down upon their heads; and, in a word, undergoing and doing every
kind of mad and demoniacal destruction. The figures are immensely
large, and exaggerated to the utmost pitch of uncouthness; the
colouring is harsh and disagreeable; and the whole effect more like
(I should imagine) a violent rush of blood to the head of the
spectator, than any real picture set before him by the hand of an
artist. This apoplectic performance was shown by a sickly-looking
woman, whose appearance was referable, I dare say, to the bad air
of the marshes; but it was difficult to help feeling as if she were
too much haunted by the Giants, and they were frightening her to
death, all alone in that exhausted cistern of a Palace, among the
reeds and rushes, with the mists hovering about outside, and
stalking round and round it continually.
Our walk through Mantua showed us, in almost every street, some
suppressed church: now used for a warehouse, now for nothing at
all: all as crazy and dismantled as they could be, short of
tumbling down bodily. The marshy town was so intensely dull and
flat, that the dirt upon it seemed not to have come there in the
ordinary course, but to have settled and mantled on its surface as
on standing water. And yet there were some business-dealings going
on, and some profits realising; for there were arcades full of
Jews, where those extraordinary people were sitting outside their
shops, contemplating their stores of stuffs, and woollens, and
bright handkerchiefs, and trinkets: and looking, in all respects,
as wary and business-like, as their brethren in Houndsditch,
London.
Having selected a Vetturino from among the neighbouring Christians,
who agreed to carry us to Milan in two days and a half, and to
start, next morning, as soon as the gates were opened, I returned
to the Golden Lion, and dined luxuriously in my own room, in a
narrow passage between two bedsteads: confronted by a smoky fire,
and backed up by a chest of drawers. At six o'clock next morning,
we were jingling in the dark through the wet cold mist that
enshrouded the town; and, before noon, the driver (a native of
Mantua, and sixty years of age or thereabouts) began TO ASK THE WAY
to Milan.
It lay through Bozzolo; formerly a little republic, and now one of
the most deserted and poverty-stricken of towns: where the
landlord of the miserable inn (God bless him! it was his weekly
custom) was distributing infinitesimal coins among a clamorous herd
of women and children, whose rags were fluttering in the wind and
rain outside his door, where they were gathered to receive his
charity. It lay through mist, and mud, and rain, and vines trained
low upon the ground, all that day and the next; the first sleepingplace
being Cremona, memorable for its dark brick churches, and
immensely high tower, the Torrazzo - to say nothing of its violins,
of which it certainly produces none in these degenerate days; and
the second, Lodi. Then we went on, through more mud, mist, and
rain, and marshy ground: and through such a fog, as Englishmen,
strong in the faith of their own grievances, are apt to believe is
nowhere to be found but in their own country, until we entered the
paved streets of Milan.
The fog was so dense here, that the spire of the far-famed
Cathedral might as well have been at Bombay, for anything that
could be seen of it at that time. But as we halted to refresh, for
a few days then, and returned to Milan again next summer, I had
Page 59
Dickens, Charles - Pictures From Italy
ample opportunities of seeing the glorious structure in all its
majesty and beauty.
All Christian homage to the saint who lies within it! There are
many good and true saints in the calendar, but San Carlo Borromeo
has - if I may quote Mrs. Primrose on such a subject - 'my warm
heart.' A charitable doctor to the sick, a munificent friend to
the poor, and this, not in any spirit of blind bigotry, but as the
bold opponent of enormous abuses in the Romish church, I honour his
a priest, suborned, by priests, to murder him at the altar: in
acknowledgment of his endeavours to reform a false and hypocritical
brotherhood of monks. Heaven shield all imitators of San Carlo
Borromeo as it shielded him! A reforming Pope would need a little
shielding, even now.
The subterranean chapel in which the body of San Carlo Borromeo is
preserved, presents as striking and as ghastly a contrast, perhaps,
as any place can show. The tapers which are lighted down there,
flash and gleam on alti-rilievi in gold and silver, delicately
wrought by skilful hands, and representing the principal events in
the life of the saint. Jewels, and precious metals, shine and
sparkle on every side. A windlass slowly removes the front of the
altar; and, within it, in a gorgeous shrine of gold and silver, is
seen, through alabaster, the shrivelled mummy of a man: the
pontifical robes with which it is adorned, radiant with diamonds,
emeralds, rubies: every costly and magnificent gem. The shrunken
heap of poor earth in the midst of this great glitter, is more
pitiful than if it lay upon a dung-hill. There is not a ray of
imprisoned light in all the flash and fire of jewels, but seems to
mock the dusty holes where eyes were, once. Every thread of silk
in the rich vestments seems only a provision from the worms that
spin, for the behoof of worms that propagate in sepulchres.
In the old refectory of the dilapidated Convent of Santa Maria
delle Grazie, is the work of art, perhaps, better known than any
other in the world: the Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci - with a
door cut through it by the intelligent Dominican friars, to
facilitate their operations at dinner-time.
I am not mechanically acquainted with the art of painting, and have
no other means of judging of a picture than as I see it resembling
and refining upon nature, and presenting graceful combinations of
forms and colours. I am, therefore, no authority whatever, in
reference to the 'touch' of this or that master; though I know very
well (as anybody may, who chooses to think about the matter) that
few very great masters can possibly have painted, in the compass of
their lives, one-half of the pictures that bear their names, and
that are recognised by many aspirants to a reputation for taste, as
undoubted originals. But this, by the way. Of the Last Supper, I
would simply observe, that in its beautiful composition and
arrangement, there it is, at Milan, a wonderful picture; and that,
in its original colouring, or in its original expression of any
single face or feature, there it is not. Apart from the damage it
has sustained from damp, decay, or neglect, it has been (as Barry
shows) so retouched upon, and repainted, and that so clumsily, that
many of the heads are, now, positive deformities, with patches of
paint and plaster sticking upon
them like wens, and utterly
distorting the expression. Where the original artist set that
impress of his genius on a face, which, almost in a line or touch,
separated him from meaner painters and made him what he was,
succeeding bunglers, filling up, or painting across seams and
cracks, have been quite unable to imitate his hand; and putting in
some scowls, or frowns, or wrinkles, of their own, have blotched
Page 60
Dickens, Charles - Pictures From Italy
and spoiled the work. This is so well established as an historical
fact, that I should not repeat it, at the risk of being tedious,
but for having observed an English gentleman before the picture,
who was at great pains to fall into what I may describe as mild
convulsions, at certain minute details of expression which are not
left in it. Whereas, it would be comfortable and rational for
travellers and critics to arrive at a general understanding that it
cannot fail to have been a work of extraordinary merit, once:
when, with so few of its original beauties remaining, the grandeur
of the general design is yet sufficient to sustain it, as a piece
replete with interest and dignity.
We achieved the other sights of Milan, in due course, and a fine
city it is, though not so unmistakably Italian as to possess the
characteristic qualities of many towns far less important in
themselves. The Corso, where the Milanese gentry ride up and down
in carriages, and rather than not do which, they would half starve
themselves at home, is a most noble public promenade, shaded by
long avenues of trees. In the splendid theatre of La Scala, there
was a ballet of action performed after the opera, under the title
of Prometheus: in the beginning of which, some hundred or two of
men and women represented our mortal race before the refinements of
the arts and sciences, and loves and graces, came on earth to
soften them. I never saw anything more effective. Generally
speaking, the pantomimic action of the Italians is more remarkable
for its sudden and impetuous character than for its delicate
expression, but, in this case, the drooping monotony: the weary,
miserable, listless, moping life: the sordid passions and desires
of human creatures, destitute of those elevating influences to
which we owe so much, and to whose promoters we render so little:
were expressed in a manner really powerful and affecting. I should
have thought it almost impossible to present such an idea so
strongly on the stage, without the aid of speech.
Milan soon lay behind us, at five o'clock in the morning; and
before the golden statue on the summit of the cathedral spire was
lost in the blue sky, the Alps, stupendously confused in lofty
peaks and ridges, clouds and snow, were towering in our path.
Still, we continued to advance toward them until nightfall; and,
all day long, the mountain tops presented strangely shifting
shapes, as the road displayed them in different points of view.
The beautiful day was just declining, when we came upon the Lago
Maggiore, with its lovely islands. For however fanciful and
fantastic the Isola Bella may be, and is, it still is beautiful.
Anything springing out of that blue water, with that scenery around
it, must be.
It was ten o'clock at night when we got to Domo d'Ossola, at the
foot of the Pass of the Simplon. But as the moon was shining
brightly, and there was not a cloud in the starlit sky, it was no
time for going to bed, or going anywhere but on. So, we got a
little carriage, after some delay, and began the ascent.
It was late in November; and the snow lying four or five feet thick
in the beaten road on the summit (in other parts the new drift was
already deep), the air was piercing cold. But, the serenity of the
night, and the grandeur of the road, with its impenetrable shadows,
and deep glooms, and its sudden turns into the shining of the moon
and its incessant roar of falling water, rendered the journey more
and more sublime at every step.
Soon leaving the calm Italian villages below us, sleeping in the
moonlight, the road began to wind among dark trees, and after a
Page 61
Dickens, Charles - Pictures From Italy
time emerged upon a barer region, very steep and toilsome, where
the moon shone bright and high. By degrees, the roar of water grew
louder; and the stupendous track, after crossing the torrent by a
bridge, struck in between two massive perpendicular walls of rock
that quite shut out the moonlight, and only left a few stars
shining in the narrow strip of sky above. Then, even this was
lost, in the thick darkness of a cavern in the rock, through which
the way was pierced; the terrible cataract thundering and roaring
close below it, and its foam and spray hanging, in a mist, about
the entrance. Emerging from this cave, and coming again into the
moonlight, and across a dizzy bridge, it crept and twisted upward,
through the Gorge of Gondo, savage and grand beyond description,
with smooth-fronted precipices, rising up on either hand, and
almost meeting overhead. Thus we went, climbing on our rugged way,
higher and higher all night, without a moment's weariness: lost in
the contemplation of the black rocks, the tremendous heights and
depths, the fields of smooth snow lying, in the clefts and hollows,
and the fierce torrents thundering headlong down the deep abyss.
Towards daybreak, we came among the snow, where a keen wind was
blowing fiercely. Having, with some trouble, awakened the inmates
of a wooden house in this solitude: round which the wind was
howling dismally, catching up the snow in wreaths and hurling it
away: we got some breakfast in a room built of rough timbers, but
well warmed by a stove, and well contrived (as it had need to be)
for keeping out the bitter storms. A sledge being then made ready,
and four horses harnessed to it, we went, ploughing, through the
snow. Still upward, but now in the cold light of morning, and with
the great white desert on which we travelled, plain and clear.
We were well upon the summit of the mountain: and had before us
the rude cross of wood, denoting its greatest altitude above the
sea: when the light of the rising sun, struck, all at once, upon
the waste of snow, and turned it a deep red. The lonely grandeur
of the scene was then at its height.
As we went sledging on, there came out of the Hospice founded by
Napoleon, a group of Peasant travellers, with staves and knapsacks,
who had rested there last night: attended by a Monk or two, their
hospitable entertainers, trudging slowly forward with them, for
company's sake. It was pleasant to give them good morning, and
pretty, looking back a long way after them, to see them looking
back at us, and hesitating presently, when one of our horses
stumbled and fell, whether or no they should return and help us.
But he was soon up again, with the assistance of a rough waggoner
whose team had stuck fast there too; and when we had helped hi
m out
of his difficulty, in return, we left him slowly ploughing towards
them, and went slowly and swiftly forward, on the brink of a steep
precipice, among the mountain pines.
Taking to our wheels again, soon afterwards, we began rapidly to
descend; passing under everlasting glaciers, by means of arched
galleries, hung with clusters of dripping icicles; under and over
foaming waterfalls; near places of refuge, and galleries of shelter
against sudden danger; through caverns over whose arched roofs the
avalanches slide, in spring, and bury themselves in the unknown
gulf beneath. Down, over lofty bridges, and through horrible
ravines: a little shifting speck in the vast desolation of ice and
snow, and monstrous granite rocks; down through the deep Gorge of
the Saltine, and deafened by the torrent plunging madly down, among
the riven blocks of rock, into the level country, far below.
Gradually down, by zig-zag roads, lying between an upward and a
downward precipice, into warmer weather, calmer air, and softer
scenery, until there lay before us, glittering like gold or silver
Page 62
Dickens, Charles - Pictures From Italy
in the thaw and sunshine, the metal-covered, red, green, yellow,
domes and church-spires of a Swiss town.
The business of these recollections being with Italy, and my
business, consequently, being to scamper back thither as fast as
possible, I will not recall (though I am sorely tempted) how the
Swiss villages, clustered at the feet of Giant mountains, looked
like playthings; or how confusedly the houses were heaped and piled
together; or how there were very narrow streets to shut the howling
winds out in the winter-time; and broken bridges, which the
impetuous torrents, suddenly released in spring, had swept away.
Or how there were peasant women here, with great round fur caps:
looking, when they peeped out of casements and only their heads
were seen, like a population of Sword-bearers to the Lord Mayor of
London; or how the town of Vevey, lying on the smooth lake of
Geneva, was beautiful to see; or how the statue of Saint Peter in
the street at Fribourg, grasps the largest key that ever was
beheld; or how Fribourg is illustrious for its two suspension
bridges, and its grand cathedral organ.
Or how, between that town and Bale, the road meandered among