Orvieto
ORVIETO, yet another of the wonderful hill towns of Italy, is quite unlike any of those with which this book has hitherto dealt. It has an absolutely insular position, due to its situation on top of an isolated crag of dark volcanic rock which rises out of the wide valley of the river Paglia. The rock, which crowns the steep slopes of a hill, goes upwards a sheer precipice on three sides. On the fourth, the old road circles and winds in and out of olive groves and orchards, until, having climbed the ascent, it finally enters the city in a bold curve close to where the funicular rail from the station terminates. The principal entrance is the Porta Maggiore at the other end of the rock. It is a gateway hewn out of the solid tufa and built across a very narrow natural gorge. Two other gates pierce the walls. One, at the east end, is close to the old Fortessa—now converted into a charming garden. Like an old eagle that in his declining years cannot trust his wings for far flight, this grim old city, built of black lava, broods over the sweep of country below. Very few places in the country occupied so impregnable a position.
On the northern slopes of the hill there has been unearthed in a peasant’s garden one of the most complete Etruscan necropoli in Italy. One tomb is left exactly as it was found, with the contents—vases, jars, utensils of bronze, &c.—in their original position.
In the troublous times that so often overtook Papal Rome no fewer than thirty-two different Pontiffs found refuge in Orvieto from incipient revolutions. The impregnable situation of the city rendered it safe and immune from attack. Pope Clement VII., who fled here after the sack of Rome by the Emperor Charles V., caused the Pozzo di S. Patrizio to be made. This extremely cleverly constructed well is hewn out of the solid rock for a depth of one hundred-and-eighty feet, and has a double spiral staircase outside the water shaft. The Papal Court naturally followed the Pope, and Orvieto in the days which have gone must have worn a more human air than it does now. One can understand that then its dark, solemn streets resounded with a little gaiety, and its palaces had a greater show of life than they have at the present time. True, the owners now spend most of the year in Rome, and reside in their fortress homes for the summer months only. But even their advent does not, to the stranger, bring much more life into this solemn place. No other word describes the palaces of Orvieto better than the above. Nearly every one of these fortress palaces has a tower of defence, the walls of which are from eight to ten feet thick. Many of them are connected with one another by underground passages, and none have any windows at all accessible from the outside. The lower class of inhabitants are quiet and sad-looking. They appear even to this day to live under some heavy mental weight. Maybe generations of suppression and the dominance of an intriguing Court has had an influence that is inbred into the children born now. Then, too, it was so far down hill and up across the opposite slopes to the world beyond! So toilsome a climb to return home! You feel this to-day when you live in Orvieto—feel that this silent city is an island. Can you be surprised, when you think of these adverse influences, that the poorer Orvietans have not quite the gay and friendly air of the peasantry of the plains? But whatever the people may be, they live in a wonderful old city, and they live under the shadow of a grand Gothic cathedral.
Standing in a fine open piazza with the Palazzo del Papa on one side, the Hospital on another, and the Bishop’s palace on a third, this fine church occupies the vantage ground of Orvieto. In the Vatican, one of Raphael’s well-known frescoes illustrates the miracle of Bolsena. It was to commemorate this that Pope Urban IV. founded the cathedral. The magnificent façade has three porches. The centre one has round arches, and the other two are pointed. Four flat panels are at the bases of the shafts that divide the façade. These shafts end in crocketed pinnacles surrounding the Gothic turrets, which soar upwards beyond the three gables at the top of the façade. The gables themselves rise above the roofs of the nave and aisles. The only fault one can find with this beautiful building, and it is one common to most Italian Gothic churches, is that the façade is “stuck on,” and does not really form part of the architectural composition of the building. A glance at the illustration will explain what is meant.
The four panels are justly placed among the masterpieces of Italian sculpture of the thirteenth century. Vasari attributes the designs to Niccolò Pisano. This may be, but it is known that Giovanni Pisano and others were the artists who executed them. The first in order begins at the lowest left-hand corner of the north panel, and records the Creation of the World and all beasts and birds. Then follow the histories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Jubal—making bells, and Tubal-Cain measuring on a scroll with a compass.
This completes the first and best panel of the four. Each incident is enclosed by a very beautifully cut and intricate pattern of the vine. The second panel depicts scenes from the Old Testament; the third, the Tree of Jesse, the Nativity and Life of Christ, with classic foliage intervening. The fourth is very good and represents the Resurrection; here figures of a very Greek type rise from Greek sarcophagi. Saints, Virgins, and the Saviour in Glory surrounded by Apostles also find places on this panel. It finishes in the lowest right-hand corner with a most realistic scene in Hell. Raphael, it is said, came to Orvieto to study these wonderful works.
Immediately above and at the bases of the four shafts are the huge bronze symbols of the four Evangelists. They rest on the abaci of the pilasters which form a sort of drip-course right along the façade. Over the centre porch is a bronze tent, the curtains of which Angels draw aside revealing the Virgin and Child seated. The lights, forming the tympanums of the porches, are thin sheets of alabaster. The columns are spiral and twisted, octagonal and quadrangular. Each is set against a different coloured background of black lava, red, white, or grey marble; and each is covered with geometrical mosaic. The wheel window of the façade is beautified with exceptionally good tracing. It is framed by quatrefoils in panels, with the head of a saint in each. On two sides of these, in recessed rectangular niches, are statues of the Twelve Apostles.
At the top of the frame are canopied niches with a row of saints. The whole of this wonderful front is covered by modern mosaics which do not quite fit in with the severe lines of the architecture. Neither does the scheme of colour in which they are executed take its place with the warmth of the marble as well as it might.
The whole of the main building is constructed in bands of black lava and white marble. Semicircular chapels in the aisles break the monotony of the lower portion of the exterior; while the upper is rendered less severe by the pointed clerestory windows, a dripstone and string-course, and a good cornice.
The interior is one of the best in Italy. It was greatly improved when the colossal statues which stood at the bases of the piers were removed, and the side chapels cleared of their altars and rather meretricious adornments. The massive columns of the nave, eight of which are round, four clustered, and two engaged, have capitals that partake of a style far more classic than Gothic. Above the round arches they support runs a triforium gallery. This is open in the nave, and covered at the west end, where it follows the slope upwards of the gables of the aisles. At the east end it is carried over the window, being also covered in here. The windows of the aisles are all filled, or partly filled, with thin slabs of alabaster. The effect of light produced through this thick but comparatively translucent medium is extremely mellow and beautiful.
The short transepts are raised three steps above the nave, and the choir five. A fine red marble balustrade separates the latter from the rest of the church. The open stalls in the choir have some extremely good intarsia work. The wooden screen that shuts them off from the nave is a carved mass of most intricate geometrical design. Under the east window is the bishop’s throne, backed and surrounded with more good intarsia, in which saints and sainted bishops with their symbols most effectively figure. The walls above and around are covered with fourteenth-century frescoes by Pietro di Puccio and Ugolino, both native artists. In their present faded state they harmonise beautifully with their surroundings, to which the colour of the well-worn red marble floor of the cathedral adds a pleasant note.
The work of Luca Signorelli can be better studied in the Cappella della Madonna di S. Brizio than anywhere else in Italy. This chapel practically forms the shallow south transept. In the magnificent frescoes which adorn its walls one can trace the possible influence of this great painter on the works of Michael Angelo. Two panels of the ceiling came from the brush of Fra Angelico. The north transept is almost entirely occupied by the Cappella del S.S. Corporale. The reliquary containing the “Corporal,” or linen cloth of the Miracle of Bolsena, is kept over the altar. This reliquary is a fine piece of silver-gilt work, with two dozen beautiful panels of blue enamel. It was on to this linen cloth that the Blood dropped from the broken Host, and convinced the officiating priest of the Real Presence. Pope Urban IV. had it brought from Bolsena, and commenced to build this magnificent cathedral as a great shrine in which the sacred relic should rest for ever.
Behind the cathedral, that is to the east, Orvieto, not many years ago, was a ruined, broken-down mass of insanitary buildings. Gardens now take the place of what was a plague-spot, and the houses of the city as we find it now occupy barely one-half of the area contained within the walls. In this respect modern ideas have decidedly improved Orvieto. What is left of the old streets is well looked after from the sanitary point of view; and from the artistic, there are not many places in Italy where subjects are to be found in such plenty. The massive Torre del Moro is close to the Piazza del Popolo, where stands the ruined church of S. Domenico. This fine Romanesque structure is entered by a flight of steps at the west end; it is built over a massively constructed crypt, now used as a granary. The mighty arches of this crypt sustain part of the church, but it does not extend beneath the whole of the fabric. One of the numerous arched gateways which are to be found throughout the city intervenes between it and the little buttressed dwelling underneath the east end. From this rises the solid campanile. An arcade runs round the whole church. This good feature is composed of round arches, containing small round-headed lights. The outer member of each arch is finished by a broad, flat, square billet, the inner has a cable pattern. Above is a dripstone and string-course.
Saturday sees the piazza crowded with country folk, and it then presents a busy scene. All the rest of the week it is silent and deserted. I was there with my sketch-book one afternoon. A thunderstorm was rolling about in the hills. The air was charged with disturbing electricity. Swifts flew screaming round the ruined church. A kestrel up in the battered old tower cried to her young. The storm crept nearer. Grand cumuli clouds piled themselves higher and higher above the lightning-riven mass of rain-sodden blackness below. A beautiful swallow-tail butterfly, brilliant against the deep purple background, came gracefully sailing across the square into the sunshine. It hovered, now here, now there, like a spirit from another world seeking rest but finding none. Little puffs of wind stirred odd bits of straw and paper about the piazza. Dust began to eddy round and round. A drop of rain fell on to the open leaves of my sketch-book. It was the writing on the wall; so I closed the book and hurried home. For half an hour the heavens emptied themselves on Orvieto. To me a stage-play of some scene in her past was re-enacted in the sky; the passing storm seemed so appropriate to the rugged old city.