University of Virginia Library

50. LETTER L.

I heard the best passage of the opera of “Romeo
and Juliet” delightfully played in the church of San
Gaetano this morning. I was coming from the café,
where I had been breakfasting, when the sound of the
organ drew me in. The communion was administering
at one of the side chapels, the showy Sunday mass
was going on at the great altar, and the numerous confession
boxes were full of penitents, all female, as usual.
As I took a seat near the communicants, the sacred
wafer was dipped into the cup and put into the mouth
of a young woman kneeling before the railing. She
rose soon after, and I was not lightly surprised to find
it was a certain errand-girl of a bachelor's washerwoman,
as unfit a person for the holy sacrament as wears
a petticoat in Florence.

I was drawn by the agreeable odor of the incense to
the paling of the high altar. The censers were flung
by unseen hands from the doors of the sacristy at the
sides, and an unseen chorus of boys in the choir behind
broke in occasionally with the high-keyed chant
that echoes with its wild melody from every arch and
corner of these immense churches. It seems running
upon the highest note that the ear can bear, and yet
nothing could be more musical. A man knelt on the
pavement near me, with two coarse baskets beside
him, and the traces of long and dirty travel from his
heels to his hips. He had stopped in to the mass
probably on his way to market. There can be no
greater contrast than that seen in catholic churches,
between the splendor of architecture, renowned pictures,
statues and ornaments of silver and gold, and
the crowd of tattered, famished, misery-marked, worshippers
that throng them. I wonder it never occurs
to them, that the costly pavement upon which they
kneel might feed and clothe them.[6]

Penitential processions are to be met all over Florence
to-day, on account of the uncommon degree of
sickness. One of them passed under my window just
now. They are composed of people of all classes,
upon whom it is inflicted as a penance by the priests.
A white robe covers them entirely, even the face, and,
with their eyes glaring through the two holes made
for that purpose, they look like processions of shrouded
corpses. Eight of the first carry burning candles
of six feet in length, and a company in the rear have
the church books, from which they chant, the whole
procession joining in a melancholy chorus of three
notes. It rains hard to-day, and their white dresses
cling to them with a ludicrously ungraceful effect.

Florence is an unhealthful climate in the winter.
The tramontane winds come down from the Appenines
so sharply, that delicate constitutions, particularly
those liable to pulmonary complaints, suffer invariably.
There has been a dismal mortality among the Italians.
The Marquis Corsi, who presented me at court a
week ago (the last day he was out, and the last duty
he performed), lies in state, at this moment, in the
church of Santa Trinita, and another of the duke's
counsellors of state died a few days before. His prime
minister, Fossombroni, is dangerously ill also, and all
of the same complaint, the mal di petto, as it is called,
or disease of the lungs. Corsi is a great loss to Americans.
He was the grand chamberlain of court,
wealthy and hospitable, and took particular pride in
fulfilling the functions of an American ambassador.
He was a courtier of the old school, accomplished,
elegant, and possessed of universal information.

The refugee Carlists are celebrating to-day, in the
church of Santa Maria Novella, the anniversary of the
death of Louis XVI. The bishop of Strasbourg is
here, and is performing high mass for the soul of the
“martyr,” as they term him. Italy is full of the more
aristocratic families of France, and it has become
mauvais ton in society to advocate the present government
of France, or even its principles. They detest
Louis Philippe with the virulence of a deadly private
enmity, and declare universally, that they will exile
themselves till they can return to overthrow him.
Among the refugees are great numbers of young men,

who are sent away from home with a chivalrous devotion
to the cause of the Dutchess of Berri, which they
avow so constantly in the circles of Italian society, that
she seems the exclusive heroine of the day. There
was nothing seen of the French exquisites in Florence
for a week after she was taken. They were in mourning
for the misfortune of their mistress.

All Florence is ringing with the miracle. The city
fountains have for some days been dry, and the whole
country was suffering for rain. The day before the
moon changed, the processions began, and the day after,
when the sky was full of clouds, the holy picture
in the church of the Annunciata, “painted by St.
Luke himself,” was solemnly uncovered. The result
was the present miracle of rain, and the priests
are preaching upon it from every pulpit. The padrone
of my lodgings came in this morning, and told me the
circumstances with the most serious astonishment.

I joined the crowd this morning, who are still
thronging up the via de Servi to the church of the
Annunciata at all hours of the day. The square in
front of the church was like a fair — every nook occupied
with the little booths of the sellers of rosaries,
saint's books, and pictures. We were assailed by a
troop of pedlars at the door, holding leaden medals
and crucifixes, and crying, at the top of their voices,
for fidele Christiani to spend a crazie for the love of
God.

After crowding up the long cloister with a hundred
or two of wretches, steaming from the rain, and fresh
from every filthy occupation in the city, we were
pushed under the suspended leather door, and reached
the nave of the church. In the slow progress we
made toward the altar, I had full opportunity to study
the fretted-gold ceiling above me, the masterly pictures
in the side chapels, the statuary, carving, and
general architecture. Description can give you no
idea of the waste of splendor in these places.

I stood at last within sight of the miraculous picture.
It is painted in fresco above an altar surrounded
with a paling of bronze and marble projecting into the
body of the church. Eight or ten massive silver
lamps, each one presented by some trade in Florence,
hung from the roof of the chapel, burning with a
dusky glare in the daylight. A grenadier, with cap
and musket, stood on each side of the bronze gate, repressing
the eager rush of the crowd. Within, at the
side of the altar, stood the officiating priest, a man
with a look of intellect and nobleness on his fine features
and lofty forehead, that seemed irreconcilable
with the folly he was performing. The devotees came
in, one by one, as they were admitted by the sentinel,
knelt, offered their rosary to the priest, who touched
it to the frame of the picture with one hand, and received
their money with the other, and then crossing
themselves, and pressing the beads to their bosom,
passed out at the small door leading into the cloisters.

As the only chance of seeing the picture, I bought
a rosary for two crazie (about three cents), and pressed
into the throng. In a half hour it came to my turn
to pass the guard. The priest took my silver paul,
and while he touched the beads to the picture, I had
a moment to look at it nearly. I could see nothing
but a confused mass of black paint, with an indistinct
outline of the head of a Madonna in the centre. The
large spiked rays of glory standing out from every side
were all I could see in the imperfect light. The richness
of the chapel itself, however, was better worth the
trouble to see. It is quite encrusted with silver. Silver
bassi relievi, two silver candelabra, six feet in
height, two very large silver statues of angels, a ciborio
(enclosing a most exquisite head of our Savior by Andrea
del Sarto), a massive silver cornice sustaining a
heavily folded silver curtain, and silver lilies and lamps
in any quantity all around. I wonder, after the plundering
of the church of San Antonio, at Padua, that
these useless riches escaped Napoleon.

How some of the priests, who are really learned and
clever men, can lend themselves to such barefaced imposture
as this miracle, it is difficult to conceive. The
picture has been kept as a doer of these miracles, perhaps
for a century. It is never uncovered in vain. Supernatural
results are certain to follow, and it is done
as often as they dare make a fresh draught on the
credulity and money of the people. The story is as
follows: “A certain Bartolomeo, while painting a
fresco of the annunciation, being at a loss how to make
the countenance of the Madonna properly seraphic,
fell asleep while pondering over his work; and, on
waking, found it executed in a style he was unable to
equal.” I can only say that St. Luke, or the angel,
or whoever did it, was a very indifferent draughtsman.
It is ill drawn, and whatever the colors might have been
upon the pallet of the sleepy painter, they were not
made immortal by angelic use. It is a mass of confused
black.

I was glad to get away from the crowd and their
mummery, and pay a new tribute of reverence at the
tomb of Giovanni di Bologna. He is buried behind
the grand altar, in a chapel ornamented at his own expense,
and with his owe inimitable works. Six bas-reliefs
in bronze, than which life itself is not more natural,
represent different passages of our Savior's history.
They were done for the grand duke, who, at the
death of the artist, liberally gave them to ornament his
tomb. After the authors of the Venus and the Apollo
Belvidere, John of Bologna is, in my judgment, the
greatest of sculptors. His mounting Mercury, in the
Florence gallery, might have been a theft from heaven
for its divine beauty.

In passing out by the cloisters of the adjoining convent,
I stopped a moment to see the fresco of the Madonna
del Sacco, said to have been the masterpiece
of Andrea del Sarto. Michael Angelo and Raphael
are said to have “gazed at it unceasingly.” It is
much defaced, and preserves only its graceful drawing.
The countenance of Mary has the beau reste of singular
loveliness. The models of this delightful artist
(who, by the way, is buried in the vestibule of this
same church), must have been the most beautiful in
the world. All his pictures move the heart.