Arezzo

“ Francis, purged Arezzo of its devils and laid the foundations of Santa Maria delle Grazie, that exquisite church outside the city walls which Benedetto da Maiano, Andrea della Robbia and Parri di Spinello enriched with the sister arts. For it was San Bernardino who, coming to Arezzo, and finding that the citizens were in the habit of practising pagan rites for an oracle, which they imagined dwelt in a wood outside their gates, preached such a fiery sermon from the pulpit of San Francesco that they wept before him like little children. ”

“ Still Arezzo has distinctly the character of a hill city, not of a river city; the hill counts for a 4 good deal, while the river counts for nothing. The best points for a general view from below will be found on the town wall, a little way to the left of the railway station; while to look down on Arezzo we must climb to the castle in the eastern corner of the city, whose Medicean fortifications look strong enough without, but which, within, has gardens and fig trees level with the walls, and rabbits running about at large among them. ”

“ A town wall standing free, as those of Arezzo stand in nearly their whole range, is always a striking object, and one whose circuit 5 it is pleasant and instructive to make. And it has a special interest in some cities, of which Arezzo is one, which have, so to speak, a show side. One side lies open to the world; the ancient roads, the modern railway, approach it; the city dies away into the country by gradually descending suburbs. ”

“ It is as though the dream of some Attic poet, for I cannot think that the heavy-eyed people of Etruria imagined such gods, lingers on in this little Tuscan town, and the echo of its ancient music vibrates in the stillness of the museum [5] like the murmur of waves in a shell. Or perhaps it is a magic in the air, the subtle air of Tuscany, that poets sing of, which has inspired more genius than we can find in all the rest of Italy.
For Arezzo, like Florence, has been the mother of great men. ”

“ Areti`no, Pietro, called the "Scourge of Princes," a licentious satirical writer, born at Arezzo, in Tuscany, alternately attached to people and repelled from them by his wit, moved from one centre of attraction to another; settled in Venice, where he died after an uncontrollable fit of laughter which seized him at the story of the adventure of a sister (1492-1557) .
Arezzo (44) , an ancient Tuscan city, 38 m. SE. of Florence, and eventually subject to it; the birthplace of Mæcenas, Michael Angelo, Petrarch, Guido, and Vasari. ”

“ Elsewhere we possess the life-history of Pietro and Violante, Pompilia's reputed parents; several drawings of the retired tradesmen class, with their gossips and friends, in the street of a poor quarter in Rome; then, the Governor and Archbishop of Arezzo, the friar who is kindly but fears the world and all the busy-bodies of this provincial town. Arezzo, its characters and indwellers, stand in clear light. The most vivid of these sketches is Dominus Hyacinthus, the lawyer who defends Guido. ”

“ In the general view of Arezzo there can be hardly said to be any one dominant object. If the castle made any show, it and the cathedral church, standing nearly on the same level on the highest ground in the town, would stand well side by side. As it is, the body of the duomo is the prominent feature in the view. ”

“ For suddenly, from far away, there came a shouting, meaningless at first, but momentarily growing in meaning, till at last men shrieked into their neighbors' ears that the supposed lost and slaughtered of the youth of Florence were not lost nor slaughtered at all, but were alive and well, and were riding in triumph through the city gates, having inflicted innumerable woes upon the devils of Arezzo. ”

“ We were obliged to stay three days to get the coach repaired; and, providentially, Arezzo was the place, as it is the most loyal city in Tuscany; and every care, attention, and kindness that humanity can dictate, and cordiality and good manners practise, were employed in our favour.... Just as we were going to set 321off, we received accounts of the French being very near the road where we had to pass, and of its being also infested with Neapolitan deserters; but at the same moment arrived a party of Austrians, and the officers gave us two soldiers as a guard. ”

“ Though this picture is greatly celebrated in Italy, and especially at Arezzo, I shall not pause to describe it minutely. Beatrice is represented as reclining, in a chaste and thoughtful attitude, on an antique couch at the foot of a pillar: flowers and flowering shrubs appear to shed their perfume around; and a spreading tree, with a vine loaded with grapes climbing up its trunk and branches, stretches over her. ”

“ Arezzo’s cathedral is about the saddest, ugliest religious edifice in Italy. Within is the tomb of Pope Gregory X.
Poppi and Bibbiena are the two chief towns of the upper valley. Each is blissfully unaware of the world that has gone before, and has little in common with the life of to-day, save such intimacy as is brought by the railroad train, as it screeches along in the valley between them half a dozen times a day.
Poppi sits on a high table rock, its feet washed by the flowing Arno. The town itself is dead or sleeping ”

“ They are garnered to-day in the museum among the relics of Arezzo's history, of which they are the chief glory now that the bronze Chimera and the magnificent Etruscan statue of Minerva have gone to swell the treasures of Florence. There is not a vase or patera unbroken. The entire collection is composed of fragments, moulds and casts in low relief. But every piece is exquisitely beautiful; each one is like a shell cast by the tides of fantasy upon the shores of a work-a-day world. ”

“ The poet related what had been mentioned to a young man who wrote to him expressly to ask whether Arezzo could really boast of being his birthplace. Petrarch added, that Arezzo had done more for him as a stranger than Florence as a citizen. In truth, his family was of Florence; and it was only by accident that he was born at Arezzo. He then went to Florence, where he made but a short stay. There he found his friends still alarmed about the accident which had befallen him in his journey to Rome, the news of which he had communicated to Boccaccio. ”

“ He wanted to win Arezzo, if he could, as well. So, by his machinations, he arranged that the forces of Arezzo should be out to meet and overthrow the adventurous Florentines, whereafter they might march on Florence and take the city unawares. But, to counteract this, he made his arrangements with Messer Griffo, who was, in one and the same job, to massacre the Florentines of the Red and give battle to the Aretines unaware of his presence, and so, at a stroke, rid Simone of his enemies, and cover him with patriotic glory. ”

“ Among the natives of Arezzo the most famous are the Benedictine monk Guido of Arezzo, the inventor 457 of the modern system of musical notation (died c. 1050) , the poet Petrarch, Pietro Aretino, the satirist (1492-1556) , and Vasari, famous for his lives of Italian painters. The town never possessed a distinct school of artists. ”

“ And in Arezzo he assembled his army to come against the city of Florence, and suddenly he departed from Arezzo and entered into the territory of Florence on the 12th day of September, and there was straightway surrendered to him the fortress of Caposelvole upon the Ambra which pertained to the Florentines. And then he pitched his camp before the fortress of Montevarchi, which was well furnished with soldiers, both horse and foot, and with victuals; against it he ordered many assaults, and caused the moats to be emptied of water, and filled up with earth. ”

“ The men of Arezzo had not forgotten how Spinello, in his younger days, being enrolled in the Confraternity of Santa Maria della Misericordia, had visited the sick and buried the dead in the plague of 1383. They were grateful to him beside for having by his works spread the fame of their city over all Tuscany. For all these reasons they welcomed him with high honours on his return.
Still full of vigour in his old age, he undertook important tasks in his native town. His wife would tell him:
"You are rich, Spinello. Do you rest, and leave younger men to paint instead of you. ”

“ For twenty miles or more after the remotest headwaters of the Arno have united to form a considerable stream, this river flows south-eastwards to the vicinity of Arezzo. It here sweeps round to the north-west, and follows that course to near its junction with the Sieve, a few miles above Florence, from which point its general direction is westward to the sea. From the bend at Arezzo, a depression called the Val di Chiana runs south-eastwards until it strikes into the valley of the Paglia, a tributary of the Tiber, and thus connects the basin of the latter river with that of the Arno. ”

“ There is a marble statue of Ferdinand de’ Medici in front of the cathedral, which was erected in 1595 by John of Douay. Arezzo is about a hundred miles north of Rome. In the story of the flight from Arezzo towards Rome, Caponsacchi indicates the chief places which they passed on the road. The first halt was at Perugia, the capital of the province of Umbria, with a population of some fifty thousand. It is the residence of a prefect, a military commandant, the seat of a bishop and a university. The city is built partly on the top of a hill and partly on the slope. ”

“ The old fortress in the city of Arezzo had at this time been destroyed; wherefore Antonio prepared the model for the new one, with the consent of Giuliano, who came on account of business connected with that matter from Rome, but very soon returned thither. This work of the fortress of Arezzo caused Antonio to be chosen architect to the commune of Florence, by which he was appointed superintendent over all the fortifications of the state. ”

“ He had caused information to be sent to Arezzo that there was a traitor within their walls who was prepared on a certain night to let in a certain number of Florentines, who thus would seize and hold one of the gates until reinforcements came from Florence to [Pg 246] secure the weakened city. He schemed all this with the aid of a Guelph that dwelt in Arezzo as a red-hot Ghibelline. Now, it would have been simple enough for him after this to send the little handful of Florentines against a warned Arezzo and have them cut to pieces by an Aretine ambuscade. ”

“ A common sight enough, heaven knows, in the Middle Ages, when every little city sought to rule itself, and the populace and the petty lords alike cloaked their ambitions under the old war-cry of Guelph and Ghibelline!
There is an air of gaiety in Arezzo, a simple, almost pastoral, joy. The philosopher felt it at once.
'We are like flowers,' he said, as we sat on a bench outside the inn after our first breakfast in Tuscany. 'In London our roots spread in the ground, and they [4] get knotted and twisted in the darkness. ”

“ Parri di Spinello Spinelli, painter of Arezzo, having learnt the first principles of art from his own father, was brought to Florence by the agency of Messer Leonardo Bruni of Arezzo, and was received by Lorenzo Ghiberti into his school, where many young men were learning under his discipline: and since the doors of S. Giovanni were then being given their finish, he was put to labour on those figures, in company with many others, as it has been said above. ”

“ We are in the country of the famous Conti Guidi, that stalwart family who so successfully maintained their feudal sway amid an environment of burgher republicanism; the clan of strong men who, for more than four centuries at least, were masters of this fertile district which stretches from the slopes of Falterona southward to the walls of Arezzo—that city of “curs” from which Arno “turns aside its nose in scorn.” ”

“ Vitellozzo left the men of Arezzo to look after their town themselves, leaving also Fabio Orsina to garrison the citadel with a thousand men. Then, profiting by the terror that had been spread throughout all this part of Italy by the successive captures of the duchy of Urbino, of Camerino, and of Arezzo, he marched upon Monte San Severino, Castiglione, Aretino, Cortone, and the other towns of the valley of Chiana, which submitted one after the other almost without a struggle. ”

“ Not so Florence. She is entirely resolved, in these years of victory, to do justice to all men so far she understands it; and in this case it will give her some trouble to do it, and worse,—cost her some of her fine new florins. For her counter-mandate is quite powerless with Guido Guerra. He has taken Arezzo mainly with his own men, and means to stay there, thinking that the Florentines, if even they do not abet him, will take no practical steps against him. ”

“ Yet considering afterwards that he had been tricked, only because he had intended to put an affront upon the painter, Bishop Guido forgave him, and even rewarded him liberally for his labors. Nay, Buffalmacco was again invited to Arezzo, no long time after, by the same prelate, who always treated him as a valued servant and familiar friend, confiding many works in the old cathedral to his care, all of which, unhappily, are now destroyed. Buonamico also painted the apsis of the principal chapel in the church of San Giustino in Arezzo. ”

“ Everything hereabouts bears traces of times when war was the prevalent condition, and peace only a rare gleam of sunshine.
At Arezzo we have put up at the Hotel Royal, which has the appearance of a grand old house, and proves to be a tolerable inn enough. After lunch, we wandered forth to see the town, which did not greatly interest me after Perugia, being much more modern and less picturesque in its aspect. We went to the cathedral,—a Gothic edifice, but not of striking exterior. ”