George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals. Vol. 2 (of 3)

Our first visit to the Museo Borbonico was devoted to the sculpture, of which there is a precious collection. Of the famous Balbi family, found at Herculaneum, the mother, in grand drapery, wound round her head and body, is the most unforgetable – a really grand woman of fifty, with firm mouth and knitted brow, yet not unbenignant. Farther on in this transverse hall is a Young Faun with the Infant Bacchus – a different conception altogether from the fine Munich statue, but delicious for humor and geniality. Then there is the Aristides – more real and speaking and easy in attitude even than the Sophocles at Rome. Opposite is a lovely Antinous, in no mythological character, but in simple, melancholy beauty. In the centre of the deep recess, in front of which these statues are placed, is the colossal Flora, who holds up her thin dress in too finicking a style for a colossal goddess; and on the floor – to be seen by ascending a platform – is the precious, great mosaic representing the Battle of the Issus, found at Pompeii. It is full of spirit, the ordonnance of the figures is very much after the same style as in the ancient bas-reliefs, and the colors are still vivid enough for us to have a just idea of the effect. In the halls on each side of this central one there are various Bacchuses and Apollos, Atlas groaning under the weight of the Globe, the Farnese Hercules, the Toro Farnese, and, among other things less memorable, a glorious Head of Jupiter.

The bronzes here are even more interesting than the marbles. Among them there is Mercury Resting, the Sleeping Faun, the little Dancing Faun, and the Drunken Faun snapping his fingers, of which there is a marble copy at Munich, with the two remarkable Heads of Plato and Seneca.

But our greatest treat at the Museo Borbonico could only be enjoyed after our visit to Pompeii, where we went, unhappily, in the company of some Russians whose acquaintance G. had made at the table d'hôte. I hope I shall never forget the solemnity of our first entrance into that silent city, and the walk along the street of tombs. After seeing the principal houses we went, as a proper climax, to the Forum, where, among the lines of pedestals and the ruins of temples and tribunal, we could see Vesuvius overlooking us; then to the two theatres, and finally to the amphitheatre.

This visit prepared us to enjoy the collection of piccoli bronzi, of paintings and mosaics at the Museo. Several of the paintings have considerable positive merit. I remember particularly a large one of Orestes and Pylades, which in composition and general conception might have been a picture of yesterday. But the most impressive collection of remains found at Pompeii and Herculaneum is that of the ornaments, articles of food and domestic utensils, pieces of bread, loaves with the bakers' names on them, fruits, corn, various seeds, paste in the vessel, imperfectly mixed, linen just wrung in washing, eggs, oil consolidated in a glass bottle, wine mixed with the lava, and a piece of asbestos; gold lace, a lens, a lantern with sides of talc, gold ornaments of Etruscan character, patty-pans (!), moulds for cakes; ingenious portable cooking apparatus, urn for hot water, portable candelabrum, to be raised or lowered at will, bells, dice, theatre-checks, and endless objects that tell of our close kinship with those old Pompeians. In one of the rooms of this collection there are the Farnese cameos and engraved gems, some of them – especially of the latter – marvellously beautiful, complicated, and exquisitely minute in workmanship. I remember particularly one splendid yellow stone engraved with an elaborate composition of Apollo and his chariot and horses – a masterpiece of delicate form.

Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 5th May, 1860

We left Rome a week ago, almost longing, at last, to come southward in search of sunshine. Every one likes to boast of peculiar experience, and we can boast of having gone to Rome in the very worst spring that has been known for the last twenty years. Here, at Naples, we have had some brilliant days, though the wind is still cold, and rain has often fallen heavily in the night. It is the very best change for us after Rome; there is comparatively little art to see, and there is nature in transcendent beauty. We both think it the most beautiful place in the world, and are sceptical about Constantinople, which has not had the advantage of having been seen by us. That is the fashion of travellers, as you know: for you must have been bored many times in your life by people who have insisted on it that you must go and see the thing they have seen – there is nothing like it. We shall bore you in that way, I dare say – so prepare yourself. Our plan at present is to spend the next week in seeing Pæstum, Amalfi, Castellamare, and Sorrento, and drinking in as much of this Southern beauty, in a quiet way, as our souls are capable of absorbing.

The calm blue sea, and the mountains sleeping in the afternoon light, as we have seen them to-day from the height of St. Elmo, make one feel very passive and contemplative, and disinclined to bustle about in search of meaner sights. Yet I confess Pompeii, and the remains of Pompeian art and life in the Museum, have been impressive enough to rival the sea and sky. It is a thing never to be forgotten – that walk through the silent city of the past, and then the sight of utensils and eatables and ornaments and half-washed linen and hundreds of other traces of life so startlingly like our own in its minutest details, suddenly arrested by the fiery deluge. All that you will see some day, and with the advantage of younger eyes than mine.

We expect to reach Florence (by steamboat, alas!) on the 17th, so that if you have the charity to write to me again, address to me there.

We thought the advance to eighteen in the number of hearers was very satisfactory, and rejoiced over it. The most solid comfort one can fall back upon is the thought that the business of one's life – the work at home after the holiday is done – is to help in some small, nibbling way to reduce the sum of ignorance, degradation, and misery on the face of this beautiful earth. I am writing at night – Mr. Lewes is already asleep, else he would say, "Send my kind regards to them all." We have often talked of you, and the thought of seeing you again makes the South Fields look brighter in our imagination than they could have looked from the dreariest part of the world if you had not been living in them.

Italy, 1860.

The pictures at Naples are worth little: the Marriage of St. Catherine, a small picture by Correggio; a Holy Family, by Raphael, with a singularly fine St. Ann, and Titian's Paul the Third, are the only paintings I have registered very distinctly in all the large collection. The much-praised frescoes of the dome in a chapel of the cathedral, and the oil-paintings over the altars, by Domenichino and Spagnoletto, produced no effect on me. Worth more than all these are Giotto's frescoes in the choir of the little old Church of l'Incoronata, though these are not, I think, in Giotto's ripest manner, for they are inferior to his frescoes in the Santa Croce at Florence – more uniform in the type of face.

We went to a Sunday-morning service at the cathedral, and saw a detachment of silver busts of saints ranged around the tribune, Naples being famous for gold and silver sanctities.

When we had been a week at Naples we set off in our carriage with Baboon on an expedition to Pæstum, arriving the first evening at Salerno – beautiful Salerno, with a bay as lovely, though in a different way, as the bay of Naples. It has a larger sweep; grander piles of rocky mountain on the north and northeast; then a stretch of low plain, the mountains receding; and, finally, on the south, another line of mountain coast extending to the promontory of Sicosa.

From Salerno we started early in the morning for Pæstum, with no alloy to the pleasure of the journey but the dust, which was capable of making a simoon under a high wind. For a long way we passed through a well-cultivated plain, the mountains on our left and the sea on our right; but farther on came a swampy, unenclosed space of great extent, inhabited by buffaloes, who lay in groups, comfortably wallowing in the muddy water, with their grand, stupid heads protruding horizontally.

On approaching Pæstum, the first thing one catches sight of is the Temple of Vesta, which is not beautiful either for form or color, so that we began to tremble lest disappointment were to be the harvest of our dusty journey. But the fear was soon displaced by almost rapturous admiration at the sight of the great Temple of Neptune – the finest thing, I verily believe, that we had yet seen in Italy. It has all the requisites to make a building impressive: First, form. What perfect satisfaction and repose for the eye in the calm repetition of those columns; in the proportions of height and length, of front and sides; the right thing is found– it is not being sought after in uneasy labor of detail or exaggeration. Next, color. It is built of Travertine, like the other two temples; but while they have remained, for the most part, a cold gray, this Temple of Neptune has a rich, warm, pinkish brown, that seems to glow and deepen under one's eyes. Lastly, position. It stands on the rich plain, covered with long grass and flowers, in sight of the sea on one hand, and the sublime blue mountains on the other. Many plants caress the ruins; the acanthus is there, and I saw it in green life for the first time; but the majority of the plants on the floor, or bossing the architrave, are familiar to me as home flowers – purple mallows, snapdragons, pink hawksweed, etc. On our way back we saw a herd of buffaloes clustered near a pond, and one of them was rolling himself in the water like a gentleman enjoying his bath.

The next day we went in the morning from Salerno to Amalfi. It is an unspeakably grand drive round the mighty rocks with the sea below; and Amalfi itself surpasses all imagination of a romantic site for a city that once made itself famous in the world. We stupidly neglected seeing the cathedral, but we saw a macaroni-mill and a paper-mill from among the many that are turned by the rushing stream, which, with its precipitous course down the ravine, creates an immense water-power; and we climbed up endless steps to the Capuchin Monastery, to see nothing but a cavern where there are barbarous images and a small cloister with double Gothic arches.

Our way back to La Cava gave us a repetition of the grand drive we had had in the morning by the coast, and beyond that an inland drive of much loveliness, through Claude-like scenes of mountain, trees, and meadows, with picturesque accidents of building, such as single round towers, on the heights. The valley beyond La Cava, in which our hotel lay, is of quite paradisaic beauty; a rich, cultivated spot, with mountains behind and before – those in front varied by ancient buildings that a painter would have chosen to place there; and one of pyramidal shape, steep as an obelisk, is crowned by a monastery, famous for its library of precious MSS. and its archives. We arrived too late for everything except to see the shroud of mist gather and gradually envelop the mountains.

In the morning we set off, again in brightest weather, to Sorrento, coasting the opposite side of the promontory to that which we had passed along the day before, and having on our right hand Naples and the distant Posilippo. The coast on this side is less grand than on the Amalfi side, but it is more friendly as a place for residence. The most charming spot on the way to Sorrento, to my thinking, is Vico, which I should even prefer to Sorrento, because there is no town to be traversed before entering the ravine and climbing the mountain in the background. But I will not undervalue Sorrento, with its orange-groves embalming the air, its glorious sunsets over the sea, setting the gray olives aglow on the hills above us, its walks among the groves and vineyards out to the solitary coast. One day of our stay there we took donkeys and crossed the mountains to the opposite side of the promontory, and saw the Siren Isles – very palpable, unmysterious bits of barren rock now. A great delight to me, in all the excursions round about Naples, was the high cultivation of the soil and the sight of the vines, trained from elm to elm, above some other precious crop carpeting the ground below. On our way back to Naples we visited the silent Pompeii again. That place had such a peculiar influence over me that I could not even look towards the point where it lay on the plain below Vesuvius without a certain thrill.

Amid much dust we arrived at Naples again on Sunday morning, to start by the steamboat for Leghorn on the following Tuesday. But before I quit Naples I must remember the Grotto of Posilippo, a wonderful monument of ancient labor; Virgil's tomb, which repaid us for a steep ascent only by the view of the city and bay; and a villa on the way to Posilippo, with gardens gradually descending to the margin of the sea, where there is a collection of animals, both stuffed and alive. It was there we saw the flying-fish, with their lovely blue fins.

One day and night voyage to Civita Vecchia, and another day and night to Leghorn – wearisome to the flesh that suffers from nausea even on the summer sea! We had another look at dear Pisa under the blue sky, and then on to Florence, which, unlike Rome, looks inviting as one catches sight from the railway of its cupolas and towers and its embosoming hills – the greenest of hills, sprinkled everywhere with white villas. We took up our quarters at the Pension Suisse, and on the first evening we took the most agreeable drive to be had round Florence – the drive to Fiesole. It is in this view that the eye takes in the greatest extent of green, billowy hills, besprinkled with white houses, looking almost like flocks of sheep; the great, silent, uninhabited mountains lie chiefly behind; the plain of the Arno stretches far to the right. I think the view from Fiesole the most beautiful of all; but that from San Miniato, where we went the next evening, has an interest of another kind, because here Florence lies much nearer below, and one can distinguish the various buildings more completely. It is the same with Bellosguardo, in a still more marked degree. What a relief to the eye and the thought, among the huddled roofs of a distant town, to see towers and cupolas rising in abundant variety, as they do at Florence! There is Brunelleschi's mighty dome, and close by it, with its lovely colors not entirely absorbed by distance, Giotto's incomparable Campanile, beautiful as a jewel. Farther on, to the right, is the majestic tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, with the flag waving above it; then the elegant Badia and the Bargello close by; nearer to us the grand Campanile of Santo Spirito and that of Santa Croce; far away, on the left, the cupola of San Lorenzo and the tower of Santa Maria Novella; and, scattered far and near, other cupolas and campaniles of more insignificant shape and history.

Even apart from its venerable historical glory, the exterior of the Duomo is pleasant to behold when the wretched, unfinished façade is quite hidden. The soaring pinnacles over the doors are exquisite; so are the forms of the windows in the great semicircle of the apsis; and on the side where Giotto's Campanile is placed, especially, the white marble has taken on so rich and deep a yellow that the black bands cease to be felt as a fault. The entire view on this side, closed in by Giotto's tower, with its delicate pinkish marble, its delicate Gothic windows with twisted columns, and its tall lightness carrying the eye upward, in contrast with the mighty breadth of the dome, is a thing not easily to be forgotten. The Baptistery, with its paradisaic gates, is close by; but, except in those gates, it has no exterior beauty. The interior is almost awful, with its great dome covered with gigantic early mosaics – the pale, large-eyed Christ surrounded by images of paradise and perdition. The interior of the cathedral is comparatively poor and bare; but it has one great beauty – its colored lanceolate windows. Behind the high-altar is a piece of sculpture – the last under Michael Angelo's hand, intended for his own tomb, and left unfinished. It represents Joseph of Arimathea holding the body of Jesus, with Mary, his mother, on one side, and an apparently angelic form on the other. Joseph is a striking and real figure, with a hood over the head.

For external architecture it is the palaces, the old palaces of the fifteenth century, that one must look at in the streets of Florence. One of the finest was just opposite our hotel, the Palazzo Strozzi, built by Cronaca; perfect in its massiveness, with its iron cressets and rings, as if it had been built only last year. This is the palace that the Pitti was built to outvie (so tradition falsely pretends), and to have an inner court that would contain it. A wonderful union is that Pitti Palace of cyclopean massiveness with stately regularity. Next to the Pitti, I think, comes the Palazzo Riccardi – the house of the Medici – for size and splendor. Then that unique Laurentian library, designed by Michael Angelo; the books ranged on desks in front of seats, so that the appearance of the library resembles that of a chapel with open pews of dark wood. The precious books are all chained to the desk; and here we saw old manuscripts of exquisite neatness, culminating in the Virgil of the fourth century, and the Pandects, said to have been recovered from oblivion at Amalfi, but falsely so said, according to those who are more learned than tradition. Here, too, is a little chapel covered with remarkable frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli.

Grander still, in another style, is the Palazzo Vecchio, with its unique cortile, where the pillars are embossed with arabesque and floral tracery, making a contrast in elaborate ornament with the large simplicity of the exterior building. Here there are precious little works in ivory by Benvenuto Cellini, and other small treasures of art and jewelry, preserved in cabinets in one of the great upper chambers, which are painted all over with frescoes, and have curious inlaid doors showing buildings or figures in wooden mosaic, such as is often seen in great beauty in the stalls of the churches. The great council-chamber is ugly in its ornaments – frescoes and statues in bad taste all round it.

Orcagna's Loggia de' Lanzi is disappointing at the first glance, from its sombre, dirty color; but its beauty grew upon me with longer contemplation. The pillars and groins are very graceful and chaste in ornamentation. Among the statues that are placed under it there is not one I could admire, unless it were the dead body of Ajax with the Greek soldier supporting it. Cellini's Perseus is fantastic. The Bargello, where we went to see Giotto's frescoes (in lamentable condition) was under repair, but I got glimpses of a wonderful inner court, with heraldic carvings and stone stairs and gallery.

Most of the churches in Florence are hideous on the outside – piles of ribbed brickwork awaiting a coat of stone or stucco – looking like skinned animals. The most remarkable exception is Santa Maria Novella, which has an elaborate facing of black and white marble. Both this church and San Lorenzo were under repair in the interior, unfortunately for us; but we could enter Santa Maria so far as to see Orcagna's frescoes of Paradise and Hell. The Hell has been repainted, but the Paradise has not been maltreated in this way; and it is a splendid example of Orcagna's powers – far superior to his frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa. Some of the female forms on the lowest range are of exquisite grace. The splendid chapel in San Lorenzo, containing the tombs of the Medici, is ugly and heavy, with all its precious marbles; and the world-famous statues of Michael Angelo on the tombs in another smaller chapel – the Notte, the Giorno, and the Crepuscolo – remained to us as affected and exaggerated in the original as in copies and casts.

The two churches we frequented most in Florence were Santa Croce and the Carmine. In this last are the great frescoes of Masaccio – chief among them the Raising of the Dead Youth. In the other are Giotto's frescoes revealed from under the whitewash by which they were long covered, like those in the Bargello. Of these the best are the Challenge to Pass through the Fire, in the series representing the history of St. Francis, and the rising of some saint (unknown to me) from his tomb, while Christ extends his arms to receive him above, and wondering venerators look on, on each side. There are large frescoes here of Taddeo Gaddi's also, but they are not good; one sees in him a pupil of Giotto, and nothing more. Besides the frescoes, Santa Croce has its tombs to attract a repeated visit; the tombs of Michael Angelo, Dante, Alfieri, and Machiavelli. Even those tombs of the unknown dead under our feet, with their effigies quite worn down to a mere outline, were not without their interest. I used to feel my heart swell a little at the sight of the inscription on Dante's tomb – "Onorate l'altissimo poeta."

In the Church of the Trinità also there are valuable frescoes by the excellent Domenico Ghirlandajo, the master of Michael Angelo. They represent the history of St. Francis, and happily the best of them is in the best light; it is the death of St. Francis, and is full of natural feeling, with well-marked gradations from deepest sorrow to indifferent spectatorship.

The frescoes I cared for most in all Florence were the few of Fra Angelico's that a donna was allowed to see, in the Convent of San Marco. In the chapter-house, now used as a guard-room, is a large Crucifixion, with the inimitable group of the fainting mother, upheld by St. John and the younger Mary, and clasped round by the kneeling Magdalene. The group of adoring, sorrowing saints on the right hand are admirable for earnest truthfulness of representation. The Christ in this fresco is not good, but there is a deeply impressive original crucified Christ outside in the cloisters; St. Dominic is clasping the cross and looking upward at the agonized Saviour, whose real, pale, calmly enduring face is quite unlike any other Christ I have seen.

I forgot to mention, at Santa Maria Novella, the chapel which is painted with very remarkable frescoes by Simone Memmi and Taddeo Gaddi. The best of these frescoes is the one in which the Dominicans are represented by black and white dogs —Domini Canes. The human groups have high merit for conception and lifelikeness; and they are admirable studies of costume. At this church, too, in the sacristy, is the Madonna della Stella,¹² with an altar-step by Fra Angelico – specimens of his minuter painting in oil. The inner part of the frame is surrounded with his lovely angels, with their seraphic joy and flower-garden coloring.

Last of all the churches we visited San Michele, which had been one of the most familiar to us on the outside, with its statues in niches, and its elaborate Gothic windows, designed by the genius of Orcagna. The great wonder of the interior is the shrine of white marble made to receive the miracle-working image which first caused the consecration of this mundane building, originally a corn-market. Surely this shrine is the most wonderful of all Orcagna's productions; for the beauty of the reliefs he deserves to be placed along with Nicolo Pisano, and for the exquisite Gothic design of the whole he is a compeer of Giotto.

For variety of treasures the Uffizi Gallery is pre-eminent among all public sights in Florence; but the variety is in some degree a cause of comparative unimpressiveness, pictures and statues being crowded together and destroying each other's effect. In statuary it has the great Niobe group; the Venus de Medici; the Wrestlers; the admirable statue of the Knife-Sharpener, supposed to represent the flayer of Marsyas; the Apollino; and the Boy taking a Thorn out of his Foot; with numerous less remarkable antiques. And besides these it has what the Vatican has not – a collection of early Italian sculpture, supreme among which is Giovanni di Bologna's Mercury.¹³ Then there is a collection of precious drawings; and there is the cabinet of gems, quite alone in its fantastic, elaborate minuteness of workmanship in rarest materials; and there is another cabinet containing ivory sculptures, cameos, intaglios, and a superlatively fine Niello, as well as Raffaelle porcelain. The pictures here are multitudinous, and among them there is a generous proportion of utterly bad ones. In the entrance gallery, where the early paintings are, is a great Fra Angelico – a Madonna and Child – a triptych, the two side compartments containing very fine figures of saints, and the inner part of the central frame a series of unspeakably lovely angels.¹⁴ Here I always paused with longing, trying to believe that a copyist there could make an imitation angel good enough to be worth buying. Among the other paintings that remain with me, after my visit to the Uffizi, are the portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, by himself; the portrait of Dante, by Filippino Lippi;¹⁵ the Herodias of Luini; Titian's Venus, in the Tribune; Raphael's Madonna and Child with the Bird; and the portrait falsely called the Fornarina; the two remarkable pictures by Ridolfo Ghirlandajo; and the Salutation, by Albertinelli, which hangs opposite; the little prince in pink dress, with two recent teeth, in the next room, by Angelo Bronzino (No. 1155); the small picture of Christ in the Garden, by Lorenzo Credi; Titian's Woman with the Golden Hair, in the Venetian room; Leonardo's Medusa head; and Michael Angelo's ugly Holy Family – these, at least, rise up on a rapid retrospect. Others are in the background; for example, Correggio's Madonna adoring the Infant Christ, in the Tribune.

For pictures, however, the Pitti Palace surpasses the Uffizi. Here the paintings are more choice and not less numerous. The Madonna della Sedia leaves me, with all its beauty, impressed only by the grave gaze of the Infant; but besides this there is another Madonna of Raphael – perhaps the most beautiful of all his earlier ones – the Madonna del Gran Duca, which has the sweet grace and gentleness of its sisters without their sheeplike look. Andrea del Sarto is seen here in his highest glory of oil-painting. There are numerous large pictures of his – Assumptions and the like – of great technical merit; but better than all these I remember a Holy Family, with a very fine St. Ann, and the portraits of himself and his fatal, auburn-haired wife. Of Fra Bartolomeo there is a Pietà of memorable expression,¹⁶ a Madonna enthroned with saints, and his great St. Mark. Of Titian, a Marriage of St. Catherine, of supreme beauty; a Magdalen, failing in expression; and an exquisite portrait of the same woman, who is represented as Venus at the Uffizi. There is a remarkable group of portraits by Rubens – himself, his brother, Lipsius, and Grotius – and a large landscape by him. The only picture of Veronese's that I remember here is a portrait of his wife when her beauty was gone. There is a remarkably fine sea-piece by Salvator Rosa; a striking portrait of Aretino, and a portrait of Vesalius, by Titian; one of Inghirami, by Raphael; a delicious, rosy baby – future cardinal – lying in a silken bed;¹⁷ a placid, contemplative young woman, with her finger between the leaves of a book, by Leonardo da Vinci;¹⁸ a memorable portrait of Philip II., by Titian; a splendid Judith, by Bronzino; a portrait of Rembrandt, by himself, etc., etc.

Andrea del Sarto is seen to advantage at the Pitti Palace; but his chef-d'œuvre is a fresco, unhappily much worn – the Madonna del Sacco – in the cloister of the Annunziata.

For early Florentine paintings the most interesting collection is that of the Accademia. Here we saw a Cimabue, which gave us the best idea of his superiority over the painters who went before him: it is a colossal Madonna enthroned. And on the same wall there is a colossal Madonna by Giotto, which is not only a demonstration that he surpassed his master, but that he had a clear vision of the noble in art. A delightful picture – very much restored, I fear – of the Adoration of the Magi made me acquainted with Gentile da Fabriano. The head of Joseph in this picture is masterly in the delicate rendering of the expression; the three kings are very beautiful in conception; and the attendant group, or rather crowd, shows a remarkable combination of realism with love of the beautiful and splendid.

There is a fine Domenico Ghirlandajo – the Adoration of the Shepherds; a fine Lippo Lippi; and an Assumption, by Perugino, which I like well for its cherubs and angels, and for some of the adoring figures below. In the smaller room there is a lovely Pietà by Fra Angelico; and there is a portrait of Fra Angelico himself by another artist.

One of our drives at Florence, which I have not mentioned, was that to Galileo's Tower, which stands conspicuous on one of the hills close about the town. We ascended it for the sake of looking out over the plain from the same spot as the great man looked from, more than two centuries ago. His portrait is in the Pitti Palace – a grave man with an abbreviated nose, not unlike Mr. Thomas Adolphus Trollope.

One fine day near the end of our stay we made an expedition to Siena – that fine old town built on an abrupt height overlooking a wide, wide plain. We drove about a couple of hours or more, and saw well the exterior of the place – the peculiar piazza or campo in the shape of a scallop-shell, with its large old Palazzo publico, the Porta Ovile and Porta Romana, the archbishop's palace, and the cemetery. Of the churches we saw only the cathedral, the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, and San Domenico. The cathedral has a highly elaborate Gothic façade, but the details of the upper part are unsatisfactory – a square window in the centre shocks the eye, and the gables are not slim and aspiring enough. The interior is full of interest: there is the unique pavement in a sort of marble Niello, presenting Raffaellesque designs by Boccafumi, carrying out the example of the older portions, which are very quaint in their drawing; there is a picture of high interest in the history of early art – a picture by Guido of Siena, who was rather earlier than Cimabue; fine carved stalls and screens in dark wood; and in an adjoining chapel a series of frescoes by Pinturicchio, to which Raphael is said to have contributed designs and workmanship, and wonderfully illuminated old choir-books. The Chapel of St. John the Baptist has a remarkable Gothic façade, and a baptismal font inside, with reliefs wrought by Ghiberti and another Florentine artist. To San Domenico we went for the sake of seeing the famous Madonna by Guido da Siena; I think we held it superior to any Cimabue we had seen. There is a considerable collection of the Siennese artists at the Accademia, but the school had no great genius equal to Giotto to lead it. The Three Graces – an antique to which Canova's modern triad bears a strong resemblance in attitude and style – are also at the Accademia.