Letters from Italy/Chapter 14

I did not follow after St. Francis but after St. Giotto but at last I was embraced by the most graceful country and the cleanest and prettiest little towns. Aye, Bethlehem, thy name is Spello or Trevi—perhaps Spoleto or Narni? I say, blessed hillocks, that on each of you a deity would be delighted to be born. And I have not yet uttered the names of all, and do not even know how are called the villages and solitudes and little forts on the summits of rounded mountains. The Umbrian deity created a plain, so that on it should grow vineyards and poplars; knolls, so that on these should arise curling forests, cypresses and hermitages; and mountains, so that on them should arise towns with Etruscan bastions, little Gothic houses, and a vast Romano-Romanesque castle. The Umbrian deity had again a beautiful blue colour for the sky, and a still more lovely colour with which he painted distances and mountains. Therefore Umbria is so marvellously blue, the bluest of all lands.

Assisi—place of calm and heavenly blue! Verily it is a grand and holy saint’s day to behold how Giotto glorified St. Francis, how greatly he loved him for he painted of him masterpieces ​wise, delicious, endlessly gentle. Ah, beside these why was I enchanted by wild, grand Cimabue and when he enchanted me, why did he remain so mysteriously and insolubly wrapped in the mantle of ruin which has covered his wondrous frescoes? At San Francesco it was hard for me to struggle between clear Giotto and amazing Cimabue; but hardly had I reeled out of the shadow of a church when I was lost; absorbed in light; overpowered by blue; blinded, deafened by calm; bewitched by the view.

Imagine Bethlehem in midday glow; the very cubes of unplastered stones, little Gothic window arches, bow windows, arches from house to house, and between them the blue profundity of earth and sky. In the deep shadow of the alleys women sew or work bene merentes; it is all like Giotto’s pictures. The fourteenth century hovers over all: it is as clean as though the ground were swept with trailing robes and palm branches. Right and left, instead of streets there are steps with arches; and everywhere you see the divinity himself at the windows or directly below in the delightful Umbrian plain full of little trees, alleys, white cubes, and blue. And then quickly, quickly hasten away, so that a fleeting dream may stay which will not endure.

Whither have you fled? And then Perugia is a dream, an idea, a Bethlehem between blue sky and blue earth: Bethlehem but something greater, a little city of palaces and fortified ​houses, Etruscan gates and marvellous views. O God, the sunset behind the blue waves of mountains And how blinded is the wanderer, when he makes the pilgrimage to Duccio’s graceful oratorium! You have not loved Perugino nor Pinturicchio, their grace has tasted too sweet and dreamy for you; now you see, this is just the sweetness of this peaceful, unheroic landscape, this delightful hilly country, the greenest and most azure of all Italy, these rounded and tender hillocks. There were Umbrians and you are some other, and your country is heavier, but just think of your land: heavens, the world is beautiful in a thousand ways, but a special charm attaches to this Umbrian land. Receive its favours, and now proceed farther.

But I must now halt at Arezzo, in order to enjoy the pleasant and severe Piero della Francesca in his frescoes. I say that here is a worldly spirit, but full of noble restraint: but his fighting shield-bearers strike you with an expression of calm and severe melancholy. Still, his Queen of Sheba with her ladies, his Madonna with the angel, are fine, modest chatelaines of high and pale brows, delicate and graceful movements and wonderful sublimity: a kind of tender anxiety surrounds these severe, almost arid masterpieces especially dear to me.

And now in order to compensate me for my visit to the terrific burning heat of this sunshine foreboding a storm, Arezzo showed a few more ​churches almost untouched by the terrible wave of Catholic Baroque, and its antique Aretino speciality in the little museum: very immoral little pictures crowded inside yellowish vessels. For what purpose these existed I cannot tell. But even to-day the girls are pretty and have eyes like lizards.