Part 6 (1/2)

I cannot tell you anything definite of the two other frescos--for I can only exain with one till I have done with another; and I had to leave Florence without looking at these--even so far as to be quite sure of their subjects The central one on the left is either the twelfth subject of assisi--St Francis in Ecstacy; [Footnote: ”Represented” (next to St Francis before the Soldan, at assisi) ”as seen one night by the brethren, praying, elevated froround, his hands extended like the cross, and surrounded by a shi+ning cloud”--_Lord Lindsay_] or the eighteenth, the Apparition of St Francis at Arles; [Footnote: ”St Anthony of Padua was preaching at a general chapter of the order, held at Arles, in 1224, when St

Francis appeared in the midst, his arms extended, and in an attitude of benediction”--_Lord Lindsay_] while the lowest on the right may admit choice between two subjects in each half of it:of them would be--that they are the twenty-first and twenty-fifth subjects of assisi, the Dying Friar [Footnote: ”A brother of the order, lying on his deathbed, saw the spirit of St Francis rising to heaven, and springing forward, cried, 'Tarry, Father, I come with thee!' and fell back dead”--_Lord Lindsay_] and Vision of Pope Gregory IX; [Footnote: ”He hesitated, before canonizing St Francis; doubting the celestial infliction of the stigmata St Francis appeared to hi his unbelief, opened his robe, and, exposing the wound in his side, filled a vial with the blood that flowed froave it to the Pope, oke and found it in his hand”--_Lord Lindsay_] but Crowe and Cavalcasella ht in their different interpretation; [Footnote: ”As St Francis was carried on his bed of sickness to St Maria degli Angeli, he stopped at an hospital on the roadside, and ordering his attendants to turn his head in the direction of assisi, he rose in his litter and said, 'Blessed be thou a to thee, oh holy place, for by thee shallsaid this, he lay down and was carried on to St Maria degli Angeli On the evening of the 4th of October his death was revealed at the very hour to the bishop of assisi on Mount Sarzana”--_Crowe and Cavalcasella_] in any case, the ed, as I have given it above

THE FOURTH MORNING

THE VAULTED BOOK

As early as , let us look for ato say, entering by one of the side doors of the aisles;--but we can't do anything else, which perhapsspecially of it There are no transept doors; and one never wanders round to the desolate front Fro you to the middle of the nave, and to the point opposite the middle of the third arch from the west end; where you will find yourself--if well in the reen porphyry, which rave of the bishop Zenobius The larger inscription, on the wide circle of the floor outside of you, records the translation of his body; the smaller one round the stone at your feet--”quiescimus, domum hanc quum adimus ultimam”--is a painful truth, I suppose, to travellers like us, who never rest anywhere now, if we can help it

Resting here, at any rate, for a fewof the compart whatever in it worth looking at Nevertheless, look a little longer

But the longer you look, the less you will understand why I tell you to look It is nothing but a ashed ceiling: vaulted indeed,--but so is arret , for that matter Indeed, now that you have looked steadily for a minute or so, and are used to the form of the arch, it see of a good-sized lu attained to this modest conception of it, carry your eyes back to the similar vault of the second compartment, nearer you Very little further contemplation will reduce that also to the si to bear, if possible--for it is worth while,--the craht up to the third vault, over your head; which, if not, in the said quarter of a arret, will at least sink, like the two others, into the senitude or lance quickly down from it to the floor, and round at the space, (included between the four pillars), which that vault covers It is sixty feet square,[Footnote: Approxi I could find the dimensions of the duomo anywhere, I only paced it lish measurements of it]--four hundred square yards of paveain more than once or twice, before you can convince yourself that theroof is swept indeed over all that twelfth part of an acre And still less, if I mistake not, will you, without slow proof, believe, when you turn yourself round towards the east end, that the narrow niche (it really looks scarcely more than a niche) which occupies, beyond the dome, the position of our northern choirs, is indeed the unnarrowed elongation of the nave, whose breadth extends round you like a frozen lake From which experiments and comparisons, your conclusion, I think, will be, and I aenuity could not produce a design for the interior of a building which should more coe of itsarrived at this, I assure you, quite securely tenable conclusion, ill quit the cathedral by the western door, for once, and as quickly as we can walk, return to the Green cloister of Sta Maria Novella; and place ourselves on the south side of it, so as to see as much as we can of the entrance, on the opposite side, to the so-called 'Spanish Chapel'

There is, indeed, within the opposite cloister, an arch of entrance, plain enough But no chapel, whatever, externally able, or dos--only ts with traceries opening into the cloister; and one story of inconspicuous building above You can't conceive there should be any effect of _nitude_ produced in the interior, however it has been vaulted or decorated It e

Entering it, nevertheless, you will be surprised at the effect of height, and disposed to fancy that the circularcannot surely be the saain, radually, as you let the eye follow the sweep of the vaulting arches, from the small central keystone-boss, with the Laonal pillars at the angles,--there will form itself in your mind, I think, soreat daring in the builder; and at last, after closely following out the lines of a fresco or two, and looking up and up again to the coloured vaults, it will becorandest places you ever entered, roofed without a central pillar You will begin to wonder that hunificent

But just go out again into the cloister, and recover knowledge of the facts It is nothing like so large as the blank arch which at hoin-shop under the last raile made to carry coals to Newcastle And if you pace the floor it covers, you will find it is three feet less one way, and thirty feet less the other, than that single square of the Cathedral which was roofed like a tailor's loft,--accurately, for I did measure here, myself, the floor of the Spanish chapel is fifty-seven feet by thirty-two

I hope, after this experience, that you will need no farther conviction of the first law of noble building, that grandeur depends on proportion and design--not, except in a quite secondary degree, on e, some definite value; and so has ht to be, at first, by St Peter's, in the end you will feel its size,--and its brightness These are all you _can_ feel in it--it is nothing er;--but the bigness tells at last: and Corinthian pillars whose capitals alone are ten feet high, and their acanthus leaves, three feet six long, give you a serious conviction of the infallibility of the Pope, and the fallibility of the wretched Corinthians, who invented the style indeed, but built with capitals no bigger than hand-baskets

Vastness _has_ thus its value But the glory of architecture is to be--whatever you wish it to be,--lovely, or grand, or comfortable,--on such terms as it can easily obtain Grand, by proportion--lovely, by ienuity--secure, by honesty: with such ive it

Grand--by proportion, I said; but ought to have said by _dis_proportion

Beauty is given by the relation of parts--size, by their co the impression of size in this chapel is the _dis_proportion between pillar and arch You take the pillar for granted,--it is thick, strong, and fairly high above your head You look to the vault springing froreat, but more subtle secret is in the _in_equality and i of the forin, the room, I said, is fifty-seven feet wide, and only thirty-two deep It is thus nearly one-third larger in the direction across the line of entrance, which gives to every arch, pointed and round, throughout the roof, a different spring fro ribs have the simplest of all profiles--that of a chamfered beam I call it si you cheaply get your chamfer, and nobody cares whether the level is alike on each side: but you et a square And it is the same with stone

And this profile is--fix the conditions of it, therefore, in your in of all Gothic tracery-s; venerable in the history of the Christian Church as that of the roof ribs, both of the lower church of assisi, bearing the scroll of the precepts of St Francis, and here at Florence, bearing the scroll of the faith of St Dominic If you cut it out in paper, and cut the corners off farther and farther, at every cut, you will produce a sharper profile of rib, connected in architectural use with differently treated styles But the entirely venerable forle of the beam is merely, as it were, secured and coe

Well, the vaulting ribs, as in Giotto's vault, then, have here, under their painting, this rude profile: but do not suppose the vaults are simply the shells cast over them Look how the ornamental borders fall on the capitals! The plaster receives all sorts of indescribably acco his design upon it as it happens to be convenient You can't rasp,--except one sirasp, if it is interested and intelligent: namely, that the room has four sides with four tales told upon them; and the roof four quarters, with another four tales told on those And each history in the sides has its correspondent history in the roof Generally, in good Italian decoration, the roof represents constant, or essential facts; the walls, consecutive histories arising out of the up to them Thus here, the roof represents in front of you, in its main quarter, the Resurrection--the cardinal fact of Christianity; opposite (above, behind you), the Ascension; on your left hand, the descent of the Holy Spirit; on your right, Christ's perpetual presence with His Church, symbolized by His appearance on the Sea of Galilee to the disciples in the storm

The correspondent walls represent: under the first quarter, (the Resurrection), the story of the Crucifixion; under the second quarter, (the Ascension), the preaching after that departure, that Christ will return--symbolized here in the Dominican church by the consecration of St Dominic; under the third quarter, (the descent of the Holy Spirit), the disciplining power of human virtue and wisdom; under the fourth quarter, (St Peter's shi+p), the authority and government of the State and Church

The order of these subjects, chosen by the Dominican monks themselves, was sufficiently comprehensive to leave boundless room for the invention of the painter The execution of it was first intrusted to Taddeo Gaddi, the best architectural master of Giotto's school, who painted the four quarters of the roof entirely, but with no great brilliancy of invention, and was beginning to go down one of the sides, when, luckily, a er brain, his friend, came from Siena Taddeo thankfully yielded the room to him; he joined his oork to that of his less able friend in an exquisitely pretty and coth into it, not coradually and helpfully When, however, he had once got himself well joined, and softly, to the more simple work, he put his own force on with a will and produced the most noble piece of pictorial philosophy [Footnote: There is no philosophy _taught_ either by the school of Athens or Michael Angelo's 'Last Judge of authorities, the effects of such authority not being shown] and divinity existing in Italy

This pretty, and, according to all evidence by me attainable, entirely true, tradition has been all but lost, a the ruins of fair old Florence, by the industry ofunder the pri good work fro a hts, would be in any case sorrowfully at the mercy of mistakes in a document; but are tenfolda received idea, if they can