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Page 41
After having taken possession of their rooms in one of the hotels which
look out upon the river, and having lunched in the chilly dining room,
which they found after wandering through rooms and halls filled with
marble statues and bric-a-brac set forth to tempt the eyes of
travellers, and so suggestive of the quarries in which the neighboring
mountains are rich, they started forth for that famous group of sacred
buildings which gives Pisa its present fame.
They were careful to enter the Cathedral by the richly wrought door in
the south transept (the only old one left) and, passing the font of holy
water, above which stands a _Madonna and Child_ designed by Michael
Angelo, sat down beneath Andrea del Sarto's _St. Agnes_, and listened to
Mr. Sumner's description of the famous edifice.
He told them that the erection of this building marked the dawn of
medi�val Italian art. It is in the old basilica style, modified by the
dome over the middle of the top. Its columns are Greek and Roman, and
were captured by Pisa in war. Its twelve altars are attributed to
Michael Angelo (were probably designed by him), and the mosaics in the
dome are by Cimabue. They wandered about looking at the old pictures,
seeking especially those by Andrea del Sarto, who was the only artist
familiar to them, whose paintings are there. They touched and set
swinging the bronze lamp which hangs in the nave, and is said to have
suggested to Galileo (who was born in Pisa), his first idea of the
pendulum.
Then, going out, they climbed the famous Leaning Tower, and visited the
Baptistery, where is Niccolo Pisano's wonderful sculptured marble
pulpit.
Afterward they went into the Campo Santo, which fascinated them by its
quaintness, so unlike anything they had ever seen before. They thought
of the dead reposing in the holy earth brought from Mount Calvary;
looked at the frescoes painted so many hundreds of years ago by Benozzo
Gozzoli, pupil of Fra Angelico; at the queer interesting _Triumph of
Death_ and _Last Judgment_, so long attributed to Orcagna and now the
subject of much dispute among critics; and then, wearied with seeing so
much, they went into the middle of the enclosure and sat on the
flagstones in the warm sun amid the lizards and early buttercups.
The next afternoon they went to Siena, and arrived in time to see, from
their hotel windows, the sunset glory as it irradiated all that vast
tract of country that stretches so grandly on toward Rome. Here they
were to spend several days.
The young travellers were just beginning to experience the charm which
belongs peculiarly to journeying in Italy--that of finding, one after
another, these delightful old cities, each in its own characteristic
setting of country, of history, of legend and romance.
They were full of the thrill of expected emotion,--that most delicious
of all sensations.
And they received no disappointment from this old "red city." They saw
its beautiful, incomparably beautiful, Cathedral, full of richness of
sculpture and color in morning, noon, and evening light; and were never
tired of admiring every part of it, from its graffito and mosaic
pavement to its vaulted top filled with arches and columns, that
reminded them of walking through a forest aisle and looking up through
the interlaced branches of trees.
They visited the Cathedral Library, whose walls are covered with those
historical paintings by Pinturrichio, the little deaf Umbrian painter,
in whose design Raphael is said to have given aid.
But Mr. Sumner wished that the time they could give to the study of
paintings be spent particularly among the works of the old Sienese
masters. So they went again and again to the Accademia delle Belle Arti
and studied those quaint, half-Byzantine works, full of pathetic grace,
by Guido da Siena, by Duccio, Simone Martini, Lippo Memmi, and the
Lorenzetti brothers.
Here, too, they found paintings by Il Sodoma, a High Renaissance artist,
which pleased them more than all else. _The Descent into Hades_, where
is the exquisitely lovely figure of Eve, whose mournful gaze is fixed
on her lost son, toward whom the Saviour stoops with pity, drew them
again and again to the hall where the worn fresco hangs; and after they
had found, secluded in its little cabinet, that fragment which
represents _Christ Bound to a Column_, of which Paul Bourget has written
so tenderly, they voted this painter one of the most interesting they
had yet found.
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