Padua

“ Man, who has it not in him to be thrifty in so prodigal a midst, has here also thought it lawful to go free. Out of that lake of rustling leaves rise, like the masts of ships crowding a port, church towers, the belfries of pious convents, the domes and turrets of great buildings walled into cities. Among which, prized as they all are and honourably additioned,—Vicenza, Treviso, Mantua, Verona, Ferrara,—there is none more considerable than Padua, root of learning and grey cupolas, chosen to be the last resting-place of Antenor, King Priam's brother, and the first of Titus Livy. ”

“ Padua does, indeed, look imposing at a little distance. Its fine dome, its numerous towers, the large vine-stocks which are rooted in its soil, the air of vast fertility which is spread over the landscape, and the halo of former glory which, cloud-like, rests above it, consort well with one's preconceived ideas [Pg 200] of this once illustrious seat of learning, which even the youth of our own land were wont to frequent; but enter it,—alas the dismal sight!—ruins, filth, ignorance, poverty, on every hand. The streets are narrow and gloomy, from being lined with heavy and dark arcades ”

“ Padua like Athens humanized its conquerors. It became the University town of Venice, as Pavia was of Milan, and it was for a long time protected from the assaults of the Catholic reaction by its rulers, who [Pg 26] possibly were instigated rather by political jealousy of the Papacy as a temporal power, than by any enthusiasm for the humanist and scientific studies of which Padua was the most illustrious home south of the Alps; studies which the powers of the Church began already to recognize as their most dangerous foes. ”

“ Verona, Vicenza and Padua were the capitals of three of the eight ancient provinces of Venezia.
Padua is built in the midst of a vast plain which merits being called Italian-Flanders. In everything but climate it is like a section of the Low Countries, and the city, with its domes and towers, looms up over the low-lying plain, faint and ghostly from afar, like a mirage of the desert.{279}
Canals and fortress walls enclose the city even to-day, and the nearer one approaches, until one actually sees it from within the walls, the less and less Padua becomes like Italy. ”

“ Anxious, as I have said, to find the sunny South, we left Verona that afternoon for Florence, by way of Padua and Bologna. The ride to Padua was through a plain, at this season dreary enough, were it not, here and there, for the abrupt little hills and the snowy Alps, which were always in sight, and towards sundown and between showers transcendently lovely in a purple and rosy light. ”

“ Padua claims to be the oldest city in north Italy; the inhabitants pretend to a fabulous descent from the Trojan Antenor, whose relics they recognized in a large stone sarcophagus exhumed in the year 1274. Their real origin is involved in that obscurity which conceals the ethnography of the earliest settlers in the Venetian plain. Padua early became a populous and thriving city, thanks to its excellent breed of horses and the wool of its sheep. Its men fought for the Romans at Cannae, and the city became so powerful that it was reported able to raise two hundred thousand fighting men. ”

“ Far away on our left, as we drove towards Padua, it rose above the little town that crawled to the foot of the castle's hill to beg protection; and it was exactly like a city painted by Mantegna or Carpaccio, Mr. Barrymore said. Up the hill ran the noblest and biggest wall that an Old Master's imagination could have conceived. Many men might walk on it abreast ”

“ Duchess
Wherefore now,
Throw ashes on the head of Padua,
With sable banners hang each silent street,
Let every man be clad in solemn black;
But ere we turn to these sad rites of mourning
Let us bethink us of the desperate hand
Which wrought and brought this ruin on our state,
And straightway pack him to that narrow house,
Where no voice is, but with a little dust
Death fills right up the lying mouths of men.
Guido
Unhand me, knaves! ”

“ The streets of Padua are lined with long arcades; it has some pleasant green gardens; the walls of the city are grass-grown, and in taking a walk on the top, I could espy the Alps with their snowy summits away in the north. The general appearance of the city is old fashioned and rusty, and an air of quiet repose reigns in every part. There is a queer-looking old building, which the inhabitants show to travellers, as Livy’s house. ”

“ Many houses being empty, rents were exceedingly cheap, and the country being very plentiful in produce, and the air very good, a little money went a long way in Padua. There was something about the quiet gloomy town, with its silent narrow streets and its long and dim arcades,—by which you might go from one end of the city to the other under a shady covert,—that soothed Inglesant's weary senses and excited brain. ”

“ Act I-The Market Place of Padua The Market Place of Padua at noon; in the background is the great Cathedral of Padua; the architecture is Romanesque, and wrought in black and white marbles; a flight of marble steps leads up to the Cathedral door; at the foot of the steps are two large stone lions; the houses on each aide of the stage have coloured awnings from their windows, and are flanked by stone arcades; on the right of the stage is the public fountain, with a triton in green bronze blowing from a conch; around the fountain is a stone seat ”

“ Its hundred churches are vast museums of sculpture and painting. Its university, which the Bolognese boast is the oldest in Europe, rivalled Padua in its glory, and now rivals it in its decay. Its two famous leaning towers,—the rent in the bottom of one is quite visible,—are bending from age, and will one day topple over, and pour a deluge of old bricks upon the adjoining tenements. Its "Academy of the Fine Arts" is, after Rome and Florence, the finest in Italy. ”

“ On the morning of Sant' Antonio's Day we strolled through the streets of Padua, side by side with the country-folk who had come from miles around to offer up their prayers at the shrine of the saint. Some rode jaded mules or were packed close in great market-wagons. Others trudged on foot, with their dinners tied up in blue cotton handkerchiefs. There were bronzed men in homespun, who pushed steadily on, aiding themselves with mighty umbrellas; dark-eyed girls, with bright kerchiefs knotted about their heads or carnations in their glossy braids ”

“ There are a great number of villas on the banks of the Brenta, well built in the best style of architecture, the most of them after the designs of Palladio, the Prince of modern architects.
Padua is an exceedingly large city: but its arcades and the narrowness of the streets give it a gloomy appearance. There are however some beautiful promenades in the suburbs. There are also the remains of an ancient Arena. Padua is famous for its Seminario or University, which is a superb edifice. The Church of St Anthony of Padua is of vast size, having six cupolas. ”

“ Padua, more than any other Italian city, was the home of the classical Renaissance in painting. It was at Padua, that is to say, that the principles which governed classical art were first and most distinctly applied to painting. The founder of this learned Paduan school [26] was Squarcione (1394-1474) . He had travelled in Italy and Greece, and the school which he set up in Padua on his return—filled with models and casts from the antique—enjoyed in its day such a reputation that travelling princes and great lords used to honour it with their visits. ”

“ At Padua, we paid a hurried visit to one or two churches adorned by frescoes by some of the earlier masters, admirable for the artless gesture—the earnest, rapt expression—the power of shewing the soul breathing in the face. Every painter who aims at the ideal—at expressing the purer and higher emotions of the soul, ought to make a particular study of these early Christian paintings; they must not imitate them—true genius, indeed, cannot imitate. He can catch the light which the labours of his predecessors throw over his path ”

“ For so great and so glorious a fatherland, which has for so many years been the bulwark of the faith and the glory of the Christian republic, will the personal service of its citizens and its sons be ever to seek? To save it who would refuse to risk his own life and that of his children? If the defence of Padua is the pledge for the salvation of Venice, who would hesitate to go and defend it? And, though the forces already there were sufficient, is not our honor also concerned therein? ”

“ Padua in spite of its low lying situation is monumental at every turn. They had courage, the old builders, to plant great buildings down in the morass, and faith to believe they would last as long as they have. ”

“ Umbria remained true to the religious sentiment, Florence engaged itself largely with nature study and technical problems, introducing here and there draperies and poses that showed knowledge of ancient sculpture, but at Padua much of the classic in drapery, figures, and architecture seems to have been taken directly from the rediscovered antique or the modern bronze.
The early men of the school were hardly great enough to call for mention. During the fourteenth century there was some Giotto influence felt—that painter having been at Padua working in the Arena Chapel. ”

“ There is a piazza with a plantation and circular public walk, with wildly affected statues of small and great notorieties, which remains with one as a peculiarity of Padua; in general the town is merely old and shabbily Italian, without anything very specific in its aspect.
From Padua to Venice!
It was about ten o'clock on a moonlight night—the [172] 4th of June—that we found ourselves apparently on a railway in the midst of the sea; we were on the bridge across the Lagoon. Soon we were in a gondola on the Grand Canal, looking out at the moonlit buildings and water. What stillness! ”

“ In his concluding passages Elze described the University of Padua at the close of the Sixteenth Century, when there were representatives of twenty-three nations among its students. He said that not a few Englishmen took up their abode in Padua, for a longer or a shorter time, for the purposes of study; all of whom must naturally have visited Venice. ”

“ Maria dell’ Orto—Other Churches—Domestic Architecture—Fondaco de’ Turchi—Other Byzantine Palaces—The Ducal Palace—Foscari Palace—Ca’ d’Oro—Other Gothic Palaces—Balconies—Venetian Architecture—A Festival—Paintings.
LITTLE is to be seen as one leaves Padua to distinguish the city at all vividly, save the oriental-looking cupolas of Sant’ Antonio, and the great roof of the Sala della Ragione, looking like the inverted hull of some great ship, with its convex sides towering up above the otherwise not remarkable-looking city. ”

“ Venice, as one approached it by boat, resembled less a city than a flotilla in the midst of the sea. Towards the middle of the seventh century, a few families from Padua, fleeing the fury of the Goths who were ravaging Italy, sought refuge in the marshy places in this Adriatic gulf; this was the beginning of Venice. As those who established the colony came from Padua, the Paduans thought they had the right to govern it. One of the lagoons was named Rialto and was declared by the founders to be free and independent of Padua. ”

“ The Senate regained courage. By a majority of one vote it was decided to resume the offensive, and, on July 17, Padua was re-taken. The law which forbade the Venetian nobility to serve on the mainland was revoked, and one hundred and seventy-six young nobles, headed by the sons of the Doge, Loredano, marched to the defence of the recovered city. Maximilian at last determined to come in person, and laid siege to Padua with a large army composed not only of Germans, but of Spanish auxiliaries, and reinforced by a French contingent. But the French and Germans were not on the best of terms. ”

“ The road is lined with fine, but mostly ruinous villas, in the light Italian style of architecture, and between Dolo and Padua we passed by a magnificent palace belonging to the Viceroy of Milan. We did not arrive at Padua till it was nearly dark, and entered the town by an old Roman gateway, similar to that at Treviso. The streets through which we passed were narrow and dirty, but furnished on both sides with arcades for foot passengers. ”

“ A Citizen
The Duchess of Padua!
END OF ACT I.
ACT II SCENE
A state room in the Ducal Palace, hung with tapestries representing the Masque of Venus; a large door in the centre opens into a corridor of red marble, through which one can see a view of Padua; a large canopy is set (R.C.) with three thrones, one a little lower than the others; the ceiling is made of long gilded beams; furniture of the period, chairs covered with gilt leather, and buffets set with gold and silver plate, and chests painted with mythological scenes. ”

“ The fame of Fabricius and his school was no doubt the chief reason which led Harvey to Padua, but there was an additional reason which led his friends to concur cheerfully in his resolve. Padua was the University town of Venice, and the tolerance which it enjoyed under the protection of the great commercial republic rendered it a much safer place of residence for a Protestant than any of the German Universities, or even than its fellows in Italy. ”

“ After the fall of the Venetian republic the history of Padua follows the history of Venice during the periods of French and Austrian supremacy. In 1866 the battle of Koniggratz gave Italy the opportunity to shake off the last of the Austrian yoke, when Venetia, and with Venetia Padua, became part of the united Italian kingdom. ”