April 4th, 1830
To the Sistine Chapel for the ceremonies of Palm Sunday; we got into the body of the chapel, not without difficulty; but we saw M. de la Ferronays in his box, and he let us in (Morier and me). It was only on a third attempt I could get there, for twice the Papal halberdiers thrust me back, and I find since it is lucky they did not do worse; for upon some occasion one of them knocked a cardinal’s eye out, and when he found who he was, begged his pardon, and said he had taken him for a bishop. Here I had a fine opportunity of seeing the frescoes, but they are covered with dirt, the ‘Last Judgment’ neither distinguishable nor intelligible to me. The figures on the ceiling and walls are very grand even to my ignorance. The music (all vocal) beautiful, the service harmoniously chanted, and the responsive bursts of the chorus sublime. The cardinals appeared a wretched set of old twaddlers, all but about three in extreme decrepitude—Odescalchi, who is young and a good preacher, Gregorio, Capellari [afterwards Pope Gregory XVI.]. On seeing them, and knowing that the sovereign is elected by and from them, nobody can wonder that the country is so miserably governed. These old creatures, on the demise of a Pope, are as full of ambition and intrigue as in the high and palmy days of the Papal power. Rome and its territory are certainly worth possessing, though the Pontifical authority is so shorn of its beams; but the fact is that the man who is elected does not always govern the country,15 and he is condemned to a life of privation and seclusion. An able or influential cardinal is seldom elected. The parties in the Conclave usually end by a compromise, and agree to elect some cardinal without weight or influence, and there are not now any Sixtus the Fifths to make such an arrangement hazardous. Austria, Spain, and France have all vetos, and Portugal claims and exercises one when she can. To this degradation Rome is now obliged to submit. The most influential of the cardinals is Albani.16 At the last election the Papal crown was offered to Cardinal Caprara, but Albani stipulated that he should make him Secretary of State; Caprara refused to promise, and Albani procured the election of the present Pope (who did not desire or expect the elevation), became Secretary of State A DEAD CARDINAL (being eighty), and governs the country. He is rich and stingy. The great Powers still watch the proceedings of the Conclave with jealousy; and though it is difficult to conceive how the Pope can assist any one of them to the detriment of another, an Ambassador will put his veto upon any cardinal whom he thinks unfavourable to his nation; this produces all sorts of trickery, for when the Conclave want to elect a man who is obnoxious to Austria, for example, they choose another whom they think is equally so (but whom they do not really wish to elect), that the veto may be expended upon him, for each Government has one veto only. The last veto absolutely put was on Cardinal ——, who was elected on the death of Pius VII. He had behaved very rudely to the Empress Maria Louisa when she took refuge in the north of Italy after the downfall of Napoleon, thinking it was a good moment to bully the abdicated Emperor’s wife. She complained to her father, who promised her the Cardinal never should be Pope. He was a young and ambitious man, and the veto killed him with vexation and disappointment.
Went and walked about St. Peter’s, and was surprised to find how very little longer it is than St. Paul’s. To the Farnese Palace, built by Paul III. out of the ruins of the Coliseum, which now, with all the Farnese property, belongs to the King of Naples, and is consequently going to decay. It got into his hands by the marriage of a King of Naples with the last heiress of the house of Farnese. The Neapolitan property here consists of the Farnese and Farnesina Palaces, the Orti Farnesiani, and the Villa Madama, all in a wretched state; and the Orti, in which there are probably great remains, they will not allow to be excavated. Many of the fine things are gone to Naples, but a few remain, most of which came out of the Thermæ of Caracalla, and originally from the Villa of Adrian. These two, principally the one through the other, have been the great mines from which the existing treasures of art were drawn. The frescoes in this palace are beautiful—a gallery by Annibal and Agostino Caracci, with a few pictures by Domenichino, Guido, and Lanfranco. Annibal Caracci’s are as fine as any I have seen; also a little cabinet picture painted entirely by Annibal, which is exquisite.
As we were going to this palace we drove by the Cancellaria (which was likewise built out of the Coliseum), and heard by accident that a dead cardinal (Somaglia) was lying in state there. Somaglia was Secretary of State in Leo’s time. Having seen all the living cardinals, we thought we might as well complete our view of the Sacred College with the dead one, and went up. After a great deal of knocking we were admitted to a private view half an hour before the public was let in. He had been embalmed, and lay on a bed under a canopy on an inclined plane, full dressed in cardinal’s robes, new shoes on, his face and hands uncovered, the former looking very fresh (I believe he was rouged), his fingers black, but on one of them was an emerald ring, candles burning before the bed, and the window curtains drawn. He was 87 years old, but did not look so much, and had a healthier appearance in death than half the old walking mummies we had seen with palms in their hands in the morning.
Took a look at Pasquin, who had nothing but advertisements pasted upon him. I had seen Marphorius in the Capitol; there has long been an end to the witty dialogues of the days of Sixtus V., so quaintly told by Leti; they are so little ‘birds of a feather’ (for Pasquin is a mutilated fragment, Marphorius a colossal statue of the ocean) that, residing as they did at different parts of the town, it is difficult to understand how they ever came to converse with each other at all. I remember one of the best of his stories. Sixtus V. made his sister a princess, and she had been a washerwoman. The next day Pasquin appeared with a dirty shirt on. Marphorius asks him ‘why he wears such foul linen;’ and he answers ‘that his washerwoman has been made a princess, and he can’t get it washed.’
To the Farnesina: Raphael’s frescoes, the famous Galatea, and the great head which Michael Angelo painted on the wall, as it is said as a hint to Raphael that he was too minute. There it is just as he left it. Here Raphael painted the Transfiguration, and here the Fornarina was shut up with POMPEY’S STATUE him that he might not run away from his work. It might be thought that to shut up his mistress with him was not the way to keep him to his work. Be that as it may, the plan was a good one which produced these frescoes and the Transfiguration.
I very nearly forgot to mention the Palazzo Spada, where we went to see the famous statue of Pompey, which was found on the spot where the Senate House formerly stood, and which is (as certainly as these things can be certain) the identical statue at the foot of which Cæsar fell.
Muffling his face within his robe
Ev’n at the base of Pompey’s statue,
Which all the while ran blood, great Cæsar fell.
People doubt this statue, because it is not like his busts. There is certainly no resemblance to the bust I have seen, which represents Pompey as a fat, vulgar-looking man with a great double chin. It is impossible for the coldest imagination to look at this statue without interest, for it calls up a host of recollections and associations, standing before you unchanged from the hour when Cæsar folded his robe round him and ‘consented to death’ at its base. Those who cannot feel this had better not come to Rome. Cardinal Spada was Secretary of State when this statue was found, and Julius III. (Giocchi del Monti, 1550) made him a present of it.
The Temple of Bacchus is one of the most remarkable objects in Rome; it is not in the least altered, merely turned into a Christian church, and some saints, &c., painted on the walls. The mosaic ceiling and the pavement are just the same as when it was devoted to the worship of the jolly god. The mosaics are beautiful, and perfect models of that sort of ceiling. The pavement is covered with names and other scribblings cut out upon it, all ancient Roman. Not a column has been removed or mutilated. The fact is, Rome possesses several complete specimens of places of heathen worship; this temple, the Pantheon, and San Stefano Rotondo are perfect in the inside, the Pantheon within and without, Vesta and Fortuna Virilis perfect on the outside.
In the Rospigliosi Palace is the famous Aurora of Guido. It is in excellent preservation, and three artists were copying it in oils. One copy was just finished, and admirably done, for which the painter asked forty louis. I begin to like frescoes better than oils; there is such a life and brilliancy about them. At the Quirinal, which was fitted up for the King of Rome and inhabited by the Emperor of Austria, we saw everything but the Pope’s apartments. It is a delightful house, and commands a charming view of Rome. The Pope always goes there the last day of the Holy Week, and stays there all the summer. Nothing can be more melancholy than his life as described by the custode; he gets up very early, lives entirely alone and with the greatest simplicity. In short, it shows what a strange thing ambition is, which will sacrifice the substantial pleasures of life for the miserable shadow of grandeur. Coming home we stopped by accident at the Capuchins, and looked in to see Guido’s St. Michael, with which I was disappointed till I looked at it from a distance. We then went to their catacombs, the most curious place I ever saw. There are a series of chapels in the cloisters, or rather compartments of one chapel, entirely fitted up with human bones arranged symmetrically and with all sorts of devices. They are laid out in niches, and each niche is occupied by the skeleton of a friar in the robes of his order; a label is attached to it with the name of the skeleton and the date of his death. Beneath are mounds of earth, each tenanted by a dead friar with similar labels. When a friar dies, the oldest buried friar, or rather his skeleton, is taken up and promoted to a niche, and the newly defunct takes possession of his grave; and so they go on in succession. I was so struck by this strange sight that, when I came home at night, I ventured on the following description of it:—
THE CATACOMBS IN THE CAPUCHIN CONVENT.
In yonder chapel’s melancholy shade,
Through which no wandering rays of daylight peep,
In strange and awful cemetery laid,
The ancient Fathers of the convent sleep.
A CAPUCHIN CHARNEL-HOUSE
No storied marble with monastic pride
Records the actions of their tranquil life,
Or tells how, fighting for their faith, they died
Unconquer’d martyrs of religious strife.
They are not laid in decent shroud and pall,
To wait, commingling with their kindred earth,
Th’ Archangel’s trumpet, whose dread blast shall call
The whole creation to a second birth.
But midst the mouldering relics of the dead
In shapes fantastic, which the brethren rear,
Profaned by heretic’s unhallowed tread,
The monkish skeletons erect appear.
The cowl is drawn each ghastly skull around,
Each fleshless form’s arrayed in sable vest,
About their hollow loins the cord is bound,
Like living Fathers of the Order drest.
And as the monk around this scene of gloom
The flick’ring lustre of his taper throws,
He says, ‘Such, stranger, is my destined tomb;
Here, and with these, shall be my last repose.’
At night I went with a party of English to see the Coliseum, but the moon was as English as the party, and gave a faint and feeble light. Still, with this dim moon it was inconceivably grand. The exquisite symmetry of the building appears better, and its vast dimensions are more developed by night. I long to see it with an Italian sky and full moon; but not with a parcel of chattering girls, who only ‘flout the ruins grey.’
Notes
15 This, from what I have heard since, was not true of the last Pope, Leo XII., who was an odious, tyrannical bigot, but a man of activity, talent, and strength of mind, a good man of business, and his own Minister. He was detested here, and there are many stories of his violent exertions of authority. He was a sort of bastard Sixtus V., but at an immense distance from that great man, ‘following him of old, with steps unequal.’ He used, however, to interfere with the private transactions of society, and banish and imprison people, even of high rank, for immorality.
16 Albani holds the Austrian veto, and is supported by her authority. But I have heard that since Clement XI., who was an Albani, there has always been a powerful Albani faction in the Conclave. This cardinal is enormously rich and the head of his house. The Duke of Modena is his nephew, and it is generally thought will be his heir.