Letters from Italy/Chapter 15

Now fall, O rain, water from heaven, and moisten my northern heart with refreshing coolness. For thus it is good for me to rest.

Wherever I roamed in this Italian land I sought with special solicitude for Etruscan monuments; for these Etrurian people rendered me somewhat uneasy. They were a squarebuilt people, with thick necks and eyes of oxen; they made black vases in a rather difficult form of speech, and wonderful tombs on which repose statues of the departed in sluggish postures. They were great fanatics for comfort and worthy folk; and it interested me that on the Christian tombs there returned this short, bull-necked type of square heads and thickset limbs. Thus Tuscany was a land sad and severe like perhaps Sicily of to-day; so now then here, with all the words which can be uttered to express something nice, delightful, grateful, enchanting, lovely, graceful, beautiful and agreeable. Burckhart says that Tuscany created early Renaissance, but I rather think that early Renaissance created Tuscany; blue and golden mountains in the background, in front hillocks fashioned so that ​on each should be a fort, a castle, or little citadel, slopes planted with cypress, pine groves, oak groves, acacia groves, garlands of grapes, juicy and bluish wreaths from the workshop of the Robbias, blue and green, wild and delicious little streams: after this manner painted Fra Angelico, Fra Lippi, Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Piero di Cosimo and all the rest, and believe me, they gave to this land this delicious, tender, and artistic plenitude and made of it a picture-book, so that we might turn over the leaves with enjoyment, smiles, and bright eyes . . . until struck by something different, Donatello, Masaccio, mysterious and gloomy, severe and profound humanity. Then the landscape has no more to say, but the man.

And still this pleasant Florentine Tuscany has for long and painfully struggled with all its neighbours: Aretino, Siena, Pisa, and thus I happily reached Pisa. Pisa is an entirely agreeable town; for many centuries it was a harbour, and that is why its evil odours remain to this day. Already at Palermo I meditated on the character and complexity of harbour odours; I think I have forgotten the important constituents, foul water, interiors of fish, burning smells, and the various mysteries of a southern kitchen, which I dare not approach closely. However, Pisa is generally known by its Leaning Tower: yes, and there is still another at San Niccola. The greatest glory and speciality of Pisa is its beautiful ​columnar architecture, a happy craze for light arcades, which cover the whole walls with their welcome rhythm; but not only internally can the Pisan folk never be satiated with large and small columns, but they have made five naves and above them galleries with arcades, all beautifully streaked and executed to the great delight of the eye. A still greater glory of Pisa is its sculpture, and I confess that Giovanni Pisano has enchanted me. Yield, my historical friends, the pre-eminence to Niccolo Pisano, for he has recalled to life the antique Muses; but I have inspected the passionate and crude Giovanni who reminds me of Donatello, Giovanni absorbed by human naturalness, its pain and terror. And if I want a rest from this passionate aspect I will go to Bonanni, sit down at the church doors and look at his sacred reliefs, so Christian and peaceful, like I know not what on earth. But so that none may say that I am obsessed with Christianity, I will confess something else: at Pisa, at San Stefano, there are Mussulman flags, trophies of war against the “heathen hounds.” Among them are three or four so wonderfully beautiful, that for the time I forgot half of the most glorious pictures which I had resolved never to forget.

There is also at Pisa a Campo Santo, a cemetery painted on all sides with old frescoes, beautiful and instructive. On one of these angel and demon souls emerge from the bodies of the dead; ​the souls are well nourished, really plump, and the mortal bodies must open their mouths terribly wide so that the souls can escape. And there is still more to see, but Giovanni Pisano has enchanted me most of all.