March 1st. [1858]
To-day began very unfavourably; but we ventured out at about eleven o'clock, intending to visit the gallery of the Colonna Palace. Finding it closed, however, on account of the illness of the custode, we determined to go to the picture-gallery of the Capitol, and on our way thither we stepped into Il Gesu, the grand and rich church of the Jesuits, where we found a priest in white preaching a sermon with vast earnestness of action and variety of tone, insomuch that I fancied sometimes that two priests were in the agony of sermonising at once. He had a pretty large and seemingly attentive audience clustered round him from the entrance of the church half way down the nave, while in the chapels of the transepts, and in the remoter distances, were persons occupied with their own individual devotion. We sat down near the chapel of St. Ignazio, which is adorned with a picture over the altar, and with marble sculptures of the Trinity aloft, and of angels fluttering at the sides. What I particularly noted (for the angels were not very real personages, being neither earthly nor celestial) was the great ball of lapis-lazuli, the biggest in the world, at the feet of the First Person in the Trinity. The church is a splendid one, lined with a great variety of precious marbles, . . . but partly, perhaps, owing to the dusky light, as well as to the want of cleanliness, there was a dingy effect upon the whole. We made but a very short stay, our New England breeding causing us to feel shy of moving about the church in sermon time.
It rained when we reached the Capitol, and, as the Museum was not yet open, we went into the Palace of the Conservators, on the opposite side of the piazza. Around the inner court of the ground floor, partly under two opposite arcades, and partly under the sky, are several statues and other ancient sculptures: among them a statue of Julius Caesar, said to be the only authentic one, and certainly giving an impression of him more in accordance with his character than the withered old face in the Museum; also, a statue of Augustus in middle age, still retaining a resemblance to the bust of him in youth; some gigantic heads and hands and feet, in marble and bronze ; a stone lion and horse, which lay long at the bottom of a river, broken and corroded, and were repaired by Michael Angelo; and other things which it were wearisome to set down. We inquired of two or three French soldiers the way into the picture gallery; but it is our experience that French soldiers in Rome never know anything of what is around them, not even the name of the palace or public place over which they stand guard; and though invariably civil, you might as well put a question to a statue of an old Roman as to one of them. While we stood under the Loggia, however, looking at the rain plashing into the court, a soldier of the Papal Guard kindly directed us up the stair case, and even took pains to go with us to the very entrance of the picture-rooms. Thank heaven, there are but two of them, and not many pictures which one cares to look at very long.
Italian galleries are at a disadvantage as compared with English ones, inasmuch as the pictures are not nearly such splendid articles of upholstery; though, very likely, having undergone less cleaning and varnishing, they may retain more perfectly the finer touches of the masters. Nevertheless, I miss the mellow glow, the rich and mild external lustre, and even the brilliant frames of the pictures I have seen in England. You feel that they have had loving care taken of them : even if spoiled, it is because they have been valued so much. But these pictures in Italian galleries look rusty and lustreless, as far as the exterior is concerned; and really the splendour of the painting, as a production of intellect and feeling, has a good deal of difficulty in shining through such clouds.
There is a picture at the Capitol "the Rape of Europa," by Paul Veronese that would glow with wonderful brilliancy if it were set in a magnificent frame, and covered with a sunshine of varnish; and it is a kind of picture that would not be desecrated, as some deeper and holier ones might be, by any splendour of external adornment that could be bestowed on it. It is deplorable and disheartening to see it in faded and shabby plight this joyous, exuberant, warm, voluptuous work. There is the head of a cow thrust into the picture, and staring with wild, ludicrous wonder at the godlike bull, so as to introduce quite a new sentiment.
Here, and at the Borghese Palace, there were some pictures by Garofalo, an artist of whom I never heard before, but who seemed to have been a man of power. A picture by Marie Subleyras a miniature copy from one by her husband, of the woman anointing the feet of Christ is most delicately and beautifully finished, and would be an ornament to a drawingroom; a thing that could not truly be said of one in a hundred of these grim masterpieces. When they were painted life was not what it is now, and the artists had not the same ends in view It depresses the spirits to go from picture to picture, leaving a portion of your vital sympathy at every one, so that you come with a kind of half-torpid desperation to the end. On our way down the staircase we saw several noteworthy bas-reliefs, and among them a very ancient one of Curtius plunging on horseback into the chasm in the Forum. It seems to me, however, that old sculpture affects the spirits even more dolefully than old painting; it strikes colder to the heart, and lies heavier upon it, being marble, than if it were merely canvas.
My wife went to revisit the Museum, which we had already seen, on the other side of the piazza; but, being cold, I left her there, and went out to ramble in the sun, for it was now brightly, though fitfully, shining again. I walked through the Forum (where a thorn thrust itself out and tore the sleeve of my talma), and under the arch of Titus, towards the Coliseum. About a score of French drummers were beating a long, loud roll-call, at the base of the Coliseum, and under its arches; and a score of trumpeters responded to these from the rising ground opposite the arch of Constantine; and the echoes of the old Roman ruins, especially those of the palace of the Caesars, responded to this martial uproar of the barbarians. There seemed to be no cause for it, but the drummers beat and the trumpeters blew as long as I was within hearing.
I walked along the Appian Way as far as the baths of Caracalla. The palace of the Caesars, which I have never yet explored, appears to be crowned by the walls of a convent, built, no doubt, out of some of the fragments that would suffice to build a city; and I think there is another convent among the baths. The Catholics have taken a peculiar pleasure in planting themselves in the very citadels of paganism, whether temples or palaces. There has been a good deal of enjoyment in the destruction of old Rome. I often think so when I see the elaborate pains that have been taken to smash and demolish some beautiful column, for no purpose whatever except the mere delight of annihilating a noble piece of work. There is something in the impulse with which one sympathises, though I am afraid the destroyers were not sufficiently aware of the mischief they did to enjoy it fully. Probably, too, the early Christians were impelled by religious zeal to destroy the pagan temples, before the happy thought occurred of converting them into churches.
To-day began very unfavourably; but we ventured out at about eleven o'clock, intending to visit the gallery of the Colonna Palace. Finding it closed, however, on account of the illness of the custode, we determined to go to the picture-gallery of the Capitol, and on our way thither we stepped into Il Gesu, the grand and rich church of the Jesuits, where we found a priest in white preaching a sermon with vast earnestness of action and variety of tone, insomuch that I fancied sometimes that two priests were in the agony of sermonising at once. He had a pretty large and seemingly attentive audience clustered round him from the entrance of the church half way down the nave, while in the chapels of the transepts, and in the remoter distances, were persons occupied with their own individual devotion. We sat down near the chapel of St. Ignazio, which is adorned with a picture over the altar, and with marble sculptures of the Trinity aloft, and of angels fluttering at the sides. What I particularly noted (for the angels were not very real personages, being neither earthly nor celestial) was the great ball of lapis-lazuli, the biggest in the world, at the feet of the First Person in the Trinity. The church is a splendid one, lined with a great variety of precious marbles, . . . but partly, perhaps, owing to the dusky light, as well as to the want of cleanliness, there was a dingy effect upon the whole. We made but a very short stay, our New England breeding causing us to feel shy of moving about the church in sermon time.
It rained when we reached the Capitol, and, as the Museum was not yet open, we went into the Palace of the Conservators, on the opposite side of the piazza. Around the inner court of the ground floor, partly under two opposite arcades, and partly under the sky, are several statues and other ancient sculptures: among them a statue of Julius Caesar, said to be the only authentic one, and certainly giving an impression of him more in accordance with his character than the withered old face in the Museum; also, a statue of Augustus in middle age, still retaining a resemblance to the bust of him in youth; some gigantic heads and hands and feet, in marble and bronze ; a stone lion and horse, which lay long at the bottom of a river, broken and corroded, and were repaired by Michael Angelo; and other things which it were wearisome to set down. We inquired of two or three French soldiers the way into the picture gallery; but it is our experience that French soldiers in Rome never know anything of what is around them, not even the name of the palace or public place over which they stand guard; and though invariably civil, you might as well put a question to a statue of an old Roman as to one of them. While we stood under the Loggia, however, looking at the rain plashing into the court, a soldier of the Papal Guard kindly directed us up the stair case, and even took pains to go with us to the very entrance of the picture-rooms. Thank heaven, there are but two of them, and not many pictures which one cares to look at very long.
Italian galleries are at a disadvantage as compared with English ones, inasmuch as the pictures are not nearly such splendid articles of upholstery; though, very likely, having undergone less cleaning and varnishing, they may retain more perfectly the finer touches of the masters. Nevertheless, I miss the mellow glow, the rich and mild external lustre, and even the brilliant frames of the pictures I have seen in England. You feel that they have had loving care taken of them : even if spoiled, it is because they have been valued so much. But these pictures in Italian galleries look rusty and lustreless, as far as the exterior is concerned; and really the splendour of the painting, as a production of intellect and feeling, has a good deal of difficulty in shining through such clouds.
There is a picture at the Capitol "the Rape of Europa," by Paul Veronese that would glow with wonderful brilliancy if it were set in a magnificent frame, and covered with a sunshine of varnish; and it is a kind of picture that would not be desecrated, as some deeper and holier ones might be, by any splendour of external adornment that could be bestowed on it. It is deplorable and disheartening to see it in faded and shabby plight this joyous, exuberant, warm, voluptuous work. There is the head of a cow thrust into the picture, and staring with wild, ludicrous wonder at the godlike bull, so as to introduce quite a new sentiment.
Here, and at the Borghese Palace, there were some pictures by Garofalo, an artist of whom I never heard before, but who seemed to have been a man of power. A picture by Marie Subleyras a miniature copy from one by her husband, of the woman anointing the feet of Christ is most delicately and beautifully finished, and would be an ornament to a drawingroom; a thing that could not truly be said of one in a hundred of these grim masterpieces. When they were painted life was not what it is now, and the artists had not the same ends in view It depresses the spirits to go from picture to picture, leaving a portion of your vital sympathy at every one, so that you come with a kind of half-torpid desperation to the end. On our way down the staircase we saw several noteworthy bas-reliefs, and among them a very ancient one of Curtius plunging on horseback into the chasm in the Forum. It seems to me, however, that old sculpture affects the spirits even more dolefully than old painting; it strikes colder to the heart, and lies heavier upon it, being marble, than if it were merely canvas.
My wife went to revisit the Museum, which we had already seen, on the other side of the piazza; but, being cold, I left her there, and went out to ramble in the sun, for it was now brightly, though fitfully, shining again. I walked through the Forum (where a thorn thrust itself out and tore the sleeve of my talma), and under the arch of Titus, towards the Coliseum. About a score of French drummers were beating a long, loud roll-call, at the base of the Coliseum, and under its arches; and a score of trumpeters responded to these from the rising ground opposite the arch of Constantine; and the echoes of the old Roman ruins, especially those of the palace of the Caesars, responded to this martial uproar of the barbarians. There seemed to be no cause for it, but the drummers beat and the trumpeters blew as long as I was within hearing.
I walked along the Appian Way as far as the baths of Caracalla. The palace of the Caesars, which I have never yet explored, appears to be crowned by the walls of a convent, built, no doubt, out of some of the fragments that would suffice to build a city; and I think there is another convent among the baths. The Catholics have taken a peculiar pleasure in planting themselves in the very citadels of paganism, whether temples or palaces. There has been a good deal of enjoyment in the destruction of old Rome. I often think so when I see the elaborate pains that have been taken to smash and demolish some beautiful column, for no purpose whatever except the mere delight of annihilating a noble piece of work. There is something in the impulse with which one sympathises, though I am afraid the destroyers were not sufficiently aware of the mischief they did to enjoy it fully. Probably, too, the early Christians were impelled by religious zeal to destroy the pagan temples, before the happy thought occurred of converting them into churches.
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