Part 16

Hence the name, which is now only used in regard to the Papal palace and the Basilica of S. Peter, but which was once applied to the whole district between the foot of the hill and the Tiber near S. Angelo.

“... Ut paterni Fluminis ripae, simul et jocosa Redderet laudes tibi Vaticani Montis imago.”

_Horace_, Od. i. 20.

Tacitus speaks of the unwholesome air of this quarter. In this district was the Circus of Caligula, adjoining the gardens of his mother Agrippina, decorated by the obelisk which now stands in the front of S. Peter’s, near which many believe that S. Peter suffered martyrdom.[13]

Here Seneca describes that while Caligula was walking by torchlight he amused himself by the slaughter of a number of distinguished persons--senators and Roman ladies. Afterwards it became the Circus of Nero, who from his adjoining gardens used to watch the martyrdom of the Christians[14]--mentioned by Suetonius as “a race given up to a new and evil superstition”--and who used their living bodies, covered with pitch and set on fire, as torches for his nocturnal promenades.

[Illustration: THE VATICAN.]

The first residence of the Popes at the Vatican was erected by S. Symmachus (A. D. 498–514) near the forecourt of the old S. Peter’s, and here Charlemagne is believed to have resided on the occasion of his several visits to Rome during the reigns of Adrian I. (772–795) and Leo III. (795–816). During the Twelfth Century this ancient palace having fallen into decay, it was rebuilt in the Thirteenth by Innocent III. It was greatly enlarged by Nicholas III. (1277–81); but the Lateran continued to be the Papal residence, and the Vatican palace was only used on state occasions, and for the reception of any foreign sovereigns visiting Rome. After the return of the Popes from Avignon, the Lateran palace had fallen into decay, and, for the sake of the greater security afforded by the vicinity of S. Angelo, it was determined to make the Pontifical residence at the Vatican, and the first Conclave was held there in 1378. In order to increase its security, John XXIII. constructed the covered passage to S. Angelo in 1410. Nicholas V. (1447–55) had the idea of making it the most magnificent palace in the world, and of uniting in it all the government offices and dwellings of the cardinals. He wished to make it for Christendom that which the Milliarium Aureum in the Forum was to the Roman Empire, the centre whence all the messengers of the spiritual empire should go forth, bearing words of life, truth, and peace.[15] Unfortunately Nicholas died before he could carry out his designs. The building which he commenced was finished by Alexander VI., and still exists under the name of Tor di Borgia. In the reign of this Pope, his son Cesare murdered Alphonso, Duke of Bisceglia, husband of his sister Lucrezia, in the Vatican (August 18, 1500). To Paul II. was due the Court of S. Damasus. In 1473 Sixtus IV. built the Sixtine Chapel, and in 1490 “the Belvedere” was erected as a separate garden-house by Innocent VIII. from designs of Antonio da Pollajuolo. Julius II., with the aid of Bramante, united this villa to the palace by means of one vast courtyard, and erected the Loggie around the court of S. Damasus; he also laid the foundation of the Vatican Museum in the gardens of the Belvedere. The Loggie were completed by Leo X.; the Sala Regia and the Paoline Chapel were built by Paul III. Sixtus V. divided the great court of Bramante into two by the erection of the library, and began the present residence of the Popes, which was finished by Clement VIII. (1592–1605). Urban VIII. built the Scala Regia; Clement XIV. and Pius VI., the Museo Pio-Clementino (for which the latter pulled down the chapel of Innocent VIII., full of precious frescoes by Mantegna); Pius VII., the Braccio Nuovo; Leo XII., the picture-gallery; Gregory XVI., the Etruscan Museum, and Pius IX., the handsome staircase leading to the court of Bramante.

The length of the Vatican Palace is 1151 English feet; its breadth, 767. It has eight grand staircases, twenty courts, and is said to contain 11,000 chambers of different sizes.

The principal entrance to the Vatican is at the end of the right colonnade of S. Peter’s. Hence a door on the right opens upon the staircase leading to the Cortile di S. Damaso, and is the nearest way to all the collections, and the one by which visitors were admitted until the fall of the Papal government. The fountain of the Cortile, designed by Algardi in 1649, is fed by the Acqua Damasiana, due to Pope Damasus in the Fourth Century.

Following the great corridor, and passing on the left the entrance to the portico of S. Peter’s, we reach the Scala Regia, a magnificent work of Bernini, watched by the picturesque Swiss guard of the Pope. Hence we enter the Sala Regia, built in the reign of Paul III. by Antonio di Sangallo, and used as a hall of audience for ambassadors. It is decorated with frescoes illustrative of the history of the Popes.

On the right is the entrance of the Paoline Chapel (Cappella Paolina), also built (1540) by Antonio di Sangallo for Paul III. Its decorations are chiefly the work of Sabbatini and F. Zucchero, but it contains two frescoes by Michelangelo.

On the left of the approach from the Scala Regia is the Sixtine Chapel (Cappella Sistina), built by Baccio Pintelli in 1473 for Sixtus IV.

The lower part of the walls of this wonderful chapel was formerly hung on festivals with the tapestries executed from the cartoons of Raffaelle; the upper portion is decorated in fresco by the great Florentine masters of the Fifteenth Century....

On the pillars between the windows are the figures of twenty-eight Popes, by Sandro Botticelli....

The avenue of pictures is a preparation for the surpassing grandeur of the ceiling.

The pictures from the Old Testament, beginning from the altar, are:--1. The Separation of Light and Darkness; 2. The Creation of the Sun and Moon; 3. The Creation of Trees and Plants; 4. The Creation of Adam; 5. The Creation of Eve; 6. The Fall and the Expulsion from Paradise; 7. The Sacrifice of Noah; 8. The Deluge; 9. The Intoxication of Noah.

The lower portion of the ceiling is divided into triangles occupied by the Prophets and Sibyls in solemn contemplation, accompanied by angels and genii. Beginning from the left of the entrance, their order is--1. Joel; 2. Sibylla Erythraea; 3. Ezekiel; 4. Sibylla Persica; 5. Jonah; 6. Sibylla Libyca; 7. Daniel; 8. Sibylla Cumaea; 9. Isaiah; 10. Sibylla Delphica.

In the recesses between the Prophets and Sibyls are a series of lovely family groups representing the Genealogy of the Virgin, and expressive of calm expectation of the future. The four corners of the ceiling contain groups illustrative of the power of the Lord displayed in the especial deliverance of His chosen people.

Only 3000 ducats were paid to Michelangelo for all his great work on the ceiling of the Sixtine; less than a common decorator obtains in the Nineteenth Century.

It was when Michelangelo was already in his sixtieth year that Clement VII. formed the idea of effacing the three pictures of Perugino at the end of the chapel, and employing him to paint the vast fresco of _The Last Judgment_ in their place. It occupied the artist for seven years, and was finished in 1541, when Paul III. was on the throne. During this time Michelangelo frequently read and re-read the wonderful sermons of Savonarola, to refresh his mind, and that he might drink in the inspiration of their own religious awe and Dantesque imagination....

The small portion of the Vatican inhabited by the Pope is never seen except by those who are admitted to a special audience. The three rooms occupied by the pontiff are furnished with a simplicity which would be inconceivable in the abode of any other sovereign prince. The furniture is confined to the merest necessaries of life; strange contrast to Lambeth and Fulham! The apartment consists of the bare Green Saloon; the Red Saloon, containing a throne flanked by benches; and the bedroom, with yellow draperies, a large writing table, and a few pictures by old masters. The Papal life is a lonely one, as the dread of an accusation of nepotism has prevented any of the later Popes from having any of their family with them, and etiquette always obliges them to dine, etc., alone. Pius IX. seldom saw his family, but Leo XIII. is often visited twice a day by his relations--“La Sainte Famille,” as they are generally called.

No one, whatever the difference of creed, can look upon this building, inhabited by the venerable men who have borne so important a part in the history of Christianity and of Europe, without the deepest interest....

The windows of the Egyptian Museum look upon the inner _Garden of the Vatican_, which may be reached by a door at the end of the long gallery of the Museo Chiaramonti, before ascending to the Torso. The garden which is thus entered, called _Giardino della Pigna_, is in fact merely the second great quadrangle of the Vatican, planted, under Pius IX., with shrubs and flowers, now a desolate wilderness--its lovely garden having been destroyed by the present Vatican authorities to make way for a monumental column to the Council of 1870. Several interesting relics are preserved here. In the centre is the _Pedestal of the Column of Antoninus Pius_, found in 1709 on the Monte Citorio. The column was a simple memorial pillar of granite, erected by the two adopted sons of the Emperor, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. It was broken up to mend the obelisk of Psammeticus I. at the Monte Citorio. Among the reliefs of the pedestal is one of a winged genius guiding Antoninus and Faustina to Olympus. The modern pillar and statue are erections of Leo XIII. In front of the great semicircular niche of Bramante, at the end of the court-garden, is the famous _Pigna_, a gigantic fir-cone, which is said once to have crowned the summit of the Mausoleum of Hadrian. Thence it was first removed to the front of the old basilica of S. Peter’s, where it was used for a fountain. In the fresco of the old S. Peter’s at S. Martino al Monte the pigna is introduced, but it is there placed in the centre of the nave, a position it never occupied. It bears the name of the bronze-founder who cast it--“P. Cincivs. P. L. Calvivs. fecit.” Dante saw it at S. Peter’s, and compares it to a giant’s head (it is eleven feet high) which he saw through the mist in the last circle of hell.

“La faccia mi parea longa e grossa Come la pina di S. Pietro in Roma.”

_Inf._ xxxi. 58.

On either side of the pigna are two lovely bronze peacocks, which are said to have stood on either side of the entrance of Hadrian’s Mausoleum.

A flight of steps leads from this court to the narrow _Terrace of the Navicella_, in front of the palace, so called from a bronze ship with which its fountain is decorated. The visitor should beware of the tricksome waterworks upon this terrace.

Beyond the courtyard is the entrance to the larger garden, which may be reached in a carriage by the courts at the back of S. Peter’s. Admittance is difficult to obtain, as the garden is constantly used by the Pope. Pius IX. used to ride here upon his white mule. It is a most delightful retreat for the hot days of May and June, and before that time its woods are carpeted with wild violets and anemones. No one who has not visited them can form any idea of the beauty of these ancient groves, interspersed with fountains and statues, but otherwise left to nature, and forming a fragment of sylvan scenery quite unassociated with the English idea of a garden....

The Sixteenth Century was the golden age for the Vatican. Then the splendid court of Leo X. was the centre of artistic and literary life, and the witty and pleasure-loving Pope made these gardens the scene of his banquets and concerts; and, in a circle to which ladies were admitted, as in a secular court, listened to the recitations of the poets who sprang up under his protection, beneath the shadow of their woods.

_Walks in Rome_ (13th ed., London, 1896).

THE CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS.

JOHN RUSKIN.

It is the admitted privilege of a custode who loves his cathedral to depreciate, in its comparison, all the other cathedrals of his country that resemble, and all the edifices on the globe that differ from it. But I love too many cathedrals--though I have never had the happiness of becoming the custode of even one--to permit myself the easy and faithful exercise of the privilege in question; and I must vindicate my candour and my judgment in the outset, by confessing that the Cathedral of AMIENS has nothing to boast of in the way of towers,--that its central _flèche_ is merely the pretty caprice of a village carpenter,--that the total structure is in dignity inferior to Chartres, in sublimity to Beauvais, and in decorative splendour to Rheims, and in loveliness of figure sculpture to Bourges. It has nothing like the artful pointing and moulding of the arcades of Salisbury--nothing of the might of Durham; no Dædalian inlaying like Florence, no glow of mythic fantasy like Verona. And yet, in all, and more than these, ways, outshone or overpowered, the Cathedral of Amiens deserves the name given it by M. Viollet le Duc--

“The Parthenon of Gothic Architecture.”...

Whatever you wish to see, or are forced to leave unseen at Amiens, if the overwhelming responsibilities of your existence, and the inevitable necessities of precipitate locomotion in their fulfilment, have left you so much as one quarter of an hour, not out of breath--for the contemplation of the capital of Picardy, give it wholly to the cathedral choir. Aisles and porches, lancet windows and roses, you can see elsewhere as well as here--but such carpenter’s work you cannot. It is late,--fully developed flamboyant just past the Fifteenth Century--and has some Flemish stolidity mixed with the playing French fire of it; but wood-carving was the Picard’s joy from his youth up, and, so far as I know, there is nothing else so beautiful cut out of the goodly trees of the world.

[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS.]

Sweet and young-grained wood it is: oak, _trained_ and chosen for such work, sound now as four hundred years since. Under the carver’s hand it seems to cut like clay, to fold like silk, to grow like living branches, to leap like living flame. Canopy crowning canopy, pinnacle piercing pinnacle--it shoots and wreathes itself into an enchanted glade, inextricable, imperishable, fuller of leafage than any forest, and fuller of story than any book.[16]

I have never been able to make up my mind which was really the best way of approaching the cathedral for the first time....

I think the best is to walk from the Hôtel de France or the Place de Perigord, up the street of Three Pebbles, towards the railway station--stopping a little as you go, so as to get into a cheerful temper, and buying some bon-bons or tarts for the children in one of those charming _patissier’s_ shops on the left. Just past them, ask for the theatre; and just past that, you will find, also on the left, three open arches, through which you can turn passing the Palais de Justice, and go straight up to the south transept, which has really something about it to please everybody. It is simple and severe at the bottom, and daintily traceried and pinnacled at the top, and yet seems all of a piece--though it isn’t--and everybody _must_ like the taper and transparent fret-work of the _flèche_ above, which seems to bend in the west wind,--though it doesn’t--at least, the bending is a long habit, gradually yielded into, with gaining grace and submissiveness, during the last three hundred years. And coming quite up to the porch, everybody must like the pretty French Madonna in the middle of it, with her head a little aside, and her nimbus switched a little aside too, like a becoming bonnet. A Madonna in decadence she is, though, for all, or rather by reason of all, her prettiness and her gay soubrette’s smile; and she has no business there, either, for this is Saint Honoré’s porch, not her’s; and grim and grey Saint Honoré used to stand there to receive you,--he is banished now to the north porch where nobody ever goes in. This was done long ago in the Fourteenth Century days when the people first began to find Christianity too serious, and devised a merrier faith for France, and would have bright glancing soubrette Madonnas everywhere, letting their own dark-eyed Joan of Arc be burnt for a witch. And thenceforward things went their merry way, straight on, _ça allait, ça ira_ to the merriest days of the guillotine.

But they could still carve in the Fourteenth Century and the Madonna and her hawthorn-blossom lintel are worth your looking at,--much more the field above, of sculpture as delicate and more calm, which tells you Saint Honoré’s own story, little talked of now in his Parisian faubourg....

A Gothic cathedral has, almost always, these five great entrances; which may be easily, if at first attentively, recognized under the titles of the Central door (or porch), the Northern door, the Southern door, the North door, and the South door. But when we use the terms right and left, we ought always to use them as in going _out_ of the cathedral, or walking down the nave,--the entire north side and aisles of the building being its right side, and the south its left,--these terms being only used well and authoritatively, when they have reference either to the image of Christ on the apse or on the rood, or else to the central statue, whether of Christ, the Virgin, or a saint in the west front. At Amiens, this central statue, on the “_trumeau_” or supporting and dividing pillar of the central porch, is of Christ Immanuel,--God _with_ us. On His right hand and His left, occupying the entire walls of the central porch, are the apostles and the four greater prophets. The twelve minor prophets stand side by side on the front, three on each of its great piers.

The northern porch is dedicated to St. Firman, the first Christian missionary to Amiens.

The southern porch to the Virgin.

But these are both treated as withdrawn behind the great foundation of Christ and the Prophets; and their narrow recesses partly conceal their sculpture until you enter them. What you have first to think of, and read, is the scripture of the great central porch and the façade itself.

You have then in the centre of the front, the image of Christ Himself, receiving you: “I am the Way, the truth and the life.” And the order of the attendant powers may be best understood by thinking of them as placed on Christ’s right and left hand: this being also the order which the builder adopts in his Scripture history on the façade--so that it is to be read from left to right--_i. e._ from Christ’s left to Christ’s right, as _He_ sees it. Thus, therefore, following the order of the great statues: first in the central porch, there are six apostles on Christ’s right hand, and six on His left. On His left hand, next Him, Peter; then in receding order, Andrew, James, John, Matthew, Simon; on His right hand, next Him, Paul; and in receding order, James the Bishop, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, and Jude. These opposite ranks of the Apostles occupy what may be called the apse or curved bay of the porch, and form a nearly semicircular group, clearly visible as we approach But on the sides of the porch, outside the lines of apostles, and not clearly seen till we enter the porch are the four greater prophets. On Christ’s left, Isaiah and Jeremiah, on His right, Ezekiel and Daniel.

Then in front, along the whole façade--read in order from Christ’s left to His right--come the series of the twelve minor prophets, three to each of the four piers of the temple, beginning at the south angle with Hosea, and ending with Malachi.

As you look full at the façade in front, the statues which fill the minor porches are either obscured in their narrower recesses or withdrawn behind each other so as to be unseen. And the entire mass of the front is seen, literally, as built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone. Literally _that_; for the receding Porch is a deep “angulus” and its mid-pillar is the “Head of the Corner.”

Built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, that is to say of the Prophets who foretold _Christ_, and the Apostles who declared Him. Though Moses was an Apostle of _God_, he is not here--though Elijah was a Prophet of _God_, he is not here. The voice of the entire building is that of the Heaven at the Transfiguration. “This is my beloved Son, hear ye Him.”

There is yet another and a greater prophet still, who, as it seems at first, is not here. Shall the people enter the gates of the temple, singing “Hosanna to the Son of _David_;” and see no image of his father, then?--Christ Himself declare, “I am the root and offspring of David;” and yet the Root have no sign near it of its Earth?

Not so. David and his Son are together. David is the pedestal of the Christ.

We will begin our examination of the Temple front, therefore with this goodly pedestal stone. The statue of David is only two-thirds life-size, occupying the niche in front of the pedestal. He holds his sceptre in his right hand, the scroll in his left. King and Prophet, type of all Divinely right doing, and right claiming, and right proclaiming, kinghood forever.

The pedestal of which this statue forms the fronting or western sculpture, is square, and on the two sides of it are two flowers in vases, on its north side the lily, and on its south the rose. And the entire monolith is one of the noblest pieces of Christian sculpture in the world.

Above this pedestal comes a minor one, bearing in front of it a tendril of vine, which completes the floral symbolism of the whole. The plant which I have called a lily is not the Fleur de Lys, nor the Madonna’s, but an ideal one with bells like the crown Imperial (Shakespeare’s type of “lilies of all kinds”), representing the _mode of growth_ of the lily of the valley, which could not be sculptured so large in its literal form without appearing monstrous, and is exactly expressed in this tablet--as it fulfils, together with the rose and vine, its companions, the triple saying of Christ, “I am the Rose of Sharon, and the Lily of the Valley.” “I am the true Vine.”

On the side of the upper stone are supporters of a different character. Supporters,--not captives nor victims; the Cockatrice and Adder. Representing the most active evil principles of the earth, as in their utmost malignity; still Pedestals of Christ, and even in their deadly life, accomplishing His final will.

Both creatures are represented accurately in the mediæval traditional form, the cockatrice half dragon, half cock; the deaf adder laying one ear against the ground and stopping the other with her tail.