whitebeard

Don't curse the darkness, light a candle.

Let us return in an unemotional moment and look dispassionately at the great Crucifixion in the Chapel. One perceives now that it has some striking defects, though at no time is it other than a noble work, simple and direct beyond the artist's wont. The form upon the Cross, moulded with a dignity of feeling and a tragic power rare in Andrea della Robbia, c1aims all the attention ; the saints and angels are quite subordinate, and fortunately we hardly notice the foolish sun and moon which some strange lapse of taste has induced the artist to admit above. But the effect of the central figure is much spoilt by the green used to give the appearance of death, and by the red hair and beard and the yellow of the cross, a realism of colour incongruous with the rest of the composition in idea anq. sentiment, and responsible for the conjecture of some writers, supported by a local tradition, that the original figure had been broken through some accident and this substituted for it by the later school. But a recent critic (See Cruttwel1, Luca and Andrea della Robbia, p. 168),  appeals, among other arguments, to the masterly character of the modelling in proof of its genuineness.
One may al so object to the saints that they lack impressiveness and depth of feeling when viewed closely. St. John is a very beautiful figure, but his show of grief is not very convincing, and the Madonna is singularly cold and unmoved. The kneeling St. Francis and  St. Jerome are of the gentle and plaintive type in which Andrea is accustomed to portray those two great spirits, and though the angels are individually beautiful, their expression is somewhat over-emphasised. There is in the whole work something rather theatrical. Signs of the co-operation of the artist's sons have been pointed out, and perhaps to the taste of Giovanni is due "the border of flowers and fruits outside the usual surrounding of cherubs, a decoration continually used by him and the whole school afterwards.
But the real interest of this great work of art must always be in its spiritual significance. It must have been produced about the time when Savonarola's great re1igious revival was shaking all Florence, and it seems to throw a light on the attitude of the artistic spirits of the Renaissance towards that movement. It was through their wonderfully developed sense of beauty that the religious impulse reached them.
Their aesthetic sensibility rose from appreciation of outward forms to enjoyment of spiritual ideas. In Andrea's angels I seem to see all that fashionable world, if I may so call it, of Florence, with its exquisite sensibilities, its grace, its culture, its curls, acknowledging a higher beauty, bowing down before the infinite nobility and dignity of the naked God upon the Cross; moved to the heart, forgetful of self, absorbed in sorrow and adoration 'before the image of the Divine Idea.
The Chiesa Maggiore, the principal church upon the Rock, was founded in 1348 by Conte Tarlato di Pietramala and his wife, contessa Giovanna di Santa Fiora, as may be learnt from an old inscription upon the façade. The Tarlati, who had possessed themselves at this time of Chiusi, the castle dose by, once the seat of Count Orlando and his House, were as zealous in their devotion to the stigmatised saint as the Guidi had been. Their benefactions to La Verna were in proportion to the devastation and misery which their greed and tyranny wrought in the country round. The church was only half finished when its founders died, and the piety of their heirs was not equal to parting with the fifteen hundred ducats which they bequeathed to carry on the work. It was not till 1459 that by the help of the Arte della Lana of Florence it was finished. The gothic design of the earlier builders was not carried out by the later ones, and the church has no remarkable architectural distinction, but it is spacious and dignified, and very richly decorated with Della Robbia works, presented by various patrons. There are no less than seven of these in this one church, including the medallion with the emblem of the Arte della Lana, in the roof. The two that claim attention first are the Annunciation and Nativity by Andrea della Robbia, the one in the  Niccolini Chapel on the left hand, the other in the corresponding chaI1el on the right, founded by Jacopo Brizzi in 1478. The Annunciation is generally considered one of Andrea's finest works and that in which he approaches most nearly to his master Luca.  Its noble simplicity and devout feeling impress one deeply at first. The attitude and the whole outward presentment of the Virgin are the perfect embodiment of meekness and loveliness; her hands are a marvel .of exquisite modelling, her draperies of' simple and graceful arrangement. It is only after contemplating this beautiful figure for a while that one begins to fee! a certain poverty of soul in her. The angel is also of great beauty, but a little over curled. He seems to lack animation; no swiftness of wings just folded, nothing of the hurry and eagerness of the newlylighted messenger disturbs his faultless equanimity. Both he and the Virgin seemed to have stayed as they are some time. On the other hand the little group in the sky is an unnecessary interruption to the holy quiet of the scene. But the whole setting of the work is chaste and restrained. The frame is ornamented with a simple floral pattern, and the colour is white on blue only, with a touch of green in the lily. One of its great beauties is the wonderful quality and colour of the surface. The thick .glossy enamel seems to give fluidity and smoothness to the folds of the drapery ; they fall and lie with the richness of the creamy spume which edges the waves upon a sandy seashore.
The arms of the donors, the Niccolini of Florence, who built the chapel, are on the predella.
The more homely Madonna of the Nativity charms one hardly less than the Annunziata just looked at. She has a simple childlike grace, void of self-consciousness, and her attitude as she bends over the Babe is very touching. The theme of this altar-piece achieved a great popularity; it appeals to a sentiment common to all, and followers of the artist have familiarised us with it in numberless imitations. In this, the original version, the beauty of the scene is disturbed by the figure of God the Father and by the choir of angels, which overcrowd the composition and detract from its simplicity and effectiveness. They appear to have been executed by an inferior and coarser hand. ( See Cruttwell, Luca ond Alldreo dello Robbia, p.170).
In a chapel just above the altar with the Annunciation, the Cappella Ridolfi, there is a large representation of the Ascension, by Giovanni della Robbia, (In giving thc authors of these works I have followed the attributions of Miss Cruttwell in her work already referred to) one of the finest works of this artist. Giovanni differs greatly in style from his father Andrea. He is of robuster and at the same time coarser character, and shows the more florid taste of the cinquecento. Instead of the refined and gentle types used by Andrea, he moulds broad and heavy figures, and the religious sentiment of the older master is replaced in him by a love of sensuous and earthly beauty. The new development which took place in the Della Robbia arts by the introduction of elaborate backgrounds and accessories, realistical1y coloured  into the pieces, converting a plastic medium from its proper use to serve pictorial ends; was chiefly owing to him. But in this Ascension he adheres to the old traditions in colour and arrangement. The work has been often attributed to Andrea, but the type of the Christ, a majestic figure and the homely, realistic and individualised heads of the apostles are characteristic of Giovanni. The Madonna del Rifugio, over an altar on the right lower down the church, is also by Giovanni; it is a rather uninteresting and conventional piece, with an insipid Virgin and characterless figures of SS. Antony, Onofrio and Francis, and a frowning Magdalen. There are also in the church two figures of St. Antony and St. Francis, in niches, in the manner of Andrea.
In the sacristy is to be seen a reliquary of delicate gothic workmanship, containing a wooden bowl from which San Francesco ate, and a glass goblet said to have been given to him by Count Orlando, but hardly antique enough in appearance for such an early date. A very sacred fragment of linen rag, stained with the blood from the wounds of the Saint, is also preserved here, and there are some very fine embroidered vestments and altar furniture of the seventeenth century, presented by the Convent of Santo Spirito at Florence.
Outside the church, in a little chapel at the end of the loggia, dose to the entrance to the long corridor, popularly called the Cappella del Conte Checco, in remembrance of its founder, Count Francesco Montedoglio, we come across another Della Robbia altarpiece, this time a late and very coarse inferior work, a Pietà, gaudy and vulgar in feeling. There is also in the refectory of the convent, invisible to women visitors, a Madonna and Child of the school of Andrea della Robbia.
The Piazza is adorned with some modern monuments in honour of the patron saint, but they lack the feeling of the medioeval so essential to one's idea of the Poverello. This is supplied however by the living figures of the Brothers, who, as they pass backwards and forwards in their simple habits, girded with the three-knotted cord, revive the thirteenth century and its poetic enthusiasm and devotion before our eyes. Beside the picturesque sixteenth century well, a door leads into the Foresteria, the rooms reserved for strangers. Rere Padre Fortunato, the Forestaio, who keeps the keys of the gate, receives and entertains the visitor with the utmost kindliness and thoughtfulness, bringing forth of his best to stay the appetite which the mountain air has sharpened.
One of the most interesting spectacles at La Verna is the dark stone chamber in the Foresteria, just within the great entrance, where the poor folk, who are never lacking here, gather for shelter if the rain falls or the wind blows cold without. Here you may see a crowd of hoary elders with bowed shoulders and deep-seamed visages, crones with their heads bound in sybil fashion, young peasants with little bundles, on their way across the mountains into the Romagna, children, ragged and merry, all crouched and chattering within the vast black chimney-place, where they stir up a heap of smouldering twigs into a blaze, veiling themselves in a cloud of blue smoke.
Outside the precincts of the convent the primaeval forest reigns undisturbed as in the days of the first Brothers, sweeping down into misty depths on the south, and northwards rising up to the precipitous summit of La Penna. To this highest point of the Rock, Francesco doubtless often ascended. And here one seems to find him again with a more subtle realisation than amid the thaumaturgic wonders of the sanctuaries. His feet must have passed up the way one goes to-day, hurt by these same stones, comforted by mosses like these, caressed by delicate pink cyclamen growing as one sees them now in slim tufts between the boulders. The same mysteries of the woodland were around him, weird growths, distorted shapes, things with strange eyes in shadowed places, voices that whispered in unknown tongues overhead. But to him aH was consecrate by love. Praised be Thou, O Lord, for our sister, the Earth, who not only gives us sustenance, but brings forth also coloured flowers and herbs. You mount up beneath the solemn shade of the great beeches and pines, and presently find yourself on the edge of a dreadful precipice, over which, no doubt, the devil used to try in vain to hurl the saint. Up in these airy heights I fancy that perpetual contest must have become a kind of game, and the antagonists must have found that they had mistaken each other and that the Prince of the Air and the Soul of Man were both the merry sprites of God, paired in the eternal dance.
Here a great fragment of rock, detached from the mountain side, rears itself precipitously from the ravine, with just a little space for a foothold upon it. It is called the Sasso di Fra Lupo. The story-tellers relate that when Francesco first carne to La Verna the mountain was infested by a very wicked brigand, who robbed travellers that passed below, and compelled those that resisted to cross on to this giddy crag by a plank thrown aver the abyss, and kept them there till they yielded to his demands. The people named him Lupo, the Wolf. But the Brothers had no fear of him, Holy Poverty was their protector. The robber, however, feared them, the heralds of love and peace, and did his utmost to drive them away. But one day Francesco went to meet him and talk with him, and in a very short time tamed his rude heart, and brought him to such deep repentance, that he abandoned his trade of robber and turned Brother Minor. Re showed such gentleness and meekness in his new calling that Francesco changed his name from Wolf into Lamb, and he was ever afterwards known as Fra Agnello.
And so you continue upward, mounting the  painful steep till at last you win the utmost summit, La Penna, and stand as it seems on the sheer edge of the world, thrust out into the abyss of space. A vast and glorious prospect is before you, rolling away to where 'in the extreme distance the land is bound by the Adriatic sea. Eastward you look upon the mountains which nurse the infant Tiber and can trace the course of the Valle Tiberina running southwards within the misty folds of the hills. Many a distant city and landmark of fame may be descried. But one. cares little for geographical particulars in this place.
For here, too, Francesco has been before us. Where his foot trod a little chapel has not failed to spring up. One could have wished a soaring beech instead. Thought can only occupy itself with him, who had climbed so fast and far, changing wolves into lambs as he passed, leaving behind him a garden where he found a wilderness, yet never staying his foot, but always soaring upwards, singing like the lark that goes to salute the rising sun; casting off all the trappings of earth and hasting naked to meet the naked truth; rising in love through death to life. Here at last the climbing feet could go no further. And already it must have seemed like Heaven around him; the pastures of the Holy Valley far below, more pale, more delicate than any green .of this world, walled with rocks of jasper or fine gold. And beyond, clothed in celestial blue, beautiful and insubstantial as an allegoric scene, lay spread out the region of his earthly endeavours, the valleys and marches where he had wandered footsore and eager, the castles whither he had breathlessly ascended, to gather in his harvest of souls. There, far beneath him now and overpast, were his' sorrows, his yearnings, his fears. Lifted up here next the Empyrean, he could rest content; around him only the things which endure, the everlasting hills, the silence, God.

La Verna, this seeming abode of peace, has not escaped altogether the vicissitudes of history. After the first establishment of the convent, it suffered from the diminution of zeal which set in among the followers of the stigmatised saint and from the bitter fraternal quarrel which soon divided them. The sacred Rock remained in the possession of the Frati Conventuali, who represented the original Order, but by accepting privileges and modifications of the rule from successive Popes had early given up the true Franciscan ideal. After a time they grew so lax, that disorders and scandals occurred, and in 1431 Pope Eugenius IV. turned them out and installed in their stead the other branch of the Order, the Osservanti, or Brothers of the Strict Observance, who had adhered to the original rule. Then was seen the shameful spectacle of war and conflict upon the Mons Fe1ix. The evicted Friars, gathering together their friends and neighbours in the Valley, assaulted the Rock and drove out the new-comers. They were, however, once more ousted and the Osservanti restored, and not long afterwards Florence took the convent under her protection, giving it a year later into the charge of the Arte della Lana. These events are marked by the "stemme" sculptured upon the doorway leading into the interior of the convent; the arms of Eugenius IV. with the Triple Crown; the Cross of the Florentine people; the Florentine Lily; and the emblem of the arte della Lana, the Lamb with the Banner.
In 1498 d'Alviano and his Venetian troops occupied La Verna and committed horrible desecrations of all the holy places. They were virtually besieged there by the Florentines and the people around and were soon reduced to dreadful straits, and after four months were compelled to abandon the mount and later to retreat altogether from the Casentino.
In course of time the Osservanti themselves grew lax, and in 1625 they were replaced by the Padri Riformati, a reformed branch of the order, who are still in possession. In 1810 the convent was threatened with suppression by the Napoleonic Government, and the Brothers had already bidden farewell with bitter tears to the Rock, but they were allowed to return and keep the convent as a hospice for travellers.
The community has escaped the fate which has fallen since on the religious houses of Italy, as the Municipality of Florence succeeded in making good a claim to the possession of the mountain, and now allows the Brothers to remain in their ancient home  as its tenants.
In the course of the year many thousand persons visit the monastery. The indulgences attached to the
various sanctuaries attract a great concourse of pilgrims, , especially on the 17th of September, when the churches of La Verna share the privileges conceded to Sta. Maria degli Angeli at Assisi for the great Perdono. Then the good Brothers are hard pressed to house their men guests in the Foresteria, or rooms reserved for strangers in the convent, and to find room for all the women in the hospice built specially for their reception and presided over by sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, at La Beccia, the tiny hamlet at the foot of the Rock. For after nightfall no woman may remain within the great gate of the convent.
In the vision of that long procession that has passed up the mountain without break through so many centuries what mighty shades appear! Saints and doctors of the Church, Antony of Padua, Bonaventura, Bernardino, Thomas Aquinas, cardinals destined to wear the triple crown, that tragic figure of an idealist, the Emperor Henry VII., and princes without number since, and bringing up the mighty file, a crowned Italian head at last, the gracious Queen Mother Margherita.
And among the thousands and tens of thousands of unrecorded pilgrims surely there comes early in the line a certain sad wanderer in the Valley below, whose name, robbed then by poverty and misfortune of its rights, record ed now, would, by its comparison, silence all those written above. He who must daily through the winter of his discontent." have looked up to the rude rock between Tiber and Arno and read the message which it bore far his proud soul, assuredly did not fail to ascend and kneel in the sanctuary of the man whom the love of poverty had carried so high and seeming despite could not weigh down. The figure of the poet, who bare the stigmata of the world's scorn and mis1lnderstanding, and of that sharper martyrdom which is the life of the creating spirit, is alone worthy to be remembered here beside the poet martyr of lave, he who

" On the rude rock between Tiber and Arno
 from Christ received the final seal."

At the lower end of the Rock, not a mile from the convent, are the .ruins of Count Orlando's castle of
Chiusi. The walk there leads through the delicious pastures which border the mount at its foot and are edged by shining streams that foam down their rocky ravines into green valleys far below. The picturesque village of Chiusi, of some importance when held by powerful barons, lies now in sunny peace beneath the hill. It used to be regarded, on Vasari's authority, as the birthplace of Michael Angelo, whose father, Lodovico Buonarotti, was Podestà of Chiusi and Caprese at the time of the great sculptor's birth. But of late Caprese, which lies on the eastern side of the mountain, seven or eight miles away, in the Valle Tiberina, has, I believe, made good a rival claim, and the glory of having produced that stupendous genius is taken away from the Casentino.
The Castle stands above the village, at the very end of the long Rock, which here drops abruptly into the Valley. A “castle precipice," in good sooth, with walls that embattle the natural wall of rock. Southwards it looks across the deep valley, and between mountain heights beyond to a fair distant world of gentle blue hills sparkling with habitations, pleasant quarry for the hawk's eye in this rocky nest to mark. This rock monster which bore San Francesco on its brow, carried, one sees, a sting in its tail. Strange juxtaposition or the palaces of peace and of strife, outward and visible sign of the stranger twinship of love and wrath in the mediaeval mind. The gentle Count Orlando and his House were succeeded in the dominion of Chiusi by the fiercer races of the Ubertini and the Tarlati in turn, and for a short time the Guidi of Bagno ruled here, but in 1404 Florence took possession of the castle and installed a Podestà in it to rule the district round.
Nothing but shattered walls remain of the strong. hold. Beneath it there clings a little church, and Il steep path zigzags down to the valley, whither the inhabitants wended long ago for good, abandoning the windy crag to solitude. I met no living thing up there, except a tall, meagre, sociable pig. One might think
that Circe had her pastures here too; but no, this altitude is no place. for her wiles. You stand on a ridge between two worlds. On your left, a pale, strange barren country, breaking in shelves and slopes of ashen rock, waterless, without tree or bush or blade of grass upon it. Yet in the people's eyes it is blessed, not cursed: witness its name, the Vallesanta, the Holy Valley. It is the same allegoric world that you look on from the Penna. And on your right what a contrasting scene! The sparkle and richness of deep valleys, of leafy trees, of coloured flowers and herbs, of silver streams.

posted by: Whitebeard at 17:07 | link | comments |
dante, casentino