University of Virginia Library

49. LETTER XLIX.

I went with a party this morning to visit the house
of Michael Angelo. It stands as he lived in it, in the
Via Ghibellini, and is still in possession of his descendants.
It is a neat building of three stories,
divided on the second floor into three rooms, shown as
those occupied by the painter, sculptor, and poet.
The first is panelled and painted by his scholars after
his death—each picture representing some incident of
his life. There are ten or twelve of these, and several
of them are highly beautiful. One near the window
represents him in his old age on a visit to “Lorenzo
the Magnificent,” who commands him to sit in his
presence. The duke is standing before his chair, and
the figure of the old man is finely expressive.

The next room appears to have been his parlor, and
the furniture is exactly as it stood when he died. In
one corner is placed a bust of him in his youth, with
his face perfect; and opposite, another, taken from a
cast after his nose was broken by a fellow painter in
the church of the Carmine. There are also one or
two portraits of him, and the resemblance through
them all shows that the likenesses we have of him in
the engravings are uncommonly correct.

In the inner room, which was his studio, they show
his pallet, brushes, pots, maul-sticks, slippers, and
easel—all standing carelessly in the little closets
around, as if he had left them but yesterday. The
walls are painted in fresco, by Angelo himself, and
represent groups of all the distinguished philosophers,
poets and statesmen of his time. Among them are
the heads of Petrarch, Dante, Galileo, and Lorenzo
de Medici. It is a noble gallery! perhaps a hundred
heads in all.

The descendant of Buonarotti is now an old man,
and fortunately rich enough to preserve the house of
his great ancestor as an object of curiosity. He has
a son, I believe, studying the arts at Rome.

On a beautiful hill which ascends directly from one
of the southern gates of Florence, stands a church
built so long ago as at the close of the first century.
The gate, church, and hill, are all called San Miniato,
after a saint buried under the church pavement. A
large, and at present flourishing convent, hangs on
the side of the hill below, and around the church
stand the walls of a strong fortress, built by Michael
Angelo. A half mile or more south, across a valley,
an old tower rises against the sky, which was erected
for the observations of Galileo. A mile to the left, on
the same ridge, an old villa is to be seen in which
Boccaccio wrote most of his “Hundred Tales of Love.”
The Arno comes down from Vallombrosa, and passing
through Florence at the foot of San Miniato, is
seen for three miles further on its way to Pisa; the
hill, tower, and convent of Fiesole, where Milton
studied and Catiline encamped with his conspirators,
rise from the opposite bank of the river; and right
below, as if you could leap into the lantern of the
dome, nestles the lovely city of Florence, in the lap
of the very brightest vale that ever mountain sheltered
or river ran through. Such are the temptations
to a walk in Italy, and add to it the charms of the
climate, and you may understand one of a hundred
reasons why it is the land of poetry and romance, and
why it so easily becomes the land of a stranger's
affection.

The villas which sparkle all over the hills which
lean unto Florence, are occupied mainly by foreigners
living here for health or luxury, and most of them are
known and visited by the floating society of the place.
Among them are Madame Catalani, the celebrated
singer, who occupies a beautiful palace on the ascent
of Fiesole, and Walter Savage Landor, the author
of the “Imaginary Conversations,” as refined a scholar
perhaps as is now living, who is her near neighbor.
A pleasant family of my acquaintance lives just back
of the fortress of San Miniato, and in walking out to
them with a friend yesterday, I visited the church
again, and remarked more particularly the features of
the scene I have described.

The church of San Miniato was built by Henry I.
of Germany, and Cunegonde his wife. The front is
pretty—a kind of mixture of Greek and Arabic architecture,
crusted with marble. The interior is in the
style of the primitive churches, the altar standing in
what was called the presbytery, a high platform occupying
a third of the nave, with two splendid flights of
stairs of the purest white marble. The most curious
part of it is the rotuned in the rear, which is lit by
five windows of transparent oriental alabaster, each
eight or nine feet high and three broad, in single slabs.
The sun shone full on one of them while we were
there, and the effect was inconceivably rich. It was
like a sheet of half molten gold and silver. The
transparency of course was irregular, but in the yellow
spots of the stone the light came through like
the effect of deeply stained glass.

A partly subterranean chapel, six or eight feet lower
than the pavement of the church, extends under the
presbytery. It is a labyrinth of marble columns
which support the platform above, no two of which
are alike. The ancient cathedral of Modena is the
only church I have seen in Italy built in the same
manner.

The midnight mass on “Christmas eve,” is abused
in all catholic countries, I believe, as a kind of saturnalia
of gallantry. I joined a party of young men
who were leaving a ball for the church of the An

nunciata, the fashionable rendezvous, and we were set
down at the portico when the mass was about half
over. The entrances of the open vestibule were
thronged to suffocation. People of all ages and conditions
were crowding in and out, and the sound of
the distant chant at the altar came to our ears as we
entered, mingled with every tone of address and reply
from the crowd about us. The body of the church
was quite obscured with the smoke of the incense.
We edged our way on through the press, carried
about in the open area of the church by every tide
that rushed in from the various doors, till we stopped
in a thick eddy in the centre, almost unable to stir a
limb. I could see the altar very clearly from this
point, and I contented myself with merely observing
what was about me, leaving my motions to the impulse
of the crowd.

It was a curiously mingled scene. The ceremonies
of the altar were going on in all their mysterious
splendor. The waving of censers, the kneeling and
rising of the gorgeously clad priests, accompanied
simultaneously by the pealing of solemn music from
the different organs—the countless lights burning
upon the altar, and, ranged within the paling, a semicircle
of the duke's grenadiers, standing motionless,
with their arms presented, while the sentinel paced to
and fro, and all kneeling, and grounding arms at the
tinkle of the slight bell—were the materials for the
back-ground of the picture. In the immense area of
the church stood perhaps, four thousand people, one
third of whom, doubtless, came to worship. Those
who did and those who did not, dropped alike upon
the marble pavement at the sound of the bell; and
then, as I was heretic enough to stand, I had full
opportunity for observing both devotion and intrigue.
The latter was amusingly managed. Almost all the
pretty and young women were accompanied by an
ostensible duenna, and the methods of eluding their
vigilance in communication were various. I had
detected under a blond wig, in entering, the young
ambassador of a foreign court, who being cavaliere servante
to one of the most beautiful women in Florence,
certainly had no right to the amusement of the hour.
We had been carried up the church in the same tide,
and when the whole crowd were prostrate, I found
him just beyond me, slipping a card into the shoe of
an uncommonly pretty girl kneeling before him. She
was attended by both father and mother apparently,
but as she gave no sign of surprise, except stealing an
almost imperceptible glance behind her, I presumed
she was not offended. I passed an hour, perhaps, in
amused observation of similar matters, most of which
could not be well described on paper. It is enough
to say, that I do not think more dissolute circumstances
accompanied the worship of Venus in the
most defiled of heathen temples.