Pietro da Cortona

“ We next employed an old man as guide. Of course he knew all about Luca Signorelli. He could show us all his frescos and pictures in Cortona. Some of them were bad enough, as he supposed the Signore knew; they were painted in the artist's youth. But we wanted to see his house? Ah! we had but to follow him, and he led us in triumph to that of Pietro da Cortona. As this would not do, he consulted with an old woman, who recommended a visit to a certain padre. The padre was in his kitchen. He had never heard of Signorelli's house, and honestly admitted his ignorance. ”

“ The discovery was hailed with the utmost exultation, not by the people only, but by those who led the minds and consciences of the people. The pope himself, Urban VIII., composed hymns in her praise; and Cardinal Francesco Barberini undertook to rebuild her church. Amongst those who shared the general enthusiasm was the painter, Pietro da Cortona, who was at Rome at the time, who very earnestly dedicated himself and his powers to the glorification of Sta. Martina. Her church had already been given to the Academy of Painters, and consecrated to St. Luke, their patron saint. ”

“ Though his early education was neglected, he supplied the defect by study and observation, and his writings connected with the arts are very creditable to him as a man, a philosopher and an artist.
[Pg 93]
BERRETINI.
Pietro Berretini was born 1596, at Cortona, in Italy. He is called Pietro Da Cortona, from the place of his birth. Even when a child, he evinced uncommon genius for painting; but he appeared likely to remain in obscurity and ignorance, as the extreme poverty of his situation precluded him from the usual means of improving natural talent. ”

“ One ragged urchin offers to accompany him to the cathedral; another persists in following him round nearly the whole circuit of the ancient walls. This last is too bad; a walk round the walls of Cortona is emphatically one of those things which are best enjoyed in one's own company.
As an Italian city which has lived, though in rather a feeble way, through 17 the regular stages of Roman colony and mediæval commonwealth, Cortona has of course its monuments which record those periods of its being. ”

“ In truth, a certain degree of wonder is awakened by the fact that Cortona exists at all. It would have been by no means amazing if we had found only its ruins, as on so many other old-world sites for which later times have found no use. Great in its earliest days, foremost among the Etruscan cities of the mountains, Cortona has never been great in any later age. As a Roman city and colony it was of so little account that, even in Italy, where bishops are so thick upon the ground, it did not become a bishopric 16 till the fourteenth century. ”

“ But it was in the early morning, as I have said, that we discovered the nameless charm of Cortona—that same charm which we found in a different guise in all the little towns of Umbria and Tuscany. Our inn, though it towered more than a thousand feet above the valley, was at the bottom of the city, for Cortona in the immemorial Etruscan fashion hangs from the crest of her hill. Even the ambitious motor-bus could not climb higher than the Piazza Signorelli, because nearly all the streets above it are so steep that they are built in shallow steps. ”

“ For few cities bear so fair a name or seem as full of promise as Cortona. Although the world has long since passed her by, she loiters on her hill-top between the valley and the sky like a forgotten goddess who is loth to quit her great estate. Her towering walls encompass her about, those mighty walls built for a mighty people which Virgil sings of in the Aeneid; she frowns as though she were still girt for war, and had forgotten how to smile; her lean grey castle, stark upon the crest of the hill, points to the heaven like an avenging sibyl. ”

“ This boy was Peter. Finally, the Cardinal sent him as a pupil to one of the first artists in Rome.
Fifty years afterwards there were two old men who lived as brothers in one of the most beautiful houses in Florence. One said of the other, "He is the greatest painter of our age." The other said of the first, "He is a model for evermore of a faithful friend."
Peter of Cortona, a great Italian painter and architect. He was born in Cortona in the year 1596, and died in Rome, in 1669.
Eminence, a title of honor, applied to a cardinal.
galleries, rooms or buildings where works of art are exhibited. ”

“ Arezzo abounds with pictures in the manner of Cortona. Salvi Castellucci, the scholar of Pietro, either at Florence or at Rome, was a great imitator of his style, and painted with expedition, according to the practice of the school. He executed many good pieces in the cathedral, and other churches, besides numerous cabinet pictures that are in private houses, which are estimable for the facility and good taste of their colouring. One of his frescos, representing our Lady surrounded by the patron saints of the city, is in the public palace; but he is greater in oil painting. ”

“ Strength is the parent of sweetness in this wonderful winged youth. But not a single sacrifice is made in the whole picture to mere elegance.—Cortona is a place which, independently of Signorelli, well deserves a visit. Like all Etruscan towns, it is perched on the top of a high hill, whence it commands a wonderful stretch of landscape—Monte Amiata and Montepulciano to the south, Chiusi with its lake, the lake of Thrasymene, and the whole broad Tuscan plain. ”

“ The first work undertaken in Cortona by Guglielmo, was that part of the Cardinal’s palace which is turned towards the Piazza, and which the artist painted in chiaro-scuro, representing thereon the figure of Croton, with those of the other founders of that city. This being completed, the Cardinal, who perceived that Guglielmo was no less excellent as a man than distinguished as a master in art, then caused him to construct the window of the principal chapel in the capitular residence of Cortona, where the artist painted the Birth of Christ, with the Adoration of the Magi. ”

“ Up on the hillside men and girls were reaping in the shadow of the ancient wall. 'And the reapers, reaping early,' quoth the poet softly to himself. Their laughter floated down to us. Every now and then a girl would straighten her lithe figure, stand upright curved scythe in hand, and sing, her clear notes soaring like a lark's in the crystal air. At our feet Cortona nestled in the embrace of her great wall, and far below, the plain of Tuscany rolled away to the hills where the sunlight fired the towers of other mountain cities. ”

“ There are some small fragments of Roman work, but nothing that can be called a Roman building. There is a crowd of churches and monasteries, but none of any great architectural value, though some contain works of importance in the history of painting. It perhaps marks the position of Cortona as a comparatively modern bishopric that its cathedral church is in no sort the crowning building of the city. The duomo stands about half-way up the height within the town, on a corner of the walls. Its elegant Renaissance interior has been already spoken of ”

“ The hill-city of Perugia supplies an instructive contrast with the hill-city of Cortona. The obvious contrast in the matter of modern prosperity and importance is an essential part of the comparative history. Cortona has through all ages lived on, but not much more than lived on. Perugia has, through all ages, kept, if not a place in the first rank of Italian cities, yet at any rate a high place in the second rank. She never had the European importance of Venice, Genoa, Florence, Naples, and Milan, or of Pisa in her great days. ”

“ These grey ramparts are in great part still visible, and form the chief attraction of Cortona. It is perched on the very pinnacle of a mountain, and I wound and doubled interminably over the face of the great hill, while the jumbled roofs and towers of the arrogant little city still seemed nearer to the sky than to the railway-station. “Rather rough,” Murray pronounces the local inn; and rough indeed it was; there was scarce a square foot of it that you would have cared to stroke with your hand. The landlord himself, however, was all smoothness and the best fellow in the world ”

“ Near the town we met two young lovers, their arms around each other's waists, and a group of men who directed us in our search for the inn up a short steep hill leading away from the main road. Above, inside the city gate, several other citizens told us we must go down again, for the road we had left led right by the door. Clearly the Albergo della Stella—for that was its name—was not well known in Cortona. After a climb of three miles it was provoking to go even a foot out of our way, and we turned back in no cheerful mood. ”

“ Castiglione distinctly does stand on a hill-top; Cortona sits enthroned on a height which it would hardly be straining language to speak of as a mountain. We have now come to a site of the oldest class, the stronghold on the height, like Akrokorinthos and the Larissa of Argos. But at Argos and Corinth the mountain-fortress became, at a later stage, the citadel of the younger city which grew up at the mountain's foot. But at Cortona, as at greater Perugia, the city still abides on the height; it has never come down into the plain. ”

“ But the lower city is still thoroughly a hill-city. The hill of Perugia is lower than the hill of Cortona, while the city of Perugia 27 is vastly greater than the city of Cortona. But Perugia is as far removed as Cortona from coming down into the plain. On the little hill of Arezzo such a process could happen, and it has happened. Not so with the loftier seats of its neighbours. Cortona is not likely to grow; Perugia very likely may. But it will take a long period of downward growth before unbroken dwellings of men stretch all the way from its railway station to its municipal palace. ”

“ The younger brother stretched himself again beside the spring and drew his hat over his eyes. The elder stood up straight and not altogether unimpressive in front of it. Pietro in the rear of the spring reflected at this point that he and the ape could conduct a livelier conversation if it were left to them. Pietro could not imagine a conversation in which it was not desirable to be lively. The silence was long and, Pietro thought, not pleasant.
“Bob,” said the apparent sleeper at last, “ever hear of the prodigal son?”
The deacon frowned sharply, but said nothing. ”

“ It is a wide leap from these days of study to the beginning of his citizen's life in Cortona, when, a man of thirty-eight, he first settled down as a burgher discharging important duties there, but it would be idle to attempt to fill the gap, and only one document exists to help in any way to bridge it over. ”

“ Yet it was not for Santa Margherita that we climbed Cortona's hill at dawn, but to see the rich plain of Tuscany in its amphitheatre of blue hills, each with a towered city for its crown—Chiusi, Città della Pieve, Montepulciano, and a host of others to which we had not learned to give their names. It was a panorama of surpassing beauty which opened out before us. Fold on fold the mountains lifted their heads above the mists of the valley, rising always towards the mighty crest of Monte Amiata, which was to loom upon so many of our horizons while we were journeying through the heart of Italy. ”

“ He saw that for a moment she hesitated and that Pietro was staring at her as if to suggest that she decline, and he felt a savage desire to tell that young man that it was not the part of a guide to make suggestions to his employer. She glanced up almost casually at Pietro, intercepted his look and then her lips closed firmly as she replied, “I shall be your guest in the evening, with pleasure, Mr. Ware.”
Pietro arose almost sulkily, recovered his poise, and said: “Then it is planned that we leave the hotel at three o'clock, Signorina Cardell.” ”

“ It seemed horrible to think that perhaps out there, even now, that handsome, fiery, temperamental, jealous youngster, Pietro, was being as callously slaughtered as if he were but a trussed sheep. In something of a fury of unreasoning impotence he rove to and fro, straining every muscle of arms and feet to break his bonds, biting savagely at the smothering folds of the cape and beating his feet helplessly on the stone floor.
The opening of the door brought a pause to his efforts and he heard that same heavy and unmistakable voice of command. ”

“ A servant entering at the moment with two large silver candelabra ablaze with lights, created an effect of luminance in the room that made him appear to even greater advantage as an imposing figure of ecclesiastical authority, and Prince Pietro looked at him with the admiring affection and respect which he, though a cynic and sceptic, had always felt for the brother of his wife,—affection and respect which had if anything become intensified since that beloved one's untimely death. ”

“ I expected to have found more interest at Cortona than was really the case; the principal antiquities are the walls of the city, of Cyclopean masonry, not of the earliest style, but of that where the stones lie for the most part in courses nearly horizontal; and a small sepulchral chamber, a little below the town, called the grotto of Pythagoras. It is built of large blocks of sandstone; the doorway remains, and the rebate for the door, and two holes in the sill and lintel for the pivot on which it turned. ”