Letters from Abroad. Letter I. – Pisa
LETTERS FROM ABROAD.
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LETTER I.—PISA.
WE have adopted the present form of communication with
the reader for these articles, because we found the use of
one’s plural privileges inconvenient in travelling. An author
must reverse on these occasions the custom of his legitimate
brother we’s, and travel cognito; otherwise his personal
experiences will sometimes have a very ludicrous and incon-
sistent effect. He will not be able to move about with so
much freedom, or give the results of his impressions and
encounters with such vivacity, as if he were unhampered
with a body corporate. It is not every body, like Cerberus
or a king, who can be “three gentlemen at once,” and at
the same time lose nothing of his loco-motion. Therefore,
be it known once for all, that when we travel, though in
company, we are one, and shall use the first person accord-
ingly; being, nevertheless, at all other times, more than one,
and ready to prove it beyond a doubt upon the head of any
one else, who shall dispute our miscellaneousness.
Pisa, one of the oldest cities in Europe, and supposed to
have originated in a colony from its Grecian namesake, was
at one time the most flourishing city in Tuscany. But the
sea deserted it; and with the sea gradually departed all its
modern importance. What it retained longest, and up to a
late period, was its renown as a place of learning and edu-
cation. But even that has departed now. It has indeed an
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university, whose name is loth to abandon it; and the edu-
cation, to those who are very much in earnest about it, is
worth procuring, because private tuition, of a very attentive
kind, is to be had for a trifle; and the university lectures
may be attended gratuituously.* The science most in request
is medicine, or rather surgery. The name of Professor Vaccà(1)
(a man in the prime of life, with an intelligent and pleasing
countenance) is known all over Europe. There is also an-
other liberality, truly becoming the study of letters, and
worth the imitation of countries that pique themselves on
their advances beyond superstition:—men of any sect or
religion can take all the degrees in the university, except
those in divinity or canonical law. One of the most inte-
resting sights now in Pisa is a venerable Greek Archbishop,
who takes his walk on the Lungarno every evening. It is
understood that he is superintending the education of some
Greek youths, and that he puts the receipts of his office to
the noble purpose of assisting it. Prince Alexander Mavro-
cordato,(2) who joined his countrymen last year in their great
struggle, and to whom Mr. Shelley has dedicated his Hellas,(3)
was studying here when his glorious duty called him off. I
know not on what errand a rich Russian comes to the same
place; but the other evening, in the cathedral, I saw one of
the sons of the late Marshal S. His semi-barbarous, fair,
active-looking, and not ill-natured face, formed a curious
contrast with the procession of dark southern heads, that
was passing him up the middle of the church. His brother,
who is said to be handsome, is here also. I was told they
* The writer of this article, for some weeks, had the pleasure of inter-
changing some English and Italian reading with the Abate Giuliani, an
elegant scholar; and there is a young man of the name of Giannetti, who
made a very kind and attentive master to his children, and promises to be
an excellent instructor.
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had been in Pisa about a year, and were ricchissimi (very
rich)—a word which an Italian utters with a peculiar gravity.
What renders Pisa interesting now, and will continue to
render it so as long as it exists, is its being left to a compa-
rative solitude, and its containing one of the most singular,
and many of the most ancient specimens of the arts, in Italy.
It now stands five miles from the sea, and so completely out
of the ordinary roads of communication, that the writers of
elaborate works upon Italy do not think it incumbent upon
them to notice it. Such however as have a true taste for
their subject, cannot be well satisfied with themselves for
the omission. Let the reader imagine a small white city,
with a tower also white, leaning very distinctly in the dis-
tance at one end of it, trees on either side, and blue moun-
tains for the back-ground. Such is their first sight of Pisa,
as the traveller sees it in coming from Leghorn. Add to this,
in summer-time, fields of corn on all sides, bordered with
hedge-row trees, and the festoons of vines, of which he has
so often read, hanging from tree to tree; and he may judge
of the impression made upon an enthusiastic admirer of
Italy, who is in Tuscany for the first time. It looks like a
thing you have dreamt of, and answers most completely to
the imagination.
In entering the city, the impression is beautiful. What
looked white in the distance remains as pure and fair on
closer acquaintance. You cross a bridge, and cast your eye
up the whole extent of the city one way, the river Arno (the
river of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio) winding through the
middle of it under two more bridges; and fair elegant houses
of good size bordering the wide pavement on either side.
Thus is the Lung’arno, or street along the Arno. The moun-
tains, in which you now discover the look of their marble
veins (for it is from these that the marble of Carrara comes)
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tower away beautifully at the further end, and seem much
nearer than they are. The Arno, which is about as wide
perhaps as the Isis at Oxford, is sandy coloured, and in the
summer-time shrunken; but still it is the river of the great
Tuscan writers, the visible possessor of the name we have all
heard a thousand times, and we feel what a true thing is that
which is called ideal.
The first novelty that strikes you, after your dreams and
matter-of-fact have recovered from the surprise of their in-
troduction to one another, is the singular fairness and new
look of houses that have been standing hundreds of years.
This is owing to the Italian atmosphere. Antiquity every
where refuses to look ancient; it insists upon retaining its
youthfulness of aspect. The consequence at first is a mixed
feeling of admiration and disappointment; for we miss the
venerable. The houses seem as they ought to have sym-
pathized more with humanity, and were as cold and as hard-
hearted as their materials. But you soon find that Italy
is the land, not of the venerable, but the beautiful; and
cease to look for old age in the chosen country of the Apollo
and the Venus. The only real antiquities are those in Dante
and the oldest painters, who treat the Bible in an ancient
style. Among the mansions of the Lungarno is one entirely
fronted with marble, and marble so pure and smooth that
you can see your face in it. It is in a most graceful style
of architecture, and has a curious symbol and motto over the
door, which is the second Pisan mystery. The symbol is
an actual fetter, attached with great nicety of taste to the
middle stone over the door-way: the motto, Alla Giornata
(For the Day, or the Day’s Work). The allusion is sup-
posed to be some captivity undergone by one of the Lan-
freducci family, the proprietors: but nobody knows. Further
up on the same side of the way, is the old ducal palace,
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said to be the scene of the murder of Don Garcia by his
father, which is the subject of one of Alfieri’s tragedies:(4)
and between both, a little before you come to the old palace,
is the mansion still belonging to the family of the Lanfran-
chi, formerly one of the most powerful in Pisa. Part of the
inside is said to have been built by Michael Angelo. The
Lanfranchi were among the nobles, who conspired to pull
down the traitorous ascendancy of Count Ugolino,(5) and
wreaked that more infamous revenge on him and his young
children. I need not remind the reader of the passage in
Dante; but perhaps he is not aware, that Chaucer has wor-
thily related the story after him, referring, with his usual
modesty, for a more sufficing account, to “the grete poete
“of Itaille.” See the Monk’s Tale,(6) part the last, entitled
“Hugelin of Pise.” The tower in which Ugolino was
starved, was afterwards called the Tower of Famine. Chau-
cer, who is supposed to have been in Italy, says that it stood
“a littel out” of Pisa; Villani(7) says, in the Piazza of the
Anziani. It is understood to be no longer in existence, and
even its site is disputed. It is curious to feel oneself sitting
quietly in one of the old Italian houses, and think of all the
interests and passions that have agitated the hearts of so
many generations of its tenants; all the revels and the quar-
rels that have echoed along its walls; all the guitars that have
tinkled under its windows; all the scuffles that have disputed
its doors. Along the great halls, how many feet have hurried
in alarm! how many stately beauties have drawn their quiet
trains! how many huge torches have ushered magnificence up
the staircases! how much blood perhaps been shed! The
ground-floors of all the great houses in Pisa, as in other
Italian cities, have iron bars at the windows, evidently
for security in time of trouble. The look is at first very
gloomy and prison-like, but you get used to it. The bars
H
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also are thin, round, and painted white, and the interstices
large; and if the windows are towards a garden, and bor-
dered with shrubs and ivy, as in the Casa Lanfranchi, the
imagination makes a compromise with their prison-like
appearance, and persuades itself they are guards only in
time of war, but trellises during a peace-establishment. All
the floors are made for separate families, it having been the
custom in Italy from time immemorial for fathers and
mothers, sons and daughters-in-law, or vice versa, with as
many other relations as might be “agreeable,” to live under
the same roof. Spaciousness and utility were the great
objects with the builder; and a stranger is sometimes sur-
prised with the look of the finest houses outside, particularly
that of the ground-floor. The stables used often to be there,
and their place is now as often occupied by shops. In the
inside of the great private houses there is always a certain
majestic amplitude; but the entrances of the rooms and the
staircase on the ground floor are often placed irregularly, so
as to sacrifice everything to convenience. In the details
there is sure to be a noble eye to proportion. You cannot
look at the elevation of the commonest door-way, or the
ceiling of a room appropriated to the humblest purposes,
but you recognize the land of the fine arts. You think Mi-
chael Angelo has been at the turning of those arches,—
at the harmonizing of those beautiful varieties of shape,
which by the secret principles common to all the arts and
sciences, affect the mind like a sort of inaudible music. The
very plasterer who is hired to give the bare walls of some
old unused apartment an appearance of ornament, paints his
door-ways, his pilasters, and his borders of leaves, in a bold
style of relief and illusion, which would astonish the doubt-
ful hand of many a gentleman “in the higher walks of art.”
It must be observed however, that this is a piece of good
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taste which seems to have survived most others, and to have
been kept up by the objects upon which it works; for the
arts are at present lying fallow in Italy, waiting for more
strenuous times.
I was so taken up, on my arrival at Pisa, with friends and
their better novelties, that I forgot even to look about me
for the Leaning Tower. You lose sight of it on entering
the town, unless you come in at the Lucca gate. On the
Sunday following however I went to see it, and the majestic
spot in which it stands, with Mr. Shelley. Good God!
what a day that was, compared with all that have followed
it! I had my friend with me, arm-in-arm, after a separation
of years: he was looking better than I had ever seen him—
we talked of a thousand things—we anticipated a thousand
pleasures — — — I must plunge again into my writing,
that I may try to forget it.
The Leaning Tower stands in a solitary quarter of the city,
but in illustrious company. Mr. Forsythe,(8) a late traveller
of much shrewdness and pith, (though a want of ear, and an
affectation of ultra good sense, render him sometimes ex-
tremely unfit for a critic on Italy,—as where he puts music
and perfumery on a level,) has been beforehand with the
spot itself in putting this idea in my head. “Pisa,” says
he, “while the capital of a republic, was celebrated for its
“profusion of marble, its patrician towers, and its grave
“magnificence. It still can boast some marble churches,
“a marble palace, and a marble bridge. Its towers, though
“no longer a mark of nobility, may be traced in the walls of
“modernized houses. Its gravity pervades every street;
“but its magnificence is now confined to one sacred corner.
“There stand the Cathedral, the Baptistery, the Leaning
“Tower, and the Campo Santo; all built of the same marble,
“all varieties of the same architecture, all venerable with
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“years, and fortunate both in their society and in their soli-
“tude.”—Forsythe’s Italy, 1801.
I know not whether my first sensation at the sight of the
Leaning Tower, was admiration of its extreme beauty, or its
threatening attitude. I remember being exceedingly struck
with both. Its beauty has never been sufficiently praised.
Its overhanging aspect seems to menace the houses near it
with instant destruction. The inclination is fourteen feet
out of the perpendicular, and has singularly escaped the
exaggerations of travellers and pictures. We wonder that
people should build houses underneath it, till we recollect
that it has probably stood thus ever since it was built, that
is to say, for nearly six hundred and fifty years; and that
habit reconciles us to any thing. “The Leaning Tower at
“first sight,” says Mr. Matthews, in his Diary of an Invalid,(9)
“is quite terrific, and exceeds expectation. There is, I be-
“lieve, no doubt of the real history of this tower. The foun-
“dation-ground gave way during the progress of the build-
“ing, and the architect completed his work in the direction
‘thus accidentally given to it. Accordingly, we find in the
“construction of the upper part, that the weight is sup-
“ported in a way to support the equilibrium.” He means,
that something of a curve backwards is given to it. Mr.
Forsythe seems to ridicule opinions to this effect; but I
can only say, that such was the impression on my own eyes,
before I called to mind anything that had been said about
it. The structure was begun by a German artist, William
of Inspruck,(10) and finished by Italians. Several other towers
in Pisa, including the Observatory, have a very visible in-
clination, owing to the same cause,—the sinking of the soil,
which is light, sandy, and full of springs; and surely nothing
is more probable than an attempt on the part of the builders
of so beautiful a structure to counteract the consequences of
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the foundation’s having given way. The tower is a campanile
or belfry to the Cathedral. It was the custom in Italy to make
the belfry a separate building, and the custom was a good
one; for it afforded variety, and prevented barbarism. The
height of the tower is about 150 feet, but it looks more, on
account of its happy situation and the lowness of the houses
near it. Let the reader imagine the Monument of London
sheathed in an open work of eight stories of little columns,
and leaning in a fine open situation, and he will have some
idea of this noble cylinder of marble. The sheath is its
great beauty, and gives it an extraordinary aspect of richness
and simplicity.
With regard to the company in which it stands, let the
reader suppose the new square at Westminster Abbey, con-
verted into a broad grass walk, and standing in a much more
solitary part of the town. Let him suppose at one end of this
walk the Leaning Tower, with some small but elegant houses
on one side of it, looking down the grass plot; the Baptistery,
a rotunda, standing by itself at the opposite end; the public
hospital, an extremely neat and quiet building, occupying the
principal length of the road which borders the grass plot on
one side; on the other side, and on the grass itself, the
Cathedral, stretching between the Leaning Tower and the
Baptistery; and lastly, at the back of the Cathedral, and
visible between the openings at its two ends, the Campo
Santo or Burial Ground, a set of walled marble cloisters full
of the oldest paintings in Italy. All these buildings are
detached; they all stand in a free, open situation; they all
look as if they were built but a year ago; they are all of
marble; the whole place is kept extremely clean,—the very
grass in a state of greenness not common to turf in the South;
and there are trees looking upon it over a wall next the Bap-
tistery. Let the reader add to this scene a few boys playing
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about, all ready to answer your questions in pure Tuscan,—
women occasionally passing with veils or bare heads, or now
and then a couple of friars; and though finer individual
sights may be found in the world, it will be difficult to come
upon an assemblage of objects more rich in their communion.
The Baptistery is a large rotunda, richly carved, and ap-
propriated solely to the purpose after which it is christened.
It is in a mixed style, and was built in the twelfth century.
Mr. Forsythe, who is deep in arches and polygons, objects
to the crowd of unnecessary columns; to the “hideous
“tunnel which conceals the fine swell of the cupola;” and
to the appropriation of so large an edifice to a christening.
The “tunnel” may deserve his wrath; but his architectural
learning sometimes behaves as ill as the tunnel, and ob-
scures his better taste. A christening, in the eyes of a good
Catholic, is at least as important an object as a rotunda; and
there is a religious sentiment in the profusion with which
ornament is heaped upon edifices of this nature. It forms a
beauty of itself, and gives even mediocrity a sort of abund-
ance of intention that looks like the wealth of genius. The
materials take leave of their materiality, and crowd together
into a worship of their own. It is no longer, “let every
“thing,” only, “that has breath, praise the Lord;” but let
every thing else praise him, and take a meaning and life
accordingly. Let column obscure column, as in a multitude
of men; let arch strain upon arch, as if to ascend to heaven;
let there be infinite details, conglomerations, mysteries, lights,
darknesses; and let the birth of a new soul be well and wor-
thily celebrated in the midst of all.
The Cathedral is in the Greek style of the middle ages, a
style which Mr. Forsythe thinks should rather be called the
Lombard, “as it appeared in Italy first under the Lombard
princes.” He says, that it includes “whatever was grand or
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“beautiful in the works of the middle ages;” and that “this
“was perhaps the noblest of them all.” He proceeds to find
fault with certain incongruities, amongst which are some re-
mains of Pagan sculpture left standing in a Christian church;
but he enthusiastically admires the pillars of oriental granite
that support the roof. The outside of the building consists
of mere heaps of marble, mounting by huge steps to the roof;
but their simplicity as well as size gives them a new sort of
grandeur; and Mr. Forsythe has overlooked the extraordi-
nary sculpture of the bronze doors, worthy of the same hand
that made those others at Florence, which Michael Angelo
said were fit to be the gates of Paradise. It is divided into
compartments, the subjects of which are taken from Scrip-
ture; and if the doors at Florence surpass it, they must be
divine indeed. The relief is the most graceful and masterly
conceivable; the perspective astonishing, as if in a drawing;
and equal justice is done to the sharp monstrosities of the
devil with his bat-wings, and the gentle graces of the
Saviour. There is a great number of pictures in the Cathe-
dral, good enough to assist rather than spoil the effect, but
not remarkable. I have not been present when the church-
service has been at its best; but the leader does not seem to
rely much on his singers, by the noise which he makes in
behalf of time. His vehement roll of paper, sounds like the
lashing of a whip. One evening, in August, I saw the whole
inside of the Cathedral lit up with wax in honour of the
Assumption. The lights were disposed with much taste, but
soon produced a great heat. There was a gigantic picture
of the Virgin displayed at the upper end, who was to be
supposed sitting in heaven, surrounded with the celestial
ardours; but she was “dark with excess of bright.” It is
impossible to see this profusion of lights, especially when
one knows their symbolical meaning, without being struck
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with the source from which Dante took his idea of the beati-
fied spirits. His heaven, filled with lights, and lights too
arranged in figures, which glow with lustre in proportion to
the beatitude of the souls within them, is clearly a sublima-
tion of a Catholic church. And it is not the worse for it,
that nothing escapes the look of definiteness and mate-
riality like fire. It is so airy, joyous, and divine a thing,
when separated from the idea of pain and an ill purpose, that
the language of happiness naturally adopts its terms, and
can tell of nothing more rapturous than burning bosoms and
sparkling eyes. The Seraph of the Hebrew theology was a
Fire. But then the materials of heaven and hell are the
same? Yes; and a very fine piece of moral theology might
be made out of their sameness, always omitting the brute
injustice of eternal punishment. Is it not by our greater or
less cultivation of health and benevolence, that we all make
out our hells and heavens upon earth? by a turning of the
same materials and passions of which we are all composed,
to different accounts? Burning now in the horrors of hell
with fear, hatred, and uncharitableness, and now in the joys
or at least the happier sympathies of heaven, with good effort,
courage, gratitude, generosity, love? When Dante was asked
where he found his hell, he answered, “upon earth.” He
found his heaven in the same place; and no disparagement
either to a future state. If it is impossible for the mass of
matter to be lost, or even diminished, it seems equally im-
possible for the mass of sensations to be lost; and it is surely
worth while, whatever our creeds may be, to take as much
care as possible that what we have to do with it, may be done
well, and rendered worth the chance of continuance.*
* See an ingenious article on this subject in Tucker’ Light of Nature,(11)
which however is not imagined as highly as it might be, or illustrated with
as much as he could reasonably have deduced from nature.
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The crowning glory of Pisa is the Campo Santo. I entered
for the first time at twilight, when the indistinct shapes,
colours, and antiquity of the old paintings wonderfully har-
monized with the nature of the place. I chose to go towards
evening, when I saw it again; and though the sunset came
upon me too fast to allow me to see all the pictures as mi-
nutely as I could have wished, I saw enough to warrant my
giving an opinion of them; and I again had the pleasure of
standing in the spot at twilight. It is an oblong inclosure,
about the size of Stratford Place,(12) and surrounded with
cloisters wider and lighter than those of Westminster. At
least, such is my impression. The middle is grassed earth,
the surface of which, for some depth, is supposed to have
been brought from Palestine at the time of the crusades, and
to possess the virtue of decomposing bodies in the course of
a few hours. The tradition is, that Ubaldo Lanfranchi,(13) Arch-
bishop of Pisa, who commanded the forces contributed by
his countrymen, brought the earth away with him in his
ships; but though such a proceeding would not have been
impossible, the story is now, I believe, regarded as a mere
legend. The decomposition of the bodies might have been
effected by other means. Persons are buried both in this
enclosure and in the cloisters, but only persons of rank or
celebrity. Most of the inscriptions for instance (of which
there are some hundreds, all on marble, and mixed with
busts and figures) are to the memory of Pisans in the rank
of nobility; but there are several also to artists and men of
letters. The most interesting grave is that of Benozzo,(14) one
of the old painters, who lies at the foot of his own works.
Here is a handsome monument, with a profile, to Algarotti,(15)
erected by Frederick of Prussia. Pignotti,(16) the fabulist, has
another; and Fabroni,(17) the late eulogist of eminent Italians
on handsome paper, has a bust so good-natured and full of
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a certain jolly gusto, that we long to have eat olives with
him. In truth, these modern gettings up of renown, in the
shape of busts and monuments to middling men of talent,
appear misplaced, when you come to notice them. They
look in the way. But the old pictures, which they seem to
contradict and interfere with, reconcile them at last. Any
thing and every thing mortal has its business here. The
pretensions of mediocrity are exalted into the claims of the
human being. One blushes to deny the writers of amiable
books what one would demand for one’s own common na-
ture; or to think of excluding a man for doing better than
hundreds of the people there, merely because he has not
done so well as some who are not there. Pignotti and Al-
garotti, at last, even harmonize with some sprightly figures
who play their harps and their love-songs in the pictures,
and who flourished hundreds of years ago, as their readers
flourish now; and even the bustling and well-fed amenity of
Monsignor Fabroni is but a temporary contradiction, which
will be rendered serious some day by the crumbling away of
his marble cheeks, or the loss of some over-lively feature.
Let him, for God’s sake, live in inscription, and look treats
in stone.
Besides these modern pieces of sculpture, there has been
for some years a collection of ancient marbles, chiefly urns
and sarcophagi, together with some fragments of the early
Italian school. It is so impossible to pay proper attention
to any large collection of art, without repeated visits, that I
do not pretend to have given it to the old pictures, much
less to the marbles. The first impression is not pleasant,—
their orderly array, the numerals upon them, and the names
of the donors upon the walls behind, giving the whole too
much the air of a shew-room or common gallery. The pic-
tures form part of the sentiment of the place as a burial
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ground, and would certainly be better by themselves; but
the antiquity of the marbles reconciles us at last. From the
glance I took at them, many appear to be poor enough, but
several very good. I noticed in particular one or two sar-
cophagi with reliefs of Bacchus and Ariadne, and a head
supposed to be that of a Roman Emperor, and looking quite
brutal enough. As to the Paganism, I do not quarrel, like
Mr. Forsythe, with the presence of things Pagan in a
Christian edifice; not only because the Pagan and Catholic
religions have much that is in common externally, their dra-
peries, altars, incense, music, winged genii, &c.; but because
from a principle which the author of a new Comment on
Dante(18) has noticed, there is in fact an identity of interests
and aspirations in all these struggles of mortal man after a
knowledge of things supernatural.*
The paintings on the walls, the great glory of Pisa, are
and others,—all more or less renowned by illustrious pens;
all, with more or less gusto, the true and reverend harbingers
of the greatest painters of Italy. Simon Memmi is the artist
celebrated by Petrarch for his portrait of Laura; Buffal-
macco is the mad wag (grave enough here) who cuts such a
figure in the old Italian novels; and Giotto, the greatest of
them all, is the friend of Dante, the hander down of his like-
* See a “Comment on the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri,” just pub-
lished. It is written in the style of one who has been accustomed to speak
another language, and ventures upon some singularly gratuitous assumptions
respecting the doctrine of eternal punishment: but the poetical reader will
consider it a valuable addition to the stock of criticism on Dante, and wish
that the author may continue it. It contains some happy local illustrations,
a complete account of the real history of Paulo and Francesca, a settlement
of the question respecting Beatrice, and a variety of metaphysico-theological
remarks in as good and deep a taste as those above-mentioned are idle.
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ness to posterity, and himself the Dante of his art. High as
this eulogy is, nobody will think it too high who has seen
his works in the Campo Santo. They are of the same fine
old dreaming character, the same imaginative mixture of
things familiar with things unearthly, the same strenuous
and (when they choose) gentle expression,—in short, the
same true discernment of the “differences of things,” now
grappling with a fiend or a fierce thought, now sympathising
with fear and sorrow, now setting the muscles of grim war-
riors, now dissolving in the looks and flowing tresses of
women, or setting a young gallant in an attitude to which
Raphael might have traced his cavaliers. And this is more
or less the character of the very oldest pictures in the Campo
Santo. They have the germs of beauty and greatness, how-
ever obscured and stiffened, the struggle of true pictorial
feeling with the inexperience of art. As you proceed along
the walls, you see gracefulness and knowledge gradually
helping one another, and legs and arms, lights, shades, and
details of all sorts taking their proper measures and posi-
tions, as if every separate thing in the world of painting had
been created with repeated efforts, till it answered the origi-
nal and always fair idea. They are like a succession of
quaint dreams of humanity during the twilight of creation.
I have already mentioned that the pictures are painted on
the walls of the four cloisters. They occupy the greater part
of the elevation of these walls, beginning at top and finishing
at a reasonable distance from the pavement. The subjects
are from the Old Testament up to the time of Solomon, from
the legends of the middle ages, particularly St. Ranieri (the
patron saint of Pisa) and from the history of the Crucifixion,
Resurrection, &c. with the Day of Judgment. There is also
a Triumph of Death. The colours of some of them, espe-
cially of the sky and ship in the voyage of St. Ranieri, are
[Page 113]
wonderfully preserved. The sky looks as intensely blue as
the finest out of doors. But others are much injured by the
sea air, which blows into Pisa; and it is a pity that the win-
dows of the cloisters in these quarters are not glazed, to pro-
tect them from further injury. The best idea perhaps which
I can give an Englishman of the general character of the
paintings, is by referring him to the engravings of Albert
Durer,(23) and the serious parts of Chaucer. There is the same
want of proper costume—the same intense feeling of the
human being, both in body and soul—the same bookish, ro-
mantic, and retired character—the same evidences, in short,
of antiquity and commencement, weak (where it is weak) for
want of a settled art and language, but strong for that very
reason in first impulses, and in putting down all that is felt.
An old poet however always has the advantage of an old
painter, because he is not obliged to a literal description of
arms, legs, and attitudes, and thus escapes half his quaint-
ness. But they truly illustrate one another. Chaucer’s Duke
Theseus,(24) clothed and behaving accordingly—his yawning
courtiers, who thank king Cambuscan(25) for dismissing them
to bed—his god Janus keeping Christmas with his fire-side
and his dish of brawn, &c.—exhibit the same fantastic alter-
nations of violated costume and truth of nature. The way
in which he mingles together personages of all times, nations,
and religions, real and fictitious, Samson and Turnus with
Socrates, Ovid with St. Augustin, &c. and his descriptions
of actual “purtreyings on a wall,” in which are exhibited at
once, Narcissus, Solomon, Venus, Crœsus, and “the porter
Idleness,”(26) resemble the manner in which some of the pain-
ters of the Campo Santo defy all perspective, and fill one
picture with twenty different solitudes. There is a painting
for instance devoted to the celebrated anchorites or hermits
of the desart. They are represented according to their seve-
[Page 114]
ral legends—reading, dying, undergoing temptations, assisted
by lions, &c. At first they all look like fantastic actors in
the same piece; but you dream, and are reconciled. The
contempt of every thing like interval, and of all which may
have happened in it, makes the ordinary events of life seem
of as little moment; and the mind is exclusively occupied
with the sacred old men and their solitudes, all at the same
time, and yet each by himself. The manner in which some
of the hoary saints in these pictures pore over their books
and carry their decrepit old age, full of a bent and absorbed
feebleness—the set limbs of the warriors on horseback—the
sidelong unequivocal looks of some of the ladies playing on
harps, and conscious of their ornaments—the people of fa-
shion, seated in rows, with Time coming up unawares to
destroy them—the other rows of elders and doctors of the
church, forming part of the array of heaven—the uplifted
hand of Christ denouncing the wicked at the Day of Judg-
ment—the daring satires occasionally introduced against
hypocritical monks and nuns—the profusion of attitudes,
expressions, incidents, broad draperies, ornaments of all sorts,
visions, mountains, ghastly looking cities, fiends, angels,
sybilline old women, dancers, virgin brides, mothers and chil-
dren, princes, patriarchs, dying saints;—it is an injustice to the
superabundance and truth of conception in all this multitude of
imagery, not to recognise the real inspirers as well as harbin-
gers of Raphael and Michael Angelo, instead of confining the
Peruginos, for all that ever I saw, meritorious as they are,
are no more to be compared with them, than the sonnetteers
of Henry the Eighth’s time are to be compared with Chaucer.
Even in the very rudest of the pictures, where the souls of
the dying are going out of their mouths in the shape of little
children, there are passages not unworthy of Dante or Mi-
[Page 115]
chael Angelo,—angels trembling at the blowing of trumpets,
men in vain attempting to carry their friends into heaven;
and saints, who have lived ages of temperance, sitting in
calm air upon hills far above the triumphant progress of
Death, who goes bearing down the great, the luxurious, and
the young. The picture by Titian,(29) in which he has repre-
sented the three great stages of existence, bubble-blowing
childhood, love-making manhood, and death-contemplating
old age, is not better conceived, and hardly better made out,
than some of the designs of Orgagna and Giotto. Since I
have beheld the Campo Santo, I have enriched my day-dreams
and my stock of the admirable, and am thankful that I have
names by heart, to which I owe homage and gratitude. Ten-
der and noble Orgagna, be thou blessed beyond the happi-
ness of thine own heaven! Giotto, be thou a name to me
hereafter, of a kindred brevity, solidity, and stateliness, with
that of thy friend Dante!*
The air of Pisa is soft and balmy to the last degree. Mr.
Forsythe thinks it too moist, and countenance is given to his
opinion by the lowness and flatness of the place, which lies
in a plain full of springs and rivers, between the Apennines
and the sea. The inhabitants also have a proverb,—Pisa pesa
a chi posa,—which may be translated,
Pisa sits ill
On those who sit still.
To me the air seemed as dry as it is soft; and most people
will feel oppressed every where, if they do not take exer-
cise. The lower rooms of the houses are reckoned how-
* There is a good description of the pictures in the Campo Santo, written
by Professor Rosini,(30) of Pisa, and enriched with some criticisms by his friend
the Cavaliere de Rossi.
[Page 116]
ever too damp in winter, at least on the Lungarno; though
the winter season is counted delicious, and the Grand Duke
always comes here to spend two months of it. The noon-day
sun in summer-time is formidable, resembling more the in-
tense heat struck from burning metal, than any thing we can
conceive of it in England. But a sea-breeze often blows of
an evening, when the inhabitants take their exercise. A look
out upon the Lungarno at noon-day is curious. A blue sky
is overhead—dazzling stone underneath—the yellow Arno
gliding along, generally with nothing upon it, sometimes a
lazy sail; the houses on the opposite side, sleeping with
their green blinds down; and nobody passing but a few la-
bourers, carmen, or countrywomen in their veils and hand-
kerchiefs, hastening with bare feet, but never too fast to
forget a certain air of strut and stateliness. Dante, in one of
his love poems, praises his mistress for walking like a pea-
cock, nay even like a crane, strait above herself:—
Soave a guisa va di un bel pavone,
Sweetly she goes, like the bright peacock; strait
This is the common walk of Italian women, rich and poor.
The step of Madame Vestris(33) on the stage resembles it. To
an English eye at first it seems wanting in a certain modesty
and moral grace; but you see what the grave poet has to say
for it, and it is not associated in an Italian mind with any
such deficiency: that it has a beauty of its own is certain.
Solitary as Pisa may look at noon-day, it is only by com-
parison with what you find in very populous cities. Its deso-
late aspect is much exaggerated. The people, for the most
part, sit in shade at their doors in the hottest weather, so
[Page 117]
that it cannot look so solitary as many parts of London at
the same time of the year; and though it is true that grass
grows in some of the streets, it is only in the remotest. The
streets, for the most part, are kept very neat and clean, not
excepting the poorest alleys, a benefit arising not only from
the fine pavement which is every where to be found, but from
the wise use to which criminals are put. The punishment
of death is not kept up in Tuscany. Robbers, and even mur-
derers, are made to atone for the ill they have done by the
goods works of sweeping and keeping clean. A great mur-
derer on the English stage used formerly to have a regular
suit of brick-dust. In Tuscany, or at least in Pisa, robbers
are dressed in a red livery, and murderers in a yellow. A
stranger looks with a feeling more grave than curiosity at
these saffron-coloured mysteries, quietly doing their duty in
the open streets, and not seeming to avoid observation. But
they look just like other men. They are either too healthy
by temperance and exercise to exhibit a conscience, or think
they make up very well by their labour for so trifling an
ebullition of animal spirits. And they have a good deal to
say for themselves, considering their labour is in chains and
for life.
The inhabitants of Pisa in general are not reckoned a
favourable specimen of Tuscan looks. You are sure to
meet fine faces in any large assembly, but the common run
is certainly bad enough. They are hard, prematurely
aged, and what expression there is, is worldly. Some of
them have no expression whatever, but are as destitute of
speculation and feeling as masks. The bad Italian face and
the good Italian face are the extremes of insensibility and
the reverse. But it is rare that the eyes are not fine, and
the females have a profusion of good hair. Lady Morgan(34)
has justly remarked the promising countenances of Italian
I
[Page 118]
children, compared with what they turn out to be as they
grow older; and adds with equal justice, that it is an evident
affair of government and education. You doubly pity the
corruptions of a people, who besides their natural genius,
preserve in the very midst of their sophistication a frankness
distinct from it, and an entire freedom from affectation. An
Italian annoys you neither with his pride like an English-
man, nor with his vanity like a Frenchman. He is quiet
and natural, self-possessed without wrapping himself up
sulkily in a corner, and ready for cheerfulness without
grimace. His frankness sometimes takes the air of a sim-
plicity, at once singularly misplaced and touching. A
young man who exhibited a taste for all good and generous
sentiments, and who, according to the representation of his
friends, was a very worthy as well as ingenious person, did
not scruple to tell me one day, as a matter of course, that he
made a point of getting acquainted with the rich families,
purely to be invited to their houses and partake of their
good things. Many an Englishman would undoubtedly do
this, but he would hardly be so frank about it to a stranger;
nor would an Englishman of the same tastes in other
respects be easily found to act so. But it is the old story
of “following a multitude to do evil,” and is no doubt ac-
counted a mere matter of necessity and good sense.
The Pisans claim the merit of speaking as pure Italian,
if not purer, as any people in Tuscany; and there is a claim
among the poorer orders in this part of Italy, which has
been too hastily credited by foreigners, of speaking a lan-
guage quite as pure as the educated classes. It is certainly
not true, whatever may be claimed for their Tuscan as an-
cient or popular Tuscan. The Pisans in general also seem
to have corrupted their pronunciation, and the Florentines
too, if report is to be believed. They use a soft aspirate
[Page 119]
instead of the C, as if their language was not genteel and
tender enough already. Casa is hasa,—cuoco (a cook)
hoho,—locando, lohando,—cocomero, hohomero,—and even
crazie (a sort of coin) hrazie. But they speak well out, troll-
ing the words clearly over the tongue. There seems a good
deal of talent for music among them, which does not know
how to make its way. You never hear the poorest melody,
but somebody strikes in with what he can muster up of a
harmony. Boys go about of an evening, and parties sit at
their doors, singing popular airs, and hanging as long as
possible on the last chord. It is not an uncommon thing
for gentlemen to play their guitars as they go along to a
party. I heard one evening a voice singing past a window,
that would not have disgraced an opera; and I once walked
behind a common post-boy, who in default of having another
to help him to a harmony, contrived to make chords of all
his notes, by rapidly sounding the second and treble one
after the other. The whole people are bitten with a new
song, and hardly sing any thing else till the next: there
were two epidemic airs of this kind, when I was there, which
had been imported from Florence, and which the inhabitants
sung from morning till night, though they were nothing re-
markable. And yet Pisa is said to be the least fond of mu-
sic of any city in Tuscany.
I must not omit a great curiosity which is in the neigh-
bourhood of Pisa, towards the sea;—namely, the existence
of a race of camels, which was brought from the East during
the crusades. I have not seen them out of the city, though
the novelty of the sight in Europe, the sand of the sea-shore,
and the vessels that sometimes combine with the landscape
in the distance, are said to give it a look singularly Asiatic.
They are used for agricultural purposes, and may be some-
[Page 120]
times met within the walls. The forest between Pisa and
another part of the sea-shore, is extensive and woody.
Pisa is a tranquil, an imposing, and even now a beautiful
and stately city. It looks like the residence of an univer-
sity: many parts of it seem made up of colleges; and we
feel as if we ought to “walk gowned.”(35) It possesses the
Campo Santo, rich above earthly treasure; its river is the
river of Tuscan poetry, and furnished Michael Angelo with
the subject of his cartoon; and it disputes with Florence
the birth of Galileo.(36) Here at all events he studied and he
taught: here his mind was born, and another great impulse
given to the progress of philosophy and Liberal Opinion.
EDITORIAL NOTES
EDITORIAL NOTES
[1] Andrea Vaccà Berlinghieri (1772-1826), internationally renowned Italian surgeon, academic, and member of the Pisan Circle. He was the son of Francesco Vaccà Berlinghieri, a medical scholar and political figure, involved in the 1798-99 uprisings and the Republican Triennium in Pisa. After studying in Paris, Andrea’s brother, Leopoldo, became a Napoleonic officer and died while returning home. Thanks to his widow, Sophie Caudeiron, who animated the literary salon at Pisa’s Palazzo Lanfranchi, Andrea Vaccà met Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron.
[2] Prince Alexandros Mavrokordatos (1791-1865), an exile from Turkish rule in Greece who studied at Padua and gave Mary Shelley Greek lessons in exchange for English instruction in Pisa. He played a significant role in the struggle for Greek independence and in Byron’s decision to join the Greek Revolution.
[3] The last major poem that appeared in his lifetime, Shelley’s verse drama Hellas was written in 1821 in Pisa and published in 1822 in London. Dedicated to Prince Alexandros Mavrokordatos, it celebrated the Greek Revolution against Turkish rule.
[4] Count Vittorio Amedeo Alfieri (1749-1803), Italian tragic poet whose main theme was the overthrow of tyranny, precursor of the Risorgimento. Set in Pisa, his tragedy Don Garzia (Don Garcia) was first published in 1789.
[5] Count Ugolino della Gherardesca (c. 1214-89), Pisan nobleman, politician, and naval commander. He was accused of treason, imprisoned in a tower with his sons and grandsons, and rumoured to have eaten them in the face of starvation. The character of Ugolino features in Dante’s Divine Comedy (Inferno, XXXII-XXXIII).
[6] Dante’s account was retold by Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400) in “The Monk’s Tale” from The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400). The Monk relates seventeen tragedies based on the disastrous endings of a selection of biblical, classical, and contemporary figures, including Count Ugolino.
[7] Giovanni Villani (c. 1276-1348), Florentine banker, official, diplomat, and writer, author of the Nuova cronica (New Chronicles) on the history of Florence, in which the story of Count Ugolino was reported. After his death, Villani’s work on the Nuova cronica was continued by his brother Matteo and his nephew Filippo.
[8] Joseph Forsyth (1763-1815) was a Scottish writer on Italy, admired by Byron and Shelley. His Remarks on Antiquities, Arts, and Letters, during an Excursion in Italy in the Years 1802 and 1803 were published in London in 1813. Several later editions appeared in the following years.
[9] Henry Matthews (1789-1828), author of the travelogue The Diary of an Invalid: Being the Journal of a Tour in Pursuit of Health in Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, and France, in the Years 1817, 1818, and 1819 (1820).
[10] William of Innsbruck (Meister Wilhelm von Innsbruck), sculptor and architect active in Pisa in the twelfth century.
[11] Abraham Tucker (1705-74), English country gentleman, who devoted himself to the study of philosophy. He wrote his magnum opus The Light of Nature Pursued (1768-77), originally published in three volumes, under the pseudonym of Edward Search. An abridged edition by William Hazlitt appeared in 1807.
[12] Located in the heart of London’s West End, Stratford Place is a quiet cul-de-sac situated to the north of Oxford Street.
[13] Ubaldo Lanfranchi (d. 1207), consecrated Archbishop of Pisa in 1176. He participated in the Third Crusade. According to the legend, the sacred soil of Golgotha was spread on the ground where Pisa’s Campo Santo arose.
[14] Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-97), Italian Renaissance painter from Florence (a pupil of Fra Angelico). Mainly active in Tuscany, he also worked in Rome and Umbria.
[15] Francesco Algarotti (1712-64), Venetian polymath, philosopher, and art critic. In 1740 Frederick the Great (1712-86), King of Prussia, conferred on him the title of Count and later paid for the funeral monument to his memory in Pisa.
[16] Lorenzo Pignotti (1739-1812), physician, historian, poet, and writer, regarded by several critics as the best of the Italian fabulists. He taught Physics at the University of Pisa, where he later became Rector.
[17] Angelo Fabroni (1732-1803), Italian biographer, historian, and clergyman. Dean of the University of Pisa.
[18] Reference to John Taaffe (b. 1787/88), Irish writer and translator, companion of Shelley and Byron in Italy, where he died in 1862. He wrote A Comment on the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, published in London in 1822 by John Murray.
[19] Andrea di Cione di Arcangelo (c. 1308-68), known as Orcagna, was the most prominent Florentine painter, sculptor, and architect of the mid-fourteenth century. He was employed as architect in the Duomo of Florence.
[20] Simone Martini (1284-1344), exponent of Gothic painting born in Siena. Thought to be a pupil of Duccio di Buoninsegna, according to Giorgio Vasari, he was instead a pupil of Giotto di Bondone. Martini’s brother-in-law was the artist Lippo Memmi.
[21] Giotto di Bondone (1266/67-1337), Florentine painter and architect, regarded as the first of the great Italian masters. Probably the pupil of Cimabue, he decorated chapels and churches in Florence, Rome, Padua, Assisi, and Naples with frescoes and paintings.
[22] Buonamico di Martino, known as Buffalmacco (c. 1290-1340), Italian Renaissance painter who worked in Florence, Bologna, and Pisa. He is assumed to be the author of some spectacular frescoes located in the Campo Santo, including The Triumph of Death.
[23] Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), the greatest painter, printmaker, and theorist of the German Renaissance, whose work was highly regarded and influential across Europe.
[24] Reference to Theseus, the Duke of Athens, one of the main characters in “The Knight’s Tale”, the first story in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
[25] In Chaucer’s unfinished “The Squire’s Tale”, Cambuscan (possibly Genghis Khan) is the King of Sarra, in Tartary.
[26] See Chaucer, “The Knight’s Tale”.
[27] Tommaso di Giovanni di Simone Guidi (1401-28), known as Masaccio, was a famous Florentine artist. Despite his brief career, his work exerted a powerful influence on other painters and he is regarded as a pioneering figure of the Early Renaissance in Italy.
[28] Pietro Vannucci (c. 1446/52-1523), known as Perugino, was a Renaissance painter of the Umbrian school and the teacher of Raphael. His work anticipated the ideals of the High Renaissance.
[29] Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/90-1576), known as Titian, was the greatest Renaissance painter of the Venetian school. He is considered as an extraordinary master of colour.
[30] Giovanni Rosini (1776-1855), philologist, Professor of Italian Eloquence at the University of Pisa, writer, art historian, publisher, and cultural mediator. He was the first to publish Shelley’s pastoral elegy for John Keats Adonais (Pisa, July 1821).
[31] Misattribution. According to tradition, these poetic lines were wrongly attributed to Dante. In truth, the canzone “Io guardo i crespi e i biondi capelli” (Rime, III) was written by the fourteenth-century Italian poet Fazio degli Uberti. See Fazio degli Uberti, Rime, ed. by Cristiano Lorenzi (Pisa: ETS, 2013), pp. 308-312 (p. 311).
[32] English translation.
[33] Lucia Elizabeth Bartolozzi (1797-1856), known as Madame Vestris, was a British actress, opera singer, theatre producer, and manager. She had a profound influence on the development of stagecraft.
[34] Sydney Owenson (1781?-1859), known as Lady Morgan, was an Irish writer, mainly remembered for her controversial personality and work. Her continental travelogue Italy was published in 1821 and attacked by The Quarterly Review. Percy Shelley and Byron were among her supporters.
[35] See, for instance, Charles Lamb, Sonnet VIII, “Written at Cambridge” (1819).
[36] Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), Italian astronomer, physicist, natural philosopher, and mathematician born in Pisa, regarded as the father of modern science.
Ultimo aggiornamento
08.03.2025