Alinari
THE CATHEDRAL OF BARGA
The whole district is well watered by many mountain streams, affluents of the Serchio, furnishing excellent water-power for various mills scattered along their banks. The soil is generally productive, the uplands covered with chestnut-trees and affording fair pasturage for sheep, which are a source of considerable revenue. On the lower levels we find the olive, maize (or granturco), a principal article of food, and flax, also the mulberry-tree and silk-worm culture. The region is fairly rich in minerals, stone and marble quarries, manganese, mercury, etc. Here, also, is found the fine red jasper, veined or flecked with white, which has been so effectively used in the Medici Chapel in Florence. We are now quite close upon the walls of Barga, but the long drive in the eager, exhilarating mountain air makes us quite willing to take Pepino's advice and stop for lunch at the Posta, an unpretending wayside inn, beautifully situated, with plain, comfortable rooms commanding fine views, and where, as a recommendation, we were told a Chicago gentleman had once spent seven weeks for his health. In the words of another visitor, we read that "the soup is excellent, and so is the wine;" also, there is trout when the streams are full. We found everything as had been promised, and did ample justice to the excellent food served by a pretty, smiling contadina, daughter of the house, who was full of chat and little airs, her young head evidently quite turned by her knowledge of the wandering forestieri.
M. M. Newell
MAIN DOOR OF THE CATHEDRAL, BARGA
Hunger appeased and our modest account settled, we walk to the nearest city gate, passing an ample bowling alley, bordered with fine plane-trees. At the upper end is a raised, grassy platform of considerable breadth, in the centre of which stands a fine cedar of Lebanon. The platform is reached by two flights of steps cut into the sod, and tradition has it that here Charlemagne stood and delivered his laws and instructions to the conquered people gathered below. The well-paved street winds and turns up the hill until it terminates in the little plateau, or Piazza del Duomo. The city retains its ancient walls and three old gates, and is still further defended by two deep natural ravines, which render it altogether a striking and typical mediæval town. We enter the gate just in time to see a religious procession, consisting apparently of all the people in town, most of the men in capes of green and white, led by three important ecclesiastics in really splendid vestments; two copes were of ivory-white damasked silk, evidently old, adorned with gold; the third, of a peachy-purple tint, enriched also with designs in gold. We join the procession, and wind slowly up the steep path, noting several palaces of old-time importance, and one or two schools or institutions. We see, also, erect and pretty young girls bearing copper pails of water on their heads, lightly mounting the precipitous side streets, and remember then that this mountain region is noted for the beauty of its women. Arriving at the Piazza del Duomo, the procession enters the Church of SS. Christopher and James, to say the prayers appropriate to St. Joseph's day, while we enjoy the wide and beautiful prospect over the Garfagnana valley, held at the north by the hill-town of Fivizzano, surrounded by Castruccio's walls, its church door bearing the Medici shield. On the left, Alpi Apuane, overlooking the charming gulf of Spezia, Carrara, and Sarzana, where Castruccio Castracane built his famous castle, and the only road to which now, as then, is by the castled town of Fosdinovo. To the right are the loftiest peaks of the Apennines: Rondinaio, Monte Prado, Abetone, and the rest, owing "much of their grandeur to the precipitous slopes and fantastic profiles of the calcareous rocks which enter into their composition." The lofty and well-defended position of Barga, near the boundaries of Lucca and Florence, gave it a certain military importance in the early struggles for despotism. At present it is a busy centre of a large district, quiet and orderly, its people marked by spirit, buoyancy of temperament and good looks. To the outside world it is best known for its church, several good Della Robbias, and its fine and beautiful situation. The Church of SS. Christopher and James—is it a temple or a citadel?—built of squared blocks of travertine, unusual and irregular in shape, its watch-tower, or campanile, springing from the main wall and guarding all the country round about, possesses no dominant style of architecture, and wears such an appearance as ten centuries of weather and vicissitudes may well give a church. The grand old tower is fitting, as a human creation may ever hope to be, the prospect it overlooks. Its massive sides are pierced by three orders of double-arched windows, supported by columns and piers, and each order defined by a string course, or corbel-table, of shallow arches, which takes, perhaps, something from the height of the tower, but emphasizes the solidity of its structure. Unlike most towers in this region, it carries no battlements, but is finished by a low, plain roof. The façade of the church is strikingly plain, broken only by a single cornice, string course, and short pilasters. The main door alone retains a hint of former grandeur in its foliated arch and sculptured architrave, once guarded by two Lombardic lions, one of which has fallen from its high estate. The front and side walls are pierced irregularly with small windows of varied shape and size.
Alinari
INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL OF BARGA
The interior is plain, resembling an ancient basilica in form, and divided into nave and aisles by piers supporting broad, semi-circular arches, and over all a good, open-timbered roof. The tribune, or choir, is raised above the nave by three steps, and separated from it by a low marble screen or parapetto. An ancient-looking holy-water stoup, carved with rude heads and designs, stands by a pillar on the north side of the nave, but the great treasures of the church are its choir-screen and pulpit. The screen consists of panels of pale red marble delicately veined, set in frames, or borders, of white Carrara, inlaid with black smalto, or enamel, in various designs and symbolic geometrical figures. That part of the screen near the pulpit is further enriched by a row of small, well-modelled heads, some of which, evidently portraits, are encircled by crowns. The pulpit must certainly be reckoned among the best ones in Tuscany; its author is unknown, but it probably belongs to the thirteenth century, about the time of the Pisani, possibly earlier. The richness of detail, dignity and expression of the rather stiff figures, suggest the work of Guido da Como.
Alinari
PULPIT (13th CENTURY)
IN THE CATHEDRAL OF BARGA
The pulpit is rectangular, and supported on four marble columns, two of which rest on the backs of lions, overcoming symbolic forms of evil. Another rests on the shoulders of a man, perhaps the artist, and all the capitals are elaborately sculptured in varying designs, one bearing the forms of eagles and animals' heads.
On the panels of the pulpit are the sculptured scenes of the Annunciation, the Nativity, and Adoration of the Magi, treated in the usual manner. On the central plinth of the front appears a crowned figure holding the Book of Good Tidings, and supported by the appropriate symbolic animals; above this figure the eagle upholds a lectern. The figures are carved in strong relief, and though the feet and hands are stiff, the faces are serious and fairly modelled, and the drapery well disposed. Heavy as the work is, we are conscious that the artist, a man of the long ago past, was himself impressed by his subject, and put into his realistic interpretation of it a profound religious mysticism. The whole work is enriched by inlaying of black marble, or smalto, with the white. Crowns, the lions' manes, and coils of the writhing serpent are picked out with black, an early form of decoration.
In the choir aisle is a beautiful tabernacle for the sacred oil, of glazed terra-cotta, chiefly white on blue, the work of the Della Robbia school or atelier. Though small, the work is composed of three perfect parts. On the arched top is a charming group of infantile figures, the Christ child standing upright on the Holy Chalice, one tiny hand uplifted in blessing, the other holding the crown of thorns; on either side is an adoring cherub, exquisitely modelled. Below this is the cupboard, or ciborium, for the oil, guarded by two graceful angel forms, and on each side an acolyte bearing a candelabrum. The whole work rests on a table, or ledge, supported by two cornucopiæ of various fruits in natural colors, and between them appears the head of a cherub enfolded in double wings.
Alinari
ADORATION OF THE MAGI (13TH CENTURY)
PULPIT IN THE CATHEDRAL OF BARGA
Well might this fortress-temple detain us longer, but there is scant time to have a look at the other Della Robbias down in the heart of the town, to which we are conducted by a courteous and handsome little man of twelve, through the narrowest and steepest of byways, which threaten at times to plunge us into doorways or ditches, until we reach the Church of the Capuchins. This contains a Nativity, two good statues of St. Andrew and St. Anthony, an Annunciation, St. Francis receiving the Stigmata, and, finest of all, an Assumption of the Virgin, by Giovanni Della Robbia. The reverent figures of four saints gaze upward to Our Lady, seated within a mandorla of cherubs' heads and surrounded by angels with musical instruments; the four trumpeters at the top are most beautiful. In the predella are other flying angels with scrolls; a wreath of exquisite heads surround the ciborium, and two kneeling saints fill the corners. The whole work is framed with clusters of various fruits in their natural colours.
Reluctantly we turn from rock-throned Barga, "Half church of God, half castle 'gainst the Scot," and as we slip down into the valley through purpling shadows shot with crimson and gold we marvel at these people, who with one hand took their part fiercely in the cruel wars of despotism and with the other adorned churches and shrines with Della Robbia reliefs, representing a form of art so pure and cool and tranquil and, above all, infused with the deepest religious feeling. Then we suddenly remember that hereabouts is the region of the Pistojese Apennines, the favoured home of the highest Tuscan imagination, poetry and song, where the people—peasants, shepherds, and mountaineers—are not only hardy, handsome, and industrious as a class, but noted for gentleness and courtesy, love of home, and the native elegance of their common speech. It is said that "the dialect that most faithfully represents the pure Tuscan of Boccaccio's day is that of peasants of the Pistojese Apennines. It is here, round about San Marcello and Cutigliano, that the purest Tuscan is spoken—pure in its language, pure in its accent; and it is here that Manzoni and d'Azelio came—comparative foreigners both of them, the one a Lombard, the other a Piedmontese—to acquire the pure language for those romances which have delighted all Italy and all the world."[10]
It is in the Pistojese mountains that we hear those "charming folk songs, in which traditions of true gentleness and elevated feeling are so well exhibited, and account for the high romantic qualities of the impassioned verse."[11]
Shepherds often improvise songs, called rispetti and stornelli, as they tend their flocks alone on the hills, and if their cadence chance to catch the popular ear they are sown on a hundred hills and meadows far and wide. Tigri records by name a little girl called Cherubina who made rispetti by the dozen as she watched her sheep, and the poetry of Beatrice di Pian degli Ontani was famous through the mountains of Pistoja.[12]
Alinari Della Robbia School
TABERNACLE FOR SACRED OIL
CATHEDRAL, BARGA
Miss Alexander, in her "Road Songs of Tuscany," has given an appreciative and loving tribute to this pastoral singer, whom she calls "one of the most wonderful women" she ever saw. The daughter of a stone-mason who worked during the winter in the Maremma, Beatrice became his companion and helper, carrying on her head stones for the walls and bridges he was building. She had no education, never learning the alphabet even, but possessed a remarkable memory, and could recite long poems that she had heard.
YOU ASK ME FOR A SONG
It was not till the day of her marriage that Beatrice discovered her new power "to sing poetry born in her mind," and from that day she never lost her remarkable power of improvisation, and the list of her ballads is very long and varied in theme. She had a strong religious nature, and addressed many of her songs to the Madonna. In her old age, it is said, she knew in poetic form nearly all the New Testament and much of the Old.
Alinari Giovanni della Robbia
ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN
CHURCH OF THE CAPUCHINS, BARGA
GIVE ME LIGHT, LADY
Her eldest son inherited her poetic gift, and often when working in the fields mother and son would carry on a conversation in improvised verse, Beatrice singing one ottava, Beppo answering with another. Miss Alexander says that as a girl Beatrice was very handsome, with an inspired face, charming smile, and sympathetic voice. She had great physical strength and indomitable courage. She generally wore her contadina dress of scarlet bodice, blue kerchief, garnet necklace, and gold earrings. On grand occasions she put on a white embroidered veil, kerchief, and apron belonging to her wedding finery. Beatrice lived over a hundred years, "much loved and honoured by her neighbours and all who knew her," and many pleasant anecdotes are told of her experiences and talent. A Boston lady told us that once, when Madame Goldschmidt (better known as Jenny Lind, or the "Swedish Nightingale,") was visiting friends in the Apennines, a meeting was arranged between the two singers, both elderly women at the time. First Beatrice, in her peasant dress, sang to the great prima-donna of the North, improvising words and music suitable to the occasion. In return Madame Goldschmidt, much gratified, sang one of the songs which has so often moved her great audiences to rapturous applause.[13]
M. M. Newell
"VIOLET-EYED TUSCAN OXEN"
THE DOVE
DETAIL OF TRAPPINGS ON THE HORSE OF LORENZO DE' MEDICI