RANCONEZZO
Reading edition
SIRMIONE
Row us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row! So they row'd, and there we landed—"O venusta Sirmio!" There to me thro' all the groves of olive in the summer glow, There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow, Came that "Ave atque Vale" of the Poet's hopeless woe, Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago, "Frater Ave atque Vale"—as we wandered to and fro Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda lake below Sweet Catullus's all-but-island, olive silvery Sirmio. Alfred Tennyson.
VI RANCONEZZO The Town and the Lake
THE ITALIAN LAKES
He who loves immense space, cloud shadows sailing over purple slopes, island gardens, distant glimpses of snow-capped mountains, breadth, air, immensity, and flooding sunlight, will choose Maggiore. But scarcely has he cast his vote for this, the Juno of the divine rivals, when he remembers the triple lovelinesses of the Larian Aphrodite, disclosed in all their placid grace from Villa Serbelloni;—the green blue of the waters, clear as glass, opaque through depth; the millefleurs roses clambering into cypresses by Cadenabbia; the laburnums hanging their yellow clusters from the clefts of Sasso Rancio; the oleander arcades of Varenna; the wild white limestone crags of San Martino, which he has climbed to feast his eyes with the perspective, magical, serene, Leonardesquely perfect, of the distant gates of Adda. Then while this modern Paris is yet doubting, perhaps a thought may cross his mind of sterner solitary Lake Iseo—the Pallas of the three. She offers her own attractions. The sublimity of Monte Adamello, dominating Lovere and all the lowland like Hesiod's hill of Virtue reared aloft above the plain of common life, has charms to tempt heroic lovers.
Symonds, Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece.
PIAZZA GARIBALDI
The painter may transfer its campanile, glittering like dragon's scales, to his canvas. The lover of the picturesque will wander through its aisle at mass-time, watching the sunlight play upon those upturned Southern faces with their ardent eyes; and happy is he who sees young men and maidens on Whit Sunday crowding round the chancel rails, to catch the marigolds and gillyflowers scattered from baskets which the priest has blessed.
Symonds, Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece.
DOWN IN THE CITY
Is it ever hot in the square? There's a fountain to spout and splash! In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foam-bows flash On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle and pash Round the lady atop in the conch—fifty gazers do not abash, Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort of a sash! Ere opening your eyes in the city the blessed church-bells begin: No sooner the bells leave off, than the diligence rattles in: You get the picks of the news, and it costs you never a pin. By and by there's the travelling doctor gives pills, lets blood, draws teeth; Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the market beneath. At the post-office such a scene-picture—the new play, piping hot! And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were shot.
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Noon strikes,—here sweeps the procession! Our lady borne smiling and smart With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart! Bang, whang, whang, goes the drum; tootle-te-tootle the fife; Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life! Robert Browning.
VII RANCONEZZO Piazza Garibaldi
PIAZZA CAVOUR
The changes of scene upon this tiny square are so frequent as to remind one of a theatre. Looking down from the inn-balcony, between the glazy green pots gay with scarlet amaryllis-bloom, we are inclined to fancy that the whole has been prepared for our amusement. In the morning the cover for the macaroni-flour, after being washed, is spread out on the bricks to dry. In the afternoon the fishermen bring their nets for the same purpose. In the evening the city magnates promenade and whisper. Dark-eyed women, with orange or crimson kerchiefs for headgear, cross and re-cross, bearing baskets on their shoulders. Great lazy large limbed fellows, girt with scarlet sashes and finished off with dark blue night-caps (for a contrast to their saffron-colored shirts, white breeches and sunburnt calves), slouch about or sleep face downwards on the parapets.
Symonds, Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece.
VIII RANCONEZZO Piazza Cavour
A ROMANESQUE DOORWAY
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How the hand of Time has mellowed the ruddy brick and the marble's whiteness until ivory and rose blend and are in harmony with those stained and faded frescoes which still remain in the panels of the upper walls. Columns of veined marble stand in ranks on either side of the entrance. They are mounted on the backs of stiff-maned lions. Fit supporters are these for the arches of the Sanctuary as, at its very door, with claw and tooth they tear to pieces the bestial forms of vice and ignorance. Above rise the moulded archivolts, tier on tier, clothed with vine and tendril and peopled with bird and beast. These may be uncouth in form, but the rude hands that fashioned them learned their lesson at the feet of Nature. What there is of convention in arrangement or in pattern has flowed hither through the East from the original fountains of Greece and Rome but now at last all moves in freedom and without restraint. As in the short nights of the North sunrise follows fast upon the setting of the sun, so here though we see in this work the sunset of the Antique yet it is already aglow with light from the coming dawn of Mediæval Art.
Roberts, Italian Sketches.
IX RANCONEZZO North Door of Duomo
LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL
Florence is more noisy; indeed, I think it the noisiest town I was ever in. What with the continual jangling of its bells, the rattle of Austrian drums, and the street cries, Ancora mi raccapriccio. The Italians are a vociferous people, and most so among them the Florentines. Walking through a back street one day, I saw an old woman higgling with a peripatetic dealer, who, at every interval afforded him by the remarks of his veteran antagonist, would tip his head on one side, and shout, with a kind of wondering enthusiasm, as if he could hardly trust the evidence of his own senses to such loveliness, O, che bellezza! che belle-e-ezza! The two had been contending as obstinately as the Greeks and Trojans over the body of Patroclus, and I was curious to know what was the object of so much desire on the one side and admiration on the other. It was a half dozen of weazeny baked pears, beggarly remnant of the day's traffic.... It never struck me before what a quiet people Americans are.
James Russell Lowell.
WITHIN THE DUOMO
The semi-dome of the eastern apse above the high altar is entirely filled with a gigantic half-length figure of Christ. He raises His right hand to bless and with His left holds an open book on which is written in Greek and Latin, "I am the Light of the world." ... Below him on a smaller scale are ranged the archangels and the mother of the Lord, who holds the child upon her knees. Thus Christ appears twice upon this wall, once as the Omnipotent Wisdom, the Word by whom all things were made, and once as God deigning to assume a shape of flesh and dwell with men. The magnificent image of supreme Deity seems to fill with a single influence and to dominate the whole building. The house with all its glory is his. He dwells there like Pallas in her Parthenon or Zeus in his Olympian temple. To left and right over every square inch of the cathedral blaze mosaics, which portray the story of God's dealings with the human race from the Creation downwards, together with those angelic beings and saints who symbolize each in his own degree some special virtue granted to mankind. The walls of the fane are therefore an open book of history, theology and ethics for all men to read.
Symonds, Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece.
X RANCONEZZO Interior of the Duomo
FROM "A LEGEND OF BRITTANY"
Deeper and deeper shudders shook the air, As the huge bass kept gathering heavily, Like thunder when it rouses in its lair, And with its hoarse growl shakes the low-hung sky, It grew up like a darkness everywhere, Filling the vast cathedral;—suddenly From the dense mass a boy's clear treble broke Like lightning, and the full-toned choir awoke. Through gorgeous windows shone the sun aslant, Brimming the church with gold and purple mist. Meet atmosphere to bosom that rich chant, Where fifty voices in one strand did twist Their varicolored tones and left no want To the delighted soul, which sank abyssed In the warm music cloud, while, far below, The organ heaved its surges to and fro. James Russell Lowell.
THE VILLA
Our villa ... ... lies on the slope of the Alban hill; Lifting its white face, sunny and still, Out of the olives' pale gray green, That, far away as the eye can go, Stretch up behind it, row upon row. There in the garden the cypresses, stirred By the sifting winds, half musing talk, And the cool, fresh, constant voice is heard Of the fountain's spilling in every walk. There stately the oleanders grow, And one long gray wall is aglow With golden oranges burning between Their dark stiff leaves of sombre green. And there are hedges all clipped and square, As carven from blocks of malachite, Where fountains keep spinning their threads of light And statues whiten the shadow there. And if the sun too fiercely shine, And one would creep from its noonday glare, There are galleries dark, where ilexes twine Their branchy roofs above the head. W. W. Story.
XI RANCONEZZO The Villa of the Cardinal Schalchi-Visconti
Truly everything here has a dramatic character. The smallness and grace of this little church gleaming with colour, its chapels and grottoes like a spiritual vision, such as I have never found elsewhere in the whole field of religious conception. It is an illustrated picture-book of poetical legends, which are bloodless and painless, though fantastic, like the lives of pious anchorites in the wilderness, and amid the birds of the field. Here Religion treads on the borders of fairy-land, and brings an indescribable atmosphere away from thence.
Gregorovius.
BRAMANTE
Few words record Bramante's great command, As from some mountain silence set apart, He blazed a trail along the way of art, Upheld the torch and led his little band. He spoke alone to those who understand, Not cheapening words within the public mart, Living withdrawn, a high and humble heart, Creating loveliness for his loved land. Though he dwelt cloistered in his northern home, When he strode forth it was with unveiled face, To rear a fabric that may crumble never. They called him "Master" when he wrought in Rome And with earth's greatest ones shall labor ever The hand that gave to Lombardy her grace. Marion Monks Chase.
XII RANCONEZZO Santa Prassede, the Cardinal's Church
IL PENSEROSO
But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloister's pale, And love the high embowèd roof, With antick pillars massy proof, And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light. There let the pealing organ blow To the full-voiced Quire below, In service high and anthems clear, As may with sweetness, through mine ear, Dissolve me into ecstacies, And bring all Heaven before mine eyes. Milton.
XIII RANCONEZZO The Cloisters of Santa Prassede
THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB IN SANTA PRASSEDE
Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, And up into the aery dome, where live The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk; And I shall fill my slab of basalt there, And neath my tabernacle take my rest, With those nine columns round me, two and two, The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands; Peach blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh poured red wine of a mighty pulse. Old Gandolph with his paltry onion-stone Put me where I may look at him! True peach, Rosy and faultless: ...
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Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black 'T was ever antique-black I meant! How else Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath? The bas-relief in bronze you promised me, Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so, The Saviour at his sermon on the mount, Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off, And Moses with the tables,—but I know Ye mark me not! Robert Browning.
XIV RANCONEZZO The Tomb of Cardinal Schalchi-Visconti in Santa Prassede
