
will reveal to you finer, rarer, more poignant,
more salient character than a whole month of
prying into the untouched corners of Florence ;
and so you will find it if you walk back along the
great alley — Shakespere's " primrose path " —
and compare the Sienese whom you meet with
the Florentines. Sienese history is bafHingly
absurd, but it touches the heart, which Florentine
history seldom does. And thus you may state
the difference : you must esteem but cannot love
a Florentine, you must love but can hardly esteem
a Sienese. I defy that erring wight, the man of
sensibility and ardent associations, not to be the
Des-Grieux of this good-for-nothing, flaming,
dear, wheedling Manon of a nation, whose

rx

SIENA

*73

beauties of mind and person may be, as Mr.
Ruskin used to say, parasitic, but for all that are
piercingly present.
Mystery, pathos, romance are her properties ;
and very likely they may prove but funguses

PIAZZA SAN DOMENICO, SIENA.

when you try to set them up for absolutes, and
make the poor, pretty things pose rhe parties
as the Sublime and the Beautiful. °fSiena-
I am sure I don't know ; but I do know what it
is which stirs the pulse of every sojourner in
Siena's desolate places — the blend of the tragic
and the trivial. The savage, gaunt, great houses,
incurably noble, and the lovely and frivolous

174 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
people within them; the mystical, gilded art
which lays a finger on its lip, and shuts up —
nothing ; the memories of her saints, the fra
grance of their names and dust : I know that these
things are desperately romantic. I know that
the city cries and wails in my ears. Tragic,
dauntless, high-flying race ! What was said of
the Celts by a Celt of old time is true of Siena,
and over-true. They went forth to war, but they
always fell. So did the Sienese — always.
They lost, as they must needs, in the long
tussle with Florence; they dedicated themselves
to their suzerain, the Madonna, and
Tragedy. were four times heard ; but she for
sook them at the fifth, in their hour of extremity.
They conquered the seaboard, but never put to
sea : Talamone, lonely and weed-choked, if it
were theirs, was of no use. They began the
greatest church in Italy, and finished no more
than one quarter of it ; their only good artist —
and he was Michael Angelo's master — made for
them his noblest work ; but they broke it, or
let it be broke ; and one must go to Bologna
now to study Delia Quercia.1 Their painters'
work, which (if we are to credit Mr. L. Douglas,
as I think we are not) began upon a scale
1 1 refer to the Fonte Gaja, ruins of which may be seen in the Opera
del Duomo, and a dead copy on the original site in the Campo.

^^iZ^^^ta^C^^^. C£6&.

¦£>6&?lfZS

IX

SIENA

175

unattainable by Giotto, dwindled off into a
school of trite copyists and shallow chiaroscurists,

jg

o. > V \ i

THE MARKET, SIENA.

betrayed by Pintoricchio, the driest of the Um-
brians, and Sodoma, the emptiest scholar Lionardo

176 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
ever tried to fill. For grace and beauty the
Sienese women have been famous, and are famous
still. They are meet to be loved — but who dare
love them ? Quick and proud, high-spirited and
vivacious, luxurious, idle, and superb at once,
they are inconstant lovers, and in the old days
were even so. They fought like Lapiths on
the walls when Marignano and his Spaniards
held that last grim leaguer of a year and a half ;
but when the capitulation was signed they threw
themselves into their enemies' arms, and wel
comed the slayers of their kin with carpets in the
windows and flowers for their feet.

Or fii giammai
Gente si vana com' e la sanese ?

cries the keen, great Florentine, scorning this
chivalrous, feather-headed, mettlesome brood.
And well he might, being of whom he was — of
the conquering race. For this people went forth
to war, but they always fell.
It is not the least of Dante's credentials by
any means, this lightning glance of his at Siena ;
nor is it for nothing that of all the figures he
chose to stand for the city in his dread vision
of things as they were, three emerge out of the
gloom and horror: Sapia, to wit, who flouted
God ; Albero, who tried to fly ; and La Pia, whd

LX

SIENA

177

was beautiful, unhappy, and died young.1 As
they were then, so they are now ; they and they
only have made their Siena ; the flushed hill-city
is the vesture of their spirit. Tragic, futile,
amorous, ardent, unhappy, above all of them

THE CONSUMA, SIENA.

La Pia stands before time as the emblem of her
nation. " Siena mi fe, disfecemi Maremma." 2
1 See back, Chapter II., for the consideration of this great power of
Dante's. 2 My brief summary of Sienese history, such as it is, must be sought
in the Appendix to this chapter : what I have not been able to say there
may be indicated here. It is that, just as character is what one sees all
over Siena, so it is what one can find detailed in every page of Sienese
history ? the blend — if I may repeat myself — of the tragic and the futile.
Not a person upon her scene but betrays some twist, some salient peak ;
not a biography could be made but it would be notable for some sharpness
VOL. II N

178 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap;
It is the firm opinion of the other nations of
Tuscany that the Sienese are mad. I remember
Young men of driving once to the city from Colle in
siena. a pelting storm of rain, and how
Trombino, the pertest Florentine that ever
sucked a lemon, and one of the best drivers,
prepared me for the worst by loud confidences
from his box. " The skies weep, signore," he
said, "and well they may, for we are going
among a people to whom those imbecilli of
Volterra are as senators and statesmen." I told
him that this was what they call fiorentinismo,
and hurt him by the imputation. " To begin
with, sir," he replied, "con rispetto parlando, I am
not a Florentine. No, thank God, but a plain
Pont'-a-Mensolano. Moreover, all the world
knows that I am telling you the truth. These
people of Siena — why, did your lordship never
hear of the Grand Duke Leopoldo, what he
of disaster, some splendid push for fame, and disastrous recoil, some heart
ache, some cry prolonged and solitary. Provenzano Salvani, for example,
no doubt the greatest of the Sienese — upon what does his fame rest if not
upon his sardonic end in the field of Colle, his death, and the rout of his
host, which depended upon a comma ? Pandolfo Petrucci — how high he
soared, what a palace he built ! He was the Magnificent for a season ;
yet the person of a vicious, pretty baggage of a Salicottina dragged him
down into the mire. Pienza, a broad city without citizens, is the ridiculous
monument of vEneas Sylvius, who sat the throne of Peter and is otherwise
famous for a luxurious tale. Saint Catherine, true daughter of her nation,
coaxed and stung the Popes into Rome, but she could not make them
Christians. And I don't think any failure recorded of any son or daughter
of Siena is more pathetic to consider than this of hers.

IX

SIENA 179
replied to the Sanesi when they asked him for

the profits of the dazio for ten years, to build
themselves a manicomio? ' Ma7iicomio? Che,

180 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.

e ! ' says his Excellency, ' what next ? Shut
your gates, my brothers, and lock them, and
there is your manicomio ready made, and all your
madmen inside it.'1 Now, certainly, he would
never have made a speech like that, to which all
Europe would listen, unless he had good reason."
It is not true that the Sienese are mad, but it
is quite true that they have strongly marked
idiosyncrasy, very hard to describe, but finding
its readiest outlet in "peacockery." Processions,
displays, spectacles, and shows — these things are
innate. Just as with us, when we think well of a
compatriot we entertain him at dinner, so the
Sienese give him a procession. And as our
notion of a public holiday seems incompletely
realised without a bugler upon the box-seat of a
four-horse brake, so theirs can only be satisfied
by tossing flags. Florence has her day of San
Giovanni, her Easter Saturday and Giorno dei
Grilli ; but processions are a small part of these :
a general junketting is more truly what goes on.
Whereas in Siena, at the festivals of Saint
Catherine or of the Virgin Mary, or at that of
Corpus Domini, whatever solemnities mark the
xThis is a good story of Trombino's, and shows that a Lorrainer
could wield a rapier. Compared with it, Lorenzo's gibe is bludgeon-work.
" To a Sienese who condoled with him upon his eyesight, and added that
the air of Florence was bad for the eyes, Lorenzo retorted, ' And that of
Siena for the brain.' " — Armstrong, Lorenzo de' Medici, 301,

rx

SIENA

181

day — and sometimes it may be horse-racing, and
always it is Mass — one begins it and ends it with
processions, music, banners to the wind. The
young men are extremely expert with flags, and
very small provocation is needed — a birthday, a
party of pleasure, five-and-twenty francs in hand
m

FONTE OV1LE, SIENA.

— to set the alfieri twirling down the streets with
the solemn gaiety of dervishes, tossing their great
silken banners, now up, now down, now level
with the telegraph-wires, now carpets for the
pavement, now drapery for the slim body of the
handler, and becoming his sinuous graces mighty
well. Clothes again! They are very fond of

182 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
mediaeval dress, parti-coloured trunks, slashes
and points, doublets, short cloaks, red caps and
plumes : " targetted tailzies," as Knox used to
call them, they wear them bravely and admire
each other. One after another the contrade have
their day of flagging. In Saint Catherine's
honour the Goose struts before every door in
Fontebranda, and the flag-bearers dance before
her silver image up and down her street just as
David did before the ark. The Madonna of
Provenzano has her day, San Bernardino his ;
the Madonna del Voto is never forgotten ; on two
days of the year all the contrade together vie with
each other who shall make the greatest display ;
and the city bristles with the totem-signs of
chosen creatures. The Snail's horns are exalted,
the Giraffe snuffs war in the air, and says among
the captains, " Ha, ha ! " The Goose defies the
Panther, the Dragon and the Grub, worms alike,
forget their common parent. They know that
men will be ready to die this day that their name
may be glorious ; and that, likely enough, some
man will die. Then indeed, as Mr. Heywood
says, husband and wife, should they have come
together from opposing signs, will separate for
the occasion ; and the woman will go to her
father's house, " there to exult or weep " in her
nation's fate. For though Siena is a nation, it

Azt&vz^A^^^^A^^AwzizA^

™ SIENA 183
contains seventeen nations within its walls, not
one of which has a good word to say for another.1
But I have been led away from Sienese youth,
which I must describe as flamboyant, and from
Sienese maidenhood, which, of a Maidensof
surety, is not coy. Flaming is the Siena"
word for her young men, so soon set afire, but
superb for her young women, so dangerous to
importune. They give you to understand that
they are there to be wooed ; but the same lazy
eyelids proclaim that they may hardly be won.
Doubt not but that there are girls of Siena
of the pleading, tender, die-away sort, divine
children, dangerous to men. Of such was Aurelia
Gualandi, whose tale is yet to be told. Also there
are the secret, slow-smiling, green-eyed, ivory-pale
women celebrated by Matteo, son . of Giovanni,
who are to be found not only in the Accademia
delle Belle Arti, but at Mass in the churches or
with children on the Lizza. But the typical
Sienese virgin is not one of these ; rather she is
tall, lithe, free-moving as a panther, hath a bold
glance and a very high head. Lncessu patet Dea:
her gait is Dian's if her deeds are not. Nor are
they often. All things seem lawful to her; she
walks thorny paths with the light foot of a
1 See Mr. W. Heywood's Palio of Siena for a popular, but most excel
lent account of these strange affairs.

1 84 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
nymph ; she dips her hands in muddy pools, but
fouls them not. Of such was Livia, the divine,

PALAZZO TOLOMEI, SIENA.

the remarked Livia, with whom you shall be
acquaint before this book is one chapter the

IX

SIENA

185

heavier; and a good note in the Appendix hereto
will give you the names and deeds of three more.
They were, then, a people of French habit, a
chivalrous people — frank, noble, attracted by the
best of its kind, furious lovers of good alike and
evil. They loved the Lady of heaven, but they

THE SERVI, SIENA.

loved no less the Lady of the stews — that im
perious, kindly, beautiful, but altogether abomin
able Venus of the plebs, who maddened their
Checho Angiolieri and drained their Pandolfo
down to the lees. It is most pertinent to inquire
what sort of outlet this people found, what sort of
a flood-mark, so to speak, they left upon the

186 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
shores of Time ; for mark, besides a pathetic
name, they must needs have made.
What mark? None in literature, that's
certain. One poet, Checho Angiolieri — unless
Perfetti, the improvvisatore, whom
Literature, - , . t-i i ¦ i •
Monsieur de Brasses admired, is to
be reckoned ; one novelist, San Bernardino ; one
humanist, ^Eneas Sylvius ; one historian, Mala-
volti, with nothing but volume to recommend
him ; and the tale is told. Mr. L. Douglas, in
a recent work, gives two bad reasons for the
absence of literary faculty, and one good one — so
excellent, indeed, that it is impossible to have a
better. " The Sienese," he says, thirdly, " were
not a literary people." Can there be a better
reason for the absence of literature in a race of
men ? That the Sienese, as he urges in his
firstly and secondly, "wasted their energies in
political strife," is beside the mark ; for what else,
pray, did every other people in Tuscany ? Or if
political excitement forbade artistic energy, why,
as he labours afterwards to show, were the
painters so active? Had he rather pointed out
that literature demands leisure of the heart, —
which may perfectly subsist in the midst of a
whirlwind of politics, — and that in Siena there
never was any such blessing, I should have had
no quarrel with him. Both terms of that pro-

AAa.nAAAcov&m.'ru/. cAA&mas'

IX

SIENA

187

position are true. Leisure of the heart can
always be secured by the poet whose heart insists

THE CATHEDRAL, SIENA.

upon it. Dante had it, though he was seethed in
the Florentine ferment, and wandered abroad

188 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
from bitterness to bitterness. Yet he had it.
That heart which he gave into the green-eyed
lady's keeping in her ninth year he never asked
back again.
But the Sienese never had their hearts at rest.
Two love-affairs at once kept them continually
and love- astir> neither of them within the
affairs. Florentine grasp, and neither of them
inducive of literary exercise. The first was
chivalry, the meat of the eyes ; the second piety, the
wine of the soul. These are ardours which involve
a splendid strenuousness in pursuit fatal to letters;
and they were blent here in a way peculiar to
the Sienese among Italian peoples. The Sienese
were militant pietists, devout chevaliers. Their
service of the Virgin was exactly feudal ; she was
their suzerain, their liege lady. At one time or
another every armigerous male in the city must
have put his hands between her hands and sworn
to be her man. There is room for passion in all
this, but none for artistry, without which literature
will not thrive. If Dante was too great, Petrarch
was, in a sense, too small a man to have been a
citizen of the Virgin's city. So there was not
enough freedom from preoccupation either for "a
humorist like Sacchetti, or a miniaturist of
Boccaccio's sort. In letters, as in most other
fine things, 'tis love that makes the world go

IX

SIENA 189

round ; and it may be love of God, or country,
or a woman. But another love there must be
mingled with it — the love of paper and ink. For
that kind of love the Sienese had no time to
spare. Let us pry more narrowly into the city. By

m 5 '
0

THE RED PALACE, SIENA.

position it is one of great outlooks, and can be
magnificently seen from any point of Architecture
the compass ; but it is unique, I believe, and ProsPeot-
in this, that within the walls there are great views.
Siena, like the king's daughter, is all glorious
within, but, unlike the damsel, she can see herself
so. The hill on which she stands is three-peaked
— one more than Parnassus ; or perhaps it would
be more correct to say that this hill, whose highest

1 90 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
point bears the cathedral, is like a star of five
points, whereof there are three greater and two
lesser rays.1 From any one of these you may
look upon two others, and as often as not see yet
other two beyond. From the Lizza you see past
San Domenico, whose ugliness not even Sienese
prestige can redeem, to the ray upon which the
cathedral stands. This gives you — odd effect ! —
the grey dome in front of the bell-tower, the whole
north side in severe profile, and the top of the
Baptistry like a ragged cliff. The background
of your picture is of hills grey and thunderous —
the mountains of Volterra. From the s*teps of
the Servite church there is as good a view, if not
better; from the market-place at the back of the
Palace, from the top of the Via Sant' Agata : and
all these prospects of purple, white, and rose —
sweet-pea colour — with bright green interspersed,
are to be had without passing the walls.
But just as Dante, by the twist of his genius,
1 The five rays of the star end in the five great gates of Siena, to
which steep streets run down into the gorge along the spines of the rock.
Porta Camollia, Porta Pispini, Porta Romana, Porta San Marco, are
the gates — these and the Gate of Fontebranda. The culmination of
the star itself is where the church stands, on a solitary spur immediately
above a cliff. You reach it, you leave it by stairs. You look upon its
striped side, from San Domenico, across a glen clothed now by russet-
purple roofs, green only at the bottom, where vineyards are still fruitful
and shade abundant. Out of this live rock, out of the heart of Siena, the
cool water flows which brims a fountain at every gate — Fontebranda,
Fontegiusta, Fonte Nuova, and so on.

IX

SIENA

191

is not apparently Florentine, so Siena, by thrust
of character, is not obviously Tuscan. Something

at once rational and gay, a plain habit with some
thing light-hearted, marks the long, yellow-faced,

192 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
broad-eaved streets of Florence, Arezzo, and
Pistoja, and is to be discerned in towns of more
individuality, towns like Lucca and Pisa. There
are whole quarters of Siena where you won't see it
at all. A typical Florentine palace of the Quattro
cento is the Riccardi. The Strozzi is of the same
order, but carried up to the superlative. The
Pitti is the dream of a megalo-maniac. But
compare with these the great Sienese hotels of
the same century; remember that magnificent red
house on the left arc of the Campo.1 There is an
allure upon it, a grace, a distinction, a bid for the
apple which the Florentines knew not of. Even
the Piccolomini, Rossellino's though it be, has
(to my eyes) a curious felicity of design, and a
choiceness denied to what he did for the Rucellai
in Florence, and certainly denied to the great
Strozzi heap. But it is when one comes to the
Gothic houses, the Tolomei, for instance, or the
Palazzo Pubblico, that one finds out wherein
the specific flower of Sienese beauty still blows.
There are whole streets of the like of these 2 —
1 As for the Campo, Montaigne says with excellent judgment, " The
Piazza of Siena is the finest of any city in the world." I am very sure he
is right, if great palaces, space, and a tower like an aloe-blossom have
anything to do in a comparison. Next to it, in Italy, I should put the
Prato della Valle of Padua. These two places seem to me as if they had
been sprung whole — totus teres, etc. — out of a man's brain.
2 I don't mean, of course, that there are whole streets of thirteenth-
century palaces, but of palaces inspired by thirteenth-century art.

?SP

'^^^mm^-'

Afa.

~Zc&ma/.

IX SIENA i93
empty streets, left for you and the wind to wander
as you list. Here are the places wherein to woo
the muse of Siena ; for chivalry has thriven here,
or there is nothing expressive in architecture.
Siena's, however, is a case where architecture
was only good when it was domestic. Its people
felt Gothic when they built a palace :
Churches.
in church-building they did worse than
most of their neighbours. You will find no
church in Siena worth an hour's serious con
templation. Personally, I may wonder at the
Duomo — and I do;1 but I am not going to sup
pose it good building ; and nobody pretends that
it is good Gothic. Like many other churches in
Tuscany — like the Duomo of Florence for one
— it dazzles you, takes your breath away, and so
far succeeds. If that were the simple ambition of
its contriver, he has his reward. All the world
wonders and applauds. Inside, there is no gain
saying that the stark measures taken do produce
an effect not unlike that of a fine Gothic cathe
dral-church. It seems to have been got by out
lining. With striped columns, with picked-out
ribs, starry spandrils, loaded window-soffits,
dappled pavement — well, with all this you do
1Or, rather, I have wondered in my day. Let me refer the reader
who cares for such a little matter to Earthwork out of Tuscany, 3rd edition,
P- 135- VOL. II °

194 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
succeed in getting the kind of daedal illusion
which pure Gothic gives you by more lawful
means ; but of course you get none of the mystery
of Gothic. The Sienese did, in fact, by outlining
in paint and coloured stone what the French did
by masses and forms. The effect is nothing so
good ; it is enormously heavy ; but it is an effect,
a strong effect, and, incredible as it may seem, a
Gothic effect.1
Lovers of the Queen of heaven, they have
not been able to build her a house; but have
they painted her portrait? Assuredly
Painting. , , . . .
they have tried, as never lover yet,
to show her to us as she showed herself to them,
without spot, utterly kind, of peerless beauty,
yet a crowned queen. To see Sienese paintings
is to have no doubt of this. Their Madonnas
have a beauty not of this world ; but their
paintings are not pictures. The gallery at Siena
is evidence of love, but not of art. Just as a
doting husband will dress his wife delightfully,
hang her little person with jewels and chains,
and set a crown upon her empty little head, and
1 For one instance out of many of unlawful practice, take the line of
popes' heads under the clerestory windows ; what is that but a way of
embossing ? But to emboss a building with popes' heads which cannot
even be seen for what they are, is more than unlawful — is outrageous.
The culmination of busyness, overlaying and overdoing, is to be sought in
the Piccolomini Library, whose frescoe*, if they were not gilt, would be
nothing. It is as if one were to keep one's books in a jewel-case.

IX

SIENA

195

with every ounce of value he puts on her will
be spending and allaying his frenzy of adoration
— so I find the Sienese painters to have been,
from Duccio, whom Mr. Douglas so strangely
exalts, to Neroccio, beloved by Mr. • Berenson.
They loved Madonna far above their force as

THE OSSERVANSA, SIENA.

artists ; but, mercifully for themselves and us, they
had gold-leaf in plenty and a wonderful knack of
pattern. Herein they found their consolation
and their snare. They thought they were showing
her worthy of their love when they were showing
their love worthy of her. Their pictures are less
pictures than panels of conventional ornament,

196 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
and, as such, excellence can go no farther. I
don't suppose the world can show a vision more
exquisitely frail and lovely than a picture of
Matteo of Siena's ; and yet a vision it is, lighter
than vanity itself, and emptier, and easier pricked,
if one had the heart to do it. And the truth, of
course, is that it lay not in the Sienese nature
to do anything wholly or long.1
1 Two things will strike the candid visitor to the Belle Arti of Siena.
The first is that the Sienese painted little but the Madonna ; the second,
that they painted her flat. A rocky background here and there, a
suggestion of an horizon somewhere, a sky which is neither black nor
scratched gold, semblances of men and of angels, are not enough to
break down the law. So far as life is concerned, all these things are
hieroglyphs : life has nothing to do with the business; the world is a
cloister-garden, a place of temporary sojourn fit to dream in. It is the
fact that the Sienese painters were illuminators from first to last, with
the one possible exception of Ambrogio Lorenzetti. From Duccio, the
Byzantine, through Taddeo and Sano, to Benvenuto the embroiderer, to
Matteo and Neroccio, the neurotic and the fantastic, there is but one
subject, the Sacra Conversazione, one treatment, the gilder's. Whether
with the blue background and diapered crimson curtain of fresco, or the
fondo d'oro of the altarpiece, the miniaturist method persists ; and it is
equally impossible to deny the charm it has, or the speed with which it
can cloy. Both are due to its cloistral, recollected air, its flavour of the
oratory, its intense limitation, its lavish ornament and extreme beauty. It
is undoubtedly true that the man who calls himself a miserable sinner every
day for a year either forgets it or doubts it profoundly at the end of the term.
So here, if you steadfastly behold a painted ecstasy, you may be rapt out
of yourself for a season ; but not if you behold nothing else ; not if you
continue to behold it for years. But decoration, for example ! It would
indeed be difficult to get more magnificent wall-covering than the great
devotional fresco in the Palazzo Pubblico of this place. Types of more
refined spiritual beauty than those of Benvenuto and Matteo I do not believe
to exist. And here, at least, are two Sienese painters who are illustrated
by life (if they do not illustrate it) ; for these lovely, frail, desirous women
are national ; they are Sienese, than whom there are none more beautiful

ix SIENA 197
But then — all deductions made : history
denied, painter's work decried — what a city
of cities Siena remains ! All her gallant, im
possible memories — the Spending Club, whose
house still stands; Checho and his beautiful
wench at Fontebranda ; Provenzano begging in
the Campo ; Pier Pettignano, the inspired comb-
seller; poor fragrant Saint Catherine, whose
shrivelled head you may still see if you care ;
Pandolfo Petrucci doting on a bad girl ; ^Eneas
Sylvius penning a love-tale and making epigrams
upon the Miraculous Blood of Mantua; Livia
in all long Italy. Matteo's Madonna, in a halo of golden straw, walks the
Via di Citta at this hour, with the same ivory tints, the same doubtful smile.
Her green eyes sparkle and peer as ever they did; her slim fingers play with
each other as you speak to her; they would go on playing if you spilled your
heart over her feet. A lazy beauty; either she hath vice or she is stupid.
Half the host of Benvenuto's heaven may be seen in the Campo on those
white-hot days of August when the Palio is running. As for Neroccio's
impossible blondes — impossibly fair, impossibly slim — with their hair like
pale silk and their faces like pink peonies, these belong to some still
seraglio of the mind, have lived neither on earth nor live in heaven.
Gracious images of green-sick adoration, nymphs of the nympholept — ¦
look at them, wonder, desire (if you choose) : they are art, and good art,
but they are the art of them who believe that the world is a garden
enclosed. Painting is more than outline and surface ornament; Giotto's
Florence knew better, and Carpaccio's Venice too, and Mantegna's Padua.
It may be a question, when discussing the absolute in this matter, how
far any Italian painting of any school whatever may stand beside that of
the Low Countries: my say has been said; the quarrel is an old one and
somewhat musty. But, like for like, there can be none at all that where
the Florentine pushed up from height to height of mastery over scope and
method, the Sienese never rose above a softened and elegant ideography.
Fra Angelico himself, the painter of faery without peer, is a realist when
confronted with Sano di Pietro.

198 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
Fausta in Dian's buskins and white tunic1 —
absurd, pitiful, gallant, lonely race ! Your unthrift
is to me more splendid than all the snug Floren
tine masserigia! They tell the tale of the Madonna
of Provenzano, that hollow-eyed, armless goddess
of three centuries' devotion, that she constituted
herself patroness of that ill-famed quarter of the
city, did miracles upon the bruised bodies of her
clients, and was adored by them all. Of what
secrets was she not a partaker? Of what griefs
was she not consolatrix ? What halting feet did
she not sustain ? It is highly characteristic of
a city which never thought of anything but love
of women, and whose virtues, as well as whose
failings, sprang from that prepossession that they
should invoke such a goddess. Patroness of
1 There were three Hippolytas in the field : the Signora Livia Fausta,
the Signora Laodamia Forteguerra- — -was ever a more glorious name? —
and the Signora Piccolomini. The occasion was the Spanish leaguer :
and here they are, as Monluc saw them in their gear of war :
"Toutes les dames de la ville de Sienne se despartirent en trois bandes.
La premiere estoict conduicte par la Signora Forteguerra, qui estoict
vestue de violet, et toutes celles qui la suivoient aussi, ayant son
accoustrement en facon d'une nymphe, court et monstrant le brodequin ;
la seconde estoict la Signora Piccolomini, vestue de satin incarnardin,
et sa troupe de mesme livree; la troisieme estoict la Signora Livia Fausta,
vestue toute de blanc, comme aussi estoict sa suitte avec son enseigne
blanche." A picture, surely, for Ghirlandajo ! And here is Monluc's tribute :
" II ne sera jamais, dames siennoises, que je n'immortalise vostre nom,
tant que le livre de Monluc vivra; car, a la verite, vous estes dignes
d'immortelle louange, si jamais femmes le feurent." Gallant tribute to
gallant doing; but it all availed them nothing.

ix APPENDIX

199

hetairce! One can imagine a more ignoble
office, I think.

APPENDIX
SIENESE HISTORY
To say — as I do say — that of history in the proper sense,
of significant, correlated history, Siena has none whatever, is
only to insist that her unhappy biography, if one could by
pains get at it, will be found to be the sum of her character
and environment. The things which stir the pulse of every
sojourner in her solitudes — to which I have abundantly re
ferred — are very worthy to be felt, proper objects of inquiry
for the archaeologist, and not to be lost sight of by the histo
rian who shall build with his bricks. They may some day
give substance to a history of the Tuscan race, but they will
never make a history of Siena — as of late Mr. Douglas has
essayed to compose it. Such a thing as that Siena has not to
give to him or any learned man ; nor could we have had it
by any possibility. Let us examine this matter a little.
Born, as every other Tuscan nation was, of a Frankish
graft upon an Etruscan stock, she endured, with every other,
the same phases of development, and shared, with every
other but one,1 the same unavoidable fate. Whether Bishop
or Gastaldo was the nucleus round which the little body-
politic was formed, matters nothing to the traveller in her quiet
and shadowed streets. Suffice it, for present purposes, that
we find a commune of Siena in the twelfth century at war with
that of Florence in 1141. They warred about a frontier town,
— Semifonte the lost, in this case — and strengthened them
selves by the very act of loss, as mostly happens in warfare.
Wars, too, if raids and counter-raids can be so called, with
1 That one, of course, was Florence, born to dominate all.

200 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
the feudal chiefs of the hills absorb the next full century ;
slowly the commune is too many for the mountain thieves —
Aldobrandeschi of Monte Amiata, Pannocchieschi in the
dreary Volterran country, brigand-haunted then as now ; one
does not need their names. Florence went through the same
courses with her Uberti and Alberti, having been driven to
them by the same needs. What Tuscan state did not ? Be
fore a quarter of the thirteenth century had gone by, the last
of her neighbours fell in to Siena ; then began an age of pos
sible government. The rule of the Ventiquattro was set up
under Provenzano Salvani, greatest of the Sienese, and Bona-
guida Lucari, one of the most pious,1 and had a splendid
setting-off. The Ghibellines of Florence, chased from their
own city, became guests and allies : one of them was Farinata
degli Uberti. In 1260 was fought the red field of Montaperti,
by virtue of which crowning mercy, for four or five years,
Florence virtually lay at the feet of Siena, and was only saved
from lying literally there by the daring and patriotism of
Farinata. Every reader of Dante has pictured the scene at
Empoli : all the savage little States yapping and snarling at
the beaten Florence, and Farinata confronting them.2 They
yapped and snarled, but they did no more. Followed three
terrible years, each with its smashing blow to Siena and
the Ghibellines: Benevento in 1266, Tagliacozzo in 1268,
Colle in 1269. In this last affair the capture, death, and
shameful fate of Provenzano Salvani made it out of the
question that Siena could ever be more than a provincial
town. Now here too, except for the last struggle of all, when
she was brought into the vortex set swirling by Cassar Borgia,
and went down in it, the relations of Siena with history
cease. As for the general stages of her biography, feuds, vendettas,
1 With San Bernardino, he seems to have been the only Sienese who
knew how to combine piety and common sense.
2 See back, Chapter XVI. of this volume.

ix APPENDIX 201
and faction-fights which count for much in all Tuscan story,
make up the rest of Siena's. They were never so paralysing
as the Florentine or Aretine, nor pursued to such ravenous
lengths as the Pisan, nor spread so widely as the Pistolese ;
in fact, they were confined to two families, and made little or
no stir outside the contado. The Salimbeni and Tolomei
were protagonists in the blood-spattered little melodrama
which began about 13 15 and did not stop until Duke Cosimo
de' Medici stopped all. Independently of these squabbles
the story of government ran the usual Tuscan course. The
Twenty- Four went down in the ruin of Tagliacozzo. It had
been a temperately compounded oligarchy, such as has always
been found to suit best to the Italian temper, half feudal, half
mercantile. The Nine who followed them were frankly
bourgeois, with money to lend and bills to discount — peace-at-
any-price men. The plague killed them, and the Twelve
reigned in their stead, a government of small tradesmen.
Theirs was the day of the Condottieri (whom they and their
predecessors had called up to save them) : free-riding, free-
booting gentry with resounding, brazen names — " Enemies of
God," Companions of the Hat, Companions of St. George,
White Companies, Hawkwood, and the likes of Hawkwood ;
petty raiders making way for greater men of larger ideas,
Castruccio, Sforza, Piccinnino, Montefeltro. A government
bolstered by such buttresses could not last, and did not. In
1368 the remnants of the old factions — the Ventiquattro, the
Nove, and what not — arose, carried the Palace by assault,
and made opportunity for a lower class yet : that of the arti
sans. Those were great days for the popol minuto — 1371 or
thereabouts ; days for the Company of the Grub and their
redoubtable leader, one Domenico an old-clothes man, with a
pretty knack of piety and murder.
But why pursue the tale, which is that of every town in
Tuscany, and is exemplified once and for all in that of
Florence ? So far, the reader will see, every step can be

202 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
watched on the Arno ; so forth also it can be matched. For
upon the shoulders of Domenico and his riformatori of Siena,
just as surely as Cosimo Vecchio upon those of the Ciompi
and their sequels, there climbed up one Pandolfo Petrucci to
the tyrant's chair ; and he might have held it, as the Medici
held theirs, but for two reasons. The Visconti-Valois
marriage (old affair of Milan) let Europe into Italy, and
Pandolfo took the wrong side — here is one reason ; and the
other is that he had no descendants worth a rush and no
collaterals either. I observe that Mr. L. Douglas1 thinks
meanly of Pandolfo. Machiavelli thought highly of him, and
Professor Villari shares the opinion. Students of the man
and his times will take their choice of sides, remembering,
however, that Machiavelli had had a hand in most of the
rubbers he reports. Pandolfo's fate was to contend with
Caesar Borgia, at long odds. Against the papal battalions
what had he but the name of the King of France ? It may
fairly be said that he made a match of it. He outlived Pope
Alexander, saw one of his sons made Cardinal by Pope
Julius, and died leaving his tyranny intact. His son Borghese
was a worthless bully who could neither use his inheritance
nor procure its use by a successor. He was worse than Piero
de' Medici in this at least, that he could not beget a Lorenzo.
The Petrucci dynasty, so to call it — ; a dynasty of one —
came to an end in 1524 ; and then afterwards the end of Siena
as a State was a matter of a few years. The Emperor Charles
marched in in 1526, and his Spaniards were expelled, by the
gust of a dying flicker of patriotism, in 1536. But in 1553
Don Garcia brought them back, and the end was at hand.
Of that bitter siege I shall say nothing, but refer the reader to
Captain Napier and the Commentaries of Monluc, as brave a
Gascon as ever crooked an arm. In spite of this matchless
Monluc, in spite of Piero Strozzi, an explosive Florentine
outlaw, in spite of the noble lady Livia Fausta and her
1 In his painstaking " History " of Siena,

ix APPENDIX

203

company of Amazons, in spite of Brandano and his soothsay,
in spite of Madonna, in 1555 Monluc walked out, a beaten
man of a beaten master, and Marignano walked in. Two
years later Siena was handed over to Duke Cosimo of Florence.
Here is the tale told. First Tuscan state to be marked out
by Florence for conquest, she was the last to fall. But why
she was so marked, and why she was doomed to fall, are
questions which belong not to Sienese history, but to
Florentine, to European history. I shall add here, and with
that pleasure one always has in recommending a good book,
that Mr. William Heywood seems to me the only English
writer who really knows, and has been able to convey, the
specific nature of this extraordinary people. The three of his
books best known to me are, Our Lady of August and the
Palio of Siena (1899) ; The Ensamples of Fra Filippo, a Study
of Mediozval Siena (1901) ; A Pictorial Chronicle of Siena
(1902). All these are published by the excellent and expert
Signor Torrini in the Via di Citta. Mr. Heywood's work
has that rare combination of humour and erudition, and that
even rarer blend of the critical with the enthusiastic faculty,
which makes good and wise readers as it is followed from
stave to stave. To love Italy, and to give her lovers, a man
must be a classic, something of a pedant, and a humanist.
The past lives in every angle of the road ; the forms are so
precise, the air so clear, that exact scholarship is of the
essence of the contract ; and yet one must be tender with the
people, see them the best thing in their country, be patient,
be just, and yet be a lover. Italy has been well served before
now by men of our race. Evelyn loved her, so did Dennis,
and Storey, the American sculptor, whose " Roba di Roma "
should have earned him something like immortality. At this
hour Mr. Carmichael and Mr. Heywood, each in his own
way, are upholding the tradition, But I give the palm to
Mr. Heywood-

CHAPTER X
THE PORTRAIT OF LIVIA
When Livia told me that she was eighteen, and
tall for her age, I could only reply that her years
had done well for her, since inches became her.
She admitted it without any kind of complacency ;
she glanced over her shoulder to the little mirror
and looked at her straight back. " Non c' e
male," she said, and then, turning about, nodding
brightly a farewell to her counterfeit — " E pure
bellina — It's rather pretty " ; which undoubtedly
it was. Her father, who was mending one of his
boots with part of a cardboard box, paused from
his labours, tack in mouth, to admire this re
markable progeny of his. He looked her up, he
looked her down, he nodded, chuckled, rubbed
his hands. " One would not find her fellow in
all the nations of Siena," he said to me. " Senta,
signore — she rears up her crest like the Mangia
tower." Livia then, not choosing to be praised
by any one but herself, flamed into scolding and
204

chap.x THE PORTRAIT OF LIVIA 205
drove him out-of-doors to his business. Ad-

ON THE WAY TO SIENA.

miring her more than ever, he departed with
uplifted hands. " Cosa straordinaria ! E quas

206 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
un arcagnuolo! Davvero, davvero, e quasi
Gabriello ! "
I should like to do her portrait in Boccaccio's
manner, for she certainly belongs to his gallery.
Livia, at eighteen, to the indolent graces of a
growing girl was able to add the self-possession
and stored knowledge of the world which you
look for in a woman of thirty. Her composure
and arrogance could not be an offence, because
they seemed so reasonable and she so good-
tempered. Nothing startled her, nothing stirred
her to raptures either of wonder or delight,
nothing hurt, nothing disturbed, and, so far as I
can tell, nothing shocked her. I have seen her
walk through the crowded market, and cross the
Campo when it was packed with men, as calmly,
as unconsciously, as idly as a queen might pass
down a corridor between her ranked and bowing
suitors. She had a long, slow, swinging manner
of going, carried her head very high, and looked
straight in front of her. Comments were many :
the Sienese are great amateurs of beauty and very
outspoken : they affected her not at all. If she
became aware — and she was ever aware — of some
person to whom she wished to speak, she stopped
and said her say, but rarely looked at him. Her
voice was low and thrilling; there was the soft
blur upon it — like the bloom on a plum — which

x THE PORTRAIT OF LIVIA 207
her nation has. In speech she was short, clear,
and succinct ; it was impossible — often unhappily
so — to doubt her meaning. She was the most
vividly beautiful girl I have ever seen, without
any kind of exception ; and those are not terms
to apply at random. Pretty, handsome, lovely,
charming, a many young woman may be ; but she
who is beautiful (it must be said) shares that
quality with the Venus of Milo, Helen of Troy,
Desdemona, Imogen, Ethel Newcome, and Diana
Vernon — and with nobody else. Therefore she
belongs to the narrowest circle, the most ex
clusive society in this world or the next. Livia,
without cavil, was a member of that society ; and
I had rather state it thus bluntly than essay the
auctioneer's catalogue, the " Item, a grey eye or
so," which Shakespere has made ridiculous. Her
eyes, by the way, were more green than grey,
and the effect she had upon one was that of a
moonlight night, compact as that is of ivory
pallors and velvet darks, at once clear and cold,
severe and calm.
I may add that I never saw her wear a hat.
That wondrous halo of lemon straw which the
maids of her city affect would have become her
as her crescent sets Dian apart from her bevy ;
but Livia chose to be crowned only by her black
hair. She denied herself many other advantages:

208 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
she was capable of high rages, and looked then
like Medusa ; but mostly she was superbly still.
Her tongue could be shrewish — nay, it could bite
like vitriol, but mostly it was idle. I don't know
that she was affectionate ; I never saw any kindly
passion in her, and only once her steady eyes
dimmed by tears. She was always friendly with
me, after our first introduction, which I must show
to have been a delicate affair, and never failed to
salute me in the street, though, after her usual
fashion, she never seemed to see me there. I don't
know that it matters much, or that it would be
very interesting, otherwise I could tell how I have
accompanied her to feasts and festivals, to pro
cessions and Church mysteries, have sat with her
at singular tables, and knelt by her side at dusky
little shrines unknown to any casual travellers.
It seems better to tell how she expounded to me
the cult of the great Madonna of Siena, and in
so doing herself and her father's nation ; and for
a beginning- of that I must show how she and I
became acquainted.
I was on the Lizza one breezy May morning
— that wooded spur from which you look past
the rock of San Domenico to that of Citta, and
have the whole length of that wonderful striped
church in focus, with its light-poised dome thrust,
by accident of the ground, actually in front of its

x THE PORTRAIT OF LIVIA 209
sable and white guardian, the bell-tower. If I
tired of this, I had the far view of Monte Maggio
to feast upon, and all the purple west. About
me and above were sunlight and the fragrance of
flowering trees ; below my feet the players at

ff

^ILlj_£ '•' i v V" ' «* " SKA JiBT^SS&i

>¦ -

PIAZZA, SIENA.

pallone, who never forego the grand gesture for
the great shot. It seemed good for me to be
there — but then, desiring to smoke, I found my
match-box empty, and was a baffled voluptuary
indeed. " These are my crosses, Mr. Wesley,"
— one remembers Fitzgerald's good story.
Now I suppose that I had looked round about

210 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
in that vaguely harassed manner an Englishman
is so ready to wear. I have no doubt of it. In
so doing I became aware of some one by my side,
courteous, deferential, a Tuscan. An old, anxious
man, hawker of matches, must have been on the
watch : he had seen his opportunity bursting-ripe,
and had pounced upon it. His tender air con
strains me still. " Ecco, signore, fiammiferi —
buoni, freschi," said he. It was not, believe me,
that he wished to trade, but that he was resolute
to please. The instinct is as old as the Caesars ;
and so is that which moved him next — the deci
sion to improve upon so auspicious a moment.
I selected my matches, paid him, and saluted ; he
fixed me with a penetrating, melancholy eye, and
with a wheedling air inquired, "Vuol vedere una
raggazza ? "
Upon my soul, this was a very different thing ;
and yet I suppose ten men out of eleven would
have avoided, as I did, with my " Che raggazza ? "
He bowed his head, but did not cease to pierce
me with those melting, deprecating eyes. " Mia
figliuola," he said gently, and for some minutes I
was dumb.
He too being at the end of his tether, I was
enabled to reflect upon this singular proposition.
The new is the unexpected, the unexpected the
irregular, the irregular either shocking or a bore

x THE PORTRAIT OF LIVIA 211
to my orderly nation; but this was a chain of
habit which I was young enough then to discard.
And, apart from it, there seemed no reason parti
cularly cogent why I should not see this person's
daughter, and many reasons why I should. Homo
sum, etc. — here was one, and a plausible argu
ment ; the gratification of curiosity, the achieve
ment of an adventure, the gratification of a
solicitous parent — here were sufficient others.
To be short, I wrote his address upon a card :
Tortoni, Tertulliano, Vicolo al Vento, No. — 40
and promised to wait upon him in the course
of the afternoon. He professed himself my ser
vant, his house my inn, and withdrew.
This Vicolo al Vento is an alley neither savoury
nor polite which runs out of the Via del Re into
the Piazza di Provenzano. I knew it for the
recognised parade-ground of the beggars, who
meet there one day in the week to apportion the
coverts, as you might say, which each is to draw.
The ground-floors of its houses are let out as
black little wine-shops, coffee-shops, tinsmiths' and
chandlers' shops. These I had seen and dis
approved. But now I was to penetrate deeper
into the arcana ; and I did it not without excite
ment, for my transient view of the mystagogues
who ruled there, got, so far from my inn windows,

212 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
had asserted them to be Jews, procuresses, demi
reps, and unfortunates of all sorts and either sex.
However, it appeared that my eyes had been too
sweeping. The first floor of number — , for in
stance, announced a Captain of Light Horse — a
perfectly reputable employment ; the second floor
had a card pinned to the door with the name
Bazzi, Antinoo — I quarrelled with the Christian
name ; the third floor sheltered the Vedova Sas-
setti, who was a midwife ; and the fourth, though
it did not say so, my Tortoni, Tertulliano, whom
I suspected to be an old scoundrel.
He was bowing in his doorway as I reached
it, bowing very low and making passes with his
hands. He looked uncommonly like a hoary
spider webbing me to my destruction, and I could
fancy with what bright and avid eyes he would
begin his meal — his fera pasta, like Ugolino's,
upon the top of my head. He was quite with
out speech, but his hands were his eloquent
apologists: backing and bowing, weaving his
spells, he ushered me into a low white-walled
room, where from an open window leaned a girl,
her elbows upon the ledge, her eyes fixed upon
the street below. I could see nothing of her
except her back, which was clothed in a print
blouse and green skirt, her hair lustrous black
and built up into a tower, and, through the glass,

x THE PORTRAIT OF LIVIA 213
her severe profile, like the head of Ligieia on a
coin of Syracuse, silver-cold, remote, and keen.
Not more aloof could Jezebel have shown as she
looked down upon the Man of God in the court
yard than did this proud daughter of Tortoni,

¦y v^-:.;i__,,._^;. ;,_X '-; -3^JA
AAgffiSMA:

fSf Ill m
\ /U'^Arf- ': ¦*'¦¦ ^ A 'm
. v-A ; m -vji-Ai MmW.

-AM "

MARKET, SIENA.

Tertulliano, upon the atoms two hundred feet or
more below her feet.
This, then, was the position. My chattering,
most agitated host was in misery which I could
hardly guess at. He dared not call his daughter
from the window, and could do nothing without
her. He tried to make a joke of it, and me a

214 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
party to the joke. He affected a mock despair —
ruefully enough — and looked to see if I would
take it. But I would not. Instead, I looked
about me at a humble but perfectly decent room.
A curtained bed was in a corner, a rep-covered
sofa against a wall. Above it hung a confec
tioner's almanac, which showed a young man,
very decollete in a blue and white vest and pink
socks, rowing a lady in pale mauve up an Alpine
waterfall. The lady had a scarlet parasol in one
hand, a cigarette in the other, and boots which
buttoned nearly to the knee. There was no
doubt about that. The only other picture was
a small card displaying a miraculous Madonna.
She was crowned and had seven swords sticking
into her heart. Gowns were no doubt concealed
behind a second hanging curtain ; a crucifix stood
on a little table by itself: I think that was all.
The whole establishment seemed to me scrupu
lously decent. I suppose it was very poor, but
certainly I should never have noticed that had
not Livia chosen that I should ; and when she
brought herself into the midst of it, we might
have been in the Palazzo del Magnifico.
Tortoni, Tertulliano, having attained what,
apparently, was to be a coup of magnitude, was
now in a hurry to say his Nunc Dimittis. In
fact, he was too ready, and in fact he said it too

x THE PORTRAIT OF LIVIA 215
soon. Badly in want of breath was he ; he lifted
and let fall his arms as if he were dandling a
baby. Wits had left him as well as breath, and
as for manners, what remained of them but some
poor tattered instincts ? " S' accommodi, s' accom-
modi," was all he had to say; and then, without
showing me any accommodation at all, he threw
up his hands like a man drowning. " lo non
posso piu ! " I heard him wail, as he fled stum
bling from the room. I heard him blunder down
stairs : he had sought the sanctuary of the street.
If one needed adventure by any chance — ! I
looked at the young queen by the window.
One frail hand was on the sill, one slim finger
just grated on it. I had nothing to say, and she
intended to say nothing. What the deuce  !
The comic edge of the crisis struck me, and I
broke into innumerable laughter. She was very
much puzzled ; she frowned ; but I suppose she
saw that I was a human being and not a milch-
cow. We very soon became friends ; or if that
is too great a word, reached that comfortable
footing of intimacy where each is able, without
effort, to get the best out of the other — as a free
will offering.
Livia, when you had got thus to know her,
was an extremely innocent girl ; I apply the word
deliberately. Her self-possession was innocence,

216 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
She had character, knew what she wanted,
and exactly how far she deserved to have it.
She did not choose to make bargains with Pro
vidence on any but the greatest occasions of
need ; but she believed that if by some fortunate
chance she got more than she deserved — why,
that then she had deserved it. I have said that
she was hot-tempered ; she was, and proud too —
as proud as a wound. She was proud of all sorts
of things, but not of her beauty. This was,
unhappily, too necessary a commodity of hers for
any satisfaction to be in it. Certainly she was
proud of being Sienese, though she always denied
it. " What else could I be ? " she used to say,
which sounds arrogantly enough. But when I
got to know her well, I found that her real pride
lay deeper, and was the faster to hold because
never sure of its ground. To fetch it up flame-
hot there always needed to be some speck upon
the object of it — just as you may make any girl
blush by saying, There's a smut on your face.
Livia's contrada was her darling pride, and upon
that there were as many smuts as you chose to
look for. She belonged, you must know, to Pro
venzano, to the contrada della Giraffa, a quarter
of little fame, with a badge which had never
brought luck. As a consequence, if you desired
to see Livia at her fiercest, you either said of

t^An&'-zAA/u/. AAiev

x THE PORTRAIT OF LIVIA 217
some one that he was "andato a Provenzano"
(which is our "gone to the devil"), or spoke
of the Palio as the peculium of Oca or Tartuca
— the Quarter of the Goose, or that of the
Tortoise. Now, I never saw the Palio run in her com
pany, and that is how I found her out. She said
that she didn't care to go, that it was too hot,
that there were too many people; but she did
go — there's the truth of it — she did go; and
screamed Giraffa ! with her neighbours, and with
them had beleaguered her famous Madonna di
Provenzano with petitions for weeks together.
And when the race was over and the contrada
of the Wave had won it, she sulked, and would
not enter the church of her armless goddess. All
this transparency flashing and flaunting under
the eyes of a friend was too much for me ; I
roundly taxed her with it, and am glad now that
I did. She saved one pride by means of another,
in the prettiest way. For when I had cornered
her, and got her to confess that her Giraffe never
had won a palio, never entered, was not even
required to enter in these days, she flew upon me
with a vehemence beyond belief — asking what
need, pray, had the Giraffe to struggle in a crowd
of thieves and assassins, when everybody knew
that the patroness of the whole stupid business

218 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
was the Madonna of Provenzano — whose banner
graced and crowned the field, without whom not
a hand could be raised, not a vote cast ; before
whom every nerbo must be laid for benediction,
every knee be bent for strength to be given ?
" And would it be a tolerable thing, a thing of
decency, do you suppose " — she startled me : it
was magnificent to see her fluttering nostrils as her
scorn fanned them — " would it be decency that the
sons of the patroness themselves should compete
in the thing ? " It is, of course, quite true that the
armless Madonna of Provenzano is the queen
of the Giraffa, and Foundress, in some degree, of
the Palio.
I said, the Provenzani had competed ; she
waved her hand. Shame had killed their base
desires. Nothing now would bring them to offer
themselves for the prova. " Shame — yes, and
Fear." She came close to me, hissing the words in my
ear. " Fear, signore. I'll tell you why. It is
reasonable in every man who competes for this
thing, that he should desire to win it. Well, well
then, do you not know that my people could
bring home the Palio more times than Bellino
ever did for his poor Tartuca ? " Bellino was
a famous rider, unbeaten, I believe. " More
times!" cried Livia, appealing to the skies —

x THE PORTRAIT OF LIVIA 219
" they would win it for ever. They could win it
on the Last Day, if there was time."
I asked, how could this be ? She bunched her
fingers together, and bound them closely with
thumb and forefinger of the other hand. "By

HOUSE OF ST. CATHERINE.

hiding our Madonna of Provenzano. Then those
others could do nothing — nothing at all. There
is the truth." She rose up, majestic and inspired ;
she looked like a Herald Angel. The dialectic
was superb — I could have kissed her foot.
When she had recovered her composure and
was perfectly good-tempered, I got her to talk
about her Madonna — which she would have done

220 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
by the hour together. What I gathered was this
much : Once the Lady of Provenzano had had a
son, a Gesu of her own. It was true he was
dead ; but she carried him on her knees and
tended him with her hands, fanning the flies away
— and she was happy, although she had hardly
any worship. She lived on the outside of a house
in the piazza : very few people had noticed that
she was there, but she had her dead Gesu — that
was company enough.
But some enemies of hers — Spaniards, Floren
tines, Volterrani, Livia didn't know who, and
cared nothing — broke through the Camollia Gate
and murdered a branca di gente (a horde of
people), and settled down in Provenzano, and
went out shooting whenever they chose. One of
these birbanti — ruffians by profession, I think
she meant — became acquainted with a donna
allegra of that quarter, and used to visit her ; and
this donna allegra lived in the piazza, just
opposite to the Madonna, who was in the open
air then, and nursed her dead Gesu day and
night, and was happy, as I had been told. Well,
this birbante was one day at the house of his
arnica — that donna allegra she had been speaking
of — and he was leaning out of the window —
and I might be sure that his gun was handy.
He was idle, had nothing to do ; so presently his

x THE PORTRAIT OF LIVIA 221
eye falls upon our Madonna across the way.
" Tut ! " says the birbante. " See how she nurses
that carrion. I'll soon put a stop to that," says he.
Whereupon he ups with his gun, pulls, and pam J
he shoots the dead Gesii all to shivers, and blows
into fine powder the Madonna's tending hands.
The neighbours run out of doors, or look out of
windows. " Who would be dead of that shot ? "
they ask each other. They look up and down,
round about, they see nothing extraordinary —
only the smoke of the gun floating up to the
chimneys. Va benissimo. They return to their
affairs ; so also the birbante.
But the donna allegra, who happened to be
alone that evening, about the prima di notte was
leaning out of her window — not looking for
anybody; just looking out into the warm evening
and thinking of little or nothing. She was of a
happy nature, living from day to day as best she
could or as she must ; and now she was certainly
very happy ; but — cosa stroma ! her eyes were
full of tears, which flowed and flowed. They ran
down her cheeks to her arms on the window,
and in little streams down to the ground ; but she
let them run freely, since they seemed to make
her happy. And the more they flowed the
happier she became. And then the miracle

222 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
occurred which I am about to tell you. Listen.
There was this Giulia — that was the name of the
donna allegra — crying softly to herself at the
window ; and presently, down in the street, she
hears, as it were, an echo of her own sweet grief
— more gentle crying, and a low sobbing of words
of grief: "O lasso! . O poverina, che faro? O
lasso! Oime!" She listened for a little — her
own tears not ceasing to fall : — and then, as if she
knew what she was going to do, she goes to her
door and down the stair, and steps across the
piazza, and stops in front of the house opposite to
her own, and looks up, and says : " Buona pasqua,
Madonna Santissima. Che hai ? "
" Oime ! " says the Madonna. " They have
taken away my son."
" Eh," says La Giulia, " but you know that
that had to be. He is gone to Paradise; and
that is where your ladyship will find him."
" They shot him, Giulia," says the Madonna ;
" and my arms which held him — see, they are
gone, too."
Giulia looked up through the dusk — and it
was as I tell you. Her arms were shot clean
away at the shoulders.
La Giulia cried out : " Oh, the assassins !
Oh, the cut-throat dogs ! Who has done this
blasphemy ? "

x THE PORTRAIT OF LIVIA 223
" It was your caro amico, Giulia," says the
Madonna. Giulia looked at the white Madonna and knew
that she could not lie, even if she would. Then
she ground her teeth together, and cursed the

birbante in a low voice. " Lo piglia un' acci-
dente," she said — and it came true, as she learned
the next day ; for the birbante had his neck broken
in a fight, being thrown out of an upper window.
" But," says La Giulia, " if you have lost a son
you have gained a daughter; and if your arms
are gone, my heart has come back."
She made her reverence, and went about the

224 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
piazza from house to house, calling her neighbours
and friends, women all, of her own profession.
" Come all of you," she said ; " come this moment.
A miracle has happened. The Madonna is
crying for her son : we must be her daughters.
Come, and bring tapers." So all those women
came out with lighted tapers and made a great
ring round about the maimed Madonna, and
joined hands, singing Laudi and the Litany of
the Virgin ; and kept all the hours, and never
left off the rosary. And whomsoever passed by,
whether man or woman, they compelled to kneel
and say the Ave Maria, and lay down a quattrino
in honour of their Madonna.
This nightly devotion went on for many weeks
of the summer, until the Madonna, being com
forted, was grateful, and her gratitude, taking
the heavenly form, was noised all over the city.
For she made many notable miracles among
women, healing them when they were sick, turn
ing their hearts, and the like. And soon there
was enough treasure to build the fine church,
which you can see any day you please in the
Piazza di Provenzano ; within which, when it
was finished, she herself was carried upon the
shoulders of lords and cardinals, under the eyes,
as Livia believes,' of the Holy Father. Upon
that great festa a palio was run in her honour,

Afavi/^AAcrrrL&ruco'. AAc&nas.

x THE PORTRAIT OF LIVIA 225
and a man of the Giraffa won it, and presented it
to her. And so, by degrees and degrees, nobody
dared enter for the palio without seeking her
benediction, or vowing her a heart, or whatsoever
he could find that would please her. Livia here
bent her brows at me. " This is why she is the
greatest of all the Madonnas of Siena, and the
Giraffa, which contains her, the greatest of all the
contrade." " And you love her, Livia ? "
" Gia," said Livia ; " we all love her. But I
shall love her more when I am older."
I objected., " Why so ? You cannot be too
young, I suppose, to love her."
" No," said Livia. " But it is more convenient
to love her afterwards — and she quite under
stands." I hope she did — in fact, I know she did,
though Livia didn't think so. I remember that
I ended the conversation by saying : " Livia,
Livia, I am going to prophesy. I prophesy that
there will be a miracle. But you must love the
Madonna extremely."
Livia turned away her head. " Come," I said,
rising. " Take me to see her now."
" I think I will not," she replied ; but after a
while she proposed it herself, as if she had
suddenly thought of it.

226 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
The Madonna of Provenzano is in a niche,
high over the altar of her somewhat gaudy temple.
Every visitor to Siena must be familiar with her
pinched white face and sunken eyes, her veil, her
crown, her cuirassed, armless trunk. To see this
magnificent young Livia kneel stiffly there, the
picture of health and bodily perfection, and look
steadily up at her woe-begone divinity, and
gravely and familiarly talk to her, was to be
assured of what I asserted before, of Livia's
innocent mind. The Madonna di Provenzano,
patroness of donne allegre! They all come to
her in time. Upon this occasion the talk
between mistress and servant was very grave.
Livia was pale ; she had shawled her head to
enter the church, and now drew the lace close
about her chin. Conversation, slow to begin,
grew very earnest; Livia seemed to be arguing
with the Madonna, rather hot for her own opinion,
not willing to be convinced. A footfall sounded
in the church, she looked round, she touched my
shoulder. " See, see," she said. " Here is old
Imperia ; watch what she does." A very wizened,
partly mad old woman with wandering grey hair
came in upon her crutches, curtsied to the Madonna
of Provenzano, and then, suddenly, changed her
mind, or seemed to change it, and went out again.
" We must follow her," said Livia. " Come."

x THE PORTRAIT OF LIVIA 227
And she took my arm. We went, very slowly
(for Imperia had to drag one leg), up the hill to the

¦ A£gA* 'M

¦X-'AT '¦':' A f , -AA\

- '"f? ^'Idypyllp

UliT
iSfei- "A;
h^__
^M'
Vi£w*J
FONTE NUOVA, SIENA.
Servite Church. Imperia entered ; we followed.
She knelt close to a sepulchre where, behind an
228 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
iron grille, was a ghastly waxen image of the
dead Christ: her face was transfigured, she was
in an ecstasy. She kissed her old hand seven
times to the Seven Wounds, and " Good day,"
she whispered — "Good day, my Lord Christ.
I have seen Thy mother. She bids her love to
Thee." I felt Livia tremble where she knelt near
by me. When Imperia was gone, she hid her
face for a while, and I saw her shoulders shake.
But her eyes were calm and quite dry when she
showed them again ; she was exceedingly grave.
" I have seen Imperia often in our church," she
said, " but never here. Now I know what her duty
is — and whose is this Cristo. This is a strange
thing. Go away now. I wish to be alone." 1
A change came over her from this hour, but I
must delay to speak of it until I have remembered
many things. She took me to visit the other
Sienese Madonnas — her, for instance, of the
Maesta, the Madonna delle Grazie, as she is
called, done by Duccio, I believe — a solemn,
1 It was after this — • shortly — that I asked Livia to sing to me. She
laughed and shook her head. I said that I had heard girls sing in the
mountains, of their lovers : — " Ho colto un giglio," etc. Her eyes
grew hard. She lowered the lids so that I should not see them. But I
had seen them ; they were like dark jade. " We do not sing of lovers in
Provenzano," she said, low ; "but we sing when we have to, and to those
who demand it of us." "But if I demand it, Livia ? " She shot a quick
chill glance at me, then stiffened her neck. "You! you do not demand.
No, no. I shall never sing to you." I didn't ask her any more for
songs. But here is evidence of change for an astute reader.

x THE PORTRAIT OF LIVIA 229
stupid-looking goddess. Livia told me that she
was sterile now, though she had many times
saved Siena from enemies. But that was long
ago, long before they moved her out of the
Duomo. Since they had put her in the Opera no
one came to do her service, and therefore she
worked no miracles. I don't wonder at it. It
is a thing which we may reflect upon, the number
of barren deities there must be in the Accademia
across the way. There they are, crowded together
for tourists to gape at : but where were they once ?
Poor ladies, dry-boned and hard-eyed, who prays
before them now, or gives them hearts or tapers ?
Who kisses them, or holds them out shaking-
hands ? It is a thing which we may reflect upon
at our leisure, that to make our holiday we have
robbed God of His people and these people of their
gods. Mr. Such-an-one and Professor That-other,
measuring the metacarpus of a thin hand or two,
will tell us immediately who made them, or who
did not. Bah ! I want to know whom they
made — what young Livias, what old Imperial
It seems to me that you have more right to taki.
a man's heart out of his body than his god out of
his heart. The thieves we are ! Let us think of
the sterile Madonna in the Opera and what that
may mean before we exalt the great Duccio at
the expense of the great Cimabue.

23o THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
But the Madonna " of the Great Eyes," in the
Capella del Voto, is (if I may be pardoned a term
from the orchard) in full bearing. She does not
want for children. Her shrine is ablaze with
tapers, stuck all over with hearts, chains, and
badges. Both she and her Bimbo have rare
crowns. Livia had to allow that she did wonders.
So also did the Madonna del Manto, whom the
laundresses of Fontegiusta serve, and so the
famed Madonna of the Servites. But she " of the
Snows," in a little church of her own, a sad-browed,
pensive, pretty lady, does nothing. Livia thought
little of her, although she could urge nothing to
her discredit. " She is nothing — she is nothing
at all," she kept drumming into my ears as we
walked to the church ; and she would not kneel
to her when she got there. " Why, what can she
do ? " she cried, directly we were in the street
again. " You see what she is. She has no curtain
before her. She is roba di galleria — a thing for
show." I said that she was a beauty. " Pooh,"
said Livia, — " what has beauty to do with the
matter? It is the heart you want, and the kind
eyes. She has neither — she is nothing. I never
heard of a single thing that she did." And let our
artists take this to mind, that there is no instance
of a show Madonna having worked a miracle.
The Madonnas of the Goldfinch, of the Grand

x THE PORTRAIT OF LIVIA 231
Duke, of the Garden ; Del Sarto's blowzy wench

SAN DOMENICO, SIENA.

of the Sack, all the Botticelli, Lippo Lippi, Titian
flower-beds — have they any gilt hearts ? Not one.

232 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
But I must get nearer to Livia's private
affair — that question whether or no she would
allow herself to love her Madonna — which I
very well knew was going on. I saw much
less of her: that was one proof. When I
did see her she was extremely silent : that was
another. Then, on a day in May, she inducted
me, much against her will, into the Glories of the
Goose. It was the Vigil of Saint Catherine, who,
of course, belonged to that quarter, and to whom
Livia, like all the Sienese whomsoever, paid
certain if grudging honour. An Ocaiola she
certainly had -been — this saintly lady — but also a
Sanese ; a great saint indeed who, had she been
of the Giraffa, would have been a serious rival
of the armless Madonna. But, secure in the
possession of that Puissance, Livia could afford to
be generous to Santa Caterina. Much of this I
had to urge before she would accept my escort to
San Domenico, that great rude church on the
headland ; and go she did ; but it is worth while
remarking, that she would not wear her festal
gear. Neither straw hat, nor silk gown, nor
filigree hairpins, nor necklace would she put upon
herself. She chose to go in her every-day wear,
hatless, in a print bodice and green stuff skirt, in
white stockings, and cloth slippers which clattered
at every step. This made her more than commonly

' (A^AZ'An/w, ¦fA/eA

x THE PORTRAIT OF LIVIA 233
conspicuous, though (to be sure) there were few
of the Ocaiole of figure so superb or carriage at

VIA SAL1COTTO, SIENA.

once so easy and so strong. No doubt but she
knew that. She was the observation of every-

234 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
body and the lure of not a few; yet I declare
upon my heart and conscience that she went
through her phases of curiosity, enthusiasm, and
religious profit-seeking just for all the world as if
there had been nobody in that thronging church
but herself, Saint Catherine's head, and a frate
or two. Now, properly digested, that is a very
extraordinary thing, that a fine girl should be
so unconscious, or so negligent, of admiration.
Imagine a girl of our own people under such fire.
Just imagine it!
I said that Livia showed, with all the rest,
curiosity, enthusiasm, and religious profit-seeking.
Not only were these the phenomena, but this was
the order of their manifestation upon this vigil
when, in San Domenico, they expose the relics
of Saint Catherine, and honour them by a ser
mon and a procession of children. For, first, she
was very curious to see the saint's head, which is
exhibited to the faithful in a shrine of flowers and
starry candles. She pushed for a place in front,
she stood tiptoe, gazed with all her serious eyes
at the little brown mummy. A woman's poor
shrunken head, it seemed to me, crowned by
some ghastly travesty of honour with a bridal
wreath. The agony still tight upon the lips and
blind eyes : this was what I could see, and soon
tired of. But that adoring, praying, appealing,

x THE PORTRAIT OF LIVIA 235
straining crowd saw, or hoped to see, much more.
They held up their arms, they nodded and wagged
their own quick heads, they whispered to it fast
and familiarly. Mothers held up their children,
who crowed and cheered to see the bright lights.
Fathers taught their boys how to cross them
selves, and got them so much into the habit of it
that I saw some afterwards wandering about the
spaces of the church performing the signature
incessantly, as if it had been a new game. Mean
while our tall Livia devoured the relic with her
eyes, neither praying to it, nor moving her arms
towards it, nor holding out her devotion in her
two hands.
" E piccola," she said, "she's a little thing to
be espoused to Christ — ma pure bellina, but she's
rather pretty all the same," which I should never
have called her. She had used the same phrase
of her own trim waist, the reader may remember ;
and one admission was as sincere as the other.
Enthusiasm had not come upon her yet.
Although she knelt and moved her lips, Livia
was not praying. I had seen her talk secrets
with the Madonna of Provenzano, and I knew
she was not praying now.
It was the procession which called up her emo
tion — a procession which followed a car decked
with paper roses and bearing a monstrance of

236 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
silver. In that there was a brown finger of the
poor dead. A straggling, straying procession it
was, of children with tapers and guild-brethren
with torches, which fought a way for itself round
the church to the music of a fitful chant. Worse
singing I have seldom heard, nor have I ever
seen more imminent conjunction of candle-flames
and muslin veils. The monotony of the chant
also beggars description: it was a single phrase
repeated for ever and ever; and yet I saw
Livia's nostrils flutter in the quick draught of her
breath, and her bosom stirring like a short sea.
As the singers came near her, she began to thrill
a little; but they passed by a dumb Livia; and
then came the young men, roaring like bulls
in a market. It was then that she too began to
sing, like one inspired, full-throated as a nightin
gale, from whom her notes well like honey from
a jug. Now indeed the girl was on fire; and
the thought jumped high within me that there
were the makings of a saint in this girl of Pro
venzano. I did not then know how soon the
armless Madonna intended to enfold her, nor in
what guise.
To this noble rage of praise succeeded self-
seeking in my friend, a frank desire to get for
herself what she could out of her exaltation: a
thing really not shocking at all, but part of the

x THE PORTRAIT OF LIVIA 237
strange affair which religion is. To Livia's mind

VICOLO AL VENTO, SIENA.

there is a bargain to be made in church just as
anywhere elser to the striking of which will go — ¦

238 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
what goes in the market-place — finesse, con
fidence, ready-mindedness, shrewdness; in fact,
all the qualities which make a good chafferer out
match a bad one. Enthusiasm for the business
is also material. Whoever heard of a man
prospering at his trade who did not think it
better to be a good boat-builder or market-
gardener than to command armies in the field
or build St. Peter's of Rome ? So your church-
chafferer will sing " O Crux, Spes Unica" with
the best, and expect to be rewarded with the
best. So Livia, having shrilled her lauds of St.
Catherine, took her place in the file, that she
might pass before the relic, speak to it — and
be heard.
She formed one of what seemed an endless
chain, and her demeanour differed from none of
her companions'. There were no more lauds,
no more prayers. No, but everybody had his
petition ready, and everybody made it, kneeling
as he passed by the head, and kissing it in, as
you may say, when he had lodged it. I saw
Livia kneel and speak her torrential whispers —
what a flood of passion in them ! I saw her
stoop and kiss the shrine — and her look at the
relic, Now, it is a bargain, mind. The moment
she was past and in the church again she was her
usual recollected, beautiful self. It was all over.

x THE PORTRAIT OF LIVIA 239
Next day was the festa, with great doings in the
street; but she would not go to San Domenico
again. She went to mass at Provenzano, and
afterwards saw with me the street procession up
the Via Fontebranda, and the flagging of certain
favoured Ocaioli by the alfieri of the quarter. I
shall not insist upon this spectacle, except to say
that, to Livia, it had no religious significance
at all, although the mummers were in sacred
guise, and the centre of all was a silver statue
of St. Catherine. The mystery was her marriage
to our Saviour, the persons all enacted by chil
dren. She hardly looked at them. The hymn
which had so stirred her before left her dumb;
the children were now brats ; the whirling flags,
the jaunty, lithe young man in striped hose and
green and yellow doublet, who manipulated them
was a " slug of Fontebranda " — and why ? Be
cause every house in the street bore a jutting
goose over its door ; because the flags were red,
white, and green, and the banner bore in its
midst a crowned goose ; because, in fact, all this
was the Glory of the Goose. St. Catherine was
become an Ocaiola again, and Livia could not
bear it. As soon as the procession had passed
she begged me to excuse her. It was not con
venient for her to remain any longer; she had
only come because I had asked her. She hoped

240 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
I would stay, if such things amused me. We
should meet again, no doubt. I said that I
hoped so, and she disappeared.. I may as well
say at once that I did not see her again for many
a year. At the end of the procession I was much
astounded to find the gallant young flag-waver
standing before me. His glories of green and
yellow, his stripes, his curls, his little red cap,
made it a public ceremony : but everything is
done publicly in Tuscany. He bowed and
saluted. " A thousand excuses, sir," he said,
" but that girl who was with you  "
" Yes ? "
" Sir, she is my arnica"
Now I had never known that before; but —
poor Livia — why not?
" Sir," continued the alfiere, " I have lately
made her highly honourable proposals — namely, .
of marriage. But last evening, sir, she refused
them. Now, sir  "
" Sir, in my turn," I said, " I can assure
you  " He put up his hand.
" Nothing more, I beg you, sir," he said. " I
know exactly what you would be pleased to say,
and can only assure you that no such words are
necessary. But I must inform you further that
Livia refused me, nevertheless, on your account."

AAc&k*z/ jAL??7i/ AAa^z-iAiAv^aAA.

x THE PORTRAIT OF LIVIA 241
I was greatly surprised. He assured me,
however, that Livia's belief was that I and the
Madonna of Provenzano between us desired her

A STREET IN SIENA.

to be a nun. Thereupon I told him what I did
most ardently desire for her — which was to marry
himself or any other honest man. I believe I
convinced him by the most obvious means : at
any. rate, we finished the evening together at

242 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap, x
the Caffe Greco, and he left me full of hope and
promise. I was not so hopeful as he was, for my
firm conviction then was that she had refused
him because he was an Ocaiolo.
I did not see my friend again for six years :
it was last May that we met. She was looking
extremely handsome and sedate, and told me
that she had four children and that her husband
was a fool. He certainly showed no folly in
marrying Livia ; and she, I may in any case
remark, seems of apostolic mind in suffering him
gladly. One question which I asked her was
answered by another from her.
" Will you tell me, Livia," was my question,
" whether, when you were married, you gave a
good gilt heart to Madonna di Provenzano ? "
Livia looked me full in the face, without a
flush or quiver.
" Why should I ? " was her question.

CHAPTER XI
VAL D' ARBIA : BUONCONVENTO  MONTE OLIVETO 
SAN QUIRICO  PIENZA
Siena, like a rustic beauty, too shy to pursue
and yet unwilling to be left, follows the traveller
for nearly twenty miles of his southerly Afterthoughts
road, with long looks and enchanting °fsiena.
glances of her blushing face. As everything
about this place is lovely you will accept with
out surprise the winding road to the gate, a road
hemmed deeply in lemon and white, laburnums
and acacias in flower, the colour of a mass-priest's
vestment. The huge double gate — port and anti-
port — which closes in this fragrant alley, bears
upon its outward face a tall sheet of fresco of Sano
di Pietro's, which you can see for a quarter of a
mile of your course, one of those gracious off
shoots of the Catholic religion which all men
must admire : the proper pride of it, the loyalty
and dead-certainty, which make sure that the
incomer will rejoice in its gods, and that its gods
243

244 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
shall be the beginning and the end of his sojourn.
Here you have a stooping Virgin, in her blue
mantle and robe of cream brocade, a courtly, fair
King Christ leaning forward to crown her: noble
belief, nobler witness ! And while you watch this
solemnity Siena herself rises above it, rose-colour
and purple, crowned with ivory and grey ; and
you see the Mangia tower, like the lance of an
outlying vedette, keeping guard, as well it may,
over the road. For you are now upon the high
way to Rome. Across this broken plain marched
the Orvietani, and robber-lords from Grosseto,
Pietra, Corneto, as often as the Papal battalions.
Those far dim hills — Monte Amiata, Monte
Labbro, Monte Civitella, and the rest of them
— have all held enemies. Siena disputed this
country with her neighbours. The end of her
high pretences and their deep claims you know
by now.
From the embanked road, which at first you
follow, you will see, left of your way, the naked
lists of Montaperto, whose mounds
The South. and dykes of mud, whose tortured
pale hills, still writhing under the fierce volcanic
stress, are a foretaste of what is to confront you
for many a league — a rolling grey plain edged
at the extreme distance by violet hills; stone
pines upon lonely eminences ; cypresses in rows,

: AAt&v

XI

VAL D' ARBIA

245

leading to chapel or farmhouse ; empty pastures ;
here and there a slow shepherd with his flock
straying dejectedly behind him —
A uno, a due, a tre; e 1' altre stanno
Timidette atterrando 1' occhio e '1 muso —
man and beasts all of the drab of the soil. A

S. QUIRICO, MONTE AMIATA.

great horizon, a sea of grey land, patched like the
sea with the shadow of a cloud or chance gleam
of light ; here a blot of crimson clover, there a
field of peas in flower : far off, but winding
nearer, a cloud of dust. A streak of dusty road,
like some ship's wake, leads you on: over all

246 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
is a white, unquenchable sky. You are going
south, and everything above or about you assures
you of it — to the land where men, trees, beasts
and their abodes are prone to the mid-day sun.
All this you may see as from a platform, as
slowly your road drops down to mulberry-trees
and the plain. Hereabouts you reach Isola, a
village of whitewashed tenements, with never a
glass window to the whole, and a trecento church
the shape of a barn. A line of poplars testifies to
the Tressa brook, which soon joins the Arbia;
and at Ponte a Tressa, a long pink village with
two stone pines to give it character, and a golden
maze of vineyards beyond it, the two rivers touch
and mingle, and take you to Buonconvento and
beyond. You pass Monterone d' Arbia, a pros
perous town where the hospital of La Scala, in
the old days, had a mill, and built a tower to guard
it. The tower still stands — a glum fortress over
a brook, and served Marignano in 1554 as a
base of his operations against Siena. Not far
on is Lucignano, a beautiful place on a cypress-
Comfort at wooded mount, a turretted, battle-
lucignano. mentec} i;ttie rock 0f offence. Largely
populated now by donkeys, which they breed and
export,1 it possesses a green hill-side, a weeping-
willow, and a fountain of spring-water, by which
1 You may see herds of them at pasture, like sheep, in the fields.

XI

VAL D' ARBIA

247

you may sit to eat your breakfast, and see far
north of you Siena, like a crimson cloud-cap to
her ridge. The spring comes out of the rock on
which Lucignano stands, the fountain is recessed
in a cave, by no means without art. It is figured as
a bountiful woman standing there. Moss clothes

J?

MONTAPERTO, SIENA.

her to the middle, and the water gushes out of
her breasts. It was pretty to see the hedgers
and vine-tenders come up to drink — children at
the bosom of their mother. For here is a Pan-
Italian picture, if you please : earth moulded
in the shape of every man's mother, and men,
like children, running to her for solace in the

248 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
day's round. Italy, by no means unaware of the
aspect of the things she makes, will show you
many emblems like this of retired Lucignano;
and so will other countries I daresay. The
figure of man or woman squirting water — if you
must reduce it to that — is pretty common and
mostly disagreeable. In Italy only, this pathetic
fancy, this glimpse of the mortal things which stir
the mind, tinges the poor images with an artless
grace which makes them real. Art or religion,
which are these parables? Heaven knows there
is mighty little difference in this country. You
will see fountains like this in the great cities : in
Brussels you will see one, which is considered
much more remarkable, bragging of its impudence
in the street. But in what village of what other
country will you find it hidden away in a cave
upon the bare hill-side, to be of service only
to the thirsty vine-dressers, who use it every
day? In none alive at this hour, I dare affirm:
but once before, in Greece, you would have
found it.
With Lucignano the hills begin ; from it you
will follow a valley road. You pass Seravalle, a
Buoncon- famous Sienese outpost, block of a
vento. fortress, without form and void ; you
pass Ponte d' Arbia; and then you reach Buoncon
vento, a brave, square, and walled town, banked

XI

VAL D' ARBIA

249

above the Ombrone, with a river-side piazza of
planes and chestnuts, a complete circuit of walls,

asAif-

1\ ¦

¦^ A

¦•" . &

¦1
IN THE CHURCH, MONTE OLIVETO.
and a belfry with a graceful tall cupola rising
above them.
250 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
Here that most unhappy Caesar, Henry of
Luxemburgh, who was to do every wonderful
thing desired by Dante, and did not one — that
Alto Arrigo, ch' a drizzare Italia
Verra in prima ch' ella sia disposta,
came in 131 3 to die, and did that suddenly1 and
thoroughly, while the Sienese were manning
their walls against him and the Florentines just
quitting theirs. There were, and there are still,
medicinal waters near by in which a man might
wash and be made whole ; but nothing, it seems,
could keep this one's bones from rotting. Ex
traordinarily futile prophecy of Dante's! But it
is the fate of poets to personify functions, and
judge a man as great as his profession. Into the
Caesarean office Dante read all the forces of
Julius and Augustus, which made that office
potent. Very soon after he had penned it the
sad-browed Florentine must have known it vain ;
and not so long after that again he was to know
whether the sequel had been any more true.
You may remember it : how Beatrice, being
with her lover in the very Rose of heaven, in
the very burning centre of that Rose, drew him
1 So suddenly, that rumour fixed his death in poison, administered
(aisait-on) by a Dominican in the sacrament. There is no truth in the
surmise, but much probability. The rumour itself is evidence of that.
The curious may see his effigy in the Pisan Campo Santo — that of a tall
man with a heavy bovine face.

^An^'S^'ie^-^^iAe/ (AiAeAi^Ad'.

XI VAL D' ARBIA

251

towards her with her look of one who would speak
and is silent —
Quai' e colui che tace e dicer vuole,
and showed him a seat empty in the convent of
White Stoles. In that high seat, said she —
In quel gran seggio a che tu gli occhi tieni
Per la corona che gia v' e su porta,
Prima che tu a queste nozzi ceni,
Sedera 1' alma, che fia giu angosta,
Dell' alto Arrigo . . .
If great Henry sat so high, it was that the lowly
might be exalted. But it avails little to wonder
what Dante said, and what missed, in that world
whither he must fare twice.
This I will add of Buonconvento, that it has
a good kitchen and a friendly inn, and this yet
again, that if you wish to see Tolomei's Abbey —
a notable outcrop of Siena — it is here that you
will turn off the Via Romana for a climb of seven
miles along a finely contoured road, not yet ten
years old.
Chiusure, a little red village, stands upon a hill
of some 3000 feet above the sea ; Monte Oliveto
Maggiore is on a spur a little below The climb to
it, only to be reached by descending lvet0'
and ascending a mile of woody glen. To make
the ascent you climb round two gorges, deep
romantic valleys whose shelves and pinnacles are

252 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
browsed by goats (while the herdboys and girls
flit in and out of the thickets, fauns and Oreads
upon their everlasting business) ; and so by pain
ful degrees you make the convent. For such a
site — high in the clouds and winds, lifting out of
an oak forest — the place looks red and raw as you
come near it. It is, in fact, uncompromisingly
ugly, without ivy, or lichen, or moss, or any of
the funguses which make gardens of our old roofs.
The church tower has a Lombard look in its
sharp casing of red brick ; it is square and has
the conical Lombard cap. The gateway is like
the entry of a castle, turretted, crenellated, and
double-doored. You receive a jar hereabouts,
a jerk to your tenderer feelings from which you
hardly recover, though Virgin and Child welcome
you in, and San Benedetto (on the convent side)
sends you forward with a blessing. The gate is
at the summit of the rock ; a gorge glooms on
three sides out of four; you must go down a
long avenue of ilex to the edge of the fourth
gorge upon the very brink of which the convent
hangs. There you find it, a great, bare, draughty
house, outside all red and inside all white ; naked
as a bride and clean to distraction. You will have
a simple reception, plain food and a cold bed.
Almost certainty you will experience a tearing
night-wind, rattling windows, slamming doors,

XI

VAL D' ARBIA

253

calling of owls and night hawks, a morning of
tempest — beating rain, clouds blotting up Monte

~jf*M 'AAf "*x
W ft ¦'

¦3gSk,

,v

2L. CWfcc^ a\ ;fnffT\U SCuT-.tt-"
THE COUNTRY AT MONTE OLIVETO.
Amiata and all the hill towns. Here at least is
my recollection of Monte Oliveto Maggiore,

254 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
which the blessed Bernardo Tolomei founded in
1 31 3, and which a Sodoma painted, but did not
adorn. They have stripped the place nearly bare of
the many fine things it no doubt contained.
Amono- others, the library is but a
The convent. ° J
shell, the pharmacy a wreck. The
over-vaunted frescoes are in part effective, in a
swagger they have and a bright air of audacity,
as if they wondered that they were there and
were vowed to carry it off. Where this is so,
they are by Signorelli and his friends. The rest
are set down to Sodoma, but if some of them are
not by Pintorricchio, they are inane enough, trite
and feeble enough, insincere enough to be his.
The border line between simplicity and simper
is an extremely narrow one. The Florentines
never stepped over it ; for the moment they had
grown out of the nursery they became absorbed
in other pursuits. They became curious, as with
Pollajuolo ; or pretentious, as with Fra Bartolom-
meo ; or meretricious, as with Andrea del Sarto ;
but they never regretted the nursery and the
fairy tales, and never tried to think themselves
back in that sweet and sunny place. The Sienese
were saved by their limitations: when they
ceased to find their joy in patterns they ceased
art altogether. It was otherwise with the Um-

XI

VAL D' ARBIA

255

brians. That Perugino was too old for the
nursery is manifest in his portraits ; but he had
the force of passion behind his fancy to put him
there again. His great pieces remain primitive
to the very last. Pintorricchio, with no fancy at

s. QUIRICO.

all, copied the nursery work of his predecessors
with a deadly precision which spreads death to the
beholder. The absence of vital fancy makes all
his things false. They are frozen — as in the
library of the Sienese cathedral — or they simper as
here. The rest are undoubtedly Sodoma's — boys,
baggages, and spiritual erotics. I take leave to
say of this whole cloisterful of frescoes that it is

256 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
nearly worthless. It is a report of the life of Saint
Benedict by chroniclers who neither knew nor had
considered of the great Norcian;1 ,it consists of
transcripts of every-day life in the Quattrocentro
made by hacks who were either too frivolous or
too dull to delight in it. As illustration, if I am
right, they fail altogether; as decoration, it is
a matter of taste ; but to me they have neither
the goldsmithery of Siena nor the vivacity and
distinction of Florence. Drab-coloured, flabby
inanity they appear to me. They do contain,
some of them, evidence of Sodoma's preoccupa
tions ; one of them gives you his portrait, that of a
narrow-eyed, scowling, red-lipped temple of evil
humours, ministered unto by badgers and languish
ing young Ganymedes. One may leave them.
Out of that severe test of adversity which is
the ordeal by fire of all systems, the Roman
Catholic religion has never failed to come — the
better. That being the fact, and the man having
been what he was, it is unnecessary to say that
the fragrance of the life and conversation of the
1 Mr. Edmund Gardner, an instructed and amiable writer, upon
whose learning I put my trust, in a recent book upon Siena, makes the
best of these miserable things. He recounts all the miracles which they
do their best to make absurd, and exclaims that he would like more of
them if there were a Signorelli or a Sodoma to paint them. I will pass
Signorelli ; but as to the Sodomesque miracles I shall ask him to
remember Gozzoli's in the Campo Santo of Pisa when he revises this
fervent page.

XI

VAL D' ARBIA

257

Abbate di Negro is still fresh about these empty
halls ; and it is only proper to add, that in the
present head of the house he has, in every respect,
his best successor — an accomplished, courtly,
humorous gentleman, a Settignanese and a
Christian. He told me — what was very evident

Mr

lA^ia'v £ ¦^w.vro

CHURCH, S. QUIRICO.

— that the Government had laid hands on every
thing but the church and its actual site. The
monks are left there on the understanding that
they are to be innkeepers to travellers. They
have been deprived of the means, they are
estopped of all but the desire of doing good to
the peasantry scattered — like dropt acorns — about

VOL. II

258 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
these uncouth bare valleys. Politically, this is
inevitable ; socially, unfortunate ; charitably
speaking, it is monstrous. One hoped better
things for him and his flock, and said one's
" Speriamo ! " And, " Eh ! " said he, " speriamo
sempre ! " and looked up out of the window with
twinkling, patient eyes. I repeat, a brave gentle
man, a Settignanese, and a Christian.1
San Quirico d' Orcia owns a magnificent
approach, a square, grey tower, and a Lombard-
esque church, which for dignity,
San Quirico. . , ,
curious beauty, and venerable aspect
should be hard to match. Once the place was
called San Quirico in Osenna; I never could
learn why; but it has a fine sound of angelic
heights which befits the austere sanctuary on a
hill-top that it is. It prospers, and has an
English air ; staunch stone houses line the streets,
clean, well-to-do, and middle-class ; a busy market,
drovers in gigs; a commodious inn with flowers
in its balconies, where one lives wondrous well;
a mansion for a squire, and, truly, a park, with
park-gates opening upon the market-place. The
1 What are you to do ? The convent pharmacy is destroyed, lest with
drugs for the body should be instilled drugs in the mind. No doubt, the
Olivetans would work against the ruling order : so long as a nation has
a " National Church " which is by no means national, that must occur.
There is but one remedy. If the nation will not go to Church, the Church
must go to the nation. Humankind no longer believes that Almighty
God can be shut up within four walls.

xi VAL D' ARBIA 259
house is a palace of the Chigi, who were mar
quesses of San Quirico ; one Cardinal Flavio laid
out the park. It has overgrown his designs,
spilled itself over the pale, and is now a soft
wilderness of moss-grown glades, dense ilex-
woods, grass run riot, a tangle of orchids and
wild gladiolus. Save for some maimed statues
of Pan and old Sylvanus, half-dressed in lichen
and fern, the birds have it all to themselves.
Prosperous, wholesome, windy little town, full of
friendly people, weatherwise, and honest — you
will leave it with regret.1
1 The story of San Quirico (which I put discreetly here, that my
impression may remain for what it is worth) is that of any one of these
little hill-towns ; but it so happens that an illustration is at hand. Some
few miles along the road, between Pienza and Montepulciano, you may
see an example of the thing, frozen in the doing, as it were. There is a
Piccolomini castle there, — a stupendous, red, embattled keep with lower
buildings about it, — a little church, a line of huts near by. Here, then,
is the nucleus of your hill-town. Some Teuton robber descended into
Italy with his lord, — were he Pepin or another, — marked this eminence,
and the valleys it commanded, with his eye. He built himself this
tower, took a fief of the empire, and held up his sword to Caesar's name
once a year. For his people he bought or stole women to be their wives
and servants ; Italians they. He built them huts close to his tower ; he
built them a church ; this brought in the priest. There were raids, forays
they lived on plunder. But in that way lived every tenant of every rock
in Tuscany ; so our man must build a. wall. He might build a dozen :
within that wall was built-in the seed of discord ; within was to be enacted
the story which you will have had written large in every chapter of this
volume ; for, observe, he had built in the priest and his God-in-four-
walls. The tenantry were the commune ; the chief looked to Caesar ;
the priest touched hands with Rome. Between these three the strife was
to be until Caesar or Peter prevailed. Then it was the turn of another
to enter and take seisin. If the lord were wise he made terms with a

260 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
^Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini, the great Sienese
Pope Pius II., thought to glorify himself and his
The city of house by rebuilding his native place.
vanity. Corsignano was the village where he
saw the light ; there he built a street of palaces,
a cathedral church, a piazza, a municipio ;
consecrated a bishop, imported with enormous
pomp certain bones of Saint Andrew the apostle,
and called the whole Pienza. Vain hope! For
what purpose all this waste ? As well could you
make your brat a man by giving him a razor.
You can no more make a city by building palaces
than establish a church with apostles' bones.
Pienza remains a country village ; you can walk
through it in ten minutes. But it has a street of
great Florentine houses — spacious, ornate, stepped,
broad-based and amply-corniced, in Rossellino's

greater lord. Caesar was far off, but Caesar's vicar would protect him. If
the priest were wise, the Pope put the little burgh under his garment.
According as the commune inclined to one or another would be the
opportunity of Guelf city or Ghibelline, of Florence or of Siena. In the
case of San Quirico, it passed from the Emperor Frederick into Siena's
keeping, and was not lost by her until she lost all. Charles V., descend
ing on Siena, took this place on his way, and quartered his cavalry here.
After that its story is as you know it. The Medici made it a marquessate
for Cardinal Chigi, whose square house and weedy park are there to this
day, and a vane on the church tower, pierced with the hills and cross. I
should add that the collegiate church is magnificent — sane, strong,
idiomatic, racy building, with two fine doors — one of angels, and the
other of knotty columns standing on lions' backs. It has a jewel of a
picture by Matteo of Siena, a golden-vested Madonna in a black cloak,
and four attendant saints all intent upon the mystery they are serving.

XI

VAL D' ARBIA

261

best manner. It has all the apparatus of a
city: a bishop's palace, a canonica, a pretorio,
a communal tower, a piazza ; and its people live
in the little straight tenements their great-grand
fathers were born in, and eat bread and garlic on
the cathedral steps.

MONTEPULCIANO.

Whether it be that the vanity of the attempt
is too open, or that the style of building is not
sympathetic, it is certain that the effect of Pienza
is not one to deceive the beholder. Great town
houses need a great town; great churches need
great assemblies ; cities must not lack for citizens.
I heard high mass at Pienza very stately done, with

262 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
reverence, care, and even circumstance. I am
sure that at the elevation the apostle's old bones
may have stirred ; but the congregation made no
sign. Three old hedgers, their bills and sickles
on the marble beside them, knelt mumbling under
the dome ; three girls with handkerchiefed heads
were whispering in the nave. But there were
canons in the choir ; organ music pealed from the
loft, and a bishop performed the rite. Thus
honour was done to Pio Secondo and Saint
Andrew's bones. It is a handsome church of the
classical, spacious, insipid, late quattrocento style ;
too correct to be individual ; in shape a Latin
cross, with clustered shafts of grey stone to form
nave and aisles, it has grey walls with narrow
bands of black marble let in, and a vaulted roof of
blue speckled with stars. You will see three fine
pictures in it, all Sienese — one of Benvenuto
di Giovanni's, one of Matteo's, weak for him, and a
graceful Virgin in a dark cloak by Sano di Pietro.
All the same, the church like the town lacks
character, as the contrivers of both mostly did.
Whatever the Renaissance may or may not have
been, a birth and a begetting, or a sleep and a
forgetting, by Rossellino's day it was an age of
rules. Passion went into those, personality was
crushed that they might be kept. Surtout point
de formules is an injunction which must always

XI

VAL D' ARBIA

263

be repeated, so prone are we to dig ruts for our
wheels. A roomy place, this church served the

PALAZZO PUBLICO, PIENZA.

French cavalry as stabling for their horses in
1555. Three times between the death of Pius

264 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.xi
and that of Siena the little town was sacked. At
last the Medici balls disputed pride of place with
the crescents of Piccolomini, the palaces emptied,
the canons sang offices to themselves, their old
bones, the wind, and the bats ; and Pienza became
what it now is, a city without citizens. It has
a graceful pointed belfry, as you will not fail to
notice when you leave it — a white stone affair,
very like a Gothic spire seen across broad English
meadows, half hidden in a clump of English elms.
I do remember one near Malvern which might be
its fellow.

AT THE VILLA BACCHLIN.

CHAPTER XII
MONTEPULCIANO
To reach this town, continuing the travel of the
last chapter, you have still to go some three
leagues of difficult country by a road
Broad views.
inextricably involved in woods of
young oak. It is well worth the pains. You
rise by one wide circle after another to your
reward: once out of the woods the views are
superb, both behind and before. Pienza is be
hind ; I saw it all purple, darkling through an
inky cloud, with a vivid white steeple striking up
out of the heart of a storm. Behind that again,
above the turmoil which afflicted it, was San
Quirico, set very high; and ridged over San
Quirico itself, Montalcino, like a city in the skies.
In front, where the air showed coldly pure, I
saw, on a sudden hill, Montepulciano, heaped
into a pyramid, pearl-grey and red, with two
towers predominant, and a warm side open to the
sun — a curtain of brick which, joining the cliff,
265

266 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
seemed to run sheer down into liquid blue — the
depths of the Val di Chiana. At least so it
appeared to me. Mr. Pennell's picture gives a
poet's vision of this eyrie, which, if it is not so
rock-bound as Orvieto, is longer to reach. Be
hind the mount on which it stands you have the
vast violet spaces of the plain, with a sun-steeped
foreground such as Claude alone had scope for.
In it are three lakes — Montepulciano and Chiusi,
' little silver sheets ; and beyond them, like a
strip of green gauze under the purple hills,
which hide Perugia and keep Cortona in shadow,
Trasimeno, fatal name. All its secrets lapt in
reeds, there is Trasimeno asleep in the light,
with a high rock jutting into it, and on that rock
a castle, Castiglione del Lago, which the reader
will discover is not so romantic as it looks.
Montepulciano, though it never look romantic,
never loses its barbaric nakedness, get you as
Humours of near as y°u will. Its only inn is
an inn' called the Marzocco, in memory of
Florentine occupation; and as if it were not
enough to climb six miles of hill to reach the
town, you must add at least two flights of stairs
to reach the inn. I believe the lower floors
were concerned with corn-chandlery, and afforded
reasonable entertainment for rats. What is
perhaps worse is that when you do get there,

XII

MONTEPULCIANO

267

you are regarded by the undertakers with in
difference if not with aversion. No smiling
maids came out to coquette with cloaks and
hand-baggage, no facchino strained at trunks,
no deferential padrone nor far-seeing padrona
knew my necessities before I asked. I re-

MONTEPULCIANO.

member loitering in an ante-room with last
month's Tribuna Lllustrata until, with a sudden
access of rage, I got up and pulled the bell-rope
out of its socket. And then a fluttered virgin
appeared and said that she would see the
cameriere. It was some time before I could
accustom myself to such chilly treatment, but I

268 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
got to understand it. It was that the cameriere
was very well as he was, assiduously, nay, affec
tionately served by all the maids in the house.
The casual guest was thus in the position of
members of a learned club, who are discouraged
from exercising hospitality because it keeps the
waiters up late.
He is, or was, this pasha of a waiter, a tall,
florid man, inclined to embonpoint. He had cold
!„„ blue eyes and a fair moustache, of
camenere. whicn he was exceedingly tender.
His manners were fine, but wanting cordiality,
his movements sedate. He was an indifferent
bad waiter, but I should fancy a good housewife.
Whatever a matron's hand could find to do he
did with all his might. I remember that he
showed me my bedroom, and how he looked to
see if there was lavender in the drawers. Com
ing downstairs, I saw him at the linen-cupboard
giving out sheets and pillow-cases. He never
wore anything but carpet slippers, and was fond
of his dressing-gown in the mornings. In these
— I mean in the slippers — he waited upon me at
dinner, for it is true that he condescended so
far; but I observed that the maids waited upon
him hand and foot, and that is more than he ever
did to me. In the process of the meal, indeed,
I discovered his foible, which was for the im-

xii MONTEPULCIANO 269
peccability of his harem. I say that they waited
upon him hand and foot ; the despot himself did
not think so. He was horribly sensitive to the
least fleck upon his self-esteem : if there were
not two wenches holding plates or a sauce-boat
at the door, and another in the room attendant
upon the wag of his head, he couldn't bear it.
As in the farmyard you may see great chanticleer
surrounded by his zenana, if any one of the bevy
chance to stray, how he chuckles and fills his
burnished neck; and when she returns to the
fold, how swoops he down, curvetting about her
with trailing wing. So alert was my soft-shod
monarch of the Marzocco, so tender of his pre
rogative. If Bettina played truant, it booted not
that Nanetta and Maria were beside him, nor
could they appease him by beseeching looks.
He would ring for Bettina; he would go to the
buttery door and bawl for her. He ceased not
to bawl until one of the others, terrified, ran to
fetch her up. How he scolded her; how he
scowled, tossed up his hands ! It took long to
pacify him, longer for me to dine. But it was
rare to see him presently, in the midst of his now
docile brood, grouting for them, so to speak, among
the crockery, and when they were all busy picking
about him, raising his great blonde head and
looking sideways with an angry eye for any hint

270 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
of disrespect from anywhere. He " did himself,"
as they say, " uncommonly well " ; and between
breakfast and dinner smoked his Virginia in the
dining-room, and read the news.
It had rained during my arrival, but cleared
whilst I was settling in. When I walked abroad
First ^ was mf° the gathering dusk, with a
thoughts, keen lemon light in the western sky,
and a flurry of vaporous cloud drawing off it. The
cobble-stones were gleaming still with wet as I
mounted a steep street — the town properly con
sists of but two — towards the citadel. There
are fine palace fronts in Montepulciano, all upon
the slope ; and what is finest about them is the
way their broad steps are set into ground which
is some four feet higher on one side than it is on
the other. Better masonry, more nicely worked
off, I have never seen. But if I was between the
houses, so (by Hercules) was the wind — bitter-
cold, gusty, and strong. The whole place seemed
in a scurry to get done with its immediate con
cern. One saw in terraced openings (giving on
to the cliff) bending women with their skirts
flying out, battling at their business. Men went
muffled to the ears in fox-skin; boys blew on
their fingers and trotted after us. Every one was
active, on the jog; the caffe doors were not
generously open, the wine-shops shut-to theirs

xn

MONTEPULCIANO

271

with a snap as the topers pushed in or came
huddling out. Your glimpses of the far-off
country were of purple-black hills ; gloom lay in
the valley, here and there showed a house, pale
as a ghost. A dust of snow came scudding over
the way. You saw the far-stretching vista of the

MONTEPULCIANO.

hill-street peppered in whirling white. And this
was May ! And this was Italy ! Stern, stern is
the spring in Montepulciano; but I gather from
what I have seen since that the summer is yet
more fierce.
And yet, out of the chance vantages of their
crags, they grow, or did grow, a fine red wine,

272 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
which Redi calls the king of all the Tuscan vast.
They are said to have been famous for it from
the 9th century, and Mr. Addington Symonds
liked it : my bottle, perhaps, was of a poor year.
Assuredly, if Bacchus in Tuscany requires to
blink unhindered at the sun, this is the place for
him ; for of late I have seen the whole bare rock
quivering under canicular heat — cliffs, houses,
roofs, and steeples all pale and hot as metal. You
know all extremes of weather when you are so
close to the sky.
The R. P. Leandro Albert!, a learned Domi
nican, reports that when he was at Montepul
ciano, in the church of his order, in
History. 1588, he was shown the body of a
co-religionist, the Blessed Agnes da Gracchiano,
which, whenever trouble or danger menaced
the city, did vehemently sweat. Certamente, as
he adds, cosa grande e rara ; certainly a great
and rare performance. Upon which portent my
only comment must be that the skin of the sacred
relic must have been in constant action, for the
disastrous tale of Montepulciano is singular among
Tuscan cities. Boasting itself founded by that
lars, Porsenna of Chiusi, whom Macaulay has
embalmed for his schoolboys, it was early a
bone of contention between Florence and Siena :
Siena's for forty years before n 54, then

xii MONTEPULCIANO 273
Florence's until 1202. Then, as fortune veered,
the poor place was pitched from one to another.
Montaperto gave it to Siena, Benevento returned
it to Florence. The sympathies of the commune,
be it said, were always Florentine, and the
public buildings have an air of that city; but
such things counted for little in the game of
politics. In 1294 the two rivals seem to have
agreed to share our town : they had a Bandi
nelli of Siena for Podesta, a Florentine, Gian-
figliazzi, for captain. Meantime a home family,
Del Pecora, began to rise towards a tyranny.
Matteo Villain has much to say of them. There
was Corrado del Pecora at the root, then a
Guglielmo, then a Ranieri, who came to be
Bishop of Chiusi, a position of advantage for
tyrants. The example of the Duke of Athens,
that fine figure of a man, inspired them to com
mence despots. Bertoldo Novello — young Ber-
toldo, son of old Bertoldo del Pecora — shot a
shrewd bolt to that end when he married a
Fiesca Malaspina and begat James and Nicholas.
These two scoundrels, rivals in the beginning,
intrigued with neighbour states, one with Perugia,
the other with Siena, with the result that first
Perugia made a slave of the place, and next
Siena. They betrayed their fellow-countrymen,
they betrayed and re-betrayed each other. Once
VOL. II T

274 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
James got in with a band by night, and terror
ised for two days by means of Greek fire and
barricades ; then Nicholas called up the Sienese,
his friends, and thought to have James in a trap.
James escaped by setting Montepulciano on fire,
beginning with his own palace. There came,
however, a day when, by Florentine help, both
brothers were out of the commune ; but that
proved the worst of all. They accorded their
differences, joined hands and forces, marched
against the city, entered it with ease, and held a
joint rule for five or six years, which, with some
interruption, was continued by their sons, John,
son of Nicholas, and Gerard, son of James. To
continue were wearisome, since the pair of sons
followed the tactics of the pair of fathers. The
end of all things was this, that one again was
forced to ally himself with Siena, the other with
Florence. This time, owing to the occupation
of Siena by Visconti of Milan, Florence pre
vailed. In 1 390 the Montepulcianesi sent in their
unequivocal submission to the great commune,
and most of their troubles were ended. What
remains of singular is that the Grand Duke
Ferdinand conferred the town upon his wife
Cristina of Lorraine absolutely, and that she
coined money there in her own name as lady
of the land.

XII

MONTEPULCIANO

275

When I say that it is a town of few graces,
I may be taken to mean that I do not think it
worth a visit; and truthfully I do
not, except for the highly curious in
dilettantism, or the highly interested in Politian.
The Piazza, or Rock of the citadel, has the severe

The sights.

«^

' -• a— r^
^A W?- -$S

MONTEPULCIANO.

look of a barrack square — not a tree, not a painted
loggia, little grass. Fronting upon it are the
ragged brick of the cathedral, the maimed stump
of its belfry. The Palazzo Pubblico has a machic-
ollated screen of heavy stonework and a short
tower, in shape like that of the Signiory at
Florence, and said by the learned to have been

276 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
the model for it. One fine palace there is here,
the Pucci, I believe, with two loggias, and a
beautiful brick moulding for a cornice. As for
interiors, that of the church would be handsome
if it were not so inordinately wide, and if the
pilasters were not so heavy as to dwarf them
selves. There is a splendid picture by Taddeo
di Bartolo of Siena, there are two ugly statues
by Michelozzo, designed for the tomb of one
Aragazzi, a poetaster, and by the door are two
bas-reliefs of the same man's, admired by Mr.
Addington Symonds, but not by me. Personally,
I have no liking for that Florentine adroitness
which could copy anything so well that the very
excellence of the imitation defeated itself. For
if you copy and add nothing, of a surety you take
away whatever worth your copy might have had.
Consider these bas-reliefs, which, because they
stare from their harsh surroundings in this
mountain-hold, are better illustrations of the thin
confectionery of Florence than most things in that
city itself. The crowded nudes upon them are
in the manner of an archaic Greek stele; but
exactly in the manner. The figures are squat,
and wriggle in lines like leeches in a bottle.
Why ? Because the Greek made them so.
Aragazzi and his wife are in toga and chiton,
their swarming children are mother-naked.

xii MONTEPULCIANO 277
Why ? Because the Greek chose it. Now when
I reflect upon dead Ilaria at Lucca, or the dead
Cardinal of Portugal at San Miniato ; when I
remember that lovely nymph with the distaff who
presides over the tomb of the Conte Ugo in the
Badia, I feel that it was better, in art, to be
flimsy than arid. The Florentine suburbans,
Mino and Desiderio, may have been frivolous,
but they were never pedants. Children never
are. They may have been affected, what we call
" precious," but they were as limpid as running
water. But Michelozzo's wriggling nudes are
repulsive — to me, at least. Another exercise in
the frigid, which has its admirers, is San Gallo's
church of San Biagio in the plain immediately
below the town. A yellowstone, cruciform
church, capped by a tall cupola — whose form is
formalism, whose rigidity is mistook for dignity,
I have never seen a worse church than this,
though there are others as bad : one at Prato,
and two at Cortona. To worship there — I tried !
I and a few bored peasants knelt there for an
hour of a Sunday morning: it was like kneeling
in a sepulchre — a sepulchre of windy shams,
reducing- Catholicism to doll's house work.
As to Politian, who left this town as young
Agnolo Cini, and now has monuments enough in
it — a street, a theatre, and three or four caffes

278 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
to his name — as to Politian, this is hardly the place
to speak of him. He was, of all
Politian. ,
the versifiers of the Quattrocento, the
most dextrous and the best able to " pretend," as
children say ; he had learning, too — but he had
little else. He had nothing approaching to the
incisiveness of Bojardo, none of the native fluency
of the Pulci, none of the silken quality of Ariosto,
who was so nearly a poet that real poets like
Byron and real critics like Landor and Stendhal
have thought him one. Politian, I judge, was at
heart a fair-weather young man, whose career
was to get on. Pliant as a withy-wand he could
have turned to any use. He found scholarship
the fashion in Florence : he bought a Greek
grammar. In a short spell he knew all the Greek
there was to be known, and a sweet-toned old
dreamer — a true student — like Ficino had the
noble humility to call him master. Politian
master of Ficino! But this was not enough for
him. He found Luca Pulci confecting a sugar-
epic — f ousting of Lorenzo — and getting glory
from it: straightway he confects his own sugar-
epic — f ousting ofGiuliano — does it better ; and
the greater glory is his. He finds L. B. Alberti
making comedies "in the Greek manner," and
Lorenzo turning his idle fancies to Sacre Rappre-
sentazione, and is too wise to copy such men

XII

MONTEPULCIANO

279

as they. But he absorbs their forms into his
Orfeo, which Mr. Symonds could not really have
thought a masterpiece. It is, at any rate, a com
pendium of every mode known to pedantry —
your historical-pastoral-epical-tragical-threnodical-
bacchanal, cut up into the infantine passages of a
Mystery Play. It reads gaspily as they do, but
is none the better for that. It is the shell of
a play, as San Biagio is the husk of a temple.
Such things — and there are many such things in
Montepulciano — make the judicious grieve.

EVENING — THE ARNO, FLORENCE.

CHAPTER XIII
VAL DI CHIANA : SIENA TO CORTONA  TRASIMENO
The short road to Cortona takes the traveller
over grey mud-heaps to Asciano, thence through
Asciano, a nne upland country to Sinalunga ;
Sinalunga. and tnere he ^ fin(j hllTlSelf in
prospect of the great plain which they call Val di
Chiana, withal river Chiana there is now none.
Of the two nations, Asciano and Sinalunga, I have
little to report save that both are handsome,
prosperous, and well-seated amid trees and airy
downs. Asciano has something of the habit of a
Berkshire town with its good red houses faced
with white, and its strong churches. But its
emblazoned gateway, its red-brick bell-tower, and
tall stone tower of the commune, correct the first
impression. Monasteries upon the hill-tops all
about, bullock-carts in the bare streets, a brisk
and civil race of men, straw-hatted Madonnas
marketing at dawn : no such things are in Saxon
Berks, though the maids of Hungerford be fair to
see, and Newbury wives make straight children.
280

CH. XIII

VAL DI CHIANA

281

From the piazzale at Sinalunga — again a very
ornate market-town, with a red Renaissance

'

53P^

. . -i
'48

rA^%^

CORTONA.

church cupola'd and belfried as befits — you have,
as I say, the whole range of the plain from

282 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
Fojano to Montepulciano, beyond it the great
lake, beyond that again the Perugian heights
which lured Flaminius to his destruction. A
noble prospect into which you descend rapidly by
way of Torrita and Bracciano.
Vaidi Once a poisonous swamp, where
(as old Fazio says) were —

Chiana.

volti pallidi e confusi,
Perche' 1' aere e la Chiana e lor nemica,
Sicch& gli fa idropici e rinfusi1 —
the plain is now a blossoming garden. Better
husbandry have I seen nowhere but in the
contado di Lucca. Compared to that green
paradise it is treeless, and in hot weather can be
insufferable ; but it is pleasant to see the tall
corn, which is life to men, growing out of the
wicked earth which was men's death. Whatever
the Chiana (Clanis of the Romans) may have
been — and an expression, le Chiane, in Fazio
leads one to suppose that in his day it had a
divided course — it is now reduced into orderly
canals, admirable for irrigation and drainage,
but in no wise picturesque. Neither the austere
1 The Val di Chiana was always proverbial for pestilence. Dante
likens the groan of Malebolge to those you would hear —
se degli spedali
Di Valdichiana tra il luglio e il settembre
E di Maremma e di Sardigna i mali
Fossero in una fossa tutti insembre.

XIII

VAL DI CHIANA 283
desolation of the Maremma, nor the green pro-

Co

'¦A

^ $ mam
<%£ ''viAf
* A?' ¦ \a^
¦ ti'-iWF v>l|JAv
i- • .I' |^A'''

lH ;*AAA^^.^
: I'JIJuA-P :¦ A*. " ¦"— ;»A

. aM flR/^
i1^*:!*-^ i3U JA^
A l ft!

' AL ii -j£rr "*m> r*^j^i« tffl 't^IPfP1' »•-' '

fusion of our Fens, nor the golden breadths of La
Beauce in France, belong to the Val di Chiana.

284 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
The cultivation is universal and minute. The
fields seem never to run more than two acres, so
one's progress is as if one were to drive through
twenty miles of allotment gardens — comfortable,
but not exhilarating.
There are trees along the western side of the
lake, and beyond them near a quarter-mile of reeds
Trasimeno, before you get to the water. Its silver
castiglione. stretches seem uninhabited by birds,
and are too shallow for boats of any draught.
Pleasant as it is to be near water, this is not the
sort of water one would choose. Not this way
came Flaminius escaping Hannibal, though there
must always have been a road by Orvieto to
Rome. He tried to squeeze in between Passig-
nano and the heights on the opposite shore, and
paid for it, as all the world knows. In mediaeval
days the Baglioni of Perugia were lords of the
lake. Here, at Castiglione del Lago, a high rock,
and the only one, jutting into the water they had
a great double-towered castle — one tower of stone,
three-angled, machicollated in red brick, and one
four-square standing in the water. By its aid
they held the Orvieto road, as by Magione on
the other side that of Perugia. The little town,
but for its castle which is apart from it, looks
blighted and poverty-struck; and so it is. I
found its only inn — Trattoria del Trasimeno —

XIII

VAL DI CHIANA

285

to be quite remarkably bad; but its landlord as
unmistakably good. His engaging candour would
commend itself to any humane traveller. He
was a fresh-coloured, white-haired little gentle
man, well-set up, and dressed in a suit of
Scotch plaid. He had the decisive air of a

CORTONA — PALLONE.

retired colonel turned squire, but kept all the
simplicity of his nation. After the preliminaries
of hand-washing were done he took me by the
button apart ; and " Senta, Signore," he began,
"this is a poor little country, where we think
ourselves lucky to be alive at all. There is no
meat, there are no fish but eels, and eels at this

286 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
season of the year are not good for the stomach.
But there does happen to be in the house a fine
young dead chicken. He, I need not say, is
much at your service." I engaged the chicken,
adding that I assumed his death to have been
violent. The landlord rubbed his chin, looking
at me out of very blue eyes. " As violent as you
please," he replied. " These hands have newly
strangled him." Evidently the murder had been
done partly for my sake, and he not sure how
I should take it. It proved an atrocious bird,
for which I had to wait three-quarters of an hour
in a cave of flies and bad smells. Everything
was bad that day — the wine flat and sour, the
minestra full of garlick, the bread musty, the maid
frowzy and ill-tempered ; but to the little landlord
everything seemed colour of rose since he had
done a stroke of business. He had killed an
uneatable fowl, and I was to pay for it.
I take it that the lake is in Umbria, that
country of soft fells, great saints, and little women.
It is geographical fact that the road
Into Cortona. . ° . .
from it to Cortona — a nine mile affair
— is so. But Cortona itself is undeniably Tus
can, mountain-built, harsh, and uncomfortable as
nearly all hill-towns in Tuscany are. The city
stands high, scattered up the slope of a mountain,
but not crowning the top. There may have been a

XIII

VAL DI CHIANA 287
great citadel there once, where the fortezza now is

¦jST„

with the church of Santa Margherita, but nothing
of the sort can be seen now. Coining at it from

288 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
Trasimeno, you fail to get it in silhouette: the
effect is of a litter of grey buildings. On the
northern road — that which takes you to Arezzo
— the sight is finer.
Nine miles though it be, with eight of them
dead straight, your road turns as many times in
the last of them to reach the gate. It is better
going than the way to Volterra, for this reason :
there are more gradients, and they are easier.
At the second turn you pass one of those cruci
form, domed churches — aut Sangalli aut diaboli —
of which Montepulciano boasts ; after that you
top it by a thousand feet or more and drive up
the narrow street to a bad inn.1
Drab and dingy, stinking city,2 it has an origin
so backward and august that no man can reckon
it or tell how splendid it was. I find that I must
quote Dennis : " Traveller," says he, " thou art
approaching Cortona ! Dost thou reverence age
— that fulness of years which, as Pliny says, ' in
man is venerable, in cities sacred ' ? Here is

1 Nazionale is its name, and I don't think there is another. It is
dirty and ill-found. The host and his wife are obsequious but helpless ;
the entrance swarms with beggars and touts. The one capable person is
the chambermaid, a. young and pretty woman, with the most exuberant
person I ever saw in this world.
2 This, by the way, was not how Dennis found Cortona. Writing in
i860 or so, he says: "She is no longer to be accused of filthy, ill-paved
streets, nor of mean and squalid houses." Now, however, I do accuse
her. I never was in a viler-smelling town.

xiii VAL DI CHIANA 289
that which demands thy reverence. Here is a

A GATEWAY, CORTONA.

city, compared to which Rome is but of yesterday
— to which most other cities of ancient renown

VOL. II

290 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
are fresh and green. Thou mayst have wandered
far and wide through Italy — nothing hast thou
seen more venerable than Cortona. Ere the
days of Hector and Achilles, ere Troy itself arose
— Cortona was." He cites the legend that God-
descended Dardanus was its king — a claim almost
as great as Faesulae's; and then he says, "Yon
solemn city was once the proudest and mightiest
in the land, the metropolis of Etruria, and now —
but enter its gates and look around."
This I did, and found Cortona, as I have said,
drab, dingy, and stinking. It was so bad in this
last particular that I saw the sewer-traps were
blocked up with wedges of wood ; and yet the
fall must be like that of a cataract, for the streets
are so steep that at various turns of the way you
could step off the pavement on to the roofs of
the street below. Its churches are — with two
exceptions — derelict and ruinous, its pictures
(magnificent though they have been) are cracking,
dropping, and clouding with cobwebs. I had a
six-fingered guide who was a liar and object of
suspicion to every man he met. I had respected
the name of Cortona and all its dim vistas ; I am
prepared to respect those still — but I saw little
of them.
To describe what I did see — the Municipio is
a fine bastille, well placed in the piazza of its

xni

VAL DI CHIANA 291
name. I saw the rings of Albizzi, the griffins of

STREET, CORTONA.

Baglioni, the stags of Salviati among its shields ;
no doubt Casali was there also — that proud family

292 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
which, when Cortona was free of Arezzo, lorded
it there for five generations and ended in a
nephew who murdered his uncle to get the
dominion, and was himself strangled by Ladislas
of Naples, and his lordship turned into a servi
tude and sold to Florence. The gates and
curtain walls, which run up to the fortezza on the
top of the hill, and are in places forty feet high,
are magnificent building: two of the gates, at
least, are Etruscan. And then there are the
Cathedral, and the Luca Signorellis.
Tucked away as the church is behind an
arcade and a palace of the bishop, it is next to
impossible to get a view of it outside ;
taken in hand as it was in the eigh
teenth century, when whitewash was the only
wear, and painted over in grey and white regard
less of tenth-century marble, the view you have
of the inside is unhappily too pronounced. In
proportions it is a good church, and in parts
excellent. The square choir behind the high
altar contains the Signorellis ; but these apart,
there are some things to look at — e.g. a Roman
sarcophagus of Centaurs and Lapiths, which they
fondly represent for the tomb of Flaminius, but
which, since it contains a portrait of the deceased,
and that a woman, gives them the lie' as soon as
they utter it. The high altar is adorned with

XIII

VAL DI CHIANA

293

candle-bearing angels in the manner of Mino of
Fiesole, and near by is an aumbry for the holy
oil which is incontestably his, and a dainty,
delicate piece of low-relief it is. I must not forget
a side chapel on the right which enshrines an old
pieta of stone, rude and stunted old dolls enacting

Al *AA
"Wt A *&&&& '"
.-"•'. f- r-L*A' AM-jr^n..-

FARM NEAR MONTEPULCIANO.

the dirge. Before this piece — which is as if
peasant-mummers should play a holy mystery and
be frozen in the act — I saw the Canons of Cor
tona kneel and sing a litany, old fat-encased
sinners and young, lean ones with very bright
eyes and much assurance, demure choir-boys
pinching each other and looking away — all kneel-

294 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
ing and singing together before the staring effigies.
Not until this daily rite was performed dared I
approach the choir and see the Signorelli pictures.
Mr. Symonds tells a fine story of this man,
how he had an only son, a beautiful boy of
perhaps fourteen years. This child
Luca the Great. , . . , . .
took a fever and died in a day and
a night, in his father's absence. They come and
tell Luca. He hears the news in grim silence,
but packs up his gear and away. Arrived at
house he goes into the chamber, turns out the
nuns watching his dead, and locks the door
upon him and it together. There he remains for
some two days — long enough to alarm his friends.
They knock, they pry through the key-hole : no
answer, nothing to be seen. They break a way
in: they find the dead boy stripped naked, his
father with an easel before him, painting his
beauties. Strange, preoccupied, hard man — with
a touch of the faun, nay, of the satyr, about him :
hard in his outlook and hard in his handling, he
was. He has a fondness for rendering flesh like
burnished metal — bronze or brass as the case
may be, and can never resist your beady-eyed
young ruffian, full of blood and sin, your superb,
over-fed young animal who will drink blood if he
can spare time from shedding it. His virgins are
Bona Deas, his Christ a Prometheus; his old

XIII

VAL DI CHIANA

295

men are nigromancers of Chaldaea, his honourable
woman might suckle Pan. In whatsoever mood
you find him there will be some hint of the wood
land wild in some corner of his painted cloth.
Adam and Eve — little moulded bas-reliefs, as
they seem — stare up at the great Tree (on which

CASTIGLIONE DEL LAGO.

the Virgin rises crowned) as they might really
have stared at the stock of it, the Tree in the
Garden, fierce, darting creatures, barely masters
of the beasts they led. And that picture is in
his tame, early manner when he was copying
Perugino. In the Deposition, where he had
come to his own, there are stooping figures of

296 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
women and young men which you might think
Venetian, if they were not as metallic as
Mantegna; but with a pagan tang which Luca
alone possessed (and Michael Angelo took from
him). Even in that first manner of his he showed the
stuff he was of — which was not Perugino's. He
had a depth of colour not known to the Umbrians
— as in the Assumption, where the solemn greens,
roses,1 and purples are wholly beyond the Peru
gian. So also is the figure on the right of this
picture — a Sibyl in a gold cope, with the savage,
fine face of a young Baglione. On the other
hand, the bending Creator, the stamping angels
and dropt flowers are all of the childish Umbrian
habit. On the same wall as this Assumption is
an Ascension of the Madonna. Here she rises
above the open tomb, angels all about her with
viols, harping her to the skies. A great deco
rative picture, sadly faded. The Commmiion of
the Apostles and Noli me tangere are both
Venetian in scope and tone : not so the Deposi
tion, which is very original indeed : deep in
colour, heightened with gold — reds, crimsons, and
browns on a field of dark green.
At San Niccolb, a little church in a garden,
1 Peony-colour : deeper and hotter and more metallic than the hue
of roses.

xiii VAL DI CHIANA 297
which you reach by a tremendous paved hill,
there are some more Signorellis — one remarkable.
This is the Madonna della Seggiola, so called:
a pensive Virgin holding a fine Child on her
lap, Sampietro and Sampaolo standing by. The
whole thing is in tones of three colours — green,
red, and brown. . There is no other colour at all.
The very sky is green, fainting off to white.
The altar-piece here is hard, with brazen flesh-
tones, in his Orvieto and least pleasing manner.
There is nothing so good as the Pan at Berlin :
but Signorelli was one of the few Italian artists
who cannot be put into a category — and left there.
It is astonishing how few there are. Giotto,
Donatello, Piero della Francesca, Lionardo, for
Florence ; Signorelli for Umbria ; Mantegna for
Lombardy; Paolo Veronese for Venice — some
great portraitists, whom I leave apart — are there
any others to dare a position in the Arts com
parable with Dante's in letters ? No, indeed.
I have no more to say of Cortona, save that I
was glad to be out of it.

CHAPTER XIV
arezzo: quick and dead
I drove to Arezzo from the south, by the Val-
di-Chiana road, through low green hills and fat
furrows — a Leicestershire landscape, which, with
out specific attraction, was comfortable enough to
fill me with content. The day was fine, the wind
was mild, there was a noble sunset. I reached
Arezzo, the prosperous place, before dusk, dined
and looked about me. A many things I saw: the
streets were full of strolling, evening citizens ; great
churches, great houses loomed solemnly out of the
dark. But (as often happens) the best sight of all
was to be had from my own inn window. . . .
She is very pale in the face, and her hands are
dangerously white. If her eyelids are heavy in
. . .. the morning it is no wonder, for she
An Aretine. » '
is late to bed and must be up at cock
crow. But she is able to laugh at her own leaden
plight, and so to win your smiling acquiescence
in that and all her other concerns. No scowling,
298

CHAP. XIV

AREZZO

299

no yearning Godward from her prison bars : crook
your little finger, she will laugh at it; nod your

*^M' 'Kit

\<it"7:'"f>

head, she will mimic you ; salute her, she will
sweep you a curtsey. She is responsive to open-

300 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
heartedness as a hedge bird to the sun ; sings, in
fact, at a kind look, like Dante's blackbird.
Full of this innocent kind of gaiety, which
bubbles as a spring under moss ; not without
proper coquetry, careful of her figure, tender to
her hair, deft in the way she wears her clothes, I
consider her the chiefest treasure of Arezzo, for
reasons which I intend to declare, though I know
nothing of her but her pleasant face. She sleeps
and commerces with the world, eats her scraps of
meals, and says her little dutiful prayers in a
square box of a room facing my own across the
way. So far as I know, she never leaves it from
Sunday night to Sunday morning. She has no
worshippers but me, though familiars not a few ;
no gilt hearts are offered to her, no hearts
but mine. By profession she is a dressmaker,
and not a Madonna ; but if her name is not Mary,
it should be Martha, the delicate, cheerful, thrifty,
diligent soul.
She goes to bed at ten; at least, that is the
time she turns out the gas, which has been drying
her since dusk. At six of the evening she has
eaten some pallid mess in a plate and drunk a
little red wine ; she has left off work to secure this
refreshment and gone back the moment the plate
was bare. Humming an air, she has got up and
wiped her mouth — and this knowing well that for

AA*<>-. JAy-te&tur.

XIV

AREZZO

301

four solid, gas-thickened hours she must be stoop
ing over a machine, pedalling like a convict at his
crank, spying sideways, for a crinkle in the hem,
narrowing her chest, craning forward her young

>^sCr

¥

-.AW1'* :

Ir

tax. jl ¦» . ^r y

jj^

THE MARKET-PLACE, AREZZO.

head. I have begun at the end ; let me stretch
back to the opening of her long day. She sets
wide her shutters at six in the morning and busks
herself. Who would know this better than I,
who myself got up at five to be beforehand?
Of toilette affairs I know nothing — I am no

302 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
profaner of mysteries. It was six by the church
bells when she rubbed her eyes ; at half past,
when I looked again, she was praying by her
bedside. She was by then in a black skirt and
lavender blouse, her fair hair was becomingly
adorned with tortoiseshell pins. A minute or so
later she is to be seen sipping a glass of coffee
(which has been making over the gas), and
chattering nineteen to a dozen with her three
mates. Sleepy, for she still rubs her eyes ; tired
to death, for she yawns and strains her arms,
straightens her back, and stares with a sigh ; with
a vista before her (if this be Monday) of fifteen
hours' work for every day of the six — she and
these other young women, if you will believe me,
gossip and whisper and prick up their ears, preen
themselves before the glass like pigeons in the
sun, are all agog for the sights and sounds of the
scarcely-peopled street. Now and again they are
at the window ; pale prisoners ! the sun has no
grudge, but greets them fairly. There is a nod
for the baker's boy — another lax child of the heat.
He returns the salute gaily, with a flourish.
Coffee glasses are put away, the gas is turned
out ; they stoop their shoulders to the yoke ; the
hum of the sewing-machines will hardly cease to
accompany their voices till night falls.
What a life for a pretty girl ! But how daunt-

xiv AREZZO

303

lessly borne; with what interest, what sparkling
eyes, what a sweet humour! What
is the aim of it all ? Is coffee an end ?
Minestrone on a greasy plate ? Are these things
so desirable that to get the right relish you must
work fifteen hours a day for three hundred days
a year? And if, by the time you are thirty,
signorina, you have therefore worked sixty-seven
thousand five hundred hours — will the coffee still
be reward enough, the relish of the pasta still be
keen ? Out upon it ! Ces dames, you tell me,
must live? I know that very well. But that
they should live ungrudgingly, not cursing me in
their hearts; that they should be able to laugh,
hum tunes, nod to the baker's boy from their
prison casement high above him ; that they
should dress themselves prettily and turn about
before the glass; that it should be possible to
suck juices out of such poor husks and shreds of
days, bloom like flowers in unsunned corners of
the ground — all this fills me with wonder and
thanksgiving. I tell you fairly, not in all dappled
Italy have I seen a greater treasure than this.
O spacious, cleanly, white-walled Arezzo ; cattle-
stocked city of marts and ploughing machines ;
birthplace of Vasari; demesne of the astonish
ing prelate, Bishop Guido Tarlati ! With such
daughters as these, if your sons were of a piece,

304 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
I would add my suffrages to yours for any
prosperous fate that you might choose. To be
like Milan, for instance, is the aim of any Italian
city, and few there be without the secret belief
that so some day they shall be. I would hope
this for you, Arezzo — your piazza should be a
maze of circling tramcars, whirling for ever there
like the drifting lost souls of Dante's first hell — if
only I could think your young men worthy of it.
But I do not think them worthy of it; how can I
while my gas-fed nymphs of the sewing-machines
peak close-girdled in their attic ? Was not
Petrarch an Aretine ? Aretine and Man of
Feeling, he did well to seek out Arqua. and the
green breadths of the Euganean hill ; for he who
melodiously wailed the Lady of Avignon must
have served a seraglio here.
Subito in allegrezza si converse
La gielosia, che'n su la prima vista
Per si alto adversario al cor mi nacque —
Petrarch admitted the rivalry of the sun for
his services to the face of Laura; I make the
a Mend of Dest I can of the man whom I some-
the house. times gee in the soc;ety of my nymph.
He is a fat, devil-may-care, chair-tilting fellow,
whose waistcoat and trousers are not on speaking
terms — evidently a friend of the house. He is
vastly familiar, wanders in and out of the work-

XIV

AREZZO

305

room at will, tips his bad hat to the back of his
head, sits on the table, smokes a cigar, ruminates

THE CATHEDRAL, AREZZO.

aloud upon men and cities, has a caustic wit, and
is evidently not too guarded in his illustrations.

VOL. II

306 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
I detect barrack-room reminiscences in some of
his pleasantries ; not that I hear them, but judge
by his knowing air. Moreover, my nymph
sometimes checks her laughing in midstream,
then looks with feigned interest into the street.
Certainly, however, she is pleased, therefore she
pleases me. As the sun enhanced his Laura's
beauty to Petrarch, so here I particularly admire
my nymph for her conduct in this nice affair.
She has no conscious hand upon herself or on
him : she is neither timid nor provocative, neither
arch nor frankly beckoning. In a word there is
no smoulder of sex about her. Now, my country
women are all sex, and Frenchwomen too — but
with a difference. The first make, and the second
await what both desire — namely, advances; but
my Aretine has no such thought. She is simply
glad to see her friend, to play off her tongue
against his, to laugh at his jokes, and to make
him laugh at hers. If he admires her clothes, as
well he may — she has a charming figure, a gimp
and belted waist — what then ? Do you suppose
she is flattered ? Not in the least. She is
pleased, and that is her reward. She has no
second thought. If she had, if by some chance
spark — ah ! I have seen a Tuscan girl under the
love-stress; there's no doubt about the thing
when it comes. But, awaiting that terrible access

xiv AREZZO

307

of labouring breath, glazed eyes and shuddering,
that rigor, that tetanus, that blue-lipped struggle
in deep water, I do affirm my lady of the work
room as untainted as a boy of twelve.
Do I wish to write of her with passion all
alight ? Then let me see her in the presence of
a client, for there are her simple
delights as yet — in deftness and in
courtesy. If courtesy be to set at ease by being
at ease, she is then most courteous. If gentle
birth do best show out in sympathy, why, then
there is in all the Val d' Arno no better blood
than hers. They are of humble station, these
clients — maid servants, farm girls, factory hands,
and such like. They come in at what times they
can spare, mostly with a friend — for the thing is
of tremendous importance, you must understand
— whose judgment is to turn the scale; and then
the conference, the discussions, the vivid play of
hands, the cocking of heads, now this side, now
the other, the appeals to the testimony of the
mirror, the pinning and tying, the business of
knees, fingers, and eyes ! For the milliner must
kneel and the client lift her elbow and look down
over shoulder — and yet it is hard to say which
has the most interest of the three, which is most
ardent in the chase. Occasionally a fourth, yet
more rarely a fifth, is called in to some especially

308 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
fine piece of fitting. The milliner may well
despair, and I know that she does — for once, in
the case of some vast-sided daughter of the
plough, I saw her fairly cry ; for all this, if you
please to understand, she gets not one penny
piece; this is fair charity of her heart which
prompts her to give full measure of what she has
in store. And, again, it is her pursuit of the
ideal — the flaunting, flittering, impossible ideal of
smoothing the breadths over ungainly haunches.
If I could settle in Arezzo, in a decent
messuage, with cupboards for a few books, a
Aspirations of view of the tower of Sta. Maria delle
the scholiast. piev6) a small square of land where I
could grow vines and stocks and a carnation
or two for my wife's girdle ; so soon as ever the
tenement was handfasted to me, I should go to
the. shop in the Via Cavour and pay my addresses
to the little milliner. It would take time, perhaps
a year ; but what hurry is there ? The day would
come at last when I should say, " Come, my dear,
get roses in your cheeks. Turn out the gas;
you have lived on that long enough. It is
sufficient for me that, in spite of it, you have
betrayed all the symptoms of a perfect wife. You
make yourself pretty because, being so pretty at
heart, you cannot help yourself. You are patient,
cheerful, thrifty ; you sing all day. In any man's

XIV

AREZZO

309

house you would be better than a linnet in a
cage; in mine you may run a risk of being a
goddess on a pedestal. If I had my way,
Ferdinando Primo should be pulled down from
his perch by the Duomo steps, and you should be

4

THE CATHEDRAL, AREZZO.

set up — you, laughing as you bend to your daily
burden — an emblem of what is most precious in
Tuscany, above Michael Angelo, or Sustermans,
or the Medici diadem, or the Appanages. Come,
lady, come, do my hand the honour to take it.
Just Heaven ! what a holiday you shall have ! "
This is my plain ambition at present : to live
and die in Arezzo, a prosperous country town in

310 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
a fold of the hills, and to be warden of its chief
treasure, a pretty, fading drudge, who is happy
because she has a pure heart.
Consider now another Aretine, who exacted a
monument — and has got it — more perdurable
in the records of his countrymen, and in ad
dition to that, has his tomb of travertine and
Another black marble in the cathedral. Well
Aretme. may Herr Baedeker call him "an
ambitious and energetic prelate "; this was a man
indeed — no other than Bishop Guido Tarlati of
Pietramala, many times a lord. His family,
which came from a castle above Arezzo, on the
watershed of Tiber and Arno, had always been for
robbery and the empire, and always great people
in this chosen city of both ; but while certain
Ubertini held the see they were forced to bide
their time. There might be two Popes of Rome,
but Arezzo is a little place. The first thing, then,
that I learn of our Guido is misfortune. In 1 308
the Aretines turned him and his friends out of
their towers and strong houses ; the Guelfs came
in and made a peace with Florence. It was a day
of party names, when Florence herself was dis
tracted by Black and White. The new Aretine
power called itself the Green Party, and hoped
for the best — a council of perfection in Tuscany.
In the very same year Corso Donati was killed

XIV

AREZZO

3"

at San Salvi, and Dante's trumpeted Saviour of
Italy, his Moses Redux, chosen to be Emperor;

AREZZO.

a month or two elapses, the Tarlati with their
Ghibellines fill all the mountain roads about

312 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
Arezzo, storm the town, carry a gate at the
sword's point — and there is an end of the Green
Party. The Tarlati sat in the high seat, and all
Italy heard of them before long. Guido Tarlati
was chosen Bishop, as I make out, about 1320.
His first act was to make friends with the notable
Castruccio of Lucca, and his next to form a
company of knights under his own banner.
With these he made great play. It happened to
be a time when Florence found her hands full of
Pisa and Castruccio ; time of times for the Bishop
who, one after another, got all his towns back and
brought the Aretine contado to very near its
former pride.
You may observe his progress up to this point
upon his tomb, where with strange irony the
p-lory and shame of him are set
Eemarkable _
conduct of side by side. Cynical cenotaph!
He is made Bishop ; he is hailed as
lord; these are the first scenes and their super
scriptions. You see the Pope's Legate laying
hands upon him, then the kneeling ancients of
this place, and himself, outside the walls as yet,
deprecating the honour they do him. He is
sitting afield here, robed as a prelate should be;
but above him, where you would look for a cross
or staff, is the horned head of a battering-ram.
Sinister emblem! In the next tablet behold

XIV

AREZZO

3*3

him within the walls on a tall throne, elbows out,
hands on knees, about him imploring figures.

iff &/'

w yi A
AA-- '

THE PRISON, AREZZO.

One clasps his feet, one his knees, others strain
up their arms. Under this is written: //

314 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
Commune pelato — the people fleeced. Pasceoves
meos, indeed ! You see him as lord — Come in
signoria — with assessors to hand; kneeling suitors
receive his decree. He builds the walls, habited
now as a general, in mail, riding a heavy horse.
Then begins the series of his conquests. Luci
gnano he took; he sits in his pavilion and im
poses his terms upon abject Lucignanesi ; Chiusi,
Fronzola, Castel Focognano, Rondine — why go
on ? He pulled down Laterina to spite the
Ubertini ; he left not stone upon stone. He got
Citta. di Castello by treachery and connivance in
the night. Branca Guelf ucci was tyrant there,
but the Bishop drove him out and kept his State.
This and his exploit in Lombardy when, in
defiance of authority and interdict, he crowned
Lewis the Bavarian with his own hands in Milan,
were his top of offences in Tuscany, in Italy
indeed. From all sides came embassies to
Florence for help against this devouring Bishop,
from Perugia, Orvieto, Siena, from Gubbio, from
Bologna. But the Bishop and his friend Cas
truccio held between them the East and the
West ; and then there was the Emperor, who, if
not friendly to the man who had made him so,
could have no genius for friendship. All that
happened was that Pope John XXII., from his
safe distance of Avignon, excommunicated Guido

XIV

AREZZO

315

until he should give up Citta di Castello,
and relinquish his lordship of Arezzo. The
Bishop, you may be sure, did neither. Now, a
Ubertini was at this time provost of the church
at Arezzo, and Guido knew quite well that the

«r

pl^

l«3*

/,

•X >¦

¦¦*>

.£..,.-- .J.'.-.„&BX.i

VASARI'S PIAZZA, AREZZO.
Pope's move had been inspired by this man or
his friends. Therefore he demolished a Ubertini
castle at Laterina. The Pope replied by a depriva
tion, which (no doubt) lost a good deal of force
as it voyaged out from Avignon. However, the
Cardinal Legate read the Act publicly in the
Piazza Santa Croce of Florence ; the Bishop
was unbishoped, and Provost Ubertini bishoped

316 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
instead ; " but," says the chronicler, " he got little
out of that, for with all the help of the Pope and
Cardinal Legate he could not obtain one penny of
his dues. For all the temporalty and spiritualty
of Arezzo were held by the said Guido Tarlati,
and he was tyrant and lord."
Tyrant and lord ! Death was the only depriva
tion for such a man, and death paid him a visit in
His respect- J327- He (the Bishop, that is) went
able end. jn force to pjsaj |-0 nelp the Emperor
and Castruccio get the town. They got it ; then
he and Castruccio fell out over some triviality and
came to injurious words, and with these, " bicker
ing like daws," into the Emperor's presence.
Castruccio called the Bishop traitor, saying that
when he beat the Florentines at Altopascio,
if the Aretines had come in force down the
Val d' Arno, as they had promised, the Florentines
would not have stood — and this is probably true.
The Bishop called him " Traitor again." Who
but Castruccio had driven Uguccione della
Faggiuola out of Pisa, him and all the good
Ghibellini ? Who had thriven on Aretine money?
Who had broken treaties? etc., etc. There was
. no lack of recrimination, and little of the subject
matter of it. The Emperor listened to it all
without partiality. He did not praise the Bishop,
and he did not reprove Castruccio. Whereupon

xw AREZZO

3i7

Bishop Guido flings out of Pisa in a fume, rides
fast and far into the south country, sickens at
Montenero in the Maremma, and there dies —
1327. He made "a good death," as they say,
pricked by mortification or conscience, God (who
judges hearts) knows which. He admitted that
he was a sinner against Pope John and Holy
Church. He renounced the Emperor as heretic,
and foster-father of all the heretics. He went so
far as to confess John XXII. wise and holy —
santo e giusto — which testifies, surely, more to the
credit of his heart than to that of his judgment.
" With many tears he declared his repentance,
and cried for mercy. He had the sacrament of
Holy Church, and in this contrition died — which
was considered in Tuscany a great thing." No
doubt it was. That sardonic tomb shows it all;
never was such a picture of Vana Gloria. Made
bishop — hailed for lord — fleeces the commune —
sits as tyrant — builds walls, storms citadels, takes
homages, sets up, pulls down, crowns an emperor
— and, for last scene, La morte di miseria,
"miserable death! This work was done by
Agostino and Agnolo of Siena, 1330, three years
„after the old sinner's wailing end. It is the most
instructive thing in Arezzo, which fell on evil days
after his, was handed about from tyrant to tyrant,
snatched, in 1336 by Florence, owned by the Duke

318 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
of Athens in 1 342 ; free the next year ; besieged,
sacked, and sold by the Sieur Enguerrand de
Coucy, a freebooter from Flanders, in 1384;
sold that time finally to Florence.1
The result of an alien occupation of such
duration has been to turn a city, whose citizens
were full of character, into a little
Are?zo itself Florence ; you may call it, if you will
forgive a not too bad joke, the Medication of
Arezzo. One would have liked to see the town
which those mountain-lords and robber-bishops
had made for themselves ; but one cannot. One
can only see where they went to church. Two
great churches there are. The cathedral, which
dominates the place from the rock of the citadel,
was built by a Ubertini Bishop, Guglielmino by
name, and continued by Bishop Guido in his odd
moments. Very French outside, of great height,
great length, and little width, it is extremely
solemn within — dark, heavy, inspiring the true
Gothic alternations of spirit, the Quid sum miser,
and fudex ergo, the veiled eyes, crouching knees ;
and then, with lifted heart and hands, the O alti-
tudo ! I hardly know better Gothic in Italy,2 and
deny that San Francesco at Assisi comes near it.
Everything goes to make mystery. There is very
1 See Appendix to this chapter, History of Arezzo.
2 San Galgano, south of Siena, a ruin, is better.

<J*£e' Si^lAu^ui .AAA AAwejj^r.

XIV AREZZO 319
little painting in the church; painting is an
explicit art. There are several great tombs set
in the walls — the Bishop's the greatest — and in
a side chapel, behind a fine grille, some Della
Robbia wares of the best time. These, again,
with their serene, patent, Tuscan ways, and that
trick they have of taking you by the hand, as if to
say, " Let us keep together; there is nothing to
be afraid of " — these familiar, happy things might
break the impression, if you could see them. But
fortunately you may pace the long nave in absolute
gloom without any ray of comfort from them ;
or you may kneel by the choir-wall while the
Bishop says Mass or the canons sing their office,
and see near by you some scanty-haired, grey-
faced old woman rock herself about or beat her
poor head against the stone. If you wish Della
Robbia companionship, it is not here that you
must seek it. It is very possible, I think, that
there is too much of it in Tuscany ; at any rate,
there is no doubt but that it is intended for the
light of day and the open air.
You must pass over a good deal of Vasari on
your way down from here, his house, vasariand
his loggia, and some abominable paint- ^ betters-
ing in San Francesco, happily on canvas, removable
and removing. It is a point which might have
held the philosophic pen of Lessing, why it is

320 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
that a man may twaddle in letters and rarely fail
to please, while his brother, twaddling in such an
art as painting, or in architecture, will most in
evitably be damned. Here Vasari is very much
to the point. The praise of his Lives is for its
twaddle ; the twaddle of his painting and building
is their condemnation. For if his pictures are
tawdry rant, these pompous palace-fronts and
ceremonious plaster arcades are no better. They
are court-painting, they are on a par with the
perruquier s art. They mean nothing but ob
sequiousness, and tell nothing but lies. Better
stuff is hard by. Standing in the piazza you see
a bleak old tower of grey and the apse of a
church. Both belong to Santa Maria delle Pieve,
which is still a noble building, and almost all
that is left to remind you of Arezzo's stormy
eld. Bishop Guido may have officiated here, in
pontificals, with his byrnie underneath ; and here
stalked towards his God some Conte Guido or
another ; and here the Duke of Athens, or Sieur
de Coucy, may well have been enthroned
" Tyrant and Lord," and pedlar also of the
Aretine dominion. Margaritone of this town,
happier with the hod than the paint-pot, built
the church, which has a square Roman front,
triple-rowed with arches, a deeply-recessed portal,
and a Madonna in the soffit, crowned and girdled

xiv AREZZO

321

— of such singular charm that one does not
willingly leave her for long together. She is stiff,
like a doll, has a very slim waist, is gorgeously
dressed, and looks as incompetent as a queen
ought to be. This is the kind of wondrous,
remote lady a man could spill his blood for. She
is the kind that would stand still, stiffly smiling,
amid the tossing swords and hoarse acclaims of
her slaves. Believe me, if you are to have an
idol at all, she must be of the Hindoo pattern —
vacant-eyed, dumb, frozen out of human ken.
Adorable Madonna delle Pieve ! She must have
been often in the battle, carried swaying to
victory — a smiling, glittering, senseless, beautiful
dolt. If Bishop Guido Tarlati did not make the
hill-towns acquainted with her glorious inanity he
was not the man I read him to have been.1 . . .
1 A great painter came to Arezzo from Borgo over the hill, filled the
choir of San Francesco with pageantry, and got much quiet, painter's
happiness in between. This was Piero della Francesca. The Invention
of the True Cross, for that is his theme, gives occasion for all that is
expected of a fresco painter of tastes heraldic and processional — a varied
story, solemn disputations of great folk, war-pieces with banners and flying
horsemen, buildings, distant prospects, and as much familiar detail as you
choose. It is a great and a good story, which begins with Adam in Eden,
and ends with Heraclius at the Battle of the Danube. It has tempted all
sorts of men, for it has murder enough for Matteo of Siena, who, when he
was not dreaming of pale women in golden rooms, saw a sword at every
throat, and ruffians doing slaughterhouse work in every piazza ; there are fine
ladies for Ghirlandajo ; angels, wise merchants, and saucy boys for Benozzo
Gozzoli ; and for Paolo Uccello big-bellied Flemish horses and spears against
the sky. What Piero made of all this pomp and circumstance — save that
he added much fine heraldry — is not very extraordinary ; but his own
VOL. II Y

322 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
She is flesh and a little blood, my poor
milliner; but she is a trope as well. She and
The milliner dead Bishop Guido may stand for
a trope. Arezzo between them, where the old
and the new lie down side by side; the old
content to sleep in the sun, the new awaiting
with confidence the time when they too may
sleep. Meantime these work all day for the few
sols they need, and everybody seems as happy as
a canary in a cage. What is become of the hot
blood, the murdering, the night alarms, the wild
party cries, the raids of hill thieves, which
made Arezzo a hornet's nest intolerable to the
Florentine bees ? Burnt out, died out, or starved
out. Meantime the great white oxen slowly pad
their day's round, the driver of the hotel omnibus
lies lazy on his perch exchanging ejaculations
with the facchino. A boy runs down the broad
street crying the Corriere della Sera, a pretty
pale girl in a lavender blouse looks out of an
upper window and throws him down a soldo.
Up he runs with his wares. By-and-by a burly
young man, with his hat tilted back, will sit upon
a certain table and read the news-sheet as he
harvesting is a very different matter. One may take it that the trappings
only interested him as a set-off to his landscape. That is exquisitely
beautiful and, true. His palette is the nearest to Tuscany of any painter
before him or since. Looked at from that standpoint, these frescoes are
masterpieces.

xiv AREZZO

323

bites his cigar, and three slim backs will be bent
over sewing-machines. A trotting man comes
along the street to light the lamps ; the day is
over. They have locked up the church doors,
and left Bishop Guido in his tomb to deal with
the old ghosts as best he may.

APPENDIX
HISTORICAL notes on arezzo
To be umbilicus Italice is to fill a necessary, if menial,
office without much profit to the performer ; for it does not
at all follow that he in whom things centre is himself the
centre of things. Thus it has been with that fine city of
Arezzo which, lying at the entry of four fruitful valleys, has
been preyed upon from all sides, but was never able to push
herself far up any one of them. The most beautiful ways of
Tuscany spring out of Arezzo ; she were more truly called
the heart than the navel. For the Arno, running due south
from its well in Falterona, turns within three miles of Arezzo
to make a northerly course again ; and thus two valleys can
conduct two hosts of enemies into the plain. Down the
Casentino the people of Romagna and the Lombards can get
in, and in times past Arezzo could never keep them out for
long. By the Val d' Arno she was fatally in touch with
Florence. But that is not all. South of Arezzo runs the
broad Val di Chiana with a forked road midway ; by one
prong the Perugians had easy access, and not they only,
but the Orvietans and Viterbans on their backs, and all the
power of Rome ; upon the other there was nothing but valour
to oppose the men of Montepulciano, or the chivalry of Siena
and all her subject nations ; and these indeed had yet another

324 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
valley to choose — that Val d' Ambra which meets Val d' Arno
above Montevarchi, and so helped Siena to join hands with
Florence in crushing the unhappy Aretines. So Arezzo would
seem marked out for a warfare more bitter than any other
Tuscan city's, and a servitude more abject than even Pisa's was.
There is, however, this to be observed, that the town which
served Tuscany for a navel, did actually serve her immediate
country-folk for a heart. Approach by any one of these
valleys you will see evidences of what I mean. Come up
the Val di Chiana from Sinalunga ; you will have passed
Torrita, you will have still to pass Fojano, Lucignano,
Castiglione Fiorentino, and other hill-castles before you get
to 1' Olmo — the place of the great elm which was Arezzo's
old boundary. So, coming by Florence ; so, coming by the
Casentino, on whose wooded rocks Poppi, Bibbiena, Subbiano,
and half a score other wild citadels are perched. Every crag
in these romantic glens had its robber-chief ; and every cut
throat of them ran to Arezzo in his need. The Pazzi, the
Ubertini, the Conti Guidi (a brood of eaglets), the Tarlati,
all great hill-names, lived hereabouts, and made havoc of the
vales. In crushing Arezzo, therefore, Florence was working
out the salvation of all Tuscany. There were those wide-
reaching, romantic Conti Guidi, for instance. From Monte
Morello above Fiesole, by the Mugello to the Sieve, by the
slopes of Falterona to the Casentino, thence to Arezzo, you
could hardly see a < *. wer which was not theirs, nor enter a
village where they had not been beforehand with you. The
sod was theirs and the men who passed with the sod. From
Guido Sangue, the one child spared in a wholesale massacre,
and Gualdrada Berti de' Rovignani of Florence (daughter she
was to the good Bellincione) came all the stock. The first
war of which there is any record in Florence (after the sack
of Fiesole) was with this house over Prato, and the next
with them again (in 1146) at Monte di Croce. The Count
Guido of the day, in close touch with the Aretines, took his

xrv APPENDIX

325

assailants by surprise, and with help from Arezzo, drove them
off with loss. Florence waited for eight years — one knows
the Florentine way — before she came on again. This time
by treachery she got the castle and the rock, dismantled the
first and held the other. " From this time forth the Counts
Guidi were no friends to the commune of Florence, nor the
Aretines either who had favoured them." That Monte di
Croce can still be seen on the cliffs above Incisa. It is one
of half a hundred between Florence and Arezzo, any one of
which might have made the valley impassable. It is not at
all extraordinary that from this day to the end of the fourteenth
century there was no long stay of war with Arezzo.
Nor is there any wonder in the fact that, while Florence
was Guelf, Arezzo was always Ghibelline. She would have
been little profit to the hill-chiefs all about her if she had
been anything else. They being feudatories of the Empire,
of Frankish stock one and all, were for Caesar to a man.
Under one bishop or another the fortune of war fluctuated —
now on one side, now on the other. Guglielmino degli
Ubertini was the first Bishop of Arezzo — "more a man of
war than of honesty in clerkship," says the chronicler — to
make himself tyrant, to " signoreggiare," to lord it there. He
did it by strategy, as you may suppose. In June 1287 a
league was made in the town by the Guelfs under Rinaldo
de' Bostoli and the Ghibellines under Messer Tarlato Tarlati
to tread the people down. They attacked the palace of the
commune, took the Capitano del Popolo and put out his eyes.
Bostoli and his Guelfs, movers of the whole plot, thought
themselves safe. But the Ghibellines went over to the Bishop,
and he, with his friends of the hills — Buoncontie of Montef eltro,
Pazzi of Valdarno, — and his own kin, prepared a night attack
which was successful. The Guelfs fled the city and sheltered
in various castles down the valley — Rondine, Monte Sansavino,
and others. The imperial vicar came to Arezzo from the
north — Prezzivalle dal Fiesco was his resonant name — and

326 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap, xiv
began reprisals upon the low-lying country. Montevarchi
suffered, and San Giovanni. Then the Guelfs of Arezzo
made a league with Florence, and general war began which
ended at Campaldino. That battle seems to belong to the
next chapter.
From that victory which put Florence at the head of all
North Tuscany, they got without difficulty near half the
Aretine country. They got Bibbiena, Castiglione Aretino,
Montecchio, Rondine, Civitella, Laterina, Monte Sansavino,
and might have had Arezzo with a little effort. As it was
they contented themselves with building a few wooden towers
(which the Aretines burnt), and with running their palio of
St. John Baptist's day outside the walls, and returned to
Florence and to triumph in July. All these places were
retaken by the Aretines within thirty years ; for Bishop Guido
arose, a greater than Bishop Guglielmino, of whom I have
already spoken.

¦ :j^^aA«

DOORWAY IN THE VIA TORNABUONI, FLORENCE.

CHAPTER XV
AREZZO TO FLORENCE: THE CASENTINO, THE
CONSUMA
There are two ways from Arezzo to Florence,
by either of which you may follow a segment of
the circle which Arno makes between ^e^™
those cities. By the lower road you of Arn°-
follow the river down-stream through Laterina,
Montevarchi, San Giovanni, Figline, to Pontas-
sieve; by the upper, through a valley called
Casentino, you go up-stream from Giovi through
Bibbiena, leave the river near Castel San Nicolb,
and rejoin it at Pontassieve, after it has run its
huge circuit round about Pratomagno. I have
no hope that I have made myself clear; nothing
but a map and a carriage will do that; but it is
the fact that Pratomagno, a great outlying mass
of the Apennines, is, as it were, the axle-tree of
wheeling Arno. There is the choice ; the lower
road gives the more river, and a better level ;
the upper road some mountain scenery on either
327

328 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
hand, two finely-placed little towns, some memo
ries, a battlefield and a pass, which, though it is
not the highest of all the Apennine passes, is one
of the most fatiguing.
It is hilly to Laterina, where Bishop Guido
had a castle — indeed, castles of his are scattered
down all these reaches as far as
The lower road. Incisa — but from that point onwards
you never leave the river level, except for a
moment at Incisa. Montevarchi is a dull and
dirty town, with a vile inn full of fleas. San
Giovanni is much better ; a pretty country place
with an inn covered with cluster roses, and two
fine churches to its name. Masaccio the painter
was born here, and one Giovanni Manozzi,
commonly called Da San Giovanni, another
painter of one good picture, and a great many
bad ones. His good picture is that black-and-
white wonder of light, air, and high spirits which
you see in the southern arm of the Uffizii; his
bad ones are here in his native town. As for the
great Masaccio, I desire above all things to be
respectful to a man whom my betters have greatly
respected ; but for the life of me I cannot get a
pulse quickened in the Carmine. Mr. Berenson,
for instance, feels that he could " touch every
figure," in those Brancacci frescoes ; " that it
would yield a definite resistance to his touch,"

XV

THE CASENTINO

329

that he would " have to expend thus much effort
to displace it," that he could "walk around it."
Well, given a reasonable artistic imagination in
the spectator, that would be possible with any
set of diagrams in Italy. To me these things
of Masaccio's are diagrams — dull diagrams with-

ON THE CONSUMA.

out poetry, charm, or significance. Fresco is an
art whose very technique should inspire, as it
certainly calls for, spontaneity, lyrical elevation,
a cry or a song. It is a water art, therefore
it should be fresh, pure, wholesome, and cool.
Masaccio's is none of these. It is a wall-decora
tion on a large scale: there should therefore be

33°

THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.

pattern or colour in masses. Masaccio has no
pattern, and his colour is dirty. Giotto is out
of the reckoning just now; I am not talking of
genius. Just compare this Masaccio with the
greatest fresco-painter (I speak as a fool, perb,
in good company) that Florence ever knew: I
mean Fra Angelico. I have said already, and
I say again, that more sufficient, more exquisite,
more spontaneous wall-pictures cannot be con
ceived of than those of the dormitories and cells
of Saint Mark's. They are so imaginative, the
illusion is perfect; they are so delicate, one
would not dare — not even Mr. Berenson would
dare — try his test of the finger upon them. They
report fairy tales, they take you into Faerie.
They are momentary, and yet, to all intent,
imperishable things. They give the colour of
poppies and corn-cockles to those pure walls ;
they are so clean that one feels the cleaner for
an hour with them. Stimulation of " tactile con
sciousness " is far from them ; they stimulate our
far better part. But to return to Masaccio, if
only to admit my own unhappy state, I have
never found that he stimulated anything at all.
The happier are Mr. Berenson and the learned
in that, not insensible to Fra Angelico, they can
get their pleasure out of Masaccio. Here, at
San Giovanni in Val d' Arno, they may apostro-

xv THE CASENTINO 331
phise his birthplace if they will. I should have
done homage, on the other hand, at Manozzi's if
I could have found it ; but the sacristan of the
Cathedral knew very little about him.
I have never seen the Casentino in that state
described by wretched Maestro Adamo's crackling
tongue — onomatopoeic lines of match- iheupperroad:
less power that they are : Bibbiena.
Li ruscelletti che dei verdi colli
Del Casentin discendon giuso in Arno,
Facendo i lor canali freddi e molli,
Sempre mi stanno innanzi. . . .
The hills have always been grey when I have
seen them, either wet and lurid as when a storm
brooded over the river, or bleached nearly to
whiteness by drought. Certainly I have travelled
finer roads and seen finer sights in other parts of
this country.
To reach it, you leave Arezzo by San Clemente,
or circle that city's walls more than half — an
agreeable thing to do, since the road is treeful ;
from San Clemente you cut straight across the
valley of the Chiassa, and begin to get among
the hills at a mean village called Giovi. This
plain of the Chiassa differs in no wise from any
other Tuscan valley : orderly husbandry, cropped
trees, dry river-beds, much dust. Caliano has a
castle and a bridge, Subbiano a bridge and a

332 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
castle — and a weir over the river which I should
like the fishing of in April. Above this the
Arno runs through a rocky gorge, and the higher
you go the better it becomes. The colouring is
beautiful — a river of pale green, swift, broken
water, silver poplars above it, a white pebble
beach on either side. So you mount the road to
Montealto, where there is a castle at the mouth of
a great combe. It is a huge, red pile of building ;
and above it is Monte Calenaja, a barren grey
fell, strewn with boulders of rock.
The hills near Rassina are scald-headed, pale
and dreary: so pale, indeed, that under the
merciless sun they shed a reflected light upon
the valley, which is narrow here and edged with
patchy poplars. After Rassina they open out
somewhat, and on a little one in the midst stands
Bibbiena, a brown, walled village with a tower at
each end. Exactly behind Bibbiena is Monte
Penna, a mountain of some size. In the
recesses of that is La Verna, which mysterious
retreat was chosen by the Burning Seraph for his
sealing of Francis. There is a great convent of
Friars Minor there which Mr. Pennell has seen,
but I have not.
In the church of this narrow-laned town there
are two Della Robbia's — one a Deposition, all pale
blue and white, one an Adoration, with green rocks

XV

THE CASENTINO

333

Bibbiena.

for the cave, and a charming heavenly choir above.
Now the experts in this ware go
by colour very largely, and would
probably ascribe the Deposition to Luca and
the Adoration to anybody but him. There I
hold that they would be wrong. There are

PIAZZA BIBBIENA.

passages in this last piece — a cherub peering
down upon the Babe, with clasped hands and rapt
childish interest, which shows real insight into the
ways of children ; shepherds, too, upon the hill,
with dogs beside them, all gazing upwards at the
star — things of this sort which, in my belief, Luca
only could do, because Luca was the only

334 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
craftsman among them who happened to be more
than a craftsman, a poet undoubtedly, and an
artist, whatever that sadly-abused word may imply.
But poet, I hope, is unequivocal enough. I once
went through the Bargello without a catalogue
and without help of the superscriptions, and tried
to identify Luca by a plan of my own. He
was one of the few sculptors who could express
not so much bodily movement,1 as mental, as
emotional movement also. This was his "gift,"
as we say. One or two painters had it — Neri di
Bicci, Baldovinetti, the Sienese Sassetta: quite
indifferent painters in everything else. With
that clue in my head, I fancy that I succeeded
in seven cases out of ten; in the other three
the ascription, let us say, may well have been
wrong. There is no doubt whatsoever as to
the merits of these two Bibbiena things : the
Deposition is as inane as wax-works, the Adora
tion is instinct with passion, wonder, rapture,
all sorts of emotions with which craftsmen can
do nothing and poets everything. There is
nothing else to see in Bibbiena except the view
of Poppi from the Citadel — Poppi on a hill, the
counterpart of Bibbiena's, with an intolerable
castle of severe grey, trees and little houses hud
dling beneath it like chicks under the mother's
1 In that Donatello beat him, and Verrocchio too.

xv THE CASENTINO 335
wing. It is by no means a fine castle, but for its
size — a perfectly square block with a tower at one
end like the smoke-stack of a locomotive. But
its bigness is very impressive ; it obliterates
everything, and is said to have a good court
and staircase, on the plan of the Florentine
Bargello. You leave the Arno at Poppi, and from the top
of the spiral road by which you climb to the Con-
suma you have a view of Castel San iheConsuma:
Nicolb and the field of Campaldino. campaldino.
A plain it is called in the accounts, but it is
rather a great down, sloping gently to the river.
There is then a broad field of fairly level country
on two sides of a brook. The whole position is
not unlike that of Lewes.
As for Campaldino, the story of the great rout
is familiar, or ought to be if it is not. It is one
of the critical points of early Tuscan story, one
of the few decisive battles of that vexed tale.
You can read it in Villani: how Aymery of
Narbonne led the Guelfic League and Gherardo
Tornaquinci bore the royal standard of Anjou ;
what a host of them — knights from Florence,
Lucca, Prato, Pistoja, as of course; the Sienese
to avenge a former smart, the Volterrani, San-
gimignanesi, Colligiani — went by the way of
the Casentino wasting the lands of Count Guido ;

336 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
how they were met by the Aretines in the
plain at the foot of Poppi "in a plain called
Campaldino, in the village called Certomondo " ;
how eagerly the gage of battle was thrown down,
and how joyfully taken up. One must needs
admire the gallantry of the Aretines. They

UPPER VAL D ARNO.

despised their enemy, " saying that they preened
themselves like women and braided their hair " ;
they had twelve captains of their battalions, whom
they called the Twelve Paladins ; nothing could
stay them from attack. All this, in the rough, is
in the true great manner of the Song of Roland.
But chivalry in Tuscany was an exotic growth,

XV

THE CASENTINO

337
imported but never sane. If Guido Novello of
Poppi was Roland he proved a craven; and if
Bishop Guglielmino was to stand for the great
Archbishop Turpin he would have been little
comfort at Roncesvalles. For Count Guido
Novello, who was to strike in on the Florentine

LA VERNA FROM BIBBIENA.

flank with 150 knights, held back from the first
onslaught to see how the battle went, and mis
doubting his strength fled to his castles in the
hills : so much for the Aretine Roland. As for
the bishop, the chief reason for the hastening of
him by his party seems to have been lest he
should have time to make a pact with the

338 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
Florentines by which he was to cede to them
all his riverine castles in return for 5000 gold
florins a year for the rest of his life. Some
such terms had been actually proposed. So they
urged him forward in a hurry. Such were the
Paladins of Tuscany. Corso Donati, the great
turbulent Florentine — II Barone as they after
wards called (before they killed) him — played
a nobler part. He was Podesta of Pistoja at
this time, and had been ordered to stand his
ground with the Pistojesi and Lucchesi, and not
to attack "on pain of losing his head." The
Florentines were ih the van and bore the first
brunt. But Corso, "when he saw the battle
begun, cried out like a brave man, ' If we are to
lose, I will die in battle with my own people ;
and if we are to win, let them come to Pistoja to
judge me.' Whereupon he freely moved his
company and struck the enemy in the flank,
and was the greatest cause of their rout. And
this done, as it pleased God, the Florentines had
the day, and the Aretines were routed and dis
comfited, and there were killed more than 1700
of horse and foot, taken more than 2000."
Among those killed were the treacherous, tyran
nous, fighting Bishop Ubertini, Guglielmino de'
Pazzi, his nephew, " who was the best and most
wary Captain of War in the Italy of his day."

xv THE CASENTINO

339

Buonconte, son of Count Guido da Montefeltro,
— and how he, being struck mortally in the throat,
fled up the gorge of the Archiano torrent — and
there —
" My sight failed me, and all my breath
Ended in Mary's name ; I fell
There, and my flesh stayed still with Death."
— all this you shall read in the Purgatorio.
Three of the Uberti they lost, one of the Abati,
two of the Griffoni of Fegghine — and Guiderello
d' Alessandro of Orvieto who carried the Eagle
of the Empire. The Florentines lost, but not
nearly so heavily, nor men of such mark. It
was a momentous victory, and, as was proper,
marvels were not wanting to impress it on the
mind. For the news was known on the very day
and at the very hour that it was made. " After
breaking their fast," Villani says, " our lords the
Priors had gone to sleep and rest themselves from
the fatigues of a night of vigil ; and suddenly there
was knocking at the door, with a cry, ' Get up,
get up, for the Aretines are undone ! ' And
getting up and opening, they found no man,
nor had their servants outside heard anything ;
whereof was great marvel, and this held for a
notable thing. For it was the hour of Vespers
before anybody from the host came with the
news."

34© THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
I could not find the Archiano, whose flood
carried Buonconte down to the sea; but Mr.
Gardner was more fortunate, or more careful. He
says it is " about an hour's walk from the battle
field, perhaps a mile from the foot of the hill
on which Bibbiena stands." This is vexatious,
because I must actually have driven over it.

THE VALLEY OF THE UPPER ARNO.

He speaks of it as "banked with poplars and
willows" — which reads like a sluggish stream
rather than a torrent.
As for the Consuma pass, I have to say that
it is not the place in which to be overtaken by
a thunder-storm. That was my lot. I remember
the sheeted rain, the knocking of the heavenly
artillery; the road a foaming water-course —

XV

THE CASENTINO

34i

darkness, fury, and a shrieking wind — and, in a
white vision revealed, a tall shepherd fighting his
way against it, leaning on a staff, his clothing
streaming like a flag behind him.

ON THE ARNO, FLORENCE.

CHAPTER XVI
CONCLUSION : THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY
Let it be assumed, for argument's sake, that I
have made one thing — nay, two things — clear up
An argument to this point : the first, that the heart
resumed, Q£ Tuscany js WOrth the getting at;
the second, that there is no sure road to it through
the plastic arts. Architecture, sculpture, painting
(according to me) show the Tuscan as a charm
ing, accomplished, ingenious, and wholesome
creature ; they evince his happy, childish fancy ;
they show him, even if he be picking over garb
age, as undefiled by the performance, and trans
muting the dross he picks up into the prettiest
filigree-gold you can care to have. But they do
not reveal the deeps of him, if deeps he have.
The limpidity of the Delia Robbia, the exquisite
impertinence of the Desiderios and Minos, the
amorous reveries of Botticelli, even the crystal
perfection of Ghirlandajo, when you have pierced
the enamel of their extraordinary accomplishment,
342

ch.xvi HEART OF THE COUNTRY 343
and have allowed for a certain deal of observation
in the artists, give you proof of just so much
trifling with matters of moment, or with matters
which would be of moment to anybody else.
Love, life, death, heaven, hell, to all the people
upon earth, are mute familiars of the hearth.
These are the gods we needs must worship, and
cannot worship ignorantly. What have the Tus
cans to say to them ? Can we by any means be
present at their secret rites ? Not by any means
open to us so far; for it is clear, I think, that
although, in plastic art, manual facility may
deceive the heart of the worker, it can never for
any serious moment deceive that of the beholder.
The artist's passion may all flow out at his finger
tips. I believe that the Tuscan artists' did.
There remain to us the arts of music and poetry.
Here I deal with the latter.
We must begin by cutting Dante out of the
argument, for reasons which have already been
shadowed. Some men may be too and restated:
frivolously minded to deal with reali- Poetry-
ties ; others too seriously minded to deal with them
before the vulgar. Dante was one of such.
O voi che avete gl' intelletti sani,
Mirate la dottrina che s' asconde
Sotto il velame degli versi strani !
He was telling a Mystery ; but there remain great

344 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
men enough, and men of copious performance.
If all of these rhymers, from Fazio and Folgore to
Petrarch and Cino, thence onwards in ever-in
creasing battalions, Sacchetti, Boccaccio, Bojardo,
the Pulci, Politian, Lorenzo, Bembo, on and on
to Guarini, Metastasio, and Bernardino Perfetti
— if all these people, I say, were poets indeed,
there should be no trouble in finding the way to
the heart of Tuscany ; for poetry is an art which
absolutely demands an emotional impulse before
a note of the music can be uttered.
Well, but are they true poets ? Are their
verses the lyrical equivalent of their passion ?
Can we read the Aretine heart of Petrarch, or
the Pistolese heart of Cino, as we can read the
Cockney heart of Chaucer or the Lowland heart
of Burns ? This is worth thinking about, not
because it is the way to appraise great poetry —
the valuation of great poetry is by no means our
present business ; not for any such reason as that,
but rather because we desire a short road into the
Tuscan heart.
Looking upon poetry, then, as a road to the
heart, let me inquire if there is any direct road
through Petrarch, or any Tuscan
A test for ° J
Petrarch and poet whomsoever, comparable to such
as Burns's " O wha my babie-clouts
will buy ? " or (since the bravado of that is a

xvi HEART OF THE COUNTRY

345

transparent veil) to " A'e fond kiss " ? I don't
intend to quote Petrarch again. I asked the
same question about him before, and cited him
to give weight to my answer ; * but then I put
him side by side with Dante. To-day I am
perhaps pitching the battle rather low, not asking
of the man and his school any stave comparable
to the solemn ruminations of great Wordsworth
or the erotic raptures of young Keats. I don't
ask them whether they ever entangled their
love-thoughts in such fantastic embroidery as
Shakespere his in his sonnets, or Marlow his
in his suggestive narration. No; but I say that
Petrarch was a lover, Cino a lover, Lorenzo a
lover — or so they thought. Did their love-stress
burn as clear in them as his in Byron — foolish,
petulant, self-enwrapt, magnificent, downright
Byron ? You will get nothing of this kind in
any Tuscan whose writings are known to me.
Here is Lorenzo to a woman whom
Lorenzo.
he thought to love :
O chiara stella, che co' raggi tuoi
Togl' all' altre vicine stelle il lume,
Perche splendi assai piii che il tuo costume f
Perche con Febo ancor contender vuoi ?
Forse i begli occhi, i quali ha tolto a noi
Morte crudel ch' omai troppo presume,
Accolti hai in te : adorna del lor lume,
1 1 beg to refer the curious reader to Earthwork out of Tuscany,
Chap. IV., "Of Poets and Needlework."

346 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
II suo bel carro a Febo chieder puoi.
O questo o nuova Stella che tu sia
Che di splendor novello adorni il cielo,
Chiamata esaldi, o nume, i voti nostri.
Leva dello splendor tuo tanta via ;
Che agli occhi che han d' eterno pianto zelo,
Senz' altra offension, lieta ti mostri.
Now that, in the sense of accomplishment and
a handsome compliment to a woman, is nearly as
good as can be ; for it is accomplished enough to
know that a common word, if it will do the work,
is infinitely better than an uncommon one.
Dante proves that over and over again, and here
the phrases I have italicised are really prose
made lyrical by feeling. Piu che il tuo costume:
a common tag of every day. Very happy, very
dextrous; and yet the thing tells you nothing
except that the writer was a clever fellow.
But, O Heaven!
Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
Shake- And like enough thou knowest thy estimate :
spere. The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing ;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thyself thou gav'st, thy own worth then not knowing,
Or me, to whom thou gav'st it, else mistaking ;
So thy great gift, upon misprisions growing,
Comes home again, on better judgment making.
Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter —
In sleep a king ; but waking, no such matter.

xvi HEART OF THE COUNTRY 347
In artifice the same; yet Shakespere's pro-

thonotary terms show us the man's golden heart.
In skill, of the same degree, for his " no such

348 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
matter" is exactly as powerful and as common
place as Lorenzo's " il tuo costume." And yet
— the two have only to be juxtaposed.1
Where, then, are we now? Why, here, I
think: that Tuscan poetry, highly educated,
highly sophisticated as it was, juggled with the
passions and emotions just as the other arts did
in that country ; that Tuscan poems are about
anything or nothing, and mean little more than
delight in the doing, playful weaving of the fancy,
a happy tracing out of phrase-arabesques, a com
fortable tingling of the vacant walls of the heart's
chamber. They do not open the door, nor clear
the road, nor reveal the Tuscan nature. So there's
for them ; and now let me deal with what does.
1 1 say nothing here of narrative poetry : epic, so called. There are
a few Tuscan folk-ballads to put beside our Chevy Chase and famie
Telfer, our Binnory O ! and Berkshire Tragedy. Mr. Symonds quotes
two, Ginevra and L' Avvelenato ; and Professor Tigri says that there
was one upon Paris and Vienne, of which I have only seen extracts. But
those two which I have seen whole do not show much of the romantic
spirit. The Tuscans were not, indeed, romantically inclined — the least
mystical of people, though I observed that Mr. Maugham, in a recent
work, says that Florence was a city of mystics. Mystics in Florence ! It
seems to have been otherwise in Piedmont. Miss E. M. Clerke cites the
Donna Lombarda, a most dramatic, tragic, and romantic narrative. As
to the Tuscan sham epics, from the Teseide to those of Roland and
Renaud, I have not concealed my opinion of their worth whenever they
have crossed the road. It is not necessary that an artificial epic should
glorify a national hero ; Milton's did not, nor did Virgil's. The destiny
of Rome is Virgil's theme : Tantce molis erat is the key-phrase. But
the Morgante, the two Orlandos, the Giostra, the Gerusalemme, and all
the rest of the frothy affairs glorified nothing but the writer's wit, and
there's an end of the matter.

xvi HEART OF THE COUNTRY

349

In the dewy mountain villages which you and
I have traversed of late, on the mossy slopes
which overlook Pistoja, in cloud-girt
Barga, in San Marcello, and Pracchia, ° P°e<"
and Cireglio, the people sing songs which they
themselves have made. So in the hill country
south of Arno, whither we have tended by the
valley roads; in San Gimignano, in sheer Vol
terra, in Cortona, the long grey town ; in Poma
rance, and Certaldo, and Barberino, there are
golden lads and girls who, when they long for
one another, sigh in rhythm and fall, when they
have bliss of each other thrill like thrushes
on April evenings, when they part moan in
music, and when they hate give wild lyrical
utterance to their heartaches. These are the
facts. In Professor Tigri's Corpus of this native
poetry (Canti Popolari Toscani: Florence, Bar
bara, i860) you may run the whole keyboard of
the heart of man and woman, under the stress of
the one primal passion of love, at least; they
sang of very little else then, and so it is now.1
Some of their songs have been admirably trans
lated by Miss E. M. Clerke, and printed in a
little book called Fable and Song in Ltaly, which

1 1 have cited a remarkable exception to this rule. Travel has turned
one girl of my acquaintance into a poet. She comes from the Mugello
country.

350 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
also gives a no less admirable, though necessa
rily short commentary upon them. Mr. Symonds
has rendered some of them in Sketches in Ltaly
and Greece (new edition, vol. ii.), and linked them
together in an essay which treats them sympa
thetically, though not from my present stand
point. He sees in them the raw stuff out of
which Petrarch fashioned his sugar-bakery. I
see them as pathetic little images, too rough not
to be sincere, and as different from Petrarch's
looking-glass languishings as a girl crying in bed
for her lover is from a Fragonard nymph pre
tending to be coy in a pink and blue bower.
The great point, however, which Mr. Symonds
makes is very important to you and me. He
corroborates Professor Tigri's assertion that these
poems are still made by the unlettered poets.
Let us examine into the thing. In Celle, a
mountain village above Pistoja, lives Nencina;
in Campiglio, on another spur of the
Apennine, lives Beppino. She is a
tanned little peasant, with green-grey eyes and
yellow hair, with strands of gold in it ; x he is
1 Most of these girls are very pretty. Stendhal says : " J'ai remarque
de fort beaux yeux chez les femmes de la campagne ; mais il n'y a rien
dans ces figures de la douce volupte ni de l'air susceptible de passion des
femmes de la Lombardie. Ce que vous ne trouverez jamais en Toscane,
c'est l'air exaltable, mais en revanche, de l'esprit, de la fierte, de la raison,
quelque chose de fmement provoquant." It is true, so far as it goes, but
it certainly does not go into Sienese territory.

xvi HEART OF THE COUNTRY 351
tall and rather lean, has a round, dark head and
a sullen look, which, however, belies him. He
is not sulky at all, but very shy and conscious of
his long legs. The sun, wind, and rain have
coloured him as with walnut juice ; he is as
tough as leather, frugal, simple, and as clean as
gold. You may have seen him any day in the
slope fields hoeing between the olives, or straying
in the clover after his pigs, or digging with a
heart-shaped spade whose handle is six feet long
— cutting into the juicy marl as if it were cheese.
A fine young savage, this Beppino, with the
starting look of a faun in his eyes; bare except
for cotton shirt and breeches, and an old hat.
Donatello has made him a dozen times, and
Almighty God makes him still by the hundred a
week up here in the wet mountain air.
As for Nencina, she goes barefoot too —
for wood and water, goose-herding, gleaning,
vintaging. She may go out in bevies with her
mates, or she may go alone ; and if by chance
she meet Beppino (which is his business), she will
give him " good day," or, if she be in company,
a prim little bow of the head in answer to his
lowered cap. What has happened to change the
relationships of these two — to show him an
aureole round her bare head, to touch her tawny
hair and turn it to fine gold, to glorify her feet,

352 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
to give her wings, to set her floating over the
ground like a questing angel ? Or to put mastery
into his brooding eyes, to make the trees bow
their heads to him as he walks, the sun announce
him, the growing dusk declare him gone ? Eh,
who knows ? I dare swear it began with him.
He saw her suddenly, the youngest of the angels,
and haunted her whereabouts. Out on the hill,
in the sun-steeped misty mornings, who comes
slowly round the shoulder of the rock to her
pasture-ground ? Who lurks in the copse to spy
for her? Who loiters about Celle in the evening
twilight, when the maids are gossiping on the
doorsteps, plaiting their straws, singing, or scold
ing the children ? Who comes kneeling to the
sung Mass on Sundays ? who dips into the stoup
with her? Ah, and who is that who, on moon
light, still nights is standing in the village street,
looking at her window, or haply singing in the
silence and dark as he walks alone through sleep
ing Celle? I think Beppino began it, but am
sure that Nencina was aware of its nicest shade
of beginning. The point to be remarked upon
is this: that, the moment they love, these two
innocent dunces begin to sing. Here,
Nota. . o o >
again, I am on the facts of the
case. This boy in love, this entangled girl, begin
to make poems. They sing. So they sang a

xvi HEART OF THE COUNTRY 353
thousand years ago, so five hundred years ago,
so now. Words and music of their song are theirs,
the music mainly traditional, the words not all
traditional, but varying with the poets and their
place in time. Modern things — the vapore, the
railway, the threshing-machine, conscription, emi
gration — come in. Professor Tigri, a Pistolese
himself, has known lads and lasses touched with
this divine fire; Mr. Symonds has heard one of
them compose, as he sat, an exile with his com
rades, by a Sicilian fire. I, too, have known a
girl of the Mugello, who, when she was moved,
uttered herself in natural poetry (on post-cards !),
than which nothing could be more exquisitely
candid, or more exactly just.
I say poet and poem advisedly — for such
they certainly are. It is no case of
r .... Quality.
a comforting jingle —
The rose is red, the violet's blue,
Sugar is sweet, and sweet are you.
It is to that effect, like all the love-rhyme in the
world ; but it is poetry. It reveals, it articulates,
it informs, pierces, lifts up. It shows, beyond
any cavil, that at heart this mountain people is
what the upland Scots have been, what the Ice
landers and Norse have been — natural singers,
self-revealing only in art, and artists only (like
VOL. II 2 A

354 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
the best of us) when their hearts are touched.
Now, since we have been trying throughout these
volumes to get to the Tuscan heart, since two
volumes have been expended to prove that all
ordinary channels fail, I have thought it good
to end this book with a sight of the true
road. A word as to the form in which this poetry is
expressed. There are two, strictly;
Form. but the second, the stornello, or
snatch, form is too slight for my purpose. The
other is the rispetto.
Rispetti run in the ordinary eleven-syllabled
Tuscan verse, the verse of Dante and Petrarch,
with the ordinary weak ending. They may have
a quatrain or two quatrains of alternate rhymes,
that is, they rhyme A B, A B and (if there is a
second quatrain) da capo. They must end with a
rhymed couplet, or two rhymed couplets. When
there is but one couplet, the sense of the quatrain
is repeated in it, with varying words ; when
there are two couplets, the sentiment of the first
is repeated in the second with slightly varying
words or arrangement. In this case the sense of
the quatrain may be left alone. I hope this is
clear; but in case it should not be, an example
will settle all difficulty.
Here is a simple quatrain to begin with.

xvi HEART OF THE COUNTRY 355
A girl sings —
Domenica mattina gentilmente
So dove andesti a far la rifermata ;
E c' era gente che ti ponean mente,
Me lo vennero a dire insino a casa.
Observe that casa and ata are considered an
assonance. Now for the couplets —
Quando me lo dicevono ridevo,
E poi in camera sola io piangevo.
Second couplet: the words alter, but not the
sense — Quando me lo dicevano, cantavo,
E poi in camera sola sospiravo.
To clench all this — which lis important — I shall
give an English version of Miss Clerke's.
A boy sings —
Wouldst see thy servant die of love straightway,
Dress not in curls those shining locks of thine ;
But down along thy shoulders let them stray,
Where they seem strands of gold from out the mine.
Where they seem chains of finely threaded gold,
Fair are the locks and fair the head they fold ;
Where they seem skeins of gold and silk most rare,
Fair are the locks, and she who combs them fair.
So much for poetic form, which in point of
accomplishment and dexterity is as little below
Petrarch, as in simplicity and candour the matter
is far above him. Now for content; and there
they beat him altogether, for they at once enfold
and inform.

356 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
I cannot better Professor Tigri's division of
content: tne rispetti into all the phases of
Love-dreams. y0ung love-making, nor begin more
reasonably than he does, at the first flush of its
dawn. Here is the picture from her side. She is
snug abed with her mother; all still. Then she
hears him come down the street singing softly
as he goes. Here she herself sings the facts —
Last night my love went singing down our street,
I, wicked one, could listen from my bed :
I turned to mother, where she lay asleep,
And on her shoulder cried for that dear lad.
Now all the pain he gives me on this sheet
I write ; and we shall read them when we're wed.
And we will read them every one, my heart —
O my fair love, with witchcraft for thine art !
And we will read them all, line after line :
O use more craft, and take the more of mine !
But on his side, when he thinks of her, it is to
particularise and enhance every little act of her
daily life. " In the morning," he sings, " in the
morning when you leave your bed, the clouds fly
away, the sun comes up over the mountains to
look at you. The angels fly down to help you,
to tie your shoes and lace your stays. The
church bell rings, you go to mass ; all the neigh
bours stand at their doors to see you go. When
you come into church, it is your eyes that light
all the candles. You dip your finger in and

xvi HEART OF THE COUNTRY 357
sign your white forehead — you curtsey and kneel
down — and, ah, the grace of you, kneeling pious
there!" Or, thinking of her person, it is of flowers he
thinks naturally.
O gentilina, gentilina tutta !
Garofanate son vostre parole —
Carnationed are your words ! A phrase for
Keats. E 1' alito che v' esce dalla bocca
Odora piu che un mazzo di viole.
All fragrance and her come to him together. A
vase of scented water, he calls her : " E sete una
caraffa d' acqua lanfa."
Thinking more curiously, more reconditely, he
says that when her mother had her to make she
went up to high heaven to get counsel how she
should go to work. The queen of the gods
said, " Leave her making to me." So then the
prophets came to model her face — prophets with
their incantations and prophesyings ; and four
gods were called in — Venus, Saturn, Mars, and
Narcissus. She may be very young when all this wonderful
service begins to encompass her on
° \ Youth in love.
every side. He admits it when he
sings to her one day —
Giovanettina, che hai quattordici anni,
Sei piccolina e m' hai cavato il cuore !

358 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
Fourteen, did he suppose her ? Heavens ! hear
the imp's own confession —
Son piccolina, e non ho anche dieci anni ;
Son gia segnata al libro dell' amore.
One does not, to be sure, need to be a poetess
to be in love at ten years old ; but one does to
confess it.
To her mother she is very frank. " Mother,"
says she, " if you will not give me my Beppino, I
shall go out into the world and never
She confesses, ,
come back. If you were to see him,
how straight he is, and how fine ; oh, mother, you
would fall in love with him yourself. He wears a
cloak of three colours, and his name is Beppino
Stealheart — Beppino Rubacuore."
He never sings, as she does, this
and is humble. .
meek kind of strain.
" High are the walls of your house," she wails,
" and mine can never reach them. I am not
worthy of your hand, I am not worthy to love
you. No, no, nor even worthy to look at you ! "
Poor little soul — and then she goes on to ask for
his pity — Se non son degna, onde degna ne sia,
Ve lo domando in grazia il vostro amore.
Ve lo domando in grazia et cortesia ;
Meriti dame di maggior valore
*****
Per gentilezza ognor ti voglio amare,
Bello, per poverty non mi lasciare.

xvi HEART OF THE COUNTRY

359

And again —
" Tell me, dear," she cries, " what I ought to
do if I wish to save my soul. I go to church, but
there I cannot stay; not even long enough my
beads to say. I go to church and nothing can I
pray, because I always have thy name at heart.
I go to church and nothing can I say, because I
think of thee and all thou art."
If the like of these things don't take one into
the intimate heart of young lovers, there is nothing
for it but to learn Tuscan and renew one's own
youth. And let those who fancy that Petrarch, as
the greater poet, can take them nearer — try him !
Beppino hurts her sometimes ; here When she is
is a wounded note — hurt-
In que' begli occhi ci hai la calamita,
Giovine bello, sappili portare.
Son quelli che consuman la mia vita
Notte nb giorno mi lascian posare,
E non mi lascian posare un' ora :
Padron non e di se chi s' innamora.
And she can run the whole gamut of unhappy
love; here plaintively —
Sarebbe meio non t' avessi ma' visto,
La lingua non t' avesse mai parlato :
Non averei lo mio core afflitto,
Ne men 1' avrei tanto addolorato . . . ;
and here a young man writes with real tragic
intensity —

360 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
Sono stato all' inferno, e son tomato ;
Misericordia ! la gente che c' era !
V era una stanza tutt' alluminata,
E dentro v' era la speranza mia.
There's a wild scene, and how plainly put down !
" O I have been in hell, and have come back.
Mercy ! the folk down there ! I saw a chamber all
lighted up, and there within it lay my hope." Mr.
Symonds has translated the whole of it {Sketches
and Studies, vol. ii. p. 298).1
That is grief made bitter by hopelessness ;
there is a gentler sort — that of the yearly sever
ance. For Beppino must take his
herds down to the Maremma for the
1 Here are two other scraps wrought in misery : —
Within my breast a candle's lit,
And burns within and shows not out.
Tigri, p. 143.
Non mi chiamate piu biondina bella ;
Chiamatemi biondina isventurata. Tigri, p. 146.
And here is dramatic narration : the parting and meeting again of Paris
and Vienne. Tigri says, " degni del Tasso." But I say, Tasso could not
approach the simplicity of — Andar si vede
In terra, e come morta s' abbandona.
Piu non si regge la meschina in piede,
E da se stessa alia terra si dona.
Non ode, e pur non sente, ne non vede,
Quai e colui che per pieta Ia sprona
Quando si pensa esser di vita priva,
In braccio del suo amor si trovo viva.
Quando si pensa esser di vita sciolta,
In braccio del suo amor si trovo tolta.
Tigri, p. 166.

xvi HEART OF THE COUNTRY 361
winter, or may go thither in June for the harvest
ing; and Nencina must stay at home and wait
for him. She cries —
Tutti mi dicon Maremma, Maremma,
Ed a me pare una Maremma amare.
Nowadays there is the military service ; and in
some sort that must always have been a factor.
But there is hope to sweeten this cup, and very
prettily he can turn it; he says —
E per segnale lascero una Stella ;
Essa rilucera sinche vivo io.
But she cries out to his comrades who are taking
him to the depot —
" Soldier, soldier, off to the wars, keep a kind
eye for my lover. Tell him not to shoulder his
arms, for he has never been in a battle. Tell him
not to sleep under the open sky ; and tell him the
keys of his heart are in my bosom. Tell him not
to sleep in the marshes ; and tell him I shall think
of him for ever."
And now she is alone —
I see the rocks for me do weep,
The mountains open, deep to deep
Wails, " Now he leaves her, now he goes ;
Cursed be the day that brought these woes."
Here she is watching for him to come back —
E vedo, e vedo, e non vedo che voglio,
Vedo le foglie di lontan tremare.

362 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
E vedo lo mio amor in su quel poggio,
E al piano mai lo vedo calare.
She sends him messages by the birds since she has
no other servants. They drop them on the trees
by his course — on the trees of Pisa, the trees of
Leghorn. And here she cries out upon his road —
The Leghorn road's a fine affair,
And happy he who fares it.
My love he is its wayfarer,
But, O my heart ! he wears it.
O Leghorn men, tell him the day,
When he may fare the other way !
O Leghorn men, tell him the hour,
And on his bosom lay this flower.
It is very characteristic of Nencina that, when
it is her turn to go away — into service, she gives
Beppino a little lecture —
Giovanettino, diamoci la mano,
Oggi o domani me ne vado via :
E vado in un paese tanto strano,
Chi sa se non mi mora per la via ?
E s' i' morissi e non tornassi piu
Coll' occhi bassi attende alia vertu.
He, on his side, knows her bird-errands and looks
out for them — If on a tree a bird I spy,
He seems to whisper in his way,
Lad, from Pistoja here come I
To greet you from your lovely may.
I answer, Birding, homeward fly,
Be speedy to her lattice, pray.

xvi HEART OF THE COUNTRY 363
And you shall see the eyes and face
That drew my poor heart from its place.
Here you have her waiting for him
on the rocks. She sees him coming.

Meeting.

Deccolo la ; che ben vienga, ben vienga!
Deccolo Ik ; che ben venuto sia !
E dategli una seggiola che siegga,
Che fa fiorir le rose per la via.
E fa fiorir le rose e le viole —
Giorno e la notte ti tengo nel core,
Giorno e la notte son ventiquattr' ore —
E venticinque ti tengo nel core !
Jealousies, quarrels, recriminations, reconcilia
tions — all are here in music. I can't give even
a specimen of each. Here, however,
Divers pangs. .
are two which have unusual character.
This is hers —
If you love me, I love you ; if you hate me, I hate ;
If you wish for my joy, so joy be your fate.
If you scorn, you are scorned ; if another you crave,
Or another crave you, then another I'll have.
Seek me, I seek you ; if you fly me, I run.
If you long for to have me, by you I'm undone.
And this also, curiously reasonable, for a little
scope. Let me go free and as I please,
Weep not, I'll never leave thee.
Had I a thousand loves they're thine,
Pastime should ne'er deceive thee.
Were I a ten score years away
My heart would hold thee fast ;
Or thrice ten score years coming home,
I'd have thee in the last.

364 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
Last scene of courtship, the serenade. In
this case the friends of the lover come with
him, and sing for him ; and they
The serenata. . ,
sing, not to the girl, but to her
parents. Thus —
Here come we with our serenade
To give you pleasure and good night.
You have within a loving maid
Under your charge and in your sight.
And if perchance asleep she's laid,
We bid you wake her, 'tis her right.
Tell her her lover passed this way,
Whose true heart holds her night and day.
Tell her her servant went by here,
Whose good mind keeps her all the year.1
He sings, and she should listen — but she must
not come out to him on any account. His delicacy
is a beautiful thing —
Se dormi o se non dormi, viso adorno,
Alza la bionda e delicata testa.
This is an exquisite piece, which has proved too
much for Mr. Symonds' muse (loc. cit. p. 288).
I continue the original —
Ascolta lo tuo amor che tu hai d' intorno,
Dice che tu ti affacci alia finestra.
Ma non ti dice che tu vada fuora,
Perchi la notte & cosa disonesta:
Facciati alia finestra, e stanne in casa,
Perch' io sto fuora, e fo 1' inserenata.
1 " O curtained fair," she is addressed sometimes : " O bella che fra'
cortinaggi stai ! "

xvi HEART OF THE COUNTRY 365
There can be little but beauty and honesty in
the heart of a young man when love turns it
to such uses as this.
Here he blesses the house he lives in, because
it is beautified by her shadow as she passes —
lo benedisco la mano al maestro
Che m' ha fatto la casa in sulla via :
E la finestra me 1' ha fatta bassa,
Per veder 1' amor mio quando ci passa.
Wedlock or good-bye: there are no other
courses'. Here then is the happy day,
and the bridegroom going to fetch
home the bride. Here is the whole scene:
Quando sark quel benedetto giorno
Che le tue scale salird pian piano ?
I tuoi fratelli me verranno intorno,
Ad uno ad un gli tocchero la mano.
Quando sara quel di, cara colonna,
Che la tua mamma chiamerd madonna ?
Quando sara quel di, caro amor mio ?
Io saro vostra, e voi sarete mio !
But hear her cry when she sends him away —
not because she will, but because she must. She
begins with gentle dignity —
M' & stato detto che a' vostri non piace
Che ci veniate, caro signor mio.
Se non ci puoi venir, dattene pace —
Non stare in guerra piu per amor mio. . . .
But at last she breaks out —

366 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY chap.
Amore, amore, amor ! passa que' poggi !
Amore, amore, amor ! viemmi a vedere !
Viemmi a vedere innanzi ch' io mi muoia,
Innanzi che m' accendan le candele !

And then — the fount of love all seared and
blistered — she sings no more, but weds her old
Robin Gray, and becomes a withered hag before
she is five-and-twenty. Let us leave her with
our benediction for her sweet, singing youth.
Now, I consider that here I have brought you
straight into the heart of Tuscany, and shall
leave you, with that gate open, to walk the
road alone. Dante in one of your pockets,
Tigri's Anthology in the other, I hold you to be
properly equipped. As for Dante, he can stand
alone ; but for the Professor's garner there is
this to be added — that not one word in the
whole budget is gross, or vulgar, or otherwise
than delicate. Chivalry, assuredly, never made
of fleshly love a more dainty ethereal business.
Dante never rarefied his Beatrice, Petrarch his
Laura, more utterly than Beppino his " bionda e
delicata testa," than Nencina, the little barefoot
girl, her " bel gelsomino." Nor, and it is a most
notable thing, is there one pang of desire, one
wail of distress, which may not be satisfied, and
is not intended to find its satisfaction or its salve
in wedlock. Neither Dante nor Petrarch could

xvi HEART OF THE COUNTRY 367
say as much — and they are none the greater
poets for the inability.
The heart of Tuscany is as sweet and mellow
as the heart of an apple ; and so it has ever been.

VILLA CRAWFORD.

INDEX

Adrian VI., Pope, i. 94
Agnes da Gracchiano, the Blessed,
ii. 272
Agnolo Gaddi, i. 316
Albert of Massa, Bishop, ii. 1 39
Alberti, Clan of, i. 74; ii. 200
Alberti, Leandro, quoted, ii. 53 n.,
272
Alberti, Leo Battista, i. 275; ii. 278
Albiano, i. 120
Aldobrandeschi, i. 74; ii. 200
Allen, Grant, i. 2, 304 »., 315
Altopascio, i. 342, 344, 345 ; battle
of, i. 348
Angiolieri, Checho, ii. 186, 197
Ansedonia, i. 70 n.; ii. 130, 149,
152
Apennines, i. 113, 243; ii. 129
Apuans, i. 113
Archiano, the, ii. 340
Ardinghelli brethren, the, ii. 60
Arezzo, i. 83, 173, 381 ; ii. 7, 298,
318; historical notes on, ii. 323
cathedral, i. 273; ii. 318
Santa Maria delle Pieve, ii. 320
Ariosto, i. 117
Aries, i. 79
Armstrong, Mr., quoted, i. 307; ii.
180 n.
Arno, i. 130; ii. 14, 20, 327
Giuoco del Ponte at Pisa, ii. 21
Arnolfini, John, i. 12, 362, 372
Arnolfo, the Architect, i. 163
Art, Tuscan. See Tuscan art
Asciano, i. 71, 78; ii. 280
Athens, Duke of, ii. 94, 273

Baedeker, Herr, i. 2, 67, 101 n.,
199, 294 »., 315; ii. 102, 310

Bagni di Lucca, i. 122, 124
Baldaccio d' Anghiori, i. 236
Baldovinetti, Alessio, i. 22, 204, 268,
296; "• 334
Barberino, ii. 116, 349
Barga, i. 80, 120; ii. 349
Batignano, ii. 158
Battifolle, i. 124
Beccadelli, Antonio, i. 32, 266
Belforti, the, ii. 94
Bellincion Berti, i. 37, 215
Bembo, ii. 344
Benozzo Gozzoli, i. 268; ii. 78
Benvenuto Cellini, i. 191
Berenson, Mr., i. 158, 282, 303,
3°5 «•> 3'5; "• '95. 328
Bernardino Perfetti, ii. 186, 344
Bertoldo Novello, ii. 273
Bevis of Hampton, ii. 89
Bibbiena, ii. 332
Black-and-White factions, i. 76, 148,
172
Boccaccio, i. 10, 38, 65, 182, 249,
253, 262; ii. 47, 188, 344
Bohemia, John of, i. 374
Bojardo, ii. 344
Bologna, i. 22 and note
Bonagiunta, i. 359
Bonaguida Lucari, ii. 200
Borgo, i. 381
Borgo a Mozzano, i. 120
Borgo San Lorenzo, i. 228
Botticelli, i. 268, 306, 320, 321
Bourget, Monsieur, i. 17
Bracco Pass, i. 95
Branca Guelfucci, ii. 314
Bridge Game, at Pisa, ii. 21
Brisighella, i. 236
Bronzino, i. 85, 323

VOL. II

3^9

370 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY

Brosses, Monsieur de, i. 151, 166,
274, 382; ii. 186
Browning, i. 330; ii. 112
Brunelleschi, i. 164, 204, 376, 377;
ii. 106
Buonconvento, ii. 246, 248
Buondelmonte, i. 35, 275, 337
Buondelmonti, Ranier Zingane de',
i- 33»
Burlamacchi, i. 7, 360
Byron at Pisa, ii. 14
Cacciguida, i. 37, 54; ii. 46
Caliano, ii. 331
Campaldino, the battle of, i. 183;
"• 335
Campiglio, i. 126
Campo Bisenzio, i. 147
Can Grande of Verona, i. 104
Cancellieri, the last of the, i. 132
Cancellieri factions, the, i. 148
Candoglia, i. 26
Cantino, i. 233
Capanaiolo, ii. 41
Cappiano, i. 343
Capraja, i. 337
Carmichael, Mr., ii. 93, 203
Carmignano, i. 144 «., 147
Carmine of Florence, the, i. 274,
292; ii. 328
Carpinelli Pass, i. 113
Casaglia Pass, i. 232
Casanova, Signor, i. 17, 39, 99
Caseina, ii. 28
Casentino, the, ii. 331
Casole d' Elsa, ii. 86
Castel San Gimignano, ii. 82, 86
Castelfiorentino, ii. 41; poverty of
the inhabitants, ii. 42
Castello di Pietra, ii. 144
Castelnuovo, i. 117; ii. 41, 129
Castel-Pulci, i. 330, 333
Castiglione del Lago, ii. 266, 284
Castrocaro, i. 238
Castruccio Castracane, i. 83, 101, 112,
126, 130 n., 173, 342 et seq.;

ii. 161; in the Lunigiana,
i. 104; story of the chamber-
hero, i. 346; at the battle of
Altopascio, i. 348; death and
burial of, ii. 166-169
Cavolino Tolomei, ii. 122
Cerbaje, i. 70 n.
Certaldo, i. 80, 342; ii. 43, 349
Boccaccio's house, ii. 48
Palazzo del Commune, ii. 48
Certosa, the (Florence), ii. 109
Ceserano, i. 109
Charlemagne, i. 298
Charles IV., i. 374
Cheat-the-Cat (Bugigatto), i. 329
Checho Angolieri, ii. 186, 197
Chiabrera, Gabriello, ii. 108
Chianti, ii. 53
Chiavari, i. 94
Chiusdino, abbey of San Galgano at,
ii. 155 n.
Chiusi, ii. 88
Chiusure, ii. 251
Cino of Pistoja, ii. 344, 345
Cireglio, i. 1 28 and note ; ii. 349
Citta di Castello, i. 381
Civitale, Matteo, i. 366, 367, 372
Civitella, ii. 164
Clement VII., Pope, i. 127 n.
Clerke, Miss E. M., ii. 348 n., 349,
355
Colle, i. 80, 342; ii. 120
Consuma, the, ii. 335, 340
Conti Alberti, the, i. 144 n.
Coreglia, i. 120
Corradino Malaspina, i. 102
Corsignano, ii. 260
Corso Donati, i. 34, 137; ii. 338
Cortona, i. 7 1 , 79, 38 1 ; ii. 87, 286, 349
Duomo, the, ii. 292
Municipio, ii. 290
San Niccolo, ii. 296
Cosimo Primo, i. 34, 112, 307; ii.
II, 106, 149; works of, ii. 12
Cosimo II., i. 298, 308
Cosimo III., i. 34, 112, 184

INDEX

37i

Cosimo, Piero di, i. 318
Cosimo de' Medici, Paler Patrice, i.
37.172, 375
Crawford, F. Marion, i. 124
Credi, Lorenzo di, i. 268, 322
Cristina of Lorraine, ii. 274
Crivelli's Annunciation, i. 93
Cronaca, i. 204
Cuccii Pass, i. 106
Dante, i. 2, 34, 40 et seq., no, 116,
150, 178, 195 et seq., 243; ii. 34,
144, 176, 188, 250, 343, 366
Beatrice and other concerns, i.
63-66
Donna Berta and Ser Martino, i.
34-39; natural history of, i.
216-225
Pictures of Italy, i. 46, 57-63
Della Quercia, i. 268, 370; ii. 104,
174; his Jlaria in St. Martin's,
Lucca, i. 366
Della Scala, i. 102
Della Volta, family of, i. 342
Dennis, quoted, ii. 130, 131 »., 135M.,
136, 138, 145 »., 158 »., 288
Desiderio of Settignano, i. 38, 162
Dicomano, i. 244
Donatello, i. 65, 268; ii. 104
Donati, Corso, i. 34, 137; ii. 338
Donna Berta and Ser Martino, i. 34-
39; natural history of, i. 216-225
Douglas, Mr. L., ii. 174, 186, 195
Dovadola, i. 239
Elsa, river, i. 130; ii. 26, 53
Ema, river, i. 130; ii. 26
Empoli, ii. 36
Era, river, i. 130; ii. 26
Este of Ferrara, i. 117 and note
Esterel, the, i. 88
Evelyn, John, quoted, i. 92 »., 363
Evola, river, i. 130; ii. 26
Faenza, i. 238
FsesukE, i. 73

Faggiuola, Uguccione della, i. 83,
i°4, 345
Falterona, i. 243
Fantoni, Giovanni, i. 1 10
Farinata degli Uberti, i. 33, 54, 338;
ii. 38
Fausta, Signora Livia, ii. 198 and
note
Fazio degli Uberti, i. 99 »., 116; ii.
89, 130, 282, 344
Ferdinand I., Grand Duke, i. 297;
ii- 274
Feruccio, Duke, i. 127 and note
Ficino, Marsilia, ii. 278
Fiesole, i. 84, 155, 170, 198, 227;
ii. 88
Museum, i. 199
Rock of, i. 194
Filelfo, i. 4
Filippino Lippi, i. 321
Fitello, ii. 165
Fivizzano, i. 106, 109, no; ii. 128
Florence, i. 27, 54, 68, 73, 84 ;
history of, i. 3, 33-34; fate of,
i. 170; origins of, i. 188; Ben-
venuto's account, i. 191 ; "the
holy breed," i. 194; Old, i. 213;
compared with Siena, ii. 172,
180
Annunziata, the, i. 288
Badia, i. 273
Bargello, i. 163
Campanile, i. 174, 301
Carmine, i. 274, 292; ii. 328
Certosa, ii. 109
Duomo, i. 151, 158, 174, 230, 273
Orsammichele, i. 272
Piazza Santa Maria, i. 167
Pitti Palace, ii. 105, 192
San Firenze, i. 274
San Gaetano, i. 274
San Giovanni, i. 158, 204, 208, 273
San Giovannino, i. 274
San Lorenzo, i. 151, 270
San Marco, i. 166, 273, 292; ii.
no, 330

372 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY

Florence, continued —
San Miniato, i. 204 el seq., 270, 275
San Pier Scheraggio, i. 274
Santa Croce, i. 158, 162, 204, 270,
273. 277. 282, 287 n., 301
Santa Maria Novella, i. 158, 275,
277
Santa Spirito, i. 274
Santo Stefano, i. 274
SS. Apostoli, i. 298
Uffizii, the, i. 304, 362; the gallery
system, i. 310; Scuola Toscana,
i. 320; portraits, i. 322
Florentine churches, i. 269 ; sculpture,
i. 300
Folgore, Messer, ii. 58, 60, 344
Forli, i. 238
Forteguerra, Signora Laodamia, ii.
198 n.
Fosciandora, i. 120
Fosdinovo, i. 101
Fra Angelico, i. 268; ii. 197 »., 330
Fra Bartolommeo, i. 321
Francesca, Piero della, i. 22, 268; ii.
321 n.
Franceschino Malaspina, i. 102
Francia, i. 22 and note
Francis III., ii. 140
Frederick, Emperor, i. 339
Fucecchio, i. 342
Gaddo, Count, i. 104
Galluzzo, ii. 1 10
Gardner, Mr. Edmund, ii. 256 n., 340
Garfagnana, the, i. 84, 101, 106;
the Garfagnanesi, i. 107, 116
Gastone, Giovanni,last of the Medici,
i- 34. 36> l84. 3°8; »¦ 1°; his
wig, i. 308; ii. 108
Ghibellines, i. 33, 338; ii. 122, 325
Ghirlandajo, i. 29, 38, 85, 268, 303 ;
ii. 70; laud of, i. 277; his
version of legend of Santa Fina,
ii. 74
Giotto, i. 22, 38, 56, 65, 164, 259,'
268, 301

Giovanni Bicci de' Medici, i. 12, 306,
317
Giovanni di San Giovanni, i. 324
Giovi, ii. 331
Giuoco del Ponte, at Pisa, ii. 21
Gozzoli, Benozzo, i. 268; ii. 78
Grosseto, i. 85 «., ii. 145; history
of, ii. 147 n.
Cathedral, ii. 146
Monte Pescali, ii. 145
Gualandi, Aurelia, ii. 183
Guarini, ii. 344
Guelfs and Ghibellines, wars of the,
i- 33. I72. 338; ii- 95. 325
Guglielmino of Arezzo, Bishop, ii. 337
Guidi, Clan of the, i. 74
Guido of Arezzo, Bishop. See Tarlati
Guido Novello, Count, ii. 337
Guido the Old, Count, i. 215
Guinigi, Paolo, i. 374 et seq.
Guisciana, river, i. 343
Guy of Arezzo, Bishop, i. 354
Henry of Luxemburgh, ii. 250
Heywood, Mr. W., ii. 182, 183 n.,
203
Ilaria del Caretto, i. 366, 374
Incisa, ii. 328
Isola, ii. 246
John XXII., Pope, ii. 314
La Nencia, ii. 116
La Scala, hospital of, ii. 246
La Verna, ii. 332
Landor, Walter Savage, i. 52-53
Lardarello, ii. 128
Lastra, i. 333
Laterina, ii. 328
Lavagna, river, i. 94
Layard, Sir Henry, ii. 127
Leandro Alberti, ii. 53 n., 272
Leghorn, i. 151
Leopold II., Grand Duke, i. 112,
243; ii. 178

INDEX

373

Lerici, i. 98
Lewis the Bavarian, Emperor, i. 373;
ii. 314
Liguria, i. 90
Ligurian building, i. 91
Lima, river, i. 124
L' Imposta, ii. 164
Lionardo da Vinci, i. 65, 182, 268
Lippi, Lippo, i. 146, 268
Lippo Memmi, i. 316
Literature, Tuscan, i. 8; Sienese, ii.
186
Livia, Portrait of, ii. 204-242
Lorenzetti, Ambrogio, ii. 196 n.
Lorenzo de' Medici, i. 11, 182, 265,
306, 375 ; ii. 93, 180 »., 278,
344, 345
Lorenzo di Credi, i. 268, 322
Lorenzo Monaco, i. 268
Luca Pitti, ii. 106
Luca Pulci, ii. 278
Luca Signorelli, ii. 294, 297
Lucca, i. 27, 73, 83, 328; the graces
of, i. 356; compared with Siena,
ii. 170; the Lucchesi, i. 383;
ii. 170
St. Fredian's, i. 363, 369
St. Martin's, i. 363 et seq.
St. Mary's, i. 363
St. Michael's, i. 275, 358, 363
San Giovanni, i. 368
San Romano, i. 372
Lucignano, ii. 246
Luni, i. 106
Lunigiana, Castruccio in the, i. 104
Machiavelli, i. 4, 181, 235, 265, 360
Magra, the, i. 28, 98
Malaspina, Marquis Spinetta, i. 104
Malaspina, the, i. 102, 112
Malatesta, Sigismund, Lord of
Rimini, i. 266
Mammiano, i. 126
Manozzi, Giovanni, ii. 328
Mantegna, i. 323
Maremma, the, ii. 131

Maremma Grossetana, ii. 142, 145
Marradi, i. 234
Masaccio, the painter, ii. 328
Massa Carrara, i. 106
Massa Marittima, i. 80; ii. 130;
histories of, ii. 139
Citadel, the, ii. 137
San Cerbone, ii. 135
Matteo Civitale, i. 360
Matteo of Siena, ii. 196 n.
Maud, Countess of Tuscany, i. 211
et seq.
Maugham, Mr., ii. 348 n.
Medici, the, i. 34, 150, 182, 306
Medici, Giovanni Bicci de', i. 12,
306, 317
Medici, Lorenzo de'. See Lorenzo
de' Medici
Memmi, Lippo, i. 316
Metastasio, ii. 344
Michelangelo, i. 268, 310
Michele di Lando, i. 329
Michelozzo, i. 166, 203, 204; ii. 106,
276, 277
Mino of Fiesole, i. 361
Modane, i. 20
Monaco, Lorenzo, i. 268
Montaigne, i. 17, 166 n., 169; ii.
164 m., 192 n.
Montalcino, i. 71, 80; ii. 157, 164,
265
Montaperto, i. 340 ; ii. 244
Monte Albano, i. 70 n., 130 «.,
147
Montealto, ii. 332 .
Monte Amiata, ii. 164
Monte Argentario, ii. 149
Monte Calanaja, ii. 332
Monte Calvana, i. 144 n.
Monte Calvi, i. 25
Monte Cerbole, ii. 128
Monte Cimone, i. 25, 106
Monte della Guardia, i. 23
Monte della Torre, ii. 85, 12C
Monte Guidi, ii. 86
Montelupo, i. 337, 340

374 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY

Monte Morello, i. 130 »., 144 ».,
228
Montemurlo, i. 130 n.
Monte Oliveto, i. 130
Monte Oliveto Maggiore, ii. 251
Convent, the, ii. 254
Monte Penna, ii. 332
Monte Pisanino, i. 106, 113
Monte Pisano, i. 70 n.
Montepulciano, i. 71, 78; ii. 126,
265; history of, ii. 272
Palazzo Pubblico, ii. 275
Piazza, the, ii. 275
Monterone d' Arbia, ii. 246
Monte Sagro, i. 106
Monte San Giuliano, ii. I
Monte Senario, i. 228
Monte Staffoli, ii. 64
Montevarchi, ii. 328
Monti dell' Uccellina, ii. 147
Montopoli, ii. 30
Moroello Malaspina, i. 102
Moscona, ii. 158 n.
Mugello, i. 106, 226
Murray, Mr., i. 2
Napier, Captain, i. 4, 298; ii. 202
Neri Capponi, i. 376; ii. 16
Neri di Bicci, ii. 334
Neri Piccolino, i. 338
Neroccio, ii. 196 n.
Nervi, i. 94
Nicholas of Pisa, i. 260, 264, 268, 364
Nozzano, ii. 1
Ombrone, the, i. 25, 130; ii. 27, 159
Orbetello, ii. 147, 149; fishing at, ii.
152; public gardens, ii. 153;
the Orbetellani, ii. 151
Orcagna, i. 268
Orvieto, cathedral, i. 277
Otto, Emperor, i. 215, 354
Paganico, ii. 158; the church, ii. 160;
the Pagani, ii. 162
Palazzuolo, i. 233

Palla Strozzi, ii. 93
Panchiatichi, Lucrezia, i. 323
Panchiatichi, Marquess, i. 136
Pandolfo Petrucci, ii. 178 »., 197, 202
Pannocchieschi, i. 74; ii. 200
Paolo Uccello, i. 317
Patrizii of Siena, the, ii. 161
Perfetti, Bernardino, ii. 186, 344
Perugia, i. 5 1 ; ii. 88
Pesa, river, i. 130; ii. 26
Petrarch, i. 10, 53, 65, no, 263 et
seq., 297; ii. 188, 304, 344, 345,
35°. 359
Petriolo, ii. 164
Petrocchi, Dottore Luigi, ii. 139
Piazza al Serchio, i. 113, 116
Piccinnino, i. 378
Piccolomini, /Eneas Sylvius. See
Pius II.
Piccolomini, Signora, ii. 198 n.
Picture galleries, i. 303
Pictures of Italy, Dante's, i. 57-63
Pienza, ii. 178 »., 261
Pier delle Vigne, ii. 33
Pier Pettignano, ii. 197
Piero della Francesca, i. 22, 268 ;
ii. 321 n.
Pieve Fosciano, i. 120
Pinturicchio, ii. 175; 255
Pisa, i. 51, 83, 84, 151, 381; ii. 4
et seq.; the Bridge Game al,
ii. 21
Campo Santo, ii. 250 ».
Cathedral, i. 204; ii. 4
Lanfranchi Palace, ii. 14
Pisano, Andrea, i. 164
Pisano, Giovanni, i. 268
Pisano, Niccold, i. 260, 264, 268, 364
Pistoja, i. 25, 26, 54, 128, 172, 381;
the Pistojese, i. 126
Baptistry, i. 139
San Atto, procession to the shrine
of, i. 131, 140
San Francesco al Prato, i. 143
San Giovanni, i. 142
San Pietro, i. 144

INDEX

375

Pitecchio, i. 26
Piteglio, i. 126
Pitelli, i. 98
Pitti Palace, Florence, ii. 105, 192
Pius II., i. 266 ; ii. 178 n., 186, 197,
260
Poggibonsi, i. 80, 342; ii. 53, 117;
churches, ii. 118; the Feast of
Corpus Christi, ii. 118
Poggio, historian, i. 4
Poggio a Cajano (Medici Villa), i.
147
Poggio Petroio, ii. 114
Poggiolo, i. 228
Politian, i. 11 ; ii. 277, 344
Pollajuolo, i. 38 ; his Galeazzo Sforza,
i. 322
Pomarance, ii. 86, 125, 349
Pontassieve, i. 244
Ponte a Cappiano, i. 343
Ponte a Tressa, ii. 246
Pontedera, ii. 26, 28
Pontepetri, i. 128 n.
Ponte Vecchio, i. 84
Popiglio, i. 126
Poppi, ii. 334
Populonia, ii. 130
Portico, i. 241
Pracchia, i. 25 ; ii. 349
Prato, i. 145, 172
Cathedral, i. 145
Pratomagno, ii. 26, 327
Provenzano Salvani, ii. 38, 121, 178
n., 197, 200; assassination of,
ii. 122
Provenzano, the Madonna of, ii. 217
et seq.
Pulci family, the, i. 331 ; ii. 344
Pulci, Luigi, i. 182, 332
Radicofani, i. 77 ; ii. 128
Raphael, i. 268
Rassina, ii. 332
Ravenna, i. 55
Raymond of Cardona, i. 349 et
seq.

Renaissance in Italy, the, i. 245; ii.
262 ; the Acts of, i. 267
Repetti, i. n ; ii. 140, 147, 162
Rica, R. P., i. 4
Rigoli, ii. 3
Rimini, i. 55
Rinaldo degli Albizzi, ii. 93
Ripafratta, ii. 1
Robbia, Luca della, i. 38
Rocca San Casciano, i. 239
Rocca Sillana, ii. 127
Roccastrada, ii. 128, 155 «., 156
Rogers, Mr., i. 17
Romagna, i. 54
Rosa, Salvator, i. 233, 336
Rosaro, the, i. 107, 113
Rossellino, i. 38, 203 ; ii. 192
Rotta-upon-Arno, ii. 29, 30
Rousseau, i. 17 ; ii. 134
Rubens, Peter Paul, i. 321
Ruselbe, ii. 158
Ruskin, Professor, i. 2, 15, 164, 281,
304 n. ; ii. 173
Sacchetti, i. 4, 10, 11, 38, 65, 288;
ii. 188, 344 ; his story of Cas
truccio, i. 346
Sade, Madame Laura de, i. 264
Saint Catherine, ii. 134, 178 «., 197
St. Francis of Assisi, i. 249 et seq.
Saint-Maximin, i. 87, 88
Salvani, Provenzano. See Proven
zano Salvani
Salvator Rosa, i. 233, 336
San Atto, procession to the shrine of,
i. 131, 140
San Benedetto, i. 242
San Benedetto, Pass of, i. 234
San Bernardino of Siena, ii. 132,
186; his invention of the divine
monogram, ii. 134
San Casciano, ii. 109, 112
San Dalmasio, ii. 86
San Felice, i. 26
San Frediano, i. 328
San Galgano, ruins of, i. 273

376 THE ROAD IN TUSCANY

San Gimignano, i. 78, 342; ii. 47,
69, 86, 117, 349; the Ghosts of,
ii. 52 et seq.
Collegiate Church, ii. 81, 104
Sant' Agostino, ii. 78, 81
San Giovanni, ii. 328, 330
San Godehzo, i. 243
San Lorenzo, ii. 165
San Marcello, i. 106, 127; ii. 128, 349
San Miniatello, i. 336
San .Miniato, Church of, i. 204 et
seq., 271, 275
San Miniato de' Tedeschi, i. 78, 341,
342; ii. 27, 32
San Quirico d' Orcia, ii. 258; story
of, ii. 259 n.
Santa Fina, ii. 58; legend of, ii. 70;
Ghirlandajo's version, ii. 74
Santa Maria-in-Monte, ii. 29
Santa Zita, i. 358
Sarto, Andrea del, i. 297
Sarzana, i. 99, IOO
Savona, i. 92
Savonarola, i. 36, 266; ii. 134
Semifonte, the lost city, ii. 43, 86,
114, 125, 199
Seravalle, ii. 248
Serchio, Piazza al, i. 113, 116
Serchio, river, i. 113, 117, 344
Sestri, i. 94
Sforza, Francesco, i. 376 et seq.
Shakespere, ii. 346
Shelley, i. 24, 40, 98; ii. 16, 18
Siena, i. 27, 53, 72, 78, 83 «., 153,
342, 381; ii. 7, 243; compared
with Lucca, ii. 172, 180; pro
perties of, ii. 173; the Sienese,
ii. 170, 176, 178; processions,
etc., ii. 180; architecture, ii.
189; gates of, ii. 190 n. ;
churches, ii. 193; painting, ii.
194; history, ii. 199
Campo, ii. 192 and note
Mangia Tower, ii. 165
Piccolomini, the, ii. 192; Library,
ii. 194

Siena, continued —
Riccardi Palace, ii. 192
Vicolo al Vento, ii. 211
Zebra Tower, ii. 165
Sieve, river, i. 130
Signa, i. 333
Signorelli, Luca, ii. 294, 297
Simone Martini, i. 316
Sinalunga, ii. 280
Sodoma, ii. 175, 254, 255
Soliera, i. 107, 109
Spezzia, i. 95, 98
Spicchiaiola, ii. 82, 126
Stendhal, Monsieur de, i. 23,302,350 n.
Stigliano, ii. 165
Strozzi, Benedetto, ii. 60
Strozzi, Filippo, ii. 106
Subbiano, ii. 331
Sustermans, i. 324
Symonds, John Addington, i. 267,
315; "¦ 272, 276, 279, 348 «.,
350, 353, 360; his story of Luca
Signorelli, ii. 294
Talamone, ii. 130, 147
Tarlati of Arezzo, Bishop Guido, i.
83. 173; »• 3io. 321, 328; death
of, ii. 317
Tarquinii, i. 70 n.
Tavarnelle, ii. 114
Tavernuzze, ii. no
Taylor, Thomas, i. 279 n.
Tendola, i. 109
Terra del Sole, i. 238
Tigri, Professor, ii. 348 n., 349, 353,
356, 360 »., 366
Tizzano, i. 349
Tolomei, Cavolino, ii. 122
Tolomei's Abbey, ii. 251
Trasimeno, ii. 266, 284
Tribbiano, i. 99
Troy, i. 185
Tuscan art, i. II, 65, 177, 321,
322 «.; ii. 104, 342; literature,
i. 8; poetry, i. 10; ii. 343;
folk-poets, ii. 349

INDEX

377

Tuscans, the, i. 26-32, 80 et seq.,
334; ii. 66-68, 113, 129
Tuscany, history of, i. 3
Tuscany, Grand Duchy of, i. 67, 176
Tuscany, Maud, Countess of, i. 211
et seq.
Ubaldini, Clan of the, i. 74
Uberti, Clan of the, i. 74; ii. 200
Uberti, Farinata degli. See Farinata
degli Uberti
Uberti, Fazio degli. See Fazio degli
Uberti
Uberti, Schiatta degli, i. 338
Ubertini, Clan of the, i. 74
Ubertini, Guglielmino degli, ii. 325
Uffizii. See under Florence
Ugolino of Pisa, ii. 1 1
Uguccione della Faggiuola, i. 83,
104, 345
Umiliati, Frati, ii. 160
Val d' Arno, i. 128, 130 n.
Val d' Elsa, ii. 40, 114
Val di Cerchio, i. 84
Val di Chiana, i. 70 n., 84; ii. 282
Val di Chianti, ii. 112
Val di Lamone, i. 236
Val di Pesa, ii. 113
Van der Goes, i. 281, 311, 321, 362

Van Eyck, i. 362
Vasari, ii. 319
Ventimiglia to Alassio, i. 90
Verona, i. 51
Veronese, Paul, i. 321 ; ii. 297
Vetulonia, ii. 130
Via Emilia, i. 238
Via Florentina, i. 146
Via Pratese, i. 145
Via Romana, ii. 105
Villani, i. 73, 104, 144 «., 188, 194
et seq., 340; ii. 89, 94, 339; his
account of the death and burial
of Castruccio, ii. 166-169
Villari, Professor, i. 192
Visconti, Azzo, i. 102, 350 et seq.,
375
Volterra, i. 70, 78, 381 ; ii. 86, 88, 92
et seq., 126, 349; general like
ness to Florence, ii. 99; the
Volterrani, ii. 96
Cathedral, ii. 100
Rocca Vecchio, ii. 94
Wig, Palace of the, ii. 108
Young, Arthur, i. 17; ii. 112
Zocchi, i. 163 n.

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

From the Library of
PROFESSOR MILTON GARVER
B. A. Western Reserve University, 1901
Ph. D. Yale University, 1904
The gift of his sister
Laura Garver Miller
1937

,¦. ...¦¦.¦¦.¦:¦¦:¦ ' ¦¦ ¦
'AA- '..¦•¦ Ay-;''' ^A" ¦¦/¦':.'¦-
¦ ...
. ..¦ ¦,.
'.'jX -..- ' ¦¦¦¦¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ .
. . . . , ¦¦¦¦ ' ¦¦.¦..¦¦
¦¦¦¦¦.. ¦ ¦ ¦ ; ¦¦ ...
'¦¦.. ' ¦¦ ' . .'¦'

¦:¦¦. ...:¦¦''¦.¦ . ¦ ' ¦
v ¦¦¦¦:..¦¦. ¦,.¦. . ¦ :¦..¦¦. ......

'. ' .

¦
.......... . •