Part 3 (1/2)
CHAPTER V
STUDY IN FLORENCE
Italy once ain the old palazzo at Albaro and the old friends surrounding us! My work never relaxed, for I set up a little studio and went in for life-size heads, and got more and more facility with the brush The kindly peasants letfriends and had professional reatly enjoyed autulish Colony, the private theatricals, the concerts at Villa Novello--all those things did ood The childish carnival revels had still power over rown up, and, to tell the truth, I got all the fun out of them that was possible within bounds ”The Red Cross Sketch Book,” which I filled with illustrations of our journey out and of life at Genoa, I dedicated to the club and sent to them e left for Florence
We found Genoa just as we had left it, still the brilliantly picturesque city of the sea, its populace brightly clad in their Ligurian national dress, the wo the pezzotto, and the htful with oriental character, its shouting muleteers and _facchini_, its fruit and flower sellers in the narrow streets and entrances to the palaces--all the old local colour Alas! I was there only the other day, and found all the local charone--modernised away!
When we left Genoa in April et a _vetturino_ to take us as far as Pisa by road on our way to Florence, for auld lang syne, but Antonio--he who used to drive us into Genoa in the old days--said that was now inore_!”--but he would take us as far as Spezzia So, to our delight, ere able once more to experience the pleasures of the road and avoid that truly horrible series of suffocating tunnels that tries us so much on that portion of the coastline At Sestri Levante I wrote: ”I sit down at this pleasant hotel, with the silent sea gliht before me outside the open , to note down our journey thus far The day has been truly glorious, the sea without even the thinnest ri the coast, and such exquisite combinations of clouds
We left Villa Quartara at ten, with Madame Vittorina and the servants in tears Majolina coood horses, but for the Bracco Pass we shall have an extra one
There is no way of travelling like this, in an open carriage; it is so placid; there is no hurrying to catch trains and struggling in crowds, no waiting in dismal _salles d'attente_ And then coh the principal streets, perhaps through a city gate, the horse's hoofs clattering and the whip cracking sous pass, to sneaking into a station, one of which is just like the other, which hasn't the slightest _couleur locale_ about it, and is sure to have unsightly surroundings
”Aentwas ravishi+ng, aswhat a perfect day it was and that this is the loveliest season of the year We dined at dear old Ruta, where also the horses had a good rest and where I was able to sketch so down From Ruta to Sestri I rode by Majolina on the box, by far the best position of all, and didn't I enjoy it! The horses'
bells jingled so cheerily and those three sturdy horses took us along so well Rapallo and Chiavari! Dear old friends, what delicious picturesqueness they had, what lovely approaches to them by roads bordered with trees! The vieere siem
Why don't water-colour painters co the mountains had at sunset, and I had only a pencil and wretched little sketch book
”_Spezzia, April 28th, 1869_--A repetition of yesterday in point of weather I feel as though I had been steeped all day in soold, purple, and blue I have a titianesque feeling hovering about h and the faces of the people who are working in the patches of cultivation under the mulberries and vines, and that intense, deep blue sky withover it We exclaimed as much at the beauty of the woreen of the budding mulberries and poplars And the ures and handsome faces, such healthy colour! We left the hotel at Sestri, with its avenue of orange trees in flower, at ten o'clock, and, of course, crossed the Bracco to-day We dined at a little place called Bogliasco, in whose street, under our s, handsoame of ball which called forth fine action I did not know at first whether to look well at them all or sketch theular drawing of the group from the sketch I took and from memory We stopped at the top of the hill, fro beloith its beautiful bay and the Carara Mountains beyond Here ends our drive, for to-morroe take the train for Florence
”_Florence, April 29th_--Magnificent, cloudless weather But, oh! what a weariso fro at each such a tie and couldn't even have lovely things to look at, surrounded by the usual railway eyesores We passed close by the Pisan Ca Tower and the Duoet into the train for Florence, having, of course, to carry all our s in Italy is odious It was very lovely to see Florence in the distance, with those domes and towers I knoell by heart from pictures, but ere very li taken all our enthusias as we arrived struck us as small, and I am still so dazzled by the splendour of Genoa that rey and white tones of this quiet-coloured little city I must _Florentine_ ' Arno, and char and see the river below and the doainst the clear sky with, further off, the hills with their convents (alas! ereater contrast to Genoa could be than Florence in every way Oh! in (and finish) ular picture _April 30th_--I and Papa strolled about the streets to get a general ientile_,'
and looked into the Duomo, which is indeed bare and sad-coloured inside except in its delicious painted s over the altars, the harmonious richness of which I should think could not be exceeded by any earthly ay and cheerful, but some of the marble has browned itself into an appearance of wood Oh! dear Giotto's Tower, could elegance go beyond this? Is not this an example of the complete _savoir faire_ of those true-born artists of old? And the 'Gates of Paradise'! The delight of seeing these froelo's enthusiastic exclamation in their praise rather makes one smile, for we know that it must have been in adates are by no ates, and the bronze is rather dark for an entrance into Paradise! I reverently saluted the Palazzo Vecchio, and aet very much attached to the brown stone of Florence in time
”_Villa Laood spell at the Uffizi in the , and in the afternoon we took possession of this pleasing house, which is so cool and has far-spreading views, one of Florence froarden and vineyards sloping down to the valley where Brunelleschi's brown dome shows above the olives”
[Illustration: IN FLORENCE DURING MY STUDIES IN /69]
Our mother did many lovely water colours, one especially exquisite one of Fiesole seen in a shi+' Arno, to which Shelley's line
”The purple noon's transparent ht”
could justly be applied, are treasured by me She understood sunshi+ne and how to paint it
”_May 3rd_--I already feel Florence growing upon lish people of culture and taste get for this round one treads on is all historic, but it is in the artistic side of its history that I naturally feel the greatest interest, and it is a delightful thing to go about those streets and be rereat Painters, Architects, Sculptors I have read so lorious ros carved by Michael Angelo, there soenius I think the style of architecture of the Strozzi Palace, the Ricardi, and others, is perfection in its way, though at first, with the brilliant whites, yellows and pinks of Genoa still in my eye, I felt rather depressed by the unifore stones of which they are built No wonder I haunt the well-known gallery which runs over the Ponte Vecchio, lined with the sketches, studies, and first thoughts of hts almost more in these than inone reat dead, and make one familiar with their methods of work One sees what little slips they ain, before finally fixing their choice Very encouraging to the struggling beginner to see these evidences of their troubles!
”I have never, before I came here where so many of them have lived, realised the old masters as our comrades; I have never been so near them and felt them to be mortals exactly like ourselves This city and its environs are so little changed, the greater part of theelesque days that one feels brought quite close to the old painters, seeing what they saw and walking on the very sa the houses where they lived, and so forth”
I was at that tireat picture,” to be taken fro to his death between the two brothers:
So the two brothers and their murdered man Rode past fair Florence,
but, fortunately, I resolved instead to put in further training before attacking such a canvas, and I becareat colourist, Giuseppe Bellucci On alternate days to those spent in his studio I copied in careful pencil soures in Andrea del Sarto's frescoes in the cloisters of the SS Annunziata
The heat was so great that, as it became more intense, I had to be at Bellucci's, in the Via Santa Reparata, at eight o'clock instead of 830, getting there in the co, after a salutary walk into Florence, acco at liberty to walk alone What heat! The sound of the ceaseless hiss of the _cicale_ gave one the i _frizzled_ by the sun I record the appearance ofrest could one have, after the heat and work of the day, than by a stroll through the vineyards in the early night escorted by these little creatures with their golden lamps?
The cloisters were always cool, and I enjoyed my lonely hours there, but the Bellucci studio became at last too ested a rest, an to doze over my work at last, and theinstreet outside, and hear the fretful sta of some tethered mule teased with the flies The very Members of Parliament in the Palazzo Vecchio had departed out of the is considered, I allowed Bellucci to persuade me to take a littlepart of July and August That little month of rest was very nice I did a water colour of the white oxen ploughing in our _podere_; I helped (?) the _contadini_ to cut the wheat with h the elaborate process of threshi+ng, enlivened with that rough innocent roroups in moveh ideas of religion, si, honour I can't say I feel the same towards his _betters_ (?) in the Italian social scale