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Santa Maria Novella, then, is as good a German Italian church as can be found; but, for the reasons stated, it is not particularly interesting as a piece of architecture. Its wealth is in its frescos. In the quadrangle of the cloister is a series of pictures by Paolo Uccello, who, by the introduction of linear perspective, of which he is esteemed the inventor, made a new epoch in art. In the “chapel of the Spaniards” is a famous collection of frescos by Giotto’s scholars. A large, thoughtful, and attractive composition is called the Wisdom of the Church. On the opposite side is a very celebrated painting, entitled the Church Militant and Triumphant; the militating and triumphing business being principally confided to the dogs of the Lord,—_videlicet, Domini-canes_. A large number of this dangerous fraternity is represented as a pack of hounds, fighting, pulling, biting, and howling most vigorously in a life-and-death-struggle with the wolves of heresy. In the centre of the composition are introduced various portraits. These were thought for a long time to represent Cimabue (in a white night-cap), Petrarch (in long petticoats), Laura (in short ones), and various other celebrities. Vasari is the original authority [Footnote: Vite da Vasari, ed. Lemonnier, 1846. Sim. and Lippo Memmi, p. 90, and notes.] for this opinion, which has ceased to be entertained by cognoscenti. It is also no longer believed that the pictures are the work of Taddeo Gaddi and Simon Memmi. The custode clings to both delusions,—the portraits and the painters. Whether red Murray, and that devoted band of English and Americans who follow his flag, patronize the Vasari theory or more modern ones, we are at this moment unable to state.
By what subtile threads are international hearts bound together! Two great nations have wrangled for a century; but they have a common property in Shakspeare and Tupper,—and—most precious of all joint-possessions—in the hand-books of Murray. We feel with one throb upon all æsthetic subjects. We admire the same great works of art. We drop a tear upon exactly the same spots, hallowed in ancient or modern history. The fraternity is absolute.
In the Strozzi chapel are an altar-piece and several wall-pictures by Andrew Orgagna. They are not so grandly conceived as that wondrous composition of his, the Triumph of Death, in the Pisan Campo Santo; but they are additional proofs of his intense and Dante-like genius. No doubt Dante influenced him deeply, as he did all his contemporaries, whose minds were fertile enough to ripen such seed. The large picture on the left—a view of paradise—is full of energetic and beautiful figures, combined with much dramatic effect and great technical skill. The opposite pictures, representing hell, were not by Andrew, but by Bernard Orgagna, a man of far inferior calibre. They have, moreover, been entirely revamped.
In the choir are the renowned frescos of Dominic Ghirlandaio,—scenes from the lives of John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary. These, however, are but names and frames. The great merit of these paintings is that they were the first, or among the first, to introduce the actual into the world of conventional and conventual art. They form a series of full-length portraits,—sometimes of celebrated contemporaries, as Politian, Marsilio Ficino, and others,—but always of flesh-and-blood people, living, moving, and having a being. That group of Platonists, with their looks of profound wisdom and dogmatic eloquence, are lifting their forefingers, pricking up their ears, opening their mouths, (each obviously interrupting the flow of the others’ rhetoric,) in most lifelike fashion. One almost catches the winged syllogisms as they fly from lip to lip. We are almost drawn into the dispute ourselves, and are disposed to ventilate a score of outrageous paradoxes, for the mere satisfaction of contradicting such wiseacres. These heads are painted with a vivacity and an energy worthy of the Dutch great masters of the seventeenth century. In fact, there is something caught, no doubt, from the early schools of Flanders; for Dominic was the contemporary of the glorious masters protected by Philip the Good of Burgundy,—the only good thing he ever did in his life,—the man who opened the road for that long triumphant procession which for two centuries was to march through the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy. There is no want, however, of historical dignity in these compositions. Each one has a stately rhythm, an harmonious grandeur of conception and execution, which, in connection with the lifelike fidelity and unaffected beauty of the heads, stamp their creator as a dramatic genius of a higher order than any of his contemporaries.
The Madonna of Cimabue, which hangs at the end of the south transept, resembles the one in the Academy. In place of the powerful saints’ heads, is a group of angels of much grace and purity, supporting a shrine. This picture is considered a bolder and more untrammelled composition than the other. It is the world-renowned masterpiece of the thirteenth century, which all Florence turned out in procession to honor when it left the painter’s hands; and which even Charles of Anjou, dripping in blood, and stalking through the scenes of that great tragedy whose catastrophe was the Sicilian vespers, paused on his way to admire.
V.
SAN SPIRITO.
In this church, which the admirers of Brunelleschi must study, are two small, but most exquisite masterpieces of Lippo Lippi. All the works of this most profligate of friars are tender and holy beyond description. They have also that distinguishing charm of the Florentine school of the fifteenth century, naïveté,—a fresh, gentle, and loving appreciation of the beautiful and the natural. It is evident that the Fra went through the world with his eyes open, looking for beauty wherever it was visible; and in his works, at least, there is no lingering trace of Byzantinism. A scholar of Masaccio, of a far inferior mind both to Masaccio and Maselino, and without the force of hand of either, he is still, more than both together, the founder of the natural school of Florence.
One of his pictures is in this church,—a Madonna with the child on her lap. The Christ is leaning forward and playing with a cross which the infant Saint John holds in his hand. Nothing can be more suggestive or touching than this prophetic infantile movement. Although the color of the picture is rather feeble and washy, as frequently may be observed of Lippo’s paintings, the whole expression is bathed in purity and piety. Yet the Fra was such an incorrigible mauvais sujet, that when he was employed to decorate the palazzo of Cosmo Vecchio, the Pater Patriæ was obliged to lock up his artist in the chamber which he was painting. The holy man was not easily impounded, however; for he cut his bedclothes into strips, let himself into the street from an upper-story window, and departed on his usual adventures; so that it was weeks before Cosmo could hear of his painter again.
[Concluded in the next Number.]
SANTA FILOMENA.
Whene’er a noble deed is wrought, Whene’er is spoken a noble thought, Our hearts, in glad surprise, To higher levels rise.
The tidal wave of deeper souls Into our inmost being rolls, And lifts us unawares Out of all meaner cares.
Honor to those whose words or deeds Thus help us in our daily needs, And by their overflow Raise us from what is low!
Thus thought I, as by night I read Of the great army of the dead, The trenches cold and damp, The starved and frozen camp,—
The wounded from the battle-plain, In dreary hospitals of pain, The cheerless corridors, The cold and stony floors.
Lo! in that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom And flit from room to room.
And slow, as in a dream of bliss, The speechless sufferer turns to kiss Her shadow, as it falls Upon the darkening walls.
As if a door in heaven should be Opened, and then closed suddenly, The vision came and went, The light shone and was spent.
On England’s annals, through the long Hereafter of her speech and song, That light its rays shall cast From portals of the past.
A lady with a lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good, Heroic womanhood.
Nor even shall, be wanting here The palm, the lily, and the spear, The symbols that of yore Saint Filomena bore.
SALLY PARSONS’S DUTY.
The sun that shines on eastern Massachusetts, specially on buttercups and dandelions, and providentially on potatoes, looks down on no greener fields in these days than it saw in the spring of 1775, fenced in and fenced off by the zigzag snake-fences of ‘Zekiel Parsons’s farm.
“About this time,” as almanacs say, young orchards were misty with buds, red maples on the highway shone in the clear light, and a row of bright tin pans at the shed door of the farm-house testified to a sturdy arm and skilful hand within,—arm and hand both belonging to no less a person than Miss Sally, ‘Zekiel Parsons’s only daughter, and the prettiest girl in Westbury; a short, sturdy, rosy little maid, with hair like a ripe chestnut shell, bright blue eyes full of mischief, and such a sunny, healthy, common-sense character, one is almost afraid to tell of it, it is so out of date now.
But of what use is it to describe her? How can I impress upon moderns how enlivening and refreshing was her aspect, as she spun, or scoured pans, in a linsey-woolsey petticoat and white short gown, wearing her pretty curls in a crop? George Tucker knew it all without telling; and so did half a dozen of the Westbury boys, who haunted the picket fence round ‘Zekiel’s garden every moonlight night in summer, or scraped their feet by the half hour together on his door-step in winter evenings. Sally was a belle; she knew it and liked it, as every honest girl does;—and she would have been a belle without the aid of her father’s wide farm and pine-tree shillings; for she was fresh and lovely, with a spice of coquetry, but a true woman’s heart beneath it all.
It was very hard to discover whom Sally Parsons favored among her numerous beaux. Her father seriously inclined to George Tucker; not because he was rich,—for ‘Zekiel had not arrived at fashionable principles,—but because he was honest, kind-hearted, and reliable; but as yet Sally showed no decided preference; time and the hour were near, but not in sight.
One Sunday night, early in April, after the nine o’clock bell had scattered Sally’s admirers far and wide, and old ‘Zekiel sat by the chimney corner, watching his sister, Aunt Poll, rake up the rest of the hickory log in the ashes, while he rubbed away sturdily at his feet, holding in one hand the blue yarn stockings, “wrought by no hand, as you may guess,” but that of Sally; the talk, that had momentarily died away, began again, and with a glance at Long Snapps,—a lank, shrewd-faced old sailor, who, to use his own speech, had “cast anchor ‘longside of an old ship-met fur a spell, bein’ bound fur his own cabin up in Lenox,”—‘Zekiel spoke after
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