CORRESPONDENCE.
SANTA FINA OF SAN GIMIGNIANO DELLE BELLE TORRI.
CRADLED among the stern towers and fortresses of San Gimigniano, the "San Gimigniano delle Belle Torn" of former days, in the heart of the solitary Tuscan mountain- ranges near Siena, is still to be found the shrine of the little damsel Saint, Santa Fine, who lived her short fifteen years more than six hundred years ago, but who still presides as the good genius of these heights. Grim and forsaken look the many towers rising round her shrine ; dead and forgotten are the ambitions, the pride, and the emulous passions of the great families who raised them, when each noble family vied with the other, and tried by the greater height of its tower to assert and make visible its supremacy over its neighbour, till at last a law had to be passed limiting the height to which any private individual might build a tower,—all this is dead and of the
Test. But in the Collegiate, otherwise the Cathedral, still burns the lamp upon the altar in Santa Fina's chapel; and stall on its walls, by the hand of the great Ghirlandaio, that "sober, restrained, not to say matter-of-fact, painter of spiritual matters, fresh and well-preserved as if painted but yesterday, are the records of the two miracles which are said to have happened in connection with her death. But her short life of ffteen years had been lived, her virtues and her sufferings 'had been recognised, before any miracle concerning her was recorded. The Church canonised her for her virtues, and 'the miracles were added thereto in order to accentuate these virtues to the popular mind. The miracles are the subjects of the frescoes, the pictorial ornament of her short 'life's history; but little Santa Fina is still alive among the ruined medieeval fortresses and towers by reason of what must ever live and be of value to the world as long as there is suffering and want, as long as we have all to realise that none • of us can stand alone or be independent of our fellow-creatures when we are stricken with care, sorrow, or sickness, Santa Fina was of noble birth, though poor. She was afflicted with a disease of the spine, and was opposed by her mother in 'carrying out her good deeds. One of the frescoes in a church in San Gimigniano represents this lady being tripped-up by a rather grotesque, undignified-looking devil, and thrown downstairs on account of this opposition. Santa Fina died at the age of fifteen ; nevertheless, six hundred years after her death, the story is still told of her helpfulness and charity to the poor and needy, andof the beautiful example she gave of resigna- tion and courage. "Her chapel exists," as Mrs. Jameson says, as the glorification of feminine patience, fortitude, and 'charity ; " and a pilgrimage to it is, in every way, one of the most interesting that can be made, either from Florence or from Siena.
What Rothenburg is in Bavaria, San Gimigniano is in Tuscany, both typical, unspoilt, medieeval, strongly fortressed 'towns, too much out of the line of the ordinary nineteenth- century-world traffic to have been yet converted by modern -civilisation to its special wants ; both, however, containing treasures for the artist, and every year becoming better known to those who deplore most the disfigurements which modern life entails on the beautiful work of the past. A railway now goes to Rothenburg, and the many thousand pilgrims who visit the "Bavarian Mecca," as Bayreuth has been called, find 'it little out of their way to stop there. There is no railway to`San Gimigniano ; but the fact that, though it is far and rather difficult of access for one day's excursion, the Queen of England made an expedition to it from Florence this year, will probably be a sufficient incitement to lead many to make a similar effort. The Queen went by special train from Florence to Poggi Bonsi, the nearest station to San Gimig- niano on the line to Siena, and drove the six miles up to the town. But a more interesting way of reaching it, is to drive by !road the whole way from Siena. This is a drive of twenty-three miles through a country which, though a contrast to the gay and sunny Italy the traveller leaves as he diverges southwards from the junction at Empoli, is most impressive and interest- ing. It is not exactly a sad-looking country, but it is for the most part grave and serious. Coming straight from Florence —radiant, joyous Florence, lying like a beautiful shell in the lap of her Val d'Arno, her marbles gleaming opal-like, pink and golden, through the sunshine, her bowers and her loggias 'in this spring-time festooned with countless garlands of the maize-coloured banksia rose, and the pale amethyst clusters ,of drooping, sweet-scented glyccene ; her happy slopes and b.neY Plain enclosed high up in the sky-distance by bril- liant. snow-lit Apennines and shining Carrara peaks— coming with all this. fresh in the eye, the country you dri:re. through between Siena and San Gimigniano is of strikingly grave and serious aspect, almost solemn in its sense of solitude, its depth of colour, its grandeur of outline. All the most fiery siennas, all the fullest red and purple madders of the artist's colour-box could not exaggerate the fervent, warm tones of the soil, blue-grey rocks peeping out here and there, and clusters of the pale sad-green bells of the hellebore increasing by contrast the full richness of its colour. The country seems very scantily populated ; you drive many miles and see but very few domiciles of any kind ; and very few peasants are to be met with on the road. Labour is cheap in Tuscany. One woman was to be seen whose work that day was apparently to take charge of three sheep ; and farther on,
a man's sole duty seemed to be to preside over the well-being of two pigs. Whether the pig was cold or the man was hot was undetermined; but one of the pigs was carrying the man's coat about the road like a saddle, the arms hanging down on each side as stirrups. Now and then on the hill-side is massed a group of ilex-trees and stone-pines, the white corner of a villa peeping out from among them, supported by a deep-shadowed archway below. Further on, a solemn avenue of cypresses creeps up the edge of a hill, each tree rising black, like a finger of death pointing upwards, and leading to the wall of a convent or monastery perched on the summit of the hill. Pine-trees cover some of the higher ranges, and the road at times passes through woods of deciduous trees. Strange to say, these are as bare of leaf at the end of April as our English trees would be in January, though further on you come upon hedges fragrant with flowering honeysuckle and weighed down with white hawthorn-blossom, and corn risen 2 ft. from the ground,—contemporaries in England of full foliage on our forest-trees. After eight orten miles' journeying, the foreground of the views you see as you drive along dons a gayer, more culti- vated aspect. The rugged sternness of its wild ranges falls back and retires into the middle distanee, allowing a brighter, more prosperous.looking foreground to border the road. The nearer slopes become lightened by the greeny-grey foliage of the olive-trees which drapes round their dark, twisted branches and stems like a silvery gauze, hanging misty, like clouds, above the verdant vividness of the bright young corn, splashed here and there by the scarlet flame of a poppy. A field of sainfoin, another of Russian clover, pink and carmine, and patches of the bright-blue salvia, fill the road-side with bright colour. Further on, a light azure veil, lying in a fold of the hill, attracts our eye and puzzles us. It is bluer than any shadow, yet it is so light, it seems to float on the earth like a bit of the bluest sky come down from above to soften the strong, rough vigour of the earth. Presently it is explained by the appearance of a field of flax by the side of the road,—a sheet of fairylike little delicate blue blossoms, a fitting emblem of the sweet girl-saint whose spirit still reigns as the presiding angel among the rugged fortresses and mediceval towers of stern San Gimigniano. These said towers are to be seen long before they are reached, high up against the sky, looking mysterious and remote like a giant's dwelling in a fairy-tale. Then they are lost again, and you drive on and up round the hills, the ascent getting steeper and steeper till you find you are creeping up the aide of the fortressed hill itself, under the walls and piles of high towers, till you mount to gates of the town, 1,260 ft. above the sea, and pass through a deep archway into the streets. These are narrow, and paved with large flat stones, the houses on either side full of incidents of interesting architecture. There is much to be seen. The famous towers, now only thirteen in number, seen as you stand close under their squared walls, rise with impressive strength up into the sky, the tallest being the Torre del Commune, 175 ft., and the most noticeable the twin towers, Torn i clegli Ardinghelli, built in the thirteenth century by the Ardinghelli family. The walls inside the churches are covered with frescoes of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the Church of St. Augustin is a series covering the high walls of the choir, by Benozzo Gozzoli, a series only second in interest and beauty to those of the Ricardi Palace in Florence. They depict the life and doings of St. Augustin; and the commission to paint them was given to Benozzo Gozzoli by one Maestro Parigina Domenico Strambi, who had travelled to Paris, and was in- cited by what he had seen to beautify his native town by this art. In the same church is a most beautiful example of the work of Benedetto da Majano in an altar and tomb. He it was who also sculptured the shrine in which rest the bones of Santa Fina and the beautiful altar in her chapel. These face you as you enter it from the aisle of the Collegiate. It is needless to add that the work of this shrine and altar is lovely and refined, showing the peculiar qualities of restrained beauty which belonged to the best period of Italian sculpture, for when did the work by the hand of Majano show other than all this P The two walls at right angles to the altar are painted in fresco by the great Domenico Ghirlandaio, Michael Angelo's master, and are, if not quite the finest, certainly among the finest, of his works. Here, indeed, is realistic art of the right kind,—so like nature that even the miracles it depicts look quite natural ; nevertheless pervaded by an
atmosphere of beauty, of serenity by a dignity, a distinction, which makes such art a truly fitting language in which to describe what happened to so rare a maiden. One of these designs represents Santa Finn lying on a low bed in nor simple room, a nurse sitting on either side of her pillow, her hands together as in devotion, her eyes raised to the vision of St. Gregory surrounded by winged cherub-heads, who is announcing to her her approaching death. This vision has passed into the little chamber by an open door, through which, and likewise through the window near her head, comes a breath of sweet country air and landscape. In the lunette above this scene, two beautiful figures of flying angels hold up on clouds a half-length profile portrait of Santa Fina released . from her cross, standing upright with folded hands, as if in presence of her Lord. The design painted in fresco on the opposite wall is even more beautiful. It represents the moment when Santa Fina, after death, is lying before the altar, the Bishop at her head reading the burial service, a young acolyte at her feet holding up a crucifix, a crowd of men and acolytes surrounding them ; and when, as the old nurse, who tended her through her sufferings, knelt down beside her, she opened her eyes, raised her head, and took one of her nurse's hands between her own. In Ghirlandaio's picture, a sobbing child is pressing one of her little feet, stiff with death, to his lips. Exquisitely beautiful and full of nature and expression are the faces and attitudes of the figures of those around, the girl-saint herself por- trayed with pathetic simplicity and sense of reality. No realistic painting of to-day ever looked more real, however commonplace and flippant the subject. And yet, what is it that divides such art in all that touches the highest sensi- bilities, by an immeasurable distance from the modern school of realism 1' Were people better in those days P Or are we less able to explain in art our better side ? Why does good- ness such as Santa Fina's no longer appeal to our artists as the highest beauty. Goodness there is in abundance, but where is the art that interprets it? We turn from these great works of Ghirlandaio with the conviction that he succeeded in creating a rare and holy impression by his work, because he placed his genius in a devout spirit on the shrine of the saintly goodness of this child. Every touch seems to emanate from devotional feeling. Modern art prostrates! itself before its own cleverness, and we have to relearn that intellect is but a halfway-house in the steep ascent humanity has to make in order to reach the height its nature is capable of reaching. The genius of goodness is, after all, the force in human nature which has had the greatest power in influencing humanity; that faith- fulness to the highest instincts given to poor mortals, which, in the spirit of the most distinguished and the finest-grained human beings, ever growing, ever radiating, becomes a passion of loving unselfishness which blossoms out for the good of all the world ; and this passion it was that inspired Ghirlandaio's genius, when he painted so beautifully these records of Santa Fina.
Turning out of the church enriched by such treasures, and taking a pathway behind it, a podere of olive-trees and corn is reached, whence you are led through a doorway into a garden. , Your path is edged by a thick border of blade-like iris leaves and tall spikes of their purple and lilac blossoms. 'You pass a well, alarming-looking from its depth and size, hung over by vines and apple-blossom, and mount a narrow staircase in the fortress wall which encloses the garden, to the top of a guard-tower, whence you are shown the show view of San Gimigniano. And wonderful it certainly is,- mountain-ranges grand and grave encircle it in one vast amphitheatre, gleams of sunshine flit across the valleys between ; but the lines rising against the horizon are all shadowed in solemn russet and purple. Even San Gimig- niano, its fortressed walls and its massive towers, look small beside the great hills heaving around them and stretching away to the sky-line. Still, as we look round us—miles and miles into the distance—it is the little girl-saint who dominates the scene in the imagination. Modern scepticism may suggest that perhaps she is altogether a myth, an invention, and that, at all events, it is certain that the scenes from her life and death painted by the great Ghirlandaio must, as far as portraiture goes, be unauthentic, seeing that they were painted two hundred years after her death ;—run it to ground in whatever direction modern cynicism or dogmatic agnoticism suggests, the beauty of the strong impression Santa Fina can produce will ever irmain the best result of the long excursion to San Gimig- Alan° delle Belle Torn.
Previous page
