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down the middle of the hillside path, through a succession of stone basins, and between a number of stone animals, who are sprinkled with its spray, and so we reach an upper garden before the fairy-like casino which was also built by Vignola. Here the turfy solitudes are encircled with a concourse of decaying stone figures, in every variety of attitude, a petrified population. Some are standing quietly gazing down upon us, others are playing upon different musical instruments, others are listening. Two Dryads are whispering important secrets to one another in a corner; one impertinent Faun is blowing his horn so loudly into his companion's ears, that he stops them with both his hands. A nymph is about to step down from her pedestal, and will probably take a bath as soon as we are gone, though certainly she need not be shy, as drapery is not much the fashion in these sylvan gardens. Above, behind the Casino, is yet another water-sparkling staircase guarded by a vast number of huge lions and griffins, and beyond this all is tangled wood, and rocky mountain-side. How we pity the ex-King and Queen of Naples, the actual possessors, but who can never come here now. Gazing through the stony crowd across the green glades to the rosy-hued mountains, one dreads the return to a world where Fauns and Dryads are still supposed to be mythical, and which has never known Caprarola.

The vases of glazed pottery carried on their heads by the women here, are remarkably decorative in both design and colour. But one is taxed for them on reaching the Dogana at Rome.

The Church of S. Maria with a Carmelite convent, contains a S. Antonio by Paolo Veronese, and a S. Silvestro by Guido.

CHAPTER XXIII

VITERBO AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD.

(Trastevere Station, Roma-Viterbo, via Bracciano. Albergo dell' Angelo, Grandoro, Tre Re: all rough; but they have satisfactory Restaurants.)

ON descending the Ciminian Hill toward Viterbo, one overlooks

the great plain of Etruria, once crowded with the populous cities of that gloomy and debauched nation, but now deserted and desolate. It is a deeply interesting historical view, second only to that on the other side of the hill.

'With what pride must an Etruscan have regarded this scene two thousand five hundred years since. The numerous cities in the plain were so many trophies of the power and civilisation of his nation. There stood Volsinii, renowned for her wealth and arts, on the shores of her crater-lake-there Tuscania reared her towers in the west-there Vulci shone out from the plain, and Cosa from the mountain-and there Tarquinii, chief of all, asserted her metropolitan supremacy from her cliff-bound heights. Nearer still, his eye must have rested on city after city, some in the plain, and others at the foot of the slope beneath him; while the mountains in the horizon must have carried his thoughts to the glories of Clusium, Perusia, Cortona, Vetulonia, Volaterrae, and other cities of the great Etruscan Confederation. How changed is now the scene! Save Tuscania, which still retains her site, all within view are now desolate. Tarquinii has left scarce a vestige of her greatness on the grass-grown heights she once occupied; the very site of Volsinii is forgotten; silence has long reigned in the crumbling theatre of Ferentum; the plough yearly furrows the bosom of Vulci; the fox, the owl, and the bat, are the sole tenants of the vaults within the ruined walls of Cosa; and of the rest, the greater part have neither building, habitant, nor namenothing but the sepulchres around them to prove they ever had an existence.' -Dennis, 'Cities of Etruria.'

The sun was near setting and the distant hills were of deep plumcolour, as we drove down the long descent of the Ciminian forest, and entered Viterbo. Over the gate the figure of Santa Rosa holding her crucifix stood out grey against an opal sky. Viterbo, which the old chroniclers called the city of beautiful fountains and beautiful women,' is now rightly known as 'the Nuremberg of Italy. Every street is a study. Such wonderful old houses, with sculptured cornices, Gothic windows, and heavy outside staircases resting on huge corbels! Such a wealth of sparkling water playing around the fountains, and washing the carved lions and other monsters which adorn them! The town, which is built for the most part of a dark tufaceous stone called 'Serena,' is paved in the

manner of Florence. Old women sit sewing at their doors; and coppersmiths' shops still ring with lusty blows on the red metal, pots of which shine above their shop doors. And indeed we are fortunate in the sunset, for the glow has now lighted up the old walls and towers with ruddy gold. Even the bats flittering about seem to be tinted red and the obscurer streets are softened by the effect. As we reach the Piazza, the gate of the Palazzo Pubblico, which is open, lets through a flood of splendour, as through a sluice; and the fountain within its open court drips fire. People stand about in groups, gossiping, hands behind back. Loungers loaf; students pass arm in arm; women sit at their windows; dogs sit and wait for their masters, below; while donkeys pass by. The Palazzo in two storeys rises above an arcade of round arches. At each corner of the Via di S. Lorenzo, a lion on a column guards the way, and here and there is seen a fine balcony. The Palazzo was commenced in 1264 on the site of the ancient cemetery of S. Angelo and it contained a Hall called Sall d' Ercole in token of the reputed founder of the city. In 1448 it was taken down with the exception of the Portico, and refashioned according to the prevailing style. The exterior was finished under Sixtus IV., whose stemma' appears on the façade : the interior remained for his nephew, Julius II., to complete. The Hall was called 'Accademia,' was frescoed by Lorenzo Romano (1486). In 1574, a wing was thrown out toward the Via della Pescheria, on the north side; while, later, in 1624, the court was amplified, and adorned with the Loggia and a fountain by Caparozzi.

In the Palace, besides its valuable archives, are preserved the forgeries by which Fra Giovanni Nanni, commonly called Annio di Viterbo, claimed for his native city an antiquity greater than that of Troy, and a marble tablet, inscribed with a pretended edict of Desiderius, the last of the Lombard kings, decreeing that within one wall shall be included the three towns, Longula, Vetulonia, and Terrena, called Volturna, and that the whole city thus formed shall be called Etruria or Viterbum.'

Some rooms on the ground floor have been converted into a Museum. Here are Etruscan sarcophagi of peperino, recumbent figures, tiles, and sacrificial dishes, removed from sepulchres at Castel d' Asso and Civita Musarna in the neighbourhood. Pictures, for the most part, are of no artistic value. There are, however, a few ruined gems amongst them.

The

An early Madonna in fresco, from S. Maria dei Gradi, by Ant. da Viterbo. A portrait of S. Bernardino da Siena.

Sebastiano del Piombo. The Flagellation-a replica of his picture in S. Pietro in Montorio at Rome. Removed from the Chiesa di S. Maria del Paradiso; painted in 1525; and ruined by restorers.

Jacopo da Norcia, or the Perugian Orlandi, who was assistant to Sinibaldo Ibi.1 The Nativity (attributed to Pinturicchio), from the Chiesa degli Osservanti.

Sebastiano del Piombo. The Dead Christ. The Madonna is watching the dead body of Christ through the moonlit night-a striking and thought.

1 Crowe and Cavalcaselle, iii. 297.

inspiring picture. Until 1839 it decorated the Cappella Botonti in S. Francesco.

"The works of Sebastiano having been exalted to great, or rather infinite, reputation by the praises lavished on them by Michelangelo, to say nothing of the fact that they were in themselves beautiful and commendable, there was a certain Messer, I know not who, from Viterbo, who stood high in favour with the Pope, and who commissioned Sebastiano to paint a dead Christ, with our Lady weeping over Him, for a certain chapel which he had caused to be erected in the Church of S. Francesco in Viterbo ; but although the work was finished with infinite care and zeal by Sebastiano, who executed a twilight landscape therein, yet the invention was Michelangelo's, and the cartoon was prepared by his hand. The picture was esteemed a truly beautiful one by all who beheld it, and acquired a great increase of reputation for Sebastiano.'Vasari.

"The figure of Christ, which has, apparently, been drawn from nature, is nearly black; it is extended on a white winding-sheet, with the shoulders raised, and the head drooping back, admirably drawn. The difficulties of the position are completely surmounted. The Madonna, behind, clasping her hands in an agony of grief, strongly expresses the deep, passionate, overwhelming affliction of a mother weeping for her child in a despair that knows no comfort. This is its charm; there is nothing ideal, nothing beautiful, nothing elevated. She is advanced in life; she is in poverty; she seems to belong to the lower order of women-but there is nature in it, true and unvitiated, though common, and perhaps vulgar-nature that speaks at once to every heart.'-Eaton, 'Rome.'

On the opposite side of the Piazza del Comune raised high against the wall of the church of S. Angelo in Spata, is a Roman sarcophagus sculptured with a representation of the Calydonian Hunt, and said to contain the remains of the fair, but alas, mythical, Galiana, whose beauty made her the cause of a war between Viterbo and the Romans, in which the latter only consented to raise the siege of her native city on condition of her showing her face from the battlements, and allowing the besiegers once more to gaze upon her charms. There are various embroideries to the fable. Her epitaph calls her :

'F'los et honor patriae, species pulcherrima rerum.'

Though not so old as the mendacious Dominican, Nanni, would make out, there is nothing new, and nothing small, in Viterbo, whose very name, Vetus Urbs (the reverse of Orvieto) indicates its antiquity. Every wall, every doorway, every sculpture, is large of its kind, and almost every design is noble. In 1207 (temp. Innocent III.) it was placed at the head of S. Peter's Patrimony, and for four centuries it greatly flourished. The Duomo (S. Lorenzo) stands in the lower part of the town, on a rising ground, and the site was once occupied by a temple of Hercules, and was called 'Castellum Herculis' as late as the thirteenth century. It is first referred to in a document of A.D. 805. It was made a cathedral in 1193. The interior has been rendered mean and repellent by modern restorations. Except for its tall black and white campanile S. Lorenzo is a sore disappointment. Within a door between chapels 4 and 5 in the left aisle, is seen the tomb and effigy of John XXI. But even this belongs to a much later date than the thirteenth century, when that unfortunate Portuguese Pontiff died here. The cathedral stands in a kind of close, and is almost surrounded by different

fragments of the half-demolished Palace where many Popes of the thirteenth century resided. In the great hall which still exists, met the conclaves at which Urban IV. (1261), Clement IV. (1264), Gregory X. (1271), John XXI. (1276), Nicholas III. (1277), and Martin IV. (1281), were elected. The cardinals spent six months over the election of Gregory X., and made Charles of Anjou, who was then at Viterbo, so impatient, that he took off part of the roof of their council-chamber so as to force them to a decision, and they, in a kind of bravado, dated their letters of that time from the 'roofless palace.' This council-hall is surrounded by memorials of all the Popes who were natives of Viterbo, or who lived there. Adjoining it is another hall, still roofless, in which Pope John XXI. (Pedro Juliani) was killed by the fall of the roof in 1277. This room is supported by a single stout pier standing in the open space below, which projects through the floor so as to form a fountain.

'John XXI. was the man of letters, and even of science; he had published some mathematical treatises which excited the astonishment and therefore the suspicion of his age. He was a churchman of easy access, conversed freely with humbler men, if men of letters, and was therefore accused of lowering the dignity of the pontificate. He was perhaps hasty and unguarded in his language, bnt he had a more inexpiable fault. He had no love for monks or friars: it was supposed that he meditated some severe coercive edicts on these brotherhoods. Hence his death was foreshown by gloomy prodigies, and held either to be a divine judgment, or a direct act of the Evil One. John XXI. was contemplating with too great pride a noble chamber which he had built in the palace at Viterbo, and burst out into laughter; at that instant the avenging roof came down on his head. Two visions revealed to different holy men the Evil One hewing down the supports, and so overwhelming the reprobate pontiff. He was said by others to have been, at the moment of his death, in the act of writing a book full of the most deadly heresies, or practising the arts of magic.'-Milman, 'Hist. of Latin Christianity.'

Owing to the vandalism to which it has been treated, there is not much to see in the cathedral, beyond a curious font, pictures of several of the native popes, and the tomb (belonging to a later century than his), of John XXI. close to the door. Interesting to Englishmen from the murder in it (March 13, 1271) of Prince Henry d'Almaine, son of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, and nephew of Henry III., is the little forlorn church of S. Sylvestro, now Gesù. He was returning from the crusade at Tunis with Charles of Anjou and Philip III. of France, and was met here by his cousins Guy and Simon de Montfort, who stabbed him while kneeling at the altar in the little church of San Sylvestro. The murderers were leaving the church boasting of their vengeance to their friends, when one of them reminded Guy that the body of his father, Simon de Montfort, had been shamefully dragged in the dust after the battle of Evesham; upon which, returning to the altar, and seizing the dying prince by the hair, he dragged him up and down the church. The tragedy is commemorated by Dante, who alludes to the fact that his sorrowing father. enshrined the heart of Henry of Almaine in London, and who sees the murderer in the

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