قراءة كتاب Pictures in Umbria
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BULIGAIA
NOTE
Our book treats of a few of the Hill-cities of Umbria, but it does not attempt exhaustive detail in regard to Perugia, Assisi, or any other.
Several old contemporary writers have greatly helped the book, notably the delightful chronicler Matarazzo, and some of his fellows; besides the "Legend of the Three Companions," and the very quaint "Fioretti di San Francesco."
"The Life of San Bernardino of Siena," by Pierre Clément, was also very useful. In the book itself I speak of the great enjoyment I found in Monsieur Paul Sabatier's thoughtful "Vie de Saint François d'Assisi," and in Miss Lina Duff Gordon's charming "Story of Assisi."
KATHARINE S. MACQUOID.
The Edge, Tooting Common
April 1905
PICTURES IN UMBRIA
CHAPTER I
AN ANCIENT HILL-CITY
It has been said that the face which exercises most permanent charm is the face whose attractions defy analysis; one in which beauty is subtle, compounded of many and varied qualities, so that, gazing at the harmonious whole, it is impossible to specialise its fascination.
Such a face will not, at first, reveal its charm, for much of this does not lie only in regularity of feature, or in beauty of colouring, nor even in the trick of a smile; the spell is so potent, that when one at last tries to find out its secret, the mind refuses to dispel the sweet illusion by any such work-a-day process, and agrees with the hasheesh smoker, "to enjoy the sweet dream while it lasts."
Places, as well as faces, exert this undefined attraction, but in the former, association often intrudes itself, a conscious ingredient in the witchery they possess for us.
I am just now thinking of a city where much of the historic association is repulsive, even horrible; looking at the old grey walls of Perugia, the mind strays backward, to times when these ancient palaces with barred lower windows were gloomy fortresses, in which ghastly tragedies were acted over and over again.
In some of the old houses dissolute sons plotted how to murder their fathers and brothers, how to commit every sort of crime; blood has run like water in the grass-grown streets and piazzas,—and not only with the blood of an Oddi, shed by a fierce Baglione, the two leading families always fighting for power in their city: the one party being Guelph, and the other Ghibelline.
There was even worse strife than this: at times near and dear kinsmen fought hand to hand in the constant brawls of Perugia; murder was done in the churches, even before the high altar of the cathedral.
Softer, quainter memories, however, linger in this hill-throned and hill-girdled city, and permeate the atmosphere, in spite of the "reek of blood" which, a poet once told me, "taints Perugia."
Up the brick-stepped way, beneath a tall dark arch, came, even in those years of rapine and murder, the grave Urbino painter, Giovanni Sanzio, with his fair-haired son, Raffaelle. Giovanni came to Perugia to place the lad with the illiterate genius of Città del Pieve, Pietro Vannucci, whose praise was in every one's mouth, and who had already set up a school and was ranked a great painter. The Perugians still fondly call him "il nostro Perugino." It is said that Pietro was born in the ancient hill-city.
One feels sure that Raffaelle must have been petted and tenderly loved. The father and son made a striking picture as they came from the dark archway into the sunlight,—Raffaelle mounted on his mule, his dainty locks falling over his shoulders in glossy waves of brightness.
Years before he came, the sun saw a very different picture, when poor, roughly clad, coarse-featured Cristoforo Vannucci came trudging along on foot from Città del Pieve, holding the red fist of his little son, Pietro. The square-faced, square-headed boy was only eleven years old, yet his father already firmly believed in his genius, and had brought him all the way from Città del Pieve to present him to the great Umbrian