The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 01, November, 1857. Various

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      The walk to the church of San Miniato is a paved, steep path, through olive orchards fringed by a row of cypresses, to the little church of San Salvadore; thence, through a garden of roses and cabbages, fresh and fragrant in the December sun, to the convent of Miniato. From the terrace is one of the best views of the city; not so fine, however, as that from Bello Sguardo. The gentle, beautiful chain of hills which encircle Florence smile cheerfully in the sunshine, clapping their hands and skipping like lambs, if little hills ever did make such a demonstration. These environs of the town are like a frame of golden filigree, almost too fantastic a one for so shadowy and sombre a city. The green hill-sides and plains are sown thickly with palaces and villas glancing whitely through silvery forests of olives and myrtle; while the distant Apennines, like guardian giants, lift their icy shields in the distance.

      The church is built upon the grave of the eminent saint, Miniato. This personage was, it seems, the son of the king of Armenia,—very much as all the heroes in the Arabian Nights are sons of the emperor of China. Having been converted to Christianity, he was offered by the emperor Decius great honors and rewards suitable to his royal rank, if he would renounce his faith. (A.D. 250.) He refused, and the emperor cut off his head. The execution took place in Florence, on the north side of the Arno. The holy man was not so easily disposed of, however; for he immediately clapped his head upon his shoulders again, and holding it on with both hands, waded across the river, and marched steadily up the hill on the other side. Arrived at the top, he gave up his head and the ghost. Hence the convent and church of San Miniato.

      The church, to an architectural student, is interesting and important. A man needs a good eye and a good education to feel and thoroughly appreciate the grand symphonies which this wonderful architectural music of the Middle Ages has so long been silently playing. San Miniato belongs to the close of the Romanesque or Latin period. The early Christian school had expired in the midst of the general convulsions of the ninth and tenth centuries,—in the struggles of an effete and expiring antiquity with the brutal, blundering, but vigorous infancy of mediæval Europe. During the three centuries which succeeded, there was rather a warming into unnatural life of the mighty corpse, than the birth of a new organism, capable of healthy existence and unlimited reproduction. The Romanesque art seems to have dealt with the ancient forms, without moulding any thing essentially and vitally new. Where there seemed originality, it was, after all, only a theft from the Saracenic or Byzantine, and the plagiarism became incongruity when engrafted upon the Roman. Thus a Latin church was often but an early Christian basilica with a Moorish arcade.

      The San Miniato has an arcade, of course not pointed, upon the façade and the interior. Its tessellated marble work, its ancient mosaics, with its Roman capitals and columns, all make it interesting. These last show that at the close of the epoch, even as at its beginning, the chain which binds the school to the ancient Roman is fastened anew.

      The frescos in the sacristy, by Spinello Aretino, painted at the end of the fourteenth century, are singularly well preserved,—fresh as if painted yesterday. 'Tis a great pity that the works of other masters of the same age, Spinello's superiors, could not have been as fortunate. If the frescos of Orgagna, and of Benozzo Gozzoli in the Campo Santo at Pisa, were in as good condition, it would be much more satisfactory.

      These pictures of Spinello are drawn with much boldness and energy, but it is not the fortunate audacity of Orgagna. They are much more the work of a mechanic, not self-distrustful, but with comparatively little feeling for the higher range of artistic expression. They are quite destitute of sentiment, but are not without a strong, rough, hardy humor. The drawing is far from accurate, but the coloring is well laid on. They represent the life and adventures of Saint Benedict, are of colossal size, and depict the saint in various striking positions. Here he is portrayed as rescuing a brother friar from the inconveniences resulting from a house having fallen upon him; in another he is miraculously mending a crockery jug belonging to his nurse; and in a third he is unsuccessfully attempting to move a large stone, upon which the Devil has seated himself, much to Benedict's discomfiture. The fiend is drawn, con amore, in black, with hairy hide, bat's wings, and a monkey's tail; the traditional Devil who has come down to us unharmed through all the vicissitudes of the Middle Ages. The saints and friars are generally attired in mazarine blue.

      III

      ACADEMY OF THE FINE ARTS

      There is here a large hall, containing a brief chronicle of the progress of painting from Cimabue to—Carlo Dolce! There may be a still deeper descent; but that is bathos sufficient for any lover of his species.

      It is desirable to look at these painters of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries with some reference to the political condition of Florence and of Italy at that time. In truth, Florence during the period of its life was Italy,—the vivida vis, creative, contemplative, ornative, impulsive to the clay of Europe. The art of painting seems to spring full-grown into existence, with the appearance of Cimabue in the latter part of the thirteenth century. Even so the Italian language suddenly crystallizes itself into a brilliant and perpetual type, at the same epoch as the wondrous poem of Dante flashes forth from the brooding chaos,—the fiat lux of a new intellectual world.

      The Emperor Frederic II., last of the imperial Hohenstaufens, died in 1250. Chivalrous, adventurous, despotic, as became the head of the conquering German races at their epoch of triumph,—imaginative, poetical, debauched, atheistical, as might be expected of a prince born in Italy, he seemed to justify the somewhat incongruous eagerness with which the Florentine mind sought political salvation in the bosom of the Church. Yet here seems the fatal flaw in the liberal system of Italy at that period. The Ghibelline party was at least consistent. To be an imperialist, a Hohenstaufenite, was at least definite; as much so as to be an absolutist, a Habsburgite, a Napoleonite to-day. But to be a Guelph,—to be in favor of municipal development, local self-government, intellectual progress, and to fight for all these things under the banner of the Church, in an age which witnessed the establishment of the Inquisition, in an age when the mighty spirit of Hildebrand was rising every day from his grave in more and more influential and imposing shape,—this was to place one's self in a false position. Dante, no doubt, felt all this to the core of his being. A poet by nature, with that intense, morbid, proud, uncomfortable, alternately benevolent and misanthropical temperament which occasionally accompanies the poetic faculty, he had little in common with the bustling, vivacious character of his fellow-townsmen. Fiorentino di nascita, non di costumi, as he describes himself, he had slight sympathy with Blacks or Whites, Guelphs or Ghibellines. A Guelph by birth, a Ghibelline by banishment, he was in reality an absolutist in politics, and a bigot in religion. Had a hell never been heard of, he would have invented one, for the mere comfort of roasting his enemies in it, and his friends along with them,—the solitary enjoyment of his lifetime. His part in public affairs has been much magnified. He was prior in 1300; but almost any citizen of Florence might be prior. He was once sent to Rome, on a diplomatic errand; but he was only the envoy of a party, only one of a set of delegates appointed by the Whites. He was banished for his political opinions, and afterwards condemned to death; but even this was no distinction; for six hundred other persons, most of them obscure men, were included in the same sentence, for the same offence. They all happened, in short, to belong to the party opposed to the one which was successful. His merits of style can hardly be exaggerated. Alone of mankind he almost created a language. Imagine the English, or the German, or the French poetry of the year 1300 flowing musically and familiarly from the lips of 1857! The culture, too, of his epoch might almost be measured by his personal accomplishments. The Aristotle, the Bacon, the Humboldt of Florence was one of the world's great poets into the bargain; but he was any thing but a statesman or a politician.

      In his poetry, accordingly, written when the Florentine democracy was young, vigorous, and mischievous, there is no chord of sympathy with the polity of his native place. On the contrary, the whole magnificent "Commedia" is a De profundis chanted out of an oppressed and scornful СКАЧАТЬ